Is Canada more pro-Israel than the US?

Yves Engler, The Electronic Intifada, 12 October 2009



Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in New York City, September 2007. (MaanImages/POOL/Omar Rashidi)

In June, Israel began barring some North Americans with Palestinian-sounding names entry through Ben Gurion Airport. Forced to reroute through a land-border crossing that connects the West Bank with Jordan, their passports were stamped "Palestinian Authority only," which prevents them from entering Israel proper.

The Obama Administration objected to the move by Israel that discriminates against American citizens of Palestinian origin. However, there has been no protest from Ottawa even though Time magazine and the Israeli daily Haaretz ran lengthy articles focusing on Palestinian Canadian businessmen harmed by this new policy. A few weeks ago the Globe and Mail reported that "Although some of the most high-profile cases of individuals being turned away involve Canadian citizens, the Harper government has, so far, made no protest."

This silence bolsters claims by some commentators that under Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government, Canada has become (at least diplomatically) the most pro-Israel country in the world. Israeli officials concur. After meeting Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, four other Conservative ministers and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff in July 2009, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has openly called for the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel, commented:

"It's hard to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days. Members both of the coalition and the opposition are loyal friends to us, both with regard to their worldview and their estimation of the situation in everything related to the Middle East, North Korea, Iran, Sudan and Somalia. No other country in the world has demonstrated such full understanding of us."

Two days after Harper won a minority government in January 2006, Hamas won Canadian-monitored and facilitated legislative elections. Quickly after assuming power Harper made Canada the first country (after Israel) to cut its assistance to the Palestinian Authority. The aid cutoff, which was designed to sow division within Palestinian society, had devastating social effects.

Ostensibly the aid cutoff was due to Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel. Yet, Canada has not severed relations with Likud-led Israeli governments, which do not recognize the Palestinians' right to a state. Harper explained that "Future assistance to any new Palestinian government will be reviewed against that government's commitment to the principles of nonviolence, recognition of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations." But support for Israel was never made contingent on "nonviolence" or an end to settlement construction.

In March 2007, Palestinian political factions representing more than 90 percent of the Palestinian Legislative Council established a unity government. Still, the Conservatives shunned the new government all the while claiming to speak regularly (like the Israelis) with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. When the unity government's Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti traveled to Ottawa on a global peace tour, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay refused to meet him. Barghouti, who represents a secular party, explained at the time that "I think the Canadian government is the only government that is taking such a position, except for Israel." Barghouti had already met the foreign ministers of Sweden and Norway, the secretary-general of the United Nations and then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

However, once Hamas officials were ousted from the Palestinian Authority (PA), Ottawa restarted diplomatic relations and financial support. "The Government of Canada welcomes the leadership of President Abbas and Prime Minister [Salam] Fayyad in establishing a government that Canada and the rest of the international community can work with," explained MacKay after the unity government's collapse in mid-2007 and the appointment of a new government in Ramallah. "In light of the new Palestinian government's commitment to nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, and in recognition of the opportunity for a renewal of peace efforts, Canada will provide assistance to the new Palestinian government."

With Palestinian society divided and a more compliant authority in control of the West Bank, the Canadian International Development Agency contributed $8 million "in direct support to the new government." Part of this aid was directed towards creating a Palestinian police force "to ensure that the PA maintains control of the West Bank against Hamas," as Canadian ambassador to Israel Jon Allen was quoted by the Canadian Jewish News. US Lt. General Keith Dayton, in charge of organizing the Palestinian force, never admitted that he was strengthening Fatah against Hamas but to justify his program Dayton argued that Iran and Syria funded and armed Hamas. Bolstering Fatah to counteract the growing strength of Hamas was the impetus for Dayton's mission. However, the broader aim is to build a force to patrol Israel's occupation, a fact Dayton does little to dispel.

In January 2007, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay offered an immediate $1.2 million for Dayton's mission. A fifth of Dayton's initial staff was comprised of Canadians and during a press conference with MacKay in Jerusalem Condoleezza Rice said Dayton "has a Canadian counterpart with whom he works very closely." Two years later Dayton's military training force in the West Bank reportedly included nine Canadians, 16 Americans, three Brits and one Turk.

In June 2008, a Harper government press release announced that "Canada is a strong supporter of Palestinian security system reform, particularly through our contribution to the mission of Lt. General Keith Dayton, the US security coordinator, and to the European Union Police Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support."

Canada's contribution to the Dayton mission was part of a $300 million "aid" package that began in December 2007. According to the government agency Public Safety Canada, "a significant component [of the $300 million will be] devoted to security, including policing and public order capacity-building. This five year commitment will go towards the creation of a democratic, accountable, and viable Palestinian state that lives in peace and security alongside Israel."

But does anything close to a "viable Palestinian state" exist? Is Israel allowing it to be created? Growing Jewish-only settlements, Israeli bypass roads and the apartheid barrier all make a Palestinian state far from realistic in the short to medium term. Yet Canadian officials act as if Israel is working toward a Palestinian state.

In Gaza, Israel's occupation has turned into a blockade. For 27 months, Israel has reduced food and medicine from entering the tiny coastal territory to a fraction of what is needed by the besieged population. Yet, the Harper government has refused any criticism of the siege. Canada was the only country at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to vote against a January 2008 resolution that called for "urgent international action to put an immediate end to Israel's siege of Gaza." It was adopted by 30 votes with 15 abstentions.

Instead, the Conservative government has been quick to congratulate Israel for any small pause in its blockade. In January 2009 International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda proclaimed that "We commend Israel's decision to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance [to Gaza] through a temporary ceasefire." A day after Oda's announcement, Israeli forces fired on a UN convoy during a ceasefire, killing a Palestinian aid worker. There was no follow-up statement from Oda condemning Israel's actions.

Compared to Ottawa's cheerleading most of the world was hostile to Israel's attacks on Gaza last winter. In solidarity with Gaza, Venezuela expelled Israel's ambassador at the start of the bombardment and then broke off all diplomatic relations two weeks later. Israel didn't need to worry since Ottawa was prepared to help out. "Israel's interests in Caracas will now be represented by the Canadian Embassy," explained The Jerusalem Post (Ottawa had been "doing this for Israel in Cuba" since 1973). In August 2009, the Canadian embassy in Caracas also began providing visas to Venezuelans traveling to Israel.

For defining Canadian policy as "we support Israel no matter what it does," B'Nai Brith International bestowed Harper with its Presidential Gold Medallion for Humanitarianism. The first ever Canadian to receive the award, Harper joined former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, and US Presidents John F. Kennedy and Harry S. Truman. For its part, the Canadian Jewish Congress gave Harper its "prestigious Saul Hayes Human Rights award, named for a former CJC executive director, the first time it's been given to a sitting PM."

Despite the government's strident support for Israel, grassroots opposition to that country's policy has never been greater. Recent protests against the Toronto International Film Festival's spotlight on Tel Aviv were a major setback to Israeli public relations efforts. The festival embarrassment followed massive demonstrations against Israel's assault on Gaza, when many cities across the country witnessed their largest ever Palestinian solidarity demonstrations.

Alongside displays of opposition to specific Israeli policy, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign is growing. Many social groups such as Independent Jewish Voices and Quebec's most active student Federation, ASSE, have joined the BDS movement, as have a number of unions, including the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Ontario), the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the teachers Federation in Quebec. Social movements in Canada have never been more critical of Israel.

Yves Engler is the author of the recently released The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy and other books. The book is available at http://blackbook.foreignpolicy.ca/.

Pledge2Protest Conference

Pledge2Protect Conference
Just a reminder that registration for the Pledge2Protect Conference is now open! We encourage you to join Genocide Intervention Network's (GI-NET) student-led division, STAND on November 6-9, in collaboration with core partners Save Darfur Coalition and The Enough Project, and 1,000 other students, community leaders and activists from across the country on Capitol Hill for Pledge2Protect. The conference is designed to educate, empower, and highlight the work of activists who are driving the movement to prevent and stop genocide and mass atrocities.

Pledge2Protect seeks to create a forum of rigorous dialogue and exchange that covers broad yet carefully selected topics. Pledge2Protect will equip activists with grassroots organizing and advocacy skills, and in-depth education/training on international conflicts of concern. Preeminent speakers and experts in the field will lead these discussions and provide their perspectives. In addition, you will have the opportunity to meet with your elected officials on a lobby day, November 9th, to push for key genocide prevention measures.

Primary Goals:
Pledge2Protect seeks to create an experience for participants that will empower them to become stronger leaders on their campuses and in their communities while demonstrating the strength of the movement to end genocide to policymakers on Capitol Hill.

The three-day conference will feature the following components:

Workshops: Workshops and seminars on Genocide Prevention, Activism, Sudan, Burma and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Training: Training sessions on grassroots organizing, media outreach and social media techniques, advocacy, and other fundamental activist skills.
Panel Discussions: Panel discussions featuring world-renowned experts and policy makers. Invited speakers include Ambassador Susan Rice, Members of Congress, and administration officials.
Networking Events: Regional activist networking events where participants can share best practices and exchange ideas.
Lobby Day: Concluding the conference, will be the largest lobby day in the history of genocide prevention.
And, until October 23rd, you can take advantage of fantastic discounts just for Pledge2Protect participants at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill! You won't find a better deal in DC, and you'll get to be in the center of all the Pledge2Protect action. Make your reservation today!

Join us for Pledge2Protect on November 6-9. Go to www.pledge2protect.net to register today!

2010 Carl Wilkens Fellowship: Time is running out to apply!
There are only 3 weeks left to apply to be a 2010 Carl Wilkens Fellow. This is a selective, 12-month program that provides emerging citizen leaders with the tools and training to shape US policy on genocide. At the conclusion of the program, individuals are equipped with the skills and relationships necessary to influence and affect US policies on genocide.

For more information on the Carl Wilkens Fellowship or to apply to this program, please click here.

This e-mail was sent by Genocide Intervention Network, located at 1333 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20005 (United States). To receive no further e-mails, please click here or reply to this e-mail with "unlist" in the Subject line

EasyJet Israeli tourist event picketed

To celebrate the new low cost Easy Jet route to Tel Aviv, Easy Jet are holding a five day event with a big orange bus touring the city to promote “Tel Avivian goodness”. It is being undertaken to further celebrate the city’s centenary. In response, Palestine activists from International Solidarity Movement, Palestine Solidarity Campaign and other groups protested in front of the Big Orange bus. In solidarity with the unified Palestinian call out for an economic and cultural boycott of Israel, protestors sought to show that tourism feeds the Israeli economy which in turn supports the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.


The Israeli security there were clearly frustrated with the presence of activists and the police were duly called upon for support. In an ironic twist, the police gently requested protestors to move, and when protestors decided against this, no further action was taken. Israeli security and Easy Jet organisers were visibly frustrated and made numerous appeals to the police to move the protestors but failed to get the demonstrators to budge.

Most members of the public showed support with the protest and asked relevant questions with a few Israelis showing their opposition.

After a couple of hours, protestors left, pleased they had ruffled the feathers of those promoting Israeli tourism.

Please find below the promotion message for the event and the dates and locations for their five day tour.

“ To present EasyJet's new route to the Big Orange and celebrate the city's centenary, Tel Aviv will be coming to London this October!

For 5 days, a double-decker bus crammed full of Tel Avivian goodness will tour London and give a glimpse into the many facets of Tel Aviv's character.

Day 1 - 11th October, Spitalfields Market, 10am - 5.30pm

Market Tel Aviv- enjoy the smells & tastes of Tel Aviv's markets in the middle of East London - craft stalls, Turkish coffee, mint tea, shakshouka, olives, baklava, and live music.

Day 2 - 12th October, Leicester Square, 1pm - 5.30pm

Bohemian Tel Aviv - Day 2 sees a typical Tel Aviv coffee shop scene, replete with mismatched sofas & chairs, stacks of books, and a soundtrack provided by street performers & musicians.

Day 3 - 13th October, Coin Street, Southbank, 12pm - 6pm

Tel Aviv, city of beaches - enjoy sunbeds, beach umbrellas, beach balls, backgammon, matkot, live music, and a surfing simulator!
And hopefully some sun .

Day 4 - 14th October, Broadgate, 9am - 7pm

Tel Aviv: 100% architecture, 100% Bauhaus - more examples of which are found in Tel Aviv than any other city in the world!
Architecture aficionados should not miss Day 4's outdoor photography exhibition & lecture.

Day 5 - 15th October, Old Truman Brewery, 5pm - 10.30pm

Tel Aviv nightlife - Day 5 will finish the tour with a party open to all, guaranteed to give a glimpse into just why Tel Aviv is known as the city that never sleeps - with a little help from DJs & dancers."

It is hoped Pro-Palestine Activists will help picket and protest these events. All Israeli tourism feeds into the Israeli economy that supports the occupation.

Activists Occupy Sainsbury’s, South Kensington in Opposition to the sale of Settlement Produce.

On 11th October 2009, a swarm of activists descended upon Sainsbury’s on Cromwell Street, West London to highlight the sale of Israeli and illegal Settlement produce by both Sainsbury’s and other major supermarket chains. Coming from a diverse range of campaign organisations, around 40 activists stood in solidarity with the Palestinian call for a global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.

Enterring the store, protestors held up an array of settlement and Israeli produce demanding that the supermarkets put a halt to their sale and reminding consumers of their capacity to effect change by not buying these goods.

Popping up a tent and claiming it to be an “Israeli Settlement”, the actions demonstrated the ridiculous ease at which Israeli Settlements pop up around the West Bank, protected by the military and evicting Palestinians from their land and homes.

They proceded to chant against the occupation and the sale of Israeli goods, following this they went on a tour of the store so that all staff and customers were made aware of Sainsbury's role in supporting illegal settlements. Handing out leaflets and engaging with customers, many of which were supportive, the actions communicated the need for greater citizen action.


Management and security were keen to encourage the protestors to leave but with no success. After twenty minutes within the store, demonstrators left of their own accord, clapping hands and chanting "Free Free Palestine", feeling that their efforts had been succesful in communicating to the store and the general public.


Police arrived soon after and despite a brief interaction with protestors there were no arrests and no signs of aggression.


Activists then left the scene and were followed for some time afterwards, however no further action by the police was taken.


-----------------------


This non-violent initiative seeks to challenge the economic and political infrastructure that supports the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Similar to the efforts against Apartheid South Africa, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign hopes to undermine the apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza whereby checkpoints, Israel only roads and the Apartheid all segregate and impoverish Palestinians. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, over 60% of Palestinians live below the poverty line, and in Gaza the figure sits at 70%.

Illegal Israeli Settlement produce is on sale in most of the high street supermarket chains, including Tesco’s, Morrisons, Waitrose, Marks and Spencers, and Asda as well as Sainsbury’s. According to the 2004 judgement by the International Court of Justice, Settlements are illegal and in violation of the Fourth Geneva Conventions. Sale of produce from these Settlements reinforce their existence and financially contribute to Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and violent oppression of Palestinians themselves.

This mass action follows a number of smaller protests that have taken place across in London and across the UK which make explicit public opposition to the sale of Settlement goods in British stores. It also follows the September 2009 decision by the Trade Union Congress to commit to building a mass boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.

After Goldstone, Hamas faces fateful choice

By Ali Abunimah

The Electronic Intifada
8 October 2009

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10821.shtml

The uproar over the Palestinian Authority's (PA)collaboration with Israel to bury the Goldstone report,calling for trials of Israeli leaders for war crimes in
Gaza, is a political earthquake. The whole political order in place since the 1993 Oslo accords were signed is crumbling. As the initial tremors begin to fade, the same
old political structures may appear still to be in place, but they are hollowed out. This unprecedented crisis threatens to topple the US-backed PA leader Mahmoud Abbas,
but it also leaves Hamas,the main Palestinian resistance faction, struggling with fateful choices.

Abbas, accustomed to being surrounded by corrupt cronies, sycophants and yes-men, badly misjudged the impact of his decision -- under Israeli and American instructions -- to withdraw PA support for the resolution at the UN Human
Rights Council in Geneva, forwarding the Goldstone report for further action. After all, the PA had actively sabotaged measures supporting Palestinian rights at the UN
on at least two occasions in recent years without much reaction.

This time, torrents of protest and outrage flowed from almost every direction. It was as if all the suppressed anger and grief about PA collaboration with Israel during the massacres in Gaza last winter suddenly burst through a dam. "The crime at Geneva cannot pass without all those responsible being held accountable," the widely-read London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi stated in its lead editorial on 8 October. The newspaper called for the removal of Abbas and his associates who betrayed the victims of Israel's massacres and "saved Israel from the most serious moral, political and legal crisis it has faced since its establishment."

Naming collaboration -- even treason -- for what it is has always been a painful taboo among Palestinians, as for all occupied peoples. It took the French decades after World War II to begin to speak openly about the extent of collaboration that took place with the Nazi-backed Vichy government. Abbas and his militias -- who for a long time have been armed and trained by Israel, the United States and so-called "moderate" Arab states to wage war against the Palestinian resistance -- have relied on this taboo to carry out their activities with increasing brazenness and
brutality. But the taboo no longer affords protection, as calls for Abbas' removal and even trial issued from Palestinian organizations all over the world.

Hamas too seems to have been taken by surprise at the strength of reaction. Hamas leaders were critical of Abbas' withdrawal of the Goldstone resolution, but
initially this was notably muted. Early on, Khaled Meshal, the movement's overall leader, insisted that despite the Goldstone fiasco, Hamas would proceed with
Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks with Fatah and smaller factions scheduled for later in the month, stating that reaching a power-sharing deal remained a "national
interest."

As the tremors continued, however, Hamas leaders escalated their rhetoric -- seemingly following, not leading, public opinion. Mahmoud Zahar, a prominent Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, labeled Abbas a "traitor" and urged that he be stripped of his Palestinian nationality. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, speaking before a hastily convened session of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said Abbas was
personally responsible for the "crime" committed in Geneva, and a senior officer from the Hamas-controlled Gaza police force held a press conference to announce that
Abbas and his associates would be subject to arrest if they set foot in Gaza.

All of this puts Hamas in a bind. Before the Goldstone report crisis, Hamas had signaled that it accepted the most recent Egyptian proposals for reconciliation. The
Egyptian position paper can be described as technocratic -- it deals with mechanisms for elections, release of prisoners, the formation of committees and other matters.
It does not resolve core political and philosophical differences over the role of resistance and armed struggle, which Abbas rejects and Hamas defends. Nor does
it deal with the problem of PA "security coordination" with Israel which has resulted in the killing and arrest by the PA of numerous Palestinian resistance fighters and the closure of hundreds of Palestinian organizations and charities.

Despite the remaining gulf, Hamas wanted to sign a unity deal. Being part of a Western-recognized PA would be Hamas' ticket to the "peace process" -- something Meshal has made no secret that Hamas seeks, although on its own terms. Abbas was less keen on a unity deal, as he and his cronies still resist dealing with Hamas as a political force that has popular legitimacy. But after Goldstone, Abbas needs Hamas.

Hamas now cannot have it both ways: it cannot talk about "unity" and "reconciliation" with people that it -- and many Palestinians -- view as "traitors." To seek unity with such people is in effect to say that Hamas wishes to join a government of traitors. For the moment, Hamas is buying time and has asked Egypt to postpone the scheduled Cairo meeting later this month.

Hamas' long-term strategy of trying to join the slowly crumbling edifice of the Palestinian Authority now makes no sense. It now seems more likely that the deal will not go ahead, although Hamas is maneuvering to avoid blame, and to maintain its lifeline to Egypt, which backs Fatah. Perhaps the more likely outcome, at least in the short term, is a continued stalemate, where Abbas, now entirely dependent on Israeli and American forces to remain in power, limps on even though he has no legitimacy or credibility, and is widely despised.

The more difficult question for Hamas will be, what comes next? Will it try to muddle through as it has, or will it rally the Palestinian public to oppose and resist Abbas until the collaborationist PA is dissolved? This would be an enormous strategic shift -- Hamas would likely have to drop the trappings of "government" it has taken up since it won the 2006 legislative elections and return to its roots as a social movement and a clandestine organization.

It will not have much time to decide where it is going. The hopes raised by the Obama Administration's initial foray into peacemaking have been dashed in the wake of
Obama's surrender to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over settlements, even though US Middle East envoy George Mitchell continues with utterly sterile
"diplomacy" aimed at bringing the rejectionist Israeli government face to face in "negotiations" with the political corpse of Abbas. As Israel accelerates its
colonization of the West Bank and its ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, there is increasing talk of a new intifada.

The political collapse underway offers all Palestinians -- including Hamas -- a new opportunity: to build a broad-based, internationally legitimate popular resistance
movement that mobilizes all of Palestinian society as the first intifada did, and to reconnect with Palestinians inside Israel who face an existential threat from
escalating Israeli racism. This movement must work with and enhance the global solidarity campaign to put maximum pressure on Israel -- and its collaborators -- to end their repression, racism and violence, and hasten the emancipation of all the people of Palestine.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

How Israel bought off UN's war crimes probe

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 6 October 2009

Israel celebrated at the weekend its success at the United Nations in forcing the Palestinians to defer demands that the International Criminal Court investigate allegations of war crimes committed by Israel during its winter assault on the Gaza Strip.

The about-turn, following vigorous lobbying from Israel and the United States, appears to have buried the damning report of Judge Richard Goldstone into the fighting, which killed some 1,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians.

Israeli diplomats suggested on Sunday that Washington had promised the Palestinian Authority, in return for delaying an inquiry, that the US would apply "significant pressure" on Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to move ahead on a diplomatic process when the US envoy, George Mitchell, arrives in the region tomorrow.

But, according to Israeli and Palestinian analysts, diplomatic arm-twisting was not the only factor in the PA's change of heart. Haaretz newspaper reported last week that, behind the scenes, Palestinian officials had faced threats that Israel would retaliate by inflicting enormous damage on the beleaguered Palestinian economy.

In particular, Israel warned it would renege on a commitment to allot radio frequencies to allow Wataniya, a mobile phone provider, to begin operations this month in the West Bank. The telecommunications industry is the bedrock of the Palestinian economy, with the current monopoly company, PalTel, accounting for half the worth of the Palestinian stock exchange.

The collapse of the Wataniya deal would have cost the Palestinian Authority hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties, blocked massive investment in the local economy and jeopardized about 2,500 jobs.

Omar Barghouti, a Jerusalem-based founder of a Palestinian movement for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel, denounced the Palestinian Authority's move: "Trading off Palestinian rights and the fundamental duty to protect the Palestinians under occupation for personal gains is the textbook definition of collaboration and betrayal."

The deal to establish Wataniya as the second Palestinian mobile phone operator has been at the center of the international community's plans to revive the West Bank's economy and show that Palestinians are better off under the rule of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, than Hamas.

Tony Blair, the Middle East envoy representing the so-called Quartet of the US, Russia, the UN and the EU, brokered the agreement last summer, saying Wataniya's investment of more than $700 million over the next 10 years would "provide a much-needed boost to the Palestinian economy."

Wataniya is a joint venture between Palestinian investors, including close allies of Abbas, and Qatari and Kuwaiti businessmen.

But while Netanyahu has welcomed the deal as part of his plans for an "economic peace," an option he prefers to Palestinian statehood, Israel has been dragging its feet in allocating the necessary frequencies.

Wataniya's planned launch earlier this year had to be pushed back and the company has threatened to pull out of the deal if the new 15 October deadline is missed. If it does, the Palestinian Authority will have to repay $140m in licensing fees and could be liable for hundreds of millions more that Wataniya has invested in building 350 communication masts across the West Bank.

According to Who Profits?, an Israeli organization that investigates links between Israel and international companies in exploiting the occupied territories, Israel has a vested interest in limiting the success of the Palestinian mobile phone industry and protecting its control over extensive parts of the West Bank it wants for Jewish settlement.

The only existing Palestinian operator, Jawwal, a subsidiary of PalTel, has been blocked from building communications infrastructure in the so-called Area C of the West Bank, comprising 60 percent of the territory, which is designated under full Israeli control.

Instead, four Israeli companies -- Cellcom, Orange, Pelephone and Mirs -- have built an extensive network of antennas and transmission stations for Jewish settlers in Area C. Mirs, a subsidiary of Motorola Israel, also has an exclusive license to provide cellular services to the Israeli military.

Typically, Palestinians traveling outside the major population areas of the West Bank find a limited or non-existent Jawwal service and therefore have to rely on the Israeli companies.

A World Bank report last year found that as much as 45 percent of the Palestinian mobile phone market may be in the hands of the Israeli companies. In violation of the Oslo accords, these firms do not pay taxes to the PA for their commercial activity, losing the Palestinian treasury revenues of up to $60m a year.

Israeli companies also rake off additional surcharges on connections made by Palestinians using Jawwal, including calls between mobile phones and landlines, between the West Bank and Gaza and many within Area C, and international calls.

Dalit Baum, a founder of Who Profits?, said the importance of the telecommunications industry to the Palestinian economy made it a point of leverage over the PA at moments of diplomatic crisis, such as the Goldstone report.

She said: "This case highlights not only how Israel restricts Palestinian economic development through the occupation but also how it uses that control for its own economic and diplomatic advantage."

Israel's chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, was reported last week to have conditioned his approval for Wataniya's launch on the Palestinian leadership withdrawing demands for a referral to the war crimes tribunal.

Defense officials were reported to be angry that the PA had supported the attack on Gaza when it was launched last winter but were now pressing for Israeli soldiers to be put in the dock. One senior figure was quoted by the Haaretz newspaper saying: "The PA has reached the point where it has to decide whether it is working with us or against us."

Under the Oslo accords, Israel retained ultimate control over the "electro-magnetic spectrum," including the allocation of radio frequencies, in both Israel and the occupied territories.

Allan Richardson, Wataniya's chief executive, who has previously launched mobile services in post-war Iraq and Afghanistan, blamed Israel for the company's problems during an interview in July: "The obstacles we're suffering from are obstacles you'll never get anywhere else in the world."

Last year Israel committed to providing Wataniya with a bandwidth of 4.8MHz, the absolute minimum required to provide coverage over the West Bank, but so far has offered only 3.8MHz.

Jawwal finally received 4.8MHz from Israel in 1999, two years after it launched. Despite the number of its subscribers growing tenfold to 1.1 million today, its bandwidth has remained the same. In comparison, Israel's Cellcom company, with three times as many subscribers, has 37MHz.

Abdel Malik Jaber, PalTel's chief executive, complained last year that millions of dollars of imported telecoms equipment was stuck at Israeli customs, some of it since 2004. Wataniya has made similar accusations against Israel.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.

Israeli highschoolers choose jail over occupation army service

Nora Barrows-Friedman, The Electronic Intifada, 6 October 2009



Refuseniks Maya Wind and Netta Mishly. (whywerefuse.org)
As US-made Hellfire missiles and white phosphorus rained down on the entrapped people of the Gaza Strip earlier this year, a number of "refuseniks," young Israeli men and women who refuse to serve mandatory military conscription after high school, along with anti-occupation activists attempted to shut down the Israeli Air Force base near Tel Aviv. It was from this base that airborne weapons of war, flown by their former classmates, took off to kill Palestinians just miles down the beach in Gaza.

From chronic checkpoint beatings, to the use of Palestinian children as human shields during invasions, to widespread use of torture and interrogation in detention camps, to the killing of unarmed civilians during incursions and wide-scale massacres that spur international condemnation, Israel's soldiers are the face of the state's expanding and illegal occupation and colonization of Palestine. And a new generation of conscripts have just finished boot camp, eager to carry on this vicious tradition of occupation.

Within mainstream Israeli Jewish society, mandatory conscription into the military is regarded as a rite of passage; a normalized violent adventure meant to codify nationalism and Zionist supremacy while carrying out Israel's policies of aggression. (Paradoxically, a few thousand non-Jewish, "Arab-Israeli" citizens have also served in the army -- see Jonathan Cook's recent article "False promise of integration for Palestinian soldiers in Israel.") Recently, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman repeated an oft-heard mantra as he attempted to defend the state's criminal massacres in Gaza earlier this year. "Israel," Lieberman claimed, "has the most moral army in the world."

However, a growing number of Israeli Jewish youth facing mandatory military conscription -- the Shministim -- are breaking the chain of conventional cooperation with the occupation. Refusing to participate in a system they agree to be immoral as well as illegal, these young people exemplify complicity with their ethical values rather than their state's colonialist policies.

The Shministim have also started linking up with American military resisters to strategize and build an international movement of opposition to the state-sponsored violence of occupation -- from the West Bank and Gaza to Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, these young people are speaking directly to Jewish audiences across the US who may romanticize Israel's perceived "need" for an aggressive military system, hoping to inspire critical thought centered on the actual reality for Palestinians affected by Israel's actions.

Since 1970, groups of Shministim -- Hebrew for 12th-graders -- have emerged, turning against the overwhelming current of generational militarism. Writing public letters to Israeli heads of state, Shministim cohorts refuse to participate in the system of occupation, and, more broadly, vociferously challenge a national attitude of supremacy and racist entitlement over historic Palestine's indigenous population.

Though personal stories of revelatory tenacity are wholly unique for each young person who stands up, the shock of collective reality and personal responsibility is a common theme. After witnessing brutal violence carried out by Israeli occupation soldiers against Palestinians in the West Bank village of Bilin, 19-year-old Shministim member Maya Wind says that "the only moral option for me was to refuse."

Not surprisingly, the Israeli government does not concur with Wind's revelation. Shministim refuseniks face draconian jail sentences in repeated cycles until they reach 21 years old or manage to secure a discharge on the basis of medical or mental health.

Israeli youth who refuse to cooperate with Israel's military occupation are sent into a lengthy and relentless labyrinth of court martials and consecutive jail terms in what Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard, representing Shministim, calls a "price tag" meant to deter other young Israelis from non-participation. "Otherwise," he says, "[the Israeli government's] argument says, everyone -- of ideological or personal reasons -- will refuse to serve."

I recently interviewed Wind and her Shministim cohort, Netta Mishly, during their tour in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Wind says that the political and ultra-religious environment in her high school led her to question the reality behind the ideologies of her government and her fellow students. "A lot of my classmates were settlers, including extremists from [settlements in] the West Bank ... there were a lot of questions that surfaced for me. I didn't even use the word 'occupation' back then." Through a discussion group with Palestinians in Jerusalem, Wind says that she awakened to a different reality than the one offered to her inside Israeli-Jewish society. "I figured I needed to learn more. Through a conversation with a Palestinian girl, I started to question more. I started going to the West Bank."

Wind was sent to jail during the third week of the Gaza massacres, and spent several weeks behind bars. Sentenced four times, she spent a cumulative two months in detention and another 42 days in a military prison altogether. She was subjected to a "humiliating" array of psychiatrists and psychologists sent by the military to determine her mental fitness, required to serve in the army. Wind says that all of the Shministim were labeled mentally unfit by these health professionals, therefore giving Israel the excuse that the problem was not with the policies or the morality of the military, but with the Shministim themselves.

Netta Mishly, also 19 years old and from Tel Aviv, was active in several political groups from early adolescence and supported by parents who encouraged her to think critically. She said that her decision to refuse was made clear during her activity against Israel's wall in the West Bank. "After I was there, and I saw how the soldiers attack civilians without any security justification, after I saw how the state steals land from [Palestinians] ... For me, not going to the army was a decision I came to after visiting the West Bank for the first time."

She says that her life changed completely after returning to school. "I kept hearing the same line [in class] -- that we need to defend ourselves, and we need to go to the army. I couldn't believe this anymore because I saw how the soldiers act on the ground. I connected with other activists and we started thinking about how we were going to take this difficult step, and we decided to keep working in the same tradition that started before us. We drafted a letter to the government, saying that we wouldn't take part in the terrible crimes that Israel is doing in our name. After that, one by one, each one of us went to jail."

Mishly was sentenced to a week in detention at the military base because there was "no room" in the regular prison (during the December-January attacks on Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel who participated in protests were rounded up and thrown into Israeli jails, on charges of treason and incitement). After the trial, one of the highest-ranking Israeli military justices decided they could re-try Mishly and she received another 20 days. "When you make the decision not to go to the army, you don't know where [the punishment] is going to end," she says.

Meanwhile, as US President Barack Obama readies another "troop surge" to entrench the interminable American occupation of Afghanistan, Wind and Mishly are meeting with US military resisters in order, Wind says, to expand international rejection of militarism. "I think that's why Netta and I have come to the US. It's not just about the Israeli occupation. It's not just an Israeli thing. The US is occupying. And there are all forms of racism, prejudice and violence ... these are not just phenomenons particular to the Middle East, you have this in the US as well. It's towards immigrants, Mexicans, towards Iraq and Afghanistan. I think we're trying to show that these are global phenomenons and we all have to create a broader justice movement."

Sarah Lazare of the Bay Area-based GI Resistance support organization Courage to Resist is helping to organize an upcoming delegation of US war resisters to Palestine-Israel, she says, to connect with Israeli refuseniks. Calling itself Dialogue Against Militarism, the group intends to discuss similar experiences and learn from each other's strategies for confronting war and occupation, while engaging with the effects of militarism in their respective societies.

"It is extremely powerful that war resisters in Israel are connecting with war resisters in the US," says Lazare. "Given the close relationship between the so-called 'War on Terror' and the Israeli occupation, it is vital for resisters in these two countries to join forces, in order to build a movement strong enough to take on the forces we're up against. Israeli and US war resisters are having exciting discussions, sharing experiences, and showing direct solidarity with each other, and I think this is a powerful step towards stopping US and Israeli-led occupations."

In January, upon her sentencing, Maya Wind offered her declaration of conscience to the military court. "We can no longer term our military a 'Defense Force,'" she asserted.

"A defense force does not conquer lands of another people. A defense force does not assist in the building of settlements on those lands. A defense force does not permit settlers to throw stones at Palestinian civilians, nor does it deny them access to their lands and source of livelihood. None of these are acts of a defense force."

"The occupation has no defensive advantages. On the contrary, the pointless occupation of millions of people only leads to radicalization of opinions, hatred and the escalation of violence. Violence is a cycle that feeds into itself. This cycle will not stop until someone stands up and refuses uncompromisingly to take part in it. This is what I am doing today."

Several other Shministim are gearing up for a similar speaking tour in South Africa during October.

Nora Barrows-Friedman is the Senior Producer and co-host of Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio and travels several times a year to occupied Palestine to document the situation. She is also a freelance reporter for Inter Press Service. She can be reached at norabf AT gmail DOT com. Her website is www.norabf.com

Following al-Aqsa clashes, Israel mulls banning Islamic movement

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 8 October 2009


Sheikh Raed Salah has been banned from Jerusalem for 30 days. (Anat Zakai/MaanImages)

The Israeli government announced yesterday it would consider banning Israel's Islamic Movement at the next cabinet meeting, in a significant escalation of tensions that have fueled a fortnight of bloody clashes in Jerusalem over access to the Haram al-Sharif compound of mosques.

The move followed the arrest of the movement's leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, on Tuesday on suspicion of incitement and sedition. Police accused Sheikh Salah of calling for a "religious war" in recent statements in which he warned that Israel was seeking a takeover of the Haram, which includes the al-Aqsa mosque.

Sheikh Salah was released a few hours later on condition that he stay away from Jerusalem for 30 days. The decision was widely interpreted as a move to damp down a possible backlash from Israel's 1.3 million Palestinian citizens, many of whom regard the sheikh as a spiritual leader. Police were deployed in large numbers throughout Jerusalem yesterday.

An Islamic Movement spokesman, Zadi Nujeidat, told the Haaretz newspaper: "We will continue our activities and call for a continued presence in and around the mosque. We are used to arrests."

The move against the Islamic Movement follows a series of pronouncements from Sheikh Salah, echoing statements from Palestinian officials in the occupied territories, that have infuriated the Israeli government.

This week he called on Muslims who could reach the compound -- access to which has been heavily restricted by the Israeli police -- to "shield the [al Aqsa] mosque with their bodies." Sheikh Salah himself has been barred by the courts from entering the Haram compound for several months.

At his annual "Al-Aqsa is in danger" rally in his hometown of Umm al-Fahm in northern Israel last week, he warned tens of thousands of supporters that Israel was trying to prize away control of the compound from the Islamic religious authorities. He added that, should Israel force a choice between martyrdom and renouncing al-Aqsa, "we will clearly choose to be martyrs."

Like many other Palestinian leaders, Sheikh Salah fears that, as well as "Judaizing" East Jerusalem, Israel is engineering a takeover of the Haram -- known to Jews as the Temple Mount because the remains of the destroyed first and second Jewish temples are believed to lie under the mosques.

He has raised repeated concerns that Israel is secretly digging under the mosques, as it did before opening the Western Wall tunnels in 1996. Then, clashes led to the deaths of 75 Palestinians and 15 Israeli soldiers.

A delegation of Palestinian leaders from inside Israel who visited the compound yesterday warned that there was strong evidence of such excavations.

In an interview with Haaretz on Monday, Sheikh Salah also warned against "infiltration of extremist Jewish elements" into the compound -- a reference to Messianic cults that want the mosques destroyed so a third temple can be built.

Muslim leaders throughout the region have expressed growing concern that the Israeli police are secretly escorting such groups into the compound following a decision by Israel in 2003 to allow non-Muslims to visit the Haram without oversight from the Islamic authorities.

Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, meanwhile, are unable to reach Jerusalem, and Israel has increasingly limited access to the mosques for Palestinians with Israeli IDs.

During clashes at the compound on Sunday, the Islamic Movement's deputy, Kamal Khatib, and the Palestinian Authority's minister in charge of Jerusalem, Hatem Abdel Khader, were arrested. Both were released on bail and banned from Jerusalem for 15 days.

Calls from Israeli officials for Sheikh Salah's arrest and restrictions on the Islamic Movement have been growing all week.

The deputy prime minister, Silvan Shalom, of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, told Israel Radio on Tuesday: "Sheikh Raed Salah should be behind bars."

The cabinet meeting on Sunday will discuss a law to ban the Islamic Movement being drafted by the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister. The bill is expected to be presented to ministers a week later.

The interior minister, Eli Yishai, of the Shas party, announced on Tuesday he would withdraw funding for imams who "incited" against Israel and was investigating whether he could fire them.

The Islamic Movement has rapidly grown in popularity by focusing on charitable and welfare work and has won control of several councils since the 1980s.

Despite eschewing terrorism, the movement is regarded with great suspicion by Israeli officials, who have shut down its charities and newspaper on several occasions. Sheikh Salah and four other leaders of the Islamic Movement were arrested in 2003 accused of supporting terrorism but released two years later in a plea bargain that significantly reduced the charges.

It is unclear how Israel would ban the Islamic Movement.

Analysts say the government could use the 1945 emergency regulations from British rule but the move would be unlikely to withstand judicial scrutiny. Traditionally, the security establishment has argued that it is better not to push the Islamic Movement underground.

The US state department was reported this week to have expressed concern to Israel that it and the Palestinian Authority not "inflame tensions" over the Haram al-Sharif.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.

A poverty of leadership

Osamah Khalil, The Electronic Intifada, 7 October 2009



Salam Fayyad, the appointed Palestinian Authority prime minister and a favorite of the US government and developmentistas, is being groomed to succeed President Mahmoud Abbas. (MaanImages/POOL/Mustafa Abu Dayeh)

A firestorm of criticism has erupted since Friday's "postponement" of the United Nations Human Rights Council's (UNHRC) vote on the Goldstone report, which accused Israel of committing war crimes during its winter invasion of the Gaza Strip. The postponement was at the behest of the Ramallah Palestinian Authority's (PA) ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Ibrahim Khraishi. Palestinians globally and across the political spectrum have rightfully been outraged at what is not only an unbelievable act of cowardice and ineptitude, but a betrayal of the highest order. Indeed, anywhere else in the world it would be considered tantamount to treason. Sadly and unsurprisingly, it is what passes for leadership from Mahmoud Abbas.

While the shock and anger over Abbas's actions is understandable, it ignores how he has behaved to date. Indeed, burying the Goldstone report represents the culmination of Abbas's collusion and incompetence dating to the time of his (brief) assumption of the then newly created post of prime minister in 2003. As the newly appointed prime minister, Abbas drew scorn for appearing beside then US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and reciting a speech that appeared to have been written by a low-level State Department staffer -- with nary a mention of Palestinian suffering.

Yet, this abysmal beginning was a highlight compared to his subsequent presidency. After being ignored by Bush and Sharon his first year in office, Abbas collaborated with the US and Israel in an attempt to undermine and overthrow the Hamas-run government elected in 2006.

After Hamas's takeover of Gaza a year later, Abbas all but endorsed Israel's siege of the territory, going so far as to order the PA's ambassador at the UN to block an attempt by Qatar and Indonesia to obtain a Security Council resolution "expressing concern" over "a pending humanitarian crisis." As the siege tightened, Abbas repeatedly insulted his own people, deriding their efforts to break the siege as well as attempts by international solidarity activists to draw attention to their plight.

Judging by their fumbling and inconsistent responses over the past several days, Abbas and his cronies were clearly caught off guard by the reaction to the postponement. After making the ludicrous announcement that he would empower an investigation into what happened at the UNHRC, Abbas dispatched the PA's "foreign minister," Riyad al-Maliki, to New York to participate in an emergency session of the UN Security Council called at the request of Libya to discuss the Goldstone report. Regardless of what happens at the Security Council, any rational observer must ask, exactly what kind of "president" is Mahmoud Abbas and who does he represent?

Therein lies the rub. Abbas's term as president expired on 9 January and he has been ruling under extra-constitutional emergency powers since. Not only is the emperor without clothes, he lacks legitimacy as well. However, he does have a freshly trained and equipped praetorian guard courtesy of Washington and US Lt. General William Dayton. The sole purpose of this force is to secure the rule of Abbas and his appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and by extension the Fatah party. On display during this summer's Fatah conference, the new security force demonstrates that while the neoconservative freedom agenda of the Bush Administration is gone, it has been replaced by a repression agenda under the guise of stability and realpolitik. Palestinians will be hard pressed to know the difference.

Whether or not the clumsy attempt to shelve the report is the tipping point for Abbas's rule, the succession process has been underway for several years. However, it is being coordinated by the US and Israel and is no reflection of the wishes and desires of the Palestinian people. Abbas's likely successor is Fayyad, who somehow manages to be an even more uninspiring and unpopular character. Yet, one would never know this considering the fawning press coverage he has received in the American media over the past few months, including The New York Times, Time magazine and The Los Angeles Times. Fayyad is a favorite not just of American and European leaders, but the developmentistas who benefit from and ensure the perpetual state of dependence that defines the Palestine Industry.

In spite of the accolades from different quarters and hyperbolic claims of plans for effective institution-building, Fayyad's record is remarkably thin on actual achievements. With no electoral success to point to, he is left with just one verifiable "success": introducing direct deposit to the PA, in particular the security services. No doubt this was a difficult effort, especially due to opposition from late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. However, what is never discussed in the glowing press accounts is that Fayyad's singular achievement barely qualifies him to be finance minister -- his position when direct deposit was implemented -- not prime minister and definitely not president. But this isn't about achievements or qualifications -- that is not how the PA functions.

Fayyad was a favorite of the Bush Administration, especially the former president, and so far has maintained that status with the Obama Administration. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have thoroughly manipulated Abbas and Fayyad, ensuring their mutual suspicion, competitiveness and insecurity in order to maintain a feckless and weak leadership beholden to the US and Israel and not to the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, the same supporters of the Abbas and Fayyad government who never tired of hailing every banal utterance by Bush and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, regardless of how destructive their policies were to Palestinian rights and aspirations, have now sought to champion the meager efforts of the Obama Administration. Once again Palestinians are told that yet another American president is paying "attention" to their situation and is "focused" on the "peace process."

We have heard this all before, and unless Palestinians reclaim their national movement, we will hear it again and again. Palestinians and those sympathetic to their cause must recognize that Abbas and his clique will abandon any advantage and undermine any initiative that threatens the position, privileges and wealth they have accrued while in power. The PA will not dissolve itself, but it will disrupt and impede any progress or effort that threatens to truly challenge the occupation and Israel's system of apartheid of which they are an essential component and direct beneficiaries. No matter what success activists across the globe have against Israeli apartheid and the occupation, the PA will scuttle those gains. Tales of corruption, graft and incompetence at the highest levels of the PA are neither new nor shocking. What is, however, is that Palestinians have allowed this situation to persist. As a result, Abbas's government has grown more strident and obvious in its collaboration with the occupation, a fact fully realized in Geneva on Friday.

The calls for Abbas's resignation are long overdue and without question he is not now nor was he ever fit to be president of the Palestinian people. Similarly, Salam Fayyad has demonstrated that he is little more than a willing tool waiting to hear his master's call so he can ascend to power. These men are certainly responsible for the fiasco in Geneva, but Palestinians must also ask: who else is accountable? Accountability in this context is not just those who made and implemented this unconscionable decision, but the elected and appointed leadership of the Palestinian people who stood by and in their silence allowed it to pass. To date, the condemnations have been strong but the resignations have been few, and some likely self-serving. One wonders, where are the rest? Indeed, the measure for Palestinians in evaluating their leaders must now be: what did you do when Abbas shelved the Goldstone report? Did you oppose it? Or did you remain silent? Did you act? Or were you complicit? For those who claim to be leaders and representatives, this is how you will be judged -- now and by history. Let there be no doubt, there will be a reckoning and you must choose.

Absent from this discussion is what happened in those three weeks in Gaza. Nearly 1,500 Palestinians were killed, including 109 women and 320 children and thousands more were injured. Basic infrastructure, homes, businesses and schools were destroyed and because of the siege, are yet to be rebuilt. The use of white phosphorous and flechette bombs, indiscriminate shelling and bombing of civilian areas, use of human shields, and the list goes on. By burying the Goldstone report, the US, Israel and the PA also hoped to bury these crimes. With Gaza isolated and besieged, they believe that claims of Israeli war crimes will get overtaken by other events and lost in the media din. Considering the poverty of leadership in Abbas's regime, it is up to people of good conscience to step into the breach and ensure that Gaza is never forgotten and that the PA, like the occupation it serves, ends up on the ash heap of history.

Osamah Khalil is a doctoral candidate in US & Middle East History at the University of California, Berkeley and a frequent contributor to The Electronic Intifada. He can be reached at ofkhalil A T gmail D O T com.

Break the Israeli Wall down with Rock Petition

Break the Israeli Wall down with Rock Petition

Shared via AddThis

If YOu Are The Real Human Rights Figther, Sign the Petition!

Volvo providing armored buses for Israeli settlements

Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada, 7 October 2009



Merkavim's promotional video shows Israeli soldiers boarding an armored bus.
Following reports published by The Electronic Intifada on the use of Volvo equipment in the demolition of Palestinian houses in 2007, the Volvo Group stated that it did not condone the use of its equipment for such purposes. Claiming to have no control over the use of its products, Volvo affirmed that its Code of Conduct decries unethical behavior. In spite of these claims, The Electronic Intifada has found that through its Volvo Buses branch, the Volvo Group is providing armored buses to transport Israeli settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

Volvo Buses is co-owner of Merkavim Ltd., an Israeli transport technology company. Another shareholder in the company is Mayer's Cars and Trucks, the exclusive Israeli representative of companies from the Volvo Group. According to Merkavim's website, the company was chosen by Volvo as "its major body builder in the Middle East." However, the Who Profits from the Occupation? project recently reported that Merkavim manufactures an armored version of Volvo's Mars Defender bus for the Israeli public transport company Egged. Egged uses the Mars Defender to provide bus services for illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Merkavim proudly announced on its website that the Mars Defender offers protection and ultimate comfort when traveling through war zones or routes susceptible to terrorist attacks. In a promotional video the armored bus is shown driving along Israel's wall in the West Bank and crossing checkpoints (http://www.merkavim.co.il/upload/defender.wmv, accessed 6 October). In another video on Merkavim's homepage, Volvo's Senior Vice-President of Business Region Europe, Lars Blom, declares that "Three core values that are very important to us are quality, environmental care and safety. ... [T]he products we are developing with Merkavim also deliver these three core values plus reliability" (http://www.merkavim.co.il/movies_library/merkavim.wmv, accessed 7 October 2009)

According to Merkavim, in the video promoting the bus, the Mars Defender "looks like any other modern bus," but it is "the world's most armored bus." Indeed, the company calls it "the bus that saves lives!" As the narrator explains that the bus is "designed to safeguard the most precious cargo," the camera pans over Israeli soldiers lining up to board the bus and on patrol with their machine guns at the ready. The video explains that Israel has "adapted its world renowned expertise in military and defense technologies to deal with" the "growing threat" of "terrorists and hostile forces." It adds that Merkavim "blends this state of the art know-how with its own expertise" to produce the Mars Defender. Built on a Volvo chassis, the Mars Defender's sides, front, roof and floor are shielded with steel armored panels and it is fitted with bullet- and explosion-proof armored glass windows as well as "run-flat" tires. According to the company, these safety measures allow the bus to withstand "grenades, car bombs, roadside charges and 7.62 caliber armor-piercing bullets." Merkavim claims that these features are needed because "people trust this bus with their lives."

The 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on Israel's wall in the West Bank confirmed that settlements violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Article 49 explicitly states that the Occupying Power is not allowed to deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. Bus services with Volvo subsidiary's Mars Defender armored buses facilitate the maintaining of illegal settlements in the OPT.

In its Code of Conduct, the Volvo Group commits itself to support and respect the protection of human rights and to ensure that it is not complicit in human rights abuses. However, by providing construction and transportation equipment that facilitates Israel's occupation, the company violates this Code of Conduct on a daily basis. With increasing calls for boycott of and divestment from companies that support Israel's occupation, Volvo Group can expect activists around the world to put pressure on responsible investors to divest from the company and to call on public bus companies not to buy Volvo buses.

Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate based in Switzerland.

Take Action: Replant Olive Trees in Palestine

October 6th, 2009

This month, Palestinian farmers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank will brave Israeli army checkpoints and curfews, apartheid fences and walls, and likely attacks by Israeli settlers simply to harvest their olives trees.

For centuries, these olive trees have formed the backbone of Palestinian agriculture. Yet as this 9-minute documentary below shows, as part of its illegal military occupation, Israel has systematically uprooted these Palestinian olive trees by the thousands to clear land for illegal Israeli settlements, apartheid fences and walls, and to dispossess Palestinian farmers of their lands and livelihoods.



You can help Palestinian farmers remain steadfast on their land and non-violently resist Israeli occupation by donating money to replant an olive tree. The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is proud to partner with Zatoun and its Trees for Life program to replant olive trees in Palestine.

For every $25 tax-deductible contribution you make to support the work of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, we will replant one olive tree in Palestine. Donate $100 and we will replant five trees.

After making your donation, the US Campaign and Zatoun will send you via email a certificate of replanting suitable for framing. You can replant a tree in your name or in honor or memory of a loved one. Just let us know how you'd like the certificate to read when you make your donation. (Please allow two weeks for us to get you your certificate.)

We've set an ambitious goal of raising enough money this month to replant 500 olive trees in Palestine. Can you please help us to reach this goal today by making your tax-deductible donation to the US Campaign by clicking here?

Remember that it is our tax-payer dollars, in the form of nearly $3 billion per year in military aid to Israel, that are financing the Israeli army's purchase of Caterpillar bulldozers and backhoes used to uproot these olive trees. Please make your tax-deductible contribution to the US Campaign today so that we can both help replant olive trees and continue our work to end U.S. support for these and other Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians.

Thank you for your generous support.

PS: If you'd prefer to make a tax-deductible donation to this campaign via a method other than Pay Pal, please call our office at 202-332-0994 to donate via credit card. You can also send a check to: US Campaign, PO Box 21539, Washington, DC 20009. Be sure to indicate that your donation is for our replanting olive trees campaign and the name of the person you'd like the trees to be planted in honor or memory of.

PPS: If you'd like to make an on-line donation of less than $25 to support our work, please click here.

Time to re-engage with people power

The Palestinian people will have to look to themselves to continue their struggle for freedom, justice and equality. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

Saree Makdisi, The Electronic Intifada, 5 October 2009


Palestinians and others are still absorbing and thinking through the implications of the Palestinian Authority's decision to withdraw its support for the Goldstone report on Israel's assault on Gaza last winter. The 575-page Report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, which was led by South African judge Richard Goldstone, confirmed the already densely documented reports published by human rights organizations that systematically confirmed Palestinian claims that Israel had committed grave breaches of international humanitarian law during the Gaza assault, including crimes against humanity (not least the sealing off an entire civilian population from the outside world, denying it the ability to flee to safety, and then subjecting that same, defenseless, shelterless population -- most of it composed of children -- to an indiscriminate round-the-clock bombardment).

Nevertheless, as Professor Richard Falk (the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories) points out, the Goldstone report could have provided a basis for referring Israel's conduct during the war in Gaza to the International Criminal Court or other international courts, or to the establishment of a war crimes tribunal along the lines of those established after the catastrophes of Bosnia and Rwanda. That would have been the best way to finally hold Israel accountable.

The process of referral depended, however, on obtaining a vote within the UN to have the Goldstone report referred to the Security Council for further deliberation, the creation of a war crimes tribunal, and so on. And all of that depended in turn on the support of Palestinian diplomats appointed by and accountable to Mahmoud Abbas, so-called President of the Palestinian Authority ("so-called" because his term of office, such as it was, expired almost a year ago).

But it is now clear that the Palestinian team representing Abbas at the UN (for they certainly do not represent the Palestinian people) has, on his instructions, dropped its support for the resolution that might have set the legal machinery of the international judicial system in motion. Other states can hardly be expected to stand up to US pressure and support a resolution on behalf of Palestinian rights that the Palestinian delegation itself is unwilling to support. Why should Venezuela or Nigeria or Pakistan be more Palestinian than the Palestinians?

Reports have been circulating in the Arab, Israeli and European media that Abbas and his associates may have been prompted to take this extraordinary action because Israel had been threatening, had they continued with their support of the UN resolution, to withhold its release of a share of the radio spectrum that would have allowed the creation of a new Palestinian mobile phone company, Wataniyya: the product of a joint venture between Qatari investors and the Palestine Investment Fund, to which Abbas himself and one of his wealthy sons have personal connections. Palestinians have suggested that simple corruption and cronyism may have motivated Abbas's decision. The PA and the circle of officials attached to it have certainly had their share of corruption charges -- most shockingly, perhaps, when Ahmed Qureia, then the so-called Prime Minister of the PA (again, "so-called" because prime ministers usually have countries to govern, and the PA is anything but a country), was accused of selling cement to the Israelis to build their wall in the West Bank. The corruption of the PA and the narrow circle of Fatah party officials running it, clinging to it, and benefiting from it, is one of the main reasons why Fatah was swept from office in the 2006 Palestinian elections in favor of Hamas. Most people then were voting against Fatah and its corruption and general hopelessness, rather than for Hamas (which had, and has, little to offer other than simply not being Fatah: a credit which goes only so far).

It's possible, of course, that corruption and cronyism were not the motivating factors for Abbas's decision to withdraw Palestinian support for the Goldstone report. There are two other possibilities.

One of these is simple incompetence: that Abbas and his associates are so lacking in intelligence, imagination and political skill that they just bungled the whole affair. This is certainly not out of the question: Abbas himself is an extraordinarily unprepossessing and profoundly compromised man, and his circle of associates -- including men like Mohammed Dahlan and Saeb Erekat -- hardly inspire any more confidence than Abbas himself. Quite apart from their sheer disregard for Palestinian suffering in Gaza (seeking redress for which ought to be their main priority), it ought to be clear that a party to a negotiation that wantonly throws a rarely-held card out of the window while attempting (or at least claiming) to negotiate is, to put it mildly, not qualified to negotiate in the first place, let alone to claim to "lead" a defiant and unvanquished people like the Palestinians. If the Ramallah leadership is really as hopelessly incompetent as this scenario would have it, that's reason enough for their removal from office, if not the dissolution of the PA itself. (It's difficult, though, to "dismiss from office" someone like Abbas who is not actually in office in the first place -- he is there because the Israelis and the Americans want him to be there, because the election for his successor after his term expired has been deferred at the behest of Washington and Tel Aviv, and not because he holds any legitimate mandate from the Palestinian people themselves, the overwhelming majority of whom have no faith in him whatsoever, as opinion polls have regularly found).

Another -- and I think more likely -- possibility is that Abbas, the PA and the essentially defunct Palestine Liberation Organization are not (and never were, at least since the time of Yasser Arafat's death) interested in serious negotiations with Israel that could have led to the creation of a genuine Palestinian state in the occupied territories. After all, one of the main criticisms of the Oslo accords of 1993-95 which created the PA, is that, far from ending Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory, they merely served to shift the day-to-day burden and cost of administering the occupation to the newly-established PA, while allowing Israel to go on demolishing Palestinian homes, expropriating Palestinian land and building Jewish colonies in the occupied territories in contravention of international law. Oslo formally separated the three main chunks of Palestinian territory that Israel has occupied since 1967 (Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem) from each other and the outside world, and, additionally, broke the West Bank itself into Areas A, B and C. It was only in Area A (about 18 percent of the total) that the PA had any kind of practical presence on the ground, and in Area C (60 percent of the West Bank), the PA had no role or presence at all -- and that's where Israel was (and still is) busy demolishing, expropriating and building. Oslo and the PA, in other words, far from ending the occupation and laying the basis for the creation of an independent Palestinian state, actually allowed Israel to consolidate the occupation and further cement its grip on Palestinian land. Which is exactly why the population of Jewish colonists in the West Bank and East Jerusalem doubled during the period of Oslo and has been increasing ever since -- and today numbers almost half a million.

As this latest episode so amply demonstrates, the PA serves Israel by facilitating the occupation -- which is why Israel invented it in the first place, just as, historically speaking, colonial powers have always attempted to create or coerce local elites into helping them deal with the population at large. This approach is perhaps most gracefully summarized in Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education of 1835: "We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect." Why would the PA want to bring to an end an arrangement from which it benefits? As the French scholar Regis Debray points out, the status quo provides the PA elites in Ramallah "with a living, status, dignity and a raison d'etre," and probably (e.g., if the mobile phone contract rumors prove to be true) much more in the way of emoluments besides that.

Even if one were to grant the PA and Abbas and his associates the benefit of the doubt, and say that they really have their people's best interests at heart, it still remains the case that the PA, even under the best-case scenario, can claim to represent only a minority of the Palestinian people, since only a minority of Palestinians live in the occupied territories. The majority live either in the exile imposed on them by force during the creation of Israel in 1948, or (in the case of those Palestinians who survived that year's ethnic cleansing and remained) as second-class, non-Jewish citizens of the would-be Jewish state, which systematically discriminates against them simply because they are not Jewish.

These, then, are the possibilities before us: not only does the PA not represent the Palestinian people, it is also, on top of that, either corrupt to an almost unimaginable level; or it is profoundly incompetent and guilty of squandering the rights and hopes of a people that it is not entitled to claim to lead; or it is interested not in its people's rights and hopes but rather in perpetuating its own status as the day-to-day caretaker of a permanent Israeli occupation -- in which case it is no less collaborationist than the Vichy "government" of Nazi-occupied France in the 1940s. Corruption; incompetence; collaboration: ah, the agony of choice.

It is unlikely that Abbas and his associates will declare the "independence" of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories, as has been suggested by the current so-called Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad -- another man whose claim to office has no legitimacy, since his arbitrary appointment, by Abbas, to replace the legitimately elected Hamas leadership (whatever one thinks of it) was never confirmed by the Palestinian Legislative Council, many of the members of which are in Israeli jails. But even if an "independent" state were declared, it ought to be clearer than ever that such a "state" would offer Palestinians only more of the same choices (corruption, compromise, collaboration), while continuing to serve Israel's interests, if not actually to take direct orders from Washington and Tel Aviv.

In any case, the Palestinian cause is a struggle for freedom and justice, not for the creation of a statelet in the occupied territories that would, as I said -- even in the best circumstances -- only address the interests of that minority of the Palestinian people who live there.

What, then, are we to conclude from all this?

Above all, that no Palestinian ought to look to the official leadership as a source of guidance and direction. It has betrayed the people and proved itself totally unworthy of their trust -- indeed, many Palestinians, including Abdelbari Atwan, editor of the Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, are demanding that those behind this recent decision be apprehended and put on trial. And of course with a leadership this corrupt, inept or collaborationist, Palestinians can hardly expect better treatment from Washington and Tel Aviv than they are getting from Ramallah. And the Hamas opposition and its alternative leadership has little more to offer in the long run other than resistance for the sake of resistance, which is not, in itself, a blueprint for freedom and justice, and in any case has nothing to offer to Christian or secular Palestinians (and hardly much more than that to offer Muslim ones either, for that matter).

The second immediate conclusion to be drawn from this experience is that, as more and more Palestinians are demanding, the PA ought to be dissolved once and for all -- the sooner, the better. This latest action really ought to be the last in a long and dismal record proving that the PA has not only failed to serve the interests of the Palestinian people, but that, on the contrary, it fundamentally serves the needs and requirements of Israel.

Bereft of any credible or legitimate leadership, the Palestinian people will have to look to themselves to continue their struggle for freedom, justice and equality. Indeed, their struggle has been at its best, for example, during the first intifada of the 1980s, when the official leadership -- at the time in exile in Tunis -- was actually least involved in it. No wonder, then, that the Israeli response to the grassroots autonomy of the first intifada was to usher the official leadership back into Palestine; the first intifada then stalled, and things have gone downhill ever since.

In looking for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then, we should once and for all stop looking to governments and officials (elected or otherwise), in the US, Israel, or among the Palestinians themselves. As the Obama Administration has already demonstrated, the US government, in the present political conjuncture, will never put peace and justice in Palestine ahead of internal domestic pressures and politics; the Israeli government will not for one moment back down from its continually expanding colonization plan in the West Bank and East Jerusalem until it is compelled by outside pressure to do otherwise; and the Palestinian government -- well, there is no such thing. There is a people living partly under military occupation; partly in enforced exile; and partly as a racialized and discriminated-against minority inside Israel. What they need is to refocus their struggle in ways that they can all identify with, collectively and equally, and, moreover, in ways that people of good will around the world -- who have repeatedly demonstrated in their tens of thousands in support of justice for Palestine -- can as well.

Indeed, the Palestinians are not alone: they have the support of people around the entire world. And it is to that reserve of good will and good faith among ordinary people around the world that the Palestinians must look. As the struggle against apartheid in South Africa demonstrated, governments not only can, but do, act, when ordinary people of good will make them act. In fact, even as governments have dithered, a vibrant global campaign to boycott, divest from, and impose sanctions on Israel in order to bring it into compliance with international law and in order to realize the rights of the Palestinian people (all of it) has been recording one success after another, reminding us all that boycotts really do work.

This is the direction in which all Palestinians, bereft of leadership, must now throw themselves. And their demand must be something that addresses and unifies the rights of all segments of the Palestinian people, not just those suffering under occupation, as well as addressing and recognizing the rights of Jewish Israelis -- something that most decent people in the world can readily identify with: justice, equality, one person, one vote: in other words, the creation of one democratic and secular state in which Palestinians and Israelis can live equally in a just and lasting peace. For without justice there will be no peace.

Saree Makdisi is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA and the author of Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. His website is http://sareemakdisi.net/.

UN must act on Goldstone and the PA must be dissolved

Omar Barghouti, The Electronic Intifada, 5 October 2009



The Palestinian Authority has no legitimacy to claim to represent these Palestinian children in Gaza, or Palestinians anywhere. (Wissam Nassar/MaanImages)

Palestinian civil society has strongly and almost unanimously condemned the Palestinian Authority's decision to delay action regarding the UN Fact-Finding Mission's report, headed by justice Richard Goldstone, which investigated the recent Israeli war of aggression against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip. A common demand in almost all Palestinian statements was for the UN to adopt the report and act swiftly on its recommendations to bring the report to the Security Council and failing meaningful investigation by responsible parties, take the case to the International Criminal Court in order to bring an end to Israel's criminal impunity, and to hold it accountable before international law for its war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and, indeed, all over the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Succumbing to US pressure and unabashed Israeli blackmail, Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Ramallah Palestinian Authority (PA), was reportedly personally responsible for the decision to defer council consideration of the Goldstone report. This dashed the hopes of Palestinians everywhere as well as those of international human rights organizations and solidarity movements, that Israel would finally face a long overdue process of legal accountability and that its victims would have a measure of justice. The PA decision -- which delays adoption of the report at least until March 2010 -- gives Israel a golden opportunity to bury it with US, European, Arab and now Palestinian complicity, and constitutes the most blatant case yet of PA betrayal of Palestinian rights and surrender to Israeli dictates.

History of betrayal

This is not the first time, though, that the PA has acted under orders from Washington and threats from Tel Aviv against the express interests of the Palestinian people. The historic July 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), finding Israel's wall and colonies built on occupied Palestinian territory illegal, presented a rare diplomatic, political and legal opportunity to isolate Israel just as apartheid South Africa was isolated after the ICJ's 1971 decision against its occupation of Namibia. Alas, the PA squandered the opportunity and systematically -- quite suspiciously, actually -- failed even to call on world governments to comply with their obligations stated in the advisory opinion.

The whole clause on Israel and Palestinian rights that was to be discussed at the recent UN Durban Review Conference in Geneva was dropped after the Palestinian representative gave his green light. Efforts by non-aligned nations and former UN General Assembly president Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann to push for a UN resolution condemning Israel's war crimes in Gaza and establishing an international tribunal were thwarted mainly by the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, causing several prominent diplomats and international law experts to wonder which side the official Palestinian representative was on.

The Mercosur-Israel Free Trade Agreement was almost ratified by Brazil last September after the Palestinian ambassador there expressed approval, only urging Brazil to exclude Israeli settlement products from the agreement. With prompt action by Palestinian and Brazilian civil society organizations and eventually by the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), this ratification was averted and the responsible Brazilian parliamentary committee recommended that the government refrain from approving the agreement until Israel complies with international law.

In all these cases and many similar ones, the instructions to the Palestinian representatives came from Ramallah. The PA government there has, however, illegally appropriated the PLO's authority to conduct Palestinian diplomacy and set foreign policy, conceding Palestinian rights and acting against Palestinian national interests, without worrying about accountability to any elected representatives of the Palestinian people.

The PA's latest forthright collusion in Israel's campaign to whitewash its crimes and escape accountability came a few days after the far-right Israeli government publicly blackmailed the PA, demanding that it withdraw its support for adopting the Goldstone report in return for "permitting" a second mobile communications provider to operate in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

This collusion undermines the great efforts by human rights organizations and many activists to bring justice to the Palestinian victims of Israel's latest massacre in Gaza, the more than 1,400 killed (predominantly civilians), the thousands injured, the 1.5 million who are still suffering from the wanton destruction of infrastructure, educational and health institutions, factories, farm lands, power plants and other critical facilities, and from the long criminal Israeli siege against them.

It is nothing short of a betrayal of Palestinian civil society's effective boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, with all its recent, remarkable growth and achievements in mainstream western societies and among leading unions. It is also a betrayal of the global solidarity movement that has worked tirelessly and creatively, mainly within the framework of the fast-spreading BDS campaign, to end Israel's impunity and to uphold universal human rights.

It is crucial to remember that the PA does not have any legal or democratic mandate to speak on behalf of the people of Palestine or to represent the Palestinians at the UN or any of its agencies and institutions. The current PA government has never won the necessary constitutional approval of the democratically elected Palestinian Legislative Council. Even if it had such a mandate, at best it would only represent the Palestinians living under Israel's military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, excluding the great majority of the people of Palestine, particularly the refugees.

Israel's strongest weapon, the PA

Only the PLO can theoretically claim to represent the entire Palestinian people, inside historic Palestine and in exile. For such a claim to be substantiated and universally accepted, though, the PLO would need to be revived from the grassroots upwards, in a transparent, democratic and inclusive process involving Palestinians everywhere and encompassing all political parties that are outside PLO structures today.

In parallel with this popular take-back of the PLO by the people and their representative unions and institutions, the PA must be responsibly and gradually dismantled, with its current powers, particularly the representation seats at the UN and other regional and international institutions, returned to where they belong: a revived and democratized PLO. Dissolution of the PA, however, must at all times avoid creating a legal and political vacuum, as history shows that hegemonic powers are often the most likely to fill such a vacuum to the detriment of the oppressed.

The fact is the PA has been gradually and irreversibly transformed since its establishment 15 years ago. It began as an often powerless, obsequious and coerced sub-contractor of the Israeli occupation, relieving Israel of its most cumbersome civil duties, like providing services and tax collection. Most crucially, the PA very effectively helped Israel safeguard the security of its occupation army and colonial settlers. Now, the PA has gone beyond those roles, becoming a willing collaborator that constitutes Israel's most important strategic weapon in countering its growing isolation and loss of legitimacy on the world stage as a colonial and apartheid state. Israel's hundreds of nuclear weapons and its fourth most powerful military in the world proved impotent or at least irrelevant before the growing BDS movement, particularly after Israel's acts of genocide in Gaza. The almost unlimited diplomatic, political, economic and scientific support Israel receives from American and European governments and its unparalleled impunity have also failed to protect it from the gloomy fate of apartheid South Africa.

Even before Israel's war on Gaza, many unions around the world had joined the BDS campaign. After Gaza, BDS leaped into a new, advanced phase, finally reaching the mainstream. Years of careful groundwork facilitated this, but international shock at Israel's white phosphorus showers of death visited upon the children of Gaza cowering in UN shelters, and the universal feeling that the international order has failed to hold Israel accountable or even end its slaughter, or the ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, has provided an enormous boost.

In February, weeks after the end of Israel's Gaza bloodbath, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) made history when it refused to offload an Israeli ship in Durban. In April, the Scottish Trade Union Congress followed the lead of the South African trade union federation, COSATU, and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in adopting BDS to bring about Israel's compliance with international law. In May, the University and College Union (UCU), representing some 120,000 British academics, reiterated its annual support for the logic of boycott against Israel, calling for organizing an inter-union BDS conference to discuss strategies to implement the boycott.

And in September, Norway's government pension fund, the world's third largest, divested from an Israeli military contractor supplying equipment for construction of the illegal West Bank wall. Shortly after that, a Spanish ministry excluded a team representing an Israeli college illegally built on occupied Palestinian land from participating in an academic competition. Also in September, the British Trades Union Congress, representing more than 6.5 million workers, adopted the boycott, ushering in a new phase reminiscent of the beginning of the end of the South African apartheid regime. According to concrete, persistent and mounting indicators, Palestinians are witnessing the arrival of their South Africa moment.

Amidst all this came the Goldstone report, quite surprisingly -- given the judge's strong connections with Israel and Zionism -- providing the straw that may well break the camel's back: irrefutable evidence, meticulously researched and documented, of Israel's deliberate commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Despite its clear shortcomings, this report presented Israel with the daunting possibility of standing trial at an international tribunal, effectively ending its impunity.

In this dire situation, only one strategic weapon in Israel's arsenal could fend off a crushing legal and political defeat: the PA. And Israel indeed used it at the right time, almost killing the Goldstone report.

Ultimately, the failure of the UN Human Rights Council to adopt the Goldstone report is another proof, if any is needed, that Palestinians cannot hope at the current historical moment to obtain justice from the US-controlled so-called "international community." Only through intensified, sustainable and context-sensitive civil society campaigns of boycott and divestment can there be any hope that Israel will one day be compelled to end its lawlessness and criminal disregard of human rights and recognize the inalienable Palestinian right to self determination. This right, as expressed by the great majority of the Palestinian people, comprises ending the occupation, ending the legalized and institutionalized system of racial discrimination, or apartheid, and recognizing the fundamental, UN-sanctioned right of Palestine refugees to return to their homes of origin, like all other refugees around the world.

We simply cannot afford to give up on the UN, though. Human rights organizations and international civil society must continue to help the Palestinian struggle to pressure the UN, at least its General Assembly, to adopt and act upon the recommendations of the Goldstone report at all levels. If the UN fails to do so it will send an unambiguous message to Israel that its impunity remains intact and that the international community will stand by apathetically the next time it commits even more egregious crimes against the indigenous people of Palestine. This would gravely undermine the rule of law and promote in its stead the law of the jungle, where no one will be protected from total chaos and boundless carnage.

Omar Barghouti is a founding member of the BDS movement (www.BDSmovement.net).