Volume 11, Issue 11
What's in the Freeze? Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak suspended all permits for building projects in Israeli settlements Thursday, but also approved plans for the construction of 28 public buildings.
The move followed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement on Wednesday that Israel decided to implement a 10-month suspension of new construction in West Bank settlements.
The Obama administration welcomed Netanyahu's announcement. "While they fall short of a full freeze, we believe the steps announced by the prime minister are significant, and could have substantial impact on the ground," said American Special Envoy George Mitchell.
Mitchell also laid out the Israeli commitment: "For the first time ever, an Israeli government will stop housing approvals and all new construction of housing units and related infrastructure in West Bank settlements. That's a positive development. The Israelis have said that the only exception will be a small number of public buildings, such as schools and synagogues, within existing settlements. Under the moratorium, those buildings already under construction will be completed."
Americans for Peace Now welcomed the Israeli announcement and called for it to be implemented in good faith. "Implemented properly, this moratorium could serve the cause of peace," the group said in a statement. "At the same time, the moratorium alone is not an alternative to negotiations. All parties have a responsibility to push for real talks that can handle the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the fate of the settlements and conflicting claims to Jerusalem." (JTA, 11/30/09; State.gov, 11/25/09; PeaceNow.org, 11/25/09)
Freeze is Just a Start: Responding to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement of a suspension in settlement construction, Haaretz columnist Akiva Eldar writes that "from Israel's point of view, the government took a major step."
At the same time, Eldar doubts that the move will result in a resumption of negotiations. He notes that the move increases the pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas: "It is hard to decide what would cause greater harm to whatever is left of Abbas' status in the Palestinian public - American pressure to settle with the deal Netanyahu offered him yesterday, or the prisoner-exchange deal that the prime minister is offering his great enemies in Hamas."
"It is unlikely that Netanyahu really believed Abbas would thank Israel's government for deciding to temporarily freeze the settlements in the West Bank, praise it for building synagogues and new schools, agree to the completion of 2,500 partially-built housing units and the construction of 492 new apartments," Eldar continues.
"Freezing West Bank settlements, even temporarily, has become a necessary condition for saving the two-state solution and the Palestinian faction supporting it," Eldar notes. "Necessary, but by no means sufficient. In the absence of basic trust between the parties, even if Netanyahu continues to shove building permits into the drawer, as he has been doing since he returned to the prime minister's desk, it won't suffice."
Eldar's sentiments wer echoed in Haaretz's editorial Friday: "Limiting the hiatus to a 10-month period, after which construction will resume, excluding East Jerusalem from the freeze, permitting the completion of buildings where construction has already begun and making no comment on the evacuation of illegal outposts, all raise serious doubts about the prime minister's true intentions... Now, in light of the reservations included within it, this latest freeze may be perceived as insufficient."
"Evidence to support this can be seen in the negative Palestinian response, which argues that this is merely a decision aiming to make an impression, particularly in Washington, one that lacks any incentive for furthering negotiations," the editorial argues. "On the other hand, the Palestinians should recognize that Netanyahu has changed his position on two issues: the adoption of the formula of 'two states for two peoples,' and his willingness to temporarily halt construction permits. Both are sufficient to restart the negotiations. There are still many difficulties and complex core issues in these negotiations, which pose crash risks at every junction; however, without a resumption of talks, there will be no chance of resolving them."
The onus for progress, the editorial concluded, is on Washington. "This is only the first link in a process that Barack Obama has promised to bring to fruition. Now Washington must resume action along the main track, focusing on the immediate resumption of negotiations and determined mediation until an agreement is reached." (Haaretz, 11/26 & 11/27/09)
Details Released on Shalit Deal: The parameters of a possible deal between Israel and Hamas for the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit were made public yesterday. Israel is to free 450 prisoners demanded by Hamas at the first stage, and about 530 additional prisoners, selected by Israel, will be freed subsequently as a "gesture to the Palestinian people."
The Israeli government released these details in response to legal action by an Israeli civic group opposed to the deal. The group sued the government, demanding that it act more transparently regarding the talks with Hamas.
Attorneys for the Israeli government want to avoid publishing the names of the prisoners slated for release until after a deal is finalized. "The sides to the negotiations made an explicit commitment to the German mediator, as a condition for the negotiations, that the details of the talks would be kept completely discreet," the attorneys told the Israeli High Court of Justice.
Israeli public opinion appears to back the deal, though there are indications that this support is fluid. A poll published Wednesday found that 73% of Jewish Israelis support a deal in order for Shalit to be released. The extent of support dropped to 52% when pollsters asked about the release of "terrorists with blood on their hands" in exchange for Shalit. (Ma'ariv, 11/30/09; Israel Hayom, 11/25/09)
Looking at Settler Violence: A number of incidents in which settlers allegedly attacked Palestinians or Israeli security personnel made news in recent weeks.
The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court last week charged two West Bank settlers for attacking two Palestinian shepherds south of Hebron.
Yehuda Goldberg and Jeremy Aronson, both residents of the Mitzpeh Yair outpost, allegedly beat Palestinian shepherds Khaled and Naeel Abu Aram, aged 55 and 22, with a pipe in June 2008.
The settlers - whose settlement was built in violation of Israeli law - claim that they acted to keep the shepherds off of their land. "I admit that it's not my job to make these shepherds leave the area, but the army does nothing and they keep coming closer to the settlement, so I thought I best stop them," said Goldberg.
"Essentially, Arabs cannot cross the riverbed to come up in the direction of [the settlement outpost of] Mitzpeh Yair," added Aronson.
An IDF soldier testified that the settlers approached the Palestinians in contravention of IDF instructions.
In a separate incident last week, several Israeli Border Guard officers came under attack by settlers from the unauthorized outpost of Havat Gilad. A military jeep was damaged in the incident. Border Guard, police and IDF forces were dispatched to the area as reinforcements. There were no reports of injuries or arrests.
Earlier this month a settler from Havat Gilad was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a policeman while Civil Administration representatives attempted to dismantle electricity infrastructure built in violation of Israeli law.
One Israeli organization drew attention last week to the lack of effective Israeli police efforts to combat destruction of Palestinian farmland. The Yesh Din organization released a report Tuesday showing that not one of the 69 complaints filed by Palestinian farmers over damage to their fruit trees has resulted in an indictment.
"Continuous damage to the livelihood of Palestinian families is not met with immediate response from the law enforcement authorities," noted Yesh Din's Lior Yavne. (Haaretz, 11/23 & 11/25/09; Ynet, 11/22/09)
Preparing for Future Settler Violence: The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) published a report earlier this month identifying 83 Palestinian communities in the West Bank that are especially vulnerable to vigilante attacks by settlers.
In particular, the report looks ahead to the expected reaction by settlers following Israeli action to meet its commitments to remove settlement outposts established in recent years.
The report focuses on a strategy known as "price tag."
According to the report, this settler tactic "entails the exertion of systematic, widespread and indiscriminate violence against Palestinian civilians and Israeli security forces, following attempts by the Israeli authorities to evacuate settlement outposts. The overall objective of this strategy is to deter the Israeli authorities from removing such outposts. In the immediate term, the 'price tag' strategy aims at diverting Israeli forces and troops from the scene of an outpost evacuation into other areas, requiring the intervention of those forces to contain violent incidents."
OCHA recommends that special protection be provided for the communities it identified when Israel takes action against settlement outposts. (OCHA, 11/15/09; Jerusalem Post, 11/18/09)
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Well, it looks as though Netanyahu & Co. have done it again. They've got the whole world talking about the relative merits of their latest diversionary scheme (as it works perfectly) while the ultimate reality - that every nail put into every settlement east of the Green Line is illegal and will, to a very large extent, need to be removed when justice for the Palestinians is finally achieved - is lost in the babble. And, why shouldn't it? It's been a tried & true formula to cover Israel's expansionary plans for the West Bank since 1967. Once everybody stops verbiating on the current "offer", there'll be another "offer" to take its place and so on, and so on, ad nauseum and exit the Palestinians.
At some point the world must respond to the repeated dissembling & deception with a resounding "BULLSHIT!", and begin the BDS campaign with the same intensity as it was used against South Africa (and threatens Iran) until such time as Israel eschews its misbegotten and narcissistic exceptionalism, rejoins the remainder of humanity and treats the Palestinians with the respect and honesty due their fellow human beings occupying the same land.
Is it really just too much to ask?