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By Ranjan Solomon

Israel’s government obviously has a well-staffed department in one of its cells where they arrive each morning to invent political muck. Among the many things they plan there, one can be certain they design irrational methods for ethnic cleansing. They go further. They make their plans look like actions that guarantee security to their own citizens. On the contrary however their plans are evil blueprints to subjugate the Palestinians.

Our first article in this edition: “Israel’s deals to ‘transfer’ Palestinians are thinly-disguised ethnic cleansing” exposes this wicked design”. For as long as Israel practices racism, colonialism and apartheid, and employs occupation as a political tool, they must also learn to expect reactions from Palestinians and their supporters around the world that may not be quite-so-politically appetizing.

Palestinians from Gaza have resorted to send incendiary balloons in the same way as as they used to fire rockets into areas across the border. An Electronic Intifada report underlines how the incendiary balloons are no match to Israel’s sophisticated and modern weapons. They are simply burning wicks attached to balloons and releasing them in the direction of Israel. The balloons are carried into Israel by the wind. Reports say they cause fires on farm land and, as a result, incur a small amount of damage to Israel’s economy. Yet nobody has been killed or injured by them. Israel despises these relatively harmless acts of resistance. In revenge, it unashamedly employs highly destructive missiles from F-16s in heavily populated Gaza.

Even those who once aspired for a peaceful, dialogue-centered solution which would be just for both Palestinians and Israelis have lost patience with Israel. A criminal rogue state which kills at will and shoots at any target that moves which they don’t like may have won them a space in the deep blue sea. It may sound anti-Semitic to say this. But a rogue regime, which has no license to persist with crude laws, policies, and practices does not deserve a place in civilization.

Israel may want to remember that even the Nazi era came to an end. Their own Nazi-type behavior will also have to face and abrupt halt. Injustice to the Palestinians cannot be eternal. The political rogues who run Israel will do better for themselves by learning this lesson.

As an integral part of its ongoing propaganda, Israel, along with its ardent supporters and mass of mysterious instruments, fervently reiterate in the media, on university campuses, in blogs and comment sections, the same old, tired Zionist myths. Israel treats international laws and conventions with contempt, and contravenes them with escalating promptness and maintains a brutal military occupation. Israel is easily the foremost rogue State. Its overt and covert allies and supporters are part of this ‘rougeness’ .

28 August 2020

Source: palestineupdates.com

By Eman Abusidu

It seems that Israel is not satisfied with driving 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948, and another 400,000 in 1967; nor with its many massacres of Palestinian civilians. It is, in fact, working to expel even more Palestinians with a view to emptying the land of its indigenous inhabitants having known long ago that Palestine was never “a land without a people for a people without a land” as Zionist propaganda would have us believe.

It is no surprise, therefore, to learn that the government of Golda Meir (1898-1978) sought to “encourage” 60,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to migrate to Paraguay in South American with payments that would have cost the occupation state millions of dollars. According to Israeli public broadcaster KAN, recently-released secret papers from 1969 give details of the scheme.

Is it a coincidence that these documents have been released now, in the wake of the “deal of the century” and the increasing Arab normalisation with the occupation state? Moreover, why Paraguay?

With 53 years’ of hindsight, we can say that the fact that the scheme did not go ahead does not mean that it is off the table for ever. Israel has always looked for “alternative homelands” for the Palestinians so that the occupation can be completed with as much of Palestine and as few Palestinians living there as possible.

The possibility of “transferring” Palestinians to Latin America is a bit of a recurring theme. Aside from Paraguay, Israel has made several attempts to encourage Palestinians to migrate to Brazil and other Latin American countries. In 2017, Israel revealed proposals discussed by ministers after the 1967 Six Day War which included the minutes of meetings of the security cabinet between August and December 1967. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol speculated about how to deal with the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians newly under Israeli control. “If it were up to us,” said Eshkol, “we’d send all the Arabs out to Brazil.”

At that time Israel was working hard to make Palestinian emigration easy, not least through organised work missions. A Palestinian refugee who has been in Brazil for more than 53 years confirmed to me that his father went there as part of an agricultural work mission with help from the Jordanian government.

Why Latin America? According to specialist in Israeli affairs Adnan Abu Amer, the region has political and geographical dimensions that made it attractive to the Israelis. “Latin American countries are a long way from the physical conflict, making it harder for Palestinians to return to their land,” he explained. “This will help to turn the page on the whole issue of Palestinian refugees and the right of return.” Furthermore, Palestinian refugees automatically became local citizens, despite the differences in languages and traditions between Palestine and Latin American countries.

In May 1969, therefore, Israeli Ministers discussed the secret plan agreed between the head of the Mossad spy agency, Zvi Zamir, and President Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay. The Paraguayan authorities agreed to take up to 60,000 Palestinians, which was about 10 per cent of the population of the Gaza Strip at that time.

“The Paraguayan government was a dictatorship then and it was promoting immigration,” Susan Mangana from the Catholic University of Uruguay pointed out. “Paraguay is a neighbour to two regional giants — Argentina and Brazil — and Paraguayan society has a large percentage of indigenous people, the Guarani, as well as the descendants of European settlers. Thus, it is accustomed to immigrants.” What’s more, the Researcher in International Studies noted, Paraguay is well known even today for its corruption and porous borders.

Under the 1969 Israeli plan, the travel costs incurred by Palestinians moving to Paraguay would have been covered, and each person would have got $100. The government in Asunción would have received $33 for each immigrant as well as an initial lump sum of $350,000. The total that Israel was ready to pay was thus $20-30 million.

“Presumably Israel knew about the eagerness of the Paraguayans to make big money by signing this type of agreement and hence it exploited this situation to its advantage,” said Mangana. The plan was a failure, though; only 30 Palestinians made the move to Paraguay. In 1970, two of them shot and killed Edna Peer, who was a secretary at the Israeli Embassy in the country. The attack put an abrupt end to the Israeli plan.

Abu Amer believes that there could be a desire on the part of the Israelis to resurrect such proposals, if not by moving Palestinians to neighbouring Arab countries, then to elsewhere. “Suitable changes would be made to the plan to suit the current circumstances, such as Arab normalisation,” he said, “but the end result, from Israel’s point of view, would be the same: the ‘transfer’ of tens of thousands of Palestinians.”

Susana Mangana thinks that it would be impossible to consider Latin American countries today. “I don’t believe that it would be possible to carry out such a plan today since news travels fast and even though Paraguayans may not be active when it comes to arguing in favour of the Palestinian cause, as more people have access to the reality of the situation they are better prepared to react in case their government tries to sign such an agreement with Israel.”

As happened 53 years ago, when only 30 out of a proposed 60,000 Palestinians took the bait and made the move to Paraguay, the people of Palestine today remain determined to stay on their land, and the refugees remain determined to exercise their legitimate right of return. Israel’s deals to “transfer” the Palestinians are simply thinly-disguised ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population from their homeland. If justice is to mean anything in the modern world, then global opinion will simply not allow the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) and 1967 Naksa (Setback) to happen again.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

25 August 2020

Source: www.middleeastmonitor.com

By Ahmed Abu Artema

In recent weeks, the tension between Palestinians in Gaza and Israel’s forces of occupation has increased. Israel has used the launching of incendiary balloons by Palestinian youths as a pretext to bomb Gaza once again.

The release of the balloons is a gesture of protest against how the Israeli occupation has procrastinated in abiding by its previous agreements with the Palestinian resistance. Under those agreements, Israel had committed to easing the siege on Gaza.

This procrastination has caused the continued deterioration of Gaza’s health and public services and its economy. Meanwhile, the Israeli government continues to control the movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza.

The Israeli military has responded to the incendiary balloons by carrying out dozens of raids on sites used by Palestinian resistance fighters with US-made F-16 jets. The Israeli naval forces, which besiege Gaza from the sea, have prevented fishers from doing their work and fired at their boats.

The Israeli government has also closed the only crossing through which commercial goods enter Gaza. This closure led to the shutting down of the only power plant in the territory, which, in turn, means households in Gaza receive only four hours of electricity per day.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated frankly that Israel would respond to the incendiary balloons in the same way as it responds to rockets fired from Gaza. Israel, it seems, wishes to keep on responding with deadly force to largely symbolic acts of resistance that make use of very basic materials.

Israel has put this statement into practice by dropping highly destructive missiles from F-16s onto densely populated Gaza for 13 consecutive nights.

The incendiary balloons bear no resemblance to Israel’s sophisticated and modern weapons. Youths have simply attached burning wicks to balloons and released them toward Israel.

The balloons have been carried into Israel by the wind. They have caused some fires on farm land and, as a result, incurred a small amount of damage to Israel’s economy.

Yet nobody has been killed or injured by them.

Compelled to act

Israel and pro-Israeli media exaggerate the effects of this form of resistance while completely ignoring the reasons motivating it.

If one wishes to understand why incendiary balloons have been launched from Gaza, it is crucial to go back to the circumstances under which Palestinian youths feel compelled to act.

I have been asked repeatedly by many Western journalists if the youth who launch incendiary balloons are contradicting the principles of the Great March of Return, unarmed protests which began in 2018.

I have replied by asking the journalists to imagine a person locked in a room without access to food or medicine while they are dying slowly and silently. The person decides to bang on the door of the room with all their strength and anger and shouts for their freedom and their need to escape from death.

Then their jailer comes from outside to give a moral sermon and tell people: Look at this prisoner’s barbarism. They are not behaving properly because they are not knocking on the door calmly and not presenting their demands to us in a respectful way.

It is unfair to blame the victim, to be preoccupied with assessing their behavior. By neglecting to address the root of the problem, we are distracted from the real criminal, the one who placed a prisoner in those life-threatening and inhuman conditions.

Whatever a prisoner who feels death approaching them does, their behavior will be in harmony with the principles of freedom and justice, even if they break the door of the prison cell.

This analogy captures Israel’s behavior toward Palestinians in Gaza. Israel has exaggerated the significance of the simple incendiary balloons launched by groups of Palestinian youths.

Israel has tried to portray these balloons as akin to a military threat. By doing so, it has tried to devise new “rules.”

Under those “rules,” Israel thinks it may respond to crude balloons with missiles launched from F-16 warplanes.

Banging on the tank’s walls

Israel says nothing about the political and economic environment in which the young people who release those balloons are growing up.

These young people are victims of Israeli aggression many times over.

Their problems began before they were born. In 1948, their families were expelled from their villages by Zionist forces.

Two-thirds of Gaza’s population are refugees hailing from towns and villages in what is now called Israel.

Many young Palestinians can see their families’ original villages beyond the fence separating Gaza and Israel. But they cannot reach them.

That offers some explanation as to the motives of people releasing balloons. The balloons are crossing the boundary and reaching towns and villages that have been stolen from Palestinians.

They are being flown as a protest against the theft of our homeland.

After the expulsions of 1948, Israel committed countless other crimes. Those include occupation, massacres, the mass detention and torture of Palestinians.

They have included, too, a siege that has deprived Palestinians in Gaza of basic rights and necessities. The siege has undermined our economy, destroyed the labor market and shattered the dreams of Palestinian youth for a decent life.

Gaza’s youth banged against the prison walls during the Great March of Return. Israel responded by firing live bullets against them, causing death and permanent disabilities.

These youths, crushed by the Israeli occupation and deprived of their fundamental rights, still feel the urge to scream at their jailers. They want to make noise so that they do not die in silence.

In his novel Men in the Sun, Ghassan Kanafani tells a story of three Palestinians undertaking a perilous journey hidden in a water tank. After the men are found dead by their driver, Kanafani asks why they didn’t bang on the water tank wall.

Banging on the walls of a tank is better than suffocating.

Launching handmade incendiary balloons from the besieged Gaza Strip is like banging on the walls of a water tank and refusing to die in silence.

Ahmed Abu Artema is a writer who lives in Gaza and a researcher at the Center for Political and Development Studies.

25 August 2020

Source: electronicintifada.net

A prominent Fatah leader spoke of the Arab League’s neglect of the Palestinian leadership’s request to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the UAE’s decision to normalise relations with Israel.

Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Secretary–General of the League of Arab States, said on Saturday that the League will hold a regular meeting on 9 September at the ministerial level, ignoring the Palestinian leadership’s request for an emergency meeting.

On 13 August, US President Donald Trump announced a peace deal between the UAE and Israel brokered by Washington.

Abu Dhabi said the deal was an effort to stave off Tel Aviv’s planned annexation of the occupied West Bank, however, opponents believe normalisation efforts have been in the offing for many years as Israeli officials have made official visits to the UAE and attended conferences in the country which had no diplomatic or other ties with the occupation state.

Netanyahu repeated last week that annexation is not off the table, but has simply been delayed.

The Palestinian government has recalled its ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in protest over the country’s agreement to normalise ties with Israel.

The PA president’s official spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the deal was a “betrayal of Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa and the Palestinian cause.”

24 August 2020

Source: www.middleeastmonitor.com

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) called on Tuesday for all vital goods to be granted unimpeded passage into the besieged Gaza Strip, including fuel for electricity. UNRWA made the appeal against the background of 14 years of an illegal blockade and the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The agency in Gaza is extremely concerned about the closure of the lone power plant since last Tuesday, 18 August,” UNRWA said. “The closure of the plant has caused the power feed to decline to two or three hours per day, followed by 20 hours of interruption.”

This, explained UNRWA, will have a negative impact on the wellbeing and safety of the people of Gaza and devastating effects on the Strip’s vital services, including hospitals. “Thus, this puts at risk the lives and health of nearly two million people, including 1.4 million registered Palestine refugees.”

The official statement from the UN agency pointed out that, “Under international humanitarian law, the passage of all relief consignments, in this case fuel for electricity, should not be prevented.”

Commenting on the situation in the Gaza Strip, the Director of UNRWA Affairs in the Palestinian territory, Matthias Schmale, said that the call is being made to all concerned parties to maintain a supply of electricity that is sufficient to meet the basic needs of the civilian population. “UNRWA is, furthermore, concerned about other measures perceived as punitive to the civilian population, such as closing down the fishing zone, as well as the escalating tensions and military activities.”

Gaza, Schmale pointed out, has now been hit by air raids for more than ten nights in a row. “All parties must show utmost restraint and protect the civilian population with full respect for their dignity and human rights.”

25 August 2020

Source: www.middleeastmonitor.com

By Ramona Wadi

It is a pity that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas wasted so much time in declaring that no one has the right “to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people.” The statement was made within the context of the US-brokered deal normalizing relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, which has allegedly stalled annexation of land from the occupied West Bank for an indefinite period.

The deal exacerbates Palestine’s isolation in the region; in particular, it signifies the start of a tacit consensus for when Israel decides it is time to take up annexation once again. For the Palestinian people, another round of “waiting” has been initiated – a tactic much favored by the international community when it comes to brushing aside Palestinian political demands.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not ruled out annexation; the only change is that now there is a context to the earlier, vague statements. Normalization of relations is the easiest option and the one that is likely to ward off unwanted scrutiny for Israel.

Normalization should not have come as a surprise, after all, Netanyahu had repeatedly stated that Israel would be able to build ties with Arab countries and Gulf states since the Palestinian cause was no longer a top priority in the region. Is it a surprise, seeing that the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 promoted the concept of normalization, albeit tied to the two-state compromise?

Yet prior to the announcement, the PA had no qualms about promoting the Arab Peace Initiative. Until last month, this paradigm was endorsed by PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat, as part of the PLO’s “national program”.

If “national program” was replaced by “international impositions”, a clearer truth would emerge. The PA’s reaction to the UAE-Israeli deal is to be expected, yet it is also making an exception that excludes all the impositions upon the Palestinian people that have altered the Palestinian cause beyond recognition. The PA never turned inwards to consult with the Palestinian people.

It blindly worked its way through international frameworks and resolutions, following an illusion of statehood that never happened, because it was created to promote the international narrative on Palestine.

Not only has the PA failed to promote the Palestinian narrative and political demands. It allowed the international community to determine what Palestine should be, particularly through its endorsement of the two-state compromise and concessions regarding the Palestinian right of return. With each loss, the PA motivated itself to work towards further losses, alongside leaders and countries that pay duplicitous lip service to Palestinians.

France, once deemed an ally due to aiding Palestinians in drafting UN resolutions, has welcomed the normalization of relations between the UAE and Israel. What has the PA achieved for Palestinians other than accentuating and promoting further loss of territory and a steady erosion of political rights?

How will the PA respond to this turn of events? Another wasteful international conference? Lobbying for the defunct two-state compromise? The Palestinian people are being forgotten even within the context of this normalization deal.

Erekat has already opined that the UAE-Israeli agreement will “kill” the two-state compromise. That the PA can regularly rise up to the occasion to fail Palestinians is a macabre spectacle, beyond any political embarrassment.

Ramona Wadi is a staff writer for Middle East Monitor, where this article was originally published. She contributed this article to the Palestine Chronicle.

25 August 2020

Source: www.palestinechronicle.com

Jerusalem/PNN/

A senior Palestinian official says thousands of Palestinian-owned houses in occupied Jerusalem are facing the threat of demolition by Israeli authorities.

The Palestinian Authority’s deputy governor of Jerusalem, Abdullah Siam, told the Arabic-language Voice of Palestine radio station on Monday that Israeli courts are considering the demolition of some 18,000 Palestinian homes.

He added that the measure comes at a time when there is a need for 15,000 housing units in the occupied city.

Siam noted that the demolition of the Palestinian homes in Jerusalem is in line with the Israeli regime’s collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and Judaization of the occupied city through forced displacement of Palestinians.

Israeli officials have issued nearly 650 demolition orders against Palestinian-owned structures in Jerusalem since the beginning of the current year.

Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes and structures in occupied Jerusalem and elsewhere in the West Bank are part of a plan by the regime to expand settlements and force Palestinians from their homes and land.

Israeli officials say demolition orders are carried out because the Palestinian-owned structures have been built without the required construction permits.

Palestinians, on the other hand, argue such authorization is routinely denied, forcing unlicensed building.

According to Israeli rights group B’tselem, Israel has demolished hundreds of houses over the years as part of Israel’s “collective punishment” policy, leaving thousands of Palestinians homeless.

A report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released in January said the year 2019 saw a 45 percent increase in demolitions and confiscations of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank compared with the previous year.

The figures showed that a total of 393 Palestinian structures were destroyed or confiscated in Area C, which is under full Israeli control, compared with 271 structures in 2018, while the number of Palestinians displaced from their homes also increased to 507 in 2019, compared with 218 the previous year.

The demolitions of Palestinian homes come at the same time that Israel continues to expand settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law and are a major stumbling block to peace efforts as they are built on land Palestinians consider to be part of their future state.

24 August 2020

Source: english.pnn.ps

By Afro-Middle East Centre

Within days of the United Arab Emirates and Israel signing a deal to normalise relations, the UAE indefinitely postponed a ceremonial signing eventthat was to be held with the USA and Israel because of Israeli opposition to Abu Dhabi purchasing F-35 fighters from the USA. The UAE cancelled the trilateral meeting that was supposed to take place on 31 August. It is clear that the F-35 sale was an integral part of the agreement, and the Emiratis claim that the Israeli prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, had agreed to it. No wonder that Netanyahu’s rejection of the possibility of such a sale outraged the UAE. These developments also suggest, as some Palestinians have pointed out, that the deal had nothing to do with Israel agreeing to halt plans to annex Palestinian territory, as Abu Dhabi had claimed.

The normalisation agreement between the UAE and Israel, concluded on 13 August, is far from being the historical deal the protagonists make it out to be. Instead, it exposed an existing affair the two states have cultivated from the mid-2000s. Although the UAE has just joined Egypt and Jordan as the only Arab countries with peace agreements with Israel, UAE-Israel secret relations for more than a decade have included commerce, cyber technology, security and military hardware and energy; these will strengthen and become overt under the new agreement. Israel had, in fact, secretly established and strengthened relations with a number of Gulf States in recent years, and some of these have reached maturity under US president Donald Trump.

Even before this agreement was concluded, Emirati-Israeli cooperation had strengthened with the assistance of the Trump administration. The UAE was one of three Arab countries to attend the unveiling of Trump’s farcical ‘deal of the century’ in January, and was a critical part of the June 2019 economic package for Palestinians designed by Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and announced in a conference for this purpose in Bahrain. Following the conference, Israeli ministers undertook several visits to the UAE, signalling progress towards normalisation. A series of cooperation agreements between the UAE and Israel to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic and an Emirati plane landing in Tel Aviv in July signalled increasing relations between the two countries, and the normalisation agreement was the logical next step. In July, in a move now seen as preparing the ground for the normalisation deal, the Emirati ambassador to the USA, Yousef Al-Otaiba, published an op-ed in an Israeli newspaper after Netanyahu had announced plans to annex parts of the West Bank, calling for these plans to be halted. Two other Gulf countries, Bahrain and Oman, as well Sudan could follow soon with normalisation plans.

Tracing UAE-Israel relations

Current relations between the UAE and Israel may be traced back to 2009, after the inauguration of Barack Obama as US president. The relationship blossomed via secret meetings held to pressure Washington into taking a stronger stance against Iran. However, UAE purchases of military intelligence software and arms deals suggest the relations started in the early 2000s. The two countries had already been communicating via intermediaries, mostly discussing their common opposition to Iran.

Mossad’s assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Hamas leader and co-founder of the movement’s armed wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, in January 2010 threatened carefully-nurtured and ongoing secret links between the two states. Contact stalled over Mabhouh’s murder until 2012 when Netanyahu secretly met the Emirati foreign minister, Abdullah Bin Zayed, in New York during the UN General Assembly. Talks on Iranian activities in the region resumed, establishing mutual geopolitical concerns. Emirati cooperation with Israel accelerated as a response to the 2010/11 Arab uprisings and Iranian involvement in the Syrian conflict. In January 2014, then Israeli energy minister, Silvan Shalom, attended a renewable energy conference in Abu Dhabi, spurring on relations. In the following year, the UAE granted Israel permission to establish an office in Abu Dhabi for the International Renewable Energy Agency, which has served as platform for regular communication between the two countries.

To showcase the relationship and test responses, the UAE, in a break with a decades-old practice among Arab states, allowed the Israeli national anthem to be played for Israeli athletes at a judo tournament held in Abu Dhabi in October 2018. This was followed by visits to Abu Dhabi by Israel’s communications and culture ministers, Ayoub Kara and Miri Regev respectively, in the same week that Netanyahu made an unprecedented visit to Oman in which he met the country’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos. Gulf leaders reciprocated. For example, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was reported secretly to have visited Israel and met with Israeli officials; his visit was preceded by a July 2016 delegation led by former Saudi general, Anwar Eshki, who also met with Israeli officials.

In July 2019, the Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, attended the UN climate conference in Abu Dhabi, and, on the sidelines of the conference, discussed Iran with senior UAE officials as well as the Israeli ‘Tracks for Regional Peace’ initiative meant to open up travel and trade between Israel and Gulf countries. Katz’s visit came on the heels of the US economic conference in Bahrain. While such official visits between Israeli and certain Gulf states did not represent diplomatic relationships, they showed that Israel was making headway towards normalisation with Gulf countries – especially key players such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This was cemented in December 2019 when USA hosted Israel and the UAE in an anti-Iran meeting that discussed a non-aggression pact between the two states as a step towards full diplomatic ties.

Normalisation, weapons and strategic alliances

Until recently, the UAE and Saudi Arabia had shied away from overt relations with Israel for fear of backlash from their citizens. This changed with Trump’s attempts to build an anti-Iran coalition with Gulf states.

Emirati-Israeli relations have grown significantly in the fields of cyber-espionage and big data analysis since 2009. Acquiring Israeli technology and cybersecurity expertise has boosted the UAE’s domestic and regional surveillance capabilities – even against its own citizens. The UAE uses Israeli companies such as DarkMatter and NSO Group, staffed by Israeli cyber experts, to hack phones, gather intelligence and monitor Islamists, other dissidents and other Gulf leaders. Many Israeli military and security specialists also work for Emirati companies, and have often been hired as mercenaries since the Arab uprisings of 2010/2011.

Although the 13 August normalisation deal is a victory for Israel, which seeks legitimacy among Arab states in order to make the Palestinians irrelevant in international affairs, the Emiratis also scored big in the deal, or so they initially thought. The package included a US agreement to sell F-35 fighter jets to Abu Dhabi in a multi-million-dollar-sale. The UAE had been looking for ways to acquire F-35s as it seeks to present itself militarily as the region’s emerging hegemon. Netanyahu, however, quickly denied these Emirati claims that F-35 acquisition had been secured, emphasising that Israel remained opposed to the sale of advanced weapons to Arab countries. Israel’s opposition to the sale of the jets to the UAE created tensions in the new alliance. Abu Dhabi cancelled the meeting that was to mark the official and ceremonial signing of the normalisation agreement in protest against Netanyahu’s opposition to the F-35 sale. Meanwhile, conflicting sentiments have emerged from the White House.

Differences also quickly emerged about Emirati claims that the normalisation agreement included an end to Israeli plans for the annexation of the West Bank. Within hours of the deal’s announcement, Netanyahu confirmed his commitment to annexation, saying it only been delayed, not cancelled. Kushner supported the Israeli prime minister, clarifying that the annexation was only temporarily halted to allow Israel to focus on strengthening its relations with Gulf countries. Clearly, the Emiratis failed in their attempts to win Arab support by packaging normalisation with Israel as a move to support Palestinians.

The attendance of Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the USA, at the unveiling of Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ in January had already indicated the increasing Emirati disregard for Palestinians. In drafting Trump’s plan, Kushner had consulted widely with Gulf countries – especially the UAE and Saudi Arabia. These countries had formed part of the process despite the fact that no Palestinians had been consulted. The Palestinian Authority (PA) and other Palestinian groups had slammed Emirati support for the heavily pro-Israel plan as the ultimate betrayal. The same sense of betrayal was expressed when the UAE-Israel deal was announced this month.

The Dahlan effect

The Emirati attitude to and interference in Palestinian affairs can be seen in the role of exiled former Fatah strongman, Mohammed Dahlan, arch enemy of PA and PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas. After being expelled by Fatah, Dahlan found refuge and massive financial support in the UAE. Some of those financial resources have been dedicated to undermining Abbas to set the stage for Dahlan to capture the PA and PLO. Many Palestinians credit him for being behind the UAE-Israel deal. Dahlan, who used to be close to the CIA and the Israeli security establishment, was convicted for corruption by a Palestinian court in 2014. Since then, from exile, he has tried to to re-enter Palestinian politics and return to Palestine. The UAE, Egypt and Israel prefer him as a replacement or replacement for or successor to Abbas. He has built a support base among sections of Fatah youth in Gaza, some of the refugee camps in Lebanon, and in a few Palestinian diplomatic missions abroad.

The UAE also has a difficult relationship with Gaza-based Hamas, which it treats with hostility because of the group’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Although the UAE has not officially designated Hamas a terrorist group, Emirati officials refer to it as such in private, especially after the 2017 blockade on Qatar, imposed by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt. UAE ally Saudi Arabia has detained dozens of Hamas activists since February 2019, allegedly at Israel’s bidding.

Through Dahlan, the UAE has sponsored aid projects in Gaza. In May and June this year, the UAE also sent two planeloads of COVID-19 aid to Israel for Palestinians in the West Bank. The first plane landed in Tel Aviv in May, unmarked, while the second plane bore the Etihad airline logo and the UAE flag, marking significant strides in UAE-Israel relations. Despite being cash strapped and battling the pandemic, the PA rejected both planeloads, viewing Emirati coordination with Israel (and the lack of consultation with Palestinians) as a betrayal. The recent normalisation deal emphasised this sense of betrayal; protests against it erupted in both the West Bank and Gaza, with protesters burning pictures of the UAE crown prince, Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Dahlan, Trump and Netanyahu.

Other Gulf states may follow

Oman and Bahrain, both of which immediately praised the UAE-Israel agreement, are expected to follow the Emiratis, allowing Israel to realise its long-time dream of normalisation with regional states while isolating the Palestinians. Israel’s foreign minister, Gabi Ashkenazi, and his Omani counterpart, Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah, have already discussed strengthening bilateral ties. The USA hoped that plans to normalise might be announced soon, and the recent regional tour of Kushner and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was aimed to finalise these plans. Pompeo’s trip to Bahrain on 26 August did not yield the hoped-for results, however, as the Bahraini king emphasised the creation of a Palestinian state. Sudan’s transitional government also backtracked. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Morocco have reiterated their stance not to normalise relations with Israel until a peace deal with Palestinians is reached. However, this does not preclude relations taking place secretly.

Secret relations persist between Israel and certain Gulf countries, as well as some Arab states in Africa. Before Bahrain, Pompeo visited Khartoum and met the Sudanese prime minister, Abdullah Hamdok, who disputed claims that his country will normalise relations with Israel, despite Sudanese officials having secretly met Netanyahu in February to discuss normalisation. Despite Sudan’s transitional government issuing conflicting statements on the matter, an 18 August meeting between Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and member of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemeti), in Abu Dhabi suggests that that closed door relations will take place despite Hamdok’s statement.

AMEC insights is a series of publicly-accessible publications, providing trenchant analyses of topical issues related to the Middle East and North Africa.

31 August, 2020

Source: amec.org.za

By Mitali Chakravarty

The best introduction to Kathleen Burkinshaw is that she a humanitarian. She wrote a novel that has been taken up by The United Nations as a part of its peacekeeping effort. She has been actively participating in efforts to ban nuclear weapons, including presenting with Nobel Laureates. Kathleen Burkinshaw, the author of The Last Cherry Blossom, a book that is in the process of gathering further accolades, is a peace activist who talks of the effects of the nuclear war. She is the daughter of a hibakusha, a survivor of the Hiroshima blast that took place seventy-five years ago. Burkinshaw still suffers the impact of her mother’s exposure to the Hiroshima blast, where the protagonist of The Last Cherry Blossom, based on her own mother, sees her father die of the exposure and loses her best friend in the middle of a conversation. In this exclusive, Burkinshaw talks of the book, why and how it came about and the impact the bomb continues to have in our lives.

Why did you write your book? Tell us your story.

When my daughter was in seventh grade, she came home from school terribly upset. They were wrapping up World War II in their history class, and she had overheard some students talking about the ‘cool’ mushroom cloud picture. She asked me if I could visit her class and talk about the people under those famous mushroom clouds, people like her Grandma.

I had never discussed my mother’s life in Hiroshima during World War II. My mother was a very private person and she also didn’t want attention drawn to herself. But after my daughter’s request she gave me her consent. She bravely shared more memories of the most horrific day of her life. Memories that she had locked away in her heart because they had been too painful to discuss.

The main reason, my mother agreed (aside from the fact her granddaughter asked her), was that she knew students in seventh grade would be around the same age she was when the bomb dropped. She was 12 years old. She hoped that students could relate to her story and by sharing her experience, these future voters would realise that the use of nuclear weapons against any country or people, for any reason, should never be repeated.

I received requests to visit other schools the following year. I began to write about my mom and August 6th after teachers requested a book to complement their curriculum.

I told my mom about this request. Later that week, she sent me a copy of her most treasured photo from her childhood. It is the one of her and her Papa (which is in the back of the book). When I looked at the photo which I remembered from my childhood because it always had a place of honor in our home; I realised there was more to her life than just war and death, she had loving memories as well.

That’s when I knew I needed to start the book months before the bomb. I wanted to show the culture, the mindset, and the daily life in Japan during the war. I intended to give the reader the view of the last year of WWII and the atomic bombing through the eyes of a 12-year-old Japanese girl-something that has not been done before.

Your book explores colours of Japan. How different is it from US?

The Last Cherry Blossom (TLCB) discusses life in Japan during WWII. I wanted to show how the Japanese citizens viewed their political leaders — very different from the US. I also wanted to show that Japan had been at war for 14 years (they invaded Manchuria in 1931) by the time of the atomic bombing — they were out of so many natural resources, as well as the young soldiers. The majority of the Japanese soldiers were fighting out in the Pacific. So even though Hiroshima was once a strong military port, in 1945 it was mostly elderly, women, and children. In addition to that, the firebombs dropped on Tokyo decimated that city and other areas in Japan had endured Allied bombing. The US did have the horrific Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor, bringing the US into the war — but no other US cities with citizens endured bombing after that. However, what I really wanted to emphasise was the similarity between the two countries. The children in Japan like my mom, loved their families, worried might happen to them and wished for peace. Exactly the same as the children in the US.

When and why did your mother move to US? Did your mother find it difficult to adjust?

My mother met my dad (a white American serving in the Air Force at a base close to Tokyo) in Tokyo. They married at the US Embassy in Tokyo in 1959. His time serving ended shortly thereafter and they moved to the United States.

Yes, my mother found it difficult to adjust. My mother didn’t expect the prejudice and racial slurs against her. She figured it was 14 years after the end of the war and she was on the losing side. She didn’t tell them about the atomic bombing-she wanted to have the least amount of attention. She told everyone she was from Tokyo. I didn’t even know she was from Hiroshima until I was 11.

She wasn’t a shy person. She was intelligent and determined. She learned English and became a citizen within 5 years of arriving in the US. She had a job at an electronics company and made circuit boards that were on Apollo 11. Unfortunately, the town we lived in had very few Asian people and none of them were Japanese. When I was born, she “Americanised” (her word) our home. She wanted people to know that I was an American so I would not experience racist actions. However, being one of the few Asians in elementary school, I experienced quite a bit of prejudice and racial slurs, anyway.

My mother was the bravest person I will ever know. She lost so much on August 6th, 1945. Yet, she never lost her ability to love.

The UN has taken up your book as part of its peace process. Tell us a bit about that.

In December of 2018, John Ennis, the Chief of Information and Outreach at the United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) contacted me after reading The Last Cherry Blossom. He felt very strongly that the book should be used in classrooms to future voters. Nothing like it has been written before from this point of view of a 12-year-old girl. He told me that it would be designated a UNODA Education Resource for Students and Teachers. I was beyond happy that a book honoring my mom and what she experienced would be on that list. Later in 2019 UNODA invited me to the United Nations in NYC to discuss my book at the UN Bookshop as well as to participate in a workshop for NYC teachers on how to add nuclear disarmament to their curriculum. It was a surreal honour to be a presenter with Noble Peace Prize winners Dr. Kathleen Sullivan and other members under the International Coalition Against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for the Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons!

What exactly do you do to create an awareness about the nuclear issue?

In addition to interviews like yours I have spoken at teacher conferences, school librarian conferences throughout the United States. In addition to that TLCB has been on many school lists so I have had opportunity to speak with students, future voters all over the world! For example, I have had the joy to speak with students in Hiroshima who have chosen TLCB to be their 6th grade read for 4 years in a row. The students also made my first book trailer. The latest group of students I had the joy to speak with were in India!

I feel that the more I can discuss my mother’s experience so that students can relate and connect to the devastation, horror, and loss my mother and her family endured — they leave that classroom as future voters knowing that nuclear weapons should never be used again.

Do you think after the holocaust another nuclear war is likely? How do you see the role of your book propounding peace?

People have asked me 75 years later — why should these stories still be told? Well time passes, and technology changes but the need for human connection through emotions is timeless. So, I feel that while statistics and treaties are very important — if we can’t get people to understand/relate to the humanity under those now famous mushroom clouds, then none of the numbers or science is going to matter. And if it doesn’t matter because there is no connection, then yes, we are at risk of repeating the same deadly mistakes again.

I hope that TLCB relays the message and an emotional impact that two paragraphs in a textbook could never do. I want readers to understand that NO family should ever have to endure the hellish, horrific deadly destruction that MY family has.

I lived with the scars of the atomic bombing during my childhood watching/reacting to the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) effects on my Mom and I still live with it each day with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (chronic, progressive neuro pain disease that affects the sympathetic nervous system). Doctors have said that the damage to my immune system from the radiation my mom was exposed to from the atomic bomb, attributed to this.

This was an online interview conducted by Mitali Chakravarty

25 August 2020

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Palestinians are not going anywhere. This is the gist of seven decades of Palestinian struggle against Zionist colonialism. The proof? The story of Ahmed Amarneh.

Amarneh, a 30-year-old civil engineer from the northern West Bank village of Farasin, lives with his family in a cave. For many years, the Amarneh family has attempted to build a proper home, but their request has been denied by the Israeli military every time.

In many ways, the struggle of the Amarnehs is a microcosm of the collective struggle of Farasin; in fact, of most Palestinians.

Those who are unfortunate enough to be living in areas of the West Bank, designated by the Oslo II Accord of 1995 as Area C, were left in a perpetual limbo.

Area C constitutes nearly 60% of the overall size of the West Bank. It is rich with resources – mostly arable land, water and ample minerals – yet, relatively sparsely populated. It should not be surprising why right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, wants to annex this region. More land, with fewer Palestinians, has been the guiding principle for Zionist colonialism from the outset.

True, Netanyahu’s annexation plan, at least the de jure element of it, has been postponed. In practice, however, de facto annexation has been taking place for many years, and, lately, it has accelerated. Last June, for example, Israel demolished 30 Palestinian homes in the West Bank, mostly in Area C, rendering over 100 Palestinians homeless.

Additionally, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israeli army bulldozers destroyed 33 non-residential structures as well. This is “the same number (of homes) demolished throughout the entire first five months of 2020,” OCHA reported.

Unfortunately, Farasin, like numerous other Palestinian villages and communities across Area C, has been singled out for complete destruction. A small population of approximately 200 people has been subjected to Israeli army harassment for years. While Israel is keen on implanting Jewish communities in the heart of the occupied West Bank, it is equally keen on disrupting the natural growth of Palestinian communities, the indigenous people of the land, in Area C.

On July 29, Israeli forces invaded Farasin, terrorizing the residents, and handed over 36 demolition orders, according to the head of the Farasin village council. Namely, this is the onset of ethnic cleansing of the entire population of the village by Israel.

Ahmed Amarneh and his family also received a demolition order, although they do not live in a concrete house, but, rather, in a mountain cave. “I didn’t make the cave. It has existed since antiquity,” he told reporters. “I don’t understand how they can prevent me from living in a cave. Animals live in caves and are not thrown out. So let them treat me like an animal and let me live in the cave.”

Amarneh’s emotional outburst is not misleading. In a recent report, the Israeli rights group B’tselem, has listed some of Israel’s deceptive methods used to forcefully remove Palestinians from their homes in Area C or to block any development whatsoever within these Palestinian communities.

“Israel has blocked Palestinian development by designating large swathes of land as state land, survey land, firing zones, nature reserves and national parks,” according to B’tselem. Judging by the systematic destruction of the Palestinian environment in the West Bank, Israel is hardly interested in the preservation of animals, either. The ultimate goal is the allocation of “land to settlements and their regional councils,” B’tselem argues.

Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that, for example, as of November 2017, only 16 of the 180 Palestinian communities in Area C have been approved for development. The rest are strictly prohibited.

Between 2016 and 2018, of the 1,485 Palestinian applications for construction and development in these areas, only 21 permits have been approved.

These unrealistic and draconian measures leave Palestinian families with no option but to build without a permit, eventually making them targets for Israeli military bulldozers.

Hundreds of families, like that of Ahmed Amarneh, have opted for alternative solutions. Failing to obtain a permit and wary of the imminent demolition if they build without one, they simply move to mountain caves.

This phenomenon is particularly manifest in the Hebron and Nablus regions.

In the mountainous wasteland located on the outskirts of Nablus, the wreckage of abandoned homes – some demolished, some unfinished – is a testimony of an ongoing war between the Israeli military, on the one hand, and the Palestinian people, on the other. Once they lose the battle and are left with no other option, many Palestinian families take their belongings and head to the caves in search of a home.

Quite often, the fight does not end there, as Palestinian communities, especially in the Hebron hills region, find themselves target to more eviction orders. The war for Palestinian survival rages on.

The case of Ahmed Amarneh, however, is particularly unique, for rarely, if ever, Israel issues a military order to demolish a cave. When the cave is demolished, where else can the Amarneh family go?

This dilemma, symptomatic of the larger Palestinian quandary, reminds one of Mahmoud Darwish’s seminal poem, “The Earth is Closing on Us”:

“Where should we go after the last frontiers?

Where should the birds fly after the last sky?

Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air?”

However depressing the reality may be, the metaphor is undeniably powerful, that of savage colonialism that knows no bounds and Palestinian steadfastness (sumoud) that is perennial.

Often buried within the technical details of oppression – Area C, home demolition, ethnic cleansing and so on – is the tenacity of the human spirit, that of the Amarneh family and hundreds of other Palestinian families, who have turned caves into loving homes. It is this unmatched perseverance that makes the quest for justice in Palestine, despite the innumerable odds, possible.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

24 August 2020

Source: countercurrents.org