It's not what you spend, It's the way that you spend it

Public Debt’s not the Devil and Balanced Budgets are no Cure-All

Going into debt is not necessarily a disaster for governments, nor will balancing the books automatically result in economic success and good public services. What’s important is what governments spend money on. The solutions to our economic problems are also much wider ranging and less separable from political, military, social and environmental problems than many economists and politicians seem to think.

What is vital in public spending is not whether governments go into debt but whether they spend money productively on things that will bring a mixture of increased revenue and collective benefits, or reduced financial costs and suffering, in the long run – in other words whether they waste money or spend it productively. A government which balances its books or reduces its debt in the short term can still be destroying its revenues or increasing its costs to an unsustainable level in the long run.

Private Finance Initiatives or ‘Public Private Partnerships’ are a good example of debt that isn’t formally counted as debt at all but in fact results in massively and costs on the public sector in annual payments over decades, resulting in increased taxes along with cuts in the number of full-time, fully-trained staff and beds in hospitals. Both main parties in the UK have expanded these massively from the 1990s on.

The US federal government has repeatedly gone into massive debt under Republican administrations from 1970 to the present, but their economy has never collapsed as a result, despite mis-spending massively on military contracts such as a fleet of submarines commissioned in the Cold War and re-marketed as ‘special ops’ submarines which would supposedly fire special forces in capsules onto beaches from their torpedo tubes. It’s Iraq ‘reconstruction’ and army supply contracts running to tens of billions have similarly been grossly over-priced and provided a tiny fraction of what they were supposed to in services and reconstruction.

The only governments to collapse due to over-spending in the modern period were the Soviet Union and it’s satellites. That was the result of mis-spending. Under Leonid Brehznev and Yuri Andropov in the 1970s the Soviet government increased their military budget massively to attempt to make their military as powerful as that of the rest of the world combined when their economy wasn’t as large as that even of their main rival’s, never mind it and all its allies. Over-spending on the military is indeed wasteful, as military spending never creates a fraction of the number of jobs or tax revenue that investment in civilian technologies and research does.

However going into debt in order to develop new technologies such as more efficient wave, tidal, solar and wind power would be the most sensible thing our governments could do. Obama has taken a step in this direction, even if a relatively modest one, but other governments seem slow to follow.

After World War Two Japanese and German industry had been destroyed by their defeat in the Second World War. Two decades later the Japanese and West German economies had overtaken most of the rest of the world in wealth because they had been forced to re-build their economies and so had been willing to pay for newer technology, while the rest of the world delayed making the investment and relied on its existing machinery.

The longer we delay now on investing in developing new, cheaper, more environmentally sustainable, energy and transport technologies the more we will suffer for it in the long run in terms of delayed economic recovery, unemployment (and the costs of paying unemployment benefit rather than getting tax revenue from the employed) and climate change related ‘natural’ disasters and illnesses (e.g lung cancer, other cancers and leukaemia caused by air pollution, mercury poisoning of seas, water and fish and nuclear waste).

Even John Browne, the former Chief Executive of British Petroleum, has said that private companies cannot be relied on to invest in these new technologies on the scale that’s required unless new government regulations and incentives ensure that they do (1). It should be added that the majority of people should not be gullible enough to allow their taxes to be used to pay to develop technologies which are then handed royalty-free for big multinational firms to reap all the profits when we’ve paid for the costs of the research and development. We need to demand that if we pay for the development of these technologies we also see a return on them in increased spending on public services and infrastructure and more apprenticeships and full-time skilled jobs.

That’s where a return to the 1970s British system of requiring all firms over a certain size to take on a certain number of apprentices relative to their number of employees or else pay an apprenticeship levy can come in. This eliminated the ‘free rider’ problem. Since it was abolished by the Thatcher government in 1979 there has been a massive shortage of apprenticeships and trained staff in Britain because every company has faced the problem that if it spends money to train apprentices other firms can simply coax them away with slightly increased pay without having to spend nearly as much on training itself. Unemployment has risen because of the resulting mis-match between the skills available among the potential work force and required by businesses. Only a reintroduction of a law making it compulsory for all medium sized and large businesses to take on apprentices or pay a fine to subsidise those who are will solve this problem.

Of course investment in green technologies and an apprenticeship law will not be enough to rebuild our economies and societies on a more sustainable model on their own. That will require a new mixed credit system, involving not just private credit from private banks but public and micro-credit, which i’ll give the outlines of in another post. It will also require fair trade with a balance between protectionism and free trade; a reform of farming towards organic mixed farming rather than chemical-using monoculture; a redistribution of wealth within and between countries; a move away from over-spending on military technology towards civilian technology ; a new system of international regulation to eliminate tax havens and allow and require firms to behave responsibly and take a long term view looking at returns over the next decade or two rather than the next quarter; and increased foreign aid replacing some military spending in order to take into account the primarily economic and social causes of many wars and genocides – and the primarily economic and social ways to end them and prevent them starting in the first place. We can always crush pirates and militias by military force in the short term, but in the long term that will not deal with the causes of piracy, civil war, sectarian violence and failed states – which are also often the product of our own governments’ wars, foreign polices, sanctions and economic policies. As with the credit system i’ll deal with all these issues in other posts here and/or articles on my website www.duncanmcfarlane.org in the future.

(1) = Guardian 25 Mar 2009 ‘State intervention vital if Britain is to meet its green energy targets, says former BP boss, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/25/clean-energy-uk-browne

Want to reduce our national debt by making real "efficiency savings"? Scrap PFIs and PPPs then - and arms Export Credit Guarantees too

The budget announced by Chancellor Alastair Darling includes £15 billion of cuts in public spending through “efficiency savings”.

If the government really wants to make significant efficiency savings it doesn’t need to fire even one public sector employee to get them. Instead it should scrap the grossly inefficient and over-priced Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and ‘Public Private Partnership Programme’(PPPP) contracts given by Blair, Brown and the Conservatives under Major and Clarke to consortia led by huge multinational firms to build and maintain hospitals at costs which Professor Allyson Pollock and other healthcare academics found to be between 4 and over 10 times the cost of either paying for them with taxes or taking out loans to pay with them.

PFIs and PPPs are not shown on the government’s debts – but in reality they are probably the largest debts we've incurred – and ones that taxpayers are already paying for twice – as taxpayers in increased taxes and as NHS patients.The annual payments which NHS trusts have to pay to the PFI consortia have already resulted in cuts in the number of beds and full time, trained staff in hospitals, making it more and more difficult for the remaining, exhausted staff to give patients the care they need and pay for through taxes.

Sacking public sector employees would result in them spending less money, further weakening the economy and putting people in the private sector out of work too.

Another “efficiency saving” could be made by ending all Export Credit Guarantees for arms exports. The weapons mostly go to military occupations and dictatorships anyway and the money could be invested in green energy technologies such as tidal, wave and solar power and create far more jobs than the arms industry ever has or could.

De Ja Vu in Baghdad

New attacks in Iraq are not down to ‘die-hards’ any more than they were in 2004 –They’re caused by unemployment, poverty and by a cycle of violence also involving the other side.

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US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is repeating a Bush administration mistake in a new form in assuming that the new wave of sectarian violence in Iraq is down to Al Qa’ida die-hards rather than mass unemployment, poverty and a cycle of violence caused by both sides(1).

Al Qa’ida is not the only force in Iraq contributing to civil war. The vast majority of Sunni insurgents have never been Al Qa’ida but Sunnis fearing Shia dominance and repression. The Coalition forces after the 2003 invasion initially used Shia militias to target Sunnis – including civilians – for “detention”, torture and death, mistakenly viewing them all as “pro-Saddam die-hards” and “Saddam loyalists” (2). A couple of years later the US military and the Bush administration did a u-turn, deciding that a Shia dominated Iraq would be an Iranian dominated one and hired Sunni “awakening” militias to target Al Sadr and other Shia Iraqi nationalist and fundamentalist groups (though strangely not the Iranian backed Badr brigade – perhaps Iraqi nationalism has been the real target in a divide and conquer strategy by the occupying forces, rather than Iranian influence). (See this page and this one and the source notes and links on them for more information and sources on the links between unemployment, poverty, sectarian violence, organised crime and terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere).

The new wave of suicide bombings coincide with the US ending funding for the sunni militias to fight for them and the Iraqi government – and the mostly Shia Iraqi government attempting to disarm the Sunni militias. With many Sunnis who were in the awakening militias made unemployed – or at least moved to jobs which won’t pay their previous wage of $300 a month - the result is similar to the earlier decision to disband the Iraqi army – lots of unemployed or poor people with weapons but not enough money looking for a way to make a living – and fearing being victims if they aren’t armed (3). Organised crime can overlap with sectarian violence – sectarian politics giving a cover for kidnapping for profit. Sunnis have been the targets of Shia death squads just as former members of Saddam’s forces inside Iraqi government forces have tortured and murdered Shia - and Shia have been victims of Sunni suicide bombings (4), (5). Working for any group that will pay them to fight for it – including Al Qa’ida in Iraq – is another option. Indeed some of the Sunni awakening militia worked for Al Qa’ida before the US offered them more money. They may now return to it unless the US and the Iraqi government think again and provide them with paid jobs. (Again see this page and this one and the source notes and links on them for more information and sources on the links between unemployment, poverty, sectarian violence, organised crime and terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere).

In 2004 then Iraqi Governing Council member Adnan Pachachi warned “More violence will cause more violence and this will be an endless spiral.” (5). His words remain as true today as they were five years ago. I’d only add that making more Iraqis unemployed or only giving them very low-paid jobs that won't give them an income they can survive on will have the same effect.

(1) = Guardian 25 Apr 2009 ‘Hillary Clinton says Iraq suicide bombs are sign of extremist fear’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/25/hillary-clinton-iraq

(2) = BBC News 11 Jul 2005 ‘Profile: Iraq's Wolf Brigade’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4083326.stm

(3) = Guardian 02 Apr 2009 ‘Iraq disbands Sunni militia that helped defeat insurgents’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/02/iraq-sunni-militia-disbanded

(4) = Guardian 20 May 2005 ‘British lawyers to pursue Iraqi security forces over killings’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/may/20/iraq.uk

(5) = Times 07 Jul 2005 ‘West turns blind eye as police put Saddam's torturers back to work’,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article541123.ece

(6) = Guardian 08 Apr 2004 ‘Battles rage from north to south’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/08/iraq.ewenmacaskill1

One thing Ahmadinejad’s right about – and Desmond Tutu agrees

Israel is racist in its treatment of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians

The Iranian government are wrong on many things. They’ve beaten Iranians, tortured them, jailed them without fair trial and murdered them. Their victims include striking bus drivers and teachers to women’s rights activists, journalists, gay people, students demonstrating for democracy, journalists, editors and unmarried women who have had sex or publicly held their fiancée’s hand (1,2,3,4,5).

Ahmadinejad is also wrong in doubting the scale of the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered, but he’s right about one thing – Israel’s treatment of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs is racist.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and UN special rapporteur Professor John Dugard both visited Israel and the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories. Both compared it to the apartheid system they’d lived under (6, 7).

The current Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has proposed expelling all Arab citizens from Israel and bombing Israel’s ally Egypt (8).

Ehud Barak is Defence Minister in the current Israeli government and was also Defence Minister in the previous one. While his Labor party is seen as progressive and ‘pro-peace’, he has claimed Arabs have a “culture” of lying (9). In 2000, when he was Prime Minister, armed paramilitary police were ordered by his government to fire on Palestinian and Israeli Arab rioters with live ammunition after Ariel Sharon deliberately provoked Palestinians by visiting the disputed Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The anger created by this visit is understandable given that Sharon was personally involved in carrying out the Qibya massacre in 1953 and the architect of the Sabra and Shatila massacres in 1982 along with many other war crimes against Arab civilians and prisoners of war. The rioters were armed only with bottles and stones (10 -16).

The deaths and injuries caused by this led to widespread riots and demonstrations across Israel and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories by both Palestinians and Israeli Arabs (some of whom consider themselves Palestinians or want a bi-national state with Israeli Jews, Arabs and Palestinians all given citizenship) This was the start of the ‘Second Intifada’ or ‘uprising’ against Israeli occupation (10 – 16).

Israeli police and soldiers responded by shooting unarmed Palestinian and Israeli-Arab protesters, bystanders and peace campaigners, killing large numbers and wounding thousands. The dead included 12 Israeli Arab citizens of Israel, including peaceful demonstrators and bystanders to demonstrations and riots. Aseel or Asel Asleh, a 17 year old Israeli Arab member of the American funded ‘Seeds of Peace’ peace campaign group (whose members include Israelis and Palestinians) was killed by Israeli police who shot him in the neck. He had not been involved even in throwing stones, only peacefully demonstrating. Israeli Arab Ibrahim Suleiman and his daughter Nur Suleiman were both shot by Israeli armed police while watching demonstrators from the flat roof of their house. Marlene Ramadan was shot dead without warning by hidden Israeli snipers as she and her husband Doctor Amr Ramadan drove home. One Israeli Jewish woman was killed by a rock thrown at her car by rioting Israeli Arabs (10 -16).

In the occupied territories the numbers of Palestinians killed when rioting, stone-throwing or merely being unfortunate to be around at the time was far higher (10 – 16).

Not one Israeli policeman, soldier or government minister was jailed or fired for any of this. The Israeli Or Commission, appointed to investigate the deaths was a partial white-wash – but even it criticised Israeli police for opening fire with rubber bullets at point blank range and live ammunition on Israeli Arab demonstrators, especially since they managed to stop Israeli Jewish rioters, who were throwing Molotov cocktails and attacking Arabs, without using deadly force (10 – 16).

When an Arab Knesset member proposed a bi-national state, with equal citizenship for all Jews and Arabs across Israel and the occupied territories, Barak portrayed Israeli Arabs as a ‘fifth column’ inside the ‘Jewish state’. (17).

The long-standing Israeli government policies of refusing any ‘right of return’ to Palestinian refugees and their descendants forced out of their homes at gunpoint in 1948 and 1967 to present also stands in marked contrast to the Israeli ‘law of return’ for Jewish immigrants to Israel. A 1970 amendment to it also allows Israeli citizenship to anyone with one Jewish grandparent. This shows the emptiness of the Israeli government claim that there is ‘no room’ for the Palestinian refugees or that Israel couldn’t support them. Palestinians and Israeli Arabs are seen as ‘a demographic timebomb’ that must be prevented from outnumbering non-Arabs in Israel either by forced transfer of Arabs or by increasing the non-Arab birth rate - notably by very high grants and child benefit provided to all Israeli Jewish (or non-Arab) families but not to Israeli Arab parents. (18) (also click here for more on this and more sources).

Israeli government adviser Arnon Soffer once suggested that the only solution is to “kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.” to keep Arabs’ numbers down within Israel and the occupied territories (19).

While the Israeli government are certainly not putting Israeli Arabs or Palestinians to the gas chambers there are uncomfortable echoes of the 1930s German government’s policy of encouraging ‘Aryan’ Germans to have lots of children and discouraging non-Aryan ones.

The American Jewish professor Norman Finkelstein has also pointed out the similarities between the South African Apartheid system of autonomous, poor, inner-city ‘homelands’ or ‘Bantustans’ for black and coloured people and the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords which granted the Palestinian Authority very limited autonomy in mostly poor urban areas cut off from one another by Israeli occupied territory, while reserving most good farmland and water for Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The role Israel’s government intended for the PA also parallels that intended by South African Apartheid governments for black ‘homeland’ governments – they are to help oppress their own people in return for being allowed to pocket some money for themselves. Ehud Barak’s later offer to Arafat at Taba in 2001 was little different from the Oslo offer, forcing Arafat to reject it. (Click here to read more and for source notes on this).

Corruption among Arafat and Abbas’ Fatah party was one of the major reasons for Hamas winning the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections – the others being Israeli violence against Palestinians and Israeli Arabs and the mass unemployment and poverty caused by the Israeli occupation and Fatah corruption.

Many Israeli Jews fear that if they are not the majority in a Jewish state they will face massacres like the pogroms and Holocaust. This however can’t justify their brutality towards and repression of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. The only way to guarantee peace is to end the cycle of violence and hatred by granting equality.

Even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that if Israel does not allow Palestinians their own state soon the result will be the overthrow of the current ‘Jewish state’ by a binational one supported by the majority of the population, much as happened with South African Apartheid (20). As in Apartheid South Africa there are many of the currently ‘dominant’ group – Israeli Jews rather than whites in this case -who oppose the racism of their government and society. Whether the solution found is two-state or one binational state, it’s clear that the status quo is not morally or politically tenable in the long run.

(1) = Guardian 17 Mar 2007 ‘Iran crushes teachers' pay protest’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/mar/17/iran.schoolsworldwide

(2) = BBC News 22 July 2003 ‘Canada tackles Iran over reporter’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3085551.stm

(3) = Human Rights Watch 06 Jun 2004 ‘"Like the Dead in Their Coffins"
- Torture, Detention, and the Crushing of Dissent in Iran ‘,
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2004/06/06/dead-their-coffins

(4) = Human Rights Watch 30 May 2008 ‘The Issue is Torture’,
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/03/30/issue-torture

(5) = Human Rights Watch World Report 2009 – Iran,
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/79223

(6) = BBC News 29 Apr 2002 ‘Tutu condemns Israeli 'apartheid',
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1957644.stm

(7) = BBC News 23 Feb 2007 ‘UN envoy hits Israel 'apartheid'’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6390755.stm

(8) = Times 17 Mar 2009 ‘Avigdor Lieberman - branded Arab-hating racist - set to be Israeli foreign minister’, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5920555.ece

(9) = Guardian 23 May 2002 ‘Lying is cultural trait of Arabs, says Barak’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/may/23/israel

(10) = New York Times 15 Jun 2001 ‘Police Killings of Israeli Arabs Being Questioned by Inquiry’, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/15/world/police-killings-of-israeli-arabs-being-questioned-by-inquiry.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/A/Arabs

(11) = Seeds of Peace – Tribute to Asel Asleh,
http://www.seedsofpeace.org/about/aseltribute

(12) = New York Times 02 Sep 2003 ‘Police Used Excessive Force on Israeli Arabs, Panel Says’, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/world/police-used-excessive-force-on-israeli-arabs-panel-says.html

(13) = B’Tselem March 2002 ‘Trigger Happy: Unjustified Gunfire and the IDF's Open-Fire Regulations during the al-Aqsa Intifada’, http://www.btselem.org/Download/200203_Trigger_Happy_Eng.pdf

(14) = Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel ‘Special report: Official Commission of Inquiry into the October 2000 Events’, http://www.adalah.org/eng/commission.php

(15) = The official summation of the Or Commission report, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=335594&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

(16) = Jonathan Cook (2006) ‘Blood and Religion – The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State’ , Pluto Press, London, 2006 , pages 38-40, 43-44, 51-54, 66-70

(17) = Jonathan Cook (2006) ‘Blood and Religion : The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State’, Pluto Press, London , 2006, Chapter 1 , especially pages 55 & 57

(18) = Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs ‘The Law of Return’,
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2001/8/The%20Law%20of%20Return-%201950

(19) = John Pilger (2006) , ‘Freedom Next Time’ , Bantam, London, 2006 , page 152

(20) = Guardian 30 Nov 2007 ‘Israel risks apartheid-like struggle if two-state solution fails, says Olmert • Jewish state is finished without deal, warns PM’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/nov/30/israel

What they never wrote down

The Bush administration torture memos Obama released don’t mention any of the worst methods of torture used

The methods described in the Bush administration memos released by Obama do include torture, but they don't come close to the worst torture methods used by the US army and the CIA (not to mention some of the British army in Iraq).

Prisoners' heads were beaten against concrete floors to 'restrain' them, even when they were already on the cell floor with several guards holding them down.

For instance Sean Baker of the Kentucky National Guard says was left brain damaged when made to play the role of a prisoner in a training exercise at Guantanamo (1).

At Bagram air base, Abu Ghraib and other prisons and military bases prisoners were tortured by beating and kicking them and asphyxiating them by waterboarding or sitting on them while they were tied inside a sleeping bag (2).

Baha Mousa died after being kicked and beaten by squads of British soldiers over several days and nights - other soldiers not involved in the torture testified, but the officer who oversaw the torture was still promoted (3).

Afghan prisoners similarly died after prolonged torture by beating by American soldiers at Bagram air base and being chained to the roofs of their cells by their arms. They turned out to have no involvement in terrorism (4).

Members of the US military who tried to testify on the fact that military intelligence officers were approving, ordering and over-seeing these torture methods - and that other senior officers were uninterested or threatened the whistle blowers with prosecution when they were told of them - were confined to base and threatened with prosecution.

One was Sergeant Samuel Provance, who served as a military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib. When he reported to superiors that high ranking military intelligence officers had told him they had ordered and overseen the torture methods used he was threatened with prosecution (5).

Captain Ian Fishback, who served in Afghanistan and Iraq and reported seeing prisoners arms and legs broken with baseball bats, with his superiors unconcerned when he told them - until he went public, when they confined him to Fort Bragg (6), (7).

The Bush administration was full of old hands at organising torture and death squads in Latin America in the 1980s - and good at propaganda. They didn't put authorisation for the worst torture methods down in writing. They made memos about the less bad methods, so that when the memos were released, people would wonder what all the fuss had been about. For plausible deniability the paper trail must look morally good or neutral, with the worst orders only ever given by word of mouth or by making it clear a blind eye will be turned to those actions.

(1) = New York Times 05 Jun 2004 ‘Beating Specialist Baker’, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/05/opinion/beating-specialist-baker.html?scp=1&sq=kristof+sean+baker&st=nyt

(2) = CBS News 24 Jun 2004 ‘Intel GIs To Be Charged In Death’, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/25/iraq/main626121.shtml

(3) = Panorama – BBC 15 March 2007, 14:55 GMT - A good kicking: Transcript http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6455113.stm

(4) = New York Times 20 May 2005 ‘In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths’, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/international/asia/20abuse.html?ex=1274241600&en=4579c146cb14cfd6&ei=5088

(5) = ABC News 21 May 2004 ‘Military Punishes Abu Ghraib Key Witness’, http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=131659&page=1

(6) = Washington Post 28 Sep 2005 ‘A Matter of Honor’, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092701527_pf.html

(7) = Sunday Times 02 Oct 2005 ‘How America tiptoed into the torture chamber’, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1806906,00.html

Rules must be binding on us and our allies as well as our enemies

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response," President Barack Obama 5th April 2009

The North Korean government is a brutal one that uses many of its own people as slave labour in prison camps. It’s missile launches over Japan in the past have been highly provocative. The most recent was of a satellite, but may have involved testing ‘dual use’ technologies that could also be used to launch nuclear missiles.

The trouble is that Obama is selective in who he condemns for breaking which rules

Obama has taken a major step back towards promoting moral behaviour in international politics by stating that US forces will not carry out torture and in closing down the camps at Guantanamo Bay and the CIA ‘black sites’ around the world.

However Israel and Pakistan have both already developed nuclear weapons, yet there’s no suggestion of punishing them for violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Another set of rules - the Geneva Conventions - also ban targeting civilians, yet Obama made no mention of Israeli forces’ targeting of civilians, including UN aid workers and trucks and the main UN aid depot in Gaza, in their offensive into Gaza.
Obama said he was ‘concerned’ and wouldn’t want [Palestinian] missiles falling in his garden and threatening to kill or injure his children, as if some Palestinian groups missile attacks on Israelis justified Israeli forces’ attacks on equally innocent Palestinian civilians and children and UN aid workers. Not only did he not punish the Israeli government for its actions, he hasn’t even ended military aid or arms sales to Israel.

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton did condemn Israeli house demolitions in East Jerusalem, but said not a word on Israeli forces targeting civilians, as though Israeli forces only harmed houses, not people.

The morality and legality of missile strikes in Pakistan is also questionable since they kill many civilians. Obama rightly condemned over-reliance on air-strikes in Afghanistan, but it's hard to see what the difference in results between air strikes in Afghanistan and missile strikes by unmanned drones in Pakistan is.

For Obama’s administration to make a real change in US foreign policy internationally accepted rules would have to be as binding on the US and its allies as on it’s enemies.

This is sometimes referred to as Immanuel Kant’s principle of universalisability, but it really doesn’t need such a big word to say that rules have to apply to everyone equally.

Correction - : Obama may not be continuing Clinton administration rendition to countries that torture

I wrote in my last blog post that the new head of the CIA told congress that extra-ordinary rendition to countries that practice torture might continue. While both Obama and Panetta have been vague on this in some interviews both seem to be saying this won't happen under the Obama administration. There is some uncertainty still about whether the administration is saying it would accept (worthless) diplomatic assurances from governments such as Egypt and Jordan that they wouldn't torture prisoners rendered to them by the CIA.

Why a nuclear weapon free world might mean more Iraq wars and more Hiroshimas and Nagasakis

President Obama has stated that his aim is a world free of nuclear weapons, beginning with a treaty to reduce the number of nuclear weapons possessed by the US and Russia. Dismantling some of the thousands of nuclear weapons which both countries are paying a fortune to maintain, while they multiply the risk of an accidental launch by thousands of times, is very wise and very possible.

However achieving the aim of a world free of nuclear weapons is likely to be as impossible as the medieval papacy’s attempts to ban crossbows though. Crossbows did eventually fall out of use, but only when they were made obsolete by newer technologies. The analogy with crossbows doesn’t highlight the much greater threats faced by countries attempting to give up nuclear weapons.

In theory every country in the world could make a mutual agreement to destroy all its nuclear warheads, but the technological know-how to create more would still exist and sooner or later someone - governments or terrorist groups (probably both) – would build new ones. Those countries which had given up their nuclear deterrents would then be at best vulnerable to blackmail by those possessing such weapons – and at worst would be in the position of Japan at the end of World War Two, facing massive nuclear attacks on their people merely in order to make an example of someone to show that those possessing nuclear weapons were willing to use them.

There’s also the question of how the ban on nuclear weapons would be enforced. By sanctions of the kind that led to the deaths of millions, including hundreds of thousands of children, in Iraq in the 1990s? ; By wars like the Iraq war?

When Bush and Blair began the fear-mongering for war on Iraq in 2002 opponents of the war were able to point to the British, American, French and Israeli nuclear deterrents and the way they had deterred Saddam from using chemical and biological weapons when he did have them - in the 1991 Gulf war.

If there were no nuclear deterrents though it would be that much easier for unscrupulous politicians to whip up fears of WMD or nuclear attack – and in fact they might even turn out to be pointing to genuine threats in future, which wouldn’t be threats if we had nuclear deterrents. We might well see another Iraq war every couple of years as part of enforcing the Non-Proliferation Treaty. How many soldiers and civilians would die in those? How many civilians would die in the increased terrorist attacks created by them?

Most of Obama’s foreign policy is a break from the Bush administration’s, but it's not clear yet how different it is from the Clinton administration's. Obama seems to have said that rendition may continue - but not to countries which practice torture. Interviews given by Obama and the new head of the CIA leave some room for uncertainty on this though. Obama, while condemning the collateral damage caused by the over-use of air strikes due to insufficient ground forces in Afghanistan, also continues Clinton’s disastrous policy of trying to assassinate Taliban and Al Qa’ida leaders by cruise missile strikes, using intelligence provided by the highly unreliable Pakistani ISI military intelligence.

These conventional missile strikes, like terrorist attacks, kill civilians along with combatants. In fact they’ve killed far more people in the last few decades than nuclear weapons have (excluding Depleted Uranium shells used by NATO and coalition forces which, again, Obama makes no mention of). Since most countries acquired nuclear weapons there have been no new Hiroshima’s or Nagasaki’s, because those were only possible when only one country had nuclear weapons. An attempt to eradicate nuclear weapons entirely could bring that nightmare scenario back along with millions of deaths.

Obama, unlike Bush, will talk to Iran – but, like Clinton, only to hector it about giving up its nuclear weapons programme or facing sanctions at the least, even though Iran was attacked with chemical and biological weapons by Saddam, who had funding and support from almost every other government in the world. Iran has no nuclear deterrent and no reliable ally to provide it with cover by providing a nuclear umbrella to them. While the US under Obama has ended threats to attack Iran for now Israeli governments have continued to threaten Iran with air strikes, while Obama says he will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

Obama’s rhetoric on nuclear disarmament may also be merely a return to the Clinton-era doctrine of using diplomacy to put pressure on opponents and gain greater international support for sanctions and air and cruise missile strikes. Obama has condemned Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear programmes and missile tests respectively, but made no mention of Israel’s large nuclear arsenal, which has broken the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for Decades, nor Pakistan’s, nor India’s active nuclear programme, nor the leaks suggesting the Saudi monarchy are developing nuclear weapons.

If Obama put as much pressure on his allies to give up nuclear weapons as on his country’s enemies his ‘world free of nuclear weapons’ speeches might carry more weight, but they would still fail to explain what we would do if we had given up our nuclear weapons and someone else then produced some; and how we would enforce the ban without constant wars?

There is the option of developing some kind of nuclear missile shield of the kind proposed by the Bush administration and then providing every country in the world with it, thus making ICBM nuclear weapons obsolete. This is a very attractive idea but it faces three serious and probably insurmountable problems.

First no-one has managed to develop any weapons system capable of reliably shooting down high speed missiles travelling across vast distances. Second, even if they did technologies could be developed to counter them and get missiles past them (and such technologies are being developed now).

Third, nuclear weapons don’t have to be delivered by missiles either (though these are the fastest and so most effective deterrent). They can be dropped by planes as bombs – and more advanced ‘stealth bombers’, not to mention bombers capable of space flight and orbital weapons systems in space, are being developed all the time. The Pentagon and NASA are at the cutting edge on these technologies and the US has the most advanced aircraft and highest military research and development budget in the world.

So while it would definitely make sense to dismantle some of the thousands of missiles the US and Russia currently maintain, a world without nuclear weapons is something we’re unlikely to see unless new weapons make them obsolete – and an attempt to free ourselves of nuclear weapons might cost many lives without saving any.

Even the former heads of Shin Bet and Mossad say there should be negotiations with Hamas without pre-conditions

Tony Blair has finally said something I can support him on, however much I revile his past actions. He’s called for and end to the Israeli and ‘Quartet’( formally the EU, US, Russia, UN) blockade of Gaza (1). (To be more accurate the Quartet should be defined as the EU, US, Russia and Israel, since the UN has condemned the blockade and called for it to be lifted.)

Unfortunately Blair still holds to the other ‘Quartet’ position – that talks with Hamas can’t begin until it formally recognizes Israel, signs up to the 1993 Oslo peace agreement between Israel and the PLO; and renounces violence.

These three conditions though are some of the biggest barriers to a negotiated peace – and that’s not just my opinion. Many Israelis, including former government ministers, advisers, academics, historians and the former heads of Shin Bet and Mossad say the pre-conditions being placed on talks with Hamas are ludicrous and amount to setting impossible preconditions to avoid talking at all – combined with a war on all Gazans intended to replace the elected Hamas government by force.

Professor Yossi Alpher, director of the Jaffa Institute for Strategic studies and a former adviser to Ehud Barak, wrote in the Jewish ‘Forward’ newspaper in October 2006 that “Israel never demanded recognition from Egypt or Jordan as a precondition for negotiating with them; recognition is a logical way to conclude successful peace talks, not to begin them.”.(2).

Alpher also points out that Israeli governments have failed to abide by the Oslo agreements by continuing to expand settlements by force in the West Bank, yet demand Hamas abide by these agreements before talks begin.

Former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben Ami signed an open letter saying “Hamas must recognise Israel as part of a permanent solution, but it is a diplomatic process and not ostracisation that will lead them there. The Quartet conditions…set an unworkable threshold from which to commence negotiations.” (3)

Shlomo Gazit, the former head of Israel’s military intelligence, called the three pre-conditions laid down by Israel “ridiculous, or an excuse not to negotiate.” (4)

Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad, also says Israel should negotiate with Hamas, noting that the group has maintained ceasefires and enforced them on other groups in the past.(5).

A poll in March 2008 showed 72% of Israelis wanted negotiations with Hamas (6).

Some may object that Hamas has failed to prevent attacks by other groups, but the Israeli government’s war and blockade on Gaza is the main reason for that. During the last offensive Israel’s deputy PM told interviewers “What I think we need to do is to reach a situation in which we do not allow Hamas to govern.” (7). On 6th January Yuval Diskin, the head of Shin Bet, told the cabinet that Israeli attacks have made it increasingly difficult for Hamas to govern (8). Attacks on Hamas’ police force and stations have continued since (9).

While claiming they’ve destroyed Hamas’ ability to govern Israeli government ministers have also said they hold Hamas responsible for attacks on Israelis from Gaza – even though they admit those attacks aren’t being carried out by Hamas (and that includes the much publicized roadside bombing which came just after the new ceasefire). (see this post and the sources listed in it)

This is what makes the ‘renounce violence’ pre-condition an impossible one for Hamas to meet. Israeli forces demand they end attacks on Israel by other Palestinian groups while simultaneously denying them the means to do so (including the very direct method of assassinating Hamas members). Once again it’s also fairly hypocritical coming from a government that reserves the right to bomb Gazans even during ceasefires.

If the campaign to destroy the Hamas government is ended then Hamas and Fatah can be reconciled, as they were in June 2007 in a coalition government, when Israel and its allies still refused to recognise Hamas as part of that government despite its election victory. Hamas can enforce a ceasefire on other groups and peace negotiations can proceed through third parties (10).

As Israeli historian and IDF veteran Avi Shlaim wrote in January “There is…no military solution...Israel's concept of security…denies …security to [Palestinians]. The only way for Israel to achieve security is…through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with [Israel] within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years.”(11)

And in case anyone thinks Shlaim is wrong to think Hamas would negotiate or concede that Israel could exist even inside it’s pre-1967 borders, he’s right, they’ve said they’d accept that if given a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

For instance in September 2005 Mohammed Gazal of Hamas told Reuters that the Hamas Charter ‘is not the Koran’ and could be amended to accept the existence of Israel within it’s pre-1967 borders – and that negotiations with Israel were entirely possible (12). In 2008 Khaled Meshal of Hamas said a Palestinian state could co-exist with Israel (13). In January this year Hamas leaders told Associated Press reporters that “"We accept a state in the '67 borders," and “We are not talking about the destruction of Israel” (14)

Hamas’ leaders are not so blind as to think they could destroy an Israeli state that has F-16 jets, helicopters, missile armed drones, tanks and heavy artillery when they only have AK-47s and rockets. They will not give up all their negotiating cards before the negotiations even begin though. Not in return for nothing, which is what Palestinians would get from the kind of ‘negotiation’ in which one side has to give in on every point before negotiations even start. Nor would the governments of Jordan or Egypt, yet negotiating with them has led to decades of peace between them and Israel.

There is no barrier to beginning peace negotiations with Hamas via third parties. The question is, does the Israeli government want peace or does it just want more land, taken by force, at any cost in Palestinian and Israeli lives?

(1) = Independent 02 Mar 2009 ‘Blair says Gaza crossings must be opened to assist rebuilding’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/blair-says-gaza-crossings-must-be-opened-to-assist-rebuilding-1635144.html

(2) = Forward 20 Oct 2006 ‘Preconditions for a Problematic Partner’,
http://www.forward.com/articles/5948/

(3) = Times 26 Feb 2009 ‘Peace will be achieved only by talking to Hamas’,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article5804266.ece

(4) = Forward 09 Feb 2007 ‘Experts Question Wisdom of Boycotting Hamas’,
http://www.forward.com/articles/10055/

(5) = Interview with Efraim Halevy in Mother Jones Magazine 10 Feb 2008 ‘Israel's Mossad, Out of the Shadows’, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/02/israels-mossad-out-shadows

(6) = Newsweek 07 Mar 2008 ‘‘We’ll Have to Talk’’
http://www.newsweek.com/2008/03/06/we-ll-have-to-talk.html#

(7) = New York Times 03 Jan 2009 ‘Is the Real Target Hamas Rule?’,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/world/middleeast/04assess.html

(8) = Guardian 06 Jan 2009 ‘Israel looks to drive out Hamas’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel-hamas

(9) = CNN 1 Feb 2009 ‘Airstrikes hit Gaza after rockets wound 3 Israelis’,
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/02/01/israel.rockets/

(10) = Guardian 07 Jan 2009 ‘How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

(11) = see (10) above

(12) = Reuters/Ynet(Israel) 21 Sep 2005 ‘Hamas: We'll rethink call to destroy Israel’,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3145475,00.html

(13) = Guardian.co.uk 21 April 2008 ‘We can accept Israel as neighbour, says Hamas’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/21/israel

(14) = AP/Haaretz 01 Jan 2009 ‘Hamas: We will accept long-term truce if Gaza borders opened’, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1059873.html

Hey Hamas : Do what we’re stopping you doing – and end all these ceasefire breaches by us and people you don’t control

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni claims “Hamas controls Gaza and is responsible for everything that happens” there (1), (2). YetYuval Diskin, head of Shin Bet, briefed Israel’s cabinet on January 6th, saying Israeli military strikes on Hamas’ leaders and infrastructure have made it increasingly difficult for it to govern (3).

There is very probably some truth in that since Israeli strikes have killed everyone from police and police cadets to ambulance crews and targeted everything from police stations to government buildings and factories including food processing plants. So how can the Israeli government demand Hamas control what’s going on in Gaza while simultaneously destroying it’s ability to do so? (4), (5), (6).

During the last ceasefire in 2008 Hamas did arrest members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Fatah’s armed wing, who it accused of firing rockets out of Gaza (7). How can the Israeli government demand Hamas do what it’s deliberately stopping them doing?

The roadside bombing attack which “broke the ceasefire” on 27th January 2009 by killing an IDF soldier was not carried out by Hamas according to the Israeli government.Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak acknowledged that it was ‘not Hamas’, but a “breakway splinter group”, Al Qa’ida Affiliated Global Jihad (perhaps an attempt to link the Israeli campaign to the US ‘war on terror’). He then said that “We will continue with our response to the attack even though it was carried out by a group that is not Hamas…We hold Hamas responsible for everything that happens in Gaza.”. So they attacked Hamas (8), (9).

More recently rockets were fired out of Gaza into Israel by members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades – the armed wing of Fatah. The Israeli government again acknowledged this, but attacked Hamas in “retaliation” anyway (10).

If Israel’s aim is to prevent rocket fire why is it giving Hamas’ rivals a green light to fire at Israelis, knowing any counter-attack will hit Hamas?

Probably for the same reason that Israeli artillery repeatedly shelled the main UN aid depot in Gaza when, as UNWRA head Chris Ging said, there was no fighting in the area (11).

Claims that reducing rocket attacks is the priority are just electioneering. The aims of the blockade and attacks on Gaza are electioneering, overthrowing the elected Hamas government and dividing and conquering Palestinians to making annexing the West Bank easier.

The event that triggered the end of the previous ceasefire is also supposedly Hamas’ ‘crazy’ decision to “unilaterally” end the ceasefire by firing rockets into Israel in December 2008. It’s not so clear that that’s the case. On 5th November 2008 Israeli forces launched a raid into Gaza, killing several members of Hamas’ armed wing – the Al Qassam Brigades. They claimed this was necessary to destroy a tunnel which Hamas were digging to capture more Israeli soldiers, like Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was captured or kidnapped by Hamas and other groups in 2006. They didn’t explain why, if this was the case, it was necessary to attack a tunnel into Israel by attacking it on the Gaza side of the border? This was the event that triggered Hamas’ armed wing beginning rocket attacks again (12), (13).

Buying votes and a sense of perfect goodness with Palestinian and Israeli deaths

Perhaps the upcoming elections in Israel, the fact the government were trailing the opposition in the polls and the claims by the Israel opposition that the government parties were “weak” and “soft on terrorism” were a factor in the “election war”. As with so many attempts to pander to the worst beliefs in order to try to get votes it’s backfired. The right wing Likud party has increased it’s lead in the polls, though Palestinians in Gaza could be forgiven for wondering whether all this “vibrant democracy” made any difference to them when the “center” and “left” parties bomb and starve them just as much.

How can anyone seriously believe that a campaign killing 1,000 Palestinians in three weeks, including 250children, was a response to one Israeli civilian killed by rocket fire from Gaza in the previous six months (on Israeli foreign ministry figures)? – and that one death resulting from the Israeli raid on Gaza on 5th November 2008 which, along with Israel’s refusal to lift the blockade on Gaza, led to the breakdown of the ceasefire (14).

There have certainly been thousands of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza, but although rocket attacks on Israeli civilians are certainly wrong they have killed very few people, unlike the thousands of Israeli shells, bombs and missiles fired into Gaza.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak himself said in the past that “The Palestinians are the weakest of our enemies. As a military threat they are ludicrous.”(15)

If Israel’s government really wanted peace and to end the pointless cycle of deaths on both sides it didn’t need to do anything except accept offers of negotiation from the elected Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

The Israeli government routinely accuses Hamas of cynically risking civilians’ lives to gain support. In fact Israel’s government and main opposition parties are responsible for exactly the same on a much larger scale. Palestinians make a useful enemy and external ‘threat’ for Israeli governments to rally the public behind in nationalistic wars. Since in reality “as a military threat they are ludicrous” they can be repeatedly defeated with ease, allowing the government to point to “victories”. The opposition Likud party, whose leader Benjamin Netanyahu has called in the past for all Israeli Arabs and Palestinians to be expelled by force or ‘transfer’ can also deride the government for being weak in the face of the Arab threat. Israeli civilians and soldiers and a hundred times as many Palestinians may die each time, but that’s considered cheap in terms of votes gained.

Many Israelis have motives to buy the “Arab threat” propaganda too. Some of them are getting cheap houses and land in the West Bank from it. Others have been brought up to think of themselves as “proud Israelis” and Israel as an inherently morally good country.

For those who identify too closely with their government or don’t attempt to stay informed from multiple sources this leads them to see any criticism of their country as a personal attack on them. They can also see themselves as perfectly good and their enemies as inherently evil. This avoids having to face any uncomfortable doubts about whether they or their country are doing anything wrong. This is not unique to Israel. It’s true in every country, but also causes pointless deaths and wars in many – and Israel even more than most.

Palestinians are now seen not as people who vary and each of whom may be right or wrong in certain beliefs or actions but as inherently evil enemies who cannot be negotiated with. That was true of Arafat and Abbas of Fatah when they won Palestinian elections and its true now of Hamas and Haniyeh.

(1) = Independent 28 Jan 2009 ‘Gaza ceasefire strained as Mitchell flies in’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-ceasefire-strained-as-mitchell-flies-in-1517852.html (5th paragraph)

(2) = Jerusalem Post 27 Jan 2009 ‘Barak cancels US trip due to Gaza border attack’,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1233050191648
“"We will continue with our response to the attack even though it was carried out by a group that is not Hamas," Barak said in a speech before students at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center. "We hold Hamas responsible for everything that happens in Gaza.”

(3) = Guardian 06 Jan 2009 ‘Israel looks to drive out Hamas’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel-hamas

(4) = Telegraph 27 Dec 2008 ‘Israel attack on Gaza: Fragile peace shattered again’,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/3981502/Israel-attack-on-Gaza-Fragile-peace-shattered-again.html

(5) = AFP 01 Feb 2009 ‘Israel bombs Gaza after new rocket fire’,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090201/ts_afp/mideastconflictgazaolmert

(6) = Guardian 26 Jan 2009 ‘Hamas offers $52m handouts to help hardest-hit Gazans’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/26/hamas-payout-gaza-infrastructure

(7) = Haaretz 10 July 2008 ‘Hamas arrests Gaza rocket squad after two Qassams hit Negev’, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1000881.html

(8) = Jerusalem Post 27 Jan 2009 ‘Barak cancels US trip due to Gaza border attack’,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1233050191648

(9) = Haaretz 29 Jan 2009 ‘IAF bombs Gaza weapons manufacturing site after rocket strikes Negev’, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1059457.html

(10) = AFP 01 Feb 2009 ‘Israel bombs Gaza after new rocket fire’,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090201/ts_afp/mideastconflictgazaolmert

(11) = CNN 15 Jan 2009 ‘Third-ranking Hamas leader in Gaza killed’,
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/15/gaza.aid.plea/
(13th paragraph reads ‘UNRWA Director John Ging denied there were any militants at the compound, and also said that at the time there was no fighting in the area.’)

(12) = Reuters 05 Nov 2008 ‘Israel-Hamas violence disrupts Gaza truce’,
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE4A37B520081105

(13) = Guardian 05 Nov 2008 ‘Gaza truce broken as Israeli raid kills six Hamas gunmen’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/05/israelandthepalestinians

(14) = Israel Foreign Ministry ‘Victims of Palestinian Violence and Terrorism since September 2000’, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Palestinian+terror+since+2000/Victims+of+Palestinian+Violence+and+Terrorism+sinc.htm

(15) = Ehud Barak in an interview published in Haaretz newspaper 18 June 1999 Cited by Avi Shlaim (2000) ‘The Iron Wall :Israel and the Arab World’ , Penguin paperback , London, 2001 , page xii

“Ignorance” and “apologising for terrorism” and war crimes

Denial, Shouting ‘Look over there’ and saying ‘Hamas made us do it’ don’t cut it – both sides target civilians, with Israel’s greater fire-power killing hundreds of times more - and the only way forward is to negotiate with Hamas

A Palestinian fireman at the UN aid depot in Gaza as food and medicines burn after Israeli artillery repeatedly shelled buildings with incendiaries

There are the usual responses by cheerleaders for Israeli actions to the widespread reports of Israeli forces targeting civilians in Gaza. The commonest has been a combination of denial and accusing Hamas of having been responsible for any incident where Palestinian civilians were killed, though there are several other tactics used.

Denial and blaming the other side

Ivor S Tiefenbrun for instance (Herald letters 26th January) says claims of Israeli forces targeting civilians and ambulances in Lebanon and Gaza and the West Bank (including Jenin) in the present and the past are “discredited…propaganda” based on the “ignorance” of “apologists” for terrorists. Like many others he also makes the false claim that every instance of Israeli forces killing civilians has been the result of their enemies “using civilians as human shields”. This is true in some cases, but in many cases it’s not – and in fact the Israeli military has often used Palestinian civilians as human shields itself.

For the truth about the Israeli offensive in Jenin and Nablus in 2002, in which at least 22 civilians were killed, many deliberately, in Jenin alone and at least 70 children killed in “Operation Defensive Shield” as a whole, as well as Palestinian civilians forced to walk ahead of Israeli troops at gunpoint, see this post and the Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem reports it lists

On 14th January 2009 Amnesty International reported war crimes “include Israeli attacks that have been directed at civilians or civilian buildings in the Gaza Strip” as well as Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli towns (1)

After the main UN aid depot in Gaza was repeatedly shelled by Israeli artillery, burning food and medicines, the Israeli government claimed Hamas had fired from nearby. On 15th January CNN quoted Chris Ging, the head of UNRWA, saying there had been no militants and no fighting anywhere near the depot when it was shelled (2).

After the 2006 war in Lebanon and Gaza Human Rights Watch reported that “Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon …The pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices.” (3) , (4). HRW also reported at least 6 confirmed attacks by Israeli forces on ambulances in Gaza, paralleled by many similar attacks in Lebanon (5,6). This month it reported at least two incidents of Israeli forces killing or injuring medics when firing on ambulances (7).

What’s more in 2005 Israeli soldiers reported following orders to shoot unarmed Palestinians even when there was no fighting taking place, including children. Palestinian and British doctors and journalists also came to the conclusion by studying injuries in dead children that they had been repeatedly shot in the head by Israeli snipers. The Israeli human rights group B’T Selem has reported similar cases (8), (9), (10), (11), (12), (13).

There is also no doubt any more that the Israeli government and military are doing everything they can to deny the entire population of Gaza enough food and medical supplies. This campaign to deny Gazans enough food, medicines and fuel kills just as surely in the long run – and involves a fair amount of direct killing with tanks, artillery and air-strikes too.

First they instituted a blockade which allows some truckloads of food, medicines and fuel into Gaza some days – just not nearly enough to supply the population according to the UN. By November 2008 the International Committee of the Red Cross was reporting that “chronic malnutrition is a steadily rising trend” along with “under-nutrition”. By December 2008 many Gazans were reduced to searching rubbish dumps for food. On 3rd February 2009 the UN reported that “The number of trucks allowed by Israel to enter Gaza daily to deliver much-needed relief supplies remains insufficient.” (14), (15), (16).

The Israeli military made a great show of letting the media film them letting some UN aid trucks into Gaza, before shelling many of them with tanks and killing the drivers on the other side of the border, where no foreign media were allowed (17), (18). Then they bombed hundreds of civilian targets including the UN aid depot mentioned above, burning hundreds of tones of food and medicines with white phosphorus shells. Israeli strikes also destroyed over 200 factories and food processing plants, including the largest functioning grain mill in Gaza (19). The DEC appeal, by providing some simple facts such as the lack of clean drinking water and levels of malnutrition and suffering in Gaza, was an embarrassment for Israeli government PR men, which is probably why they demanded the BBC drop it.

I’ve provided independent and reliable sources for all the above claims. So what are the sources Mr Tiefenbrun and others have for their claims that all this is ‘propaganda’ by ‘apologists’ for terrorists? ; The Israeli government and military maybe? Certainly if he was listening to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert then the Israeli military are “the most moral, the most high-minded military forces in the world” (20). Unfortunately as Professor Norman Finkelstein has pointed out, even Himmler and the SS claimed they were upholding the highest moral standards and only regretfully doing what was necessary to protect the German people (21). What the Israeli military has done in Gaza is not a Holocaust but statements about how moral you are don’t magically make every action you take right even when you’re targeting civilians either.

Mr Tiefenbrun derides “closed minds”. If he believes the Israeli government, one of the sides in the conflict, are an unbiased source, while the UN, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch aren’t, then perhaps he’s the one who has a closed mind and prefers ignorance to unpleasant facts. You might even say that “his ignorance is matched only by his colossal arrogance”. Stating the facts is “beyond the pale” to him; a telling phrase, since it was first used by colonists in Ireland to deride the native Irish who they looked down on as sub-humans who could be killed without guilt.

Like many others he acts as an apologist for Israeli forces’ targeting of civilians in fact free rants against those who deal with the reality and condemn both Palestinian terrorist groups and Israeli forces for targeting civilians.

“Look over there – they’re doing it too”

Other cheerleaders for the Israeli blockade and offensive have returned to the time honoured practice of the Israeli lobby – shouting ‘look over there, they’re doing it too, so why are you picking on me?’ ; so Sudanese war crimes in Sudan, Sri Lankan ones against Tamils and the Iraq war are raised as if these somehow make Israeli war crimes against civilians justifiable.

“They asked for it by voting Hamas”

Saying that Gazans asked for whatever they got by voting for Hamas has also become fashionable. This is idiotic in several ways. First hundreds of the dead are children too young to vote. Second half the population didn’t vote for Hamas. Third it’s hypocrisy. Israelis have repeatedly elected war criminals like Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert and even former terrorists like Begin – yet no-one suggested that because of this Israeli civilians deserved to be suicide bombed because some of them voted for war criminals.

“Evil Hamas are the problem, but we’d talk to Fatah”

Then there’s the story that Hamas are evil but Fatah are good. This is just the continuation of the divide and rule strategy whereby in the past, when the PLO and Fatah were dominant in Palestinian politics, Israel backed Hamas to divide Palestinians (21). This is also hypocrisy again. When Israelis elected people with a long record of committing and ordering war crimes, from Deir Yassin to Qibya to Sabra and Shatila, like Sharon, no-one suggested Palestinians couldn’t be expected to negotiate with them.

“We are entirely good, They are entirely Evil”

The biggest problem is the problem with any kind of nationalistic or religious jingoism – the attempt to pretend that “our side” are entirely morally good while the enemy are entirely “evil” and that any wrong done by our side either didn’t happen or else was all the fault of the “evil ones”. The reality is that there are very very few people who are entirely good or evil and pretty much no entire countries which are. Pointing out that Hamas are the democratically elected government of the Palestinian Authority and that Israeli forces also target and kill civilians is not a statement that Israel is evil and Hamas are good. It’s a simple statement of the reality – that both sides target civilians, that the stronger side (Israel’s government) has refused negotiations because it thinks it can get everything it wants by force.

“We are democrats, they are terrorists”

The Israeli government is also fond of claiming that Israel is “the only democracy in the middle east” besieged by “terrorists”. However Israel is not the only democracy in the Middle East. Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority have both held plenty of democratic elections. Yet Israel prefers alliances with election rigging dictators like Mubarak of Egypt and corrupt, torturing monarchies like Saudi and Jordan, while bombing other democracies. Not only that but it routinely elects and re-elects war criminals like Sharon and Olmert and its forces target civilians as much as any terrorist group.

“We are strong, they are weak”

Another problem is the ludicrous belief that the other side will react in a way opposite to our own reaction to similar treatment. So Israelis are tough and their will is hardened by attacks that kill their soldiers civilians, but they assume that if they just kill enough Palestinians the Palestinians will surrender. You would think that six decades of Palestinians reacting to Israeli offensives that kill hundreds of them by hardening their attitudes to Israel would make Israeli politicians and generals realise the reality, but unfortunately so far only a minority do. Two, Avreh Cohen and Arieh Spitzen, were quoted by the Wall Street Journal on past Israeli backing for Hamas and on the likelihood that just as bombing Palestinians to drive Arafat and Fatah out of power led to the rise of Hamas, bombing them to drive Hamas out of power could lead to the rise of even more extreme groups like Al Qaeda (21). Perhaps, though, that’s the plan – kill enough Palestinians to make radicalize them in order to justify more bombing to “stamp out extremism”. That distracts attention to the land grab and new settlements in the West Bank. If Israel’s government really wants peace though negotiations that include Hamas are the only way forward.

(1) = Amnesty International 14th January 2009 ‘Growing calls for investigations and accountability in Gaza conflict’,
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/growing-calls-investigations-and-accountability-gaza-conflict-20090114

(2) = CNN 15 Jan 2009 ‘Third-ranking Hamas leader in Gaza killed’,
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/15/gaza.aid.plea/
(13th paragraph reads ‘UNRWA Director John Ging denied there were any militants at the compound, and also said that at the time there was no fighting in the area.’

(3) = Human Rights Watch 2 Aug 2006 ‘Israel/Lebanon: End Indiscriminate Strikes on Civilians’, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/08/02/israellebanon-end-indiscriminate-strikes-civilians

(4) = HRW 2 Aug 2006 ‘Fatal Strikes : Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon’, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2006/08/02/fatal-strikes (5) = HRW 13 Sep 2006 ‘Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territories: Don't Fire on Gaza Medics - Six Attacks on Palestinian Ambulances, Paramedics’
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2006/09/12/israeloccupied-palestinian-territories-don-t-fire-gaza-medics

(6) = HRW Dec 2006 ‘The “Hoax” That Wasn’t:
The July 23 Qana Ambulance Attack’,
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/mena/qana1206/index.htm

(7) = Human Rights Watch 13 Jan 2009 ‘Deprived and Endangered : Humanitarian Crisis in the Gaza Strip’, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/12/deprived-and-endangered-humanitarian-crisis-gaza-strip
(Scroll down to second third main heading ‘"OPERATION CAST LEAD" AND EXPLOSION OF THE HUMANITARIAN CRISIS’ then to 4th sub-heading ‘Humanitarian Problems Due To Possible Humanitarian Law Violations’ – 2nd paragraph under it reads “Medical facilities and ambulances have also been hit by Israeli attacks, in some cases resulting in casualties among medical personnel. On January 5, Israeli forces reportedly shelled an ambulance of al-`Awda hospital in the north, seriously injuring four medical staff. On January 4, an Israeli airstrike struck an ambulance in Beit Lahiya run by the Union of Health Work Committees, funded by Oxfam, killing one paramedic, Arafa Abd al-Dayim, 33, and gravely wounding another, `Ala' Sarhan, 22. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, they were trying to evacuate a wounded person from a site attacked by an Israeli airstrike when the plane returned and struck the same site again”)

(8) = Guardian 28 Jun 2005, ‘Snipers with children in their sights’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1516362,00.html

(9) = BT’Selem eyewitness testimonies – IDF soldier shoots and kills a 14 year-old boy playing with his friends, in Tubas, north of Nablus, January 2005 - witness Abu Muhsen -
http://www.btselem.org/english/Testimonies/20050120_Salah_Abu_Muhsen_Shot_to_Death_in_Tubas_witness_Abu_Muhsen.asp

(10) = BT'Selem eyewitness testimonies - IDF soldier shoots and kills a 14 year-old boy playing with his friends, in Tubas, north of Nablus, January 2005 - witness Daragmeh - http://www.btselem.org/english/Testimonies/20050120_Salah_Abu_Muhsen_Shot_to_Death_in_Tubas_witness_Daraghmeh.asp

(11) = Summerfield, Derek ‘Palestine – The Assault on Health and Other War Crimes’,
British Medical Journal 16 October 2004 http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/329/7471/924?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Derek+Summerfield+Palestine&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

(12) = Guardian 6 Sep 2005, ‘Israeli troops say they were given shoot-to-kill order’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1563476,00.html

(13) = Guardian 6 Sep 2005, ‘Israeli soldiers tell of indiscriminate killings by army and a culture of impunity’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1563255,00.html

(14) = Independent 15 Nov 2008 ‘Chronic malnutrition in Gaza blamed on Israel’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/chronic-malnutrition-in-gaza-blamed-on-israel-1019521.html

(15) = Observer 21 Dec 2008 ‘Israeli blockade 'forces Palestinians to search rubbish dumps for food',
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/21/israel-gaza-strip-middle-east

(16) = UN Department of Public Information 03 Feb 2009 ‘More supplies must be allowed to enter Gaza, says UN’, http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/47d4e277b48d9d3685256ddc00612265/eb20a38860c16537852575520070a134!OpenDocument

(17) = AP 08 Jan 2009 ‘UN curbs Gaza aid after trucks hit by Israeli fire’,
9th paragraph reads “"We've been coordinating with them (Israeli forces) and yet our staff continue to be hit and killed," said a U.N. spokesman, Chris Gunness, announcing the suspension. The U.N. is the largest aid provider in Gaza.”

(18) = Guardian 10 Jan 2009 ‘Ban on foreign journalists skews coverage of conflict’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/10/gaza-israel-reporters-foreign-journalists

(19) = Guardian 26 Jan 2009 ‘Hamas offers $52m handouts to help hardest-hit Gazans’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/26/hamas-payout-gaza-infrastructure

(20) = Norman Finkelstein (1995) ‘ Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict’, (2nd edition), Verso, London & NY, 2003, chapter 4 , pages 112-116 of paperback edition

(21) = Wall Street Journal 24 Jan 2009 ‘How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas’,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123275572295011847.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

copyright©Duncan M McFarlane 2009

There were Israeli war crimes in Jenin

One of the least unsettling photos taken of Jenin after the Israeli attack on it in April 2002 - for more see Sandiego Indymedia here

It’s become common for those people who think Israeli forces can do no wrong to claim that claims of war crimes in Jenin and Nablus in 2002 were later “discredited” or “proven untrue” – and even that this proved the UN and human rights groups were “unreliable” sources of information. This is then used as supposed evidence to claim Israeli forces have not targeted civilians more recently either.

There is a tiny grain of truth to these claims which has been exaggerated so massively that the resulting claims are completely untrue. The tiny grain is that Amnesty International initially believed hundreds of civilians had been killed in Jenin refugee camp and called this a “massacre”, but after further investigations it and other groups found the number killed in Jenin itself was not hundreds but twenty-two. In the entire ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ which covered Jenin, Nablus and elsewhere 497 Palestinians were killed (according to Amnesty and the UN), including over 70 children (according to Amnesty). Physicians for Human Rights said around 38% of the dead were children, disabled or over 50 years old (1),(2),(3),(4), (5).

If you want to play with words on the definition of “massacre” then whether hundreds or dozens of civilians were killed could make a difference, but the fact remains that Israeli forces targeted and killed dozens of civilians including ambulance crews. They had also fired on ambulances earlier in the same year (6)

During the Israeli assaults on refugee camps in Nablus and Jenin in 2002 there were initially allegations of the massacre of hundreds of civilians from some Palestinians. Amnesty international began an investigation and initially said that the forensic evidence they had so far seemed to corroborate the allegations.

In their final report however they, along with Human Rights Watch and Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, found that dozens, rather than hundreds of civilians had been killed by Israeli forces, along with dozens of armed combatants.

There were also armed Palestinian combatants killed, but this does not justify what was done to civilians. Eyewitness testimony from Israeli soldiers and Palestinians confirmed that Israeli forces had bulldozed many houses without warning, killing many Palestinians. Other unarmed civilians were forced to walk ahead of Israeli forces as human shields or shot or run over by tanks in the middle of the street – including at least one disabled person in a wheel chair. Ambulances, medics and aid organizations were prevented from bringing wounded Palestinians to hospital and even fired on and killed. Journalists were also banned from the area until days after the offensive ended.

For instance B’T selem took this testimony from Israeli soldier Moshe Nissim who drove a bulldozer at Jenin.

“They called out on a bullhorn to warn the residents before I came. But I didnt give anybody a chance. I didn’t wait. I didnt strike once and wait for them to leave. I would smash the house really hard so that it would collapse as quickly as possible…Everything I did was according to orders.” (5)

These are all quite clearly war crimes – a mixture of deliberately targeting civilians, not making any attempt to avoid killing civilians and using them as human shields. The fact that dozens rather than hundreds were killed in this way does not erase these crimes from history. Nor can Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

What’s more Amnesty reported that “Throughout the period 4-15 April, the IDF denied access to Jenin refugee camp to all, including medical doctors and nurses, ambulances, humanitarian relief services, human rights organizations, and journalists.” (2). So Israeli forces had 12 days in which to move or bury bodies – and bulldozers to do it with. So the 22 civilians Human Rights Watch found solid evidence of being killed in Jenin, like the 70 children cited by Amnesty for Operation Defensive Shield as a whole, may have been far less than the real totals. Any Palestinian witnesses could be killed, or, even more easily, dismissed as lying Arabs – the usual response of the IDF to any claim by any Arab witness.

The UN report on ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ came to few conclusions of its own, preferring to merely summarise the different claims made by the Israeli military and government, the Palestinian authority and investigations by human rights groups, as if the two sides in the conflict were as unbiased as neutral third parties (4).

So those who claim that claims of Israeli war crimes against civilians in Jenin and Nablus in 2002 were ‘disproven’ or ‘discredited’ are mistaken at best. This is even more true for those who claim this ‘proves’ the UN and all human rights groups are unreliable sources.

(1) = BBC 18 Apr 2002 ‘Jenin 'massacre evidence growing'’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1937048.stm

(2) = Amnesty International 2002 ‘Israel and the Occupied Territories
Shielded from scrutiny: IDF violations in Jenin and Nablus’,
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/143/2002/en/dom-MDE151432002en.html

(3) = Human Rights Watch May 2002 ‘Jenin: IDF Military Operations’,
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2002/israel3/

(4) = UN 2002 ‘Report of the Secretary-General prepared pursuant
to General Assembly resolution ES-10/10’,
http://www.un.org/peace/jenin/index.html ; On the 497 Palestinians killed on the Operation see Paragraph 37 Section E;
For figures from Physicians for Human Rights see Paragraph 57

(5) = B’Tselem 2002 ‘OPERATION DEFENSIVE SHIELD
Palestinian Testimonies , Soldiers’ Testimonies’,
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:qZPp4XdKIKwJ:www.btselem.org/Download/200207_Defensive_Shield_Eng.pdf+Jenin+2002&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=29&lr=lang_en&inlang=en

(6) = B’Tselem Mar 2002 ‘Impeding Medical Treatment and Firing at Ambulances
by IDF Soldiers in the Occupied Territories’,
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:OmUwaNktodIJ:www.btselem.org/Download/200203_Medical_Treatment_Eng.rtf+Jenin+2002&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=32&lr=lang_en&inlang=en

Operation Kill Children to Boost Poll Ratings Achieves Partial Success

Pity it Tripled deaths from rocket attacks; but there are glimmers of hope

We can all relax now that Operation Kill Children to Boost Poll Ratings has achieved partial success. Barak and Livni now have their chances to be the next Israeli Prime minister who bombs and starves Gazans rather than Benjamin Netanyahu. That’s a triumph for humanity (1,2).

Cynics point out that the offensive actually increased rocket attacks. The Israeli Foreign Ministry website shows one Israeli civilian was killed by rocket attacks in the six months before the offensive, while three were killed in the three weeks during it (3).The cynics miss the point though. Reducing rocket attacks was never the aim.

More Palestinians have been radicalized by a thousand deaths and Israeli spokesmen have been able to claim that it’s the ‘undemocratic’ Hamas, not their own government, which has refused to negotiate. That may be the opposite of the truth and Hamas may be elected, but who cares. Israel “won”;the Labour-Kadima governing coalition matched Likud in the polls; the untermenschen Israeli Arab parties are banned from the next election (edit - a law later over-turned in Israeli courts) and the settlement of the West Bank continues. Palestinians are again relegated to their assigned roles of being ethnically cleansed and used as an enemy to rally Israeli voters against (4 – 11).

The Israeli government can also continue to propagandise about being the "only democracy in the Middle East", even while (yet again) trying to overthrow the democratically elected government of one of the other two (the Palestinian Authority) by force and repeatedly trying the same in the other (Lebanon).

There are some glimmers of hope though - Barack Obama has announced his administration will talk to Hamas, which would make it hard for the Israeli government to justify not acccepting offers of talks, especially if Obama threatens a cut in financial aid and arms shipments behind the scenes, as even George Bush Senior did when he was President (12).

Many people have also begun their own boycotts of Israeli produce and some company directors, including, I'm proud to say, one of my own relatives, have said their firms won't trade with Israel as long as the slaughter of civilians continues. So even if governments fail to put sufficient pressure on the Israeli government their citizens might yet do it.

(1) = Haaretz 31 Dec 2009 ‘Poll: Most Israelis support continuing Gaza military op’,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051852.html

(2) = BBC News 08 Jan 2009 ‘Israelis back Gaza action - for now’,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7816794.stm (see last two sections under sub-headings ‘Ratings War’ and ‘High Stakes’)

(3)= Israel Foreign Ministry ‘Victims of Palestinian Violence and Terrorism since September 2000’, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Palestinian+terror+since+2000/Victims+of+Palestinian+Violence+and+Terrorism+sinc.htm

(4) = Telegraph 09 Feb 2006 ‘Hamas offers deal if Israel pulls out’,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/1510074/Hamas-offers-deal-if-Israel-pulls-out.html

(5) = Guardian 4 Mar 2006 , ‘Hamas says peace possible at Moscow talks’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1723217,00.html

(6) = Guardian 22 Jun 2006 ‘Climbdown as Hamas agrees to Israeli state’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1803184,00.html

(7) = Ynet news (Israel) 22 Dec 2007 ‘Report: Hamas weighing unconditional truce with Israel’, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3485394,00.html

(8) = IHT 23 Dec 2007 ‘Israel rejects Hamas request for cease-fire talks’,
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/23/africa/hamas.php

(9) Guardian.co.uk 21 April 2008 ‘We can accept Israel as neighbour, says Hamas’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/21/israel

(10) = Khaled Hroub (2006) ‘Hamas : A beginner’s guide’ , Pluto Press, London, 2006

(11) = Haaretz (Israel) 13 Jan 2009 ‘Israel bans Arab parties from running in upcoming elections’, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054867.html

(12) = 09 Jan 2009 'Obama camp 'prepared to talk to Hamas'',
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/08/barack-obama-gaza-hamas