M74 opens: the big steel and other roadside blues

It's finally here.  Today, as previously outlined.  In all its nightmarish reality.

The M74-M8 extension through the heart of Glasgow's southside will open to the roar and pollution of mass, booming traffic, oblivious to all the carefully-presented studies and warnings of environmental, social and aesthetic vandalism.

Fittingly, the ribbon will be cut by the Duke of Gloucester, an archaic statement of royal patronage to match the backward prerogatives of Scotland's and Glasgow's transport policy barons.

Costing an astonishing £692 million - £2,000 an inch - the six-lane, five-mile section has been hailed by ministers, councillors and business leaders alike as a 'regeneration saviour', their ill-founded claims still driving roughshod over more studious and mounting evidence of 'road-solution' folly:

"The opening of the new M74 northern extension will increase vehicle trips in a city that is already gridlocked at rush hour. Any benefit through the displacement of traffic from other routes, such as the M8, will be short-term and quickly undone through the new traffic generated by the extra road capacity.

The massive amounts of money spent on the completion of this new road could and should have been better invested in improving Glasgow’s creaking public transport services, such as local buses or cross-Glasgow rail services, particularly given that more than half of all households in Glasgow don’t even have access to a car. The new road does little or nothing for these households, which are largely in the poorer or less well-connected parts of the city.

The new road will increase air pollution levels in a city that is currently breaching European Union safe levels of nitrogen dioxide air pollution and which has been declared one of the UK's worst pollution hot-spots. Nitrogen Dioxide causes respiratory illnesses that result in 9000 hospital admissions every year, and Glasgow provides more than its fair share of these." 

As also reported in the Scotsman:

The extension was approved by ministers despite being rejected by an independent public inquiry.

The Scottish Government has trumpeted the £445m construction contract - which excluded the cost of decontamination and land purchasing - as being completed early and under budget, but the overall cost of the project has rocketed and the road's completion is in fact years late.

It should have been finished three years ago, and when initially given the green light in 2001 was estimated to cost £245m.

Glasgow Green MSP Patrick Harvie, the past convener of Holyrood's transport committee, said: "The evidence is clear - building new motorway capacity, like the M74 extension, just creates more congestion, not more jobs.

"In the longer term, Glasgow can expect slower journeys, worsening air quality and more cost to the local economy."

Stephen Joseph, chief executive of the Campaign for Better Transport, said: "The promoters of the M74 have never been prepared to take seriously the idea that the road will suffer from the 'M25 effect', where it generates so much traffic that jams get worse rather than better.

"This effect is now well recognised worldwide, but the danger is that instead of learning from it, the Scottish roads authorities will simply come back for more and try to build even more roads across Glasgow."

Meanwhile, as bus fares continue to rise, the transport 'options' for Glasgow's citizens seem no less limiting.

On a website more inclined to the weighty issues of Palestine and Libya, Japan's nuclear catastrophe and other human-created suffering, this question may seem like a descent into parochial bathos.  Yet, how can First Buses, Glasgow, justify the highway robbery sum of £1.80 to travel more than five stops?

First recently replaced its £1.45 and £1.65 fares with a 90p 'short hop' (up to five stops) and the £1.80 ticket for anything beyond.  Though a discounted 'two-journey' can be obtained for £3, the £1.80 will, for many, still be the relevant tariff into the city-centre, while an 'all-day' ticket has been 'rounded-up' from £3.75 to £4.

The same return (after 9 am) train journey from Glasgow's southside into town is around £2.  Compared to travelling on often-littered, irregular, expensive buses and the hassle of congested roads,  the comfortable, usually-on-time and less-expensive train option is a no-brainer.

Not long ago, I had the pleasure of sitting on a smart single-decker as it hugged the gorgeous coastal road between Nice and Monte Carlo (curious to see its showy affluence - wasn't my kind of place), a substantial journey which cost just 1 euro.  Taking a First bus a few short miles into Glasgow city-centre costs double that.  How did we get to such a crazy policy destination?

Even allowing for the relentless hikes in fuel costs - always passed on, and more, to the paying public, never in cuts to executive salaries - what would induce a commuter or a city-centre shopper to sacrifice their four wheels for a Glasgow bus?  Where's the encouragement for families to relinquish the private comfort of their precious car?  More particularly, how are low-income families with kids meant to cope with such soaring costs for basic travel?

It's the usual free-market imperatives.  Prices go up.  Profits are protected.  No one is consulted.  Public concerns are simply dismissed.

Other cities around the world are trying to effect imaginative transport policies.  Here, proclamations of green, sustainable transport are simply that - lofty words and political pontifications.

The airline industry enjoys zero-VAT and other assistance on aviation fuel.  Why should car-reducing public buses not receive similar or greater subsidies?  Why, more boldly, not make public transport free?

And now, alongside some of the country's highest bus fares, Glasgow has the monstrous M74 extension, encouraging even more cars and greater pollution.

With it's giant blue steel bridges now striding defiantly atop the little homes on Devon Sreet, the M74 offers a whole new 'urban vista' from the top-deck of your all-expensive bus into town.

It's not just the profit-driven greed and eco-toxicity of market life, it's the aesthetic mediocrity it imposes on our daily outlook.

John

Young American Jew beaten and arrested in Jerusalem

Here's what happens to courageous, peaceful people who dare raise their conscientious voices for Palestinian rights on the streets of Jerusalem. 

 

Nineteen-year-old Lucas Koerner, an American Jew, was violently arrested during 'Jerusalem Day' for speaking his mind about Israel's illegal occupation and the key complicit role of his own government in maintaining Palestinian suffering.  

Following his release from custody, Lucas gave an insightful interview relating some of the visceral abuse he received and the discriminatory conditions he witnessed in jail:

"Throughout the whole affair, the only thing audible coming from the policemen was a constant stream of curses words, ‘mother####er,’ ‘piece of shit,’ etc., which was to me a ringing confirmation of how infuriated and threatened they were by a 19-year-old wearing a kippah and a keffiyeh standing with the Palestinians.

"What struck me most about my time in prison is that it is a reflection of the rest of Israeli society in that it’s completely segregated. I was placed against my will in the Jewish cell. I asked to be put in the Arab cell. The Jewish cell conditions weren’t bad at all; it was still jail, but it was bearable. I did see the Arab cell or at least one of the Arab cells and the conditions there were absolutely abominable. … We had furniture, we had beds of some sort, we had a clean bathroom. They had nothing. Just a bench and an open toilet. The conditions were horrible. That’s what struck me most." 

It's a graphic picture of truth for all the world to see.  The state of Israel - that 'great democracy' - in all its intolerant and colours.

But it's also a statement of common humanity and hope, with Jews of good conscience speaking up for the occupied and oppressed, saying clearly: not in our name.

Great credit to this brave and moral young man.

John

Media Lens, Hari and the 'liberal wager'

An excellent, pushing-the-boundaries Alert has just been published by Media Lens, asking probing questions of those who continue to serve and defend the liberal media.

In particular, some objections to the piece have been raised in defence of Johann Hari of the Independent, who ML cite as one of those liberal journalists still unwilling to challenge the corporate media which employs them.

Why, some ask, single-out Hari, who has shown impressive humility in recanting his support for the Iraq war, opposes Western 'intervention' in Libya and now cites Chomsky in favourable reference?

All relevant points.  But where precisely do we see Hari, Monbiot, Fisk, Milne and other liberal 'dissidents' take-on and criticise the very organs of liberal propaganda that serve to rationalise corporate-military-planet-destroying greed?  

It's as if all the great evils in the world can be safely described and condemned from the pages of the Guardian/Indy while remaining blind to the same media that runs on similar corporate, profit-determined lines. 

Where, in short, is their critical realisation of that great big elephant in the room? 

The key point, as ML suggest, is to start having more penetrating discussions about how token 'dissident' journalists see their place within corporate-driven organisations and how their presence is used to reinforce the corporate-sustaining myth of a 'free and democratic vanguard media'. 

Nor does the standard 'would you rather there were no Milne, Monbiot, Hari or Fisk left inside such media?' take us much further in that discussion. 

So many liberal leftists seem stuck on this 'dilemma', treating it like a kind of 'Pascal's Wager' - perhaps agnostic over Guardian-type output or inclined to accept that it may be fig-leaf journalism, yet still uncertain and fearing the 'consequences' of its non-existence.  

Thus, so many err on the side of 'rational-cautionary belief': it's better to have such journalists and accept the liberal media's 'positive' existence rather than not have it and live with a 'radical void'.  

The ML Alert is, essentially, asking such journalists and their advocates to consider a much more radical set of questions beyond the 'liberal wager': how and why are you being told and sold this message, and what are you prepared to say and do about it within and beyond the media that you serve? 

The day such writers step outside that self-protecting wager to become part of a true independent media - a cooperative unconstrained by corporate imperatives, ready to dissect the power-sustaining role and pretensions of the Guardian/Independent - will be the day they start to become real dissident journalists.

John

BBC and the murder of Golan protesters

More brutal Israeli executions of unarmed civilians.  No condemnation or serious action from complicit governments. Another shameless inversion of the truth from the BBC.

The latest ruthless murder of defenceless Palestinian-Syrian demonstrators, this time on Naksa Day (5 June), indicates Israel's deepening concern over Arab Spring ferment and the power of peaceful Palestinian protest.

If this was peaceful, popular dissent in, say, Iran or any other official enemy of the West, we can be sure that BBC correspondents like John Simpson and Kevin Connolly would be on the ground castigating the regime and talking-up the protesters' democratic aims.  Not so when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians.

What we get, instead, is not only token, second-hand reportage of the killings, but a loaded narrative implying that Israel was merely 'responding to provocation', with the demonstrators bringing about their own killing.

A letter to the BBC's Middle East online editor Tarik Kafala.

     

Dear Tarik Kafala


The BBC's coverage of unarmed Palestinian-Syrian protesters being shot dead by Israeli soldiers was as oblivious to balanced, impartial reportage as the disregard those soldiers seemingly showed their victims.

The wording and omissions in this article coupled with brazenly-biased references to Israeli sources tells us all we need to know about 'BBC neutrality'.

The opening line - always important in getting the essence of the story across - states that:

"Israeli troops have fired on pro-Palestinian protesters".

Why not, at the very least:

'Israeli troops have killed unarmed pro-Palestinian protesters'?

The words 'killed' and 'unarmed' should not only be part of this line, they should be the headline and basis of the story.

Indeed, why isn't such killing referred to as a "massacre" - as in South Africa's Sharpeville massacre?  Or does the BBC think it anything less than open state murder for troops to wilfully gun down unarmed civilians?

Moreover, why is there no questions in the report about Israel's failure to wait and try to arrest the protesters?  Or, like Israel, do the BBC consider the life of Arab 'others' so cheap as to negate that line of enquiry?

The report goes on to say that the "protesters defied razor-wire fences", while "Israel had vowed to prevent a repeat of a similar march last month, in which hundreds of people breached the fence."

All very 'factual', you will, no doubt, claim.  But the impression conveyed is that this 'defiance' was met with legitimate, fore-warned force.  Where in this line, or anywhere else in the piece, does the BBC consider the disproportionality of Israel's 'response'?

It goes on:  

"The US state department said it was "troubled" by the "loss of life". "We call for all sides to exercise restraint," it said. "Provocative actions like this should be avoided." "

Isn't this statement worthy of even a little deconstruction?  Isn't its classic understatement on calculated murder and the 'provocative invitation' to being shot not worthy of critical or alternative comment?

It seems not, with the piece moving seamlessly into the first direct Israeli-sided statement:

"Israel's military said its soldiers shouted warnings in Arabic and fired warning shots in the air, before aiming at the legs of those who had reached the fence."

Again, why is there no counter-statement here on the disproportionality of Israeli actions?  Are we even to believe that they fired at the protesters' legs?  Isn't this also unlawful use of force?

Instead of noting such points, the piece offers this loaded take on what Israeli troops seemed 'forced' to do:

"After live gunfire failed to disperse the crowds, Israeli troops fired volleys of tear gas over the border. Many people fled while others lay on the ground."

This is the BBC tacitly accepting that Israel acted 'reluctantly' in only firing after they had 'failed' to disperse the crowd.  The dispersal of the crowd is, in itself, implied to be the imperative issue and objective rather than the lives or safety of civilians.   The tenor of this wording implies, as stated by Israel, that the crowd were 'threatening', and, thus, 'responsible' for their own killing.   

The report's token attempt at 'balance' is no less effective in casting doubt over the level of deaths and injuries.  It begins, lazily, with this set of other media-sourced claims: 

"Syrian TV said more than 300 protesters had been wounded. An Israeli military spokeswoman told The Jerusalem Post newspaper they were only aware of 12 injuries."

But then, immediately, in the report's second direct Israeli statement, Mark Regev is allowed to dismiss the Syrian view:   

"Israeli spokesman Mark Regev told the BBC that the Syrian figures could not be trusted."

Rather than include any counter-view here to Regev, the piece goes on to cite, in substantive detail, Netanyahu's own 'pre-warning':  

"Ahead of Sunday's march, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not allow "extremists" to breach Israel's borders." "I have instructed our security forces to act with determination and restraint in order to protect our sovereignty our borders," he said at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem."

One might expect, even by now, some sort of Palestinian voice.  Instead, here's what we get:

"Another Israeli military spokeswoman, Avital Leibovich, told reporters: "This is an attempt by the Syrian regime to divert the world's attention from the Syrian bloodshed that has been taking place in recent weeks."  She added that Israeli forces were better able to stop border protests now than they were last month as they had since prepared "for a variety of operation scenarios"."

In what the BBC will cite as definitive 'balance', Regev - again - and Fatah official Hossam Zomlot get to air their views in small pieces to camera.  But the Palestinian account seems massively outweighed here by the text, exclusions and comments afforded to Israel.   

The report ends with no other oppositional statements, permitting only some basic background words on Israel's 'seizure' of the Golan in 1967.  The "Naksa" is 'explained' as a "known in Arabic" term, allowing it only some kind of marginal significance.

The meaning of "Nakba" is, likewise, defined here in the course of noting the outcome of its recent anniversary: 

"At least 12 people died during the 15 May demonstrations, which at one point saw hundreds manage to cross into the Golan Heights."

Again, people - innocent, unarmed civilians - somehow "died" in the demonstration.  They weren't shot, or killed, or murdered or massacred.  They just "died".

All this, the BBC will say, is consistent with applying its codes of 'impartiality' and 'straight reporting'.

Yet, the use of anodyne language like "died", where people have been calculatingly executed, is the most effective way of disguising and mitigating the truth of such atrocities.

Exclude words like "unarmed" or "defenceless", while introducing words like "defied", and we have the impression of a threatening mob bringing-on their own misfortune.

Add to that loaded mix a blanket range of Israeli statements and Washington apologetics and we're left with a report utterly devoid of balance and truthful information.

As with regime reactions to Arab Spring protest, Israeli violence is becoming more brutal, desperate and apparent to the world.  Yet, the BBC's own output is still serving to mask that criminality.

As with the BBC's reporting of Libya, viewers might expect to see a more regime-critical journalism and accurate use of words to describe Israeli actions.  In making such charges against the BBC, we're more likely to get Regev-type defence and denial from their spokespersons.

BBC state media will, of course, deny any such bias or service to power. Increasingly, viewers are coming to see through both Regev's and the BBC's parallel distortions.

Kind regards

John Hilley

BBC go muckraking Media Lens

The BBC Empire - or, at least, one of its outposts - it seems, is striking back, and in rather cheap and desperate form judging by the responses of BBC Middle East Bureau Chief Paul Danahar.

Following Bad News From the BBC, Part 1, a Media Lens charge sheet of BBC imbalance and distortion, Part 2 of the Alert featured a most revealing exchange with Danahar in which he refused to countenance the accumulated evidence of More Bad News From Israel, an updated text from Glasgow University Media Group authors Greg Philo and Mike Berry, or the damning testimony of ex-BBC journalist Tim Llewellyn.

Instead, Danahar resorted to a spurious and diversionary attack on ML co-editor David Cromwell, dragging-up a job held long-ago at Shell. With no moral obligation to do so, Media Lens subsequently offered this comment:

"The BBC’s Middle East Bureau Chief, Paul Danahar, shares senior editorial responsibility for ensuring balanced and impartial BBC News coverage from Israel and Palestine. Rather than provide substantive answers to the serious questions raised in our latest media alert, he apparently first requires a ‘mea culpa’ from David Cromwell making clear that DC ‘deeply regrets his actions, or lack of them’ in working for Shell in the Netherlands between 1989-1993. What could possibly justify such a slippery response from a senior BBC editor?

There's a lot that could be said about this. But the issue of supposed hypocrisy is a red herring based on a fundamental misunderstanding of our argument. Most of us work for corporations, most of us buy their products and services, and most of us pay taxes that feed the war machine. We all began life as infant narcissists. We are all still prone to the self-interested, greedy, egotistic, angry thoughts that are entrenched in our destructive society. We could all be doing more to make the world a better place. None of us is beyond blame. But then blame has never been the issue for us. The issue is that we should all be challenging each other - challenging, listening and changing - in order to make the world a saner, less destructive place. We have to because the world is rapidly going to hell in a handcart.

We are not pretending that we are paragons of virtue and we are not saying that Paul Danahar is a 'bad man' for working at the BBC. We are saying that we believe that BBC News offers a biased version of events favouring the powerful on Israel-Palestine and many other key issues. And we're offering solid and ample evidence, arguments and sources in support of our claims. We're asking Paul Danahar and the BBC to respond rationally to our arguments so that people can make up their own minds on who is making most sense. Then it's up to the public, and indeed BBC journalists, how they want to respond. We don't ask the BBC or readers to respond on the basis that we are teetering on the edge of Enlightenment. We ask them to respond if they think our arguments are reasonable and important. Frankly, we could be complete moral reprobates. But if our arguments make sense, and if people think the oppression of Palestinians matters, then they should still think about how things might be improved to relieve suffering. It is the arguments that matter, and the suffering, not whether DC is a virtuous individual."

As ever, the ML Editors getting to the very heart of the matter.

I'd like to add this.  Whatever our past circumstances, the most important things are what we learn from those experiences and what we actually, if possible, do about the injustices we see and feel therein.

Cromwell's experiences helped him see from the inside just how brutal the corporate monolith can be in its rapacious pursuit of profit.  It provided the impetus for writing Private Planet, a book outlining radical, green alternatives to the corporate plunder of the world and its resources.  Ten years ago, Cromwell had gone on to co-found Media Lens with David Edwards, both giving much of their lives to exposing corporate-establishment power by helping to advance a new, unconstrained and humanitarian media.   

Danahar, by contrast, continues to work for an organisation which protects the establishment line and, in his particular role as Middle East bureau head, approves an output that, in its consistent falsifications and denials, actually contributes to the suffering of occupied and brutalised Palestinians.    

Danahar's refusal to engage the serious questions put by Media Lens prompted many letters.   Here's my own: 

Dear Paul

How regrettable to see you engage in this petty point-scoring diatribe against David Cromwell when all he's done is ask some civil questions about your organisation's reporting.

Don't you have some public duty to consider the weight of these issues, not least for those suffering in the conflict? You are the BBC Middle East Bureau Chief, after all.

Nor is it remotely relevant to claim that the issues precede your own tenure - or that those not having visited the region can hold no informed view.

Are you seriously claiming that there's no substance at all to the mass of documented evidence now showing BBC bias by language, omission and institutional constraints?

It's not just the bombing and siege of Gaza or the murder of those aboard the Mavi Marmara. It's the daily oppression of Palestinians across the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem that never gets any mention.

That's right, Jerusalem, same city, different part, where your bureau sits, its editors and journalists seemingly oblivious to the persecution and apartheid going on all around.

Not long ago, returning from the West Bank/East Jerusalem, I wrote to the BBC asking why they had failed to report the plight of a Palestinian family being evicted from their home in Sheik Jarrah, while noting the multiple other brutalities against Palestinians that go unreported by the BBC.

http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2845

It went, tortuously, up to the BBC Trust for further consideration before being, predictably, dismissed. Most complaints never even get a response.

Tim Llewellyn has just outlined that labyrinthine process alongside key examples of loaded BBC coverage and institutional placation of Israel, receiving a terse little smear on his good character for doing so.

Like your responses to Media Lens, it's a sign of the BBC on the back foot, in blatant denial, stooping to cheap riposte rather than answering the serious charges levelled against it.

As documented by Philo and Berry, by Media Lens and many others, the evidence of BBC bias and fear of Israel is obvious to anyone who cares to see. It certainly should be to you.

You've expressed your opposition to past apartheid injustices. Why don't you permit the same open, ethical examination in this case?

Kind regards
John Hilley

No answer has come.  As ML say, Paul Danahar is not a 'bad' person in working for the BBC.  Nor are my own points to him meant as personal or moralising.  It's about trying to show how such people come to defend indefensible bias when their careers and ego depend on it. 

On which note, readers here at Zenpolitics might also be interested in this latest sample (30 May 2011) of BBC distortion from Radio 4 Today presenter Kevin Connolly (as cited by the ML Editors) eliciting another of my responses: 

Dear Mr Connolly

I heard your piece today discussing the apparent anxieties Israel feels towards its neighbours Egypt and Jordan, while considering the Arab Spring as a catalyst for Palestinian action.

I'd be very interested to learn who was involved in writing such a loaded report, with its 'democratic Israel surrounded by hostile Arab forces' theme.

Did it ever occur to you or your fellow producers that Israel is the most dangerous, militarist state in the region, the one deliberately preventing peace through its expansionist occupation and inhuman siege? 

Did you for a moment think to question Israel's own claims to being a democratic state given the (UN-documented) apartheid treatment of its Arab 'others'?

Did your conclusion, Israel "always cautious in these matters, will simply become more cautious still", never strike you as a resort to BBC caution in itself, ensuring, as with the rest of this grossly unbalanced report, that Israel is not presented as a calculating aggressor?

The production of such output, alas, reveals nothing about Israel's nuclear militarism, its anti-democratic fear of a democratic region or its wilfully-crafted repressions.  But it surely does say much about your own cautious appeasement and BBC-trained mindset.

I (incautiously) await any response.

Kind regards

John Hilley

Can the BBC ever be redeemed?  Is it worth sending these letters?  Do such criticisms make a difference?  I'd say the answers to these questions are, no, yes and yes.

The greater, long-term aim is the diminishment, rather than redemption, of 'statemouth' news services like the BBC.  The point of sending emails is to help expose the distortion and propaganda.  And the difference all this can make is two-fold: it helps victimised people in immediate ways by serving to inform and build public support for their cause, while suggesting model alternatives for a truly independent citizen media to come.

All very large undertakings and aims, perhaps, but why think small when the consequences of corporate power and establishment lies are so dismally and dangerously big.   

John

   

Obama: media adulation and the 1967 border

Barack Obama's current European tour has been accompanied by levels of media idolatry that would make a movie star blush.

One has little faith in what purports to be serious 'analysis' in most of the mainstream media.  But it has been remarkable, by any such standards, to watch so many journalists, correspondents and news anchors gush over Obama's 'starlit' presence and 'benign' words, particularly concerning Israel-Palestine.

The propaganda effect on a celebrity-primed public is a study in how our 'critical' media have served to conceal, circumvent and prettify Obama's true warmongering colours.

As the first leg of the tour commenced in Ireland, the BBC's Mark Mardell was in typical 'romantic' flow:

"President Obama's trip to Europe will be a melange of pageantry and policy, and the political equivalent of both poetry and prose."

The fawning continued in more personalised form during Andrew Marr's studio 'questioning' of the President, which, alongside his previous 'engagement' of Tony Blair, might serve as a definitive model of the deference-to-power BBC interview.

By the time of Obama's speech to Parliament, the BBC's political correspondent Nick Robinson was swooning for the nation: "There was never any doubt that Britain was in love with Obama" - a declaration, observed Media Lens in a letter to Robinson, which had raised the adulation from love-in to "hagiography". 

The Guardian's Patrick Wintour was also on-side with a glowing endorsement of Obama's US-Europe 'compact' for a free Middle East:

"Barack Obama has put America and Europe unambiguously on the side of those fighting for freedom across the Middle East, saying the west can remain "the catalysts for global action", ending a decade of war, terrorism and terrible recession."

Much of the same media devotion has been given to Obama's latest Middle East speech, billed as the second big 'appeal to the region' after his Cairo address in 2008.  

In particular, the 'analysis' failed to record the truth behind Washington's supposed 'support' for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal based on the 1967 border.

This was taken in spoon-fed form by the BBC and other liberal outlets as Obama's 'historic endorsement' of a two state settlement.  Yet, few seemed willing to question or deconstruct what Obama had actually intimated to Netanyahu. 

Wintour at the Guardian could only muster this lame comment on Obama's meaning:

"He also seemed to tack to the Israelis, following his speech calling for a settlement based on 1967 borders, by arguing that it would be difficult currently for Israel to talk to the Palestinians." 

Helpfully, other observers like Lamis Andoni have been more forthcoming in helping to expain that "tack":  

"Obama's lip service to Palestinian "self-determination" is nothing more than vacuous rhetoric - as he clearly implied that Israeli interests, especially its security, remain the top priority for American foreign policy in the region.

He mechanically repeated his commitment to the vision of a two-state solution - establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. However, as expected, he left the borders and terms of the creation of such state subject to Israel's "security interests".

His reference to resuming peace negotiations on the basis of the 1967 borders (also known as the Green Line) means neither a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories nor the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state on all of the land within the Green Line, including East Jerusalem.

There is a significant difference in negotiations "lingo" and even legal language between saying that the establishment of a Palestinian state "will be based on" 1967 borders as opposed to saying it "will be established on" the 1967 borders.

The first leaves ample room for Israel to continue occupying and even annexing vast settlement blocs (and perhaps even all of the illegal, Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem) for "security reasons".

For Andoni, Obama's evasions are a clear green signal to Israel that it's still permissible to take whatever it can from any 'two-state settlement':

"Just in case his pro-Israel support base misunderstood the thinly veiled statements from his Middle East speech last Friday, Obama made sure to clarify to his definitively pro-Israeli view that there is no going back to the true 1967 borders:

"[The statement] means that the parties themselves - Israelis and Palestinians - will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 196... It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last forty-four years, including the new demographic reality."

In clearer words, the president is effectively, although not explicitly, equating the presence of Palestinians on their own land with the illegal presence of Israeli settlers living on land confiscated forty-four years ago from the Palestinians."

Ilan Pappe, another ever-reliable conduit for truth, could also see the real intimations behind Obama's lofty words:

"[Obama]said there will be “no return to the borders of June 4, 1967” and the thousands who attended the AIPAC convention cheered wildly. Annexation of Israeli settlement blocs built illegally in the occupied West Bank and the creation of a small Palestinian bantustan in the spaces in between was the essence of Obama’s real vision for peace."

Which leaves Pappe, like this present writer, in no doubt about the necessary direction of any Palestinian - or other - liberation process:  

"A relentless struggle against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine will continue outside the realm of the western corridors of power. What we learned from Egypt and Tunisia, even if we are not sure what would be the endgame there, is that struggles outside corridors of power do not wait for leaders, well-oiled organizations and people who speak in other people’s names."

We wait in vain for Mark Mardell committing those fundamental words to poetic prose.

John

Essential add-on: Pilger on the "violent world of Mr Hopey Changey".

Arrival of the Palestinian-Arab Spring

The remarkable footage of Syrians and Palestinians pouring across the Golan's wired fences last weekend shows that the Arab Spring has now decisively reached Palestine-Israel.

As Real News also reports (if only the BBC could offer such honest and qualitative output) it formed part of a coordinated set of Nakba protests, all met with brutal responses, across the West Bank - notably Qalandiya - Gaza, East Jerusalem and on the Lebanon-Israel border.  Pro-Palestine protesters even gathered in Tel Aviv.

Jonathan Cook's fine analysis of the Nakba anniversary protests suggests a growing mood of optimism as the September date for a declaration of Palestinian statehood approaches.  

It also offers some sombre reading for Israel's political and military advisers who see with increasing clarity that brute force will not be enough to stem the gathering, unified demand for Palestinian liberation.

As Cook notes:

"Although the protests are not yet a third intifada, they hint at what may be coming. Or, as one senior Israeli commander warned, they looked ominously like a "warm-up" for September, when the newly unified Palestinian leadership is threatening to defy Israel and the United States and seek recognition at the United Nations of Palestinian statehood inside the 1967 borders." "There are several lessons, none of them comfortable, for Israel to draw from the weekend's clashes. The first is that the Arab Spring cannot be dealt with simply by battening down the hatches. The upheavals facing Israel's Arab neighbours mean these regimes no longer have the legitimacy to decide their own Palestinian populations' fates according to narrow self-interest."

It's an ominous set of developments for Netanyahu who must now consider the combined threat of a new Palestinian political accord - the Hamas-Fatah rapprochement - and the spectacle of a newly-released Arab street determined to exercise not only its domestic grievances but also its solidarity with the Palestinians.

The spectacle of so many Palestinians and fellow Arabs marching in peaceful protest is yet another crucial rebuke to Israeli fearmongering and claims of a new 'terrorist' insurgency, further raising the Palestinians' moral case around the world.

Netanyahu has responded with the same standard combinations of defiance and an 'acceptance' that Israel may have to "cede parts of our homeland" for peace.  

Yet, alongside the exit of Obama's envoy George Mitchell, Netanyahu's rhetoric and empty 'concessions' only confirms the vacuousness of any 'peace process' and, without that reliant prop, the increasingly worried assessments that must be taking place inside the Israeli power circle.

As September at the UN draws nearer, Israel will, inevitably, turn to America for political cover.  But with Washington under increasing pressure to declare its support for all democratic claims in the region, it will be more difficult than ever to exclude equal Palestinian demands for statehood and democratic participation.

The decisive dynamics of the Arab uprisings, all driven by populist internet campaigns, has created not only the crucial Fatah-Hamas realignment but also a crisis of hegemony for Israel and the US power bloc that keeps it protected.

 

Already, much of Europe has signalled its support for a 'pre-1967' Palestinian state, giving advance notice that any further US veto at the UN - following Washington's rejection of the Security Council vote on Israeli settlements - will leave Obama even further exposed.

As ever, Netanyahu's upcoming visit to Washington is being scrutinised for its possible manoeuvrings and signals on Israel's difficult relations with Obama.  It's a media gaze with diminishing relevance.  

Rather, it's what's happening on-the-ground in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, across the region, along Israel's borders, in the streets of Cairo and Damascus, that really matters.

Inspired by their mutual aims and achievents, Palestinians and their Arab supporters are no longer waiting around for America's 'benign' interventions or insistence on a 'negotiated settlement'.  The Arab Spring itself appears to be the determining factor in how that process will evolve.

Much of that has some way to go - as the Egyptian navy's collaboration with Israel in attacking and preventing passage of the latest Gaza aid ship suggests.

Yet, for all the regime-transformation still to take place in the region, Israel realises that it is now confronting a newly-invigorated Arab movement, a set of popular forces able to enliven the Palestinian cause and multiply the political pressures for change.       

John