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The Absurdities of Life in Palestine
The life and art of Khaled Jarrar
CULTURAL CONNECTION blog: “Art has to be the best way to build trust between countries.” —Issa Touma, Syrian photographer. ‘Cultural Connection’ provides updates on the Arab and Iranian arts scene from writers across the Middle East and the Western world.


Still image from video Concrete, 2012 (Khaled Jarrar)
“I am not a political artist,” insists Khaled Jarrar, the Palestinian artist who recently exhibited his work in London. “I don’t do political art; I’m simply reflecting my own experiences,” Jarrar told The Majalla. Although he does not want to be cast in the role of the rebellious Palestinian artist, he throws his vitriol with devastating eloquence. He literally seeks to break down the wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians, and yet, at the same time, his art takes the viewer on a journey of the absurd.

Jarrar’s art—a combination of sculpture, film, photography and painting—is born out a life throwing stones in the intifada, working as a carpenter while dreaming of art, and serving in Yasser Arafat’s presidential guard. “It was art,” he says “that [turned] me into a soldier.” As a young man, Jarrar wanted to attend art college, but his financial circumstances meant that he was instead compelled to join the police force in order to pursue that dream. During the training period, he was persuaded to join Yasser Arafat’s presidential guard. His ego was sufficiently pumped, and it was a well-paid job. Jarrar accepted the offer in 1997, when he was twenty-one years old.

Jarrar makes clear that serving Arafat was both an honor and a labor of love. Despite Arafat’s many shortcomings, real or perceived, Jarrar feels an intense attachment to the man. It was the personal relationship and appreciation that Arafat had for Jarrar’s services that endeared him to the artist. “When the Israelis were besieging us in 2003, Arafat was right next to us with his revolver. When many were afraid, he was there not caring for his own safety,” said Jarrar. He was injured in the siege, hit by two dum-dum bullets that shattered his leg: “These bullets are illegal and are used to shoot elephants and explode inside your body.” The injury put him out of action for a year. “When Arafat learned that we were well enough, he interrupted a press conference and went to us and kissed our hands.”

Khaled Jarrar (Ayyam Gallery)

Khaled Jarrar (Ayyam Gallery)
The incident forced Jarrar reassess his life, and take a back seat with the presidential guard. He began to work as a part-time graphic designer and also started to work with film. “The filming changed my life,” he says, “because I saw myself when I was filming these new recruits to the presidential guard, and it became the story about human beings in general.” It set Jarrar off on a journey that eventually saw him leave the presidential guard, in 2007.

His exploration of the absurdity of the Palestinian situation brought him international acclaim. Jarrar’s work depicting the humiliation of the checkpoints—which he displayed at the checkpoints themselves—allowed some Palestinians to experience an art exhibition for the first time, while Israeli soldiers, tourists and the international community came face-to-face with the uncomfortable reality of occupation. For some, the truth was hard to take, and there were attempts to suppress his exhibition. “It was intensely empowering,” he says.

His work with film allowed him to produce Infiltrators, a documentary about Palestinians entering Israel by evading Israeli security measures. In his most recent exhibition, Whole in the Wall, displayed at London’s Ayyam Gallery, Jarrar erected a concrete wall with a Palestine shaped hole in it. The wall forced the visitors to climb through the hole in order reach the other side, allowing them to experience how Palestinians deal with occupation. There were also statues sculpted out of the wall itself. Jarrar says the best possible result would be if “an Israeli art collector buys it and displays it in Israel.”

But his art is not just about making us feel uncomfortable; it is also about the sheer absurdity of occupation. Jarrar draws inspiration from his own experiences: his recollection of a visit to his sister in Nablus is particularly moving. He recalls how he took his two boys with him—Adam, who was an infant at the time, and Muhammad, who was six years old. When they reached a checkpoint, Israeli Defense Force soldiers became enamored with his baby boy and loved the fact that he was called Adam, a name shared by both Jews and Muslims.

Once they crossed the checkpoint, Muhammad needed to go to the bathroom. They returned to the checkpoint and he asked the same soldiers if his six-year-old could use the bathroom, but they refused because of security issues. The artist protested and asked if they had been so kind to his other son, why not to Muhammad? “They wouldn’t even listen, and they threatened to shoot,” he said. In the end, his son defecated in his trousers on the bus: “The whole bus smelled and I had to blame my infant boy. I didn’t have any means to clean him. . . . My heart was breaking up inside, while I was being strong for my six-year-old.” It is exactly this absurdity that Jarrar wants all of us to experience, and the reason why his work is so interesting—so much so that he was invited to showcase his work at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June.

Remarkably, Jarrar is not bitter about the conflict, and his solution is not about revenge but rather about finding a common ground to share space. “First and foremost,” he insists, “in order for there to be reconciliation there has to be recognition that a wrong has occurred, that the British made a huge mistake with the Balfour Declaration [and] that, in actual fact, this was a land with people.” He believes that once this hurdle is crossed and adequate reparations are made to those who lost out, then the healing process can begin.

Tear down this wall: Khaled Jarrar at the Ayyam Gallery

Khaled Jarrar has made playful sculptures from fragments chipped from the eight metre high wall which runs through the West Bank. Is this trivialising or accepting the wall's existence?
By Aisha Gani Published 23 July 2013 15:30


Khaled Jarrar
Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar with a football sculpted from pieces of the Israeli separation wall in Qalandia. Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images.

The looming grey wall confronts you as soon as you step into the gallery. It is claustrophobic and you have two options: walk all the way around the length of the wall, or squeeze through the chiselled opening in the shape of historic Palestine.

Khaled Jarrar’s provocative installation is a piece of the West Bank in the heart of London. Earlier this year I travelled to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and was intrigued to see how the wall, a symbol of division, would be integrated to express freedom and unity. The Jenin-born artist combines video, photography and sculpture to reflect life in the shadow of the separation wall.

We are introduced to Jarrar in a short film, as he chips away at the eight metre high wall, working quickly with a chisel, hammer and red plastic bag. As you walk along the installed barrier, you come across a heap of concrete rocks in a corner of the gallery. It is the crushed and recycled sediment of the wall that acts as a base and links all of the sculptures in the gallery.

A football, table tennis rackets and a basketball are seated on plinths. They are sculptures made of concrete. The heaviness of the items contrasts with their usual lightness. Jarrar also makes international parallels, and a concrete figure of Buddy Bear, which was first exhibited at the site of the fallen Berlin Wall, stands in the gallery’s shadows.

We also encounter a short film featuring a surreal badminton match over the wall, in which a split screen shows the Israeli side of the wall painted bright, and the Palestinian side grey and dusty. The only thing unifying the uncanny scene is the blue sky and the ball going from one side to the other. It is a reflection that dark humour can be found in the most absurd situations.

Then there is the poignant film of an elderly woman who travels to the wall to talk through the gaps to her daughter, who was forced to live on the other side when the village was divided. It is heartrending to see her searching for her daughter’s voice, seeking her eyes through the gaps, touching her daughter’s fingers under the wall with her frail hands. “What can I tell you. It’s hard,” she says to the camera. You can feel the love they have for each other, but at the same time you feel helpless.

Jarrar’s sculpture of a halved olive tree, with a half-concrete branch is particularly powerful. The traditional significance of the olive tree to Palestinians, as a symbol of peace, resistance, life and growth, contrasts with the dead concrete. Yet at the same time, both sides are needed to make the branch whole. The lighting in the gallery creates a sombre mood, and all is still and quiet in the shadows aside from the distant sound of chiselling.

Eleven years have passed since the first slabs were erected separating the West Bank from the rest of Israel. Referred to as the ‘Apartheid Wall’ or ‘Security Wall’ depending on which side of the fence you are on, is it right that this Wall is already being memorialised in a bourgeois gallery space, moving from active resistance to the realm of grieving, of history and acceptance of the status quo?

Jarrar is clear that his art is not an attempt to beautify the separation wall. Far from it – especially as he moulds his sculptures from its destruction and emphasises how the concrete could be used for a much better cause. But this debate has been raised before: there is a story that an old man confronted Banksy as was putting up his street art in Bethlehem, telling him to go home and not make the wall he hates beautiful.

Whether it is the old woman who communicates with her daughter through a crevice in the wall, a student who feels like she is living in an open-air prison, or a farmer separated from his olive groves by an electric fence, Khaled Jarrar’s work is fresh and at times eccentric. Although he could be bolder in exploring some themes in greater depth, Jarrar doesn’t use clichéd images and certainly helps to unpack and re-contextualise the wall. He is keeping the issue on our conscience.

Last Update: Sunday, 11 August 2013 KSA 10:28 - GMT 07:28
‘Dreams of independence:’ Palestinian star envisions Mideast peace
Sunday, 11 August 2013
Assaf’s strong voice and his ability to sing different styles of music from across the Arab world attracted an audience of up to 100 million for the show’s final in June. (File photo: AFP)



Al Arabiya
Mohammed Assaf, the 23-year-old Palestinian who won the hugely popular Arab Idol, wants to use his place in the limelight to call for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, British daily The Guardian reported on Saturday.
Assaf’s strong voice and his ability to sing different styles of music from across the Arab world attracted an audience of up to 100 million for the show’s final in June.
He now hopes to use that popularity to bring real change to his people.
"I am confident that I will see a free Palestine in my lifetime," he said in comments published in The Guardian.
"I sing about popular themes but they center on the hopes of my own people – dreams of independence for the West Bank, for Jerusalem and for Gaza. We've been under Israeli occupation for decades."
Assaf, who grew up in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, cites the ousting of dictators such as Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt as inspiration for the kind of political change by mass participation he wants in Palestine. He embodies the generation of young Arabs who, empowered by new technology used every tool available to them during the uprisings in 2011 to bring their struggle to global attention.
The singer’s weapon of choice is his music and celebrity. He believes that international negotiators have lost touch with the reality of life on the ground in the occupied territories.
"There are many ways to make a difference in life, but my way is as an artist," said Assaf, a graduate of Palestine University who has just become a U.N. youth ambassador.
"I've always wanted to make my voice heard around the world, to sing about the occupation, about the security walls between communities, and about refugees. My first ambition is a cultural revolution through art. Palestinians don't want war – they are tired of fighting."
Assaf’s specific peace demands include a return to Palestine's 1967 borders, as well as guaranteed security from attack, freedom of movement, an end to illegal Israeli settlements and the return of prisoners and refugees.
"The subject of peace is massively complicated," said Assaf.
"The Palestinians want independence and freedom, just like everyone in the world. Thousands of us are professionals – teachers, doctors and lawyers. We all want our dignity and rights."
He expressed concern at the division between authorities in Palestine.
"Unity is the key – Hamas and Fatah should come to an agreement," said Assaf. "It's insane that we effectively have two governments at the same time as being colonized by Israel. It's hugely frustrating for me, and for all Palestinians."
Assaf’s prominence and political significance since his Arab Idol win is clear. Last week he posed for photographs with Barcelona footballers, including Lionel Messi, in Bethlehem, and met with President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas.
He has also, with the help of Abbas, gained Israeli permission to move with his family out of Gaza to the less volatile West Bank.
This high-profile move attracted attention to the harsh restrictions which govern life for the 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza.
"These are the kind of issues I want to highlight," he said.
Assaf wants to use his voice not only for his passionate singing, but to promote justice and a mass movement for change in the Middle East’s most protracted conflict. It is clear that he understands the duties, as well as opportunities, which come with his spot in the limelight.
In a concert at a new stadium near Hebron in the West Bank he told thousands of ecstatic fans, “I have a great responsibility to my people.”

Journal- Welcome to Palestine: tear gas and coffee
Posted on: August 10, 2013 |
10th August 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Anna, Nablus Team | Kafr Qaddum, Occupied Palestine

I came to Palestine last Tuesday and joined the weekly protest held on Friday the 8th of August in Kafr Qaddum. The demonstration represented non-violent resistance against the land grab and for the freedom of movement in the village. Kafr Qaddum was my first demonstration in Palestine in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, self-determination, human rights and international law.


Tear gas spread throughout the village (Photo by Al Masira Kafr Qaddum )

In the past years the village has gone through several attacks by Israeli soldiers and police who raid the village in the night, threatening the population. Even children under 18 years old are menaced with arrest and when arrested, are beaten along with other Palestinians.

Yesterday as we got off the service (shared taxi), soldiers started firing tear gas and sound bombs directly at protesters. They had invaded the village and chased after Palestinians and several international and Israeli activists throughout the village. Even though I knew the answer I asked two international comrades who were there with me: ‘has the demo begun?’ – ‘No, that’s the pre-demo.’ I can now easily reply to anybody asking me the same. Actually, since early that morning soldiers and police (with at least three jeeps) had entered the village, scaring people and filling the air with so much gas people could hardly breathe.

After one of the first clashes between the Palestinian youth and the soldiers had begun, everyone started running everywhere trying to protect themselves as best as possible. I ran like a hare, taking shelter in a Palestinian house where I was welcomed by a beautiful Palestinian woman dressed in white. A Palestinian man (I understood later he was her son, living in Dubai and returned to the village for the Eid holiday) and a bunch of children all of different ages, from three to 11 years old were also in the house.

I went up onto the roof where children behaved as “special watchers” running from one corner to another following the soldiers’ movements and screaming when they were throwing tear gas canisters and alerting the shebab (Arabic word for Palestinian youth) hiding in different areas of the village. I was offered a cup of coffee which I accepted with joy, longing for something strong and needing to drink so much because I couldn’t make enough saliva.


Soldiers invading the village, shebab defending it (Photo by Al Masira Kafr Qaddum)

Kafr Qaddum is a small village situated near the top of a hill facing the illegal settlement of Qedumin, which was established on Palestinian land and has been expanding to take over more privately owned Palestinian land. Furthermore the road to Nablus from the village was shut by the army with a roadblock in 2003 and this obstruction means an extra 14 kilometres distance to travel out of the village. The journey is emblematic of the restriction of movement imposed by the Israeli authorities on Palestinians in the West Bank.
The man started questioning me about the international presence in the village, showing he was curious about us, especially about why we decided to leave our own countries and come to Palestine struggling beside Palestinians in support of “another population’s cause”. He was puzzled but happy when I replied that it is our duty to act and stand up for Palestinians and that we speak out for them not only because as internationals we think they all have a right to resist, but as we are all human beings, we should take part in this cause for freedom and speaking out against ongoing violations of human rights amongst many oppressions that the Palestinians have been subjected to for more than 60 years. As we are generally Europeans or Western citizens coming from countries that strongly support Israeli apartheid through economic, cultural and institutional ties, we have the duty to speak out and stand up for international law and the human rights of Palestinians, with the best of efforts.

After the conversation, I joined comrades once again as the struggle was still going on. The demonstration ended but this time the soldiers and police were stopped from arresting protesters but not from injuring people. Children aged 4, 6 and 7 years old and a 75 year old woman suffered badly from tear gas inhalation when it was thrown and shot directly into their homes.

This is the daily life for Palestinians. This is their enduring resistance. Long live Palestine!

Palestine prison
By Political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal on May 1, 2013 » Add the first comment.

Taken from an April 10 audio column at prisonradio.org. Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner at SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, Pa.

It is one of the ironies of history that the descendants of the beleaguered Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, subjected to the bitter hatreds and repression of the Nazis, have established an entire sea of the oppressed and impoverished on their periphery: the open-air prison ghettoes of Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank.

There, in full view of the world, is the latest apartheid state, where Arabs are excluded from certain roads; where their very land is carved up from beneath them and placed behind barbed wire, cyclone fences and concrete walls.

Welcome to the Israeli occupation, blessed by the U.S. government as its imperial outpost, where the lives of Palestinians are broken into thousands of pieces daily, where everything from olive trees to water sources — everything but the sun itself — is locked up, barred, caged from the people of Palestine.

And so, those who were subjected to the bitter hatreds and repression of Christian Europe, for centuries, are now subjecting another people to bitter hatreds and repression on behalf of Europe and America because of Western lust for Middle Eastern oil.

The gift of one empire (the British), and now the tool of another empire (the U.S.), Israel has become the rabid attack dog of the West — ready, willing, armed and able to strike any target its master so commands, especially Arab targets.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians suffer every tragedy an oppressed people can suffer — dislocation, occupation, imprisonment of its militants, subversion of its political leaders, seizure of its lands and the embitterment of its spirits by the apartheid regime of Israel.

Apartheid? Yes. For the only tangible difference between the racist repression of the South Africans and the Palestinians is that the Nationalist government exploited African labor; the Zionists neither want nor need Palestinian labor — they want only their lands. And in that sense, it may be even worse for there, in Israeli apartheid, Arab Palestinians are truly expendable.

And if you read comments in the Israeli press or listen to Israeli politicians, you find the naked racism and hatreds expressed against Arabs that, 60+ years ago, were expressed against German Jews and 60+ years before that, expressed against Indian tribes and newly freed Africans in America.

Israel is today apartheid country. We need to acknowledge this in order to mobilize against it.

Down with apartheid, anywhere in the world!

Peace talks: The perfect alibi for settlement expansion
Building thousands more settlement units all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem is in no way comparable or proportionate to the release of Palestinian prisoners. The construction of more settlements is equivalent to the annihilation of a two-state solution and the preemption of any kind of faith-building measures.


Building of the new settlement of Leshim on the lands of the West Bank village of Kafr ad Dik, near Salfit, December 7, 2012. (photo: Activestills)
The announcement Sunday that Israel’s housing minister has approved construction of 1,200 new settlement units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem should be no surprise. It comes just a few days after the Civil Administration announced 878 new housing units in the West Bank. In fact, Israel’s approval of new settlement construction is the one new concrete development on the ground since Kerry announced the resumption of negotiations on July 19.

Something like 2,000 new units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – some in final approval stages before building begins and others at the start of the tender process – have been announced in the last few weeks. The construction published today enumerates 400 new units in Gilo, 210 in Har Homa and 183 Pisgat Ze’ev — all settlements beyond the Green Line in East Jerusalem. In the West Bank,it was made up of 117 units in Ariel, 149 in Efrat, 92 in Ma’aleh Adumim and 36 in Beitar Ilit.

While the new units are mostly part of “consensus settlements” – meaning areas that are presumed to remain part of Israel in any two-state solution – it is important to remember that the only reason they have become so is because of U.S. and international complacency in Israeli settlement building over the years. There is no logical or legitimate reason for places like Ariel, deep in the West Bank, and Har Homa, a relatively new but highly controversial settlement that cuts Bethlehem off from Jerusalem, to remain part of Israel in a future agreement.

The tandem news headlines of “peace talks to resume” coupled with “new Israeli settlements announced” are ridiculously insulting. How can anyone take these talks seriously? It is as if Israel was waiting patiently for the U.S. to announce peace talks before it could fling the settlement floodgates wide open; there was actually more restraint in the last year, with a de facto settlement freeze in East Jerusalem.

Despite its formal statements of condemnation, the U.S. clearly has no problem with the new settlement construction, since it is not doing anything to stop it. According to Ma’ariv‘s report Sunday morning, a U.S. official said that Israel notified the administration of this new round of settlement plans, presenting it as a carrot and stick deal in which the carrot is settlement building, and the stick is releasing Palestinian prisoners.

But how can more construction in what is slated to be a future Palestinian state constitute a carrot? Building thousands more settlement units all over the West Bank and East Jerusalem is in no way comparable or proportionate to the release of Palestinian prisoners. Approving more settlements is equivalent to the annihilation of a two-state solution and the obliteration of any kind of faith-building measures. And releasing Palestinian prisoners is primarily symbolic – considering that Israel remains the controlling power, choosing who and when it releases and re-arresting as it pleases, whenever it pleases.

The disingenuous nature of Israeli actions and the nerve of U.S. passivity is at times hard to comprehend. How can anyone take any of it seriously? Instead of building settlements, as the occupier, Israel should be building trust. If Israel wanted to show a modicum of genuine interest in moving towards a solution with the Palestinians — or if the United States was serious about compelling it to do so — the first thing it should carry out one single act to relieve the basic human rights violations in the occupied West Bank. At this point, even a really really small act could make a big difference.

Like, how about the Civil Administration refrain from destroying water cisterns in the Palestinian village of Susya and allow residents to access their water? Is that too much to ask? Would that undermine the “peace process?” Or how about opening Shuhada Street in Hebron to Palestinians? How about ceasing to conduct night raids in the homes of Palestinians who are non-violently protesting occupation. Or how about this crazy thought? Instead of releasing some prisoners, how about ending the military system under which Palestinians can be arrested and imprisoned without trial for years on end?

That would be too much. In the theatrical charade that is the 2013 “peace talks,” Israel has found the perfect equation: continue exactly as before, but this time, settlements aren’t even considered a hindrance, they are rather, the carrot.

Who Is the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?
by Philip Giraldi, August 15, 2013

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been going around the world as well as regularly appearing on American television telling everyone who might be inclined to listen that "The [Iranian] president was replaced but the goal of the regime remains obtaining nuclear weapons to threaten Israel, the Middle East and the safety of the world." He has repeatedly described Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani as a "wolf in sheep’s clothing." The phrase originated in the New Testament and is attributed to Jesus, which likely makes Netanyahu cringe if he is aware of its provenance, but he is using the expression so often that he really should seek to copyright it. The phrase is meant to suggest that Rouhani is pretending to be a moderate interested in negotiations over issues dividing his country from the western powers when all he really is doing is buying time for Tehran to further advance its nuclear weapons program.

It is presumably a tactic that Netanyahu is quite familiar with as it is precisely what Israel has been doing relating to its ever expanding West Bank settlements. Peace talks began yesterday, shortly after Israel rendered them irrelevant by announcing the building of 2100 new homes in eleven different locations, some in Arab East Jerusalem and also deep in the West Bank. Nearly everyone who is not a complete apologist for Israel agrees that the settlements are the number one obstacle to any peace agreement with the Palestinians. Netanyahu has no desire to halt the process whereby the West Bank is being subsumed into Greater Israel, but he is willing to enter into negotiations to serve as a distraction while enabling the expansion on Arab land to continue.

The regular denigration and demonization of Iran is all part of the process. If Israel can succeed in portraying itself as a potential victim and under threat from a devious and suicidal neighbor, what is happening to the Palestinians remains largely unnoticed and unremarked upon, particularly in the US mainstream media. Last Friday there appeared a propaganda piece precisely along those lines, a featured op-ed in The New York Times which was extraordinary, even breathtaking, in its depiction of an Iran that is poised to obtain a nuclear weapon by hook or by crook. The piece was entitled "Iran’s Plan B for the Bomb." Written by? The Times byline says "Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israel military intelligence, is the director of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, where Avner Golov is a researcher."

Yes indeed, the authors are two Israelis intimately tied to the country’s security apparatus. They are both formerly and currently being paid by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and have a personal interest in convincing a perhaps skeptical American public that Iran poses a serious threat. Yadlin and Avner describe Iran’s proposal for negotiations as "dangerous" because "What matters is not the talks but the outcome." I for one am not sure what that is supposed to mean, but to summarize their argument, they claim that Iran’s desire to enrich some fuel to a 20% level (weapons grade is 90%) is a ruse because stockpiled uranium at that concentration can quickly be turned into weapons grade. They refer to this as a "breakout capability," and they estimate that Iran’s growing stockpile of enriched uranium will enable it to produce a bomb in one month by the end of this year and by the end of 2014 the breakout time will be less than two weeks. They also note that Iran "appears to be" enabling the production of plutonium, which is the "Plan B" in the article’s title.

The op-ed is particularly light on going beyond technical "what ifs." The authors treat Israel’s "red line" that Iran should not have 530 pounds of 20% enriched uranium as if it had some meaning outside of the presumed pie charts used for briefing purposes by the Israeli cabinet and they warn that there must be both sanctions and a credible military threat to forestall any attempt to exceed those limits. They assume that the heavy water reactor at Arak, which will become operational next year, will inevitably produce weapons grade plutonium, even though they concede that the reactor has no reprocessing plant to separate the plutonium from uranium and there is no other indication that Iran has plans to move in that direction. "Western negotiators should…demand that Iran shut down the Arak reactor" because once it is operational they will be reluctant to bomb it because of potential environmental damage, a la Chernobyl. They conclude that "Moderate messages from Tehran should not be allowed to camouflage Iran’s continuing progress towards a bomb."

"Progress towards a bomb" is a meaningless phrase that would apply to any one of the more than twenty countries that have a nuclear engineering program at one of their technical universities. The Iranian nuke program is conveniently treated as if it were a fait accompli, but there are numerous problems with that line of thinking as the theoretical capability to build a bomb is not the same has having the means or desire to do so. Benjamin Netanyahu has been warning about a nuclear weapon in the hands of the Mullahs ever since 1992, but it still has not arrived. Every six months there is a warning that Iran is again six months away from a weapon and every six months the date is moved back.

According to Yadlin and Golov, "breakout" will soon be two weeks. But both the CIA and Mossad agree that Iran has not made the admittedly political decision to create a nuclear weapon and the country’s religious leadership has even declared that such a device would be un-Islamic.

There have also been reports that Iran is actually reducing its supply of enriched uranium by converting it to reactor fuel, which cannot be used in a weapons while several Israeli senior officials have admitted that the alleged threat from Iran has been exaggerated and is containable. Also, a bomb in and of itself is useless unless it can be delivered. Iran has no delivery system and the creation of a nuclear warhead to be fitted on a ballistic missile is a hugely expensive and technically complicated engineering problem that might well be beyond its capability.

So Iran has no bomb and there is no real evidence that it is seeking to acquire one. Also there is no mention of Israel itself in the op-ed, perhaps understandable when two Israeli government officials are spouting the Likud Party line. Israel is the only nuclear armed power in the Middle East, possessing several hundred weapons together with the missiles and submarines that are capable of delivering them on target. It also has the most powerful conventional military, thanks to the United States, and might be regarded as the regional superpower. Successive US administrations have insisted that Washington will protect Israel, and even Senator Rand Paul has declared that an attack against Israel would be treated as an attack against the United States.

One has to wonder why The New York Times believes that being "balanced" somehow requires it to replay Israeli propaganda. If it really wanted to be even handed it might note somewhere on the editorial page that the op-ed is the product of authors who are affiliated with the Israeli government through an officially funded university think tank. It might also mention that Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its weapons program is regarded as a top secret. Iran is a signatory and its program for nuclear energy is perfectly legal, even encouraged under the terms of the NPT. It has permitted United Nations IAEA inspectors to view its facilities. Israel has never done so. So who is the miscreant? And who has started the most wars in the Middle East? The correct answer is Israel followed closely by the United States, not Iran, which has initiated no wars with anyone since the seventeenth century.

"One has to wonder why The New York Times believes that being "balanced" somehow requires it to replay Israeli propaganda. If it really wanted to be even handed it might note somewhere on the editorial page that the op-ed is the product of authors who are affiliated with the Israeli government through an officially funded university think tank..."

When Israeli denial of Palestinian existence becomes genocidal
Ilan Pappe The Electronic Intifada 20 April 2013

Sixty-five years on, Israeli President Shimon Peres still denies the existence of the indigenous population of Palestine. (World Economic Forum / Flickr)
In a regal interview he gave the Israeli press on the eve of the state’s ” Independence Day,” Shimon Peres, the current president of Israel, said the following:

“I remember how it all began. The whole state of Israel is a millimeter of the whole Middle East. A statistical error, barren and disappointing land, swamps in the north, desert in the south, two lakes, one dead and an overrated river. No natural resource apart from malaria. There was nothing here. And we now have the best agriculture in the world? This is a miracle: a land built by people” (Maariv, 14 April 2013).

This fabricated narrative, voiced by Israel’s number one citizen and spokesman, highlights how much the historical narrative is part of the present reality. This presidential impunity sums up the reality on the eve of the 65th commemoration of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine. The disturbing fact of life, 65 years on, is not that the figurative head of the so-called Jewish state, and for that matter almost everyone in the newly-elected government and parliament, subscribe to such views. The worrying and challenging reality is the global immunity given to such impunity.

Peres’ denial of the native Palestinians and his reselling in 2013 of the landless people mythology exposes the cognitive dissonance in which he lives: he denies the existence of approximately twelve million people living in and near to the country to which they belong. History shows that the human consequences are horrific and catastrophic when powerful people, heading powerful outfits such as a modern state, denied the existence of a people who are very much present.

This denial was there at the beginning of Zionism and led to the ethnic cleansing in 1948. And it is there today, which may lead to similar disasters in the future — unless stopped immediately.

Cognitive dissonance

The perpetrators of the 1948 ethnic cleansing were the Zionist settlers who came to Palestine, like Polish-born Shimon Peres, before the Second World War. They denied the existence of the native people they encountered, who lived there for hundreds of years, if not more. The Zionists did not possess the power at the time to settle the cognitive dissonance they experienced: their conviction that the land was people-less despite the presence of so many native people there.

They almost solved the dissonance when they expelled as many Palestinians as they could in 1948 — and were left with only a small minority of Palestinians within the Jewish state.

But the Zionist greed for territory and ideological conviction that much more of Palestine was needed in order to have a viable Jewish state led to constant contemplations and eventually operations to enlarge the state.

With the creation of “Greater Israel” following the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the dissonance returned. The solution however could not easily be resolved this time by the force of ethnic cleansing. The number of Palestinians was larger, their assertiveness and liberation movement were forcefully present on the ground, and even the most cynical and traditionally pro-Israel actors on the international scene recognized their existence.

The dissonance was resolved in a different way. The land without people was any part of the greater Israel the state wished to Judaize in the pre-1967 boundaries or annex from the territories occupied in 1967. The land with people was in the Gaza Strip and some enclaves in the West Bank as well as inside Israel. The land without people is destined to expand incrementally in the future, causing the number of people to shrink as a direct consequence of this encroachment.

Incremental ethnic cleansing

This incremental ethnic cleansing is hard to notice unless one contextualizes it as a historical process. The noble attempt by the more conscientious individuals and groups in the West and inside Israel to focus on the here and now — when it comes to Israeli policies — is doomed to be weakened by the contemporary contextualization, not the historical one.

Comparing Palestine to other places was always a problem. But with the murderous reality in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, it becomes an even more serious challenge. The last closure, the last political arrest, the last assault, the last murder of a youth are horrific crimes, but pale in comparison to nearby or far-away killing fields and areas of colossal atrocities.

Criminal narrative

The comparison is very different when it is viewed historically and it is in this context that we should realize the criminality of Peres’ narrative which is as horrific as the occupation — and potentially far worse. For the president of Israel, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, there were never Palestinians before he initiated in 1993 the Oslo process — and when he did, they were only the ones living a small part of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

In his discourse, he already eliminated most of the Palestinians. If you did not exist when Peres came to Palestine, you definitely do not exist when he is the president in 2013. This elimination is the point where ethnic cleansing becomes genocidal. When you are eliminated from the history book and the discourse of the top politicians, there is always a danger that the next attempt would be your physical elimination.

It happened before. The early Zionists, including the current president, talked about the transfer of the Palestinians long before they actually disposed them in 1948. These visions of a de-Arabized Palestine appeared in every Zionist diary, journal and inner conversation since the beginning of the 20th century. If one talks about nothingness in a place where there is plenty it can be willful ignorance. But if one talks about nothingness as a vision or undeniable reality, it is only a matter of power and opportunity before the vision becomes reality.

Denial continues

Peres’ interview on the eve of the 65th commemoration of the Nakba is chilling not because it condones any violent act against the Palestinians, but because the Palestinians have entirely disappeared from his self-congratulatory admiration for the Zionist achievement in Palestine. It is bewildering to learn that the early Zionists denied the existence of Palestinians in 1882 when they arrived; it is even more shocking to find out that they deny their existence — beyond sporadic ghettoized communities — in 2013.

In the past, the denial preceded the crime — a crime that only partially succeeded but for which the perpetrators were never brought to justice. This is probably why the denial continues. But this time, it is not the existence of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians which is at stake, but that of almost six million who live inside historic Palestine and another five and half million living outside Palestine.

One would think only a madman can ignore millions and millions of people, many of them under his military or apartheid rule while he actively and ruthlessly disallows the return of the rest to their homeland. But when the madman receives the best weapons from the US, Nobel Peace Prizes from Oslo and preferential treatment from the European Union, one wonders how seriously we should take the Western references to the leaders of Iran and North Korea as dangerous and lunatic?

Lunacy is associated these days, it seems, to possession of nuclear arms in non-Western hands. Well, even on that score, the local madman in the Middle East passes the test. Who knows, maybe in 2014 it would not be the Israeli cognitive dissonance that would be solved, but the Western one: how to reconcile a universal position of human and civil rights with the favored position Israel in general and Shimon Peres in particular receives in the West?

Published on Sunday, August 18, 2013 by Common Dreams
Honesty and the Dominant Zionist Narrative
Mayor of Upper Nazareth exposes the logic of exclusion that defines the current Israeli political and social landscape

by Neve Gordon
The Israeli mayor of Upper Nazareth, Shimon Gaspo, is an honest man. As part of his bid for re-election in the town which overlooks the ancient Palestinian city of Nazareth, he has launched a well-orchestrated political campaign. During the first stage, which began early in August, he furtively posted billboards which quoted left-wing politicians—including Haneen Zoabi from the political party Balad and Ahmed Tibi from the United Arab List-Ta'al—clamouring for his removal.
Honest man: Israeli mayor of Upper Nazareth, Shimon Gaspo.

Zoabi was quoted as saying, "Upper Nazareth was built on Arab land. We will fight to the end against Shimon Gapso's racism. [Send] the racist home; Arabs to Upper Nazareth.” The Tibi poster quoted the member of Knesset saying: "Shimon Gapso is racist scum and a neighbourhood bully who boorishly tramples the basic rights of Arab citizens to live wherever they want and to buy lands which, in any case, were theirs and were stolen from them by force!"

But because Gapso is an honest man, a few days after the self-initiated negative campaign had commenced, he admitted that he was actually behind it. He then hung his “real” campaign posters.

One reads, "Upper Nazareth will be Jewish forever; no more shutting our eyes… this is the time to defend our home."

Another poster reads: "I will not allow the city’s Jewish character to be changed. I will block the establishment of an Arab school and will build neighbourhoods for Jewish residents ... Upper Nazareth is a Jewish city!"

In a letter to Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, two Israeli organizations Tag Meir and the Israel Religious Action Center condemned Gapso’s election campaign as “consisting wholly of racist incitement." Writing on behalf of both organizations, Israel Religious Action Centre attorney Einat Hurvitz wrote that the remarks by Gapso on his campaign posters “do not belong in an equal, pluralistic society, especially not when made by an elected official. These are utterly racist quotes, since all of Gapso's re-election campaign is based on a clear racist line – the prevention of equal resources from Upper Nazareth's Arab residents, and an effort to drive out the Arabs from the city."

Gapso, of course, did not remain silent. In an incredibly forthright Oped, which appeared in Ha’aretz, he complained that many people had been calling him a racist. “Sometimes they also call me a Nazi, a bully or even Hitler. One need only look at the comments on Haaretz’s website, [where people want] to put me before a firing squad,” he wrote; and then rhetorically asked the readers: “What’s my crime? What act of bullying did I commit?”

He, of course, immediately responds: “I made a clear and unequivocal statement that Upper Nazareth is a Jewish city. Yes — I’m not afraid to say it out loud, to write it and add my signature, or declare it in front of the cameras: Upper Nazareth is a Jewish city and it’s important that it remains so.”

After this pithy statement, Gapso lays out his manifesto. “If that makes me a racist,” he declares, “then I’m a proud offshoot of a glorious dynasty of ‘racists’ that started with the ‘Covenant of the Pieces’ [that God made with Abraham, recounted in Genesis 15:1–15] and the explicitly racist promise: ‘To your seed I have given this land’ [Genesis 15:38].”

He goes on to note that “When the Jewish people were about to return to their homeland after a long journey from slavery in Egypt, where they were enslaved for racist reasons, the God of Israel told Moses how to act upon conquering the land: he must cleanse the land of its current inhabitants.”

Fast forwarding 3000 years, Gaspo claims:

“The racist Theodor Herzl wrote ‘Der Judenstaat’ (‘The Jewish State,’ not ‘The State of All Its Citizens’). Lord Balfour recommended the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Arlosoroff, Moshe Sharett and other racists established the Jewish Agency, and the racist UN decided to establish a Jewish state — in other words, a state for Jews. The racist Ben-Gurion announced the establishment of the Jewish State in the Land of Israel, and during the War of Independence even made sure to bring in hundreds of thousands of Jews and drive out hundreds of thousands of Arabs who had been living here — all to enable it to be founded with the desired racist character.”
“Since then,” the mayor concludes, “racially pure kibbutzim without a single Arab member and an army that protects a certain racial strain have been established, as have political parties that proudly bear racist names such as ‘Habayit Hayehudi’ — ‘the Jewish home.’ Even our racist national anthem ignores the existence of the Arab minority — in other words, the people Ben-Gurion did not manage to expel in the 1948 war. If not for all that ‘racism,’ it’s doubtful we could live here, and doubtful that we could live at all.”

Gapso’s clear-sighted analysis of the dominant Zionist narrative speaks volumes about Israel’s state in the new millennium. With jingoist pride he reveals the logic of exclusion that defines the current Israeli political and social landscape. The novelty is not so much in what he says, but that he is has no shame in saying it. The only thing that he forgets to mention, however, is that racism is not “natural,” something one is born with or should be proud of, but rather a trait one acquires by internalizing the horrific lie that certain human beings are less than fully human.

Israel's West Bank Plans Will Leave Palestinians Very Little
By Noam Chomsky

Source: CNN.comSaturday, August 17, 2013


The Israeli-Palestinian peace talks beginning in Jerusalem proceed within a framework of assumptions that merit careful thought.

One prevailing assumption is that there are two options: either a two-state settlement will be reached, or there will be a "shift to a nearly inevitable outcome of the one remaining reality -- a state 'from the sea to the river'," an outcome posing "an immediate existential threat of the erasure of the identity of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state" because of what is termed "the demographic problem," a future Palestinian majority in the single state.

This particular formulation is by former Israeli Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Yuval Diskin, but the basic assumptions are near universal in political commentary and scholarship. They are, however, crucially incomplete. There is a third option, the most realistic one: Israel will carry forward its current policies with full U.S. economic, military, and diplomatic support, sprinkled with some mild phrases of disapproval.

The policies are quite clear. Their roots go back to the 1967 war and they have been pursued with particular dedication since the Oslo Accords of September 1993.

The Accords determined that Gaza and the West Bank are an indivisible territorial entity. Israel and the U.S. moved at once to separate them, which means that any autonomy Palestinians might gain in the West Bank will have no direct access to the outside world.

A second step was to carry forward the creation of a vastly expanded Greater Jerusalem, incorporating it within Israel, as its capital. This is in direct violation of Security Council orders and is a serious blow to any hope for a viable Palestinian entity. A corridor to the east of the new Greater Jerusalem incorporates the settler town of Ma'aleh Adumim, established in the 1970s but built primarily after the Oslo Accords, virtually bisecting the West Bank.

Corridors to the north including other settler towns divide what is to remain under some degree of Palestinian control -- "Bantustans," as they were called by one of the main architects of the policy, Ariel Sharon, in a reference to the territory set aside for black South Africans during the apartheid era.

Meanwhile Israel is incorporating the territory on the Israeli side of the "separation wall" cutting through the West Bank, taking arable land and water resources and Palestinian villages.

Included are the settlement blocs that "will remain part of Israel in any possible future peace agreement," as stated by Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev as the current negotiations were announced.

The International Court of Justice ruled that all of this is illegal, and the Security Council had already ruled that all of the settlements are illegal. The U.S. joined the world in accepting that conclusion in the early years of the occupation. But under Ronald Reagan, the position was changed to "harmful to peace," and Barack Obama has weakened it further to "not helpful to peace."

Israel has also been clearing the Jordan Valley of Palestinians while establishing Jewish settlements, sinking wells, and otherwise preparing for eventual integration of the region within Israel.

That will complete the isolation of any West Bank Palestinian entity. Meanwhile huge infrastructure projects throughout the West Bank, from which Palestinians are barred, carry forward the integration to Israel, and presumably eventual annexation.

The areas that Israel is taking over will be virtually free of Arabs. There will be no new "demographic problem" or civil rights or anti-apartheid struggle, contrary to what many advocates of Palestinian rights anticipate in a single state.

There remain open questions. Notably, pre-Obama, U.S. presidents have prevented Israel from building settlements on the E1 site -- a controversial area in the West Bank that Israel hopes to develop -- which would complete the separation of Greater Jerusalem from Palestinian-controlled area. What will happen here is uncertain.

As the negotiations opened, Israel made its intentions clear by announcing new construction in East Jerusalem and scattered settlements, while also extending its "national priority list" of settlements that receive special subsidies to encourage building and inducements for Jewish settlers.

Obama made his intentions clear by appointing as chief negotiator Martin Indyk, whose background is in the Israeli lobby, a close associate of negotiator and presidential adviser Dennis Ross, whose guiding principle has been that Israel has "needs," which plainly overcome mere Palestinian wants.

These developments bring to the fore a second common assumption: that Palestinians have been hindering the peace process by imposing preconditions. In reality, the U.S. and Israel impose crucial preconditions. One is that the process must be in the hands of the United States, which is an active participant in the conflict on Israel's side, not an "honest broker." A second is that the illegal Israel settlement activities must be allowed to continue.

There is an overwhelming international consensus in support of a two-state settlement on the internationally recognized border, perhaps with "minor and mutual adjustments" of this 1949 cease-fire line, in the wording of much earlier U.S. policy. The consensus includes the Arab states and the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran). It has been blocked by the U.S. and Israel since 1976, when the U.S. vetoed a resolution to this effect brought by Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

The rejectionist record continues to the present. Washington's most recent veto of a Security Council resolution on Palestinian territory was in February 2011, a resolution calling for implementation of official U.S. policy -- an end to expansion of Israel's illegal settlements. And the rejectionist record goes far beyond the Security Council.

Also misleading is the question whether the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would accept a "Palestinian state." In fact, his administration was the first to countenance this possibility when it came into office in 1996, following Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, who rejected this outcome. Netanyahu's associate David bar-Illan explained that some areas would be left to Palestinians, and if they wanted to call them "a state," Israel would not object -- or they could call them "fried chicken."

His response reflects the operative attitude of the U.S.-Israel coalition to Palestinian rights.

In the region, there is great skepticism about Washington's current revival of the "peace process." It is not hard to see why.

‘Back Egypt or risk peace talks,’ says Israeli official to US
Israeli source says Washington must support military-backed Egyptian government if negotiations stand any chance of moving forward

August 20, 2013

The Washington Post’s Distorted Cartography
Erasing Palestine From the Map
by ROBERT ROSS

A foreign affairs blogger for The Washington Post recently posted “40 Maps that explain the world.” Some of the maps are important (“Economic inequality around the world”), some are interesting (“Meet the world’s 26 remaining monarchies”), but others grossly distort the reality they purportedly represent. Chief among this latter category is “How far Hamas’s rockets can reach into Israel” .

WashPostMap

All about Hamas’s rockets

There are two principal problems with this map. First, the map attempts to “explain” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by pointing exclusively to the capacity of Hamas’s rockets to reach ever-extensive points within Israel. Four color-coded, concentric semi-circles spread out from the Gaza Strip, each showing the distance different rockets could travel, the furthest making it all the way to the Dead Sea. Max Fisher, the Post’s chief foreign affairs blogger, writes in a caption to the map, “This helps drive home why Israel is so concerned about Hamas, the Gaza-based Islamist group, and in particular about its access to Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets. Those are the ones that can reach into the light-yellow region.”

Erasing Palestine from the Map

The second major problem with this map is that Palestine—both historic and contemporary—is erased from it. A white dotted line traces the border between the West Bank and Israel but the line is barely visible beneath the yellow-shaded ring. Moreover, “West Bank” (not “occupied West Bank,” or “occupied Palestinian territory,” or “Palestinian West Bank” or “Palestine,” mind you) appears in font so small that it seems to designate some tiny city northeast of Jerusalem, not the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. And while Israeli municipalities such as Arad, Ashdod, Holan, and Hrzliya, among others, are included, nowhere can one find the Palestinian cities of Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem, or Jericho, much less al-Bira, Jenin, or Qalqilia. Only Jerusalem and Hebron, West Bank cities that are significant to both Israelis and Palestinians, are featured. Even Jaffa, the coastal Palestinian city north of Tel Aviv, has been replaced by the Israeli-Hebrew version, “Yafo.”

So what does this map tell us about the Israel-Palestine conflict? It’s not apparent what or where Palestine is, or that it even exists, but the map suggests that an ever-menacing, Iranian-supported Islamist group threatens more than half of Israel. And therefore, Israel is “concerned.” Presumably, the reader might conclude, that “concern” forces Israel to periodically defend itself, launching its own counter-attacks into the Gaza Strip. The West Bank, meanwhile, appears for all intents and purposes, part of Israel and in no way related to the Gaza Strip or the cartographically cleansed “Palestine.” So Israel’s geography is simplified into a need to defend itself and Palestine is wiped off the map.

Concealing more than it reveals

The Washington Post’s map (which is actually just a simple google map lifted from someone named “Gene,” whose cartographic resume also includes google maps of “Richmond Bars/Restaurants” and “Jane Austin’s England”) doesn’t reveal how and to what extent Israel has “defended” itself against the perceived threat of Hamas’s rockets. The threat is all that is deemed important; a map showing where and with what deadly ramifications Israel’s responses have taken place, such as this one produced by the Alliance for Justice in the Middle East at Harvard University and the MIT Center for Future Civic Media, didn’t make the Post’s list.

Any attempt to cartographically represent the context within which Hamas’s rockets and Israel’s “response” may have been launched, such as this UN map, is also entirely missing from the Post’s compilation.

In addition to nearly erasing the Palestinian West Bank altogether, the Post’s map reveals nothing about the multiple ways in which the territory is occupied by Israel. Maps of Israeli-only roads, checkpoints, the separation barrier, settlements, and the ethnically-based divisions of the West Bank (such as these from Btselem, the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, and The Applied Institute for Research – Jerusalem) don’t, according to the Washington Post, help explain this part of the world as much as Gene’s map of Hamas’s rocket-firing potential.

The Washington Post’s map of choice sheds no light on the Palestinian villages within Israel that were ethnically cleansed and destroyed in 1948-1949. References to these maps from the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA) and Visualizing Palestine could have at least begun to cartographically resurrect these erased landscapes.

The Dangers of Distorted Cartography

In sum, The Washington Post’s map explains very little about this part of the world. But what the map does reveal is The Washington Post’s myopic view of Israel and Palestine. The ongoing colonization of Palestine by Israel is reduced and reversed, in this map’s representation, to a normal country that must fend off existential threats from its shadowy neighbors. The effects of this distorted cartography are dangerous—erasing the geographies of Palestine is yet another step in the ongoing occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Can Architecture Help Solve the Israeli-Palestinian Dispute?
The key to bringing these nations together in peace may be to first think of the territories as moveable pieces

By Yochi Dreazen
Smithsonian.com, August 20, 2013, Subscribe



Architects are using a puzzle-like map to get Israelis to think about how a peace plan might look. (Image courtesy of SAYA)

More from Smithsonian.com
Israel and Gaza Are Now at War Both Online and in Reality

It’s 2015, and peace has finally come to the Middle East. Tourists stream to the Old City of Jerusalem from Israel and the new state of Palestine, passing through modern border crossings before entering the walls of the ancient site. Jerusalem has been divided, but creatively: the city’s busiest highway is used to separate the Jewish half of Jerusalem from the Palestinian one, the the border between the countries situated unobtrusively along the road’s median.

Both ideas were developed by a pair of young Israeli with an unusually practical approach to peacemaking. Yehuda Greenfield-Gilat and Karen Lee Bar-Sinai, both 36, have spent years working on highly specific ideas for how policymakers could divide Jerusalem between Israel and Palestine without doing permanent damage to the delicate urban fabric of the city.

The architects say their top priority is to prevent Jerusalem from being divided by barbed wire, concrete walls and machine gun batteries. That was the dire reality in the city until 1967, when Israeli forces routed the Jordanians, who had controlled Jerusalem’s eastern half since the Jewish state’s founding in 1948. All of Jerusalem, including the Old City, has been under full Israeli sovereignity ever since. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that will never change. Jerusalem, he said in July, is “Israel’s undivided and eternal capital.” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he will accept nothing less than a partition of the city that leaves its eastern half, and much of the Old City, under Palestinian control.

Greenfield-Gilat and Bar-Sinai have mapped out where the border between East and West Jerusalem would go and made detailed architectural renderings of what it would look like. They’ve even designed some of the individual border crossings that would allow citizens of one nation to pass into the other for business or tourism. They are trying to take big-picture questions about the future of the city and ground them in the nitty-gritty details of what a peace deal would actually look and feel like.

“We’re trying to fill the gap between the broad stroke of policymaking and the reality of life on the ground,” says Bar-Sinai, who recently returned to Israel after a yearlong fellowship at Harvard University. “Only thinking about these questions from the 30,000 foot high perspective isn’t enough.”

Her work with Greenfield-Gilat begins with the premise that the heavily-fortified border crossings currently in use across the West Bank – each guarded by armed soldiers and equipped with mechanical arms that look like those found in American toll booths – would destroy Jerusalem’s unique character if they were imported into the capital.

Instead, the two young architects have tried to blend the new border crossings into their surroundings so they stand out as little as possible. In the case of the Old City, which contains many of the holiest sites of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, that approach calls for situating the structures just outside the walls of the ancient site so its architectural integrity is preserved even as Israeli and Palestinian authorities gain the ability to move visitors through modern security checkpoints that resemble those found in airports. Once in the Old City, tourists would be able to move around freely before leaving through the same border crossings that they had come in through.

The two young architects have also paid close attention to detail. Their plan for turning Jerusalem’s Route 60 into the border between the Israeli and Palestinian halves of the city, for instance, includes schematics showing the motion detectors, earthen berms, videos cameras and iron fences that would be built on top of the median to prevent infiltration from one state to the other. A related mock-up shows a graceful pedestrian bridge near the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem that would arc over the highway so Israelis and Palestinians could enter the other country by foot.

Greenfield-Gilat and Bar-Sinai’s work is taking on new resonance now that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have returned to the table for a fresh round of American-backed peace talks, but it has been attracting high-level attention for several years. The two architects have briefed aides to retired Senator George Mitchell, the Obama administration’s chief envoy to the Israelis and Palestinians, and other senior officials from the State Department, White House and Israeli government. In 2008, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented their sketch of the American Colony bridge to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as an example of what the separation of Jerusalem would look like in practice.

The journalist and academic Bernard Avishai, who first reported on the Olmert-Abbas meeting, describes Greenfield-Gilat and Bar-Sinai as “young and visionary.” In a blog posting about their work, Avishai wrote about “how vivid peace looked when you could actually see the constructions that would provide it a foundation.”.

The two architects have been honing their ideas since they met as students at Israel’s Technion University in the late 1990s. The Israeli government began building the controversial security barrier separating Israel from the West Bank in 2002, during their senior year, and talk of dividing Jerusalem was in the air.

Greenfield-Gilat and Bar-Sinai, joined by a close friend named Aya Shapira, began thinking about practical ways that the city could be partitioned without turning it into a modern version of Cold War Berlin. (Shapira was killed in the 2004 South Asian tsunami, and the name of their design studio, Saya, is short for “Studio Aya” in honor of their friend and colleague).

The three architects eventually settled on the idea of building parallel light rail systems in East and West Jerusalem that would come together outside the Damascus Gate of the Old City, turning it into a main transportation hub for the divided city. Their plan also called for turning the Damascus Gate rail station into a primary border crossing between the two states, making it, in Greenfield-Gilat’s words, a “separation barrier that was political but also highly functional.”

Part of their proposal was ahead of its time – Jerusalem has since built a light rail system with a stop outside of the Damascus Gate, something that wasn’t even under consideration in 2003 – but a peace deal dividing the city looks further apart than ever. There hasn’t been a successful Palestinian terror attack from the West Bank in more than a year, and Israelis feel little urgency about striking a deal with Abbas. The Palestinian leadership, for its part, distrusts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and doesn’t believe he would be willing to make the territorial concessions they have demanded for decades as part of a comprehensive accord.

In the middle of a trendy duplex gallery near the Tel Aviv harbor, an exhibition showcases Greenfield-Gilat and Bar-Sinai’s plans and includes a vivid illustration of just how difficult it will be to actually bring about a deal. The architects installed a table-sized map of Israel and the occupied territories It is built like a puzzle, with visitors encouraged to experiment by picking up light-green pieces in the shapes and sizes of existing Jewish settlements and then comparing them to blue pieces corresponding to the swaths of land that would need to be given to a new state of Palestine in a peace agreement. (Greenfield-Gilat and Bar-Sinai have also developed an online interactive map that offers a similar experience.)

Two things become clear almost immediately. First, Israel would only need to annex a small amount of land to bring the vast bulk of settlers within the Jewish state’s new borders. Second, that annexation would still require the forced evacuations of dozens of settlements, including several with populations of close to 10,000. Some of the larger settlements are so far from Israel’s pre-1967 borders– and would require Israel to relinquish such an enormous amount of territory in exchange – that they can’t even be picked up off the puzzle board. Those towns house the most extreme settlers, so any real-life move to clear them out would hold the real potential for violence.

Greenfield-Gilat and Bar-Sinai are open about their belief that Israel will need to find a way of relinquishing broad swaths of the West Bank. Greenfield-Gilat spent a year studying in a religious school in the West Bank before entering college and describes himself as a proud Zionist. Still, he says that many settlements – including the Israeli community in Hebron, the ancient city that contains many of Judaism’s most holy sites – will need to be evacuated as part of any peace deal. “The deep West Bank won’t be part of Israel,” he says. “The map is meant to show what’s on the table, what is in the zone of the possible agreements between the two sides, and what the cost would be.”

In the meantime, he’s is trying to find other ways of putting Saya’s ideas into practice. Greenfield-Gilat has worked as an advisor to Tzipi Livni, now Netanyahu’s chief peace negotiator, and ran unsuccessfully for the Israeli parliament as part of her political party. He’s now running for a seat on Jerusalem’s city council. “Our mission is to prove that these are not issues that should be put aside because they’re intractable,” he says. “Dealing with them is just a matter of political will.”

This project was supported with a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

An American collusion laid bare
Rashid Khalidi’s new book is an expose of how Washington calculatedly prevented the difficult but essential steps towards peace in Palestine

By Fawaz Turki | Special to Gulf News
Published: 20:00 August 23, 2013

Rashid Khalidi, the New York-born Palestinian American professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, may not have yet acquired the celebrity status that the late Edward Said had acquired in his career as a scholar engaged in exposing European orientalist thought and Washington’s complicit role in the continued subjugation of Palestinian people, but he is getting there.

It is significant that Khalidi’s new book on what he calls dismissively — for its duplicity — the “peace process” brokered by the US from Reagan to Obama, was released several days before American Secretary of State John Kerry initiated yet another round of talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Relying on meticulous research and on his own first-hand experience as an adviser to the delegation at the 1991 negotiations in Washington, Khalidi has written a scathing book about how the US and Israel have actively colluded in preventing the emergence of a Palestinian state all these years. The title and subtitle of his book say it all — Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East. His concluding chapter, about America’s special relationship with Zionism, is equally tellingly

titled: Israel’s Lawyer.

This tome is not only timely, but much-needed as an expose of how Washington, irrespective of who was in the White House, deliberately and calculatedly prevented the difficult but essential steps needed to achieve peace in Palestine and justice for the Palestinians.

Khalidi’s analysis focuses on what he calls the “three historical moments” in the peace process over the last three decades: The 1982 Reagan Plan, the Madrid Peace Conference and the later signing of the Oslo accords, from 1991 to 1993, and finally the retreat by President Barack Obama — whom Arabs, Muslims and Europeans expected to humanise America’s foreign policy — from his declared plans to insist that Israel halt the colonisation of Arab land in Palestine. Not since The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (2007), by John J. Marsheimer and Stephen Walt, has a book mounted such a frontal attack on the myths of America’s role as an impartial peace mediator.

Khalidi writes bluntly and up-front in the introduction: “Since the Camp David Accords in 1978 ... the incessantly repeated mantra about a ‘peace process’ has served to disguise an ugly reality — whatever process the United States was championing, it was not in fact actually directed at achieving a just and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis”. He adds: “Instead of trying to achieve these goals, the process actually undertaken by the United States was aimed at pressuring the weaker Palestinians into conforming to the desiderata of their much stronger oppressor.”

Virtually all American presidents in the “three historical moments” covered by Khalidi have honed to the narrative that Israel fiercely sold to the American people, namely the victim status of the Israeli state, a beleaguered and vulnerable entity in constant danger of assault by its fanatical neighbours. Even Obama pandered to that fiction when just a day after he won the Democratic presidential nomination in June 2008, he delivered a speech to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee annual conference, in which he invoked the Holocaust and lambasted those Arabs “committed to Israel’s destruction”, with nary a word about how Israel is actually a regional superpower bristling with lethal weapons of mass destruction that it had shown little hesitation over the years in using against its poorly armed neighbours.

The assault on Arabs, whether in Palestine or beyond, often accompanied by denial that it is happening or has ever happened, would not clearly have taken place without the collusion of the US.

And if any of us had naively assumed that Obama was, pun aside, a horse of a different colour, consider the speech — the most brazenly pro-Israeli speech ever delivered by an American president at any time, anywhere — that he delivered at the UN General Assembly in September 2011, where he reiterated the apocalyptic, but by now banal and pathetic, myths about an Israel in mortal danger from the brutal hordes at its borders, the barbarians at the gate, as it were.

“But understand this as well”, he thundered from the podium as he addressed the world body: “America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakable ... Israel is surrounded by neighbours that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel ... looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off the map ...” And so it went on and on, without a word uttered about the Palestinians.

If Obama turned out a dud on the issue, whom do you trust in Washington to buy a used car from in the future? Khalidi does not evince the slightest bit of trust either in that regard and lest we forget, he was linked to Obama because, as he writes, “I was a colleague of his at the University of Chicago, lived in the same Hyde Park neighbourhood, and because our families at times socialised together”.

Khalidi’s may not have unearthed new archival material, but his is a sprightly and accessible book about how, for decades now, American presidents and policymakers, while masquerading as honest brokers, were in fact “brokers of deceit”.

Fawaz Turki is a journalist, lecturer and author based in Washington. He is the author of The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile.