The second-highest decision-making body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) decided Monday to call on the executive committee to suspend recognition of Israel until Israel recognizes the existence of Palestine, and annuls its annexation of Jerusalem, marking the latest fallout from Donald Trump’s December 6th claim of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
The PLO will cease all security cooperation with Israel, and will cease the cooperation of the Paris Agreement, which had tied the Palestinian economy to the Israeli economy.
The statement from the Central Council said, in part, “Since Israel has voided all signed agreements through its constant violations of these agreements, the Central Council affirms that the direct goal is an independent Palestinian state, which involves moving from self-rule to having a state, by achieving sovereignty of the state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
The Council called on the international community to work on ending the Israeli occupation, using all of the past UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, to achieve Palestinian sovereignty and an independent Palestinian state.
They called on countries to boycott Israeli settlement products, and to publish the database which includes the list of companies which bring products from the settlements.
The Council called for adopting the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) call, denouncing Israeli apartheid as a racist regime that is being imposed in place of a Palestinian state, rejecting any temporary solutions – especially regarding borders, rejecting any recognition of Israel as a Jewish state (which implies the denial of the existence and rights of the millions of non-Jews who live there), affirming the unity agreement signed in 2011 between the Palestinian factions, and affirmed again in 2017, and assuring a political partnership under the PLO as the only representative of the Palestinian people.
The Council affirmed the legitimate right of resistance to the occupation, as stated by international law, and called for support of the non-violent resistance movement in Palestine.
They also affirmed the urgent need to assist the Palestinians in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Palestine, who are facing expulsion, home demolitions, and constant violations by Israel. They called on all Arab countries to follow through on their commitments of support to the Palestinian people.
The Council decided to take all needed measures to assist the Palestinians living in the besieged Gaza Strip.
They decided to continue the work on the international level to provide protection for the Palestinian people, as stated in Security Council Resolution 605 in 1987, 672 and 673 in 1990, Resolution 904 of 1998, and to ensure the implementation of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which calls for protecting civilians living under foreign military occupation.
They decided to continue the international work to call for full membership at the United Nations for the state of Palestine.
The Council also decided to submit the cases of settlements, political prisoners, and the Israeli wars on Gaza to the International Criminal Court, and they also decided to continue filing more applications to international organizations and agencies.
Unofficial translation of the statement (by WAFA ):
Statement issued by the Central Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
January 14, 2018
Ramallah, Palestine
The Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Council held its twenty-eighth ordinary session, under the name “Jerusalem the eternal capital of the State of Palestine”, between January 14 – 15 2018 in the city of Ramallah, in the presence of President Mahmoud Abbas.
A total of 87 members out of 109 members attended the session, while a number of members were unable to attend because they were arrested or prevented by Israel.
President of the Central council Salim Al-Za’noun began the session by saying that “The time has come for our Palestinian Central Council, that is representing the Palestinian National Council, which took the decision to establish the Palestinian National Authority to be the core of the state, to decide its future and function and to reconsider the recognition of the State of Israel until it recognizes the State of Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital and accept the refugees’ return based on resolution 194.”
Al-Za’noun stressed that the Central Council rejects any ideas that are being circulated as part of the so-called “deal of the century”, because they violate international law and resolutions of the international community and seek to impose a deficient solution that does not meet the minimum of Palestinians’ legitimate rights.
He called for finding other international pathways under the auspices of the United Nations to sponsor solving the Palestinian cause.
He said, “Our success in facing these risks and challenges requires accelerating the steps of implementing reconciliation and ending the division, and developing a plan to strengthen national partnership within the framework of the PLO, as the supreme national political and legal reference for our people.”
Al-Za’noun proposed to hold a session of the National Council, in which both Hamas and the Islamic Jihad will be invited with the task of reshaping, choosing or electing a new national council, as stipulated by the system of elections of the National Council.
“We respect and appreciate the position of Arabs and their support for the Palestinian cause. We demand the implementation of the decisions of the Arab summits on Jerusalem, especially the Amman summit of 1980, which called for severing all relations with any state that recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or transfers its embassy to it.”
He stressed that the sacrifices and struggles of prisoners in Israeli jails obligate Palestinians to provide all forms of support and that the dignity of Palestinians remains above any consideration.
Meanwhile, President Abbas reiterated commitment to a two-state solution based on international resolutions, the Arab peace initiative on the 1967 borders, the cessation of settlements’ expansion and unilateral actions. He affirmed that Palestinians will continue to seek the Security Council until full membership is achieved.
He stressed that Palestinians will not accept what the US attempts to impose, and that the PLO will reconsider its relations with Israel, yet engage in any serious peace negotiations under the auspices of the UN.
Following are the resolutions issued by the Central Council:
First: US recognition of Jerusalem
1. To condemn and reject the decision of US President Donald Trump, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and transferring his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and work to reverse this decision.
2. The Council considered that the US administration, by announcing this decision, has lost its eligibility to function as a mediator and sponsor of the peace process and will not be a partner in this process unless the decision is reversed.
3. The Council stressed its rejection of President Trump’s policy that is aimed at presenting a project or ideas that contravene the resolutions of international community to resolve the conflict, which revealed its essence by declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Council stressed the need to abolish the Congress’s decision to consider the PLO as a terrorist organization since 1987, and the State Department’s decision to close the Office of the PLO general delegation in Washington on November 17, 2017.
Second: The relationship with Israel (the occupation):
In light of the withdrawal of the occupying state from all agreements and revoking them by practice and imposing a fait accompli, and with the Central council stressing that the direct goal is the independence of the State of Palestine, which requires transition from self-governing to the stage of a state that is struggling for independence, with East Jerusalem as its capital and on the borders of 4 June 1967, in implementation of the resolutions of the National Council, including the Declaration of Independence in 1988, and relevant UN resolutions, including the General Assembly resolution 67/19 of 29/11/2012, as the political and legal basis for Palestinians reality, and the affirmation of adherence to the territorial unity of the State of Palestine, and the rejection of any divisions or facts imposed contrary to that;
The Central Council decided that the transitional period stipulated in the agreements signed in Oslo, Cairo and Washington, with its obligations no longer stand.
1.The Central Council calls upon the international community to assume its responsibilities on the basis of relevant UN resolutions to end the occupation and enable the State of Palestine to achieve its independence and to exercise its full sovereignty over its territory, including its capital, East Jerusalem, on the borders of 4 June 1967.
2.Assign the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization to suspend recognition of Israel until it recognizes the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders and revokes the decision to annex East Jerusalem and expand and build settlements.
3.The Central Council reaffirms its decision to stop security coordination in all its forms and to break away from the relationship of economic dependence established by the Paris Economic Agreement, to achieve the independence of the national economy. It requests the Executive Committee of the PLO and the institutions of the State of Palestine to start implementing this.
4.Continue to work with world countries to boycott Israeli colonial settlements in all fields, to work on publishing the database for companies operating in Israeli settlements by the United Nations and to emphasize the illegality of Israeli colonial settlements since 1967.
5.Adopt the BDS movement and call on world countries to impose sanctions on Israel to put an end to its flagrant violations of international law and to end its continued aggression against the Palestinian people and the apartheid regime imposed on them.
6.Reject and condemn the Israeli occupation and apartheid that Israel is trying to enshrine as an alternative to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and affirm the determination of the Palestinian people to resist by all means.
7.Reject any proposals or ideas for transitional solutions or interim stages, including the so-called state with temporary borders.
8.Refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Third: The internal Palestinian situation:
1.Adhere to the reconciliation Agreement signed in 2017 and its execution mechanisms, the latest of which is the Cairo agreement in 2017 and the provision of means of support for its implementation, and enable the Government of National unity to assume its responsibilities fully in the Gaza Strip in accordance with the Amended Basic Law, and then conduct general elections and hold the Palestinian National Council session no later than the end of 2018 in order to achieve political partnership within the framework of the PLO, the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people, and work to form a government of national unity in order to strengthen the political partnership and the unity of the Palestinian political system.
2.Affirm the right of our people to exercise all forms of resistance against the occupation in accordance with the provisions of international law and to continue to activate, support and strengthen the peaceful popular resistance.
3.Affirm the need to support Palestinians and their steadfastness in the eternal capital of the State of Palestine, Jerusalem and affirm the need to support their struggle against the Israeli measures aimed at Judaizing the Holy City.
4.Take all measures to support our people in the Gaza Strip, who faced the Israeli aggression and the Israeli siege and provide the support they need, including freedom of movement, access to health, the reconstruction and the mobilization of the international community to break the siege.
5.The Central Council condemns the leaking of the property by the Greek Orthodox church to Israeli institutions and companies and calls for accountability of those responsible. It supports the struggle of the Palestinian people from the Orthodox community in order to preserve their rights and their role in administering the affairs of the Orthodox Church and preserving its property.
Fourth: The Security Council, the General Assembly and the International Criminal Court:
1.Continue to work to provide international protection to the Palestinian people in the territory of the occupied State of Palestine (West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip) based on the Security Council resolution 605 for the year (1987), 672 (1967) and (1990), 904 of (1998), and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 (Protection of Civilians in Time of War).
2.Continue to work to strengthen the status of the State of Palestine in international forums and activate the request for full membership of the State of Palestine in the United Nations.
3.Provide referral on various issues (settlement, prisoners, aggression on the Gaza Strip) to the International Criminal Court.
4.Continue to join to international institutions and organizations, including the specialized agencies of the United Nations.
Fifth: The Arab and Islamic levels:
1.Call for activating the resolution of the 1980 Amman Summit, which obliges the Arab states to sever all ties with any state that recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and transfers its embassy to it, which has been reaffirmed in a number of other Arab summits with the request of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation member states to do the same.
2.Adhere to the Arab peace initiative and reject any attempts to change or alter it and maintain its priorities.
3.Work with the Arab countries (The Arab League), the Islamic countries (OIC) and the Non-Aligned Movement to hold an international conference with full powers to launch the peace process and in coordination with the EU countries, Russia, China, Japan and other international groups on the basis of relevant international resolutions and benefit from the outcomes of the 2017 Paris conference in a way as to ensure the end of the Israeli occupation and the empowerment of the State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital on the 1967 borders and exercise its independence and sovereignty and to resolve the refugee issue on the basis of UN Resolution 194 and other final status issues in accordance with the resolutions of the international community within a specific time frame.
4.The League of Arab States, the OIC, the Non-Aligned Movement and the African Union must stand firm in front of world countries that violated the resolutions of these collective frameworks on voting against the United Nations General Assembly resolution on Jerusalem 21/12/2017.
5.The Central council condemned US threats to cut aid to UNRWA, which is seen as a way for the US to abandon its responsibility over a refugee crisis that it has aided in creating and calls on the international community to commit itself to securing the necessary funds for UNRWA, which would put an end to the continued decline in the Agency’s services and instead improve its role in providing basic services to the victims of the Nakbah and ensure a decent life for refugees as a responsibility that the international community should fulfill in accordance with resolution 194.
6.The Central Council rejects foreign intervention in Arab countries and calls for a political solution and dialogue in order to end the crises and wars experienced by some Arab countries. It calls for maintaining the unity of these countries and defying attempts to divide and alleviating the suffering of Arabs.
Sixth: Develop mechanisms to implement the decisions of the previous Central Council to represent women by at least 30% in all institutions in the State of Palestine and to harmonize the laws in accordance with the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Seventh: The Central Council salutes the masses of Palestinians in refugee camps and exile camps in Syria, Lebanon and the Diaspora who affirm their adherence to the right of return every day. The Executive Committee is mandated to continue and intensify work with the Palestinian communities in the world and to communicate with international parties to mobilize support in facing decisions that aim to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
Eighth: The Central Council salutes the struggle and steadfastness of the prisoners in the Israeli jails and calls for their support in their daily confrontation and calls on national and international institutions to bring up their cases in all forums until their release. The Council condemns the arrest and intimidation of children, including Ahed Tamimi, which has become a symbol of Palestinian pride in the face of occupation as well as dozens of other children.
It condemns the deliberate killings and field executions committed by Israel, as well as the killing of Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, and condemns the continued detention of the bodies of Palestinians in the numbers graves, and calls for their unconditional release.
Ninth: The Central Council salutes Palestinians for their response to President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and transfer the US Embassy to it. It salutes the souls of Palestinians who rose for Palestine and al-Aqsa.
Five days after Turkey summoned the US charge d’affaires in Ankara to convey its concerns over the US’ continuing support for the Kurdish militia in Syria with weapons and training, President Recep Erdogan threatened on January 15 that it is resolute about thwarting the attempt by Washington to consolidate the emergence of a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria under American protection.
Erdogan said that the Turkish military has completed its preparation to move against the Kurdish militia in their canton of Afrin, in northwestern Syria, and Manbij, in northern Syria. He added, “The operation may start any time. Operations into other regions will come after,” noting that the Turkish army was already hitting the Kurdish positions. Erdogan said, “America has acknowledged it is in the process of creating a terror army on our border. What we have to do is nip this terror army in the bud.”
On January 14, the Turkish Foreign Ministry also issued a statement saying Turkey had reiterated on numerous occasions that it was “wrong and objectionable” to cooperate with the Syrian Kurdish militia. “On the other hand, the establishment of the so-called ‘Syria Border Protection Force’ (by the US) was not consulted with Turkey, which is a member of the (US-led anti-terrorist) coalition,” the statement said. It was also unknown which coalition members approved this decision, the ministry said. “To attribute such a unilateral step to the whole coalition is an extremely wrong move that could harm the fight against Daesh,” it added.
On another plane, what emerges is that the US ploy to create misunderstanding between Moscow and Ankara by stage-managing the drone strike recently at the Russian bases in Syria from Idlib province close to the Turkish border has flopped. Erdogan telephoned President Vladimir Putin last week to talk things over and the latter since then openly endorsed the assessment by the Defence Ministry in Moscow that the drone technology used in the attack was far too sophisticated to be handled by terrorist groups without the support of an advanced country. In effect, Moscow hinted at an American conspiracy.
At a press conference in Moscow today, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also hit hard on the US’ gameplan in northern Syria. For the first time, he made the specific allegation that Washington is working on the “separation of a huge territory along the borders with Turkey and Iraq” from the rest of Syria. Analysts have estimated that the area works out to a quarter of Syrian territory. Lavrov hinted that Moscow, Tehran and Ankara are in consultation on the issue. As he put it, “We, like our Turkish and Iranian partners, like many others, I am sure, are expecting detailed explanations from the US.”
Meanwhile, Tehran has also voiced concern over the American (and Turkish) moves in northern Syria. The Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani warned of the dangers posed to the regional states by the occupation of Syria. “Any political or military action to target a part of the Syrian territories which are under the terrorist groups’ control or occupation of the Syrian lands by foreign forces runs counter to people’s interests, is considered as a threat to the regional countries and doomed to failure,” Shamkhani warned.
However, a military confrontation between Turkey and the US is unlikely to happen. Erdogan is good at brinkmanship. Nonetheless, his future course of action will bear watching. The point is, Turkey also has its own agenda in northern Syria and may well use the presence of Kurdish militia forces along its border regions as a pretext for staging new military operations in northern Syria. Equally, Turkey still has an ambivalent relationship with some of the extremist groups operating in Idlib.
All in all a complicated matrix is developing in northern Syria where Russia, Turkey and Iran have convergence as regards their opposition to the US attempt to bolster the Syrian Kurds’ control of vast territories in the region. But, having said that, Russia and Iran (and Syrian government) also disapprove of any independent Turkish military action in northern Syria. On the other hand, they also harbor misgivings about Turkey’s continuing links with some terrorist groups present in Idlib (which also have had US backing.)
The Syrian government’s best hope – as indeed Russia and Iran’s – would lie in weaning away the mainstream Kurdish groups from the orbit of US influence to engage them constructively as participants in a peace process. But Turkey brands the Kurdish groups as terrorists and threatens to attack them. Damascus has repeatedly questioned the Turkish moves with regard to Afrin.
In such complicated circumstances, it remains to be seen how the proposed Syrian Congress of National Dialogue could be held in Sochi, as planned, in end-January. The expectation was that the congress would pave the way for the drafting of a new constitution for Syria. To be sure, these contradictions will be exploited by the US to create rifts between Turkey and Russia (and Iran.) The US design is to keep Syria weak and divided for a foreseeable future so that its occupation of a big swathe of land in the strategic northern regions bordering Turkey and Iraq goes unchallenged and the Russian plans to push ahead a settlement in Syria somehow within this year get thwarted.
The good part is that the recent disturbances in Iran do not seem to have affected Tehran’s resolve to help Syrian government forces regain the lost territories. In fact, Shamkhani made his remarks (cited above) during a meeting with the Syrian Parliament Speaker Hammoudeh Sabbagh in Tehran on Monday. (FARS)
Two Russian Syria-embedded journalists have put together a damning firsthand report on the true purpose of the secrecy-laden US military mission at At-Tanf, southern Syria.
The Pentagon was forced to go into full public relations mode late last month amid fresh allegations by the Russian General Staff that US instructors were providing training assistance for some 350 ex-Daesh (ISIS) militants at the US Army’s al-Tanf garrison in the southern Syrian province of Homs. Chief of Staff General Valery Gerasimov accused Washington of intending to use the militants to create a so-called ‘New Syrian Army’, a military formation aimed at further destabilizing the war-torn country after Daesh had been defeated.
A Pentagon spokesperson soon responded, telling Sputnik that Moscow’s allegations were “false and absurd,” and stressing that the US and its allies engage in capturing and killing Daesh, not training them.
In a special investigative report for Russia’s Federal News Agency, embedded Syria correspondents Igor Petrashevich and Roman Martynovich made their way south to try to figure out what was really going on in the US-occupied area with their own eyes.
Al-Tanf, a settlement situated near Syria’s border with Iraq and Jordan, is one of three official border crossings between Syria and Iraq, and the main border checkpoint along the Damascus-Baghdad highway. Intense fighting for the area took place in the spring and summer of 2017, as US-allied militia attempted to solidify their foothold in southern Syria. However, a Syrian Army counteroffensive backed by Russian air power stopped the militants’ advance, prompting them and their US-led coalition allies to secure a patch of territory running about 55 km deep into Syria.
Late last month, General Gerasimov pointed to al-Tanf as being one of two staging areas for the continuation of an armed struggle against the Syrian government by the jihadists, with the other located at Shaddadi camp, under the control of Kurdish forces operating in Syria’s north. According to the general, the al-Tanf militants, many former members of Daesh, were brought into the area by US special forces from Deir ez-Zor province, where Daesh had suffered total defeat.
According to Petrashevich and Martynovich, the presence of these former Daesh fighters made local residents wary of helping them to make their way into the US military-administered enclave. “A young man named Marshod warned our correspondents about this and said that two of his own attempts to make his way to a nearby village beyond the line of demarcation led to threats against his life from militants guarding the enclave’s inner perimeter.”
Undeterred, the journalists continued their investigation via interviews with eyewitnesses and representatives of the Syrian military stationed in the region.
There May Be Close to Four Times as Many Militants as Previously Estimated
Although the Russian military conservatively estimated the presence of roughly 350 Daesh militants at al-Tanf, Syrian military sources speaking to Patrashevich and Martynovich explained that the number may, in fact, be upwards of 1,200 fighters, some 200 of them Daesh jihadis brought to the area by US special forces, mostly from Deir ez-Zor province. Other forces include the so-called ‘New Syrian Army’, the Forces of Martyr Ahmad al-Abdo (formally part of the Free Syrian Army), and the Martyrs of Islam Brigade (an Islamist group). According to the Syrian military, these forces’ armament includes large-caliber mortars, anti-tank missiles, tanks and other heavy weaponry.
The New Syrian Army, commanded by one Mekhenda Talla, reportedly has a strained relationship with the other formations, who cooperate with his forces only on a for cash basis.
“In general, the relationship between the militants from the individual groups is quite tense, as civilian testimony makes clear,” Patrashevich and Martynovich wrote. “One local, a man named Amjad Sahim, who managed to escape the US-controlled territory to neighboring Damascus Governate, told us that he and his brothers witnessed clashes between the NSA forces moving toward the border and former Daesh fighters attempting to leave the area into Jordanian territory. As a result of the clashes, the small group of Daesh terrorists was completely wiped out.”
Furthermore, the journalists’ Syrian Army source said that other members of the US-led coalition were also deployed in the area, with about 400 mercenaries, intelligence operatives and members of the special forces of the UK, France, Jordan, and possibly other countries, operating in the region. These forces’ arsenal includes HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems, as well as anti-aircraft artillery, tasked with defending the US base.
‘Passive Reserve’ of 5,000 More Jihadists
Local freelance journalists told Patrashevich and Martynovich that in addition to the so-called ‘active reserve’ of militants, the US and its allies also has a passive one.
“While the main jihadists are based at the US Armed Forces base and receive a monthly allowance, another 5,000 Islamists reside at the Rukban refugee camp, some still armed and in contact with their field commanders. Last November, militants began voicing their dissatisfaction with the noticeable decline in US funding. As a result, the al-Tanf base’s command, fearing military insurrection, decided to pay out a severance payment of several thousand dollars to each fighter, and gave them the right to remain inside the enclave in the tent camp zone.”
As for the New Syrian Army, their job, according to a Syrian Army serviceman stationed near the front line, includes guard duty at checkpoints along the makeshift border, and defense of the perimeter of the al-Tanf base and the Rukban camp. Talla’s troops maintain discipline over the other units via payments for the performance of various duties.
Life in Region a Living Hell for Civilians
Speaking to locals, Patrashevich and Martynovich were told that the jihadists’ presence in the region has had a severe impact on civilian life. In the town of Al-Qaryatayn, the correspondents met with Farah Alhamsih, a young woman who had lived outside al-Tanf before managing to escape the area once it fell under US and jihadist control.
According to Alhamsih, while some militants engaged in “building homes or carried out shooting practice, most of them, left almost without a livelihood, robbed local houses, or trucks passing along the Damascus-Baghdad highway.” According to the eyewitness, while US forces first tried to exert pressure on the radicals or even evict them from the Rukban camp, they eventually gave up, closing their eyes to their criminal activities.
Last fall, a group of some 300 Daesh militants carried out an offensive toward Al-Qaryatayn, successfully avoiding the Syrian Army’s hidden outposts using coordinates Moscow and Damascus later alleged were obtained through aerial reconnaissance provided by the US. Although the offensive was stopped, the Syrian military has concerns that new attacks may be in the offing. Furthermore, US and jihadi occupation of the area put important roads, including the Homs-Deir ez-Zor and Damascus-Palmyra highways, as well as strategically important oil and gas fields, under threat.
Russian officials have also voiced concerns about the state of the Rukban refugee camp, the Russian Center for Reconciliation describing the situation there as being close to ‘catastrophic,’ and the US military closing access to the camp to the UN and other humanitarian organizations. Thus far, Patrashevich and Martynovich recalled, “any attempts by Syrian government convoys or pro-Russian forces to come close to the enclave have been met with airstrikes by the US coalition.” This includes incidents in May and June 2017.
Sahim, the local man now living in Damascus Governate, confirmed to the journalists that the humanitarian situation in the US-occupied territory is approaching desperate, with basic foodstuffs and other necessities unavailable, while militants have seized local wells, selling water to locals at marked up prices.
“When I was very thirsty, I had to spend a fortune. A bottle of water which could earlier be bought for 50 lira is sold by the terrorists for 500. And people buy it. What else could they do? Many parents tried to save their children. I know several local families who gave away their girls for marriage just to get them out of the area,” Sahim recalled.
The eyewitness added that when locals tried to organize to get the attention of US military command about arranging the supply of necessities, their requests fell on deaf ears. This, combined with the lack of any effort to rein in the militants, has given rise to anti-American sentiments, as well as hopes for cooperation with the Syrian government or even representatives of the Russian military.
The Russian Center for Reconciliation has offered to assist refugees from the Rukban camp. Despite the absence of any security guarantees from the US side, and the presence of roaming jihadist militants in the region, last month, Center representatives assisted in the evacuation of a small group of refugees from the camp. The reporters captured the evacuation on video.
For now, Patrashevich and Martynovich noted, the fate of the occupied Syrian enclave is in American hands. So long as the illegal US occupation of the border area continues, Damascus will not be able to rest easy with regard to the security of its southern territories.
The Syrian Arab Republic strongly condemned the US announcement of forming an armed militia in the north-eastern Syria as a blatant breach of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and a flagrant violation of the International law, an official source at the Foreign Ministry said Monday.
The source added that the US step came within the framework of its destructive policies which aim at fragmenting the region, fueling tensions and conflicts and hindering solutions to its crises as it clearly shows its hostility towards the Arab Nation in order to implement the US-Zionist scheme.
It said that the Syrian Arab Republic urges the international community to denounce this American step and take action to put an end to the domination mentality and arrogance which govern the US Administration’s policies, warning of its negative consequences on international peace and security.
The Ministry considered any Syrian citizen who takes part in the US-backed militia as a traitor to the Syrian state and people and will be treated as one, adding that these militias will hinder reaching to a political solution to the situation in Syria.
The source concluded by renewing the Syrian people and army’s steadfastness and determination to thwart this conspiracy, end the presence of the US, its agents and tools in Syria, establish full control over the entire Syrian territory and preserve the country’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and the unity of its people.
A US attack helicopter made an emergency landing near a hotel in Japan’s Okinawa on Monday. The incident came as a disabled rotorcraft was removed from a beach, where it had landed on Saturday.
The AH-1 helicopter landed on the premises of a hotel in the village of Yomitan after a warning light had come on, the Japanese broadcaster NHK reported. No injuries or damage were reported in the incident.
Also on Monday, a US heavy-lift transport evacuated a disabled US Marine Corps UH-1 helicopter, which had landed on a beach on the eastern coast of Ikeijima Island, near Okinawa, on Saturday afternoon.
No injuries or damage were reported in that incident either but the landing, just 100 meters from a residential area, fueled concerns of local residents over the US presence on the Japanese island.
Just before the New Year, Okinawans held a protest against the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, triggered by two incidents, in which helicopters flying from the base had dropped items on residential areas. Both endangered children on the ground, the protesters said.
Okinawa hosts roughly three fourths of the US troops deployed in Japan, with 30,000 service personnel living and working in bases that occupy about 20 percent of the island’s area. Local residents have long been protesting the bases, which they see as sources of pollution and crime.
One of the most memorable incidents involving a US Marine Corps UH-1 helicopter happened in 2004, when one crashed into a building at Okinawa International University. Fortunately, the school was largely vacant for summer break at the time.
“If opposing Israel is anti-semitism then what do you call supporting a state that has been engaged in brutal ethnic cleansing for seven decades. What does that make you?” It’s a question posed by Miko Peled, an Israeli Jew and son of an Israeli general, former Israeli soldier and now a leading voice in the struggle for Palestinian freedom. You couldn’t find a more authentic insider.
What else has Peled been saying about Israel?
“The name of the game: erasing Palestine, getting rid of the people and de-Arabizing the country…”
As for talk about Israel giving up the West Bank for a Palestinian state: “If it wasn’t so sad it would be funny. It shows a complete misunderstanding of the objective of Zionism and the Zionist state…. By 1993 the Israelis had achieved their mission to make the conquest of the West Bank irreversible.”
Peled also describes the Israeli army, in which he served, as “one of the best trained and best equipped and best fed terrorist organisations in the world.”
So let’s repeat Peled’s question. What does supporting Israel make you when Israel has been busy ethnically cleansing the native Palestinians for seven decades? What should we call people who defend the indefensible?… who admire the despicable?… who applaud the expulsion at gunpoint of peaceable civilians and the confiscation of their homes and land?
Give them a name, one that will stick.
The claim by Conservative Friends of Israel that 80 percent of the party’s MPs and MEPs are members is alarming and reveals how lacking in integrity we are at the heart of government. It puts us almost on a par with US Congress which is almost totally controlled by the Israel lobby through AIPAC.
Being a Friend of Israel, of course, means embracing the whole rotten kit and caboodle, including the terror and racism on which the state of Israel was built. It means embracing the dispossession and oppression of innocent Palestinians. It means embracing the discriminatory laws against those who remain n their homeland. It means embracing the jackboot thuggery that abducts civilians — including children — and imprisons and tortures them without trial. It means embracing the theft and annexation of Palestinian land and water resources, the imposition of hundreds of military checkpoints, severe restrictions on the movement of people and goods, and maximum interference with Palestinian life at every level.
It means approving the bloodbaths inflicted by Israel on Gaza and feeling comfortable with blowing hundreds of children to smithereens, maiming thousands more, trashing vital infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, power plants and clean water supplies, and causing $6bn of devastation that will take 20 years to rebuild. And, by the way, where is the money coming from?
It means embracing the strangulation of the West Bank’s economy and the vicious ten-year blockade on Gaza. It means embracing the denial of Palestinians’ right to self-determination and return to their homes. It means embracing the religious war that humiliates Muslims and Christians and prevents them from visiting their holy places. It means endorsing a situation in which hard-pressed American and British taxpayers are having to subsidise Israel’s illegal occupation of the Holy Land.
And if, after all that, you are still Israel’s special friend, where is your self-respect?
It is ludicrous that a foreign military power which has no regard for international law and rejects weapons conventions and safeguards can exert such influence on foreign policy in the US and UK. Pandering to Israel has been immensely costly in blood and treasure and stupidly damaging to our reputation.
Everyone outside the Westminster/Washington bubble knows perfectly well that there can be no peace in the Holy Land without justice. In other words no peace until the occupation ends. Everyone knows that international law and countless UN resolutions still wait to be enforced. Everyone knows that Israel won’t comply unless sanctions are imposed. Everyone knows that the siege on Gaza won’t be lifted until warships are sent.
What’s more, everyone now knows that the US is not an honest broker, Israel wants to keep the pot boiling and justice won’t come from more sham ‘negotiations’. Nor will peace. Everyone knows who is the real cause of turmoil in the Middle East. And everyone knows that Her Majesty’s Government’s hand-wringing and empty words serve no purpose except to prolong the daily misery for Palestinians and buy time for Israel to complete its criminal scheme to make the occupation permanent.
Churchgoing British prime minister Theresa May praises Israel for being “a thriving democracy, a beacon of tolerance” when it is obviously neither. It’s an obnoxious ethnocracy. She says our two countries share “common values” when we obviously don’t — although her rotten party probably does.
Given the Israeli regime’s endless crimes against humanity and cruelty to the rightful inhabitants of the Holy Land her remarks are insulting to anyone who lives by Christian values. She even claims that Israel is a country where people of all religions “are free and equal in the eyes of the law” and “Israel guarantees the rights of people of all religions, races and sexualities, and it wants to enable everyone to flourish”. Her ignorance in these matters rivals Trump’s.
And May would do well to call off her efforts to ciminalise the successful BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaign, which is a grass-roots civil society based resistance movement. She warns that her government will “have no truck with those who subscribe to it”. But Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights bestows on everyone “the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”. So she boobs even on that.
In an interview with Jonas Alexis, Miko Peled sounds upbeat about BDS. As long as Israel has a blank check [cheque] from the US and the UK and is undefeatable militarily and diplomatically, BDS “is possibly the only positive change one can point to at this time.”
Many of us have urged beefing up BDS, extending its reach and orchestrating its efforts globally. There seems no other way to force the spineless international community to finally impose the sanctions they should have slapped on Israel decades ago.
It has got to the point where I wouldn’t mind seeing individuals among the political élites targeted by BDS if they deserve it. And many of them surely do.
It just might be that the two Koreas are figuring out a way to avoid war, much to the anger and chagrin of President Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment, who are obviously increasingly viewing war as inevitable and even in the best interests of the United States.
Why, even the U.S. mainstream press, which oftentimes seems to operate as an ex officio spokesman for the U.S. government, appears irritated over North Korea’s initiation of talks with South Korea. The press describes North Korea’s overtures not as an attempt to avoid war but instead as a cynical attempt to “drive a wedge” between the United States and South Korea.
Actually, it’s President Trump, who is obviously upset that the Koreas are marginalizing him, that is using his ridiculous and dangerous tweeting abilities to further provoke North Korea, with the obvious intent of “driving a wedge” between North Korea and South Korea, a wedge that could conceivably sabotage talks between them.
Let’s first get to the root of the problem in Korea. That root is the U.S. government, specifically the U.S. national-security branch of the government, i.e., the Pentagon and the CIA. That’s the reason there is a crisis in Korea. That’s the reason why war could suddenly break out, killing hundreds of thousands of people and more if it the war turns nuclear.
The U.S. government and its acolytes in the mainstream press say that the problem is with North Korea’s nuclear development program.
Balderdash! The problem is with the Pentagon’s and CIA’s decades-old aim to effect regime change in North Korea, a Cold War aim that they have never been able to let go of. That’s why the Pentagon has some 35,000 troops stationed in South Korea. That’s why they have regular military exercises over there. That’s why they have those bomber fly-overs. They want regime change, bad, just like they still do in Cuba and Iran, and just like they wanted (and got) in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and so many other countries.
That’s why North Korea wants nuclear bombs — to protect its communist regime by deterring the United States from attacking and fulfilling its decades-old aim of regime change. North Korea knows that a nuclear deterrent is the only thing that might deter the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking.
The nuclear deterrent strategy certainly worked for Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Once the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, that stopped the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking and invading the island again and even caused President Kennedy to vow that the Pentagon and the CIA would not again invade the island.
North Korea also has seen what happens to impoverished Third World regimes that don’t have nuclear weapons, like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. They go down quickly to defeat and regime change at the hands of an all-powerful First World country.
Here’s the big point: Korea is none of the U.S. government’s business. Never has been and never will be. The Korean conflict was always nothing more than a civil war. A civil war in an Asian country is none of the U.S. government’s business. It wasn’t in the 1950s when the war broke out. It still isn’t. Korea is the business of the Korean people.
Keep in mind also that U.S. interventionism into the Korean War was always illegal under our form of constitutional government. The Constitution, which the president, the Pentagon, and the CIA, swear to uphold, requires a congressional declaration of war. There was never a congressional declaration of war against North Korea. That means that U.S. troops and CIA agents had no legal right to kill anyone in Korea, not with rifles, artillery, carpet bombing, or with the use of germ warfare against the North Korean people.
The Pentagon and the CIA claimed that it was necessary to illegally intervene in Korea because the communists were coming to get us. It was a lie, just as the entire Cold War was a lie. It was all just one great big fear-mongering racket to solidify the power and control of the military and intelligence services over the American people.
Those 35,000 U.S. troops in Korea today have no business being there, not only because the communists are still not coming to get us but also because they are simply the outgrowth of the original illegal intervention in the 1950s. The Pentagon has those troops there for one reason and only one reason: No, not to defend and protect the South Korean people, who are of minor importance to U.S. officials compared to the United States, but rather to serve as “tripwire” to guarantee U.S. involvement should war once again break out between the two Koreas.
In other words, no congressional deliberation on a declaration of war on whether to get involved should war break out. No national debate. Once tens of thousands of troops are automatically killed, the United States is, as a practical matter, stuck, trapped, committed. That’s why the Pentagon and the CIA have those troops there — to box in the American people — to deprive them of a choice on whether to get involved in another land war in Asia or not.
That makes U.S. soldiers in Korea nothing more than little pawns. Their assigned role is to die in order to ensure that Congress has no say on whether the U.S. gets involved in another land war in Asia. The Pentagon and the CIA, not Congress, remain in charge.
Why hasn’t the U.S. already attacked North Korea? One big reason: China. It says that if the United States starts the war, it’s coming in on the side of North Korea. China has lots of troops that could easily be sent into Korea to fight against U.S. forces. It also has a nuclear capability that can easily hit the United States.
So, that leaves Trump and his national security establishment doing their best to provoke North Korea into “firing the first shot,” or at least making it look like they have fired the first shot, like what happened at the Gulf of Tonkin or what the Pentagon hoped to accomplish with Operation Northwoods and a concocted war against Cuba.
If Trump can successfully taunt, tease, antagonize, and provoke North Korea into attacking first, then he and his national-security establishment can exclaim, “We’ve been attacked by the communists! We’re shocked! We’re innocent! We have no choice but to protect America by carpet-bombing North Korea again, this time with nuclear bombs.”
And as long as it’s not the United States that suffers the death and destruction, it will all be considered acceptable. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops will be dead. Hundreds of thousands of Koreans will also be dead. Both countries will be devastated. But the United States will remain intact and, equally important, will no longer be threatened by North Korea’s growing nuclear capability. It will all be considered a victory as far as the United States is concerned.
That’s why the South Koreans are smart in agreeing to talk to North Korea. If they were really smart, they would give Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA the boot. The best thing South Korea could ever do is immediately kick out every U.S. soldier and every CIA agent out of their country. Send them packing back to the United States.
Sure, Trump would be hopping bad, just as the Pentagon and the CIA would be. So what? It would be the best thing that could ever happen to Korea, the United States, and the world.
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas should be aware by now that he can no longer be taken seriously. As evidence of a shrinking Palestine continues to accumulate, Israel and the international community are well aware of this and are applying two complementary strategies. While Israel passes legislation to annex areas of the occupied West Bank colonised by illegal, Jewish settlers, the international community has quietly departed from the scene of its recent condemnations over the US-approved Israeli appropriation of Jerusalem.
The legislation was described by Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan as a “moral right and obligation towards our settler brothers,” indicating the dependency of the colonial entity upon the expansion of its settler-colonies for its own survival. This prompted Abbas to make one of his weakest statements ever: “We shall make important decisions during 2018, including regarding legal avenues, in order to hold Israel accountable for its grave and systematic violations of international law, and to revisit agreements signed with Israel.”
A leader with decolonisation in mind would not stoop so low. Decades have proven that Israel cannot be held accountable and the international community is adamant that it will not try to reverse this impunity. Indeed, UN votes to one side (they mean little), the world is equally assertive that Palestinians should remain tethered to Israeli hegemony until there is no further need to sustain that narrative and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is complete.
Nothing that Abbas says or does in 2018 can be deemed to be an “important decision”. Giving a hint of what he has in mind, the PA leader called upon the international community “to look at the Israeli incitement against Palestinian rights that is particularly recurrent among members of the government coalition.”
There are many weaknesses in Abbas’s statement. First of all, the international community does not need reminders; it is, quite simply and willfully, ignoring Israel’s violations of international law. To crawl and beg continuously in front of a complicit international community has harmed the people of Palestine in the long run; while Israel is rapidly executing its expansionist plans (and executing Palestinians extrajudicially in the process), Abbas is misinterpreting the whole colonial project as a series of isolated violations which he loosely labels “incitement”.
This begs the question of whether or not it is still correct to speak of Israeli incitement. Given the impunity that Israel enjoys, it is imperative that incitement is analysed critically and specified, rather than used as a convenient term to describe actions taken by Israel which result in the loss of Palestinian rights, land and lives. The prelude to such loss is indeed incitement, but it was initiated decades ago. For Abbas to speak of it as if it were something new is a bonus for Israel. Palestinians are witnessing a denial of the current political violence by the leaders which claim to represent them.
Hence, Abbas would do well to refrain from redundant statements which entrench the politically inferior position imposed upon him by Israel, the PA and the international community. If Israel’s legislation paves the way for the physical end of the two-state compromise, why are Abbas and members of the international community still insisting upon what is clearly an obsolete paradigm as the “only” solution? The answer is clear to anyone with eyes and the will to see: by adhering to the concept, Palestinian leaders and the UN are taking several steps backwards and thus buying time for Israel to complete its obliteration of Palestine unhindered. This tactic has been obvious for decades. As Israel prepares to annex most of the West Bank, Abbas bleats about “incitement”; he really can’t be taken seriously anymore.
The Trump regime proclaimed that the vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations regarding the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was a strategic US decision.
Both President Trump and his bombastic UN Ambassador Nikki Haley threatened that all decisions and agreements regarding alliances, loans, aid and diplomatic relations were at stake.
Moreover, the Trump regime clearly defined the style and substance of US imperial dictates: All UN member nations (large and small) must grovel in the most abject manner to his orders. Ambassador Haley demanded that each nation on earth accept Trump’s and the racist-Zionist Netanyahu’s declaration that the ancient city of Jerusalem is the eternal, undivided and ethnically managed capital of the Jews. Trump’s message was loud and clear – he was the great ‘decider’ and the UN votes would identify America’s true friends and enemies. “We are making a list… and there will be consequences…”
Clearly Trump’s boast of US power and Haley’s assumption that her terrifying threats would ensure that Washington had a majority vote in the ‘gifting’ of Jerusalem to Zio-fascism. They believed that US dominance and global hegemony was absolute and unassailable. The vote proved something else, something very new was happening.
The US suffered an overwhelming and humiliating defeat, one that kept Ambassador Haley’s dexterous fingers busy ‘taking notes’: 128 nations demanded that the Trump regime withdraw its declaration that Jerusalem was Israel’s undivided capital for Jews. Only 9 micro-nations (some mere postage stamps and a few death-squad banana-stans) voted with the Trump-Haley decision, 35 mendicant-states put their heads down and abstained while 21 timorous ambassadors chose to hide their shamelessness in the toilet stalls rather than show up for this important vote.
Political Context
First and foremost it is important to discuss the steps leading up to the US suffering such a crushing debacle. In other words, who was responsible for leading the Trump Administration by the nose down the blind alley of submission to the dictates of Zio-fascism.
The leader and driving force behind the UN disaster was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whose quest to seize Jerusalem and convert it into the ‘eternal’ capital of the Jews was his top priority. For decades the entire world has rejected Israel’s seizure of Jerusalem and its conversion into an ethnically cleansed capital for the ‘Jewish’ state. The UN and international jurists denounced Israel’s colonial conquest and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Netanyahu took charge with the election of Donald Trump as President. Operation Jerusalem was his first order to Puppet Donald. A number of Israel-First multi-billionaires, who financed Trump’s electoral campaign, demanded an immediate pay-off from their puppet: The Administration’s unconditional support for Netanyahu’s agenda. Despite protests from the rest of the world, especially the US closest European allies, Trump plunged the nation right into the Zionist soup: a Jewish Jerusalem; the systematic eviction of all Arabs, Christian, Muslim and secular, and the eventual annexation of all of Palestine; as well as an increasing military confrontation with Iran.
Real estate speculator, Jared Kushner, Trump’s pampered son-in- law, and a complete Netanyahu flunky, became the senior advisor for the Middle East. Kushner pressured Trump’s National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn to intervene with Russia on behalf of Israel’s take-over of Jerusalem. Flynn was subsequently prosecuted for discussing global US Russian relations and the ‘good soldier’ is falling on his sword on behalf of the Zionists. Not surprising, the Congressional Democrats, the FBI and the Special Prosecutor found it easier to prosecute Flynn for his discussion regarding de-escalating the tense US-Russian relations provoked by the Obama administration than his discussions with the Kremlin in support of Israel’s seizure of Jerusalem!
Netanyahu’s operational weapons in manipulating US policy involved Jared Kushner, the billionaire Israel-First donors, the AIPAC and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. Tel Aviv succeeded in securing Trump’s commitment to the Israeli agenda, despite opposition from the entire UN National Security Council and the overwhelming majority of the General Assembly. In the style of a typical authoritarian, US President Trump grovels at the feet of his ‘superior’, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while tearing at the throats of his ‘inferiors’, the 193 member nations of the UN General Assembly.
Netanyahu’s vitriolic bar room threats against the entire membership of the UN prior to the vote ensured the repudiation of all Security Council representatives with the exception of his South Carolina puppet, Ambassador Nikki Haley. Trump and Haley backed the blustering Netanyahu by issuing gangland threats to all UN representatives who dare to oppose Washington’s dictates.
In this way, Prime Minister Netanyahu secured the greatest diplomatic and political success of his career – the total submission of the US to his agenda, at the risk of a major humiliation in the UN. This, in effect, formalized Israeli hegemony over Washington, for the world to see.
In contrast to Netanyahu’s beaming success, the US suffered a historic diplomatic defeat: Fourteen times as many nations voted against the demands of the US President over– Netanyahu’s grab of Jerusalem.
What makes the defeat even more striking is the fact that all major allies and most of the biggest aid recipients openly defied the US threats. Eight of the ten biggest US aid recipients voted against Trump–Netanyahu–Haley. This bizarre troika is now left with an enemy list circling the entire globe, and a few timorous allies in the South Pacific and among the death squads of Guatemala.
Trump’s total and puerile embrace of the raving Netanyahu has exposed and widened fissures in US global hegemony.
Apart from ‘capturing’ Netanyahu’s vote, the other pro Trump nations included a handful of insignificant Pacific islands (Marshall Islands, Palau, Micronesia), Togo, a corrupt African mini-state and two banana-sized ‘death squad democracies’, Honduras and Guatemala. The latter two regimes hold power via stolen elections backed by narco-thugs in the pay (dubbed ‘foreign aid’) of the US.
All of the leading Asian and Western European countries voted against Trump. They openly rejected the crude blackmail of the US-Israel duet. Subservient regimes in Eastern Europe, corrupt regimes in Latin America and some horrifically impoverished nations in Africa and Asia chose to abstain or excuse themselves to the bathrooms of Times Square. Narco-neo-liberal regimes in Mexico, Colombia, Paraguay, Panama and the Dominican Republic abstained. Even rightwing Eastern European regimes, which usually give unquestioned support to all US demands, like Romania, Bosnia, Poland and Latvia defied Nikki Haley’s ‘name taking’ by abstaining. The ‘no-shows’ (hiding in the toilets) included US puppets like Georgia, Samoa, St Kitts and Tonga.
An openly humiliated UN Ambassador Haley was left with the task of thanking the abstainers and ‘no-shows’ for their courage and preparing a few bags of goodies (matzos, Mogan David wine and discounts to the brothels of Tel Aviv) for the torturers of Honduras and half-drowned ‘leaders’ of Palau in gratitude for such loyalty.
Conclusion
Clearly Trump’s championing of a racist, colonialist, ethnic cleansing state like Israel is viewed as a strategic diplomatic disaster. The Manhattan egomaniac has tied the US fortunes to the whims of a pariah state led by a complete lunatic.
Trump’s decision to demonstrate total loyalty to his Zionist billionaire campaign ‘donor-owners’ and his Israel-First son-in-law in his first major foreign policy decision failed to impress any of the influential nations of the world – East or West. Indeed, it showed how fractured and dangerously dysfunctional the US Administration had become.
Most important, Trump’s proclamation of a unipolar world based on his notion of the US’s economic power has collapsed. Israel, despite Haley’s bluster and list-taking, has no legitimacy. It’s continued Mossad assassinations of leading Palestinians and others and the increasing IDF slaughter of the spontaneous Palestinian civilian resistance has failed to improve its international standing – except among Guatemalan torturers.
However, it is not clear that the US has lost its big power influence regarding other regional conflicts. The subsequent UN Security Council vote in favor of Washington’s demands for added sanctions against North Korea demonstrated Trump’s power to intimidate the oligarchs and leaders of China and Russia.
In other words, limits on US power still depend on the issues, the allies, the diplomatic appeals, the adversaries and the distribution of benefits and costs.
In the case of Jerusalem, Real Estate Mogul Trump’s bizarre decision to hand an entire city over to the Zionists alienated all Muslims and Christians the world over, as well as the secular Western liberal nations and emerging powers, like Russia and China. The US tied its prestige to the whims of a paranoid nation arrogantly flaunting its racist superiority complex, backed by groups of immensely wealthy overseas dual citizens.
Diplomatically, Israel’s vituperative responses to any legal criticism from world bodies undermines its chances of coalition building.
Finally, Washington’s support for Israel’s perpetual and overt violation of international law and its bombing of humanitarian missions makes Israel a very costly ally.
A planned visit to Israel by US Vice President Mike Pence has been indefinitely postponed, according to Israeli officials.
The trip which had been expected to take place in mid January is not on the Israeli foreign ministry’s schedule, according to The Times of Israel.
“The visit is not included in our provision of scheduled visits of high-level dignitaries in January,” ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said.
No new date has yet been set for the vice president’s visit.
Pence originally postponed a planned mid-December trip to Israel so he could preside over the Senate vote on the Republican tax plan.
But the delay also followed region-wide protests over President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as the “capital” of Israel.
At the time, Palestinian authorities canceled a planned meeting with the US vice president to protest Trump’s declaration.
A White House official said back then that Pence would visit the occupied territories in mid-January instead.
The entire Jerusalem al-Quds is currently under Israel’s control, while the regime also claims the city’s eastern part, which hosts the third holiest Muslim site.
The city has been designated as “occupied” under international law since the 1967 Arab War. It remains at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinians hoping that the eastern part of the city would eventually serve as the capital of their future state.
Palestinians have repeatedly warned Trump against recognizing al-Quds as Israel’s capital, saying it would deliver a death blow to any prospects of the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and fuel extremism in the region.
Pence’s original schedule also included a stop in Egypt. The head of Egypt’s Coptic Church, Pope Tawadros II, also called off a planned meeting with Pence.
A backlash against New Zealand singer Lorde continues in the wake of her decision to call off her concert in Israel amid pressure from her fans following Trump’s Jerusalem move.
A full-page advertisement calling Lorde a bigot and accusing New Zealand of harboring a bias against Israel appeared on the fifth page of the Washington Post’s December 31 edition.
The ad features Lorde’s photo over the picture of men running through ruins with babies and Israeli flags streaming in the wind. The headline says “Lorde and New Zealand ignore Syria to attack Israel.”
It slams the 21-year-old singer’s decision to cancel a concert in Tel Aviv following a wellspring of Muslim fans urging her not to go there, noting that she had joined the global boycott of Israel but “will perform in Russia, despite Putin’s support for Assad’s genocide in Syria.”
The advertisement adds that Lorde’s move shows how a “growing prejudice against the Jewish State” in New Zealand is “trickling down to its youth.”
As for New Zealand, the ad points out the country’s support for the UN resolution urging the US to revoke its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, while citing New Zealand’s co-sponsorship of a UN resolution condemning illegally-built Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories. The resolution, which was approved by every member of the UN Security Council except the US (which abstained), was endorsed by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
“Let’s boycott the boycotters and tell Lorde and her fellow bigots that Jew-hatred has no place in the twenty-first century,” the ad reads.
Commenting on the advertisement in the Post, the New Zealand Jewish Council said that the council is “committed to dialogue and tolerance and distances itself from the inflammatory and aggressive material that stoops to the level of BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement] rather than rising above it.”
“We are disappointed with Lorde’s decision to cancel her show after pressure from the discriminatory BDS movement and invite Lorde to continue learning about the region,” the council’s statement reads.
Lorde called off her June concert in Tel Aviv, giving in to the mounting pressure from activists of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS), which aims “to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law,” according to its official website.
She was also influenced by an open letter written by her fans from New Zealand, which stated that the show in Tel Aviv would demonstrate support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
“I’ve received an overwhelming number of messages & letters and have had a lot of discussions with people holding many views, and I think the right decision at this time is to cancel the show,” Lorde said, as quoted by Naranjah, the Israeli promoters of her show.
The decision was made after what the New Zealand pop star deemed as her “learning all the time” and “considering all options” available to her.
Israel’s government has approved an agreement with the EU that includes a provision excluding funding for settlements, seemingly consenting to the EU’s boycott of settlements.
The agreement centers on Israel’s part in the EU’s ENI Cross-Border Cooperation in the Mediterranean (CBC Med) program, which provides funds for projects for non-EU countries in the Mediterranean area, such as Israel, Egypt and Jordan, Haaretzreports. The projects are largely focused on promoting development, education, technology and environmental sustainability.
As per EU policy, the ENI CBC Med agreement contains a provision which excludes areas outside Israel’s 1967 borders from receiving grants. This means Israeli settlements inside the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights (which were occupied by Israel in the conflict) cannot receive funding under the program.
Israeli settlements inside Palestinian territories are considered both an impediment to the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, and to be in violation of a number of UN resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Israel’s Culture and Sport Minister, Miri Regev, voiced her objections to the agreement to the cabinet secretary earlier in the month. She fought against the deal at the cabinet meeting, the Jewish Pressreports, but no other minister agreed to second her motion to delay the vote pending further debate.
The deal was given final approval by the government Sunday, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on the measure last week. It’s also been approved by the Justice Ministry and Foreign Ministry, Haaretz reports. The foreign ministry is said to have led the charge for Israel to be part of the program.
The agreement is at odds with the Israeli government’s stance on settlements, which it continues to develop within the occupied territories in disregard of the EU and others’ condemnation. Netanyahu is also a fierce opponent to the international Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which calls for boycotts and sanctions against Israel.
“My fundamental position is that the Israeli government should reject agreements from the outset that require us on a de facto basis to boycott portions of the homeland or populations living in the Golan Heights, Jerusalem or Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] other than with very limited exceptions,” Regev wrote in her letter.
“I do not see the justification to compromise and with one hand sign the agreement while with our other demanding that the world give de facto recognition to our right to a united Jerusalem and even to move embassies to Israel’s capital,” she added.
Aside from the settlement matter, Regev’s letter to Cabinet Secretary Tzachi Braverman also took issue with the text of the agreement referring to the Palestinian Authority “as if it were a neighboring country.”
It is “not acceptable to me,” she said.
The far-right Regev managed to halt a similar agreement with the EU last year. A Creative Europe culture and media program contained a similar provision excluding settlements, and, although Netanyahu had given consent, Regev stopped it from going ahead. Earlier this month, Regev succeeded in forcing the NBA remove a reference to Palestine as being “occupied territory.”
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.” … continue
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