Iran-Israel "Silent War": Armed Ship Intercepted

The Latest from Iran (5 November): Riding the Wave?
Israel-Palestine: Clinton’s Cairo Visit Pushes Talks Into the Distance
Video & Transcript: Clinton Press Conference in Egypt (4 November)

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The silent war with Iran is continuing. On Wednesday, Israeli commandos seized the Antigua-flagged civilian ship "Francop" and unloaded the largest arms shipment Israel has ever commandeered.

According to Israeli officials, the ship was heading for Egypt, having departed from Iran with weapons destined for Lebanon's Hezbollah. They displayed what they claimed was an Iranian report.



Israel's Foreign Ministry issued an instruction to Israeli embassies and consulates around the world to use the findings on board and to turn the international community against Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said:

Iran is shipping weapons to terror organizations in order to attack Israeli cities and kill its citizens. It is time that the international community applied real pressure on Iran to stop these criminal actions, and support Israel in its battle against terrorists and their patrons.

Following the conclusion of Israeli military intelligence that Hamas' armed strength has grown after the Gaza War, the "existential threat" of Iran is again on the top of Israeli agenda. With support from the US and 27-member EU support in their pocket, who can convince Israeli diplomats that Operation Cast Lead was a failure, whatever the assertions of "war crimes" in the Goldstone Report?

Israel-Palestine: Clinton's Cairo Visit Pushes Talks Into the Distance

Video & Transcript: Clinton Press Conference in Egypt (4 November)

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On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Ali Aboul Gheit spoke to the public after a meeting they had with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

A day earlier, Egyptian Foreign Minister was asking for guarantees for Palestinians and was warning all sides "not to waste time", even as Clinton was playing up "unprecedented concessions" by Israel on settlements. At the conference, this translated into an amiable exchange of Gheit's satisfaction with Washington's "unchanged" position and Clinton's repetition of her rhetoric "calling both sides on the negotiation table."

On settlements, Clinton said:

I want to start by saying our policy on settlements has not changed. And I want to say it again, our policy on settlement activity has not changed. We do not accept the legitimacy of settlement activity.

Well, I can repeat to you what President Obama said in his speech at the United Nations and what he said here in Cairo – that the United States believes that we need a state that is based on the territory that has been occupied since 1967.

That seems a consistent position, since it is impossible to talk about a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders without the prospect of halting settlements in the West Bank. The difficulty remains, however, that Washington has put forward no possibility of pressure on the Israeli side to bring a settlement freeze and thus a move towards the negotiation table.

That difficulty may have been complicated by Clinton's description of the Goldstone Report on Gaza as an "impediment": "We’re not going to let anything deter us or prevent us from working as hard as we possibly can, going forward." Thus, far from showing how Washington could press Israel to recognise the international position, Clinton effectively set up Goldstone as another pretext for Israeli refusal or delay on negotiations: Tel Aviv can simply argue that there will be no talks without a repudiation of the report.

Clinton, offsetting these difficulties, reiterated her "unprecedented concessions" statement from Jerusalem, "What we have received from the Israelis to halt all new settlement activity –-- and I’ll repeat that again, too –-- to halt all new settlement activities and to end the expropriation of land, and to issue no permits or approvals, is unprecedented."

Someone might want to update Madame Secretary that the Netanyahu Government has already approved additional 3,000 housing units and has put an exception of "natural growth" problems to justify further construction.

So where is "unprecedented" in this picture? And where is the stimulus for both sides to come to the oft-upheld negotiation table? If anything, the prospect for talks appears to have receded. After the conference, the chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat declared that Palestinians may have to abandon the goal of creating an independent state, "It may be time for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities, the two-state solution is no longer an option."

U.S. House of Representatives Opposes the Goldstone Report

On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution with a 344-36 vote which condemns the Goldstone Report and urges President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to oppose unequivocally any endorsement of the report.

Following the resolution, U.S. Representative Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Relations committee, said: "This resolution defines the report as biased and unworthy of further consideration."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said: "The report paints a distorted picture. It epitomizes the practice of singling Israel out from all other nations for condemnation."

Democratic Congresswoman Nita Lowey, Chair of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, stated that the Goldstone Report could damage the Middle East peace process::

Israel, like all sovereign nations, has the responsibility to respect human rights and adhere to international law. However, its defense of its citizens against attacks by Hamas militants simply cannot be conflated with terrorist actions.

Facilitating a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is among our most important foreign policy priorities, and further consideration of the Goldstone report could hinder movement toward peace negotiations.

Israel-Palestine: Britain & France Try to Contain Goldstone Report

Israel-Palestine: Clinton Praises Everyone, but No Progress on Talks
Palestine: Goldstone Report Goes Back to UN General Assembly

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The United Nations General Assembly is scheduled to discuss the Goldstone Report on Wednesday. However, a joint French-British statement, delivered to the members of the Assembly on Monday, is calling for the members to agree on three "red lines" already confirmed by the 27 members of the European Union. The "red lines" are:

- A resolution brought for the approval of the General Assembly will not include operational steps, like taking the matter to the Security Council or the International Court of Justice.

- The resolution would call on Israel and the Palestinians to embark on an independent investigation into the events of Operation Cast Lead, and the allegations of war crimes.

- The handling of the Goldstone report will return to the Human Rights Council, the UN body in Geneva. The parties will have to report to the council on the findings of their investigations in a few months.

Even if Palestinian leaders were inclined to accept these condition, they now face signficant pressure from their own constituents. On the other hand, it is also certain that there will be no sanctions on Israel from the Security Council since Washington, Paris and London had already declared their positions regarding the Goldstone Report. Welcome to the deadlock of politics....

Israel's UN Ambassador: United Nations Hijacked by Anti-Semites

Goldstone Latest Comments on Israel & Hamas
Palestine: Goldstone Report Goes Back to UN General Assembly

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On Friday, Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, Gabriela Shalev, criticized the UN Human Rights Council during its weekly session, following the recent endorsement of a resolution based on the Goldstone Report on the Gaza War. According to Shalev:

- There is a constant and exclusive discrimination against Israel.
- More than half of the council's meetings have dealt with condemning Israel for one reason or another.
- The council has approved more resolutions critical of Israel than resolutions criticizing any other UN member country.
- The UN rights council is dominated and used by countries obsessed with demonizing Israel and its democratic nature.
- The basic human rights of thousands of innocent people are violated throughout the world on a daily basis, but the council has and remains silent to their plight