International [Arab-Israeli Conflict, v4] Israel Sets Goal of Doubling the Jewish Population on the Golan Heights

[ferrisjso]

Honestly, no because the British weren't indifferent to the creation of Israel. They were against it. The White Paper of 1939 makes this clear. It rejected the creation of a separate Jewish state but called for an independent Palestine run jointly by Jews and Arabs. This was Britain's government policy until the pullout.

"His Majesty's Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State."


Basically, the Brits decided by 1939 that there were enough Jews in Palestine that they had fulfilled the Balfour Declaration promise of creating a national home for the Jews. So the White Paper restricted immigration from Europe (in the face of the Nazis) and restricted land purchases by Jews from Arabs.

These aren't the actions of a nation that is indifferent or neutral.

Britain's abstention in the U.N. Assembly vote was simply calculated politics. Following the Holocaust and then Britain's decision to send death camp survivors trying to get out of Europe and into Palestine to refugee camps in Cyprus, the British couldn't possibly vote no...the shame was simply to great. On the other hand, Britain didn't want to piss off its allies - Egypt, Syria, and Iraq.



The League of Nations called for (like the Balfour Declaration) a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. As shown above, the British definition was very different from the Israel we know today. The Israel that was established in May 1948 was very different from what the British wanted.

Just for the record (not really for you, but anybody else reading this), Israel wasn't created by the Brits, the League of Nations or the U.N. It was created by David Ben Gurion on May 14, 1948. Had it been created under the U.N. (which inherited the League of Nations mandate), our initial recognition of Israel would have been de jure rather than de facto.



You only have James VII to blame

Now we're getting deep into semantics. That area was known as Palestine and it had Jews and Arabs living in it in fairly even numbers. Now you could argue putting them together was a terrible idea but that was standard practice in the Middle East. Put groups with nothing in common except living in the same region ruled by the same empires into the same country. This is how we got Iraq and Syria. The conversation was different back then, the area was Palestine and there was a Jewish and Islam population, a separate Jewish state was just a biblical reference.

Also Palestine is referring the whole area and of course the UK and even today most people don't want the Israeli's to rule the entirety of that land. Calling Israel a Jewish state means there is no place for the other people and that is the foundation of the whole Israeli-Palestinean crisis and the insistence Israel be a Jewish state rather than a mulicultural one(you know in the US tradition) is the reasont the two solutions to the conflict have been a two state solution, or Israeli apartheid because living side by side the way the British proposed and the way they had in the Ottoman era wasn't an option.

One thing about Nazi's is people fail to understand they don't need to support genocide to be Nazi's, just think the imaginary problems that the Nazi's used genocide to solve(lack of a nation state) exist. In 1939 the UK was not aware the consequences of that action because the Nazi's didn't make it clear they were going to do the Holocaust. That policy was made with the governance and eventual partition of Palestine in mind. But we were discussing post WWII immigration when there was far less reason for Jews to immigrate to Israel. That's when Israel was created. Stopping the flow of immigrants was seen as a neutral decision because allowing the flow to continue would have seen the Jewish population vastly outgrow the Muslims and made a solution less workable. The land restriction again was because they were trying to make a two state solution or a unified state where the represenation of both groups would be key(the failure to do this in Iraq and Syria is responsible for basically everything that's happening there right now). This is the main issue with Jewish settlements today, Israeli's taking land that would constitute a Palestinian state(this time by force not voluntary exchange)is still a relevant issue even today.

Well I guess voting no would have been a PR stain. I'm saying they would have abstained regardless. Syria and Iraq weren't UK "allies" they were Israel's mandate peers. Syria ran by the French and Iraq ran by the British. The management of all three mandates were bungled and that mismanagement's consequences are a great deal of 2019's current events.

Again we are getting deeply into semantics with what is and isn't Israel or what is and isn't a Jewish state. Just saying you were making it sound like the UK was simply anti semitic when the truth was Israel-Palestine politics was a separate thing well before WWII and Jews had been mass immigrating to the region for decades interfering with the UK's goal of leaving the region to be self governed by two different groups. Whether creating a two state solution or a Jewish/Muslim Palestine, it was in the UK's interest to ease tensions and keep land holdings stable so they could fulfill their mission. Now perhaps the UK drove Muslims and Jews to be divided in the first place in the name of governance in the 1920s they'd done that elsewhere wouldn't surprise me one bit to see them screw that up but the Jews coming to Israel in the early days whose descendants constitute the lionshare of Jewish Israel(I'd imagine if I'm wrong correct me) were not refugees fleeing the Nazi's, they were Zionists who were trying to fulfill a religious agenda that said they were the rightful claimants of said territory.

 

[Arkain2K]

Palestinians Are Getting Fed Up With Hamas for Wretched Conditions in Gaza
By Amy Teibel | March 27, 2019

It was a rare sight in Gaza: a woman daring to publicly denounce Hamas — not Israel — for the wretched conditions in the isolated Palestinian enclave.

“Our sons and daughters have lost 12 years of their lives, and for what?” Mervat al-Buheisi, 52, railed during a protest on March 15, referring to the time that’s elapsed since the militant group took over the coastal territory. “Each son of a Hamas official owns an apartment, a car, a jeep, a building” while “our sons have nothing,” she said in a widely shared video, earning the family a late night raid from Hamas forces who arrested her husband and son. “These officials don’t care about the needs of the poor.”

Mervat al-Buheisi in the video in Deir El Balah, Gaza ​

Gaza is seething after another flare-up between Hamas and Israel and as a fraught anniversary approaches.

Since 2007, an Israeli and Egyptian blockade has confined 2 million people to a patch of land that’s the third-most densely-populated polity in the world. Towns and cities are lacerated by neglect and damage from repeated wars pitting the Islamist militants against Israel’s overwhelming military might. Infrastructure is shattered, power is spotty and clean water a luxury. Almost 80 percent of the population depends on aid.

Conditions worsened two years ago when President Mahmoud Abbas’s West Bank-based Palestinian Authority set out to suffocate Hamas financially and force it to cede control of Gaza. Despair is bursting to the surface.

The anti-Hamas protests — held this month over several days under the slogan “We want to live” — were as brief as they were rare. Hamas crushed them, beating and arresting hundreds, including rights workers and journalists, according to Amnesty International. One of Buheisi’s four sons and husband were detained for nearly a week, beaten and tortured, she said by phone.

Hamas accuses Abbas’ Fatah movement of stirring the dissent to bring down the Islamist group, a charge its rival denies. “The needs of blockaded citizens are being exploited and those who’ve had their salaries stopped are being blackmailed,” Hamas said in a March 19 statement.

Now, it’s trying to redirect anger toward its traditional target Israel — but at its own peril.

A ball of fire above a building believed to house the offices of Hamas chief in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, during Israeli strikes on the Gaza City, on March 25​

A rocket fired on Israel’s heartland Monday has whipped up domestic criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reluctance, over the past year, to strike Hamas harder despite repeated missile volleys. With Netanyahu seeking re-election in a closely-fought poll next month, Gazans at the receiving end of Israeli airstrikes worry that, although the fighting has now subsided, the lull won’t last long.

The protests against Hamas were sparked by new taxes that raised prices on hundreds of items, including meat, vegetables and bread. While people aren’t going hungry, life is an ordeal. Their electricity system is hostage to strife with Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and blackouts plunge the territory into darkness for hours at a time.

More than half of Gazans don’t have access to running water, and even if they did, it’s polluted with salt and sewage, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Privately, some complain that Hamas is too preoccupied with fighting Israel to take care of local needs. Others are fed up with Palestinian divisions that prevent them from effectively lobbying for an independent state while U.S. President Donald Trump bolsters Israel’s claims to occupied land, including in Jerusalem.

The protests, promoted on social media, never involved more than several hundred people in Jabalia refugee camp, Deir El Balah and Gaza City. But although the dissent has been suppressed, the underlying despair won’t be contained, according to Mustafa al-Sawaf, a political analyst close to Hamas.

“The street protests are a serious sign that the situation in the Gaza Strip will explode at any time,” he said.

Israel is well aware of the risks but is focused on security and restricts the entry of civilian goods that can be put to military use like cement and steel construction rods. Israel can't be in a position to send in everything civilians need, only to see Hamas “taking the lion's share of what's going into Gaza to build its military capability,” said former National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror.

The unrest was quelled before Hamas celebrates on Saturday the first anniversary of the kind of protest it encourages: a weekly demonstration against Israel.

The Great March of Return aims to reclaim the lands Palestinians fled or were expelled from when Israel was created 70 years ago. But the more realistic objective is to refocus attention on the plight of stateless Palestinians.

More than 260 people, including militants, have been killed by Israeli snipers during the year of protests near Gaza's frontier with the Jewish state, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Thousands more have been wounded at the demonstrations that Israel says are a cover to attack it and breach its frontier. Two Israelis have also been killed and farmlands burned by blazing kites and balloons flown into Israel.

The failure of the rallies to achieve anything concrete has become another driver of anger against Hamas.

“Hamas managed to suppress our activity, but they won’t be able to stop it completely,” the organizers said on their Facebook page. “We are determined.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ls-hamas-tries-to-channel-anger-toward-israel

 

[Arkain2K]

Israeli-Hamas war is such BS. Hamas are a bunch of freedom fighters who have no real chance against the US backed IDF.

Whose freedom is Hamas fighting against in Gaza right now?

Hamas Crackdown on Gaza Protests Instills Fear
By Iyad Abuheweila and Isabel Kershner | March 24, 2019

Hamas security forces, seen last year at a police academy graduation ceremony, brutally crushed peaceful protests in Gaza this month.​

GAZA CITY — The young tea and coffee vendor from northern Gaza said he was not asking for much. He just wanted to get by.

So the vendor, Amir Abu Oun, 19, joined the peaceful protests in the Jabaliya refugee camp this month against the daily hardships in the impoverished Palestinian coastal enclave.

The first day, he said, security forces from Hamas, the militant Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip, beat and punched him. The second day, he was detained and held for five days, during which he said he was slapped, beaten and deprived of food.

“Injustice will not last,” he told the security officers.

According to Mr. Abu Oun, they replied, “We will show you how injustice will last.”

Hamas security forces moved quickly to quell the protests that brought hundreds of people into the streets in at least four camps and towns across Gaza this month to demand better living conditions.

The security forces beat demonstrators, raided homes and detained organizers, journalists and participants, about 1,000 people in all. Along with the uniformed officers, masked, plainclothes Hamas enforcers armed with pistols, batons and wooden rods attacked the protesters, according to witnesses, and prevented journalists and human rights workers from documenting the events.

Since then, many Gazans say they have been living under a pall of fear — not of Israel this time but of Hamas.

“As a young man, my hope of making a future has been killed,” said one of the organizers, Amin Abed, 30, from Jabaliya.

Hamas has since responded to the widespread criticism of its crackdown with statements blaming rival political forces for the unrest and apologizing for its heavy-handed response. In a statement last week, Hamas expressed “regret for any psychological or material harm inflicted on any Palestinian citizens” and called for its security forces to compensate victims.

The protest movement appears to have sprung out of frustration with new taxes imposed by Hamas on food and cigarettes, compounding the usual misery of electricity cuts, poverty and unemployment. Gaza’s economy was already crippled by more than a decade of tough restrictions on the movement of people and goods imposed by Israel, with Egypt’s help, citing security grounds.

Hamas’s rival, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, has also taken punitive measures against Gaza, including slashing the salaries of its employees there. As conditions in Gaza have become desperate for many, Hamas has been seemingly more focused on its military buildup and fight against Israel than on the bread-and-butter needs of its people.

Nobody goes hungry in Hamas, said Mr. Abu Oun’s father, an unemployed ambulance driver who asked not to be identified. He described Hamas officials driving jeeps, barbecuing chicken and sending their children to private schools while he could not even give his children pocket money or pay his son’s university fees.

The protests began on March 14 in Jabaliya and spread as far as Rafah in the south. Activists promoted the protests via Facebook under slogans like “The revolt of the hungry,” “Down with price hikes” and “We want to live.”

The Fatah spokesman Atef Abu Saif was hospitalized in Gaza City with a fractured skull and broken hands and legs.​

“We did not march to overthrow Hamas,” Mr. Abed, the organizer from Jabaliya, who is now on the run, said in a telephone interview, “but only demanded of those ruling us to ease the burdens of daily life.”

He had already been arrested and detained for five days in February for trying to organize earlier protests. During his detention this month he said he was handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten for three days and left with a broken tooth.

Hamas accused the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, led by Fatah, of orchestrating the protests in a “vicious scheme” to create chaos and insecurity to harm the armed struggle against Israel.

Gaza’s Health Ministry, which has assiduously reported on the nearly 200 Palestinians killed and thousands wounded by Israeli troops during often-violent protests along the fence dividing Gaza from Israel, has not reported the number injured by Hamas in quelling the protests. No deaths have been reported.

Journalists and photographers were barred from covering the Gaza protests and human rights workers were among those beaten and detained, though grainy cellphone video documented some of the violence.

The Hamas police raided the home of a journalist, Osama al-Kahlout, who had shot photographs of the protests. Two members of the Independent Commission for Human Rights, a Palestinian watchdog group, were in his house at the time, taking testimony. The pair were forced into the street, beaten with batons and punched by dozens of security officers, according to their organization. Mr. al-Kahlout was detained.

Taif al-Bhaisi, 20, a citizen-journalist for the Gaza-based Sharq news agency, began live-streaming the protests near her home in the Deir al-Balah refugee camp in central Gaza, then ran into her house after Hamas forces began attacking the protesters. There, she continued filming with her cellphone.

The next day Hamas forces raided her house, assaulted young and old and broke the arm of one woman, she said. About five masked Hamas officers tried to confiscate her phone and beat her with batons, breaking her arm, she said. Photos of her with her arm in a splint were widely circulated among Gaza residents, prompting outrage.

The novelist and Fatah spokesman Atef Abu Saif was transferred to a hospital in Ramallah in the West Bank, apparently having been severely beaten and suffering from a fractured skull and broken hands and legs.

The crackdown drew international condemnation from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations special envoy for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov.

“Hamas authorities routinely arrest and torture peaceful critics and opponents with impunity,” Human Rights Watch said. “They’re following the same script in the latest crackdown.”

Hamas issued apologetic messages in English and Arabic on its social media platforms, calling on human rights organizations to continue their good work and affirming the Palestinians’ “right to peaceful demonstration and to freedom of expression.”

Given the Palestinian security forces’ long record of abuse, many in Gaza were skeptical.

“The demonstrations broke the state of silence and inertia among Gazans and showed the reality of Hamas,” said Mr. Abed, the activist.

He said he had received a message from Hamas through a friend who had been detained. It was a warning that if Mr. Abed tried to escape when Hamas forces finally caught up with him, they would shoot him.

 

[3DayFunk]

Hamas getting upset their human shields are getting mouthy

 

[fishNjits]

Now we're getting deep into semantics. That area was known as Palestine and it had Jews and Arabs living in it in fairly even numbers. Now you could argue putting them together was a terrible idea but that was standard practice in the Middle East. Put groups with nothing in common except living in the same region ruled by the same empires into the same country. This is how we got Iraq and Syria. The conversation was different back then, the area was Palestine and there was a Jewish and Islam population, a separate Jewish state was just a biblical reference.

Also Palestine is referring the whole area and of course the UK and even today most people don't want the Israeli's to rule the entirety of that land. Calling Israel a Jewish state means there is no place for the other people and that is the foundation of the whole Israeli-Palestinean crisis and the insistence Israel be a Jewish state rather than a mulicultural one(you know in the US tradition) is the reasont the two solutions to the conflict have been a two state solution, or Israeli apartheid because living side by side the way the British proposed and the way they had in the Ottoman era wasn't an option.

One thing about Nazi's is people fail to understand they don't need to support genocide to be Nazi's, just think the imaginary problems that the Nazi's used genocide to solve(lack of a nation state) exist. In 1939 the UK was not aware the consequences of that action because the Nazi's didn't make it clear they were going to do the Holocaust. That policy was made with the governance and eventual partition of Palestine in mind. But we were discussing post WWII immigration when there was far less reason for Jews to immigrate to Israel. That's when Israel was created. Stopping the flow of immigrants was seen as a neutral decision because allowing the flow to continue would have seen the Jewish population vastly outgrow the Muslims and made a solution less workable. The land restriction again was because they were trying to make a two state solution or a unified state where the represenation of both groups would be key(the failure to do this in Iraq and Syria is responsible for basically everything that's happening there right now). This is the main issue with Jewish settlements today, Israeli's taking land that would constitute a Palestinian state(this time by force not voluntary exchange)is still a relevant issue even today.

Well I guess voting no would have been a PR stain. I'm saying they would have abstained regardless. Syria and Iraq weren't UK "allies" they were Israel's mandate peers. Syria ran by the French and Iraq ran by the British. The management of all three mandates were bungled and that mismanagement's consequences are a great deal of 2019's current events.

Again we are getting deeply into semantics with what is and isn't Israel or what is and isn't a Jewish state. Just saying you were making it sound like the UK was simply anti semitic when the truth was Israel-Palestine politics was a separate thing well before WWII and Jews had been mass immigrating to the region for decades interfering with the UK's goal of leaving the region to be self governed by two different groups. Whether creating a two state solution or a Jewish/Muslim Palestine, it was in the UK's interest to ease tensions and keep land holdings stable so they could fulfill their mission. Now perhaps the UK drove Muslims and Jews to be divided in the first place in the name of governance in the 1920s they'd done that elsewhere wouldn't surprise me one bit to see them screw that up but the Jews coming to Israel in the early days whose descendants constitute the lionshare of Jewish Israel(I'd imagine if I'm wrong correct me) were not refugees fleeing the Nazi's, they were Zionists who were trying to fulfill a religious agenda that said they were the rightful claimants of said territory.

This is way too long to answer point to point. I want to say from the start that I never said the Brits were anti-Semitic. They were pro-Arab.

If you want to argue that they really weren't but just trying to play fair, fine. But both Syria and Transjordan were independent by 1946. Iraq in 1932. Egypt in 1922. These were no longer mandate peers. Britain needed oil and access to the Suez Canal. Britain didn't need to keep the Jews happy.

My original point was that the Brits were forced out. You seem to keep on making my point. Yeah, the British were going to eventually leave. But they left before they accomplished their goals because the Jews made it too difficult to stick around.

 

[fishNjits]

So....do I have this right? Hamas is arresting, jailing and beating its own population for protesting peacefully.

Meanwhile the Palestinian Authority decided to make matters even worse for the Palestinians in Gaza by cutting aid two years ago in the hopes that Gazans would be incited to overthrow Hamas.

These are the good guys? I think Benjamin Netanyahu gives more of a shit about the average Palestinian than either Hamas or the PA. And I say this only slightly tongue-in-cheek.

 

[ferrisjso]

This is way too long to answer point to point. I want to say from the start that I never said the Brits were anti-Semitic. They were pro-Arab.

If you want to argue that they really weren't but just trying to play fair, fine. But both Syria and Transjordan were independent by 1946. Iraq in 1932. Egypt in 1922. These were no longer mandate peers. Britain needed oil and access to the Suez Canal. Britain didn't need to keep the Jews happy.

My original point was that the Brits were forced out. You seem to keep on making my point. Yeah, the British were going to eventually leave. But they left before they accomplished their goals because the Jews made it too difficult to stick around.

Yeah the UK needed access to Suez that was an issue with Egypt(which was not a mandate and had technically always been independent though controlled like a puppet). The point of a mandate though is to leave eventually. It's not like a colony where the long term intention is to keep it. The UK was not forced out, the UK left of their own free will, and that was policy in regards to mandates, colonies etc etc because at this point the UK public was just done with being an empire.

The French mandates were different cause of what happened in France.

 

[fishNjits]

Yeah the UK needed access to Suez that was an issue with Egypt(which was not a mandate and had technically always been independent though controlled like a puppet). The point of a mandate though is to leave eventually. It's not like a colony where the long term intention is to keep it. The UK was not forced out, the UK left of their own free will, and that was policy in regards to mandates, colonies etc etc because at this point the UK public was just done with being an empire.

The French mandates were different cause of what happened in France.

Really, you're just arguing semantics. Could Britain have defeated the Jews in a war? Yes, so they weren't "forced" out.

And therefore we weren't forced out of Vietnam, because we could have turned the place into glass.

 

[Arkain2K]

Israel approves new permanent US embassy site in West Jerusalem
December 10, 2019

Israel approved on Tuesday the construction of a permanent US embassy in West Jerusalem, Israeli media reported.

Moshe Leon, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, said that US officials had received a green light to construct their embassy in the Allenby Complex, near the Hebron Road in the neighbourhood of Talpiot.

The area falls within West Jerusalem and Israel's 1948 borders, and offers a magnificent panorama of the Old City and the surrounding hills.

Leon said in a statement that “within six months, we will start building the premises and God willing in few years we will be able to inaugurate the permanent building of United States embassy in the capital."

Though Israeli officials have been eager to see Washington's diplomatic presence in the city entrenched, US officials were angered last week over “elements in a transport master plan” that could compromise the embassy's security, Israeli news site Mako reported.

After meetings between US officials, the Jerusalem municipality and the Israeli ministry of transport, however, a decision was made to change the route of the city’s light rail and cut one of the planned rail stations that clashed with embassy’s security requirements.

The US embassy in Jerusalem is highly controversial.

Occupied by Israel in 1967 and later annexed in a move that remains unrecognised by the international community, Jerusalem's status has historically been left to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

However, in December 2017, US President Donald Trump unilaterally recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, subsequently moving the embassy from Tel Aviv in May 2018.

Palestinian leaders want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state, and view the US embassy move as evidence Washington supports Israel's de facto annexation of the city.

The current US embassy is in a building in the Arnona neighbourhood, used in the past as a visa consulate. The area lies on the border between East and West Jerusalem, and was largely off limits until Israel seized the entire city.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/...ng-permanent-us-embassy-headquarter-jerusalem

 

[Arkain2K]

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ends all agreements with Israel and U.S
20.05.2020

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has declared an end to all agreements and understandings with Israel and the United States, saying Israeli annexation plans would ruin chances for peace.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday declared an end to all agreements and understandings with Israel and the United States, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.

"The Palestine Liberation Organization and the State of Palestine are absolved, as of today, of all the agreements and understandings with the American and Israeli governments and of all the obligations based on these understandings and agreements, including security ones," Wafa cited Abbas as saying at an emergency meeting.

Speaking after a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, the 85-year-old leader said Israeli annexation of any parts of the occupied West Bank would ruin chances for a two-state solution.

Abbas has made multiple previous threats to end security cooperation with Israel without ultimately following through. He did not give any details about what his latest declaration would mean in practice.

Abbas added that Israel would now have to "shoulder all responsibilities and obligations in front of the international community as an occupying power over the territory of the occupied state of Palestine," according to Wada.

The United States, as a "primary partner with the Israeli occupation government," will be "fully responsible for the oppression of the Palestinian people," Abbas said.

Annexation plans

The Palestinian leader's statement came in response to Israel's plans to annex settlements and the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday swore in a new unity government with former rival Benny Gantz. Under the coalition agreement, the government can discuss annexing parts of the West Bank from July.

The annexation plans are in accordance with US President Donald Trump's Middle East plan, which was released in late January. But Trump's plan drew sharp criticism and Palestinians have rejected it out of fear it will recognize Israeli claims to parts of the West Bank that they want for a future state.

The Palestinian leadership has been boycotting the US government since President Donald Trump unilaterally recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in late 2017.

https://amp.dw.com/en/palestinian-leader-ends-all-agreements-with-israel-us/a-53503284

 

[French Canadian]

Nothing about Benjamin planning annexation of huge parts of Palestine ?

 

[Arkain2K]

Biden draws ire of progressive activists for shunning BDS efforts
The Biden campaign says it 'firmly rejects' the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in the US and elsewhere.
May 21, 2020​

​

Progressive activists in the United States roundly rejected assertions by the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden, that criticism of Israel and its policies in the occupied territories too often drifts towards anti-Semitism and must be condemned.

"Criticism of Israel's policy is not anti-Semitism," Biden said during a phone call with major donors earlier this week. "But too often that criticism from the left morphs into anti-Semitism."

The call was part of a virtual fundraiser hosted by Dan Shapiro, a former ambassador to Israel, and Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emory University. The Biden campaign said 550 people attended.

Biden was asked during the call how to respond to anti-Semitism among progressive Democratic activists in both the US and the United Kingdom. "We have to condemn it, and I've gotten in trouble for doing that," the former vice president replied. "Whatever the source, right, left or centre."s comments, leaders of the BDS movement - under the auspices of the Palestinian BDS National Committee - said Democratic voters should be endorsing the movement instead

Biden has struggled to unite a Democratic Party deeply divided between an older, more moderate wing personified by the presumptive candidate and younger progressives who gravitated towards his rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, during the primaries before Sanders withdrew from the election. The progressive wing has been outspoken in its opposition to Israel's policies towards Palestinians, particularly under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to a pool report regarding the call, Biden did not cite any specific examples of anti-Semitic comments on the left or specifically identify individuals or groups that he was concerned about. He did, however, say that he was disappointed in Netanyahu for moving "so, so far to the right" and called for Israel to "stop the threat of annexation" of occupied West Bank territories.

"It'll choke off any hope of peace," Mr. Biden said on the call.

Biden said his "commitment to Israel is absolutely unshakable" and promised to reverse several policies pursued by the administration of US President Donald Trump if elected in November, including restoring diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority and economic and humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/...sts-shunning-bds-efforts-200521154945064.html

 

[weed]

 

[swiftasthewind]

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ends all agreements with Israel and U.S
20.05.2020

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has declared an end to all agreements and understandings with Israel and the United States, saying Israeli annexation plans would ruin chances for peace.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday declared an end to all agreements and understandings with Israel and the United States, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa.

"The Palestine Liberation Organization and the State of Palestine are absolved, as of today, of all the agreements and understandings with the American and Israeli governments and of all the obligations based on these understandings and agreements, including security ones," Wafa cited Abbas as saying at an emergency meeting.

Speaking after a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, the 85-year-old leader said Israeli annexation of any parts of the occupied West Bank would ruin chances for a two-state solution.

Abbas has made multiple previous threats to end security cooperation with Israel without ultimately following through. He did not give any details about what his latest declaration would mean in practice.

Abbas added that Israel would now have to "shoulder all responsibilities and obligations in front of the international community as an occupying power over the territory of the occupied state of Palestine," according to Wada.

The United States, as a "primary partner with the Israeli occupation government," will be "fully responsible for the oppression of the Palestinian people," Abbas said.

Annexation plans

The Palestinian leader's statement came in response to Israel's plans to annex settlements and the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday swore in a new unity government with former rival Benny Gantz. Under the coalition agreement, the government can discuss annexing parts of the West Bank from July.

The annexation plans are in accordance with US President Donald Trump's Middle East plan, which was released in late January. But Trump's plan drew sharp criticism and Palestinians have rejected it out of fear it will recognize Israeli claims to parts of the West Bank that they want for a future state.

The Palestinian leadership has been boycotting the US government since President Donald Trump unilaterally recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in late 2017.

https://amp.dw.com/en/palestinian-leader-ends-all-agreements-with-israel-us/a-53503284

they only agreement that is "standing" is the oslo agreement which they brutaly disrespect it
2000 death in 10 years(mostly citizens), suicide bombers on weekly basis
the agreement simply gave them control on A areas
so they simply used it to transport bombs and weapons etc
so the agreement means nothing to them
the "israeli palastinian issue" is simply dying and almost non existent, simply because that now even their arab allies dont care about them
about the embassy, bibi was against it because he is very corrupt, trump pushed it successfully

what u seeing here is simply abas understands that the usa is a very close ally to israel so much that the usa cut all support to the palastinian (trump said himself that he will go ONLY with israel interest)
so he tries his last option, which is trying to get a world support

i really dont understand his threat, how can u throw away an agreement that u didnt respected in any way

before the agreems most of us were lefties and we all sang for a peace, the oslo agreements were supposed to go into later stages were they could now have their own state
but we learned the hard way that against islam there couldnt be possibly any "agreement"

we are winning the fight for the long run simply because of demographics
sweden, netherlands, france has no chance
india might survive the long run but it will be very painful, at least india has their own past to learn from it

 

[Arkain2K]

Palestinians slam 'traitor' UAE for normalising ties with Israel
Israel-UAE deal nullifies hope that only peace with Palestine can usher in ties between Israel and the Arab world.
by Ibrahim Husseini

Occupied East Jerusalem - The United Arab Emirates (UAE) decision to normalise ties with Israel did not surprise Saeed Ibrahim, an 83-year-old Palestinian living in East Jerusalem. For Ibrahim, it was just the latest betrayal of the Palestinian cause by Arab states.

"It all began with Anwar Sadat's visit to al-Quds. It is Egypt who opened the door," he said, referring to the former Egyptian president's visit to Israel in 1977.

"Before that, no one dared to say peace with Israel."

Sadat's visit, the first by an Arab leader to Israel, resulted in normalising of ties between Cairo and Israel. Jordan followed decades later, signing a peace treaty and establishing diplomatic relations in 1994.

The rest of the Arab states held out. That is, until now.

For years, Palestinians have known about the existence of relations, albeit discreet, between the UAE and Israel. Still, they did not see an announcement of formal ties between the two countries coming this soon.

The move is just the latest blow to the Palestinian cause by the United States since Donald Trump took office in 2016. It comes on the back of a US decision in 2017 to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the unveiling of this year's so-called "Middle East Peace Plan" that resulted in Israel declaring plans to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank.

That the UAE-Israel agreement temporarily holds Israel off from declaring sovereignty over its illegal settlements in the West Bank - from a Palestinian perspective - is little justification for the rapprochement.

The UAE decision "was coming" regardless of Israel's annexation plans, according to Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. This "decision is at the expense of the legitimate Palestinian national rights," he told the Palestinian news agency Wafa on Friday.

Meanwhile, Hamas, the group that controls the Gaza Strip, condemned the Emirati recognition of Israel as a "cowardly" and "desperate attempt to influence the struggle to defeat the occupation and the fulfilment of the national rights".

Following Friday's noon prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a group of Palestinians raised the Palestinian flag along with large photos of Mohmmed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto ruler of the UAE, with the word "traitor" written underneath.

Palestinians have for years been troubled by signs of closer ties between Israel and countries in the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, as well as other Muslim-majority nations, such as Sudan in Africa.

And for many, the normalising of ties between Israel and the UAE signal the crumbling of a long-held mantra by the Palestinian leadership that only peace with the Palestinians can usher in peace between Israel and the rest of the Arab and Muslim world.

"The card that was in the hands of Mahmoud Abbas that there are fifty-seven Arab and Islamic countries to do peace with [if Israel agrees to a two-state solution] has now fallen," said Muhammad Abdel-Qader, a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem.

Some blame the Palestinian Authority for the present-day situation.

"After the Palestinian leadership gave legitimacy to Israel and colonialism, the recognition [of Israel] by others is just a matter of detail, " 63-year-old Yousef Sharqawi, a former Fatah member told Al Jazeera.

He was referring to the Oslo Accords signed between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in 1993, in which both sides pledged to sign a permanent deal within five years providing for two states for the two peoples.

"We have recognised Israel in exchange for a superficial authority, the Palestinian people must change the status quo whatever the cost may be," said Sharqawi.


'We reject this conspiracy': Israelis and Palestinians react to UAE deal
Recent events and the long standstill at resolving the Palestinian issue is giving momentum to the long-held demand for reforming the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). Hamas which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007 is the largest Palestinian faction outside the PLO umbrella.

"Palestinians have a bigger problem than the issue of the UAE declaring the normalisation of relations with Israel," said George As'ad, a Palestinian entrepreneur.

"As Palestinians, we haven't had real Arab support for the Palestinian cause," he said. "So [the announcement of formal ties now] doesn't hurt because under the table they had been normal."

The fundamental issue, he said, was an "antiquated PLO".

"It's the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people but it is not really completely representative because there are lots of parties effective on the ground but are not represented" he added.

The trilateral announcement, which came ahead of the US presidential election is believed to serve Trump's re-election chances and ease pressure from Israeli far-right groups on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after his West Bank annexation pledge was put on hold.

A by-product of the ties between Israel and the UAE may be the hastening of reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.

"If they unite then elections can be held," Muhammad Abdel Qader told Al Jazeera.

https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/...-normalising-ties-israel-200814180547098.html

 

[Arkain2K]

Netanyahu Drops Troubled Annexation Plan for Diplomatic Gain
In an abrupt reversal, Israel’s prime minister “suspended” a promise to annex part of the West Bank in exchange for a historic opening with the U.A.E.​

JERUSALEM — For the past 16 months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had doggedly pursued a right-wing dream that he saw as securing his legacy: annexing West Bank territory that the Palestinians counted on for a future state, potentially dealing a death blow to a two-state solution.

On Thursday, with his annexation plan already running aground, Mr. Netanyahu abruptly walked away from it. Instead, he exulted in a potential legacy achievement of an entirely different character — one that, unlike annexation, could only improve Israel’s ties with the West and much of the Arab world.

The announcement in Washington that the United Arab Emirates had agreed to a “full normalization of relations” with Israel in exchange for Mr. Netanyahu’s agreement to “suspend” his annexation push amounted to a breathtaking turnabout for the veteran Israeli premier.

His drive for sovereignty on the West Bank had pushed Mr. Netanyahu into a corner: He was hectored by European leaders, rebuffed by his coalition partners, and distracted from a pandemic that was rapidly spiraling out of his control, even as the goal of annexation seemed ever more elusive.

But the agreement with the Emiratis allowed Mr. Netanyahu, who has craved a historic achievement to cap his tenure as Israel’s longest-serving leader, to rank himself alongside Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin, forerunners who struck peace accords with the nation’s former bitter enemies, Egypt and Jordan.

The agreement allows the U.A.E., too, to enhance its international standing, which has been deeply damaged over its central role in a war that has turned Yemen into a humanitarian disaster, and over its proxy role in the conflict ravaging Libya.

By making an end to annexation the price for bringing into the open a robust diplomatic relationship that had long been one of the Middle East’s worst-kept secrets, the U.A.E. could now boast that it was coming to the rescue of the Palestinians, rather than selling them out.

“The cancellation of annexation is merely an excuse for the Emirates,” said Shimrit Meir, an Israeli analyst of the Arab world. “This was in the stars for a long time. And framing it as their success in blocking annexation, and as a quid pro quo, makes Palestinian and Arab criticism less harsh.”

Skeptics noted that Israel and the U.A.E. had never faced one another in battle, and that their relations had long since ceased to look like those of enemies: The Emiratis have hosted Israeli ministers and athletes, and invited Israel to the Dubai Expo 2020, which was delayed until 2021 because of the pandemic.

“It’s an agreement to partially normalize ties between two countries who already have partially normalized ties,” Ofer Zalzberg, an analyst at International Crisis Group, wrote on Twitter. “Annexation is suspended in order to formalize & publicize those ties.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/...tion=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

 

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[Arkain2K]

 

[JbModest]

Interesting in that Bahrain is the only Arab country I'm aware of other than Iraq that is mostly Shia. Iran is also Shia.

 

[Yehudim]

Interesting in that Bahrain is the only Arab country I'm aware of other than Iraq that is mostly Shia. Iran is also Shia.

Ruled by Sunni Gulf elites though which explains the move