Israel Update for August 2009

David Dolan

Israeli government officials confirmed media reports during August that they have been quietly enforcing a construction freeze in disputed territory north and south of Jerusalem for several months. The ban against issuing new housing starts in Jewish communities located in contested portions of Judea and Samaria went into effect soon after Binyamin Netanyahu was sworn in as Prime Minister on March 31. Officials said American President Barack Obama-who has made a total construction halt a central plank in his emerging Arab-Israeli peace plan-has been aware of the de facto freeze since its inception.

Meanwhile Palestine Liberation Organization leaders furiously blasted the Jewish State during a raucous PLO Fatah convention held in Bethlehem. Led by Israel's Palestinian Authority "peace partner" Mahmoud Abbas, conference delegates unanimously approved a resolution blaming Israel for Yasser Arafat's death in 2004.

The latest scathing Palestinian "blood libel" was quickly followed by another one published in Sweden's largest newspaper, claiming that Israeli soldiers were secretly slaying Palestinians in order to steal and sell their body organs to local hospitals. Headlined "THEY PLUNDER THE ORGANS OF OUR SONS" the insidious report-based solely on totally unsubstantiated Palestinian allegations-led to a sharp crisis in diplomatic relations between Israel and Sweden, whose leaders refused Israeli government pleas to renounce the article.

Tensions remained high in the north as Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned that his Iranian and Syrian-backed Shiite militia organization is prepared to rain rockets down upon Tel Aviv if new fighting erupts in the region. The latest verbal threat came as the Times of London reported that the nefarious Lebanese group now possesses some 40,000 rockets, many of them capable of reaching central and southern Israel. Meanwhile Syrian dictator Bashar Assad visited Tehran, where he publicly congratulated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his "victory" in Iran's disputed presidential election last June-pledging to support him militarily if Israel strikes his country's nuclear facilities.

Indications grew during the month that a deal is nearly complete to free hundreds of Hamas prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. This came as an Israeli man, sitting on a bench with his wife and daughter on a north Tel Aviv beach, was brutally attacked and murdered by a gang of young Arab men. The victim was one of 13 Israelis murdered during the first half of August, including a teenage girl gunned down in a mass shooting at a homosexual youth counseling center in Tel Aviv. The spate of domestic killings, which dominated Israeli headlines during the month, sparked a special Knesset session amid a surge in local gun purchases by citizens apparently worried that they might become the next victim.

Obama Gets His Way

Various Arab and Israeli media outlets reported in late August that US President Obama will unveil his new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan either when he speaks at the United Nations the end of September, or at a "Group of Twenty" summit meeting several days later in Pittsburg. The White House would not confirm the reports. Israeli political analysts said the plan's final formation is largely dependent on the outcome of a crucial meeting to be held this Wednesday in London between PM Netanyahu and Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell.

According to the usually well informed AL Quds Al Arabi (Arab Jerusalem) newspaper published in London, the Palestinians will be asked by a team of retired US officials led by former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, and including George H.W. Bush's Secretary of State, James Baker, (neither exactly known for their love of Israel) to give up their "right of return" demand in exchange for international financial compensation for family homes lost inside of Israel during the 1948 and 1967 wars. Some border adjustments would also reportedly be recommended, giving Israel official sovereignty over three large settlement blocks located near the pre-1967 de facto border north and south of Jerusalem. In exchange, Israel would transfer an equal amount of its current land to a demilitarized Palestinian state, which would share Jerusalem as its capital city with Israel. Palestinian leaders have already publicly rejected most of these concepts.

Meanwhile several members of Prime Minister Netanyahu's own cabinet expressed shock when the Israeli media reported August 18 that their leader had secretly ordered a total freeze on new construction permits in all Jewish communities located in Judea and Samaria, as demanded by Obama. The reports said the freeze had actually quietly gone into effect shortly after the Likud-led government assumed power last spring, with most cabinet ministers unaware of the move.

The reports-apparently confirmed the same day by the US President himself when he told visiting Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak he was "encouraged by what I am seeing on the ground"-claimed that the building ban was hammered out in a clandestine agreement made between Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak (who heads the Labor party) and Housing Minister Ariel Atias of the Orthodox Shas party. Both Labor and Shas have expressed past support for uprooting Jewish communities in the disputed territories as part of any final status peace accord with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu's office quickly denied that the Premier had made a secret pact with Barak and Atias to stop issuing construction permits. However it confirmed other reports that he had promised President Obama that no new housing tenders will be issued from now on until at least early next year. Atias later told Israel Radio that a de facto freeze on new construction permits had indeed been in effect since early April, but added that building projects approved before then had not been halted by the new government.

Barack Obama's demand that Israel immediately halt all construction in every inch of territory it seized from Jordan during the Six Day War in order to get the peace process moving forward again was rebuked by a prominent American newspaper which strongly supported his election. In an editorial that sparked widespread discussion in the US media, The Washington Post said the President's "unbalanced" campaign to put pressure mainly on Israel was harming his professed aim to help bring an end to the long and bitter Arab-Israeli conflict. It pointed out that due to Obama's "absolutist demand for a settlement freeze," various regional Arab and Palestinian leaders that "had accepted previous compromises immediately hardened their positions, and also balked at delivering the 'confidence building' concessions to Israel that the administration seeks."

Coalition Jitters

Ron Nachman, a prominent member of Netanyahu's Likud party who serves as mayor of the growing Jewish town of Ariel in northern Samaria, warned that "the government's days will be numbered" if the construction permit freeze is not soon reversed. This was echoed by Benny Kashriel, the mayor of the largest disputed community, Ma'aleh Adumim, located several miles east of Jerusalem. He was upset to learn via the media that the PM was withholding approval of a proposed expansion in the city's industrial park, which he noted employs Arabs as well as Jews. He charged that Netanyahu was "doing above and beyond" what the Obama administration was demanding of him.