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The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it    
Commentary

TitleDescriptionDate
Israelis and Palestinians need reconciliation
[prominently places in a mainstream Israeli daily]
Iyad Muhsen AlDajani - Ynet - Taking action for one side while denying the rights of the other, as when former U.S. president Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, has ignited the conflict. Assigning occupied or disputed lands to one side while denying the other; jeopardizing past agreements by threatening to remove one side’s existence, such as in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood; incidents such as those at Damascus Gate and in al-Aqsa Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan; denying peaceful worship for all religions in the holy city of Jerusalem – these are the results of implementing Trump’s declarations on the ground. Hamas and Israel have been in protracted conflict, and the siege has been almost 14 years long. It did not weaken Hamas or other parties but made them stronger politically and on the ground. It did not contribute to the security of Israelis. Hamas and other factions are part of Palestinian society and must be part of the solution, not the problem. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs a path not taken, which leads toward justice, coexistence, forgiveness, empathy, truth, and inclusiveness. Two cultures have invested much in denying the existence of the other; attempted agreements have failed for a variety of reasons. The reconciliation process starts by recognizing the suffering and accepting the narrative of the other. [bz]29/5/2021
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"It’s Time to End the ‘Special Relationship’ With Israel" Stephen Walt - Foreign Policy - The latest round of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians ended in the usual way: with a cease-fire that left Palestinians worse off and the core issues unaddressed. It also provided more evidence that the United States should no longer give Israel unconditional economic, military, and diplomatic support. The benefits of this policy are zero, and the costs are high and rising. Instead of a special relationship, the United States and Israel need a normal one. [ak] 28/5/2021
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Shemah YisraelSusan Block - CounterPunch - “Call me a ‘self-hating Jew,’ if you like, and right now, I do *hate* that side of myself that’s genetically and/or ethnically related to these despicable destroyers of apartment houses, media buildings, medical facilities, family homes and the people inside them—broken bodies, lost lives— unspeakable brutalities! Yet we must try to speak about them” [ry] 24/5/2021
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The final demise of the Trump-Kushner attempt to bypass the Palestinians Michelle Goldberg - New York Times - “We are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict” said Jared Kushner just two months ago. Even with Trump out of the White House, Kushne still hailed the Abraham Accords, the ersatz Middle East peace plan he helped negotiate - based on the deadly fiction that the Palestinians were so abject and defeated that Israel could simply ignore their demands, and that normalization agreements with some Arab countries, generously bribed by the US, were enough to supply Israel`s need for peace and prosperity. But the explosion of fighting in Israel and Palestine in recent days makes clear something that never should have been in doubt: justice for the Palestinians is a precondition for peace. And one reason there has been so little justice for the Palestinians is because of the foreign policy of the United States. To be fair, this is not something that began with Trump: America has been enabling Israel’s occupation and settlement project for decades. In some ways the Trump administration was simply more honest than its predecessors about its disregard for the Palestinians. (...) It’s not enough for Joe Biden to be a little bit better than Trump or to try to restart a spectral “peace process.” If Israel can no longer afford to ignore the demands of the Palestinians, neither can we. [ak] 20/5/2021
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Bernie Sanders: United States cannot continue being an apologist for an increasingly right-wing and racist Netanyahu government. Bernie Sanders - No one is arguing that Israel, or any government, does not have the right to self-defense or to protect its people. But why is the question almost never asked: “What are the rights of the Palestinian people?” e should also understand that, while Hamas firing rockets into Israeli communities is absolutely unacceptable, today’s conflict did not begin with those rockets. Palestinian families in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah have been living under the threat of eviction for many years, navigating a legal system designed to facilitate their forced displacement. And over the past weeks, extremist settlers have intensified their efforts to evict them. And, tragically, those evictions are just one part of a broader system of political and economic oppression. For years we have seen a deepening Israeli occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and a continuing blockade on Gaza that make life increasingly intolerable for Palestinians.[ak] 20/5/2021
Turning `collateral damage` into war crimeGush Shalom - "Our bombing of Gaza is moral" cried the Prime Minister as if he cares. [bz]19/5/2021
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Biden Can’t Avoid the Israeli-Palestinian ConflictPatrick Cockburn - CounterPunch - “Biden would clearly like the present situation to just go away. This is the last issue his administration wants to spend time thinking about, knowing that its greatest efforts are likely to produce nothing but political self-harm” [ry] 17/5/2021
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How the violence plays into Netanyahu’s handsAkiva Eldar - Al Jazeera - By letting violence escalate, the outgoing prime minister is sabotaging the formation of a cabinet by the opposition [ry] 17/5/2021
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Israeli Apartheid? The Biden House House does not agree, but is not really shocked by the assertion. Jen Pskai - The White House spokesperson referred to the annual State Department report on human rights abuses (which has long been more critical of Israel than most government reports) and stated that, “As to the question of whether Israel’s actions constitute apartheid, that is not the view of this administration.” When pressed on the HRW report, Psaki still would not condemn it or directly attack it. Rather, she said, “I would say that the United States is committed to promoting respect for human rights in Israel and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And we’ve been an enduring partner — we also have an enduring partnership with Israel and discuss a wide range of issues with the Israeli government, including those related to human rights.” That is not the sort of defense of Israel’s human rights record that we have become accustomed to, even before Donald Trump’s presidency. As Quincy Institute Vice President Trita Parsi put it, Biden is keeping the Netanyahu government “at arm’s length.”6/5/2021
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International law sides with Palestinian refugees. But can it solve their plight?Sam Bahour - +972 - A new book dives into the myriad laws that protect Palestinian refugees and their right of return. Its proposed solution, though, may be hard to swallow [ry] 3/5/2021
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Bottom-up Politics: Grassroots Activism Drive Pro-Palestine Shift in the USRamzy Baroud - CounterPunch - "The rooted support for Israel among establishment Democrats is too deep – and well-funded – to be erased in a few years, but the pro-Palestine, anti-Israeli-occupation trend continues unabated, even after the defeat of Trump" [ry] 3/5/2021
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Why the events in Jaffa of May 1, 1921 are important todayMark LeVine & Mathias Mossberg - Al Jazeera - From May 1, 1921 to May 1, 2021, everything and nothing has changed between Israelis and Palestinians [ry] 3/5/2021
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