Is Israel preparing to annex most of West Bank?

Israel’s nonexistent occupation of the West Bank.

The recently published report by an Israeli judge concluding that Israel is not in fact occupying the West Bank — despite a well-established international consensus to the contrary — has provoked mostly incredulity or mirth in Israel and abroad.

Leftwing websites in Israel used comically captioned photographs to highlight Justice Edmond Levy’s preposterous finding. One shows an Israeli soldier pressing the barrel of a rifle to the forehead of a Palestinian pinned to the ground, saying: “You see — I told you there’s no occupation.”

Even Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, seemed a little discomfited by the coverage. He was handed the report more than a fortnight earlier but was apparently reluctant to make it public.

Downplaying the Levy report’s significance may prove unwise, however. If Netanyahu is embarrassed, it is only because of the timing of the report’s publication rather than its substance.

It was, after all, Netanyahu himself who established the committee earlier this year to assess the legality of the Jewish settlers’ “outposts,” ostensibly unauthorized by the government, that have spread like wild seeds across the West Bank.

He hand-picked its three members, all diehard supporters of the settlements, and received the verdict he expected — that the settlements are legal. Certainly, Levy’s opinion should have come as no surprise. In 2005 he was the only Israeli high court judge to oppose the government’s decision to withdraw the settlers from Gaza.

Legal commentators too have been dismissive of the report. They have concentrated more on Levy’s dubious reasoning than on the report’s political significance.

They have noted that Theodor Meron, the foreign ministry’s legal advisor in 1967, expressly warned the government in the wake of the war that year that settling civilians in the newly seized territory was a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Experts have also pointed to the difficulties Israel will face if it adopts Levy’s position.

Belligerent occupation

Under international law, Israel’s rule in the West Bank and Gaza is considered “belligerent occupation” and, therefore, its actions must be justified by military necessity only. If there is no occupation, Israel has no military grounds to hold on to the territories. In that case, it must either return the land to the Palestinians, and move out the settlers, or defy international law by annexing the territories, as it did earlier with East Jerusalem, and establish a state of Greater Israel.

Annexation, however, poses its own dangers. Israel must either offer the Palestinians citizenship and wait for a non-Jewish majority to emerge in Greater Israel; or deny them citizenship and face pariah status as an apartheid state.

Just such concerns were raised recently by forty Jewish leaders in the United States, who called on Netanyahu to reject Levy’s “legal maneuverings” that, they said, threatened Israel’s “future as a Jewish and democratic state.”

But from Israel’s point of view, there may, in fact, be a way out of this conundrum.

In a 2003 interview, one of the other Levy committee members, Alan Baker, a settler who advised the foreign ministry for many years, explained Israel’s heterodox interpretation of the Oslo accords, signed a decade earlier.

The agreements were not, as most assumed, the basis for the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories, but a route to establish the legitimacy of the settlements. “We are no longer an occupying power, but we are instead present in the territories with their [the Palestinians’] consent and subject to the outcome of negotiations,” Baker said.

On this view, the Oslo accords redesignated the 62 percent of the West Bank assigned to Israel’s control — so-called Area C — from”occupied” to “disputed” territory. That explains why every Israeli administration since the mid-1990s has indulged in an orgy of settlement-building there.

Groundwork for annexation?

According to Jeff Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the Levy report is preparing the legal ground for Israel’s annexation of Area C. His disquiet is shared by others.

Recent European Union reports have used unprecedented language to criticize Israel for the “forced transfer” — diplomat-speak for ethnic cleansing — of Palestinians out of Area C into the West Bank’s cities,which fall under Palestinian control.

The EU notes that the numbers of Palestinians in Area C has shrunk dramatically under Israeli rule to fewer than 150,000, or no more than 6 percent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank. Settlers now outnumber Palestinians more than two-to-one in Area C.

Israel could annex nearly two-thirds of the West Bank and still safely confer citizenship on Palestinians there. Adding 150,000 to the existing 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, a fifth of the population, would not erode the Jewish majority’s dominance.

If Netanyahu is hesitant, it is only because the time is not yet ripe for implementation. But over recent weeks, there were indications of Israel’s next moves to strengthen its hold on Area C.

It was reported that Israel’s immigration police,which have been traditionally restricted to operating inside Israel, have been authorized to enter the West Bank and expel foreign activists. The new powers were on show the same day as foreigners, including a New York Times reporter, were arrested at one of the regular protests against the separation wall being built on Palestinian land. Such demonstrations are the chief expression of resistance to Israel’s takeover of Palestinian territory in Area C.

And it emerged that Israel had begun a campaign against OCHA, the UN agency that focuses on humanitarian harm done to Palestinians from Israeli military and settlement activity, most of it in Area C. Israel has demanded details of where OCHA’s staff work and what projects it is planning, and is threatening to withdraw staff visas, apparently in the hope of limiting its activities in Area C.

There is a problem, nonetheless. If Israel takes Area C, it needs someone else responsible for the other 38 percent of the West Bank — little more than 8 percent of historic Palestine — to “fill the vacuum,” as Israeli commentators have phrased it.

Bailing out the PA

The obvious candidate is the Palestinian Authority, the Ramallah government-in-waiting led by Mahmoud Abbas. Its police act as a security contractor for Israel, keeping in check Palestinians in the parts of the West Bank outside Area C. Also, as a recipient of endless international aid, the PA usefully removes the financial burden of the occupation from Israel.

But the PA’s weakness is evident on all fronts: it has lost credibility with ordinary Palestinians, it is impotent in international forums, and it is mired in financial crisis. In the long term, it looks doomed.

For the time being, though, Israel seems keen to keep the PA in place. In June, for example, it was revealed that Israel had tried — even if unsuccessfully — to bail out the PA by requesting a $100 million loan from the International Monetary Fund on the PA’s behalf.

If the PA refuses to, or cannot, take on these remaining fragments of the West Bank, Israel may simply opt to turn back the clock and once again cultivate weak and isolated local leaders for each Palestinian city.

The question is whether the international community can first be made to swallow Levy’s absurd conclusion.

(Jonathan Cook / electronicintifada.net / 18.07.2012)

Myanmar religious cleansing tantamount to crime against humanity

“In view of the ongoing inhumane violations in Myanmar, the US and its western allies, which keep pontificating about human rights in the world, have feigned ignorance about this humanitarian catastrophe. Why? Because they will not be able to reap any benefits of their future efforts in the country as they do in the Middle East and elsewhere. To crown it all, they have kept an agonizingly meaningful silence over the massacre.”

Described as the Palestine of Asia by the UN, the Rohingya Muslim community in Myanmar is currently going through an unutterable ordeal at the hands of the Rakhine extremist Buddhists in Arakan who are targeting the Muslim minority with the worst form of religious cleansing.

Ethnic cleansing is rife in Myanmar and is turning into a human tragedy of colossal proportions. A confidential United Nations report dated May 29, 2011 and marked “Not for Public Citation or Distribution”, defines ethnic cleansing as a “purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”

What is happening in Myanmar to the Rohingya Muslims violates international laws and is to be categorized as crime against humanity.

Unfortunately, the Myanmar peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the plight of the Rohingya Muslims. Maybe she has forgotten her own words on democracy and human rights that, “The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity.”

Reportedly, the settlement of the Rohingya Muslims in this region dates back to the eighth century. However, in the seventies, the junta embarked on a systematic program of religious cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims who are denied their basic rights, i.e. the right to freedom of movement, marriage, faith, identity, ownership, language, heritage and culture, citizenship, education etc. Deplorable as it is, the Muslims in Myanmar are among the most persecuted minorities in the world according to UN.

According to reports, 650 of nearly one million Rohingya Muslims have been murdered as of June 28. On the other hand, 1,200 others are missing and 90,000 more have been displaced.

US photographer Greg Constantine has recently released a book of black and white photography titled “Exiled to Nowhere: Burma’s Rohingya.” He believes that “One of the things that is lost in the discussions of the issues of statelessness-particularly with the Rohingya-are human stories.”

He relates the story of 20-year-old Kashida who had to “flee to Bangladesh with her husband. The Burmese authorities had denied her permission to get married, but when they discovered she had married in secret and was pregnant they took away all her family’s money and cows and goats. They forced Kashida to have an abortion, telling her: “This is not your country; you don’t have the right to reproduce here.”

The dire humanitarian crisis has already begun to assume tragic proportions and Muslims and non-Muslims alike are beginning to respond with perturbation and fear.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has called for end to violence in Myanmar.

“It is expected that the Myanmar government will prepare the ground for solidarity, national unity and asserting the rights of Muslims in the country and that it will avert violence and a human catastrophe in this regard,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on Monday.

Iranian lawmaker Hossein Naqavi-Hosseini has suggested that the Islamic Republic of Iran should call on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to hold an ad hoc meeting concerning the Muslim massacre in Myanmar.

Also, the president of India’s Jamiat Ulma-i-Hind has voiced concern about the massacre, calling for an end to the humanitarian crisis in the country. Maulana Syed Arshad Madani lashed out at the Myanmar government for being indifferent to the massacre of Muslims by extremist Buddhists. He also criticized the silence of the international community and human rights organizations across the world about this humanitarian tragedy.

The International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS) has strongly condemned the brutal massacre perpetrated against the Rohingya Muslims and has demanded that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) take necessary and urgent steps to prevent religious cleaning and these crimes against humanity in this region.

The statement reads, “The IUMS is reviewing in all concern what has befallen the Muslims in the Muslim region of Arakan, Burma, of fierce killing, displacement and persecution since a long time, not to mention displacement of them, and demolition of their homes, properties and mosques at the hands of the religious extremists in the Buddhist community. Unfortunately, the Buddhist government acts as a bystander in face of the heinous massacres escalating day after day against the Muslim minorities in the country. The numbers of casualties, in the attacks that are considered the most ferocious in the history of targeting the Muslims in Burma, are countless.”

In view of the ongoing inhumane violations in Myanmar, the US and its western allies, which keep pontificating about human rights in the world, have feigned ignorance about this humanitarian catastrophe. Why? Because they will not be able to reap any benefits of their future efforts in the country as they do in the Middle East and elsewhere. To crown it all, they have kept an agonizingly meaningful silence over the massacre.

It is certainly incumbent upon every person who cares about human dignity to fly in the face of this inhumanity and give a helping hand to the downtrodden Myanmar Muslims.

As the great Persian poet Sa’di says, “Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain. If you’ve no sympathy for human pain, The name of human you cannot retain!”

(www.presstv.ir / 18.07.2012)

Israel blames Iran for deadly bus explosion targeting Israeli tourists in Bulgaria

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promising a strong reaction after an attack on Israeli tourists that he says was carried out by Iran.

A bus carrying mostly Israeli youth in a Bulgaria exploded near an airport Wednesday, killing at least six people and wounding at least 32 others, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said. Witnesses told Israeli media that the huge blast occurred soon after someone boarded the vehicle.

A Bulgarian news agency is also reporting that two pregnant women and an 11-year-old Israeli girl are among the wounded.

Bulgarian media is reporting that one of the victims killed is a local tour guide. Nine of the tourists are reportedly still missing, according to Haaretz news.

The incident took place in the Black Sea resort city of Burgas, some 250 miles east of the capital, Sofia. Images shown on Israeli media showed smoke billowing from the scene — a parking lot at the area’s airport where tourists had apparently just landed.

Netanyahu said “all signs point to Iran.”

This “is an Iranian terror attack that is spreading across the world,” Netanyahu said. “Israel will react strongly to Iran’s terror.”

Burgas Mayor Dimitar Nikolov told Haaretz that explosives were placed in the back of the bus.

The attack comes on the anniversary of a 1994 attack on a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that killed 85 people. Just this morning, relatives of the victims implored the Argentine government to pressure Iran to turn over seven suspects accused in that attack.

Bulgaria, an eastern European nation, is a popular tourist destination for Israelis.

Although it was not yet certain what caused the blast, Israeli tourists have been targeted in attacks before, namely in India, Thailand and Azerbaijan. Israel foe Iran is suspected of being behind these assaults.

Another spokesman for the Israeli ministry would not confirm that it was an attack. “We don’t know if it was a terror attack,” Paul Hirschson said. “We do know it was an explosion.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Jonathan Rosenzweig said a flight from Tel Aviv had landed at a quarter to 5 p.m. and that the blast took place about 40 minutes later.

The tourists were apparently boarding the bus en route to their hotels.

The airport in Burgas was closed after the blast. At least 10 fire trucks are battling flames from the explosion, police say.

Witness Gal Malka told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that she saw someone board the bus before it exploded. She also noted that the bus was full of Israeli teenagers.

Officials said Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had spoken with his Bulgarian counterpart and was being kept abreast of the developments. Bulgarian leaders, including President Rosen Plevneliev were on their way to the site.

(www.foxnews.com / 18.07.2012)

Wholesale Price Index Decreased in Q1, Says Bureau of Statistics

RAMALLAH, July 18, 2012 (WAFA) – The overall Wholesale Price Index (WPI) in the Palestinian Territory reached 117.59 in the second quarter of 2012, indicating a decrease by 2.15% compared to the first quarter, Wednesday said a press release by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

WPI for imported products reached 119.70 in the second quarter of 2012, registering a decrease by 0.37% compared to the first quarter of 2012 while WPI for local products reached 117.08 in the second quarter of 2012, which indicates a decrease by 4.26% compared to the first quarter of 2012.

Changes in WPI in the second quarter of 2012 can be traced back to changes in the prices of major activities compared to the previous quarter, including a decrease in agriculture goods by 8.38%, and an increase in fishing by 2.82%, mining and quarrying by1.32%, and manufacturing group by 0.53%.

(english.wafa.ps / 18.07.2012)

Christians United For Israel: Building an Evangelical Army to Defend Zionism

Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United For Israel (CUFI), has been at the forefront of pro-Zionist propaganda and integral in the building of an evangelical army ready to defend the agenda of the Zionist movement.

CUFI is holding a two day conference to discuss the “critical decisions [that] are going to be made about Iran, Israel and the world” as they are supportive of the Obama administrations false flag assertions that Iran is hiding a nuclear program that intends to procure or produce a nuclear weapon.

Some of the speakers at the conference include:

Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann

Pastor John Hagee

Senator Joseph Liberman

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Steven Emerson, author and journalist

Ari Fleischer, former spokesperson for the George W. Bush administration

Sgt. Benjamin Anthony, combat veteran and reservist for Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

The IDF are the military forces for the State of Israel. However, they are involved in societal issues and influential in controlling and dissemination of propaganda by directly participating in the local economy, culture and political venues. Since 1967, the US has had close ties to the IDF with regard to developing cooperation on military technology and defense systems.

The CUFI Conference will provide training sessions that will instill pro-Zionist perspectives on the Israeli-Arab conflicts. During the “Myth and Facts: Refuting the Negative Myths About Israel” workshop, attendees will be schooled as to defending the Israeli “battlefield ethics” in regard to the mass executions of Palestinians that continues to this day. While paralleling Israeli military experts who can “reveal the truth behind the headlines and empower you to respond to Israel’s accusers with confidence” Sgt Nadav Weinberg, veteran Israeli combat solider will speak on the justification of the slow extinction of the Palestinian people on the Gaza Strip.

Educating evangelical Christians on the ins-and-outs of Christian Zionism is all important to the agenda of this conference. While the movement appears to support the Christian belief that the return of the Jews to the Holy Land (Jerusalem) will usher in the second coming of Jesus Christ (also referred to as Restorationism); the actual agenda is much more sinister.

The Globalist Zionists have used chicanery to convince the encompassing evangelical movement to dedicate their unwavering support to Israel because a Jewish return to the Land of Israel, along with the parallel idea that the Jews ought to be encouraged to become Christian, as a means fulfilling a Biblical prophecy has been common in Protestant circles since the Reformation. Yet the only event they are assisting in preserving is the creation of a One World Government.

Jewish Zionism is the primary advocate of the State of Israel and seeks to protect the movement from anti-Semitic discrimination, exclusion and persecution from other societies. By equating the Jewish people with Zionism, the global Elite have been able to hide in plain sight and become the over-reaching influence that we call by many different names. Historically, Zionism is a political credo introduced by the Rothschild family. The perfect cover of establishing a State of Israel has allowed the global Elite to use the influential power of government to advance their interests and manipulate an entire group of people for the sake of ensuring One World Government.

In support of Israeli and Zionist agendas, the Obama administration created the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB). This group is headed by Samantha Power, who is a member of Obama for America; a Blue State Digital organization that conducts surveillance on American citizens through social media sites to better market to them for the purpose of coercing them to support and ultimately vote for Obama in 2012.

Obama’s APB will monitor and seek to eradicate anti-Semitism in foreign nations in support for Israel’s schemes. The APB and Obama’s executive order called “Blocking the Property and Suspending Entry into the US of Certain Persons with Respect to Grave Human Rights Abuses by the Governments of Iran and Syria via Information Technology” will give the US government obligation to reprimand corporations on behalf of the Jewish community that use the Reform Movement’s Religious Action Center (RMRAC) lobbying firm to represent them.

The CUFI are a national association that supports Israeli agendas by infiltrating “every pro-Israel church, para-church organization, ministry or individual in America.” They intend on converting as many Christians to their pro-Zionist movement as they can through coercive programs of “education, outreach and events.”

Like the clergy response teams deployed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), CUFI use the Bible to keep their congregations under the directives of the US government like blind followers who are intimidated into going along without question because of Roman 13. As Durell Turberville explained: “. . . because the government is established by the Lord, you know. And, that’s what we believe in the Christian faith. That’s what’s stated in the scripture.”

The CUFI Conference in Washington, DC will bring together elected officials, representatives of the Zionist Elite, and the congregations of evangelical Christians that will be the “grassroots” voice that will demand efforts be made to usher in Global Governance; under the covering of expediting the stability of Israel so that Jesus Christ may return.

Religious coercion is a powerful weapon, and one that the global Elite have been working like puppet masters behind the scenes for centuries. Zionists hold key positions of absolute influence in entertainment, mainstream news media, banking and multi-national corporations. They are now gearing up to push their agendas through all avenues of control.

Pay attention, and you can see them coming.

(theuglytruth.wordpress.com / 18.07.2012)

UN fails Myanmar human rights test: US cleric

The main thing this shows us is that we Muslims around the world are proud of Iran and Turkey for standing up- but we have to, the whole Muslim community has to stand up for the rights of other Muslims.”

Abdul Alim Musa, the Imam of Washington’s Masjid al-Islam

A prominent cleric in the US says the UN has failed to restrain the predicament against Muslims in Myanmar by its lack of action against the massacre of the minority group, Press TV reports.

“This problem in Burma… it’s not a concern of the West or its institution it’s not a concern for the rest of the people,” the Imam of Washington’s Masjid al-Islam mosque, Abdul Alim Musa said in an interview with Press TV on Wednesday.

The Imam added that the situation in Myanmar shows that the life and values, the family, the people’s culture and heritage are “not important” to the United Nations “unless it’s wrapped around what’s valuable to the West or oil or gold or some other resource”.

Imam Musa also praised Tehran and Turkey for standing up for the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar who are being oppressed in the Buddhist-majority country.

“The main thing this shows us is that we Muslims around the world are proud of Iran and Turkey for standing up- but we have to, the whole Muslim community has to stand up for the rights of other Muslims,” he added.

The government of Myanmar refuses to recognize Rohingyas, who it claims are not natives and classifies them as illegal migrants, although they have lived in the country for generations.

On Friday, Myanmar’s President Thein Sein said that Rohingya Muslims must be expelled from the country and sent to refugee camps run by the United Nations.

The UN says decades of discrimination have left the Rohingyas stateless, with Myanmar implementing restrictions on their movement and withholding land rights, education and public services.

Reports say 650 of nearly one million Rohingya Muslims have been killed as of June 28 during clashes in the western region of Rakhine. This is while 1,200 others are missing and 80,000 more have been displaced.

The UN has described Rohingya Muslim as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.

(www.presstv.ir / 18.07.2012)

Syria interior minister injured in bomb attack in Damascus

Syrian Interior Minister Mohammad Ibrahim al-Shaar

Syrian Interior Minister Major General Mohammad Ibrahim al-Shaar has been injured in a bomb attack at security headquarters in the capital, Damascus.

He is reported to be in a stable condition.

Syria’s defense minister, his deputy who is also President Assad’s brother-in-law and security chief were killed in the attack targeting the headquarters of the National Security Bureau in the capital on Wednesday.

Cabinet ministers and senior security officials were meeting inside the building in Rawda distric at the time of the attack.

Some reports suggest that the suspected bomber worked as a bodyguard for the officials.

The violence comes as armed groups fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continue their attacks in the capital for the fourth straight day.

Syria has been the scene of deadly unrest since mid-March, 2011 and many people, including large numbers of army and security personnel, have been killed in the violence.

The West and the Syrian opposition accuse the government of killing protesters. But Damascus blames ”outlaws, saboteurs and armed terrorist groups” for the unrest, insisting that it is being orchestrated from abroad.

(www.presstv.ir / 18.07.2012)