roachboy

Israel claims Jerusalem settlement plan would not harm Palestinians | World news | guardian.co.uk

in case you weren't following this, right about the time biden was saying that the us committment to israel, whatever that means, is "iron-clad" netanyahu, that rightwing disaster, announced this:

Israel approves more construction in West Bank settlement | World news | guardian.co.uk

in case you don't have a sense of the extent of israeli colonial occupation of the west bank, here is a map from 2009:

La Cisjordanie occupée

and two other maps (these from 2007) that show the israeli take-over of east jerusalem:

Comment Israël confisque Jérusalem-Est
Comment Israël confisque Jérusalem-Est (II)

it seems to me pretty obvious that the israeli settlement program and the american position up to now of looking the other way are **the** primary obstacles to any coherent peace, any possibility of an autonomous viable palestine, any possibility of an end to israeli occupation.

but i am wondering if netanyahu managed through a singular combination of arrogance or ignorance (where's the line? it's not always obvious) and cloddishness has managed to bring about a pretty abrupt change in the american relation to the israeli settlement program. in response to what the obama administration obviously sees as a deliberate attempt to embarass it, there is actual pressure coming from the united states on israel to not build more settlements, to stop.

this seems to me quite new.

how lasting a change in american policy toward israeli settlement programs do you see this as being?
what do you think of this shift?

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evilmatt

What Israel is doing in re: East Jerusalem settlements is underhanded and mean, I agree. However, there are a ton of other issues and acts being perpetrated by both sides that stifle the peace process. I think saying the settlements are the one big issue is buying into the media machine a bit too much. If the settlements were razed tomorrow, do you honestly think so much would change?

roachboy

on the map of the west bank ("cisjordanie occupée"), the orange represents israeli settlements. these are all more or less off-limits for palestinians. the grey triangles are outpost-type settlements started before 2001; the black triangles outpost-type settlements started since 2001. the yellow squares represent military checkpoints. it should be obvious from this alone that the settlement program is not some "media machine" fiction, but a real, grinding, brutalizing reality that if anything is radically down played in american domestic media.


you could map water supply points on. then things would be clearer still.

i have a meeting, so more later.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Cynthetiq

During my visit to Jerusalem this past year I didn't notice the tension since I wasn't allowed to go to the contested areas. I did want to go, but that would have been dangerous in the company that I had. On the way to Masada, there was only 1 checkpoint going both directions but we were not in contested territory.

We were in a private vehicle, but all the buses carried rifled guards.

What does this mean? Well even though I was there and I didn't have media to influence me, I still couldn't get any idea as to how it was since it's the same as not having any idea as to what the reality of life going on in Brooklyn just a mile or two away.

thanks for the clarification of the map legend. I don't speak French.

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The_Dunedan

Aah. So Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden have seen fit to dare speak a word against Israel. They're outraged. They're disappointed. They're just all different kinds of pissed off. None of this however, will change the facts;

1: The US will continue to pour "aid" into Israel in amounts that could supplant the GDP of some small European countries. This "aid" will come not only in the form of billions of dollars of giveaways, but also in the form of billions more in "loans" that Congress will happily write off in next year's budget, just as they've been doing since before I was born.

2: Israel will continue to use aforesaid "aid" mostly to prop up it's economy (hard to sell tourism when things keep blowing up) and military, which leads us to....

3: A significant secondary form of "aid," ie All Our Best Toys, will -also- continue unabated. F-22? Probable check. F-35? Definite check. Radars? ELINT equipment? Crypto? Check, check, and check. And what's the second thing Israel usually does with all this Really Cool Shit (right after they use it to blow up two camels, one wellhead, an abandoned car and an apartment block, plus steal identites for Mossad and Shin Bet)? Sell it to China. That's right; one of Israel's biggest customers for Our Best Toys (which we keep giving them) is the single military power which may soon be in a position to challenge the US. Anybody wonder where the Chinese got the guidance systems for their new generation of carrier-killing ballistic and cruise missiles, rocket-propelled torpedoes, and bottom-rising rocket-propelled naval mines? It wasn't from the Russians, the Indians, or the Japanese, I promise you that. None of these facts stopped any of the previous four presidents, and I doubt they'll stop Mr. Obama.

The dogs bark, but the caravan rolls on.

roachboy

here's a little more translation of the map...sorry to use a french one, but it's the most recent i could find online...the most recent english-language map is from 2002. things have changed. at the bottom left, the map lists the principal mechanisms the israelis use to prevent palestinian movement around the west bank.

1) the settlements and the roads which are built or diverted to get to them all of which are completely forbidden to palestinians
2) 500-600 obstacles that cut up other roads--beyond the network of military checkpoints there roads are cut off with things like that puncture tires or with barricades. these are simply left in place, so the roads are impassable.
3) closed military zones
4) strictly controlled passes which are required to move south-to-north (or vice versa) across the west bank.

the only reason any of these controls exist is the settlements.

for example.

later: here's a larger-scale map from 2006 linked via wikipedia that's in english:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Westbankjan06.jpg

mostly for comparison's sake.

=======

one more addition:

here's a short web-piece that at least broaches the question of water access:

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/water.html

so the settlements are a big deal, but they're caught in other conflictual situations.
like water, who gets it, who does not.

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

hiredgun

It would not solve the conflict by itself, no, but it would remove an intractable obstacle. Take a look at the maps that have been posted in the thread. Does the area emerging under eventual Palestinian control - shut off from Jerusalem to the west, and hemmed in by a string of settlements and military installations dotting the Jordan river valley to the East - look like a viable state to you? Keep the scale in mind here - the distance from Jerusalem to the dead sea is only something like 15 miles.

Settlements aren't a silver bullet, but it is hard to negotiate over the division of a pizza when your counterpart is busy eating it.

To address the OP: I don't think this is a lasting shift. If the administration had intended to explore new ground in this relationship, it would have done so in the first year. They have no desire to shake things up in this area. My guess is that Israel/Palestine will remain on the back-burner until a second Obama term. It is a shame - though I'm not at all certain that friendly pressure from the US would change the situation. The stakes for the two countries are wildly at variance. For a US administration, this is one among a huge host of concerns in the region. For the Israelis, it is absolutely central: they are busy drawing the borders of their future. To seriously alter the Israeli calculus would take a lot more than this administration - or any administration - is willing to do.

roachboy

at the moment i'm not so sure what direction this will take over the longer run, mostly because it's pretty clear that netanyahu is a problem.
but the administration has argued that there has to be a change in us policy toward israel from the outset. my vague sense is that biden is to the right of hillary clinton on this.
it seems to me that the settlements are a fundamental issue, a fundamental problem. they are **the** central obstacle to a two-state arrangement; they are the cause of the more brutal aspects of the occupation; they are the trigger for violence both independently (that is on their own) and in response. the settlers are also a considerable force on the israeli right and ultra-right. and the demolition of existing settlements---which personally i think necessary and justifiable---will self-evidently not be simple thing.

curiously, the model for alot of this seems to be the occupation of native american land.

in principle, i see the settlements as the central problem.
in reality, i think the settlements are the central problem but it's obviously not going to be easy to do anything about them.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

ASU2003

I agree, I think Israel is doing pretty well militarily and needs to work more on it's diplomacy instead of hiding behind the US. We want to save some money here at home, either make Israel pay us for that technology or live with what they have.

roachboy

it is amazing that in 2010 it requires repeating that israel has been built into a regional military superpower since 1967 and that no combination of other countries would be in a position to pose a basic existential challenge. this basically changes the situation as folk seem to imagine it.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

hiredgun

Ok, this is actually more interesting than I thought.

Biden throwing a fit because he was publicly embarrassed - that is expected, and just as easily forgotten.

But this, on the other hand:

The Petraeus briefing: Biden?s embarrassment is not the whole story, by Mark Perry | The Middle East Channel
Notably, it seems Petraeus wants to shift the West Bank and Gaza to CENTCOM (they fall under EUCOM right now), and in a break from tradition, has expressed serious concern over Israeli intransigence.

I'm not entirely sure, but this feels new.

roachboy

Hillary Clinton piles pressure on Israel over East Jerusalem settlements | World news | The Guardian

this is interesting. the petraus testimony is here anyway being interpreted as a signficant direction change...the us is pressuring israel to make concrete moves to re-start a peace process...and netanyahu's government, which is a coalition affair with elements of the ultra-right, is placed in a really difficult spot. to which i say: good. i hope it collapses.

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Charlatan

While the sounds coming out of Washington are different from the past, I still can't help but to be cynical about all of this. We've been down these roads before and little has changed. As with anything in Israel/Palestine I try to remain cautiously optimistic but it's really hard given the history.

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Sun Tzu

Really different from the past. I wonder if this concept will truly catch.

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ASU2003

Well this isn't in the paranoia section, but part of me thinks this was planned. It helps US relations in the Middle East to be opposing an Israeli policy, it gives the Israelis something to barter with in the peace talks, and it makes the Palestinians look strong if they make Israel back down.

roachboy

i dont think it was planned....it makes no sense, particularly not from the viewpoint of the netanyahu government. but there was a hilarious survey of the israeli press reactions to this in le monde yesterday. bibi is apparently famously maladroit, a master of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by saying the stupid thing at the wrong moment...but there are folk (and you or i may know such folk typically of course at our peril) who can not only be almost counted on to say the wrong thing at the wrong time (almost is the key here because if you could count on it you could control for it...that's what handlers do....uh oh, burt, he's quinching up his face....he's about to say something stupid...kill the microphones now now now.) but who seem to attract fucking up at a machine level, like they bring it out in the systems they interact with. if they come for a holiday dinner, the turkey is cooked to sawdust and the pool filters begin spitting crap into the water. or the ministry of the interior announces all these shiny new illegal settlement initiatives while biden is visiting.

and it's not really their fault--these folk transcend the limits of personal incompetence and somehow tap into The Higher Incompetence. bibi sounds like he's one of those people.
he ran in part on the idea that this was the ""New Bibi" which lead alot of politico-types to say: "please...old bibi...come resuce us from the new bibi."

i'm trying to think of a fictional version of such a character. all that comes to mind is inspector clouseau.
but clouseau never really hurt other people. well, he did, but not entire populations.


====

later:
as an example:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1157061.html

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

roachboy

here's something curious to consider. this morning the quartet held a meeting about the various aspects of the israel/palestine situation. the same meeting....the same thing...is written about in the following two ways.

in the guardian:

Quartet blasts Israel over East Jerusalem settlements | World news | guardian.co.uk

in the new york times (i paste it here because of the subscription requirement--even though it's still free---and because i would expect this to change)

Clinton Calls Israel?s Moves to Ease Tension ?Useful? - NYTimes.com

i find the differences between these to be pretty telling.
and americans think they'd don't live in a media bubble.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Sticky

The Israelis are not very good at PR.
The Palestinians are not very good either but these events show that the Palestinians might have finaly figured it out and may be passing the Israelis in the are of PR.

Why glorify the murderers? - Los Angeles Times

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Willravel

Zionism, a sense of entitlement so grand that it's written into a major world religion, is at the center of this ignorance. The UN is impotent because of the US to stop the settlements, and now.. what? The POTUS is using slightly stronger language? Oh please.

The United States is still the grand enabler when it comes to Israel and that won't change until we both end all aid and stop unconditionally backing Israel in the UN. Israel has had ample opportunities to stop building settlements and has chosen not to. They need a clear indication that violating human rights is wrong even for a people that had their rights violated once upon a time.

WinchesterAA

The Eternal Jew (Der Ewige Jude) - English dub.

Cimarron29414

Really Will? Because I'll bet I could find a descendant of the Costanoan Tribe who would take your house, should you feel so inclined to return their land back to them. :P

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roachboy

there's no particular reason to waste time debating questions on zionist grounds as if that ideology had a role to play in justifying israeli colonialism in fact---in the justificatory narratives of the settlers there's little doubt that variants of kahane-style eretz israel ideology continue to operate and to rationalize the daily brutalization of the palestinian people---and it's no surprise that the settlers find themselves on the extreme right in israel--what the far right in israel and the united states is an affection for loopy nationalism rooted in mythology substituted for history and reality and little hesitation in drawing racist conclusions from the substitution (look around at the teapartiers today in the states...great humanitarians that they are)...one difference between the us and israel at the moment is that the government in israel relies on the support of the ultra-right to hold itself together.

so they've announced this morning that the construction in east jerusalem that was at the origin of this brouhaha can start at any time. of course, it might not start---such is the two-faced game that netanyahu has to play to appease the far right and the us at the same time.

but fact is that kahane-style ideology has no legal standing. the settlements are illegal. they are an obstacle to peace. every last one of them should be taken down.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

I was the Tamien (a specific tribe that was lumped together with other tribes by European and American historians that invented the term Costanoan) that inhabited the area now known as San Jose. The story of San Jose is actually quite interesting. The first European settlers in the area were, of course, Franciscan priests. They settled missions, with permission from the natives, and did their proselytization thing. The Spanish government wanted more land in the area, so the priests actually represented the native's interests in debates, and managed to make a strong enough case for the rights of the natives that they basically won. The natives were granted property and ownership rights by the Spanish government, and a few years later they were all made Spanish citizens.

Not all natives were forced from their lands by European settlers. The descendants of the Tamien are still here and never had their land stolen from them. They weren't forced to live in the worst areas of the country, they weren't besieged regularly by one of the most powerful militaries in the world, and they weren't occupied by a foreign military for decades. I'm being totally honest when I say this history was a determining factor in my living here. I don't like the idea of living on stolen land.

But even if it were the case that the Spanish had stolen the land from the natives hundreds of years ago, that's an entirely different circumstance. The Tamien aren't fighting a war to end the occupation of their homes, they're not having the shitty land they were given occupied by a powerful military, and they aren't attacked by said military often They don't have American homes being built farther and farther into what little land they have left. It would be an entirely different situation, you see.

Israel is building illegal settlements and regularly violates the human rights of the Palestinians with deadly attacks.

james t kirk

I agree with everything you've posted, however, hats off to Obama for daring to cross the Israel Lobby as much as he did. We should see the Israel lobby kick into high gear now to get his ass tossed out in 2012 and return (hopefully for them) another fundamentalist Christian like Bush who is actively praying for Armaghedon.

Israel doesn't have too many friends in the world. Really, the USA is about it. You'd think they'd be a little more concerned about what their benefactor thinks about their actions.