The Corner Report

He did it with seven words. “Ultimately the U.S. cannot impose a solution.”

By Alan Hart

He was speaking at the White House the day before the start of the new round of direct talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, after he had met with them and Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah II. (In my last post I anticipated Obama saying at the point of his complete surrender that “America can’t want peace more than the parties.” He also said that – ahead of schedule!)

Today there is a growing number of seriously well informed people of all faiths and none (including me) who believe there will only be peace if it is imposed.

Among those who have dared to say so in public is one of the most eminent Jewish gentlemen of our time, Henry Siegman. A former national director of the American Jewish Congress, he is president of the U.S./Middle East Project, which was part of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1994 until 2006 when it was established as an independent policy institute. He is also a research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Programme of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. During his more than 30 years of involvement in the Middle East peace process, he has published extensively on the subject and has been consulted by governments, international agencies and non-governmental organizations involved in the peace process. In a comment piece for the Financial Times on 23 February 2010, (quoted in Conflict Without End? the Epilogue to Volume 3 of the American edition of my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews), he wrote this:

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Tel Aviv portrays the Iranian reactor as an 'existential threat'.

By Jeff Gates

The phony intelligence used to induce our March 2003 invasion of Iraq has been dusted off. This time it's being deployed to take us into Iran.

Same scam. Same storyline. Same fraud—even featuring some of the same players.

Except that this time around their deception lacks the broader context required to gain traction for their phony content. That key difference makes today’s perpetrators far more transparent—for those willing to look.

Those foisting on us this latest fraud also face another challenge: Americans now realize it was Israel and its advocates who fixed that false intelligence around a Zionist agenda.

That realization adds combustibility to the facts now fueling Israel’s fast-fading legitimacy.

Each week brings new insights that undermine generally accepted truths about 911 and our response to that mass murder on U.S. soil. As the costs continue to rise in both blood and treasure, the credibility of those who sold us this “Clash” continues its steady decline.

One key player in this long-running fraud remains unfazed: mainstream media.

In March 2002, Israeli-American Jeffrey Goldberg published in The New Yorker a story alleging an alliance between the jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Iraq. Though an impossible premise, his account made it appear plausible.

His collaborator was James Woolsey, a former Director of the CIA and an avid Zionist. Woolsey assured us that Iraqi intelligence officials met in Prague with Al Qaeda.

Woolsey’s intelligence was “sexed up” to sound credible. Now we know it was false. All of it.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

In the consistency and common source of this duplicity lies the perilous future of Israel and its fast-shrinking legitimacy as a nation state.

The fast-growing worldwide revulsion at all things Israeli suggests that this latest fraud may yet fail—though not for lack of trying.

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By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Palestine

An influx of hair-raising stories keeps coming from the Egyptian side of the Rafah border terminal. Nearly all these stories underscore the degrading treatment meted out to Gazans, already thoroughly savaged by the manifestly criminal siege imposed by Israel on the coastal enclave in coordination with several regional and international players, including Egypt itself.

In fact, according to testimonies collected from Gazans who have been in the "Egyptian hell," the Egyptian treatment of some Gazans is far worse than that which is accorded to them by the Israel.

This is more than disgraceful. It is criminal.

A few weeks ago, a Gazan woman died while waiting on the Egyptian border. True, death is an act of God, but it can also be the result of criminal negligence and degrading treatment, especially if the dead is ill.

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By Dr. Alan Sabrosky - Intifada Palestine

As the US edges toward an unprovoked and utterly needless war with Iran, some remarks by an eminent and experienced observer of that part of the world caught my attention. First, he noted that “Israel and the US realize that the next war will burn much of the Middle East and may well spell the end of Israel.”

Now, Israel certainly believes that about the Middle East, and in fact hopes it happens, because that just makes its position stronger. But neither Israel nor the US — at least at a governmental level — accept the second part of the proposition, just the opposite, that in fact it will be the saving of Israel — because (as I’ve noted elsewhere) if the regional chaos is great enough, Israel will take the opportunity to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians (and probably Israeli Arabs as well) from “Greater Israel” by shoving them over its borders, into Jordan and the Sinai (and some into the Lebanon as well). That will leave it intact and Jewish, its neighbors overwhelmed by a few million destitute Palestinians — a 2nd and even worse Nakba — and everyone else in ruins or teetering on the edge. Netanyahu, Barak, Lieberman and their merry thugs won’t shed a tear or lose a second’s sleep over any of it, much less over the many Americans who will die in yet another of America’s Jewish Wars.

Second, he remarked that “Every week Israel becomes weaker vis a vis the “resistance axis” and at what point does Israel decide to bring down the house and start again if it can survive with enough military power (backed by the US) to remake the region.”

But I simply don’t see Israel getting weaker, just more beleaguered, which is not the same thing. We need to keep in mind that Israel defines its usable power (and therefore its security) not only in terms of what it has, but also what it can command from its “most favored goyim” in the US — and that, now, is virtually everything. We know about Israel’s control of the Congress and the media, and I think people on our side generally understand about their control of political appointments that absolutely keep opponents of Israel out of office – the Chas Freeman incident ought to have been telling. The American public, unfortunately, is almost absolutely clueless about the whole enterprise, thanks to the prevailing dominant theme they get from the President, national politicians, the press and mostly the Protestant pulpit.

Yet it goes beyond that.

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Submit to Washington and keep the Palestinian Authority afloat, or follow the Palestinian street and see the Ramallah government implode? Khaled Amayreh weighs Abbas's choices in Ramallah

Palestinians look at damaged houses following a blast at the house of a Hamas commander in the Deir Al-Balah refugee camp, central Gaza Strip

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is facing a growing political dilemma that some observers suggest might even force him to resign. The dilemma stems from the impossible situation of having to balance intensive behind-the-scenes US pressure to join open-ended peace talks with Israel and pressure from the Palestinian street as well as Abbas's own Fatah Party to stay out of talks under the present conditions irrespective of the cost.

Most Palestinians view submission to US pressure as amounting to capitulation to Israeli demands and dictates. Earlier this week, President Obama sent a letter to Abbas telling him that the PA would have to join direct peace talks with Israel or face the consequences. For most Palestinians, the word "consequences" is widely believed to be an allusion to withdrawing financial assistance paid by Washington, without which it is doubtful that the PA can survive for long.

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Israeli troops clash with Palestinians protesting against last year's Gaza offensive

By Abbas Momani

The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this week raised scarcely a headline.

There was a Nato-Israeli exercise in progress. Well, that's OK then. Now imagine the death of five Hamas fighters in a helicopter crash in Romania this week. We'd still be investigating this extraordinary phenomenon. Now mark you, I'm not comparing Israel and Hamas. Israel is the country that justifiably slaughtered more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza 19 months ago – more than 300 of them children – while the vicious, blood-sucking and terrorist Hamas killed 13 Israelis (three of them soldiers who actually shot each other by mistake).

But there is one parallel. Judge Richard Goldstone, the eminent Jewish South African judge, decided in his 575-page UN inquiry into the Gaza bloodbath that both sides had committed war crimes – he was, of course, quite rightly called "evil" by all kinds of justifiably outraged supporters of Israel in the US, his excellent report rejected by seven EU governments – and so a question presents itself. What is Nato doing when it plays war games with an army accused of war crimes?

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I have little doubt that if the American killed on those ships had been Hedy Epstein, a St. Louis-based Holocaust survivor, or Edward Peck, a former U.S. ambassador to Mauritania, we would have heard a lot more.

New York Times

By Op-Ed Columnist ROGER COHEN

TROY, New York — The Dogans were a quiet family little noticed by their neighbors here in upstate New York. Ahmet Dogan had come to the area from Turkey to study accounting at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

He was a serious student; the Dogans did little entertaining. But when their younger son, Furkan, was born in 1991, the family threw a party and a neighbor recalled a toast “to the first U.S. citizen in the family.”

Furkan Dogan would live just two years in Troy, returning to Turkey with his family in 1993. But he was proud of his American passport and dreamt of coming back after completing medical school. Five Israeli bullets — at least two of them to the head — ended that dream on May 31. Dogan was 19.

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Domestic pressure is one reason behind the US-Israeli rapprochement but so is a failure of policy, writes Graham Usher in New York

After a cool year United States-Israeli relations are again warming. Since their "kiss-and-make-up" meeting in Washington on 6 July, Barack Obama has made no call on Binyamin Netanyahu to extend Israel's so-called settlement freeze in the West Bank beyond its expiry in September. Instead, the US president has squeezed the Palestinians to move from indirect "proximity" talks with the Americans to direct negotiations with Israel.

So far to no avail. On 17 July Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said there would be little point in talks unless Israel accepted the 1967 armistice lines as the "basis" of the borders of a future Palestinian state with "international" -- rather than Israeli -- troops to police them. Netanyahu has rejected both conditions. So, currently, has Obama.

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By RANNIE AMIRI

CounterPunch

In the Middle East, the link between political machinations, espionage and assassination is either clear as day, or clear as mud.

As for the yet unsolved case of the February 2005 murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, mud might be giving way to daylight.

A crackdown on Israeli spy rings operating in Lebanon has resulted in more than 70 arrests over the past 18 months. Included among them are four high-ranking Lebanese Army and General Security officers—one having spied for the Mossad since 1984.

A significant breakthrough in the ongoing investigation occurred in late June and culminated in the arrest of Charbel Qazzi, head of transmission and broadcasting at Alfa, one of Lebanon’s two state-owned mobile service providers.

According to the Lebanese daily As-Safir, Qazzi confessed to installing computer programs and planting electronic chips in Alfa transmitters. These could then be used by Israeli intelligence to monitor communications, locate and target individuals for assassination, and potentially deploy viruses capable of erasing recorded information in the contact lines. Qazzi’s collaboration with Israel reportedly dates back 14 years.

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US poured more money into Israel than it did into the Marshall Plan.

USAID has slated $550.4 million for the PA in its budget next year. The continuation of this aid is contingent on the continuation of the Palestinian Fatah-Hamas rift and the blockade. Nothing is allocated for East Jerusalem and the bulk of the funds are to be spent on "fighting drugs, law enforcement and security programmes".

By Nicola Nasser

Since 1860, when the American Jewish tycoon Judah Touro donated $60,000 -- a fortune for that time -- towards the construction of the first Jewish settlement outside the old walls of Jerusalem, public and private American funds have aided the creation and territorial expansion of Israel. Israel today is the foremost recipient of US aid. According to a USAID green paper, between 1946 and 2008 Israel has received more aid than Russia, India, Egypt and Iraq. In fact, the US has poured more money into Israel than it did into the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. However, a recent New York Times article adds a new dimension to the story. On 5 July, the Times reported that, over the last decade more than 40 American groups have collected more than $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, indicating that the US Treasury is effectively aiding and abetting illegal settlement expansion and the Judaisation of Jerusalem.

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by Kenneth O’Keefe / Pulse

Imagine this, imagine that Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress negotiated a deal with the South African Apartheid regime and settled for a “two-state solution.” Imagine Mandela negotiating with the Apartheid regime a land deal in which less than 15% of current day South Africa went to the black South Africans, the remaining 85% to the inherently racist Apartheid government and its people.

With that in mind, I ask, is there any real difference between that scenario and the idea of a “two-state solution” today? I am happy to know that ever-increasing numbers of people inside and outside of Palestine see what I see, the so-called two-state solution is in truth the two-state disaster, the second Nakba.

I can imagine the result of two states and, as far as I am concerned, anything less than one state, with all equal protection under the law, is a recipe for perpetual conflict. And that is exactly why every US and EU administration and puppets and stooges of all stations from around the globe support the second Nakba of two states. One a nuclear armed, economically advanced and land rich, the other impoverished and beaten, a legacy to the motto that ‘might makes right’ and justice comes at the barrel of a gun.

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Is hypocrisy no longer a vice?

By SHELDON RICHMAN

I presume Barack Obama's Likud membership card is in the mail.

No doubt Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu has seen to it. After all, Obama has now paid his dues.

After a few idle negative statements about expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank/East Jerusalem, Obama caved at the slightest push-back from the Israel lobby -- election year, you know -- and now he's apparently fine with them. He went from saying the settlement expansion "could end up being dangerous [!]" to saying, "I think that he [Netanyahu] is dealing with a very complex situation in a very tough neighborhood." We can be sure that Netanyahu will not permanently stop the expansion and Obama will not take any action -- such as cutting off the money -- to bring that about. (Even Gen. David Petraeus fears the lobby.) "[T]he pace of settlement building in the West Bank has been barely affected by the 10-month freeze, due to end in September," Jonathan Cook of The National writes.

Obama also quickly folded on the matter of Israel's signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. ("Israel has unique security requirements.") Everyone knows Israel has upward of 200 nukes, but the official position is to neither confirm nor deny their existence. That's known as "nuclear ambiguity."

The security relationship between the Obama administration and Israel is said to be stronger than ever -- the Pentagon, the Israelis, and at least some neoconservatives agree. More military aid is in the works, on top of the annual $3 billion transfusion.

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But did Israel bring the region any closer to peace?

By George S. Hishmeh –Washington, D.C.

It was a session replete with superlatives when the assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs, Andrew J. Shapiro, spelled out in unprecedented detail the Obama administration’s approach to U.S.-Israel security cooperation, reassuring the Israelis of “preserving (their country’s) qualitative military edge.”

The crowded event, held at the Brookings Saban Center founded by a wealthy Egyptian-Jew, seemed to serve as an obvious attempt by the administration to reassure Israelis that President Barack Obama, whose popularity in Israel is very low (about 10 percent), means well in his lethargic bid to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Shapiro, a onetime a senior research assistant at the pro-Israeli think-tank, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and for eight years a former foreign and defense adviser to Hillary Clinton before she was named secretary of state, reminded his audience of her “deep sense of pride in being a strong voice for Israel.”

At the packed session he faced some tough questioning but he was evasive in his responses. For example, he was asked why would Israel chose to make any concessions when it had all it needed from the U.S., or why Obama’s popularity remains very low despite these amazing favors that Shapiro often described as “unprecedented.” Another woman shot back at Shapiro saying he is sounding more like “an agent of the Israeli government than a U.S. representative” because this special relationship with Israel “is very dangerous,” a point that prompted surprisingly some cheering in the audience.

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In today's Israel, advocating equal rights for all can prove fatal, writes Ahmad Tibi*

In the 11 years that I have served in Israel's Knesset I have received numerous death threats. Pulsa Denura (the term for a rabbinical death curse) has evidently taken exception to my consistent call for equal rights for Israel's Palestinian minority. Recently I received a letter -- the second in as many days -- that warned: "You have 180 days to live. Your death will be sudden and cruel, accompanied by great pain... "

In the Middle East, he (Obama) is regarded as full of fine but empty words. Empty because securing Palestinian freedom and equal rights requires standing up to Israel.

Last month, I was forcibly removed by armed guards from the Knesset podium. In recent days, colleagues have faced violent and vulgar rhetoric and one was very nearly physically attacked by fellow Knesset members. Much, but not all of this fury, is a consequence of daring to speak out on behalf of Palestinians in the biggest prison in the world, Gaza, a land cruelly and illegally deprived of essential goods. Yet American elected officials seem far more concerned with specious claims against humanitarian aid workers who were violently attacked and abducted by Israel in international waters.

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Israel's urban planning policies for East Jerusalem aim at expelling all Palestinians in favour of Jews only, writes Stephen Lendman*

The UN General Assembly's 1947 Resolution 181 internationalised Jerusalem as a separate body (a corpus separatum ) administered by a UN Trustee Council, a policy still binding but not followed. Nor have other resolutions or international law provisions Israel rejects been followed, ones interfering with its military occupation, affecting East Jerusalem Palestinians repressed since June 1967, more still after the passage of the 30 July 1980 basic law declaring that "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel."

Yet on 30 June 1980, the UN Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted Resolution 476 (the US abstaining), declaring "all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant [Fourth Geneva] violation."

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"This strife might take several decades, even a century or more, but it must end with the dismantling or destruction of something called Israel," said one resident of Hebron in the southern West Bank.

Israeli police and border police officers prevent a Palestinian woman from entering the house of her relatives that is about to be demolished in East Jerusalem

Israeli settlement expansion continues to make a mockery of efforts to reach a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, writes Khaled Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

While the rest of the world talks about a peace process, and while President Barack Obama raises false hopes of a resolution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, Israel is working frantically to create irreversible facts in occupied East Jerusalem as well as across the West Bank.

These facts, which take the form of tens of thousands of Jewish settler units built all over the occupied city and beyond, are changing the demographic features and overall panorama of East Jerusalem in particular.

Jerusalem is not just another town. It is extremely sacred to more than 1.5 billion Muslims around the world, being home to some of Islam's holiest shrines. Hence, progressive Judaicisation of the town by Israel is likely to drastically complicate any future effort to find a peaceful settlement to the conflict.

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The Americans have sold the Palestinians false hopes.

By Nicola Nasser

Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) officials in the government of Mohamed Abbas often complain they spend more time negotiating with American rather than Israeli governments. This has been particularly true of late. Since Israel's all-out assault on Gaza nearly a year and half ago, Palestinian officials have discontinued all direct talks with the Israelis and have been talking to the Americans. US presidential envoy George Mitchell has been closely engaged in the region since May 2010, but his efforts have not proved fruitful.

Palestinian negotiators keep telling us that they have no other option but to negotiate with the Americans. This is not true. The Palestinian people don't want them to do so, and their fighting spirit is alive and well. When all other options run out, the people will come up with options of their own. It is what people living under foreign occupation have always done, and the Palestinians are no exception.

The Palestinians have had no more luck with the Americans than with the Israelis. They have been consistently asked to accept US-Israeli peace terms that spell disaster and capitulation. Apart from exhausting the Palestinians, and making them edge closer to further concessions, nothing of substance has emerged from talks with either the Americans or the Israelis.

The Americans have sold the Palestinians false hopes, giving Israel the time it needed to grab land and change the demographics of their state-to-be. Now, even the fig leaf of good intentions has fallen.

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Distinguishing between normal and abnormal is no easy task.

By Kara Newhouse – The West Bank, Palestine

'For 122 days I heard the voices of tortured people, the shouting of tortured people, the crying of tortured people. The first days in that time, I could not sleep. I could not do anything, because I could not stop hearing the voices of tortured people. But after maybe 100 days, I got used to that situation, so I could sleep very well, and I started thinking there is nothing that can bother me. I started laughing a lot with my mate in my horrible cell and my family when they came to visit me.'

I heard these words from Mahmoud, who has been locked up by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority eight times over the last nine years. He is a former student government leader and politically-minded artist, and I met him only days after I completed an article on the rehabilitation of Palestinian torture victims. While drafting the article, I contemplated the meaning of the phrase, “re-establishing a normal life,” unsure whether many features of Palestinian life qualify as normal.

For Mahmoud, life inside a 1.5 meter by 4 meter cell has at times felt more normal than anything else he knew. Speaking of his release from the four-month period in a P.A. jail described above, he told me, “I had nightmares. When they arrested me again I could sleep very well, because outside the jail I was scared that they would arrest me again. So the feeling of fear from the arrest disappeared because I’m already in the jail, so I get back my normal life again.”

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U.S. Congress united in its support of Israel, says Republican minority whip
Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor, the highest ranking member of Republican Party, assures hundreds of worshipers in New York of lawmakers' stance on Israel's interests.

LONG ISLAND, NY -- U.S. Republicans and Democrats differ on nearly every issue in the U.S. Congress but are united in their support of Israel, Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) told a congregation of U.S. Jews on Saturday.

Speaking at The Hampton Synagogue in Long Island, the Republican minority whip characterized the current U.S. Congress as one of the most divided in recent memory.

But despite its many differences with regard to foreign and domestic matters, said Cantor, the Congress stands united on one issue: support for Israel and its vital interests.

Cantor, who is the highest ranking Jewish member in the Republican Party, attended the synagogue as a guest of Rabbi Marc Schneier. Chief Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger was also present for the Sabbath services.

Cantor was honored during the service with a call to the Torah and delivered his address to hundreds of worshipers.

Haaretz

By Khalid Amayreh

Intifada-palestine.com

In 1978, the famous American Jewish author Alfred Lilienthal wrote his masterpiece book “the Zionist connection: what price peace?”, in which he described in great detail the Jewish-Zionist stranglehold on the American media, especially the so-called agenda-setters.

Lilienthal, who died two years ago, knew what he was talking about. He explained that the Zionist cabal controlling the American media had only one mantra to invoke, one cause to serve, and one goal to achieve, namely Israel. Every other consideration, whether professional ethics or simple honesty, was subject to Zionist expediency.

Lilienthal used strong terms to describe the Zionist-Jewish octopus plaguing the American media discourse. I have no doubt that he would have cited the sacking by CNN this week of its senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs, Octavia Nasr, as a classical and scandalous example of how the American media is decidedly at Israel’s beck and call.

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By James M. Wall

Barack Obama swept into the White House, thanks, in part, to his political and oratorial skills.

He should have learned during his campaign for the US Senate that what he says about race relations at a Southern Illinois county fair will be reported in the African American wards in Chicago.

So what happened to those skills when he hosted Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu at the White House this week?

One day after what he described as an “excellent” White House meeting with Netanyahu, President Obama turned his back on the rest of the world, and focused tightly on confronting “the anxiety some Israelis feel toward him.”

The President was determined to reassure the Israeli public. But did he pause, even for a moment, to consider how his answers would sound to that part of the Israeli public that desperately wants him to stand up to Bibi?

Did he think how demeaning his answers were to Americans who want their president to be their president, and not pander to the prime minister of a foreign nation?

Did he stop to think that his answers would be harmful and offensive to the Arab/Muslim world? Worse yet, did he care?

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July 7, 2010

By Khalid Amayreh

The Obama administration, which seems to have completely surrendered to Israeli insolence and rejectionism, is pressuring the weak and disoriented Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership to switch from proximity or indirect talks with the Netanyahu regime to direct talks.

For the uninitiated, the American pressure might give the impression that once direct talks between the Israeli fox and the Palestinian lamb started, miracles would begin descending on the region one after the other.

As to Israel’s premier, the notorious pathological liar, Benyamin Netanyahu, he, too, is urging “President” Abbas to immediately enter into direct talks with Israel “because serious issues can’t be tackled through indirect and impersonal talks.

For its part, the PA leadership is obviously prone to agree to direct talks, but is trying to reach more favorable arrangements that would save it the embarrassment of succumbing to Israeli dictates without achieving any of its demands, including a freeze of Jewish settlement activity.

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July 6th could be a defining moment for a president in need of such a moment.

By Jeff Gates

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting the White House July 6th, it's time to recall how Tel Aviv deceived Washington throughout the entirety of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

U.S. military leaders will be watching this meeting very closely, as will the veterans community.

For me, confirmation of Israel’s strategic duplicity came in a meeting with Harry McPherson who served as counsel and speechwriter for Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ entered the Senate in 1948 with Louisiana Senator Russell Long for whom I served as counsel and speechwriter.

At his law offices in Washington, Harry described his arrival in Tel Aviv the night that the 1967 War began. That war typifies the consistency of this ongoing deceit.

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By Maidhc Ó Cathail

It would be hard to think of anyone who has done more to undermine American freedoms than Joseph Lieberman.

Since 9/11, the Independent senator from Connecticut has introduced a raft of legislation in the name of the “global war on terror” which has steadily eroded constitutional rights. If the United States looks increasingly like a police state, Senator Lieberman has to take much of the credit for it.

On October 11, 2001, exactly one month after 9/11, Lieberman introduced S. 1534, a bill to establish a Department of Homeland Security. Since then, he has been the main mover behind such draconian legislation as the Protect America Act of 2007, the Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, and the proposed Terrorist Expatriation Act, which would revoke the citizenship of Americans suspected of terrorism. And now the senator from Connecticut wants to kill the Internet.

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Jordan Times

By Hasan Abu Nimah

Ever since Israel's murderous attack on the Freedom Flotilla on May 31, there have been increasing calls from many parties on Israel to end its siege of Gaza. This is strange as well as deceitful, for the siege is not Israel's alone.

Many of those who now talk about ending the blockade have strongly supported it all along and continue to support it. Their empty calls are primarily intended to absolve themselves of blame for the harm the cruel, illegal and unjustifiable siege has caused to the Palestinian population in Gaza Strip.

It is clear now that the siege has failed, first and foremost because the brave people in Gaza decided to adjust to its harshest effects and to endure with dignity and courage the collective punishment intended to strangle them into submission and despair. They never acquiesced to trading their national dignity and rights for a few more goods - even ones desperately needed.

The siege has also failed as a result of mounting civil society pressure orchestrated by hundreds of concerned organisations and activists who kept reminding the civilised world of the illegality of the Gaza siege, the complicity of the UN through its bizarre membership in the self-appointed Quartet, as well as the cruelty and double standards of the Europeans, the Americans and many others who lined up behind Israel's decision to terrorise the entire population of Gaza for political ends.

The latest, but certainly not the last, such effort was the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which fell victim to Israel's bloody sea and air attack, followed by hijacking and kidnapping of all the ships and passengers on board.

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Jordan Times

By Hasan Abu Nimah

Ever since Israel's murderous attack on the Freedom Flotilla on May 31, there have been increasing calls from many parties on Israel to end its siege of Gaza. This is strange as well as deceitful, for the siege is not Israel's alone.

Many of those who now talk about ending the blockade have strongly supported it all along and continue to support it. Their empty calls are primarily intended to absolve themselves of blame for the harm the cruel, illegal and unjustifiable siege has caused to the Palestinian population in Gaza Strip.

It is clear now that the siege has failed, first and foremost because the brave people in Gaza decided to adjust to its harshest effects and to endure with dignity and courage the collective punishment intended to strangle them into submission and despair. They never acquiesced to trading their national dignity and rights for a few more goods - even ones desperately needed.

The siege has also failed as a result of mounting civil society pressure orchestrated by hundreds of concerned organisations and activists who kept reminding the civilised world of the illegality of the Gaza siege, the complicity of the UN through its bizarre membership in the self-appointed Quartet, as well as the cruelty and double standards of the Europeans, the Americans and many others who lined up behind Israel's decision to terrorise the entire population of Gaza for political ends.

The latest, but certainly not the last, such effort was the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which fell victim to Israel's bloody sea and air attack, followed by hijacking and kidnapping of all the ships and passengers on board.

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Direct or indirect, Palestinians are telling Washington that no progress can be made in peace talks with Israel, writes Khaled Amayreh in the occupied West Bank

A Palestinian labourer collects gravel at an abandoned airport that was damaged by Israeli airstrikes, in Rafah, Gaza

Apart from the usual pleasantries and reiteration of platitudes, the latest visit to Washington by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas seems to have failed to stir the waters in the American capital.

Abbas pleaded with President Obama to pressure Israel to show more seriousness in the current proximity -- or indirect -- talks with the Palestinians. However, Obama responded by merely reasserting his general commitment to the creation of a viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state.

He also reiterated his view that "both sides" would have to make sacrifices for peace, which he said was a Palestinian as well as an Israeli interest.

Abbas was unsatisfied by the mere repetition of old platitudes, asserted ad nauseam by successive US presidents in recent years, including George W Bush, but without being translated into facts on the ground. He warned that the two-state solution was becoming difficult if not impossible to realise. He told reporters in Washington that while the creation of a Palestinian state was still "our strategy", many inside and outside the region were reaching the conclusion that the strategy was unworkable.

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Salam Fayyad throws products made in Israeli settlements into a fire in the occupied West Bank. (Mustafa Abu Dayeh/MaanImages

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 25 May 2010

In recent weeks, the US-and Israeli-backed Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) has made a show of calling on Palestinians to boycott goods manufactured in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Despite the rhetoric of defiance and resistance, and exaggerated screams of anguish from Israeli settler groups, the PA effort actually appears designed to co-opt, undermine and abort the much broader Palestinian civil society campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), and to reassure Israel of the continued docility and collaboration of its puppet regime in Ramallah.

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Lebanese refugees wait to enter Israel after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon [GALLO/GETTY]

By Giles Trendle

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the withdrawal of Israeli troops from south Lebanon.

Recalling that occupation, this article examines the false promises made to the head of the South Lebanon Army, a former Lebanese militia allied to Israel.

Throughout the 1990s there were two Lebanese militias that remained armed and active, even though the Lebanese civil war had ended in 1990.

One was the Hezbollah movement, which still operates to this day. The other was the South Lebanon Army (SLA).

On November 12, 1993, seven years before Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, I interviewed General Antoine Lahd, the commander of the SLA - a militia that was armed, trained and financed by Israel.

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Relatives of the Palestinian victim mourn during his funeral in the north of the Gaza Strip. Reuters photo

The Israeli Army fatally shot an elderly Palestinian farmer on Saturday, claiming he had violated a combat zone by entering his farm near Gaza's border with Israel.

On Saturday, the 75-year-old, identified as Fuad Abu Matar, was "hit with several bullets fired by Israeli occupation soldiers," Muawia Hassanein, head of the Gaza Strip's emergency services was quoted by AFP as saying.

The victim's body was recovered in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the coastal sliver.

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Wiesenthal Center has produced a brochure: '2010 Top Ten Anti-Israel Lies'.

By Iqbal Jassat

As Israel reels from successive blows to its image as a 'civilized democracy' its supporters have in another desperate attempt to salvage this bruised profile come up with a rescue plan.

This time the Simon Wiesenthal Center has produced a brochure titled “2010 Top Ten Anti-Israel Lies” that they plan to distribute to millions of people worldwide.

It’s a multi-million dollar propaganda exercise that they hope will counter what they perceive to be “a worldwide frenzy of intimidation” and “threats” directed against Israel “that has backed its supporters into a corner”.

It’s an exercise that they believe will help to restore normalcy in the relations between the United States and Israel which many commentators acknowledge are severely strained and tense. They allude to this by admitting that it’s no secret that these ties reflect a new reality and not what they once were!

Apart from being a reaction to the battering that Israel has undergone in the court of public opinion especially following its horrific violations during the Gaza massacre and since then with the inhumane blockade of Gaza’s occupied people, the new propaganda blitz is also designed to equip Zionist groups with stock responses.

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Proximity talks should reveal the true position of Netanyahu's hawkish government.

By George S. Hishmeh – Washington DC

By choice or coincidence, Barak Obama and Mahmoud Abbas find themselves this week in the same boat, thanks to the mischief of Benjamin Netanyahu. The American and Palestinian leaders have turned the other cheek helplessly, and seemingly adopted the choice offered in the Christian doctrine which favored a non-violent response to an aggressor.

One explanation of this doctrine, among many, is that to turn the other cheek is neither humiliating nor retaliation but “rather a response of strength that says: ‘I will not seek revenge because I am stronger than that.’” True or not, we will find out in the next four months when and if these proximity talks, scheduled to start this month between the Palestinians and Israelis, are supposed to end with the launching of direct peace negotiations after a hiatus of 18 months.

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Past FAIR analyses clearly exposed NPR's pro-Israeli coverage.

By Stephen Lendman

Since established in 1970, NPR ignored its public trust in favor of privilege, corporatism, militarism, and Israel's vilest crimes, including collective punishment, illegal occupation, targeted killings, land theft, dispossessions, home demolitions, crop destruction, mass incarcerations, torture, violence, and the 2008-9 Gaza war inflicting mass deaths, permanent injuries, vast devastation, and human misery against defenseless civilians, imprisoned under siege since June 2007, and afflicted by a dire humanitarian crisis as a result - exacerbated by conflict and intermittent attacks, issues NPR ignores or understates.

It's notorious for its biased, shoddy reporting, pseudo-journalism, creeping commercialism, distracting non-news, and deceiving listeners it's public, non-profit, and impartial. Savvy media consumers know better and tune them out for delivering the same slanted coverage found on major networks and in broadsheets like The New York Times, Washington Post, and others - grossly favoring power, and when it comes to Israel it's interests matter. Palestinian ones don't, so news is carefully filtered to distort facts, and report lies that when repeated enough become truths.

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Palestinian youths confront Israeli police in the Arab east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan after ultra-nationalist Jews carrying Israeli flags marched through Silwan to assert Jewish sovereignty over all of Jerusalem

In the last month Barack Obama has engaged in a blitz of nuclear diplomacy. He has reiterated his commitment to "a world without nuclear weapons"; issued a new military doctrine that reduces the amount and role of nuclear weapons in the United States security strategy; hosted an international conference to secure vulnerable nuclear materials; and pledged to reinvigorate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Every time the US president tries painstakingly to build a coalition against Iran up pops Israel, writes Graham Usher in New York

At all points he has tried to keep attention focussed on the dangers posed by the small or potential nuclear arsenals of North Korea and Iran while keeping it away from the mammoth arsenals of the five declared nuclear weapon states and growing arsenals of the non-NPT nuclear weapon states India, Pakistan and Israel.

It's a balance he may not be able to hold much longer.

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By Muhammed Amin

Egypt is facing a potential political eruption that could rock the
entire Mideast and seriously undermine US domination of the strategic region.

This threat comes as tensions in the Mideast are already extremely
high. Threats of war involving US, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran are flying fast and furious.

President Husni Mubarak, the US-supported strongman who has ruled
Egypt with an iron hand for almost 30 years, is 81 and in frail
health. Amazingly, he has no designated successor. No one knows who will take over Egypt when he dies.

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Unpopular with some human rights organisations, the execution of Israeli collaborators in Gaza highlights how deep Israel's intelligence war goes, writes Saleh Al-Naami

For six years, the killing of Amr Abu Setta, one of the leaders of a Palestinian resistance group in southern Gaza, remained a mystery. While there were many tales about how he died, there was consensus that Israeli intelligence was in one way or another behind his murder. The Israeli army accused him of being responsible for the deaths of a large number of occupation soldiers. A few months ago, the mystery was solved.

It became apparent that the person who placed the explosives under Abu Setta's car is Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed Ismail, a Palestinian working for Israeli intelligence. Ismail detonated the explosives via remote control upon orders from Israeli intelligence, killing Abu Setta and one of his aides. Ismail used his connections with some people in Abu Setta's circle to place the explosives that ended the life of this highly respected leader in Gaza. Ismail confessed to his involvement and received a death sentence from the military court in Gaza. He was executed 15 April.

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Egypt’s plans to construct a steel barrier along the border with Gaza is being challenged by Palestinian supporters who have called the plan a violation of international law and insisted it breaks agreements with the Arab League.

The Palestinian group, which included support from U.S. and UK citizens, is now taking the Egyptian government to court to block the barrier. Egypt has argued that the impenetrable wall was necessary to protect its own security.

Egypt has instituted a tight blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007 but hundreds of underground tunnels are believed to exist from which food and medical supplies are brought in to Palestinians. While Palestinians rely on these items Egypt has said the tunnels are also being used to smuggle weapons and money into Gaza to aid the militant group Hamas.

To strengthen the blockade Egypt now plans to erect a wall that will stretch nearly seven miles long and extend almost 60 feet below the surface.

The Egyptian court handling the case is expected to reach a decision in June but the ruling may not be a factor in whether the wall is constructed because the government has been known to ignore rulings in the past.

Transworld News

It is immoral to force negotiations without first establishing a level playing field and ensuring both sides are compliant with international law. The international community has shirked this responsibility for decades, not because the peoples of the community of nations lack the will but because their leaders are gutless and corrupt.

In the UK the Foreign Office has been under Zionist influence for decades.

By Stuart Littlewood - London

We can already see how disastrously the US election turned out, not just for Americans but the rest of us also. "The US president is simply the voice of the Zionist parasite," writes a friend in Norway. "It is sickening and frightening that Obama is seen toeing the Zionist line.

"Zionism has the US administration and other western governments by the balls."

Well, that's certainly the way it looks. Last month Israel's prime minister Netanyahu slapped America in the face by approving more illegal settlements during vice-president Joe Biden's visit. What did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton do? She repeated the pathetic mantra: "We have an absolute commitment to Israel's security. We have a close unshakeable bond between the United States and Israel and between the American and Israeli people".

Clinton completed her surrender to the Israeli terror machine by sharing the AIPAC Conference platform with a triumphant Netanyahu.

Whereupon over half of America's lawmakers topped Clinton's performance by signing a letter committing to the US's "unbreakable" bond with the racist regime.

Nine months earlier, speaking in a BBC interview, Obama said he believed the US was "able to get serious negotiations back on track" between Israel and the Palestinians. And when asked about Israel's defiance when called on to halt construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, he urged patience. "Diplomacy is always a matter of a long hard slog. It's never a matter of quick results."

The fact is, diplomacy doesn't work with the Israelis. Everyone knows the problem: Israel's contempt for international law and UN resolutions. And now we see Obama's contempt too. In this wobbly leader's mind Israel is somehow exempt from the laws, conventions, codes of conduct and respect for the rights of others that apply to everyone else in the civilised world.

Forcing Negotiations is Immoral

And Obama should know better than to keep harping on about peace negotiations. It is absurd to put a weak party and a strong party together and expect fair results when the strong party is in permanent occupation and has its military boot on the weak party's neck.

It is immoral to expect the weak party to negotiate while the strong party is in flagrant breach of international law, commits acts of piracy, maintains a crippling blockade, carries out daily air strikes on civilians and continues to steal the weak party's land and resources.

It is immoral for sponsors of negotiations to be so partisan as to refuse to recognize the democratically elected representatives of the weak party or its right to self-determination and territorial integrity.

It is immoral to force negotiations without first establishing a level playing field and ensuring both sides are compliant with international law. The international community has shirked this responsibility for decades, not because the peoples of the community of nations lack the will but because their leaders are gutless and corrupt.

Then there's the scandal of the US government's aid to Israel which runs at nearly $3 billion annually and totals well over $100 billion since 1949. The money helps pay for Israel's costly occupation of Palestinian territory, its F-16s, helicopter gun-ships, tanks, ordnance, Caterpillar bulldozers, and all the other tools of military oppression and territorial grand theft.

Israel gets more billions in indirect aid - military support, loan write-offs, rich technology transfers and special grants. Before George W Bush left office he agreed an assistance package of $30 billion over the next ten years.

So the US taxpayer has been cheerfully funding Israeli operations to destroy Palestinian infrastructure (which in many cases has been paid for by British, EU and - yes - US taxpayers) and bring the whole civil society to its knees.

Most of this aid violates US laws that stipulate US-supplied weapons can only be used for "legitimate self-defense" and military assistance is prohibited to any country that engages in "a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights". Military assistance is also banned to any government that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or allow inspection of its nuclear facilities. But thanks to the "unbreakable" bond with Israel these inconvenient laws might as well not exist.

Israelis fiercely attack any attempt to 'de-legitimise' their ill-gotten gains while more and more people argue that the state of Israel had no legitimacy in the first place. Nevertheless the Zionist menace now has nuclear fangs and the capability to target most European cities… and, as we have seen, has no sense of restraint whatever.

Gee, thanks, America. Before you go accepting any more peace prizes, Obama, how about bringing to heel this monster the US has been nurturing?

Israel's 'Voices' Compete for British Vote

Here in Britain we have our own version of AIPAC. The Foreign Office has been under Zionist influence for decades. Our most important security bodies - the Intelligence & Security Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committee - are headed by Israel flag-wavers. They have embedded themselves in nearly ever nook and cranny of parliamentary life.

Right now these stooges are battling for our votes in a general election.

Before the election campaign the main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, were so wedded to the Zionist cause that both wished to change our laws to protect Israeli leaders from arrest on war crimes charges and provide them with a safe haven in Britain.

Now they keep very quiet about their pro-Israel antics, no doubt hoping the question won't be brought under the public spotlight or need explaining.

Labour has been in power 13 years and is now under Blair's successor Gordon Brown, a Zionist sympathizer and patron of the Jewish National Fund. The party's 115-page manifesto barely mentions the fate of the Holy Land except to say: "We support the creation of a viable Palestinian state that can live alongside a secure Israel." Note that it's a secure Israel but only a viable Palestine. Israel must remain comfortably secure while continuing its ethnic cleansing and thieving.

The Conservative Party is favourite to win the election - or was until its leader, David "I'm-a-Zionist" Cameron, flunked a televised leaders' debate. Cameron too is a dutiful patron of the JNF. His party's 118-page manifesto says nothing about Britain's responsibility towards the Palestinians apart from promising support for a two state solution to the Middle East Peace Process. That's all, full stop.

80% of Conservative MPs and MEPs, it is claimed, are passionate admirers of racist Israel. But they don't shout it from the rooftops at election time. No, they are furtive because they know deep down that it is a grubby, indefensible position and the public would react with revulsion if the party's allegiance to a foreign military power that makes war of Christian communities was exposed in the mainstream media.

Sad to say, then, there is no sign of Labour or the Conservatives deviating from the path of betrayal.

Thankfully a third party, the Liberal Democrats, is emerging strongly. Its leader, Nick Clegg, is no rabid Zionist though readers will remember he recently sacked Baroness Jenny Tonge to appease the Israel lobby. However, the Liberal Democrats at least believe Britain and the EU must put pressure on Israel and Egypt to end the blockade of Gaza and talk of borders "which are secure and based on the situation before the 1967 conflict".

This party looks less corruptible than the others and less likely to worship at the altar of Zionism. Not being considered serious contenders till now, Clegg and his team probably haven't been groomed by the US administration's spivs and pimps. So we can expect big efforts to discredit them in the days ahead.

In my simple way I see a glimmer of hope here.

When a proper history comes to be written, Americans will struggle to explain how the most powerful nation on earth was so easily conned and mugged for countless billions of tax dollars to finance the ambitions of a bunch of extremists bent on defiling the Holy Land and spreading their tentacles into every crevice of the western world.

The British also will have some explaining to do.

- Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk
If you like this article, please consider

By Hanan Awarekeh

13/04/2010

“They were warned by loudspeaker to get out of the house before I come, BUT I GAVE NO ONE A CHANCE. I didn’t wait. I didn’t give one blow, and wait for them to come out. I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible, I didn’t give a damn about the Palestinians, but I didn’t just ruin with no reason. It was all under orders.”

Fortified by an arsenal of alcohol, Israeli occupation army bulldozer driver Moshe Nissim did enjoy his work by killing hundreds of Palestinian children, women and unarmed men in the Jenin camp. First published in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot and since reprinted on the website of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom, his testimony gives a version of the barbarian and inhumane massacre that took place on April 13, 2002.

“I found joy with every house that came down, because I knew they didn’t mind dying, but they cared for their homes. If you knocked down a house, you buried 40 or 50 people for generations. If I am sorry for anything, it is for not tearing the whole camp down,” he says.

Nissim’s army unit received a military commendation for its efforts in killing Palestinians in Jenin.

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Israel claims exceptionalism no matter how extreme its crimes. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)

By Sonja Karkar, The Electronic Intifada, 12 April 2010

Today, there is no excuse for not knowing the truth about Palestine, especially what is happening in Gaza. Even taking into account the disinformation spread in mainstream media, there are enough glimpses one gets of a ravaged Gaza and a brutalized people that should compel us to ask questions. There are enough websites and blogs easily available for anyone to learn more, even if it requires sifting through and evaluating the available information. Certainly, the alarm bells should be ringing when our political leaders declare undying fealty to Israel or cavalierly wear it as a badge of honor, despite the documented reports of Israel's war crimes by human rights groups and official enquiries.

But the world lacks courage from government leaders, acquiescent mainstream media, nongovernmental organizations dependent on government support, academics looking for tenure and populations too long fed on a diet of Zionist myths. People are terrified of being labelled anti-Semitic, a mendacious charge against anyone criticizing Israel. Palestinians too, afraid of being further shunned and disadvantaged in countries that give them refuge, so often remain silent. Not only do people fear repercussions, but speaking the truth or even just hearing it has a way of taking people out of their comfort zones. They fear their troubled consciences may require them to act and so they bury their heads deeper into the sand where they hope even the sounds of silence might be extinguished.

This then is the challenge for advocates the world over. How does one talk Palestine to power if one cannot even talk Palestine to the people who are in fear of the powerful?

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By Jeff Gates

The history of Israel as a geopolitical fraud will fill entire libraries as those defrauded marvel at how so few deceived so many for so long. Those duped include many naive Jews who—even now—identify their interests with this extremist enclave.

Israeli leaders are wrong to worry about “de-legitimization.” They are right to fear that a long-deceived public is fast realizing that Israel’s founding was key to an ongoing deception.

The Invention of the Jewish People did not begin with Shlomo Sand’s 2009 bestseller by that title. There was no Exile says this Jewish scholar. Nor was there an Exodus. So how could there be a Return, the core premise of Israeli statehood?

If this patch of Palestinian land never rightly belonged to a mythical Jewish People, what then for the legitimacy of the “Jewish homeland.” And for that depiction by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in his November 1917 letter to Lord Rothschild?

Were Christians likewise seduced by Sunday school teachings reliant on the phony findings of Biblical archeologist William Albright? Shlomo Sand chronicles how in the 1920s Albright interpreted every excavation in Palestine to “reaffirm the Old Testament and thereby the New.”

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Khalid Amayreh

By Khalid Amayreh

“They may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.”

Millions of Christian Zionists think that by blindly supporting Israel’s apartheid policies against the tormented Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians, they are upholding the truth and doing the right thing in the sight of God. Frankly, they are wrong; supporting blatantly unjust policies, including murder, persecution and theft, is never morally correct no matter how many verses one can quote from the Old Testament or any other religious text. Moreover, these pseudo-Christians, many of whom think they are following in the footsteps of Jesus, are convinced that they are doing his will by absolutely and unconditionally embracing evil actions which are in reality the antithesis of everything that Jesus Christ preached.

I am not talking about something about which I have scanty information or rudimentary knowledge. I have written a Master’s thesis on Christian Zionists’ distorted theology, met and spoken with some of their leaders, watched their TV antics and read their books. I heard the late Jerry Falwell on several occasions claim that “if you criticize Israel, you criticize God”, adding that the Almighty “treats nations according to how nations treat Israel”. Similarly, I heard and watched another demented evangelical, Pat Robertson of the 700-Club, who would invoke Old Testament atrocities to justify Israel’s modern equivalents, even those committed against Palestinians who are his fellow Christians. I also know that some evangelical preachers have called for applying the “Biblical approach” to the Palestinians and Lebanese people for resisting Israeli aggression. That “Biblical approach” is nought but a euphemism for genocidal ethnic cleansing.

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Israeli soldiers stand guard as a Palestinian woman waves her national flag during a demonstration and an Israeli soldier fires tear gas towards Palestinian protesters during clashes in the West Bank

Fayyad's apparent determination to build Palestinian state institutions leaves many questioning what kind of state he envisions precisely, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

In a wide-ranging interview with the Haaretz newspaper this week, Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA), vowed to declare statehood before the end of 2011.

"The birth of a Palestinian state will be celebrated as a day of joy by the entire community of nations. The time for this baby to be born will come and we estimate it will come around 2011. That is our vision, and a reflection of our will to exercise our right to live in freedom and dignity in the country where we were born, alongside the state of Israel in complete harmony."

Fayyad stressed the Palestinians wanted a "genuine state, an independent, sovereign state, not a state of leftovers, or a Mickey Mouse state." He added that by August 2011, the PA would have amassed such credit in the form of positive facts on the ground that the outcome would be produced.

"I envision that we will be so mature in terms of positive facts on the ground and along the way will have grown on you, Israeli neighbours, we will have begun a process of transformation from a concept to a possibility to a reality. It is the right of an oppressed nation to say 'enough'. None should be expected to stand for injustice, not least the Palestinians who have endured long decades of occupation."

It is unclear at this point if Fayyad's statements are based on concrete political expectations or are just wishful thinking. A third possibility is that Fayyad sees a unilateral declaration of statehood as part of the continuing struggle to end the Israeli occupation that started in 1967. However, confrontation is not his style and he is unlikely to be thinking this way.

Meanwhile, most Palestinians that are deeply frustrated by the many unfulfilled promises of the international community, especially since the hapless Oslo Accords, are not willing to give Fayyad the benefit of the doubt.

Indeed, in light of the Palestinians' long and bitter experience with the Israeli occupation and the deference with which the international community has been treating Israel, regardless of its actions, it seems that Fayyad is underestimating and downplaying the "Israeli factor" which is the decisive and determining factor in the matter of Palestinian statehood, while at the same time overestimating the "international pressure factor" in furthering Palestinian statehood.

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Israel has no intention of halting settlements in East Jerusalem.

By James Gundun - Washington D.C.

The US-Israeli spat has reached a temporary conclusion. Israel has no intention of halting construction of settlements in East Jerusalem, as both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat recently revealed. The White House correspondingly went silent for Passover and the peace process remains frozen until further notice.

Whether US officials have truly pressured Israel to the limit or we’re watching an elaborate show remains uncertain, though many indications lean towards stagecraft over statecraft. A new "crisis" looms in the near future, whenever Jerusalem comes to a head again, or Gaza, or something completely new. But whatever the case, America and Israel have transitioned from defending themselves to damage control.

Having won its battle, Israel is already deep into a re-branding campaign.

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A cloud of tear gas envelopes Palestinian demonstrators in a West Bank village near Ramallah

With Israel continuing settlement expansion and Arabs clinging to a path proven fruitless, something has got to give, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

Palestinians reacted with a combination of ambivalence and disenchantment to the outcome of this week's two-day Arab summit in Sirte, Libya. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, who participated in the summit, voiced general satisfaction, describing the conference's decisions as "good and reasonable". He particularly praised the decision to allocate $500 million for Jerusalem, saying he hoped it would be implemented soon.

Abbas also welcomed the summit's decision to give American-led efforts to restart the stalled peace process a "chance", saying that the "exhaustive approach we are adopting towards the cause of peace is necessary so that we won't regret anything we should have done and didn't do." Regardless, it was clear that on the "street level" reactions were negative, spurred by widespread disillusionment with the Arab League, especially its notorious failure to formulate a meaningful Arab stance on the Palestinian question.

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Israeli war crimes were made possible because of American funds.

By Ramzy Baroud

As I listened to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address an animated crowed of supporters on March 22, I felt physically sick. The man has already displayed time and again a complete lack of moral sense or ethical framework in his words and actions. In his recent arguments, he once again twisted history, manipulated facts and fabricated his own selective, self-interested and highly questionable narrative. Netanyahu, a colonialist from a faraway land, also had the audacity to convince himself and a few others that he had legal, moral and historic rights over my land. While I am the son of a Palestinian family rooted in Palestine since time immemorial, Netanyahu is the son of an immigrant from Lithuania. While he giddily robs more Palestinian land in Jerusalem, I live in exile.

Netanyahu was addressing the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The ‘powerful’ lobby group encompasses a large conglomerate of rightwing Zionist politicians and lobbyists and is seen by many as the most instrumental platform that influences – and, to a large degree, controls - US foreign policy regarding Palestine, Israel and the entire Middle East.

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Israel’s outrageous behaviour is ruffling feathers in Washington, and not before time

Riding roughshod over the latest American criticisms of his government, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue to expand Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem as well as the rest of the West Bank regardless of American and international objections, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah.

Buoyed by his hawkish government, widely considered the most extremist in Israel’s history, Netanyahu was quoted as saying that “building in Jerusalem and all other places will continue in the same way that has been accepted for the last 42 years.”

Other Israeli officials vowed to defy American pressure, alluding to “Jewish power” in the United States.

The latest crisis between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government began last week when Israel announced plans to build thousands of additional settler units in East Jerusalem that Israel occupied in 1967. The announcement came during a high-level visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden, considered one of Israel’s most loyal supporters in the American political arena.

Biden, whose visit to Israel aimed to reaffirm American commitment to its security, which he did using characteristically lavish phraseology, was clearly embarrassed by the Israeli announcement, especially its timing, believed to have been made deliberately to coincide with US efforts to restart stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

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Al Hewar

by Richard Curtiss

By now many Americans are aware that Israel, with a population of only 5.8 million people, is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, and that Israel’s aid plus U.S. aid to Egypt’s 65 million people for keeping the peace with Israel has, for many years, consumed more than half of the U.S. bi-lateral foreign aid budget world-wide.

What few Americans understand however, is the steep price they pay in many other fields for the U.S.-Israeli relationship, which in turn is a product of the influence of Israel’s powerful U.S. lobby on American domestic politics and has nothing to do with U.S. strategic interests, U.S. national interests, or even with traditional American support for self-determination, human rights, and fair play overseas.

Besides its financial cost, unwavering U.S. support for Israel, whether it’s right or wrong, exacts a huge price in American prestige and credibility overseas. Further, Israel’s powerful U.S. lobby has been a major factor in delaying campaign finance reform, and also in the removal from American political life of some of our most distinguished public servants, members of Congress and even presidents.

Finally, the Israel-U.S. relationship has cost a significant number of American lives. The incidents in which hundreds of U.S. service personnel, diplomats, and civilians have been killed in the Middle East have been reported in the media. But the media seldom revisits these events, and scrupulously avoids analyzing why they occurred or compiling the cumulative toll of American deaths resulting from our Israel-centered Middle East policies.

Each of these four categories of the costs of Israel to the American people merits a talk of its own. What follows, therefore, is just an overview of such losses.

First is the financial cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers. Between 1949 and 1998, the U.S. gave to Israel, with a self-declared population of 5.8 million people, more foreign aid than it gave to all of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, all of the countries of Latin America, and all of the countries of the Caribbean combined – with a total population of 1,054,000,000 people.

In the 1997 fiscal year, for example, Israel received $3 billion from the foreign aid budget, at least $525 million from other U.S. budgets, and $2 billion in federal loan guarantees. So the 1997 total of U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel was $5.5 billion. That’s $15,068,493 per day, 365 days a year.

If you add its foreign aid grants and loans, plus the approximate totals of grants to Israel from other parts of the U.S. federal budget, Israel has received since 1949 a grand total of $84.8 billion, excluding the $10 billion in U.S. government loan guarantees it has drawn to date.

And if you calculate what the U.S. has had to pay in interest to borrow this money to give to Israel, the cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers rises to $134.8 billion, not adjusted for inflation.

Put another way, the nearly $14,630 every one of 5.8 million Israelis had received from the U.S. government by October 31, 1997, cost American taxpayers $23,241 per Israeli. That’s $116,205 for every Israeli family of five.

None of these figures include the private donations by Americans to Israeli charities, which initially constituted about one quarter of Israel’s budget, and today approach $1 billion annually. In addition to the negative effect of these donations on the U.S. balance of payments, the donors also deduct them from their U.S. income taxes, creating another large drain on the U.S. treasury.

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