UPDATED Middle East Inside Line: Lebanon Warning, Obama on Iran Sanctions, Clash within Palestinian Authority

Lebanon's Warning: On Wednesday, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri warned Israel, "If there is a war against us, there won't be a division in Lebanon. We will stand against Israel. We will stand with our own people." He added: "We see what's happening on the ground and in our airspace and what's happening all the time during the past two months - every day we have Israeli planes entering Lebanese airspace. This is something that is escalating, and this is something that is really dangerous."

Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman responded sharply, "Hezbollah murdered his father (former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, assassinated in 2005 by unknown assailants) and he is in the position of being a hostage."

Israel: A Loose Cannon for a Middle East Conflict?

Clash in Gaza: Responding to two Gaza-made rockets fired into southern Israel on Sunday and Monday, the Israeli Air Force launched missiles into the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday. A military spokesman said, "The Israel Defense Forces will continue to act firmly against anyone who uses terror against Israel, and we see Hamas as solely responsible for maintaining peace and quiet in the Gaza Strip."


Split in Israeli Cabinet: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced Monday that they intend to promote a bill that would let Israeli citizens vote from abroad in Knesset elections. However, Minister of Defence Ehud Barak was quick to criticize his the measure:

I strongly object to granting the right to vote to Israelis living permanently abroad. Only those people who are here with us and who bear the risks and burden of being here should be allowed to vote in Israel.

Obama Proclaims More Sanctions on Iran: President Barack Obama declared last night that a series of sanctions on Iran are to be developed in the coming several weeks, though he could not assure China's support in the UN Security Council.

Palestinian Authority Out in West Bank?: In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Fahmi Shabaneh, who until recently was in charge of the Anti-Corruption Department in the Palestinian Authority's General Intelligence Service (GIS), warned that Hamas' victory the Fatah-controlled regime in Gaza in 2006-7 is likely to recur in the West Bank. He said that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had surrounded himself with many of the corrupt officials who used to work for his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, and added: “It’s hard to find people in the West Bank who support the Palestinian Authority. People are fed up with the financial corruption and mismanagement of the Palestinian Authority.”

The PA said on Wednesday morning that Shabaneh's allegations were part of an Israeli conspiracy aimed at undermining Abbas because of his refusal to return to the negotiation table unconditionally.

Palestine Special: All Along Israel's West Bank Watchtower

From The Flying Carpet Institute:

A member of the FCI got the chance to tour the Separation Wall last Sunday, seeing the "realities on the ground", as Israeli governments have a habit of saying.

The most expensive project in the history of the state, the Wall or Fence (it is actually both, with the Fence-version suspiciously resembling its US-Mexican counterpart) is responsible for one of the biggest land grabs against Palestinian territory in the recent years. Even more permanent-looking behind it are the settlements, fortresses of the Israeli extreme right amidst a shrinking Palestinian landscape.

Palestine: Abbas “Show Political Will and Roll Back the Occupation”

The Wall is responsible for the arbitrary division of Palestinian land, an elaborate system of permanent surveilance (we had a "friendly visit" by an Israel Defense Forces jeep during the tour), the isolation of Palestinians from their places of residence, and a variety of psychological disorders in the Palestinian population, especially amongst children. The Wall is complemented by so-called Workers Terminals, policed by private security firms and designed to ease the access of Israeli goods to enclaves controlled by the Palestinian Authority, as well as the flow of cheap Palestinian labour to Israel.

But is it really "Apartheid"?



How did this term become so popular among Palestinians and international activists? Probably the reason is the direct optical reality. Seeing the Wall separate the Palestinian enclaves from a modern Israel brings to mind images of a prosperous, European Johannesburg and a "Third World" Soweto township. The Workers Terminals certainly bring to mind the thousands of black South Africans commuting everyday from their townships to the factories and diamond mines of white South Africa.

However, to quote socialist Israeli dissident Moshé Machover, to call this Apartheid is misleading. The situation is worse than Apartheid. The South African Apartheid dug its own grave by ending up as a system of a white ruling class exploiting a black working-class majority. While the Worker Terminals are intended to bring Palestinian labour into Israel, the proportion of Palestinians that are vital for the functioning of the Israeli economy is very small. In fact, a significant amount of workers employed in the factories set up along the barrier, as in Tulkarem, employ not only Palestinians but also migrant workers from countries such as Romania and Thailand.

So the Wall is not an effective high-tech policing operation intended to exploit Palestinian labour. Instead, it is seeks to suffocate economic and cultural activity by the Palestinians to the point of forcing them to leave, while settlements expand from the hilltops to the valleys. (If any doubts arise about this statement, then I suggest reading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent statement that Israel (West Bank) is here to stay.) There is no Palestinian workers' strike that is able to paralyze the Israeli economy and force a significant change in current Israeli policy. Judging by the high levels of unemployment and cases of extreme alcohol abuse, the Palestinian Authority enclaves resemble Native American reservations in the United States.

So calling this Apartheid is a self-defeating statement. Apartheid does a favour to the Palestinians by assigning them a better status than the one they enjoy now.

Palestine: Abbas "Show Political Will and Roll Back the Occupation"

On Sunday, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, in an interview with The Guardian, said that Israel's continued activity in the West Bank was leading to a "one-state solution".

Abbas also said he would be prepared to resume full face-to-face peace negotiations if Israel froze all settlement construction for three months and accepted its June 1967 borders as the basis for land swaps. "These are not preconditions, they are requirements in the road map. If they are not prepared to do that, it means they don't want a political solution," Abbas explained.

UPDATED Israel: The Government Responds to the Goldstone Report on Gaza
Israel-Palestine: Abbas “We Are Considering the US Proposal” For Talks

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad then jumped in. He said that, unless Israel shows that it is rolling back its occupation (referring to continuing settlements), there will be no peace, which is the "only path to security for Israel". Fayyad added:

What is required is negotiations based on settled principles... We need to begin to see things that suggest to our people that indeed the occupation is on its way to being rolled back.

If settlements continue, the political question is how confident can we be that once relaunched, the political process will be able to deliver on permanent status issues.