". . . a republic, if you can keep it."
They nailed it.
“The United States deeply regrets any harm Mr. Milstrand’s careful, even-tempered, and factually accurate remarks may have caused our democratic partner in the Middle East,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an unequivocal condemnation of the veteran foreign-service officer’s perfectly reasonable statements.
(Read more from theonion.com)
Document obtained by Haaretz reveals that between 1967 and 1994 many Palestinians traveling abroad were stripped of residency status, allegedly without warning.
Israel has used a covert procedure to cancel the residency status of 140,000 West Bank Palestinians between 1967 and 1994, the legal advisor for the Judea and Samaria Justice Ministry’s office admits, in a new document obtained by Haaretz. The document was written after the Center for the Defense of the Individual filed a request under the Freedom of Information Law.
The document states that the procedure was used on Palestinian residents of the West Bank who traveled abroad between 1967 and 1994. From the occupation of the West Bank until the signing of the Oslo Accords, Palestinians who wished to travel abroad via Jordan were ordered to leave their ID cards at the Allenby Bridge border crossing.
. . . .
Today, a similar procedure is still in place for residents of East Jerusalem who hold Israeli ID cards; they lose their right to return if they have been abroad for seven years.
Palestinians who found themselves “no longer residents” include students who graduated from foreign universities, businessmen and laborers who left for work in the Gulf. Over the years, many of them have started families, so the number of these Palestinians and their descendants is probably in the hundreds of thousands, even if some have died.
Also, several thousands Palestinians with close links to the Palestinian Authority were allowed to return over the years, as did a number of Palestinians whose cases were upheld by the joint committee for restoration of Palestinian ID cards. As of today, 130,000 Palestinians are listed as “no longer residents.”
Among them is the brother of the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat. Erekat’s brother left for studies in the United States and was not allowed to come back; he still lives in California. (Read more from haaretz.com)
Some of the former soldiers describe the “neighbour procedure”, a term for the use of Palestinian civilians, often children, as human shields to protect soldiers from suspected booby traps or attacks by militants. The procedure was ruled illegal by Israel’s high court in 2005.
Others speak of routine harassment of civilians at checkpoints, arbitrary intimidation and collective punishment.
Idan Barir, who served in the artillery corps, describes in his testimony how an officer forced Palestinian civilians to crawl in a “race” towards a checkpoint near Jenin in the West Bank during the 2000 olive harvest. Only the first three out of “teams” of eight were allowed to pass.
Another, Itamar Schwarz, says Palestinian homes were routinely ransacked in search operations. He describes the day of the World Cup final in 2002, when soldiers confined a Palestinian woman and child in the kitchen of their home for two hours while the unit watched the game in the middle of an operation.
Arnon Degani, who served in the Golani brigade, describes the distress of a young woman who tearfully pleaded to be allowed to pass through a Jenin checkpoint in order to sit an important exam. He gradually came to understand, he says, that the Israeli army’s intention was “to enforce tyranny on people who you know are regular civilians” and to “make it clear who’s in control here”. (Read more from guardian.co.uk)
On the surface it appears that president Obama has given up on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and, frankly, given the evidence, it is difficult imagining that there is something different beneath the surface. To wit:
Special Envoy George Mitchell resigned, clearly angry at the lack of support his peace efforts received from the White House – and his resignation letter was about as curt and cold as any in recent memory. The announcement of his resignation followed reports that the president’s Thursday speech on the Middle East will, amazingly, say virtually nothing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A day after Mitchell’s resignation came news that the president had decided that he will speak at this month’s AIPAC conference, the traditional setting for pandering to the Israeli government and, more significantly, to Israel-centred political donors. (Read more from english.aljazeera.net)
A report issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has confirmed that since its occupation in 1967, authorities of the Israeli occupation have confiscated about a third of the territory of East Jerusalem in order to expand settlement construction.
Ray Dolphin, the author of a report entitled “East Jerusalem: the basic human concerns”, said that Israeli policies and measures give priority to Israeli settlers in Jerusalem at the expense of the city’s indigenous inhabitants, pointing out that the Israeli occupation has confiscated thirty-five per cent of the Palestinian territories in eastern Jerusalem, for the benefit of projects aimed to expand Jewish settlements and to build other new settlements. (Read more from middleeastmonitor.org.uk)
JERUSALEM — Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has approved the construction of 294 new homes in Beitar Ilit settlement on the occupied West Bank, anti-settlement NGO Peace Now reported on Sunday.
It also said that work had started on more than 2,000 settler homes since the end in September of Israel’s 10-month freeze on Jewish construction on Palestinian land.
Peace Now made its announcement as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington preparing to address the US Congress and a powerful pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). (Read more)
The current issue of Toronto Life’s cover story is the sad and perverse tale of Byron Sonne, a Toronto security researcher, hackspace stalwart, and anarcho-libertarian who decided to show up the security theatre at play in last year’s billion-dollar-plus G20 preparations. Sonne published extensive accounts of the vulnerabilities in the preparations, taunting the police and officials who were putting on a kind of repressive, city-wide puppet show about security, rather than securing much of anything. Sonne was arrested and spent more than just under a year in jail, being held without bail on a variety of charges, almost all of which have been dropped (his bail conditions are nothing short of Kafkaesque). Sonne’s actions seem, on their face, to be over-the-top and ill-considered (though we haven’t heard his side of things yet), but the Canadian judicial system’s response is so insanely paranoid that it makes Sonne look extremely reasonable by comparison.
Sonne’s story is the sad tale of a geek who lost everything — his marriage, his home, his livelihood — because he couldn’t figure out how to contain or express his disgust with the state’s increasing encroachment on personal liberty. (Read more from boingboing.net)