Eight hours of terror in southern Israel

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

This is how Israel transports its soldiers around Israel - on public buses:

U.S. news reports almost never mention this fact, but it's the reason so many buses are targeted (as was the bus in Eilat.)

[Sofiyya 1,687]

From The Times

March 20, 2009

Israeli soldiers admit to deliberate killing of Gaza civilians

James Hider in Jerusalem

The Israeli army has been forced to open an investigation into the conduct of its troops in Gaza after damning testimony from its own front line soldiers revealed the killing of civilians and rules of engagement so lax that one combatant said that they amounted on occasion to “cold-blooded murder”.

The revelations, compiled by the head of an Israel military academy who declared that he was “shocked” at the findings, come as international rights groups are calling for independent inquiries into the conduct of both sides in the three-week Israeli offensive against Palestinian Islamists.

The soldiers’ testimonies include accounts of an unarmed old woman being shot at a distance of 100 yards, a woman and her two children being killed after Israeli soldiers ordered them from their house into the line of fire of a sniper and soldiers clearing houses by shooting anyone they encountered on sight.

“That’s the beauty of Gaza. You see a man walking, he doesn’t have to have a weapon, and you can shoot him,” one soldier told Danny Zamir, the head of the Rabin pre-military academy, who asked him why a company commander ordered an elderly woman to be shot.

"I gathered the graduate students of the course who fought in Gaza, to hear their impressions from the fighting. I wasn't prepared for any of the stuff I heard there. I was shocked,” Mr Zamir said. “I think that the writing was on the wall, but we just didn't want to see it, we didn't want to face it."

One non-commissioned officer told Mr Zamir, himself a deputy battalion commander in the reserves, that the army “fired a lot of rounds and killed a lot of people in order for us not to be injured or shot at.

"When we entered a house, we were supposed to bust down the door and start shooting inside and just go up storey by storey… I call that murder. Each storey, if we identify a person, we shoot them. I asked myself – how is this reasonable?"

The same unnamed NCO said that his commanding officer ordered soldiers on to a rooftop to shoot an old woman crossing a main street during the fighting, which a Palestinian rights groups said left 1,434 people dead, 960 of them civilians.

"I don't know whether she was suspicious, not suspicious, I don't know her story,” the NCO said. “I do know that my officer sent people to the roof in order to take her out… It was cold-blooded murder."

Another NCO recounted a military blunder that led to a mother and her two children being shot dead by an Israeli sniper. "We had taken over the house… and the family was released and told to go right. A mother and two children got confused and went left… The sniper on the roof wasn't told that this was okay and that he shouldn't shoot… you can say he just did what he was told… he was told not to let anyone approach the left flank and he shot at them.

"I don't know whether he first shot at their feet or not, but he killed them," the soldier said.

The soldiers’ accounts were submitted anonymously at a meeting at the academy around a month ago. The Israel army said that it had started an investigation, but that this was the first time it had heard such testimony, despite having debriefed troops itself.

Breaking The Silence, an organisation of former soldiers who gather witness accounts from troops in the Palestinian territories, said that its own investigation into Operation Cast Lead, as the war was known in Israel, had revealed a similar picture of the fighting.

“It’s definitely in line with what we are hearing,” said one of the researchers.

Another disturbing element reported by the soldiers was the role of military rabbis in distributing booklets that framed the fighting as a religious war. “All these articles had a clear message: we are the Jewish people, we have come to the land by miraculous means, and now we have to fight to remove the Gentiles who are getting in our way and preventing us from occupying the Holy Land… a great many soldiers had a feeling throughout this operation of a religious war,” said one soldier.

There were also accounts of soldiers being ordered to throw all the furniture out of Palestinians’ homes as they were taken over.

“We simply threw everything out the windows to make room and order. The entire contents of the house flew out the windows: refrigerator, plates, furniture. The order was to remove the entire contents of the house.”

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights released the names of 1,417 Gazans that it says were killed in the war, saying that 926 were civilians. The Israeli Government contends that most of those killed were combatants or legitimate targets.

[mawilson 2,133]

This is how Israel transports its soldiers around Israel - on public buses:

WoM = Terror Apologist Extraordinaire

[Sofiyya 1,687]

OCTOBER 22, 2002

Excuse Me? Israel's Justification for Killing Palestinians

by KATHLEEN CHRISTISON Former CIA Political Analyst

Any discussion of violence and non-violence in the Israeli-Palestinian context encounters a serious problem of definition of terms. First, each side apparently understands its use of violence as a reaction to the violence of the other. In this regard, while Israelis and Palestinians generally agree on a definition of Palestinian violence–from low level stone throwing to suicide bombings–Palestinians define Israeli “violence” in a unique way: occupation, settlement construction, closures, and curfews are “violence”, regardless of how and why they came about or whether bullets are fired or people injured. This brings us to the issue of moral equivalency. In Palestinian eyes, the inadvertent killing by Israeli forces of Palestinian civilians–usually in the course of shooting at Palestinian terrorists–is considered no different at the moral and ethical level than the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians by Palestinian suicide bombers. While the shockingly high numbers of Palestinian civilians killed during the past two years undoubtedly, in some cases, reflect poor judgment or lax discipline on the part of some Israeli troops, in Palestinian eyes there is no grey area here: all violence is equivalent, whatever the motive and backdrop.

Yossi Alpher (former director, Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University), “Violence and Non-Violence by Palestinians and Israelis: A Question of Definition,” bitterlemons.org, October 7, 2002

Dear Dr. Alpher:

I have just read your article on non-violence in the October 7 issue of bitterlemons.org, and I want to express my dismay at your attempt to exonerate Israel for its actions since the intifada began, as well as your display of a selective morality that devises alibis for Israeli violence while condemning Palestinian violence.

At the start, you label as “unique” the Palestinian view that the occupation itself and such actions as settlement construction and closures constitute Israeli violence. I would argue, on the contrary, that this Palestinian definition of violence is not at all unique but is entirely appropriate.

Land confiscation by military force is theft, which is violence. As you well know, Israel has confiscated approximately 60% of the land area of the West Bank for military use, for settlement construction, and for road-building. The theft (violence) has been unprovoked. None of this confiscation can be explained away as a response to Palestinian terrorism. Moreover, this violence takes land from Palestinians for the exclusive use of Jews–a vile form of ethnic/religious discrimination that compounds the violence.

House demolitions carried out by military force against civilians who have no recourse to the law clearly constitute violence. When the demolitions are carried out because Palestinians have built or expanded homes without a permit, in a situation where permits are consistently denied to Palestinians, the demolitions cannot be explained away as a response to Palestinian terrorism. When the demolitions are carried out against the families of suspected Palestinian terrorists, this violence is unprovoked by the victims of the Israeli action. This is collective punishment (violence), which is illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The forcible confiscation of natural resources such as water by a military administration or by armed settlers is theft, which is violence. The indisputable fact that Israeli settlers use approximately ten times as much water per capita as the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza are allowed to use, and that Palestinians must often stand in line to obtain drinking water while Israeli settlers enjoy lush gardens and swimming pools, constitutes the worst kind of violence: a violence directed at a civilian population simply because of its ethnicity and/or its religion, or rather its lack of the right ethnic or religious identity–because it is not Jewish. The denial of the basic necessities of life and basic public services to a people because they are not Jewish is violence of such immorality that it takes one’s breath away.

You then proceed to compare Palestinian and Israeli violence and declare that there can be no moral equivalence between Israel’s “inadvertent killing” of Palestinian civilians, “usually in the course of shooting at Palestinian terrorists,” and the Palestinians’ “deliberate targeting” of Israeli civilians. Your construction assumes that all Israeli killing of civilians is inadvertent, whereas all Palestinian killing of civilians is deliberate. I wonder how you explain the following:

On September 29, 2000, seven Palestinian civilians throwing stones–not lethal weapons–to protest Sharon’s visit the previous day to the al-Aqsa Mosque were shot to death by Israeli soldiers and police. The shooting was not inadvertent; nor was it a response to Palestinian terrorism. The protestors were not terrorists and did not carry arms. Although Orthodox Jews in the Mea Shearim district of Jerusalem have for years thrown stones at anyone they consider a Sabbath violator, Israeli police and military have never once fired on them.

In the first few days of October 2000, 13 Israeli-Palestinian civilian protesters–some totally unarmed, some throwing stones, none carrying arms, none terrorists–were shot to death by Israeli police. The shooting was not inadvertent; nor was it a response to Palestinian terrorism. It bears repeating that, although Orthodox Jews have for years thrown stones at anyone they consider a Sabbath violator, Israeli police have never ever fired on them.

According to an Israeli journalist, a check by Israeli army intelligence three weeks into the intifada revealed that “the IDF had shot, in the first few days of the Intifada, about 700,000 different shells and bullets in the West Bank and 300,000 more in Gaza. All together about a million shells and bullets. Someone in the Central Region Command later termed the project ‘a bullet for every child.’ An astronomic number that provides evidence as to what happened on the ground . The IDF had been preparing for this Intifada for years, and when it broke out, it unloaded its prolonged frustration on the Palestinians . In the [israeli] political as well as military systems there is a view that it was perhaps the IDF destructive reaction and the blow the Palestinians took in the first weeks that made the situation deteriorate and escalated it . In the beginning of October, the balance was 75 Palestinians dead with only four Israeli victims.” ["The Intifada's Second Anniversary," by Ben Kaspit, Maariv, September 6, 2002]

During the first month of the intifada, through the end of October 2000, 117 Palestinian civilians were killed, including 32 kids under the age of 18 (18 under the age of 16). The killing of these 117 Palestinians was not inadvertent, and it was not a response to Palestinian terrorism. Except for the horrible lynching of two Israeli soldiers (whose perpetrators were arrested and were not among the Palestinians killed during this first month), there was no Palestinian terrorism in this period.

An American reporter watching a Palestinian funeral procession in Nablus in October 2000 watched as Palestinian teenagers broke away from the funeral near an Israeli checkpoint and took slingshots out of their pockets. “Stones were fired from slingshots, none coming close to the Israelis sitting inside a jeep with wire mesh over the windows. … [After half an hour] the first shot rang out–a loud crack coming from the direction of the Israeli checkpoint. Another crack of weapons fire was heard, then another. Then the scattered pops became a burst, this time coming from the tree line on the hill. One young Palestinian went down, blood gushing from behind his ear. But he was alive, grazed by a ricochet. A young man shouted and pointed to a rooftop on the hill. Four small figures, Israeli soldiers, had taken positions behind the parapet and were seen taking aim. The crack-crack-crack of automatic weapons fire cut through the air, and two young men went down. One was shot in the thigh. The other was shot in the forehead, between the eyes he was the day’s first fatality. [Four teenagers made molotov cocktails, without lighting them, and tried to sneak up on the Israeli checkpoint.] Suddenly from the far right, in the hills, came a burst of automatic weapons fire that sent the young men into temporary retreat. Some pointed to the hilltop, warning that Israeli sharpshooters were there. Then came a rapid burst of what sounded like heavy machine-gun fire. One long burst, then another. Two more young men fell, one shot in the head. The automatic weapons fire came closer, and from all directions–from the Israeli checkpoint, from the concrete house on the hill and from the tree line. No fire had been heard coming from the Palestinian side. But other reporters said they saw young Palestinians shooting from behind a wall–and that their shots had started the gunfire. Then the ambulances brought in a young boy with the back of his head missing. Behind him, friends ran in, shouting and carrying a piece of cardboard. On the cardboard were pieces of the boy’s brains they had scooped off a wall. [The 14-year-old boy had been trying to pry a bullet out of a wall when he was shot.] ‘His brains got stuck on the wall. He got stuck on the wall’ [said two witnesses]. The final count in Nablus was at least five dead, perhaps six, and dozens injured.” ["Death in the Afternoon," by Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post, October 21, 2000]

An Israeli journalist conducted a lengthy interview with an Israeli sharpshooter in November 2000, who described himself as very careful about when he fired and described IDF orders for opening fire as “moderate”–meaning “sharpshooters are given precise orders to open fire. On people who throw firebombs, you aim for the legs, but people who pull out weapons can be shot straight on.” They discussed the permissible age of Palestinian targets. “You haven’t shot children? All the sharpshooters haven’t shot children. If they were children, they were mistakes. They forbid us to shoot at children. How do they say this? You don’t shoot a child who is 12 or younger. That is, a child of 12 or older is allowed? Twelve and up is allowed. He’s not a child any more, he’s already after his bar mitzvah. Something like that. Thirteen is bar mitzvah age. Twelve and up, you’re allowed to shoot. That’s what they tell us. Again: twelve and up you’re allowed to shoot children. Because this already doesn’t look to me like a child by definition. So, according to the IDF, it is 12? According to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I don’t know if this is what the IDF says to the media. In the 10 seconds that I have, I have to estimate how old he is. And in what the direction the wind is blowing, and the deviation here and there, and which way he’ll jump the next moment. Yes, but there are hardly any mistakes by sharpshooters. The mistakes are made by people who aren’t sharpshooters. And it turns out that they happen to hit the children’s heads, and all this is just by chance? If you say you have seen children that have been hit in the head a lot, then it is sharpshooters.” ["Don't Shoot Till You Can See They're Over the Age of 12," by Amira Hass, Ha'aretz, November 20, 2000]

Another American reporter described the following incident in Gaza in June 2001: “It is still. The camp waits, as if holding its breath. And then, out of the dry furnace air, a disembodied voice crackles over a loudspeaker. ‘Come on, dogs,’ the voice booms in Arabic. ‘Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!’ I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: ‘Son of a ######!’ ‘Son of a #######!’ ‘Your mother’s ######!’ The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children’s slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos. Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered–death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo–but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.” ["A Gaza Diary: Scenes from the Palestinian Uprising," by Chris Hedges, Harper's magazine, October 2001]

On November 22, 2001, five Palestinian boys, aged six through 13, on the way to school were killed when they kicked an Israeli bomb deliberately planted at a crossroads. The boys’ bodies were so badly mangled that doctors could not determine for some time whether four or five children were involved. This killing was not inadvertent, and it was not a response to Palestinian terrorism. In fact, there is very little difference between a bomb deliberately planted at a crossroads used by civilians and a suicide bombing deliberately aimed at civilians, except that in the first case the perpetrator survives and gets away with his crime. (I had occasion to discuss this incident at the time with an American supporter of Israel who prided himself on being “a liberal.” I was disconcerted to hear him justify and defend Israel’s action in planting a booby trap in a civilian area. Palestinian parents, he said, shouldn’t let their children out on the streets.)

The number of cases of Israeli tanks, helicopter gunships, and fighter jets firing into civilian marketplaces to punish curfew violators, or firing into civilian homes, or firing into crowds of adults and children known to be unarmed are myriad-too numerous and frequent to be recounted here. Israeli and international human rights organizations have remarked repeatedly on Israel’s disproportionate use of firepower against civilians. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reports that fully80% of Palestinians killed by IDF troops enforcing curfew are children. Need I repeat: this killing is not inadvertent, and it is not a response to terrorism. Moreover, Israel doesn’t care about the killings. An Israeli correspondent reported in November 2001 that, despite the fact that 700 Palestinians had been killed to that point in the intifada, the IDF had conducted only ten investigations into shootings by soldiers, and only one had led to a court martial. These 700 killings up to a year ago, and the nearly 2000 up to the present, cannot possibly all have been inadvertent, and they were clearly not all a response to Palestinian terrorism.

None of what I have recounted is, or is intended to be, an excuse or justification for Palestinian suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism. These acts, which do indeed deliberately target civilians, are indefensible. The Israeli actions described above are also instances in which civilians have been deliberately targeted, and they are also indefensible. These are not isolated incidents or aberrations or mistakes; they do not, as you put it, simply represent occasional instances of “poor judgment or lax discipline”; they are not inadvertent.

The effort to cast this struggle in moral terms, painting Israel as always an exemplar of high moral values and the Palestinians as unable to maintain those values, is extremely hypocritical and sanctimonious. It leads, moreover, to moral distortions such as the one described above in which an otherwise liberal person can be so blinded by his mental image of an ever-moral Israel populated by ever-moral Jews that he can actually defend Israel for a clear terrorist action and blame the victims for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. How the suffering and death and oppression caused by Israel’s month-long siege of the West Bank in April 2002, or by the round-the-clock curfews imposed for the last four months on a civilian population–to name just a few of Israel’s actions in the last 35 years of occupation–can be justified as moral and non-violent beggars the imagination.

The Israeli actions I have recounted here are the deliberate, calculated, and quite frequent actions of a military establishment and government that are, all things considered, no more moral in their wartime conduct–or indeed in their peacetime conduct–than any other nation or people, including the Palestinians. The campaign conducted since the intifada began to demonstrate that Israel is morally superior to Palestinians is part of the decades-long effort to portray Israel as superior in all ways to its Arab neighbors. As one thoughtful Jewish-American scholar has put it, the effort is meant to demonstrate that ultimately “Palestinian history and destiny are secondary to Jewish history and destiny.” This moral selectivity impedes justice, justifies Israeli violence, and ultimately perpetuates the conflict year after year.

Kathleen Christison worked for 16 years as a political analyst with the CIA, dealing first with Vietnam and then with the Middle East for her last seven years with the Agency before resigning in 1979. Since leaving the CIA, she has been a free-lance writer, dealing primarily with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her book, “Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy,” was published by the University of California Press and reissued in paperback with an update in October 2001. A second book, “The Wound of Dispossession: Telling the Palestinian Story,” was published in March 2002. Both Kathy and her husband Bill, also a former CIA analyst, are regular contributors to the CounterPunch website.

Edited September 23, 2011 by Sofiyya

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

WoM = Terror Apologist Extraordinaire

Tell the IDF to stop hiding behind civilians !

[mawilson 2,133]

Tell the IDF to stop hiding behind civilians !

Yes, because IDF soldiers using public transportation is the same as Hamas terrorists using an elementary school to fire mortar shells

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Hey, Ma. Are you one of those folks that scandal was complaining about being a regular on Arab-Israeli conflict threads despite having no ties to the region?

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Yes, because IDF soldiers using public transportation is the same as Hamas terrorists using an elementary school to fire mortar shells

Well I guess you could say one big difference is - it's true that Israel transports its soldiers on Egged buses. But the IDF's claim about Hamas using an elementary school to fire mortar shells is not true.

Edited September 23, 2011 by wife_of_mahmoud

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Well I guess you could say one big difference is - it's true that Israel transports its soldiers on Egged buses. But the IDF's claim about Hamas using an elementary school to fire mortar shells is not true.

But it is true, numerous videos and pictures prove your claimed "not true" is indeed all too true. Pretty sure it is not dirty pool to use public transportation to move IDF troops. It is dirty pool to use private homes, mosques, and yes school yards to fire rockets, mortars, and small arms etc just so you can produce the desired PR photos to show IDF will respond with force and destroy such targets.

Both sides commit demonstrable wrongs WOM. At some point it becomes pretty useless to claim only the other is doing so. It cheapens the points trying to be made by either perspective.

[luckytxn 2,265]

Netanyahu: I deceived US to destroy Oslo accords

Damaging video released

By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth

24 July 2010

Jonathan Cook considers the significance of a video that has surfaced showing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu boasting about his ability to manipulate the United States and his success in destroying the Oslo accords with the Palestinians.

There is one video Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, must be praying never gets posted on YouTube with English subtitles. To date, the 10-minute segment has been broadcast only in Hebrew on Israel’s Channel 10. [Editor’s note: A version of the Natanyahu video with English subtitles is now available and can be viewed, together with the translated English transcript, here.]

Its contents, however, threaten to gravely embarrass not only Mr Netanyahu but also the US administration of Barack Obama.

The film was shot, apparently without Mr Netanyahu’s knowledge, nine years ago, when the government of Ariel Sharon had started reinvading the main cities of the West Bank to crush Palestinian resistance in the early stages of the second intifada.

Binyamin Natanyahu “dismisses the US as ‘easily moved to the right direction’ and calls high levels of popular American support for Israel ‘absurd’."

At the time Mr Netanyahu had taken a short break from politics but was soon to join Mr Sharon’s government as finance minister.

On a visit to a home in the settlement of Ofra in the West Bank to pay condolences to the family of a man killed in a Palestinian shooting attack, he makes a series of unguarded admissions about his first period as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999.

Seated on a sofa in the house, he tells the family that he deceived the US president of the time, Bill Clinton, into believing he was helping implement the Oslo accords, the US-sponsored peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, by making minor withdrawals from the West Bank while actually entrenching the occupation. He boasts that he thereby destroyed the Oslo process.

He dismisses the US as “easily moved to the right direction” and calls high levels of popular American support for Israel “absurd”.

He also suggests that, far from being defensive, Israel’s harsh military repression of the Palestinian uprising was designed chiefly to crush the Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat so that it could be made more pliable for Israeli diktats.

All of these claims have obvious parallels with the current situation, when Mr Netanyahu is again Israel’s prime minister facing off with a White House trying to draw him into a peace process that runs counter to his political agenda.

“The contemptuous view of Washington Mr Netanyahu demonstrates in the film will confirm the suspicions of many observers ... that his current professions of good faith should not be taken seriously.”

As before, he has ostensibly made public concessions to the US administration – chiefly by agreeing in principle to the creation of a Palestinian state, consenting to indirect talks with the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, and implementing a temporary freeze on settlement building.

But he has also enlisted the powerful pro-Israel lobby to exert pressure on the White House, which appears to have relented on its most important stipulations. tbody>

The contemptuous view of Washington Mr Netanyahu demonstrates in the film will confirm the suspicions of many observers – including Palestinian leaders – that his current professions of good faith should not be taken seriously.

Critics have already pointed out that his gestures have been extracted only after heavy arm-twisting from the US administration.

More significantly, he has so far avoided engaging meaningfully in the limited talks the White House is promoting with the Palestinians while the pace of settlement building in the West Bank has been barely affected by the 10-month freeze, due to end in September.

In the meantime, planning officials have repeatedly approved large new housing projects in East Jerusalem and the West Bank that have undercut the negotiations and will make the establishment of a Palestinian state – viable or otherwise – far less likely.

The video proved that Netanyahu was a “con artist … who thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes... Such a crooked way of thinking does not change over the years.”

Gideon Levy, columnist, Ha’aretz

Writing in the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, the columnist Gideon Levy called the video “outrageous”. He said it proved that Mr Netanyahu was a “con artist … who thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes”. He added that the prime minister had not reformed in the intervening period: “Such a crooked way of thinking does not change over the years.”

In the film, Mr Netanyahu says Israel must inflict “blows [on the Palestinians] that are so painful the price will be too heavy to be borne … A broad attack on the Palestinian Authority, to bring them to the point of being afraid that everything is collapsing”.

When asked if the US will object, he responds: “America is something that can be easily moved. Moved to the right direction… They won’t get in our way … Eighty per cent of the Americans support us. It’s absurd.”

He then recounts how he dealt with President Clinton, whom he refers to as “extremely pro-Palestinian”. “I wasn’t afraid to manoeuvre there. I was not afraid to clash with Clinton.”

His approach to White House demands to withdraw from Palestinian territory under the Oslo accords, he says, drew on his grandfather’s philosophy: “It would be better to give two per cent than to give 100 per cent.”

He therefore signed the 1997 agreement to pull the Israeli army back from much of Hebron, the last Palestinian city under direct occupation, as a way to avoid conceding more territory.

“There must be at least a very strong suspicion that Mr Netanyahu is as firmly committed today as he was then to destroying any chance of peace with the Palestinians.”

“The trick,” he says, “is not to be there [in the occupied territories] and be broken; the trick is to be there and pay a minimal price.”

The “trick” that stopped further withdrawals, Mr Netanyahu adds, was to redefine what parts of the occupied territories counted as a “specified military site” under the Oslo accords. He wanted the White House to approve in writing the classification of the Jordan Valley, a large area of the West Bank, as such a military site.

“Now, they did not want to give me that letter, so I did not give [them] the Hebron agreement. I stopped the government meeting, I said: ‘I’m not signing.’ Only when the letter came … did I sign the Hebron agreement. Why does this matter? Because at that moment I actually stopped the Oslo accords.”

Last week, after meeting Mr Obama in Washington, the Israeli prime minister gave an interview to Fox News in which he appeared to be in no hurry to make concessions: “Can we have a negotiated peace? Yes. Can it be implemented by 2012? I think it’s going to take longer than that,” he said.

There must be at least a very strong suspicion that Mr Netanyahu is as firmly committed today as he was then to destroying any chance of peace with the Palestinians.

Leaked video exposes Israeli Premier Netanyahu’s contempt for USA and intention to deceive Palestinians

In this video, leaked and aired on Israeli Channel 10 TV, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is seen speaking candidly back in 2001 at a constituent's home about the Oslo accords, the peace process, Bill Clinton and the United States. He brags about having "stopped" Oslo accords and refers to America as something to be "moved in the right direction", citing polls showing Americans' support for Israel.

Transcript of video – courtesy of Institute for Middle East Understanding

[binyamin Netanyahu] Turn off the camera so that we can elaborate on this.

[Narrator]: A few minutes later... the camera is turned on again and Netanyahu begins to speak without quotation marks and without masks.

[Netanyahu] Now we're beginning to understand the meaning of the slogan “Yesha Zeikan Judea, Samaria and Azza are here”. Yesha is everywhere, what is the difference?

What does Arafat want? He wants one big settlement [implies Palestinians see all of Israel as a settlement].

[Woman] Yes that's what my daughter-in-law who came from England says [i.e. they, the Palestinians, see Tel Aviv as a settlement also].

[Natanyahu] Tel Aviv is also a settlement. From their [Palestinians] point of view, our territorial waters are also theirs. The fact is that they want us in the sea. Over there... [gestures] in the distant water.

The Arabs now are preparing for a campaign [or war] of terror, and they think that this will break us.

The main thing is, first and foremost, to hit them hard. Not just one hit... but many painful [hits], so that the price will be unbearable. The price is not unbearable, now. A total assault on the Palestinian Authority. To bring them to a state of panic that everything is collapsing ... fear that everything will collapse... this is what we'll bring them to...

[Woman interrupts] But wait a minute, at that point the whole world will say “What are you occupiers”...

[Natanyahu interrupts] The world will say nothing. The world will say that we are defending ourselves.

“I know what America is. America is a thing that can be easily moved, moved in the right direction... Let's suppose that they [the Americans] will say something [i.e. to us Israelis] ... so they say it...” [i.e. so what?]

[Woman] Aren't you afraid of the world Bibi?

[Natanyahu] No. Especially now, with America, I know what America is. America is a thing that can be easily moved, moved in the right direction. They [the Americans] will not bother us. Let's suppose that they [the Americans] will say something [i.e. to us Israelis]... so they say it... [so what?] Eighty per cent of the Americans support us. It's absurd! We have such [great] support there! And we say... what shall we do with this [support]?

Look, the other administration [that of Bill Clinton] was pro-Palestinian in an extreme way. I was not afraid to manoeuvre there. I did not fear confrontation with Clinton. I was not afraid to clash with the UN. As it is, I am paying the price in the international arena... So I might as well receive something of equal value in exchange.

[Child] But never mind that. We gave them things, and we can't take them back. Because they won't give them back to us.

[Natanyahu, gestures to let child speak] First of all, Oslo is a system [or package of things]. You're right... I do not know what can and cannot be taken back [from the Palestinians]

[Woman] He [the child] has political opinions, believe me.

[Natanyahu] He's right.

[Woman] He said such things to Arik Sharon that I told him: that's not – that's not a child's opinion. The Oslo accords are a disaster.

[Natanyahu] Yes, I know that and you know that... but the people need to know

[Woman] Right. But I thought that the prime minister did know, and that he'd do everything so that, somehow, not to do critical things, like handing over Hebron, that...

“I interpret the [Oslo] accords in such a way that will enable me to stop this rush towards the 1967 borders.”

What were the Oslo accords? The Oslo accords, which the Knesset signed, I was asked, before the elections: "Will you act according to them?" and I answered: "Yes, subject to reciprocity and limiting the withdrawals." But how do you limit the withdrawals? I interpret the accords in such a way that will enable me to stop this rush towards the 1967 borders. [so] how do we do it?

[Narrator] The Oslo accords stated at the time that Israel would gradually hand over territories to the Palestinians in three different stages, unless the territories in question had settlements or military sites. This is where Netanyahu found a loophole.

[Natanyahu] No one said what defined military sites. Defined military sites, I said, were security zones. As far as I'm concerned, the Jordan Valley is a defined military site.

[Woman] Right [laughs]. The Beit She'an settlements. The Beit She'an Valley.

[Natanyahu] How can you tell. How can you tell? But then the question came up of just who would define what defined military sites were. I received a letter – to me and to Arafat, at the same time ... which said that Israel, and only Israel, would be the one to define what those are, the location of those military sites and their size. Now, they did not want to give me that letter, so I did not give the Hebron agreement. I stopped the government meeting, I said: "I'm not signing." Only when the letter came, in the course of the meeting, to me and to Arafat, only then did I sign the Hebron agreement, or rather, ratify it. It had already been signed. Why does this matter? Because at that moment I actually stopped the Oslo accord.

[Woman interrupts] And despite that, one of our own people, excuse me, who knew it was a swindle, and that we were going to commit suicide with the Oslo accord, gives them, for example, Hebron. I never understood that.

[Natanyahu] Indeed, Hebron hurts. It hurts. It's the thing that hurts. One of the famous rabbis, whom I very much respect, a rabbi of Eretz Yisrael, he said to me: "What would your father say?" I went to my father. Do you know a little about my father's position?... He's not exactly a lily-white dove, as they say. So my father heard the question and said: “Tell the rabbi that your grandfather, Rabbi Natan Milikowski, was a smart Jew. Tell him it would be better to give two per cent than to give a 100 per cent. And that's the choice here. You gave two per cent and in that way you stopped the withdrawal, instead of 100 per cent.”

The trick is not to be there and break down. The trick is to be there and pay a minimal price.

[Woman] May you say that as prime minister.

[Natanyahu] In my estimation that will happen.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

My link

This man wants no peace. The citizens elected him. The U.S. needs to rethink our ties to this country.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Hey, Ma. Are you one of those folks that scandal was complaining about being a regular on Arab-Israeli conflict threads despite having no ties to the region?

Israel doesn't want informed, intelligent discussion threads among the US population about the middle east. If folks that had no ties to the region in the US paid attention to these discussions, instead of the barrage of pro-Israeli propaganda on stations like Fox News Channel, then they would learn what folks in the rest of the world that do pay attention already know.

[luckytxn 2,265]

Israel doesn't want informed, intelligent discussion threads among the US population about the middle east. If folks that had no ties to the region in the US paid attention to these discussions, instead of the barrage of pro-Israeli propaganda on stations like Fox News Channel, then they would learn what folks in the rest of the world that do pay attention already know.

I get the feeling that both major political parties here in the U.S. don't want this also.

[mawilson 2,133]

Hey, Ma. Are you one of those folks that scandal was complaining about being a regular on Arab-Israeli conflict threads despite having no ties to the region?

What makes you think I have no ties to the region?

[Ban Hammer 13,500]

What makes you think I have no ties to the region?

because geckos aren't native to the middle east!

[mawilson 2,133]

because geckos aren't native to the middle east!

Geckos are found in warm climates throughout the world. It's true because Wikipedia says so.