AxisMundi Jerusalem
Inside Israel and the Palestinian Territories
O Hamas where art thou?
Hamas has kept a pretty low profile in the West Bank recently–when will that change?
According to recent polls in both Israel and the West Bank, both Israeli and Palestinian populations are looking to see Hamas step up to the plate in negotiations. But that might not be enough to make Hamas willing to resurface in the West Bank just yet.
Two days ago, the Israel Dialogue Institute released a poll saying that over half of the Israeli public wants to see Hamas brought into negotiations if it recognized Israel (See Reuters’ story here).
A Ha’aretz article said, “it turns out that the majority of the public – 57% – supports the view of (Knesset member) Shaul Mofaz of (Israeli centrist party) Kadima, who published a plan earlier this week, in which he called for dialogue with Hamas under certain conditions. Inside Kadima the idea has tremendous support by some 72 percent of the party’s voters.”
Even more surprising is that among supporters of Likud, Israel’s right-wing political party, 53% of the public approved of negotiating with Hamas.
But according to a recent report in the Carnegie Endowment’s Arab Reform Bulletin, Hamas plans to keep lying low in the midst of the West Bank political storm between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American negotiators (original Arabic here).
“Hamas has also gone to ground on the West Bank because it is convinced that the current situation will eventually redound to its benefit,” says Palestinian writer Omran al-Risheq–especially given Abbas’ refusal to restart peace talks with Israel, the US reluctance to demand a total settlement freeze, and Abbas’ recent announcements that he won’t run for re-election. (Read Reuters’ latest story here.)
A Muddy Journey: Sewage Tunnel becomes transit point to Jerusalem
Ordinary women and men, wearing plastic bags on their feet, pulling pants up to knee level, clutch their children to their chests and roam along a 110-metre dark tunnel of sewage to cross from the Israeli-occupied West Bank to East Jerusalem.
Erected under a barrier that Israel is building in the West Bank in defiance of a World Court ruling, the tunnel serves as a gateway connecting Palestinians from the West Bank to East Jerusalem, a centre for medical, social, religious and other services for the Palestinians.
The passage goes from the village of Old Beit Hanina in the West Bank to the area also called Beit Hanina in what Israel has annexed as part of its Jerusalem municipality. It was first used in early 2004, locals say, when Israel erected the barrier between the two Beit Haninas. What was originally essentially one village became physically divided in two. The tunnel was last used during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in late September by people anxious to visit family or to pray in Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque. Israel restricts entry for Palestinians to the city. Since then Israel has blocked off the passage — not for the first time.
Scenes of people’s legs sinking up to the knee in sewage are depicted in ”Journey 110″ by Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar, who spent six hours capturing the 12-minute-long clip last year.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip can only enter Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as a capital for their future state, with often hard-to-get permits from Israeli authorities. In 1967, Israel captured the territories including Arab East Jerusalem.
Local officials in Old Beit Hanina estimated the number of people who crossed the passage at up to 150 per day while it was open. “People are not doing it for fun and this is may be the only way to get to Jerusalem,” said Saleh Daajneh, an official in the village.
God Bless Israel in their struggle against these palestinian squatters in their land.
“Little Palestine”
Palestinian reconciliation efforts suffered another setback when President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree for presidential and parliamentary elections on Jan. 24, a move that was rejected by the Islamist group Hamas. Egypt has been mediating for over a year to heal the split between Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas but the two rivals have continuously failed to reach a unity agreement. (Read our Q&A to understand why the two Palestinian factions fail to reach an agreement on Cairo’s latest proposal.) Most Palestinians believe a unity deal is crucial to achieving Palestinian statehood but don’t think an agreement is likely. However, the rare case of successful Fatah-Hamas partnership in the West Bank village of Beita might convince them otherwise.
Elected leaders of this town come from different backgrounds and political affiliations but all serve on the same council, working in synergy to build a robust independently-funded infrastructure – a rarity in the Palestinian territories.
In the 2004 municipal elections, Beita village produced an 11-member council comprised of 6 Hamas and 5 Fatah members, with Sheikh Arab from Hamas as mayor. Shortly after the elections, Sheikh Arab joined forces with Abu Haitham, a former mayor of 8 years who had headed the Fatah ballot list, and together they worked to start building what they call ‘Little Palestine’.
“We asked ourselves this question, ‘Why did we come to this council?’ and all 11 members answered: ‘We came here for the good of the town,’” Sheikh Arab told Reuters. “We cooperate on what we agree and we pardon one another on issues we do not agree. We try to pretend as if Beita is Little Palestine with all of its problems – political, social, economic, and security issues.”
Like most Hamas leaders in the West Bank, Sheikh Arab was arrested by Palestinian forces loyal to Abbas in 2007, the year Hamas wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah. He was released in 2009 and now serves as deputy to the current mayor, Abu Muhanad, a Fatah member who last held the post while Sheikh Arab was in detention.
“Outside the walls of this municipality, I am still Fatah and defend Fatah, and he is Hamas and defends Hamas. But we defend the right things and what is wrong on what we all agree is wrong,” Abu Muhanad said about his relationship with his deputy mayor.
Unity and cooperation within the leadership isn’t the town’s only achievement, said Abu Haitham, the former mayor who oversees various investments and development projects. “On top of the slogan to have unity and cooperation, we have adopted another principle and that is how to move from relief to development. In this respect, we concentrated on investments and how to rely on our income,” he said.
the americans are the top terrorist in the world, they are a threat for the peace in the world
Insulting the intelligence
Good morning, children.
Today we are going to learn about two common rhetorical tricks that help greatly with the cynical manipulation of arguments.
First, disingenuousness. The Oxford Shorter English Dictionary defines disingenuous as “lacking in frankness, insincere, morally fraudulent”, in the sense of pretending not to know what you in fact know very well.
Second, the straw man argument. Wikipedia defines this as misrepresentation of an opponent’s position, to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the straw man) and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original proposition.
Today, thanks to Mr Netanyahu, we have one handy slice of well-worn rhetoric to illustrate both rhetorical tricks.
I often wonder if the anti-Israel propagandists at Reuters like Douglas Hamilton and Alistair MacDonald sit around the table at Starbucks on Oxford Street sipping on lattes and dreaming up new and contemptible ways to slander Israel and its leaders.
At various points in their histories, sovereignty over New York, London, Paris, and Rome was also in dispute. The same holds true with Prague, Toronto, Istanbul, Pittsburgh, and today, Belfast, Gibraltar, and Jerusalem.
Jerusalem has been invaded, conquered, and colonized over a longer period of time than any other city in the world but only one nation can lay original claim to sovereignty and that is the Jewish nation. Despite numerous bloody conquests and expulsions, there has always been a Jewish presence in Jerusalem and the city has had a majority Jewish population since the 19th century. The fictitious “city” of East Jerusalem – which Reuters correspondents guilefully capitalize in an effort to demarcate as separate from the rest of the city – is home to the most sacred Jewish antiquities and, despite ethnic cleansing by Jordan between 1948 and 1967, 42% Jewish by population.
Of course, neither Douglas Hamilton nor any of the other Reuters crop will tell you the above nor will they explain that the 1947 UN resolution to internationalize Jerusalem was to be followed 10 years later by a vote among the city’s residents on the issue of sovereignty – a vote it is clear the Jewish majority in Jerusalem would have held in favor of Israel.
In these willful refusals to report the truth, it is Hamilton who is guilty of “insulting the intelligence”.
from Global News Journal:
Peace is no kiss, Israeli aide says
A top adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used an odd turn of phrase to explain what some see as a puzzling demand put to Palestinians by the right-wing leader as a condition for any any Israeli agreement to establishing a state in the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu wants Palestinians to recognise Israel explicitly as a Jewish state, in addition to their having recognised Israeli sovereignty as part of an interim peace deal in 1993. He feels this would symbolise an historic end of conflict, his aides have explained.
At a briefing summing up Netanyahu's first 100 days in office, advisor Uzi Arad and several other officials rejected criticism from centrist Kadima party leaders who accused the Israeli leader of achieving little on the diplomatic front since his government was sworn in late in March.
Netanyahu had clearly laid out the terms for any future peace deal, they said. Arad emphasised what he saw as the importance of seeking further Palestinian acceptance of Israel's existence, before Israel would agree to Palestinians achieving statehood in territory Israel captured in a 1967 war.
"Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, which they have so far refused to do, is not a matter of a kiss on the forehead, but a declaration of intent," Arad said.
"If they don't do it, they will have a serious problem, something everyone understands," Arad added, alluding to what would be Israel's refusal to reach the two-state deal the United States and Europe have been seeking, unless the condition were met.
Palestinians dismiss Netanyahu's condition as inconsistent with international law and say it isn't up to any nation to define the nationality of another.
“Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, which they have so far refused to do, is not a matter of a kiss on the forehead, but a declaration of intent,”
Arad knows very well that for the Palestinians to accept Israel in its present form is a declaration of suicide. And like the rest of the Netanyahu’s cabinet, he’s using this tactic to deflect growing international criticism of Israel’s ‘settlements’ (a neutral term designed to mask their racist character)
In a recent interview with Haaretz, Arad made it clear that he would prefer to focus his ‘brute energies’ on the ‘goyim’ rather than see Israel facing off the settlers. Arad may be many things, but a closet racist isn’t one of them. He sees no problem in openly identifying with the cultural genocide the settlers and the IDF are carrying out in the West Bank and Gaza.
Palestinian recognition of Israel as their overlord is of little importance. What Israelis should be concerned with is how the “the world’s most moral army” is being indoctrinated to casually murder children who are not amongst the chosen ones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tSskdcs mI
Unlikely visitor
The setting seemed surreal, watching Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, an ardent ultranationalist, being warmly welcomed to an Arab town.
Only weeks ago Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party had introduced bills proposing to restrict the rights of Arab citizens deemed as disloyal to the Jewish state, and many had responded by denouncing him as a racist.
Yet here he was on weekend evening, being feted with oven- baked fish and skewered lamb, stuffing his mouth with freshly picked cherries after cuddling a local toddler on a porch in Shefaram, one of Israel’s largest Arab towns.
It was the same town where Jewish-Arab tensions had been running high last month as Israel put seven Shefaram men on trial for allegedly killing an armed soldier four years ago at the scene of a deadly shooting attack aboard a public bus in which four Arabs were killed. The suspects insist they acted in self defence and that Israel was following a double standard by trying them, a step Israel seldom takes against Jewish citizens accused of killing Arab assailants.
That issue seemed pretty remote from the gaiety that prevailed at the reception fellow parliamentarian Hamed Amer threw for Lieberman in Shefaram, a town Amer calls home as a member of its tiny Druze minority.
“Our entire community embraces you and loves you,” Amer said, surrounded by several dozen Druze religious leaders wearing customary red and white hats, and some local politicians.
from Global News Journal:
Austrian far-right leader isolated over Israel stance
Senior figures from across Austria's political spectrum have condemned the head of the far-right Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, over his party's European election campaign directed against Israel and Turkey.
In an advertisement in the newspaper Kronen Zeitung, Freedom opposes the accession of Turkey and Israel to the European Union. Although Turkey is in EU accession talks, Israel is not.
Heinz-Christian Strache prepares for a TV discussion in Vienna, Sept. 17, 2008. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader (AUSTRIA)
"What is the most distasteful and despicable is the style," says Ernst Strasser, the conservatives' candidate in next month's elections for the European Parliament, referring to Strache's campaign. "This style is abusive. He vilifies other religions and ethnicities."
According to Chancellor Werner Faymann, Strache is "a hate monger, a disgrace".
"It makes absolutely no sense for Israel to be mentioned. Israel is not a candidate for accession. There isn't even an accession process. The only reason to mention Israel is to serve anti-Semitic prejudices. It is disgraceful."
I do not quite get it. Mr. Fayman may object to Strahe’s style (although words are more important),but certainly, Strache is not the first or the only one who is objecting to “Israel and other ethnicities”. Not that that is the most important, to begin with.
If Austria in general is not enamoured by far right, and only “senior figures from accross Austria’s political spectrum” are condemning Strahe’s rude words against Israel and Turkey, how come, then, that Mr.Heider who exuded much more directly expressed hate of almost anything “not Austrian”, got such a wide following, not to mention the most elaborate state funeral that I have ever seen; the politicians, the Church, the young and the old in their full splendor, flowers and candles and all the paraphernalia of the pomp. Why such a big deal about Strache, then.
israel is has become a terrorist sponsoring nation. just like how hamas is sponsored by iran, the israeli government is sponosring the IDF who has killed thousands of people in palestine and lebanon. The U.S. needs to sending our tax dollars to them. we need to stop sending them a welfare check. if we can distance ourself from israel and its extremist government, we can reduce the threat of islamci extremesim against us.