In the talks that led to the Oslo Accords, which took place without [Palestinian leader and doctor Haydar] Abdel Shafi’s knowledge, current Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala) and Yasser Arafat agreed to what [Abdel Shafi] had vehemently refused to do: postpone discussion of the settlements in the territories with the Israelis. He warned that this would allow the Jewish settlements to expand and the Israeli takeover of Palestinian lands to continue.
The concessions the Palestinians made at Oslo, he said, transformed the occupied territories in the world’s eyes into simply "contested territories," with both sides seemingly having the right to ownership. In his later years he lived in deep frustration because his warnings had been right.
History Proved Arafat Critic Right, by Amira Hass; Ha’aretz, 30 Sept 2007, upon Abdel Shafi’s death (picked up by this site).
Dr. Haydar Abdel Shafi was a Palestinian giant, who deserves to be better known.
My thoughts exactly.
I am very much saddened by this fact… I am very saddened…Dr. Haydar Abdel Shafi must be man of wisdom…had he been listened by his compatriots, they, the Palestinians could have been in a much more internationally respected position…
This is also a sad fact of history, men of such wisdom and temperance, are constantly ignored by men of impulsive anger…what a missed -real- opportunity!
The question is: what is there to negotiate about, since Netanyahu has declared that every issue of importance is non-negotiable.
I’ve come to believe that for those who prefer a two-state solution the only alternative is the Fayyad plan of unilaterally declaring a state within unilaterally-declared borders. When Obama and the EU finally get tired of Israeli rejectionism and support such a plan, it will become a real possibility.
The problem with Oslo is that the principles were too willing to settle for an agreement, any agreement, without much care as to what they were agreeing to. The Palestinian birthright was sold for a photo op.
You can’t negotiate with a military expansionist power from a position of persecution. Oslo proved that Israel simply cannot be taken at its word. Even if you can laud Rabin for negotiating at all…. even while he was talking, behind everybody’s backs the settlements just kept expanding.
Off subject: The rocket that killed a Thai worker was launched by a wannabe Al-Quida style group Ansar al-Sunna. I hop that Hamas can deal this effectively. Israel will likely use it as a pretext for further aggression.
link to jpost.com
You know to touch on earlier posts — NPR is making this top of the hour news. When’s the last time NPR gave that priority to a Palestinian being killed by the IDF? Israel is still bombing and shelling Gaza, and NPR talks about it as if all military action from the IDF actually ceased on Obama’s inauguration.
It will be interesting to see if the recent developments make Israel more cautious or more reckless in their response.
Does it matter? The IDF will aim at Gazan civilians, not al-Qaida operatives (or whoever is responsible for this). So it won’t even be a “response” in any meaningful sense of the word.
They will aim at Hamas.
The media is also using it to deflect from substantively addressing the Ashton visit. Hamas has said that they’ve been trying to enforce an unofficial cease-fire. My first thought when I heard this was cui bono? I’m sure I’m not alone in that my thoughts wandered to thinking about what the fabulous Mossad, so famed for their deception and false flag attacks, are doing these days?
Mossad, undercover police forces indistinguishable from the Palestinians, Israel’s vaunted media strategy, Israel’s recent crowing about having infiltrated the ranks of Hamas, Hezbollah…
Here is the CFR report on the Ansar al-Islam al-quaeda affiliated group, operating in Iraq, until now. link to cfr.org
There have been several reports lately that Hamas is failing to contain these militant groups. Of course it never seems to occur to the Israelis to cooperate with Hamas.
RE: “several reports lately that Hamas is failing to contain these militant groups” – potsherd
EXCERPT: On December 27, 2008, the Israeli military fired a missile at a graduation parade for police cadets at the police headquarters in Gaza City, killing dozens of unarmed policemen. In the words of Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem:
“The attack on the main police building in Gaza killed, according to reports, forty-two Palestinians who were in a training course and were standing in formation at the time of the bombing. Participants in the course study first aid, handling of public disturbances, human rights, public-safety exercises, and so forth. Following the course, the police officers are assigned to various arms of the police force in Gaza responsible for maintaining public order”.
The attack marked the beginning of the three-week offensive known as Operation Cast Lead, which claimed the lives of more or less 1,000 Gazan civilians, depending on who is doing the counting. Much of the disparity in casualty figures stems from disagreement over whether the Hamas police should be characterised as civilians or combatants.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that a total of 255 civilian police force members who were not engaged in fighting were killed during the offensive, and included this number in the total of civilian casualties that resulted from the conflict….
SOURCE – link to crimesofwar.org
On the other hand, this would also support Petraeus’ request to have the Palestinian territories placed under his command, as he has possibly asked for. It sounds like the Israelis could use the help.
This is not a positive sign:
Along those lines, you know what I’m afraid of? When the picture of that precious donkey painted as a zebra for the children of Palestine was posted on this site, I gave a small donation. Will I ultimately go to jail for that?
Are we surprised? The financial system has been a tool for the wealthy elite for some time now. Geithner and Paulson wielded it in order to aggrandize Goldmann Sachs at the expense of Lehmen Brothers. Is it any surprise the Treasury Department would do the same for Israel at the expense of Palestine?
RE: “The U.S. Treasury said on Thursday it imposed sanctions against two firms in Gaza…”
FROM GRANT SMITH: …A new type of “office of special plans” at the Treasury Department that AIPAC and its think tank lobbied to create by executive order in 2004 is also on the warpath. Stuart Levey, the head of the office of “Terrorism and Financial Intelligence” is traveling to Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman “pointing out that they face dramatic risks by doing business with Iran.”…
SOURCE – link to original.antiwar.com
MORE FROM GRANT SMITH:…The grinding march toward a pointless war with Iran, like Morgenthau’s dalliances with the Irgun, is not really about America’s own best interests. It’s not that Stuart Levey doesn’t know how Israeli extremism can endanger the United States. Levey’s Fulbright-grant-funded undergraduate thesis was all about Meir Kahane, the Brooklyn-born rabbi who founded the Israeli group Kach. Kahane Chai (Kach) currently occupies slot number 20 on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. While the buttoned-down Levey is certainly not an extremist of Kahane’s or Jabotinsky’s violent mold, his AIPAC-sponsored financial warfare is clearly extreme. Levey and his supporters are threatening US trading partners, banks, multinational corporations, independent shippers, small trade related businesses and the international shipping system. The only beneficiary of the action is Israel—a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and longtime owner of its own nuclear weapons—an arsenal financed and created, in large part, by precisely the kinds of “deceptive schemes” and “illicit commerce” toward which TFI consciously turns a blind eye. In contrast, Iran signed the NPT, is under active International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring, and is not enriching uranium to levels sufficient for nuclear weapons production.
Like the rigged 1984 Free Trade Agreement, AIPAC’s Treasury Department actions will create more hard times for American workers. As never before, America’s economy could benefit from any expansion in export jobs boosted by new market access. Trade with Iran and the rest of the Middle East is based on real comparative advantages. US workers, many facing home foreclosures due to junk mortgages, will be the unknowing victims of the latest US Treasury gambit. Like the Morgenthau scheme, the Israel lobby’s latest venture is likely to fail as the international system routes around the new trade impediments. The world largely ignored Morgenthau’s and the men from Irgun’s attempts to “lead by example” to save displaced persons of Europe. Levey’s far less worthy cause, fighting for Israeli regional nuclear hegemony through damaging trade edicts, may also be similarly ignored. Countries suffering from the fallout of their investments in US junk mortgages are unlikely to buy into more junk policies and junk wars crafted by the Israel lobby….
SOURCE – link to dissidentvoice.org
P.S. ONE LAST EXCERPT FROM SMITH’S 2008 DISSIDENT VOICE ARTICLE: …AIPAC and its associated think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), were instrumental in lobbying the president for the creation of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence unit early in 2004. The Israel lobby also vetted Stuart Levey who President Bush approved to lead the new unit. TFI claims to be “safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats.” However its actions—and more important, inactions—reveal it to be a sharp-edged tool forged principally to serve the Israel lobby.
TFI has taken no actions to undercut one nexus of money laundering in the Middle East unveiled in 2005 by Israeli prosecutor Talia Sasson and exposed by USA Today. Even mainstream print outlets such as Reuters continue to wonder aloud why US tax exemptions are offered for illegal overseas activities. Although Stuart Levey has made multiple official visits to Jerusalem to liaise with Israeli government officials, when formally asked under a Freedom of Information Act request to reveal how TFI was tackling the reported $50-$60 billion laundered from the US through Israel and into illegal West Bank settlements, TFI politely demurred. TFI claims that Levey’s US-taxpayer-funded missions to Israel must be kept secret from the American public in order to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act, which ironically is an anti-money-laundering law…
Unless they are Haliburton and Cheney, who don’t face any risks at all.
How many Palestinians has Israel killed since the last rocket attack from Gaza? How many have been reported in the US media? Maybe Ethan Bronner and Linda Gradstein can dig up the information. Corporal Jeffrey Goldberg might show them where to start.
I know. The double standard is downright insulting. NPR should be ashamed.
Citing the NY Times headline on its webpage about the death in Israel from a Gaza rocket, I emailed the public editor:
It is possible to get some information from the world media about the numbers of Palestinians Israel has killed in Gaza and the Palestinian side of the Green Line. Those Palestinian killings are not reported by the New York Times. At what level is the decision to not report them made at the Times? Would you explain the Times’ logic?
According to uruknet:
“The Palestinian ministry of health reported Sunday that the number of victims who have been killed in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli occupation since the start of 2010 and until the ninth of March amounted to 12 Palestinians and the injuries to 25 others.”
link to uruknet.info
Thanks for sharing.
And there are 9+ months to go. And god knows how many many more killed in the West Bank.
The names should be collected and saved for mention at this year’s Yom Kippur.
Al Qaida.
Yeah.
Sure it was.
And we know which Al Qaida, too.
I met Dr. Haider Abdel Shafi in 1976. Ironically, he had only just been driven out of the Hilton London lobby by a Palestinian bomber.
Then, in 1976, he was the undisputed leader of Gaza. He was supplanted by Hamas, who were a bit more active, and so he retired from engaging in a long and seemingly unendable conflict.
He was dead right about the Israelis’ duplicity over colonial settlements. They used the Oslo agreements to carry on, and increase their colonial settlements, as they still do.
We are living through a turning-point When a US SOS says a certain Israeli action is an ‘insult’ publicly, and a US general says Israeli actions ‘endanger the lives of American troops’ then this is very good news that the US is finally getting pissed off with those piddling little Levantines.
Been a while, incidentally, Mr. Parker, and it’s nice to see you’re still here. :)
Welcome back. Spring is upon us and Richard Parker is back. Coincidence?
Thanks for the welcome back. I have just spent two weeks in Majorca, Spain (plus two weeks getting there and back). I would like to restate what I have said before; Spanish (and European media in general, except for us bloody Brits) is far more deeply informative than anything the US can provide, and is distinctly pro-Palestinian in outlook. El Mundo El Dia de Baleares is the local island edition of El Mundo, and its foreign news coverage is simply terrific.
Ia it true that the Palestinians living in E. Jerusalem don’t have the right to vote in Israel?
Or in Palestine either, right? Because if they venture out beyond the wall to vote or do anything else, they will never be let back in. Is that right?
I’m asking these questions because E. Jerusalem is being touted as a special case by Israel, apart from the rest of the territories, as if it is part of Israel already.
Yes, they are legal residents but not citizens of Israel. They can vote in Palestinian elections, but Israel restricts this.
Well, I think these facts should be reported when discussing the case of E. Jerusalem.
I’m asking these questions because E. Jerusalem is being touted as a special case by Israel, apart from the rest of the territories, as if it is part of Israel already.
Jonathan Cook wrote a good article on this issue.
The Media Annexed East Jerusalem.
The US has made no secret that it supports a Sudetenland solution to be imposed on the Palestinians. We know how successful that has been in the past.
Israel today proposed an agreement wherein it will avoid publicly announcing new colonial construction in East Jerusalem. This, in an effort to avoid embarrassing the US as was the case with Biden.
link to haaretz.com
Persons pretending to be unclear on the concept.
There could hardly be anything more hypocritical than this. Netanyahu’s bunch has already made it quite clear that East Jerusalem is Israeli, and that they intend to introduce settlements eventually intended to outnumber the Arab residents, who will be marginalised and harassed as much as possible, and sealed off from contact with other W Bank residents. The US will concur with this illegal behaviour, behind the facade of ‘proximity peace talks’, which will get nowhere.
Eventually, sooner rather than later, the Israelis will use the prophecy about the Hurva synagogue to ‘rebuild’ the umpteenth temple on al- Haram al- Sharif, probably demolishing a couple of very holy mosques on the way.
Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are permanent residents, but not citizens, of Israel. Therefore, they are not eligible to vote in the national elections (for the Knesset). However, they are eligible to vote in Jerusalem Municipality elections — but the vast majority continue to adhere to a boycott and do not participate, despite the fact this means they have absolutely no representation in local matters which have affected them deeply — and, largely, adversely. A few East Jerusalem Palestinians regret this boycott, and the effect of this lack of representation — but they have not amassed the weight of public opinion behind them. The Palestinian Authority leadership does not encourage East Jerusalem Palestinians to participate in the Jerusalem municipal elections. On the other hand, since the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s, East Jerusalem Palestinians have had the right to participate in Palestinian Legislative Council and Presidential elections — a bit of a stretch from the letter of the Oslo Accords, which authorized Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to vote in the first Legislative Council elections. However, on each occasion that has offered the East Jerusalem Palestinians a chance to vote in the PA elections, Israeli officials have made difficulties and obstacles — ranging from problems with registration, to a prohibition on political campaigning, to inaccessibility of balloting places (in Israeli Post Offices). And now, there is The Wall, which puts probably as many as 100,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem on the wrong side, causing difficult access. The result is that Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem have the right to vote in two elections (Jerusalem municipality + Palestinian Authority “national” elections for President and parliament), but most do not, or can not, participate in either…
It is theoretically possible for Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to apply for Israeli citizenship — but many have not done so, in part for the same reason that they boycott the Jerusalem municipal election: they do not want to recognize the Israeli occupation as lawful. In earlier years, it was relatively easy for the few Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem who were interested to obtain Israeli citizenship. In recent years, there was an Israeli “tightening up” which made it much more difficult for these Palestinians to obtain Israeli citizenship. Now, I have just been told, it has suddenly become easier again… But, first, an applicant has to travel to Jordan to return the special Jordanian passports that East Jerusalem Palestinians have been using. And, the question for many of them, as they tell me they see it, is not whether it is good or bad to apply for Israeli citizenship, but whether an Israeli passport is more advantageous than a Jordanian passport which allows for travel to other Arab countries…
Israel treats East Jerusalem as a “special case” because: (1) after their conquest in the June 1967 war, it extended its administration and laws to East Jerusalem (which was basically 6 square kilometers including the Old City and close surrounding neighborhoods) ; (2) also in 1967, Israel unilaterally re-drew the boundaries of “Jerusalem” to include the not only the Old City and its near neighborhoods in East Jerusalem — but also a large additional swathe of other West Bank territory in a crescent of areas surrounding East Jerusalem, from Qalandia (airport) and the Atarot industrial zone north of Jerusalem almost down to Bethlehem in the south, and then called all of this the “Greater Jerusalem municipality”, or “Jerusalem”.
Then, in 1980, Israel adopted a Basic Law declaring this expanded “Jerusalem” (including the Old City, East Jerusalem, and surrounding territory) as its eternal and undivided capital. Both the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council have called this move “null and void”, but Israel has not backed down or blinked.
This is the “Jerusalem” that Netanyahu said the other day Israel will continue to build in, as it has for the past 42 years. He was not talking only about West Jerusalem, which became part of Israel at its proclamation in May 1948 — he also meant the areas of East Jerusalem (including the Old City) and other areas of the nearby West Bank that were joined together in 1967 to make the “Greater Jerusalem Municipality”. It was not until 2008, during the Annapolis process of negotiations, that Israeli government officials first stated clearly and publicly that in their view the Jewish settlements (“neighborhoods”) in East Jerusalem are not on “occupied” land, nor — in their view — are they contrary to international humanitarian law.
U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell reportedly recently explained that Israel has “annexed” these areas — but it was not reported that Mitchell said this was illegal…
Palestinian officials in various negotiations over the years apparently reportedly given indications that they might be willing to “swap” close neighborhoods like French Hill (now predominantly Jewish, though built on Shuafat land) for Israeli concessions elsewhere.
Adding to the confusion is that the course of The Wall as it has been constructed in and around the “Jerusalem” areaet effectivly unilaterally redefines, once again, what Israel means by “Greater Municipal Jeruslem” — cutting some Palestinian neighborhoods in two, and putting large numbers of East Jerusalem Palestinians on the West Bank side of The Wall in areas like Qafr Aqab and Semiramis (north of Qalandia checkpoint), ar-Ram, Dahiet al-Bariid, Atara, Ras Khamis, Dahiet as-Salam, and Shuafat Refugee Camp (all north of the Old City), as well as Abu Dis, Bethany, Jabel Mukaber and other areas to the south. So far, despite enormous nervousness, Palestinians with (East) Jerusalem IDs who live in these areas, on what is now the “other” side of The Wall, have not faced a loss of their IDs — and they still have to pay Jerusalem municipality taxes (“arnona”) — but they do have to cross Israeli military checkpoints to go to the bank, or to the post office, or to school, or to work …
From the time of Bill Clinton’s intervention in the Camp David talks with Yasser Arafat and Ehud Olmert in July 2000, and six months later again in Taba in January 2001, a “principle” was introduced (though it harks back to the British Mandate era) that areas of dense Palestinian population would go to the Palestinian state, while areas of Jewish population would go to Israel. In the Annapolis negotiations, Israel’s then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert applied this “principle” to the “Greater Jerusalem Municipality”, in a proposal he submitted in September 2008 to his Palestinian counterparts…