Thursday 14 May 2009

palestinian emirates and two-state conflicts

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Posted on May 14, 2009 by marcy/مارسي newman/نيومان

in an article in the australian today john lyons writes that “most israelis want a two-state conflict.” here are a few recent examples of how the zionist entity perpetuates this conflict. first, in beit ummar witness how palestinians are taunted:

A group of Israeli settler youth standing on a hillside near the Palestinian village of Beit Ummar got Israeli soldiers stationed nearby to prevent a group of Palestinian farmers, accompanied by international and Israeli human rights activists, from accessing their farmland.

The farmers, residents of the village of Beit Ummar, near Hebron in the southern West Bank, own farmland near the illegal Israeli settlement of Bet Ayin, which was constructed on illegally-confiscated Palestinian land.

The settlement continues to expand further and further onto Palestinian land, and the Palestinian farmers whose land lies nearby the expanding settlement have experienced increasing harassment over the last several months.

As the children stood on the hillside chanting “Death to all Arabs”, the Israeli soldiers showed the farmers and human rights observers a military order declaring their farmland to be a “closed military zone”, and forced them off their land at gunpoint.

This incident comes on the heels of a violent attack by a gang of masked Israeli settlers against two elderly Palestinian farmers, who were badly beaten on April 26th. One of them, Abdullah Soleiby, age 80, suffered severe head injuries when 30 Israeli soldiers held him down and hit him on the head with rocks.

second, on new palestinian political prisoners:

Palestinian researcher, specialist in detainees’ affairs, former detainee Abdul-Nasser Farawna, stated Monday that the Israeli forces kidnapped since the beginning of this year until the end of April more than 2350 Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.


He stated that some of the kidnapped residents were released later on while hundreds of them remained imprisoned in different detention and interrogation centers.

Farawna added that the army kidnapped 1220 Palestinians in January, including 1000 who were kidnapped during the latest offensive on Gaza, and that dozens of the kidnapped residents are still detained.

The army kidnapped 365 Palestinians in February, 395 in March and 370 in April. This includes 13 women and dozens of children in addition to hundreds of workers who were detained in Israeli for “not having the required work permits”.

third, more news of ethnic cleansing in al quds:

While the Pope is visiting the Holy Land, and started his visit to Bethlehem on Wednesday with a call for peace and reconciliation, Israeli occupation authorities continued their violations against the Palestinians and issued more orders to demolish Palestinian apartments in East Jerusalem.

The orders target 31 apartments providing shelter to more than 300 Palestinians.

The office of Hatim Abdul-Qader, Jerusalem Affairs advisor to President Mahmoud Abbas, stated that the Jerusalem municipality decided on Tuesday at night to demolish nine more homes in Al Thoury neighborhood, near Silwan town, south of the Al Aqsa Mosque.

The homes belong to the families of Zayyad, Al Bardaweel, and Aseela, and are providing shelter to more than seventy residents.

The office added that the orders include demolishing old homes and additions to them, and said that it would file a legal appeal at the Israeli High Court of Justice.

Furthermore, the Jerusalem municipality handed an owner of an apartment building an order to demolish his building which includes 22 apartments, and was constructed in 1999. The apartment building provides housing to 250 residents.

of course for anyone who knows about palestine it is obvious that all the zionists have ever wanted is war, conflict; that is all we have seen from them since pre-statehood. meanwhile an israeli terrorist colonist professor offered a different plan, which would, of course, continue the conflict, though maybe it would be an eight-state conflict if he had his way:

An Israeli researcher specializing in Arab-Israeli affairs at Bar-Ilan University, Dr Motti Kedar, asserted on Monday that he would submit to the Israeli Knesset this week a proposal suggesting the establishment of a “Palestinian emirate state.”

Kedar told local Palestinian radio station “Ar-Raya FM,” which is based in Ramallah, that several Knesset members and party leaders welcomed his idea that he has worked on for some ten years studying the nature of Palestinian-Israeli relations.

“Today I promise both peoples that their complicated question will be solved through this proposal. My proposal suggests the appointment of a king or emir or caliph in each Palestinian city or village, which will have its own systems and its own army. These emirates could become richer than the Gulf states if the Palestinians wake up and invest in the gas reserve near the Gaza beaches.”

However, Kedar rejected a withdrawal from Israeli settlements in the West Bank. He said Israel would not allow these hilltops to become bases for Hizbullah.

As for Jerusalem, he said it would never be negotiable, and that if any Israeli prime minister were to seriously negotiate over Jerusalem, he would be assassinated immediately because Jerusalem is a red line “burning anyone who comes close to it.”

and what do palestinians want? ali abunimah’s article in electronic intifada makes that abundantly clear:

The Fafo survey of more than 1,800 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and almost 1,500 in the West Bank offers some real insights into the state of Palestinian public opinion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (international funders never sponsor surveys of all Palestinians, which would include those inside Israel as well as those in the Diaspora).

Fafo found that just 35 percent of Palestinians still support a two-state solution. One third preferred an Islamic state throughout Palestine, and 20 percent wanted “one state with equal rights for all,” in Palestine/Israel.

Palestinians did not even agree with the common claim that the two-state solution is clearly the more “pragmatic” and “achievable” one. In the West Bank, 64 percent thought the two-state solution was “very” or “somewhat” realistic, as against 55 percent for a single democratic state. In Gaza, 80 percent considered a single democratic state to be “very” or “somewhat” realistic as against 71 percent for a two-state state solution. This is a moment when no vision carries a consensus among Palestinians, underscoring the urgent need for an inclusive debate about all possible democratic outcomes.

The American effort, started by the Bush Administration with European and Arab accomplices, and continued by US President Barack Obama, to impose an Israeli-friendly Palestinian leadership has failed. The Fafo survey indicates that Hamas emerged from Israel’s attack on Gaza with enhanced support and legitimacy.

Palestinian Authority leaders in Ramallah and their Arab, Israeli and Western allies, did all they could to portray the Israeli attack on Gaza as the result of “recklessness” and provocation by Hamas and other resistance factions. This narrative has taken hold among a minority: 19 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip viewed Hamas as having “great” responsibility for the attack on Gaza (this rose to 40 percent among Fatah supporters). Overall, 51 percent agreed that Hamas had no responsibility at all for the attack (48 percent in the West Bank, 58 percent in Gaza). Just over half of those polled agreed with the statement “All Palestinian factions must stop firing rockets at Israel.”

All the financial, diplomatic and armed support given by the West to Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader whose term as Palestinian Authority president expired in January, has done little to shore up his standing among Palestinians. Only 44 percent of respondents overall (41 percent in the West Bank) considered him the “legitimate” president of the Palestinians, while 56 percent did not.

Near universal dissatisfaction with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is reflected in the finding that 87 percent of respondents agreed that it was time for Fatah to change its leadership. Unsurprisingly, 93 percent of Hamas supporters wanted change, but so did 78 percent of Fatah supporters.

Palestinians expressed very low confidence in institutions (by far the most trusted were UNRWA — the UN agency for Palestine refugees — and the satellite channel Al-Jazeera). But a plurality in the West Bank and Gaza Strip — 32 percent overall — considered Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s Western-boycotted Hamas-led government in Gaza to be the legitimate Palestinian government. Only a quarter overall (31 percent in Gaza, 22 percent in the West Bank) thought the Ramallah-based “emergency” government headed by Abbas’s appointed and US-backed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was the legitimate one.

Hamas leaders performed well during and after Israel’s attack on Gaza. Haniyeh had an overall positive rating of 58 percent while Abbas’s was only 41 percent. But among Palestinians who said they would vote in an election, 41 percent would support Fatah against 31 percent for Hamas. If that was out of step with the rest of the survey, there is a clear trend: support for Fatah was down sharply from a year earlier and Hamas doubled its support in the West Bank from 16 to 29 percent, according to Fafo.

There were some issues on which there was a strong consensus. Ninety-three percent of respondents wanted to see a “national unity government” formed, and the vast majority (85 percent) rejected maintaining the West Bank and Gaza Strip as “independent regions” if efforts to form one foundered.

Palestinians still overwhelmingly support a negotiated settlement, but the “peace process” and its sponsors have lost all credibility. Just one percent thought the US had a “great deal” of concern for the Palestinian cause, and 77 percent thought it had none at all. The “Quartet,” the self-appointed ad hoc grouping of US, EU, UN and Russian representatives that monopolizes peace efforts earns the trust of just 13 percent of Palestinians.

Post-Gaza, Palestinians hold jaundiced views of all Western countries and the Arab states aligned with them. Iran and Turkey, which took strong public stands in solidarity with Palestinians, have seen support surge.

If the Fafo poll confirms that the Western-backed effort to destroy Hamas, impose quisling leaders, and blockade and punish Palestinians until they submit to Israel’s demands has failed, a useful conclusion from the One Voice survey is that given a free choice, Israelis reject all solutions requiring them to give up their monopoly on power and to respect Palestinian rights and international law.

The right response to such findings is to support the growing international solidarity campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to force Israel to abandon its illegal, supremacist and colonial practices, and to build a vision of a democratic future for all the people in the country.




Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)


Isreal’s 40 Years of Violent Oppression

More non-questioning reporting from IT’s Jansen

Israel to pay ‘civil servants salaries’ in Gaza

Palestinian Moderates a Casualty of the Gaza War?




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