We've Done a Good Job at Pretending. Now We Have to Figure Out If the Liberals Deserve to Be Called "Liberal"?

It's a safe bet that Trump's announcement on Jerusalem as Israeli capital will likely bring a motion to the floor of the United Nations General Assembly.

The Harper/Trudeau machine has been in Israel's pocket for a decade.  Whenever there's a motion dealing with Israel and Palestine the vote comes down to this : The World versus the United States, Canada and a trio of bought and paid for South Pacific atoll states.  The World speaks with one voice. Us, we five (minus three), are the only support Israel still has.  A great relief when one of the two principals has a veto on the Security Council.

We'll know just what lurks inside Justin Trudeau when that motion is brought before the General Assembly. If we've become a nation of lickspittles we will see it then.  I hope Canada would find its once legendary decency and join "The World" to denounce Trump and support the Palestinians yet I doubt that's in the cards.

It's time we, the average guy, knew how this country came to be aligned under Harper and how little Trudeau has even slightly altered that alignment, our new normal.

We're no longer a country resembling the Canada as we knew it at its apex during Pearson and his immediate successor.  We don't get leaders of that calibre any more. We get technocrats who view national leadership as a management function to transactional accommodation. Now we have leaders who ignore what is right and just in favour of what is advantageous and expedient. And so they very quietly go about this nasty little business of ours hoping that people like you will be none the wiser.

While We're On the Subject of Jerusalem.

The Palestinians are once again on people's minds (sort of, briefly) due to Donald Trump's announcement that the US will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  It sort of confirms the idea that if a nightmare drags on for decades, half a century is plenty, we forget what really happened and we're prepared to swallow just about anything.

Most people I know have never read David Hirst's "The Gun and the Olive Branch." (You can get it here, free it seems, in PDF.) It's a long read but in it the veteran Middle East journalist shatters many of the myths we have come to embrace as the accepted narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There's probably no prime minister in Canada, sitting or past, who would want you to read it for it would not cast them in a flattering light.

But if you're not up for that sort of effort, you might to whet your interest with Dr. Shir Havir's account of the origins of this intractable conflict that has seen an entire people held in captivity for a half century, their lands occupied and annexed by a state that persistently flouts international law, a rogue state we proudly proclaim our ally.

About Jerusalem

Trump has broken with previous administrations to announce that the United States will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The question on everyone's lips is "why?" He wasn't compelled to do it. If anything the decision seems ill-thought out, even capricious. It threatens to set the region on fire. The Guardian is calling it "diplomatic arson."

The history of Jerusalem is vast and full of turmoil. The name, Urusalima, was bestowed by Mesopotamians around 2400 BC abut 1500 years before the Israelis first turned up.

"During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.[8] The part of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE.[9] In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent. Today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters.[10] The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger."

According to the Israeli version of the Great Book of Murderous Myths and Fatal Fantasies (as opposed to the slightly different Christian and Islamic versions), it was God herself who bestowed Jerusalem on the Israelis for all time or at least what remains of time. God means for them to have it. God doesn't want anyone else to have it. God has spoken. God is great. God is good. As an outsider it strikes me as curious how anyone who picks up any of the versions of that book gets so f#@ked up.

Now we know Donald Trump doesn't read books and I'm pretty sure he hasn't squandered a lot of time studying his Bible. I'm sure he still thinks Amos was a black guy on the radio who had a partner named Andy.

So if Trump isn't acting on some deeply held religious conviction, why is he going to such lengths to ruffle feathers? If there's one discernible trait in this presidency it's been Trump's predilection for doing things that will piss someone off, often a lot of someones. He has repeatedly offended and alienated America's allies, even the closest. He has embraced the Thuggees, anti-democratic authoritarians such as Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Netanyahu, Poland's Duda, even the murderous Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. He's like a bull in the china shop of decency. Why?

I may have stumbled across the answer in my most recent negotiation with my beagle, Buddy.  A long time ago someone tipped me off. When you ask a beagle to do something, the hound's first reaction is, "What's in it for me?" If the beagle doesn't like the deal as he sees it, he just looks the other way. If he sees what you're asking is a sweet deal - for him, he's with you. I don't mean to disparage beagles with comparisons to Trump, but...

What if Trump sees the presidency primarily as a business opportunity? He gets to dole favours out of the public purse with an expectation of future accommodations of the the Trump business empire for his kids. The Mango Mussolini has always talked in the context of "deals." He's proud of his ghost-written book, "The Art of the Deal." That was pretty much the entire curriculum of his faux college, Trump University. He promised his supporters, the Gullibillies, that he would make "the best deals" for America, renegotiating everything.

Trump has always put his personal interests ahead of all others. He's legendary for screwing those who risk dealing with him, put trust in him. He monetizes their confidence and trust and often leaves them empty-handed and bitter. That's all he knows how to do. Mentally the man is not well. Intellectually he's every bit as infirm. His greatest, perhaps only real skill, is to shamelessly exploit opportunities especially in perceived weaknesses.

Why then would he not exploit the presidency? By zigging where his predecessors all zagged, he can make some people beholden to him. He can accumulate markers to be called in at another time.

Look at what he has done in his first year in office. Everything from rampant deregulation, gutting the EPA, defunding government and the social safety net, tax relief for the richest of the rich (including familia Trump), it's all been to benefit a class of people, the sort who know to repay favours.

It's not a reach, not at all, to see Jerusalem as another example of Trump's modus operandi in action. Sure it will set back if not destroy any chance of Middle East peace and it's almost certain to result in a lot of deaths for years, perhaps generations to come, but it's an opportunity that can be monetized by the empire in years to come. The old bastard is in it for the deal.

Who Will Decide Canada's Policy on Israel, Barack Obama or Donald Trump?

When US secretary of state, John Kerry, proclaimed that Israel had to choose - it could be a Jewish state or a democracy, just not both, Washington's abrupt epiphany must have caught Justin Trudeau and Steffie Dion with their short pants down.

If Washington can say the emperor has no clothes, where does that leave Ottawa?

Trudeau Mk.ll, like Harper, has broken with Canadian tradition in paying fealty to Benjamin Netanyahu. Put another way, Justin enjoys kissing Bibi's ass every bit as much as Stephen Harper in his day.

Oh, this is more than simply supporting the Tory motion to censure the BDS (boycott/divest/sanction) movement. As Alison at Creekside has diligently reported, the Trudeau government has continued the Harper policy of steadfastly supporting Netanyahu by voting against every pro-Palestine resolution in the UN General Assembly.

On every occasion, until now, Canada and the United States have carried Israel's water even as the rest of the world, as in the "rest of the world" - the entire EU, South America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia - refuse to look the other way.

That changed when the US refused to veto a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Israel cease stealing Palestinian land, what little of it remains, for ever more Israeli settlements. With that, America pushed the "reset" button on US-Israeli relations. Kerry followed through with a speech branding the Netanyahu government as the "most right wing in Israel's history."

The Israelis were predictably outraged at being exposed for what they are and have been for decades. Netanyahu's education minister, Naftali Bennett, blurted out that, as of January 20th when Trump is inaugurated, the "two state solution" will be off the table which, of course, it has been all along. Bennett then repeated his call that Israel simply annex most of the Palestinian West Bank.

John Kerry was speaking the obvious truth when he said Israel's settler policy is creating a one-nation state, one in which Palestinians will see their homeland erased even as they remain captives to the Israelis. What's next, ethnic cleansing - driving the Palestinians off their lands, again, and herding them to Jordan?

The problem with this is, when you have 150 nations - make that 151 now - opposed to Israeli extremism, that leaves just the one - Justin Trudeau's Canada isolated, exposed.

Of course, Justin can wait until the 20th when the old order is restored by president Donald Trump but he's been put on notice. He can't pretend any more. He cannot continue to look the other way. Trudeau, like Harper before him, has made our government, our nation and us - you and me - complicit in this. Once again this prime minister has shown that all of his principles come with price tags and can be had for the right price.

Don't Eat That, Charlie, It's Bullshit.

Most of us come with a pretty good "BD" or Bullshit Detector as standard equipment.  People lie, so we need it.  Not that it always works but it's still pretty good.  The more obvious the lie the better our BD works.  White lies sometimes get past us but whoppers rarely do.

So, why?

Why have we spent decades listening to Israeli leaders tell us how they support the "Two State" solution only to then authorize new Israeli settlements on land that plainly belongs to the Palestinians?  Look at it this way - there are now more than 600,000 lies illegally occupying the West Bank.  Why do we still believe this nonsense?

How in hell would Israel ever relocate, oh let's use the term "repatriate" all those settlers back into Israeli territory?  Do you think they haven't already asked and answered that question?  Of course they have. They're not stupid.  And the answer is, and always has been, "we won't."

Take a look up top.  Can you foresee Israel going back from Map 4 to Map 2? Of course not.  So then you're pretending to believe that this Two State business is at least possibly in the cards.  You're making this up in your mind.  The only place it has any illusion of reality is between your ears.

There aren't many people still breathing who know the doctrine of "profit a prendre" or "long user."  They're old real property terms from the days of the ancient British land registry system.  Long user describes the situation where a farmer crosses your field to access his own.  Over the course of 20 or 30-years he acquires a right of long user. It's sometimes a right of carriageway or an easement.  Profit a prendre is a right to take something (okay, let's call it groundwater) from land belonging to another.

Israel has another term for "long user" when it comes to Palestinian lands.  They call it "reality on the ground."  It's another way of saying, "my tank is parked on that hill, ergo it's my hill."  I don't think the Israelis have come up with their own term for profit a prendre but they don't need one, they just take the groundwater without it.

At this point further talk of the Two State solution should have your BD buzzing hard enough to loosen your fillings. So what's the point of pretending it's not?  Is it because we don't like to think bad thoughts?  Is it because we realize we're complicit in the armed conquest and illegal seizure of the Palestinian homeland? Is it because we don't like to trouble our beautiful minds with images of two generations of Palestinians already born into captivity with a third not far off?  Is it because we know that what we're watching is slow-motion ethnic cleansing?

Whatever our excuse, it sucks.    

Netanyahu's "Dog Whistle" Might Have Fetched the Hounds

Maybe some day Benjamin Netanyahu will be known as the founder of the state of Palestine.  Strange things are happening.  From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Already the US is hinting that it might support a United Nations Security Council resolution that recognises Palestine along pre-1967 borders.

Until now it has repeatedly refused to endorse the resolution and Israel has always been opposed to it, insisting that only negotiations can bring about a lasting peace and agreed borders, but a US official has told The New York Times that Washington is "in a reality where the Israeli government no longer supports direct negotiations. Therefore we clearly have to factor that into our decisions".

British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg described Mr Netanyahu's comments as "extremely worrying".

"It cannot be more alarming – to have [Mr Netanyahu] do something which no leading Israeli politician has ever done – to rule out the prospect of a two-state solution," he said.

Summing up the week in Israeli politics, Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy said: "They voted for the man who admitted to having duped half the world during his Bar-Ilan speech. Now he has torn off his mask and disavowed those words once and for all. Israel said `yes' to the man who said `no' to a Palestinian state."

Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said, "No one has been taking seriously the idea that you will get a two-state solution under Netanyahu, but if you can maintain the pretence, if the Palestinians are willing to maintain it, if the US and the EU are willing to maintain it, then it can be business as usual."

...The tactics Mr Netanyahu used to get elected – coming out against a Palestinian state – will have far-reaching consequences on Israel's standing in the international community, warns Daniel Seidemann, political commentator and an expert on Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem.

"There are people who only recently have heard the opposite from him – US Secretary of State John Kerry, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example – and I believe that tactics that Netanyahu used to get re-elected will haunt us for a long time.

"Netanyahu plays on Israeli fears and anxieties the way the virtuoso plays on a Stradivarius," he says.

Is it even possible for the Americans or Euros to play this game again?  How will they respond to the continued annexation of Jerusalem, more illegal settlements in the Palestinian territories or the next time Israeli deathware is dispatched to "mow the lawn" in Gaza?

Update - Guess who's heading to Israel to congratulate Netanyahu?  John Boehner.

Netanyahu Promises Israeli Voters - There'll Be No Palestinian State On My Watch.

With Israelis heading to the polls, Benjamin Netanyahu is running scared.  He's seen Likud's numbers and all the polls show he's in trouble.  He's in deep enough that he's pulling out all the stops and scrambling for the hardliner vote.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau said Monday that if he were to be reelected, a Palestinian state would not be created, in a definite disavowal of his 2009 speech, in which he had voiced support for the principle of two states for two peoples.

Netanyahu's remarks in an interview with the NRG website - which is owned by casino mogul [and Bibi owner] Sheldon Adelson and tied with the settler newspaper Makor Rishon - were a last-minute attempt to pull right-wing voters away from Habayit Hayehudi. 

The Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, also reports that Middle East envoy, Tony Blair, is about to resign.

In 2014, a group of former British diplomats and political figures wrote an open letter calling for Blair's resignation from his role as the Special Envoy of the Middle East Quartet, citing, among other reasons, his "blurring the lines between his public position as envoy" and his private business dealings in the region.

Israelis vote tomorrow but it won't be clear whether Netanyahu could keep post even if Likud emerges trailing Zionist Union by three or four seats.  With nearly a dozen parties expected to pick up seats there's enormous room for horse trading.  Of course our Mr. Harper won't hesitate to embrace a Likud coalition even if he denounced the legitimacy of the very same thing in Canada.

The Real Threat Facing Israel

No one expected Benjamin Netanyahu to win the gushing approval of the editorial board of Israel's liberal newspaper Haaretz but they were decidedly unimpressed by their prime minister's speech to part of the US Congress yesterday.  Their view is that Netanyahu deliberately avoided any mention of the real existential threat to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state - the ever expanding occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Israel’s insistence on ruling over millions of Palestinians in the West Bank who lack civil rights, expanding the settlements and keeping residents of the Gaza Strip under siege is the danger that threatens its future.

Israel is mortgaging its national resources to maintain a dual regime of democracy for Jews and apartheid for Palestinians. But the illusion that the occupation is comfortable and quiet, and that most Israelis are isolated from it, is fated to explode.

In recent years, during which relative security quiet prevailed in the West Bank, Israel embarked on three wars in Gaza that killed thousands of Palestinian civilians – solely in order to maintain the status quo. These periodic “operations,” along with the cessation of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, have left a moral stain on the Israel Defense Forces, and on the statesmen who sent them into Gaza and on policing missions in Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron.

Calls for boycotting Israel and recognizing Palestine even without an agreement have moved from the political fringes to center stage in the West. Instead of the Palestinians giving up their national aspirations, Israel is being forced to contend with claims that Zionism and democracy are mutually exclusive.

...Internal tensions between Jews and Arabs have risen, and right-wing parties have vied among themselves in pushing anti-democratic laws designed to institutionalize discrimination against the minority and deprive it of the right of political expression. While Netanyahu was planning his speech in Washington, right-wing thugs attacked MK Haneen Zoabi at a political conference in Ramat Gan. This was the natural continuation of the nation-state bill and the attempts to oust Zoabi and her colleagues from the Knesset, and more proof that democracy has trouble flourishing or even functioning alongside apartheid and military occupation.

How a Court Pushed Israel and the United States into Meltdown

What is it about the International Criminal Court that has so inflamed Israel and the United States?  It's a court of law and a pretty good one at that.  It's a venue to prosecute those who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Who would be bothered by that - except perhaps war criminals and those who commit crimes against humanity?  Oh, I get it.

Israel is afraid that its war crimes in Gaza will come before the ICC where Israel won't be able to control the narrative and manipulate the press and public opinion.  The United States fears for what that could mean to Israel.  The US doesn't hold a veto over the International Criminal Court so it can't protect Israel as it has for decades on the UN Security Council.  Washington is used to being able to simply nullify any effective intervention by the United Nations.  Can't do that with the ICC which is one reason the US hasn't joined the court.  It can't. Too many presidents and cabinet secretaries might find themselves in the prisoner's dock.

So what is America's response to the audacity of the Palestinians in joining the community of nations through the International Criminal Court?  They're going to cut off American aid to Palestine and the Republicans who now control both houses of Congress will push that through.

[Lindsey] Graham, the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that governs aid to Palestine, said Israeli officials are no longer opposed to efforts to chip away at the roughly $400 million of aid the United States sends to Palestine every year — a policy change he plans to capitalize on.

“I’m going to lead the charge to make sure the Palestinians feel this,” he said.

Others on Capitol Hill feel similarly emboldened.

On Wednesday, Jan. 7, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul introduced legislation to prohibit all assistance to the Palestinian Authority until it withdraws its request to join the International Criminal Court. “Certainly groups that threaten Israel cannot be allies of the U.S.,” said Paul. The United Nations has confirmed that the Palestinians will become part of the criminal court in April.

Brian Darling, a spokesman for the libertarian-leaning Republican, said his office hasn’t received any pushback on the legislation, a shift from just last spring when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a Likud-flavored lobbying organization with close ties to the Netanyahu government, immediately came out against his previous bill to defund the PA.

On Monday, Haaretz reported that Jerusalem would be contacting pro-Israel members of Congress to ensure that aid to the PA is cut off. While pro-Israel lawmakers such as Graham, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) told FP they’re not aware of an overt push by the Israelis to defund, the understanding is that Jerusalem will no longer actively protect Palestinian aid on the Hill.

Maybe it's time for another benefactor, China perhaps, to step up and provide the aid America cuts.  China could easily stare down an Israeli naval blockade.  It's time to break this poisonous American hegemony.

Fair and Balanced? Of Course, It's Israel!

Let's keep this in perspective.  That takes us back to 2010 when an Israeli court acquitted an army captain of all charges related to his slaughter of a 13-year old Palestinian school girl.  It's too obscene to recite.  You can follow the link to get the details.

So consider, in the context of that atrocity, a new Israeli law intended to crack down on Palestinian kids who are in the habit of throwing stones at Israeli forces and settlers.

There would be two major sentences for stone throwers - those who endanger the safety of someone inside a vehicle could be jailed for 10-years without proof there was intention to harm; those throwing stones at people could be sentenced to 20-years in prison without the need to prove they intended to cause serious bodily harm.

I suppose it all makes sense in the fascist state of Israel or in the inner sanctum of Canada's Conservative and Liberal leadership.

Israel- Palestine in One Paragraph

Yesterday we discussed the modern trend of policy divorced from reality.  One ugly example of that is the policy of Canada's government, and Trudeau's Conservative-Lites, lavishing absolute support on Israel in its persecution of the Palestinians.  Not to say that the NDP is much better.

If you're a Liberal, consider your party's policy against Noam Chomsky's summary of the cat and mouse game Israel is playing with the Palestinians.

It is critically important to recognize that a pattern was established almost a decade ago and has been followed regularly since: A ceasefire agreement is reached, Israel makes it clear that it will not observe it and continues its assault on Gaza (and illegal takeover of what it wants elsewhere in the occupied territories), while Hamas observes the ceasefire, as Israel concedes, until some Israeli escalation elicits a Hamas response, offering Israel a pretext for another episode of "mowing the lawn" (in Israel's elegant parlance). I have reviewed the record elsewhere; it is unusually clear for historical events. The same pattern holds for Operation Protective Edge. Another of the series of ceasefires had been reached in November 2012. Israel ignored it as usual, Hamas observed it nevertheless. In April 2014, Gaza-based Hamas and the Palestine Authority in the West Bank established a unity government, which at once adopted all of the demands of the Quartet (the US, EU, UN, Russia) and included no Hamas members. Israel was infuriated, and launched a brutal operation in the West Bank, extending to Gaza, targeting mainly Hamas. As always there was a pretext, but it quickly dissolves on inspection. Finally killings in Gaza elicited a Hamas response, followed by Protective Edge. The reasons for Israel's fury are not obscure. For 20 years, Israel has sought to separate Gaza from the West Bank, with full US support and in strict violation of the Oslo Accords that both had signed, which declare the two to be a single indivisible territorial entity. A look at the map explains the reasons. Gaza offers the only access for Palestine to the outside world; without free access to Gaza, any autonomy that might be granted to some fragmented Palestinian entity in the West Bank will be effectively imprisoned.

Israel & Palestine - It's All a Game of Who Controls the Narrative

And it's a game in which Israel and its collaborators abroad consistently win.  The side with the loudest, most professional voice - Israel, of course - gets the all important advantage of fixing the beginning of the conflict.  Israel decides what started it and exactly when.  What happened before that carefully selected start point is conveniently omitted by people like Harper & Co, and his associates, J. Trudeau and T. Mulcair.  Le Monde captures this reality:

...inspiring pity is not an effective political weapon; it is better to control the account of what has happened. For decades, we have been told that Israel is “responding” or “retaliating”. The story is always that of a peaceful little state, poorly protected, without a single powerful ally, which manages to win through, sometimes without a scratch. And the confrontation always starts at the precise moment when Israel appears as the victim, shocked by misfortune — an abduction, an attack, an act of aggression, an assassination. A commentator will express indignation that rockets are being fired at civilians; then another will argue that the Israeli “response” was much more murderous. Score, one all, ball still in play.

And everything else, everything that matters, is forgotten: the military occupation of the West Bank, the economic blockade of Gaza, the colonisation of the land (1). News channels never take the time to go into details... 

Israel's "cut and paste" reality is instrumental to its control of the narrative that, in turn, allows its overseas sops to support its butchery as the mere exercise of the right of self-defence.

Four Pictures Worth Many Thousand Words

A Vancouver group is targeting the public conscience with an ad campaign to show what has happened to the Palestinian homeland.

Unless you're a Zionist, it's a pretty disturbing but accurate depiction of how the Palestinians are being erased from their homeland.  The point is, it's not over yet.  The aquifer beneath Gaza has been "inadvertently" drained and the U.N. believes that enclave could be unlivable by 2020.  Presumably those Palestinians would have to be relocated to the fractured ghettos inland to the north.

The ads are running on Vancouver's transit system and they're expected to appear on Calgary and Toronto transit vehicles this Fall.  Jewish groups have denounced the images as "derogatory."  Turning logic straight on its head they claim this is a campaign to "wipe Israel off the map."

Stephen Schachter, the co-chair for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, argued that if advertisements targeted non-Jewish groups, the situation would be taken more seriously.

“I can think of all sorts of other kinds of advertising by other communities, whether it’s sexist, homophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-other-ethnic or religious groups that would be” prohibited, he said.

Yeah, right Steve.  It says a great deal that none of those criticizing these ads take exception to their accuracy.   They can't, they're very accurate.   And they can't take exception to the text.  There is none.  They just don't want people to see the plain truth that these maps so clearly depict.

Taking the Real Measure of Netanyahu, An Arab Woman Speaks Up

There's a new name being given to Benjamin Netanyahu's newest illegal settlement crime.  It's being called the "Doomsday Settlement," a term coined by the Israeli founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem, Daniel Seidemann.

Nicola Nasser, an Arab journalist based in the West Bank, or at least what remains of it after years of Israeli predations, warns that this settlement is unlike all of the others.

The international outcry is not against the Israeli policy of settlements on Palestinian occupied land per se, but against this one particular settlement, known as East One (E-1), and Netanyahu's answer to the overwhelming recent recognition of Palestine as a non-member state by the UN General Assembly.

On the ground, the site of some 4.6 square miles (12 square kilometers) on the easternmost edge of eastern Jerusalem will close the only link between the north and south of the West Bank. Therefore it would sever the territory from East Jerusalem, the prospective capital of the State of Palestine, thus undermining any viable and contiguous Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 and turning the recognition of the UN General Assembly on November 29, 2012, as merely a Palestinian achievement on paper. 

...The international community's inaction could not but vindicate the expected Palestinian reaction. President Mahmoud Abbas late on December 4 chaired a Palestinian leadership meeting in Ramallah, attended for the first time by the representatives of the rival Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements. They decided to ask the UN Security Council to adopt a binding resolution obliging Israel to stop all settlement activities in the occupied State of Palestine, concluding that Israel "is forcing us to go to the International Criminal Court".

Netanyahu's defiance and the Palestinian leadership's decision will both put the credibility of all the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to an historic test: They either decide to act on their own words or their inaction will inevitably leave the Palestinians with the only option of defending their very existence by all the means available to them.

For Palestinians, to be or not to be has become an existential issue that can no longer be entrusted to the international community.

40-Years of Peace Tossed in the Garbage

Apparently forty years of peace has been too much of a good thing for Benjamin Netanyahu.  Israel has enjoyed peace with its Arab neighbours since 1973.

Don’t blame yourself if you didn’t realize that the Middle East has enjoyed four decades of peace. But that is precisely what has transpired between Israel and Arab states since the Yom Kippur War of 1973. In its first twenty-five years of independence, Israel was characterized by multi-state war with intermittent bouts of unsuccessful diplomacy. Six Arab armies invaded Israel in 1948; Israel fought four Arab armies in June 1967; twelve Arab armies participated in the 1973 war. In the forty years since, Israel has fought no wars against an Arab state, and its history has been characterized by frequently successful diplomacy with intermittent bouts of terrorism and asymmetric war against non-state actors.

Conditions on the ground in the M.E. are in transition.   American hegemony is in decline.   China is poised to fill the vacuum.  Beijing is far more interested in Arab oil than in Jaffa oranges. It is also looking for opportunities to push back against America's new military pivot into China's backyard.

France is ready to open diplomatic relations with Palestine.  Netanyahu's bully boy tactics and arrogance may just get other nations to follow suit.  What then?   Nations with diplomatic relations can just as easily enter into all sorts of treaties including mutual defence and military assistance pacts.

What does Israel do if a mixed Chinese-Russian naval fleet begins escorting flotillas of ships into Gaza?   Is Netanyahu mad enough to fire on Chinese and Russian warships?

It might not be a bad idea for Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza, to be turned into an occupied territory only, this time, with benevolent occupiers.   A multi-national occupation to restore Palestine to its pre-1967 borders and maintaining a suitable demilitarized zone alone the Palestine-Israel border. 

As Israeli civilians are in Palestine unlawfully, they wouldn't be expelled but, instead, relocated to pre-1967 Israel along with all the Israeli troops who have been positioned inside Palestine to protect them.  Jerusalem would again be partitioned until the parties were ready to consider making it an open city.

Yes, Palestine needs to remain occupied for Israel's sake and for its own.  That may mean a foreign presence for a full generation or more to allow the bad blood between Israeli and Palestinian to drain out.   Anyone nearing retirement age knows that generational change can do amazing things.   It's why we old geezers are always griping and moaning about how things were so much better "in our day."

Wouldn't this sort of neutral but muscular foreign occupation be infinitely better, for Israeli and Palestinian alike, than the scourge-tactics of the Israeli occupiers or, worse, the prospect of another succession of Arab-Israeli wars?

Germany Shines a Light on the Harp of Darkness

When it came right down to it, Germany balked at voting "no" on Palestinian recognition in the UN General Assembly and, instead, merely abstained.   Netanyahu was not amused.

What transpired between Angie Merkel and Benny Netanyahu may shed some useful light on how Israel interacts with allies, like Canada, expecting them to do its bidding.


It was one of the most unpleasant conversations that Christoph Heusgen had ever been required to have with Jaakov Amidror. On Wednesday evening, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's foreign policy adviser told his Israeli counterpart that Germany would abstain in the following day's vote at the United Nations General Assembly on whether to grant the Palestinians the status of a "non-member observer state." Merkel's government had just decided, he said. 

Amidror made it clear what he thought about the Germans' decision. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government had been expecting Berlin to show its customary support for Israel by voting "no." The Israelis viewed [the German] announcement as an affront. 

Germany's stance on this issue shows just how deeply frustrated its government is with the Netanyahu government's policies. The UN vote was a defeat for Israel. In the end, 138 of the 193 UN member states supported the Palestinians' petition, including France and 13 other European Union member states. Germany's abstention weighed particularly heavy because it meant that Canada and the United States were the only major Western nations to vote on Israeli's side.

 ...In mid-November, Merkel was still of the opinion in internal deliberations that the Palestinians should be prevented from taking unilateral steps. Indeed, this was the reason her government cited when justifying its vote against the Palestinians' bid to become a full member of UNESCO, the United Nations' cultural organization, in late October 2011.

But in the end, the Israeli government's tactical maneuvering prompted Merkel to back away from this hard line. When it became apparent that a series of EU member states would support the Palestinians' bid for observer-state status, the Israelis asked Germany to push all of its fellow EU states to abstain. Up until that point, Netanyahu had pressured Merkel's government to gather as many "no" votes as possible within the EU.

[As the vote neared] the question was how the Germans should act. From the Israeli perspective, the answer was clear: Berlin would simply vote "no." But German officials had a different take on things. Merkel was upset that the Israelis were treating Germany's vote like a bargaining chip.

The chancellor was particularly annoyed because Netanyahu had shown himself completely unwilling to make concessions. On several occasions, Merkel had urged him to at least make a gesture on the issue of settlement construction in order to send out a signal to the Palestinians. Doing so would have made it easier for Merkel to campaign for the Israeli position. But Netanyahu stubbornly ignored her wish.

So Angie Merkel, unlike Stevie Harper, wasn't willing to be Benny Netanyahu's bitch.

How Petty Can Israel Get

Last week ambitious students around the world took the SAT, or scholastic aptitude test, their ticket to a chance at a good education and a bright future.

Students around the world except for Palestinian students that is.  It seems the Israelis received the exams for the Palestinian kids and withheld them.   From the Harvard Crimson.

The Israeli authorities held the exams sent by the College Board for weeks, not releasing the tests to AMIDEAST’s office in Ramallah.

AMIDEAST is the only testing agency in the West Bank, serving over three hundred thousand Palestinian students. Yet Israel controls the flow of goods and people in and out of the ever-shrinking Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli occupation impacts nearly every aspect of Palestinian life. In particular, the military occupation, illegal under international law, violates the basic right to education for Palestinian youth.

This SAT cancellation has been devastating for high school seniors across the West Bank who were planning to apply to college in the United States—including those from the Ramallah Friends School.

The Olive Grove War Re-Ignites

How do you steal a Palestinian's land?   It usually begins by destroying his olive groves.   Destroy his livelihood and then you can claim the land unoccupied and build a settlement.

It's the olive harvest on the West Bank and, true to form, Israeli settlers with the help of the Israeli Army are on the attack.

The Palestinians are pleading for the international community to send observers to their lands, hoping this will force the Army to restrain the settlers' land grab.   Maybe Ottawa could do the right thing for a change.   Nah, forget it.

How Far Will Obama Grovel?

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to be weighing "punitive" measures against the Palestinian Authority for having the temerity to seek statehood from the United Nations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is evaluating Israel's next step. But key members of his right-wing coalition are pushing for a firm response, which they say would discourage Palestinians from pursuing their strategy of gaining United Nations recognition or taking other unilateral steps away from the negotiating table.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has warned Palestinians of grave consequences and, according to one Israeli newspaper report, threatened to quit the government unless punitive actions are taken. He later denied saying that he would quit over the issue.

Lieberman and others say the Palestinian application for U.N. membership violates the 1993 Oslo peace accords, which committed both sides to work out their differences at the negotiating table. As a result, they say Israel should annex all or part of the West Bank, terminate the Oslo accords or cut off tax transfers that Israeli ports collect on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. That revenue, about $100 million a month, accounts for much of the authority's budget.

A New Middle East Reality

Oh my, my.  Mahmoud Abbas has called Barack Obama's bluff and applied to the United Nations for Palestinian statehood.   It will fall to the United States to veto the motion, spilling international political capital the US no longer has in much abundance.   With that, America loses its last shred of credibility in the Muslim world, especially with Israel's neighbours.   Obama has but two choices - either he wrestles a triumphant Benjamin Netanyahu to a genuine settlement or he posits America as Israel's discredited stooge, paving the way for a geopolitical realignment in the Middle East.   China stands ready and willing to supplant US hegemony in the Middle East, further cementing its ascendancy globally.

Middle East expert Robert Fisk, says there's no going back:

"The Palestinians won't get a state this week. But they will prove – if they get enough votes in the General Assembly and if Mahmoud Abbas does not succumb to his characteristic grovelling in the face of US-Israeli power – that they are worthy of statehood. And they will establish for the Arabs what Israel likes to call – when it is enlarging its colonies on stolen land – "facts on the ground": never again can the United States and Israel snap their fingers and expect the Arabs to click their heels. The US has lost its purchase on the Middle East. It's over: the "peace process", the "road map", the "Oslo agreement"; the whole fandango is history.

"Personally, I think "Palestine" is a fantasy state, impossible to create now that the Israelis have stolen so much of the Arabs' land for their colonial projects. Go take a look at the West Bank, if you don't believe me. Israel's massive Jewish colonies, its pernicious building restrictions on Palestinian homes of more than one storey and its closure even of sewage systems as punishment, the "cordons sanitaires" beside the Jordanian frontier, the Israeli-only settlers' roads have turned the map of the West Bank into the smashed windscreen of a crashed car. Sometimes, I suspect that the only thing that prevents the existence of "Greater Israel" is the obstinacy of those pesky Palestinians.

"But we are now talking of much greater matters. This vote at the UN – General Assembly or Security Council, in one sense it hardly matters – is going to divide the West – Americans from Europeans and scores of other nations – and it is going to divide the Arabs from the Americans. It is going to crack open the divisions in the European Union; between eastern and western Europeans, between Germany and France (the former supporting Israel for all the usual historical reasons, the latter sickened by the suffering of the Palestinians) and, of course, between Israel and the EU.

"A great anger has been created in the world by decades of Israeli power and military brutality and colonisation; millions of Europeans, while conscious of their own historical responsibility for the Jewish Holocaust and well aware of the violence of Muslim nations, are no longer cowed in their criticism for fear of being abused as anti-Semites. There is racism in the West – and always will be, I fear – against Muslims and Africans, as well as Jews. But what are the Israeli settlements on the West Bank, in which no Arab Muslim Palestinian can live, but an expression of racism?

"...So goodbye to  [Israel's] only regional allies, Turkey and Egypt, in the space of scarcely 12 months. Israel's cabinet is composed both of intelligent, potentially balanced people such as Ehud Barak, and fools such as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the Ahmadinejad of Israeli politics. Sarcasm aside, Israelis deserve better than this."

If Obama runs true to form, he'll do what previous American administrations have done when confounded by Israeli intransigence - he'll put the matter on the shelf and wait.   Only this time Washington's waiting game may be hexed.  A collapse of American hegemony over the Middle East could be a milestone in America's global decline and a Great Leap Forward for Beijing.

Update:  For another take on how Obama's bungling is playing straight into the hands of China, follow this link to Asia Times.   Meanwhile, al Jazeera, is calling it "The Humiliation of Barack Obama. 
As he prepares to singularly veto Palestine's statehood bid, he must be thinking to himself: 'This isn't right'."