Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

If you liked Monty Python as much as I, you’ll remember the skit in which a dirty leering character asks his pub mate whether his wife “does it.” The conspiratorial refrain goes: “Wink-wink. Nudge-nudge. Know what I mean, know what I mean?” It’s absolutely hilarious in a knowing, low-down sort of way.

An article in today’s Washington Post which outlines a secret Bush Administration agreement with Ariel Sharon to permit major settlement expansion isn’t as hilarious. But it surely is a dirty low-down trick on the Palestinians whose future territorial integrity it has imperiled:

A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president’s efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office.

Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush’s letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush’s peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon’s chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza…

Weissglas said that in 2005, when Sharon was poised to remove settlers from Gaza, the Bush administration made a secret agreement — not disclosed to the Palestinians — that Israel could add homes in settlements it expected to keep, as long as the construction was dictated by market demand, not subsidies. He said the agreement was necessary because Sharon needed the support of municipal leaders in the main West Bank settlements…

Weissglas said he then negotiated a “verbal understanding” with deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams that would permit new construction in those key settlements; Rice and Sharon then approved the Weissglas-Abrams deal. “I do not recall that we had any kind of written formulation,” Weissglas said.

It certainly doesn’t matter that the agreement wasn’t signed, sealed and delivered by the parties. It doesn’t even matter that Condi Rice is denying the agreement existed. What matters is Israeli actions and U.S. reactions. Israel is hell bent on completing the huge Maale Adumim project which will effectively separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank:

Olmert declared in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, published Sunday. “I say this again today: Beitar Illit will be built, Gush Etzion will be built; there will be construction in Pisgat Ze’ev and in the Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem,” referring to new settlement expansion plans.

While protesting verbally, Condi & Co. have done nothing to stop them. That’s all that matters. The U.S. is willingly colluding in the theft of Palestinian patrimony.

So how do you look Mahmoud Abbas in the eye as Bush did today and claim you can deliver a peace agreement before you leave office? What credibility do you have? In a way, the article coming out today as Bush met with Abbas is the ultimate slap in the face to the lamest of lame duck presidents.

Of course, we also have to remember that Dov Weisglass (note: I think the Post is misspelling his last name), the Sharon henchman who claims to have negotiated this secret deal, has always had the utmost disdain for the Americans. I wrote a post about a delightfully cynical interview he gave in which he said that he and Sharon had Bush wrapped around their little fingers preventing the possibility of a Palestinian state for years, if ever.

So Weisglass’ interview today serves two functions. It reinforces just how tightly wrapped Bush was around their fingers and makes it that much more difficult for Bush to bring into being that Palestinian state which he and Sharon worked so assiduously to prevent. A truly crafty, devious Machiavellian, Weissglas is.

Thanks to Rupa Shah for bringing this story to my attention.

tags abbas, ariel-sharon, Bush, condi-rice, dov weissglad, israeli settlement expansion, palestinians

The NJDC just e mailed me one of their periodic alerts. This one announced that Ira Forman, the group’s executive director, had attacked a Jimmy Carter USA Today column about Ehud Olmert’s West Bank “realignment” plan. Forman himself had penned his own objections in a column in Washington Jewish Week.

I am a good Jewish Democrat who often finds myself in agreement with the work of the NJDC. But Ira Forman’s column is so wrong-headed and so ignores the facts of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict that I could not allow it to go uncontested.

First, Forman gets really exercised by Carter’s statement:

[Olmert's] plan, as described during the recent Israeli election and the formation of a new governing coalition, would take about half of the Palestinian West Bank and encapsulate the urban areas within a huge concrete wall and the more rural parts of Palestine within a high fence.

He counters:

[Carter] describes Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s unilateral withdrawal plan as one “which would take about half of the Palestinian West Bank and encapsulates the urban areas within a huge concrete wall … .”

Where does he get this stuff? Olmert’s government has not produced any definitive unilateral withdrawal plan. However, every report of possible plans assumes that if there continues to be no Palestinian peace partner, then Israel will withdraw its population behind the security fence — taking in about 8 percent of the West Bank.

While Israel may only be retaining 8% of Palestinian territory for its settlements–with the Maaleh Adumim project & by retaining control of the Jordan Valley the actual amount of territory that is rendered inaccessible to the Palestinians is much greater than that 8%. I don’t know whether Carter’s 50% figure is correct, but I have no doubt that it is a realistic one.

Forman continues his diatribe against Carter’s comments about the nature of the Separation Wall:

it is astonishingly disingenuous to talk about concrete wall encapsulating Palestinian urban areas. Of the seven cities that the Palestinian Authority lists as having more than 100,000 people, only in Jerusalem will concrete barriers run through the middle of urbanized land.

Even in Jerusalem, it is misleading to say that the fence “encapsulates” the urban population. He further claims that the Olmert plan “would effectively divide it [the West Bank] into three portions.” This echoes the Palestinian Authority’s rhetoric about bantustans. While the convergence plan envisions creating strips of land that reach into the West Bank in a few areas, a review of the security fence maps belies charges of chopping the area up into three separate portions.

A combination of the Separation Wall running through the middle of East Jerusalem (Abu Dis) and the Maaleh Adumim project will effectively wall off the 250,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem from the West Bank. The majority of Israeli analysts, journalists and politicians accept this formulation. A reading of any number of posts on this subject in this blog will take you to some of their views. Yet Forman is so blinded by his slavish adherence to Olmert’s vision that he must deny reality readily accepted by knowledgeable Israelis.

Why Forman’s miserable pilpul/casuistry over the word “encapsulate?” The exclusion barrier is a structure that imprisons the Palestinians. Let me ask Forman this: has he ever visited a Palestinian village next to the wall? He brings Dem bigwigs on Israel tours all the time. Have they ever once visited with common Palestinian folk affected by the Wall. If not, how in heaven’s name does he know what that experience is like and whether “encapsulated” is the proper word to describe it?

Unbelievably, Forman denies the internationally accepted norm of the Green Line. Like other hardline pro-Israel ideologues he must argue that the Green Line is a fiction that was never embraced by Israel or the international community. His argument has the ring of many other circular arguments which divorce themselves from reality. The Green Line IS universally accepted. It is the 1967 border. It will be the basis for any final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians (though the final border may diverge from it slightly by mutual agreement). Arguing otherwise as Forman does is a useless exercise in blowing smoke.

Second, regarding Palestinian willingness to negotiate: Abbas has continually spoken of his willingness to enter into final status negotiations with Israel. Only Olmert refuses to do so citing the demand that Hamas meet preconditions before he will negotiate with Abbas.

Now let’s talk about the Road Map. Forman reminds us:

Has President Carter totally forgotten that a central requirement of the Phase I portion of the road map is that the P.A. bring a halt to violence, terrorism and incitement?

But what he and other hardline pro-Israel folk always neglect to add is that the Road Map was a MUTUAL document that called for simultaneous actions by both sides. And while the Palestinians were supposed to stop terror Israel was supposed to stop new settlement activity. Israel has not done so and new building is happening in the West Bank as I write this. Why does Forman believe that only the Palestinians are subject to the provisions of the Road Map while Israel isn’t?

While Forman fulminates on Carter’s perfidy toward Israel, events on the ground both in Palestine and Israel will render the former’s views completely obsolescent. In the coming months, possibly in a year, Israel will be negotiating with Abbas and Hamas. In the end, Israel’s Exclusion Wall will be dismantled in whole or in part. The final border will run very close to the Green Line with only a few diversions to incorporate those settlement blocs which both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators designate as Israeli territory (in exchange for Negev territory per Clinton’s Camp David proposals). All argument to the contrary is mere hackery and a distraction from reality.

In fact, one wonders why the NJDC and Aipac’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are more hardline than those of the Bush Administration? Hell, they’re even more hardline than some ministers in the current Israeli government. Now, why might that be?

As a Jewish liberal Democrat, I can see that the NJDC does not represent me when it comes to Israel. I’m much more comfortable with Brit Tzedek, the Israel Policy Forum and American Friends of Peace Now. That NJDC appears to be in the pocket of Aipac irks me no end.

I value Jimmy Carter’s contribution to the Israel-Palestine discussion. NJDC should too. President Carter has done more to advance the cause of Israeli-Arab peace than most Americans. What has Ira Forman done on that score? I wonder why Aipac & NJDC both detest him so & what this says about relations between these two ostensibly independent groups?

tags 1967-borders, aipac, american-israel-public-affairs-committee, east-jerusalem, green-line, ira-forman, national-jewish-democratic-council, Olmerts-realignment-plan, palestinians, separation-barrier

Has it come to this? The Israeli settler movement seems to have utterly lost its moorings and abandoned its senses. Echoing Joseph Welch in the McCarthy hearings, I can only say: “Have you no shame, at long last, have you no decency?”

Let’s take a look at the AP image and the cognitive dissonance it generates. First, we’re very familiar with seeing green-masked Palestinian activists doing the same thing that this settler is about to do: burn the Israeli flag. But what does seeing a settler do this mean? It means that the settlers, once the darlings of every Israeli government going back to 1967, have now utterly abandoned the State. They reject Israel. In this they are little different than our own U.S. home-grown terrorist groups like The Order and Aryan Nation, which see the U.S. government as an utter fraud. In effect, our terrorists make war on our state just as the settlers appear ready to do regarding the Israeli state. It is a deeply disturbing turn of events. I can only hope that Israel is prepared to deal harshly with such people in not allowing them to triumph in their utterly nihilistic goals.

So has it come to this–that the settlers are now enemies of the State? And should Israel see them as such and act towards them as such? I’m sorry to say that my answer to this is “yes.”

The settler pictured is protesting an impending government action to remove settlers from three Palestinian homes which they’ve taken possession of by bullying the families into abandoning them. The Israeli Supreme Court has rejected the claim of ownership of the homes and directed the IDF to remove them. And this is how the settlers repay the government.

Haaretz, in covering this story also notes a deeply disturbing addendum to it:

Jewish settlers from the Havat Maon settlement located south of Hebron hurled stones at Palestinian children making their way to school on Saturday morning. There were no reported casualties.

The schoolchildren, long-time and frequent targets of settler attacks, were being escorted by Israel Defense Forces soldiers when they came under attack.

The Moan settlers last week renewed their routine harassment of children from the Palestinian village of Khirbet Al-Tawani.

The IDF and police routinely provide a jeep in order to provide the Palestinian children protection from the settlers as they make their way to school.

Meanwhile, two police officers were lightly wounded Friday during confrontations with settlers in the Beit Shapira area of Hebron.

Settlers pelted policemen with eggs and officers have thus far arrested two settler youths in connection with the riot in the West Bank city.

One of the wounded officers absorbed a blow to the head from a bottle of paint thrown by one of the demonstrators. The other policeman was hit in the eye by an egg which was flung in his direction.

You’ll notice there is no mention of the sheer terror that the poor Palestinian schoolchildren must endure every day when they make there way to school. Imagine your own youth. Imagine you had to run such a gauntlet of hate every day you went to school. Imagine the impact that such hatred and violence would have upon you? How could any political or religious movement treat children in such a way? It is despicable. I do not say that the settlers have no right to protest or express their views. That would be wrong. But how in God’s name do they justify making children the target of their hate?

tags israel, israeli-settlers, palestinians

One of Haaretz’s veteran correspondents, Gideon Levy, writes yet another scathing denunciation of Shaul Mofaz’s tenure as Israeli defense minister and before that, IDF chief of staff. Yesterday, I wrote about Akiva Eldar’s portrayal of Mofaz’s brutality and ineptitude in both government posts. But if anything, Levy’s attack is more scabrous and doesn’t stop short of accusing Mofaz of war crimes:

During the eight years in which Mofaz headed the defense establishment - four years as chief of staff and four as defense minister - he did everything he could to derail any chance of an accord with the Palestinians. We are not only talking about his inhumane policy toward the entire Palestinian people, but also his systematic effort to destroy the Palestinian Authority and not leave a trace of it, lest Israel have a partner for peace. Mofaz is not only responsible for countless unnecessary victims, but also for the destruction of the infrastructure of moderate Palestinian leadership. From this perspective, the Hamas government and the impasse we now face are the direct result of his policy. The person who called for liquidating Yasser Arafat and ordered the bombing of the PA’s installations bears heavy responsibility for the rise of the Hamas alternative. If only for this failure, Mofaz should have paid the price with his cabinet seat long ago.

But there is also something else, which we do not discuss often: It is called morality…The heritage Mofaz left for the IDF, and via the IDF to society as a whole, is wholly based on the exercise of force and violence. During Mofaz’s days, force had no limitations. The IDF opened fire, bombed, liquidated and destroyed on an alarming and unprecedented scale. The moral image of Israel was completely distorted…The purity of arms became an annoying and archaic concept, the IDF almost completely stopped investigating incidents involving killing, and the finger on the trigger became frightfully light. Mofaz’s spirit of command prevailed over everything.

What is to be done with Mofaz now?…The mark of shame on his brow will only become evident to Israeli society in another generation. In the meantime, he should not be a minister. Here is a challenge for the interim prime minister: Leave Mofaz out and even explain why. Tell citizens that there is no place in your government for someone suspected of being responsible for war crimes…

Last February, Daily Telegraph reported that Mofaz was in high dudgeon over the fact that one of his senior IDF officers had to cancel a planned trip to Britain for fear of being arrested for war crimes:

The affair prompted an angry response from Israel’s defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, who…called on “countries that suffer from terrorism at home” not to take legal action against “soldiers and officers who acted legally against vicious and atrocious terror”.

Mofaz of course makes the mistaken assumption that Britain would pursue the same policy choices he and his government made in prosecuting Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. My cherished hope is that Mofaz himself will be one of the those current and former IDF officers who cannot make overseas trips without fear of the same thing happening to him.

It is only fair to note that there could be no “Shaul Mofaz” unless he served a useful purpose for the political echelon which appointed and supported him. Sharon must’ve wanted a brutal beast of a chief of staff. And that’s what Mofaz gave him. Certainly, Mofaz improvised new riffs on brutishness which his sponsors may not have expected. But largely he did their bidding.

With Amir Peretz as defense minister things must get better. But how much better? And will they improve enough to breathe some semblance of life into Israeli-Palestinian relations which have withered with the ’scorched earth’ policies of his predecessor.

tags gideon-levy, haaretz, idf-chief-of-staff, israeli-defense-minister, palestinians, shaul-mofaz

The Jerusalem Post published a rather interesting poll result saying that Israelis are surprisingly flexible (much more flexible than Kadima and Likud leaders) on the issue of Jerusalem territorial concessions:

63 percent of Israelis are willing to make concessions on the borders of Jerusalem in exchange for “real peace” with the Palestinians. Of them, 54% are willing to relinquish Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, but not in the Old City, the Jewish Quarter or the Western Wall, according to the study by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

Seventy-five percent of those who said they would be willing to make concessions for peace admitted they did not believe that real peace with the Palestinians was a possibility.

That’s a solid majority in favor of returning Arab neighborhoods to Palestinian control. Personally, I don’t believe that retaining Israeli control over Arab neighborhoods in the Old City can work as a long term solution. There will have to be some flexible solution to this conflict that allows Jewish neighborhoods in the Old City to rest under Israeli control and Arab neighborhoods under Palestinian. That’s not an easy problem to resolve, but I firmly believe that there is a way to do so.

And the fact that 75% of respondents don’t believe real peace is possible doesn’t bother me. I read that number differently than some would. What interests me about it is that while a vast majority of Israelis believe that peace isn’t possible, a sizable majority of those naysayers STILL are willing to return Arab land and population to Palestinian control in the quest for such a real peace. In other words, their hope is trumping their cynicism. That is a good thing. A sign that peace is possible despite the dangerous and damaging bellicosity of their leaders.

tags east-jerusalem, israel, jerusalem-institute-for-Israel-studies, palestinians, territorial-concessions

Just in case Kadima's leading lights--Olmert, Dichter, Livni and Mofaz--ever tire of their hysterical anti-Hamas grandstanding in the runup to the Israeli elections, they would profit by reading this piece of reasoned analysis by Prof. Asher Susser at the Israel Policy Forum website. Susser is Distinguished Professor of History at Tel Aviv University and director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. In his column, he lays out the likely scenario for near term political developments in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. I agree most strongly with his warnings against allowing ideology to stand in the way of pragmatism in dealing with Hamas. I have some reservations about other matters he ...

Leonard Fein, founder of Moment Magazine, is bucking the AIPAC juggernaut in calling its signature legislative proposal, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act (H.R. 4681), "a piece of meddlesome foolishness." He published More Pro-Israel Than Israel in The Forward: They may be all smiles here, but Condi can't be happy with Ros-Lehtinen's draconian Palestinian Anti-Terrorism bill (photo: House.gov) Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Tom Lantos offer a bill that...could be a poster-child for knee-jerk reaction... What they have offered, and what at least 70 of their colleagues have by now endorsed, is a draconian measure that would forbid any and all contact between the American government and Hamas — ...

Hey, it's Tom Friedman's red letter day. This may be the second time in this blog's four-year existence that I've featured one of his columns. That's because I normally find him a pontificator full of self-regard and lacking in new ideas. His opinions always seem to go right down the middle rarely swaying right or left. As a result, I find much of what he writes full of stasis with little to surprise or offend. But today's column (TimesSelect sub required) about the approach Israel and the U.S. should take toward Hamas was right on the money: This moment has the potential to open some new, intriguing possibilities for a long-term settlement, or truce, in ...

Lawrence of Cyberia broke my heart tonight. But as anyone who has followed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can tell you, your heart breaks far too often when you come to care for the fate of these two troubled peoples. There are all too many opportunities to get your heart broken. Tonight, Diane wrote about a particularly nasty 2003 incident first reported in the New York Times, in which Israeli Border Police picked a 17 year-old Hebron boy at random, threw him in the back of their jeep, drove him to the town's deserted industrial zone and beat him up along the way. An officer in the front seat filmed a trophy video of the beating while his ...

I delight in pointing out the idiocy and anti-Arab racism in the blogs that are part of the Pajamas Media/Jewish & Israeli Blog Awards nexus. (cartoon: Gapingvoid) Thanks to the intrepid LGF Watch I discovered this lovely cartoon running at Atlas Shrugs, a blog devoted to the undeniable truth that there is a vast anti-Semitic Islamic (aren't the two contradictions in terms since Arabs are Semites?) conspiracy out to exterminate the Jewish race. Of course, Pamela, Atlas Shrugs' blogmistress, seems to lose sight of the fact that a cartoon (this one drawn by the eminent Mideast ...