I-Spies

This past week has seen a few major dints into the Israel armory that the Jewish State has attempted (successfully) to be immune from and that is criticism of its policies vis-a-vis the United States. We need no refreshments over the "strategic" alliance between the two states: Israel is the major force that upholds US values and it is the paradigm of democracy and culture in a region of backwardness and barbarism. Concurrently, arming Israel is of great value since all its neighbours are more than willing to destroy democracy because, as Samuel Huntingon famously wrote, it is the "clash of civilisations" and Israel is the only nation that the US (and the West) can identify with, what with all its advanced technology and its superb order of governance and its sublime human rights record (err, scratch that last one.). Because the US is stuck on an ideological battle, the "evil" of Islamic fundamentalism and the terrorism tactic with which they equip themselves with, has to be dislodged, or obliterated, with Israel being the key ally to do the US bidding in that part of the world. It goes without saying that you have to omit the glaring fact that it is Israel's intransigence that is the motivating factor for much of this enmity between the Muslim world and the West.

But we have known that this alliance is rather tenuous, mainly because Israel is under the belief that its treasured seat next to the emperor is under scrutiny, not only because of the high price they pay (in tax dollars and also in weaponry and even with the higher threat of terrorism on the home shores) but because Israel feels that it can be deposed for another key player in the area (ie Iran) to do the job. Also, because of said high price, it leads many of the citizens to question said alliance and whether it would be better to distance themselves from the core factor that generates so much hostility towards the US (and the West), hence making Israel's dream of a greater expansion and a state to their liking all the more bleak. As we have also seen, Israel is not compromising on such a thing.

So what do we get? Espionage. Good old-fashioned espionage. Former CIA official Philip Giraldi blogged that Israel has leaked information about spies in the US. Yes, we recall Jonathan Pollard and as of two years ago, the famed Larry Franklin who was found guilty of spying and leaking classified information to the strategic ally. Now Giraldi comes out with a nugget:

"Now it is investigating a number of US citizens, including an individual who held very senior security positions in the Clinton and Bush White Houses."

A senior security position in both regimes? That is hardcore, juicy stuff. How many people can say that they held a high position in both governments in the past eight to nine years? Now I cannot narrow this down and I will have to rely on other sources to do so for me since I do not have the faculties to do such an exhaustive research but we will have to sit tight on whether this latest investigated will amount to another embarrassing moment for the US and its supposed ally.

What is also important to note in Giraldi's post is the fact that certain "doves" in Olmert's government leaked the information in order to thwart a possible war scenario with Syria and Iran. This is in contrast to what Eitan Haber, who was a Defense Minister's aide (under Yitzhak Rabin) claiming that the leak was to prevent Jonathan Pollard from ever getting a pardon. Now I definitely do not believe that Pollard should get by easily here, especially considering that many do believe that espionage is one of the high crimes anyone can commit (look at Scooter Libby); and consider the fact that this is meant to be a relationship "premised on true friendship". Friends don't spy on friends. That is a relationship premised on distrust. You cannot make a person believe that when you go around, sneaking at classified documents and leaking them to an official who it is not meant for because of security purposes, that this is a "true friendship". Snooping around on your significant other is frowned upon; what do call it when you do it concerning national security?

I is also for Impunity

The Washington Post carried an article related to the approval by Bush for Israel to continue their settlement expansion. Not that they needed approval in the first place but since they did have it they aim to give it a legitimacy that no one in the world has given it. It is condemned by every state (even the United States) and no nation in the world recognises Israel's annexation of the West Bank and Jerusalem. It makes you wonder how they even get away with it all even when the official US position is that Israel has to give these territories up and go back behind that '67 border, if you can even call it that.

Although the piece is littered with US denial, there can be absolutely no doubt that President Bush was the first US President to acknowledge said settlements. In fact, it even quotes Bush as to saying

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."

In effect, the settlement policy has thus been declared a success. In today's world, you do not need UN approval for anything so long as you have US approval (re: Kosovo). If you are backed (continually) by the biggest superpower today, as well as the rest of the EU and Canada and Australia (which usually is in line with whatever the US scuttles), then international law is of less importance. Think about it: you can occupy a people, you can destroy their history and claim that they never existed, you can demolish their homes for pleasure, you can torture their young and their women, you can imprison them without trial, you can bomb them until they want to be bombed again, you can threaten to inflict a bigger "holocaust", you can erect a wall that destroys the farming community and usurp the best land and water for your own illegal zealots backed by the army, and you can do it all with the approval of the purveyor of democracy and human rights in this world.

Of course it is not surprising that we were given the denials. It's more or less a speak-easy: you give tacit approval but say you are against it. The rhetoric is strong but the mettle is spineless. Why haven't we even got one concession (I do not count the removal of 50 pathetic roadblocks as a concession) when the US is meant to be applying pressure to both sides in accordance with the Annapolis agreement? In Henry Siegman's latest piece, he implies what is known by many objective analysts throughout:

"As long as Israel knows that by delaying the peace process it buys time to create facts on the ground that will prove irreversible, and that the international community will continue to indulge Israel's pretense that its desire for a two-state solution is being frustrated by the Palestinians, no new peace initiative can succeed, and the dispossession of the Palestinian people will indeed become irreversible."

Simply put, these peace processes in just another ploy to grab more land and head for the hills (to expel Palestinians). Think about it: do any of them get anywhere? Have we seen any progress since the PLO recognised Israel's right to exist back in 88? Did Oslo change a thing (in the Palestinian narrative)? Did Madrid do anything to alleviate Palestinian purgatory? What about Camp David? The only thing that seems to have changed is the fact that we now have the green light by the Bush administration to continue the belligerency. Referring back to the Post article, it quotes former Secretary of State Colin Powell and his words are an echo to many in this administration as well as previous ones and for others in the future:

"I consistently spoke against settlement growth, but as you know all I could do is talk against it," Powell said. "There would be no consequences and there still aren't."

That's right: all we can do is talk against it. Well, what good is being a representative of the US government if you aren't going to do something about it but talk? Trust me, we've all grown very tired of this talking. We seem to talk and talk about it that it gets so tedious that it becomes another exercise that we succumb to, sort of like the peace processes. What? Israel-Palestine? We revisit every issue. Balfour. Partition. Right of return. Zionism. Six-Day War. Ugh. Haven't you heard enough? Haven't you had enough? Haven't you grown weary when Israel says they will do one thing and then do the exact opposite the next week? How much construction can they approve of at the behest of Rice and Bush? Who is the superpower here?

Over at Philip Weiss's blog, he gives a few reasons that there is "light coming into our lives". I do wish that I could share his optimism but I do have to remind myself that (1) I am not as experienced in these matters as he and (2) I am also not as privileged as he is to have the cornucopia of information that he has encumbered with. In summary, Phil quotes Joel Kovel where he lays out that the "chipping away" is starting to make the Establishment crumble, and the hold they have over the discourse of the issue. The Nakba is getting more and more press (thankfully) and the book written by Walt and Mearsheimer was a major event (as well as Carter's book). Coupled with the charge that the Iraq war is attributed to many Zionists, the atmosphere gives one reason for hope.

And I do not aim to dispel this as all of this is very welcome news. After all, here in Canada, we have the first union to impose a boycott of Israel and that is BIG BIG news. The wording even says "apartheid state" and you can speculate whether that such an accusation would even have taken place were it not for Carter's infamous book.

But you have to be careful and be battle-tested. A great expose by Electronic Intifada has the pro-Israel lobby group CAMERA attempting to thwart Wikipedia from its unbiased stance and even undergoing a very calculated policy that aims to have many pro-Israel moderators managing the website's Israel-Palestine webpages. This is just another part of the Battle for the Internet that I have commented previously on. What is also revealed is a plethora of emails suggesting such an endevour. The propaganda machine is working labouriously to prevent the truth from ever coming out and they want things to go back to the way they were when Israel could do such things and have the world take it with a smile on their face because they suffered the Holocaust. It does not work in today's world of citizen's journalism where anyone with a camera phone can expose crimes. Times are tough when the web works against you and this is Israel's way of evening the playing field.

And while all this positivism is all well and good for those of us who do not bear the brunt of the occupation, people like the Hamdan family will have to find a new house to live in since their's was demolished at the hands of Israel with the IDF looking on (and arresting Jeff Halper). It is good to talk and have open discussions about all of this but what about the people of B'ilin who witnessed a historic Supreme Court decision to re-route the separation wall, only for it to be unmoved eight months later. Akiva Eldar's article also noted that "three other places in the West Bank where the High Court of Justice has ordered" a re-routing has not been altered at all: in the Alfei Menashe region, in Tzofin (Azoun), and Hashmonaim (Na'alin). I'm not even touching the subject of Gaza.

Without the adequate pressure, this is the perfect staging for Israel to continue its spying and its settlement expansion and its impunity. Colin Powell may feel that its enough to speak out against it; but is that really sufficient when there is so much at stake here? All of this talking is too narrow and pathetically hollow. It's no wonder that so many are disheartened by this when all they see is the same old thing.

The Way to J Street

Because of the way the system has been imposed, and for what seems like an eternity, we have been tied down to the same old tired and strung out "peace processes" that has many who are seeking a just solution to perhaps the biggest conflict in contemporary society today, left feeling jaded about the whole discord of Israelis and Palestinians. We have heard it from the most weary (by that I mean the passive normal citizen) that there is no peaceful solution to this friction and that the only way to ever get some rest is to nuke it or just kill off one group (mostly the belligerent Arabs who don't know their place in this world). I distinctly remember a co-worker of mine, when he caught a glimpse of the title of a book I was reading, called Middle East Illusions: Including Peace in the Middle East? Reflections on Justice and Nationhood (by Noam Chomsky), objected that there will never be any peace in that tumultuous region and that they have been fighting for centuries and they will continue that path until they all wind up killing each other (Note: he only caught the subtitle, not the header.). Of course not one to back down, I contended that that attitude was rather defeatist and also a little misguided since history is filled with conflagrations that is not solely within the Middle East and that he omitted the glaring fact that the Orient (in the region in question) has been under the aegis of one empire to another that egged on civil wars. The point was over his (non scholar) head as he attested that it is a lost cause and that we should not expend any more energy on a people that is only going to implode.

Is he right? As of this point in time, he is not but who knows what the future holds. But we are only able to shape what we see before us today and we have to try to avoid such cataclysms that has dire consequences for the entire world's population. While my co-worker can direct our attention to the back-and-forth bombings in Gaza as proof of this, he is only simplifying a narrative that is too complex to be fit into a sound byte or a two-minute news blurb on television. Right now, we barely have any coverage on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I barely even noticed anything on the Canadian news hub about an ex-President's visit with a leader of Hamas. Now it may not seem to be big news to Canadians but this is a major step towards a comprehensive dialogue that might bridge the gap between the occupier and the occupied. But how is my co-worker meant to demur on this latest act without even knowing that it occurred?

It comes as no surprise that this step by Jimmy Carter is being brandished a no-no by many who claim to be supportive of peace between the two parties in the conflict. As a matter of fact, Barack Obama lambasted President Carter for meeting with Khaled Meshaal, inculcating us that Hamas is "not a state" and that it is a "terrorist organisation". To double it up, Obama emphatically stated (yet again) that he would never meet with Hamas unless it recognises Israel, blah blah blah. The same old tired rhetoric that we have been imbibed with for decades now. Terrorists this, Israel's security that. Not a damned thing has changed (except for those pretty settlements in the West Bank), no matter how many times Obama stresses that he is for it.

So what of it? What are we to do now since this power disparity has been so entrenched that we have been unable to move the boot of Israel from the Palestinians' necks? The (true) left has been applying their voice but they are largely ignored because, as Norman Finkelstein calmly stated it (when Tony Judt labeled him as such), it is the "loonie left" that advocates the position that Israel should give up its territories and its annexations for the purpose of achieving peace and normalisation with its neighbours. And because the media has been couched with the bigwigs of philanthropy that finds their "donations" into the favoured candidates who confess to be "pro-Israel", we have been moved rightward and that the only effective opposition that they afford the time to is one that is "centrist" or even slightly right-of-centre. The right-wing has so demonised the left as being supporters of communism that the dissidence is largely deflected onto the alternative media. What counts for skeptical journalism these days? After all, we have had over three months after Annapolis and the West Bank is in a shambles (for the Palestinians); Hebron is under siege by more and more settlers; the wall has not moved an inch; the checkpoints remain intact and normal Palestinian life is rather abysmal compared to their Israeli counterparts IN THE WEST BANK. Mats Svensson describes the disconnect:

"Ma'ale Adumim [a settlement with 28 000 settlers], which previously did not exist in our modern history, is soon completed. People live there with access to water, swimming pools, olive groves outside the window, schools, clinics and perhaps most importantly--access to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv just 60 minutes away. Many live in Ma'ale Adumim and work in Tel Aviv. It is cheaper that way, because the land is free."

These illegal usurpers are living the high life on bulldozed Palestinian land and what is a pro-Israel supporter to do? Compare this leisure to the horror stories of Palestinian life where they are held at checkpoints for hours and hours and sometimes are not even let through. Is this the life that they have to look forward to? Where is the sense of outrage that this is no acceptable as applicable to human rights, something that we have been drunk on ever since the Tibetan outrage and the urge to boycott the Beijing Olympics? You would think that occupations would be the du jour of today but I guess if you're a Palestinian, you do not deserve the recognition that Tibetans are warranted.

As we talk and talk, Israel just continues to approve more housing, effectively shutting off any peace proposal for a two-state solution. Many will say that this was the point all along and who can say that they are wrong here? Having been an espoused anti-Zionist, it has always been affirmed within me that Israel's leaders are not content with what they have, hence the refusal for a constitution or even final borders, and are willing to sacrifice anything to get what they want (as much land as possible). This only evokes David Ben-Gurion's words back when European Jews were being slaughtered at a massive scale by the rise of the Nazi party:

"If I knew that it was possible to save all the children in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second - because we face not only the reckoning of those children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people." [One Palestine, Complete pg 394]

That was the price they were willing to pay for their "Jewish homeland"; they were willing to tolerate the most odious of statesmen just to achieve their goal. It is no different today: why we have an ex-Prime Minister and current leader of the Likud party boasting that Israel has benefited greatly from the 9/11 attacks. This puts the Christopher Ketcham story into greater perspective.

Again, where is the outrage? Where is the anger? Or more importantly, where is the coverage? (Incidentally, it cannot be ignored that a PNAC paper, called the "Clean Break" Plan, authored by the biggest neoconservatives we have grown to know and love was written for Netanyahu when he was in office.)

Well some people have had enough of the monopoly that the likes of AIPAC have had over foreign policy (and if you doubt that just glimpse at Walt and Mearsheimer's best-seller). The campaign of smears and kowtowing and bribery, along with the backing of every failed initiative that only prolongs the agony for Israel's citizens and its neighbours, is getting too tiresome and it is getting old. The lynching of Carter has not worked and his book is still regarded very highly. Walt and Mearsheimer have been blacklisted but they still receive an audience and the apartheid analogy is gaining credence and even getting into a tuffle at the University of Toronto (over freedom of speech and so forth). Zionism, as has been revealed, is on the wane and Israel is of less importance to the younger Jews in the Diaspora and some do see their hardline stance in the negative.

Capitalising on this is the new lobby, named J Street. Now this new organisation is getting coverage; from Mother Jones, to the Washington Post, to Jim Lobe at IPS, and its making headway in the blogosphere, mainly from the Jewish circles such as Philip Weiss, Richard Silverstein, Dan Fleshler and of course the co-founder of the group Daniel Levy. This is exciting but you do have to try to reserve yourself. This new group aims to be a counterpoint to the disastrous legacy that has conflated Jewish into one pool that to be pro-Israel is to be supportive of every aggressive action that testifies to Israel's staunch stance on democracy. Not only that, it also will do what other liberal Jewish groups have been unable to do and that is back candidates in office or attempt to delegitamise a candidate that is seen as having a deleterious record on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Here is J Street:

"Neoconservative, right-wing Jewish leaders and radical Christian Zionists have turned their definition of “pro-Israel” into a driving force in the American political process... These voices do not…represent the mainstream of American Jews or the broader community that cares about Israel or American interests in the Middle East. Their efforts have skewed American policy, undermined Israeli and American interests, and constrained the domestic political and public debate about American foreign policy.

It is time for the mainstream of Americans–Jews and others–to establish a bold, political voice that advocates for the best interests of the U.S. and Israel, including a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the 1967 borders with agreed reciprocal land swaps, and for American policy that will lead to real security for Israelis, Americans and the entire Middle East."

Is there a call for rejoice? I would call for one. It is well past time that another group would rise up and challenge the narrative here. J Street may be just the group to do that and you would have to agree that this is probably the best timing possible. The AIPAC hold is getting shaky and J Street might just be able to swoop where AIPAC is weakening. In addition, AIPAC has made plenty of fodder in past campaigns and J Street has a member by the name of Howard Dean, who has felt the wrath of AIPAC when he called for a more "balanced" approach to the I-P conflict which got him in the doghouse. Others who are tired of AIPAC's hegemony might lean towards J Street and take on the power of the lobby. In fact, the members are rather presitigous:
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"There are of course leaders of the main American Jewish peace groups. There are rabbis and academics. But most important there are heavy hitter political donors (Alan Solomont), policy wonks (Rob Malley), U.S. ambassadors to Israel (Samuel Lewis), high level political operatives (Eli Pariser of Moveon), Hollywood liberals (Robert Greenwald), business leaders, George Soros’ top aide (Morton Halperin), and even a former Republican senator (Lincoln Chafee) and former Congressman (Tom Downey). The major political donors and business leaders are critical to provide the funding necessary to have an impact on political campaigns." [Quoted from Richard Silverstein's blog]

The other founding member Jeremy Ben-Ami stated that

"American voices... from the far Right... have claimed that the only way to be pro-Israel is to support military responses to political problems, to refuse to engage one's adversaries in dialogue and to put off the day of reckoning when hard compromises will be required to achieve a peaceful and secure future for Israel and the entire Middle East.

These are not the kind of smart, tough views that serve the long-term interests of the state of Israel, of the United States – or frankly, the American Jewish community.

Voices of reason need to reclaim what it means to be pro-Israel and to establish in American political discourse that Israel's core security interest is to achieve a negotiated two-state solution and to define once and for all permanent, internationally recognized borders."

In the end it really is a matter of who can best fit the pro-Israel mark. Is it going to be the doves or the hawks? As of today, we are seeing each Presidential candidate (and primary candidate) effectively out-hawking each other on the Israel question in order to fit the "pro-Israel" description. Gershom Gorenberg analysed this back in January:

"Being pro-Israel does not require backing the most bellicose possible Israeli position, anymore than being "pro-American" requires backing the war in Iraq.

To be pro-Israel certainly doesn't mean basing foreign policy on the alleged conflict of civilizations; the whole West locked in combat with the Islamic world.

Being pro-Israel certainly doesn't mean standing in the way of peace negotiations with Syria... support for Israel does not mean support for West Bank settlement, for the Whole Land of Israel, for endless occupation. The sane, mainstream Zionist vision was and is of a democratic state with a Jewish majority, with full rights for all citizens, a country living at peace with its neighbors. (That's what the country's declaration of independence says.) Rule over the disenfranchised Palestinians of the West Bank undermines democracy. Every additional settler makes withdrawal more difficult." {Emphasis mine]

Those who see that there is a price to pay for Israel's bellicose rule of Palestinians are trying to take back the reigns and make those who really support a Jewish state to take a step back and have a long hard look at where all of this is headed. Ehud Olmert famously said that unless there is a two-state solution that the Jewish state is in danger. Apparently others who do want Israel to continue to exist see it this way too because the longer we accept Israel's accelerating expropriation, the closer we get to facing a one-state battle (which I don't mind at all but could spark alarms for Zionists and post-Zionists out there).

The most common analogy I have encountered is the "drunk driver" analogy: you do not let friends drive drunk, so you cannot let Israel do something harmful that might end up killing not only those around it, but also itself. You do not urge them on or give them the keys. This is how many Jewish liberals are depicting this fight. AIPAC and other Christian Zionists are fueling the fire that is only making things worse for the world (remember that all roads lead to Jerusalem, which is occupied). J Street is hoping to be that guidance that would take the keys away from Israel and start telling them that this is not the way to get home. What is J Street's position?

"J Street calls for territorial compromises with the Palestinians based largely on the 1967 borders with reciprocal land swaps and the division of Jerusalem. The group also favors strong U.S. support for Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations and direct, high-level U.S. talks with Iran to address all issues of mutual concern, including ending Iranian opposition to Arab-Israeli peace efforts and its support for armed anti-Israel groups in Palestine and Lebanon."

Even though J Street is not going to be the saviour, it can be a major cog in the machine that ends up driving Israel back behind the Green Line. It is possible to apply pressure to Israel and see rewards. Eisenhower was successful and even President Carter was able to sign a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt (who both ironically starve the Gazans). Israel's elite still does not want a repeat of those two episodes but many in the US (and in Israel) are starting to see that the current policy is bankrupt and it is a failure, so it's time to start something new (or start actually listening to the Palestinians).

I wholly support this initiave and I urge others to back it. Support it, send out the word, email others about it and even donate. You do not have to be Jewish to do so despite the fact that it is a Jewish group. It is they who have so much at stake at losing support for Israel's security and peace. Although I am a strong supporter of Palestinian rights and am rather ambivalent about the whole project considering it is a lobby that is meant to strengthen ties to Israel (yet again), it is also one lobby that is openly stating the word "occupation" and (genuine) support for a Palestinian state. Daniel Levy is no slouch and he honest about his intentions of a two-state solution. And with all the support from so many Jewish liberals, it is tough not to support the cause.

My only hope is that the Palestinian voice is not lost in all of this. But J Street seems to be the only major campaigner who has a strong enough voice to voice it for them in the forum of the US.

Calling a Spade a Spade

We have to be honest with ourselves here and let go of all the hyperbole that seems to be enmeshed when we talk about the Israel-Palestine conflict. It's difficult to separate our emotional ties to the region whether you are Jewish or an Arab because we have been told over and over that the bitter battle between Israel and Palestine is what drives many of enmities towards the Western nations and the attitudes that fuels the terrorism and "fundamentalism" that get bracketed into the absurd "clash of civilisations" that we find ourselves struggling with in our post-Soviet Union stateground. But in order for us to try to move ahead into anything meaningful, sometimes we do have to detach what we feel is so important because it may hinder what is so appallingly obvious to one who is less tied to the two parties to the conflict. We have so many casting a huge role in the US who have very strong affiliations with the Israeli front that it is very hard to picture them ever having a pragmatic approach as relates to what could benefit both the Israelis and the Palestinians: because if we believe that we can finally put an end to this, both sides have to feel that justice has prevailed in any negotiated solution, and that also means talking about the topics that matter to the Palestinians (East Jerusalem, settlements, the wall, checkpoints, water, etc.) because whether Israelis and its supporters like it or not, their security is intertwined with the security of the Palestinians.

Now where we are at, we are currently a third of a year of post-Annapolis, and still we are not only stuck at another impasse, we are seeing two steps backwards every time we think that we are going forward. It's a terrible affliction that we are inured with as we have come to expect this sort of backdrop of failed solutions and talks when these two parties come to the table to speak to one another (with the US as the mediator). And unfortunately, each time we rerun this episode, more violence and more deaths are inevitable, and the aftermath could prove more disastrous than the last intifada that saw Sharon take an iron fist approach to the security situation. Only over a month ago, we saw some horrific images coming from the Gaza Strip as Israel attempted to strong-arm their way to finally put an end to rockets being fired into Israeli proper, only to see more fatalities and more Israelis dead. During the same week of escalation, we witnessed a shooting spree from a Palestinian who was a citizen of Israel. The reprisal from the fanatics have been very elementary as they raided the offender's family's house and took their rage out on them. We have read reports in Bethlehem that took out four Palestinians in "execution style" can be viewed as symptoms that lead to a bigger backlash against each other, with more and more dead proving even more catastrophic for the Palestinians considering the disparity we have seen in the numbers over the decades.

But what I'd like to revert back to is that this is all nothing new. We have been through this road before and we have had warnings from the intellectuals, the negotiators and the academics that this is the path that we are taking when we do not pressure the bigger party to concede something tangible so they can show they are serious about their security and peace. Yes, I'm talking about pressuring Israel, and to be frank, we all know that if they wanted a concrete peace proposal to work out that they would have done so already. They have all the power here and it is they who needs to show that they are willing to work with the weaker opposition who have been trying to show the world that they have the right to self-determination also. Autonomy has been dealt around rather passively with total disregard for international law and yet we are still at the same stumbling bloc when it comes to the Palestinians affirmation for their right to determine their own fate. Naturally I will hear the typical response that the PA has done little to nothing to curb terrorism from the West Bank and Gaza. But let's not be myopic here: it is quite difficult to effectively curtail every terrorist attack. Washington and Tel Aviv, will all their might and intelligence at their disposal are still struggling with it. Iraq is a haven of terrorism; Afghanistan is run by warlords and yet the US can not "pacify" the insurgencies. Colombia is equipped with an exorbitant military to fight the FARC and yet they do not make any ground in silencing the guerrillas. Now, you have these nations who trade mightily with their beefed up military budget and they are unable to quell terrorism in Iraq, the West Bank and Colombia; you expect the Palestinians who have little to nothing in their police force to police their own people and tell them that they have no reason to fight back and stop this nonsense of martyrdom because it only digs a deeper hole for the Palestinians? I highly doubt that. Let's be sensible about this: Jimmy Carter stated it in his book Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid that you can never guarantee total security. Crimes will happen and under an occupation, it is practically mandatory that a resistance will occur. What haven't we learned from the past in places like Algeria, India, Northern Ireland and Iraq?

Right now, Israel has no incentive to strive for a peace with the Palestinians. We know that they do not want to give up any part of Jerusalem, so why cave in and lose East Jerusalem so more Palestinians can inhabit the capital? Ehud Olmert has not changed his spots today from when he was the mayor of Jerusalem: he continues to approve more and more construction around the settlements in "Greater Jerusalem" and plans to never negotiate over the ancient city. We also know that they do not want to give up any part of the West Bank that they deem worthy, hence why they continue to litter it with more Israeli settlers and surround Hebron with more zealouts to crowd out the Palestinians. There is no reason why they should concede anything when they can just populate the hills with more Jews and don't give a shit about international law or UN Resolutions. They are seeing a maximalist dream here that not even Ben-Gurion was willing to undertake when Israel won the Six-Day War: they are realising the Eretz Israel on Judea and Sumaria. There is no West Bank for these people. There is no Palestinian for these people. There is no Palestine. As far as they are concerned, it is only meant for the Jews and without any state to oppose this, what is going to stop them from doing what they feel is God's plan?

It's tough to separate what you feel is your rightful duty to your religion and to what the law says you must obey: there is no separation for most of these believers and they have no desire to ever give up the Golan and Judea and Sumaria. They already comprised on Jordan and the Gaza Strip (well, some of them about Gaza anyways) so they have already comprised on their part, why aren't the Palestinians doing their part by just going to Jordan which is their "Palestinian" state? What could make them see it this way? Sure, they were the indigenous people but why can't they just leave for the greater good of the cosmpolitan state in the Middle East? They had no ties to the land and were only savages and nomads; Israelites cultivated the desert and made it into the paradise we now see.

Of course it is preposterous to make a Palestinian believe that they have no right to the land and the only future they have to look forward to is the only that sees them removed from their homes for a Jew to live in. We go back and forth on this and there are many books that have dealt with these issues about who has the right to live here and which truth trumps the other: but that misses the point entirely as both have seen themselves are the rightful owner of this historic piece of land. Both will have to live with each other or else face oblivion as they will surely attempt to destroy one another in order to gain total control of the land. Tony Karon said it earlier that the Israelis "ignored the elephant in the room: the Palestinians." And yes, the Palestinians to lesser extent ignore the Israelis' desire to live on their biblical land. Both were very guilty of ignoring the case of the other and now we are stuck on rivaling nationalisms. It's important for everyone to realise that we have come sixty years since the birth of Israel, and since then there has been a rise in Palestinian nationalism. Calling them a non-entity only figures in colonialism and ignorance of pragmatism. Whether or not Arabs called themselves Palestinian previous to Israel's existence is a non-starter: they call themselves that now just as Israelis are now Israelis and not Sephardic or Ashkenazi Jews. It's time to accept that they want to live in this part of the world and not a neighbouring state or in a refugee camp.

But why haven't they accepted it? Some simply choose to believe that they are the chosen ones and it is hard to remove the ideology that motors so many in the region. But luckily they are on the fringes; most do want to see some kind of peace and settlement over the whole land issue. So why still nothing after Annapolis?

Because Israel has no real consequence for doing what they do best: disregard international law and rule with impugnity. The occupation may be costly, but it is a cost they are willing to pay for their constituents who want the whole of the land. Israel has no constitution for the sole purpose of discriminating against non-Jews in their country. It has no final borders so which Israel is Hamas or the Palestinians meant to recognise? It is unwilling to do anything under the Road Map or Annapolis or Oslo in the past or Camp David or any of these bogus peace talks that have an industry of their own. There's alot of money to be had over all of this and there is plenty of time for Israel to sit tight and do nothing over Condoleezza's minor threats over their "roadblocks" and "checkpoints". We get 50 roadblocks removed when there is over 550 checkpoints in the West Bank: some concession. We get more approved housing in occupied land that is owned by Palestinians and this is how you act when you are serious about having a peace with your neighbour? You bulldoze their houses and build your own over its ruins and steal their water for your swimming pools. That's great relations between two parties negotiating a peace, no? You release prisoners who were at the end of their term and yet you continue to imprison 11000 Palestinians who go without trial and who have been documented to have been tortured. Wow, some concession. What else can you show that you are serious about peace? Bomb them? Shoot them in the back of their heads? Arrest your own citizens when they protest against your violations of the Geneva Convention? You do all of this for the love of the land, correct?

Now you do not want to get cynical but nothing motivates Israel to ever concede anything that they do not want to. Militarism is a good lark these days and without an occupation to take care of, what else would you spend all those tax dollars at (American tax dollars)? It would be hard to find a reason for existence when your whole bane of existence has been aggression and deterrence against your neighbours attacking you. It would be hard to justify that nuclear arsenal and that hearty budget of your's when all you do is police your own citizens (which might be needed if you read Bernard Avishai's warning of an internal intifada).

Without a strong nation to stop Israel, they will only do what they have done in their sixty years of existence: whatever they want. They know they have strong backing in the US. What is that joke again:

"Why doesn't Israel want to be the 51st state of the US? Then it will only have 2 senators to speak for them."

The senate is stuffed with money from the Lobby and they know who pays their salaries. You might think it is our citizens but they know who has the power to fund their campaign. Obama knows how badly it can feel when you say things that they do not agree with. And the list of those who have fallen because they said something of a nature that might not be so pro-Israel is long, one that even took the scalp of Bush's father. The EU has the power to turn the tide but two of their leaders have expressed so much concern for Israel's security that it is hard to see where this leverage for the Palestinians will be. Costa Rica? Ecuador? Not exactly the powerhouses that can shape foreign policy. Israel can do what it pleases: thumb its nose over the UN, abuse US aid whenever it feels the need to do so and act like a rogue state. What country can bomb a US ship and get away with it? What country can have supporters of the 9/11 attack and have no investigation over it? What country can have two high profile AIPAC members be indicted over espionage against an ally and be buried in the back pages of the press and independent websites? What country can continue to occupy a people, subjugate it with walls, checkpoints, barriers, blockades, separate road systems, torture them, kill their children, demonise them as terrorists and gets international sanction for it?

You betcha: it's Israel. And who is going to try to stop them from doing all of this to the Palestinians, to the Syrians, to the Lebanese? Right now we are still unready for any change because no Western nation is going to stand up against Israel who has very powerful supporters in most Western states. In Canada, the investigation over the death of a Canadian military personnel during the Lebanon War in 06 is still inconclusive. Yet the Prime Minister still does not want anything to do with it and even asks why Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener was even in the area when he was there for UNIFIL, part of a peacekeeper unit. Harper had no concern for his own citizen and wanted to exonerate Israel from the blame of Hess-von Kruedener's death. How backward do we have it when Israel kills your own citizens and you want to askew the truth into something that would avoid Israel being a bad guy?

Tony Blair has been quoted that 70 percent of the violence towards the West can be attributed to the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict. With such a huge stake in the matter, you would think that most Western nations have a genuine reason to back a proposal that would be acceptable to all parties (as close as we can get to one anyway) but yet we do not have that. You would think that they have no desire for a safer world at all. We know that that is not true: they just want a world where they can have their cake and eat it too. Most statesman are like that, no? Israel is no different. They want what they believe is rightfully their's and they want it with security too. They are willing to compromise the latter in order to achieve the former and they have seen no real price to pay for such an ideology. The Palestinians have their resistance movements that aims to make Israel pay for the occupation but that is merely a nuisance that they just can't put down. It's been forty one years of occupation, they can wait another forty one until the world realises that this policy is bankrupt and it's detrimental to Israel's democracy and security.

We do learn from history and this occupation will not last. It would be better for everyone to remove their ties to the region and take a look at the bigger picture here and say that enough is enough and make both parties sit down and be serious about a solution. That means bringing Israel in and making them concede something as well as making the Palestinians concede something too. If not then the bloodening will widen and we may see more horrific episodes that sees not only Israelis and Palestinians dying but other internationals who want to see peace happen within their lifetime. But this can only happen if Israel is being made to pay a price for their continued oppression. Without it, they will be free to obtain a maximalist view of the conflict.

Note: I cited an article by Henry Siegman published in the London Review of Books. It is a very informative piece that is based on three books regarding the strive for settlements and making fait accompli on the West Bank. Siegman has no qualms about who to blame on the accelerating drive for settlements even if both the books he reviews seem to exculpate Israel's elite from the policy of colonising Palestinian land. Siegman writes:

"These books give the lie to the carefully cultivated narrative that has sustained the occupation. According to that narrative, the government of Israel offered peace to the Palestinians and to its Arab neighbours in the aftermath of the war of 1967 if they would agree to recognise the Jewish state... the Arab world responded with ‘the three “no”s of Khartoum’... Israel no choice but to continue to occupy Palestinian lands [for security reasons (JA)].

The story is a lie. Israel’s military and political leaders never had any intention of returning the West Bank and Gaza to their Arab residents. The cabinet’s offer to withdraw from Arab land was addressed specifically to Egypt and Syria, not to Jordan or the Palestinians in the territories. The cabinet’s formal resolution to return the Sinai and the Golan in June 1967 said nothing about the West Bank, and referred to Gaza as ‘fully within the territory of the state of Israel’.

The decision to retain control of the territories was taken days after the end of the 1967 war, and was not a response to Palestinian terrorism, or even to Palestinian rejection of Israel’s legitimacy. Zertal and Eldar cite a report by Mossad officials, prepared at the request of the IDF’s intelligence division and presented to the IDF on 14 June 1967, which found that ‘the vast majority of West Bank leaders, including the most extreme among them, are prepared at this time to reach a permanent peace agreement’ on the basis of ‘an independent existence of Palestine’ without an army. The report was marked top secret, and buried."

I do not wish to see the great work of Gorenberg and Eldar to be diminished as they have been priceless in their journalism about Israel's settlement program but I have read Gorenberg's book and found that it did little to blame the policy on Israel's leaders and basically said it was an anarchist movement that moved these settlers into doing what they do. That is preposterous as they have had state approval since the beginning and even some of Gorenberg's writing state it so. Siegman also sees this and writes it as straightforward as he sees it, calling a spade a spade.

There is no security reason for the settlements:

"[The] overwhelming majority of them actually created new security problems, if only because vast military and intelligence resources had to be diverted to their defence. The settlements have also enraged the Palestinians, whose land has been stolen to make room for them – this, too, has done nothing to increase Israel’s security."

In fact, coupled with a nice post by Dan Fleshler at his blog, that even checkpoints are unnecessary from a security point of view. As Fleshler says,

"the VAST MAJORITY OF [checkpoints] WHICH ARE THERE TO MAKE LIFE EASIER FOR ISRAELI SETTLERS, and have nothing to do with protecting anyone in Israel proper."

This is how worthy these settlements are to Israel: they want to pay the price to keep this enterprise alive and kicking and even screaming and killing. Siegman quotes a member of Ta'ayush from his book Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine David Shulman, who wrote:

"many destructive individuals have found a haven, complete with ideological legitimation, within the settlement enterprise. Here, in places like Chavat Maon, Itamar, Tapuach and Hebron, they have, in effect, unfettered freedom to terrorise the local Palestinian population; to attack, shoot, injure, sometimes kill – all in the name of the alleged sanctity of the land and of the Jews’ exclusive right to it."

Without any pressure from its main backer the US, or even any economic consequence from its main trader the EU, we are left with this cycle of non-starters and more land theft by these "hilltop youths" that steal more Palestinian land. They want to be seen as pioneers when they are really helping erase another people from this world.

Obama feels the sting

Being the candidate with the most diversity on background (as well as havnig a name that is eerily too familiar to a most-wanted terrorist), Barack Obama's advantage to his (potential) minority constituency is also his most vulnerable. A son of a black man and borne from a Kenyan woman, Obama's pedigree is unmatched by any past presidential candidates: a field dominated by privileged white men. (Ironically, this year's campaign sees a privileged black man running against a privileged white woman.) And it is this cultural heritage that Obama has in his arsenal that makes him more progressive than most, believing in egalitarianism disregarding race, religion, or any denomination. Having such an outlook on politics made him state that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinians." However, that poses a problem when you apply it to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and one that is really getting Obama in a bind planning his next step to appease the Jewish vote; or as Michael Lerner put it:

"Apply that to the Middle East and you get policy inclinations very different from those which have been insisted upon by the Israel Lobby, supported by most of the establishment Jewish institutions, and through the power of their organized pressure, have become the dominant policy supported by both parties in rare unanimity.

Obama’s problem is that his spiritual progressive worldview is in conflict with the demands of the older generation of Jews who control the Jewish institutions and define what it is to be pro-Jewish..."

Although his position has softened to be molded into a President that is befitting of past ones (ie supportive of a bellicose Israel), he can't seem to shake off the vultures pecking at his background. Being the candidate with the lowest Israel Factor rating left alive in the race (in actuality, his rating has steadily increased in the last couple of months from a proud 3 to a moderate 5), Israel's best friends want to take him down so as to level the playing field, making the few candidates available to be the best for Israel (ie McCain and Clinton). It is no secret that most hawks of the Israeli-kind prefers Hillary over Barack, and they feel the need to take him down a peg for fear of losing their hold on what could be billions of dollars lost in aid (which is a dumbfounded fear since Obama would still need to pass it through Congress, and it remains to be seen whether Obama is genuine about his recent sycophancy or not). Why despite being an overt Christian, Obama is being accused of the worst of all religions: Muslim!

"Such rumors, he [Obama] said, are absolutely false. I have never practiced Islam; I was raised by my secular mother. I have been a member of the Christian religion and have been an active Christian. I was sworn in with my hand on my family Bible, and have been pledging allegiance since I was three years old...

When Doug Bloomfield, a columnist for Jewish newspapers and popular lecturer on the pro-Israel circuit, spoke in south Florida last week, he was astonished by what he encountered.

Anonymous e-mails and not-so-anonymous charges by some Jewish leaders about Sen. Barack Obama’s alleged Muslim past have started gaining real traction in the increasingly furious battle for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, he said."

It is saying alot of today's politics that a smear against a Presidential candidate is to call him a Muslim. Wow. Yes, it's important for Obama to clear the air on his religion; well, on second thoughts, is it really THAT important? I thought the US was meant to be a secular state? Why would Obama's religion matter, even if the accusation, as demeaning as that was, really, it was a real low-blow there, were true? I would find it very compelling news if they accused Clinton of being Jewish because of her very pro-Israel stance, and how that would be a real aberration on her ability to govern (we all know it isn't, as she seems to be doing a good job of being terrible just on her campaign route alone). Since there has been only one President that was Catholic, and none from the Islamic faith, Jew, or Native tribe, maybe a different God might really instill fear amongst the Americans.

What the real shame here is not only the pathetic Israeli nuts who aim to smear anyone whom they believe threatens their hold on the Presidency and Congress, but on Obama himself for not capitalising on such a preposterous vile act by the Israel Lobby functionaries. This is what has become of Presidential candidates? Spineless yellowbellies that have no decency to stand up for, not only themselves, but by those who may follow in their footsteps, just to slip into the good part of the Oval Office, and for what? Are they going to change policy? Are they going to make a historic peace? Or are they just going to stagnate like so many before them? Aren't they sick and tired of being bullied by a bunch of "ideological zealouts and bigots"? M.J. Rosenberg does not stop there, as he nails the paramount failure of today's candidates:

"Candidates are not dumb... They understand that you can’t promote change in the Middle East while parroting organizational talking points...

Candidates need to realize that the political insiders who are demanding that they stick to tried and failed formulas are not so much concerned with Israel as they are determined that their standing as would-be influence peddlers not be challenged...

Meanwhile, of course, Israel’s travails continue. The very policies pushed on public officials and candidates by supposedly pro-Israel advocacy groups have produced disaster for Israel. They ensured that U.S. assistance to Abu Mazen’s Palestinian Authority would be so stingy that Hamas would beat Fatah in the Palestinian elections. They supported only Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza but not a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians that would have gotten Israel out of Gaza without transforming it into a terror launching pad. They pressured the Bush administration not to insist on the immediate dismantling of the illegal outposts and checkpoints not needed for Israeli security even though such actions would have boosted Abbas and harmed Hamas. They encouraged neither prisoner exchanges nor cease-fires, nor a permanent settlements freeze, oblivious to how they were strengthening Hamas. In short, these status quo positions—which candidates are pressured to endorse—have done nothing for Israel, other than to perpetuate the misery typified by the words Gaza and Sderot."

You know why they do nothing, I know why they do nothing, WE ALL seem to know why they do nothing (as pointed out by Walt and Mearsheimer and the bubble that is being burst slowly), and yet we're still stuck at where we were back in Truman days. We got brief respites by Eisenhower and Carter (until he caved), and then Bush senior (and then they made him lose), but the rest has been bad news for Palestinians. When are we going to demand that enough is enough for these talking robots?

How I wished Obama had a different response to such an attack against his religion. I figure Obama could have gotten an upper hand by being more direct at who was attacking him, and questioning the rationale for the targeting of his religious beliefs. He really dropped the ball here for ever gaining some kind of cosmetic support from myself. I do hope that he is more than geniune in his concern about the Palestinian plight, but then again, even Condoleezza Rice has expressed despair at the conditions of the West Bank, and she let Lebanon burn back in 2006 as part of the "birthpangs of a new Middle East".

He is in such a tizzy about being cast as pro-Israel that he is selling out something that must have been instilled in him by his minority parents. Why didn't he stand up and be accounted for? He left a whole bunch of Muslims out to dry and made himself look like a weasel that was trying to slither back into the race. This is the lengths it takes to get into the good books of the Israel Lobby, going from statements by Obama that was cited in the first paragraph to signing letters that gives Israel the right to impose punishment on the Gaza Strip. Well, if nobody is suffering more than them EXCEPT for the residents of Sderot so it's okay for Israel to make them suffer more. It's easy as pie.

Being supportive of Israel is getting too convuluted. Gershom Gorenberg put it plainly:

"Being pro-Israel does not require backing the most bellicose possible Israeli position, anymore than being "pro-American" requires backing the war in Iraq. To be "pro" means to support, to want a country to survive and flourish...

For an American administration to be pro-Israel does not mean adopting the apocalyptic foreign policy of John Hagee's Christians United for Israel. (Mike Huckabee gave his pre-Christmas sermon at Hagee's San Antonio church). It does not mean outdoing Bush in finding neo-con advisers (see again: Giuliani). It does mean a considerably different policy than what the Democratic candidates have yet advocated. Maybe if we can define "pro" more sensibly, the policy next January will also be productive."

But it all seems to be missing from the dialect here. They all talk about domestic policy; Social Security, Healthcare, Border controls, and even foreign policy by Kyoto and Iraq, and they debate about them, but never Israel. The support is overwhelming that they have one another stepping over each other trying to get in the frontlines of being who's more Pro-Israel. Isn't it time for a change? Has the Gaza exodus counted for nothing? Has the call for Israel's settlements to stop immediately been removed from negotiations? Why bother with all the Annapolis bullshit even if you aren't going to bolster your own satrap to be viewed as a saviour of Palestinians? He can't even match the success of an isolated political party that has no aid aside from Syria and Iran. Syria and Iran? We're talking about the US and Israel, one the empire of the world, the other the hegemon of the Middle East, and Abbas cannot defeat a Hamas that has small solidarity from Syria and Iran?

Perhaps Obama should ask himself why he didn't take more of a hard line against his detractors. We all know it was out of line to do such a thing against him and he should have aimed for the jugular and taken off the head of the snakes. A more fitting response would have been,

"No I am not Muslim, as I have stated it in numerous occasions that I am a Christian. As a son of a Muslim though, I find these accusations quite destatable, especially in the context of the impending nominations. What do these 'critics' of mine hope to achieve by such a slander, if you could even define it as one? Do they want to depict that Muslims are unfit for the seat of the Presidency? Are they insinuating that, if I were a Muslim, that I am not a decent candidate to vote for to run our country, who prides itself on pluralism, egalitarianism, secularism and democracy? Would they believe that I could not respect the words of our forefathers who gave birth to our most glorious of nations, that a Muslim only knows authoritarianism, violence and the word of the Koran practised in day-to-day lives?

Let me ask you this: would it make a difference if I were a Muslim, if I prayed to a different God, if I worshipped a different book, would that change your vote, America? I was taught to believe that we, as a people of the greatest democracy on earth, saw every being as equals, whether they be black, white, Asian, Native, woman, man, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or atheist, and that any one of us could be a leader of this great nation. Would it make a difference if any of the former were among today's candidates today?

How much does it say about our leaders that no one has come to excoriate the authors of such a defamation against me? How much does it say about our society of 'pluralism' that accusing myself of being Muslim would somehow be of consequence in certain matters of governance? How much does it say about those 'critics' and their intentions on who they want to demonise, and who they want you to fear most, and who they want you to view as the ones who does not have your best interests at heart? How much does it say about those 'critics' true nature about their politics that they want you to view me as a vote for 'Muslims', meaning, a vote for extremism, anti-Americanism, and hatred?

And how much does it say about you if you believe any of their charges against me?

The Burning Issue

In amongst the hoopla, there have been more than one key instances indicating how important the Israel/Palestine issue is to today's Western society, and more appropriately and acurately, to the Presidential elections that is set to begin shortly after all the candidacy races that is hotly contested all through the major swing states in the US. Annapolis is receding as a relevant summit, and its importance is being severly undermined as time progresses in the occupied territories, and the West Bank is being further corroded into a tiny slivet of a contiguous region. But that has not stopped all the vibrant rhetoric from being regurgitated between the party players, ie, President George W Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Quite a remarkable achievement is that Bush has went out of his way to (attempt) pressure Israel into compliance of the former Road Map and the revised version called Annapolis.

"Bush, when asked about the outposts, said simply and directly, "The outposts, yeah, they ought to go. Look, we've been talking about it for four years. The agreement was get rid of outposts, illegal outposts, and they ought to go."

What was also remarkable was the fact that Bush himself acknowledged that the Palestinian refugee issue had to be addressed (for once), but his solution has been far from the consensus that has been agreed upon by the international powers outlined in UN Resolution 242. Bush declared that "Palestinian refugee families should be compensated, rather than returning to former homes in what is now Israel". This is defiance of Resolution 242, which charges that only the refugees can decide on gaining compensation for lost land. In crude terms, Bush has asserted that there is no relief for the refugees languishing in huts and camps except for the fact that they will gain money for their loss. They take their land, deny their existence, and pay them off as if they will go away with a hefty bribe; and this is Bush's magical solution to solve the refugee problem, even though it is more than evident that most of them want to return to their past homeland. Although the statement does indeed bear responsibility on Israel for creating the refugee status, it falls far short of direct recognition of the catastrophe, even bypassing the justice that the Palestinians are entitled to after their extirpation.

"On the Israeli side, that includes ending settlement expansion and removing unauthorised outposts."

But the US is the main funder of those pesky settlements. It would be funny if the consequences were not so serious. And then Bush went his way to another Mideast nation to talk about democracy there too.

Not to be outdone was our very good friend Ehud Olmert, parroting the dovish-line whenever the big bad Bush comes around to criticise Israel. Even though Olmert seems to have gone through some changes as of late (maybe a little too coincidental as the timing of the Winograd report and Bush's lameduck status), many of his policies are reflecting his very brutish style when he was mayor of Jerusalem. Olmert says good things, but it's not being represented where it counts. "Olmert told the cabinet earlier Sunday that it is a disgrace that Israel hasn't taken action to remove unauthorized outposts", juxtaposed with what a Peace Now spokesperon told Israel Radio that "since Olmert took office, not a single outpost has been dismantled. Olmert should stop acting like a commentator and start taking action against illegal outposts."

Olmert is doing a courageous job trying to balance a lopsided scale (the right being the heavyweight). He is pushing his coalition to the brink with his insolence, with Barak breathing down his neck and now Lieberman quitting the Knesset over Olmert's attempts at negotiation. What a silly gesture indeed, but somewhat alarming since any negotiation with the Palestinians is deemed a threat. This is the attitude that prevails in the Israeli sector. There is a right (Olmert), and then their is right of the right (Barak). Then you have Lieberman, who's only difference is the fact that he openly states what the main objection is: removal of the Palestinians. But Olmert need not worry if he is in need of support: Gideon Levy outlined what would be a peace coalition that could help swing Olmert's words into Olmert's deeds. That is, if he truly is serious about all of this.

Because we've been through this track before. And it is a lesson that is learned the hard way when you are a Palestinian. Looking ahead, it's hard not to be skeptical. The facts are showing that Bush really is inept, as he is in his final year, and now powerless to be any kind of effectual. Olmert can give lip-service (and he's doing it well) and sit idly by until the new President is elected, and then we can go through this motion for another four years. Because back in 2004, you would not have seen Bush say such things against Israel; it would have jeorpardised his chances for re-election. And now there's no reason for him to toe the line, so he does what he thinks might give him a better reputation than the one he is carrying as of right now. Too little, too late? Perhaps, but if any progress is borne from this, then maybe it's more than welcome. I certainly enjoy seeing Presidents and politicians excoriate the occupation, even though their words mean nothing without action.

So why no action? Former President Jimmy Carter was the most outspoken proponent of the Palestinian cause (still to date, and that was almost thirty years ago), which cost him dearly. Bush's dad tried to mediate a more balanced approached (even though it was less than balanced), and he was removed. Reagan was Israel's greatest ally, and he took two terms. Clinton kept quiet on the issue until his final year. Bush junior is doing the same. Do we have a problem here?

We're recycling images of past peace processes. Just like Oslo, we're seeing more violence and building of houses under Annapolis, when we're meant to be seeing the exact opposite to help "build confidence".

"Dr [Mustapha] Barghouthi presented data showing that Israeli militarykillings of, and attacks against, Palestinians have soared by 100% since Annapolis, confirming an intensification of Israeli military violence against the Palestinian people even after the meeting on 27 November 2007.He highlighted that the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed in 2007 had risen to 40:1, up from 30:1 in 2006 and 4:1 from 2000-2005.

Barghouthi also focused on Israeli settlement expansion and their refusal to dismantle any existing settlements... maintains 133 settlements in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) which have population of 447,500, and which are equally illegal under international law. Moreover, Israel continues to build in 88 of the sesettlements.

Barghouthi stressed that settlement expansion is being facilitated by Israel's 'Roads and Tunnels' Plan."

All the while Gaza is crushed daily, Hamas is derided, and we're getting numbers that Israel slaughters children, whom are viewed as "terrorists". We get "firm opposition" from settlement blocs in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and yet Israel continues with its new construction.

"The neighborhood's [of Maaleh Hazeitim] initial construction provoked an international storm in September 1997, and the United States pressured Israel not to go ahead with the plan. The pressure was rebuffed by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and backed by Jerusalem's mayor at the time, Ehud Olmert."

Who else could stand up against the US and defy their criticism? We should not forget here that this is in direct violation of international law. We should also not forget that the US has the power to stop all of this construction. We should also never forget that actions like these should be accounted for. We should never ever forget that the Palestinians have a right to self-determination, and new settlements around East Jerusalem will destroy their right that any other person (rightfully) demands. Israel has to be stopped; Bush has already said so, Olmert says so, past politicians and Presidents say so; why has this not been solved?

As we near apartheid with Jewish only roads, the burning issue that is preventing any progress here is because of the Israel Factor, or the Lobby. Yes, it's contested from the left, right and the centre. But it exists, and it is far from any normal lobby here. It has a great deal of clout, and it has plenty of supporters in where it counts. It is in many combinations, such as sympathy and allegiance, as well as just plain cowardice, but the Israel Factor is what is halting any US politician from castigating Israel. They openly admit it also.

No other country could brazenly pride themselves with such bravado of power over another government. Also, no other country really has so much at stake at the Presidential race than Israel. In the most liberal newspaper in Israel, they have a section called "the Israel Factor". Here they table out who is best for Israel's interests. Not surprisingly, Guiliani is number one with Clinton a close second. Obama is ranking a 5 (while it was much lower about two weeks ago), and one of my favourites from the past Chuck Hagel got a lowly 3.5. It's easy to see how the rankings is determined: Hagel's description is "The Senator for Nebraska believes that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to bringing about Middle East peace." That ranks low. The high flyers are very pro-Israel, ie hawkish. So we get more of the same. No big changes here.

These are our best candidates to control the Israel-Palestinian issue. Clinton, Obama, McCain, Romney, Huckabee. Arrgh. They do not differ much. It's more or less the same. For instance, here's Obama's recent track record on Israel/Palestine:

"During the past two years, however, Obama has largely taken positions in support of the hard-line Israeli government, making statements virtually indistinguishable from that of the Bush administration...

Obama has insisted “we should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests” and that no Israeli prime minister should ever feel “dragged” to the negotiating table...

Obama acknowledged the reality that that “nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people,” as a result of the stalled peace process he has since placed the blame for the impasse not on the Israeli occupation but on the Palestinians themselves...

Obama rushed to Israel’s defense [during the Lebanon War], co-sponsoring a Senate resolution defending the operation. Rather than assign any responsibility to Israel for the deaths of over 800 Lebanese civilians, Obama claimed that Hezbollah was actually responsible for having used “innocent people as shields.”

The senator’s press spokesman did not respond to my subsequent requests for more credible sources. This raises concerns that an Obama administration, like the current administration, may be prone to taking the word of ideologically driven right-wing think tanks above those of empirical research or principled human rights groups and other nonpartisan NGOs.) Indeed, Obama’s rhetoric as a senator has betrayed what some might view as a degree of anti-Arab racism. He has routinely condemned attacks against Israeli civilians by Arabs but has never condemned attacks against Arab civilians by Israelis."

Stephen Zunes also indicates that the Lobby is responsible for Obama's shift that "it’s quite reasonable to suspect that pressure from well-funded right-wing American Zionist constituencies has influenced what Obama believes he can and cannot say." This is the best we can expect from all the Presidential hopefuls?

How about another one? Huckabee? The Israel Factor ranking has him at 6, and a reletive unknown with his policies on Israel-Palestine. Well, look no further as he is now getting in bed with the rest of the cronies for Israel. Philip Weiss shows an exchange he had with Wolf Blitzer "in which he calls for an Israeli state in all of Mandatory Palestine, from the Jordan to the sea, and there's enough room for the Arabs in Arab lands." Sounds more like the resigned Lieberman rather than a Presidential hopeful.

What about Clinton? She supports the embassy being moved to Jerusalem. That's a no-brainer.

This, my friend, is the major indicator of how things will be in the future. It is "the issue that dare not speaks its name". Here is Justin Elliott on Mother Jones:

"In nine of the 11 debates, the terms Israel, Palestinians, and Gaza were either never uttered or were mentioned once or twice peripherally. For instance, Joe Biden said at the October 30 NBC debate that Pakistan has missiles that can reach Israel. The two exceptions were the November 15 Democratic debate in Las Vegas, where Bill Richardson, unprompted, briefly outlined his ideas for a two-state solution, and the December 4 Democratic radio debate on NPR, in which moderator Robert Siegel posed the single question about Israel of the past 11 debates. Unfortunately, the query was effectively avoided. Excerpt of Edwards and Obama dodging, after the jump.

"When we do things that policymakers in
Washington may think are rational, like very strong support of Israel, that also
upsets a lot of those 1 billion Muslims you've described. How would you, Senator
Edwards ... answer the complaint that the U.S., in its support of Israel, is so
pro-Israeli, it can't be an evenhanded, honest broker of matters and is
anti-Muslim?"

Edwards proceeds to ignore the question, makes a point about Ahmadinejad and says to improve relations with Muslims we must "help make education available to fight global poverty." He makes no mention of Israel/Palestine. Siegel then turns to Obama. The senator says we need to close Guantanamo and talk not just to our friends but to our enemies. He, like Edwards, doesn't touch the Israel issue. To their credit, Dodd and Kucinich do a much better job at engaging.

So in the past 11 debates the grand total of references to the Gaza Strip is zero. Considering that Israel is our biggest ally in the Middle East and the biggest recipient of U.S. aid in the world, isn't it about time the candidates were asked what they think of our ally's destructive policies in Gaza? Will any moderator have the courage to pose the question?"

Effectively removed has been Gaza, and it's slowly being that apartheid of the West Bank is the normalisation of relations. The Palestinian state is the one determined by Israel, not by both countries. Deal with it. The big talk is just alot of bark; the politicians have no bite. And because of the stranglehold that percepetions of Israel/Palestine and its pro-Israel henchman has on Washington's balls, we're doomed to see more recycled images for another four years. How much longer can we suffer such horrific stories of occupation? How much longer can the Palestinians live as refugees with no home and no country? How much longer can we tolerate those who fund settlements and give support to what is a major bloc towards justice? How long are we going to stay silent while Palestinians are being pushed over the edge of destitution? How many more lives will it take until we say enough is enough?

This is the burning issue: the Israel Factor is one that determines policies, and one who determines a candidate's job or status. They can differ on so many issues domestically, or even on Iraq, but we can always count on one thing: they will always play favourites to the Jewish state. The lessons of the past cannot be forgotten. Take them on at your own perile.