Clashes ignite over Al-Aqsa mosque

sraeli forces have clashed with Palestinians at Haram Al Sharif, or Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem.

Several Palestinians were arrested and dozens more were lcoked inside the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reports from East Jerusalem.

Charlie Rose – Roger Cohen

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen

Israel denies Palestinians access to land

For years, Israeli authorities have both barred Palestinian access to rings of land surrounding settlements, and have not acted to eliminate settlers piratical blocking of Palestinian access to lands adjacent to settlements. Blocking access is one of the many ways used to expand settlements. In recent years, Israel has institutionalized the closing of such lands in an attempt to retroactively sanction the unauthorized placement of barriers far from the houses at the edge of the settlements. ‘Abdallah ‘Aqel from Halhul, Hebron district, describes the implications of the settlement expansion on farmers in the area.

Israel’s nukes and Iran

Beneath the hype Pt.3: US intelligence experts Ray McGovern & Greg Thielmann weigh-in on the consequences of US silence regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons

How Israel silenced its Gaza war protesters

A new report from Adalah shows how the courts and police attempted to stamp out opposition to Operation Cast Lead “This is a time of war, and every incident harms the people’s morale.”

This was not a sentence in a right-wing journal, but rather a statement by an Israel Police representative during Operation Cast Lead seeking to persuade the Tel Aviv District Court to block anti-war protesters from the city.

Around the same time, in a Haifa Magistrate’s Court hearing on extending the remand of minors, Judge Moshe Gilad stated: “Anyone who enables remarks denouncing the state and backing its enemies, even as they rain missiles upon its citizens, must obey its laws, and certainly is prohibited from attacking police who come to impose order. It is similar to a person spitting in the well from which he drinks.”

Here are some of the pearls in Adalah’s new report: “Prohibited protest – how the law enforcement authorities limit the freedom of expression of opponents of the Gaza military attack.” The document, being published for the first time here, was written by attorneys Abeer Baker and Rana Asali. They reviewed and analyzed hundreds of rulings and detention requests, interviewed dozens of human rights activists who were arrested and threatened during the Gaza attack, and documented the behavior of Israeli academia during the moments of truth last winter.

Continue reading: HAARETZ

Why Lie?

Israel rejects war crimes findings of UN Gaza inquiry

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman denounces ‘propaganda and bias’

Link to ‘The Guardian’ video

Israel refused to accept the findings of a highly critical UN inquiry into the Gaza war and said today it would launch a diplomatic offensive to prevent any risk of prosecutions.

No independent inquiry into the military’s conduct during the war last January would be held, a clear rejection of one primary recommendation from the UN report.

The inquiry, headed by a former South African judge, Richard Goldstone, delivered a detailed and damning criticism of the war, accusing both Israel and armed Palestinian groups, notably Hamas, of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. It was by far the most serious international inquiry into the three-week war, which left 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead and which triggered a wave of criticism across the world.

“This report was conceived in sin and is the product of a union between propaganda and bias,” said Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. “Israel is a country with a fiercely independent judiciary … Everything done by the military in Israel is open to judicial review by the independent judiciary.”

Israel had refused to co-operate with the inquiry, not letting the team enter Israel or the occupied West Bank. It said the UN human rights council, which commissioned the inquiry, was biased against Israel.

“The mandate was biased from the beginning and it would have been a mistake to give credibility to a mission that has more in common with a kangaroo court than it does with a serious investigation,” Regev said.

For its part, Hamas also rejected the criticism. “The Palestinian people and the Palestinian resistance were in a position of self-defence and not of attack. One cannot compare the simple capabilities of the resistance with the great strength of the occupation,” said Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader and former Palestinian prime minister.

After the inquiry was published yesterday evening, a legal team from Israel’s foreign ministry met with other government officials to prepare an analysis of the UN report. Netanyahu reportedly held meetings into the night on the impact of the findings.

Israel is concerned that, when the UN human rights council discusses the report later this month, it could agree to pass it to the UN security council. The security council could then decide to pass the findings on to the international criminal court, where arrest warrants could be issued ahead of prosecutions.

Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, who is on a visit to Washington, said he would meet the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, to minimise the impact of the report before it reaches the UN security council. Other senior figures from the Israeli government are expected to begin a round of telephone calls with ministers from other governments, particularly the five permanent members of the security council, to head off any decision that might lead to prosecutions. The Ha’aretz newspaper said priority calls would go out to EU nations, in the hope of influencing the debate at the UN human rights council in Geneva.

Continue reading: THE GUARDIAN

The Tel Aviv Party Stops Here

When I heard the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was holding a celebratory “spotlight” on Tel Aviv, I felt ashamed of Toronto, the city where I live. I thought immediately of Mona Al Shawa, a Palestinian women’s rights activist I met on a recent trip to Gaza. “We had more hope during the attacks,” she told me. “At least then we believed things would change.”

Al Shawa explained that while Israeli bombs rained down last December and January, Gazans were glued to their TVs. What they saw, in addition to the carnage, was a world rising up in outrage: global protests, as many as 100,000 on the streets of London, a group of Jewish women in Toronto occupying the Israeli Consulate. “People called it war crimes,” Al Shawa recalled. “We felt we were not alone in the world.” If Gazans could just survive, it seemed that their suffering could be the catalyst for change.

But today, Al Shawa said, that hope is a bitter memory. The international outrage has evaporated. Gaza has vanished from the news. And it seems that all those deaths–as many as 1,400–were not enough to bring justice. Indeed, Israel is refusing to cooperate even with a UN fact-finding mission headed by respected South African judge Richard Goldstone.

Last spring, while Goldstone’s mission was in Gaza gathering devastating testimony, the Toronto International Film Festival was making the final selections for its Tel Aviv spotlight, timed for the Israeli city’s hundredth birthday. There are many who would have us believe that there is no connection between Israel’s desire to avoid scrutiny for its actions in the occupied territories and the glittering Toronto premieres. I am sure that Cameron Bailey, TIFF’s co-director, believes that himself. He is wrong.

Continue reading: THE NATION

Israel Wants More Land

Israel to Allow Building of New (Illegal) Homes in West Bank

TEL AVIV — The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it plans next week to authorize construction of hundreds of new homes in the West Bank, a move that drew immediate rebukes from Palestinian officials and Washington.

The decision comes as the U.S. and Israel appeared to be moving closer to a deal over some sort of settlement halt, which would allow for a resumption of Israel and Palestinian peace talks. Both the U.S. and Palestinians have demanded a total freeze of construction.

The new building approval would be in addition to the 2,500 housing units already in various phases of construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, according to a senior official in the prime minister’s office. This official said the approval would precede Israeli consideration of a settlement freeze for “a few months.”

Palestinian officials have said that unless there’s a total freeze, they aren’t interested in restarting talks. Palestinian officials weren’t immediately available for comment Friday.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told Reuters Friday that peace talks, suspended since December, couldn’t resume without an Israeli pledge of a total freeze of settlement building.

In a statement, the White House said it regretted the Israeli decision. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion, and we urge that it stop,” the statement said. “We are working to create a climate in which negotiations can take place, and such actions make it harder to create such a climate.”

Continue reading: WALL STREET JOURNAL

Israel’s Self-Destruction as a Jewish State

By William Pfaff

The laws of physics say that actions produce equivalent counteractions, and in international relations these may not be what’s expected.

American policy in the Middle East under George Bush and Condoleezza Rice has sought to polarize the region’s forces in the belief that it benefits by promoting a clear confrontation between those, as President George W. Bush said in 2001, “who are with us and those who are against us.” Washington reckons that it wins because it is, in conventional terms, the more powerful.

But suppose the situation is not a conventional one, and the application of power produces ricochet, indirect or asymmetrical reactions. Take the case of Lebanon, whose modern history is one of compromise among the communities that make up the country, which are not automatically hostile to one another but have distinct and divergent interests, and historically have also been the object of foreign intervention and attempts to set the communities against one another.

American policy has never acknowledged the fact that, to exist as a nation, the divided Lebanese have to compromise. Washington and Israel have both consistently seen Lebanon as a country that could be divided, polarized and toppled into their camp, or made to serve their interests inside the Arab camp.

Both have promoted policies intended to put the Christians in power over the Muslims, and if that proved impossible (as it has), to promote an alliance of Sunni Muslims, Druze and Christians against the Syrian- and Iranian-supported Hezbollah.

Take what has just happened. Hezbollah, the movement that has mobilized what historically has been the poorest and least powerful Lebanese community, that of the Shiite population, has seen its power and prestige vastly increased by recent Israeli actions. Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Lebanon in 2006, provoked by Hezbollah, intended by Israel to destroy or decisively weaken Hezbollah by causing the other communities to hold it responsible for the war, was a failure.

This did not happen. Hezbollah was hailed as the victor over Israel. Lebanon nonetheless has since been in a political stalemate between what usually has been described as the “American-backed” prime minister and the hostile Shiite sympathizers of Hezbollah, over nomination of a new president.

In May, the prime minister ordered dismantlement of a secret Hezbollah-controlled communications network, clearly built to improve Hezbollah’s military performance in another war. Another crisis ensued, during which Hezbollah and allied Amal armed militants displayed their military strength by occupying western Beirut, and their political sophistication by going no further. They accepted a proposal by the secretary-general of the Arab League and the emir of Qatar for talks to settle the crisis.

This Arab intervention was an unpleasant surprise to Washington, but produced agreement for a new government under a new president, the former head of the carefully neutral Lebanese army. He has been sworn into office.

(Continue reading: Truthdig)

Israel Defense Forces admit targeting civilians in Lebanon with cluster bombs

The Israel Defense Forces discovered that there had been “irregularities” in the use of cluster munitions, even before the end of the recent Lebanon war, sources in the defense minister’s office said Monday. As a result of this information, Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered an “extensive inquiry” into the use of these munitions before the war’s end.

Meanwhile, for the first time Monday, the IDF admitted targeting populated areas with cluster munitions. In a statement released by the IDF Spokesman’s Office, “the use of cluster munitions against built-up areas was done only against military targets where rocket launches against Israel were identified and after taking steps to warn the civilian population.”

The statements released by the minister’s office contradict Israel Defense Forces’ claims – made both during and after the war – regarding the use of cluster munitions.

One IDF version, which remained unchanged until earlier this week, held that the firing of cluster munitions was done in accordance with international law.

On Sunday it was announced that an investigating officer, Brigadier General Michel Ben-Baruch, who was appointed to examine the issue, found that in some cases cluster munitions were used contrary to the orders of Chief of Staff Dan Halutz.

(Continue reading: Haaretz)

Siege of Gaza squeezes life out of the land

The field is planted with shoulder-high rows of corn and is so close to Israel that the tall concrete boundary wall is well within sight, along with the Israeli military jeeps on their regular patrols into northern Gaza.

For Abid Razzaq Ouda, 40, who farms this land, this brings its own complications. His field is sometimes used by Palestinian militants to fire rockets or mortars into southern Israel and the Israeli military mounts so many operations here that the farmers dare not risk going out at night for fear of being hit.

Last month, after militants used the field for a rocket attack, the Israeli military sent in armoured bulldozers which carved sweeping paths through his corn, tearing down the crops and wrecking the extensive plastic irrigation pipes. Then a bulldozer demolished the cement hut housing the water pump in the corner of the field. Ouda, still heavily in debt from the shortfall in his earlier strawberry crop, has no money to repair the pump and so this season’s half-matured corn is already lost.

(Continue reading: The Guardian)

Olmert inquiry mars Israel’s birthday

Israel’s 60th birthday celebrations yesterday ended in uncertainty and confrontation yesterday as fresh details emerged about a corruption investigation into the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and a riot briefly pitted Arab Israelis against the police.

Celebrations marking the 1948 creation of the state of Israel were muted by the growing crisis surrounding Olmert. The festivities, the fireworks, the military displays and the barbecues had barely finished when the Tel Aviv magistrates court loosened a gag order on the investigation, revealing that Olmert is suspected of accepting bribes involving “significant sums of money”.

The investigation, the latest in a string of corruption inquiries that have dogged Olmert since he took over from Ariel Sharon in 2006, began 11 days ago, when the national fraud unit, having received new information in another inquiry, interviewed the embattled leader.

Olmert’s chief of staff, Shula Zaken, who is now under house arrest, and his lawyer, Uri Messer, have also been questioned, a police statement issued after the court relaxed the gag order said.

“It is suspected that the prime minister received significant sums of money from a foreigner or number of foreign individuals over an extended period of time, partly directly and partly indirectly,” the police statement said.

(Continue reading: The Guardian)

Sixty years on, Palestinians mourn loss of homeland

BURJ AL-BARAJNEH, Lebanon (Reuters) – While Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, Palestinian refugees mourn the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) when they lost their homeland. Often ignored in Middle East peace talks, they cling to a “right of return”.

Alia Shabati was 12 when she fled Jewish attacks on her village of Kabri, captured a few days after Israel’s creation.

Now a matron of 72, wearing a flowery blue dress and white headscarf, her memories of Kabri in today’s northern Israel are vividly intact, unlike the village, which was wiped off the map.

“We had houses and land,” Shabati said in the living room of her modest dwelling in the alleys of Beirut’s Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp. “We had olives, grapes, prickly pears and dates. We had orchards and fields. Now what do we have? Nothing.”

Her life story encapsulates the bitterness of dispossession and exile familiar to about 4.5 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants in squalid camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the occupied West Bank and Gaza, or in a wider diaspora.

For Shabati, who has lost three of her 11 children, her tale is unique. “What I tasted, no one has tasted,” she said.

Her father was killed by British forces during a Palestinian revolt in 1936, shortly after she was born.

Twelve years later, she fled Kabri with her mother, brother and grandmother, along with other women and children, after an attack by Jewish Haganah forces. Her uncle and several other relatives who stayed behind were among those killed.

(Continue reading: Reuters)