Overplaying Its Hand, Israel Still Holds Plenty of US Cards
Overplaying Its Hand, Israel Still Holds Plenty of US Cards
More than ever, Israel is isolated from world opinion and the squishy entity known as the international community. The Israeli government keeps condemning the Iran nuclear deal, by any rational standard a positive step away from the threat of catastrophic war.
In the short run, the belligerent responses from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are bound to play badly in most of the U.S. media. But Netanyahu and the forces he represents have only begun to fight. They want war on Iran, and they are determined to exercise their political muscle that has long extended through most of the Washington establishment.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/11/25-0
The Palestinian Capitalists that have gone too far
While most Palestinians living under Israeli occupation are struggling to survive, a powerful group of Palestinian capitalists is thriving and growing in political, economic, and social influence.
The cost, all too often, is their engagement in economic normalization projects. In other words, they deal with the Israelis as though they were a "normal" business partner rather than an occupying power that has ruthlessly violated Palestinian rights for over 65 years.
In this policy brief, Al-Shabaka Policy Member Tariq Dana sheds light on the ways in which these Palestinian capitalists exercise political influence and social control and gives examples of the economic normalization projects in which they have engaged.
The repeated failure of bilateral negotiations brokered by the United States to halt and reverse Israels aggressive colonialism regularly fuels speculation about a 3rd Intifada (uprising) against the Israeli occupation. However, a 3rd Intifada depends on the interaction of two sets of processes: the collective repressive and dehumanizing conditions of life under occupation, on the one hand, and, on the other, the changes that have taken place within Palestinian society in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBG), as well as the overall Palestinian political movement.
The Palestinian Authority prevents people from expressing their anger at the occupation, so the centers of struggle moved to areas where the PA has no influence: Jerusalem, within Israel and the West Bank's Area C.
Only 10 percent of Palestinians in Gaza would vote for current president Mahmoud Abbas if elections were held now, according the results of a recent poll released Tuesday.
Some 29.8 percent would vote for senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh, who headed the former government in the Strip, the poll, conducted by the Gaza-based House of Wisdom Institute, showed.
Twenty-eight percent would choose jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, and 32.4 percent would choose a different candidate.
PA forces regularly conduct politically motivated arrests
Palestinian Authority police regularly detain people in the West Bank due to their political affiliation, an official said Sunday.
Khalil Assaf, a member of the subcommittee on civil liberties formed after the West Bank-Gaza unity government was sworn in in June, told Ma'an that regardless of the committee's formation, none of its recommendations have been implemented.
"Every day people are being detained in the West Bank because of their political affiliation, though in most cases they are released within days," Assaf said.
Cracking down on Palestinian resistance under the pretext of criminal offenses and business interest
Hebron: Cracking down on Palestinian resistance under the pretext of criminal offenses and business interests
Unit 101 of the Palestinian Authority is carrying out a major security crackdown south of Hebron, which it claims it meant to pursue wanted fugitives. But that region happens to be under the Israeli occupations control, so it is unlikely that the Palestinian Authority is only seizing illegal weapons but not the resistance weapons it may find. While it would be inaccurate to claim that there are no criminal activities taking place there, the operations of the Palestinian Authority in the areas witnessing friction with Occupation may not be entirely innocent.
The nostalgia for the old leader is not uncommon: in the West Bank these days, posters with Yasser Arafats face appear everywhere and there are still many Palestinian shops that, close to the cash register, have a picture of him. There are also many critical voices, those that rise both among political activists and members of political parties, from Fatah to the Popular Front: There were two Arafats, one before and one after the Oslo accords. Respect for the first one, disapproval for the second.
Bild : Members of the Palestinian security forces detain a Palestinian demonstrator during clashes after Hamas supporters tried to reach the Israeli checkpoint, in a protest against Israel restrictions at the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the city centre of the West Bank city of Hebron on October
Abbas 'supports' Egypt action on Gaza tunnels
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he supported Egypt's crackdown on tunnels linking the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to the Sinai Peninsula to protect itself from fighters, according to a media report.
"We have supported all the precautionary measures taken by the Egyptian authorities to close the tunnels and stop the trafficking of arms and the passage of people between Gaza and the Sinai," Abbas said in an interview with Egyptian magazine Al-Ahram Al-Arabi due to be published on Saturday, extracts of which were published by MENA news agency.
"We will continue to support any measure protecting Egypt from danger," Abbas was quoted as saying.