“Stop Israeli war crimes”, yells woman at U.S. Congress, during Netanyahu’s speech

·         She later gets beaten, arrested at hospital

Netanyahu interrupts his speech

Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu was briefly interrupted as he was addressing a joint session of Congress on Tuesday afternoon when the voice of a woman shouted from the gallery, “Stop Israeli war crimes”.  The audience booed the heckler, who was immediately removed from the premises, and gave Netanyahu a standing ovation. The Prime Minister then took the occasion to remark that “you can’t have real protests in the farcical parliaments of Tehran and Tripoli. This is real democracy”, for which he received another delirious round of applause.

Rae Abileah is democratically removed from the premises

The heckler, Rae Abileah, a CODEPINK activist, was confronted by members of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and reportedly beaten to the point that she had to be taken to the George Washington University Hospital to be treated for neck and shoulder injuries, where she was soon after arrested by Police.

CODEPINK activist Rae Abileah is treated at the hospital

From her hospital bed, the 28 year old activist of Israeli descent told reporters that she was in “great pain”, but that "it was nothing compared to the suffering the Palestinians go through on a regular basis”, and added that “this kind of colonial occupation cannot continue.”

Land occupied during the Six Day War in 1967

Netanyahu has flatly dismissed as “unpractical” the assesment made by U.S. President Obama that the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be to start peace negotiations based on the 1967 Israeli borders, i.e., before the Six Day War when Israel occupied, and kept, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights from its neighbors.

Although Obama has considerably watered down the notion of the ‘1967 borders’ initial idea, by clarifying that negotiations would have to take into account present demographic changes on the ground, which is nothing less than the occupied territories where Israel has allowed new Jewish settlements; it is, nonetheless, a unique opportunity to restart the many times interrupted peace process in the Middle East from the perspective that the Palestinian land is under illegal occupation.

Palestinian loss of land 1946 - 2000

However true that if Israel does not accept the 1967 borders as a starting point in future negotiations with the Palestinians, no sustainable peace will ever be achieved in the area; Netanyahu continues to slam any prospect of real compromise conducive to the existence of both states, Palestine and Israel, sharing borders in harmony.