Gaza ceasefire announced
Posted on Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 4:21pm
13 responses
Media reports today show that Israel has announced a unilateral ceasefire, suspending their 22 day ‘Operation Cast Lead.’ The Telegraph reports that Israel will not enter talks with Hamas, and that ‘if Hamas does not attack Israel and does not provoke Israel, we will honour the ceasefire.’ An Israeli security chief has stated however that the military operation “is not over,” and that the next few days will be critical in determining whether they will resume operations. A summit of European leaders and Arab leaders is set to take place today in Egypt in a bid to add momentum to the peace talks. Hamas has also announced a one week ceasefire in response to Israel, calling on Israeli forces to remove troops from Gaza. Barak Obama has stated that he will enter negotiations after his inauguration on Tuesday. Will this suspension of hostilities provide enough of an opportunity for negotiations to take effect?
In other news, Matt Withers wades in to the Nick Bourne expenses saga by suggesting that Tory HQ ( aka Cameron and co) have stepped in to stop Nick Bourne from being ousted as leader in Wales for fear that this may ruin the party’s credibility in an election year. This could well be the case, but why should we be surprised at that news? I assumed that’s how Unionist parties worked. Problems with Tories in Wales= Cameron being involved as their overall leader. The Tories in Wales may well have announced their support for Nick Bourne in a statement to the press, but I’m sure tensions are still simmering under the surface. How long this unity will last is the question. If it means anything at all, I do believe that Nick Bourne has been attacked disproportionately in the press over allowances, although now that a Labour candidate has reported him to the police, the story has added momentum and will no doubt run and run. Lets just hope the review of AMs allowances amends the system for the better, so that there is little opportunity to fuel the media’s obsession with allowances.
Another story of interest today notes that an officer serving with Prince Harry has suggested that a colleague stole Harry’s infamous videos from his laptop and allegedly sold them to the press. Of course, such action would be unacceptable, but I’m more interested in discovering whether Harry will be held responsible for his actions, rather than whether or not he is upset that a colleague has undermined his confidence in such a way. Its embarrassing that someone who represents Wales, who holds the name or our country in his title acts in such a way, whether he said what he did two, three or ten years ago. It shows that the Armed Forces are still faltering with regards to implementing equality of opportunity measures within their structures, and I support the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s call for an inquiry in to anti-discrimination measures within the Armed Forces.
If people are led to believe by those in positions of responsibility that words like ‘paki’ are acceptable to use in our everyday lives, then what hope do we have of creating a tolerant and equal society? On Question Time last Thursday the panelists rightly criticised Harry’s comments on the video in question, but then progressed by feeling sorry for him, stating that he is under pressure as a young Prince and so on. I have no sympathy on this level. If Harry wants to use his position in a positive way, then do so. If he doesn’t want the airs and graces, or the trials and tribulations of being a member of the Royal family then surely he knows that that too is an option.
And finally- a story that made me chuckle in today’s Observer was a study by sociologists at the University of Essex who have carried out a study stating that if you want to avoid relationship heartbreak in later life, then one must avoid the passion of ’puppy love’ as this leads to unrealistic expectations for future relationships.
He exclaimed,’ remarkably, it seems that the secret to long-term happiness in a relationship is to skip a first relationship. In an ideal world, you would wake up already in your second relationship.”
Hmm, very enlightening- now tell me how that works?! I’m glad the government are giving money to Universities for vital research like this;-)………….
Don’t be fooled – the ceasefire is a sham, the continuation of Israel’s war by other means. Having at its heart injustice, these negotiations will only result in more war, as without justice there can be no peace.
The ceasefire is being framed in terms of Israel being the victim: No talk of those who have committed war crimes being held to account. No talk of ending the blockade and siege of Gaza that preceeded the war. Israeli troops that have just massacred hundreds to stay put in Gaza. This is just a PR stunt.
Gordon Brown has actually offered to send the British Navy to ’stop the flow of weapons in Gaza’ while the UK government floods weapons to Israel.
Over 1,200 Palestinians dead, Gaza flattened. 13 Israelis dead (10 of them soldiers, 3 killed by friendly fire). And the British government is fighting on the worldstage for the Palestinians to be disarmed.
****************************************
From Stop the War Coalition website: http://www.stopwar.org.uk
“1200 DEAD, 6000 INJURED: ENOUGH FOR NOW SAYS ISRAEL
This is no ceasefire. Israel has momentarily stopped bombing schools, mosques, hospitals, universities and residential buildings.
“We have achieved our objectives, and more,” says Israeli prime minister Olmert. So 1200 dead, 350 of them children, is slaughter enough for now.
Injuring 6000 people, bombing hospitals and ambulances, killing medical staff — that will do for now, says Israel. But, says Israel, it may start again any time it wishes.
As for lifting the blockade, which has starved 1.5 million Gazans of essentials such as food, fuel and medical supplies for the past three years – not a word. As for opening Gaza’s borders, which have locked the population into one giant concentration camp — not a word.
The cost to Israel in the past three weeks: three civilians killed and ten soldiers killed, four of them by their own troops, tells its own story against the mass murder suffered by Palestinians in Gaza.
Only one Israeli was killed by Hamas in the year before Israel unleashed the last three weeks of carnage. Hamas’s rockets were always a pretext for a long planned war to erase the memory of Israel’s defeat in Lebanon in 2006 and to bolster the electoral prospects of Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak in Israel’s general election next month.
Instead of offering Israel the use of the British navy against Hamas, the legitimate government in Gaza, Gordon Brown should be announcing a complete ban on all arms trade with Israel, as he would if any other country had carried out war crimes on such a scale and violated so many international laws and the articles of the United Nations Charter.
Israel has “achieved its objectives, and more”…
The morgues of Gaza’s hospitals are over-flowing. The bodies in their blood-soaked white shrouds cover the entire floor space of the Shifa hospital morgue. Some are intact, most horribly deformed, limbs twisted into unnatural positions, chest cavities exposed, heads blown off, skulls crushed in.
Family members wait outside to identify and claim a brother, husband, father, mother, wife, child. Many of those who wait their turn have lost numerous family members and loved ones. Blood is everywhere.
Hospital orderlies hose down the floors of operating rooms, bloodied bandages lie discarded in corners, and the injured continue to pour in: bodies lacerated by shrapnel, burns, bullet wounds. Medical workers, exhausted and under siege, work day and night and each life saved is seen as a victory over the predominance of death.
Read more:
http://www.counterpunch.org/butterly01162009.html “
“Don’t be fooled – the ceasefire is a sham” comments adam j. Well yes he is right – at least so far as the holocaust denying anti-semites of hamas are concerned.
Despite israel announcing a ceasfire the iranian supplied rockets continue to be fired into israel by hamas!!
Hamas the legitimate govt in gaza? hmm.. hamas the organisation that has carried out a systematic programme of murder, arrest and intimidation of its political opponents in gaza, leading the independent human rights watch organisation to accuse hamas of ‘crimes against humanity’ since gaining power in gaza in 2006!
The so called stop the war coalition is of course rather selective in which wars it opposes or wishes to see stopped. This swp front has had nothing to say about the genocidal war being carried out in darfur by the sudanese govt aganst largely christian villagers – UN and US govt sources estimates the numbers of civilian dead at UP TO 1 MILLION. Yet there has been not a murmur from the stwc about this! no marches.. no vigils …..no noisy protests outside the sudanese embassy… not a peep from the usually vocal george galloway! i wonder why?
Similarly when the president of the islamic republic of iran repeatedly states he wishes to wipe israel off the earth the presumably peace lovin stwc issued not one word of conemnation.. again i ask why this is?
Yet when israel defends itself from repeated ariel bombardment from gaza the seemingly moribund stwc coalition suddenly springs into action instigating marches and highly intimidatory protests outside the israeli embassy – where it has not been unusual to hear participants chanting ‘hey ho israel has to go’ and ‘we are all hamas now’.
It seems clear that the so called STWC is very keen to support one war in particular – the war being waged by fanatical islamicists on the very existence of the state of israel..
Leigh,
Stop embarrasing yourself and get a grip. The ceasefire is just a rhetorical maneuver.
The Israeli army is still stationed in Gaza having recently murdered hundreds, the siege has not been lifted. The ceasefire has no binding element, so the IDF can resume operations whenever they feel like it. The British navy is going to be sent to disarm the Palestinians while the best weaponry will be shipped by Britain to the Israeli military. The brutal siege that is slowly killing Palestinians will continue.
As Gaza is flattened, you complain a war is being waged on the very existence of Israel, what a fantasist! It’s like the old projection – “The arabs want to drive the Jews into the Sea”, what a turning upside down of reality. It is the Palestinians who are being driven into the sea, whether ethnically cleansed from their land, the agressive expansion of illegal settlements on the occupied territories, house demolitions, the apartheid wall, the Palestinians now make up one of the largest and most consistent refugee populations in the world.
So this kind of nonsense doesn’t really wash.
The left has supported Palestinian human rights for decades, starting at a time when the resistance in Palestine was led by the secular PLO. Indeed, on the radical left it was Jewish leftist anti-zionists such as Akiva Orr, Moshe Machover,Haim Hanegbi, Isaac Deutscher, Ygael Gluckstein (Tony Cliff), Ernest Mandel, Maxime Rodinson, Nathan Weinstock, to name a few who shaped our thinking.
We should remember that Israel is a state that is founded on principles of race supremacy. Imagine if Britain defined itself as a WHITE State and said that Black and Asian British citizens couldn’t live on 90% of the land of Britain. This would be regarded as pretty racist, no?
This is the situation in Israel. 20% of Israel’s population is Arab, yet they are denied the right to live on more than 90% of the land. It is actually illegal for a political party in Israel to argue for full equality of all Israel’s citizens as this would undermine Israel’s integrity as a Jewish State. So, yes, many on the left do think that the solution is to abolish this racist set-up and have One State where Jews, Arabs, Christians, Muslims etc can live with full equality (it’s the same slogan as the anti-apartheid movement – one person, one vote). You may have heard Lampeter academic and Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok put a similar argument for a one-state solution in the Western Mail recently.
Hamas refuse to recognise the right of Israel to exist for 2 reasons: 1) It is somewhat difficult for people to stomach recognising the right of a state to exist that was founded upon them being driven from their homes 2) They make the argument, rightly, that the PLO recognised Israel and it got them nowhere. But Hamas have proposed to Israel a two-state settlement in practice, a ten year truce for negotiations if Israel completely withdraws from the occupied territories and ends aggression, as the basis for working out the details.
You have already shown you don’t even grasp the dynamics of the war in Darfur, I suggest you read the excellent writings of Alex De Waal.
As it happens I am involved in many solidarity campaigns, particularly with the Congolese, a conflict that doesn’t get the publicity of Darfur in the West but which has seen more die than in Darfur, in the millions over the last 100 years.
What you fail to identify is the central role of Britain in the Israeli/Palestine conflict, which is far more direct than Britain’s indirect role in other global injustices. It is also at the sharp end of global imperialism. Britain and America use Israel as a tool to dominate the oil fields of the Middle East.
It was the British who first offered the Zionists a homeland in an area that didn’t belong to them, that our ruling class occupied (The first intifada was actually the 1936 Arab revolt in Palestine against British occupation, part of a wave of anti-colonial struggles across the Middle East – Zionist militia aided the British army in putting down the rebellion).
It is Britain who have bloc-ed with America in blocking ceasefires both in the Lebanon and in the war on Gaza.
It is Britain that leads the EU in blockading Gaza and in the attempts to destabilise the democratically elected administration that the Palestinians have elected.
It is Britain (along with France & Germany) who are offering Israel to send war-ships to blockade the flow of weapons into Gaza, while they relentlessly arm the occupying power.
We could go on.
“Yet when israel defends itself from repeated ariel bombardment from gaza”
Leigh, somebody who occupys someone else lands, who blockades and lay siege to an entire people cannot claim to be acting in self-defense, it’s simply not possible. In fact, it was Israel who broke the ceasefire, and even during the ceasefire they were slowly murdering Palestinians through a siege and economic blockade.
The idea that there is any equivalence between Israel’s massacre of over 1200 people and Hamas’s killing of 3 civilians (the soldiers are of course legitimate targets in international law) is laughable.
The condemnations of Hamas are also hypocritical from Western politicians. Given that the West has spectacularly failed to bring pressure to bear on Israel to at the very minimum completely end the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, supports violence against Palestinians when they use non-violence (For example the intifada in the 80s that was generally mass civil disobedience, or the breaking of the siege of Gaza at the Rafah Gate earlier in the year) they have no moral authority to complain if the Palestinians resort to violence. If the international community wants to end violence, they should stop backing Israel to the hilt and start pressurising Israel to act in consonance with justice and international law.
Palestinians have very little avenue for justice. The US, Britain & Israel have used peace processes and negotiations to repackage the occupation rather than end it. Mass civil disobedience in the first intifada couldn’t free Palestine. You essentially have powerless people pitted against a country with the 4th largest military in the world backed by the world’s only superpower and armed to the teeth.
Hamas get arms from Iran you claim. Israel gets much better weaponry from Britain to carry on its occupation. This is not the issue. The issue is that Brown wants to disarm the Palestinians while relentlessly arming Israel.
israel would not have been defeated in lebanon if the u.s. state dept. hadn’t insisted they call off operations just shy of debunkering and demolishing their entrenched enemies underground strongholds. further.. if a man kills your wife. comes back and kills your mom. comes back and kills your friend. comes back and kills your child. each time fleeing to his stronghold unmolested. and next week more of the same. he trades with you. you pay him. he lives. maybe not the best life but he lives. what is a good reaction. what kind words do you offer. how much more land and goods do you want to see him or her get while his will for you goes unchanged? WASP
Although my support for the Palestinian people is total, I have no time for Hamas. They are misogynistic and homophobic, the left should really distinguish between them and the population as a whole.
Although the Israeli response was totally disproportionate, let’s not forget that Hamas started the rocket attacks. Did they consider the population as a whole?
Someone else on another blog has made the comparison between Hamas and the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno
Even yesterday, after thousands of deaths, including amongst their own ranks, they were claiming victory. “Come back, I’ll bite your legs off”
No, Steve T, you are profoundly wrong. Violence is never initiated by the oppressed, always by the oppressor. Occupation breeds violence. What is needed is not rhetorical condemnations of the violence of the oppressed, but rather to end the root of violence which is the occupation and continued denial of human rights to the Palestinian people. Desmond Tutu once said that if the apartheid regime did not peacefully surrender power then there was danger of a blood bath, if Israel continues along its current trajectory a spiral of violence will be unleashed.
To be frank, during the Algerian War of Independence against French occupation and colonialism, when the Algerian resistance was criticised for it’s indiscriminate bombings they said to the French, “If you don’t like our bombs, give us your F16s, your tanks, your helicopter gunships”. I’m sure if Hamas received the same kind of weaponry that Israel receives from Britain then maybe they would fight the occupation in a more conventional way.
Hamas launched primitive rockets after Israel broke the ceasefire (that it was Israel who broke the ceasefire is something that has been admited by both Israeli politians and the UN).
Israel repeatedly failed to meet the conditions of the original ceasefire negotiated with Hamas and agree to continue it. Hamas had met its terms – not only discontinuing Hamas’ firing of rockets but pretty much clamping down on rockets fired by rival militias such as Fatah and Islamic Jihad. Between June 19, when the ceasefire was agreed and November 4, when Israel launched a military raid, breaking the ceasefire, rocket and mortar fire was effectively ended. It was Israel that failed to meet the terms of the ceasefire and repeatedly provoked Hamas with attacks, arrests and killings including targetted assassinations of Hamas leaders.
But more to the point the ceasefire was unjust and its terms shaped by the powerful. This has always been the case, during the Oslo Peace Process, Israel argued that agressively expanding settlements, checkpoints, house demolitions was not an act of war.
The ceasefire offered as an alternative to mass slaughter the slow killing by starvation through the total siege and economic blockade of Gaza include stopping medicines and medical equipment getting into the strip. It’s not really surprising that this violence of siege and blockade would engender violence in return.
Naturally, I would prefer the Palestinian resistance to be led by secular leftists, but one of the reasons Hamas rode to power was because the PLO got locked into the West-brokered fraudulent peace process that led nowhere, the Israeli’s gave the PLO a prison instead of a state and made them the guard.
Hamas are now the democratically elected leadership of the Palestinians. The reason why the West and Israel want to smash them is not because they are homophobic or mysogynistic (the West has no problem backing regimes far more vile) but because their vote represented a refusal of the Palestinians to surrender and just submit to occupation. Unlike Fatah, Hamas have proved far less malleable to being puppets of the West and collaborating with the occupation. This is why they won the Palestinian elections by a landslide, and why the West are determined to smash them – including attempts to destabilise this elected administration.
This discussion is more enlightening than Newsnight! – great stuff.
agree with you on that jeremy! Full marks to bethan for allowing people with differing points of view to have their say on her blog…
Adam J or Urdo Erasmus as he is known on urban 75 supports the destruction of Isreal.
http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=8621668#post8621668
Any debater with should keep this in mind.
I do not disagree in principle to the Assembly have a debate on Gaza (except if it took time from important affairs in Wales like the NHS and economy) as long as it was balanced and took into account reasons for Israel’s drastic action. I also understand Rhodie Glyn Thomas’s personal reasons for it. It is commendable.
What I do find quite abhorrent is Adam Johannes making statements that Israel is a “racist state” comparable to South Africa, that is slanderous. It is not perfect and not all of us necessarily accepts Israel’s actions as right. We just try to understand it from their perspective. Adam needs to present his facts accurately and not distort the way he does. When he says that the SWP supports a secular Palestine his comments ring hollow when Respect his linked with Islamic organisations that do not believe in that. Also it is a fact that George Galloway I the past has suggested that “Progressive” movements should ally itself with Muslim movements, hardly a belief that any self respecting secularist would hold.
Whether you like it or not Adam the human rights situation in Israel may not be perfect. But the Arabs where not butchered like the Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Turkey or the Marsh Arabs were in Basra. Or even the Copts in Egypt. What makes a country truly free are not elections, but a truly independent judiciary.
You of course would not accept that! “Capitalist courts”. Change will inly truly happen when all governments in the Middle East recognize Israel’s right to exist. Then peace will reign and Arab Israelis will truly not feel like strangers in their own land
I don’t have time to reply substantively to this.
Some brief comments:
1. Yes, I see the most just solution in Israel/Palestine as abolishing all racist discrimination whether on the occupied territories or within Israel and having one state where all the people there live with equal rights. I believe that true reconcilliation can only be built on this basis of justice.
As the poet Cesaire wrote: “no race possess the monopoly of beauty, of intelligence, of force, and there’s a place for all at the rendezvous of victory”
Our peace plan is equality, instead of discrimination on the basis of race.
You can read Rabbi Dan Cohn Sherbok, a Lampeter academic, talking about a one-state solution here in the Western Mail: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/welsh-politics/welsh-politics-news/2009/01/14/leading-welsh-rabbi-professor-dan-cohn-sherbok-says-it-s-time-for-israelis-and-palestinians-to-live-together-91466-22686609/
Sherbok’s interpretation of the conflict is different from mine, but we come to a similar conclusion as to the solution that will lead to a lasting peace.
Respected human rights activist, Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions has also recently come out in favour of the one-state solution:
http://www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org/node/772
2. While a socialist, I am not a member of the Socialist Workers Party. I was at one time, around the same time as Leigh above!
3. Actually the most specific comparison I made was between the situation of Arab ‘citizens’ of Israel and the situation of discrimination faced by Catholics in Northern Ireland in the 60s that led to the Civil Rights movement there.
Though it’s more complicated as the oppression of Palestinians in Israel is linked to the wider oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories & the denial of the right of return to Palestinian refugees.
There are not 3 Palestinian people – the diaspora snd refugees, on the occupied territories and within Israel – there is one, and the dispossession has the same root the drive of the Zionist movement to create an ethnically pure state.
This is why they relentlessly drive Palestinians off their land and into ghetto’s on the occupied territories, treat Palestinians as third-class citizens in Israel & in contravention to the norms of international law deny Palestinian refugees the right to return – because this might effect the demographics of Israel – too many Arabs would mean that the State would become untenable as one based on race & have to become a democratic state of all its citizens.
4. I’m not sure what on earth Morgan Hen is on about re. courts. I can tell him that the lawyers of Pakistan have been rather more robust in challenging their government than the lawyers of Britain. And Pakistan is not a democracy!
5. There are similarities between apartheid in South Africa and Zionism in historical Palestine there also many significant differences.
6. Israel is founded upon the ethnic cleansing/exclusion of the indigenous people of Palestine.
The root of this conflict is the racism of the Israeli state that privilleges one ethnic group at the expense of the other.
Just read the latest interview with the Israeli Prime Minister who sees the solution as “maximum Jews, minimum Palestinians”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=360533&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
The entire political establishment in Israel for the last 60 years has been obsssed by what they term the ‘demographic threat’.
In Britain such obssessing over the racial make-up of society is generally identified with the far right, in Israel it is the mainstream discourse of left and right because this is the root of the conflict
7. “Whether you like it or not Adam the human rights situation in Israel may not be perfect. But the Arabs where not butchered like the Kurds in Iraq, Iran and Turkey or the Marsh Arabs were in Basra. Or even the Copts in Egypt.”
Nor were Black South Africans butchered like the Kurds in Iraq. Nor are Palestinians who live in Israel oppressed and butchered like Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza. Nor were Catholics in Northern Ireland facing the same situation as a Tutsi in Rwanda in the 90s.
Nobody has argued that the worst attrocities in history are taking place in Israel/Palestine – though attrocities do take place.
Nevertheless Israel is a state that is clearly based on racism, and therefore I support those who campaign for an end to the racism.
Ironically it is people who refuse to acknowledge these basic facts who are prolonging the war that dehumanises oppressor and oppressed alike.
“The South African Apartheid regime never engaged in this sort of a repression that Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians. For all the evils and atrocities of Apartheid the government never sent tanks into black towns, it never used gun ships, bombers, or missiles against the black towns or Bantustans. The Apartheid regime used to impose sieges on black towns, but these sieges were lifted within days. Soldiers used to search homes and conduct a variety of punitive measures, but none of these can be compared with Israel’ s repressive actions and its siege of entire towns and villages for months on end”.
Ronnie Kasrills, ANC minister
Finally, to answer the apartheid enquiry. This comparison has been made by many leaders of the ANC and anti-apartheid struggle such as Desmond Tutu & Ronnie Kasrils, the most well known Jewish South African politician. The ANC and PLO had very close links seeing themselves as both being engaged in an anti-racist universal human rights struggle(just as the government of Israel and South Africa had fraternal relations, for example, developing nuclear weapons together).
Israel bears many similarities with South Africa, both are settler states founded on the myth of an empty land. White South Africans used to ludicrously claim that the land had been empty and that Black people came afterwards attracted by the society they had created. Zionist ideology likewise has a strong strand that seeks to deny that the land was very much occupied before they turned up on the scene. (Many Jewish people saw through this, before the creation of Israel, a Rabbi who visited the area famously said – ‘The bride is beautiful, but she already has a husband’ and people such as the philosopher Martin Buber tried to put forward the idea of a binational state based on equality)
However, there is a fundamental difference. South Africa dealt with the indigenous population mainly through creating a system of domination. The South African system relied on black labour. Whereas Zionism aimed to exclude and drive out the indigenous population. Hence the history of the last 60 years has been one of ethnic cleansing, land grabs and population transfer.
All the essential features of Apartheid – exclusivity, inequality, separation, control, dependency, violations of human rights and sufferings – are an integral part of the Jewish state.
If you went to Galillee (the area of Israel where the majority of Palestinians in the country live) you would see state discrimination against the 20% of the population who are Arab (but are herded onto 2% of the land), but it would be only a whiff of apartheid.
If you were to go onto the West Bank and see the apartheid wall that is dividing people away from their land & all the mechanisms of separation related to Jewish settlements, you would get more than a whiff of apartheid.
You would see armed enclaves where one race lives with swimming pools and luxury, while another race suffers from shortages of water and economic collapse. Palestinian land is seized to make way for ‘Jew only roads’ that connect the settlements and are designed so that the Jewish settlers don’t even have to see the Palestinian inhabbitants. Meanwhile Palestinians face a regime of military checkpoints with the equivalent of a journey from Cardiff to Newport taking hours, sometimes a few days, sometimes not allowed.
This is an account from an Israeli Jewish human rights activist of the set-up in Hebron, West Bank. This is a place where the Israeli army routinely abuse thousands of Palestinians in order to defend 450 racists who occupy the choicest 20% of the town while 160,000 get the other 80% and suffer regular human rights abuses.
‘Hani, a Palestinian, lives with his family in a house near a barracks that shelters settlers. The house is like a cage; the entrance and the entire front of the house are covered with a close-meshed grill. The chicken-wire is not to keep the family inside the house, but to prevent the rotten eggs and stones thrown by the settlers from constantly damaging the windows. Hani’s sister — speaking both Arabic and English — tells of the constant attacks: as soon as she leaves her home, eggs and stones rain down on her. “You have to try and imagine what it’s like,” Yehuda says. “These people can’t even meet their friends for a coffee without it being cleared with the military and planned. Exit permits have to be issued. It’s simply not possible to maintain a group of friends here.”
Hani’s father died a year ago. Because the way into the city, through the settlers’ quarters and the “exclusively Jewish” roads, was closed to them, the family had to carry the body of their dead father through the fields to the checkpoint — on their backs. From here, a Palestinian ambulance collected him, Hani’s sister continues. Settler ambulances don’t come for their Palestinian neighbors when they are ill. The woman breaks down in tears.
The whole reality in Hebron cries out, “Why?” But Yehuda says: “This is an upside-down world. Here the answer is, ‘Why not?’ Why shouldn’t the settlers throw stones at Palestinian girls on their way to school? Why shouldn’t they break into a Palestinian house and smash everything up? Why shouldn’t they cut down trees to deprive Palestinians of their connection to the land? Why shouldn’t they take over, road by road, until the Palestinians are left with nothing?”‘
Well I guess Adam I am rather confused by want you mean. One moment you talking about all people in Israel having equal rights. Then you speak about Israel existence being the problem “A country created on the premiss of “racial supremacy”, Is that correct? I assumed that the debate in the assembly was to do just with the invasion of Gaza, not with the issue of Zionism and Israel itself. Does the British Muslim Initiative believe in the One state comprising both Jews and Arabs? Yes they believe in one state. An Islamic Republic. How will Jews, Christian and Druze fit into that? As for the issue of the judiciary you know damn well what I mean. You accused the Israelis of banning a Arab party on the grounds all “they wanted was all Israelis to be treated equally”. Well that was not true. They were banned by the Central Election committee because their leader was accused of collaboration with Syria and for talking the stand that Israel had no right to exist. Both bans were overturned by The Israel High Court of Justice. Rhodri Glyn Thomas says that there should be negotiation with Hamas because they are the democratically elected government. Yes I agree, just like Neville Chamberlain negotiated with democratically elected government of Germany. And remember what happened there!