http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svOMJ_IIJWU

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/mapstellstory.html

Palestinian people power – could it be a game-changer? - Alan Hart

Palestinian people power – could it be a game-changer? - Alan Hart

The Settlement Obsession | Foreign Affairs

On taking office in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama put Israeli settlements at the center of U.S. policy in the Middle East. In Washington's view, a complete construction freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem became not only desirable but also a prerequisite to Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Previous U.S. administrations of both parties had never taken such a stance, and in fact, there had been years of negotiations (not least at Camp David in 2000 and after the Annapolis meeting in 2007) while Israeli settlement activity continued. But the Obama administration stuck to its demand, and when Israel refused to freeze construction, 2009 and much of 2010 went by without negotiations. This only changed in November 2010, when the White House abandoned the entire approach and began to search for a new one.
This single-minded focus on a construction freeze was clearly a mistake in the sense that it failed: the Israeli government did not agree to a freeze in East Jerusalem. Nor could any earlier Israeli governments have accepted such a demand, even if they, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had been open to partial or time-limited freezes in the West Bank. John Kerry (D-Mass.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed the situation well when he said in April 2011, "I was opposed to the prolonged effort on the settlements in a public way because I never thought it would work and, in fact, we have wasted a year and a half on something that for a number of reasons was not achievable." What is more, the Obama administration's demand had the effect of cornering Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who could not ask for less than Washington; if the U.S. president thought a total freeze was a prerequisite to negotiations, Abbas would have to think so, too. As a weary Abbas told Newsweek in April, the Obama administration led him up a tree and then "removed the ladder."
But the tactic also was a mistake in a deeper sense: current construction in the settlements is not a critical issue, and the expansion of construction into additional lands has been minimal. At Camp David in 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat 94 percent of the West Bank; ten years later, Ehud Olmert offered Abbas 93.6 percent with a one-to-one land swap. So it is clear that settlement expansion has not significantly eaten away at the territory of an eventual Palestinian state. The far more serious issues are wholly outside the short-term question of a freeze: namely, the future of the settlements if and when a Palestinian state is created, their impact on the maneuvering that will advance or impede that objective, and the conflict between the settlers' ideology and that of mainstream Zionism.
This is not the view taken in the handsome new collection Occupation of the Territories: Israeli Soldiers' Testimonies 2000-2010. The volume is a product of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli nongovernmental organization that presents itself as the conscience of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and indeed of the nation, explaining its role as "pushing Israeli society to face the reality whose creation it has enabled." In this book, Breaking the Silence advances two conclusions. The first relates to the morals of Israel's army and, by extension, Israel itself: "Soldiers who serve in the Territories witness and participate in military actions which change them immensely," the organization explains. "Cases of abuse towards Palestinians, looting, and destruction of property have been the norm for years, but are still explained as extreme and unique cases. Our testimonies portray a different, and much grimmer picture in which deterioration of moral standards finds expression in the character of orders and the rules of engagement, and are justified in the name of Israel's security." The second conclusion is that the presence of Israeli settlers and IDF soldiers in the West Bank is laying waste to the area, reducing it to misery.
Some of the testimonies are deeply affecting, and there is no doubt that occupation duty brings out the worst in some soldiers: violence, bullying, vandalism, and theft. Official accounts of the U.S. occupation of Germany after World War II, for example, make clear that there is no such thing as an immaculate occupation. But in this book, Breaking the Silence appears less interested in the current impact of the settlements and the backdrop to the IDF's actions in the West Bank than in advancing particular ideological and political points. For one thing, why produce a volume in 2010 that has so many testimonies about Gaza, from which all Israeli forces withdrew in the summer of 2005? Why include so many interviews from 2000-2002, the years when the second intifada was at its height, rather than interviews from more recent years? In the section on the methods the IDF uses to prevent terrorism, for example, there are 67 interviews, but only five are from 2008 or later; similarly, a section on how the IDF carries out a "policy of control, dispossession, and annexation of territory" contains 44 interviews, of which just six are from 2007 or later.
A logical inference from this data would be that the IDF's conduct is improving, but Breaking the Silence does not discuss this possibility. Nor does it discuss what the IDF was attempting between 2000 and 2002, namely, trying to stop terrorist acts that were maiming and killing thousands of Israelis. There is just one sentence about terrorism in this entire volume, acknowledging that "it is true that the Israeli security apparatus has had to deal with concrete threats in the past decade, including terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens."
Moreover, the descriptions of life in the West Bank presented here are inaccurate or at best outdated. A soldier interviewed in the book describes the West Bank city of Nablus as "sealed hermetically." But just last November, The New York Times described Nablus as follows: "The city is open to visitors from all over the West Bank, as well as to Arabs from Israel. In the streets, new cars, including sport utility vehicles, point to growing prosperity." Put simply, the book's description of a West Bank living in deliberately inflicted misery does not comport with reality. Last April, Robert Serry, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, provided an update to the international donor group dedicated to assisting the Palestinian Authority. According to the UN's official summary, the report concludes that, "in the limited territory under its control and within the constraints on the ground imposed by unresolved political issues, the PA has accelerated progress in improving its governmental functions. . . . Governmental functions are now sufficient for a functioning government of a state. . . . In parallel, Israeli measures to facilitate movement and access have also supported economic activity."
Denying such progress, ignoring the withdrawal from Gaza, and relying on interviews from a decade ago suggest that Breaking the Silence is pursuing its own political goals in Occupation of the Territories rather than offering a fair and current documentary account of the occupation. It should come as no surprise, then, that the group is highly controversial in Israel. Amos Harel, a veteran journalist at Haaretz, is typical of the critics, writing that Breaking the Silence "has a clear political agenda, and can no longer be classed as a 'human rights organization.'"
REDEMPTION SONG
Whereas the dated testimonies and the refusal to acknowledge the slightest progress in the West Bank mean that Occupation of the Territories ultimately fails to persuade, Gadi Taub's The Settlers: And the Struggle Over the Meaning of Zionism offers a profound and fascinating account of the practical and ideological challenges posed by the settler movement. In the book, Taub, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, describes a fundamental clash between the religious settlers and mainstream Zionism, one that has existed for more than a century. "No dispute has divided Israeli society more deeply," Taub writes. But it is also clear that however deep the divisions, the two sides are not equal in number. By Taub's count, "only about a third to a half of the West Bank's Jewish population, some 100,000 to 130,000 people, are religious Zionists," which would make this religious group around two percent of Israel's Jewish population.
The term "religious" is critical, for in the eyes of most Israelis, many settlers are simply suburbanites who commute to work in Israel's cities. Most of those who live in, for example, Maale Adumim, a city of nearly 40,000 in the West Bank just outside Jerusalem, moved there because they were priced out of the Jerusalem housing market. Maale Adumim is typical of the major blocs of which President George W. Bush spoke in 2004, when he said that "already existing major Israeli population centers" constituted "new realities on the ground" that any peace negotiation must reflect and that would realistically require changes in Israel's previous borders.
In other cases, Israelis have returned to areas where Jews lived not only in antiquity but in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, before being forced out by pogroms. For example, Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank, had a Jewish presence up until a massacre in 1929 eradicated the Jewish community there. Jews returned after 1967, and around 500 live there now under IDF protection; 6,000 more live in the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba. Gush Etzion began as a collection of villages with about 450 Jews, founded in the 1920s just south of Jerusalem. During Israel's 1948 War of Independence, Arab forces overran the town and killed nearly everyone. An Israeli presence was reestablished after 1967, and today the population totals around 60,000 in two dozen small settlements and the town of Beitar Illit.
In the eyes of many Israelis, settlers have every moral right to reestablish communities in places where Jews lived before 1948 and left only because they were driven out violently. (Of course, Palestinians assert a similar claim, "the right of return," to places where they lived before 1948 in what is now Israel. Leaving aside moral and historical arguments, the difference is that the rebuilt Israeli settlements do not prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, whereas the movement to Israel of millions of Palestinians who claim refugee status -- those who lived before 1948 in what is now Israel plus all their children and succeeding generations -- would destroy Israel's identity as a Jewish state.) I remember taking part in a discussion of Gush Etzion with then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2005, when he was visiting Bush at his ranch in Texas. In a dinner with high-ranking U.S. officials the evening before Sharon met the president, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Sharon to stop settlement expansion. His reply started diplomatically and gained energy; by the end, he was pounding the table. "People in Israel don't understand, for example, why we can't build in Gush Etzion, an old community where everyone was killed in the 1948 war," he said. "Never will this area be handed to the Palestinians. Never. I am not going to negotiate this area. The Palestinians will never be able to come there -- never. They already destroyed it one time, and murdered hundreds."
In contrast to communities established to improve Israelis' security or quality of life or to reclaim places where Jews lived in previous decades, a minority of settlements reflect a more ambitious, deeply religious goal: obeying the biblical commandment to settle the land. From its earliest days in the nineteenth century and until the Holocaust, the Orthodox rabbinate in eastern Europe was not enthusiastic about the Zionist movement, which at the time was led by irreligious Jews. To the rabbis, seeking a return to Zion on a human, rather than a heavenly, timetable seemed almost sacrilegious. But a compromise of sorts was reached in 1948: the creation of the Jewish state was seen as, in the words of the official prayer for the state, "the first flowering of our redemption," an act that, whatever its material goals, was also performing a religious mission. Israel's Declaration of Independence refers to "the fulfillment of an age-old dream -- the redemption of Israel," but the document is mostly a reflection of the secular Zionism of the state's founders, whose mission is stated in the declaration as "the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State."
This difference in focus caused few problems until 1967, when Israelcaptured Gaza, the Golan Heights, the Sinai, and the West Bank. Sittingon the land that Israelis commonly call Judea and Samaria are thecentral locations (apart from Jerusalem) mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.These places are filled with religious meaning. Hebron is where thepatriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as the matriarchs Sarah,Rebecca, and Leah, are buried, in the Cave of Machpelah. Rachel's Tombis near Bethlehem, and Joseph's is in Nablus. And suddenly in 1967,like Jerusalem itself, all these sites came under Israeli control. AsTaub puts it, "The spark that ignited the messianic fire . . . was theextraordinary victory of the Israel Defense Forces in the Six-Day War.. . . Redemption was no longer at its beginning; it was well under way."
Whether Jewish law actually contains a commandment to settle the land has been controversial; the 613 binding commandments listed by the revered Jewish scholar Maimonides in the Middle Ages do not include it. But for many of the Orthodox, this dispute was swept aside after 1967, and this commandment became central. And here lay the problem, for the goal of secular Zionism had been not to settle the land but to establish a Jewish democratic state. Taub explains:
The inner faith-based circle of religious settlers perceived the state as but an instrument for the fulfillment of the commandment to settle the Land of Israel. . . . It was a struggle between two kinds of Zionism: on one side stood mainstream Zionism, for which self-determination -- the political independence of Jews as embodied in a democratic national state -- was the goal and foundation of Zionism; on the other side stood a religious movement, for which Eretz Israel -- the Land of Israel -- was the center of the Zionist project. According to the former -- a Zionism of state -- the settlement of the land was a means for establishing sovereignty, while for the latter -- a Zionism of land -- sovereignty was a means for settling the land.
Thus, as Taub explains, the Jewish national homeland had to be in the land of Israel. The question later became, did it have to encompass all of the land of Israel?
The conflict between secular Zionism and the settler movement did not appear overnight following Israel's conquests in the 1967 war, for there was an argument that bridged the gap: security. The Israeli right viewed the settlements as critical for Israel's future. The old borders were not defensible, Israel could be attacked again from the east, and settlements on the ridges of Judea and Samaria were part of the state's new system of defense. So the religious settlers and Israeli hawks made common cause, and year after year, settlers by the tens of thousands moved to the West Bank.
For the religious settlers, this was an exciting period, filled with spiritual and also political and psychological satisfaction. Whereas the Orthodox had largely sat out the hard work of building Zionist institutions and founding the state, Taub says, "the act of settlement was a chance to reenact the days of pioneering glory, which religious Zionists felt they had half missed."
The alliance between the religious settlers and secular Israeli hawks held for some years, but before long, the underlying contradiction began to emerge. In 1974, Gush Emunim, or "Bloc of the Faithful," was founded as the main settler organization, and its manifesto spoke of its "obligation toward the Land of Israel." To the actually existing State of Israel, there was apparently no such obligation. Three years later, in 1977, leaders of the Israeli right were forced to confront this uncomfortable fact when Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat came to Jerusalem offering peace in exchange for the Sinai. Menachem Begin, founder of the Herut Party (a predecessor of the right-wing Likud coalition), handed the Sinai back to Egypt in 1982 and in the process evacuated 2,500 Israelis from Yamit, a settlement there. It was apparent, Taub explains, that "in Begin's view the realization of the right of Jews to settle anywhere in the Land of Israel was always subordinate to a higher value: political independence, the sovereignty of the state."
A far more significant moment came in 2005, when Sharon evacuated all Israeli settlers from Gaza and also removed four tiny settlements in the West Bank. The settlers, Taub recounts, found that their adoption of the security argument as a means of reaching out to secular Israelis had backfired badly. For in the end, Sharon and his fellow hawks had come to the conclusion that keeping all the territories was a huge mistake and a danger to the Jewish state itself. As Taub writes:
Even staunch secular hawks in Likud understood that extending Israel's sovereignty to the territories, as opposed to maintaining the temporary status of these regions, would spell an end to Zionism; it would force the state into a double-bind where it would have to choose between a non-Jewish democracy and a Jewish apartheid. . . . Likud under Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Ariel Sharon, despite repeated declarations that Judea, Samaria, and Gaza would remain forever a part of Israel, never considered such a possibility seriously, and so never moved to annex these territories.
For both the Israeli center and the Israeli right, the failure of the Camp David talks in 2000 and the ensuing intifada taught a lesson: a negotiated settlement was unlikely. Combined with the continuing Palestinian insistence on the right of return of millions of Palestinians to Israel, an outcome that would doom Israel as a Jewish state, the seeming impossibility of a negotiated deal led Sharon to favor unilateral withdrawal. That approach, Taub says, "gradually acquired legitimacy. . . . Leaving the territories no longer looked to many like a concession to the Palestinians. It began to look like an urgent Israeli interest." The alliance between the settlers and the hawks against the Israeli left, or "the peace camp," was now at an end; the right joined the left in believing that separation from the West Bank was desirable.
Sharon, once called "the father of the settlements," created a new party, Kadima, whose founding document says that Zionism requires a Jewish majority in the State of Israel and therefore necessitates "conceding a part of the Land of Israel." In this view, Taub writes, getting out of most of the West Bank was "not an ideological retreat from Zionism, but its realization. The right [to live anywhere in the land of Israel] was still there, but it was subordinate to the higher goal and was therefore impossible to realize."
The difference between the religious settlers and the Israeli majority was profound, in Taub's view, in that "in the eyes of most Israelis the heart of Zionism was seated in an institution, the Jewish democratic state, not in the earth of the holy land. . . . For secular Zionism settlement was just a means, and the end remained democratic statehood. It made no sense to demand that the end bow to the means."
The problem for the Israeli majority that favors withdrawal from most of the West Bank, excepting only the major settlement blocs, is Israel's experience in southern Lebanon and Gaza. Both times Israel tried unilateral withdrawal -- in 2000 from Lebanon and in 2005 from Gaza -- terrorist groups moved in to fill the vacuum, leading, as Taub puts it, to "radicalization rather than pacification," because withdrawal was seen as a sign of weakness and a vindication of Palestinian violence. From the Israeli perspective, then, Israel's enemies thwarted partition by refusing a negotiated solution, and then thwarted unilateral withdrawal as well. Still, as Taub writes, even after these experiences, "Greater Israel [the dream of keeping all the territory from the Jordan to the Mediterranean] was no less dead, and the territories were still perceived as a burden rather than an asset."
IDEOLOGY AND EXPERIENCE
Now what? On the fringes of the Israeli left and right, there remains a desire to avoid facing the complicated facts and messy compromises that sovereignty requires. The religious settlers have no love for what, in Taub's words, "was actually the most momentous, unprecedented achievement of Labor [the party that led the country for its first 29 years]: painstaking, sober institution building." Their actions in building small outposts and settlements in the midst of millions of Palestinians, he writes, "did not reproduce Zionism; they reproduced the Diaspora . . . a minority, isolated and marginalized." Meanwhile, on the farther shores of the Israeli left, there remain those who blame Israel for every problem and whose continuing belief in "land for peace" demonstrates the triumph of ideology over experience. In the middle sit the vast majority of Israelis, who have in Taub's view "remained Zionist in [Theodor] Herzl's and [David] Ben-Gurion's sense of the term. They believe in a Jewish democratic state, dependent, as it always was, on a territory where Jews are a majority. Partition was the original logic of the drive to statehood, and it still is its only recourse." The settlement enterprise, Taub concludes, "now exists in a limbo."
Taub is more concerned about how this story will end within Israel than about the future of the settlements after Israel withdraws from them. He believes the religious settlers are divided now, realize they will lose the battle in the end, and are bitter at and frustrated with the state that would crush their work and remove them from their homes. Taub hopes to see the settlers persuaded rather than defeated, to see settler leaders and rabbis come forward to endorse mamlachtiyut (a word that comes from mamlacha, Hebrew for "state"), which can be translated as "statism" but is better rendered as "seeing statehood and sovereignty as high civic values." Taub wants them to understand that "the mitzvah [commandment] to settle the land is important, and the right of Jews to the whole land is eternal, but the polity -- the Jewish democratic state -- is still the greatest achievement of the Jews in our time, politically and religiously, and must take precedence above all considerations."
If the settler leadership is not persuaded, the bitter arguments among Israelis will only deepen. "If religious settlers are brought down from the messianic tree they have climbed up into only by force, if they are crushed rather than reformed, if they harbor only anger toward the state of Israel, they may compound the damage already done" in dividing Israel into two camps, religious and secular, Taub fears. "The struggle over the meaning of Zionism cannot be a triumph of the secular public over the settlers. . . . Zionism . . . must do more than win the political struggle: it must also win back the minds and hearts of religious Zionists," he concludes.
No easy task. Sharon, after all, failed to achieve this in Gaza. He never told the settlers there that the state loved them for their sacrifices in building an Israeli presence under fire but now required even more heroism from them: abandoning the very homes that marked that presence. Instead, the message from Jerusalem, and from most of their fellow citizens, was that they were fanatics who were a burden on the IDF and would be thrown out. If that is the message now heard by religious settlers in the West Bank, their resistance to any future Israeli withdrawal will be that much greater. It may seem ironic, but if Israel's leaders hope to persuade the settlers to evacuate with minimal discord and resistance, they must praise the settlement enterprise as a heroic effort that permanently changed Israel's borders rather than attacking it as a burden and a mistake. Similarly, recent statements from Washington calling the settlements -- all of them -- "illegitimate" are unhelpful. It would be far more useful to say, as Bush did, that there are realities on the ground that will require compromises by all parties.
In Occupation of the Territories, Breaking the Silence makes an additional argument about the settlements and their impact on Israel, namely, that occupation duty corrupts both the IDF and Israeli society itself in the task of protecting the settlers. Whatever their disagreements, this argument goes, the Israeli security forces and the settlers "at the end of the day . . . still see each other as partners in a common struggle." Breaking the Silence sees that struggle as the effort to crush the Palestinians; most Israelis would define the goal quite differently, as protecting the settlements and all of Israel against terrorism. After all, the occupation began in June 1967, when there were no settlers to protect, and was aimed at taking control of the territory that had been conquered in war. In the 20 years before the first intifada started in 1987, the line between Israel and the West Bank was an open border. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crossed it each day to work in Israel. Even after the first intifada, a casino opened in Jericho in 1998 to attract Israeli -- both Arab and Jewish -- gamblers, and several thousand typically showed up each weekend, until the second intifada began in 2000. The most common estimate is that just prior to the outbreak of the second intifada, 115,000 Palestinians -- one-fourth of the Palestinian work force -- traveled to Israel each day for work.
But all this changed due to terrorism. The first section of the Israeli security fence was completed in 2003, after there had been roughly 75 suicide bombings since the outbreak of the second intifada in late 2000. It was a direct response to those attacks. The activities of Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, and of the IDF in the West Bank are aimed at suppressing terrorism, often with cooperation from the Palestinian Authority's security forces, which at least until the Fatah-Hamas agreement of April 2011 shared the desire to weaken Hamas and other extremist groups. It is not coincidental that Breaking the Silence was itself founded in 2004, not in 1994 or 1984 or 1974, all times when the same territory was occupied by the same Israeli army and police forces. It is easy to believe that in this task of fighting terrorism there are plenty of abuses, but that does not change the nature of the mission to annexation or repression.
Breaking the Silence gets closer to the truth in suggesting that the occupation has more and more become the only prism through which Palestinians see Israelis. With the flow of businesspeople and workers into Israel drastically reduced, few Palestinians now deal with Israelis as employers or have a chance to experience normal life in Israel. Settlers and soldiers are the only Israelis they see, and Israelis no longer deal daily with West Bank Palestinians working in construction or other sectors in Israel. This separation has had a predictably dire impact on relations between Israelis and Palestinians and on the way they see each other, but it is not the product of the occupation per se, nor of the settlements. It is the result of terrorism and the steps taken by Israel to prevent it. The IDF will stay in the West Bank even after the settlers withdraw, because the task of protecting Israel from terrorism launched from the West Bank will remain: the army was there first and in all probability will be there last.
In the end, Israel will withdraw from most of the West Bank and remain only in the major blocs where hundreds of thousands of Israelis now live. Israelis will live in a democratic state where Jews are the majority, and Palestinians will live in a state -- democratic, one hopes -- with an Arab Muslim majority. The remaining questions are how quickly or slowly that end will be reached and how to get there with minimal violence. Despite the view adopted by the Obama administration that all settlements are illegitimate and that construction activity in the settlements is the main obstacle to a peace deal, the facts are otherwise. The contours of a territorial compromise are visible; the settlements beyond Israel's security barrier obviously have no future. Far more difficult complications exist as to Jerusalem, the status of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and workable security arrangements -- all problems that exist independently of the settlements and would be murderously complex even if no single settlement had ever been built.
There is no reason to believe that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which have failed since 1967, will magically succeed in the near future. It is often said that the outlines of an agreement have been clear for decades, or at least since Camp David. If that is true, it is equally clear that neither party is ready to accept those terms and the compromises they entail.
For Israelis, this should lead not to more complaining about Palestinian politics or leadership but to efforts to fulfill the central goal for which their state was established: to provide Jews with an opportunity to be in sovereign control of their own destiny, as Israel's founding document makes clear. The logic of the 1948 partition between a Jewish state and an Arab state still holds, and the vast majority of Israeli Jews realize that maintaining a Jewish democratic state requires separating from the 2.5 million Arabs who live in the West Bank. This would be not a favor done for the Palestinians but a task that Israel's national interests require. In the absence of a final-status agreement, Israel can and should continue the process begun when it removed the settlements from Gaza and built the West Bank security fence. The Israeli government should offer settlers beyond that fence compensation (as it did the settlers in Gaza) to assist them in moving west; it should simultaneously assist efforts to build a decent and successful Palestinian state in every way possible.
But any such Israeli steps are unlikely in the near future due to the April agreement between Fatah and Hamas, which establishes a unity government and a joint "higher security committee." The limited cooperation that existed in the past between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on economic and security matters will now likely disappear; Israel will look to avoid assisting a new coalition that includes Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority security forces will seek to avoid confrontation with Hamas and other terrorist groups. Moreover, negotiations are impossible, as Israel will not sit at a negotiating table with Hamas, a group pledged to Israel's destruction. The Palestinian leadership under Abbas understands all this, but it has chosen to address internal political matters, including holding new elections, rather than pursue additional cooperation or negotiations with Israel. If Abbas and his allies beat Hamas in those elections next year, perhaps they will reverse direction again -- but first they must win, and then persuade Israelis to view them once more as genuine partners for peace.
In the face of this cessation of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation and peace negotiations, the issue of settlement activity will rise again in importance in many capitals, especially in Washington. In an odd way, current U.S. officials have now adopted the mirror image of the religious settlers' obsession. The more extreme settlers believe that settling the land is more important than protecting the interests of the State of Israel. At the same time, according to current U.S. policy, getting them off that land -- indeed, stopping them from placing one more brick on it -- is worth badly damaging Washington's relationship with a longtime ally and putting Israel's security and reputation in jeopardy. The settlements, and the end of the settlements, are a great problem for Zionism, but they are not the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. The sooner the United States realizes that, the sounder and more constructive its Middle East policy will become.bsession Foreign Affairs

Lost Humanity

Libya is the seventh richest nation in Africa having 90,600 dollars GDP (purchasing power parity) in oil and petrol but why is the country fighting for revolution? Could we roughly say that the people of Libya are poor and have no stability in there work and this government is ruled by dictatorship for 42 years!

Unfortunately it is a rich country with poor people living in it. A normal workers income in Libya is estimated to be within 100 and 200 American dollars. The government only pays for the housing-electricity and water of the state workers. What about the others? Who are not able to work for the government? That is why with the success of the Egyptians setting a big example in the Arab world, the people of Libya had to do something to change the regime.

While the people of Libya are fighting for freedom, hired mercenaries soldiers from Senegal, Nigeria and Chad are attacking the villages, where there are only women and children left. The Libyan citizens state that these rebels were hired by the Gaddafi. ‘They are raping our women and children, and are stealing our money and our wife’s jewelry’ shouted one of the victims husband crying out in tears on the television last night.

But the Libyans have found out a way to give their own punishment to the rebels. While trying to find some footage about this news on YouTube, I came across the punishment sight. The rebels were beaten to death and dead bodies were put on the trucks front rear for exposure to the others who dare to do the same.

Gaddafi made this happen to his own citizens, because Gaddafi is aware of loosing power, he can not afford losing his power and going to prison. Last night Gaddafi’s son was to speak to the sate television, so we all waited in anticipation but the unfortunate explanation with an arrogant attitude was clearly noticeable; Libyans where to suffer the results of the uprising! God help the people of Libya.

Tuğçe Birgen

21.02.2011

Middle East Clashes

It’s happing, the people in Tunisia-Yemen-Bahrain-Egypt-Iran and Algeria have at last said no to dictatorship.

18 days of revolution movements has lightened up the people who are ruled with dictatorship,  especially the April 6th youth movement of Egyptians; their long desired freedom has made its points. How did they do it? Leading the millions isn’t an easy job. All the demonstrations took place in peace until the pro-Mubarak came in to the picture.

Yesterday night I watched the first part of people power documentary shown on Aljazeera English channel about the April 6^th  youths movement preparing their demonstration demands and organizing the groups in pairs to do what and what to say. All have the common purpose, the propose of demanding their freedom from dictatorship. As I watched the documentary I thought of Turkey. The youth of Turkey. Would we do the same thing? Could we gather around for even a week out on the streets? Well I am not quite sure?

We all know that Turkey has faced one of its important wars, which lasted with the Turks victory; the war of Independence between years of 1919-1922, FYI which not long after in 29 October 1923 the announcement of Republic of Turkey was proclaimed.

 But that war was won by the people living in those days generation. If it had been done in this time of period I am unfortunately going to say definitely no, we can not even get to gather for a birthday celebrations. So I guess the youth in the Middle East is more eager for their rights. I really admire the youth’s determination.

Now in Bahrain, unfortunately clashes have started, the army and the civilians are clashing. The latest news coming from Bahrain is that the nurses and doctors are not treating the wounded activists that have come to the hospitals. No ambulances are out on the streets. What is happing?!? Can this be true? Are we that stoned hearted? Have we lost our souls?

There is the US 5th fleet based in Bahrain, why doesn’t Washington make some phone calls to Manama to allow ambulances to their jobs? What is going on?

As for king Hamad, he will never regain credibility after letting the peaceful protestors get attacked during sleep in the streets. Blood will be forever in his hands…

Tuğçe Birgen

17.02.2010

Gone with the wind..

What a Mubarak Friday it was 11.02.2011

VP Omar Suleiman stepped on to the platform of the Egypt state TV and announced that Hosni Mubarak had resigned from Presidency and had left power to the Army. I think for once he heard the crowed crying out for freedom and the ‘yallah yallah’s meaning, ‘go go’ in English.

I spent the whole weekend sitting at home and watching the news. To be frank I prefer to watch foreign news agencies especially Aljazeera English. The analysts they choose to give speech to are specialist on their fields and give different perspectives to the viewers. Very unfortunate to hear that US can not watch Aljazeera English in their cable TV’s because while Aljazeera was giving the speech of Mubarak’s resignation, I switched the channel directly to CNN international news, but the translator could not translate because of excitement and shock so he could just say that Mubarak resigned and said nothing else, all us viewers kept on hearing Omar Suleiman speaking in Arabic so the TV presenter had to interrupt and start speaking.

It was a total disaster felt very badly for them. Any way it was very nice to see the crowd laughing and wiping their succeeded tears running down their smiling faces. The activists immediately went on live and expressed their feeling to the millions watching the news channels. Wow it is going to be an unforgettable day, the liberation square and Alexandria and many other Arab countries went out on the streets to celebrate Egypt’s victory. But I wish they will be always happy like that, it remembered me the day that when we all were very happy to be accepted to the UN but came out to a long waited disaster.

Well we wont be hearing from Hosni Mubarak, the former President of Egypt any more because he has been gone with the wind, even though he announced that he was to die in his own soil, he was taken from his presidency palace by a helicopter and was gone with the wind and still there are conspiracy theories to where he is to be..

Tuğçe Birgen

14.02.2011

Yallah go Mubarak!

What is wrong with Mubarak? Clearly he is not wanted in power anymore! He doesn’t give any notice to the Egyptians who are fed up with his sate of ruling the country!

Who is he depending on? The little majority that supports him! Where are they? Why doesn’t he call out to them and tell them to join and support him in power?

Maybe he can’t do that because most of them are golfing or playing tennis at the country club a couple of km further where the demonstrations take place.

By means!! They are not watching the TV Mr. Mubarak, because some of them are too busy talking about throwing the ball to the hole.

Yesterday evening after the Egyptian state TV channel announced, that Mubarak was going to give a live speech to the nation, the anxious crowd waited in deliberate patient for hours. But the patience did not last long shortly after Mubarak announced that he was lending his authorities to the VP Omar Suleiman.

 But the only tiny winy thing that Mubarak doesn’t get is that Suleiman is not welcomed by the anti Mubarak protestors. Because everybody is clever enough to understand that Suleiman will be the pawn of this game. As the unfortunate speech continued on the satellite cameras turned to the angry crowd in the Tahrir square. The crowd was waving their shoes in their hands to Mubarak, which is signed as a curse in the Arab society.

How can Mubarak collate him self with the anti Mubarak protestors by saying that; ‘once, he was Young like them and he can understand their concerns?!? What concern? The concern that he couldn’t understand for over 30 years!! Come on! Where is his dignity? He comes out blaming the demonstrators like as if they were to blame of the economical situation of Egypt. He even also said that the Egyptian economy needs everybody to go back to their works.

By giving out this speech he has once again lost all his trust ability in his nation. The people out on the streets for 18 days are out for a revolution but he can only see them as anti Mubarak protestors.

What now?

Now the people out on the streets are all gathering round for a revolution. They are calling out to the millions who live in Egypt to join them.

In conclusion, the more Mubarak forces him self to stay in position the more the determination is going to stay foot in Tahrir square.

Tuğçe Birgen

11.02.2011

What about the economical policy?

Egyptian protestors are in the streets, calling for the government to step down but Egypt’s has deeper problem than a single politician holding on to his chair. It has its economical situation to be solved. Then what is expecting Egypt after the turmoil?

Since the turmoil all the shops and banks are closed. Most of all, the stock market is closed. By means Egypt is losing 3 million dollars each and every single day. Ok then where does these 3 million dollars come from? Well this money of consists of 6% coming from tourism. But now that has stopped too. The only thing that hasn’t stopped is the protestors determined attitude.

Yesterday night as I surfed in the internet trying to find information about Egypt’s economical situation since the turmoil I came across Deborah Hewitt, a Clinical Associate Professor of Economics saying that  ‘generally economic growth and expansion comes a desire for more political freedom, and that they are mainly  hand in hand and that they feed on each other.’ I kind of liked her way of expression praising freedom and economy together.

Now 83 million Egyptians are faced with distributional problems, they have governmental issues. But if we had to compare the economical terms of Egypt with Africa then we can say Egypt is better than Africa but worse then Asia economy. The Suez Canal is a major effect now. Tourism in Egypt is the first industry that has being impacted. Since the turmoil, 1 million tourists have left the country. Their budget defect can get to 12.3% this year. The world’s attention is now turned to Egypt. The analyzers are now talking about finding solutions for the Egypt economy.

President Hosni Mubarak has approved 15% of a pay hike for the government workers a couple of days ago. But will the 6 million state workers buy this promise given by the targeted President?

Tuğçe Birgen

09.02.2011

Ship or Sheep

Maybe it’s written different but it is sure pronounced the same. Just like what is to be happing in Egypt.  Omar Suleiman the vice president of the Egypt government is to be nominated the next to be president.

But what does the anti Mubarak’s think about this issue? The 20% of the population believes in the Muslim Brotherhood ideology though they have been banned since 1954 in Egypt; they are field candidates in the elections as ‘independents’.

Though Mr. Suleiman has held separate talks with Muslim Brotherhood; The MB said it did not regard the meeting as negotiations but as an opportunity to hear the government's position.

A Muslim Brotherhood reformist, Dr.Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, said he was not pleased with the results because Suleiman had failed to respond to the demand for Mubarak resignation.

He also said that if the government was serious about political reform it should immediately dissolve parliament, which was elected in a tainted ballot from which the Muslim Brotherhood was banned.

Unites State diplomats and politicians including Yossi Sarid, a former Israeli unicameral member, is calling Suleiman to be a positive influence on negotiations person.

This so-called to be comparison is not happily met with the Muslim brotherhood’s expectations. An opponent of their beliefs is naming Suleiman to be positive and a negotiate person. On the contrary they see Omar Suleiman as a person who did not go far enough in his proposals for greater political freedom and pledge of free elections. All they say is that need freedom, electing Omar Suleiman will be just showing their right ear with their left hand, like wise as Mubarak’s regime.

Today is the 14^th day of demonstration, the crowd in the Tahrir square and Alexandria is not planning to go unless Mubarak goes. This picture shows how  determined they are not to go any where. Photograph from Ben Curtis/AP

 

Now means yesterday!

Though the Yemen president Ali Abdullah Salih announced two days ago, before the demonstrations began, that neither he nor his son will be in the 2013 elections but still this announcement did not satisfy the angry crowd to go out on the streets over 20 thousand people have started protesting in Yemen. Chaos is spreading more and more in the Middle East, the leaders in the area are craving in worry, Will we be next?!?

Let’s look back to Egypt, the clashes between the pro and anti Mubarak’s has killed at least 150 and injured 1500 Egyptians, but still the protestors are chanting out the government member’s names to resign. They are determined; they will not stop until Mubarak steps down. Today is the 10’Th day of demonstrations. The activists are surviving lack of communication but still achieved to bring over 1 million protestors together in Tahrir square.

They have been chanting and marching that ‘Now means Yesterday’ but  Mubarak stressed out to the ABC American news channel that he wants to step down but he is afraid that there will be a chaos after giving up mission.

Mubarak is expected to bury the hatchet and give what the millions want. But one thing experts say that the US should not do is stick its nose too far into Egypt's business. No matter how much the Obama administration wants Mubarak gone, it should not engineer an outcome. Hence Israel watches nervously as its most important strategic ally in the region descends in chaos.

Tuğçe Birgen

04.02.2011

The day after tomorrow..

Egypt is a key partner in the search for peace in the Middle East and resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But what will happen now? The ninth and current prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu is taking a more closer look at  Egypt as the crowed chants out with millions of determined and loud voices, Netanyahu yet gets another round of  ‘table meetings’,  as the thought of millions of Egyptians thundering day and night in the Tahrir square.

Is this a sign to him and his country? We now know that Egypt has opened its door to the people of gazze on the 7^th day of the turmoil. Without notice I can assure you that the people of gazze took side with the protestors as soon as they entered the ancient city filled with activist shouting out for democracy.

We now that Egypt is the first Arab country to sign treaty with Israel, the Camp David treaty signed in between 17’Th of September 1979 and 1978, but not longer after Israel broke the treaty after a couple months the Arabs understood that they could no longer make treaties with the Israel, so the war between Egypt and Israel never seemed to come to an end.

Israel wants to maintain its military superiority over Egypt, by means of America's control over military assistance to both countries. Also Israel uses Egypt's influence over the different Palestinian factions as authority. It is unclear who will emerge victorious from the power struggle in Egypt; it is even less certain whether other dictatorial governments in the region will be next to face the democratic forces of mass mobilization.

Egypt is trying to challenge Israel's strategic superiority while at the same time moderating the damaging effects of Israel Defense Forces activity in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. This approach constitutes the background to Cairo's diplomatic struggles to shut down the reactors, and to its involvement in managing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which could spill over into Egyptian territory.

The biggest question is what will happen the day after the Egyptian president leaves the office. There is no greater Israeli fear than the rise of an Islamic regime, like wise in Iran, which would transform Egypt from a tranquil neighbor into a threatening monster.

Tuğçe Birgen

03.02.2011

past present future what shall be the nature of Eygpt

To day the Egypt’s youth are playing a major role in the anti-government demonstrations in Egypt. The youth of Egypt is chanting out for democracy and that they have had enough with Hosni Mubarak’s regime for over 30 years now. Lets look past at Egypt’s government policy to understand their power of regime until today.

Egypt’s first president to be was Gamal Abd un Nasır in year 1950, he introduced new political system, it was called Arab socialism, he was a revolutionist to drive out the English colony who ruled over Egypt for 72 years. After his death in year 1970 his nation looked past on what he had given, he introduced a new political system, it was called Arab socialism, with a one-party system and with Islam as its official religion he is a man who stood up to the West and lead his country from a poor slaved British Colony to a Free Progressing Nation. Nasser instituted an economic system that was communist in everything but name. He nationalized industries and drafted a five-year plan aimed at self-sufficiency through industrialization. He transformed the agricultural system, ending generations of pseudo-serfdom for Egypt’s poor. He brought education, health care and urban services such as electricity to areas far beyond Cairo and Alexandria. Egyptian parents no longer had to dream of free education for their children. For a time it seemed that Nasser’s economic system had finally brought economic justice to Egypt’s poor. For that he was known for his Arab dignity after the long humiliation of Western domination.

Egypt’s second president was Anwar El Sedat, he came into power by military coupe. He ruled in power for 11 years in year 1970. He chose a liberal policy and disseveration in economics. In order to do so he made important changes in the council. His death came with an assassination in year 1981 by two fanatic Islamic fundamentalist organizations jammat members, who opposed to the peace treaty with Israel.

After the sudden death of Anwar EL Saadet, Hosni Mubarack was appointed president. The Egypt Politics comprised of a semi-presidential republic in which the President of Egypt was in both the head of state and government. Mubarak combated Egypt's most pressing problems, unemployment and a struggling economy. He increased the production of affordable housing, clothing, furniture, and medicine. He also kept a tight rein on his officials, firing ministers at the first hint of scandal and fining parliamentary legislators for unnecessary absences. Egyptian voters overwhelmingly endorsed Mubarak for a fourth six-year term in office, there is the left wing, there are the reformists, there are the Islamic there are the youth of Egypt who has had enough with the Egyptian elections because they say it is completely fake, one of the activist shouted out loudly; it takes two months to sort out the votes and until that day we dig up the torn votes from garbage if there were to be democracy we should not wait at least two months to learn out that Mubarack is president again, Previous presidents of Egypt Gamal Nasser- Anwar El Sedat servied until they died, in that sense Mubaracks coming down is unprecedented. But a prolongation of the uncertainty of Mubarack ruling in to old age, unable to govern dynamically, may be worse then the alternatives. We have waited in deliberate patient but now we shall not!! Chanted the activist; we want democracy!! And it should be given to us today!!  As they chant out in Tahrir square and also in Suez and Alexandria; they say they don’t want Mubarack in another election or now! He should resign immediately! If Mubarack does not resign until Friday the determined protestors are going to march to the presidency palace. Will the Egyptian youth get what they want? Or will they have to wait until the elections in September? Let’s wait and see.
Tuğçe Birgen

02.02.2011