Cleanup-Israel

Well well then, I've got two classes at the university tomorrow... this is going to be a good time. On Sunday, for my dad's birthday, as a family we rode around the Mississippi waterfront area on Segways. 'Twas excellent. The company, Human on a Stick, has a website, and hopefully soon a few pictures they took of us will appear in the photo gallery. They took us into the base of the Mill City Museum and gave us cookies halfway through the trip. I won't share more because I have to get to bed soon.

However, here is some of the stuff which has been backing up in my browser windows in this June of Suspense.

First area: in Israel there is confrontation over the stability of Sharon's government, as the hard-rightwing pro-settler parties dropped out. Housing Minister Effi Eitam and Tourism Minister Benny Elon (a favorite of evangelical Christians) couldn't handle supporting the withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, so they quit the government. (more on the arguing inside the NRP) Now Sharon's government has only 59 of the 120 Knesset members' complete support, and some members of the Likud party are now voting against the government in no-confidence motions, while some of Sharon's Likud ministers are failing to show up for key votes altogether. As usual it is so complicated that the parentheses are nested:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Likud members on Monday night that the 12 party dissidents were forcing him to invite Labor Party to join the coalition, a move he was not happy to take.
He explained that the current coalition was unable to function with only 49 MKs (59 coalition members, together MKs David Tal (One Nation) and Michael Nudelman (National Union), but excluding the 12 "rebels").

Sharon decided Monday night that "at this stage" he will not fire Likud Minister Uzi Landau or Likud Deputy Minister Michael Ratzon for skipping a no-confidence vote on the disengagement plan. The motion, filed by the National Union party, was defeated in the Knesset on Monday.
[....]
Likud "rebels" Landau and Ratzon preferred to risk Sharon's wrath by skipping the vote than support the government's position on evacuating from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. Sharon told his cabinet members Sunday that they must attend all votes and support his disengagement plan.
[....]
Meanwhile, half the National Religious Party faction - party chairman Effi Eitam and MKs Yitzhak Levy and Nissan Slomiansky - voted against the government on the anti-disengagement motion. The other three NRP faction members - Minister Zevulun Orlev and MKs Shaul Yahalom and Gila Finkelstein - refrained from voting.
[........]
National Union MK Binyamin Elon, who was fired as housing minister prior to last week's cabinet vote on disengagement, blamed Sharon for betraying the Likud movement, its constitution and its members, who voted to defeat the pullout plan in a May 2 party referendum.

Elon quoted from a section of the Likud constitution saying that the Jewish people have an eternal right to the Land of Israel, and said Sharon was threatening his ministers so they wouldn't oppose his disengagement plan.

Supposedly the Labor party is willing to join Sharon's government at the last second if it appears that it will fall. What would that bring? Another two-sided machine run by Sharon that, last time, left Labor a wasted, pointless shell of an opposition party? Yoel Marcus is serious about the cynicism that this is just talk:

Quite a few people are skeptical about Sharon's disengagement plan. On another TV talk show, "Hot Mishal," Netanyahu remarked that the government had not actually decided on evacuating settlements - "In nine months, we'll have to sit down and see what's what." This is Bibi's way of saying that for the time being, it's all talk. The left and the media commentators don't really believe that Sharon will do what he says either. They think that when the time comes, he'll find an excuse to get out of the whole thing.
[.....]
In practice, the plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza is an attempt to retain our hold on most of the West Bank. Sharon rejects Arafat as a partner for dialogue not because army intelligence whispered in his ear that the guy is a bastard. It's because he knows the conditions for an agreement with Arafat (or any other Palestinian leader) are the same as those insisted on by Sadat - withdrawal to the `67 borders and saying goodbye to the settlements. And that is not on Sharon's agenda, even in his worst nightmares.

Hence from Arafat's perspective, Sharon is not a peace partner either. Sharon is focused on Gaza, and he is not preparing the Israelis for the great exodus that will enable the two peoples to live side by side in peace. Unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which has rattled the windowsills in these parts, is peanuts compared to the quake that is on its way. The epicenter - and the solution - are inside Gaza.

The threats of the organizational chiefs in the territories should be taken seriously. This is not the time to pooh-pooh the warnings of the world's leaders, who say that terror has assumed World War III proportions and will not stop unless Israel takes steps to leave the Gaza Strip and a Palestinian state is on the map.

Meanwhile, the real deal is that they are building a horrible fence around the grand mega-settlement of Ariel, in the center of the northern West Bank (near the area that they talk about "evacuating"). The last link, a Haaretz editorial, also describes the pain caused by the huge fence cutting through Arab towns that sit snugly against whatever might be called 'official' Jerusalem. And cash money, 300 million shekels to be dumped into the 'security' of the other unfenced settlements. They are considering building another neighborhood to fill the gap between Jerusalem and a huge bloc of settlements south of there. Very inflammatory.

Earlier in the month (reported June 9), a senior U.S. official demanded the withdrawal of settler outposts. This editorial pointed out the lurching, undemocratic nature of Sharon's moves, going from stupid ministers to a stupid Likud referendum to a worthless phone poll to "prove" that the public supported the withdrawal/annexation plan (yes we are mapping out oxymorons this evening). (See also "Four comments on the situation.") On the plus side, the evacuation planning committee announced that they would envision leaving by September 2005, a terribly long time, but at least it is a sort of planning timetable... and we all know how well those work in the middle east.

On the military planning side, it's been unearthed that the military establishment sees that the situation with the Arab world is, operationally speaking, a zero-sum game. But this is also interesting: the head of Israel's military intelligence research division, a very weird man named Amos Gilad, apparently gave false reports about what Arafat's intentions and actions were in the dawning days of this whole phase of the conflict. The difference between military intelligence and politics here is pretty much nil, but basically he argued that Arafat was determined to level Israel and hence there was no 'partner for peace' worth talking to. (this was the original report by veteran journalist Akiva Eldar)

Then, on the flip side, the Haaretz settlement reporter Nadav Shragai reports on "when rabbis and politicians clash" over the settlements (in this case National Religious Party rabbis, who have a degree of organizational authority). On the pro settler side "Religious Zionists cannot retreat"!!! A call to arms, nearly.

This whole crazy thing has dwelled on the inward machinations of Israeli politics, never a healthy hobby. In Palestine, a good chunk of the Jenin refugee camp that got leveled (and many innocent people killed) in the "Defensive Shield" phase, has been rebuilt with extra big gaps between buildings for Israeli tanks to go zooming through. About 100 of the 530 "housing units" obliterated more than two years ago have been replaced. That rounds it out for this batch of info... sorry its mostly from Haaretz, what can I say, they're pretty good.

Posted by HongPong at June 15, 2004 01:11 AM
Listed under Israel-Palestine .