Yahoos rising

In the Israeli election, it looks like the Likud rightist Benjamin Netanyahu has split the results with Kadima's Tzipi Livni. Livni was an instigator behind the recent Gaza Crisis, so it's not like her party is a great choice, but when compared to a Netanyahu administration... We might be looking the Israeli version of a neoconservative on steroids. Especially since Netanyahu has the best chance of working a power sharing agreement in the Knesset to become Prime Minister:

To get the president's mandate to form the next government, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has fewer seats than Tzipi Livni, will need to lock-down a majority of Knesset members, which means a coalition of:

Likud+Lieberman+Shas+various ultraOrthodox and ultraNationlist parties.

This he can almost certainly do, and, given his victory speech, intends to, although Lieberman and Shas despise one another.

Don't expect peace talks in the Holy Land any time soon. Meanwhile, I'll be rereading this in my free time.

Gaza Strip News

International Solidarity Movement supplied the Guardian with footage of the aftermath of the Israeli air raid. The town of Rafah was heavily battered from bombing.

In other news: President-elect Obama intends to have back-channel talks with Hamas.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush ­presidency's ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 ­Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.

The Guardian has spoken to three ­people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start ­contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.

The Bush policy of not talking to Hamas hasn't worked. I am not sure Obama's attempts at dialogue will be anymore productive. Hamas does not want an independent state, living peacefully with Israel. Hamas wants the destruction of Israel. The Europeans, Canada and Australia recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization. Where is the middle ground?

Hamas has become extremely popular in the occupied territories for providing social services. The corrupt Afafat regime failed to take care of the Palestinian people. The first thing Obama needs to do is get the Israelis and Palestinians away from the other's throat. Clinton was good at that. President Bush told Colin Powell: "I don’t see much we can do over there at this point." We see what Bush's lack of interest has done to Israel. Obama appears to be engaged. That is a promising start.

Who's in control?

[Crossposted from Talk Radio is Stupid]

Ran across an interesting report in my Twitterfeed today. Al Jazeera Gaza (AJGaza) had two reports on a brief ceasefire three hours ago...

Report 1:

The Israeli military confirms it has paused military operations in #Gaza for a period of three hours to allow Palesti nians to access aid.

Report 2:

Hamas says it will not fire rockets into Israel during the same period of time, Al Jazeera's corre spondent reports.

One might say, "Great! At least they agree to something!" But not so fast. Here's a third report from AJGaza:

One rocket and two mortars fired from #Gaza by Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, thirty minutes i nto hostility pause.

So a 180 minute truce lasted all of 30 minutes because of Hamas... Maybe.
Reading news like this makes me wonder who's really in control of the Palestinian military operations (if you can even apply such a grand title to a Mickey Mouse system of rockets) in Gaza. The first update says that Hamas and Israel agreed to the brief ceasefire, but the third update says the Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades were firing rockets. While the Qassam Brigades are commonly regarded as the military wing of the Hamas party, has anyone considered the notion that they could have autonomy from Hamas? If the latter is true, then even the Palestinian government Israel claims to be fighting against is more complex then they have presented.

Second thought: These reports also mean that Israel refuses to let any humanitarian aid in unless the rocket fire stops. Since Israel full well knows that innocent civilians have been harmed as a direct result of their rockets, not giving those citizens access to medical aid which they need puts to rest any notion that Israel isn't targeting civilians. Anyone who argues to the contrary is an idiot (and we sure have a lot of those people around, unfortunately). And isn't holding back humanitarian aid breaking some international laws? It's like Israel hasn't respected international law since the year of their formation, 1948! Oh wait, I'm not being sarcastic. Oopsie.
Third thought: Israel may have broken the ceasefire, too. Here's a tweet from a Palestinian in Gaza from 2 hours ago:

the occupation bombed my home and iam fin e #gaza

This tweet was posted a couple of hours ago, but it could be in response to the fact that he hadn't tweeted in a couple of days.. Meaning his house could have been bombed in the past two days and not two hours. It's still surreal, though, to receive communiqués whose house was just bombed. Maybe Israel thought his house contained one of those famous Hamas terrorist cells. Boy they recruit young.
Click here if you want to be even more appalled.  That should tell you who's really in control.

Honesty and peace, they go hand in hand. And without one...

For the past eight years Bush has used the "Blame the Beaten Wife" argument against Palestinians, so his implementation of it again in his radio address today isn't surprising. Likewise, maybe this part of is speech isn't surprising, either, but I think it's worthy of closer inspection:

He expressed concern about the humanitarian suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza, but again blamed this on Hamas.

"By spending its resources on rocket launchers instead of roads and schools, Hamas has demonstrated that it has no intention of serving the Palestinian people," Bush said.

The assumption here is that the Palestinian people are free to live their lives how they wish and build a society. You have to be pretty ignorant of history to believe this, but Bush is talking to Americans here... So we have a lot of people who believe this.

I could whip out the traditions arguments against Bush's assertion: Israel's economic blockade of the Occupied Territories: controlling how much water and electricity they do (and don't receive), continually taking their land, building walls around their society that separate the territories from the rest of the world, etc. And all of that is important, but first we need a visual representation of oppression.



Here's a colored map of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where most Palestinians live. The dark green spots show the parts of the territories which are nominally under the control of Palestinians. As you can tell, the areas that Palestinians "control" in their own territory is startlingly fragmented -- how could anyone even claim that Palestinians are free to build their own society when they are given so little land build upon?

And where it's not dark green? Could be an Israeli-only highway, could be Israeli settlers who are surrounded by the IDF for protection. Last July, a Guardian reporter went to a West Bank town (which I would surmise to not be in a dark green zone) and made a must-see audio slideshow of how differently Palestinians and Israeli settlers are treated there. The slideshow gives you a personal view of all the traditional arguments: land and water control, electricity, checkpoints, etc. Is this the Palestinian freedom that Bush speaks of? Is he kidding?

As for the dark green spots, some will point out that all of Gaza is dark green because Israel moved all of its settlers out of there. So they're free, right? I think the past couple of weeks have given us an answer to that question -- an indisputable fact that only a stubborn idiot would protest against.

Which brings us back to Bush.

One wonders what Bush's motivations are. With less than 20 days left in office, does he have any motivation left? Does he actually believe what his speech writers tell him to say even though it can easily be debunked by a blogger with half an hour to kill? Is Bush actually that stupid? Or is Israel holding a gun to Bush's head, telling him that they'll spend billions on arms from Russia instead of us if he doesn't pimp their public relations points about how war against Palestinians is an awesome thing? Though interesting to ponder, we won't know the answer for quite a while (if ever, depending on how many documents the Bush administration shreds on its way out the door).

What is important to note is that, whether or not Bush knows he's lying, he's not helping. By arguing that Palestinians are free and choose to be terrorists, Bush does not honestly assess the dire situation the Palestinians live under every day. How can a peace process even begin when one side isn't represented honestly?

Thus, the cycle of violence continues. Thanks Bush. Please be sure to fuck the hell off on your way out, you warmongering fucking asshole.

Placing the latest Israel/Gaza violence into perspective...

Robert Fisk (h/t mattthebastard):

Ever since 1948, we've been hearing this balderdash from the Israelis -- just as Arab nationalists and then Arab Islamists have been peddling their own lies: that the Zionist "death wagon" will be overthrown, that all Jerusalem will be "liberated." And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise "restraint" -- as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.

Amnesty International:

This is the highest level of Palestinian fatalities and casualties in four decades of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The escalation of violence comes at a time when the civilian population already faces a daily struggle for survival due to the Israeli blockade which has prevented even food and medicines from entering Gaza.

So this latest Israeli hissy fit bout of violence may be unprecedented (since 1948, at least). And speaking of the Israelis blockading aid, the Guardian reports...

Israel accused of ramming Gaza aid ship

The Free Gaza Movement said its vessel, the Dignity, was intercepted by several Israeli vessels as it was heading to the Gaza Strip, which has been under Israeli aerial bombardment since Saturday.

One gunboat rammed the Dignity on the port bow side, causing heavy damage, although no one was hurt, the group said.

"[The Dignity] is taking on water and appears to have engine problems," the movement said on its website. "When attacked, the Dignity was clearly in international waters, 90 miles off the coast of Gaza.

As for the origins of this current crisis, it's tough to know where to begin... But, as OpenLeft points out, some blame should be given to the Bush administration since it was them who helped bring Hamas into power (ironically enough):

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

But, as we all know, the real question is how many anti-Arab, pro-death trolls will this post rake in? Fuck talking about reality! Meanwhile, the bodycount mounts... And Arab leaders still don't know what the hell to do. (Well, except for the Egyptians, who seem content with shooting at Gazans at the border and not opening up their hospitals to them. Classy.) But to be fair, Bush doesn't know what to do either -- he won't even cut his vacation short because of the crisis. Which is also classy.

What's up, Gaza?

We often hear about the violent side of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict because that's more sensational, but we're subjected to much less about normal, day to day life there. So what's normalcy in Gaza right now?

Smuggled through tunnels from Egypt, sheep were not selling well in a Gaza market on the eve of a Muslim holiday in which the animals are slaughtered and their meat is donated to the poor.

'People here are just watching one another and nobody is buying,' complained sheep merchant Omar Fuji. 'The prices are higher because we had to pay a $100 fee to the tunneller on every sheep that came through.'

And why aren't Palestinians buying the sheep?

'It is a difficult Eid [holiday]. There are no salaries, no cash at banks. Electricity is cut most of the day,' said Ezzel-Deen Abu Amira, a 42-year-old civil engineer.

Some 77,000 Gaza employees have not received their November pay and banks have been shut since Thursday because they do not have enough money to operate. Israel cut off imports of cash and other goods this month as cross-border violence rose.

And thus we see normal, day to day life in the Gaza Strip. Some people call news like this anti-semitic; others call it "context".

Let's talk Apartheid

A while back, some unknown former president that I'm sure nobody has ever heard of published a book overviewing all sides of the arguments between Israel and Palestine, as well as offering some solutions to these problems. This book angered many of our comrades on the right side of the fence. How dare a former president write a book critical of Israel!, they screamed. Worse yet, this former president used the word "Apatheid" in the title of his book as a description of what Israel was doing to Palestine, and such claims against Israel are outrageous and racist!, they also claimed.

Well.

They're gonna fucking hate this news item: "Olmert fears apartheid in the Mideast."

For those of you who are scratching your heads over just who "Olmert" is, he's the prime minister of Israel. You know, head of state, yadda yadda... The linked article has further details on his comments:

JERUSALEM -- In unusually frank comments, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview published Thursday that "the state of Israel is finished" unless a Palestinian nation is created, saying the alternative is a South African-style apartheid struggle. [...]

"The day will come when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights," Olmert told Haaretz [a major Israeli daily newspaper]. "As soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished."

So there you have it: the chief executive officer of Israel compares his country's treatment of Palestine to the racist apartheid system that gripped South Africa so many years ago. On the heels of this news, I betcha three things won't happen:

- The Right won't apologize to President Carter for their vicious attacks on his character
- The Right won't be even a tenth as much angry with Olmert as they were with Carter
- And, most importantly (or should I say "pathetically"?), the Right won't read Olmert's comments and rethink their views on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict

Because, after all, they could never, ever be wrong! Not even when the head in a country whose reprehensible actions they so slavishly defend says they're wrong.