Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "netanyahu"
A lesson in (mad) Mideast politics
On Global Post, I report on the fairly crazy mess (even by Middle East standards) in which both Israeli and Palestinian politics find themselves just now.
Measuring Up: Inside Netanyahu's Head
Here's my post this week on Global Post:
JERUSALEM — In Hebrew the word for “to visit” – levaker – is the same as the word for “to criticize.” He visited me; he criticized me. Exactly the same.
So why would you invite 30 of the most critical people in the country to visit you every Sunday, to sit around your table and run their mouths?
You wouldn’t. Unless you wanted trouble.
That’s exactly what the new Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has done. Each Sunday, an enormous cabinet – more than half the parliamentarians in the governing coalition are ministers and deputy ministers – will troop up the stairs to his office, preening for the cameras before they settle into their caramel leather chairs and let rip at the boss.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Last time he was Prime Minister – from 1996 to 1999 – Netanyahu held together a shaky coalition of rightists and hawkish centrists as long as he could. The religious-nationalists in the cabinet brought him down in the end.
Bruised he went into exile as a “consultant” for companies doing business in the U.S. He returned rich, bought a villa in the exclusive Mediterranean town of Caesarea, and gradually eased back into the politics of the Likud Party. His message, delivered in private in those days, was that he had learned his lesson. He was a different man. For a time he even tried to get people to stop calling him by his childhood nickname, “Bibi.”
One of the reasons the far right abandoned him in 1999 was, according to legislators, that he would always promise whatever you wanted, trying to make you happy, to make you like him. Then he’d contradict himself by pledging to do whatever the next person to enter his office wanted. When he returned to politics, Netanyahu said, he would no more be manipulated into giving tiny parties just what they demanded.
Take a look at this new government and you have to wonder if that’s true.
Netanyahu handed the rightist Yisrael Beitenu control of the Police Ministry, though the party’s leader is under police investigation for money laundering and fraud.
The ultra-Orthodox Shas party is practiced at squeezing prime ministers and received four ministerial seats in return for the support of its mere 11 legislators.
Ha-Beit Ha-Yehudi is an ultra-right backer of West Bank settlement and is sure to make problems for Netanyahu next time U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton comes calling.
The least of his troubles ought to be Labor, traditionally powerful and center-left, because it stands for little except keeping its leader, Ehud Barak, in the Defense Ministry. Still some of the Labor legislators say they’ll rebel against Barak and won’t support the government.
Even within Netanyahu’s own Likud Party, some leaders are grumbling that they failed to secure top cabinet jobs.
The government has 69 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. Politically, socially, ethnically, it’s all over the map. Technically three of Netanyahu’s four partners could block his majority in parliament.
The new prime minister seems to be repeating his self-defeating pattern.
Where does this tendency come from? From the Netanyahu family.
Global Post editor-in-chief C.M. Sennott last week examined the way Bibi’s relationship with his father drives him (http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/is...). I’d expand upon that: Bibi’s family relationships determine his performance as Prime Minister — and may have set him up for another failure as Prime Minister.
As a young man, Bibi lived in the shadow of the dominant father detailed by Sennott. He was also most definitely in second place behind his elder brother Yoni. In the nationalist-Zionist set of the day, Yoni was seen as a future chief of the army, even a prime minister. He died in the 1976 rescue of hostages at Entebbe, Uganda, leading the commando force that stormed a hijacked Air France jetliner.
That death — both heroic and tragic — preserved Yoni as he had been, a perfect example which any human — certainly one who followed such a compromising path as politics – could never quite live up to.
When Bibi became Prime Minister, he might have overcome this. But he didn’t. His performance back then showed that he had to leave room for Yoni to continue to be superior to him. It was as though surpassing Yoni would’ve been an act of defiance against the father who idolized his departed son. So Bibi sabotaged himself.
When I met him shortly before his ouster he was a shadow of the confident orator who narrowly won an election three years before. He toyed with a cigar stub and stared at his crystal ashtray, barely attempting eye contact. He was generally acknowledged to have been a poor prime minister.
I put this family theory to Netanyahu as delicately as I could when I rode in the armored car he called his Batmobile on election day in January 2003.
“I used to be in a hurry,” he said. “Now I’m not anxious. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I only have to prove things to myself. I’ve climbed the greasy pole. Now I’m perched on a branch.”
Uh-huh… I pushed him on the role his departed brother played psychologically in his first term as Prime Minister.
“In public life you shouldn’t press Rewind,” he said. “Or Fast Forward. You can press Eject, or you can press Play.”
Analyze that. Well, without Rewind, you can’t analyze anything. It’s the definition of repression.
We drove to the Har Hamenuchot cemetery on a stark Jerusalem hillside. It was the third jahrzeit — the anniversary — of the death of Tsila, Netanyahu’s mother. His father, Ben-Zion, stood stern and jowly, like John Gielgud cast as a headmaster. He wore a flat cap and a blue raincoat and was still, staring ahead as though unaware of the crowd of several hundred. Bibi read kaddish with his brother Ido, though his usually powerful baritone was a barely audible whisper.
The inscription on Tsila’s grave was in particularly complex language. I asked Bibi to clarify it for me. “It’s a very high Hebrew. My father wrote it,” he said. “It’s hard to translate.”
Perched on a branch back then, Netanyahu has crawled out all the way along the limb with his new coalition. If he can’t master his own psychological demons as Prime Minister this time, he won’t be the only one to take a fall.
JERUSALEM — In Hebrew the word for “to visit” – levaker – is the same as the word for “to criticize.” He visited me; he criticized me. Exactly the same.
So why would you invite 30 of the most critical people in the country to visit you every Sunday, to sit around your table and run their mouths?
You wouldn’t. Unless you wanted trouble.
That’s exactly what the new Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has done. Each Sunday, an enormous cabinet – more than half the parliamentarians in the governing coalition are ministers and deputy ministers – will troop up the stairs to his office, preening for the cameras before they settle into their caramel leather chairs and let rip at the boss.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Last time he was Prime Minister – from 1996 to 1999 – Netanyahu held together a shaky coalition of rightists and hawkish centrists as long as he could. The religious-nationalists in the cabinet brought him down in the end.
Bruised he went into exile as a “consultant” for companies doing business in the U.S. He returned rich, bought a villa in the exclusive Mediterranean town of Caesarea, and gradually eased back into the politics of the Likud Party. His message, delivered in private in those days, was that he had learned his lesson. He was a different man. For a time he even tried to get people to stop calling him by his childhood nickname, “Bibi.”
One of the reasons the far right abandoned him in 1999 was, according to legislators, that he would always promise whatever you wanted, trying to make you happy, to make you like him. Then he’d contradict himself by pledging to do whatever the next person to enter his office wanted. When he returned to politics, Netanyahu said, he would no more be manipulated into giving tiny parties just what they demanded.
Take a look at this new government and you have to wonder if that’s true.
Netanyahu handed the rightist Yisrael Beitenu control of the Police Ministry, though the party’s leader is under police investigation for money laundering and fraud.
The ultra-Orthodox Shas party is practiced at squeezing prime ministers and received four ministerial seats in return for the support of its mere 11 legislators.
Ha-Beit Ha-Yehudi is an ultra-right backer of West Bank settlement and is sure to make problems for Netanyahu next time U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton comes calling.
The least of his troubles ought to be Labor, traditionally powerful and center-left, because it stands for little except keeping its leader, Ehud Barak, in the Defense Ministry. Still some of the Labor legislators say they’ll rebel against Barak and won’t support the government.
Even within Netanyahu’s own Likud Party, some leaders are grumbling that they failed to secure top cabinet jobs.
The government has 69 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. Politically, socially, ethnically, it’s all over the map. Technically three of Netanyahu’s four partners could block his majority in parliament.
The new prime minister seems to be repeating his self-defeating pattern.
Where does this tendency come from? From the Netanyahu family.
Global Post editor-in-chief C.M. Sennott last week examined the way Bibi’s relationship with his father drives him (http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/is...). I’d expand upon that: Bibi’s family relationships determine his performance as Prime Minister — and may have set him up for another failure as Prime Minister.
As a young man, Bibi lived in the shadow of the dominant father detailed by Sennott. He was also most definitely in second place behind his elder brother Yoni. In the nationalist-Zionist set of the day, Yoni was seen as a future chief of the army, even a prime minister. He died in the 1976 rescue of hostages at Entebbe, Uganda, leading the commando force that stormed a hijacked Air France jetliner.
That death — both heroic and tragic — preserved Yoni as he had been, a perfect example which any human — certainly one who followed such a compromising path as politics – could never quite live up to.
When Bibi became Prime Minister, he might have overcome this. But he didn’t. His performance back then showed that he had to leave room for Yoni to continue to be superior to him. It was as though surpassing Yoni would’ve been an act of defiance against the father who idolized his departed son. So Bibi sabotaged himself.
When I met him shortly before his ouster he was a shadow of the confident orator who narrowly won an election three years before. He toyed with a cigar stub and stared at his crystal ashtray, barely attempting eye contact. He was generally acknowledged to have been a poor prime minister.
I put this family theory to Netanyahu as delicately as I could when I rode in the armored car he called his Batmobile on election day in January 2003.
“I used to be in a hurry,” he said. “Now I’m not anxious. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I only have to prove things to myself. I’ve climbed the greasy pole. Now I’m perched on a branch.”
Uh-huh… I pushed him on the role his departed brother played psychologically in his first term as Prime Minister.
“In public life you shouldn’t press Rewind,” he said. “Or Fast Forward. You can press Eject, or you can press Play.”
Analyze that. Well, without Rewind, you can’t analyze anything. It’s the definition of repression.
We drove to the Har Hamenuchot cemetery on a stark Jerusalem hillside. It was the third jahrzeit — the anniversary — of the death of Tsila, Netanyahu’s mother. His father, Ben-Zion, stood stern and jowly, like John Gielgud cast as a headmaster. He wore a flat cap and a blue raincoat and was still, staring ahead as though unaware of the crowd of several hundred. Bibi read kaddish with his brother Ido, though his usually powerful baritone was a barely audible whisper.
The inscription on Tsila’s grave was in particularly complex language. I asked Bibi to clarify it for me. “It’s a very high Hebrew. My father wrote it,” he said. “It’s hard to translate.”
Perched on a branch back then, Netanyahu has crawled out all the way along the limb with his new coalition. If he can’t master his own psychological demons as Prime Minister this time, he won’t be the only one to take a fall.
Beastly Me: What Israel learned from Arafat
Tomorrow's Netanyahu-Obama summit has Iran, Gaza, and settlements on the agenda, but the Israeli leader will bring a new tactic learned from an old nemesis. On The Daily Beast today, my take on how Bibi will "pull an Arafat."
Global Post: Bibi in a corner
Obama presses Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop building in West Bank settlements. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost May 26, 2009
JERUSALEM — One morning late last week, Israeli Border Police showed up at Maoz Esther, an outpost of Israeli settlers in the West Bank near Ramallah. They waited for a Bible study class to finish, tore down the settlers’ five little shacks and ran the residents off.
A few hours later, the settlers returned, nailing together the battered pieces of drywall shunted aside by the government. Maoz Esther rose again.
This kind of half-hearted approach to clearing out illegal outposts is the way Israel has always handled the settlers. Read more...
JERUSALEM — One morning late last week, Israeli Border Police showed up at Maoz Esther, an outpost of Israeli settlers in the West Bank near Ramallah. They waited for a Bible study class to finish, tore down the settlers’ five little shacks and ran the residents off.
A few hours later, the settlers returned, nailing together the battered pieces of drywall shunted aside by the government. Maoz Esther rose again.
This kind of half-hearted approach to clearing out illegal outposts is the way Israel has always handled the settlers. Read more...
Obama's speech: the view from Jerusalem
President Barack Obama spelled out what he expects of the Israeli government in his Cairo speech, issuing a challenge that most commentators here believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no way of meeting [I wrote on Global Post today:].
Obama’s speech, carried live on all three main Israeli television stations, made clear his firm opposition to any sort of building in Israel’s West Bank settlements. “This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace,” Obama said. “It is time for these settlements to stop.”
The realization that Obama is serious about halting settlements has been growing in Israel since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited in early March. At first Israeli politicians and diplomats thought it could be dealt with by the same sleight of hand that stymied previous administrations — Israel would agree to a freeze on settlement construction, except for “natural growth” to accommodate the children of existing settlers. In reality that meant as much building as Israel wanted.
Since Netanyahu’s visit to Washington two weeks ago, aggrieved Israeli government officials (who weren’t immediately available to comment on Obama's speech) have complained that there were unwritten agreements with the Bush White House allowing Israel to build in the settlements, provided they pulled out of “illegal outposts” — mainly composed of a few young settlers living in shipping containers on hillsides across the valley from existing settlements.
Obama’s speech made it clear that such unwritten promises are not part of the debate. Read more....
Obama’s speech, carried live on all three main Israeli television stations, made clear his firm opposition to any sort of building in Israel’s West Bank settlements. “This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace,” Obama said. “It is time for these settlements to stop.”
The realization that Obama is serious about halting settlements has been growing in Israel since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited in early March. At first Israeli politicians and diplomats thought it could be dealt with by the same sleight of hand that stymied previous administrations — Israel would agree to a freeze on settlement construction, except for “natural growth” to accommodate the children of existing settlers. In reality that meant as much building as Israel wanted.
Since Netanyahu’s visit to Washington two weeks ago, aggrieved Israeli government officials (who weren’t immediately available to comment on Obama's speech) have complained that there were unwritten agreements with the Bush White House allowing Israel to build in the settlements, provided they pulled out of “illegal outposts” — mainly composed of a few young settlers living in shipping containers on hillsides across the valley from existing settlements.
Obama’s speech made it clear that such unwritten promises are not part of the debate. Read more....
Netanyahu holds his line
Israeli Prime Minister ignores Obama and reiterates same policies
by Matt Beynon Rees on Global Post
JERUSALEM — It’s as if Obama never happened.
Less than two weeks ago President Barack Obama laid out his plans for the Middle East in a speech in Cairo. He called for a freeze on Israeli settlement construction, among other things.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately announced that he’d make a key policy address in Tel Aviv. Commentators wracked their brains figuring out how Bibi, the nickname by which the Likud leader is known, would walk the tightrope between his nationalist coalition — which is very supportive of the West Bank settlements and disdains the idea of a Palestinian state — and Obama, who had made it clear that he sees the settlements as Israel’s main contribution to the failure of peace efforts.
But Netanyahu outsmarted them all. No smokescreen, no artful diplospeak, no talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Nothing but old-school Bibi.
The big policy speech turned out to be filled with typical nationalist rhetoric about the settlements. The olive branch held out to the Palestinians was loaded with the kind of conditions Netanyahu surely knows are unacceptable in Ramallah — let alone Gaza.
“We would be prepared to reach agreement as to a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state,” Netanyahu told his audience at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv.
He said “Palestinian state,” but he added an adjective that grates rather hard on the Palestinian ear: “demilitarized.” For Netanyahu that’s important because a militarized Palestinian state would, as he sees it, be much as Gaza is today, with the capacity to rain missiles on Tel Aviv and the country’s international airport. It could make a military alliance with Iran, like Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border and Hamas in Gaza. We’ve all seen how that turned out for Israel.
To Palestinians, a demilitarized state sounds like no state at all. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Netanyahu would “wait a thousand years to meet a Palestinian who’d accept his conditions.”
As for Obama’s gripe about settlements, Netanyahu seemed at first to be edging toward a compromise, something so cunning in its apparent straightforwardness that no one would notice he’d refused to comply with the American demands. “We have no intention of founding new settlements,” he said.
Well, that’s not the heart of Obama’s argument. He doesn’t want to be deflected by Israel pulling out of a few remote hilltop outposts. The U.S. wants even existing settlements to stay as they are — not growing by so much as a single brick — until the future of the land on which they stand is decided.
But Netanyahu trotted out the same formula Israel has always used for evading a settlement freeze: so-called natural growth. “We must give mothers and fathers the chance of bringing up their children as is the case anywhere in the world,” he said.
In other words, if children grow up in a settlement, Israel is bound to build a home for them there when they want to have their own place, so they don’t have to move elsewhere to find accommodation.
As if their parents didn’t move to the settlements from somewhere else.
As if Barack Obama didn’t insist there be no “natural growth” in the settlements.
No one expects Netanyahu to go head to head with Obama. The speech wasn’t intended as a gauntlet in the face of the U.S. But the Israeli prime minister is sailing pretty close to the White House wind.
It all played well with Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party. “It was a Zionist speech from his faith and heart,” said Limor Livnat, a leading Likud hawk. “I’d have preferred he hadn’t said ‘Palestinian state,’ but it was a good speech.”
The country’s rather lackluster opposition recognized that Netanyahu hadn’t given ground to Obama. “The speech was typical Netanyahu,” said Ofer Pines, a legislator from the Labor Party (Labor is part of the coalition, but some of its lawmakers including Pines refused to join the government.) “He said a very small ‘Yes,’ and a very big ‘No.’ He’s really only talking to himself.”
Except he’s not the only one listening. There must surely have been bemusement in Washington, as officials watched the speech, waiting for Netanyahu to adjust his previous positions.
Wait on. The Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state, he said. Jerusalem, too, “would be the united capital of Israel.” He didn’t even offer to open the checkpoints into Gaza to let in construction material to rebuild the city ruined in the war between Israel and Hamas at the turn of the year.
The most optimistic of assessments — at least among those who oppose Netanyahu — was that the speech was just words. “It’s not what he says, it’s what he does after this that interests me,” said Haim Ramon, a legislator from the opposition Kadima Party.
Obama will surely second that.
by Matt Beynon Rees on Global Post
JERUSALEM — It’s as if Obama never happened.
Less than two weeks ago President Barack Obama laid out his plans for the Middle East in a speech in Cairo. He called for a freeze on Israeli settlement construction, among other things.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately announced that he’d make a key policy address in Tel Aviv. Commentators wracked their brains figuring out how Bibi, the nickname by which the Likud leader is known, would walk the tightrope between his nationalist coalition — which is very supportive of the West Bank settlements and disdains the idea of a Palestinian state — and Obama, who had made it clear that he sees the settlements as Israel’s main contribution to the failure of peace efforts.
But Netanyahu outsmarted them all. No smokescreen, no artful diplospeak, no talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Nothing but old-school Bibi.
The big policy speech turned out to be filled with typical nationalist rhetoric about the settlements. The olive branch held out to the Palestinians was loaded with the kind of conditions Netanyahu surely knows are unacceptable in Ramallah — let alone Gaza.
“We would be prepared to reach agreement as to a demilitarized Palestinian state side by side with the Jewish state,” Netanyahu told his audience at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv.
He said “Palestinian state,” but he added an adjective that grates rather hard on the Palestinian ear: “demilitarized.” For Netanyahu that’s important because a militarized Palestinian state would, as he sees it, be much as Gaza is today, with the capacity to rain missiles on Tel Aviv and the country’s international airport. It could make a military alliance with Iran, like Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border and Hamas in Gaza. We’ve all seen how that turned out for Israel.
To Palestinians, a demilitarized state sounds like no state at all. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Netanyahu would “wait a thousand years to meet a Palestinian who’d accept his conditions.”
As for Obama’s gripe about settlements, Netanyahu seemed at first to be edging toward a compromise, something so cunning in its apparent straightforwardness that no one would notice he’d refused to comply with the American demands. “We have no intention of founding new settlements,” he said.
Well, that’s not the heart of Obama’s argument. He doesn’t want to be deflected by Israel pulling out of a few remote hilltop outposts. The U.S. wants even existing settlements to stay as they are — not growing by so much as a single brick — until the future of the land on which they stand is decided.
But Netanyahu trotted out the same formula Israel has always used for evading a settlement freeze: so-called natural growth. “We must give mothers and fathers the chance of bringing up their children as is the case anywhere in the world,” he said.
In other words, if children grow up in a settlement, Israel is bound to build a home for them there when they want to have their own place, so they don’t have to move elsewhere to find accommodation.
As if their parents didn’t move to the settlements from somewhere else.
As if Barack Obama didn’t insist there be no “natural growth” in the settlements.
No one expects Netanyahu to go head to head with Obama. The speech wasn’t intended as a gauntlet in the face of the U.S. But the Israeli prime minister is sailing pretty close to the White House wind.
It all played well with Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party. “It was a Zionist speech from his faith and heart,” said Limor Livnat, a leading Likud hawk. “I’d have preferred he hadn’t said ‘Palestinian state,’ but it was a good speech.”
The country’s rather lackluster opposition recognized that Netanyahu hadn’t given ground to Obama. “The speech was typical Netanyahu,” said Ofer Pines, a legislator from the Labor Party (Labor is part of the coalition, but some of its lawmakers including Pines refused to join the government.) “He said a very small ‘Yes,’ and a very big ‘No.’ He’s really only talking to himself.”
Except he’s not the only one listening. There must surely have been bemusement in Washington, as officials watched the speech, waiting for Netanyahu to adjust his previous positions.
Wait on. The Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state, he said. Jerusalem, too, “would be the united capital of Israel.” He didn’t even offer to open the checkpoints into Gaza to let in construction material to rebuild the city ruined in the war between Israel and Hamas at the turn of the year.
The most optimistic of assessments — at least among those who oppose Netanyahu — was that the speech was just words. “It’s not what he says, it’s what he does after this that interests me,” said Haim Ramon, a legislator from the opposition Kadima Party.
Obama will surely second that.
Israel: Less corrupt than Somalia!
Seems even those holding the keys to the Holy Land need reminding that thou shall not steal. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — In its international survey of corruption, Transparency International (TI) ranks Israel a respectable number 33 out of 180 countries.
Pity the poor people of Somalia (rank: 180), because the graft stinks bad enough here, 147 places higher on the list.
Israel occupies its position on the TI scale between those other paragons of good government, Dominica and the United Arab Emirates, despite having its last prime minister under investigation for several corruption offenses, its former finance minister on his way to jail for dipping into union funds and its current foreign minister fighting an investigation into his business dealings.
The root of the corruption is cronyism in the political system. This week, the attorney general dropped an investigation of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who had allegedly made 260 political appointments against civil service rules. That was seen as a lifeline for one of his former ministers, Tzahi Hanegbi, who’s on trial for a mere 80 shady appointments.
But corruption isn't the biggest problem for Israel (which is why 33rd place in the TI survey is deceptively high). Rather it’s the refusal of Israeli politicians to acknowledge their wrongdoing that sets a tone for the entire society. Thanks to the men in its Knesset, Israelis are a nation of blame throwers.
Take former Health Minister Shlomo Benizri, who’ll be jailed for four years for bribe-taking, fraud, breach of trust and conspiracy as soon as the Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur holidays are over. (He plans to be with his family for those.) Benizri is a powerful force in the Shas Party, which represents religious Jews with origins in Arab countries who’re known as Sephardi. Last week he denounced his sentence as racist.
His party chief Eli Yishai, who is also interior minister, this week called for his pal to be pardoned by President Shimon Peres, before he even begins his sentence. Yishai went on a national radio talkshow to say that “there’s no one who doesn’t tell me on the street that [Benizri’s conviction:] is because he’s Sephardi and religious.”
Shas has long played the ethnic card. Yishai is facing an imminent challenge to his leadership from Aryeh Deri, a former minister who was jailed for bribe-taking in 1999. Deri will shortly have completed the cooling-off period for politicians convicted of crimes “of moral turpitude,” after which they may once again run for positions of power.
Back then Shas ran an entire election campaign based around the slogan “He’s innocent,” with angelic photos of Deri and accusations that the Israeli establishment set out to crush a bright kid from the Moroccan immigrant underclass. Just lately Deri has been quoted as telling people close to him: “When I look in the mirror, I don’t see shame. I see an innocent man.”
Being a part of the establishment doesn’t necessarily cover a politician in anti-corruption Teflon. Ask Ehud Olmert, who left office as prime minister in March. It’d be an understatement to say that Olmert quit under a cloud. It was more of a storm of investigations.
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz told Olmert’s lawyers this week that he’d soon decide whether to charge the former prime minister in three corruption cases. Olmert’s accused of taking envelopes stuffed with cash from an American businessman. He’s also suspected of double-billing charities and the government for the same flights, using falsified receipts for travel expenses. Then there’s another case in which it’s alleged Olmert granted favors to his old law partner, saving one of his clients $11 million in taxes.
That’s only the short-list. The attorney general this week closed a bribery case against Olmert for lack of evidence. He’d previously dropped another case in which Olmert was suspected of helping an Australian friend buy a big Israeli bank, and another corruption investigation involving Olmert’s discounted purchase of a home on one of Jerusalem’s most exclusive streets.
So Olmert might get off scot free. Unlike his finance minister, Avraham Hirshson, who was sentenced in June to five years and five months in prison for embezzling $1 million from a trade union.
Olmert’s fighting all these charges. He, too, sees an innocent man in the mirror.
Across the Israeli wall in Bethlehem, there was what looked like better news last week. Corrupt old hacks from the Fatah Party were swept away in the first Fatah congress for 20 years. Young activists — mainly middle-aged, actually, though the previous chiefs were truly decrepit —replaced all but four of the 18-person Central Committee, disposing of a number of aged cronies of Yasser Arafat.
They replaced them with …. relatively youthful cronies of Yasser Arafat. The new faces include Jibril Rajoub, 56-year-old former head of Arafat’s West Bank secret police. During his tenure at the helm of Preventive Security, I tracked a scam Rajoub’s men were running in which wealthy businessmen would be arrested and big ransoms extorted from their family. He also had an official monopoly on the import of gasoline to the West Bank.
Fatah also elected Marwan Barghouti to the Central Committee. He’s serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail for his part in the killing of four Israelis and a foreigner during the intifada.
And just like all those corrupt Israeli pols, Barghouti’s not saying sorry either.
JERUSALEM — In its international survey of corruption, Transparency International (TI) ranks Israel a respectable number 33 out of 180 countries.
Pity the poor people of Somalia (rank: 180), because the graft stinks bad enough here, 147 places higher on the list.
Israel occupies its position on the TI scale between those other paragons of good government, Dominica and the United Arab Emirates, despite having its last prime minister under investigation for several corruption offenses, its former finance minister on his way to jail for dipping into union funds and its current foreign minister fighting an investigation into his business dealings.
The root of the corruption is cronyism in the political system. This week, the attorney general dropped an investigation of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who had allegedly made 260 political appointments against civil service rules. That was seen as a lifeline for one of his former ministers, Tzahi Hanegbi, who’s on trial for a mere 80 shady appointments.
But corruption isn't the biggest problem for Israel (which is why 33rd place in the TI survey is deceptively high). Rather it’s the refusal of Israeli politicians to acknowledge their wrongdoing that sets a tone for the entire society. Thanks to the men in its Knesset, Israelis are a nation of blame throwers.
Take former Health Minister Shlomo Benizri, who’ll be jailed for four years for bribe-taking, fraud, breach of trust and conspiracy as soon as the Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur holidays are over. (He plans to be with his family for those.) Benizri is a powerful force in the Shas Party, which represents religious Jews with origins in Arab countries who’re known as Sephardi. Last week he denounced his sentence as racist.
His party chief Eli Yishai, who is also interior minister, this week called for his pal to be pardoned by President Shimon Peres, before he even begins his sentence. Yishai went on a national radio talkshow to say that “there’s no one who doesn’t tell me on the street that [Benizri’s conviction:] is because he’s Sephardi and religious.”
Shas has long played the ethnic card. Yishai is facing an imminent challenge to his leadership from Aryeh Deri, a former minister who was jailed for bribe-taking in 1999. Deri will shortly have completed the cooling-off period for politicians convicted of crimes “of moral turpitude,” after which they may once again run for positions of power.
Back then Shas ran an entire election campaign based around the slogan “He’s innocent,” with angelic photos of Deri and accusations that the Israeli establishment set out to crush a bright kid from the Moroccan immigrant underclass. Just lately Deri has been quoted as telling people close to him: “When I look in the mirror, I don’t see shame. I see an innocent man.”
Being a part of the establishment doesn’t necessarily cover a politician in anti-corruption Teflon. Ask Ehud Olmert, who left office as prime minister in March. It’d be an understatement to say that Olmert quit under a cloud. It was more of a storm of investigations.
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz told Olmert’s lawyers this week that he’d soon decide whether to charge the former prime minister in three corruption cases. Olmert’s accused of taking envelopes stuffed with cash from an American businessman. He’s also suspected of double-billing charities and the government for the same flights, using falsified receipts for travel expenses. Then there’s another case in which it’s alleged Olmert granted favors to his old law partner, saving one of his clients $11 million in taxes.
That’s only the short-list. The attorney general this week closed a bribery case against Olmert for lack of evidence. He’d previously dropped another case in which Olmert was suspected of helping an Australian friend buy a big Israeli bank, and another corruption investigation involving Olmert’s discounted purchase of a home on one of Jerusalem’s most exclusive streets.
So Olmert might get off scot free. Unlike his finance minister, Avraham Hirshson, who was sentenced in June to five years and five months in prison for embezzling $1 million from a trade union.
Olmert’s fighting all these charges. He, too, sees an innocent man in the mirror.
Across the Israeli wall in Bethlehem, there was what looked like better news last week. Corrupt old hacks from the Fatah Party were swept away in the first Fatah congress for 20 years. Young activists — mainly middle-aged, actually, though the previous chiefs were truly decrepit —replaced all but four of the 18-person Central Committee, disposing of a number of aged cronies of Yasser Arafat.
They replaced them with …. relatively youthful cronies of Yasser Arafat. The new faces include Jibril Rajoub, 56-year-old former head of Arafat’s West Bank secret police. During his tenure at the helm of Preventive Security, I tracked a scam Rajoub’s men were running in which wealthy businessmen would be arrested and big ransoms extorted from their family. He also had an official monopoly on the import of gasoline to the West Bank.
Fatah also elected Marwan Barghouti to the Central Committee. He’s serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail for his part in the killing of four Israelis and a foreigner during the intifada.
And just like all those corrupt Israeli pols, Barghouti’s not saying sorry either.
Can Palestinians step up to self-government?
Tax breaks, smaller government, a rationalized legal system? No, this is a long way from New Jersey. By Matt Beynon Rees, Global Post
RAMALLAH — More than two decades after declaring an independent state, the Palestinians now say they may be able to run one.
Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat declared an independent Palestinian state at a conference in Algiers in 1988. But in 2000, when presented with the basis for a state, he failed to agree to a final deal in negotiations with Israel. Current Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad unveiled a plan this week that would set up an independent state in the Palestinian areas in two years — whether Israel likes it or not.
“We must confront the whole world with the reality that Palestinians are united and steadfast in their determination to remain on their homeland, end the occupation and achieve their freedom and independence," Fayyad said at a press conference in Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority has its seat of government. "We will be the initiators and set up a de facto Palestinian state."
Fayyad, as U.S.-educated economist, has been urging other Palestinian politicians to end the civil strife between the Fatah Party, which effectively governs the West Bank, and the Islamists of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Privately he has said for some time that the Palestinians need to be seen to be governing themselves, rather than stumbling along at Israel’s whim.
That feeble appearance had been particularly strong since peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel broke down during the war in Gaza at the turn of the year. Since then, the Palestinians have refused to negotiate until Israel halts all building in its West Bank settlements.
At first the U.S. seemed to support that position and the Palestinians settled back to watch Israel’s new right-wing government sweat. But the Israelis have brazened it out, so that international politicians now appear to accept the idea that Israel can continue to build in its settlements provided that it doesn’t expand their boundaries.
After a meeting in London on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown accepted what Israelis call “natural growth” in the settlements. “They need kindergartens and houses for their families,” Brown said. “This doesn’t mean it’ll take up more West Bank territory.”
Perhaps Brown thinks the Israelis are planning to build new floors on top of existing homes in the West Bank. Anyone who’s watched the settlements expand knows that more West Bank territory is precisely what’ll be swallowed up as long as Israel doesn’t promise an absolute freeze. But Brown’s declaration demonstrates the formula international leaders are using to back down from their earlier pressure on Israel.
It’s clear to Fayyad and the more realistic Palestinian politicians that they’ve lost the initiative that seemed to be with them in June when President Barack Obama called for a settlement freeze. His 65-page plan is an attempt to regain that lost impetus.
Fayyad’s statehood plan includes an international airport, a sea cargo terminal, and an oil refinery.
If that state sounds more like New Jersey than Palestine, then wait until you hear the Americanized ideology behind it.
Fayyad says he wants to cut Palestine’s dependence on foreign aid by giving tax breaks to encourage foreign investment. He wants smaller government and a rationalized legal system.
Without Fayyad’s imprimatur, you’d have to say the plan was total bunk. After all, these are the same Palestinians who wasted most of the $4 billion in foreign aid they received during the decade after signing the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, siphoning much of it off into corrupt projects and secret bank accounts.
I take that back. They aren’t the same Palestinians. They’re much worse off.
These days the putative Palestinian state is divided. Fayyad can only claim control over the West Bank. Hamas has Gaza, and they aren’t buying into his plan.
Sami Abu Zohari, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said Wednesday that Fayyad’s regime was “illegal” and the plan needs to be approved by the Palestinian parliament, which Hamas controls. Other Hamas officials in Gaza said that independence could only be achieved by “resistance” to Israel.
Such fiery declarations often go down well with Palestinians angered by Israel’s continued occupation. But Fayyad has made a success of small, boring measures, and Palestinians have come to appreciate that, too.
A former World Bank and International Monetary Fund official, he replaced the Hamas prime minister in June 2007, when the Islamists ran Fatah out of Gaza. Which is why Hamas thinks his position is illegal.
Since then, Fayyad has instituted economic reforms aimed at reducing corruption and waste. He has pushed security reforms, with the help of a U.S. adviser, so successfully that Israeli military chiefs cut 41 checkpoints in the West Bank recently, allowing much easier movement for ordinary Palestinians.
So does Fayyad have a chance?
First, if he hadn’t done this, then it was becoming clear the Palestinians might have waited a long time for any change of heart from the Israeli government. At this week’s Israeli cabinet meeting, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liebermann noted that it was 16 years since the Oslo Accords were signed.
“It will be impossible in the next 16 years to bridge the gaps on Jerusalem, on the refugees, or on Israel as a Jewish state,” he added.
Second, Fayyad’s plan is a way for those Palestinians who reject violence to chart a path that will give ordinary West Bankers a political alternative to the corrupt power of the militias. If it’s a success, it might also force Hamas to come out of its isolation, making peace with Fatah to get a piece of the action.
A true Palestinian state in two years may seem about as easy to achieve as universal health care for U.S. citizens. But aspects of Fayyad’s plan may be in place by 2011 to improve the lives of Palestinians, whether their state is a reality or not. After all, at his press conference Fayyad pledged to provide state housing and education for all Palestinians.
He also promised free health care. [image error]
RAMALLAH — More than two decades after declaring an independent state, the Palestinians now say they may be able to run one.
Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat declared an independent Palestinian state at a conference in Algiers in 1988. But in 2000, when presented with the basis for a state, he failed to agree to a final deal in negotiations with Israel. Current Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad unveiled a plan this week that would set up an independent state in the Palestinian areas in two years — whether Israel likes it or not.
“We must confront the whole world with the reality that Palestinians are united and steadfast in their determination to remain on their homeland, end the occupation and achieve their freedom and independence," Fayyad said at a press conference in Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority has its seat of government. "We will be the initiators and set up a de facto Palestinian state."
Fayyad, as U.S.-educated economist, has been urging other Palestinian politicians to end the civil strife between the Fatah Party, which effectively governs the West Bank, and the Islamists of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Privately he has said for some time that the Palestinians need to be seen to be governing themselves, rather than stumbling along at Israel’s whim.
That feeble appearance had been particularly strong since peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel broke down during the war in Gaza at the turn of the year. Since then, the Palestinians have refused to negotiate until Israel halts all building in its West Bank settlements.
At first the U.S. seemed to support that position and the Palestinians settled back to watch Israel’s new right-wing government sweat. But the Israelis have brazened it out, so that international politicians now appear to accept the idea that Israel can continue to build in its settlements provided that it doesn’t expand their boundaries.
After a meeting in London on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown accepted what Israelis call “natural growth” in the settlements. “They need kindergartens and houses for their families,” Brown said. “This doesn’t mean it’ll take up more West Bank territory.”
Perhaps Brown thinks the Israelis are planning to build new floors on top of existing homes in the West Bank. Anyone who’s watched the settlements expand knows that more West Bank territory is precisely what’ll be swallowed up as long as Israel doesn’t promise an absolute freeze. But Brown’s declaration demonstrates the formula international leaders are using to back down from their earlier pressure on Israel.
It’s clear to Fayyad and the more realistic Palestinian politicians that they’ve lost the initiative that seemed to be with them in June when President Barack Obama called for a settlement freeze. His 65-page plan is an attempt to regain that lost impetus.
Fayyad’s statehood plan includes an international airport, a sea cargo terminal, and an oil refinery.
If that state sounds more like New Jersey than Palestine, then wait until you hear the Americanized ideology behind it.
Fayyad says he wants to cut Palestine’s dependence on foreign aid by giving tax breaks to encourage foreign investment. He wants smaller government and a rationalized legal system.
Without Fayyad’s imprimatur, you’d have to say the plan was total bunk. After all, these are the same Palestinians who wasted most of the $4 billion in foreign aid they received during the decade after signing the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, siphoning much of it off into corrupt projects and secret bank accounts.
I take that back. They aren’t the same Palestinians. They’re much worse off.
These days the putative Palestinian state is divided. Fayyad can only claim control over the West Bank. Hamas has Gaza, and they aren’t buying into his plan.
Sami Abu Zohari, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said Wednesday that Fayyad’s regime was “illegal” and the plan needs to be approved by the Palestinian parliament, which Hamas controls. Other Hamas officials in Gaza said that independence could only be achieved by “resistance” to Israel.
Such fiery declarations often go down well with Palestinians angered by Israel’s continued occupation. But Fayyad has made a success of small, boring measures, and Palestinians have come to appreciate that, too.
A former World Bank and International Monetary Fund official, he replaced the Hamas prime minister in June 2007, when the Islamists ran Fatah out of Gaza. Which is why Hamas thinks his position is illegal.
Since then, Fayyad has instituted economic reforms aimed at reducing corruption and waste. He has pushed security reforms, with the help of a U.S. adviser, so successfully that Israeli military chiefs cut 41 checkpoints in the West Bank recently, allowing much easier movement for ordinary Palestinians.
So does Fayyad have a chance?
First, if he hadn’t done this, then it was becoming clear the Palestinians might have waited a long time for any change of heart from the Israeli government. At this week’s Israeli cabinet meeting, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liebermann noted that it was 16 years since the Oslo Accords were signed.
“It will be impossible in the next 16 years to bridge the gaps on Jerusalem, on the refugees, or on Israel as a Jewish state,” he added.
Second, Fayyad’s plan is a way for those Palestinians who reject violence to chart a path that will give ordinary West Bankers a political alternative to the corrupt power of the militias. If it’s a success, it might also force Hamas to come out of its isolation, making peace with Fatah to get a piece of the action.
A true Palestinian state in two years may seem about as easy to achieve as universal health care for U.S. citizens. But aspects of Fayyad’s plan may be in place by 2011 to improve the lives of Palestinians, whether their state is a reality or not. After all, at his press conference Fayyad pledged to provide state housing and education for all Palestinians.
He also promised free health care. [image error]
Let's do the time warp again
A brouhaha over who can pray at the Temple Mount recalls a similar disagreement ... that became known as the second intifada. by Matt Beynon Rees on GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — I just returned to Jerusalem after a month away. Or at least I thought I did.
I suspect I entered a cosmic wormhole that popped me out in the right place — the Israeli capital — only nine years earlier.
Muslim leaders claim radical Jews plan to pray at the mosques on the Temple Mount. Protect the Mount, goes the cry. Rioters throw rocks at tourists and at Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall. Both sides scream that they’re being provoked.
That’s the news this week. But it was also the news in the week that started the second intifada in October 2000. So you’ll have to forgive me for wondering whether I passed through a fold in the space-time continuum on the flight back from Zurich, where I was vacationing on Lake Geneva after finishing up a book tour.
In October 2000, Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Northern Islamic Movement inside Israel, called on Muslims to defend the Haram ash-Sharif (the “Noble Sanctuary,” which is also known as the Temple Mount because it was the site of the ancient Jewish temple).
To defend it against a visit by Israel’s then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon, and against Jews who supposedly wanted to pray there, and against archaeological excavations undermining the mount (the supposed digging was aimed at proving what Salah and his followers argue is a Zionist lie that the Jewish temple ever stood there). His call was in essence to defend the mount against any perceived affront to Muslim “sovereignty” over it by Israel.
The result: the second intifada, more than 1,000 dead Israelis and Palestinians, and another 7,000 injured. Secondary results: deep-freeze for a peace process that’s still frosty on the outside and ice-cold within, Palestinian civil war and a big boost for right-wing Israeli politicians who said the peace process was a mistake in the first place.
Despite such dreadful consequences, if Salah could go back in time, he’d do it over just the same.
In fact, that’s what he’s doing. He spent the last week in Jerusalem pushing for a violent response to the plans of a Jewish group to pray on the Mount. The Israeli police barred the group, which hopes their temple will be rebuilt on the site and the Jewish Messiah will come, from entering the holy precinct. That wasn’t enough for the sheikh.
Nor for the Palestinian Authority, which has used the crisis and the violence surrounding it to deflect attention from its own confused response to the U.N.’s investigative report on the war in Gaza at the turn of the year. The Palestinian government in Ramallah initially wanted to turn the screw on Israel and to have the report form the basis of hearings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Israel headed that off with threats of economic sanctions.
Many Palestinians were unhappy with the decision to ease off on the war crimes angle. Thus, the Palestinian leadership got on board with Salah. One of the leading Jerusalem members of Fatah, the faction that rules the West Bank, threatened a “third intifada” over the Temple Mount. The chief Palestinian peace negotiator blamed Israel for the tension at the holy site.
That plays well with a Palestinian public that is angry at Israel’s right-wing government, but it won’t outweigh the disgust of Gazans that there’ll be no push to put Israel on trial at The Hague.
In Gaza this week, Hamas displayed large posters of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with the caption “Traitor.” Gazans were invited to throw shoes at the picture. In the Middle East, showing the dirty sole of your shoe to someone is an insult. To throw it at them is much worse.
Israel’s leadership has responded to the Temple Mount shenanigans so far with bewilderment. The police have arrested 75 Palestinians, including 24 minors. A Jerusalem judge freed Salah after he was arrested Tuesday, but he banned the sheikh from Jerusalem for 30 days. Given the nasty atmosphere in Jerusalem, that seemed to me like Salah was being rewarded for what the judge called his “incitement.” But then I spent the previous week in Montreux where the most inciteful thing is a lakefront statue of Freddie Mercury in tight pants.
It seems unlikely that the sheikh’s Islamic Movement will be banned, though Israeli politicians have raised the idea.
The focus on the Temple Mount conspiracy theories of Sheikh Salah would be laughable if it wasn’t for the fact that it raises the prospect of violence potentially as damaging as that which followed the onset of the second intifada nine years ago.
It also deflects attention from the very real issues Palestinians have to face with Israeli policy in general and with Jerusalem in particular. Efforts by the Obama administration to force a freeze on building in Israel’s West Bank settlements were essentially evaded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government — Israel agreed to a freeze, but before it takes effect permits will be granted for a lot of new building.
Meanwhile in the Jabal Mukhaber neighborhood of Jerusalem, just over the Green Line into East Jerusalem, a right-wing politician and the former chief rabbi laid the cornerstone Wednesday for a new Israeli residential complex called Nof Zion. The 105 housing units planned for the site could be a source of tension to add to the more ideological Israeli settlements deeper in East Jerusalem, close to the Temple Mount.
The view which gives the complex its name (Nof Zion means “View of Zion” in Hebrew) is the forked valley known as the “holy basin,” with the golden Dome of the Rock at its center. The residents of Nof Zion might soon have a front-row seat for some unholy fireworks.
JERUSALEM — I just returned to Jerusalem after a month away. Or at least I thought I did.
I suspect I entered a cosmic wormhole that popped me out in the right place — the Israeli capital — only nine years earlier.
Muslim leaders claim radical Jews plan to pray at the mosques on the Temple Mount. Protect the Mount, goes the cry. Rioters throw rocks at tourists and at Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall. Both sides scream that they’re being provoked.
That’s the news this week. But it was also the news in the week that started the second intifada in October 2000. So you’ll have to forgive me for wondering whether I passed through a fold in the space-time continuum on the flight back from Zurich, where I was vacationing on Lake Geneva after finishing up a book tour.
In October 2000, Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Northern Islamic Movement inside Israel, called on Muslims to defend the Haram ash-Sharif (the “Noble Sanctuary,” which is also known as the Temple Mount because it was the site of the ancient Jewish temple).
To defend it against a visit by Israel’s then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon, and against Jews who supposedly wanted to pray there, and against archaeological excavations undermining the mount (the supposed digging was aimed at proving what Salah and his followers argue is a Zionist lie that the Jewish temple ever stood there). His call was in essence to defend the mount against any perceived affront to Muslim “sovereignty” over it by Israel.
The result: the second intifada, more than 1,000 dead Israelis and Palestinians, and another 7,000 injured. Secondary results: deep-freeze for a peace process that’s still frosty on the outside and ice-cold within, Palestinian civil war and a big boost for right-wing Israeli politicians who said the peace process was a mistake in the first place.
Despite such dreadful consequences, if Salah could go back in time, he’d do it over just the same.
In fact, that’s what he’s doing. He spent the last week in Jerusalem pushing for a violent response to the plans of a Jewish group to pray on the Mount. The Israeli police barred the group, which hopes their temple will be rebuilt on the site and the Jewish Messiah will come, from entering the holy precinct. That wasn’t enough for the sheikh.
Nor for the Palestinian Authority, which has used the crisis and the violence surrounding it to deflect attention from its own confused response to the U.N.’s investigative report on the war in Gaza at the turn of the year. The Palestinian government in Ramallah initially wanted to turn the screw on Israel and to have the report form the basis of hearings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Israel headed that off with threats of economic sanctions.
Many Palestinians were unhappy with the decision to ease off on the war crimes angle. Thus, the Palestinian leadership got on board with Salah. One of the leading Jerusalem members of Fatah, the faction that rules the West Bank, threatened a “third intifada” over the Temple Mount. The chief Palestinian peace negotiator blamed Israel for the tension at the holy site.
That plays well with a Palestinian public that is angry at Israel’s right-wing government, but it won’t outweigh the disgust of Gazans that there’ll be no push to put Israel on trial at The Hague.
In Gaza this week, Hamas displayed large posters of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with the caption “Traitor.” Gazans were invited to throw shoes at the picture. In the Middle East, showing the dirty sole of your shoe to someone is an insult. To throw it at them is much worse.
Israel’s leadership has responded to the Temple Mount shenanigans so far with bewilderment. The police have arrested 75 Palestinians, including 24 minors. A Jerusalem judge freed Salah after he was arrested Tuesday, but he banned the sheikh from Jerusalem for 30 days. Given the nasty atmosphere in Jerusalem, that seemed to me like Salah was being rewarded for what the judge called his “incitement.” But then I spent the previous week in Montreux where the most inciteful thing is a lakefront statue of Freddie Mercury in tight pants.
It seems unlikely that the sheikh’s Islamic Movement will be banned, though Israeli politicians have raised the idea.
The focus on the Temple Mount conspiracy theories of Sheikh Salah would be laughable if it wasn’t for the fact that it raises the prospect of violence potentially as damaging as that which followed the onset of the second intifada nine years ago.
It also deflects attention from the very real issues Palestinians have to face with Israeli policy in general and with Jerusalem in particular. Efforts by the Obama administration to force a freeze on building in Israel’s West Bank settlements were essentially evaded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government — Israel agreed to a freeze, but before it takes effect permits will be granted for a lot of new building.
Meanwhile in the Jabal Mukhaber neighborhood of Jerusalem, just over the Green Line into East Jerusalem, a right-wing politician and the former chief rabbi laid the cornerstone Wednesday for a new Israeli residential complex called Nof Zion. The 105 housing units planned for the site could be a source of tension to add to the more ideological Israeli settlements deeper in East Jerusalem, close to the Temple Mount.
The view which gives the complex its name (Nof Zion means “View of Zion” in Hebrew) is the forked valley known as the “holy basin,” with the golden Dome of the Rock at its center. The residents of Nof Zion might soon have a front-row seat for some unholy fireworks.
Is Abbas really ready to quit this time?
Worn out has-been or drama queen? Interpretations of the Palestinian president's threat to quit vary greatly. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost
JERUSALEM — Sometimes a quitter really does quit for good.
The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, announced last week that he wouldn’t run for re-election in the proposed January elections. Back when he was Yasser Arafat’s deputy in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Abbas sulked off to his home in the Persian Gulf several times. As Arafat’s prime minister, he quit in the middle of the intifada, accusing the Palestinian leader of undermining him and slamming the U.S. for failing to back him fully.
Each time, he slipped back from exile, until he took over from Arafat on his death and was elected to office, in January 2005. But the 74-year-old now says that he’s exhausted by the political events of this past year, particularly the failure of the Obama administration to pressure Israel on continued settlement-building in the West Bank.
At first, Abbas’s announcement was interpreted as a ploy to press Washington and the Israelis. Israeli, European and Arab leaders called Abbas to beg him to stay on. The West has long banked on Abbas, one of the formulators of the Oslo Peace Accords, as the best hope for a deal with Israel. If he were to go, things might look bleak for peace. (Not that they don’t look bleak right now.)
Despite the phone calls to Ramallah, most leaders assessed Abbas’s move as a tactic rather than a genuine expression of finality — like an actress pouting in her trailer until the director strokes her ego. After all, Abbas said only that he wouldn’t run in the January elections. It’s far from certain that those elections will be held, because Hamas won’t allow a poll in the Gaza Strip, which it controls. That would leave Abbas in office, in spite of his announcement.
Then Palestinian officials started talking to local and international media about what they claimed were Abbas’ true feelings. To sum up: He’s really had it with the Israeli government’s intransigence, and the way the U.S. backed down over settlements was the last straw.
Abbas’ supporters added that if he were to quit, the entire Palestinian Authority might collapse. It is, after all, fairly unloved among Palestinians. The only politician to have told his aides he would run to replace Abbas, Marwan Barghouti, is serving a series of life sentences in an Israeli prison. There are also plenty of Palestinian leaders who hanker for the old days of backroom political deals and lucrative private trade monopolies, which were nixed by Abbas and his Prime Minister, Salaam Fayyad, a U.S.-trained economist.
Still an institution that receives more than $1 billion in international aid each year is unlikely to just go away. For that kind of money, someone will be found to keep it rolling. The threat of collapse seems like an attempt by Abbas’ friends to demonstrate how peeved he is.
So why is Abbas out of patience?
Early in the year, the new U.S. administration pushed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a true freeze on building in Israel’s West Bank settlements. Washington insisted the freeze include so-called “natural growth,” which Israel uses to expand its building in the West Bank under the guise of new housing for existing residents.
But Netanyahu didn’t cave. During an Oct. 31 visit to Jerusalem, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Netanyahu for showing “restraint” on settlement building. Restraint, Arab leaders pointed out, is not quite a freeze.
U.S. diplomats seemed to have been slipping toward this climb down for some weeks. Abbas already called Obama late last month to complain about it. That was when he first broached the idea of quitting.
Abbas had, after all, conditioned the resumption of peace talks on a total Israeli settlement freeze. He edged out onto that high diplomatic branch because he thought the U.S. was behind him. Gradually he saw that he was going to be left on that limb.
Backing down on the settlements isn’t an option for Abbas. He’s already seen as weak and vacillating by ordinary Palestinians. Over the summer, he backed off when the U.S. pressed him not to insist on an International Court of Justice trial for Israel, after the release of a U.N. report into the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza at the turn of the year.
Palestinian public outcry forced him to shift his position. But it was too late. He appeared to have confirmed long-standing suspicions that he lacked strength. Perhaps really quitting is the only thing that will show he can make a plan and stick to it.
JERUSALEM — Sometimes a quitter really does quit for good.
The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, announced last week that he wouldn’t run for re-election in the proposed January elections. Back when he was Yasser Arafat’s deputy in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Abbas sulked off to his home in the Persian Gulf several times. As Arafat’s prime minister, he quit in the middle of the intifada, accusing the Palestinian leader of undermining him and slamming the U.S. for failing to back him fully.
Each time, he slipped back from exile, until he took over from Arafat on his death and was elected to office, in January 2005. But the 74-year-old now says that he’s exhausted by the political events of this past year, particularly the failure of the Obama administration to pressure Israel on continued settlement-building in the West Bank.
At first, Abbas’s announcement was interpreted as a ploy to press Washington and the Israelis. Israeli, European and Arab leaders called Abbas to beg him to stay on. The West has long banked on Abbas, one of the formulators of the Oslo Peace Accords, as the best hope for a deal with Israel. If he were to go, things might look bleak for peace. (Not that they don’t look bleak right now.)
Despite the phone calls to Ramallah, most leaders assessed Abbas’s move as a tactic rather than a genuine expression of finality — like an actress pouting in her trailer until the director strokes her ego. After all, Abbas said only that he wouldn’t run in the January elections. It’s far from certain that those elections will be held, because Hamas won’t allow a poll in the Gaza Strip, which it controls. That would leave Abbas in office, in spite of his announcement.
Then Palestinian officials started talking to local and international media about what they claimed were Abbas’ true feelings. To sum up: He’s really had it with the Israeli government’s intransigence, and the way the U.S. backed down over settlements was the last straw.
Abbas’ supporters added that if he were to quit, the entire Palestinian Authority might collapse. It is, after all, fairly unloved among Palestinians. The only politician to have told his aides he would run to replace Abbas, Marwan Barghouti, is serving a series of life sentences in an Israeli prison. There are also plenty of Palestinian leaders who hanker for the old days of backroom political deals and lucrative private trade monopolies, which were nixed by Abbas and his Prime Minister, Salaam Fayyad, a U.S.-trained economist.
Still an institution that receives more than $1 billion in international aid each year is unlikely to just go away. For that kind of money, someone will be found to keep it rolling. The threat of collapse seems like an attempt by Abbas’ friends to demonstrate how peeved he is.
So why is Abbas out of patience?
Early in the year, the new U.S. administration pushed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a true freeze on building in Israel’s West Bank settlements. Washington insisted the freeze include so-called “natural growth,” which Israel uses to expand its building in the West Bank under the guise of new housing for existing residents.
But Netanyahu didn’t cave. During an Oct. 31 visit to Jerusalem, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Netanyahu for showing “restraint” on settlement building. Restraint, Arab leaders pointed out, is not quite a freeze.
U.S. diplomats seemed to have been slipping toward this climb down for some weeks. Abbas already called Obama late last month to complain about it. That was when he first broached the idea of quitting.
Abbas had, after all, conditioned the resumption of peace talks on a total Israeli settlement freeze. He edged out onto that high diplomatic branch because he thought the U.S. was behind him. Gradually he saw that he was going to be left on that limb.
Backing down on the settlements isn’t an option for Abbas. He’s already seen as weak and vacillating by ordinary Palestinians. Over the summer, he backed off when the U.S. pressed him not to insist on an International Court of Justice trial for Israel, after the release of a U.N. report into the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza at the turn of the year.
Palestinian public outcry forced him to shift his position. But it was too late. He appeared to have confirmed long-standing suspicions that he lacked strength. Perhaps really quitting is the only thing that will show he can make a plan and stick to it.
