Does recognition of "Palestine" have any legal meaning?

The recent recognition of "Palestine" as an independent state by Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and now Ecuador brings up the question of whether these acts have any legal meaning.

In the nineteenth century, the general viewpoint in the matter was known as the "constitutive theory of statehood," meaning that a state becomes a legal entity due to the fact that it is recognized by other states. There were problems with this definition, for example when only some states recognized another. But it was considered normative.

All that changed in the twentieth century. The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (followed by the Badinter Committee in Europe) codified normative international law as saying that statehood is independent of recognition by other states. This is known as the "declarative theory of statehood" and in the Montevideo Convention statehood is defined this way:

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

The main sticking point for "Palestine" is the second criterion: a defined territory.

The South American nations - who are signatories to the Montevideo Conventions - are declaring the territory of "Palestine"  to be defined by the Green Line. The problem is that their declaration is based on fiction. For example, the Ecaudor recognition says "a free and independent Palestine with its 1967 boundaries." Before 1967, however, there were no boundaries between the West Bank and Jordan; there was no state of Palestine with any borders by any definition, and the Green Line was not a national boundary between Israel and Jordanian annexed territory. Ecuador might as well have declared that Palestine is on recognized lunar boundaries.

Furthermore, the statement says "This is a recognition that has been legitimized by resolutions 242 and 338 of the Security Council of the United Nations." This is also nonsense. Resolutions 242 and 338 do not mention a word about "Palestine" and do not even imply that such a state would ever exist, let alone legitimizing it.

It appears that these countries' recognition of "Palestine" have little legal bearing on its statehood, and statehood is impossible without a defined territory. They certainly have political value but not much legal meaning.

There might also be an argument as to whether "Palestine" has a government. It has two separate internal administrations that act as governments for their people, but the PA does not have diplomatic relations with other countries. The PA reports to the Palestinian Liberation Organization which handles all diplomatic issues - but it is not a government. Hamas acts more like a government than the PA.

A possible legal ramification of these countries' recognition might be in Article 6 of the Montevideo Conventions:

The recognition of a state merely signifies that the state which recognizes it accepts the personality of the other with all the rights and duties determined by international law. Recognition is unconditional and irrevocable.

It is possible that from the perspective of the recognizing state, "Palestine" would be bound by international law that only applies to states. It is uncertain whether the Palestinian Arab leadership are willing to take on such responsibility at this time.

Again, I am not an international or any other kind of lawyer and all of these are just my interpretations of source materials, with some help from Wikipedia.

UPDATE: After I wrote this I asked an international lawyer to comment, and I was pointed to an interesting legal opinion by Professor Malcolm Shaw that touches on these very issues.

Briefly, Shaw talks about the "defined territory" requirement as much less important than I thought and the government requirement as much more important:

The requirement for a defined territory does not mean that the boundaries of such territory have to be delineated and settled, nor that there be an absence of frontier disputes," but it does necessitate that there be at the minimum a consistent band of territory which is undeniably controlled by the government of the alleged State. This is an indispensable factual necessity. The concept of government as enumerated in the Montevideo Convention may be seen as the requirement for a foundation of effective control. It would seem to necessitate that the undisputed authority of that putative State should exercise a degree of overall control over most of the territory it claims. For this reason at least, therefore, the "State of Palestine" purportedly declared in November 1988 at a conference in Algiers cannot be regarded as a valid State. The Palestinian organisations did not control any part of the territory that was claimed.

He goes on to say that the PA's lack of control over Gaza means that it can only be recognized as a government if "widespread international recognition" deems it so, which seems like Shaw admits that the constitutive theory still holds some sway.

Shaw then goes into much more detail about the PLO/PA split of responsibilities:

There is one further relevant issue in considering the criterion of effective government. There is a clear distinction or division of competences on the Palestinian side between the Palestine Liberation Organisation ("PLO") and the Palestinian Authority. The former constitutes an internationally recognised "national liberation movement" accepted as representing externally the Palestinian people and the party with Israel to the various agreements commencing with the Declaration of Principles,1993.  Under the Interim Agreement, 1995, in addition, it has authority to negotiate and enter into agreements for the benefit of the Palestinian Authority in certain limited circumstances. On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority, as will be seen in the following paragraphs, exercises within the West Bank and Gaza a number of powers and responsibilities expressly transferred from Israel. The two institutions are not identical. Thus, what might be termed governmental functions are split between the two bodies. This must impact upon any conclusion as to whether the criterion of effective government has in fact been complied with.

Shaw says that "Palestine" does not adhere to requirement (d),  capacity to enter into relations with the other states, due to existing agreements with Israel and its lack of independence within those agreements.

The essential point is that critical functions seen as indispensable to statehood in international law have by agreement between the relevant parties been recognised as matters subject to Israeli control. This includes what is termed the capacity to enter into relations with foreign States in the Montevideo Convention. This competence in the Interim Agreement is clearly reserved to Israel, apart from certain minor areas, as noted in article IX (5) a and b noted above. It also includes the exercise of effective control with regard to external threats. This is emphasised in article XII, which, while providing for the establishment of a Palestinian police force, stipulates that: "Israel shall continue to carry the responsibility for defence against external threats, including the responsibility for protecting the Egyptian and Jordanian borders, and for defence against external threats from the sea and from the air, as well as the responsibility for overall security of Israelis and  settlements, for the purpose of safeguarding their internal security and public order, and will have all the powers to take the steps necessary to meet this responsibility".

Shaw goes further, saying that any declaration of "Palestine" would be inherently illegal because of the violation of existing agreements and

it is also now part of the international consensus that the emergence of a new State must not take place upon the basis of illegality. This may be seen as reflective of the general principle of ex injuria поп oritur jus.

He goes on:

There is one further point in. the context of statehood. It may seem self-evident, but it is nevertheless a key issue, that in order for a new State to be created (and indeed recognised thereafter by the international community), the entity in question must actually assert a claim to statehood. A new State cannot arise implicitly or incidentally by way of circumstances or by way of inference. It may only be established as a concrete and explicit act of will. The US Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law notes that, "[w]hile the traditional definition does not formally require it, an entity is not a State if it does not claim to be a State".' Crawford concludes that, "[sjtatehood is a claim of right. Claims to statehood are not to be inferred from statements or actions short of explicit declaration".

 In the case of the Palestine, not only has no formal claim to statehood been made, but statements have been made continually declaring that the aim of the peace process is to establish a State of Palestine. This goes hand in hand with the explicit nature of the many instruments signed from the Declaration of Principles in 1993 onwards between the relevant parties, and witnessed by leading members of the international community, and indeed with the whole tenor of international documents.

There's lots more there.

This is not a simple issue! Unfortunately, we have seen the international community ignore customary international law in favor of "Palestine" and against Israel before, and I would not be surprised if it happens again.

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Freedom of the Press, PA-style

From The Guardian:

An independent West Bank journalist detained for five days by Palestinian security forces after broadcasting a news item relating to frictions within the ruling Fatah party has questioned the extent to which freedom of speech is permitted by the Palestinian Authority.

George Canawati of Radio Bethlehem was held in an office at the city's general intelligence service headquarters over the Muslim holiday of Eid last month, according to an account he has given to the Guardian. He was provided with a mattress to sleep on, and food, but was given no explanation for his continued detention beyond an initial three-hour interrogation.

On 15 November at around 2pm, Radio Bethlehem broadcast a short item saying that Mohamed Dahlan, a senior Fatah figure, had played a recording made on a mobile phone of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to some members of Fatah's central committee. According to Canawati's report, the recording was of Abbas saying he wanted a Palestinian state regardless of whether it was inside or outside the wall – meaning the separation barrier Israel has constructed, much of it on Palestinian land.

Canawati – who has not heard the recording himself – based his report on a source within Fatah's central committee. "I confirmed the news from a credible person and that is enough for me to publish a report," Canawati said. The source was "someone I trust", he added.

...Shortly after Canawati's report was broadcast, he received a visit from the intelligence services. He was told to close down the radio station, and to accompany the official for questioning. "I was told it would be for 10 minutes. It took me five days," he said.

Canawati was questioned about the source of his story. "They treated me really good, they didn't put pressure on me. After three hours they told me to call the radio station to resume broadcasting. I was expecting to be released."

He had given his interrogators all the information they needed, including the name of his source. "I told them exactly what happened, I didn't know why they were keeping me," he said. He was eventually released on 19 November.

"I'm not confident any more that we have freedom of speech. Our prime minister [Salam Fayyad] is always preaching that the sky's the limit for freedom for journalists. From what happened to me, my experience, that is a false slogan. I really believed it until this happened."

It is interesting that the report that got him arrested said that Abbas would be willing to compromise. Besides the obvious issue of the PA clamping down on embarrassing reports, and of a journalist who willingly gives up his sources, the question is whether Abbas really said that statement or if it is part of an internal Fatah smear campaign against him?

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The Forward insults me (and many others)

The Forward published an absurd op-ed by Letty Cottin Pogrebin:

From the moment the Goldstone Report was released in September 2009, its lead author has been subjected to fierce, well-orchestrated attacks by Israeli and American Jews who purport to be defending the legitimacy of the Jewish state and the safety of the Jewish people. Rather than discuss the contents of the report — which concluded that during the 2008-2009 Gaza war, Israel (as well as Hamas) may have committed war crimes — Israel’s defenders launched an all-points campaign to bury it. But their strategy was complicated from the start by an inconvenient truth: Goldstone was one of them — a Jew, and not just any Jew, an exemplary one.

She goes on to cast Goldstone as a modern Jewish tzaddik and his detractors of being guilty of a multitude of Jewish sins.

I responded to the article this way:

I take personal offence to this article.

From the moment that Goldstone's report was released, I - along with other bloggers, prominent writers and others - have spent countless hours writing specific criticisms of the report. I personally wrote at least 25 articles on my blog cross-referencing Goldstone's assertions with reliable information available from other sources, proving Goldstone's pattern of bias and disregard for facts and international law.

I daresay that I read Goldstone's report with much greater care than Letty Cottin Pogrebin did.

To say that I and my fellow critics of Goldstone did not address the contents of the report is simply a lie. To say that we wanted to bury it is ridiculous - I quoted large swaths of the report in my articles. On the contrary, we wanted to highlight the report's lies and bias for the many people - including, sadly, most journalists - who themselves couldn't be bothered to actually read it.

I invite readers to look at the many weighty criticisms of Goldstone available at goldstonereport.org. I would invite Pogrebin to do the same, but it appears that she is guilty of what she accuses us - making false claims without actually reading the content.

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Let's reward Syria for just being great guys

From AFP:

President Barack Obama on Wednesday bypassed Congress to name the first US ambassador to Syria in nearly six years, part of his Middle East engagement drive criticized by his Republican opponents.
Obama took the controversial step of forcing through the appointments of Ambassador Robert Ford and five other officials while the Senate -- which normally needs to confirm nominations -- was out of session.

A senior administration official traveling with Obama on vacation in Hawaii justified the recess appointments, which are certain to irritate Republicans after both sides spoke of bipartisanship in the waning days of the last Congress.

Barry Rubin comments:

Speaking of Syria, while the Saudis are so worried about the United States being too soft on Syria and Iran that they are trying to cut their own deal surrendering Lebanon to the Syrians, what does President Barack Obama do? Why, of course, he is in such a hurry to name a U.S. ambassador to Syria that he bypasses Congress and does a recess appointment! Even though he has gotten nothing from Syria after two years of engagement.

What this technique does, of course, is shield the Syrian dictatorship from any criticism by Congress. If this administration had more sense it could have used the harder line from Congress as a rationale to get tougher on Syria. But instead of a "good cop/bad cop" approach we get a Keystone cop approach. (Note below)

The administration has argued that sending a U.S. ambassador to Syria is not a gift to that dictatorship (which is helping to murder Americans in Iraq, sponsoring Hamas and Hizballah, and helping Iran in every possible way) but a necessity to have a channel through which the United States can communicate with Damascus. But since this U.S. government only wants to communicate flattery and concessions it is hardly worthwhile.

Indeed, have no doubt that everyone in the Arabic-speaking world will interpret this as a Syrian victory. That's why this action is also worthy of a Dopes of the Day award.

Or maybe the US is just a fan of Bashir Assad's comedy act.

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How to Defame Israel - NPR edition

When it comes down to it, all of the anti-Israel agitators, protesters and complainers use the same method for their smears. It is easy, effective and sometimes even partially truthful.

The method is to simply compare Israel with their idea of perfection, and note where it falls short.

It is insidious, because when it is done well, it is difficult to argue against on a point by point basis, and that tends to make people think that Israel is guilty of horrendous crimes. It is criticism without context, calumnies without comparisons, arguments without considering the alternative.

A classic example is being broadcast today on NPR, on the very real problem of tens of thousands of illegal African immigrants who are sneaking into Israel:

In Israel, No Welcome Mat For African Migrants

Israeli officials have stepped up efforts to stem the flow of African asylum seekers and migrant workers into Israel. With numbers reaching into the tens of thousands, Israeli officials are pressed to find a policy to combat the ever-increasing flow of people.

Israeli construction workers are battling against the blustery wind and sandstorms to build a fence across one stretch of desert.

The $270 million fence will cover 87 miles of Israel's southern border with Egypt. African refugees are smuggled through this area almost daily. They travel thousands of miles and often spend their life savings to try to reach Israel, a country they see as their doorstep to the West.

Israel, however, is far from laying down the welcome mat.

Sigal Rosen is an organizer at the Hotline for Migrant Workers, an advocacy group for refugees, in Tel Aviv. She says that though Israel signed the Geneva Convention relating to refugees, it regularly violates it.

"During the last years, Israel is sending a very clear message to all asylum seekers: Beware. We are not interested in your presence here. We will do whatever is in our power to prevent you from being here, even if the price is violating our legal commitments," Rosen says.

...On Nov. 22, the same day that work began on the fence along the Egyptian border, Yishai presented his four-part plan to make Israel a less desirable locale for refugees.

In addition to the fence, Israel is building a detention center that will operate as a yet undefined "open facility" for any would-be refugee who decides to remain in Israel.

The third step in Yishai's plan is to punish any employer who hires African migrants or supports their employment.

The last step is the repatriation of refugees who are already in Israel. Israel took that step for the first time — last week — when it removed 150 southern Sudanese who agreed to leave voluntarily in exchange for some pocket money and a flight home in time to vote in the upcoming referendum on the region's independence.

...At the Hotline for Migrant Workers, Rosen says she knows many more who would consider leaving Israel if they were given a similar deal. Most of them, she says, have become fed up.

"Actually, Israel doesn't have an immigration policy. What we have is a big mess," she says.

Now for some context.

Let's start with the headline: Israel does not roll out the "welcome mat" for African migrants.

Is there any country in the world that actively seeks or welcomes migrants from Africa? Has a single country gone to Israel and said "We would love to take them in?" The idea is absurd, but to NPR, Israel is to be castigated for not openly allowing itself to be overrun with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

Not all of the migrants are refugees. In fact, there is a process that must be gone through to determine whether they can legally seek asylum. UNHCR in Israel used to do it, but a couple of years ago Israel took over that function partially because UNHCR was getting overwhelmed.

Many of the African migrants are not fleeing persecution and personal danger, but simply seeking a better life in the nearest Western-style state. Which means that they are not "refugees." It gets complicated though because once many of them step foot in Israel they really cannot go back to their own countries. In those cases Israel has a very good reason to discourage them from coming to begin with.

Notice that these African migrants usually pass through Egypt on their way to Israel. That indicates that they are not simply escaping persecution but illegally seeking a better life. (There are also a significant number from West Africa who visit Israel on religious pilgrimages and then never leave.)

Israel really is a tiny nation, While Israel in the past has welcomed small numbers of refugees in need (Vietnamese "boat people" in 1977, Bosnian Muslim refugees in 1993, southern Lebanese Christians in 2000) it simply cannot have the open door policy that NPR seems to demand. Even the US, 450 times the size of Israel, cannot survive with such a policy. It is a matter of national survival.

Moreover, UNHCR credits Israel with great strides in improving its policies on dealing with asylum seekers, creating a program from scratch in only a few years.

The UNHCR itself is concerned not only in resettlement when necessary but in repatriation when possible, meaning that Israel's attempts to send migrants back to their original homes is quite consistent with preferred international standards.

Not only that, but Israel now has a serious crime problem from these illegal African immigrants.*

One doesn't even have to mention the fact that Egyptian policies are to shoot migrants on sight.

All of these facts are easily ascertained and they took me only a few minutes to learn. But NPR's Sheera Frenkel could not be bothered to find out the facts.

The methodology of the report is also very biased. Only one side is humanized; the Israeli policies are presented purely as malicious. You won't find Frenkel interviewing Israeli victims of crimes by Africans, nor Israeli officials who are dedicating their lives to making the lives of the Africans as bearable as possible while keeping within Israeli policies and respecting Israel's citizens, and not even UNHCR officials in Israel. Instead she interviews only two people - an advocate for the illegal migrants and an actual migrant - whose views are hardly unbiased.

In other words, NPR is presenting a hatchet job, solely for the purpose of demonizing Israel.

The methods are familiar, because we have seen countless similar articles from the media that use the same format: find people who are unhappy with some aspect of Israeli society, de-contextualize it while humanizing only one side of the story and making the Israeli side seem cold and heartless, and highlighting where Israel is supposedly falling short to some idealized standards that are literally impossible or that would cause worse human rights problems in themselves.

This is merely one of thousands of examples of how the media slyly and subtly tries to undermine Israel.

(h/t Jim)

*CORRECTION: While the Israeli media had widely reported about crimes committed by the migrants, statistics show this is not true.(h/t Frankie)

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Al Aqsa Brigades declares a truce with Israel?

Palestine News Network reports that the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in Gaza - the military wing of Fatah - has declared a truce with Israel.

The leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades Mekdad Ehab said on Wednesday that the declaration of a truce with the occupation comes unilaterally to ensure the national interest, and in order to avoid giving pretexts for the occupation to wage a new war on the sector [Gaza.]

Other groups were in the meeting as well.

Mahmoud Khalaf, a member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that the meeting was intended to close ranks and confront the Israeli threats, adding that the factions had agreed to many of the most important issues to emphasize that the resistance is a natural right to defend the Palestinian people

The meeting was organized by Hamas. Hamas has been keeping all other terror organizations mostly in line, and the recent increase in rockets and Israeli reactions seem to have spooked the group.

This is mostly cosmetic. The Al Aqsa Brigades are close to non-existent in Gaza ever since Hamas took over.  They've shot a few token rockets but if any member shows allegiance to Fatah in Ramallah, Hamas is there to perform some gentle physical persuasion.

It does show that Hamas, for all its rhetoric, is not looking for a war now, and that can only be a good thing.

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Burqa Woman - the video

From Pakistani comedian Said Haroon, who naturally is getting death threats:


(h/t Solomonia)

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Dismantle UNRWA for peace (Commentary)

Michael Bernstam in Commentary writes an important article that lays out the major problems of UNRWA:

UNRWA’s mandate created, in effect, a multigenerational dependency of an entire people—a permanent, supranational refugee welfare state in which simply placing most Palestinians on the international dole has extinguished incentives for work and investment. It has succeeded with a vengeance. It has thwarted economic development, destroyed opportunities for peace in the Middle East, and created, along the way—both metaphorically and literally—a breeding ground for international terrorism. The great-grandchildren of East Prussian refugees do not blow up pizzerias in what used to be Konigsberg and is now the Russian city ­Kaliningrad. But the great-grandchildren of the original UNRWA refugees do blow up pizzerias in Jerusalem.

It is this open-ended refugee status—which necessarily envisions a victorious return to the Israeli part of the former British Mandate Palestine—that puts bread on the table in the rent-free house, together with an array of social services. Only the triumphant return of the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren to the ancestral land will mark the final deliverance in this ideology. Until then, the permanent refugee welfare state means permanent war. It is no longer the epitome of former British prime minister Clement Attlee’s dichotomy of warfare state and welfare state: it is both.

The permanent refugeeism of the UNRWA welfare state generates a particular “right of return” claim—the argument that Palestinians should be given title to the land they occupied before Israel’s independence—that fuels perpetual warfare. To see its pernicious demographic and physical meaning, consider what this claim is not, and then what it is. First, it is not the right of return of actual refugees (as opposed to descendants) that was created by international conventions since 1948 to prevent deportations and to mitigate the conditions of concurrent refugees who fled the ravages of war. Nor is it the right of return of historical ethnic diasporas to their own nation-states that Germany extends to all Germans, Armenia to all Armenians, Greece to all Hellenes, and Israel to all Jews. Nor is it the establishment of new nation-states where there were none, such as the partition of British Mandate Palestine into the Jewish and Arab states or the partition of the British Raj into India and Pakistan. Rather, the claim of the Palestinian right of return is intended for one historical ethnic diaspora of the ­descendants of perennial refugees to repopulate another people’s existing nation-state, Israel.

This is not the right of return to a country; this is the right of return of a country, a reconquest after a lost war. In Europe, a similar claim would apply to the right of the Germans to a return of the Sudetenland from the Czech Republic, Farther Pomerania and Silesia from Poland, and East Prussia from Russia. In Asia, it would mean the right of the Pakistanis to parts of India.

This is not the right of return; this is a claim of the right of retake. In the world of historical ethnic diasporas, the right of return-cum-retake means a Hobbesian war of all against all. More than being detrimental to Israel, it is destructive for the Palestinians because it gives more belligerent groups, such as Hamas, an upper hand and prevents reunification of the two potential Palestinian nation-states. It converts what was meant to be a civil right into a civil war, on top of the war with Israel.

It gets better:

UNRWA has been one of the most inhuman experiments in human history. Since UNRWA creates incentives for war and disincentives for peace, conditions for Palestinian misery and disincentives for economic development, it cannot be reformed and must be removed. The change in the Palestinian incentive structure is necessary for both peace and statehood. Palestinian sovereignty will only be achieved by liberation from UNRWA and, like peace, cannot be truly achieved without this liberation. The first order of business, then, is to dismantle the UNRWA welfare-warfare state.

...The end of UNRWA would automatically nullify the pernicious issue of the right of return-cum-retake. It is unsolvable in the presence of UNRWA, because it implies the repopulation of Israel with millions of perennial paramilitary refugees. But once UNRWA is discarded, the refugee status expires instantaneously or after a transition period, and the right of return becomes a non-issue due to immediate and actually pressing needs.

Though its defenders may claim that criticisms of this agency are ill-intentioned or biased against the Palestinians, the phasing out of UNRWA is not only the Palestinians’ sole hope of finding a viable future. It also fits well with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s hope of creating a viable independent state. Though supporters of the Palestinians and even some friends of Israel have come to believe that UNRWA is indispensable, nation-building from within is the only viable form of nation-building. Instead of perpetuating the dead end that the international welfare state for the Palestinians represents, ending UNRWA’s horrific six-decade reign would instantly create the conditions for an honest, meaningful, and viable peace process to begin in the Middle East.

Read the whole thing - and tweet it.

(h/t Joshuapundit)

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Attention Tel Aviv U: Saudi Arabia found your bird

An article in Saudi Arabia's al-Weeam discusses the discovery of a large, injured bird in the Ha'il region of the country.

The bird was not frightened of people, and  it had really, really bad breath making it difficult to approach.

It had an electronic device attached which said "Ariel" and a metal bracelet that says "H1 - Ho5," on the wing it says "x63" and another bracelet says "Israel - Tel Aviv University."

One of the commenters named Mahmoud Nassar, who says that he works in a nature reserve in the north of "Palestine", says that the bird is one of some eagles that TAU has been monitoring since 2008. Others agree that this is likely.

But some other commenters aren't so sure, convinced that it is an Israeli spy bird of some sort.

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Israel's Flash Mobs, 2010

Jerusalem, New Year's Day 2010:


Jerusalem, January:


Tel Aviv, January:


Haifa, February:


Tel Aviv, March:


Jerusalem, April:


Haifa, April (Freezing for three minutes flashmob:)


Tel Aviv, April:


May:


Haifa Cinemall, May:


Holon, July:


Tel Aviv, September:


Rishon LeTzion Beach, September:


Tel Aviv, November:


Hadera, November:


Jerusalem, December:


I'm sure I missed a few.

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Deputy PM: Iran's nuke program delayed three years

From Reuters:

The United States and its allies have up to three years to curb Iran's nuclear programme, which has been set back by technical difficulties and sanctions, a senior Israeli official said on Wednesday.

Saying Iran remained his government's biggest worry, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not mention possible unilateral military strikes by Israel, saying he hoped U.S.-led action against Tehran would be successful.

"I believe that this effort will grow, and will include areas beyond sanctions, to convince the Iranian regime that, effectively, it must choose between continuing to seek nuclear capability and surviving," Yaalon told Israel Radio.

"I don't know if it will happen in 2011 or in 2012, but we are talking in terms of the next three years."

Yaalon, a former armed forces chief, noted Iran's uranium enrichment plan had suffered setbacks. Some analysts have seen signs of foreign sabotage in incidents such as the corruption of Iranian computer networks by a virus.

"These difficulties postpone the timeline, of course. Thus we cannot talk about a 'point of no return'. Iran does not currently have the ability to make a nuclear bomb on its own," Yaalon said.

"I hope it won't succeed at all and that the Western world's effort will ultimately deny Iran a nuclear capability."

This is a bigger delay than anything I had heard before from Stuxnet, at least (there might have been other successful operations that delayed the program further.)

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Morning links

Sultan Knish writes "Who's Afraid of Israeli Democracy?", slamming Jeffrey Goldberg for his essay "What if Israel Ceases to Be a Democracy?"

Yochanan Visser in YNet on "Biased Dutch reporting on Arab-Israeli conflict leads to drastic rise in anti-Semitism"

On a related note, we have JPost's 'Norwegians in UNIFIL causing negative view of J'lem' based on a Wikileaks cable.

NGO Monitor goes after NGOs and Goldstone for uncritically believing Palestinian Arab statistics about civilian casualties in the Gaza war, a theme we have written extensively about.

Daphne Anson discusses Israel's new tough line against the London-based "Palestinian Return Center" saying it is a front for Hamas. The PRC denies this, according to Middle East Monitor - which is itself suspect.

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