I'm still not sure what to make of Ehud Olmert's statement in favor of unilateral withdrawal.

This article says that the statement is a "trial balloon" from the Sharon camp - which would be really shocking, and also suggest that the idea was hatched at the same time as the decision to go ahead with the security fence. Obviously, withdrawing without a peace agreement is a form of surrender - noone should pretend otherwise. And it would increase the PA's determination to fight for everything else that they are demanding (ie. Jerusalem, settling millions of Palestinians into pre-1967 Israel, whatever's after that), while in no way reducing international pressure.

The weekend Yediot had an article called "Korbanot Hagader" ("casualties of the fence") - a play on "Korbanot ha-shalom" ("casualties of the peace") which was the term applied by Oslo supporters to the casualties of "first-generation" suicide bombings. The article by Tsadok Yehezkeli is both informative and melodramatic in that it contrasts the initial successes of the fence with the hardships endured by Palestinians in Jayyous, Jabara, and a third village.

Yehezkeli tries to describe the situation from the first-person vantage point of those affected (including the standard baseless bit about how they think malicious land confiscation and "transfer" are in the offing), asserting (mistakenly) that this aspect is lost in the "sterile" language of Israeli discussion of the fence. I actually want more "sterile" information ie. how many people are really going to be substantially affected (the article quotes an untenably large estimate from B'tselem) and what possible alternatives exist.

I will try to write more from this article later, though real-life may well end up taking precedence.

More on 'Geneva' Another right-on evaluation from Yossi Klein Halevi:

The Israeli initiators of the Geneva Accord are guilty of multiple outrages. They've summoned a campaign of international pressure against their own democratic government, hampering its diplomatic maneuverability. They've undermined the legitimacy of the Sharon government while strengthening the legitimacy of Yasser Arafat's. They've lied to the public about the accord's supposed renunciation of the right of return, when in fact the accord reaffirms it. They've negotiated away Israel's most basic assets, not least its right to defend itself, and gotten vague Palestinian promises in return. And, hardly surprising, they allowed the Geneva signing ceremony to be overtaken by a blame-Israel atmosphere without offering any defense in response.

But perhaps their greatest damage is domestic. In the past three years, Israeli society has managed two extraordinary achievements. The first is to withstand a planned, systematic terror campaign whose purpose was to break our will and slowly erode our viability. Shortly after the outbreak of the Terror War in September 2000, Ehud Barak warned that, in a contest of wills between two societies, the loser will be the one who blinks first. Now, with Geneva, a part of Israeli society has blinked.

No less serious is Geneva's erosion of Israel's second great achievement: the marginalization of both the ideological Right and Left and the end of the no-win debate between them. The combined effects of the first and second intifadas on Israeli consciousness was to convince the majority that both Greater Israel and Peace Now were delusions. And so, arguably for the first time since the 1967 Six Day War, most Israelis were no longer viewing the territories through an ideological prism of wishful thinking but facing reality, however grimly, on its own terms.

This article says that Arafat's last minute decision to ambigously smile on the Geneva ceremony was the result of pressure from Egypt.

Haaretz writer Sara Leibovich-Dar levelled some criticisms at Jpost. Jpost editor Bret Stephens responds that Leibovich-Dar is a tendentious interviewer and a plagiarist.

I variously read Jpost, Haaretz, and Yediot - all of them have good and bad writers (at Haaretz: Ari Shavit, Zeev Schiff, Amos Harel, and Amir Oren are the best ones). In 2002, Jpost and Haaretz both interviewed me about my blog, and Jpost was the more professional of the two. The Haaretz article has a lot of sloppy misquotes, including an anecdote told by Sgt. Stryker that was attributed to me. The Haaretz interviewer was also quite envious of my ability to say whatever I want on my blog.

On the off chance that you were thinking of going to see the excellent musicians (like Omri Mor, Daniel Sarid, and Daniel Zamir's Ad Matai) at the Tel Aviv"Fringe Jazz Festival" , you might take a look at the home page of the Communist Party-sponsored arts space that's hosting it and have second thoughts.

Palestinian 'Geneva' negotiator Jamal Zakot on why Palestinians shouldn't fear that the plan would eliminate unlimited "right of return" to pre-1967 Israel for descendents of refugees from 1948:

"The document does not promise a full and collective return for millions of Palestinians, but it also does not cede this right. On the contrary: the proposed time frame for the solution of the refugee problem is five years, while the time frame for the Israeli retreat from the Palestinian lands [sic], evacuation of settlements and completion of installing Palestinian sovereignty on its lands according to the maps - which are more important than the texts - is only three years."

So Zakot is saying that the PA will first get everything that it wants in the West Bank/Gaza, so it will be able hold out and stay maximalist. And don't think that they wouldn't.

Arutz-7 translates the above from PA daily Al Hayat al Jadida. Perhaps Ribbity will take a closer look.

In the course of a discussion about an assertion by Norwegian Television that Israel's security fence is creating "apartheid", Bjorn Staerk enunciates the real issue regarding "antisemitism" among European media and intelligentsia:

We don't have to call it anti-semitism or Jew-hatred. Those words are so intertwined with modern history that their defining qualities have been pushed aside. But "irrational fear of and attribution of malicious intent to the only country in the world that is dominantly Jewish, and Jewish influences in other countries" covers it. It highlights the sinister part without strawman-friendly diversions like whether this is hate, or whether Hitler would have approved.

I've been thinking along similar lines for a while. We just need a good name for this phenomenon - eg. where Tony Judt will wave away physical and verbal attacks on Jews by Europeans as "misguided", while castigating (with comparisons to Pontius Pilate) Israeli leftists who have become (understandably) disillusioned.

Standard liberal gestures - ie. trying to "understand", suspending judgement, trying to "build bridges" - just seem to be absent. Although the Guardian seems to have started changing in the past week or two.

The Swiss just wouldn't risk offending the Palestinians (report):

It had been agreed beforehand that a message from Arafat would not be read aloud at the ceremony - but at the last moment the PA delegation demanded and threatened, and the Swiss hosts gave in. The message from Arafat, considered to be the father of modern-day terrorism, stated, "While Israel continues to build a Berlin Wall, we hold an olive branch.

So apparently in Geneva they blamed Israel for everything, cursed at the fence, and called Sharon a "fascist". And no criticism at all for the Palis.

The one-sidedness is partly because that's how many of these people actually think. But it's also because any criticism of Arafat or the Palis would "offend" the Palestinian delegation. Castigating Israel and giving Arafat a free ride is part of trying to drum up Palestinian support for the Geneva enterprise.

Similarly, if some peace plan gets support from an Israeli gov't (whether Likud or Labor), Palestinian support for it is then likely to decrease. The thinking is: "if the Israelis are willing to accept it, then it's probably a trick and we should be demanding more".

Heard the Geneva affair (including some of the Carter speech) on Channel 2 news. I bet most of the people there never actually read the "accords", and have no recollection of the Camp David or Taba negotiations (except for Beilin & co. of course, who were present at them).

Carter apparently called repeatedly for "return" of refugees to the territories beyond what the "accords" call for. He obviously hasn't read the documents, which call for unlimited settling of refugees into the "territories" and an additional "limited" (but TBD) number of refugees to be settled in Israel proper.

More: This article describes how Carter and Arafat have a longstanding close relationship (via Kesher Talk). Carter is not disturbed by Arafat's support for Al-Aqsa Brigades etc.

I will eventually force myself to read the reports of the Geneva "signing". Most normal people would probably not be able to participate at this thing in an official capacity (eg. by making a speech) without somehow noting that it's basically meaningless.

But professional politicians (and ex-politicians) aren't normal people, and will largely ignor the fact that Beilin etc. have no mandate from the Israeli public, and that the hypocritical Palestinian delegates don't even represent themselves, let alone Arafat or the Palestinian public.

The real evidence of the shallowness of the sponsors (ie. Blair, Carter et. al. ) is that none of them will actually try to treat the Palestinians' ostensible (though mega-ambiguous) blessing of the Geneva document as readiness to make the single concession that it apparently requires of them - ie. giving up their demand that millions of descendents of refugees from the 1948 war be settled in Israel proper.

Still on the very local side of things: Jpost print edition has more info on the Templer cemetery in Jerusalem's German Colony neighborhood and Beilin's plan (ie. 'Geneva') to provide the PA with "access" (which is not defined within the Geneva document).

The area actually contains two burial grounds - the one belonging to the Templers has been unused for about 50 yrs; a second one belongs to an evangelical Christian movement, whose administrator expressed surprise that the PA had expressed any interest in the site. This confirms to me that the provision was a not-particularly-well-considered "tit-for-tat" in exchange for Israeli access/sovereignty of the large and centuries-old Jewish cemetery on Mt. Scopus.

Mazal Tov to Ribbity Frog + spouse on the addition of a new tadpole.

Apparently pandering to Arab and Muslim sentiments, BBC World Service Radio broadcast an all-Muslim panel discussion on whether Israel has a right to exist. The consensus of the panel was not surprising.

Norman Geras links to this this article on the situation. This article from Haaretz has similar sympathies. This other Haaretz article.

It's tiresome to fisk articles in the Independent and the Guardian because to me it seems that the loaded language and one-sided presentations in those publications should be obvious to everyone. But since this article has made such an impression on a sensible liberal blogger it seems like a good time to respond.

Guardian:

There are yellow steel gates in the barbed wire [at Jayyous] but they are closed. Farmers are busy making phone calls, some are going to see the Israeli military to demand that the gates be opened. Eventually, soldiers arrive. Harvesting is a family affair so the soldiers face a crowd of men, women and children. What they do is this. First they collect all their identity papers.

Then they call the people out one by one. Today they have decided that no male between the ages of 12 and 38 will be allowed on his land. Also, no woman will be allowed unless she is over 28 and married. So the majority of the farmers - men, women and teenagers - stand at the gate, the Israeli soldiers and the barrier between them and the harvest that is their sustenance and income for the coming year.

Two men set off to try and find a way of infiltrating their own land. The rest make their way back to the village hall. On the mayor's desk lie some 600 permits that appeared in the village this morning. They are issued by the Israeli authorities and made out to individual farmers. About half of them are in the names of people who can't use them: babies, infants, a couple of men who have been in Australia for 15 years. But that is not the point. The point is that the people know that if they use these permits they are implicitly accepting their terms: three months' access with no recognition of any rights to the land. They suspect that after three months Israel will start playing games with them. Permits like these were one of the mechanisms by which their parents and grandparents were dispossessed of their land in 1948. What should they do? Use the permits and try to salvage their crops and deal with the rest later? Boycott the permits and starve?

More lies from the Guardian

An Egyptian writer tours the West Bank for the Guardian:

The next day a Jewish Israeli woman gives me a copy of the military order on which the permits are based. It names the West Bank land now trapped between the barrier and Israel's borders the "Seam Zone". It states that the people who have the right to be in the Seam Zone without permits are Israelis or anyone who can come to Israel under the Law of Return. That is, any Jewish person from anywhere in the world. But in this district alone, 11,550 Palestinians have their homes in the Seam Zone. "It is Nuremberg all over again," she says.

That whole paragraph is baldfaced fiction - nothing unusual for the Guardian, I know. But it's also disturbingly provocative and inflammatory.

More later.

More:

To clarify:

- the assertion that the seam zone is "Jews only" is simply bunk

- the wacky-left and mainstream British press have also stated that the villagers were told to get permits or face expulsion. Those reports don't describe how the orders were supposedly promulgated (or offer an Israeli response). I haven't found anything vaguely similar in the Israeli press (and there should have been something).

- I have read about permits being required for crossing the fence

Don't know if I'll have any more info today, but I'll try (the Nuremberg bit is obviously obscene but apparently goes over well in Europe).

More:

It's another instance of the "Jenin Effect" (ie. Palestinian rumors becoming international news):

The Palestinians of Jubara were alarmed when Israeli soldiers began posting notices on telephone poles and at checkpoints around their small West Bank village.

....

The notices told of an unprecedented new order: everyone must apply for a special permit to remain in Jubara -- the village has about 300 residents. The notices did not specifically mention expulsion, but Palestinian officials and villagers said they understand this to be the implied threat.

Suffice to say that this "implied threat" is either Pali propaganda or subconscious projection (or both). The IDF is trying to prevent non-locals from crossing the fence easily - an unpleasant consequence of maintaining a quasi-open border with Arafatistan.

I'm a bit weary of the whole 'Geneva' thing, but: A recent Jpost article mentioned that under 'Geneva' the Palestinians would be provided with "access" to the Templar (German Protestant) cemetery, which is right in the middle of my neighborhood. This was apparently a spur-of-the-moment concession demanded in exchange for Israeli access to the old Jewish cemetery on Mount Scopus.

Update: More background on the cemetery here. Apparently they're the Templers, not the Templars.

The text of the "Geneva accords" were mailed to all Israelis a week or so ago (though I was in the US, and T. didn't keep the brochure for me). The mailing was funded by gambling website operator (and Beilin associate) Avi Shaked, together with the Geneva-based Center for Humanitarian Dialogue (report)

"What's your solution then?" While some are still saying that "we just have to believe in the possiblity of peace", Yossi Klein Halevi is a realist:

In a week when the Sharon government announced negotiations with the new Palestinian government for a second hudna, or cease-fire, and when the text of the "Geneva Accord" appeared as a pamphlet with our morning newspapers, it is useful to remind ourselves what we've learned about the conflict over this last bitter decade. And that is that the Oslo-era notion of a comprehensive peace needs to be wiped from our lexicon.

Instead, we should conceive not of resolving the conflict but of managing its intensity. A hudna isn't merely a means to an end but - at least for the foreseeable future, and possibly for this generation - the end itself.

There are several compelling reasons why a comprehensive peace is now unattainable. The first is the near-total absence, among mainstream Palestinians and the Arab world generally, of the notion that Jewish sovereignty over any part of this land is legitimate.

....

Many of us who initially supported Oslo assumed that a reciprocal realization had occurred among Palestinians. In fact, no such transformation of Palestinian consciousness occurred. The opposite: One of Oslo's many ironies is that, by entrusting the education of a generation of Palestinians to Arafat's pathological regime, the Palestinian people are far less emotionally and ideologically ready for peace than they were before the Oslo process began.

...

At the same time, we need to recognize the fluidity of this moment and stay open to new possibilities. In balancing the contradictory insights of politics and faith, our challenge is one of timing: how to avoid premature hope that could once again lead us to disastrous political initiatives, while not missing sudden openings for change.

I hope to resume blogging next week.

Last week I was in the US at an often boring wi-fi enabled conference. I can imagine how people living generallly peaceful surroundings could catch a glimpse of LGF and see it as obsessive or even intolerant.

Interesting: a roundtable discusssion on "The New World Order" featuring the very insightful Mark Lilla as well as Tony "Dissolve Israel" Judt - sponsored by batty-sounding graduate programs at the U. of Illinois.

Lilla's article "The End Of Politics" offers an explanation of the depressing European trends embodied by Judt's clumsily argued and clearly agenda-driven article in the NY Review of Books (excellent responses to Judt by Bret Stephens and Victor David Hansen have been heavily blogged already).

The question that I would like to put to Judt: "Suppose that your 'binational state' idea were actually attempted and just made matters worse. Would you then support international 'encouragement' to get Jewish Israelis to emigrate?" Like many leftists, Judt pretends that the Israeli gov't contemplates transfer of its Arab population and gets outraged; but his answer to my question could only be 'yes'.