Japan, Indyk and Negotiations--A Palestinian point of view from Mazin Qumsiyeh's Human Rights Journal

HumanRights]
From: Mazin Qumsiyeh
Tue, Jul 30, 2013 03:28 PM

I will be in Japan giving a series of lectures on Israel-Palestine
situation (explaining apartheid, popular resistance, nuclear weapons, and
advocating for the only viable sustainable solution: one democratic secular
state).  Please tell your Japanese friends that they can find my schedule
(in Japanese) at http://qumsiyeh.org/upcomingevents/

Public Negotiations began amid great fanfare in Washington DC. Saeb Ereklat
sat next to a war criminal (Tsipi Livni who is responsible for massacre of
hundreds of civilians in Gaza) and across from the Israeli lobbyist Indyk
(representing the US) after giving up on the requirement (that is part of
Oslo and the Road map) for a settlement freeze and settling for informal
verbal assurances.   This is the same Erekat who has been fruitlessly
 negotiating  for 20 years along the sa,e lines (hence his book titled
 Life is negotiations ). It is the same person who the Palestine Papers
leaked to AlJazeera was shown giving one after another concession while the
Israeli side yawned and asked for more (see
http://www.aljazeera.com/palestinepapers/).

But most disturbingly, Abbas and Erekat accepted Martin Indyk as a US key
broker in the talks.  Indyk was appointed as US envoy to the  peace
process .  Indyk will broker the deal between Erekat and Livni even though
Indyk is a Zionist Jew who was an Israeli lobbyist. Indyk took leave of
absence from the Zionist group the Brookings institute in Washington DC. A
major funder of this institute is Haim Saban (see more about Saban at
http://www.mediamonitors.net/mazin32.html).  Indyk first worked in
Washington for the 'Washington Institute for Near East Policy' (WINEP), an
offshoot of AIPAC (Israel s lobby). Indyk did not have US citizenship but
this was quickly corrected with a speeded up process of facilitation,
nomination, and approval (all in less than two weeks) by President Clinton
in order to appoint him (this is rather unberlievable) as US ambassador to
Israel. Appointing a lobbyist for a  foreign country as US ambassador to
that country is unprecedented. Now appointing a wolf to broker the deal
between another wolf and a chicken is quite a feat.  We will see how fast
this chicken will get fleeced.

Ya alon said,  Releasing prisoners came as a result of choosing a bad
option over a worse option  We reached the decision to avoid the worse
[option]. Many strategic considerations, which may be revealed in the
future, stood behind this, and hence we must go forward with a release of
pre-Oslo prisoners.

Netanyahu said it even more clearly: that he refused to accept borders of
1967 or a settlement freeze and that this move to negotiations is merely to
strengthen Israeli positions.

Palestinian Authority police prevent a Palestinian march and attack
demonstrators who object to the unilateral decision by Abu Mazen to return
to negotiations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbAkYyw3u7c

Analysis: Palestinians should invest in a Plan B By Daoud Kuttab
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=598851

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
http://qumsiyeh.org

From Mazin Qumsiyeh's Journal

HumanRights] Palestinian choices

From: Mazin Qumsiyeh


Mr. Abbas agreed to go back to public negotiations with a pathological liar
(Netanyahu, see below).  Private negotiations have been ongoing behind the
scenes.  Public and private negotiations for the past 20 years produced
nothing tangible except increasing the number of colonial Jewish settlers
in the West Bank from 200,000 in 1992 to 650,000 today and subcontracting
Israeli security to Palestinian security officials.  Israel will release
some prisoners (and replace them with others) and the US will give more
money to corrupt officials on all sides.  The question is whether the only
two choices available to us are sitting around not doing anything or going
to fruitless unbalanced negotiations intended to liquidate Palestinian
rights? Do we really give up on resistance, on democratizing the PLO or on
freedom or on human rights? Below are some news showing that the BDS
movement is working thanks to global and local activists even as it is not
supported by Mahmoud Abbas and high level officials who continue to meet
and normalize with Israeli officials (the last was a high level meeting
with Likud and Shas leadesr at the PLO headquarters).

So that we are reminded who we are dealing with:  Netanyahu, caught
of-camera speaking his mind (not hasbara) about how he scuttled peace etc
http://youtu.be/3-5hUG6Os68

Despite heavy Israeli pressure, the EU published new guidelines asking all
Eropean entities not to deal with any Israeli entity that works in the
areas occupied in 1967.  Future agreements between the European Union and
Israel must include the explicit exclusion of Jewish settlements in the
West Bank or East Jerusalem, according to a new EU directive described by
an Israeli official as an "earthquake". This include the illegally annexed
Golan and Jerusalem.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/16/eu-israel-settlement-exclusion-clause

Consensus wisdom: The boycott of Israel is working: The only way to stop
its spread is to end the occupation, say a growing number of prominent
voices (none of whom, by the way, support the boycott).
http://972mag.com/consensus-wisdom-the-boycott-of-israel-is-working/74297/

[USA] BDS Campaigns Nationwide: Use the map below to connect with groups
working on specific BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns.
You can also search groups by state and resources they offer. If you would
like your group's campaigns included, please email Ramah Kudaimi at
membership@endtheoccupation.org
http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=3383

Kairos Palestine strongly condemns the planned displacement, dispossession
and eviction of tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouin citizens of Israel
http://www.kairospalestine.ps/sites/default/Documents/Letter%20of%20Condemnation%20-%20Pra
wer%20Plan.pdf

 [action needed] Announcing the launch of the  Freedom Stitchers  project
to create self-sufficiency for marginalized and jobless women in Gaza.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/freedom-stitchers

Stop the racist Prawer-Begin plan to ethniocally cleanse Palestinians of
the Negev
http://adalah.org/eng/?mod=articles&ID=1589


A visit to Al-Araqib, the desert village that refuses to be erased by Alice
Rothchild on July 1, 2013
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/07/desert-village-refuses.html

Mazin Qumsiyeh
A Bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
http://qumsiyeh.org

Israel slams EU's decision

English.news.cn   2013-07-17 05:32:48                                   JERUSALEM, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted Tuesday the European Union's decision to add a clause to agreements between its members and Israel specifying they will not apply to Israeli occupied territories in the West Bank. In response, Netanyahu held an urgent meeting Tuesday afternoon with Justice Minister and chief peace negotiator Tzipi Livni, Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennet and Deputy Foreign Minister Ze'ev Elkin. According to the EU's decision, delivered as a guideline for its member states, it is prohibited for any country or companies located on their territories to do business with firms or bodies situated in the West Bank settlement. Slamming the EU's decision, the Israeli prime minister said he expected the body to focus on other worrying developments in the region, such as the Syrian crisis and the Iranian nuclear issue, instead of Israel's settlement policy. "As prime minister, I would not allow hundreds of thousands of Israelis living in Judea and Samaria (the biblical name of the West Bank) to be hurt, as well as those living in the Golan Heights and Jerusalem," said Netanyahu. "We will not accept anyone on the outside dictate our borders to us. This topic will only be determined by direct negotiation between the two parties." Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority came to a halt in 2010 over Israel's settlement construction in the West Bank, which represents a key issue in the attempts to resume negotiations. Editor: Mu Xuequan

Eclectic group sues U.S. government over phone data surveillance

By Dan Levine

SAN FRANCISCO | Tue Jul 16, 2013 1:37pm EDT

(Reuters) - A diverse collection of groups, including a gun manufacturer and marijuana legalization advocates, sued the U.S. government on Tuesday, alleging that the National Security Agency conducts unlawful dragnet surveillance of telephone calls.

The lawsuit, filed in a Northern California federal court, follows disclosures about NSA surveillance programs by fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The suit targets the NSA's "Associational Tracking Program," which collects phone information from all major American telecommunication companies, including time and duration of calls.

A U.S. Department of Justice spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

The group of 18 plaintiffs - including a Unitarian church, an Islamic advocacy group and a gun rights organization - subscribe to Verizon and other phone carriers, the lawsuit said.

They are represented by the Electronics Frontier Foundation, data privacy advocates who have already been litigating for years against warrantless wiretapping under former President George W. Bush.

Last week, a San Francisco federal judge rejected government arguments that the older case should be dismissed because it would compromise state secrets and damage national security.

The lawsuit filed on Tuesday seeks an injunction against the operation of the Associational Tracking Program, along with the return and destruction of communication information possessed by the NSA.

The NSA's bulk collection of communication information is done without probable cause that the plaintiffs are engaged in any crime or international terrorist activity, the lawsuit says.

The White House said on Tuesday that Snowden, who applied for temporary asylum in Russia after spending three weeks in limbo at a Moscow airport, should be returned to the United States to face trial on espionage charges.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles et al. vs. National Security Agency et al., 13-cv-3287.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)