Tag: Israeli Expansionism

J Street is the political home of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.

From: [email protected]
Sent: 5/31/2010 1:19:58 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: Shocking News Off Gaza

Like many of you, I am still absorbing the terrible news from the waters off of Israel and Gaza this morning. Going into this weekend, we knew there were few good outcomes likely from the latest effort to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip in the face of Israel’s determination to prevent it. But none of us expected the tragedy we woke up to this morning, a day on which we honor the memory of U.S. soldiers who served and died in prior wars. As one of our supporters wrote to me this morning, “how many more people need to die, how many more children deprived of a father or mother, before this conflict is settled and people can live in peace and security, while devoting their energy to building better lives?” With details still emerging and propaganda spinning furiously on all sides – one simple truth stands clear to us: today’s events are the natural outgrowth of the larger, ongoing failure to resolve this conflict peacefully through a two-state solution. It is up to our leaders to turn this crisis into a real push to end the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians now – otherwise events will spin even further out of control. We will have more to say on how in the days ahead. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts with us by responding directly to this message and we’ll put together a webpage for feedback and reactions from the J Street community later on in the week. Our statement reacting to the day’s events follows: J Street is deeply shocked and saddened by reports that at least 10 civilians have been killed and dozens more wounded (including Israeli soldiers) this morning as Israel intercepted a naval convoy bringing humanitarian supplies and construction materials to the Gaza Strip. We express our condolences to the families of those killed and we wish the injured a full and speedy recovery. We hope that leaders on all sides will take immediate steps to ensure that this incident does not escalate into a broader round of violence – in Israel, in Gaza, or in the region. There will undoubtedly be calls in the coming days for a UN investigation into today’s events. A credible, independent commission appointed by the Israeli government should provide the world with a full and complete report into the causes and circumstances surrounding the day’s events and establish responsibility for the violence and bloodshed. This shocking outcome of an effort to bring humanitarian relief to the people of Gaza is in part a consequence of the ongoing, counterproductive Israeli blockade of Gaza. J Street has been and continues to be opposed to the blockade – believing that there are better ways to ensure Israel’s security and to prevent weapons smuggling than a complete closure of the Gaza Strip. We do not know yet what the impact of today’s incident will be on the just-restarted peace process, on Israel’s relations with the international community, or on the health of Arab-Jewish relations within Israel itself. We do know, however, that today is one more nail in the coffin for hopes of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict peacefully and diplomatically and for preserving Israel’s Jewish and democratic character. We urge President Obama and other international and regional leaders to take today’s terrible news as an opportunity to engage even more forcefully in immediate efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We’ll be in touch, – Jeremy Jeremy Ben-Ami President J Street May 31, 2010 ———- J Street is the political home of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.

By HELENE COOPER and ETHAN BRONNER

Published: May 31, 2010

WASHINGTON — Israel’s deadly commando raid on Monday on a flotilla trying to break a blockade of Gaza complicated President Obama’s efforts to move ahead on Middle East peace negotiations and introduced a new strain into an already tense relationship between the United States and Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel canceled plans to come to Washington on Tuesday to meet with Mr. Obama. The two men spoke by phone within hours of the raid, and the White House later released an account of the conversation, saying Mr. Obama had expressed “deep regret” at the loss of life and recognized “the importance of learning all the facts and circumstances” as soon as possible.

While the administration’s public response was restrained, American officials expressed dismay in private over not only the flotilla raid, with its attendant deepening of Israel’s isolation around the world, but also over the timing of the crisis, which comes just as long-delayed American-mediated indirect talks between Israelis and Palestinians were getting under way.

Some foreign policy experts said the episode highlighted the difficulty of trying to negotiate peace with the Palestinian Authority without taking into account an element often relegated to the background: how to deal with Hamas-ruled Gaza. Hamas, the Islamist organization that refuses to recognize Israel’s existence, operates independently of the Palestinian Authority and has rejected any peace talks. Gaza has repeatedly complicated Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

“This regrettable incident underscores that the international blockade of Gaza is not sustainable,” Martin S. Indyk, the former United States ambassador to Israel, said Monday. “It helps to stop Hamas attacks on Israelis, but seriously damages Israel’s international reputation. Our responsibility to Israel is to help them find a way out of this situation.”

The Obama administration officially supports the Gaza blockade, as the Bush administration did before it. But Mr. Obama, some aides say, has expressed strong frustration privately with the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

At a time when the United States is increasingly linking its own national security interests in the region to the inability of Israelis and Palestinians to make peace, heightened tensions over Monday’s killings could deepen the divide between the Israeli government and the Obama administration just as Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu were trying to overcome recent differences.

“We’re not sure yet where things go from here,” one administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the diplomatic delicacy of the issue. The White House statement said that Mr. Obama “understood the prime minister’s decision to return immediately to Israel to deal with today’s events” and that they would reschedule their meeting “at the first opportunity.”

No matter what happens, foreign policy experts who advise the administration agreed that if Mr. Obama wanted to move ahead with the peace talks, preceded by the so-called proximity or indirect talks, the flotilla raid demonstrated that he may have to tackle the thornier issue of the Gaza blockade, which has largely been in effect since the takeover of Gaza by Hamas in 2007.

Since then, Israel, the United States and Europe have plowed ahead with a strategy of dealing with the Palestinian Authority, which has control over the West Bank, while largely ignoring Gaza, home to some 1.5 million Palestinians.

Gaza was left with a deteriorating crisis as Hamas refused to yield to Western demands that it renounce violence and recognize Israel.

“You can talk all you want about proximity talks, expend as much energy as Obama has, but if you ignore the huge thorn of Gaza, it will come back to bite you,” said Robert Malley, program director for the Middle East and North Africa with the International Crisis Group.

For the Obama administration, the first order of business may be figuring out a way to hammer out a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas that will end the blockade of Gaza. Several attempts in the past two years to reach such an agreement have come close, but ultimately failed, the last time when the two sides were unable to reach a consensus on the release of an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas, Gilad Shalit.

Mr. Indyk, the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, says that after things cool down, the administration needs to work on a package deal in which Hamas commits to preventing attacks from, and all smuggling into, Gaza. In return, Israel would drop the blockade and allow trade in and out. “That deal would have to include a prisoner swap in which Gilad Shalit is finally freed,” he said.

It was unclear whether the indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority would suffer an immediate delay. George J. Mitchell, the Obama administration envoy to the Middle East, was still planning to attend the Palestine Investment Conference in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Wednesday and Thursday.

The indirect talks involved American negotiators shuttling between the Israelis and Palestinians, and are widely viewed as a step back from nearly two decades of direct talks.

But their structure may actually serve the purpose of keeping them going. Mr. Mitchell and his staff have been shuttling between the two sides for more than a year, meaning that the preparation for indirect talks and the talks themselves do not look different from the outside. As a result, the American brokers could continue their shuttles despite the flotilla attack.

While the blockade of Gaza has been widely criticized around the world, Israeli officials say it has imposed political pressure on Hamas. The group has stopped firing rockets at southern Israel and is fighting discontent among the people in Gaza.

By ISABEL KERSHNER

Published: May 31, 2010

JERUSALEM — Israel faced intense international condemnation and growing domestic questions on Monday after a raid by naval commandos that killed nine people, many of them Turks, on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza.

Turkey, Israel’s most important friend in the Muslim world, recalled its ambassador and canceled planned military exercises with Israel as the countries’ already tense relations soured even further. The United Nations Security Council met in emergency session over the attack, which occurred in international waters north of Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was flying home after canceling a Tuesday meeting with President Obama. With street protests erupting around the world, Mr. Netanyahu defended the Israeli military’s actions, saying the commandos, enforcing what Israel says is a legal blockade, were set upon by passengers on the Turkish ship they boarded and fired only in self-defense. The military released a video of the early moments of the raid to support that claim. Israel said the violence was instigated by pro-Palestinian activists who presented themselves as humanitarians but had come ready for a fight. Organizers of the flotilla accused the Israeli forces of opening fire as soon as they landed on the deck, and released videos to support their case. Israel released video taken from one of its vessels to supports its own account of events. The Israeli public seemed largely to support the navy, but policy experts questioned preparations for the military operation, whether there had been an intelligence failure and whether the Israeli insistence on stopping the flotilla had been counterproductive. Some commentators were calling for the resignation of Ehud Barak, the defense minister. “The government failed the test of results; blaming the organizers of the flotilla for causing the deaths by ignoring Israel’s orders to turn back is inadequate,” wrote Aluf Benn, a columnist for Haaretz, on the newspaper’s Web site on Monday, calling for a national committee of inquiry. “Decisions taken by the responsible authorities must be probed.” The flotilla of cargo ships and passenger boats was carrying 10,000 tons of aid for Gaza, where the Islamic militant group Hamas holds sway, in an attempt to challenge Israel’s military blockade of Gaza. The raid and its deadly consequences have thrown Israel’s policy of blockading Gaza into the international limelight; at the Security Council on Monday voices were raised against the blockade, and the pressure to abandon it is bound to intensify. Israel had vowed not to let the flotilla reach the shores of Gaza, where Hamas, an organization sworn to Israel’s destruction, took over by force in 2007. Named the Freedom Flotilla, and led by the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement and a Turkish organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi, the convoy had converged at sea near Cyprus and set out on the final leg of its journey on Sunday afternoon. Israel warned the vessels to abort their mission, describing it as a provocation. The confrontation began shortly before midnight on Sunday when Israeli warships intercepted the aid flotilla, according to a person on one boat. The Israeli military warned the vessels that they were entering a hostile area and that the Gaza shore was under blockade. The vessels refused the military’s request to dock at the Israeli port of Ashdod, north of Gaza, and continued toward their destination. Around 4 a.m. on Monday, naval commandos came aboard the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, having been lowered by ropes from helicopters onto the decks. At that point, the operation seems to have gone badly wrong. Israeli officials say that the soldiers were dropped into an ambush and were attacked with clubs, metal rods and knives. An Israeli official said that the navy was planning to stop five of the six vessels of the flotilla with large nets that interfere with propellers, but that the sixth was too large for that. The official said there was clearly an intelligence failure in that the commandos were expecting to face passive resistance, and not an angry, violent reaction. The Israelis had planned to commandeer the vessels and steer them to Ashdod, where their cargo would be unloaded and, the authorities said, transferred overland to Gaza after proper inspection. The military said in a statement that two activists were later found with pistols taken from Israeli commandos. It accused the activists of opening fire, “as evident by the empty pistol magazines.” Another soldier said the orders were to neutralize the passengers, not to kill them. But the forces “had to open fire in order to defend themselves,” the navy commander, Vice Adm. Eliezer Marom, said at a news conference in Tel Aviv, adding, “Their lives were at risk.” At least seven soldiers were wounded, one of them seriously. The military said that some suffered gunshot wounds; at least one had been stabbed. Some Israeli officials said they had worried about a debacle from the start, and questioned Israel’s broader security policies. Einat Wilf, a Labor Party member of Parliament who sits on the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that she had warned Mr. Barak and others well in advance that the flotilla was a public relations issue and should not be dealt with by military means. “This had nothing to do with security,” she said in an interview. “The armaments for Hamas were not coming from this flotilla.” The fatalities all occurred aboard the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish passenger vessel that was carrying about 600 activists under the auspices of Insani Yardim Vakfi, an organization also known as I.H.H. Israeli officials have characterized it as a dangerous Islamic organization with terrorist links. Yet the organization, founded in 1992 to collect aid for the Bosnians, is now active in 120 countries and has been present at recent disaster areas like Haiti and New Orleans. “Our volunteers were not trained military personnel,” said Yavuz Dede, deputy director of the organization. “They were civilians trying to get aid to Gaza. There were artists, intellectuals and journalists among them. Such an offensive cannot be explained by any terms.” There were no immediate accounts available from the passengers of the Turkish ship, which arrived at the naval base in Ashdod on Monday evening, where nearly three dozen were arrested, many for not giving their names. The base was off limits to the news media and declared a closed military zone. The injured had been flown by helicopter to Israeli hospitals. At the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv, relatives of injured soldiers were gathered outside an intensive care unit when a man with a long beard, one of the wounded passengers, was wheeled by, escorted by military police. Organizers of the flotilla, relying mainly on footage filmed by activists on board the Turkish passenger ship, because all other communications were down, blamed Israeli aggression for the deadly results. The Israeli soldiers dropped onto the deck and “opened fire on sleeping civilians at four in the morning,” said Greta Berlin, a leader of the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement, speaking by phone from Cyprus on Monday. Israeli officials said that international law allowed for the capture of naval vessels in international waters if they were about to violate a blockade. The blockade was imposed by Israel and Egypt after the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007. Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, said Monday that the blockade was “aimed at preventing the infiltration of terror and terrorists into Gaza.” Despite sporadic rocket fire from the Palestinian territory against southern Israel, Israel says it allows enough basic supplies through border crossings to avoid any acute humanitarian crisis. But it insists that there will be no significant change so long as Hamas continues to hold Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured in a cross-border raid in 2006. The Free Gaza Movement has organized several aid voyages since the summer of 2008, usually consisting of one or two vessels. The earliest ones were allowed to reach Gaza. Others have been intercepted and forced back, and one, last June, was commandeered by the Israeli Navy and towed to Ashdod. This six-boat fleet was the most ambitious attempt yet to break the blockade.

Holy Land Churches Slam Israel’s Policy in Jerusalem

WAFA – Palestine News Agency
March 27 2010

Date : 27/3/2010 Time : 19:44

JERUSALEM, March 27, 2010 (WAFA)- In a press conference organized in
Jerusalem this morning by The National Christian Coalition in the Holy
Land, Representatives of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, Latin
Patriarchate, Armenian Patriarchate, Episcopal Church slammed Israel’s
policies in Occupied East Jerusalem.

President of the National Christian Coalition in the Holy Land,
Dimitri Diliani, assured local Christian popular support of the
Churches’ position rejecting Israeli unilateral colonial settlement
building in the Palestinian Territory Occupied in 1967, especially in
Jerusalem, in addition to the churches condemnation of violations
committed by the State of Israel against the Palestinian People’s
national, religious and cultural rights.

`As we approach Easter Holidays,’ Diliani added, `Israeli
discrimination appears clearly when we compare the treatment of Jews
celebrating Passover on one hand, and Christians celebrating Easter on
the other.’

Diliani said, `if what Israel practices against Christians is
practiced anywhere in the world against Jews, that place would be
boycotted by the International community at once.’ He wondered, ‘Are
the Holy Land Christians less worthy than other human beings around
the world?’

Bishop Aris Shirverian of the Armenian Patriarchate expressed his
church’s dismay at Israeli policies in Jerusalem, especially during
the holidays where thousands of pilgrims are prohibited from visiting
the Church of Holy Sepulcher.

Father Dr. Peter Madrous of Latin Patriarchate assured that one who
plants injustice will harvest animosity ‘and that is the reason for
the Israeli paranoia, Israel has planted injustice for years’. Father
Madrous stated that Palestinian Christians are peaceful people who
have the right to practice their religion without Israeli armed
interference.

Rev. Zahi Nasser of the Episcopal Church criticized Israeli claims to
Democracy given reality on the ground. He said that Israeli building
an Apartheid Wall and violating Palestinian people’s rights directly
contradict its claims to being a Democracy. Rev. Nasser said that
Jerusalem is suffering just like Jesus suffered at the hands of his
capturers.

Father Issa Misleh, Spokesman for the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate,
said that his church attempted to negotiate with the Israeli security
forces over the arrangements for the Holy Week, he added that these
negotiations faced major inflexibility by Israeli officials who
insisted on imposing their view of what should be taking place on our
holiday. Father Misleh rejected the Israelis excuse of security
saying that all throughout history Christians were not prohibited from
entering the same facilities under the same circumstances until Israel
decided that it should down play any Christian character of the holy
city of Jerusalem. He said that Christian and Muslim Palestinians
suffer from the same Israeli policies.