Gas masks and dancing soldiers

 "The U.S. Army awaits orders reads one headline." “The countdown has started" announces another; on a photo of submarines and aircraft were superimposed Obama and Assad facing each other, like two in a Wild West showdown.  

Israeli citizens were not impressed by experts telling them that there is only a "low probability" of a Syrian attack on Israel in retaliation for an American assault. The demand for gas masks immediately jumped up, and there was revealed again what was already known - that the government had not taken care to provide enough masks for all Israeli citizens. Personally, I did not join the race. After all, since the end of the First World War nobody in the world has used chemical weapons against an enemy who could respond in kind… 

Meanwhile, the countdown slowed down a bit after the British Parliament's vote and accelerated again with the speech by  Secretary of State Kerry. A speech rather similar to  the "smoking guns" speech which Colin Powell delivered at the UN ten years ago on behalf of George W. Bush  – with not a trace of those Smoking Guns found after the Americans invaded and occupied Iraq. But that does of course not mean that again now the evidence is false.

Had Obama been really enthusiastic to intervene in the Syrian Civil War, he could have found plenty of reasons and justifications for his actions in the gory acts of Bashar Assad over the past two years - even before the massive use of gas in the suburbs of Damascus . But this is a president who prides himself on having brought American troops back from Iraq and who prepares to evacuate Afghanistan as well. He certainly does not wish to wade into a new, particularly murky, Middle Eastern swamp. In fact, over the past year Obama had chosen to overlook several instances of the "minor" use of gas resulting in "only" dozens of casualties. 

Still, it is hard to see how Obama can avoid adhering to the Red Line set by himself, and ignore the harrowing photos of children suffocated to death which flooded the global media . Unless ... unless the unexpected happens when Obama comes to Russia on his scheduled visit in the middle of next week. Unless the Americans and Russians overcome the Cold War which has returned to our world also without Communism , and Obama and Putin roll up their sleeves and impose some kind of political solution on their respective clients in Syria. Or at least a more or less stable ceasefire, which would save the lives of many. What are the chances of that? Higher or lower than the likelihood that superpower intervention will lead to an end of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict? 

And meanwhile, what is really going on between Israel and the Palestinians? Over the decades, Israeli governments have always tried to exploit situations where the spotlight was directed elsewhere , and create new accomplished facts while the world was not looking. In 1956, when international attention was focused on the Soviet invasion of Hungary, David Ben Gurion – supported by Britain and France - launched a war against Egypt and occupied the Sinai. And in 1981, when the Polish government moved to suppress Solidarność, Menachem Begin was quick to enact within a single day the annexation of the Golan Heights. 

Uri Ariel, Minister of Housing and Construction in the Netanyahu government, tried his best to continue the tradition. With the world focused on Syria, he inaugurated a new settlement called "Leshem" , in the northern part of the West Bank, where forty settler families entered solemnly into their new homes . The guest of honor at the ceremony was the minister, and his words left no room for doubt : "This is a moving occasion, the laying down of one more brick in the building of the Land of Israel. Let me say it in the clearest way: I'm here in order to build you a home. We are building here in Leshem another  300 housing units. The Jewish People needs apartments everywhere in the country, and we can meet everybody’s needs! This is the right thing to do, from the  Zionist as well as the socio-economic point of view. Anyone who is present here today can understand why the two-state vision is unrealistic and will not happen. It should be obvious to any thinking person: there will be no two states west of the Jordan River. Such a thing will not happen. Even if we are involved in negotiations, this is not on the agenda”. 

And of course, Minister Uri Ariel did not neglect  to claim the moral high ground and from that location arouse the conscience of the world against the war crimes taking place in Syria. “Go to the murderous doctor of Damascus and leave alone the Israeli settlement enterprise.” 

There is no doubt that  the ongoing atrocities in Syria had the effect of distracting the world from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Indeed, the media did not pay much attention for example to what happened this week in the Kalandia Refugee Camp north of Jerusalem. 

“Entanglement" the military authorities called it. "A detention operation which had gone wrong”. Every night the army goes out on such operations, five to ten of them at various locations throughout the West Bank. The goal is not to engage in all-out confrontations with the Palestinians. Rather, the soldiers are to arrive in the wee hours of the night to the door of a “wanted” person and as quickly as possible get him, bound and blindfolded, into the waiting military car . In many cases the force is able to leave the area before the neighbors are aroused and get the detainee to interrogation under "moderate physical pressure" at the facilities of the Shabak Security Service. One hardly hears about such routine operations. 

But for the second time within one week such a routine detention went wrong, and local residents rallied and took to the streets at this nightly hour and actively expressed their opposition to the arrest of a neighbor by the occupation army’s soldiers. As per routine, the force came to the Kalandia Refugee Camp to arrest a “wanted” Palestinian, in this case a person who had just a month ago been released from prison in Israel . On what charges was he wanted ? This we cannot know. The regulations issued by the Commanding General (Center), who is since 1967 the sovereign legislator in the West Bank, do not require detaining officers to inform the detainee what he is suspected of, nor does he have the right to call a lawyer. 

Some unfortunate disruption happened and the operation did not proceed smoothly. Within minutes the Kalandia Camp was aroused. The soldiers - artillery soldiers converted into detentions troops – faced a large and angry crowd , first numbering some three hundred and swiftly increasing to as many as 1500. "There was a very violent riot, the military jeeps were pelted from the roofs with stones, iron bars, and even burning carpets and washing machines" stated the military communiquי. Whereupon the soldiers opened fire and killed three residents of the camp - Jihad Aslan, 21, Yunis Jahjuh, 24, and Rubin Zayed, 34.years old and a father of four. 

”It was an act of self-defense" said the IDF Spokesperson – which does have some plausibility, as long as one assumes that the Israeli military has the right to enforce its rule. Probably, the  Palestinians in Kalandia saw themselves as acting in self-defense against armed intruders, representatives of an oppressive occupation rule which had imposed itself on them for 46 years. But such a way of seeing things did not get expressed in the Israeli media.

Coincidentally or not, the settlement inauguration by Minister Uri Ariel and the deadly raid on Kalandia both occurred on the day before the scheduled third meeting in the series of renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. There was an angry mood among Palestinians, and the bureau of President Mahmoud Abbas announced the cancellation of the negotiations meeting: ''The string of Israeli crimes, and the continued settlement activities, constitute a clear message about Israel’s true intentions regarding the peace process.” In the end , the meeting did take place on that day. In fact, it was the first time that the peace talks were held in Palestinian territory, in Jericho. 

What was said there, in the peace talks held at the same time that three funerals were held in Kalandia? What was the atmosphere? By the rules prescribed by the Secretary of State John Kerry, the lid was kept on and no information given to the media. In fact, the media did not show any great interest in what was kept hidden. And probably John Kerry himself, the man who initiated and pressured Israelis and Palestinians to meet and talk, was this week busy with other things and only skimmed the report submitted to him of the meeting in Jericho.

On the following day, however, news came of a very different and unexpected kind of a meeting between Israelis and Palestinians.  A group of combat soldiers of the Rotem Battalion of the Givati ​​Brigade patrolled the Ja’bari Neighborhood of Hebron. Suddenly they heard, coming from a Palestinian wedding held in one of the houses, the famous  “Gangnam Style” of the South Korean singer PSY. The song which had swept young people across the globe,  regardless of religion, race and nationality, also swept the patrolling soldiers. Against orders and in contravention of their set task, the soldiers decided to enter the hall and join dozens of celebrating young Palestinians. These were from the Jabari Clan who are defined by the military authorities as “Hamas supporters”, but who did welcome the soldiers and invite them to join the dance.

The publication of this event  on Channel 2 of Israeli TV, and especially the video showing soldiers carried on the shoulders of dancing young Palestinians,  aroused the ire of the military authorities. Unlike the soldiers who shot and killed at Kalandia, defined as having acted in accordance with the military orders and regulations, the entire patrol of dancing soldiers from Hebron were suspended and are expected to be punished severely. "This is a very serious incident. The soldiers are being interrogated, the brigade and battalion commanding officers are conducting an investigation and the soldiers will be treated accordingly”. 

The event could have ended differently, the military authorities asserted. The young Palestinians might have also attacked the soldiers who entered the wedding celebration, to injure or kill or kidnap them. Not a completely baseless assertion . Still, what did happen was different. For a single moment, the soldiers did not come to the Palestinians as occupation troops but as fellow young fans of the South Korean PSY . And for that moment , the Palestinians received them as such. 

http://972mag.com/watch-soldiers-on-patrol-dance-at-palestinian-wedding-get-suspended-by-idf/78059

Settlement boycott on the Supreme Court Agenda

The following article appeared on Wednesday, August 21, 2013, in the op-ed section of the Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Supreme-Court-to-rule-on-legality-of-settlement-boycott-323718

Israeli settlement on the West Bank, always a hot issue, seems to have heated up even more in recent weeks. The Netanyahu government’s decision to authorize 1,200 new housing units precipitated a predictable crisis in the just-resumed talks with the Palestinians. And since the European Union put down a collective foot, no Israeli academic institute located or active in a settlement would be eligible to get European grants. Should the government of Israel fail to provide a written acknowledgement of these terms, all of our country’s universities and research institutes stand to lose hundreds of millions of euros in grants, a considerable blow to Israeli science and academia.

Meanwhile, the same issue is soon due to figure prominently on the agenda from a different angle – as a weighty matter of Israeli law. The Supreme Court secretariat informed various appellants and litigants that on February 16, 2014, a special ninejudge panel headed by Supreme Court president Asher Grunis will deliberate on the constitutionality of the socalled “Boycott Law,” and will address the key question: Is the act of boycotting the settlements located in the territories of “Judea and Samaria” tantamount to “boycotting Israel,” to be punished as such? Undoubtedly, the initiators of the Boycott Law – enacted late at night, at the end of a stormy Knesset debate on July 11, 2011 – meant this question to be answered with a very strong affirmative.

Some of these initiators explicitly stated that they were particularly targeting the Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc) movement (of which I happen to be a member).

Already in the 1990s, Gush Shalom has compiled and published – and constantly updated – a list of settlement products reaching the shelves of Israeli supermarkets, calling upon consumers to avoid purchasing such products. Quite naturally, if you consider settlements in the Occupied Territories to a be major impediment to peace with the Palestinians and/or a gross violation of international law (and many Israeli citizens do), you should take care not to help finance the same settlements with your shopping.

Under the Boycott Law, continuing the above campaign might have exposed Gush Shalom to hundreds of tort actions by settlement-based corporations, resulting in a far from affluent movement having to pay many millions in damages and being effectively wiped out.

On the very morning after it was enacted, advocate Gaby Laski went to the Supreme Court to present Gush Shalom’s appeal, arguing that this law constituted an unacceptable violation of freedom of speech and of political action in Israel. Also, that it was a gross discrimination, as any other civil boycott action remains completely legal under Israeli law, and the settlements alone are granted immunity.

Indeed, the Chief Rabbinate regularly points out restaurants and shops which are unkosher and calls upon observant Jews not to go there. Such rabbinical boycott calls are not only legal but are even financed (lavishly) by the Israeli taxpayer.

The appeal had been dragging on for the past two years. The state attorney’s bureau had tried various delaying tactics. It is well known that they were far from happy with this law to begin with, and had tried in vain to dissuade the right-wing MKs from enacting it. Meanwhile, a considerable number of other appellants joined in and lodged their own appeals against this law: The Civil Rights Association (ACRI), Yesh Din, Adalah, the Women’s Coalition for Peace, The Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, MK Ahmed Tibi, The Arab Monitoring Committee and many others.

Soon, the time for delay will be over and Israel’s Supreme Court – which assigns three judges to rule on more routine issues, and assigns a panel of nine only to particularly significant and crucial cases – will deliberate and make a ruling. It would have many implications, both for civil liberties inside Israel and for the ever more thorny issue of the settlements.

Bloodshed and basketball

Mohamed El-Baradei found out that he had gotten himself into trouble. Baradei, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate who had been at the head of  the Cairo crowds protesting against the rule of President Mubarak, and again two years later against President Morsi. A month and a half ago Baradei and his fellows openly called upon  the Egyptian Army to overthrow the hated Morsi Administration and seize power. Baradei also agreed to serve as Vice President in the government appointed by the army. But this week, at the sight of the blood spilled in the squares, Baradei understood that he had let himself become a fig leaf for a brutal regime of military dictatorship.

This is not only true for Baradei, but for all the liberal secular Egyptians, who had made Tahrir Square into a global symbol of the struggle for freedom and democracy. By supporting  the military coup they had turned themselves into extras in the play in which they had been the main actors, condemning themselves to be crushed  between two millstones - the army and  the Muslim Brotherhood.

Itzhak Levanon, who had been Israel's ambassador to Egypt and who is now considered an expert, strongly condemned  Baradei for his "weakness". Levanon  said that he had been wrong to resign and should have "fully supported" the killing of the  Muslim Brother demonstrators by the Egyptian army. In general, the Israeli government seems nowadays to be General el-Sissy’s most steadfast supporter. As commentator Alex Fishman disclosed in "Yediot Aharonot", the government did its best in Washington, invoking the full authority of the AIPAC lobby so as make sure that the mass killings in the streets of Cairo would not impair the regular flow of generous U.S. aid to Egypt and its government and its armed forces.

The killings in Egypt pushed off the headlines the first meeting of the resumed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which took place on the same  evening in Jerusalem. In any case it was not hard to push to the background an event which was so deliberately kept low-profile. Probably just by coincidence, it was nearly on the twentieth anniversary of the first Oslo Agreement, that famous handshake on the White House lawn. On this anniversary, not marked in any official way, there started a new round of negotiations, arousing little hope and a lot of doubts. The low profile meant that there were few photos taken  (in future sessions, we are told, there will be no photos at all). No information was provided on what Livni and Erekat spoke about, other  than that the talks had been "serious."

All that seems quite intentional. To hold meetings and discussions (and serious negotiations?) below the media radar, without attracting attention, without media briefings (also no unofficial leaks?). To hold sessions – once in Jerusalem, then in Jericho - to which nobody would pay attention any more. And in nine months? A surprise announcement of an agreement which nobody  expected? Or the anticipated death notice, to which the response would likely be "What? Were these negotiations still going on"?

In the absence of concrete information from the negotiations room, the Israeli media centered on the side effects, especially the release of Palestinian prisoners. One hundred and  four prisoners are to be released from the prisons and detention camps of the State of Israel, of which twenty-six were freed this week , the rest to be released (or not) in later months, subject to the course of the negotiations and to other developments in our unpredictable region. One hundred and four prisoners, who were incarcerated since before the Oslo agreement of twenty years ago, some of whom had been behind bars for nearly   thirty years. It had not been all that hard for Binyamin Netanyahu to obtain a majority in the cabinet for the decision to free these prisoners. Still, the mass-circulation daily papers gave huge front page coverage to very small demonstrations of the kind which usually gets no mention at all. News editors competed for the most belligerent of headlines: "The Black List: terrorists with blood on their hands to be set free", "Bereaved families cry out: The wound has been reopened, the heart bleeds, this is a black day"; "Now it has been proven that over here there is no penalty for murderers"; "The murderer of my brother should have been killed, even Kerry could not get a dead terrorist released”; "Under cover of darkness, the killers are set free! ";  "Going back to negotiations - with a heavy heart".

"I tried to find a spoonful of justification for the murderers, not only for their own sake but also for myself" wrote commentator Dan Margalit on the pages of "Israel Today”.  "After all, if they had killed because of an ideal, if in their own eyes they are freedom fighters, it is slightly easier to accept the injustice done to the victims and the bereaved families. I tried to find a spoonful of justification, but I could not; they are too vile, like lepers of whom nothing good can come. Such they are, and they are different from us. That is the truth, even if it sounds condescending. There were none like them in our history. "

Away from the big headlines, in the sports sections in those same newspapers, there was a news item of another kind, sober and far from impassioned. There is an ongoing  debate in Israeli sporting over whether Dan Halutz should be appointed as Chair of the Israel Basketball Association. Some say that Halutz is a highly capable man who could make an important contribution to promoting basketball in Israel. Others argue that with all due respect, it doesn’t make sense to appoint to a crucial leading position in Israeli Sports a person  with no experience in this field, a person whose qualifications and experience are limited to the military, to having been  Commander of the Air Force and   then Commander in Chief of the IDF.

It is noteworthy that the phrase "blood on the hands" was completely absent from this particular debate. Nobody bothered to quote one of the most well-known of Dan Halutz’s utterings: "When the bomb left the plane, I felt only a slight bump on the wing. I sleep very well at night."

The bomb which had caused just a slight bump on the wing and which failed to disturb Dan Halutz’s later sleep was a one-ton bomb thrown off an Israeli Air Force jet flying over Gaza City on the night of July 22, 2002. A one-ton bomb intended to kill Hamas leader Salah Shehadeh and which incidentally also happened to kill fourteen of his neighbors and family members, including eight children.

All of these facts about Dan Halutz are well known and uncontested, easily located by two minutes’ Googling. These facts are at least just as widely  known as the acts for which 104 Palestinian prisoners got life sentences in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. But this week, there was none of the reporters or news editors bothering to search out or mention the dark patches in the past of the new basketball manager Dan Halutz.

The media did talk quite a bit of the counter-balancing measures taken by Netanyahu and his ministers, so as to sweeten the bitter pill of the release of the despicable Palestinian prisoners. A virtual flood of settlement construction permits, 1200 housing units and another 900 for good measure and the status of "national priority areas" and various other subsidies and benefits. "This is just the appetizer, a lot more will follow” promised Housing Minister Uri Ariel, and he is known as a person who means what he says.
Yedioth Ahronoth reporters Oded Shalom and Akiva Novick went out on the ground, visiting four settlements and finding construction going on at full swing in all of them.

At the entrance to the settlement or Revava, in the northwest part of the West Bank, the two journalists found huge signs bearing the words "Revava Groves, spacious apartments with five rooms and a courtyard, at a special price", under which were Biblical verses emphasizing the Divine Promise and Historic Rights of the Jewish People over the Land of Israel, as well as  computer simulated images of a large detached house surrounded by a green lawn. "It is a huge success. We sell these apartments at a million and three hundred thousand apiece, in Petach Tikva the same would cost a minimum of two millions. Everything we put on the market was snapped up immediately, if we  get more building permits we can easily sell twice as much" said entrepreneur Reuven Gur Aryeh – a former Deputy Chair of the settlers’ Samaria Regional Council, who had moved to the private sector and found the golden path to combining ideology and profit. "Do you not mind that the project you are now marketing is causing the world to feel upset?" asked the reporter. "Do you mind if I speak candidly?” asked Gur Aryeh. "The world is upset? My ass!"

"The World" in this context refers particularly to the EU Commission in Brussels, whose functionaries have become fed up with ineffective verbal  protests at ever-new Israeli settlement projects. For the first time, they have taken concrete steps. Three weeks ago, the EU proclaimed that Israeli participation in European scientific projects could take place solely within the internationally recognized boundaries of Israel, and that institutions located or active in settlements would not be eligible to European grants. Without the Government of Israeli officially acknowledging  and strictly applying this  limitation, Israeli researchers and academic institutions could end up barred from the EU’s highly desirable "Horizon 2020" scientific program, altogether.

Over the past week scientists, researchers and university heads have been crying out ever more desperately. As they point out, government intransigence  over settlements and “National Honor” could lead to 300 million Euros in  grants will just go down the drain - about forty percent of the total research budget available to Israeli academia.

It seems these researchers now do take seriously the things which upset the world. .

The Civil Agenda's short life

Precisely six months ago, on February 3, 2013, various political parties embarked on negotiations to form a new government coalition, with the new cabinet  again headed by Binyamin Netanyahu. Uri Ariel, who headed the negotiating team of the Jewish Home and would soon gain the Housing portfolio in the new cabinet, announced at the outset: "The voters have spoken, they decided for an essentially civil agenda, and that will be the new government’s main business."

What exactly is a civil agenda? A lot of people gave the term a lot of different meanings and interpretations. Uri Ariel said on that day that a civil agenda would imply "for example, a greater concern for the poor, and budgetary issues which we would discuss with professionals". The government budget which was actually formulated a few months later, in consultation with economic experts of a specific school, actually included a lot of bad news for  the poor, bearing the imprimatur of the new Finance Minister, Yair Lapid - also among the chief upholders of the Civil Agenda.

For Lapid, who entered into a close partnership with the Jewish Home Party to the extent of symbolically proclaiming himself “brother " to its leader Naftali Bennett, the Civil Agenda consists primarily of landing blows on the ultra-Orthodox – leaving them outside the cabinet, and on the other hand dragging  them into the army. The law now passing its first reading would remove  their exemption and get them all conscripted in four years’ time – that is, of course, unless the government which would then be in power decides to give them another respite of four or eight years ...

So what exactly is this Civil Agenda? It is easier to describe what it is not. A Civil Agenda is not about Palestinians, and settlements, and Territories. It has nothing to do with any of the confusing headaches which  preoccupied and troubled Israeli society since 1967. All of this belongs to the Old Politics, which we at last left behind us. Anyway, the bad Old Politics have become irrelevant, because the Palestinians do not want peace and we have no partner and there will be no negotiations and if there will be some talks they would lead nowhere and the Two State Solution is dead and we need to think creatively about other solutions but there is no hurry since time is working in our favor and Israel is prosperous and the world has forgotten the Palestinians and we just need to manage the conflict rather than resolve it and of course we should devote ourselves to the New Politics of the Civil Agenda. This  was how nearly everybody in our country talked for years.

Indeed, most of the political parties which gained an electoral mandate in January 2013 had avoided the Palestinian issue like the plague. For example the Israeli Labour Party and its leader Shelly Yechimovitz, who made sure to focus the election campaign on being Social Democratic, vowing to restore the Israeli Welfare State and dreaming of channeling the Social Protest Movement into a Labor Party electoral momentum and taking care not to stray into dealing with the Palestinians and the settlements.

This past week should have been Shelly Yechimovitz’s week, the moment for which she had waited and prepared for years, ever since she had gone over from journalism into politics. The sleepless night in the Knesset when the social militant Yechimovitz fought like a lioness against budgetary cuts and economic austerity and the cutting of social services. But in actuality the opposition filibuster ended with a whimper, and in the media it was pushed into the back pages by the dinner in Washington which marked the opening of the renewed negotiations with the Palestinians (was it just by chance on the very same day?).  For the time being Tzipi Livni is the star, Livni whose party gained only six seats at the elections and whose insistence on getting the position of Chief Negotiator with the Palestinians had gotten her a lot of  ridicule.

After all, it seems that the dream of emulating the European countries, where it is social issues that determine the difference between Left and Right, must be deferred until (and unless) we achieve peace. While attacking Netanyahu’s socio-economic policies, Yechimovitz has already promised him her party’s  support on diplomatic issues against the rampant hawks inside his government and his own party.

The change in line was marked yesterday by Knesset Member Hilik Bar, Secretary General of Yechimovitz’s party:  "Yesterday, Minister Naftali Bennett yelled at me in the plenum: 'Tell me, KM  Bar, have you gone crazy? '. Bennett was out of his mind when he heard that I hosted a Palestinian delegation in the Knesset in order to jointly offer support for the negotiations just beginning between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Probably Minister Bennett does not really appreciate the idea of ​​opposition members helping the cabinet of which he is a member in promoting and strengthening its own declared policies..."

The Jewish Home Party certainly does not feel easy or comfortable to be in a government which enters into negotiations with the Palestinians - and they are not  any more entirely convinced, as they were during the formation of the government, that negotiations, if any, would lead to nothing. It was particularly difficult and unpleasant for them to be in a government which took the decision to release 104 Palestinian prisoners in order to facilitate the opening of negotiations.

These prisoners  had been incarcerated in Israeli prisons for twenty or even thirty years, since before the Oslo Accords. They remained in prison for decades after the commanders who had sent them out had already shaken hands with Israeli government officials and some of them even got from Israel VIP certificates which ensure free passage through IDF checkpoints. Even so, after all these decades, the news of their impending release precipitated an outcry about "murderers with blood on their hands", and relatives of Israelis killed in the eighties made very emotional outpourings of pain which were published on the front pages of the mass circulation papers. Naftali Bennett and his party voted in the cabinet against the release of prisoners and were in the minority but remained in the government. Bennett contented himself with  announcing publicly that while serving as a combat officer he had managed to accumulate quite a bit of Arab blood on his hands.

It might be noted in passing that the Palestinian cabinet had no need to hold an emotional debate on whether or not to release the Israeli pilots who threw bombs and killed 1300 people in Gaza - since these pilots never were in Palestinian captivity...

Anyway, what could and should one expect from these talks which began in Washington and which are intended to last for nine months and end in a final status agreement that would provide full and comprehensive solutions to all outstanding problems between Israel and the Palestinians? Did Netanyahu change his spots, would he, can he? Is Kerry going to push seriously and would he have the backing of Obama? Will the Europeans do their share by some sort of intensive pressure or at least a threat to use such pressure? Would Bennett eventually leave the government? Would Yechimovitz get in  to replace him? The analyses and guesses and predictions and hopes and fears filled the media a few days, and even the commentators wearied themselves.

Only one thing was reported in unambiguous detail from the Washington event: The menu of the dinner eaten by Israelis and Palestinians and their  Americans hosts in “a symbolic moment of peace and tolerance at the elegant Thomas Jefferson room”. Dinner consisted of sweet corn and shell bean soup, grilled fillet of Atlantic grouper, saffron Farro risotto and apricot upside-down cake, washed down with peach and mango iced tea.

Apart from the menu, everything remains ambiguous and mysterious and subject to rumors and conflicting interpretations. But one can assume that  long before the end of the stipulated nine months we would get a clear idea if the whole thing is leading anywhere.

The last time someone promised an agreement within nine months it was Yitzhak Rabin, in the wake of being elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1992. He did not quite meet that timetable, but it was not significantly later when in September 1993 he did sign an agreement and make a symbolic handshake. It was an interim agreement which was to last for five years and end no later than May 1999 and be replaced with a permanent agreement. By  May 1999, Rabin was no longer with us and we will never know if he would have met that deadline.

If John Kerry succeeds in actually implementing what he announced this week, the agreement will be signed at a delay of precisely fifteen years. Too late for thousands of dead, for many Israelis and many more Palestinians and quite a few Lebanese too. Still, it is definitely better late than never.

Maybe, maybe then at last we could start thinking of a real Civil Agenda.

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?