Israel makes largest West Bank land grab in 30 years

[Originally posted at NOW]

Sometimes it takes the placid, sterile dispassion of the BBC to fully ram home the amazing arrogance and malevolence of the Israeli government.

Describing Tel Aviv’s declared seizure of – sorry, “decision to appropriate” – more West Bank territory than it’s snatched in one go for three decades, the BBC staff writer says with serene insouciance that, “The military-run local administration said it was a response to the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenagers in the area in June.”

More or less everything one needs to know about Israel today is contained in that sentence. In case the full implications aren’t immediately clear: by way of response to the murder of three teens from families already settled on the West Bank (“in the area”), Israel will add five entire Palestinian villages, along with their farmland, to its already vast takings from what remains of non-Israeli land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. (Having taken them, of course, it will then raze them to make way for more theocratic settler-colonies; in this case an extension to the Gevaot settlement.) It’s as if Mexico, in response to the killing of Mexicans living illegally in the USA, were to permanently award itself a portion of Texas.

What, for that matter, did the United States, the honest broker of the peace process, have to say about it? Surely, after all, there would be outrage were the Palestinian Authority, following the murder of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir in occupied East Jerusalem, to react by annexing five West Jerusalem neighborhoods. Condemnation, if that’s the word, came from the State Department in the form of a description of the move as “counterproductive” to the two-state solution – a statement of the obvious on par with saying fire is counterproductive to the treatment of burns. Evidently missed by the State Department was Netanyahu’s statement in July that he had “always” opposed the two-state solution; that “to pull out of Judea and Samaria [Bible-speak for the West Bank]” was something that “cannot” be contemplated “under any agreement.” Far from giving the Israeli government pause, in other words, the idea that the two-state solution has been further derailed will have been received in Tel Aviv with warm gratification.

The Pope seems in more danger in Israel than he was in Lebanon

[Originally posted at NOW]

Around three years ago, while doing some desktop research on religious extremism, I signed up for the mailing list of the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) organization, an influential American fundamentalist outfit (boasting over a million members) that advocates the total colonization of historic Palestine by Jewish settlers, to whom God eternally granted the land in the Book of Genesis.

It’s been an invaluable window into the underworld of Christian Zionism ever since, regularly dispatching Christmas greetings from Benjamin Netanyahu; invitations to conference calls with Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann and; above all else, reminders of the multiple options available to me for making tax-deductible cash donations.

What it takes great care not to disclose, however, are the actual realities of the Christian situation on the ground in the Holy Land today. There is curious silence, for instance, on the fact that Israeli troops occupy the land of the world’s oldest Christian community – the Palestinian one – whose access to religious sites in Bethlehem and, particularly, Jerusalem is subject to the whim of a foreign military authority. Nor is there mention of the steady rise of Jewish fundamentalist bigotry against Christians, which sees churches regularly defaced by fanatics (“Jesus is garbage” read a slogan sprayed on a Jerusalem church last week) and is officially represented in parliament: sent a copy of the New Testament by Christian well-wishers in 2012, MK Michael Ben Ari tore the thing up and threw it in the bin, calling it an “abominable book” that belonged “in the garbage can of history.”

These omissions of detail can often occur with unfortunate timing. Thus, my latest receipt from CUFI, sent six days ago, tells me that:

“The freest Christians and Muslims in the Middle East are the Christian and Muslim citizens of the Jewish state of Israel […] While Christians throughout the Arab world are being bombed, shot and decapitated, the Christian population of Israel can worship in complete safety.”

Which is rather odd, because the Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported last week that anti-Christian hate in Israel has grown so toxic that police fear a “massive hate crime” is being planned by Jewish fundamentalists to coincide with Pope Francis’ visit to Jerusalem later this month; something Christian patriarchates in the city say authorities are doing almost nothing to forestall. Indeed, the only discernible action taken by police so far has been the removal of a sign welcoming Francis to the Old City – lest the fanatics deem it a provocation!

Incidentally, this makes for an interesting contrast to Lebanon, where the Vatican flags erected all over the damn place in anticipation of Pope Benedict XVI’s 2012 visit still haven’t been taken down in some neighborhoods, and where – however contrived it might all have been – every one of the country’s twelve non-Catholic sects wore a smile and professed joy at His Holiness’ arrival (in a vulpine gesture, Hezbollah even sent its Mahdi Scouts to receive him at the airport). Is the Pope, then – and are Christians in general – at greater risk in Israel than in Lebanon?

Pardoned

[Originally posted at NOW]

Despite an initial media backlash, the Maronite patriarch’s upcoming trip to Jerusalem has the backing of all parties, including Hezbollah.

In the immediate aftermath of the news that the Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Beshara al-Rai, would make history by being the first head of Lebanon’s largest Christian community to visit Jerusalem since the creation of Israel, it looked as though he would face stiff opposition from a key segment of the political class.

“The historic sin: Al-Rai to Israel!” ran the headline of one leading newspaper on Saturday, saying the trip – scheduled from May 24-26 – was tantamount to “normalization with the occupier.” An open letter, written by the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel in Lebanon, published in another prominent daily, urged the patriarch against visiting the “Zionist entity,” noting that many Palestinian and other Arab Christian clergy, including Rai’s own predecessor, advocate against travel to Israeli-occupied territory. One Christian politician in the pro-Syrian March 8 coalition even warned the trip could be a first step toward a full peace treaty with Israel.

And yet, away from the media, no tangible or consequential political opposition has in fact emerged. Aside from Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt, no major politician has publicly voiced or even hinted at disapproval of the patriarch’s plan. Most conspicuously, there has been silence from the one group that might have been expected to put up the strongest objection – Hezbollah, the militant Islamist movement whose fighters attacked Israeli soldiers as recently as March this year.

Indeed, a Maronite church spokesman explicitly said Thursday there was “no dispute with Hezbollah” over the visit. Elaborating on this, senior church official Father Abdo Abu Kassem portrayed the visit to NOW as a strictly religious affair, saying the patriarch was not going “to do politics or collaborate with Israel […] and Hezbollah knows that.”

To be sure, the patriarch is not actually breaking any law, according to lawyer and constitutional expert Marwan Sakr. While for almost all citizens “it is a criminal offence under Lebanese law to visit Israel,” Sakr told NOW there is legal exemption “for Maronite clergymen.” Sakr cited the example of the Lebanese Bishop Boulos Sayyah, who for a while actually lived full-time in Jerusalem, and who is among a number of Maronite clergymen who routinely travel from Lebanon to historic Palestine.

Yet Hezbollah’s tacit acceptance of the patriarch’s visit likely has a political, rather than legal basis, according to several analysts with whom NOW spoke. The prevailing view is that Hezbollah, like all Lebanese parties, has a strong interest in avoiding conflict with the patriarch at the present time, given the ongoing negotiations over the country’s next president, in which the Maronite church wields considerable influence (up to and including the shortlisting and vetoing of candidates, according to some reports). For Hezbollah, the argument goes, remaining on favorable terms with the patriarch is of much greater importance than an ultimately symbolic trip to Jerusalem.

“What counts for [Hezbollah] is the relationship with Rai,” said Dr. Charles Chartouni, professor of politics at Beirut’s Université Saint Joseph and the Lebanese University. “The other issues can be discounted.”

Some even argue the trip could be of political benefit to Hezbollah, helping it to re-brand itself as a moderate, pragmatic player with whom the West can build partnership, in line with the broader American-Iranian rapprochement across the region driven, in large part, by common enmity to militant Sunni Islamist groups proliferating in Syria and Iraq.

“It’s a new era,” said Dr. Imad Salamey, professor of political science at the Lebanese American University. “[Hezbollah’s] real enemy is emerging as the Sunni extremists, so the question of Israel being an enemy is not as [prominent] as it used to be.”

Moreover, believes Salamey, in signaling its comparative leniency vis-à-vis the patriarch’s visit, Hezbollah is “trying to gain US support for the perspective” that the region’s Christians, Shiites, and Jews comprise a “minority coalition” against the common Sunni enemy – a tactic designed to draw the US closer to the Shiite side of a regional Sunni-Shiite divide.

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

Video: Israeli police beat Palestinian teen

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

A disturbing video surfaced over the weekend showing Israeli policemen inside the Dome of the Rock compound pinning a 17-year-old Palestinian boy to the ground by the neck and punching him on the side of the head.

According to the Palestinian WAFA news agency, they continued to beat the boy, Hasan al-Afifi, until he bled on the ground, while also pepper-spraying his mother until she fainted.

The attack took place during a demonstration inside the compound, known in Judaism as the Temple Mount, in which Palestinians threw stones in protest against an earlier attempt by what Ma’an called “Israeli ultranationalists” to hold Jewish prayers inside it. The label is misleading – the ideology of these fanatics is in fact a fusion of territorial expansionism with heterodox Jewish fundamentalism.

It is, in other words, merely one more trophy in the cabinet of Israel’s ascendant extreme right wing. For decades, Israel’s chief rabbis have forbidden Jews from entering the compound on theological grounds (how, for example, are Jews to perform the mandatory cleansing ritual for entry into the Temple in the absence of the famous red heifer?). Today’s hot-headed settlers and other supremacists have no time for such craven defeatism, and are finding a growing number of rabbis only too happy to sign off on their more muscular approach (as history teaches us well, there is no political movement too sinister for the approval of the men of God).

To see how acutely dangerous this all is, one need only recall that it was Ariel Sharon’s visit to the same site in 2000 that sparked the Second Intifada. Meanwhile, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Israeli Air Force are trading blows in Gaza. Time for a large whisky, I think.

On attending the Pope's Mass

Pope Benedict XVI wields a stick (Alex Rowell)

I’ll say this much for Joseph Ratzinger: no one could accuse him of over-emotive speechmaking. With his barely-audible lethargic croak, rising infrequently and with great strain to a mumble, there is little danger of him whipping a crowd into a frenzy of bloodlust or vengeance. He would, indeed, be incapable of holding an audience of any kind were it not for his claim to be the quasi-divine “vicar” of Christ on earth, with the “infallibility”, “supreme authority” and other special powers that that heady title entails.

Having reached the waterfront venue in central Beirut a full hour before the Popemobile arrived, and having outlasted many a devout Catholic and hardened journalist in staying till the very end under the roasting sun, I think I can fairly claim to have given my first Mass my best shot. Much as when I visited Jerusalem, I went into the experience with an open mind; willing to be taken wherever my emotions moved me. Ignore, to the extent possible, the unspeakable crimes in which the man is complicit, I told myself. Perhaps seeing him live in the flesh, I speculated, would induce some stirring within me, however slight, of the awe, or contentment, or “agape”, or whatever exactly it is that the faithful get out of these things. Even Larkin admitted to an “awkward reverence”, after all.

And yet, here as in the Old City, precisely the opposite turned out to be the case. Once again it squarely struck me that personal exposure to “holiness” only confirms its essential banality. Just as the Western Wall is really just a wall, and the Stone of the Anointing is really just a stone, so a mediocre man in a hat and costume is really just a mediocre man. Non-Catholics already know this, of course, but as the minutes became hours and the postures succumbed to gravity, I wondered how many of “the flock” were privately beginning to suspect it too. Indeed, when the chairs began to empty by the hundreds while the Baba was still on the mic, I might have even felt a twinge of pity for the geriatric if I didn’t remember what infamous villainy he was capable of.

Not that I intend to go into any of that now, nauseating as it was to see a quarter of a million people cheering a paedophile-enabler (in case you’re interested, the authoritative account of Ratzinger’s widely-underestimated role in these crimes against humanity is human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC’s ‘The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse’). My point, as I was saying – which is one I’ve known since childhood, just as every child in the crowd yesterday knew, as did most of the adults if they only had the honesty to admit it to themselves – is that religion is desperately, unrescuably dull.

It might seem like a frivolous criticism, but it’s enough by itself to discredit the whole enterprise. Take humour alone, or rather the lack thereof. As the philosopher Alfred Whitehead pointed out, “The total absence of humour from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature”. How can a book without laughter – that famously most efficacious of medicines; “the sunshine”, as Hugo put it, “that chases winter from the human face” – claim to give comfort to troubled souls, let alone pave the way to eternal bliss?  

Or, in the present case, how can God’s own incarnation fail to keep common mortals listening for a mere two hours? How could he be anything less than brilliantly, incomparably captivating? One might have expected the creator of the Universe to be a bit of a personality. (One might also have expected him to be a bit kinder with the weather – I counted no fewer than four limp bodies carried away on stretchers.)

In short, if yesterday were any indication of what the party’s like up in heaven, it underscored once again why most atheists are happy enough to be excluded. 

The Land of Promises Broken: What I Saw in Palestine

Having been up till the small hours the previous evening immoderately imbibing with an old friend in Amman, I found myself at the Abdali bus station at 06:30 am wondering for more than one reason what on earth I thought I was doing. I purchased my ticket for the ‘JETT’ bus that would take me to the King Hussein Bridge – one of Jordan’s three border crossings to Israeli-occupied Palestine – and took my seat in the waiting area, gulping furiously on a bottle of water. Everybody else in the station was Jordanian, and like most Jordanians, they appeared to be of relatively modest means. As a nearly lifelong resident of the UAE, it struck me how strange it was to see poor Arabs; that’s to say, dirt poor Arabs. In Jordan, the waiters are Arabs, the street sweepers are Arabs, and the peasants who harvest the olive trees in the beautiful countryside are Arabs. And as was to be made palpably apparent to me throughout the course of the day, there are plenty of Arabs in the region who are considerably more unfortunate still.

The first leg of my journey, from Amman to the King Hussein Bridge, passed by pleasantly enough, as we meandered through the mountainside overlooking the arresting landscape below – enormous dark-green valleys punctuated by islands of pearl-white rock. The air in Jordan has none of the haze one finds in the Gulf, and as my eyes followed the miles of cloud folding behind the pastel blue horizon, I felt closer to my mother’s native Scotland than to my apartment in Dubai three hours away. 

Arriving at the King Hussein Bridge, I alighted to have my passport and visa checked. After the first of what were to be many of the day’s waits, I was back on the bus, crossing the narrow stretch of no-man’s-land that separates Jordan from the West Bank. Thirty-odd seconds later, I felt the skin on the back of my neck churn as I laid eyes on that one sight for which no person who has lived for years in the Gulf can ever be prepared: the Israeli flag, speared defiantly into the desert, its Star of David flapping muscularly in the hot wind. Indeed, as the bus approached the drop-off point at the Israeli side of the bridge (known as the Allenby) and the IDF soldiers came into view, it struck me that I was setting eyes on Israeli citizens for the first time.

Israeli flags at the western side of the King Hussein bridge

Stepping off the bus, the apparatus of occupation unfolded before me. Those passengers with luggage joined a long queue of Palestinian families heaving and dragging their bundles of cargo to the security scanners. Invariably, these included several large cartons of water, and many families also carried shopping bags filled with inexpensive-looking snacks and juices. I was later to learn that due to perennial shortages of water in the West Bank, families frequently made the trip to Jordan – a country with substantial enough water problems of its own – to stock up. Carrying nothing but a backpack, I made for the nearby portakabin which acted as the first layer of passport control. Trying to ignore the soldier standing just metres to my left – a stone-faced young man of about 21; his eyes shielded behind reflective silver Ray-Bans; his fingers wrapped fondly around his machine gun – I focused instead on the customs officials behind the windows, whom I noticed were all women. Or, rather, I should say they were girls – not one of them looked a day older than me (23). Without exception they were strikingly pretty and as my eye caught one of theirs and I thought I detected the hint of a coy smile I began to wonder in my ignorance what on earth a girl like her was doing in a place like this, etc.

That ended very quickly once I reached the window. Handing over my passport with as much insouciance as I could manage, the girl’s facial expression turned first from Haughty Shop Assistant to Puzzled Mathematician. “What is this?” she asked brusquely, pointing to the entry on my passport under ‘Place of birth’. “Jeddah”, I replied. “Where is Jeddah?” Could she be serious? “Saudi Arabia”, I replied, trying my best to sound as though the question were entirely reasonable. Her look of shock couldn’t have been more pronounced if I had said Pluto. “Thank you, have a seat”, she said hurriedly, her radio already rising to her mouth. I did so on a nearby bench and watched as she left the portakabin with my passport through a door into the main building. Surveying my surroundings, I noticed the soldier had turned to face me, evidently intrigued by my detention. Between the two of us was an elderly Palestinian woman, hunched over a large plastic water container, driving it slowly across the tarmac in silent determination. I searched the soldier’s face for emotion: if he felt any, he hid it expertly. 

Five minutes later the girl reappeared and I was permitted to pass through to the main building, where I had my first of four rounds of questioning while my bag was emptied and scanned for explosives. What were my parents’ names? Why were they in Saudi Arabia? Where were they now? What did I do in Dubai? Did I speak Arabic? Was I married? Where was I going in Israel? (I quickly decided it would not have been worth my while to reply that in no sense was the West Bank actually in Israel.) Why was I going to Jerusalem? Where exactly within Jerusalem would I be going? Would I be meeting any Arabs? Was I going to visit any Arab towns? Where was I staying in Jordan? Who did I know in Jordan? Why was he not joining me in Jerusalem? Did he have a problem with Israel? (Again, I deemed it unwise to go down the factual route here.) In one question that seemed to me highly telling of the Israeli national fixation with ‘homelands’, I was asked “Why do you live in Dubai, when your [British] passport lets you work in the UK?” Clearly, the concepts of internationalism and globalisation are lost on some. 

Surviving the first round, I was again made to wait while my passport was taken elsewhere (presumably being screened by every search the Shin Bet computers could handle). This process was repeated with two more officials (both of whom, again, were women), with further highlights including ‘Are you carrying a weapon, or anything that looks like a weapon?’ Once again opting for the path of least resistance, I managed not to reply that I was just pleased to see her. After about an hour, I was allowed to proceed to the final hurdle, where my entrance visa would be approved and my passport stamped. I asked the woman to kindly not stamp my passport and instead stamp the famous ‘Form 17L’ that is routinely issued to tourists and businessmen travelling to countries that do not recognise Israel as a state. “Why?” she snapped. I told her that I worked in Dubai. As before, the radio came up, I sat down, my passport disappeared. A fourth and final interview was conducted with yet another woman and after a further fifteen minutes I was finally released – about twenty metres as the crow flies from where I had started an hour and a half previously. 

After changing my Jordanian Dinars into Israeli Shekels, I boarded a ‘service’, or shared taxi, to Jerusalem (or as I would call it to any Arab, Al Quds). My fellow passengers in this cramped minibus were exclusively Palestinian women, not one of them younger than 50, and not one of them without food and water packed into the boot for the families to which they were returning. As I removed my bag from the adjacent seat to accommodate the final passenger on board, she smiled at me graciously and thanked me in lucid, equanimous English. I asked her how she spoke the language so well and she replied that she was a teacher. At that point her phone rang and she raised her hand in apology, taking the call and leaving me to peer out the window at the protean Palestinian desert, which was at this point an arid amalgamation of sand and light brown rock – what Philip Roth called “the cratered moonscape of the Pentateuch”. So this is it, I thought. The Promised Land. As someone without any religious affiliation, the Holy Land has no metaphysical significance to me, but as a keen student of history and politics, I nevertheless felt what I have no problem describing as a spiritual frisson as I contemplated the millennia of pitiless tyranny and tragedy of which this tiny corner of the Levant has been the object. Ruminating on this macro reflection, I was brought back down to the micro by a tap on the shoulder. When I turned, another woman to the right of the teacher was holding out, as though to hand me, a small plastic cup of orange juice she had poured from one of the bottles in her shopping bag. Instinctively; Englishly; I spluttered, “No no, thank you very much”, shaking my head and smiling politely. Without blinking, the woman offered it to the woman next to me, and then to each of the remaining passengers in turn. Although I wasn’t the one sitting closest to her, it was to me – the visitor – that she had offered the cup first. 

Turning back to the window, I felt a hot flash of piercing anguish combined with acute fright washing over me, and it took me a second to realise that I was forcing back tears. There I sat, in my Covent Garden polo and my Italian loafers, and here was a woman with nothing offering me a portion of one of the few trifling comforts she was able to get her hands on. Never in my life had I been the recipient of so powerful a gesture of pure humanity. I shall not soon forget it.

Moments later, the engine screeched into life and we were off. At first there was little to see but barren rock and sand, but after about fifteen minutes I caught sight of what turned out to be an enormous walled-off residential complex high on a hillside to the left. Recognising the tell-tale sign of red roofs on beige walls, I instantly knew it to be the infamous Ma’ale Adumim settlement, illegally constructed by messianic Jews shortly after the 1967 conquest, and now home to at least 34,000 settlers (according to Peace Now). As I began taking pictures, the teacher asked if it was my first time in Palestine. I told her it was. For the remaining twenty minutes or so of the journey, especially once we had entered East Jerusalem (which involved stopping at a checkpoint whilst IDF men with machine guns climbed on board and demanded our documents), she pointed out, in a weary but not at all self-pitying tone all the residences where friends and relatives had once lived before being evicted to make way for Israeli settlers (who, thanks to a clause in Israeli law known as the ‘Law of Return’, were more likely to be from Brooklyn, Brisbane or Belarus than from Bethlehem). As she did so, I found myself at a loss for words. What do you say to such a person? Who has every reason to resent you, and yet treats you like an old friend? Who has every reason to suspect you, and yet invites you to her home when she disembarks, laden with as many bottles of water as she can carry? I felt immeasurably impotent, and viscerally sick. My regret compounds with every passing day that I never asked her name.

Ma'ale Adumim

Disembarking myself at the wall surrounding the Old City, I entered via the Damascus Gate. Shouldering my way down the narrow streets through the throngs of Arabs, Jews and tourists, it was in many ways like stepping back in time: the men in Ottoman hats burning frankincense; the Orthodox Jews in their 19^th century clothing; the ancient stone pavements and archways. It was also much the same as any other major tourist attraction: novelty t-shirt stalls (“Guns N’ Noses” being my personal favourite); overweight Westerners talking too loudly; tawdry souvenirs sold at staggering prices (I think I paid over $30 for my black-and-white keffiyeh). I headed first for the Muslim quarter but was told by a soldier at the entrance that it was temporarily closed. When I made inquiries at a nearby shop, a Palestinian man told me that some Jewish extremists had made a nuisance of themselves there earlier and so the IDF had shut it down for the day. This was no small disappointment - the Dome of the Rock is the most iconic building in the City, and I would now only see it from afar.

The Dome of the Rock

Over the course of the next five hours I saw more or less everything else: the Al-Aqsa Mosque (of the eponymous 'Martyrs' Brigade'); the Western Wall; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; and dozens of other synagogues and churches. Whilst the place is unquestionably exhilarating, I couldn’t shake the feeling of continuous incredulity as I encountered each wall, stone, rock, or bone. Can this really be what all the anger and fighting and death are for? Granted, the architecture and history are rich and marvellous in the extreme – but is it really for this that bombs are dropped on children? For a wall, a stone, a rock, a bone?

Al-Aqsa mosque

Orthodox Jews praying at the Western Wall

Christians praying at the Stone of the Anointing in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

In the taxi back to the Allenby Bridge that evening, as I tried to make sense of the experience, the lapidary words of the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani came back to me: “O Jerusalem, you city of sorrow/ A big tear wandering in the eye/ Who will halt the aggression/ On you, the pearl of religions?” As the first bomb to hit Jerusalem in six years killed a foreign citizen just days after my return, and as round after round of peace talks continue to scale new heights of futility, his is a question long overdue an answer. Until that day, though, the tears.