Israel’s designs in Africa aim to encircle Egypt
By Hassan Tahsin, Arab News, January 29, 2003
Last week we spoke of Israel’s machinations in Africa. These aimed to threaten Egypt from the south. Africa was not, however, willing to be used — not least because of the help Egypt had given during its own struggle to achieve independence. Egypt’s support to Africa greatly hindered Israel’s plan to threaten Egypt, either in the Great Lakes region or in Ethiopia where the Nile’s tributaries originate. Israel has worked to foster conflict between the African countries and Egypt and also between them and Arab countries. Israel took an important role in aiding the separatist southern Sudanese revolutionaries and led the American administration into viewing Sudan a terrorist country. Following America’s invasion of Afghanistan as part of the war on terrorism and Washington’s announcement that Iraq was up next, Israel rushed to interfere in one way or another, especially when Washington had failed to gather an international alliance to strike Iraq. In July 2002, a CIA delegation visited a number of French- speaking Central African countries where a number of ideas and projects were proposed with the aim of helping the countries. Then the countries were invited to participate in a war against Iraq — after assuring the political leadership of Washington’s determination to strike Iraq in any case. African participation would of course be rewarded for assisting Washington.

Academic Boycott: In Support of Paris VI
By Tanya Reinhart, Dissident Voice, January 29, 2003
In April 2002, following the Israel's "operation" in Jenin, first calls for institutional academic boycott of Israeli universities appeared in England and in France.  The British petition called to freeze European Union contracts with Israeli university as long as Israel continues its present policy.  What started as the individual voice of concerned academics, has become lately a formal resolution of a French university.  The Administrative council (board of Governors) of the prestigious Marie Curie university - Paris VI issued  in its meeting of December 16, 2002 the following resolution: "The Israeli occupation of territories in the West Bank and Gaza renders it impossible for our Palestinian colleagues in higher education to teach or pursue their research: the renewal of the European Union-Israel Association Agreement, in particular as regards research (6th Framework Program for Community RTD) is a form of support for the current political policies of the State of Israel and would contravene Article 2 of this agreement (relationships between the parties, as well as all the stipulations of this agreement, which are based on the observance of human rights and democratic principles guiding their domestic and foreign policies and which are a key feature of this agreement)" (Paris VI university press release) This decision raised an enormous storm in France.  Bodies ranging from the Jewish Lobby, to conservative parties all came up with the standard anti-Semitism accusations. "Several hundred protesters, including the philosophers Bernard Henri-Lèvy and Alain Finkielkraut, a leading Paris politician, the Nazi-hunting lawyer Arno Klarsfeld and Roger Cukier, the president of the Jewish umbrella organisation CRIF, waved banners and chanted slogans outside the campus entrance" (Guardian Jan 7, 2003). Threats of potential consequences and budgetary cuts if the university does not retract its decision came from official governmental sources.  Under this pressure a second discussion of the resolution was scheduled for this week.

Noam Chomsky
By Noam Chomsky, The Guardian, February 3, 2003
There's never been a time that I can think of when there's been such massive opposition to a war before it was even started. And the closer you get to the region, the higher the opposition appears to be. In Turkey polls indicated close to 90% opposition, in Europe it's quite substantial.
In the United States the figures you see in polls, however, are quite misleading because since September there's been a drumbeat of propaganda trying to bludgeon people into the belief that not only is Saddam a terrible person but in fact he's going to come after us tomorrow unless we stop him today. And that reaches people. They have to terrify the population to feel there's some enormous threat to their existence and carry out a miraculous, decisive and rapid victory over this enormous foe and march on to the next one. Remember the people now running the show in Washington are mostly recycled Reaganites, essentially reliving the script of the 1980s. So one year it was an airbase in Grenada which the Russians were going to use to bomb the US. Nicaragua was "two days marching time from Texas". Nicaragua might conquer us on its way to conquer the hemisphere. A national emergency was called because of the threat posed to national security by Nicaragua.

Double whammy
Editorial, Arab News, January 30, 2003
President Bush’s State of the Union address and the Israeli election results are a bitter double whammy for the Middle East. They are the worst of news, crushing any hopes of peace in the region. Bush’s address makes it plain that war over Iraq is moving inexorably closer. Ariel Sharon’s election victory means no change in the present bankrupt Israeli policy of confrontation with the Palestinians: there will be no peace deal, no end to Israeli violence in the occupied territories, no end to suicide bombs in Israel. The only glimmer of light is that whatever coalition Sharon manages to pull together is bound be weak and divisive, and probably fall apart within a couple of years, maybe less. But so much blood is going to flow between now and then, so much pain, so much destruction; and all because the Israelis have chosen a leader who is hellbent on smashing the Palestinians into abject submission.

Now Sharon can do just what he likes
By Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, January 30, 2003
'The bulldozer' is all-powerful, so why does he seem so reticent? -- Now we may get to see the true face of Ariel Sharon. His crushing victory in the early hours of yesterday morning has given the Israeli people, and the wider world, a chance at last to see what this man really wants.
For not only has Sharon become the first incumbent Israeli prime minister since the 1980s to be re-elected, he has been handed a triple mandate: he, his Likud party and the wider "national camp" have all triumphed. Commanding nearly 70 seats in the 120-member Knesset, the Israeli right is now free to do what it likes, unfettered by the need to compromise with the dovish left. For two years it had to share power in a "national unity" government with Labour; now it can be true to itself. Except Sharon seems oddly bashful about seizing his moment to break free. "Today is not the time for celebrations - no celebrations," he insisted, as he sought to hush cheering supporters at Likud headquarters. It turns out the man they once called "the bulldozer" is fearful of his newly acquired might.

The recolonisation of Iraq cannot be sold as liberation
By Seumas Milne , The Guardian, January 30, 2003
Of course most Iraqis don't want their country invaded and occupied -- Tony Blair's government is running scared of the British people and their stubborn opposition to war on Iraq. The latest panic measure is to try to ban what has been trailed as the biggest demonstration in British political history from Hyde Park, where a giant anti-war rally is planned for February 15. As the US administration accelerates its drive to war, its most faithful cheerleader is having to run ever faster to keep up. Never mind that every single alleged chemical or biological weapons storage site mentioned in Blair's dossier last year has been inspected and found to have been clean; or that the weapons inspectors reported this week that Iraq had cooperated "rather well"; or that most UN member states regard Hans Blix's unanswered questions as a reason to keep inspecting, rather than launch an unprovoked attack. Jack Straw nevertheless rushed to declare Iraq in material breach of its UN obligations and fair game for the 82nd airborne.

No Beginning or End to War 
By Günter Grass, Common Dreams/The Guardian, January 29, 2003
War is looming. Once again war looms. Or is war only being threatened so as to stop war coming? Does the limiting word "only" mean that this is just a mock threat, this staged build-up of US and British troops and ships on the Arabian peninsula and in the Red sea, with its supply of pictures to the media of overwhelming military might? As soon as one of the world's two dozen dictators has crumbled into exile or preferably is dead, will this all turn out to be a show of force which brought peace and can vanish away again? Hardly. This looming war is a wanted war. It is already going on in the heads of the planners, in the world's stock exchanges, and in what seem to be forward-dated TV programs. The enemy target is in the sights. He has been named and - along with other enemies on the stocks who will be targeted and named next - he fits the bill for those who want to conjure a danger so grim that it undermines careful reflection. We know how people create enemies where none exists. We know, and have plenty of pictures to illustrate it, what happens in war when the target is not quite hit. We are familiar with the words for damage and casualties which we are told to accept as inevitable. We are used to the relatively small number of its own dead that the world's number one ruling power has to count and mourn while the mass of enemy dead, including women and children, go uncounted and are not worth mourning.

The Palestinian Dialogue in Cairo
By Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, January 30, 2003
Finally, the Palestinians are meeting in Cairo to consider their next moves. The meeting, which for quite a while was meant to only settle differences on how to handle the Intifada between Hamas and Islamic Jihad, on the one side, and Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA) on the other, has now been enlarged to include twelve Palestinian factions, including Damascus-based hardliners such as PFLP-General Command of Ahmad Jibril. Egypt, which had been pushing for this meeting for months now, will apparently be trying to secure the approval of the participants for a one-year unilateral truce, with cessation of all forms of violence against the Israelis, by way of preparing the grounds for the resumption of the long-stalled peace talks. Since the eruption of the Intifada, in September 2000, every effort to reconcile the Palestinian and the Israeli positions demanded that the Palestinians stop their violence against the Israelis first. That was the case with the Mitchel Report, the Tenet understandings, the Zinni recommendations and the frozen road map of the quartet. None of these "peace plans" has ever seen the light, in spite of the fact that the PNA had promptly accepted the terms of every one of the said plans and kept declaring ceasefires.

The voters' will
Editorial, Ha'aretz, January 30, 2003
The Israeli electorate has once again - for the third year and second election in a row - entrusted its fate to Ariel Sharon. A majority of the voters were not influenced by the prime minister's failure to end the conflict with the Palestinians, or by his lack of success in coping with the severe economic crisis; and now they have given him a stronger parliamentary base (37 seats, compared to the 19 that the Likud headed by Benjamin Netanyahu received in 1999). The grim situation actually freed Sharon of the need to present any achievements when asking for a renewed mandate from the voters. The Israeli public has lost faith in the Palestinian leadership and is frustrated by the ongoing terror attacks and the Palestinians' support for violent resistance. In addition, the leadership crises among the leftist parties, and especially in Labor, caused more than 1.25 million eligible voters living in Israel to decide not to go to the polls.

Mahmoud is Dead - Mahmoud is Dead
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle, January 29, 2003
"I wish I could say that Mahmoud died with a smile on his face. He didn’t. He was in so much pain. Moments after his death, hundreds of people broke the siege and rushed to his family’s home .." -- Mahmoud Amer Turkman is a friend of mine. He never spoke a word to me. He couldn’t. A bullet left a hole in his throat wide open. He only gestured, but between his hands and eyes, he could do miracles. I can testify to that. I wrote about it several times in the past. I wrote about it in April of last year when I first met Mahmoud. He was jammed with several other Palestinians in a Jordanian hospital room. He, and one other young man were the only wounded from the Jenin refugee camp that were allowed to leave the Occupied Territories. The distance between Jenin and Amman is a few hours drive. But it took Mahmud 22 days to finally reach his destination. His resilient ambulance driver carried him from a tiny Jericho clinic in the West Bank to the West Bank’s border with Jordan, now controlled by Israel, 22 times. Each time, the Israelis would interrogate Mahmoud. He had nothing to say. Finally he was allowed entry. He arrived to Jordan after he had lost half of his body weight, waiting at the border. He slept on his hospital bed, light as a feather, lost in what seemed to be a massive hospital gown. I also wrote about Mahmoud then, appealing to the world to help him. His doctors said that the bullet had destroyed much of his lungs, broke its way to his back and left him completely paralyzed. They said that advanced medical technology in Europe would help save his life. Mahmoud and his family waited to hear from me. They prayed for a miracle, for a living conscience. I had nothing for them, but my own prayers.

People and Politics: 'On the Road Map,' with Meridor as Shimon Peres
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, January 30, 2003 
Ariel Sharon knows very well why it's more important than ever for the Labor Party to come back to his government. This time he doesn't need Shimon Peres and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer merely for the purpose of "neighbor practice," meaning as human shields against external pressure on Sharon to be restrained in the war against the Palestinians. Sharon needs their support to rebuff internal pressures, from "social" coalition partners like Shas and One Nation, who oppose budgetary constraint. The prime minister understand that it's impossible to expect the chairman of the opposition, MK-elect Amram Mitzna, to order the largest opposition faction to abstain a second time in a vote for a budget cut that hurts the weak and that doesn't barely touch the settlers.

Bush marches onward in splendid isolation
By William Wallace, Financial Times, January 29, 2003
An American president's State of the Union message has to address two audiences: one within the US, one outside. President George W. Bush may have rallied the support of heartland America but the faith-based rhetoric that appeals to Republicans in the American south and west will not have reassured his audiences elsewhere. The president declared his determination to lead a coalition to disarm Saddam Hussein, if necessary. The popular phrase in Washington is that "if we lead, others will follow". The governments of other states, however, need a persuasive rationale to carry their people with them, more than a reassertion of the primacy of American power and of the superior virtues of the US. Tony Blair, the British prime minister, has appealed to shared values across the Atlantic to justify the UK's solidarity with its American ally. Yet there was little in Mr Bush's speech that appealed to universal values, to the importance of international law and institutions that could win foreign support for US action against Iraq.