The Dominion - Middle East

Khader Adnan's Unpublicized Hunger Strike

stephlaw — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:26:43 +0000

Vigil called on CBC to end the silence

VANCOUVER—Khader Adnan, a Palestinian political prisoner, ended his 66-day hunger strike on February 21, after reaching an agreement with the Israeli government in which he will be released on April 17, four months after he was first detained. During his strike, Adnan lost about one-third of his body weight and put his life in danger, according to a doctor who examined him last week on behalf of Physicians for Human Rights.

There was next to no mention of Adnan's strike in Canadian media, though, according to Vancouver Palestine activists who held a vigil and picket at the CBC building in downtown Vancouver on February 16. The activists were calling for CBC to end its silence about his case.

"Khader Adnan is invisible in Canadian media. We see [Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister] John Baird saying that Israel has no greater friend than Canada, at a time when Khader Adnan is protesting his arbitrary detention without charge, settlements are expanding and the illegal occupation continues," said Khaled Barakat, a Palestinian community activist. "We think it is very important to say that Baird does not speak for all Canadians."

Activists from a number of Vancouver-based organizations, including the Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign, Canada Palestine Association, Canadian Boat to Gaza, Independent Jewish Voices, Seriously Free Speech, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, and others joined the picket, where protesters distributed flyers informing the public about Khader Adnan's case, held signs with his image and candles honoring his struggle and sacrifice.

Khader Adnan is a Palestinian political activist, baker, husband and father, and was put into administrative detention by the Israeli occupation military forces. His hunger strike was undertaken to demand the end of administrative detention in Palestine.

Administrative detention is detention without charge, based only on secret evidence, indefinitely renewable by Israeli military judges.

“My husband is dying inside an Israeli jail. The world should make sure I am able to see him,” said Randa Adnan, Khader's wife, before Tuesday's announcement was made. “And it should pressure the Israeli government to release him before it’s too late…Israel denied Khader any fairness or decency…But maybe the rest of humanity will show more mercy."

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had also called for Khader Adnan to be charged or released. Thousands of people around the world called for his release. In Palestine, dozens were injured at protests calling for his release, where they were attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Despite those calls, domestically and internationally, an Israeli military court of appeal upheld Khader’s administrative detention as late as Monday, Feb. 20. That was before Khader struck the agreement for his release in April. He has still not been charged with any crime.

Charlotte Kates is a Palestine solidarity activist with the Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign and Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories. This article was originally published by the VMC.

Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca.

khader

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Oil Rich Gulf Co-operation Council Grows

stephlaw — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 03:55:55 +0000

Extreme extraction could prove to be the meaning of GCC membership for Morocco and Jordan

AMMAN, Jordan—The Arab Spring sent shockwaves through the regimes of the Middle East and North Africa, and in the face of demands for popular accountability alongside bread and butter issues, states throughout the region have devised strategies to try and avert popular upheaval.

If one were asked to list the most powerful players from the Arab world, it is likely that neither Morocco nor Jordan would head that list. Both are relatively poor countries, and neither is classically known as being resource-rich. Morocco occupies the edge of Western Africa, geographically distant from richer Arab countries such as Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates. Jordan has high energy demands, and thus has long been reliant on imports. The steady backing of the United States, in exchange for Jordan's relative complicity in American policy, has also somewhat isolated Jordan in the Arab world.

Regardless of their outsider status, the kingdoms of Morocco and Jordan have recently been invited to join the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC). On the surface, inviting in Jordan—and even more so the non-Gulf nation of Morocco—appears to be a puzzle.

Similarities between the newly-invited monarchies and other GCC countries are not completely lost, at least not with their reigning pro-American kings: Mohammed VI of Morocco, and King Abdullah II of Jordan. Despite some limited political reforms, both monarchs have spent a dozen years on their thrones with static regimes and unregulated, free market economies. Both reflect the deires of other regimes in the region to avoid the uprisings that have swept rulers from some Arab states in recent months. Jordan and Morocco also share in high unemployment and poverty rates, and both countries have seen street protests in recent months.

Recent promises from King Mohammed VI for "meaningful reform" included a recent referendum on constitutional amendments, to which it was reported that the general population of Morocco responded 98 per cent in favour. Moroccan protesters have since called the poll fraudulent and the newly-drafted constitution insufficient. Likewise, in an attempt to placate protests, King Abdullah has re-shuffled the Jordanian parliament. Critics, however, perceive the changes in both kingdoms to be little more than cosmetic.

The GCC, which is now courting Morocco and Jordan, was founded in 1981 by Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. “It's not as far advanced as the European Union but in many ways is similar to the European Union regional integration project,” says Adam Hanieh of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

“This was partly a security agreement that was established with the support of the United States, but then beyond that it has evolved in the last few decades—particularly the last ten or so years—to be focused very much on the economic integration of these six countries in the Gulf,” explains Hanieh.

“These countries all have strong oil and gas supplies, they have similar political structures and through economic integration they have been promoting common trade, free movement of capital and goods, pretty much across the borders, and also the movement of citizens,” he says.

During the Arab Spring, Jordan and Morocco experienced street protests in their capital cities, and elsewhere. Neither have had movements that called for the end of their respective monarchies or the establishment of republics. However, in terms of reshaping the economy and landscape, both nation states have been looking to convert oil shale rock into synthetic petroleum, which has implications for the GCC.

Within OPEC, GCC states have consistently called for production targets that are more in line with most Western countries like the U.S. and France—seeking to heighten targets and lower global market prices. Nation states such as Venezuela or Iran seek lower production targets as a way of generating higher prices for crude on the world market.

In recent years, the way that global petroleum reserves are measured by country has changed so as to be able to include bitumen from the Canadian tar sands. This is a result of Canada proving the “commercial viability” of its mock oil development, which has been expanding at a breathtaking pace. Similar dynamics could immediately take root in both Morocco and Jordan if their planned oil shale ventures go into production. Integrating these new huge reserves into the GCC would guarantee both investments and a market for mock crude from the new member states.

The terms of the invitation to the GCC have yet to be spelled out, but there is good reason to assume some conditions may apply.

“If countries like Jordan and Morocco were to join, I don't think they would join as full members or with the same type of integration as the existing GCC states have,” says Hanieh. “I don't think you would see for example, the ability of people to move freely to the GCC states from Jordan and Morocco.”

This may leave GCC membership for newcomers to look more like the North American Free Trade Agreement than the European Union: de-regulation and neoliberal re-regulation, freer movement of capital, no new movement (or rights) for labour.

“In all of the GCC countries, citizenship is restricted to a minority of the population,” says Hanieh. “The bulk of the people living in these countries are migrant workers who don't have citizenship rights.”

GCC countries, however, have long been the favoured states of Washington in the Arab world for other reasons as well. Even before the 2011 uprisings began, the GCC states were allied with many American ventures, such as the two wars of aggression against Iraq.

“They have become a close adjunct of the U.S. foreign policy in the region. The one thing about the GCC states—with the exception to a certain extent of Saudi Arabia as you saw in the case of Bahrain—is in general, their military capability is very weak and they act under a U.S. military umbrella,” explains Hanieh. Qatar in particular has been exposed recently, having aligned militarily with NATO countries in their air and ground war against the Qaddafi government in Libya.

The short and long term development of the large oil shale deposits in the Kingdoms of Morocco and Jordan have similar plots. Both countries are poor and reliant on imports for energy. Both have large oil shale potential despite serious water shortages, and both also have (among others) development plans that stem from a partnership between Brazil’s state-owned Petrobras and French energy giant Total to strip mine and convert kerogen rock into mock oil, perhaps allowing the integration into economic and trade matters for the rest of the GCC states.

Of course, there is also the issue of Israel.

While publicly critical of Israel, GCC states have accommodated Tel Aviv to varying degrees. Normalization with Jordan in 1994 allowed for Israeli-Jordanian trade. Jordan joining the GCC may provide another means of trade with Israel for Arab states that are still officially part of the general Israeli boycott.

“It's clear that over the last decade, the United States has really been pushing increased regional integration in the Middle East and particularly trying to break the boycott of Israel, and increase the normalization. This has had some success in the case of the GCC. For example, in the case of Qatar, there was a trade office that was opened for many years, I'm not sure if it still operates but it probably operates unofficially,” says Hanieh.

In Jordan, collaboration with Israel functions at an official capacity. However, if Jordan's industrial plans were to go ahead, closer ties between the two nations might emerge. Already on the table is a major nuclear facility within Jordan, and the so-called “Red-Dead” canal.

The Gulf Co-operation Council has set itself up as a localized combination of NATO and EU in terms of policy. There is little doubt that given the events of the Arab Spring so far the GCC has adjusted itself to a combination of counter-revolutionary politics, mixed together with a promotion of western (oil) interests, ranging from Saudi Arabia leading the occupation of Bahrain, to Qatar flying sorties and providing ground troops during the recolonization of Libya.

Jordan and Morocco both maintain Kingdoms that straddle the so-called fence. They choose to deal with Israel, align with the Saudis and other oil-producing monarchies, all the while adding their own plans to become extreme extractors. The Gulf Co-operation Council is the agent to integration of the same ideology, regardless of territorial ambiguity.

Jordan and Morocco both possess reserves of oil shale that, if counted by the International Energy Agency and OPEC as oil, would outstrip other members of the GCC. The spread and influence of pro-USA, pro-Israel, GCC politics into Morocco and Jordan could have an important social, political, and environmental impact on the entire region.

This article is the fourth in a four part series examining unconventional oil deposits in the Middle East and North Africa. The series was originally published by the Media Co-op. Questions? Comments? Drop us a line: info@mediacoop.ca.

Shale Oil Basins in Israel and Jordan

Extreme Extraction

stephlaw — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 09:03:49 +0000

Oil production plans could reshape Morocco's economy and environment

RABAT, MOROCCO—Many well-known voices trying to address the global climate crisis have posited that less-developed countries—those without a full-blown industrial base—can skip industrialization all together and transition away from fossil fuels. If that is achieved, development in those countries would ideally result in the construction of infrastructure suitable for a post-fossil fuel society.

But if Morocco is any indication, the opposite scenario appears more likely to happen. Instead of proceeding with climate-friendly energy developments, Morocco is poised to begin extracting crude oil from unconventional deposits—the dirtiest fuel available. Mining rock for oil in Morocco would leave massive craters in post-fossil, green energy hopes.

Morocco, like Jordan and Israel, is moving towards using the most carbon intensive fuel base on earth. This move is supported by present, and projected, oil prices that make synthetic crude from oil shale profitable on a near permanent basis. Technology has become cheaper while the price of oil has gone up dramatically. Recent industry estimates indicate that oil can now be extracted from shale for approximately US$40 per barrel, while the average price at an American pump is US$94 per barrel.

With global oil demand slated to grow, Morocco is set to become an unconventional oil producer through mining oil shale and converting it to mock crude oil in a fashion similar to Canadian tar sands development, but borrowing on shale technology from Brazil. Morocco also has contracts to use Estonian technology to mine and burn oil shale directly for domestic electricity.

Estonia is one of a few countries in the world that has ongoing oil shale currently in operation. The Tangier deposit of oil shale in the north of Morocco is likely to see Eesti Energy-owned Enefit of Estonia work to mine this shale directly for domestic electricity generation, which would treat the kerogen shale more like a cousin of coal rather than an ancestor of oil.

Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil company, has developed a technique of extracting oil as well as gas from oil shale, and has been involved in this process commercially since the early 1980s. A partnership between Petrobras and TOTAL energy of France has been developing towards shale-to-oil mining at the Timahdit deposit, a deposit much larger than Tangier, approximately 240 kilometres southeast of Rabat, Morocco’s capital. Petrobras would be the main operator of the Timahdit mine, but both world energy majors will share the costs and profits.

However, there is one persistent problem for both these projects: water. Even without proposed oil shale mining and in-situ developments, Morocco has a serious potable water problem.

To operationalize oil shale in Morocco, water would need to be sourced from nearby the Timahdit deposit. Throughout the country, waterways are already becoming silt-ridden as erosion slowly manifests as a result of another ecological tragedy in the area: illegal timber harvests.

Some environmental journalists, like Mohammed Attaoui, have recently landed directly in the crosshairs of the Moroccan Kingdom. Attaoui was imprisoned by the Moroccan government after he investigated ongoing illegal timber marketing and exporting. Although Attaoui was officially charged and convicted in March 2010 for the extortion of 1,000 dirham (approximately US$120), critics maintain Attaoui was set up in a ploy timed immediately after his research into the country's “cedar mafia” had been published. He was handed a two-year sentence for his alleged crime.

Deforestation, destructive in its own right, is without doubt one of the major factors furthering the water crises of Morocco. But if the water needs for running a major mining operation are appended onto the existing crisis, the prognosis for the country's environmental health gets ever bleaker. The proposed mine at Timahdit happens to be in the same region as two national parks: the Ifrane National Park, which is already under threat from the illegal timber harvest, and Haut Atlas Oriental, which is home to tens of thousands of small farmers who rely on the area and its habitat for agriculture and subsistence.

The illegal timber harvest is the primary threat to the macaques, the last remaining large population of monkeys in northern Africa. Primarily living in the Ifrane National Park, macaques used to be common throughout the Mahgreb but are now endangered by loss of habitat elsewhere and by the shrinking forest. The only place outside Morocco where they live is in the small and shrinking Djebel Babor Nature Reserve on Algeria's coast. According to The Morocco Board News Service, the region is also home to more than 200 forms of plant life not found anywhere else.

Oil extraction is but another burden in a region defined by an already fragile environment. Between the three proposed sites for shale oil development in Morocco, early projections indicate that 50,000 barrels per day of mock oil could be produced for conversion into various fuels within a few years. (This figure does not include electricity generation where shale is burned in a similar fashion to a coal fired plant.)

That estimate includes the Tarfaya deposit near Morocco's border with the nominally independent Western Sahara, which is still occupied by Moroccan forces. Tarfaya has also just seen the completion of an in-situ pilot project constructed by San Leon Energy of Ireland, a smaller player with some operations in the continental United States. Building up Tarfaya has already meant the construction of major highways in less populated parts of southern Morocco to allow for the transport of supplies and materials for the project.

Morocco is on its way to becoming a testing ground for unprecedented oil shale extraction. “The environmental issues in places such as Colorado are not an issue in Morocco,” John Buggenhagen, San Leon Energy’s vice-president of exploration, told Petroleum Economist.

This article is the third in a four-part series examining unconventional oil deposits in the Middle East and North Africa. The series was originally published on the Media Co-op.

Questions? Comments? Email us at info@mediacoop.ca.

Morroco map shale oil

Oil in the Desert

stephlaw — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:48:38 +0000

Will water be sacrificed to oil in Jordan?

AMMAN, Jordan—In March of 2011, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan jumped headlong into unconventional oil extraction, and signed a deal with Karak International Oil (KIO), a subsidiary of Jordan Energy and Mining Limited (JEML--a British company), for the commercial mining of oil shale approximately one hour’s drive from the capital of Amman. Unlike most countries in the region, if you fill up your gas tank in Jordan, you are using imported oil— but the Kingdom is touting a future when extreme extraction will change that, and soon.

Jordan is one of the countries most likely to bear the harshest impacts of climate change, and least suited to dive headlong into the most destructive forms of energy yet devised. Walking the streets of Amman, however, one gets the sense that the government has already decided the country will serve as a launching pad for American interests. The entire city is oriented towards the American troops, engineers, and others who stop off on their way to and from Baghdad, Iraq.

The invasion of Iraq transformed Jordan without the dropping of a single bomb overhead. New oil shale proposals could promote a similarly intense kind of change with an absence of popular input—but perhaps even more discreetly.

The main oil shale deposit designated for exploitation in Jordan is at Al Lajjun in the southern Karak governorate, and the lease has a 35-square-kilometer radius. This project is expected to produce commercial crude for refining within five years, maxing out some years after that at 60,000 barrels of mock crude per day. By way of comparison, the entire nation consumes an average of 200,000 barrels per day.

Part of the project’s construction and know-how will be imported into Jordan from the Athabasca region of Canada via Thyssenkrupp Group of Germany. Thyssenkrupp has pledged to build strip mining operations there based on their existing work in Alberta's tar sands mines—the largest existing industrial project in human history.

Elsewhere in the country, Royal Dutch Shell operates under a 100-per-cent-owned subsidiary called Jordan Oil Shale Company (JOSCO). JOSCO also has long-term development plans for oil exploitation in Jordan that are expected to come online no sooner than 2021. Shell/JOSCO have exploration rights to large segments of the country. Shell will also be bringing technology from their operations in Alberta, Canada—including the huge Albian Sands mine.

It's not just Shell and Thyssenkrupp that are coming in with the know-how. So too are Petrobras and TOTAL SA Energy, of Brazil and France respectively. Petrobras has long since operated an oil shale mining and conversion to oil and gas plant. TOTAL has multiple unconventional oil shale and tar sands plays around the world, some operational.

Oil shale slated for extraction in Jordan is for local electricity (not synthetic crude production), by Eesti Energia of Estonia. Estonian electricity has been provided almost exclusively by oil shale mining and burning for several decades. Eesti Energia is now looking into providing technology and constructing electrical plants from shale in not only Jordan, but also in Morocco. Estimates of a recoverable 40-billion barrels of mock crude exist in Jordan, in a total of 26 different deposits.

“We depend 96 per cent on importing our energy from outside of Jordan. It's basically coming from Saudi Arabia, from Iraq and from Egypt,” said Basel Burgan, the head of the Jordanian Friends of the Environment—a group that, among other issues, is in opposition to possible nuclear development in the country on economic and environmental grounds.

“We had depended for a good time on the Egyptian Gas that was cheaper than heavy fuel, but unfortunately the Egyptians have been bombing the pipeline that's sending gas through Sinai to Jordan because it's connected at the same time to Israel,” he said.

Jordanian Friends of the Environment has yet to take a firm position on oil shale.

Power needs for synthetic oil production are vast, and could coincide with a brand new nuclear power plant expected to be announced by French nuclear powerhouse Areva. The amount of water needed for cooling nuclear reactors as well as heating oil shale to extract petroleum is exceedingly high.

With regards to the water needed to run nuclear plants, Burgan says the Jordanian government “claims they are going to take this grey water and do tertiary purification which is a very costly plan, about $800 million [US], and eventually it will produce good water available to be used in a reactor.”
Burgan went on to explain how all of these projects may in fact rely on one another, and even on further regional integration with Israel:

“Some people have said that Jordan will end up sending electricity to Israel. [...] I have read only that Hashemite University, located in the area proposed for the plant site (north of Amman ~40kms) has signed an agreement with Colorado University, which already has an agreement with Ben Gurion University on the same project to build up some kind of desalination plant inside the Hashemite University with modern technology for purification and desalination. We say that all of these agreements and projects are basically depending on the Jordanian nuclear reactor because any desalination plant or station would need massive energy, and the energy would be available from a nuclear reactor.”

Jordan possesses, at best, the fourth smallest water to population ratio on the planet. Israel, which is also poor in terms of water, has already constructed five desalination plants, one of which is the largest on the planet. In the area where KIO plans to construct a large oil shale mine, many traditional Bedouins live off the land and source their water through deep wells in an extremely arid environment just east of the Dead Sea. Damage to the water table through use for extraction, or through contamination resulting from toxic waste produced by the mining process could have disastrous health effects on local people and ecosystems. The same would be true of air quality.

One of the other possibilities for increasing available water supply is a massive industrial project euphemistically known as the Red-Dead canal. This canal comes with a plan to pump sea water over 200 kilometers from the Red Sea to fill up the ecologically unique Dead Sea (where water levels are currently dropping at an alarming rate) and provide sea water for desalination projects and industry to both Israel and Jordan. Essentially Red-Dead project would transform the Dead Sea into little more than a reservoir for Israel and Jordan to use for industry, and would likely require the deepening of 1994 normalization agreements signed in the shadow of the increasingly sidelined 1993 Oslo Agreements, themselves signed as a pre-cursor to a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Jordanian water is used in varying amounts by Israel, depending on the season, under the terms of the '94 normalization between the two states. The water situation in Jordan is so bleak that the Red-Dead Canal is endorsed by groups that oppose nuclear power, including Friends of the Environment, in the hopes that this massive Israeli-Jordanian project could supply the population with potable drinking water even as climate change dries out the planet ever further.

The Jordanian government has announced open bids for nuclear plans, while the United States—backed by Israel—demands the uranium be converted to fuel somewhere other than the Kingdom out of a desire to prevent technological and research development. For obvious reasons, official confirmation or details about Israel's continued uranium research at their Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, where Israel's nuclear arsenal was almost certainly developed, are not forthcoming. Israel has also declared their desire to have a nuclear power plant in the Negev—the hot, arid desert lands west of the rapidly drying Dead Sea.

If normalization were to include collaboration on a plan to extract crude from shale, industrial mega-projects would stand in as a regional response to dwindling water and energy supplies.

With the Red-Dead Canal plan still in play, the possibility of collaboration and increasing development on both sides of the Dead Sea looks likely.

This article is the second in a four part series examining unconventional oil deposits in the Middle East and North Africa. The series was originally published at http://mediacoop.ca

Israel Jordan Shale Oil Map

Apartheid Oil

stephlaw — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:58:40 +0000

Crude oil trapped in shale could transform Israel into energy powerhouse

JERUSALEM—Major offshore gas strikes in 2009 and 2010 may soon convert Israel into a gas exporting country with self-sufficient energy. But perhaps more important than the gas under the sea is the mock crude trapped in husk dry sands and rock hard shale, reserves which could push Israel into the upper echelons of recoverable oil on the planet. Israel’s reliance on others for energy supplies has long been a weakness, both economically and militarily.

What promises to be the most energy intensive form of oil recovery on the planet could reinforce Israel's military might, while presenting a new threat to scarce water resources and the climate.

New estimates show that there are 250 billion barrels of recoverable mock (or synthetic) crude oil, possibly even more, in locations throughout Israel. By way of comparison, Canada has just under 200 barrels of oil, including recoverable tar sands while Saudi Arabia is said to have 260 barrels.

The announcement of these major oil finds comes on the heels of the discovery of the contested Leviathan offshore gas field in the Mediterranean Sea, estimated to hold between 16 and 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The Leviathan field was discovered by Texas-based Noble Energy Inc. in June 2010. The discovery is disputed by Lebanon, which brought a complaint to the United Nations alleging Israeli slant drilling off the Lebanese coast following the 2006 aerial war. Further complicating matters is the other major natural gas play in the region, which lies beneath the recognized maritime territory of the Gaza Strip.

“Israel [will] never buy gas from Palestine,” declared Ariel Sharon in 2001, after the Palestinian Authority signed 25-year development leases with European energy companies. Palestinian control over their own gas was challenged in a 2003 Israel Supreme Court case that has yet to be resolved.

British Gas Group was close to striking a development deal on the Gaza deposit, and was planning to pipe gas through to Egypt when, in 2006, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair allegedly intervened to prevent sending the gas south, in the interest of Israel. In the following year, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert issued a proposal to buy the $4 billion worth of gas found in the Gaza deposit, with $1 billion in profits going to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The Israeli cabinet approved the proposal, and bypassed the newly-elected Hamas government in Gaza altogether.

The proposal eventually fell through because various military and security advisers warned a gas deal with the PA would pose a security risk to Israel. Soon after, British Gas Group closed their office in Israel and announced on their website that they were “...evaluating options for commercialising the gas.” Perhaps on the advice of retired high-ranking Israeli Defence Forces officials, British Gas Group ceded their field license, so as to no longer involve the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli interest in the Gaza deposit didn’t end then. In November 2008, the Israel Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of National Infrastructures instructed the Israel Electric Corporation to enter into negotiations with British Gas with hopes of purchasing natural gas from British Gas’s offshore concession in Gaza, according to a press release by Boycott Israel UK.

These instructions came approximately one month before Operation Cast Lead, or the Gaza War, and might have played a role in stalling an official Israeli attack on Gaza.

"It is possible that the prospect of a major natural gas transaction with the Palestinians has been a factor in the Israeli cabinet's refusal to launch a Defensive Shield II operation in Gaza,” wrote retired Israeli Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, only months before the Operation Cast Lead bombing of the Gaza Strip.

Together with the Leviathan deposits, the natural gas fields off of Gaza's shores represent reserves that could easily meet Israel's internal electrical energy needs and turn the Zionist state from net importer to an exporter of energy. But the importance of the gas deposits may pale in comparison to the more recent development of technology for recovering tar sands and shale oil. In fact, given the massive energy inputs required to extract oil from shale, the Leviathan and Gazan gas fields may become an integral part of supplying the energy for this massive heavy oil project.

Israel's massive oil shale deposits vary in form from petrified kerogen rock to bituminous formations that have the texture and appearance of the tar sands common to places like Alberta, Canada.

Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI) announced in March 2011 a project to transform shale into oil. The project will use a combination of technologies already in use in Canada's tar sands and newer conceptual technology developed in Colorado's vast oil shale deposits. If it proceeds, the shale oil extraction in Israel project could permanently alter the political and atmospheric climate of the Middle East.

IEI is a subsidiary of the much larger Israeli Data Technologies (IDT), a corporation that already dominates Israel's economic landscape and is led by IDT Chairman Howard Jonas. Along for the ride on this venture are media mogul Rupert Murdoch and former US vice-president Dick Cheney, along with many other notables.

Approximately 15 per cent of the landmass of UN-defined Israel overlays oil shale deposits. In fact, Israel has already exported their know-how to the Alberta tar sands: Ormat, an Israeli firm, has set up shop with patented energy technology in Alberta under the name Opti. Opti teamed up with Nexen in Canada to launch an in-house technique of burning the waste gunk produced through extraction in order to provide energy for the extraction operation itself. At the end of July 2011, Opti (and their interests in Alberta's tar sands) was sold to China National Offshore Oil Corp.

Not unlike the seismic shift that kicked the long dormant Alberta tar sands into high gear following the war on Iraq and cumulative rise in oil prices that coincided with the Katrina disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the latest announcements out of Israel are staggering.

The oil shale proposal that is closest to approval is a short drive southwest of Jerusalem, a pastoral area of Kibbutzes and small villages that historians believe was the backdrop for the biblical battle between David and Goliath. The area doesn't feel anything like the oil boomtown of Fort McMurray, Alberta, or even anything close to much of the Middle East, but more like parts of western Canada's Okanogan Valley.

In the sunny backyard of a house in a gated community, Lia Tarachansky of the Real News Network interviewed Chagit Tishler about the proposed oil shale project while myself and a Palestinian man from a Jerusalem neighbourhood listened and drank tea.

“It's the biggest license even given to a private company in Israel,” said Tishler, who works with the organization Save Adullam, which is made up of local residents who oppose the IEI pilot project. The license was granted under the Oil Law, said Tishler, which is essentially a free entry law dating from 1952, which prioritizes oil and gas exploration over farms, parks or historical sites.

“The area could be ruined completely. This area is the last area in the centre of Israel that remains an open area and a green area, and has a lot of archaeological sites that are important not only to Israelis but to the rest of the world,” she said, before listing historical sites in the vicinity. Known as the Elah Valley, the area was re-settled only a couple of years after the Nakba in 1948 by primarily North African Mizrahi Jews. To this day, they and others use the valley for food crops and Israeli wine.

IEI's planned operations in the Elah Valley include digging five kilometres of trenches through farms and vineyards to expose the shale rock, which would then be heated until the kerogen and other organic materials held inside it are bled out of the rock, producing a basic crude substance. Much like tar sands bitumen, this substance will still need to go through an upgrading process before refining.

If carried out as planned, IEI’s project would constitute one of the least energy efficient forms of oil production ever devised. Three to five gigawatts of electricity would be used to produce a single barrel of shale-based oil, according to Save Adullam. Heating the shale, which takes place for months at a time, could release at least 15 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. No other extraction process in conventional oil or even tar sands involves a heating process this extensive, nor is any as carbon intensive. This carbon release takes place even before refining, let alone consumption.

Regardless, for Israel, these reserves represent a local supply that cannot be blockaded. IEI states that the petroleum from this shale produces a light synthetic crude nearly perfect for converting to jet fuel.

Thus far, groups like Save Adullam who wish to stop this project have failed to make alliances with other communities living with the threat of oil shale extraction. The focus of Save Adullam is to demand a repeal of the 1952 oil law. Their allies are inside the Knesset and others within the Israeli state, including the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

Though the first lands slated for large scale development projects have religious and biblical resonance, there are also mining projects that will spread across the traditional territory of Bedouin Palestinians in various parts of the Negev Desert. The majority of the surface oil shale, which is similar in composition to the Albertan tar sands, sits in the northern part of the desert. In addition, mining for oil shale, which is burned for electricity, has already taken place in the deep south of the desert, close to Eliat.

The Mishor Rotem Basin is on the west bank of the Dead Sea, and an oil shale deposit straddles both sides of the border between the state of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In 2006 the JNF concluded that Israel was using 25 per cent more water than was sustainable (this includes the almost 90 per cent of the water diverted from Palestinians in the West Bank).

In Zionist settlements and recognized Bedouin villages in the Negev, cancer rates are already considerably higher than in the rest of the Jewish state. Pollution from oil shale developments in any form would undoubtedly contribute to increasing overall contamination. In addition, the bulk of the Negev desert is also a training ground and “free fire zone” for the air force and military—already a massive environmentally destructive force at play.

Israel's laws make it nearly impossible for non-Jewish citizens of Israel to exact equal rights in almost any field, even within Israel. Bedouins are seeing these problems deepen—primarily upon the orders of the JNF, and carried out by riot squads and the IDF—with JNF-led “making the desert bloom” projects, attacking and bulldozing entire villages (some over 25 times in the last year) to facilitate “forest planting”; and forced re-settlement into government planned townships.

Bedouin communities traditionally linked with the land who wish to stop the intrusion of oil shale and its toxic consequences will likely need to think beyond strategies that simply try to undo laws written by the Zionist state, and they aren't likely to find allies in the JNF.

And in yet another parallel to Canada, the vast offshore gas deposits claimed by Israel—mainly but not exclusively the Leviathan field—could serve the same vital role for energy input of oil shale developments that natural gas plays in the Athabasca tar sands. Israel already has a water crisis, but it looks like it might see fit to exacerbate that problem in the push for energy independence.

This article is the first in a four part series examining unconventional oil deposits in the Middle East and North Africa. The series was originally published at http://mediacoop.ca

Israel Jordan Shale Oil Map

The Changing Face of Oil Extraction

stephlaw — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:39:35 +0000

Shale oil and gas plays in Israel/Palestine, Jordan and Morocco

You may have heard of "Dirty Oil", "Ethical Oil", "Bloody Oil" or even "Conflict Oil"-- but have you heard of "Apartheid Oil"? This is the topic that Edmonton-based writer and activist Macdonald Stainsby has been exploring ever since he visited the Middle East and Northern Africa earlier this year.

In a four-part series to be released over the next month, Stainsby examines key shifts in technology and politics that could change the face of oil extraction in Israel/Palestine, Jordan and Morocco. As an introduction to the series, The Media Co-op had a chance to talk with Stainsby about what he learned on his visit and through the writing process.

Media Co-op: How important are the new shale oil and gas plays in the Middle East?

Macdonald Stainsby: The question is fairly technological, as well as geopolitical. If the Israeli plans go ahead for example, it could mean a dramatic shift towards Israeli power and away from the traditional sources of oil in the region. It would take many years for Israel to be able to produce at a level that could undermine other countries, but the impact of proving the ability would be immediate. In the case of Jordan, the question will be the destruction of local water first and foremost, as well as tightening the previous "peace accords" with Israel without repatriating a single refugee. In North Africa, Morocco has the potential to become one of the most polluted countries in the region where environmental standards are already alarmingly low. In each of these cases, it is hardwiring forms of oil production possibly even more destructive than Canadian based tar sands production.

Media Co-op: What surprised you about your time in the Middle East and North Africa?

MS: In all three cases, the biggest surprise was the level of media awareness [about tar sands and shale oil] in the business pages — which was quite high — and how little concern it seemed to generate among the population that one would hope should oppose such projects. In Israel in particular, the main opponents are pro-Zionist groups that openly collaborate with sectors of the government involved in ethnic cleansing inside the 1948 borders internationally recognized as Israel.

Media Co-op: Are people aware of what is going to happen because of these projects?

MS: Not really, though, community groups near the proposed site in Israel are taking an oppositional, "not in my backyard" approach. Considering the condition of water in Morocco and, even more so, Jordan, education about the potential dangers to the little water available is paramount.

Media Co-op: How could these new oil and gas plays factor into the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] campaign against Israeli Apartheid and other organizing in Canada?

MS: If BDS is to work, it has to be able to make the Israeli state economically scream, to borrow a phrase. The ability to sanction a state with a massive oil and gas sector is slim to nil. BDS is already having strong effects, but pollution aside, the energy security provided to the state by such a play would be monumental and could be the single greatest enabler of Israeli intransigence for years to come, all the more reason — along with those other pesky issues like climate change, peak oil and water in desert regions — such projects must be halted.

Media Co-op: Can you talk about the interconnections between the heavy oil discoveries and the longer term state response to the uprisings in the spring?

MS: It also appears the US is openly planning to use GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries — all of them currently major oil producers — as a local attack dog in the region for US interests. We saw this with Saudi and Qatari troops invading Bahrain, as well as Qatar openly engaging the adventure in Libya. With Morocco and Jordan invited into the GCC, likely also now to be oil producers — this locks them into that alliance, which ultimately also serves American and Israeli interests. This could end up having these tar sands and oil shale projects playing major role in global capitals efforts to steer the Arab Spring in the direction they want, again as we have recently seen in Libya.

Stay tuned: over the next month, the Dominion will publish four articles exploring the theme of Apartheid Oil. This series originally ran on the Media Co-op in November 2011.

Shale Oil Basins in Israel and Jordan

Resistance Floats

Martin Lukacs — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 05:28:14 +0000

Canadian boat to break the blockade on Gaza

MONTREAL—Just months after the Israeli Defense Forces raided a humanitarian flotilla headed to Gaza and killed nine international activists on the Mavi Marmara, a team of Canadians is gathering funds and passengers for their own Gaza-bound boat, departing from the Mediterranean as soon as December.

Composed of 40 activists from across the country, this would be the first Canadian group to participate in the international effort.

“Over the past two years, many boats tried to break the Israeli siege over Gaza,” said Ehab Lotayef, part of the Canadian boat organizing group. “The Canadian presence in these efforts was nearly non-existent. Canada at the same time is, as a government, one of the strongest supporters of Israel. It stays silent when Israel violates international law or commits atrocities against the Palestinian people, and in most cases, even supports Israel in doing that.”

Sending a boat of humanitarian aid to Gaza requires a minimum of $300,000, mainly for the purchase of a boat and medicines. Organizers say they have reached a third of this goal and have received the endorsement of approximately 100 organizations.

The Canadian boat is a partner of the Free Gaza Movement, which has sailed ten humanitarian flotillas to Gaza since 2008. Two of their ships successfully reached Gaza that year, but all others since have been interrupted by Israel.

Lotayef insists the team is not perturbed by this reality.

“We are there to challenge the Israeli blockade in a passive-resistance manner,” he said. “We don’t want anybody to get harmed, we are not an army to go stand against the Israeli army, but we refuse in principle to get towed to Ashdod or redirected to Egypt.”

The boat project is virtually unprecedented in Canadian history, says Yves Engler, author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy.

“There aren’t many examples in the history of Canadian international solidarity that are being taken on the same scale as Canadian boat to Gaza...as mass opposition to a policy that the Canadian government is supporting abroad,” he said.

He cited the 1981 campaign “Tools for Peace,” which brought “people-to-people” aid to Nicaragua, as another example of Canadians providing concrete aid while broadly critiquing their government's actions.

“I think the boat to Gaza is similar to that,” he said.

While the mission aims to deliver humanitarian aid, it doubles as an attempt to attract international attention in order to pressure Israel into lifting the blockade.

“I would be surprised if they managed to reach Gaza, that’s one thing for sure,” said Michel Lambert, executive director and co-founder of Alternatives, the key sponsor and financial manager of the Canadian boat.

“But I think that politically speaking, the fact that there will be Canadian citizens on that boat will of course put the state of Israel in a difficult position.”

The Harper government has made the Canadian government one of Israel’s strongest allies in the international community. Canada was the first country to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority in 2006 and the only country to vote against the 2008 United Nations Human Rights Council resolution to call for an end to the siege of Gaza. In addition, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon defended Israel’s 22-day campaign “Operation Cast Lead,” which left over 1,200 Palestinians dead in January 2009, taking the position that Israel acted in self-defense.

Pierre Florea, spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), refused to comment on the specifics of a governmental response to the launch of the Canadian boat or any potential attacks by Israel.

“We will not speculate on hypothetical scenarios,” he said. He added that DFAIT calls on all parties to deliver aid by official channels and that “Canada recognizes Israel's legitimate security concerns and its right to protect itself and its residents from Hamas and other terrorist attacks.”

Despite holding back on public comments to the media, the government is closely monitoring Canada Boat to Gaza organizers. Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) agents visited Lotayef’s home twice in August in
an attempt to talk about the project and his “safety,” but have not contacted him since.

“I told them that if I feel that the work I’m doing is being infiltrated or that I’m in danger from any group, I will contact the police,” said Lotayef, who knows each of the 40 working group members individually.

Lambert is not surprised at the reaction of the government.

“We’ve seen attempts last year to criminalize even informal informational activities in Canada, like the Israeli Apartheid Week,” he said. “We’ve seen people in parliament discussing the possibility of making this a crime...to say 'Israel' and 'apartheid' in the same sentence.”

The fatal attack on the Mavi Marmara in May proved to be successful in forcing Israel to weaken the embargo it has been imposing on Gaza since June 2007. After international condemnation of the raid, Israel announced on June 17 that it would “liberalize” the blockade for civilian goods.

According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, food, medicine and other aid cannot be restricted as a result of a blockade, nor can civilians be prevented from leaving the war zone. The United Nations fact-finding mission led by Richard Goldstone concluded that Israel's blockade violated international law, calling it “collective punishment of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.”

Israel's announcement of a “loosened” blockade has caused some, like Rabbi Reuben Poupko of the Quebec-Israel Committee, to see future flotillas aimed at breaking the siege as “misguided.”

“It’s a little after the fact,” said Poupko. “I don’t really understand why anyone feels it’s necessary. The crisis according to all objective observers is pretty much over, if there was a crisis beforehand. The border crossing is now letting in a lot more stuff and the alleged siege—the inspection protocol which Egypt and Israel had imposed upon Gaza—has been loosened dramatically. I’m not sure why it would be necessary.”

But recent news reports say that Israel’s continued restriction on allowing construction materials into the Gaza strip is barely making a dent in alleviating the housing shortage caused by Operation Cast Lead almost two
years ago. According to Israeli human rights group Gisha, only about 60 trucks of cement, steel and gravel have come in each month for the past three months, compared to 5,000 a month before the blockade.

Access to medicine and outside medical treatment has also remained a serious problem, with 70 per cent of medicines donated to Gaza expiring before they make it across the border, according to the Gaza health ministry.

The United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—an agency responsible for helping 4.7 million Palestinian refugees access health care and education—is experiencing a $90-million shortfall this year.

Canada had been supplying aid to UNRWA since 1950, but announced this January that it would stop giving core monetary support to the agency because of concerns about its “values.”

A CIDA report in 2009 stated that UNRWA represented a “low risk” for funding terrorist groups.

According to Engler, loosening the blockade has not changed daily life for those in Gaza.

“Israel still controls the waterways, the airspace, and just the fact that they can decide to lessen or strengthen their blockade is indicative that they have overwhelming control over Palestinian lives in Gaza,” he said.

The Canadian boat project has also been criticized by Montreal Muslim Council president Salam Elmenyawi, who said the money should be used for aid rather than “controversy.”

Lotayef has a difference of opinion.

“Breaking of the siege is more important in the long run than just giving people food,” he said. “The long-term interest should be above short term need.”

Both Lotayef and Lambert agree that the flotilla is not the only way to help Palestinians in Gaza and influence Israeli policy, citing it as one tactic among others—like the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign and the World Education Forum in Palestine—to effectively oppose the Israeli occupation.

“I think that all together—this and other initiatives—is the best way to confront the state of Israel and its policies,” said Lambert. “It needs to be as diversified as they are because the state of Israel is quite diversified in its own ways of implementing the occupation. So you need to be in every sphere to eventually be capable to have an impact on their policies.”

Just as combating South African apartheid took a variety of social and political movements, so too will the Palestinian liberation movement, said Lotayef.

“The important thing is at the end of the day we have to voice our objection to the siege of Gaza, the blockade, and we also have to challenge our own government [and say] that this compliance and this silence is not acceptable.”

Meagan Wohlberg is a journalism student and community organizer living in Montreal. For more information about the Canadian boat: http://canadaboatgaza.org.

Breaking the blockade

Less Than Animals

hillarybain — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:46:24 +0000

Palestinian women imprisoned by Israel speak out

JERUSALEM—“The Russian Compound...” said Jehan Dahadha, before trailing off. Her gaze shifts to the floor and the 23-year-old Palestinian woman sighs before continuing.

“The level of pain that the prisoners suffer inside the Russian Compound, whether it is psychological or on a physical level, made it so that we call it the ‘Butcher Shop.’ It is not suitable for humans to live there. Even animals, it is not healthy for them.”

At age 19, Dahadha was arrested under Israeli suspicion that she belonged to the Islamic Jihad movement, and was taken away from her home and family in Ramallah, West Bank.

She spent several days being interrogated at the Russian Compound prison facility in Jerusalem before being sentenced to 16 months at Ha’Sharon prison in northern Israel.

“We as Palestinians are all subject to becoming prisoners: my sister, me, my mother, my brother. There is not a single Palestinian house that [does] not suffer whether from demolition or arrest,” said Dahadha, sitting in the offices of Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association in Ramallah.

Dahadha says the real reason she was arrested was because she engaged in non-violent demonstrations against the Israeli occupation, visited the families of Palestinian political prisoners and helped these prisoners get in touch with lawyers.

“What's behind [the Israeli process of arrest and detention] is not to maintain order or to punish people for violations of laws or committing crimes; the idea is to crush the mentality of resistance or the idea of rejecting the occupation in your mind,” explained Ala Jaradat, Programs Director at Addameer.

Approximately 700,000 Palestinians have been arrested or detained under Israeli military orders since 1967. This accounts for about 20 per cent of the total Palestinian population in the occupied territories, and nearly 40 per cent of the male population.

Over the same time period, nearly 10,000 Palestinian women have been detained.

Presently, 7,000 Palestinians—including over 300 children and 34 women—remain in Israeli prisons. According to Jaradat, the small number of Palestinian women in Israeli jails makes it much more difficult for the prisoners to demand better treatment and rights, as compared to their more numerous male counterparts.

“[Male Palestinian prisoners] can organize themselves in such a way and actually negotiate and resist and struggle to have certain rights and to have a certain level of relations because of the larger number,” Jaradat explained. “With Palestinian women, it's harder to be able to organize because of the smaller number. Whenever they try to [negotiate] they are subjected to harsh treatments."

Dahadha says that despite the research and information she gathered before entering prison, she was shocked by what she saw there.

"I used to read in newspapers and on the Internet about prisoners in prison. But no matter how much you read, you will never understand it until you go there,” she said, explaining that poor lighting, unhealthy food, and the constant presence of insects and cockroaches characterized daily life in Ha'Sharon prison.

“They treat you very badly, not as humans. They make committees for animal rights. But humans for them, especially the Palestinians, are less than animals,” said Dahadha.

According to Jaradat, Israeli prisons sorely lack a gender-sensitive approach and issues such as personal hygiene and medical needs are rarely addressed.

Further, sexual harassment and intimidation are widespread and used as a means to coerce confessions out of Palestinian women during the interrogation process, he says.

While Palestinian women may have a unique experience, many of the injustices widespread in Israeli prisons are shared by both men and women—and are forbidden by international law.

Hiba Hamidat is originally from Jalazone refugee camp, seven kilometers north of Ramallah. She spent 32 months in Ha’Sharon prison in Israel for her participation in demonstrations and support of Palestinian prisoners.

Released just over a year ago, Hamidat explains that the hardest part was being separated from her family, especially her mother, who didn’t have an Israeli ID card and therefore could not enter Israel to visit the prison.

“While I was serving my sentence, my mother couldn’t visit me for one year. For one year, only my father visited me. It was very difficult to see that all the other prisoners had their mothers visiting them, while my mother couldn’t visit,” explained the 24-year-old.

According to Israeli human rights lawyer Lea Tsemel, Hamidat should never have been held in an Israeli jail.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power are prohibited."

Hamidat’s case is yet another example of how Israel blatantly disregards international law, says Tsemel, especially when it comes to arrest, interrogation and detention procedures for Palestinians.

“[Palestinians] are not recognized prisoners of war. They are held in different prisons within Israel which again is contradictory to the international Geneva Conventions, [which state] that people from the occupied territory will not be shifted to the occupier's territory,” explained Tsemel.

Jaradat, who does prisoner support with Adameer, says that a prisoner’s plight does not end with his or her release from prison. "Once a Palestinian has been to prison, their life will change. The punishments or violations of their rights and restrictions on their lives continue forever by the Israeli occupation," said Jaradat. "It’s never over."

Dahadha can speak to this reality first-hand.

"My life changed," she said. "I was engaged to someone in Jordan, but after I was released they prohibited me from leaving the country. Every time I try to cross the border they turn me back and give me an invitation for interrogation."

Newly engaged and planning her wedding for the fall, Dahada says her new fiance has been threatened with imprisonment by Israeli authorities for his connection to her.

"Even after a prisoner is out of prison," she said with a soft smile, "the torture and sentence does not stop there."

Originally from Montreal, Jillian Kestler-D'Amours is a human rights activist and multimedia journalist presently based in occupied East Jerusalem.

Jehan Dahadha

Central Prison

Ties that Bind

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:00:46 +0000

Canadian military seeking lessons from Israeli occupying army

OTTAWA—Canadian military officials have undertaken a comprehensive effort with their Israeli counterparts to “pursue deeper relationships,” to borrow from Israel’s weapons, war training, and counter-insurgency strategies, and to strengthen diplomatic ties, according to documents obtained through access to information (ATI) requests.

The documents from the Department of National Defence (DND) detail an October 2009 visit to Israel by General Walter Natynczyk, chief of the Canadian Forces (CF).

“Your trip to Israel…will also offer you insight into broader regional issues, the multitude of threats facing Israel, the lessons learned from IDF [Israeli Defence Force] operations, and Israeli strategic thinking and military equipment,” states one briefing note.

Although Israel has found itself increasingly isolated diplomatically in recent years, support from successive Canadian governments has grown.

“It is harder to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days,” ultra right-wing Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on a trip to Canada last year. “No other country in the world has demonstrated such a full understanding of us.”

Canadian government and military officials appear ready to disregard what critics like South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu refer to as Israel’s apartheid practices in order to maintain, as the documents put it, a “robust and rich” bilateral relationship.

The DND refused repeated requests for an interview.

The series of formal high-level meetings between figures in the Canadian military and the IDF have gone under the name of “Strategic Dialogue,” according to the disclosed documents. The first of these meetings, described in the documents as being “very successful” took place in Tel Aviv in February 2008.

“Overall, the trip solidified existing friendships, uncovered further opportunities for military-military cooperation, and, perhaps most importantly, revealed that DND/CF is well situated to pursue deeper relationships,” states a memo written after the meetings. Since February, 2008, there have been a number of formal “staff talks” between the upper echelons of Canada and Israel’s defence establishments.

Comprised mostly of briefing notes and backgrounders, the documents explain contentious issues, outline strict talking points, and, under heavy redaction, disclose “future considerations” for improving Canadian bilateral relations with Israel and the IDF. Several briefing notes deal exclusively with particular issues of cooperation, such as Science and Technology Cooperation, Military Medical Cooperation, and Defence Material Relations.

Documents prepared for Natynczyk’s trip in October, 2009, note that one of the “key objectives” was to “examine IDF equipment, tactics, doctrine, procedures, that might have operational benefits for the Canadian Forces.” To that end, Natynczyk met with a host of IDF senior generals, as well as Defence Minister Ehud Barak. The meetings focussed on gaining access to Israeli areas of “expertise,” including gaining insights into Israeli military strategies and tactics.

While meeting Brigadier General Harel Knafo, Natynczyk received a briefing on “the lessons learned from [2008’s] Gaza War.” Knafo commanded Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion during the Gaza War that killed more than 1380 Palestinians, 400 of them children, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

The visit came on the heels of the Goldstone Report, a UN investigation into the Gaza War by former South African Supreme Court judge Richard Goldstone.

In his report, Goldstone criticized both Hamas and Israel for crimes of war during the conflict, but the report singled out Israel for the most serious condemnation. Goldstone documented the IDF’s use of Palestinians as human shields – itself a war crime – and warned that the Israeli blockade of Gaza amounted to “collective punishment intentionally inflicted by the government of Israel on the people of the Gaza Strip.”

Israel’s war, according to Goldstone, was designed to “punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population.”

Natynczyk also discussed counter-insurgency operations with top Israeli General Gabi Ashkenazi.

“[Ashkenazi] suggested further military-military cooperation with Canada, including regarding doctrines and tactics that enable forces to switch conduct both asymmetric and conventional operations and switch between the two,” recounts a summary note of the meeting.

The switch between “asymmetric” and “conventional” operations is a reference to Israel’s special brand of counter-insurgency: the unconventional, often urban warfare Israel engages in against Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Presiding over one of the longest military occupations in modern times, Israel is an acknowledged leader in innovating new tactics of urban warfare. As Israeli scholar and architect Eyal Weizman has documented, the Israeli military reshape the battleground to meet their objectives in the densely populated and often impenetrable cities and refugee camps of the West Bank: rather than fight in the streets, for instance, they blast holes through the walls and ceilings of houses, moving in this manner often through entire streets.

Battles in half-demolished living rooms, bedrooms and corridors of refugee camp homes have blurred the lines between civilian and military – or private and public – space.

This is the military laboratory in which the “doctrines and tactics” mentioned by Ashkenazi are studied and, as the memo indicates, exported to other urban environments.

Canadian military officials have clearly stated their strategy in Afghanistan has focused on developing stronger counterinsurgency tactics. Canada has said it will withdraw its military presence in the country in 2011, but Canadian Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie has said Canada’s military future is based on counterinsurgency measures.

“It’s not going to be peacemaking anymore, it’s going to be counter-insurgency because the odds of us doing peacemaking between two functional states are probably pretty low, ergo COIN (counter-insurgency),” he told the Toronto Star in 2009.

While clearly interested in borrowing from IDF technologies, briefing notes also indicate Canadian officials are eager to win recognition of their war-making capacities from both Israeli and U.S. authorities.

“In Israel, the IDF’s warm welcome and insistence [redacted] is open to Canada reflects both the deepening relations between our two militaries and the credibility and respect won by CF operations in Afghanistan,” says a briefing memo to Natynczyk.

In various notes, Natynczyk is reminded to highlight Canada’s military efforts in Afghanistan and stress Canada’s contributions to various U.S. and Israeli diplomatic initiatives.

In addition to advancing military cooperation through the Strategic Dialogue, documents reveal that Natynczyk’s trip is part diplomatic mission. An array of diplomatic initiatives are tied to the Strategic Dialogue, and Canada’s increased role in supporting a militarized international agenda premised on an aggressive and militarized Israel in the Middle East.

The Canadian military’s most significant operation in Israel is in support of US-led operations under the command of US Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton. Dayton, in close coordination with Israel, leads the United States Security Coordinator (USSC) program, initiated in 2005. It was created, according to then-US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, in order to oversee the training of a new integrated Palestinian police force and to referee problems between rival political parties Hamas and Fatah. Under Dayton’s leadership, the program is closely coordinated with the Israelis. Canadian members make up the bulk of Dayton’s training team – with 18 Canadian officers alongside 10 American.

The USSC program has come under scrutiny, though. A 2008 exposé by Vanity Fair revealed that these security forces attempted to overthrow Hamas and prop up Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party following Hamas’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections.

US forces face restrictions around their movement in the West Bank, though, that Candian forces do not. Due in large part to Canada’s reputation as a “trusted, impartial third-party,” the notes claim that CF personnel enter the West Bank daily allowing them to offer a useful window of intelligence on the West Bank to the American army. As briefing notes indicate, Dayton is “an enthusiastic advocate of Canada’s support to his mission” with the US government.

Canada plays a similar conduit like role in respect to facilitating communication between NATO and Israel. In this regard, the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv is serving as Israel’s NATO Contact Point Embassy until 31 December 2010.

Beyond the role as a NATO contact, the documents reveal a small glimpse into Canada’s behind-the-scenes role in lobbying for Israel’s inclusion into NATO.

Canada serves as “the liaison between Israel and NATO, assists with visits of NATO officials...to Israel.” Canada is also the first country to speak at NATO meetings that involve Israel, details one briefing note.

The documents show Canada has been working with Israel towards its goal of a stronger partnership with NATO. This includes helping Israel in its “pursuit of a Status of Forces Agreement, getting access to the NATO Maintenance Supply Agency, [redacted].”

The fundamental principle of the Cold War NATO alliance is that an attack against one party is equivalent to an attack against all parties of the alliance. Hence bringing Israel into NATO could mean that Canada would automatically declare war on an aggressor that attacked Israel, whatever the definition of aggression.

These sentiments were recently made public when junior Foreign Affairs minister Peter Kent mused to the magazine Shalom Life that “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.” Kent later apologized for the public comment but noted that Israel understood its substance.

The documents are only a small glimpse into the dialogue between the two nations’ militaries. A talking point laid out in a note to Natynczyk during his October 2009 visit confirm a strong commitment to increasing and future collaboration.

“I am pleased with the increased cooperation between Canadian Forces and the IDF and I am looking forward to future coordination and partnership between our armed forces.”

SIDEBAR: Recent Developments in Canada-Israel Relations

• Although Canada’s diplomatic support for an Israeli state predates Israel’s inception, policy toward the country became more friendly under Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, and veered further right under Stephen Harper.

• Among the long list of examples of Canada’s ardent pro-Israel turn was Harper’s response to the massive bombardment of Lebanon in 2006 following the Hezbollah abduction of two Israeli soldiers. While the international community decried Israel’s aberrant bombardment, Harper described it as a “measured response.”

• The conflict killed at least 1,500 people, mostly Lebanese civilians, and severely damaged Lebanese infrastructure. Among the accounts of widespread collateral damage was the death of Canadian soldier Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener.

• Kruedener was among four UN Military Observers killed when the Israeli Air Force attacked a UN observation post in southern Lebanon. Briefing notes written for Natynczyk shed light on Canadian diplomatic actions in the aftermath of Kruedener’s death.

• The notes state Israel took responsibility for their deaths, but that the killings were unintentional. Unbeknownst to many, however, the notes mention that Harper subsequently wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Olmert accepting Israel’s account. While Harper presents himself as a defender of military personnel, it appears – in the face of widespread criticism of Israel following the attack on the UN position – that Canada was more inclined to defend the reputation of its ally than demand answers to uncomfortable questions on behalf of its soldiers.

• Revealing Israel’s sensitivity to the issue, Natynczyk is warned in the briefings: “Israel has made clear that it has answered all the questions it intends to with respect to the deaths of the four.”

Yavar Hameed is a human rights lawyer and sessional lecturer at Carleton University in Ottawa. Jeff Monaghan works with Books to Prisoners in Ottawa.

Canada-Israel ties that bind

DND document

Three Weeks in the West Bank

hillarybain — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 05:48:24 +0000

Resistance, destruction, life in Palestine

WEST BANK—In the wake of the Conservative government funding cuts to NGOs critical of Israel, independent journalist David Parker travelled to the West Bank in April to learn more about the reality of life in Palestine.

Israel maintains a three-year long siege on Gaza, and continues to actively colonize the West Bank, displacing Palestinians, stealing land, and enforcing a matrix of control.

David Parker is Spoken Word Coordinator at CKDU 88.1 in Halifax.

Bil'in

Hebron

Sheikh Jarrah

Beit Hanoun

Al-Walaje

South Hebron Hills

Gilo

Silwan

Multi-Billion Dollar Mining Boom

Moira Peters — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 04:24:08 +0000

From the archives: the economics of war and empire in Afghanistan

Two years ago, in State of Mine—our 2008 special issue on the Canadian extractive industry—the Dominion published an article by Michael Skinner about the international bidding war for Afghan minerals. Skinner cites a 2002 US Geological Survey report detailing over 1,000 mineral deposits in Afghanistan, and Soviet geological studies from the 1970s that led to large-scale mining operations in the country.

We thought—given the New York Times just broke the "news" about a trillion dollars in minerals in Afghanistan—that we would, ahem, dig up this piece for our readers.

****

BAMIYAN, AFGHANISTAN—On a brilliant sunny afternoon in July, 2007, my research partner Hamayon Rastgar and I climbed Shahr-e Gholghola, a tiny but strategically-located mountain that incongruously juts upward in the center of the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan’s central province, Bamiyan. Our guide was a geologist I’ll call Aziz.

Aziz led us through the minefields that guard the approach to Shahr-e Gholghola to reach the strategic lookout above. From the mountaintop we surveyed the incredibly verdant Bamiyan Valley bounded by the famous cliffs of Bamiyan to the north, the snow-capped mountains of the Koh-e Baba Mountains to the south, and looking downstream along the Bamiyan River to the east, the red cliffs of Shahr-e Zohak. A chain-smoking Afghan soldier, posted on sentinel duty to keep watch over the NATO airbase below and guard the BBC broadcasting equipment installed atop the mountain, kept us under his bored gaze. But we didn’t climb Shahr-e Gholghola just to admire the spectacular view. Aziz wanted to tell us his story of war, empire, and mining in Afghanistan with the Bamiyan Valley as his dramatic backdrop.

Some of the richest mineral deposits in the world, said Aziz, exist within a few kilometres of where we stood. Many more deposits are scattered throughout the rest of Afghanistan. A promotional brochure distributed by the Afghanistan Ministry of Mines claims the Hajigak iron deposit in Bamiyan contains 1.8 billion tonnes of ore with a concentration of 62 per cent iron. There is also abundant coal nearby that can be used for the coking process and to generate electricity, making this a world-class site for mine development.

Since antiquity, Afghanistan has been a source for gems and semi-precious stones, metals, and marble. Small-scale artisanal mining has always existed to supply jewelers and metal industries. A Soviet geological survey conducted in the 1970s led to some development of large-scale industrial mining, but most of these developments stalled after 1992 during the upheavals of the American-backed Mujaheddin regime, and then the Taliban regime after 1996. The Soviets also developed natural gas extraction, which helped to fuel the Soviet economy and provided the Afghan economy with a significant portion of its foreign trade.

In 2002, the US Geological Survey (USGS) published a list of more than 1000 deposits, mines, and occurrences in Afghanistan to confirm the country’s wealth of mineral and hydrocarbon resources. Among the minerals found in abundance are gold, copper, iron, mercury, lead, and rare metals such as cesium, lithium, niobium, and tantalum. Tantalum, which is also known as coltan, is a rare element essential in the manufacture of cell phones, computers, and digital cameras. Lithium is necessary for high-tech batteries, specialty glasses and ceramics, and for some high-performance metal alloys. Niobium is used in steel alloys. According to Afghan geology expert John Shroder, writing for online geography journal GeoJournal in 2007, oil and natural gas reserves identified by the USGS far surpass earlier Soviet estimates.

Aziz said he fears most Afghans could be condemned to even greater suffering if these resources are developed by giant transnational companies. Looking over the Bamiyan Valley, we can see that productive and sustainable agriculture fills every available niche in a delicate balance of nature. It is an extremely fragile environment, similar to the arid American southwest. Building a railway through the valley, spewing toxic waste into the atmosphere during the smelting process, and dumping tons of slag onto the watershed would have an incredibly destructive impact on the delicate ecological balance that has been maintained for millennia by local farmers. Aziz reminded us of the genocidal slaughter of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas as they were displaced to make way for economic development and the ecological destruction that resulted from resource extraction. Recognizing that, to this day, resource extraction practices continue to disrupt social and environmental systems, Aziz fears for the future of the Hazara people of Bamiyan and all Afghans throughout his country.

****

As part of its economic liberalization and privatization strategy, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is directing the sale of every Afghan state enterprise in transportation, communications, manufacturing, and resource extraction. Any potentially profitable sector of the Afghan economy is overseen by the agency.

In October 2006, the British Agencies Afghanistan Group announced that privatization of the Jawzjan gas field was beginning and that deals had already been signed to privatize the Karkar-e Dodkash coal mine in Baghlan, a fluoride mine in Uruzagan, a gold mine in Herat, a precious stones mine in Nuristan and cement factories in Ghori and Parwan.

In November 2007, the huge Aynak copper deposit, which is approximately 35 kilometres southeast of Kabul, was auctioned under the USAID plan. According to an article in GeoJournal, the Aynak deposit is estimated to contain more than 11 million metric tons of recoverable copper.

For centuries, if not millennia, artisanal copper mining was practiced at Aynak. In the 1980s, Soviet geologists and engineers began exploration and preliminary mine development of the 28-square-kilometre Aynak copper field, but the Soviet miners were forced to leave when the Soviet military withdrew in 1989. In August and September 2008, the Afghanistan Ministry of Mines tendered four more mine sites for auction: the Feranjal barite deposits in Parwan, the Da Eman coal deposits in Bamiyan, the Namakab coal deposits in Takhar and the Ghorian iron deposits in Herat.

While the privatization program is overseen by an office of USAID, the ultimate decision to accept a winning auction bid rests with the Afghan government. However, there are questions about whether the Karzai government has the power to make autonomous decisions. Some Afghan critics complain that American, British and Canadian diplomatic and military advisers act as Karzai’s shadow cabinet.

For example, a team of Canadian Forces advisers called SAT-A (Strategic Advisory Team Argus) is embedded within Karzai’s presidential offices. During Karzai’s September 2007 visit to Canada, documents acquired under the Access to Information act suggested that Karzai’s speech to the Canadian Parliament was written by the SAT-A.

Ironically, Aynak was technically not privatized in accordance with liberalization doctrine—it was sold to a Chinese state enterprise, China Metallurgical Group, for an astounding US$3.5 billion. The principals of Vancouver-based Hunter-Dickinson, who thought they would win the bidding process with an offer in the neighbourhood of $2 billion, were not pleased by the outcome, according to a Canadian government source. Other bidders on the Aynak deposit were Phoenix-based Phelps Dodge, London-based Kazakhmys Consortium, and a subsidiary of Russia’s Basic Element Group.

Awarding the Aynak mine deal to the China Metallurgical Group may be a shrewd strategic move from the perspective of Canadian advisers. A considerable portion of the extraordinary Chinese bid is earmarked for constructing a 400-megawatt power plant to feed the mine and its smelters, the development of a nearby coal mine to feed the power plant, and construction of Afghanistan’s first railway, which will stretch from Western China through Tajikistan to the Aynak mine and on to Pakistan. The political and commercial risk of investing in Afghanistan makes it unlikely a private company would undertake an infrastructure project of the scale needed to develop the Aynak deposit. The American, Canadian, and British governments operate state-financed insurance schemes to protect investors from political risk in foreign investments, but they will not insure investments of this massive scale. Considering the high degree of influence American, Canadian, and British diplomats and military advisers have inside the Afghan government, it is conceivable that working out the deal with China Metallurgical Group could have been a deliberate strategy designed to shift the burden of infrastructure development to the Chinese state. Private companies from the NATO states can potentially benefit from the surplus capacity of the Chinese coal mine, power plant, and railway to service the many other mines and development sites yet to be sold.

Such a meshing of economic and geopolitical strategies fits with the strategic agenda outlined in the 2008 US National Defense Strategy (USNDS). It outlines America’s strategy to economically engage China and Russia, while still relying on the old Cold War era strategy of containment by NATO forces as a military backup. This latest strategic statement outlines how the US “will develop strategies across agencies, and internationally, to provide incentives for constructive behaviour while also dissuading them [China and Russia] from destabilizing actions.” Strategists in the NATO states are concerned with controlling the growth of Russia and China in Central Asia as these two emerging powers increase their level of mutual co-operation through the Shanghai Co-operation Organization and the Russia China Security Partnership. Allowing China to make a huge and extremely risky investment, for which success is entirely dependent on a continued NATO military occupation of Afghanistan on China’s border, may be a cunning tactic as part of the engagement-containment strategy outlined in the USNDS 2008.

Many Afghans—from cab drivers, shopkeepers and day labourers to intellectuals—told us they believe the privatization of Afghanistan’s resource wealth is one among many factors in the strategic geopolitical and economic calculus the leaders of the NATO states use to rationalize their war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s undeveloped resource wealth is no secret to Afghans, even if most Canadians outside the mining industry remain ignorant of the fact.

****

Like many Afghans, Aziz is sceptical of an Afghan government controlled by warlords that was first established by military force and backed by American aid in 1992, and re-established by American and NATO forces in 2001. This government cannot survive without the support of foreign military forces. He doubts such an arrangement will protect Afghans from the destructive practices of foreign mining companies, whether these companies are based in the powerful NATO states or elsewhere. Among the many warlords prominent in Afghan politics and business are Rashid Dostum and Ismail Khan.

Since 2001, Dostum has held numerous influential positions in government and business including the office of Minister of Defence. Dostum is alleged by Human Rights Watch to have committed numerous war crimes since the 1980s, including while he led the Northern Alliance as the ground forces for the American-NATO invasion in 2001. Khan was a captain in the Afghanistan National Army when he led the Islamic revolution in Herat in March 1979. Khan’s Islamic revolutionary forces received covert support from the US during that year. Human Rights Watch alleges that Khan committed war crimes and crimes against humanity since first seizing power in 1979 and throughout his participation in the Northern Alliance. Khan was appointed Minister of Energy by Hamid Karzai in 2004.

Before the NATO states chose to support the Northern Alliance in 2001, Human Rights Watch, among other agencies, repeatedly warned that the Northern Alliance, as well as the Taliban, committed widespread and systematic crimes against humanity that included targeted civilian killings, indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas, summary executions, torture, rape and sexual abuse, and the use of child soldiers.

****

As we soaked in the breathtaking view of the Bamiyan Valley, a man I’ll call Zahir joined our conversation. Alexander the Great’s army, he said, is believed to have occupied the valley for four years after sweeping through the Persian Empire. From here, Alexander moved south to invade India. The Greek legacy can be found in remnants of art and architecture still scattered about the valley. We could also see Shahr-e Zohak to the east.

In the 13th century, the grandson of Genghis Khan was killed there. The Khan set his army on a genocidal rampage through the valley in retaliation. We could see, carved into the cliffs north of Bamiyan, the two empty colossal niches that, until March 2001, had housed the largest Buddha statues in the world. The destruction of the Buddha statues is portrayed in the West as an act of religious fanaticism by the Taliban. According to Zahir, however, the destruction was a calculated act of cultural cleansing and ethnic subjugation of the Indigenous Hazara people. This deliberate process of ethnic subjugation began at least as early as the late 17th century when the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s army first defaced the East Asian facial features of the Buddha statues. Zahir suggests the Buddha statues were defaced because they resembled the features of local Hazaras, although this is a contentious theory.

At the base of the Bamiyan cliffs, we could see the ruins of the famous bazaar of Bamiyan destroyed during battles in the early 1990s between the Hazara Islamic Unity Party and the National Islamic United Front. The United Front became better known as the Northern Alliance when these forces were used as NATO’s ground troops to take Kabul, in 2001.

Both Aziz and Zahir told us they are fearful the historical subjugation of the Indigenous Hazara will continue and could intensify when mining companies move into Bamiyan. When empires compete over resources, ethnic groups are often enlisted as proxy forces in the fight for wealth.

The Hazara people, Zahir told us, like all the people of the almost two dozen distinct Indigenous ethnic groups scattered throughout Afghanistan, have a deep psychological attachment to their land. They know only too well the brutal history of invading armies that threatened their lives, their livelihoods, and their traditional claims to their land. During our travels, many Afghans, from all walks of life and different ethnic groups, told us they regard the current NATO occupation no differently than previous occupations by the Soviet military, the British military, or any of the other imperial armies that have invaded Afghanistan.

Leaders of the NATO states claim the current occupation of Afghanistan is different from previous imperial occupations. But the question remains as to how the current occupying forces will deal with Afghanistan’s natural resources: who will get access, who will benefit, and whose livelihoods and land will be sacrificed to mining? Recognizing the long global history of extractive industries—including the domestic and global practices of Canadian extractive industries—our two Afghan friends told us they are not hopeful that the Indigenous peoples who will be affected by mining development will be fairly compensated or that the environment will be adequately protected.

Michael Skinner is a researcher at the York Centre for International and Security Studies with the Afghanistan Canada Research Group (ACRG). In 2007, Skinner and his research partner Hamayon Rastgar travelled throughout Afghanistan, where they listened to Afghans from all walks of life who do not have a voice in the Western media.

Recent critiques of the NYT article have been written by Marc Ambinder in The Atlantic and by Paul Jay on The Real News Network.

The Same Boat

Moira Peters — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 05:15:33 +0000

Israel's attack on flotilla mirrors daily reality in Gaza

GAZA—On the evening of May 30, 2010, I awoke to a text message from a Gaza-based international activist saying that the Freedom Flotilla was being instructed by the Israeli Navy to halt its course to the Gaza Strip. The vessels were more than 70 miles from Gaza’s coast.

I wasn’t surprised. In every one of the nine Free Gaza trips from Cyprus to Gaza, the Israeli Navy commanded boats in international or Palestinian waters to turn around. Five voyages succeeded in ignoring the Israeli Navy’s threats and sailing on through international waters into Palestine.

Earlier that day, Gaza had been preparing for the arrival of the flotilla. A sea demonstration had ventured a couple of kilometres out; an Israeli gunboat patrolled another kilometre or so out and had been shooting on some poor fishing trawler.

In the morning of May 31, 2010, I awoke to text messages saying the boat had been attacked by the Israeli Navy. I wasn’t surprised. In December, 2008, as Israel pounded Gaza from the air, land and sea in a 23-day assault, Israeli gunboats rammed a Free Gaza vessel.

"The gunboats gave us no warning... They rammed us three times, hitting the side of the boat hard. We began taking on water and, for a few minutes, we all feared for our lives," said Free Gaza co-ordinator Caoimhe Butterly, who was on board during the 2008 attack.

Images of the latest attack on the Freedom Flotilla showed Israeli commandos dropping from military helicopters and firing on the passengers. Scenes of shocked faces carrying the dead and the injured emerged from the chaos.

"The attack on the Mavi Marmara [vessel] came in an instant: they attacked it with 12 or 13 attack boats and also with commandos from helicopters. We heard the gunshots over our portable radio handsets, which we used to communicate with the Mavi Marmara, because our ship communication system was disrupted. There were three or four helicopters also used in the attack. We were told by [the] Mavi Marmara their crew and civilians were being shot at and windows and doors were being broken by Israelis," said Kutlu Tiryaki, captain of another vessel in the flotilla, as reported by The Guardian.

This latest brutality, in which elite Israeli commandos opened fire on peace and justice activists on at least two of vessels and according to some estimates killed 19 and injured up to 60, was criminal but not shocking. That the Israeli commandos did so in international waters, far from Israel’s coastline and jurisdiction, was also not shocking.

Utmost respect for the killed and injured aside, I am not surprised.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, said the flotilla was carefully inspected before departure: “I want to say to the world, to the heads of state and the governments, that these boats that left from Turkey and other countries were checked in a strict way under the framework of the rules of international navigation and were only loaded with humanitarian aid."

There was no-one on board "other than civilian volunteers" he said.

Given that Israeli commandos boarded the vessels in international waters, and if, as the activists on board allege, the soldiers fired first with live ammunition—not rubber-coated bullets or tear gas—Israel's self-defence spin is simply not credible.

Having borne witness to Israeli attacks on clearly-marked medics (16 emergency workers killed by Israeli soldiers) and civilians (nearly 1500 Palestinians killed, the vast majority of whom were non-combatants) during the War on Gaza in December 2008, as well as the variety of war crimes perpetrated by Israeli soldiers, little surprises me now.

Having watched an Israeli soldier target an unarmed youth in his femoral artery because the young man protested the Israeli-imposed no-go zone, I’m not surprised by any Israeli action. Ahmed Deeb, 21, bled to death when the bullet exploded in his thigh.

On a daily basis, Israeli soldiers shell and fire on unarmed Palestinian civilians. Accompanying fishermen and farmers, I have seen and experienced this first-hand. I’m no longer surprised, although at first it was unimaginable: they are firing live ammunition on visibly unarmed people, I said. There are children here, older men and women. What threat do these people pose, I wondered.

The United Nations (UN) reports that two fishermen have been killed and 12 injured since January, 2009 alone, and these are only the reported cases.

In the border regions, unarmed farmers, workers and residents face daily attacks from Israeli soldiers enforcing a brutal no-go zone well beyond the 300 metres Israeli authorities say is off-limits. Tens have been killed and injured by these Israeli attacks.

But attacks are not limited to Palestinians working on Gaza’s waters and border region lands. Under a siege imposed shortly after Hamas was elected in 2006 and tightened brutally since mid-2007, all of Gaza’s 1.5 million suffer. The health sector has been decimated: the Israeli war on Gaza destroyed or damaged more than half of Gaza’s hospitals while the Israeli-Egyptian-international siege prevents 141 vital medicines from entering, and has led to more than 360 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health.

Gaza’s sewage and sanitation systems are collapsing; their alarming state has been well-documented by the UN, World Health Organization (WHO) and other international organizations.

Ninety-eight per cent of industry has been shut down, contributing to unemployment levels of roughly 50 per cent and an increase in the number of tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, as well as the number of desperate Gazans willing to work in them.

Without the siege on Gaza, the more than 1,000 tunnels would have no market for the goods they bring in daily. The more than 150 workers killed in the tunnels (by Israeli bombing, tunnel collapses, electrocution, Egyptian gassing and bombing) would have had alternative employment options.

Malnutrition is rife, particularly among children, with anaemia and growth stunting on the rise at a drastic rate.

Israeli officials claim that there is no “humanitarian crisis” as they admit more than enough food aid for each person. However, this aid is largely in the form of carbohydrates, leaving families deficient in protein and vitamins. The caloric requirements Israel authorizes per Palestinian in Gaza perpetuate the sentiment of Israeli governmental adviser Dov Weisglass who sought to “put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger."

The farmers and fishermen targeted by Israeli soldiers are providers of produce and protein not permitted through Israel’s borders. Their harvest would enable Palestinians in Gaza to stave off slow starvation. Roughly one-third of Gaza’s agricultural land lies in the region Israel unilaterally deems and mortally enforces as off-limits.

When I sailed to Gaza in November 2008 with the third Free Gaza voyage, I knew there was an element of risk: either we wouldn’t reach Gaza or we would be abducted by the Israeli navy. It was a risk worth taking but above all it was a small risk compared to the dangers Palestinians are exposed to every day.

Participants of the Freedom Flotilla, comprising nine vessels and nearly 700 people from over 20 countries, knew there was a significant risk the Israeli navy would attack or halt their boats.

And while the Freedom Flotilla carried needed construction supplies as well as toys, sweets and books for children, the significance of sailing to Gaza to break through the isolation and penetrate the siege cannot be overemphasized.

The siege, as crippling and cruel as it is, is about more than an engineered humanitarian, social and economic catastrophe. It is about the right to self-determination, the right to open borders and to freedom of movement.

The world should question not only the killing of non-threatening civilians in international waters, but also the validity of Israel’s jurisdiction in the whole matter. Does Israel occupy Gaza, or not? If so, why are malnutrition and poverty levels rising in the Gaza Strip?

Huwaida Arraf, abducted from international waters, said previously that "[w]hen states and the international bodies responsible for taking action to stop such atrocities chose to be impotent, then we—the citizens of the world—must act. Our common humanity demands nothing less."

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer living in Gaza. Read more about life in Gaza on her blog, ingaza.wordpress.com.

Flotilla Fish

Underground Diplomacy

Moira Peters — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 05:57:53 +0000

Canada’s transnational mining industry implicated in abuses

TORONTO—Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani announced the termination of a mining contract for Barrick Gold’s Reko Diq project on January 5, 2010, following a unanimous decision by the Pakistani province’s cabinet. According to the minister, “They [Barrick and Chile’s Antofagasta, co-owners of the mine project] only have an exploration license, which does not cover extraction,” adding his government would not approve an agreement undermining people’s rights.

Immediately afterwards, US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson warned that “multinational corporations will not invest in a country where deals are cancelled.” Canada’s international trade ministry followed suit, pressing Pakistani officials to “fulfill their obligations under a 2006 Pakistani-Canadian-Chilean agreement potentially worth billions of dollars,” according to the Vancouver Sun.

According to the Asia Times, “Critics said the local government’s action [to cancel the mining contract] was politically motivated to appease Baloch nationalists in the desperately poor and insurgency-hit province, who have been demanding the cancellation of the agreement.”

Balochistan, the province in Pakistan bordering Iran and Afghanistan, has been struggling for independence from Pakistan since 1948. The fifth uprising of the Balochistan independence movement was in 2004. More than 8,000 Baloch have been disappeared since then and 26 prominent leaders have been assassinated.

This ongoing independence struggle was overlooked by Canadian and US delegates as they pushed the Pakistani state to force Balochistan’s approval of the Barrick/Antofagasta mine. Meanwhile, in a move that the group American Friends of Balochistan say reveals insensitivity to the region’s politics, Barrick hired a Pakistani army colonel as its public affairs manager and head of security for its Balochistan mine project.

Disregard for political conflict reveals an international diplomacy concerned primarily with profits, and is consistent with the actions of Canada and its corporate ambassadors in situations around the globe where mining profits conflict with human rights.

Despite their human rights record, these corporate ambassadors of the mining sector will again be well-represented at discussions during the G20 summit in Toronto in June. Mining companies Banro, Barrick, Iamgold and Freeport McMoran will attend a parallel conference to the G20 summit, “G20 Business Leaders: Partnering with Africa’s Dynamic Markets,” at Toronto‘s Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre.

Questions about the ties between the mining sector and governement do not end in Balochistan though. Canadian Ambassador to Guatemala James Lambert published an op-ed in support of mining in Guatemala on the same day a survey revealed that 95.5 per cent of the people in San Miguel Ixtahuacan, Guatemala, opposed mining projects in their region.

Six years after that survey and the subsequent establishment of Goldcorp’s Marlin mine in San Miguel, villagers suffer from health issues linked to arsenic levels seven times the maximum limit recommended by the World Bank.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Barrick Gold officials during diplomatic visits to Chile and Tanzania, where Barrick mines have been widely protested for mistreatment of workers, environmental destruction, and for failing to pay Tanzanian taxes and royalties. Since Harper’s visit, a toxic spill killed 43 people and 1,358 livestock, according to the Ward authorities near Barrick’s Tanzanian North Mara mine.

An Amnesty International report published in February 2010 found Indigenous peoples in Colombia are at risk of being exterminated by state forces, right wing paramilitary groups and guerrilla organizations. “Far from creating a legitimate economy, as Liberal MPs have been suggesting in defence of the Colombia free trade agreement, the deal before Parliament would increase the chances that Canadian companies invested in agriculture, mining and resource extraction in sensitive areas will be doing business with murderers, drug traffickers and arms smugglers,” said Stuart Trew of the Council of Canadians in a recent press release.

As a consequence of this growing list of allegations, Canada has drawn criticism from around the world, first from environmental, religious and human rights organizations and labour unions, and now increasingly from international institutions such as the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the UN Special Rapporteur on Toxic Waste and Products.

The Canadian government has also begun to acknowledge its lack of accountability within the transnational mining industry. The first National Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility and the Canadian Extractive Industry in Developing Countries was organized in 2006, in reaction to a 2005 report from Canada’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (SCFAIT). The report acknowledged Canada does not have laws ensuring Canadian mining companies “conform to human rights standards, including the rights of workers and [I]ndigenous peoples.”

The Roundtables released a consensus-based, multi-stakeholder report approved by the main industry group, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC).

The Harper government took two years to respond to the Roundtables’ recommendations. Its report, “Building the Canadian Advantage: A Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Strategy for the Canadian International Extractive Sector,” rejected the recommendations and offered no tools for redressing the documented abuses of Canadian industry abroad.

Instead, the report offered increased subsidies to Canadian mining companies under the CSR banner. The “voluntary approach of CSR” is a strategy advocated by G8 countries as part of the Heiligendamm Dialogue Process, initiated at the 2007 G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. Before this dialogue process, the Commission for Africa (CfA), launched in February 2004 by Tony Blair in the lead up to the G8 in Gleneagles, advocated the same strategies in a 2005 report.

In an analysis of the report, watchdog NGO Corporate Watch said, “The Commission for Africa does concede that ‘oil, diamonds, timber and other high-value commodities all fuel Africa’s conflicts.’ However, [CfA] points the blame at the OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] Guidelines on Multinational Companies for failing to provide ‘clear enough guidance on what companies should do in these situations.’...Rather than regulating, or even dismantling, these corporations, the CfA will allow them to continue plundering at will, apparently satisfied by their ‘corporate social responsibility’ policies and promises to be more transparent.”

Recently, members of Canada’s parliament have proposed legislation to hold Canadian transnational resource extraction companies accountable to Canadian law. Liberal MP John McKay introduced private members bill C-300 to the House of Commons February 29, 2009. The bill would withhold government funds, including billions of dollars in Canadian Pension Plan investments and diplomatic support for companies found—following a government investigation—to be abusing human rights. Some contend that this bill—while a positive step forward in holding corporations to account for their crimes—is most valuable in its exposure of the Canadian government’s support for its mining industry abroad.

Canada is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Private member’s bill C-354 aims to codify these international agreements into Canadian law. The International Promotion and Protection of Human Rights Act (IPPHRA), introduced by NDP MP Peter Julian, amends the Federal Courts Act to permit people who are not Canadian citizens to initiate lawsuits based on violations of international law or treaties to which Canada is a party if the violations occur outside Canada.

“The IPPHRA contrasts with Bill C-300 in that C-300 keeps the monitoring of corporate activities out of the criminal or civil courts, in administrative processes controlled by ‘the Ministers,’” said Grahame Russell of Rights Action in an email.

“With respect to reforming Canada’s criminal code so that corporations and their directors could be brought to trial for criminal actions in their corporate activities in ‘developing countries,’” he added, “no one in Canada has taken up this challenge.”

Sakura Saunders is an editor for protestbarrick.net, an all-volunteer news site that networks organizations and community groups around the world against Barrick Gold.

This story was published in The Dominion's special issue on the G8 and G20 summits in Ontario. We will continue to publish independent, investigative news about the G8 and G20 throughout the month of June.

For up-to-the-minute G8/G20 news from the streets of Toronto, visit the Toronto Media Co-op.

G20 Mining image

Jalil Rieki

Canada’s Conservatives to Push for Iran Sanctions

dru — Sat, 29 May 2010 05:00:31 +0000

Israeli nukes not a concern

MONTREAL—In the lead-up to the G8 summit in Canada, Conservative politicians in Ottawa are pushing publicly for increased sanctions on Iran.

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has indicated he will lobby for severe sanctions at the elite summit, to take place June 25-27, 2010.

“Canada will continue to use its G8 presidency to focus international attention and action on Iran,” a representative of the office of Minister Cannon told The Dominion. “We believe that further sanctions authorized by the United Nations Security Council are needed.”

China’s reluctance to back US attempts to introduce strict sanctions on Iran has set the stage for the upcoming G8 summit to serve as gathering where the US and Canada will unite in favour of a more hard-line position on Iran. China holds a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, but it is not a member country of the G8.

The Conservative government’s plan to utilize the upcoming G8 summit as a platform to apply pressure on Iran is central to its intervention strategy in contemporary Middle Eastern politics. Often left out of the global political drama surrounding the Iranian government’s relationship to nuclear power is the region’s only current nuclear power: the Israeli government in Tel Aviv.

At the recent US Nuclear Security Summit, President Barack Obama pushed for world leaders to scale back major nuclear development, and build an increasing global consensus in support of sanctions on Iran.

What sanctions...accomplish is, hopefully, to change the calculus of a country like Iran, so that they see that there are more costs and fewer benefits to pursuing a nuclear-weapons program,” Obama said at the summit.

Also absent from serious scrutiny at the summit was the massive US nuclear stockpile or any criticism of the Israeli nuclear program. “As far as Israel goes, I’m not going to comment on their program,” said Obama. The Canadian government has issued no criticism of the existing Israeli nuclear arsenal, even though they have pushed for Iran to end its nuclear program. The fact that Israel is left out of the discussion is not an accident, according to Shourideh Molavi, a Toronto-based Iranian writer.

“Canada is moving toward a second phase of a major foreign policy project they have already started, which is to develop deeper ties with Israel, in regards to security and military policy,” said Molavi. “So when it comes to Iran they want to use the G8 as a platform to push for sanctions within this framework.”

Canada’s intense support for the Israeli government has shaped a new era of Canada-Israel relations. Ottawa has arguably emerged as the staunchest pro-Israel capital in the world.

“Canada is so friendly that there was no need to convince or explain anything to anyone,” said right wing Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, after a recent meeting in Ottawa with Canadian Foreign Minister Cannon. “We had amiable talks in a supportive atmosphere...we need allies like this in the international arena,” he said.

Beyond talk of sanctions, Iran is currently experiencing major turmoil. Massive protests swept across the country last summer after an election widely seen as tainted led to the victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Social movements globally expressed solidarity with the protest movement in Iran. Political leaders in Europe, the US and Canada also backed the protest movement.

“With Iran in the picture, Ottawa is using any avenue they can to build support for sanctions on Iran, including manipulative positions towards the protest movement in Iran,” Molavi told The Dominion. “Canada is claiming that they support the people in Iran, while pushing for sanctions that will impact the poorest people in the country first.”

Canada’s attempts to lock in sanctions on Iran contradict the demands of leading dissidents in Iran, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.
“We oppose military attack on Iran or economic sanctions because that’s to the detriment of the people,” Ebadi said in March 2010.

Canada’s appeal for “further sanctions” on Iran will be in the media spotlight during the Toronto G8 summit.

It will be critical for grassroots movements organizing in opposition to the G8 summit in Canada to identify the major gaps between the push by G8 leaders for sanctions and the anti-sanctions positions of Iran’s most vocal opposition leaders.

Stefan Christoff is a regular contributor to The Dominion and is at
http://www.twitter.com/spirodon.

For up-to-the-minute G8/G20 news from the streets of Toronto, visit the Toronto Media Co-op.

Lawrence Cannon at CTBTO

Khalas! The Fifth Bil'in International Conference on the Popular Struggle

david parker — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:50:04 +0000

Bil'inchildren.JPG

In the name of our prisoners: Non-Violence, Creativity, International Joint Struggle

April 21-23, 2010
Bil'in, West Bank

Closing Statement

During this fifth annual conference, we felt the absence of our friends who are prevented by the occupation's cells and bars from joining us, imprisoned for struggling non-violently for our freedom, activists and leaders of the popular committees Abdullah Abu Rahmah, Ibrahim A'amirah, Adeeb Abu Rahmah, Hassan Moussa, Zaydoun Surour, Ibrahim Burnat, Wael Faqi and all political prisoners.

The conference opened with a message from them written by the imprisoned coordinator of the popular committee of Bili'n, Abdullah Abu Rahme. The message spoke of the need to continue the popular nonviolent struggle and the need for international support.

We felt the absence our beloved Bassem Abu Rahmah, along with the martyrs of Ni'lin and those that have fallen to defend our land and human dignity. We heard from the family of the martyr Bassem Abu Rahma on behalf of the families of the martyrs who stated that the popular struggle must continue until freedom is achieved.

We felt the absence of our brothers and sisters from Gaza who can join us only via video conference due to the occupation's criminal siege of 1.5 million of our people.

All those that were not with us physically were with us every minute in spirit. It is your steadfastness and your sacrifice that fuel and inspire the struggle that will ultimately lead us to our freedom.