Author: heathlander

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Thursday published its latest report  (.pdf) into Iran’s nuclear activities. Interestingly, the U.S. has claimed that the report confirms what it has been saying all along – that it “makes clear that Iran seems uninterested in working with the rest of the world” – and is using it to justify a renewed push for further sanctions. Meanwhile, Israel has denounced the same report for “fail[ing] to expose Ahmadinejad’s intentions”. It seems the warmongers can’t get their story straight.
In a nutshell, the report concluded that:

“The Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran. Iran has provided the Agency with access to declared nuclear material, and has provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and activities.”

Iran was praised for its cooperation with the investigation:

“Iran has provided sufficient access to individuals and has responded in a timely manner to questions and provided clarifications and amplifications on issues raised in the context of the work plan.”

The IAEA further added that, whilst all declared nuclear materials have been verified, the organisation is not in a position to confidently confirm the absence of any undeclared nuclear material – not because there is any evidence that such material exists (on the contrary: the Agency has “no concrete information” to that effect), but simply because Iran is not currently operating under the optional Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and so the IAEA’s access is limited. Of course, it is worth recalling that Iran had been implementing the Additional Protocol until the IAEA, under pressure from the U.S., referred it to the UN Security Council on extremely flimsy grounds.

The report also confirmed that Iran has continued to enrich uranium, in “defiance” of a UN Security Council resolution but in accordance with its legal rights under the NPT.

This last point is hardly a revelation – Iran hasn’t exactly been hiding its enrichment programme. On the contrary: it has very possibly been exaggerating it. Yet, this is the angle through which most newspapers seem to have approached the story.

Consider the Guardian‘s take on the report – entitled “Decision time for US over Iran threat“, and subtitled “UN nuclear report heightens tension”, Julian Borger’s article begins:

“Iran has installed 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium – enough to begin industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel and build a warhead within a year, the UN’s nuclear watchdog reported last night.”

Now firstly, as other readers have noted, the IAEA report says nothing whatsoever about 3,000 centrifuges being “enough to…build a warhead within a year”. That seems to be Borger’s own contribution, though it is presented as if it came from the IAEA. Secondly, the whole tone of the article is one that implies increased threat and danger, suggesting that the IAEA report has somehow brought us closer to a war. In Borger’s words,

“The IAEA says the uranium being produced is only fuel grade (enriched to 4%) but the confirmation that Iran has reached the 3,000 centrifuge benchmark brings closer a moment of truth for the Bush administration, when it will have to choose between taking military action or abandoning its red line, and accepting Iran’s technical mastery of uranium enrichment.”

This is a ludicrous angle to take on a report that affirms, once again, that there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The entire piece is written from the perspective of the Bush administration, and is positively dripping with bias from start to finish – note, for example, how the British Foreign Office spokesman “said” and Gordon Brown “called for”, while President Ahmadinejad “seized on”.

The Times was no better, carrying the headline: “Iran could build atom bomb within one year, says watchdog“. The first paragraph is very similar to Julian Borger’s in the Guardian:

“Iran has expanded its capacity to enrich uranium and now has 3,000 centrifuges operating — enough potentially to produce an atom bomb within a year — the United Nations nuclear watchdog reported yesterday.”

Again, as noted above, the report says no such thing – the bit about it being “enough…to produce an atom bomb within a year” is an extrapolation made by The Times, yet presented as if it was contained within the IAEA report. Astonishingly, The Times article fails to even mention the IAEA’s most significant conclusion – that all declared nuclear material has been accounted for, and that no concrete evidence exists suggesting the presence of undeclared nuclear material. This suppression enables The Times to present the IAEA report as implicating Iran and pointing towards an Iranian nuclear bomb, thus turning the truth completely on its head.

The Independent was equally shambolic. In an article entitled “Iran nuclear report fails to convince the West” (why not: “The West fails to convince the IAEA”?), it maintained that,

“the document will do nothing to ease tensions between the West and Iran nor quell speculation of eventual military action. Rather, it will provide new ammunition to Western governments seeking to impose new sanctions on Iran, notably the United States, Britain and France.”

How, exactly? By affirming once again the total lack of evidence for an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, and thus utterly undermining the U.S.-led campaign of intimidation against Iran? Alas, The Independent does not explain – indeed, like The Times, it inexplicably fails to mention this aspect of the IAEA report at all.

The Associated Press managed to run a piece entitled, “IAEA: Iran Not Open About Nuke Program“, which was then immediately contradicted in the first paragraph, where it was acknowledged that the IAEA report in fact “said the Tehran regime has been generally truthful about key aspects of its past nuclear activities”. CNN published an article headlined “U.N. losing grip on Iran nuke plan” (’nuff said), while the Washington Post emphasised the IAEA’s “diminishing” information about Iran’s current nuclear activities (because, as explained above, Iran is no longer implementing the Additional Protocol), while failing to mention the report’s conclusion that all of Iran’s declared nuclear material has been verified and accounted for by the IAEA.

A recurring theme has been the idea that Iran is being “punished” by the West for its “defiance” – see, for example, this from Reuters. This conception relies upon two assumptions – a) that Iran is doing something wrong, and b) that “the West” has the right or is in some moral position to “punish” countries that disobey it. Neither premise is supported by the evidence, and the second in particular betrays the fundamental belief in the supremacy and benevolence of Western power that underpins so much of mainstream reporting.

As sampled above, most media coverage of the IAEA report has served to distort and, in many cases, totally invert the IAEA’s actual findings. Far from reporting the IAEA’s conclusion that there is no evidence of any Iranian nuclear weapons programme, the press have tended instead to portray the report as evidence of a growing Iranian nuclear threat. For the media to misrepresent the facts so thoroughly and to regurgitate Pentagon press releases so unquestioningly at a time when the U.S. is openly pushing for war with Iran is the height of irresponsibility. As with Iraq, it is precisely this kind of media propagandising for power that could enable an attack to take place. If it does, the press will surely bear significant responsibility for the disaster that ensues.

For a more reality-based take on the IAEA report and the facts about Iran’s nuclear programme, see here and here.

Cross-posted at The Heathlander

Life for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is now so miserable that it has become quite difficult not to be seduced by the theatre of the latest ‘peace push’, such is the desire to see an end to the conflict. When Condoleeza Rice expresses her sincere ambition to create an independent Palestinian state, and when Ehud Olmert hints about a willingness to divide Jerusalem, it is extremely tempting to simply forget about the facts on the ground and dare to hope that perhaps, this time, they’re for real.
Unfortunately, facts matter. It is axiomatic in politics that you don’t simply take what political actors (so to speak) say at face value. While political rhetoric can reveal important insights into the motivations and attitudes of each side, for it to be useful it must be evaluated and placed in a relevant context. In this case, Olmert’s platitudes must be placed in the context of Israel’s actions on the ground and the historical record, in order to evaluate what they might actually mean.

On Wednesday, two very respectable, knowledgeable observers of the conflict posted two very different perspectives on the current diplomatic surge. Tony Karon, a veteran journalist and senior editor at TIME magazine, argues that the Annapolis summit is doomed to “failure”, primarily due to U.S./Israeli rejectionism and the political weakness of both Ehud Olmert, who depends upon the likes of Avigdor Lieberman and the extreme-right Shas party to hold his shaky coalition together, and Mahmoud Abbas, who has no control over Gaza and whose political legitimacy is extremely suspect.

Charles Levinson, a British journalist and Middle East correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph, disagrees, arguing that “[t]hose who think this isn’t a serious peace push are mistaken”. He claims that, despite their threats, it is far from certain that Lieberman and Shas would actually withdraw from the ruling coalition in protest at Olmert’s negotiating positions with Abbas. The political prominence and influence conferred upon both parties by their involvement in the government, he maintains, could well be too important for them to follow through on their threats to walk away. His optimism places him in a distinct minority – both Palestinians and Israelis, including Israel’s military intelligence, view the Annapolis summit with extreme scepticism. “Since the goal of the conference amounts to a mere declaration of interests and doesn’t deal with the core issues,” explained Meretz head Zehava Gal-On, “it will be pointless”. Indeed, the U.S. and Israeli governments have themselves been at pains to downplay any hopes for a “breakthrough” at the summit, the White House press correspondent explaining:

“I think a lot of people are inclined to try to treat this as a big peace conference. It’s not…

I think what happened is it was being spun up as a major peace conference where people are going to be talking about final status issues, and that is not the case.”

Interestingly, Levinson acknowledges the possibility that the entire process is nothing more than “a cynical exercise by Olmert to placate the Bush administration until next summer”:

“If Olmert is not nearly as enthusiastic about peace as some suggest he is, he just has to do the pro-peace song and dance to the US tune for the next six to eight months and then Israel will have the US out of its hair until well into the next administration.”

There would, of course, be a precedent to this. Levinson also mentions the difficulties a peace process would face, even if sincere, given that Hamas are excluded from it. However, after raising these arguments, he simply leaves it at that, his original opinion intact, as if they are somehow insignificant or minor problems. In fact, Israel’s insistence on isolating Hamas reveals a lot about its true intentions.

Background

After the Hamas takeover of Gaza, both Israel and the United States rushed to portray the situation as a “historic opportunity”, a brief “window” of possibility that must be grasped before it is too late. It was an opportunity, certainly, but for what? In considering this question, it is worth recalling the events of the previous year.

Hamas took office in March 2006 after winning democratic elections in January, when they beat a divided and corrupt Fatah whose election campaign was funded in part by the United States. They came into power in the midst of a year-long, unilateral self-imposed ceasefire, talking about possible negotiations with Israel and a long-term truce accompanied by a two-state settlement, based on the 1967 borders. Hamas’ participation in the elections represented a significant ideological progression for the movement, which had vehemently opposed the Oslo Process and viewed the Palestinian Authority as illegitimate. It represented the triumph of the pragmatic, moderate elements within the party over the extremists. Statements by the political leadership, both at home and abroad, demonstrated a clear shift in Hamas’ thinking, to the point where they had effectively accepted Israel’s existence within the Green Line.

In line with long-standing government policy, Israel moved quickly to crush this threatened “peace offensive”. It began illegally withholding the tax revenues collected each month as the occupying power on the PA’s behalf, which, together with a crippling sanctions regime imposed upon the occupied Palestinians by the ‘international community’ (instigated by the U.S.), brought the Palestinian economy to a stand-still and precipitated a humanitarian crisis. The objectives were clear: the Palestinians were being subjected to collective punishment in an attempt to undermine popular support for the Hamas government. As Dov Weisglass, advisor to Ariel Sharon and then Ehud Olmert, explained,

“It’s like a meeting with a dietician. We have to make them [the Palestinian people] much thinner, but not enough to die”.

Or as one Israeli border officer defined his mission: “no development, no prosperity, only humanitarian dependency“. When sanctions alone failed to produce the desired effects, Israel launched a sustained assault upon the civilian and political infrastructure of the Gaza Strip. Killing close to 700 people, most of them civilians, ‘Operation Summer Rains‘ was a calculated attempt to reduce Palestinian life to such abject misery that the population would turn against their elected government. In the West Bank the number of checkpoints was increased by 40%, dividing the territory into several de facto non-contiguous cantons and destroying what was left of the Palestinian economy, which was already suffering what the World Bank described as “the worst economic depression in modern history“.

With the Hamas government paralysed, starved of funds and a third of its legislators detained in Israeli jails, the U.S. and Israel began arming and training a group of Fatah militants under the leadership of Mohammad Dahlan. It had been predicted that the siege of the territories would eventually lead to internal Palestinian violence, and the U.S. wanted to ensure that the “good guys” won. The conflict that eventually culminated in Hamas’ takeover of Gaza was in fact engineered from the start by the U.S. and Israel, so much so that when the violence erupted, one U.S. official was heard to exclaim: “I like this violence…[i]t means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas”.

A leaked 16-page internal document detailed the U.S.’ strategy for ‘undermining and replacing the Palestinian national-unity government’. It was essentially two-pronged: on the one hand the U.S. and Israel would cripple the Hamas government and undermine its popular support, whilst at the same time they would arm its opponents and build the “political credibility” of Mahmoud Abbas.

Finally, in June 2007, Hamas struck back against Dahlan’s forces in Gaza, and ended up taking control of the territory. Israel and the U.S., in accordance with the strategy outlined above, rushed to condemn the “coup” and began the current blitz of diplomatic engagement with the Abbas government.

Isolating Hamas

Given the background outlined above, it seems extremely implausible to suggest that, overnight, the Olmert government suddenly became interested in a genuine peace process. More likely, Middle-East specialist Henry Siegman is correct to conclude that “it is [the U.S. and Israeli governments’] determination to bring down Hamas rather than to build up a Palestinian state that animates their new-found enthusiasm for making Abbas look good”, in accordance with the two-pronged strategy discussed above.

This judgement is reinforced by the behaviour of the Bush and Olmert administrations towards Hamas since it seized control of Gaza in June. Virtually every serious analyst of the conflict, from the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (.pdf) to Ephraim Halevy, former head of the Shin Bet, recognises that some basic level of political cooperation between Hamas and Fatah is a prerequisite to any serious attempt at peace. As the International Crisis Group put it,

“Security and a credible peace process depend on minimal intra-Palestinian consensus. Isolating Hamas strengthens its more radical wing and more radical Palestinian forces…a new Fatah-Hamas power-sharing arrangement is a prerequisite for a sustainable peace.”

It’s hardly rocket science: Hamas commands the support of a significant proportion of the Palestinian population. It controls Gaza, and possesses the capability to undermine and sabotage any political settlement that excludes it, for instance by resuming its campaign of suicide bombings. No Palestinian will accept a state on the West Bank only, and no settlement can be reached in Gaza without the cooperation of Hamas. Clearly, then, if Israel and the U.S. were genuinely interested in achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict, one of the first steps they would take would be to encourage negotiations between Fatah and Hamas.

In fact, they’ve done the precise opposite. Even before the takeover of Gaza, Israel and the U.S. worked hard to destroy any possibility of Fatah-Hamas cooperation. In early 2007, despite having won democratic elections, Hamas agreed to enter into a power-sharing arrangement with Fatah in an attempt to get round the U.S./Israeli sanctions regime. Hamas would concentrate on running the territories, while Abbas would be given the authority to negotiate with Israel, on the condition that any settlement reached would first be put to a national referendum. Instead of celebrating this national unity government, Israel and the U.S. moved quickly to undermine it. Hiding behind a series of “principles”, described charitably by Ret. Major General Shlomo Gazit, former chief of Israel’s military intelligence, as “ridiculous, or an excuse not to negotiate“, the ‘Quartet’ maintained the aid boycott, refused to negotiate with the new government and continued to arm and train Dahlan’s militia. UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories John Dugard was right to describe this approach as “hostile to Palestinian self-determination”. This attitude of viewing any hint of moderation by Hamas as a threat as opposed to a blessing is not consistent with a genuine desire for peace. Since Hamas took control of Gaza in June, Israel, supported by the United States, has explicitly and repeatedly warned Abbas that should he enter into negotiations with Hamas or enter a power-sharing agreement with them, all diplomatic engagement will immediately cease. The aid boycott would resume and the Palestinians of the West Bank would return once again to living under relentless siege. As Olmert explained to Abbas,

“Any renewed cooperation between Fatah and Hamas will be, from our point of view, a breakdown of the political process”.

As a result, Abbas has flat-out rejected all of Hamas’ overtures and requests for negotiations. His hands are by now well and truly tied. The fact that Israel and the U.S. have vehemently opposed, on the flimsiest of grounds, a development recognised by almost everyone as a necessary prerequisite for peace speaks volumes about their true intentions.

Facts on the Ground

It is also instructive to compare Olmert’s diplomatic statements with Israel’s actions  on the ground. The latest round of the ‘peace process’ began, as discussed, in mid-2007, when Israel and the U.S. rushed to take advantage of the split between Hamas’ Gaza and Fatah’s West Bank. Yet, here is how John Dugard described the situation on the ground (.pdf) in August:

“The construction of the wall (or barrier) continues; settlements continue to expand; checkpoints remain in force; the Judaization of Jerusalem continues; and the de facto annexation of the Jordan Valley is unaffected. Military incursions, accompanied by arrests, continue unabated. House demolitions remain a feature of life in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

Construction of the wall, deemed illegal under international law by the World Court, has continued. 80% of the route travels through the West Bank, at one point jutting out some 22km into Palestinian territory in order to enclose the Ariel settlement bloc. Israel has tried to defend it as a “security measure”, but in fact it’s clear that the route was drawn not to protect Israel but to annex the major settlement blocs. As veteran Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar and Israeli historian Idith Zertal write in their recent history of the settlement enterprise, the wall is being “constructed with no reckoning and no logic other than the purpose of enclosing as many settlements as possible on the western, Israeli, side and dividing up and seizing Palestinian lands.” When finished, the wall, described by the OCHA (.pdf) as a “de facto border”, will annex approximately 10% of the West Bank to Israel, trapping some 60,000 Palestinians between the wall and the Green Line. As John Dugard explains,

“The closed zone includes many of the West Bank’s most valuable water resources. Completion of the wall around the Ma’aleh Adumim bloc will separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, restricting access to workplaces, health, education, and to places of worship. Further south, the route of the wall around the Gush Etzion settlement bloc will sever the last route between Bethlehem and Jerusalem and isolate the majority of Bethlehem’s agricultural hinterland.”

While Olmert hints vaguely about returning parts of occupied East Jerusalem to the Palestinians, construction continues on a wall that, when completed, will sever East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. The recent IDF expropriation of over 1,100 dunams of land from four Palestinian villages, between East Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim, further undermines Olmert’s claims. The purpose of this and other recent moves is to free up the E-1 area for Israeli development. If this goes ahead, Israel will have achieved territorial contiguity between East Jerusalem and the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement. The Palestinians would be cut off from East Jerusalem and the West Bank would be divided into de facto non-contiguous cantons, destroying any hope for a viable two-state settlement.

The settlements, described (.pdf) by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as “the single biggest impediment to realizing a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity”, have continued to expand. Construction has continued on settlements both east and west of the wall, with political and humanitarian consequences described by the OCHA as “profound”. According to the OCHA (.pdf), the current rate of annual growth in the settlements is 5.5%, almost three times that of Israel proper, which if continued will result in a doubling of the settler population to nearly 900,000 in just 12 years. Some of the construction has occurred in settlements in the Jordan Valley, an area constituting roughly 25% of the West Bank that has effectively been annexed by Israel. Declaring it a “closed military zone”, Israel regularly demolishes Palestinian house in the Jordan Valley and orders entire villages to evacuate. As John Dugard reports,

“That Israel intends to remain permanently in the Jordan Valley is clear from Government statements and is further manifested, first, by restrictions imposed on Palestinians and, second, by the exercise of Israeli control and the increase in the number of settlements in the Jordan Valley.”

There is simply no way to look honestly at the settlement project and conclude that Israel intends to withdraw from the West Bank. The Israeli government allocates huge areas of land to settlements, way out of proportion to their actual size, to prevent Palestinians developing on it, and then allows the settlements to build right on the edges of this inflated jurisdiction to expand still further into Palestinian territory. Strategically placed on the most fertile areas of land and along the Jordan Valley, the continuing development of Israel’s colonial infrastructure in the West Bank gives lie to the government’s claims that it is sincere in wanting a genuine two-state settlement. It follows that the current “peace process” is nothing but a farce, intended not to achieve a lasting peace but rather to build Abbas’ “political capital” at the expense of Hamas, and to maintain Israel’s image as a peacemaker even as the theft and dismemberment of Palestine continues. As much as we may want to believe that the Annapolis summit represents a genuine push for peace, the facts tell a different story.

Cross-posted at The Heathlander

As Ehud Olmert busied himself shaking hands with Abbas and correcting uninformed journalists from calling the Annapolis summit a “peace conference”, the IDF yesterday ordered the expropriation of over 1,100 dunams of land from four Palestinian villages (Abu Dis, Arab al-Sawahra, Nebi Musa and Talhin Alhamar) in the West Bank, between East Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim. The land will be used for a new Palestinian road connecting East Jerusalem with Jericho, thereby freeing up the so-called E-1 area for Israeli development.

This follows a recent report that Israel’s police force in the West Bank is moving its HQ to the E-1 area.

This is part of Israel’s cherished ‘E-1 Plan‘ to construct 3,500 apartments and a business park in the area between East Jerusalem and the illegal settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, connecting the two under Israeli control and severing the West Bank into two, territorially non-contiguous cantons. It would also cut East Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank.

In short, as veteran Ha’aretz correspondent Akiva Eldar writes,

“This order is synonymous with putting an end to working on an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of the principle of two states with territorial contiguity”.

Three years ago, the E-1 plan was permanently ‘frozen’ after the Bush administration and the international community voiced strong objections. It seems Olmert has encountered a more welcoming climate, with media attention largely focused on the diplomatic theatrics, away from the hard realities on the ground.

The road being built represents the Israeli government’s generous gift to the Palestinians of “transportational contiguity” – that is: the separate cantons that will make up the Palestinian “state” will, at least, have roads running between them. The prisoners from each camp will be able to visit each other. Needless to say, anyone advocating this “transportational contiguity” for the Israeli state would be laughed off the stage.

This is the classic Israeli bantustan plan, rejected by Arafat at Camp David in 2000 and now being implemented unilaterally by force. If the E-1 development goes ahead, we can say good-bye to a two-state settlement.

Update: Abbas has come out explicitly with his territorial demands: a Palestinian state must include all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, allowing for mutual and minor border alterations (land-swaps). This actually represents a significant Palestinian concession, but otherwise is simply a demand that Palestinians receive what they are entitled to under the law. Unfortunately, as Ha’aretz comments,

“the Palestinian demands appear to exceed anything that Israel would be willing to offer.”

Cross-posted at The Heathlander

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco. He has written extensively on a range of foreign policy issues, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, non-violent struggle and nuclear proliferation. He is the author of 2003’s acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism, is a regular contributor to Tikkun magazine and the Common Dreams website, among other places. He serves as Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus think-tank and as an associate editor of Peace Review. His articles can be viewed here, and information about his books is available here.

I asked Dr. Zunes a few questions about the current ‘Iran crisis’, the situation in Iraq and the Israel/Palestine conflict. The second part of the interview, dealing with Iraq, is published below. The third and final part will be published shortly.
1. What are U.S. interests in Iraq today? Have American objectives in the region changed since the invasion, and does the Bush administration still think that it can achieve them?

Clearly the original U.S. goal of establishing a pro-American secular free market-oriented democratic government is now considered unreachable. Now Washington is just hoping that the Sunni insurgents can be contained, the Shiites in power will loosen their close ties to Iran, the Kurds won’t do anything too provocative to the Turks (like declaring full independence), U.S. companies can effectively control a good percentage of the county’s oil, and the United States can establish a network of large permanent bases to better facilitate U.S. military domination of the Middle East.

President Bush recently declared that the eventual goal for U.S. troops is “overwatching” — a term I could not locate in any dictionary — Iraqi forces. This suggests that allowing Iraqi forces to act independently is not even considered a long-range prospect anymore and that the Bush administration intends for American armed forces to ultimately be in charge of security in Iraq indefinitely.

2. Should we expect a full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq any time soon?

Unless and until Congress is willing to eliminate funds for U.S. operations except what is needed to safely withdraw them from Iraq, a full withdrawal is out of the question. Hillary Clinton and most of the other contenders for the Democratic Party nomination for president (with the exceptions of Elliot Richardson, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel) intend, if elected, to keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the country even after the withdrawal of most combat forces. Senator Clinton’s plan, for example, would mean a reduced combat role for American forces, but would still maintain at least 60,000 U.S. troops remaining in that country.

Bush’s plan, meanwhile, means very little in terms of overall reduction in troop strength. There will be virtually no reduction of troops by December nor will there be a reduction of forces beyond the numbers prior to the pre-surge levels by next July. The Pentagon currently has plans to add an additional 4,000 Army troops in the next couple of weeks, more than making up for the 2,200 Marines ending their tour of duty in Anbar and nearly making up for the 4,500 additional forces he plans to pull out by Christmas. Furthermore, the larger reduction of five combat brigades expected by next July will place the total number of combat troops at levels no less than they were prior to the start of the surge, when the Baker Commission — representing the consensus of the foreign policy establishment — called for the complete withdrawal of regular combat forces by that same month.

U.S. military commanders have made it clear that American forces simply cannot sustain the current level of combat troops in Iraq and there would need to be a withdrawal to pre-surge levels regardless of the situation on the ground. The drawdown recommended by General Petreaus and announced by President Bush had already been planned months ago as there will be insufficient fresh forces available to sustain the escalation. So, the limited withdrawals announced by Bush in his speech in September should not be mistaken for the beginning of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

3. The “surge” has led to a sharp increase in the number of internally displaced refugees and has failed to cut attacks on civilians. How can it be that some people are touting it as a success?

Basically, General Petraeus and the Bush administration manipulated the numbers. Figures released by the Bush administration purporting to cite a decline in sectarian killings appear to be based on some rather arbitrary calculations, including a determination that being shot in the back of the head is a sectarian attack whereas being shot in the front of the head is a criminal act, even in cases where eyewitnesses indicated the frontal killing was indeed sectarian in motivation. All car bombings, even those apparently sectarian in motivation, are also excluded from Bush administration calculations.

If indeed there actually has been a slight decline in sectarian killings in Baghdad over the past six months, it could be attributed to the hundreds of thousands of Sunnis and Shiites who have fled mixed neighborhoods — at a rate of over 50,000 per month — into segregated enclaves, many with concrete walls erected around them to keep out militants from the other side. A recent report from the Government Accountability Office on the situation in Baghdad noted how “The average number of daily attacks against civilians remained about the same over the last six months; 25 in February versus 26 in July.” The Iraqi Interior ministry also confirmed that there has been no drop in civilian deaths.

Claims by President Bush of an improvement in a decline in violence outside Baghdad also have little relation to reality. This may be in part because the administration’s figures purporting to show a decline in sectarian violence exclude such tragic mass killings as the slaughter of 322 Yazidi Kurds in northern Iraq in August or the growing violence in Basra, Karbala and elsewhere in southern Iraq between rival Shiite factions. Estimates based on records from Iraqi morgues, hospitals and police headquarters around the country reveal that the numbers of civilians killed daily is almost twice as high as last year’s level. Six out of ten Iraqis in a recent poll indicate that their security situation has worsened since the surge began and only one out of ten say that it has improved. Seven out of ten believe that the surge has “hampered conditions for political dialogue, reconstruction and economic development.”

4. Do you think it’s important for the anti-war movement to come out and be pro-active about recognising the right of the Iraqi people to resist the U.S.-led occupation? It seems that at the moment, Bush’s narrative about the resistance being composed entirely of al-Qaeda has become the dominant one, to the extent that when an “insurgent” is killed it is generally seen as acceptable, or even good.

There are dozens of different insurgent groups, including neo-Baathists, Sunni Islamists, independent nationalists, tribal-based groups, radical Shiite militias and others. Al-Qaida is constitutes only a tiny minority of the insurgency. The U.S. military estimates that foreign fighters represent barely 5% of the insurgency. The overwhelming majority of those fighting U.S. forces have no desire to build a radical Islamic empire or attack the United States itself. They want to rid their country of foreign occupation forces and oust a government they see as repressive, corrupt, and too closely aligned with their Persian and American enemies.

While attacks against foreign occupation forces cannot be legally considered terrorism and are arguably legal, most identify with various Baathist and Islamist ideologies that few American opponents of the war can identify with. I think the anti-war movement should primarily point out how the longer the U.S. has been fighting, the more the insurgency has grown and that the majority of insurgents unaffiliated with al-Qaida would likely put down their arms and join a broad coalition government in return for amnesty and a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal, options the Bush administration has rejected.

A sizable majority of Iraqis – both Sunni and Shia – believe it is legitimate to attack American forces. Even those making up the Anbar Salvation Council – the coalition of local sheiks and Sunni militias which came together to fight al-Qaeda forces which Bush has touted as evidence his “surge” strategy was working (even though it formed last September, four months before the “surge” in U.S. forces into the province began) – had been fighting alongside al-Qaeda against U.S. and Iraqi government troops previously. They have temporarily allied with the United States because al-Qaeda’s extremist Islamist ideology and its massacres of civilians so alienated the populace. The hostility of those in the Anbar Salvation Council to the Iraqi government (which they see as dominated by pro-Iranian Shiite fundamentalists) as well as to the United States (which they see as a foreign occupier) raises the likelihood that once the al-Qaeda forces are marginalized, they will turn their guns once again on U.S. and Iraqi government forces. Unlike the extremists, those in the Anbar Salvation Council have widespread popular support and — thanks to American arms and training provided in recent months — could end up being a bigger threat to the Iraqi government and U.S. forces than al-Qaeda, a possibility acknowledged in a recent National Intelligence Estimate. And they are unlikely to be placated, as Prime Minister Malaki has explicitly ruled out working with some of the Sunni groups temporarily allied with U.S. forces in Anbar.

5. Why have the Democrats, despite winning last year’s mid-terms on a tide of popular anti-war sentiment, failed to force an end to the occupation by cutting off funds, or making them conditional upon a withdrawal?

First of all, it’s important to remember that five years ago, when Congress gave President Bush the unprecedented war powers to invade Iraq at the time an circumstances of his own choosing, Democrats controlled the Senate, the Democratic leadership of both houses endorsed the resolution, and the majority of Democratic senators supported it. Overwhelming majorities of Democrats have supported unconditional funding of the war ever since. With only a few conscientious exceptions, most Democrats who now oppose the war are doing so only because of constituent pressure.

By voting on non-binding resolutions for a timetable for withdrawal, they can tell their constituents they oppose the war, while simultaneously voting to give unconditionally funding to Bush to continue fighting the war. The Democrats do not need a two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto in order to stop the war. All they need to do is to refuse to pass any funding bill that does not condition war funding on a strict timetable for withdrawal, something that is well within the prerogative of the majority party.

As a result, one can only conclude that most Democrats in Congress actually support President Bush’s policies and are only pretending otherwise so as to assuage the anger of their constituents.

They also assume that anti-war voters will vote for Democrats anyway and will not support Green or independent anti-war candidates, so they believe that they have little to lose by continuing to support funding for the war.

You can read part one, a discussion of the so-called “Iran crisis”, here.

Cross-posted at The Heathlander

“Our opponents in the main are Iraqi nationalists, and are most concerned with their own needs – jobs, money, security, hope. And the majority, therefore, I would suggest are not bad people.”

General Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the British Army, speaking about the Iraqi resistance (via) during a recent speech at the Institute for International Studies (IISS) in London.
Channel Four news showed a film of him making the remarks:

(via lenin)

When the head of the British Army describes the “majority” of the Iraqi resistance as “Iraqi nationalists” and “not bad people”, thereby totally deflating the official government narrative about the ‘insurgency’ being primarily composed of crazy al-Qaeda/takfiri fanatics, it’s surely big news.

However, whilst a search for ‘general richard dannatt’ on Google News brings up plenty of articles discussing his speech, a search for ‘general richard dannatt “not bad people”‘ produces but a single Guardian article, which buries the quote in a passing mention three paragraphs from the end.

It seems inconceivable that the mainstream press would report a speech so heavily and yet almost unanimously fail to mention one of its most important details, but it appears that this is what has happened. A Google search for ‘general richard dannatt “not bad people”‘ confirms this.

Who needs censorship when you have a press that is perfectly willing to ignore statements from a top military official in order to preserve the official government line all by itself?

Cross-posted at The Heathlander

Dr. Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco. He has written extensively on a range of foreign policy issues, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, non-violent struggle and nuclear proliferation. He is the author of 2003’s acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism, is a regular contributor to Tikkun magazine and the Common Dreams website, among other places. He serves as Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus think-tank and as an associate editor of Peace Review. His articles can be viewed here, and information about his books is available here.

I asked Dr. Zunes a few questions about the current ‘Iran crisis’, the situation in Iraq and the Israel/Palestine conflict. The first part of the interview, dealing with Iran, is published below. The remaining two parts will be published shortly.
1. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei recently said, “I see war drums that are basically saying that the solution is to bomb Iran. It makes me shudder”. Is he right to be worried?

With the ongoing debacle in Iraq, any kind of ground invasion of Iran by U.S. forces is out of the question. Iran is three times bigger than Iraq, both in terms of population and geography. It is a far more mountainous country that would increase the ability of the resistance to engage in guerrilla warfare and the intensity of the nationalist backlash against such a foreign invasion would likely be even stronger.

An attack by air and sea-launched missiles and bombing raids by bombers and fighter jets would be a more realistic scenario. This would last several days and target suspected nuclear, military and government facilities throughout the country, resulting in enormous casualties and terrible repercussions for the United States. One would be in the Persian Gulf, where U.S. Navy ships could become easy targets for Iranian missiles and torpedoes and worldwide oil shipments would be disrupted, with serious economic repercussions. Perhaps more serious would be in Iraq, where American troops are currently operating against the Sunni-led insurgency alongside Iranian-backed pro-government militias. If these Iranian-backed militias also decided to turn their guns on American forces, the United States would be caught in a vise between both sides in the country’s simmering civil war with few places to hide.

A U.S. air strike would be met by widespread condemnation in the international community. It would further isolate the United States as a rogue superpower at a time in which it needs to repair its damaged relations with its European and Middle Eastern allies. Even Great Britain has expressed its opposition to military action. Pro-Western Arab states, despite their unease at Iran’s nuclear program, would react quite negatively to a U.S. strike, particularly since it would likely strengthen anti-American extremists by allowing them to take advantage of popular opposition to the United States utilizing force against a Muslim nation in order to defend the U.S.-Israeli nuclear monopoly in the region.

As a result, the negative consequences of a U.S. attack may be strong enough to convince even the Bush administration not to proceed with the military option. There have been consistent reports that most of the leadership of the U.S. armed services are strongly opposed to a military option. I would put the odds of the U.S. going to war against Iran at between 20-40%, so – while it is not probable – it is still enough of a possibility to be of serious concern. Most of the personnel and equipment to launch such an attack are already in place.

2. Why is the Bush administration so hostile towards Iran? How would an attack on Iran serve U.S. interests, or even just U.S. elite interests?

Iran has a repressive regime which imposes a reactionary form of Islam on its population, but they are not nearly as bad as U.S. ally Saudi Arabia in this regard. They have backed extremist groups, some of which have engaged in terrorism, but they have cooperated with the United States – more than has Saudi Arabia – against Al Qaeda, by far the biggest threat in this regard.

So, while there are many bad things to say about Iran’s clerical regime, their real crime in the eyes of Washington has been their refusal to cooperate with America’s strategic and economic designs in the region. Iran is a target as a result of the doctrine of full spectrum dominance – that is, the refusal of the United States to allow any regional power to challenge U.S. hegemony. Iran, along with Iraq, is the only Middle Eastern country which combines a sizable educated population, enormous oil resources and an adequate water supply so to be able to develop a foreign and domestic policy without having to succumb to the demands of the United States, other Western powers and international financial institutions. Iran has the desire and the ability to be an important economic, political and military player in the region, which is seen as unacceptable. As a result, as with Iraq under Saddam Hussein, cruder forms of pressure may be deemed necessary.

3. Is Iran responsible for the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq? If so, would that legitimise an attack on Iran?

Virtually all attacks against U.S. forces over the past couple of years have come from Baathist, Sunni, and other anti-Iranian Iraqi insurgent groups, which get their outside support from private sources in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. Similarly, of the more than 10,000 suspected insurgents arrested in U.S. counter-insurgency sweeps, the relatively few foreigners among them have been Arabs, not Iranians. It makes little sense, then, that the Bush administration has depicted Iran as the principal foreign threat to U.S. forces in Iraq. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, compiled by America’s sixteen intelligence agencies and issued last February, downplayed Iran’s role in Iraq’s ongoing violence and instability.

There are serious questions as to whether the explosively formed projectiles increasingly found among the improvised explosive devices targeting U.S. forces indeed have come from Iran as the Bush administration charges, given that they could be made by anyone trained on a munitions lathe. (Indeed, it is rather bizarre that the same U.S. administration that insisted just five years ago that Iraq was technologically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and was on the verge of developing an atomic bomb is now claming that Iraqis are incapable of developing an effective roadside bomb.) In any case, there is a huge black market in various explosive devices in Iraq, so it would not be surprising to find components from any number of countries and, given the lack of security along the long Iranian-Iraqi border, it would not be difficult to smuggle weapons across the frontier without the knowledge of either government. Furthermore, despite its repressive theocratic orientation, the Iranian regime is hardly monolithic. Even if some of these devices were of Iranian origin, it is far more likely that they entered Iraq through the machinations of individual Iranian officers or criminal gangs rather than as a result of orders from the “highest levels of the Iranian government,” as alleged by the Bush administration.

It is true that there are elements of the Iranian government backing radical Shiite militias, some of which have engaged in death squad activities. But much of the death squad activity, however, has come from the Badr Brigades, the militia of the largest party in the U.S.-backed Iraqi government, which has received thousands of U.S.-made machine guns, grenade launchers and high-mobility vehicles – not to mention hundreds of thousands of AK-47 rifles – courtesy of the American taxpayer. The Badr Brigades were organized and trained in exile by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, so the U.S. and Iran have mostly been backing the same groups. The greatest irony of the U.S. invasion was that it brought to power these pro-Iranian parties which have asked for this Iranian assistance.

Some Shiite militiamen who have received some Iranian support have probably killed some Americans at some point. And Iran is out to take advantage of the situation in Iraq in some ways that are not supportive of U.S. objectives. Iran, however, does not come close to being the biggest threat against American forces in that country, however, and it does not in any way justify military action against Iran.

4. As far as we know, Iran has no nuclear weapons and no nuclear weapons program. But if it were trying to develop nukes, would that justify an attack on it?

No. Even though Iran is in violation of a number of UN Security Council resolutions regarding its nuclear program, the UN has not authorized the use of force and – combined with the fact that Iran has not attacked the United States and is not on the verge of doing so – any military action by the United States would be a clear violation of the United Nations Charter. (Besides, Israel, India and Pakistan are also in violation of UN Security Council resolutions regarding their nuclear program, but that does not give any UN member state the right to attack them.)

Given that Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions are likely for deterrence, and they are unlikely to develop any deployable nuclear warhead until at least 2012, a negotiated settlement is still possible. For example, the United States could normalize relations and end its threats to attack Iran and efforts to overthrow its government in return for Iran ending its nuclear reprocessing and accepting other guarantees that would preclude their developing nuclear weapons. Such a diplomatic solution led to an end to Libya’s nuclear program in December 2003 and would likely be successful with Iran as well, but the United States has rejected such proposals.

A related initiative could be for the United States to end its opposition to the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone for the entire Middle East and South Asia, where all nations of the region would be required to give up their nuclear weapons and weapons programs and open up to strict international inspections. Iran has endorsed the idea, along with Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and other countries in the region. Such nuclear weapons-free zones already exist for Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, Antarctica and Latin America.

5. How much of a threat does Iran pose to the U.S. and Israel, and how much of a threat would it pose as a nuclear power?

Iran poses no military threat to the United States and, even if it had nuclear weapons, would not have delivery systems capable of reaching the United States for decades. Regarding Israel, since there are hundreds of miles and hundreds of thousands of American troops and sailors in between Iran and the Jewish state, there is no way that Iran could launch any attack against Israel by its navy, ground forces or aircraft. The only way Iran could theoretically attack Israel would be by launching medium-range missiles, to which Israel has more than enough capability to launch a massive counter-attack, not even counting the massive U.S. military operations which would certainly follow as well. In other words, Israel and the United States have more than enough firepower to deter any Iranian aggression.

Israel alone has at least 200-300 nuclear weapons along with ground-launched, sea-launched and air-launched nuclear missiles capable of reaching Iran to deter any possible Iranian nuclear attack. Though Iranian President Ahmadinejad has made some extreme and shocking anti-Israel statements, he does not have control over the Iranian armed forces, which is in the hands of the Supreme Leadership Council of clerics, who work by consensus and wouldn’t realistically launch what would certainly be a suicidal nuclear attack against Israel that would result in Iran’s utter destruction.

(Incidentally, President Ahmadinejad never threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” That idiom does not even exist in Persian. What he said was, “Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shaved,” which directly translated means “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.” An extreme and deplorable statement, to be sure, but he was referring to the Israeli regime, not the nation as a whole, and it was not nearly as direct a threat as implied by the mistranslation. In any case, he was quoting what Ayatollah Khomeini had said twenty years earlier, so he wasn’t saying anything new indicating a more confrontational policy.)

6. Hans Blix has stated, ‘So long as any state has [weapons of mass destruction] – especially nuclear arms – others will want them. So long as any such weapons remain, there is a risk that they will one day be used, by design or accident. And any such use would be catastrophic’ In the long run, do you think a world where some countries have nuclear weapons and some don’t is sustainable, or do we face a choice between nukes for all or nukes for none?

In early 2002, Iran was listed with Iraq and North Korea by President Bush as part of “the axis of evil.” Iraq, which had given up its nuclear program over a decade earlier and allowed IAEA inspectors to verify this later that year, was invaded and occupied by the United States anyway. By contrast, North Korea-which reneged on its agreement and resumed production of nuclear weapons-has not been invaded. The Iranians may see a lesson in that.

In addition, soon after coming to office, President Bush decided to unfreeze America’s nuclear weapons production and launch a program to develop smaller tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use. The Bush administration has refused to rule out the unilateral use of such tactical nukes against Iran, a position backed by Senator Hillary Clinton and other Democratic Party leaders. It is important to remember that the only country to actually use nuclear weapons in combat is the United States, in the 1945 bombings of two Japanese cities, a decision that most American political leaders still defend to this day. It is also important to remember that, within the past six years, U.S. forces invaded countries bordering Iran on both its east and west.

Thus far, the Bush Administration has rejected calls for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, insisting that the United States has the right to continue bringing tactical nuclear weapons into the region and to decide which countries get to have such weapons and which ones do not, effectively demanding a kind of nuclear apartheid. Not only are such double-standards unethical, they are simply unworkable: any effort to impose a regime of haves and have nots from the outside will simply make the have nots try even harder in order to deter an attack against them.

The only realistic means of curbing the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is to establish such a law-based region-wide program for disarmament, in which all countries – regardless of their relations with the United States – must be a part. And, ultimately, the only way to make the world completely safe from the threat of nuclear weapons is for the establishment of a nuclear-free planet, for which the United States – as the largest nuclear power – must take the lead.

Cross-posted at The Heathlander

When confronted with the scale of the carnage wrought upon the civilians and civilian infrastructure of southern Lebanon last year, the Israeli government and its apologists typically resort to the following line: ‘we had to do it, because Hizbullah kept hiding behind civilians’ (it should be noted here that Israel is in no moral position whatsoever to complain about other people using human shields). “Hiding behind civilians” – this became the standard media narrative for explaining how the Hizbullah’s tactics placed Israel in a difficult position with regards to killing civilians, which surely represents a significant success for the Israeli propaganda machine.
Of course, a far less popular topic for discussion was the fact that Israel “hid behind civilians” during that war, placing military bases and military equipment near and amongst civilian settlements. Independent journalist Jonathan Cook reported at the time how journalists in Israel during the war were subjected to strict censorship laws (or “martial law”, as he put it) that forbade them from disclosing the locations of Israel’s military installations. That silence allowed the Israeli government to propagate the myth that every Hizbullah attack was deliberately targeted at civilians, when in fact many were aimed at military targets that were close to or embedded within civilian settlements.

In any event, Human Rights Watch investigated Israel’s claims last year and found them to be nonsense. In an extensive report entitled ‘Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon‘, it explained,

“The Israeli government claims that it targets only Hezbollah, and that fighters from the group are using civilians as human shields, thereby placing them at risk.  Human Rights Watch found no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack.  Hezbollah occasionally did store weapons in or near civilian homes and fighters placed rocket launchers within populated areas or near U.N. observers, which are serious violations of the laws of war because they violate the duty to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties.  However, those cases do not justify the IDF’s extensive use of indiscriminate force which has cost so many civilian lives.  In none of the cases of civilian deaths documented in this report is there evidence to suggest that Hezbollah forces or weapons were in or near the area that the IDF targeted during or just prior to the attack.”

This was based upon an on-the-ground investigation of 153 civilian deaths, or over a third of the reported deaths at the time. HRW concluded:

“By consistently failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians, Israel has violated one of the most fundamental tenets of the laws of war: the duty to carry out attacks on only military targets.  The pattern of attacks during the Israeli offensive in Lebanon suggests that the failures cannot be explained or dismissed as mere accidents; the extent of the pattern and the seriousness of the consequences indicate the commission of war crimes.”

Amnesty International reached a similar judgement:

“In the course of the conflict Israeli forces committed serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including war crimes. In particular, Israeli forces carried out indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on a large scale. Israeli forces also appear to have carried out direct attacks on civilian infrastructure intended to inflict a form of collective punishment on Lebanon’s people, in order to induce them and the Lebanese government to turn against Hizbullah, as well as to cause harm to Hizbullah’s military capability”.

This did not deter pro-Israel propagandists (who are, it seems, undeterrable), who simply continued to use the ‘hiding behind civilians’ line regardless, but Human Rights Watch today published another report emphasising once again that “Israel’s indiscriminate airstrikes, not Hezbollah’s shielding as claimed by Israeli officials, caused most of the approximately 900 civilian deaths” during the war. From the report:

“Human Rights Watch found that a simple movement of vehicles or persons – such as attempting to buy bread or moving about private homes – could be enough to cause a deadly Israeli airstrike that would kill civilians. Israeli warplanes also targeted moving vehicles that turned out to be carrying only civilians trying to flee the conflict. In most such cases documented in the report, there is no evidence of a Hezbollah military presence that would have justified the attack…

Statements by Israeli officials strongly suggest that the IDF deliberately hit entire neighborhoods because they were seen as pro-Hezbollah, rather than specific Hezbollah military targets as required by the laws of war…

Human Rights Watch’s on-the-ground investigation refutes the argument made by Israeli officials that most of the Lebanese civilian casualties were due to Hezbollah routinely hiding among civilians and using them as “human shields” in the fighting. Hezbollah at times did fire rockets from, and store weapons in, populated areas and deploy its forces among the civilian population. That violated its legal duty to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians the hazards of armed conflict. In a few cases documented by Human Rights Watch, these Hezbollah violations led to civilian deaths. However, in contrast to this unlawful endangering of civilians, Human Rights Watch found no evidence in these cases of the separate legal violation of shielding, which is the deliberate use of civilians to render combatants immune from attack. The various film clips and photos published by the IDF and its allies do not provide that evidence…

With these few exceptions, Human Rights Watch found that Hezbollah stored its rockets in bunkers and facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys; ordered its fighters and civilian officials away from populated civilian areas as soon as the fighting started; and fired its rockets from pre-prepared positions outside villages. In the vast majority of airstrikes resulting in civilian deaths investigated by Human Rights Watch, there was no Hezbollah military presence or activity to justify the attack.” [my emphasis]

The report is the result of a five month investigation that examined 561 deaths (510 of them civilian), or almost half of the total death toll. Once again, a clear picture emerges: the vast majority of civilian deaths and the extensive damage to civilian infrastructure was a result not of Hizbullah “hiding among civilians” but of an Israeli campaign to deliberately destroy civilian infrastructure as a form of collective punishment, together with systematic failure by the IDF to distinguish between civilians and combatants.

This should be front-page news in Britain and the United States, both of whom backed Israeli war crimes in Lebanon to the hilt. The U.S. sent Israel weapons during the conflict, via British military airports, and both countries conspired to delay a ceasefire to give Israel more time to “bomb Lebanon back 20 years”. During the war, the U.S. House of Representatives almost unanimously passed a resolution declaring unqualified support for Israeli crimes. Some choice passages:

‘Resolved,; That the House of Representatives–

(2) condemns Hamas and Hezbollah for engaging in unprovoked and reprehensible armed attacks against Israel on undisputed Israeli territory, for taking hostages, for killing Israeli soldiers, and for continuing to indiscriminately target Israeli civilian populations with their rockets and missiles;

(3) further condemns Hamas and Hezbollah for cynically exploiting civilian populations as shields, locating their equipment and bases of operation, including their rockets and other armaments, amidst civilian populations, including in homes and mosques;

(4) recognizes Israel’s longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss and welcomes Israel’s continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties;

I bet they’re fucking cringing at those words now – although actually, the sad truth is that they probably aren’t. ‘Are you still talking about those  stupid brown people? Get over it already!’

The report has particular relevance in the light of stories that Israel is planning to cut off water, electricity and gas supplies to the Gaza Strip in an effort to turn the population against Hamas. As Vice Premier Haim Ramon (the former “Justice Minister”, no less) explained, “[w]e will set a price tag for every Qassam, in terms of cutting off infrastructures”. In other words, Israel is once again preparing to inflict collective punishment upon a defenceless, desperate people. This would hardly be a new experience for Gazans – last year, for example, Israeli jets destroyed Gaza’s power plant in what the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem termed a “war crime”. John Dugard, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories, reported how, even before last year’s ‘Operation Summer Rains’ (in which hundreds of Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed) began,

“[i]t seemed clear to me that the Government of Israel had embarked upon a siege [of Gaza] in order to bring about regime change. In the process little attention was being paid to human rights, as shelling and sonic booms violated the fundamental rights to life and human dignity, and even less attention was paid to the constraints of international humanitarian law; it was already clear that collective punishment was to be the instrument used to bring about regime change.”

Today’s Ha’aretz editorial got it right when it described Ramon’s proposal for Gaza as “immoral and illegal” but, as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others have shown, it’s just the latest example of a long-running Israeli strategy.

Cross-posted at The Heathlander

There is much buzz surrounding the latest U.S./Israeli ‘peace push’. As a Ha’aretz editorial put it,

“empty words about a “diplomatic horizon” and barren meetings between representatives of the parties are giving way to genuine diplomatic processes and practical plans for solving the conflict.”

Certainly, the Israeli government has taken steps recently that, on the face of it, appear to indicate a desire to move towards a final peace settlement. The Monday meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jericho was the first visit by an Israeli leader to a Palestinian city in more than six years. As to what was discussed there – that depends on who you listen to. In the lead-up to the summit, the Palestinian government, eager to show signs of serious progress to a sceptical Palestinian public, insisted that “final-status” issues (borders, Jerusalem, refugees) would be on the agenda. Olmert instead stuck to ambiguities about “principles” and “fundamental issues”. When pressed, David Barker, an Israeli government spokesman, admitted that Olmert and Abbas would “not be negotiating about final-status issues”. In the event, it appears that Israel got its way and that final-status issues were not discussed. As the Financial Times reported,

‘The Israeli leader made clear at the outset of the three-hour summit, their first in the West Bank, that it was not the opening of bargaining about core issues but rather talks about talks.’

This reflects the long-standing Israeli strategy of ‘endless negotiations’, whereby talks are dragged out for as long as possible without ever actually reaching a firm, clear agreement on the nature of the Palestinian state-to-be. When Olmert met with Abbas in July he was happy to talk all day about his pitiful “gestures”, but as soon as Abbas started talking about the serious issues he became impatient, demanding that Abbas “stop talking about the occupation”. As Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Ehud Olmert, put it last month, “[t]he Palestinians want to go a lot faster”, whereas Israel prefers to go “a lot slower”. No kidding.

The basic problem is this: for political reasons, it is important for both Israel and the United States to be seen to be doing something constructive in the way of a peace process. It is important for two reasons: firstly, the U.S. is in the midst of a battle for influence in the Middle East. It is trying to rally the “moderate” Gulf states against Iran and Syria, and making moves on the Israel/Palestine conflict is part of this effort. Secondly, it is important as part of the year-long U.S./Israeli strategy of strengthening Abbas at the expense of Hamas. I’ve written about this many times already, so I won’t go over it again. Suffice to say, from the moment Hamas entered office (even before, in fact, since the U.S. helped fund Abbas’ election campaign), Israel and the United States launched a campaign to overthrow it, through collective punishment, brutal military assault (‘Operation Summer Rains’) and, finally, by engineering inter-factionary violence between Fatah and Hamas. The aim was twofold: to isolate and ultimately topple the Hamas government, in order to avert the threat of a looming ‘peace offensive’, and to further split the Palestinian resistance and separate Gaza and the West Bank, in classic ‘divide and rule’ style.

Thus, the current diplomatic flurry is primarily about appearances, with the aim of strengthening Abbas politically. As the International Crisis Group reports (.pdf), the purpose of the “peace conference” President Bush has called for this Autumn is “to bolster Abbas, respond to repeated calls for a conference and fill the political void” (p. 29). It does not, as White House press spokesman Tony Snow was at pains to emphasise, have anything to do with peace:

“I think a lot of people are inclined to try to treat this as a big peace conference. It’s not…

I think what happened is it was being spun up as a major peace conference where people are going to be talking about final status issues, and that is not the case.”

The reason it has nothing to do with peace is, quite simply, because Israel is not prepared to offer the kind of settlement that Palestinians would find acceptable, and to which they are entitled under international law – namely, the international consensus two-state settlement that has been sitting on the table gathering dust for some 30 years. Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, former Information Minister for the PA and leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, is mostly correct when he says,

“It seems that the parties are both turning around in the same circles. The Palestinians are trying to reach discussions on final status issues, and the Israelis are sticking to the minor issues. The Israeli hesitance to enter the serious issues…is a severe mistake…To talk about a state without addressing the borders or the relation of the state to Jerusalem is a mistake.”

It’s an accurate assessment of what is happening, but it’s not a mere “mistake”. It’s a calculated strategy designed to delay or stall serious negotiations even while pretending to engage in them.

To illustrate the gap between what Israel is saying and its true intentions, it is worth taking a look at what it is doing on the ground. If we step back from the flowery rhetoric, we find that conditions for Palestinians are as bad as ever. Those living in Gaza are suffering from a deliberate Israeli policy of collective punishment, calculated to reduce popular support for Hamas. In the sterile language of the ICG,

“Gaza is being kept on a drip of welfare support, further eroding its fledgling, market-driven and Palestinian-run economy…

An Israeli border officer was heard defining his mission thus: “no development, no prosperity, only humanitarian dependency”. (p. 25, footnote 210)

This is just a rephrasing of the policy outlined by Dov Weisglass, an advisor to Ehud Olmert, last year: “[t]he idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger”. Since the Hamas takeover, Israel has tightened (.pdf) its already vice-like siege on Gaza. The UN today reported that Gaza will become “a virtually 100 percent aid dependent, closed down and isolated community within a matter of months or weeks, if the present regime of closure continues”. Filippo Grandi, deputy head of UNRWA, continued, “[f]ailure to open the crossings will lead to disastrous consequences”. He’s referring primarily to the Karni crossing, which has been virtually closed (apart from emergency humanitarian aid) since the Hamas takeover in June, in violation of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access (which Israel has never kept to, anyway). Karni is the primary passage of goods in and out of Gaza, and its closure has had a predictable effect on Gaza’s economy. According to figures from the Palestinian Association of Businessmen, the total loss to industry in Gaza has reached $23 million since June and if the closures continue at least 120,000 workers in Gaza will lose their jobs. Already, the 600 Gaza-based garment factories have closed down due to a lack of raw materials, putting 25,000 Palestinians out of work.

In the West Bank, despite Olmert’s pathetic “gestures” in the order of removing a couple of roadblocks here and there, Israel’s system of checkpoints and barriers has carved the West Bank into several cantons, with movement between them difficult and dependent upon arbitrary Israeli cooperation. According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem,

“In addition to the restrictions on movement from section to section, Israel also severely restricts movement within the sections by splitting them up into subsections, and by controlling and limiting movement between them.”

These restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement are humiliating and enormously damaging for the economy. In Nablus, for example, it is estimated that Israeli restrictions have reduced business income by more than 40%. The World Bank, for one, has emphasised that “Palestinian economic revival is predicated on an integrated economic entity with freedom of movement between the West Bank and Gaza and within the West Bank”. It added that Israel’s system of road and travel restrictions in the West Bank is aimed at “protecting and enhancing the free movement of settlers and the physical and economic expansion of the settlements at the expense of the Palestinian population”. B’Tselem agrees, noting that,

“Israel continues to apply these means even after the temporary and specific security need has passed, and use them to achieve other objectives, among them controlling and regulating the movement of Palestinian vehicles to separate them from the settlers and other Israelis on roads in the West Bank, and to create a rapid and convenient road network for the settlers. In addition, this separation results in the de facto annexation of these roads by Israel.”

B’Tselem concludes that the restrictions “constitute collective punishment, which is absolutely forbidden by international humanitarian law.” Only this week, a heart patient died trying to get to a hospital, after being refused access through an Israeli checkpoint.

In the Jordan Valley, long declared by Israel to be its “security border“, the IDF is harassing and threatening Palestinians, pressuring them to leave. Amnesty International reports that the IDF is trying to force more than 100 villagers, most of them children, to leave their homes in Humsa and Hadidiya, two hamlets in the Jordan Valley.  They have been ordered to leave the area “with immediate effect”, and are regularly harassed by the IDF and denied access to water. Amnesty notes,

“The Israeli army has declared most of the Jordan Valley a “closed military area” from which the local Palestinian population is barred. However, Israeli settlements — established in violation of international law — continue to expand and Israeli settlers are allowed to move freely and use vast quantities of water.

While in Humsa and Hadidiya every single home is slated for destruction and the Palestinian villagers have to bring water for their basic needs from 20 kilometres away, Israeli settlements only a few hundreds of meters away, have well-watered gardens and swimming pools.”

As one resident asked, “We are doing no harm to Israel. We have rights to our land. Where are the settlers’ documents for land rights?” Evidently, his question fell on deaf ears – Israeli bulldozers have demolished homes in five Palestinian villages in the Jordan Valley in the past week. Another was destroyed in East Jerusalem.

Needless to say, even as Palestinian houses are being demolished, new homes for Israeli settlers in the West Bank continue to be built. In the first four months of this year, active permanent construction was seen in at least 12 settlement outposts, and no outposts were removed. In the same period,

– Instances of development and construction were noted in 86 out of the 121 official settlements in the West Bank

• Construction or development was noted in 45 of the settlements situated east of the fence
• Construction or development was noted in 41 of the settlements situated west of the fence
• 32% of the sites on which either construction or development is being carried out are situated east of the fence
• 65 tenders for  new residential units in the settlements have been published since the beginning of the year

Meanwhile, three years after the International Court decision that ruled it illegal, construction continues on Israel’s annexation wall. The wall poses huge problems for Palestinians by restricting access to fields, workplaces, relatives and hospitals – as one Palestinian from Abu Dis, separated from his workshop by the wall, exclaims, “It is easier for me to go to Venezuela than to the Damascus Gate”. In June, the OCHA released a report (.pdf) on the humanitarian, social and economic consequences of the wall on East Jerusalem, which has cut off from the West Bank. Some of its findings:

– Palestinians from the West Bank require permits to visit the six specialist hospitals inside Jerusalem. The time and difficulty this entails has resulted in an up to 50% drop in the number of patients visiting these hospitals.

• Entire families have been divided by the Barrier. Husbands and wives are separated from each other, their children and other relatives.
• Palestinian Muslims and Christians can no longer freely visit religious sites in Jerusalem. Permits are needed and are increasingly difficult to obtain.
• School and university students struggle each day through checkpoints to reach institutions that are located on the other side of the Barrier.
• Entire communities, such as the 15,000 people in the villages of the Bir Nabala enclave, are totally surrounded by the Barrier. Movement in and out is through a tunnel to Ramallah which passes under a motorway restricted for Israeli vehicles only.

The OCHA notes that the barrier, only 20% of which will follow the Green Line when completed, has now become a “de facto border”, which is exactly what it was intended to be.

If any doubt remains about Israel’s sincerity, one need only look at the intensive pressure it is applying to Abbas to keep him away from talks with Hamas – a step that all informed analysts (and anyone with a functioning brain in their head) agree is a necessary one for a settlement of any kind to become a meaningful prospect.

These ‘peace talks’ are pure theatre, a political distraction from the reality on the ground – a reality that continues to changed, actively and deliberately, by an Israel intent on making the occupation an irreversible ‘fact’. The point is this: you and I may be fooled by the diplomatic niceties and vigorous handshakes, but those Palestinians who daily experience Israel’s continuing efforts to expand and entrench its control over the occupied territories will not. They’re not that stupid.

Cross-posted at The Heathlander

Below is a sample – all too representative – of quotes by Democrats and bills supported/introduced by Democrats relating to Israel, in particular its aggression against Lebanon last year and the ongoing occupation of the Palestinians, compared with reports and quotes by reputable witnesses and human rights NGOs describing the reality on the ground.

The Democrats’ views of the conflicts are written in italics. The reality is presented in plain text.

Compare and contrast.

“We must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs.”

– Sen. Barack Obama

“Gaza is dying. The Israeli siege of the Palestinian enclave is so tight that its people are on the edge of starvation…A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world.”

– Patrick Cockburn

“As Americans we are humbled by Israel’s commitment to civic engagement and open debate, free expression and the rule of law, even in the face of grave dangers.”

– Sen. Hillary Clinton

“The Shin Bet security service will thwart the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, even if such activity is sanctioned by the law”.

– the Shin Bet (see also here and here)

“Until and unless Hamas renounces violence and terror, and abandons its position calling for the destruction of Israel, I don’t believe the United States should recognize Hamas, nor should any nation in the world.”

 Sen. Hillary Clinton

‘Israeli forces carried out frequent air and artillery bombardments against the Gaza Strip [in 2006], often into densely populated refugee camps and residential areas. Some 650 Palestinians, half of them unarmed civilians and including some 120 children, were killed by Israeli forces. This toll was a threefold increase compared with 2005.’

– Amnesty International, 2007 Annual Report

“Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons…The Iranian president’s statements such as his description of the Holocaust as a myth and his goals to wipe Israel off the map indicate that Iran is serious about its threats…Once Iran goes nuclear, other countries in the Middle East will go nuclear, making Israel’s neighborhood much more volatile…To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table, Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table.”

– Sen. John Edwards

“While, feeling under threat from Iran and others, Israel is not likely to discard its nuclear-weapon capability except as part of a peace settlement, it could help to reduce tension, as is now asked of Iran, by joining Iran and all other states in the region in a commitment to suspend and renounce any fuel-cycle activities…We assume Israel has 200 nuclear warheads. Stop the work in Dimona…The best way to guarantee security is a WMD free zone.”

– Hans Blix, Chairman of the WMD Commission. See also here for a list of threatening statements, far more credible than the Ahmadinejad misquote, made by U.S. and Israeli officials against Iran.

“Today, instead of an economy, the Palestinians have a tin cup…Yet who do they blame? The United States, Bush, Olmert, Abu Mazen, the P.A., the Arabs, the Quartet, the weather, the New York Yankees — anyone and everyone except Hamas.”

– Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.)

“[If the boycott is ended, the Palestinians] will offer a promise from Hamas and Fatah of a total cease-fire with Israel, including a complete halt to Qassam [rocket] fire and suicide bombings”

– Hamas (Israel rejected the offer)

“I stand firmly with the people of Israel and their government as they defend themselves against these outrageous attacks. The kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and missile attacks against Israeli citizens are unacceptable and cannot be tolerated.”

– Sen. Russ Feingold

“Since the abduction of Gilad Shalit, and more so since the outbreak of the Lebanon war, the Israel Defense Forces has been rampaging through Gaza — there’s no other word to describe it — killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately…In the last two months, Israel killed 224 Palestinians, 62 of them children and 25 of them women. It bombed and assassinated, destroyed and shelled, and no one stopped it. No Qassam cell or smuggling tunnel justifies such wide-scale killing. A day doesn’t go by without deaths, most of them innocent civilians.”

– Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy

‘Resolved, That the Senate–<>

(1) reaffirms its steadfast support for the State of Israel;

(2) supports Israel’s right of self-defense and Israel’s right to take appropriate action to deter aggression by terrorist groups and their state sponsors;

(3) urges the President to continue fully supporting Israel as Israel exercises its right of self-defense in Lebanon and Gaza;
(4) calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Israeli soldiers who are being held captive by Hezbollah or Hamas;

(5) condemns the Governments of Iran and Syria for their continued support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and holds the Governments of Syria and Iran responsible for the acts of aggression carried out by Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel;

(6) condemns Hamas and Hezbollah for exploiting civilian populations as shields and locating their military activities in civilian areas;

(7) urges the President to use all available political and diplomatic means, including sanctions, to persuade the governments of Syria and Iran to end their support of Hezbollah and Hamas;

(8) calls on the Government of Lebanon to do everything in its power to find and free the kidnapped Israeli soldiers being held in its territory, and to fulfill its responsibility under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 (adopted September 2, 2004) to disband and disarm Hezbollah;

(9) calls on the United Nations Security Council to condemn these unprovoked acts and to demand compliance with Resolution 1559, which requires that Hezbollah and other militias be disbanded and disarmed, and that all foreign forces be withdrawn from Lebanon;

(10) urges all sides to protect innocent civilian life and infrastructure and strongly supports the use of all diplomatic means available to free the captured Israeli soldiers; and

(11) recognizes that thousands of American nationals reside peacefully in Lebanon, and that those American nationals in Lebanon concerned for their safety should receive the full support and assistance of the United States government.’

– Senate Resolution 534, passed unanimously on July 18, 2006. The bill condemned Hamas and Hizbullah, making no mention of Israeli crimes.

‘Israeli forces pounded buildings into the ground, reducing entire neighbourhoods to rubble and turning villages and towns into ghost town, as their inhabitants fled the bombardments. Main roads, bridges and petrol stations were blown to bits. Entire families were killed in air strikes on their homes or in their vehicles while fleeing the aerial assaults on their villages. Scores lay buried beneath the rubble of their houses for weeks, as the Red Cross and other rescue workers were prevented from accessing the areas by continuing Israeli strikes. The hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who fled the bombardment now face the danger of unexploded munitions as they head home…The Lebanese government estimates 31 “vital points”, for example water and sewage treatment plants, power stations, airports etc., have been totally or partially destroyed. More than 25 fuel station and 900 commercial enterprises were hit. The number of residential properties, offices and shops completely destroyed exceeds 30,000. Two government hospitals – in Bint Jbiel and Mais al-Jebel – were completely destroyed in Israeli attacks and three others were seriously damaged…

The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of public works, power systems, civilian homes and industry was deliberate and an integral part of the military strategy, rather than “collateral damage”‘. [my emphasis]

– Amnesty International, on the other hand, did.

‘Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) reaffirms its steadfast support for the State of Israel;

(2) condemns Hamas and Hezbollah for engaging in unprovoked and reprehensible armed attacks against Israel on undisputed Israeli territory, for taking hostages, for killing Israeli soldiers, and for continuing to indiscriminately target Israeli civilian populations with their rockets and missiles;

(3) further condemns Hamas and Hezbollah for cynically exploiting civilian populations as shields, locating their equipment and bases of operation, including their rockets and other armaments, amidst civilian populations, including in homes and mosques;

(4) recognizes Israel’s longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss and welcomes Israel’s continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties;

(5) demands the Governments of Iran and Syria to direct Hamas and Hezbollah to immediately and unconditionally release Israeli soldiers which they hold captive;

(6) affirms that all governments that have provided continued support to Hamas or Hezbollah share responsibility for the hostage-taking and attacks against Israel and, as such, should be held accountable for their actions;

(7) condemns the Governments of Iran and Syria for their continued support for Hezbollah and Hamas in their armed attacks against Israelis and their other terrorist activities;

(8) supports Israel’s right to take appropriate action to defend itself, including to conduct operations both in Israel and in the territory of nations which pose a threat to it, which is in accordance with international law, including Article 51 of the United Nations Charter;

(9) commends the President of the United States for fully supporting Israel as it responds to these armed attacks by terrorist organizations and their state sponsors;

(10) urges the President of the United States to bring the full force of political, diplomatic, and economic sanctions available to the Government of the United States against the Governments of Syria and Iran;

(11) demands the Government of Lebanon to do everything in its power to find and free the kidnapped Israeli soldiers being held in the territory of Lebanon;

(12) calls on the United Nations Security Council to condemn these unprovoked acts and to take action to ensure full and immediate implementation of United Nations Security Council 1559 (2004), which requires Hezbollah to be dismantled and the departure of all Syrian personnel and Iranian Revolutionary Guards from Lebanon;

(13) expresses its condolences to all families of innocent victims of recent violence; and

(14) declares its continued commitment to working with Israel and other United States allies in combating terrorism worldwide.’

– House Resolution 921, passed by the House 410-8 on July 20, 2006. It made no criticisms of Israel’s conduct in the Lebanon war and neglected even to call upon Israel to display ‘restraint’.

“In the 34-day war which broke out on 12 July, after Hizbullah’s military wing crossed into Israel and attacked an Israeli patrol, killing three Israeli soldiers and capturing two others. Israeli forces carried out air and artillery bombardments, killing nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of children. Israeli forces also destroyed tens of thousands of homes and commercial properties, mostly in south Lebanon and in the suburbs of Beirut; and targeted and damaged main roads and bridges throughout the country. Hizbullah missiles fired into Israel caused the deaths of 43 civilians and damaged hundreds of buildings.

In the course of the conflict Israeli forces committed serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including war crimes. In particular, Israeli forces carried out indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on a large scale. Israeli forces also appear to have carried out direct attacks on civilian infrastructure intended to inflict a form of collective punishment on Lebanon’s people, in order to induce them and the Lebanese government to turn against Hizbullah, as well as to cause harm to Hizbullah’s military capability…

In the final days of the war, after the terms of the ceasefire had been agreed, Israeli forces launched hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs containing up to 4 million bomblets into south Lebanon. The million or so unexploded bomblets that were left continued to kill and maim civilians long after the end of the war. Some 200 people, including tens of children, had been killed or injured by these bomblets and newly laid mines by the end of the year. Despite repeated requests, Israel did not provide detailed maps of the exact locations where its forces launched cluster bombs to the UN bodies mandated to clear unexploded ordnance.” [my emphasis]

– Amnesty International, 2007 Annual Report

“We will support [Israel’s] efforts to send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians, to the Iranians, to all who seek death and domination instead of life and freedom”

– Sen. Hillary Clinton, speaking at a rally in New York City in July, 2006.

“In Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombs, what we did there was crazy and monstrous”.

– An IDF commander, describing exactly how Israel delivered its “message” to Hizbullah.

‘Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That Congress–

[snip]

(2) congratulates the residents of Jerusalem and the people of Israel on the 40th anniversary of the reunification of that historic city;

[snip]

(4) commends Israel for its administration of the undivided city of Jerusalem for the past 40 years, during which Israel has respected the rights of all religious groups;’

– Excerpt from a bill recently introduced by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.).

‘Confirms in the clearest possible terms that all legislative and administrative actions taken by Israel to change the status of the City of Jerusalem, including expropriation of land and properties, transfer of populations and legislation aimed at the incorporation of the occupied section, are totally invalid and cannot change that status’.

– UN Security Council Resolution 298, cited in the July 2004 World Court advisory opinion, which ruled that, “[a]ll these territories (including East Jerusalem) remain occupied territories and Israel has continued to have the status of occupying Power.”

And so on and so on. Even as everyone from the Red Cross and B’Tselem to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN have documented Israeli war crimes and systematic violations of international humanitarian law in detail, the Israeli state has enjoyed virtually unqualified bipartisan support in the U.S. Unfortunately, this looks set to continue, despite the ongoing collective punishment and ethnic cleansing in the Occupied Territories.

This amounts to support for and complicity in war crimes. The Democrats must end their support for Israeli oppression and brutality, and bring their policies back in line with the law. No party with a record of advocation of state terrorism and gross human rights abuses as consistent and sustained as that detailed above can legitimately call itself “progressive” – or, indeed, anything other than morally barbaric. A change in Israel’s behaviour is going to have to be brought about from the outside, and realistically that means from the U.S. It is therefore imperative that the Democrats progress beyond the current unconditional cheerleading for Israel, which will only lead to yet more unnecessary suffering.

Cross-posted at The Heathlander

“Chaos reigns in the occupied territories, the prison’s inmates turning on one another while their jailors look on smugly. It is hard not to feel anger, especially at those responsible for the incarceration of the Palestinian people (now in their fortieth year of occupation), but also at those nominally responsible for the fate of this people, who are failing dismally.”

It is easy to sympathise with Rashid Khalidi’s frustration. The humanitarian disaster currently unfolding in the Gaza Strip (Israel claims, as always, that it is only attacking “Hamas targets”; others beg to differ) could so easily have been avoided, if the Palestinians had a more responsible leadership and if the occupiers weren’t so determined to avoid peace with a Palestinian leadership that is unwilling to cede to its political demands.

It is important to recognise that, just as last year’s military operations had nothing to do with the capture of Cpl. Shalit, the latest spate of violence is not about the Qassam missiles. It is instead the latest act in a long-standing U.S./Israeli strategy to topple the elected Hamas government, principally by collectively punishing the Palestinian population. It is for this reason that the number of military roadblocks in the West Bank was increased by 40% last year – the Israeli system of restrictions on freedom of movement within the West Bank, of which the roadblocks and checkpoints are an integral part, has, according to the World Bank, `divided the occupied West Bank into 10 economically isolated enclaves, severing financial links and denying Palestinians access to some 50 percent of the land’. According to the World Bank,

“[These restrictions have] fragmented the territory into ever smaller and more disconnected cantons…Estimates of the total restricted area are difficult to come by, but it appears to be in excess of 50 percent of the land of the West Bank…

While Israeli security concerns are undeniable and must be addressed, it is often difficult to reconcile the use of movement and access restrictions for security purposes from their use to expand and protect settlement activity and the relatively unhindered movement of settlers and other Israelis in and out of the West Bank”.

Similarly, Israel’s decision in early 2006 to steal the Palestinian money it collects every month, as the occupying power, on behalf of the Palestinian Authority was part of the overall strategy aimed at bringing down the Hamas government, outlined in late 2006 by Dov Weisglass, an aide to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert:

“It’s like a meeting with a dietician. We have to make them [the Palestinian people] much thinner, but not enough to die”.

The international aid boycott of the Palestinian Authority, which is ongoing, furthered the same objectives. The point is to make it very clear to the Palestinian people that their welfare depends upon the overthrow of the Hamas government. As Ha’aretz reports,

`Nonetheless, the Shin Bet is also not optimistic about the long-term future. This assessment will only change if there is a major revival in Fatah, and if a majority of the Palestinian public concludes that Hamas is the source of serious damage.` [my emphasis]

The international boycott and the collective punishment that has been inflicted upon the Palestinian population for the past year have been about precisely that – drilling it into Palestinian minds that retaining a Hamas government will entail great suffering for them. This policy is, of course, illegal under international law. John Dugard, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, last year described the boycott as “possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions…[imposed] in modern times”. Dugard recalled that at the height of apartheid in South Africa, “Western states refused to impose meaningful sanctions on South Africa to compel it to abandon apartheid on the grounds that this would harm the black people of South Africa”, and noted that “[n]o such sympathy is extended to the Palestinian people or their human rights.” It is perhaps worth repeating, then, the recent comments of Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa’s Minister for Intelligence Services and a son of Lithuanian Jews. Speaking to Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, he stated,

“The occupation reminds me of the darkest days of apartheid, but we never saw tanks and planes firing at a civilian population. It’s a monstrousness I’d never seen before. The wall you built, the checkpoints and the roads for Jews only – it turns the stomach, even for someone who grew up under apartheid. It’s a hundred times worse…

We know from our experience that oppression motivates resistance and that the more savage the oppression, the harsher the resistance. At a certain point in time you think that the oppression is working, and that you’re controlling the other people, imprisoning its leaders and its activists, but the resistance will triumph in the end.”

In essence, then, the Palestinians have been subjected to a form of blackmail, although the word hardly does the policy justice. It is not mere blackmail when the very states responsible for the degradation of Palestinian life, to the point where the majority of them are dependent on international aid for survival, then condition that aid upon the political obedience of their victims. This is analogous to beating an old man to the point of death, and then withholding medical care from him until he agrees to do one’s bidding (all the while pretending to be supremely concerned about his welfare, of course). “Collective torture” more adequately describes the moral bankruptcy of this policy, supported, as far as I can tell, by all three major political parties in Britain and both parties in the U.S.

International aid to the Palestinians has massively increased over the past year, a reflection of their worsening condition. There can be no doubt, however, about the effects the international boycott has had on Palestinian welfare. A recent House of Commons International Development Committee report (.pdf) outlined the depths to which Palestinian life has sunk.

* Real GDP declined by 9 percent in the first half of 2006 and was predicted to fall by 27 percent by the end of 2006, with personal income falling by 30 percent.

• 160,000 public sector workers have not been paid since March 2006, affecting 25 percent of the population.
• Their coping strategies include: postponing paying bills (83.5 percent), living on past savings (26.3 percent), selling jewellery (29.6 percent) and reducing consumption of fresh meat (88.6 percent). Fully 65 percent are reliant on informal borrowing just to subsist.
• 70 percent of the Gazan workforce is without work or pay.
• 51 percent of the Palestinians now depend on food assistance, a 14 percent increase on last year.
• Malnutrition rates in 2004 were as bad as parts of sub-Saharan Africa. It is the main public health problem, with 37.9 percent of children under five and 31.1. percent of women of child bearing age being anaemic. Twenty-two percent of under-fives are deficient in vitamin A and 20 percent are deficient in iodine.
• Infant mortality is 25.2 per 1,000 live births, while under-five mortality is 29.1 per 1,000 live births.
• Hospital fees are unaffordable to most Palestinians. The effect of the closures imposed by Israel, non-payment of salaries and subsequent strikes by staff have interrupted the supply of medication and equipment. This has drastically reduced access to hospitals and healthcare.
• While the average number of births in Hebron is about 600, last September, just 100 babies were delivered in public hospitals, with a further 200 traced to private or NGO hospitals. Three hundred could not be traced and were assumed to be home deliveries, most without access to trained midwives.
• 25 percent of Gaza’s residents do not have sufficient access to water.
• The bombing of Gaza’s power plant by Israel during the summer offensive has further restricted access to water, causing problems for the hospitals and an increase in diarrhoea, particularly in children under three.
• Palestinians consume an average of 83 cubic metres of water per person per year, compared with Israeli consumption of 333 cubic metres and settler consumption of 1,450. Settlements on hilltops often drain their waste water into the valleys below, contaminating the Palestinians’ water supplies.
• Only 7.3 percent of West Bank land is irrigated compared with 50 percent of comparable Israeli land.
• 64 percent of Palestinians fell below the poverty line in 2006, but this figure rises to 78 percent in Gaza. This has grown from 20 percent in 1998 and 54 percent in 2005.
• In the first half of 2006, a massive 1,069,200 people had consumption levels below the deep poverty line, an increase of 418,400 in just six months. They had an average daily consumption equivalent to about US$1.66 per person per day, which is below the accepted level of consumption of US$2.10 needed to meet basic needs.
• Real per capita consumption had fallen by 12 percent in 2006, with food consumption down by 8 percent.

As I wrote at the time,

`The Palestinian economy shrank by 21% in the fourth quarter of 2006. To put Gaza’s 70% unemployment rate in some perspective, the U.S. at the height of the Great Depression had an unemployment rate of 23.6%. The House of Commons report (.pdf) concludes that the “current phase” of the humanitarian crisis in the OPT has been “largely triggered by the withholding of Palestinian Authority revenues by the Government of Israel and the withdrawal of budgetary assistance by the major donors.” “These actions have made a bad situation worse” and are “harming ordinary people”. It should be remembered that the international community decided to impose sanctions on a population that was already experiencing “the worst economic depression in modern history“. Talk about kicking them when they’re down.’

According to Oxfam International, reporting in late February 2007, `conditions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories [are] close to melt-down’. `Since 2006 poverty has shot up’, it continued. `Two thirds of Palestinians now live in poverty, a rise of 30 per cent last year. The number of families unable to get enough food has risen by 14 per cent. More than half of all Palestinians are now are `food insecure’, unable to meet their families’ daily requirements without assistance. The health system is disintegrating.’ Jeremy Hobbs, the Director of Oxfam, was correct when he said,

“The Quartet needs to take off its blinkers and see the damage its policies are having on ordinary Palestinian families. Using international aid as a battering ram to force through political change is not only immoral but also counter-productive. While the Palestinian Authority is bled dry by Israel’s seizure of tax revenue and the international aid boycott peace will be a distant dream.”

There can, as I say, be no doubt about the catastrophic effects the aid boycott has had on the Palestinian population. What one has to bear in mind, however, is that all this humanitarian suffering has been utterly intentional. The policies pursued by Israel and the U.S. were designed with the express purpose of collectively punishing the Palestinian people. The New York Times, reporting in February 2006, was fairly blunt about the objectives underpinning the policies of economic warfare:

“The United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to Israeli officials and Western diplomats.”

As John Dugard wrote late last year, “[r]egime change, rather than security, probably explains Israel’s punishment of Gaza.”

All the above, of course, is without mentioning the extreme violence meted out by the Israeli army in Gaza last year, and the psychological as well as physical damage this has caused. `Operation Summer Rains`, as Israel cynically dubbed it, was driven by precisely the same objectives as the economic starvation. As John Dugard explained, even before the full-scale military assault began last June,

“It seemed clear to me that the Government of Israel had embarked upon a siege in order to bring about regime change. In the process little attention was being paid to human rights, as shelling and sonic booms violated the fundamental rights to life and human dignity, and even less attention was paid to the constraints of international humanitarian law; it was already clear that collective punishment was to be the instrument used to bring about regime change.”

It is in this context that the current spate of violence must be understood. Hamas yesterday declared that it is willing to accept a ceasefire with Israel, as long as it applies to both Gaza and the West Bank. This was, of course, offered to Israel months ago, before the current round of attacks began. The response then was an Israeli rejection, and it looks as though this attitude is set to continue. Hamas’ proposal is a rejection of Abbas’ plan of a month-long ceasefire in Gaza, followed by an extension to the West Bank. Hamas has always demanded reciprocity, and in any event, militant groups like Islamic Jihad cannot be expected to just sit there doing nothing in Gaza even as their brothers in the West Bank are being kidnapped and killed. It would be like Hamas proposing a truce with Haifa and Tel Aviv, but not with Jerusalem or Sderot.

It is quite clear that the recent spate of Qassam missile attacks on Sderot were intended primarily to refocus the Palestinian resistance back onto the occupation, as opposed to the disastrous internecine fighting that has been rampaging through the territories of late. Indeed, if you look at the front page of the Palestinian Ma’an news service, you’ll see a poll that explicitly asks, “Do you think the projectile attacks on Sderot succeeded in ending the Hamas-Fatah infighting?” (currently, 64% of respondents say `no’).

The role of Israel and its international supporters in the current internal Palestinian violence is therefore crucial to understanding the cause of the current crisis, which threatens to make 2007 an even worse year for the Palestinians than 2006. The fighting between Fatah and Hamas reflects in large part the quite openly proclaimed U.S.-Israeli policy, discussed above, of collectively punishing the Palestinian population for the purpose of toppling the elected Hamas government. Only recently, a secret 16-page document was leaked that made explicit the U.S. plan for `undermining and replacing the Palestinian national-unity government’. It essentially outlined a two-pronged strategy – to finance and equip President Abbas’ security forces on the one hand, and to ease some short-term economic restrictions (such as removing a few roadblocks, or opening the crossings more frequently) on the other, making clear that these rewards have been won by President Abbas. In the documents’ words, the strategy aims to “[d]eliver a strong political blow to Hamas by supplying the Palestinian people with their immediate economic needs through the Presidency and Fatah”. The idea is to both ensure that Abbas’ forces are strong enough to win any future civil war and to “build up his political capital”, which would then enable him to comfortably call “parliamentary elections by the beginning of autumn 2007″.

The contempt this strategy has for Palestinian democracy is obvious – it is, after all, a secret programme of subversion whose goal is regime change. What is particularly striking, however, is the sheer indifference with which it regards the welfare of the Palestinian people (striking, but not surprising, given the policies outlined above). Humanitarian suffering is totally subordinated to political concerns – the sole objective of the document is regime change. As the Missing Links blog, which translated part of the document from Arabic to English, puts it,

“The unifying theme in this is the following: Everything that was to be done was for the ultimate purpose of enabling Abbas to call, and then to win, new parliamentary elections in fall 2007, so as to definitively and legally sideline Hamas. The document spells out the idea that World Bank financing was to be considered from that perspective; wage-payments were to be arranged with that in mind; even the idea of negotiating with Israel was to set up an atmosphere of optimism that would similarly help Abbas; strengthening of law and order were also for the purpose of enhancing the position of Abbas. What this document shows is that not only was the US still intent, after the Mecca agreement, on dislodging the elected government of Hamas, but that all of the component parts of the scheme, political, financial and economic, were all subordinated to that.”

The effect of the crippling aid boycott, outlined above, together with the frequent Israeli abductions of Palestinian legislative officials and bombings of Palestinian government infrastructure, has been to exacerbate tensions within the Gaza Strip and reduce PA control, to the point where inter-factionary violence has erupted. This was entirely predictable. As Amira Hass wrote last year,

“The experiment was a success: The Palestinians are killing each other. They are behaving as expected at the end of the extended experiment called `what happens when you imprison 1.3 million human beings in an enclosed space like battery hens.`”

It was not only predictable, but predicted, by both U.S. and Israeli policy makers. As Ha’aretz reported in October,

“Israeli sources say that the United States is interested in the fall of the Hamas government currently in power in the Palestinian Authority…

“During the Quartet meeting in London, the Americans expressed their satisfaction with the results of the boycott of Hamas’ government, which has undermined its standing among the Palestinians…

“However, the U.S. administration is also certain that the sanctions against Hamas will inevitably result in a violent confrontation between Hamas and Fatah, and in such a scenario, they would prefer to strengthen the “good guys” headed by Abbas.”

To that end, the U.S. and Israel have funded, armed and trained Abbas’ private militia. To its shame, Fatah has collaborated with the occupation, accepting U.S. and Israeli military aid, knowing full well the motives behind it. Whether the main culprit for this betrayal is President Abbas or his thuggish National Security Advisor Mohammed Dahlan, the fact is that Fatah has a long history of cooperating with the occupiers against Palestinian interests to consolidate its own power (indeed, this is precisely what the “Oslo process” in reality represented). It is worth recalling that Fatah accepted U.S. money to help fight its electoral campaign last January, in which Hamas emerged victorious. (Laila El-Hadad is correct to note, however, that Hamas is itself no stranger to Israeli money).

This also explains Israel’s recent campaign, which has involved violations of international and perhaps Israeli law, of targeted assassinations, home demolitions, mass kidnappings and air strikes against Hamas activists, officials and infrastructure. It must be understood that the primary goal of U.S./Israeli policy over the past year has been to depose the Hamas government – that is what explains the current assault on Gaza, and that is what is in large part responsible for the internal Palestinian “civil war”, which is in reality more accurately described as a military coup.

There has been a realistic ceasefire offer on the table for months, and the terms are quite simple. If Israel halts its offensives in Gaza and the West Bank, so Hamas and the other Palestinian factions will stop launching missiles at Israel. That Israel continues to reject this in favour of increased violence and destruction demonstrates further that halting the Qassam missile strikes is simply not a high priority for the Israeli government. This should not be surprising in the least – Israel has, after all, chosen expansion at the expense of security for decades.

So instead of looking upon the intra-Palestinian violence with smug condescension and even contempt, exemplified by this recent Ze’ev Schiff article in Ha’aretz, let’s instead work to change the policies of occupation and collective punishment that have brought it about. Even if the moral argument is set aside for a moment, it is clear that Israel will never enjoy security in the absence of a political settlement. For the sake of the residents of Sderot, then, as well as the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel must sign a comprehensive ceasefire with the Palestinian factions and the devastating boycott of the Palestinian Authority must be brought to an end. The sad truth is that it almost certainly won’t, because peace is not Israel’s objective. Regime change is, and it comes with a heavy humanitarian cost – one born chiefly by the occupied Palestinian people, which probably explains our shocking indifference.

Cross-posted at The Heathlander

(Source for image)