http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=21964

Shimon Peres calls Arab peace initiative an "historical" opportunity that "cannot be missed"
Date: 11 / 05 / 2007 Time: 14:37

Bethlehem - Ma'an - Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres has warned the Israeli public against missing a great opportunity for peace, as presented by Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz in the Arab peace initiative.

“This is the first time the leader of a great Arab nation, Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, decided to support a peace initiative over war strategies,” said Peres Friday, according to the website of the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, Ynet.

“This is an historical move. If the Arab parties side with king Abdullah’s proposal, Israel will willingly negotiate with them. This opportunity cannot be missed,” said Peres, according to Ynet.

The article does not mention where Peres was when he made the statements or to whom he was talking.

Jerusalem - Ma'an - Israeli Knesset member and leading member of Israel's Labor party, Ehud Barak, advocated on Friday a two-state solution – "two states for two people" – with the division of Jerusalem.

Barak's statement came during a conference for Labor party activists in Kiryat Taf'on, in which he clarified his political program and his plan for a peaceful agreement with the Palestinians. "Within the peace agreements, Jerusalem will stay without the Arab districts in it, and there will be no harm to the religious places," he said.

He added, "There will be no agreements with enemies unless they understand that it is not possible to exhaust Israel with terror or weaken it militarily".

The Israeli Labor Party is due to hold party elections on 28 May and many expect Barak to win. He may then push for new Israeli parliamentary elections. "If on May 28, I am elected leader of the Labor Party, and the prime minister [Ehud Olmert] has not yet reached personal conclusions, I will push for new Knesset elections," he told a press conference last week, according to the Israeli media.

Gaza's fish break the blockade
Date: 11 / 05 / 2007 Time: 17:19

Gaza - Yousef Alhelou - Joy has filled the hearts of hundreds of Palestinian fishermen in the Gaza Strip this week as they expressed their happiness over the most plentiful fishing season in 40 years, especially in the shadow of the Israeli navy restrictions on fishing off Gaza's coast.

There are some 433 boats registered at Gaza's port, but only a few of them are seaworthy; fewer still risk the Israeli-imposed ban on Gaza's fishermen. Collectively, Palestinian fishermen have seen their monthly catch drop from 823 tones in June 2000 to as low as 50 in late 2006.

The number of registered fishermen has also dropped significantly, from as many as 5,000 in the 1980s to less than 3,000 today, according to the UN. At least 35,000 Gazans directly rely on the fishing industry for subsistence, amid poverty levels that the UN pegs at more than 80 percent in Gaza.

In 2000, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics valued the industry at 10 million dollars; today it is a mere shadow of that productivity.

The World Bank cited Israel's closure, restrictions and ban regime as "above all" responsible for the economic crisis.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza has been monitoring the closure regime and its weekly reports invariably include attacks on fisherman and their equipment by Israeli forces. Their most recent report said: "Fishermen have been subjected to intensive monitoring by the Israeli occupation forces, which use helicopters, gunships and gunboats" against the small fishing crafts.

Palestinian fishermen are routinely arrested and shot at by the Israeli navy. In the past year, four fishermen have been killed after being attacked by Israeli forces. Dozens have been arrested.

Palestinians are often compelled to fish within a few hundred meters of the beach, or even cast their homemade nets from the shoreline.

Under current restrictions, Palestinians are allowed to fish only up to six nautical miles off the Gaza coast, whereas a deal in 2002 between the UN and Israel allowed for fishing up to 12 miles off the coast and the Oslo Accords of 1993 gave fishing rights for up to 20 miles.

This spring was a surprise for fishermen and drew smiles on their faces as their nets yielded sardines, which Gazans always crave for.

Gazans usually buy frozen fish, because the fishing industry is destroyed and because Gaza does not have a sea port. Also, as fish is very expensive, many families cannot afford to buy it due to the lack of salaries and lack of money.

Rami Abu Hasirah, a fisherman, said: "Thanks to God, today fishermen netted tones of sardines, which will compensate all the losses over the past months."

Munir Al-Hessi, fisherman, said: "I'm very excited. This season is a surprise for all of us. Other fishermen and I are subject on a daily basis to the Israeli gunboats and vessels and we risk our lives to feed our families, but today, I earned $500! Finally, I will be able to support my family."

Hani Gandil, 48, said while buying sardines: "I usually buy frozen fish but when it comes to sardines, I buy them fresh. This season, the sardines seem bigger and more numerous. May God protect the fishermen, who risk their lives to carry out their job in order to feed their children and bring us these sardines."

Hamdi Baker, 42, fisherman, said: "Today the sardines broke the blockade!"
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=21967

http://www.imemc.org/article/48003

Time will Never Heal this Wound
Wednesday April 25, 2007 21:59 by Joharah Baker - MIFTAH

For Israeli Jews, this week was all about celebrations, barbecues and oversized blue and white flags fluttering in the spring breeze as their country celebrated the 59th anniversary of its independence. For Palestinians, this was one more year enduring an open wound, one more year to remember the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian people almost 60 years ago and the enormity of the problem it created.

By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH

To Palestinians, Israel’s Independence Day is called Al Nakba, the “Catastrophe”, which represents the displacement of some 800,000 Palestinians from their homes during the 1948 War, who were never to return and would soon comprise one of the Palestinian leadership’s most pressing and most complicated predicaments – the refugee problem.

According to the United Nations Works and Relief Agency, UNRWA, there are more than 4.3 million registered Palestinian refugees throughout the world, many of them still living in the squalid and sprawling refugee camps originally set up for them in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinian sources put this number at 6.5 million, taking into consideration that a percentage of these refugees are not registered with UNRWA.

The story of how the Palestinian refugee problem was created has been told, interpreted and recounted many times over, of course with significant discrepancies between the Palestinian and Israeli narratives. However, solid facts remain the best proof of what actually happened over half a century ago. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes in a wave of massacres and killings carried out by Jewish gangs and later the Israeli army. Others fled in fear for their lives, believing they would return in a matter of days to their homes.

Obviously, this did not happen, and scores of Palestinians found themselves homeless, stateless and penniless, with only their children and a few precious belongings left as reminders of a home they would never again set eyes on.

In the months and years that followed, approximately 400 Palestinian villages in the area that would become the state of Israel were annihilated, their inhabitants ethnically cleansed and new Jewish immigrants brought in to take their place. In stark contrast to the low, grey stone homes hundreds of years old, newly built and polished settlements were built atop what were once vegetable fields, fruit orchards, schools and mosques. In many places today, the only indication that a Palestinian village once existed are the tenacious cactus plants that would designate the village borders.

All Palestinians, refugee or otherwise, were born and raised on the story of Palestine and have been nurtured with the nostalgia of days gone by. So, while the Palestinian refugee cause has certainly been kept alive and well in the hearts of all Palestinians, young and old, an actual solution to this problem remains severely lacking.

There have been several reasons attributed to this ongoing predicament. First and foremost is the Israeli mentality towards the refugee right of return. Israel, from the get-go has vehemently rejected any return of Palestinian refugees to their original homes, or at least to those that still remain standing, under the pretext that such a large influx of Palestinians would harm the Jewish demographic makeup and would thus undermine the Jewish character of the state.

Given this obstinacy, which also stems from Israel’s denial of any historical injustice done to the Palestinians during the 1948 War, the Palestinians’ demand that refugees be granted the right of return has mostly fallen on deaf ears. Even the United Nations, which issued Resolution 194 in December 1948, has been disregarded. The resolution stipulates, “…that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”

The international community has followed suit, shoving the right of return demand aside in all international forums debating a final peace settlement for the Palestinians. While the UN, the United States and the world have thrown themselves into the refugee situation in Darfur, and earlier in Bosnia, the Palestinians have yet to have the spotlight shown on them in the international arena.

Even UNRWA, which was originally set up as a temporary agency to offer basic humanitarian services to the displaced Palestinians, has become a permanent facility in Palestine and neighboring countries where refugees continue to reside.

This is not to say the Palestinian leadership has not made its fair share of blunders where the refugees are concerned. When peace negotiations were officially launched in Madrid in 1991, the refugee community was excluded from representation. Then, a few years later, when the Oslo Accords were signed and the Palestinian Authority established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the refugees were snubbed once again. None of the Palestinians in the Diaspora were given a say in the legislative or presidential elections or in the actual running of the PA. Of course, the leadership at the time did and still does pay lip-service to the cause, insisting that a “just solution” be found to the refugee problem. But, to use a common cliché, action speaks louder than words.

Still, what is done is done, and the leadership is again at a crossroads. While it will always be bound by the restrictions imposed on it by the Oslo Accords, it is never too late to set priorities straight. If the government is truly representative of its people, it must embrace its entire people without exception.

The refugees have been dealt a bad hand for far too long, but not long enough for us all to forget. Whether or not refugees or their descendants choose to return to their prior homes, to the West Bank or Gaza Strip or make their homes someplace else, it is their inherent right to make this choice.

If the right of return is not addressed properly by the leadership and the international community, no truncated peace agreement, settlement or solution will ever stand. Just as injustices in the past have been righted, with universal vows of “never again,” so must the horrendous injustice done to the Palestinians.

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Programmer at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mip@miftah.org.

Source: MIFTAH (The Palestinian Initiative For the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy)

palestine | refugees/immigration | opinion/analysis

http://www.imemc.org/article/48134

The Livni-Rice Plan: Towards a Just Peace or Apartheid
Wednesday May 02, 2007 18:33 by Jeff Halper - 1 of International Middle East Media Center - IMEMC Editorial Group jeff at icahd dot org

Dr. Jeff Halper

For years I have been one of the doomsayers, arguing that the two-state solution is dead and that apartheid has become the only realistic political outcome of the Israel-Palestine conflict– at least until a full-blown anti-apartheid struggle arises that fundamentally changes the equation. I based my assessment on several seemingly incontrovertible realities. Over the past 40 years, Israel has laid a thick and irreversible Matrix of Control over the Occupied Territories, including some 300 settlements, which effectively eliminates the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. No Israeli politician could conceivably be elected on the basis of withdrawing from the Occupied Territories to a point where a real Palestinian state could actually emerge, and even if s/he was, the prospect of cobbling together a coalition government with the requisite will and clout to carry out such a plan is highly unlikely, if at all possible. And given the unconditional bi-partisan support Israel enjoys in both houses of Congress and successive Administrations, reinforced by the Christian Right, the influential Jewish community and military lobbyists and a lack of will on the part of the international community to pressure Israel into making meaningful concessions, a genuine two-state solution seems virtually out of the question – even though it is the preferred option espoused by the international community in the moribund "Road Map" initiative.

Now if it is true that the two-state solution is gone, the next logical alternative would be the one-state solution, particularly since Israel conceives of the entire country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River as one country – the Land of Israel – and has de facto made it one country through its settlements and highways. Seeing that Israel has been the only effective government throughout the land these past 40 years, why not go all the way and declare it a democratic state of all its inhabitants? (After all, Israel claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East .) The answer is clear: a democratic state in the Land of Israel is unacceptable (to Israel) because such a state, with a Palestinian majority, could not be "Jewish."

Which leads us back, then, to apartheid, a system in which one population separates itself from another and then proceeds to dominate it permanently and structurally. Since the dominant group seeks control of the entire country but wants to get the unwanted population off its hands, it rules them indirectly, by means of a bantustan, a kind of prison-state. This is precisely what Olmert laid out to a joint session of Congress last May when he presented his "convergence plan" (to 18 standing ovations). And this is precisely what Condoleezza Rice, together with Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, have been working on during Rice's monthly visits to the region.

The plan embodies the worst nightmare of the Palestinians. Phase II of the Road Map presents the "option" of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders, "as a way station to a permanent status settlement." Livni is publicly pushing for Phase II to replace Phase I, raising Palestinian fears of being frozen indefinitely in limbo between occupation and a "provisional" state with no borders, no sovereignty, no viable economy, surrounded, fragmented and controlled by Israel and its ever-expanding settlements.

For their part, Livni and Rice are proceeding very quietly, in stark contrast to the bluster of their male bosses. They have even refrained from giving a name to their plan, which Livni calls simply and innocuously " Israel's peace initiative for a two-state solution." Ari Shavit, a leading journalist in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, asks: "Does Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have a clear diplomatic plan that she is trying to promote? Livni implies that she does, but refuses to explain. She speaks of the two-state vision. She talks about the need to divide the country politically….However, she does not explain what the plan really is."

The plan is simple but far below the public radar. (The New York Times recently took Rice to task for "humiliating" herself by going to Israel frequently with no apparent plan). In order to seemingly conform to the Road Map initiative ostensibly led by the US, Livni talks of the two-state solution arrived at through negotiations. But the Road Map requires Israel to freeze its settlement building, something Israel steadfastly refuses to do. How can this be reconciled? How can Israel pursue a two-state solution while at the same time expanding its settlements and infrastructure in the very territories in which a Palestinian state would emerge?

The answer lies in a little noticed but fundamental change in US policy, announced by President Bush in April, 2004, and ratified almost unanimously by both houses of Congress. " In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers [which is what the Bush Administration calls Israel's massive settlement blocs]," he stated, "it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." In one fell (but immensely significant) swoop, Bush fatally undercut the very basis of international diplomacy towards the Israel-Palestine conflict, including his own Road Map: the withdrawal of Israel to the 1967(1949) borders to make space for a genuine Palestinian state. Israel thus claims that settlement building within these settlement blocs does not violate the Road Map, since that territory has been unilaterally recognized by the US as belonging permanently to Israel. In this way between 15-25% of the West Bank has been removed from negotiations and annexed de facto to Israel, while the "occupied territories" have been redefined as only that area outside the settlement blocs – and that to be negotiated and "compromised."

What Israel expects of the Palestinians, then, is a type of occupation-by-consent made possible by "negotiations" in which a priori the Palestinians lose up to 85% of their historic homeland. Now this is patently unacceptable to the Palestinians. Israel's initial attitude was: Who cares? The Palestinians have always been irrelevant, including in the Oslo "peace process." In his congressional address, Olmert was explicit in Israel's intention to impose a Pax Israeliana unilaterally if need be: "We cannot wait for the Palestinians forever. Our deepest wish is to build a better future for our region, hand-in-hand with a Palestinian partner. But if not, we will move forward -- but not alone. We could never have implemented the disengagement plan without your [ America's] firm support. The disengagement could never have happened without the commitments set out by President Bush in his letter of April 14th, 2004, endorsed by both houses of Congress in unprecedented majorities."

But here Olmert hit a snag. The Road Map – to which lip service must be paid – clearly calls for a negotiated end to the Occupation and the conflict. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, says the text, must be resolved "through a negotiated settlement leading to a final and comprehensive settlement." Both Bush and Blair grabbed Olmert and told him that the "convergence plan" could not be imposed unilaterally. He would have to "pretend" (and I know that word was used by the British government) to negotiate with Abbas for a year. That is what lies behind the occasional meetings Olmert has had with Abbas, which Olmert has publicly limited to strictly "practical issues." The Boston Globe reported on April 15, 2007, "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas launched a U.S.-initiated series of meetings on Sunday, bypassing some of the most contentious issues of the Middle East conflict….'We will not discuss the core issues of the conflict – the issue of (Palestinian) refugees, Jerusalem and borders,' Olmert said in broadcast remarks at the weekly cabinet meeting."

And here is where Tzipi Livni's idea of substituting Phase II for Phase I comes in. After the year is over (in May 2007) and it is clear that the Palestinians have not been "forthcoming," Israel will be allowed to declare the route of the Separation Barrier its "provisional" border, thus annexing about 10% of the West Bank. That may not sound like much, but it incorporates into Israel the major settlement blocs (plus a half-million Israeli settlers) while carving the West Bank into a number of small, disconnected, impoverished "cantons." It removes from the Palestinians their richest agricultural land and all their water. It also creates a "greater" Israeli Jerusalem over the entire central portion of the West Bank, thereby cutting the economic, cultural, religious and historic heart out of any Palestinian state. It then sandwiches the Palestinians between the Barrier/border and yet another "security" border, the Jordan Valley, giving Israel two eastern borders. This prevents movement of people and goods into both Israel and Jordan, but also internally, between the various cantons. Israel also retains control of Palestinian airspace, the electro-magnetic sphere and even the right of a Palestinian state to conduct its own foreign policy.

In that way the Palestinians get their state, albeit with "provisional borders," Israel expands onto 82-85% of the country while still conforming to the Road Map and apartheid – in the guise of a "two-state solution" – becomes political reality. And that's where we stay forever.

But here I hit a snag. Make your case as persuasive as you might, neither Israelis nor Palestinians nor governments are willing to give up on the two-state solution, seeing nowhere to go from there. So I have to cut it some slack. Tzipi Livni herself, one of the few truly thinking government officials we Israelis have, has uttered some hopeful phrases lately, going further in tone and content than anyone in the Labor Party. " On the one hand, I want to anchor my interests on the security issue, demilitarization and the refugee problem," she said recently, "and on the other I want to create a genuine alternative for the Palestinians that includes a solution to their national problem."

She has even criticized male approaches to the conflict over the years. "Did you see male hormones raging around you?" she was asked in a Ha'aretz interview (December 29, 2006). "Sometimes there are guy issues," she answered candidly. "Was there a guy problem in the conduct of the [Lebanon] war?" pressed the interviewer. "Not only in the war," she responded. "In all kinds of discussions, I hear arguments between generals and admirals and such and I say guys, stop it. There's something of that here….During those days [of the war], the thinking was too militaristic….At the beginning of the war, some people thought that the diplomatic role was to provide the army with time. That's understandable: In the past we always achieved, we conquered, we released, we won, and then the world came and took away from us. The victory was military and the failure political. But this time it was the opposite."

Livni, like most Israelis, cannot abandon the two-state plan. The alternatives – one state or apartheid – are clearly unacceptable. The existence of a Jewish state depends on that of a Palestinian one. Yet that has not constrained Israeli settlement expansion, which continues apace even as I write. Livni appears to believe, with most Israelis, that there is a thin magic overlap between the minimum the Palestinians can accept and the minimum Israel can concede – especially if emphasis is given to the Palestinian state and territory rather than to genuine sovereignty and economic viability. I doubt this, particularly in light of the fact that more than 60% of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are under the age of 18 and need a truly viable future.
Failing the carrot, Israelis – and here I'm not really sure where Livni stands – turn to the stick, to military pressures, economic sanctions and daily hardship that, they believe, can compel the Palestinians to accept a truncated, semi-sovereign, non-viable mini-state. All that is needed is continued pressure on the part of Israel, combined with some "sweetening of the pudding" designed to make apartheid palatable to the international community. Giving the Palestinians 90% of the Occupied Territories, for example. Though all the resources, sovereignty and developmental potential are found in the 10% Israel would keep, simply offering them such a "generous offer" would place irresistible pressures on them to accept. Who, after all, really cares about "viability?"

I think the two-state solution is gone and apartheid is at the door. I do not see any way that "finessing" will liberate enough qualitative land for a viable Palestinian state to emerge. But if we are stuck with it for the meantime, I would then contend that three absolutely indispensable criteria have to be met to give any two-state solution at least a shot at success: (1) the Palestinians must obtain Gaza, 85-90% of the West Bank in a coherent form (including its water resources) and an extra-territorial land connection between them; (2) they must have unsupervised borders with Arab States (the Jordan Valley and the Rafah crossing in Gaza), plus unrestricted sea- and airports; and (3) a shared Jerusalem must be an integral part of a Palestinian state with free and unrestricted access.

I fear that the Livni-Rice plan falls far short of this. I don't doubt Livni's sincerity (something unusual for me to say about any politician, let alone one from Likud-Kadima), but I fear she, like almost all Israelis who seek peace, minimize what the Palestinians can accept beyond what they are capable of. And when they don't accept, they are, of course, to blame. Thus Livni herself has said tellingly: "Abbas is not a partner for a final-status agreement, but he could be a partner for other arrangements, on the basis of the road map's phased process."

Can Livni pull it off? It all depends on her sincerity, her ability to maneuver an extremely right-wing Olmert government onto a path of true peace or, failing that, to get elected Prime Minister on her own and then establish a government that could take the momentous decisions a true and just peace with the Palestinians would require. A pretty tall order, but keep Tzipi Livni, not a name most people recognize today, in mind.

In the meantime, the no-name, no-publicity, Livni-Rice non-plan proceeds on its course, concealed by seemingly larger events such as the Arab League initiative. But wait! What about the Arab League/Saudi initiative? Doesn't that call for a two-state solution and a return of refugees? It does, of course, but few in the Arab world take it seriously. People there understand that justice for Palestinians means far less to the Arab governments than relations with the US and, yes, Israel, especially given the common Iranian threat. So the Arab League initiative is intended more to placate the Arab Street than as an actual political position that will adversely affect the Livni-Rice plan.

We in the peace camp must closely monitor the doings of Livni and Rice. There is nothing really secret; everything reported above has been said or reported upon in the Israeli press. It is simply a matter of connecting the dots, of picking up the hints and half-statements. We must develop the ability to comprehend the significance of bland non-news statements such as "Abbas is not a partner for a final-status agreement but…" if we, unlike the New York Times, want to "get it." As it is, the Livni-Rice initiative is significant in exactly the reverse proportion to how it is perceived as newsworthy.

Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a candidate, with the Palestinian peace activist Ghassan Andoni, for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org