The elections in Israel make us certain of the victory of the Israeli racial state. Livni, Netanyahu or Lieberman – the result is the same even though one speaks about ‘dialogue’ towards a ‘two state solution’, one speaks of ‘no dialogue’ and one speaks of conditioning citizenship on an oath of loyalty… In a sense, I agree with Gideon Levi who wrote in Haaretz a couple of weeks ago ‘Let Netanyahu win’, arguing that only with an extreme right-wing government will the world understand Israel’s trajectory towards a ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian question – more land, fewer Arabs – and will start to put real pressure on Israel military regime. Only with a governmetn intent on no surrender, might the Un ited States (although I am not holding my breath) close the military aid tap. Only then might Israel be forced to recognise that the time for a two-state solution has long gone. As David Theo Goldberg writes: ‘Debates, such as they are, about a two-state solution are a distraction. Israel has given no indication beyond soft rhetoric that it has any intention (ever?) of enabling a viable, sovereign, economically and politically independent Palestinian state, centered either in the West Bank or Gaza, hostile or peaceful. Landlocked, the West Bank would have to depend either on foreign countries (including Israel) or on an increasingly distant Gaza for its lifeline to a world beyond Israeli constraint. The legacy of relying on foreign countries, of course, is one of dependence and economic control, not self-determination and political viability’ (‘Final death blow to the two-state solution?’ www.threatofrace.org).
Continue reading “The war after”
The end of (Irish) migration studies?
Translocations – the Irish inter-university ejournal for migration, race and social change – is in danger of closing. In NUI Cork, migration studies is threatened with closure. and what about Ireland’s other migration studies projects?
No one has heard from the Minister of Integration Conor Lenihan for weeks – once his budget was cut by 26%, he stopped making public appearances. Some might say that this is just we well, but the fact remains that the issues of immigration, and integration, and interculturalism, and equality seem off the agenda in the new climate of panicky economic meltdown. Migrants from Eastern Europe, we are being told, are going home in their thousands (a recent report in the Guardian put the figure at 1,200 per week returning to Poland from Britain and Ireland). Asylum applications are the lowest to date. And while deportations continue on the quiet, there is no talk about it. Nor have we heard much talk about language acquisition, education issues, service provision, housing.
New year, new war
To be published in Metro Eireann, 15 January 2009.
(PHOTOS: http://gaza.haimbresheeth.com/gaza-carnage-archive/gaza-photos)
What a start for the new year!! On 27 December, the Israeli Defence Forces launched an attack of unprecedented scale on the Gaza Strip. According to the Israeli government, the attack was in response to unyielding Palestinian rocket and mortar fire into Israel since the end of the Egyptian negotiated ceasefire. Israeli F16 planes bombed more than 400 targets through the densely populated Gaza Strip, which Israel pulled out of but kept it under siege ever since, killing, at the time of writing, about 721 people, at least 169 of them young children, 46 women and 6 medical personnel, and injuring some 3200. Rather than succeed in stopping the rocket attacks, since the attack started Palestinian militants continue to fire short and long range rockets, some landing in major Israeli towns and cities. Only on the thirteenth day of the attack has President elect Barack Obama spoken for the first time about his plans to organise negotiations between Israel and Hamas, something Israel has rejected since Hamas was democratically elected.
Continue reading “New year, new war”