AxisMundi Jerusalem

Following the money from Washington to the West Bank…

By encouraging foreign investment in the Palestinian economy, and notably the part of it controlled by President Mahmoud Abbas rather than the Hamas Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip, the United States and its allies hope to create conditions more conducive for long-stalled peace talks with Israel to succeed.

Israel, too, led by the government installed this month under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is hoping for an “economic peace” with the Palestinian Authority.

Reuters has reviewed aid and investment promotion programmes developed by Washington, the European Union and other donors. 

In a series of stories running this week, Reuters will explore U.S. aid contracts won by firms run by Abbas’s sons, a shift in the structure and governance of a Palestinian investment fund, and the role of a small group of politically-powerful Palestinian companies linked by a web of cross holdings. 

Wanted: an ethical code of war

    International law governing the conduct of war is based on the traditional model of two armies on a battlefield. It fails to apply effectively to ‘terrorist conflicts’ and provides insufficient response to the ethical dilemmas that arise.

    Until effective international law is developed to regulate the ‘war on terror’, no decisive ethical code will exist. This is not only a challenge for the Israeli military. It is shared by all Western armies fighting to preserve core democratic values.

    The above is the thesis of an Israeli foreign ministry briefing published March 25 in response to allegations that Israel flouted the rules of war in its Gaza offensive Dec 27-Jan 18 against Islamist militants led by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

     Here are a few excerpts. It may be noted that the docmuent does not define “terrorist” or allude in any way to the political, religious, national or other causes underlying “terrorist” activities. You can read the full document (one and a half pages only) here.

“Terrorists have developed a number of strategies … to offset their military inferiority … at the same time they place the value of propaganda above the value of human life.”

“Terrorists attempty to deligitimize the actions of their state targets: by protraying themselves as victims, by accusing the state of unfair play, and by waging war in densely populated areas and causing panic among the populace with the ultimate goal of obtaining media coverage.”

“To confront ethical dilemmas arising during counter-terrorist operations, the IDF (Israel Defence Force) developed a moral code, The Spirit of the IDF .

The code is composed of Israeli values, democratic Western values and commitment to international laws. It is deeply integrated  throughout each IDF soldier’s education.

Spirit places a high standard of personal judgement when targetting terrorists who seek shelter among civilians.

Until an effective international deterrent exists, terrorists will continue to use civilians as human shields. The advantages to amoral forces of operating from densely-populated urban areas are clear, as are the media advtanges arising from international condemnation of counter-terrorist operations in these areas. As a result, international legal attention to this issue is vital.”

Captured Israeli soldier’s parents take protest to Olmert’s doorstep

Dubbed Israel’s most polite protesters by one Israeli newspaper columnist, the parents of captured soldier Gilad Shalit have set up a protest tent outside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Jerusalem residence to press for his release.

Shalit, 22, has been held since 2006 by militants from Hamas and two other groups who tunnelled into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Hamas has demanded Israel release hundreds of its members held in Israeli prisons in exchange for the soldier.

Some of those Hamas men have been convicted of carrying out attacks that have killed Israelis, and the prospect of their release has set off a heated debate in Israel.

Israeli leaders have agreed to numerically lopsided swaps with Arab enemies in the past in exchange for captured soldiers or their bodies. Those in Israel opposed to a similar deal to get Shalit back argue it would only strengthen Hamas’s resolve in its fight against Israel.

Top job in the new government? No thanks!

By Tova Cohen

Though it’s considered one of the top three cabinet posts in Israel’s government,  in these troubled times there seems to be no takers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party for the job of finance minister, according to the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

Netanyahu, who is in the process of putting together a government after last month’s general election, is seeking to give the finance post to someone in his own party, but senior members are reluctant to step into this “honey trap”, the country’s top selling daily reported.

“It’s not a secret that these days no one wants the Treasury,” the paper quoted a Likud member of parliament as saying. “Only a Shiite suicide (bomber) would take on this job. Everyone knows that Bibi ( Netanyahu) will rise or fall on the financial issues so who wants to get into this mess?”

A senior Likud member who has been mentioned as a possible candidate for finance minister was quoted as saying that if he took the post in these times, he would be a  “marked man”.

Two senior Likud members expecting ministerial positions in the new government have served as finance minister – Dan Meridor and Silvan Shalom. But they both are said to prefer the defence ministry to avoid having to deal with a looming recession and the global financial crisis.

Foreign Affairs

Israeli newspapers are abuzz this morning as they mull over the possibility that ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman could be appointed foreign minister in the government that Benjamin Netanyahu is working to stitch together.

The strong showing by Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel our Home) party in last month’s election – where it won the third most Knesset seats ahead of the Labour Party - has put the Moldovan-born former nightclub bouncer turned bureaucrat in a strong position in the lobbying for top ministerial posts in the new government.

With Israel’s coalition building process such a tortuous and drawn-out affair, speculation, much of it wild, about who will get what job is inevitably rife in the local media.

As we reported yesterday – Netanyahu has ruled Lieberman out as a future defence minister, one of the top jobs in an Israeli government.

Lieberman is also understood to be interested in other key jobs for himself and his people including Justice, Interior and Internal security.

His aides, though, play down talk of all this horse-trading and deal-making.

“He has said he wants the defence portfolio, but he has also said cabinet positions are not a deal-breaker. What’s really important is that we agree on basic policy lines,” Yisrael Beiteinu spokeswoman Irena Etinger said.

from Global News Journal:

Gaza damage more than even the ‘fixer’ can fix

I first met Raed al-Athamna when he was driving a journalist friend of mine around Gaza in his yellow, stretch-Mercedes taxi during the tense and violent days after Gaza militants captured Gilad Shalit, a young Israeli soldier, in the summer of 2006.

Raed seemed to be a good 'fixer' - attentive, sensible and with far-from-perfect but perfectly understandable English.

A few months later, I interviewed him in the rubble of Beit Hanoun - after Israeli tank shells slammed in to a relative's home killing 18 members of his extended family early one morning as most were still sleeping.

Israel said a technical mishap caused the shells to stray from their intended targets and in to the residential neighbourhood where the Athamnas lived.

Perhaps because his immediate family had escaped the tragedy in their nearby home, and perhaps because loss is so intimately entwined in the lives of Gazans, Raed seemed sanguine and calm in the interview and still confident that peace between Israelis and Palestinians was possible.

Raed's business hit a lean patch soon after that interview - when many of the foreign journalists he worked with stopped making the trip in to Gaza as the menace of kidnapping and the unpredictability of the factional fighting between Fatah and Hamas effectively put the Strip off limits.

from Global News Journal:

Twittering from the front-lines

Who remembers the Google Wars website that was doing the viral rounds a few years back – a mildly amusing, non-scientific snapshot of the search-driven, internet world we live in?

It lives on at www.googlebattle.com where you can enter two search terms, say ‘Lennon vs. McCartney’ or ‘Left vs. Right’, and let the internet pick a winner by the number of search hits each word gets.

As we reported here – the virtual world has become a real battleground in the ongoing Gaza conflict – with all sides deploying significant resources.

For Israel – where hasbara or PR has often been frowned upon as unnecessary pandering to international opinion that never turns in Israel’s favour anyway – the second Lebanon war underlined the need for a coherent media and PR strategy coordinated at the centre of government.

The post-mortem of the month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006 - known as the Winograd Commission - recommended a centralised approach to hasbara to avoid spokesmen from different ministries, the army or the police telling different or conflicting stories to a voracious local and international media.

Notwithstanding the fact that the head of the new National Information Directorate did not make it to a scheduled interview with our reporter on the story above  – as my colleague Dan Williams reported here the strategy certainly seems to be working for domestic consumption.

Sources inside the Israeli government have said they are generally happy with the way the strategy has worked internationally as well despite growing international calls for a ceasefire and increasingly angry protests around the world.