Vote against peace
Editorial, Arab News, February 3, 2003
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s resounding election victory has reshaped Israel’s political map and has handed the Israeli premier a strong mandate to continue his hard-edged approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The poll was also where the last efforts of the champions of the Oslo peace accords were annihilated. With his smashing victory over the left-of-center Labour Party, Sharon is now in a position to do precisely what his rightist Likud Party officially demands: To prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sharon would now easily have majority support in the Knesset to expel Yasser Arafat — a step he has said he wants to take — and to accelerate the already rapid growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. He is free to tighten the already harsh restrictions on the more than three million Palestinians who live there. Apparently, Sharon’s election victory has propelled him much closer to the state of affairs he envisions for Israelis and Palestinians alike. He has said he will accept an eventual Palestinian state that would occupy less than half of the West Bank — and none of Jerusalem — and be demilitarized. Israel would control its airspace. He envisions the borders of this state as being made final in perhaps 10 years.

The Empire Strikes Back: Sharon and Settlers Destroy the Infrastructure of Palestinian Existence
By Neve Gordon and Catherine Rottenberg, Dissident Voice, February 3, 2003
Nine Palestinian farmers were taken to the nearby military base. When they arrived soldiers jumped on them, tied their hands behind their backs and fixed a piece of cloth around their eyes.  They were led to a deserted area in the base and told to sit on the ground, while the soldiers threatened, and cursed them, hour after hour. Whoever dared to ask why he was being held, requested to go to the bathroom, or complained in any way, was kicked, slapped, or held down with his head to the ground. The farmers, turned prisoners’ only offence was an unsuccessful attempt to plow their land. This incident is part of the ongoing campaign carried out by the Israeli government and the Jewish settlers; a campaign whose major objective is to undermine the infrastructure of existence of the occupied Palestinians, so that they, in turn, will bow down to Israeli demands and give up the claims to their land -- it is a struggle against what the Palestinians call Tzumud, which means the "close and relentless attachment" to the land, their home. Throughout this past summer, the settlers -- often aided by the Israeli military -- obstructed the harvesting of olives, grapes and other crops, and now that the time for tilling the soil has arrived, they are not allowing many Palestinians to reach their fields so that in the spring there will be nothing to harvest.

The road back from page 9
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, February 3, 2003
After the previous elections, in one of the debates as to whether Labor should join Sharon's government, which have become an inseparable part of Israel's political ritual, Shimon Peres warned his friends about the cruel fate awaiting them in the opposition: "Running after reporters for a headline at the bottom of page nine." Indeed, during the 18 months that followed, Peres - as foreign minister in Sharon's cabinet - was frequently a front-page item. In some cases headlines heralded his successes in marketing peace plans to the prime minister, and in others they relayed how Sharon had circumvented him. Oddly enough, after he paid such a heavy price for the dubious honor of being Sharon's PR specialist, life in the opposition still seems ominous to a man like him. Peres belongs to a select group of statesmen who have the power to change things without needing a title or a job-description to do so. He himself has said that he waits for no one's permission to work for peace, and that he does not care if he is dubbed "a tireless subverter." Instead of squabbling with his ranch buddy, Peres could have used the last two years to negotiate with Ramallah and Cairo - from the opposition benches. Instead of taking insult after insult from his government partner Tzachi Hanegbi for "the Oslo crimes," the Nobel Prize laureate could have devoted his time to diplomatic efforts in Washington and Brussels.

Gaza’s Bombs Echoed in Cairo
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle, February 3, 2003
"Arguing that Israel was indeed after a few rusting tools that produced homemade rockets is as ridiculous as claiming that the United States intends to attack Iraq to bestow peace and democracy on the Arab republic .." -- (PalestineChronicle.com) - Did Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon order the Gaza onslaught on Saturday, Jan 25 to guarantee a landslide victory in the Israel elections, two days later? Yes, although the relationship might not be as obvious to some. First, let’s be clear on something. Unlike what the “leftist” Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported as a matter of fact, the attack on Gaza, which killed 13 people, wounded 50 and left nearly 100 shops and homes burned to the ground was not “meant to put and end to Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks on the Negev and settlements inside the Strip.” (“IDF kills 13 Palestinians in biggest operation in Gaza since start of Intifada,” Haaretz, Jan 27, 2003).

An Open Letter To President Bush
By Jaffer Ali, Palestine Chronicle, February 3, 2003 
(PalestineChronicle.com) - Mr. President, I write today with a heavy heart after listening closely to your State of the Union speech. As a first-generation American of Arab and Muslim descent, I feel peculiarly qualified to express not just my thoughts..but my feelings about your speech. On my office wall hangs a framed reproduction of The Declaration of Independence. In fact, every office I have ever sat in had this same framed reproduction, cut from the July 4th issue of The Chicago Tribune in 1976; the two hundredth anniversary of our nation's independence. It has been these stirring words and ideals that have animated my heart and soul ever since I first read the words. Freedom and the inalienable rights of Man are not just words for me; they are the very reason for living. In your speech, you spoke about war with Iraq. You spoke the words of freedom, but somehow they seemed...false. Why? Freedom is not a thing bestowed to a people as a gift from Uncle Sam. The "gift" is even more awkward when it comes wrapped with an invasion force of 250,000 US soldiers, carpet-bombing and missiles raining from the sky. You cannot give the Iraqi people their freedom at the barrel of an American gun. The Iraqi people must earn their own freedom if it is to be worth more than words.

Shimon Peres: a political obituary
By Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Daily Star, February 3, 2003
It was sad to watch former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres laboring to explain away the crushing defeat his Labor Party suffered in Israel’s elections. The Noble Peace Prize laureate, who shortly celebrates his 80th birthday, had received yet another defeat, a disaster for him, but a worse disaster for Israel, which is reduced to seeking salvation at the hands of a man regarded as a war criminal, even among Israelis. Peres may be guilty of many war crimes himself. One cannot remain at the top of Israeli politics for that long and be innocent of such crimes ­ all those conquests, usurpations, torture, wanton destruction and theft of property, massacres, assassinations, murders of war prisoners and flouting of international conventions. Even a bystander would start to feel guilty, let alone someone who was there, at the top, and in the thick of it all. On top of that, Peres is guilty of no mean amounts of hypocrisy. I still vividly recall my first (and only) close encounter with him in London in the late 1980s, when he visited as prime minister in the schizophrenic government in which he shared power with ultra-right-winger Yitzhak Shamir. Just as he did in the outgoing government of Ariel Sharon (and to some extent in the Yitzhak Rabin administration of the early 1990s), Peres then tried to project the nice face of an ugly system. Speaking at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, he gave an extremely conciliatory presentation, pleading passionately for peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors, whom he described as “our cousins.” Peres expressed his deep regret that the Arabs continued to refuse to talk to Israel. Like all Israeli politicians at the time, his Arab “cousins” curiously did not appear to include the Palestinians. He wanted peace with Arab states that did not have any quarrel with him in the first place ­ if it were not for the crimes Israel committed and continued to commit against the Palestinians.

Yes, That Really Was the President of the United States
By Alexander Cockburn, Dissident Voice, January 29, 2003
One has to go back to the lesser Roman emperors of the second century to find an imperial suzerain as dismal as Bush. Tuesday's was surely the worst State of the Union address to Congress in the past thirty years, as the commander-in-chief stumbled through a thicket of brazen fictions towards the proposed rendezvous with destiny of February 5, the day Secretary of State Colin Powell is scheduled to make his way to the United Nations to present the administration's latest "intelligence" confection on the topic of Saddam's deceits. If you want to get a taste of how these ramshackle "intelligence" reports are assembled, take a look at "Apparatus of Lies: Saddam's Disinformation and Propaganda, 1990-2003", recently issued by the White House and invoked Tuesday night by the 43rd President. By way of illustrating the all-round deviousness of Saddam's propaganda machine, the White House document cites on page 23 the Pakistani news outlet Inqilab as having reported on January 27, 1991, that "The American pop star Madonna was in Saudi Arabia, entertaining US troops." The White House comments triumphantly: "Madonna never went to Saudi Arabia." Moral: if Saddam can lie about Madonna, he can certainly bring the Big One out of some bunker in Tikrit and drop it on Jerusalem.

The madness of Baghdad
By Ibrahim Nafie, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 30 Jan. - 5 Feb. 2003
The greatest obstacle to a peaceful resolution of the Iraqi crisis is the vain posturing of its political elite. --  While international and Arab powers are struggling furiously to prevent the outbreak of a new war in the Middle East and promote a peaceful solution to the Iraqi crisis what does the regime in Baghdad do? It makes sure the storm clouds gather by furnishing the advocates of war in the US new pretexts to mount a military operation. While Egypt and other Arab nations work to alleviate the plight of the Iraqi people and prevent further suffering, leaders in Iraq appear determined to undermine their efforts with an incessant outpour of provocative bluster and bravado. One can only be dumbfounded by the bellicose statements issuing from Baghdad at a time when European capitals are butting diplomatic horns with Washington in order to dissuade it from unleashing a military operation against Baghdad. It is mystifying how tenaciously Iraqi leaders persist in their bombast when a wave of popular demonstrations around the world try to promote sympathy for the Iraqi people. I stress, here, Iraqi people, for it is the conviction that these people deserve to be given another chance at a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi crisis that inspires all these efforts. After all, a military onslaught will claim an enormous death toll among ordinary Iraqi citizens while the ruler of Baghdad and his clique remain safely ensconced in shelters constructed and equipped to withstand the ravages of war.

Coming Around
By MIFTAH, February 2, 2003
Sharon knew that all he had to do was stick with his own beliefs and everyone will come around. He has managed to take the Palestinian - Israeli conflict hostage, actually scrap that, he has managed to take the entire Middle East hostage to his vision of a lasting peace, legitimized it by utilizing the most impudently Likud supporting American Administration and is shoving it down the Palestinians' throat until they swallow it. Surprise, surprise, the results are better than expected for Sharon with the international community lining up to congratulate him on his reelection, Egyptian President Mubarak inviting him for talks and even Yasser Arafat extending his hand for peace to the man that has not only managed to successfully cajole the international community into sidelining him, but also continues to brutally kill the Palestinian people. Since the Israeli Election Day, 16 Palestinians have been killed. On Saturday Israeli tanks attacked a Palestinian field in Beit Hanoun, Gaza, fired shells and injured seven Palestinian children, while in the south of Mount Hebron, near the West Bank village of Yatta, Israeli soldiers prevented Palestinians from plowing their land, confiscated the Palestinians' farming equipment and watched as Israeli settlers from Susya beat the Palestinians and damaged their property. Wide-spread Israeli operations continued Saturday in Hebron which has been placed under strict curfew. A Palestinian woman returning home from hospital was wounded when Israeli troops enforcing the curfew shot at her taxi. Israeli forces also managed to demolish a block long fruit and vegetable market in Hebron, just in case food shortages were not disastrous enough. While all this was taking place, US Secretary of State Powell remarked before a national conference of Americans interested in U.S. foreign policy, "they cannot get a state by using violence to get a state" and urged Palestinians to halt their terrorism. Perhaps Powell was not aware that lately the only violence is coming from the Israeli army as scores of Palestinians have been killed on land that is legally and without negotiation theirs.