Tag: Palestine

Israel and the Palestinians

ISRAEL – Can anyone tell me which of these statements is not true?

  • Fatah, long-time sworn enemy of Israel, no longer sponsors attacks on Israel.
  • Fatah poses no military danger to Israel.
  • Fatah has accepted the right of Israel to exist; threats to obliterate it from the map have come from Iran, but that is not Fatah’s fault.
  • Palestinians in general are among the best-educated and most democratic of Arabs.
  • A democratic Palestinian State trading freely with Israel would greatly increase prosperity in both states, but especially in Palestine.
  • Free, democratic and prosperous states do not in general cause conflict.
  • A free, democratic and prosperous Palestine would cause ordinary people in Gaza and elsewhere in the Arab world to wonder why the hell they were bothering to support extremists and “terrorists”.  Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and Iran would have the ground cut totally from under them. The latter are terrified of anything free and democratic, so it is no wonder that their main aims are to foment disorder and chaos. Israel sometimes seems to play their game for them.

I believe all the above to be true, though am willing to stand corrected. And so the next question is, Why does Israel still occupy the West Bank and impose roadblocks on ordinary Palestinians trying to create some sort of normal and prosperous life for themselves?

West Bank and Gaza

It seems to me that Israel’s policy here is potty. In all walks of life, you encourage good behaviour (assuming you want progress, peace and prosperity). I am unclear how the good behaviour of Fatah in the last few years has been rewarded. On the contrary, there is endless talk as ever but little action on the ground.

One understands Israel’s existential fears, but the dangers no longer come from Fatah and Palestinians in the West Bank. They should and could become the allies of Israel.

Has Israel become so accustomed to battering its enemies with force that it cannot learn the humility of victory and take a longer vision?

The major sticking points?

  • Jerusalem? This has to become a shared city in some form. Israel has no right to claim it as its own. We all share the planet; I can see no fundamental problem with sharing a city.
  • The exiles? There has to be some sort of justice. We – I believe – empathize with Jews. We understand their fears for their existence. We support their right to exist. But they do not seem to empathize with those Arabs whose land was taken from them first in 1948 and then later by conquest. EMPATHY – this is sorely lacking in the current Israeli leadership.

Israel Blockade Challenged

The Aid Ship Fiasco? Once again, Israel is its own worst enemy. The critical thing is to establish the truth, so if Israel has nothing to hide then why does it not permit an independent enquiry?

It seems pretty clear to me that the majority of activists on the first ship were peaceful but you only have to have a few prepared to use violence and this will cause big trouble, which seems to have been the case here. And everyone knows that if Israel or Israelis are attacked then they respond with overwhelming force.

But “winning hearts and minds” CANNOT be done without the truth being known, and nobody who matters (ordinary Arabs, Iranians and Turks in particular) is going to trust an enquiry carried out solely by the Israelis. This is so obvious that one wonders if – as often seems the case – Israel has taken leave of its senses.

by Chris Snuggs

Three buses arrive at once ….

Hang on, folks.  We have some good news!

It is a sad and lonely vigil that we who long for good news sometimes keep. But now and again, like London buses, it does arrive in welcome batches, and so it has proved this week.

Oh look! Here's five of them!

US Health Care

First of all, our faith in Obama has been somewhat resurrected from what had become – in my case at least – a depressingly-comatose condition.  For he has managed to squeeze his

Band-aid or long-term fix?

health bill through Congress, which is more than the glamorous Clinton duo managed the last time it was tried.

Now I am sure Learning from Dogs has many American friends – at least, I hope so. And they are surely better-qualified to give an objective view of exactly what has been achieved. To listen to the Republicans, you’d think the end of the world had arrived, yet it is surely surreal that “the greatest country in the world” should NOT have universal health care, isn’t it?

As far as I understand, another 32 million Americans will now have health cover, even if that still – apparently – leaves some outside the fold. Well, let’s not quibble; it’s a major step forward. How even the reddest-necked Republicans could accept poor Cuba having better overall health care for their poorest citizens than the mighty USA was always a mystery to me. So, let’s chalk it up and celebrate.

Palestine

Secondly, the Obama-Clinton team is AT LAST standing up to Israel. Now this is a major topic, and beyond the scope of one post, but if you empathize – as I feel one should – then from a Palestinian’s point of view, the Israelis are occupying their territory by force. And they are not alone in this belief; the international community has long considered the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Jerusalem to be illegal. Yes, Israeli supporters may find ways of rationalizing their presence there, but the facts speak for themselves.

“Whom the Gods seek to destroy, they first make mad.” Well, Netanyahu may not quite be mad, but he was certainly very silly – in my opinion – to so impudently announce more building in Jerusalem just as efforts to restart serious negotiations were under way. How he could imagine this would not be a major slap in the face to the US is a mystery. Perhaps he was just seeing how much he could get away with? Well, he seems to have found out, and for once – after nearly a year of pussy-footing about with Israel – the USA is moving closer to the international community’s position.

The world – let alone the Palestinians – needs a permanent solution to the problem, and that will not be achieved by Netanyahu prattling on about Jerusalem “belonging to Israel”. It is obvious to any outsider that the city has to be shared. As with Berlin, what will no doubt be a divided city for some time will eventually – through the force of position and logic – become a united one. WITHOUT goodwill (and there has been precious little in recent years from victorious Israel) this running sore will only come back to bite the Israelis time and time again. Friends of Israel – as I count myself in fact – should make this point more strongly.

However, the only friend that really counts is the USA, and we need them to keep up the pressure. Can and will Obama tough this one out in the face of the very powerful Israeli lobby? I believe Obama has said that he would prefer to be a one-term President if it meant he could get some real reforms through, and this is a welcome change from the “I’ll do anything to stay in office” syndrome that we seem to be seeing in Britain right now.  Let’s hope he can live up to this promise. It is after all now nearly a decade since 9/11, after which there was so much talk about “finding a solution” that has – so far – come to little.

Google & China

Where next?

Finally, we hear from Asia that China is cross with Google for removing filters from its search engines. Now we have got used to cosying up to China, to the point where the west imports a VAST quantity of cheap goods that have helped China’s economy to make a real leap forward, and of course pay for a vast increase in their military spending.

Yet the truth remains the truth, no matter how you dress it up. It remains a Communist dictatorship.

That Google even tolerated acquiescence in the fascist suppression of free speech in the first place was a disgrace, but they seem now to be moving to a more defensible position. What was sad about their original  move into China was that they are big and powerful enough to have made a stand before. All over that vast country, individuals are trying to stand up to a fascist state, so how must they have felt when a vast, rich and powerful organisation from the west (Statue of Liberty and all that) got into bed with their oppressors?

Well, perhaps those little people will feel a bit better now. Predictably, the Chinese are now making threats against other “partners” of Google, saying that they “must obey its laws”. Well, we’ll see how this plays, but united we stand, divided we fall, and is it moral to respect immoral laws?

Yes, it will irritate the Chinese Communist Party leaders (I won’t be losing any sleep there …) and No, it won’t make a vast practical difference in the short-term; the Chinese have their OWN search engines, but it is a symbol, and symbols count. Sooner or later, the Chinese will join the modern world; but every now and then the free world needs to give it a prod in the right direction.

By Chris Snuggs

[Explanation of title to our non-UK readers. Londoners are so used to waiting in the cold for a bus to arrive and then having three arrive at once, that the phrase has become a little bit of English folklaw! Ed.]