Khan Yazdani Library : America, Israel and Palestine

America, Israel and Palestine

Obama: Israel Has ‘No Greater Friend’ Than U.S.)

http://world.time.com/2013/03/20/president-obamas-first-trip-to-israel/photo/president-obama-departs-the-white-house-en-route-for-israel/#ixzz2ZjXDNxrJ

Barack Obama made a historic first trip to Israel as president and he met with the country’s President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, the ongoing civil war in Syria, and the Middle East peace process. During his three day visit, Obama also met with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank.

http://world.time.com/2013/03/20/president-obamas-first-trip-to-israel/#ixzz2ZjWJqggU

Can Obama Make Israelis Believe Again?

The American President poured on the charm in an effort to persuade Israelis and Palestinians to get back on the peace process — and a two-state solution

By Karl Vick @karl_vickMarch 21, 201336 Comments

U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledges the audience after delivering a policy speech on mideast policy at the Jerusalem Convention Center on March 21, 2013

JASON REED / REUTERS

Transcript of Obama’s Speech in Israel The New York Times

Bombing near Jerusalem bus stop kills woman, 30 hurt Reuters

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The purpose of President Obama’s visit to Israel finally emerged on Thursday, in the ebullient afterglow of the speech that was billed as the centerpiece of his trip, and lived up to the billing. After a first term spent trying to alter the mechanics of the negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians over the land they both claim — tinkering with settlement freezes, summoning leaders to the White House — Obama decided on a new approach to Middle East peace: he’d talk them into it.

The master orator brought all his skills to the Jerusalem address, braiding emotion, history, reassurance, logic and personal charisma into a speech that did to the audience what a really good Obama speech can be relied upon to do: it lifted them out of themselves and made them think anything was possible. It was a stunning success, at least until his listeners return to the realities awaiting them right outside the auditorium (which stands behind the bus stop that was the scene of the last terror attack inside Jerusalem, a 2011 backpack bomb that killed one).

“He’s so good, I loved it even though I don’t agree with some of what he said,” says Gila Kordana, descending a staircase from the balcony in a crowd buzzing with the experience. Such as? “I’m not really for the idea of two states,” she says, not a small thing. Nor was she much taken with Obama’s take on the young Palestinians he’d seen earlier the same afternoon at the West Bank city of Al Bireh. “Talking to them,” he said, “they weren’t that different from my daughters. They weren’t that different from your daughters or sons.”

(PHOTOS: President Obama’s First Official Trip to Israel)

“My brother’s in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces], and they deal with 9-year-old kids who throw bottles,” Kordana says. “So I didn’t go for that part about them being just like us. ‘My daughters, your daughters, their daughters,’” Kordana says, paraphrasing Obama’s plea for “empathy” and seeing your own in the faces of the other: “You can’t put them in the same triangle.”

The reality lurking outside the afterglow was not lost on the White House. Obama understands that the two-state framework is in danger of collapse — the idea that the competition between Jews and Palestinians can be resolved by negotiating a sovereign Palestine on the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, and Gaza Strip, which remains virtually sealed off by the IDF. But the new government assembled by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is officially committed to resuming the talks, and Obama spent hours with both Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas trying to bridge the mistrust between the two.

He’s made progress, according to a senior Obama Administration official. The larger problem is that their constituents have no faith in the talks anymore, either, especially the young people Obama is trying to coax. “They do not trust the two-state solution and vision anymore, and this is very dangerous,” Abbas said in a joint news conference with Obama in Ramallah, the West Bank city. “The younger generation no longer believes.”

(MORE: Obama in Israel: Running to Stay Put)

Much the same is true in Israel, where polls for years have found a tension between the appetite for peace — still strong, in general — and an overwhelming pessimism that it will come to pass. The skepticism has devastated support for the “peace camp” in Israeli politics and empowered right-wing activists who support expansion of the about 200 settlements that amount to a slow takeover of the West Bank. Such activists hold senior posts in Netanyahu’s new government.

“It’s hard for political leaders to get too far ahead of your constituents,” Obama acknowledged in Ramallah. “But if we can get direct negotiations started again, I believe the shape of a potential deal is there.”

Therein lies the rationale for Obama’s three-day charm offensive in Israel, a full-court press designed to win over a Jewish population long wary of his attention to the Islamic world. The remedial effort appears to be going very, very well — with hard-shell Israelis marveling at the speed with which the nation has run into Obama’s arms. On 88 FM, a DJ spun Salt-n-Pepa’s “Whatta Man” and name-checked the President. On the front page of the Jerusalem Post, Herb Keinon wrote: “He had us at the word ‘shalom.’’’

The question is whether the newfound popularity will produce some newfound power of persuasion, especially on a topic as fraught as peace. His audience in Jerusalem was invitation-only and skewed young, Obama’s sweet spot: most were from universities inside Israel. “The reason he gave this speech to this audience today is because he believes people need to get invested in this,” a senior Obama Administration official said afterward. Mention of peace talks brought, like the lyrics of a nearly forgotten song, the vocabulary of diplomacy stretching back two decades now, which of course is much of the problem: it’s gone on too long and drifted into a world of its own. “If people don’t get reinvested in the idea that peace is in their interest and is possible, it doesn’t matter what kind of confidence-building measures you have,” the official said.

(MORE: Bibi and Barack: A Buddy Movie Opens in Israel)

Can it work? In the convention center, the reception was enthusiastic, and not only for the portions that both stroked and stoked the Israelis — the eloquent enunciation of the inspiration African-Americans had taken from the Passover narrative, for instance, and the defiant proclamation: “Israel isn’t going anywhere.” The words brought a thunderous ovation — the kind Netanyahu receives, projecting the jut-jawed steadfastness that accounts for much of his popularity. But it meant more “when someone from outside said it aloud: ‘This is going to be a Jewish country,’” Kordana says. “It makes you feel more confident, more secure in your place.”

But there was also considerable applause heard for the challenging sections: Obama’s earnest case for believing again in a peace effort. At times the response was loud enough a stranger might have believed that the left wing in Israel is no longer referred to as Lonesome Doves.

“And now I’m not,” says Liat Biron, a graduate student in public policy at Tel Aviv University, one of the last leftist holdouts, as she left the auditorium, “because the President of the most powerful nation in the world feels the same way. “

But was anyone persuaded? “He made a very good argument,” says Dvir Goldstein, a student at Open University, looking past the enchantment of the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to hear Obama speak. “I’ll certainly give new thought to the points that he offered.” He was already talking about it, after all.

“At the end of the day,” says Kordana, “he’s a good politician.”

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/03/21/can-obama-make-israelis-believe-again/#ixzz2ZjWWdpzT

The Secret of the Wonder Weapon That Israel Will Show Off to Obama

Iron Dome is a huge and economical success for Israel's security. But politics makes the definition of success a much more furtive thing

By Karl Vick @karl_vickMarch 19, 2013188 Comments

A New Gaza War: Israel and Palestinian Militants Trade Fire

URIEL SINAI / GETTY IMAGES

An Israeli missile from the Iron Dome defense system is launched to intercept and destroy incoming rocket fire from Gaza in Tel Aviv on Nov. 17, 2012

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No tour of Middle East conflict zones could be complete without a stop at Sderot, an Israeli town of 24,000 that stands uncomfortably close to the Gaza Strip. The rain of rockets out of the Palestinian enclave has made Sderot famous for two things: the thickness of its roofs (even bus stops have reinforced concrete tops); and the collection of crumpled missiles arrayed in racks behind the police station. As a visiting VIP in 2008, U.S. Senator Barack Obama dutifully inspected what the machine shops of Islamic Jihad and Hamas fashioned from lengths of pipe and scrap metal. Low-tech doesn’t begin to cover it.

It’s a long way up the Mediterranean coast from Sderot to Haifa, and even farther to the showroom of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., the weapons-development branch of Israel’s military-industrial complex. Hi-tech doesn’t begin to cover it. Rafael developed the first precision-guided munitions — the precursor to the American-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions that replaced “dumb bombs” — and scores of other battlefield innovations, from IED detectors to floating drones. But the company’s most acclaimed invention is the one now President Obama will inspect moments after arriving in Israel on Wednesday: Iron Dome. It is a missile-interception system that has performed what Israelis regard as a miracle, draining a good bit of the fear out of the wail of an air-raid siren. During the last Gaza conflict, which lasted a week in November, Iron Dome knocked out of the sky a reported 84% of the missiles it aimed at — that is, the ones headed toward population centers. The rockets headed for open space its computers simply let fall. Rafael executives are understandably proud of Iron Dome, which after a few months on the job is performing at the level of a system that’s had seven years to work out the kinks. But they appear even prouder of the unlikely philosophy behind it. To make the most-tested, if not the most effective antimissile system in military history, Israeli engineers took a page from the Gaza militants they aimed to frustrate. The secret to Iron Dome is that it’s cheap.

(MORE: Iron Dome’s Lessons for the U.S.)

Consider the problem of volume. Since 2005, Gaza militants have fired more than 4,000 of their homemade rockets into Israel. Most cost a few hundred dollars each. Interceptors typically cost a few hundred thousand. “The main question that everyone asks is, ‘You’re firing a very costly missile against something very cheap,’” says Joseph “Yossi” Horowitz, a retired air-force colonel who markets air-and-missile defense systems at Rafael. “So our main mission was to reduce the cost.”

The economizing would be across the board, but the biggest savings were realized by reducing the size of the missile’s eyes — by far the most expensive component. An interceptor missile locks onto its target by following directions from the radar in its nose cone, typically packed with radio-frequency sensors of extravagant unit cost. An interceptor carried by a fighter jet has to be very smart, because it’s expected to find a missile being fired in its direction before it’s even in sight, one that could come from any direction. The nose-cone radar of an AIM/AMRAAM has so many RFs, or radio-frequency nodes, that it runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But a homemade missile coming out of Gaza is simply ballistic: it goes up and comes down. Rafael realized its launch and trajectory can be detected by ground radar, which would then transmit that information to the Iron Dome interceptor launched into the area of the sky where it’s headed. Only when the two missiles come near one another does the interceptor’s own radar come alive, guiding it to the incoming Qassam or GRAD and colliding with its own nose — where the warhead is positioned — in midair. It’s a delicate business, what with each missile traveling at 700 m per second.

“I can bring the interceptor in an accurate way, near the target, which means I can use the radar, the ‘seeker’ for a very short time,” says Horowitz. The shorter the time, the fewer the RF sensors required. “Saves money,” he says. How much? “Two digits: from hundreds of thousands of dollars to several thousand dollars.”

(MORE: ‘Iron Dome’ Protects Israel From Gaza’s Missiles: Will That Embolden It to Strike Iran?)

The savings mount up. Most guided missiles are made of so-called exotic materials, complex polymers designed to prevent the rocket from expanding or contracting as it travels through different altitudes. Again, not necessary for Iron Dome, which ascends only a few thousand feet. “Here we did it with aluminum,” Horowitz says. “Went across the street. Got some pipe.”

The result is visible in this extraordinary YouTube video from a wedding in Beersheba, an Israeli city of 200,000. The incoming missiles are not visible in the night sky until the ascending Iron Dome interceptors find and destroy them — again and again and again. “We can do more, but in this video we do 12,” says Horowitz, a reserve colonel in the Israeli military’s air-defense section. “You are not looking for the best of the best. You are looking for some optimization.”

At about $50 million per battery — the launchers with 20 missiles each, ground radar and command-and-control center, led by an officer equipped with an abort button — Iron Dome still costs plenty, especially since Israel estimates it would need at least 13 of them to protect the entire country. It currently has five. But the U.S. Congress voted about $300 million to help close the gap, which is why the Israel Defense Forces will truck a battery to Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday to be photographed behind the American President.

That no previous antimissile system has performed so impressively might raise awkward questions about the norms of defense procurement in other nations. (For David’s Sling, the Israeli version of the Patriot 3, the U.S. intermediate-range interceptor that costs about $5 million per interceptor, Rafael is partnering with Raytheon, an American firm, and still aims do the job for one-quarter of the cost.) But for Israelis, the more pressing question is how to define success.

(MORE: Psychological Warfare with Missiles: Why Tel Aviv Matters)

Back to the Beersheba wedding. The revelry appears to carry on oblivious to the wail of air-raid sirens competing with the DJ (that song in the background is “Sunday Morning” by Maroon 5). If Israelis no longer scramble to shelters, then Iron Dome really has changed the dynamic. It’s not yet at that point; schools still close when the rockets fly, and parents stay home from work. But Rafael’s head of research and development, who began work on Iron Dome even before the government thought to ask for it, tells TIME that its overarching accomplishment is that it can break the pernicious cycle of escalation that can lead to things like invasions. The batteries can liberate Israel’s elected leaders from the public pressure that comes with mass casualties. “The big success of Iron Dome is not how many missiles we intercept,” says Roni Potasman, the executive vice president for R&D. “The main success is what happened in the decisionmaking civilian population environment. The quiet time. Clausewitz used to say the mission of the military is to provide the time for the decisionmakers to decide. Now, if out of 500 missiles, 10 of them get by and cause casualties, a school or kindergarten, then this is a whole different story.”

The more stubborn problem is that, even though Iron Dome knocked down 400 of the rockets fired out of Gaza in the last round of fighting, Hamas acts as though it prevailed in the conflict. What’s more, polls show 80% of Palestinians think so too, while only 1 in 4 Israelis think their side prevailed. Israeli warplanes killed scores of senior militants and destroyed hundreds of missiles and launchers on the ground, including Fajr-5 from Iran. But Hamas and Islamic Jihad still launched their own version of the Fajr, dubbed the M-75, toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — unsettling Israelis who had previously considered themselves out of range and had not heard an air-raid siren since the Gulf War.

“[Gaza militants] were hit badly, much more than four years ago, but still I think they perceive it as a success,” says Potasman. “This is the Middle East. You see one reality, one side is looking at this reality from one angle; the other side looks from a totally opposite angle. That’s why we cannot communicate with them on a regular, normal basis, because you see on reality, and you look at this and you say, ‘Hey, what else can we do, to kill them? I mean, to kill them softly?’ And they look at this and they say, ‘Hey, we were able to hit Beersheba and Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. So our understanding of the reality and their understanding of the reality is totally different. It’s not the same book.”

— With reporting by Aaron J. Klein / Haifa

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/03/19/the-secret-of-the-wonder-weapon-that-israel-will-show-off-to-obama/#ixzz2ZjWh1ebn

What Have You Done for Us Lately? Why the Palestinians Are Put Out With Obama Too

The American President, already suffering a dearth of popularity in Israel, isn't getting high marks from the Palestinians either

By Karl Vick @karl_vickMarch 20, 201373 Comments

A Palestinian demonstrator holds shoes and a digitally manipulated placard depicting U.S. President Obama during a protest in Ramallah.

AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS

A Palestinian demonstrator holds shoes and a digitally manipulated placard depicting President Barack Obama during a protest in the West Bank city of Ramallah on March 19, 2013

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Updated: March 21, 2013 at 5:30 a.m. EST

Were he a journalist, President Obama could claim he must be doing something right in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Look: both sides are mad at him! But he’s a politician, and the conundrum he faces on both sides of the Green Line fits like a straitjacket.

The skepticism that greets Obama in Israel — where a newspaper poll last week found only 1 in 10 Israelis are “favorable” toward him — is grounded in the very assumption that once raised hopes in the Palestinian territories: that a black American President who came of age in the third world harbored real feelings for their situation. But the height of the hopes only deepened the reservoir of disappointment that awaits him in the West Bank. In Ramallah, where Obama meets Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday, posters heralding his arrival were promptly defaced with red X’s (and, as the Associated Press reported on Thursday, Obama was planning to emphasize the importance of reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, before Palestinian militants in Gaza launched rockets into southern Israel). In Bethlehem, where he will visit the Church of the Nativity on Friday, motorists earlier this week took turns driving over his image on a grubby street.

“I am very disappointed in Obama, since he is the key to our hope,” says Hayil Mansara, 53, a native of Hebron, a city divided between Palestinians and militant Jewish settlers. “Unfortunately the pressure of the Israelis is much stronger and louder. Therefore he is not planning on unlocking any of our rights soon.”

(PHOTOS: President Obama’s First Trip to Israel)

“I don’t understand,” Mansara goes on. “He is a black man, with roots from Africa. His people suffered from racism, and his family are still in Africa. So why isn’t he interested or willing to help us gain our rights and freedom?”

As Abbas likes to point out, Washington has never pretended to fill the role of impartial mediator in the Palestinian contest with Israel. “The United States is our friend,” he told TIME last year. “But it is Israel’s ally.” Even so, hopes soared in the West Bank and Gaza Strip when Obama was first elected, and the sympathetic tenor of his Cairo address to the Muslim world only heightened expectations. But while the new President succeeded in freezing Israeli settlements in the West Bank for 10 months (an opening that Abbas largely let pass), what Palestinians remember of Obama’s first term was his rigid opposition to U.N. recognition of Palestine as a member state. In the West Bank, Obama’s visit to the region is understood as advertised — as an effort to reach out to Israeli Jews who remain wary of the American President despite what Israeli officials acknowledge has been intensive support for Israel, especially in military and diplomatic realms.

“Four years ago I had hoped that he might bring about a change, return our land, free the prisoners, assure refugees the right to return [to homes inside present-day Israel they left in 1948],” says Aseel Zaid, 18, a community-college student in Qalqilya, a small city near the separation barrier. “But four years have passed and nothing achieved. Things have just gotten worse.”

Palestinians say they are further discouraged by the makeup of the new Israeli government sworn in under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Though the agreement binding the parties into a governing coalition calls for resuming negotiations with the Palestinian leadership, none of the major parties profess much enthusiasm for the process. Meanwhile, prosettler activists have taken control of ministries crucial to advancing Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the approximately 200 Jewish subdivisions and cities that greatly undermine the possibility of a future Palestinian state.

“He did not stand by us to gain our own state, so what does this tell you about his goals and efforts?” asks Shams Mansour, 24, a truck driver in Qalqilya. “I think this trip is intended only for the Israelis. To show that he is neutral he will visit the occupied Palestinian territories — but only as a tourist.”

In Ramallah, Obama will talk with Abbas, then pay a call to a youth center in the neighboring city of al-Bireh, a municipality known for the expansive homes built by Palestinians who have emigrated to the U.S., done well and sent money back. Dual citizenship tends to make the experience of living under occupation — Israeli troops have controlled the West Bank since 1967 — more poignant.

“When I am living in the U.S. I always feel as though I am free and that my rights are protected like everyone else,” says Ghassan Abed, 43, who owns businesses in New York. “Unfortunately, living now in the town of al-Bireh I must say that I feel no sense of freedom. I am not able to travel to Israel without applying for a permit from the Israelis and then having to wait to be approved or granted the right to enter my people’s confiscated land.”

Mutasem Nabhan was on vacation from Boston, where he owns several businesses. “When I come to visit my family here, I am harassed at the airport despite my U.S. citizenship just because I am a Palestinian,” he tells TIME. “In the U.S., you feel the real meaning of freedom. Just as long as you obeyed and follow all the laws, no one will bother you nor will anyone question why you are going to a certain place.”

And yet, Nabhan expects Obama to “push for peace.” Palestinian leaders like Abbas, having sworn off armed resistance, often say hope is all they have to offer their public, and even in the more discouraging periods — talks have been frozen since 2008 — many grope for optimism. Waseem Shobak, 58, a retired schoolteacher and father of five in Qalqilya, was not about to turn away the U.S. President quite yet. “Till now we have not seen anything positive from him, so we are still hoping that he may be able to bring about a change to our cause,” Shobak says. “Since he is the most powerful man in the world after Allah, maybe my children will be able to find jobs and be able to live normal lives.”

— With reporting by Rami Nazzal / Qalqilya and Ramallah

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/03/20/what-have-you-done-for-us-lately-why-the-palestinians-are-put-out-with-obama-too/#ixzz2ZjXQ3ANk

Obama in Israel: Running to Stay Put

President Barack Obama heads to Israel, Palestine and Jordan for the first foreign trip of his second term

By Jay Newton-Small @JNSmallMarch 19, 201322 Comments

Israel Prepares For President Obama's Visit

URIEL SINAI / GETTY IMAGES

Preparations continue a day ahead of President Barack Obama's arrival at the Israeli President's residence in Jerusalem on March 19, 2013

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President Barack Obama heads to Israel late Tuesday for the first foreign trip of his second term, a visit more about maintaining the status quo in a region filled with upheaval than about historic treaties or groundbreaking peace deals. When U.S. Presidents visited Jerusalem in years past, it was for big reasons, usually involving the ends of various conflicts or to make a push for Middle East peace. Obama’s ambitions are a lot smaller.

The President’s hopes for this trip are about getting leaders not to do things, rather than prompting action. In Jerusalem, he needs Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to bomb Iran before diplomatic talks have run their course. He also wants Netanyahu to stop, or at least slow, the building of new settlements in Palestinian areas so as to give the peace process a chance. And Obama would like Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas not to report Israel to the International Criminal Court for human-rights violations. “This trip is about managing Middle East problems. It’s not about solving them,” says Haim Malka, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The President’s broad objectives are to convince the Israeli and Palestinian publics that he’s protecting their interests and preventing their leaders from taking any unilateral steps that would undermine U.S. interests and their own,” Malka says.

(MORE: The Secret of the Wonder Weapon That Israel Will Show Off to Obama)

For an American President, Obama is unusually unpopular among Israelis: he had a 33% approval rating last year. Which is why instead of speaking to the Israeli parliament, Obama chose to give a speech directly to the Israeli people. “Given this is his first trip to Israel as President, we thought that it was very important for him to speak directly to Israelis about the nature of the friendship between the United States and Israel, and the challenges that we’re faced with,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters ahead of the trip. Obama may not change public opinion with a single speech, but courting the Israeli public will help build trust when the President asks their leaders to have faith that the U.S. will act to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Israel worries that Iran is using talks with international powers as a way to stall while building a program that can rapidly enrich enough uranium not just for one bomb but for many. “Think of the Iranian nuclear-weapons program as a horse race: now, when the bell goes off, a single horse might be able to gallop out of the gate and run a full track in front of spectators,” Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren says. “The Iranian regime, though, wants to unleash 20 horses out of the gate at the same time,” he says. For Israel, Iran obtaining nuclear weapons is a much more existential threat than for Washington, lying safely 6,000 miles away. Jerusalem’s military opportunity to strike Iran is closing, while the U.S. has a longer timeline to hit Iran’s centrifuges. Obama is asking Israel to trust he’ll protect them when they no longer can protect themselves; that would give negotiators more time to come to a diplomatic resolution.

(PHOTOS: President Obama’s First Trip to Israel)

On the peace process, Obama intends to do a listening tour, visiting with both Israelis and Palestinians and seeing where common ground might be found. Little has been done on a two-state solution since U.S. special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell resigned in disgust in May 2011, saying the process had “hit a brick wall.” Secretary of State John Kerry, who will be traveling with Obama, is anxious to take advantage of Israel’s recent election — Netanyahu literally only just formed a government over the weekend — to see if moderate Israeli support can be drummed up for a new round of talks. But no breakthrough is expected on this trip — indeed the White House did everything it could to lower expectations publicly.

(MORE: Israel Uneasy on Iran Ahead of Obama’s Visit)

Peace talks mean getting the Palestinians to the table as well, and Abbas has not wanted to restart a whole new process, insisting the Israelis go back to the terms he negotiated with the last Israeli government under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted the talks begin anew. Abbas is further debilitated by Hamas’ control of the Gaza Strip and the Islamist group’s growing popularity in the West Bank. Without the popular support of all Palestinians, Abbas’ bargaining position is weak and he has little incentive to come to the table. Until the Palestinian factions are united, it will be impossible for Abbas — or any Palestinian leader — to compromise with Israel without losing credibility at home.

Abbas’ only power — and popularity — of late has come when he defied both Israel and the U.S. to petition the U.N. to recognize Palestine as a state. Having Israel tried for human-rights violations by the International Criminal Court is wildly popular among Palestinians and one of the only threats remaining to Abbas. Obama’s job will be to convince Abbas that coming to the table with Israel and the U.S. is in his better interests than going outside the process. Obama must also reassure the Palestinian people of America’s support. To that end, Kerry has said he will deliver $700 million in aid to Palestine withheld by Congress after Abbas’ push for statehood at the U.N. Since Obama took office in 2009, some 60,000 more Israelis have settled on Palestinian lands, and Obama will press for a freeze or slowing of those developments. The Palestinians are also hoping Israel will release 1,000 prisoners and return some of the tax money Jerusalem collected from Palestinians but has held back for months.

Perhaps Obama’s trip will also be highly symbolic. He will view the Dead Sea Scrolls, 2,000-year-old evidence of Israel’s long ties and ancient claim to the land. The President will also visit Mount Herzl, where he’ll lay wreaths at the graves of slain Israeli President Yitzhak Rabin and Zionist Theodor Herzl, who envisioned an Israeli state before the Holocaust. In the West Bank, Obama will visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

(MORE: Netanyahu Finally Forms a Government, but It’s Nearly as Painful as the Election)

The President will wrap up his tour in Jordan, where he’ll try to persuade King Abdullah not to close his borders to Syrians fleeing the two-year-old civil war, even as Jordan’s economy buckles under the strain of 400,000 refugees, with twice that number expected by year’s end. Jordan’s economy has also taken a hit as tourism has fallen off because of regional unrest and the perception of insecurity. To promote Jordan, Obama will play tourist for a day, visiting the ancient site of Petra with 500 international journalists in tow, demonstrating how safe and appealing Jordan’s tourist attractions remain. Jordan also hopes for more pledges of support from the U.S. for the Syrian refugees and for its own economic reforms.

All of Obama’s efforts this week will be running to stay in place: from pushing Israelis and Palestinians to place international interests above domestic pressures, to bolstering Jordan’s regime against the pressures of the Arab Spring. Sometimes the second-term Presidents look abroad for a legacy. So far, Obama’s second-term foreign policy ambitions in the Middle East are hardly lofty: striving for the status quo ante, lest things get worse than they already are.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/19/obama-in-israel-running-to-stay-put/#ixzz2ZjXqAA00

State of the Union: No Obama Doctrine on Foreign Policy

Anyone hoping to hear from President Obama a more overarching foreign policy vision in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night went home disappointed.

By Jay Newton-Small @JNSmallFeb. 12, 201319 Comments

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry applauds President Barack Obama

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry applauds as President Barack Obama gives his State of the Union address on Feb. 12, 2013

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Anyone hoping to hear from President Obama a more overarching foreign policy vision in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night went home disappointed. Yes, second-term Presidents usually focus on foreign policy. And, yes, Obama just two weeks ago elevated his Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough to be his chief of staff and shuffled his foreign policy team, naming new secretaries of State and Defense and a new head of the CIA. But Obama made it clear that, at least for the first year of his second term, he would be focusing on domestic politics: gun control, immigration, fiscal cliffs and jobs.

That said, the President had plenty to say on foreign policy, though slightly less than last year’s Osama bin Laden–heavy speech. In his first address of a joint session of Congress in February 2009, Obama dedicated just eight paragraphs out of 94 to foreign policy. In 2010, he spent eight out of 105 paragraphs on foreign policy. In 2011, he had 17 out of 111. And last year it was 18 of 109. This year he had 13 paragraphs out of 88. In other words, percentage-wise, foreign policy is slowly gaining ground, but compared with the economy and jobs, it’s definitely still on the back burner.

(WATCH: “They Deserve a Vote”)

What is an Obama doctrine? Thus far, leading from behind — for lack of a better phrase — seems to define his foreign policy. The President is heavy on the covert ops and has pushed allies into places like Libya and Democratic Republic of Congo. He gives technical and humanitarian assistance where needed, like in Syria. But he’s not one to start land wars in Asia — indeed, he swore to end the war in Afghanistan in his speech on Tuesday — or fund guerrilla wars in the name of democracy. What most foreign policy experts say has been lacking is an overarching strategy to deal with the Arab Spring rather than stumbling from one uprising to the next. And this was not something Obama addressed on Tuesday. “An Obama doctrine is still a work in progress,” says Michael O’Hanlon, a foreign policy expert at the progressive Brookings Institution in Washington. “A drone base in Niger or brigade in the Congo, they’re good policy but they don’t have flash and sex appeal, and they distract from his core purpose, which is the economy.”

As the newly minted Secretary of State, John Kerry, noted in his confirmation hearing, the economy is very much a foreign policy issue these days. To that end, Obama made news announcing a new effort for a free-trade agreement with Europe and a trans-Pacific partnership with “the growing markets of Asia.”

(MORE: Signs of Unity in a Divided Congress)

Obama also made news chastising the North Koreans for their nuclear test earlier in the day, warning them that their moves “will only isolate them further.” On Iran, he stopped short of again calling for direct talks, which Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei rejected on Feb. 7, but said that “now is the time for a diplomatic solution … and we will do what is necessary to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon.”

Perhaps the biggest news of the night was his announcement that in a year’s time more than half the remaining U.S. troops — some 34,000 — would be back home “and by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over,” he said, drawing a standing ovation. Still, many questions remained. Obama “did not really explain what led to the accelerated timetable or how a small residual force could accomplish the ambitious goals he outlined,” says Mike Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The President has struggled to define publicly his goals for that conflict, much less his strategy for achieving them or how the recent steps he has outlined brings them closer to fruition.”

(MORE: Transcript of President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union Speech)

Much of the foreign policy segment of the speech was defined by what he didn’t mention: for the first time since the U.S. invasion a decade ago, a U.S. President did not mention Iraq in a State of the Union address. Obama was mum on the controversial Keystone-pipeline decision with Canada, Middle East peace, the pivot to Asia and closing Guantánamo. Most notably, he did not utter the words war on terror. “A key question is: Have we dropped the phrase war on terror? Or have we found some clever new phrasing?” says Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It won’t change the way we approach the problem, but we have to find a better way to say it.”

Obama noted that al-Qaeda “is a shadow of its former self.” He continued:

Different al-Qaeda affiliates and extremist groups have emerged — from the Arabian Peninsula to Africa. The threat these groups pose is evolving. But to meet this threat, we don’t need to send tens of thousands of our sons and daughters abroad or occupy other nations. Instead, we will need to help countries like Yemen, Libya and Somalia provide for their own security, and help allies who take the fight to terrorists, as we have in Mali. And, where necessary, through a range of capabilities, we will continue to take direct action against those terrorists who pose the gravest threat to Americans.

This was perhaps the closest Obama came to redefining America’s struggle against terrorism — and hinting at his vision. Perhaps next year, when the fiscal cliffs are done and immigration has passed, Obama will finally deliver a doctrine.

Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/02/12/state-of-the-union-no-obama-doctrine-on-foreign-policy/#ixzz2ZjY2A54c

Obama’s “Humanitarian Hawk” and Israel’s New Gladiator at the UN

by Nima Shirazi / July 19th, 2013

In her first appearance before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Samantha Power, Obama’s pick for next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, made clear that she will spend her time in the role much as her predecessor Susan Rice did: acting as Israel’s consummate defender, fear-mongering about Iran, and opposing any move to champion Palestinian human rights or self-determination.

Rice, who has been appointed as Obama’s National Security Adviser, has said repeatedly that the American delegation to the UN “often works in ‘lockstep’ with the Israeli delegation” and spends “an enormous amount of time defending Israel’s right to defend itself and defending Israel’s legitimacy.”

“It’s an issue of utmost and daily concern for the United States,” she declared last year. A few months ago, she reiterated this point, insisting that her role as an apologist for the Israeli government is “a huge part of my work to the United Nations” and that the United States “will not rest in the crucial work of defending Israel’s security and legitimacy every day at the United Nations.”

Power has already proven herself a loyal replacement, disavowing any semblance of past critical thinking when it comes to Israeli human rights abuses and abrogation of international law and opposing fear-mongering about Iran’s nuclear program. It is no surprise Washington hawks, Zionist ideologues and even the Israeli government are falling over themselves to sing her praises.

In her confirmation hearing yesterday, Power revealed her adherence to AIPAC talking points, essentially working her way down the tried and true list of boilerplate phrases. ”The United States has no greater friend in the world than the State of Israel,” she said, adding, “Israel is a country with whom we share security interests and, even more fundamentally, with whom we share core values – the values of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”

“America has a special relationship with Israel,” she stated, to the surprise of no one and the consternation of George Washington‘s ghost. “I will stand up for Israel and work tirelessly to defend it,” she promised in her prepared statement.

She later reiterated her vow: “I commit to you wholeheartedly to go on offense as well as playing defense on the legitimization of Israel,” she declared to the assembled U.S. Senators.

Perhaps her most disturbing comments, however, were about Iran. Shamelessly exploiting the horror of the Holocaust to fear-monger about the Islamic Republic, she declared:

…within this organization built in the wake of the Holocaust – built in part in order to apply the lessons of the Holocaust – we also see unacceptable bias and attacks against the State of Israel. We see the absurdity of Iran chairing the UN Conference on Disarmament, despite the fact that its continued pursuit of nuclear weapons is a grave threat to international peace and security.

With this statement, Power, in her eagerness to check off all the buzzwords boxes prescribed by AIPAC, directly contradicts the consistent assessment of the United States’ own intelligence community, which has repeatedly concluded that Iran is, in fact, not pursuing a nuclear weapons as it has no nuclear weapons program.

Early last year, an unnamed U.S. intelligence official told the Washington Post that Iran has not decided to pursue nuclear weapons, explaining, “Our belief is that they are reserving judgment on whether to continue with key steps they haven’t taken regarding nuclear weapons.” At the time, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta affirmed this position, admitting, ”Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.”

Soon thereafter, the New York Times reported, ”Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier.” This, the paper noted, “remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.”

Either Samantha Power is an idiot or she’s lying.

In fact, there was a time when Power wasn’t so confident in making such a declarative statement. In a 2008 interview with Miller-McCune, Power noted that she was “not an expert on Iran,” but condemned the “American sabre-rattling” of the George W. Bush administration. “The threats – implicit and explicit – of U.S. military action have united very diverse secular, Islamist and nationalist strands,” she said, adding that American “belligerence” had “backfired.”

When asked specifically about whether she thought “Iran is trying to create nuclear weapons,” Power replied, “It would surprise me if they weren’t, but I don’t know.”

Still, she disparaged the findings of the National Intelligence Estimate and simply assumed Iran “would see as in its interests to amass as much firepower as possible,” due to the foreign threats it faces. Nevertheless, she stated, “It does not seem as though the Iranian regime is close to possessing nuclear weapons” and said that “when U.S. leaders claim Iran poses an imminent threat, they are not currently heard as credible.”

Now, five years later, Power sounds exactly like Bush’s own UN Ambassador, perennial Iran hawk John Bolton, who in 2006, insisted to the UN Security Council that “Iran had defied the international community by continuing its pursuit of nuclear weapons” and that this “pursuit of nuclear weapons constituted a direct threat to international peace and security.”

Furthermore, Power’s incredulity regarding what she deems the “absurdity of Iran chairing the UN Conference on Disarmament,” betrays her own ignorance on Iran’s constantly repeated stance regarding nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.

Iran has long championed a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East and is a party to all disarmament treaties on weapons of mass destruction, including the Biological Weapons Convention, Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel, however, is not a member of any of them.Last year, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi stated that Iran fully supports the establishment of a NWFZ, but that Israel, and its American backers, presented the ”only obstacle to the creation of such a zone…due to its persistent refusal to join the NPT and to place its nuclear facilities under the IAEA safeguards system.”

Earlier this month, at the “International Conference on Nuclear Security: Enhancing Global Efforts” held in Vienna, Iran’s Ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh reiterated his nation’s commitment to universal nuclear disarmament. “The best guarantee for nuclear security is definitely a world free from nuclear weapons,” he said, “as a result of which nuclear disarmament process could reinforce nuclear security efforts.”

The United States consistently blocks crucial international conferences dedicated to nuclear non-proliferation for the sole purpose of protecting Israel’s massive nuclear arsenal from scrutiny.

Samantha Power has surely embraced her new role in Turtle Bay as Israel’s stalwart apologist, going to so far as to promise her Congressional interlocutors that she will push for Israel to gain a seat on the United Nations Security Council as a representative of – get this – the Western European bloc of nations, despite being located in the Levant, which is indisputably in the continent of Asia and far to the East of even Eastern Europe from which it is separated by hundreds of miles of water.

Abe Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s hasbarist-in-chief, once called Susan Rice a “gladiator” fighting in the United Nations on behalf of Israel. There is no question Samantha Power will, for the sake of our “special relationship” and “shared values” with an aggressive, nuclear-armed, settler-colonial apartheid state, similarly take up the sword and continue to unleash hell on the entire Middle East.

Nima Shirazi is a writer and musician from New York City. Contact him at: wideasleepinamerica@gmail.com. Read other articles by Nima, or visit Nima's website.

This article was posted on Friday, July 19th, 2013 at 8:18pm and is filed under Obama, Propaganda, United Nations, Zionism.

Samantha Power says her top priority is to defend Israel in UN role

Irish-born U.S. ambassador to UN nominee faces senate confirmation hearings

By IrishCentral Staff Writers,

Published Thursday, July 18, 2013, 7:43 AMUpdated Thursday, July 18, 2013, 9:36 AM

Samantha Power speaking at the White House

Photo by REUTERS/Joshua Robert

Samantha Power, 43, the Irish-born nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations has stated that one of her top priorities will be to defend Israel at the U.N.

She was speaking at her confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She is expected to be confirmed.

Power moved to the U.S. from Ireland when she was nine years old and grew up in Georgia. She was introduced by the two Republican Georgia senators to the committee.

She stated that defending Israel at the UN from unfair attacks would be a large part of her job.

“The United States has no greater friend in the world than the state of Israel,” she said. “I will stand up for Israel and work tirelessly to defend it.”

When asked by Senator Marco Rubio about alleged anti Israeli comments in a 2002 interview Power disavowed them. She also said she regretted her tone in some comments she had written about U.S. foreign policy.

Speaking on the Israeli remarks she said; “I have dissociated myself from those comments many times,” adding, “I gave a long rambling and very remarkably incoherent response to a hypothetical question I should never have answered.”

Asked about her alleged anti American comments she said; “There are things that I have written that I would write very differently today.” “This country is the greatest country on Earth. I would never apologize for America.”

Speaking about the situation in Syria she stated. “I believe that America cannot — indeed, I know that America should not — police every crisis or shelter every refugee.

“While our goodwill knows no bounds, our resources are finite, strained by pressing needs at home. And we are not the world’s policeman. We must make choices based on the best interests of the American people.”

She listed her other priorities as fighting UN corruption, standing up to repressive governments and championing human rights.

Senator Bob Corker the Republican ranking member signaled early on that he would support her.

“I think you’re going to be a significant and positive force at the United Nations,” he said.

Khan Yazdani Library

Wednesday 24 July 2013

America, Israel and Palestine

America, Israel and Palestine

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