Thursday, May 20, 2010

Who Lives in Sheik Jarrah? By Kai Bird - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/opinion/01bird.html?ref=global-home

New York Times

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Who Lives in Sheik Jarrah?

By KAI BIRD
Published: April 30, 2010

AS a boy, I lived in Sheik Jarrah, a wealthy Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Annexed by Israel in 1967 and now the subject of a conflict over property claims, my former home has come to symbolize everything that has gone wrong between the Israelis and Palestinians over the last six decades.

Despite talk of a slowdown in Israeli construction in East Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, Jerusalem’s mayor, toured Washington earlier this week and told officials that the expansion into Arab neighborhoods is going ahead at full speed.

As a result, “The battle line in Israel’s war of survival as a Jewish and democratic state now runs through the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” writes David Landau, the former editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz. “Is that the line, at last, where Israel’s decline will be halted?” I hope so.

My family lived in Israel from 1956 to 1958, when my father, an American diplomat, was stationed in East Jerusalem. We lived in the Palestinian sector, but every day I crossed through Mandelbaum Gate, the one checkpoint in the divided city, to attend school in an Israeli neighborhood. I thus had the rare privilege of seeing both sides.

At the time Sheik Jarrah was a sleepy suburb, a half-mile north of Damascus Gate. One of my playmates was Dani Bahar, the son of a Muslim Palestinian and a Jewish-German refugee from Nazi Europe. Before the establishment of Israel in 1948, such interfaith marriages were uncommon, but accepted. Another neighbor was Katy Antonius, the widow of George Antonius, an Arab historian who argued that Palestine should become a binational, secular state.

The Sheik Jarrah of my youth is gone; Mandelbaum Gate was razed by Israeli bulldozers right after the Six-Day War in 1967 that united Jerusalem. But the city remains virtually divided. Few Jewish Israelis venture into Sheik Jarrah and the other largely Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and few Palestinians go to the “New City.”

Today East Jerusalem exudes the palpable feel of a city occupied by a foreign power. And it is, to an extent — although much of the world doesn’t recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to halt the construction of new housing units for Jewish Israelis in the Arab neighborhoods. “Jerusalem is not a settlement,” he recently told an audience in Washington.

Not all Israelis agree with this policy. For over a year, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Israelis and Palestinians have been gathering in Sheik Jarrah on Fridays to protest the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. Israeli courts have deemed these nonviolent demonstrations to be legal, but this has not stopped the police from arresting protesters.

In a cruel historical twist, nearly all of the Palestinians evicted from their homes in Sheik Jarrah in the last year-and-a-half were originally expelled in 1948 from their homes in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Talbieh. In the wake of the Six-Day War, Israeli courts ruled that some of the houses these Palestinian refugees have lived in since 1948 are actually legally owned by Jewish Israelis, who have claims dating from before Israel’s founding.

The Palestinians have stubbornly refused to pay any rent to these “absentee” Israeli landlords for nearly 43 years; until recently, their presence was nevertheless tolerated. But under Mr. Netanyahu, a concerted effort has been made to evict these Palestinians and replace them with Israelis.
This poses an interesting question. If Jewish Israelis can claim property in East Jerusalem based on land deeds that predate 1948, why can’t Palestinians with similar deeds reclaim their homes in West Jerusalem?

I have in mind the Kalbians, our neighbors in Sheik Jarrah. Until 1948, Dr. Vicken Kalbian and his family lived in a handsome Jerusalem-stone house on Balfour Street in Talbieh. In the spring, the Haganah, the Zionist militia, sent trucks mounted with loudspeakers through the streets of Talbieh, demanding that all Arab residents leave. The Kalbians decided it might be prudent to comply, but they thought they’d be back in a few weeks.

Nineteen years later, after the Six-Day war, the Kalbians returned to 4 Balfour Street and knocked on the door. A stranger answered. “He was a Jewish Turk,” Dr. Kalbian said, “who had come to Israel in 1948.” The man claimed he had bought the house from the “authorities.”
That year the Kalbians took their property deed to a lawyer who determined that their house was indeed registered with the Israeli Department of Absentee Property. Under Israeli law, they learned, due compensation could have been paid to them — but only if they had not fled to countries then considered “hostile,” like Jordan. Because in 1948 they had ended up in Jordanian-controlled Sheik Jarrah, the Kalbians could neither reclaim their home nor be compensated for their loss.

The Kalbians eventually emigrated to America, but their moral claim to the house on Balfour Street is as strong as any of the deeds held by Israelis to property in Sheik Jarrah.
If Israel wishes to remain largely Jewish and democratic, then it must soon withdraw from all of the occupied territories and negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. And if not, it should at least let the Kalbians go home again.

Kai Bird is the author of “Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978.”

India acting like an ostrich with its head in sand By Ghulam Muhammed

India cannot act like an ostrich and bury its head in sand, while serious developments in the neighborhood can inflame the whole area. The consequences for US/Israel conspired attack proceed step by step, should alarm our Administration and it should not sit on the fence and see US armed forces once again unleashing blood bath of innocents on contrived pretext. US and Israel's HEGEMONICAL agenda in the oil resource rich Gulf is not hidden to the world. The real reason for the US upping the ante is to manufacture a regime change in Iran. That is openly against the UN Charter's prohibition of interference in the internal affairs of UN member nations. Yesterday, it was Iraq and Afghanistan, tomorrow it will be India, which is already infected by US and Israeli agents in its government and political polity. India had been in colonial bondage for over 150 years and its people have made great struggles and sacrifices to gain independence, which is certainly threatened if India does not cover its bases against US and Israeli moves in Asia. India should work towards 'Asia for Asian' and chuck foreign influences out, before they get further entrenched in the area. The passive and tired leadership of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh is not up to taking longer term measures to secure India's integrity, freedom and honor. A vigorous public debate should give them the required courage to face the uncertain and danger-laden future and bolster its will to stand up for national interest.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>




Cover everyone’s bases


C. Raja MohanTags : crajamohancolumnsPosted: Thu May 20 2010, 00:51 hrs
India’s current diplomatic exertions on Iran, marked by External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna’s anxious outreach to Tehran this week, could get a lot more strenuous if the government does not come to terms with the gravity of the gathering crisis in the Gulf.
During Krishna’s brief Tehran sojourn, there was much motion, if not movement, in dealing with the nuclear confrontation
between the United States and Iran. The leaders of Brazil and Turkey, who along with India were part of a third world conclave convened by Iran, declared that they got Tehran to agree on a nuclear compromise that would end the impasse. Dismissing the initiative from two of its old allies and partners, Washington quickly wrapped up a draft agreement among the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council on new sanctions against Tehran.
The Gulf crisis will indeed test Delhi’s strategic acumen and diplomatic mettle in dealing with a range of associated issues from a possible breakdown of international efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear aspirations and a radical redistribution of power in the region.

Iran has long been part of Delhi’s security perimeter thanks to Tehran’s historic role in shaping the geopolitics of India’s north-western frontiers, the Persian Gulf, the Caucasus and
Central Asia. Iran is a major producer of oil and natural gas, two commodities that India will need in ever larger quantities. With India’s physical access to inner Asia blocked by Pakistan, Iran offers the alternative route.
Geography alone demands that India cultivate a strong partnership with Iran. Yet, the pursuit of Indian interests in Iran is circumscribed by the political and economic orientation of Tehran’s current ruling elite. Delhi’s difficulties have become acute amidst the power struggles within Iran, Tehran’s sharpening disputes with its Arab neighbours, its prolonged hostility with the US, and its defiance of the nuclear system. India will be able to do no real business with Iran if the
present conflict with the West is not mitigated.
Reports from Tehran say that Krishna has chosen to “explain” India’s votes in the International Atomic Energy Agency against Iran — three of them during the last five years — to the Iranian leadership. If true, these reports are indeed disturbing; for it
reflects a needless nervousness in Delhi. Worse still it reveals a
focus on the peripheral rather than the central issues arising out of the current crisis.
Delhi has no reason to be apologetic because its votes are consistent with India’s principles and interests. India has always maintained that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran must abide by its legal obligations. Any fudging of this principle would have severely undermined India’s own nuclear interests — especially in winning international endorsement of Delhi’s civil nuclear initiative.
While Delhi owes Tehran no explanation on the IAEA vote, India has every reason to be concerned about the many implications and consequences of the current stand-off between Iran and the international community.
The first is about the credibility of the UNSC itself. Three rounds of UNSC sanctions have not forced Iran to stop its uranium enrichment programme. And Tehran is not trembling at the sight of the draft fourth resolution. Despite its minimalism, the new resolution will have no credibility if it runs into the opposition of Brazil, Turkey and other non-permanent members of the UNSC.
Facing a resolution that has neither teeth nor legitimacy, Iran will be right to hold that the metaphorical emperor of the post-Cold War world — the UNSC — has no clothes.
If the Bush administration gave “unilateralism” a bad name in the handling of the Iraq crisis during 2002-03, the Obama administration might be close to doing the same with “multilateralism” in its handling of Iran. Believing that American decline is real, betting that its military machine is
exhausted after Iraq and Afghanistan, and sensing that the multilateral coalition against Iran is on its last legs, Tehran may be sorely tempted to test the resolve of President Obama. Amidst a growing clamour at home for a tougher policy towards Iran and accusations that he is weak on national security, the Obama administration would be under pressure to act. With Israel straining at the leash for a military solution, Obama is between a rock and a hard place.
In this emerging situation, India’s main task is not about defining a diplomatic position that covers all political bases and potential contingencies. Nor does it involve a return to the old ideological impulses of third world solidarity.
Delhi’s current focus on the minor stakes in Iran — an oil field here or a pipeline there — stands in contrast to the enormity of the current dynamic in and around Iran. Delhi’s immediate task is to join the international effort to avert a war in the Gulf. It must press Washington and Tehran to begin an unconditional bilateral dialogue to address all issues of mutual concern. The world has had enough of shadow play between the two of them.
Looking ahead, India must assess the prospect that the US may not be able to remain for ever the principal provider of security in the arc of crisis stretching from Pakistan to Somalia, via Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and the Gulf of Aden.
Just as the failure of the great powers to act against Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia led to the political demise of the League of
Nations in the ’30s, the Iran crisis has the potential to wreck the post-war international order and destroy the regional equilibrium.
Promoting a new concert of powers that can step into the breach between a weakening America and an irrelevant UNSC is the real long-term challenge before India’s national security planners.