Israel asks for "peace," whilst resuming colonisation

Israel's 10-month moratorium on construction in the West Bank is over. Construction contractors are expecting to begin work on 500 to 600 new homes in the coming month. As a result, several Palestinian organisations are opposed to continuing direct negotiations with Israel.

However, according to the Jerusalem Post, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said that this shouldn't affect "the goal of reaching a historic  peace agreement between our two peoples."

In full, he said;

I hope that President Abbas will remain in the talks and continue with me on the path of peace which we started three weeks ago, after many in the world have now realized that my intentions of reaching peace are serious and sincere and that I honor my commitments.

I say to President Abbas, for the sake of both our peoples, let us focus on what is truly important – accelerated, sincere and continuous talks to reach a historic framework agreement within a year.

The only problem is that, for the vast majority of Palestinians, these settlements are "truly important." They represent the steady colonisation by Israel of all viable land within the occupied territories, whilst any "historic framework" will merely leave Palestinians crowded into the barren remains.

Already, Israel is siphoning off water supplies for itself and pumping raw sewage - shit, in a word - back to the Palestinians. And alonside the theft of resources is the physical occupation of land.

Before the moratorium was imposed, Israeli settlements saw their population grow over from 177,411 to 267,163in just the seven years from 1999 to 2006. At the same time, the Palestinian refugee population has been growing at a rate of 100,000 per year, the fallout from the 1948 and 1967 wars compounded by the continuing forced eviction of families to make way for settlers.

And the rhetoric of Danny Danon, Ayoob Kara and Tzipi Hotovely from the Likud Party, quoted by Ha'aretz, made clear the nationalist ideology underpinning the occupation;

"This is what I wanted to see - blue and white in every corner," said Kara, speaking to around 2,500 people at the annual World Likud convention at Revava. "I came to be with you all. Residents here respected the freeze; the most important thing is to continue the peace process. The result of the freeze was zero. It gave us nothing and it gave the Palestinian Authority nothing. As a wounded Israel Defense Forces veteran I think Israel's security depends on your settling here." 

Quoting a Talmudic saying, he said, "If [a man] comes to slay you, slay him first." 

Zeev said: "This day unites the entire people of Israel, not only World Likud. The residents of Judea and Samaria are native to Israel through a historical link. That's the issue that should lead us today regarding our rights in the face of the Quartet and the United Nations. We were born here and this is the land of our fathers forever. In the name of God we will succeed." 

Hotovely told the crowd she was "proud to be a member of a party that was elected to preserve our right to exist in this country."

One could well imagine the same rhetoric coming from any hard-right party in Europe or America. It is nothing less than the doctrine of racial-religious nationalism.

With such a tendency prevailing amongst the settlers, it is easy to be sceptical about any "restraint" they may show. And certainly ordinary Palestinians have no reason to trust that we won't merely see the continuation of business as usual.

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has already complied with Netanyahu's demand not to protest the end of the settlement freeze. Repeated threats of a walk-out have come to nothing.

But Abbas appears to be in it for his own gain. His presidential term expired in 2009, and his unilateral extension a year later. Still, he remains at the head of the Palestinian Authority, his own position apparently the only thing he has managed to secure.

And with Hamas out of bounds for negotiation, based on wholly hypocritical reasoning, ordinary Palestinians have no voice.

No matter how "historic" the "framework agreement" may be, there will be no serious peace . Not when those negotiating at the top table are a nationalist pursuing a policy of colonial expansion and a "leader" willing to sell out the rights of his people to maintain his own position.

Israel's racist migration policy sees children facing deportation

The following appaling story comes from Al Jazeera;

Children of undocumented migrant workers who were born and have lived their whole lives in Israel are now facing deportation [EPA]

For most children summer is a carefree time. But for the children of Israel's undocumented migrant workers, deportation looms on the horizon.

It has been a hotly contested issue since last July, when the Oz Unit, a strong arm of the interior ministry's population and immigration authority, first hit the streets.

As the state took aim at Israel's 250,000 illegal labourers, 1,200 children were marked for expulsion along with their parents.

The move, a sudden reversal of Israel's long-standing policy against deporting minors, sparked public outrage. Protests and media scrutiny delayed the deportations but only temporarily.

In October, Eli Yishai, the interior minister, indicated that the families would indeed be expelled. The following month, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, announced that the children would be allowed to finish the school year.
 
Roei Lachmanovich, a spokesman for Yishai, commented: "The government's decision is that Israel should minimise the number of foreign workers in Israel. It is nothing against those 1,200 children - the decision is against the illegal workers who think getting pregnant gives them permission to stay here."

"There's a way that these parents use the children," Lachmanovich added, accusing the mothers of hiding behind their children to avoid deportation.

Forbidden relationships
But, in fact, many of the women became illegal simply because they gave birth in Israel.

State policy forbids migrant workers from having children in the country. If a woman does, she must send her newborn home. If she keeps her baby in Israel, she loses her work visa.

Romantic relationships are also forbidden for foreign workers. In June, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported on the story of Charlene Ramos, a Filipina caregiver with employment and a valid work visa, who faces deportation because she married another migrant labourer.

Hanna Zohar, the director of Kav LaOved, an Israeli NGO that advocates for workers' rights, says: "Israel decided to bring migrant workers. But they are not only workers, they are human beings."

Labourers should not be punished for falling in love or having babies, Zohar argues. Nor should they be expelled for it.

"Deporting children and their family is not humane," she says.

This confirms my point, made in December, that "it is not just Palestinians who suffer under Israel's two-tier labour system."

Then, I wrote how organising pressure had forced Israel's main trade union body - the Histadrut - to alter its racist policy towards migrant workers, if slightly. The task for activists in Israel now is to exert that same pressure against the racist policies of the state, in defence of families being forced out of what is - at the end of it - their home.

I sincerely hope that they succeed.

Why Netanyahu's PR exercise will not bring peace to the Middle East

Israel has "eased" restrictions on what can go into Gaza, and Barack Obama is to hold "key talks" with Binyamin Netanyahu in Washington. This, according to the official narrative, marks the two countries "repairing their friendship." The truth is somewhat more complex.

Yes, as Al Jazeera reports, Israel is "moving from a policy of barring everything except items on a "kosher" list to a system under which everything is permitted except blacklisted items." This means that consumer goods will now be allowed in, no doubt easing the suffering of the Palestinians under the blockade.

This doesn't change the fact that the blockade is illegal under international law. On top of severe and discriminatory rationing of the water supply to Palestinians, and forced eviction of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, it is part of an overall policy of socio-economic apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

People will continue to suffer, especially as "the naval blockade of the coastal enclave will also continue, as will restrictions on the movement of people within Gaza." That "construction materials like iron and steel will only be allowed to enter under Israeli supervision," makes it difficult for any rebuilding in Gaza without a level of political will that simply doesn't exist at present.

But, after Netanyahu's mild chastising by Hilary Clinton for his country's policy in the West Bank, this is Israel returning from the wilderness. It has done something good for Gaza, its other crimes are forgotten, and thus both US-Israeli relations and the official "peace process" are back on track.

Except, of course, that the US-Israeli "rift" was in the first place little more than PR, and the prospects for peace remain slim.

As Fawaz Gerges, a professor at London School of Economics, told Al Jazeera, "this Israeli government has not given the international community, the American government or the Palestinian authority any reason to believe they are serious about the peace process."

Meanwhile, the main subject of talks between Obama and Netanyahu are not the peace process, but Iran.

The US has imposed sanctions, despite Iran meeting the deadline to inform the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of a nuclear fuel swap with Brazil and Turkey. Iran then barred two UN inspectors only when it was met with further UN sanctions.

But both leaders are in "agreement on this issue" as "the sanctions that were imposed by the congress and signed by the president are certainly in line with the Israeli demand." Talks today are likely to see Netanyahu continue in his efforts "to convince the president that the Iranian threat tops any kind of a peace settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis."

All of which is entirely consistent with the course of US-Israeli relations and with attitudes to rival powers in the Middle East.

The only potential spanner in the works is that "many voices in America now are saying Israel represents a strategic liability rather than a security asset for the United States" because "what happens in the Israeli-Palestinian theatre affects the national security of United States."

We shall have to wait to see whether this jeopardises Israel's long-held position as the US's most valuable client state as time passes.

In the meantime, though, what we are seeing is the normal course of Middle East politics and the US-Israel propaganda narrative. Especially now that the Gaza Freedom Flotilla has become old news, don't expect any "breakthrough" in the peace process any time soon.

Balance as a propaganda tool in the Middle East

There is no such thing as balance in reporting.

Even if one tries, scrupulously, to be impartial and to tell both sides of the story, there will be bias. If this doesn't come out in the actual wording of the report or article, it will in the presentation. The choice of facts, quotes, even pictures - which to use, which to shelve betrays bias. As Howard Zinn once noted, "you can't be neutral on a moving train."

Thus, calls for "balance" are not only misleading but actively serve a propaganda function. This flak emerges when the media is perceived as deviating too far from established assumptions, and thus rather than challenging bias is part of the propaganda model that enforces it in favour of established power.

We have recently seen this in relation to the Israeli attack on the lead ship of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

Take the following analysis from the flak machine Honest Reporting;

Will the media report accurately and fairly as anti-Israel activists violently resist an IDF naval boarding with tragic results?

Immediately, we have a display of balance from a body seeking accuracy and fairness. The neutral term "naval boarding" applied to the IDF actions versus the loaded "violently resist" applied to those on the boat. The implicit connection between the activists' "violently resist[ing]" and the "tragic results," as though the "naval boarding" was entirely incidental. The presumption that supporting the people of Gaza equates to being "anti-Israel." Indeed, the presumption that the phrase "anti-Israel" is itself anything other than flak to silence criticism of Israel.*

Going further in Honest Reporting's "Special Alert," the agenda becomes very clear;

Israel's critics have been quick to condemn the incident, using it to inflame anti-Israel sentiment. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has already termed what is undoubtedly a serious incident as a "massacre". Will this be the latest in a long list of incidents that have been distorted and misrepresented to cause Israel the maximum amount of damage to its image?

The idea that Israeli PR is the main casualty of a raid which saw up to twenty civilians killed is the absurd assumption pushed by pro-Israeli bloggers. For example, Reb Mordechai blames Defence Minister Ehud Barak for "hand[ing] a propaganda gift on a silver platter to Hamas and all the hostile world media." The actual casualties are irrelevant.

Honest Reporting continues by saying that "primary objective of this flotilla was not to deliver aid packages to Gaza but to spread anti-Israel propaganda in cooperation with Gaza's Hamas rulers."

As purported "proof" of this, it mentions the "central role in the flotilla" played by "the Turkish IHH organization," which "a supporter of radical Islamic networks, including Hamas, and at least in the past, even global jihad elements."

It is true that IHH's links are at the least questionable, and as such they shouldn't have been involved. The waters in the Israel-Palestine conflict are already muddy, and more needs to be done to distinguish between genuine aid organisations and terror fronts. Those who genuinely support the people of Palestine would not side with anti-semites or neo-Nazis, so why should we side with Islamists?

Nonetheless, this doesn't alter the fact that the IHH were a minority on the flotilla, the majority being peace activists. Nor does it remove charges, voiced by Reuven Pedatzur in Haaretz, that the raid was an abysmal failure;

The inefficiency and the panic that overwhelmed the commandos, leading to the deaths of so many, raises worrying questions about their skillfulness and operational capability.

Again, the focus here is narrow, on how well or poorly the operation was conducted rather than whether it should have been. But even within this framework, the leading article in Haaretz opines that this was "the price of a flawed policy" in Gaza and that Israel needs to set "up a state inquiry committee to investigate the decision-making process, and to decide who should pay for this dangerous policy."

This may simply amount to hanging an individual out to dry for crimes of state, but it demonstrates that at least part of the Israeli media recognises the folly in this act. Not every critic can be comfortably written off as terrorists or anti-Israel propagandists.

The other organisation singled out for accusations by Honest Reporting is the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). They adhere to "nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles," yet for the flak machine this amounts to "placing foreign nationals in danger through encouraging 'direct action'." After all, the death of activists such as Rachel Corrie cannot be blamed on the army bulldozer that crushed her but the nonviolent organisation she was a part of. The idea that attempts to dismantle the Israeli security barrier amount to "violent protests against" it are laughable and unworthy of comment.

What is woth commenting on it the idea that "ISM's extreme ideology was underscored when terrorists, originating from the UK, used ISM as a cover to attack Mike's Place bar in Tel Aviv, murdering three people." Yes, the attack was a horrendous one and those involved clearly had an "extreme ideology." But can we really claim, in all seriousness, that terrorists using a nonviolent organisation to establish their cover is proof that the nonviolent organisation supports terrorism? This, as Greg has explained in the context of the recent Thai troubles, amounts to lazy thinking and an error of logic.


I could go on fisking this one article, but the truth is that there is no need. By insisting that "it is the duty of the international media to report fairly and accurately" whilst criticising those who "do not paint Israel in a positive light," the intent of this and other organs of flak is clear. If you make Israel look bad, we'll tear you apart with accusations of bias. In fact, if you simply don't do a good enough job of making Israel look good, we'll do it anyway.


Hence the frantic efforts of media institutions to show off their "balance."

To use the BBC as an example, we see an entire page dedicated to Israeli reactions. Or, rather, to those Israeli reactions which support the IDF. Likewise, the media daily view "balances" six pro-Israeli views (including Mad Mel) against five commentators who question only tactics, and just three who openly criticised the raid beyond the acceptable framework. Then we have headlines such as "Israel 'had no choice' over raid" and a page dedicated to IDF soldiers' accounts of the raid. And still, the BBC is accused of bias against Israel.

This is the media propaganda model at work: reducing a murderous raid by soldiers against civilians to a question of tactics, and denouncing anything that isn't rabidly pro-Israel as biased against it. The point is to enclose debate within parameters acceptable to established power.


If we want to end injustices such as the one now ongoing in Gaza, then one thing is clear. We need to find a way to smash the propaganda filters on the media.

*Interestingly, as Noam Chomsky points out, that very phrase "was used in the Bible by King Ahab, the epitome of evil, to condemn those who sought justice as "anti-Israel" ("ocher Yisrael," in the original Hebrew, roughly "hater of Israel," or "disturber of Israel"). His specific target was Elijah."

The attack on the Gaza freedom flotilla

There isn't much that I can add to the already-published analyses of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

For a full analysis of what has happened so far, the best port of call is Rady Ananda in Dissident Voice. Chris Marsden and Jean Shaoul are also worth reading on WSWS. Whilst Amnest International provides excellent background on the effects of the Gaza blockade.

Lenin's Tomb offers an explanation as to why the attack took place. Slackbastard not only draws attention to the attack but to foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman blaming it on anarchists.

Craig Murray can't believe the BBC's "balance" on this issue and Left I is outraged at the New York Times' editorial. Ten Percent has written the article you're sick of reading on this event. Cindy Sheehan condemn's Israel's terrorist actions.  A-Infos reports on the Israeli radical left's protest against the attack.

And, on Twitter, you can follow the ongoing debate through the #flotilla hashtag.

To all of which there is not much to add. It's impossible even to offer a solution when 60 years of US-supported rejectionism have made Israel invulnerable to both international law and world opinion. Israel is most useful to the US when embattled and fearful of destruction at the hands of the Arabs, and that is not likely to change any time soon.

On the question of how the impossible horror of the Palestinian (and especially Gazan) people may be ended, I have no answers. I can only hope that someone does.

Iron Dome, media propaganda, and military Keynesianism

The United States has pledged $205 million to fund the development of the Israeli "Iron Dome" project. Allegedly, this will help defend Israel from Palestinian and Lebanese rocket attacks. But, as is often the case when it comes to Israel, the truth is somewhat more complex.

According to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman, "with nearly every square inch of Israel at risk from rocket and missile attacks, we must ensure that our most important ally in the region has the tools to defend itself." The BBC adds that "Iron Dome was conceived and developed in Israel following the Lebanon war of 2006, during which Hezbollah launched about 4,000 rockets into northern Israel" and "southern Israel has also come under fire, with thousands of rockets and mortars fired by Palestinian militants."

Iron Dome seems not only useful, then, but neccesary in the face of such a bombardment. But, as I have noted before, the threat is overstated.

According to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (PDF), "as of April 27, 2008, a total of 13 Israelis have been killed by Qassam rockets since the attacks started in 2001." However, as Amnesty International point out in Operation Cast Lead: 22 Days of Death and Destruction (PDF), the end result of an offensive by Israel lasting less than a month was that "some 1,400 Palestinians had been killed, including some 300 children and hundreds of other unarmed civilians, and large areas of Gaza had been razed to the ground, leaving many thousands homeless and the already dire economy in ruins."

Also important to note, for context, is that Gaza had been blockaded for 18-months prior to that, and remains so to the present. For the crime of electing a Hamas government in free and fair conditions, they were condemned to brutal collective punishment.

In the words of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC);

The stringent closure imposed on Gaza is having a serious impact on most people's daily lives and has stymied reconstruction efforts. Fishermen's and farmers' livelihoods have been destroyed. Unemployment and poverty are rampant. The availability of medical care is inadequate and water and sanitation services are run down.

Despite this, Hamas offered to renew its existing ceasefire. Israel flatly rejected the offer, favouring war as long as Gaza was under Hamas control. One can only wonder when the US will fund an equivalent Iron Dome to protect the Palestinians from Israel.

As Edward Herman notes for Z Magazine;

In reality, the primary violence is Israeli dispossession, which has taken Palestinian land and water for decades, under U.S. and other enlightened states' protection. Over the years the Palestinians have resisted, mainly peaceably, sometimes by violence, but with very much higher casualty rates suffered by the poorly armed Palestinians (over 20-1 prior to the second intifada, when the rate dropped to 3 or 4 to 1-rising to 100 to 1 in the Gaza war).

Nonetheless, the established line of "Israel at risk from rocket and missile attacks" continues to be parrotted by politicians and the media alike. As such we must continue to expose it for the lie that it is.

But this is far from all. The idea of Iron Dome as any kind of "defensive," even an unnecesary or disproportionate one, is fallacious. According to the BBC, Israeli "officials say the next phase in its development is its integration into the Israeli army."

Tel Aviv University professor and noted military analyst Reuven Pedatzur, quoted in the Jerusalem Post, has a quite different take on the matter;

The Iron Dome is all a scam. The flight-time of a Kassam rocket to Sderot is 14 seconds, while the time the Iron Dome needs to identify a target and fire is something like 15 seconds. This means it can't defend against anything fired from fewer than five kilometers; but it probably couldn't defend against anything fired from 15 km., either.

We've been here before. Barack Obama's policy statement on Israel included the call for "continuing U.S. cooperation with Israel in the development of missile defense systems," of which Iron Dome appears to be the end result. The model is clearly the broader US "star wars" system. In both cases, it is not just cynicism which challenges the idea of the systems as "defensive," but the fact that they are quite evidently not fit for purpose on that front.

Johann Hari has made this point before, in some depth;

In the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan was increasingly worried a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was inevitable, until a long-suppressed memory resurfaced in his mind. In 1940, he had starred in a hokey movie called ‘Murder in the Air’. He played a secret agent who had to protect a newly invented super-weapon called the “Intertia Projector” which fired an electrical current at any plane or missile approaching the United States, rendering it worthless. In the film, a scientist tells Reagan this weapon “makes the US invincible in war, and promises to become the greatest force for world peace ever discovered.” 

Why, Reagan wondered in the Oval Office, couldn’t he have a real Intertia Projector? Let’s create a machine that would detect any incoming nuke as it approached the US and zap it into nothing! The Cold War standoff would be over! Reagan was losing the ability to distinguish between reality and films: he repeatedly claimed he had been at the liberation of Auschwitz, when he had recreated it in Hollywood. After the Second World War, there had been a few studies trying to invent such a machine – but they all concluded it was “impossible.” Nonetheless, Reagan decided in 1983 to call on America’s scientists to make it happen. 

Everyone was bewildered. Reagan’s undersecretary of Defence, Richard DeLauer demanded to know how such a “half-baked political travesty” got into a Presidential address. As the Pulitzer-prize winning historian Frances Fitzgerald explains: “Most of the scientists and defence experts invited to the White House for dinner that evening expressed incredulity. An umbrella defence of the United States was a virtual impossibility… [But] when the experts insisted that science was not magic and that American technology could no do everything, they would be accused of lack of patriotism.” 

The lack of evidence didn’t deter Reagan’s team. The man he put in charge of the programme, James Abrahamson, declared: “I don’t think anything in this country is technically impossible. We have a nation which can indeed produce miracles.” The programme was dubbed ‘Star Wars’ – which was fitting, since it was science fiction. As the years passed, the US strategic planners developed ever-more-fevered fantasies of how the shield would allow them to strike anywhere in the world without any risk of retaliation. 

By the time Reagan left office, there was a vast industry dedicated to chasing this will-o’-the-wisp. Huge defence contractors – including Boeing and Lockheed Martin – were making billions from it, and giving fat donations to politicians in both parties. In the decades since, the US has spent more and more, and asked the ‘shield’ to do less and less. Now they want it to just take out a single nuke – and it still doesn’t work. The tests only succeed when the interceptors know where the missile is being fired from, where it is heading to, and the warhead continually broadcasts its location to the interceptor. Some success. They have been given a near-impossible-task: scientists compare it to hitting a bullet with another bullet.

Greg Thielmann, Senior Fellow at the Arms Control Association, backs this assesment up (PDF);

Getting to ground truth on strategic missile defense is a bit like looking for a faithful reflection in the distorted mirrors of a carnival fun house - nothing is quite what it seems.

Performance details are shrouded in secrecy on both strategic ballistic missile defenses and the countermeasures that would be used to defeat them. Neither strategic ballistic missile offenses nor defenses have been used in combat. Many experts to whom the public has access have a vested interest in spinning evaluations of their capabilities.

This is no less true when it comes to the smaller-scale version in Iron Dome. Indeed, according to Pedatzur, "considering the fact that each Iron Dome missile costs about $100,000 and each Kassam $5, all the Palestinians would need to do is build and launch a ton of rockets and hit our pocketbook." But then we can safely assume that the point here was never defence.

The main point, as I noted during the South Ossetia conflict back in 2008, is that whilst "missile defence" is unworkable in terms of its stated goal, it is more feasible as a way to launch first strikes with impunity. There is historical precedent for the US making such plans.

This is not to say that America will launch a first strike anywhere. Indeed, it is unlikely. Rather, the possiblity of such a thing will allow it to assert dominance and scare off threats on the basis of a more one-sided form of the Cold War MAD strategy. After all, control of strategic markets and resources remains the primary goal of US planners, and if they can maintain that without open warfare then all the better.

At the same time, the industry that has built up around "missile defence" adds to the taxpayer subsidy of private profit through the military-industrial complex. As Noam Chomsky has explained;

Like all advanced societies, the U.S. has relied on state intervention in the economy from its origins, though for ideological reasons, the fact is commonly denied. During the post-World War II period, such "industrial policy" was masked by the Pentagon system, including the Department of Energy (which produces nuclear weapons) and NASA, converted by the Kennedy administration to a significant component of the state-directed public subsidy to advanced industry.

By the late 1940s, it was taken for granted in government-corporate circles that the state would have to intervene massively to maintain the private economy. In 1948, with postwar pent-up consumer demand exhausted and the economy sinking back into recession, Truman's "cold-war spending" was regarded by the business press as a "magic formula for almost endless good times" (Steel), a way to "maintain a generally upward tone" (Business Week). The Magazine of Wall Street saw military spending as a way to "inject new strength into the entire economy," and a few years later, found it "obvious that foreign economies as well as our own are now mainly dependent on the scope of continued arms spending in this country," referring to the international military Keynesianism that finally succeeded in reconstructing state capitalist industrial societies abroad and laying the basis for the huge expansion of Transnational Corporations (TNCs), at that time mainly U.S.-based.

The Pentagon system was considered ideal for these purposes. It imposes on the public a large burden of the costs (research and development, R&D) and provides a guaranteed market for excess production, a useful cushion for management decisions. Furthermore, this form of industrial policy does not have the undesirable side-effects of social spending directed to human needs. Apart from unwelcome redistributive effects, the latter policies tend to interfere with managerial prerogatives; useful production may undercut private gain, while state-subsidized waste production (arms, Man-on-the-Moon extravaganzas, etc.) is a gift to the owner and manager, who will, furthermore, be granted control of any marketable spin-offs. Furthermore, social spending may well arouse public interest and participation, thus enhancing the threat of democracy; the public cares about hospitals, roads, neighborhoods, and so on, but has no opinion about the choice of missiles and high-tech fighter planes. The defects of social spending do not taint the military Keynesian alternative, which had the added advantage that it was well-adapted to the needs of advanced industry: computers and electronics generally, aviation, and a wide range of related technologies and enterprises.

Thus, we can assume the fact that Iron Dome is not fit for its stated purpose to be largely irrelevant. It is not, in fact, there for "defence" but as a visible deterrent and an industrial cash-cow.

What this means for the Palestinians is as yet unclear. Under Obama's lead, despite obfuscation in the media, the US-Israeli alliance has not wavered in its rejectionist stance. Expansion into Palestinian territory has been unceasing, and indirect peace talks (initiated after the failure of direct talks) are going nowhere. This new development seems only to be another barrier to hope and progress.

What we do know is that the fight for justice cannot end.

A nine-ship convoy, under the banner "Freedom Flotilla," is headed to Gaza to deliver aid, despite warnings that they will be stopped for "breaching Israeli law." Palestinians have been staging protests in memory of the damage inflicted by the 1948 war. Direct action by Anarchists Against the Wall persists despite continual repression by the Israeli Defence Force.

The Palestinians are a people under apartheid. Especially in Gaza, their conditions are incomparable even weighed up against the South African struggle. Their oppressor is backed up by the full might of the most powerful superpower in history. Every act of resistance is met with a thousand-fold retaliation, and they are being choked and starved as a people. And still they fight back.

If they can continue to do that, against such overwhelming odds, then the very least we can do is to show solidarity and make sure that their story isn't consigned to the memory-hole by the media.

The US-Israeli "rift" only distracts from the oppression of the Palestinians

Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States, has reportedly told diplomats that relations between the two countries are at a thirty five year low. This comes after Israeli plans to go ahead with settlements in occupied East Jerusalem "angered" vice president Joe Biden. However, it should be questioned how genuine this alleged "rift" is.

In the past, when the interests of right-wing Zionism clash with those of global economic hegemony, the US is not afraid to chastise its client state. We have seen this in the past few years over Israeli arms sales to China and US-vetoed plans to bomb Iran, amongst other events. The idea of some all-powerful "Israel Lobby" dictating US policy on this matter is a nonsense, since the same policy is duplicated around the world, primarily serving the state corporate interests of the United States rather than of the hard-right Zionists in the government of its Israeli client.

Noam Chomsky reviews the history of US-Israeli relations to illustrate this point;

Take, as one example, arms sales to China, which [John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of The Israel Lobby] bring up as undercutting US interests. But they fail to mention that when the US objected, Israel was compelled to back down: under Clinton in 2000, and again in 2005, in this case with the Washington neocon regime going out of its way to humiliate Israel. Without a peep from The Lobby, in either case, though it was a serious blow to Israel. There's a lot more like that. Take the worst crime in Israel's history, its invasion of Lebanon in 1982 with the goal of destroying the secular nationalist PLO and ending its embarrassing calls for political settlement, and imposing a client Maronite regime. The Reagan administration strongly supported the invasion through its worst atrocities, but a few months later (August), when the atrocities were becoming so severe that even NYT Beirut correspondent Thomas Friedman was complaining about them, and they were beginning to harm the US "national interest," Reagan ordered Israel to call off the invasion, then entered to complete the removal of the PLO from Lebanon, an outcome very welcome to both Israel and the US (and consistent with general US opposition to independent nationalism). The outcome was not entirely what the US-Israel wanted, but the relevant observation here is that the Reaganites supported the aggression and atrocities when that stand was conducive to the "national interest," and terminated them when it no longer was (then entering to finish the main job). That's pretty normal.

Here, once again, we can see the US taking a strong rhetorical line on Israeli actions. Unlike the Lebanon war, however, Israeli settlement building is not neccesarily harming American national interest. What it is doing is challenging the PR image that Barack Obama has built up for himself and his administration. As I pointed out during the 2009 invasion of Gaza, Obama's position on the Middle East is a somewhat more dovish approach than the Bush administration, though with much the same goals. Propagandised through the filters of the media, this makes him concilliatory, a peacemaker to Bush's warmonger.

Thus, whilst Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden go "on the offensive" over settlement plans in East Jerusalem, little clamour is raised for Bilin and Nilin. The Israeli government has declared both Palestinian villages "closed military zones" and barred Israelis and foreigners entering in a bid to suffocate protest there against the apartheir imposed by the "separation wall."

According to Anarchists Against the Wall, this has not prevented resistance;

After giving speeches in Arabic, English and Hebrew, a small group of demonstrators went through the barbed wire set on the road, and was pushed by the soldiers who also threatened activists will be arrested as the area is a closed military zone. Demonstrators on both sides sat on the ground, beat drums, sang songs, and called upon the soldiers to abandon the oppression of the popular struggle and join it in stead. The soldiers, already with stun and tear gas grenades at hand, were somewhat taken aback faced with this act of non-violent resistance and the many cameras documenting all over the place. And so, with nobody arrested and no attack on the demonstrators, activists eventually decided to leave willingly and escape the burning sun, promising to return next week as well.

However, as well as protests such as these, what the people of these towns (as well as in Gaza and East Jerusalem) need is solidarity. They need their cause to be heard across the world, and stories of a "rift" in US-Israeli relations over what is ultimately a tactical question only obfuscate that fact.

Bringing justice to Gaza will be a long struggle

The aftermath of the Israeli invasion of Gaza last year continues to resonate worldwide. Al-Jazeera reports that two Israeli Defence Force (IDF) officers have been "disciplined" for "exceeding their authority in a manner that jeopardised the lives of others" by firing artillery shells on the densely populated Tel al-Hawa on January 15th 2009. The officers, judged to have "breached guidelines," will "have an official reprimand put into their file," but the army has ruled that "ruled there was no basis to order a criminal investigation into the incident."

This comes after the state denounced the report by South African Judge Richard Goldstone as "flawed from A to Z", "biased," and "ludicrous." An Israeli investigation, not surprisingly, ruled that the IDF's conduct "was consistent with Israel's obligations under international law."

However, we now learn via the Independent that "a high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties." According to reporter Donald McIntyre, the officer has "made it clear that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as "means and intentions" – whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon – as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters." This reinforces the conclusion of Breaking the Silence, who published soldiers' testimonies last July showing that the "unwritten message, which came from brigade, battalion, and company commanders in morale-building conversations before entering Gaza, translated into zero patience for the life of enemy civilians."

McIntyre posits that the revelations "will pile more pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to set up an independent inquiry into the war," but this looks unlikely. If we want proof of this, we look to his paper's editorial assertion that "strong democratic nations are able to scrutinise their own behaviour, even in times of conflict." If this is true, then strong democratic nations are in short supply. Taking Britain as a leading example, the Hutton Inquiry on the Iraq war was nothing short of a whitewash - as even the mainstream press admitted - and the Chilcott Inquiry has followed the same pattern. There is no chance of any culpability for war crimes falling on politicians or planners in either the US or Britain and the idea that their Israeli client might face "UN action to bring war crimes charges" as an alternative is ludicrous.

As Mark S Ellis, the executive director of the International Bar Association (IBA), told Al Jazeera, the mechanisms to bring those deemed responsible for war crimes to justice "simply don’t exist." The refusal of the United States to comply with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) verdict of 1986 that it "acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another State," is a case in point. Though the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a separate entity to the ICJ, the trend of US vetoes regarding resolutions against Israeli crimes, as well as continued Israeli non-compliance, remains the crucial factor. As Ellis notes, "the ICC option is effectively closed."

It would seem that few options remain for the Palestinians to seek redress, and that hopes for any resolution to the Israeli occupation of Palestine remain dim. But there must be cause for hope. Acts of resistance and protest, such as those taking place regularly across the West Bank, must continue. The search for a way to gain justice through international law must not abate. And those across the world who stand in solidarity with the suffering Palestinian people must not let their support waver. We must continue, even if it takes an age and a day, until the force of popular pressure brings the walls crashing down and the criminals to justice.

Walls, demographic timebombs, and the convergence of Zionism with fascism

CNN reports that "Israel will build barrier along its southern border with Egypt to stop illegal crossings." Just as with the illegal West Bank barrier, the pretext is fear over "infiltrators and terrorists." However, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has also offered up an anti-immigrant angle of which Europe's far-right would be proud;

This is a strategic decision to ensure the Jewish and democratic character of the state of Israel. Israel will remain open to war refugees, but we cannot allow thousands of illegal workers to infiltrate into Israel via the southern border and flood our country.

Indeed, testifying to the level to which Netanyahu's rhetoric is in-sync with the far-right, the British National Party has come out in praise of this action;

The right of all nations to preserve their identity, culture and heritage has been reaffirmed by the state of Israel with an announcement by its Prime Minister that a wall will be built to prevent illegal workers “flood(ing)” that country and altering its “Jewish character.”

In an official press release issued today, the Israeli foreign office announced that an agreement had been reached with Egypt for the construction of a barrier wall along the border with Israel.

In the statement, Prime Minister Netanyahu said: “I decided to close Israel’s southern border to infiltrators and terrorists after prolonged discussions with Government ministries and professional elements.

“This is a strategic decision to ensure the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel,” he said.

“Israel will remain open to war refugees but we cannot allow thousands of illegal workers to infiltrate into Israel via the southern border and flood our country.”

A government committee approved the construction of three barriers along the 155-mile desert frontier that would block the “main infiltration routes,” an Israeli official added.

The Israeli government also announced that new laws would be brought in to punish employers who gave work to illegal immigrants.

Israel has good reason to be concerned about the influx of illegal immigrants and bogus asylum seekers. According to the Israeli interior ministry, some 300,000 illegal aliens — including 100,000 migrants, tourists who overstayed their visit and Palestinians — live in Israel which is home to seven million people.

This means that Israel has an illegally-resident population of around five percent. This does not however tell the real story about Israel’s non-Jewish population.

As of 2008, Arab citizens of Israel comprised just over 20 percent of the country’s total population. The majority of these identify themselves as Palestinian by nationality and Israeli by citizenship. In other words, fully a quarter of Israel’s current population is not Jewish.

This balance is bound to be affected by higher Arab and immigrant reproduction rates. A 2007 study by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies found that “if there is no change in the reproduction rate among Jerusalem residents, by 2035 there will be an equal number of Arabs and Jews residing in the capital.”

The data revealed that the reproductive rate of the capital’s Arab population is double that of the Jewish population.

“If these trends continue, we’ll reach a situation in which the Arab population outnumbers the Jewish population,” Dr Maya Choshen, a researcher at the institute, told the Israeli Ynet news service.

The very real possibility that Israel may cease to be a majority Jewish nation has spurred the Israeli government on to announce the crackdown on illegal immigration.

It would seem that the irony is lost on both sides. For Israel, it is the fact that their policy is seen as vindication of a party whose leader has previously denied that the Holocaust, the very reason for Israel's existence, ever happened. Indeed, even today, he cannot concede that it amounted to anything more than "excessive" death on the Eastern Front. For the BNP, the irony lies in the fact that the vast majority of the Jewish population of Israel are of what they would call "immigrant stock," and that the Palestinian people are indigenous to the land he defends their being barred from entering.

The issue of Muslim birth rates, meanwhile, amounts to little more than alarmist nonsense.

In Europe, studies such as that by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), show that "the fertility gap between Muslims and non-Muslims is shrinking." As "Muslims are far from achieving majority status," making up "less than 5 percent of the population in most European countries," the fact that "their fertility tends to decline over time, often faster than among non-Muslims," renders the idea an absurdity. Justin Vaisse, co-author of Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France, adds the fact that the fertility rate of immigrants declines to meet that of the native population, and that Muslims are not a homogenous or monolithic group but rather "exhibit strong cleavages based on the country of their origin, their social background, political orientation and ideology, and the branch or sect of Islam that they practice (when they do)."

In the Middle East and Africa, meanwhile, PRB notes that "growth of the mainly Arab countries of the Middle East and North Africa has been slowed by a veritable revolution in marriage and childbearing in recent decades. While a young population structure ensures momentum for future growth, the pace has slackened thanks to fertility declines in some of the region's largest countries." Thus, the fertility rate of the region "declined from about seven children in 1960 to three children in 2006." The reasons range from "rising economic aspirations" to "waiting longer to marry," but it decimates the idea that Israel is threatened by non-Jewish reproduction. Iran, in particular, is following developed word trends and facing a decline in fertility to below replacement level.

The "demographic timebomb," then, is a scare story built upon hysteria rather than fact. But it also illustrates the increasing parallel between the far-right of Israel and of the West. In December, I reported how the Israeli Histradut's decision to accept migrants as members marked "only the tiniest of steps forward, but nonetheless ... a vital one," for "those who wish equal rights for all workers and an end to exploitation."

With the Israeli government embracing the rhetoric of Europe's neo-fascists, those attempting to take that tiny step face being forced backwards. Likewise, those fighting to tear down the walls of the Israeli apartheid state now have a new frontier opening up for them. And the consequences of this convergence between fascism and Zionism have yet to be charted.

One thing is certain. Nothing good can come of this new development and it must be resisted fiercely.

A tiny step forward for migrants' rights in Israel

For Israeli workers, the equivalent of the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) or American Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO) is the Histadrut. However, the "General Federation of Laborers in the Land of Israel" is an anomalous organisation.

It was founded in 1920 not only as a trade union, promoting workers' rights, but also as a Labour Zionist organisation, promoting land settlement and the employment of Jews over Arabs, despite the latter receiving lower wages.The union's state-building role made it the owner of a number of businesses and factories and, at one point, the largest employer in the country.

Writing for the Electronic Intifada, Tony Greenstein explains the role of Histadrut in the ongoing occupation and apartheid;

The exploitation of Palestinian workers from the occupied territories was institutionalized by an Israeli cabinet decision of October 1970. It provided that the military administration should supervise their employment. Their wages would be distributed by the payments department of the National Employment Service. Histadrut was a partner in this arrangement. National Insurance coverage was permitted in only three areas: work accidents, employer bankruptcy and a grant on the birth of a child in an Israeli hospital. Ten percent of the wages of Palestinian workers went to a special "Equalization Fund," which was supposed to supply the population in the occupied territories with social and cultural services. In fact, this money was used to finance the occupation. The workers did not receive unemployment and disability benefits, old-age pensions, a monthly child allowance or vocational training.

In addition, each Palestinian worker had to pay one percent of his or her wages as dues to Histadrut. Workers saw nothing in return and now a fraction of this money has been returned, as a propaganda ploy, to the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions. When the Shin Bet intelligence service used work permits as a means to coerce Palestinian workers to collaborate, with those who refused being placed on a blacklist and their work permits cancelled, Histadrut again did nothing.

It is not just Palestinians who suffer under Israel's two-tier labour system, either. Kav LaOved is "a nonprofit non governmental organization committed to protecting the rights of disadvantaged workers employed in Israel and by Israelis in the Occupied Territories, including Palestinians, migrant workers, subcontracted workers and new immigrants." Using the case study of "N," they describe the conditions that migrants in Israel endure;

The majority of migrant workers in Israel are exposed to disgraceful exploitation by their employers. The employers do not act in vacuum – the State of Israel, with its laws and degrading attitude towards the rights of migrant workers, gives a clear message to job brokers and employers that the workers are nothing more than tools.

One can charge exorbitant amounts of money from workers simply for bringing them over. Basic rights to family life and childbirth are denied. It is legitimate to “bind” workers to their employers, and rarely would the authorities come to enforce or check the conditions in which workers are employed.

These issues have been discussed many times in the media, and I estimate that the public is aware of the large scale of exploitation and humiliation. But what happens when a worker tries to find out what his rights by law are and demand them? The worker is detained! That’s what happened to N., a worker from Nepal who was detained by the Oz unit.

During the trial the visa expired

After five years of working in Israel, N. decided to find out what his rights were and approached Kav LaOved. The investigation revealed that his employer imposed even more disgraceful conditions than common: workers received wages much lower than the minimum and the right for days off and holidays was denied. Frequently workers were forced to work dozens of consecutive days, more than 16 hours a day. Some were fined when they were five minutes late to work, and the hands of one worker were seriously hurt as a result of overexposure to chemical substances.

Immediately after collecting N.’s testimony and the documents in his possession, Kav LaOved decided to take N.’s case to court. But during the few weeks that it usually takes to file a case, N.’s visa expired. From that point, the way to the Ramle jail was short.

While in custody, N. presented to the Oz unit inspectors a letter from Kav LaOved, clearly stating that the organization was representing him in legal proceeding against his employer, for which he should remain in Israel a few more weeks. The inspectors were probably inspired by Tsiki Sela, the commanding officer at the time, who believed that organizations providing aid to migrant workers were interested in the destruction of Israel. With much “sensitivity and compassion”, they carried N. in the detainee’s van. Now he is waiting in his cell for the Court decision on whether he can be released on bail.

Years of disgraceful abuse and exploitation

Four months ago, following a complaint by Kav LaOved, the economic unit of the immigration police started an investigation against N.’s employer. Within a month, charges of exploitation and fraud were made against the company owners.

But this is of no concern to the Israeli Minister of Interior Affairs, the Oz commander or inspectors. From their point of view, N.’s stay in Israel is illegal, because his visa expired two weeks ago. What about his rights to severance pay, fair wages for years of hard labor, denied days off and holidays and other social benefits denied him during all those years? How can a person exercise his legal right to sue his employer for years of disgraceful exploitation under the threat of detention and deportation? Minister Eli Yishay may has the answer.

When I heard about N.’s arrest, I recalled my trip to Nepal ten years ago, and how enthusiastic I was about the hikes I took there, the views, the excellent food – but mainly about the generous and smiling people. In contrast, it will be interesting to see what N. will have to tell his family and friends about Israel and its citizens, after his many years of exploitation and humiliation.

Now, however, it would appear that organising pressure has forced a slight, but vital, change in that situation. Three years ago a new trade union called Koach La'ovdim, "Power to the Workers," started organizing workers in non-unionised sectors. Particularly, the organisation of migrant care-workers and increasing militancy from Chinese construction workers have forced a reaction from Histadrut.

According to Histadrut itself, "until now the Constitution of the Histadrut allowed only Israeli citizens to be members of the Histadrut." But the executive leadership has "decided to submit a proposed resolution to the Histadrut Legislative Assembly to change the Constitution which would allow migrant workers to become regular Histadrut members." In the press release, they declare their newfound commitment to "work as a trade union to promote the status, working conditions, and to protect the rights of migrant workers in Israel, based on the principles of equality and the Israeli law."

The Histadrut has "also decided to object the deportation of the migrant workers children." As Al-Arabiya reports, "some 1,200 Asian and African children born in Israel had faced deportation along with their parents on Nov. 1 following a crackdown on foreign workers who have overstayed their visas and continue working in the Jewish state." Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu has postponed the move "until the end of the school year," but it still looks set to go ahead. The opposition by the Histadrut represents a vital obstacle to this happening.

However, the Histadrut's apparent change in stance should not be seen as a greater breakthrough than it is. As Hannah Zohar, executive director of Kav LaOved told the Jerusalem Post, "if the Histadrut really takes actions, then it might change things," but "the only reason the Histadrut decided to accept membership of foreign workers is because they now have competition from an alternative workers' organization, Koach La'ovdim." They are "spurred to act" only because "they have some competition from a democratic and inclusive union." In reality, they are "used to going over the workers' heads to reach bargains with employers."

This more familiar tactic is evident in the fact that "the executive [has also] stated that it would support the gradual decrease of work permits for foreign workers in an effort to reduce unemployment." According to Ofer Eini, head of the Histadrut, is that "work permits should only be issued according to real market needs, after ensuring all opportunities to employ Israeli workers have been exhausted." This nationalistic sentiment proves that the union and its executive is commited more to the goals of right-wing Zionism and the Israeli nation-state than representing all workers, regardless of race or nationality, against the bosses.

As such, the apparent change of heart by Israel's biggest labour federation should be taken with a pinch of salt. But the opportunity that their move represents should be seized upon by those who wish equal rights for all workers and an end to exploitation. It is only the tiniest of steps forward, but nonetheless it is a vital one. 

On building settlements and breaking down walls in Palestine

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton told al-Jazeera that "Washington wants an end to illegal Israeli settlements." The words rang hollow, however, with her praise for Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu's "unprecedented restraint," which came "despite his refusal to halt settlement expansion," and her insistence that a halt to settlement expansion "was not a precondition for negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians." Clinton's aim, as Obama's on several occasions past, is to offer concilliatory words whilst US-Israeli rejectionism continues apace.

At the same time, other developments within Israel offer a suggestion of what is to come. According to the Independent, "the Israeli education minister has unveiled plans to take teams of senior army officers to high schools across the country to help teachers "foster the motivation" of pupils to serve in combat units following a decline in conscription rates." The announcement has "infuriated liberals," but minister Gideon Saar is unrepentant, and has "also said that he would experiment with publishing individual schools' conscription rates, a move aimed at embarrassing those with a higher than average proportion of "draft dodgers"."

The move, according to the Independent, comes amid "growing right-wing criticism of draft evasion, coupled with dissatisfaction among part of the public that not serving in the army has become more accepted in the society than in the past." To the contrary, however, recent events suggest that Israeli society is becoming ever-more hawkish.

On Tuesday, BBC News reported that "four Israeli soldiers have been disciplined for protesting against the evacuation of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank." Those involved "received sentences ranging from three weeks in jail to confinement to their base for hanging an anti-eviction banner at their barracks near Hebron." The action is only "the latest in a series of anti-evacuation protests by some soldiers," with "some high-ranking officials" "concerned at the increasing number of religious Jewish soldiers who have refused to take part in the planned evacuation of some Jewish settlements in the West Bank."

However, this does appear to be at least partly propaganda. Considering that the building of illegal settlements and converse eviction of Palestinians continues apace, reports of pro-settler "dissent," such as Haaretz's story that "two Israel Defense Forces soldiers were expelled from their brigade and given 20 days in military prison, just a few days after they waved a pro-settler banner during their swearing-in ceremony," seem conveniently timed. Not that the media are lying, since the Israeli press is perhaps more honest than western outlets in reporting the situation in Palestine. But, certainly the actual disciplinary acts seem calculated to draw maximum press attention at a time when the settlements are drawing (mild, non-committal) criticism from the United States. As former minister Yossi Sarid arued in relation to the presence of the IDF in schools, "this plan says something about the militaristic character of Israeli society. It is definitely getting more militaristic."

The prospects for future peace, then, do not look healthy. However, there are still those willing to resist. Friday saw the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. Unreported in the mass media, Anarchists Against the Wall marked this occasion with mass demonstrations, during which "demonstrators brought down a section of the eight meters tall concrete wall that cuts through the village [of Ni'ilin]'s land." The action was not without consequences, as "soldiers, positioned at the other side of the wall, fired scores of live rounds at the demonstrators as well as tear gas, and sprayed them with the "skunk-bomb" (a foul-smelling liquid)." Nonetheless, the event is a promising one.

As demonstrator Moheeb Khawaja said during the protest, "twenty years ago no one had thought the monster that divided Berlin into two could be brought down, but in only two days in November, it did. Today we have proven that this can also be done here and now. It is our land beyond this wall, and we will not give up on it. We will win for a simple reason - justice is on our side."

The environmental front of Israeli apartheid

Reposted from Amnesty International, why the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people goes beyond military aggression and socio-economic apartheid to a theft of natural resources that is slowly murdering an entire people.

Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies.

These unreasonably restrict the availability of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and prevent the Palestinians developing an effective water infrastructure there.

“Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank, while the unlawful Israeli settlements there receive virtually unlimited supplies. In Gaza the Israeli blockade has made an already dire situation worse,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s researcher on Israel and the OPT.

In a new extensive report, Amnesty International revealed the extent to which Israel’s discriminatory water policies and practices are denying Palestinians their right to access to water.

Israel uses more than 80 per cent of the water from the Mountain Aquifer, the main source of underground water in Israel and the OPT, while restricting Palestinian access to a mere 20 per cent.

The Mountain Aquifer is the only source for water for Palestinians in the West Bank, but only one of several for Israel, which also takes for itself all the water available from the Jordan River.

While Palestinian daily water consumption barely reaches 70 litres a day per person, Israeli daily consumption is more than 300 litres per day, four times as much.

In some rural communities Palestinians survive on barely 20 litres per day, the minimum amount recommended for domestic use in emergency situations.

Some 180,000-200,000 Palestinians living in rural communities have no access to running water and the Israeli army often prevents them from even collecting rainwater.

In contrast, Israeli settlers, who live in the West Bank in violation of international law, have intensive-irrigation farms, lush gardens and swimming pools.

Numbering about 450,000, the settlers use as much or more water than the Palestinian population of some 2.3 million.

In the Gaza Strip, 90 to 95 per cent of the water from its only water resource, the Coastal Aquifer, is contaminated and unfit for human consumption. Yet, Israel does not allow the transfer of water from the Mountain Aquifer in the West Bank to Gaza.

Stringent restrictions imposed in recent years by Israel on the entry into Gaza of material and equipment necessary for the development and repair of infrastructure have caused further deterioration of the water and sanitation situation in Gaza, which has reached crisis point.

To cope with water shortages and lack of network supplies many Palestinians have to purchase water, of often dubious quality, from mobile water tankers at a much higher price.


Others resort to water-saving measures which are detrimental to their and their families’ health and which hinder socio-economic development.

“Over more than 40 years of occupation, restrictions imposed by Israel on the Palestinians’ access to water have prevented the development of water infrastructure and facilities in the OPT, consequently denying hundreds of thousand of Palestinians the right to live a normal life, to have adequate food, housing, or health, and to economic development,” said Donatella Rovera.

Israel has appropriated large areas of the water-rich Palestinian land it occupies and barred Palestinians from accessing them.

It has also imposed a complex system of permits which the Palestinians must obtain from the Israeli army and other authorities in order to carry out water-related projects in the OPT. Applications for such permits are often rejected or subject to long delays.

Restrictions imposed by Israel on the movement of people and goods in the OPT further compound the difficulties Palestinians face when trying to carry out water and sanitation projects, or even just to distribute small quantities of water.

Water tankers are forced to take long detours to avoid Israeli military checkpoints and roads which are out of bounds to Palestinians, resulting in steep increases in the price of water.

In rural areas, Palestinian villagers are continuously struggling to find enough water for their basic needs, as the Israeli army often destroys their rainwater harvesting cisterns and confiscates their water tankers.

In comparison, irrigation sprinklers water the fields in the midday sun in nearby Israeli settlements, where much water is wasted as it evaporates before even reaching the ground.

In some Palestinian villages, because their access to water has been so severely restricted, farmers are unable to cultivate the land, or even to grow small amounts of food for their personal consumption or for animal fodder, and have thus been forced to reduce the size of their herds.

"Water is a basic need and a right, but for many Palestinians obtaining even poor-quality subsistence-level quantities of water has become a luxury that they can barely afford,” said Donatella Rovera.

"Israel must end its discriminatory policies, immediately lift all the restrictions it imposes on Palestinians’ access to water, and take responsibility for addressing the problems it created by allowing Palestinians a fair share of the shared water resources."