CounterVortex

Continued from node 10721

Greater Jerusalem Land-Grabs
February 2012 saw a new round of unrest over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. The protest wave began after far-right Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin tried to make a publicized visit to the Temple Mount, and called on Jews to visit the site. Leaflets were distributed around the city calling for removal of “Israel’s enemies” from the site. Police finally blocked Feiglin from entering, and briefly closed the compound Feb. 12. Hundreds of Muslim worshippers clashed with police at the holy site on Feb. 24. Israeli authorities said that following Friday prayers, a large group of worshippers began hurling rocks at the Mughrabi Bridge leading to the Mount. In a rare move, Israeli police came to the entrance of al-Aqsa Mosque, using tear gas and stun grenades to scatter the protesters. The clash caused confusion amongst the large crowd of gathered worshippers, with several wounded—including police, authorities said. (Ha’aretz, Ma’an News Agency, Feb. 25; Ma’an News Agency, Jewish Press, Tikun Olam, Feb. 24; YNet, Feb. 12; Jerusalem Post, Feb. 1, 2012)

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said of the new clashes: “This is a serious attack that intends to impose full Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa a prelude to the establishment of the supposed [Third] Temple.” The Palestinian Authority cabinet protested “continuous attempts by settlers and extremists to raid Al-Aqsa Mosque and conduct religious rituals on its campuses in a manner that provokes Muslim sentiments and creates a state of tension.” Tensions over the Haram al-Sharif sparked at least one clash on the West Bank, as protesters gathered near the Qalandia checkpoint outside Ramallah. A 25-year-old Palestinian protester died during surgery after being shot in the Qalandia clash. (Ibid)

Also Feb. 24, US representatives Elliot Engel and Jerald Nadler (both D-NY) were on tour of Mount of Olives Cemetery, along with American Jewish leaders Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents, and Abraham and Menachem Lubinsky of International Committee for Preservation of Har HaZeitim, when they were attacked by rocks in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood in front of a mosque, damaging a vehicle. The tour was organized by New York’s arch-conservative Jewish Press. The Mount of Olives is also a disputed site, being partially enclosed by Israel’s West Bank “separation barrier.” (Ibid)

The war of words remained ongoing, with the usual lack of discretion on either side. Pro-Israel media touted comments by Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, who at a Ramallah celebration marking the 47th anniversary of the founding of Fatah in January, quoted a hadith (saying attributed to the Prophet): “The hour [of resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call, ‘O Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.'” Days earlier, Israel’s hardline Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that the Palestinians don’t want peace and had entered the talks unwillingly: “Anyone who talks about a breakthrough with the Palestinians has no idea what he’s talking about… The only way forward is to manage the conflict, and not to end the conflict.” (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 9, 2012)

But Lieberman himself had been criticized in a classified US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks entitled “SUBJECT: RIGHT-WING LIEBERMAN UNABASHEDLY ADVOCATES TRANSFER OF ISRAELI ARABS.” The cable read:

Right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Lieberman told the Ambassador January 31 that separation of Israeli Jews from Israeli Arabs is necessary in order to promote Israeli security and maintain Israel’s Jewish identity. To accomplish this, Lieberman proposes that Israel redraw its border with the West Bank through negotiations to place some Israeli-Arab population centers that are close to the Green Line within Palestinian territory, and to include some Israeli settlement blocs within Israel…

Lieberman underlined his view that to avoid conflict, a separation of Israeli Jews from Israeli Arabs must occur. He said his proposal for such a separation is based on the Cyprus model, where, he said, the island’s Turks are separated territorially from the island’s Greeks. Lieberman said that the roadmap makes a mistake by advocating a two-state solution, wherein Israel retains two peoples within its borders, Jewish and Arab, while the Palestinian state retains only Palestinians. Lieberman asserted that states that are composed of different “nations” continue to experience conflict. The Ambassador noted that the United States maintains its diversity without experiencing such conflict…. [MondoWeiss, Aug. 25, 2011]

UN agencies on the West Bank said April 22 that Israel had destroyed 21 homes of Palestinian Bedouin refugees—leaving 54 people homeless, including 35 children. A joint statement from the refugee agency UNRWA and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs condemned the demolition of the structures at Khalayleh north of Jerusalem, along with the removal the same day of refugees from two houses in East Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina neighborhood. Jewish settlers reportedly moved into the homes the same day. A day later, Israeli forces demolished and confiscated emergency tents provided to the evicted Khalayleh families by humanitarian organizations, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the UN Relief and Works Agency said in a joint statement. “The forced eviction of Palestine refugees and the demolition of Palestinian homes and other civilian structures in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is contrary to international law,” UNRWA’s West Bank director, Felipe Sánchez, said in the statement. (AFP, Ma’an News Agency, April 22, 2012)

The evictions came as Israel’s Housing Ministry published tenders for the construction of 827 new housing units in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa. The new construction would significantly expand Har Homa to the south and east, bringing it closer to Palestinian towns Beit Sahour and Nuaman. (Ha’aretz, April 4, 2012)

There were also some moves against “illegal” settlers. An Israeli court in April ordered the eviction of six Jewish families from a Palestinian-owned home in the Tel Rumeida of Hebron. The Jewish families had lived there since 2005, and said that the property was purchased from its Palestinian owner by the (Jewish-owned) Tal Lebniya construction company. The Jerusalem District Court found that the home was owned by a Palestinian who left the property in 2001 after the Israeli military restricted the movement of Arabs in the area, and had been fighting since 2009 to reassert his ownership rights. The court ruled that the sale documents presented by the company were forgeries. The ruling came weeks after Israeli settlers were evicted by the Civil Administration from a home near the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron that they said they purchased legally. (JTA, April 22, 2012)

Israel’s Supreme Court on April 29 ruled that buildings of the Givat Ha Ulpana settlement outpost at Beit El on the West Bank, ordered destroyed because of a claim by Palestinian land-owners, would receive a reprieve. Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, which helped the Palestinian claimants file the petition against the outpost in 2008, slammed the government for failing to raze the 30-apartment complex, which was inhabited by settler families. The stay was intended to allow time to find an “alternative solution.” In subsequent weeks, hundreds of settlers and their right-wing supporters mobilized to Givat Ha Ulpana. (Arutz Sheva, June 10; Jewish Press, April 30; Jerusalem Post, April 29, 2012)

Over 80 people were injured in clashes with Israeli forces near Ramallah in a rally commemorating the Nakba on May 16, as troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters. (Ma’an News Agency, May 16, 2012)

The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed a European Union Foreign Affairs Council report on the West Bank issued in May. The report said Israeli settlement building and curbs on economic development jeopardized hopes for a Palestinian state. The statement by European foreign ministers accused Israel of accelerating settlement construction and tightening its control over East Jerusalem at the expense of Palestinians, while also criticizing Palestinian “incitement.” Israel’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as a “partial, biased and one-sided depiction of realities on the ground.” (Ma’an News Agency, May 16; Ha’aretz, May 13, 2012)

One of the last Palestinian farming villages still using irrigation systems from Roman times protested that its ancient way of life was in danger as Israel prepared to extend its separation barrier. The people of Battir village waged a legal battle to halt the wall’s expansion. Battir’s 6,000 inhabitants live in houses built into a hillside southwest of Jerusalem. On village lands, stone retaining walls transform scrubby hills into terraces of olive trees and vegetable gardens, watered by an ancient network of irrigation canals. UNESCO in 2011 awarded the village a $15,000 prize for “Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes.” Said local UNESCO official Giovanni Fontana-Antonelli: “The wall as projected so far will interfere with this ancient irrigation system by cutting part of the irrigation network.” The integrity of the terraces “will be totally dismantled.” (Time, May 11, 2012)

In June, Israel announced plans to “legalize” 13 of the 18 settlement outposts that had been challenged before the High Court of Justice: “Because the 13 outposts are not built on privately-owned Palestinian land, the legalization process could presumably make the petitions against them moot,” the court wrote. “The remaining five outposts cannot be legalized, because they are located on privately-owned Palestinian land, and so are slated for evacuation.” The first to go was be Beit El’s Ulpana neighborhood, which the court has ordered dismantled by July 1. Next in line was Migron, an outpost near Ramallah, ordered dismantled by Aug. 1. (Haaretz, June 1, 2012) Prime Minister Netanyahu announced a decision June 2 to evacuate the Ulpana neighborhood, and to not endorse a bill to override the high court on the issue. Netanyahu proposed to relocate the houses to a military zone inside Beit El. He pledged: “For each demolished house, we’ll build 10 new ones.” (YNet, June 2, 2012)

The settlers were not appeased. In evident response to government’s decision to evacuate Ulpana, vandals punctured the tires of 14 parked cars in the Israeli village of Neve Shalom June 8—one of the few villages in the country with a mixed Jewish and Arab populace. The words “revenge,” “death to Arabs” and “regards from Ulpana” were spray-pained on the vehicles. Neve Shalom (Arabic: Wahat al-Salam) village was established in the 1960s by Israeli Jews and Arabs who favored co-existence, to promote it by example. (YNet, June 8, 2012) 

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories Richard Falk on June 27  demanded  Israel cease its demolition of Palestinian homes on the West Bank. Falk reported that the demolition of Palestinian structures—including houses, animal shelters, water cisterns and roadways—had risen by 87% over the past year, with a total of 536 Palestinians displaced, including hundreds of children. Falk charged that in some cases the ostensibly punative demolitions were coorindated to faciliate settlement expansion. (Jurist, June 28, 2012)

A proposal in South Africa to ban products from the West Bank received a boost in June from an unlikely source—Israel’s own former Foreign Ministry director-general and ex-ambassador to South Africa, Alon Liel. Writing in the South African Business Day newspaper, Liel endorsed the plan to ban “made in Israel” labels for imported products from the West Bank. Liel wrote: “I can understand the desire, by people of conscience, to reassert an agenda of justice, to remind Israelis that Palestinians exist. I can understand small but symbolic acts of protest that hold a mirror up to Israeli society. As such, I cannot condemn the move to prevent goods made in the occupied Palestinian territory from being falsely classified as ‘made in Israel.’ I support the South African government’s insistence on this distinction between Israel and its occupation.” (JP, June 28, 2012)

In July, a report in newspaper Ha’aretz revealed that Israel’s government had drawn up plans to start compiling land registry records of assets controlled by West Bank settlers. The registry would bypass the regular “tabu” land-listing process, denying Palestinians the right to appeal the validity of ownership titles. Haaretz obtained documents indicating the registry was to be overseen by the Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration. Jewish settlements were established on lands originally “occupied for military reasons” and subsequently classified as “state lands.” These lands had still not been transferred to settler ownership. Instead, authorities granted “permission” to the World Zionist Organization or housing companies to make use of the land. These entities were now seeking to hand over title to the settler communities—but under the normal “tabu” registration process (adopted by Israel from the Ottoman legal code), previous owners would have the right to challenge the new titles. To avoid such challenges from Palestinians, Israel’s deputy attorney general Mike Blass evidently drafted the plan granting the power to issue summary titles. (Haaretz, July 3, 2012)

Palestinians reported July 7 that Jewish settlers attacked the West Bank village of Yanoun, beating residents and killing three sheep. Four villagers were hospitalized. IDF troops rushed to the scene to find the sides throwing rocks at each other, and used tear gas to disperse them. But the only one arrested was a Palestinian resident. (Haaretz, July 8, 2012)

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) announced in July 6 formation of a fact-finding mission on Israeli settlements. Israel said that it would sever ties with the organization and warned that members of the mission would be blocked from entering the Jewish state. “The establishment of this mission is another blatant expression of the singling out of Israel in the UNHRC,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. In fact, the UNHRC had over the past year acted on rights accusations in Syria, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and the United States. (Jewish Chronicle, July 9; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, July 6, 2012)

Israeli security forces evacuated the settlement of Migron Sept. 2, arresting eight who had holed up in their homes and refused to be moved, as their supporters gathered nearby and chanted “Jews do not expel Jews!” Some of the houses had been painted with slogans such as “Bibi is good for Arabs.” The evacuation followed years of legal battles that began in 2006 when Peace Now brought a petition for removal of the settlement, and the Israeli government conceded that Migron was built at least in partly on land privately owned by Palestinians. But those removed from Migron were taken to the nearby “legal” settlement of Ofra, which was set for expansion to accommodate them. (LAT, Sept. 2, 2012) Protests and judicial postponements of the Ulpana demolition continued for months. The evacuation was finally carried out in October, after the government similarly promised Ulpana’s settlers to provide them with new homes on the West Bank. A bill to override the high court on the Ulpana settlement was defeated by the Knesset. Seemingly to appease the right, Netanyahu and Housing and Minister Ariel Atias immediately approved 851 new housing units—300 for Beit El and 551 for four other settlements. (Ha’aretz, Oct. 24; YNet, June 6, 2012)

Advances Toward Statehood 
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas delivered a fiery speech at the opening of the General Assembly’s 67th session in New York Sept. 30, 2012, charging: “Israel is promising the Palestinian people a new catastrophe, a new Nakba.” He asserted that in recent months, “attacks by terrorist militias of Israeli settlers have become a daily reality.” He said the stalemate in the peace process had led to the conclusion “that the Israeli government rejects the two-state solution,” but instead seeks to reduce Palestine to “small enclaves surrounded by large Israeli settlement blocs and walls, checkpoints and vast security zones and roads devoted to settlers.” He did say that “despite our real feelings of anger and disappointment,” the PA remained committed to negotiations, and “there is still a chance—maybe the last—to save the two-state solution and to salvage peace.”  He affirmed his rejection of terrorism in all its forms, “particularly state terrorism.” Abbas said his renewed statehood bid was not aimed at delegitimizing Israel, “but rather to assert that the state of Palestine must be realized.” (JP, Sept. 30, 2012)

Israel made abundantly clear that the would-be Palestinian state did not control its own borders. An international conference of non-aligned countries scheduled to take place in Ramallah Aug. 5 was canceled after Israel barred the entrance of four delegations from Jordan to the Palestinian territories. The foreign ministers of Cuba, Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh requested to enter the West Bank through the Allenby crossing, but were refused entry because their governments do not recognize Israel. (YNet, Aug. 5, 2012)

The PLO began distributing a position paper to European governments in October, detailing plans to seek an upgrade of Palestine’s status at the United Nations. In the document, obtained by Ma’an News Agency, the PLO emphasized that UN membership would not be a substitute for negotiations with Israel. But it also asserted Palestine’s right to self-determination does not require Israeli approval.  “Palestine asks the world to reaffirm that the Palestinians are not the exception to the international rule; that they will not be punished for pursuing a peaceful, political and diplomatic initiative on the basis of international law,” the document stated. (Ma’an News Agency, Oct. 25, 2012)

The message followed a private US memo sent to European diplomats in early October warning that any UN upgrade of Palestine’s status “would be extremely counterproductive” for the Palestinians, and threatening “significant negative consequences.” (The Guardian, Oct. 1, 2012)

In evident response to Abbas’ initiative to revive a statehood bid at the UN, Israel launched a campaign to demand restitution for Jewish refugees from Arab countries. This was explicitly portrayed as a means to head off moves towards a reckoning with the question of Palestinian refugees. The campaign was kicked off on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York on Sept. 21, with Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon serving a pointman. Ayalon presided at the opening affair along with Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron Prosor. Also on hand were top American Jewish leaders. Ayalon stated flatly: “We won’t achieve peace without solving the problem of refugees, including Jewish refugees. Justice isn’t a term for just one side. The same criteria must apply to both sides.” (Globes, Sept. 23, 2012)

According to Ayalon—whose parents were originally from Iraq—nearly a million Jews fled Iraq, Egypt, Morocco, Yemen and other Arab lands in 1948 and the following years. That figure exceeds the generally accepted number of 750,000 Palestinian refugees uprooted during the Nakba, with another 280,000 added to their ranks in 1967. It should be noted that the million figure also exceeds Israel’s official estimate of  860,000 Jews who fled Arab countries between 1948 and 1972. Ayalon pushed for a national commemoration, to be called Jewish Refugee Day—sometime in the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, a reference to the June 1941 Farhud massacre in Iraq during the festival, in which some 180 Jews were killed. He called upon the international community to recognize Mizrahi or Arab Jews as refugees, as it does other populations displaced across international borders. (USA Today, The World, Oct. 11; Electronic Intifada, Oct. 5; The National, UAE, Sept. 17; Point of No Return blog, June 25)

Palestinian leaders of course condemned the effort as a propaganda ploy. “The two issues are totally separate—Israel is just trying to undermine the problem of the Palestinian refugees and their rights,” said Saeb Erekat, the senior Palestinian peace negotiator. Added Hanan Ashrawi: “Opening up this can of worms is not a joke. If you want to go down that path, we’ll go down that path with you all the way. They want restitution? We want restitution. We want all our property back. This guy is opening up Pandora’s Box. If you give the Palestinians their rights, the right to return, restitution and compensation, there will be no more Israel.” (Ibid)

In the past, Israel had actually blocked efforts by Middle Eastern Jews to seek compensation from Arab countries; the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty explicitly prevented Egyptian-born Jews from seeking restitution. Yehouda Shenhav, a professor at Tel Aviv University, commented that Israel wanted to keep restitution as a bargaining chip: “The State of Israel did block such claims, because it wanted to save those assets, or property, to use it against the claims of the Palestinians in future negotiation over their property and assets.” (Ibid)

The popular blog Electronic Intifada added: “Moreover, many, if not most, Arab Jews left their homelands voluntarily, unlike Palestinians, to begin a new life in Israel. Even where tensions forced Jews to flee, such as in Iraq, it is hard to know who was always behind the ethnic strife. There is strong evidence that Israel’s Mossad spy agency waged false-flag operations in Arab states to fuel the fear and hostility needed to drive Arab Jews towards Israel.” (Electronic Intifada, Oct. 5, 2012) 

The conspiracy-theorizing may weaken their case, however. If there were instances in which anti-Jewish attacks were fomented by Zionist agents, it hardly suggests that there wasn’t also much “authentic” violence, with Arab Jews falling victim to reprisals for Zionist purging of Palestinian Arabs. There were new pogroms against Yemeni Jews as recently as 2009, with scores displaced in reaction to Israel’s assault on Gaza. (World War 4 Report, Feb. 22, 2009) Moreover, this theorizing distracts from the more critical point: The Yemeni and Iraqi and Moroccan Jews who fled to nascent Israel in 1948 and subsequently, and  their children and grandchildren, are not clamoring to return to Yemen and Iraq and Morocco. They are not stateless, or living in refugee camps. They are (ironically) second class citizens within Israel (with the Arabs third-class), but they are citizens. And not all those who left the Arab lands can be legitimately considered refugees. The exodus of Jews from Arab countries since 1948 had at least as much to do with Israeli efforts to promote emigration as with their being pushed out by their Arab neighbors. 

Citizenship Controversies
Controversies about the nature of Israeli citizenship, amid the complexities of competing claims, continued to mount. On March 26, 2012, the US Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in MBZ v. Clinton that the ability of a US national born in Jerusalem to list Israel as place of birth on a passport was not a political question, and remanded the case for a ruling specifically on the issue. The US State Department argued that the question was political because it involved the government’s foreign policy on the sovereignty of Jerusalem. The case concerned a US citizen who was born in Jerusalem in 2002. His parents asked the State Department to record his place of birth as “Jerusalem, Israel,” but were told it could only be listed as Jerusalem because the US does not recognize any country as having sovereignty over Jerusalem. The parents filed suit in 2003 based on the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003, which they said allowed the listing of Israel as birthplace for those born in Jerusalem. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed the suit as a political question. The Supreme Court’s reversal of that dismissal was a victory for growing de facto US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. (Jurist, March 27, 2012)

A new law granting Israeli authorities the power to detain “illegal migrants” for up to three years took effect June 3, following a wave of Tel Aviv protests over the influx of African migrants who cross into Israel along its border with Egypt. The law even made asylum seekers liable to imprisonment—without trial or deportation—if determined to be staying in Israel for an excessive period. Additionally, anyone found to be aiding migrants or providing them with shelter could face up to 15 years in prison. The law amended the Prevention of Infiltration Law, passed in 1954 to prevent the entry of Palestinians. Seemingly in a holdover from the origins of the law in 1954, the African migrants were called “infiltrators” with the same ugly connotation as the term “illegals” in the US. (Haaretz, June 3, 2012)

Also June 3, Israeli daily Maariv published an interview with Interior Minister Eli Yishai, in which he complained that most of the “Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man.” Yishai himself is a Mizrahi Jew of Tunisian origin. (Ibid)

And there was growing conflict between Orthodox and secular Israelis. The wave of ultra-orthodox vigilante violence that had been mounting even within Israel took a grim turn Feb. 28, 2012 as a 70-year-old woman—herself an ultra-Orthodox Jew—was beaten by thugs who broke into her home, leaving her handcuffed and bleeding. The self-appointed “Modesty Patrol” apparently mistook her for a Christian missionary. As they beat her—breaking her right hand with a metal rod and using their cell phones to document the attack—they taunted her: “You are destroying the neighborhood with your missionary teachings.” (YNet, Feb. 29, 2012)

Amid outrage across the Jewish diaspora over a flurry of recent arrests of women seeking to pray at the Western Wall with ritual garments in defiance of Israeli law, Prime Minister Netanyahu in December asked Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency, to study the issue and suggest ways to make the site more accommodating to all Jews. (NYT, Dec. 25, 2012) 

An Arab teen who was violently accosted by two Haredi men in Jerusalem Dec. 24 said he did nothing to provoke the assailants. “I still don’t know what led them to attack me, I didn’t do anything, we didn’t even exchange words,” the 16-year-old resident of Beit Hanina neighborhood recalled. The youth suffered head wounds and was hospitalized in moderate condition.  (YNet, Dec. 25, 2012)

Following the “Judaization” of geography in Jerusalem—the censoring of old Arab place names by municipal authorities—a similar controversy emerged in Tel Aviv. An August speech by Tel Aviv-Jaffa city council member Ahmed Mashharawi, in which he proposed that the city add an Arabic inscription to its official logo, was edited out of a recording of the city council meeting that was posted to YouTube by municipal authorities. In a comment he wrote on Facebook, Mashharawi, of the Meretz party, wrote that he “couldn’t believe” someone would censor his comments out of the recording. “It began with closing [city council] meetings to the public and now they are censoring parts,” he wrote, adding, “Shame on you.” (Ha’aretz, Aug. 10, 2012)

Class divisions within Israel continued to manifest in protest. Police detained 89 demonstrators after more than 6,500 flooded Tel Aviv’s Habima Square the night of June 23 to protest the arrest of Daphni Leef, a leader of the previous summer’s mass movement against economic inequality and the high cost of housing in Israel. Police said the protest was illegal, because no permit had been applied for. Protesters responded that the lack of a permit was intentional, to make the point that permits are difficult to obtain. Clashes were reported from nearby Rabin Square, where protesters attempted to break into banks, smashing the window of one. The elite police “Special Forces” riot squad was mobilized to the scene. The gathering was publicized as an attempt to reboot the movement, under the slogan, “Emergency protest! Returning power to the people!” (The Nation blog, June 25; Haaretz, June 23, 2012)

Results of the January election found Benjamin Netanyahu weakened but holding to power, in a shift toward what Israeli media called “the center.” Netanyahu’s bloc, made up of Likud and Yisrael Beitenu, came out on top with 31 seats out of the 120 in the Knesset—down from 42. Coming in second, the new “centrist” Yesh Atid (There is a Future), led by ex-TV personality Yair Lapid, took 19 seats. The center-left Labor, once the mainstay of Iraeli politics, came in third with only 15 seats, with Arab parties winning another 12. The biggest party in the last Knesset, the “center”-right Kadima, dropped from 28 seats to none. (Foreign Policy’s Middle East Channel blog, JTA, Jan. 23, 2013)

But an election-time controversy demonstrated the degree to which ultra-right positions had become mainstreamed in Israeli politics. Israeli TV aired footage of Jeremy Gimpel, a candidate with Habayit Hayehudi (formerly the National Religious Party), speaking to a church group in Florida in 2011: “Imagine if the Golden Dome—I’m being recorded so I can’t say ‘blown up’—but let’s say the Dome was blown up, right? And we laid the cornerstone of the Temple in Jerusalem. Can you imagine? None of you would be here. All of you would be like, ‘I’m going to Israel, right?’ No one would be here, it would be incredible!” (Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, Haaretz, Jan. 20, 2013) There was an outcry over this, and Gimpel failed to win his Knesset seat. In rare criticism of an Israeli politician, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a leading US Jewish organization, called on Gimpel to apologize to Muslims for his comment. (JTA, Jan. 22, 2013)

Even the “centrist” parties were increasingly rejecitonist in their stance towards the Palestinians. and Jewish-supremacist regarding their vision for Israel. Yair Lapid, the head of Yesh Atid, wrote on his Facebook page in the run-up to the election: “I do not think that the Arabs want peace… What I want is not a new Middle East, but to be rid of them and put a tall fence between us and them….to maintain a Jewish majority in the Land of Israel.” (Arutz Sheva, Jan. 20, 2013)

Days earlier he said that the left “makes the same mistake again when it negotiates the division of Jerusalem… The Palestinians must be brought to an understanding that Jerusalem will always remain under Israeli sovereignty and that there is no point for them in opening negotiations about Jerusalem.” He added that Israel will not allow a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees. “We need to be clear about Jerusalem as well and then they will understand that this is our solid position.” (Ibid)

Prison Hunger Strikes
Palestinian detainee Khader Adnan went on hunger strike Dec. 17, 2011, and by February rights advocates were warning that his life was at risk. This was also acknowledged by the Israeli Prison Service, which transferred him from military detention on the West Bank to a hospital in northern Israel. Adnan, said to be a leader of Islamic Jihad, was refusing all food in protest of his ill-treatment and his arbitrary detention without charge or trial—”administrative detention.” The father of two daughters and with a third child on the way, Adnan, 33, was a baker and a student at the West Bank’s Birzeit University. He was arrested by masked soldiers who raided his home at Arrabe near Jenin in the middle of the night. For the first two weeks he was subject to daily interrogations, during which he was shackled to a crooked chair with his hands tied behind his back in a position that caused him pain. There were then some 300 Palestinians under Israeli administrative detention (among a total of some 4,000 detainees), and Adnan’s case became symbolic, prompting support demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza, and solidarity hunger strikes by other detainees. Posters of his likeness became common, with statements like, “For every gram you lose from your weight, we gain a thousand grams in our dignity.” (BBC News, Feb. 8; 972Mag, Feb. 7; Amnesty International, Feb. 6; Samidoun, Feb. 5, 2012)

Adnan ended his hunger strike Feb. 21, after Israeli authorities agreed to release him in April. The announcement came less than an hour before a scheduled High Court of Justice hearing on his petition demanding that he be charged or released. Through the arrangement, Israel averted the possibility of widespread unrest that was expected if he had died. However, just two days after Adnan ended his strike, news emerged that a Palestinian woman had begun her own hunger strike against her detention without charge or trial. Hana Yahya al-Shalabi spent more than two years in administrative detention, and had been freed in October as part of the prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas. On Feb. 17, al-Shalabi, 29, was once again arrested by Israeli forces from her home near Jenin. She was on hunger strike for 40 days, before she was released in April. But Palestinian prisoner support group Addameer and Physicians For Human Rights-Israel raised questions about the deal in a joint statement, raising fears that she had been coerced. They noted that their officials, as well as Shalabi’s relatives, were denied access to her during the final days of her hunger strike. (NYT, April 2; AFP, April 2; Electronic Intifada, Feb. 23; Maan News Agency, Feb. 21, 2012)

The Palestinian Authority said that Israeli prison authorities stormed the cells of Palestinian prisoners on April 1, leaving 61 injured. The raid in Israel’s Nafha facility came after prisoners refused to give DNA samples, the PA’s own prisons ministry said. Minister Issa Qaraqe asserted that every prisoner has the right to refuse forcible DNA testing. PA lawyers filed a complaint in Israel’s courts to demand the end of forced DNA tests for Palestinians detainees. (Ma’an News Agency, April 1, 2012)

On April 17, marking Palestinian Prisoners Day, at least 1,200 detainees launched an open-ended hunger strike, demanding improvements in living conditions, as well as an end to solitary confinement, “night raids” on cells, and bans on family visits for prisoners from Gaza. Prison authorities responded by denying all striking inmates family visits, and separating them from the inmates not taking part in the protest.  Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas administration in Gaza, called for a new intifada to support Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel. (Ma’an News Agency, April 30, 2012)

The Israeli Supreme Court on May 7 ruled against two striking prisoners, Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla, in their appeal seeking release from detention. In its decision, the court determined that “administrative detention” policies were necessary to combat terrorism, but suggested the authorities should consider releasing the two prisoners for health reasons. (Jurist, May 7, 2012)

On May 9, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Israel to try or release the striking prisoners to avoid risks to their health. (Jurist, May 10, 2012)

The striking prisoners agreed May 14 to a deal, ending the strikes in exchange for improved conditions. The Egyptian-brokered pact called for the prisoners—including Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla, who had gone without food for 77 days—to be released at the end of their “administrative detention” terms. Four hunger strikers were transferred to civilian hospitals within Israel for treatment. Israel also agreed to release all detainees from solitary confinement, lift the ban on family visits for detainees from Gaza, and revoke the “Shalit law.” The “Shalit law” restricted prisoners’ access to families and to educational materials, as punishment for the five-year captivity of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. (Ma’an News Agency, May 16, 2012)

Operation Pillar of Defense
The uneasy truce in the Gaza Strip would break down amid a major new Israeli offensive by the end of 2012. But the preceding months saw a steady level of violence and privation that generally failed to win international media coverage. 

A 69-year-old Palestinian man was killed and three others injured in an attack by the Israeli Air Force on tunnels and a supposed weapons depot near Gaza City on Feb. 12, 2012. The strikes came in response to a short-range rocket that was launched from Gaza the previous day, wounding an Israeli woman, the military said. No faction took credit for the rocket attack. Hamas at this time was officially trying to rein in attacks on Israel as it sought a political accommodation with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. (Ha’aretz, Feb. 12, 2012)

Gaza power authority officials warned that the Strip would soon have only six hours of electricity a day if more fuel was not delivered. A small delivery on Feb. 13 staved off a wide-scale blackout. The Palestinian Authority had taken over responsibility from the European Union for delivering diesel to the Gaza Energy Authority in late 2009, and the directors of Gaza’s only power plant said that the Palestinian Authority’s delay in payments for fuel contributed to the crisis. (Ma’an News Agency, Jan. 13, 2012)

On March 5, for the first time in five years, Israel allowed export of goods from Gaza to the West Bank. Two trucks carrying date bars traveled to the West Bank as part of an initiative by the World Food Program to feed Palestinian schoolchildren—after six months of negotiations. The shipments left Gaza via Kerem Shalom, the only one of the Strip’s four commercial crossings that Israel had not closed.  The permission, for 13 trucks in total, was the first exception to a ban on exports to the West Bank imposed by Israel in June 2007. Until the March shipment, all export was limited to markets abroad, with low demand and transportation costs high.  The restrictions played a major role in the fact that Gaza’s economy was essentially paralyzed, with an unemployment rate of 31.5%, and some 70% of the population receiving humanitarian aid. (Gisha, March 5, 2012)

March saw renewed hostilities, with air-strikes on the Gaza Strip and rockets fired from the Strip on southern Israel for four days before a new ceasefire on the 14th. The fighting began with a round began with a targeted killing by the IDF, ostensibly aimed at foiling a terror attack. Altogether, about 300 rockets were fired into Israel during the new hostilities—largely by Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees. Of these, 56 were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, Israeli military authorities said. The IDF said that 26 Palestinians were killed in the new fighting, of whom 22 were “terrorists.” (Ha’aretz, March 14, 2012)

An Israeli air strike June 19 killed two Palestinians near the Gaza Strip border, drawing the first Hamas rocket fire in more than a year. Gaza medical officials said the two men killed were civilians. The Israeli military said the strikes “targeted a terrorist squad identified handling an explosive device” near Israel’s border fence. Hamas said its Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades fired rockets into Israel in response. No casualties were reported. Although other armed groups had fired rockets across the border in previous surges of violence, Hamas had held its fire under unofficial truces with Israel. (AlJazeera, June 19, 2012)

Another Palestinian man was killed while riding a motorcyle west of Gaza City, and ten more wounded, as Israel resumed air-strikes on June 23. The new strikes were launched after militant groups in Gaza—although not Hamas—fired rockets into Israel despite reports that an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire had gone into effect the previous morning. Israeli gunboats also shelled a beach in northern Gaza. (JP, Maan, June 23; Maan, June 22, 2012)

In July, 50 aid groups and UN offices signed a joint statement urging Israel to end its blockade of the Gaza Strip, calling it a violation of international law. Among the signatories were Amnesty International, the World Health Organization, and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The joint statement followed a call by UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos to end the blockade, which she said deprived Gaza residents of basic humanitarian needs. (Jurist, Nov. 6, 2012)

In a case brought by Gisha, Israel’s Supreme Court on Sept. 5 ordered the state to release the secret 2008 “red lines document,” which established the minimum caloric intake required for the survival of residents of the Gaza Strip, as part of the policy that restricted the entrance of goods into Gaza. The Gaza bloackade, imposed in 2007, was “eased” but not lifted in June 2010.  Gisha director Sari Bashi said: “The court sent a clear message to the Defense Ministry that in a democratic society, the public’s right to know must be taken seriously. Had this information come to light earlier, the policy of restricting even food items from entering Gaza might not have lasted three years.” (Gisha, Sept. 6, 2012) 

After the ruling, Israel’s Defense Ministry turned over the document, entitled “Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip—Red Lines.” Two versions of the document, in the format of PowerPoint presentations, were provided to Gisha. The documents, produced in January 2008, cited a daily average of 2,279 calories per person, which could be supplied by four pounds of food, or 2,575.5 tons of food for the Gaza Strip’s entire 1.7 million population. The Defense Ministry had argued to the court that Israel had a right “to adopt a policy of economic warfare” against Gaza’s Hamas leadership. (UPI, Oct. 18; Gisha, Oct. 17, 2012)

Arab leaders were meanwhile moving towards recognition of the Hamas administration. The emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, in October became the first head of state to visit the Gaza Strip since Hamas took control over the area in 2007, pledging $400 million in aid to the Strip. (Jewish Policy Center, Nov. 1, 2012)

Israeli troops on Oct. 20 commandeered a Gaza-bound ship that tried to break through Israel’s blockade. European lawmakers and activists aboard did not resist, and the Finnish-flagged vessel was diverted to an Israeli port. (AP, Oct. 20, 2012)

On Oct. 23, Israeli air-strikes killed three Hamas militants, and a fourth the next day—a move ostensibly aimed at stopping rocket attaclks. But Hamas of course responded with a new round of rocket and mortar attacks, the heaviest bombardment on southern Israel in months. Three Thai laborers working on an Israeli farm were wounded, two seriously, when a rocket hit a chicken coop. Schools in the area were closed. Israel, in turn, responded with a series of air-strikes on presumed rocket launching sites in Gaza, killing four Palestinians, two of whom were “confirmed as militants.” The exchanges came to an end when Egypt brokered an “informal ceasefire.” (Reuters, Oct. 25; AP, Oct. 24, 2012)

A Turkish court on Nov. 6 opened a trial in absentia for former Israeli military commanders accused of killing nine Turkish citizens aboard the ship attempting to pass through the Gaza blockade in 2010. Prosecutors demanded life in prison for the Israeli commanders involved in the raid. Israel dismissed the trial of the four commanders as politically motivated. Hundreds of protestors showed up outside the courthouse to voice their opposition to Israel’s actions. (Jurist, Nov. 6, 2012)

War returned in earnest Nov. 14, when Israel launched multiple air-strikes across the Gaza Strip. Among those killed was Ahmed al-Jaabari, the head of Hamas’ military wing the Qassam Brigades, in a missile strike on his vehicle in Gaza City. The strikes were aimed at Hamas police and security forces headquarters across the Strip. “We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead,” the Israel Defense Forces said. Immediate calls for revenge were broadcast over Hamas radio and the al-Qassam brigades vowed to strike back. “The occupation has opened the doors of hell,” the Qassam Brigades said in a statement.  (Ma’an News, Ma’an News, NYT, Nov. 14; Reuters, Nov. 13, 2012) 

Hamas had actually been attempting to restrain Islamic Jihad before the new fighting, leading commentator Aluf Benn to wryly charge in Ha’aretz that “Israel killed its subcontractor in Gaza… Ahmed Jabari was a subcontractor, in charge of maintaining Israel’s security in Gaza.” The Nov. 10 rocket attack on an IDF jeep that sparked the new crisis was fired by  the Salah a-Din Brigades, military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza. The attack injured four soliders. (Ha’aretz, Nov. 14; Ha’aretz, Nov. 13, 2012)

More than 80 rockets were fired from Gaza after the opening Israeli air-strikes, hitting Beersheba and Ashdod. Ashkelon also targeted but those were apparently among the 27 rockets claimed to have been intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. The Israeli cabinet authorized the army to issue emergency orders mobilizing reserve units for the new campaign, dubbed Operation Pillar of Defense (literally “Pillar of Cloud,” a biblical reference). The US State Department issued a statement saying: “We support Israel’s right to defend itself, and we encourage Israel to continue to take every effort to avoid civilian casualties.” (YNet, Nov. 14, 2012)

On Nov. 15, air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv  for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War. Reports conflicted as to whether a Tel Aviv-bound rocket, claimed by Islamic Jihad, hitempty land in a suburb or crashed into the sea. Israel now sent troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers to Gaza’s borders—raising fears of an imminent ground invasion. (AP, Nov. 16; WP, Nov. 15, 2012)

Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil arrived in the Gaza Strip Nov. 16 to show solidarity. Israel said it would suspend all military action during Kandil’s three-hour visit as long as the Hamas also ceased fire. (Reuters, Nov. 16, 2012) A rocket landed in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem, that day—marking the first time since 1970 that a rocket had been fired at the city. Hamas claimed it was targeting the Knesset, but the rocket landed outside the city and there were no casualties. Two Israeli women and a man were killed when a rocket fired from Gaza hit a building in the southern town of Kiryat Malachi. (BBC News, The Guardian, Nov. 16, 2012) An Israeli air-strike on al-Maghazi refugee camp killed al-Qassam Brigades leader Ahmad Abu Jalal and three others, bringing the Palestinian death toll in the new campaign to 28. (Ma’an News Agency, Nov. 16, 2012) Israel hit the Hamas cabinet building in Gaza City the next day, causing extensive damage although no casualties. (Economic Times, Nov. 17, 2012)

The Israeli Cabinet on Nov. 16 authorized the call-up of 75,000 reserve troops as the air assault against Gaza intensified, adding to speculation a ground invasion was imminent. During Operation Cast Lead in 2008, Israel mobilized some 10,000 reserves in preparation for the ground operation. (RT, Nov. 17, 2012)

Dozens of Palestinians were injured as protests were held across the West Bank in support of Gaza under its third day of Israeli bombardment Nov. 16. At Kafr Kaddum village, a youth was hospitalized after a tear gas canister hit him in the back of the head. Hundreds of Palestinians, Israelis and foreign activists joined a march in the village, holding banners saying “Relief of Gaza.” In Bethlehem, Israeli forces fired tear gas and a foul-smelling chemical liquid as protesters gathered outside Aida refugee camp to support Gaza—and another youth was hit in the head with a tear gas canister. In Jenin, a youth was wounded by rubber bullets in clashes with Israeli forces near the Jalama crossing into Israel. Protesters who gathered at the Enav checkpoint east of Tulkarem after Friday prayers were also met with rubber bullets and tear gas. Near Ramallah, four were arrested at a demonstration in Nabi Saleh and two Palestinians were injured in a protest in Bilin village. Near Hebron, Israeli forces clashed with Palestinians at a weekly demonstration in Beit Ummar, dedicated in solidarity with Gaza. In Hebron city, political and religious figures led a march to the main square, demanding the Arab world do more to stop the bombardment. Marches were also held in Ramallah and Nablus. (Ma’an News Agency, Nov. 16, 2012)

Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi announced Nov. 17 that peace talks in Cairo were progressing toward a ceasefire. UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Navi Pillay urgently called for a truce. (Jurist, Nov. 17, 2012)

In news that shocked the world Nov. 18, an Israeli bomb destroyed a Gaza City home, killing 11 people, including nine from three generations of a single family—from a grandmother to a two-year-old child. Gaza’s Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, called the attack a “massacre” that “exceeded all expectations.” Israel said the target was a militant responsible for rocket attacks, but that the incident was under investigation. That same day, a youth was fatally injured when Israeli troops used rubber bullets and tear gas at a Ramallah protest against the Gaza bombardment. (Ma’an News, Ma’an News, Ma’an News, Nov. 19; NYT, Nov. 18, 2012)

Also that day, President Obama clearly signaled a “green light” for the bombardment. “There’s no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” he said. “We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself. Israel has every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory.” (MSNBC, Nov. 18, 2012) Of course the US was routinely carrying out drone missile attacks on Pakistan and Yemen.

Gilad Sharon, the son of former prime minister Ariel Sharon, had a piece in the Jerusalem Post Nov. 18, whose understated title, “A decisive conclusion is necessary,” belied the exterminationist rhetoric within:

Why do our citizens have to live with rocket fire from Gaza while we fight with our hands tied? Why are the citizens of Gaza immune? If the Syrians were to open fire on our towns, would we not attack Damascus? If the Cubans were to fire at Miami, wouldn’t Havana suffer the consequences? That’s what’s called “deterrence”—if you shoot at me, I’ll shoot at you. There is no justification for the State of Gaza being able to shoot at our towns with impunity. We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima—the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.

There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.

Were this to happen, the images from Gaza might be unpleasant—but victory would be swift, and the lives of our soldiers and civilians spared.

Mourners clashed with Israeli troops at two funerals Nov. 21 as protests continued. In Hebron, hundreds attended the funeral for a man shot by Israeli troops at a protest in the city’s Bir al-Mahjar neighborhood. After the burial, hundreds of young men began marching towards a Jewish settlement, to be set upon by Israeli forces with tear gas and rubber bullets. In Ramallah, thousands attended the funeral for a police officer who died two days after he was shot by Israeli forces at a protest in Nabi Saleh. A video of that protest showed Israeli forces threatening demonstrators who tried to administer first aid. At Nabi Saleh, where he was buried. mourners chanted “Martyr, rest, we will pick up the fight.” After the procession, masked youths hurled rocks at Israeli soldiers lined up at the village entrance, who again responded with tear-gas and rubber bullets. East of Hebron, Israeli forces closed the entrance to Bani Naim village amid clashes between residents and soldiers. In the northern West Bank, hundreds of protesters marched to al-Jalama crossing. Israeli forces declared al-Jalama village a closed military zone, and more clashes ensued. (Maan News Agency, Nov. 21, 2012)

Israel launched new air-strikes late Nov. 21, even as Egypt’s foreign minister Mohamed Kamel Amr announced a ceasefire to end the eight days of violence. Missiles fired by an unmanned drone hit Deir al-Balah in the central Strip, killing a youth and critically injuring another. Another air-strike killed a Palestinian in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, with six more wounded elsewhere in the city. The ceasefire, announced at a Cairo press conference with the US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, was to take effect at 9 PM—less than two hours after the air-strikes. The Palestinian death toll in the eight days of bombing stood at some 170, with another 1,000 wounded. Five Israelis had been killed, including one soldier. (Maa’n News Agency, Nov. 21, 2012)

Also Nov. 21, a bomb exploded on a bus passing Israel’s Defense Ministry complex in central Tel Aviv, wounding at least 10. Celebratory gunfire rang out across Gaza as the news spread, and Hamas praised the bombing, although no-one claimed responsibility. (Reuters, Nov. 21, 2012)

The Egypt-brokered ceasefire commited Israel to “Opening the crossings and facilitating the movement of people and transfer of goods and refraining from restricting residents’ free movements and targeting residents in border areas.” In other words, further easing the siege. (AFP, Nov. 21, 2012) Leaders in Gaza and Israel both claimed victory. Ramadan Shallah, chief of Islamic Jihad, which was also signatory to the ceasefire, called the war Israel’s “greatest defeat in history.” Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak meanwhile boasted that Israel dropped 1,000 times as much explosive on the Gaza Strip tha had landed in Israel. “A large part of the mid-range rockets were destroyed,” Barak told Israel’s Army Radio. (Ma’an News Agency, Nov. 23, 2012)

In a rare display of unity, leaders of Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian factions on Nov. 21 celebrated the end of the war and called for parties to end the split with the West Bank. Thousands took to the streets of Gaza, calling for unity. Fatah leader Nabil Shaath, who came to Gaza three days earlier, during the Israeli bombing, told crowds in Gaza City: “How glad I feel when yellow, green, red and black flags fly together, united by the Palestinian flag. We must all unite and work together.” This was a reference to the colors of Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and leftist factions. “Today our unity materialized, Hamas and Fatah are one hand, one rifle and one rocket,” senior Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya told several thousand in the main square of Gaza. (Ma’an News Agency, Nov. 22, 2012)

In New York, Human Rights Watch issued separate statements accusing both Israel and Gaza Palestinian factions of violating the laws of war by targeting civilian areas during the fighting. (Jurist, Dec. 24, 2012)

Iran, Syria, Egypt and Rumors of War

In January 2012, the plans for unprecedented US-Israel missile defense exercises were postponed by Washington, citing regional instability. (NYT, Jan. 16, 2012) But the US Congress was meanwhile advancing a nearly $1 billion package for Israel’s anti-missile program. The program included the high-altitude Arrow 3 rocket being developed by Israel Aerospace Industries and Boeing to destroy Iranian and Syrian ballistic missiles outside Earth’s atmosphere. (UPI, May 8, 2012) 

There was clearly an arms race underway between Israel and Iran. In May, Israel received its fourth German-made submarine—capable of launching nuclear warheads. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said only that the submarine would increase Israel’s capabilities “in the face of the growing regional challenges.” The Dolphin-type military submarine is one of six Israel has ordered from Germany, which subsidizes the sales. (AP, May 3, 2012) Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper, citing unnamed sources, said it has learned that Israel was arming the submarines with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Officials said the German government had known about Israel’s nuclear weapons program for decades, despite denials, and assumed nuclear arms would be used on the subs. (Der Spiegel, June 3, 2012) 

Iran, in turn, announced June 12 plans to build its first nuclear-powered submarine—days before talks with world powers on its nuclear program were set to begin. (Reuters, June 12, 2012) 

On July 18, a bomb went off in a tour bus in the Black Sea resort city of Burgas, Bulgaria, killing five Israelis and wounding some 30. Netanyahu immediately said: “All signs point to Iran. In just the past few months we’ve seen Iran try to target Israelis in Thailand, India, Georgia, Cyprus and more. The murderous Iranian terror continues to target innocent people. This is a global Iranian terror onslaught and Israel will react forcefully to it.” It was probably not coincidence that the attack came on the 18th anniversary of the bombing of the Jewish center in Buenos Aires, the world’s most deadly anti-Semitic attack since World War II, which investigators had linked to Hezbollah. (The Forward, JTA, Sofia News Agency, July 18, 2012)

On the other side of the coin, Mossad and the CIA were widely blamed for the mysterious deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists; three had been killed over the past two years. (World War 4 Report, Jan. 10, 2012)

In mid July, the mounting protests in Syria spread to the country’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, Yarmouk, an enclave of nearly 150,000 within Damascus. Security forces fired on protesters, killing at least five and setting off a cycle of funerals, demonstrations and further crackdowns—which  escalated to shelling of the camp. Similar violence hit other Palestinian camps in Syria. More than two-thirds of the 17,500 refugees in the southern city of Daraa fled an attack in June, the UN reported. While many returned, the camp remained under siege, with food and medicine in short supply. The Palestinian Authority placed the number of Palestinians killed in Syria since the start of the uprising as high as 300.  (AP, July 27; Al-Bawaba, July 25, 2012)

Syria’s 496,000 UN-registered Palestinian refugees, while not citizens, traditionally had greater rights than their brethren in other Arab countries, allowed to hold government jobs, attend state universities for free and serve in the military. The regime of Bashar Assad, like that of his father Hafez Assad before him, posed as a champion of the Palestinian cause, despite its bitter rift with Fatah. But as the violence mounted in Syria, Hamas quietly vacated its Damascus offices, after being pressed by the regime and opposition alike to take sides in the conflict. Palestinian factions openly allied with Assad had been targeted by the Syrian rebels, despite efforts to avoid involvement in the conflict. In the worst incident, 16 members of the Palestine Liberation Army were killed after rebel gunmen stopped their bus July 20. (Ibid)

Israeli warplanes swooped low over Lebanese villages Oct. 7 in a show of force apparently aimed at Hezbollah the day after a mysterious incursion by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The Israeli Air Force shot down the drone shortly after it crossed into southern Israel from the Mediterranean, passing “over settlements and military bases in the Negev,” the IAF said. The craft’s launch point was unknown. Israeli officials said the UAV may have been on a mission to perform surveillance of the Dimona nuclear complex in the Negev, and pointed to Iran or Hezbollah. (Slate, AP, Oct. 7; JP, Oct. 6, 2012)

Palestinians were also impacted by the continuing unrest in Egypt. On Aug. 5 an armed attack on an Egyptian military post near the Rafah crossing on the border with Gaza left 15 troops and border guards dead. Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood said that the attack “can be attributed to Mossad.” The IDF said the attack was carried out by “global jihadists”—the Israeli military’s term for ultra-fundamentalist Salafist groups linked to al-Qaeda’s network in the region. Despite the angry rhetoric, Egypt deployed bulldozers and earth movers to Rafah to destroy the estimated 600 tunnels used for smuggling contraband in and out of the Strip. (Aswat Masriya, Cairo, Aug. 7 via AllAfrica; ANSA, Aug. 7; Reuters, Aug. 6; Long War Journal, Aug. 5, 2012)

Hamas security forces on Aug. 15 arrested a senior Salafist sheikh who ahd been injured in an Israeli air-strike in June. Sheikh Abu Suhaib Rashwan was detained as he left a hospital, where he was recovering from wounds sustained in the air-strike in Rafah. The June 20 missile strike on a motorcycle wounded Rashwan and a companion who the IDF described as a “global jihad operative.” Israel accused the two of being behind an ambush along the Egyptian border two days earlier that killed an Israeli civilian. This wasn’t Hamas’ first crackdowns on Salafists since it took control of Gaza in 2007. It had carried out several arrests of Salafist militants in the past, notably following attacks on women and Christians. (Ma’an News Agency, AFP, Aug. 18, 2012)

Egyptian police and army officers meanwhile detained five supposed Salafist militants, including Palestinians, in two military operations on Aug. 18 in the northern Sinai town of el-Arish. There had been several such raids in the Sinai in recent days, some turning violent. (Ma’an News Agency, Aug. 18, 2012)

The international wave of Arab protests meanwhile returned to the West Bank. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Sept. 6 announced he would resign if that was the will of the people, amid growing demonstrations over the rising cost of living. Salaries for the PA’s government workers were held up as the US Congress stalled on a request by President Obama to pay $200 million to the Ramallah government.  (Ma’an News Agency, Sept. 7, 2012)

Fayyad emphasized that the PA’s economic growth was hindered by Israeli restrictions. Fayyad charged that Israel had paralyzed economic development in Area C, the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli military control. Israel frequently demolished development projects in Area C, and had not implemented provisions in the Paris Protocol of 1994 to allow Palestinians access to Israeli markets. Israel’s control of the West Bank’s borders hindered the export market, and restrictions on imports limited domestic industries. Israel repeatedly withheld the payments on import duties as “punishment” for Palestinian political maneuvers, such as negotiations with Hamas or the UN statehood initiative. (Ibid)

But Palestinian protesters demanded Fayyad’s resignation, and called on the PA to set a minimum wage, create jobs for the unemployed, and lower university fees.  Taxi and bus operators, angered over fuel prices, blocked roads in Jenin. (Ibid)

Palestinian Authority employees went on strike in December after receiving only part of their November salaries. Some 50,000 workers took part in the stoppage. West Bank security forces did not participate, but most public services were shut down, inclduing schools. “This strike is against Israel’s piracy,” said Bassam Zakarneh, head of the Union of Public Employees. (Maan News Agency, Dec. 23; Maan News Agency, Dec. 21; WAFA, Dec. 17, 2012)

Bibliography

Thanks to the AJ Muste Memorial Institute for the use of its library.

This work was commissioned by David Rubinson.

Dedicated to the memory of Farouk Abdel-Muhti

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