From al jazeera

The Israeli parliament has passed a preliminary reading of a bill that would mandate the imprisonment of anyone who calls for the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, according to the Jerusalem Post newspaper.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said there must be no exceptions to President Barack Obama's demand that Israel stop its settlement activity.

Correspondents say it is the first time in years that US officials have been so vocal in calling for a settlement freeze in the Palestinian territories.

The comments come hours before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is to meet Mr Obama at the White House.

Israel's PM has defied US demands, saying some settlements can expand.

'Very clear'

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with her Egyptian counterpart, Mrs Clinton said that the president was "very clear" with PM Benjamin Netanyahu at their recent meeting that there should be a stop to all settlements.

from the Guardian

Increasingly fractious relations between the US and Israel hit a low unseen in nearly two decades yesterday after the Jewish state rejected President Obama's demand for an end to settlement construction in the West Bank, and the president responded by suggesting that Israeli intransigence endangers America's security.

The dispute, which blew in during the open hours before Obama met the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, reflects the depth of the shift in US policy away from accommodating Israel, and towards pressuring it to end years of stalling negotiations over the creation of a Palestinian state as it continues to grab land in the occupied territories.

By ETHAN BRONNER

JERUSALEM — Senior Israeli officials expressed irritation on Wednesday that President Obama had declined to acknowledge what they called clear understandings with the Bush administration that allowed Israel to build West Bank settlement housing within certain guidelines while still publicly claiming to honor a settlement “freeze.”

The complaint was the latest in a growing rift between the Obama administration and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how to move forward to achieve Middle East peace. Mr. Obama was in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and due to address the Muslim world from Cairo on Thursday.

The Israeli officials said that repeated and ongoing discussions with Bush officials starting in late 2002 gave unambiguous permission to build within the boundaries of certain settlement blocs as long as no new land was expropriated, no special economic incentives were offered to move to settlements and no new settlements were built. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity about an issue of such controversy between the two governments.

When Israel signed onto the so-called roadmap for a two-state solution in 2003, which says its government “freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements),” the officials said, it was after a detailed discussion with Bush officials that laid out those explicit limits.

“Not everything is written down,” said one of the officials.

--------------

see toon at top.... "yes what?" and read more at the NYT...

Representing just a tiny piece in the enormous puzzle of settlements that litter the West Bank, the settlement of Karmei Tzur is striving to expand. Founded just 25 years ago by students from the Zionist Har Etzion Yeshiva, 120 families, or 700 settlers - out of a total settler population of roughly 500,000 - currently inhabit Karmei Tzur. However, the settlement has several obstacles in the way of its desire to increase in size, notably its distance of only 100 meters from the large agricultural village of Beit Ommar with almost 15,000 Palestinian inhabitants.

Surrounded by rich agricultural land Palestinian farmers have been using for centuries, Karmei Tzur is gradually expropriating this land through the insidious use of "security fences" guarded 24/7 by the Israeli Occupation Forces - the IDF in the occupied territories - and armed settlers. When the fence was expanded in early 2007, incorporating the land of many Palestinians, the Israelis promised that the farmers weren't losing their right to use their land and that they could continue to access it. Majdi Za'aqiq is a Palestinian who owns land on the settlement side of the fence: "They say you can go Saturday or Sunday, 'Just tell us and we will let you go,' they say... but I don't need permission to go to my land. If I want to go in the morning, in the evening, whenever, it's up to me."

The army ordered that for one person to work one day - with limited hours - on the land, the Palestinian owners would need to give two weeks notice. Knowing full well that the majority of Palestinians would refuse to collaborate with the occupying forces, thus giving up their land to be legally taken by Israelis three years later, most of the land lies fallow. "All farmers with land on the other side of the fence refuse to cooperate with the settlement security," Za'aqiq said. Even in cases where Palestinians have tried to access their land in the way proposed by the Israeli military, they were consistently denied access or harassed by the army and armed settlers. Anti-occupation international and Israeli groups like Anarchists Against the Wall used direct action tactics to destroy parts of this fence in several instances throughout 2007.

http://www.countercurrents.org/galvin300709.htm

elsewhere .....

On Sunday, July 26th at 12:30pm, three internationals, one Israeli and two Palestinians, including the former Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, were arrested in an attempt to block settlers from entering a Palestinian home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. As they were arrested, settlers entered the home and began to destroy the house from the inside, as they plan to build a new house for Jewish settlers on the site. At 3:30pm three internationals tried to enter the Palestinian home to stop the destruction and were also put under arrest. A protest in solidarity with the arrestees and against the actions of the settlers was called for at 4pm on Monday.

The scene at 4pm on Monday is relatively calm with people videotaping the activities of the settlers and chanting pro-Palestinian slogans outside the tin barrier put up by the settlers along the perimeter of the pedestrian path in the center of the neighborhood. Roughly 60 protesters are present, about 1/2 Palestinian and 1/2 international. Young Palestinians set off fireworks nearby and bang on the tin wall making loud clanging noises. The approximately 15 police and 10 border police present for the settlers' "protection" from the beginning of the protest begin to react more and more violently as the protest continues, threatening the kids with violence by lifting their hands as if about to hit them. Despite a court order ordering the settlers not to work or build on the land of the Palestinian home they destroyed, the settlers move building materials into the house from outside - on two occasions with the help of the police - despite cries from the Palestinians that they were breaking the court order.

Between 4:30 and 5pm, one settler provocatively exits the zone two times to get tools. Each time the police force their way through the crowd, pushing people aside, at times violently. The settler laughs as he moves through the crowd and protesters scream "fascist." Roughly 15 more police enter the occupied house's yard during this period bringing the total to around 40 or 50.

At 5:42pm as the protest gets more agitated, 10 to 12 police, unannounced, charge the crowd attacking a small boy and pouncing on a Palestinian woman, Huda Imam, who was leading the anti-settler chants. Imam is thrown to the ground as at least five officers hold her down and twist her arm behind her back. She is the only arrest of the afternoon. Witnesses also report seeing people trampled during the assault, and an Israeli was held and dragged by the neck after earlier attempting to negotiate with the police. Chaos ensues following the charge and the protest is split into two; both halves are further separated from the settlers who were taunting, laughing and sticking out their tongues at protesters earlier in the afternoon.

http://www.countercurrents.org/galvin300709A.htm

real terrorism .....

Israel's late 1947 -1948 "War of Independence" took six months to create a new Jewish state, excluding Arabs to the greatest extent possible. To accomplish it, widespread war crimes and atrocities were committed as about 800,000 people were brutally uprooted, ethnically cleansed, or murdered in cold blood. In addition, 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and other cities were destroyed and erased except in the collective memories of their inhabitants and descendants who'll always consider them their rightful homes.

Shortly after, laws were passed to legitimize the seizure and exclusive Jewish use of Palestinian land. The June 1948 Abandoned Areas Ordinance referred to "any area or place conquered by or surrendered to armed forces or deserted by all or part of its inhabitants." It gave the Israeli government exclusive jurisdiction rights, including "expropriation and confiscation (authority over) movable and immovable property, within any abandoned area." It meant displaced Palestinians were prohibited from returning and claiming their property that by law was no longer theirs.

The September 1948 Area of Jurisdiction and Powers Ordinance stated that "Any law applying to the whole of the State of Israel" applies as well "to the whole of the area including....any part of Palestine which the Minister of Defence has defined by proclamation as being held by the Defence Army of Israel." It meant that Palestinians lost all rights and were subject to whatever laws Israel enacted.

http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman310709.htm

and, from Crikey .....

Letter from Gaza, Part 2: Keep off the grass

Freelance journalist and author Antony Loewenstein writes from inside Gaza:

The American International School in Gaza was bombed on 3 January, completely destroying the institution. Today it is a twisted wreck of concrete, metal and burnt vans. Surreally, when I visited a few days ago I found two green, grass ovals being watered by a highly effective sprinkler system. Sheep were grazing on the unused land.

Two students of the school, Mohammed Samhadane and Walid Abuzaid, both 13, are like many pimply faced kids all over the world; addicted to violent video games and smoking cigarettes. They told me that like their friends they wanted peace with Israel but believed the state had no desire to negotiate honestly with the Palestinians, especially after the recent Gaza massacre. Politically aware, sceptical towards the claims of Hamas to represent the Palestinian people (they came from Fatah families) and Western-friendly, they resigned themselves to the idea that things might change soon. Maybe.

This attitude has followed me across the Strip. From farmers to Hamas spokespeople and militants to academics, there is a little hope, but only because the alternative is despair and extremism. In a land such as this, where daily life is consumed with finding petrol, a job and respite from the searing heat, politics seeps into every facet of life. I'm yet to meet anybody who doesn't want to share opinions on the Hamas/Fatah split or President Barack Obama (usually a positive comment that he's not George W. Bush then dismissal of his chances to change the equation here.)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may believe that the people of Gaza despise the Hamas leadership and want to overthrow its rule but the picture is not that simple. The growing Islamisation of society concerns many Gazans -- today I was given a list Hamas is distributing that urges parents not to allow children to wear t-shirts that contain words such as, "Madonna" and "Hussy" -- but security has greatly improved since the group took over in 2007.

During Friday prayers in Khan Younis last week, I witnessed thousands of Hamas supporters cheer Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and embrace his message of a devout Islamic society (though he also talked about a Palestinian state along 1967 borders, the internationally acceptable solution to the conflict.) Young men and boys, some devout and some more liberal, clearly found meaning in a movement that deftly melded faith with politics. I was nearly crushed in a push by the crowd to get close to Haniyeh as he departed the mosque.

Unemployment now defines the Gazan population; tens of thousands of Palestinian Authority staff still pull a regular income from the West Bank but are directed by Fatah not to work in Gaza under Hamas. I've lost count of the number of men who tell me their wives are begging them to leave home during the day. "1500 people were killed during the war", one man, Nafez Aldabba, told me, "but more babies than that have been born since because there is nothing to do except sleep, eat and have sex."

People like Nafez and his son Mohammed confounded my expectations about attitudes in the Strip and indicated a deep desire in Gaza for some kind of normalised relations with Israel. Mohammed, a militant who fires rockets into Israel and treats all Israeli civilians as legitimate targets, told me that he still supported a two-state solution, the right of return and enforcement of 1967 borders.

He rejected the "extremism" of Hamas. But like his father, he had no faith that Israel would ever end settlement building "and now is even telling America to get lost."

I rarely hear any hateful comments towards Jews. A few have asked whether public opinion in Australia was supportive of the Palestinians (I replied that recent polls suggest that they are.)

Even farmers with little education stressed their embrace of "all religions" but opposition to Zionism. Hazem Balousha, a Gazan-based journalist who strings for the London Guardian, told me that he believes Israel doesn't want to overthrow Hamas but merely strangle the economy.

"Most people are fed-up", he said. "They don't really care too much about politics but have to focus on getting electricity, cooking gas and how to feed the family every day. They only care about themselves."

Gaza's biggest rap group, Darg Team, were a breath of fresh air (their latest single, 23 Days, details the carnage during January's war.) Six twenty-somethings, with matching white trainers, riff on religion, culture, honour, occupation and the right of return. I asked manager Fadi Srour whether they would perform in Israel.

"We'd like to", he responded. "Every society has good and bad and we want to reach people directly. We'd love to perform in the Knesset."

Under Hamas, the band has been unofficially banned but they say they'll continue performing anyway, going underground, if necessary.

Antony Loewenstein is a freelance journalist and the author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution.