Kadima wins Israeli election

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Kadima hails Olmert as next PM, leaders declare victory for party
Haaretz (http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/699815.html)

Kadima lawmakers hailed party leader Ehud Olmert as the next prime minister Tuesday night, shortly after exit polls gave the party the most number of seats, with a predicted range of 29 to 32.

"Kadima has won today. The next prime minister is Ehud Olmert," said Roni Bar-On, a Kadima legislator, who followed Ariel Sharon from the Likud to his new party.

"In any final outcome, this is a victory for Kadima," said another former Likud member, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. "Kadima will form the government. The intention is to fulfil all of our commitments to the voters."

"What is important is that Kadima is alive and kicking," said Kadima MK Ruhama Avraham. "All options are open to Ehud Olmert."

Labor figures also responded positively to the exit polls, which predicted that between 20 and 22 Knesset seats would go the party.

In praise of the party's chairman, Shelly Yachimovitch (Labor) called Amir Peretz the "undisputed leader of the Labor Party."

Former prime minister Ehud Barak, who refrained from campaigning for Peretz due to political differences between the two, congratulated Peretz for preserving Labor's strength.

Labor MK Yuli Tamir said that the party will sit in a coalition only if its political and social platform is adopted. "We have clear guidelines for a coalition we're willing to sit in," Tamir said.

Dan Yatom of Labor said the results of the exit polls showed a defeat for Kadima and victory for Labor.

"According to these exit polls this is a severe defeat for Kadima. This is a big achievement for the Labor party," he said.

"As far as the coalition is concerned, we will wait and see. I am very satisfied with these results."

Labor MK Isaac Herzog said the results vindicated his party's social agenda.

"Before the elections, everyone was lamenting the Labor party, which has succeeded in changing the national agenda," he said.

"We proved that we united the nation. We brought together religious and secular citizens, settlers and those in the Gush Dan region. Our most important achievement was bringing everyone together," Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman, whose party won 12-14 seats, said Tuesday night.

"This is only the beginning. I am happy that we became a large party in the nationalist camp, and I'm sure that next time we'll win the elections. We have a lot of work ahead of us. This is the beginning of the fight for Israel's future. This achievement belongs to the activists, volunteers and fellow party members. We'll do everything to ensure the security of Israel's citizens, be it from outside sources or from internal criminal sources," Lieberman said.

The exit polls also predicted seven seats for the Pensioners' party. Party leader Rafi Eitan said Tuesday night that his party would only join a coalition that would safeguard the rights of the elderly.

[PhilosophyGenius]

Thank goodness Netanyaho didnt win...but then again, what's the difference?

[Partridge]

Ah, the best part of any election - save for your party winning - the post election analysis! Here we go, here we go...

The Ethnic Cleansing Party Outpaces Likud: The Rise of Israel's Avigdor Lieberman
Saree Makdisi - Counterpunch (http://counterpunch.org/makdisi03312006.html)

Everyone is talking about the successful-albeit lackluster-performance of Ehud Olmert's Kadima party in Tuesday's Israeli elections. Kadima won a marginal victory, gaining 28 seats in the Knesset, and giving Olmert the opportunity to form a government.

But in a sense the real winner of the elections was Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Yisrael Beiteinu, which pushed past Likud to become one of Israel's major parties-turning Lieberman into a potential kingmaker. This is a remarkable development because Lieberman's party stands for one thing: an Israel finally cleansed of the remainder of the indigenous Palestinian population.

Lieberman was born in Moldova in 1958. In 1978, he moved to Israel. Since he is Jewish, he was eligible for instant citizenship under Israel's Law of Return.

It was evidently not enough for Lieberman that, as a Russian-speaking immigrant fresh off the plane, he was instantaneously granted rights and privileges denied to Palestinians born in the very country to which he had just moved (not to mention those expelled in during the creation of Israel in 1948). The very presence of an indigenous non-Jewish population in Israel was, in effect, unacceptable to him.

In 1999, he formed a party called Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel our Home"), made up largely of other Russian immigrants for whom the presence of Palestinians is also unacceptable.

Lieberman's party believes what all Israelis believe: that Israel is a Jewish state. Unlike the more respectable Israeli parties, however, Lieberman's party is willing to add that since Israel is a Jewish state, non-Jews are not welcome. Even if they were born there.

Since Israel has-somewhat conveniently-never declared its own borders, Lieberman proposes that the state's borders be drawn in such a way that Jews are placed on one side of it, and as many Arabs as possible on the other. Ethnic purity is the operative ideal. The mainstream Israeli parties, and even right wing politicians like Moshe Arens, denounce what they regard as Lieberman's racism.

The difference between Lieberman and mainstream Israeli politicians, however, is not that they believe in cultural heterogeneity and he does not: for they are as committed to Israel's Jewishness as he is.

The difference, rather, is one of degree. Mainstream Israeli politicians agree that a line of concrete and steel ought to be drawn with Jews on one side of it and as many Arabs as possible on the other. But they argue that it is OK to have a few Arabs on the inside, as long as they behave themselves, and don't contribute too heavily to what Israelis refer to ominously as "the demographic problem."

Contending themselves with the platitude that Israel is a democracy, mainstream Israeli politicians ignore the fact that, in matters of access to land, questions of marriage and family unification, and many of the other normal rights and duties associated with citizenship, Israel's Palestinian minority faces forms of discrimination not faced by Jewish citizens of the state.

This is hardly surprising. As the state of the Jewish people, Israel is, after all, the only country in the world that expressly claims not to be the state of its actual citizens (one fifth of whom are non-Jews), let alone that of the people whom it governs (half of whom are Palestinian).

Non-Jews have always been, at best, an impediment to Israel's Jewishness. The only question has been what to do about them. Lieberman's suggestion is hardly novel. Until he was assassinated, the Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi used to refer to Palestinians as "lice," and compared them to a "cancer" destroying Israel from the inside. He thought that Palestinians should simply be expelled. Lieberman's solution to "the demographic problem" may seem a little less inhumane, but it is just as racist.

The point, however, is that-as the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy points out-Ze'evi and Lieberman are no more racist than mainstream politicians like Ehud Olmert. The difference is simply one of modalities. "Lieberman wants to distance [Palestinians] from our borders," writes Levy; "Olmert and his ilk want to distance them from our consciousness." Racism, Levy concludes, is the real winner of the 2006 elections.

The question is whether this represents some new development, or merely a sign that Israeli politics are becoming truer to the nature of Israel itself-a reminder that the quest for ethnic purity, no matter how it's dressed up, is inherently ugly.

Saree Makdisi, a professor of English at UCLA, is the author of Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s (University of Chicago Press, 2003). He can be reached through his blog (http://www.sareemakdisi.blogspot.com/).

[Partridge]

The Israeli Elections: What the Hell has Happened?
Uri Avnery - Counterpunch (http://counterpunch.org/avnery03302006.html)

The most dramatic and the most boring election campaign in our history has mercifully come to an end. Israel looks in the mirror and asks itself: What the hell has happened?

On the way to the ballot box, in the center of Tel-Aviv, I could not detect the slightest sign that this was election day. Generally, elections in Israel are a passionate affair. Posters everywhere, thousands of slogan-covered cars rushing around ferrying voters to the ballot stations, a lot of noise.

This time - nothing. An eerie silence. Less than two thirds of the registered citizens did actually take the trouble to vote. Politicians of all stripes are detested, democracy despised among the young, whole sectors estranged. Those who decided not to vote, but at the last moment relented, voted for the Pensioners' List, which jumped from nothing to an astonishing seven seats.

This was a real protest vote. Even young people told themselves: Instead of throwing our vote away, let's do them a favor. Old people, sick people (including the terminally ill), handicapped people and the entire health and education systems were the victims of the Thatcherite economic policies of Netanyahu, backed by Sharon, which Shimon Peres (of all people) called "swinish".

That vote was a curiosity. But what happened in the main arena?

At the beginning of the campaign I wrote that the whole of the political system was moving to the left.

Many thought that that was wishful thinking, sadly removed from reality. Now it has actually happened.

The main result of these elections is that the hold of the nationalistic-religious bloc, which has dominated Israel for more than a generation, has been broken. All those who announced that the Left is dead and that Israel is condemned to right-wing rule for a long, long time have been proved wrong.

All the right-wing parties together won 32* seats, the religious parties 19. With 51 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, the rightist-religious wing cannot block all moves towards peace any more.

This is a turning point. The dream of a Greater Israel, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, is dead.

Significantly, the "National Union", the party that is completely identified with the settlers, has won only 9 seats - more or less like last time. After all the heart-rending drama of the destruction of the Gaza settlements, the settlers remain as unpopular as ever. They have lost the decisive battle for public opinion.

Netanyahu declared that the elections were going to be a "national referendum" on the withdrawal from the West Bank. Well. It was - and the public overwhelmingly voted "Yes".

The main victim is Netanyahu himself. The Likud has collapsed. For the first time since its founding by Ariel Sharon in 1973, it has been subjected to the humiliation of being the fifth (!) party in the Knesset.

The heartfelt joy about this rout of the Right is tempered by a very dangerous development: the rise of Avigdor Lieberman's "Israel our Home" party, a mutation of the Right with openly fascist tendencies.

Lieberman, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union and himself a settler, draws his main strength from the "Russian" community, which is almost uniformly extremely nationalistic. He calls for the expulsion of all Arabs (a fifth of Israel's population), ostensibly in a swap of territories, but the message is clear. There are also the usual hallmarks of such a party: the cult of the Leader, a call for "law and order", intense hatred for "the enemy" both within and without. This man got 12 seats and has overtaken Netanyahu. His main slogan "Da Lieberman" ("Yes Lieberman" in Russian) reminds one of similar historical salutes.

For those who are interested: the fascist group that called for my murder as part of their election program has failed to attain the 2% necessary to gain entry into the Knesset. But, of course, an assassin does not need 2% to follow such a call. (I would like to use this occasion to express my heartfelt thanks to all those around the world who expressed their solidarity.)

The joyful scenes at the Labor Party's Headquarters may seem at first glance exaggerated. After all, the party got only 20 seats, as against 19 last time (to which must be added the three of the small party led by Amir Peretz at the time). But the numbers do not tell the whole story.

First of all, the political implications are far-reaching. In parliament, it is not only the raw numbers which count, but also their location on the political map. In the next Knesset, any coalition without the Labor Party has become impractical, if not completely impossible. Amir Peretz is going to be the most important person in the next cabinet, after Ehud Olmert.

But there is more to it than that. Peretz, the first "oriental" Jewish leader of any major Israeli party, has overcome the historic rejection of Labor by the immigrants from Muslim countries and their offspring. He has destroyed the established equation of Oriental = poor = Right as against Ashkenazi = well-to-do = Left.

This has not yet found its full expression in the voting. The increase in Oriental voters for Labor has been only incremental. But no one who has seen how Peretz was received in the open markets, until now fortresses of the Likud, can have any doubt that something fundamental has changed.

And most important, when Peretz arrived on the scene, hardly three months ago, Labor was a walking corpse. Now it is alive, vibrant, hungry for action. It's called leadership, and it's there. Peretz is on his way to being a viable candidate for Prime Minister in the next elections. Until then, he certainly will have a major impact both on social affairs and the peace process.

That is, of course, the main question: Can the next government bring us closer to peace?

Kadima has won the elections, but is not happy. When it was founded by Sharon, it expected 45 seats. The sky was the limit. Now it has to be satisfied with a measly 28 seats, enough to head the government but not enough to dictate policy.

In his victory speech, Olmert called on Mahmoud Abbas to make peace. But this is an empty gesture. No Palestinian could possibly accept the terms Olmert has in mind. So, if the Palestinians don't show that they are "partners", Olmert wants to "establish Israel's permanent borders unilaterally", meaning that he wants to annex something between 15% and 50% of the West Bank.

It is doubtful whether Peretz can impose another policy. Possibly, the whole question will be postponed, under the pretext that the social crisis has to be addressed first. In the meantime, the fight against the Palestinians will go on.

It is up to the peace movement to change this. The elections show that Israeli public opinion wants an end to the conflict, that it rejects the dreams of the settlers and their allies, that it seeks a solution. We have contributed to this change. Now it is our job to show that Olmert's unilateral peace is no peace at all and will not lead to a solution.

On our election day, the new Palestinian government was confirmed by its Parliament. With this government we can and must negotiate. At the moment, the majority in Israel is not yet ready for that. But the election results show that we are on the way.

* All numbers mentioned in this article are those published with 97% of the votes counted. There may be slight changes in the final count.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156584789X/counterpunchmaga). He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1902593774/counterpunchmaga). He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.

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The Irony of the Israeli Elections: Does Kadima's Victory Put the Peace Process in Reverse?
Neve Gordon - Counterpunch (http://counterpunch.org/gordon03302006.html)

Israelis went to the polls this week with the hope of resolving the Israeli Palestinian conflict once and for all. The new political party Kadima, which means ìforwardî in Hebrew, promised as much and therefore won the day, while the country's long-established ruling parties, Labor and Likud, lost their traditional place at the helm.

Although the refreshing social justice discourse introduced by Labor's new leader, the Moroccan born union advocate Amir Peretz, did inject energy into the shattered party, he failed to reap the support many had hoped for. His position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been rightly criticized as incoherent, and it also appears that many of Labor's longtime Ashkenazi voters have deserted the party ranks because they are unwilling to be led by a Mizrahi Jew.

Likud's situation is much worse. Following the creation of Kadima it lost almost 75 percent of its cohorts not least because it has been increasingly characterized as an extremist party that represents the settler's uncompromising ideology. Perhaps more importantly, during his tenure as Minister of Finance, Binyamin Netanyahu introduced unpopular Thatcherite policies that pushed hundreds of thousands of Israelis under the poverty line. After the election's humiliating results -- in which Likud won less than 10% of the Knesset seats and has been relegated to the fifth largest party -- many believe that Netanyahu should resign.

Even though the extreme right lost many seats, Avigdor Liberman's party Israel Beiteinu (Israel is our Home), garnered 12 seats, four times more than it won in the previous elections. This is a worrisome development since Liberman is Israel's version of France's Jean Marie Le Pen, a shrewd politician who captivates right wing voters by appealing to atavistic sentiments of Jewish blood and soil.

Whereas Liberman may have been the election's surprise, Kadima was its victor, gaining 28 seats. Kadima's meteoric ascent in the polls is due, in part, to a pervasive yearning for a centrist party that will solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the party has very little to say about the country's other social ills, Ehud Olmert's bold declaration that Kadima will unilaterally determine Israel's international borders is one of the secrets behind its noteworthy achievement.

It was actually the party's founder, a man who is currently lying in a coma, who managed to persuade the public that he will make the Palestinian problem disappear. In the weeks leading up to the elections Kadima simply exploited Ariel Sharon's promise, and much of the support the party enjoys reflects the enormous respect many Israelis developed for the former prime minister.

Kadima had a straightforward message and the Israeli public bought it. The thrust of its claim is that there is a contradiction between Israel's geographic and demographic aspirations: as the settlement project deepened its hold on the Occupied Territories, the very idea of Israel as a Jewish state, where Jews are the majority, has been undermined. In other words, the fact that the majority of people living between the Jordan Valley and the Mediterranean Sea are not Jewish underscores the impossibility of achieving the vision of a greater Israel while maintaining a Jewish state.

The party's idea is to unilaterally redraw the borders between Israel and the Palestinian territories, and thus to radically alter the region's demographic and geographic reality. Last summer's Gaza pull-out constituted the plan's first stage. This move was regarded both in Israel and among the international community as a positive step towards solving the conflict. Few seemed to care that it was carried out unilaterally and that the new reality limited Gazans even further in terms of resources, mobility and decision-making.

In a recent interview for Ha'aretz, Olmert outlined the plan's next stage, explaining that Sharon's so-called security barrier will become Israel's political border. But he failed to explain what exactly will the conversion of the security barrier into a political border entail.

Demographically, the barrier will surround 48 Jewish settlements from the east, so that 171,000 of the West Bank's settlers will be incorporated into Israel's new borders. The wall being built in East Jerusalem is meant to reinforce the 1967 annexation of this part of the city, and to further consolidate the 183,800 settlers living there. In this way the government will not have to evacuate 87 percent of the settlers now living in the West Bank, and Jews will have a clear majority within Israel's unilaterally determined borders. The price Israel will have to pay for such a solution is the evacuation of 52,000 settlers.

Geographically, however, the barrier qua political border (including Israel's plan to maintain control of the Jordan valley) does not resemble either one of the two traditional visions for peace: the two-state solution or the bi-national polity.

An examination of the barrier's route reveals that the future Palestinian ìstateî will be divided into three if not five areas (including Gaza). Each area will be closed off almost entirely from the others, while Israel effectively continues to control all of the borders so as to enforce a hermetic closure whenever it wishes. What is new about Kadima's vision is not the attempt to create isolated enclaves in the Occupied Territories, but rather the effort to transform these into quasi-independent entities that will ostensibly constitute a Palestinian state.

Examining the make up of the new Knesset, it appears that anywhere between 65 and 85 members out of 120 will support Olmert's proposal. The brilliancy of Kadima's political plan is that it solves Israel's demographic problem and presents its solution as the two-state option, regardless of the fact that this will be the first time in history that a so-called ìindependent stateî will not have power over any of its borders. Indeed, Kadima's plan elides the fact that Israel will continue to control the Palestinians, whose living conditions will be even further limited. The methods of control, though, will have to be more remote and technologically sophisticated, using biometrics, video cameras, robots and surveillance aircraft.

The Palestinians, in turn, will no doubt employ all means at their disposal to resist Israel's attempt to transform the West Bank and Gaza into remotely controlled Bantustans. Consequently, one should not be surprised if Olmert's plan were to be met by Qasam missiles being launched from the West Bank towards Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv.

The ultimate irony is that Kadima's political vision actually puts the peace process into reverse. On the one hand, it is trying to persuade the public that it can make the Palestinian problem disappear by reintroducing the age-old Zionist trope of an iron wall. On the other hand, it has abandoned all forms of dialogue and negotiation, which Israeli leaders since the early 1990s understood to be the only way to reach a solution with the Palestinians. Kadima is accordingly an oxymoron. While the party's name means forward its political program will effectively take Israelis several steps backwards.

Neve Gordon teaches human rights at Ben-Gurion University in Israel and is the editor of From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0739108786/counterpunchmaga). He Can be reached at nevegordon@gmail.com.

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Haaretz Election Coverage page (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/elections2006.jhtml?contrassID=1&subContrassID=30)

[Partridge]

Narrow victory for Kadima in Israeli elections
World Socialist Website (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/isra-m30.shtml)

The victory of Kadima in Israel’s general election has been hailed as a popular mandate for the unilateral redrawing of the country’s borders by 2010 and the creation of a new “political centre-ground.” In reality, the vote reveals a deeply fractured society that is politically, economically and socially unstable.

On a record low turnout Kadima, the party led by Ehud Olmert since its founder Ariel Sharon fell into a coma, performed much worse than expected. It won only 28 seats instead of a projected 35 to 40. It will rely heavily on the support of the Labour Party, which did better than predicted by winning 20 seats, and still needs the support of smaller parties to form a government.

The dominant sections of Israel’s ruling elite, Washington and the European powers backed Kadima’s policy for unilateral separation from the Palestinians—what is in fact an attempt to permanently annexe much of the West Bank, including Jerusalem. But it was the support of Labour and other nominally left parties that enabled Sharon’s policy to be portrayed as a more realistic path to peace and the elections as a plebiscite on disengagement, with no other alternative to the demands of the far right for war until total victory.

The pro-Labour Haaretz insisted, “Anyone who wants to perpetuate Israel’s control over the Palestinian people should vote for one of the parties on the right. Anyone who admires the courage demonstrated by Ehud Olmert, who presented the voters with his plan for a withdrawal from most of the West Bank and a corresponding evacuation of settlements, and even promised that his coalition will include only parties that promise in writing to support the withdrawal, should vote for Kadima, or for Labour or Meretz, both of which support an additional withdrawal.”

Notwithstanding such efforts to focus attention exclusively on the disengagement plan, growing social antagonisms found a partial and distorted expression in the election result.

Labour was able to win increased support because its new leader, Amir Peretz, made limited promises to safeguard the more impoverished sections of society. His election campaign coupled pledges to join Kadima in a coalition government so as to push through separation from the Palestinians with calls for raising the minimum wage and other social measures.

The seven seats won by the Pensioners Party, one of the major shocks of the election, was another manifestation of the social tensions that have been created by the drive to destroy Israel’s once extensive welfare network. The party came from nowhere by campaigning for pensions for all citizens and for medical care to be subsidized by the state.

On the right, the collapse of Likud, from which Sharon split in order to form Kadima, was in part due to the deep unpopularity of its leader Binyamin Netanyahu. As finance minister he has become indelibly associated with the austerity measures imposed since 2003.

Kadima’s poor performance and its heavy reliance on Labour and possible inclusion of the Pensioners Party, the ultra-orthodox Shas and other smaller formations have given risen to concern over the possibility of forming a stable government. This would necessitate reliance on an electoral base that is objectively in conflict with the neo-liberal economic programme demanded by the major corporations and banks. Israeli shares fell as soon as the stock markets opened yesterday.

Ultimately, the electoral manoeuvres with Labour and the Pensioners Party cannot prevent the development of explosive class tensions within Israel. There is no basis for any party that upholds the interests of Israeli capitalism to resolve any of the pressing social problems afflicting working people. To the extent that Peretz honours his commitment to back the government in slashing public spending, his demagogic appeals to the poor will be undermined, exposing the ephemeral character of Labour’s increased support.

Instability is also made inevitable by the disengagement plan itself. Though this is deliberately concealed by most of the media, there is no possibility of establishing peace based on land grabs that reduce the Palestinians to an impoverished ghetto existence.

As Britain’s Economist magazine admitted, “A Palestinian state under such constraints would not prosper. So long as Israel controls its borders, it would not even count as sovereign. It would be much like Gaza since the disengagement. Citing intelligence reports of planned terrorist attacks, Israel has kept Gaza’s main border-crossing for goods closed more often than open since the start of the year, causing serious food shortages and leaving Gazan fruit and vegetable exports worth millions of dollars to rot. Such friction between security and economics would keep the West Bank poor and angry, encouraging attacks across the border.”

There is no consensus behind the disengagement plan that is meant to have created a new centre. Rather, the adoption of Sharon’s perspective by most of the so-called left is indicative of a lurch to the right within official Israeli politics that also finds expression in the growth of the far-right parties.

Labour’s support for Kadima is the end product of the two-state solution championed by the entire Zionist left. Sharon relied directly on Labour to remain in government. He formed Kadima with the backing of Labour’s former leader Shimon Peres in order to break the grip of the right-wing settlers and pave the way for the renewal of an effective electoral bloc with Labour.

Although Yossi Beilin’s Yachad-Meretz party, the political wing of the Peace Now group, may not join the government it has described disengagement as opening “a window of opportunity for the renewal of the peace process.” It no longer calls for a withdrawal to Israel’s border prior to the 1967 war, but calls them a guide to negotiations on a final settlement “with the goal of removing the smallest number of settlers possible from their homes.... Both sides will consider the facts on the ground and re-evaluate the borders accordingly.”

The capitulation of the left has left the far right as the only significant political opposition to Kadima.

The Labourites have routinely justified their support for Sharon as a necessary compromise that would serve to neutralise the influence of the settlers and the ultra-orthodox parties by creating a stable “centre.”

But such efforts to rebrand the core leadership of Likud could never provide a basis for resolving what is a profound crisis of rule within the Israeli state. Instead it has paved the way for explosive political developments that pose grave dangers to the Israeli and Palestinian working class.

Likud’s collapse to just 11 seats benefited the far-right parties that were once only able to influence state policy by exerting pressure on their far larger ally. Likud, once seen as the most aggressive militarists, has been overtaken by parties that advance policies once associated with Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach party, considered so extreme that it was banned from running for office in 1988.

Yisrael Beiteinu, with 12 seats, is led by Avigdor Lieberman and counts on support from Israel’s 900,000-strong Russian immigrant population; “Israel is our home”demands the ethnic cleansingof some 500,000 Arab Israeli citizens and subjecting those remaining to a “loyalty test.” The National Union-National Religious Party, from which Lieberman split, also secured nine seats.

Together with Likud, these far-right formations control over a quarter of the seats in the Knesset (parliament). They can mobilise a social base which, though numerically small, is ideologically driven and enjoys the support not only of sections of the army but also a powerful Zionist and Christian fundamentalist lobby in the United States.

Not only will these right-wing parties continue to do everything in their power to worsen hostilities with the Palestinians, but their efforts to this end will be used to justify Kadima’s own acts of military and economic aggression.

See Also:
Israel announces plans to annex more Palestinian land (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/isra-m23.shtml)
[23 March 2006]

[Partridge]

The New York Times Covers Up Discrimination against Palestinian Citizens of Israel
Patrick O’Connor, Electronic Intifada (http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4600.shtml)

One of the major developments in March 28th's Israeli elections was the sudden rise of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party which became the fourth largest Israeli party. Yisrael Beiteinu advocates transferring a number of Palestinian towns in Israel to Palestinian Authority control, thus revoking the Israeli citizenship of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. The popularity of this proposal fits with the results of a poll released last week which showed that sixty-eight percent of Israeli Jews would refuse to live in the same apartment building as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, and forty percent of Israeli Jews believe the state needs to support the emigration of Palestinian citizens.[1] However, because of the way Israel is portrayed in the mainstream US media, such blatant discrimination would likely surprise the US public.

Israel’s obfuscation of the second-class status and even of the very existence of Palestinian citizens, 20% of Israel’s population, is a crucial component of a broader Israeli strategy of presenting the public face of a liberal democracy while simultaneously repressing Palestinians. The US mainstream media, with the New York Times in a leading role, collaborates with this strategy. The US media emphasizes the Israeli narrative and focuses coverage on Palestinian terrorism, while minimizing the central Palestinian experiences of Israeli occupation and seizure of Palestinian land, Israeli state terrorism, and systematic Israeli discrimination against Palestinians living in Israel, the Occupied Territories and the diaspora.

Three news articles on “Israeli Arabs” and the Israeli elections published in March in three of the most trusted and widely read US newspapers – The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post provide one example of US media support for the Israeli narrative. Israel uses the term Israeli Arab rather than Palestinian citizen of Israel as one tool in the longstanding effort to “divide and rule”, and to cover up the familial, historical and cultural relationship between Palestinians living in Israel and those living under occupation. None of the articles challenges the use of the term Israeli Arab, and none questions whether a Jewish state with a substantial non-Jewish minority can be democratic and ensure equal rights. While mentioning discrimination, the three articles completely omitted Yisrael Beiteinu’s proposal to revoke the citizenship of many Palestinians.

This disregard for Palestinian citizens of Israel is consistent with the findings of a recent research study I conducted on the publication of op-eds by Palestinian and Israeli writers over the last five years in the five US newspapers with the greatest circulation.[2] Though these newspapers published 201 op-eds by Jewish citizens of Israel, they published just a single op-ed by a Palestinian citizen of Israel currently residing in Israel.

However, The New York Times, commonly viewed as the most influential US newspaper, follows the discriminatory Israeli narrative on Israel’s Palestinian citizens to a much greater degree than the Washington Post and LA Times. This also corresponds with my op-ed research findings. From 2000-05 the New York Times published 3.4 op-eds by Israeli writers for every op-ed by a Palestinian writer, while the LA Times published 2.3 Israelis per Palestinian, and The Washington Post published 1.4 Israelis per Palestinian.

Throughout Dina Kraft’s March 21 New York Times article, “Politicians Court a Not-so-Silent Minority: Israeli Arabs”,[3] Kraft maintains a rigid dichotomy between “Palestinians” and “Israeli Arabs.” Kraft provides no hint of family ties, shared identity, history or culture between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories. Kraft describes Palestinians citizens of Israel as a distinct group from Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, “Almost 20 percent of Israel's 6.8 million citizens are Arabs (a group distinct from the Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip)….”

In contrast, in the May 25 LA Times article “Israeli Arabs Feel Little Stake in Vote,”[4] reporter Laura King calls them “brethren”, noting “a central dilemma for Israeli Arabs: whether they should identify more strongly with their Palestinian brethren in the West Bank and Gaza Strip or seek to strengthen their own identity within Israel.”

The Washington Post’s Scott Wilson reports valuable information in his March 5 article, “Israeli Arabs See Lesson in Hamas Victory”[5] that “The Arab families who remained in their villages during Israel's 1948 war of independence account for roughly 20 percent of the Jewish state's 6 million people… They are also viewed with suspicion by Israel's security services, who fear they might be a Palestinian fifth column concentrated in a strip of towns running north from here along the 1949 armistice line into the Galilee region.”

Kraft’s complete separation of “Israeli Arabs” from “Palestinians” is particularly audacious given her article’s dateline from “Baqa Al-Gharbiyeh,” a town which dramatically illustrates Israel’s systematic separation of Palestinians in Israel from those in the Occupied Territories. Baqa Al-Gharbiyeh is a Palestinian town inside Israel, just west of the Green Line. Connected, just east across the Green Line and inside the West Bank is the Palestinian town of Baqa Al- Sharkiyeh. “West” and “East” Baqa in Arabic, are really one town straddling the Green Line, but now separated by a 25 foot high concrete Wall which divides families and friends. Though from the same families, Baqa Al-Gharbiyeh’s residents are typically identified as “Israeli Arab” citizens of Israel, while Baqa Al-Sharqiyeh’s residents are “Palestinians” under Israeli military occupation.

In contrast to the other two newspapers, The New York Times describes discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel in an ambiguous manner. In the LA Times, Laura King notes that: “Joblessness and poverty rates are much higher among Israeli Arabs than among the Jewish majority. Arabs as a rule do not serve in the Israeli army, which gives many young Israelis a boost in their career prospects… Arab cities and towns inside Israel receive substantially less funding than Jewish municipalities. And a poll last week suggested that a majority of Israeli Jews regard Arab citizens as a threat to national security.” Scott Wilson in the Washington Post mostly repeats these points, but adds discrimination in land ownership. Wilson also mentions the Israeli police and military’s killing of 49 Palestinian citizens in 1956 during the 1948-66 period when Palestinians in Israel were under military rule, and the killing of 13 Palestinian citizens in 2000.

The Washington Post and LA Times describe the discrimination as a fact outlined in the reporter’s seemingly objective voice, but in The New York Times a Palestinian citizen of Israel explains discrimination. "People live under continued and planned discrimination when it comes to the economy, education and job…," said Ali Haider, co-executive director of the Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality.”

Most American readers, accustomed to hearing competing viewpoints from “both sides”, are more likely to trust Kraft’s “objective” reporter’s voice which adds, “Arabs in Israel have higher levels of education, medical care and standards of living than their counterparts elsewhere in the Middle East. But they compare their lives with those of Israeli Jews, who are generally better off.”

Kraft’s statement reflects a startling tolerance of a discriminatory understanding of the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel – that the rights of an ethnic or religious group in a “democratic” state should primarily be compared with ethnically or religiously similar people in other countries, and as an afterthought compared with the privileged majority in the same country. Would the Times endorse ethnically or religiously differentiated citizens’ rights for other self-proclaimed democratic states?

The three articles exemplify how the US mainstream media collaborates in maintaining a fictional narrative of Israel as a liberal, democratic state inexplicably beset by Arab/Muslim terrorism. Maintaining that narrative requires covering up the historical reality that in 1947-48 Israel drove over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in what is now Israel. It necessitates denying that Palestinians who remained in what is now Israel are Palestinians, from the same families and sharing the same culture as Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories and the diaspora. It involves whitewashing Israel’s systematic discrimination against all Palestinians, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, simply because they are Palestinian Muslims and Christians and not Jews, and avoiding the central question of whether a Jewish state can provide equal and democratic rights to non-Jewish citizens.

The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times news reports provide some information that allows a careful reader to question parts of the dominant Israeli narrative. The New York Times, the US’ newspaper of record, chooses to swallow and sell wholesale the discriminatory Israeli understanding of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Endnotes

[1] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=697458

[2] Israeli and Palestinian voices on the US op-ed pages: A Palestine Media Watch Report (http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/reports/pmw_03052006.pdf) (PDF) Patrick O'Conner (28 February 2006)

[3] Politicians Court a Not-So-Silent Minority: Israeli Arabs (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/international/middleeast/21israel.html), Dina Kraft, New York Times (21 March 2006)

[4] Israeli Arabs Feel Little Stake in Vote (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-arabvote25mar25,1,229119.story), Laura King, LA Times (25 March 2006)

[5] Israeli Arabs Reflect on Hamas Win (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/04/AR2006030401057.html), Scott Wilson, Washington Post (5 March 2006)


Patrick O’Connor is an activist with the International Solidarity Movement (http://www.palsolidarity.org/), and Palestine Media Watch (http://www.pmwatch.org/).

[Partridge]

Israel is united in avoiding real peace
Jonathan Cook - Daily Star (Lebanon) (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=23361)

The low margin of victory aside, Kadima's success in the Israeli election on Tuesday is far from the political (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=23361#) and ideological upheaval most analysts were predicting. The most notable event was the humiliation of Likud, Ariel Sharon's (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=23361#) old party and the one he hoped to sabotage by setting up Kadima shortly before he himself was felled by a stroke. Likud's fortunes foundered after most of its supporters, following in Sharon's footsteps, deserted either to Kadima or to the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu. Given the record low turnout, and the challenges posed by the Palestinians' recent backing of a Hamas government, the scale of the Likud failure was all the more shocking. Apparently even some of the settlers abandoned it.On learning of his defeat, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told supporters that the party would "not bend to the winds of fashion." If so, he was writing certainly his own political obituary and possibly that of his party too. For if there was any lesson to be learned on Tuesday, it was that what Israelis expect from the many parties they voted into the next Knesset is that they blow precisely with those winds.

In Israeli politics, where coalition governments are a fact of life (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=23361#), the parties are often judged not only in terms of their platforms but in terms of with whom they will work (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=23361#). Kadima's victory assured, some voters may have wanted to guide its hand in office (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=23361#) by choosing its most likely partners. Other Israelis, it seems, chose not to vote at all. Those parties that backed Kadima's program in relation to the Palestinians most enthusiastically prospered: from Labor under Amir Peretz to Yisrael Beiteinu. Those that demurred, notably Likud, paid the price.

Kadima's policy comes in various guises: "disengagement," "unilateral separation" and "convergence." In plain speaking, however, they all mean expanded Israeli borders that will enclose swaths of Palestinian land in the West Bank (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=23361#) while appearing to give the Palestinians a state. Not a state of the kind that could ever challenge Israel's control over their lives but one that may win the approval of the international community and ensure the Palestinians are held responsible if they reject the new order.

Even Ehud Olmert, the colorless technocrat who inherited Sharon's mantle, could not quite tarnish the alchemy bestowed on the new party by its commitment to "unilateral separation." But what makes this policy compelling, both to voters and to most of the other parties?

Kadima, far from seeking the realignment of the Zionist natural order, as is commonly supposed, has ensured its effective consolidation (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=23361#). The new "center" party has triumphed not because it broke with the left and right, but because it incorporated them. Observers have often pointed out that although Sharon was identified with the right - he even founded Likud - his political roots lay in the leftist Zionist traditions of the Labor Party. It is therefore unsurprising that Sharon's final legacy was a party that fused those two competing traditions in relation to Israel's core obsession: how to manage its conflict with the Palestinians' over their dispossession.

In fact, Labor and Likud have never been far apart in their view of the goals of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians: both hoped to find a way to ensure Israel's continuing grip on the land of "Greater Israel." What separated them was how to achieve it.

In the tradition of Vladimir Jabotinsky, most in Likud believe the Palestinians can never be made willing accomplices to their dispossession. Because they will always struggle for their freedom, the Palestinians must be ruthlessly subjugated or expelled. Which of these two courses to follow has been the paralyzing dilemma faced by Likud ever since.

Labor, on the other hand, has tried various ploys to win a degree of Palestinian acceptance of the Israeli occupation, whether it was the corrupt, limited "self-government" of the Palestinian Authority established by Oslo, or Shimon Peres' attempts to set up Israeli-run industrial parks close to the Green Line - Israel's post-1948 war border - in the hope that Palestinian workers' obeisance might be bought on the cheap. But during the second intifada Israelis came to understand not only that Oslo had failed but that Sharon's attempts at reinvasion and direct reoccupation were leading the country nowhere either.

With the Labor and Likud approaches discredited, Sharon changed tack. In creating Kadima, he found a way to transcend the differences of left and right. He created, in his own words, an "Israeli consensus." Like Likud, Kadima admits that the Palestinians will never surrender their dreams of nationhood, but like Labor it believes a strategy can be devised in which the Palestinians are made powerless to resist Israeli diktats. Kadima squares the circle through a policy that maintains Likud's insistence on "unilateralism" while not forgoing Labor's pretence of "separation."

The question now is what coalition Olmert will bring together to carry through final, limited withdrawals from the West Bank. Unusually for an Israeli prime minister, he may find himself spoilt for choice. With the exception of Likud and the settlers' National Religious Party, the sizeable parties look ready to jump into bed with him. Labor, the Sephardic religious party Shas, the new Pensioners' Party and the peace camp of Meretz may try to push him leftward on social and economic policy, but will not oppose the central planks of the separation program. The rabidly anti-Arab Yisrael Beiteinu, under Avigdor Lieberman, will seek a harder line on separation, more to Israel's advantage, but the indications are that it will not stand in his way either.

In fact, with the ideological glue of Kadima at the center of the coalition, even ideological enemies like Meretz and Yisrael Beiteinu have said they would happily sit together in government. In Olmert's words, Israel has finally been born as a "united people, a people without camps."

The only people who won't be partners in the next stage of Israeli policy are the country's 1 million Arab citizens. None was placed in a realistic slot on Kadima's list, and it is a certainty that none of the Arab parties will be invited into the coalition. The consensus Sharon wanted and Olmert has delivered is an all-Jewish affair. With a Kadima government up and running in the coming days and weeks, it will be Israeli unilateralism as usual. And a real peace will be nowhere on the agenda.

Jonathan Cook (www.jkcook.net (http://www.jkcook.net/)) is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth. He is the author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State," published by Pluto Press. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.

[Partridge]

Finished with Likud: Poverty not disengagement that determined the outcome of the Israeli elections
Graham Usher - Al-Ahram Weekly (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/788/fr3.htm)

The emotions said it all. Israel's next prime minister, a subdued Ehud Olmert, said the victory of his Kadima Party in the Israeli elections on Tuesday was an endorsement of his "convergence" plan. Over the next four years, he averred, Israel will determine its permanent borders, mostly in the occupied West Bank, to ensure its "Jewish and democratic" character. "If the Palestinians are wise enough to act, then in the near future we will sit together at the negotiating table to create a new reality. If they do not, Israel will take its destiny in hand," he said.

Kadima clearly won the elections and will form the next government but with nowhere near the mandate anticipated. Kadima will have 28 seats in the next 120- member parliament. Less than a week ago polls were predicting 35.

Amir Peretz -- with tears in his eyes -- said under his leadership the Labour Party had ceased to be the party of Ashkenazi (European) privilege. It had become the "truth" of "social justice" and "the right to earn a living in dignity". This too was stretching things. Labour will have 20 seats, only one more than it got in the "defeat" of 2003. But it had survived the "tsunami" of Kadima and the fear of a racist backlash against Peretz's Arab origins.

Binyamin Netanyahu presided over the worst performance of his Likud Party's 23-year history, reducing its 38-seat majority in the last parliament to a rump in the next. He looked pale and sweated profusely on Tuesday but vowed to "continue on the path we started to ensure the movement recovers. If we unite the ranks, we will restore Likud to its rightful place in leading the country," he said. Netanyahu then went to a crisis meeting of the Likud leadership. Israel's former foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, did not attend. He is preparing to challenge Netanyahu, "un-uniting the ranks".

So were Israel's 17th elections a "referendum" on "convergence", the euphemism for Olmert's plan to consolidate Israel's permanent rule over Jerusalem and the West Bank? The answer is only a little.

There was no doubt one of the deepest sentiments in the elections was most Israeli Jews desire to "separate" from the Palestinians as well as to give up on futile attempts to resolve the conflict through negotiation. This was most clearly seen in the 12 seats won by Avigdor Lieberman's racist Yisrael Beiteinu Party. Lieberman seeks not only separation from the Palestinians in the occupied territories but also from the 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, either through transfer or redrawing Israel's borders "demographically" to exclude them.

But separation has been a feature of Israeli policy since at least the Gaza disengagement last year. The elections merely confirmed it. More than separation these elections were a referendum on Netanyahu's economic policies during his tenure as finance minister in the last Israeli government. These enhanced Israel's growth rates and created an investor- friendly economy. But they also pushed 1.4 million Israelis into poverty, devastated entire towns and massively increased the disparity between Israel's rich elite and mass poor. It was "swinish capitalism" of the worst kind and Likud's traditional constituencies rejected it in droves.

The middle classes voted for the "gentler" capitalism of Kadima. The hard-line nationalists went to Lieberman. And the poor went to Shas (13 seats), the Pensioners Party (seven seats) and, in some cases, to Labour. But it was Peretz who inserted the social agenda into the election campaign, denting Kadima's rise and precipitating Likud's fall. "It was his biggest political achievement," said Isaac Herzog, number two on Labour's parliamentary list.

But it is a problem for the Palestinians. Israeli elections determine their fate every bit as much as Israelis. And while few believe negotiations -- let alone peace -- are anywhere on the horizon, Palestinians are aware the kind of coalition Olmert puts together will affect the dynamic, severity and temper of the conflict. If it is a "centre-left" government -- made up of Kadima, Labour and religious parties like Shas -- the future could be one of conquest but containment, where Israel and the Palestinian Authority observe a practical détente on the ground. If it is a centre-right coalition -- with Lieberman -- the future could be one of conquest, confrontation and collapse of the PA.

Neither coalition is especially stable. There are differences within Kadima on how to proceed with the Palestinians, let alone across the coalitions as a whole. Shas and the other orthodox parties are against any un-negotiated withdrawal from occupied Palestinian land. So is Lieberman. Labour is in favour of disengagement if negotiations fail. Peretz has also said he won't sit in a coalition with Lieberman, a man he describes as "a new kind of Le Pen".

The only sure thing is that the conflict will continue. On Tuesday Palestinians in Gaza for the first time launched a Katyusha rocket into Israel. It was claimed by Islamic Jihad as an attempt to disrupt the Israeli elections. It landed harmlessly south of Ashkelon. But one day a Katyusha will hit Ashkelon and Israel will respond with something more than assassination and artillery fire. And separation will then visibly become what it has always been, even if denied by the Israeli electorate -- a war by other means.

[Partridge]

Defense minister, Amir Peretz
By Gideon Levy in Haaretz (http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=701205)

If Amir Peretz really wants to generate change, he must demand one portfolio for himself: the defense portfolio. If there is one appointment in the new government that could fire the imagination and herald a societal turning point, it would be this. If the chairman of the Labor Party wants to become a statesman and perhaps also the next leader of Israel, his path must now take him to the Defense Ministry.

While everyone is busy speculating who will be the next finance minister, the truly important appointment in the new government is the person who will lead the Israel Defense Forces and defense establishment. Citizen Peretz at the head of this tarnished militaristic establishment would be the right person in the right place. The time has come for Israel finally to become like most Western countries, where the defense minister is a citizen who did not sprout from within the system, who does not bring with him the dust of the barracks and who does not bear iron ranks on his shoulders.

To command the IDF, a chief of staff is sufficient. And to receive situation assessments, a head of military intelligence and a Shin Bet director are enough. Above them should be a citizen who can balance the enormous and exaggerated power of the security establishment and present different patterns of thinking. Israel needs a defense minister for whom "the only projectile whistling past his ear has been a ping pong ball," as the militaristic MK Danny Yatom once said in belittling Peretz. The ears of those who have heard the whistling of live bullets became deaf long ago, and we need someone with healthy ears to supervise their activity.

As defense minister, Amir Peretz would have the potential to generate a much deeper change than he would as finance minister. Peretz should be tempted not only by the fact that finance ministers usually end their tenure bruised and wounded. He should also realize that if he receives the defense portfolio, he would be able to make more of a long-term impact than with any other portfolio - as someone who paves a new way and changes patterns of thinking.

After concluding the election campaign with quite an impressive success and as someone who is not regarded lightly anymore, Peretz must not take fright from this position, which is ostensibly foreign to him. He must not be intimidated by the security establishment, which will definitely do its utmost to prevent a citizen who was only a junior officer to stand at its head. They will again ridicule him, but Peretz's test will be whether he stands up to this.

One can also recommend to Ehud Olmert, another civilian, that he offer this position to Peretz - not due to coalition constraints, but out of a recognition that Peretz as defense minister could help him to lead a truly civilian coalition.

If Peretz wants with all his might to take care of the weak members of society, he should aspire to this position: the NIS 54 billion allocated each year for defense is crying out for revision. Social salvation could come from a cutback in this budget. If Amir Peretz as defense minister surrenders part of this bloated budget, he might be able to point toward greater social achievements than those he is liable to attain as finance minister.

Most of the IDF's activity in recent years has been directed against the Palestinians in the territories. A general appointed as defense minister has no chance of changing our entrenched patterns of thinking, according to which the only language to be used in the territories is the language of force. A civilian like Peretz could pose questions that no general has yet dared to raise: Why, in fact, are we destroying and killing? And why are we incarcerating an entire people? And how long will this go on? His social sensitivity would be a great asset for the job. He could leave the decisions about the diameter of the artillery cannons aimed against the Palestinians and the type of smart missiles launched to liquidate them to the IDF. He would decide when to use the missiles and cannons, if at all; the one making such decisions should not be a general.

In a true democratic system, someone has to balance and oversee the enormous power that lies in the hands of the defense establishment. And this person must be a civilian. Peretz, who speaks about social compassion, might also direct this same compassion toward the Palestinian population. And precisely in this way is he liable to attain security achievements. Perhaps it will be Peretz who explains to our intelligence experts that the real infrastructure of terror is the occupation and that the only way to overcome terror is to liquidate the occupation. In this way, he would become a new type of "Mr. Security," someone who would bring success in the war against terror and would be much more successful than the glorified militarists who advocate an aggressive policy of "only through power." Peretz can also show the world a new model of Israeli statesman, who understands what the occupation has done to both the occupied and the occupier, and portray Israel as a bit less militaristic and brutal.

In terms of the government's relations with the settlers, Peretz would also be the right person to head the Defense Ministry. In a government determined to put an end to a small part of the settlement enterprise, Peretz could be the one to implement this policy - not only via a future evacuation but immediately, by stopping the scandalous flow of funds to the settlers.

And if all this is not enough, there is also a bonus: The appointment of Peretz would mean removing Shaul Mofaz from the Defense Ministry. That would be the added benefit of this exciting move. We have never had someone more brutal and aggressive than the current defense minister, the father of the assassinations and the siege on the Palestinian people. The culmination of Mofaz's bloody period at the Defense Ministry would only bring good tidings.

"The defense minister, Amir Peretz." Are we ready for this almost fanciful combination of words? Is Peretz bold enough to take up this challenge? And Olmert? It will be the first test for both. In fact, it will be a test for all of us.

[Partridge]

Another brick in the wall
Robert Fisk - The Independent (http://www.globalecho.org/view_article.php?aid=7055)

We have been conned again. The Israeli elections, we are told, mean that the dream of "Greater Israel" has finally been abandoned. West Bank settlements will be closed down, just as the Jewish colonies were uprooted in Gaza last year. The Zionist claim to all of Biblical Israel has withered away. Likud, the nightmare party of Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu, has been smashed by the Gaullist figure of the dying Ariel Sharon, whose Kadima party now embraces Ehud Olmert and that decaying symbol of the Israeli left, Nobel prizewinner Shimon Peres. This, at least, is the narrative laid down by so many of our journalists, "analysts" and "commentators". But it is a lie.

Only in paragraph two - or three or four - of the grovelling news reports from the Middle East do we read that Olmert's not very impressive election victory will allow him to "redraw" the "frontiers" of Israel, a decision described as "controversial" - the usual get-out clause of newspapers that wish to avoid the truth: that Israel is about to grab more land and claim it to be part of the state of Israel. Yes, true, the smaller and more vulnerable Jewish colonies illegally built on Palestinian-owned land may be abandoned - stand by for more of the grief and tears which we witnessed in Gaza. But the rest - the great semi-circle of concrete that runs around east Jerusalem, for example - will not be depopulated.

Let's start with the wall. It will soon run from top to bottom of the occupied Palestinian West Bank - and it is going to stay. It is higher, in the long sectors where it has been completed - east of Jerusalem, for example - than the Berlin Wall. Yet journalists go on calling it a "security barrier" or a "fence" - because the as yet uncompleted sectors of the wall are still coils of barbed wire.

This is part of the dream world that editors and reporters have constructed for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It exists in the same Potemkin landscape that allows journalists to call the occupied Palestinian territory "disputed territory" - after then Secretary of State Colin Powell ordered his diplomats in the region to use this mendacious phrase - and to call Jewish colonies illegally built on Arab land "settlements" or - my favourites now - "Jewish neighbourhoods" or "outposts". It is the same stage set on which Israelis are killed by Palestinians - which they are - but on which Palestinians die in anonymous "clashes" (with whom - and killed by whom, exactly?)

And each of these little lies, of course, contains a kernel of truth. The occupied territories are "disputed" between Israelis and Palestinians, the first claiming that God gave them the land, the second producing land deeds to prove that the law entitles them to their own property. If illegal colonies such as Maale Adumim are built adjacent to Jerusalem - itself illegally annexed by Israel - then of course they are "neighbourhoods". And since the wall - which has gobbled up 10 per cent more Palestinian land for the Israelis - is to prevent suicide bombers (and has been fairly successful in doing so), it is a "security barrier". I seem to recall that the East Germans called the Berlin Wall - or "Berlin Fence" as I suppose we would have to call it if built by the Israelis - a "security barrier". Forget the illegality of occupation, then, and the illegality of stealing someone else's home and land, and the illegality of building a wall that thieves yet more property from the 22 per cent of mandate Palestine which the Palestinians are supposed to negotiate for.

Let me be frank: if I were an Israeli I too would have built a wall to prevent the suicide executioners of Islamic Jihad and, earlier, of Hamas. But I would have built it along the international frontier of Israel - not used the wall as a cheap method of stealing more land. Indeed, under UN Security Council Resolution 242, which is meant to be the foundation of any peace, the acquisition of land through war is stated to be illegal. The wall itself is illegal. The International Court also ruled it to be illegal. And Israel ignored this ruling. So, of course, did the US.

But now the burden of all this post-election theft is to be placed upon Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. This colourless, helpless man, who presided over the Palestinian Authority's continuing corruption, is supposed to persuade the new Hamas government to accept all of Israel's land-grabs, to pick up where the Oslo process left off (which still left Jerusalem in exclusively Israeli hands), and to abandon all violence - which means to surrender whenever Israeli troops raid refugee camps or cities in the West Bank.

The point is that Hamas members have been as assuredly elected representatives of the Palestinians as Mr Olmert and his forthcoming allies in government are representatives of Israelis. But this does not allow them to make any "controversial" plans to redraw their "border" with Israel, not even to insist that Israel withdraws - or redeploys - to its internationally recognised borders. (I'm talking about the pre-1967 frontier, not the 1948 one.) They cannot demand fulfilment of UN Resolution 242 because George Bush has already made it clear that the vast Jewish colonies east of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem itself, will remain in Israeli hands. Sure, 14 of the 24 Hamas ministers have been in Israeli prisons. But what are Palestinians supposed to think when they realise that 15 Israeli generals have been elected to the new Knesset, along with six secret service agents?

Yet even this is not the point. If the Israelis want Hamas to acknowledge the state of Israel, then Hamas should be expected to acknowledge the state of Israel that exists within its legal frontiers - not the illegal borders now being dreamt up by Olmert. We will have to abandon the idea that Ariel Sharon - an unindicted war criminal after his involvement in the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres - was really going to give up the major Jewish colonies built illegally on Arab land or the illegal annexation of Jerusalem. Certainly Olmert is not going to do that. He is going to create wider frontiers for Israel and steal - let's call a spade a spade - more Arab land in doing so. The US will go along with this next illegal land-grab. But will the EU? Will the UN? Will Russia? Will our own dear Tony Blair?

Israelis deserve peace and security as much as Palestinians. But "new" and expanded "controversial" Israeli frontiers will not bring peace or security to either.

[Partridge]

A Decisive Vote for Apartheid
Omar Barghouti - Counterpunch (http://counterpunch.org/barghouti04032006.html)


Israel votes for disengagement and final borders" and "Israelis abandon the dream of Greater Israel" were the main themes in the spin that characterized mainstream, even some progressive, media coverage of the Israeli parliamentary elections which took place on March 28. In reality, the election results revealed that a consensus has emerged among Israeli Jews, not only against the basic requirements of justice and genuine peace, as that was always the case, but also in support of a more aggressive form of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and cementing Zionist apartheid.

In the 2006 Knesset elections, Israelis have indeed overwhelmingly voted for "disengagement," not from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), but only from the Palestinians -- whether in Israel, in the OPT or in exile. Palestinian lands are clearly precluded from this disengagement. An objective examination of the election results and the political platforms of the parties represented in the new Israeli parliament will show that the celebration of the "shift to peace and realism" by Western and Israeli media pundits alike is not only unwarranted but quite deceptive as well. If anything, an avid adoption of the right's agenda has taken place.

Before exposing the spin, readers must be cautioned that "right," "left" and "center" are relative terms; they have substantially different meaning in the Israeli political context than in any comparable parliamentary system, including the Palestinian Legislative Council. With the exception of the Palestinian dominated political parties, all Israeli parties represented in the seventeenth Knesset converge on the three fundamental No's of Zionism: No to the return of Palestinian refugees who were uprooted by Israel during the Nakba (catastrophe of dispossession and expulsion around 1948); No to a complete end of the occupation and colonization of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in 1967; No to full equality -- in the law as well as in government policies -- between Israel's Jewish citizens and its Palestinian citizens, the remaining indigenous population of the land.

Some may argue that the "ultra-dovish" Jewish-Israeli party, Meretz, has dissented from the consensus on the second clause, when it supported "ending the occupation." In fact, Meretz has never accepted a complete return to the internationally recognized borders of 1967, which put East Jerusalem with its Old City on the Palestinian side. It has always argued for keeping parts of the OPT under Israeli control, not to mention that its consistent position against Palestinian refugee rights and full equality in Israel makes the xenophobic right parties in Europe sound quite liberal in comparison.

Just recently, Meretz's leader, Yossi Beilin, wrote to Avigdor Lieberman -- seen by some analysts as the new leader of the "fascist" right in Israel -- admiring him for being "very intelligent, a successful politician, an excellent man of action, and a smart Jew," further praising him for "guiding us to a situation in which the Jewish people, too, will indeed finally have a Jewish state of its own." Lieberman has called for ethnically cleansing Israel of half a million of its Palestinian citizens by "adjusting its borders" to leave them out, denying them citizenship and any pertinent rights. It is worth noting that most of the land belonging to this target group has already been confiscated by the state over decades. Opportunistic politicking notwithstanding, Meretz was squarely rebuffed by Israeli voters, winning only 5 seats in last week's elections, compared to its already paltry 6 seats in the 2003 elections.

In sharp contrast to the steady fall of the "left,", Lieberman's ultra-right party, Israel Our Home, whose main constituency is among the Russian-speaking immigrants, won an astounding 11 seats on a platform which explicitly calls for denying Israeli citizens "the right to live in the state on the grounds of religion and race," as the Israeli commentator Akiva Eldar writes.[1] Although other extremist parties that sat in the Knesset, like Rehavam Ze'evi's Moledet, have in the past advocated a similarly fascist agenda, this is the first time in Israel's history that any such party is embraced as part of the mainstream. "Lieberman's acceptance into the heart of the consensus," cautions Eldar, "is evidence [] of the moral degradation of Jewish Israeli society."

A recent study of Israeli racism [2] confirms this "moral degradation." More than two thirds of Israeli Jews stated they would not live in the same building with Palestinian citizens of Israel, while 63% agreed with the statement that "Arabs are a security and demographic threat to the state." Forty percent believed "the state needs to support the emigration of Arab citizens." This general shift of Israeli public opinion to extreme right positions well explains the remarkable rise of Lieberman.

But one does not have to be Lieberman to be a racist, as Ha'aretz writer Gideon Levy notes.[3] "The 'peace' proposed by Ehud Olmert is no less racist," he argues, adding: "Lieberman wants to distance them from our borders, Olmert and his ilk want to distance them from our consciousness. Nobody is speaking about peace with them, nobody really wants it. Only one ambition unites everyone - to get rid of them, one way or another. Transfer or wall, 'disengagement' or 'convergence' - the point is that they should get out of our sight."

Olmert's Kadima party, whose 29 Knesset seats make it Israel's principal party, was given a reasonably strong mandate by the Israeli electorate to "disengage" or "separate" from the Palestinians, both popular Israeli -- and increasingly Western -- euphemisms for separating Palestinians from their best lands and water resources, incarcerating the former in Bantustans not very different from South Africa's, while maintaining Israeli control over the latter. Hailed in the leading Western newspapers as a force for peace, Kadima's program not only categorically rejects the internationally sanctioned rights of Palestinian refugees but also calls for the permanent annexation of the largest Jewish colonies, all illegal according to international law, as well as the vast Jordan Valley portion of the West Bank. Such a plan, more or less endorsed by the Bush Administration, effectively blocks any realistic prospects for a "viable" Palestinian state -- let alone a truly sovereign state within the 1967 borders, in accordance with UN resolutions. It is therefore a recipe for further conflict and bloodshed, not peace. Hardly a "center" party, by any fair standard.

[Partridge]

The good news in this election, one may stubbornly argue, is that Labor, the stalwart crucible of the Israeli left, gained in this election, raising hope for a "center-left" coalition that seeks a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians. It is true that, unlike Likud, Labor has largely maintained its presence on the Israeli political map, but, in the 2003 elections, Labor and its ally, One Nation (led then by Amir Peretz, Labor's current leader), won 22 seats. In the current elections, Labor went down to 19. Regardless, Labor's platform is the true cause of concern, not its number of seats.

If there was serious doubt in the past about Labor's left credentials, now one can say with certainty that the party has none. Its dovish reputation has never really been deserved. Labor Zionism is, after all, historically responsible more than any other force in Israel for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967; for the proliferation of illegal colonies in the occupied territory; for championing the racist discourse about the Palestinians constituting a "demographic threat;" and for devising military and political strategies -- including the Wall -- intended to make the lives of Palestinians under occupation so miserable as to consider leaving. Labor, historically "given to evasion and denial," as Geoffrey Wheatcroft puts it [4], played the key role in Israel's colonial project, while simultaneously projecting a false image of democracy and enlightenment to a misinformed and largely duped Western audience.

Under Peretz, a committed union leader and a Jew belonging to the down-trodden "Sephardic" (meaning Mizrahi/Arab) community, Labor has shifted to the left, argue Israel's apologists, in an attempt to further polish their spin. Reality on the ground was, again, at odds with such a cunningly crafted image. As soon as he was elected Labor's new chairman, Peretz, a self-declared "man of peace," announced [5] that he favored a "united Jerusalem" as Israel's capital and resolutely opposed permitting Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties in Israel, both positions in contravention of international law. Furthermore, his first innovative idea in the political arena must have extinguished any naively misplaced hope for progress towards a just peace under his leadership. The "Hong Kong paradigm," the idea of "leasing" from the Palestinians for 99 years the land on which the largest Jewish colonies were established, was to become Peretz' creative contribution to the search for peace. Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli writer and a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, shrewdly commented on this scheme saying [6]:

"It is impossible to give any more fitting expression to the colonialist nature of the annexation of parts of the West than the example of the takeover by the British Empire [] of parts of the hapless Chinese Empire. Indeed, the inventors of the Hong Kong paradigm identified the similarity: robber capitalism that operates under the auspices of military power against an impotent rival, the bullying takeover of land and water resources while displacing the natives, and making huge profits while exploiting patriotic sentiments and nationalist urges."

Settlers, the main would-be benefactors of Peretz' initiative, were depicted in many misleading media stories as the biggest losers of this vote. Actually, they scored a most significant victory. Focusing their attention on the small, remote and extremely costly to defend settlements that Kadima and Labor were ready to give up, the media curiously ignored the fact that the leading "peace" parties in the current Knesset have accepted the bulk of the colonies -- housing more than 80% of the settlers and controlling most of the illegally settled land in the OPT -- as an inseparable part of Israel. The largest settlements, which are most detrimental to the pursuit of a just peace with the Palestinians, have been embraced by the emerging Israeli consensus, with US blessings and sheepish European acquiescence. Aside from a minority of settlers, expected to be evacuated by a Kadima-Labor government from the midst of densely-populated Palestinian areas in the OPT, the settlers' decades-old agenda of "legitimizing" their colonization of the most fertile lands and the largest water aquifers of the West Bank -- including East Jerusalem -- by annexing those lands to Israel will be largely fulfilled. Besides, the direct representative of the settlers, the National Union - National Religious Party coalition, also won 9 seats, giving it some say in deciding the fate of even the smaller settlements.

Given the above, it is little wonder that Palestinians and discerning observers around the world were not fooled by the media spin about Israel's elections bringing us any closer to peace based on the minimal requirements of justice. Perhaps no one sums up this election better than Gideon Levy, who writes [7]:

"Contrary to appearances, the elections this week are important, because they will expose the true face of Israeli society and its hidden ambitions. More than 100 elected candidates will be sent to the Knesset on the basis of one ticket - the racism ticket. [] An absolute majority of MKs in the next Knesset do not believe in peace, nor do they even want it - just like their voters - and worse than that, don't regard Palestinians as equal human beings. Racism has never had so many open supporters."

The Israeli majority has chosen apartheid. And since Western governments have welcomed the result as a breakthrough for peace, Israel's Wall and colonies can only be expected to grow more aggressively under the pretence of "consolidation" and "separation," condemning the entire region to endless bloody conflict. It is time for the international civil society to fulfill its moral obligation by opting for sanctions and boycotts -- similar to those that brought down South Africa's apartheid -- for the sake of equality, justice, real peace and security for all. Nothing else has worked.

[b]Omar Barghouti, independent political and cultural analyst who has published essays on the rise of empire, the Palestine question and art of the oppressed. He holds a Masters degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University, and is currently a doctoral student of philosophy (ethics) at Tel Aviv University. He contributed to the published book, The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid (Verso Books, 2001). He is an advocate of the secular, democratic state solution in historic Palestine. His article "9.11 Putting the Moment on Human Terms" was chosen among the "Best of 2002" by The Guardian.

References:

[1] Akiva Eldar, Lieberman -- nyet, nyet, nyet, Ha'aretz, Macrh 13, 2006.

[2] Eli Ashkenazi and Jack Khoury, Poll: 68% of Jews would refuse to live in same building as an Arab, Ha'aretz, March 22, 2006.

[3] Gideon Levy, One Racist Nation, Ha'aretz, March 26, 2006.

[4] Geoffrey Wheatcroft, After the rhapsody, the bitter legacy of Israel and the left, The Guardian, March 24, 2006.

[5] Mazal Mualem, Gideon Alon and Zvi Zrahiya, Labor Party votes to quit PM Sharon's government, Ha'aretz, January 1, 2006.

[6] Meron Benvenisti, The Hong Kong Trick, Ha'aretz, January 1, 2006.

[7] Levy, op cit.

[Partridge]

Labour loses Knesset seat in recount
Al Jazeera (http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C4A4AD6D-86CD-4F66-B2C3-F2F33D91D447.htm)

A recount has cut from 20 to 19 the number Labour seats in Israel's parliament, stripping Ehud Olmert of a centre-left Jewish majority for his planned withdrawal from the West Bank.

However, the 10 seats won by Israeli-Arab parties in last week’s general election, plus possible support from religious or centre-right parties, should enable the acting prime minister's plan to proceed if he puts together the next ruling coalition as expected.

Arab parties had demanded a recount of ballots in some Arab towns.

After the new tally, Labour lost one seat, and the United Arab List's representation in the 120-seat parliament rose to four from three.

The election commission said in a statement late on Sunday that the results from five polling stations had been logged incorrectly.

Coalition talks

The coalition-building process began officially on Sunday and parties presented their choices for the country's next prime minister to the president, Moshe Katsav.

The government, like every other government in Israel's 58-year history,will be a coalition because no one list won an outright majority of votes.

Olmert, whose Kadima Party won the elections with 29 seats, wants to draw Israel's final borders with the West Bank by withdrawing from some Jewish settlements on the Palestinian territory while annexing the three largest.

With Labour holding 20 seats, Olmert could count on a majority of 61 seats of Jewish parties favouring withdrawal.

But for a plan so controversial, Olmert would like to rely on the support of a Jewish bloc without having to turn to Arab politicians outside his coalition.

It is possible he would be able to persuade the ultra-Orthodox party Shas or a right-leaning party of Russian immigrants called Israel Beitenu to back his plan.

Labour eyes premiership

Labour, led by Amir Peretz, a former union leader, is the second-largest faction in parliament.

But Peretz is reportedly exploring the possibility of trying to form and lead a coalition with religious and right-wing parties that, like Labour, want the government to spend more money on Israel's poor.

The far-right National Union/National Religious Party alliance, desperate to prevent Olmert from withdrawing from occupied land, has said it will endorse Peretz for the job.

And senior members of the former governing right-wing Likud party, who have little time for Olmert after he defected to Kadima last November, have also said they would prefer to sit in a cabinet headed by Peretz.

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Monday that Peretz had angered senior Labour figures, with some describing him as having a "Napoleon complex".

Matan Vilnai, one Labour politician, said: "People didn't vote for us so that we could lead a right-wing, ultra-Orthodox government. It's not completely legitimate and it's also stupid."

Sharon out

Meanwhile, the Israeli cabinet will next week pronounce the Israeli prime minister “permanently incapacitated”, according to Israeli media reports.

Ariel Sharon has been in a coma since a stroke in January and Olmert will be declared head of government at a cabinet meeting on Sunday.

The decision will come into effect on April 14, the end of the 100-day period required under the law for Sharon to be declared permanently incapacitated, provided that he does not emerge from his coma.

The decision will be purely formal given that Olmert has already exercised all of Sharon's duties since becoming acting prime minister when his mentor collapsed.