7 oct 2013
Head of the popular committee against the siege Jamal Al-Khudari said the problems of water, electricity and sanitation are three strategic core issues threatening the human life and the future of the population in the Gaza Strip. In a press statement to the Palestinian information center (PIC), Khudari called on the international organizations that support the Palestinian people to direct their funding and efforts towards these problems and necessarily find radical solutions to them.
He said that the Gaza Strip is being ripped down by the blockade, and called on the international community to pressure Israel to open its border crossings in Gaza.
Khudari affirmed that Israel uses its media to deceive the world about allowing goods to enter Gaza, while on the ground it only allows in a small percentage of building materials and ban the entry of dozens of vital needs.
He stated that Israel deals with the Palestinian cause and Gaza without any regard for the international law and its blockade violates all conventions which it has committed itself to.
He said that the Gaza Strip is being ripped down by the blockade, and called on the international community to pressure Israel to open its border crossings in Gaza.
Khudari affirmed that Israel uses its media to deceive the world about allowing goods to enter Gaza, while on the ground it only allows in a small percentage of building materials and ban the entry of dozens of vital needs.
He stated that Israel deals with the Palestinian cause and Gaza without any regard for the international law and its blockade violates all conventions which it has committed itself to.
Hundreds of Palestinians held in a protest in the central West Bank city of Ramallah demanding the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, to stop direct talks with Israeli due to its ongoing violations, and its absent interest in real and comprehensive peace.
A number of leftists Palestinian political parties organized the protest.
The protesters marched from the Manara Square, in the center of Ramallah, carrying Palestinian flags and chanting slogans against the political process, and the occupation.
Protest organizers stressed that peace talks with Tel Aviv are futile, especially since Israel has no interest in real peace, and is only interested in legitimizing its illegal occupation of Palestine, and its illegitimate settlement activities.
They added that all Palestinian factions must define a clear strategy to counter the Israeli occupation, and to defend the Palestinian people, their lands and their holy sites.
The protesters further stressed on the importance of national unity, and affirmed that the Palestinian people will never abandon the internationally guaranteed Right of Return of all refugees displaced by Israel.
“No peace without the liberation of Jerusalem”, they chanted, “Unity, Freedom, and Liberation”
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed during a speech in Bar Ilan University that the Israeli occupation of Palestine “is not the core of the conflict in the Middle East”, and reiterated his demands that the Palestinians must first recognize Israel as a Jewish State, before a final status peace agreement is signed.
A number of leftists Palestinian political parties organized the protest.
The protesters marched from the Manara Square, in the center of Ramallah, carrying Palestinian flags and chanting slogans against the political process, and the occupation.
Protest organizers stressed that peace talks with Tel Aviv are futile, especially since Israel has no interest in real peace, and is only interested in legitimizing its illegal occupation of Palestine, and its illegitimate settlement activities.
They added that all Palestinian factions must define a clear strategy to counter the Israeli occupation, and to defend the Palestinian people, their lands and their holy sites.
The protesters further stressed on the importance of national unity, and affirmed that the Palestinian people will never abandon the internationally guaranteed Right of Return of all refugees displaced by Israel.
“No peace without the liberation of Jerusalem”, they chanted, “Unity, Freedom, and Liberation”
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed during a speech in Bar Ilan University that the Israeli occupation of Palestine “is not the core of the conflict in the Middle East”, and reiterated his demands that the Palestinians must first recognize Israel as a Jewish State, before a final status peace agreement is signed.
Palestinian and Israeli negotiators held an extended round of political talks, under American mediation, yet again, ending without achieving progress.
Tzipi Livni and Chief Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molcho represented the Israeli side, while Chief Palestinian negotiator, Dr. Saeb Erekat, and Mohammad Eshtayya represented the Palestinian side.
While no progress was made on core issues, the two sides agreed to strengthen the American “mediation role”, as demanded by the Palestinian side. Yet, U.S Special Envoy to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Martin Indyk, did not participate in the meeting.
The two sides recently agreed to intensify negotiations sessions, and to hold two sessions of direct talks per week, to discuss a large array of issues, in an attempt to reach a peace deal.
Israeli TV, Channel 10 quoted a Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, stating that the two sides are holding extensive rounds of talks, and decided to extend the number of hours in each round to eight.
The official said that the United States has demanded Israel and the Palestinian Authority to intensify the talks, especially amidst rising serious conflicts regarding arrangements on core issues, such as borders, the refugees, and security.
Palestinian and Israeli negotiations teams have been holding a meeting or two a week since direct talks were resumed under direct American mediation.
Each round of talks mainly lasted an hour or two, an issue that casted doubt on achieving the American goal of reaching a final status peace deal by April of 2013.
The talks were resumed in late July following three years of stalemate, while most rounds of talks, especially recent ones, have been held away from the media, with no signs of achieving any notable progress.
Obstacles remain largely the same, with no Israeli interest in ending its illegitimate occupation of Palestine, its insistence of building and expanding Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and in occupied Jerusalem, in addition to the Israeli demand to focus on security arrangements rather than other core issue.
Israel refuses to recognize international resolutions by the United Nations and the Security Council, and insists that its illegitimate settlements are not an obstacle to peace.
This is happening admits escalating assaults carried out by Israeli soldiers and extremist settlers against the Palestinians, their property and their holy sites.
Tzipi Livni and Chief Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molcho represented the Israeli side, while Chief Palestinian negotiator, Dr. Saeb Erekat, and Mohammad Eshtayya represented the Palestinian side.
While no progress was made on core issues, the two sides agreed to strengthen the American “mediation role”, as demanded by the Palestinian side. Yet, U.S Special Envoy to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Martin Indyk, did not participate in the meeting.
The two sides recently agreed to intensify negotiations sessions, and to hold two sessions of direct talks per week, to discuss a large array of issues, in an attempt to reach a peace deal.
Israeli TV, Channel 10 quoted a Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, stating that the two sides are holding extensive rounds of talks, and decided to extend the number of hours in each round to eight.
The official said that the United States has demanded Israel and the Palestinian Authority to intensify the talks, especially amidst rising serious conflicts regarding arrangements on core issues, such as borders, the refugees, and security.
Palestinian and Israeli negotiations teams have been holding a meeting or two a week since direct talks were resumed under direct American mediation.
Each round of talks mainly lasted an hour or two, an issue that casted doubt on achieving the American goal of reaching a final status peace deal by April of 2013.
The talks were resumed in late July following three years of stalemate, while most rounds of talks, especially recent ones, have been held away from the media, with no signs of achieving any notable progress.
Obstacles remain largely the same, with no Israeli interest in ending its illegitimate occupation of Palestine, its insistence of building and expanding Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and in occupied Jerusalem, in addition to the Israeli demand to focus on security arrangements rather than other core issue.
Israel refuses to recognize international resolutions by the United Nations and the Security Council, and insists that its illegitimate settlements are not an obstacle to peace.
This is happening admits escalating assaults carried out by Israeli soldiers and extremist settlers against the Palestinians, their property and their holy sites.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday night that there will be no peace with Palestinians until they "recognize Israel as a Jewish state."
Netanyahu said in his statement at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv that Palestinians must "ending the refusal to recognize the right of the Jews to a homeland of their own in Israel."
"This recognition constitutes a necessary condition to getting a true solution to the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict," Netanyahu added.
The Jerusalem Post reported that rather than presenting a "vision" speech, of where he thought the negotiations with the Palestinians were headed, Netanyahu used the opportunity to emphasize that a Palestinian recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people was a necessary condition to any agreement.
Netanyahu stressed in his statement that the root of the conflict has not been the "occupation," the "territories" or the settlements, but rather an Arab refusal to recognize the Jews' right to a sovereign state in their historic homeland.
It's worth mentioning that Israeli-Palestinian peace talks resumed at the end of July, under the auspices of the United States, after three years hiatus.
Netanyahu also proposed other conditions to reach a final peace agreement, demanding that Palestinian refugees abandon "the right to return," and he confirmed the necessary to reach an arrangement that meets Israel's security measures.
Netanyahu said in his statement at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv that Palestinians must "ending the refusal to recognize the right of the Jews to a homeland of their own in Israel."
"This recognition constitutes a necessary condition to getting a true solution to the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict," Netanyahu added.
The Jerusalem Post reported that rather than presenting a "vision" speech, of where he thought the negotiations with the Palestinians were headed, Netanyahu used the opportunity to emphasize that a Palestinian recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people was a necessary condition to any agreement.
Netanyahu stressed in his statement that the root of the conflict has not been the "occupation," the "territories" or the settlements, but rather an Arab refusal to recognize the Jews' right to a sovereign state in their historic homeland.
It's worth mentioning that Israeli-Palestinian peace talks resumed at the end of July, under the auspices of the United States, after three years hiatus.
Netanyahu also proposed other conditions to reach a final peace agreement, demanding that Palestinian refugees abandon "the right to return," and he confirmed the necessary to reach an arrangement that meets Israel's security measures.
6 oct 2013
Hamas spokesman Dr. Sami Abu Zuhri has urged PA chief Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from negotiation with Israel after its premier Benjamin Netanyahu announced its failure. Abu Zuhri said in a press release on Saturday that Netanyahu’s announcement that the result of the talks was a big zero after two months of its initiation should entail a PA withdrawal from the talks.
He said that the PA leadership in Ramallah should return to completing national reconciliation by implementing all articles of agreements in this regard and approving a national strategy that would stand up to Israeli crimes and intransigence.
He said that the PA leadership in Ramallah should return to completing national reconciliation by implementing all articles of agreements in this regard and approving a national strategy that would stand up to Israeli crimes and intransigence.
4 oct 2013
Israeli housing minister, Uri Ariel, has said that the West Bank will be under Israeli control forever.
Ariel was addressing settlers near the Shilafim settlement in the occupied West Bank. "All the area located to the west of the Jordan River is owned by Israel and it will continue to be under Israeli control forever," he said.
The remarks came as Palestinian-Israeli peace talk meetings continued and Palestinian Authority officials expected Israel to offer some concessions on land and settlement issues.
Previously, former chief of the Israeli Shin Bet, had said that he did not believe Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu's, intentions for a two-state solution.
Analysts said that such remarks proved that Israel's leaders were not interested in the peace process and that they were only buying time to 'Judaise' more lands in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
This article was originally posted on Middle East Monitor. View original post here.
Ariel was addressing settlers near the Shilafim settlement in the occupied West Bank. "All the area located to the west of the Jordan River is owned by Israel and it will continue to be under Israeli control forever," he said.
The remarks came as Palestinian-Israeli peace talk meetings continued and Palestinian Authority officials expected Israel to offer some concessions on land and settlement issues.
Previously, former chief of the Israeli Shin Bet, had said that he did not believe Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu's, intentions for a two-state solution.
Analysts said that such remarks proved that Israel's leaders were not interested in the peace process and that they were only buying time to 'Judaise' more lands in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
This article was originally posted on Middle East Monitor. View original post here.
US Special envoy Martin Indyk arrived in Israel for the eighth meeting of Israeli and Palestinian negotiators since July. The talks resumed after a two-week break while the Israeli and Palestinian leaders were at the UN and the focus was on Iran's nuclear program.
Both sides have kept the details of the negotiations, which are being shepherded by US Secretary of State John Kerry, under wraps.
The talks are meant to reach a final-status peace deal that will solve all outstanding issues between the two sides, including borders, refugees, water, and Jerusalem. It is also meant to end with a declaration that Israelis and Palestinians have reached an "end of conflict," meaning Palestinians have no future claims on Israel.
But there has recently been speculation in the Israeli press that Israel will offer some kind of interim agreement, perhaps a Palestinian state in Areas A and B, the 40 percent of the West Bank that is already under complete or partial Palestinian control and includes the main Palestinian cities such as Ramallah, Nablus and Bethlehem.
"Israel is not prepared for a final agreement that will mean ending its control over the occupied territories," Ghassan Khatib, a professor of cultural studies at Birzeit University and a former Palestinian government spokesman told The Media Line. "The question is if the US is willing to use its leverage over Israel."
On the other side, many Israeli analysts say the Palestinians have passed up several opportunities for a peace deal with Israel, and nothing has changed.
"I don't think the Palestinians are interested in a solution in any case," Efraim Karsh, a professor at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. "They have refused all solutions over the past 20 years. What's changed now – that they're charmed by Kerry?"
Palestinians say Israel must stop all construction on land Israel acquired in 1967, where some 330,000 Israelis live, as well as east Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1967. Israeli officials counter that Palestinians must stop incitement against Israel in mosques and Palestinian schools.
The question of the Palestinians' right of return will also be difficult. Some 750,000 Palestinians both fled their homes and were forced to leave when the state of Israel was created in 1948. Today their descendants – some 4 million people – claim the right to return to their former homes in Israel.
At the same time, Israel demands that Palestinians recognize the country as a "Jewish state."
Some Palestinians say that the two-state solution, meaning an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, is no longer feasible and they should advocate for a "one-state solution." In this scenario, Israel would annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip and give the Palestinians citizenship. Most Israelis oppose this solution because, with the higher Palestinian birthrate, Israel would eventually no longer have a Jewish majority.
Other Palestinian analysts say the two-state solution, which is favored by the US, is still possible.
"Time hasn't run out yet, but it is running out," Khatib said. "I think this term of Netanyahu is the last opportunity for the two-state solution. If he continues to consolidate the "occupation" it will be too late.
Source: The Media Line
Both sides have kept the details of the negotiations, which are being shepherded by US Secretary of State John Kerry, under wraps.
The talks are meant to reach a final-status peace deal that will solve all outstanding issues between the two sides, including borders, refugees, water, and Jerusalem. It is also meant to end with a declaration that Israelis and Palestinians have reached an "end of conflict," meaning Palestinians have no future claims on Israel.
But there has recently been speculation in the Israeli press that Israel will offer some kind of interim agreement, perhaps a Palestinian state in Areas A and B, the 40 percent of the West Bank that is already under complete or partial Palestinian control and includes the main Palestinian cities such as Ramallah, Nablus and Bethlehem.
"Israel is not prepared for a final agreement that will mean ending its control over the occupied territories," Ghassan Khatib, a professor of cultural studies at Birzeit University and a former Palestinian government spokesman told The Media Line. "The question is if the US is willing to use its leverage over Israel."
On the other side, many Israeli analysts say the Palestinians have passed up several opportunities for a peace deal with Israel, and nothing has changed.
"I don't think the Palestinians are interested in a solution in any case," Efraim Karsh, a professor at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. "They have refused all solutions over the past 20 years. What's changed now – that they're charmed by Kerry?"
Palestinians say Israel must stop all construction on land Israel acquired in 1967, where some 330,000 Israelis live, as well as east Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1967. Israeli officials counter that Palestinians must stop incitement against Israel in mosques and Palestinian schools.
The question of the Palestinians' right of return will also be difficult. Some 750,000 Palestinians both fled their homes and were forced to leave when the state of Israel was created in 1948. Today their descendants – some 4 million people – claim the right to return to their former homes in Israel.
At the same time, Israel demands that Palestinians recognize the country as a "Jewish state."
Some Palestinians say that the two-state solution, meaning an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, is no longer feasible and they should advocate for a "one-state solution." In this scenario, Israel would annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip and give the Palestinians citizenship. Most Israelis oppose this solution because, with the higher Palestinian birthrate, Israel would eventually no longer have a Jewish majority.
Other Palestinian analysts say the two-state solution, which is favored by the US, is still possible.
"Time hasn't run out yet, but it is running out," Khatib said. "I think this term of Netanyahu is the last opportunity for the two-state solution. If he continues to consolidate the "occupation" it will be too late.
Source: The Media Line
3 oct 2013
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni told Israeli paper The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that she is aiming to reach a final-status agreement with the Palestinian Authority (PA).
In an interview, Livni said she had not changed her negotiating tactic from the talks that ended in 2008: "There is no deal on anything until there is a deal on everything," as the Post put it.
Livni also denied the accusations by Likud deputy ministers Danny Danon and Ze’ev Elkin that she is focused on an interim agreement with the PA to create a Palestinian state with temporary borders.
“My goal is an agreement that will end the conflict and all claims for both sides,” she said. “I have never used the term ‘interim agreement.’” Livni said that a partial agreement would not work based on the negotiating tactics being used by both sides.
She said there could not be a "give and take" if there isn't the assurance that all the issues will be resolved.
In an interview, Livni said she had not changed her negotiating tactic from the talks that ended in 2008: "There is no deal on anything until there is a deal on everything," as the Post put it.
Livni also denied the accusations by Likud deputy ministers Danny Danon and Ze’ev Elkin that she is focused on an interim agreement with the PA to create a Palestinian state with temporary borders.
“My goal is an agreement that will end the conflict and all claims for both sides,” she said. “I have never used the term ‘interim agreement.’” Livni said that a partial agreement would not work based on the negotiating tactics being used by both sides.
She said there could not be a "give and take" if there isn't the assurance that all the issues will be resolved.
PLO Executive Committee member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, visited on Tuesday October 1st 2013, the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, Virginia and addressed about 100 State Department diplomats who are preparing to go to the Middle East.
Ashrawi discussed the issue of the ongoing negotiations and Israeli violations on the ground, PLO Department of Culture and Information said in a press release Wednesday. In addition, Dr. Ashrawi addressed the issue of the requirements of a just peace and the obstacles that have prevented it so far.
Ashrawi also answered questions regarding the latest political developments in Palestine, Palestinian nation and institution-building, and the role of regional players and international actors in achieving Palestinian statehood.
Ashrawi discussed the issue of the ongoing negotiations and Israeli violations on the ground, PLO Department of Culture and Information said in a press release Wednesday. In addition, Dr. Ashrawi addressed the issue of the requirements of a just peace and the obstacles that have prevented it so far.
Ashrawi also answered questions regarding the latest political developments in Palestine, Palestinian nation and institution-building, and the role of regional players and international actors in achieving Palestinian statehood.
Fifty-eight percent of Palestinians expect a third intifada if the peace talks with Israel fail, a poll published on Wednesday showed.
The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion conducted the survey, which covered a random sample of 1,110 Palestinians representing a demographic sample of adults in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. It has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
Fifty percent of Palestinians support the resumption of the peace negotiations with Israel, while 39% oppose it, the survey showed.
Asked how an agreement with Israel should be ratified, 46% said that it should be approved through a referendum, while 25% said that a decision by the Palestinian Authority would be sufficient.
When asked whether they anticipate the outbreak of a third intifada in case the peace process ended in failure, 58% replied in the affirmative, while 26% said they did not expect violence.
Asked what rating they would give the performance of PA President Mahmoud Abbas in managing the talks with Israel, on a scale from 1 to 10, the average rating Palestinians gave was 6.
More than 60% of respondents said they were satisfied with the way Abbas was dealing with his post.
Also on Wednesday, Nimer Hammad, political adviser to Abbas, said that if the current peace talks fail, the result would be a one-state solution such as the one that existed in South Africa.
Hammad told the Quds Net News Agency that the talks with Israel still haven't reached a dead-end. However, he said, they were "facing difficulties here and there."
Commenting on {Israeli} Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's Tuesday address to the United Nations General Assembly, Hammad said: "The speech is far from reflecting sincerity and a serious desire in telling the truth."
This article was originally publsihed on The Jerusalem Post
The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion conducted the survey, which covered a random sample of 1,110 Palestinians representing a demographic sample of adults in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. It has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
Fifty percent of Palestinians support the resumption of the peace negotiations with Israel, while 39% oppose it, the survey showed.
Asked how an agreement with Israel should be ratified, 46% said that it should be approved through a referendum, while 25% said that a decision by the Palestinian Authority would be sufficient.
When asked whether they anticipate the outbreak of a third intifada in case the peace process ended in failure, 58% replied in the affirmative, while 26% said they did not expect violence.
Asked what rating they would give the performance of PA President Mahmoud Abbas in managing the talks with Israel, on a scale from 1 to 10, the average rating Palestinians gave was 6.
More than 60% of respondents said they were satisfied with the way Abbas was dealing with his post.
Also on Wednesday, Nimer Hammad, political adviser to Abbas, said that if the current peace talks fail, the result would be a one-state solution such as the one that existed in South Africa.
Hammad told the Quds Net News Agency that the talks with Israel still haven't reached a dead-end. However, he said, they were "facing difficulties here and there."
Commenting on {Israeli} Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's Tuesday address to the United Nations General Assembly, Hammad said: "The speech is far from reflecting sincerity and a serious desire in telling the truth."
This article was originally publsihed on The Jerusalem Post
The Israeli authorities have approved the construction of 32 additional housing units, in Beit Orot in occupied Jerusalem after the establishment of 28 housing units in Jabal al-Zaytun in Jerusalem. The lawyer Kais Nasser told al-Ayam newspaper that four buildings are planned to be established in Beit Orot settlement consisting of 32 housing units.
The settlement expansion is funded by the American-Jewish millionaire Irving Moscovich, who had previously held a conference with the participation of Minister of Housing during which they discussed the Israeli settlement construction in the Old City of Jerusalem.
The settlement was built several years ago, where a Jewish religious school was established for inciting settlement expansion and building the alleged Temple on the ruins of al-Aqsa mosque.
The lawyer added that the expansion project of Beit Orot settlement was submitted by the religious school to confiscate more than three dunums of al-Tur neighborhood.
Nasser considered the project as a serious escalation in settlement expansion where it will pave the way to build a large settlement outpost in al-Tur neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem.
The settlement expansion is funded by the American-Jewish millionaire Irving Moscovich, who had previously held a conference with the participation of Minister of Housing during which they discussed the Israeli settlement construction in the Old City of Jerusalem.
The settlement was built several years ago, where a Jewish religious school was established for inciting settlement expansion and building the alleged Temple on the ruins of al-Aqsa mosque.
The lawyer added that the expansion project of Beit Orot settlement was submitted by the religious school to confiscate more than three dunums of al-Tur neighborhood.
Nasser considered the project as a serious escalation in settlement expansion where it will pave the way to build a large settlement outpost in al-Tur neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem.
2 oct 2013
The Palestinian government in Gaza renewed its appeal to the world's free people to organize aid convoys to break the blockade imposed on Gaza and protect the human rights of its people. In a press release issued following its weekly meeting on Tuesday, the government expressed its grave concern over the disastrous situation at the Rafah border crossing and the growing suffering of citizens because of its closure, appealing to the Egyptian authorities to open the crossing naturally before the movement of passengers and goods.
As for the peace talks, the government strongly denounced the Palestinian authority for its intransigent insistence on swimming against the current and defying the vast majority of its people who reject its frivolous negotiations with the Israeli occupation and its persistence in raping the representation of the Palestinian people and controlling their destiny.
The government emphasized that the Palestinian people reject any concessions being made by the PA and Fatah on their national constants and rights.
The government also called on the Palestinian people inside and outside occupied Palestine to continue organizing activities and protests in support of the Aqsa Mosque, exposing Israel's violations in Jerusalem and backing the steadfastness of its natives.
It urged the Arab League and the organization of Islamic cooperation to make further efforts to support the Palestinians in Jerusalem and help them stand in the face of the Israeli occupation and its plots.
As for the peace talks, the government strongly denounced the Palestinian authority for its intransigent insistence on swimming against the current and defying the vast majority of its people who reject its frivolous negotiations with the Israeli occupation and its persistence in raping the representation of the Palestinian people and controlling their destiny.
The government emphasized that the Palestinian people reject any concessions being made by the PA and Fatah on their national constants and rights.
The government also called on the Palestinian people inside and outside occupied Palestine to continue organizing activities and protests in support of the Aqsa Mosque, exposing Israel's violations in Jerusalem and backing the steadfastness of its natives.
It urged the Arab League and the organization of Islamic cooperation to make further efforts to support the Palestinians in Jerusalem and help them stand in the face of the Israeli occupation and its plots.
Israeli deputy army minister, Danny Danon, said the Middle East peace process "will soon be recognised as definitively dead." Danon told the Financial Times that "if the Israelis were surprised by an agreement, it would require not only a referendum, something Netanyahu has committed to do, but fresh elections too.
"If you reach the point of having an agreement which includes giving away major parts of the land of (Israel), we will have to go for general elections, no matter what," he said.
Danon espouses what he describes as a "three-state solution": a regional agreement between (Israel), Jordan and Egypt that would give Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip some rights in those three countries, but no distinct state.
"My goal is to get hold of the majority of the land with the minimum amount of the Palestinian population," Mr Danon said. "This is the starting point for the negotiations when we sit down with the regional partners and the Palestinians."
"If you reach the point of having an agreement which includes giving away major parts of the land of (Israel), we will have to go for general elections, no matter what," he said.
Danon espouses what he describes as a "three-state solution": a regional agreement between (Israel), Jordan and Egypt that would give Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip some rights in those three countries, but no distinct state.
"My goal is to get hold of the majority of the land with the minimum amount of the Palestinian population," Mr Danon said. "This is the starting point for the negotiations when we sit down with the regional partners and the Palestinians."
1 oct 2013
Israeli police on Tuesday temporarily closed Al-Quds university offices in Jerusalem's Old City to prevent the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine from participating in a media conference.
The leftist group was due to participate in a news conference organized by the Coalition for Jerusalem to urge the PA to stop negotiations with Israel.
The Coalition for Jerusalem has started a campaign across Palestine to collect signatures in support of the PA ending peace talks.
The group said the raid by Israeli police was a violation of international law.
Israeli police chief Yohanan Danino signed an induction banning the PFLP from holding the press conference and Israeli police raided the offices and evicted dozens of participants.
The leftist group was due to participate in a news conference organized by the Coalition for Jerusalem to urge the PA to stop negotiations with Israel.
The Coalition for Jerusalem has started a campaign across Palestine to collect signatures in support of the PA ending peace talks.
The group said the raid by Israeli police was a violation of international law.
Israeli police chief Yohanan Danino signed an induction banning the PFLP from holding the press conference and Israeli police raided the offices and evicted dozens of participants.
Israeli authorities intended to build a new settlement on a 4000 sq. m area which belongs to Al-rijbi family in the old town of al-Khalil, Peace Now Group revealed. "This would be the first new settlement in Hebron since the 1980s, with potentially devastating consequences with respect to Palestinian residents of Hebron," the Israeli group said.
The group warned of the Israeli intention to establish another large new settlement in the heart of al-Khalil, at a site known as “the House of Contention,” it will likely take place in the coming days or weeks.
Netanyahu declared his intention, last week, to encourage the establishment of a new settlement in Hebron at a site known as “Beit Hamachpela.”
The site in question is a large building located inside the built-up area of Hebron, on the road connecting Kiryat Arba (located on Hebron’s periphery) and the Ibrahim Mosque. Settlers have long sought to convince Israeli soldiers to take control of this strategic corridor, with the goal of establishing contiguous Israeli control between the two settlement areas, the group stated.
The group warned of the Israeli intention to establish another large new settlement in the heart of al-Khalil, at a site known as “the House of Contention,” it will likely take place in the coming days or weeks.
Netanyahu declared his intention, last week, to encourage the establishment of a new settlement in Hebron at a site known as “Beit Hamachpela.”
The site in question is a large building located inside the built-up area of Hebron, on the road connecting Kiryat Arba (located on Hebron’s periphery) and the Ibrahim Mosque. Settlers have long sought to convince Israeli soldiers to take control of this strategic corridor, with the goal of establishing contiguous Israeli control between the two settlement areas, the group stated.
Edward Said died ten years ago – in September 2003, after a twelve-year battle with leukemia. One of the 20th century’s great intellectuals, Said, author of the masterworks Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism, was also a beloved professor to generations of students at Columbia University, a gifted amateur pianist and an opera critic for The Nation magazine.
He was perhaps best known for his fierce defense of the rights of his people, the Palestinians, in numerous books and hundreds of essays and articles published worldwide.
September also marks another fateful 20th anniversary – that of the now-infamous Arafat-Rabin handshake on the White House lawn, which sealed the Oslo accords. The legacies of Oslo and its greatest critic, Edward Said, stand as polar opposites. Indeed, it was Said who was among the first to sharply criticise the accords, in part because, unlike many satisfied pundits of the day, he had actually read them. For this reason, his widow Mariam told me, he had declined a White House invitation to attend the ceremony in September 1993. Today, his words on Oslo are the soundings of a prophet.
A Kingdom of Illusions
“What Israel has gotten is official Palestinian consent to continue occupation,” Said wrote in “The Middle East ‘Peace Process’,” an essay in Peace and its Discontents. “[A] kingdom of illusions, with Israel firmly in command.” He wrote these words in response to “Oslo II”, of 1995, when Israel’s full military control of the West Bank shrank slightly, from 72 to 60 percent – the same as today, 18 years later.
Indeed his earlier concerns, written four days before the White House ceremony he had declined to attend, were born out. “The ‘historical breakthrough’ … leaves Palestinians very much the subordinates, with Israel still in charge of settlements, East Jerusalem, and the economy,” Said wrote in the Guardian and Cairo’s Al Ahram Weekly. “Israel will control the land, water, overall security, and foreign affairs. … For the undefined future, Israel will dominate the West Bank, including … almost all the water and land, a good percentage of which it has already taken. The question is, how much land is Israel going to in fact cede for peace?”
You are forgiven if it seems these words were written last week. In the two decades since Said wrote them, a succession of would-be peacemakers have recycled their failures as a diplomatic “Groundhog Day”: Same old ideas, same failed “process”.
Yet Said, despite the frequent vitriol of his critics (Commentary dubbed him “Professor of Terror”), was not an opponent of peace per se. He was, rather, an advocate of a just peace.
In 1998, nearly five years into the Oslo process, Said began investigating alternatives to the peaceful and just coexistence he deeply believed in for all of the people between the river and the sea – the Jordan and the Mediterranean. This conviction led him into a friendship with the Argentine-Israeli conductor and pianist, Daniel Barenboim, which resulted in their founding the West Eastern Divan Orchestra. Today, ten years after the death of Said, the Divan remains popular with audiences in the US and Europe. But with the spirit of rapprochement long faded from the Holy Land, the orchestra has fallen out of favour with many Palestinians. Indeed, some of the orchestra’s Arab musicians have left out of frustration that the Divan is unwilling to make a unified public statement against the occupation of Palestine.
What follows is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, tentatively titled Children of the Stones. The excerpt focuses on Said’s determination to find what he called “an alternative way of making peace”. The account is based on multiple interviews, video footage, secondary and first-hand accounts, including Tania Nasir’s remembrance in Al Ahram Weekly.
Children of the Stones
Edward’s scepticism of the peace accords deepened in the Spring of 1998, when he travelled across Israel and Palestine for an autobiographical film produced by the BBC to mark the 50th anniversary of the creation of Israel and the Palestinian “Nakba” (Catastrophe) of 1948. One day he went to a rubble-strewn field where, hours earlier, a Palestinian home had been demolished by Israeli bulldozers. “Every day, every hour, every minute for 50 years, and it’s continuing,” a visibly anguished Edward told the film crew. Behind him, an old man in a checkered keffiyeh knelt beside the fallen stones outside his former home, praying to Mecca. “Look, the little bits of plastic, the little logs, the bit of railing here, a tin can crushed here,” Edward said. “These are the atoms out of which the tragedy of Palestine is constructed.” Edward paused repeatedly, short of breath, holding back tears. “It’s very very hard for me to stand here talking about it … when I see my own people going through this … without any relief, without any sympathy or support from the so-called civilised world. And we hear about the peace process, but who is protecting, who is giving these people peace?”
Edward had been battling leukemia for nearly seven years, and probing urgently for an “alternative way of making peace.” Encounters like this drove him deeper into the search for new ideas. He remained convinced that one day, Palestinian independence was inevitable – just not through Oslo. “Palestine and Palestinians remain, despite Israel’s concerted efforts,” he wrote. “As an idea, a memory, and as an often buried or invisible reality, Palestine and its people have simply not disappeared.” As he travelled the Holy Land that spring, Edward encountered artists, politicians and intellectuals on both sides who shared his views, and who were willing to try new things to put them into action. This alternative thinking, he believed, should focus not on the details of a flawed agreement, but on bringing together the two peoples on equal footing.
In his search for alternatives based on equality, Edward had found a kindred spirit in Daniel Barenboim, the Israeli musician who had become his best friend, and with whom he traveled that spring. “We must do something for our people,” Daniel would tell Edward again and again.
Edward was in East Jerusalem, at the American Colony hotel, excited to share his ideas, and his friendship with Daniel, with his friends in Palestine. He picked up the phone and got an outside line. “Tania”, he said when he heard the voice on the other end. “Keefek? Keefcom? How are you and Hanna?”
Tania and Hanna Nasir were old friends of Edward and his wife, Mariam. Edward and Hanna went back to the days of Palestinian West Jerusalem in the 1940s, before the war of 1948 resulted in the flight and expulsion of Palestinians from the western portion of the city. Later, the two couples knew each other in the Palestinian diaspora, most recently in Jordan, where Hanna, the president of Birzeit University in the West Bank, lived in exile for 19 years after his expulsion by Israel. He’d been charged with “security violations” following protests at the university against Israeli rule. In the early days of Oslo, as a high-profile gesture of reconciliation, Israel had allowed Hanna to return. When he crossed over the River Jordan and onto home soil for the first time in nearly two decades, Edward and Mariam had been watching the historic event on television. That evening, from New York, they called their old friends in celebration.
Now Tania and Hanna were back together in the home they had shared with their children before his exile. It was the same house in which Hanna’s Christian family had established the Birzeit Higher School in the 1920s. That school would evolve into Birzeit University, eventually under Hanna’s leadership. Hanna’s sister, Rima Tarazi, was a co-founder, and his nephew, Suhail Khoury, the new director of the Palestine National Conservatory of Music (the Mahad), which was established under the auspices of the university. Tania, trained as a soprano, collaborated frequently with Rima, a pianist, on Palestinian songs of liberation, set in a classical vein.
Now Edward had a proposal for Tania, with whom he shared a deep love of classical music.
“Tania,” Edward said from his room at the American Colony, his voice energised and urgent. “I am here with my close friend Daniel Barenboim. He is a wonderful man, a great human being.” Tania knew of Daniel’s reputation as an advocate for the Palestinian cause. As a musician, she had long been familiar with Barenboim, and she knew the two men had become close friends. “It was part of the general atmosphere of people seeking rapprochement,” she recalled. Edward had taken a stand against the Oslo accords, but nevertheless, a sense of possibility was in the air. “It was all part of our inner dialogue: to where will this lead us?”
Now, Edward was suggesting, it could lead Tania to a concert hall in West Jerusalem.
“Daniel is giving a concert this weekend in West Jerusalem,” Edward told her. “You’re invited, Tania. We want you to come.”
Tania paused, unsure of how to respond. Under different circumstances, she would have said yes immediately. She wanted to preserve the remnants of positive feeling she and Hanna had felt since their return from exile, despite the growing violence and expanding settlements – including one on the hill just outside her living room window. But attending a concert in West Jerusalem would be a huge leap. She’d been born there nearly 57 years earlier, in 1941, but hadn’t been back in decades. She was not allowed, in fact, to go, by the authorities. Even if she obtained a permit, crossing from occupied territory to the land of her long-time enemy might be more than she could handle.
Tania believed as a musician that the arts could be a vehicle for understanding. But with the facts on the ground being what they were, she did not feel comfortable traveling to West Jerusalem, now part of another country, when that country still held her people under occupation. The situation was not normal and she did not want to suggest by going to Israel that it was. Still: Why should she decline to attend a piano recital in West Jerusalem by one of the world’s great musicians – and a defender of her people’s rights – on the invitation of her dear friend, Edward Said? What purpose would that serve?
Tania promised Edward she would think about it. She trusted and believed in Edward, and admired that he was trying to open new possibilities. “Edward was hungry,” she recalled. “He wanted to know what could change. There was this feeling that we could push for something. His friendship with Daniel was part of this.” Tania felt she owed it to Edward, and to Daniel for his invitation, and to herself, to find out what this was all about.
Soon she called Edward back, and found herself not only accepting the invitation to the concert, but inviting Edward and Daniel to dinner at the family home in Birzeit.
***
The guests arrived in the early evening, walking into a family room of 12-foot cross-vault ceilings and foot-thick plaster walls draped with Palestinian embroidery, and framing an upright piano, above which hung Nasir family photos dating back to the 1930s. Persian carpets covered the red-tiled floors.
Daniel, Edward and their hosts settled into couches, sipping arak and snacking from plates of grape leaves and candied almonds. Daniel asked about Hanna’s experience of deportation and exile. In November 1974, the university president explained, following the demonstrations of his students, he was arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded, place in a van with other deportees, and “driven for seven hours towards an unknown destiny”. Soldiers removed the blindfold and told Hanna he was in Lebanon.
“And then you moved to Jordan?” Daniel asked.
Yes, Hanna replied. In exile.
Tania noticed the concern on Daniels’ face. She was struck by his respectful, probing questions. She told him about the years of shuttling their children back and forth between Birzeit, where their family was determined to remain present, and Amman, where their father now lived. They needed travel permits, which required multiple stamps of approval from various occupation authorities. “From the municipality, the police station, the ministry of education, the tax centre, whatever,” Tania said. “I would sometimes have to do this over several days, because you’d have such long lines, and all this waiting. And all of a sudden there would be a soldier there, and someone would be out of line, or if whimsically he would just decide that we had misbehaved, he would start scolding us like children, and kick us all out. I would have been waiting for three or four hours, from the morning. ‘We’re finished now. Come tomorrow.’ That’s when you really feel occupied. And there was a fear inside you, that he would never stamp your permit, so you would shut up. And I would burn inside, because I had to get to Amman, to my husband, to the children, who had to go back to school.”
At the Allenby Bridge at the River Jordan, the dividing line between the West Bank and the kingdom of Jordan, “we would wait for eight hours, the children would have no food, no water, no diapers, no changing. I would be terrified if they would find a piece of paper in the children’s clothes, like a chocolate wrapper or something. And then they would send you all the way back to the end of the line. They knew it was chocolate, but it was an excuse: ‘You never know what’s on that piece of paper.’”
When Oslo arrived, Hanna said, as a kind of confidence-building measure in the peace process, Israel allowed him to come home. Tania went to Amman to accompany him, and Hanna made a point of saying that he would never cry and kiss the ground upon seeing Palestine again, like so many of the more sentimental refugees had done. The moment they crossed the Jordan and reached Palestinian soil, however, Hanna leapt from the bus in tears, kneeling down and kissing the ground. “Right on the bridge!” Tania laughed. “He was the first to go down from the bus!”
In nearby Jericho, throngs of jubilant Birzeit students cheered their president’s triumphant return. She and Hanna returned, Tania said, in a “genuine spirit of hope and reconciliation. We shared a sense of cautious joy.”
Five years later, the hope was dimming, Tania said, amidst an “avalanche of militancy and violence,” and the ever-expanding settlements. She pointed through the living room’s twin arched windows. Daniel looked to the southeast, beyond the darkened palm and cypress trees, to the bright yellow lights of a hilltop settlement a mile away.
Throughout the cocktail hour, and over a dinner of stuffed chicken and red wine, Tania sensed Edward’s pleasure at being with friends from both sides of the divide. He was listening intently; he knew all these stories, but his friend Daniel did not. “This was the first time I was confronted with people who had lived such a destiny,” he said years later. “I was very, very moved by that.”
Politics dominated the evening, but music was never far away. Hanna’s sister Rima, was a co-founder of the Palestine National Conservatory of Music. In the future, Daniel would play concerts there. Now, Edward and Daniel were in the nascent stages of a grand project – something that would focus on musicians from both sides, in a way that could promote a just peace and show what was possible. This was the idea.
The project still hadn’t taken shape. But soon Daniel would be considering an invitation by the city of Weimar, Germany, to play as part of the 250th birthday celebration of Goethe, a son of Weimar. Goethe sparked Edward’s sense of the possible. Unlike the “Orientalists” he regularly skewered as representatives of Western imperial and military domination, Edward saw Goethe as the epitome of a Westerner reaching out to understand the “other”. Goethe began his inquiry into Islam and the Arab world after receiving a torn page of the Quran from a returning German soldier in the early 19th century.
Such an inquiry, Edward believed, represented what could be possible, two centuries later, as a kind of parallel alternative to what he saw as a collapsing peace process. No place would be more appropriate for this than Weimar, where the currents of high culture and terrible history swirled together. It had been home to Bach, Liszt, Wagner, Nietzsche, and the death camp at Buchenwald. The Weimar invitation excited the imagination of the two friends, and soon they would begin thinking about bringing together young musicians from across the Middle East.
It was close to midnight by the time Edward and Daniel rose to leave and summoned their driver for the ride back to Jerusalem. Again, Daniel extended his invitation to Tania to attend the concert the next night in West Jerusalem. Tania assured him she would be there. There was risk involved, everyone knew – if caught trying to enter Israel without a permit, Tania could be arrested.
Late the next afternoon Edward sent a taxi eight miles north from Jerusalem to Birzeit. Tania climbed into the back alone, heading for the first time in decades to the city of her birth. Hanna had also lived in Jerusalem as a child, and as she rode, Tania recalled his old haunts: the Cinema Rex, the coffee shops, the YMCA, where he played tennis and studied Arabic typing, where his family attended concerts by the Palestine Symphony, and where the Palestinian musician Salvador Arnita gave his organ recitals. Now, without a permit, Tania would recall, “I had to come to Jerusalem in secrecy. I had to infiltrate it like an outlaw.”
Alone at the piano, Daniel played the first notes of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony in B minor, the Pathetique. Tania began to weep. She longed to disappear into the music, and for moments, she would, only to be gripped by doubts over whether she should have agreed to come.
An hour later, after Daniel had played the last notes of Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor, the audience rose in a standing ovation. Tania and Edward rose, too. Daniel walked forward, closer to the audience, spoke briefly in Hebrew, then switched to English.
“Last night I was in the West Bank, at the home of a Palestinian academic, who has recently returned from an unjust 20-year deportation by the Israeli government,” Daniel said. “He and his family received me not just as a friend, but more as a member of the family.”
Tania was astounded. She and Edward looked at each other. What was Daniel trying to say? It was silent in the auditorium. Daniel stood in the small pool of light, speaking into the darkened hall. He spoke of peace and justice, and of the need to end the suffering on both sides. Suddenly Tania heard him say: “I am happy to have my Palestinian hostess of last night with us here this evening. She has accepted my invitation to come to Jerusalem, despite prohibitions and many reservations. To thank her, I would like to dedicate my encore to her.”
Edward was embracing Tania. “Only Daniel can do it,” he said. “Only he has the guts.” Tania was overcome with emotion, which only grew deeper as Daniel sat down at the piano to play a Chopin nocturne. As a child, Tania had danced to the nocturnes.
Sandy Tolan is associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communicaton and Journalism at USC, and author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East. His book about playing music under occupation in Palestine will be published in 2014. He blogs at Ramallahcafe.com. Follow him on Twitter: @ramallahcafe. (This article was first published in Al Jazeera)
He was perhaps best known for his fierce defense of the rights of his people, the Palestinians, in numerous books and hundreds of essays and articles published worldwide.
September also marks another fateful 20th anniversary – that of the now-infamous Arafat-Rabin handshake on the White House lawn, which sealed the Oslo accords. The legacies of Oslo and its greatest critic, Edward Said, stand as polar opposites. Indeed, it was Said who was among the first to sharply criticise the accords, in part because, unlike many satisfied pundits of the day, he had actually read them. For this reason, his widow Mariam told me, he had declined a White House invitation to attend the ceremony in September 1993. Today, his words on Oslo are the soundings of a prophet.
A Kingdom of Illusions
“What Israel has gotten is official Palestinian consent to continue occupation,” Said wrote in “The Middle East ‘Peace Process’,” an essay in Peace and its Discontents. “[A] kingdom of illusions, with Israel firmly in command.” He wrote these words in response to “Oslo II”, of 1995, when Israel’s full military control of the West Bank shrank slightly, from 72 to 60 percent – the same as today, 18 years later.
Indeed his earlier concerns, written four days before the White House ceremony he had declined to attend, were born out. “The ‘historical breakthrough’ … leaves Palestinians very much the subordinates, with Israel still in charge of settlements, East Jerusalem, and the economy,” Said wrote in the Guardian and Cairo’s Al Ahram Weekly. “Israel will control the land, water, overall security, and foreign affairs. … For the undefined future, Israel will dominate the West Bank, including … almost all the water and land, a good percentage of which it has already taken. The question is, how much land is Israel going to in fact cede for peace?”
You are forgiven if it seems these words were written last week. In the two decades since Said wrote them, a succession of would-be peacemakers have recycled their failures as a diplomatic “Groundhog Day”: Same old ideas, same failed “process”.
Yet Said, despite the frequent vitriol of his critics (Commentary dubbed him “Professor of Terror”), was not an opponent of peace per se. He was, rather, an advocate of a just peace.
In 1998, nearly five years into the Oslo process, Said began investigating alternatives to the peaceful and just coexistence he deeply believed in for all of the people between the river and the sea – the Jordan and the Mediterranean. This conviction led him into a friendship with the Argentine-Israeli conductor and pianist, Daniel Barenboim, which resulted in their founding the West Eastern Divan Orchestra. Today, ten years after the death of Said, the Divan remains popular with audiences in the US and Europe. But with the spirit of rapprochement long faded from the Holy Land, the orchestra has fallen out of favour with many Palestinians. Indeed, some of the orchestra’s Arab musicians have left out of frustration that the Divan is unwilling to make a unified public statement against the occupation of Palestine.
What follows is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, tentatively titled Children of the Stones. The excerpt focuses on Said’s determination to find what he called “an alternative way of making peace”. The account is based on multiple interviews, video footage, secondary and first-hand accounts, including Tania Nasir’s remembrance in Al Ahram Weekly.
Children of the Stones
Edward’s scepticism of the peace accords deepened in the Spring of 1998, when he travelled across Israel and Palestine for an autobiographical film produced by the BBC to mark the 50th anniversary of the creation of Israel and the Palestinian “Nakba” (Catastrophe) of 1948. One day he went to a rubble-strewn field where, hours earlier, a Palestinian home had been demolished by Israeli bulldozers. “Every day, every hour, every minute for 50 years, and it’s continuing,” a visibly anguished Edward told the film crew. Behind him, an old man in a checkered keffiyeh knelt beside the fallen stones outside his former home, praying to Mecca. “Look, the little bits of plastic, the little logs, the bit of railing here, a tin can crushed here,” Edward said. “These are the atoms out of which the tragedy of Palestine is constructed.” Edward paused repeatedly, short of breath, holding back tears. “It’s very very hard for me to stand here talking about it … when I see my own people going through this … without any relief, without any sympathy or support from the so-called civilised world. And we hear about the peace process, but who is protecting, who is giving these people peace?”
Edward had been battling leukemia for nearly seven years, and probing urgently for an “alternative way of making peace.” Encounters like this drove him deeper into the search for new ideas. He remained convinced that one day, Palestinian independence was inevitable – just not through Oslo. “Palestine and Palestinians remain, despite Israel’s concerted efforts,” he wrote. “As an idea, a memory, and as an often buried or invisible reality, Palestine and its people have simply not disappeared.” As he travelled the Holy Land that spring, Edward encountered artists, politicians and intellectuals on both sides who shared his views, and who were willing to try new things to put them into action. This alternative thinking, he believed, should focus not on the details of a flawed agreement, but on bringing together the two peoples on equal footing.
In his search for alternatives based on equality, Edward had found a kindred spirit in Daniel Barenboim, the Israeli musician who had become his best friend, and with whom he traveled that spring. “We must do something for our people,” Daniel would tell Edward again and again.
Edward was in East Jerusalem, at the American Colony hotel, excited to share his ideas, and his friendship with Daniel, with his friends in Palestine. He picked up the phone and got an outside line. “Tania”, he said when he heard the voice on the other end. “Keefek? Keefcom? How are you and Hanna?”
Tania and Hanna Nasir were old friends of Edward and his wife, Mariam. Edward and Hanna went back to the days of Palestinian West Jerusalem in the 1940s, before the war of 1948 resulted in the flight and expulsion of Palestinians from the western portion of the city. Later, the two couples knew each other in the Palestinian diaspora, most recently in Jordan, where Hanna, the president of Birzeit University in the West Bank, lived in exile for 19 years after his expulsion by Israel. He’d been charged with “security violations” following protests at the university against Israeli rule. In the early days of Oslo, as a high-profile gesture of reconciliation, Israel had allowed Hanna to return. When he crossed over the River Jordan and onto home soil for the first time in nearly two decades, Edward and Mariam had been watching the historic event on television. That evening, from New York, they called their old friends in celebration.
Now Tania and Hanna were back together in the home they had shared with their children before his exile. It was the same house in which Hanna’s Christian family had established the Birzeit Higher School in the 1920s. That school would evolve into Birzeit University, eventually under Hanna’s leadership. Hanna’s sister, Rima Tarazi, was a co-founder, and his nephew, Suhail Khoury, the new director of the Palestine National Conservatory of Music (the Mahad), which was established under the auspices of the university. Tania, trained as a soprano, collaborated frequently with Rima, a pianist, on Palestinian songs of liberation, set in a classical vein.
Now Edward had a proposal for Tania, with whom he shared a deep love of classical music.
“Tania,” Edward said from his room at the American Colony, his voice energised and urgent. “I am here with my close friend Daniel Barenboim. He is a wonderful man, a great human being.” Tania knew of Daniel’s reputation as an advocate for the Palestinian cause. As a musician, she had long been familiar with Barenboim, and she knew the two men had become close friends. “It was part of the general atmosphere of people seeking rapprochement,” she recalled. Edward had taken a stand against the Oslo accords, but nevertheless, a sense of possibility was in the air. “It was all part of our inner dialogue: to where will this lead us?”
Now, Edward was suggesting, it could lead Tania to a concert hall in West Jerusalem.
“Daniel is giving a concert this weekend in West Jerusalem,” Edward told her. “You’re invited, Tania. We want you to come.”
Tania paused, unsure of how to respond. Under different circumstances, she would have said yes immediately. She wanted to preserve the remnants of positive feeling she and Hanna had felt since their return from exile, despite the growing violence and expanding settlements – including one on the hill just outside her living room window. But attending a concert in West Jerusalem would be a huge leap. She’d been born there nearly 57 years earlier, in 1941, but hadn’t been back in decades. She was not allowed, in fact, to go, by the authorities. Even if she obtained a permit, crossing from occupied territory to the land of her long-time enemy might be more than she could handle.
Tania believed as a musician that the arts could be a vehicle for understanding. But with the facts on the ground being what they were, she did not feel comfortable traveling to West Jerusalem, now part of another country, when that country still held her people under occupation. The situation was not normal and she did not want to suggest by going to Israel that it was. Still: Why should she decline to attend a piano recital in West Jerusalem by one of the world’s great musicians – and a defender of her people’s rights – on the invitation of her dear friend, Edward Said? What purpose would that serve?
Tania promised Edward she would think about it. She trusted and believed in Edward, and admired that he was trying to open new possibilities. “Edward was hungry,” she recalled. “He wanted to know what could change. There was this feeling that we could push for something. His friendship with Daniel was part of this.” Tania felt she owed it to Edward, and to Daniel for his invitation, and to herself, to find out what this was all about.
Soon she called Edward back, and found herself not only accepting the invitation to the concert, but inviting Edward and Daniel to dinner at the family home in Birzeit.
***
The guests arrived in the early evening, walking into a family room of 12-foot cross-vault ceilings and foot-thick plaster walls draped with Palestinian embroidery, and framing an upright piano, above which hung Nasir family photos dating back to the 1930s. Persian carpets covered the red-tiled floors.
Daniel, Edward and their hosts settled into couches, sipping arak and snacking from plates of grape leaves and candied almonds. Daniel asked about Hanna’s experience of deportation and exile. In November 1974, the university president explained, following the demonstrations of his students, he was arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded, place in a van with other deportees, and “driven for seven hours towards an unknown destiny”. Soldiers removed the blindfold and told Hanna he was in Lebanon.
“And then you moved to Jordan?” Daniel asked.
Yes, Hanna replied. In exile.
Tania noticed the concern on Daniels’ face. She was struck by his respectful, probing questions. She told him about the years of shuttling their children back and forth between Birzeit, where their family was determined to remain present, and Amman, where their father now lived. They needed travel permits, which required multiple stamps of approval from various occupation authorities. “From the municipality, the police station, the ministry of education, the tax centre, whatever,” Tania said. “I would sometimes have to do this over several days, because you’d have such long lines, and all this waiting. And all of a sudden there would be a soldier there, and someone would be out of line, or if whimsically he would just decide that we had misbehaved, he would start scolding us like children, and kick us all out. I would have been waiting for three or four hours, from the morning. ‘We’re finished now. Come tomorrow.’ That’s when you really feel occupied. And there was a fear inside you, that he would never stamp your permit, so you would shut up. And I would burn inside, because I had to get to Amman, to my husband, to the children, who had to go back to school.”
At the Allenby Bridge at the River Jordan, the dividing line between the West Bank and the kingdom of Jordan, “we would wait for eight hours, the children would have no food, no water, no diapers, no changing. I would be terrified if they would find a piece of paper in the children’s clothes, like a chocolate wrapper or something. And then they would send you all the way back to the end of the line. They knew it was chocolate, but it was an excuse: ‘You never know what’s on that piece of paper.’”
When Oslo arrived, Hanna said, as a kind of confidence-building measure in the peace process, Israel allowed him to come home. Tania went to Amman to accompany him, and Hanna made a point of saying that he would never cry and kiss the ground upon seeing Palestine again, like so many of the more sentimental refugees had done. The moment they crossed the Jordan and reached Palestinian soil, however, Hanna leapt from the bus in tears, kneeling down and kissing the ground. “Right on the bridge!” Tania laughed. “He was the first to go down from the bus!”
In nearby Jericho, throngs of jubilant Birzeit students cheered their president’s triumphant return. She and Hanna returned, Tania said, in a “genuine spirit of hope and reconciliation. We shared a sense of cautious joy.”
Five years later, the hope was dimming, Tania said, amidst an “avalanche of militancy and violence,” and the ever-expanding settlements. She pointed through the living room’s twin arched windows. Daniel looked to the southeast, beyond the darkened palm and cypress trees, to the bright yellow lights of a hilltop settlement a mile away.
Throughout the cocktail hour, and over a dinner of stuffed chicken and red wine, Tania sensed Edward’s pleasure at being with friends from both sides of the divide. He was listening intently; he knew all these stories, but his friend Daniel did not. “This was the first time I was confronted with people who had lived such a destiny,” he said years later. “I was very, very moved by that.”
Politics dominated the evening, but music was never far away. Hanna’s sister Rima, was a co-founder of the Palestine National Conservatory of Music. In the future, Daniel would play concerts there. Now, Edward and Daniel were in the nascent stages of a grand project – something that would focus on musicians from both sides, in a way that could promote a just peace and show what was possible. This was the idea.
The project still hadn’t taken shape. But soon Daniel would be considering an invitation by the city of Weimar, Germany, to play as part of the 250th birthday celebration of Goethe, a son of Weimar. Goethe sparked Edward’s sense of the possible. Unlike the “Orientalists” he regularly skewered as representatives of Western imperial and military domination, Edward saw Goethe as the epitome of a Westerner reaching out to understand the “other”. Goethe began his inquiry into Islam and the Arab world after receiving a torn page of the Quran from a returning German soldier in the early 19th century.
Such an inquiry, Edward believed, represented what could be possible, two centuries later, as a kind of parallel alternative to what he saw as a collapsing peace process. No place would be more appropriate for this than Weimar, where the currents of high culture and terrible history swirled together. It had been home to Bach, Liszt, Wagner, Nietzsche, and the death camp at Buchenwald. The Weimar invitation excited the imagination of the two friends, and soon they would begin thinking about bringing together young musicians from across the Middle East.
It was close to midnight by the time Edward and Daniel rose to leave and summoned their driver for the ride back to Jerusalem. Again, Daniel extended his invitation to Tania to attend the concert the next night in West Jerusalem. Tania assured him she would be there. There was risk involved, everyone knew – if caught trying to enter Israel without a permit, Tania could be arrested.
Late the next afternoon Edward sent a taxi eight miles north from Jerusalem to Birzeit. Tania climbed into the back alone, heading for the first time in decades to the city of her birth. Hanna had also lived in Jerusalem as a child, and as she rode, Tania recalled his old haunts: the Cinema Rex, the coffee shops, the YMCA, where he played tennis and studied Arabic typing, where his family attended concerts by the Palestine Symphony, and where the Palestinian musician Salvador Arnita gave his organ recitals. Now, without a permit, Tania would recall, “I had to come to Jerusalem in secrecy. I had to infiltrate it like an outlaw.”
Alone at the piano, Daniel played the first notes of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony in B minor, the Pathetique. Tania began to weep. She longed to disappear into the music, and for moments, she would, only to be gripped by doubts over whether she should have agreed to come.
An hour later, after Daniel had played the last notes of Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor, the audience rose in a standing ovation. Tania and Edward rose, too. Daniel walked forward, closer to the audience, spoke briefly in Hebrew, then switched to English.
“Last night I was in the West Bank, at the home of a Palestinian academic, who has recently returned from an unjust 20-year deportation by the Israeli government,” Daniel said. “He and his family received me not just as a friend, but more as a member of the family.”
Tania was astounded. She and Edward looked at each other. What was Daniel trying to say? It was silent in the auditorium. Daniel stood in the small pool of light, speaking into the darkened hall. He spoke of peace and justice, and of the need to end the suffering on both sides. Suddenly Tania heard him say: “I am happy to have my Palestinian hostess of last night with us here this evening. She has accepted my invitation to come to Jerusalem, despite prohibitions and many reservations. To thank her, I would like to dedicate my encore to her.”
Edward was embracing Tania. “Only Daniel can do it,” he said. “Only he has the guts.” Tania was overcome with emotion, which only grew deeper as Daniel sat down at the piano to play a Chopin nocturne. As a child, Tania had danced to the nocturnes.
Sandy Tolan is associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communicaton and Journalism at USC, and author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East. His book about playing music under occupation in Palestine will be published in 2014. He blogs at Ramallahcafe.com. Follow him on Twitter: @ramallahcafe. (This article was first published in Al Jazeera)
U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accelerate peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Haaretz newspaper reported Tuesday.
Obama also urged Netanyahu to start seriously discussing core issues, among them borders, security arrangements, Palestinian refugees, and Jerusalem, the newspaper added.
According to Haaretz, Netanyahu wanted to talk with Obama about the upcoming negotiation between the United States and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program, yet Obama went on talking with Netanyahu about the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in which he has a vested interest – since they are being conducted under US auspices.
Obama reported to Netanyahu on his meeting last week in New York with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, saying Abbas had asked for a more active US role in talks with Israel.
According to Palestinian officials, Abbas expressed his frustration with the lack of progress in the peace talks. They said the sides have yet to seriously discuss the borders of a future Palestinian state and Israel's security arrangement demands – two core issues they decided to focus on first.
The Palestinians said that the Israeli negotiating team presented only a general position and did not even agree that the talks will be based on 1967 borders with land swaps, added Haaretz.
Western sources told the Al-Hayat London-based newspaper that the Israelis are seeking to convert negotiations to a series of meetings between Netanyahu and President Mahmoud Abbas, while the Palestinians seek American pressure on Israel, in hopes of advancing the peace talks between the two parties.
Obama warned that if the talks, which began some six weeks ago, don't progress, the nine-month period allotted for negotiations would run out.
Obama also urged Netanyahu to start seriously discussing core issues, among them borders, security arrangements, Palestinian refugees, and Jerusalem, the newspaper added.
According to Haaretz, Netanyahu wanted to talk with Obama about the upcoming negotiation between the United States and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program, yet Obama went on talking with Netanyahu about the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in which he has a vested interest – since they are being conducted under US auspices.
Obama reported to Netanyahu on his meeting last week in New York with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, saying Abbas had asked for a more active US role in talks with Israel.
According to Palestinian officials, Abbas expressed his frustration with the lack of progress in the peace talks. They said the sides have yet to seriously discuss the borders of a future Palestinian state and Israel's security arrangement demands – two core issues they decided to focus on first.
The Palestinians said that the Israeli negotiating team presented only a general position and did not even agree that the talks will be based on 1967 borders with land swaps, added Haaretz.
Western sources told the Al-Hayat London-based newspaper that the Israelis are seeking to convert negotiations to a series of meetings between Netanyahu and President Mahmoud Abbas, while the Palestinians seek American pressure on Israel, in hopes of advancing the peace talks between the two parties.
Obama warned that if the talks, which began some six weeks ago, don't progress, the nine-month period allotted for negotiations would run out.