The Aid Flotilla

The Incident

Israeli commandos conduct a bloody raid on a humanitarian flotilla in international waters seizing crew, passengers and ships. Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine. The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back.

Turkish Response

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed it most forcefully in a televised speech last week: "You [Israel] killed 19-year-old Furkan Dogan brutally. Which faith, which holy book can be an excuse for killing him? I am speaking to them in their own language. The sixth commandment says, 'Thou shalt not kill'. Did you not understand? I'll say again. I say in English, 'You shall not kill'. Did you still not understand? So I'll say to you in your own language. I say in Hebrew, 'Lo Tirtzakh'."

US Response

"We communicated with Israel through multiple channels many times regarding the flotilla. We emphasised caution and restraint, given the anticipated presence of civilians, including American citizens," a State Department spokesman said in a statement.

Israeli Response

The usual claim that Israel offers time and again in order to justify its vicious repression of the Palestinian people is that it has the right to defend itself. Few would argue that it doesn't. But it can only do it legally. For decades now Israel has been engaged in provocative actions on Palestinian territory - appropriating land that belongs to Palestinians, destroying century-old olive groves, diverting water to Jewish settlements, leaving an inadequate supply for Palestinian farmers, and on and on.. When people object, Israel goes into its "we are victims mode." Like the schoolyard bully who runs crying to the teacher when a classmate finally fights back.

From Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz: "Recently an intelligence official actually called the absence of Palestinian terror a 'propaganda problem.'"

Israeli Contempt

British consulate officials were treated contemptuously. One example: the British consulate official from Jerusalem tried to have a private conversation through a prison cell door--we weren't allowed to meet face to face--with two British citizens. The junior prison guard refused to move. When he was asked to move, he brought two other prison guards. When the diplomat explained that under all international treaties, protocol and the law, he's entitled to speak to his nationals privately, the junior guard said, "Go to your international tribunals, go to your law, we don't care."

In another incident, Ann Wright, ex US diplomat had been seen in a videotape of detainees being brought into Ashdod, an Israeli port. In an interview, she said she was held at a "brand new Israeli prison" in Barsheba, where she was treated well. But she said that law enforcement officials upon her departure, airport law enforcement officials were "laughing, giggling, commenting on (the) wounded and dead. It was a very pitiful, pitiful performance by law enforcement people."

Israeli Sarcasm

A video mocking the humanitarian activists was distributed officially by the Israeli government before being pulled back due to vehement protests of its blatant insensivity. Mark Regev, Israeli government spokesman, defends the attack which killed nine passengers on the Freedom Flotilla and commented on the video. "I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny, it's how Israelis feel" he said.

Prior to the storming of the Turkish ship, the Israeli GPO (Government Press Office) sent an e-mail to journalists sarcastically recommending that while covering "alleged humanitarian difficulties," journalists should dine at one of Gaza's few restaurants. "We have been told the beef stroganoff and cream of spinach soup are highly recommended," the e-mail said.

Humour or black comedy does not always side with Israel or its supporters. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show said Charles Krauthammer, columnist and fervent Israel supporter, made the stupidest @#$& thing anyone ever said about the Middle East. Krauthammer said that there was no need for the flotilla since there was no humanitarian crisis and no one was starving in Gaza. Stewart smirked and paused and said that whatever anyone thinks of the Israeli leadership or Hamas, or religious beliefs, if someone fails to see the suffering in Gaza that needs to be alleviated, then his heart is so dead that "tourists flock there to float their backs in it".

Obama's Meek Response

Here’s what we’ve got. You’ve got a situation in which Israel has legitimate security concerns when they’ve got missiles raining down on cities along the Israel-Gaza border. I’ve been to those towns and seen the holes that were made by missiles coming through people’s bedrooms. So Israel has a legitimate concern there. On the other hand, you’ve got a blockade up that is preventing people in Palestinian Gaza from having job opportunities and being able to create businesses and engage in trade and have opportunity for the future.

Robert Fisk's Observation

I wasn't personally at all surprised at the killings on the Turkish ship. In Lebanon, I've seen this indisciplined rabble of an army – as "elite" as the average rabble of Arab armies – shooting at civilians. I saw them watching the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians on the morning of 18 September (the last day of the slaughter) by their vicious Lebanese militia allies. I was present at the Qana massacre by Israeli gunners in 1996 – "Arabushim" (the equivalent of the abusive term "Ayrab" in English), one of the gunners called the 106 dead civilians, more than half of them children, in the Israeli press. Then the Israeli government of Nobel laureate Shimon Peres said there were terrorists among the dead civilians – totally untrue, but who cares? – and then came the second Qana massacre in 2006 and then the 2008-09 Gaza slaughter of 1,300 Palestinians, most of them children, and then..

Apartheid 2010

The most likely outcome is that Greater Israel will become a full-fledged apartheid state. There are already separate laws, separate roads and separate housing in the occupied territories, and the Palestinians are essentially confined to impoverished enclaves. Indeed, two former Israeli prime ministers — Ehud Barak and Olmert — have made just this point. Olmert said that if the two-state solution collapses, Israel will face a "South African-style struggle." He went so far as to argue, "as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished."

It is already there. It is apartheid in its lowest and banal form.

(various news and media sources)

Gaza and the West Bank

The Goldstone report cited Eli Yishai, Israeli interior minister, as saying, “We should bombard thousands of houses in Gaza, destroy Gaza. As simple as that.”

Noam Chomsky says that in the case of Gaza, it's just savage torture. They are keeping the population barely alive because they don't want to be accused of genocide, but that's it. It's limited to survival. It's not the worst atrocity in the world, but it is one of the most savage. Egypt is cooperating fully by building a wall and refusing to allow concrete to go in and things like that, so it's an Israeli-Egyptian operation that is literally torturing the people of Gaza in a way that one can't think of a precedent, and it's getting worse.

In the West Bank, first of all it's not Israel: it's the United States and Israel. The United States sets the bounds of what they can do and cooperates with them. It's a joint operation, just as the attack on Gaza was. But they're continuing to impose their stranglehold, and they're taking what they want. The land inside the separation wall, which is in fact an annexation wall, they'll take that. They'll take the Jordan Valley, and they'll take what's called Jerusalem, which is far larger than Jerusalem ever was, as it's a huge area expanding into the West Bank.

In the West Bank they moved, in their phrase, from 'colonialism' to 'neo- colonialism'. They construct neo-colonial structures on the West Bank. Typically, they have a sector of extreme wealth and privilege that collaborates with the former colonial power, and then a mass of misery and horror surrounding it. That's what's being done. So if you go to Ramallah, it's kind of like Paris, you live a nice life, there are elegant restaurants, and so on, but of course if you go into the countryside, it's quite different, and there are checkpoints and life's impossible. There's only totally dependent development, and they will not allow independent development, and they're trying to impose a permanent arrangement of this kind.

An advocate of economic peace, Salam Fayyad is trying to arrange for Palestinians to have forms of employment other than working in the settlements and doing whatever construction they can manage to do within the Israeli framework, maybe even in Area C, the Israeli- controlled area, and just taking small steps towards trying to lay the basis for a future independent Palestinian entity. Israel might very well accept it. The Israeli deputy prime, Silvan Shalom said it's fine, if they want to call the cantons they'll leave to them a state, then that's fine, but it'll be a state without borders.

There's another element to it, which is the military force. There is an army run by an American general, Keith Dayton, which is trained by Jordan with Canadian and Israeli cooperation, and has caused a lot of enthusiasm in the United States. John Kerry, who is head of the Senate foreign relations committee, said that for the first time Israel has a legitimate negotiating partner because during the Gaza attack or Operation Cast Lead, the Dayton army was able to prevent any protests. They were so effective during the Gaza attack that Israel was able to shift forces from the West Bank to Gaza to extend the attack with para-military forces controlled by the colonial power that keep the population under control.

The largely docile Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is known for its corruption, passivity and its ridiculed belated campaign to boycott the settlements and their products. PA officials are virtual hostages albeit quite appreciative and cooperative collaborators. The resistance has apparently been crushed by General Dayton's army. All the militias and fighters in the West Bank have been effectively subdued especially Hamas.

The Fatah-heavy West Bank government headed by president Mahmoud Abbas receives considerable support, financial and otherwise, from the United States and Europe, so Hamas is persona non grata in this part of the Palestinian territories. Palestinian soldiers say the drop in terror attacks across the West Bank have little to do with Israeli actions - like checkpoints and the "security barrier" - and much to do with the National Security Force. Now, Palestinian and Israeli military commanders sometimes share information with each other have "some small degree of co-operation," . Also the degree of collaboration is such Israel insists the National Security Force not patrol between midnight and 6am, to not interfere with Israeli night raids in the West Bank villages.

In early 2006, immediately following the election of Hamas, Canada was the first country in the world to boycott the new government, ahead even of Israel. "Not a red cent to Hamas," said Peter MacKay, the then Canadian foreign minister, setting the tone for a crippling blockade that the United Nations has called "possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions imposed in modern times". In 2005, immediately following Israel's 'disengagement' from Gaza, Canada dispatched a top official from the Canada Border Services Agency, Denis Lefebvre, to advise Israel and the Palestinian Authority during the earlier stages of the blockade of Gaza.

It was at this juncture that Canada began funding and training Palestinian forces to monitor the sealed borders of the Gaza Strip, under the auspices of General Keith Dayton, the US security coordinator. Known at the time as the Karni Project, named after the principle commercial crossing into Gaza, the initiative was a covert - though not clandestine - effort to train a pliable security force to work with Israel.

A Jerusalem Post analysis tabbed the project as "a prototype for the running of Palestine". Provocations by Dahlan's security forces were seen by Hamas and many others as precipitating the Hamas takeover in Gaza. The Karni project saw the US and its Canadian allies "engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt PA dictatorship with victory".

On the heels of the Hamas takeover, Canada re-instituted its funding for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and redoubled its efforts to back Dayton's security forces training initiative to back appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and to prevent the Hamas government from taking power in the West Bank. In many crucial ways, Canada is the heart of the Dayton project - 18 of the training officers are Canadian and 10 are American.

Fayyad lauded US and Canada's efforts in not only the security sector but also governance and working to create legitimacy for Fayyad's impending unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. Canada recently removed longstanding funding for UNRWA, the agency responsible for Palestinian refugee affairs, and reallocated it to Fayyad's security project. "Our paramount concern is the security of Israel," said Canada's minister of public safety.

General Dayton is in charge of equipping and training the new Fatah-allied Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces in the West Bank. While the PA says its forces are trained to impose law and order, they have also clamped down on political opposition, including Hamas. Under the Oslo peace agreements the West bank is divided into three zones, Area A - full PA control, Area B - Palestinian civil control and Israeli security control, and Area C - complete Israeli military control. However, Israeli forces have freedom to operate wherever they choose in the West Bank.

Israeli security officials said despite recent U.S. training, they were also concerned Abbas is not strong enough in the West Bank to impose law and order without the help of the Israeli army. According to the officials, Fatah's intelligence apparatus routinely hands the Israel Defense Forces lists of Hamas militants that threaten Fatah rule, requesting that Israel make arrests.

A supporter of economic peace says that If the Palestinians were to form a state while the people were poor, uneducated, unemployed, and angry — then that would be a recipe for further disaster and war. If they were to have stable lives, then they would be less likely to throw that away by pursuing further war and terrorism against Israel. After all, people in the comfortable middle-class — in any country — are the least likely to rock the boat. If given a choice, most people would prefer not to starve — even if it means accepting a political arrangement that they might not necessarily like.

In the meantime, for those who still resist this grand US-Israeli project on pliant Palestinian governance, there is Gaza as a living showcase as the most deplorable and miserable state whom any Palestinian would dread with the latest fear of forced deportation out of the West Bank.

(various news sources)