Paul Larudee’s email report on his latest conversation with Israeli Prime Minister spokesperson Mark Regev

From: PAUL LARUDEE

Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 9:58:43 AM [PDT]

Subject: My latest conversation with Israeli Prime Minister spokesperson Mark Regev

I just got off the phone with him.  I pointed out that the last time I talked to him, he had been as good as his word.  I had sought assurance that the Spirit of Humanity would not be damaged, nor the passengers harmed, and in fact that is what happened.  Of course, he only promised that Israel would not break international law, which I took as the assurance I was seeking, and he gave me the same assurance this time, which I told him I would interpret the same way.

It was actually a long conversation, wide-ranging, with him talking about how evil Hamas is, how we are their propaganda tools, how beneficent Israel is.  He loves debate.  He accused me of being underinformed and I accused him of making up his facts.  “How so?” he asked.  “Are you 63 years old?” I asked.  “Not quite,” he responded.  I concluded, “Mark, you just said you’re older than I am, and I’m 63.”  I rest my case.

Will it make a difference to the outcome of the boat trip?  Who knows?  But it couldn’t hurt.

Paul

Below:

3. The myth of Israel’s strategic genius

4. U.S. ups pressure on Israel to end Gaza blockade

5. Life in Gaza By Jordan Flaherty

6. Israeli ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children – a report

7. 4 December 1997 Address by President Nelson Mandela at the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

3. The myth of Israel’s strategic genius

By Prof. Stephen Walt

Many supporters of Israel will not criticize its behavior, even when it is engaged in brutal and misguided operations like the recent onslaught on Gaza. In addition to their understandable reluctance to say anything that might aid Israel’s enemies, this tendency is based in part on the belief that Israel’s political and military leaders are exceptionally smart and thoughtful strategists who understand their threat environment and have a history of success against their adversaries. If so, then it makes little sense for outsiders to second-guess them.

This image of Israeli strategic genius has been nurtured by Israelis over the years and seems to be an article of faith among neoconservatives and other hardline supporters of Israel in the United States. It also fits nicely with the wrongheaded but still popular image of Israel as the perennial David facing a looming Arab Goliath; in this view, only brilliant strategic thinkers could have consistently overcome the supposedly formidable Arab forces arrayed against them.

The idea that Israelis possess some unique strategic acumen undoubtedly reflects a number of past military exploits, including the decisive victories in the 1948 War of Independence, the rapid conquest of the Sinai in 1956, the daredevil capture of Adolf Eichmann in 1960, the stunning Israeli triumph at the beginning of the 1967 Six Day War, and the intrepid hostage rescue at Entebbe in 1976.

These tactical achievements are part of a larger picture, however, and that picture is not a pretty one. Israel has also lost several wars in the past — none of them decisively, of course — and its ability to use force to achieve larger strategic objectives has declined significantly over time. This is why Israelis frequently speak of the need to restore their “deterrent”; they are aware that occasional tactical successes have not led to long-term improvements in their overall security situation. The assault on Gaza is merely the latest illustration of this worrisome tendency.

What does the record show?

Back in 1956, Israel, along with Britain and France, came up with a harebrained scheme to seize the Suez Canal and topple Nasser’s regime in Egypt. (This was after an Israeli raid on an Egyptian army camp in Gaza helped convince Nasser to obtain arms from the Soviet Union). Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion initially hoped that Israel would be allowed to conquer and absorb the West Bank, parts of the Sinai, and portions of Lebanon, but Britain and France quickly scotched that idea. The subsequent attack was a military success but a strategic failure: the invaders were forced to disgorge the lands they seized while Nasser’s prestige soared at home and across the Arab world, fueling radicalism and intensifying anti-Israel sentiments throughout the region. The episode led Ben-Gurion to conclude that Israel should forego additional attempts to expand its borders — which is why he opposed taking the West Bank in 1967 — but his successors did not follow his wise advice.

Ten years later, Israel’s aggressive policies toward Syria and Jordan helped precipitate the crisis that led to the Six Day War. The governments of Egypt, Syria, the USSR and the United States also bear considerable blame for that war, though it was Israel’s leaders who chose to start it, even though they recognized that their Arab foes knew they were no match for the IDF and did not intend to attack Israel. More importantly, after seizing the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza Strip during the war, Israeli leaders decided to start building settlements and eventually incorporate them into a “greater Israel.” Thus, 1967 marks the beginning of Israel’s settlements project, a decision that even someone as sympathetic to Israel as Leon Wieseltier has described as “a moral and strategic blunder of historic proportions. ” Remarkably, this momentous decision was never openly debated within the Israeli body politic.

With Israeli forces occupying the Sinai peninsula, Egypt launched the so-called War of Attrition in October 1968 in an attempt to get it back. The result was a draw on the battlefield and the two sides eventually reached a ceasefire agreement in August 1970. The war was a strategic setback for Israel, however, because Egypt and its Soviet patron used the ceasefire to complete a missile shield along the Suez Canal that could protect Egyptian troops if they attacked across the Canal to regain the Sinai. American and Israeli leaders did not recognize this important shift in the balance of power between Israel and Egypt and remained convinced that Egypt had no military options. As a result, they ignored Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s peace overtures and left him little choice but to use force to try to dislodge Israel from the Sinai. Israel then failed to detect Egypt and Syria’s mobilization in early October 1973 and fell victim to one of the most successful surprise attacks in military history. The IDF eventually rallied and triumphed, but the costs were high in a war that might easily have been avoided.

Israel’s next major misstep was the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The invasion was the brainchild of hawkish Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who had concocted a grandiose scheme to destroy the PLO and gain a free hand to incorporate the West Bank in “Greater Israel” and turn Jordan into “the” Palestinian state. It was a colossal strategic blunder: the PLO leadership escaped destruction and Israel’s bombardment of Beirut and its complicity in the massacres at Sabra and Shatila were widely and rightly condemned. And after initially being greeted as liberators by the Shiite population of southern Lebanon, Israel’s prolonged and heavy-handed occupation helped create Hezbollah, which soon became a formidable adversary as well as an avenue for Iranian influence on Israel’s northern border. Israel was unable to defeat Hezbollah and eventually withdrew its troops from Lebanon in 2000, having in effect been driven out by Hezbollah’s increasingly effective resistance. Invading Lebanon not only failed to solve Israel’s problem with the Palestinians, it created a new enemy that still bedevils Israel today.

In the late 1980s, Israel helped nurture Hamas — yes, the same organization that the IDF is bent on destroying today — as part of its long-standing effort to undermine Yasser Arafat and Fatah and keep the Palestinians divided. This decision backfired too, because Arafat eventually recognized Israel and agreed to negotiate a two-state solution, while Hamas emerged as a new and dangerous adversary that has refused to recognize Israel’s existence and to live in peace with the Jewish state.

The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 offered an unprecedented chance to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all, but Israel’s leaders failed to seize the moment. Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Benjamin Netanyahu all refused to endorse the idea of a Palestinian state — even Rabin never spoke publicly about allowing the Palestinians to have a state of their own — and Ehud Barak’s belated offer of statehood at the 2000 Camp David summit did not go far enough. As Barak’s own foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, later admitted, “if I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David as well.” Meanwhile, the number of settlers in the West Bank doubled during the Oslo period (1993-2001), and the Israelis built some 250 miles of connector roads in the West Bank.

Palestinian leaders and U.S. officials made their own contributions to Oslo’s failure, but Israel had clearly squandered what was probably the best opportunity it will ever have to negotiate a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Barak also derailed a peace treaty with Syria in early 2000 that appeared to be a done deal, at least to President Bill Clinton, who had helped fashion it. But when public opinion polls suggested that the Israeli public might not support the deal, the Israeli Prime Minister got cold feet and the talks collapsed.

More recently, U.S. and Israeli miscalculations have gone hand-in-hand. In the wake of September 11, neoconservatives in the United States, who had been pushing for war against Iraq since early 1998, helped convince President Bush to attack Iraq as part of a larger strategy of “regional transformation. ” Israeli officials were initially opposed to this scheme because they wanted Washington to go after Iran instead, but once they understood that Iran and Syria were next on the administration’ s hit list they backed the plan enthusiastically. Indeed, prominent Israelis like Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu, and then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres helped sell the war in the United States, while Prime Minister Sharon and his chief aides put pressure on Washington to make sure that Bush didn’t lose his nerve and leave Saddam standing. The result? A costly quagmire for the United States and a dramatic improvement in Iran’s strategic position. Needless to say, these developments were hardly in Israel’s strategic interest.

The next failed effort was then-Prime Minister Sharon’s decision to unilaterally withdraw all of Israel’s settlers from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. Although Israel and its supporters in the West portrayed this move as a gesture towards peace, “unilateralism” was in fact part of a larger effort to derail the so-called Road Map, freeze the peace process, and consolidate Israeli control over the West Bank, thereby putting off the prospect of a Palestinian state “indefinitely. ” The withdrawal was completed successfully, but Sharon’s attempt to impose peace terms on the Palestinians failed completely. Fenced in by the Israelis, the Palestinians in Gaza began firing rockets and mortars at nearby Israeli towns and then Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006. This event reflected its growing popularity in the face of Fatah’s corruption and Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank, but Jerusalem and Washington refused to accept the election results and decided instead to try to topple Hamas. This was yet another error: Hamas eventually ousted Fatah from Gaza and its popularity has continued to increase.

The Lebanon War in the summer of 2006 revealed the deficiencies of Israel’s strategic thinking with particular clarity. A cross-border raid by Hezbollah provoked an Israeli offensive intended to destroy Hezbollah’s large missile inventory and compel the Lebanese government to crack down on Hezbollah itself. However worthy these goals might have been, Israel’s strategy was doomed to fail. Air strikes could not eliminate Hezbollah’s large and well-hidden arsenal and bombing civilian areas in Lebanon merely generated more anger at Israel and raised Hezbollah’s standing among the Lebanese population and in the Arab and Islamic world as well. Nor could a belated ground attack fix the problem, as the IDF could hardly accomplish in a few weeks what it had failed to do between 1982 and 2000. Plus, the Israeli offensive was poorly planned and poorly executed. It was equally foolish to think that Lebanon’s fragile central government could rein in Hezbollah; if that were possible, the governing authorities in Beirut would have done so long before. It is no surprise that the Winograd Commission (an official panel of inquiry established to examine Israel’s handling of the war) harshly criticized Israel’s leaders for their various strategic errors.

Finally, a similar strategic myopia is apparent in the assault on Gaza. Israeli leaders initially said that their goal was to inflict enough damage on Hamas so it could no longer threaten Israel with rocket attacks. But they now concede that Hamas will neither be destroyed nor disarmed by their attacks, and instead say that more extensive monitoring will prevent rocket parts and other weapons from being smuggled into Gaza. This is a vain hope, however.

As I write this, Hamas has not accepted a ceasefire and is still firing rockets; even if it does accept a ceasefire soon, rocket and mortar fire are bound to resume at some point in the future. On top of that, Israel’s international image has taken a drubbing, Hamas is probably more popular, and moderate leaders like Mahmoud Abbas have been badly discredited. A two-state solution — which is essential if Israel wishes to remain Jewish and democratic and to avoid becoming an apartheid state — is farther away than ever. The IDF performed better in Gaza than it did in Lebanon, largely because Hamas is a less formidable foe than Hezbollah. But this does not matter: the war against Hamas is still a strategic failure. And to have inflicted such carnage on the Palestinians for no lasting strategic gain is especially reprehensible.

In virtually all of these episodes — and especially those after 1982 — Israel’s superior military power was used in ways that did not improve its long-term strategic position. Given this dismal record, therefore, there is no reason to think that Israel possesses uniquely gifted strategists or a national security establishment that consistently makes smart and far-sighted choices. Indeed, what is perhaps most remarkable about Israel is how often the architects of these disasters — Barak, Olmert, Sharon, and maybe Netanyahu — are not banished from leadership roles but instead are given another opportunity to repeat their mistakes. Where is the accountability in the Israeli political system?

No country is immune from folly, of course, and Israel’s adversaries have committed plenty of reprehensible acts and made plenty of mistakes themselves. Egypt’s Nasser played with fire in 1967 and got badly burnt; King Hussein’s decision to enter the Six Day War was a catastrophic blunder that cost Jordan the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Palestinian leaders badly miscalculated and committed unjustifiable and brutal acts on numerous occasions. Americans made grave mistakes in Vietnam and more recently in Iraq, the French blundered in Indochina and Algeria, the British failed at Suez and Gallipoli, and the Soviets lost badly in Afghanistan. Israel is no different than most powerful states in this regard: sometimes it does things that are admirable and wise, and at other times it pursues policies that are foolish and cruel.

The moral of this story is that there is no reason to think that Israel always has well-conceived strategies for dealing with the problems that it faces. In fact, Israel’s strategic judgment seems to have declined steadily since the 1970s — beginning with the 1982 invasion of Lebanon — perhaps because unconditional U.S. support has helped insulate Israel from some of the costs of its actions and made it easier for Israel to indulge strategic illusions and ideological pipe-dreams. Given this reality, there is no reason for Israel’s friends — both Jewish and gentile — to remain silent when it decides to pursue a foolish policy. And given that our “special relationship” with Israel means that the United States is invariably associated with Jerusalem’s actions, Americans should not hesitate to raise their voices to criticize Israel when it is acting in ways that are not in the U.S. national interest.

Those who refuse to criticize Israel even when it acts foolishly surely think they are helping the Jewish state. They are wrong. In fact, they are false friends, because their silence, or worse, their cheerleading, merely encourages Israel to continue potentially disastrous courses of action. Israel could use some honest advice these days, and it would make eminently good sense if its closest ally were able to provide it. Ideally, this advice would come from the president, the secretary of state, and prominent members of Congress — speaking as openly as some politicians in other democracies do. But that’s unlikely to happen, because Israel’s supporters make it almost impossible for Washington to do anything but reflexively back Israel’s actions, whether they make sense or not. And they often do not these days.

http://walt. foreignpolicy. com/posts/ 2009/01/17/ the_myth_ of_israels_ strategic_ genius

4. U.S. ups pressure on Israel to end Gaza blockade

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent

June 22, 2009

The United States has stepped up pressure on Israel regarding the Gaza Strip: Three weeks ago it sent Jerusalem a diplomatic note officially protesting Gaza policy and demanding a more liberal opening of the border crossings to facilitate reconstruction.

U.S. and Israeli sources say the note was followed by a verbal communication clarifying that the Obama administration thinks Israel’s linkage of the case of abducted soldier Gilad Shalit and the opening of the crossings was not constructive.

The note was delivered to Israel after a decision by senior U.S. officials including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and special Mideast envoy George Mitchell. The latter discussed the contents of the note during his visit to Israel last week.

U.S. demands on Israel’s Gaza policy were also raised Wednesday during talks between Clinton and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is on an official visit to Washington.

The note focused on a number of issues that have troubled the U.S. administration regarding Israeli policy toward the Gaza Strip.

The note’s central message was that if Israel believes that the Palestinian Authority should be strengthened vis-a-vis Hamas, it must take the necessary steps regarding the Strip.

The first task is to allow food and medicine into the territory. A senior political source in Jerusalem said the Americans have noticed some improvement here, but there has been no consistency or transparency on the types of foods permitted in.

Another issue is the transfer of cash to banks in the Strip. U.S. officials have asked that Israel continue to allow the transfer of funds from Ramallah-based banks to Gaza banks to avoid damaging the enclave’s banking and financial system.

A third issue in the note was the expansion of the system for opening the border crossings, and permission to import a variety of goods that would enable imports and exports and encourage economic growth.

The note also focused on construction materials such as cement and iron, which would be used to rebuild the damage caused by Israel’s three-week Gaza offensive last winter.

The U.S. administration emphasized that in parallel with its demands of Israel, it was willing to assist in establishing an international supervisory mechanism under UN auspices to ensure that the building materials were used for civilian purposes and not Hamas’ fortifications.

The diplomatic note was delivered to the Defense Ministry, the Foreign Ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office.

Verbally, the Americans relayed a message on Israel’s linkage of the Shalit case with a more extensive opening of the border crossings. Israel is particularly insistent that unless there is progress in the negotiations for Shalit’s release and a new sign of life is received, there will be no concessions on the crossings.

The United States made clear that it is dissatisfied with this Israeli policy and wants Jerusalem to reevaluate its stance. “Until you change this, it will be impossible to progress,” a source quoted the American officials as saying.

“This policy has not led to progress on the Shalit case and we do not think that it is contributing to anything,” the U.S. officials were quoted as saying.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1093870.html

5. Life in Gaza By Jordan Flaherty

As President Obama Visits Cairo, Gaza Remains Devastated

June 4th, 2009

More than four months after Gaza was devastated by a massive Israeli military bombardment, rebuilding has been slow to come. The problem is not a lack of funding or will. However, an Israeli-led blockade has kept all rebuilding materials, including concrete or any tools that could be used to rebuild the hundreds of homes and buildings here, out of Gaza. The border entries, controlled by the Israeli and Egyptian governments, are sealed to almost all traffic.

There is an intense desire here to rebuild. There is no shortage of skilled labor. Billions of dollars of aid from countries around the world, including the US, has been pledged. But scarcely a single house has been rebuilt. From the Rafah border in the south to the town of Beit Hanoun in the north, people are still living in tents, or with family members, or in shelters.

The range of destruction is breathtaking. More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed in 22 days, the vast majority civilians, including more than 300 children. Schools, health clinics, houses, and, most importantly, the basic infrastructure of both public services and government has been destroyed. Rubble is everywhere. Basic government structures, such as the building that houses the Palestinian parliament are all destroyed.

Two days ago, a delegation 66 activists, scholars, journalists and human rights workers, mostly from the US, visited the Parliament building. The visit was organized by the peace group Code Pink, which has led several delegations attempting to break the blockade. The group was surprised to find the building housing the legislature reduced partly to rubble, and Parliament members forced to meet in a tent outside. Having no building to meet in is just one of the many problems facing the elected government of the Palestinian people. “Not only are more than 11,000 prisoners in Israeli jails,” explained Dr. Ahmed Bahar, the acting speaker of the Palestinian legislative council, and part of the Hamas political party. “Forty members of the legislative council are imprisoned, including the head of the legislature. Can you imagine if the head of the legislature, of anywhere else in the world, were held in prison by a foreign government?” Dr. Bahar appealed to the US activists assembled for help in breaking the siege. “They don’t allow basic construction material to enter,” he said. “Cement, glass, wood, steel.”

Gaza is among the most densely populated places on earth. One and a half million people live in 139 square miles, and it has been described as the world’s largest prison. Traveling across this very small area, you meet people everywhere who just want to live a normal life, but are being prevented by a cruel blockade from going anywhere or doing anything.

“The biggest lie that has been told is that Gaza is a hostile entity,” declares John Ging, the head of the United Nation’s Relief and Works Agency in the Gaza Strip. “It’s populated by well educated, decent people. They’re not spitting hatred. They’re asking for help, they’re asking for justice, they’re asking for the rule of law.” An Irish former soldier with a staff of 10,000, Ging is a UN bureaucrat, not an activist, but his respect for the international law has made him a passionate spokesperson for a rebuilding of Gaza.

Under the current siege, explains, Ging, “There’s no cement, even if its to repair a hospital or school or health center. So people are being kept alive, nothing more.” Its been said in the US media that the situation in Gaza is complicated, that the siege is part of a defense against terrorism, but Ging denies these claims. “When it comes down to it, its rather simple what’s needed,” he says. “What we now need to focus on is creating a life for people here. We need to see the depoliticization of assistance. What we have here in Gaza is a failure to uphold those basic human rights.”

Gaza is currently hosting several delegations of international human rights observers and activists from the US and Europe. With each month, more people come here, and see the painful reality of the situation here. And with each new arrival, the siege perhaps moves a step closer to ending.

President Obama is scheduled to be in Cairo tomorrow, and members of Code Pink plan to ask him to visit Gaza. Tens of thousands of people from the US have signed a petition asking him to see the devastation. Across Gaza, people are looking for some sign that the new president will stand up for human rights in Palestine. “We ask Obama not to close his eyes to the Palestinian catastrophe,” says Dr. Bahar. “We are running out of time,” says John Ging. “We need to move from keeping people alive to giving them a life.”

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/06/life-in-gaza/

6. Israeli ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children – a report

DCI-Palestine* released a report which documents the widespread ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children at the hands of the Israeli army and police force – Palestinian Child Prisoners: The systematic and institutionalized ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities.

The release of the report came just days after an article was published in The Independent newspaper reporting the testimonies of two Israeli soldiers which detail the deliberate abuse of Palestinian children. One soldier is reported as saying that in an incident that occurred in a Palestinian village in March, he saw a lot of soldiers ‘just knee (Palestinians) because it’s boring, because you stand there for 10 hours, you’re not doing anything, so they beat people up.’

The report published contains the testimonies of 33 children, one as young as 10 years old, who bear witness to the abuse they received at the hands of soldiers from the moment of arrest through to an often violent interrogation.

More at http://freedetainees.org/5947

7. 4 December 1997 Address by President Nelson Mandela at the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

Pretoria

Mr. Chairman;

Mr. Suleyman al-Najab,

Special Emissary of President Yasser Arafat;

Members of the diplomatic corps;

Distinguished Guests,

We have assembled once again as South Africans, our Palestinian guests and as humanists to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine.

I wish to take this opportunity to congratulate the organisers of the event, particularly the United Nations Information Centre and the UNISA Centre for Arabic and Islamic Studies for this magnificent act of compassion, to keep the flames of solidarity, justice and freedom burning.

The temptation in our situation is to speak in muffled tones about an issue such as the right of the people of Palestine to a state of their own. We can easily be enticed to read reconciliation and fairness as meaning parity between justice and injustice. Having achieved our own freedom, we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others faces.

Yet we would be less than human if we did so.

It behoves all South Africans, themselves erstwhile beneficiaries of generous international support, to stand up and be counted among those contributing actively to the cause of freedom and justice.

Even during the days of negotiations, our own experience taught us that the pursuit of human fraternity and equality – irrespective of race or religion – should stand at the centre of our peaceful endeavours. The choice is not between freedom and justice, on the one hand, and their opposite, on the other. Peace and prosperity; tranquility and security are only possible if these are enjoyed by all without discrimination.

It is in this spirit that I have come to join you today to add our own voice to the universal call for Palestinian self-determination and statehood.

We would be beneath our own reason for existence as government and as a nation, if the resolution of the problems of the Middle East did not feature prominently on our agenda.

When in 1977, the United Nations passed the resolution inaugurating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, it was asserting the recognition that injustice and gross human rights violations were being perpetrated in Palestine. In the same period, the UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to this iniquitous system.

But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians; without the resolution of conflicts in East Timor, the Sudan and other parts of the world.

We are proud as a government, and as the overwhelming majority of South Africans to be part of an international consensus taking root that the time has come to resolve the problems of Palestine.

Indeed, all of us marvelled at the progress made a few years ago, with the adoption of the Oslo Agreements. Leaders of vision, who saw problems not merely from the point of view of their own narrow constituency, had at least found a workable approach towards friendship and peaceful co-existence in the Middle East.

I wish to take this opportunity to pay tribute to these Palestinian and Israeli leaders. In particular, we pay homage to the memory of Yitshak Rabin who paid the supreme sacrifice in pursuit of peace.

We are proud as humanists, that the international consensus on the need for the implementation of the Oslo Agreements is finding expression in the efforts of the multitude of Israeli and Palestinian citizens of goodwill who are marching together, campaigning together, for an end to prevarication. These soldiers of peace are indeed sending a message to us all, that the day is not far off, when Palestinian and Jewish children will enjoy the gay abandon of children of God in a peaceful and prosperous region.

These soldiers of peace recognise that the world we live in is rising above the trappings of religious and racial hatred and conflict. They recognise that the spurning of agreements reached in good faith and the forceful occupation of land can only fan the flames of conflict. They know from their own experience that, it is in a situation such as this, that extremists on all sides thrive, fed by the blood lust of centuries gone by.

These Palestinian and Israeli campaigners for peace know that security for any nation is not abstract; neither is it exclusive. It depends on the security of others; it depends on mutual respect and trust. Indeed, these soldiers of peace know that their destiny is bound together, and that none can be at peace while others wallow in poverty and insecurity.

Thus, in extending our hands across the miles to the people of Palestine, we do so in the full knowledge that we are part of a humanity that is at one, that the time has come for progress in the implementation of agreements. The majority of the world community; the majority of the people of the Middle East; the majority of Israelis and Palestinians are suing for peace.

But we know, Mr. Chairman, that all of us need to do much much more to ensure that this noble ideal is realised.

As early as February 1995, our government formalised its relations with the State of Palestine when we established full diplomatic relations. We are proud of the modest technical assistance that our government is offering Palestine in such areas as Disaster Management, women’s empowerment and assistance to handicapped children. But the various discussions with our counterparts in Palestine are an indication that we can do more.

We need to do more as government, as the ANC and other parties, as South Africans of all religious and political persuasions to spur on the peace process. All of us should be as vocal in condemning violence and the violation of human rights in this part of the world as we do with regard to other areas. We need to send a strong message to all concerned that an attempt by anyone to isolate partners in negotiations from their own mass base; and attempt to co-opt tes is bound to hurt the peace process as a whole.

We must make our voices heard calling for stronger action by world bodies as well as those states that have the power, to act with the same enthusiasm in dealing with this deadlock as they do on other problems in the Middle East.

Yes, all of us need to do more in supporting the struggle of the people of Palestine for self-determination; in supporting the quest for peace, security and friendship in this region.

But at least we can draw comfort from the fact that, our meeting today is yet another small expression of our empathy.

We hope that, by this humble act, we are strengthening the voice of peace and friendship in Israel and Palestine; so that, as we enter the new millennium, we shall all have taken a giant stride towards a world in which our humanity will be the hallmark of our relations across colour, religious and other divides.

I thank you.

Issued by: Office of the President

http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mandela/1997/sp971204b.html

A:  gazafriends

Cc:  FG-Coordinators, FG-MediaList, fg-projects

Click on http://freegaza.org/images/stories/Audio_update_from_Cynthia_McKinney_Monday_morning_29_June.mp3

Track the progress of the boat at http://www.freegaza.org/live (CET or Central Europe Time is one hour behind Gaza time) and check Twitter messages on left-hand panel or go to http://twitter.com/freegazaorg.

~ Janet