Freedom means control of our borders.

Consistent with international law, which forbids Israel, or any other state, from acquiring territory by force, the borders of the Palestinian state will be the same as the borders of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza as they stood on the eve of Israel’s 1967 occupation. A territorial link connecting the West Bank and Gaza is crucial to the integrity of the Palestinian state. The Palestinian state must permanently provide for free and unrestricted movement for people, goods and vehicles between the two geographic areas. The Palestinian state must also have unhindered access to the international community. Palestine’s maritime borders must be equitably delimited, not only with Israel, but also with Palestine’s other maritime neighbors.

Freedom means having our government located in our historic capital—the center of our culture and faiths.

Jerusalem does not belong to one faith or people. For centuries, Jerusalem has been the political, administrative, cultural and religious center of Palestine. Metropolitan East Jerusalem – an area extending from Ramallah to Bethlehem – has for long been the driving force of the Palestinian economy. Without East Jerusalem, there can be no economically and politically viable Palestinian state. Christian and Muslim Palestinians are committed to respecting the freedom of worship at, and access to, religious sites within Jerusalem for all faiths. All possible measures will be taken to protect such sites and preserve their dignity

Freedom means respecting the Palestinian refugees’ right of return. Freedom means the ability to choose how that right is exercised. Freedom means no longer being a refugee.

For 62 years, Palestinian refugees have been trapped in exile, separated from their homes, lands and families. For Palestinian refugees, who represent 70 percent of all Palestinians, freedom means being able to live with dignity and hope for the future. Freedom means having their experiences of displacement and dispossession recognized. Freedom means having their properties returned to them. Most importantly, though, freedom means having the right to return to their homes, and choosing how to exercise that right.

Freedom means not having another state building cities and roads in our country, as Israel is currently doing through its settlements on our land.

Colonialism, oppression and systemic discrimination are the hallmarks of Israel’s settlement enterprise. Some 170 Israeli settlements are scattered throughout Palestine, connected by segregated road systems criss-crossing the territory. Hundreds of roadblocks keep Palestinians from accessing our fragmented land, and a 25-foot-high wall snakes through the territory, encircling all of Jerusalem, the most fertile land and the best water sources in Palestine.

Today, nearly half a million Israeli settlers live on land illegally seized from Christian and Muslim Palestinians. The settlements and their related infrastructure control nearly 40 percent of the occupied Palestinian territory. In addition to being illegal, Israeli settlements pose the single greatest threat to a viable two-state solution, and hence, to a just and lasting peace.

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Who’s the traitor here?

This week the Knesset took an additional step on the slippery slope towards the elimination of the last traces of ethnic democracy that still exist within the Green Line. For the first time in its history the Knesset punished one of its members for fulfilling her legal function, and deprived her of her parliamentary privileges solely because her outlook is not consistent with that of the Israeli Right.

MK Hanin Zoubi of the Balad (1) faction was punished for her participation in the Turkish flotilla that was transporting humanitarian supplies to Gaza. She participated in the flotilla for the same reason that I participated in an earlier flotilla to Gaza (that did in fact succeed in breaking the blockade) (2) – opposition to the closure and the siege that the government of Israeli has imposed on the million and a half residents of Gaza by military means. She believed and still believes, as do many other good people and as do I, that the collective punishment that has converted Gaza into a ghetto and the biggest prison in the world is not right and in our opinion is not legal either.

MK Zoubi’s participation in the flotilla was completely legal. Nevertheless they decided to withdraw her privileges, which are part of the immunity accorded to Knesset Members, such as the right to a diplomatic passport and the right to receive financing for legal defence. She can live without those privileges, but a precedent has been set here, which, like a substantial part of the attacks on basic liberties in racist Israel, begins with Arabs, but its continuation is likely to affect the rest of us as well.

The irony in the whole affair is that it began with a complaint submitted by MK Michael Ben-Ari of the National Unity party, who as a settler is a party to a war crime according to the Geneva and Rome Conventions. Ben-Ari is a member of the Kach movement, founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, which was outlawed in Israel. Even the Supreme Court, which is infected by more than a few racist rulings, could not remain silent in the face of its ideology and that of its leader, because it saw similarities to Nazism in certain aspects of its ideology.

To this day MK Ben-Ari declares that he sees himself as a disciple and perpetuator of the legacy of Rabbi Kahane. Thus did the king of racism in the Israeli Knesset file a complaint against MK Hanin Zoubi and succeed in drawing the Knesset into sanctions against her.

In the discussion that took place in the Knesset over Hanin Zoubi’s participation in the flotilla, two voices were conspicuous for their violence and extremism. MK Miri Regev of the Likud, the former spokeswoman for the IDF, rhetorically exiled Zoubi to Gaza and called her a “traitor;” and MK Anastasia Michaeli of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beiteinu party went so far as to resort to physical violence. She was about to strike MK Zoubi when Knesset ushers blocked her path. This is one of the saddest stories about Israel, which has turned into a home for nationalists and racists. Interior Minister and professional racist Eli Yishai of the Haredi Shas party declared that her citizenship should be revoked.

“Treason” is not only a judicial term, but also a moral one. Former German chancellor Willy Brandt, who was active in the Norwegian underground during World War II, was a traitor to Nazi Germany. Does MK Zoubi commit treason? I very much hope that she is indeed a Willy Brandt-like traitor to racist colonial Israel as I myself am also a traitor to it, along with everyone else who struggles for a democratic Israel that embraces human rights for all.

Meanwhile, while it is still permitted, I declare that everyone who voted to suspend MK Hanin Zoubi’s parliamentary privileges has betrayed the values of democracy as they are expressed in the International Declaration of Human Rights, and has been captivated by racism.

The right wing of the Knesset has been putting in extra hours recently in its attempt to shorten the transition period towards the establishment of a tyrannical regime that will silence dissenting voices. Not a day passes without some new law being proposed in the Knesset. Once it is to withhold the pension of former MK Azmi Bishara, another time it is to bar the receipt of donations from foreign governments that are given mainly to human rights organizations, another time it is to change the citizenship law in order to oblige Arabs to swear allegiance to a “Jewish and democratic” state (an extinct species), another time it is to forbid Palestinian citizens of Israel who marry people from the Occupied Territories from living with their spouses in Israel, and yet other time it is to bar Israelis from signing petitions calling for a boycott of Israel and its products because of the Occupation (including products from the settlements), and to impose a monetary fine on the signers, and so on – whatever the right-wing imagination can come up with.

These new laws are classified under the rubric of “defence of democracy” – another example of laundered terminology along the lines of the “people’s democracies” that we recall from the Soviet period. For the sake of linguistic accuracy it is important to point out that we are dealing here not with a democracy that is defending itself, but with the threatening posturing of an incipient dictatorship.

If things go on like this, then the day will not be far off when we witness the materialization of MK Ahmad Tibi’s hair-raising scenario: by 2022 laws will be passed in Israel that will forbid Arabs from walking on the same sidewalk as Jews, they will be obliged to sit on special seats on buses and they will be barred from living in the same house with Jews. The apartheid regime in the Occupied Territories will conquer all of Israel.

I do not agree with Balad about everything, and so I did not vote for it in the last election. But if Balad runs candidates in the next election and puts Hanin Zoubi in a realistic spot on the list (at least number two), I will vote for the “traitor,” for “a traitor unto a traitor utters speech.” (3)

Oy, Obama!

Yonit Levy, the new anchor on Channel 2, the most watched channel in Israel, chalked up a journalistic accomplishment with her exclusive 20-minute interview with President Obama. In the interview Obama reaffirmed his policy of coddling Israel as was expressed in the last visit of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to the White House. In the interview, President Obama showed himself to be more Zionist than Ben-Gurion and Herzl combined.

Yonit Levy did not ask challenging questions, but instead lobbed softballs that allowed Obama to show himself to be a lapdog instead of a Rottweiler. Obama exhibited understanding for Israel’s “special situation” due to its being in a state of conflict with its hostile surroundings, he emphasized that he has been a friend of Israel since time immemorial, he highly praised Netanyahu as a “wise and peace-loving” politician, he emphasized that his Administration gave Israel more security assistance than any previous Administration and he even displayed understanding for Israeli racism when he stated that he understands that the suspicion of him stems from his middle name, Hussein – the lesson being that it is every Hussein is a legitimate object of suspicion until the opposite has been proven. In summary: a classic case of the tail wagging the dog – or alternatively, maybe the Israeli empire taught Obama a genuine lesson. The settlers and the Kahanists who had enjoyed abusing Obama with terms like “nigger” [Heb. kushon - trans.] must now choke back their anger.

The Israeli Left, which had placed such high hopes on Obama, is now hanging its head in shame. There are those who try to console themselves with the thought that this is only a tactical move to appease Israel in the run-up to the Congressional elections in November because of the importance of the Jewish vote (under the mistaken assumption that all Jews support the State of Israel). Don’t worry, they add: the heavy pressure on Israel to make concessions will come. We have already waited 43 years; we can wait a little longer.

Learning from the Nazis

Hadassah Ben Ito is a retired district judge who is serving as the president of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. Hadassah Ben Ito participated in a conference that took place recently in London with Jewish lawyers that dealt with improving Israeli propaganda [Heb: hasbara - trans.], and in her speech she said that Israel must adopt the tactics the Nazis used in their promotion of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the courts. (Ynet website in English, 7 May 2010)

This is not the first time that public figures in Israel have urged study of Nazi practice. A senior officer in the Israeli Occupation army once declared that the Israeli army must study the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising by the Nazi army in order better to suppress the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

The bifurcation in Israel today is clear. There are those who learn from the Nazis, and they are members of the ruling Establishment. And there are those who learn from those who resisted the Nazis, and they are among those who espouse human rights.

Click here to read the complete column.

For Jerusalem's sake I, like you, will not rest. With great interest I read the beautiful open letter you penned to the U.S. president that appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and International Herald Tribune on Friday, and which will appear in the New York Times today. From it I learned that you know much about heavenly Jerusalem, but less so about its counterpart here on earth.

To read the complete article, click here.

The Centrality of Jerusalem
Palestine Center Brief No. 194 (2 April 2010)

Policy Brief

By Yousef Munayyer

If international law matters to any American president, it ought to be President Obama who has taught constitutional law.

Israel's supporters are wrong to downplay the significance of illegal settlement activity as innocuous building in "Jewish neighborhoods" of Jerusalem. Contrary to Prime Minister Netanyahu's claim that "building in Jerusalem is the same as building in Tel Aviv," according to international law and longstanding U.S. policy, building in East Jerusalem is the same as building in Jenin - or any other city in the occupied West Bank.

Despite all its remonstrating, Israel stands isolated from the entire international community over occupied East Jerusalem. Israel has no legitimate sovereignty on any inch of land beyond the Green Line, regardless of what they call it. As one European foreign minister recently stated: "I think I can say very clearly that Jerusalem is not Tel Aviv." Legally speaking, this rebuke to Netanyahu's bluster is correct, and the U.S. knows it.

Those who watch this conflict closely know that Israeli settlement expansion in Jerusalem has the potential to destroy the two-state solution and precipitate a third intifada. It is no minor matter. Nor was the timing of the announcements of 1600 new Jewish homes in the settlement of Ramat Shlomo during the visit of Vice President Biden, or of 20 more units for a site owned by an American funder of Netanyahu just hours before the prime minister was to meet with Obama.

Netanyahu rejected U.S. calls to halt settlement expansion and his Interior Minister, Eli Yishai -- the same man who started the fracas when Biden visited -- also seems determined to continue flouting the Obama administration.

Undeterred, unrepentant, and still in his job, Yishai declared more than two weeks after the initial incident: "I thank God I have been given the opportunity to be the minister who approves the construction of thousands of housing units in Jerusalem."

And when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced the concern of the Obama administration, MK Danny Danon of Netanyahu's Likud party said her "meddling in internal Israeli decisions regarding the development of our capital, Jerusalem, is uninvited and unhelpful." American organizations such as AIPAC and the ADL then urged the Obama administration to hush while expressing no public dismay at Danon's tongue-lashing of the American secretary of state.

Could you imagine what would happen today if the United States annexed Mexico down to Mexico City, claimed it as part of Texas, then began building US cities there and preventing Mexicans from entering?

Obviously, the rest of the world would not accept the annexation of land through conquest for the United States or any state -- even Israel.

But Jerusalem is not only a flash point because of Israel's ongoing colonization through settlement expansion; this transcends the territorial dimension. Jerusalem is a symbolic city dear to Muslims, Christians and Jews. And as the economic and cultural center of Palestinian life for centuries, it is the only city that could be the capital of a Palestinian state. Likewise, no viable Palestinian state could emerge without East Jerusalem as its capital.

That's why other Israeli provocations in Jerusalem are equally damaging to the diplomatic process and stability in the region. The ongoing de-Arabization of Jerusalem which has accelerated in recent years, demands the immediate attention of all those interested in a just solution to this conflict. From eviction and demolition of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, to the revocation of residencies and a complex matrix of walls and checkpoints, Israeli policies are slowly sapping Jerusalem of its Palestinian population.

In the Arab and Muslim world, this process playing out daily on the television screens of onlookers is interpreted as nothing short of a colonialist enterprise. (To see a video that explains Israels increasing grip on Jerusalem click here for a flash version and here for a YouTube version.)

While some Israeli spokespersons may claim that there is no need to fuss over building a few houses, the reality is that the Palestinians and others in the Middle East have been watching an ongoing and alarming trend in Jerusalem for decades. Major settlements like Har Homa, Gilo, Ramat Shlomo, Ma'ale Addumim and others, which were developed under the Israeli guise of building in Jerusalem "just like Tel Aviv," have created insurmountable obstacles to sharing Jerusalem between both peoples. The policies of removing or forcing out Palestinians from Jerusalem reinforce the notion that Israel has no intention of returning the land it occupies.

Without Jerusalem on the table, Palestinians not only lack incentive to negotiate, they lack any incentive to maintain the two-state framework.

Jerusalem tumult has the potential to send shockwaves through the Middle East and the broader Muslim world where the United States has far more important interests than the troublemaking state of Israel.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

Seven years ago today, Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by a Caterpillar D9R Israeli bulldozer while nonviolently protesting the demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah, Gaza Strip, along with other members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Now her parents, sister and brother are suing the State of Israel and the defense minister, claiming wrongful death.

This past January, over the course of 10 days, our class of 17 visited most major cities in the West Bank and Israel. Though we spent an entire semester preparing for the trip and doing research on the conflict, we were caught off-guard by nearly everything we saw. From the wall to the checkpoints and from the settlers to the soldiers, we were finally seeing everything that we had read about, and it was not comforting.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cheapened the memory of the Holocaust in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. He did so twice. Once, when he brandished proof of the very existence of the Holocaust, as if it needed any, and again when he compared Hamas to the Nazis.

Whenever the possibility of establishing an independent Palestinian state is mentioned by Israeli politicians, they take for granted that their interlocutors understand that the future state would have to be demilitarized and disarmed, if an Israeli consent for its existence is to be gained. Recently, this precondition was mentioned by the current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in response to President Barrack Obama's two states vision, presented to the world at large in his Cairo Speech this June.

In January 1989 I was questioned by the Jerusalem police over the publication of the "Service Notebook 2" of the "Yesh Gvul" movement, which included information about what soldiers could expect if they refused to serve in the Occupied Territories. I was one of the of five activists in the movement who were invited for questioning on the orders of the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), which wanted to know where the Notebook had been printed and who wrote it.

Nearly everything you've been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip.

The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

Large numbers of bodies, large numbers of wounded, and every minute another wounded is added to the list of those dead, and there is no longer space in the morgue. Relatives search among the dead and wounded so they can quickly bring their dead to burial. A woman has three school-age children killed. They are piled one on top of the other in the morgue, and she is screaming and crying and screaming again and then quiet. Mustafa Ibrahim managed to see all of that on Saturday at one o'clock in the Shifa hospital in Gaza. As a field investigator for a human rights organization, he thought he had been immunized but nothing had prepared him for these sights. Patients whose condition was not serious were requested to leave the hospital so there would be free beds.

After Hamas' January 25, 2006 electoral victory, Israel targeted Gaza oppressively.  All outside aid was cut off. Sanctions and an economic embargo were imposed, and the democratically elected government was falsely called a terrorist organization and isolated.  Stepped up repression followed along with repeated IDF incursions, attacks, killings, targeted assassinations, arrests, destruction of property and more in a pattern all too familiar to Palestinians for over six decades.  Gazans are imprisoned in their own land and have been traumatized for months.  In June 2007, things got worse after Israel placed the Territory under siege, described by some as medieval because of its extreme harshness.

Even before the voting began, Israeli politicians and pundits were asking: Will an Obama Administration be good for Israel? "Be good for Israel" is our code for "Will the US allow us to keep our settlements and continue to support our efforts to prevent negotiations with the Palestinians from ever bearing fruit?" For Americans the question should be: Will the Obama Administration understand that without addressing Palestinian needs it will not be able to disentangle itself from its broader Middle Eastern imbroglios, rejoin the community of nations and rescue its economy?

After campaigning on a platform of discarding failed past formulas and bringing "fundamental change" to Washington, Senator Barack Obama has won his bid for the presidency.