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Blunderov
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The Golem Cometh
« on: 2011-05-05 15:34:52 » |
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[Blunderov] Israel have had a purple patch while the bin Laden years lasted but now the lumpen Arab street is rising from the desert dirt and is taking a form. The golem cometh. And so it begins...
Global research
Egypt and Israel heading for crisis
Mood in Cairo turns against close ties
by Jonathan Cook
Global Research, May 5, 2011
Israeli officials have expressed alarm at a succession of moves by the interim Egyptian government that they fear signal an impending crisis in relations with Cairo.
The widening rift was underscored yesterday when leaders of the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation pact in the Egyptian capital. Egypt's secret role in brokering the agreement last week caught both Israel and the United States by surprise.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the deal “a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism”.
Several other developments have added to Israeli concerns about its relations with Egypt, including signs that Cairo hopes to renew ties with Iran and renegotiate a long-standing contract to supply Israel with natural gas.
More worrying still to Israeli officials are reported plans by Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza, closed for the past four years as part of a Western-backed blockade of the enclave designed to weaken Hamas, the ruling Islamist group there.
Egypt is working out details to permanently open the border, an Egyptian foreign ministry official told the Reuters news agency on Sunday. The blockade would effectively come to an end as a result.
The same day Egypt's foreign minister, Nabil Elaraby, called on the United States to recognise a Palestinian state -- in reference to a move expected in September by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to seek recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.
Israel and the US have insisted that the Palestinians can achieve statehood only through negotiations with Israel. Talks have been moribund since Israel refused last September to renew a partial freeze on settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
According to analysts, the interim Egyptian government, under popular pressure, is consciously distancing itself from some of the main policies towards Israel and the Palestinians pursued by Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president overthrown by a popular uprising in February.
Mubarak was largely supportive of Israel and Washington's blockade policy to contain Hamas' influence. Egypt receives more than $1.3 billion annually in US aid, second only to Israel.
But the popular mood in Egypt appears to be turning against close diplomatic ties with Israel.
A poll published last week by the Pew Research Centre showed that 54 per cent of Egyptians backed the annulment of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, with only 36 per cent wanting it maintained.
Israel's Yedioth Aharonoth daily reported this week that Egyptian social media sites had called for a mass demonstration outside the Israeli embassy tomorrow, demanding the expulsion of the ambassador, Yitzhak Levanon.
In comments to several media outlets last weekend, unnamed senior Israeli officials criticised Egypt's new foreign policy line. One told the Wall Street Journal that Cairo's latest moves could "affect Israel's national security on a strategic level".
Another unnamed official told the Jerusalem Post that "the upgrading of the relationship between Egypt and Hamas" might allow the Islamic movement to develop into a "formidable terrorist military machine".
Silvan Shalom, Israel's vice-premier, told Israel Radio on Sunday that Israel should brace for significant changes in Egyptian policies that would allow Iran to increase its influence in Gaza.
Egypt's chief of staff, Sami Hafez Anan, responded dismissively on his Facebook page to such statements, saying, "Israel has no right to interfere. This is an Egyptian-Palestinian matter."
In a sign of Israeli panic, Netanyahu is reported to be considering sending his special adviser, Isaac Molho, to Cairo for talks with the interim government.
In recent weeks, Netanyahu has repeatedly complained to visiting European ambassadors and US politicians about what he regards as a new, more hostile climate in Egypt.
Late last month Elaraby said Egypt was ready to “turn over a new leaf” in relations with Tehran, which were severed after the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty more than three decades ago.
Egyptian offiials have also warned that the supply of natural gas to Israel may be halted. The pipeline has been attacked twice on the Egyptian side, including last week, in acts presumed to be sabotage.
Even if Egypt continues the flow of gas, it is almost certain to insist on a sharp rise in the cost, following reports that Mubarak and other officials are being investigated on corruption charges relating to contracts that underpriced gas to Israel.*
Yoram Meital, an expert on Israeli-Egyptian relations at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva, said Egypt's policy change towards Gaza threatened to "provoke a severe crisis in Egyptian-Israeli relations" by undermining Israel's policy of isolating Hamas.
With the toppling of Mubarak’s authoritarian regime, Meital noted, the Egyptian government is under pressure to be more responsive to local opinion.
“We are at the beginning of this crisis but we are not there yet. However, there is room for a great deal more deterioration in relations over the coming months,” he said.
Analysts said Cairo wanted to restore its traditional leadership role in the Arab world and believed it was hampered by its ties with Israel.
Menha Bahoum, a spokeswoman for the Egyptian foreign ministry, told the New York Times last week: “We are opening a new page. Egypt is resuming its role that was once abdicated.”
That assessment is shared by Hamas and Fatah, both of which were looking to Egypt for help, said Menachem Klein, a politics professor at Bar Ilan University.
He noted that Abbas had lost his chief Arab sponsor in the form of Mubarak, and that the Hamas leadership's base in Syria was precarious given the current upheavals there.
With growing demands from the Palestinian public for reconciliation, neither faction could afford to ignore the tide of change sweeping the Arab world, he said.
Meital said: “We are entering a new chapter in the region's history and Israeli politicians and the public are not yet even close to understanding what is taking place”.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
Jonathan Cook is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
* Oh rly? Israel has been stealing from the Egyptian people? I bet that doesn't play well on the street.
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Blunderov
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #1 on: 2011-05-18 17:34:52 » |
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[Blunderov] Israel kills unarmed civilians and no NATO airstrikes against Tel Aviv? No warrants from the ICC? Not even a mild rebuke? All this will likely add to the store of troubles to come.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=COO20110518&articleId=24833
Israel in strategic* dead-end. Nakba protests: A taste of the future.
by Jonathan Cook
Global Research, May 18, 2011
They are extraordinary scenes. Film shot on mobile phones captured the moment on Sunday when at least 1,000 Palestinian refugees marched across no-man's land to one of the most heavily protected borders in the world, the one separating Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Waving Palestinian flags, the marchers braved a minefield, then tore down a series of fences, allowing more than 100 to run into Israeli-controlled territory. As they embraced Druze villagers on the other side, voices could be heard saying: "This is what liberation looks like."
Unlike previous years, this Nakba Day was not simply a commemoration of the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians in 1948, when their homeland was forcibly reinvented as the Jewish state. It briefly reminded Palestinians that, despite their long-enforced dispersion, they still have the potential to forge a common struggle against Israel.
As Israel violently cracked down on last Sunday's protests on many fronts -- in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and on the borders with Syria and Lebanon -- it looked less like a military superpower and more like the proverbial boy with his finger in the dam.
The Palestinian "Arab Spring" is arriving and Israel has no diplomatic or political strategy to deal with it. Instead on Sunday, Israel used the only weapon in its current arsenal -- brute force -- against unarmed demonstrators.
Along the northern borders, at least 14 protesters were killed and dozens wounded, both at Majdal Shams in the Golan and near Maroun al-Ras in Lebanon.
In Gaza, a teenager was shot dead and more than 100 other demonstrators wounded as they massed at crossing points. At Qalandiya, the main checkpoint Israel created to bar West Bank Palestinians from reaching Jerusalem, at least 40 protesters were badly injured. There were clashes in major West Bank towns too.
And inside Israel, the country's Palestinian minority took their own Nakba march for the first time into the heart of Israel, waving Palestinian flags in Jaffa, the once-famous Palestinian city that has been transformed since 1948 into a minor suburb of Tel Aviv.
With characteristic obtuseness, Israel's leaders identified Iranian "fingerprints" on the day's events -- as though Palestinians lacked enough grievances of their own to initiate protests.
But, in truth, Israeli intelligence has warned for months that mass demonstrations of this kind were inevitable, stoked by the intransigence of Israel's right-wing government in the face of both Washington's renewed interest in creating a Palestinian state and of the Arab Spring's mood of "change is possible".
Following in the footsteps of Egyptian and Tunisian demonstrators, ordinary Palestinians used the new social media to organise and coordinate their defiance - in their case challenging the walls, fences and checkpoints Israel has erected everywhere to separate them. Twitter, not Tehran, was the guiding hand behind these demonstrations.
Although the protests are not yet a third intifada, they hint at what may be coming. Or, as one senior Israeli commander warned, they looked ominously like a "warm-up" for September, when the newly unified Palestinian leadership is threatening to defy Israel and the United States and seek recognition at the United Nations of Palestinian statehood inside the 1967 borders.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, alluded to similar concerns when he cautioned: "We are just at the start of this matter and it could be that we'll face far more complex challenges."
There are several lessons, none of them comfortable, for Israel to draw from the weekend's clashes.
The first is that the Arab Spring cannot be dealt with simply by battening down the hatches. The upheavals facing Israel's Arab neighbours mean these regimes no longer have the legitimacy to decide their own Palestinian populations' fates according to narrow self-interest.
Just as the post-Mubarak government in Egypt is now easing rather than enforcing the blockade on Gaza, the Syrian regime's precarious position makes it far less able or willing to restrain, let alone shoot at, Palestinian demonstrators massing on Israel's borders.
The second is that Palestinians have absorbed the meaning of the recent reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. In establishing a unity government, the two rival factions have belatedly realised that they cannot make headway against Israel as long as they are politically and geographically divided.
Ordinary Palestinians are drawing the same conclusion: in the face of tanks and fighter jets, Palestinian strength lies in a unified national liberation movement that refuses to be defined by Israel's policies of fragmentation.
The third lesson is that Israel has relied on relative quiet on its borders to enforce the occupations of the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. The peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, in particular, have allowed the Israeli army to divert its energies into controlling the Palestinians under its rule.
But the question is whether Israel has the manpower to deal with coordinated and sustained Palestinian revolts on multiple fronts. Can it withstand such pressure without the resort to mass slaughter of unarmed Palestinian protesters?
The fourth is that the Palestinian refugees are not likely to remain quiet if their interests are sidelined by Israel or by a Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations in September that fails to address their concerns.
The protesters in Syria and Lebanon showed that they will not be pushed to the margins of the Palestinian Arab Spring. That message will not be lost on either Hamas or Fatah as they begin negotiations to develop a shared strategy over the next few months.
And the fifth lesson is that the scenes of Palestinian defiance on Israel's borders will fuel the imaginations of Palestinians everywhere to start thinking the impossible - just as the Tahrir Square protests galvanised Egyptians into believing they could remove their dictator.
Israel is in a diplomatic and strategic dead-end. Last weekend it may have got its first taste of the likely future.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
Jonathan Cook is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Jonathan Cook
*[Bl.] What with the USA economy totally busted, it's military depleted and the potentially existential threats that it faces with the implosion of it's Pakistan alliance and the rise of China, Israel finds itself with the prospect of sucking on the hind tit of America's foreign policy priorities. Not a good position to be in given the sirocco of change sweeping across the ME.
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Blunderov
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #2 on: 2011-05-19 13:25:49 » |
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[Blunderov] Israel is not to be underestimated in it's short term abilty to keep the hordes at bay. But it seems to increasingly clear that the tide has turned. I estimate that their position is roughly equivalent to that of the South African apartheid regime sometime in the middle to late eighties. So, they've got a decade left - approximately: maybe less.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/05/israel%e2%80%99s-doomed-fate/
Israel’s Doomed Fate
by Gilad Atzmon / May 18th, 2011
“There will be no return– time has come to tell Palestinian refugees they will not be returning to the State of Israel,” writes Nahum Barnea, a prominent Israeli ‘liberal’ columnist
It is becoming clear that Israel lacks the means to cope with Palestinian resilience. Despite Israeli barbarism; despite sixty-three years of oppression, racial discrimination and mass murderous tactics– including the usage of WMD– the Palestinian people have remained determined to return to their land.
This week they reminded the Israelis, world Jewry and the rest of the world that the Palestinian cause is not going to fade away. If anything, in 2011, Palestinians seem more decisive, firm and united than their parents’ or grandparents’ generations.
Hence, it is almost amusing to follow the bizarre manner in which Israeli writer Barnea tries to convince himself otherwise, proclaiming “Their politicians told them it would happen. The clerics promised Allah’s help. Foreign sponsors provided flags and buses. They embark on their mission with the confidence that the Zionist project is destined to collapse. Another small push and the entire Land of Israel, from the Jordan to the Sea, will become Palestine.”
Whether Barnea grasps it or not, this is indeed the vision more and more Palestinians have in mind and this is exactly the vision I have in mind. This is the exact vision more and more people around the world envisage as a perfect solution, and clearly, this is the only ethical and universal solution to this bitter conflict: Israel will be Palestine. It will stretch from the river to the sea. And it will be a State of all its citizens as opposed to the racially exclusivist ‘Jews only’ State.
“I have news for you, my dear cousins,1” says Barnea in a condescending manner. “It won’t be happening – not in your lifetime…. Sixty-three years have passed since that war; the time has come to embrace other dreams.”
It doesn’t take a genius to gather that Barnea, like many other Israelis, expresses wishful thinking here rather than a reading of the reality on the ground. As it happens – and more than a few of us detected it decades ago – Palestinians are at the forefront of a battle for a better world. The current regional Arab revolution is a mass call for justice, but also for justice in Palestine. As much as the world looks with admiration at young Muslims and Arabs making a change, it also becomes general knowledge that Israel is the biggest threat to world peace. The Palestinian Right of Return is about to become an international priority issue, and Israel will be defeated on that front. The West wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice Israel on that issue: isolated and humiliated, Israel is going to struggle hopelessly against the entire region. And to clarify the matter, time is not exactly on the side of the Jewish State.
Israel has had sixty-three years to confront its original sin. It had a window of opportunity to repent, and open its border to the millions of refugees it so brutally expelled. But now the window seems to have been closed. Israel has lost the chance to save itself from itself. And what we saw this week was just an introduction. Israel is about to face a tidal wave of Palestinian gatherings on its borders. Israel doesn’t possess the political or military means to deal with these emerging forms of non-violent resistance.
Barnea like many other Israelis loves Abbas: according to the Israeli columnist Abbas is “the most humane, lovely politician in the three governments currently serving in the Land of Israel.” However, Barnea is disappointed to find out that even Abbas “gets carried away” when he declared on the eve of Nakba Day that no Palestinian leader will renounce the right of return: “the return is not a slogan…Palestine is ours.”
Barnea stresses that Abbas refrained from clarifying the question of how, and where this right will be realised, and whether it will be through compensation or physical return. Barnea concludes that “anyone could make what he wanted” out of Abass’ words.” But in fact Barnea is wrong again. Abbas’ words were totally clear: there was no hidden message or even ambiguity in them. The return is not a slogan. For a while it was a universal and an ethical call. But as things stand this week, it is now becoming a call for a direct action. Barnea and most Israelis may still fail to grasp that today’s Middle East is a new entity all together. It is united; it is firm, and it is far from timid. It is vibrant, and revolutionary, and fuelled by yearning for justice and freedom. Israel is surrounded by a wall of fierce resistance. As far as the Jewish State is concerned, the countdown has begun.
Barnea ends his diatribe by telling his fellow Israelis that “those who wish to live in the sovereign, Zionist and democratic State of Israel have no other option but to keep telling the Palestinians: with all due respect, what’s in the past is in the past.”
Yet, a universal reading of Barnea’s suggestion surely also logically implies that the rest of us then, can also now relieve ourselves of the endless burden of Jewish exceptional suffering too: after all, Barnea did say, ‘what’s in the past is in the past.’ Accordingly then, if the Jews are not unique in their collective pain, nothing should stop the Israelis from opening a new page too, so they can cross the divide and build bridges with the indigenous people of the land; those whom they themselves ethnically cleansed and attempted to destroy. For if the burden of the past can, as Barnea suggests, lose its relevance or significance, Israel might as well live up to that, and turn its face to a brighter future and voluntarily invite the Palestinian refugees to return to their land. Such a move would mean an immediate end to the conflict.
But, needless to say, I do not hold my breath.
Yet, there is one crucial (currently hypothetical) question I must address: nowadays, when it becomes clear that the Jewish state approaches its final phase, how would Israelis who would like to return to Europe react to a Barnea-like ‘no return’ statement if it were expressed by a European ‘liberal’ columnist? How would Israelis or the rest of us react to the following: ‘there will be no return-time has come to tell the Jews they will not be returning to Europe’?
Such a statement would clearly provoke outrage amongst many of us.
Yet sadly enough, we are all too used to hear similar statements from ‘liberal’ Israelis and Jews.
1.Cousins- a derogatory manner in which Israelis refers to Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. I vow to explore this term and its origin in one of my next papers. [↩]
Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He lives in London and is the author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and the recently released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. He can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk.
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Blunderov
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #3 on: 2011-05-19 14:01:09 » |
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[Blunderov] But this I did not foresee. Seems Obama knows which side of the ME the butter is on. Now the cat is well and truly amongst the pidgeons.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4856317
Obama endorses Palestinian demand for state based on 1967 borders
Source: AP
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is endorsing the Palestinians' demand for their future state to be based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war, in a move that will likely infuriate Israel. Israel says the borders of a Palestinian state have to be determined through negotiations.
In a speech outlining U.S. policy in the Middle East and North Africa, Obama on Thursday sided with the Palestinians' opening position a day ahead of a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is vehemently opposed to referring to the 1967 borders.
Until Thursday, the U.S. position had been that the Palestinian goal of a state based on the 1967 borders, with agreed land swaps, should be reconciled with Israel's desire for a secure Jewish state through negotiations.
Read more: http://www.startribune.com/nation/122238099.html
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Fritz
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #4 on: 2011-05-19 17:27:46 » |
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[Fritz]I keep wondering how the 'Nuke Card' comes into play, or doesn't ?
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/
Estimates for Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile range from 70 to 400 warheads. The actual number is probably closer to the lower estimate. Additional weapons could probably be built from inventories of fissile materials.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Blunderov
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #5 on: 2011-05-19 18:01:26 » |
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Quote from: Fritz on 2011-05-19 17:27:46
[Fritz]I keep wondering how the 'Nuke Card' comes into play, or doesn't ?
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[Blunderov] I don't think it does. The revolutions in the ME are, AFAIK, peaceful ones consisting of overwhelming numbers unarmed civilians, so far at least. South Africa had nukes but didn't deploy them against the revolutionaries during that revolution. It's hard to imagine how it would have been possible to do so to any effect but it would have been insane to do so anyway. Of course, there is no lack of insanity in the world, especially where religion is involved, so who knows what might really happen?
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Blunderov
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #6 on: 2011-05-20 17:02:42 » |
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[Blunderov] <anecdote alert> As I was turning off Parliament Square in down-town Cape Town this afternoon I saw a petite woman with knock-knees and a crimpolene frock waving an Israeli flag with a vigour which belied her obvious years. Just as well the South Easter wasn't blowing much today (it is that most wonderful of seasons - late May before the NW gales begin) because otherwise it might easily have swept her into Table Bay: to my fleeting eye it seemed almost possible that the flag weighed more than she did. So, it appears that the alarm call has gone out to The Diaspora.The game's afoot! </anecdote alert>
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Fritz
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #7 on: 2011-05-20 19:42:34 » |
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[Fritz] Seems we are dis'in our neighbors to the south again .... no errant flags being waved up here though; need both hands to swat the hordes of 'Black Flies' ... nasty little beasties we endure till June.
Ottawa won’t back Obama’s Mideast peace proposal
Source: Globe and Mail
Author: DANIEL LEBLANC
Date: 2011.05.20
The Harper government is refusing to join the United States in calling for a return to 1967 borders as a starting point for Mideast peace, a position that has drawn sharp criticism from Canada’s staunch ally Israel.
At a briefing ahead of the upcoming G8 summit in France, federal officials said the basis for the negotiations must be mutually agreed upon.
Israel quickly rejected U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposal for the talks to be guided by the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed land swaps.
“What the government of Canada supports is basically a two-state solution that is negotiated,” a senior federal official said. “If it’s border, if it’s others issues, it has to be negotiated, it cannot be unilateral action.”
Pressed by reporters, federal officials said both the Israelis and the Palestinians have to decide on their bottom lines, which the Israelis have said will not include a return to the 1967 border.
“If the two parties are of the view that this is a starting point, that is fine for them,” said the federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The Prime Minister’s director of communications, Dimitri Soudas, added that Canada’s position continues to be the search for a two-state solution.
“No solution, ultimately, is possible without both parties sitting down, negotiating and agreeing on what that final outcome will look like,” he said.
Mr. Obama boosted Palestinian hopes for an independent state during a speech by pointedly calling on Israel to regard its 1967 borders as the basis for a neighbouring Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states,” Mr. Obama said Thursday – apparently the first time a U.S. president has drawn a line in the sand by publicly using the “1967 lines” phrase.
Mr. Obama’s deliberate use of the phrase touched off a furor, even if the basic outlines of a peace settlement remain unchanged.
It came in a wide-ranging speech that staked out American support for democratic reform in the Middle East that served notice on Arab dictators – allies as well as adversaries – that they need to heed the call for change or face ouster.
“At a time when the people of the Middle East and North Africa are casting off the burdens of the past, the drive for a lasting peace that ends the [Arab-Israeli] conflict and resolves all claims is more urgent than ever,” the President said in a speech timed for evening television audiences throughout the Middle East.
Infuriated, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected any “full and complete return” to the pre-1967 frontiers, citing “new realities on the ground,” by which he means the sprawling Jewish suburbs ranging east of Jerusalem and scattered settlements occupying strategic points throughout the West Bank. Israel defeated Arab nations in 1967, seizing Gaza, Old Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Blunderov
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #9 on: 2011-05-20 20:08:10 » |
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[Blunderov] More details of the Israeli shock, horror and amazement at the recent developements in which they find themselves with the rug swiftly disappearing from beneath their jackboots. Bottom line: the USA has bigger fish to fry.
Mitt Romney's flaccid electioneering will, if I'm any judge, come back to bite him. Disaffection with the Zionist project is gaining every day in the USA in the face of more pressing local concerns - even amongst American Jews - and more citizens are leaving Israel now than are entering. Alea jacta est.
The karma police never sleeps.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0520/Israel-s-1967-borders-Three-reasons-Obama-s-stance-is-a-very-big-deal
Israel's 1967 borders: Three reasons Obama's stance is a very big deal
In the subtle world of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Obama's step – describing the 1967 borders as something more than a 'Palestinian goal' – could signal a significant policy shift.
<picture>
An Egyptian woman watches President Obama's Middle East policy address outside an appliance shop in Cairo, May 19. In his speech, Obama appeared to endorse a key Palestinian demand: a future state with the borders that prevailed prior to the 1967 Six-Day War.</picture>
By Peter Grier, Staff writer / May 20, 2011
Washington
On Thursday, President Obama said that a Middle East peace agreement should largely be based on the borders that prevailed in the region prior to the 1967 Six-Day War. Furor ensued.
What’s the problem with him saying that? That’s an approach that many experts on the region talk about. It’s been an implicit basis for past Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Yet if you’d listen to Israeli leaders and their strongest US supporters, you’d think Obama had just said Hamas was a bunch of great guys.
Obama “threw Israel under the bus,” said GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney, for instance.
Well, the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are nothing if not complicated and subtle. And in that context, what Obama said could well be seen as a very big deal.
First, Israel could interpret those words as a shift toward the Palestinians. In the past, US officials have talked often about a Palestine based in 1967 borders – but almost always they’ve presented that as something the Palestinians want. They’ve coupled it with a nod toward Israel security concerns as a way to try to appear even-handed.
Here’s how that worked: In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the result of good-faith Middle East negotiations should be “an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders.”
By dropping “Palestinian goal,” Obama gave Israeli leaders a sharp poke. That is how they could see it, anyway.
“With a small gesture ... he was able to both send a strong message to [Israeli Prime Minister] Bibi Netanyahu and to the Palestinians that this was a different US regime, open to different approaches to peace,” writes international affairs expert David Rothkopf in an analysis on the "Foreign Policy” magazine’s website.
Second, it’s not clear how much of the border between Israel and a Palestinian state that Obama was talking about. In his Thursday speech, the president simply noted that two of the most difficult issues to be resolved are the fate of Palestinian refugees, and the status of Jerusalem. Yet Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 fighting, and wants to keep it. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be their capital. It's a highly emotional issue for both sides.
Does Obama think the border issue and the Jerusalem issue should be resolved separately?
“In fact, the border is most in dispute near Jerusalem, so achieving a border agreement without resolving Jerusalem cannot work,” writes Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Third, Obama called for a “full” withdrawal of Israeli military forces from the area in question, coupling that with an insistence that any Palestinian state should be “non-militarized.” That will concern Israeli leaders who want to retain a buffer zone of armed forces in the Jordan River valley, on the far side of what would be a Palestinian state.
How and whether Obama’s formulations can get peace talks moving again remains to be seen. To Israel, it may appear as if the US president is hedging his support for its security at a moment when the Arab world is in flux. To supporters of Obama’s approach, all he did on Thursday was to recognize reality.
“The president’s call for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on Israel’s 1967 border with land swaps may have unnerved some Israelis and some of Israel’s supporters, but the speech overall does not fundamentally depart from previous ideas and formulations for resolving the conflict,” writes Steven Cook, a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, in his online analysis.
[Bl.] Israel wants a one party solution which doesn't include anybody who is not a Jew. Obama wants a two party solution - a partition. Meanwhile democracy waits in the wings and her cue will come soon unless Israel makes a deal very quickly. Time is running out. Big brother has his own life to lead and might be moving to Montana soon...
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Blunderov
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #10 on: 2011-05-20 20:23:02 » |
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Quote from: Fritz on 2011-05-20 19:42:34 Canada’s staunch ally Israel.
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[Blunderov] Lol! What has Israel staunchly done for Canada lately? Perhaps I am ignorant but I don't recall any reports of any actual action by Israeli regiments on the frontlines of Iraq, Afghansitan or Pakistan during recent times.
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Blunderov
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #11 on: 2011-05-21 04:39:52 » |
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[Blunderov] Obama outlined the USA's position on Israeli/Palestinian negotiations. He said nothing new except for:
"Israel must be able to defend itself, by itself, against any threat."
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/20/did_obamas_mideast_speech_signal_us
Nobody seems to have noticed that bit yet- at least not in public. But my guess is that this is exactly what has sent Israel into state-of-emergency mode and quite clearly the Diaspora has been told drop whatever it was doing and to put it's shoulder to this particular wheel immediately instead. It's not hard to see why.
In Diplomatese, Obama is saying "Don't start anything you can't finish. We might not be able to help you"*.
Pretty soon somebody from the GoP will ask Obama if he meant what he said and Obama will, of course, say that the USA won't hesitate to defend "our staunch ally" (Lol! I'm still smiling about that one  But the diplomatic message has been given and it has been received I think. IMV, the whole of Obama's speech was mere boilerplate for presenting just that one very telling clause: " by itself".
The Israeli's are shitting bricks.
* China sold a whole lot of fighter jets to Pakistan the other day - 50 or 60 of them IMS. Apparently, Pakistan feels a strong need to defend it's airspace with equipment which is not made in the USA. I think that is really, really interesting. I expect the Pentagon does too.
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Blunderov
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #12 on: 2011-05-21 19:39:33 » |
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[Blunderov] If the following reports are true, and they do rathere strain credulity, then China is using very strong language towards the USA indeed. Asking the USA to respect Pakistan's sovereignty is one thing but saying that "any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China" is quite another. The report appear to emanate from the Indian sub-continent but it has been picked up by the Statesman.
http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=370105&catid=35
China 'asks USA to respect Pak sovereignty'
19 May 2011
Press Trust of India
ISLAMABAD, 19 MAY: In the wake of the US raid in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden, China has “warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China”, a media report claimed today.
The warning was formally conveyed by the Chinese foreign minister at last week's China-US strategic dialogue and economic talks in Washington, The News daily quoted diplomatic sources as saying. China also advised the USa to “respect Pakistan's sovereignty and solidarity”, the report said.
Chinese Premier Mr Wen Jiabao informed his Pakistani counterpart Mr Yousuf Raza Gilani about the matters taken up with the US during their formal talks at the Great Hall of the People yesterday. The report said China “warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China”. The two premiers held a 45-minute one-on-one meeting before beginning talks with their delegations.
The Chinese leadership was “extremely forthcoming in assuring its unprecedented support to Pakistan for its national cause and security” and discussed all subjects of mutual interest with Mr Gilani, the report said. Mr Gilani described Pakistan-China relations and friendship as “unique”. Talking to Pakistani journalists accompanying him, he said that China had acknowledged his country's contribution and sacrifices in the war against terrorism and supported its cause at the international level. “China supported Pakistan's cause on its own accord,” Mr Gilani said with reference to the Sino-US strategic dialogue where the Chinese told the US that Pakistan should be helped and its national honour respected. Mr Gilani said China had asked the US to improve its relations with Pakistan, keeping in view the present scenario
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Pakistan reiterated its position on the one-China policy and said it fully supported China on the issues of Taiwan and Tibet, he said. He said both sides will continue their consultations on UN reforms. It was also agreed that both countries will formulate a long-term joint energy mechanism for electricity generation in Pakistan through various means, including nuclear energy.
Mr Wen announced that the Chinese leadership will send a special envoy to Islamabad to express solidarity with Pakistan at this “crucial period in its history”. The envoy, a senior minister, will take part in celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
The USA has stepped up pressure on Pakistan to crack down on terrorist sanctuaries and to probe whether military and intelligence officials were aware that bin Laden had been hiding in the garrison city of Abbottabad, which is home to thousands of soldiers.
Pakistan has turned to China, its “all weather friend”, for support in the face of reports that US lawmakers are pressing for cuts in aid. China has agreed to provide Pakistan 50 new JF-17 Thunder multi-role jets under a co-production agreement, The News reported. It is likely that these planes will be supplied by June next year.
The two countries are also discussing the supply of Chinese J-20 stealth jets and Xiaolong/FC-1 multi-purpose light fighter aircraft to Pakistan. They are discussing the mode of payment and the number of planes to be provided to Pakistan, the report said. China will also launch a satellite for Pakistan on 14 August.
The satellite will supply “multifarious data” to Pakistan, the report said. Mr Gilani said both sides had agreed to increase defence cooperation and China had assured Pakistan of help in enhancing the capacity of its armed forces.
He said Pakistan's trade with China had registered a significant increase in the last two years and efforts were being made to raise it to US$ 15 billion a year.
Mr Gilani said Pakistan has the capability and capacity to defend its frontiers and the armed forces are fully vigilant, and no incident like the US raid against bin Laden will happen in future. He said Pakistan will continue its efforts to stop US drone attacks, which have proved to be counter-productive.
To a question, Mr Gilani said Pakistan's political and military leadership will decide about a military operation in North Waziristan agency. No pressure will be accepted in this regard and Pakistan alone will decide on this issue, he said. Mr Gilani said Pakistan desired good relations with all its neighbours, including India, Afghanistan and Iran.
[Bl.] This is very serious business if true. As the world knows, Pakistan is most mightily pissed off about US drone attacks on it's sovereign territory, not to mention the bin Laden raid. Whether the drone attacks amount to an attack on Pakistan itself is moot I suppose, but the acquisition of all these fighter jets and a surveillance sattelite seems to suggest that Pakistan intends to defeat them. The USA, needless to say, is unlikely to cease and desist with these attacks. This might explain why Israel has been urged to make a deal with the Palestinians and to make sure that it can take care of itself. Tension with China would require the USA's undivided attention.
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Blunderov
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #13 on: 2011-05-22 06:02:01 » |
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[Blunderov] Bibi's TV tantrum has availed him nothing. Obama sees his bet and raises him anyway. Obama has got lots of political capital from the bin Laden raid, not to mention the GOP doesn't seem able to find a candidate to oppose him who isn't an obvious fucktard. The implicit threat to call the Jewish vote out against Obama is a big, fat bluff.
The usual Zionist tactic when the heat is on is to bog negotiations down in complications and acrimony until the talks fail. But Obama is saying that this time Big Brother might just be otherwise engaged when the golem is at the gate. Will Israel go all in? I think they will need better cards than those they appear to be holding.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4858831
Obama wants Cameron to back Palestinian state with pre-1967 borders
Source: The Guardian
Barack Obama will seek a joint Middle East agreement with David Cameron, insisting that a Palestinian state should be based on pre-1967 borders – a proposal rejected by Israel's prime minister as "unrealistic" and "indefensible".
The issue will be raised in private talks between the two men during the state visit by Obama and his wife to London, only the third by a US president in 100 years. Afghanistan, Libya, relations with Pakistan and the global economy – as well as the vacancy for the top job at the IMF – will also make up the agenda.
Despite the outright rejection by the Israeli premier, Binyamin Netanyahu, of a Palestinian state based on the borders that existed before the Six Day War, when Israel captured and occupied the West Bank and Gaza, Obama has already secured the political backing of the United Nations, European Union and Russia who, with America, are collectively known as the "quartet".
Signalling his determination to keep up pressure on Israel, Obama will be looking to enlist the public support of the UK prime minister. The aim is, in large part, to persuade the Palestinian leadership not to go to the UN in September seeking symbolic backing for an independent state.
The coming meeting between the two men follows evidence of a hardening of criticism of Israel by London. On the eve of the Obamas' arrival, Middle East minister Alistair Burt accused Israel of "unhelpful and destabilising activity" in announcing the building of 1,500 new settlement units in East Jerusalem ahead of a speech by the president on the Middle East on Friday.
"I am deeply disappointed with Israel's announcement on 19 May to build up to 1,500 settlement units in the East Jerusalem settlements of Har Homa and Pisgat Ze'ev," Burt said.
"This decision came on the same day as Obama's important speech on the Middle East, which set out a clear path towards peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. Settlement activity is a recognised obstacle to this path. It is illegal under international law and should stop.
"The UK continues to call on Israel to cease unhelpful and destabilising activity and instead help build the conditions that allow meaningful negotiations to resume."
UK sources said they expected a packed agenda, with the two leaders likely to set aside time to discuss the enhanced threat of global terrorism following the death of Osama bin Laden, progress in Afghanistan and the west's strategy to oust Muammar Gaddafi from power in Libya.
Away from the formal agenda of talks, the president's wife, Michelle, and the prime minister's wife, Samantha, will host a barbecue in the Downing Street garden on Wednesday evening for British and US troops who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, including some who have suffered injuries.
The president and prime minister will attend and lend a hand dishing up the food. "They will be helping with the serving. There will be British sausages and burgers on the menu,"* said a spokeswoman.
The president and his wife, who will begin their tour of Europe in Ireland on Monday, will stay at Buckingham Palace for the UK leg of the visit, which begins on Tuesday and ends on Thursday.
They will be met by the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall before flying to the palace. On Tuesday evening there will be a state dinner at the palace preceded by meetings with Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband.
Cameron and Obama will hold further talks on Wednesday, when the president will also address both houses of parliament in Westminster Hall. He will lay a wreath at the Grave of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey.
Liberal Democrat sources expressed frustration yesterday at reports that Nick Clegg had been "snubbed" by the president. The Lib Dems say it was made clear that US protocol did not allow for the president to have a bilateral meeting with the Liberal leader in his role as deputy prime minister.
* [Bl.] I'm not sure that this is a good idea. It risks adding insult to injury. The Brits do not know how to make sausage meat - it's just as pale as their legs are. They would do better to import some from Germany or, better yet, get some South African "wors" which, I'm told, is readily available down the Earl's Court Road.
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Fritz
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Re:The Golem Cometh
« Reply #14 on: 2011-05-22 13:42:45 » |
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Seems China has a vested interest here ... isn't capitalism wonderful ... Splitism ?
Sigh
Fritz
China to sell 50 JF-17 Thunder jets to Pakistan
Source: China Times
Author: Xinhua and Staff Reporter
Date: 2011.05.21
China will sell Pakistan 50 JF-17 Thunder fighter jets (pictured), aimed at reducing Pakistan's dependence on western companies for advanced fighters. (File photo/Xinhua)
China will sell Pakistan 50 JF-17 Thunder fighter jets (pictured), aimed at reducing Pakistan's dependence on western companies for advanced fighters. (File photo/Xinhua)
China has agreed to expedite the delivery of 50 fighter jets to Pakistan, a Pakistani government minister said yesterday (May 20).
Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gillani was holding talks with Chinese leaders during a four-day visit that ended on May 20.
Pakistan's Defense Minister Ahmad Mukhtar said his country was aiming to receive "50 aircraft in six months" from China at between US$20 million and US$25 million per aircraft, Reuters reported.
The Wall Street Journal originally quoted an unnamed high-ranking Pakistani Air Force spokesman, in Beijing with Gillani, as saying the jointly developed JF-17 jets would be in addition to another batch of the same aircraft currently being assembled in Pakistan.
The JF-17 Thunder program dates back to 1999 and is aimed at reducing Pakistan's dependence on western companies for advanced fighters.
The jets are a single-engine, multi-role combat aircraft that Mukhtar said are being jointly produced between China and Pakistan.
"There was a loan given for starting the manufacturing of this because the Chinese will also buy these aircraft," he said on Chinese financing for the order.
The Pakistani Air Force has ordered 150 Thunders, which it may increase to 250. The 50 mentioned in the report are likely part of the larger order.
In February 2010, Pakistan fielded its first JF-17 squadron with 14 aircraft, Reuters said.
Premier Wen Jiabao assured Gillani on Wednesday (May 18) of China's "all-weather friendship" and said Pakistan had made "huge sacrifices" in the international struggle against terrorism.
President Hu Jintao yesterday vowed to enhance cooperation with Pakistan on fighting terrorism and cross-border crime in a bid to create a sound security environment for the economic and social development of both countries.
While meeting Gillani in Beijing, Hu expressed his appreciation for the contribution Pakistan has made to fighting terrorism and said China would promote security dialogue and coordination with Pakistan.
Hu said China would join Pakistan in the fight against drug trafficking, cross-border crimes and the "three evil forces" -- terrorism, extremism and "splittism," which refers to secession.
Gillani thanked China for its support for Pakistan's counter-terrorism effort, saying his country would fight against terrorism in all forms.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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