Saturday Debate: Prosperity or Invasion in the West Bank?

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Israel's high-profile Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, has been on an intense public-relations campaign over the last week. He had a nice chat with Fareed Zakaria on CNN and then wrote last week in the  On August 13, The Wall Street Journal published "The West Bank Success Story". Oren explained that the economy of the West Bank has been flourishing because of the decline of terrorism and corruption and because of Israel’s contribution to the area's financial boom. After “the Palestinian initiative [on security] and the responsible fiscal policies of West Bank leaders”, supported by Israel’s initiatives through “removing dozens of checkpoints and road blocks, withdrawing Israeli troops from population centers, and facilitating transportation into both Israel and Jordan”, the West Bank is enjoying “an annual economic growth rate of 7%, declining unemployment, a thriving tourism industry, and a 24% hike in the average daily wage". Meanwhile, in Gaza, “Hamas has spent millions of dollars restocking its supply of rockets and mortar shells”.

Slovaj Zizek, not quite as high-profile as Oren, begs to disagree. Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, wrote on Tuesday, "Quiet slicing of the West Bank makes abstract prayers for peace obscene". Zizek claims, "While paying lip-service to the two-state solution, Israel is busy creating a situation on the ground that will render such a solution impossible.” Israel’s “bureaucratic invasion” of the West Bank, with legal  settlement constructions, is the main obstacle to peace:

The state of Israel is clearly engaged in a slow, invisible process, ignored by the media; one day, the world will awake and discover that there is no more Palestinian West Bank, that the land is Palestinian-free, and that we must accept the fact. The map of the Palestinian West Bank already looks like a fragmented archipelago.

So, what do you think? Is the Netanyahu Government deliberately slowing the peace process through “the pretext of economic flourishing”, whose primary outcome is the widening of the gap between Gazans and the inhabitants of the West Bank? Or is this economic growth the only way to reach a settlement through a “bottom-up” process, even if the issue of settlements is still a political problem to be resolved?

West Bank Success Story

The Palestinians are flourishing economically. Unless they live in Gaza.
Michael B. Oren

Imagine an annual economic growth rate of 7%, declining unemployment, a thriving tourism industry, and a 24% hike in the average daily wage. Where in today's gloomy global market could one find such gleaming forecasts? Singapore? Brazil? Guess again. The West Bank.

Read rest of article....

Quiet slicing of the West Bank makes abstract prayers for peace obscene

Condemnation of 'illegal' settlements and violence only blurs the reality of what the Israeli state is sanctioning, day by day.
By Slovaj Zizek

On 2 August 2009, after cordoning off part of the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in east Jerusalem, Israeli police evicted two Palestinian families (more than 50 people) from their homes; Jewish settlers immediately moved into the emptied houses. Although Israeli police cited a ruling by the country's supreme court, the evicted Arab families had been living there for more than 50 years. The event – which, rather exceptionally, did attract the attention of the world media – is part of a much larger and mostly ignored ongoing process.

Read rest of article....

Boiling Point for US-Israeli Relations: The Warning to Israel from Within

UPDATE (9 August, 1920 GMT): The Israeli Government is bringing the hammer down on Nadav Tamir after his criticism of the Netanyahu Government and its endangerment of US-Israeli relations. He has been summoned home and disciplined for his "very regrettable" memorandum.

You want to know how much trouble is Tamir in? Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon not only went public on Army Radio with criticism of the diplomat. He took the trouble to Twitter, "Nadav Tamir's document was not the work of a professional and contained more opinion than data."

How serious is the effect on US-Israeli relations of Israel’s uncompromising hard line on Palestine?

According to the Israeli daily newspaperHaaretz, Israel's consul general in Boston, Nadav Tamir, wrote a warning letter to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Tamir accused the Netanyahu Government of endangering relations with Washington and risking the alienation of the Jewish lobby in the United States:

The manner in which we are conducting relations with the American administration is causing strategic damage to Israel. The distance between us and the US administration has clear consequences for Israeli deterrence.

There are American and Israeli political elements who oppose Obama on an ideological basis and who are ready to sacrifice the special relationship between the two countries for the sake of their own political agendas.

There has always been a discrepancy in the approaches of both states [on the issue of settlements], but there was always a level of coordination between the governments. Nowadays, there is a sense in the United States that Obama is forced to deal with the obduracy of the governments in Iran, North Korea, and Israel.

The administration is making an effort to lower the profile of the disagreements, and yet it is [Israel] that...is highlighting the differences.

The letter of Israel's Consul General is an explicit rejection of Israeli political language, which has been intensifying around the importance of Israeli ethnicity and Judaism, especially on the issue of settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Moreover, it underlines the effect on US perceptions. Israel’s image is shifting from a democratic and modern ally to “the source of obduracy” in the region as Israeli politicians dig in their heels on the issue of a freeze on settlements.

Indeed, the wider context bears out the pertinence of Tamir’s warning, with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s ultra-nationalism and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s selective reading of political history.

In an interview with The Times of London in June, Lieberman  applied the “clash of civilizations” theory to the Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was part of a broader "clash of values between civilizations" and was not the key for bringing peace to the region. He asserted, "With 9/11 and terrorist acts in London, Madrid, Bali, in Russia, I can't see any linkage with the Israeli-Palestinian problem."

In his major foreign policy speech in June, Netanyahu rejected an open approach to negotiations for a one-sided presentation of history:

Those who think that the continued enmity toward Israel is a product of our presence in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, is confusing cause and consequence… The attacks against us began in the 1920s, escalated into a comprehensive attack in 1948 with the declaration of Israel’s independence, continued with the fedayeen attacks in the 1950s, and climaxed in 1967, on the eve of the six-day war, in an attempt to tighten a noose around the neck of the State of Israel… All this occurred during the fifty years before a single Israeli soldier ever set foot in Judea and Samaria.

Palestine, for the Prime Minister, is always “the other” Israel's “universal, modern and right” values…

It is these statements that are the target of Tamir’s letter. Can Lieberman and Netanyahu sustain these statements when there are increasing doubts in Washington --- both because of the direct consequences for Palestine and the wider efects in the region --- over whether the political situation issustainable?

Saudi Arabia to US: It is Israel's Move (However You Report It)

For the Associated Press, Saudi Arabia's rejection of a  US request that it establish ties with Israel was pretty cold-blooded. 
 
Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said "bluntly" that his Government was "not interested" until Israel withdrew to 1967 borders, while SoS Hillary Clinton "looked on" during the joint news conference.

Mina Al Orabi offers a much different framing in the Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat. Saud al Faisal "was keen to express Saudi Arabia’s 'thanks and appreciation to President Obama and to Secretary Clinton for their early  and robust focus on trying to bring peace to the Middle East'.... However, he  also indicated that 'Israel must decide if it wants real peace, which is at hand, or if it wants to continue obstructing and, as a result, leading the region towards instability and violence.'"

Saud got to the heart of the preference of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for talks on specific economic and security matters rather than a broad two-state settlement: “Today, Israel is trying to distract by shifting attention from the core issue – an end to the occupation that began in 1967 and the establishment of a Palestinian state --- towards incidental issues such as academic conferences and civil aviation matters. This is not the way to peace.”

For Saud, “The question is not what the Arab world will offer....The question really is: what will Israel give in exchange for this comprehensive offer?"

Asharq al-Awsat also made clear that Secretary of State Clinton was far from mute. She diplomatically restated that the Obama Administration “is committed to comprehensive peace in the region,” and expressed thanks to “the Prince for the leadership that King Abdullah and his government has shown by championing the Arab Peace Initiative".

The Associated Press may want to portray the Saudis as the intransigent obstacles to peace. After all, more than 200 US Congressmen/women have signed a letter to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah "calling for precisely the measures that Saud rejected and chastising the country for its stance". 

The fact beyond the framing remains, however, that all movement is suspended without a substantive response from Tel Aviv. And if the rumoured White House spin is true --- President Obama will announce a "Middle East plan" after his meeting with Egypt's Hosni Mubarak on 17 August --- that response better come soon.