Wreaking Havoc in Nablus
Editorial, Miftah 1/3/2004
It has been 14 days since Israel embarked on its latest invasion of the occupied city of Nablus. The largest West Bank city, Nablus was founded back in 72 AD by the Roman Emperor 'Titus' in honor of his father, 'Flavius Vespasian,' on the site of the Canaanite ancient village of Maborta. It was called 'Flavia Neapolis', the “New City,” until 636 AD when the Arabs took the town, changing its name to Nablus, but reserving its cultural and biblical significance.
Over the past seven days, Israeli troops have escalated their attacks. Imposing a strict curfew on the old city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers wasted no time in demolishing and dynamiting historical buildings, home to dozens of Palestinian families. The troops claim that they are looking for 'wanted' men supposedly hiding in tunnels, which leaves them no choice but to damage the ancient Arab city. Palestinian Minister of Labor Ghassan al-Khateeb on Saturday appealed to the United Nations, UNESCO and the world community to move swiftly to save Nablus’ historical treasures from destruction, yet his pleas have gone unanswered.
Palestinians Feel Isolated and Abandoned
By Linda S. Heard, Palestine Chronicle 1/4/2004
The anguish on the face of Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, who was recently heckled and assaulted by Palestinians inside one of Islam's holiest sites, the Al Aqsa mosque, serves as a symbol of a growing division between the Palestinians and the Arab world.
Looking at the attack from the point of view of the Egyptian government, its minister had travelled to Israel for the furtherance of the roadmap (remember that?) and met with the Israeli leader Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. The appalling treatment meted out to him was, therefore, shocking and inexcusable.
Expressed outrage: According to Egypt's English-language paper Ahram Weekly, the Chairman of the Egyptian Parliament's Arab Affairs Committee Ahmed Abu Zeid expressed outrage that Maher's attackers were Palestinians.
"The attackers even called the foreign minister a traitor and a collaborator. It is highly depressing that in Palestine there are some who think that Egypt is collaborating against them or that Maher is a traitor to their cause," Abu Zeid was quoted as saying.
'As long as we're caged, why not make us part of the zoo?'
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz 1/4/2004
The residents of the village of Al-Walajah want to sound out the Israeli government on the possibility of being granted prisoners rights, says Adnan al-Atrache, the deputy head of the village council and the chairman of Al-Walajah's Committee to Prevent House Demolitions. According to the plan of the separation fence now under construction, the village is set to be completely surrounded and will effectively become a prison compound. One of al-Atrache's neighbors doesn't think it's very funny, but al-Atrache retorts: "In prison you get food, cigarettes, electricity and water, and all for free, in addition to permission to walk in the yard - and that's exactly what we're asking for." Al-Atrache's wife points to the big park across the railway tracks in which lies Jerusalem's large Biblical Zoo. "As long as we're in a cage," she says, "maybe you'll annex us to the zoo?"
A visit to Al-Walajah, located in southern Jerusalem and within the city's municipal boundaries, raises only one hope - that the project of building the separation fence along its planned winding route is so fantastic and complicated that there is hardly any chance of implementing it. It's doubtful, however, whether the residents of the village, like those of dozens of other communities along the route of the fence, can make do with that hope.
Bravo To Those Who Refuse!!
Editorial, Montreal Muslim News 1/5/2004
Montreal- January 5, 2003 (MMN Editorial): On Sunday the Central District Military Court of the Israeli Defence Forces sentenced five young Israeli men to a one year prison term for their refusal to serve in the Israeli occupation army.
The five refuseniks include Noam Bahat, Hagai Matar, Adam Maor, Shimri Tsameret and Matan Kaminer.
In our opinion the sentence that these five men received is unduly harsh. First, because they have already been imprisoned for about a year, which in itself was unjust. In addition, in the past 30 years, no country priding itself as a democracy, as Israel so readily and frequently reminds the world that it is, has handed out such a severe punishment to conscientious objectors who refuse to serve an army on moral and ethical grounds. It is simply wrong that they should be punished in such a fashion for their strongly held convictions.
In its decision the court stated that the actions of the five refusers put a question mark over the justice and the morality of the army's actions and challenge the legitimacy of the state's behavior. The five, in fact, did not dispute this decision and stated in an impromptu press conference after the ruling that this was indeed their intention and that they are proud of their actions and that they will continue to challenge and speak out against the occupation until it ends.
Breeding grounds for hatred
By Shlomo Lahat, Ha'aretz 1/5/2004
Two weeks ago, together with my friend Brigadier General (res.) Yitzhak Elron, I visited 13 Israel Defense Forces checkpoints in Judea and Samaria, near the cities of Nablus, Tul Karm and Qalqilyah. The visit was conducted at the initiative of B'Tselem, and I must point out that the two people from B'Tselem who accompanied us throughout the visit did not try to influence us in any way. We saw and we formed impressions. And the impressions were very harsh.
The Palestinians arrive at one checkpoint by car, and there they have to get out in order to cross over by foot to the next checkpoint on the road. The distances are not small, sometimes several kilometers.
At one checkpoint we met four mothers with eight blind children aged 4-5 who were walking to Nablus for medical treatment. It was a hair-raising sight to see the little blind children marching along led by the women.
Some of the drivers of trucks or taxis commit crimes such as the attempt to bypass a route or a path. They are punished by the commander of the checkpoint, some 18-year-old soldier, who decides for how long to delay the vehicle. The wait can continue from four to 24 hours, or more. It's up to the checkpoint commander. We came across a convoy of 10 trucks driven by Israeli Arabs, who were bringing food to Nablus. A few kilometers before Nablus they were suddenly stopped, and told that entry into the city was forbidden. From the opposite direction came 10 trucks from Nablus in order to receive the food. They were stopped about 200 meters from the convoy coming from Israel. The local commander prohibited the transfer of the food. How long would the two convoys remain there - unknown.
The fear of civil war
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz 1/5/2004
The pictures of rusting shipping containers that the settlers call "outposts" show that all the people can be fooled all the time. Even though their own sit in the cabinet and hold key positions in the Knesset, the settlers have failed to establish "our right to the whole land of Israel." Even though trifles like the rule of law and the rights of the Palestinians do not stand in their way, it is only a small, vociferous minority that hides behind all the uproar. The citizens of Israel, among them Likud voters and ministers, are among the large majority of those who refuse civilian service in the territories. In spite of generous benefits designed to tempt Israelis seeking a house with a garden, 36 years of settlement have brought the ratio of Jews to Palestinians in the West Bank to only 1:10 (in the Gaza Strip it's 1:200). The areas most attractive to about half of all the 220,000 Israelis living in the West Bank are the blocs of settlement nearest the Green Line, which are those with the greatest chance to be annexed in case of an exchange of lands.
According to numbers provided by Peace Now, at least two-thirds of the rest of the settlers are families that sought to improve their quality of life at the time, and now are having trouble selling their homes. Among these prisoners of settlement are thousands of non-Zionist ultra-Orthodox who solved their housing problems in Bnei Brak by moving to Immanuel. According to a study conducted in June 2003 by the Hopp Research Company, headed by Dr. Micha Hopp (and facilitated by three professors from Tel Aviv University), 83 percent of all settlers are willing to leave the territories in exchange for compensation or alternative housing. Only 9 percent said that they might take illegal steps, including passive physical opposition, to prevent their evacuation. This is the "hard kernel," which includes no more than 5,000 adults. Only 1 percent, some 500 people, said they would go so far as to oppose evacuation violently.
Jibril Rajoub is back
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz 1/5/2004
A placard across the road at the entrance to Ramallah and Al-Bireh says: "Smile, you've entered the city of Al-Bireh." Indeed, were it not for the hardships at the Qalandiyah roadblock, and were it not for the headlines and photographs in the newspapers about the incessant bloodshed and destruction, one could well smile there. The streets in the new neighborhoods of these cities are wide, clean, and lined with hundreds of modern buildings, some of them large office buildings, hotels and apartment buildings surrounded by gardens. The office of Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian Authority's national security advisor, is situated in his former private home, which was hit by an Israeli tank shell. After a long absence, in which Rajoub underwent two operations to remove tumors, he returned to assume a central role beside Arafat. He sits in on all the important meetings, and judging by the way he was treated at the Fatah rally in A-Ram on Saturday, the senior Palestinian officials respect him deeply, and probably fear him as well. As head of the preventive security forces and as the West Bank strong man, Rajoub is known for keeping his men away from terrorist activity. Despite that, during Operation Defensive Shield about two years ago, the IDF demolished his headquarters in Bitouniya in West Ramallah and captured the Hamas activists who were detained there. Hamas, who regarded Rajoub as a bitter rival, accused him of turning the activists in to Israel.
At Herzliya, Sharon offered no strategy for peace
By Yossi Alpher, Daily Star 1/5/2004
There are a number of ways to look at Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Herzliya speech of Dec. 18, which appears to offer little good news and a lot more of the bad news we have become so used to in the past three years. The following “takes” on the speech are not mutually exclusive.
First, the good news. Sharon, along with many on the political right, appears finally to have understood the demographic problem and the dangers of direct ongoing occupation. He wants to disengage. The architect of the settlement movement in the West Bank and Gaza over the past 25 years is indicating that some settlements will have to be “redeployed.” While he clearly still does not comprehend the minimal territorial needs of a viable Palestinian state and studiously avoids relying publicly on demographic arguments (instead, emphasizing immigration), if and when he does carry through on his commitment to disengage and remove even a single settlement, this will be an extremely important and positive precedent.
Now for the other takes on Sharon’s new policy. The first and most obvious is that Sharon is simply keeping up with the times, but has no near-term intention of acting on his words. Just as he disciplined himself in recent months and years to adopt the term “Palestinian state” and criticize the “occupation,” so now he has embraced “disengagement.” He places an extremely high premium on representing a broad consensus of Israeli opinion, and he knows this is what the public wants to hear. The advent of the Geneva Initiative and the frenzied response of the Israeli right – with every senior political figure espousing his or her new plan, and most advocating disengagement – precipitated this development.
Dean Staff Addresses Comments on Israel, Both Real and Distorted
By Matthew E. Berger, Miftah 1/5/2004
An e-mail smear campaign distorting Howard Dean’s positions on Israel, coupled with the candidate’s genuine gaffes, has his staff working overtime to persuade Jewish voters that he is committed to Israel. “Even-handed is not a way anyone fairly describes Howard Dean,” said Stu Brody, chairman of the Democratic Rural Conference in New York and a former liaison between the Vermont governor and Jewish leaders. “His commitment to Israel is as strong as anyone’s.” The former Vermont governor’s now famous comment that he would support an “even-handed” approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict led more than a few Jewish community leaders to fret that Dean would push Israel to make risky concessions for peace.
The e-mail campaign this fall — denounced by the Anti-Defamation League as a distortion of Dean’s record — accuses Dean of having “promised” to “no longer support Israel the way it has in the past under both Democratic and Republican presidents.” “In his own words, he will insist that the United States be ‘even handed,’ ” said the unsigned e-mail. “I urge you that if you have any love for America and Israel you should not and cannot vote for Howard Dean for the office of president.” The e-mails have had an effect, and national Jewish organizations report fielding calls from constituents worried about Dean’s record.
Brody and other Jews close to Dean insist that the U.S. approach to Israel would not significantly change under Dean’s watch, and that Dean is a strong supporter of Israel’s security.
....Dean has called Hamas terrorists “soldiers,” a term that some say legitimizes the group. Dean used the term on CNN in defending Israel’s right to single out Hamas leaders for targeted killings, and his campaign says the word reinforces the argument that terrorists are legitimate military targets.
Geneva Accord: Analysis of the Bankruptcy
By Paul Burrows, Miftah 1/5/2004
It's hard to talk about the provisions of the recent Geneva Accord, and offer some kind of analysis without reference to the facts on the ground -- right now -- inside Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It's hard to talk about the accord without also talking about the 120 Palestinians, including over twenty children, who have been killed since October 4th, when the last suicide attack inside Israel occurred.
It's hard to weigh the pros and cons of the Geneva Accord without mentioning the new "settlement" that is being built outside Israel's borders -- begun since the accord was first unveiled in mid-October -- which is helping to complete a ring of Jewish-only colonies around Arab East Jerusalem, cutting the centre of Palestinian economic, political, religious, and cultural life off from the rest of the population, and making the whole concept of a viable Palestinian state into an increasingly bad joke.
And it's hard to calmly and carefully talk about the accord, without talking about other "facts on the ground" -- like the proposed 600-kilometer "apartheid wall" that is being built as we speak, which will turn the West Bank into the world's largest prison. But without understanding this context of repression and violence, without recognizing this ongoing process of colonization and military occupation, we will never understand the Geneva Accord itself, nor comprehend the real reasons for its inevitable and predictable failure.
[See also: Assessing the Geneva Accord: Last gasp of the two-state solution? Or the latest smoke & mirrors to sell apartheid? Part I by Paul Burrows, ZNet, 12/21/03 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=4738]
We are all soldiers at checkpoints
By Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz 1/4/2004
The terminology used to be routine and clear: Whenever a unit of the Israel Defense Forces completed a mission - be it the aerial bombing of refugee camps in Lebanon, shelling terrorist headquarters in Syria or attacking missile sites in Egypt - the media would report that "our forces returned safely to their bases." The missions were part of a universal consensus and their success - they were always considered successful - was our collective success. The term "our forces" encapsulated the spirit of the time - the broad consensus, the concept of the IDF as "the people's army," the shared national pride and concern.
Rivers of blood have flowed since then - mostly for no good reason; and the attitude toward the IDF has become more cautious and suspicious. Not all its operations have been automatically sanctified, and Israeli society has become more skeptical. These are all positive developments; and their result - the term, "our forces," was eliminated from the public agenda. A capricious attempt some two years ago by the former director of Israel Radio, Amnon Nadav, to restore the glory of yesteryear by ordering radio announcers to use the term, "our forces," in newscasts failed. The term did not catch on again, perhaps because it's something of a problem to say: "Our forces killed three Palestinian children this morning."
Israeli invasion of Nablus continues
Editorial, Palestine Monitor 1/5/2004
The West bank city of Nablus has now been under constant attack for 20 days. On Saturday, four Palestinians were killed and a fifth left brain-dead after being shot in the head with live ammunition. This brings the number of Palestinians killed in Nablus during this offensive to 14 and counting. Israeli soldiers have attacked peaceful demonstrations and even a funeral.
The old city in Nablus has repeatedly been subjected to a total curfew. Many families have forced to leave their homes by occupying forces, while those that remain are frequently confined to their houses for days at a time by a military closure that is enforced with reckless violence and a casual disregard for human life.
With the local population trapped in their homes, Israeli troops have set about destroying significant sections of the city’s architectural heart. In the last two days, soldiers have begun dynamiting sections of the old city claiming they were searching for Palestinian militants hiding in tunnels beneath these buildings. In the process they have systematically destroyed a number a buildings of great architectural and historical value, although not a single militant was found in the old city during the search.
|
