Archive for July, 2005

There Goes the Neighborhood

Published by
July 30, 2005 in The Settlements. 1 Comment

With all eyes focused on the Disengagement, Israel continues to consolidate its hold on Jerusalem, foreclosing the possiblity of a shared capital in a final negotiation with the Palestinians. First there was the Maale Adumim tender, expanding settlement on Jerusalem’s eastern border to the tune of thirty-five hundred new housing units; then the Jerusalem Envelope plan, described here, which places all but a distant Palestinian neighborhood on the Israeli side of the separation wall; and now, YNet reports, city planners have approved construction of a Jewish neighborhood in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, breaking a de facto ethnic segregation that has prevailed in the city for decades…

The plan to build 21 apartments for Jews in the walled Old City’s Muslim Quarter was approved 5-2 by a local Planning Board, said Yosef Alalu, a dovish city council member who is on the committee. The plan must go through several more bureaucratic stages before final approval…

“It is clear that when the first tractor puts down the first stone it will lead to the next uprising and could have international impact,” Alalu said.

The Old City consists of four quarters - Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Armenian. Today, just a few Jewish families live in the Muslim Quarter, in fortified complexes.

About a dozen properties are owned by Jews, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who bought an apartment there in 1987. For several years, Sharon used the apartment to hold political meetings but today rarely visits the heavily guarded compound.

The plan - which has been in the works for several years - would violate a city ban on building within 10 meters (11 yards) of the Old City wall, Alalu claimed.

Helena Cobham offers this brief history of the ethnic divide in the Old City:

The present walls of Jerusalem’s Old City were built by the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. But most of the structures inside their enclosure–including the whole Muslim Haram al-Sharif area with its two holy mosques; the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and numerous other ancient churches; and the foundations of the Jewish Temple– are far, far older than the walls. In line with traditional Islamic principles of city planing, the city is divided into four ethnic/religious “quarters”– the Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Armenian Quarters.

At the end of the 1947-48 fighting that accompanied the birth of the State of Israel, the whole Old City remained in the hands of the Jordanian Army, while the infant Israeli forces held the city’s more modern western suburbs. On each side of the armistice line there was near-total ethnic cleansing. The Jordanians evicted some 2,000 Jewish residents from the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, and the Israelis evicted some 60,000 Palestinians from West Jerusalem and nearby villages.

After Israel conquered the Old City (and the rest of the West Bank) from Jordan in 1967, it immediately set about establishing a strong Jewish presence in the Old City. It notably did not allow any reciprocal “return” by the Palestinians of West Jerusalem to the properties from which they’d been evicted 19 years earlier.

In addition, it knocked down the whole, Muslim-populated “Mughrabiyyeh” quarter next to the Wailing Wall (Ha-Kotel), in order to make the open plaza where nowadays many Jewish and Israeli ceremonies are held. Land records from the time showed that the clearing of that area involved demolishing 135 homes, two ancient mosques, and a Sufi zawia (shrine).

Nowadays, the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is a thriving, densely-populated hub of Jewish-Israeli life. But settler activists– including, in an earlier era, Ariel Shatron– have also been covertly acquiring and establishing tiny settlemnt footholds throughout the city’s other quarters.

In a comment on Helena’s site, Jonathan Edelstein points out that the construction plan is only in the proposal stage. There are many hurdles to clear before it’s approved. True, and perhaps that will also provide opportunities for protest. It seems clear, though, that the proposal is part of a pattern of “Judaizing” Jerusalem.

One might hope that someday the segregated neighborhoods will disappear and that Jerusalem will be an integrated, multi-ethnic city. Unfortunately, this proposal is not a move in that direction.

Progress on the Comprehensive Convention Against Terrorism

Published by
July 28, 2005 in Activism, United Nations and Terrorism. 0 Comments

First, you should read Brad’s post below, which is brilliant. Then, if you have time, check this out. The United Nations is engaged in an interesting and important debate of the definition of terrorism. Does the use of anti-civilian violence against an occupying force constitute terrorism? Should the actions of a state’s armed forces be classified as terrorism if they are directed against a civilian population in violation of accepted international rules of combat? The debate is really about the legitimacy of militant (or terrorist) groups in the occupied territories, and is quite germane to many of us writing about the conflict…

The U.N. Treaty Section began work on the Comprehensive Convention Against Terrorism in 1996. India introduced the current draft in 2001. According to a 2003 report from the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University,

…this draft convention is an attempt to combine and expand on the twelve existing conventions on terrorism, which cover certain terrorist acts without actually defining terrorism. The draft treaty promises to close gaps and to offer a legally uniform regime for judicial cooperation and prosecution of terrorist activities. It covers a wider ground than that delineated by the post-September 11 UN Security Council resolutions. Crucially, if adopted, it would provide a solid legal basis for the fight against terrorism.

CTR interviewed the U.N. Ambassador from India, Vijay Nambiar:

The draft comprehensive convention’s approach is holistic and would offer the international community a sound legal basis to face up to the challenge. The draft convention closes loopholes in the other (anti-terrorism) treaties. It targets the methods through which terrorists commit their crimes and deals with states’ responsibilities in preventing and punishing (such offenses)…

The proposition stalled when the Arab states objected to defining only the military actions of stateless groups as terrorism. Thalif Deen reports for Inter-Press:

Arab diplomats have continued to argue that any comprehensive definition of terrorism must include the phenomena of “state terrorism” and distinguish it from the right of self-determination.

According to this argument, Israel is guilty of state terrorism in the occupied territories, while Palestinians are “freedom fighters.”

The Israelis, on the other hand, have a different take on it: a Palestinian who deliberately kills an Israeli child is a terrorist, while an Israeli who deliberately kills a Palestinian child is a soldier or settler.

The Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) and the League of Arab States are insisting that the treaty should exempt from consideration as terrorists all those engaged in conflicts against “foreign occupation.”

This includes even national liberation movements, including the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Lebanese-based militia, the Hizbollah, both of which have been battling Israeli occupation.

The bombings in Britain and Egypt seem to have given new impetus to the treaty. Al Jazeerah reported Tuesday:

The head of the 22-nation League of Arab States has endorsed a definition of terrorism opposed by many Arab nations for inclusion in a long-stalled comprehensive UN treaty against terrorism.

The proposed definition of any intentional maiming or killing of civilians as terrorism, regardless of cause, put forward by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, “could serve as the basis for consensus” in drafting the global pact, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said.

The BBC has the draft language:

We affirm that the targeting and deliberate killing of civilians and non-combatants cannot be justified or legitimised by any cause or grievance, and we declare that any action intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population or to compel a government or an international organisation to carry out or to abstain from any act cannot be justified on any grounds and constitutes an act of terrorism.

Annan is pushing to complete the convention put it up for a vote at the next General Assembly session in September. Hopefully, it will enhance international cooperation against Al Quaeda and other groups that are a real threat to states and civilians alike.

As an ethical guidepost, I think the statement above is a good one. And it seems to apply equally to the IDF and the Palestinian miltias. I can’t accept that killing children is an acceptable form of warfare, no matter what cause is served. Nor does the violence of the last five years seem to have brought us any closer to a resolution of the conflict.

But there is the question of the imbalance of power. When a state uses its authority and resources to deprive a whole people of land, and of civil and human rights, as has been the case with Israel and the Palestinians since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in 1967, do the occupied have a right to resist? With arms, if peaceful means fail? And, if with arms, against what targets?

A pacifist - or an anti-terrorist - ethos that fails to address the abuse of power by the state is a cop-out. Those of us who oppose terrorism as a means of resistance should be working hard to redress the balance of power by other means, i.e. by supporting divestment and other forms of economic pressure on Israel to end the occupation.

Am I a Settler?

Published by
July 26, 2005 in Religion, Personal Reflections and The Settlements. 2 Comments

Reading the Haaretz interviews with Disengagement chief Yonatan Bassi and settler leader/disengagement opponent Rabbi Yaakov Meidan, and seeing some of the most blatantly hypocritical statements I have ever read, I have now realized that, in many ways, I myself have been thinking like a settler for years. That I too subscribe to Judaism with an agenda.

I came to this realization, that I have been a settler in my own right, while reading the Haaretz interview published a couple of weeks ago with Yonatan Bassi, the man in charge of the Disengagement Administration and in last Friday’s interview with Rabbi Yaakov Meidan, one of the leading rabbis opposed to the disengagement, but who says he will not respond with violence.

What I mean by “thinking like a settler,” or being “a settler in my own right,” is the notion that Judaism can have an agenda, or basically mean what you want it to. And that you can utter words that say one thing but really mean quite another. Or, put in another way, words that mean nothing because you only mean them to the extent they suit you and those who think like you.

The article with Mr. Bassi is fascinating and well worth everyone’s time. I think it is safe to say that he can be described as the man with among the least desirable jobs in the world at the moment. I frankly knew very little about him before reading the article, and it seems to me anyway that he has taken the attitude and approach that one would need to have to accomplish this task.
But he himself has been a part of the settler community, and it is from that place that he can utter statements like:

“Everyone here is a victim. Everyone is caught up in a tragedy.”

and

“The thought of a bulldozer crushing the garden of a family and the house of a family is a nightmare for me.”

I read and reread these statements in shock. Although it may not be fair, my shock stemmed from my assumption that his definition of “everyone” in the first statement did not include the Palestinians, the Israeli soldiers who have lost their lives or suffered severe physical or mental injury defending the settlements, the entire non-settler Israeli whose economy has been wrecked, in part, constructing and maintaining the settlements and the infrastructure they require.

No, I imagined that Mr. Bassi does not see any victims other than the settlers. And I then assumed, again possibly unfairly, that Mr. Bassi has not been having nightmares for years and is not likely to be familiar with the work of Jeff Halper and the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions. For, like only a few people, in reality, are included in his conception of the “everyone” who are victims, I imagined that Mr. Bassi really meant to say that the nightmare is the thought of bulldozers crushing the homes and gardens of Jewish families in the settlements.

Okay, so I caught someone involved with the settler movement (albeit in an unpopular way at the moment) being a hypocrite. Stop the presses? Hardly. That the settler leadership, or even the leadership of the American Jewish community that has all but demanded subscription to an “Israel right or wrong” ideology, would be guilty of hypocrisy is not news, probably not even worth a blog post.

But these statements stuck with me nonetheless. And then I read this past weekend’s interview with Rabbi Meidan, again a fascinating read. And again another guy with an unpopular job – after leading a movement that for years gambled on the notion that the State would always support and prop up their pursuit of the Land — in fact relied on their occupation of the Land — Rabbi Meidan and others must deal with the fact that they lost their gamble. And as a result of losing the gamble, thousands of his followers will suffer. Suffering merely heaped upon the suffering of, literally, millions of others that occurred while they were winning the gamble.

In the course of the interview, Rabbi Meidan is asked what he would do as a soldier faced with an order to evacuate a family from their home in Gaza. This is how he answered:

“That is a very difficult question. Very difficult. It is a question that touches also on dragging people from the home in which they have lived for 30 years. Dragging children, dragging mothers. Let me ask you: If your mothers were there, would you drag them out?”

Which is when it struck me. Here are the arguments that have failed, for the most part, for those of us on the left. Put yourself in their shoes. Apply justice and law equally to all. How can We do this after what We have been through. The victimizer ultimately becomes the victim of his actions.

And now we watch as settler leaders try to use those same arguments to defend their gamble. As they send their children into the streets to fight their battles. As they declare they cannot follow the decisions of a democratically elected government when they don’t like those decisions.

But it’s not enough to declare them hypocrites, to believe that the end of their gamble in Gaza is justice (partly) served, to feel somehow vindicated by disengagement.

Putting aside the issue of what will happen in the West Bank, we must all see this as a moment to check ourselves. For the last several years now, I have been sitting through services, waiting to find passages that justify my beliefs, that prove my politics. And I have sat in judgment of those who disagree with me, believing that they must not be able to see what I am seeing, that they are missing what Judaism is really saying to us. That they are becoming, contributing to or sitting silently while the rest of the Jewish community becomes, everything we are commanded not to be. The oppressor. The victimizer. The hypocrite.

But to do so, to use Judaism to prove a point, to support an agenda is, well, to be a settler. Judaism is not that easy. And the moment anyone believes that they and those like them have it right, then, like the gamble made by the settlers, Judaism itself is lost.

Let us perhaps see disengagement as a victory for Judaism. For the notion that the situation in Israel and Palestine, like Judaism itself, is complex and difficult and painful, and it needs every ounce of each one of us working constantly to move forward. For the challenge that the word Israel itself presents us: struggling with God.

For the belief that Judaism is not a religion that can be claimed by a few, and that Judaism is not a religion that espouses a vision where only its followers, but all people, thrive in peace. A religion that stands for justice for all.
Rabbi Meidan concluded his interview with a statement I agreed with. A statement that, if it really did mark settler ideology, would make me proud to be one:

“I have never recognized the supremacy of the law. Justice and morality are far more important to me than the supremacy of the law. When the law stands opposite justice and morality, I stand on the other side.”

Maybe someday, Rabbi Meidan, we will stand there together.

Kahanists Evoke Pulsa D’Nura Death Curse Against Sharon

Published by
Andrew Schamess
July 26, 2005 in The Jewish Right. 4 Comments

Our own religious extremists are starting to look an awful lot like the more incendiary preachers of radical Islam, whom we are fond of denouncing. Remember how shocked everyone was about Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989? It was hard to believe - then - that a major world religion could make death threats. Well, it turns out we have something similar. It’s called the Pulsa D’Nura. To be honest, I’ve never heard of it - but evidently we just evoked it against Ariel Sharon…

|inline

Football for Peace

Published by
Andrew Schamess
July 21, 2005 in Israeli Politics, Politics and All Posts. 0 Comments

My next post will be a more serious one, but in my first post after a long absence, I needed to ease my way back into the blogging world with something a bit different than usual…

|inline

A Palestinian Civil War? Hamas Challenges PA Control of Gaza.

Published by
July 21, 2005 in Palestinian Politics. 3 Comments

Much of the U.S. media, seeing things though a typically Israel-centric lens, is missing the point of the current violence in Gaza. The Boston Globe editorial, for example, declares that “the immediate need is to stop Palestinian mortar and rocket attacks on Israelis.” The LA Times says Condoleeza Rice should “warn Abbas that he must do more to rein in Hamas.” That would be a warning he doesn’t need. He has already moved militarily against Hamas, taking the risk of precipitating a full-fledged civil war. At stake is whether the democratically elected Palestinian government can maintain control and stop paramilitary groups from taking power in parts of the territories where they have strong support…

The situation is quite serious. Tuesday Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade actually took over a part of Northern Gaza for a while Wednesday and barred PA forces from entering.

Abbas has proceeded very deliberately. When the Hamas rocket attacks resumed last week and killed an Israeli woman in Netiv Ha’asara, he sent the PA police force in to arrest the militants who were involved; and at the same time attempted to negotiate a stand-down. While publically affirming its committment to a ceasefire, Hamas escalated the attacks, both against Israel and against the PA police in Gaza. The result, by Monday, was an all-out battle for control of the streets.

Anne Barnard of the Boston Globe reported on the scene in Tel al-Zatar neighborhood of Gaza City earlier this week:

The clash, as described by people in the neighborhood, displayed Hamas’s power on the street. It began when Hamas supporters in the neighborhood heard that members of the Preventive Security Force, part of the police, were coming to arrest a Hamas member. Dozens of Hamas men flooded the streets and captured four police officers.

Hamas was still holding one of the men yesterday afternoon, said Obeid, as the man’s brother stood nearby and shouted, ”If he is not freed, we will fight!” The Hamas gunmen then milled around the nearby Al Awda hospital, where the wounded were taken, until doctors there summoned members of a rival militia with ties to the hospital and demanded that they leave.

There was a brief truce but it appears to have broken down. From Al Jazeerah

At least seven people were wounded in the exchanges of fire with bodyguards after the attacks on the home of preventive security chief Rashid Abu Shbak and the head of Fatah in Gaza, Abd Allah Franji, security and Hamas sources said…

The exchanges had imperilled a tentative agreement reached on Tuesday night between members of Hamas and Fatah to stop targeting each other.

Hamas has blamed the conflict on PA Interior Minister Nasser Yousef, accusing him of precipitating violence by moving against the Hamas militants. The party line seems to be that Fatah (the ruling party) should be cooperating with the other wings of the resistance movement. For example, Hamas spokesman Saed Siam said Saturday:

“The Yousef decision comes at a time when the occupation is committing crimes and persecutions against our people in Tulkuram and Nablus.” Hamas is calling for his resignation.

Siam affirmed, “Dialogue is the language that we should use. These events serve the occupier and the PA wants to escalate the situation and shed Palestinian blood.”

Siam is questioning why the PA security forces are not confronting the Israeli attacks, but instead find the courage to confront the resistance instead of engaging in dialogue.

This begs the question. In a stateless resistance movement, various groups can collaborate, or work independently, toward the goal of toppling the occupier. In an actual state, there needs to be one authority that has control of military and policing functions. The Palestinian condition is somewhere between the two. There is no soveriegn Palestinian state, but there is a hope of one. An elected government exists, but without clear territorial sovereignty. Abbas is thinking forward toward statehood. Hence, his response:

“There is no such thing as ‘controlled resistance’ and ‘uncontrolled resistance,”‘ Abbas said Monday at a Gaza news conference, adding that “no one has the right to take the law into their own hands.”

“I’m making every effort to keep the truce,” he said. “I don’t want or accept a civil war. But if they insist on breaking the truce without abiding by the consensus, let them bear the responsibility.” The Palestinian Authority, he said, would enforce the law and tolerate “no alternative so-called government or authority.”

Yesterday the Executive Committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization came out of a meeting chaired by Abbas with this statement

:

The PLO “confirms that the PNA shall solely be responsible for the administration of the Gaza Strip through the Council of Ministers and the competent departments, institutions and cabinet ministries,” the EC said in a statement following its meeting in Gaza City on Wednesday, chaired by President Mahmoud Abbas and attended by Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei.

The PLO refused proposals and initiatives to create a “special administration” for the Strip after the planned Israeli withdrawal late in August, reiterating that the PNA shall solely “have the national and legal roles” in all the West Bank and Gaza Strip areas that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) pull out from.

I agree with Abbas that Palestinian society would do well to centralize power in the elected government. But that government also needs to maintain transparency and integrity. Ms. Barnard found persistent suspicion of corruption and patronage in the Fatah-dominated administration. This undermines its authority as the representative of all Palestinians. Figuring prominently in this is Abbas’ decision to cancel the next scheduled Council elections after Hamas’s gains in the last round:

Supporters of Hamas say the authority gives jobs only to followers of Fatah, the party of the late leader Yasser Arafat, and charge that it canceled elections scheduled for this month because it feared Hamas’s popularity. The authority blames Hamas for refusing an offer to join the government…

“The Palestinian Authority wants to be the main power. They don’t want to share the cake,” said a man whose house was decorated with Hamas posters and who identified himself as Mohammed Abed, 50.

He said the fighting was fueled by competition for the spoils of the Israeli pullout, adding, ”The Palestinian Authority wants to do what Israel has failed to do, to dismantle Hamas.”

I do not think that all this should be seen as “backsliding” by the Palestinians, though that is certainly how Israel views it. These are conflicts that were submerged in a resistance movement, that are coming to the surface now with the prospect of statehood. Hopefully, they will be played out more with words than with guns; but they need to play out at some point in the course of creating a Palestinian state.

Israel has massed its forces on the border of Gaza, ready to storm in if the missile attacks continue. So far - probably mainly out of deference to Condoleeza Rice, who is on her way there to try to put out the fire - Sharon has delayed giving the order to march.

The Washington Post editorial page was more or less on target yesterday with this analysis:

Mr. Sharon can hardly be faulted for responding to the Palestinian attacks, which killed a half-dozen Israeli civilians. But the Israeli military response risks playing into the hands of the Palestinian extremists. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose own security forces fought gun battles with Hamas on Friday in an attempt to stop the attacks, could be critically undermined by continued Israeli intervention… If the moderate Palestinian president is shoved to the sidelines by Israeli military intervention, the result could be a post-withdrawal Gaza effectively ruled by Hamas and its allies.

Such an outcome might suit Israeli hard-liners determined to stop further territorial concessions or peace talks, but it would be a disaster for the Bush administration and U.S. interests across the Middle East.

In the same vein, the Christian Science Monitor argues that U.S. support for Abbas at this juncture is critical to the peace process:

Unlike Sharon, Abbas heads a fragile, poor, emerging democracy. After six months in power, he has yet to reform his security forces - critical for law and order. In congressional testimony last month, the US general (William Ward) sent to help get those forces in shape termed them “fiefdoms.”

In recent days, Abbas has finally begun to assert himself. In a televised address, he said his government would not tolerate militants’ attacks against Israel. And, for the first time, his security forces are using force against militants.

Still, he needs political backing, and that’s where Ms. Rice comes in. Palestinians need to hear her repeat the bottom-line conditions of Palestinian statehood supported by her boss during an Abbas visit to the White House in May.

But they also need to know there’s a “day after” plan for them post- pullout, and that final status talks are not far off. The administration’s been noncommittal on these last points - but it could change that with a meaningful visit from Rice.

I must point out that, while Yassir Arafat was the one who made a mess of the Palestinian security forces, Israel cannot altogether sidestep responsibility. It was under Israeli military rule that a violent, factionalized insurgency arose among the Palestinians. Israeli measures, focused almost entirely on protecting the Jewish citizenry using barriers and counterstrikes, failed to check - in fact, probably helped to foster - the growth of Hamas and other militant groups in the occupied territories. It’s Abbas’s mess, but it’s ours, too.

An afterthought: has any consideration been given to a United Nations force to assist the PA in policing the territories?

The March on Gush Katif

Published by
Andrew Schamess
July 19, 2005 in Religion, The Jewish Right, The Settlements and Zionism. 0 Comments

For Ariel Sharon, the Gaza disengagement was more of a tactical move than a declaration of principle. He recognized that Israel could not maintain the occupation forever. He understood that the Second Intifada was running out of steam and that Israel held the upper hand militarily. So he decided to seize the opportunity, consolidate Israel’s most important gains from the 1967 war - principally, the Jordan River, Jerusalem and its suburbs, and a good deal of land to the East of the Green Line, including the outlet of the large Eastern Aquifer - and withdraw troops from the rest of the territories, starting with Gaza. His main goals were defined, defensible borders for Israel, and control of water resources. For the Jewish religious right, however, the Gaza withdrawal has become a final showdown on the Peel Commission’s 1937 recommendation to partition British Palestine into Jewish and Arab states…

|inline

About

You are currently browsing the semitism.net weblog archives for the month July, 2005.

Longer entries are truncated. Click the headline of an entry to read it in its entirety.

Latest

RSS

Archives

Categories