Still, even for Ha’aretz, this is crazy. In an editorial titled: “Netanyahu, the US has given you a second chance. Use it.” the paper tries to argue that (a) the Americans are offering a “second chance” that, presumably, may not return, (b) “the US had demanded that Netanyahu … agree to deliberations on all the core issues,” and (c) that “Netanyahu will commit a grave error if he is tempted to continue the damaging clash with Obama, and if he uses the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to enlist the president’s political enemies to advance the positions of the Israeli right wing.”

The degree of disinformation contained in this piece is staggering, and begs the question: Are Ha’aretz’s savvy editors so disconnected from reality, or are they knowingly lying to advance their politics?

First, the Americans aren’t offering a “second chance.” What happens if Netanyahu declines? Cancels his trip? Will the US start bombing Tel Aviv? What does “second chance” even mean? After all, the Palestinians have been getting second chances for 17 years, and have yet to compromise on a single issue.

Second, Ha’aretz knows but is obfuscating the fact that the Israeli government has agreed, again and again, to begin negotiations. It is the Palestinians who continue to refuse, on the apparently correct assumption that delay works in their favor, since Ha’aretz types will always urge the Israeli government to give in for the sake of getting the Palestinians to negotiate over, um, what we’ve just surrendered.

Would that this strategy worked. Unfortunately, it will most likely end up in disaster. The Israeli government has real limitations – especially on issues like Jerusalem and refugees, where the Palestinians have been unable to bend even over the Temple Mount, and the Israeli public unable to give ground on such fundamental questions. Pressuring the Israelis to acquiesce, at every turn no matter the cost, is a sure-fire way to bring real Israeli rejectionists to power, the kind unseen since the early 1990’s. If Ha’aretz is simply a cheerleader to every Palestinian demand, it enables their rejectionism – which, after all, remains the unsolved problem everyone likes to ignore.

Third, why would Netanyahu be “tempted to continue the damaging clash with Obama?” This whole time, he’s the one trying to dial it down, while Hillary and Obama worked feverishly to keep the flames burning. As Ha’aretz itself reported.

And as for enlisting the aid of the pro-Israel lobby “to advance the positions of the Israeli right wing,” Ha’aretz is consciously and inexcusably propagating the conspiratorial lies about AIPAC’s allegiances. AIPAC officially supports a two-state solution and negotiations to that end. But why would Ha’aretz care?

Related posts:

1. Go ahead, pressure Israel
2. What more can Bibi do just to start negotiating?
3. Why Palestine must be negotiated, not declared

Israel’s relentless drive to establish “facts on the ground” in the occupied West Bank, a drive that continues in violation of even the limited settlement freeze to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed himself, seems finally to have succeeded in locking in the irreversibility of its colonial project. As a result of that “achievement,” one that successive Israeli governments have long sought in order to preclude the possibility of a two-state solution, Israel has crossed the threshold from “the only democracy in the Middle East” to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.

Don’t believe it. Siegman’s vision suffers from a disparity between the real Israel and the Israel he believes he knows.

For example, he argues that “it is now widely recognized in most Israeli circles–although denied by Israel’s government–that the settlements have become so widespread and so deeply implanted in the West Bank as to rule out the possibility of their removal (except for a few isolated and sparsely populated ones) by this or any future Israeli government unless compelled to do so by international intervention, an eventuality until now considered entirely unlikely.”

Really? When over 80% of settlers live on 5% of the West Bank, most of it adjacent to the Green Line, when the popular reaction to the Disengagement from Gaza was an overwhelming yawn – no Galilee bed-and-breakfast and no Tel Aviv beach was empty during those two ostensibly traumatic weeks in August 2005.

The settlements can be removed, and the vast centrist Israeli mainstream that has so far escaped the notice of an ignorant world media will implement this removal. But only when it knows that the Palestinians won’t use the withdrawal from the West Bank the way they used the one from Gaza.

In short, Siegman is not a serious observer of Israel.

In 2008, he wrote another piece in the Nation seeking to prove Israel’s dishonesty in peacemaking. His sole proof: the settlements. Always the settlements.

It would be one thing if Israeli governments had insisted on delaying a Palestinian state until certain security concerns had been dealt with. But no government serious about a two-state solution to the conflict would have pursued, without letup, the theft and fragmentation of Palestinian lands, which even a child understands makes Palestinian statehood impossible.

I’m a big fan of American Jews taking Israel to the cleaners. I am genuinely mystified at their failure to protest the corrupt Israeli rabbinate’s efforts to define who is Jewish, or the complete absence of education about the Diaspora in all 12 years of an Israeli’s schooling, or the lack of Israeli support for Diaspora education while Israel joyfully drinks up American Jewish love and money with barely an acknowledging nod.

But the criticism on the peace process is not serious, and is repeatedly disproven by events. To insist on punishing Israel at this stage, Siegman must ignore the simple glaring fact that the Palestinians are refusing to prove the Israelis’ intransigence through, um, negotiating.

Yes, there are settlements. And yes, the settlement movement is a serious constituency with a resonant narrative. So it would be excruciatingly difficult for Netanyahu to take on the entire far-right unless he can show the mainstream that there is a reason to do so.

But it is also true that the settlers have lost every time they were challenged – in Sinai, Gaza and the current extra-Jerusalemite freeze. The broader culture war within Israel over the past two decades has left them marginalized politically. It is only Palestinian brutality that has left the majority of the settlements intact.

To seriously suggest further punishment of Israel without giving even casual consideration to the simple fact that the Palestinians have yet to concede anything in 17 years of negotiations – not even simple rhetorical gestures such as recognition of the Jews’ right to self-determination – is either stupid or willfully disingenuous.

You don’t trust Netanyahu? Fine. But right now, it isn’t Netanyahu that has to prove his good faith and capacity for peacemaking.

Pressure Israel all you want. As Obama has discovered in recent months, the Palestinians will only up their demands and push off the inevitable compromise.

Related posts:

1. What more can Bibi do just to start negotiating?
2. Are Obama's settlement demands good for Israel?
3. Why Obama is optimistic about peace

But what more can Netanyahu do to overcome this distrust?

Isn't the surging Palestinian economy proof that Bibi wants peace? Pictured: A Palestinian man sells sandwiches in Gaza City during Eid al-Adha festivities. (Photo accompanying WSJ article quoted below)

Unlike Rabin [in 1995], Netanyahu now accepts the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state. Unlike Rabin, he is issuing orders prohibiting construction throughout the Jewish West Bank. Netanyahu has crossed the Rubicon, on both ideological and practical levels, and reinvented himself as a centrist.

All this just to bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table, which they still refuse to do.

In a must-read in today’s Wall Street Journal, British analyst Tom Gross explains the results of Netanyahu’s pro-peace policies, especially the recent dismantling of hundreds of roadblocks and other measures to jump-start the Palestinian economy.

(True, Keith Olbermann once called Tom “the worst person in the world” for basically supporting military action against Iran’s nuclear program – for what it’s worth, Olbermann misquoted him – but Tom is also a passionate supporter of Palestinian independence and democracy.)

The piece is worth reading in full. Here are some choice parts:

Wandering around downtown Nablus the shops and restaurants I saw were full. There were plenty of expensive cars on the streets…

And perhaps most importantly of all, we had driven from Jerusalem to Nablus without going through any Israeli checkpoints. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has removed them all since the Israeli security services (with the encouragement and support of President George W. Bush) were allowed, over recent years, to crush the intifada, restore security to the West Bank and set up the conditions for the economic boom that is now occurring…

The shops and restaurants were also full when I visited Hebron recently…

Life is even better in Ramallah, where it is difficult to get a table in a good restaurant. New apartment buildings, banks, brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships and health clubs are to be seen. In Qalqilya, another West Bank city that was previously a hotbed of terrorists and bomb-makers, the first ever strawberry crop is being harvested in time to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe…

Palestinian economic growth so far this year—in a year dominated by economic crisis elsewhere—has been an impressive 7% according to the IMF, though Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad, himself a former World Bank and IMF employee, says it is in fact 11%, partly helped along by strong economic performances in neighboring Israel…

The truth is that an independent Palestine is now quietly being built, with Israeli assistance. So long as the Obama administration and European politicians don’t clumsily meddle as they have in the past and make unrealistic demands for the process to be completed more quickly than it can be, I am confident the outcome will be a positive one.

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Oscar Arias (Wikipedia)

In an interview with the Israeli news website YNet over the weekend (The English article is here, but the Hebrew one has the full quote I translated below), he says:

“In my conversations with the Palestinians, I’m trying to suggest a crazy idea – get rid of your army. In practical terms, this isn’t really a crazy idea, because we did it 61 years ago, and we have only benefited from it. In my opinion, a small state, a poor state like Palestine doesn’t need an army. Clearly not everyone will agree with me, but it takes a bit of courage to make such a decision and I hope the Palestinian Authority will have the courage to take this step.”

YNet’s Netanel Shlomovich adds:

The Costa Rican president’s position [on disarmament] will likely make the Netanyahu government happy, but not on all issues. During Arias’ term, Costa Rica established diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority and even recognized a Palestinian state. Yet President Arias doesn’t understand why these actions constitute a controversial decision.

“Over a hundred nations have recognized a Palestinian state. This was the vision of the United Nations from the partition agreement of 1947 that called for the establishment of two states. Very few people will disagree with the idea of two states,” [Arias said].

Related posts:

1. Report: PA shuts down only Christian TV broadcaster in West Bank
2. Is the Palestinian Diaspora part of the solution?
3. Why, in Palestine, is Baruch Goldstein a hero?

Middle East expert Mordechai Kedar said Monday that Dr. Sari Nusaiba of Birzeit University, north of Ramallah, has had to go underground in the wake of an article that claims an historical connection between the Jews and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Interviewed on Arutz Sheva’s Hebrew news journal, Dr. Kedar said that Nusaiba would not be the first prominent Arab to publicize the link.

Dr. Kedar said that Haj Amin El-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, declared in 1929 that the site’s association with King Solomon’s Temple was beyond all doubt, even though he would become part of the Nazis’ efforts against the Jews.

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The Atlantic Wire, the blog section of the Atlantic magazine, juxtaposes my view on this with three other commentators extolling the idea. For the record, I wrote that unilateral statehood would give the Palestinians nothing while freeing Israel’s right-wing government from its standing obligations.

The other commentators, on the other hand, didn’t even try to deal with the question in strategic terms.

Yossi Sarid, as is his wont, is hopeful and optimistic to the point of irrelevance: “When he declares independence, Abbas should call upon the Jews living in the state of Palestine to preserve the peace and to do their part in building up the new country as full and equal citizens, enjoying fair representation in all of its institutions.”

Juan Cole is inexplicably paranoid: “Since the Netanyahu government is about the least likely government to negotiate a Palestinian state within 1967 borders you could imagine, the Palestinians are giving up any hopes that talks will lead anywhere. Moreover, since Netanyahu has secret plans to thousands of further Israeli houses on Palestinian land in the next few years, time is short.”

This is just plain weird. First of all, Netanyahu doesn’t need “secret plans.” There are perfectly non-secret construction plans available for public viewing in the Housing and Construction Ministry. Second, the non-negotiable Palestinian demands aren’t just about borders, but also about refugees, Jerusalem and other issues. Third, on Cole’s doubts about Netanyahu’s intentions, he would do well to remember that both Sinai and Gaza – two withdrawals that included dismantling settlements and resettling thousands of Jews – were carried out by right-wing governments.

Finally, Chris Hedges seals the debate by comparing Palestine to all sorts of non-comparable places: “It worked in Kosovo. It worked in Georgia. And it will work in Palestine.”

But it didn’t work in Chechnya or Kurdistan, and worked only partially in Scotland and the Basque country – because these are all completely different situations.

Consider: Unlike in Kosovo, Israelis have been willing to withdraw from Palestine for over a decade (according to Tel Aviv University’s annual Peace Index). Unlike in either Georgia or Kosovo, Palestine has Hamas waiting in the wings to take over. Unlike in either Georgia or Kosovo, Israel is neither Russian nor Serbian in its intentions or in its political capacity for brutality.

Besides, supporting unilateral independence implies a trust in the current Palestinian leadership to get it right – to build institutions, to construct a national economy. Does Hedges trust them to do this?

The occupation is bad, undemocratic and temporary – even according to Israel’s own laws. But should the PA, which has suffered for almost two decades mainly from its own corrupt and incompetent leadership, unceremoniously jettison the entire Oslo process in the hope that more UN pressure will give them independence and prosperity? Will the need to negotiate over Jerusalem, refugees and borders disappear because Cuba, Sweden and Russia recognize Ramallah and Nablus as a “state” rather than an autonomous “authority?”

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The demand was ridiculous – Obama wanted not just a geographic freeze to the size of settlements, which Bibi Netanyahu gave him, but a demographic freeze. Israel was not to build kindergartens for the 960 children born each year in settlements. And “settlements” included Jerusalem.

No Israeli leader, on Left or Right, could agree to this as a pre-negotiation concession. And once uttered by the Americans, no Palestinian leader could demand any less. By undermining the Palestinians, Obama has set back all of us.

Dr. Alex Yakobson

But now I’m starting to wonder if my thinking on this may have been premature. Yes, the Obama administration goofed as only self-righteous fools can. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Dr. Alex Yakobson of Hebrew University, my teacher on these issues and a family friend, made some important points in Ha’aretz last week, suggesting that acceding to Obama’s demands now would leave Israel better off strategically even in the short term.

First, he notes, the American public’s support for Israel is strong and getting stronger:

…According to the poll, 64% of Americans continue to believe that Israel is serious about reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians. By a 3:1 ratio, the American people express more sympathy with Israel than with the Palestinians: 45% to 15%.

This support, however, is based on the perception that Israel genuinely sought and continues to seek peace. The settlement debate, says Yakobson, is getting in the way:

The support of a majority of Americans is still a much more important factor than all the attacks on Israel and the calls for a boycott. The American people would never have awarded such support to a country they viewed as not pursuing peace.

This is an asset of enormous importance, and it should not be wasted on a dispute with the Obama administration over the expansion of the settlements. The settlements are the main cause for questioning Israel’s desire for peace and its willingness for a two-state solution. Even among our best friends in the United States and elsewhere, the great majority disagrees with Israel over this issue.

…

There is no real gap between the Obama administration’s positions on the settlements and those of the Bush administration. The only difference is that Obama has decided to focus public and diplomatic attention on this issue. From the moment this happened it became clear – beyond any ideological or political dispute – that it is an essential Israeli interest to find a way to reach an agreement with the Americans on a formula for a settlement freeze.

He concludes:

Such a prolonged and public dispute with the United States over the settlements harms Israel. It is a battle where even victory would be a serious defeat. Netanyahu understands America well enough to know that. The question is whether such a critical national interest is a good enough reason in his eyes to confront the extremists within his coalition and party.

Devil’s advocate for a moment: What can Bibi give Obama on settlements without paying an exorbitant political price? And is it worth the trouble just to make the Palestinians willing to talk?

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JStreet. From left: Daniel Kohl, political director; Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder and executive director; Rachel Lerner, chief of staff. (NYT)

This policy was disastrous for Obama in Israel because it was spectacularly disconnected from reality. This wasn’t a demand for no geographic expansion of settlements (something Netanyahu has already committed to), but of no population growth.

Why is that shockingly stupid, you ask? For one thing, American officials publicly refused to distinguish between far-flung towns like Emmanuel and generations-old Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. For another, 960 children are born each year in settlements. Presumably Israel was expected to snatch these from their parents and sell them to the Chinese?

But none of that was as serious as the profound damage this elephant-in-a-china-shop policy did to the Palestinian Authority. With America demanding of the Israelis more than the PA seemed to demand, and then, because the demand was demonstrably stupid, suddenly withdrawing it, US diplomats left the PA with hat in hand facing an unprecedented wave of Arab excoriation for its “collaboration.”

I’m not saying Obama shouldn’t lead on peace, but he should do so competently and carefully. It wasn’t Bush’s Zionism that prevented peace in the past eight years, as Obama suggested to Jewish leaders back in July. It was Palestinian political dysfunction and ideological rejectionism. Remember the suicide bombings? Those were in Bush’s term, too.

Whether or not Obama gets this basic reality barely matters, since the Palestinians will explain it to him in short order. We know how to extract concessions from Israel for peace treaties, territorial withdrawals – even on the dismantling of settlements. Has anyone figured out how to extract a “yes” from the Palestinians?

So I couldn’t bring myself to share the excitement about JStreet, either for or against. It won’t bring peace because it’s barking up the wrong tree. But neither will it “undermine” or “betray” Israel’s security, since the ball will always stop, motionless, in the Palestinians’ court.

At some point, I figure, it is the Palestinians who will set the JStreet folks straight.

As I noted a month ago:

J-Street is not “Left” because its fundamental point of disagreement with AIPAC has nothing to do with the old division of peace vs. territorial redemption. Rather, J-Street stands out in the American Jewish landscape because it trusts Palestinian intentions and capabilities – a trust that, ultimately, it cannot convincingly explain to the rest of us.

Whatever its power becomes in Washington – and I suspect it will not be very great until J-Street wisens up on the only issue that distinguishes it – it will remain irrelevant on this side of the Atlantic. Lacking a healthy distrust of the intentions of the intransigent Palestinian leadership, it will lack any shred of credibility when it tries to convince Israelis to compromise once more for the sake of Palestinian freedom.

Now if only I could be as confident vis-a-vis JStreet’s stance on Iran, where its lack of support even for sanctions is just plain dangerous…

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David Makovsky

Could he be right?

Where does this optimism, which is apparently shared by the Obama administration, come from? Are the Americans impervious to the experiences of the past 16 years of peacemaking?

Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, says Makovsky. “Sometimes the news is what isn’t reported.”

What isn’t being reported is the quiet revolution taking place in the West Bank under Salam Fayyad, one that should impress even the more fatalist of cynics, he adds.

The Hamas takeover in Gaza in 2007 “was an unbelievable wakeup call that made the PA understand that Hamas is coming to the West Bank if they don’t get their act together.” For the Israelis, too, “the alternative to Salam Fayyad is not the Hadassah women of Brooklyn. It’s Hamas that will pick up the pieces.”

This has created a whole new willingness to work together that has not been seen since Oslo.

“Since 1996, [in the wake of the Hamas terror attacks of that year,] we’ve been hearing about the ‘revolving doors’ of the Palestinian security services – that the Palestinians arrest the Hamas guys and let them go. They’re not doing that anymore. There are 800 Hamas prisoners in [PA jails in] the West Bank.”

In the religious sphere, too, “they’re moving imams out of the mosques. There are 1,800 mosques [in the West Bank] and the PA is slowly changing their imams” from those sympathetic to Hamas’ message of destroying Israel to others more willing to compromise in order to end the conflict.

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First, Shmuley Boteach, publicist-rabbi extraordinaire, tackles the moral conundrum that is Jimmy Carter. Boteach has a habit of saying things in a succinct and clever way, so it’s a pleasure to read how he structures the argument.

The take-away: It’s one thing to worry about Palestine, quite another to blame Israel alone for the lack of peace. It’s one thing to seek dialogue, quite another to side with a string of failed dictators over four decades. So what’s Carter’s deal, anyway?

You’ve got to hand it to Jimmy Carter. No matter how wrong he is, no matter how many times he is refuted, no matter how inane his ramblings, he just keeps on coming back. Forget that he was eviscerated in a landslide election. And forget that historians and the public rate him as the worst president of all time. Carter doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. We’re stuck with him forever.

For example, on Carter’s accusation of racism in the opposition to Obama, Boteach notes:

Obama himself disagreed. More importantly, Obama’s biggest critics like him a lot more than the ex-president, even though Jimmy is a white man.

Is Carter criminally naive?

Carter, I have argued, is not so much an anti-Semite as he is what Lenin famously called, ‘a useful idiot,’ his mistake being to always side with the weaker party, notwithstanding their immorality. Let us never forget that the Carter administration tried to view the Khmer Rouge as the rightful government of Cambodia even though they slaughtered one out of three Cambodians. For Carter, weakness is itself a sign of righteousness.

Or is he an anti-Semite?

Therefore, when Carter said in 2006 that Israel’s policies in the West Bank were actually worse than apartheid South Africa, I began to question whether my readers were right. When he added in his 2009 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy that due to “powerful political, economic, and religious forces in the US, Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate our media,” I said to myself that anyone who rolls out the old Jews-control-the-world theory probably is an anti-Semite.

But no, Boteach concludes. He’s nothing so dramatic. He’s just a man who accepted “millions of dollars”

from leading Arab sources, including Saudi King Fahd, the now-defunct BCCI bank, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and Agha Hasan Abedi, among others. These millions, some of which even went to bail out the Carter peanut business in the late 1970s, finally vindicated my earlier theory.

Jimmy Carter is not an anti-Semite. He is simply a man with a price.

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The American B-1B strategic bomber - I'm just saying...

The AJC survey revealed that 56% of American Jews would support, and 36% would oppose, United States military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. A year ago, the AJC survey found that 42% would support the U.S. taking military action against Iran, while 47% were opposed.

And, in another sign of heightening concern about Iran’s nuclear program, 66 percent would support, and 28 percent would oppose, Israel taking military action against Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.

On the peace process:

In response to a new AJC survey question, 94% of American Jews agree that the Palestinians should be “required to recognize Israel as a Jewish state in a final peace agreement.”

Demonstrating American Jews’ skepticism of Arab intentions regarding Israel, 75% agree, and 19% disagree, with the statement, “The goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel.” In the 2007 survey, 82% agreed and 12% disagreed.

Nonetheless, regarding the establishment of a Palestinian state, 49% favor that outcome, and 41% are opposed. In AJC’s 2007 survey, 46% were in favor and 43% opposed.

On settlements:

The AJC survey found that a majority, 51% of U.S. Jews, disagree with the Obama Administration’s call for a stop to all new Israeli settlement construction, while 41% agree with that tactic.

Among the denominations, 74% of Orthodox, 62% of Conservative, and 46% of Reform Jews disapprove of the call for a full settlement freeze.

Still, there is wide recognition among American Jews that the question of settlements is a topic to be resolved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. When put in that context, most American Jews say Israel should be willing to dismantle all (8%) or some (52%) of the settlements as part of a permanent peace settlement with the Palestinians. 37% oppose dismantling any.

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United Nations Fact Finding Mission
on the Gaza Conflict

Statement by Richard Goldstone on behalf of the Members of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict before the Human Rights Council

Human Rights Council 12th Session – 29 September 2009

Check against delivery

Mr. President,
(Madame High Commissioner)
members of the Council,
ladies and gentlemen

My colleagues and I are here today to present to the Council the final report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.

Since the release of the advance version of the report two weeks ago, we have witnessed many attestations of support, but also a barrage of criticism towards our findings as well as public attacks against the Members of the Mission.

We will not address these attacks as we believe that the answers to those who have criticised us are in the findings of the report.

I have, however, to strongly reject one major accusation levelled against the Mission; the one that portrays our efforts as being politically motivated.

Let me repeat before this Council what I have already stated on many occasions:

We accepted this Mission because we believe deeply in the rule of law, humanitarian law, human rights, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.

We accepted with the conviction that pursuing justice is essential and that no state or armed group should be above the law. Failing to pursue justice for serious violations during any conflict will have a deeply corrosive effect on international justice.

We accepted out of a deep concern for the hundreds of civilians who needlessly died and those who suffered injury and dislocation of their lives.

We accepted because we believe that the perpetrators of serious violations must be held to account.

We do not claim to be immune from error. After the release of the report we have received a number of comments from people who are sincerely interested in the truth.

We have considered them and where relevant redressed inaccuracies in the final version of the report which is today before you.

We regret that the response to date of the Government of Israel avoids dealing with the substance of the report.

Mr. President

As you all know, the Mission was established in April of this year with the mandate to investigate “all violations of International Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza from 27 December 2008 – 18 January 2009, whether before during or after”.

Ambassador Uhomoibhi and I announced the establishment of the team at a press conference in April and he brought the mandate of the Mission before this Council in June.

The mandate of the mission was to look at all parties: Israel; the Palestinian Authority; Hamas, which governs Gaza; and armed Palestinian groups.

Soon after its establishment the Mission was faced with one of its major challenges: the decision of the Government of Israel not to cooperate with it and its implicit refusal to give us access to Gaza, the West Bank and to southern Israel.

We decided not to allow this lack of cooperation to prevent the Mission from discharging its mandate.

The Mission is grateful to the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt for having facilitated its entry into Gaza through the Rafah crossing.

The Mission also wishes to express its gratitude to many, without whose assistance its task would have been impossible to fulfil.

It would be difficult to name all of them here. We attempt to do so in the acknowledgement section of the report.

We wish, however, to pay our respect to the many civil society organisations, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Israel and elsewhere, which – often under difficult and challenging circumstances – continue to play a crucial role in upholding the universal principles of human rights.

We would respectfully suggest that this Council should recognize and support these organizations.

The first field visit by the Mission Members was conducted in the Gaza Strip from 1-5 June 2009, during which we held meetings, conducted interviews with victims and witnesses and visited the sites of incidents.

The Members of the Mission were in Gaza again from 26 June to 1 July, during which time we continued our investigations and held the Mission’s first round of public hearings. Mission staff maintained a presence in Gaza until early July.

Members of the Mission also travelled to Amman, Jordan, from 1 to 4 July to interview witnesses and meet with people and organizations from Israel and the West Bank.

As part of its investigation process, the Mission held a second set of public hearings. In the two rounds of public hearings, 38 witnesses, victims and experts gave testimony.

The aim of holding the hearings publicly was to give a voice to those who had direct experiences and expertise that related to the mandate of the Mission.

The Mission reviewed reports produced by various organizations and institutions as well as submissions on matters of fact and law relevant to its inquiry.

The Mission consulted with a wide range of interlocutors. They included victims and witnesses, Palestinian, Israeli and international NGOs, United Nations and other international organizations, community organizations, human rights defenders, medical and other professionals, legal and military experts, authorities and other sources of reliable information relevant to the Mission’s mandate. These interlocutors were both within and outside Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.

The Mission conducted 188 individual interviews, reviewed over 10 000 pages of documentation and viewed some 1200 photographs, including satellite imagery and video-tapes.

The Mission was supported by an outstanding Secretariat provided by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). We are grateful to the High Commissioner for providing this support, without which the Mission could not have carried out its mandate.

In making findings of fact, we relied primarily on our own evaluation of the people who spoke to us and from what we saw with our own eyes.

We relied on reports from others where they corroborated the views we had formed.

The exception to that approach was in respect of some facts relating to the West Bank and to Israel in light of the refusal by the Israeli Government to allow us into Israel or to visit the West Bank.

On 15 September the Mission released an advance version of its report.

Mr. President
Members of the Council

Our report is before this Council for its consideration. Allow us, however, to focus the Council’s attention on a number of points.

Let me immediately say that the report reflects the unanimous views of all four of its members.

For practical reasons, the Mission decided for the most part to restrict its fact finding to the period from 16 June 2008 to 31 July 2009. The 16th June 2008 was the date on which a cease fire between Israel and Hamas came into effect.

The Report contains an analysis of 36 specific incidents in Gaza as well as a number on the West Bank and in Israel.

In Chapter XI of the Report, for example we detail a number of specific incidents in which Israeli forces launched direct attacks against civilians with lethal consequences. These were, with only one exception, where the facts establish that there was no military objective or advantage that could justify the attacks.

You will find details of the other 35 incidents in the Report. Some of them relate to the use by the Israel Defense Forces of human shields in violation of an earlier ruling by the Israel Supreme Court outlawing such conduct.

The Mission investigated in some detail the effects on the civilian population in Southern Israel of the sustained rocket and mortar attacks from Palestinian armed groups in Gaza. We detail the suffering of victims and the highly prejudicial effects of these acts on the towns and cities that fall within the range of the rockets and mortars.

The Mission decided that in order to understand the effect of the Israeli military operations on the infrastructure and economy of Gaza, and especially its food supplies, it was necessary to have regard to the effects of the blockade that Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip for some years and has been tightened since Hamas became the controlling authority of Gaza.

The Mission found that the attack on the only remaining flour producing factory, the destruction of a large part of the Gaza egg production, the bulldozing of huge tracts of agricultural land, and the bombing of some two hundred industrial facilities, could not on any basis be justified on military grounds. Those attacks had nothing whatever to do with the firing of rockets and mortars at Israel.

The Mission looked closely and sets out in the Report statements made by Israeli political and military leaders in which they stated in clear terms that they would hit at the “Hamas infrastructure”.

If “infrastructure” were to be understood in that way and become a justifiable military objective, it would completely subvert the whole purpose of IHL built up over the last 100 years and more. It would make civilians and civilian buildings justifiable targets.

These attacks amounted to reprisals and collective punishment and constitute war crimes.

The Government of Israel has a duty to protect its citizens. That in no way justifies a policy of collective punishment of a people under effective occupation, destroying their means to live a dignified life and the trauma caused by the kind of military intervention the Israeli Government called Operation Cast Lead. This contributes to a situation where young people grow up in a culture of hatred and violence, with little hope for change in the future.

Finally, the teaching of hate and dehumanization by each side against the other contributes to the destabilization of the whole region.

Mr. President
Members of the Council

Let me come to some of the recommendations.

The Mission debated long and hard on whether this was a case, like Darfur, where the Security Council should consider referring the situation both in Israel and Gaza to the International Criminal Court.

The Mission is highly critical of the pusillanimous efforts by Israel to investigate alleged violations of international law and the complete failure by the Gaza authorities to do so in respect of the armed groups. That notwithstanding the Mission came to the conclusion that both Israel and the Gaza Authorities have the ability to conduct open and transparent investigations and launch appropriate prosecutions if they decide to do so.

We therefore recommended that the Security Council should require Israel to report to it within six months, on the investigations and prosecutions it is carrying out with regard to the violations referred to in this Report and any others that may come to its attention.

The Mission recommends further that the Security Council should set up a body of independent experts to report to it on the progress of the Israeli investigations and prosecutions. The committee of experts should similarly report on investigations and prosecutions undertaken by the relevant authorities in Gaza with regard to crimes committed by the Palestinian armed groups.

In both cases, if within the six month period there are no good faith investigations conforming to international standards, the Security Council should refer the situation or situations to the ICC Prosecutor.

The Mission was concerned at the use made by the Israeli army of certain munitions and especially white phosphorous, flechettes and certain heavy metals such as tungsten. Their use is not presently banned by international law.

The Mission has recommended that the General Assembly should promote an urgent discussion on the future legality of the use of these munitions.
As appears from the Report the manner in which those munitions were used in Gaza caused unacceptable and unnecessary human suffering as well as environmental damage – not only in Gaza but probably also in southern Israel. The situations arising from the latter should be monitored by the United Nations.

Since the issue of the advance copy of the Report it has been rejected in vehement terms by the Government of Israel. The call for transparent investigations has been rejected. The Government of Israel wishes to restrict its investigations to secret inquiries by the Military investigating itself. That would clearly not satisfy the legitimate expectations of the many victims of the Israeli military operations.

A word about accountability. It has been my experience in many regions of the world, including my own country, South Africa, that peace and reconciliation depend, to a great extent, upon public acknowledgement of what victims suffer. That applies no less in the Middle East. It is a pre-requisite to the beginning of the healing and meaningful peace process.

The truth and accountability are also essential to prevent ascribing collective guilt to a people. Many people in Gaza deplore the firing of thousands of rockets at civilians in Southern Israel and the terror that it has caused to innocent children, women and men. And many in Israel, Jews and Palestinians, deplore the actions by the Israel Defense Force that caused unjustifiable civilian deaths and injuries on a very large scale. They do not approve of the damage to the food and commercial infrastructure of Gaza that will take many years to repair.

Support for many of the recommendations contained in the Report has come from Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.

People of the region should not be demonized. Rather their common humanity should be emphasized.

It is for this reason that the Mission came to the conclusion that it is accountability above all that is called for in the aftermath of the regrettable violence that has caused so much misery for so many.

The Mission calls upon the HRC to accept the Report and adopt its recommendations.

Mr. President

Now is the time for action.

A culture of impunity in the region has existed for too long.

The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point; the ongoing lack of justice is undermining any hope for a successful peace process and reinforcing an environment that fosters violence. Time and again, experience has taught us that overlooking justice only leads to increased conflict and violence.

In conclusion, may I say that the Mission hopes that the substance of this report will be used to strengthen initiatives for peace in the region. The mission is convinced that the international community must confront the realities highlighted in this report and that by doing so find a meaningful basis for the pursuit of peace and security for all the people of the region. Only in that way will the human dignity and security of these people be realised.

By appointing this Fact Finding Mission, the Human Rights Council raised expectations for action and for justice: we call on the Council and on the international community as a whole to take up our recommendations so those expectations will not have been raised in vain.

Thank you.

Geneva, 29 September 2009

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Judge Goldstone himself has weighed in on the debate in today’s Jerusalem Post. He concludes with this:

The recognition of the humanity of all people – the recognition of Israel by Hamas and the recognition of the Palestinian right to self-determination – are both pre-requisites for peace. And I still nurture the hope that the facts contained in the Report of the Fact-Finding Mission will assist, even in a small way, to finding a peaceful way forward in the Middle East.

The people of the region have waited all too long for that.

It’s enough to make you want to tear your hair out – the automatic psychological blindness to Palestinian rejection. Palestinian self-determination was at the center of a generation-long Israeli culture war, complete with a murdered prime minister. And all polls show that the Left won the argument about Palestinian rights.

What has prevented peace and compromise – and destroyed the Left even as its basic idea was becoming widely accepted – is the second half of Goldstone’s equation: “the recognition of Israel by Hamas,” or by the Palestinians generally. Even moderate Palestinians, buoyed in part by international documents such as Goldstone’s report, continue to believe Israel is an illegitimate bastard-child of colonialism. Compromise is thus automatically a kind of betrayal.

This is the wisdom behind Prime Minister Netanyahu’s demand for Palestinian recognition of the legitimacy of a Jewish state: The double-talk of negotiating and delegitimizing has undermined Palestinian peacemakers among their own people. How could it do otherwise? How can you negotiate while assuring your own people the other side is evil?

Perhaps, Judge Goldstone, you should take your own advice about judging the sides equally – not based on an artificial assumption of mutual fault, but on the merits of each side’s efforts at peacemaking and reconciliation.

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NYT's dramatic view of J-Street. From left: Daniel Kohl, political director; Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder and executive director; Rachel Lerner, chief of staff.

Ben-David’s key point is that J-Street is not “pro-Israel,” but a pro-Obama infiltrator into the pro-Israel camp. Now, I don’t know J-Street’s top honcho Jeremy Ben-Ami personally, so I can’t say with confidence whether Ben-David is right or wrong. But I think the criticism is misguided in the sense that J-Street’s error is even more fundamental if its intentions are good and honorable.

J-Street is not so much wrong on Israel as it is lost.

When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is no real division nowadays between Right and Left, only between those who understand that Palestinian intransigence and dysfunction make the price of an Israeli pullout too high, and those who don’t. After Gaza and Sinai, with some 35 settlements uprooted and tens of thousands of settlers resettled, how can anyone believe that settlements are permanent and Israel, given the prospect of genuine peace, wouldn’t remove them?

I’m not saying settlements are right or wrong – that’s a different discussion. I’m saying that the settlements would certainly be gone by now had the past 10 years not included hundreds of dead Israelis due to terror assaults on our pizzerias and the near-certain reality that the withdrawal of the IDF from Kalkilya will result in rockets falling on our only international airport.

It’s easy to see why the terror of the past decade has gone out of sight and out of mind for most in the West ever since the IDF forcibly dismantled the Palestinian terror infrastructure – including the Fatah’s – and took the issue out of the news cycle. But we Israelis haven’t forgotten quite so easily what was, on an Israeli scale, almost three-dozen 9/11s.

J-Street is not “Left” because its fundamental point of disagreement with AIPAC has nothing to do with the old division of peace vs. territorial redemption. Rather, J-Street stands out in the American Jewish landscape because it trusts Palestinian intentions and capabilities – a trust that, ultimately, it cannot convincingly explain to the rest of us.

Whatever its power becomes in Washington – and I suspect it will not be very great until J-Street wisens up on the only issue that distinguishes it – it will remain irrelevant on this side of the Atlantic. Lacking a healthy distrust of the intentions of the intransigent Palestinian leadership, it will lack any shred of credibility when it tries to convince Israelis to compromise once more for the sake of Palestinian freedom.

UPDATE: J-Street has launched an initiative to campaign for a two-state solution on American campuses. Once again, it shows how strangely disconnected it is from reality. There are few things Israelis and Palestinians agree on more than that they do not want to live in each other’s state. The two-state solution is a given – even for Bibi.

How about campaigning to make sure that any future Fatah-Hamas reunification does not oust Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the man bringing real reform and economic revival to Palestine?

UPDATE 2: Lenny Ben-David responds via Facebook:

Haviv — good questions and good blog. I don’t share your belief in J Street’s naivete. I respect (don’t have to agree) transparent orgs like Peace Now America and IPF — after the hate-full Rosenberg left. But too much is hidden in J Street – $, motives, backers. They don’t reflect the opinion of anyone in Israel unlike other orgs. J St isn’t lost; they’re following a path mapped out and paved for them. But by whom?

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But more importantly, David (full disclosure: my boss) lays out the near-universal opinion of Israelis at the end of 16 years of peace-processing:

With a series of astute political gambits in recent days, Netanyahu has defused right-wing criticism, found a workable middle-ground with the US, and attracted center-left support. But the strategic challenge of peacemaking with the unbending Palestinians remains as daunting as it ever was.

Nine years [after Camp David], Netanyahu is drawing closer to another attempt at negotiation, with Arafat’s successor. Unlike Rabin and Barak, and unlike Olmert, he comes from the center-right, heads a relatively stable coalition, and can fairly claim to speak for a sizable Israeli majority. He seems to have finessed many of his right-wing critics, impressed some in the center-left, found a workable arrangement with the US administration, and embraced a potentially viable two-state solution.

What hasn’t changed, at least not for the better, is the Palestinian position – the same maximalist stances, the same relentless anti-Israel incitement, and the same refusal by leaders to acknowledge and convey to their people the legitimacy of Israel. If Obama and Netanyahu have found a middle ground, there is sadly no evidence that Abbas is traveling in the same direction.

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There are no facts except the occupation, in Carter’s worldview. Which is a shame, because the occupation would have been over 10 years ago if the major Palestinian political movements didn’t have this habit of murdering people with every Israeli concession.

Most interestingly, Carter writes:

Also, in a meeting last week with a large group of prominent Israeli business and professional leaders, their most vehement, and uncontradicted, statement was, “Israel’s worst mistake has been building settlements in the West Bank.”

I’m sure they said that, as would I. But Carter should have asked those businesspeople what they believed should be done going forward. Does their opposition to the occupation translate into withdrawal from the West Bank? Had he asked, he would have discovered that the only thing Israelis distrust more than the occupation is the Palestinians. Hundreds of bombings and shootings after 2000, over 1,000 of our dead, and launched at a time when there wasn’t a single IDF soldier in any Palestinian city and Barak was negotiating over Jerusalem. Is it so strange that we’re a bit cold on Palestinian intentions?

Carter’s selective hearing of Israelis is thus tragic. It is that Israeli mistrust, above all, that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state. The solution is not to scare us. We know how to survive Carter’s dire warnings. And, to be blunt, neither Palestinians nor Israelis actually want to live together in a single state. So it’s unlikely to happen no matter how earnestly Carter fears that it might.

The solution, therefore, is to genuinely repair what is broken in Palestine, so that our withdrawal doesn’t end up shutting down our major cities and only international airport due to rocket attacks.

Here’s hoping.

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I just thought you’d appreciate the warning.

Just when you thought you couldn’t take one more news report about talking about talking in the Middle East, there is now new talk about holding “serious” talks between the Israelis, the Palestinians and the Arab states.

It’s nobody’s fault really. The Obama administration, still untested in the gauntlet of geopolitical cynicism, wants to bring its celebrated talents – a more balanced perspective, the president’s personal charm, careful elocution, etc. – to this tangled conflict. Solve Israel/Palestine, Jimmy Carter keeps saying, and worldwide calm and contentment is sure to ensue.

Thus it was that in his recent tour of Europe, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu listened patiently as every single European leader he met made it a point to bring up the question of settlement construction. The White House, too, was reportedly upset by Netanyahu’s expected approval of the construction of some 500 apartments in already-existing neighborhoods in the already-populated towns of Maaleh Adumim and Ariel.

Having asked Arab leaders for steps toward normalization with Israel in exchange for the Israeli settlement freeze – and received an unceremonious “no” for an answer – the Obama administration seems to be falling back on complaining about Israel’s refusal to surrender a negotiating asset in exchange for earning the right to hold the negotiations.

Amr Moussa

The Arabs “cannot speak of normalization as long as Israel continues [settlement] construction,” he added for good measure.

And just in case you’re a lefty peacenik hippy like me who just wishes everyone could calm down and settle this already – and therefore you might be thinking that a settlement freeze is a reasonable demand on Moussa’s part – he made sure to check that empathic instinct quickly. In an interview with an Arab newspaper last Friday, he clarified that the Arab League’s demand includes the entire Old City of Jerusalem, even its Jewish Quarter – the area rebuilt by Israel after 1967 from the desecrated ruins left behind when the Jordanians tore down every last Jewish home and synagogue, leaving only a garbage heap as a message to the Jews. You know, the part of the city containing Judaism’s holiest spot.

So Moussa’s demand seems to be: Before we talk about normalization, even in theory, even with Obama, Israel must actually stop all construction and place its sovereignty over the Jewish Quarter and the Wailing Wall up for negotiations.

Some peace process Obama is bringing with him.

So why is every world leader worthy of the title taking the time to blast Israel, and Israel alone?

Hey, what else are they going to do? Complain about Palestinian self-ruination through kleptocratic corruption of historic proportions? “Speak truth to power” about ruthless Arab dictators that have no real national program except to remain in power by refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the very existence of the seven-million-member civilization next door, while by the way refusing to teach their own populations literacy and science?

The tragedy, of course, is that it doesn’t matter how much the world criticizes Israel, because the ball hasn’t been in Israel’s court for almost a decade. There is little my country can do to Gaza – good or bad – that would give it real freedom from war and suffering, since it is ruled by men (and only men) who are moved to spiritual ecstasy by the thought of sacrificing a thousand Palestinian lives for the satisfaction of terrorizing Israelis.

There may be even less Israel can do – good or bad – to transform the West Bank’s Fatah leaders from a Somali street gang managing an entire nation primarily through extortion to the savvy, moderate leadership Palestinians deserve and desperately need.

After all these years of back-and-forth, do I really still need to state for the record that I’m opposed to expanding settlements, support a viable Palestinian state and sincerely yearn for Palestinian happiness and independence?

It’s just that – and forgive me for repeating once again – we showed in Sinai and Gaza that we can withdraw, dismantle settlements and keep our side of any bargain.

In refusing to set its gaze firmly on Palestinians and Arab intransigence, the international community, with Obama currently in the lead, has committed two possibly irreparable mistakes: it has told the Israeli people that they can do no right, and the Palestinians that they can do no wrong.

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Welcome to my new blog. As correspondent for the Israeli English-language daily The Jerusalem Post, I cover the Jewish communities of the world, Israel’s diplomacy and strategy, and a myriad of other issues related to Israeli culture and politics.

What follows are two posts of recent articles that sum up my perspective on central issues of the modern Jewish experience: the Israeli-Arab peace process and the diverging identities and interests of the different Jewish communities of the world.

On the peace process, I hope to offer a perspective that represents, as nearly as I can understand it, the Israeli mainstream or “street.” I believe in the cacophony and passion surrounding the issue, the voice of ordinary Israelis is usually either ignored or misunderstood. The Israeli people are liberal, largely support Palestinian freedom and continue to believe the old folk songs about the horrors of war and the importance of peace. That this simple reality is not reflected in media coverage is a statement about the ignorance and amateurish advocacy that has come to dominate international media on a whole variety of issues, this one included.

On the Jewish world, I hope to represent well the thesis developed by my father, the American Jewish Committee’s Rabbi Edward Rettig, who recently submitted a 450-page PhD analyzing the diverging cultures and identities of Israeli and American Jews (Americans being some 80% of the Diaspora). As these communities break apart in the most fundamental ways, the Jewish organized world – including the Israeli government, legislature, army and education system, as well as federations, charities and educators worldwide – must decide whether to fight back in order to bridge the growing divide or to surrender to the continental drift that within a generation will surely cleave the Jewish people in two.

I hope this blog will be interesting and useful, and will raise these issues in new and relevant ways.

Much thanks,
Haviv

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