Most Recent Content-
- Friday, Nov 06, 2009
ZNet Article It was as if some official, perhaps one of President Obama's "czars," like the Czar for Demolishing American Credibility, had orchestrated a systematic campaign to isolate the US from the rest of the world, make it a political laughingstock and, finally, render it a second-rate power capable of throwing around tremendous military weight but absolutely incapable of leading us to a better future. -
- Sunday, Sep 13, 2009
ZNet Article Almost a decade ago I wrote an article describing Israel’s “matrix of control†over the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It consisted then of three interlocking systems: military administration of much of the West Bank and incessant army and air force intrusions elsewhere; a skein of “facts on the ground,†notably settlements in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, but also bypass roads connecting the settlements to Israel proper; and administrative measures like house demolitions and deportations. I argued in 2000 that unless this matrix was dismantled, the occupation would not be ended and a two-state solution could not be achieved. -
- Tuesday, May 26, 2009
ZNet Article Would Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu say the magic words "two states" after his meeting with President Obama? All Israel held its breath. (He didn't). The gap between the two is wider than those words could ever have bridged, however. Obama, I believe, sincerely - perhaps urgently - seeks a resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a pre-condition, he understands, to getting on with larger, more pressing Middle Eastern issues. Netanyahu, who rejects even the notion of a Palestinian mini-state as grudgingly accepted by Barak, Sharon and Olmert, is seeking a permanent state of "warehousing" in which the Palestinians live forever in a limbo of "autonomy" delineated by an Israel that otherwise encompasses them. The danger, to which we all should be attuned, is that the two sides might compromise on apartheid - the establishment of a Palestinian Bantustan that has neither genuine sovereignty nor economic viability. -
- Thursday, Jan 01, 2009
ZNet Article Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week. Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, who organized the petition, has been silent, as have his co-signatories from Princeton, Northwestern, and Cornell Universities, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Most others who signed similar petitions, like the 11,000 professors from nearly 1,000 universities around the world, have also refrained from expressing their outrage at Israel’s attack on the leading university in Gaza. The artfully named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which organized the latter appeal, has said nothing about the assault. -
- Sunday, Sep 07, 2008
  ZNet Article So rapid is the pace of systemic change in that indivisible entity known as Palestine/Israel that it almost defies our ability to keep up with it. The deliberate and systematic campaign of driving Palestinians out of the country in 1948 was quickly forgotten, the plight of more than 700,000 refugees becoming an invisible "non-issue." Instead a plucky, European, "socialist" Israel became the darling of even the radical left, and for many years after 1967 Israel's occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza also remained a non-issue. Even the mention of the word "occupation," not to mention "Palestinians," would get you labeled an anti-Semite in a wink of the eye, especially given the identity of Palestinians with terrorism in the 1970s and early '80s. Only with the outbreak of the first Intifada in late 1987 did the situation of the! Palestinians under Israeli rule show upon the radar of public consciousness, in Israel as elsewhere, becoming a full-fledged and official "issue" with the opening of the Madrid and Oslo peace talks in the early 1990s. Still, Israeli ruled the all-important realm of PR. Once Arafat refused Ehud Barak's "generous offer" - a mythical proposal which put a positive spin on a blatant attempt to impose an apartheid regime of "cantons" on the Palestinians - the campaign to re-demonize Arafat and his people proved a relatively simple exercise. Sharon's imprisoning the Palestinian president in a dark room of his demolished headquarters, eliminating him politically, and I believe, physically, raised virtually no major opposition or even criticism in the international community. -
- Saturday, May 17, 2008
ZNet Article Israeli Independence Day 2008, marking the sixtieth anniversary of the rise of the Jewish State on the ruins of Palestinian society, should be cause more for sober reflection and reevaluation than for celebration. True, Israeli Jews have much to celebrate. Only a few weeks ago the shekel joined the fifteen strongest currencies in the world, and with an economy fueled by diamonds, arms, high-tech, security services and tourism, Israel's economy is booming. Israel's international position continues to soar: the European Union recently upgraded its links, German Chancellor Angela Merkel brought half her cabinet to Jerusalem to emphasize that Germany was Israel's "loyal partner," and President Bush will come for the second time in the past few months. Celebrities like Steven Spielberg (who withdrew as a cultural consultant to the Olympics in protest of China's human rights violations), Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google founder Sergey Brin, Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger, alongside South African Nobel Laureate and anti-apartheid crusader Nadine Gordimer, will also grace the festivities. And as for the "conflict," it has been effectively removed from the public consciousness (with the exception of Sderot) as attacks inside Israel have been virtually eliminated. What's not to celebrate? -
- Sunday, Apr 27, 2008
ZNet Article As did his pronouncements last August in Jericho, where Prime Minister Ehud Olmert indicated a willingness to withdraw from an area equivalent to 100% of the occupied territories, his latest declarations to the Saban Forum, in the presence of Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair, sounded promising, even stirring. "Annapolis is a landmark," he said, "on the path to negotiations and of the genuine effort to achieve the realization of the vision of two nations: the State of Israel - the nation of the Jewish people; and the Palestinian state - the nation of the Palestinian people." -
- Thursday, Apr 24, 2008
ZNet Article One may well think that the struggle inside the Jewish community of Israel is between those of the political right, who want to maintain the settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank so as to "redeem" the Greater Land of Israel as a Jewish country, and those of the left who seek a two-state solution with the Palestinians and are thus willing to relinquish enough of the "territories", if not all, in order that a viable Palestinian state may emerge. -
- Thursday, Jan 24, 2008
ZNet Article In breaching the wall between Egypt and Gaza, the Palestinian people have stood up for their rights. -
- Friday, Nov 30, 2007
ZNet Article Jeff Halper argues that, for the Israeli government and the majority of Israelis, the overriding question is not how to reach peace with the Palestinians but how to transform the occupation from a temporary situation to a permanent political fact, de facto or through apartheid. -
- Sunday, Apr 23, 2006
ZNet Article This is, as they say, the crunch. This is the political moment all Israeli governments - all of them, Labour, Likud and 'National Unity' - have been working towards the past four decades of Occupation: the final push for an expanded Israel, the permanent foreclosure of any viable Palestinian state and a unilateral declaration that the conflict with the Palestinians is over. Indeed, it is the fi... -
- Sunday, Apr 03, 2005
ZNet Article The fatal flaw in most analyses of the Israel-Palestine conflict is the assumption that if the Palestinians can just get a state of their own, then all will be fine. A state on all the Occupied Territories (UN Resolution 242), on most of the Occupied Territories (Oslo and the Road Map to the Geneva Initiative), on even half the Occupied Territories (Sharon's notion) - it doesn't matter. Once ... -
- Tuesday, Sep 23, 2003
ZNet Article Jon Elmer, FromOccupiedPalestine.org: You use the term ‘matrix of control’ to describe the Israeli occupation. Can you explain exactly what that is and how it functions?Jeff Halper: The Israel-Palestine conflict is often framed in terms of territory: ending the occupation, a viable Palestinian state, and what that means in terms of territory. But two stat... -
- Tuesday, Sep 16, 2003
ZNet Article Paper given at the United Nations International Conference on Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People New York, September 5, 2003
Everyone pooh-poohs the road map. From State Department and other "quartet" officials through the office of Ariel Sharon to international activists and the average person on the streets of Palestine and Israel, one would be hard-pressed to find a sing... - All Most Recent Content
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