More Troops to Afghanistan

Obama announced yesterday that he'll send four thousand more troops to Afghanistan, bringing the grand total of troops he's committed to the region in his first two months in office to 21,000.

The local Herald Sun newspaper noted that "there is no timetable for withdrawal, and the White House said it had no estimate yet on how many billions of dollars its plan will cost."

In addition, ABC News has caught wind of the controversy raging in Israel over civilian casualties and the actions of the IDF in the recent siege on Gaza more generally, a significant development.

For a more in-depth report on the Israeli response, check out this article in the Times.

The Right Wing in Israel, and the Arab Israeli Response

A couple of things are happening with regard to Israel right now.

First, internationally, people are getting more and more outraged as news of barbarities committing by Israeli soldiers during the recent siege on Gaza becomes known.

Second, within Israel, as the shift to the right continues, people are fighting back. The caption for the above picture on the Financial Times website reads, "Israeli Arab protesters clash with riot police on Tuesday in Umm el-Fahm after a right wing march in the country’s biggest Arab city." At least we know that while Labor joins Netanyahu and Lieberman, those that stand to lose the most if Lieberman's plans are implemented are taking a stand.

Check out coverage of the march in the Jerusalem Post and the Washington Post in particular, which links the Israeli Arab response to this right wing march directly to fears of Israeli Arabs' future under Netanyahu and the coalition he's formed.

Labor Agrees to Form Government with Netanyahu

The New York Times is reporting that Israel's Labor party has voted to join a Netanyahu-led coalition, causing controversy within its ranks.

We should ask ourselves what the implications of this will be for Israeli politics. People have been talking about the slow rightward drift of Israeli politics more frequently in recent days. Now Labor has officially joined a coalition where Avigdor Lieberman will serve as foreign minister. (Check out our previous posts for some of his positions on "foreign affairs.")

The picture above says it all: the day after labor agrees to join the government, "clashes broke out between police and demonstrators in the northern Arab Israeli town of Umm al Fahm after a march by Israeli far-rightists." As the far right is literally on the march in Israel, labor joined one of the most right-wing governments in Israel's history.

"Dead Palestinian Babies and Bombed Mosques"

This picture is just one example of a phenomenon in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) that has been gaining in popularity for over a decade - the commission of "unique" shirts and slogans for various IDF units, according to a recent report entitled,"Dead Palestinian Babies and Bombed Mosques: IDF Fashion 2009," in Haaretz. Believe your eyes: it is a pregnant Palestinian woman in crosshairs with the slogan, "One shot, two kills." According to Haaretz, this particularly disgusting t-shirt is "a sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion."

The article puts the shirts in the context of an increasing rightward shift we've mentioned before on this blog.

"Sociologist Dr. Orna Sasson-Levy, of Bar-Ilan University, author of "Identities in Uniform: Masculinities and Femininities in the Israeli Military," said that the phenomenon is "part of a radicalization process the entire country is undergoing, and the soldiers are at its forefront. I think that ever since the second intifada there has been a continual shift to the right. The pullout from Gaza and its outcome - the calm that never arrived - led to a further shift rightward."

Far Right Gains in Israeli Elections

The openly racist Yisrael Beitenu party won 15 seats in Israel elections Tuesday. With Likud grabbing 27, Kadima 28, and the ultra-orthodox Shas party 11, it is increasingly likely that Likud will form a government with Yisrael Beitenu and Shas. This bodes very, very ill for Palestinians within Israel as well as in the West Bank and Gaza. Yisrael Beitenu has suggested Palestinians in Israel take a loyalty oath, and promised "no citizenship without loyalty." Netanyahu, head of Likud, has supported expanding West Bank settlements, and said recently that the war in Gaza ended too soon and didn't go far enough.(Netanyahu was also part of a right-wing rebellion against Ariel Sharon when Sharon sought to disengage from Gaza in 2005.)

(Those interested in a very in-depth analysis of political parties in Israel should consult Jews sans frontieres' primer on Israeli elections.)

What is clear is that these elections represent a significant shift to the right among the Israeli people.

In addition, still more voices are joining the chorus proclaiming the possibilities of a two-state solution dead. Juan Cole recently declared as much, and none other than Stephen Walt, of "The Israel Lobby" fame and no wild-eyed radical by any means, wrote an editorial in Foreign Policy online magazine asking "what do we do if the two state solution collapses?"

As always, a picture is worth a thousand words. The one accompanying this article says it all: Univesity College London, bedecked with a Palestinian flag by militant students. In the US, students at the University of Rochester recently occupied a building in solidarity with Palestine, and won significant demands. Palestine solidarity activism is sweeping across the UK and Canada, and it looks like it is coming to the US as well. Militant young folks are providing the answers policy wonks like Cole and Walt fail to imagine - direct, people-to-people solidarity with Palestine, standing up to the powerful interests of the status quo.

Free Palestine!

Palestine Solidarity in Canada on the Rise

Check out an important article discussing the development of the Palestine solidarity movement in Canada over the past few years. It discusses the development of the apartheid analysis of Israel, along with the Zionist response, both right wing and liberal (the liberal response, the article notes, is "dialogue"), as well as the movement's growth beyond university campuses into communities and high schools.

This is definitely an encouraging sign and it is worth asking how this history compares to that of the Palestine solidarity movement in the US.

Netanyahu eases toward Lieberman's position

So, builiding on the last post.

Lieberman and Yisrael Beitanu are polling third before Tuesday's elections, according to the NY Times. But the frontrunner is not looking much different. Ha'aretz reports that Netanyahu has backed Lieberman's anti-Arab campaign as "legitimate." This is the man who will likely be the next Prime Minister.

Just to reiterate what Mike said: divest, boycott, sanction.

CBS Declares Two State Solution Dead

Over at the blog Mondoweiss, they posted the following video from "60 Minutes" arguing that Israel has 3 options before it - ethnic cleansing, apartheid or democracy.



Here's a key excerpt that the folks from Mondoweiss highlighted, as well as some of their analysis.

Demographers predict that within ten years Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Without a separate Palestinian state the Israelis would have three options, none of them good. They could try ethnic cleansing, drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank, or they could give the Palestinians the vote. That would be the democratic option but it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Or they could try apartheid - have the minority Israelis rule the majority Palestinians, but apartheid regimes don't have a very long life.

"Unfortunately, and I have to say to you that apartheid is already in place," Dr. Barghouti argued.

Apartheid? Israel is building what it calls a security wall between the West Bank and Israel. The Palestinians are furious because it appropriates eight percent of the West Bank. Not only that. It weaves its way through Palestinian farms, separating farmers from their land. They have to wait at gates for soldiers to let them in. Settlers get a lot more water than Palestinians, which is why settlements are green and Arab areas are not.

Moderate Israelis who deplore the occupation used to believe passionately in a two-state solution. That is no longer the case.

Meron Benvenisti used to be deputy mayor of Jerusalem. He told Simon the prospects of the two-state solution becoming a reality are "nil."

"The geopolitical condition that’s been created in '67 is irreversible. Cannot be changed. You cannot unscramble that egg," he explained.

Mondoweiss continued:

"What made the piece so good is that it did not equivocate. It did not excuse the Israeli occupation as an "unfortunate necessity guided by security concerns". It did not blame Hamas or Palestinian governance for a plan successive Israeli governments have been carrying out for over 40 years (if not longer). Instead, it showed a family in Nablus who can't leave their home while its taken over by Israeli soldiers. It showed a man fighting to protect his home from demolition in Jerusalem. It juxtaposed the verdant green lawns of a settler community with the parched starved landscape of the Palestinian West Bank. And while Tzipi Livni swoops in at the end to tell the world they have nothing to worry about, that the Israeli government has this under control, settler Daniella Weiss displays a supreme arrogance and confidence to end the story that tells you all you need to know - she doesn't plan on going anywhere.

As I watched it I was slightly frustrated that it didn't deal with Gaza, or Jerusalem (the settler population is over 500,000 with Jerusalem, not the 280,000 in the story), or the refugees. But then I realized that that is part of what made it so powerful. Those are the "difficult" issues that are supposedly always standing in the way of peace. Here was the "easy" issue of the illegal Israeli settlers, and Simon was saying that that alone has torpedoed the two-state possibility. Israel has made the two-state solution impossible.

When the two-state solution was first raised in the early 1970s it was a radical notion. Golda Meir wouldn't even acknowledge that Palestinians existed, let alone deserve a state. But the idea slowly built credibility, then gained official endorsements, and now represents political common sense. How many news stories include the passage "the basic parameters of an eventual peace deal have been known for some time . . ." and then goes on to describe a two-state solution? Two states have been assumed, it was just a matter of a little land here, some more walls there. Tonight, 60 Minutes put an end to all that. Everything is back on the table. Even better they laid out three options for the future: ethnic cleansing, apartheid or democracy. Which one do you think the world is going to support?"