Arab Revolution Knocking at Israel's Door

The Israeli response to Palestinian protests? Killing ten people in Lebanon, eight in Syria, two in Gaza and one in the West Bank, and injuring over 200.

May 16, 2011 |

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Wednesday that construction would continue unabated in all of Jerusalem, as he addressed a ceremony marking the 43rd anniversary of Israel's capture of the city's Arab eastern sector. Language en Duration 00:00:33 Products PRWINT CodeName MMV118710 FileName MMV118710_TEN 00:30 images of celebration procession, protestors SOURCE: AFPTV -------------------- JERUSALEM, May 12, 2010 (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Wednesday that construction would continue unabated in all of Jerusalem, as he addressed a ceremony marking the 43rd anniversary of Israel's capture of the city's Arab eastern sector. "You can't flourish in a divided city and a flourishing city can't be divided or frozen," Netanyahu said. "We will continue to build and develop ourselves in Jerusalem." The Palestinians have warned that continued construction in Jewish settlements in annexed Arab east Jerusalem will torpedo newly launched indirect peace talks which are being brokered by the United States. They want to make east Jerusalem the capital of their promised state but Israel, which captured it in the 1967 Middle East war and then annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community, lays claim to the entire city as its "eternal, indivisible capital." Each year, Israelis celebrate the anniversary, known as "Jerusalem Day", with parties, parades and solemn ceremony. Festivities kicked off at sundown on Tuesday with an open-air concert by US funk band "Kool and the Gang" and continued through the night with prayers and gatherings. Security was tight, with thousands of police deployed across the city to ensure the festivities went off without a hitch. "Several thousands of police and border police have been mobilised, with the deployment of forces particularly high in the Old City," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP. On Wednesday, thousands of people, mostly nationalist-religious Jews, marched through Jerusalem to the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites in Judaism. Netanyahu spoke in an evening memorial ceremony, attended by President Shimon Peres and other officials, at Ammunition Hill where Israeli troops fought a fierce battle with Jordanian forces in 1967. Tensions in and around Jerusalem have soared in recent months over the deeply controversial issue of Jewish construction in east Jerusalem. Despite US assurances to the Palestinians that Israel would freeze some settlement activity in the eastern sector for the next two years, Israel has denied making any such commitment. "There is no agreement about freezing building in east Jerusalem and normal life in Jerusalem will continue as in every other city in Israel," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told journalists during a visit to Tokyo. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat also insisted that there would be no halt to construction in the "united and undivided" Holy City. "The municipal borders of Jerusalem are not negotiable and building will continue across all of the city under Israeli sovereignty," Barkat told army radio. Israel marks Jerusalem Day in accordance with the Hebrew calendar. It captured east Jerusalem on June 7, 1967, the third day of the Six-Day War, and unilaterally annexed it. In 1980, Israel passed a law declaring Jerusalem its "eternal and indivisible" capital. Israeli human rights groups say the Holy City is sharply divided and that Palestinian residents suffer from discrimination. Jewish settlements and the status of Jerusalem are among the thorniest issues in the Middle East peace process. bur-scw/kir

Photo Credit: AFP - Menahem Kahana

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It was a Sunday, bloody Sunday - with no uplifting U2 anthem to "celebrate" it. In Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, tens of thousands of Palestinians marched to the borders with Israel to mark the anniversary of the 1948 Nakba -- the displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel.

The Israeli response, with "maximum restraint": killing 10 people in Lebanon, eight in Syria, two in Gaza and one in the West Bank, and injuring over 200. The Anglo-French-American consortium waging war on Libya because Colonel Muammar Gaddafi allegedly kills his own people was thunderously mute.

The United Nations urged "restraint" (compare it with the official Israeli "maximum restraint"). The Israeli daily Ha'aretz, oblivious to the irony, ran a headline "The Arab Revolution is knocking at Israel's door". Yeah baby, it is, and that's why you're freaking out.

Always on target

Israel - master practitioner of targeted assassination - can always get away with killing Arabs wholesale because it fears no UN Security Council resolution; the US always blocks them. Even if there were any, the US administration of target executioner-in-chief Barack Obama would not, for instance, instruct UN ambassador Susan Rice to abstain from a UN condemnation. That's the kind of abstention that could also help the UN, for instance, to force Israel into accepting a two-state solution with Palestine.

Forget about the UN Security Council - so eager to send the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on an attacking rampage on the side of a dodgy bunch of Libyan "rebels", effectively taking sides on a civil war - even considering dealing with Israel as it treats Iran, slapping it with economic sanctions until it starts complying with international law.

Forget about the Obama administration supporting the UN Security Council into giving Palestine a formal seat as a nation-state at the UN; over 100 nations, including, recently, Brazil, Argentina and Norway, already recognize the legitimacy of Palestine. If that would ever happen, the Palestinian nation could sue the hell of Israel in international courts of law over the systematic theft of Palestinian territory.

Would Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama lose anything with this move? No. The powerful Israel Lobby in Washington - led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) - is already campaigning against him in 2012. Anyway, he won't do it - and on top of it will address the upcoming AIPAC annual meeting in Washington. If there is a Washington consensus, it's its complicity in the Israeli regime.

Israel pays for over 100 illegal settlements in the West Bank plus over 100 others that are considered "illegal outposts" even under Israeli law. The US supports them all via a complex network of Jewish and ultra-right-wing Christian "charities". Visa, Mastercard and PayPal all enable donations funding illegal settlements.

And yet this regime is in serious trouble. Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu - for all his bluster - is scared to death. He badly needs the secular Russians of Yisrael Beitenu ("Israel Our Home") and the fundamentalist ultra-Orthodox Jews of Shas to remain in power. Former Moldavian bouncer turned Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of Yisrael Beitenu, eats Bibi for breakfast and routinely humiliates him (and then Bibi regains his self-respect by humiliating Obama). All one needs to know is that Lieberman is the top political dog in Israel.

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