Living with the enemy in the Gaza Strip

Yousef Bashir, 22, lives with a bullet lodged near his spine.  “When I imagine myself without the bullet in my back I ask myself would I be the same?” he said. “That bullet talks to me and I talk to it everyday. It is a very personal thing that I go through,” he continued. “I know that it was put there to destroy my life. I look at it and I say I am not destroyed yet.”

Bashir has very personal ties to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. He grew up in the Gaza Strip next to the Israeli settlement Kfar Darom, which was evacuated in 2005. The battle lines ran right through his house. When the second Palestinian Intifada broke out, Israeli soldiers moved into his home. Bashir was 11 years old at the time. His father, Khalil Bashir, refused to leave the house and so the family - Yousef Bashir, his grandmother, parents and his siblings - spent five years living with the soldiers, who occupied the top two floors.

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Obama and the Gaza war, revisited

Report: Documents expose U.S. wiretaps of Israeli officials in Washington - Haaretz:

the Israeli Embassy in the United States provided “regular written briefings” on Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza intended for "President Obama in the weeks between his election and inauguration."

Remember, back then when Obama was studiously ignoring the Gaza war and refusing to comment on it because "there is only one president at a time." Even though he commented on other things.

Video: Welcome to Gaza

This is a really interesting video about Gaza: it starts out like a tourism promotion video but then comes to address the occupation, wars and blockade. Worth watching till the end. 

On Egypt's Gaza policy

After the recent cabinet change, Egypt now has a Prime Minister and a Minister of Foreign Affairs who argue against Egypt's role in the Gaza blockade. Nabil al-Arabi, the new FM, in particular is on record has criticizing that policy on the grounds of international humanitarian law. Will we see a change in the policy anytime soon?

In some sense, it already has changed. Palestinian officials from Hamas have been allowed to travel from Rafah. The border crossing has also been re-opened after a month-long shutdown following January 25, although it is still only taking 300 people a day. But fundamentally, the official position is the same for now. It's based on a legal reality that the siege of Gaza is Israel's responsibility, since it is the occupying power, as well as more convoluted legalism that the border cannot fully be reopened until Gaza is part of an independent Palestinian state. The real reasons for Egypt's participation in the blockade were a mixture of anti-Hamas sentiment, legitimate concern that Egypt could be held responsible for Hamas' actions by Israel, American and Israeli pressure on Cairo, and a fear that the Israelis were maneuvering to dump the Gaza problem onto Egypt's lap.

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Egyptian Wikileaks: The Gaza Wall

A bunch of as-yet-unreleased Wikileaks cables have been shared with al-Masri al-Youm and other Egyptian newspapers, which will start releasing them today and over the rest of the week. 

For English coverage check out al-Masri al-Youm's site, which already has stories about how the Gaza-Egypt wall is due to be completed this month:

“The MOD had frequently discussed this project with us since the beginning of the year, but only recently received the corrugated steel sheets,” reads the document. “It is unknown, however, if the wall will be effective at deterring smuggling in the long-run, as the steel sheets are basic construction-grade material that can be cut using a tool like a blow torch.”

The document references international, regional and local press reports that criticize the wall for representing Egyptian support for Israeli security, describing them as “erroneously stating the wall is a US-funded project.”

The document also reveals the US has provided technical support for the installation of the tunnel detection system, which was due to be finished by the US Army Corps of Engineers and handed over to the Egyptian military in April 2010..

I've long believed the wall financing issue was set up to create US deniability that it was financing the wall. The cable says it cost $40m — not much compared to the $1bn and more of US military aid — and its most expensive technological component, the detection system, was US provided. So yes, it is US-backed and financed.

In another cable, US diplomats get warnings from Sinai Bedouins that the wall will radicalize the peninsula. More to come...

Did the PA kill the Goldstone report?

Asks Jared Malsin in FP:

GAZA--Israeli soldiers shot a mentally ill Palestinian man in the leg when he ventured near the Erez crossing, in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Last Wednesday, a 65-year-old man was shot in the neck in the same area. A week earlier the soldiers shot a 17-year-old, who entered the 300 to 500 meter "buffer zone" in northern Gaza to collect construction scrap which he hoped to sell for a few dollars. Human rights groups say there is a direct link between these daily shootings and the international community's failure to hold Israel accountable for past violations, especially during its 2008-2009 offensive on Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead, most of them noncombatants. Fourteen Israelis also died. "The attacks [are] still going on, and the Israelis are taking the same stance as during Cast Lead. They're failing to distinguish between civilian and military targets," said Mahmoud Abu Rahma, of the Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza.

Last month, under US and Israeli pressure, the Palestinian Authority (PA), once again delayed the process of accountability. This came at a September 29 vote at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, in which the PA backed a resolution to give Israel and Hamas officials in Gaza six more months to investigate crimes documented in Richard Goldstone's UN Fact Finding Mission report. According to Palestinian and international human rights groups, the Palestinian Authority has decided that the Goldstone report must remain in Geneva, away from the relatively more powerful UN bodies in New York. This is a position identical to that of the US State Department, which wants to keep pressure off Israel during the newly re-launched political negotiations.

On the contrary, the PA should be increasing pressure during negotiations. But Abbas is a good boy: he does what he's told.

Also, do bookmark Malsin's blog on Palestine.

Now that would be change I can believe in

Via Coteret, a great blog translating from the Hebrew media, this piece in today's Yediot Ahronot:

The lifting of the blockade on the Gaza Strip and permission for Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip freely through Israeli border crossings. These are the unequivocal demands that President Barack Obama is expected to make during his meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the White House in two weeks.

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Khouri on the flotilla

I am quoting from most of this Rami Khouri column, because it is so on the money:

The experience of the Free Gaza Movement over the past few years, which sent half a dozen boat expeditions to deliver humanitarian aid to Gazans, suggests to many that in-your-face confrontation is the most effective way to challenge Israel and force it to change its policies. Israel’s reduced siege of Gaza is the fourth example of its changing a policy under pressure. The three other cases were the withdrawals from south Lebanon and Gaza’s heartland in the face of Hizbullah- and Hamas-led resistance, and the partial suspension of some settlements for 10 months last year in response to American government pressure.

So the question now is: How will people and states in the Arab world and nearby lands, like Iran and Turkey, react to the latest lesson in challenging Israel with forceful action, over making only meek pleas? 

Israel is already initiating two new aggressive acts that will quickly test the mettle of both its friends and foes. It will destroy several dozen Palestinian Arab homes in occupied East Jerusalem to build an Israeli tourism facility, and it will initiate work on the ground to build another 600 homes for settler-colonial Zionists in the Jerusalem area.

The fascinating issue today is not whether Israel is making any major changes in its policies: it is not. Its changes are only cosmetic, to ward off foreign pressures. The really important new development is the growing Arab and international realization that the criminal and inhuman excesses of Zionism – colonialism, discrimination, collective punishment, racism, siege and starvation, murder on the high seas, mass incarcerations, and more – can best be confronted using the same tactics that finally brought down the two major examples of racism and inequity in modern times: the civil rights movement that broke the back of official racism in the United States, and the anti-Apartheid movement that forced the white minority government in South Africa to accept a fully democratic system.

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Did the Freedom Flotilla work?

Israel announced today that it will allow civilian goods to enter Gaza and loosen restrictions on freedom of movement:

Senior cabinet ministers on Sunday approved steps toward easing Israel's land blockade of the Gaza Strip, days after Jerusalem had issued a non-binding declaration supporting such a move.

In a statement released following the cabinet vote on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office emphasized that the change would not counter Israel's policy "to defend it citizens against terror, rocket fire or any other hostile activities from Gaza."

The PMO said that Israel would release "as soon as possible" a detailed list of goods that would not be allowed into the Gaza Strip, which would include all weapons.

"Israel seeks to keep out of Gaza weapons and material that Hamas uses to prepare and carry out terror and rocket attacks toward Israel and its civilians," Netanyahu said. "All other goods will be allowed into Gaza."

Israel's new policy will allow an inflow of construction material into the Gaza Strip for projects approved by the Palestinian Authority or under the auspices of international supervision, including schools, health facilities, water treatment and sanitation, the statement said.

Israel also said it would keep the right to ban "dual-use" construction materials that could be used by Hamas to manufacture weapons and to rebuild its military facilities.

The change in policy is also aimed at improving economic activity in the coastal territory, said the PMO. The new policy was also to allow humanitarian aid to be brought into Gaza in a more effective way and to ease movement in and out of the coastal territory, said the PMO.

Israel would consider further easing its siege as the situation on the ground improved, said the PMO. It would also continue to inspect every item brought to the Ashdod Port bound for the Gaza Strip.

The PMO emphasized in its statement that its defense regime along the Gaza border would remain in place and that Israel still sees Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Many reactions to this. The first is simply that it took the courage and lives of the organizers of the Freedom Flotilla to make this happen. The lesson to retain here is that confrontation works, it is not only effective, but necessary. Nothing will be given, you have to take it.

The second is that you have to treat anything that comes from a government that has lied and weaseled its way out of its treaties and international obligations for decades with a grain of salt. The devil will be in the details, such as the list of allowed goods Israel still has to publish and the character and length of the border procedures for people and goods moving in and out. It's crucial to wait to see what this means and how it's implemented.

That, in turn, will influence a bunch of other things. Assuming this does mean a general relaxation of the blockade, but not its lifting altogether, what are the larger consequences?

First there's the political fallout. This might not entirely be a popular move for the Netanyahu government considering the strong backing for collective punishment policies among many Israelis. For Hamas, they have arguable gained very little and potentially lost much face, since they are neither responsible for the blockade being lifted (the Freedom Flotilla and the international community achieved that) and now are back at being isolated but with less obvious ways to play the victims here. Likewise Fatah and the Palestinian Authority really appears ineffective here, and the recent decision by the PA to postpone municipal elections is hardly a sign of confidence.

For the Palestinians and especially people of Gaza, this will be hopefully bringing much relief and enable the reconstruction of the terrible destruction wrought by Israel's Operation Cast Lead. It still leaves impunity for Israel for its actions during that war, and efforts to get the Goldstone Report and other attempts to hold it accountable should be redoubled. But some of the basic rights of the Palestinians, such moving within their country (that is, between the West Bank and Gaza) are still curtailed. They now all have unrepresentative governments that have outlived their mandates, and a leadership that not only appears reluctant to reconcile but may be actively prevented from outside powers from doing so.  

For Egypt, which was again destabilized by the renewed attention to the Rafah border, this will come with some relief. But I wonder for how long — this issue is not going away for long, and a continued spilt Palestinian polity and the unlikeliness of a peace deal makes it ever more likely that Gaza will be dumped on Egypt.

And for the Obama administration, which put out a press release (reproduced below) welcoming the Israeli decision without even a cautious wait-and-see approach, perhaps it means that an embarrassing moment may be over — for now. But while the White House is finally encouraging relieving the blockade and allowing traffic of goods and people between the West Bank and Gaza, it is still ignoring Hamas and Palestinian reconciliation. The name of the game is still West Bank First. It may take another crisis to abandon that policy.

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The EU, Egypt and the IP conflict

Recently a bunch of EU country ambassadors were summoned by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and urged not to waver and engage Hamas, because "all of this is their fault." As some of the European powers try to find a solution to the Gaza blockade, it's not only Israel scuttling solutions — the Egyptians are doing it to in order to preserve their monopoly on talking to Hamas, stay relevant, and make sure they're not short-changed in any future deal:

Kouchner has said the EU could defuse tensions around Gaza by checking the cargo on ships bound for the tiny Palestinian coastal enclave as well as the Rafah border crossing from Egypt into the Hamas-controlled territory.

Providing further details of the proposal made last week, the French diplomatic chief said the checks could take place in Cyprus, which, unlike Gaza, has a deepwater port. Cargo could also be unloaded in the Israeli port of Ashdod.

"This would simplify the checks," he added, though acknowledging the plan "is not a success for now."

According to Kouchner, there would also be a list of banned products, but not a blanket ban on merchandise delivered to the Palestinians.

He expressed pessimism for the Rafah proposal, saying "it's not certain this would work because our Egyptian friends do not want us to speak directly with Hamas."

I wonder if Kouchner expressing this publicly is meant to embarrass the Egyptians and signal that they might just ignore them (and their American protectors). More details on possible deals over Rafah here.

This is coming at a time when there are voices within the EU rising to act more effectively on Middle East issues, as well as more independently from the US. For the last few decades, despite being a full members of the Quartet and the major donor to the Palestinians (as well as an important trade partner to the Israelis), the EU has played second fiddle to hopelessly biased and ineffective US administrations.

Chris Patten writes in the Guardian:

Today's miserable standoff in the Middle East requires new initiatives. The short-term failure of Israeli policies has concentrated global attention on their blockade of Gaza rather than on Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. The long-term failure has rendered increasingly difficult a two-state solution as Palestine is broken up into barriered Bantustans.

As President Obama's military commanders have told him, the absence of anything resembling a peace process in the Middle East, and the identification of Washington with a very rightwing Israeli government, has made it more difficult for the US to deal with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and others.

If politics does not succeed, then humanitarian aid will continue to be necessary. Yet we should never depend on the provision of humanitarian relief as an excuse for diplomatic drift and the failure to confront intransigence. Organisations such as Medical Aid for Palestinians do not exist so that others can duck their moral and political responsibilities.

. . .

However, the EU has too often since taken the view that only Washington really drives things forward. Yet what should the EU do when American policy is going nowhere? Not surprisingly, the secretary-general of the Arab League called the so-called quartet (the EU, US, UN and Russia), which supervised the non-implementation of the road map for peace, "the quartet sans trois".

. . .

Today, the EU should not only call for an immediate end to the Gaza blockade but should work harder to promote reconciliation between the splintered Palestinian body-politic. The UN should be tasked with preventing the flow of weapons while the EU should take the initiative with Turkey and the Arab League to re-establish a government of national unity involving Fatah and Hamas for the whole of the Palestinian territory. In due course, the EU should monitor free elections there. You cannot favour democracy everywhere except in Palestine.

Without Hamas there will not be a peace settlement. What we should require from Hamas is simple – a ceasefire, acceptance of the outcome of a peace process provided it is endorsed in a Palestinian referendum, and help in securing the release of Corporal Shalit. To insist that they accept all past agreements is bizarre when no such requirement is made of Israel. Look, for example, at settlement building.

We should go further. There has been speculation the US may consider unilaterally tabling an agreement with a timetable for achieving it. Opponents of this proposal have questioned whether it would be wise for the US to thus risk its prestige. The EU could work with Turkey and the Arab League to draft proposals for an agreement to be tabled in the UN security council. This may not be immediately acceptable to the US but would at least bring some momentum.

Go for it!

More on the flotilla fallout for Egypt

I stayed away from blogging today because of family obligations and looming deadlines. But here's my new piece for Foreign Policy, looking at the fallout of the flotilla raid for Egypt.

The silver lining in the tragedy of Israel's brutal raid on the Free Gaza flotilla is a new urgency about lifting the blockade on Gaza and addressing the territory's humanitarian crisis. Calls for the blockade to be lifted have been made in the Arab world, in Europe and even, albeit more timidly, by the Obama administration. But Israel's siege is not the only thing that has been highlighted: the role of Egypt, Tel Aviv's silent partner in the blockade, has also been brought to the fore. This is an uncomfortable development for Egypt, which denies playing any role in the blockade even as it closed its border with Gaza at Rafah since the June, 2007 Hamas takeover. Even now, after quietly opening the Rafah border crossing to avoid popular outrage, the Egyptians are preventing an aid convoy led by the Alexandria Pharmacists Association from reaching the crossing. The renewed uproar over Rafah has the potential to destabilize Egypt, exponentially raising the cost of its participation in the Israeli-led, Quartet-endorsed blockade -- an outcome that the Egyptians will seek to avoid but is also a concern for their Arab allies, Israel and the Obama administration.

The Egyptians have for the past three years offered an elaborate explanation to deflect blame for their enforcing of the blockade -- despite the fact that the border, with a few exceptions for a few medical cases and hajj pilgrims, has remained closed since June 9, 2007.  Whatever the legal merits of Egypt's position, domestically and regionally it lost the moral and political argument: there has been widespread outrage at what is essentially seen as Egyptian collaboration with Israel to punish Gazans for Hamas' actions. Its intentions have also been made clear by acts that can be best described as petty and vindictive, such as the treatment of last December's Viva Palestina convoy, which arrived at the southern Sinai port of Nuweiba only to be told to it could not disembark: it was forced to go to the northern Sinai port of al-Arish by heading back to Jordan, driving up to Syria, and then chartering a boat to al-Arish.  Its reported intention of building an imposing wall across the border has been the subject of intense debate.

Why has Egypt taken such an unpopular hard line towards the Rafah crossing into Gaza?  What will it do now?

Read the rest here.

More Israeli propaganda failures

Max Blumenthal shows that the IDF is quietly redacting its own press releases to remove allegations of links between the IHH members of the flotilla and al-Qaeda:

Not content to believe that night vision goggles signal membership in Al Qaeda, Israel-based freelance reporter Lia Tarachansky and I called the IDF press office to ask for more conclusive evidence. Tarachansky reached the IDF’s Israel desk, interviewing a spokesperson in Hebrew; I spoke with the North America desk, using English. We both received the same reply from Army spokespeople: “We don’t have any evidence. The press release was based on information from the [Israeli] National Security Council.” (The Israeli National Security Council is Netanyahu’s kitchen cabinet of advisors).

Today, the Israeli Army’s press office changed the headline of its press release (see below), basically retracting its claim about the flotilla’s Al Qaeda links.

We debunked the basis of previous al-Qaeda links here.

Where is Obama?

GC at the The Majlis points out Obama's thundering silence:

As a journalist covering this story, it's been striking to see Washington's irrelevance over the last 72 hours. We've heard almost nothing from Obama or other US officials -- one 20-second sound bite from Hillary Clinton, that's it -- compared with (literally) hours of material from Turkish, Israeli, Arab and European leaders. The White House has gone out of its way to avoid taking a high-profile stance on the flotilla attack.

But here's the thing: Nobody in the Muslim world seems surprised! After the US ran interference for Israel at the United Nations, there wasn't much anger in the Arabic press. Instead there was mostly a sense of cynicism, like nobody expected America to behave differently.

We've seen a few anti-American protests over the last few days -- there was a small demonstration outside the US consulate in Adana, for example -- but overall there's been very little vitriol directed at the United States.

It's not for lack of interest in the flotilla attack, which has been covered almost non-stop on Arabic news networks for three days. But you get the sense nobody had higher expectations for the White House.

So when Gibbs says Obama's weak response won't affect his outreach to the Muslim world, maybe he's right. Obama's outreach has been stalling for months, particularly in the Arab world. He increasingly looks like just another American president: The promises of his Cairo speech are fading, he refuses to take strong public stands against Israel, and he's carrying on many of the Bush administration's most inflammatory policies (stepping up drone strikes, failing to close Guantanamo Bay, etc.).

The flotilla attack was a golden opportunity for Obama to reverse that trend, to demonstrate that he's serious about shifting US policy in the region. He passed on that opportunity -- and, in doing so, merely confirmed what many people in the region already suspected about his presidency.

While the US is now backing some relief for the Gaza blockade, no real change of approach is being seriously considered, apparently. They want to relieve the blockade, not really end it and restore Palestinian economic integrity.

Joe Biden says the problem is Hamas, Laura Rozen points out:

The Vice President also said Hamas shares blame for Palestinian suffering and said Hamas should join a Palestinian reconciliation government with its political rival, Fatah.

"So the problem is this would end tomorrow if Hamas agreed to form a government with the Palestinian Authority on the conditions the international community has set up," Biden said.

Except the "international conditions" are ridiculous and designed to prevent a national unity government while going ahead with a West Bank First policy. Rozen cites Biden's interview with Charlie Rose:

Joe Biden: Yes, we know that, but they could have easily brought it in here and we'd get it through. And so now the question is what do we do? Well, we had made it clear, the President of the United States has spoken three times, yesterday with Bibi, or the day before yesterday, he's spoken once yesterday with a guy that I have spent a fair amount of time with, with Prime Minister Erdogan in Turkey; the Turks, we passed a resolution in the U.N. saying we need a transparent and open investigation of what happened. It looks like things are -- 

Charlie Rose: International investigation -- 

Joe Biden: Well, an investigation run by the Israelis, but we're open to international participation, just like the investigation run on the sunken sub in — off the coast of Korea. That was run by South Korea, but the international community joined in that investigation. And so that is very possible here as well. I might add by the way for all those who say the Israelis, you know, you know, you can't trust them, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled today that every one of the people on those ships had to be released immediately, immediately.

So in the Korean case, the victim gets to do the investigation, whereas in the flotilla case, it's the aggressor? Of course, no surprise to see this: AIPAC embraces Biden statement.

The Obama administration has no moral ground to stand on in this case, so it's either spinning by keeping focus on the investigation rather than ending the blockade or keeping silent. Shameful. The US needs a clean break in its relationship with the Israeli regime, a radical departure. Will we ever get it?

Because the other alternative will become, over time, at the region's stronger states solving the problem by excluding the United States, rather than calling for it to play a greater role. Right now, the net balance points towards Washington being a liability for regional peace — in Iraq, in its attitude towards Iran, and of course in its defense of Israel no matter what.

The Israelis can't even get propaganda right anymore

My friend Ibn Kafka has a wonderful post catching Israel in a propaganda f**k-up. The Israeli Ministry Foreign Affairs posted on its Flickr account pictures of the terrifying weapons they found on the IHH ship. You know, things like bulletproof vests for emergency services, pepper spray, kitchen knives, bits of wood and other weapons of mass destruction. Except that they did not realize that Flickr displays EXIF data, which is the information that cameras record when they take pictures: aperture, shutter speed, flash status... and the time the picture was taken.

Which, as Flickr commenters quickly pointed out, was sometime in 2006. 

So the Israeli MFA quickly changed the EXIF date, but not before I was able to take snapshots of before and after:

I don't know what's most ridiculous: calling these objects weapons or messing up your propaganda.

Flotilla fallout: strategize and disentangle

I want to get this quick thought down amidst tons of work and much distraction from Twitter and the flotilla fallout.

There are three issues that have been raised at the heart of international debate as a result of the flotilla murders:

1. The need for an investigation into the incident;
2. The need to lift the Gaza blockade;
3. The longer-term need for a breakthrough in the deadlock in the Middle East peace process caused in part by Israel's intransigeant and aggressive behavior, from settlement expansion to landgrabs to assistance to attacks by settlers to its lack of desire for a permanent resolution that is in anyway reasonable (or indeed, its lack of interest in a viable two-state solution)

These must be disentangled from one another and prioritized. The international response so far, at the UN, has put the focus on the investigation. It should instead be moved to lifting the Gaza blockade. Several governments have explicitly come out in favor of this, as well as many opinion leaders around the world.

The investigation process is underway, and there will inevitably be battles over what direction it takes. There is a principle in parts of international law that countries get to conduct investigations on their own actions themselves, and that things go to an international investigation only after the country in question is shown to be incapable of conducting a fair investigation. This is certainly the case with Israel — the precedent of the military investigation into the Gaza war, which was inadequate and led to the Goldstone report suggests that. There may also be a legal argument that Turkey should be conducting the investigation, although that's up to Turkey. I say let that process take place and be debated, but do not allow it to take center stage.

Gaza is the crux of the matter. An international effort towards lifting the blockade must be inventive and propose a solution to a complicated problem quickly. They should be focused on lifting the restrictions Israel imposes on goods coming into Gaza and ensure that reconstruction materials are allowed in. They must also tackle the security demands that Israel will make to prevent weapons going into Gaza. International institutions like the UN will almost certainly have to play a role, and perhaps also the European Union as monitors (as has been suggested before.) This is costly both politically and financially, support needs to be rallied around the idea. But an immediate aim must be allowing aid and reconstruction material, and secondly relinking the Gazan economy to that of the West Bank, i.e. restoring Palestine's economic integrity. 

This brings us to reviving an admittedly discredited peace process.

Update: to clarify (see Helena Cobban's comment below) I think focus peace process and what follows from here should take place after the blockade on Gaza is lifted.

Fully normalizing Gaza's status has to mean abandoning the "West Bank First" strategy implemented by the Bush administration in 2006, endorsed by the Quartet and continued by the Obama administration. It has to mean working towards Palestinian reconciliation leading to new elections and a legitimate Palestinian representation (neither the PA nor the Hamas government are currently legitimate, since their electoral terms have expired), and turning the proximity talks into preliminary talks while that can happen. It means renewed efforts at stopping potential spoiler states (Iran, Syria, Egypt and the United States) and spoiler factions (parts of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Dahlan Gang, Shas, Israel Beiteinu and others). And it may mean abandoning some of the legal infrastructure of the Oslo process and the Quartet process and bringing a fresh approach. I'm not optimistic, but as I see it this might be necessary. There is a great risk that various parties involved in this conflict will choose to grandstand and temporize — the Arab states with their threats of reneging the Arab Initiative, the US by continuing a policy based entirely on shielding Israel from hard decisions and sensible behavior. Now is the time to push, not retreat.

Out of chaos and tragedy, a breakthrough is possible — but only with intensive and continuous effort.

Update: Along the same lines do read Helena Cobban, who has much deeper knowledge of the intricacies of the Middle East peace process than I do: How to end the siege of Gaza and How to end the siege of Gaza, addendum.

Flotilla commentary roundup

Below is a mix of good and bad commentary on the flotilla raid — a best and worst of, so to speak.

Click to read more ...

The flotilla murders: not piracy, but war

Craig Murray, the courageous former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan who denounced Western silence over that brutal regime's practices, who brings his diplomatic and legal expertise to shed light on the legal issues surrounding the attack on the flotilla:

A word on the legal position, which is very plain. To attack a foreign flagged vessel in international waters is illegal. It is not piracy, as the Israeli vessels carried a military commission. It is rather an act of illegal warfare.

Because the incident took place on the high seas does not mean however that international law is the only applicable law. The Law of the Sea is quite plain that, when an incident takes place
on a ship on the high seas (outside anybody's territorial waters) the applicable law is that of the flag state of the ship on which the incident occurred. In legal terms, the Turkish ship was Turkish territory.

There are therefore two clear legal possibilities.

Possibility one is that the Israeli commandos were acting on behalf of the government of Israel in killing the activists on the ships. In that case Israel is in a position of war with Turkey, and the act falls under international jurisdiction as a war crime.

Possibility two is that, if the killings were not authorised Israeli military action, they were acts of murder under Turkish jurisdiction. If Israel does not consider itself in a position of war with Turkey, then it must hand over the commandos involved for trial in Turkey under Turkish law.

In brief, if Israel and Turkey are not at war, then it is Turkish law which is applicable to what happened on the ship. It is for Turkey, not Israel, to carry out any inquiry or investigation into events and to initiate any prosecutions. Israel is obliged to hand over indicted personnel for prosecution.

More legal arguments here. I hope the next ships are escorted by the Turkish Navy!

It's the Gaza siege, stupid

Here are a few responses that buttress my earlier post about what's important in the flotilla crisis. They emphasize the need to end the Quartet-backed blockade of Gaza. For the last 24 hours, Israel has putting forward the argument that the blockade stops rockets from reaching Gaza. This is a ridiculous and patently untrue argument. As countless NGOs and the UN have shown, Israel is engaging in a policy of deliberately withholding construction materials and basic necessities in what one senior official under the previous Israeli government described as a policy of "putting the Palestinians on a diet" back in 2006:

Israel's policy was summed up by Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, earlier this year. 'The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger,' he said. The hunger pangs are supposed to encourage the Palestinians to force Hamas to change its attitude towards Israel or force Hamas out of government.

This is a policy of collective punishment, it is what the flotilla was fighting against, and what must end.

✩ International Crisis Group - link to Norman Finkelstein's site, for some reason it's not their main site. ICG (whom I worked for 2007-2009) has had a good line on Gaza, and this is emphasized here: 

Brussels/Washington/Jerusalem, 31 May 2010: The International Crisis Group condemns Israel’s assault on a flotilla of humanitarian aid bound for Gaza, which resulted in a tragic loss of life.

At the same time, the incident is an indictment of a much broader policy toward Gaza for which Israel does not bear sole responsibility.

For years, many in the international community have been complicit in a policy that aimed at isolating Gaza in the hope of weakening Hamas. This policy is morally appalling and politically self-defeating. It has harmed the people of Gaza without loosening Hamas’s control. Yet it has persisted regardless of evident failure.

“The flotilla assault is but a symptom of an approach that has been implicitly endorsed by many”, says Robert Malley, Director of Crisis Group’s Middle East Program. “It is yet another stark illustration of the belated need for a comprehensive change in policy toward Gaza.”

✩ The Guardian's editorial ended along the same lines:

The blockade should end, but that will only be the start of the U-turn which is now required. Closely allied to Gaza's physical isolation is its political one. The international consensus is also crumbling on isolating Hamas by insisting it recognise Israel before it is allowed to join a national unity government with Fatah. Russia broke the taboo first two week ago when its president, Dmitry Medvedev, met Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader in Damascus, but other countries in Europe are now planning to follow suit. Brick by brick, this policy is coming apart, and in a strange way Israel is helping.

✩ William Hague, UK Foreign Secretary - I'm surprised with this one, it's excellent! Better than anything Labour would have said.

This news underlines the need to lift the restrictions on access to Gaza, in line with UNSCR 1860. The closure is unacceptable and counter-productive. There can be no better response from the international community to this tragedy than to achieve urgently a durable resolution to the Gaza crisis.

I call on the Government of Israel to open the crossings to allow unfettered access for aid to Gaza, and address the serious concerns about the deterioration in the humanitarian and economic situation and about the effect on a generation of young Palestinians ."

✩ On the Arab front, Syria has called for an emergency meeting of the Arab League (there will be a press conference tonight). Kuwait's parliament has voted to rescind its endorsement of the Arab Initiative. Qatar was the first Arab state to condemn the flotilla murders, perhaps they came so soon after an Israeli cabinet minister was in Doha. And Egypt is reopening the Rafah border:

(Reuters) - Egypt opened its border with the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, letting Palestinians cross until further notice amid a storm of international criticism of Israel's blockade of the enclave, officials in Egypt and Gaza said.

It's not clear exactly what will happen, but at a minimum humanitarian aid should be allowed in directly through Rafah without going through the Kerem Shalom or Karni crossings controlled by Israel.

✩ Last but certainly not least, my friend Ethan Heitner — a cartoonist dedicated activist for justice in Israel/Palestine — has produced a comic strip leaflet calling for attendance at US protests:

Do check out his new comic blog, Freedom Funnies.

Keeping focus and countering the spin

Amidst the rage about yesterday's flotilla murders, it's important to keep a sense of proportion and focus about what's really important. And, of course, to be prepared to poke holes in the way the pro-Israel-no-matter-what community is going to spin this.

Focus:

✩ Yesterday's murders were an unwarranted attack on civilians by elite units of one of the most fearsome and best-equipped army in the world. It's not a "blunder" or poorly planned attack — the decision to raid the boat is itself illegal, immoral and is what needs condemning. 

✩ The fact that the boat was attacked in international waters adds to the legal case against Israel, but should not become the whole story as much as the "pirates of the Eastern Mediterranean" narrative is tempting. If the boat had been attacked in Israeli or Palestinian or Egyptian territorial waters, the murders would be just as offensive and the decision to raid just as reprehensible.

✩ The best way to honor the memory of the victims of the raid is, as well as defending them and ensuring their murders are punished, keep an eye on the big picture: Gaza. The flotilla was trying to break the blockade — a blockade that is illegal by any international standard, as UN Envoy Archibishop Desmond Tutu and other statesmen have stated:

Tutu said the blockade was "a siege" and a "gross violation to Human Rights", echoing rights groups which accuse Israel of collective punishment. Former President Jimmy Carter last month referred to the blockade as an atrocity.

It is not enough to call for action on the boat raid itself — the aim should be to pressure the Middle East Quartet (US, EU, UN and Russia) to stop giving political cover to Israel's blockade.

✩ There is no need to use hyperbole in referring to the attack on the boat — it is not the worst thing Israel has done by far. The attack on the boat and international indignation should be channeled towards accountability for the Gaza war (notably for the international process started by the Goldstone Report to continue at the UN), and ultimately an end to settlements leading to an end to the occupation. Israel, under the present government, may be pressure-proof, but its allies in the US and EU are not.

Countering the spin:

It's interesting to see that Israel's most establishment defenders, especially in the US, are generally keeping mum. The NYT has not commented on the crisis in its opinion page, the Obama administration has put out a weak non-committal statement, and AIPAC has not said anything. They had the handy excuse yesterday that it was a public holiday in the US, which gave them time to prepare their approach.

✩ First of all, the Obama administration cannot be allowed to get away with its weak statement or obstructionism at the UN on behalf of Israel. As Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment (hardly a radical person) puts it:

Condemnation of the Israeli action has been strong, not only in Turkey and Arab countries, but in most European countries as well. In comparison, the initial response from the White House is completely inadequate and President Obama will need to choose how forcefully to react. Obama must decide whether to sacrifice his credibility in the region in order to continue a well-established U.S. tradition of mild rebukes toward Israel, or break with “business-as-usual” policies and condemn the Israeli action. 

This is an opportunity to drive a major wedge between the Obama administration and its already nervous friends in the lobby. Let's use it.

✩ So far, major pro-Israel voices are obviously embarrassed and trying to find ways to spin it. Look no further than Jeffrey Goldberg for the model, which goes something like this:

I don't know yet exactly what happened at sea when a group of Israeli commandos boarded a ship packed with not-exactly-Gandhi-like anti-Israel protesters. I learned from the Second Intifada (specifically, the story of the non-massacre at Jenin) not to rush to judgment without a full set of facts (yes, I know what you are thinking: So why have a blog?). I'm trying to figure out this story for myself. But I will say this: What I know already makes me worried for the future of Israel, a worry I feel in a deeper way than I think I have ever felt before. The Jewish people have survived this long in part because of the vision of their leaders, men and women who were able to intuit what was possible and what was impossible. Where is this vision today? Israel may face, in the coming year, a threat to its existence the likes of which it has not experienced before: A theologically-motivated regional superpower with a nuclear arsenal.

This approach says:

1. Oh, it's too confusing and too soon to know what really happened. BULLSHIT: the basic fact is that Israel attacked a boatful of activists and killed 10-20 of them in order to defend its morally bankrupt blockade policy. You don't need to know much more.
2. The activists on the boat were not non-violent. BULLSHIT: They were provoked by being raided from helicopters by elite commando units armed with guns. They acted in self-defense, not offensively.
3.  Bad leadership is responsible. BULLSHIT: People like Goldberg may growing ever more uncomfortable with the PR disaster that is the Netanyahu administration, but its actions are consistent with those of other governments that carried out attacks against civilians to assert Israeli deterrence — see Lebanon, 2006, and Gaza, 2009.
4. Oh, look, Iran! BULLSHIT: This is a lame attempt to change the topic of conversation. There is an international process underway to deal with the Iran nuclear issue, and it will continue. The flotilla issue is completely separate, and related instead to the humanitarian disaster caused by the blockade of Gaza.

✩ You are seeing another approach in conservative pro-Israel sites such as the National Review's The Corner, where Michael Rubin argues it's a question of proportionality:

A lot of the criticism surrounding Israel’s actions against the Free Gaza flotilla center on proportionality. Did Israel apply disproportionate force? The same charges form the basis of the criticism leveled by the Goldstone Report and, indeed, also were leveled against Israel following the 2006 Hezbollah War and, before that, Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.

But why should any democratic government empowered to defend its citizenry accept Europe’s idea of proportion? When attacked, why should not a stronger nation or its representatives try to both protects its own personnel at all costs and, in the wider scheme of things, defeat its adversaries?

BULLSHIT: It's not about proportionality, it's about the use of force in the first place. Raising the question of proportionality not only sidetracks the issue, but it implicitly accepts that some use of force was warranted and makes it about the degree.

✩ Also at The Corner, the reprehensible Daniel Pipes writes:

Rachel Corrie has been an albatross around Israel’s neck since 2003; today’s dead on the seas off Gaza will prove an even worse source of anti-Zionism. Thus did the “armada of hate and violence” achieve its purpose. Thus did the Israelis fall into a trap.

BULLSHIT: This is the classic blame-the-victim approach. That Pipes stoops this low is no surprise, but shame of Der Spiegel (that "trap" link) for falling into the trap of using the same approach.

✩ If you need reminding, many are making the "Islamist flotilla of terror" argument by focusing on the IHH, the Turkish NGO that ran the main boat that was attacked. I've already highlighted that it's BS on a previous post.

Watch out for these arguments to crawl out of the cesspool of right-wing and Likudnik magazines and blogs and into the mainstream narrative, especially in the US where these people have made tremendous advances onto the pages of mainstream newspapers and television stations in the last two decades. And be ready to ignore them or counter them when necessary — they should not be allowed to dominate the conversation on this issue.

Update: Just saw Jackson Diehl's piece, which has strong words — the attack was "indefensible" and so on — but note how his main concern is to get back to his favorite pastime, bashing Obama from the neocon perspective (as he does unconvincingly on democracy in the Middle East). The bulk of his piece expresses his concern that Obama's tiff with Israel over settlement expansion means he has little wiggle room left to defend Israel on this issue. And so Diehl scrapes the bottom of the moral barrel.  

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The flotilla crisis seen from Cairo

Sorry about the quality - cops telling me to leave...

It's impressive to see such a forceful international reaction to this morning's deadly raid on the flotilla of boats bringing aid to Gaza. Thousands have protested in New York, Istanbul, Ankara, Stockholm, Paris and many other places, in one of the biggest mobilizations on behalf of the Palestinian cause in years. 

Even in Cairo, where pro-Palestinian demos have been very, very tightly restricted since the Gaza war — since the regime doesn't want any reminders of its role in the Gaza blockade — today was a surprise. At first, the protest outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs seemed disappointed, with only a few dozen participants. But this evening, thousands gathered at the al-Fath mosque on Ramses Square and staged an impressive protest, even if they were penned in by several hundred uniformed riot control troops and police officers, as well as tons of plainclothes security people and a bunch of baltiguiya (street toughs hired to intimidate, and need be, beat up protesters).  

I didn't get to come close to the mosque, because police people were everywhere (mostly plainclothes, which always leads me to say the equivalent of, 'who the fuck are you? where's your uniform? show me some ID if you're a cop' and that gets tiresome, especially since I probably only get away with it because I'm a khawaga) getting people to move off. But from what I could tell — confirmed by my colleagues Sarah Carr and Jon Jensen who were closer and there longer — it was a tightly organized affair, if not led by the Muslim Brothers then definitely Islamist-dominated. They even had a brief moment of shouting slogans against Mubarak, although that was quickly shushed down (my guess would be this is the old Labor Party Islamists vs. MB argument).

It's important to note that this is the biggest protest about Palestine since the Gaza war, in an atmosphere in which such protests have not been tolerated. We might see more in the next few days, including on Friday after prayers. This may revive local activism on Gaza as well as linkages made between the situation there and the situation in Egypt — notably the Mubarak regime's collaboration with Israel on the blockade. Expect a fierce fight in the media over this in the next few days, and more opportunities to express all sorts of grievances. But when Turkey expels its ambassador and Egypt is seen to be doing nothing, it looks very, very bad for Cairo.

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