A racist rabbi, peace talks and the soldiers in the field

On the eve of the new Chief Rabbis’ selection, I was sitting in front of a TV set together with N., an old Palestinian friend who managed to get a permit to enter Israel and find odd jobs in Tel Aviv to support his family. Both of us, an Israeli Jew who does not fast on Yom Kippur and a Muslim Palestinian who is not particular about the Ramadan fast, could not ignore the religious-political event which was taking place.

Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu of Safed was among the candidates for Chief Sephardi Rabbi. He is the one behind the “The Rabbis' Letter”, calling upon Israelis  not to rent apartments to Arabs. "What is wrong with that? This is exactly what the Jewish Law, the Halacha, says. We must not allow them to live among us".

The position of Chief Rabbi is an ancient one, dating back to the Ottoman times. The original title was Hakham Bashi - Turkish for "Head of the Wise Men”. It provided a considerable amount of communal autonomy to the Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition in Spain and found refuge under the Ottomans. Should the state of Israel in the Twenty First Century retain this Ottoman institution, amply finance its extensive bureaucracy, and impose by law its jurisdiction in matters of marriage and divorce on its non-religious Jewish citizens? This has often been called in question, even before the advent of the odious Rabbi Eliyahu.

The Supreme Court had refused to touch this hot potato, rejecting on technical grounds the appeal against Rabbi Eliyahu and letting him run. But in the event, he failed to gain the Rabbinical High Seat, garnering "only" a third of the votes in the 150-member Rabbinical Electoral College.

Having tuned in to news flashes from the conclave in Jerusalem, me and N. could heave a sigh of relief and turn to other things. N. was concerned about a little tidbit which is of great importance to daily life in the area where he lives. The IDF just announced the removal of concrete barriers which, since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2001, prevented any movement on the al-Harayyeq Road which connects the city of Hebron with several villages and towns to its south and which passes near the settlement of Beit Haggai. From now on, the military said, Palestinians will be allowed to travel on this road from 5:00 am to 9:00 am and again from 4:00 pm until 8:00 pm.

“They are tight-fisted” he said. “Even after twelve years, they do not open the road for the whole day. The army wants to show they are still the Boss, and the settlers don’t want us to travel near them. And I want to see if it would really open, even on these hours. It already happened that they announced in the media  the opening of roads but on the ground nothing happened. What I can tell you, when I was going to Tel Aviv we had to wait longer than usual at the Bethlehem Checkpoint. For some two hours they delayed and harassed us until we at last could get through. I'm already used to it, whenever they are speaking about  peace talks and easing of restrictions, the soldiers in the field do the exact opposite".

Even so, N. is in no rush to dismiss out if hand the negotiations between the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, due to be resumed in Washington following the great efforts of Secretary of State Kerry. "We'll see what comes of it. It will not take very long, two or three weeks. We'll see what happens when they start talking about the 1967 borders, if it is serious or just idle chattering  again."

It is quite a lot, coming from this man. Already for some time, N. has effectively lost hope of ending the occupation. Several times I heard him say that it would be better for the Palestinians to dismantle the PA and give up the demand for a state of their own, and to demand instead Israeli citizenship and civil equality - and was certainly not the only one. Now, he is again ready to give negotiations a cautious chance.

Precisely a week ago, when John Kerry declared the resumption of negotiations, was also the day when Sarit Michaeli was wounded by a rubber-coated metal bullet fired by a soldier. Michaeli, spokesperson of the Israeli Human Rights group B'Tselem, was documenting by video the course of a demonstration at the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh. Already for years, villagers are holding weekly demonstrations, with the help of Israeli and international volunteers, to protest settlers from the nearby Halamish thaving taken over the spring which had for generations provided water to their village.

http://www.btselem.org/firearms/20130721_btselem_spokesperson_injured

”This shooting was in violation of army regulations: the soldier fired from a distance of less than twenty meters, well below the prescribed minimum range of 50 meters, aiming at a photographer who posed no threat to the soldiers" read the statement issued by B'Tselem. The bullet penetrated into Michaeli's thigh and was extracted by surgery at Ichilov Hospital. The incident got some media attention, but did not really cause a stir. Sarit Michaeli of B'Tselem recovered and was soon back on her documentation job in the Occupied Territories. The soldier who fired was also back on his own job, and yesterday afternoon he was probably again active in the dispersal of the weekly demonstration. Meanwhile, the settlers continue in possession of the village spring. Would the Washington talks ever have any effect on the situation in Nabi Saleh?

Another coincidence (or is it?). The day when Kerry announced the resumption of negotiations was also the day when hundreds of Israeli actors and theater people rallied to protest the closure order issued by the Israeli Police, to prevent a Puppet Theater Festival for children, which was scheduled to take place at the al-Hakwati Theater in East Jerusalem. Some of the actors made speeches, while  others expressed their protest by playing elaborate pieces on stage. They clearly found if difficult to comprehend why puppet theater had so alarmed the authorities, and why this year (the festival has been going on annually for 18 years already). Why should Palestinian children from East Jerusalem be deprived of what is abundantly provided to Israeli children? (Not one but two Puppet Theater Festivals are held in Israel these very days, one in West Jerusalem and the other in Holon, not far from the room where I sit and write this article…)
http://972mag.com/activists-and-actors-host-hakawati-theater-solidarity-event-in-jaffa/76207/

No, no one had claimed that the puppet performances intended to entertain the children of East Jerusalem, disrupted by police closure order, had any  subversive or dangerous political content. All that was asserted by Mr Yitzhak Aharonovitz, Minister of Public Security, was that the PA (yes, the very same Palestinian Authority with which the State of Israel is at long last going to restart peace negotiations) had funded the puppet theater. And, as the honourable minister averred, The Oslo Accords Implementation Law, enacted by the Knesset in 1994, duly forbids the Palestinian Authority from hold, financing or sponsoring events in East Jerusalem.

It was no use when the theater director went to police and averred that the  Palestinian Authority, which finds it difficult to pay its own employees, had not given the festival even one penny. The police had determined that it was the PA which provided the funding, and it is the police's word which counts. The PA could send a representative all the way to Washington to negotiate with a representative of the government of Israel, but is strictly forbidden to finance a children's puppet theater in East Jerusalem within a half an hour’s drive from Mahmoud Abbas’ headquarters in Ramallah. The Law is the Law.

So, how should one regard these talks, due (tentatively) to start on Tuesday? The debate on enacting a Referendum Law is already started to heat up. Does that mean that somebody seriously believes that the negotiations would indeed lead to the signing of a far-reaching agreement, which would need to be presented to the citizens of Israel in a national referendum? Or is just one more one of the mirages and illusions to which we have gotten all too used?

Under the title "There is reason for concern" Uri Elitzur, one of the most influential Right-wing columnists, writes today: "The first and most obvious script means that we are due for another round of talks and photo opportunities, which like all its predecessors over the last 20 years will not lead anywhere. And if so,  there is a definite chance that it will be the last round of futile talks, and that everybody concerned would shed their delusions and realize the two-state idea is itself false”.

That is certainly Elitzur’s desirable scenario. In such a case, he proposes that the State of Israel proceed to annex the territories which it conquered in 1967 and grant Palestinians civil rights in a “gradual and controlled process" lasting  about thirty years. In his view, in this way Israel could "digest" the Palestinians and gradually ensure that even after annexation the number of Arab Knesset Members shall not exceed a twenty out of one hundred and twenty. "The Jewish State could endure that”.

However, Elitzur is quite apprensive of Scenario Two: "Most of Israeli society, including most leaders and opinion makers, and including Binyamin Netanyahu, are full of irrational fear of the moment when the dream of two states is conclusively proven impossible. Fear sometimes clogs the mind, and pushes the person to lie to himself and ignore all warning signs. Yes, there is reason for apprehension that Netanyahu would embrace delusional and suicidal options rather than face up to the fact that achieving a Palestinian state on reasonable terms is impossible. The fact that the Prime Minister personally takes the trouble and effort to energetically promote proposal for a referendum is a rather worrying sign. When fear is the main motivation for a major irresponsible step, it would be easier to get such a step approved by a referendum rather than by a political party’s organ or in the Knesset. Under the frightening slogan: “Either a Palestinian state which will live with us in peace, or a Bi-national State which will seal the doom of Zionism”, the majority would be carried along by their leaders’ fear and vote for a Palestinian state . The bottom line, unfortunately, is that I cannot reassure those who feel concerned since John Kerry announced resumption of talks. There is indeed a reason to worry.”

Uri Elitzur knows Binyamin Netanyahu quite well. He had once been Netanyahu’s Chef de Bureau and was privy to the PM’s most confidential strategic planning - though it was quite a long time ago. Do he and his fellows really have a reason for concern?

The easy part of the task

So it seems that he did it, after all. After so many mocked his mission and  prematurely proclaimed its demise (as did I in one of these blogs). 
The Israeli media accorded John Kerry the ultimate insult of hardly bothering to report on his repeated visits. And for their part, the settlers and their representatives in the cabinet and the Knesset did not regard Kerry and the prospect of  negotiations with the Palestinians as a threat. "So, let there be some talks. Nothing will come of it, anyway" said Naftali Bennett and his friends hardly more than a week ago.

And now, after all the efforts, the repeated trips and shuttles from Washington and back, all the severe problems and the infinite insistence - dubbed as naïve - John Kerry seems to have succeeded. At least, in the easiest and simplest part of the task: bringing a representative of the government of Israel and one from the Palestinian leadership to sit in one room and talk to each other. But what reasons have we, if any, to assume that this time something would really come out of the talks?

There is no festive ceremony planned, no photo opportunity, no formal handshakes, no declaration of “A Historic Moment”. Nothing even remotely resembling, for example, the pathetic show of George W. Bush’s Annapolis Conference. Tzipi Livni of occupying Israel and Saeb Erekat of occupied Palestine, who already met more than once, are to come to Washington without ceremony and talk "in complete secrecy, away from the public and the media, so as to deal thoroughly with all the most sensitive issues, without interruption and without public pressure."

But what is going to happen there, away from the public and the media? Would Erekat ask "What about the 1967 borders" and Livni  answer "I have no mandate from Netanyahu to discuss this" - which would essentially bring negotiations to their end fifteen minutes after they started?

Just maybe, one who sets up talks on such a basis, with no ceremonies and no photo opportunities and just simple plain prosaic talks, might be seriously intending them to bear fruit? Not be just “A Peace Process", of which we have had more than enough, but one which ends with real peace? Getting there will be far more difficult than just getting Saeb Erekat and Tzipi Livni to sit in a single room.

At least, the honorable Naftali Bennett, Minister of Economy, is no longer certain that talks will not lead to anything. He had started to feel apprehensive and also make threats: "Let it be clear, the Jewish Home Party under my leadership will have no part, even for one second, in a government which agrees to negotiate on the basis of the 1967 lines". Maybe Bennet has some inside information causing him to feel apprehension and make threats?

These talks are starting under the shadow of the European Union 's decision to impose a far-reaching boycott on the West Bank settlement enterprise, a decision which alarmed the Israeli political establishment and brought the issue of the 1967 borders to the top of the national agenda. And if talks get into crisis because of this issue – which is very likely - the European Union will be waiting outside for Netanyahu, with another package of sanctions. "Good cop/Bad cop", is a well-known power play, practiced worldwide for many centuries. And maybe it will work for us, too, with the nice American cop sitting inside the negotiating room and the dastardly European cop waiting outside with a club?

Anyway, the fact that we got this far proves that Secretary of State John Kerry is very stubborn. If Kerry really wants the negotiations to produce results, he would have great need of all his stubbornness.

The Arab Spring and us

The term "Arab Spring" was inspired by the historic 1848 events known as the “Spring of Nations". When it became known throughout Europe that in Paris the monarchy was overthrown and a republic established, the masses in many different countries took to the streets to make their own revolutions. Some were oppressed peoples suffering under foreign rule, others lived under Kings and tyrannical rulers of their own nationality. In some places there were relatively peaceful revolutions, others burst into bloody civil wars and the intervention of foreign powers.

Most of the 1848 revolutions in Europe ended in failure and frustration. In some cases the former rulers were able to maintain their rule by force. In other places, where the people got to choose their representatives, manifestly unfit people got to power and brought their countries low. But despite all, in historical perspective there is no doubt that these revolutions sowed the seed of present day democratic Europe.

The chain of events known as the Arab Spring began with a young Tunisian named Mohammed Boazizi, who set himself on fire to protest a personal act of injustice. He did not live to see that how his death sparked protests which led to the overthrow of tyranny in his native Tunisia and quickly spread to other countries.

The fall of the regime in Tunis did not arouse too much of an interest in Israel. Most Israelis never heard of the dictator Ben Ali until the day he boarded a plane and fled. Egypt was quite another matter. The demonstrations in Tahrir Square two years ago made headlines in the Israeli press, displacing our own politics. Israelis watched the developing drama with bated breath and a clear and evident sympathy, up to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

Egyptian bloggers were amazed to hear how deeply many Israelis were interested in and sympathetic to their struggle. The struggle in the city squares of Cairo also affected directly the social protest movement that arose a few months later in the streets of Israeli cities. In the protest tent encampment on Rothschild Boulevard, there were signs and stickers such as "From Kiryat Shmona to Cairo - The People Demand Social Justice" "Corner of Rothschild and Tahrir" and "With Prices Going Sky-High, We Will Struggle Like in Egypt” (this rhymes in Hebrew).

But the honeymoon did not last long. With the increasing signs that free elections in Egypt would be won by Islamist parties and factions, Israeli  enthusiasm for democracy in Egypt noticeably cooled. Writer Amos Oz seems to have been the first to utter the phrase "It's not an Arab Spring, but an Islamist Winter" which at record speed became the most outworn of the cliches used by Israeli commentators and editorial writers.

Meanwhile, Libya got to the headlines for a time. In general Israelis tended to support the decision of the NATO countries to intervene in the war and provide the Libyan rebels with air support, and eventually topple Moammar Gadhafi from the heights of power to a despicable death in a sewer pipe. On the other hand, there was very little interest over here in the brutal suppression of the democratic protest movement focused on Bahrain’ Pearl Intersection, a suppression carried out with the tacit consent of the same NATO countries. To the extent that Bahrain got any mention, the Israeli branded Bahrain Shiite protesters as "pro-Iranian", which by definition made their swift suppression into an Israeli interest.

Attention quickly moved to Syria and the brutal war which developed there. To begin with, many Israelis naturally sympathized with the protesters in the squares of the Syrian cities, who encountered very brutal repression. Netanyahu and his government soon seized their chance and rushed to very loudly condemn the repression in Syria - and note with satisfaction that the   Syrian army’s murderous violence against the citizens of its own country was much worse than the acts of the Israeli Defense Forces in the Palestinian territories. When international Human Rights activists sought to reach the shores of besieged Gaza, each and every one of them got in their detention cells a copy of a personal letter from the Prime Minister of Israel, which  directed them to turn to Syria and forget about Israeli settlements or the siege on Gaza.

Gradually, as the weight of global Jihad activists among the Syrian rebels increased, sympathy for the rebels was replaced by regarding them as a threat to Israel, one of the many threats for which we must remain ever vigilant, and the right-wingers triumphantly reiterated the argument "how good that we did not make peace with Syria and give back the Golan Heights." And when news websites published items of Syrian civil war horrors, anonymous commentators used the talkback section to comment: ”Let them go on killing each other”.

The spread of the Arab Spring from one country to another revived among a certain section of political right-wing the old hope that a fall of the Hashemite Dynasty in Jordan would provide the Palestinians with a substitute  statehood, so that Israel could retain the Palestinian territories west of the Jordan River. But amidst the regional turbulence the throne of King Abdullah II in Amman seemed to shake much less than those of other rulers. Moreover, such challenges to his rule which did appear came especially from non-Palestinian Jordanians. Nevertheless, right-wing circles in Israel have not lost hope for a Jordanian Spring taking up the slogan "Jordan is Palestine", and not a week goes by without an article expressing such hopes appearing in one of their publications.

In the meantime – back to Egypt. The elections resulted in the fulfillment of what had been presented as the nightmare scenario: Mursi became Egypt's first democratically elected President and the Muslim Brotherhood became the ruling party. To the surprise of many here, the sky did not really fall. The peace treaty with Israel was not canceled, and President Morsi played a key role in achieving a cease-fire an Gaza in November 2012, ending the fighting after the number of those killed reached "only" one-tenth of the number killed in the   January 2009 round. This was followed by President Morsi making an effort to help maintain the ceasefire on the Gaza border and authorizing the Egyptian army to take energetic action against the smuggling tunnels at Rafah - more than it did in the time of Mubarak. All of which did not add to the popularity of Morsi in Egypt itself, and in the militant demonstrations his photo was integrated into a huge Israeli flag, appearing right in the center of the Star of David. Yet in Israel he never gained any real popularity.

For a long time, we have not heard so much about happenings in Egypt. Israeli media did report Morsi's decision last year to dissolve the ruling military council and of the momentary support given to this move by the liberal and secular opposition. But then the media seemed to lose interest in the nuances and complexities of Egyptian politics - the belligerent steps increasingly adopted by Morsi to consolidate his rule and the increasing opposition to that rule and the escalating crisis in the Egyptian economy and the Muslim Brotherhood’s failure to implement campaign promises to their voters (in which, it must be noted in fairness, they were far from the only ones among the world’s elected governments).

Until last week, when Egypt was once in the focus. It seemed a replay of the scenario of two years ago – once again the huge demonstrations in Tahrir Square capturing the Israeli headlines and driving out our local news, once again expressions of joy at the fall of another Egyptian President. And at the weekly demonstration by social protest activists outside the home of the Minister of Finance appeared a big sign: "Morsi, Bibi, Lapid – the Same Revolution!”.

Most Israeli commentators felt no more than a slight unease at the fact that a President elected in free elections had been ousted by the Egyptian army. The respected Hemi Shalev on the pages of Haaretz actually questioned whether  democracy should always be the preferred system of government, and the well-known Ben Kaspit went into a paroxysm of joy at the thought that "The Islamists with their galabiya robes had been thrown into the trash can”. But according to the most recent news coming out of Egypt, they are not in the trash but out in the streets. They seem far from resigned to being ousted from the power to which they had been elected, and the death toll continues to rise.

So how will our media report on the following installments of the Egyptian saga?

Zionism and torn papers

A heated debate, polarized positions, a tense vote - and at the height of suspense,  a speaker mounts the podium, angrily and demonstratively tearing up the text of the resolution which had just been approved.

This is what happened a few days ago at the Knesset, during the First Reading of the bill known as "The Negev Bedouins Settlement Act”. But when did we see something of the kind before?

It was quite some time ago, a moment etched in the Israeli collective  memory. November 10, 1975, at the UN Headquarters in New York. Just like Knesset Member Muhammad Baraka and Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi this past week, on that day Chaim Herzog, Israel's Ambassador to the UN (later President of the State) mounted the podium and tore up the resolution adopted by the UN Assembly General. The resolution stating that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”.

The resolution  asserted that  the Government of Israel – like the then South African government - "enforces manifestations of racial discrimination by legislative or administrative proceedings," and that such discrimination stems directly from Zionism, the official ideology of the State of Israel.

Before tearing up the text of the resolution, Ambassador Herzog delivered a ringing speech, praising Zionism as a noble and immaculate movement of National Liberation, and asserted that Israel's treatment of its Arab citizens was a model of fairness and of complete equality.

In passing, on that day the UN also resolved that "The PLO should be invited to take part in all deliberations and conferences, on equal footing with other parties", and that "The Palestinian People should be helped to achieve the status of an independent nation." These resolutions, too, were strongly opposed by the Government of Israel, but Herzog did not go as far as tearing them up.

Swiftly afterwards the cities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa all renamed their respective "United Nations Boulevard” as “Zionism Boulevard”. For the next two decades the State of Israel waged a struggle against the UN and against the UN’s anti-Zionist resolution, ultimately achieving its repeal. It is no accident that this repeal took place in the 1990’s, a time when the State of Israel did accept the PLO as a negotiating partner and agreed (at least verbally) that the Palestinian people should achieve the status of an independent nation. It was a time when Israel, claiming to be a member of the club of Western Democracies, was perceived as approaching closer to that club’s current norms of behavior.
 
Back to this past week in the Knesset and the debate held there this week, The House was split almost down the middle and the bill passing its First Reading by a narrow majority of 43 against 40. The nature of this of this bill - the same bill whose text was torn to pieces by the Arab MKs  - was described by the veteran commentator Shalom Yerushalmi on the pages of Ma'ariv:

”The government’s Bedouin Regulation Plan is based on the following principle: nearly a hundred thousand Bedouins live in illegal villages in the Negev. Part of them will get ownership of lands over which they have filed claims. Everybody else will receive financial compensation. All will move to recognized, modern communities which will be built later, and in the areas which they will evacuate there will be built Jewish communities. Any Bedouin who does not enter the program within nine months will remain without land and without compensations, and if insisting on staying on at his current location would be liable to a penalty of up to two years’ imprisonment”.

And why should that be the solution? Why should the Bedouins have to move to “modern communities" which the government would build for them once upon a time? And the plans, setting out  exactly where these modern communities are to be established, have been declared a state secret, anyone revealing what they know about it being liable under the same section in the law as those who expose weapons systems or and war plans of the IDF – and why is that? And why does the government completely refuse to explain which existing Bedouin villages would be destroyed because of being "illegal" and “unrecognized”' and how many residents of these villages will be uprooted from their homes and land - twenty thousand, thirty thousand, forty thousand? And besides, why is the government refusing to recognize these Unrecognized Villages and connect them to water and electricity and sewage and all needed infrastructure and make modern communities of these villages themselves? Why destroy Bedouin villages and move the residents to other locations and build Jewish communities in their place, communities which will  of course get all the services and infrastructure that the State of Israel provides to its (Jewish)  citizens.

Some answer to all these questions were given by Welfare Minister Meir Cohen, a member of Yair Lapid’s new party, the party that promises that There is a Future and that Israel is to witness the advent of New Politics. Meir Cohen is himself a resident of the Negev who often dealt with Bedouin issues, and he undertook to introduce this bill and bring it to a vote in the Knesset. Meir Cohen says he knows the Bedouins and he knows that this bill would be in their favor and for their benefit and all the outcry is caused by the incitement of radical Islamists.

And why did the Parliamentary opposition vote  against the law? Why did Jewish Knesset Members from Meretz and Labor and even Shas mobilize against this bill, almost managing to knock  it off? Welfare Minister Meir Cohen just cannot not get it. "How can they call themselves Zionists and still vote against this bill?" cries out the Minister of Social Affairs.

So here, probably, lies the answer. This is a Zionist bill, and as such Zionists are supposed to give it their support. This is the official and authorized interpretation of Zionism, as provided by the government of the State of the Jews  which was established in fulfillment of the vision of Theodor Herzl. And what if this bill does pass also its Second and Third Readings and duly becomes the Law of the Land in Israel?  What if the Minister of Finance grants the request of the Minister of Public Security to provide ample funds for the recruiting of hundreds of new police officers and the new police forces embark on enforcing the new Zionist law and do it throughout the Negev in front of TV cameras from around the world, and go on doing it for months and perhaps for years?

And what if the UN then embarks on re-adopting that 1975 resolution and again charges the government of Israel with “enforcing racial discrimination by legislative or administrative proceedings," and once again assert that such discrimination stems directly from the ideology and practice of Zionism?

Strategic assets and a threatening toilet

It was not the Naval Commandos’ best week.

Already for thirteen years, naval fighters afflicted with cancer are conducting an ongoing struggle for compensations. Att. Moshe Kaplinsky, who had taken them up as  a pro bono case, assembled a mass of evidence showing that for many years the commandos had been required to dive and train in the waters of the Kishon River, the most polluted body of water in the state of Israel and among the most polluted in the entire world. Into this rivulet were spilled over the years an impressive array of carcinogens from military bases, refineries, petrochemical plants, electricity stations and various other large and small factories and workshops.

But the state had hired shrewd lawyers, highly experienced in tort cases, and they were continually casting doubts. And indeed, the District Court found that“no causal relationship has been proven”.
 True, there is no doubt that there was a huge concentration of carcinogens in these waters. There is no doubt that a bunch of very enthusiastic and highly motivated young men were daily putting on scuba gear and joyfully obeying the order of jumping into these waters, feeling a surge of great satisfaction at their success in becoming members of such a famed elite unit. There is also no question that among those people, nowadays  no longer young and certainly not very enthusiastic, the number of  cancer patients greatly exceeds their percentage in the general population. But  the judges ruled that a causal relationship between these phenomena has not been proven. Thus, the Treasury could mark a net gain in some tens of millions which would not have to be paid in compensation payments.

This is not the final word. They will appeal to the Supreme Court, and it is possible that in a few years the judges there would rule in their favor. It is even possible that some of the naval fighters would still be alive and able to enjoy the compensations during their final years. 

Forgotten are the days when stickers praising the Naval Commandos were pasted on cars, and demonstrations supporting them were held outside the Turkish Embassy. The State of Israel loves to see her Naval Commandos as fearless strong men,  Heroes  who dangle from helicopters at mid-sea and land aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla and fight with dangerous Turkish terrorists and within five minutes liquidate nine of them. But Naval Commandos, their bodies broken by cancer?  In this struggle they are quite alone.

Anyway, the whole issue was pushed off the headlines by President Shimon Peres’ 90th birthday, which was broadcast live throughout the nation by all of Israel’s television channels.

Everybody was there, Barbra Streisand and Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone and Tony Blair and Mikhail Gorbachev and President Bill Clinton (who, as is well known, got the sum of half a million dollars as his fee for participating). Only Stephen Hawking just did not want to participate in this joy, and after talking with Palestinian friends decided not to take part in honoring Israel’s president. (Palestinians there weren’t at all, except for a 5 year old child, once treated in an Israeli hospital.)

Even so, much praise was heaped on Shimon Peres, the Man of Peace. There was also a girl band singing "Give Peace a Chance".  Peres wouldn’t mind to give peace a chance. Especially when some tycoons and captains of industries, with whom Peres is quite friendly, spoke just a few days earlier on how much the Israeli economy is threatened by the absence of peace.

Of course, it was extensively mentioned that this was the birthday of a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. True, he had a partner in this award, a Palestinian leader whose surname begins with A, and the award was associated with an agreement named for a capital city in the north of Europe, but it would be a pity to go into such trivialities on this day of  international joy and celebration. Of course the President whose birthday it was did deliver a keynote speech in which he explicitly expressed his hope for a better future, a better future not only for Israel but for Palestine as well.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home Party, who attended the Peres party, does not want a better future for Palestine. He just does not want a Palestine to exist. Just this week, addressing the settlers’ Judea and Samaria Council, Bennett used a very picturesque parable about Israel's relations to the Palestinians: "I have a friend with shrapnel in his rear end. They told him that they could operate but that he’d become an invalid. He decided to continue living with it."

The shrapnel in the rear end certainly did not prevent Naftali Bennett from taking part in the Peres celebration and applaud politely and tell the TV cameras that no doubt  President Shimon Peres is a strategic asset second to none. Obviously, without him it would have been far more difficult to present  the world with a smiling, attractive, peace-seeking Israeli face. Especially this week when Israel lost that other strategic asset, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – who, alas, is no longer Iran’s president.

Had Ahmadinejad not existed, the Israeli Hasbara PR  would certainly have had to invent him, with his nuclear program, inflammatory  speeches and the highlight: Holocaust denial! But now he is irrevocably gone, and we are left to deal with a new Iranian President who looks and sounds moderate, and also with crowds cheering and dancing in the streets of Tehran the victory of the people in the ballot box. And how to present now the case that it is still needed to send the Israeli Air Force on the long and dangerous route to a decisive attack on Iran's nuclear facilities? Meanwhile, Netanyahu moved the date of the "Year of Decision" further forward - to 2014.

In the headlines of old yellowing papers we can find that once upon a time 2011\was the Year of Decision. Does  Netanyahu truly want to reach a decision, or does he merely want to keep the Iranian Threat permanently on the agenda, distracting attention from other issues?  For example, this week. While the headlines were devoted to the heated debate about what the election of Rohani in Iran could imply, the economic austerity budget got through its first reading in the Knesset  with hardly anyone noticing.

This was also the week in which the “Price Tag” groups went out of the settlements and into Israel hitting the village of Abu Ghosh. Abu Ghosh, where Jews and Arabs come closer than anywhere else in this country. Even if this coexistence is based primarily on the eating of hummus at excellent restaurants. It turns out that there are among us racists who greatly dislike this, and they came at night to puncture the tires of 28 cars - very systematically and consistently, puncturing all four tires at one and every car. They also wrote on the walls "Arabs out!" and “Racism or Assimilation” - hummus-eating being tantamount to “assimilation" and racism being the preferred choice.

The story of the Abu Ghosh Price Tag attack made headlines on the very day of President Peres’ celebration. A lot of people felt that what is going on in our country has gone beyond any imaginable limit, if even the people of Abu Ghosh are the target of racism. Condemnations were heard from all across the political spectrum. Especially right-wing Knesset members and ministers made a conspicuous show of their indignation.  But of course the same people at the very same time blocked the proposal to declare "Price Tag" to be  a terrorist organization. They also objected to the idea that , according to the Law on Victims of Terrorism, the state offer compensations to the 28 owners of the cars damaged in Abu Ghosh.

There was another event this week which perhaps might also be called a  Price Tag event, which somehow went completely under the radar of the Israeli media. A modest little event related to a toilet – an event which became known due to the tireless Guy Butavia who day after day spreads through Facebook news and photos of obscure events taking place in that shrapnel fragment stuck in Israel’s bottom end.

Umm al Kheir is a Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills, one of the villages which in the opinion of settlers living nearby (also of military personnel stations nearby) just should not have been there. Umm Al Kheir is not linked to the electric grid, nor to water pipes or sewage systems. There are  no toilets in this village, and for the call of nature residents need to go to the nearby creek. But this creek is within sight of the settlement of Carmel, which is perched on a hilltop. This is not just a problem of privacy, also of stones being regularly hurled from the settlement on anyone seen in the valley below.

An international humanitarian organization called ACF donated  to Umm al Kheir a small toilet cell made of wood, and a resident named Bilal dug a septic pool. On the same day that the grand celebration in honor of President Shimon Peres was held in Jerusalem, the residents of Umm al Kheir were preparing a modest celebration of their own, to mark the installation of the first toilet in their village. But that celebration did not take place, because the settlement of Carmel (like every settlement) has a Military Security Coordinator, and he takes his job seriously.

The job definition of a Military Security Coordinator includes setting the watch,  maintaining the integrity of the perimeter fence, keeping in touch with army forces in the region and reporting any theft or security incident. The Military Security Coordinator of the settlement of Carmel, whose name is Simha, is highly motivated in the performance of his duties. He noticed a serious security incident developing right in front of eyes, i.e. that the Umm al Kheir people were establishing a toilet in their village. The Security Coordinator rushed to call the army, as well as the Civil Administration (which is part of the army but maintains its own separate structure). Quickly there arrived Lieutenant Asaf Simhoni for the army and another Lieutenant with the first name Moshe, on behalf of the Civil Administration.

Two officers presented a "Seizure Order", valid and lawful in accordance with the laws and decrees issued by the Israel Defense Forces to manage day to day life in the territory which is under its control for the past forty-six years (and two weeks). The order read "Item (toilet) transported without a permit". Accordingly the toilet cell was confiscated and loaded on a military truck and taken away, thus foiling one more serious threat to the security of Israel.

These  officers involved are part of the chain of command headed by the Commanding General Center, Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon. It so happened that this same general on that same day spoke to foreign journalists. "If in the coming weeks the efforts of the Americans end in naught, I think we might see a growing escalation on the ground" said Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon, referring to the efforts of U.S. Secretary of State John.

Of course the general's statement provoked a wave of angry protests from right-wing politicians, who noted that this general has notorious leftist views and is full of hatred for the settlers. The condemnations which these politicians hurled at the Commanding General Center were even louder than those issued in denunciation of the Abu Ghosh Price Tag attack.

And Secretary of State John Kerry? Well, we are patiently waiting for the announcement of his next coming.

The right to be pessimistic

Perhaps the most important event of this week is what did not happen.  US Secretary of State John Kerry did not land at Ben Gurion Airport, and did not go by helicopter back and forth between Jerusalem and Ramallah, and the reporters did not cover any press conferences of his, and commentators wrote no learned comments about the chances of his crucial peace mission.  
All of this should have happened.    Some weeks ago Kerry had stated explicitly that he would visit the  Middle East in the second week of June, and that unlike in previous visits “this time he would expect to hear clear answers."  But when the time came near, Kerry just quietly announced that his visit would be “put off”, and no new date was announced. So quietly was it announced, and so little was his mediating mission regarded to begin with, that most of the Israeli media did not even bother to tell their readers that after all he would not be coming.

The non-arrival of Kerry left some vacuum on the political and diplomatic correspondents’  agenda – but it was promptly filled. By Danny Danon, of all people.  Danny Danon, by no means the brightest star in the firmament  of Israeli politics. A Likud party hack who industriously went up in the party hierarchy and got into the Knesset and finally got upgraded to Deputy Defense Minister (Not that Defense Minister Ya’alon felt any special need for having a deputy, or any inclination to give him any function).  Danon had established for himself a clear niche on its extreme right flank  which he helped make. Still the general Israeli public hardly noticed his existence.

Danon got his chance for a moment of fame with Netanyahu’s speech last week, when the PM stated on the Knesset floor his great longings for negotiations to resume and  movingly implored Abu  Mazen “Give Peace a Chance!”.  Danon was quick to get his oar in - incidentally giving a scoop to The Times of Israel, an English language news website which is not very highly regarded. “We are a nationalist government, not a government that will establish a Palestinian government in the 1967 lines. There was never a government deliberation, resolution or vote about the two-state solution. If anyone  brings it to a cabinet vote  – nobody will, it would not be smart – but if there is a vote, a solid majority of ministers will be against. (…) The international community opposes construction in East Jerusalem? They can say whatever they want, and we can do whatever we want.  Netanyahu wants to talk with the Palestinians? Sure he wants it, he knows nothing will come of it anyway”.

It got  into the headlines, and Netanyahu was quick to dissociate himself from the truculent Deputy Minister.  And Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who got the plum job of conducting negotiations with the Palestinians (if and when) actually threatened to resign (but will she?).  All in all, it’is not such a big deal.   Danny Danon didn’t reveal  something we did not already know. Nor did he tell Kerry something which was not yet well-known among the analysts in Washington.  At most, it might have helped  to dot the i's and cross the t's in the confidential situation report which had already landed on the Secretary of State’s desk.

And what now? Is it really all over, so quietly and prosaically?

It is still quite possible that in two or three weeks we would still see Kerry landing  here with great fanfare, rushing and shuttling to and fro with enormous energy and doing his utmost to pull some kind of rabbit out of the hat he is not wearing.  Even remotely possible that it would be rabbit with teeth. But with every passing day, the other possibility becomes more likely:  that this is indeed  The End,  not with a bang but with a whimper. That there would be no  further announcement,  but  Kerry would just not come by again, nor (certainly) Obama. After some weeks or months we would  suddenly notice Kerry putting all his energy into another issue on the other end of the world.

If so, it could it be that we have just passed, unnoticing, a major historical turning point. That historians would one day point to the second week of June 2013 as the time when the US finally shrugged off and abdicated its self-appointed role as the mediator and not quite  precisely honest broker between Israelis and Arabs. The time when Barack Obama and John Kerry closed the door which had been opened exactly four decades ago by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.  And if so, it might even be that Danny Danon would get a footnote or two all to himself in the future history books…

Would it really be so bad if turned out that Uncle Sam had cut us adrift, Israelis and the Palestinians and our tiresome, interminable conflict? Re'uven Kaminer, at least,  thinks it might offer a wonderful new chance. Kaminer left his native Chicago in the 1950’s in order to avoid service in the Korean War, and in the following decades made a name for himself in the Israeli Left as a staunch and uncompromising opponent of the imperial ambitions of his former homeland.  "Through the cracks in the American hegemony,  the sun is  shining" is the title of the article he published this week on the Radical Left website Hagada Hasmalit (The Left Bank).

“This week the Peace Camp marked  46 years of occupation. Among participants there was a deep sense of disappointment and pessimism. A  lack of any chance of progress, even the tiniest, in the struggle to end the occupation. Where does this pessimism come from? Its source is the feeling of many in the Peace Camp that achieving peace, and with it an end to the occupation, depends primarily on the willingness of the U.S. to put massive pressure on Israel. If anybody had a lingering illusion that such a miracle can still take place, the latest mission of Secretary of State Kerry slapped them in the face. By all signs, it is a total failure. It is hard to know why Kerry and Obama deluded themselves that this time it would be different. Israel regards itself as a senior partner in regional politics, due to its  military might.  In the present sensitive situation in the region, Washington can’t afford a break with the Netanyahu government -  and without such a break there can be no resumption of negotiations. Kerry cannot get from Israel even the slightest concession to the Palestinians, and they for their part cannot  afford a total submission to the Israeli demands”.

Kaminer  does not share in the left’s  pessimism. “The Israeli-Palestinian issue is decisively affected by developments in the Middle East, primarily the cracks in the American hegemony .  True, though forced to give ground, the U.S. remains a mighty force whose interest must be reckoned with. Still, the option of an Israeli-Palestinian peace founded entirely upon American hegemony and tutelage is fading fast. The Americans can no longer achieve, all by themselves, peace in our region. If they want peace at all, they would need to rely on a wide European and global consensus. Precisely these changes herald the possibility of a better balance between the parties to the Israeli - Palestinian Conflict. It is such a balance which is needed in order to lay the foundations of real peace”.

Meanwhile, Knesset member Orit Struk got interviewed in the weekend Ma’ariv. Struk is a prominent leader of the religious-nationalist settler enclave in Hebron. In recent  years, she became known as a Human Rights activist – i.e.  an activist for the Human Rights of the settlers,  which  she asserted were being terribly trampled on. Since being elected to the Knesset a few months ago, as part of Naftali Bennet’s Jewish Home Party, she already distinguished herself in promoting a bill which would allow settlers in Judea and Samaria to “act in self defense and shoot to death any intruder to their properties”.  But would not such a law also allow Palestinians to shoot at settlers invading their property? Had such a law been in force a year ago, might it not have had an adverse effect on Struck’s own son Tviki, now serving a two and half years’ term for having severely assaulted a Palestinian shepherd? “Oh, of course this law would not apply to Palestinians” the Human Rights activist answered without blinking.

Orit Struk does believe in peace. “Peace will come when the Arabs come to terms with the fact this is our country and they are no more than tolerated guests here”.  And until they come to such a realization? “Well, until then there is nothing to do but sit on out sword, and sit securely”.  It was Napoleon Bonaparte, who knew quite a bit of military matters, who said that “You can do anything with a bayonet except sit on it”…

This week also marked the passing of Yoram Kanyuk – veteran soldier of the  war  in which Israel was created,  and a lifelong dissident writer and activist. His last major act was a prolonged struggle to remove from his entry in the population registry the notification: “Religion : Jewish” and replace it with “Religion : Undetermined”.  But it was not taken as a class action, opening the way to others. Anybody else applying to the Ministry of the Interior for a similar change would have to take his or her own lawyer and go all over again through  an individual  years-long struggle through the courts.

In the past decade he had become increasingly bitter and disillusioned.   Daphna Baram in her article in The Guardian quoted Kanyuk’s words – perhaps not his very last, but ones which reflect his mood in the last part of his life: "The state I took part in founding had ended long ago, and I am not interested in what it has become. It is ludicrous, blunt, vile, dark, sick, and it will not last. We used to think it would be different."

And meanwhile, Peace Now once again published a call upon all who are worried - to come out into the streets, specifically, into the street outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem. (Netanyahu will not actually be there tonight, he spends his weekends in the luxurious private home at affluent Caesarea – but he would not have listened anyway). 

Saturday night - demonstrating against the government of diplomatic fiasco!

Despite the unprecedented efforts of John Kerry to renew the process, despite the peace initiative of the Arab League, which includes recognition of the settlement blocs, Despite all this, the Government of Israel says NO!

It's time to go out and make it clear to Netanyahu, Lapid and Bennett that they and they alone are to blame for the political stalemate and rejecting the option of peace.

They are guilty of a major diplomatic fiasco which would severely damage the vital military, political and economic interests of the State of Israel.

Israel must not miss the historic opportunity open to us, Only if Netanyahu and Lapid feel the public’s accusing finger pointed at them, only then is there a chance that something will move.

The demonstration will take place on Saturday, June 15, at 20:00,  in front of the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem.

For updates and registration for the ride from Tel Aviv, contact Inbal:
inbal@peacenow.org.il

https://www.facebook.com/events/564122653639912 

Peace Now is no longer a mass movement, able to bring tens of thousands into the streets, and no one expects such a turnout  tonight. Still, those who still did not give up will be there.

P.S.  While this article was being written, results started to come in from the Presdiential elections in Iran,There are not final results yet, and it is too early to estimate the influence of these elections on Netanyahu’s designs - to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities. One thing is clear, already: whatever may be wrong with Iran, it is the kind of country where the elections results are not known until the votes have  been counted. 

John Lennon and the knock on the door at the wee hours

Last Saturday night, thousands of people demonstrated in the streets of Tel Aviv. Two demonstrations had been scheduled for the same evening. One was held to mark the forty-sixth anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, forty-six years of an oppressive military regime imposed on millions of people, and the continuing robbery of their lands. The second demonstration was held to protest the increase in VAT which came into force that night, a regressive and manifestly unjust tax raise which imposes the burden of closing the huge budget deficit mainly on the poor and the weak and the have-nots.

Great effort has been made to coordinate the two demonstrations. Different hours were set so that activists full of energy and motivation would not have to choose, but would be able to take part in both. The end point of the anti-occupation march, at the Likud Party headquarters on King George Street, was but a short walk away from the anti-VAT rallying place at Habima Square. And indeed, quite a few people went directly from one demonstration to the other,  carrying signs proclaiming that there can be no Social Justice without Ending Occupation and Oppression, and that social injustice and abject poverty are a fertile ground for demagogues who incite desperate masses to war and racism, and that the two issues are inseparably intertwined.

Inseparably? Journalists were present in both demonstrations, and the photographers did their work and captured a representative sample of the signs and posters and chanting crowds. But when this material got to the editorial offices, it did get completely separated. The protest against VAT got sympathetic coverage and large photos in several newspapers on the next morning. And the second demonstration? Was there another demonstration? Against the occupation? The occupation is not news, it is very old news. Precisely forty-six years old.

Anyway, for the Israeli media this week was mostly a Turkish week. "The Turkish Spring!" cried huge headlines in the Israeli press. Every day saw an extensive update on the unfolding protests at Taksim Square in the heart of Istanbul, accompanied by huge photographs of heroic young Turks holding their ground amidst the barrages of tear gas. Of course, there were plenty of cartoons and commentaries mocking and jeering at Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, the man that Israelis have grown fond of hating.

And what would happen in a week or two, when Turkey falls down in the news ratings? It is likely that, in at least some of the papers, we will see on the same page renewed complaints about failure of the army to subdue the brazen  young Palestinians, followed by belligerent demands to change the rules of engagement and let soldiers move beyond salvos of tear gas and go over to using live ammunition.

The precise date of the beginning of the occupation - June 5th - passed without more than a whisper. It was not a round number - and the occupation is after all a banal topic, so often rehashed that there is little new to say about it. Fortunately, early June is also the time of the Hebrew Book Week, and in honor of the Book Week some newspapers took the trouble of interviewing Hebrew writers. David Grossman was able to take advantage of having the floor to squeeze in a few words about "The huge elephant which is standing for 46 years already in the middle of our room. Israelis find all kinds of ways to manage their lives around this animal. "

Professor Ze'ev Tzahor of Ben-Gurion University found an opportunity to tell personal memories and show that still we do not know all of what happened then, 46 years ago, and how critical decisions were being taken.

"On the third day the Six Day War, I was part of the Fifth Brigade as it crossed the Green Line. We went in Nablus, but the city entrance was blocked by skeletons of Israeli tanks which were burned accidentally by friendly fire. We turned back and established a temporary camp at the Anabata Junction. A soldier who was a teacher in civilian life excitedly told us that Anabata was the same as the famed Anathoth from the Bible . The response to this revelation was immediate: an urgent command conference was called up in the command tent at whose entrance was placed a sign reading “Anathoth”.  Major Ra’anan Lurie, a well known cartoonist and graphic artist, was appointed governor of Anabta and got the order to immediately expel the residents and destroy their homes. Lurie refused, but there was no problem in finding a volunteer who enthusiastically agreed to carry out the order.

A long caravan of refugees was winding its way down from the destroyed town to the junction -  first cars, then horse-drawn wagons, and followed by a long line of pedestrians. Last walked a man carrying his crippled mother on his back. And  as they passed near us, they crossed with another caravan of refugees from Qalqilya, which was also being destroyed at that time.

We watched in shock the refugee caravans. Even those of us who felt the destruction had been justified admitted that it was a harsh thing, and took part in handing army food rations to the passing refugees. Suddenly came the news that "Temple Mount is in our hands." The chain soldiers passing rations to refugees disintegrated, some bursting out gleefully dancing while others decided to use the battalion’s cars to help old and sick refugees go to the nearby village of Ramin, out of sight of the destroyed Anabta.

The real heroes of those event are those who decided to tell. Dan Frank of Kibbutz Gan Shmuel contacted Meir Yaari, leader of the Mapam Party. A brave officer who was later dubbed "traitor" used an IDF communications set to get word to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. We don’t know exactly what happened then, but the next day we were called for a new  command conference and this time the order was to immediately rebuild the destroyed houses. We did not see the trek of the refugees back home, by then we were on our way to the Wailing Wall. "

So far the words of Ze'ev Tzahor in his article "On the ruins of Anabta" published in Yedioth Ahronoth last Tuesday (June 4). Indeed, the residents of Anabta were lucky that this unknown traitor with his radio was there to help them. Had several days or several weeks been allowed to pass, the expulsions and the destruction of their town would have become an “accomplished fact”, and its perpetuation a matter of national security and national honor, and not much later an Israeli settlement would have been set up on the site. By now, it would have been talked of as “irreversible”. As happened in many other places. As happened at exactly that time in the three villages of the Latrun Panhandle, Emmaus, Yalu and Beit - Nuba,  and at the Mughrabi Neighborhood in the Old City of Jerusalem, and at several villages in the Jordan Valley (where, nowadays, the authorities continue their effort to destroy what they missed 46 years ago…).

This is what happened then, when the occupation began.  What happened in those territories this week? Nothing dramatic, just  arrests and nightly detentions like always. On the precise night of the occupation’s 46th birthday - very late at night, or maybe very early in the morning - soldiers entered Ramallah and reached the house of Abdul-Jabbar Al-Foqaha, member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, who had already been incarcerated last year, and took him off to another term of detention whose length no one knows except perhaps some interrogators of the Israeli Security Service. In the Palestinian Territories, Israel does not recognize Parliamentary immunity.

And at Arub Refugee Camp, the soldiers came to arrest Mohammad Hasan ‘Aadi, 21 year old, for whom too this was not the first detention. And in the Al-Fawwar  refugee a whole military detachment arrived on jeeps to arrest one 14-year-old boy named Mohammad Yousef Jawabra, who was cuffed and blindfolded and taken away. And at the village of Um Slamouna south of Bethlehem the 19 year old Ali Ahmad Taqatqa was detained and the Taqatqa Family’s home was damaged during the soldiers’ very intensive search. The  list of detainees which can be found on the Palestinian news websites goes on and on, but how many Israelis would take the trouble to enter and read it?

http://www.imemc.org/article/65625


There was a time when the IDF used to publish every morning  the number of the passing night’s detainees. Only the number, not their names or any other information. This number of the night’s detained Palestinians was usually on the first news broadcast of the morning, heard by early risers who turn on the radio the moment they jump off their beds. But it is a long time already that  the IDF has ceased to publish these statistics. It is already a long that the citizens of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, no longer know anything about it. They really do not know that Palestinians under Israeli occupation, like people who live under any other dictatorship, live in constant apprehension of the knock at the door in the wee hours of the night.

The sun rose that morning, and the new detainees who were taken from their homes and their beds have already reached the Security Service interrogation centers where senior interrogators were deliberating which of them would merit a stint of a special treat under “moderate physical pressure”. It was at that time that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mounted the Knesset podium. He had been called there to answer the firm demand of opposition Members, who wanted to know what the government's position was regarding the long standing Peace Initiative of the Arab League, also known as the "Saudi initiative". According to that initiative, all Arab countries would sign peace treaties with Israel on condition that Israel end its occupation of all  territories which have been occupied by its armed forces in the past 46 years.

When the Arab countries put this proposal on the table for the first time, at the Beirut Summit of 2002, the occupation was just  35 years old. Since then,  the Arab Peace Initiative was annually reconfirmed by the Arab League, year after year, and is still on the agenda though no Israeli government ever bothered to give it serious attention. Even at the special Knesset debate convened for this specific purpose, Netanyahu said nothing clear about the Arab Peace Initiative and whether he is willing to see in it a basis for negotiations. Nor did he say if he would stop construction in the settlements and the establishing of facts on the ground at the same time when the future of this ground was being negotiated on. And also said nothing about  whether or not his government was ready to release some hundred prisoners, many of them elderly and infirm, who are held since before the Oslo Agreement was signed in 1993 (which included an Israeli commitment to release these same prisoners).

So what did Netanyahu say in the special debate held at the request of the Knesset opposition? Well, he again called upon the Palestinians to return to negotiations and to trust to it that  at the negotiating table they would discover an Israel completely different from one which knocks on their doors in the wee hours of the night. And cheerfully the Prime Minister quoted the words of a well-known song which had once been the unofficial anthem of the protest movement against the Vietnam War: Give Peace a Chance!

Was this what John Lennon meant?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZC7sqImaM

Soon, maybe even next week, John Kerry, Secretary of State of the United States, is due to come here again. He had just warned Israel’ rather sternly, that the status quo is unsustainable. He will probably go to the Netanyahu with a series of questions similar to those posed by the Knesset opposition. What would John Kerry do when the Prime Minister of Israel answers him by quoting Beatles’ songs? Would he just wring his hands and return to Washington in disgrace? Would he just assign blame for the failure, and on whom?

Should Netanyahu continue and increase settlement construction, and Kerry's efforts finally fail, the Palestinians may take up their last remaining diplomatic recourse  and turn to the International Court of Justice. And as published in press headlines this week, European Union leaders warned Netanyahu that their patience is running low and that they may support the Palestinians in the  Hague. All of which is indeed a cause of concern to decision makers in our country’s government,  but … let’s cross the bridge when we get to it.

Meanwhile, yesterday morning the Gay Pride Parade was held in Tel Aviv – bigger and more colorful than ever, with a record number of commercial companies to sponsor it. The Tel Aviv Gay Pride Parade had come a long long way from its humble beginnings as very bold and daring act of a few hundred radical daring hostile streets at the time when homosexual relations were an act punishable under Israeli law. Nowadays, the Pride Parade is warmly embraced by the municipal and governmental establishment. It is an essential component of the worldwide hasbara PR campain, praising in ten languages the liberal and gay-friendly Tel Aviv.

Already many days before the big event, the streets of Tel Aviv were full of six-coloured Rainbow Flags. In every corner were piles posters and brochures in English and Hebrew meant for the expected flood of gay visitors and tourists. "One hour of chill on the one and only Gay Cruise. Sail off from the ancient port of Jaffa into the sparkling blue water of the Mediterranean. And the next morning, a day's tour of Jerusalem. Don’t miss the opportunity to see Wailing Wall, the Arab market and the Wonderful, Magical City of David. "

The Wonderful, Magical City of David? Wait, have the organizers of this tour, tailor made for the international gay community, forgotten that the important archaeological site known as “The City of David" has already long since been passed over to the exclusive management of an association of National-Religious settlers known as Elad. These people definitely take the Bible very seriously and very literally. Especially, the part about God's promising the Promised Land to His Chosen People, which the Elad people see as licence and commandment to throw Palestinian out of homes in Silwan where King David supposedly had his palace 3000 years ago. But, they also seem to take very seriously and literally what God had to say about the mortal sin known as “Sodomy”…”

Well, one can only hope that the Elad settlers in control of The Wonderful, Magical City of David would not spoil the major  campaign planned by the government’s leading PR talents.