Thousands of Jewish youths celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary in Jerusalem. This year's celebrations have been hit by scandal. Photograph: Dan Balilty/AP
guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 April 2010
Ian Black, Middle East editor
Tomorrow's 62nd birthday celebrations marred by bribery scandal and peace impasse
Blue and white Star of David flags are flying from cars and buildings all over the country as Israelis prepare to celebrate tomorrow's Independence Day holiday ‑ their 62nd ‑ first with sombre memorial ceremonies, then barbecues, fireworks, squeaky plastic hammers and searching reflections about past and present.
It is about remembering the sacrifices of 1948 and later wars, marking national achievements, nostalgia – and having fun. But this year's is not the happiest of anniversaries: the hottest talking point of recent days is that former prime minister Ehud Olmert is suspected of involvement in a huge corruption scandal when he was mayor of Jerusalem.
Controversy is raging too over the arrest of a young woman accused of a damaging security leak ‑ about the army's killing of wanted Palestinian militants ‑ to the liberal Haaretz newspaper, a row that underlines profound differences between right and left over media freedoms and patriotism.
Prospects for what is still called the "peace process" with the Palestinians have never been so poor, while Barack Obama's determination to force a resolution of the conflict is unsettling to a country long used to near-unqualified support from Washington. "Obama doesn't understand Israelis," is a common complaint. "He's tough on the good guys but not the bad guys," is another. (Israel has always loved America and yet, if America wishes to betray Israel's trust, then Israel will still be a majority - for with the G-d of Israel, she out-numbers all the armies in the world.)
Binyamin Netanyahu's grudging and temporary West Bank settlement moratorium and US and Arab fury over plans to build housing units in East Jerusalem are stark reminders that the core issues remain as intractable as ever. Even if Obama's envoy, George Mitchell, does manage to start "proximity" talks, no one knows how direct negotiations can resume.
(Here's an idea! Back off and stop deciding what is best for another nation! Pack up, go home and try to bring America back to her former glory, before Obama took office! Amazing how the same people in Washington who are crooked and rob the American people of their own freedoms, want to discuss peace in the Middle East!)
THIS IS A WARING ... HIS SMILE IS DECEITFUL ... WARNING!!
Many Israelis worry more about the nuclear ambitions of Iran's Holocaust-denying president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These are widely seen, and officially presented, as posing the greatest danger to the Middle East's only (though still unavowed) nuclear power. "We face two cruel possibilities," the rightwing military expert Ya'akov Amidror commented in an eve-of-holiday newspaper article. "Living with a nuclear Iran or setting the Middle East ablaze by attacking it." Officials and ordinary citizens complain of the "de-legitimisation" of the Jewish state. This comprises campaigns in Europe and the US for anti-apartheid-style boycotts, disinvestment and for bringing war crimes charges against Israeli politicians and generals. It all reinforces a sense of outraged victimhood that takes little account of the international impact of last year's war in Gaza ‑ seen as self-defence against Hamas rockets by a majority of Israelis ‑ in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed. (So, do we measure the guilt by how many terrorists are killed? They can stop anytime they have a desire to live in peace with their neighbor, Israel. They will NEVER cease from causing pain to the innoncent civilians in Israel. Maybe time to move Hamas out of Gaza, while lighting a fire up in Iran.)
So it's no surprise that the mood this independence day feels a tad subdued. "Israelis are exhausted after 62 years," argues writer Yigal Sarna, sipping latte in a Tel Aviv cafe. "People are fed up with the news. As far as most Israelis are concerned the conflict was over once the West Bank wall was built. It's a state of total denial. But at the end of the day this conflict is destroying us." (Not true! Israelis are not exhausted .. they are trusting that this is just beginning of their State and have much to celebrate and celebrate they will - in the glory of being back in their homeland!)
Optimists in what remains of the Israeli peace camp see hope in the achievements of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Its prime minister, Salam Fayyad, is building a stronger economy and institutions that should be the nucleus of a future state, regardless of the political impasse. (This is propaganda for Fayyad! WARNING!) Western governments, in line with Quartet envoy Tony Blair, call this "the only game in town". Critics sneer that propping up the PA is making it easier for Israel to maintain its 42-year occupation with Palestinian help.
Surveying the events of the past year, the veteran Haaretz newspaper columnist Yoel Marcus urged Netanyahu to bow to Obama's pressure for substantive negotiations with the Palestinians ‑ or accept the likelihood of an internationally imposed peace settlement before Israel's 63rd independence day. (I hope you go out of business, Haaretz! You do not know what is good for all Israel!)
Historian Tom Segev has spent years arguing for a two-state solution but confesses that he has all but lost hope of progress, even if the president does eventually table his own peace plan. "In principle the US can force us to do anything," he says. "But it won't happen. There's no sense here that we have to make fateful decisions." (Good, Mr. Segev - stop arguing for a two-state solution!! Solution for what - an appeasement to the Arabs, who all wish the death of the State of Israel?)
On the Israeli right the mood is of defiance in the face of international pressure and the absence of any prospect for successful negotiations. Benny Begin, a hawkish Likud minister who Netanyahu cannot ignore, protests that the west is appeasing Iran, Syria and their allies, and that the mainstream Fatah movement is out to remove the "Zionist presence", despite the PLO's formal commitment to a two state-solution.
"The notion of an independent sovereign Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] that is viable and peace-seeking is an oxymoron," Begin warns. "I don't see the minimum military needs of Israel being met by a Palestinian state."
Amid the celebrations, the bitter arguments about politics, peace and territory go on.
