Statehood for the Palestinians

[anajmi]

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/op ... d-1.384559

The truths are so basic, so banal, that it hurts even to repeat them.

But are the farts listening?

[Muslim First]

Editorial
Israel and New York’s Ninth DistrictPublished:
September 14, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/opini ... trict.html

Israel and New York’s Ninth DistrictThere has already been a lot of theorizing about why a little-known Republican businessman, Bob Turner, won Tuesday’s special Congressional election in a traditionally Democratic New York City district. The grim economy appears to have been a big factor in his victory over Assemblyman David Weprin, and some voters also complained about Mr. Weprin’s principled vote in Albany to legalize gay marriage, which was anathema to many ultra-Orthodox Jewish voters.

Some analysts — and eager Republican critics — are also claiming it was a repudiation of President Obama’s policies toward Israel. On Wednesday, an article on the Web site of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said that “in politics it is the perception that counts,” and that the Democratic loss “will be portrayed, as the outspoken former Mayor Ed Koch put it, ‘as a message to President Obama that he cannot throw Israel under a bus with impunity.’ ”

Mr. Obama has done nothing of the sort; his support for Israel has never wavered. But we fear that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will read the election as yet another reason to ignore the president’s advice and refuse to make any compromises with the Palestinians, no matter how essential for Israel’s own security.

Mr. Koch played a cynical game in urging special-election voters to choose the Republican as a rebuke to Mr. Obama for saying that Israel’s pre-1967 borders — with mutually agreed land swaps — should be the basis of any peace agreement. That has been the basis of every deal sought by American presidents for more than a decade. Mr. Netanyahu now hints that he, too, accepts it.

Mr. Obama has not handled the Israeli-Palestinian issue adroitly. Palestinians certainly waited too long to begin negotiations, and Arab leaders failed to offer initiatives that might give Israel confidence that a serious deal was possible. But Mr. Netanyahu has been the most intractable, building settlements and blaming his inability to be more forthcoming on his conservative coalition. Egged on by Congressional Republicans, he has sought to embarrass Mr. Obama — astonishing behavior for so close an ally that does not serve his own country’s interest.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly affirmed support for Israel and backed it up with action. He has had far more success than President George W. Bush in rallying tough sanctions on Iran. Security cooperation is strong, including accelerated development and funding for an Israeli missile defense system. The administration pressured Egypt last weekend to protect Israel’s diplomats in Cairo, and it negotiated an agreement to ease tensions with Turkey over the Gaza aid flotilla, until Israel pulled out of the deal.

Now, Mr. Obama is risking American ties with a fast-changing Arab world by vowing to veto the Palestinians’ statehood bid at the United Nations. The president supports a two-state solution but rightly believes that can be achieved only through negotiations.

His diplomats are working with allies to persuade the Palestinians that a United Nations vote would be costly for them too, once the euphoria fades in the West Bank and it is clear that little has changed. They are hoping to restart negotiations by defining the main elements of an agreement that guarantees Israel’s security and provides the Palestinians with a viable state. They should put a map and a timeline on the table and demand that both sides join in.

Mr. Netanyahu should be worried that his country is more isolated now than when he took office. That isolation will deepen so long as negotiations remain stalemated. No vote in New York City makes that any less true — or any less dangerous for Israel.

[Muslim First]

After the U.N. Vote on Palestine
By JIMMY CARTER

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/opini ... ter14.html

[Muslim First]

Room for Debate: Does Israel Need a Palestine? http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/20 ... ame-change

[Muslim First]

Palestinians Say a U.N. Gamble on Statehood Is Worth the Risks
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/world ... -risk.html

[anajmi]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 1544.story

Casting a high-profile veto, however, could score much-needed points with Jewish voters at home.


Is it ever about anything other than much needed votes in the US? These people would sell their own mothers for votes!!

[SBM]

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/15/2 ... k=misearch

[Muslim First]

Israel: Adrift at Sea Alone
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/opini ... alone.html

The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation.

This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.

Israel is not responsible for the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt or for the uprising in Syria or for Turkey’s decision to seek regional leadership by cynically trashing Israel or for the fracturing of the Palestinian national movement between the West Bank and Gaza. What Israel’s prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, is responsible for is failing to put forth a strategy to respond to all of these in a way that protects Israel’s long-term interests.

O.K., Mr. Netanyahu has a strategy:Do nothing vis-à-vis the Palestinians or Turkey that will require him to go against his base, compromise his ideology or antagonize his key coalition partner, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, an extreme right-winger. Then, call on the U.S. to stop Iran’s nuclear program and help Israel out of every pickle, but make sure that President Obama can’t ask for anything in return — like halting Israeli settlements — by mobilizing Republicans in Congress to box in Obama and by encouraging Jewish leaders to suggest that Obama is hostile to Israel and is losing the Jewish vote. And meanwhile, get the Israel lobby to hammer anyone in the administration or Congress who says aloud that maybe Bibi has made some mistakes, not just Barack. There, who says Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t have a strategy?

[Muslim First]

Ten Reasons for a European 'Yes'

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/opini ... ari17.html

[Muslim First]

Sad and Happy About Palestinian Statehood Bid

http://original.antiwar.com/avnery/2011 ... state-bid/

[Muslim First]

Dear U.S. Jews, please don't let Netanyahu deceive you

http://www.islamicity.com/m/news_frame. ... ceID=60249

[Muslim First]

Stanley Fish: Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... to-dinner/

So there is no legal case here and there may very well be no dinner; and there will certainly not be the kind of dinner that led the Israel Law Center to issue its warning. So why write about it, whatever “it” turns out to be? Because it raises questions I have been trying to answer while I work on a book about academic freedom. Why has the conflict between Israel and much of the Arab world become a third-rail topic in the academy? Why do so many of the incidents in which academic freedom is invoked by both sides center on that conflict? How can even a non-event, as this appears to be, release virulent energies and give rise to rants and counter-rants that threaten to go viral?

I have tentative answers to these questions, but they don’t really satisfy. For example, academics are always looking for an underdog to champion. I am old enough to remember when it was Jews. After Jews came women, then African-Americans, then the oppressed blacks of South Africa (remember divestment?), then Native Americans, then Latinos and Chicanos, then gay, lesbian and transgendered people, then the disabled and, for some years now, Palestinians. (Commentators on the right complain that conservatives and Christians never make the list.)

There is also the fact that Jews are disproportionately represented in the academy, and as scholars dedicated (in theory) to objectivity and a universal rationality, they may be bending over backward to avoid slipping into a tribal identification. (Hence the very vocal insistence on the part of many Jewish professors that criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism are very different things.) And then there are those academics (Jews and non-Jews) who feel that the whole of American foreign policy is distorted by what has been called the “Israeli lobby” and believe that unless the imbalance is corrected, we are in for a very bad time.

But singly or collectively these answers don’t quite add up, don’t account for the intensity of the feelings, don’t explain why, for example, some academics boycott Israeli professors and require them to renounce the policies of their government as the price of entry into the scholarly conversation. Of all the issues that might have captured the academic mind, why has this one come front and center? If you have any ideas, please send them my way.

There str dome intersting commentson this also

[anajmi]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09 ... on-israel/

American farts competing over who can make Israel "come" faster!!

[Humsafar]

Actually, if Israel (and its puppet USA) had any sense they would let Palestinians have there miserable state(let) and be done with it - no more reverting to 1967 borders, no more demand for right of return, no rights, no justice, no compensation for occupation and devastation of their homeland. But Israel is greedy, it wants all of Palestine, and the pathetic Obomber is playing along. These two criminal, war-mongering regimes will ultimately have their way and will never agree to any peace, any settlement .
Of the UN bid itself, it's just a gimmick by the Palestinian Authority and its dictator Abbas. Not all Palestinians support this move, they think it is undemocratic and is being done without any public debate. They think they have much to lose by gaining a state(let). As usual, Palestinians are being sandwiched by the occupiers and by their own corrupt, sell-out leadership.

[Muslim First]

Defending Jim Crow in Palestine
Why is the U.S. so fearful of a nonviolent freedom movement?
By Zahi Khouri
http://www.salon.com/news/israel/?story ... /palestine

[ghulam muhammed]

Middle East Quartet's last-minute deal

International efforts to forestall a showdown in the U.N. Security Council over the declaration of a Palestinian state are solidifying around a plan for the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to submit a request for recognition but for a vote on the issue to be put on hold while a new round of peace talks is launched.

The deal is being pushed by the Middle East “Quartet” of the U.N., EU, U.S. and Russia, which is attempting to persuade Mr. Abbas to back away from a diplomatic confrontation with Washington, which says it will veto the Palestinian bid.

However, diplomats warned that a number of issues remain unresolved, including a Palestinian demand that the statement include a requirement that Israel halt construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

Israel's position is unclear. Its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was arriving in New York on Wednesday and has appealed for immediate talks with Mr. Abbas but without preconditions.

However, diplomats cautioned that the plan is far from complete and that obstacles remain.


http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a ... 473781.ece

[ghulam muhammed]

The contours of an independent state

Palestine will become the 194th member of the U.N. if its application for statehood goes ahead and succeeds. But what will be the territory of Palestine? Palestine is likely to consist of territory in the West Bank and Gaza, totalling around 6,200 sq km. At the moment the two areas are physically separate, although they could be linked by a sealed road in future. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their new state. Israel, which annexed the east of the city after the 1967 war, rejects any division.

The borders have not been decided and will be a matter for negotiation with Israel, which wants to retain its big settlement blocs in the West Bank. Land swaps in compensation are expected to be agreed.

The Palestinian population is around 2.6 million in the West Bank, 1.6 million in Gaza and 270,000 in East Jerusalem.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a ... 473779.ece


Obama address triggers wave of defiance in Arab world

A wave of defiance is building up in the Arab world against the address by the President of the United States, Barack Obama, in the United Nations, where he rejected the anticipated Palestinian bid for a formal international recognition as an independent State by the world body.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian authority, dozens of protesters slammed Mr. Obama for his rejection in the U.N. of the much expected Palestinian gambit for formal independence. Some of the protesters held signs which castigated Mr. Obama as “the hypocrite”. Others blamed the U.S. President for siding "with killers against victims".


http://www.thehindu.com/news/internatio ... 476748.ece

[Muslim First]

Palestine: Mission accomplished for China
http://www.islamicity.com/m/news_frame. ... ceID=60340

[Muslim First]

A President Who is Helpless in the Face of Middle East Reality
Obama's UN speech insists Israelis and Palestinians are equal parties to conflict
http://www.islamicity.com/m/news_frame. ... ceID=60347

[Muslim First]

The Flight of the Plucked Chicken
Abu Mazen’s Gambitby URI AVNERY
A WONDERFUL SPEECH. A beautiful speech.
The language expressive and elegant. The arguments clear and convincing. The delivery flawless.

A work of art. The art of hypocrisy. Almost every statement in the passage concerning the Israeli-Palestinian issue was a lie. A blatant lie: the speaker knew it was a lie, and so did the audience.

It was Obama at his best, Obama at his worst.

Being a moral person, he must have felt the urge to vomit. Being a pragmatic person, he knew that he had to do it, if he wanted to be re-elected.

In essence, he sold the fundamental national interests of the United States of America for the chance of a second term.

Not very nice, but that’s politics, OK?

IT MAY be superfluous – almost insulting to the reader – to point out the mendacious details of this rhetorical edifice.

Obama treated the two sides as if they were equal in strength – Israelis and Palestinians, Palestinians and Israelis.

But of the two, it is the Israelis – only they – who suffer and have suffered. Persecution. Exile. Holocaust. An Israeli child threatened by rockets. Surrounded by the hatred of Arab children. So sad.

No Occupation. No settlements. No June 1967 borders. No Naqba. No Palestinian children killed or frightened. It’s the straight right-wing Israeli propaganda line, pure and simple – the terminology, the historical narrative, the argumentation. The music.


http://www.islamicity.com/m/news_frame. ... ceID=60342

[Muslim First]

Palestine Spring, Bibi’s Winter of Discontent
http://www.islamicity.com/m/news_frame. ... ceID=60338

[Muslim First]

Mahmoud Abbas and Barack Obama: tragic hero vs political prostitute
http://www.iviews.com/Articles/articles ... V1109-4875

[Muslim First]

Analysis: Mideast Heading Into Dangerous Paralysis
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09 ... ml?_r=1&hp

[Muslim First]

Mr. President!

http://www.islamicity.com/m/news_frame. ... ceID=60368

[SBM]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDqgH6jsnUA&sns=em

[ghulam muhammed]

Israel approves 1,100 new settler homes

Palestinians call it a “slap in the face to all international efforts to protect the fading prospects of peace in the region”.

Israeli authorities approved in principle the construction of 1,100 homes in an East Jerusalem settlement on Tuesday, putting at risk international efforts to persuade Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to return to talks.

“This sends the wrong signal at this sensitive time. Settlement activity is contrary to the Road Map and to international law, and undermines the prospect of resuming negotiations and reaching a two-state solution to the conflict.”

The Israeli government asserts it has the right to build Jewish settlements anywhere in the city.

An Israeli police investigation concluded that a settler and his infant son, who were killed when their car overturned last Friday, had been struck by a rock thrown by Palestinians. At their funeral on Sunday night, a rabbi called for “collective punishment” of Palestinians, saying “there are no innocents in a war”.


http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a ... 494365.ece

[ghulam muhammed]

Israeli occupation hitting Palestinian economy, claims report

Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza deprives the Palestinian economy of almost £4.4bn a year, equivalent to about 85% of the nominal gross domestic product of Palestine, according to a report published in Ramallah .

As well as its detrimental effect on the Palestinian economy, the "occupation enterprise" allows the state of Israel and commercial firms to profit from Palestinian natural resources and tourist potential, the report said

Without the occupation, the Palestinian economy would be almost twice as large as it is and would be able to reduce its dependence on donor funding from the international community, according to the report.

Compiled jointly by the economy ministry and the independent thinktank Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem, the report was the first attempt to quantify the annual cost of the occupation to the Palestinian economy. "The total cost which we have been able to measure was $6.897bn in 2010, a staggering 84.9% of the total estimated Palestinian GDP," it said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/se ... an-economy

[anajmi]

Unfortunately, the farts over here do not see that the Israeli occupation and oppression is costing the American economy just as much as it is costing the Palestinians. If only they had been worried about the economy and not just about getting re-elected!!

[ghulam muhammed]

Saudi silence on Israeli-seized islands

Saudi Arabia and the Western states have kept silent for decades regarding the occupation of two Saudi western islands by the Israeli regime. Israeli forces reportedly occupied Saudi Arabia's Tiran and Sanafir Islands in 1967. The two islands are located at the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, leading to the Red Sea. Tiran Island, which has an area of about 80 square kilometers, is located at the inflow of the Straits of Tiran. Sanafir Island, with an area of 33 square kilometers, also lies to the east of Tiran. The two islands were given to the former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser for logistics use in the Six Day War of 1967 against Israeli forces. However, the islands have been occupied by Tel Aviv since Egypt's defeat. The Straits of Tiran, which has remained under the control of Tel Aviv, has strategic significance since it serves as Israel's only direct access to the Red Sea.

[ghulam muhammed]

Muslim and Christian graves desecrated in Israeli city of Jaffa

Dozens of gravestones have been desecrated at Muslim and Christian cemeteries and a firebomb thrown at a synagogue in Jaffa, Israel, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

At least five tombs were smashed and around 20 others sprayed with Hebrew graffiti, including 'Death to Arabs' and 'Price Tag' – a slogan used by militant Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and their supporters.

On Monday, a mosque in a Bedouin village in northern Israel was set on fire and graffiti sprayed on its walls in an attack authorities have blamed on hardline Jewish settlers.

In 2005 a Jewish couple were charged for throwing a pig's head into a Tel Aviv mosque in an attempt to derail Israel's pullout from Gaza, which went ahead in August of that year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oc ... yom-kippur