Israel Goods Boycott Movement Rises

February 11, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

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Um Abed plants an olive tree in support of Palestinian farmers. Credit: Eva Bartlett/IPS.

By Eva Bartlett

ZEITOUN, Gaza, Feb 10 (IPS) – Tawfiq Mandil, 45, stands amongst hundreds of Palestinian farmers, activists, and international supporters in the Gaza Strip’s eastern Zeitoun district, about half a kilometre from the border with Israel. They are renewing a call for the boycott of Israeli goods.“The Israeli army destroyed my house and my five dunums of land (a dunum is 1,000 square metres) on the last day of the attacks in 2009, as well as 20 other homes,” he says.

With signs reading ‘Boycott Israeli Agricultural Products’ and ‘Support Palestinian Farmers’, Mandil and others protesting Israeli oppression of Palestinian farmers joined together Saturday to plant olive trees on Israeli-razed farmland and to implore international supporters to join the boycott of Israeli agricultural produce.

Mandil believes that the boycott is his only hope for justice for Palestinian farmers being targeted by the Israeli army and oppressed by Israel. “We hope that it will put pressure on Israel to stop targeting us and allow us to farm our land as we used to.”

With an Israeli surveillance blimp hovering above and a nearby remotely-controlled machine gun tower open and ready to fire, the significance of the rally’s location near the ‘buffer zone’ was not lost. Israeli authorities prohibit Palestinians from accessing the 300 metres flanking the Gaza-Israel border. In reality, the Israeli army regularly attacks Palestinians up to two kilometres from the border in some areas, rendering more than 35 percent of Gaza’s farmland off-limits.

“By engaging in the trade of settlement produce, states are failing to comply with their obligation to actively cooperate in order to put the Israeli settlement enterprise to an end. Therefore, a ban on settlement produce must be considered amongst those actions that Third Party States should undertake in order to comply with their international law obligations.”

The Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq released a position paper last month condemning the Israeli settlement produce trade. The paper, ‘Feasting on the Occupation: Illegality of Settlement Produce and the Responsibility of EU Member States Under International Law’ highlights the means by which Israeli settlements benefit from the oppression of Palestinian farmers.

“While the EU has been quite outspoken in condemning settlements and their expansion, they continue to import produce from these same settlements and in doing so, help to sustain their very existence,” Al-Haq director general Shawan Jabarin notes in the Al-Haq press release.

“More than 80 Palestinians have been injured and at least four Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks in the border regions since the November 2012 ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian resistance,” says Adie Mormech, 35, a British activist living in Gaza. This is in addition to the many Palestinians killed and hundreds injured in previous years of Israeli army attacks on the border regions.

“There is simultaneous action happening in the occupied West Bank,” says Mormech. “They’re planting near Yitzhar colony, which is notorious for its violence against Palestinians. Around the world, an estimated 30 countries are holding actions in solidarity with Palestinian farmers and fishers.”

Um Abed, 65, from Zeitoun is defiant. “Today we’re planting olive trees. God willing next year we’ll plant lemon, date and palm trees. We grow, they bulldoze, we re-plant.”

The boycott action follows a growing number of initiatives emerging in recent years from the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian students in Gazan universities stepped up the Boycott call in 2012, releasing Youtube videos calling for political action, not aid, from international supporters.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has attracted international support, including the backing of numerous UK and North American universities and scholars.

Increasing numbers of cultural and religious associations, such as the Quakers’ Friends Fiduciary Corporation, are divesting from corporations that profit from or support Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. The United Church of Canada endorsed the boycott of goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements in August 2012.

Dr Haidar Eid, professor at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa University and PACBI member, outlines what BDS entails.

“We are calling for implementation of UN Security Council resolution 242, which calls for withdrawal of occupation forces from the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and east Jerusalem. The second demand is the implementation of the United Nations resolution 194, the return of all Palestinian refugees to the towns and villages from which they were ethnically cleansed in 1948. The third demand is the end to Israel’s apartheid policies in Palestine 1948. We want equality.”

While civil society and students have been in the forefront of BDS actions in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas government has also taken steps calling for boycott. Joe Catron, an American activist based in the Gaza Strip, explains one recent government-led campaign.

“The Adidas campaign began in March 2012, when Adidas was sponsoring a marathon through parts of Jerusalem, including parts that are internationally recognised as occupied. The Ministry of Youth and Sports here called upon the Arab League to boycott Adidas in response to this, which a number of countries did.”

In September 2012, Gaza’s Ministry of Agriculture decided to ban most Israeli fruits entering Gaza.

“Palestinian farmers can grow the fruits we consume,” said marketing director in the ministry Tahsen Al-Saqa. “We need to support and protect our own farmers. They’ve been economically devastated by the Israeli ban on exporting since 2006.”

“Boycott is the key, and it is growing,” says Adie Mormech. “The momentum is so much now that it is not going to stop. It’s going to be like South Africa.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Human Rights, Middle East, Politics, Report, Security Tagged With: , ,

Golan Heights Braces for More Fighting

February 7, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

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The fence and army road separates Majdal Shams from ‘Syria proper’. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

Jillian Kestler-DAmours

MAJDAL SHAMS, Occupied Golan Heights, Feb 07 (IPS) – After Israeli war planes reportedly bombed targets in Syrian territory last week, individuals and groups in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights are quietly preparing for the possibility of escalating violence between Syria and Israel.“We can feel that the presence of the Israeli army in the Golan has been increasing in the last week. People started to prepare for a war situation,” said Dr. Taiseer Maray, director general of the local group Golan for the Development of the Arab Villages.

Israeli security sources reported this week that an Iron Dome missile defence system had been placed on Israel’s northern border with Syria and Lebanon. The move came less than a week after Israeli jets were suspected to have bombed a weapons convoy inside Syria, near the Lebanese border.

Media reports speculated that the weapons were destined for Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, which fought a month-long war with Israel in 2006. The Syrian government, however, said a scientific research centre on the outskirts of Damascus was the target of the Israeli raid.

Syrian officials accused Israel of trying to “destabilise” Syria. They also used the Israeli attack to discredit the opposition movement in Syria, arguing it proved that external forces are responsible for the ongoing uprising against President Bashar Assad.

While Israel hasn’t formally taken responsibility for the bombing, defence minister Ehud Barak said the strike was “proof that when we say something we mean it. We don’t think (Syria) should be allowed to bring advanced weapons systems into Lebanon.”

Fighting between the Syrian army and Syrian resistance groups aiming to oust President Assad has left over 60,000 Syrians dead and forced up to one million people to flee as refugees to neighbouring countries, the United Nations estimates.

According to Maray, as Israel increasingly threatens to become involved militarily in the conflict, preparations for emergency field clinics in the Golan Heights, and across the Israel-Syria ceasefire line are now being planned, should Israel occupy more Syrian land.

“Any kind of fighting, or any movement of (the Israeli) army, will be via the Golan Heights. This makes the Golan a really sensitive area. We try to prepare the shelters. We try to keep more food in our houses, just to be ready for such a possibility,” Maray told IPS from his office in Majdal Shams, the largest Syrian-Arab village in the area.

In 1967, Israel occupied the Golan Heights, a mountainous region and fertile plateau bordered by Lebanon, Jordan and northern Israel. Israel annexed the Golan in 1981 and extended its laws to the territory in a move that is considered illegal by the international community.

About 20,000 Syrian Arabs live in a handful of communities in the Golan Heights, including the largest and northernmost village, Majdal Shams, which lies only 60 kilometres from Damascus.

Most Syrian-Arab residents of the Golan are members of the Druze religious minority. Today, community members hold Israeli ID cards and are considered permanent residents of Israel.

Since the Syrian uprising began, Golan residents have been divided between supporting the Assad government and supporting the opposition movement. In Majdal Shams, physical violence has erupted between the two sides.

“I think every day Assad is losing popularity. It’s not politics. What’s taking place in Syria became a very basic humanitarian thing: people have the right to life,” said Salman Falkredeen, an activist at Al-Marsad, a human rights centre in Majdal Shams.

Speaking from the Al-Marsad office, as the sound of bombs went off in the distance just over the hills of southwestern Syria, Falkredeen said the Syrian uprising has amplified local demands for the end of the ongoing Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights.

“It sharpened the conflict (with Israel) more and more. People began discussing or raising the issue of freedom,” Falkredeen told IPS. “The demand of democracy, the awareness of human rights values, these are new questions that people are asking all the time. People are changing their ideas and their behaviour.”

He added that while the Syrian revolution has had minor, direct impact on the lives of the people in the Golan Heights – young people were barred from studying in Syria, and farmers were unable to market their apples in Damascus, for example – it will have a lasting effect on political consciousness.

“All Syrians will have political experience through the revolution because before that, there was no opportunity for Syrians to develop politics. Under the Assads, Bashar and his father (Hafez), there was no politics. We had a political desert in Syria, but in the last two years, it was a huge school of politics. We are learning in the most painful and hard way.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Conflict, Featured, Middle East Tagged With: ,

Israeli Activists Invite Palestinian Vote

February 4, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Mel Frykberg

RAMALLAH, Feb 04 (IPS) – Unknown to the Israeli government or the Israeli electorate, hundreds of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza took part in the recent Israeli elections by default thanks to an act of civil disobedience by Israeli peace activists.Real Democracy, an initiative comprising thousands of Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian Territories and Israelis, decided that the undemocratic nature of Israel and its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory needed to be challenged.

One month prior to the elections the Real Democracy rebellion started on a Palestinian-Israeli Facebook page. Thousands of Palestinians and Israelis joined the initiative.

More than a thousand Israelis decided to give up their votes to Palestinians from the occupied territories in an act of protest against what the participants saw as the undemocratic nature of the Israeli elections and the United Nations system. Shimri Zamaret, 27, an Israeli researcher from Warwick University in the UK, was one of the founders of the Real Democracy movement.

“The idea started in the UK when people there decided to give up their votes to people in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana to protest the stranglehold of Western powers in the UN over less powerful countries,” Zamaret told IPS.

“We decided to start a similar movement in Israel and Palestine. Palestinians live under a double apartheid system. The Israeli Parliament and the UN are based on inequality between citizens – and are therefore undemocratic. The UN Security Council is dominated by the five superpowers which won World War Two and is totally unrepresentative of the international community today,” Zamaret told IPS.

“Israeli citizens elect a government that controls Palestinians, but Palestinians cannot vote and do not have an independent state,” said Zamaret who was jailed for two years as a conscientious objector for refusing to serve in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

“Through the Israeli government (and the undemocratic Security Council), Israelis also have a de facto veto power over the UN Security Council system. Citizens do not have a direct voice in the United Nations, and the Palestinian government’s UN membership got vetoed,” said Zamaret.

“Palestinians therefore do not have any vote in the UN nor any control over their country. So undemocratic Israel’s monopoly of force is supported by undemocratic control over international institutions.”

Zamaret gave his vote to Omar Abu Rayan, a 19-year-old student from Hebron who ironically decided the best move was not to use the vote but to ‘boycott’ the Israeli elections altogether despite a long debate with Israelis over using ‘his’ vote to make a difference.

“I appreciate the move by the Israeli activists to give voteless Palestinians a voice in the Israeli elections but I don’t think this would have made any difference, it wouldn’t have changed anything on the street. The peace parties in Israel are too small and don’t have enough influence. The no vote was a protest vote,” Abu Rayan told IPS.

“We aren’t expecting the Real Democracy initiative to make a big difference. It’s a symbolic gesture and only relevant as part of a larger campaign to de-legitimise Israel on an international level,” said Israeli freelance translator Ofer Neiman, who also gave up his vote.

“What we wanted to do was make a noise about the occupation and the treatment of Palestinians. We have discrimination even within Israel against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Real Democracy is part of a broader international movement, specifically the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

“Most of the Israeli activists are involved in other activist movements and we all believe that only international pressure on Israel through sanctions will help bring about the end of the occupation,” Neiman, who was kicked out of the IDF for his left-wing political views and was monitored as a student at university for activism against the occupation, told IPS.

Neiman gave his vote to Bassam Aramin from the West Bank village of Anata. “I am a Palestinian citizen, I live in East Jerusalem. I am 44,” said Aramin.

“I am a bereaved father – my 10 year-old daughter Abir was killed by an Israeli soldier on the 16th Jan, 2007, but I have no control over the Israeli government who sent the soldier there. I live under occupation. We Palestinians have no vote or veto in the UN Security Council or the government that controls us. That’s undemocratic.”

Aramin asked Neiman to use his vote for the left-wing Israeli party Hadash even though he is not a supporter of the party.

Palestinian activist Musa Abu Maria, from Beit Omar in the southern West Bank, is also a member of Real Democracy. He used the vote he was given to vote for leftist Haneen Zoabi, one of the few Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset or parliament.

“Many of the Palestinians who took part in the initiative wanted to support the efforts of our Israeli colleagues,” Abu Maria told IPS.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Elections, Middle East, Politics, Report Tagged With: ,

It’s All About Israel

February 3, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

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Senator Chuck Hagel at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Service Committee Jan. 31, 2013. Credit: DoD Photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 02 (IPS) – If former Defence Secretary-designate Sen. Chuck Hagel’s lacklustre performance at his confirmation hearing Thursday heartened neo-conservatives and other hawks opposed to his nomination, those who argued that the Israel lobby has been exerting too great an influence on U.S. foreign policy were ecstatic.Indeed, Stephen Walt, the Harvard international relations professor who co-authored the "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy", issued a special thanks to the Senate Armed Services Committee that held the hearing on his foreignpolicy.com blog Friday, suggesting that controversial 2007 book should sell like hotcakes after what he called “the Hagel circus".

“I want to thank the Emergency Committee for Israel, Sheldon Adelson, and the Senate Armed Services Committee for providing such a compelling vindication of our views,” wrote Walt, who, among other things, has been accused of anti-Semitism for writing a book that criticised the allegedly excessive influence the Israel lobby wields over U.S. foreign policy and the public debate that surrounds it.

As evidence, Walt cited the number of mentions of Israel and its most powerful regional foe, Iran, received in the course of Hagel’s eight-hour ordeal – 166 and 144, respectively, according to a compilation by the Internet publication, Buzzfeed.

By comparison, he noted, the epidemic of suicides among U.S. troops – a necessary concern for any incoming Pentagon chief – was addressed only twice.

In fact, the degree to which Israel and the threat posed to it by Iran dominated the hearing was somewhat understated by Buzzfeed. The full transcript revealed that Israel was brought up no less than 178 times, followed closely by Iran with 171 mentions.

Those numbers compared with a grand total of five mentions of China, the central focus of the Obama administration’s much ballyhooed “pivot” from the Middle East to the Asia/Pacific; one mention (by Hagel himself) of Japan, Washington’s closest Asian ally whose territorial dispute with China has recently escalated to dangerous levels; and one mention of South Korea, Washington’s other major treaty ally in Northeast Asia.

Similarly, NATO, Washington’s historically most important military alliance – and one with which it fought a successful air war in Libya last year and is currently fighting its 12th year in Afghanistan – warranted a total of five mentions.

“It is extraordinary that, in an eight-hour hearing, as little attention was devoted as it was to issues such as China and NATO, which ought to be near the top of the concerns for any secretary of defence of the United States,” said Paul Pillar, a former top CIA analyst who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near and South Asia from 2000 to 2005.

“The emphasis on Israel and Iran – which, in American politics, has become for the most part an Israel issue – demonstrates that the senators were far less concerned with the strategic questions that the secretary of defence should be focused on and much more interested in trying to defeat a nominee who has strayed from political orthodoxy, especially on issues related to Israel,” he told IPS.

Hagel, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and former Republican senator from Nebraska, has come under sustained attack from neo-conservatives – who still exercise a preponderant influence on the Republican Party’s foreign policy views despite the general unpopularity of the Iraq war which they championed – since he was first rumoured to be Obama’s top choice to succeed Leon Panetta as Pentagon chief in mid-December.

The anti-Hagel attacks have been carried out by a number of groups, such as the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), that have refused to disclose the identity of their donors.

The New York Times reported Sunday that billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the single biggest contributor to the Republican presidential campaign last year and a staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was involved in the campaign, by far the most expensive and organised ever mounted against a cabinet nominee.

Initially joined in their attacks by some leaders of the more-mainstream and bipartisan Israel lobby, they charged, among other things, that Hagel was anti-Semitic (in part because he had used the phrase “Jewish lobby” on one occasion) and hostile to Israel.

Conversely, they complained, he has been too sympathetic toward Palestinians, too eager to engage Iran and other Israeli foes diplomatically, and too averse to using military force, particularly against Iran if negotiations over its nuclear programme fail.

On these issues, they argued in a mantra subsequently adopted by half a dozen Republican senators, Hagel was “out of the mainstream” or even “far to the left of” Obama himself.

In fact, Hagel’s views on the Middle East and the use of military force, in particular, not only largely reflect those of the administration and, according to public-opinion polls, of a war-weary electorate, but also of most of the foreign-policy elite. Dozens of retired top-ranked diplomatic, intelligence, and military officials, as well as former Cabinet officers from both Republican and Democratic administration have rallied to Hagel’s defence in recent weeks.

But those “mainstream” views are not reflected in Congress, where the Israel lobby has long wielded its greatest influence.

While its main institutions, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), declared their neutrality on the nominee after his formal nomination by Obama earlier this month, they worked with sympathetic senators from both parties and their staffers to ensure that particular questions would be asked that would elicit reassuring answers with respect to both supporting Israel and preventing Iran from achieving a nuclear bomb by any means necessary.

The effort – which was supplemented by angry prosecutorial performances by several senators, notably John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Ted Cruz, closely associated with neo-conservatives – largely worked, as Hagel recanted or softened some of his more-provocative previous statements to the disappointment of many of his supporters.

But, in some respects, the effort, as suggested by Walt, succeeded too well, simply because it demonstrated quite dramatically to the interested public how completely Israel dominates the foreign-policy agenda, at least on Capitol Hill.

After all, the U.S. remains the world’s one superpower with interests in every country. Its defence budget – at well over half a trillion dollars this year — is greater than the combined budgets of the 10 next-most powerful militaries.

Yet Israel was mentioned more often in the hearing, according to IPS’s tally, than the following countries or entities combined: Iraq (30), Afghanistan (27), Russia (23), Palestine or Palestinian (22), Syria (18), North Korea (11), Pakistan (10), Egypt (9), China (5), NATO (5), Libya (2), Bahrain (2), Somalia (2), Al-Qaeda (2), and Mali, Jordan, Turkey, Japan, and South Korea (once each).

Several key regional powers with which Washington has been trying hard to build or already enjoys strong defence relationships – notably India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia – were not mentioned even a single time. Vietnam was mentioned 41 times but exclusively in relation to Hagel’s wartime service there or his work as a senior official in the Veterans Administration.

“They were not asking questions that had any relevance to the tasks facing the secretary of defence, in terms of either the military or budgetary challenges we face,” noted Amb. Chas. Freeman (ret.), whose appointment early in the Obama administration to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC) provoked such a furious campaign by neo-conservatives and key Israel lobby figures that he felt compelled to withdraw his name from consideration.

“So there was no serious discussion of defence or larger strategic issues,” he told IPS. What was there was a lot of grandstanding about whether or not the nominee was politically correct.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Analysis, Foreign Affairs, Politics, United States Tagged With: , ,

End of Assault Opens Opportunities for Gaza

November 26, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Jillian Kestler-DAmours

JERUSALEM, Nov 25 (IPS) – As the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas seems to be holding, many are hoping that one of the agreement’s main points – the easing of restrictions on people and goods coming in and out of the Gaza Strip – signals a new era for the besieged Palestinian territory.“The people of Gaza cannot go back to the situation as it was before. This cycle of violence and de-development must end,” Ramesh Rajasingham, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territories told IPS via e-mail.

“Lifting of the blockade and allowing the free movement of people and goods to and from the Gaza Strip is the only way to address the chronic humanitarian needs amongst so many Gazans, and facilitate sustainable economic growth that benefits the population as a whole.”

Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement on Nov. 21 mediated by Egypt and the United States, to bring an end to eight days of Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip and Hamas rocket fire onto Israeli cities.

According to a transcript of the agreement released by Agence France-Presse, in addition to halting violence on both sides, the agreement stipulated that further discussions would be held to open the border crossings between Israel and Gaza, and ease current restrictions on “the movement of people and transfer of goods” from Gaza.

According to local reports, Palestinian fishermen have been allowed to fish at a distance of six miles from the Gaza shore, up from three miles, for the first time in three years, and farmers allowed to work their lands within 300 metres of the border fence with Israel.

Israel has gradually implemented a closure policy on the Gaza Strip since the early 1990s, with strictly enforced restrictions on travel and on transfer of goods and services from the Palestinian territory.

Israel adopted more stringent restrictions in 2006 following the abduction of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian fighters. When the Islamic movement Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections and later ousted its rival Fatah party from Gaza – effectively dividing the occupied Palestinian territories into two entities, a Palestinian Authority-ruled West Bank and a Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip – even more Israeli restrictions were enforced.

“The ban on goods from Gaza being marketed to Israel and the West Bank has crippled the agricultural and manufacturing sector. Unemployment in Gaza is one-third of the workforce. Humanitarian assistance is above 70 percent,” said Sari Bashi, director of Gisha, a legal centre backing freedom of movement.

Before June 2007, more than 85 percent of the goods exported from Gaza were sold in Israel and the West Bank; today, products from Gaza cannot be sold in either. Israel now allows an average of 18 truckloads of goods to pass through its territory to be marketed abroad per month, only two percent of pre-2007 export levels.

Under the 1993 Oslo agreement, Israel has a responsibility to treat the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a single, territorial unit. But Israel only allows Palestinians from Gaza to access the West Bank in “exceptional humanitarian cases”. This has largely meant medical patients and their companions, and merchants.

“Families are separated. Students cannot access their studies. Workers cannot access professional opportunities and the fragmentation of Palestinian society is exacerbated. While Israel has a right to conduct security checks on those seeking to travel through Israel, it must recognise the right of Palestinians to travel and choose their place of residence in Gaza and the West Bank,” Bashi told IPS.

The closure policy has also had a devastating impact on healthcare services.

According to Medical Aid for Palestine, hospitals in Gaza are operating with only 40 percent of essential medicines, and 65 percent of medical disposables are at zero stock. There is not enough staff, medical professionals are sometimes forced to re-use rubber gloves, and equipment is often broken, outdated, or altogether missing.

In August, the United Nations found that, should the current Israeli restrictions be maintained, Gaza would be unlivable by 2020. In particular, population growth – which would result in a density of more than 5,800 people per square kilometre – and lack of adequate access to water, electricity, health and education are exacerbating the situation.

“So far very few details have been provided about any changes to the closure policy. Negotiators will negotiate that,” said Gisha’s Sari Bashi, about the potential changes included in the ceasefire agreement.

“But right now, it’s in everybody’s interest. Right now there’s a real opportunity to protect the integrity of Palestinian society in ways that are responsive to Israel’s security needs.”

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Conflict, Featured, Middle East Tagged With: , ,

Gaza Assault Shows a New Egypt

November 24, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Adam Morrow, Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

CAIRO, Nov 23 (IPS) – The reaction of post-revolution Egypt to Israel’s weeklong onslaught on the next-door Gaza Strip – brought to a halt temporarily at least by a Wednesday night ceasefire – has contrasted sharply with the former regime’s callous approach to the besieged coastal enclave."The Mubarak regime unashamedly participated in Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip, never missing an opportunity to pressure Hamas," Tarek Fahmi, Israel affairs expert at the Cairo-based National Centre for Middle East Studies told IPS. "Egypt’s new leadership, by contrast, has expressed its unconditional support for Hamas and the people of Gaza, and actively tried to lift the siege."

President Mohamed Mursi became Egypt’s first freely elected head of state this summer, some 16 months after the ouster of longstanding president Hosni Mubarak. Mursi hails from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, of which the Palestinian resistance faction Hamas – which has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007 – is an ideological offshoot.

Unlike his predecessor, and most Western leaders, Egypt’s new president was quick to denounce the latest round of Israeli bloodletting. In his weekly Friday sermon on Nov. 16, Mursi vowed that Egypt would not leave the Gaza Strip "on its own" to face Israel’s "shameless aggression."

In a clear reference to post-revolution foreign policy changes, he went on to assert: "Egypt today is very different than the Egypt of yesterday."

The latest violence was triggered by Israel’s assassination on Nov. 14 of a top Hamas commander, to which Gaza-based resistance groups responded by firing salvoes of rockets. The subsequent week of unremitting Israeli bombardments – from air, land and sea – left more than 150 Palestinians dead, the vast majority civilians, and hundreds more seriously injured.

In the same period, five Israelis were killed by rocket fire from Gaza. Several more were reported injured.

Following announcement of the ceasefire, Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal expressed gratitude to Mursi for Egypt’s role in mediating an end to the violence. He also thanked the Egyptian president for the latter’s "decisions and approach to Israel’s latest aggression on Gaza."

Since the crisis first began, Egypt’s reaction has not been confined to strongly worded statements.

On the first day of the onslaught, Cairo announced the withdrawal of its ambassador to Israel, while Mursi called on the UN Security Council and the Cairo-based Arab League to hold emergency meetings. Two days later, Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil paid a brief visit to the beleaguered territory in a show of solidarity.

Egypt also opened the Rafah border crossing, the strip’s only link to the outside world (since its 2005 ‘unilateral withdrawal’ from the territory, Israel has kept its border with the strip hermetically sealed). Passengers and cargo, including desperately needed medical supplies, are now flowing from Egypt into the strip, while injured Palestinians are being brought into Egypt for medical treatment.

According to Fahmi, the reaction of Egypt’s new Islamist leadership to the latest crisis in Gaza corresponds to Mursi’s – and by extension the Muslim Brotherhood’s – stated positions on the perennial Arab-Israel conflict.

"Mursi’s reaction is in line with his campaign platform and his post-election statements on the issue," Fahmi explained, "in which he said that Egypt under his leadership would directly support the Palestinian people against Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine and work to secure Palestinian national aspirations."

The Egyptian response to the current crisis contrasted starkly with the Mubarak regime’s reaction to Israel’s 2008/09 ‘Cast Lead’ offensive. Over the course of that three-week-long onslaught almost four years ago, in which Israel used internationally banned weapons, some 1,500 Palestinians – mostly civilians – were killed and thousands more injured.

Despite the ferocity of the Cast Lead assault, Mubarak’s Egypt had kept the Rafah border crossing tightly sealed. Not even Palestinians suffering life-threatening injuries had been allowed into Egypt for medical treatment.

"At the behest of the U.S. and Israel, Mubarak completed the Zionist blockade of the strip – even at the height of the Cast Lead massacre – in hopes of destroying Hamas," Magdi Hussein, political analyst and former head of Egypt’s Islamist-leaning Labour Party told IPS.

"Mursi, by contrast, openly supports the resistance in Gaza and began taking steps to open the border even before the latest aggression," added Hussein, who was jailed for two years under Mubarak for crossing into the strip without permission during Israel’s 2008/09 assault.

Notably, Mursi has also shifted Egyptian support from the Palestinian Fatah movement, which leads the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, to Hamas in Gaza.

"Egypt now supports Hamas, to which the Brotherhood is affiliated ideologically and which espouses a strategy of armed resistance," said Fahmi. "The Mubarak regime had supported Hamas’s bitter rival Fatah, which had insisted on holding fruitless ‘peace talks’ with Israel that utterly failed to improve the Palestinians’ position."

Egyptian support for the people of Gaza – and the resistance based there – has hardly been confined to official circles.

On Sunday, a convoy including hundreds of Egyptian activists of all political stripes briefly visited the strip to express solidarity with their beleaguered Palestinian brethren. Two days earlier, pro-Gaza rallies held across Egypt drew tens of thousands, while Egyptian political groups from across the spectrum are calling for an even bigger mass protest this Friday.

But while Egypt’s Gaza policy has changed fundamentally since last year’s revolution, that of the international community has apparently not. As was the case during Israel’s Cast Lead assault four years ago, the UN Security Council failed to issue a resolution calling for an end to hostilities.

On Tuesday (Nov. 20), one day before the ceasefire announcement, the U.S. blocked a UN Security Council statement condemning the escalating violence.

"Some European capitals appear more sympathetic to Hamas and Gaza this time around," said Fahmi. "Washington’s support for Israel, however, as during Cast Lead, appears to be total."

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This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Commentary, Conflict, Foreign Affairs, Middle East, Politics Tagged With: , ,

In Gaza, Another Eight Days of Killing

November 24, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Mohammed Omer

GAZA CITY, Nov 22 (IPS) – Fouad Hijazi was watching the 7 pm news with his wife and eight children when a missile fired by an Israeli F-16 hit their house in Jabalyia refugee camp, Gaza’s most densely populated area.Fouad, 46, was killed. So were his sons Mohammed, 3, and Suhaib, 2. Fouad’s wife Amna is in Shifa hospital, and her two daughters and four other sons are also in hospital.

Eighteen others from the neighbourhood were injured in the airstrike. Following the airstrike, two firefighters and a rescue team worker were wounded when a wall of the home fell on them. Neighbours told IPS that Fouad Hijazi did not belong to any militant group, and nor has any organisation claimed him as a member.

Relatives took the dead for burial at the Jabalyia cemetery on Wednesday. Bodies are usually brought home from hospital for a last farewell. In the case of the Hijazi family, there was no house left to take them to.

“Just an ordinary man, sitting peacefully with his wife and children in their home. What did they do to deserve this?" cried Umm Mohammed, a cousin of the father.

Israel says it has hit 1,450 targets in the Gaza Strip since assassinating Hamas’s most senior military leader in a missile strike on Nov. 14.

The eight-day attack killed 162 Palestinians, including 42 children – the youngest aged 11 months – 11 women, and 18 elderly persons, the oldest 82 years of age. In all 1,222 have so far been listed as injured, more than half of them women and children. Rockets fired from Gaza have killed five Israelis.

Israel’s airstrikes have hit several locations in Gaza Strip. The targets have included civilians’ houses, apartment blocks, most of the security units, the ministry of interior office, prime minister office, police stations, roads and bridges connecting camps, naval forces, and journalists offices and media centres. Three journalists have been killed, and eight injured.

Israeli leaflets were dropped asking the population to leave their homes all over northern Gaza Strip: Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, Atatra and surrounding locations.

Women and children have been heading to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) schools for refuge after fleeing the northern Gaza Strip. Refugees are sleeping on the floor at these centres.

Sada Assaf, 41, said she fled her house with her two children, her ill husband and his eight children from a previous marriage. "We got this leaflets dropped on our heads, following very intensive days of artillery shelling," Assaf said. She sits in a classroom at Gaza Prep. School for Boys with her husband and children, listening to the news on a tiny radio and hoping the ceasefire will hold. The whole neighbourhood of Al-Attatra in the north of Gaza fled.

The UN says that thousands of people fled to 12 school buildings in the area.

Mais was at home when her telephone rang with a recording playing from the Israeli Army asking her to evacuate and to find somewhere else away from the north. “I don’t feel safe anywhere,” she said. “I am here just to hide under the UN flag.”

“It happened before in 2008, and here we are once again,” said her husband Salah Assaf.

Back then Mais recalls many of her neighbours were asked by the army to evacuate, and later Israeli tank shells killed at least 40 Palestinians who had sought refuge at this very centre. That massacre boosted international groups’ call for a halt to the war on Gaza.

The families at the centres are drawing hope from the ceasefire that appeared to be holding. In the early hours of Thursday morning the skies fell silent over Gaza for the first time in eight days. Gunfire erupted on Gaza streets – it was Gazans celebrating the announcement of ceasefire and victory for Palestinian resistance.

Sada Assaf was looking for the donkey cart that had brought her and her family to the shelter, to now take her back home.

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This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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A War Writ Small On the Other Side

November 21, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Pierre Klochendler

ASHDOD, Southern Israel, Nov 20 (IPS) – Overhead on a bombing mission, an Israeli Air Force F16 screams its way towards Gaza. On the street, the fighter jet’s shriek is covered by a plaintive sound – a “red alert”. Within seconds, an “Iron Dome” anti-missile missile launched roaring in a spark of light intercepts the incoming GRAD rocket.“It isn’t safe for the children here. We’re leaving the city for the day; we’re coming back this evening. We don’t have anywhere else to stay,” laments Elisheva Pinto, with her daughter Chava, 13, and her son Arieh, 11, at her side inside the central station’s shelter, waiting to board a bus to Jerusalem.

Schools are closed for a fourth day. Playgrounds are empty.

The day before, on Saturday, the tenement building located on Independence Avenue, 93, in the centre of this working class city of over 200,000 people, sustained a direct hit. No one was killed.

Property Tax Authority assessors have come to evaluate the damage. The rocket hit an apartment on the fourth floor. The flat’s a wreck. A gaping hole on the wall of the balcony; shrapnel on the walls of the living room are testament of the rocket’s trajectory.

A myriad of broken shards of glass are strewn on the floor, mixed with pellets of metal. When the rocket exploded, countless pellets scattered, pierced through bonnets of cars parked in the street down below, maximising the devastation.

Remnants of frozen life are everywhere. On the dining table, a framed family portrait – a couple and their two young daughters – has been tossed away by the blast on a plate containing the leftovers of a modest sabbatical lunch of rice, lentils and spring chicken.

The Elikashvilis, the tenants, have been evacuated to a hotel in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv, 30 kilometres to the north. The landowner reports to the assessors just as a news bulletin on the radio reports that Tel Aviv has also been targeted.

Another “red alert” resounds in the living room. The visitors leave the useless apartment, and run through the corridor to the building’s staircase which serves as shelter for most residents. Some have preferred to stay in their private shelter. In recently-built construction, the law requires that each flat be equipped with a protected room.

Two floors below, the Amsaleg family – the grandparents, the mother and her two small children Natanel and Ilay – cuddle together under the dim light. “This is not life!” Annette Belladev, the grandmother, protests.

End of alert – the Amsalegs returns to their three-room apartment.

Natanel is hungry, hasn’t eaten for a day. He prepares himself a slice of toasted bread with cream cheese at the kitchen table. “I’ve been sick vomiting because of the missile,” he says. “You’ll be fine, right Natanel?” his mom, Dvora, comforts him, brushing his cropped hair with her hand.

And yet there’s another alert, Natanel cuts short his quick snack and he, his younger brother, mom, “grandpa and ma”, all rush back to the staircase. They’ve got 30 seconds to take shelter before they hear the far away explosion. The air trembles.

November 20 marks Universal Children’s Day. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is in Jerusalem and Ramallah (in the West Bank) to assist the current ceasefire efforts. “A day of fraternity and understanding between the children of the world,” is the blessing, and the wish, put up on the UN’s official website.

Since the start of the “Pillar of Defence” operation launched by Israel on Hamas in Gaza on Wednesday, at least 24 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli fire in more than 1,400 Air Force and Navy raids, according to Palestinian health officials; more than 200 have been wounded. One Israeli child has been wounded by Palestinian fire during one of some 1,200 rocket attacks.

Here in this port city, on an average day, children and their families live under the threat of ten rocket attacks launched by Palestinian militants from Gaza, just 23 kilometres away.

No one in Ashdod will pretend that Israeli children suffer the same predicament as the one endured by the children in the Gaza Strip. But fear and pain makes you blind and oblivious to the other’s pain and fear, and selfish.

Natanel is nine years old today. He looks around the staircase at the sound of the alarm, his face convulsed in a final moment of terror, in some sort of silent supplication. “We’ll celebrate your birthday when all this is over, right Natanel?” mom comforts her son.

“What do you wish for your birthday?” she asks him. “I wish that Israel kills all the Palestinians, all of them, and their children as well,” he answers impassively.

This is the story of a war writ small by young, unforgiving people.

“You shouldn’t say such awful things,” Natanel’s mother protests, “Jews and Arabs, we’re all human beings. Like us, they’re stuck in an impossible quagmire. Just like us, they didn’t ask for it.”

Natanel imperceptibly nods his ascent. Unlike the adult role model who kisses him, he seems to be feeling very little for “the other side”.

When quiet sets in again, the day is spent gazing at the television, preposterously watching the news announcing what’s happening right here, at home: Israel’s ferocious assault; the destruction of an incoming rocket by the “Iron Dome” battery located on a hillock on the city’s outskirt.

Natanel is bored: “I wish I’d go to school and play. I miss my friends.”

Another rocket attack – it’s the third one in one hour – and another rocket interception. Looming over the sea, a cloud of white smoke stains the immaculate sky.

Ten minutes later, the routine of life takes over from matters of life and death. Natanel is back at the kitchen table, butters another slice of toasted bread. “So, when shall we organise your birthday party, Natanel?” asks Dvora, preparing a hot cocoa. “In one month,” he murmurs, “When the war’s over…”

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This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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Israel Prepares for Deeper Confrontation

November 17, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Nov 17 (IPS) – Four days into Israel’s fierce assault on Hamas in Gaza, the ongoing operation looks on the surface a remake of the Gaza War of 2008-9 – with one unanswered distinction: whether it is aimed at completing what the previous onslaught didn’t achieve – the removal of the Palestinian Islamic movement from power once and for all.Preparing to expand the operation, the Israeli army has drafted 16,000 reserve soldiers from infantry, engineering and armoured battalions, and from the Home Front command, and approved the call-up of 75,000 reservists. Four years ago, less than 10,000 reservists had been mobilised.

When it launched its operation dubbed ‘Pillar of Defence’ on Wednesday with the targeted assassination of Hamas’s military wing commander Ahmad Jabari and the destruction of most of Hamas’s long-range ‘Fajr’ rockets arsenal, Israel’s stated goal was somehow modest – to force Hamas into a long-term ceasefire that includes all Islamist factions, and thus ensure quiet on Israel’s south-western border.

But the means employed to achieve that goal are far from modest.

Israel’s Air Force and Navy have been pounding rocket launchers, bunkers, guerrilla positions and command centres in hundreds of attacks, 200 just on Friday night. On Saturday the Hamas headquarters were bombed.

Hundreds of rockets hit Israeli towns and villages in a 40-kilometre radius from Gaza, killing three civilians. In a first since the first Gulf War (1991), long-range rockets landed in the larger Tel Aviv metropolitan area, without causing damage.

“All signs suggest that Israel has set a relatively modest goal – a long-term truce,” Israeli defence analyst Ron Ben-Yishai wrote in the Israeli centrist daily Yedioth Ahronoth. Meanwhile, there’s no plausible sign that Hamas prepares to agree to such truce.

Though Israel still enjoyed relative freedom of action and Western support as at the start of operation ‘Cast Lead’ four years ago, one factor that might constrain the Israeli military is the risk of the current operation sliding into evermore disproportionate use of force and indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians.

The three-week war in 2008-9 resulted in the killing of 1,400 Palestinians, 300 of them under 18 years of age. Israel was subsequently accused of “war crimes” by the Goldstone inquiry commission in a report following the war.

Israel then argued that it had restored deterrence. In effect, periods of calm alternated with periods of tension. This year, with a total of 750 rockets launched on Israel by Palestinian guerrillas prior to the current escalation and tit-for-tat retaliation by Israel, lulls in hostilities were increasingly short-lived.

Yet, there’s an important consideration in Israel’s contingency plans for a ground attack – the Arab Spring that has radically changed the region and closed in on Israel’s northern and southern borders, hyping Israel’s prevalent feeling of insecurity.

Within one week, adding to the missile attack claimed by Hamas on an Israeli jeep – the ‘match’ that Israel says ignited the present conflict – in the north errant shells launched by the Syrian army against rebel positions landed on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Israel twice retaliated by shelling Syrian positions. It also faces guerrilla attacks from Egypt’s Sinai, a region adjacent to the Gaza Strip.

The current offensive is thus also meant to test the reaction of Egypt, whose security cooperation is necessary for enforcing the 1979 peace treaty, and stability in Sinai and Gaza.

By recalling the Egyptian ambassador from Israel and appealing for U.S. and Arab League intervention, President Muhammad Mursi seemed to show his preference for diplomacy. On Friday, he dispatched Prime Minister Hesham Qandil on a brief solidarity visit to Gaza.

Israel’s ulterior motive behind the operation might be just that – not only to deliver a deterrent message to Hamas through Egypt, but to show the larger Arab world, including the Shia organisation Hezbollah in Lebanon, and beyond that, Iran, that Israel is still strong and strikes when feeling threatened.

By and large, the operation serves both foes’ interests. For instance, it serves Israel, partly because so long as the operation continues, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s declared intention to have the U.N. General Assembly endorse Palestine as a non-member state is no pressing matter.

After having prevented more extreme Islamist factions from shelling Israel during four years of uneasy security ‘cooperation’ with Israel, Hamas can finally reposition itself at the vanguard of the resistance against the Israeli occupation.

Besides, Hamas’s non-compliance to an Israeli-imposed truce could constitute a deliberate tactic aimed at dragging the Israeli military into Gaza in a remake of the 2008-9 war, thereby hoping that Israel’s invasion will arouse international opprobrium.

On Friday evening, ‘Fajr’ rockets targeted Jerusalem and hit the occupied West Bank.

In theory at least, Hamas’s brinkmanship could inadvertently achieve what the Gaza war didn’t achieve – its own removal from power once and for all after five years of rule, and replacement by Abbas’s Palestinian Authority.

But Hamas knows what Israel knows – expecting the Palestinian Authority to take control over the Strip under such conditions is improbable. And it’s also highly improbable that having withdrawn from it voluntarily in 2005, Israel would want to reoccupy the Gaza Strip.

In addition, given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s track record regarding peace negotiations with Abbas, the period of grace that Israel currently enjoys would be short-lived were the Israeli Prime Minister to order a full-fledged invasion of Gaza.

Eventually, the tangible prospect of Netanyahu’s re-election in two months might have a moderating effect on the operation, even though placing security – neither peace nor social issues – high on the agenda of the election campaign serves the incumbent’s calculations.

After all, getting Israel entangled in Gaza for too long and too close to election date could risk spoiling his chances of remaining at the helm.

Yet, as long as Hamas refuses to agree to a meaningful truce with Israel, the operation will go on, with all the risks of a deeper confrontation that the continuation of the operation entails.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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Israeli Firepower Threatens to Overwhelm Palestinians

November 17, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 17 (IPS) – When the late Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), was engaged in a heavily one-sided battle against a robustly-armed Israel in 2000, he admitted the Palestinians were completely outgunned by the Israelis.As the the U.S.-supplied Cobra helicopters rained fire on the West Bank and Gaza, Arafat told reporters, "I have only one aeroplane," alluding to his single-aircraft Palestinian airline.

Even in routine military jargon, an "aeroplane" no longer exists – particularly in an age of jet fighters and attack helicopters – proving how powerless the Palestinians remained as a fighting force against Israel.

The PLO’s rockets and machine guns at that time were overwhelmed by an Israeli military arsenal beefed up with some of the world’s most sophisticated military equipment.

The air force inventory included F-15 and F-16 fighter planes, E-2C Hawkeye reconnaissance aircraft, Kfir military trainers, Boeing mid-air refueling aircraft, and Apache, Chinook and Sikorsky Blackhawk helicopters – virtually all of them doled out mostly as outright military grants from the United States.

And as Hamas, the successor to the PLO, now finds itself in a military skirmish with Israel in Gaza, the long-range rockets falling on Israel are still unmatched by Israel’s missiles, warships, battle tanks, mortar, howitzers and air defence radar.

An Israeli fighter plane early this week blew up, with pinpoint accuracy, a vehicle carrying a Hamas military leader and his family.

Nearly 12 years after Arafat’s admission of military helplessness, the Palestinians seemed armed only with rockets, mortars, assault rifles and anti-aircraft guns against Israel’s laser-guided bombs, armoured vehicles, battle tanks and armoured personnel carriers.

In Middle Eastern politics, it is long established fact that no Arab country – or even a combination of Arab countries – would be able to overpower the Israelis.

The latest Global Militarisation Index released last week by the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC) listed Israel as "the world’s most militarised nation", followed by Singapore, Syria, Russia, Jordan and Cyprus.

Dan Darling, military markets analyst for Asia/Europe at Forecast International, told IPS that "in terms of raw firepower and military technologies Israel remains the most advanced military nation in the region".

The defence exporting policy of the U.S., and to a lesser extent other European nations, is the retention of the status quo, he said.

"Thus every approved defence sale to an Arab nation in the Middle East is weighed against the consequent pressure brought to bear on Israel’s qualitative military edge (QME)", he noted.

For instance, he pointed out, the next-generation F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter plane has been approved for sale to the Israelis, but is unlikely to get the go-ahead for interested Arab parties until the Israeli Air Force is equipped with the platform and its personnel brought up to speed on utilising and maintaining the aircraft.

"And even then the number of aircraft and the planes accompanying weapons and electronics suites approved for an Arab country will not be allowed to measure up to the level granted the Israelis," said Darling.

The United States has also helped fund and develop Israeli anti-rocket/mortar/missile air-defence systems such as David’s Sling and Iron Dome.

Born in conflict, Israelis realise their country has to maintain a strong national security apparatus, Darling said.

On the domestic side, the Israeli defence electronics industry is well advanced in the area of unmanned aerial and ground platforms, he added.

In terms of pure spending, however, nobody in the region invests more in defence and security than Saudi Arabia (48-plus billion dollars in 2012).

Forecast International, a U.S. based company which also monitors arms sales worldwide, has ranked Israel second, regionally, in terms of defence budgets, at 14.7-15.0 billion dollars, just ahead of Iraq (14.6 billion dollars) and well ahead of the United Arab Emirates (10 billion dollars).

According to the 2012 Congressional Budget Justification put out by the U.S. State Department, outright U.S. military grants to Israel remained at 2.8 billion each in 2010 and 2011, rising to 3.1 billion dollars in 2012.

The State Department also said that 2009 marked the first year of a 10-year, 30-billion-dollar military financing memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Israel.

"U.S. assistance helps ensure that Israel maintains a qualitative military edge over potential regional threats, preventing a shift in the security balance in the region, and safeguarding U.S. interests," the State Department said.

Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday he was extremely concerned about the continued violence in Gaza and Israel and deeply worried by the rising cost in terms of civilian lives.

Ban, who is planning a visit to the Middle East, "urgently appealed to all concerned to do everything under their command to stop this dangerous escalation and restore calm".

Walking a thin line between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he said, "Rocket attacks are unacceptable and must stop at once. Israel must exercise maximum restraint."

Meanwhile, the 15-member Security Council met at a late night session Thursday. But there was no decision on how to deal with the escalating violence.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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