I find the said text to be a sad illustration of the ongoing weakness of such among “human rights activists, social organizations in Israel, Jewish and other allies in the United States and around the world” as failing to position at the center of their political programme and grass-root practice the demand for the implementation of the right of all 1948 Palestine refugees and their families to return and to the repossession of the titles to their properties inside Israel. Furthermore, the said text fails to recognize the extent of the JNF’s complicity in the racist and apartheid policies of the State of Israel since its founding in 1948.
Allow me point out at the outset that the term “apartheid” is not synonymous with the terms “racism” and “xenophobia”. The terms “racism” and “xenophobia” are not synonymous with the term “apartheid”.
Racism is defined by the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1965 as “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life”. (Article 1) There is a certain degree of accuracy in the argument put forth by the Israeli Foreign Ministry (which is located in Jerusalem on land belonging to Palestinian refugees who were expelled from the city in the widespread ethnic cleansing perpetrated in Palestine in course of and in the wake of the 1948 war), and other representatives of the State of Israel around the world, that Israel should not be singled out from among other member states of the United Nations as a state uniquely afflicted by racism – not because Israel is not afflicted by racism, but because it is not greatly different from other member states of the UN, such as Indonesia and Canada, to name but two.
However, the State of Israel is not merely afflicted by racism. The core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hinges upon access to land and to subsoil (minerals and, above all, water), and in respect of this core the State of Israel is anchored in a regime of apartheid. Apartheid is a political regime that imposes upon the population which is under its control racist preferences and choices by power of Acts of Parliament, and enforces the said racist preferences and choices upon the population which is under its control by means of the law enforcement instruments of the state, such as the judicial system, the security forces (police, army, secret services), the planning authorities, the municipal authorities, etc.
Whereas racism in the modern sense of the term is a rampant social affliction at one level or another in all of the member states of the UN (some more and some less), a regime of apartheid as defined above is less common and, to the best of my knowledge, with the dismantling of the apartheid regime in South Africa – a process that began with the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990 and was completed with his election as President of the Republic in 1994 in the first democratic elections ever to be held in the history of South Africa – the State of Israel remains the only member state of the UN that is an apartheid state.
It is possible that my knowledge is insufficient; there may be additional member states of the UN which are apartheid states as defined above, but in any event they would be few and far between. An apartheid regime constitutes a blatant violation of the UN’s founding charter, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and of the standards of international law. Therefore, it is the duty of the international community to single out apartheid states, separately and collectively, including the State of Israel, for the same specific attention that was paid to the apartheid regime of the Republic of South Africa, i.e., a boycott of industrial and other products, academic, cultural and sport institutions (including research grants and international conferences), and international sanctions enforced by the UN. This is our duty, not because Israel claims to be “the Jewish state” (or any other name, for that matter), but in order to assist such states, in the same way as the international community assisted South Africa, to replace the apartheid regime with a democratic constitution.
In this regard it is important to note that, in the first democratic elections in the Republic of South Africa in 1994, Nelson Mandela was elected as President of the Republic by majorities of votes, not only among the “non-White” tribes and ethnic groups that comprise the social mosaic of the territory that comes under the authority of the Republic, but also among the “White” tribes and ethnic groups. This was after decades of political imprisonment and extensive and coordinated efforts on the part of the apartheid regime to remove him from sight and to defame him as a “terrorist”.
93% of the entire territory of the State of Israel within the borders of 4 June 1967 are defined as “national lands” and are legally designated for “Jews only”, more specifically, for those persons who are defined under the laws of the State of Israel as “Jews”. Only some 7% or less of the entire territory of the State of Israel within the borders of 4 June 1967 are privately owned, approximately half of which are estimated to be privately owned by Arabs and half by Jews. The legal system of apartheid by which this blatant discrimination is maintained in the territories under Israeli sovereignty has resulted in a land tenure system worse than that of the Republic of South Africa at the height of the apartheid regime, where 87% of the territory of the Republic was legally designated in law for the use of “Whites only”.
The strategic settler colonial apartheid legislation in the State of Israel is anchored, inter alia, on the following series of laws:
Absentees’ Property Law; Law of Return; Development Authority Law all of 1950
World Zionist Organization [WZO]-Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel [JA] (Status) Law, 1952
Jewish National Fund [JNF] Law; Lands Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law both of 1953
Covenant between the Government of Israel and the Zionist Executive, also known as the Executive of the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel, 1954
Perscription Law, 1958
Basic Law: Israel Lands; Israel Lands Law; Israel Lands Administration Law all of 1960
The Covenant between the Government of Israel and the JNF, 1961
Agricultural Settlement (Restriction on Use of Agricultural Land and Water) Law, 1967
It is beyond the limits of this contribution to elaborate further upon the apartheid laws that operate in the State of Israel. In order to properly appreciate the case, one must begin by examining the cornerstones of the aforementioned legislation, and first and foremost understand how the Israel Lands Administration operates; what is the status in Israel of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund; and the modalities and the links that obtain among them.
Given the above, aren’t the signatories to the above “Open Letter” aware of the articles of incorporation of the JNF company as registered in Israel such as were approved and signed in 1954 by the Justice Minister at the time, Pinhas Rosen? They read inter alia as follows:
To purchase, acquire on lease or in exchange, etc., … in the prescribed region (which expression shall in this Memorandum mean the State of Israel in any area within the jurisdiction of the Government of Israel) or any part thereof, for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands and properties (Article 3a, Jewish National Fund, Association Limited in Liability and Without Capital Distributed to Shareholders, Memorandum of Association, Government Gazette No. 354, 10.6.1954).
Aren’t the signatories to the said “Open Letter” aware of the JNF’s complicity with the crime against humanity of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine under the cover of the 1948-49 war and their critical role in “greenwashing” the said crime by planting its forests, cultivating its parks and developing its recreational facilities over the ruins of many of the 500 odd ethnically cleansed Palestinian Arab villages inside pre-1967 Israel and over their lands?
How can the said 27 NGOs, human rights organizations and social movements from the Negev and Israel and 7 American Jewish organizations suggest that “If you, the leaders of the JNF, fail to heed this call, you will bear responsibility for the betrayal of Israel’s commitment to the values of equality and justice enshrined in its Declaration of Independence”? It is the “greenwashing” by the JNF of the crime against humanity of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that has significantly made possible for the apartheid State of Israel to conceal these crimes for several decades and project itself as the “only democracy in the Middle East”.
How can the said 27 NGOs, human rights organizations and social movements from the Negev and Israel and 7 American Jewish organizations call upon the leadership of the JNF “to end your complicity in the destruction of Bedouin villages in the Negev and in the dispossession of Israel’s Bedouin community”, rather than call upon governments world-wide and western governments in particular to direct their Commissioners of Charities to strike the JNF off the list of charitable societies the charitable registration of the JNF, to nullify the JNF tax privileges in their respective states (as well as demand that the JNF reimburse their respective treasuries with all the monies fraudulently gained as tax-exemptions), and to declare the JNF an illegal organization under their respective liberal democratic constitutions.
Political Zionism is a form of apartheid and the appropriate penalties prescribed by the International Covenant on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid of 1973 should be applied to its institutions, notably the WZO, the JA and the JNF, and to the State of Israel, which has granted those institutions statutory status by power of parliamentary legislation.
It is the duty of civil society, including professional associations, trade unions, and religious organizations, as well as the responsibility of every concerned individual of conscience (notably, the 27 NGOs human rights organizations and social movements from the Negev and Israel and the 7 American Jewish organizations) to single out the State of Israel for the same specific attention that was paid to the apartheid regime of the Republic of South Africa, inter alia in the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid of 1973, not because racism in Israel as defined in international law is that different from racism in the UK or North America, but because apartheid in Israel (the regulation of racism through Acts of Parliament) is akin to apartheid in the former (pre-1994) South Africa.
It is the duty of civil society, including professional associations, trade unions, and religious organizations, as well as the responsibility of every concerned individual of conscience (notably, the 27 NGOs human rights organizations and social movements from the Negev and Israel and the 7 American Jewish organizations) to mobilize for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and act to:
NULLIFY ISRAELI JNF LAW!
REVOKE THE CHARITABLE REGISTRATION OF THE JNF AND CANCEL ITS TAX EXEMPT STATUS IN THE UK AND BEYOND!
ANNUL THE NGO OBSERVER STANDING OF THE JNF IN THE UNITED NATIONS AND DECLARE THE JNF AN ILLEGAL ORGANIZATION UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW!
Professor Dr Uri Davis is a Palestinian Hebrew, citizen of the alleged constitutional monarchy of the U.K. and of the apartheid State of Israel, born in Jerusalem in 1943. He has been at the forefront of the defence of human rights in Israel, notably Palestinian rights, since 1965 and has pioneered critical research on Zionism and the State of Israel since the mid-1970. He has published extensively in these fields, including Israel: An Apartheid State (Zed Books, London 1987 & 1990; abridged edition, MRN, Laudium, 2001); (associate author with Walter Lehn, author), The Jewish National Fund. Kegan Paul International, London and New York, 1988; Citizenship and the State: Comparative Study of Citizenship Legislation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon (Ithaca Press, Reading, 1997); Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications (co-ed) (Syracuse University Press, 2000) and most recently Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (Zed Books, London, 2003); A Secular Anti-Zionist COMPANION of an Abridged Passover Haggadah (with Ricky Romain, forthcoming).
Dr Davis is Associate Professor at AL-QUDS University, Institute of Regional Studies, Israel Studies Programme, Jerusalem/Abu Dis; member of the Middle East Regional Committee of the international Journal Citizenship Studies; Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies (IAIS), University of Exeter and Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies (IMEIS), University of Durham; Chairperson of AL-BEIT: Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Israel; member of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (FATH) Revolutionary Council; and Observer-Member of the Palestine National Council (PNC).
AL-BEIT: Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Israel was founded in March 1995 by a group of Arab and Hebrew veteran human rights activists as a not-for-profit organization with the view to address a largely neglected area of human rights abuse in Israel, namely, the violation of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR):
(i) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state;
(ii) (ii) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
The organization has been a small and innovative voluntary association aiming to contribute to the process expanding the choice of residence in the State of Israel for all citizens (UDHR Article (i), above); advance the implementation of the right of return for all 1948 Palestine refugee families (UDHR Article (ii), above); and promote the idea of open localities and mixed cooperative and other communities, Jewish-Arab/Arab-Jewish communities in the first instance on an equal footing. AL-BEIT is a signatory to the Call for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (Published by PACBI: Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel http://www.PACBI.org). All members of the AL-BEIT Management Committee volunteer their time and their skills.
The sky over Gaza City, 21 January 2011. (Yasmeen El Khoudary)
People keep talking of a new war. They tell you about their neighbors — they’re probably too shy to admit that its their family, not their neighbors — who already started stocking up on food items and candles in preparation for the upcoming war. “People are really scared,” they tell you, using “people” instead of “we.” Everyone — groundless news reports and loud rumors — is saying that they can hear the war drums, can’t you?!
Well, to me war has already started, and Israel is already chanting victory, given the very conversation the two of us are having. About two weeks ago I saw what looked to me like a confused Israeli pilot flying around in his F-16 jet, drawing circles in the sky. People immediately took it as a sign, a threat and a signal that war was coming. They even made up memories from back in 2008, and were convinced that on 27 December 2008, an Israeli jet, possibly even the same one, drew the same circles in the sky, and that was when war started.
Well, congratulations Israel for winning the psychological war on Gaza. No, you don’t find it enough that you are honored to be the only power on the planet that finds purpose in physically besieging a whole population, but you also want to drive them mad. Only when people started to heave a sigh of relief and take baby steps towards recovering from the 2008-09 war do you start disseminating rumors about a new war. What a fool you are, even if you think you’re winning!
Sure, some people actually believe your rumors and have already started buying supplies in preparation for the “eventual” war and shortage in all kinds of supplies, from baby formula to medicine. But have you heard of a single family that prepared itself for leaving Gaza? That question sounds absurd to you, doesn’t it? How can anyone question the possibility of running away in times of fear? In your traditions, you build and hide in safe shelters, prepare mass evacuation plans for your citizens and buy tons of gas masks as soon as you anticipate the launching of even the smallest rocket. In our traditions, people only buy candles to light their homes and flour to bake bread while you flatten their cities to the ground with your merciless army. They seek no safe havens nor are they provided with any kind of protection against gas, let alone phosphorous bombs. They seek protection from God and in their unity and their love, as they find war a good time for families, or whoever remains amongst them, to gather and share love and warmth.
You know, Israel, you remind me of the scientist and the frog. You — in this case the scientist — order the frog to jump, and it obeys. You cut off its arms, order it to jump, then it struggles to jump. You cut off its legs, order it to jump but it doesn’t jump. You then proudly announce your discovery: when a frog is limbless, it becomes deaf, and so it cannot jump. Yes, deafness caused the frog to lose that physical skill, not the fact that you amputated its four limbs. Is that not what you are trying to do to the Palestinians every single day? You have been slowly cutting off our limbs for the past sixty years, one by one. You have been forcing us into getting used to a life with one missing limb, two missing limbs, three missing limbs, and now four missing limbs slowly as the years go by. You run your experiments on us and show the world that we can still jump. When you cut off that last limb, however, you claim that we were unable to jump because we suddenly turned deaf. In real world terms, that translates into you blaming us for the misery that shapes our every day life, and take your occupation, your wars, your siege and your merciless acts out of the equation.
We might be accustomed to a limbless life, but that doesn’t mean that we lost our ability to jump. We will crawl on the floor and catch our own food. You will always be the oppressor, rather the foolish oppressor with false scientific theories, at least in this case. Living a limbless life means that we will continue to live any kind of life as long as we live it in our country, where we legitimately belong. Israel, when you cut off our limbs, we lose our ability to jump because you cut off our limbs, not because we turned deaf. However, we would indeed turn a deaf ear to your threats and your illogical claims; because frankly, nothing you say or do will succeed in making us even think of leaving this place. Some of us might see the circles in the sky as a sign of war, others might see it as a barbed wire fence stating that even the sky has a limit. To the frog, however, the circles in the sky are reason to keep its head high towards the sun, regardless of the missing limbs.
Yasmeen El Khoudary is a freelance writer and researcher based in Gaza City, Palestine. Her blog is yelkhoudary.blogspot.com.
*Germany and France to control all wages, taxes, pensions and welfare benefits across the Eurozone under new plan unveiled in Brussels.
*Economic coordination will result in a planned economy and inefficiency, economic experts say.
*People of Europe will have no say in the transfer of control over their pensions, wages and taxes to a central authority, national leaders to decide.
A plan by Germany and France to enforce the same labour, welfare, pension and economic policies across the entire Eurozone by decree was unveiled in Brussels on Friday.
Economist Hans-Werner Sinn from Germany’s IFO said that the attempt to introduce new binding agreements on labour costs, taxes and pensions that would apply to every single citizen in every single country in the Eurozone, amounted to introducing a planned economy that will promote inefficiency.
The plans set out by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for the harmonization of the corporate-tax base, the abolition of indexing pay raises to inflation, and also for the linking of pension ages to demographics i.e. the pension age to be raised across the Eurozone.
Merkel and Sarkozy are pushing for an agreement in March.
They claim their push for economic convergence in the euro monetary union without a political union and without any opportunity by the people of Europe to have a say and also without any adequate basis in an EU treaty will allow economies in Europe to overcome the financial crisis and grow faster. But experts say their plan is a way of introducing through the back door the transfer union and Eurobonds benefiting banks at the expense of ordinary people .
The plan also includes a binding indicator for labour productivity and labour unit costs across Europe i.e. the amount of earnings every person working in a specific job sector is to be set centrally across Europe.
In any event labour cost units do not address the problem of enormous and growing unemployment in the Eurozone as a result of the failed policies of Merkel and Sarokzy and EU, especially in countries in the southern European zone where many jobs have been lost because they joined the Eurozone at an exchange rate that was too high and so became uncompetitive.
To regain competitiveness, the countries need to be able to devalue their currency or introduce a regional, parallel currency, experts say. However, there is no mention of devaluation in the Merkel/Sarkozy plan.
Crucial also to a buoyant economy is the demand for products. Germany, for example, was prosperous in the 1980s because people earned enough money to be able to buy German products, creating a virtuous economic circle of demand and production. Today, Germany’s domestic demand is small because real income is barely enough to cover essentials, and the new plan does nothing to change that.
In fact, Germans along with the rest of Europeans are set to have even less money if the new pact is agreed in Brussels in March with wages and pensions set to be slashed in real terms.
Scrapping the link between annual wage increases and inflation will mean that wages will fall in real terms across Europe, leaving people with even less money to spend resulting in reduced demand in the economy.
Far from boosting the economy, the measures unveiled will, in fact, accelerate Europe’s transformation into a centrally planned, labour Gulag such as in China.
It has been estimated that more people in the developing countries will have an income of 10,000 dollars a year than in Europe and the USA together in five years time, underlining just how steep the drop in the real incomes in Europe and the USA has been.
Charities have calculated that the minimum required to live in Germany is about 1000 euros a month. That means almost 80% of the Germans are now already living on or close to the minimum needed to exist.
According to Die Welt, more than 20% of Germans have less than 1,070 euros a month and another 60% of Germans earn between 1,070 to 2,350 euros a month. Only 3% earn more than 7,000 euros a month.
The long-term unemployment benefit Hartz IV is 350 euros or only about 7 times more than the poorest Egyptians have to live on a month in spite of much higher costs in Germany.
The Hartz IV benefit is set to rise by only 5 euros this year on the insistence of Merkel, far below inflation, further eroding the real purchasing power and driving millions deeper into poverty.
It is not just in Germany but all across Europe that salaries have been decimated. Gone are the days not so long ago when professions such as young teachers for example earned 30 times more than their average cost of accommodation in major cities. In Greece, for example, the average pension is just 600 euros.
The next logical step for Merkel and Sarkozy is to float plans to send millions of Europeans to live in barracks and work in factories or roads with a bowl of soup and bread until they are 90 or drop dead as in the 1930s after a similar engineered financial crisis.
I can’t see the people of Europe allowing a centralised bureaucracy set up by governments in Berlin and Paris to cut their pensions and wages in order to give yet more to the banks and corporations – not after these same governments aided the banks in an engineered financial crisis that wrecked economies, and plunged nations into debt.
Merkel has said that the rest of Europe has to keep up with the “best”. Implying the low wage, slave labour concentration camp that Germany has become, with its corrupt financial sector, corrupt corporations caught bribing its own and foreign politicians (Siemens in Greece) is in some way to be emulated.
I suspect Europeans will not share that view.
Not the Irish for sure. Even tame politicians and newspapers like Enda Kenny and the Irish Times are comparing the brutal take-over of the Irish economy by the German and EU bankers via an enforced 85 billion euro loan with the armed conflicts of Leningrad and the Easter Rising.
How much longer will the people of Europe put up with this?
After helping the banks wreck the European economy in front of everyone’s eyes and pushing toxic vaccines on their populations, Merkel and Sarkozy pair up in a flagrant bid to steal pensions (etc) instead of presenting a serious plan.
Students at Israel’s Bar Ilan University cancelled a planned speech by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Navi Pillay, claiming that she is “anti-Semitic.”
Commissioner Pillay was invited by Bar Ilan University to speak at its Faculty of Law. University students affiliated with the right-wing “Forum for Eretz Israel” plastered the campus with posters against Pillay and sent a sharply worded letter of protest to the university’s administration.
“Ms. Pillay stands at the head of a commission…which is biased and tendentious in everything concerning the Israeli-Arab conflict,” the letter stated. “This commission explicitly promotes an anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist agenda, and a large number of her statements concerning Israel as like blood libels of the worst kind.”
Examples noted in the letter include Pillay’s statements that during Israel’s military attack on the Gaza Strip in December 2008-January 2009 (Operation Cast Lead), Israel bombed hospitals for no reason and in several cases, soldiers killed Palestinians in cold blood. According to Israel’s daily Israel Hayom, the letter also contends that a report issued by Pillay concerning these military attacks repeat contentions of the Goldstone Commission that Israel committed war crimes.
“Just as the university would not allow a Holocaust denier to speak, there is no room to provide a platform for an anti-Semitic personality such as her.”
Bar Ilan University failed to respond to questions in this matter.
Along with the laundry list of domestic grievances expressed by Egyptian protesters calling for an end to the regime of Hosni Mubarak, the popular perception of Egypt’s foreign policy has also been a focal point of the demonstrations.
Signs and chants have called on Mubarak to seek refuge in Tel Aviv, while his hastily appointed vice-president, Omar Suleiman, has been disparaged as a puppet of the US. Egypt’s widely publicised sale of natural gas to Israel at rock bottom prices has featured in many refrains emanating from the crowds.
The widespread view among Egyptians that the regime has served the interests of the West has not been helped by Israel’s call for world leaders to support Mubarak, or the apparent unwillingness by American officials to give the protests their full backing.
Plummeting status
In the shadow of the current cries to topple the Egyptian regime, the Mubarak government has had a tough time keeping its role in international affairs out of public view.
In the area where Egypt’s foreign policy apparatus has served US interests most directly, Israel’s security, the Mubarak regime’s complicity in the failure to establish a Palestinian state has become widely publicised in recent years. Its role in placing the stranglehold on the people of Gaza, in conjunction with Israel, has seen Egypt’s status in the region plummet to a level it has not reached in decades.
The Palestine Papers, the leaked internal documents of the Palestinian Authority (PA) that were recently exposed by Al Jazeera, provide further confirmation of Egypt’s role in the impasse between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.
While much of the coverage of the Palestine Papers has focused on the unprecedented concessions offered by Palestinian negotiators, and how swiftly they were spurned by Israeli and American representatives, Egypt’s role as an instrument for added pressure stands out from the internal records.
As the peace process broke down over the past decade, Egypt was a party to many of the discussions and central to the security arrangements made between the PA and Israel.
Egyptian duplicity
Throughout the documents, Suleiman in particular is singled out as the point person whom Israeli and American officials could count on to execute their agenda of dividing the Palestinian factions or pressing the PA for greater concessions.
Barely a few months after the January 2006 Palestinian elections that resulted in a Hamas victory, PA leaders were already appealing for assistance in fending off their political opponents. At a meeting between leading Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and US General Keith Dayton, the latter assured the Palestinians that the American administration is committed to reinforcing the PA’s Presidential Guard to maintain Mahmoud Abbas’ authority in the face of the newly elected Hamas government.
In support of his pledge, Dayton referred to discussions with Suleiman, who committed Egypt, along with Jordan, to providing training and equipment, “even at their own expense”.
Later in the year, as the Palestinian factions were engaged in negotiations over the formation of a unity government, a European diplomat told Erekat that the American position on unifying the Palestinians was “prematurely negative”. Erekat agreed, adding that Suleiman had also been discouraging of those efforts, saying that they would not work.
In early 2007, as the siege on Gaza had crippling consequences on the lives of Palestinians, negotiators complained that Egyptian leaders were duplicitous, speaking publicly in support of allowing goods into Gaza, but in reality, “it remains blocked on the ground …. This is a general problem with the Egyptians”.
An internal report from April 2007 confirms these suspicions. The Agreement on Movement and Access states: “Although there has been political agreement by Omar Suleiman and President Mubarak on allowing exports through, this agreement has never been translated into operational reality.”
Conditions in Gaza only worsened in the months ahead, thanks in large part to the stranglehold imposed by Israel and Egypt. As Hamas assumed sole control of Gaza by preventing a coup attempt by US-backed PA forces, Egypt determined to seal off the border.
In a February 2008 meeting between Ahmed Qurei, a high-ranking PA official, and Tzipi Livni, the then Israeli foreign minister, Qurei relayed the Egyptian position conveyed to him by their leader. “President Mubarak said they’ll close down the borders after Sunday and whoever is caught on Egyptian territories will be considered illegal.”
The situation came to a stalemate in the months leading up to Israel’s December 2008 assault on Gaza that resulted in the deaths of 1,500 Palestinians, most of them civilians. As tensions were heightened, Erekat lamented to his Israeli counterpart that Suleiman was forced to cancel a meeting in the occupied territories. Amos Gilad, the director of Israeli military intelligence, speculated: “Regarding Omar Suleiman, maybe he delayed because he is afraid we will attack while he is here. It will hurt him. He will look like a collaborator.”
A tool to pressure Palestinians
The image of Egyptian officials as tools to pressure the Palestinians also emerges out of conversations between US and Palestinian officials. In late 2009, George Mitchell, Barack Obama’s envoy to the region, told Erekat that he had spoken with Suleiman and the two agreed that the PA could unilaterally declare new elections without any input from Hamas.
Furthermore, Mitchell and Suleiman agreed that any agreement would have to permanently eradicate any Hamas presence in the West Bank, while at the same time allowing the PA to resume control of Gaza, terms Hamas was sure to reject. But as Egypt was preparing a document on how the PA should proceed, Erekat assured Mitchell that: “Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] won’t say no to whatever the Egyptians present to him”.
Even when it appeared that the Egyptians were attempting to display some degree of autonomy, it became more evident in the documents that external pressure was never too far behind. Only a few weeks later, Erekat complained to US negotiators that Egypt’s latest efforts to reconcile the Palestinian factions were straying from the official line. Daniel Rubenstein, the US consul general and chief of mission in Jerusalem, responded: “I can tell you, we did put pressure on the Egyptians. I read the document. It was a disaster.”
As Erekat continued to grumble about the PA’s weakened position and Egypt’s lack of cooperation, General James Jones, the US special envoy for Middle East security, abruptly ended the meeting with his words: “It’s insulting. We’ll take care of this.”
Jones appeared to have lived up to his promise. Only three months later, in January 2010, US negotiator David Hale assured Erekat that in recent talks with Suleiman: “The Egyptians brought ideas similar to our thinking.”
In this instance, the US appeared to put pressure on the PA to accept the latest proposals by giving the impression that the US and its allies in the region were unified in their position. Hale further added of the Egyptians: “They talked with Netanyahu and think he is serious.”
‘Egypt’s number two’
Given the critical role that Suleiman has played in advancing US and Israeli objectives, it was no surprise that Mubarak chose to appoint him as vice-president on January 29, a move rejected by protesters, but reassuring to Egypt’s Western patrons. In the leaked documents, Israeli officials were already referring to Suleiman as “Egypt’s Number Two” at a time when most observers believed that Mubarak was grooming his son to be succeed him.
Among Western policymakers, it seems Suleiman remains a popular choice to replace Mubarak, as the candidate uniquely suited to maintaining Egypt’s current foreign policy, while also addressing domestic grievances expressed by protesters. That remains a distant prospect, given the unlikelihood that the Egyptian opposition would abandon its call to determine the nation’s role in regional affairs. But it also demonstrates that, unlike Tunisia, Egypt is far too critical to US objectives in the Middle East to be left to its own devices.
Whatever the outcome in Egypt, it is clear that the recent revelations will have a dramatic impact on the settlement of the Palestinian question. Already weakened by the scandal of the Palestine Papers, Erekat may now have to do without the support of an Egyptian regime he termed, “our ally, our backbone”.
In his first interview as vice-president, Suleiman decried as “unacceptable” what he called “foreign interference” in Egypt’s current turmoil. Coming from a regime whose ability to endure through the decades is owed largely to foreign interference, the irony of those words will not be lost on the Egyptian people.
Abdullah Al-Arian is a doctoral candidate in the department of history at Georgetown University.
Five of Norway’s largest PR firms have said ‘no’ to offers to improve Israel’s global public relations campaign, reported the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naæringsliv.
Israel is attempting to widen its global public relations campaign by hiring foreign PR firm to improve its reputation abroad. With the increasing threat being posed by the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and the publicity surrounding Israelis human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel has contacted public relations specialists in Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Norway for help.
The project, for which each firm would be paid around 3.5 million USD annually, is to help Israel promote its vision in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as prevent the international boycott, amongst other things.
“Israel is an highly controversial project,” Sigurd Grytten, the PR firm Burson-Marsteller’s Managing Director, told the paper.
Statements by heads of the public relations agencies Geelmuyden.Keise, Gambit H&K, Apeland Informasjon, and First House range from “difficult”, to “no comment”. Only one agency, Kreab, has said it might consider the assignment.
In response, Aviad Ivri, Counselor at the Israeli embassy in Oslo, said, “It’s no secret that Israel has a reputation problem.”
Norway has a growing boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. The country’s Government Pension Fund Global recently divested from two Israeli companies, Africa Israel Investments and Danya Cebus, due to their involvement in the construction of illegal settlements in the West Bank.
“Several United Nations Security Council resolutions and an International Court of Justice advisory opinion have concluded that the construction of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory is prohibited under the [Geneva] Convention,” said Norway’s Minister of Finance Sigbjørn Johnsen at the time of the much-publicized divestment.
What’s more late 2010, Israel accused the Norwegian government of funding and encouraging blatant anti-Israel incitement. The accusations were based on reports that a local Norwegian municipality is funding a trip for students to New York in order to take part in the “Gaza Monologues” play, and view an exhibition by Norwegian artists.
The play, which “deals with the suffering of children in Gaza as a result of the Israeli occupation,” was written by a Palestinian playwright from Gaza, and was presented at the United Nations headquarters. The Norwegian government responded to the Israeli accusation, saying that the Norwegian government supports freedom of expression and will not be intervening in the arts.
Reports say anger at the United States and Israel is widespread among the Egyptian crowds protesting against out-of-favor President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
The protesters hold Washington responsible for President Hosni Mubarak’s thirty-year dictatorship.
A Press TV correspondent says many slogans at Liberation Square are directed against the US, Israel and France.
This comes as Egyptian demonstrators gathered in Cairo’s Liberation Square on Sunday to honor the martyrs of 13 days of anti-government protests.
They have managed to stay in the central square, despite heavy army presence and attacks by pro-government thugs.
Protesters say their achievements in recent days have made it impossible for them to give up until President Mubarak quits power.
The developments come as the government has entered talks with opposition groups to discuss political reforms.
Egypt’s opposition party, the Muslim Brotherhood, has agreed to join talks with the government of President Mubarak but says that the meeting is “in no way in the form of negotiations, it is rather statement of our demands.”
Senior party officials said they would enter talks with Vice-President Omar Suleiman, but will drop out if the demands made by the protesters during the last two weeks are not met.
Earlier, the Muslim Brotherhood representative in Britain, Mohammad Ghanem, confirmed to Press TV that his party will hold talks with the government. However, he said the position of the Muslim Brotherhood has not changed.
The government has pledged to hold talks with all opposition parties to discuss democratic reforms that would lead to the replacement of President Mubarak.
The Muslim Brotherhood is officially banned in Egypt. The group, however, enjoys popular support.
Meanwhile, people and leaders around the world are rallying in solidarity with the Egyptian people’s protests against Mubarak.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for a democratic transition in Egypt as soon as possible.
Erdogan suggested that an interim administration be formed to pave the way for the fulfillment of the Egyptian people’s demands.
The Turkish leader said democratic change in Egypt would have a positive impact on the entire region.
Earlier, Erdogan called on the Egyptian president to immediately step down, saying Mubarak’s promise to resign in September is not enough.
The greatest danger to the Egyptian revolution and the prospects for a free and independent Egypt emanates not from the “baltagiyya” — the mercenaries and thugs the regime sent to beat, stone, stab, shoot and kill protestors in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities last week — but from Washington.
Ever since the Egyptian uprising began on 25 January, the United States government and the Washington establishment that rationalizes its policies have been scared to death of “losing Egypt.” What they fear losing is a regime that has consistently ignored the rights and well-being of its people in order to plunder the country and enrich the few who control it, and that has done America’s bidding, especially supporting Israel in its oppression and wars against the Palestinians and other Arabs.
The Obama Administration quickly dissociated itself from its envoy to Egypt, Frank Wisner, after the latter candidly told the BBC on 5 February that he thought President Hosni Mubarak “must stay in office in order to steer” any transition to a post-Mubarak order (“US special envoy: ‘Mubarak must stay for now’,” 5 February 2011).
But one suspects that Wisner was inadvertently speaking in his master’s voice. US President Barack Obama and his national security establishment may be willing to give up Mubarak the person, but they are not willing to give up Mubarak’s regime. It is notable that the US has never supported the Egyptian protestors demand that Mubarak must go now. Nor has the United States suspended its $1.5 billion annual aid package to Egypt, much of which goes to the state security forces that are oppressing protestors and beating up and arresting journalists.
As The New York Times — always a reliable barometer of official thinking — reported, “The United States and leading European nations on Saturday threw their weight behind Egypt’s vice president, Omar Suleiman, backing his attempt to defuse a popular uprising without immediately removing President Hosni Mubarak from power.” Obama administration officials, the newspaper added, “said Mr. Suleiman had promised them an ‘orderly transition’ that would include constitutional reform and outreach to opposition groups” (“West Backs Gradual Egyptian Transition,” 5 February 2011).
Moreoever, the Times reported, the United States has already managed to persuade two of its major European clients — the United Kingdom and Germany — to back continuing the existing regime with only a change of figurehead.
Suleiman, long the powerful chief of Egypt’s intelligence services, has served — perhaps even more so than Mubarak — as the guarantor of Egypt’s regional role in maintaining the American- and Israeli-dominated order. As author Jane Mayer has documented, Suleiman played a key role in the US “rendition” program, working closely with the CIA which kidnapped “terror suspects” from around the world and delivered them into Suleiman’s hands for interrogation, and almost certainly torture (“Who is Omar Suleiman?,” The New Yorker, 29 January 2011).
High praise for Suleiman’s work has also come from top Israeli military brass. “I always believed in the abilities of the Egyptian Intelligence service [GIS],” Israeli General Amos Gilad told American, Palestinian Authority and Egyptian officials during a secret April 2007 meeting whose leaked minutes were recently released by Al Jazeera as part of the Palestine Papers. “It keeps order and security among 70 millions — 20 millions in one city [a reference to the population of Egypt, actually closer to 83 million, and to Cairo] — this is a great achievement, for which you deserve a medal. It is the best asset for the Middle East,” Gilad said.
The notion that anyone, let alone US officials, could believe that Suleiman would lead an “orderly transition” to democracy would be laughable if it were not so sinister. Much more likely, the strategy is to try to ride out the protests and wear out and split the opposition, consolidate the regime under Suleiman’s ruthless grip with the backing of the Egyptian army, and then enact cosmetic “reforms” to keep the Egyptian people politically divided and busy while business carries on as usual. Under any Suleiman “transition” political activists, journalists and anyone suspected of being part of the current uprising would be in grave danger.
From the American perspective, the strategy can be likened to what happened in the summer of 2008 when the house-of-cards international financial system started to collapse. Think of the Tunisian regime of deposed dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali as the investment bank Lehman Brothers. When a run on the bank began, the United States government refused to provide it with financial guarantees to bail it out, and it quickly went bankrupt.
But when the panic spread and even larger “too big to fail” financial firms including massive insurance company AIG began to see their positions suddenly deteriorate, the United States government stepped in to bail them out with hundreds of billions of dollars.
The Egyptian regime is the AIG of the region and what we are seeing now is an American attempt to bail it out. If Egypt goes under, the United States fears that the contagion would spread as Arab publics realize that the US-backed despots who rule them can be replaced. The toppling of these regimes whose only promise to their people has been “security” is not the end of the world but the start of renewal.
Of course, no analogy is exact. Whereas, allowing Lehman Brothers to collapse was a calculated decision, the United States did not see the revolution in Tunisia, or the uprising in Egypt coming. “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton infamously declared on 25 January, the day the anti-regime protests broke out (“US urges restraint in Egypt, says government stable,” Reuters, 25 January 2011).
Clinton’s cluelessness is reminiscent of her predecessor Condoleezza Rice’s famous words (“didn’t see it coming”) in relation to Hamas’ victory in Palestinian legislative council elections in 2006.
As Helena Cobban has observed, the Israel Lobby, “AIPAC and its attack dogs,” have conducted such a thorough “witch-hunt” over the past quarter century “against anyone with real Middle East expertise that the US government now contains no-one at the higher (or even mid-career) levels of policymaking who has any in-depth understanding of the region or of the aspirations of its people” (“Obama’s know-nothings discuss Egypt,” 28 January 2011).
But it is even worse than that. The US “policy” establishment seems only capable of viewing the region through Israeli eyes. This is why for so many officials and commentators the concerns of Israel to maintain a brutal hegemony trump the aspirations of 83 million Egyptians to determine their own future free from the shackles of the regime that has oppressed them for so long.
And different futures are possible. On the minds of many observers is the “Turkish model” of constitutional democracy, economic resurgence and foreign policy independence, all under the rule of a “moderate” Islamist party. Turkey, once closely in the orbit of the United States, started to break out with its refusal to allow the US to use the country’s bases for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
In recent years, Turkey has developed a deliberate “360 degree” foreign policy doctrine which includes maintaining relations with Europe and the United States, while restoring close ties with all its neighbors among them Iran and Arab countries, and assuming a greater regional mediating role. Since 2009, Turkey’s once close alliance with Israel has deteriorated sharply, even though ties have not been cut. These shifts, along with its ubiquitous consumer and cultural products have given Turkey enormous regional influence and appeal.
Turkey has its own specific history and is no more perfect than any other country. But the bigger point is that subservience to the United States and Israel is not Egypt’s only option. The worst case scenario from the American viewpoint is to have three major regional powers, Iran, Turkey and Egypt, that are not under Washington’s control.
Of course Turkey is carving out its own path and Egyptians are struggling to go their own way which may be very different. There’s no reason either to believe that Egypt would become “another Iran” as ceaseless Israeli propaganda suggests. But given a free choice, Egypt is not likely to serve the “interests” of the United States and Israel the way the Mubarak regime has.
One example is that Egypt might dispense with US aid and still come out ahead by simply selling its natural gas on international markets rather than to Israel at what is reported to be a deep discount. Another is that a truly independent Egypt would eschew serving as Israel’s proxy in enforcing the criminal siege of Gaza and stoking intra-Palestinian divisions.
By coming to the streets in their millions, by sacrifing the lives of some of their very finest, the Egyptian people have said that they and they alone want to decide their nation’s future. Mubarak as a person is already irrelevant. The confrontation is now between the Egyptian people’s desire for democracy and self-determination on the one hand, and, on the other, US insistence (along with its clients in Egypt and the region) on continuing the old regime. Let us offer whatever solidarity we can from wherever we are to help the Egyptian people to win.
In a meeting with Egypt’s opposition representatives, the government has made a range of concessions including the formation of a constitutional reform panel, release of political prisoners and the freedom of the Press.
Vice President Omar Suleiman, who is known to be cooperating with CIA, met a wide representation of major opposition groups on Sunday, on the 13th consecutive day of massive anti-government protests across the country.
Suleiman endorsed a plan with the opposition to set up a committee of judiciary and political figures to study proposed constitutional amendments that would allow more candidates to run for president and impose term limits on the presidency, the state news agency reported.
The committee was given until the first week of March to finish the tasks.
A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood commented on the outcome of the meeting saying, “We hope to take the country to stability, security and democracy, which can bring in the future prosperity, equality, justice and human dignity for all Egyptians.”
Millions of Egyptians took to the streets on Sunday to honor hundreds of protesters killed during the anti-government rallies of the past 13 days.
In the Egyptian capital, Cairo, tens of thousands of people have gathered in Liberation Square for what they have dubbed the “Day of Martyrs.”
Protesters are flooding into the heart of the city despite heavy military presence. The army has promised not to use force against protesters.
Protesters are demanding an immediate end to President Hosni Mubarak’s three decades in power.
They say they will not leave the streets unless their demands are met. They are now calling for fresh millions-strong marches across Egypt.
The UN says at least 300 people have been killed and thousands more have been wounded in Egypt in the nearly two weeks of protest against the government.
People around the world are rallying to show solidarity with the Egyptian people.
The publication of nearly 1,700 leaked files by Al Jazeera on negotiations between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority has been largely overshadowed by the uprising in Egypt. But that doesn’t mean they don’t matter for the future of Israel/Palestine.
I recently caught up with Diana Buttu, a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiations Support Unit, a team that is mentioned throughout the “Palestine Papers” and where it is suspected the leak came from. Buttu discussed the meaning of the “Palestine Papers,” what they say about the “peace process,” and the current Egyptian uprising and what it may mean on the Palestinian street.
Alex Kane: Could you talk about your overall take on the leaked documents that have been published by Al Jazeera?
Diana Buttu: Having now gone through a lot of the documents—of course, not all of the documents, but many of them—the overall impression that I’m left with is that of a very powerful party, which is Israel, trying to continue their control and authority over a very weak party being the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). But the story doesn’t just stop there.
I think that it’s become, at least clear to me and perhaps to others, that this mantra we’ve been hearing for many, many years—that we all know what a solution is going to look like, we all know what a settlement is going to look like—is actually not the case, particularly when you read the transcripts of the Israeli officials. That’s one major thing that I come away with.
The second major conclusion that I walk away with is that of a PLO leadership stubbornly sticking to one strategy, and only one strategy: negotiations, and only negotiations, despite the fact that there are so many other options out there. It’s as though they’ve cornered themselves by demanding negotiations, and then when they actually happen, they didn’t have any other strategy to get out of negotiations in the event that Israel was going to be stubborn.
AK: What would you say these revelations mean for the entire “peace process”?
DB: I don’t think there really is a “peace process.” There’s been a lot of process, but not a whole lot of peace, and I just don’t think that things are going to change. It hasn’t changed over the course of the past 17 years. I don’t think this is going to make the United States wake up, and it’s certainly not going to make the Israelis wake up, and in fact I don’t think the PLO will wake up, unless there’s some very serious dissent, and I just don’t see that happening right now, even though diaspora Palestinians are quite upset about what’s going on. But we haven’t seen that translate into anything on the streets of Palestine. I don’t think this is going to change anything in the “peace process.” They’re going to continue doing this over and over again because this is the way they’ve done it for the past 17 years, and unless there is a sea change of opinion that makes the PLO stand up and take notice or makes any of the other parties stand up and take notice, I’m afraid that it’s just going to be the same old, same old.
AK: Given that there’s been a muted reaction on the Palestinian street at the same time that there’s an uprising going on in Egypt, do you see any possible connection between these events in the future?
DB: Right now I don’t see that there’s going to be a connection. It’s important to step back: part of the reason why we’re seeing a muted reaction in Palestine is because of the way the documents were presented. Whether you believe the documents or you don’t believe the documents—and I have no reason to question the documents, particularly after members of the PLO have come out and verified the authenticity of the documents—the main problem is that they were presented in somewhat of a sensationalist way.
One example that I can give is that Al Jazeera tied the assassination of al-Madhoun, who is a member of Fatah, of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, to the Palestinian Authority (PA), and they tried to claim that because the Israelis made a request for this man to be assassinated, that somehow the PA acquiesced or condoned his killing. That’s a bit of a stretch. There is a lot of security cooperation that takes place between the PA and Israel—and it’s outrageous, it includes torture and mass arrest—but there was really no proof to bring it to the level that the PA was actually collaborating with Israel over this man’s killing.
And so, in the way that the documents were presented, the debate in Palestine now has not turned into a debate over the main issues, which are accountability, transparency, red lines, whether we should believe in this negotiations process, and whether the PLO has adopted alternative strategies. None of that is going to take place because instead the debate is currently over whether Al Jazeera crossed the line. And until we see something different, where it’s not a question of shooting the messenger, but we have the message that’s presented in a coherent way without the sensationalism, then I don’t think we’re going to have any real debate any time soon, unfortunately.
AK: Would you say that there’s been a marked shift in the negotiating posture of Palestinians since you last were part of a team involved in negotiations, is that shift represented in the “Palestine Papers,” and lastly, if so, what does that shift represent?
DB: Yes, there’s definitely a shift, and the reason why there was a shift is twofold. One is that the second intifada took place, and the PLO was suddenly stuck. Rather than capitalizing on the intifada, and the people power that it brought them, they ended up somehow being apologetic for the intifada and therefore backtracked on some positions. What were the positions they backtracked from? At the time that I was there, there was still a claim for the right of return.
It’s interesting, if you look at the documents from roughly 2000-2004, the positions that are taken are actually quite principled in some instances. For example, there is a demand for the right of return. There is the notion that all of the settlements are illegal. There is then a little bit of a backtrack by saying “land swaps,” but on a one-to-one basis. And so you see this kind of principled position, but then there’s a backtracking, and one of the reasons was the intifada and the complete failure on the part of the PA to use the intifada to their advantage, to actually harness popular support and alter their negotiating position.
The second reason, and I think this is the much more dangerous reason, is that during the period that I was there and a little bit after, you saw initiative after initiative come forward, and all of these initiatives, while never accepted by the PLO directly, were tacitly accepted by the PLO. For example, the Geneva Initiative was something that was never adopted by the PLO, and yet, you see a couple of things that are interesting. The first is those commercials you saw with Erekat and others in which they come forward and say “I need a partner”—those were all sponsored by the Geneva Initiative. And if you see, for example, the statements that American officials have come forward and said, they’ve all been saying the same thing, which is that “this reflects what happened during the negotiations.” But it didn’t. It reflects what happened after the negotiations fell apart. It was their own initiatives that they were putting forward—the Nusseibeh-Ayalon initiative, the Geneva Initiative—and this is where it becomes dangerous, because the Americans and others seem to assume that silence equals acquiescence. And unfortunately, the PLO falls into the trap of de facto acquiescing to these initiatives, when they align themselves with these things, such as they did with the various commercials, and when they don’t come out and completely reject them. I think this is why we’re now seeing a shift. While there were principled positions, if you believe in a two-state solution, the PLO has consistently undermined its own position because they didn’t really know how to deal with the intifada and because they never really objected to these major initiatives that were put on the table.
AK: And lastly: I know that you don’t think the papers will have a huge impact on the ground, but with the combination of what the “Palestine Papers” revealed and the unrest and uprising in Egypt, do you think that any of this popular anger in Egypt might be translated onto the street in Palestine and directed at either the PA or Israel?
DB: Optimism is one thing, but if I’m to speculate, I think the answer is going to be no. And I think it’s important to keep in mind that what’s going on in Egypt is a little bit different than what’s happening in Palestine, and there’s a lot of issues mitigating against another uprising.
The first is that the government of Salam Fayyad has tried to do a good job, using donor funds, to create a middle-class, and to give credit, and all of these sorts of things, and they’ve largely managed to silence a lot of dissent.
The second major factor is that there is a very repressive police regime that is now in place. It hasn’t been in place for as long as the Mubarak regime was in place, but nonetheless this is something new for Palestinians.
A third factor is that people aren’t really examining the merits of the papers, but rather in the way they were presented.
And the fourth thing is that the Palestinian street is already very divided, and if there’s one message that people are calling for, it’s that of national unity. And I think that people fear that going against the authority will somehow serve to undermine any attempts at national unity, even though there really are none right now. There also may be a fear factor of not wanting Hamas to take over.
It’s not ripe in the same way that Egypt was ripe. Again, not to say that it won’t happen. I just don’t think it’s going to happen in the short term.
Minimally explored in all the coverage of the momentous Egyptian uprising taking place over the last 10 days are the Israeli connections.
A central and critical reality is that it is US tax money that has propped up Hosni Mubarak’s despotic regime over the past 30 years, and that this money has flowed, from the beginning, largely on behalf of Israel.
Israel is generally a significant factor in events in the Middle East, and to understand ongoing happenings it is important to understand the historic and current Israeli connections.
The violent creation, perpetuation, and expansion of a state based on ethnic expulsion of the majority inhabitants has been central to Middle East dynamics ever since Israel was created by European and American Zionists in 1948 as a self-identified “Jewish State.”
Israeli leaders and outside observers realized from the very beginning that the only way to maintain such a violently imposed, ethnically based nation-state was through military dominance of the region. For Israel to achieve this military dominance required two things:
(1) The creation of a military more powerful than all the others in the region combined. Israel has achieved this through a uniquely massive influx of US tax dollars and technology, occasionally purloined but largely procured through the machinations of its lobby. (Among other things, Israel has several hundred nuclear weapons, a fact almost never mentioned by American media or the American government.)
(2) The prevention of any other nation in the region from becoming a threat. Israel has attained this goal through several strategies: divide and conquer techniques, direct invasions and attacks (or pushing the U.S. to carry out attacks), and the propping up of despots who would openly or tacitly agree (sometimes in return for similarly large influxes of American tax money) not to support the rights of those oppressed and ethnically cleansed by Israel.
For the past 30-plus years, Egypt has been among those despotic regimes supported by the U.S. and Israel in return for turning its back on Palestinians.
The Egypt-Israeli peace treaty of 1979 has occasionally been mentioned in news reports on the current uprising. That treaty was an arrangement in which the Egyptian leader of the time, Anwar Sadat, stopped opposing Israel’s previous ethnic cleansing of close to a million indigenous Palestinian Muslims and Christians (at least 750,000 in 1947-49 and an additional 200,000 in 1967). This removed the most populous and politically significant country from the Arab front opposing Israel’s illegal actions and led the way for other nations to “normalize” relations with the abnormal situation in Palestine.
In return, Israel gave back to Egypt the Sinai, Egyptian land it had illegally annexed in its 1967 war of aggression. (Egypt had almost managed to re-conquer this land and more in 1973, but the most massive airlift in American history, engineered by Henry Kissinger under pressure from the Israeli lobby, was sent to Israel, preventing this outcome.)
Also in return, the United States agreed to give Egypt more US tax money than any other nation, with the exception of Israel. Since 1979, Egypt has received an annual average of close to $2 billion in economic and political aid /a/ from American taxpayers (most of whom have known nothing about this use of our money). /3/ The arrangement has allowed Mubarak to stay in power for decades despite periodic attempts by Egyptians to free themselves from his ruthless rule.
At the same time, it’s important to note that the U.S., as broker of the peace treaty, gave Israel even greater rewards: guaranteeing Israel’s oil supplies for the next fifteen years; assuring Israel of American support in the event of violations; committing to be ‘responsive’ to Israel’s military and economic requirements; and promising a variety of major transfers of technology and aid, including $3 billion to relocate two Israeli air bases out of the Sinai, where, as journalist Donald Neff noted, they had no right to be in the first place.
In fact, the American financial arrangement with Israel, which had begun years before Egypt’s, has been far cozier than Egypt’s: Israel gets considerably more money from the US, even though its population is one-tenth of Egypt’s; there is little U.S. oversight of how it uses that money; and, unlike Egypt, which receives its allotment monthly, Israel receives its handout in a lump sum at the very beginning of the fiscal year (which means that Americans then pay interest for the rest of the year on money that the government has already given away, while Israel makes interest on it).
In the cases of both Israel and Egypt, the Israel lobby’s role in procuring this U.S. tax money has been central. While this fact is largely missing from US media reports and many liberal/left analyses, it is frequently referred to in Israeli and Jewish media. For example, a current Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) report states: “The question of whether to stake a claim in the protests against 30 years of President Hosni Mubarak’s autocracy is a key one for the pro-Israel lobby and pro-Israel lawmakers because of the role they have played in making Egypt one of the greatest beneficiaries of U.S. aid.”
As conditions change in Egypt, U.S. lawmakers known for their allegiance to Israel are evaluating what to do about U.S aid. Many such Israel partisans have particularly powerful and relevant positions, such as Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the foreign operations subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee; Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House Middle East subcommittee; Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), ranking member on the Foreign Affairs committee and the author of last year’s sweeping Iran sanctions law; and Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev), member of the subcommittee on the Middle East of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. A person close to the Israel lobby notes: “No matter what happens, clearly one of the top criteria Congress is likely to use is Egypt’s approach to its peace treaty obligations with Israel.”
Through the years a variety of Egyptian groups have opposed the Egyptian regime, some using violence (while the regime has used greater violence against them). This is virtually always reported without context and in extremely negative terms, without noting that it is routine for resistance movements to use violence; the American Revolutionary War was not known for its nonviolence. Yet, Israeli-centric U.S. media rarely discuss this.
In recent years, Mubarak has collaborated with Israel in closing off the Gaza Strip, largely imprisoning 1.5 million men, women, and children, resulting in a humanitarian disaster in which children suffer malnutrition, stunting, and trauma, and 300 Gazan patients have died through lack of essential medical supplies or being denied exit passes for medical care. Egyptian citizens, furious at their nation’s complicity in this cruelty, have been powerless to stop it.
Israel has long worked to create enmity between Egypt and the U.S. In the early 1950s the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, hatched a plan to firebomb areas in Egypt where Americans gathered — and to make these attacks appear to be the work of Muslim extremists. The plot was discovered and caused a scandal in Israel known as the “Lavon Affair,” but few Americans have ever heard of it. Some analysts suspect that other such plots succeeded and that the little-known Israeli attack on the U.S. Navy ship USS Liberty may have been a similar false-flag operation. (Certainly, there is little doubt that the U.S. would have attacked Egypt if Liberty crewmembers had not succeeded, against all odds, in getting a distress signal out before Israel succeeded in sinking the ship with all men aboard.)
Another little-discussed result of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty was the creation of an international peacekeeping force in the Sinai, known as the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), charged with mediating between Egypt and Israel. It is telling that this force was not placed on Israeli land but instead occupies Egyptian territory.
Its current head is Ambassador David M. Satterfield, an American diplomat who served extensively in the Middle East, was Senior Advisor on Iraq for former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and held a number of other high positions in the state department, including Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.
In 2005 Satterfield was named as having provided classified information to an official of the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, AIPAC. According to documents, Satterfield had discussed secret national security matters in at least two meetings with AIPAC official Steven J. Rosen, who was subsequently indicted by the U.S. Justice Department (later quashed over the objections of the FBI.)
In 2004 Satterfield presided at a State Department conference on the 1967 war. A Washington Report on Middle East Affairs report on this conference stated that Satterfield repeatedly referred to Palestinian terrorism while failing to mention Israel’s brutal attacks on Palestinian civilians. The article reports “Satterfield’s remarks dampened audience expectations for an even-handed U.S. approach to peacemaking.”
Among those in the audience at the conference’s panel on the USS Liberty, though not on the panel itself were USS Liberty survivors, trying to tell their story. State Department moderator Marc Susser quickly cut them off, and his treatment of the survivors reportedly “bordered on abusive.”
Now, David Satterfield is heading up international forces occupying Egyptian land charged with being a “neutral” mediator between Egypt and Israel.
It is unknown whether his conversations with AIPAC continue.
11. Those Not Invited to Speak Steal the Show at State Department Liberty Discussion,” Delinda C. Hanley, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2004:
The week that followed January 25, 2011, Day One of the Egyptian Intifada, saw two organized demonstrations in front of the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv. Both protests included people of various ethnic identities, but were primarily made up of Palestinian-Israelis, and Arabic was the language of the angry chanting. I videotaped both of these demonstrations and subtitled the anti-Mubarak slogans into English and Hebrew, for the benefit of non-Arabic speakers. At the second demo I also interviewed a number of people on the street to contextualize how these protestors are being interpreted by average Israelis.
I believe that we owe a great debt to the brave souls in Tahrir Square and all across Egypt who are fighting for their freedom, for inspiring us to do the same. But I’m also thankful to them for shining a light so bright that it renders us all almost transparent, allowing us to see ourselves and easily understand all the other actors on stage. There are only two sides of the barricades: the side of freedom, and the side of control. Misr, thank you for the reminder; we need to make every day January 25.
American tech giant Google has faced regulatory scrutiny on numerous occasions amid accusations of antitrust violations. Google’s relationship with the CIA, ranging from early financial support to collaborative efforts have been decried as undermining privacy rights and free speech in the digital landscape.
Google’s creation played a crucial role in the US intelligence community’s scheme to attain global dominance by controlling information. … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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