Well This is Going Swimmingly

Remember back when everyone was mad at Netanyahu? That was because just as Joe Biden was in Israel trying to get peace talks started, Israel announced it was going to build a whole bunch of new settlement housing in East Jerusalem, in a neighborhood called Ramat Shlomo.

As part of the newest round of proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Israel annouced yesterday that it would not build the approved Ramat Shlomo neighborhood for at least two years. There, are you happy now?

Israel had pledged not to build in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood of East Jerusalem for two years and that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed that he would work against incitement of any sort.

But then today, one day later, oops.

Just two days after resuming peace talks with Israel, the Palestinian Authority has reported to the United States what it termed the first violation of negotiation terms, a senior Palestinian official said Monday.

Yasser Abed Rabbo said the construction of 14 housing units for Jewish settlers in an East Jerusalem neighbourhood, as reported by the Israeli Peace Now pressure group, violated the terms of new talks.

About the first round of talks, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said:

Erekat said that during their meeting, Abbas gave Mitchell a letter outlining the Palestinian Authority's position on proximity talks and the issues it wants to discuss. Abbas would head the Palestinian negotiating team himself, Erekat said, adding that the Palestinians view the talks as aimed at "The end of the occupation and creation of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel along the 1967 borders."

And Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak echoed his sentiments at a separate event:

"Without an agreement, we will be subject to international isolation, and we will suffer a fate similar to that of Belfast or Bosnia, or a gradual transition from a paradigm of two states for two peoples to one of one state for two peoples, and some people will try to label us as similar to South Africa. That's why we must act," Barak said. If both sides are willing to make brave decisions, he said, "it will be possible to get to direct negotiations and a breakthrough toward an agreement."

So it looks like Barak is super duper ready to make a two-state solution with the Palestinians, but clearly the rest of the government is not on board. Ah, well, no matter. I'm sure Netanyahu and Lieberman and all those guys will enjoy being a Jewish minority in, oh, 20 years.

Everyone Hates Netanyahu

Remember last week when I described how Netanyahu inserted his foot fully into his mouth with that whole Biden thing? Well, now clean-up is happening.

Firstly, yesterday, Bibi was apparently trying to explain that he handled the situation with Biden:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he thought his apology to Joe Biden over the ill-timed announcement of east Jerusalem construction was sufficient and believed the matter was closed.

This he says the same day he was "harshly reprimanded" on the phone by Sec. State Clinton. She expressed this sentiment herself:

In an interview with CNN, Friday Secretary of State Clinton said the move was "insulting" to the US.

"We have to make clear to our Israeli friends and partner that the two-state solution which we support, which the prime minister himself said he supports, requires confidence-building measures on both sides," she said.

And then today, when Netanyahu sees that everyone is still talking about it, he tries again:

"We opened the newspapers today and read all kinds of commentaries and estimates about the crisis with the United States. I suggest that we avoid getting carried away and calm down."

But the fact that he, himself, called it a "crisis" belies his message. In any case, the more interesting question to some will be whether Netanyahu really didn't know that the Interior Ministry would make the announcement on the same day as Biden's visit. My sources say no, that in fact, Israel really is that disorganized. But Netanyahu intends to remedy that:

Netanyahu on Saturday decided to form a committee comprising senior officials in the aims of preventing such mishaps.


The new committee will be responsible for establishing procedural guidelines to prevent the reoccurrence of similar incidents in the future.

Basically, everyone is mad at Netanyahu. Also, the word "crisis" was used exactly seven times in this one article.

Netanyahu is Going to Get Impeached

According to this AP article Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu really put his foot in it yesterday. VP Joe Biden showed up in Israel to try to re-start the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and what does Israel do? Announce its plans to build 1,600 new housing units in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo.

The announcement was made just before Biden was scheduled to arrive to a planned dinner with Netanyahu. Meanwhile, Biden was on the phone with Washington asking just what he was supposed to do with this steaming pile of dung that had previously resembled a peace prospect. This caused him to be over an hour late to the dinner, a blunder which was perceived as an insult to Netanyahu, on top of the fact that he publicly condemned the move.

Israel's opposition party, Kadima, is reportedly planning a no-confidence vote to oust Netanyahu, which is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Israeli prime ministers who rub the U.S. the wrong way have suffered the same fate before. In fact, one of the reasons Bibi did not win re-election after his first term as prime minister is that he failed to please Clinton. And even Rabin, who would later be America's darling because of Oslo, stepped down partially due to the fact that he and Carter had bad chemistry.

Israel's Moderates Quiet As Usual

Way back in the day (meaning mid-June), I wrote about how Obama's Cairo speech, and mid-east policy in general, was affecting the Israeli populace.

But Obama's loudly-proclaimed intentions have led to a more clearly defined divide among the Israeli people: those who value America's support above all else and those who are committed to settlement of the West Bank above all else.

But the issue of settlements may be a smart litmus test of Israel's intentions, because it draws a clear line between those in Israel and among its supporters abroad who support a two-state solution, and those who don't. Obama is betting the ayes have it.

Basically Obama just went ahead and put that out there, and now he's sitting back and waiting for internal strife in Israel to make Netanyahu more agreeable to a two-state solution.

And according to this article in today's Haaretz, that internal strife is bringing the settlement issue further into the limelight than it's been since The Disengagement in 2005. Basically, this latest development is that Israeli settlers are accusing the Israeli government of "colluding" with leftist Israelis against them. Notice how many times I used the word "Israelis" in that last sentence? That's because this argument is a family one. Leftist Israelis are pretty happy about Obama butting in to force the government's hand, but rightist Israelis would thank everyone to please mind their own business. I'm sure this is why the right wingers feel they're being colluded against but if the government is colluding with anybody, it's the settlers.

From this morning's article:

Settler representatives met with Defense Ministry officials earlier in the week in a bid to discuss a negotiated compromise on removing West Bank outposts. The state is interested in gaining settler acquiescence to voluntarily evacuate the outposts in exchange for the building of new neighborhoods in existing settlements, Army Radio reported.

Officials in the Yesha council of settlers told Army Radio they have no intention of discussing the voluntary removal of outposts.

This whole dog and pony show is really amusing to those of us who know that the settlers are completely dependent on the government for their ability to settle anywhere in the West Bank. So the government arguing about whether they should or should live on this or that hilltop is just for show. It's a delay tactic, wrapped and tied with a bow, direct from Netanyahu to Obama.

But anyway, back to that internal strife I was talking about. The theory was that Obama wanted to see whether the majority of Israelis supported settlements more, or U.S. support more. Both right and left have been more active, vocal, and organized of late. But it's not yet clear which of them can claim greater numbers.

Israel Dismantles Outpost. Sort of.

Haaretz says today that Israel dismantled a small outpost outside of the Kiryat Arba settlement, which had been expanded on Tuesday to include two new families. But the article says, "The settlers are expected to build the outpost again on Wednesday, as is customary following their dismantlement by security forces."

This was after the Youth for Israel movement established 11 new outposts earlier this week.

Also earlier this week, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said, "the IDF has not received orders to prepare for the evacuation of outposts in the West Bank." One of the movement's members, Shlomit Amitai, said:

"What we do is like bandaging a mother's wounds," Amitai says, explaining the proverb's meaning. "This empty earth is a wound that must be bandaged with a settlement."

And by "empty earth" she means, "earth currently being cultivated by Palestinian farmers who, as non-Jews, have no rights to the land."

At the beginning of this whole spat with the US over settlements, activists and the blogosphere predicted that Netanyahu would order a few far-flung outposts dismantled, which would inevitably make it into the news and make it look like he was making an effort to stop settlement expansion. And that prediction seems to be all too true.

An opinion column on Ynet today says:

We have to admit that despite the unpleasantness involved in the American reprimands over the unauthorized outposts, this confrontation has several benefits. The Israeli government and its settlers enjoy every moment, as every minute dedicated to the quarrel over the removal of illegal mobile homes in Judea and mobile washrooms in Samaria is a minute that is not devoted to the truly important evacuations.

Besides, the preoccupation with the “illegal outposts” is a good thing, as it implies that all the other settlements are legal; as if alongside the lawbreaking thieves we see legally sound thieves, who rob and steal in line with the rules.

In addition, the outpost festival allows the official Israel to present an image whereby the problem – that is, the enemies of the peace process and of an agreement – has to do with reckless hilltop youth, devoid of any restraints or Ritalin.

What isn't mentioned here is that even these random, youth-initiated, illegal outposts are protected by the army and are sooner or later provided with paved roads, electricity and plumbing by the Israeli government. They literally could not even set up a tent without the support of the IDF. If Netanyahu didn't want them to set up house, there would be no need for a settler-military confrontation, he could simply ignore them. But what he's after is the creation of "facts on the ground", a phrase that become synonymous with Israel's race to populate the West Bank with Jews before the world puts its foot down about the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.

Israeli News Got the Memo

I have been saying for a long time that it is the Israeli people who need to change their minds about the conflict. The rest of the world is basically on board with the idea of a Palestinian state and an end to the daily human rights abuses that have been documented for anyone with internet access to see.

But the question is how to reach Israelis? They are terribly mistrustful of outsiders, especially those who don't speak Hebrew and attempt to criticize their country. It must come from inside, and now, with groups like Peace Now swelling in size, I feel a quickening on the horizon. More and more Israelis will jump on board the human rights movement, like whites who demonstrated for civil rights in 1960s America.

And here, a ray of hope. This segment was on the Israeli evening news. Bold, unapologetic, and extremely sympathetic to the Peace Now activists it focuses on.

Let Mommy and Daddy Talk, Kids

Ha'aretz says today that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak went to Washington DC to discuss with George Mitchell about whether or not Israel would agree to a temporary freeze of settlement construction. Their four-hour "discussion" (Mommy and Daddy aren't fighting, kids, we're discussing) did not seem to bring them any closer to a decision. But that might be because Obama and Michell have not explicitly demanded an end to settlement construction, instead saying, "that Jerusalem must take 'action' on the matter."

And this article talks about a deal where settlers in Migron (a tiny settlement just East of the Palestinian city of Ramallah) would be relocated in Adam, a settlement annexed to Jerusalem and much closer to the green line.

Ha'aretz says:

Barak was quick to present the plan to evacuate Migron and build at Adam as an effort meant to deter a petition by Peace Now, scheduled to be brought before the court Monday. The defense minister's aim is to gain more time. In any case, the Defense Ministry argues, the construction of the new neighborhood in Adam will take at least two years - a decent amount of quiet time. Barak based his gamble on the images of the violent evacuation of the Amona outpost and is hoping that the justices will be deterred from another clash with the settler-invaders, and will jump at the opportunity to put the whole matter to rest for a long time.

Every single time, I am dumbounded that an entire government acts as a frightened child with even the thought of action from a violent minority of their own population. Again and again, it's been made clear to us "outsiders" that the settlers have the Israeli government on a short leash.

Israelis Are Worried

Wow, it's tense over here with this Obama-Israel rift in the making. Y'all know I wrote about Obama's Cairo speech, called "A New Beginning" and the effect it had on Israelis.

Well.

Things have continued on in that vein. Public Sentiment, the great barometer of the little people, has spoken. I give you two examples:

First, this article in Time Magazine
The title- "Can Netanyahu Repair the Rift With the U.S.?" pretty much says it all. Israelis are well aware that they stand at a precipice. On one side is their sovereignty, on the other is their prosperity. Israelis receive about $10 billion of aid money from the U.S. every year (more on that below) and $7 million daily just for military use. If Netanyahu ignores Obama's demands polite requests to freeze settlement construction that aid may be jeopardized. Even though Obama did call the U.S.-Israel bond "unbreakable" in his Cairo speech, he also made it clear he won't stand for any more riff-raff. ("The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.")

The article says:

When an Israeli cabinet minister proposes that his country impose sanctions on the United States, his government is clearly in a state of distress. Pressure from the Obama Administration to freeze Israeli settlement construction and move toward a two-state peace with the Palestinians has reportedly spurred Minister-without-Portfolio Yossi Peled (who belongs to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's own Likud party) to recommended that Israel shop outside the U.S. for aircraft and military hardware, sell sensitive technology to clients disapproved of by Washington, and invite America's rivals to play a greater role in the Middle East.

This is clearly a knee-jerk reaction and these sanctions are very unlikely to come to fruition. It's big-talk for Obama's benefit.

But Obama's loudly-proclaimed intentions have led to a more clearly defined divide among the Israeli people: those who value America's support above all else and those who are committed to settlement of the West Bank above all else.

But the issue of settlements may be a smart litmus test of Israel's intentions, because it draws a clear line between those in Israel and among its supporters abroad who support a two-state solution, and those who don't. Obama is betting the ayes have it.

Basically Obama just went ahead and put that out there, and now he's sitting back and waiting for internal strife in Israel to make Netanyahu more agreeable to a two-state solution.

Opinion polls often find a majority of Israelis willing to give up West Bank settlements in exchange for a genuine peace, and that same majority is unlikely to be willing to jeopardize Israel's relationship with the United States in order to defend the settlers' right to build on Palestinian land, a right the settlers say is based on the argument that it forms part of the Biblical Land of Israel.

Despite this trend, the status quo is a very powerful thing and it takes a lot of momentum to shift it. Obama knows this and has apparently calculated that now is the time to roll with that forward momentum.

Netanyahu pleads that his hawkish coalition will collapse if he does as Obama asks, but skeptics point out that the Prime Minister chose to ally with the far-right when he might have chosen the centrist Kadima party, which has enough seats to shore up a government committed to a two-state solution.

Ooooopsie. Wrong choice, Bibi.

And he'll also likely take down one or two outposts built without permission by Israeli zealots outside of the boundaries of their existing settlements. Such actions will provoke televised clashes between settlers and police, and make the case that Netanyahu is acting on the settlement issue (without necessarily stopping construction within the boundaries of settlements, as demanded by Washington).

So right. The government cannot, I mean literally cannot go up against any group of settlers without a violent and highly publicized reaction.

Secondly, Israel's SNL Shows us the Score:
The Israeli comedy show Eretz Nehaderet (Beautiful Country), which is similar to America's Saturday Night Live, had a skit last night commenting on the possible rift between the U.S. and Israel. Actor-comedian Tal Freedman was dressed as PM Bibi Netanyahu and hosted a parody of the show "Million Dollar Race." Only the prize amount was ten billion (the same amount as Israel receives from the U.S.) and the possible sources of the money were various other rich and powerful world countries. Contestants competed for a new sponsor for Israel.

So that basically sums up the situation over here at the moment.

UPDATE:

I forgot about this. A week ago, journalist Max Blumenthal and Ta'ayush activist Joseph Dana published a video on youtube called "Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem" in which they interviewed drunk American Jews about Obama's upcoming speech. The speech hadn't even been made yet and everybody was all in a tizzy about what he would say. All the interviewees are basically ignorant and racist ("Who's Bibi Yahoo?") but something had to have prompted them to respond so viciously to their own president, whom, statistically speaking, they probably voted for.

On Natural Growth

As I've been trying to explain lately, natural growth is not only a problem for settlement construction, it's a major problem in the construction of Arab homes. However, the former group gets much more media attention.

This Ha'aretz article does an excellent job of breaking this issue down in concrete terms- using statistics rather than public sentiment to show that Palestinians are indeed discriminated against regarding housing.

Settlements Not an Obstale to Peace

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington meeting with President Obama this week, and he made some surprising concessions, in theory at least. Only time will tell if he will make good on his promises.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are of two types: state-sponsored and illegal. The "legal" settlements are built by the Israeli government, are protected by the Israeli military, and are usually much larger than the second type. Illegal settlements are those that are built in areas not approved for settlement by the government. These settlements are sometimes home to only one family, or several families.

Of the 26 illegal outposts on record, Israel will dismantle "a number of" them. No mention of dismantling any of the "legal" settlements. But no matter. According to Netanyahu, those are not really an issue.

From Haaretz:

The document, which Netanyahu issued for distribution only after meeting Obama, says Israel is ready to evacuate the illegal outposts. As for stopping construction in the settlements the document was more cagey, saying the settlements were not an obstacle to peace and that the evacuation of settlements in Gaza only led to the establishment of a Hamas terror base in the Gaza Strip.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak also added, "the new Israeli government would take action against the outposts, not because it was told to do so by the United States, but because Israel 'is a state of law."

It is widely understood that these statements were the price Netanyahu paid for Obama's support regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is taking a tougher stance on even the officially recognized West Bank settlements.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a hard line against settlement construction in the territories Wednesday, including a call to freeze building for natural growth. Her statement came in contrast to the general terms U.S. President Barack Obama expressed about the issue to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the week.

"Natural growth" refers to home additions designed to better accommodate a growing family. For example, adding a room onto the house when you've had a new baby. Or adding another small home to the property when one of your children marries. This type of natural growth is common in Arab families, as one piece of land is often lived on by many generations of a growing extended family. Unfortunately in many cases, this natural growth is deterred by the denial of building permits. In East Jerusalem, Arab homes are sometimes demolished because a proper permit was not obtained.

Gov't Report Reveals Corruption at Highest Levels

With Israeli elections just around the corner, we can safely assume that all major political developments are at least in part one group or another's attempt to win favor with the electorate. Operation Cast Lead was one example of political maneuvering, and quite possibly the most significant one of this election. It has seemed to achieve its goals of creating a sense of national unity, feelings of patriotism, and a strong distrust of outsiders and their criticisms. In short, the country has been put in a war mood.

This is good for Prime Minister candidate Bibi Netanyahu, who has already held the office from 1996 to 1999, as leader of the conservative Likud party. Support for the latest Gaza war and Israelis' tendency to go insular when they are threatened has made his success much more likely.

This could be the reason a secret government report revealing settlement construction to be illegal and corrupted has recently been released, even though it was completed over two years ago. What's more is that the research was done by the Israeli government and at the behest of former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, another right-wing candidate for Prime Minister in this election.

Ha'aretz writes:

An analysis of the data reveals that, in the vast majority of the settlements - about 75 percent - construction, sometimes on a large scale, has been carried out without the appropriate permits or contrary to the permits that were issued.

Now, let's deconstruct this in order to fully realize the significance. Building without permits is a pretty piddly violation. If building without permits was the only accusation we could make against the Israeli government, I wouldn't have anything to write about. What makes this significant is that Palestinian homes built without permits are demolished, oftentimes without warning, meaning the residents not only lose their home, but many of their possessions as well. Before the appearance of this report, government spokesmen could make all the excuses they want about these demolitions, but now, they can no longer claim Palestinians receive equal treatment in this regard.

Moving on:

The database also shows that, in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of buildings and infrastructure (roads, schools, synagogues, yeshivas and even police stations) has been carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinian West Bank residents.

The government admits that it knowingly builds on the property of the West Bank's Palestinian residents.

The Ha'aretz article, besides a summary of the report, includes interviews with settler leaders and Housing Ministry officials. Not surprisingly, they all pass the buck higher and higher, until it becomes clear that decisions regarding the illegal building come from the very heights from which the order to compile the report was given. Nevermind why Shaul Mofaz would order a report written that could very well cost him the election, the question is: who released the report to the public, two years after its completion?

The answer, if I may speculate, comes from the left. If Operation Cast Lead hurt Tzipi Livni's chances in the election, this report does the same to her right-wing competitors. If the electorate knows their government is out looking for trouble, support of the Gaza war could wane, thus giving Livni the boost she needs at the polls.