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FOCUS MIDDLE EAST (ISRAEL-PNA)

PROBLEM WITH EAST JERUSALEM? NOT ENOUGH CONSTRUCTION

Haaretz - March 18, 2010

by Israel Harel

The day before yesterday, with the flames of the third intifada at their height, the anxious organizer called and asked if I had a suggestion for a substitute.
You don't want me? I asked, offended. Of course we do, he replied, but the media is making it seem like Jerusalem and the territories are burning and it's not worth it to risk your life just for a lecture.
I shuddered. Only yesterday, when the police announced that even the Temple Mount was open to visitors, did I venture out of my home. I can imagine the surprise and dismay of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's admirers in the White House, the Tel Aviv newsrooms and the TV studios in Givatayim and Neveh Ilan that the third(!) intifada, for which they had so yearned, played itself out like that.
However, never fear: In these places reality doesn't jolt the conception that intifadas break out only because of Israel's rejection of peace and its provocations (the accuracy of which was proven beyond a doubt back in the days of Yasser Arafat).
That conception will only grow stronger. In the next few days, the countdown will begin for the fourth intifada.
For months there have been whisperings that we are on the brink of an explosion, always couched in the menacing Palestinian terminology, "intifada," and always with the admonition: The ball is in Israel's court.
If course it can be averted, but only if Israel "does (or doesn't do) something" - freezes, restricts, prevents, restrains itself, doesn't surprise, doesn't move, doesn't act, doesn't pave, doesn't build, doesn't inaugurate.

Doesn't breathe.

There's no doubt those "drunk drivers" at the head of our state are the ones who initiated the conflagration that has spread from Jerusalem throughout the Middle East. The flames are reaching Pakistan as well, and are set to engulf American troops.

Here it is again, the flat, detached, linear world outlook of the American administration and the people who have Obama's ear in his golfing coterie.

The upshot: an anti-Israel agenda that is firm, but lacking understanding and depth. One of its principles is that Netanyahu understands only force. It seems the Obama administration does not want to hold a true dialogue with Israel but to dictate where its borders will be and where it can build in its capital city.

It was not peace, but rather opposition for its own sake that motivated Joe Biden's irrational conduct and Hillary Clinton's statements, which were presumably okayed by the White House.

For long months George Mitchell has been working the lines that lead to the resumption of talks. That whole time the Americans and the Palestinians knew Israel would not stop building in Jerusalem. And had there not been a row, proximity talks would have begun as the prelude to comprehensive negotiations.

Along came Biden, Clinton, David Axelrod and others who, aided by Israelis yearning to see Netanyahu brought down, destroyed all the preparations made in the preceding months.

If their chief aim was the continuation of the talks, they would have held back, certainly in public, in the face of the clumsiness of the District Planning and Building Committee. Because now, after they have proclaimed that it is forbidden to build in Jerusalem, what Palestinian leader would dare to talk to Israel, even if only a school was being built in Gilo, and not a neighborhood in Ramat Shlomo?

At a time like this, especially with Jerusalem in the mix, it would be natural for Israelis, or at least the Jewish majority, to rally around Netanyahu if only because of the Americans' brutality or the affront to the prime minister's honor behind the kind of snafu that can and does happen in any bureaucracy.

But it's not like that in Israel. Here, a great many people, including some who don't oppose building in the capital, joined with the Americans to assist them in humiliating their country and throwing their prime minister off balance.

There is one important lesson that Israel never learns: If there is a master plan to build tens of thousands of apartments in Jerusalem and thereby assure that the absolute Jewish majority in the city be preserved for generations, it is the entire plan that should be approved, all at the same time. Whether 1,600 or 50,000 apartments are slated to be built, the condemnation and threats from within and the self-righteousness, panic and criticism from within, will be exactly the same. Instead of drawing such intense fire every year or two, it can all be concentrated into one anticipated blast, and the building of Jerusalem will continue after the condemnatory dust settles, as it always does.

 

EU'S FOREIGN CHIEF IN GAZA VISIT

BBC News - March 18, 2010

The EU's new foreign policy chief has arrived in Gaza on one of the highest level visits there by a Western politician since Hamas took power.

Baroness Caroline Ashton's trip comes amid a new push by the EU and US to revive stalled Middle East peace talks.

The international quartet of Middle East mediators - the EU, US, UN and Russia - is to meet in Moscow later.

As Baroness Ashton arrived, militants in Gaza fired a rocket into Israel, killing a man, Israeli officials said.

The rocket struck the Netiv Ha'assera kibbutz in southern Israel killing a foreign agricultural worker, according to reports.

Baroness Ashton will later join US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has already arrived in the Russian capital for the talks.

The meeting will "demonstrate international support" for indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians, said US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley.

Baroness Ashton swept into Gaza City from Israel in a convoy of armoured cars and was taken to a UN food distribution centre.

The BBC's Jon Donnison, in Gaza, says she is not expected to meet Hamas leaders during her brief visit.

The EU is the largest contributor of aid to the Palestinians, delivering 1bn euros ($1.4bn; £890m) a year.

UN welcome

Baroness Ashton said she wanted to see for herself the impact the EU's aid has on the ground.

During her Middle East tour, she is also scheduled to meet Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Israeli President Shimon Peres.

But it is her visit to Gaza which is arousing the most interest, says Jon Donnison.

Only two European foreign ministers have come to Gaza in the past year, our correspondent notes.

Foreign officials are often refused entry by Israel, or their governments choose not to come because they do not recognise Hamas.

The visit has been welcomed by the United Nations, which says the blockade of Gaza has left hundreds of thousands in Gaza living in poverty.

The head of the UN's refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip, John Ging, said the people of Gaza were hoping for a single outcome from Baroness Ashton's visit - a lifting of the Israeli siege.

"It's phenomenally important because people at the policy-making level have to have that first-hand experience to really unravel the complexity, and then also to see the simplicity of the plight of the people and the urgency for action," he said.

"We have to have action. A thousand days and a thousand nights of a medieval siege is far too much. It's a shame - it's a disgrace."

Baroness Ashton is on a regional tour that began in Cairo and also includes Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

On Wednesday she visited Jerusalem where she met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and held a joint press conference with Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman.

During the conference, she said she hoped that attempts by US special envoy George Mitchell to launch indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians would succeed.

Baroness Ashton has been criticised as too inexperienced for the new job of EU High Representative, a post created by the EU's Lisbon Treaty.

Violence

Her visit comes as the US and Israel try to bridge divisions over Israeli plans for new building in occupied East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians have pulled out of indirect talks because of the plan.

Israel's building announcement has provoked fresh violence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Mrs Clinton has described the announcement - made while US Vice-President Joe Biden was in Israel last week - as "insulting".

She has made a series of demands of Mr Netanyahu - on the housing project and on showing his commitment to peace talks.

On Thursday Mr Crowley said that Mr Netanyahu had yet to respond.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli economic blockade since 2007, when the Islamist movement Hamas took power.

Hamas militants have fired thousands of rockets into Israel in the past decade.

In 2008 Israel launched a three-week offensive against Gaza which killed more than 1,000 Palestinians and caused widespread damage to its infrastructure.

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