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Egyptian dictator president says his regime is ready to protect Israel

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Sisi-Egypt-Israel

by Middle East Monitor

Egyptian President Abdul-Fattah Al-Sisi told an Italian newspaper that his country is ready to send troops to Palestine in order to guarantee Israel’s security and work jointly against terrorism.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Al-Sisi said: “We are prepared to send military forces inside a Palestinian state. They would help the local police and reassure Israelis in their role as guarantors.”

The former military general stressed that any such troop deployment would only be for the time needed to restore trust between the two sides.

According to Reuters, Al-Sisi added that he has spoken about this idea ‘at length’ with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

“I told [Netanyahu] a courageous step was needed otherwise nothing would be resolved,” he said.

Al-Sisi led the July 2013 military coup that ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. Since then, the Egyptian government has criminalised the Muslim Brotherhood organisation, which Morsi was a member of, and deepened the Israeli siege of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by closing the Rafah Border crossing in order to raise pressure against the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, which is an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Post by Middle East Monitor.

India opts out of admonishing Israel

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Union home minister Rajnath Singh (left) during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right). Photo: PTI

Union home minister Rajnath Singh (left) during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right). Photo: PTI

by Ninan Koshy

While every other ally of Israel has distanced itself from Israel’s policies after its offensive in Gaza this summer – especially on settlements – India has pledged to strengthen its relations with the country.

A visit by India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh to Israel this month became an chance for India to proclaim its steadfast support for the country. During the trip, Singh said India sought closer ties with the country adding, “Israel plays a major role in world politics”. India has invited Israel to become a partner in a “Made in India” initiative in the defense sector and Israel has expressed a desire to share cutting edge weapon technologies with New Delhi.

Even before the ink on the indefinite ceasefire agreement in the Gaza conflict had dried in August, Israel announced a decision to grab nearly 1,000 acres (404 hectares) of Palestinian land to build Jewish settlements. This expansionist act was condemned by the US, the UK, the European Union and the United Nations. British Prime Minister David Cameron called it “utterly deplorable”.

Israel had two objectives in the war against Hamas. One was to delegitimize Hamas as a political movement and degrade it to a sheer terrorist organization and if possible to destroy it. The other was to scuttle the process of Palestinian unity which had strengthened with the formation of a unity government.

Israel failed in both objectives. The world witnessed the increasing acceptance of Hamas as a legitimate political movement of Palestine and Palestine as a state. The Swedish government officially recognized the state of Palestine on October 30. Before that came a non-binding resolution in the British parliament, with similar votes in the pipeline in France, Spain and Ireland.

New European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini last week appealed for the establishment of a Palestinian state, saying the world cannot afford another war in Gaza. “We need a Palestinian state. That is the ultimate goal and this is the position of all the European Union”, Mogherini said during a trip to Gaza. “We cannot just sit and wait. If we sit and wait it will go on for another 40 years. We have to have act now”

Israel’s other objective of scuttling the process of Palestinian unity also failed – Fatah-Hamas relations have strengthened since the ceasefire.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu in September, the first such meeting between the prime ministers of the countries in more than a decade, was significant for a number of reasons. During the meeting, Netanyahu said that “the sky is the limit” in terms of prospects for cooperation.

It was also made clear that Modi would seek the views of the Israeli prime minister on the Islamic State. “The two leaders discussed the situation in West Asia. Given that Israel is well-placed in that region PM [Modi] requested and was given a briefing of their understanding of the situation”, the amiable spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs helpfully explained. The Indian Prime Minister did not need any briefing on the situation from any other West Asian leader.

The conversation came just before Modi’s dinner with President Barack Obama in Washington and the prime minister’s address to the Council on Foreign Relations, to outline his government’s foreign policy objectives. Netanyahu’s views were sought by Modi in his preparations for these two events.

In fact there was no need to seek Netanyahu’s views on the Islamic State in Modi’s conversation, since the Israel prime minister had clearly stated his views in the UN General Assembly, “Hamas and the Islamic state group are branches of the same poisonous trees, both bent on world domination through terror just as the Nazis were.”

India’s relationship with Israel was sparked by L K Advani, a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), following a visit to Israel in 1995. He returned with rhetoric on civilizational bonds, but also on terrorism. Five years later, Advani returned to Israel, this time as India’s Home Minister.

During the visit in June 2005, Advani said at the Indian Embassy in Tel Aviv, “In recent years we have been facing a growing international security problem. We are concerned with cross-border terrorism launched by proxies of Pakistan. We share with Israel a common perception of terrorism as a menace, even more so when coupled with religious fundamentalism. Our mutual determination to combat terrorism is the basis of discussions with Israel whose reputation in dealing with such problems is quite successful.”

Rajnath Singh had a helicopter tour of the Jordan valley and Israel’s northern and southern regions with National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen “to get a sense of the security situation there”. The security situation there is simply the military preparedness of Israel, mainly against the Palestinians.

Of course, Rajnath Singh was following in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor Advani who in 2000 had “visited northern border areas to study border management that Israel has displayed so successfully”.

The talk about cross-border terrorism and border areas seems unlikely considering Israel has refused to define its borders and is grabbing more and more Palestinian territory borders on legitimizing occupation. During the Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres’ visit to New Delhi in January 2002, the Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson had said, “India finds it increasingly beneficial to learn from Israel’s experience in dealing with terrorism since Israel has long suffered from cross-border terrorism”.

What are the borders of Israel crossed by terrorists, the spokesperson was speaking about? As Robert Fisk asked, “Which particular Israel? The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds and goes on building vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab lands, gobbling up even more of the 22% Palestinian land still left to negotiate?”

India-Israel cooperation in counter-terrorism is based on equating the Palestinian struggle with cross-border terrorism. It is this flawed and skewed stance that is reflected in India’s attitude to Israel’s periodic wars against Palestinians.

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing. Articles submitted for this section allow our readers to express their opinions and do not necessarily meet the same editorial standards of Asia Times Online’s regular contributors.

Ninan Koshy is a political commentator based in Trivandrum, Kerala, India, and formerly Visiting Fellow, Harvard Law School, is the author of War on Terror: Reordering the World and Under the Empire: India’s New Foreign Policy.

(Copyright 2014 Ninan Koshy)

Is there a civil war brewing in Jerusalem and the West Bank?

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Anadolu / Salih Zeki Fazlıoğlu

Anadolu / Salih Zeki Fazlıoğlu

by Juan Cole

Observers of the evolution of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians have long argued that there are only two likely outcomes of the alternating violence and diplomacy between the two sides that has gone on nearly 70 years now. One is a “two-state solution” wherein Israel accepts a rump Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank. That possibility has by now been more or less forestalled because of the massive land theft and colonization drive of Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank. (The UN General Assembly partition plan of 1947, whatever one thinks of its legitimacy, awarded the West Bank to Palestine). The other is a “one-state solution” wherein Israel bestows Israeli citizenship on the stateless Palestinians. There is no obvious path to such a decision on the part of what are essentially fascist ruling parties in Israel and it is hard to imagine a scenario in which such a thing happens.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman have another ending to the story in mind. And that is the “transfer” of Palestinian-Israelis and of Palestinians in the West Bank to some other country, probably Jordan. This crackpot plan of uprooting and moving 5 million people is also not very likely on the face of it.

But there is one scenario in which “transfer” (i.e. ethnic cleansing) could occur. That would be a repeat of the 1947-48 civil war in British Mandate Palestine, which eventuated in the ethnic cleansing by Jewish militias of 720,000 Palestinians out of a pre-war total of 1.2 million. Jewish terrorist organizations such as the Stern Gang simply mowed down Palestinian villagers with machine guns to scare their neighbors into fleeing their homes, which the nascent Israelis then usurped. After Israel was established, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion simply locked the Palestinians out of their homeland for good, creating a massive refugee problem in the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon that has never really been resolved to this day (only Jordan gave the Palestinians citizenship, and even there it is sometimes revoked).

Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967 and militarily occupied it, then contravened the Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of occupied populations by flooding Israeli squatters into the territory. It also illegally annexed part of the Palestinian West Bank and awarded it to the Israeli district of Jerusalem, which is roughly 35 percent Palestinian. It also has gradually forced many Palestinians in East Jerusalem to depart, confiscating their property, and is building Jews-only squatter settlements all around Jerusalem with an intent of turning Jerusalem into a Jews-only city.

The Israeli government has now put 600,000 Israeli squatters into the Palestinian West Bank (including Palestinian Jerusalem), among nearly 3 million Palestinians. There is constant Israeli construction of housing on usurped Palestinian land. Squatters dig their wells deeper into aquifers and cause the wells in Palestinian villages to go dry. There is a low-intensity struggle between the incoming squatters and the indigenous Palestinians. Israelis have attacked mosques and villagers. Palestinians have killed Israelis whom they view as land thieves.

These two populations are not separate from one another in the West Bank. Nothing would be easier than for tit-for-tat killings to spiral out of control. Then you’d have a war on the West Bank, which of course the Israelis would win, being very well armed by the US and very well organized.

In the course of this coming civil war in the West Bank, Israeli squatter organizations would seek to repeat the Stern Gang’s achievements in 1947-48 of making the Palestinian population flee its homes for Jordan. Jordan, a country of 6 million, would suddenly be a country of 9 million.

On past experience, no one would do anything about such an ethnic cleansing of the West Bank Palestinians, who would end up penniless and living in tents in the desert. The spokesmen for Western governments would say they regret that it happened and maybe offer some aid money. The Arab publics would be outraged but the governments would do nothing. Some European governments might slap ineffectual sanctions on Israel. Others would praise the Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign.

The fascist parties in Israel would lock the Palestinians out of the West Bank permanently and flood in more settlers. They might even “transfer” the Palestinian-Israelis, stripping them of their citizenship and making Jordan 10 million, half of them in refugee tents in the desert). They would give press conferences where they regretted that the Jordanian government did not treat its new citizens well enough.

The Jordanian state likely could not survive being almost doubled in population overnight overnight, with most of the newcomers hostile to the Hashemite monarchy. There would likely be a republican revolution in Jordan against King Abdullah II. Extremism would flourish and an ISIL- like state in Jordan would not be impossible. The ethnic cleansing would be extremely destabilizing for the Middle East for decades to come and Israel’s security environment would deteriorate drastically. Eventually reprisals with things like small rockets would create such a sense of crisis that gradually Israelis might begin emigrating abroad in fair numbers, a process that could snowball.

The killings at the Jerusalem synagogue yesterday and the spate of Israeli killings of Palestinians in the West Bank are all small harbingers of this coming civil war.

Israel ex-officers urge PM to make peace with Palestinians

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) has been asked to actively pursue peace with the Palestinians in a letter from former high-ranking Israeli army members, police officers and spy chiefs (POOL/AFP Ronen Zvulun)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) has been asked to
actively pursue peace with the Palestinians in a letter from former
high-ranking Israeli army members, police officers and spy chiefs
(POOL/AFP Ronen Zvulun)

Jerusalem: Over 100 former high-ranking Israeli army members, police officers and spy chiefs have called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pursue peace with the Palestinians, media reported Monday.

“We, the undersigned, reserve IDF (army) commanders and retired police officers, who have fought in Israel’s military campaigns, know first-hand of the heavy and painful price exacted by wars,” 105 signatories said in a joint letter addressed to Netanyahu.

Excerpts of the letter were published by Ynet news website.

It called on Netanyahu to embark on a “courageous initiative” and make peace with Palestine and other Arab states.

“We fought bravely for the country in the hope that our children would live here in peace, but we got a sharp reality check, and here we are again sending our children out onto the battlefield,” it said.

“This is not a question of left or right. What we have here is an alternative option for resolving the conflict that is not based solely on bilateral negotiations with the Palestinians, which have failed time and again.

“We expect a show of courageous initiative and leadership from you. Lead — and we will stand behind you,” said the letter.

The website said the letter was the brainchild of major general Amnon Reshef, a former armored corps commander.

Ynet said that Reshef was “sick and tired of a reality of rounds of fighting every few years instead of a genuine effort to adopt the Saudi initiative.”

It was referring to the Arab Peace Initiative drawn up in 2002 by oil kingpin Saudi Arabia, which called on Israel to withdraw from occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, in exchange for a normalization of ties with Arab countries.

Former president Shimon Peres made a similar appeal last week, saying: “It’s a shame that the only peace initiative was an Arab initiative. Where is the Israeli peace initiative?”

US-brokered peace talks between Israel and Palestine have been frozen since April.

(AFP)

Revealed: Europe’s "discreet" cooperation with Israel’s nuclear industry

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José Manuel Barroso (left), the European Commission president, has a “discreet” chat with Benjamin Netanyahu. (European External Action Service)

José Manuel Barroso (left), the European Commission president, has a “discreet” chat with Benjamin Netanyahu. (European External Action Service)

– by David Cronin, Electronic Intifada

The European Union has been cooperating furtively with Israel’s nuclear industry for at least six years.

An internal document that I recently obtained states that an accord on “joint and cooperative initiatives relevant for the peaceful use of nuclear energy” was signed between the EU and Israel in 2008. “This is a discreet agreement that has not been given publicity,” the paper adds.

The document (published below) was drawn up ahead of an October 2013 visit to Israel by Antonio Tajani, then Italy’s member of the European Commission.

It is not hard to understand why the Union wishes to keep this cooperation “discreet.” The agreement was reached with Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission — the body that runs the Dimona reactor, where Israel’s nuclear weapons were developed.

Israel introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East and has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It has refused to permit international inspection of all its nuclear activities.

In 2006, Ehud Olmert, then Israel’s prime minister, acknowledged that Israel possessed nuclear weapons. The US Defense Intelligence Agency estimated in 1999 that Israel had between 60 and 80 nuclear warheads.

Hypocrisy

These facts put Israel in a very different category to Iran, supposedly a major threat to world peace.

Unlike Israel, Iran has no nuclear weapons. The National Intelligence Council — a group advising the US president — expressed “high confidence” in 2007 that Iran had halted its weapons development program a few years earlier.

Despite that explicit statement, both the EU and the US have slapped punitive sanctions on Iran (after some sanctions had been relaxed, America imposed new restrictions on business with Iran last week). The official narrative behind these sanctions is that everything must be done to stop Iran acquiring the bomb.

Yet the European Union is happy to cooperate with Israel, a nation that actually has the bomb. Is it any wonder that Brussels officials don’t want attention drawn to this hypocrisy?

Military links

I asked the EU’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) — which is tasked with implementing the “discreet” agreement — why it is cooperating with Israel, a known threat to world peace. A JRC spokesperson tried to present the “scientific collaboration” involved here as benign.

The research with Israel concerns the “medical application of radionuclides, radiation protection, as well as nuclear security related to the detection and identification of nuclear and radioactive materials,” according to the spokesperson. “It does not cover any activities related to reprocessing and enrichment.”

I asked the spokesperson if any guarantees have been provided that Israel will not use the fruits of its research with the Union for military purposes. Not surprisingly, I didn’t receive a reply to that question.

When I asked how much had been spent on nuclear cooperation with Israel, the JRC would only say that the research in question is “not jointly funded as each institution covers its related activities.”

As well as overseeing the development of nuclear weapons, Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission has strong links to the conventional arms industry.

Apart from Dimona, the commission also runs the Soreq research center. Soreq’s own website says that it develops equipment with “homeland security” applications — a euphemism for surveillance technology and weaponry. When journalists have been given guided tours of that center, its scientists have bragged of inventing lasers to assist snipers.

The JRC — the European Commission’s in-house science service — has been cooperating more directly with Israel’s weapons industry, too.

In December 2010, it teamed up with Elbit, the Israeli arms company, for what it called a “small boat detection campaign” in Haifa. The purpose of this exercise was to see how drones can be used for maritime surveillance, principally to stop asylum-seekers from entering Europe.

Elbit is one of the leading suppliers of warplanes to the Israeli military. This means that it is providing some of the key tools that Israel used to inflict death and destruction on Gaza this summer (and in previous attacks). By hosting the “boat detection” exercise, the EU indicated its eagerness to deploy Israel’s tools of mass murder against refugees.

Greenwashing

Although the EU has tried to keep the nuclear research “discreet,” it has openly celebrated more palatable forms of engagement with Israel.

José Manuel Barroso, the outgoing European Commission chief, posed for photos with Benjamin Netanyahu, when the two men approved an energy and water cooperation agreement in 2012. The JRC tried to sell that accord as ecologically sound by stressing that it concerned renewable energy and resource conservation.

Environmental campaigners have a name for tactics designed to rebrand a villain as a tree-hugger: “greenwashing.”

Cooperation on “clean” energy provides scant comfort to Gaza’s people, whose only power plant was bombed by Israel this summer. Nor should it be forgotten that Israel attacked a center for autistic children that had solar panels on its roof. So much for Israel’s commitment to renewable energy.

Israel is a nuclear-armed rogue state. I’m sure that many decent people would be horrified to learn that the EU is liaising with the very agencies that developed Israel’s nuclear weapons — even if this cooperation is “discreet.”

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