A biweekly feature of news and opinion pieces from the Israeli and Palestinian press.
1.) In a strikingly harsh op-ed in Ynet News, entitled “No Need for Phony Sorrow,” Israeli columnist Uri Orbach writes that the death of Palestinian civilians is a fact of war and need not elicit an Israeli apology.
If we are all destined to suffer here, it would be good that they suffer more than we do. And if the Palestinians continue to overestimate their power, we can assume that along with their killed gunmen we are also going to see innocents die. We should regret it when we kill civilians who are not involved in terror and children who have not sinned. Yet we do not have to take up the moralistic mood of the global peace powers, and we do not need to assume a façade of phony sorrow.
This is war, where “the sword devours one as well as another,” as it says in the bible. Those who regularly and deliberately fire at our civilians lead to cases where on occasion, unintentionally, some civilians on their side will die too. It isn’t fair and it isn’t aesthetic, but those are the facts of life.
2.) Indicating growing discord, a dispute erupted this week between Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and the Palestinian Authority’s head negotiator, Ahmed Qureia. “Qureia,” reports Ynet News, “angrily rejected a proposed map presented by Livni in which any future agreement would see Israel retaining control of the larger settlement blocs in the West Bank as well as the Jordan River Valley and Jerusalem.” Following on the heels of Mahmoud Abbas’s recent statement that there is no forward progress towards an agreement, such a hard-line proposal by Livni raises additional questions about the viability of the peace process at this time.
3.) A coalition of Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups has issued a joint statement calling on the Olmert administration to stop blocking fuel from entering Gaza. The statement accuses Israel of preventing Palestinians “from obtaining the fuel they need to generate electricity, power hospitals, run transportation, pump water and sewage, and provide for basic social and economic needs.” It also argues toughly that “acts of reprisals and collective penalties against civilians are unjustified and could be considered war crimes that must be investigated and stopped.”
4.) The Jerusalem Post published two op-eds yesterday with competing views about J Street, the newly-formed Israel lobby. Columnist Isi Leibler argues that the new lobby is likely to force Israel to make unilateral concessions to the Palestinians “which undermine Israel’s security and embolden terrorists.” The other op-ed, written by the editor-in-chief of the New Jersey Jewish News, hints that J Street should be welcomed because “no agreement can be forged without the muscle of the world’s remaining superpower.”