5 Myths of Palestinian Unity

Honest Reporting had another insightful article. An excerpt follows:

Here are a five media myths to beware.

Myth: Hamas is pragmatic about peace.

Fact: Hamas still wants to destroy Israel. It has always defied calls to renounce violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and honor past negotiating agreements. The Hamas charter remains unchanged.

Myth: Ruling Gaza has moderated Hamas.

Fact: Quite the opposite. Hamas is emboldened, imposing Islamic law, smuggling sophisticated weapons, and watching the Muslim Brotherhood’s gains in Egypt. No goodwill gestures for Gilad Shalit from a new and improved PA are on the horizon. Need I go on?

Myth: Palestinian unity paves the way for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Fact: It remains to be seen how durable this unity will really be. The two sides will bury their squabbles till September, but all bets are off afterwards. Remember, Hamas and Fatah already reconciled in 2007, only to see Hamas take over Gaza as Fatah supporters like Mohammed Sweirki ?were literally thrown off the rooftops. And both sides have other calculations. Fatah lost its biggest patron, Hosni Mubarak, while Hamas faces losing Bashar Assad. Now, they need each other, for better or for worse.

Myth: Abbas is displaying real statesmanship.

Fact: Salam Fayyad’s state-building efforts were the PA’s main source of credibility in the West. The closer we get to September, the more the PA needs to tout Fayyad’s program. Instead, Abbas is throwing Fayyadism under the bus. That’s stupidity, not statesmanship.

Myth: Israel must prove its willingness to make peace by negotiating with a unified Palestinian government.

Fact: What’s to negotiate when the other side wants to destroy you?

Palestinian reconciliation could work to Israel's advantage

Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel believe Netanyahu will be able to use the newly signed unity deal as proof that Abbas doesn't really want peace.

By Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel

Fatah and Hamas announced in Cairo on Wednesday that they had agreed to a reconciliation agreement, ending four years of feuding between the Palestinian factions. The historic deal was greeted cooly in Jerusalem.

In an about-face, Hamas said that it would sign the agreement, which was drafted by the Egyptians and signed by Fatah in October 2009.

The agreement calls for a setting up a caretaker government of technocrats, and for holding presidential, parliamentary and National Palestinian Council elections within a year.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the move, attacking the Palestinian Authority for its willingness to reconcile with Hamas, which "aspires to the destruction of Israel." The reconciliation was a sign of weakness, he said.

Hamas had refused to sign despite repeated pleas by Egypt, in part because of apparent pressure from its two main patrons, Syria and Iran. The fall of Egypt's Mubarak regime two months ago may have pushed Hamas to change its stance.

The representatives of the two movements, Fatah's Azam Al-Ahmed and the deputy head of Hamas' Damascus political bureau, Mousa Abu Marzouk, met in Cairo at the invitation of the new Egyptian intelligence chief, Mourad Mouafi, and foreign minister Nabil Al-Arabi.

Next week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas politbureau head Khaled Meshal will meet to sign the final agreement, they said. Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar, who also took part in the meeting yesterday, said that several clauses in the 2009 deal had been changed, which enabled Hamas to sign.

The parties also reached an agreement regarding who would sit on the central elections committee, and on a 12-judge committee to oversee the elections, al-Zahar said on Wednesday. A joint Hamas-Fatah defense committee will oversee the Palestinian security forces. The caretaker government will be composed of technocrats without party affiliation, to be chosen jointly by both parties.

The agreement raised surprise in Israel: While there had been intelligence about the move, Israeli sources had not expected the Palestinians to reconcile so soon.

It is not clear whether the process will go through, as several earlier agreements have collapsed.

Netanyahu on Wednesday called on the PA to choose between Hamas and Israel.

"You can't have peace with Hamas and with Israel," Netanyahu said.

Despite the harsh response, the reconciliation may well work to Israel's advantage. Israel has been struggling internationally, as more than 100 nations prepare to recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state in the UN in September. Renewed relations between Hamas and Fatah, however limited, could shed a different light on Abbas' intentions, and Netanyahu, who is due to speak before both houses of Congress next month, will be able to present the agreement as proof that Abbas doesn't really want peace.

If the reconciliation does indeed go through, Israel's immediate concern would be the future of security coordination with the PA. A Hamas foothold, however limited, would mean that Israel could not share intelligence with the PA.

Between the Hamas election victory in January 2006 and the Hamas coup in Gaza in mid-2007, Israel had been engaged in complex maneuvers to produce at least the appearance of completely excluding Hamas from any security arrangements.

If the reconciliation is accompanied by a mass release of Hamas prisoners from West Bank prisons, this would further increase the risk of terror attacks.

However, if Hamas is participating in a unity government, even if through technocrats, this would minimize the group's desire to renew the conflict on the Gaza front, which could help maintain calm there.

In the most optimistic scenario, the reconciliation may even improve the chances of a deal to return captive soldier Gilad Shalit. Hamas' military wing, which is holding Shalit captive, has presented very tough stances in its negotiations with Israel.

Reducing tension with Fatah and the daily friction with the Israel Defense Forces could create a more positive atmosphere for negotiations, and the PA may also scale back its opposition to a prisoner exchange. Until now, the PA has objected because it would be a massive coup for Hamas.

Both parties appear increasingly interested in implementing a deal, but many of the details remain unclear. One key detail is who the ministers will be, and more important still, who will lead it and what will happen to the incumbent prime ministers - Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and Salam Fayyad of the PA.

The last question is particularly troubling for the PA, which has won much of the improvement in its international standing thanks to Fayyad's work. However, the personal grudge that many in both Hamas and Fatah hold against Fayyad may mean he will be the first to pay the price of unity. The agreement also does not detail how each party's security forces will be reformed, which in turn may influence international funding - the U.S. Congress in particular is unlikely to enthusiastically give hundreds of millions of dollars that may end up in the hands of Hamas in less than a year, should it win the elections.

Black student leaders slam 'apartheid' characterization

By JORDANA HORN, JPOST CORRESPONDENT
04/09/2011 10:09

Letter says "decency, justice and hope compel us to demand immediate cessation to deliberate misappropriation of words."

NEW YORK – African-American student leaders from a variety of historically black colleges and universities took out full page ads in numerous American college newspapers Thursday, displaying an “Open Letter to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP),” to convey that they were offended by SJP’s use of the term “apartheid” at recent Israel Apartheid Week events at campuses across the country.

The 16 signatories to the letter are students and alumni from historically black colleges and universities who are members of the Vanguard Leadership Group, a leadership development academy and honor society for top students. The letter ran or is slated to run in student newspapers at Brown University, University of California- Los Angeles, University of Maryland and Columbia University over the next few days.
“The Students for Justice in Palestine’s labeling of Israel, an extremely diverse and vibrant country, as an apartheid state is not only false, but offensive,” Vanguard President Michael Hayes told The Jerusalem Post. “Additionally, this rhetoric does absolutely nothing to help Israel-Palestine negotiations or relations. We feel this type of action serves to hinder the peace process domestically and abroad, and have made it our priority to take a stand to shift the tide of understanding.”

In a statement released by the Vanguard Leadership Group as to why they authored the open letter to SJP, Vanguard described itself as “proudly involved in the pro-Israel movement in America.

“The use of the word ‘apartheid’ by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in its characterization of Israel is patently false and deeply offensive to all who feel a connection to the state of Israel,” the letter reads. “Your organization’s campaign against Israel is spreading misinformation about its policies, fostering bias in the media and jeopardizing prospects for a timely resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Such irresponsibility is a blemish on your efforts.”

The letter continues to state that “[p]laying the ‘apartheid card’ is a calculated attempt to conjure up images associated with the racist South African regimes of the 20th century,” and calls the strategy “as transparent as it is base.”

“Beyond that, it is highly objectionable to those who know the truth about the Israelis’ record on human rights and how it so clearly contrasts with South Africa’s,” the letter reads, noting that under apartheid, black South Africans had no rights in a country in which they were the majority of the population.

Saying that the analogy manipulates rather than informs, the letter requests SJP to “immediately stop referring to Israel as an apartheid society and to acknowledge that the Arab minority in Israel enjoys full citizenship with voting rights and representation in the government.”

“Decency, justice, and the hope of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East compel us to demand an immediate cessation to the deliberate misappropriation of words and of the flagrant mischaracterizations of Israel,” the letter concludes. “Your compliance with this request will be viewed as a responsible and appropriate first step toward raising the level of discourse.”

Militants Put Gazans in Danger, Group Says

March 30, 2011

By FARES AKRAM and ETHAN BRONNER

GAZA — A Palestinian human rights group in Gaza took the unusual step this week of condemning the building and storage of anti-Israel rockets in densely populated areas, a practice that has led to injuries and deaths of civilians.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said that it had investigated recent rocket explosions and found that locally produced projectiles had fallen on homes in Gaza or exploded in factories where they were made or stored. Shrapnel severely wounded several people, including a 22-year-old woman and her 7-month-old baby.

It called on the Hamas government, which controls Gaza, to investigate “and take measures to protect Palestinians and their property.” It added that “members of the Palestinian resistance continue to store explosives or to treat such explosives in locations close to populated areas.”

“This poses a major threat to the lives of the Palestinian civilians,” it said.

Israel has long accused Hamas and other groups of endangering Palestinian civilians by carrying out militant activities in densely populated areas.

Hamdi Shaqura of the rights center said conducting such investigations was risky in Gaza. Militant groups generally deny responsibility. He noted that the Hamas Interior Ministry Web site blamed Israel for the landing of what were locally produced rockets on Palestinian targets.

On Wednesday, a Palestinian militant was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, days after armed groups here announced a commitment to an unofficial cease-fire with Israel.

A rocket fired from a drone hit two militants on a motorbike in the southern city of Rafah, wounding them both, and one later died in the Rafah hospital, doctors there said. The two were members of Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, which has fired dozens of mortar shells and missiles at Israel recently. The Israeli military said they were part of a squad that launched rockets at southern Israel a day earlier.

Also Wednesday, Hamas police officers broke up a small demonstration by youths calling for an end to the split between Gaza and the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority holds sway. Recent efforts by the authority to reconcile with Hamas have so far led nowhere.

Fares Akram reported from Gaza, and Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem.

UVM won't divest over Palestinian issue

Written by Tim Johnson, Burlington Press Staff Writer

The latest divestment proposal at the University of Vermont — that UVM withdraw endowment funds from companies doing business in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories — is apparently dead.The university’s Socially Responsible Investing Work Group has decided to take no position on the proposal. The group is a composite committee charged with screening all divestment proposals for the board of trustees, which has final authority over the endowment.

That means that the trustees’ Investment Subcommittee — the next step in the approval process — is unlikely to take the matter up, effectively ruling out any action by the full board. No other American university is known to have implemented such a proposal.

Read rest of article here.

Israel urges U.N. to cancel Gaza war crimes report

updated 4/2/2011

JERUSALEM — Israel Saturday called on the U.N. to cancel a report which said it had committed war crimes during its December 2008-January 2009 Gaza offensive, after its author said he may have been wrong.

South African jurist Richard Goldstone chaired a fact finding mission which in a 2009 report to the UN Human Rights Council said both Israel and the Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza, were guilty of war crimes in the conflict.

Goldstone wrote in a Washington Post column published on Friday: "If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."