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.

London Has Denounced It. So Has Washington. Why the Complicit Silence from Canada?

Israel has just taken another massive bite out of the Palestinian West Bank homeland.  Britain has condemned the land grab, so has Washington.

As for Canada, "what land grab?"  As Harper reminds us, we don't practice sociology.  It took Mulcair and Trudeau to demonstrate that we don't do integrity either, not when we're suckholing for votes.

And This Is Our "Ally"?

The U.N. acts to overwhelmingly upgrade the status of the Palestinian state.   Israel retaliates by stealing more Palestinian lands in the West Bank, enough to sever the West Bank itself.   This is what we call our "ally"?

 "Israel has authorised the construction of 3,000 more housing units in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, according to Israeli officials.

"It is also speeding up the processing of 1,000 planning permissions.

"The Palestinian Authority has said it will not return to peace talks without a freeze in settlement building.

"The decision comes a day after a vote at the UN General Assembly upgraded the Palestinians' status at the UN to that of non-member observer state.

"According to the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, some of the new units will be between Jerusalem and the settlement of Maale Adumim.
Plans to build settlements in the area, known as E1, are strongly opposed by Palestinians, who say the development will cut the West Bank in two, preventing the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state."

If this is Canada's ally, we've got a real scumbag for an ally.

Israel Metastasizes in West Bank Again

Israel has supposedly legalized three more illegal settlements in the Palestinian West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority strongly condemned the decision.

"Every single settlement built on Palestinian land is illegal", Chief Negotiator, Saeb Erekat, told the BBC.

The Israeli government had told the Supreme Court that it would regulate the status of the three outposts, which have a total of about 830 residents.

On Sunday, Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, formed a new committee, made up of four ministers, to look into the sites.

The statement said the "three communities... were established in the 1990s following the decisions of past governments".

Israel, with our tacit blessing, is the only country in the world allowed to steal its neighbour's lands and they do it again and again and again and they're not finished either.   It's probably no coincidence that the lands Israel is taking by force of arms sit atop a Palestinian aquifer Israel deems essential to its needs.  It's not just the land they're stealing, it's the water too and, in that region, water is gold.  Jackboots.

Is Obama Buying Netanyahu Time to Finish Annexing the West Bank?

"Not now" is Barack Obama's answer to the Palestinian Authority's appeal for statehood.  It's hardly unexpected coming from a feeble executive who can't even get basic legislation passed through his own unruly Congress.  The Republican's will piss on Obama later for gutting American hegemony in the Middle East yet, on Palestine, he's as reliable to Netanyahu as would be Rick Perry.

All Obama has left is an hollow "no."  He's an empty suit when it comes to the Palestinians, Jerusalem and the West Bank.  So, where does that leave the Palestinians?  al Jazeera provides a telling glimpse into flourishing West Bank Zionism, the sort of people who consider West Bank Palestinians "occupiers."  Now they're even recruiting gunmen from France.

Two weeks ago, an announcement appeared on a French website, calling for "militants with military experience" to participate in a solidarity trip to Israel between September 19 and 25. "The aim of this expedition is to lend a hand to our brothers facing aggression from the Palestinian occupiers, and to enhance the security of Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria," it explained. The dates of the trip coincide with the Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations.

The website belongs to the French chapter of the Jewish Defence League (JDL), a far-right Jewish group founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in the United States in 1968. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has refered to the JDL as a "violent extremist organisation".

"In France, it is a movement made up of French citizens who defend the Jewish community when faced with aggression, and also defends Israel in a more general manner," said Amnon Cohen, a spokesperson for the group. “In terms of ideology, we are Zionists, pro-Israeli, and we share similar ideologies to that of the Ichud Leumi ["National Union"] party in Israel." The National Union advocates the settlement of Jewish people in the entirety of the occupied West Bank, which it calls by its biblical name of Judea and Samaria.

I suppose it's to be expected.  Israel was born out of terrorism of the Irgun and other Zionist groups.  Terrorism drove Palestinians from their homes for the expansion of Israel.   Now, with Obama safely painted into a corner, what's next should be pretty clear.

Can We Still Keep Backing Israel After This?

Can we still back Israel if it has no intention of ever accepting the creation of a Palestinian state?   Can we support the state of Israel if we discover that it has been flying false flags about peace in the Middle East?   Can we support an Israel whose actual policy is to perpetuate the notion of flexible, ever shifting borders and the permanent subjugation of the Palestinian people?

I think we can and, so long as the Libs remain under the current management, will do just that.

You don't hear much about it in our media but al Jazeera has blown the lid off the secret negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority going back to the Bush/Cheney years.   The Arab news service has released confidential documents, now called the "Palestine Papers" showing the P.A. was willing to drop its pants and bend over to get any sort of statehood deal from Israel only to get the heave-ho.

Why won't Israel even consider handing Gaza and the West Bank over to a legitimate Palestinian state?   One reason I've often repeated is that Israel will never permit the aquifer that lies beneath the West Bank to fall under Palestinian (i.e. "enemy") control.  It is one of three aquifers that Israel sees as essential to its survival.   There will always be an Israeli tank parked on top of it.

The second reason is best explained by Alistair Crooke.   He contends we have heard but never understood what type of state the Israeli's want to create in their homeland.

It may be politically expedient, however disingenuous, for the current Liberal management to cling to fairy tale explanations of the Palestine/Israel roadblock but that does the party and its faithful no honour.

The documents are out.   They speak for themselves.   The Guardian has received a volume of them from al Jazeera and has had Palestinian officials privately confirm their authenticity even as the Palestinian Authority wants them to simply go away.

Hey Steve, Some Terrorists to Sue - Finally!

Steve Harper is going to open Canadian courts to enable victims of terrorism to sue for compensation. I wonder what he thinks of these terrorists. From AFP:

Jewish settlers rampaged in the West Bank on Monday, wounding four Palestinians, as they vented fury that Israel may answer US calls and dismantle outposts in the territory, officials said.

Jewish extremists blocked roads, hurled rocks at drivers, burned fields, cut down olive trees and opened fire towards Palestinians who tried to chase the trespassers from their fields in the northern West Bank, witnesses said.

West of the city of Nablus, an area home to some of the most hardline settlers in the occupied territory, dozens of masked extremists blocked a road in the early hours and hurled rocks at Palestinian drivers who stopped their vehicles to move the obstructions, they said.

"They attacked when the minibus (carrying 17 Palestinian workers on their way to work in Israel) stopped. The man next to the driver was seriously wounded," said Zakaria Sada, an activist with the Rabbis for Human Rights organisation.

Near the settlement of Yizhar -- one of the most radical in the West Bank -- heavy smoke billowed into the air as settlers set fire to Palestinian fields.

When a group of Palestinians threw stones trying to chase them off the land, about 20 settlers armed with guns jumped out from hiding places and opened fire in the direction of the Palestinians and journalists, an AFP correspondent said.

Three army patrol vehicles at a nearby junction stood by and did not intervene to stop the violence, but prevented a Palestinian fire-engine from reaching the field.

That sure sounds like terrorism and I'll bet those farmers whose fields were torched could probably do with a dollop of compensation too. Maybe Steve can tell us where they can sign up to launch their court cases.

Benny's Loose Cannon

It was obvious that when newly-minted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed ultra-right nutjob Avigdor Lieberman to be his country's foreign minister it wouldn't take long for the sparks to fly.

As though Israel has something to gain from poking a sharp stick in Washington's eye, Liberman wasted no time announcing that Israel was not bound by understandings on the creation of a Palestinian state reached at a U.S.-sponsored conference at Annapolis in November 2007. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently reported on a secret side deal between Netanyahu and Lieberman that could make the possibility of a Palestinian state in the West Bank all but hopeless:

Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu has struck a secret deal with Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman for highly contentious construction on West Bank land known as E1, Army Radio reported Wednesday. A source close to the negotiations between the pair told Army Radio that the plan had been agreed upon even though it did not appear in the official document detailing the coalition deal between Yisrael Beiteinu and Netanyahu's Likud.

Construction in the area is particularly sensitive because it would create contiguity between the settlement and the capital, which in turn would prevent Palestinian construction between East Jerusalem and Ramallah. This would also make it difficult to reach agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on the question of permanent borders.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1073771.html

Obama Might Have Palestine Figured Out

Hamas won't like it. Israel won't like it. That sure sounds like a way forward to me.

A rough idea of President Obama's initiative for peace in Palestine is emerging. The thrust of it seems to be to isolate Hamas in Gaza for now, clear the West Bank as a Palestinian homeland, create a vibrant economy and society in the West Bank and wait for the Gazans to sign on to a winning deal.

It will probably entail concessions from Israel, in particular clearing out all illegal settlements in the West Bank. The settler population is now estimated at upwards of 430,000, 40% of which arrived during the Bush Jr. administration

That will probably give the Israelis fits but, if there's to be any hope of lasting peace, that's pretty much unavoidable. Many Israeli papers have not warmly greeted the Obama inauguration. They seem to be getting the idea that the carte blanche thing is rapidly coming to a close.

Obama will have to tread carefully to resolve the Fatah-Hamas split. While Hamas was weakened by the Gaza war, many think Fatah suffered the greatest loss of Palestinian support. That may just create an opening for a genuine, national unity government for the Palestinian people.

Delusions of Peace

Don't kid yourself imagining that, if only Hamas was out of the way, the Israelis would leave the West Bank and Gaza and a lasting peace would break out.

There are a few obstacles in the way, the greatest of them would be Israeli access to groundwater from the West Bank and the consequent deprivation of Palestinian access to that same essential resource. There are two key reservoirs, the biggest being the Yarkon-Taninim Stream aquifer. Now here's the problem. As far back as 1989 the Israelis drew 320-million cubic metres of water while allowing the Palestinians 20-million cubic metres annually.

A 2008 Israeli Environmental Protection Ministry report suggests that settlement over the past two decades has increased the draw rate to 600-million cubic metres annually. The problem posed is that the maximum recharge rate of this aquifer is believed to be 360-million cubic metres a year. Worse yet, global warming is having a significant effect on ground water in the Middle East and the region is steadily drying out. If the recharge rate is just 60% of the draw rate it represents an unsustainable overdraw of the resource.

So settlement is consuming far more water than the region's system can produce. As though that wasn't bad enough, the existing groundwater is being ruined by pollution.

Some 2.8 million people reside in the Judea and Samaria region, including both Israelis and Palestinians. Due to conflicts and economic constraints, the effluents of more than 2 million people are inadequately treated, and only some of the cities and villages are connected to a sewage system. As a result, effluents have penetrated into the subsoil and polluted groundwater and springs.

In recognition of the problem, the environmental unit of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Judea and Samaria regional office of the Ministry of Environmental Protection selected the main streams suffering from pollution and initiated long term monitoring in order to evaluate the extent of the pollution and to quantify and evaluate the effluents flowing into these streams.

According to the report, Palestinian towns and cities produce an estimated 56 million cubic meters of sewage per year, 94 percent of which is disposed in cesspits or discharged without treatment into streams. Israeli sources produce an estimated 17.5 million cubic meters per year, 31.5% of which is disposed in cesspits or discharged without treatment into streams.

http://www.sviva.gov.il/bin/en.jsp?enPage=e_BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDisp
What=Object&enDispWho=News^l4345&enZone=e_news

Of course when the Israeli military occupation restricts Palestinian water use to drinking water only, it's a bit hard to imagine where they're supposed to find the water necessary for sewage treatment.

By what right is Israel draining the shared resource and by what right is the occupying military administration depriving Palestinians of access to this essential resource? The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has an interesting analysis of the situation:

1. Prohibition on altering legislation

Article 43 of the 1907 Hague Regulations prohibits an occupying state from changing the legislation in effect prior to occupation. The military orders that Israel issued regarding the water resources and the supply of water in the Occupied Territories significantly changed the legal and institutional structure of the water sector. The water resources in the Occupied Territories were integrated into the legal and bureaucratic system of Israel, severely limiting the ability of Palestinians to develop those resources.

2. Illegal utilization of water resources

Article 55 of the Hague Regulations limits the right of occupying states to utilize the water sources of occupied territory. The use is limited to military needs and may not exceed past use. Use of groundwater of the Occupied Territories in the settlements does not meet these criteria and therefore breaches article 55.

3. Discrimination between Palestinians and Israeli Settlers

Article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits an occupying state from discriminating between residents of occupied territory. The quantity of water supplied to the settlements is vastly larger than that which is supplied to the Palestinians. Similarly, the regularity of supply is much greater in the settlements. This discrimination is especially blatant during the summer months when the supply to Palestinians in some areas of the West Bank is reduced in order to meet the increased demand for water in the settlements receiving their water from the same pipelines.

The discrimination in utilization of the resources shared by Israel and the Palestinian Authority is clearly seen in the figures on water consumption by the two populations. Per capita water consumption in the West Bank for domestic, urban, and industrial use is only 22 cubic meters a year, which translates into 60 liters per person per day.

There is a huge gap between Israeli and Palestinian consumption. The average Israeli consumes for domestic and urban use approximately 104 cubic meters a year, or 280 liters per person per day. In other words, per capita use in Israel is four and a half times higher than in the Occupied Territories . To make a more precise comparison, by also taking into account industrial water consumption in Israel, per capita use per year reaches 120 cubic meters - 330 liters per person a day - or five and a half times Palestinian per capita consumption.

The World Health Organization and the United States Agency for International Development recommend 100 liters of water per person per day as the minimum quantity for basic consumption. This amount includes, in addition to domestic use, consumption in hospitals, schools, businesses, and other public institutions. Palestinian daily consumption is 40 percent less than the recommended quantity.

http://www.btselem.org/english/Water/Shared_Sources.asp

Even without the problem of inadequate access to minimal quantities of freshwater by the Palestinians, it's pretty obvious that the illegal Israeli settlements present an unsustainable draw on the groundwater resources of the region. Put another way, if the Palestinians were allowed the same per capita draw on the aquifers, no one would have any water in very short order.

When you look at the history of this problem going back twenty years you'll see that Israel has never been willing to entertain an equitable sharing of the West Bank ground water and it's more than hard to imagine that changing anytime soon. That, in my view, makes a compelling argument for the international community to impose a peace settlement on the Palestinians and the Israelis which incorporates a total removal of all Israeli settlements from the Occupied Territories and a return to the precise 1967 borders.

What other solution could there be to this water crisis? How long can we allow the Palestinians to be treated inhumanely, forced to accept a water ration 40% below the World Health Organization's minimum basic consumption threshhold?

This problem is going to worsen in the coming years and there isn't going to be any peace while it remains unresolved. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.

To get an idea of how a lot of Israelis view the Palestinian water issue, click on the following link:

http://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.think-israel.org/mar05pix/aquifers.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.think-israel.org/wulfsohn.water.html&usg=__FFPE1aW7srMEDLaLM62Pg-c7ULU=&h=455&w=375&sz=22&hl=en&start=5&sig2=y1hnSu5U3rrNU5oTFJzzrA&um=1&tbnid=qRRXwfzpCWAKXM:&tbnh=128&tbnw=105&ei=iDdgSebLJpj2sAOW54yWDQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3DMountain%2BAquifer%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4GGLL_en%26sa%3DN