A nuclear safety watchdog says UK nuclear weapons sites pose great public and environmental risks, amid complications caused by the government’s spending review.
The Ministry of Defense’s nuclear safety watchdog said in a report that there are 11 bomb-making sites and ports housing nuclear submarines across the UK that pose potentially significant risks, the daily Guardian reported.
Budget cuts and staff shortages were already hurting nuclear safety before the new government began slashing government spending, the report added.
The reports warns that efforts to reduce radioactive risks have been “weak”, safety analyses “inconsistent” and attempts to cope with change “poor.”
The danger zones include nuclear weapons sites and the two places where nuclear submarines no longer in use are docked, nine at Devonport in Plymouth and seven at Rosyth on the Firth of Forth in Scotland, said the report.
The report also reveals that there is “no funded plan” for the decommissioning of Britain’s 16 defunct nuclear submarines.
The report by Rear Adm. Nigel Guild, chairman of the defense nuclear environment and safety board, is restricted, but the newspaper said it had been allowed to look at Ministry of Defense documents.
Guild said no money has been allocated to decommission the nuclear submarines. The report, which covers 2006 and 2007, identified 11 sites, including Devonport and Rosyth, where there are “potentially serious risks” — as well as Aldermaston and Burghfield, the nuclear weapons factories, and nuclear submarines near Glasgow.
A 10 percent shortage of suitably qualified staff was “one of the greatest challenges to the sustainable future of the defense nuclear program,” he said.
According to the documents seen by the Guardian, funding cuts have already been hampering the MoD’s ability to ensure good safety performance at nuclear weapons sites even before the coalition government began imposing the spending squeeze.
“Often, in government, the management approach is to first impose a reduction in resource, and only then to assess its implications,” added Guild.
“Fulfilling the legal requirement to reduce radiation exposure to as low as reasonably practical was often weakened by excessive cost estimates and delays”, he said.
Guild described the MoD’s response to major organizational changes as “generally poor and significantly below best practice in the civil nuclear programs”.
The control of potentially hazardous activities was also said to be “below best practice” at several sites, with particular problems highlighted at Devonport in 2006.
Arrangements for the transport of warheads and other nuclear materials were “inconsistent” and emergency plans “have not accorded with standard UK practice”.
According to one former MoD official, nuclear safety had been compromised.
Fred Dawson, who worked for the MoD for 31 years and was head of its radiation protection policy team before he retired in 2009, described the absence of funds for decommissioning nuclear submarines as “particularly damning”.
“It suggests that the need to make cost savings is being put ahead of the need to meet regulatory safety and environmental standards”, he said.
November 2010 marked the sixth anniversary of the death of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. For the last two years of his life, the once peripatetic leader who was a constant fixture on the world stage for almost four decades, was reduced to living in a small compound-cum-prison. Only after he became gravely ill did Israel permit Arafat to leave for medical treatment in France. Less than three weeks later, he returned to Ramallah in a coffin and was buried in a chaotic funeral. While the circumstances surrounding his death remain shrouded in controversy, its impact on the Palestinian national movement is indisputable.
Although As’ad Ghanem’s new book Palestinian Politics after Arafat: A Failed National Movement focuses on the post-Arafat era, the dead leader permeates the pages and his legacy hangs like a specter over the Palestinian body politic. As Ghanem documents, Arafat’s actions and decisions as chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (1969-2004) and as president of the Palestinian Authority (1996-2004) served not only to consolidate his rule, but were directly responsible for the current crisis in the Palestinian national movement and its inability to achieve its goals.
A senior lecturer in the School of Political Science at the University of Haifa, Ghanem is unsparing in his assessment of the current state of Palestinian politics and unsentimental in his analysis. The Palestinian national movement has not only failed as the book’s subtitle declares, but is “disintegrating.” What follows, Ghanem argues, is fratricidal chaos.
Ghanem’s main argument is bleak. “The crisis among the Palestinians is so severe,” he writes, “that the street fighting and confrontations covered by the media barely scratch the surface” (p. x). He adds that “the Palestinians have actually lost the ability to function efficiently, internally or externally, as a single national group” (p. 173).
Drawing on primary and secondary sources in English and Arabic, Ghanem identifies three internal and external indicators that demonstrate that the Palestinian movement has failed. Internally, he argues, the movement has descended into “internecine struggle and internal collapse” (p. 18). More importantly, he contends that the movement has not achieved a single goal in its conflict with Zionism: it has not liberated Palestine, established an independent state, or even achieved a stable peace with Israel. Nor has Zionism been rejected internationally as a colonial movement. Finally, the stature of the Palestinian national movement in the Arab and international arenas has “plummeted” (p. 18).
What is the cause of this failure? Ghanem argues that the seeds were planted during the Oslo period (1993-2000). He asserts that a combination of factors have led to the “political bankruptcy” of the PA and the PLO (p. 12). These include the PLO’s shift from pursuing a comprehensive solution to a partial resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as embodied by the Oslo accords, Arafat’s dominance over the national movement and the increased corruption under his leadership.
Palestinian Politics after Arafat picks up where works by Yezid Sayigh and Rashid Khalidi left off. But while Ghanem cites and references Sayigh’s Armed Struggle and the Search for State (1997), Khalidi’s The Iron Cage (2007) is notably absent. Ghanem also benefits from and draws upon his earlier critical examination of the Palestinian national movement and the PA in The Palestinian Regime (2001). In both books Ghanem’s analysis echoes many of Edward Said’s criticisms of Arafat and the PA, particularly those discussed in his edited volumes Peace and its Discontents (1996), The End of the Peace Process (2001), and From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map (2005). Indeed, Ghanem substantiates many of Said’s claims of the cronyism, corruption and authoritarianism that pervaded the PA and became synonymous with Arafat’s regime.
In chapter 1, Ghanem addresses the influence of external factors on the Palestinian national movement, offering a compelling analysis of Israel’s “post-Oslo strategy.” Adopted in the wake of the failed Camp David Summit in 2000, he argues that Israeli policy toward the Palestinians under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shifted from conflict resolution to conflict management. The key element of this strategy was the separation of the two populations through the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the construction of Israel’s “separation wall” in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the existence of the PA allowed Palestinians to retain some measure of limited self-governance. Ghanem convincingly demonstrates that Israel’s goal was the establishment of a “Palestinian entity,” offering “more than autonomy and less than a state” (p. 36).
The reorientation of Israeli policy was driven by two related factors: first, Israel’s preoccupation with the “demographic threat” — in other words, that Palestinians will become the majority within the boundaries of historic Palestine. And second, the fear that Israel will be transformed into a binational state. Ghanem argues that in spite of Israeli efforts to ensure a Jewish majority, the higher birth rate of Palestinians portends the opposite, creating a constant source of “concern among Jewish politicians and academics interested in the character and identity of the state, prompting many of them to seek new ways of guaranteeing a Jewish majority” (p. 23). He demonstrates that Israeli academia, think tanks and the government often worked closely in researching and assessing strategies to deal with this issue. However, Israel’s post-Oslo strategy has been complicated by the parallel policies of increased settlement activity and the annexation of the Jordan River Valley. As a result, Israel’s goal of separation from the Palestinians is undermined by the greater desire for Palestinian land and resources.
In chapter 2, Ghanem discusses recent Israeli public opinion polls to demonstrate that the shift in Israeli policy has benefited from broad-based support. More importantly, these polls reveal that the maximum the Israeli public would be willing to concede in any peace agreement does not meet the minimum of Palestinian demands or fulfill their rights under international law. Thus, barring a dramatic shift in Israeli public opinion, the strategy adopted by the Palestinian leadership of negotiations accompanied by attempts to convince Israelis of their willingness to achieve peace is bound to fail.
The core of Palestinian Politics after Arafat focuses on the internal causes for the current state of affairs and their implications. In chapter 3, Ghanem analyzes Arafat’s successful effort to consolidate power first within the PLO and then the PA. He convincingly argues that the failures of the PA were rooted in the structure of the PLO and Arafat’s leadership of the organization, which “provide a partial explanation for both Palestinian achievements since the 1950s and also for the Palestinians’ failure to attain their national goals” (p. 71). Indeed, as Sayigh demonstrates, after the assassinations of Fatah’s cofounders and his closest advisors, Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) and Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) in 1988 and 1991, respectively, Arafat had few rivals within Fatah or the PLO with the authority to challenge his decision-making. Therefore, with the decline of the leftist wing of the PLO by the end of the Cold War and the predominance of Fatah within the organization, Arafat was able to consolidate his rule over both.
Building on Sayigh’s Armed Struggle and the Search for State, Ghanem demonstrates that the Oslo accords and creation of the PA represented the logical conclusion of Arafat’s leadership of the PLO. In other words, the agreement could not have been signed if the PLO were truly a democratic and representative organization with a leadership that was elected by and responsive to its constituency or with functional independent institutions. Instead, the PLO’s quota system was exploited by Arafat “to guarantee passage of the decisions he supported and the selection of his confidants to important posts” (p. 72). Meanwhile, it allowed for representation of the different Palestinian political groups and “independents” in the Palestinian National Council (i.e., the Palestinians’ “parliament in exile”) and the PLO’s Central and Executive Committees based largely on their size. In reality, the independents were largely aligned with Fatah, further bolstering its weight within the PLO and enhancing Arafat’s power. The end result was that the PLO’s different legislative and executive organs “had no real power, a vacuum was created at the top of the power structure — a vacuum that was filled by one man, a single individual who had replaced the institution” (p. 73).
The implications of Arafat’s control over the national movement were evidenced after his death with the scission of the Palestinian body politic. While the election of Mahmoud Abbas as Arafat’s successor in 2005 appeared to ensure Fatah’s hold on power, Hamas’s victory under a banner of “Reform and Change” in the parliamentary elections a year later represented the most significant threat to Fatah’s nearly forty years of dominance over the national movement. The ensuing clashes led to a rift between the two organizations as well as between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that has yet to be resolved. Ghanem asserts that the conflict between Fatah and Hamas is “substantial in every respect” and that it “relates to deep and fundamental political, social and cultural differences in approach between the two movements.” Overcoming these differences, he argues, will require “great effort” to resolve the conflict between the two organizations based on their mutual embrace of “democratic principles” (p. 143-144).
However, Ghanem is pessimistic that such a rapprochement is possible. He concludes that “new thinking” is required by Palestinians “about all of the options available to them in their internal affairs and their relations with Israel, the West and the Arab world” (p. 182). While the current crisis in the national movement can be directly attributed to the “choice of Arafat and the PLO to guide Palestinian affairs,” Ghanem opines that “it is hard to envision the various factions and currents in the Palestinian national movement taking a consensual and logical step in this direction, and therefore it is improbable that it can extricate itself from the crisis” (p. 183).
Palestinian Politics after Arafat is a welcome addition to the literature on the Palestinian national movement, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Middle East peace process. It is written in a clear style that makes it accessible to both specialized and general audiences. Although the text does suffer from repetition and would have benefited from closer and more thorough editing, these minor flaws do not diminish the overall work. It is highly recommended for readers seeking a better understanding of the history and current state of Palestinian politics.
Six years after his death, Arafat’s ghost still haunts the Palestinian national movement. From the cult of personality he constructed to the institutions he established and the agreements he signed, Arafat’s influence was not only profound but enduring. Indeed, the politics of divide and rule, and governance through intimidation, wasteful duplication and destructive rivalries that Ghanem describes have been adopted by Arafat’s children — his former supporters and associates who are ubiquitous inside and outside of government and who have chosen to mimic his style of leadership. Thus, Arafat’s specter is likely to hang over yet another generation of Palestinians. If Palestinians are to find a way out of this crisis, they must begin not by glorifying the national movement but by demystifying and demythologizing its history, and conducting a frank assessment of its successes and failures. Palestinian Politics after Arafat is an important step in that direction.
Osamah Khalil is a PhD candidate in US & Middle East History at the University of California, Berkeley. This essay was originally published by H-Net Reviews and is republished with the author’s permission.
Doha – At a press conference in Doha, Qatar, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said the power of American foreign policy was inherently limited when it came to pressuring Israel.
Asked by an al-Jazeera reporter why Arab countries should take US advice when US pressure on Israel proved ineffectual, Clinton explained, “Israel is a sovereign country and it makes its own decisions. [The US] can’t stop a lot of countries from doing things that we disagree and we speak out against. I wish there was a way we could tell a lot of countries what they should do because there are a lot of countries doing things that are not in the best interests of their own people, their neighbors, or the world.”
American pressure on Israel’s illegal settlement policies has amounted, in the past months since Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were derailed over the issue of settlements, to statements of disappointment and discouragement. Most recently, Clinton called the demolition of the historic Shepherd Hotel in East Jerusalem a “disturbing development.”
However, neither Clinton nor US President Barack Obama has been able to enforce any kind of settlement freeze in the Palestinian territories. Clinton speculated that Israel’s intransigence was due to caution over possible new violence in the West Bank.
“You often make decisions based on your own experience and history,” said Clinton. “And when the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon they got Hezbollah and 40,000 rockets and when they pulled out of Gaza they got Hamas and 20,000 rockets.”
Secretary Clinton was in Doha for a regional development conference.
Haaretz doesn’t often run columns by Uri Avnery, but last week they printed a piece of his entitled “Freedom of expression in Israel is a hollow pretension.” It starts with a well-deserved tribute to Jonathan Pollak, the courageous Israeli activist who has just begun serving three months in jail, officially for taking part in a protest bicycle ride in Tel Aviv during Operation Cast Lead, but actually for his longtime work as a leader of the Anarchists Against the Wall and an ally and advocate for the Palestinian grassroots resistance movement.
Avnery uses the prosecution of Pollak to make a larger point. “Israel is sliding down a slippery slope,” he writes. “A country that imprisons its Jonathan Pollaks will end up with jails filled with ‘opponents of the regime.’ We have seen that in other places − let’s hope we don’t see it here.”
Now, I happen to be an admirer of Avnery, even though I consider his brand of left Zionism morally and practically bankrupt. For decades he has bravely written and demonstrated in opposition to Israeli occupation and aggression, and for his trouble he has to endure intense hostility from most of his fellow Jews. I can only hope that when I reach his current age (87), I’m half as active and outspoken as he remains.
That said, I find the lines just quoted from his column appalling, because they are infected by the same Judeo-centrism that blinds most of Avnery’s compatriots to the realities around them.
In fact, it’s not just in “other places” that the jails are filled with “opponents of the regime” – that’s true in Israel today, and has been not just since 1967, but since the state was born in 1948 and martial law was imposed on the Palestinian population. As of Nov. 30, 2010, there were 5,741 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, according to data from the Israeli Prison Service compiled by B’tselem. That’s down from the more than 8,000 who were incarcerated two years ago, but still more than four times as many as were held in 2001. Overall, it is estimated that about a fifth of the Palestinian population has been imprisoned by the Israelis at one time or another since 1967. Since most (though by no means all) of those arrested are men and boys, one-fifth of the population translates into somewhere been a third and two-fifths of adult male Palestinians.)
Avnery, I’m sure, knows all this much better than I. Yet when he writes in Haaretz, he chooses, consciously or not, to focus only on the Jews: what troubles him is not the present reality of Palestinians by the thousands languishing in prison, but the specter of a similar fate befalling Jewish dissidents in the future.
“Let’s hope we don’t see it here,” he writes. But “it” is already there, just not for Avnery and his (and my) tribe. Let’s hope he and his readers do see that, and soon.
Here is the great Tata, an innovator of modern conga playing and Latin music. Filmed by Michelle White, a writer and editor at Timba.com. For those of you who want to find out about timba, a beautiful popular music from Cuba, log on to timba.com. Michelle has a very large library of films of many great artists available there.
Ankara – Once again Israel demonstrates its contempt for the world. This time the location is the Jerusalem quarter of Sheikh Jarrah and this time the occasion is the demolition of the Shepherd Hotel, the latest target in a process of demolition and rebuilding in the Zionist image that has been going on for the past six decades in all of Palestine.
The first actions of the occupying regime in East Jerusalem in 1967 was the destruction of the medieval Magharibah quarter, founded in the 12th century by a son of the great warrior Salah al Din al Ayyubi (Saladin), to make way for a ‘plaza’ in front of the western wall of the Haram al Sharif. Soon after it was the turn of the Fakhriya compound, the home of the sheikh of the Shafi’i school of Islamic law. A section of the Mamilla century, where the remains include the bones of the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad, was bulldozed to make way for a garden, a car park and lavatories. The rest has since been built over to make way for a ‘Museum of Tolerance’. The destroyed buildings were part of Jerusalem’s architectural and historical heritage. The people who lived there were driven into the street and left to fend for themselves as best as they could, a precedent for thousands of similar situations which were to follow. Had the awful chief rabbi of the Israeli ‘defence’ forces, Shlomo Goren, had his way, the destruction would have included the Aqsa mosque. Israel’s intention is to destroy Arab Jerusalem and replace it with Jewish Jerusalem. The difference is that Arab Jerusalem was a tolerant city. Jewish Jerusalem is not. It is a city of religious and secular fanatics, who have no consideration for any interests, laws or rights other than their own. The city has not known a worse period of history since it was captured by the Crusaders in the 11th century.
Now we have the destruction of the Shepherd Hotel, a landmark in Jerusalem since early in the 20th century. It was built as a home for the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Hussein, before he escaped from the British in 1937. He never lived there. The building was the home of Katy and George Antonius, the celebrated Palestinian Arab historian, and then was used as a base for British soldiers before being converted into a hotel. In 1967 the government of Israel declared the hotel ‘absentee property’ and used it for its own purposes before ‘selling it’ in 1985 to the American Jewish billionaire Irving Moskowitz, who made his money from casinos and gives a sizeable percentage of it to the Ateret Kohanim settler organisation. The US government theoretically opposes settlements but has never even attempted to put a spoke in Moskowitz’s wheel, which it could have done by removing the tax-free status of his ‘philanthropic’ donations to Israel. Of course, the Shepherd hotel was never sold. It could not be, seeing that it was not the property of the state of Israel in the first place. It remains the property of the Husseini family. The property which was ‘sold’ was stolen and under any laws except those of Israel’s, it remains the property of the original owner (ask your friendly local policeman for confirmation).
Beyond all of this, everything Israel has done in East Jerusalem since 1967 to bring about permanent change is illegal under international law. The movement of civilians into occupied territory is specifically prohibited under article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention (1949), one of many articles of the convention which Israel has violated. The declaration of the Greater Jerusalem municipality in 1967 is an inherent violation of international law. Nir Barkat has no more right to call himself the mayor of Jerusalem than any official administering any occupied territory anywhere at any time. Laws and regulations changing the status quo in East Jerusalem represent breaches of international law enabled by the government of Israel. Those of Barkat’s voters who live in East Jerusalem have no right to be there and therefore no right to vote. They are civilians who have been transferred into occupied territory. The whole situation is quite mad, but at least consistently mad.
The purpose of pulling down the Shepherd Hotel, all but the facade, which will be maintained to give the new structure some semblance of historical authenticity, is to built 20 luxury apartments for Jews only. This could not happen nowhere elsewhere without being described as open racism but in Israel it is no more than par for the course. Racism seeps out of the state and society more overtly and openly and defiantly every day. It is not accidental but structural. It is embedded in the ideology of Zionism and in the laws and regulations of the state and it is encouraged right from the top. Notwithstanding Netanyahu and his equally repugnant Foreign Minister are driving forward the whole ugly process. They are the head on the body of the stinking fish. Opinion polls show that Jews don’t want to live in the same street or apartment block as ‘Arabs’. Hundreds of fanatical rabbis sign petitions prohibiting the sale or rental of property to ‘Arabs’. Again, we should not be surprised, seeing that this was the principal article of the Jewish National Fund when it began trying to purchase land in Palestine early in the 20th century. ‘Arabs’ in East Jerusalem are beaten up by marauding gangs of Jewish youth. ‘Arab’ students in Safad – a Palestinian city taken over by the Zionists in 1948 as all other cities were – are threatened and abused by Jewish fundamentalists. Demonstrators protest against Jewish women going out with ‘Arab’ men. Even love cannot deflect their hate. Inside and outside the Knesset members of this less than august body threaten the ‘Arabs’ and threaten the Jews whose conscience does not allow them to remain silent witnesses any longer to the brutality and the racism of the state. So why should anyone be surprised by the decision to pull down a Palestinian-owned hotel and replace it with an apartment in which only Jews can live.
The only positive sign in this ugly climate is that the EU finally seems to be getting its act together. A document has been prepared calling on representatives of all EU governments to refuse to have anything to do with representatives of the government of Israel east of the so-called ‘green line’. They would not deal with them, they would not acknowledge them, they would not visit their offices, they would not use Israeli travel and tourist offices when making their plans and they would not accept to be protected under Israeli ‘security’ arrangements. The reasoning behind this document is that if there is ever to be a settlement, East Jerusalem must be the Palestinian capital, and that option is fast disappearing in the dust of Israeli bulldozers. Israel will be trying to work on the EU directly and through the US to compel it to drop this plan. Let’s hope that for once, the EU sticks to its guns and actually does something that opens up a little sliver of light in this gloomy situation.
– Jeremy Salt is associate professor in Middle Eastern History and Politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. Previously, he taught at Bosporus University in Istanbul and the University of Melbourne in the Departments of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science. Professor Salt has written many articles on Middle East issues, particularly Palestine, and was a journalist for The Age newspaper when he lived in Melbourne.
At least 77 people are confirmed dead after a commercial IranAir passenger jet crashed in Northern Iran. The plane was almost 40 years old. Israel/US initiated UN Security Council sanctions that have been strangling various elements of Iran’s economy for years seriously limit Iran’s ability to purchase new parts or aircraft. Proponents of sanctions such as Undersecretary of the Treasury for Financial and Terrorism Intelligence Stuart Levey argue sanctions will force Iran into complying with Israel/US demands. Of course, we have no actual evidence to support this claim in the case of Iran (except for the side-effect of innocent dead civilians) and we already know about the deadly effect of sanctions in Iraq, especially on Iraqi children.
We have criticized sanctions as being futile and counterproductive, in that America’s continued resort to multilateral and unilateral sanctions against Iran undermines whatever credibility U.S. offers of “engagement” might otherwise have. But, the Levey interview makes clear that the damaging effects of sanctions go beyond even this. Levey says that sanctions are meant to press Iran to engage in serious diplomacy with the United States and the international community. But, he has, in effect, created a sanctions policy which will be very difficult for the United States to walk back, even as part of a process of negotiation and prospective rapprochement. We suspect that this is precisely what Levey intends. That President-elect Obama moved so rapidly to retain Levey was a sad indicator of how internally contradictory and incoherent the Obama Administration’s Iran policy would turn out to be.
For a recent take on the Iran sanctions by Flynt Leverett click here.
It is dismaying that during this dark anniversary period two years after the launch of the deadly attacks on the people of Gaza – code-named Operation Cast Lead by the Israelis – that there should be warnings of a new massive attack on the beleaguered people of Gaza.
The influential Israeli journalist, Ron Ren-Yishai, writes on December 29, 2010, of the likely prospect of a new major IDF attack, quoting senior Israeli military officers as saying “It’s not a question of if, but rather of when,” a view that that is shared, according to Ren-Yishai, by “government ministers, Knesset members and municipal heads in the Gaza region”.
The bloody-minded Israeli Chief of Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi, reinforces this expectation by his recent assertion that, “as long as Gilad Shalit is still in captivity, the mission is not complete”. He adds with unconscious irony, “we have not lost our right of self-defence”.
More accurate would be the assertion, “we have not given up our right to wage aggressive war or to commit crimes against humanity”.
And what of the more than 10,000 Palestinians, including children under the age of 10, being held in Israeli prisons throughout occupied Palestine?
Red herrings
Against this background, the escalation of violence along the Gaza/Israel border should set off alarm bells around the world and at the United Nations.
Israel in recent days has been launching severe air strikes against targets within the Gaza Strip, including near the civilian-crowded refugee camp of Khan Younis, killing several Palestinians and wounding others.
Supposedly, these attacks are in retaliation for nine mortar shells that fell on open territory, causing neither damage nor injury. Israel also had been using lethal force against children from Gaza, who were collecting gravel from the buffer zone for the repair of their homes.
As usual, the Israeli security pretext lacks credibility. As if ever there was an occasion for firing warning shots in the air, it was here, especially as the border has been essentially quiet in the last couple of years, and what occasional harmless rockets or mortar shells have been fired, has taken place in defiance of the Hamas effort to prevent providing Israel with any grounds for the use of force.
Revealingly, in typical distortion, the Gaza situation is portrayed by Ashkenazi as presenting a pre-war scenario: “We will not allow a situation in which they fire rockets at our citizens and towns from ‘safe havens’ amid [their] civilians.”
With Orwellian precision, the reality is quite the reverse: Israel from its safe haven continuously attacks with an intent to kill a defenceless, entrapped Gazan civilian population.
Silence is complicity
Perhaps, worse in some respects than this Israeli war-mongering, is the stunning silence of the governments of the world, and of the United Nations.
World public opinion was briefly shocked by the spectacle of a one-sided war that marked Operation Cast Lead as a massive crime against humanity, but it has taken no notice of this recent unspeakable escalation of threats and provocations seemingly designed to set the stage for a new Israeli attack on the hapless Gazan population.
This silence in the face of the accumulating evidence that Israel plans to launch Operation Cast Lead 2 is a devastating form of criminal complicity at the highest governmental levels, especially on the part of countries that have been closely aligned with Israel, and also exhibits the moral bankruptcy of the United Nations system.
We have witnessed the carnage of ‘preemptive war’ and ‘preventive war’ in Iraq, but we have yet to explore the moral and political imperatives of ‘preemptive peace’ and ‘preventive peace.’ How long must the peoples of the world wait?
It might be well to recall the words of one anonymous Gazan that were uttered in reaction to the attacks of two years ago: “While Israeli armed forces were bombing my neighbourhood, the UN, the EU, and the Arab League and the international community remained silent in the face of atrocities. Hundreds of corpses of children and women failed to convince them to intervene.”
International liberal public opinion enthuses about the new global norm of ‘responsibility to protect,’ but not a hint that if such an idea is to have any credibility it should be applied to Gaza with a sense of urgency where the population has been living under a cruel blockade for more than three years and is now facing new grave dangers.
And even after the commission of the atrocities of 2008-09 have been authenticated over and over by the Goldstone Report, by an exhaustive report issued by the Arab League, by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, there is no expectation of Israeli accountability, and the United States effectively uses its diplomatic muscle to bury the issue, encouraging forgetfulness in collaboration with the media.
Truths
It is only civil society that has offered responses appropriate to the moral, legal, and political situation. Whether these responses can achieve their goals, only the future will tell.
The Free Gaza Movement and the Freedom Flotilla have challenged the blockade more effectively than the UN or governments, leading Israel to retreat, at least rhetorically, claiming to lift the blockade with respect to the entry of humanitarian goods and reconstruction materials.
Of course, the behavioural truth contradicts the Israeli rhetoric: sufficient supplies of basic necessities are still not being allowed to enter Gaza; the water and sewage systems are seriously crippled; there is not enough fuel available to maintain adequate electric power; and the damage from Operation Cast Lead remains, causing a desperate housing crisis (more than 100,000 units are needed just to move people from tents).
Also, most students are not allowed to leave Gaza to take advantage of foreign educational opportunities, and the population lives in a locked-in space that is constantly being threatened with violence, night and day.
This portrayal of Gaza is hardly a welcoming prospect for the year 2011. At the same time the spirit of the people living in Gaza should not be underestimated.
I have met Gazans, especially young people, who could be weighed down by the suffering their lives have brought them and their families since their birth, and yet they possess a positive sense of life and its potential, and make every use of any opportunity that comes their way, minimising their problems and expressing warmth toward more fortunate others and enthusiasm about their hopes for their future.
I have found such contact inspirational, and it strengthen my resolve and sense of responsibility: these proud people must be liberated from the oppressive circumstances that constantly imprisons, threatens, impoverishes, sickens, traumatises, maims, kills.
Until this happens, none of us should sleep too comfortably!
Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).
He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
I have to confess, we were not prepared. We were not even aware of the white-faced American mostly Jewish privileged skin in which we were living. Our bus left the tiny village of Mas’ha, heading past Ariel to the municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffo, or Jaffa as our Palestinian friends say. We had a yellow license plate, the seats were comfortable and the seat belts functional. Life was good.
In a smaller car, 3 Americans (one tall bearded guy who could be mistaken for a settler and one very blond woman) and 2 Palestinian women, university students, who had not successfully obtained permits to leave the West Bank and were passing as Americans, drove in front of us. One of them had done this several times before without getting caught. The other had never seen the Mediterranean Sea. You might call this an exercise in human smuggling Israeli style.
A private security company pulls the two vehicles over at a checkpoint near the settlement of Ariel for a “routine security check.” I wonder, is it the obvious Arab face of our driver or just part of the mechanics of control. Why would a group of non-settlers be driving down this highway? We watch with trepidation as our friends get out of the car and are led into the checkpoint. A smiling woman in uniform enters our bus, “Who is the tour guide?”
“Me (gulp).”
“What are you doing?”
“Tourism.”
“Where have you been?”
“Nablus.”
“What did you do?”
“We like old things, we toured the Old City.”
“Where did you stay?
I know I cannot say the Balata Refugee Camp. “Yaffa Guest House.”
“OK, passports, come with me.”
I step out of the bus and a snarling dog, a Belgium Malinois known for good scent detection, is chewing on the leash with its handler next to the bus. I discover that this little checkpoint, is fully equipped with x ray equipment, FAX machines, and computers. All our bags are x-rayed repeatedly as suspicious items like books, notebooks, tape recorders, etc. are removed and re x-rayed. The questioning keeps up and I have no idea if the group will keep its story straight. I am acutely aware that in my bag are BDS stickers (we all have them), materials about BDS, brochures from the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee and two copies of my book which would instantly get me in trouble. I keep turning them over so the title is not visible. And then there are pages of incriminating notes and hundreds of easily accessible photos. Usually before any security check, I “cleanse” my belongings and make the evidence difficult to find. I have been careless. The other wild dynamic I observe is the white, clearly Ashkenazi woman who is in charge, and the younger Ethiopian woman who receives her barking orders and unpacks and repacks our bags obediently: race and class in action.
As anxious as we are, our main focus is on the two Palestinians who are insisting they are from the US, have quickly made up names and fake histories, and are acting their parts flawlessly. They are aided by the performance of our group leader who plays the innocent but helpful Jewish tourist, so apologetic about the forgotten passports. The main problem is of course the issue of identities. Oh we forgot our passports in our hotel in Tel Aviv, we didn’t know we had to have them, etc, etc. A quick phone call to a fellow activist, Hello, so wonderful visiting you in Ariel, would you talk to security about our visit….The story is being fabricated in real time and the fear and anxiety in the group for the two brave Palestinian women is gripping us all. As we sit in the waiting room, we pretend we do not know each other as that would definitely blow our cover. While maybe I might face an angry security guard, a fine or deportation, these two women could get arrested and go to jail for the crime of visiting Jaffa with a group of activists.
The bus finally passes inspection and we have to drive off not knowing the fate of our friends. After a prolonged interrogation and much dancing around, I think the head security woman knew something was not right, they are turned back. We all cheer when we learned by cell phone that they sailed through Hizma checkpoint without being stopped.
When the group is finally reunited for a tour of Jaffa, one of the Palestinian women runs down the beach and into the water, soaking her boots and pants, crying, breathing in the smell of the sea for the first time in her life.
A Senate Finance Committee investigation into several high-profile TV ministries went badly off track when staffers recommended that Congress repeal a federal ban on partisan politicking by churches and other non-profit groups, says Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) announced in 2007 that committee staff would investigate six TV ministries that might have been abusing their non-profit status. A staff memo delivered to Grassley yesterday reports on the findings, including lack of cooperation from four of the six ministries being examined.
But the report also includes a recommendation that the Congress do away with the federal tax law ban on partisan political activity by non-profit groups.
“I have to wonder what these Senate staffers could possibly be thinking with this breathtakingly wrong-headed suggestion,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “It’s a sign that this investigation has gone seriously off course.”
Lynn noted that the investigation got under way because of allegations that several high-profile TV preachers were abusing non-profit status by living lavishly while raking in millions tax-free every year. Issues of church-based politicking had not been raised during the investigation.
Lynn said if the ministries were abusing non-profit status, then more accountability and oversight might be in order. Yet Grassley’s staffers have recommended doing away with the “no electioneering” rule, which would only turn these same ministries loose in the world of partisan politics to do what they will with little or no oversight.
“If these multi-million-dollar ministries are already misusing their donations for personal gain, imagine how much more dangerous they would be operating in the world of partisan politics,” said Lynn. “I don’t want to see Pat Robertson and other TV preachers using their tax-exempt empires to give backing to favored candidates, and I don’t think most other Americans want that either.”
Under current federal law, all non-profit groups holding a 501(c)(3) tax exemption are forbidden to intervene in partisan elections. This ensures that money donated to these groups is used for charitable purposes, not political ones.
Scrapping this rule, Lynn said, would open the door to the politicization of America’s religious organizations and wreak havoc with campaign-finance reporting laws.
Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.
On 13 December 2010, Israeli bulldozers, flanked by hundreds of municipal, riot squad and border police forces, demolished seven homes belonging to the Abu Eid family in Lydd, a city a few miles east of Tel Aviv.
The demolition, which took several hours, subsequently displaced 67 members of the entire family, including dozens of children, during one of the worst rainstorms of the season. Dozens of other Palestinian homes have been demolished over the years in Lydd.
Lydd is a so-called “mixed city,” as is the neighboring city of Ramle. Both are home to a significant population of Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship living in segregated areas, separated from the Jewish majority. Palestinian residents of these communities have been chronically discriminated against and brutalized by police.
Oren Ziv, a photographer with the ActiveStills photography collective who witnessed and photographed the demolition told The Electronic Intifada: “I’ve been documenting [home demolitions] for seven years and this was one of the biggest demolitions I’ve ever seen.” Ziv added that when the bulldozers finished demolishing the seventh house, children were starting to come back from school only to find their homes reduced to rubble.
The images included in this photostory were all taken by Ziv on the day of and the day after Israel’s destruction of the Abu Eid family’s homes in Lydd.
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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