Oslo Accords | UN-Truth

Fatah and Hamas – What's the problem? A view from Yasser Abbas

Other excerpts from the interview with Yasser Abbas in Ramallah on 18 December 2008:
Part 4: Separation of Powers in Ramallah
Part 3: Business and Businessmen in Palestine
Part 1: Fatah and Hamas – and the Abbas family house in Gaza

Yasser Abbas (apparently named after Yasser Arafat), Palestinian businessman and older of the two surviving sons of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said in an interview in his office last December, just before the IDF military attack on Gaza: “You have been politically confused due to the Hamas situation in Gaza – politically confused. This country has one head, it does not has two heads. One decides who the second one is. It’s not two who decide how to run the country. It’s the President [who] gives a mandate to the Prime Minister, and this President can take his mandate back any time he likes, when he doesn’t see it fit”.

Yasser Abbas continued: “The Ministry, the Cabinet, is ousted in three cases: either the President takes back the mandate from the Prime Minister, or the Prime Minister resigns, or one-third of the cabinet resigns, as a total. OK? So these three conditions decide the political relationship, political, in the by-laws, of the relationship between the President and the Prime Minister. The issue with Hamas becoming, yeah, we are the government – that’s what created the problem here. Ok? So, two presidents? Two heads? Two governments? There’s only one legitimate government. There is no two governments. This what so-called government of Hamas is pure garbage, they are nothing. They don’t run nothing. They run a bunch of gangs, ok, that they are trying to run the country but they are not. They know nothing about how to run a country. They are not legitimate whatsoever. And I’m sure of what I’m saying”.

Q: What’s interesting, though, about what happened when Hamas took over security in Gaza, was that they continued to recognize the President as the President – at least until the 9th of January (2008) – and to some, to me, it looked like an occasion that was lost because of hostility, after the government was dissolved … How do you see this crisis?

A: Well, they cannot deny the legitimacy of the President. The President has more legitimacy than they do. It’s very simple. The President has been elected by all the Palestinians with a percentage of 62.8% percent, in January of 2005. The President will maintain a President until January 2010, even though his term is four years, but the law says both two elections should take place together, legitimate [legislative] and presidency, simultaneously. The word “simultaneously” means, both elections will be done in one day. That’s what simultaneously means – this is how they taught me that in school. If anybody interprets that in his own terms, that’s his own problem, he has to go and learn Arabic, or English.

Continue reading Fatah and Hamas – What's the problem? A view from Yasser Abbas

Israeli human rights groups criticize new Palestinian "naturalization" criteria separating Gazans from West Bank

As Quartet Envoy Tony Blair and Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter careen around the region, showing up by design or purest coincidence together in Gaza today, the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of [Israeli] Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has suddenly authorized a significant increase in the number of trucks carrying humanitarian supplies to enter the Gaza Strip to some 144 yesterday and 177 today or so (last week it was about 100 fewer trucks than that per day).

Carter in Gaza - 16 June 2009 Jimmy Carter visits the bombed-out shell of the former American International School in Gaza

Meanwhile, two Israeli human rights groups — GISHA and HAMOKED — have just gone public with their opposition to a new official procedure that restricts Palestinian civil and human rights.

Continue reading Israeli human rights groups criticize new Palestinian "naturalization" criteria separating Gazans from West Bank

Jerusalem session of Palestinian Literature Festival forced to relocate again — to British Council

Unfortunately, it was predictable.

Israel’s Ministry of the Interior ordered the closure (for tonight, at least) of the Palestinian National Theater (Hakawati) in East Jerusalem, where the final event of the PalFest09, the Palestinian Literary Festival, was due to be held.

Israeli Border Police telling audience to leave Hakawati Theatre at closing event of PalFest09

Photo from PalFest’s photostream on Flikr here

However, as happened in the opening PalFest09 event in Jerusalem last Saturday night, a European institution stepped in to offer its premises as a substitute, in a small but significant show of support. It was also a small gesture of defiance of the current suppression of Palestinian activities in Jerusalem.

This time, it was the British Council in East Jerusalem which hosted the event — and, somehow, it didn’t seem to be a surprise. Everything appeared to be ready and organized in advance for the (predictable) move.

The drama was captured, again, on a video now posted on Youtube here, from PalFest09 closing event.

It is also available on the PalFest09 official website, here.

In the video, a markedly quiet and polite Israeli Border Police officer tells a strawberry-blond European man in a suit that “There is a court order [to close the theatre] … I have the Hebrew one in my pocket … You can see the court order in English hanging on the door of the Hakawati Theater”.

The man in the suit replies: “Well, yeah, my name is Richard Makepeace, I’m the British Consul-General here in Jerusalem. This is a literary festival attended by many great distinguished British writers It seems a strange decision.”

He goes, followed by the camera, to read the court order.

British Consul-General in Jerusalem reads order closing Hakawati Theater to PalFest09

Photo from PalFest’s photostream on Flikr here

Then, he turns to face the camera. Imad Muna, owner of the Educational Bookshop on Salah ed-Din Street [East Jerusalem’s Fifth Avenue or maybe even Champs Elysees] stands beside the British Consul-General, who then says: “I’ve just been informed by the police that this closing event of the literary festival is not to be permitted here. I’m glad to say that it will take place on the premises of the British Council here. I don’t recognize the law referred to in the statement behind me [the court order in English], but I think all lovers of literature will regard this as a very regrettable moment, and a regrettable decision“.

And, as noted by a PalFest09 Twitter [tweet?], the show goes on — here, relocated Thursday night to the garden of the British Council. A photo of the lovely garden as the sun sets is available on PalFest’s Twitter page here or directly here.

Israeli officials have claimed that PalFest09 was, at least in part, sponsored in part by the Palestinian Authority, which Israel says cannot operate in Jerusalem, according to the Oslo Accords. That’s why, according to the Israelis, the two sessions scheduled to take place in East Jerusalem — the opening and the closing sessions — could not take place in the venues where they were originally booked.

But, Ma’an News Agency reminded us that the event organizer Omar Hamilton has contradicted the claim, saying “The PA has nothing to do with PalFest”. This report can be read in full here.

And, the events were held anyway, despite the closure orders — in quasi-diplomatic European sites in East Jerusalem.

One of the PalFest09 participants (Egyptian authoress Ahdaf Soueif) wrote in the first post on the PalFest09 Author’s Blogs, quoting the late Edward Said: “our mission: to confront the culture of power with the power of culture“.

Why are Palestinian Authority activities banned in East Jerusalem?

Why is Israel suppressing the activities of Palestinian and/or Palestinian Authority (PA) activities in East Jerusalem?

The argument being offered by Israeli authorities is that PA activities are banned in Jerusalem under the Oslo Accords.

But, these activities were allowed — with difficulty — before and after the start of the “Olso” process in 1993.

It’s hard to believe these days, with the now-routine suppression of rather simple activities such as a memorial meeting on the anniversary of the death of Faisal Husseini, or the press conferences of East Jerusalem Palestinians in a media center opened by the Palestinians during the Pope’s recent visit, or this year’s Palestinian Literary Festival (PalFest09) that opened in Jerusalem on Saturday (see post below), have all been closed by police and Border Policemen with guns.

Israel’s then-Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, who is now Israel’s State President, wrote a letter dated 11 October 1993, promising “not to hamper” — but rather to “encourage” — the activity of “all the Palestinian institutions of East Jerusalem”.

The “Oslo process” Declaration of Principles between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the State of Israel was signed on the White House lawn on 13 September 1993. It was to go into effect a month later. Apparently as part of that, Israel’s then-Foreign Minister Peres sent this letter to the Norwegian Foreign Minister, whose country had hosted the previously-secret Israeli-Palestinian negotiations taking place under Oslo.

The text of the letter is posted on the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry (though, strangely, they take it from the Jerusalem Post some eight months later):

“The following is the text of a letter sent by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst, on October 11, 1993, as published in The Jerusalem Post on June 7, 1994:

‘I wish to confirm that the Palestinian institutions of East Jerusalem and the interests and well-being of the Palestinians of East Jerusalem are of great importance and will be preserved. Therefore, all the Palestinian institutions of East Jerusalem, including the economic, social, educational, cultural, and the holy Christian and Moslem places, are performing an essential task for the Palestinian population. Needless to say, we will not hamper their activity; on the contrary, the fulfilment of this important mission is to be encouraged’.”

This text can be found on the Israeli MFA website here .

So, what has happened since then?

According to lawyer Jawad Bulous, the Israeli Knesset passed an “implementation” law (to “implement” subsequent “Oslo process” agreements) — he said, I thought, that this law was passed in 1997 — and it is this “implementation” law passed by the Knesset is apparently what prohibits Palestinian Authority activity in East Jerusalem — despite the promise made by Shimon Peres in his October 1993 letter to the Norwegian Foreign Minister.

So, what good are such letters — Peres apparently wrote a number of them on various subject matters — and such promises?

If the “implementation” law passed in 1997, an internet search reveals other dates, or other stages in the process: A Jerusalem Post article dated 6 June 1996 reported that “since the passing in December 1994 of special legislation explicitly forbidding Palestinian Authority activity in the capital, Orient House officials have largely stopped work directly connected with the PA. Faisal Husseini, the senior PLO official in Jerusalem who runs Orient House, also personally promised Internal Security Minister Moshe Shahal the PA activity would stop”…

December 1994 was just over a year after the Oslo accord’s Declaration of Principles — very early days.

The Orient House was then finally closed down in August 2001, after a suicide bombing targetted a Jerusalem pizza restaurant.

Former top officials urge Obama to contact Hamas

Former U.S. National Security Advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, are among the ten authors of a newly-revealed letter handed to Barack Obama just before his inauguration, urging the new president-elect to change policy and make contact with Hamas.

This was revealed today in a story published by the Boston Globe, which reported that “Nine former senior US officials and one current adviser are urging the Obama administration to talk with leaders of Hamas to determine whether the militant group can be persuaded to disarm and join a peaceful Palestinian government, a major departure from current US policy…
Continue reading Former top officials urge Obama to contact Hamas

The logic of the Olso Accords still continues

During the first Palestinian Intifada, a spontaneous uprising in the West Bank and Gaza that started at the end of 1987 and caught the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership in exile by surprise, any display of the Palestinian flag — or even just showing its colors (green-red-white-black) — was severely repressed by Israeli troops. It was a shooting offense.

At peace talks launched at an international conference in Madrid in 1991 after the Cold War ended — and just a few months after the U.S.-led Desert Storm coalition forced Saddam Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait, amid much Arab commentary about U.S. double standards in the Middle East — the Palestinian delegation had to participate as members of the Jordanian delegation. The Palestinian participants were supposed to be “independent” and not members of the PLO — though the delegation members made it clear during the talks that they deferred to the PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who was in based Tunis at the time.
Continue reading The logic of the Olso Accords still continues

Pondering Israel's naval blockade of Gaza

Israel has asserted its security control over Gaza’s maritime space, but it does not have title to these Mediterranean waters — nor has Israel ever asserted a territorial claim on them.
Continue reading Pondering Israel's naval blockade of Gaza

Israel announces naval blockade of Gaza

The IDF spokesperson has announced a naval blockade of Gaza.

This announcement says that “In accordance with the decision of the Defense Minister and current security assessments, as of Saturday January 3rd, 2009, the IDF has begun enforcing a naval blockade for 20 nautical miles from the Gaza Strip. The length of Gaza’s shore is used by the Hamas terror organization, and the presence of its operatives on the shoreline and in the open sea constitutes a threat against the citizens of southern Israel”.

This announcement will apparently have legal consequences — but it basically encodes a situation that existed previously — and for rather a long time. Only some five Free Gaza expeditions of international activists have actually managed to pass into and out of Gaza’s maritime space. And Gaza’s fishermen have been forced to operate, for years, in far less than their alloted, allocated and agreed, fishing territory.

The 20-mile designation is interesting also — it is the limit of a “fishing” (and “economic”) zone allocated to Gaza in the Oslo Accords.

Gaza's maritime space as delimited by Oslo Accords - Israeli MFA website

One of the main aims may be to try to reinforce the Israeli claim that Gaza is not occupied — because Israel is not “controlling” Gaza’s maritime space (which would be one of the tests for a situation of occupation- Rather, the IDF announcement is saying, Israel has “begun enforcing a naval blockade” — which is an act of war, and/or a sign of an actual state of war.

This move also puts pressure on BG negotiators, who have re-opened discussions at Israel’s insistence after freezing them just over a year ago, on the development of the Gaza Gas wells located precisely within this Gaza maritime space … And one of the reasons (though not the main one) why the discussions on this gas deal have not been concluded already is precisely the questions posed about its status with Hamas in power in Gaza…