Respect or Disrespect?

Hello Friend,
A personal note from me this time, plus an excerpt from friend Marlin Vis.

I've been reading JESUS THROUGH MIDDLE EASTERN EYES, by Kenneth Bailey, who is very knowledgeable about the Hebrew and Aramaic languages, and the customs and traditions current during the time of Jesus of Nazareth. He shows how Jesus turns the tables on conventional habits of "hating" the Samaritans, how Jesus invites people to include outcasts and outsiders to the Messianic banquet; on how his whole life is poured out toward people who criticize, reject, and kill him (Parables of the Good Samaritan and the Great Banquet come quickly to mind).

This Jesus is hard to follow when it comes to Jews and Palestinians who keep resurrecting 1000 year old suspicions, hardness of heart and yes, even hatred, toward one another. It is this attitude of the heart that "God" wants to treat, it seems to me, to help us go beyond the "normal" attitudes of revenge, bitterness and death that results.

As usual, our friend Marlin Vis, gets at the heart of the matter in a recent post. He begins by sharing how his seven-year-old daughter Emma observes how many (church) people love her dad and affirm him. Ah, but I'll let him tell the story:

Children are paying attention as to how we treat one another. And when it is mainly church people that Emma sees me interacting with, well then...you get this, right? People who love Jesus love her Papa. She loves her Papa. Church people must be pretty good people if they love her Papa. Let other church people say "Amen!"

Here's why I bring this up: The most important matters in life are caught, not taught. I know you know this and have heard preachers preach this a million times. But we forget. So here's a little reminder: When Emma catches love between people who love Jesus and her Papa too, then she catches the love too. In fact, she basks in it. I started watching her more closely. When someone was loving on me, she was beaming--seriously--beaming. Then she'd look at me as if to say, "See, told you." I'd smile. She'd smile. It was our little secret.

I don't know what is the larger point in this story--the point beyond a mere moralism. Maybe there isn't one. Not long ago I sat on a big, green Israeli bus, filled with Jewish Israelis along with a handful of others--ex-pats like me, and a Palestinian or two. Sitting near one another was a pair of mothers, one Jewish Israeli and the other Muslim Palestinian. Each had several children. The Palestinian mother was on her way to the hospital on the west side of Jerusalem--the Jewish side. I watched the children watch their mothers as the two women glared at each other with such obvious hatred and loathing. Hatred is passed on from one generation to the next. Long before formal education begins, the children on both sides have caught the hatred virus, and killing this killer-bug is about as difficult as killing cancer after it has metastasized.
God, it's sad. And God is sad.

Friends, let's look for ways to reaching out to the outsider, the outcast that "everybody" else excludes. It's "easy" (as our Leader said), to care about those who care about us. It is a more "godly" thing to love "enemies" who don't care about us at all.

Let's get into someone else's shoes and realize why people feel the way they do and get to root causes. There will be no "progress" in Isr/Pal unless and until there is a move toward mutual respect for one another, repentance over past disrespectful behavior and a willingness to "set things right", whatever the personal cost. When we continue wallowing in our "victimhood" (how grievously we have been offended against), and withhold openness to "the other" and nurse the grievances, there will be no "peace". Conversely, when we feel the pain of "the other", say "I am sorry" for any way we may have contributed to it, treating one another with respect, the relationship changes, for the better.

(Let Marlin and Sally escort you to visit with "reconcilers" over there, and you'll be converted to a "better way" yourself). Your servant, John Kleinheksel

An Enlightened Israeli Evaluates P.M. Netanyahu's Speech

Dear Friend,
Akiva Eldar is a correspondent for Ha'aretz, the Israeli newspaper. Here is his evaluation of Netanyahu's speech last night.
Read it and weep for the lost opportunity to engage in serious conversation with President Obama's vision of a "freeze" on Israeli settlements, and for peace with justice in Isr/Pal. JRK

Netanyahu, Mideast peace and a return to the Axis of Evil



Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz Correspondent
Ha'aretz -- Monday - June 15, 2009


The prime minister's speech last night returned the Middle East to the days of George W. Bush's "axis of evil." Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a patriarchal, colonialist address in the best neoconservative tradition: The Arabs are the bad guys, or at best ungrateful terrorists; the Jews, of course, are the good guys, rational people who need to raise and care for their children. In the West Bank settlement of Itamar, they're even building a nursery school.

No empathy for the refugees from Jaffa who lost their entire world, not a word for the Muslim connection to Jerusalem - neither a fragment of a quote from the Koran, nor a line of Arabic poetry.

Netanyahu's provincial remarks were not intended to penetrate the hearts of the hundreds of millions of Al Jazeera viewers in the Muslim world. Instead, he sought to appease Tzipi Hotovely, the settler Likud lawmaker, and make it possible to live peaceably with the settler foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman. Netanyahu's demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people didn't even leave him an opening for forging reconciliation with the Arab citizens in the country.

The prime minister's declaration that Jerusalem will remain the "undivided capital" of Israel - only Israel - slammed the door before the entire Muslim world. And his Hebron is solely the city of the Jewish patriarchs; the Arabs have no such rights at all. The Palestinians can have a state, but only if those foreign invaders show us they know how to eat with a fork and knife. Actually, without a knife.

The demilitarization of the Palestinian state was mentioned in the Clinton guidelines, the Taba understandings and the Geneva accord, as was the right of return to Palestine, not Israel. The difference between these documents and the Bar-Ilan address is not only that the former recognized the Palestinians' full rights to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The real difference lies in the tone - in the degrading and disrespectful nature of Netanyahu's remarks. That's not how one brings down a wall of enmity between two nations, that's not how trust is built.

It's hard to believe that a single Palestinian leader will be found who will buy the defective merchandise Netanyahu presented last night.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1093048.html

Uri Avenery to P.M. Netanyahu

Dear Friend,
Here is what Uri Avnery says about P.M. Netanyahu's effort (in tomorrow's BIG speech) to craft a middle road between his right wing settler supporters and the demands of President Obama that settlements be "frozen". We'll hear all about it as the new week unfolds. Settling conquered territory is as old as the Assyrians putting their people into Samaria in the 8th BCE.

Especially since 1967, Israel has basically been given a free pass to do the same with Arab Palestinian territory. P. M. Netanyahu's heart and soul is committed to perpetuating this historic drive. Up against a (seemingly) determined US President who is asking for (expecting) a different operating model will be interesting to observe for the next two or three years. Your servant, JRK ("There is no peace without justice; this is no justice without love".)

Uri Avnery
June 13, 2009

Obama won’t wink back
REMEMBER DOV WEISGLASS? The one who said that peace must wait until the Palestinians become Finns? Who talked about preserving the peace process in formaldehyde?

However, Weisglass will mainly be remembered less for his mouth than his eyes. Weisglass is the King of the Wink.

This week, Binyamin Netanyahu called him in for urgent consultations. He needed a lesson in "working with the eyes" (as cheating is called in modern Hebrew slang).
Winking is the main instrument of the settlement enterprise. The wink is the real father of the settlements. The settlers wink. The government winks. Officials don’t issue a permit, but wink. They say no, and wink. Wink and build. Wink and connect to electricity and water. Wink and send soldiers to protect the outposts, and also remove the Palestinians from adjoining fields and olive groves.

The wink is also the main instrument of Israeli diplomacy. Everything is done by winking. The Americans demand a freeze of the settlements – and wink. The Israelis agree to the freeze – and wink back.

Trouble is that there is no printed sign for a wink. The computer has no standard symbol for it. So Hillary Clinton could honestly assert this week that no wink is documented in any agreement signed by the US and Israel. Not in any memorandum of oral exchanges. So there are no understandings. No mention at all of a wink in any file or document.

Worse: it seems that in Afro-American culture the wink is unknown. When Netanyahu came to the White House and winked – Barack Obama did not respond. Winked again, and again Obama did not understand. Winked and winked and winked until his face ached – nothing. Obama thought, perhaps, that Netanyahu had a nervous tic. Really embarrassing.

What can you do with someone who is no winkee? How, for God’s sake, does one get him to wink back?

THAT IS the main problem confronting the Prime Minister of Israel.

Tomorrow he is going to deliver a Great Speech. Not just great, Historic. His resounding response to Obama’s speech in Egypt. Everything has been done to put the two events on the same level. Obama spoke at Cairo University? Netanyahu will speak at Bar-Ilan University, the religious right-wing institution that nurtured the murderer of Yitzhak Rabin.

But that is the only similarity. Obama outlined the contours of a New Middle East? Netanyahu will outline the contours of the Old Middle East. Obama spoke about a future of peace, cooperation and mutual respect? Netanyahu will speak about a past of Holocaust, violence, hatred and fears.

Netanyahu’s biggest problem is to make believe that the old is new. To make yesterday’s tired old clichés sound like the rallying call for tomorrow. But how to do that without using winks, facing a person who does not understand winks?

How to speak about the "natural increase" of the settlers without winking? How to speak about a Palestinian state without winking? How to speak about speeding up peace negotiations with the Palestinians without winking?

The most expert tailors have been called for advice about the emperor’s new clothes. Ministers and Knesset members and professors and magicians and, of course, Shimon Peres.

All of them rallied to the call: to tailor a beautiful robe, fashionable trousers and a colorful tie – such as only the very wisest of people will see.

ONCE WE could rely on the Holocaust. We said Holocaust, and the room fell silent. We could oppress the Palestinians, steal their lands, set up settlements, scatter checkpoints everywhere like the droppings of flies, blockade Gaza and so on. When the Goyim opened their mouths to protest, we cried "Holocaust" – and the words froze on their lips.

So what to do with someone who himself speaks incessantly about the Holocaust and denounces its deniers? A person who actually bothers to visit a concentration camp and drags with him "Mr. Holocaust", Elie Wiesel, in person?

No wonder that our Prime Minister tosses and turns in his bed and finds no rest for his soul. Netanyahu without the Holocaust is like the Pope without the cross. Netanyahu without a "second Holocaust" – how can he speak about Iran? What can he say about the Existential Danger, which prevents us from dismantling cabins in Judea and sheds in Samaria?

(Thank God for small mercies: at least Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, our main asset in the region, has been reelected.)

SO HOW will Netanyahu pitch his Historic Speech?

He will have to try and hammer a square peg into a round hole. To say Yes when he means No. That is what his predecessors did. Ehud Barak did it. Ariel Sharon did it. Ehud Olmert did it. With one big difference: they did it with a sly wink. Netanyahu will have to do it with a straight face.

He must speak about Two States without mentioning two states. To speak about freezing the settlements while building work there is proceeding at full speed.
In the past, there were many ways of going on with the settlement. "The Jewish brain produces patents", as a popular Hebrew song goes. New neighborhoods were built under the pretense that they were simply an extension of existing ones – at a distance of ten meters, or a hundred, or a thousand or two, as long as they were in the range of visibility. Or it was said that the building activity was taking place within the boundaries of existing settlements – helped by the fact that the municipal area of Maaleh Adumin settlement, for example, is officially as big as all of Tel-Aviv.

One can also brandish George W. Bush’s famous letter, in which he expressed his opinion that in any future peace agreement "existing Israeli population centers" should be joined to Israel. But Bush did not define the "population centers" nor outline their borders. And he certainly did not say that we are allowed to build there before the signing of a final agreement, including possible swaps of territory. Not that he had any authority to decide such matters in the first place.

One can also talk about "natural increase". No problem: women can be turned into factories for children, preferable twins and triplets. Also, one can adopt children from the age of 1 to 101. After all, if there is a new child in the family, one needs to build another room, another house, another neighborhood.

(By the way, "natural increase" is, of course, a strictly Jewish matter. Arabs have no natural increase. Their increase is unnatural.)

AND WHAT about the State of Palestine, as projected by Obama?

Israeli TV did a beautiful job this week, when it reminded us what Netanyahu said only six years ago: "A Palestinian state – NO!" because "Yes to a Palestinian state means No to the Jewish state."

Netanyahu seems to think that it is only a matter of presentation. He can mention that in the past we already accepted the Road Map, which contains something about a Palestinian state. True, we made the acceptance conditional on 14 "reservations" which castrated it and turned it into a meaningless scrap of paper. But perhaps Obama will be content with that.

To sum up: no need to talk about Two States when they have already been mentioned in the Road Map (its name be cursed), which we declared dead a long time ago, but which we now consider alive again, and where something like two states is mentioned, so there is no need to repeat it - enough to allude to it in an oblique way.
But what to do if, in spite of everything, the Americans insist that Netanyahu emit the two words "Palestinian state" from his own mouth? If there is no way out, Netanyahu may mutter them somehow, silently adding phooey-phooey-phooey and loudly adding qualifications that empty them of all content. That is what Barak did, then Sharon, then Olmert.

The declarations of Tzipi Livni and her people produce the impression that they are stuck at the same point. They, too, seem to believe that we can go on speaking about two states and doing the very opposite, about freezing the settlements and go on building there. No new message is coming from this camp, but only criticism of Netanyahu for not changing his style to please Obama.

BUT WHAT Obama is asking for is not a new formulation of old slogans. He demands the acceptance of the principle of Two States as a basis for concrete and rigorous action: achieving an agreement on the establishment of a state called Palestine, with its capital in East Jerusalem, without settlements and all the other paraphernalia of the occupation.

He demands the start of negotiations forthwith, so that within two or three years – before the end of his current term – real peace will be established, a peace that will ensure the existence and security of "the Jewish state of Israel" (as George Mitchell put it this week) and the Arab state of Palestine, side by side.

All this as part of a new Greater Middle Eastern order, from Pakistan to Morocco, and as a part of a world-wide vision.

Against this demand, no winking a la Weisglass or verbal gimmicks a la Peres will be of any avail. In tomorrow’s speech, Netanyahu will have to choose between three alternatives: a head-on collision with the United States, a total change in his policy, or resignation.

The era of winks is over.

The Work of Reconciliation, Again

Friend,
Here is a prayer update from our friends at MUSALAHA, JRK

Dear Friends,

We are at a most busy and fruitful time of the year. God has provided us the opportunity for many outlets of reconciliation building through summer camps, follow-ups, women’s groups, seminars and conferences. Below is a report from a women’s conference we had for our new women’s group.

Last month, Musalaha brought a group of 20 Israeli and Palestinian women to Cyprus to begin the journey of reconciliation. Our time in Cyprus was blissful, peaceful, productive. We learned about listening, the stages of reconciliation and the character of a reconciler. The time was fruitful, filled with laughter and fellowship.

In reflecting about the trip upon my return, some of the things that stand out most were my experiences traveling to Cyprus and returning home. Leaving Israel was quite an ordeal. Our mixed group of women was questioned, delayed, looked at suspiciously. “What could Israelis and Palestinians possibly have to do with one another?,” was the unasked question.

All this was soon forgotten as we were finally allowed to board our plane. For four days, we were visitors in Cyprus. There was no ever present security, no daily talk of existential threat or the delays and frustrations of checkpoints. No one looked at us strangely, stopped us, or asked us questions with skepticism. We were able to speak freely, share with each other from our hearts and experiences, and learn from one another.

And then we came home very early in the morning on May 5. As my taxi driver took me home, he told me he lived in the same neighborhood as I…and then he digressed into racial slurs and bigoted comments about the Arab neighborhoods and communities bordering ours. And my heart sank, because I knew I was home.

Recently I read a short parable that I found provoking, motivating and encouraging.
One day, a young man has a dream. He lives in a world in which following Christ is illegal. He is summoned to court, and as he stands before a judge he sees the evidence laid out against him. There are pictures of him attending religious events and services, religious books and music taken from his home, journal entries in which he discussed his faith, and his well-worn Bible attesting to his daily reading of that sacred text. He sits in fear, awaiting the verdict that would bring either imprisonment or death. Denying his faith crosses his mind, but he tries to push it away, pray and maintain resolve. After some time, the judge summons him to stand before him, and declares him not guilty. His fear dissipates into immediate relief, but as the verdict sinks in, he becomes indignant, and angry. He demands an explanation for the rendering of such a verdict. The dream ends with the judge’s words: “The court is indifferent towards your Bible reading and religious meetings; it has no concern for worship with words and a pen. Continue to develop your theology, and use it to paint pictures of a comforting world in your mind. We have no interest in such church-going artists who spend their time creating mental images of a better world. We exist for those who would lay down that brush, and their life, in a Christ-like endeavor to create such a world.”[1]

Herein lays the challenge and vocation. Work for reconciliation is met with skepticism, wariness, fear, suspicion and disbelief. And many times, it’s quite tiring. But this is our challenge. This is our vocation. It’s far too easy to be ignorant and hole up within our respective communities, imagining that we are wronged and in the right, holding tightly to our favorite prejudices. But in encountering the other, we grow and learn and change – speaking peace, passing the peace, and creating spaces for peace to happen. And so we endeavor to create such a world.


By Ambreen Tour
Musalaha Administrator

Barack Obama on Isr/Pal Principles

Dear Friend,

Here are the exact remarks President Obama spoke in Cairo, Egypt earlier today in regards to Israelis/Palestinians. Very interesting that they are the second of seven "issues of tensions between America and the Muslim Middle East".

In other words, the addressing and resolving of the Isr/Pal conflicts are seen in the context of improved relationships among US and all our Islamic (and Israeli) neighbors in the Middle East. It is further interesting that he chose to come to Saudi Arabia and Egypt before visiting Israel/Palestine, as if to underscore the larger context of the Isr/Pal matter. It is an Arab state/American issue, not just an issue of Israelis and Palestinians.

Therefore, Israelis and Palestinians must see it too, in the larger context of respect for human rights that each and all of us are called upon to accord to one another, respectful of the deeply human nature of our fears, aspirations, grievances and present realities.

I think we must support our President in his call for a "new beginning", a "remaking" of the region according to the Talmud/Torah, Qur'an, and "Bible" expectation that we "do to others as we would have them to do us". (He also has some pointed things to say in re "religious freedom" (i.e., not only Muslims free to express themselves religiously, as in the US, but Christians freely to express themselves religiously, as is NOT the case in many places in the ME).

Now, we all have to put the right actions into place, consistent with a reiteration of these intentions. JRK


The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world.

America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed - more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction - or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews - is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It is easy to point fingers - for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel's founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.

That is in Israel's interest, Palestine's interest, America's interest, and the world's interest. That is why I intend to personally pursue this outcome with all the patience that the task requires. The obligations that the parties have agreed to under the Road Map are clear. For peace to come, it is time for them - and all of us - to live up to our responsibilities.

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist.

At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.
Israel must also live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society. And just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel's security; neither does the continuing lack of opportunity in the West Bank. Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people must be part of a road to peace, and Israel must take concrete steps to enable such progress.

Finally, the Arab States must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities. The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems. Instead, it must be a cause for action to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their state; to recognize Israel's legitimacy; and to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past.

America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs. We cannot impose peace. But privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away. Likewise, many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state. It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true.

Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed. All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.

The Facts on the Ground

Dear Friend,
Here is the issue in a nutshell. Thanks to the NY Times for today's article by Isabel Kershner.

The gradual take over of previously occupied Palestinian land and homes has and will continue, despite US appeals for a "HALT". This is the reality. One state, two state discussion is irrelevant to the more underlying issue. Enfranchisement. Self-determination of people. The right to live, vote, work, build homes, raise families by ALL parties in the land. First class vs. second class status. Occupier vs. occupied. Oppressor vs. oppressed. Treating "The Other" with respect, giving each their "due" as fellow human beings; acknowledging each parties existence and place in the sun on God's good earth.

As long as the Israelis have the attitude: "This is our land, you no longer belong here", there will be insoluble problems between the Israelis and the Arab Palestinians. These are the underlying issues as always. Your servant, JRK

June 2, 2009
Israel and U.S. Can’t Close Split on Settlements

By ISABEL KERSHNER

KFAR TAPUAH, West Bank — Thirty Israeli couples are on a waiting list to move into the Kfar Tapuah settlement, which teems with children on the hilltops south of Nablus. Some on the list grew up here. But there is not an apartment available for sale or rent, or even a stifling trailer to be had.

If Israel built all the housing units already approved in the nation’s overall master plan for settlements, it would almost double the number of settler homes in the West Bank, according to unpublished official data provided to The New York Times.

The decision of whether to build, and how much, goes to the heart of the tensions between the administrations of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Obama, an unaccustomed and no-budge conflict between Israel and the United States. Washington is standing firm against any additional settlement construction in the West Bank, including what Israel argues is necessary to accommodate what it terms “natural growth.”

That term has been defined vaguely by Israeli officials, meaning for some that settlements should expand to accommodate only their own children. But Mr. Netanyahu, of the conservative Likud Party, made his own wider position clear on Monday. He said that while Israel would not allow new settlements and that some small outposts would be removed, building within the confines of established settlements should go on.

Israel “cannot freeze life in the settlements,” he said, describing the American call as an “unreasonable” demand.

And in fact, whatever the American demands and Israeli definitions, the reality is that no full freeze seems likely.

The issue is, in part, political: Mr. Netanyahu is trying to hold together a fractious coalition, including parties that favor settlement building and oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state. He must contend with an aggressive settler movement, emboldened by support from Israeli governments for decades and determined to continue building, if necessary through unofficial means.

“It is important for the world to know we won’t stop,” said Doron Hillel, 29, the settlement council head and one of the first children born here after it was founded about 30 years ago. “These decrees make things difficult, but they strengthen us. We will continue to build and grow.”

A partial freeze has been in place for several years, but settlers have found ways around the strictures. Twenty trailer homes have been assembled in Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, for young families over the past year. The Samaria Council, which represents settlers in the northern West Bank, has brought in 150 trailers. Thousands of permanent houses have been illegally constructed within existing settlements, and settlers have recently bulldozed new roads through fields to link up the outposts.

Critics argue that successive Israeli governments have turned a blind eye to this construction and that they have contributed more broadly to settlement growth.

The settlers’ annual population growth, at 5.6 percent, far outstrips the Israeli average of 1.8 percent. But official data from the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel shows that while about two-thirds of that is a “natural” increase, as defined by settler births in relation to deaths, one-third stems from migration. There is also a disproportionately high level of state-supported building in the settlements compared with most regions of Israel.

And many critics of the settlement movement dispute the notion that settlers’ children have an absolute right to continue living in their parents’ settlement.

“A newborn does not need a house,” said Dror Etkes of Yesh Din, an Israeli group that fights for the rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories. “It is a game the Israeli government is playing” to justify construction, he said.

Underlining the competing pressures on Mr. Netanyahu, extremist settlers rioted on Monday in various parts of the northern West Bank, stoning Arab vehicles, burning tires and setting fields alight, according to a witness and the police. They were protesting the government’s recent actions against some tiny outposts. Several Palestinians were wounded. Six Israeli settlers and a rightist member of Parliament were arrested and later released.

The Israeli population of the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem, has tripled since the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort started in the early 1990s, and it now approaches 300,000. The settlers live among 2.5 million Palestinians in about 120 settlements, which much of the world considers a violation of international law, as well as in dozens of outposts erected without official Israeli authorization. Israel argues that the settlement enterprise does not violate the law against transferring populations into occupied territories.

According to the newly disclosed data, about 58,800 housing units have been built with government approval in the West Bank settlements over the past 40 years. An additional 46,500 have already obtained Defense Ministry approval within the existing master plans, awaiting nothing more than a government decision to build.

The data began to be compiled in 2004 by a retired brigadier general, Baruch Spiegel, at the request of the defense minister at the time, Shaul Mofaz. The Defense Ministry has long refused to make the data public, but it has since been leaked and obtained by nongovernmental groups. Mr. Etkes analyzed the master plans in the Spiegel data, together with a colleague from Bimkom, an Israeli group that focuses on planning and social justice.

Under international pressure, construction in the settlements has slowed but never stopped, continuing at an annual rate of about 1,500 to 2,000 units over the past three years. If building continues at the 2008 rate, the 46,500 units already approved will be completed in about 20 years.

In Kfar Tapuah, a group of young Israelis who grew up here decided about six years ago that when they married, they would stay. The population has more than doubled since then, to 150 families from 60. Like in other West Bank settlements, nobody counts individuals here: the rate of new births makes that impossible.

Revitalized from within, the community also attracted young couples from other settlements and from cities in Israel who were seeking a lifestyle that combined relatively cheap suburban comfort with the national-religious ideal of settling the land.

Kfar Tapuah has a reputation as an extremist settlement, having become a base for the followers of the virulently anti-Arab Rabbi Meir Kahane after he was assassinated in 1990. It now seems overrun by young children. A $150,000 state-of-the-art playground recently went up, a second kindergarten just opened and a third is planned.

“This is our land from the beginning of days,” said Aviva Herzlich, 67, most of whose 10 children and more than 40 grandchildren live in and around the settlement. “We do not have anywhere else.”

Mutual Respect is What is Being Asked

Dear Friend,
Jeff Halper is always a good read. When you hear Netanyahu asking the Palestinians to "recognize" the Jewishness of the Zionist state, he is really asking for respect. Palestinians also ask for "respect", an admission from Israelis that they "exist", side by side with Jews, who have first class status and Palestinians, who have second class status. It is not symmetrical. It has always been one-sided. "Where is the love"? is the question. When will the Israelis begin to hear the anguished cries of the oppressed and occupied, the disenfranchised and maligned? (Here I go preaching again). Read Jeff Halper for yourself. JRK

NETANYAHU CHOOSES WAREHOUSING
Jeff Halper

May 25, 2009


Would Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu say the magic words “two states” after his meeting with President Obama? All Israel held its breath. (He didn’t). The gap between the two is wider than those words could ever have bridged, however. Obama, I believe, sincerely – perhaps urgently – seeks a resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a pre-condition, he understands, to getting on with larger, more pressing Middle Eastern issues. Netanyahu, who rejects even the notion of a Palestinian mini-state as grudgingly accepted by Barak, Sharon and Olmert, is seeking a permanent state of “warehousing” in which the Palestinians live forever in a limbo of “autonomy” delineated by an Israel that otherwise encompasses them. The danger, to which we all should be attuned, is that the two sides might compromise on apartheid – the establishment of a Palestinian Bantustan that has neither genuine sovereignty nor economic viability.


For his part, Obama seems to understand the strong linkage between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the hostility towards the West so prevalent in the Muslim world. His administration has been quite candid about the need to move forward on Palestine in order to deal with the Iranian nuclear issue, and his ability to withdraw from Iraq, stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan and deal with the challenge political Islam poses to the “moderate” Arab states also depend, to a meaningful degree, on forging a new relationship with the Muslim world , which requires an end to the Israeli Occupation.


Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman have already presented the outlines of their new “reframing” of the conflict:


(1) The Iran threat is preeminent, uniting the US and Israel into a strategic alliance and completely overshadowing the Palestinian issue;


(2) Such “slogans” (as Lieberman characterized them) as occupation, settlements, settlers, land for peace and even the “simplistic” two-state solution must be abandoned in order to “go forward” according to a new slogan: “economy, security, stability” – meaning improving the Palestinian economy while ensuring Israel’s security. The stability that results (Lieberman invokes the “stable” situation between the Greek and Turkish populations of Turkish-occupied Cyprus as his model) will then somehow facilitate some future and vague peace process;


(3) Israel will continue to expand its “facts on the ground.” Just the day before the Netanyahu/Obama meeting the building of a new settlement was announced – Maskiot, in the Jordan Valley, the first settlement to be officially established in 26 years. Two days after returning from Washington, Netanyahu further declared: “United Jerusalem is Israel's capital. Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided.” It then announced that it will continue building within the “settlement blocs.” Just a month before, on the day Hillary Clinton and George Mitchell were to arrive in the country, the Israeli government announced that it would conduct massive demolitions of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem. This “in your face” approach signals the Administration that Israel is not about to accept dictates, as the Minister for Strategic Affairs Moshe Ya’alon put it, testing just how assertive Obama will be.


(4) Both the US and Israel seek broader involvement in the peace process by the Arab states, but once again, Israel has its own particular spin on that. While the US is formulating a comprehensive approach to peace and stabilization in the entire Middle East region (which King Abdullah of Jordan calls a “57-state solution” whereby the entire Arab and Muslim worlds would recognize Israel in return for a genuine end to the Occupation), Israel’s formula of putting “economic peace” before any politically defined peace agreement tries to create a state of normalization between Israel and the Arab/Muslim world that would relegate the Palestinian issue indefinitely to the back-burner. Given the record of the so-called “moderate” Arab states, and given the opposition to a rising Iran they share with Israel, their involvement does not necessarily bode well for the Palestinians.


Then there all the mechanisms for delaying or undermining negotiations:


· Creating insurmountable political obstacles, such as the demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” Netanyahu well knows that the Palestinians will not accede to that, the fact that such recognition would prejudice the equal status of Palestinian citizens of Israel, a full 20% of the Israeli population, being an important consideration. The fear of further ethnic cleansing (“transfer” in Israeli parlance) is a real one. When she was Foreign Minister, Tsipi Livni stated clearly that future of Israel’s Arab citizens is in a future Palestinian state, not in Israel itself. And remember, last year the Israeli Parliament passed a law requiring a majority of two-thirds to approve any change in the status of Jerusalem, an impossible threshold. Similar legislation, supported by the government, will be passed on other issues such as dismantling settlements and ratifying any peace agreement.


· Delayed implementation. OK, the Israeli government says, we’ll negotiate, but the implementation of any agreement will wait on the complete cessation of any resistance on the part of the Palestinians. “Security before peace” is the way the Israeli government frames it. Since, however, there has never been any indication that Israel would agree to a viable Palestinian state, and since Israel views any resistance, armed or non-violent, as a form of terrorism, “security before peace” actually means “stop all resistance and you may get a state.” The catch here is that if Palestinians do stop their resistance they are lost. Without Palestinian pressure, Israel and the international community would lack any motivation for making the concessions necessary for a genuine solution. And even if an agreement is reached, “security before peace” means that it will not be implemented until Israel unilaterally decides the conditions are ripe. This so-called “shelf agreement” erects yet another insurmountable obstacle before any peace process.


· Declaring a “transitional” Palestinian state. If all else fails – actually negotiating with the Palestinians or relinquishing the Occupation not being an option – the US, at Israel’s behest, can manage to skip Phase 1 of the Road Map and go directly to Phase 2, which calls for a “transitional” Palestinian state before, in Phase 3, its actual borders, territory and sovereignty are agreed upon. This is the Palestinians’ nightmare: being locked indefinitely in the limbo of a “transitional” state. For Israel, such a situation is ideal, since it offers the possibility of imposing borders and expanding into the Palestinian areas unilaterally while seeming to respect the Road Map process.


Needless to say, all of this is to avoid a real two-state solution, the very idea of which is anathema to the Likud-led government. More than a decade ago Netanyahu set out his vision of Palestinian self-determination: somewhere between “state-minus and autonomy-plus.” The best, if bleakest term for what Israel is intending for the Palestinians is warehousing, a permanent state of control and suppression in which the victims disappear from view and their situation, emptied of all political content, becomes a non-issue.


Although the Obama Administration may truly desire viable two-state solution and even understands all Israel’s tricks, it is also clear that without significant pressure it cannot be achieved. And here is where the real problem arises. Israel’s trump card has always been Congress, where it enjoys virtually unanimous bi-partisan support. And Obama’s own Democratic Party, which received almost 80% of the Jewish vote in 2008, has always been far more “pro-Israel” than the Republicans. It may well be that Obama and Mitchell will try to take American policy in a new and more assertive direction and the leaders of his own party will balk, fearful of not being re-elected.


In this case, the “compromise” between the desire to resolve the conflict and the inability to move Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories so that a viable Palestinian state may emerge may be nothing less than apartheid. The difference between a viable Palestinian state and a Bantustan is one of details. Already signs are that the Obama Administration will allow Israel to keep its major settlement blocs, including a “Greater” Jerusalem, and prevent the Palestinians from having sovereign borders with the neighboring Arab states. Since few appreciate the crucial meaning of such details, Israel believes that it can finesse an apartheid situation in the guise of a two-state solution. Over the past decades the job of civil society has been to force governments to fulfill their responsibilities and enter into a political process that will actually lead to a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Now that that process is upon us, our task is now to keep it honest.
(Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at .)


The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions is based in Jerusalem and has chapters in the United Kingdom and the United States.

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