A Middle East Peace That Could Happen (But Won’t)

In Washington-Speak, “Palestinian State” Means “Fried Chicken”

Noam Chomsky (Tom Dispatch)

The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders — with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.

The basic principles have been accepted by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states (who go on to call for full normalization of relations), the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran), and relevant non-state actors (including Hamas). A settlement along these lines was first proposed at the U.N. Security Council in January 1976 by the major Arab states. Israel refused to attend the session. The U.S. vetoed the resolution, and did so again in 1980. The record at the General Assembly since is similar. (...)

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IDF evidence so far falls well short of al-Shifa hospital being Hamas HQ

the Guardian

Footage to date fails to prove Gaza complex was nerve centre for attacks on Israel, as military has claimed. (...)

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Screengrab from IDF video of a bulletproof vest with Hamas insignia that it says was found with weapons in the MRI centre of al-Shifa hospital. Photograph: AP.

Prior to their capture of Dar al-Shifa hospital, the Israel Defense Forces went to great lengths to depict the medical complex as a headquarters for Hamas, from where its attacks on Israel were planned.

The evidence produced so far falls well short of that. IDF videos have shown only modest collections of small arms, mostly assault rifles, recovered from the extensive medical complex.

That suggests an armed presence, but not the sort of elaborate nerve centre depicted in animated graphics presented to the media before al-Shifa was seized, portraying a network of well-equipped subterranean chambers.

Even the videos produced so far have raised questions under scrutiny. A BBC analysis found the footage of an IDF spokesperson showing the apparent discovery of a bag containing a gun behind an MRI scanning machine, had been taped hours before the arrival of the journalists to whom he was supposedly showing it.

In a video shown later, the number of guns in the bag had doubled. The IDF claimed its video of what it found at the hospital was unedited, filmed in a single take, but the BBC analysis found it had been edited. (...)

“Israel has failed to provide anywhere even close to the level of evidence required to justify the narrow exception under which hospitals can be targeted under the laws of war,” said Mai El-Sadany, a human rights lawyer and the executive director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, in Washington. (...)

The absence of evidence so far, is beginning to recall past US intelligence failures, most dramatically those preceding the Iraq invasion. It further isolates Washington on the world stage, and deepens already significant rifts within the administration itself.

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Arab forces will not go to Gaza, says Jordanian minister in rebuke of Israel

The Guardian

Ayman Safadi says credibility of international law at stake as he clashes with senior US official over terms for humanitarian pause.

Jordan’s foreign minister has said Arab troops will not go to Gaza as he delivered a blistering criticism of Israel’s war on Hamas. (...)

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Safadi speaking at the IISS Manama Dialogue summit in Bahrain on Saturday. Photograph: Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters.

Safadi, in a no-holds-barred attack on Israel and the cover being provided by the US, said faith in peaceful negotiation and international law was being destroyed by the west’s refusal to rein in Israel.

The credibility of international law had fallen victim to its selective application, he said. “If any other country in the world did a fragment of what Israel did, it would have sanctions imposed on it from every corner of the world.” (...)

He said: “International law has to apply to all. The message seems to be that Israel can do whatever it wants. That is what the world is seeing, [that] Israel is above the law.” (...)

Safadi urged Hamas to release the hostages, but said no preconditions should be set for a humanitarian pause, arguing that 2.4 million Palestinians were being held hostage by Israel in Gaza.

He refused to join the calls to liken Hamas to Islamic State. “Hamas did not create the conflict. The conflict created Hamas,” he said, adding: “You cannot bomb an idea out of existence. (...)

He said Jordan would do “whatever it takes to stop” the displacement of Palestinians. “We will never allow that to happen; in addition to it being a war crime, it would be a direct threat to our national security. (...)

“Denial of food, medicine and fuel to Gazans is a war crime and we have to call it out.” (...)

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Is it too much to ask people to view Palestinians as humans? Apparently so.

The Guardian

As the last few weeks have made abundantly clear, Palestinian lives don’t count.

I do not want to ever hear western democracies lecture the rest of the world on human rights ever again.

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‘It isn’t enough that Palestinians are dying and being displaced: we must be dehumanized and discredited too.’ Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu/Getty Images.

As I write this, more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza – almost half of them children. One child is being killed every 10 minutes in Gaza. (...)

Those numbers don’t count the kids slowly dying of hunger and thirst. The kids getting sick from drinking sewage and sea water. They don’t count the kids with cancer who will not be able to get any care now that the Israeli siege has forced the only cancer hospital in Gaza to suspend operations. They don’t count the kids who are going to die from entirely avoidable diseases because hospitals in Gaza are ceasing to function. (...)

But also? Those numbers just don’t count, period. They’re Palestinians. And, as the last few weeks have made abundantly clear, Palestinian lives don’t count. They don’t count to many in the media, who steadfastly refuse to empathize with Palestinians. (...) Who immediately report anything that the Israeli government says, sending out every IDF statement as a push alert, while looking at Palestinian voices through a permanent lens of suspicion. (...)

Those numbers certainly don’t count to the president of the United States. (...) Joe Biden came right out and said: we don’t believe Palestinians about the death toll. (...)

what does Biden think is happening, exactly? (...) Does he think the pictures of entire neighborhoods being wiped out are some sort of AI deepfake? (...)

He knows very well that the numbers from the Gaza health ministry have been proven to be accurate time and time again. (...)

And, rather than champion the importance of the press, the US is actively trying to suppress coverage of the living hell in Gaza. Two weeks ago, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, asked Qatar to moderate Al Jazeera’s coverage of Israel’s war against Hamas. Can’t have too much of the truth coming out; too much truth is a terrible thing. (...)

Of course I will absolutely condemn Hamas massacring innocent Israeli civilians on 7 October and taking hostages. And let’s be very clear here: while nothing Hamas did on 7 October can be condoned, their actions did not take place in a vacuum. This conflict did not start on 7 October. Palestinians have been killed, displaced, humiliated, detained unlawfully, for decades; the media only sits up and pays attention, however, when an Israeli dies. Ask yourself this: do you know how many Palestinians were killed last year by Israeli forces and settlers? Do you know how many Palestinians are being forced out of their homes by settlers in the West Bank – where Hamas is not in charge? Do you know how many Palestinian children are being held by Israeli forces without trial or charge for “crimes” that can be as minor as waving a Palestinian flag?

I will absolutely condemn Hamas but I ask that the absolute condemnation goes both ways. (...)

As for non-violent resistance? That’s not allowed either. The US has long been trying to criminalize the peaceful boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. (...)

What are Palestinians supposed to do? That’s a rhetorical question because the last three weeks have made the answer to this crystal clear: we are supposed to shut up and die. (...)

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Mokhiber noted: “Usually the most difficult part of proving genocide is intent, because there has to an intention to destroy in whole or in part a particular group. In this case, the intent by Israeli leaders has been so explicitly stated and publicly stated – by the prime minister, by the president, by senior cabinet ministers, by military leaders – that that is an easy case to make.” (...)

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Hamas’s barbarism does not justify the collective punishment of Palestinians

The Guardian
Laying siege to a civilian population isn’t the same thing as targeting a terrorist organisation.

‘They too have casualties, they too have captives and they have mothers who weep … Let’s make real peace”. Not a liberal peacenik speaking from the safety of London or Washington but Yaakov Argamani, whose daughter Noa was taken hostage by Hamas at a music festival near Re’im on Israel’s border with Gaza. (...)

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The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at a joint press conference in Tel Aviv with the US secretary of state Antony Blinken on 12 October. Photograph: Israeli PM Press Service/UPI/Shutterstock.

Many have celebrated the murderous actions of Hamas gunmen. And many, even if they refrained from rejoicing, have tried to justify those actions. (...)

Yes, there is a historical context to Palestinian violence, and Palestinians continue to suffer from Israeli repression. There is, though, no context in which the mass murder of more than 260 revellers at a music rave, or a massacre in a kibbutz, comes close to being justified, let alone provides an occasion for rejoicing. (...)

These were the acts of an antisemitic, theocratic organisation detached from the moral and political frameworks that guided traditional liberation movements. As with other jihadi groups, terror has become an end in itself. (...)

There have been Palestinian leaders, and supporters, who have deplored the depravity of the acts. Hamas represents a betrayal of Palestinian hopes as well as a threat to Jews.

Condemning Hamas, its policies and actions, is not, though, the same as supporting Israeli policies. Israel has cut off power, water, food and medical supplies to Gaza, begun mass, indiscriminate bombings, and a probable ground invasion. (...)

Yet, this collective punishment and killing of civilians has won the backing of western leaders, who justify it as Israel’s “right to self-defence” against Hamas. But as Daniel Levy, one-time adviser to the former prime minister Ehud Barak, asked a BBC presenter: “Can someone credibly tell me that when the leadership of a country says ‘We are cutting off food, electricity, water, all supplies, to an entire civilian population’, that they’re targeting militants?”

Israeli leaders themselves leave little doubt. “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy,” Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Force, acknowledged. (...)

Meanwhile, Israel is turning the occupation of the West Bank into annexation. (...) Israeli government policy is effectively for a de facto single state, but one in which most Palestinians are denied basic rights. (...)

Whether in a single state with equal rights, or in two states, “self-determination” can only be the self-determination of all the people who live between the river and the sea, Palestinians and Jews, in a shared future. No bomb, no butchery can erase that.

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The double standard with Israel and Palestine leaves us in moral darkness

The Guardian

Biden and Zelenskiy support a war they say was ‘unprovoked’ but a defenseless population will pay for media misinformation. (...)

After Hamas’s deadly attacks in Israel and Israel’s hellish bombardment of Gaza, I checked in on MSNBC. Before long, I heard one of their reporters talk about “the violent history between these two nations” – as if Palestine were a country – and had to turn off the TV to get a break. Palestine is not a country. That’s the whole point. Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel all live under various regimes of organized discrimination and oppression, much of which makes life nearly unlivable, and if the US media can’t even frame the issue correctly, what use is there in even covering it?

It’s not just laziness either. The reflexive identification with Israel, by both US media professionals and politicians, always obscures the fuller picture of what’s happening between Israel and the Palestinians. (...)

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Women hold candles during a rally to show support to Palestinians and against Israel's military operations in Gaza, in Santiago, Chile, on 10 October 2023. Photograph: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images.

[T]he US “unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians”. (...)

What exactly counts as a provocation? Not, apparently, the large number of settlers, more than 800 by one media account, who stormed al-Aqsa mosque on 5 October. Not the 248 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers between 1 January and 4 October of this year. Not the denial of Palestinian human rights and national aspirations for decades. One can, in fact must, see such actions as provocations without endorsing further murderous violence against civilians. But if you watched only US news, you would be likely to presume that Palestinians always act while Israel only reacts. You might even think that Palestinians are the ones colonizing the land of Israel, no less. And you probably believe that Israel, which holds ultimate control over the lives of 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and yet denies them the right to vote in Israeli elections, is a democracy. (...)

There’s the nagging hypocrisy of the war in Ukraine. So many around the world support Ukraine’s resistance to foreign occupation (as they should) but blithely deny Palestinians any way to resist their occupation. Even non-violent methods of resistance like the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign is vilified and even criminalized. Why the double standard? (...)

One fundamental way this double standard operates is through a false equivalence, a two-sides-ism that hides the massive asymmetry of power between the state of Israel and the scattered population groupings that make up the Palestinian people. They’re not equal. One dominates while the other is dominated. One colonizes. The other is colonized. (...)

Today, a negotiated peace seems farther away than ever. (...)

The future is full of unnecessary and horrific bloodshed all around. Desperate western attachment to morally bankrupt double standards bears a large portion of the blame.

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> See also: The West’s hypocrisy towards Gaza’s breakout is stomach-turning

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The West's hypocrisy towards Gaza's breakout is stomach-turning

Jonathan Cook (Middle East Eye)

There will be little sympathy in the West as, yet again, besieged Palestinians are bombed by Israel, their immense suffering justified by the term 'Israeli retaliation'.

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Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinian twin babies Ossayd and Mohammad Abu Hmaid, their mother and their three sisters killed in Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on 8 October 2023 (Reuters).

The current outpouring of sympathy for Israel should make anyone with half a heart retch.

Not because it is not awful that Israeli civilians are dying and suffering in such large numbers. But because Palestinian civilians in Gaza have faced repeated rampages from Israel decade after decade, producing far more suffering, but have never elicited a fraction of the concern currently being expressed by western politicians or publics.

The West's hypocrisy over Palestinian fighters killing and wounding hundreds of Israelis and holding dozens more hostage in communities surrounding and inside besieged Gaza is stark indeed.

This is the first time Palestinians, caged in the coastal enclave, have managed to inflict a significant strike against Israel vaguely comparable to the savagery Palestinians in Gaza have faced repeatedly since they were entombed in a cage more than 15 years ago, when Israel began its blockade by land, sea and air in 2007.(…)

Watch how little sympathy and concern there will be from the West for the many Palestinian men, women and children who are killed once again by Israel. Their immense suffering will be obscured, and justified, by the term "Israeli retaliation". (…)

No one really cared while Gaza's Palestinans were subjected to a blockade imposed by Israel that denied them the essentials of life. (…)

No one really cared when it emerged that Gaza's Palestinians had been put on a "starvation diet" by Israel. (…)

No one really cared when Israel bombed the coastal enclave every few years, killing many hundreds of Palestinian civilians each time. (…)

No one really cared when Israeli snipers targeted nurses, youngsters and people in wheelchairs who came out to protest against their imprisonment by Israel. (…)

Western concern at the deaths of Israeli civilians at the hands of Palestinian fighters is hard to stomach. Have not many hundreds of Palestinian children died over the past 15 years in Israel's repeated bombing campaigns on Gaza? Did their lives not count as much as Israeli lives – and if not, why not? (…)

How does Israel have an "unquestionable right" to "defend itself" from the Palestinians whose territory it occupies and controls? (…)

Western governments so horrified by the Palestinian attack on Israel are also the governments that are remaining silent as Israel turns off the electricity [and water] to the prison that is Gaza - again in supposed "retaliation".

The collective punishment of two million Palestinians in Gaza, dependent on Israel for power because Israel surrounds and controls every aspect of their lives in the enclave, is a war crime.

Strangely, western officials understand it is a war crime when Russia bombs power stations in Ukraine, turning off the lights. They scream for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be dragged to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. So why is it so difficult for them to understand the parallels of what Israel is doing to Gaza?

There are two immediate, and contrasting, lessons to be learnt from what has happened this weekend.

The first is that the human spirit cannot be caged indefinitely. Palestinians in Gaza have been constantly devising new ways to break free from their chains. (…)

Israel will batter the enclave back into submission with massive bombardments, but only "in retaliation", of course. The Palestinians' craving for freedom and dignity will not be diminished. Another form of resistance, doubtless more brutal still, will emerge.

And the parties most responsible for that brutality will be Israel and the West that supports it so slavishly, because Israel refuses to stop brutalising the Palestinians it forces to live under its rule.

The second lesson is that Israel, endlessly indulged by its western patrons, still has no incentive to internalise the fundamental truth above. (…)

Already, the "good Israelis" - opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz - are in discussions with Neyanyahu to join him in an "emergency unity government".

What "emergency"? The emergency of Palestinians demanding the right not to live as prisoners in their own homeland.(…)

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Tags: #israel #palestine #palestinians #occupied_territories #gaza #human_rights #settlements #illegal_settlements #terrorism #hamas #hezbollah #hypocrisy