CounterVortex

MEXICAN HIGH-TECH WORKERS DEMAND JUSTICE

by Kent Paterson, Frontera NorteSur

The two high-tech workers laughed when asked if they could afford the smartphones made by their colleagues on Mexican production lines. “No, no, no,” chuckled Maria and Alma, two Guadalajara workers who have labored for years in Mexico’s Silicon Valley. A cheap $20 cell phone has to make do for Maria, while Alma uses a similarly low-priced contraption she won on a five-dollar raffle ticket. “It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity, especially when you have kids,” Alma said.

The two women, who asked that their real names not be used because of possible employer retaliation, recently sat down with Frontera NorteSur to discuss their jobs and lives as factory workers in Mexico’s second largest city and one of the world’s most important centers in the electronics industry supply chain.

An assembly-line worker, Maria makes about $10 for an eight hour shift six days a week. Although Maria said she gets all the benefits afforded by Mexican law, she must renew her work contract every two months. A quality control specialist, Alma has more responsibilities than Maria but gets the same amount of pay. A third woman who joined the conversation worked in the local high-tech industry until she was fired two years ago. Unlike Maria and Alma, the friend completed higher education training for a technician’s career but still maxed out her earnings at approximately $500 monthly after a dozen years in the industry.

All the women interviewed have multiple children to support, and two of them are single mothers. Living in Guadalajara these days is expensive, they said. The lowest rent hovers around $100 a month, a cylinder of gas costs a couple of days’ pay and the price of staple corn tortillas is now well above a dollar. Tomatoes, eggs and the hot chile de arbol essential for so many Mexican sauces have all gone up in price recently. A family budget for four or more people can get quickly dented just by forking out the bus fare necessary for moving around a sprawling city.

To make ends meet, the women play what might be called the Mexican Shuffle. They take out pay-day loans from a bank, dip into small savings accounts, accept packages of basic commodities from churches and contemplate the ever-expanding doors of pawn shops. Like other low-income Mexicans, they participate in tandas, a form of economic solidarity in which members of a group contribute ten bucks or so and then pay out the sum total to a member on a rotating basis. Guadalajara’s women workers get by on a “miracle,” Maria laughed again. “God is great!”

Maria and her friends said they endure an employment system in which a job is on an increasingly temporary basis, unpaid furloughs pop up, promised bonuses do not materialize, overtime is not properly compensated and “labor representation” is performed by “unions” the workers often do not even know exist. Complaints are waved away by the constant fluttering of an economic wand.

“If you don’t like the work, there are five other people outside willing to do it,” Maria said. “You have no option.” While Maria and her friends say they are too afraid to speak out publicly, many workers like themselves channel their grievances through the non-governmental organization Cereal (Centre for Reflection and Action on Labour Rights).

“These are very generalized, across-the board situations, especially in the electronics industry,” said Felipe Burgueno, Cereal’s outreach coordinator. “Many of the [high-tech] businesses are sustained by women, and many of them are housewives. They are frequently paid less than the men and get treated worse.”

Celebrating its 15th anniversary this month, Cereal documents the complaints of workers, negotiates with employers, helps fired workers get severance pay and advocates for the right of workers to collective bargaining and union representation of their choice. Cereal has focused its efforts on electronics industry workers but is beginning to hear more from other sectors of the workforce, according to Burgueno.

Some workers are taking collective action. On Feb. 21, a small group of former Jabil Circuit employees, some of them wearing masks and holding signs, staged a demonstration outside the gate of the company’s Guadalajara plant. The protesters demanded the reinstatement of dismissed workers, freedom of association, steady work and labor justice. In a press statement, the demonstrators contended that pay inequity among “workers performing the same activities” violated Article 4 of the Mexican Constitution that guarantees equal pay for equal work.

The Guadalajara action was also endorsed by the National Coalition of Workers and Ex-Workers of the Electronics Industry. A phone call to Jabil’s headquarters in Florida was not immediately returned.

Last fall, Cereal released a report that highlighted the low pay of electronics industry workers in Mexico. According to the Jesuit-affiliated group, the $8.70 average rate of daily pay in the electronics industry is sufficient to cover only 60% of the cost of a basket of food and other routinely-consumed goods. In a production cost analysis, Cereal asserted that workers only receive 0.1%, or 64 cents, of the sales price of a smartphone that retails for more than $600 abroad.

Covering a variety of issues, the report included case studies of worker experiences with Nokia, Lenovo, Philips, Blackberry, Dell, Foxconn, and Celestica. Since the Mexican high-tech sector is so reliant on sub-contracted workers hired through temporary agencies, the report also discussed the Manpower and Azanza temporary employment firms.

“Frequently, workers who sign seven-day contracts stay in the company months and even years, signing contracts every week,” Cereal said in a statement announcing the release of the report.

Jorge Barajas, Cereal coordinator for Guadalajara, said industry reactions to the report varied. While Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sanmina were most responsive, some finger-pointing went on with Blackberry, for example, telling Cereal to speak with its supplier Jabil about labor problems, Barajas said. On the other hand, Sanmina rehired 10 workers and made severance and social security payments to 20 others, according to the longtime labor activist. “These are verified, concrete changes,” he said.

For years Cereal and other non-governmental organizations have dialogued with the heavy hitters in the high-tech world assembled in the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), an initiative which was launched eight years ago to promote business, labor and environmental best practices.

According to the EICC’s mission statement, the organization envisions “a global electronics industry supply chain that consistently operates with social, environmental and economic responsibility.” Available in 16 languages, the EICC has a code of conduct its 67 member companies must commit to implement in their employment and production policies.

The EICC Code of Conduct upholds adherence to all local laws regarding wages and benefits, and explicitly recognizes the right of workers to freedom of association.

“Workers shall be able to communicate openly with management regarding working conditions without fear of reprisal, intimidation or harassment,” the EICC Code of Conduct states.

Barajas said the results of the management-labor dialogue have been mixed at best, with progress noted in different individual grievances but little headway made in changing structural conditions like the growing use of temporary workers, the lack of genuine union representation and revolving lay-offs.

Since the beginning of the year, Cereal has estimated that about 3,000 high-tech workers have been laid off from Guadalajara plants.

“There was a lot of expectation in the beginning but (EICC) has lost a lot of credibility in the last two years among unions and NGOs because of its inability to affect changes in the industry,” Barajas said. “There is a lot of debate about the utility of the EICC, even in the industry.”

The lot of high-tech industry workers in Guadalajara and elsewhere will be on the agenda of an international gathering scheduled for Amsterdam this upcoming May. The meeting is expected to draw representatives from the EICC and its European counterpart as well as unions and groups like Cereal. According to Barajas, labor activists are increasingly looking to the United Nations as the possible forum for resolving worker grievances in an emblematic industry that spans the globe.

For Guadalajara high-tech worker Maria, the right of workers to organize and enjoy a decent career is a fundamental one that’s currently missing
from their lives. “I want my job, but I want it with dignity,” she said. “This is something we deserve.”

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This article was first published March 3 on Frontera NorteSur.

From our Daily Report:

Mexico: unions hold “last May Day of the PAN era”
World War 4 Report, May 8, 2012

Strikes spread across China
World War 4 Report, Dec. 3, 2011

See also:

iDIDN’T MOURN STEVE JOBS
by Michael I. Niman, ArtVoice, Buffalo, NY
World War 4 Report, December 2011

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, June. 20, 2012
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingMEXICAN HIGH-TECH WORKERS DEMAND JUSTICE 

MESOAMERICA PROJECT

Obama's Message to the Latin American Governments

by Emma Volante, Upside Down World

On Dec. 5, 2011, representatives from Mexico, Colombia and the countries of Central American attended the 13th Summit of the Tuxtla Mechanism for Dialogue and Coordination in Merida, Mexico. The summit's main purpose was to discuss the progress of different initiatives included in the Mesoamerica Project's framework, which is the new version of the Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP).

Launched by the Mexican government in 2001, the PPP envisioned the creation of infrastructures that would connect Central America from Puebla, south of Mexico City, down to Panama, all promoted in the name of development and welfare for the people of the region. The idea was to facilitate investments by transnational corporations through the creation of incentives for maquiladoras and mining companies. Furthermore, to ensure the full development of neoliberalism, they planned to open numerous hydroelectric power plants that would provide these factories with energy, as well as new means of communication within the region, to better enable trade. The PPP was primarily financed by loans from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, which citizens themselves have since had to pay back. It was not long after that that Central Americans rose up in protest and lifted the veil on the Plan’s true objectives, obscured by government promises of "development," which were essentially to create the conditions to strip these nations of their natural resources and to uproot entire communities, and exploiting the people in maquiladoras as underpaid and exploited workforces with no rights. The popular resistance has been strong and as a result PPP has disappeared from official discourse.

However, governments and international organizations continued to carry out certain projects until June 2008, when the Villahermosa Declaration was signed, replacing the PPP with the "new" Mesoamerica Integration and Development Project, or the Mesoamerica Project (MP). The new project eliminates some 95% of the original projects (which were based on strategic principles of physical and economic infrastructure and cooperating for social development), but the remaining projects have expanded to include the Dominican Republic and Colombia. And if we take into account that a similar project named the Initiative for Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IRSSA) also emphasizes infrastructure development and integration through ecologically damaging mega-projects, it is apparent how this attempt to integrate the continent would imply greater circulation and extraction of resources by transnational corporations, which in turn would then arrive at US, European and Chinese ports.

The final document from the Tuxtla Summit further focuses on existing security problems in the region, and naively urges the US and other countries that produce and sell weapons to create regulations necessary to stem their weapons flow and to take measures that will considerably reduce their citizens' demand for drugs. The statement also reiterates how important the participating governments' involvement is in fighting organized crime. The MP is not, in fact, merely economic, as it openly addresses problems surrounding regional security and the "war on drugs."

The CIEPAC (Centro de Investigaciones Económicas y Políticas de Acción Comunitaria) report “Integration for Plunder: The Mesoamerica Project, or Ratcheting up the Land Grab”, written by Mariana Zunino, gives details of the future projects of the MP while offering a perspective that goes beyond official statements. Zunino observes that "with this new ingredient of security, the MP has more clearly become a US geo-strategic plan to force countries from Mexico to Colombia to conform to its national security interests.… According to the Mexico City-based Permanent Seminar on Chicano and Border Studies, the way out of the deep economic crisis involves boosting the military-industrial complex through two ways. First, though coercion, which includes new military bases in Colombia, Peru and Panama; supporting the coup in Honduras; or the reactivation, after 50 years, of the US Navy’s Fourth Fleet in the Caribbean. Then, diplomacy, through Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)."

Zunino points out that the first aspect was also highlighted in the Declaration of Guanacaste in Costa Rica at the 11th Summit of the Tuxtla Mechanism for Dialogue and Coordination, which dedicates 10 points to the fight against drug-trafficking and organized crime. There they agreed to "welcome the Merida Initiative, as an important instrument of international cooperation in the fight against transnational organized crime, particularly drug trafficking."

The Merida Initiative (or "Plan Mexico") provides large US investments for the militarization of the drug war in Mexico and Central America by providing military equipment and training. A strikingly similar project, Plan Colombia, has been in effect in the Andean nation since 2000. The underlying logic behind both projects is to use "territorial rearrangement," which involves displacing indigenous and other rural communities that live in strategic commercial areas, in order to make space for multinational corporations to develop transnational investment, in areas such as oil.

Argentine journalist Stella Calloni discussed US policy on the continent in an interview with Fernando Arellano Ortiz, the Director of online news portal ‘Observatorio Sociopolítico Latinoamericano’. Calloni stated that "Plan Colombia's territorial politics, which aim to re-colonize the continent, have been transferred over to Mexico under the Merida Initiative. The project is a copy of Plan Colombia and it’s evident that violence in Mexico has reached unbearable levels in the last six years. During this time, Mexico’s death toll reached that of Colombia while the country suffered destruction of its rural areas and the loss of deep-rooted local cultures, all due to its involvement in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)."

However, at the Merida Summit, Mexican President Felipe Calderón insisted, stating that "the North American Free Trade Agreement is a great asset for the country." He also signed a new treaty—along with other Central American governments – to reinforce existing bilateral agreements and create space for free trade in the region. These governments, who are almost all right-wing, are evidently following US imperial interests in implementing free trade policies.

Not only has the US signed FTAs with Central America and the Dominican Republic, but also with Chile, Peru and most recently with Colombia. Therefore, thanks to the implementation of these corporate, economic and military agreements in Colombia, Mexico and Central America, Washington is one step closer to reaching its goals for establishing militarized neoliberalism throughout the continent.

On December 6, Panama, Colombia and the US signed an agreement for a new military academy in Panama. Andrés Mora Rodriguez, from AUNA Costa Rica, points out that plans for the new academy and the consolidation of the Mesoamerican FTA were announced only a few days after the end of the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Summit in Caracas, Venezuela, where heads of state from around Latin America made a major step toward regional integration and independence outside the interests of Washington. The US message to the Latin American governments is a clear one: we are not letting go of our hold on the continent.

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This article was first published Jan. 4 on Upside Down World. It was translated from the Spanish by Victoria Robinson.

From our Daily Report:

Oaxaca meets the new boss —or does it?
World War 4 Report, Jan. 28, 2011

See also:

THE RETURN OF PLAN PUEBLA-PANAMA
The New Struggle for Central America
by Bill Weinberg, World War 4 Report
World War 4 Report, May 2007

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, June. 20, 2012
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingMESOAMERICA PROJECT 

OCCUPY GUATEMALA

Shantytown Dwellers Occupy Congress—And Win

by Frauke Decoodt, World War 4 Report

As crisis and poverty escalate in the Western world, activists in Europe and North America occupied city squares everywhere. In Guatemala City, however, an independent movement existed, as activists occupied the street in front of Congress from Aug. 22, 2011 until Jan. 12, 2012. Here, warm houses were not sacrificed for tents—rather, miserable hovels have been exchanged for tents. Activists from the slums pledged not to leave until the “Housing Law” was approved—demanding a solution for the housing crisis in Guatemala. A lack of affordable accommodation forces uncountable Guatemalans into shantytowns where precarious living conditions often have lethal consequences.

The slums of Guatemala
Everywhere you look there are banners in the tent-camp. The khaki-colored tents were distributed in the shantytowns following natural disasters. Electricity is provided by a school down the street, and plastic toilets were donated by supportive social movements. In the camp, a coal fire is smoldering. The welcoming activists, mostly chatting women and their children, largely ignore the television. “The conditions here are better than where we live,” they assure me.

The protesters are some of the estimated 1.5 million inhabitants of the slums of Guatemala. Shantytowns are everywhere, in cities and in the countryside. Recent accurate figures are not available. Within the camp Roly Escobar, the sympathetic representative of the organization CONAPAMG (National Coordinator of Marginal Areas and Inhabitants of Guatemala), is having a meeting with his some fellow activists. We look for a quiet place to talk. Escobar has a thorough understanding of the situation, having fought for years for the rights of poor neighborhoods. Escobar claims that in Guatemala more than 800,000 families live in shacks in the country’s some 1,000 slums. Nearly half of these are situated in and around Guatemala City. According to experts, a fifth to one third of the 2.5 million inhabitants of the metropolitan area reside in “precarious” locations—that is, essentially squatting, with no official title.

The residents call their shantytowns “settlements.” They feel this is a more dignified and accurate description, as the settlements can vary in size from a house to a whole neighborhood. “Only poor people live in the settlements, they are forced to settle on land which they do not own,” says Escobar. “Often this is wasteland where nobody wants to live, on the edge of ravines, on steep slopes and adjacent to or in garbage dumps.”

After leaving the streets to live in the slums, Luis Lacán quickly became aware of the needs of the settlement dwellers and the problems they face. He joined UNASGUA—an organization that offers legal support to those who fight to improve conditions in the slums. As we sit in his humble office, Lacán explains, “living conditions are precarious because invariably the occupied land has nothing, no water, no electricity, no drainage, no paved streets, nothing.”

Lacán worries about his fellow slum dwellers. He explains that one cannot connect water and electricity without being able to prove a legal right to occupancy. The settlements are not included in official plans for regional and urban development and so are not considered for infrastructure investment. This sometimes has disastrous consequences for the safety and health of residents.

Over time residents often start to organize themselves, some areas acquire electricity and water, some shacks become more like houses, while others still resemble cardboard boxes. However, in spite of the age of a settlement, without legalization, the fear of eviction is ever-present.

Surviving in the slums
“Most families in our neighborhoods live in houses made of rusty corrugated iron, cardboard and plastic. Some families do not even have that,” says Brenda, one of the campaigners camped outside Congress. A young mother named Julia adds, “Without sewage systems all the waste water from the surrounding neighborhoods passes by our shacks, shacks which have earth floors. It’s a breeding ground for diseases and infections. Our children get sick, sometimes they die, just because they lack a decent home. My daughter was eighteen months old when she became ill and died.”

Brenda nods affirmatively. “During the rainy season, many people live in mud,” he says. “Water flows through their shacks. Children and the elderly are particularly susceptible to pneumonia and bronchitis and deaths are not uncommon. Recently, an elderly woman died in my neighborhood from bronchitis. Because of hurricane Agatha in 2010 she lived in a house built from cardboard and plastic. My neighborhood suffered much then.”

Malnutrition has a huge impact on the health and development of the residents, especially children. According to figures from the United Nations half of Guatemalans live below the poverty line, and half the children are malnourished. These figures are the daily reality of slum dwellers. “We do not have enough money to buy food for our children. With the privatizations everything became more expensive; food, water, gas, electricity,” explains Brenda indignantly. Escobar emphasizes that it is not only young children but that most settlement dwellers are malnourished. “How is this possible in such a rich country? Without work and income people will die of hunger here. This is already happening. Recently three fifteen year old teenagers died of malnutrition.”

Another common cause of death in these neighborhoods is violence. The slums are often associated with notoriously brutal gangs. Escobar, whose son was murdered, wants to put this violence in its context. “If there is no work, no schools, nothing to do, and you have the level of poverty where parents cannot afford to feed their children or send them to school then you are going to get criminality. Young people become easy prey to powerful organized criminals. These problems are not born here and do not only occur here. The whole of Guatemala is plagued by narcos and violence.”

Many inhabitants feel hopeless. Doña Rosa, an elderly woman who joins in as Brenda and Julia talk cannot restrain her tears. “What will happen if I die? Maybe I will never see this legalization.”

A lame housing policy and a growing housing problem
“Why do we go and live in a slum on the edge of an abyss or on a steep mountain slope? Not because we want to live like this, but because we hope to survive. People live here because they have no choice, there is no viable, affordable housing. Far too many people have nowhere to live,” says Brenda, whilst her five year old daughter jumps around catching her attention.

The reasons why there are so many overcrowded slums are diverse. The recent armed conflict, natural disasters, population growth and a lack of land or work in the countryside have forced many Guatemalans to migrate to the city and live in the slums.

Official figures estimate that by the end of 2011 there will be a housing shortage for 1.6 million households, of which 15% will be in Guatemala City. “The increasing demand exceeds the capacity of the State to resolve the incurred housing shortage,” concludes the state Peace Secretariat (SEGEPAZ). Those knowledgeable about the housing crisis and settlement residents agree that the government has never really tried to find a solution to the housing problem. ASIES, a research institution, found that since 1956 government action on housing has consisted of sporadic initiatives undertaken by inefficient institutions and of insufficient policy interventions, resulting in the accumulation of an enormous housing shortage.

To remedy this situation the first “Law for Housing” was finally approved in 1996. Overseen by the Ministry of Communications, Infrastructure and Housing, the new housing initiative received a ridiculously low budget. The corrupt siphoning of funds by government officials, building companies, and representatives of neighborhood organizations has left little to provide for those with housing needs. Applying for a grant under the scheme is not only a very long and bureaucratic process, it also requires the applicant to add a considerable sum of money, something many do not have. “Given the size of the housing problem, it was clear that this law was not a solution,” concludes Lacán.

The housing policy of the last few decades was mainly characterized by cosmetic solutions claims Helmer Velásquez of the newspaper El Periodico. “Residents must first occupy what is basically an uninhabitable piece of land in order to gain the attention of the authorities. After a while they are provided with ‘important’ infrastructure such as stairs and paved allies. Especially during the elections there is thought about the conditions in the slums and about legalization.” Lacán affirms that “only during elections politicians find the way to the slums. Then they come with presents such as corrugated iron and concrete, with promises such as employment, education and health.”

From bills to hunger stikes
As a result of these myriad problems, shantytown residents and related social movements began working on a bill themselves, drawing on their own experiences, the Constitution, national laws and the international treaties of the United Nations which guarantee the right to housing. The University of San Carlos and relevant state institutions further refined the proposal. Lacán continues, “In 2008 the bill was presented to Congress. There too, the proposal was revised and eventually consented by Congressional committees. Since then it is stuck. The bill should only be reread and approved, in principle, a formality.”

On Aug. 23, 2011, when the bill was again not approved for the umpteenth time, some activists decided to set up a “Shantytown Congress,” camping in front of the doors until they are heard. “So many governments have come and gone and no one has ever taken us into account. Now we are here and we stay until they approve the bill,” declares the elderly Doña Rosa combatively.

“We struggle for a law that will benefit the entire Guatemalan population,” emphasizes Brenda. “We demand that shacks are changed into livable homes, that our land and our homes are legalized so we can finally connect basic services, we demand that housing is provided to families who really need it.”

Escobar wants socially responsible institutions and housing policy directed from a dedicated housing ministry. A good housing policy needs to have good law as its foundations.

Academics however point out that a law and legalization are not enough. Attention should also be paid to education, employment, living conditions, in short to a different socio-economic model which breaks the vicious circle of poverty. Otherwise, the slums will continue to grow.

But after nearly four months in front of Congress the slum dwellers begin to lose their patience. After the bill was rejected again on Nov. 22 three residents, including the young mother Julia, decided to start a hunger strike.

Update: A happy end?
The three slum dwellers stopped their hungerstrike after 19 days. The activists from the slums lifted their occupation in front of Congress after five months. The changing political context of the country was on their side. Otto Pérez Molina would soon become the new president and wanted the streets clean for his inauguration. On Jan. 12, two days before the ceremony, he visited the protesters with the head of Congress. Both promised to pass the bill by the end of March. They carried a letter signed by 40 members of Congress backing this position. The slum dwellers vowed to return if the politicians broke their promises.

On Feb. 10, the bill finally became law. What remains to be seen now is if the measures within the law are fulfilled. Guatemala has many great laws and agreements, the problem is they are often not enacted. Another question is where will the money come from to provide decent housing for 1.5 million people within the next four years.

For a president that vowed to rule with an iron fist, and who is haunted by a past stained with accusations of grave human right violations, Pérez Molina’s support for the housing law and slum dwellers seems rather unexpected. This is arguably a strategic move to prove his opponents wrong and gain support of a sizable part of the population. Many presidents have promised decent housing at the beginning of their term, but the slum residents now have a law that might force authorities to turn words into action, or in this case, houses.

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This article was first published in Dutch on Dec. 2, 2011 on the author’s website, and later translated in English, Spanish and German. It was updated on May 9.

Resources:

Movimiento Guatemalteco de Pobladores
www.movimientoguatemaltecodepobladores.blogspot.com

International Alliance of Inhabitants
www.habitants.org

See also:

“THIS LAND IS OURS!”
Land Theft as Legacy of Genocide in Guatemala
by Frauke Decoodt, World War 4 Report
World War 4 Report, December 2010

OCCUPY JUAREZ DEFIES REPRESSION
by Dawn Paley, Upside Down World
World War 4 Report, December 2011

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Special to World War 4 Report, June 20, 2012
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingOCCUPY GUATEMALA 

REPSOL SUES ARGENTINA OVER YPF NATIONALIZATION

by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero, CorpWatch

Repsol, a multinational based in Spain, has brought a class action lawsuit in New York courts against the Argentine government for the re-nationalization of YPF, the former Argentine state oil company. The company has also lodged a complaint with the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina signed a bill on May 4 seizing 51% of the company’s shares after over 80% of legislators in both the lower and upper houses of parliament voted in favor. Respol, which owned 57% of YPF, wants $10.5 billion in compensation, although it may find it hard to collect since Buenos Aires has ignored previous ICSID fines.

“When corporate interests are not aligned with national interests, when companies are concerned only with profits, that’s when economies fail, which is what happened globally in 2008 and what happened to Argentina in 2001,” Fernández said in a speech on May 3 to explain her motives in pushing for the takeover alleging that Repsol under-invested in the company and paid out excessive dividends, essentially stripping out the value.

Fernández’s move has rattled international financial markets but drawn extensive praise from some popular movements.

The Battle Against Privatization in South America

In the 1970s, most oil companies in South America were state-owned, just like most utilities. Following the debt crisis of the 1980s, governments in the region were persuaded by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to privatize many of these state assets. A number of European multinationals – like Repsol of Spain and Suez of France – jumped at the opportunity to capture lucrative new sources of production and revenues. Financial institutions hailed this wave as an opportunity for the region to attract capital for modernization and to get rid of unnecessary bureaucracy.

Carlos Menem, who was elected the president of Argentina at this time, became the darling of global financial markets for his aggressive privatization strategy that brought in foreign direct investment, cut inflation and boosted productivity, although his policies also caused major unemployment. At the same time Menem also increased borrowing from the International Monetary Fund and failed to control the flight of capital out of the country by the country’s elite. In 2001, the Argentine economy collapsed again.

In 2003 President Néstor Kirchner was elected. He chose to turn his back on the international financial institutions and renegotiate the national debt at favorable terms and engineer an economic recovery. In 2006 he canceled Argentina’s contract for water supply to Buenos Aires with the French company Suez.

He was succeeded in 2007 by his wife, Cristina Fernández, who maintained his policies of keeping the international institutions and multinationals at bay.

The partial nationalization of YPF (49% of the company will remain in the hands of local and foreign private investors) repudiates the advice of international economists but is wildly popular in Argentina. It could bring an influx of cash to the Argentine economy but could also backfire, if it does not.

Then there is the threat of Western interests who do not take kindly to being kicked out. Notably, the government of Spain has not taken the news well. Spanish president Mariano Rajoy has threatened economic sanctions against Argentina, and vice president Soraya Saenz de Santamaria has stated that Spain and its allies “will protect the juridical safety of European investments worldwide”. The European Union is considering bringing a case against Argentina to the World Trade Organization.

Fernandez says she has a very pragmatic reason for pushing for nationalization: Argentina’s bills for energy imports hit $9.4 billion last year affecting the country’s trade surplus.

Environmental Impact Questionable

She has the backing of some community activists.

“Repsol is still in debt to the people of Argentina and to nature,” proclaimed the National Peasant and Indigenous Movement (MNCI) on their website. “The REPSOL corporation must assume responsibility for the environmental harms it has caused and damages to natural resources, economically compensating the country and the peasant and indigenous communities that have been affected.”

But not all movements are convinced that a state owned YPF will be that different. “As an ecologist collective, and being plainly conscious that the Argentina government was not thinking of environmental issues when it made its decision, we will remain vigilant of [YPF’s] future actions,” said Noelia Sánchez of the Spanish group Ecologistas en Acción.

Indeed Repsol-YPF has been tried three times by the Permanent Peoples Tribunal for environmental and human rights violations and found guilty. For example in 2010 YPF was accused of trampling on the rights of the Lonko Purran community of Mapuche people in the Cerro Bandera oil field.

Others note that YPF plans to exploit the country’s “unconventional” oil and gas finds, such as the Vaca Muerta oil deposit in the province of Neuquen, using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) will mean business as usual, no matter who owns the company: “The future scenario could be one of profound environmental and social risk for much of the country, as experience abroad (of the environmental impact of fracking) has demonstrated,” warns Diego Di Risio, a spokesman for Petroleum Observatory South (Opsur)

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This story first appeared May 18 on CorpWatch.

Resources:

Oil Giant Repsol Sues Argentina
Courthouse News Service, May 18, 2012

From our Daily Report:

Fracking and “energy independence”: full-on propaganda push
World War 4 Report, May 6, 2012

Argentina: government plans to re-nationalize oil company
World War 4 Report, April 24, 2012

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, June 20, 2012
Reprinting permissible with attribution
 

Continue ReadingREPSOL SUES ARGENTINA OVER YPF NATIONALIZATION 

Ron Paul Hall of Flame

Here are some the choice comments that we chose to preserve here rather than approving them on the original page where they will further drag down the level of dialogue (as if that were possible)…

There are…
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 01/22/2012 – 02:14.
Good Jews, bad Jews, then there’s moron Jews. Weenieberg here is the the latter. What I don’t get is if Jews are so “clever” then why can’t they anticipate their next holocaust?

Bill Weinberg wants to kill the President
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 01/22/2012 – 04:28.
Hey I can play this game too:

1. Andrew Adler, publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, suggested that Israel hire a hit squad to take out Obama.

2. Bill Weinberg has a Jewish-sounding surname.

3. Bill Weinberg hasn’t repuidiated Andrew Adler.

3. Therefore Bill Weinberg wants to assassinate the President.

Excuse me? I didn’t say anything about Ron Paul’s last name.

Bill Weinberg
Submitted by Matt (not verified) on Sun, 01/22/2012 – 14:37.
Is nothing more than a Jewish supremacist spewing his hate for American freedom, free enterprise, liberty and anyone who is not an Israel Firster.

Why do Jews so much hate Ron Paul? Because Ron Paul will dismantle their dominance over banking, media, Hollywood, the U.S. Govt, and Jewish Extremist Terrorism (i.e., 9/11). No, he won’t dismantle these necessarily by force, but rather the free market will crumble the crony system that props all these Jewish dominated apparatus up.

This is why Bill Weinberg hates Ron Paul. He and his mentally deformed genetic relatives will be out of business.

PLEASE EXCUSE ME, AS A
Submitted by Billl Weinberg (not verified) on Sun, 01/22/2012 – 15:49.
PLEASE EXCUSE ME, AS A WEINBERG, I AM BEING JEWISH. $39 TO REPLY TO THIS.

Pretty funny, you guys glorify “free enterprise”—unless practiced by people with Jewish last names.

Don’t you have a dick to suck weinhole?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 01/22/2012 – 14:24.
You’re the sucker — a shill for the establishment.

See how your corporate owned buddies will work out for you when they shut down your propaganda website because someone was threatened by it.

Dumbass.

As for your $7– pull it out your ass like the Fed does.

Bill Weinberg is a NWO piece of garbage that supports murder and
Submitted by Freeman via the creator (not verified) on Sun, 01/22/2012 – 14:27.
the destruction of America. How do we know this? Because he supports people who are active in destroying our country and writes trash like this that have no basis in reality.

Don’t worry Weinberg everyone is waking up to the BS and people like you are fast becoming not unlike the ancient Der Stürmer that told the Germans Jews kidnapped small children to drink their blood.

Your the racist evil one Bill, your the one dividing our country and pushing us closer toward the debt crisis perpetual war and tyranny.

You and your ideas will be rooted out into the open and in the end no one will listen to a single lying foul word that comes from your mouth.

Oh an just remember they are destroying you and your families future as well you idiot.

Screwdriver
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 01/22/2012 – 20:31.
That’s what you need….you have numerous screws loose. Good luck!

Screwdriver? Perhaps a reference to these guys…? One hopes not…

Hahaha! Everybody says there
Submitted by Anonymous Rabbit (not verified) on Fri, 02/03/2012 – 14:47.
Hahaha!

Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.

The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and “assimilating” with them.

Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.

What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?

How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?

And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?

But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, everyone agrees that I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

They say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white.

Continue ReadingRon Paul Hall of Flame 

THE DISPOSSESSION OF THE PALESTINIANS, PT. V

Continued from node 9140

The Bedouin Struggle

While stopping short of explicitly protesting the displacement of Palestinians on the West Bank, the coordinating committee of the Tel Aviv rent protests did adopt the demand for legalization of “unrecognized” Bedouin villages within Israel. (972Mag, Aug. 7, 2011)

Pressure on this issue had been mounting throughout the year. For months, Israeli forces had been demolishing homes at the Bedouin village al-Araqib in the Negev—an “unrecognized” village that an Israeli court found to be “illegally” built on “state land,” and slated to be removed. The residents—all Israeli citizens, and one third of them are children—had been in court for several years, to demand their land rights. At least 200 children had been left homeless by the recent evictions. Fruit orchards and olive grove trees were also destroyed. The UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination both expressed concern over Israel’s policy toward its Bedouin population. In July 2011, UNHRC called on Israeli authorities to “respect the Bedouin population’s right to their ancestral land and their traditional livelihood based on agriculture.” (Maan News Agency, Nov. 12, 2011)

In March, Israeli prosecutors launched a $275,000 lawsuit against Bedouin families for the cost of removing them from “state land” they tried to take over northwest of Beersheba. The suit targeted the sheikh of a Bedouin tribe that had staged 13 attempts to occupy “state land” near the Bedouin town of Rahat. Officials estimated there were thousands of “illegal” Bedouin settlements, also known as “non-recognized communities,” with tens of thousands of illegally constructed buildings, in the Negev. (Arutz Sheva, March 2, 2011)

In response to a reported initiative to settle the issue of “unrecognized” villages, Bedouin leaders accused the Israeli government of a “divide and conquer” strategy in order to seize Bedouin lands. A special committee was reported to have prepared a plan under which Bedouins who can prove an historical link to their land could receive financial compensation for a portion of their lots. If the Bedouins accept this offer, the extent of land that could be included in the deal would be approximately 150,000 dunums (about 40,000 acres)—less than half of the land the Bedouins lay claim to. (Ha’aretz, YNet, March 10, 2011)

Dr. Awad Abu Farih, spokesman for the local committee for the unrecognized village of al-Araqib, rejected the reported deal, saying: “How can someone discuss the lives of tens of thousands of people in the Negev without involving them at all? [O]ur principled position is to recognize all the unrecognized Bedouin settlements in the Negev, and nothing but that.” Ibrahim al-Wakili, who heads the regional council of unrecognized Bedouin communities in the Negev, said that the offer does not answer the Bedouins claims at all. “There are more than 45 unrecognized settlements on a large portion of land worth hundreds of thousands ofdunums for decades,” al-Wakili said. He asserted, “our land isn’t for sale.” (Ibid)

The committee, which was appointed by former Housing Minister Zeev Boim in late 2007, was preparing a draft report, to be considered by the Prime Minister’s Office, based on a survey headed by retired justice and former State Comptroller Eliezer Goldberg. The Prime Minister’s office was preparing its own regional development plan for the Negev, foreseeing a large Jewish influx into the southern desert region. Ramat Negev Council head Shmulik Rifman warned, “If they don’t finalize the Bedouin settlement it will be very hard to enhance Jewish settlement in the Negev. This must be addressed if one wants 700,000 Jews in the Negev.” (Ibid)

The land of some of the Bedouin communities slated to be evicted under the proposed Israeli government plan was slated for construction of a new Jewish community, according to documents obtained by Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in the Jewish state. The plan called for the forcible relocation of some 30,000 Bedouin to designated existing Bedouin towns. The Prime Minister’s Office intervened to block the unincorporated hamlets of Atir and Umm al-Hiran (near the legal village of Wadi Atir) from being recognized as “legal” villages, contrary to the recommendations of an advisory committee of the National Planning and Building Council. The some 1,000 Bedouin who live in the hamlets, all members of the Abu Alqiyan clan, say they had actually been relocated to their current lands by the Israeli military in the 1950s. Until 1948, the clan held the land where Kibbutz Shoval now stands. After the war, the clan roamed the Negev desert seeking new land, finally being assigned to the Wadi Atir area in 1956. A classified military document dating from 1957 says that the clan received 7,000 dunams of land near the wadi (oasis). It later divided into two hamlets that shared the land. But a plan to build a new Jewish community, to be called Hiran, was submitted to the regional planning and building committee. The Interior Ministry said that a detailed plan for the first neighborhood of Hiran was already under consideration. (Ha’aretz, June 3, 2011)

Unrecognized Bedouin villages receive no basic services such as water and electricity from the state. An estimated 90,000—nearly half of the total Bedouin population of the Negev—currently live in unrecognized villages. The government’s new policy paper—dubbed the Prawer Report for Ehud Prawer, Netanyahu’s director of Planning Policy—called relocating 40% of the Bedouin population now living in unrecognized villages and concentrating them into the seven Israeli government-planned Bedouin townships. These townships are largely viewed as dormitory towns: residents would only sleep there, and be forced to go outside of the town for nearly everything else they need. An Israeli cabinet vote on the Prawer Report scheduled for early June, was postponed due to pressure from right-wing parties, who said the plan gives too much to the Bedouin. If approved, Israel hoped to implement the Prawer Report within a five-year period. A new Bedouin organization called “Recognition Now” was formed to fight the plan, and demand Bedouin land and civil rights in the Negev. (Electronic Intifada, June 16, 2011)

Bedouin were also facing eviction on the West Bank, of course. Evacuation and demolition orders were handed out to a Bedouin family east of Tubas on March 27. The orders come amid concern from UNRWA officials who noted a near two-fold increase in home demolitions during the first two months of 2011. Nabil Mustafa Daraghmeh, the head of a Bedouin family in the Ein Al-Hilwa area outside of Tubas in the northern West Bank, was served papers demanding he and his family evacuate their tent home and move their herds elsewhere. Palestinian security officials said several Israeli military patrol cars arrived in the area to serve the papers, which gave Daraghmeh one day to leave the area. (Ma’an News Agency, March 28, 2011)

Bedouin herding families were increasinly targeted by Israeli officials, who began executing evacuation orders for areas that the Civil Administration has determined are “state land,” lands that fall under Israeli-controlled Area C, or are designated as firing or military training areas. Areas that are not under Palestinian civil control amount to some 60% of the West Bank. (Ma’an News Agency, March 28, 2011)

Mohamed al-Korshan, representative of the Bedouin community in the West Bank, spoke May 24 at the 10th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York, where he appealed for recognition of his people as a displaced indigenous group living as refugees under occupation. Korshan said there were now 40,000 Bedouin in the West Bank, who were separated from Bedouin tribes in the Negev desert after Israel became a state in 1948. They hold Palestinian identity documents, but many live in Area C, under direct Israeli military occupation. Others, who fled the Negev in 1948, are in UN-run refugee camps, where they have lost their traditional livelihood as nomads and are experiencing an erosion of their culture. (WAFA, May 25; Haaretz, May 24, 2011)

“Since the military occupation of the West Bank by Israel in 1967, the Bedouin in the West Bank are experiencing increasing duress,” Korshan said. “On a daily basis we encounter discrimination, social isolation, multiple counts of home demolition and dispossession, food and water insecurity, harassment by Israeli settlers, all of which constitute triggers to forced displacement.” (Ibid)

Whither Recognition?

With the peace process essentially frozen, the Fatah leadership announced in September that it would seek recognition for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations—a move bitterly protested by Israel and the US. (AlJazeera, Sept. 14, 2011)

Abbas and his team were weighing whether to apply through the Security Council for full membership—which the US vowed to veto—or to go directly to the General Assembly, with no veto and a pro-Palestinian majority. The General Assembly, however, could only declare Palestine an “observer” state, not a full UN member. This would still allow Palestine to join international agencies and treaty groups—including the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court, where it could bring complaints against Israel. (Although a further jurisdictional dilemma is raised by the fact that Israel is not a member of the ICC.) (NYT, Sept. 9)

But criticisms of the statehood bid also came from within the Palestinian camp. The team responsible for preparing the UN initiative was given an independent legal opinion that warned of the proposal’s risks to Palestinian rights. The initiative would transfer the Palestinians’ representation at the UN from the PLO to a state—terminating the international legal status held by the PLO since 1975 as sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This could mean there would no longer be an institution to represent the rights of the Palestinian people in the UN and related international institutions, the document stated. The seven-page opinion, obtained by the independent Ma’an News Agency, was submitted to the Palestinian team by Guy Goodwin-Gill, a professor of international law at Oxford University and a member of the team that won the 2004 judgement by the International Court of Justice that the route of Israel’s West Bank wall was illegal. (Ma’an News Agency, Aug. 24, 2011)

Under the initiative, being prepared by a Palestinian team headed by Saeb Erekat, the PLO would be replaced at the UN with a State of Palestine as representative of the Palestinian people. However, an actual state would not be created, as long as Israel’s occupation continues. The dissenting brief was intended to “flag the matters requiring attention” so that Palestinians are not “accidentally disenfranchised.” It warned that the Palestinian Authority, which was established by the PLO as a temporary administrative entity, “has limited legislative and executive competence, limited territorial jurisdiction, and limited personal jurisdiction over Palestinians not present in the areas for which it has been accorded responsibility.” It also noted implications for Palestinian refugees and others in the diaspora: “They constitute more than half of the people of Palestine, and if they are ‘disenfranchised’ and lose their representation in the UN, it will not only prejudice their entitlement to equal representation…but also their ability to vocalize their views, to participate in matters of national governance, including the formation and political identity of the State, and to exercise the right of return.” (Ibid)

The UN on Sept. 2 issued its its report on the deadly 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, criticizing Israel for using “excessive and unreasonable” force but finding that the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip itself was lawful. Prepared by a panel headed by former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer for the office of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the report found:

The fundamental principle of the freedom of navigation on the high seas is subject to only certain limited exceptions under international law. Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law… Non-violent options should have been used in the first instance. In particular, clear prior warning that the vessels were to be boarded and a demonstration of dissuading force should have been given to avoid the type of confrontation that occurred. The operation should have reassessed its options when the resistance to the initial boarding attempt became apparent.

The report was predictably met with protest by both Israel and Turkey. Ankara expelled Israel’s envoy and froze military cooperation with the Jewish state following the release of the report, citing Israel’s failure to apologize for the raid. The Turkish administration also said it would seek to prosecute all Israelis involved in the raid. (Reuters, Jurist, Sept. 2, 2011)

US Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) was meanwhile promoting a bill to suspend Washington’s assistance to three elite Israeli military units implicated in human rights violations. Leahy called for aid to be withheld from the Israeli navy’s Shayetet 13 unit—that involved in the flotilla incident—as well as the undercover Duvdevan unit and the Israel Air Force’s Shaldag unit. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a long-time friend of Leahy, met with him in Washingto to try to persuade him to withdraw the initiative. Leahy began promoting the legislation after protesters staged a rally outside office. The activists pointed out that Leahy, who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee’s sub-committee on foreign operations, was the principle sponsor of a 1997 bill prohibiting the US from providing military assistance to foreign military units suspected of human rights abuses or war crimes. (Haaretz, Aug. 16, 2011)

On Sept. 8, the IDF reported new “price tag” attacks by presumed far-right settlers on Palestinian targets in the West Bank. A mosque in the village of Yitma, near Nablus, was vandalized with graffiti. Two Palestinian vehicles were torched in the village of Kablan. Vandals also broke into an army base outside the Beit El settlement, slashing tires and breaking windows on 13 vehicles. It was the first “price-tag” attack against the IDF, and drew harsh condemnation from the Israeli government. The attacks came after the IDF razed three homes at the Migron settler outpost. (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 10, 2011)

The Israeli right made much of comments by the Palestinian Authority’s ambassador to the US, Maen Rashid Areikat, at a breakfast briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington September, in which he supposedly called for a “Jew-free Palestinian state.” The offending quote:

“Well, I personally still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated, and we can contemplate these issues in the future,” he said when asked by The Daily Caller if he could imagine a Jew being elected mayor of the Palestinian city of Ramallah in a future independent Palestinian state. “But after the experience of 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it will be in the best interests of the two peoples to be separated first.” [Jerusalem Post, Sept. 14, 2011]

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (himself, ironically, a vocal advocate of “transfer” of the Palestinians from their homeland) said, “The Palestinian Authority has adopted the German idea of judenrein”—the Nazi policy of a “Jew-free” nation. (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 15, 2011)

Areikat himself responded: “It’s not a misquotation or out of context, it’s a total fabrication. I never mentioned the word ‘Jews,’ I never said that Palestine has to be free of Jews.” Areikat said that he stood by his call for “separation,” but that he intended to refer to the separation of the Israel and Palestinian peoples, not the members of the two religions. “Israeli people includes Christians, Jews, Muslims, Druze… When I say the Israeli people, I mean everybody. This is not a religious conflict, this is not against Jews. We want to be a secular state,” Areikat said. (The Cable, Sept. 15, 2011)

In an earlier interview with the Jewish-oriented Tablet Magazine, Areikat was more forthright, saying: “We need to separate… I’m not saying to transfer every Jew, I’m saying transfer Jews who, after an agreement with Israel, fall under the jurisdiction of a Palestinian state.” (Tablet Magazine, Oct. 2010)

But he was also unequivocal on recognizing Israel’s right to exist:

One hundred years of struggle over that piece of land that was called Palestine produced a lot of misconceptions and misperceptions. We witnessed the rise of national movements that were struggling to create homelands for their own people, and neither one wanted to acknowledge the presence of the other. I think of the early Zionist slogans of a land without a people for a people without a land… I remember former Prime Minister Golda Meir saying that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people in the early ’70s. I remember Palestinians saying that the only Jews in the land of Palestine are going to be Palestinian Jews. I think the bloody conflict brought leaders on both sides to their senses. We have seen at least, from the Palestinian side, since 1988, a clear acceptance of the existence of the State of Israel. [Ibid]

In October, the Security Council’s Standing Committee on Admission of New Members began considering Palestine’s application for full UN membership. Eight of the Security Council’s 15 members declared their support for the Palestinian application: China, Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa, Lebanon, Niger and Gabon. But a veto was practically inevitable by the United States, one of the five permanent Security Council members—which, unlike the 10 rotating members, wield veto power within the Council. (KashmirWatch, Oct. 1, 2011)

Palestinians were meanwhile concerned that their economy could collapse if Israel retaliated against the statehood bid by withholding revenue collected on their behalf. And US punitive financial measures were already coming into place. US Congress members called on President Obama to reduce the Palestinians’ annual $500 million in foreign aid if they proceeded at the UN. Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee acted to freeze about $200 million in Palestinian aid in response to the statehood bid. (Bloomberg, Sept. 21, 2011)

“There must be consequences for Palestinian and UN actions that undermine any hope for true and lasting peace,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (VA) and the number-two House Democrat, Steny Hoyer (MD), accused Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas of “diplomatic warfare” against Israel. Cantor and Hoyer wrote in a joint Sept. 22 opinion in the New York Daily News: “Congress will not sit idly by. The US will likely reconsider its assistance program for the PA and other aspects of US-Palestinian relations should the Palestinians choose to move forward in requesting a vote on statehood.” (Ibid)

But, significantly, the aid freeze only applied to butter—not to guns. In the unambiguous wording of one wire account: “The economic package is separate from security aid, which the US lawmakers say would be counterproductive to block. They fear that withholding those funds would weaken the ability of Palestinian security forces to quell anti-Israel violence.” (AFP, Oct. 1, 2011)

Israel openly replied to Palestine’s statehood bid with new East Jerusalem settlement plans. Prime Minister Netanyahu on Sept. 28 rejected Western and Arab complaints that the newly announced construction of 1,100 Jewish homes in Gilo on annexed land close to East Jerusalem would hurt efforts to revive the peace process. But the PLO executive committee, meeting in Ramallah, said that Israel must halt all settlement building in the occupied West Bank before they will restart talks. (Ma’an News Agency, Reuters, Sept. 29; Haaretz, Reuters, Sept. 28; AP, Sept. 27, 2011)

Israel reacted with even greater blatancy after the UN cultural organization UNESCO’s Oct. 31 decision to grant Palestine full-member status. The government immediately said it would move ahead with “sensitive housing projects”—as a rebuttal to UNESCO. Netanyahu and a forum of eight senior ministers formally decided the next day to initiate a new wave of settlement construction on the West Bank. The Prime Minister’s Office said the construction of 2,000 housing units planned in East Jerusalem, Gush Etzion and Ma’aleh Adumim should be expedited. “All of the mentioned areas are ones that would remain in Israeli control under any future peace agreement,” the PMO said in a statement. The ministers also resolved to suspend the transfer to the Palestinian Authority of tax remittances collected by Israel in October. Foreign Minister Lieberman additionally announced that Israel would “review its relations” with UNESCO. (Haaretz, Nov. 2; YNet, Oct. 31, 2011)

Only 13 of the 194 UNESCO members voted with Israel against granting full membership to Palestine. 107 voted for, while 52 abstained and the rest were absent. France voted for the Palestinians, and the UK abstained. The US responded to the vote by suspending its $80 million-a-year contribution to UNESCO’s $643 million budget. The cutback, decreed by Congress, went ahead even as UNESCO worked closely with the US in Afghanistan—on literacy, education, gender equity, clean water and basic health programs. (Toronto Star, Nov. 2, 2011)

Israel’s propaganda apparati quickly mobilized to delegitimize UNESCO’s decision. The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE, chaired by Yochanan Manor of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) issued a study asserting that Palestinian textbooks do not meet UNESCO’s requirements for tolerance and non-racism. The report, which examined 117 Palestinian textbooks, was purportedly commissioned before the Palestinians filed their UNESCO application. It charged that Palestinian textbooks and maps were largely devoid of any reference to Israel, geographic or otherwise. IMPACT-SE also found that many of the Palestinian schoolbooks glorified jihad, death and acts of violence, predominantly against Jews. (YNet, Oct. 2, 2011) Israeli media accounts did not make clear if these were Fatah-approved textbooks used on the West Bank or Hamas-approved textbooks used in the Gaza Strip, or if the reviewed textbooks were still actually in use.

Netanyahu, in his speech at the United Nations on Sept. 23 urging no recognition of Palestinian statehood, argued that Israeli concessions have only encouraged Palestinian extremists:

But Israel did more than just make sweeping offers. We actually left territory. We withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 and from every square inch of Gaza in 2005. That didn’t calm the Islamic storm, the militant Islamic storm that threatens us. It only brought the storm closer and made it stronger. Hezbollah and Hamas fired thousands of rockets against our cities from the very territories we vacated. See, when Israel left Lebanon and Gaza, the moderates didn’t defeat the radicals, the moderates were devoured by the radicals. [Haaretztranscript, Sept. 23, 2011]

Israel’s Gaza Gateway blog, which opposes the siege of the Strip, responded to Netanyahu’s portrayal:

[D]evelopments in Gaza in recent years would seem to impart a different lesson… Netanyahu linked…Israel’s “disengagement” and the strengthening of Hamas, but that is not where Israel’s policy towards Gaza ended. The closure policy that soon followed, and which is still in effect, has been the subject of growing criticism by Israeli journalists, commentators and researchers who have argued that rather than fulfilling its explicit objective of weakening Hamas, the policy has actually achieved the opposite outcome…

The closure imposed on the Gaza Strip has remained in place since 2007. During this period, the civilian economy in Gaza has collapsed, and Palestinians living in the Strip have been denied the right to visit their families, study or engage in commerce in the West Bank. To date, the closure has not helped stop the firing of rockets, bring back Gilad Shalit, or cause the downfall of the Hamas regime—objectives cited by the Israeli government to justify the closure. Instead, Israeli soldiers have found themselves discussing how many rolls of toilet paper should be allowed into the Gaza Strip… It’s time to allow Gaza to be a different kind of example, for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Amidst all this, in a deal with Hamas, Israel won the release of Gilad Shalit, the IDF soldier held on the Gaza Strip since 2006. Shalit was freed Oct. 18, on an Israeli pledge to free 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. Israel immediately released 477, with an additional 550 to be freed in two months. Many were to be relocated to third countries, including Turkey, Syria and Qatar. Hamas officials said their members had been subject in Israeli prisons to “torture, compulsion and revenge.” At least one released Palestinian detainee, Wafa al-Bass (arrested for an attempted suicide bombing in 2005), indiscretely declared her next goal upon stepping off the bus in Gaza: to abduct more Israeli soldiers and thereby win the release of more Palestinian prisoners. (NYT, Oct. 18, 2011)

Shalit himself, after his long ordeal, seems to have immediately become a political football. Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan held a press conference in Tel Aviv to blast the prisoner swap. Dagan said: “I oppose the deal which was implemented. I thought it wrong to release 140 terrorists to the territories. Many of them will resume their terrorist activity. We bolstered Hamas and weakened the PA.” He went on to criticize the jubilation around Shalit’s release—and stopped barely short of criticizing Shalot himself: “I’m not sure I was thrilled with the fact that Netanyahu greeted him back. It seemed problematic to me, he’s being portrayed as a hero, I would beware of such definitions.” (YNet, Nov. 2, 2011)

Meshulam Nahari, Knesset member with the ultra-orthodox Shas party, slammed Shalit for going to the beach with his father on the first Shabbat after his release, instead of going to the synagogue for prayer. Nahari asserted that Shalit and his father should have used his first Saturday of freedom to say the benediction of deliverance—a Jewish prayer of thanks traditionally said by those who survived an adversity or were released from prison. (YNet, Nov. 3, 2011)

A New York Times editorial raised concerns about such a backlash:

Now that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has compromised with Hamas, we fear that to prove his toughness he will be even less willing to make the necessary compromises to restart negotiations… One has to ask: If Mr. Netanyahu can negotiate with Hamas—which shoots rockets at Israel, refuses to recognize Israel’s existence and…vowed to take even more hostages—why won’t he negotiate seriously with the Palestinian Authority, which Israel relies on to help keep the peace in the West Bank? [NYT, Oct. 19, 2011]

On Oct. 30, Israeli warplanes struck the Gaza Strip, killing at least 10 Palestinians. Gaza militants retaliated with rockets that left one Israeli dead—the worst violence over the Strip since August. The Israeli air-strike came hours after Islamic Jihad, which had been firing rockets and mortars into Israel, accepted an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire. (Bloomberg, Oct. 30, 2011)

Class tensions within Israel continued to manifest. The country’s public sector workers walked out for four hours Nov. 7, shutting down trains, buses, airports, banks, government ministries and municipalities. Traffic jams clogged Tel Aviv, and the city’s stock exchange and Ben Gurion International Airport were closed. A general strike by the Histadrut Labor Union was limited to four hours by an order of the National Labor Court. The union demanded that the government officially hire some 250,000 contract workers, who were denied representation and job security. (Haaretz, JTA, AFP, Nov. 7, 2011)

On Nov. 14, a strike on what the Israeli army called a “terror activity center” in the northern Strip left one police offer dead and four of his colleagues wounded. Also injured in the attack was a French diplomat and two family members. The consul, Majdi Jameel Yaseen Shaqqoura, and his 13-year-old daughter were hit by shrapnel, and his pregnant wife miscarried. “France strongly condemns the consequences of the air raid,” the French foreign ministry said in response to the incident. (Ma’an News Agency, Ma’an News Agency, Nov. 16, 2011)

On Nov. 15, Israeli police detained six Palestinians calling themselves “West Bank Freedom Riders” who boarded a Jerusalem-bound bus used by Jewish settlers. The activists said they drew inspiration from 1960s US civil rights campaigners who used the same tactic to oppose segregated buses. The group of six protesters gathered at a West Bank bus stop and waited for an Israeli bus to pick them up, then tried to enter Jerusalem—in what was apparently a first. The activists were arrested when they refused to leave the bus at a checkpoint near the city. (BBC News, Nov. 15, 2011)

A funeral procession in the West Bank town of Beit Ummar erupted into clashes between Israeli forces and locals on Nov. 20, after a man in an unmarked vehicle, initially identified as a Jewish settler, fired towards the group and Palestinian mourners responded by throwing stones. Israeli forces shortly arrived at the scene, and started firing tear gas at the Palestinians. An Israeli army spokesperson later said the man who fired on the procession was an army official traveling in a civilian vehicle paid for by the army. (WAFA, Ma’an News Agency, Nov. 20, 2011)

Despite the Fatah-Hamas deal to unite the separate Palestinian administrations in the West Bank and Gaza, little progress was made—and the two sides remained at odds in disputes over money and jurisdiction. The Hamas administration in Gaza ordered the PA-controlled Bank of Palestine to pay nearly $100 million in what it called back taxes, and prevented 11 board members from leaving the Strip. (Ma’an News Agency, Nov. 21, 2011)

At least four Palestinians were killed in new Israeli air-strikes on the Gaza Strip in early December—including the 12-year-old son of one suspected militant whose house was targeted. Militants responded with a barrage of rockets, some of which landed near Beersheba. No one was hurt in the rocket attacks, but aiir-raid sirens summoned residents of southern Israel to shelters. (Ma’an News Agency, Dec. 9, 2011)

Hundreds of Palestinians gathered in the West Bank Dec. 11 to mourn the death of a Palestinian protester who died after being hit in the face by a tear-gas canister fired by Israeli troops at the village of Nabi Saleh two days earlier. The body of 28-year-old Mustafa Tamimi was carried in a procession that began in Ramallah, ending 10 kilometers north at his home village, which had been holding weekly protests against land confiscation for a settlement. The European Union issued a statement protesting the “disproportionate use of force” in the incident. (CNN, Dec. 11; Ma’an News Agency, Dec. 9; JP, Dec. 14, 2011)

The death of Tamimi came as an international coalition of 20 aid agencies and human rights groups issued new findings that Israeli authorities had stepped up unlawful demolitions in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, over the past year—displacing a record number of Palestinian families from their homes. The statement was timed to coincide with a Jerusalem meeting of the Middle East Quartet in its latest effort to revive peace talks. The humanitarian and rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam International, called for the Quartet to hold all parties to the conflict to their obligations under international law. (Amnesty International, Dec. 13, 2011)

Seth Morrison, a board member of the Jewish National Fund in Washington DC, announced his resignation in December, in protest of the ongoing displacement of Palestinians on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem—especially citing land seizures under Israel’s Absentee Property Law. Wrote Morrison in his resignation letter: “My commitment to building a safe and secure Israel has not changed. My admiration for much of JNF’s environmental work has not changed. What has changed is a sense of betrayal I have at learning that JNF is a force in preventing long-term peace.” (The Forward, Dec. 23, 2011)

On Dec. 12, some 300 settlers hurled stones at Palestinian vehicles on the main road near the settlement of Ramat Gilad in response to rumors of an imminent eviction. They also pelted stones at the jeep of a local Israeli army commander—and later launched an attack on the local base of the army’s Ephraim Brigade, hurling paint, nails and rocks. Around 50 of them broke into the base and proceeded to vandalize vehicles, burn tires and throw stones at the brigade commander. Soldiers dispersed the rioters and detained one man. Another group of settlers under the “Hilltop Youth” banner meanwhile occupied a border post with Jordan. (Haartez, Dec. 14; YNet, NYT, Dec. 13, 2011)

Two nights later, presumed Israeli rightists carried out an arson attack on an abandoned mosque in Jerusalem. Firefighters were able to contain the blaze before serious damage was done. Security officials found graffiti defaming Islam and Arabs on the building’s walls, as well as the words “price tag.” (YNet, Dec. 14, 2011)

The Jerusalem city council’s district planning committee on Dec. 28 approved plans for a large tourism complex in the flashpoint neighborhood of Silwan, just south of the Old City. The project was slated for a plot of land currently being used as a parking lot opposite the Dung Gate, main entrance to the Western Wall and the Old City’s Jewish Quarter. It would be managed by Elad, a hardline settler organization, which runs the nearby archaeological site at David’s City. Local Palestinian activists protested the move. “This project aims to promote settler tourism and religious tourism,” said Fakhri Abu Diab, head of the Silwan Defense Committee. “This complex will change the character of the area and will emphasize the idea that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people—because it is a political project too.” The complex would be higher than the Old City walls and would in some places block Silwan’s view of al-Aqsa mosque. Silwan is part of the so-called Holy Basin around the Old City, purported site of ancient Jerusalem during the time of the biblical kings David and Solomon. The neighborhood, built on the steep hillsides of the Kidron Valley, was the scene of frequent clashes between locals and a 400-strong community of Jewish settlers living in their midst. (AFP, Dec. 28, 2011)

On Dec. 26, dozens of haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) hurled stones at policein the Jerusalem suburb of Beit Shemesh after officers had removed public signs calling for segregation between men and women in the city. Some haredim called police “Nazis.” There were no reports of injury. (YNet, Dec. 26, 2011)

The following day, some 4,000 participated in a rally in Beit Shemesh against gender segregation and violence against women by haredi extremists. The rally was held near a religious girls school attended by 8-year-old American immigrant Na’ama Margolis, who was featured in an Israeli TV news program, saying she was afraid to walk to school following harassment by local haredi men. She said haredi spat on her and called her a whore for dressing “immodestly.” (JTA, AP, Dec. 27, 2011)

A missile fired from an Israeli drone at presumed militants near the Gaza Strip’s border wall left one dead on Dec. 30, after a dozen rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza over the past week. None caused injury or damage. (NYT, Dec. 30, 2011)

At year’s end, Arab families and their supporters erected a small tent camp outside Old Acre’s Khan al-Umdan district to protest their eviction from an apartment building by Israel’s state-owned Amidar Company. Amidar said the eviction was to allow for the building to be renovated and made safe for its residents. But the residents charged that Amidar, the Old Acre Development Company and the Israel Lands Authority want to evict as many Arab families as possible for the benefit of developers and potential buyers, mostly Jews and foreigners. (Ha’aretz, Jan. 3, 2012)

Amid growing tensions in the Persian Gulf over Iran’s nuclear program, the US and Israel prepared to hold the largest missile defense exercise in the history of the Jewish state. The drill was to include establishment of US command posts in Israel and IDF command posts at European Command headquarters in Germany. The US prepared to deploy its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and ship-based Aegis missile defense systems to Israel to simulate the interception of strikes on Israel. The US systems were to work in conjunction with Israel’s missile defense systems—the Arrow, Patriot and Iron Dome. (Jerusalem Post, Dec. 20, 2011)

In US political discourse, the hardline pro-Israel position was becoming more hegemonic. At a campaign stop in Iowa, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum told a questioner that “all the people that live in the West Bank are Israelis. They’re not Palestinians—there is no Palestinian—this is Israeli land.” (The Lede, Jan. 5, 2012) Newt Gingrich made similar remarks, telling a Jewish cable TV show: “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. We have invented the Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and are historically part of the Arab people, and they had the chance to go many places.” (Washington Post, Dec. 9, 2011)

Israeli and Palestinian officials met for the first time in more than a year in Amman on Jan. 3, and agreed to hold further preliminary talks in Jordan as part of an effort to renew formal peace negotiations. The meeting of Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat and his Israeli counterpart, Yitzhak Molcho—the first since the breakdown of talks in September 2010—was arranged by the Quartet, with help from Jordan’s King Abdullah. (Bloomberg, Jan. 4, 2012)

But Hamas leader Ismail Radwan said the Amman meeting would damage Fatah’s reconciliation deal with his party. “We consider these meetings a blow for national reconciliation, especially as we agreed in Cairo to face Israel’s settlements, wall, and attacks together,” Radwan said during a meeting of the community reconciliation committee in Gaza. In a show of strength, thousands of Hamas supporters attend a rally in Gaza City on Dec. 14 marking the 24th anniversary of the Islamic movement’s foundation. (Ma’an News Agency, Jan. 4, 2012)

Israel’s High Court on Jan. 11 voted to reject a challenge filed against provisions of the Citizenship Law, which bar Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs from receiving Israeli citizenship or residency. Six judges voted to reject the challenge, while five voted to accept it. Israel generally grants citizenship to spouses of Israelis in a gradual process, with a somewhat longer process for spouses of permanent residents. However, a 2002 temporary order—which has been repeatedly extended—excluded Palestinian spouses from these processes, barring them from becoming Israeli citizens. Despite a 2006 ruling that the order is unconstitutional, it has continued to have force of law while it was amended by the Knesset to bring it into compliance with constitutional standards. The provision still imposes harsh restrictions on the freedom of Arab citizens of Israel to live with spouses from the Occupied Territories, as well as from so-called “enemy states” (defined as Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq). The new decision upholding it affects thousands of couples. (Ha’aretz, Ha’aretz,Electronic Intifada, YNet, YNet, Jan. 12; Ha’aretz, Jan. 11, 2011)

In the ruling, Justice Asher Grunis wrote that “human rights are not a prescription for national suicide”—a term often used in reference to allowing a return of Palestinian refugees. Similar language was used in reference to the ruling by Interior Minister Eli Yishai, who warned about the need to protect the Jewish majority. MK Otniel Schneller (Kadima) also praised the High Court’s decision in terms of ethnic separation: “The High Court decision articulates the rationale of separation between the [two] peoples and the need to maintain a Jewish majority and the [Jewish] character of the state.” Far-right National Union MK Yaakov Katz explicitly portrayed marriage as a subterfuge for a strategy to reverse the Jewish majority in Israel: “A fantastic miracle took place last night in the High Court when by a happenstance majority the State of Israel was saved from being flooded by 2-3 million Arab refugees.” (Ibid)

The legal challenge was brought by the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, and affected individuals. The Adalah Center issued a statement in response to the decision, saying: “The High Court of Justice today approved a law the likes of which does not exist in any democratic state in the world, depriving citizens from maintaining a family life in Israel only on the basis of the ethnic affiliation of the male or female spouse. The ruling proves how much the situation regarding the civil rights of the Arab minority in Israel is declining into a highly dangerous and unprecedented situation.” The Association for Civil Rights in Israel also slammed the decision, stating that “the majority opinion has stamped its approval on a racist law, one [that] will harm the very texture of the lives of families whose only sin is the Palestinian blood that runs in their veins.” (Ibid)

Arabs make up about 20% of Israel’s population of 7 million (excluding the Mizrahi, or Jews of Arab origin). About 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Many families were divided by ceasefire lines after wars, and marriage between the two groups has been common over the years. Between 1993 and 2002, more than 100,000 Palestinians obtained Israeli residency permits in this manner—which the Israeli rights has portrayed as a security threat. Many couples now fear residency will be withdrawn retroactively following the new high court decision. “The Citizenship Law will lead to the expulsion of thousands of families from the country,” said Hatam Iyat, an attorney from the village of Qara whop is married to a Palestinian woman, the mother of his four children. “But we will not remain silent; we will take action against the law.” (Ibid)

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Continue ReadingTHE DISPOSSESSION OF THE PALESTINIANS, PT. V 

We Lurch Resolutely into the Future…

Continue ReadingWe Lurch Resolutely into the Future…