Is there any need to be surprised anymore about Israel's actions - especially with the US presidential election in the offing and no one going to upset the Jewish Lobby?
The big news that Mondoweiss recently highlighted (here by Allison Deger and here by Annie Robbins) is that construction in the controversial "E1" area in Jerusalem has restarted again, according to a Haaretz report. Completion of illegal settlement infrastructure and homes in the area would bisect the West Bank.
But what the move also represents is a big, giant slap in the face to the United States. As Nir Hasson explains in Haaretz , it was "American pressure" from the Bush administration that "forced all work in the area halted in 2007." And according to this document from the "Palestine Papers," President Barack Obama "said he got Israel to commit to stop construction in E1" early on in his term. The US knows that no Palestinian official could accept an agreement that allows Israel to bisect the West Bank, though completion of construction in E1 would be only the most egregious example in a line of Israeli obstacles that has already carved up the West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going ahead with E1 construction because he knows Israel can get away with it, especially in a US election year. And because of the Israeli government's move, the next president (Obama or someone else) may wake up and realize there's no way to shove this Palestinian bantustan down the PA's throat.
There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...
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