Category Archives: Viva!

IOF attack elementary school, assault teachers

power corrupts the soul…

PNN/ Hebron/

Dozens of students and a schoolteacher on Monday were wounded after Israeli occupation forces stormed an elementary school in Hebron this morning.

Local sources said that the Israeli soldiers assaulted a number of school teachers, injuring teacher Shukri al-Zaru al-Tamimi, before they threw stunt and teargas grenades towards the students in the vicinity of the school and inside its walls.

The attack spread terror among the students where dozens suffered from teargas suffocation.

The school has some 370 students in elementary classes.

 

PA: Trump closing Washington PLO office is “vicious blackmail”

PNN/ Ramallah/
 The Trump administration on Monday is expected to announce that it will close the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington, The Wall Street Journal reported today.
Citing unidentified White House officials, the WSJ said the announcement is expected to be made in prepared remarks by National Security Adviser John Bolton, and is part of a widening U.S. pressure campaign on Palestinian officials amid stalled Middle East peace efforts, the paper reported.The U.S. “will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel,” Bolton plans to say in his prepared remarks, the Journal reported, citing a draft it had reviewed.

He also plans to threaten to impose sanctions against the International Criminal Court if it moves ahead with investigations of the U.S. and Israel, the paper said. Actions the U.S. could take include banning ICC judges and prosecutors from entering America.

“We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system,” the paper reported Bolton was planning to say. “We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans.”

This comes after a series of measurements against the Palestinian leadership and people, including moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and announcing Jerusalem the capital of Israel in May, in addition to the recent cut of funding to the UNRWA, which is responsible for aiding millions of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.

Senior PLO official, Dr. Saeb Erekat described the decision as another affirmation of the Trump Administration’s policy to collectively punish the Palestinian people, including by cutting financial support for humanitarian services including health and education.

Erekat said that the leadership in response will take the necessary measures to protect the rights of Palestinian citizens living in the United States to access their consular services.

“This dangerous escalation shows that the US is willing to disband the international system in order to protect Israeli crimes and attacks against the land and people of Palestine as well as against peace and security in the rest of our region,” Erekat said in a statement.

“We reiterate that the rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale, that we will not succumb to US threats and bullying and that we will continue our legitimate struggle for freedom, justice, and independence, including by all political and legal means possible.  Accordingly, we continue to call upon the International Criminal Court to open its immediate investigation into Israeli crimes.| he added.

Erekat concluded by saying that the international community has the responsibility to react.

“Lowering the flag of Palestine in Washington DC means much more than a new slap by the Trump Administration against peace and justice; it symbolizes the US attacks against the international system as a whole, including the Paris Convention, UNESCO and the Human Rights Council among others,” he added.

To her part, PLO Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi said in a statement “It is ironic that the US is punishing the PLO, the national representative of the Palestinian people and the highest political body that made the commitment to reaching a political and legal settlement of the Palestinian question and that has engaged in negotiations with successive US administrations for decades.”

“This form of crude and vicious blackmail, as clearly articulated by officials including US President Trump, United States Special Envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, senior advisor to President Trump Jared Kushner, and National Security Advisor John Bolton, once again seeks to punish the Palestinian people as a whole who are already victims of the ruthless Israeli military occupation,” Ashrawi said.

Serena Williams gains support of WTA and USTA chiefs after umpire row

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  • WTA’s Steve Simon: double standards applied by Carlos Ramos
  • USTA president hails Williams’s ‘class’ and ‘sportsmanship’

The Women’s Tennis Association has backed up Serena Williams’ claims of sexism regarding the way she was treated by umpire Carlos Ramos during Saturday’s US Open final.

Williams was given a warning for coaching, then docked a point for smashing a racket before being penalised a game by Ramos after she called him a “liar” and a “thief”. That left the 23-times grand slam singles champion one game from defeat and in tears, with Naomi Osaka clinching her first slam title shortly afterwards.

Continue reading…

This Week in Egypt: Week 36 -2018 ( Sept 3-9)

Nervana

Top Headlines

  • Egypt sentences hundreds over 2013 pro-Morsi protests, including 75 to death
  • An Egyptian Man was arrested after backpack ignites near U.S. embassy in Cairo
  • Egypt’s foreign debt rises to $92.64 bln at end-June
  • Egyptian church suspends one monk for a year and permanently expels another
  • Egyptian Armed Forces launch first Gowind-class Corvette made in Egypt
  • Egypt is fined $2 billion over natural gas dispute
  • Cairo court reduces sentence for Lebanese Mona Mazbouh to suspended jail term
  • Egypt nears completion of its $1billion transport link under the Suez Canal that will reduce travel time from several hours to four minutes

 Main Headlines

 Monday

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Trump’s endgame in Palestine

Washington defunding the Palestinian refugee agency is not merely an attack on UNRWA, as serious as that may be. It is an attempt to destroy the Palestinian national movement.

By Mitchell Plitnick

Palestinians in Bethlehem commemorate the Nakba, May 14, 2013. (Activestills.org)

Palestinians in Bethlehem are seen in front of the separation wall on Nakba Day, May 14, 2013. (Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)

Late last month, the State Department announced it would end all funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN agency that provides many essential services for Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. The reaction to this decision has been mostly negative.

Some have objected to the Trump administration’s decision because it runs counter to U.S. interests. Some have objected because it jeopardizes Israel’s security. Others talk about the staggering humanitarian consequences for the millions of refugees UNRWA serves.

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These are all important concerns. But none of them hits the mark of what the Trump administration—apparently at the urging of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, without any consultation with anyone else in the Israeli government or defense establishment—is doing. This is not merely an attack on UNRWA, as serious as that may be. This is an attempt to destroy the Palestinian national movement.

As I have long argued, the biggest single issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948 is not Jerusalem, settlements, borders, or even security. It is the Palestinian right of return. It is the one issue Israel would not discuss in talks and Israelis, with very few exceptions mostly on the far left, will not even consider compromising on.

It is also the very basis of the Palestinian national movement since 1948. For seven decades, the Palestinian right of return has been the irresistible force meeting the immovable object of Israeli nationalism. It has been the time bomb that would explode if talks on all those other issues were ever successful.

The right of return continued to smolder on its long fuse while diplomats from Israel, the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere sat comfortably with their belief that the Palestinians would simply accept their permanent exile. That this would be an Israeli position is acceptable, in the sense that one side or the other can come to the table with their own view of what is right and just. But as a pre-determined outcome it was never going to work, for the simple reason that a diktat on an issue of such importance would naturally inflame tensions, not resolve them.

Trump has not reversed policy, as some have said. Rather, he has shoved policy in the direction it was leaning before. Consider the words of Dan Shapiro, who was Barack Obama’s ambassador to Israel. Shapiro tweeted: “I’m 100% for being honest [with Palestinians] that there will be no right of return or any other outcome that undermines Isr[ael] as a Jewish state. I’m also for being honest that the conflict can only end in 2 states [for] 2 peoples.”

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As analyst Lara Friedman pointed out, it’s “[h]ard to be [a] credible steward if US has already decided [an] inevitable outcome—one defined not through give and take of negotiations but through US deciding what is necessary for Israel and what Palestinians can/must accept.”

Trump is taking that idea to a reckless and callous extreme. Friedman also noted that “Trump and his team’s core positions/goals vis-a-vis [Israel-Palestine] have been coherent and consistent since before Trump took office. Every devastating action that has flowed from them has been predictable and predicted.”

Whether it was his abandonment of the two-state solution with no alternative (allowing Netanyahu’s policies to fill the void), his turning a blind eye to settlement expansion, moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, his parroting of virtually every right-wing Israeli talking point, or his relentless attacks on UNRWA, Trump has steered his policy on Israel-Palestine down a clear path. He is motivated by the right-wing belief, undoubtedly held by Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, and his ambassador to Israel, David Friedman — Trump’s “Mideast peace team” — that contrary to conventional wisdom, the Palestinians can be pounded into submission.

Trump and his staff

Senior Trump Advisor Jared Kushner, Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, June 22, 2018. (Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy)

Senior Trump Advisor Jared Kushner, Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, June 22, 2018. (Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy)

Part of the problem with the Trump administration is that the president himself will make bold, often outlandish statements that have a powerful effect on policy, but his senior staff is working on something else. So, when Khaled Elgindy of the Brookings Institute tweeted that, “Unlike past US [administrations] for whom stability, security and even moral obligation were all mitigating factors, Trump’s approach to [the Israel-Palestine] conflict [is] driven entirely by ideology [and domestic political] considerations,” he is correct, but that may not be the whole story.

Kushner, Greenblatt, and Friedman each have been involved with right-wing pro-Israel movements for a long time. Although those movements are certainly ideologically driven, they are also strategic in their approach. These movements have opposed Oslo and the whole idea of negotiations because they believe that the diplomatic track is based on a false premise: that force cannot decide the outcome of this conflict.

The Israeli right and its U.S. counterparts understand very well the power imbalance between the Palestinians and Israel. They believe that they should crush Palestinian national aspirations and that Israel can weather the Arab and global reaction until it eventually subsides. Trump’s policies have been directed unerringly at that outcome.

Elgindy’s observation is important. Trump wants to please Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson and to be able to sell a story to his base that he resolved the Israel-Palestine conflict. If he does so by smashing the Palestinians, it is unlikely that his base will be concerned about that. But that’s neither policy nor strategy.

The troika of Greenblatt, Kushner, and Friedman, however, are pursuing a strategy. They hope it is one that can be supported, even if only in secret, by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and anyone else they can bring along. They believe that they can impose conditions on the Palestinians that leave them nothing to fight for and then buy them off with an economic package that stabilizes their economy and improves it to the point that they will be quiescent about their lack of independence. Life will “get better,” as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley put it.

All the Palestinians have to do is agree to live under occupation and accept their fate quietly. The Trump team seems not to have considered that if the Palestinians could be forced to do that, they would have acquiesced sometime over the past 70 years.

Trump takes it to the next level

In 2003, President George W. Bush gave a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that stated that Israel would not be expected to return to the 1967 borders nor would it be expected to allow Palestinian refugees to return to the lands that constitute the state of Israel proper. So, Trump’s actions in determining what had been agreed on as “final status issues” by diktat are not unprecedented. Trump simply took them much further. He removed the two-state framework, made it clear that settlement growth was an Israeli prerogative, “took Jerusalem off the table,” and now is aiming at the refugees.

That pretty much covers it all. There will be nothing left to negotiate. And this is Washington’s doing, not Israel’s. Although Netanyahu clearly pushed for this, and very likely lit the match that set it off, these are entirely U.S. actions. Indeed, most of the Israeli government and braintrust were left completely outside of these deliberations, very likely because even much of the Israeli right would not be on board with such a reckless approach.

The plan can’t work. It may well lead to violence, which Israel is no doubt ready to suppress with an iron fist. It will certainly increase Israel’s isolation from the more liberal or pro-Palestinian corners of the world. But Israel is prepared for this, as Netanyahu has cemented Israel’s relationship with right-wing forces in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.

Eventually, however, the distaste Israel is creating for itself will have serious consequences. Republicans will not control U.S. politics forever, and the disgust at Israel’s handling of the occupation is creating great antipathy toward it in much of Europe and among liberals — even pro-Israel liberals — in the United States. In the Arab world there has never been a starker separation on the question of Palestine between leaders like Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman and the people they are ruling over.

Palestinians may be facing a new kind of catastrophe, one that will take another awful toll on them. But they’ve already survived two of them. They may not have flourished, but they have survived and multiplied. Trump’s effort to destroy the Palestinians as a nation won’t succeed, but it will certainly have terrible consequences. After it fails, it will fall on the United States and Western Europe to finally live up to their responsibilities and use their considerable levers of influence to protect the rights of Palestinians as assiduously as those of Israelis.

Mitchell Plitnick is former vice president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is the former director of the U.S. Office of B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and was previously the director of education and policy for Jewish Voice for Peace. This article was first published on Lobelog.com.

New Italian government plans to curb Sunday shopping: Di Maio

Huh? Fake tradition of the rightists! Tradition of last 50 years is to go out and go shopping, eat, see a movie and now watch your favorite movie on your laptop or phone. Fake Il Duce fascist wannabes! The new Italian government will introduce a ban on Sunday shopping in large commercial centers before the end of the year as it seeks to defend family traditions, Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Sunday.

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Italy’s Matteo Salvini links with Bannon’s far-right ‘Movement’ ahead of EU vote

The man who would be king or at least Il Duce should be locked up as dangerous fascist enabler just to make money and be his version of murderous cool!

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Italy’s far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has joined with similar European elements in US former-presidential adviser Steve Bannon’s Brussels-based Movement. Their focus is on next year’s European elections.

Elections in Jerusalem for Palestinians, a need or treason?

In the end, the relationship with Israel is a relationship between an oppressor and an oppressed. An occupier and occupied. Justice cannot be built when the oppressor and the oppressed stand on the same line. It is a lot of so much work done when both become equals…

نادية حرحش

3_452685_20180907164503Every time every four years, the debate on elections starts and end like fireworks igniting in the sky and falling in pieces to nothingness.

Each time we debate whether Palestinians should participate in the elections of the municipality . and every time a stubborn like resistance is the master of the situation.

Why is this resistance to Palestinians participating in what seems to be a natural ABC of the miserable life of Jerusalemites? An ABC to what may appear to solve or in a way help resolve the frustrations Palestinian live in Jerusalem with all the restrictions, obstacles, violations and systematic attempts to get rid of the people of this city.

The ABC in response is, this will mean a legitimacy of the current municipality. It will mean that we Palestinians are legitimizing this capital of Israelization.

However, we are paying taxes; we receive services why not be involved in the system?

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