Is the European Union about to give its blessing to the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah? There is a possibility that it will but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, was trying to sound reasonable this week, while actually being distinctly unreasonable. She appeared to declare support for the idea of a national unity government, led by Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah. “I understand President Abbas’s desire to move forward on reconciliation,” Ashton said. “We have all argued there needs to be reconciliation and with caution we are moving to try and support his efforts. I say ‘with caution’ because we understand it needs to be based on principles of non-violence.”
It is telling that Ashton has never called on Israel to observe the principle of non-violence. A statement which she issued after Hamas fired rockets into southern Israel last month exemplified how she applies different rules to different parties to the conflict. While she directed the words “strongly condemn” at the “attacks” by Hamas and said that they “must stop immediately”, she merely called on Israel to “show restraint”. There was no explicit acknowledgment of how Israel had killed three members of Hamas a few days earlier, inevitably provoking a response.
And why does Ashton laud Mahmoud Abbas at every available opportunity? His term as president expired in January 2009; since then he has clung to power without any mandate.
Perhaps Ashton feels a sense of affinity with him as she has been a successful politician, without having to go through the messy business of winning elections. Her $435,000-a-year job was obtained thanks to her close ties with two UK prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Although she had sat in the elitist House of Lords, few of her compatriots had heard of her until 2009, when she was appointed the closest thing that Europe has to a foreign minister by the Union’s heads of state and government. This explains her apparent bemusement at the warm reception she received when she met Libyan “rebels” last weekend. “I am more popular in Benghazi than in Britain,” she quipped.
Interestingly, the same unelected Ashton has been extolling the virtues of “democracy promotion” in the Middle East. In her contacts with Hillary Clinton, she has been exploring how Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites can help spread liberty, she stated on Wednesday. Is she telling Arabs to stop worrying about the West’s indulgence of Israel and concentrate on tweeting their way to freedom?
·First published by Mondoweiss (www.mondoweiss.net), 25 May 2011
Showing posts with label Mahmoud Abbas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mahmoud Abbas. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Divide and rule in Palestine
Brussels is a city of whispers. More accurately, those who work in its European quarter love to gossip about people regarded as important within their cosy bubble.
Catherine Ashton has been singled out for a relentless whispering campaign ever since she took up her post as EU foreign policy chief. For the first time, a Belgian government minister recently said publicly what many other diplomatic and political figures have been saying about Ashton behind her back: that she is forever spouting platitudes.
Ashton’s response to the “reconciliation” between the rival Palestinian parties Fatah and Hamas appeared platitudinous but was actually something more sinister. She claimed that the “EU has consistently called for peace and reconciliation, under the authority of President [Mahmoud] Abbas, leading to an end to the division between the West Bank and Gaza and in support of greater security and stability across the region.”
There are two problems with this statement. First, it is misleading. Far from urging unity, the EU has connived in Israel’s “divide and rule” strategy against the Palestinians.
Alastair Crooke, who advised Javier Solana (Ashton’s predecessor as foreign policy chief), has exposed how Britain orchestrated a dangerous shift in the EU stance on the Middle East when Tony Blair was prime minister. In an article published by the London Review of Books in March, Crooke recalls the glee of Jack Straw, then the UK’s foreign secretary, when he convinced Germany that Hamas should be placed on the Union’s list of terrorist groups in 2003. This led to a situation where the EU was showing preference for one Palestinian party (Fatah) over another (Hamas). The argument about Hamas being “terrorists” was bogus; Fatah, too, accepts the principle that Palestinians have the right to resist their occupation, including by arms.
The Palestine Papers, those internal documents made public by Al Jazeera earlier this year, show that Blair contemplated exporting some of the most pernicious aspects of Britain’s own imperial legacy to the occupied territories. In 2003, Britain and the US agreed on a secret “counter-insurgency” operation that would target members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Internment without trial of Hamas members was even considered, despite how Britain’s use of that policy in the North of Ireland during the 1970s exacerbated the conflict there.
Many aspects of the “counter-insurgency” strategy were taken on board by the European Union collectively. In 2006, the EU launched an initiative called COPPS (Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support). Two of the police officers who have headed this initiative, Colin Smith and Paul Kernaghan, had formerly served with the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a force that was synonymous with harassment of the Catholic community in the North of Ireland. For most of its history, COPPS has mentored police loyal to Fatah in the West Bank and has declined to deal with Hamas representatives in Gaza. How does that advance the quest for “peace and reconciliation”, trumpeted by Ashton?
The second problem with Ashton’s aforementioned statement is her demand that “reconciliation” must be led by Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah. Contrary to what she implies, Abbas no longer has a democratic mandate. His term as elected president of the Palestinian Authority expired in January 2009. The legality of his term’s extension is questionable, to say the least.
More broadly, there is something condescending – racist, even – about how Israel and the West vets who should be the Palestinians’ political representatives. After Hamas won a parliamentary election in 2006, the EU – under pressure from the US – froze its aid to the Palestinian Authority and helped trigger the collapse of the resulting coalition between Fatah and Hamas. That was despite how the Union’s own supervisors of that poll, led by British MEP Edward McMillan Scott, confirmed that it was conducted in a free and fair manner.
Although Ashton’s statement did not refer to Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian “prime minister”, the West has also been eager to shore up his position. Fayyad was appointed premier by Abbas in 2007, without the decision being approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council (the closest thing that the Palestinians have to a parliament). The legitimacy of his appointment is, therefore, dubious.
Fayyad has made quite a few enemies among his fellow Palestinians, yet Western “experts” have ran a public relations campaign on his behalf. In his capacity as an international envoy for the Middle East, Blair regularly extols Fayyad’s virtues. Robert Danin, head of Blair’s Jerusalem office from 2008 to 2010, has gone further by portraying Fayyad as an intellectual trailblazer. Writing in the January-February issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, Danin told Fayyad’s critics that they should “stop resenting his successes”.
What are these successes? Near the top of Danin’s list was that Fayyad had kept public spending within his targets. This is in keeping with the neo-liberal doctrines inculcated in Fayyad when he previously worked for the World Bank and IMF.
Never mind how setting up a viable Palestinian state has become virtually impossible now that Israel has built a massive annexation wall in West Bank. Never mind how malnutrition among young Palestinians has reached “crisis point”, according to Save the Children. Never mind how Israel controls most of the water resources in the occupied territories. Never mind how elementary principles of democracy have been traduced. Of far greater importance to the EU’s representatives is that they can deal with Palestinian “leaders” cut from the same ideological cloth as themselves.
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 15-21 May 2011
Catherine Ashton has been singled out for a relentless whispering campaign ever since she took up her post as EU foreign policy chief. For the first time, a Belgian government minister recently said publicly what many other diplomatic and political figures have been saying about Ashton behind her back: that she is forever spouting platitudes.
Ashton’s response to the “reconciliation” between the rival Palestinian parties Fatah and Hamas appeared platitudinous but was actually something more sinister. She claimed that the “EU has consistently called for peace and reconciliation, under the authority of President [Mahmoud] Abbas, leading to an end to the division between the West Bank and Gaza and in support of greater security and stability across the region.”
There are two problems with this statement. First, it is misleading. Far from urging unity, the EU has connived in Israel’s “divide and rule” strategy against the Palestinians.
Alastair Crooke, who advised Javier Solana (Ashton’s predecessor as foreign policy chief), has exposed how Britain orchestrated a dangerous shift in the EU stance on the Middle East when Tony Blair was prime minister. In an article published by the London Review of Books in March, Crooke recalls the glee of Jack Straw, then the UK’s foreign secretary, when he convinced Germany that Hamas should be placed on the Union’s list of terrorist groups in 2003. This led to a situation where the EU was showing preference for one Palestinian party (Fatah) over another (Hamas). The argument about Hamas being “terrorists” was bogus; Fatah, too, accepts the principle that Palestinians have the right to resist their occupation, including by arms.
The Palestine Papers, those internal documents made public by Al Jazeera earlier this year, show that Blair contemplated exporting some of the most pernicious aspects of Britain’s own imperial legacy to the occupied territories. In 2003, Britain and the US agreed on a secret “counter-insurgency” operation that would target members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Internment without trial of Hamas members was even considered, despite how Britain’s use of that policy in the North of Ireland during the 1970s exacerbated the conflict there.
Many aspects of the “counter-insurgency” strategy were taken on board by the European Union collectively. In 2006, the EU launched an initiative called COPPS (Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support). Two of the police officers who have headed this initiative, Colin Smith and Paul Kernaghan, had formerly served with the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a force that was synonymous with harassment of the Catholic community in the North of Ireland. For most of its history, COPPS has mentored police loyal to Fatah in the West Bank and has declined to deal with Hamas representatives in Gaza. How does that advance the quest for “peace and reconciliation”, trumpeted by Ashton?
The second problem with Ashton’s aforementioned statement is her demand that “reconciliation” must be led by Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah. Contrary to what she implies, Abbas no longer has a democratic mandate. His term as elected president of the Palestinian Authority expired in January 2009. The legality of his term’s extension is questionable, to say the least.
More broadly, there is something condescending – racist, even – about how Israel and the West vets who should be the Palestinians’ political representatives. After Hamas won a parliamentary election in 2006, the EU – under pressure from the US – froze its aid to the Palestinian Authority and helped trigger the collapse of the resulting coalition between Fatah and Hamas. That was despite how the Union’s own supervisors of that poll, led by British MEP Edward McMillan Scott, confirmed that it was conducted in a free and fair manner.
Although Ashton’s statement did not refer to Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian “prime minister”, the West has also been eager to shore up his position. Fayyad was appointed premier by Abbas in 2007, without the decision being approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council (the closest thing that the Palestinians have to a parliament). The legitimacy of his appointment is, therefore, dubious.
Fayyad has made quite a few enemies among his fellow Palestinians, yet Western “experts” have ran a public relations campaign on his behalf. In his capacity as an international envoy for the Middle East, Blair regularly extols Fayyad’s virtues. Robert Danin, head of Blair’s Jerusalem office from 2008 to 2010, has gone further by portraying Fayyad as an intellectual trailblazer. Writing in the January-February issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, Danin told Fayyad’s critics that they should “stop resenting his successes”.
What are these successes? Near the top of Danin’s list was that Fayyad had kept public spending within his targets. This is in keeping with the neo-liberal doctrines inculcated in Fayyad when he previously worked for the World Bank and IMF.
Never mind how setting up a viable Palestinian state has become virtually impossible now that Israel has built a massive annexation wall in West Bank. Never mind how malnutrition among young Palestinians has reached “crisis point”, according to Save the Children. Never mind how Israel controls most of the water resources in the occupied territories. Never mind how elementary principles of democracy have been traduced. Of far greater importance to the EU’s representatives is that they can deal with Palestinian “leaders” cut from the same ideological cloth as themselves.
·First published by New Europe (www.neurope.eu), 15-21 May 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
New year, new lies from Israel lobby
One of Israel’s most dubious inventions is a form of public relations generally unconnected to the truth. It is called hasbara, a Hebrew term that has no “real, precise” translation into other languages, according to a senior Israeli diplomat Gideon Meir.
The hasbara machine was cranked into action early in 2011. On New Year’s Eve, Jawaher Abu Rahmah collapsed from inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli troops during the weekly protest against the massive wall that penetrates deep into her native Bilin, a West Bank village. After she died the following morning, the Israeli army spread malicious rumours – reported faithfully in some newspapers – that she may not have attended the demonstration and instead perished from cancer.
The practice of hasbara is not restricted to official organs of the Israeli state, as a recent article by Daniel Mariaschin from the Zionist lobby group B’nai B’rith illustrated (“Europe’s misguided meddling in Israel”, EUobserver, 5 January). In taking a swipe at 26 former office-holders who have appealed for EU sanctions against Israel if it does not halt the expansion of settlements on occupied Palestinian land, Mariaschin attempts to dress up several falsehoods as facts.
Mariaschin asserts that the signers of the appeal – including Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief for most of the past decade – “all know Israel well and are surely familiar with its desire for peace”. Yet he provides not one shred of evidence to prove that Israel, the world’s third highest spender on the military (as a proportion of gross domestic product) and the only Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons, has a “desire for peace”.
He defends the construction of exclusively Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem by claiming that Jerusalem has been the “capital of Israel for 3,000 years”. This perception has no basis in international law. In 1980, the United Nations Security Council declared Israel’s claims over East Jerusalem to be “null and void”.
Just as absurdly, Mariaschin argues that Israel’s control over Jerusalem “enables Jews, Christians and Muslims each to freely worship at their own holy sites in the city”. Where was that magical freedom in 2010, when Israel sealed off crossings in order to stop Christians in the West Bank from celebrating Easter in Jerusalem?
And Mariaschin regurgitates the trite Israeli line that it “withdrew” from Gaza in 2005, only to be bombarded by rockets from Hamas. He neglects to mention that Hamas observed an Egyptian-brokered truce with Israel between June and November 2008. It was Israel which resumed the cycle of violence by attacking Gaza on 4 November that year, a day when the world was preoccupied with the election of a new American president. Israel’s dismantlement of its settlements in Gaza does not alter the area’s status; the 1907 Hague regulations make clear that a territory is occupied when a foreign power exerts “effective control” over it. As part of its determination to maintain control of Gaza, Israel has imposed a brutal blockade by land and by sea. Gaza’s fishermen, for example, are regularly fired at by Israeli naval vessels while doing nothing more sinister than trying to earn a living.
Nonetheless, I have some sympathy for Mariaschin’s observation that the Palestinian leadership “is on its way to betraying its own people”. If the “leadership” Mariaschin is referring to is the Palestinian Authority, then I would go further by saying that it has been engaged in a steady process of betrayal. A US diplomatic cable made public lately by WikiLeaks indicates that Mahmoud Abbas, the authority’s “president” (his mandate expired in 2009) was told in advance about Israel’s plans to bomb Gaza in late 2008 but that he was so fixated on the rivalry between Hamas and his party Fatah that he kept silent.
To its shame, the European Union has been pressurising Abbas to act as a quisling. The late scholar Edward Said drew a distinction between how Fatah has behaved in the occupied territories and the African National Congress behaved in South Africa. Even after the ANC was granted recognition by the apartheid regime, it refused to supply police “in order to avoid appearing as the white government’s enforcer,” Said wrote. This in stark contrast with the situation in the West Bank; during 2011, the EU will give more than €8 million to the Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support (COPPS). This “mission” is confined to a sliver of the West Bank; Palestinian police trained under it may only arrest their kinfolk, not Israeli settlers on stolen land. In other words, the Palestinians are being required to police their own occupation – with unwitting assistance from the European taxpayer.
Shamefully, too, the EU has been helping Israel to hone a neo-colonial “divide and rule” strategy in the occupied territories. Catherine Ashton, the Union’s current foreign policy chief, has chosen Israel and the West Bank for her first working trip abroad this year. Although she met Fatah representatives, she refused to talk to anyone from Hamas, the victors of parliamentary elections in 2006 that official EU monitors deemed to be free and fair. The EU’s decision to ostracise Hamas – originally taken under pressure from Washington – does nothing to advance the search for peace to which the Union is rhetorically committed. Rather, it advances Israeli imperialism and the attendant dispossession of the Palestinians.
It is telling that senior politicians wait until they have left office before they criticise Israel. Before stepping down in 2009, Javier Solana exulted in how Israel enjoys a closer relationship with the EU than any other state outside the Union’s borders. Participating in EU programmes ranging from archaeology to enterprise promotion, Israel is a member of the Union, without being a member of its institutions, Solana noted.
The widespread public revulsion in Europe at how Israel treats the Palestinians as subhuman is not shared by our leaders. True, they feign concern every so often from one side of their mouths. From the other, they give Israel all the support it needs to keep subjugating an entire people.
·First published by EUobserver (www.euobserver.com), 7 January 2010
The hasbara machine was cranked into action early in 2011. On New Year’s Eve, Jawaher Abu Rahmah collapsed from inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli troops during the weekly protest against the massive wall that penetrates deep into her native Bilin, a West Bank village. After she died the following morning, the Israeli army spread malicious rumours – reported faithfully in some newspapers – that she may not have attended the demonstration and instead perished from cancer.
The practice of hasbara is not restricted to official organs of the Israeli state, as a recent article by Daniel Mariaschin from the Zionist lobby group B’nai B’rith illustrated (“Europe’s misguided meddling in Israel”, EUobserver, 5 January). In taking a swipe at 26 former office-holders who have appealed for EU sanctions against Israel if it does not halt the expansion of settlements on occupied Palestinian land, Mariaschin attempts to dress up several falsehoods as facts.
Mariaschin asserts that the signers of the appeal – including Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief for most of the past decade – “all know Israel well and are surely familiar with its desire for peace”. Yet he provides not one shred of evidence to prove that Israel, the world’s third highest spender on the military (as a proportion of gross domestic product) and the only Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons, has a “desire for peace”.
He defends the construction of exclusively Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem by claiming that Jerusalem has been the “capital of Israel for 3,000 years”. This perception has no basis in international law. In 1980, the United Nations Security Council declared Israel’s claims over East Jerusalem to be “null and void”.
Just as absurdly, Mariaschin argues that Israel’s control over Jerusalem “enables Jews, Christians and Muslims each to freely worship at their own holy sites in the city”. Where was that magical freedom in 2010, when Israel sealed off crossings in order to stop Christians in the West Bank from celebrating Easter in Jerusalem?
And Mariaschin regurgitates the trite Israeli line that it “withdrew” from Gaza in 2005, only to be bombarded by rockets from Hamas. He neglects to mention that Hamas observed an Egyptian-brokered truce with Israel between June and November 2008. It was Israel which resumed the cycle of violence by attacking Gaza on 4 November that year, a day when the world was preoccupied with the election of a new American president. Israel’s dismantlement of its settlements in Gaza does not alter the area’s status; the 1907 Hague regulations make clear that a territory is occupied when a foreign power exerts “effective control” over it. As part of its determination to maintain control of Gaza, Israel has imposed a brutal blockade by land and by sea. Gaza’s fishermen, for example, are regularly fired at by Israeli naval vessels while doing nothing more sinister than trying to earn a living.
Nonetheless, I have some sympathy for Mariaschin’s observation that the Palestinian leadership “is on its way to betraying its own people”. If the “leadership” Mariaschin is referring to is the Palestinian Authority, then I would go further by saying that it has been engaged in a steady process of betrayal. A US diplomatic cable made public lately by WikiLeaks indicates that Mahmoud Abbas, the authority’s “president” (his mandate expired in 2009) was told in advance about Israel’s plans to bomb Gaza in late 2008 but that he was so fixated on the rivalry between Hamas and his party Fatah that he kept silent.
To its shame, the European Union has been pressurising Abbas to act as a quisling. The late scholar Edward Said drew a distinction between how Fatah has behaved in the occupied territories and the African National Congress behaved in South Africa. Even after the ANC was granted recognition by the apartheid regime, it refused to supply police “in order to avoid appearing as the white government’s enforcer,” Said wrote. This in stark contrast with the situation in the West Bank; during 2011, the EU will give more than €8 million to the Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support (COPPS). This “mission” is confined to a sliver of the West Bank; Palestinian police trained under it may only arrest their kinfolk, not Israeli settlers on stolen land. In other words, the Palestinians are being required to police their own occupation – with unwitting assistance from the European taxpayer.
Shamefully, too, the EU has been helping Israel to hone a neo-colonial “divide and rule” strategy in the occupied territories. Catherine Ashton, the Union’s current foreign policy chief, has chosen Israel and the West Bank for her first working trip abroad this year. Although she met Fatah representatives, she refused to talk to anyone from Hamas, the victors of parliamentary elections in 2006 that official EU monitors deemed to be free and fair. The EU’s decision to ostracise Hamas – originally taken under pressure from Washington – does nothing to advance the search for peace to which the Union is rhetorically committed. Rather, it advances Israeli imperialism and the attendant dispossession of the Palestinians.
It is telling that senior politicians wait until they have left office before they criticise Israel. Before stepping down in 2009, Javier Solana exulted in how Israel enjoys a closer relationship with the EU than any other state outside the Union’s borders. Participating in EU programmes ranging from archaeology to enterprise promotion, Israel is a member of the Union, without being a member of its institutions, Solana noted.
The widespread public revulsion in Europe at how Israel treats the Palestinians as subhuman is not shared by our leaders. True, they feign concern every so often from one side of their mouths. From the other, they give Israel all the support it needs to keep subjugating an entire people.
·First published by EUobserver (www.euobserver.com), 7 January 2010
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