Commentary
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| Title | | Description | Date |
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 |
| ... |
| "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 |
| ... |
| Shemah Yisrael | | Susan 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 |
| ... |
| 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 |
| ... |
| 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 crime | | Gush Shalom - "Our bombing of Gaza is moral" cried the Prime Minister
as if he cares. [bz] | 19/5/2021 |
| ... |
| Biden Can’t Avoid the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict | | Patrick 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 |
| ... |
| How the violence plays into Netanyahu’s hands | | Akiva 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 |
| ... |
| 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 |
| ... |
| 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 |
| ... |
| Bottom-up Politics: Grassroots Activism Drive Pro-Palestine Shift in the US | | Ramzy 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 |
| ... |
| Why the events in Jaffa of May 1, 1921 are important today | | Mark 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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