Utvalgte utdrag fra artikkel i National Geographic:
" Europe burns a controversial ‘renewable’ energy source: trees from the U.S."
"As
world leaders pledge more action on climate change, one so-called
solution—burning trees for electricity—could undermine progress."
"The Sterman study estimated that the carbon “payback time” for
wood-burning ranged from 44 to 104 years, depending on the type of
forest. In the meantime, it said, power plants that burn wood are adding
CO2 to the atmosphere, just as if they were burning coal."
Sverige har besluttet å begrense krafteksport fra nå og til 2030:
"Svenska Kraftnät har varslet at det vil bli begrensninger i strømutvekslingen med Norge og flere andre land fremover. Selskapet tilsvarer norske Statnett, og driver det svenske sentralnettet. Situasjonen kan vedvare helt frem til 2030, og skal skyldes utfordringer med begrenset kapasitet internt i det svenske strømnettet. Begrensningene kan føre til at norske priser i perioder blir høyere enn de ellers ville ha vært."(E24 22. november 2021).
Norge svarer med "samme mynt" ... man regulerer de tekniske mulighetene i strømnettet mot Sverige for å få balanse i utvekslingen.
Kommentar: Dette lå i kortene. Elektrisk kraft er samfunnskritisk og da er det andre hensyn enn kommersielle som gjelder. Norge må raskt gjøre sin egen analyse om kraftutveksling. For det er ikke sikkert vi får tilbake den kraften vi sender ut av landet hvis vi trenger det.
Og nå advarer USA Israel at de drap og ødeleggelser som Israel utfører i Iran virker mot sin hensikt:
"As Hopes for Nuclear Deal Fade, Iran Rebuilds and Risks Grow" "With
Iran’s new administration preparing for its first international nuclear
negotiations, there are signs that there will be no going back to the
2015 agreement."
I denne situasjonen markerer Israels statsminister Bennett at Israel vil holde alle muligheter åpne og ikke være bundet av en eventuell ny avtale.
Her blir det farlige tilstander for verdensfreden. Å rette opp etter Trump kan vise seg svært vanskelig her ...
Så erkjenner en israelsk "senior sikkerhets-person".
Sitat fra Haaretz-artikkel 19. nov 2021:
"“These are not attacks by bored children,” a senior security figure told
Haaretz this week. “You have to call things by their name. In some of
the cases it’s simply Jewish terrorism."
Å kalle noe med rett betegnelse er viktig. Spesielt venner må i tide være tydelige her.
Settler Attacks on Palestinian Spike, Reflecting Israel's Systemic Failure
Amos HarelNovember 19, 2021
Settlers and Palestinian protesters clashing in the West Bank Village of Asira al-Qibliya, in September.Majdi Mohammed/AP
Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Thursday convened an emergency
meeting with senior figures of the defense establishment to discuss the
steep rise in the number of incidents between settlers and Palestinians
in the West Bank.
It was decided in the meeting
to ramp up enforcement and investigation efforts in the West Bank on
top of issuing clear guidelines for soldiers forbidding “standing by”
and doing nothing during violent attacks on Palestinians.
A large portion of the cases, which occurred in the past two months in connection with the olive-harvesting season, stem from attacks by inhabitants of illegal settler outposts on Palestinians from neighboring villages.
Data presented in the meeting show that this year has so far seen a
rise of 150 percent in incidents in which physical confrontation was
documented between settlers and Palestinians, compared to all of 2019.
(In 2020 there was something of a decline, due to the coronavirus
epidemic.)
Taking part in the meeting with Gantz were the chief of staff, the
head of the Shin Bet security service, the commissioner of police, the
head of Central Command, the coordinator of government activities in the
territories and other senior figures.
One reason for the meeting has to do with the video clips being
posted in the social networks and which sometimes even trickle into the
television newscasts (somewhere after the break for commercials), in
which Palestinians filmed violent attacks on them by settlers.
Incidents such as these, most of them during the olive harvest, occurred recently near Sussia in the South Hebron Hills, in the Shiloh Valley north of Ramallah and near the settlement of Yitzhar, south of Nablus.
A
Palestinian man stands by a wall that is spray-painted with Hebrew that
reads, "price tag," in the West Bank village of Marda, last week.
Nasser Nasser/אי־פי
The clips show masked Jews – it’s best to avoid the newspeak term
“hilltop youth” – behaving like the lords of the land: beating and
threatening Palestinians, in some cases with the use of clubs.
In the rare cases when Israel Defense Forces soldiers somehow find
themselves at the site, they behave more like security guards of the
Jewish rioters than a force whose task is to preserve law and order.
This is not a new phenomenon, of course. The settler outposts started
to spread through the West Bank shortly before the second intifada, and
afterward during the intifada itself, in the first years of the
century.
A massive evacuation of outposts,
many of which stand on private property of Palestinians, was at the
center of talks between the Barak and Sharon governments and the U.S.
administrations of Bill Clinton and afterward of George W. Bush, but was
never implemented.
The settlers in the outposts were quickly identified as a major
source of attacks on Palestinians and their property. The police cite
two main reasons for this: a desire to deter the neighbors from
attacking the unfenced, unprotected outposts (outposts were in fact
targeted in a number of serious attacks) and an attempt to deter the
state from evacuating the outposts.
The circumstances have changed since then. The danger of evacuation
is negligible, with the exception of far-flung outposts, and the scale
of Palestinian terrorism in these years is not high.
Still, defense establishment statistics show that this year there
have been 60 cases of public disturbances by settlers in clashes with
the security forces, compared to 50 in all of 2019. There have also been
135 cases of stones being thrown at Palestinians, up from 90 two years
ago.
One of the reasons for the upsurge in the past two months is indeed
the olive harvest: Villagers come to pick olives in groves close to
settlements and outposts, and settlers try to scare them off. The
Palestinian Authority is also not sitting idly by.
The friction with the settlers is perceived in the West Bank as part
of the national struggle being waged against Israel, focusing on
construction and control of Area C.
In the background of the attacks is the open wound of the incident in which a young settler from an outpost, Ahuvia Sandak, was killed in an accident during a reckless police chase of a car whose passengers were residents of outposts.
Some of the acts of sabotage of Palestinian property have been
devoted to his memory. Revenge actions also increased after the murder
last May of a young Israeli at the Tapuah Junction in the central West
Bank.
A
Palestinian protester clashes with Israeli settlers after Palestinian
students were prevented from heading to their school in al-Lubban
al-Sharqiya village in the West Bank on Wednesday.JAAFAR ASHTIYEH - AFP
The assailants took advantage of the fact that most of the forces of
the Border Police were recalled from the West Bank to inside the Green
Line to deal with the riots that erupted in the mixed Jewish-Arab cities
during Operation Guardian of the Walls in the Gaza Strip.
The impotence in dealing with the violence is systemic, and little
has been done to rectify the situation even though it has been going on
for many years. The reasons are all too familiar. One of the major ones
is the influence wielded by the veteran settlers’ establishment on
Israel’s various governments.
Over the years, ranking IDF and police officers have generally shied
away from taking excessively vigorous action in connection with the
phenomenon, for fear of getting involved in political entanglements that
will haunt them even after they take up a new position. The leniency of
the judicial system toward Jewish ideological offenders also
contributes to the situation,
A relative success by the security forces was mentioned at Thursday’s
meeting: in solving incidents that occurred around Yitzhar. The success
is attributed to the formation of joint teams combining IDF, police and
Shin Bet personnel.
Now the plan is to form similar teams in other areas where many
violent incidents have taken place. Gantz asked the police commissioner
to increase police activity
in the West Bank, and demanded that the State’s Prosecutor Office and
police prosecutors take a harder line against those involved in
violence. IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi said he has issued an
unambiguous directive that soldiers must intervene to stop violent
attacks, including by Jews.
“These are not attacks by bored children,” a senior security figure
told Haaretz this week. “You have to call things by their name. In some
of the cases it’s simply Jewish terrorism.
I don’t rule out the possibility that we will see another deadly
attack, like the murder of the three members of the Dawabsha family in
Duma [a village near Nablus] in 2015. This trend is also harming the
country abroad. There is no meeting with foreign ambassadors in which
the phenomenon of the attacks on Palestinians doesn’t come up.”
8. november produserte det republikanske kongressmedlem PaulGosar en Twitter- og Instragram-melding der han henrettet en kvinnelig kollega i Kongressen (AOC, og ytterligere nagrep president Biden med sverd.
Det gikk flere dager før Gosars partiledelse tok fatt i ham og sørget for at meldingene ble tatt ned.
"Last week, Arizona Representative Paul Gosar posted on Twitter and Instagram a photoshopped animated cartoon in which he assassinates Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacks President Joe Biden." (CNN)
Det er tydelig at ekstreme republikanere ikke kjenner grenser. Hvem setter egentlig grensene innen GOP?
I Hebron fotograferer israelske soldater palestinske barn ned i barnehagealder.
Nylig tok IDF-soldater seg i Hebron inn i et palestinsk hus der familien lå og sov.
De ble vekket og barna måtte stille seg opp til fotografering.
Si "Cheese" sa soldatene til barna som var av alder ned til barnhage:
"Israeli Soldiers Awoke, Gathered and Illegally Recorded Palestinian Minors" "Israeli soldiers gathered and photographed 13 Palestinian children forcing them to 'say cheese' before snapping an illegal image." (Haaretz 17. november 2021).
Bildene samles i en database kalt "Blue Wolf".
Washington Post har en artikkel dette prosjektet den 5. november.
Der stammer informasjonen fra IDF-soldater ... det skal allerede være tusener av foto samlet inn. Soldatene blir belønnet etter hvor mange bilder de har fått tatt.
Washington Post 5. november 2021: "To build the database used by Blue Wolf, soldiers competed last year in
photographing Palestinians, including children and the elderly, with
prizes for the most pictures collected by each unit. The total number of
people photographed is unclear but, at a minimum, ran well into the
thousands."
Allerede har IDF bygget opp en omfattende database ... kalt "Wolf Pack" ... dekkende hele Vestbredden og Øst-Jerusalem. Informasjonen her kobles med ansiktsgjenkjenning og ved "Blue Wolf" blir den også tilgjengelig på smarttelefoner.
UD må notere seg dette og bidra til at Norge får et godt lovverk for bruk av ansiktsgjenkjenning. "Israels Venner" kan sikkert bidra med hva Norge IKKE skal gjøre i en slik sak.
EDIT: 2. mai 2023 Amnesty utgir 80-siders rapport om det israelske ansiktsgjenkjenningsprosjektet: "Israel/OPT: Israeli authorities are using facial recognition technology to entrench apartheid" (se lenke til rapporten under Ny Info)
"Israel, Spyware and Corruption: NSO Ties to Netanyahu, Bennett and Other Politicians"
"NSO's story is a political one which begins with Israel's prime minister, seeps down to other ministers and reaches the very heart of the culture and the actions of the government". (Haaretz 15.11.2021)
"Israel, spionasje og korrupsjon". Den ene etter den andre av ledende israelske politikere knyttes til saken. Der NSO/Israel er blitt en leverandør til udemokratiske og undertrykkende regimer verden rundt. Så disse kan overvåke og fengsle ... ja drepe regimemotstandere.
Dette er så graverende at mer søkelys må settes på. USA har gått foran ... men flere land må følge opp med svartelisting.
Dette må ikke minst kreves av de som kaller seg "Israels Venner."
"Portrayal of the Other in Palestinian and Israel Schoolbooks"
Det er navnet på en grundig og balansert studie av BEGGE lands lærebøker fra 2013. Studien er finansiert av USAs Utenriksdepartement.
Om denne studien av BEGGE lands lærebøker konkludertes det i artikkel i NY Times 3. februar 2013:
"Academic Study Weakens Israeli Claim That Palestinian School Texts Teach Hate"
"JERUSALEM — An academic study of the contents of Israeli and Palestinian Authority textbooks, to be published Monday, finds that each side generally presents the other as the enemy, but it undermines recent assertions by the Israeli government that Palestinian children are educated “to hate.”
Med dette skulle egentlig påstandene om hatopplæring være parkert.
Men så har Israel satt opp en av de tidligere ledere av "The Israel Project", Marcus Sheff, med organisasjonen IMPACT.se. Dette er en ... selverklært nøytral ... gruppe med sete i Jerusalem som gransker læredøker i flere land i Midt-Østen, men spesielt de palestinske.
IMPACT.se er en del av Israels påvirkningsapparat i Israel/Palestina-konflikten. Når lederen Marcus Sheff er en av Israels tidligere fremste agitatorer ... da sier det mye. "Forskningen" må ses i det lyset.
Snarere burde det kreves analyse av de aktører, lærebøker, utdannelses-institusjoner og økonomiskstøtte og statlig beskyttelse som gis til unge israelere på okkuperte palestinske områder ... disse som siden ulovlig setter opp leirer og derfra terrorisere de lokale palestinerne der.
DET burde være en oppgave for "Israels venner på Stortinget".
Å bidra til å stoppe statlig opplæring og støtte til praktiserende terrorister.
Ytringsfriheten vant. Men det måtte et internasjonalt akademisk opprop for å få universitet til å snu.
"Glasgow University retreats over ‘antisemitic’ label for journal article"
"Preface apology for paper on pro-Israel advocacy removed after free speech petition involving Noam Chomsky."
..............................
Og noen måneder før ... tilsvarende i Toronto, Canada:
"University of Toronto reverses block of hire after donor influence scandal"
"Valentina Azarova turned down the University of Toronto's second offer to lead the human rights program, citing their inability to protect her from Zionist harassment." (Mondoweiss 30.9.2021)
..................................
Det er påfallende hvordan noen vil undertrykke ytringsfriheten.
Og at store universiteter trår feil under disse angrepene. Og må gå tilbake på sine første beslutninger.
Det er urovekkende når institusjoner som universiteter er forvirret i dette landskapet.
"Settlers Use Club to Break Palestinian’s Arm. Israeli Cop Returns the Weapon"
"The incident occurred in the West Bank after settlers watered their flock at a cistern that they had been told by Israeli authorities was off limits to them". (Haaretz 8. november 2021, hele artikkelen nederst under Kilde)
Det er hverdagshendelsene som viser virkeligheten.
Forbryteren får tilbakelevert angrepsvåpenet.
Og de angrepne ... som har retten til området ... de blir jaget bort.
Dette er ikke noe nytt ... det gjentar seg systematisk.
Slik vil folk over tid drives bort fra sine eiendommer.
Foruten åpenbar apartheid i den ulike behandling av partene ... så er dette et virkemiddel i en langsom og metodisk strategisk etnisk rensing for angjeldende områder rundt Hebron.
Settlers Use Club to Break Palestinian’s Arm. Israeli Cop Returns the Weapon
Nir HassonNovember 08, 2021
One of the settlers involved in the incident Sunday.Maya Kurs, Sabaya Taayush
Jewish settlers from an unauthorized West Bank outpost beat a Palestinian man with a club on Sunday, fracturing his arm.
The incident followed a clash over the use of a cistern in a
Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills. Police separated the two
sides and later an officer returned the club to the settlers, who reside
in Maane farm outpost.
The incident occurred after the settlers, who were herding sheep,
directed the sheep to a cistern in a Palestinian village in the Masafer Yatta
area, even though the Israeli Civil Administration in the West Bank had
ruled that the settlers had no right to access the cistern for their
flocks. Several Palestinian villagers sought to get the sheep away from
the cistern and were attacked by the settlers. In addition to the man
who fractured his arm, two women were injured in the clash.
אתמול הגיעו מתנחלים להשקות עדר מבור ששייך
לפלסטינים בדרום הר חברון. כאשר הפלסטינים ביקשו שיתרחקו הם הותקפו, אחד
המתנחלים היכה באלה על ידו של יוסף עליאן מהכפר ת'עלא ושבר אותה. שוטרים
שהגיעו לקחו את האלה, אבל אז אחד מהם החליט שזה מוגזם וצריך להחזיר אותה
לידי המתנחלים: pic.twitter.com/0JKYe9ECxE
Footage of the club being returned.Maya Kurs, Sabaya Taayush
Israeli police arrived a short time later, removed the Palestinians
from the scene and advised them to file a police complaint. The police
permitted the settlers to continue to water their flock from the village
cistern. The officers took the club from the settlers but minutes later
a policeman returned the club to the owner of the farm, Issachar Dar.
"A clash developed between [settlers] and Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills
area," the police said in a statement. "Following that, an Israeli army
force and the police arrived at the scene and separated the sides."
An officer who was not present at the time of the initial clash
returned what was described as "a stick," the police said, adding that a
complaint was filed over the incident and that the case is being
investigated.
"Secret Israeli dossier provides no proof for declaring Palestinian NGOs ‘terrorists’" "Israel hoped a classified Shin Bet document would convince European governments to stop funding Palestinian rights groups. +972 and Local Call got hold of the dossier's testimonies — and found no real evidence to justify Israel's claims." (972mag 4. november 2021)
Denne mappen er kjent av europeiske donorland ... og innholdet er avvist ... det inneholder ikke bevis, men påstander.
Og noe av innholdet stammer fra forhør av to palestinere som er oppsagt av den palestinske organisasjonen de jobbet for ... og som IKKE er en av de som nå av Israel er stemplet som terrorister.
Dette er en dokumentasjonsartikkel som går gjennom påstandene fra Israel ... og parkerer dem.
Det angis også bruk av "enhanced interrogation" ... dvs tortur.
Verd å merke seg er også uttalelsene fra israelske jurister som er forsvarere i disse sakene ... spesielt Michael Sfard.
Han burde inviteres til Norge for samtaler med UD ... ref Norges rolle som "Giverland" til palestinerne.
Og "Israels Venner på Stortinget" burde også nytte anledningen til en samtale med Sfard.
Klar melding fra en israeler "på innsiden". Han tar ikke alvorlig Benny Gantz sin erklæring om terrorvirksomhet av flere palestinske menneskerettighets-organisasjoner.
Denne israeleren er leder av organisasjonen av tidligere israelske IDF-soldater: "Breaking the Silence".
Og han har erfaring ... som han gjengir i artikkelen:
"Gantz Decided They're 'Terrorists' and Now Expects Us to Salute. I'm Done With That"
(Haaretz 4. november 2021, HELE artikkelen under Kilde).
Eksemplene er mange i artikkelen at beskyldninger ... uten reell substans ... det er en del av det israelske statlige virkeapparatet.
Gantz Decided They're 'Terrorists' and Now Expects Us to Salute. I'm Done With That
Avner GvaryahuNovember 04, 2021
Defense Minister Benny Gantz in the Knesset, last month.Emil Salman
I was in New York when I discovered that I was a spy. It’s hard to
remember now; after all, it’s been more than five years. But I think I
heard about this at the university library.
Ofer Hadad of Channel 12 television had reported the shocking,
ridiculous claim that we engage in espionage on prime-time news. He
didn’t say it explicitly, but he openly implied it. The politicians then
did the dirty work for him.
I know what it’s like to be on the other side and hear Israel’s defense minister accuse you of treason and espionage
or hear the prime minister say he has ordered the Shin Bet to start
investigating the tiny organization you work for. People would ask us at
lectures how many employees our organization has and were always
surprised to discover that there were only around 15. They had imagined
an octopus-like corporation.
Obviously, I don’t blame them. Knesset members and ministers and
former army officers had told them that’s what we were. The defense
minister was talking about espionage. There must be something to it, no?
Actually, there was nothing to it, as became clear years later when
the little hot air still remaining in this balloon finally leaked out,
after all the relevant legal and defense officials had thrown this joke
into the trash. But Channel 12, whose “espionage scoop” was broadcast
with much fanfare, preferred to ignore the sorry outcome of their
baseless report.
Nobody ever apologized. They simply moved on. That’s the way it’s
done, we discovered. That’s also what happened when Ayelet Shaked, then
the justice minister, ordered the system she was in charge of to launch a
showy investigation into our spokesman because he described what he had
done as a soldier in Hebron. That investigation also collapsed, but
everyone moved on. After all, it’s just a person’s life; what difference
does it make?
How can I explain this to someone who wasn’t there? You become
paranoid. You joke about being tailed by the Shin Bet, but suspect that
there may be something to it.
You also become disappointed in people. People you knew and who knew
you are suddenly willing to assume the worst about you. You even
discover that it’s still possible to be disappointed by the system
itself – by the entire defense establishment, about which you thought
you merely had a lot of criticism, until you discovered from up close
how fragile, biased and sometimes aggressively political it really is.
Therefore, I refuse to be impressed by Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s decision to declare six Palestinian human rights groups “terrorist organizations,”
or by the repeated assurances of his party colleague, MK Ruth Wasserman
Lande, that this decision wasn’t “a whim and certainly not politics.”
Because I remember very well how Israel deported an employee of Human Rights Watch,
Omar Shakir, claiming that he “supported BDS.” I remember how the
Defense Ministry accused an employee of World Vision in the Gaza Strip
of transferring funds to Hamas, an accusation that effectively destroyed
the organization’s Gaza office but has somehow remained unproven to
this day.
I remember the Strategic Affairs Ministry’s involvement in attempts
to smear Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations, and how it
refused even to reveal its budget, much less name the organizations it
was working with. Israel is waging a shady propaganda war against anyone
who documents the brutal reality it has created in the territories, and
that’s as true of the Palestinian group Al-Haq as it is of Israeli
groups like Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem.
And the Palestinians are the first to have learned this.
I know how easy it is to become a “terrorist” with a single remark.
When the defense minister, the former Shin Bet head and many other
former and current senior officials claimed that Breaking the Silence
was committing treason for money, thousands of ordinary people stood
behind us and refused to erase us because of the defense minister’s
claims. But we’re Israelis and they’re Palestinians.
We won’t see these Palestinians’ faces on our television screens. We
don’t speak their language. And their access to justice is that of
subjects with no rights. Nor will we hear from the thousands whom these
organizations have helped to achieve a bit of justice under perpetual
military rule.
Benny Gantz decided, and now he expects us to salute. But I’m done with saluting.
Avner Gvaryahu is the executive director of Breaking the Silence.
En både tankevekkende ... og oppsiktsvekkende ... artikkel i Haaretz om Israels kontakt med makthaverne i Sudan.:
"First Saudi Arabia, Now Sudan: Why Israel's Normalization Strategy Is Imploding"
"One
size doesn't fit all. Triumphal bombast may suit normalization with the
UAE, but it won't work with Saudi Arabia, Djibouti or Iraq. With Sudan,
Israel's hubris and complicity with the coup may well blow up in its
face." (Haaretz 4. november 2021, se HELE artikkelen under Kilde)
..........................
Artikelforfatteren skriver altså:
"With Sudan,
Israel's hubris and complicity with the coup may well blow up in its
face."
Her skrives det rett ut at Israel har medvirket til kuppet i Sudan.
DA har Israels søken etter støtte i autoritære og antidemokratiske regimer i området blitt en farlig politikk ... og det langt ut over de okkuperte palestinske områder.
First Saudi Arabia, Now Sudan: Why Israel's Normalization Strategy Is Imploding
Yonatan TouvalNovember 04, 2021
Sudan's
Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, then head of the transitional military council
and now coup leader, meets Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi
Crown Prince on a visit to the UAE two years agoMohamed Al
Hammadi/Ministry of Presidential Affairs via AP
One year and two days after the celebratory announcement that Sudan
and Israel had agreed to normalize relations, Jerusalem finds itself
facing a strategic dilemma in the wake of the Sudanese military's power
grab in Khartoum.
Suspicion that Israeli officials were in the know about the plot, if
not outright complicit in it, surfaced almost immediately following a
report reports that a Sudanese security delegation had secretly visited Israel
just weeks earlier. And this suspicion seemed all but validated in
light of the revelation that an Israeli delegation, which included
defense and Mossad representatives, traveled to Khartoum in the aftermath of the coup for talks on unspecified topics.
While it is not known who headed the Israeli side on both these
occasions, it appears that on the Sudanese side it was Mohamed Hamdan
Dagalo, the notorious commander
of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and a key ally of General
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the man
responsible for the putsch.
Unfortunately, even if there are no grounds to believe that Israeli
military and intelligence officials were complicit in the military
takeover (a possibility about which even some Israeli journalists have openly speculated), Israel is far from an innocent bystander.
Israel is a stakeholder
with vested interests, formally bound up in Sudan's political
transition in light of the Trump administration's ill-witted decision
last year to force Khartoum to agree to normalize relations with
Jerusalem in exchange for a package of vital financial incentives,
including Sudan’s long-awaited removal from U.S. list of State Sponsors
of Terrorism.
Then-President
Donald Trump talks on a phone call in the Oval Office with the leaders
of Sudan and Israel as his advisors and officials applaudAP Photo/Alex
Brandon
It was a role in a quid pro quo that Israel should have refused to play, and precisely because of its genuinely strategic interests in forging a long-term relationship
with a stable and functioning Sudan. Indeed, as some analysts,
including myself, had warned ahead of the announcement of the deal, the
heavy-handed manner in which Washington pressured Khartoum to normalize
relations with Jerusalem was bound to backfire.
At a time that Sudan
was governed by a fragile cohabitation arrangement between military and
civilian stakeholders and undergoing a fragile process of
democratization, we argued, a decision as publicly contentious as
recognizing Israel risked strengthening the very elements who posed the
greatest impediment to a smooth transition to civilian rule – primarily,
the military, which assumed the lead in establishing contacts with
Israel, and the Islamists, who opposed any such contacts.
In the event, Israeli prime minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu,
put aside Israel's long-term interests in favor of a short-term public
relations victory in the form of yet another normalization deal with a
Muslim country. In so doing, he joined President Trump’s desire to score
a quick victory for expedient political gains – just two weeks before
the U.S. presidential elections.
The risk that such a move would add further friction to Sudan's
internal political process – a process whose derailment would not only
doom the country's chances of transitioning into a Western-oriented
democracy but throw it into a prolonged political turmoil and perhaps
even civil war – was blithely ignored. Sudan, after all, was a trophy,
not a partner.
To be sure, turmoil in Sudan would first and foremost constitute a
tragedy for the people of Sudan. But as Netanyahu must have appreciated,
it would also undermine Israel's broader strategic goals.
Absenting a functioning government, Sudan would be in no position to
partner and collaborate with Israel on any number of issues, including
strategic-related interests pertaining, most urgently, to Iranian
regional actions directly and through its proxies – both inside Sudan
and the Red Sea. And it is these very interests that appear to have
guided Israel’s most recent moves against the backdrop of the military
takeover in Sudan.
A
Sudanese protester draped with the national flag flashes the victory
sign next to burning tires in the capital Khartoum to denounce overnight
detentions by the army of members of Sudan's government- - AFP
Certainly, from a narrowly-defined security perspective, Israel is
right to be seeking assurances from Sudan’s military leadership that any
preliminary understandings over security and intelligence cooperation,
reached before the coup, would be upheld.
Thus, for instance, of utmost concern to Israel is that the establishment of an intelligence base
on the Red Sea, presumably near the Sudan's principal coastal city of
Port Said, not be imperiled, not least given the recent unrest in the
area that had seen tribal protesters blockading the seaport for several
weeks.
All the same, even as it is too early to tell how the military coup
in Sudan will play out, Jerusalem’s recent actions suggest it has no
actual thought-out policy toward Khartoum. Israel-Sudan relations
require a broader and more nuanced view, especially as the new military
leadership has failed to win legitimacy from Washington and other key
Western powers.
Indeed, the strong condemnation by the Biden administration, which
has already suspended $700 million in financial assistance to Sudan,
should cast a chill on Israel’s rapprochement with the Sudanese
leadership rather than, as Jerusalem seems determined to show, stimulate
it.
The very fact that Israeli officials have confirmed the report about
the visit of the Israeli delegation to Khartoum last week – a report
that originally appeared in a Sudanese newspaper and which Israeli
officials might have easily dismissed, refused to comment on, and even
ban its publication in Israel – suggests that there are those in
Jerusalem who deem it useful to demonstrate that Israel is defying
the consensus among its allies on how to respond to the putsch in
Sudan, perhaps as a way of rewarding the Sudanese military leadership
for their willingness to continue to cooperate with Israel on vital
security needs.
Sudanese
Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok holds a press conference at the Council
of Ministers in the capital Khartoum this summer before being deposed in
a military coupASHRAF SHAZLY - AFP
And the possibility that Israeli actions have, at the very least, been coordinated
with Washington only underscores the apparent utility in this defiance –
namely, that Israel is determined to tread its own course and is
willing to prove useful for its allies should they so desire.
Either way, Israel's conduct betrays misguided diplomatic and strategic thinking.
It's misguided, in that it feeds into Sudanese misconceptions about
Jerusalem’s sway over Washington (misconceptions, often tinged with
antisemitism, that are prevalent not only in the Arab and Muslim world
but also in many European capitals). And misguided, in that it fails to
read the regional and international map.
In contrast to the global acquiescence to the counter-revolutionary coup in Egypt that toppled the government of Mohammed Morsi,
Western powers are unlikely to accept the counter-revolutionary putsch
in Khartoum. It is one thing to overthrow an Islamist leadership, even
if it was democratically elected; it is another thing altogether to
derail a political process that holds out the promise of a
Western-oriented democracy.
Rather than let narrow security interests combined with diplomatic
hubris drive its policy toward Khartoum, therefore, Israel and its
relatively new government have an opportunity to rethink its approach to
Sudan. Such an approach, which might be called differential
normalization, might also help inform and refashion its outlook toward
diplomatic opportunities such as brokering ties with further former
adversaries more broadly.
Women
in Khartoum chant slogans to protest Sudanese President of the
Sovereignty Council Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan's contentious
decision to meet Israel's prime minister in a move toward normaliP
Photo/Marwan Ali
With respect to Sudan, Israel should curb its instincts and proceed
cautiously, limiting its relations with the military leadership only to
the most vital security and intelligence needs.
Israel must recall that what incentivized the Sudanese military
stakeholders – first and foremost, General al-Burhan, the most
conspicuous backer of the normalization agreement with Israel within the
Sudanese leadership – was the generous financial package that was
offered in exchange for normalizing relations with Israel. Now that key
elements in the package are in jeopardy, it remains to be seen whether,
and for how long, the generals will continue to embrace Israel.
And although al-Burhan continues to enjoy considerable support,
including also financial, from the UAE and Saudi Arabia, their money can
never entirely supplant the kind of aid that Sudan would need from the
World Bank, IMF, and other international institutions.
The very need for Israel to adopt a more cautious and nuanced
approach to Sudan applies also to other regional players. The gung-ho
enthusiasm Jerusalem conveyed toward the first signatories of the
so-called Abraham Accords last year, the UAE and Bahrain,
and, at least in the case of the UAE, its reciprocity, set a standard
that was difficult and perhaps impossible to reach for others.
Indeed, it is no wonder that, despite the expectations that as many as nine countries
might follow the example of the UAE and Bahrain and normalize relations
with Israel, only one single country in addition to Sudan did so –
namely, Morocco, which took the step in return for winning American recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara.
Sudanese
anti-coup protesters gather in a street in the capital Khartoum olast
month to express their support for the country's democratic transition,
derailed by a military coup and deadly crackdown- - AFP
While the reluctance of others to join, notably Oman
and Saudi Arabia, may have also had to do with a wide array of
considerations, including the expectation of a change in administrations
in Washington, Israel’s ham-fisted approach played a factor.
The way in which Israel bungled the direct face-to-face talks at a meeting between then-prime minister Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
in Neom last November is a case in point. The Israeli public's
swaggering bombast over the meeting, which was supposed to remain
undisclosed, generated considerable backlash from opponents of
normalization with Israel from within the Saudi royal household and
quashed whatever existed for a diplomatic breakthrough during the final
weeks of the Trump administration.
Having instantly established a uniform model for how normalization
should look and feel, Israel is losing opportunities to make diplomatic
advances with countries that might have been put off by the triumphalist
terms and adulatory tones in which Israel’s accords with the UAE and
Bahrain were cast. After all, no country is like another, and no
relationship can, or indeed should, be like another. What suits the UAE
and, with some adjustments, Bahrain, does not and cannot suit Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or Djibouti.
Yet Israel’s one-size-fits-all approach did not originate with the
Abraham Accords. It has shaped its attitude to allies and rivals alike
since at least the 1979 signing of its peace treaty with Egypt. Indeed,
it explains why Israel is so resentful of the cold peace with Egypt and impatient with the standoffish attitude of Jordan.
A
woman walks in front of a banner in Dammam showing Saudi King Salman,
right, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, left, and Saudi Arabia's
founder late King Abdul Aziz Al Saud AP Photo/Amr Nabil
In Israel’s black-and-white diplomatic imagination, peace must
translate into a warm and thriving relationship, with trade and tourism
at their heart; anything that falls short of that feels like a snub.
It is this same attitude that hampered efforts to reach a peace
agreement with Syria, especially during the final days of Hafez al Assad
in 2000, when Israel’s demands for a full-blown peace deterred the
ailing leader out of concern that his son and apparent successor,
Bashar, would be unable to overcome the domestic opposition which the
influx of Israeli goods and tourists was expected to generate.
Unfortunately, his preference for a "go-slow" approach was taken by
then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak as a sign that Assad was not serious
enough.
Finally, a policy of differential normalization might also help
Israel overcome some of its ingrained resistance to making meaningful
progress with the Palestinians.
Israel’s seemingly countless demands on the Palestinians at the level
of their attitude to Israel – whether that they recognize Israel as a
"Jewish state" or abandon their myth of the Right of Return – all
bespeak the same intrinsic difficulty to fathom a peace agreement,
especially one that required making supposedly painful concessions, that
did not reflect amity and reconciliation. It is yet one more reason why
Israel has failed to do all that it might have done to reach a
final-status agreement with the PLO and, mutatis mutandis, a long-term hudna, or truce, with Hamas.
A policy of differential normalization would not only open up a world
of possibilities for Israel that, as yet, remain inconceivable. And it
will help Israel make peace with the peace that it has already won.
Yonatan Touval is a senior foreign policy analyst at Mitvim: The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies. Twitter: @Yonatan_Touval
Et tankevekkende innlegg i Israel/Palestina-konflikten.
Det gjelder ordene som brukes:
"Why are the Jewish-only colonies in occupied Palestine still innocuously called “settlements?”"" "If the mainstream media reported on Israel's
Jewish-only colonies more accurately, Americans would have a better
understanding of the Israeli system of apartheid." (Mondoweiss 29.10.2021)
Tiltredes.
Ordene som brukes betyr mye.
Israelske "settlements" er ulovlige etter folkeretten.
Etter israelsk lov fra 1955 beslaglegges alle palestinske eiendommer der eieren måtte ha flyktet eller oppholder seg utenfor Israel. Loven gjelder fortsatt ... og skaper store problemer ... spesielt i Øst-Jerusalem.
Dette er inngående beskrevet i nedenstående Haaretz-artikkel:
" Why This Powerful Israeli Agency Won't Disclose the Scale of the Palestinian Properties It Manages"
(Haaretz 1. november 2021, se hele artikkelen nederst under Kilde)
Det er forsøkt å få tilgang til informasjon om virksomheten til denne "Custodian of Absentee Properties".
Men israelske domstoler nekter innsyn .. med henvisning til at det vil skade Israels omdømme internasjonalt.
Israels UD deltok i denne vurderingen ... og da konkluderte den israelske dommeren:
“I have been convinced
that the disclosure of the requested information may jeopardize the
state’s foreign relations,”..
Slik skjules virkeligheten
Og tilstanden for folk i Øst-Jeruslalem forverres.
Og dette gjelder noe så grunnleggende som eierskapet til huset du bor i.
Israels annektering av Øst-Jerusalem er ulovlig etter internasjonal rett.
Bruk av loven fra 1955 i år 2021 er et klart brudd på både moral og jus.
Why This Powerful Israeli Agency Won't Disclose the Scale of the Palestinian Properties It Manages
Nir HassonNovember 01, 2021
Palestinian
residents of Silwan outside Israel's Supreme Court prior to a hearing
in Jerusalem, last month.AP/Sebastian Scheiner
Israel's Custodian of Absentee Properties is a powerful agency that
manages hundreds of properties in East Jerusalem and shapes the city's
real estate market — but power does not always mean knowledge.
Despite its vast sway, a recent hearing on a freedom of information
request reveals the Finance Ministry department doesn't know how many
properties it controls; or that finding the information is too
complicated; or that revealing this information may compromise the
country’s foreign relations – depends on which answer you choose to
believe.
With the backing of the magistrate’s court judge, who decided not to
force the custodian to disclose the information, one of the most
contentious bodies in Israel has the license to remain opaque.
The Custodian of Absentee Property has been operating under the
Absentee Property Law of 1950, which transfers to the state any property
whose owner stayed in an enemy country during the temporary “state of
emergency” – which is in effect until this day, renewed perfunctorily on
a biannual and bipartisan basis. Through the law, the state has seized
all the property left behind by Palestinian refugees in 1948. In a controversial expansion, the law was applied to East Jerusalem
as well, after it was de facto annexed to Israel in 1967. This means
that any property on the east side of Jerusalem belonging to somebody
living in the West Bank or an Arab country is supposed to automatically
devolve to the Custodian — and herein lies the problem.
The fear of the Custodian is one of the most impeding factors in the
real estate market in East Jerusalem, with a far-reaching impact on the
economy and city planning. As many Palestinian families have a relative
who lives or lived in an Arab country, almost every piece of property in the east side can be claimed
to have an owner who is an absentee, and therefore the Custodian should
receive their share of the asset. Among other things, it causes many to
prefer purchasing and selling realty on the black market, without
notifying authorities, or to turn to illegal construction in order to
avoid requesting a building permit.
A family in East Jerusalem where the Absentee Property Law has been used to seize Palestinian homes, 2019.Olivier Fitoussi
“An unreasonable situation has developed where people fear to make
deals on the east side,” says Att. Amir Adika Tal of Kadari, Shamir
& Co. Law Offices, which has taken up the fight on the subject. “The
resulting situation is that there is an enormous pool of houses and
land that nobody is doing anything with, despite Jerusalem being
desperate for land.” Even a massive land registration drive announced by
the state some two and a half months ago was met with noncooperation,
due to the same fear.
Against this backdrop, Ram Cohen, an attorney at Tal, Kadari, Shamir
& Co. Law Offices and an urban planning student, decided to file a
freedom of information request to establish how many properties are
managed by the Custodian. The firm represented him in the petition, in
an effort to uncover even a fraction of the goings-on at the Custodian’s
office. Based on experience from a previously rejected petition, Cohen
did not request the location of the properties or the identities of the
owners, but only the number: How many properties are “assigned,” or
supposed to be under the Custodian’s control, how many of these are
managed by the Custodian in practice, and how many have been released to
their owners or sold.
What ensued was a series of contradictory accounts. The Custodian
first responded that the number of properties it owns cannot be given
“due to the complexity of the requested information,” that there are no
properties managed by it, and that it has no information on the scope of
properties released or sold.
Demonstration
in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem against Israeli families
who live in houses sold to Jews, March.Ohad Zwigenberg
Just before the hearing on the petition at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s
Court last June, the Custodian suddenly recalled that they do manage a
single property: The Seven Arches Hotel on Mt. Olives in Jerusalem. At
that time the Custodian devised a new reason to turn down the request:
Revealing the information would compromise Israel’s foreign relations,
which is considered a legitimate reason for authorities to decline
requests to reveal information on their activities.
Ronen Baruch, the Custodian of Absentee Property since 2005, gave a
different answer. He testified to the court that his unit has a staff of
just three, only two of whom are professional. “Even thought we’re in
2021, our office isn’t digitized, and the material isn’t scanned,” he
said on the stand, explaining that from 1967 to this day, no
comprehensive survey has been conducted of the Custodian’s properties in
East Jerusalem. He said that every year there are some 40 requests to
release properties back to their owners, but he doesn’t know how many
were approved. In response to a question by Judge Einat Avman-Muller,
Baruch explained that in order to extrapolate the information about the
number of properties, he has to pore over paper files.
The hearing also had a surprise attendee: Jonathan Rosenzweig, head
of the Palestinian department at the Foreign Ministry. Despite objection
by Cohen and Adika, the judge granted the Custodian’s request and
allowed Rosenzweig to be heard ex parte. After this, the judge decided
to reject the freedom of information request: “I have been convinced
that the disclosure of the requested information may jeopardize the
state’s foreign relations,” she wrote in her ruling. She fully accepted
the Custodian’s explanations. “I am satisfied that delivery of the
information will cause an unreasonable allocation of resources… Which
may disrupt and even paralyze the Custodian’s work,” she wrote, adding
that Cohen must pay the Custodian’s legal expenses, a sum of 10,000
shekels.
“What harms the state’s foreign relations? Revealing the information,
or the very existence of the law, over 70 years after the country’s
founding?” Adika asks. Cohen and Adika have recently filed an appeal of
the decision to the District Court. The appeal was joined by former
Deputy State’s Prosecutor, Shuki Lamberger. “This law is very powerful
in regard to the state’s authority over people’s private property,” says
Lamberger. “There is public and economic importance in knowing how it
conducts itself with this power, how many such properties there are, how
many they release, how many they sell. This is a very unconventional
law. The impression is that they’re either presenting a very imprecise
picture, or that they’re not managing at all."
The Finance Ministry, in response to a series of questions about the
Custodian’s operations: “The state will respond in the proper
jurisdictions.” The Foreign Ministry declined to comment.
