Speaking at the Herzliya Conference, Livni said for the umpteenth time that the two-state solution is the only acceptable path for Israel.

But, and this is a big but, she admitted that it might not be a realistic goal and that Israel needs “to prepare interim measures or other measures, or unilateral ones that can lessen the damage, which can reduce the pressure a little.”

When those politicians who have dedicated much of their careers to advancing the peace process begin to express doubts about the viability of their own project, anyone who believes in those leaders and their political programs should be worried.

Former settler leader Dany Dayan drove the sentiment home, assuredly saying that “20 years after Oslo, the burden of proof is on [its] believers, not me.

Former settler council leader Dany Dayan at the Herzliya Conference, March 12, 2013 (Photo: Herzliya Conference PR)

The Oslo framework for a two-state solution has lost a number of long-time believers in recent months (and years). In December, Meretz chairwoman Zehava Gal-On called for cancelling the Oslo Accords, the mainstay and only lasting impact of peace talks that began 20 years go.

In its place, Gal-On called for enacting interim measures and revisiting the Arab Peace Initiative. But the API is not very different than the two-state formulation expressed in nearly every peace initiative for decades. It is so not dramatically different than Oslo, aside for the attention it pays to the refugee issue.

For Dayan, it is not about process of Oslo itself; he loves the results of Oslo. Oslo created the Palestinian Authority in order to unburden Israel of the costs of its occupation, and that is not lost on Dayan; he openly calls for strengthening the PA.

His problem is Oslo’s goal of a two-state solution: two states for two peoples. There is simply no way to reconcile the national aspirations of the Jewish and Palestinian peoples, Dayan asserts, there is no point of convergence between the two. “Any effort you make to get to that point is doomed to fail,” he said.

But in place of offering an alternative version of peace or a peace process, he embodies a realist Zionist outlook that is unacceptable to anyone who cares about equal rights, be they human, civil or political. Since he argues it is impossible for nationalist Israelis and Palestinians to find even a minimal point of convergence, the conflict should be reduced to a zero sum game – and of course the Israelis should win. To him, anything else is simply unrealistic.

This post first appeared on +972 Magazine

The EU’s rhetoric against Israel’s settlement policies has always been damning, but its actions have never lived up to its words.

Read the full report here

“The EU and its member states now face the urgent challenge of translating the observations and recommendations of their own senior diplomats into concrete and effective policies that indeed maintain the possibility of the two-state solution,” a document obtained by +972 stated.

Reflecting the (perhaps naïvely optimistic) sense of a closing window for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a frustration with EU inaction despite its rhetoric, the document continues: “If the EU and its member states won’t accelerate the operationalization and implementation of their declared positions in 2013, the two-state solution will fail.”

This is a clear call to action – a frustrated plea by the EU’s professional ranks to their elected bosses to put their money where their mouth is.

Without action, the almost predictably regular condemnations of Israeli settlements by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, unequivocally declaring them illegal under international law are just that: empty statements and declarations.

The power of such a wide union of developed and influential countries such as the EU is meaningless if it limits itself to declarations and condemnations instead of exercising the power it is sitting on.

The message these diplomats are sending is that principled and legal stands against illegal settlements – and in favor of a two-state solution – are in vain if it takes no action.

But the report’s recommendations are not groundbreaking. They are based on existing resolutions, legislation, trade agreements and declarations by the European Union, its legislative and diplomatic bodies and its individual member states.

The EU-Israel Association Agreement, which established the free trade agreement and close diplomatic cooperation between the two is explicitly clear about the conditions necessary for its continued existence.

Article 2 of the agreement states:

Relations between the Parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of this Agreement.

As far as the EU is concerned, a two-state solution is the only way to ensure that human rights and democratic principles are respected for both Israelis and Palestinians. It is also clear that the EU believes settlement activity is the primary obstacle to achieving a two-state solution.

After explaining how settlements are the biggest obstacle to piece, the report is particularly bold in declaring that Israel’s settlement activity “is systematic, deliberate and provocative.”

Discussing how Jerusalem must be the capital of both Israel and Palestine if there is to be a two-state solution, the diplomats write: “Israel is actively perpetuating its illegal annexation of East Jerusalem.”

In other words, they are saying that Israel is actively working against a two-state solution, and therefore against the foreign policy interests of the EU.

The European Union is Israel’s largest trade partner and holds tremendous influence due to the free trade agreement that benefits Israel far more than it does the EU or any of its individual member states.

The EU long ago gave itself the tools to put pressure on Israel to correct its ways. These diplomats are begging their governments to use them.

“Do something!”, they’re screaming.

However, foreign consulates in Jerusalem and Ramallah are known to be much more blunt in their criticism of Israeli policy than their sister-embassies in Tel Aviv. So just as it is not surprising that such a frustrated and damning document came out of the consulates, we can expect that it will be ignored like all those that preceded it.

This post first appeared on +972 Magazine

Before Israel agreed to release 1,027 Palestinians in exchange for captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, the army quietly modified Article 186 to Military Order 1651. Article 186 codifies special military tribunals that have the power to cancel early releases. The panels operate using secret evidence and do not even reveal to Palestinians what they are accused of.

So while according to Thursday’s sentencing hearing in the Magistrate’s Court Issawi is to be released within weeks, he will likely be re-sentenced by the military tribunal to the 20 years that remained when he was freed in exchange for Shalit. He will not know for what alleged crime he is being re-incarcerated.

Even Israel’s most secretive prisoner in recent years, Prisoner X, knew what he was charged with. But Prisoner X was Jewish. Samer Issawi is Palestinian.

One other Palestinian hunger striker is being held under identical circumstances. Two others are being held in administrative detention, the practice of holding suspects without charge or informing them of what they are accused.

The injustice suffered by Issawi and the others is not theirs alone, it is one that has and continues to unite Palestinian society. Solidarity hunger strikes are being held both in and out of Israeli prisons. Protests are taking place across the West Bank and judging by the number of injured protesters, the Israeli military response to those protests is becoming more violent.

On Thursday, thousands of Palestinians marched toward the Ofer Military Prison compound in solidarity with the hunger strikers and to protest the practice of administrative detention. At that protest alone, at least 29 protesters were injured by rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters.

Days earlier, nearly two-dozen Palestinian demonstrators were injured at another protest in Hebron. Similar protests have been taking place almost daily in Nablus and throughout the West Bank. Solidarity tents have been erected and protests launched in Palestinian cities and neighborhoods throughout Israel, in Jaffa, Acre and Nazareth, among others.

The situation could explode should the hunger strikers die in prison.

Palestinian parliamentarian Mustafa Barghouti warned as much on Thursday. “Should anything bad happen to Issawi, I predict that the entire West Bank will rise up and a new, non-violent intifada will break out,” he told Israeli news site Ynet.

It is a very real possibility.

Something could happen to Issawi at any time, without warning, explained Physicians for Human Rights executive director Ran Cohen.

“The main problem [with hunger strikers] is that there can be heart failure or something else you can’t predict,” he said in a telephone interview earlier this week.

But there is a much larger issue at stake than Issawi or any of the other current hunger strikers. It is not their individual cases that are necessarily unjust, although they are. Subjecting a civilian population to a military legal system is the larger injustice.

There is a word for when one regime rules different people under different sets of laws based on their nationality, religion or the color of their skin. At a conference in Jerusalem Thursday, former Israeli Foreign Ministry director-general and previous Israeli ambassador to South Africa Alon Liel explained: “In the situation that exists today, until a Palestinian state is created, we are actually one state. This joint state — in the hope that the status quo is temporary — is an apartheid state.”

Much of Israel, particularly journalists and those concerned with civil and human rights, was up in arms in the past few weeks over the case of Prisoner X’s secret imprisonment, specifically that the charges against him were being kept secret from the public and media. Prisoner X, however, knew the charges against him and his lawyers were given access to the state’s evidence against him.

Unlike Prisoner X, Samer Issawi does not even know the charges against him nor will he have an opportunity to contest them in court, let alone a civilian court, adjudicating civilian law, with proper civilian oversight.

Samer Issawi is Palestinian.

Unlike Prisoner X, there is no public outrage in Israel over the way the legal system is preventing Samer Issawi from receiving a fair trial.

Samer Issawi is Palestinian.

This post first appeared on +972 Magazine

Four Palestinian men in Israeli prisons are currently in the late stages of prolonged hunger strikes protesting the legal basis of their imprisonment: administrative detention and military committee sentencing decisions based on secret evidence. Both amount to imprisonment without knowledge of what they are accused and without the right to a trial.

In recent days, at least one of the prisoners reportedly intensified his hunger strike, refusing all medical treatment, including vitamins and minerals. Their health is said to be deteriorating.

Thousands of Palestinians have taken to the streets throughout the West Bank in recent weeks, leading to violent clashes with the IDF and including protests that shut down the Ramallah offices of the Red Cross and UN. Hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel have also protested in solidarity with the hunger strikers on the other side of the Green Line.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Quartet envoy Tony Blair have both called on Israel to respect the human rights of Palestinian prisoners in accordance with its obligations in international law. Responding to the hunger strikers’ deteriorating health condition, Ashton said Saturday, “Under international law, detainees have the right to be informed about the reasons underlying any detention and to have the legality of their detention determined without undue delay.”

The Arab League has demanded the international community take responsibility and break its “unjustified silence” over the injustices Israel subjects Palestinian prisoners to.

In its preparations for U.S. President Obama’s upcoming visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah, the Palestinian government is also reportedly pushing the issue of prisoners to the top of its agenda.

The longest of the hunger strikes is reported to be around 200 days, although it was not clear if it has been continuous. Samer Issawi was released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in October, 2011, having served 10 years of a 30-year sentence. He began his hunger strike nine months later, shortly after the IDF re-arrested him. Issawi is protesting the legal mechanism that put him in prison without access to due process. He was re-sentenced by a military committee using secret evidence that neither he nor his lawyers can see, and therefore cannot mount a defense in court.

Ayman Sharawna was also re-arrested and sentenced under similar conditions using secret evidence, thereby denying him the ability to defend himself in court.

Two other prisoners on hunger strike, Jafar Azzidine and Tareq Qa’adan, are being held in administrative detention; they were never charged with a crime, told what they are accused of or given a chance to defend themselves or clear their names. Those two men have been on a continuous hunger strike for 84 days and are being held at a medical facility in Ramle Prison. According to Physicians for Human Rights, they are not eating but are drinking and receiving some minerals and vitamins.

Administrative detention, which is permissible under international law only in extreme cases to prevent immediate and grave dangers, is widely abused by Israel to imprison Palestinians. During a mass, 1,400-prisoner hunger strike last year to protest the practice, Israel was said to be holding over 300 Palestinians in administrative detention. Acknowledging the legally problematic nature of the practice, even the most senior Israeli security officials have admitted it is unnecessary.

But beyond the highly problematic and illegal (under international law) mechanisms for detaining them, Israel’s treatment toward the hunger strikers defies its own laws and regulations, medical ethics and international conventions, Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) wrote in a statement.

After petitioning Israeli courts to demand visits with the hunger striking prisoners, PHR recently met with and examined Azzidine and Qa’adan. They were are kept shackled in their hospital beds overnight and are being denied family visits, despite being in danger of dying, the statement said.

The main health danger for hunger strikers, PHR’s executive director Ran Cohen told +972 is that heart failure can take place without any warning, at any time.

Azzidine and Qa’adan were recently brought to Assaf Harofe Medical Center against their will and underwent medical testing despite their refusal to be treated, they told a lawyer representing PHR, Cohen said. The prisoners refused to be taken to civilian hospitals unless they were given guarantees they will not be shackled to their beds, which goes against Israeli Medical Association and Israel Prison Service regulations. Nonetheless, after being physically forced to go to the hospital, the two reported that their wrists and ankles were shackled to their beds overnight during their hospitalization.

“Israel’s use of administrative detention based on military regulations to incarcerate individuals without trial is evidence that this is but one more tool used to repress residents of the occupied territories,” a PHR statement asserted.

“The fact that medical personnel are also involved, the violations of the right to health and the courts failure to preserve the inmates’ rights is evidence of Israel’s widespread and systemic moral, ethical and professional failures,” the statement added.

Israeli courts are set to hear appeals in two cases relating to the hunger strikers in the coming days. One of the cases is challenging the military committees that sentenced the men, and the second is by PHR seeking regular access to the hunger strikers.

On a separate but related note, a PLO official reportedly said U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro promised him Israel would release 550 Palestinian prisoners ahead of Obama’s visit in the coming weeks, according to Israeli daily Ma’ariv on Monday. (Hebrew)

Update (Tuesday, Feb 19):
On Tuesday, 800 Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons began a one-day hunger strike in solidarity with the four hunger strikers, Palestinian prisoner support and human rights NGO Addameer reported.

Update 2 (Tuesday, Feb 19):
The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court rejected a request to release Samer Assawi earlier Tuesday. His next hearing is scheduled for March 14.

Read a recent letter by Samer Issawi describing the reasons for his determination to continue his hunger strike here.

This post first appeared on +972 Magazine

As details about the life, work and untimely demise of ‘Prisoner X’ unravel, the most intriguing unanswered questions remain: why did Israel secretly imprisoned him and why he is dead? But the details of the story appear to be making one thing clear; Israel’s security services likely had every reason in the world to (try to) keep the affair and Ben Zygier’s identity a secret.

Like most spy stories, nothing about Prisoner X, his true identity, what he did or didn’t do for Israel’s Mossad or even how he died is known with any degree of certainty. But as various reports and accounts – mostly from Australia, but others from Israel and around the world – come out, pieces of a puzzle begin to take shape into a picture that resembles a spy thriller, possibly gone horribly wrong.

The original ABC investigative report, which revealed Ben Zygier as the highly-censored ‘Prisoner X,’ identified him as an Australian-born Jew who emigrated to Israel in his early twenties. From his age at the time he immigrated and pictures of him in an IDF uniform, it is safe to assume that he was drafted into the army soon after arriving in the country. Those details, though unconfirmed like every other part of the story, are the most reasonable and normal parts of the story. He would have been only one of thousands of Diaspora Jews who move to Israel as young adults and volunteer to serve in the IDF.

From there, the story gets much more interesting. At some point, it appears Zygier returned to Australia where he changed his name to Ben Allen and took out a new passport under that non-Jewish-sounding name. That, in and of itself, it appears, was enough to spark the interest of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO).

The ABC report stated:

In 2010 ASIO suspected that several Australian Jews were working for Mossad, after changing their names from European or Jewish names to Anglo names. Then with new Australian passports and Australian accents, they could travel freely in the Arab world and to places like Iran, to destinations where no Israeli could venture.

Israel has long been suspected of having a hand in covert operations within Iran in efforts to sabotage, spy on and subvert that country’s suspected military nuclear program. But from the assassinations of nuclear scientists to explosions at nuclear research and development facilities, it is difficult to believe that whatever intelligence agency (or agencies) was behind those events did not have agents on the ground, whether to carry out the covert operations themselves or to train and equip Iranian opposition groups to do the work on its behalf.

Other operations widely attributed to the Mossad, such as the 2008 assassination of senior Hezbollah official Imad Mughniyah in Syria, would also likely have required agents on the ground, either to carry out the work themselves or train and equip others.

The Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday reported that Zygier, aka Ben Allen, aka Benjamin Burrows, was one of at least three dual Australian-Israeli citizens under investigation by ASIO. All reportedly changed their names at least once and took out new passports under their pseudonyms.

“The men had used the new passports to travel to Iran, Syria and Lebanon,” the Herald reported.

As former Australian intelligence agent Warren Reed explained to ABC, it is greatly advantageous to use Australian nationals and their passports for covert intelligence work.

Australians abroad are generally seen to be fairly innocent. It’s a clean country, it has a good image like New Zealand. There aren’t many countries like that so our nationality and anything connected with it can be very useful in intelligence work.

If Zygier was a Mossad agent and did indeed travel to Iran, Syria and Lebanon under a new name, it is entirely plausible that he took part in any number of covert operations attributed to Israel. If that is the case, and it is unlikely we’ll ever know, it becomes clear why Israel would jump through so many hoops to try and keep his identity a secret.

Almost by definition, a covert operative in enemy territory puts his or her own life at risk, but they also work with others – both local recruited agents and often foreign intelligence operatives. By revealing Zygier’s identity, if he is who it appears he may be, anyone he ever worked with is suddenly at risk.

Just by publishing his photo, any competent intelligence agency can begin to put together the pieces of how attacks and intelligence operations targeting them transpired. Analysts can review photos and video footage containing the exposed agent and discover the identities of those he worked and traveled with. The careers of covert operatives can be ended. The lives of those agents they recruited will likely come to a swift end. But from an operational perspective, years of work installing equipment and building networks for intelligence collection and sabotage can vanish overnight. Any responsible spy agency would themselves dismantle those networks the moment they fear any serious exposure.

If Zygier was a covert Israeli operative, it is absolutely clear why the Mossad and the entire Israeli government would want to prevent his identity from being made public. Its work in whatever countries he may have operated in are likely over. It would take years to rebuild the networks that were destroyed.

We will never likely know the full story of why Israel put Zygier into secret detention. But one angle revealed in recent (foreign) news reports does provide – highly speculative – clues as to why his (second) country might have stopped trusting him to the point of making him disappear into one of the most secure prison facilities in Israel.

One acquaintance of Zygier’s from 1994, long before he would have ever joined the Israeli army, let alone any clandestine service, spoke anonymously to JTA after news of the affair broke Tuesday. He “never struck me as someone who was stable, he said, adding, “Ben talked too much.”

In another account published Wednesday, of when an Australian journalist actually accused Zygier of working for the Mossad in early 2010, the suspected spy reacted strangely and angrily, in a demeanor one would not expect from a trained spy.

“Who the f–k are you?” an incredulous Mr Zygier told Fairfax’s then Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis. “What is this total bullshit you are telling me?”

If the Mossad did believe Zygier was mentally unstable and either was likely to, or had already revealed too much about his clandestine work for Israel, it is almost understandable why they would want him to disappear. It’s also possible that Zygier’s demise was a result of treachery, accidental exposure, an impending Moshe Vanunu-type planned public exposé, or a host of other spy novel-esque scenarios.

What actually happened? We may never know. But as the story unravels, it is becoming clearer and clearer why Israel would have wanted it to remain a secret.

Update: On Wednesday night, Israel officially acknowledged that in 2010 it held a dual Israeli citizen under a false name in secret detention, which it described as court ordered. The statement added that the prisoner was represented by three lawyers, whom it named, and that his family was notified after his arrest. The acknowledgement did not name Prisoner X or give any reason for his detention but said an inquiry ruled his death to be a suicide and that a further probe looked into whether negligence played a role in his death.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign has had mixed, but limited, success since its official launch in its current iteration nearly seven years ago. Divestment and boycott campaigns have claimed small victories after targeting educational and labor pension investment funds, transportation companies serving Israelis in the occupied Palestinian territories, academic conferences and musical and cultural events. But many “big-picture” observers will admit that its successes have led to little if any change in Israeli policy, and subsequently, in the Palestinian reality.

While former international officials have called for limited sanctions against Israel should it fail to cease its settlement enterprise, and current officials have hinted at limited travel sanctions against violent settlers, the notion of sanctions against Israel has largely taken a back seat to the more constricted and arguably less impactful boycott and divestment campaigns.

Last week’s UN report, however, advanced the prospects of – and possibly laid the beginnings of a legal groundwork for – economic sanctions against Israel for its continued settlement enterprise, which is viewed as illegal under international law in every corner of the globe.

The last paragraph of the report’s recommendations reads (emphasis added):

Private companies must assess the human rights impact of their activities and take all necessary steps – including by terminating their business interests in the settlements – to ensure they are not adversely impacting the human rights of the Palestinian People in conformity with international law as well as the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The Mission calls upon all Member States to take appropriate measures to ensure that business enterprises domiciled in their territory and/or under their jurisdiction, including those owned or controlled by them, that conduct activities in or related to the settlements respect human rights throughout their operations.

If and when the UN report is finalized and adopted by the UNHRC and then the UN General Assembly (GA), the first possible legal – but more significantly, practical – foundations for sanctions will have been laid.

General Assembly resolutions do not carry the legally binding and obligatory weight of Security Council resolutions, and any likely GA measure will merely call on the Security Council to implement its recommendations. Furthermore, it would not be the first time the General Assembly passed a resolution calling for sanctions against Israel. But the Security Council never adopted those resolutions (UNGA Resolution 3414 and UNGA Resolution 31/61), primarily because they were blocked by Washington’s perennially loyal veto. There is no reason to believe the United States will act any differently in the future.

But there is something about those previous resolutions of great relevance: Resolutions 3414 and 31/61 called for an end to military and economic aid to Israel, which is provided almost exclusively by the United States.

Any future resolution based on the UNHRC report could – explicitly or implicitly – call on states to take measures to regulate private businesses that operate in settlements in the Palestinian territories, in line with the report’s recommendations.

By addressing private business and economic interests instead of state-to-state aid, such a resolution would be actionable – regardless of legal obligation – by a much larger number of countries whose citizens do business in Israel, and many times by natural extension, in the settlements.

This is not to say that the UN report or its possible adoption by the General Assembly will inevitably lead to sanctions against Israel, or in a more limited sense, against its settlement activities. Even if such momentum were to transpire, the near-consensus requirement of EU trade policy (Israel’s largest trade partner) makes radical and sweeping economic sanctions all the less likely.

But in a time when the BDS movement is gaining momentum, putting the onus of action against Israeli settlement and human rights violations on states – instead of private student and ecumenical groups – holds the potential to ratchet up pressure to levels unseen since the Arab Oil Boycott. Furthermore, and perhaps most consequently, it could serve as an important tool to those calling for BDS-inspired actions and campaigns against Israel.

Without addressing the legitimacy of sanctions in general, or the ability of BDS-type campaigns to end Israeli settlement, the occupation and human and civil rights abuses against Palestinians, the final two sentences of the UN report could be the start of a diplomatic and economic regime of pressure against Israel. If that takes place, it might force Israel to begin reconciling itself with the consequences of its actions, and more tangibly, reconsidering the policy decisions that put it at odds with much of the world.

This post was first published on +972 Magazine

“When a new settlement is established, it must withstand attack from the very first day of occupation. A system of defense has been evolved, in which these experienced settlers play an important part.

“When the proposed site has been marked out, members of the established settlements in the vicinity move off to congregate in the village nearest the scene of the latest colonizing adventure. From all around they come. Men, who have themselves recently made pioneering history, by cars, lorries and wagons, they all move to the assembly point. The point from which, in the still of night, they will set out to roll back still further the carpet of desert waste.”

The film, of course, is an early Zionist propaganda piece from 1939. The descriptions of tactics, however, are just as accurate today as they were nearly three-quarters of a century ago.

What some might find shocking — or amusing — are the changes in the narrative and terminology-driven framework used to describe the Zionist settlement enterprise in the past 74 years.

Were the phrase “latest colonizing adventure” to be used in a documentary on settlements today, surely a host of “Hasbara” social media specialists, quasi-journalists and bloggers would summarily declare the filmmaker a pro-Palestinian, a “delegitimizer” of Israel, and at least one article would surely lodge an accusation or two of anti-Semitism.

Just like today, albeit sans historical context and an understanding that Palestine was not a land without a people, the film pays lip service to the displacement and/or land theft that is almost always part and parcel of renegade settlement construction.

“Armed guards watch with interest as the plowshare turns the first plow. An agricultural settlement is being reborn … The tower is up and the new settlement provides a background of permanence to the Arab neighbors driving their cattle back in the setting sun.”

Here is the 27-minute film. Enjoy.

Follow Michael Omer-Man on Twitter: @MikeOmerMan

Every Israeli government for the past decade has deferred to international diplomatic pressure not to advance construction in the “E-1” zone outside Jerusalem. Every Israeli prime minister since Ariel Sharon knew that such a move would cause a diplomatic uproar, and for good reason.

One of the foundations of the Oslo Peace Process, the Clinton Parameters and the Road Map for Peace, all of which have long passed their expiry date, is that East Jerusalem will in some form or another become the capital of Palestine. But that becomes all-the-more impossible if Israel builds new settlements in E-1, further sealing Palestinian East Jerusalem and cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank. Construction in E-1 would make a contiguous Palestinian state appear even more of a pipedream than it already does today.

For that reason, the United States and other diplomatic heavyweights have long made it clear to Israel that building in E-1 is unacceptable.

But Netanyahu is in the middle of an election campaign and an ideological coup d’état took place in the Likud last month. The new face of the Likud is made up of ardent believers in the “land of Israel” stream of Zionism. Among them are a number of populist, uncompromising ideologues who have been responsible for a significant portion of the most controversial legislation tabled and diplomatic stances taken in the previous government. The results are the equivalent of a complete Tea Party takeover of the Republican Party.

The Likud also recently joined lists with the nationalist Israel Beytenu party, led by Avigdor Liberman, (probably) the only foreign minister in the world who lives outside the country he represents. Israel Beytenu too has always favored bold nationalist endeavors over strategic diplomacy with the West.

Netanyahu’s political family was demanding blood in response to the Palestinians’ upgrade to non-member observer status in the UN, forcing him to make a big gesture before the elections.

The prime minister knew that advancing construction in E-1 would put Israel in the middle of a diplomatic maelstrom. Furthermore, he knows that by advancing construction in E-1 he is driving yet another nail into the already closed coffin interring the two-state solution as it awaits burial.

But Netanyahu never intended to achieve a two-state solution, so that’s not an issue. And he’s already taken on the United States and survived politically.

So “what’s the big deal?”, Netanyahu asks. He may very well be pushing Israel further into international isolation, but hey, at least he’ll be around to deal with it.

As Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Last week, in the midst of the latest round of deadly violence between Israel and Gaza, The Jerusalem Post printed an op-ed penned by Gilad Sharon, a man who has pushed himself into the public eye solely by virtue of the name and legacy of his father, former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.

In a hyper-nationalist tone, Sharon advocated escalating the limited military operation into what would be the 21st century’s first instance of genocide:

“We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.”

There is no need to delve into the plethora of reasons Sharon’s words and ideas are appalling. If he were a man of any influence, his writings might be considered criminal under the Genocide Convention; a cursory reading makes that clear even to the legal layman.

More worthy of discussion is the wisdom of disseminating such abhorrent ideas.

Anyone who has lived in Israel for any significant period of time can recall at least a handful of times they heard public calls to “turn Gaza into a parking lot,” to “kill them all,” and other unabashed murderous racism most often associated with stereotypes of taxi drivers. Nationalist marches through Palestinian neighborhoods filled with genocidal chants of “death to Arabs” have without challenge, become part and parcel of the defective Israeli social landscape.

A day before Sharon’s article was published, Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari, a former member of a terrorist organization, picked up a megaphone at a public demonstration in Tel Aviv to declare that security for Israel is synonymous with “erasing Gaza [from the map].” A few days earlier, he posted a message to IDF soldiers on his Facebook page saying, “There are no innocents in Gaza … mow them down.” (Hebrew link)

At the same demonstration in Tel Aviv last week, as a young Army Radio reporter stood by recording, Knesset candidate and former spokesman for the Kach terrorist organization (designated as such by both Israel and the United States) Baruch Marzel said Israel can and must “exterminate” its enemies, namely Palestinians in Gaza.

But despite their commonality and de facto acceptance in Israeli society, such calls for racially motivated mass murder, genocide and ethnic cleansing are not usually aired for the Israeli public to see and hear, let alone translated by international or English-language media for foreigners to read and watch.

The first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem.

Racism and calls for mass murder are normally cast aside by the Israeli mainstream as insignificant and peripheral views. While by no means do such overtly racist and unacceptable outbursts represent the entirety of Israeli society, Israeli society as a whole can and should be morally indicted for its silent assent to and passive acceptance of those ideas’ legitimacy, and for its unwillingness to confront them.

When a recent poll found that a full one-third of Israeli Jews think Israeli-Arabs should be stripped of the right to vote (Hebrew PDF), the public backlash was not against the rampant racism it exposed but against the journalist who published it. (A similar poll in 2010 found 36% held the same view)

It may be legitimate to attempt not to air one’s dirty laundry in public, but the laundry must be washed somewhere, sometime.

While it is indeed objectionable to print the genocidal, racist ramblings of somebody like Gilad Sharon, shutting one’s eyes and pretending his ideas exist only in the minds of a crazy few is even more reprehensible than suppressing the expression of those thoughts in the first place.

As John Stuart Mill wrote over 150 years ago, “Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument: but facts and arguments, to produce any effect on the mind, must be brought before it”.

Instead of burying and dismissing outrageous views and ideas, expressed and espoused by no insignificant minority of Jewish Israelis, maybe it’s better they are aired and printed for all to hear and read.

Only by forcing Israel – and the world – to acknowledge the ugly reality and xenophobic consequences on society wrought by nearly half a century of military control over another people does rehabilitation even stand a chance. Only by exposing the murderous ideologies espoused by the likes of Gilad Sharon – and many others – can Israel begin to treat the plague it has long been afflicted with.

But exposure is not enough; if there is any chance for change, the silent majority must remove its blinders and act – there must be outrage.

Follow Michael Omer-Man on Twitter: @MikeOmerMan

In the past month, armed Palestinian groups in Gaza launched a string of three, seemingly well planned and ultimately successful attacks against IDF forces along the border. Planted explosive devices, a massive and unprecedented tunnel detonation and an anti-tank missile left a total of eight Israeli soldiers injured, some seriously.

Already there was something strange. Hamas’s armed wing, the Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades, has declared for some time that it was focusing on military targets, a change from its rocket attacks on Israeli civilian centers. Nevertheless, to have nearly a month go by without rocket attacks on civilians is almost unheard of in recent years.

The IDF’s responses to the attacks were also uncharacteristically restrained considering the Israeli casualties, limited to immediate defensive fire and late-night airstrikes on empty buildings and tunnels. Following the second two Gaza-born attacks last week, however, the immediate counterattacks introduced a civilian casualty count.

When a massive tunnel detonation left three Israeli soldiers injured, the IDF returned fire “into an open field,” as the IDF Spokesman’s Office later claimed, killing a 13-year-old Palestinian boy. That night, the IDF launched no major retaliatory airstrikes.

The next morning, armed groups in Gaza shot an anti-tank missile at an IDF jeep, injuring four soldiers. Once again, tanks returned fire, killing four civilians and injuring some 30, among them women and children. That night, the IDF launched no major retaliatory airstrikes, although it targeted and killed two alleged terrorists in the morning.

These civilian deaths were an escalating turning point and terrorists, mostly Salafi elements in the Strip, launched over 130 rockets into Israeli civilian centers for the next three days. Some seven Israelis were injured. The IDF, however, continued to limit its retaliation to late-night airstrikes targeting empty buildings and tunnels. There were no more Palestinian casualties.

Meanwhile, Palestinians announced an ambiguously worded cease-fire declaration after a conference between major armed groups in Gaza. It was almost as if injuring seven Israeli civilians had evened the score and accomplished their retaliatory objectives.

Normative calm was restored.

This latest round of violence was different than those in recent months and years. The absence of deadly and overwhelming IDF assassinations and retaliatory strikes draws a stark contrast to previous escalations.

But more important than how this mini-cycle of violence was different, is the question of why?

One scenario is that the Israeli defense establishment failed to notice a strategic paradigm shift on the part of Palestinian groups.

One of Israel’s strongest weapons against Hamas (and other groups in the Gaza Strip) is its ability to label them terrorists, and attacks that deliberately target civilians are almost unquestionably terrorism, or at the very least serious war crimes. A shift by those Gazan groups toward attacking uniformed military personnel would ostensibly deny Israel its most powerful rhetorical weapon.

If there has been a shift, the driving forces behind it are the loss of Syria as safe haven and the rise of a new regime in Egypt; Gaza-based Palestinian groups are scrambling to find new homes. Making life difficult for them, few regimes in the region are fully comfortable with groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Their revolutionary nature and Islamic influence threaten secular monarchies and dictatorships, while the use of terrorism is frowned upon by more democratic regimes like Egypt and Jordan. Both groups would have inevitably come under pressure from the US not to take them in.

Hamas, which recently relocated its political headquarters to Qatar, may have agreed – or decided – to change its armed tactics in order to please its new landlord, specifically, to limit its attacks to Israeli military targets.

If that did in fact happen, Israel failed to take notice. Even worse, it may not know how to react under the new rules of the game. The absence of serious IDF retaliation could very well be an undesired but unavoidable Israeli stalling maneuver to figure out how to respond. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu essentially confirmed the IDF would remain silent on Tuesday, saying: “I am responsible for choosing the right time to exact the highest possible price and so it will be.”

A lead-up to war?

But regardless of the relative calm, members of the Israeli government have recently made public declarations and suggestions that a Cast Lead-style major ground operation is imminent, or at least likely.

Cumulatively, the use of anti-tank missiles, the success of explosives attacks on patrols and the massive tunnel detonation signal an introduction of new military tools to the Palestinian military repertoire. A massive Israeli response would not be surprising.

In the lead-up to previous major offensives, however, Israel fully participated in the violent escalations that made them inevitable. It is unlike the IDF to stand back while rockets fall and attacks are launched, as it has in the past month. That appears to signal Israeli hesitation.

One explanation for the current situation is that Prime Minister Netanyahu does not want to head into elections on the heels of a military operation. A ground operation today would likely face fierce objections and near-universal international condemnation on a scale much larger than Cast Lead. After Netanyahu seemingly bet on the wrong horse in the US elections, it is possible he is wary of further isolating Israel in the international community, and especially further distancing Israel from the Obama White House. The prime minister needs Obama for his trademark Iranian campaign, and a casualty count even remotely close to that of Cast Lead could drive an even larger wedge between the two leaders.

Secondly, a botched military operation, or one that fails to accomplish its objectives, could cripple Netanyahu’s image as the strong-on-security candidate in an election, which under the right circumstances could easily become contestable. Additionally, opening a southern front as the Syrian border is heating up could be disastrous.

Yet another possibility, raised by a number of political commentators is that Netanyahu simply lacks the resolve to order and oversee a major military operation, something which he has never done in either of his two terms as prime minister.

Lastly, it’s possible the Netanyahu government is facing intense pressure not to launch a major operation in Gaza from the United States, Europe, Egypt or even Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority. All of those parties, particularly Abbas, have an interest in preventing war.

Whatever the reasons, Israelis and Palestinians have once again been left with no peace and no war, but something is different. The status quo survived another day, but there may be a whole new game in Gaza.

The only question is: what is it?

Follow Michael Omer-Man on Twitter: @MikeOmerMan