Israel's policies aren't winning it any friends or support. Lurching ever-more to the Right the Israeli Government ploughs on. Apartheid first - and now facing isolation at least from some quarters. The US will just go along with anything the Israelis want even if there is the occasional tut-tutting about this or that. Of course this blind aligning with Israel only serves to push the Americans away from main-stream and international positions on challenging what the Israelis are actively doing to thwart peace with the Palestinians.
"By denying the Palestinians a state, Israelis are actively destroying the Palestine they agreed to create in the Oslo Accords that Israel signed in 1993.
Israelis prevent Gaza from exporting most of what it makes. The territory is denied an airport or seaport, and severe restrictions are placed on imports, plunging many of the Palestinians there into food insecurity and creating high incidences of anemia. In the West Bank, Israeli authorities are resorting to an ever more robust Israeli apartheid, which the world is signaling it will not accept.
Meshaal’s triumphant visit to Gaza underscored the new limitations on Israeli power. Netanyahu’s recent attack on Gaza remained a brief air war, and, unlike in 2008-2009, could not be escalated into a land incursion because of opposition to that step in Washington, Brussels and Cairo. Egypt’s fundamentalist president, Mohamed Morsi, played a key role in negotiating a cease-fire, but those talks themselves limited the scope of Netanyahu’s ability to act unilaterally.
Netanyahu stubbornly refuses to get the message. His settlement project in E-1 would cut the West Bank in two and forever forestall the emergence of a Palestinian state. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referred to the plan as “an almost fatal blow” to any two-state solution.
The declaration came just after the United Nations General Assembly humiliated Israel and the Obama administration by elevating Palestine’s status to “nonmember observer state,” with 138 delegates in favor of the upgrade, nine against and 41 abstaining. That overwhelming sentiment in favor of the Palestinians had been stoked by Israel’s attack on Gaza in November. Netanyahu moved quickly to remind the world that while the General Assembly might be able to play symbolic political games, he controls the land, water and air of the Palestinian West Bank, and intends permanently to annex all three to Israel, even as he keeps the entire population of the Gaza Strip under an economic blockade. Abbas has riposted by reminding Netanyahu that Palestine’s new status gives it access to international forums in which he can press his case.
Think of the Palestinian West Bank as a peanut with a curve in it in the middle on the left. Jerusalem is in the crook of that curve. After the Israelis invaded and occupied Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967, they gradually annexed part of the latter territory to their “district of Jerusalem.” In the last few decades, they have aggressively constructed Israeli housing projects on Palestinian land around Jerusalem, encircling the city to the west.
Building a new, large settlement in the E-1 area between west Jerusalem and the big settlement of Maale Adumim just nine miles from the Dead Sea border with Jordan would virtually slice the West Bank in two, making a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. The West Bank was already carved up by checkpoints and highways (some Jewish-only) into a set of tiny Bantustans. But now the whole territory is to be sundered, just as Solomon offered to cut the disputed newborn in two.
That Netanyahu and his partners intended to make a Palestinian state impossible was never in doubt, but their boldness in pressing forward to implement this plan has shocked the capitals of Europe. In response to the announcement about E-1, the British and French foreign ministries took the unusual step of summoning their Israeli ambassadors for a dressing-down, and there were rumors that they were considering withdrawing their own ambassadors from the country.
"By denying the Palestinians a state, Israelis are actively destroying the Palestine they agreed to create in the Oslo Accords that Israel signed in 1993.
Israelis prevent Gaza from exporting most of what it makes. The territory is denied an airport or seaport, and severe restrictions are placed on imports, plunging many of the Palestinians there into food insecurity and creating high incidences of anemia. In the West Bank, Israeli authorities are resorting to an ever more robust Israeli apartheid, which the world is signaling it will not accept.
Meshaal’s triumphant visit to Gaza underscored the new limitations on Israeli power. Netanyahu’s recent attack on Gaza remained a brief air war, and, unlike in 2008-2009, could not be escalated into a land incursion because of opposition to that step in Washington, Brussels and Cairo. Egypt’s fundamentalist president, Mohamed Morsi, played a key role in negotiating a cease-fire, but those talks themselves limited the scope of Netanyahu’s ability to act unilaterally.
Netanyahu stubbornly refuses to get the message. His settlement project in E-1 would cut the West Bank in two and forever forestall the emergence of a Palestinian state. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon referred to the plan as “an almost fatal blow” to any two-state solution.
The declaration came just after the United Nations General Assembly humiliated Israel and the Obama administration by elevating Palestine’s status to “nonmember observer state,” with 138 delegates in favor of the upgrade, nine against and 41 abstaining. That overwhelming sentiment in favor of the Palestinians had been stoked by Israel’s attack on Gaza in November. Netanyahu moved quickly to remind the world that while the General Assembly might be able to play symbolic political games, he controls the land, water and air of the Palestinian West Bank, and intends permanently to annex all three to Israel, even as he keeps the entire population of the Gaza Strip under an economic blockade. Abbas has riposted by reminding Netanyahu that Palestine’s new status gives it access to international forums in which he can press his case.
Think of the Palestinian West Bank as a peanut with a curve in it in the middle on the left. Jerusalem is in the crook of that curve. After the Israelis invaded and occupied Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967, they gradually annexed part of the latter territory to their “district of Jerusalem.” In the last few decades, they have aggressively constructed Israeli housing projects on Palestinian land around Jerusalem, encircling the city to the west.
Building a new, large settlement in the E-1 area between west Jerusalem and the big settlement of Maale Adumim just nine miles from the Dead Sea border with Jordan would virtually slice the West Bank in two, making a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. The West Bank was already carved up by checkpoints and highways (some Jewish-only) into a set of tiny Bantustans. But now the whole territory is to be sundered, just as Solomon offered to cut the disputed newborn in two.
That Netanyahu and his partners intended to make a Palestinian state impossible was never in doubt, but their boldness in pressing forward to implement this plan has shocked the capitals of Europe. In response to the announcement about E-1, the British and French foreign ministries took the unusual step of summoning their Israeli ambassadors for a dressing-down, and there were rumors that they were considering withdrawing their own ambassadors from the country.
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