Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has lambasted the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, accusing him of displaying only disingenuous concern for peace with the Palestinians and deliberately inflating the “Iranian danger”. Speaking before a decidedly right-wing Jewish audience in New York this week, Olmert said the Israeli government was letting the two-state solution slip away from its hands, saying the termination of the two-state strategy would lead to dire strategic consequences for the Hebrew state. He added that Israel's current relationship with the Palestinians was completely inadequate and that there was no alternative to the two-state solution. Olmert said that the creation of a Palestinian state was the only way to safeguard Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state. He described Netanyahu's position on the two-state solution as “somewhat vague and not as eloquent and explicit as he can make it”. Met with a chorus of heckling and boos from the extreme right-wing audience, Olmert warned that if Israel didn't make room for a Palestinian state, “we will be isolated in the world — not because they hate us, but because they don't want to have Israel as the occupier of people who don't have equal rights.” The former Israeli premier infuriated the audience, which apparently identified with far-right American Jewish circles advocating the imposition of apartheid on non-Jews in Israel-Palestine, when he said that Israel ought to seek an alternative to violence and bloodshed. “I have fought terrorism more than any of the prime ministers before me. But one morning you wake up and ask yourself: What am I leaving for my children and grandchildren? A reality of endless war and confrontation and blood that will destabilise the life of the people in our country, or a glimpse of hope that things will be different and there may be a chance and that if there is a chance, we will not be the ones that missed it because of prejudice.” On Iran, Olmert admitted that Israel had been exaggerating the urgency of the so-called Iranian danger. Last year, at the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu sought to dramatise the “Iranian nuclear danger”, giving the impression that Iran would attack Israel in a matter of weeks or even days. “I disagree with those who say the Iranians have arrived at the red line drawn by the Israeli prime minister in his famous appearance at the UN last September. We have exaggerated [the Iranian danger] for a long time — not in regard to the direness of the potential of the threat, but in regard to how close Iran actually is to possessing a nuclear weapon.” Relating to Olmert's comments, Netanyahu tacitly admitted that he was not telling the truth when he sought to dramatise Iran's alleged danger, saying that Iran didn't yet cross the red line in its nuclear programme. Last week, Amos Yadlin, former head of the Israeli military intelligence, said Iran was only a month or two months away from the point of no return. Israel is the only country in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons. Israel wants to maintain its nuclear monopoly in order to have undisputed strategic mastery over the Middle East. This week, Egypt withdrew from a meeting of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signatories in protest at the failure of the international community to deal honestly and effectively with Israel's nuclear stockpile.
MORE REPRESSION: As voices are being raised, even within the predominant right-wing establishment, questioning Israel's current approach of slowly but definitively killing the two-state vision, the present Israeli government continues to adopt a policy based on repression against Palestinians in the West Bank. During the past few weeks, the Israeli occupation army demolished numerous Palestinian homes and structures all over the West Bank. The demolished structures included cisterns used by Palestinian peasants and shepherds to water their herds. In the Jordan Valley, the population of an entire village was expelled from their homes in order to enable the Israeli army to carry out military training. Palestinian sources said the real Israeli goal was to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian inhabitants in preparation for handing the village to Jewish settlers. Israel has long been carrying out a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Jordan Valley region, forcing tens of thousands of Palestinian residents to leave their homes and lands. Moreover, Jewish settlers, apparently with a green light from the occupation army, this week took over Palestinian fields in the Nablus region. The settlers began ploughing and planting seeds as if the land were theirs. Palestinians have a limited chance of redress as the Israeli justice system is notoriously biased in favour of Jews. Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation army is embarking on a fresh campaign of hostage taking, “administrative detention”, against Islamic activists all over the West Bank. The arrests are seen as an effort by Israel to replenish its jails and detention centres. On Tuesday, Israeli troops stormed the southern suburbs of the northern city of Nablus, detaining several college professors from An-Najah National University. Among the detainees is Essam Al-Ashkar, professor of physics, and Mustafa Shunnar, professor of sociology. The latter reportedly suffers from cardiac problems. According to the head of the Ahrar Centre, which follows up the plight of Palestinian detainees and prisoners in Israeli detention camps, the Israeli army has started a broad arrest campaign code-named “Mowing the Grass”. The operation is particularly targeting Islamist activists, intellectuals and academics. It is uncertain if the arrest campaign has any connection with efforts on the part of the Palestinian Authority to hold elections. Hamas has consistently argued that the organisation of elections in the West Bank would be meaningless if candidates had no guarantees against arbitrary arrest by the Israeli occupation army.
