Israel knocked by its nearest allies

* France stands up for Palestinians’ right to demonstrate and declares Bassem Tamimi “a human rights defender”.
* Hillary Clinton is “worried” about women and democracy in Israel.
* US arch-zionist Abe Foxman warns of “Israel’s judicial, press and speech freedoms” being undermined by its governing coalition.
* Israel’s TV ads aimed at its expats in America pulled in panic.
* US Ambassador to Belgium dares to say hatred of Israel is caused by its actions, not by anti-semitism;
* Leading American Zionist Peter Beinart says that until there’s a separate Palestinian state, Palestinians (more…)

Why the law against Apartheid is stronger stuff than Occupation Law

Six explorations
around International
Law, plus the
gate-crashing of
Birthright Israel’s
Reunion party

 1. “A single integrated regime”

“The Russell Tribunal on Palestine concludes that Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a (more…)

Freedom Riders: a new front for civil rights

Annexation of the West Bank into Israel is a constant threat by right wing parties wanting a “Greater Israel”. However abominable this may be, it would at least reveal the present reality in its true colours. (more…)

Did UN bid finish off the Peace Process?

As the diplomatic trick with smoke and mirrors at the UN, intended to create the illusion of a Palestinian state, clears away, it reveals the same picture as before, with a few small changes to the frame. (more…)

Hilltop marches threaten ethnic cleansing

Mustafa Barghouti warns of “massacre”

Apart from stoning and beating little kids on their way to school, (more…)

Urgent call from “Stop the Wall”

Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign say: “UN — let’s inspect the goods before we buy”

At not more than 15 days from the UN General Assembly (more…)

As PA ditches “1967 borders” to win UN vote,

It’s time to switch to Civil Rights

Mark Twain once asked, on hearing news of the death of a less than dynamic US politician, “how did they know he was dead?”. What we are now asking (more…)

After the UN, “Equality Struggle Ahead”

As the September UN vote in New York approaches, Palestinian responses have sharply diverged.

1. The Last Push for Recognition

Possibly millions of people have been signing petitions, pressuring their (more…)

“Stay on the streets, keep the tents going, refuse Reserve call-up, march as usual on Saturday” — Tent 1948

Tent Struggle to Meet Palestinian September

 Wednesday night (Aug 17) a first meeting of its kind was held by activists who have decided to facilitate an encounter of the ‘tent struggle’ movement and ‘Palestinian September’. (more…)

Israel’s Protests Part 2: the revolution inside the Revolution

Stories from the Fringe

While it’s easy to decry the insistent shunning of “politics” that leads this movement, there’s plenty to find and celebrate if you rummage around. Noam Sheizaf writes in +972 that though it doesn’t touch the big questions of the occupation (more…)

Has Israel Just Crashed Its Bullshit Barrier?

The Arab Spring was commonly said to have crashed the Fear Barrier: they knew they hated their regimes, but had been terrified to speak out. In Israel, members of the dominant Hebrew sector have lived in blinkers rather than in fear. When 150,000 marched last week, all across the country, Israel crashed its Bullshit Barrier. (more…)

Norway’s message:

Never Again for Anyone!

The shocking and tragic events in Norway have provoked a divided reaction. Most commentators have expressed on all our behalf a universalist horror against the racism (more…)

Will tent activists call for an “equal right to build”?

Israel has seen in the past week a massive mobilisation with tent cities all over the country, demonstrations backed by thousands, and sit-in protests blocking busy road junctions. Despite concessions from a government that’s keen to buy them off, the protests are growing and have called for a (more…)

20 Reasons why Israel, within any borders, cannot be “The Jewish State”

The last attempt to re-start Two State negotiations has failed. The big power Quartet (UN, EU, US and Russia) met in Washington on 11 July, planning to offer one good thing to each side to entice them to go further. But it wasn’t theirs to offer. (more…)

London One State group

A London One State Initiative is to be formed, to promote discussion and action on the politics of a single state in all of Palestine. A small nucleus has met to plan an inaugural meeting on 18 August in central London.

The group was brought together by the Palestine Justice Network. The founding members included activists in the BDS campaign and ISM. Having a group “on the ground” will help to make our presence visible at meetings and events.

The group decided to work towards a public meeting in the Autumn with prominent speakers to expound the arguments and theory of the single state and to take stock after the September showdown at the UN over Palestinian statehood.

“Why Boycott Culture?” — a revealing debate

On the eve of the Knesset’s new law penalising calls for boycott, London’s arts centre at the South Bank hosted a prestige debate on “Why Boycott Culture?”.

Organised by English PEN, it asked (more…)

What to do AFTER September

The big guys (UN, EU etc) are meeting in Washington on 11 July to map out a “peace plan” based on Obama’s 19th May speech, in the hopes of forestalling the PA move for recognition at the UN in September.

Apparently the PA’s UN resolution also quotes from the Obama speech, which contained enough contradictions to keep (more…)

Poor little Israel, now they’re coming in the window!

Our friend is off to Tel Aviv. He writes:

For years I’ve felt  ashamed at the way my Palestinian friends, and their Western wellwishers, have been humiliated, intimidated and dehumanised when trying to (more…)

300 Israel academics in civil disobedience call

A growing swell of hope and defiance

“Any act of rebellion, any physical defiance … anything that seeks to draw the good to the good, nourishes our souls and holds out the possibility that we can touch and transform the souls of others. Hope affirms that which we must affirm, and any act that imparts hope is a victory in itself.”  Chris Hedges

What started with one brave woman is now on its way to being a movement. The one woman was Ilana Hammerman, Israeli writer who decided to defy Israel’s control on Palestinians’ freedom of movement.

The Occupation allows half a million citizens of Israel, who can vote in national elections and have full infrastructure, material subsidies, services and clear, open roads, to live (more…)

 Picket in support of  US dockworkers refusing to unload Israeli goods

ACTION ALERT

EU’s plan threatens Palestine’s legal rights

Germany, France and Britain working to make Obama speech into official UN policy

Both sides are putting in place their preparations for the big Palestine recognition vote in September at the UN General Assembly. 

Israel has cancelled diplomatic leave for the month, clearly set its goals and arguments, and told its police to prepare for mass arrests in September. (more…)

Paris Peace Conference v. UN Vote: why PA leaders must see through what they have started

A Quartet-backed move to head off the UN Palestine vote has now come from France, which has proposed yet another Peace Conference.

This might have been a fitting initiative if Netanyahu had just gone to Washington and indicated flexibility, or willingness (more…)

One Staters and BNC say “pull out the stops for UN vote”

The clock is ticking towards September, when the PA leaders will mark 20 years of fruitless “two state peace process” by going to the UN and demanding that a Palestine state is recognised NOW, with the borders as they stood before Israel’s June 1967 invasion. That so many countries have promised their support is a sign that they, too, think that enough is enough.

Our initial reaction, along with many others prominent in the One State movement, (more…)

Our First Year: And what a Year!

It’s just a year since this site, advocating for One Country in Palestine and against the Two State cul-de-sac, was first posted. What a year it’s been! (more…)

Young Jewish descendants of the Arab and Islamic world living in Israel write to their peers in the Middle East and North Africa: “we identify with you”

We, as the descendents of the Jewish communities of the Arab and Muslim world, the Middle East and the Maghreb, and as the second and third generation of Mizrahi Jews in Israel, are watching with great excitement and curiosity the major role that the men and women of our generation are playing so courageously in the demonstrations for freedom and change across the Arab world. (more…)

Just what is keeping the Peace Process alive? And what will it take to bury it?

You’d think that the Peace Process was over. You’d think that Oslo would be dead. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Two State Solution had been cremated, its ashes buried under a building site on heat, (more…)

The Pink Slip: Notice to Quit

The fallout from the Palestine Papers had hardly hit the ground before the ground itself moved. The final day of Al Jazeera’s presentation of its cache of leaked documents exposed in graphic detail the security collaboration between Israel and the Palestine Authority, created and groomed as Israel’s sub-contractor. By then, all eyes were on Tahrir Square. (more…)

Egypt’s gifts to Palestine

Lifting the siege, pride and joy, and an Election platform that could kill off the Palestine Authority

In Gaza, Palestinians joined the party on the night of Fri 11 with almost as much wild joy as Egyptians themselves. (* See Notes below) It might have been the first moment of collective happiness after all the violence, hardship and sorrow they have gone through.

And it wasn’t just about getting the siege lifted  —  which, as long as the Egyptians don’t get double-crossed, should be beyond question. The Treaty with Israel, even if it’s renewed, says nothing about starving Gaza. See Ali Abunimah in Notes, below**. And to speed it up, on Saturday 26 Feb an international march from Egypt will go there to open it. (more…)

Egypt: In Other Words

Some comments from the blogs

Arabs do “get it”
♦♦ Egyptians are so proud. And we are proud for them. They gave us the answer to the racist prejudices that “Arabs have their specific culture, they don’t get it”. Well, they got it. This is universalism and it’s the best argument against all that trash about clash of civilisations. (more…)

Egypt 1

Week 3  —  The Workers

In the classic, time-honoured revolution there would be a storming of the radio station. In Cairo, the staff simply locked out the pro-regime bosses and editors of their papers. Now the Cabinet has relocated: Tahrir Square was too close for comfort, and the nearby parliament building is blockaded. With the Square filling up, there is now a list of other places to go: the Parliament building, the state TV, and now maybe a choice of workers’ sit-ins. (more…)

Egypt 2 

The Muslim Brotherhood

Barely a news report or panel of pundits passes without the Big Question coming up: will the “largest opposition party” the Muslim Brotherhood “take over”? (more…)

Egypt 3

The world turned upside down

“WE ARE in the middle of a geological event. An earthquake of epoch-making dimensions is changing the landscape of our region. Mountains turn into valleys, islands emerge from the sea, volcanoes cover the land with lava. …  what is happening now in Egypt will change our lives. “  —  Yuri Avneri

This is not just about dominoes, nor just about Israel and Palestine (as Avneri goes on to say). If Egypt comes out of this as a vibrant democracy, (more…)

Egypt: the heroes of Tahrir Square… and actions called in Bethlehem, Ramallah and Jerusalem

Yesterday, 2nd Feb, it looked like a classic counter-revolution: on the night of Day 8, Mubarak said he would only stay until September, a statement calculated to divide the rebels’ support (“why go on with the chaos for the sake of just six months?” the gullible were asking); the “soft-cop” army said: you’ve made your point, now go home. And the hard-cop government-hired thugs and plain-clothes police, (more…)

Students occupy Palestinian HQ in London to demand fresh elections and a political process thet reflects and engages all Palestinians: see our call below for an international Palestinian electorate and democratic Assembly

The Palestine Papers have driven a stake through the heart of the Undead Peace Process.

But where do we go from there?

“The release into the public domain of these documents is such a landmark because it destroys the final traces of credibility of the peace process.” Karma Nabulsi

The Palestine Papers will shake a lot of things loose. How they re-assemble is now the crucial question. One Democracy looks at some of the immediate effects of the Palestine Papers and proposes a 5-Step Plan to reconstitute a Palestinian leadership and decide on its direction. (more…)

EU’s consuls propose boycott

It was more valuable by far than the symbolic recognitions of a notional Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem: it was a set of proposals by the EU’s missions (more…)

TUNISIA

1. Sparks illumine “the day after”

Mazin Qumsiyeh, author of Popular Resistance in Palestine, writes in his newsletter

As people around the world evolved beyond dictatorship and racism, we in the Arab world will too … (more…)

“Return the refugees and you end the conflict”

“The essential problem that has not been solved is the dispossession of the Palestinian people. And you put it right by returning them to the land they came from. That is how you end the conflict. … What we are talking about is one state. The only and the ultimate aim has to be to return Palestine to what it was. Palestine was one state and we want that to happen again, and we are against dividing up our homeland and our country” (more…)

Defend Tutu from these vindictive Zionists

An international petition has been set up to support Desmond Tutu against an onslaught by the Israeli Ambassador to South Africa and the  South African Zionist Federation. Just as they ganged up on eminent South African judge Richard Goldstone when he found Israel guilty of war crimes in Gaza (an attack so vindictive (more…)

Recognition of Palestine: closing in on Israel but reviving the Undead Two State con-trick

Four South American countries have now added their voices to recognise a notional Palestinian state. Five others are tipped to follow, including Chile which has the largest Palestinian population outside the Arab world. What is this about, and how does it impact on the fight for a single state? (more…)

Richard Falk in London: Palestine now has the high moral ground

Speaking in London a month after reporting on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to the UN General Assembly:

The Palestinian issue, Dr. Falk told his audience, has risen to the status of the pre-eminent moral struggle of our time. And for the first time, the Palestinians have the high moral ground and are now seen around the world as the victims. (more…)

How KPFT Radio got ambushed by the Israel lobby

A reporter on the KPFT Radio for Peace, a liberal beacon in US media, was sacked for saying that “the Jews” have too much media influence. Rattled by accusations of anti-semitism, KPFT went on to arrange for Israel’s local diplomatic mission to have a regular slot to promote itself as “The Voice of Peace”. (more…)

Is there one single decent argument against the one single state?

By Alex Pushkin

I was in the middle of reading Menachem Klein’s new book The Shift when I happened to see a TV programme in which a historian took us on a conducted tour of a Victorian workhouse. Her description of the notoriously grim regime of separation (more…)

Christmas trees banned in Nazareth

In another propaganda coup for the Jewish democracy, the mayor of the predominantly Jewish new town of Nazareth Illit (Upper Nazareth) has banned Christmas trees from the town square. Mayor Shimon Gapso announced. “Nazareth Illit is a Jewish town, not a mixed town, and it will not (more…)

Talks expire but Two-State Process is still Undead

It’s official. The talks are dead. They died NOT because of the direct talks format, but because there isn’t the will in Israel for an end-of-conflict agreement based on two states, in any shape or form. (more…)

2011: A game-changing year

The coming year will see the transition from the Two State template. Somehow the last-ditch moves for a deal are hardly getting noticed, and in Israel the end of the talks was scarcely reported. (more…)

Let’s Vote for a New Jerusalem

The Palestinians of Jerusalem have lost many rights. Thousands have lost the right to live there, and hundreds are losing their homes to ultra-Zionist squatters and master plans aimed at racial division of the city. But one surprising right remains: (more…)

Fayyad plans for economic prison zones

There are those who argue, probably with the best intentions, that Palestinians need their own economy: in a single state, the argument goes, (more…)

BBC: ’skinhead racists not a problem’

BBC World Service recently ran a major feature on the rise of anti-semitism, but somehow it all seemed to be about Israel.

Writer Howard Jacobson complained that the word “massacre” had been misused against Israel over Operation Cast Lead, rather than “fight”: one might query this as a misuse, considering that Israel lost seven dead while (more…)

Hamas leader lines up with PA’s position

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh just called a rare press conference to announce that if a deal made with Israel by the Fatah-led PA was approved in a Palestine referendum, Hamas would accept the result. (more…)

Israel’s fascists flourish in well prepared ground

The floodgates are open, it’s the tip of an iceberg, we’re on the slippery slope and this or that event has proved a last straw. Israel’s fascist right is calling shots (more…)