The successful Palestinian dialogue
By Hasan Abu Nimah, Jordan Times 12/31/2003
EARLIER THIS month, a dozen Palestinian factions sent representatives to Cairo to discuss their next moves. The assembly covered the entire Palestinian political spectrum, from hardliners Hamas and Islamic Jihad, at one end, to Fateh, which forms the core of the Palestinian National Authority, at the other. Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia joined the Cairo dialogue to add his weight to the Egyptian-sponsored effort.
The Cairo meeting was only the latest instalment of an early effort which began in Gaza and ended without reaching the conclusion hoped for by many observers, including the PNA. This result would have been an agreement by all factions to declare total ban on all acts of resistance to the Israeli occupation, ending not only attacks on Israeli civilians, but even attacks on occupation forces. In short, it would have meant an unconditional and total end to the Intifada, with no guarantee of any Israeli reciprocity.
Israel, no doubt with the intention of making the assembled Palestinians' task even harder, announced in advance that it would not accept any “truce”. Rather, Israel maintained its insistence that Qureia “disarm and dismantle” all “terrorist” groups, rather than negotiate with them, and promised to continue its assassinations and attacks as long as the PNA failed to do that.
No meaningful effort was made by any of the erstwhile supporters of the truce, inside or outside the region, to pressure Israel into abstaining from such destructive and preemptive pronouncements and actions. Nor was there much emphasis on the obvious point that no truce could work unless it is respected by both sides.
The culture of factionalism
By Ze'ev Sternhell, Ha'aretz 1/2/2004
The right wing has always preached national unity, while at the same time developing and disseminating an ideology of civil war. This was the pattern throughout Europe and it is the pattern in Israel as well. For those on the right, the term "unity" has one practical meaning: falling into line with their opinions. They believe that anyone who holds an opposing view and does not make do with merely voicing it but also tries to implement it, is a traitor. Therefore it's always the left that pays the price of unity, and it's in the ranks of the left that the victims fall. When the right is in power it is also adept at making substantive innovations: the sole meaning it attaches to democracy is majority rule. According to this approach, the majority has all the rights, including control over the citizen's conscience. This intriguing doctrine also holds that under no circumstances does anyone have the right to oppose the government that was democratically elected, and that this government is entitled to trample human rights, ignore norms of law and natural morality alike, and make a mockery of the principle of equality. By the same token, the government of the majority is entitled to demand that every citizen put on a uniform and take part in deeds that border on war crimes. This is the logic according to which refusal to participate in killing civilians, women and children in the course of belligerent activity is perceived by many as being identical with the refusal to participate in removing a settler outpost. It's clear, though, that in the first case the refusal is the revolt of an individual, whose value system does not allow him to be part of a morally unjustified killing campaign, whereas the latter refusal case is purely political resistance.
Racism repackaged
By Salman Abu Sitta, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 1 - 7 January 2004
The Geneva Accord was long ago scripted by Israeli Military Intelligence -- The orchestrated media blitz, replete with approving noises made by those European and Arab politicians eager to be rid of Palestinian refugees, conveniently ignored the fact that the understanding reached between some Palestinians and Israelis on the shores of the Dead Sea, later dignified with the name Geneva Accord, is in essence no more than the blueprint produced by the Israeli intelligence service to "solve" the issue of Palestinian refugees.
Following the first Palestinian Intifada of 1987 Yitzhak Shamir, on a visit to the US, called for an international conference to discuss ways to disperse Palestinian refugees across the globe and make the international community -- i.e. Europe and the rich Arabs -- pay for the scheme. Later, during the Madrid Conference of 1991, Shamir declared: "The land of Israel [Palestine] is our true homeland... any other country is still diaspora."
The Israeli official position underlying the Dead Sea understanding was later formulated by the former chief of Israeli Military Intelligence, and the first governor of the Israeli- occupied West Bank and Gaza, General Shlomo Gazit.
Gazit produced a report in 1994, shortly after the Oslo Accords, for the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, entitled "The Palestinian Refugee Problem". The report's solution to the refugee problem included the following.
The option of return should, under no circumstances, be provided to the Palestinians. Israel may allow a small number of returnees, under the [existing but useless] shaml programme, for humanitarian reasons but only if this does not compromise security or national interests.
The return of refugees to their homes (in Israel), Gazit states, "will threaten the Jewish character of the state".
Twilight Zone / An American dream
By Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz 12/31/2003
This is the story of another boy, the seventh in the past few months who was killed for no good reason, this time in the Qalandiyah refugee camp near Ramallah. It's the story of another Palestinian who was shot with appalling thoughtlessness by Israeli soldiers, just as Gil Na'amati, a kibbutz member, was shot last Friday by Israeli soldiers while demonstrating against the separation fence - only in the case of the boy there was no public furor in Israel. It's also the story of an American dream, between Qalandiyah and Jelazoun, which was almost realized but finally was brutally shattered.
In the spring of 1994, this column published the story of Awad Hindash, a car body-worker from the Jelazoun refugee camp, west of Ramallah. He was shot in the back by Israeli troops for no special reason shortly after the postman had brought him the visa to the United States he had coveted. Hindash was going to marry a California woman and start a new life. He was 23 at the time of his death.
Now, nearly nine years later, Ibrahim Abd el-Qadr, a butcher by trade, shows the new passport of his son, Fares, which contains an entry visa to the United States. Not long before he was to travel with his son to America and remove the boy from the hell of life (and death) in this sprawling refugee camp, this American dream was also aborted in the same way. Fares was shot to death by Israeli soldiers. He was 14 and a half when he was killed.
Awas Hindash was Fares' uncle. Neither of them made it to America.
Israelis against Sharon policies are right
By John Nichols, The Capital Times 12/30/2003
They say that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is a mission of oppression.
They say that Israel is denying basic human rights to millions of Palestinians.
They say that if Israel continues the occupation, the country will endanger not just the lives and rights of Palestinians but the future of Israel itself.
Who are these militant critics of Israeli policies? More than a dozen members of the ultra-elite Sayeret Matkal unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. Arguably the most respected, and feared, soldiers in the Israeli military, members of the unit have for decades been at the forefront of their country's most daring military initiatives - including the 1976 rescue at Entebbe airport of 100 hostages being held on an Air France flight that had been hijacked by terrorists. The mystique surrounding the Sayeret Matkal unit is even more intense and dramatic than that associated with the U.S. Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, or the British Special Air Service.
Sayeret Matkal is, in the words of military historian Yagil Levy, "the No. 1 military unit in Israel."
That is why it is so startling, and so very significant, that members of the unit have refused to participate any longer in what they describe as "missions of oppression." Like a growing number of Israelis, many of whom serve in the military, the dissident members of the Sayeret Matkal unit say they are no longer willing to cooperate with the occupation of Palestinian land on the West Bank and Gaza Strip - or with the often brutal actions that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon believes are justified as part of that occupation.
Why I paint things black
By Yoel Marcus, Ha'aretz 1/2/2004
To the reader who wrote in to complain that I'm always criticizing Sharon and painting things black, I have two answers.
Number one: I'm critical of Sharon because he's the leader of this country and the one who runs the show. If the tea lady were the head honcho, I'd criticize the tea lady. The only thing that counts, when push comes to shove, is results, and in that subject Sharon gets a big red "F."
Think about it: According to the American road map, between Wednesday and Thursday of this week there should have been a Palestinian state with temporary borders in place. Instead, the only state with temporary borders is Israel, busy fighting with itself over where the line should be.
And number two: I paint things black for the simple reason that there is nothing about our lives that is not black. In honor of the new year, I made a desperate attempt to list all the good things that have happened to us. In the end, I realized that the editor of the op-ed page would never agree to print such a short piece.
Justice Minister Tommy Lapid has described 2003 as Israel's worst year ever. The only thing left to ask what he and his party, who have pumped us full of hopes, have done to make it any better.
Pouring Fuel on Israel's Fire
By Leonard Fein, Forward 1/2/2004
Quite naturally, our attention when we think of Israel is principally focused on issues of war and peace: the intifada, the persistent terrorism, the halting peace efforts both governmental and private, the occupation and so forth. But there is, of course, another Israel — not the Israel of the deadly headlines, but the Israel where people give birth, raise children, look for work, the Israel where life goes on. These days, that Israel faces a staggering array of very serious problems. Beyond a stagnant economy, with all its consequences, there is an education system that is in deep trouble, a rising problem of organized crime, a slackening support for democratic norms and a growing coarseness in the treatment of Israel's Arab citizens.
In 2001, Israeli fourth-graders tested for literacy scored 23rd among the 35 countries where the tests were administered — slightly above the international average, just behind Romania, well behind Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria. A new report from Israel's National Council for the Child asserts that 40% of Israel's children live "in poverty, squalor and delinquency," and that another 30% are on the brink of a similar fate. Organized crime, "The Sopranos"-style, has finally become a matter of urgent national concern. As to support for democratic norms, the latest annual report shows that "support for the democratic system has plunged to the lowest level recorded during the past 20 years." So, for example, more than half the respondents in the study agree that "strong leaders can do more for the state than debates and laws," and where 90% of respondents just five years ago agreed that "democracy is the best system," that number is now down to 77%.
With regard to Israel's Arab citizens, who include one of every five Israelis, matters are especially serious. While 20% of Jewish children live below the official poverty line, 54% — more than half — of non-Jewish children do. No one any longer doubts that the condition of Israel's Arabs is wretched, and that no small part of that owes to governmental discrimination. Prime minister after prime minister has promised to repair the discrimination, but none — not Labor's Ehud Barak any more than Likud's Ariel Sharon — have delivered on their promises....
Fenced in
By Eyal Ofer, Ha'aretz Friday Magazine 1/2/2004
They came and said - `You name the amount.' But I'm not selling. You don't sell a home," says Hani Amar, 46, from the village of Maskha as he looks at his house that, in recent weeks, has become a heavily fortified location. Like the rest of the village, this house, too, has seen better days. Every Saturday, Maskha used to be the embodiment of coexistence between Jews and Arabs: Thousands of Israelis filled its stores and created a traffic jam on their way to next-door Biddya to buy all kinds of items at rock-bottom prices - from porcelain sinks to bottles of olive oil, hummus and spare auto parts. Maskha, which is just a five-minute trip from Rosh Ha'ayin, became a giant shopping center. In the summer of 2003, new sounds were heard in the village - bulldozers and tractors wending a twisting route on the Samarian hills, marking the arbitrary outline of the separation fence. The idea was to have the fence surround the settlements of Sha'arei Tikva and Etz Ephraim and separate them from the nearby Palestinian villages. In Maskha, this route passes next to the residents' homes and separates them from their olive groves.
The fate of the Amar family was different than that of the other villagers. Their yard was appropriated to be used in the construction of the separation barrier. Bulldozers flattened part of the goat pen in the yard, made the area level by lowering the yard a meter and a half below the floor-level of the house - all to make way for the patrol road. These days, patrols pass right through the yard of the Amars' house. On the other side of the yard, directly opposite the house, a wall was built that separates their house from the other houses in the village. Thus, the Amar family's house has become an isolated Palestinian enclave next to the Elkana settlement and cut off by the fence from the rest of the village of Maskha.
Sharon's old new year
By Graham Usher, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 1 - 7 January 2004
Palestinian options will vanish as rapidly as their lands under Ariel Sharon's plans for the year ahead -- On the eve of 2003 Ariel Sharon gave some flesh to his vision of a Palestinian state with "provisional borders", the second stage of the untested "roadmap towards peace". One year on -- and at the same Herzliya venue -- he gave vent to what might happen should the roadmap remain folded on the Bush administration's shelf.
"If in a few months the Palestinians still continue to disregard their part in implementing the roadmap, then Israel will initiate the unilateral step of disengagement from the Palestinians," he said.
The contrast between the two roads is more apparent than real. Whether by agreeing to an interim state or having it imposed through Israeli diktat, the most the Palestinians can look forward to in the foreseeable future is a truncated entity, divided into four cantons, on around 40 per cent of the West Bank and parts of Gaza. The difference -- one year on -- is that Sharon is closer to his vision than he was.
One reason for this is the growing Israeli and American consensus that the roadmap is now not much more than an instrument for managing the conflict. Even this may be too much for Sharon. He now believes the roadmap is tied to the longevity of Ahmed Qurei's government and that that has a shelf life of no more than six months. He is already taking steps to hasten the collapse.
A bleak mid-winter
By Ibrahim Nafie, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 1 - 7 January 2004
What kind of state is being proposed in this "two-state" solution? -- Ariel Sharon this week appointed Major-General Giora Eiland to head a new national security council charged with implementing his "unilateral disengagement plan". The plan, which calls for new lines of deployment and other so- called security measures that will establish new realities on the ground, is Sharon's answer to an intensified Arab and international drive to create a climate conducive to the resumption of peace talks.
For months Sharon has been waiting for the opportunity to deliver a slap in the face of the roadmap and then to continue battering the Palestinians into accepting his terms for a settlement. This is perfectly in keeping with his approach to the peace process since coming to power in 2001. His response to the Arab peace initiative adopted at the Beirut summit that year was to launch a massive incursion into Palestinian territories. When Sharon realised how difficult it was to achieve his ends by force of arms, he engaged in other tactics. He tightened the stranglehold on the Palestinian people and attempted to ignite internecine strife by demanding that Palestinian resistance organisations be dismantled.
In spite of the intensity of this onslaught the Palestinians demonstrated an exemplary degree of responsibility, as was apparent in the truce agreement reached by the Palestinian factions under the Abu Mazen government. Simultaneously, other factors helped keep the situation in the Palestinian territories from boiling over. Foremost among these was Egypt's unremitting support of the Palestinian leadership combined with its mediating efforts with the Palestinian factions and its continued diplomatic drive to promote the peace process. Also of major importance was the Quartet's roadmap and Bush's personal commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. Now Sharon is determined to snuff out the glimmer of hope these efforts had revived.
'The other Israel'
By Omayma Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 1 - 7 January 2004
A new NGO attempts to build a case against Israeli racism. Omayma Abdel-Latif talked to the founders -- Where in the Middle East did a school principal get away with burning the New Testament in front of students? And in which country did a religious man say that a man's life is more important than a woman's? Was it Iran? Saudi Arabia?
The right answer is Israel, where teachers at religious schools, it turns out, urge their students to write to soldiers to encourage them to "kill as many Arabs as possible", and where an IDF officer at a checkpoint may use glass shards to carve a Star of David on a Palestinian's arm.
Israel's dark side, argue a group of Arab activists who have founded Arabs Against Discrimination (AAD), is rarely seen by the West. The horrors described above, and much else, are rarely reported in both Western and Arab media.
The new NGO, which is being launched today, will have as its primary objective the monitoring of the Israeli media in order to expose any content with a racist and discriminatory nature. It will also attempt to bridge the language gap between the West and the Arab world -- where very few people speak Hebrew -- by offering comprehensive overviews of what is being published in the Hebrew press.
Based on a personal initiative by Al-Ahram Board Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Nafie, who also heads the Arab Journalists Federation, a group of Arab activists have been laying down the groundwork for the project over the past six months.
The Occupation is Damned
By Robert Fisk, CounterPunch 12/31/2003
When the Innocent Die -- Cigarette sellers don't have names. They said he was called Fouad but even the shopkeeper whose nephew drove the wounded, screaming man to the hospital didn't know his family name.
There was just a pile of crushed Marlboro boxes and a lot of blood that had poured from his half-severed arm when the bomb went off in the middle of Karradah. It was aimed at the Americans of course, and, as so often happens, the Iraqis paid the price. None more so than the man in black trousers and white shirt who was torn apart by the explosion and whose crushed body was dragged off on a wooden cart. Another day in the life and death of Baghdad. As always, there were the odd little ironies of violence. The dead man--and nobody in Karradah knew him because he had arrived in a taxi--was on his way to the local bank to change currencies, from the old dinar notes with Saddam's face on them to the new dinars with the ancient Iraqi mathematician Al-Hassan Ibn al-Haitham in place of the captured dictator.
In one sense, therefore, the dead man had been making his way from "old Iraq" to "new Iraq" when he died. A cafe owner called Anwar al-Shaaban--the living always have names--thought the man might have been called Ahmed.
Then there was Yassir Adel. He was a 12-year-old schoolboy and he was taking his two brothers to school when the bomb exploded in the centre of the crowded highway. "The American patrol had just gone past and one of their vehicles was blasted over the road," he told me with a maturity beyond his years. "It's like that here these days--every day."
|
