David Cameron: Israeli blockade has turned Gaza Strip into a 'prison camp'

Prime minister intervenes in Middle East dispute and hopes Turkey can stop Iran's nuclear weapons programme

Cameron's comments, in a speech to business leaders in Ankara, prompted the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to issue another strong condemnation of how Israel dealt with the flotilla.

Erdogan likened the behaviour of Israeli commandos, who shot dead nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists, to Somali pirates.

Cameron's criticism of Tel Aviv came when he called for Israel to relax its restrictions on Gaza. "The situation in Gaza has to change," he said. "Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp."

He strongly condemned Israel after the assault on the Gaza flotilla.

"The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable," he said. "I have told prime minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous. "Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change." ...

Cameron also said Turkey should use its links with Iran to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear weapons programme ...

Guardian  27 July 2010    Iran    War on Terror Log

Gaza remark signals Cameron's kick-and-run diplomacy

A tale of three wars

Should Israel Bomb Iran?

An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table

Making a Mockery of the Moratorium

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have declared a freeze on new settlements, but construction is continuing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Settlers are receiving contributions from American foundations that enjoy tax breaks, including Christian groups that see Biblical prophecies being fulfilled ...

[Dror] Etkes has further proof that there has not in fact been a "freeze" on settlement building since November, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have the world believe.

In any case, the Israeli cabinet also made exceptions in the moratorium for public buildings such as synagogues and preschools, as well as allowing private homes already under construction to be completed.

The settlers' administration of Samaria in the northern part of the West Bank thus issued permits for 1,600 housing units -- nearly 10 times as many as in the previous year -- before the moratorium began.

Etkes' latest research shows that settlers have also begun new construction projects since the moratorium took effect.

At least 46 of the 120 official settlements are currently carrying out construction, the left-wing activist says.

"Talking about a moratorium is just a bad joke." ...

Der Spiegel  23 July 2010

War on Terror & The Christian Right

Jaffa's Arab haven of coexistence resists influx of Israeli hardliners

An Israeli religious group plans to build flats in a historic area, threatening to overturn an uneasy balance with local Arabs and reviving memories of past traumas ...

Jaffa ... was the country's commercial and cultural centre in the first half of the last century.

All that changed in 1948 when, according to an "abridged history" displayed by the Tel Aviv city authority ... "Jaffa was liberated" in the war that led to the creation of the state of Israel.

The Arab population saw it rather differently. The vast majority of the 100,000 Arabs in Jaffa were forced to leave in fear for their lives; the port and beaches were packed with families scrambling for places on ships to Gaza or Lebanon.

Others fled on foot to Nablus in the West Bank or Jordan. Within days, only 4,000 remained; the rest were destined to be lifelong refugees.

"All the Palestinians in Jaffa were rounded up and brought to the Ajami neighbourhood, surrounded by a fence with soldiers and dogs," said Abu Shehadeh.

"The Jews called our neighbourhood a ghetto. My grandfather, who used to get a taxi from Jaffa to Beirut, needed military permission to leave Ajami."

A year later Israel decreed that properties whose owners were "absent" would pass to the state. Not only did all of Jaffa's refugees lose their property, but so did those forced into Ajami who owned property in other areas of the city:

"1948 was the first naqba [catastrophe]," said Abu Shehadeh. "The absentee law was the second." ...

Observer  18 July 2010

Balfour Declaration

Nudge on Arms Further Divides the U.S. and Israel

It was only one paragraph buried deep in the most plain-vanilla kind of diplomatic document, 40 pages of dry language committing 189 nations to a world free of nuclear weapons. But it has become the latest source of friction between Israel and the United States ...

At a meeting to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May, the United States yielded to demands by Arab nations that the final document urge Israel to sign the treaty — a way of spotlighting its historically undeclared nuclear weapons ...

In addition to singling out Israel, the document, which has captured relatively little public attention, calls for a regional conference in 2012 to lay the groundwork for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

Israel, whose nuclear arsenal is one of the world’s worst-kept secrets, would be on the hot seat at such a meeting ...

NYT  04 July 2010    Israel    War on Terror

Gaza blockade: Iran offers escort to next aid convoy

• Aide threatens use of Revolutionary Guard
• Netanyahu warns of Jerusalem missile danger ...

The threat came as the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, dismissed a UN proposal for an international commission to investigate last week's commando assault on aid ships, in which nine people died.

Another aid ship, the Rachel Corrie, carrying Irish and other peace activists, was boarded peacefully by Israeli forces on Saturday, escorted to the port of Ashdod, and its passengers deported.

Netanyahu has defended Israel's right to maintain the blockade by arguing that without it Gaza would become an "Iranian port" and Hamas missiles would strike Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Israel's undeclared aim is to weaken or bring down the Hamas government.

Iran continued to exploit the "freedom flotilla" affair to lambast Israel. Its foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki, told the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Jeddah on Sunday that Israel's crime was "another instance of the Zionist regime's brazen and merciless treatment of Muslims, especially the oppressed Palestinian people." ...

Guardian  06 June 2010    Iran    War on Terror Log

Israeli navy kills four Palestinians off Gaza coast

Israeli forces storm Gaza aid ship

The Israeli navy has stormed one of six ships carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza strip, with at least two people reported killed ...

Israel says it allows about 15,000 tones of humanitarian aid into Gaza every week.

But the United Nations says this is less than a quarter of what is needed ...

BBC NEWS  31 May 2010

Israeli forces board the Rachel Corrie

Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range

Autopsies reveal intensity of Israeli military force

Witnesses cast doubt on Israel's convoy raid account

Israeli sabotage suspected

At Least 10 Killed as Israel Intercepts Aid Flotilla

Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons

Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons.

The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes".

The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.

The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence ...

Guardian  23 May 2010

The end to nods, winks and blind eyes

US to help fund Israeli 'Iron Dome' project

American lawmakers have overwhelmingly backed a proposal to provide Israel with $205m (£142m) to speed up the deployment of a short-range anti-missile system.

The US House of Representatives voted 401-4 in favour of President Barack Obama's plan to fund Israel's Iron Dome project, designed to protect the country from rocket and artillery shell attacks ...

Independent  22 May 2010

Qatar's offer to help rebuild Gaza is snubbed by Netanyahu

US nuclear talks risk collapse over Middle East plan

Wrangling over goal of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East threatens to bring month-long conference to halt ...

At the centre of the crisis are highly sensitive ongoing negotiations on plans for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

The idea is being championed by Egypt and the Arab nations as a way of forcing Israel to admit publicly that it is in possession of nuclear arms as a first step towards eradicating those weapons.

Under a long-standing policy of ambiguity, Israel has never admitted possessing atomic weapons, though it is universally believed to do so.

Israel is one of four countries that has refused to sign up to the NPT, and persuading Tel Aviv to attend any discussion on nuclear arms in the Middle East is proving difficult ...

Guardian  19 May 2010

Netanyahu pulls out of Obama's nuclear conference

There's an odd thing: Iran is allowed no such, er, 'ambiguity' ...

Officials in Netanyahu's office said this morning that the decision was made after it emerged that Egypt and Turkey planned to raise the matter at the 47-nation event, Reuters reported.

A spokesman for Obama's national security council confirmed that the US had been informed that Netanyahu's deputy, Dan Meridor, would be travelling instead.

Israel is widely presumed to have a nuclear weapons arsenal, but refuses to discuss the issue under a so-called ambiguity policy. The country has never signed the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

The official in Netanyahu's office said the country had learned that Egypt and Turkey, among others, planned to use the event next Monday and Tuesday to pressure Israel to sign the treaty ...

Guardian  09 Apr 2010    Israel's Nuclear Hypocrisy

Netanyahu tells US: We won't stop east Jerusalem settlement building

'Compelling evidence' Israel was behind misuse of UK passports

David Miliband said today that there was "compelling evidence" that Israel was responsible for misuse of British passports as part of a plot to kill a prominent member of Hamas.

The foreign secretary confirmed that Britain had demanded the withdrawal of an Israeli diplomat following the "intolerable" use of 12 forged British passports by a hit squad that killed the founder of Hamas's military wing in Dubai.

Miliband attacked the "profound disregard" for UK sovereignty and said the apparent involvement of a friendly nation "added insult to injury" ...

Guardian  23 Mar 2010    War on Terror

US envoy George Mitchell postpones Israel visit

US envoy George Mitchell has postponed a visit to Israel amid a continuing row over Israel's decision to build more Jewish homes in Arab East Jerusalem ...

The renewal of talks had been agreed before Mr Biden's visit, but Israel's announcement that it planned to build 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem left it in tatters ...

"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

Balfour Declaration 1917

BBC NEWS  16 Mar 2010    War on Terror Log

The real price of Israel's settlements

Netanyahu raises stakes ...

Ban Ki-moon demands Israel settlements halt

Netanyahu rebuffs Hillary Clinton demands

Jerusalem issue 'a red line', says Jordan's king

Jail ordeal of hundreds of Palestinian children arrested for throwing stones

With more than 300 Palestinian children being held in Israeli prisons, human rights groups and Palestinian officials are increasingly concerned about the actions of the Israeli military.

The Israeli group B'Tselem said that security forces had "severely violated" the rights of a number of children, aged between 12 and 15, who had been taken into custody in recent months.

The family of one 13-year-old boy from Hebron who was arrested on 27 February by a military patrol and detained for eight days have brought a legal case against the authorities. The teenager, Al-Hasan Muhtaseb, described how he had been interrogated without a lawyer late into the night, forced to confess to throwing stones, made to sign a confession in Hebrew that he couldn't read, jailed with adults and brought before a military court.

He was only released on bail eight days later, after considerable legal effort by several human rights groups. As he had signed a confession, he still faces a possible indictment for throwing stones – a charge that usually brings several months in jail but carries a maximum penalty of 20 years' jail ...

Observer  14 Mar 2010

The best political weapon is the weapon of terror.

Cruelty commands respect.

Men may hate us.

But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear.

Heinrich Himmler

B'Tselem

Scarred, trapped, vengeful

Israeli go-ahead for new settlement homes casts cloud over Biden visit

• 1,600 new homes to be built in East Jerusalem settlement
• Approval comes hours after US VP backed government

The new building comes at a delicate moment in the long-stalled peace process when Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to start indirect negotiations.

The latest approvals were announced by the interior ministry, which said they had been passed by the Jerusalem district planning committee. A spokeswoman said there were 60 days to appeal against the decision.

Ramat Shlomo, built 15 years ago, is on land captured in the West Bank in 1967 and then annexed to Israel in a move not recognised by the international community ...

In talks with Netanyahu, Biden appeared to focus not on the struggling peace process but on Iran, saying Washington was committed to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. "There is no space between the US and Israel when it comes to Israel's security," Biden said after their meeting ...

Guardian

Britain must protect foreign leaders from private arrest warrants

Gordon Brown tells the Torygraph of his government's efforts to protect Zionist war criminals

It is our moral duty to ensure that there is no hiding place for those suspected of the most serious international crimes.

Britain will continue to take action to prosecute or extradite suspected war criminals – regardless of their status or power.

This is why the UK was among the first countries in the world to put in place legislation providing for universal jurisdiction over torture, hostage taking and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions ...

But the process by which we take action must guarantee the best results.

The only question for me is whether our purpose is best served by a process where an arrest warrant for the gravest crimes can be issued on the slightest of evidence ...

Telegraph  03 March 2010

Britain denies any advance warning of plan to murder Hamas leader

Britain has flatly denied any foreknowledge of a Mossad plan to assassinate a top official of the Palestinian group Hamas, in Dubai, amidst angry accusations in Whitehall that Israel is seeking to deflect blame from itself by implicating others.

British government sources dismissed as "nonsense" a report claiming the Israeli secret service had given the UK advanced warning of possible complications arising from the illicit use of British passports in an unspecified "overseas operation" – the murder of the Hamas commander ­Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Officials complained of misleading briefing, apparently by pro-Israeli sources, reflected in a report in Friday's Daily Mail, which claimed that the Foreign Office was told, albeit only in general terms, of an impending assassination. The Mail story was widely reported today, both in Israel and across the Arab world.

"Any suggestion that the government knew anything about the murder before it happened is completely untrue, including the use of UK passports," insisted a FCO spokesman ...

Guardian  19 Feb 2010    Israel

Passport to the truth in Dubai remains secret

Many Dubaians believe that the collapse of the emirate's economy last year was the revenge of Western banks – spurred on, of course, by the Americans – to punish them for allowing Iranian shell companies to use Dubai as a sanctions-busting base during the cold-hot war between the US-Israeli alliance and Iran.

Now the Americans (or the Israelis – you can take your pick) want to turn Dubai into the Beirut of the Gulf. That was actually a headline last week – in The Jerusalem Post, of course – which painted Dubai as dangerous as it was economically calamitous ...

According to a Dubai "source" of The Independent – readers will have to judge what this means – the security forces of the aforesaid emirate informed a "British diplomat" in Dubai ... of the UK passport details almost six days ago and "did not receive an appropriate reply".

If this is true – the Foreign Office will be wrathful in its denials – then why didn't the British immediately express their outrage at the use of forged British passports and cough up details of the equally outrageous frauds a week ago? ...

Far too many police forces are now sending their minions to Israel to learn about "terror".

The Canadians actually dispatched a team of cops to Tel Aviv who allowed themselves to wear "suicide vests" for publicity pictures.

Air France now hands the US details of all its passengers' profiles – which, of course, go straight to the Israelis – despite the fact that Israeli security officers (like hundreds of Arab security officers in the Middle East) may well be involved in war crimes ...

Independent  17 Feb 2010    War on Terror

Britain's explanation is riddled with inconsistencies

British threat to Israel over Dubai Hamas assassination

Britain summons Israeli ambassador

Mossad accused of complicity

Hallmarks of a classic Israeli operation

The moment Mossad agents got their man?

Israel admits to using white phosphorous against Palestinians

The openSecurity verdict: If brought into contact with human bodies, white phosphorous can burn through skin to the bone, lodging itself internally and potentially leading to organ failure.

Although its use is permitted by international law during offensives made on open ground, in areas where there are heavy concentrations of civilians it is forbidden.

This latest admission by the Israeli government was found embedded deep in a document given last week to the UN.

The government in Tel Aviv has denied allegations made by Human Rights Watch that its use of white phosphorous as a weapon of war has been much more widespread against Palestinians in packed residential areas.

The fact that criminal charges will not be brought against the officers held responsible makes the Israeli move unlikely to signal any radical departure from its much criticised rules of engagement ...

openDemocracy  01 Feb 2010

'Iran Is a Litmus Test for German-Israeli Ties'

As the article implies, Israel is using the Holocaust to ensure that Germany supports Israel in attempting to neutralise Iran's nuclear programme, whilst at the same time rejecting inspection of its own nuclear programme

Germany's special relationship to Israel came under the spotlight once again on Wednesday, when Israeli President Shimon Peres addressed the German parliament, the Bundestag, in a speech marking Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Peres devoted part of his speech to talking about the threat to Israel from Iran, which is widely believed to be working on a nuclear weapons program.

"We reject a fanatic regime, which contradicts the United Nations Charter," he said. "A regime which threatens destruction, accompanied by nuclear plants and missiles and who activates terror in its country and other countries. This regime is a danger to the entire world." ...

The German government is calling for tougher action on Iran. Peres and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed the issue during a meeting on Tuesday.

"Time is running out," Merkel told reporters afterward. She said that it was time to consider additional international sanctions against Iran and said that February would be a "tantalizing month." ...

Der Spiegel  28 Jan 2010

U.S. Speeding Up Missile Defenses in Persian Gulf

The Obama administration is accelerating the deployment of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Persian Gulf, placing special ships off the Iranian coast and antimissile systems in at least four Arab countries, according to administration and military officials ...

The deployments are also partly intended to counter the impression that Iran is fast becoming the most powerful military force in the Middle East, to forestall any Iranian escalation of its confrontation with the West if new sanctions are imposed.

In addition, the administration is trying to show Israel that there is no immediate need for military strikes against Iranian nuclear and missile facilities, according to administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity ...

NYT  30 Jan 2010

Israel will never quit settlements

The Israeli prime minister has taken part in tree-planting ceremonies in the West Bank while declaring Israel will never leave those areas.

Benjamin Netanyahu said the Jewish settlements blocs would always remain part of the state of Israel ...

All settlements in the the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this ...

BBC NEWS  25 Jan 2010

An Egyptian border guard was killed and 15 Palestinians injured today in clashes on the Gaza border after an international aid convoy was delayed entering the strip ...

Egyptian officials told the convoy some of their trucks could not pass through Rafah, but had to enter into southern Israel and then pass through an Israeli-controlled crossing into Gaza. There was no guarantee that the trucks would be allowed to enter the strip.

"We refused this," said Galloway. "It is completely unconscionable that 25% of our convoy should go to Israel and never arrive in Gaza. Because nothing that ever goes to Israel, ever arrives in Gaza." ...

Under pressure from the US and Israel, Egypt has started building a vast steel wall along its side of the Gaza border to prevent smuggling. Hundreds of smuggling tunnels dug by Palestinians reach into northern Egypt and supply Gaza with a wide range of products from food and clothing to animals and cars. Israel and the US have said they are concerned about weapons smuggling.

Guardian  06 Jan 2010

George Galloway MP deported from Egypt

The Attorney General could be given a veto over arrest warrants for foreign leaders in an attempt to placate Israeli ministers who fear war crimes prosecutions if they visit Britain.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal, who is in Jerusalem, discussed an amendment to British law that would give her office the power to review arrest warrants in private prosecutions against political figures, according to Foreign Ministry sources.

Israel warned that a failure to resolve the situation soon would have consequences for both countries.

Any further deterioration in diplomatic relations could damage Britain’s counter-terrorism effort which has drawn heavily on Israeli experience and expertise, notably in dealing with suicide bombers ...

Times 06 Times 2010

Quirk of law leaves larger issues at play

Miliband moves to placate Israel over Tzipi Livni arrest warrant

Until a year ago, Kamal Awaja would often spend the hour before dusk in his garden, teaching his six children the names of the trees and flowers, and encouragiong each one to pick a shrub as their own. Ibrahim, his nine-year-old son, chose the red rosebush.

But a year ago today, everything changed as Israel launched its military offensive against the Hamas militants who run Gaza. After a week of fierce fighting, the gun-barrel of a tank smashed through the family's living room window, forcing them to flee to nearby fields as their house was demolished.

Then, as they crept back at dawn to salvage warm clothes, Israeli soldiers opened fire. Both Awaja parents were wounded, and Ibrahim was hit fatally, dying in his father's arms as he tried to rescue him.

But reliving her son's death a year later, there is another, more harrowing detail that preys on Mrs Awaja's mind. She says that as she hid behind a wall while her husband limped away to find help, Israeli soldiers used Ibrahim's corpse, which was lying in a road, as target practice ...

Telegraph 26 December 20090

Gaza reconstruction not being addressed

Israel has admitted that pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others without the consent of their families – a practice that it said ended in the 1990s, it emerged at the weekend.

The admission, by the former head of the country's forensic institute, followed a furious row prompted by a Swedish newspaper reporting that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to use their organs – a charge that Israel denied and called "antisemitic".

The revelation, in a television documentary, is likely to generate anger in the Arab and Muslim world and reinforce sinister stereotypes of Israel and its attitude to Palestinians. Iran's state-run Press TV tonight reported the story, illustrated with photographs of dead or badly injured Palestinians.

Ahmed Tibi, an Israeli Arab MP, said the report incriminated the Israeli army ...



Guardian  20 December 2009

Israel spurns nuclear watchdog's call to open atomic sites to inspection

ISRAEL HAS rejected the call by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and open up its atomic sites to international inspection.

The nuclear watchdog, meeting yesterday in Vienna, adopted a resolution expressing concern about “Israeli nuclear capabilities” and called on agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei to work on the issue.

The motion was adopted by 49 votes to 45, with 16 abstentions. Russia and China, both permanent members of the UN security council, voted in favour.

But David Danieli, deputy director of Israel’s atomic energy commission, said Israel deplored the vote for singling it out while many of its neighbours remained hostile to its existence. “Israel will not co-operate in any matter with this resolution which is only aiming at reinforcing political hostilities and lines of division in the Middle East region,” he said.

Israel is one of only three countries along with India and Pakistan, which is not a signatory to the NPT.

According to foreign media reports, the Jewish state is widely believed to possess several hundred nuclear warheads, as well as the means to deliver them.

Under a decades-old policy of “nuclear ambiguity” Israel has never confirmed nor denied processing atomic weapons, maintaining that the country “will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East”.

The vote was a setback not only for Israel but also for the US and other western backers of the Jewish state. They had lobbied for debate on the issue without a vote.

Iranian ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh told reporters the passage of the resolution was “very good news and a triumph for the oppressed nation of Palestine”.

Western states said it was unfair and counterproductive to isolate one member state. They said an IAEA resolution passed on Thursday, urging all Middle East nations to forswear atomic bombs, included Israel and made Friday’s proposal superfluous.

Arab nations said Israel had brought the resolution on itself by having never signed the 40-year-old NPT.

Before the vote, US ambassador Glyn Davies said the resolution was “redundant . . . Such an approach is highly politicised and does not address the complexities at play regarding crucial nuclear-related issues in the Middle East”.

Irish Times  19 September 2009

Israel pressured on nuclear sites

IRAN - THE WAR DANCE

Israelis get four-fifths of scarce West Bank water

A deepening drought in the Middle East is aggravating a dispute over water resources after the World Bank found that Israel is taking four times as much water as the Palestinians from a vital shared aquifer.

The region faces a fifth consecutive year of drought this summer, but the World Bank report found huge disparities in water use between Israelis and Palestinians, although both share the mountain aquifer that runs the length of the occupied West Bank. Palestinians have access to only a fifth of the water supply, while Israel, which controls the area, takes the rest, the bank said.

Israelis use 240 cubic metres of water a person each year, against 75 cubic metres for West Bank Palestinians and 125 for Gazans, the bank said. Increasingly, West Bank Palestinians must rely on water bought from the Israeli national water company, Mekorot.

In some areas of the West Bank, Palestinians are surviving on as little as 10 to 15 litres a person each day, which is at or below humanitarian disaster response levels recommended to avoid epidemics. In Gaza, where Palestinians rely on an aquifer that has become increasingly saline and polluted, the situation is worse. Only 5%-10% of the available water is clean enough to drink ...

Guardian 28 May 2009

Water crisis looming in West Bank

Israelis get four-fifths of scarce West Bank water, says World Bank

Israel defies US on settlements growth

How can you trust the cowardly BBC?

The BBC Trust is now a mouthpiece for the Israeli lobby which abused Bowen

Let's go step by step through this pitiful business. Zionism does indeed instinctively "push out" the frontier. The new Israeli wall – longer and taller than the Berlin Wall although the BBC management cowards still insist its reporters call it a "security barrier" (the translation of the East German phrase for the Berlin Wall) – has gobbled up another 10 per cent of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" that Arafat/Mahmoud Abbas were supposed to negotiate. Bowen's own brilliant book on the 1967 war, Six Days, makes this land-grab perfectly clear.

Anyone who has read the history of Zionism will be aware that its aim was to dispossess the Arabs and take over Palestine. Why else are Zionists continuing to steal Arab land for Jews, and Jews only, against all international law? Who for a moment can contradict that this defies everyone's interpretation of international law except its own?

Even when the International Court in The Hague stated that the Israeli wall was illegal – the BBC, at this point, was calling it a "fence"! – Israel simply claimed that the court was wrong.

UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 called upon Israel to withdraw its forces from territories that it occupied in the 1967 war – and it refused to do so. The Americans stated for more than 30 years that Israel's actions were illegal – until the gutless George Bush accepted Israel had the right to keep these illegally held territories. Thus the BBC Trust – how cruel that word "trust" now becomes – has gone along with the Bush definition of Israel's new boundaries (inside Arab land, of course) ...

Robert Fisk 16 April 2009

Bad judgement

A confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of "actively pursuing the illegal annexation" of East Jerusalem.

The document says Israel has accelerated its plans for East Jerusalem, and is undermining the Palestinian Authority's credibility and weakening support for peace talks. "Israel's actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making," says the document, EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem.

The report, obtained by the Guardian, is dated 15 December 2008. It acknowledges Israel's legitimate security concerns in Jerusalem, but adds: "Many of its current illegal actions in and around the city have limited security justifications."

"Israeli 'facts on the ground' - including new settlements, construction of the barrier, discriminatory housing policies, house demolitions, restrictive permit regime and continued closure of Palestinian institutions - increase Jewish Israeli presence in East Jerusalem, weaken the Palestinian community in the city, impede Palestinian urban development and separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank," the report says.

The document has emerged at a time of mounting concern over Israeli policies in East Jerusalem. Two houses were demolished on Monday just before the arrival of the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and a further 88 are scheduled for demolition, all for lack of permits. Clinton described the demolitions as "unhelpful", noting that they violated Israel's obligations under the US "road map" for peace ...

Guardian 07 March 2009

Clinton condemns Israel's demolition of Arab East Jerusalem homes

Israel's demolition of East Jerusalem homes harms peace efforts

Israelis 'firing live rounds' at West Bank protesters

Israeli society was always introverted but these days it reminds me more than ever of the Unionists in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s or the Lebanese Christians in the 1970s.

Like Israel, both were communities with a highly developed siege mentality which led them always to see themselves as victims even when they were killing other people.

There were no regrets or even knowledge of what they inflicted on others and therefore any retaliation by the other side appeared as unprovoked aggression inspired by unreasoning hate ...

Patrick Cockburn 22 January 2009

Clinton rebukes Israel over demolition plan

US Israel support 'unshakeable'

An assault on the peace process

Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask

Have we forgotten the 17,500 dead – almost all civilians, most of them children and women – in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon; the 1,700 Palestinian civilian dead in the Sabra-Chatila massacre; the 1996 Qana massacre of 106 Lebanese civilian refugees, more than half of them children, at a UN base; the massacre of the Marwahin refugees who were ordered from their homes by the Israelis in 2006 then slaughtered by an Israeli helicopter crew; the 1,000 dead of that same 2006 bombardment and Lebanese invasion, almost all of them civilians? ...

The Sabra and Chatila massacre was committed by Israel's right-wing Lebanese Phalangist allies while Israeli troops, as Israel's own commission of inquiry revealed, watched for 48 hours and did nothing. When Israel was blamed, Menachem Begin's government accused the world of a blood libel.

After Israeli artillery had fired shells into the UN base at Qana in 1996, the Israelis claimed that Hizbollah gunmen were also sheltering in the base. It was a lie. The more than 1,000 dead of 2006 – a war started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on the border – were simply dismissed as the responsibility of the Hizbollah.

Israel claimed the bodies of children killed in a second Qana massacre may have been taken from a graveyard. It was another lie. The Marwahin massacre was never excused.

The people of the village were ordered to flee, obeyed Israeli orders and were then attacked by an Israeli gunship. The refugees took their children and stood them around the truck in which they were travelling so that Israeli pilots would see they were innocents. Then the Israeli helicopter mowed them down at close range.

Only two survived, by playing dead. Israel didn't even apologise ...

Robert Fisk 07 January 2009

Massacre of innocents as UN school is shelled

Eyeless in Gaza

First, I want to explore a phenonmenon that Orthodox Jews and Israelis are not aware of-- rapture Christianity.

Tens of millions of fundamentalist Christians are fervently praying for the "rapture" to arrive, as soon as possible.

The "rapture" is a scenario that these fundamentalists believe is predicted by the bible. It is preached about routinely, promised by ministers.

When the rapture occurs, people who have "taken Jesus into their heart" will be instantly whisked up to heaven "in Jesus' arms." They'll simply disappear from the earth-- both the living and the dead-- to find themselves in heaven.

These tens of millions of "rapturists" believe that, for the rapture to occur, other biblically predicted events must occur.

There must be great turmoil and conflict in the middle east, and then, once the turmoil and conflict reach the worst levels, the "antichrist" will come.

The new phenomenon of Christian Zionism is based upon these rapture beliefs. The strong support that evangelical fundamentalists give to Israel is based on these beliefs.

Let's spell it out clearly. For the rapture to occur, Israel must be engulfed in war, massive, violent, hellfire and damnation war, with huge losses of life.

This is the vision the rapturists are praying for, that they yearn for. When the rapture occurs, and Jesus "raptures" the people to heaven, hundreds of thousands of Jews will die and the rest of the people on the planet will be "left behind." ...

OpEdNews 03 September 2006

Wide support for UN Gaza report

Dozens of nations at the UN have backed a resolution calling for independent inquiries by Israel and the Palestinians on war crimes in Gaza.

The UN General Assembly is holding a two-day debate on a report by former war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone.

The report condemns the conduct of both sides last December and January, after Israel launched an offensive in Gaza.

It also urged both sides to set up independent investigations.

However, the report is harsher towards Israel which has rejected it as politicised and with predetermined conclusions.

Palestinians and rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans died in the 22-day conflict, but Israel puts the figure at 1,166. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were killed.

The General Assembly draft resolution has been introduced by Arab states and the Non-Aligned Movement, which represents 118 nations.

It calls for independent investigations of alleged war crimes to be set up within three months and for possible Security Council action if Israel and the Palestinians fail to do so ...

BBC NEWS  05 November 2009

UN body to debate damning Gaza report

UN Gaza report accuses Israel and Hamas of war crimes

CIA working with Palestinian security agents

‘Better use Durex’

The FT reported:

“Among the incidents which the Israeli army said it would investigate were the shootings of a mother and her two children, who were ordered to leave their house but, misunderstanding the soldiers’ instructions, strayed into a ‘no-go’ zone where they were killed by sniper fire. A separate shooting of another Gaza woman was described by one soldier as “cold-blooded murder”.

“On Monday, a report by a UN human rights panel made fresh allegations, including the claim that Israeli soldiers used Palestinian civilians as human shields during the fighting. ‘Violations were committed on a daily basis, too numerous to list,’ said one of the report’s authors.” (Tobias Buck, ‘Israel dismissive as fury mounts,’ Financial Times, March 24, 2009)

This was reported in the same week that Israel’s Haaretz newspaper published details of the images Israeli soldiers are having printed on the shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of duty in the field:

“A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription ‘Better use Durex,’ next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, ‘1 shot, 2 kills.’ A ‘graduation’ shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, ‘No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it.’"    haaretz.com

Children of Darkness - Killing ‘Them’ - Part 2

'This is a war against an entire people'

'Human Relations Award'

Israel was last night confronting a major challenge over the conduct of its 22-day military offensive in Gaza after testimonies by its own soldiers revealed that troops were allowed and, in some cases, even ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinian civilians.

The testimonies – the first of their kind to emerge from inside the military – are at marked variance with official claims that the military made strenuous efforts to avoid civilian casualties and tend to corroborate Palestinian accusations that troops used indiscriminate and disproportionate firepower in civilian areas during the operation.

In one of the testimonies shedding harsh new light on what the soldiers say were the permissive rules of engagement for Operation Cast Lead, one soldier describes how an officer ordered the shooting of an elderly woman 100 metres from a house commandeered by troops ...

The Independent 20 March 2009

Israel must root out the canker of military brutality

What hopes now for peace in the Middle East?

Veteran politician Tony Benn accused the BBC today of a "betrayal" of its public service obligations following its decision not to broadcast a public appeal for funds for Gaza ...

... the Director-General wrote: "I note the Government's desire to work with the NGOs to help alleviate the situation and the progress you say that Oxfam, Save The Children and others have been making in getting aid through on the ground.

"In addition to the practical issue of delivering aid, however, there was a second important reason why we decided after careful consideration that the BBC should not broadcast the DEC appeal. This is because Gaza remains an ongoing and highly controversial news story within which the human suffering and distress which have resulted from the conflict remain intrinsic and contentious elements.

"After consultation with senior news editors, we concluded that to broadcast a free-standing appeal, no matter how carefully couched, ran the risk of calling into question the public's confidence in the BBC's impartiality in its coverage of the story as a whole ... "

The Independent 24 January 2009

Sky joins BBC in Gaza aid appeal ban

A Cowardly Decision

Why the BBC is wrong over the Gaza appeal

The homeless of Gaza

BBC attacked by Ben Bradshaw

Gaza's children need our charity

BBC left isolated

Eretz Nehederet (Wonderful Country) ... featured a warmongering military correspondent ... repeatedly breaking in to the newscasts with updates on the rising Palestinian death toll as if the war was a sports match.

"It's 500 for the visitors, four for the home team," the correpondent says. "The result is good but we can't be complacent and we have to widen the lead." ...

Parodying coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest – in which Israel competes – Wonderful Country correspondents report from different capitals on how many Palestinians the Europeans will allow Israel to kill. From Italy: 800. From Germany: 6,000 ...

The Independent 10 January 2009

'Tungsten bombs' leave Israel's victims with mystery wounds

Gaza clinics destroyed by raids

Massacre of a family seeking sanctuary

UN probes raid on sheltering Gazans

On February 29 last year the BBC's website reported deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatening a 'holocaust' on Gaza. Headlined "Israel warns of Gaza 'holocaust'" the story would undergo nine revisions in the next twelve hours.

Before the day was over, the headline would read "Gaza militants 'risking disaster'".

(The story has since been revised again with an exculpatory note added soft-pedalling Vilnai's comments). An Israeli threatening 'holocaust' may be unpalatable to those who routinely invoke its spectre to deflect criticism from the Jewish state's criminal behaviour.

With the 'holocaust' reference redacted, the new headline shifts culpability neatly into the hands of 'Gaza militants' instead.

One could argue that the BBC's radical alteration of the story reflects its susceptibility to the kind of inordinate pressure for which the Israel Lobby's well-oiled flak machine is notorious.

But, as will be demonstrated in subsequent examples, this story is exceptional only insofar as it reported accurately in the first place something that could bear negatively on Israel's image.

The norm is reflexive self-censorship ...

Spinwatch 07 January 2009

UN human rights chief accuses Israel of war crimes

Gaza under fire

U.N. and Red Cross Add to Outcry on Gaza War

Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony

How easy it is to snap off the history of the Palestinians, to delete the narrative of their tragedy, to avoid a grotesque irony about Gaza which – in any other conflict – journalists would be writing about in their first reports: that the original, legal owners of the Israeli land on which Hamas rockets are detonating live in Gaza.

That is why Gaza exists: because the Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza.

They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.

But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force.

The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.

Robert Fisk 30 December 2008

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Sealed Off by Israel

The Israeli government is increasingly restricting the import into the Gaza Strip of batteries, anesthesia drugs, antibiotics, tobacco, coffee, gasoline, diesel fuel and other basic items, including chocolate and compressed air to make soft drinks.

This punishing seal has reduced Gaza, a territory of almost 1.5 million people, to beggar status, unable to maintain an effective public health system, administer public schools or preserve the traditional pleasures of everyday life by the sea.

"Essentially, it's the ordinary people, caught up in the conflict, paying the price for this political failure," said John Ging, director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, which serves the majority refugee population.

"The humanitarian situation is atrocious, and it is easy to understand why -- 1.2 million Gazans now relying on U.N. food aid, 80,000 people who have lost jobs and the dignity of work. And the list goes on." ...

Washington Post 15 December 2007

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel.

The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world.

This situation has no equal in American political history.

Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?

One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.

Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’ ...

Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members.

It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating peace ...

London Review of Books 23 March 2006

Iraq-Israel oil pipeline 'to reopen'

In the pipeline: More regime change

US asks Israel to explore reviving of Iraq pipeline

U.S. looks at reopening Iraq-Israel oil pipeline

Iraq-Israel Oil Pipeline

Not With Our Oil

Balfour Declaration, 1917

skorpion 2 Feb 2010, 3:19PM

Clinton

China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilising impact that a nuclear-armed Iran would have in the Gulf?."

The implication being that the Middle East is not a hotbed of instability. It has been for centuaries and particularly since this obscenity.

The Balfour Declaration (it its entirety):

Foreign Office November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour

And now, mindful of the destabiizing effect of posturing in the ME, the US sends more ships and missiles.

Is it me?

Also, show me one item of evidence that would hold up un a court of law that the Isralies are entitled to any Arab land. Or a homeland for that matter.

Guardian 01 Feb 2010