MARCH 2007
UN panel to hear Israel respond to charges of anti-Arab bias
By Yoav Stern and Amiram Barkat, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service . 26/02/2007
Israel will be required to provide the United Nations Human Rights Council explanations for its policies regarding Arabs, defending itself against allegations of bias in land allocation, Bedouin rights, treatment of Palestinians, and other issues.
The Adala Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights has been involved in recent talks between the United Nations and Israel on discrimination against Israeli Arabs, both counseling the state and advising the UN of categorical discrimination overlooked by Israel's report.
Last week's talks with the UN Human Rights Council held at the UN Geneva headquarters were part of ongoing discussions and monitoring of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Israel has become party to the convention in the late 1970s, and as such it is required to present the council a bi-annual report on its implementation. Despite this obligation, Israel submitted its last report in 1998.
Adala debriefed the members of the Israeli delegation ahead and during the discussions, stressing several areas it still considers to suffer from manifest discrimination against Arabs.
One of the issues Adala highlighted is the control of Jewish institutions - The Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Agency - over state lands. According to Adala, the fact that part of the lands are being allocated only to Jews attests to discrimination that is ingrained into state policies.
Other issues raised by Adala were the treatment of the Bedouin population in the Negev and the state's position on unrecognized Bedouin communities; the Law of Citizenship preventing Israeli Arabs from marrying Palestinians or citizens of Arab countries and living together in Israel; and also the discrimination against the Palestinians living in the territories. All of those issues were not mentioned by Israeli delegates to the talks.
Permanent Representative to the UN Office in Geneva, Yitzhak Levanon, noted at the opening meeting Israel's progress in legislation and acceptance of Arabs into public service, despite ongoing security threats and unceasing struggle against terrorism. Levanon mentioned the appointment of MK Raleb Majadele as Science, Culture and Sports Minister as proof of non-discriminatory policies at the public service. Israeli delegates emphasized affirmative action regulations in the state's hiring policies for the public service. But Adala says that according to figures in its possession Arabs constitute a mere 6 percent of public servants whereas they form some 20 percent of the population in Israel.
Morten Kjaerum, the Dane Committee Expert who served as country Rapporteur for the report of Israel, welcomed the information provided by the Israeli delegation on affirmative action plans, as well as the Government's attitude that discrimination was not acceptable. He did, however, note several areas requiring improvement, including: "Insufficient" implementation of human dignity principles under current legislation and jurisprudence; doubtful balance between security laws and human rights in cases of family reunification resulting in direct discrimination; and indirect discrimination resulting from the separation wall and security laws.
Adala's involvement in UN anti discrimination activities is part of a growing trend among Israeli Arab rights groups to affect state policy via international bodies. The various organizations believe that by increasing international pressure on Israel significant policy changes can be achieved.
Other than Adala, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel presented the treatment of foreign workers in Israel and the B'tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories raised human rights violations against Palestinians.
The Foreign Ministry expressed its satisfaction with the discussions, although sources at the department said they expect "critical" conclusions from the committee, to be published in two weeks' time. Head of Human Rights department Daniel Meron said that committee members complimented Israel for efforts at narrowing the gaps between Jews and Arabs. Meron said also that the queries raised by Adala "were not unexpected" and said he was hopeful that in its conclusions the committee would show understanding to the complex reality Israel faces.
Three out of four Israelis would like to be part of EU
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Published: 23 February 2007
Three-quarters of Israelis want to be in the European Union and more than a tenth would actually leave Israel for Europe if they were granted EU citizenship, according to an opinion poll published yesterday.
With Germany scoring an approval rate of 67 per cent, making the second most popular European country after Britain, the poll suggests that the attitude of most Israelis is no longer predominantly coloured by the Second World War and by the Holocaust.
At the same time Israelis have a startlingly positive view of the EU given the frequent suspicion of EU policy-making - especially on the Middle East - expressed by elements of the country's political class.
The poll carried out by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a German foundation, in Jerusalem suggests that Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has played a notable part in warming Israelis to Germany - and indeed to Europe as a whole - with 60 per cent saying that her election as its first female head of government had improved her country's image in the world.
The findings show that Israelis over the age of 51 are especially positive about Germany and the EU - with young people still lagging behind in their enthusiasm for Europe. Lars Haensel, the foundation's representative in Israel, said he was "very pleased" that most older Israelis no longer associated Germany with "the dark chapter" of its past.
He said: "That chimes with my experience because we do a lot of work with Israeli Jews of German origin and I have never encountered any hostility - quite the reverse." He added that Jews of German origin had played an especially important part in the reconciliation between the countries from the 1950s and that the poll showed "how deep the German-Israeli bond is and will help to bring Europe and Israel even closer".
Mr Haensel also said that German commitments to Israeli security - for example by sending peacekeeping forces to Lebanese waters - and the progressive delivery of three state-of-the-art submarines, as a result of a decision first taken by Helmut Kohl when he was Chancellor, had also played a part.
Seventy-six per cent of Israelis cited foreign policy as a priority, which suggests that the widespread perception of Tony Blair as a friend of Israel may have influenced Britain's 80 per cent approval as the Israelis' favourite European country. But Mr Haensel suggested that widespread use - and teaching - of English in Israel was also important.
Mr Haensel said that he had been surprised by the findings on EU membership since the issue was not even "on the table". The poll suggested that, in general, European involvement in the stepped-up UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) since the war last year, and the EU provision of monitors on the border between Gaza and Egypt, had also influenced the findings. Surprisingly just over 60 per cent of Israelis cited the perception that the "EU helps the Palestinians" as a positive factor while an even higher proportion cited the EU's belief in the rule of law, belief in human rights and protection of minorities - an issue on which Israel has been criticised for its discrimination of Israeli Arabs - as good reasons for supporting Europe.
The survey showed that among the 11 per cent expressing a preference for relocating to Europe, the biggest proportion were recent immigrants with fewer roots in the country. Israeli Arabs - also surveyed - were less inclined to leave for Europe than Jews.
The most unpopular European country was France, which 61 per cent of Israelis said they disliked and which came significantly below Turkey in approval ratings. On the other hand France was among the most popular destinations for the 50 per cent of Israelis who have visited Europe in the past three years.
Lawrence of Arabia was really a Zionist, historian claims
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Published: 24 February 2007
It appears to be revisionism on a grand scale. Popular imagination, fed on Peter O'Toole's portrayal in David Lean's film classic Lawrence of Arabia, will have a hard time absorbing the startling assertion by the historian Sir Martin Gilbert that its hero was in fact a "serious Zionist" who believed in a "Jewish state from the Mediterranean shore to the River Jordan".
Sir Martin, who plans to back up his myth-challenging claim in his next book, declared here this week that TE Lawrence, long regarded as the unrivalled prototype of the British Arabist, "had a sort of contempt for the Arabs, actually. He felt that only with a Jewish state would the Arabs make anything of themselves."
The British Jewish historian who has written histories of Israel and the Holocaust, as well as his monumental biography of Winston Churchill, made front-page news here when he told The Jerusalem Post during the city's international book fair: "The most interesting thing from an Israeli perspective is about Lawrence of Arabia. The great Arabist, right? The man who supported the Arabs and pushed for Arab nationhood in the 1920s. He is always pictured wearing Arab robes. What is so astonishing which you'll see in my next book, Churchill and the Jews is that he was a serious Zionist."
Sir Martin revealed last night that a series of minutes written by Lawrence, which he uncovered in the National Archive, demonstrated his sympathy with the Zionist cause. Working for Churchill in 1921, for example, he clearly identified "the area of Palestine from the Mediterranean to Jordan" as the "Jewish National Home".
While the discoveries overturn many popular assumptions about Lawrence in Britain and much of the Arab world, they will come as less of a surprise to prominent historians here.
Norman Rose of the Hebrew University, and a leading expert on the history of Zionism in Britain, leaves little room for doubt about Lawrence's admiration for Chaim Weizmann in his biography of the Belarus-born Zionist who became a British citizen in 1910, was the leading lobbyist for the 1917 Balfour declaration pledging a Jewish homeland, and the first President of Israel.
The biography quotes Lawrence as telling the Archbishop of Jerusalem, a sceptic about Weizmann, that the Zionist leader "is a great man whose boots neither you nor I are fit to black". When Weizmann finally settled in Palestine in 1934, and told his friend Lewis Namier that he regretted not having done so a decade earlier, Namier could not resist replying that Lawrence had remarked to him of Weizmann that "one does not build the National Home by living in a villa in Addison Road". This was hardly, to put it mildly, the sentiment of an anti-Zionist.
Lawrence, who had played a leading part in co-ordinating the Arab revolt against the Turks to serve British interests, mediated and translated at the post war Jewish-Arab accord between the future King Feisal of Iraq and Weizmann, which allowed for "large-scale immigration" of Jews to Palestine and implementation of the Balfour declaration in return for the Arab state promised and then reneged on by the British.
Professor Rose said yesterday: "I am no expert on Lawrence, but this was when many people did not see a contradiction between a Jewish National Home and Arab independence."
In 1921, when Churchill was Colonial Secretary, Lawrence worked closely with him as an adviser from the Department's Middle East Department, travelling with him to the Cairo conference when Feisal was assigned the kingship of Iraq and his brother Abdullah the Emirate of Transjordan.
It was from this period that several of the documents uncovered by Sir Martin originate. Lawrence, for example, wrote that part of Abdullah's job would be to "check anti-Zionism" and prevent infiltration from what is now Jordan into the "Jewish National Home".
It seems logical to imagine that working so closely with the minister, he shared at the time Churchill's warmth to the idea of a Jewish homeland, and probably an eventual Jewish state. "Churchill was pro-Zionist," says Professor Rose. "No question."