At the outbreak of the revolution in Syria two years ago, the Israeli government announced that events there were none of its business and it would not interfere. Forty years of quiet on the Golan Heights had led Israel to prefer Assad over any conceivable replacement. Now, however, when the rebels rule wide areas, when the Syrian army is falling apart, and when the regime’s survival is in the balance, Israeli policy appears to have shifted from passivity to active intervention.
A political statement by Daam Workers Party on the recent Israeli air strikes in Syria
Yair Lapid had hardly settled into his Knesset seat before the Finance Ministry declared war on the ultra-Orthodox, on the Histadrut, on the monopolies – in short, a world war. What the father Tommy began with Netanyahu in 2003, the well-disciplined son is completing ten years later, fulfilling his father’s directives. Tommy Lapid has passed away, but Netanyahu has received renewed strength to continue the process he began as finance minister in Ariel Sharon’s government. Netanyahu paid a heavy price when he lost the general elections to Ehud Olmert, but a man like Bibi doesn’t despair – especially when another Lapid arrives to restore his self-confidence.
The Daam Workers Party has been active in Israel for many years. For most Israelis, Daam is the hardest political party to understand: It criticizes the establishment Arab leadership but also attacks the government. It consistently supports the Arab Spring but is a firm opponent of the Islamists. Unlike Hadash, it chose a socialist, feminist woman to lead it: Asma Agbarieh-Zahalka. The party aims to protect the rights of workers but refuses to surrender to the aggressive regime of Ofer Eini’s Histadrut (General Federation of Labor); instead, it organizes workers such as truckers in Ashdod and finds employment for Arab women via its union, the Workers Advice Center (WAC-MAAN). As a Marxist party, it follows an unequivocally secular line, but is happy to enter homes lined with portraits of venerated rabbis, Koran texts or statuettes of the Virgin Mary. It has tens of thousands of supporters, yet in the last election it won just 3500 votes.
The Daam Party adds its voice to the call of the Palestinian people and all people of conscience in Israel and the world, who demand an end to the Israeli authorities’ arbitrary policy against Palestinian prisoners, particularly those in mortal danger, prisoners Samer Issawi and Ayman Sharawna, who have been on hunger strike for over 200 days. We demand their immediate release.
In March, after Bibi Netanyahu forms Israel’s new government, U.S. President Barack Obama intends to arrive for a first historic visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Obama wants to talk with the Israeli people, but has nothing of note to tell them. First on the American president’s crowded agenda will be Iran, and then Syria. Last will be the Palestinian issue, concerning which he has no new initiative.
That Obama is distancing himself from the Palestinian question is unsurprising. He has already crashed and burned on that one, when he named George Mitchell his special envoy, in vain. In response to Obama’s demand, Netanyahu did freeze settlement construction for ten months, but then he renewed it with greater vigor. Meantime another term in office has passed, both in Israel and in the United States, without even the semblance of an Israeli-Palestinian political process, and four more arid years lie ahead. Netanyahu committed himself to the principle of two states, but his actions belied it – the settlements expanded and the would-be Palestinian state continued to shrink.
Sheikh Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib’s declaration that he is ready to talk to the Assad regime came like a bolt out of the blue. A few days before he travelled to the Munich Security Conference, the Syrian National Coalition leader wrote on his personal Facebook page that talks would be dependent on the release of 160,000 political detainees and the return of passports belonging to opposition members who have been unable to enter their home country. On the same day, the Syrian National Council, which had been the main Syrian opposition until the National Coalition was formed, declared that the leader’s statement did not represent the views of the opposition.
Khatib was originally invited to the Munich conference for a high-ranking meeting with US Vice President Joe Biden. Surprisingly, he also met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi – two Assad allies who have excused the massacres perpetrated on the Syrian people. These meetings give Khatib’s words – coordinated with the US – a new dimension: indeed, they are intended to promote a US-Russian plan concerning Syria’s future.