Here are today’s news headlines, reports and opinion pieces from Occupation Info…
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News: Israeli forces kill seven Palestinians in attacks on northern Gaza Strip – (Update, death toll now 8, over 60 injured) |
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(01-11-06) – Wisam Afifeh, PNN. Beginning at dawn Wednesday Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip city of Beit Hanoun. Palestinian medical sources are reporting this morning that intense Israeli air strikes instantly killed National Security Force member, 25 year old Azwaidi Faiz Mohammad while 23 year old citizen Ahmed Yousef Sa’adat died of sustained injuries. Another four Palestinians were killed as the armed resistance responded to the Israeli ground invasion. See Also: Six killed in large-scale military operations in north Gaza (Al Mezan), Israeli army bombards northern Gaza; at least seven killed, 50 injured (Ma’an), and Israel launches major Gaza raid (BBC). |
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News: Lieberman says ‘learn from Mother Russia, do to Gaza what Russia is doing to Chechnya’ |
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(01-11-06) – Report, AFP. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s hardline new minister for strategic affairs, has said the Jewish state should use the same methods in Gaza that Russia had in Chechnya. Israel should operate in the Gaza Strip “like Russia operates in Chechnya,” Lieberman, local media quoted the leader of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party as saying during a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet. See Also: Negroponte in Israel for security talks (AFP), and Egypt rejects U.S. offer to deploy int’l force on border with Gaza (Haaretz). |
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News: Hamas say Gaza raid will have ‘negative influence’ on Shalit deal |
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(01-11-06) – Report, Haaretz. Hamas said Wednesday that the Israel Defense Forces operation [ed. the killing of 8 Palestinians and wounding of scores more] in northern Gaza would have a “negative influence” on negotiations being brokered by Egypt to try to arrange an exchange of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel for the release of captured IDF Corporal Shalit. A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Tuesday for talks with Egyptian officials on the deal that would see the release of Shalit, captured in June by Gaza-based Palestinian militants. See Also: Talks progress on Hezbollah-Israel prisoners’ swap says Nasrallah (AFP), and Hamas delegation in Cairo for prisoner swap talks (AFP). |
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News: Israel – Peretz sees Saudi peace proposal as ‘basis for negotiations’ |
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(01-11-06) – Report, Daily Star. Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Tuesday that a dormant Saudi initiative for Middle East peace could be a “basis for negotiations.” Peretz, speaking at an academic conference, said he was not endorsing the plan. Nonetheless, he was the most senior Israeli official even to consider it. The Saudi plan called for a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world. But Israel has balked at its call for full withdrawal from all territories captured in the 1967 war. See Also: Blair plans to reach out to Damascus (The Guardian). |
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News: Israel – Knesset approves Lieberman’s entry into Olmert’s coalition |
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(01-11-06) – Gideon Alon, Haaretz. The Knesset last night resoundingly approved MK Avigdor Lieberman’s inclusion in the government as deputy prime minister and minister in charge of strategic affairs. Thus, some two and a half years after being dismissed from the second Ariel Sharon government because of his opposition to the disengagement plan, Lieberman has returned to serve as a senior minister in Ehud Olmert’s cabinet. Lieberman’s new position was approved by 61 representatives of the coalition; 38 opposition MKs voted against. |
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News: Israel – Labor Minister Pines-Paz quits – I can’t sit in government with a racist |
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(01-11-06) – Mazal Mualem, Haaretz. Minister of Culture and Sport Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor) resigned from the government yesterday, hours after the cabinet approved by a large majority the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman. “I couldn’t sit in a government with a minister who preaches racism,” Pines-Paz wrote in his resignation letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday. “The combination of loss of direction and adding Lieberman to the cabinet is dangerous and irresponsible”. |
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News: Diplomacy – Lieberman already set to visit US |
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(01-11-06) – Report, Jerusalem Post. Avigdor Lieberman is already set for his first trip abroad as a minister. He will travel to the United States on December 8 to take part in the prestigious Saban Forum at the Saban Center For Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. Lieberman will speak about the future of the Middle East on a panel with Labor MK Ami Ayalon that will be chaired by former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger. Lieberman’s event is scheduled between addresses by former president Bill Clinton and his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton. |
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News: Senior UN envoy for Lebanon ‘particularly disturbed’ by Israeli over-flights of Beirut |
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(01-11-06) – Report, UN News. A senior United Nations envoy today expressed serious concern at continuing Israeli over-flights of Lebanon, especially intensive mock air raids over Beirut this morning, calling them a breach of the Security Council resolution 1701, which ended this summer’s conflict with Hizbollah. “The United Nations commends the efforts of all sides in implementing resolution 1701 over the 10 weeks since its adoption,” a UN spokesperson said. See Also: Debris of war compounds ecological nightmare in Lebanon (AFP), Up to 200,000 still displaced after war, UN says (IRIN), and UN agency concludes operation to feed 810,000 mostly displaced people (UN News) . |
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News: Lebanon – Olmert apologizes to Germany’s Merkel for Lebanon plane incident |
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(01-11-06) – Aluf Benn, Haaretz. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert phoned German Chancellor Angela Merkel Sunday to apologize for the incident that took place last week between Israel Air Force planes and a German naval vessel off the coast of Lebanon. Olmert made the call to strengthen Merkel’s position, government sources in Jerusalem said. The sources added that Merkel had been been roundly criticized by her political opposition, which is against the deployment of troops in Lebanon due to the risk to German forces, as well as the risk of impairing the special relationship between Germany and Israel. |
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Report: Israel – An intifada in the Carmel |
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(01-11-06) – Jack Khoury and Fadi Eyadat, Haaretz. Yesterday, a strike against the plan to annex thousands of dunams of private land, owned by local residents, to the Carmel National Park was announced in Daliat al-Carmel and Isfiya, applying to all public institutions, including the education system. Local businesses have also answered the call. The NGO Protection of Carmel Lands announced that Druze spiritual leadership, as well as Druze local authority heads and Knesset Member Majali Wahabi, all support the struggle. The mayor, Doctor Akram Hasson, warned of a situation in which the planning authorities ignore the residents’ claims: “As far as we are concerned, this is a struggle for our very existence in this village”. |
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Report: Palestinian emigration on the rise |
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(01-11-06) – Report, Jerusalem Post. Palestinians are leaving the territories due to the harsh security and economic situation there, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. Israel Radio reported that thousands of Palestinians have received permits to emigrate to Arab and other foreign countries. Ahmed Suboh, a Palestinian Foreign Ministry official, said at a Ramallah press conference that over the last four months, foreign and Arab diplomats in the territories have authorized 10,000 Palestinians to enter their countries. See Also: The Palestinian brain-drain (Electronic Intifada). |
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Report: Israeli barrier and settlement to leave West Bank village with nowhere to go |
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(01-11-06) – Rory McCarthy, The Guardian. Within months, the village of Wadi Fukin will be sandwiched between the growing settlement of Beitar Illit and the barrier, with a large chunk of its farmland gone. Confiscation orders have been issued for land that villagers have cultivated for generations. Mr Ibrahim was told that 12 hectares (30 acres) of his father’s land is to be taken. “I think the worst is yet to come,” said Mr Ibrahim, 50, a teacher at the village primary school. “We are totally dependent on that farmland.” He believes the settlement and the barrier together are designed to squeeze out the villagers. |
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Report: Olmert boasts of killing 300 Palestinian fighters in Gaza – The reality: 137 kids, 29 women, 12 old people |
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(01-11-06) – Report, Ma’an News Service. The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has boasted before the Knesset foreign and security committee that his army has now killed over 300 Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip over the last three months. He added that the Israeli army will intensify their operations against the Palestinian factions; however, it will not stay in Gaza much longer. The Palestinian director of ambulances and emergencies, Dr Mu’awiyah Abu Hassanein has refuted the claims. Dr Abu Hasanein stated that the Israeli allegations are false, since the Israeli army was targeting civilians, rather than fighters giving the following as proof… |
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Report: ‘National’ weapons in Nablus |
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(01-11-06) – Amira Haas, Haaretz. A rifle round that costs NIS 0.50 in Israel costs NIS 4 in Nablus. A rifle that costs NIS 20,000 in Nablus is sold in Israel for NIS 5,000, according to three young men who presented themselves as gun dealers. One of them, about 21, also presented himself as an activist of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade. The other two serve in the Palestinian security forces. They said the usual things – that the weapons and munitions in Nablus (and the West Bank in general) came from Israel, and that there were many ways to smuggle them despite the barricades and roadblocks as well as strict military inspection of all incoming and outgoing merchandise and the merchants’ permits. |
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Report: Last stop, Tel Aviv – US handing non-Palestinian ‘terror suspects’ to Israeli interrogators |
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(01-11-06) – Yossi Melman, Haaretz. A coincidental meeting at the Kishon prison, near Haifa, between a Jordanian-Pakistani detainee and an Israeli lawyer has shed new light on the intelligence cooperation between Israel and Jordan and these countries’ special relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency and America’s war on global terrorism. This could also turn out to be the first case of the United States handing Israel a world jihad suspect who is not linked to Palestinian terror or Hezbollah. Hundreds of similar cases – of suspects being transferred between countries – have been publicized over the last few years. However, this is the first time such a case has come to light in Israel. |
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Media Watch: Al Jazeera International confirms launch date for channel |
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(01-11-06) – Report, Gulf News. The Al Jazeera Network announced on Tuesday that its English-language news and current affairs channel will launch from its Doha headquarters at 1200 GMT on November 15. Director-general of Al Jazeera Network, Wadah Khanfar, said: “We are extremely proud of what Al Jazeera has achieved over the past ten years. “Al Jazeera today is an international media organisation. Al Jazeera English will build on the pioneering spirit of Al Jazeera and will carry our media model … to the entire world”. See Also: Al-Jazeera International losing its Arab identity?, and Pro-Israeli editors seek to influence Al-Jazeera International both by journalist Khalid Amayreh for the Electronic Intifada. |
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Lobby Watch: Texas versus Tel Aviv: US policy in the Middle East |
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(01-11-06) – James Petras, PEJ News. The struggle within the US power structure between the economic empire builders (EEB) and the civilian militarists/Z ioncons over US Middle East and global policy is now out in the open and intensifying. The EEB now have a politically powerful organizational expression, the Baker Commission (known officially as the Iraq Study Group) led by the formidable former Secretary of State, James Baker. The EEB are backed by a group of bipartisan congressional leaders, sectors of the traditional military elite, a powerful coalition of Texas-based oil and gas groups and sectors of Wall Street financial houses and potentially a large majority of public opinion. |
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Book Review: Unmasking the Second Palestinian Intifada |
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(01-11-06) – Remi Kanazi, Palestine Chronicle. Over the last five years, the Palestinian people have faced a host of obstacles in their fight for sovereignty, preventing them the opportunity to create a life those in the Western world brag about. A principal impediment facing the Palestinian struggle today is the constant reaffirmation that the Palestinian people—deemed by Israel and the US—are “terrorists,” “militants,” or animalistic beings lesser than those of the “civilized world.” In Ramzy Baroud’s new book, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of People’s Struggle, this myth is shattered. |
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Book Extract: Bearing witnes – An extract from Intifada: The Long Day Of Rage (2006) |
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(01-11-06) – David Pratt, Sunday Herald. They came through the wall using sledgehammers. With their faces daubed in camouflage paint and assault rifles and machine guns under their arms, they were a terrifying sight for the Hassan family, who huddled together in fear. There were at least 10 of the Israeli soldiers. They took the family’s blankets and bedded down. Others came and went throughout the night. When the soldiers left the following morning to continue their house-to-house hunt for “terrorists”, their parting gift was to smash the Hassans’ television set – one of the few luxuries enjoyed by this impoverished Palestinian family living in the squalor of al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah. |
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History: Peace talks – Why did Oslo fail? |
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(01-11-06) – George Giacaman, Bitter Lemons. It has been oft repeated that had Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and US President Bill Clinton stayed in power, the 2001 Taba talks would probably have led to a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. The point here is not to cry over spilt milk, but to note that the so-called Moratinos Document summarizing what the parties achieved at Taba remains for most European countries and for the Palestinian Authority a benchmark. Any future agreement will not succeed if it regresses from Taba. To say this, however, occludes the main reason for the failure of the Oslo process and the lesson to be drawn from this failure. |
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Comment: Pause for peace – Senior Hamas advisor argues that the ‘Irish model’ could lead to lasting ceasefire |
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(01-11-06) – Ahmed Yousef (Hamas), New York Times. The Irish Republican Army agreed to halt its military struggle to free Northern Ireland from British rule without recognizing British sovereignty. Irish Republicans continue to aspire to a united Ireland free of British rule, but rely upon peaceful methods. Had the IRA been forced to renounce its vision of reuniting Ireland before negotiations could occur, peace would never have prevailed. Why should more be demanded of the Palestinians, particularly when the spirit of our people will never permit it?. |
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Comment: From massacre to Lieberman – Lieberman to use ‘emergency’ claims to justify ethnic cleansing |
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(01-11-06) – Tamar Gozansky, Yedioth Ahronoth. While Olmert views the addition of Lieberman and his new-fascist party to the government as a lifesaver for his faltering coalition, for Israeli society this move is akin to a death sentence to the chances for peace, democracy, and civil and human rights. Lieberman’s eagerness to join the government led by Olmert, who was a senior partner to the disengagement plan, and to sit together with the Labor party, after rejecting a partnership with it several months ago, is not coincidental. Just as the predator who lies in wait for the prey to weaken, Lieberman acted the same. |
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Comment: Just how weak is Hamas after months of pressure? |
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(01-11-06) – Jarrett Blanc, Daily Star. Negotiations for a unity government between Fatah and Hamas are the fruit of international pressure, which has forced Hamas to consider sacrificing some of its formal authority within the Palestinian Authority (PA) despite the fact that the Islamic movement and its allies hold 77 out of 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC). (Note: The author is a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow based at the United States Institute of Peace. He was the International Foundation for Election Systems’ chief-of-party in the Palestinian Authority from March 2005 through March 2006). See Also: IMF: Aid embargo squeezes Hamas-led Palestinian government (Reuters), and IMF calls for tough reforms from cash-strapped Palestinians (AFP). |
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Comment: Budget – Defense at the expense of society, again |
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(01-11-06) – Nehemia Shtrasler, Haaretz. The 2007 state budget was brought before the Knesset yesterday. The NIS 295 billion budget is expected to solve the problems of security, education, poverty and socio-economic gaps. Bringing the budget before the Knesset signals the start of the season of applying pressures. Every group, party and MK will try to get a bigger slice of the pie over the next two months. Some will do this out of belief that they are serving the best interests of the nation. Some will do it out of utter cynicism – to “pay back” those who sent them to the Knesset. |
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Comment: Israel’s new arsenal |
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(01-11-06) – Ethan Heitner, TomPaine.com. What bizarre science-fiction horrors have to occur before the American media wakes up to the strange war that Israel is prosecuting against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians? People are still being maimed or killed every day in Lebanon thanks to unexploded cluster ordinance dropped massively by Israel in the 48 hours after a cease-fire had been negotiated but before it went into effect. |
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Comment: Making Joerg Haider Look Good – The Obscene Views of Avigdor Lieberman |
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(01-11-06) – Akiva Eldar, Haaretz. The prevalent comparison between Avigdor Lieberman and Joerg Haider does an injustice to the Austrian nationalist whose party joined the government in the winter of 2000. Haider is far from being a righteous man, but even in his most fascist days, he never called on Austria to rid itself of citizens who’d been living in the country for generations. Also, Haider never suggested standing up legislators representing these citizens in front of a firing squad. Natan Meron, at the time Israel’s ambassador to Austria, noted that once the leader of the Freedom Party joined politics, he never uttered a single anti-Semitic statement. Meron emphasized that the leader of the Freedom Party “does not threaten the Jews”. |
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