Australia’s Woodside Petroleum goes to Israel
December 6, 2012 | Sharyn Mittelman
Australia’s biggest oil and gas firm, Woodside Petroleum has announced it is buying a 30 percent share, valued up to $2.5 billion, in Israel’s Leviathan natural gas field.
Israel, a nation once thought to be devoid of natural resources in recent years has found vast amounts of natural gas deep under its Mediterranean waters. The gas finding may not only make Israel energy self-sufficient for decades but also a world leader in energy exports – including possibly to Europe and Asia.
The Woodside deal also highlights the changing political and economic ramifications of the new gas fields in the East Mediterranean.
E-1: Beyond the myths and hype
December 4, 2012 | Ahron Shapiro
An international furore has arisen over Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s decision to move forward with the long-stalled planning of a new Jewish neighbourhood in the area between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim known by the name E-1. Construction on the project itself would not begin for, at the earliest, one or two years, and would require additional political approvals…
Beyond the exaggerated rhetoric, however, evidence shows that the reality of the E-1 plan, which was originally developed by the Rabin government in the early 1990s, is far less sinister than these reports would suggest.
What Palestinians think they have achieved from passage of the UN “Non-member state” resolution
December 3, 2012 | Ahron Shapiro
Western countries that abstained or voted for the United Nations General Assembly resolution on Thursday upgrading the Palestinian representation in the UN to that of a non-member state have depicted their decision as a vote in favour of a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians and a two-state solution.
However, Palestinian officials have been telling their own people that the vote was a substantive step towards forced Israeli capitulation, not compromise. Significantly, Palestinian officials say they intend to argue that their increased recognition of statehood automatically entitles them to massive political dividends, including a presumption of final borders.
Tel Aviv bus bomb terror suspect – a case of “family reunification terrorism”
November 29, 2012 | Sharyn Mittelman
Israel has now arrested suspects responsible for the Tel Aviv bus bomb attack on November 21 that injured 28 people, three seriously.
One suspect is an Israeli-Arab formerly from the West Bank who obtained Israeli citizenship on reunification grounds. Therefore, this latest terrorist attack has again put the spotlight on how family reunification laws can be exploited by terrorists to gain entry into Israel to commit their crimes.
More Hamas incitement to genocide
November 29, 2012 | Sharyn Mittelman
The Hamas Charter of 1988 calls for the destruction of Israel, and includes rampant antisemitism and genocidal incitement. However, Hamas’ use of genocidal rhetoric is not confined to its Charter and continues today. For example, Palestinian Media Watch reported that during the latest Israel-Gaza conflict, Hamas’ al-Aqsa TV station aired calls to kills Jews, such as “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah”.
Remember Syria?
November 22, 2012 | Ahron Shapiro
From the moment Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defence began last week, news of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s bloody suppression of the rebellion against his rule was pushed down the news page, and in some cases knocked out of the paper entirely.
This, in spite of the fact that more Syrians than Palestinians were killed over the same period and that the death toll in Assad’s crackdown is approaching 40,000 – many times more than the total number of Palestinians killed during fighting with Israel in decades of conflict.
Did the current round of violence start because of the death of a 13-year-old boy on November 8?
November 22, 2012 | Or Avi Guy
In the first few days of the current escalation in Southern Israel and Gaza (which hopefully may now be coming to an end) most of the media reported that the violence escalated after a Kornet anti-tank missile was launched at an Israeli military jeep on November 10, injuring four soldiers. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) took responsibility for the attack. Shortly afterwards, a barrage of dozens of rockets aimed at Israeli cities and towns was launched from Gaza.
Perhaps the 10 days that have passed since that incident has blurred the memory of some reporters. Some media reports are now framed around the assumption that this whole thing began on the 14 with the strike on Jabari. And even more bizarrely, other reporter and commentators are stating or implying that it was the death of 13-year-old Hamid Younis Abu Dika on Nov. 8 near Khan Younis that sparked the current round of violence.
Gaza: How we got here and how it might end
November 21, 2012
This Update offers more top-flight analysis of how the Gaza conflict got to this point – with more than 1150 rocket hits on Israel since Wednesday (on top of the 150 in the few days before that) and over 1400 Israeli strikes on terror targets in Gaza – and what the end of the conflict might look like. (Report now say a deal on a ceasefire being negotiated in Cairo might be close to completion, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton now in the region to try to assist in a ceasefire deal.) Good constant updates on what is going on militarily are being provided by the IDF’s website.
Human rights NGOs, and their half-hearted, belated, and weasel-worded condemnations of rocket attacks
November 21, 2012 | Or Avi Guy
Human rights organisations are supposed to advance a universal approach, according to which every person in entitled to certain rights and liberties, based simply on his or her humanity. The most basic of these rights is the right to life. Yet time after time those very same organisations prove that some humans – those from groups they personally identify or sympathise with – have more rights than others. Most recently, this double-standard was evident in the response by various human rights organisations to the ongoing rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza on Israeli cities and towns. In between ‘code red’ sirens, you could almost hear the silence of human rights organisations.
Rockets from civilian areas: Hamas and Islamic Jihad are fooling no one
November 21, 2012 | Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz
The most unfortunate consequence of any war is that innocent people are invariably caught in the crossfire. The current conflict in Gaza is no exception, as can be seen by the tragic deaths of members of the Dallu family on Sunday from what appears to have been an erroneous airstrike on the part of the Israelis. The IDF were trying to target Hamas commander Yihya Abayo and, for reasons still unclear, hit the nearby Dallu household instead. The incident is currently under investigation.
Nevertheless, there is overwhelming evidence that the human toll that the war is taking is being exacerbated substantially by the tactics that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (‘PIJ’), and other Gaza militant groups are employing…
