O N E D E M O C R A C Y N E W S L E T T E R
26 November 2010
ONE STATE News, Writing and Opinion
** A Major CONFERENCE Nov 26-28 organised by the Stuttgart Palestine Solidarity Committee, Germany, titled OBSTACLES AND PERSPECTIVES FOR A JUST SOLUTION. Chaired by eminent lawyer Felicia Langer, speakers include Ilan Pappe, Ali Abunimah, Mazin Qumsiyeh and Haider Eid, as well as leading activists, academics and human rights lawyers from Europe. Sessions include International Strategies to support Civil Resistance in Palestine; International Law and Perspectives for Action; The JNF in the Negev; German responsibility towards the Palestinians, and The German Left, the Holocaust and Palestinian Solidarity; Ethnic Cleansing and the Right of Return; Overcoming Zionist ideology; Israel’s apartheid laws; Mazin Qumsiyeh on Civil Resistance; Haider Eid on the South Africa analogies; and A One State Solution and a Just Peace. http://senderfreiespalaestina.de/konferenz/index.html
** New Facebook Page : ONE STATE, ONE DEMOCRACY FOR PALESTINE AND ISRAEL: Follow the link and click the Like button to stay connected
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?v=info&ref=profile&id=1152867051#!/pages/One-State-One-Democracy-for-Palestine-and-Israel/166133830084464?v=info
** English film director Mike Leigh said the loyalty oath was the “last straw” in his decision to pull out of a film masterclass in Israel. Israel’s fascist right has got bolder in its legal and physical moves against the “home” Palestinian minority. One Democracy’s Newsblog comments that Lieberman is flourishing in well prepared soil laid down by Herzl, Weizmann and Ben Gurion, but that the instability and contradictions in Israeli life and opinion can “go either way if something dramatically changes the view”. http://onedemocracy.co.uk/news/ben-gurions-fascist-descendants/#more-756
** A spate of major instances of new repression against Israel’s 20% Palestinian population: new laws, new housing segregation, the 7th demolition of El Araquib village and the demolition of the mosque at Rahat after Bedouin worshippers were rounded up and taken to the other side of town; steps against MK Haneen Zoabi; a fascist march through the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm; and a flood of toxic demands for the elimination of “enemies within”, see Ben White. Some political repercussions are discussed in an article by Seumas Milne, which points to a possible new convergence among Palestinians on both sides of the border around a civil rights – and by implication a Single State – agenda.
Ben White: http://jfjfp.com/?p=18902
Seumas Milne: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/10/palestinians-poised-to-take-centre-stage
** Dimi Reider in Mondoweiss says that almost the last nails in the Two State coffin were driven in when the Knesset decided that no territory would be abandoned without a referendum. And “The last nail will come when the Palestinian Authority implodes, whether for lack of credibility, or for a conscious change of tactic in favour of demanding the vote and collective rights within the overarching Israeli government.” Of the Two State solution, he says “it seems likely to become an instrument of oppression, rather than liberation, for all involved”. http://mondoweiss.net/2010/11/the-knesset-has-killed-the-classical-two-state-solution-in-all-but-name.html
** Excellent article on the One State by George Bisharat in Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/02/AR2010090204665.html
** In the lead-up to the Washington talks, ex-US diplomat Charles Freeman spoke to Foreign Affairs officials in Oslo. In the context of the “process” he had thoughtful insights about concepts of negotiation in the Arab tradition and the damaging role of the demand for Israel’s “right to exist”, and went on to a blistering attack on Israel’s actions and “the pathologies of political life in the United States that paralyze the American diplomatic imagination.” He outlined measures needed for peace, such as a credible Palestinian leadership, the need to affirm and enforce international law after “almost forty American vetoes have prevented the application to the Israeli occupying authorities of the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg precedents, human rights conventions, and relevant Security Council directives.” And finally he suggested a deadline for either a Palestinian state at the 1967 borders or “recognition of Israel’s achievement of de jure as well as de facto sovereignty throughout Palestine (requiring Israel to grant all governed by it citizenship and equal rights at pain of international sanctions, boycott, and disinvestment)”. And if the UN won’t do it, he called for member states to get together and act.
http://justworldnews.org/archives/Freeman-Norway-Sept-1-2010-b.htm
ONE-Liners
** While Israel’s laws, army and militant outriders enforce growing segregation between Jews and Arabs, Israel’s ultra-religious (Haredi) population is enforcing segregation in schools, neighbourhoods, public places and buses, both between its own people and secular Jews, and between its own men and its own women. Just how many other divisions can they come up with?
** “I must have heard the words Jewish democracy a million times there. I’ve never seen a purple cow either.” Philip Weiss (of Mondoweiss)
** The Palestinian says: I will not go away, I belong to this land. The Israeli says: I will not go away, this land belongs to me.
SOLIDARITY and OTHER NEWS
** Abdalla Abu Rahma is now perhaps the most loved and celebrated prisoner that Israel is holding. Sentenced to one year’s imprisonment for organising the Bil’in resistance (after an attempt to frame him for stone-throwing failed) he was due for release on 18 November. But he is still in prison, held pending a military court decision on the Military Prosecution’s appeal for a longer sentence. Read more at: http://www.uruknet.info/?new=72126
** Breaking the Silence is a contender for the Sakharov Prize awarded by the European Parliament for freedom of thought. Haaretz published a revealing in-depth account of this organisation started by ex-IDF soldiers, which has collected 2,500 hours of video and sound testimonies from soldiers, and will publish a book next month. They say the sheer quantity of testimonies gives them an overview of patterns: “You have dozens of soldiers saying the same thing over a long period. Today, with 700 testimonies, we have a broad picture and we see phenomena – a policy. The outstanding example is the rules of engagement, which are issued orally. The story here is not the aberrant soldier, but the problematic order for opening fire. It’s far more systemic. People are murdered according to procedures.”
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/crying-out-loud-1.325558
** The building boom that never stopped: Spiegel online, as the last “moratorium” was drawing to an end, on the fictional freeze: ”Around 2,000 homes are currently under construction — and in most cases, work had begun shortly before or after the start of the moratorium.” http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,715614,00.html
** 100 leading Norwegians including the national football team coach have signed a petition supporting BDS. http://www.ejpress.org/article/news/western_europe/47417
