Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton forcefully rejected yesterday Israeli claims that the Bush administration had secretly agreed to expanding Jewish settlements on the West Bank, deepening the impasse between the two countries.

"We have the negotiating record, that is the official record, that was turned over to the Obama administration by the outgoing Bush administration," Clinton told reporters after meeting with her Turkish counterpart in Washington. "There is no memorialization of any informal and oral agreements."

President Obama in recent weeks has pushed Israel to halt settlement growth, including expansion that results from population growth, on the grounds that it violates commitments made by Israel in the 2003 "road map" peace plan.

Israeli officials have protested, saying that they had reached a series of understandings with Bush administration officials - some written, some spoken - under which growth was permitted under certain conditions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/05/AR2009060503490_pf.html

from Crikey .....

What is Gillard's Israel visit all about?

Former WA premier Peter Dowding writes:

No one should be surprised at the news that the Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is hot footing it to Israel with some of the local press with a long track record for supporting the Israeli view of the Middle East. Which is basically - to paraphrase the Orwell line - "Israel good, Palestinians bad".

US President Obama's speech in Egypt and his insistence on some basic compliance by Israel with UN declarations has clearly wrong-footed Australia and angered the strong Israel lobby within the ALP.

Members like Michael Danby and others have made it their business to ensure that Australia's foreign policy mirrored the worst of the shallowness of the Bush era which simply writes off those who believe in meeting Palestinian aspirations to live in some semblance of a homeland with some semblance of dignity, as ranting supporters of terrorism.

Of course there is a serious issue of the use of terrorism, but that applies to the terrorism from people with nothing left to lose as well as State terrorism. And for those in the Government who still do not understand the issues, Paul McGeough's latest book Kill Khalid provides insight into the complete failure of all the major participants to move forward towards creating a just and lasting peace.

Our Foreign Policy has been very pro Israel -- just look at the appalling silence when Israel, one of the strongest nuclear powers in the world, decimated the civilian population of Gaza where 1.5 million people live in a small area, trapped from any reasonable contact with the outside world.

The few ALP Caucus members who dare to hold the view that peace in the Middle East requires reigning in the unlawful Israeli occupations and demands that Palestinians be treated with some dignity have been warned not to go public but to keep any discussions about the policy in-house.

In the meantime, our foreign minister must be feeling very uncomfortable with the Obama play -- it's such a pity, as Australia could have used its position as an honest broker. Instead it hung on to the extreme Jewish lobby coattails and the Bush madness for too long.

So what's the journey to Israel about? Assuring Israel that while we love the US we don't agree with Obama and if we do get a seat on the Security Council we will look after Israeli interests?

Britain's prime minister has put a notorious pro-Israel lobbyist in charge of policy in the Middle East, Iraq and Iran, reaffirming his determination to continue with his Zionist policies even as his administration approaches the end of its life.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has appointed an Israeli agent of influence and proponent of genocide in Gaza to a key position at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Britain's foreign ministry.

On 9 June, Ivan Lewis was given a major promotion in Mr Brown's government when he was appointed Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with responsibility for Middle East policy, Iraq, Iran, counterterrorism and Anglo-American relations. According to one source, he is now "just one step away from the cabinet".

Speaking after his promotion, Mr Lewis said: "My responsibility for the Middle East peace process is particularly poignant. I have never hidden my pride at being Jewish or my support for the State of Israel".

According to the Independent newspaper, Mr Lewis's appointment has "raised eyebrows in the Foreign Office". It said:

"Lewis has a long history of interest in the region as vice-chair of the Labour Friends of Israel. Earlier this year, he became - not without controversy - one of the most outspoken political supporters of Israel's military assault on Gaza. Critics can't help but wonder how objective Lewis is likely to be in his new post."

Mr Lewis is also a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust, a body founded in 1988 by British pro-Israel lobbyists Greville Janner and Merlyn Rees with the aim of maintaining a culture of gentile guilt and Jewish victimhood in British schools.

http://www.redress.cc/stooges/redress20090611

Since Israel accepted the then US president George Bush's 2003 "road map", which mandated a freeze on all settlement activity, the settler population in the West Bank has swollen from 211,400 to 289,600 - an increase of 37 per cent in six years, far outstripping any natural population growth.

At the same time, Israeli planning law discriminates against Palestinians who want to expand their own towns and villages in the West Bank, on land that is supposed to be part of their future homeland.

"On this issue, yes, I would say we have an apartheid system," said Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, a planning expert and co-author of a 170-page report titled The Prohibited Zone, which documents Israeli planning policy in the West Bank.

The report, published last month by the Israeli human rights group Bimkom - Planners for Planning Rights, makes clear that for the 150,000 Palestinians who live in the part of the West Bank known in the Oslo accords as Area C - 60 per cent of the total territory that comes under Israel's direct control - Israeli policies practically prevent any new Palestinian construction.

"We have a system that deliberately allows Jewish settlers to expand West Bank settlements virtually at will, while for the 150 Palestinian villages and communities in Area C, applications to build are mostly rejected," Mr Cohen-Lifshitz said. "On average, 13 building permits are granted each year for Palestinians."

So Palestinians build without permission, and risk having their houses demolished by the Israeli Civil Administration.

From the beginning of 2000 to September 2007, the Israeli Civil Administration issued demolition orders for 4820 buildings established by Palestinians in Area C. Actual homes demolished amounted to 1626 buildings - 240 a year.

As Mr Cohn-Lifshitz's report notes, these statistics mask the painful stories of families left without a roof over their heads.

Other serious consequences include residential congestion, "for example, when a family expands but is not permitted to enlarge its home. In many other cases young couples are forced to leave their village and move to other Palestinian communities in Areas A and B [of the West Bank]," the report says.

That sounds a lot like the arguments being mounted by those Israelis pleading for the continuation of "natural growth" in their West Bank settlements.

"It's one law for the Jews, and a totally separate law for Palestinians," Mr Cohen-Lifshitz said.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/palestinians-denied-housing-as-israeli-settlements-expand-at-will-20090717-do9q.html

from Crikey .....

Letter from Gaza: flattened, occupied, sick and rootless

Antony Loewenstein writes from inside Gaza:

During a conversation last night in Gaza with a group of 20-something male students, the issue of homosexuality came up. These were university-educated, Muslim men with relatively liberal attitudes but accepting a gay lifestyle was a complete anathema to them. "It's disgusting," one said, a Fatah loyalist and opponent of Hamas.

We sat and talked alongside Gaza City's beach, a beautifully peaceful place with a Hamas wedding being celebrated nearby to the MC-led, Western soundtrack. "Jump", "jump", "jump", screamed the music.

The Gaza Strip, under siege for over three years by Israel and the Western powers, is utterly unlike anywhere I've ever visited. Over 70 percent unemployment, garbage strewn across many streets and in abandoned buildings, a thriving tunnel business from Egypt that brings in the essentials of life and Hamas gunmen on most street corners directing traffic and keeping cool in the searing heat.

The main image in the West of Gaza is of a fundamentalist Islamic regime bent on Israel's destruction. Although there are worrying signs of an increasing intolerance of difference -- witness the news that sharia law and a kind of Muslim code of conduct may soon be implemented here -- Hamas is a broad church. The reality on the ground is removed from virtually everything I read before crossing the border.

The Hamas Deputy Foreign Minister and former adviser to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, Dr Ahmed Yousef, told me in his high-rise office building, overlooking an Israeli-destroyed, Hamas home and the deep blue ocean, that his group was becoming more pragmatic and now embraced the two-state solution with Israel. He was pessimistic that the Jewish state would ever agree to completely cease and reverse the illegal settlements in the West Bank. If not, he explained, "resistance" had to continue.

I came principally to talk to the Gazan people. Yesterday I spent time at El-Wafa hospital, the only rehabilitation centre in Gaza and situated very close to the Israeli border. During the recent war, Israeli missiles struck two, unfinished wards. Akram al-Sattari, the head of planning, told me that officials there received countless requests of assistance from poor and needy families on a daily basis. Some need therapeutic work and others orthopaedic surgeries. I saw a man in a coma, his legs missing and stomach mangled, lying in a bed with his eyes and mouth wide open. There were literally thousands of similar patients across Gaza, mostly refused entry to Israel or Egypt to receive essential care.

The effects of Israel's December/January bombardment are pervasive. The town of Jabaliya was flattened in parts by Israeli missiles and shells. It's a ghost town, with a few families living in tents and the ruins of their homes and donkeys and young boys carrying rubble piece by piece to be sold or re-used.

Majed Alathanma, a 60-year-old father, lost his well-appointed home and taxi business in a barrage one day. He told me that he had personally seen Israeli troops open fire on civilians and drivers carrying dead bodies to be buried. These allegations are borne out in the recent report by IDF soldiers of the "Breaking the Silence" group. I have heard so many similar stories, all completely unverifiable, but consistent in their detail and callousness.

Homes cannot be re-built with cement because Israel bans its import. The Strip's first clay building for disabled children is the first of many experiments in this now necessary skill. The engineer said that the Palestinians could keep on re-building as long as the Israelis continued destroying. Such despondency wasn't uncommon, though surprising was the hope that co-existence with Israel wasn't only important but essential. I've heard very few comments against Jews themselves.

Despair, depression, sexual dysfunction, bed-wetting (for children and adults) and lethargy are common complaints, a number of psychologists have told me. Students are refused exit permits to study abroad. Teachers can't improve their skills with native English speakers. Journalists are trapped between dedication to truth-telling and battles with Hamas officials over what version of events should be published.

In the small village of East Maghazi, near the Israeli border, a farmer told me a story that seemed to encapsulate the sense of humiliation that infects this conflict. After the Israelis bulldozed his home without warning in early January, along with killing some of his live-stock, they returned to steal the roots of a 100 year-old sycamore tree, a shady covering used by his grandfather in decades past. The roots would undoubtedly be re-planted in Israel as a way to eradicate the Palestinian connection to the land.

This is the real meaning of occupation.

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