Making Gaza a ‘European ghetto’

August 6th, 2010 • News
Tags: blockade, gaza, ghetto, international, isolation, lieberman, monitoring, siege, UN

Lamis Andoni opinion piece for AJE’s Focus

While most Israeli leaders are resistant to fully lifting the blockade of Gaza, Avigdor Lieberman, the right-wing foreign minister, is advocating that Israel abandon the Strip to international monitoring and economic rehabilitation.

The proposal, recently leaked to the Israeli press, does not amount to freeing Gaza but rather to placing it under European sea and land inspections and a reconstruction plan.

If implemented, it will permanently sever the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, transforming the Strip into an internationally supervised ghetto – with the dual purpose of ensuring Israeli security and reigning in the Palestinian population.

The isolation of Gaza would further undermine the vision of a contiguous Palestinian state or any form of equitable coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis. It would also divide those families with members in the West Bank, creating a permanent schism in Palestinian society and deepening the sense of fragmentation.

Hamas would effectively be ruling a development project with no meaningful ties to the rest of the Palestinian people.

Read the rest at more at AJE…

Turkey Threatens Israel with cut-off of Diplomatic Relations

July 7th, 2010 • News
Tags: diplomatic, flotilla, israel, lieberman, netanyahu, obama, turkey, washington, Zaman

Post-flotilla, Juan Cole looks at the diplomatic situation between Turkey and Israel:

Thousands gathered in Istanbul to pray alongside the coffins of victims of the Gaza flotilla raid. Photograph: Ibrahim Usta/AP

As Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu flew to Washington, DC, on Monday,  a further war of words has broken out between Turkey and Israel over comments made by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to the press corps on an airplane returning from Kyrgyzstan. The Zaman correspondent heard him to say of Israel, “It will either apologize, or it will consent to a study by an international commission, or the relations will break off.”

Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister whom Davutoglu apparently declines to deal with, shot back, “We don’t have any intention to apologize. We think that the opposite is true.” Lieberman, a notorious thug who once advocated drowning all the Egyptians by bombing the Aswan Dam if they ever gave Israel any trouble, is a Moldavian immigrant to Israel not known for being diplomatic.

Davutoglu is probably not serious about presenting Israel with an ultimatum, and may have been especially interested in posturing as a hard liner because he was embarrassed with the Turkish cabinet and in the Arab world when it came out that he had had a secret meeting with Israeli Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer last week. Ben-Eliezer, an Iraqi from Basra originally named “Fuad,” had earlier in his career been a hard liner, but compared to Lieberman he has emerged as a voice of reason. Davutoglu was widely criticized in Turkey and Arab capitals for the secret talks.

Read the rest at juancole.com….