Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images
This image is from 2010 at a website where astounding pictures are taken by a very talented photojournalist, Gharabli Ahmend (click here)
The human rights abuses are real and now the idea of a single country has made it's way into Israeli politics.
March 18, 2015
Celebrations (click here) at the Joint List's headquarters over becoming the third largest political force in Israel after Tuesday's elections were muted by concern over the re-election of Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu and the prospect of business as usual.
By winning 14 seats in the new parliament, the Joint List alliance of three Arab-Israeli parties and Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), a Jewish-Arab leftist party, has nevertheless achieved its goal of becoming a significant political force in the country.
"It's the end of the dream for Netanyahu and [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman of an Israel without Arabs. With the results from this evening we are now clearly present on the political map of the country," Imad Abu Ahmad, an architect and a Hadash activist, told FRANCE 24 in the great hall of Abu Maher in Nazareth....
The statements by Prime Minister Netanyahu are not new, they extend back decades. There is no reason to speak to the radical political right wing that turned out to support the current Prime Minister.
I think the current situation in the Middle East speaks to this election more than the resolve for a two state solution. I can remember statements by many Hebrews dating back to the late 1990s that Palestine has stayed viable within Israel's borders past 20 years, a generation, and should stop their demands for a homeland. This election is more of the same.
The USA continued to advocate for a Palestinian homeland past the radical right's influence for a long time. The relationship of Israel and the USA will sustain, but, the position of The West will not change. It is The West that Israel has to seek for solutions and the USA will never be alone regarding human rights abuses and the need for a Palestinian Homeland.
I might add, there are those that believe Hamas would take leadership in any Palestinian election. Quite possibly, but, look what the Palestinians are facing in Netanyahu. The more extreme Israel becomes the more Palestinians will be as well.
March 18, 2014
By Gulf News
...American commentator Peter Beinart (click here) wrote in the Israeli paper Haaretz recently, Barack Obama is “the face of 21st Century America” in which millennials and minorities that have distaste for Israel’s atrocities are becoming an influential part of the electorate. Obama, he warned, is “not an aberration; he is not a passing phase”.
On the other hand, leaders in western capitals who may have been hoping for Netanyahu’s defeat may be in for a rude awakening. Netanyahu, too, is not a passing phase in Israel. He is Israel. A third term may make him the longest serving Israeli prime minister; the Israeli people’s preferences could not be clearer....
