Nablus – Another Nakba – January 2003
By Anne Gwynne, Palestine Media Center, January 14, 2003
If crossing Kalandia and on to Ramallah brought tears, then traveling to Nablus from Ramallah by UPMRC ambulance is beyond tears, beyond words, beyond description, beyond anything I could have imagined experiencing. All senses are numbed, you ride on a sea of despair...The roads are empty - for Palestinians are not allowed to travel in their own country. On the Western side of the huge dual carriageway, miles and miles of ‘confiscated land’ lie empty - with every living thing removed by order of the illegal Israeli Occupation Force. The East side is garlanded with miles of high electrified fencing - barriers which enclose the thousands of illegal houses of the illegal Israeli occupiers. We face roadblock after roadblock, wait after wait, search after search of the ambulance with the icy wind blowing in through the thrown-open doors. Everything is removed from the ambulance and everyone ordered out – except me with my bulletproof EU passport. Desperately ill patients lie on the roadside in the rain – the wet cold chills to the bone. Doctors and drivers are insulted and bullied by insolent Israeli soldiers. At one roadblock, a young soldier spent 10 minutes picking at his spots in our door-mirror, while his mates searched the ambulance. At the Huwarah checkpoint (the last before we reached Nablus) an ambulance from the other direction was stopped and held for 30 minutes with its maximum emergency indicators going. Our ambulance waited 25 minutes there – I thought this was a long time; later in my stay I would consider this a short wait.

One way trip to nowhere
By John Chuckman, YellowTimes, January 10, 2003
(YellowTimes.org) – As of this writing, since the beginning of December, Israeli soldiers have killed about 70 Palestinians. These homicides, committed by some of best armed and equipped soldiers in the world, included children and an old woman. They came after Israel's wanton destruction of basic day-to-day civilian infrastructure in reoccupying much of the West Bank and suppression of economic activity, acts that have generated conditions comparable to a Great Depression. Under these circumstances, how is anyone surprised that once again, some Palestinians blow themselves up in Israel? Can there be the smallest doubt that Mr. Sharon's policies are "a one-way trip to nowhere"? In news of Israel's reprisal measures, I read that some buildings in Gaza were destroyed, supposedly containing weapons-making facilities. I could only shake my head. Is it remotely plausible, in the course of his many destructive rampages, that Mr. Sharon has left standing even a potential weapons-manufacturing facility in Gaza? Would it have been left standing on the promise of good behavior? Perhaps Israel's policy of "pinpoint targeting" -- that is Israel's euphemism for assassinating mere suspects, a policy only this week given another ringing public endorsement by Mr. Sharon -- had wiped out every person capable of running the facility, and it had been spared? Or was it discovered only within hours of the bombing? Can it be possible that Israel's army has anything less than the most exquisitely detailed maps of every building, bomb crater, and broken water pipe in Gaza?

Blair is dangerously wrong about this US government
By Martin Kettle, The Guardian, January 14, 2003
The prime minister has a case on Iraq. But Washington isn't listening -- Tony Blair is neither wicked nor stupid. This puts those of us who disagree with his Iraq policy under an obligation. We need to do better than merely caricature his policy or insult him. We need to show why his assessment is wrong. Though Blair speaks often now about Iraq, he rarely does so candidly. Much remains merely implied, especially about the relationship with Washington. Even at yesterday's press conference, he certainly concealed more than he revealed. In some ways it is as hard to get an absolutely clear overall picture of Blair's views on Iraq as about Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes themselves. Blair's most recent remarks on Iraq came in his new year message, in his speech to British ambassadors a week ago, in the first prime minister's questions of 2003 and now in yesterday's Downing Street press conference. Through all of them there has run a pronounced vein of pessimism. It first caught the headlines in the new year message, which spoke of unprecedented dangers and difficulties.

The Sketch: Are we going in? The PM replies with his weapons of mass obfuscation
By Simon Carr, The Independent, January 14, 2003
During the Prime Minister's monthly press conference, Andrew Marr, the BBC's political editor, asked a question of such clarity and gravity I could hardly hear what he was saying. Never heard anything like it, certainly not in parliament. He genuinely expected to be answered. The novelty was deafening. His question has often been asked in the House of Commons but no one expected it to produce anything useful in reply. Marr asked the Prime Minister whether he believed he had UN authorisation to invade Iraq, whether or not the weapons inspectors found the famous smoking gun. It is the fascinating question. Is Tony Blair going to invade Iraq without UN approval? He has always said the UN's authority must be upheld, so naturally we assume he'd ignore it when the time came. But knowing that he would defy it in the future means that he must ostentatiously kowtow to it now to bolster the UN's authority in the long term.

Israel in a prison of fear
By Hassan Tahsin, Arab News, January 14, 2003
Politics in Israel these days is a fierce battle between the generals of terrorism and the falcons of extremist policies which drives us to believe that a change in the governing structure of the Jewish state is at hand. The need for change has become more pressing in light of the recession afflicting the Israeli economy. There is a rise in unemployment which in turn is spreading deviance among the working force and young people inside Israel. The downturn in Israel began with the explosive Aqsa intifada more than two years ago — triggered by the butcher Ariel Sharon who later became the elected prime minister. It is certain that the continuation of the intifada has pushed Sharon into excessive monstrosity. To squash the uprising he is using the army with the result that Israeli society is suffering economically and psychologically. This is a reality and not an assumption. There are enough warning signals. On the economic front, the Yedihot Ahronot newspaper says: The deteriorating situation has hit the Israeli tourism and leisure sector. A number of hotels and restaurants and cafes are deserted and an Israeli study has revealed that in the last two years one thousand cafes and restaurants have been closed due to the Palestinian suicide bombings. According to the president of the Union of Israeli Chambers of Commerce Glizman, the Israeli economy will need a number of years to get back into shape and all this is due to the wrong policies of the government.

Schlieffen plan
Editorial, Arab News, January 14, 2003
The twentieth century, which was to prove the bloodiest in history, began with a timetable. The Schlieffen plan called for the mustering of one and a half million German troops on the Belgian and French frontiers. This vast deployment in 1914 at the start of World War I, was made possible by precise railway timetabling. When, in the hours before this most pointless of wars actually began, the German Kaiser had second thoughts, he was told it was too late to stop the vast synchronized movement of men and materiel. In the next four years, 10 million people were to die, 20 million wounded and the seeds sown for further conflict which would cost many millions more dead. Is the United States operating its own Schlieffen plan at the start of the 21st century ? The military build-up against Iraq continues steadily but the reasons for a war do not. Everything depends upon the findings of the UNMOVIC inspectors in Iraq. Now a senior official at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with whom the UNMOVIC inspectors are working, has said that neither his organization nor UNMOVIC believes that comprehensive inspections will be completed within a year.

Ethnic Cleansing: Some Common Reactions
By Ran HaCohen, Dissident Voice, January 13, 2003
My previous column – "Ethnic Cleansing: Past, Present and Future" – attracted more reactions than any other. Some of them were supportive and encouraging, for which I am grateful. Many were outraged and even offensive, for which I am even more grateful: not just for enriching my English vocabulary in certain semantic fields (I have been called everything from "anti-Semitic renegade" to "stupid dump ass"), but for reassuring me that I am not wasting my time writing for those who agree with me anyway. Almost all the fire was aimed at my claim regarding the ethnic cleansing carried out by Israel in 1948. These copious reactions reaffirm my argument that this is still a taboo in pro-Israeli discourse. Even when protesting the present "quiet" ethnic cleansing in the Occupied Territories or warning of future Israeli intentions is tolerated, saying that Israel owes its existence as a Jewish State to ethnic cleansing is evidently beyond the pale. As I said, fighting the present strangulation of the Palestinians should be the top priority of any peace activity on the ground; but on the level of consciousness, coming to terms with the ethnic cleansing of 1948 is an inevitable precondition for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. In spite of the heated tone of many reactions, not many of them were seriously argumentative. Several readers want me to stop criticising Israel and to focus on Palestinian terrorism instead. I get this advice regularly, as if Palestinian terrorism were a never-heard-of scoop just waiting for me to discover.

This conference won't help the Palestinians
By Adrian Hamilton, The Independent, January 14, 2003
And what we are telling them, and will tell them today, is a lie. It is simply wrong to lead them to believe that the reason Washington doesn't sympathise with their case and the Israelis reject it is because their leadership is poor or their administration corrupt, however true that may be. --
An Armenian friend of mine surprised me the other day by seizing my wrist and declaring that he couldn't "sleep some nights just thinking of the unfairness of it". He wasn't talking about the plight of his own people – although Heaven knows the Armenians have reason to feel the injustice of fate – but about the Palestinians. What he would say now that we are adding humiliation to injury with today's conference to further "Palestinian Reform", I hate to think. Cast aside the fact that the Palestinians are in a state of virtual siege in their own land. Never mind that their representatives have been prevented from coming to the meeting, that the Americans have said it is pointless before the Israeli election and that the Israelis themselves have refused to have any part in it. Yet still we are going ahead with a meeting formally aimed at discussing how the Palestinians can reform their structures, remove corruption from their practices and become more disciplined in their behaviour. Like schoolboys in an unruly fifth form, they have been told that they have to prove that they can be properly behaved before they can expect to get any privileges. Only they are not schoolchildren, they are a people, most of whose land is occupied, three million of whom are under Israeli control and whose chances of achieving any kind of viable or peaceful civic life have been made impossible by the terms of their daily existence.

Israel Won't Let Us Reform
By Yasser Abed Rabbo, Washington Post, January 14, 2003
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Israel's most recent excuse for why it cannot negotiate peace with the Palestinians is that the Palestinians have been unable to develop a fully democratic society while living under Israeli occupation. This excuse is better known as "reform." And yet, when Palestinians are invited to go to London to further the reform process, the government of Israel prevents us from doing so. Yes, Palestinians are expected to reform, but no, we are not supposed to succeed at it. The truth is that Israel's purported interest in reform is merely an attempt to divert the world's attention from the crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Israel's 35-year occupation of Palestinian territory and the denial of Palestinian freedom. Never mind the occupation. Never mind the assassinations, the home demolitions, the continuing theft of Palestinian land and water resources and the "curfews" under which entire populations are held hostage in their homes by the threat of a bullet should they go in search of food or medicine. Never mind the sadistic Israeli soldiers ordering civilians at gunpoint to strip naked or to beat their friends or to pick their fate from a "lottery" with tickets labeled "broken arm" or "broken leg." None of this is relevant to Middle East peace, goes the new Israeli narrative. All that is relevant is that the Palestinians reform their political institutions.

The surplus votes of hatred deal
By Avirama Golan, Ha'aretz, January 14, 2003
How amazing. Terror, recession, unemployment and twisted economic priorities - none of it has managed to pry Likud voters out of their political homes and make them slide into the other bloc, headed by the Labor Party. It briefly appeared that the corruption scandals would shake the foundations, but political logic works differently in Israel. Apparently, the Likud - which absurdly raises two flags of a ruling party headed by someone who grew up in Mapai and enjoys power and all the best the country has to offer yet heads a body that rails against the elite - will recover some of its power. That contradiction should have shaken up the left and made it clear to it, again, that the political fault line runs through hidden areas it has yet to identify. But that didn't happen. On the contrary, in contravention of any sociological logic, the left continues to rely on the academic and economic elite, while the right counts on what has become known in recent years as "the People." Even when the left is weak and lacks all influence, it is still tagged with the faded brand of historical Mapai. Now, after a small group of pensioners and kibbutzniks elected a tribal leader to their liking, Labor is finding it even more difficult to crack the conundrum.