Well-Made World 38

In another piece for the LRB, Henry Siegman sets things straight in terms of Israel/Palestine, discussing the truce (rather than ease restrictions in Gaza during the truce, he explains, Israel tightened its hold on the city, while Hamas was acknowledged to be quite effective in preventing rocketfire, including from groups like Islamic Jihad); Hamas on the terrorist list (Siegman reminds us that when it became a political party, Hamas publicly ended its suicide bombings and kassam fire, until the blockade); and the conception that Israel is acting as part of a widespread "war on terror" (as he writes, "It is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terror organisation’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism, as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood, in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to end an oppressive occupation and bring about a Palestinian state. While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today any more than the same declaration in the PLO charter determined Fatah’s actions").

In other news, the NYT reports today that layoffs are expanding to sectors of the economy such as manufacturing, retailing and information technology. To this end, we have a piece from NE favorite Paul Craig Roberts on the next real estate crisis, which, he argues, will hit commercial real estate. His answer to the question of the hour--who will finance the next wave of debt in the US, once Obama brings the deficit to the $3 trillion mark?--is Americans, via inflation.

Tariq Ali on Gaza, Boycotts, and the One-state Solution in the LRB

Below you can find the full text of Tariq Ali's recent comments on Gaza for the LRB--one point of interest in particular is his mention of the US Army's recently published document on "Hamas and Israel" (Ali links to it as well), which notes that Hamas seemed ready to alter their position on Israel's 'right to exist' even before the blockade. Ali also refers to a recent call by 500 Israelis to Western Embassies in support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions:

A few weeks before the assault on Gaza, the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army published a levelheaded document on ‘Hamas and Israel’, which argued that ‘Israel’s stance towards the democratically-elected Palestinian government headed by Hamas in 2006, and towards Palestinian national coherence – legal, territorial, political and economic – has been a major obstacle to substantive peacemaking.’ Whatever their reservations about the organisation, the authors of the paper detected signs that Hamas was considering a shift of position even before the blockade:

It is frequently stated that Israel or the United States cannot ‘meet’ with Hamas (although meeting is not illegal; materially aiding terrorism is, if proven) because the latter will not ‘recognise Israel’. In contrast, the PLO has ‘recognised’ Israel’s right to exist and agreed in principle to bargain for significantly less land than the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, and it is not clear that Israel has ever agreed to accept a Palestinian state. The recognition of Israel did not bring an end to violence, as wings of various factions of the PLO did fight Israelis, especially at the height of the Second (al- Aqsa) Intifada. Recognition of Israel by Hamas, in the way that it is described in the Western media, cannot serve as a formula for peace. Hamas moderates have, however, signaled that it implicitly recognises Israel, and that even a tahdiya (calming, minor truce) or a hudna, a longer-term truce, obviously implies recognition. Khalid Mish’al states: ‘We are realists,’ and there is ‘an entity called Israel,’ but ‘realism does not mean that you have to recognise the legitimacy of the occupation.’

The war on Gaza has killed the two-state solution by making it clear to Palestinians that the only acceptable Palestine would have fewer rights than the Bantustans created by apartheid South Africa. The alternative, clearly, is a single state for Jews and Palestinians with equal rights for all. Certainly it seems utopian at the moment with the two Palestinian parties in Israel – Balad and the United Arab List – both barred from contesting the February elections. Avigdor Lieberman, the chairman of Yisrael Beiteinu, has breathed a sigh of satisfaction: ‘Now that it has been decided that the Balad terrorist organisation will not be able to run, the first battle is over.’ But even victory has its drawbacks. After the Six-Day War in 1967, Isaac Deutscher warned his one-time friend Ben Gurion: ‘The Germans have summed up their own experience in the bitter phrase “Mann kann sich totseigen!” — you can triumph yourself to death. This is what the Israelis have been doing. They have bitten off much more than they can swallow.’

Five hundred courageous Israelis have sent a letter to Western embassies calling for sanctions and other measures to be applied against their country, echoing the 2005 call by numerous Palestinian organisations for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on the South African model. This will not happen overnight but it is the only non-violent way to help the struggle for freedom and equality in Israel-Palestine.

Inauguration Day News

Watching TV in a hotel room in Chicago this weekend, No Empires learned from a scroll on CNN that "History Will Happen in 48 Hours." Ok. But now that it's happened (and yes, Michelle Obama donned a yellow Isabel Toledo number, while Aretha wore a sort of fantastic hat), we can point you to Kevin Alexander Gray's piece on Obama, black American national heros, and the US, the country that Martin Luther King Jr once called the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world." Reminding us of King's rising unpopularity towards the end of his life due in part to his outspoken opposition to the war in Vietnam, Gray suggests that we remember King for something more than "I have a dream", particularly in light of the Gaza massacres. Certainly something to keep in mind while dancing to Beyonce and U2/reading Maureen Dowd.

And speaking of Gaza: Israel's High Court of Justice lifted the ban on Arab parties in the Knesset today; Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN, as well as about 300 other human rights groups, are claiming that Israel used white phosphorous in its attacks on Gaza and are calling for war crimes investigations.

Despite all of the "victory" talk by supporters of the Gaza massacres, Joseph Massad questions Israel's "right to defend itself", just as Khalid Mish'al and Bashir Abu-Manneh explain that the massacres will not weaken Hamas.

Gaza Massacres

As Western media outlets talk about hopes for a cease-fire in Gaza, we at No Empires thought we'd direct your attention to something that's been getting a bit less attention in Western media: Israel's surprising decision to bar Arab political parties from the Knesset this week, citing their support of a "terrorist organization" as well as violations of a 2002 law that would require them to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Here's Jonathan Cook on the issue for Electronic Intifada.