The Making of a Virtual Palestinian State

Direct Talks: Five Myths

Direct talks between Palestinians and Israelis are scheduled to commence in Washington on September 2, a decade after the last real final-status talks, and nearly two years after the last direct talks. Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu will come face to face for dinner and talks in Washington as guests of President Obama after 18 months of shuttle diplomacy and indirect "proximity talks" headed by Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell.



President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, along with Tony Blair, the special representative of the Middle East Quartet are also due to join the inaugural session in Washington.

While much hope has been placed on these talks culminating in an agreement within a year, most Palestinians and Israelis remain skeptical of their success. More importantly, hopes and expectations have been inflated in some media reports, adding confusion and creating myths about what might turn up only to be yet another photo op in DC.

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Why Turkey Is Looking East

First came the clash at Davos in January 2009, when Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan walked off the stage after an angry exchange with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres during a panel discussion on Gaza at the World Economic Forum.



Then came the surprise uranium deal with Tehran, undermining Western pressure on Iran to come clean about its nuclear program, followed by the Israeli assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which sailed under Turkish flags, sending shockwaves throughout the world. Most recently, Turkey and Brazil have become the only countries that voted against UN sanctions to impede Iran's progress toward nuclear weapons capabilities.

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Israel: Hasbara, Lies, and Videotape

As thousands of outraged demonstrators poured into the streets of Ankara and several capitals across the globe in the aftermath of Israel's bloody attack on an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip early Monday, an Israeli sergeant stood in front of reporters claiming that the activists on board "were armed with knives, scissors, pepper spray and guns." He said he was armed only with a paintball rifle.

"It was a civilian paintball gun that any 12-year-old can play with," he said; yet, at least nine activists were killed, including a 19-year-old American who was shot in the head four times, and scores were injured.



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Sleepless in Gaza and Jerusalem

Day 51: Ashira joins her friend Bakrieyh on a tour of some Palestinian villages that were emptied out in order to make way for Jewish immigrants in 1948. Today marks Israel's Independence Day, which is known to Palestinians as al-Nakba, the Catastrophe; when Palestinians lost their country and Israel came to being.



In Gaza, Eman pays a visit to her friend Umm Walid who lives in Beit Lahia.

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Deporting Gandhi from Palestine

The Israeli government's recent announcement of Army order No. 1,650 was just the latest act of provocation in a series of calculated measures to derail any possible resumption of peace negotiations. Under this new draconian measure, anyone who doesn't have a "permit" to be in the West Bank is to be considered an "infiltrator" and subject to expulsion or risk up to seven years in jail.



Expulsions and deportations are not something new for the Israeli military administrative system which was established in 1969, shortly after the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six-Day War. At the time, the Israeli military was given the legal power to expel "infiltrators" without trial for various unspecified "security reasons."

Two particular Palestinian communities will be impacted by order No. 1,650: Palestinians with Gaza residencies and Palestinians with East Jerusalem residencies, as well as foreign-born residents of the West Bank. But many Palestinian and Israeli experts believe that it's the foreigners living amongst Palestinians who are the real target of the Netanyahu government. Many believe that this is part of an ongoing Israeli effort to silence dissent and crack down on international solidarity members and activists who travel to Palestinian areas to support protests and rallies, often bringing with them the eyes of the outside world.

Now that Israel has almost completed its "Separation Wall", it wants to build a "Wall of Silence" and control the flow of information and limit the presence of foreign-born eyewitnesses on the ground. The question is, why now?

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Israel: Occupation or Apartheid?

The dreaded "A-Word" has once again made its way into Israeli media, not by a leftist "self-hating Jew", but by a prominent Israeli politician, the Minister of Defense, who is a decorated soldier and a former prime minister as well. "A" is for Apartheid.



An awful word that evokes awful memories, presumably left behind in the annals of history in places such as Soweto and Cape Town. A word that has invited rage, insults, and attacks against a former US president who received a Nobel Peace Prize.

This past Tuesday, however, Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that if Israel does not achieve a peace deal with the Palestinians, it will have to become a binational state or be an undemocratic apartheid one if it remains as it is. Read More

Gaza: Forsaken but not Forgotten

EREZ CROSSING, Gaza Border- They came in buses and cars from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and the Galilee: Palestinians, Israelis, and few international activists. They waved Palestinian flags and carried banners chanting in Arabic and Hebrew: "Break the Siege," "Set Gaza Free," and "Down with Netanyahu and Mubarak."

"Welcome to Erez Crossing Point," the sign reads in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The ultimate irony, as no one is allowed to cross in or out except for a lucky few, such as diplomats and aid workers, or the unlucky ones who suffer from terminal illnesses. The rest of the 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants remain caged in like animals in the largest open air prison on earth, called Gaza.

Eighty-six international activists were allowed to enter the Strip last night from Egypt through Rafah. We were told that they too, accompanied by hundreds of Gazans, were chanting and waving on the other side of the border, but we could not see or hear them. Between them and us were a few hundred meters, a wall, a steel gate, and armed Israeli soldiers.

More than a thousand activists from around 40 countries remained in Cairo after the Egyptian government declined them entry due to the "sensitive situation" in the Palestinian territory. When was it not a "sensitive situation" in Palestine?

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Palestine 1001 Nights

"Hamas is negotiating with Israel:" this is what Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas confidently said to a BBC -Arabic reporter in an exclusive interview. How does he know? Abbas asserted that there are "no secrets in Israel".

If things could only be this simple in the Middle East, Mr. Abbas would have known from the get-go that the Oslo Accords were a disaster for the Palestinians, Bush's Road Map for Peace was just another road to nowhere, the Annapolis Peace Conference was dead on arrival, and Obama's promises for "change" do not mean squat when it comes to Israel.

The President of the Palestinian Authority added that the presidential and legislative elections scheduled for January will be postponed and that he would not seek a second term as president. Abbas looked frustrated...he looked like a beaten man.



Meanwhile, the Israeli government in recent days has been scrambling for yet another distraction to offer the beleaguered Palestinian Authority President: an interim accord that would include a Palestinian state with provisional borders. This way he'll have a quasi-state with temporary borders to show for all the endless negotiations. What a brilliant idea!

The reasoning behind this brilliant idea is that it would remove contentious issues that have prevented an agreement in the past, such as the Palestinian refugee issue and Jerusalem, from the negotiating table. No big deal, really!

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The Vichy Government of Palestine

It is not the first time Palestinians have called for the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas. When Hamas swept to victory in the Palestinian Parliamentary Elections in January 2006, angry mobs from the defeated Fatah party staged rallies in the Gaza Strip, calling for his resignation. Many gathered outside the parliament in Gaza City, setting fire to government cars and firing shots into the air.



Today, the anger is subtler, but more poignant. Palestinians from all walks of life are stunned and disappointed by Abbas, who withdrew Palestinian support for a vote in the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to have the Goldstone report sent to the U.N. General Assembly for possible action, the first of many steps towards possibly establishing war crimes tribunals to investigate Israel's alleged war crimes in Gaza.

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Goldstone's Rosh Hashanah Bomb

The news hit Israel like a bomb, and I do not use this word lightly for a region riddled with bullets that has seen its share of real bombs that kill and maim people.

Israel is appalled and disappointed by the Report published on September 15, 2009 by the Gaza Fact-Finding Mission. The Report effectively ignores Israel's right of self-defense, makes unsubstantiated claims about its intent, and challenges Israel's democratic values and rule of law.

So began the Israeli response, posted on the Israeli Ministry of foreign Affairs' website, to Judge Richard Goldstone, the head of a United Nations commission, who this week charged Israel with committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip during its offensive there last winter.

The nearly 600-page report, presented this week by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, and recommended that if no appropriate independent inquiry takes place in Israel within six months, the Security Council should refer the matter to prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.

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Settlement Freeze: Been There, Done That

UN resolutions, the Oslo Agreement, and negotiations over Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 have all been replaced by buzzwords, such as, "settlement freeze" and "confidence-building measures." Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has skillfully managed to get the international community spinning its wheels over issues that have been dealt with decades ago. During a recent press conference with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor has urged Israel to stop settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territories and resume the Middle East peace process.

Who Speaks for Palestine?

Fateh, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, will meet next week in an atmosphere mired with internal divisions, charges of corruption, and tales of espionage and betrayal fit for a John Le Carré novel.

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Iran's Uprising: Food for Thought

Ever since the Iranian revolution stunned the world in 1979, the Arab world, or at least the Arab regimes and their allies in the West, have been obsessing over Iran's "exporting of the revolution" and the implications it would have on the Arab world. Eventually, this obsession manifested itself into a Sunni-Shi'a divide. Rumors and speculations quickly spread across the Arab world about the Islamic Republic's plans to spread Shi'ism across the Middle East, hence terminologies such as, "Shi'a Revival" and "Shi'a Crescent" have emerged, fueling fear and suspicion amongst Arabs across the region.

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A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

Following his meeting with US President Barack Obama at the White House, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a special briefing to Israeli reporters, and told them that the president planned to formulate a new Middle East peace initiative which would be presented soon.
The prime minister termed the plan "interesting," and said that it would involve not just the Palestinians and Israelis, but also a number of moderate Arab states.

Yup...another NEW peace initiative...and Palestinians are very thrilled with the Israeli occupation!

Mousawa: An Alternative to a Two-State Solution

For the past 10 years, the "two-state solution" has been the mantra of the United States, and of most countries involved in bringing a lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But now, Netanyahu is calling for what he says is a fresh approach to peace with the Palestinians.
"The fresh approach that I suggest is pursuing a triple track toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians: a political track, a security track and an economic track," said the prime minister via satellite to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference in Washington.
Mr. Netanyahu made no mention of a two-state solution.

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