Middle East Watch

475 Article

• Israel’s Master Plan for Transfer

  9 April 2009, by Ellen Cantarow

  No one doubts that Avigdor Lieberman is a thug. His ultimata (“Those who think that through concessions they will gain respect and peace are wrong,” etc, New York Times Thursday, April 2, 2009) were designed to shock. On this site Neve Gordon’s revelations of Lieberman’s many corruptions, his beating of a 12-year-old child, his exhortation to bomb Gaza as the US bombed Hiroshima, supply further ugly evidence against the man, and fuel the flash-fires burning through the Internet in the wake (…)

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• Obama team readying for confrontation with Netanyahu

  8 April 2009, by Aluf Benn

  In an unprecedented move, the Obama administration is readying for a possible confrontation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by briefing Democratic congressmen on the peace process and the positions of the new government in Israel regarding a two-state solution.
  The Obama administration is expecting a clash with Netanyahu over his refusal to support the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
  In recent weeks, American officials have briefed senior Democratic (…)

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• En Israël, une association déterre le passé enfoui de plusieurs villages arabes rasés

  6 avril 2009,

  Zochrot est une organisation israélienne unique : elle tente de retrouver les traces des villages arabes détruits lors de la création d’Israël en 1948, afin d’empêcher que leur souvenir ne disparaisse entièrement de la mémoire collective. « Nous avons posé plus de cent panneaux de marquage, tous ont été enlevés », déclare Eitan Bronstein, le directeur de Zochrot (Souvenir en hébreu), en parcourant les ruines de Simsim, un ancien village arabe proche de la bande de Gaza. « Je ne serais pas (…)

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• Learning the Nakba as a condition for peace and reconciliation

  by Norma Musih

  The Jewish people in Israel, or at least most of them, live in complete ignorance or even denial of the Palestinian disaster that took place in 1948, the Nakba. The Nakba has no place in the language, the landscape, the environment, and the memory of the Jewish collective in Israel.
  Traveling in Israel, one may find signposts, landmarks and memorials that create and sustain the Jewish-Israeli narrative. Jewish-Israeli events that took place more than 2,000 years ago are celebrated through (…)

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• Israel’s fabricated rocket crisis

  6 January 2009, by Jim Holstun, Joanna Tinker

  In The Iron Wall (2001), Israeli historian Avi Shlaim shows that in July 1981, US diplomat Philip Habib brokered a ceasefire between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel. For the next year, the PLO infuriated Israel by refusing to violate the ceasefire and thereby provide an excuse for Israel’s long-planned attack on PLO refugee camps and bases in Lebanon. Then, on 3 June 1982, a member of the Abu Nidal organization shot and wounded Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador in (…)

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• Belgian campaign targets bank financing Israeli settlements

  1 April 2009, by Adri Nieuwhof

  In a remarkably short period of time, activists in Belgium have built a strong basis for the campaign "Israel colonizes — Dexia funds," asking the bank to divest from its subsidiary Dexia Israel because of its financing of the expansion of illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli settlements violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibiting the Occupying Power to deport or transfer parts of its civilian population into the territory it occupies, (…)

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• Disposable justice

  2 April 2009, by Gideon Levy

  Anyone who cares about the rule of law and Israel’s moral image, and is worried that its soldiers may have carried out war crimes in the Gaza Strip, can now sigh with relief. The military advocate general, Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, ordered that the investigation into soldiers’ testimonies on their experiences in Operation Cast Lead be closed. A flash operation of instant justice buried a story that had rocked worlds. There are judges in Jerusalem, and a military advocate general in Tel (…)

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• Rule now, liberate later

  30 March 2009, by Amira Haas

  In Cairo, representatives of the Palestinian parties have discussed the threshold of votes required for representation on the Palestinian Legislative Council. The party that is considered the strongest, Hamas, wants a high threshold and threw out the figure of 8 percent, to the shock of members of one of the smaller parties. In Fatah, a ruling party that has known the taste of defeat, opinions were mixed: Some preferred a relatively high threshold (4 percent) in the hope that it would force (…)

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• Breaking With Israel

  27 March 2009, by Justin Raimondo

  America’s coming confrontation with Israel has been foreshadowed for quite some time by several under-the-radar signals, but the media has been too invested in the "special relationship" narrative to notice, at least until the Obama administration took the reins. In spite of the Bush team’s reputation for being the most pro-Israel White House ever, in the last year or so of the second term they had been moving steadily away from being Israel’s yes-man – for example, by tightening visa (…)

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• صدامات أم الفحم: نموذج أوَّلي لتصفية القضية

  بقلم د. عادل سمارة

  حتى لو بدأنا قراءة الصراع العربي-الصهيوني من مذبحة غزة، لكان ذلك كافٍ لرؤية الخطر المحدق والخطر القادم بتصميم من مختلف الأطراف الرسمية تجاه حق الشعب الفلسطيني والأمة العربية ومستقبلهما. وهو خطر ينقسم إلى مستويين وليس نقيضين:
  – في المستوى الأول مشروع صهيوني رقم (أ) بطرد فلسطينيي ١٩٤٨ إلى الضفة الغربية والأردن، وهذا ما تقبله الأطراف العربية الرسمية، دون إعلان، على أمل أن يكتفي الكيان الصهيوني بهذا ويمنح سلطة الحكم الذاتي ما يقارب دولة!
  – وفي المستوى الثاني، أن هذا الطرد هو مقدمة لطرد كل من (…)

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