"Clinton Considered Secret Plan to Spark Palestinian Protests"

The Washington Free Beacon: In a Dec, 18, 2011, email, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Thomas Pickering suggested that Clinton consider a plan to restart then-stalled peace negotiations by kickstarting Palestinian demonstrations against Israel.

Pickering described the effort as a potential “game changer in the region,” recommending that the United States undertake a clandestine campaign to generate unrest. Clinton requested that his email be printed. 

“What will change the situation is a major effort to use non-violent protests and demonstrations to put peace back in the center of people’s aspirations as well as their thoughts, and use that to influence the political leadership,” Pickering wrote.

“This is far from a sure thing, but far, in my humble view, from hopeless,” he continued. “Women can and ought to be at the center of these demonstrations. Many men and others will denigrate the idea. I don’t and I don’t think that was your message.”

Palestinian women, he noted, are less likely than men to resort to violence.

“It must be all and only women. Why? On the Palestinian side the male culture is to use force,” Pickering wrote, comparing the effort to the protests in Egypt that deposed former leader Hosni Mubarak. “Palestinian men will not for long patiently demonstrate — they will be inclined over time and much too soon to be frustrated and use force. Their male culture comes close to requiring it.”

Saul Alinsky goes international.

More University disruption and abuse disguised as discourse

"University of Texas law student and cohorts disrupt Israeli professor’s talk"

Legal Insurrection has the details:
The ringleader of the group has been identified as a UT law student named Mohammed Nabulsi. Despite being asked repeatedly to either leave or sit down and listen to the lecture, Nabulsi kept insisting that he was going to give a speech, and as an argument ensued between Prof. Pedahzur and Nabulsi, the other protesters began chanting “Free Free Palestine” and other slogans.

The PSC, ironically, is circulating an (edited) video of the disruption, (see below) somehow believing that the end result is that Pedahzur should be punished (they misidentify him in the video). Give them points for chutzpah, at least. But in fact, the video, even in its edited version, should be enough for University of Texas to suspend the lot of protesters, Nabulsi in particular. Is the university going to tolerate preplanned disruption of campus events? Legal Insurrection has additional video.

Operation Protective Edge...time to shut it down?

"Israel has fought four major wars in the last eight years, including the Lebanon War of 2006 against Hezbollah and three devastating wars against Hamas in Gaza from late 2008 to the present (not counting several smaller operations from 2006 to 2008). It has assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists and bombed sites in Syria, Lebanon, and Sudan over the same time period, just as it has continually agitated for U.S. military strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure...

-National Interest

"12 Signs It’s Time to Get Out of Gaza

1. Your enemy refuses to protect its people. Normally, if you invade a country and pound the daylights out of it, you can expect its government to seek, or at least accept, a cease-fire to stop the bleeding. Not here. Hamas has refused to endorse or honor a simple cease-fire despite the ridiculous imbalance of casualties.

Israel argues, correctly, that Hamas doesn’t care about Gazan civilians. Hamas also seems fragmented, unable to make decisions. Arab governments aren’t stepping in, either—they seem to hate Hamas more than they love Gazans. But the absence of competent advocacy for Gazans isn’t a reason to keep shooting. It’s a reason to stop. When your enemy shows no mercy for its own people, that responsibility falls to you.

9. Your eldest statesman says it’s time to stop. A week ago, Shimon Peres stepped down after seven years as Israel’s president. The job is ceremonial, but Peres has stratospheric prestige, having served as prime minister in three different decades. On Wednesday, he visited wounded Israeli soldiers and praised them for fighting Hamas terrorists “who have no respect for human lives.” But he also concluded that the war had “exhausted itself” and “now we have to find a way to stop it.” For this, Israel’s housing minister called Peres’ remarks “unacceptable” and accused him of undermining military morale.

10. Your army hints that it’s time to stop. On Tuesday, an anonymous “high-ranking military official” told Israeli reporters that “the political leadership must decide now—either we push deeper [into Gaza] or we backtrack.” He cautioned that “we won't be able to take out every tunnel” and added (in a country where polls overwhelmingly favor further prosecution of the war) that “our responsibility is to lead the offensive to where it needs to go, not to where the public wants.” That sounds like a warning that the wise course, at this point, is to get out.

12. The West Bank is boiling. So far, the war has been confined to Gaza. But Hamas has been doing everything possible to inflame anger in the West Bank. Over the last two weeks, the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency has tracked an increase in “armed attacks on Israeli military sites and settlements in the West Bank.” If Israel doesn’t end one war soon, it may soon be facing two."

-Slate

Political Islam politics

"CAIRO — Battling Palestinian militants in Gaza two years ago, Israel found itself pressed from all sides by unfriendly Arab neighbors to end the fighting.

Not this time.

After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.

“The Arab states’ loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington and a former Middle East negotiator under several presidents.

...Although Egypt is traditionally the key go-between in any talks with Hamas — deemed a terrorist group by the United States and Israel — the government in Cairo this time surprised Hamas by publicly proposing a cease-fire agreement that met most of Israel’s demands and none from the Palestinian group. Hamas was tarred as intransigent when it immediately rejected it, and Cairo has continued to insist that its proposal remains the starting point for any further discussions.

...At the same time, Egypt has infuriated Gazans by continuing its policy of shutting down tunnels used for cross-border smuggling into the Gaza Strip and keeping border crossings closed, exacerbating a scarcity of food, water and medical supplies after three weeks of fighting.

“Sisi is worse than Netanyahu, and the Egyptians are conspiring against us more than the Jews,” said Salhan al-Hirish, a storekeeper in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. “They finished the Brotherhood in Egypt, and now they are going after Hamas.”" [my bolding]

-NYT

Israeli/Palestinian Peace Talk Frame-Work Negotiations

[Above] In the West Bank town of Ramallah, Palestinian police officers clash with activists after they tried to reach the Palestinian Authority president's headquarters during protests against the resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks

JERUSALEM — The first substantive peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in years will begin Monday evening in Washington, the Obama administration announced, after Israeli leaders agreed Sunday to release 104 Palestinian prisoners.

 State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the preliminary talks will be led by Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. The talks, which will continue Tuesday, are expected to address the framework for full negotiations to follow — the talks about talks that had preceded past attempts at a deal.

 The release of Palestinian prisoners was one of the major roadblocks to the peace talks.

There are those who believe that the two-state solution is dead, and it is a race to whether Israel will eventually wear down the Palestinians through land grabs and oppression, or the Palestinians will persistently resist and out-breed the Israelis.