podesta_email_00010.txt

podesta-emails 3,198 words email

P21 D7 P19 P24 D3

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Israel and the Middle East News Update ------------------------------------------------------------ ** Friday, August 1 ------------------------------------------------------------ Headlines: * Israel Declares Gaza Truce Over, 50 Die in Gaza Shelling * IDF Soldier Feared Kidnapped, 2 Other Soldiers Killed * US Envoy Seeks Extension of Gaza Truce * Netanyahu Reprimands Cabinet Ministers for Politicking During War * Abbas Seeks Broad Support for War Crimes Charges * Under Fire and Out of Cash, U.N. Overwhelmed by Gaza Crisis * Israel Has to Keep Hamas from Rebuilding once Gaza Fighting Ends * Islamist Surge Threatens Mideast Powers Commentary: * The Economist: “Israel - Winning the Battle, Losing the War" - Editorial * LA Times: “Israel's Doctrine of Proportionality in Gaza” - By Dore Gold ** Reuters ------------------------------------------------------------ ** Israel Declares Gaza Truce Over, 50 Die in Gaza Shelling (http://news.yahoo.com/israel-palestinian-militant-groups-agree-three-day-gaza-004445708.html) ------------------------------------------------------------ Israel declared a Gaza ceasefire over on Friday and killed more than 50 Palestinians in renewed shelling, saying militants had breached the truce shortly after it began and apparently captured an Israeli soldier. The 72-hour break announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was the most ambitious attempt so far to end more than three weeks of fighting, and followed mounting international alarm over a rising Palestinian civilian death toll. The ceasefire was to be followed by Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Cairo on a longer-term solution. See also, “IDF: Hamas used ceasefire to kidnap soldier; ceasefire over” (Ynet News) (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4553302,00.html?elq=a771a83474c74311864523a9a3a6830b&elqCampaignId=2128) ** Jerusalem Post ------------------------------------------------------------ ** IDF Soldier Feared Kidnapped, 2 Other Soldiers Killed (http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/IDF-soldier-feared-kidnapped-369720) ------------------------------------------------------------ A Hamas attack on IDF soldiers in southern Gaza, which occurred an hour and a half after the start of a humanitarian truce, ended with the suspected kidnapping of a soldier, the IDF said Friday. Second Lt. Hadar Goldin, a 23-year-old Givati officer from Kfar Saba, was named as the IDF soldier presumed to be abducted by Hamas. His family has been notified. Two other soldiers were killed during the incident. Their families have been notified. Terrorists emerged from a tunnel shaft, and a suicide bomber detonated himself in the vicinity of soldiers. Heavy exchanges of fire ensued, before one of the IDF soldiers was kidnapped, a senior army source said. See also, "Israel's tunnel vision" (Share Harris, Foreign Policy) (http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/07/31/extensive_hamas_tunnel_network_points_to_israeli_intelligence_failure_harris) ** Agence France Presse ------------------------------------------------------------ ** US Envoy Seeks Extension of Gaza Truce ------------------------------------------------------------ The No. 2 US diplomat will head to Cairo and seek to extend beyond 72 hours a truce agreed upon by Israel and Hamas, a senior US official said Friday. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns — a veteran career diplomat frequently tasked with delicate missions — will travel to Egypt this weekend to take part in talks as part of the three-day truce that took effect Friday, the official said. The official said Burns would look to see if the two sides can extend the truce in the deadly conflict, especially as negotiators need time to travel to Cairo. Israeli officials rarely meet during the Jewish Sabbath that starts at sundown on Friday. ** Jerusalem Post ------------------------------------------------------------ ** Netanyahu Reprimands Cabinet Ministers for Politicking During War (http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Netanyahu-reprimands-cabinet-ministers-for-politicking-during-war-369695) ------------------------------------------------------------ Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lashed out at his ministers for playing politics during Operation Protective Edge at Thursday’s cabinet meeting. “I call upon you not to harm the special unity that there is among us right now,” Netanyahu said. “Watch your words, be careful with your actions. Above all, cabinet ministers must present a personal example to the entire public. At this time, the nation expects all of us, especially cabinet ministers, to unite behind a common goal.” The prime minister referred to a book by his brother, the late Entebbe commander Yonatan Netanyahu, who wrote that the wars of the Jews started after the fighting, not before it was over. ** Associated Press ------------------------------------------------------------ ** Abbas Seeks Broad Support for War Crimes Charges (http://news.yahoo.com/abbas-seeks-broad-support-war-crimes-charges-203727977.html;_ylt=AwrBJSDufttTIH4AxBXQtDMD?elq=a771a83474c74311864523a9a3a6830b&elqCampaignId=2128) ------------------------------------------------------------ Nearly a month into Israel's fierce assault on Hamas in Gaza, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is facing mounting domestic pressure to seek war crimes charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court. He has hesitated in the past because such a move would instantly put the Palestinians on a risky collision course with Israel. But with about 1,400 Palestinians killed in Gaza, according to health officials, Abbas has signaled he might move ahead — cautiously. Palestinian officials said Thursday that Abbas asked all Palestinian political factions, including Hamas and the smaller group Islamic Jihad, to give their written consent to such a move. Different PLO factions signed up in a meeting in the West Bank earlier this week, while Abbas is still waiting for a response from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, they said. ** Reuters ------------------------------------------------------------ ** Under Fire and Out of Cash, U.N. Overwhelmed by Gaza Crisis (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/us-mideast-gaza-un-idUSKBN0G01DL20140731?elq=a771a83474c74311864523a9a3a6830b&elqCampaignId=2128) ------------------------------------------------------------ The United Nations in Gaza is struggling to withstand a flood of almost a quarter of a million refugees into shelters that have repeatedly come under Israeli fire. Out of cash, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the main U.N. body in the impoverished enclave of 1.8 million Palestinians, says it can barely handle the humanitarian crisis unleashed by more than three weeks of fighting between militants and Israel. Asked to explain the scale of the civilian suffering to an Arab news station, an UNRWA spokesman simply burst into tears. ** LA Times ------------------------------------------------------------ ** Israel Has to Keep Hamas from Rebuilding once Gaza Fighting Ends (http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-gaza-disarm-20140801-story.html#page=1) ------------------------------------------------------------ Determined to avoid a repeat of the fighting in the Gaza Strip, Israel is seeking to build support for having an international force take charge of preventing the Palestinian militant group Hamas from rearming once the conflict is over. One sticking point remains: finding countries willing to take on the job. The idea, floated repeatedly by top Israeli officials in recent days, comes at what could be a key point in the 3-week-old conflict. With the announcement of a 72-hour cease-fire starting Friday morning, the Israelis apparently believe they are close to destroying the bulk of the tunnels that Hamas, which controls Gaza, has spent years digging and fortifying, and a significant portion of the group's arsenal of rockets. ** Wall Street Journal ------------------------------------------------------------ ** Islamist Surge Threatens Mideast Powers (http://online.wsj.com/articles/islamist-surge-threatens-mideast-powers-1406859723) ------------------------------------------------------------ The eruptions of Islamist violence in the Gaza Strip, Syria and Iraq have begun shaking the Middle East to its core, increasing the likelihood that a new order will emerge when the dust starts to settle. The region's traditional power centers—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Israel—are all threatened by the surge of Islamist forces that aim to disrupt the status quo. Even Shiite Iran, which often stokes Islamist movements, is finding that the surge of Sunni extremism is threatening its position in the region. The hope among U.S. officials and U.S. allies is that, in the long run, those traditional powers—which are more often rivals than partners—will find common interest in curbing the extremist forces. ** The Economist – July 31, 2014 ------------------------------------------------------------ ** Israel - Winning the Battle, Losing the War ------------------------------------------------------------ Editorial HAMAS has ruled Gaza since 2007 and there is not much to admire. The Islamist party is harsh, narrow-minded and intolerant of dissent. Its charter is anti-Semitic. It fires rockets into Israeli territory and builds tunnels under it to kill or kidnap Israeli soldiers. It knows that the Israeli attacks it provokes will kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians, which will garner sympathy around the world. It is also weaker than it was, for it is now losing the military battle against Israel. By contrast Israel is the most successful state in the Middle East. It is the region’s only true democracy—a hub of invention, enterprise and creativity. Israel has overwhelming firepower in the fight in Gaza. Most of its people are united behind their soldiers and have the firm backing of America’s Congress. Yet, though Israel is winning the battle, it is struggling in the war for world opinion (see article). That matters in part because Israel is a cosmopolitan trading country that looks to its American ally for security, but also because Israel needs to hear some of what its critics are saying. Anti-Semitism: a very light sleeper A generation ago, Israel had the best of the argument with Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation, in many ways a less vile outfit than Hamas. Young Europeans spent their gap years on kibbutzim. The Western world cheered when Israeli commandos rescued Jewish hostages from the terminal building in Uganda’s Entebbe airport in 1976. But as the occupation of Palestinian territory has dragged on, sympathy has seeped away. In a poll published in June, before the destruction of Gaza, the citizens of 23 countries put the balance of those who think Israel is a good or bad influence on the world at minus 26%, ranking it below Russia and above only North Korea, Pakistan and Iran. A growing number of Europeans call Israel racist (with the sinister flourish that Israelis, of all people, should know better). And even in America, where a solid majority backs Israel, the share that thinks its actions against the Palestinians are unjustified has risen since 2002 by five percentage points, to 39%. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, Israel is backed by just a quarter. Many Israelis, and their most fervent supporters in Congress, see today’s hostility as the culmination of a long process of demonisation, double standards and delegitimisation. They have a point. Holding a country to high standards, as Israel’s critics do, can be a compliment—yet against Israel, morality is often used as a cudgel. The common slur that Israel is an apartheid state ignores the fact that Israel’s minorities, such as the Druze, Arabs and Bahais, are protected by the country’s independent courts—including the highest, which has a sitting Arab Israeli judge. The “BDS” campaign to impose boycotts, encourage divestment and introduce sanctions calls not just for an end to the occupation of the West Bank and for equal rights, but also for the right of return of all Palestinian refugees—in other words, for the erosion of Israel as a Jewish homeland. Protests in France against the fighting in Gaza led to attacks on synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses. No wonder that many Israelis feel that the world is against them, and believe that criticism of Israel is often a mask for antipathy towards Jews. But they would be wrong to ignore it entirely. That is partly because public opinion matters. For a trading nation built on the idea of liberty, delegitimisation is, in the words of an Israeli think-tank, “a strategic threat”. But it is also because some of the foreign criticism is right. Please, hear them That begins with the scale of the violence in Gaza. Some 1,400 Palestinians have died in the past few weeks, compared with 56 Israeli soldiers and four civilians. Even allowing for Hamas’s brutality, no democracy should be happy with a military strategy that results in the death of so many children (let alone the crass claim from Israel’s ambassador to Washington that its soldiers deserve a Nobel peace prize). The destruction is driving support towards Hamas and away from the moderate Palestinians who are Israel’s best chance for peace. But more than that, Israel needs to hear what its critics say about the need for a two-state solution, which remains the only one that will work. Time is not on Israel’s side. Palestinians may already outnumber Israelis in the lands they share. Without two states, Israelis and Palestinians will be left with one that contains them both. The risk for Israel is of either a permanent, non-democratic occupation that disenfranchises Palestinians, or a democracy in which Jews are in a minority. Neither would be the Jewish homeland with equal rights for all that Israel’s founding fathers intended. America’s secretary of state, John Kerry, has made a Herculean effort to forge peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians along the lines of two states for two peoples. When the talks broke down, a few months ago, he blamed Israel’s settler lobby. That outraged right-wing Israelis. And now the left has joined in the derision because he proposed a ceasefire in Gaza that Israelis thought favoured Hamas. But Mr Kerry is right. If Israel continues to build settlements in the occupied territory, it will gobble up land that would belong to an independent Palestinian state, making peace harder to reach. The same goes for what appears to be Israel’s strategy towards both Gaza and the West Bank. Having created a huge open-air prison in Gaza, Israel remains committed to a blockade that contains Hamas—but also ensures that ever more Palestinians grow up angry. On the West Bank, Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has gone backwards: he has said that Israel cannot relinquish security control of the West Bank for fear of Islamist attack. That implies an intention to consolidate the occupation, thus withdrawing all hope from Palestinian moderates. The West Bank would be likely to explode too, then, while the demographic clock ticked on. For all the blood and misery in Gaza, Mr Netanyahu will soon have a chance to show he has heard the critics. Having won his battle, he could return to the negotiating table, this time with a genuine offer of peace. Every true friend of Israel should press him to do so. ** LA Times – July 31, 2014 ------------------------------------------------------------ ** Israel's Doctrine of Proportionality in Gaza (http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gold-israel-gaza-proportional-force-20140801-story.html?elq=a771a83474c74311864523a9a3a6830b&elqCampaignId=2128) ------------------------------------------------------------ By Dore Gold The images of destruction after the battle between the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas that began July 20 in the Shajaiya neighborhood in the Gaza Strip have caused many to declare, in a now-frequent refrain, that the IDF is behaving “disproportionately.” Some commentators are simply dressing up in sophisticated language their belief that Israel is using excessive force, but others clearly mean to accuse Israel of violating the laws of war — specifically, of violating the doctrine of proportionality. These accusations have no merit. Shajaiya was not just another neighborhood in Gaza, but rather a crown jewel of Hamas' effort to intertwine civilians and terrorists to complicate Israel's ability to defend itself. Shajaiya was crisscrossed with an elaborate network of underground bunkers and tunnels containing equipment for the manufacture of rockets, storage facilities for rockets and other weapons, and launching sites from which the rockets were fired at Israeli towns. It was a civilian area where Hamas embedded its most important military capabilities, precisely to encourage condemnation of Israel should the IDF be forced to fight there. Moreover, multiple attack tunnels whose exit points are in Israel had entrance points in Shajaiya. These tunnels allow Hamas to cross under the border fence and penetrate Israeli territory to carry out attacks on civilians. Mothers in Israeli villages near the Gaza border feared that terrorists would emerge from the tunnels, kidnap their children and drag them back as hostages to the Gaza Strip, a concern that became more terrifying when handcuffs and tranquilizers were found in the tunnel system. Shajaiya encapsulates the challenge Israel faces in the Gaza conflict: How can Israel defend itself without being accused of violating the principle of proportionality? Israel had three choices in how to deal with Shajaiya. First, it could have decided that it had every right to use overwhelming force to neutralize the neighborhood with air power, ignoring the question of collateral damage to civilians, much like the Allied bombing campaigns of World War II, or NATO's three-month campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, in which 40,000 homes were destroyed. This option was not even a consideration for the IDF. Second, looking at how Hamas had embedded its military capabilities within civilian neighborhoods, Israel could have decided there was nothing it could do, thus allowing Hamas to strike at Israeli population centers with impunity. Such a decision would have granted Hamas a license to kill Israelis, something no Israeli government — or, indeed, any accountable democracy — could do. Finally, there was the decision that Israel ultimately made: Separate, as much as possible, the civilian population from the Hamas fighters and arms in their midst. This required getting the Palestinian population to evacuate potential target areas by multiple means: dropping leaflets with evacuation routes, breaking into Hamas radio broadcasts with warnings about specific areas, Arabic-language telephone calls to homes and text messages to cellphones. While the notification process was underway, an Israeli drone would hover over the area that was to be cleared to ensure that residents had left. Against this Israeli effort, Hamas employed a counter-strategy of trying to prevent civilians from heeding Israeli warnings. On July 8, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri appeared on local television and called on Gazans to serve as human shields against Israeli air attacks. Hamas enforcers sought to dissuade civilians from fleeing. And, anticipating a ground incursion into neighborhoods like Shajaiya, Hamas booby-trapped whole rows of homes, hoping to collapse them on Israeli soldiers. This only magnified the scale of the destruction. It should be recalled that proportionality in international law has a very specific meaning: It is the calculation a military commander must make as to whether the military advantage to be gained by the use of force is greater than the probable harm that may be inflicted on the surrounding civilian population. Anyone who complains about “disproportionality” must explain exactly what the IDF should have done to neutralize the terrorist threat from Shajaiya while causing less destruction than what occurred. War between an embattled democracy, like Israel, and a terrorist organization, like Hamas, inevitably produces certain asymmetries. Israel heavily invested in the defense of its population, including air raid shelters as well as a missile defense system, known as Iron Dome. Where did Hamas put the billions of dollars it obtained from supporters like Qatar? It built the system of attack tunnels and an arsenal of missiles. Yet there are those who wrongly infer Israeli intent to cause civilian casualties from the greater damage suffered by Hamas, which resulted from a war Hamas imposed, and from its readiness to sacrifice the lives of its people to advance its extremist goals. Dore Gold served as Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations from 1997 to 1999. He is an advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. ============================================================ S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace 633 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20004 ** www.centerpeace.org (http://www.centerpeace.org) 2014 S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, All rights reserved. YOU ARE RECEIVING THIS EMAIL BECAUSE YOU SIGNED UP FOR OUR NEWS UPDATES. ** unsubscribe from this list (http://centerpeace.us7.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=232a4a45176fccacab865e520&id=929d521884&e=a7f9100a75&c=5c0dd2e955) ** update subscription preferences (http://centerpeace.us7.list-manage.com/profile?u=232a4a45176fccacab865e520&id=929d521884&e=a7f9100a75)