Since taking office this past January, President Obama has pressed for renewed peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. While he has exhorted both sides to make concessions, the bulk of his effort, at least publicly, has been to pressure Israel to respect his demand to immediately freeze all construction in its settlements. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected the demand saying that freezing construction in Israeli settlements when new apartments, schools, roads, etc. were needed, was tantamount to "freezing life" in those settlements, and therefore "unreasonable."

Ask average, albeit somewhat informed, Americans what feelings or images they associate with Israel, and you're likely to receive responses that range from the extreme positive to the extreme negative but are mostly somewhere in between. Ask the same group about Israeli settlers, however, and you're likely to elicit an overwhelmingly negative response. The word "settler" has become a pejorative term. It is, for many people, including those who are not anti-Israel, synonymous with violent fanatic.

One would have to write a book to adequately address the issue of Israeli settlements, which is much more complicated than most news sources would have us believe. Suffice it to say, we should be troubled that the media use the same word, "settler," to describe, on the one hand, an ideologue committed to a "Greater Israel" and, on the other, a regular citizen of any political persuasion who is motivated by economic concerns. I'd venture to guess that when most people hear the word "settler," they think of the former. But in reality, as David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy notes in his article Beyond Settlements: US Policy Options Going Forward, "80% of [the 285,000] Israeli settlers live in less than 5% of the West Bank -- largely, but not completely, adjacent to the pre-1967 boundaries." Thus, one could argue that 57,000 settlers, the other 20%, stand in the way of a future Palestinian state. But, Makovsky continues, "an equal amount of land within Israel could be swapped in exchange [for the 5% of the West Bank where 80% of settlers currently live], allowing [both Israeli and Palestinian leadership] to claim victory." In other words, 228,000 settlers, the 80% majority, can be absorbed into Israel without any sacrifice by the Palestinians, and therefore cannot be considered an obstacle to the peace process.

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Dear Mr. President,

Over the past few months we are ever more frequently hearing about the US State Department's objections toward Israeli building in existing settlements (even those that have been established three to four decades ago) in general and in Jerusalem as well. In particular the negative commentary given in regards to building of a new house in East Jerusalem on private land owned by a private citizen who has received all the necessary municipal permits because of strange explanations to the effect that it would "upset the demographic character of the area."

Was it not just over one year ago on June 4, 2008 that you (at the time a senator and presidential candidate) delivered an inspiring speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in which you declared to all present that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided"?

What has happened in that short time since? In addition you and your staff from the State Department are continuously speaking about Israelis settlements as the main obstacle to peace.... as if they did not exist then peace would instantly reign in this area. In your speech to AIPAC the word "settlements" is mentioned only once with your advice to Israel "to refrain from building new settlements - as agreed with the Bush administration at Annapolis."

Personally, I can attest to have been captivated by you during your presidential campaign. Your speeches were deeply inspiring, and gave a message of hope to many throughout the USA and indeed the world. "Yes we can" is a simple statement, a hope and a belief in a better world, and our individual and collective ability as nations to bring about much needed change to the good. But implicit in "Yes we can" is also the promise that "Yes we will do what we promised to do". Now is the time to convert those presidential campaign promises into action, in recognition to the words of Benjamin Franklin, "Well done is better than well said."

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Kristin Davis, the actress best known for her role as WASP-dreamgirl-cum-nice-Jewish-wife Charlotte York Goldenblatt on Sex and the City, found herself unintentionally affected by the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Davis was working as a spokeswoman for Oxfam International, only to be shown the door. According to today's New York Post, Davis' endorsement deal with Ahava cosmetics was at odds with Oxfam's political policies.

Because Ahava is made by Dead Sea Cosmetics in the Mitzhe Shalem Jewish settlement in the West Bank, it's been controversial -- the leftist women's peace group Code Pink, which accuses America of "war crimes," has called for a boycott, saying Ahava uses Palestinian natural resources in what it calls "Occupied Palestine."

As for Davis' side, the Post reports:

 

Our source said Davis "has been very active with both Oxfam and Ahava, and is very passionate about the causes of Oxfam. She was completely unaware of this conflict of interest and is saddened to be on public pause from a group she has devoted so much time, money, and support to."

Ahava, for the record, had no comment.

While Davis seems like a perfectly nice person who happened to get swept up in controversy around her multiple projects, I do find it interesting that it was Oxfam - the charitable organization - and not Ahava - the for-profit company - who dropped her. I'm also willing to bet that Oxfam doesn't pay her for her work or only covers travel expenses, while Ahava employs her, but that's purely speculative at this point.

"Israel will not freeze settlement construction for natural growth, despite intense pressure from the Obama administration to do so," The Jerusalem Post, June 1, 2009.

The argument that “natural growth” is crucial to Israel's well-being is utter nonsense.  

Here are a few facts. 

First of all, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the population growth in the settlements is 5.6% annually. That is three-and-a-half times the rate of Jewish population growth in Israel. Forty percent of settler population growth is directly attributable to immigration, with a significant part of the rest due to the increased childbirths as a result of that immigration.

Second, there is no housing crisis in the settlements. There remain many vacant units. The idea that "natural growth" forces families to separate is simply counter-factual. Creating more opportunities and incentives for settlers to move back to Israel proper would be a welcome development, but barring “natural growth” contributes little, if anything, in this regard. It simply stops the settlements from expanding.

Third, the idea that a young couple or an expanding family should somehow have the right, guaranteed by the government, to live in the place of their choosing, irrespective of the housing market, is absurd. No one in New York, London, Paris, or anywhere else has such a guarantee, nor do people in Tel Aviv, Haifa or Beersheva. Young settler couples, like any others, must hunt for housing in the existing housing market, and sometimes that means they have to move to a nearby town.

Fourth, the implication that families will be “separated” if some members need to move back to Israel is ridiculous, as anyone who has ever travelled in Israel knows. Israel is a small country. If someone needs to move and finds a nice, affordable place in Israel, they are a short drive or bus ride away from their former community.

Fifth, the municipal boundaries of the established settlements are three times the size of the built-up areas. Therefore, allowing ‘natural growth” exceptions has enormous potential for major settlement expansion.

Sixth, the argument that Israel cannot legally halt construction once tenders have been issued, apartments sold, and work begun, is absolutely false. In 1992, when settlers sued the Rabin government over their decision to freeze work already begun, the High Court of Justice ruled that even after work has begun, the government can stop work due to its policy decisions. If losses are thereby incurred, they would be settled in civil court. Two different decisions agreed on this point, and there is no contradictory precedent in Israeli jurisprudence.

That adds up to the seventh and overriding fact: there is no reason or rationale for making any exception, including “natural growth,” to a settlement freeze. It certainly doesn’t serve Israel’s interests; the settlements are a terrible strain on Israel’s budget, with housing subsidies, increased security, and the need for new infrastructure to supply electricity, roads, water and other services to comparatively remote locales. That is a cost the budget, with education, health and other social services being strangled, cannot withstand.

Under these circumstances, it is astounding that the Minister of Internal Affairs Eli Yishai (Shas) is threatening to grab every shekel he can and pour them into the settlements while Israel’s social services die a slow death. The only reason to oppose a settlement freeze is to oppose ending the occupation of the West Bank. It is to oppose any move toward peace. Sadly, for some like both Yishai and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that is apparently far more important than the well-being of Israelis behind the Green Line.

After the Freeze

Whether he ever admits it publicly or not, Netanyahu is overwhelmingly likely to implement the settlement freeze the US is demanding. The real question is: what then?

A settlement freeze accomplishes two things: one, it buys some time for the Palestinian Authority and for a real, tangible peace process to be revived. But only a few months. In those months, it will be crucial that genuine progress is made on the diplomatic front, on the ground in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and in terms of Israeli security.

The second thing it does is to bring the confrontation with the hardcore minority of the settler movement closer to the surface. A frequent refrain of late has been that Israel is “a country of laws.” Unfortunately, this has generally not been the case when it comes to enforcing the law on the settlers. That will have to change, and the most radical settlers’ likely response to a full and genuine freeze on all construction in the West Bank will put law and order to its final test. Either Israel gets serious about applying Israeli law to the settlers or it will demonstrate that it is not a country of law.

But that’s the limit of a freeze’s effects. Some, including such notable figures in Washington as Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah of the New America Foundation, have argued that a freeze is the wrong goal, and that the enormous political capital a freeze demands from the US would be better spent on pushing for dismantlement of settlements. They fear that once a freeze is obtained, that political capital will be depleted.

I see it differently. I believe that a freeze will be an investment of political capital, one which will generate great returns if successful and open up more opportunities, including opportunities to push for a rollback of the settlement project. It will give the Palestinian Authority the first evidence it has had that, in the age of Obama, their approach works and Hamas’ does not. The continuing ability of the Palestinian Authority's forces to keep a lid on terrorist activity in the West Bank, coupled with a settlement freeze, will create hope and support for next steps.

But Levy and Atallah are certainly correct that a freeze does nothing in the long run by itself. It must be followed quickly by serious steps toward a final resolution of this conflict. It will open the opportunity for such an outcome.

Benefits of a Settlement Freeze

A freeze will restore some credibility to the PA. If it is successful and Israelis see no decline in security, it will legitimize Obama’s approach and further discredit Netanyahu’s intransigence, particularly in the eyes of the Israeli public.

The ball will then be in Obama’s court, and the next step will be even more difficult. In order to capitalize on the freeze, he will have to get concessions from both Israel and the Arab world. He will have to continue to press Netanyahu to continue with the removal of roadblocks in the West Bank, to dismantle the “illegal outposts,” keep a moratorium on house demolitions in East Jerusalem and to find some way to allow reconstruction materials into Gaza without strengthening Hamas.

The danger is that if Israel is seen to be making all the concessions and getting nothing immediate in return, Obama will start to lose the unprecedented support he has right now from Congress and the pro-Israel community. The Palestinians will need to maintain and even strengthen their security apparatus and prove that they can maintain control in the West Bank.

But much more will be needed. Obama will have to get the Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, to begin to melt the ice between themselves and Israel. Nothing like full diplomatic relations, of course, which must wait until a Palestinian state emerges. But something is needed -- some kind of trade relations or an easing of the boycott of Israeli products.

It can’t all wait until the occupation completely ends. Obama has already begun pushing for some steps from the Arab world, and it will be crucial that he convince the Arab states to take them. One of the main problems with bilateralism is that the Palestinians have nothing to offer Israel that is tangible. The Arab states do, and Obama must obtain something to show Israel that peace is paying off for them as well.

That’s really the dance the President has to do now. When he gets the freeze (and I have no doubt he will get it if he sticks to his guns), he then needs to make sure it means something in the long term for the Palestinians and that it pays off for Israel as well. Not easy, but certainly possible. Obama has acted forcefully and boldly on this issue much earlier than most thought he would. He has earned some faith that he can take the more complicated steps before him. He’d better; because time is running short for a two-state solution and the obstacles in the region are perhaps as big as they’ve ever been.

Among early Zionist writers, Ze'ev Jabotinsky stood out for the cruelty and compete amorality of his arguments.  His position was simple:  we want territory in Palestine, there is an indigenous Palestinian people living in that territory, we must crush them by violence until they surrender to our will. "As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes, not for any kind of sweet words or tasty morsels, because they are not a rabble but a nation, perhaps somewhat tattered, but still living. A living people makes such enormous concessions on such fateful questions only when there is no hope left. Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups."  Jabotinsky was forthright about the nature of Zionism:  it was "colonialism," a program to be carried out behind "a wall of bayonets."  

There was almost something bracing about his brutal honesty:  that Zionism was an essentially imperialist enterprise, that Jews simply should not care about non-Jews, that "right" is determined by reasoning backwards from what we want to what is required to achieve it.  "We hold that Zionism is moral and just," he wrote.  "And since it is moral and just, justice must be done . . . There is no other morality."  Jews should make no other kinds of claims (Jabotinsky was particularly contemptuous of the Jewish religion, which he described as "a preserved corpse" in the Diaspora:  it is interesting that today it is in Israel that Judaism most obviously fits his description.)  Israel was not to be a center of Jewish culture or learning or the inculcation of virtue, it needed no justification beyond "we want it and we have bayonets."

To bolster his arguments later, however, Jabotinsky also made an argument based on "justice":  "The soil does not belong to those who possess land in excess but to those who do not possess any.  It is an act of simple justice to alienate part of their land from those nations who are numbered among the great landowners of the world, in order to provide a place of refuge for a homeless, wandering people."  The weird perversity of this notion of justice becomes apparent (if it isn't already) as soon as one tries to apply it in any other context.  Catholics have a country in Southern Ireland - therefore Northern Irish Protestants should be entitled to drive out all Catholics from the area?  There is no Romany state, nor a Breton state nor a Druze state nor a Kurdish nor a Basque state; therefore it would be justifiable to drive Americans, Frenchmen, or Spaniards, Turks, Lebanese or Israelis out of their homes in order to create a new state for each of these peoples?  There is no Bahai state nore a Wiccan state nor a Sufi state.  Therefore it would be justifiable to drive Christians, Muslims and Jews out of their homes to create space for these new states?  Jabotinsky's answer was, effectively, a shrug.

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I suppose that the revolutionaries are those who are capable of coming to terms with the brutality of the world, and of responding to it with increased brutality. --- Michel Houellebecq

I just finished working on an article about the Jewish community (or settlement, if you wish) in the West Bank city of Hebron for a Swedish magazine. It was originally meant to be a simple interview with the community spokesperson David Wilder, but once it was finished, my editor wanted me to "balance" the piece with a "voice from the other side." Allowing a Jewish settler to speak unchallenged would create the impression that his views were somehow endorsed by this magazine, heaven forbid.

And what are his views? Simply put, David Wilder believes that Jews have the rightA Prayer By The Grave Of The Patriarchs to live in Hebron, just as they have the right to live in any other part of the Land of Israel. We don't really discuss it, but it is obvious that this right has had to be maintained through continued sacrifice. During the last 40 years, 103 Jewish civilians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have been murdered by their Arab neighbors, simply for being Jewish. At times, the Jews have responded in kind: On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein stepped into the Mosque by the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and gunned down 29 Muslims before being beaten to a pulp.

In Zionist theory, Hebron can be said to be the logical end point of the argument. People who otherwise agree with the basic Zionist tenet that Jews have the right to live in Israel will be hard-pressed to concur that this right extends to Hebron. That is probably why there are fewer than 1000 Jews living there, with at least 100 Arabs to every one of them. Hostility long ago reached the point at which the IDF had to enforce a separation between the populations, effectively destroying any semblance of normal life for thousands of Arabs. H2, the area where the Jews live, is a ghost town. The Arab shops have been closed for years and a lot of people have moved out. It is an ugly sight, I can assure you --- yes, brutal. It is perfectly understandable why people feel reluctant to take their Zionist claims all the way to Hebron.

But this is where it all started, the idea that God gave a piece of land to a certainMitzpeh Shalhevet Settlement: Cleared by order of the government person and his descendants. It is repeated every day in the morning prayers: "...and You established the covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanite, Hittite, Emorite, Perizzite, Jebusite, and Girgashite, to give it to his offspring; and You affirmed Your word, for You are righteous..." God gave the land with an obligation to conquer and expel, as one rabbi phrased it a few years before he was murdered outside of his settlement together with his wife.

It is not an easy thing to stomach, and most people don't. Just like they rush through their morning prayers without thinking about the words they utter, they claim that they are Zionists without giving much thought to the fact that every square inch of this land is soaked in the blood of Jews who died defending it and that there is no foreseeable end to this struggle. Maintaining a Jewish civilian presence in Hebron might require brutality, yes, but that's increasingly true for the rest of Israel as well. The neighborhood has always been rough, and it is getting worse.

Coming from a completely non-Jewish background, this is the Judaism that I amNot Everyone Was Thrilled About The Forced Evacuation exposed to in Israel. My secular Jewish flatmate in Jerusalem is increasingly concerned about the amount of time I spend in my West Bank Yeshiva. "Why don't you move to New York?" she almost pleads and assures me that there is Jewish life there, too. "Residual Judaism," I reply with a smile. "There is absolutely no life in it."

"But it is so much nicer..." she tries, before realizing that "nice" is obviously not what I'm looking for.

So what am I looking for? I think my life took a decisive turn about eight years ago when I first encountered the writing of the French author Michel Houellebecq. In between reports from the Second Intifada that had just broken out in Israel, his words were etched into my conscience: "In the midst of its natural barbarity, humankind had (not often) managed to create areas of love and warmth; small, protected zones where love and inter-subjectivity thrived."

Today I think that I have found one of those zones, perched on a hilltop in the West"The People of Israel Live" Bank. I think I have come to terms with the brutality of the world; I have yet to respond to it, beyond moving here, which for some is brutal enough, but I am not sure if it qualifies me as a revolutionary. I suppose this move is a way to graphically express the fact that I have given up on the world in a sense, a consequence of the fact that I can no longer, as I used to, claim that it is redeemed. Israel, as a state and as a concept, is in itself another expression of this for me, an expression of the obvious, undeniable fact that we live in an unredeemed world. Israel is the last outpost, mankind's last attempt at redeeming itself; There is nothing beyond it, and all the evidence seems to suggest that things are going straight to hell. It is, to once again quote Houellebecq, an expression of the general impossibility of things.

Photography by Paul Widen

Itamar: as seen from above Labels on the plastic bottles of Giva’ot Olam’s (admittedly delicious) goats milk yogurt describe the farm’s location as ‘The heart of the Shomron’, the Hebrew name for the northern West Bank. What the labels don't say is that the farm is completely illegal: one of over 100 settlement outposts erected without authorization from the Israeli government. The farm’s ‘mother’ settlement—Itamar—was authorized by the Israeli government, but is considered illegal under international law because it's built on occupied territory. Both Giva’ot Olam and Itamar are partly constructed on land privately-owned by Palestinians (and that’s according to data from the Civil Administration in the West Bank).

Giva’ot Olam is nothing short of a green oasis. Surrounded by rocky hilltops, and an arduous hike from the nearest built-up area (itself home to less than 700 people), the farm is run according to organic principles of environmental sustainability and motivated by a strong Jewish faith. The lush green grass that carpets the hill is home to free-range chickens and calm, happy goats whose pens are free from the nauseating stench that typically emanates from Israel’s intensive dairy farms.

On the surfaHappy Goats: make good milkce, Giva’ot Olam is a peaceful place where the still air is only disturbed by the sounds of the sheep or birdsong. It is also one of the biggest producers of organic yogurt and eggs sold in Israel (although I didn’t see a single hen roaming outside when I visited—apparently they get let out to exercise at certain times of the day). But these hilltops aren’t those of the Galilee or the Judean Hills: They are in the middle of the West Bank, lying just east of Nablus, the largest Palestinian city (or “the largest Arab city in Israel”, as the American rabbi leading our propaganda tour described it.)

“A guy called Avri just took his trailer there and started living here, he did the same thing in other places too. People came to live with him and then he moved on to settle other hilltops,” explained Moshe, an American-born settler who was one of the first Jews to settle a nearby hilltop over 20 years ago which became known as Itamar. Moshe, with his M16 strapped tightly to hAll Along The: organic watchtoweris back, described the farmer, Avri Ran, as a ‘pioneer’ and the ‘father of the hilltop movement’.

A few weeks ago I met another American-born settler living in Bat Ayin who was keen to extol the ecological virtues of his small, religious community, oblivious to the irony within the ethical contradiction of his choices. How can one be ‘environmentally sustainable’ whilst living on occupied territory? As tasty as their yogurt might be, buying products from Giva’ot Olam or other West Bank settlements inevitably means buying into the ideology of eternally conquering territory regardless of the cost to the Jewish State.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great thing that more Israelis are going organic: Side effects of the Zionist dream to ‘make the desert bloom’ have turned farm animals into chronically-sick meat machines, and resulted in the pollution of the country’s scarce water and soil. Sales of organic food rose by 30% in Israel last year, and organic systems now account for almost 5% of the country's total agriculture. There's no question that Israelis needs more organic farms, but they should build them in their own country and not in the West Bank.

Birthright Palestine: the trip of a lifetimeBirthright Israel has a doppelgänger called Birthright Palestine. The Palestinian program aims to "gather first-generation, western-born Palestinians (over the age of 18-years old) in their ancestral homeland, so that they can reunite and witness firsthand how their brethren are living under illegal Israeli military occupation."

Birthright Palestine participants are offered opportunities to volunteer in Bethlehem, take daily Arabic language classes, engage in cultural events, and party hearty. Although the program mimics the structure of its Jewish, Zionist counterpart almost exactly, there are some fundamental differences between the two. Shocking, I know.

One major difference is that Birthright Palestine doesn't support a two-state solution. Another is that they describe some of their destinations as the "1948 territories, which some people refer to as 'Israel.'" (Emphasis mine.)

Other differences: The Birthright Israel trip is a 10-day gift that covers roundtrip airfare, hotel, transportation, most meals and other associated land costs, while Birthright Palestine requires participants to cover their own airfare and pay approximately $1,000 to $3,000, depending on the length of their stay.

Though the site describes Birthright Palestine as a "concept created by the Palestine Center for National Strategic Studies (PCNSS)–a new non-profit, non-governmental Palestinian organization," the Birthright Palestine domain name is actually registered to Palestinian-American Nader Muaddi at an address in good ol' Pennsylvania, and Muaddi is an alum of the Palestine Summer Encounter–a strikingly similar program.

The first annual Birthright Palestine Program is launching this summer, and in case you're not convinced, more details about the experience can be found here.

The project "Seen in Behlehem" takes art to the walls and streets of the West Bank. More photos from this series can be found at the Wooster Collective website.

• House votes 223-201 to withdraw troops from Iraq by next spring. [The Huffington Post]
• DFLP leader could enter West Bank for the first time since the Six Day War. [The Jerusalem Post]
  
• With GOP defections, many Republicans calling for withdrawal. [The Week Magazine]
• What atheists and theists can and can't agree on. [The Washington Post]
  
• Hillary Clinton and John Edwards talk of paring down debates to only "serious" candidates. [WLUC]
• Kucinich pissed that Hillary and John in cahoots. [Yahoo]
• Celebs, like hot rod Mr. Kilmer, who can't seem to keep their girlish figures. [TMZ]

Shmuel Rosner worries that Abu Mazen is too old to change his stripes:

He didn't make a decision; he was pushed into it. And this decision cannot endure for very long. "While Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has declared an end to the national unity government, I have little doubt that he will be talking to Hamas in the relatively near future," wrote Dennis Ross, former special U.S. envoy for the peace process who knows Abbas as well as anyone in the West. "We should not be fooled by Abbas' rhetoric. Sooner or later he will be forced to pursue new power-sharing arrangements between Hamas and Fatah and restore unity among Palestinians," wrote Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller, two other former members of the Clinton team, who rarely agree with Ross.

Yet that same Dennis Ross sounds a more hopeful note in USA Today:

[T]o prevent the West Bank from becoming dominated by Hamas as well, it is time for Fatah to carry out reform and remake itself. In talks I recently held in Ramallah, Abu Dis and East Jerusalem, I saw a readiness for the first time to organize Fatah at the grassroots level and respond to the social and economic needs of the Palestinian public. In effect, the younger generation of Fatah appears committed to showing it can embody social justice and fight the corruption that has plagued the movement. With Salaam Fayyad as the new prime minister, the donor community — including specifically the Saudis — needs to focus on a strategy for working with Fayyad to bolster those who will provide services and programs and who will enhance the credibility of Fatah. If the Saudis don't want Iran to be able to exploit the Palestinian conflict, they need to ensure that Hamas does not come to dominate the cause in a way that guarantees enduring struggle.

The "poodle" who manages to bark loud enough about Palestinian statehood to get the U.S. president listening is now being called in to administer the dispensation of aid to the Abbas government.  Will the pro-Hamas left color Tony Blair another hapless ditto of shameful Israeli interests?  Of course it will:

Blair's role would be an expanded version of the position held by former World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn, who resigned in May 2006 out of frustration at the deadlock over aid to the Palestinians following the January election of Hamas, U.S. officials said.

Concerns about nullifying a democratically elected government are negligible in the face of civil war when almost half of a legislature is ranged against the other half and basic public services have been halted. The lessons of Algeria are instructive, and now that millions of dollars of denied funds are finally being sent to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, Fatah looks to be the political winner after a week of blood and misery. Abbas can also now claim credit for reviving his government's legitimacy.

“We are going to support President Abbas and what he wants to do,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday in announcing the change in policy. She said the United States would work to “restructure” and unfreeze $86 million in aid that was originally set out to help Mr. Abbas build up his security forces. It was frozen because Hamas would not renounce violence, was considered a terrorist group and did not believe Israel had a right to exist.

This of course yields the sound of one hand clapping from Ari Berman at The Nation's blog:

The US operation received surprisingly little scrutiny in this country. Few pundits noted the irony of the Bush Administration attempting to undermine the democratically-elected (though hardly moderate) Hamas government while preaching the virtues of democracy in Iraq.

Given that The Nation doesn't support democracy in Iraq, why it should be so perturbed by electorally iffy developments in Palestine is, I guess, part of its inimitable editorial charisma. The "operation" Berman refers to is the U.S.'s arming of Fatah to counter Iran and Syria's arming of Hamas. (Under the Palestinian constititution, the president of the PA is in charge of domestic security, which fact of course never stopped Haniyah's gang from maintaining their own private militia outfitted by men in ski masks.)

More interesting in Berman's post, however, is where his link attached to that wily neocon Elliot Abrams takes you -- to a site called "Conflicts Forum," which features the following subhead: "listening to political Islam, recognizing resistance." [Italics mine.]

Founded in the mid-80s by two Brits -- Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry -- Conflict Forum has this to say on its About page:

Our encounters with political Islam - with both non-violent and armed resistance groups - leads us to conclude that Islamism is above all political. The overwhelming majority of Islamists are striving to create just societies and bring about political reform in a region entrenched with inequity, that has long suffered the overbearing influence of foreign powers.

The sweet justice of sharia law, which I'm sure Crooke and Perry look on with as much equanimity as the Nation gang does when the philosopher-kings are Shia sectarians in Baghdad. And Hamas is plenty influenced by foreign powers -- above all autocratic and theocratic.

Michael Hirsh's only point in this Newsweek editorial on last week's Hamas seizure of Gaza hinges on what has become the conventional wisdom about Palestine: It's not ready for democracy. Isn't the Bush administration to blame for angling for legislative elections when everyone in the know and on the ground  said it would lead to the ascendancy of the Islamists?  Further, how does that stunning catastrophe make relevant again the old question of what to do when the democcratic process yields un-democratic results? Sometimes known as the "bullet or the ballot" dilemma, it came up previously in Algeria in the mid-90's, and one can still keep score of a person's politics by his take on how the Islamic Salvation Front should have been dealt with. 

Anyway, Hirsh sheds no new light on the subject:

Why does the disaster in Gaza matter? In part because the defeat of the secular—and more moderate—Fatah forces could, along with the insurgents' success in Iraq, inspire Islamist radicals in the region and around the world. Hamas is not the Taliban, and it knows that an uptick in rocket attacks against Israel will be met with a harsh response. But, as Bush said in his second Inaugural, the whole point of promoting freedom is to blunt the hopelessness and anger that breed radicalism. Gaza faces 50 percent unemployment in the best of times. Qaeda-like splinter groups that have carried out kidnappings of foreigners have already begun to appear. Further isolating the territory is not likely to fill its residents with faith in the future.

Well, Hamas is already a Qaeda-like splinter group, likewise descendent of the Muslim Brotherhood and with an ideology formulated by middle-class university students, so that nightmare's already real. But now that the group retains total responsibility for the governance of Gaza, it may yet have fashioned a rod for its own back.

One of the longstanding concerns of Hamas's so-called "inner wing" was that it would one day be in charge of the region and have no one else to blame for the problems there. Fatah was an easy foil as an opponent, and it remained so all throughout Hamas's win in 2006  since Arafat's party still controlled security and other key services of state.

All that's changed, however, accountability for the continuing squalor and misery of Gazans shall belong to Haniyah and company and to them alone. Call it the blessings of unilateralism.

Humanitarian aid -- in the form of food, water, electric generators -- should of course be provided to the people of this clerically ruled islet on the Mediterranean, but it should be made clear to them, and to Hamas, that such aid is dependent on the largesse of external actors and NGOs.

Hamas's victory may prove to be Pyrrhic in the short term and, what is more encouraging, a complete failure in the long term.

I think Martin Indyk has got it exactly right:

Over the past year when Hamas would stage attacks in Gaza, Fatah forces would retaliate in the West Bank, where they were stronger. When fighting began this time, Fatah did little in the West Bank to counter Hamas's onslaught. Abbas's passivity further confirms that the fix was in. Abbas and Fatah have in effect conceded Gaza to Hamas while they hold on to the West Bank. Hamastan and Fatahstine: a "two-state solution" -- just not the one that George W. Bush had in mind.

"Give Hamas enough rope and it'll hang itself" may not be an especially attractive option when human lives are stake and the short-term yield is an Islamist statelet that enslaves women and secularists, but what options are left to Fatah?  The Quartet has failed at every turn to take Hamas seriously enough to let its democratic mandate expire of natural causes. The irony of this may be the satisfaction of the Quartet's signal demand: one Palestinian leader is taking responsibility for its own people by forcing them to confront their own demons. (Gaza relies for electricity and water on Egypt and Israel, two countries that are not likely to provide either to Hamas.)

If sane Palestinians can the isolate theocratic fascists in their own back yard, then all the better.

NYT: 

Hamas responded by saying it would keep up the rocket attacks, which have killed one Israeli civilian and damaged property in recent weeks. “Our strikes against the enemy will continue — we have freed the hand of all our cells to strike the enemy everywhere in Palestine,” the Hamas armed wing said in a statement, according to Reuters.

I lost an hour last night, sometime between 1:30 and 2:30 AM to be exact. The US government decided Spring should come three weeks early this year, and came it did. But research proves that little energy will actually be saved in the long run, albeit evening joggers might get more of a reprieve. Don't scoff about the prospect of avid sports enthusiasts pushing our clocks forward and never underestimate the correlation between golf and our country's policymakers.

Not to say all of our nation's leaders are the same. During WWII, President Franklin Roosevelt did away with daylight saving time completely and it didn't plunge the country into another Depression, just a whole lot of confusion until roughly the late '60s.

It's not so much that I mind parting with my precious hour of sleep or the internet issues that ensueas a result of the phenomena which no can actually properly label, it's more so that I resent that the whole weekend becomes monopolized with talk of this blessed event. And it doesn't simply stay buried in the weekend. It trumps even the weather as the most popular water cooler Monday morning chat-time fodder.

I doubt Ben Franklin knew the ruckus he was causing way back when while on a trip to France and first conceiving of the idea of daylight saving time. If he imagined that candy lobbyists would push back the end of DST till after Halloween to make an extra buck and in the process help contribute to a future generation of decaying mouths. Or better yet that in 1999, daylight saving time would account for the early self-detonation of suicide bombersin the West Bank and save a busload of passengers.

Hippos like to demarcate their terrority by releasing dung. I guess the US government isn't all that dissimilar. They simply defecate hours instead.

Photographs of a haredi couple engaging in sexual acts were distributed over the internet in February.

The 11 photographs, which were taken by the young man seen in them, have caused quite a controversy in the hardei community. The photos show a young haredi woman performing oral sex on her partner while exposing her private parts.

The couple in the pictures was identified as haredi by their clothing. The pictures show the young woman wearing a Bet Yaakov Seminary top, while the man wore a typical Hasidic sweater.

“It has become the talk of the town in the haredi community. Everyone sees the pictures, is shocked by them, passes them along, and erases them. A haredi girl needs a lot of guts to be photographed in this way,” a haredi journalist said.

According to Ynet, Israeli settlers in the West Bank are producing three times the amount of offspring as those on the other side of the green line. As the Israeli government has taken action to decrease the number of outposts, the number of caravans in the area has increased to accomodate for the growing population.

Peace Now, an organization committed to establishing peace in the Middle East, compiled the statistics, which also attributed the growing birth rate to the number of Orthodox families moving to haredi communities in the West Bank.

Egged bus destroyed by terroristsFirst, the background: There was a law in Israel that granted citizenship to Palestinians from the territories who married Israeli Arabs. In 2003, a law was passed that stopped that, due to the hundreds of terrorist attacks that Israel was undergoing as a result of the second "Intifada." This law, in fact, is one of the things that people (like, say, Jimmy Carter) use to accuse Israel of human rights abuses. Never is the context given: That this law was passed as a direct result of Palestinians from the territories marrying Israeli Arabs and then creating terror cells or committing acts of terror themselves.

Now we have the numbers.

38 of the 272 suicide bombings in Israel (roughly 14 percent) were carried out by terrorists that had received Israeli citizenship in the context of family reunification, a Shin Bet official told the Knesset Internal Affairs and Environment Committee on Monday.

The committee met Monday in order to discuss the extension of a temporary law that prevents family reunification between Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza and Israeli Arabs due to security reasons.

The Shin Bet official said the figures show it is imperative that the government extend the temporary law, which will expire January 16.

Remember this the next time you hear Israel accused of human rights violations, and remember that much of the so-called violations are simply an attempt to defend Israeli citizens from terror.

Don't be surprised when you hear opponents argue that "only" 14% of the Palestinians turned out to be terrorists, so the law is still unjust because 86% of them do not. The world puts a very low price on the lives of Jews.

A 2,000-year-old toilet was among the recent archeological discoveries in Qumran, West Bank. Researchers believe that the toilet proves that the people inhabiting the area were in fact, the Essene, the same sect that penned the Dead Sea Scrolls since the ancient latrine was found at the proper distance from the inhabited area, in accordance with the Essene's laws of ritual purity.

Adds The Tribune:

Thanks to an Israeli anthropologist, an American textual scholar and a French paleo-parasitologist, researchers can now add another find: human excrement. The discovery is more significant than it may seem. The nature of the settlement at Qumran is the subject of a lively academic debate.

Zias and Tabor identified an area behind a rock outcropping, took soil samples and sent them to Stephanie Harter-Lailheugue, a French scientist specializing in ancient parasites. The samples tested positive for pinworms and two other intestinal parasites found only in human feces. Samples from locations nearer the settlement tested negative.

The excrement traces were found underground--meaning the feces had been buried, as required by Essene law--a nine-minute walk uphill from the settlement.

"A lot of people were concerned with what went into the body, but the Essenes were perhaps the only group in antiquity concerned with what came out," Zias said. "No one else would have gone to the trouble of walking this far."

Consequently, a latrine was also found within the confines of the Essene's living area, but researchers believe this was used in cases of emergency, only. Like when cholent was served on Friday nights, perhaps.