Israel Continues Colonization of East Jerusalem

Haaretz: The White House responded angrily Tuesday to Israel’s plan to build 900 new housing units beyond the Green Line in Jerusalem, despite specific objections from the U.S., saying that “we are dismayed.”

In a statement, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs voiced the U.S.’s disappointment with “the Jerusalem Planning Committee’s decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem.”

The Jerusalem municipal planning committee approved the construction plan Tuesday despite an expose in Israel’s Yedioth Aharonot newspaper earlier in the day revealing that the U.S. has specifically objected to the construction outlined in the plan.

Maan: Israeli bulldozers demolished a four-story house in Jerusalem as reports in the Israeli media announced the approval of construction of 900 new settlement homes in the Israeli Gilo settlement on Tuesday.

Neighbors of Nasry Nassar Al-Husseini said his home, a four-story, multi-family structure in a neighborhood south of the Old City of Jerusalem, was destroyed by Israeli bulldozers as the family looked on. The structure was home to 30 Palestinians.

The demolition is part of what Palestinians call an ongoing campaign of Judaizing Jerusalem, including the eviction of Palestinians from their homes, the destruction of Palestinian homes and the continued construction of settlements.

JPost: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is willing to show “restraint” in construction in the West Bank, but will not accept any restriction on building in Jerusalem, senior government sources said Tuesday night, following the Jerusalem Municipal Planning Committee’s approval of a plan to build some 900 units in the capital’s southeastern Gilo neighborhood.

Washington reportedly objected to the plan earlier this week, in a meeting between Mara Rudman, a top aide to US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, and Defense Ministry chief of staff Michael Herzog. The issue was also apparently raised again on Monday at a meeting between Mitchell and Netanyahu’s envoy Yitzhak Molcho.

US Refuses to Back Palestinian Statehood on ‘67 Borders

The US commitment to “negotiations” has successfully stripped the word of any meaning.  Negotiations cannot occur when one side asserts its power to prejudice the very thing under negotiation.  When Israel refuses to end its policy of colonization via settlements, in other words, it is also prejudicing the very thing under negotiation: independence for Palestinians in what remains of Palestine.  Israelis have refused to “negotiate” in the past.  Consider Arial Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza as one example. Don’t Palestinians have the same “right”?   If Israel refuses to “negotiate” on terms that do not prejudice the outcome of the negotiations, then the Palestinians can declare their state unilaterally, especially since Israel has no legitimate claims over the West Bank (on ‘67 borders).

Maan: The United States backs Palestinian efforts to achieve an independent state, but only through negotiations with Israel, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters on Monday.

“We support the creation of a Palestinian state that is contiguous,” he said. “We are convinced that has to be achieved through negotiations between two parties. We support a Palestinian state that arrives as a result of negotiations between two parties.”

Al Jazeera: Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has warned the Palestinian leadership against any attempts to unilaterally declare statehood for the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

West Bank-based Palestinian officials said on Sunday that they were preparing to ask the United Nations Security Council to declare their backing for the Palestinian quest for an independent state.

In a radio address on Sunday evening, Netanyahu said: “There is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

“Any unilateral action would only unravel the framework of agreements between us and can only lead to one-sided steps on the part of Israel.”

Netanyahu did not specify what “steps” Israel could take, but Israeli legal experts have said that if the Palestinians were to move forward on their own then Israel could cancel interim peace accords.

“Israel could say there has been such a gross and major violation that the agreement itself is no longer in force,” Robbie Sabel, a former legal adviser to Israel’s foreign ministry, told The Associated Press news agency.

Fawaz Gerges: Abbas’s Hopes for Obama’s Intervention

NY Times: Despite Mrs. Clinton’s efforts to soften the impact of her comments from Jerusalem, that new shift has damaged the administration’s credibility and authority in the region. The lesson learned by Arabs and Israelis alike is that President Obama does not possess the political will to push forward his vision of a two-state solution. His capitulation on settlements sends the wrong message to both camps and emboldens them to resist making the necessary concessions for a breakthrough.

Having won the first round on settlements, Mr. Netanyahu will no longer take President Obama’s vision of peace seriously. His allies have already hailed President Obama’s retreat as a diplomatic victory.

Danny Ayalon, the deputy foreign minister, said that Israel’s policy of resisting U.S. pressure had paid off, while his cabinet colleague Daniel Hershkowitz declared: “The U.S. administration understands what we have always said — that the real obstacle to negotiations are the Palestinians.”

In the first six months of his administration, President Obama raised the expectations among Muslims of a real change in American policy and buoyed Palestinian hopes that he would deliver them their long-expected independent state.

Those hopes are rapidly fading, replaced by disillusionment and cynicism. More and more voices say that President Obama is no different from his predecessors, and that all he offers is empty rhetoric. The chorus of Palestinian and Arab protests and disappointment must be set against promises made and high expectations set by the new president in the first six month in office.

Mrs. Clinton’s comments from Jerusalem hit a raw nerve and shattered widely held perceptions among the pro-Western Palestinian and Arab ruling elite, particularly Mr. Abbas, that unlike his predecessor, President Obama is genuine about helping the Palestinians establish a state of their own.

In contrast to the furor in pro-Western Arab capitals, the radical camp – Iran, Syria and their local allies (Hamas and Hezbollah) – maintained sweet silence. “The Arab and Muslim people know that the U.S. position is biased,” said Mohammad Nazzal, a top member of Hamas’ exiled leadership in Syria.

End of Palestinian Authority Sends Israeli PM to President Obama

NY Times: The possible collapse of the Palestinian Authority, Israel’s

Supporters of the Fatah party held a poster of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, during a rally in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday.

negotiating partner, loomed Monday, as several aides to its president, Mahmoud Abbas, said that he intended to resign and forecast that others would follow.

“I think he is realizing that he came all this way with the peace process in order to create a Palestinian state, but he sees no state coming,” Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, said in an interview. “So he really doesn’t think there is a need to be president or to have an Authority. This is not about who is going to replace him. This is about our leaving our posts. You think anybody will stay after he leaves?”

Mr. Abbas warned last week that he would not participate in Palestinian elections he called for, to take place in January. But he has threatened several times before to resign, and many viewed this latest step as a ploy by a Hamlet-like leader upset over Israeli and American policy. Many also noted that the vote might not actually be held, given the Palestinian political fracture and the unwillingness of Hamas, which controls Gaza, to participate.

In the days since, however, his colleagues have come to believe that he is not bluffing. If that is the case, they say, the Palestinian Authority could be endangered.

Four top officials made the same point in separate interviews. Mr. Abbas, they say, feels at a total impasse in negotiations with the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has declined to commit to a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, including East Jerusalem. Mr. Netanyahu favors negotiations without preconditions.

Azam al-Ahmad, head of the Fatah bloc in the Palestinian Legislative Council, said he spoke with Mr. Abbas on Saturday and that the Palestinian president was likely to resign in the next month or so. “Nobody will accept to be president under this situation,” Mr. Ahmad said. “We could witness the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.”

Ali Jarbawi, the minister of planning, spoke in similar terms in an interview, asking, “Why do we need anybody to take his place if the whole process is failing? If the authority is going to go on forever, who needs it?” But he suggested that the crisis was aimed at persuading the United States and Europe to become more actively involved in bringing about a two-state solution.

What a collapse of the Palestinian Authority would mean is far from clear. All legal definitions in Palestinian politics have grown fuzzy since the 2007 split between the West Bank, dominated by Fatah, and Gaza, run by Hamas. What is clear is that Mr. Abbas and those who work closely with him were shocked when the United States backpedaled on a demand that Israel freeze settlement building in the West Bank.

Mr. Netanyahu was due to meet President Obama in Washington on Monday night, and Mr. Abbas’s threat to leave office was expected to be a part of their talks. When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was in Jerusalem last week, she asked Mr. Netanyahu to include in negotiating guidelines specific references to the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and in Jerusalem. He declined.

Activists Bring Down Piece of Israeli Apartheid Wall

Al Jazeera: Palestinians and foreign activists have torn down segments of Israel’s separation wall in a demonstration marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In the town of Qalandiya in the occupied West Bank, a group of masked activists using a lorry pulled down a two-metre cement block before Israeli security forces confronted them with tear gas grenades.

Several of the estimated 50 demonstrators passed through the hole they had made, hoisting a Palestinian flag and setting ablaze tyres on the other side.

Protesters were wearing shirts with the text “Jerusalem we are coming”, which was the slogan for the protest.

Abdullah Abu Rahma, leader of the People’s Campaign to Fight the Wall, said: “Today we commemorate 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“This is the beginning of the activities, which we do, to express our hold on our land, and our refusal to this wall – the wall of torture, the wall of humiliation.”

Activists have vowed to hold a week of protests in the Palestinian territories and around the world, including a campaign calling for the release of all anti-wall activists currently imprisoned.

Last Friday, Palestinian youths almost toppled a segment of wall using a hydraulic car-jack in the West Bank village of Nilin.

Israeli PM Heads to US Fearing Palestinian Declarations of Statehood

Concerns are growing in Israel’s government over the possibility of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence within the 1967 borders, a move which could potentially be recognized by the United Nations Security Council.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently asked the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama to veto any such proposal, after reports reached Jerusalem of support for such a declaration from major European Union countries, and apparently also certain U.S. officials.

The reports indicated that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has reached a secret understanding with the Obama administration over U.S. recognition of an independent Palestinian state. Such recognition would likely transform any Israeli presence across the Green Line, even in Jerusalem, into an illegal incursion to which the Palestinians would be entitled to engage in measures of self-defense.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told supporters in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Sunday that they must remain committed to peace, despite what he called Israel’s failure to promote a viable solution.

Israel was not fulfilling the preconditions necessary for seeing a peace deal, said Abbas, emphasizing that as long as settlement activity continued, peace could not be reached.

“These are the conditions of the Road Map that urges Israel to halt settlements, dismantling all of the settlements that are built on lands of the West Bank in order to establish a Palestinian state,” he said.

“It appears they do not want peace, and they don’t want to stop settlement, and they don’t want the vision of two-states, so I don’t know what they want,” he told a crowd outside the presidential palace.

“We must remain believers in peace,” he added, speaking in a carpark which still bears the track marks of Israel tanks stationed there during the Intifada, or uprising, which swept the Palestinian territories in 2000.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad Urge Abbas to End Negotiations with Israel

Maan: Hamas and Islamic Jihad both advised President Mahmoud Abbas to give up peace talks with Israel and focus his efforts on creating inter-Palestinian unity following the leader’s announcement that he would not run for re-election on 24 January.

Abbas announced his position on Thursday, blaming US unwillingness to take a strong hand with Israel, and Israeli insistence on continued settlement construction in Palestine. The outgoing president had harsh words for Hamas, whose Gaza Strip takeover he called the “worst thing” ever to happen to Palestinians.

Responding to the criticism from Damascus, head of the Hamas politbureau Khalid Mash’al told Abbas to “throw the compromise project in the face of the US and Israel” because the route has “reached an impasse,” while addressing a rally of Hamas supporters.

Israeli Evictions (Ethnic Cleansing) of Palestinians Continues

Over-Term Palestinian President Says He Will Not Run for Elections

AP: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pushed Mideast peace prospects into unknown territory Thursday, announcing he doesn’t want another term and opening the way to a succession battle that could play into the hands of his rival, the militant Hamas.

But it also could boost the prospects of a popular candidate who reportedly wants to run for the presidency from his Israeli prison cell.

Abbas blamed his decision on the stalemate in peace talks, but the wording of his televised speech raised speculation that it was not final and could be a tactic for pushing Israel and the U.S. toward a larger compromise.

He said only that it was “desire not to run in the upcoming elections” which are set for January but could be delayed, extending his current term indefinitely.

Abbas took over after the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004, and Western leaders have come to see him as a symbol of moderation. Although criticized as indecisive and associated with the corruption-tainted old guard of his Fatah party, he has given free rein to his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, to reform the West Bank’s economy and boost its police, which has resulted in a limited economic upturn.

But the stalemate with Israel overshadows all, and Fatah activists say the party is in a panic, fearing a fragmented slate of candidates that would hand victory to Hamas.

Late last month, Abbas told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that he would not run, but recanted after President Barack Obama called him and expressed his commitment to Mideast peacemaking, Abbas’ aides said. A senior Palestinian official told The Associated Press that Abbas informed other Fatah leaders of his latest decision several days ago but didn’t tell Obama.

Al Jazeera: The One State Solution