Power Grab: As Hamas and the PA posture for political gain, the Palestinian people suffer.

As Hamas and the PA posture for political gain, the Palestinian people suffer.

In anticipation of his meeting next month at the White House Palestinian Authority (PA) President Abbas has taken steps to pressure Hamas to accept PA authority over Gaza.  Presidential and parliamentary elections have not been held  for over a decade.

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami al-Hamdallah declared:

"I think there is a golden and historic chance to regain the unity of our people... Hamas should relinquish control of Gaza."

The PA  has been increasing the  pressure on Hamas by withholding the fuel  from Israel that powered Gaza's only generating plant, and by slashing the salaries of its 60,000 civil servants in Gaza by 30 percent.  These employees in Gaza do not work, but continue to draw salaries.  Hamas refuses to buy fuel from the PA for the Gaza power station because of a dispute over taxation. It shut down two weeks ago, plunging the people of Gaza into darkness.

Now,the Palestinian Authority has told Israel that it would no longer pay for the electricity Israel supplies to Gaza.   Israel supplies Gaza with 30 percent of its total electricity needs at a monthly cost of $11 million.  Less reliable Egyptian power lines also provide a portion of Gaza’s electrical needs. In an effort to avoid a humanitarian crisis, Israel did not immediately cut off the electrical supply.  The United Nations has also allocated $500,000 for the purchase of emergency fuel for Gaza’s 13 hospitals and 54 medical centers.

Electricity shortages have led to protests in Gaza. Cuts to the power supply affect the water supply. Sewage is flowing into the sea.

Fuad Al-Shobaki of the Palestinian Authority's Petroleum Authority blamed Hamas for manufacturing  the crisis, saying  Hamas was unable "to cover their inability to manage the Gaza Strip."

The fuel shortage is one more problem for Hamas-controlled Gaza, which is already dealing with soaring unemployment and a lack of drinkable water.

In 2016, the PA’s budget was $4.14 billion, of which the Gaza Strip’s share was $1.65 billion. Hamas continues to divert this funding  to weapons and terror tunnel, in preparation for their next war against Israel.

Eylon A. Levy of i24 News explains the Gaza energy crisis on Twitter:

Equivalence, and Lack Thereof

So, Israel has objected to Mahmoud Abbas meeting with Amna Muna. This woman was released this week, as part of the exchange of prisoners for Gilad Shalit. She had been serving a life sentence for luring a sixteen-year-old boy named Ofir Rahum to meet her in Jerusalem, with a fake Internet identity and promises of romance. She took him to Ramallah, where he was murdered by her co-conspirators.

And now she's out, to be greeted by a warm reception from Abbas. Israelis are, understandably, a little agitated at yet another reminder that people who've committed horrific crimes against civilians are, in fact, considered heroes and freedom fighters by Palestinian leaders.

Palestinian leaders, meanwhile, feel that it's entirely unreasonable for Israelis to be upset about a little business of a continential breakfast or two between a president and a terrorist. Jibril Rajub, who the AP describes as a 'Palestinian official', but the liberal-left Ha'aretz more bluntly describes as a 'Fatah strongman', was quite iffy about the whole thing. "If she doesn't deserve to live, why did you let her go?" he demanded. "We can't he talk to her?" he went on, addressing Israel Radio. "There are Israeli parliamentarians and army generals who are worse than her."

That's the sort of insane, unaccountable logic that anti-Israel nuts on the Internet tend to favor. Warfare, terrorism, diplomacy...it's all the same thing, more or less, right? There are members of the Knesset who are just as bad as this woman who lured a sixteen-year-old civilian to his death in cold blood, and we know this because...well, because Mr. Rajub says so, and he ought to know.

A Facebook friend provided a 'what-if' that I think casts some light on this whole situation: what if Netanyahu had sat down with some of the recent 'price tag' vandals, for coffee and a photo op? Bear in mind that as little as I approve of these people, they have done nothing that even begins to approach what Ms. Muna was convicted of. What if his excuse was the same as Abbas', that he should 'be with his people', wherever they were? What would the people say who are going to look at this and shrug, because it's not important, and there are people worse than Amna Muna? I think we all know.

(Ha'aretz also notes that Muna was supposed to go to Gaza after her release, but refused, because she's a secular Muslim. There's a sort of sad fitness to learning that even terrorists don't want to set foot in what Fortress Hamas has become. Amna Muna may be evil, but she's apparently not stupid.)

Our Queer Family In Palestine

No, this is not a follow-up to 'Our Mutual Friend', written by some edgy experimental heir to Charles Dickens. It's a phrase taken from a flyer distributed by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (yes, that's really their name), at a demonstration in front of the Castro Theater on Friday.

Why was QUIT protesting at the Castro Theater? I'll let them try to explain that themselves:

 In case you cannot read it, the cute little pink umbrella says "Israeli pinkwashing does not make me wet!". 'Pinkwashing', a term shamelessly stolen from breast cancer activists, is the new hip term in the BDS movement, for 'mentioning that Israel has a sterling human rights record on LGBT issues'. This is so true that they can't stand it, and must create little derogatory terms suggesting that allowing same-sex partners adoption rights, sending transgendered Israelis to represent the country at major music festivals, and acknowledging same-sex marriage from out of the country are all things Israelis have done simply to change the subject, and try to cover up their unspeakable evil.

Hey, we're not here to ruin anyone's good time, the flyer continues. We just want the same freedom to go out and have fun for all queers. But our queer family in Palestine doesn't have it. Many of them live under military occupation, and all of them live under a rigid system of discrimination and segregation very similar to apartheid South Africa.

This is the passage that makes me consider this otherwise fairly innocuous flyer perhaps the most chutzpahdik piece of writing that I've ever seen in a world full of terrible lies about Israel. Even coming from QUIT, this is a remarkable piece of chicanery. The deception comes in two layers. First is the expected one, which involves  throwing out words like 'military occupation', 'segregation' and 'apartheid', mischaracterizing and spinning the situation of Palestinians living under their own governments in disputed territories.

Second, however, is an almost breathtaking lie of omission. Apparently, you see, the reason our 'queer family in Palestine' is not getting to go out and have a fun day at the Palestinian Gay and Lesbian Film Festival*, is because of the Israelis.

Not because sex between men is a criminal act in Gaza. Not because there is no legislation either by the PA or Hamas to protect gay and lesbian Palestinians. Not because government-sanctioned and enacted violence against LGBT Palestinians is common in both the West Bank and Gaza. Not because gay Palestinians are routinely accused of being collaborators with Israel, a charge that carries the death penalty. Not because gay Palestinians have been pressured into becoming suicide bombers to expiate their shame. Not because in order to live as an out gay man and survive, many young men have made their way illegally into Israel, the luckier ones finding support and shelter within the gay community there.

No, it's not because of this nightmare of socially sanctioned hate and violence against queers of all stripes that 'our queer family in Palestine' isn't having a lovely time marching in the Ramallah Pride Parade*. It's because of Israel.

QUIT's website and print propaganda contains no mention whatsoever of any sort of oppression of LGBT Palestinians by anyone except the ever-convenient Israelis.

They clearly believe that mention the LGBT Palestinians dead at the hand of the PA police, murdered by their own families, or living on the street in Tel Aviv, trying to stay alive and find a place to belong, would be too morally complex and inconvenient to their narrative.

They are betraying those they pretend to claim as family.

*The Palestinian Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and the Ramallah Pride Parade do not exist, except in the blogger's overactive imagination. May they someday exist, in a region filled with peace.

The Denial of History Continues

Over at Palestinian Media Watch, Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook have a page up about a recent claim on TV by a Palestinian 'researcher and specialist on Jerusalem', that the Crusaders wrote the Psalms. They write:

As part of the continuing Palestinian denial of Jewish history in Jerusalem, a Palestinian researcher and specialist on Jerusalem has claimed that the well-known verse of the Hebrew psalm, "If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill," is not a Jewish source at all. He said that the words were uttered by a Christian Crusader, and have only recently been "borrowed" by Jews and "falsified in the name of Zionism."

The Children of War--Two Pictures

If you spend enough time reading and writing and speaking about Israel and her neighbors, shocking pictures of children become old hat. Children in mock suicide belts, children dressed in miniature martyr garb, children gaily playing with cartoon characters that praise terrorists--these are shockingly common. So are the wrenching pictures of dead children, wielded by both sides of the situation, the children killed in air strikes on Gaza, the children, like the Fogel family's, murdered in the night by teenage terrorists making their bones.

But this photograph still stood out to me.

This was taken by Reuters. Their caption reads: Palestinian boys dressed in uniforms of Palestinian security forces and holding plastic toy guns take part during a rally marking "Nakba" in the West Bank city of Nablus May 15, 2011. Palestinians on Sunday mark the "Nakba", or catastrophe, to commemorate the expulsion or fleeing of some 700, 000 Palestinians from their homes in the war that led to the founding of Israel in 1948.

Well-fed, chubby-cheeked little boys, wearing matching little costumes and holding toy guns, march in the streets of Nablus, ready to grow up and become real soldiers in a war their leaders fully expect to end only with the complete destruction of Israel. What catches my eye here is how abnormally normal they look to my American eye...fidgety, sleepy, playful. Photos of these children will go into albums at home, and be looked back at fondly, like the pictures of me in my Brownie uniform that probably still lurk in one of my mother's photo boxes.

It makes me think of pictures of little boys in scout uniforms, because it is, except for the big toys guns, so like them, and it makes me think of other pictures of young boys with guns--because it is so unlike them.

  

These boys are child soldiers in the hideously misnamed Democratic Republic of Congo. They're not well-fed, their uniforms were not ordered up for them by the neighborhood parade committee, and the guns they fire are real. Look at their watchful, controlled faces. Look at the thousand-yard stare on a child who should be worrying about his math homework in a sane world. These photographs will not be going into a photo album in a neatly swept apartment with food in the refrigerator and a television and computer in the living room. There is no home. There is no family.

If you run around accusing Israel of creating a humanitarian crisis 'beyond imagining', look at these photographs, and be ashamed. The Palestinians and their leadership have options beyond conflict, and have consistently rejected them. They have sent their children in harms' way, and justified the murder of Israeli children. Those little boys in Nablus could have a future of peace. Those little boys in the Congo could tell you that a chance like that is treasure you don't throw away.

Senate Democrats to Obama: Warn the PA

I'm tempted to snark, and say that this can't possibly be the case, since so many people have told me that the Democrats simply hate Israel...but I'll stop there. Hamas remains the spanner in the works of peace for the foreseeable future, and everyone knows it.

Casey, Menendez and Colleagues Call for Evaluation of U.S. Relations with Fatah-Hamas Government, Possible Suspension of Aid to Palestinian Authority

Friday, May 6, 2011

WASHINGTON, DC— U.S. Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) today sent a letter to President Obama asking him to evaluate the U.S. relationship with the Palestinian Authority and consider taking stronger measures in condemnation of the recently formed Fatah-Hamas unity government. In the letter signed by 27 Senators, the Senators urged the Administration to stand by its refusal to work with any Palestinian government that includes Hamas and consider cutting aid should the U.S. designated terrorist group remain in the government. Preconditions in U.S. law prevent aid from being provided to a Palestinian government that includes Hamas, unless the government and all its members have publically committed to the Quartet principles.

“It is imperative for you to make clear to President Abbas that Palestinian Authority participation in a unity government with an unreformed Hamas will jeopardize its relationship with the United States, including its receipt of U.S. aid. As you are aware, U.S. law prohibits aid from being provided to a Palestinian government that includes Hamas, unless the government and all its members have publically committed to the Quartet principles. We urge you to conduct a review of the current situation and suspend aid should Hamas refuse to comply with Quartet conditions,” wrote the Senators.

The full text of the letter is here.

Denying Culture, Denying History

Getty Images. People meet to pray at a vigil honoring Ben-Yosef Livnat, murdered by PA police at the Tomb of Joseph

As for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt, they buried them at Shechem, in the piece of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money. It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph. (Joshua, 24:32)

This is the history of my people. This is the story of how they brought the remains of their ancestor home to their own land from exile, and laid him to rest. Joseph's tomb has been a pilgrimage site for Jews for thousands of years. This is our heritage, in the simplest, deepest sense. A tribal ancestor and hero lies buried there. Like Hebron, like Rachel's Tomb, this is a sacred place to Jews everywhere.

Jews have always made pilgrimages to such places. A friend once told me about her grandfather, who made an annual pilgrimage from Baghdad to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, by train. I imagine this would have been in the 1930s or early 40s. Only Muslims were permitted to actually enter the tomb, but he would go as far as he was allowed, to pray as near to the shrine as he could. Every year the man did this, at enormous expense and danger, to express his piety. This is whole history lost on people who talk big about the Middle East--a total lack of understanding of what it meant to be a Jew before Jews had a country. In Baghdad, as everywhere else in the Middle East, you were a second-class citizen. Even if you had the money for a ticket from Iraq to Palestine, and most didn't, you couldn't expect to be treated like a human being in either place. And usually, you weren't.

Jews continue to travel to Joseph's tomb to pray whenever they can. The tomb rests inside the Palestinian Authority, which has permitted it to be repeatedly vandalized, but pilgrims continue to make their way there. Often they make their way under IDF guard, by prearrangement. Sometimes worshipers, especially young male worshipers, sneak in. That's what happened on April 24, when a group of young Israeli men quietly made their way to the tomb. As they were leaving, Palestinian Authority police officers opened fire on their cars. One man, 25-year-old Ben-Joseph Livnat, a father of four, was killed.

Baz Ratner/Reuters. Ben-Yosef Livnat's funeral procession.

 Peaceful civilians, leaving a place of prayer, were gunned down by armed police, murdered in cold blood, and the best excuse that could be come up with were, 'they didn't fill out the correct paperwork'. In the aftermath of the shooting, men from nearby Palestinian communities rioted and set the tomb on fire. (Again, this has happened a few time.) (In theory, Joseph's Tomb is, actually, also a Muslim holy site. How the nominal Muslims who have repeatedly vandalized it justify this to themselves is their problem.)

Another tragedy. Another murder. Another desecration of religiously and culturally sacred space.

A man who posts frequently to a blog I contribute to went a little nuts after Livnat's death, and the assault on the tomb. He said a number of things that I and the other bloggers found offensive, and was asked to tone it down. But while I was clear with him that some of the things he was saying were unacceptable, I also noticed that many other people in the group were simply shocked by his anger. Jews, like women, are not supposed to be angry. We are not supposed to feel fury when we are violated. We are supposed to consider what we did to deserve this.

Indymedia UK posted Palestine Today's comment on the incident: On the ground, Palestinian sources reported that hundreds of Israeli settlers, mostly armed, are roaming around the city of Nablus in the northern part of the West Bank. This motion by the settlers comes two days after an Israeli settler was shot dead in Nablus, believed to be by Israeli military gunfire by mistake.

The settlers was killed when a group of settlers invaded Nablus and attempted to enter the Tomb of Joseph in the city. Palestinian police tried to stop them however, the settlers pointed their guns at the police. Palestinian sources say settlers opened fire in the air to stop the settlers. Immediately a nearby Israeli military post responded to eh source of fire, which led to the settlers' death.

Both Israel and the PA are investigating the incident, but no final report has been issued yet.

So, let me see if I've got this straight--the 'settlers' invaded Nablus, tried to shoot the police, and were themselves gunned down by an Israeli military post? Oddly, that does not seem to accord with any other report, but it certainly does make it clear that the 'settlers' were entirely to blame for their own fate.

I'm angry, and I'm alienated. What is holy to me--a man's life, an ancient place of prayer--is merely a distraction to an ongoing campaign to delegitimize a nation and a people.

86 Wells Approved for W. Bank but PA has failed to drill

Photo: Palm Trees by the Sea of Galilee

NOTE TO READER: In the long list of "crimes" the State of Israel is accused of, "stealing" water is always on the list. The last time I investigated the merits of the claim, I found that the major aquafirs that Israel taps into reside on Israeli territory. If anything, unchecked Palestinian building sans permits or appropriate sewage planning have caused something of an environmental problem which affects the water supply. This appeared in the Jerusalem Post on August 5, 2009. --- Becky Johnson -- One Woman Talking
Sept 12 2009

Israel Refutes Claims on West Bank Water Supply

- Yaakov Katz
(excerpted from the Jerusalem Post)

Palestinian claims that Israel denies water rights in the West Bank are "baseless and incorrect," Lt.-Col. Amnon Cohen, head of the civil administration's infrastructures department, said Tuesday. He said that in 2007 the Palestinians received 47 million cubic meters of water and in 2008 over 52 million. In addition, Israel recently allocated land on the beach next to Hadera for a Palestinian water desalination plant, which could provide over 100 million cubic meters of water annually. "The land was allocated over a year ago and the Palestinians have yet to move forward with the project," he said. "The Palestinians do not cooperate to try and independently improve their water situation," Cohen added. "While we in Israel are cutting back on water use due to the drought and imposing fines on people who use too much water, the Palestinians are doing nothing of the kind."

The Palestinians claimed that while the Israeli-PA joint water committee approved the drilling of 82 wells, none have been carried out due to Israeli refusal. "This is nonsense," Cohen explained. "Out of the 82, 43 are in Areas A and B which are under PA control and they do not need us involved. Out of the remaining 39, in Area C and under Israeli security control, 21 have been approved and 11 have not even been submitted for approval." Dozens of drillings have been approved over the years but the Palestinians have not acted upon them. There are already 11 open wells in the territories that have not been connected to pumps. "If they were to connect the wells, they would get another 11 million cubic meters of water," he said. (Jerusalem Post)

Article can be read in its entirety here.