Two reasons not to be cheerful

A divided centre has left voters with a choice of extremes

 

AS THE numbers came in after round one of Egypt’s first more-or-less free presidential election, so did the metaphors of gloom. With no clear winner and ten of 12 contenders eliminated, the two remaining candidates were variously described by liberal reformers as a choice between disaster or calamity, poison or the noose. Irony echoed in comments flashed on Facebook and Twitter. Fifteen months after the toppling of Hosni Mubarak, the voters seeking to pick a new president on May 23rd and 24th ended up, on the face of things, returning Egypt to the same grim dilemma it faced during three decades of his rule: submit to a military-backed dictatorship or risk a stifling Islamist autocracy.

Such fears may be exaggerated, yet the discomfort felt by many Egyptians is understandable. The two men who will face off in the final round on June 16th and 17th are polar opposites. Muhammad Morsi, a dour engineer who is the anointed candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, promises to impose Islamic sharia law and radically to reform government. His rival, Ahmed Shafiq, a grouchy former air-force chief who served as Mr Mubarak’s trusted last prime minister, stresses a swift end to what he calls “revolutionary chaos”. His constituency includes bureaucrats and businessmen who profited under the old regime, Egypt’s large minority of Christians fearful of Islamists, and rural Egyptians worried by a post-revolutionary crime wave.

The wider cast of presidential hopefuls proved uninspiring, as several more prominent figures either bowed out or were disqualified. The turnout fell from nearly 60% in parliamentary elections just six months ago to 46% for the presidency. Mr Mubarak himself is said to have scoffed at the candidates. “If any of them ran a cigarette kiosk, it would go bankrupt,” he is reported to have joked, from the comfort of a military hospital where he awaits judgment on June 2nd for his alleged abuse of power.

Between them, the two front-runners got just under half the votes cast, with Mr Morsi ahead by a hair. A slim majority of voters nationwide and a striking majority of city dwellers shunned the leading pair in favour of less divisive figures. But the three top centrist contenders—a mild Islamist, Abdel Moneim Abolfotoh; a mild liberal, Amr Moussa, tainted with long service under the old order; and a populist socialist, Hamdeen Sabahi—split what should have been a dominant centrist clutch into losing fractions. Most strikingly, non-Islamists reversed the pattern of the parliamentary election, outpolling Islamist candidates by a clear margin.

As in the earlier polls, the disparate groups who united to foment last year’s revolution now find themselves shunted aside. They fear that Mr Morsi, bolstered by the Brotherhood’s hold on nearly half the seats in parliament, may now seek to hijack the revolution. “They’ve been waiting for 80 years to get into power,” warns a youth activist. “Do you think they’ll ever give it up?” Mr Shafiq, tacitly backed by Egypt’s army and still-powerful security services, represents a threat of counter-revolution. Small wonder that when election officials announced the final results, dismissing what appeared to be credible challenges to the former general’s surprisingly high tally, an angry mob torched the façade of his campaign headquarters.

Both men quickly shifted gear as soon as the results came out, lunging for the political centre. Mr Shafiq now says he would work with a coalition government that could include Muslim Brothers and figures such as Mohamed ElBaradei, the former UN nuclear chief whose sharp attacks on Mr Mubarak helped galvanise the revolution. Mr Morsi has issued a string of promises meant to reassure those who distrust the Brotherhood. He says he will respect freedom of expression and the right to protest, insist on full rights for women and Christians, and encourage tourism.

Such sweet talk may be having some effect. Mr Shafiq has won few new public endorsements but many non-Islamists are likely to grit their teeth and quietly vote for him as the lesser of two evils. “We can’t say it out loud,” says the strategist for one of Egypt’s small liberal parties. “But we’re unfortunately going to have to support him.” Mr Morsi’s new backers are more straightforward. Salafists, Islamist fundamentalists who had largely endorsed Mr Morsi’s main Islamist rival in the first round, the liberal-leaning former Muslim Brother, Mr Abolfotoh, say they will now wholeheartedly back Mr Morsi in the final round. So may Mr Abolfotoh. Some revolutionary youth groups and parties have also reluctantly declared for Mr Morsi. Since Islamists together captured three-quarters of parliament’s seats, their ability to whip up similar numbers for the last presidential round could prove decisive.

But an even bigger majority of Egyptians may sit out the second round. That would be a sad commentary on the ruling military council’s management of a tortuous and messy post-revolutionary transition. Some suspect the generals, who are supposed to hand over executive power to an elected president by the beginning of July, of engineering Egypt’s current predicament in order to frighten voters into Mr Shafiq’s embrace. Mr Mubarak’s powerful intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, ominously suggested before the election that in the event of a Brotherhood victory the army would simply take over. Just as ominously, disgruntled revolutionaries rumble that if Mr Shafiq were to win, they would again take to the streets. So Egypt’s fate still hangs in the balance.

(www.economist.com / 01.06.2012)

London lawyer takes on corporations abetting Israel’s crimes

Simon Natas

Simon Natas is a London-based lawyer specializing in criminal defense law and human rights. Natas is involved with the organization Jews for Justice for Palestinians and has defended a number of Palestine solidarity activists, including four who blockaded the cosmetics retailerAhava’s London flagship store in Covent Garden on two occasions in 2009. Ahava closed the store last September; this decision followed a long series of protests outside the store, which led its landlord to refuse to renew the lease.

The Electronic Intifada contributor Adri Nieuwhof interviewed Natas about the protesters’ case and the role of G4S Israel, a subsidiary of British-Danish security firm G4S, in Israel’s occupation and repression of Palestinians. Meanwhile, G4S won a massive security contract with the London 2012 Summer Olympics worth £200 million ($312.7 million) (“100,000 eye Olympics security jobs with G4S,” The Independent, 15 May 2012).

Adri Nieuwhof: Can you talk about the case against the activists who blockaded Ahava’s shop in London?

Simon Natas: In 2009, I defended a number of activists who carried out a peaceful blockade of the Ahava shop in Covent Garden. That case was discontinued. There were further blockades in 2010 which resulted in a trial that summer. That trial — again — collapsed and all the defendants were acquitted. Then there were further blockades which resulted in a trial in which there were convictions. Two of those we successfully appealed last month in the High Court. The two remaining convictions were upheld. We are now seeking to appeal in the Supreme Court.

AN: What was your main line of defense in the case against the Ahava protestors?

SN: My clients were charged with an offense known as aggravated trespass. It makes it a criminal offense to trespass on somebody else’s property and in doing so, obstruct lawful activity. So it is part of the prosecution’s case that the activity that you obstruct or intend to obstruct is lawful. You cannot be guilty of the offense if you are obstructing activity that is itself criminal.

Now, the defense that my clients relied on was that the activity they had obstructed was unlawful on a number of different grounds. All arose from the fact that the Ahava products were manufactured in an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank called Mitzpe Shalem.

We relied on a number of different allegations of illegality, one of them was the labeling of those products. They were labeled “manufactured by Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories Ltd, Dead Sea, Israel.”

It is quite clear that anybody reading that label would assume that the products were manufactured in Israel, but of course they are not. They are manufactured in the West Bank, which is not recognized by the international community as being part of Israel. Throughout Europe we have laws designed to ensure that consumers are not misled by people who market products.

In the UK, they have been incorporated into our domestic law and are known as the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations of 2008. They make it a criminal offense to engage in a misleading omission or misleading action that would cause consumers to buy goods that they might not otherwise buy had they known the true facts or had they not been misled as to the true facts. My clients argued that the labeling of Ahava’s products were clearly misleading, because there are many people out there who would not want to buy products from an illegal Israeli settlement.

There were other allegations of illegality as well. One of the things that my clients argued was that it was potentially illegal to market any product which was the proceeds of a crime in international law. They argued that the establishment of an illegal settlement and a factory on that settlement breached international law and that all the goods that were produced on it were the proceeds of crime. It followed that anyone dealing in those goods was also dealing in the proceeds of crime.

The district judge accepted that my clients had adduced a considerable body of evidence to back up their argument and also that the argument had considerable force, but he did not feel able to rule that Ahava’s trade was unlawful in the context of proceedings in which the company was not itself a party.

AN: G4S is involved in the provision of services to Israeli checkpoints, the police and Israeli prisons. How do you assess G4S’s role in Israel’s violations of international law?

SN: The first thing we need to establish is that we are talking here about G4S Israel, or Hashmira. The shares in this company are held overwhelmingly [91%] by the parent company, which is the British Danish company G4S. But it is G4S Israel operating the contracts in Israel and the occupied territories [the West Bank and Gaza Strip].

The background to this is that in 2002, G4S took over the Israeli security company Hashmira. That company had been engaged in activities in the occupied territories that included providing security services, security guards for settlements in the West Bank and also for businesses and prisons in the West Bank and prisons for Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

Over the years, the parent company G4S has faced considerable criticism from NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], particularly in Denmark, for the activities of its Israeli subsidiary. G4S says it has given up a number of contracts. They say they no longer provide security contracts for settlements themselves. They do still provide services to some businesses and also a police station in the West Bank.

One of the most problematic services they operate is the provision of technical equipment and maintenance for checkpoints. Those include checkpoints in the wall, known by many as the apartheid wall, although the Israeli authorities describe it as the separation barrier.

The wall cuts deep into Palestinian territory, encompassing most of the area of major Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, and cuts through Palestinian towns such as Qalqiliya. It prevents Palestinians from getting to their land and blocks Palestinian access to East Jerusalem.

The building of this wall was determined by the International Court of Justice in its advisory opinion of 2004 as being illegal, not just because the UN Security Council had said Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was illegal and determined that Israel should leave the occupied Palestinian territory but also because through the construction of this wall Israel was pursuing conduct which they found in breach of Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention. This provision makes it a crime for an occupying country to transfer its own population into the territory that it occupies. So the transfer of Israeli civilians into the settlements in the West Bank is a grave breach of the convention.

The court said that the wall had become an integral part of this crime because it was part of a policy of de facto annexation. What they saw was that Israel had created settlements in the West Bank and it had then constructed this wall which was designed ultimately to enable Israel to annex that territory. The court also observed that the wall had a serious impact on Palestinians’ right to access their land, water, education, health care. So it has a significant humanitarian impact as well.

The court talked not only about the wall, but about the wall and its associated regime. It considered that “the construction of the wall and its associated regime create a fait accompli on the ground that could well become permanent in which case and notwithstanding the formal characterization of the wall by Israel it would be tantamount to de facto annexation.”

When one talks about the associated regime of the wall, one certainly talks about the checkpoints, because the wall cannot operate without checkpoints. The checkpoints enable Israeli settlers and indeed Israeli citizens who are not necessarily settlers but may be visiting the settlements, to pass through that wall and access other parts of the West Bank, such as the Jordan Valley, which is subject to a considerable amount of economic exploitation by Israel. Much of the settlement produce which comes out from the [occupied West Bank] comes from the Jordan Valley.

So the checkpoints are necessary in order to allow Israelis access to the West Bank [and] to prevent Palestinians from passing the other way. If you are providing the technical facilities like the scanners and other equipment, and you also have a contract to look after them, to fix them when they go wrong, to ensure that they are working properly, then you are assisting in that process by ensuring that the checkpoints can effectively regulate the movement of people through the wall. That is one area in which G4S Israel may be assisting in something which the International Court of Justice has condemned as a breach of the Geneva conventions.

AN: And how do you assess G4S Israel’s involvement in prisons in Israel?

SN: One of the main areas of criticism from NGOs in Europe and far more significantly, from within Palestine, is the fact that G4S provides electronic security systems to prisons in which Palestinian political prisoners are held. These include both prisons and detention and interrogation centers.

It is well-established that Israel’s detention of Palestinian political prisoners breaches human rights norms routinely. Administrative detention has been much in the news as a result of the recent hunger strike, but it is a very longstanding issue. Criticism of G4S Israel has evolved around its involvement in providing security equipment to those prisons in which Palestinian political prisoners are held. Whether in doing that they are assisting in Israel’s breaches of international law is matter of argument, but it seems to me something that one would not easily be able to exclude.

As a result, it seems to me something G4S should not be doing. Clearly on moral grounds, but it may be legally problematic as well. G4S Israel is participant in the UN Global Compact which has ten principles for businesses. Principle one is that business should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights. Principle two is that they must not be complicit in human rights abuses.

Activists and members of NGOs which are concerned about what Western corporations are doing in other parts of the world can look at these legal principles and the norms that they attempt to establish and protect, and then one can look at what these companies are involving themselves in when they provide services to regimes which routinely breach human rights as Israel does in the occupied Palestinian territories.

AN: Do you think companies or its staff can be held accountable for breaches of international law?

SN: Companies themselves cannot be prosecuted in international courts. In domestic jurisdictions there are various crimes that corporations can commit, for example, corporate manslaughter or bribery. Not so for breaches of international law.

It is in theory possible for individuals who are responsible for the behavior of companies to be personally liable. There have been successful prosecutions of directors of companies. There was a well-known case in the Netherlands, the Van Anraat case, in which the director of a company was convicted of selling chemicals to the Saddam Hussein regime, knowing that they would be used to make mustard gas which then be used against civilians. He had no other involvement with the Saddam Hussein regime and no involvement in planning or organizing the attacks. Van Anraat was prosecuted on the basis that he was personally liable for the actions of his company. So it is possible to hold corporate officials responsible for the actions of a company, but every case will turn on its own facts, for example, who was responsible for the decisions and what their state of knowledge was.

AN: Palestine solidarity activists have campaigned to exclude the transportation giantVeolia from bidding for public contracts because of the company’s role in several Israeli projects in the occupied West Bank. They argue that this involvement can be qualified as grave professional misconduct. Do you think the same would apply for G4S?

SN: I think the same arguments made about Veolia can also be made about G4S Israel. I don’t know if the corporate structures of Veolia and G4S are similar, but I think the general point that is made about Veolia is that this is a company which operates in the occupied Palestinian territory through its involvement in building and operating the Jerusalem light railway.

There is a strong argument that the Jerusalem light railway breaches article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, a similar criticism to that which can be made about G4S’s involvement in checkpoints for the wall. The Jerusalem light rail connects West Jerusalem with settlements in the [occupied West Bank] and appears designed to achieve the same goal that the International Court of Justice condemned in relation to the building of the wall, i.e. a policy which leads to the de facto annexation of territory in the West Bank and particularly territory around East Jerusalem. So in my opinion the same criticism can be made about G4S’s involvement in the wall. There is a clear analogy there.

(electronicintifada.net / 01.06.2012)

Syrian political parties form coalition to resolve unrest

In Syria, several newly established political parties and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have joined to form a coalition, Press TV reports.

“I announce the formation of the coalition of the national and democratic parties. The aim of our national coalition is to start serious work with all Syrian parties to overcome the unrest through dialogue,” the Syrian Solidarity Party’s Imad al-Katib said.

While underlining the importance of Syria’s unity, independence, and national sovereignty, the coalition says it aims at helping build a nationally democratic nation.

The coalition said that it would work with all parties in order to solve the crisis in Syria. They also rejected violence and all foreign intervention in the country.

“We invite all involved Syrian parties outside and inside Syria to work with us genuinely to reach a peaceful solution to our problem. Anyone who agrees with our principles and that Syrian blood should not be shed anymore is invited to join us,” the Democratic Party’s Ahmed al-Kousa says.

On May 25, over 100 civilians were killed in a massacre in the western town of Houla.

Damascus has strongly denied any involvement in the bloodshed and blamed armed terrorist groups for the violence across the country as part of a plan to ignite a civil war.

About 280 UN observers are currently monitoring the ceasefire in Syria, which was part of a six-point peace plan proposed by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan in March.

As part of reforms made by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last year, a new law was issued allowing parties to be established.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March 2011. The violence has claimed many lives, including several security forces.

Damascus blames “outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups” for the unrest, asserting that it is being orchestrated from abroad.

(www.presstv.ir / 01.06.2012)

Army: Israeli soldier, Palestinian killed in south Gaza

An Israeli armoured vehicle travels near the Israeli Gaza border on August 20, 2011.

JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — An Israeli soldier and Palestinian gunman were killed in an exchange of fire in the southern Gaza strip on Friday morning, the Israeli army said.

Israel’s Ynet news reported that a clash took place around 4 a.m. after a gunman crossed the border into Israel under cover of heavy fog. It said the army’s Golani force opened fire after attempting to arrest the gunman.

The Israeli army said in a statement the Palestinian was “infiltrating Israel from the southern Gaza Strip (and) opened fire at IDF soldiers, who responded with fire,” which killed a Golani soldier and the Palestinian.

Local witnesses heard shooting near Abassan, a border village in southern Gaza that is also close to the Egyptian frontier. They said Israeli forces set off smoke bombs to obscure the view as helicopters landed at the scene.

(maannews.net / 01.06.2012)

Tunisian PM chastises hardline Islamists

Tunisia’s Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali (pictured) has warned hardline Islamists who attacked police stations and liquor stores that authorities would deal firmly with them. His statement late Wednesday came after several rampages by Salafi Muslims.

AP - Tunisians have lost patience with hardline Islamists sowing violence in the country, and authorities will deal firmly with any such groups “who believe they are charged by God to purify society,” the prime minister said.

The statements by Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali were the sternest warning yet against Salafi Muslims who have attacked police stations and other sites while demanding rigid Islamic law in a nation still emerging from years of secular dictatorship. They follow criticism that the new government, which is led by a moderate Islamist party, has been too timid in dealing with the hardliners.

“The patience of Tunisians is at an end. We will not sit by with our arms crossed – we will be on the ground applying the law,” Jebali said late Wednesday.

Tunisians overthrew their longtime secular dictator last year, a revolution that engendered a flowering of political Islam and the victory of Jebali’s moderate Islamist Ennahda party at the ballot box. But the new freedom has also given space to factions such as the ultraconservative Salafis, who have been more than vocal about their demands.

On Saturday, after police arrested a Salafi suspect in the northern town of Jendouba, a group of 200 bearded men attacked the police station with firebombs and stones. They were repulsed with tear gas, but went on a rampage through downtown, attacking bars and liquor stores. Fifteen suspects have been arrested.

Earlier in the month, another group of conservatives attacked bars in the central town of Sidi Bouzid. There also have been numerous other incidents of clashes between Salafis and ordinary citizens since the overthrow of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011.

Leftist and liberal opposition parties allege that the government’s cautious approach toward the Salafis has merely emboldened them in their quest to turn Tunisia into an Islamic state.

“The deterioration of the political, social and security situation in Tunisia today is due to the inability of the team in power to find solutions to the urgent problems in the country,” Maya Jribi, the head of the Republican Party, a newly formed alliance of opposition parties, said Monday. She called for a national unity government to address the country’s problems.

On Sunday, Tunisia’s police union demanded expanded powers to deal with the Salafis, including “all means necessary” to put down the disorder.

Jebali didn’t give specifics about what steps the government would take to deal with the hardliners, but said, “It is imperative that these incidents be ended and a firm approach be taken to those who believe they are charged by God to purify society.”

(www.france24.com / 01.06.2012)

Israel`s Enforcer

Israel enforces rogue state harshness. Rule of law principles are spurned. Even Jewish rights are marginalized. Palestinians have none.

Occupation ruthlessness terrorizes them. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad serve illegitimately.

Israel manipulated the process to elect Abbas and keep him in charge. Despite virtually no popular support, Fayyad was appointed.

Enforcing Israeli authority is policy. Abbas is a longtime collaborator. Duplicity defines his agenda. Israel and Washington know he’s reliable. They support him to serve their interests.

Abbas took credit as Oslo’s architect. Israel controlled the process. Sellout defined it. Israel got what it wanted. Palestinians were shut out. Abbas sold out. He agreed to unilateral surrender. So did Arafat.

In April, Al-Ahram contributor Hasan Afif El-Hasan headlined “Twenty lost years,” saying:

Post-Oslo, nothing changed. Israel’s military protects settlers and terrorizes Palestinians. PA security forces violate the rights of their own people “in accordance with guidelines and direct orders established by Israel.”

“The path the PA chose since Oslo has not led to Palestinian independence and it has weakened the Palestinian national movement.”

“The PA does not govern its own territory, and became for all intents and purposes the administrator of an Israeli protectorate while Israel carries on with ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, colonising the West Bank and enforcing the criminal blockade on Gaza.”

Abbas and Fayyad replicate US-controlled puppet authority in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. PA security forces prevent and/or contain peaceful demonstrations.

During Cast Lead, anti-Israeli protests were prohibited. Abbas tried to prevent war crime investigations. He won’t permit another Intifada. He targets Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine supporters.

Historian Beshara Doumani recently visited the West Bank. He said PA crackdowns prevent Palestinians from expressing views freely. He called Nablus “a broken city.” Resistance is confronted and quashed.

Sociology Professor Khalil Nakhleh calls PA/Israeli cooperation frightening. Palestinian elites place their interests above collective ones.

PA leaders work cooperatively with a “Jewish-ethno-security regime.” They rule Palestine “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean….” What chance have Palestinians when top officials representing them sell out to Israeli authority?

On May 10, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights reported (PCHR) Palestinian security forces broke up “the concluding colloquium of the Palestine Festival of Literature.”

Free expression and opinion were violated. So was the right to peacefully assemble. Palestinian law affirms rights too important to deny.

Arab poets and writers attended. Egyptian blogger ‘Amru ‘Izzat spoke about liberty. Security forces cut off electricity and told attendees to leave. Those refusing were confronted. Cameras were confiscated. Chaos resulted. Later, the colloquium resumed at al-Quds International Hotel.

In early May, PA security forces arrested dozens of journalists and activists voicing dissent. Al Haq director Shawan Jabarin said:

“There are many people I’m sure that are afraid and will count to ten before they say anything. Maybe they’ll push people to speak underground instead of expressing their opinions freely.”

“I think they’re using different words here and there, just to undermine these people in the eyes of the public and to say that they are creating trouble and creating divisions. It’s a political judgement more than (something) illegal.”

Palestinian Attorney General Ahmad al-Maghni hasn’t “protect(ed) the freedoms and the rights of the people in the face of arbitrary detention, instead of arresting people.”

“Here, we see him acting quickly” and irresponsibly. “(A)t the same time, he’s closing his ears and his eyes on the crimes going on.”

“He is not taking into his mind that the law that he is using was approved in 1960 and these days, we are in 2012 and the main principle now in all the world is freedom of expression.”

Jabarin referred to the long outdated 1960 Jordanian Penal Code.

An-Najah University student Hasan Abbadi was jailed for days and fined for “creating disunity.” Others were targeted for Facebook and other social network comments.

Abbas ruthlessly targets truth. Criticizing PA authority isn’t tolerated. Web sites were blocked. Al Mughani ordered them shut. Internet freedom’s threatened. So are peaceful assembly and other rights.

Palestinians should ask who’s side are they on? It’s simple knowing and should mobilize them to react. Otherwise, current policies will continue and worsen.

Palestinian Security Forces Trained to Serve Israel

From 2005 until he retired in October 2010, Lt. General Keith Dayton served as US Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority head (USSC). Lt. General Michael Moeller replaced him. He reports directly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The State Department says he “directs all facets of U.S. security sector assistance to the Palestinian Authority and synchronizes international supporting efforts.”

It’s part of Washington’s pro-Israel/anti-Palestinian agenda. USSC created, built, trains and funds a 25,000-strong PA force. Hundreds of millions are spent. At issue is Institutionalizing hard-line control. Israel’s own security operations are supplemented.

Dayton built and renovated garrisons, training colleges, Interior Ministry facilities, and security headquarters. In January 2010, a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report addressed “US Security Assistance to the Palestinian Authority,” saying:

In late 2004, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Abbas created the USSC for “civil security and counterterrorism purposes.”

Palestinian recruits train at Jordan’s International Police Training Center (JIPCA) near Amman. Instruction includes crowd control, confronting “terrorist networks,” and consolidating “competent, defactionalized civilian control” over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Hamas controls besieged Gaza. Perhaps Israel plans another war to change things.

At issue is maintaining militarized occupation control, confronting challenges to Israeli authority, serving imperial Washington, and denying Palestinians freedom and control over their own lives.

PA security forces assist Israeli harshness. Five PA security organizations operate: the National Security Forces (including military intelligence), Palestinian Civil Police, Preventive Security Organization, Presidential Guard, and General Intelligence Service.

Together they comprise the Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF). The PA interior minister controls them. He’s beholden to Israel. So are Abbas and Fayyad. Palestinians lose out. They have two enemies – Israel and their own West Bank government.

USSC is a multinational organization comprised of military officers and civilian personnel. Its core staff numbers about 45, including Americans, Canadians, Brits, and Turks. Operations are based in Jerusalem and Ramallah.

US private military contractors (PMCs), including DynCorp., are involved. So are around two dozen US and foreign law enforcement and security training specialists, as well as seven US and foreign technical advisors with expertise in security and Middle East affairs, strategic planning and organizational development, contracts and grants, procurement, logistics, and finance.

At issue is enforcing occupation harshness, denying Palestinian self-determination, and eliminating challenges to Israeli control. Palestinian security forces target their own people. Abbas and Fayyad collaborate for whatever benefits they derive.

Israel has final say on policy. Washington’s a reliable partner. Palestinians are left out and exploited. They’re on their own against two rogue states denying their legitimate rights. Liberation depends on restoring them.

– Mathaba Analyst Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”.

(www.mathaba.net / 01.06.2012)

Israel blocks mother from visiting her own daughters

Migrant workers and their children are a target of Israel’s demographic war.

TEL AVIV (IPS) – Hundreds of thousands of families — from Palestinians to Southeast Asian migrant workers to African refugees — struggle under Israeli policies that seek to limit the number of non-Jews within Israel and in the areas it occupies.

Sitting in the living room of her home in East Amman, Jordan, Sabah Othman flips through the photos of her two daughters’ weddings. “I love all of my children,” she said, in Arabic. “But my girls are my best friends.”

Due to Israeli policies, however, Othman’s relationship with her daughters now takes place on the phone.

Othman’s daughters live with their Palestinian husbands in Shuafat refugee camp in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. Because Othman’s husband is from Hebron, all of Othman’s Jordanian-born children hold West Bank identification cards and can enter the West Bank without a visa.

But Othman holds only a Jordanian passport, so she must apply to the Israeli consulate in Amman to enter the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. In the past three years, she has applied six times and has been rejected four times. The two times Othman received a visa, she was permitted to visit for two weeks.

Most tourists get a three-month visa issued on the border.

Israeli officials have admitted that the state has no security claim against Othman, who is a mother of five and a grandmother of eight. Numerous inquiries at the Ministry of Interior, the Israeli consulate in Amman, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed that Othman’s visa requests were denied due to questions about her “migration intentions.”

Obsession with demographics

Othman denied that she intended to leave her husband, sons and grandchildren in Amman and migrate to Shuafat Refugee Camp. But Israel’s concerns that she would do so point to the state’s obsession with demographics and maintaining a Jewish majority.

Sam Bahour of the Ramallah-based organization Right to Enter explained that, under Israeli law, West Bank ID holders can help first degree relatives secure residency in the West Bank. In practice, however, things are not so simple.

Bahour, who was born and raised in the United States, married a West Bank Palestinian in 1994 and immediately applied for an ID. “The Palestinian Authority wasn’t even here yet [and the Israelis] refused to deal with it.”

Since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in 1967, Israel has purged more than 150,000 Palestinian residents from the population registry and has ignored hundreds of thousands of requests like Bahour’s for family unification. Between 2000 and 2005 alone Israel received 120,000 such applications. The requests were simply not processed.

A survey conducted in 2005, on behalf of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, estimated that more than 640,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had a parent, sibling, child, or spouse who was unregistered.

Because Israel controls the population registry for the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian Authority cannot help.

“Just the mailman”

“The PA is just the mailman,” Bahour says, explaining that Palestinians submit their applications to the PA, which delivers them to Israel and then distributes the Israelis’ answers.

After 15 years of living in the West Bank, Bahour received an ID in 2009. His was one of the 33,000 applications Israel processed to reward the PA for taking part in “peace talks” — turning the human right to family into a political card.

Bahour believes that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and their family members reflects a “policy of fragmentation” designed to pressure the population into emigrating.

Othman’s daughter, Amira Dana, has begun to look for work abroad. She hopes to move to a place where her family members can visit her whenever they like.

Dana mourns the important life moments she has been unable to share with her mother, like the births of her three children.

“I really wanted her there next to me. I didn’t want anyone there except her,” Dana said. But Israel denied Othman entry.

No work visas

Inside present-day Israel, migrant workers’ children and African asylum seekers bear the brunt of Israel’s demographic war.

The state ignores African refugees’ requests for asylum. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called them a “concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country” and even though Sudanese and Eritrean citizens cannot be deported to their home countries, Israel does not provide them with work visas.

Speaking to Israel’s Army Radio recently, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said, “Jobs will root them here.” As a result, many of Israel’s approximately 45,000 African asylum seekers are unemployed and homeless.

Mimi Hylameshesh, a 28-year-old refugee from Eritrea, cleans houses for a living. She makes just enough to rent a small apartment in south Tel Aviv and to send her daughter to daycare. While Hylameshesh manages to feed her child, she does not always have the money to buy food for herself.

In another attempt to preserve its Jewish majority, the state is in the process of deporting hundreds of families of migrant workers, including Israeli-born children. Until now, all of the children who have been expelled have been aged four and under. But members of the organization Israeli Children explain that older kids could be arrested and expelled during the upcoming summer break.

Angie Robles, 56, has been taking care of her 15-year-old grandson since 1999, when his father died and his mother abandoned him. The boy was born here, attends public school in Tel Aviv, celebrates the Jewish holidays, and speaks fluent Hebrew.

Despite the fact that he met all of the criteria for “naturalization” in both 2005 and 2010 — when Israel opened “one-time” windows for the children of undocumented migrant workers — his applications were denied. He faces expulsion to the Philippines, his parents’ home country, a place he has never visited.

Imminent deportation

Rose Fabianas, 32, and her six-year-old daughter, Danielle, also face imminent deportation to the Philippines.

Fabianas sits on a park bench in south Tel Aviv, watching her daughter play on the swings with friends. She calls to Danielle and the girl darts over. Danielle talks, shyly, about her life in Israel, where she was born. Her favorite subject is mathematics, she said in fluent Hebrew, and her favourite holiday is Purim.

Fabianas remarked that Danielle used to live in constant fear of the immigration police. When someone knocked on the door, Danielle would beg her mother not to answer. “But now she says, ‘Ima [mom], I’m already big, they’re not going to take me’ … She’s very settled.”

(electronicintifada.net / 01.06.2012)