Israel: Colonising East Jerusalem, Deporting Palestinians (Cole)

Parallelling the assessment of EA's Ali Yenidunya, Juan Cole considers the latest steps by the Israeli Government:

The new Israeli policy of deporting Palestinians from the West Bank on arbitrary grounds has kicked in with Ahmad Sabah, who has just been deported to Gaza and separated from his family in the West Bank. The measure contravenes the Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of occupied populations, and it also goes contrary to the undertakings Israel made toward the Palestine Authority in the course of the Oslo peace negotiations.

Palestine Analysis: Breaking Down Israel’s Counter Offer on Talks

The episode underlines the ways in which their forced statelessness leaves Palestinians (almost uniquely among major world nationalities) completely vulnerable to loss of the most basic human rights. That he was forcibly moved to Gaza by the Israelis suggests that many of those singled out for potential deportation from the West Bank may be moved to the small slum along the Mediterranean, which the Israelis have cut off from its traditional markets and which they keep under a blockade of the civilian population (a war crime). The Israeli establishment has decided not to try to colonize Gaza, and its isolation and hopelessness make it an attractive place for them to begin exiling West Bank residents, thus making more room for Israeli colonists.


The new policy, which is illegal six ways to Sunday in international law, is the brainchild of the government of far rightwing Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, an Israeli hawk and expansionist, slapped President Barack Obama in the face again Thursday when he confirmed that he refused to halt construction of new homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem, which is militarily occupied by Israel.

Netanyahu’s announcement is probably the nail in the coffin of any two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (in which the Israelis have thrown most Palestinians now living beyond the Green Line off their land and deprived them of citizenship in a state and all the rights that go with such citizenship). Palestinians are so despairing that only 57 percent even believe in having an independent Palestinian state any more. The rest are resigned to becoming Israelis in the distant future, when demographic realities and perhaps world-wide boycotts of Israel for its Apartheid-style policies toward the occupied Palestinian will force Israel to accept them.

At the same time, Netanyahu tried to throw sand in peoples’ eyes by talking about recognizing an ‘interim’ Palestinian state with “temporary” borders.

Palestinian leaders reject this formulation, which is intended to allow the Israelis to continue aggressively to colonize Palestinian territory while pretending that they are engaged in a ‘peace process.’ The Palestine Authority, established in the 1990s, was already a sort of interim state then, and Palestine’s borders were then ‘temporary.’ So temporary that Israel has made deep inroads into them through massive colonies and building a wall on the Palestinian side of the border, cutting residents off from their own farms and sequestering entire towns and cities.

Netanyahu’s various moves this week, from illegally expelling a Palestinian from the West Bank to Gaza to blowing off the president of the United States and hitching his wagon to massive increased colonization of Palestinian land: all of these steps are guaranteed to mire Israel in violent disputes for years and perhaps decades. And the US, which has already suffered tremendously in Iraq and elsewhere from its knee-jerk support of illegal and inhumane Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, will suffer further.

Meanwhile, in the wake of a vicious attack on Barack Obama by New York senator Chuck Schumer, Steve Clemons of the Washington Note frankly wonders whether Schumer understands he is in the US Senate or whether he is under the impression he is serving in the Israeli Knesset.

Iran Document: The Supreme Leader on Nuclear Weapons (17 April)

From Fars News, via the US Government Open Source Center and Juan Cole:

In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

I would like to welcome the honorable guests who have gathered here. It is a pleasure that the Islamic Republic of Iran is hosting the International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament today. Hopefully, you will make use of this opportunity and present human societies with the timeless and valuable results that you will obtain through discussion and consultation.

Iran Analysis: And The Nuclear Sideshow Goes On…And On…And On
The Latest from Iran (18 April): Strike A Pose

The study of atoms and nuclear sciences are one of the greatest human achievements which can and should be at the service of the well-being of nations across the world as well as the growth and development of all human societies. The applications of nuclear sciences cover a wide range of medical and industrial needs as well as energy requirements, each of which has considerable importance.


For this reason, it can be said that nuclear technology has gained a prominent position in economic areas of life. And with the passage of time and the rise in industrial and medical needs and energy requirements, its importance will continue growing, and the efforts to achieve and utilize nuclear energy will increase accordingly. Just like other nations of the world, Middle Eastern nations that are thirsty for peace, security, and progress have the right to guarantee their economic position as well as a superior position for their future generations through utilizing this technology. Preventing the nations of the region from paying serious attention to this natural and valuable right is probably one of the goals behind creating doubts about the peaceful nuclear programs of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The interesting point is that currently the only nuclear criminal in the world is falsely claiming to fight the proliferation of nuclear weapons. This is while there is no doubt that it has not taken any serious measures in this regard, and it will never do so. If America’s claims of fighting the proliferation of nuclear weapons were not false, would the Zionist regime be able to turn the occupied Palestinian lands into an arsenal where a huge number of nuclear weapons are stored while refusing to respect international regulations in this regard, especially the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty]?

Unfortunately, although the word atom is associated with the progress of human knowledge, it is equally associated with the most appalling event in history and the greatest genocide and misuse of man’s scientific accomplishments. Although many countries have made an effort to manufacture and amass nuclear weapons — which in itself can be considered a preface to committing crimes and has seriously jeopardized global peace — there is only one government that has committed a nuclear crime so far. Only the government of the United States of America has attacked the oppressed people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs in an unfair and inhumane war.

Since the detonation of the early nuclear weapons by the US Government in Hiroshima and Nagasaki created a human disaster of unprecedented proportions in history and exposed human security to a great threat, the global community has reached a unanimous agreement that it is necessary to completely destroy such weapons. The use of nuclear weapons resulted not only in large-scale killings and destruction, but also in indiscriminate massacre of people — military members and civilians, young and old, men and women. And its anti-human effects transcended political and geographic borders, even inflicting irreparable harm on future generations. Therefore, using or even threatening to use such weapons is a serious violation of the most basic rules of philanthropy and is a clear manifestation of war crimes.

From a military and security perspective, after certain powers were armed with this anti-human weapon, there remained no doubt that victory in a nuclear war would be impossible and that engagement in such a war would be an unwise and anti-human act. However, despite these obvious ethical, intellectual, human, and even military realities, the strong and repeated urge by the global community to dispose of these weapons has been ignored by a small number of governments who have based their illusory security on global insecurity.

The insistence of these governments on the possession and proliferation of nuclear weapons as well as increasing their destructive power — which are useless except for intimidation and massacre and a false sense of security based on pre-emptive power resulting from guaranteed annihilation of everyone — has led to an enduring nuclear nightmare in the world. Innumerable human and economic resources have been used in this irrational competition to give the superpowers the imaginary power to annihilate more than a thousand times their rivals as well as other inhabitants of the world including themselves. And it is due to this reason that this strategy has been known as pre-emption based on guaranteed mutual annihilation or insanity.

In recent years, a number of governments who possess nuclear weapons have even gone beyond the pre-emptive strategy based on mutual annihilation in dealing with other nuclear powers to the extent that in their nuclear policies they insist on maintaining the nuclear option even if they are faced with conventional threats from countries violating the NPT. This is while the greatest violators of the NPT are the powers who have reneged on their obligation to dispose of nuclear weapons mentioned in Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. These powers have even surpassed other countries with respect to promoting nuclear weapons in the world. By providing the Zionist regime with nuclear weapons and supporting its policies, these powers play a direct role in promoting nuclear weapons which is against the obligations they have undertaken according to Article 1 of the NPT. These countries, headed by the bullying and aggressive US regime, have posed a serious threat to the Middle East region and the world.

It behoves the International Conference on Nuclear Disarmament to investigate the threats posed by the production and stockpiling of nuclear weapons in the world and propose realistic solutions to counter this threat to humanity. This will prepare the ground for taking steps toward safeguarding peace and stability.

We believe that besides nuclear weapons, other types of weapons of mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons also pose a serious threat to humanity. The Iranian nation, which is itself a victim of chemical weapons, feels more than any other nation the danger that is caused by the production and stockpiling of such weapons and is prepared to make use of all its facilities to counter such threats.

We consider the use of such weapons as haram (religiously forbidden) and believe that it is everyone’s duty to make efforts to secure humanity against this great disaster.

UPDATED Iran Analysis: And The Nuclear Sideshow Goes On...And On...And On

UPDATE 1200 GMT: The US side of this nuclear dance just gets stranger. In a clear sign of the bureaucratic in-fighting, the Pentagon has issued an official statement repudiating the Secretary of Defense's reported three-page memorandum denouncing a lack of clear US strategy. Spokesman Geoff Morrell said the Obama Adminsitration has "spent an extraordinary amount of time and effort considering and preparing for the full range of contingencies".

So who was the original mischief-maker (and from which agency) who fed the Gates story to The New York Times?

The first day of Tehran's 48-hour nuclear disarmament festival, a response to Barack Obama's Washington summit, dazzles the non-Iranian media this morning. Even the top analyst Juan Cole follows the lead, with attention to the Supreme Leader's declaration that the use of nuclear weapons is forbidden (haram) in Islamic law:

An American audience just assumes that Khamenei is just lying and they feel (with some justification) that he is simply engaged in anti-American propaganda, and so he words fall on deaf ears here. But in much of the world, Khamenei’s speech will be taken as devastating to the US position.

I'm not sure how much rhetorical devastation has taken place --- I suspect that shrewd onlookers, despite the media brouhaha, will see both the Washington and Tehran gatherings as posturing in the US-Iran political contest.

However, our old friend David Sanger at The New York Times, fueled by the US Government, has his own mini-explosion to contribute:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document.

Several officials said the highly classified analysis, written in January to President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, came in the midst of an intensifying effort inside the Pentagon, the White House and the intelligence agencies to develop new options for Mr. Obama. They include a set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course.

Officials familiar with the memo’s contents would describe only portions dealing with strategy and policy, and not sections that apparently dealt with secret operations against Iran, or how to deal with Persian Gulf allies.

One senior official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the memo, described the document as “a wake-up call.” But White House officials dispute that view, insisting that for 15 months they had been conducting detailed planning for many possible outcomes regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

If Sanger took a moment's retreat from his dramatic prose, he might realise he is being given a walk-on part (see the precedent of Rosencrantz and Guildestern in W. Shakespeare's political case study Hamlet) in a bureaucratic battle over Iran policy. Gates isn't entirely happy with the State Department's diplomatic approach, so he fires off some paragraphs to the NSC to ask them to have a look at military options. Some of his staffers or allies in other departments pick up the phone to Sanger so he, as reporter, could put on some public pressure. Other officials (NSC? State Department? White House?) counter with the assurance that the US policy is being thoughtfully and carefully formulated.

Beyond this internal battle, Gates' "military alternatives", contrary to Sanger's implication in his lead paragraph, does not mean attacking Iran but strengthening the "containment" of Tehran in the region through a bolstered US presence and through the now ever-present rationale of tying the nuclear issue to "terrorism". That is not that distant from the policy being considered in other parts of the Obama Administration; the issue is one of degree --- how far to consider Iran as rival to be contained? how far to think of Tehran as a power who can be approached in discussions, to the point of pursuing a rapprochement over issues such as Iraq and Afghanistan?

Needless to say, Sanger never countenances the possibility that Iran is far from marching --- a la Khamenei's own theatrical declaration --- toward an atomic bomb. And he sprinkles in, from his unnamed Government officials, generalisations such as, "[Gates] wrote the memo after Iran had let pass a 2009 deadline set by Mr. Obama to respond to his offers of diplomatic engagement."

(Set aside Iran's media spin that it is taking the lead in diplomatic engagement to pursue disarmament. Tehran's reiterations that it wants discussions on a swap of uranium fuel --- albeit still murky as to whether that occurs inside or outside Iran --- is enough to puff away this US Government-supported article.)

Oh, well. Another 24 hours in Tehran of poses and declarations today. Then we'll be back to the rat-a-tat-tat, with no "That's All, Folks", of sanctions, sanctions, sanctions v. Iran's declarations that it stands tall in the face of Western provocation.

Pakistan: President Weakened, 100 Die in Aerial Attacks (Cole)

Juan Cole offers an overview of the latest developments in Pakistan:

On Saturday, fierce Pakistani fighter-jet bombardments of suspected militant positions in Khyber left dozens of persons dead and local tribal leaders livid at what they characterized as the killing and wounding of innocents. The Pakistani military maintained that the militants had fled ongoing military operations in Orakzai and South Waziristan (i.e. they are suspected of being members of the Movement of Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan or TTP). In addition to the bombardment in Khyber, Pakistani troops fought a pitched battle on the ground at a checkpoint in Orakzai, leaving an alleged 54 militants dead.

The renewed fighting in the northwest and the announcement of such large enemy casualties may have been in part intended by Islamabad to do political work. On the one hand, the bombing raids were a form of reassurance that the central government is still strong, even though the president may have been weakened.



On Friday, the lower house of the Pakistani parliament passed the 18th amendment to the constitution, significantly diluting the president’s powers. A vote could not be taken in the senate the same day for lack of a quorum, but the bill is expected to pass there on Monday. After that vote, the president can no longer dismiss the prime minister at will or prorogue parliament, and no can he control appointments to the supreme court. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani praised President Asaf Ali Zardari and the Pakistani military for not interfering in the passage of the amendment or lobbying against it taking immediate effect (which it has). The amendments that had given the president those powers to begin with were martial law amendments implemented by generals during periods of military rule. In fact, Zardari likely acquiesced in the amendment because he is hoping to deflect any further legal action against him on corruption charges. Despite pleading from the Pakistani judiciary, Switzerland has decided not to proceed with a prosecution of Zardari for corruption, saying his position as president makes him immune.

On the other hand, Gilani will attend President Obama’s nuclear summit this week in Washington, and the massive bombardments serve as a reminder to Washington of Pakistan’s value in combating the Taliban and what is left of al-Qaeda in its northwest tribal areas. Given Pakistan’s past as an active proliferator of nuclear technology, the country is otherwise likely to come in for harsh criticism from India and perhaps others. Moreover, many in Washington worry about whether Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure, in the face of the Taliban insurgency. Gilani will argue that Pakistan is a prime security asset to Washington, and that its powerful 550,000-man army is fully in control of assets such as the smalll nuclear stockpile.

President Zardari clearly has a bill he wants to submit to Washington, since he claims that the ‘War on Terror’ cost his country $35 billion and caused a good deal of inflation and poverty.

Although it is true that US military leaders are pleased with Pakistan’s confrontation of militants in Bajaur, Swat and South Waziristan over the past year, suspicions linger that the country’s military continues to play a double game, using some of the Taliban while attacking others. The alleged release by the Inter-Services Intelligence of two prominent Afghan Taliban leaders, including recently, will reinforce suspicions of this double-faced policy. For all its remarkable progress the country has made, both in reversing the terrible legacy of military dictatorship and in finally owInter-Services Intelligencening its Taliban problem, Pakistan is still likely to receive some stern lectures in Washington this week.

UPDATED Iraq: Reactions to the "Collateral Murder" Video

UPDATE 7 APRIL: Juan Cole, highlighting a discussion on Reddit including a number of soldiers, offers these "main conclusions":

1. The cover-up of the pilots' mistake in killing the Reuters cameramen and mistaking their cameras for an RPG is the worst thing about this episode.

2. While the pilots who fired at apparently armed men (and at least 3 were actually armed) thought they were saving US ground troops who had been pinned down from men with small arms, they had less justification for firing on the van. Indeed, the latter action may have been a war crime since the van was trying to pick up the wounded and it is illegal to fire on the wounded and those hors de combat.

Iraq and “Collateral Murder”: The White House Response
US Military & Iraq’s Civilians: The “Collateral Murder” Video

3. While many actions of the pilots may not have been completely wrong under their rules of engagement, nevertheless they often acted inexcusably, and their attitude is inhuman and deplorable.


The US military's Central Command has posted a set of documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, on the deaths in Iraq in 2007 of Reuters journalists, who were among killed in the "collateral murder" video released yesterday by Wikileaks.

James Fallows of The Atlantic, who has covered Iraq extensively over the last decade, reacts:

I can't pretend to know the full truth or circumstances of this. But at face value it is the most damaging documentation of abuse since the Abu Ghraib prison-torture photos. As you watch, imagine the reaction in the US if the people on the ground had been Americans and the people on the machine guns had been Iraqi, Russian, Chinese, or any other nationality. As with Abu Ghraib, and again assuming this is what it seems to be, the temptation will be to blame the operations-level people who were, in this case, chuckling as they mowed people down. That's not where the real responsibility lies.

Bill Roggio of The Weekly Standard has a different view:

There is nothing in that video that is inconsistent with the military's report. What you see is the air weapons team engaging armed men.

Second, note how empty the streets are in the video. The only people visible on the streets are the armed men and the accompanying Reuters cameramen. This is a very good indicator that there was a battle going on in the vicinity. Civilians smartly clear the streets during a gunfight.

Third, several of the men are clearly armed with assault rifles; one appears to have an RPG. Wikileaks purposely chooses not to identify them, but instead focuses on the Reuters cameraman. Why?

Glenn Greenwald of Salon challenges this by putting the video in the context of the Pentagon's fight against Wikileaks and other cover-ups of civilian deaths:

WikiLeaks released a video of the U.S. military, from an Apache helicopter, slaughtering civilians in Iraq in 2007 -- including a Reuters photojournalist and his driver -- and then killing and wounding several Iraqis who, minutes later, showed up at the scene to carry away the dead and wounded (including two of their children).  The video (posted below) is truly gruesome and difficult even for the most hardened person to watch, but it should be viewed by everyone with responsibility for what the U.S. has done in Iraq and Afghanistan (i.e., every American citizen).

Reuters has been attempting for two years to obtain this video through a FOIA request, but has been met with stonewalling by the U.S. military.  As Dan Froomkin documents, the videotape demonstrates that military officials made outright false statements about what happened here and were clearly engaged in a cover-up:  exactly as is true for the Afghanistan incident I wrote about earlier today, which should be read in conjunction with this post.