Finger After Finger
By Uri Avnery, MIFTAH 2/28/2005
Seven words uttered by President Bush in Brussels have not been paid the attention they deserve.
He called for the establishment of “a democratic Palestinian state with territorial contiguity” in the West Bank, and then added: “A state on scattered territories will not work.”
It is worthwhile to ponder these words. Who did he point the finger at? Why did he say this in Brussels, of all places?
Nobody warns of a danger without a reason. If Bush said what he said, it means that he believes that someone is causing this danger.
Just who might that be?
For years now I have been warning that this is the intention of Ariel Sharon, the basis of the whole settlement enterprise planned and set up by him. The lay-out of the settlements on the West Bank map is designed to cut the territory up from North to South and from West to East, in order to forestall any possibility of establishing a really viable and contiguous Palestinian state, a state like any other.
Lessons from the struggle against Apartheid
By Sietse Bosgra, Electronic Intifada 2/28/2005
Following the recent meetings between the Palestinian and Israeli authorities, the struggle for an independent Palestinian state will probably move to the political and diplomatic front. In this new phase, the role of the international community will be of utmost importance for a successful outcome. Therefore, there exists an urgent task for Palestinian NGOs and leaders to capture world support for the Palestinian cause.
The past four years of the Intifada have been a very painful period for the Palestinians, but a positive effect has been that international public opinion has once again been focused on the conflict. The seven years between the two Intifadas resulted in a near total silence in the Western press and a near total disappearance of the conflict from the international political agenda. During these years Israel could extend its occupation without any protest or pressure from the Western world.
But the brutal measures of the Israeli government during the Second Intifada and especially the television images of the suffering of the Palestinians led to a change in the European perceptions of the conflict. Last year, an opinion poll commissioned by the European Union (EU) in 15 European countries ranked Israel as the greatest threat to peace in the world with 59 percent of the targeted sample. In the Netherlands, which has always been a pro-Israel country, 74 per cent of the public put Israel on the top of the list of warmongers.
Relativity, LA Times Style
By Alison Weir, CounterPunch 2/28/2005
The Meaning of "Calm" -- Well, I just got hung up on again. This time by an editor on the Los Angeles Times foreign desk. He didn''t give me his name.
I had called and attempted, as politely as possible, to give him a correction for the story on the Times, website tonight. This will probably be their front-page lead news story tomorrow morning.
The trouble is, their headline and lead paragraph are just plain wrong. And now, of course, they''ll stay wrong in the paper tomorrow.
The headline proclaims: "Palestinian Suicide bomber Shatters Calm of late." The lead sentence then goes on to state that this bomber "shattered a months-long period of relative calm"
The fact is, however, that the truce and this "calm" were shattered long before this. The last suicide bombing against Israeli civilians was Nov. 1, 2004 It took three Israeli lives. Since that time, while Israelis have basked in "relative calm," 170 Palestinian men, women, and children have been killed.
During this LA Times, "relative calm," another 379 Palestinian men, women, and children were injured and maimed. Anyone who has been to the West Bank or Gaza knows what this means: leg bones splintered, intestines torn open, teeth shattered.
Did you say the Israelis are withdrawing
By Y. Khellef, Electronic Intifada 2/27/2005
Bethlehem, Feb, 20th 2005 — Since the Sharm El Sheikh summit things have significantly improved in the Palestinian territories. The Army has stopped its incursions in Palestinian towns, Palestinian civilians are free to move, prisoners are about to be released and economic activity is slowly recovering...
At least this is the information that most western media is conveying to its people.
The situation on the ground is unfortunately completely different. The Separation Wall is being completed faster than ever, all the military check points are still in place, the Palestinian detainees are still under Israeli custody and daily life is still hell for all Palestinians.
The only significant gesture Israel has made towards the PA was the handover of 15 corpses of Palestinian gunmen kept in Israeli morgues. Nothing however has been done for the living. The Separation Wall or "Confinement Wall" should we say, has already been completed around most of the Major Palestinian cities.
Beware of the dog! The US primes Israel to attack Iran and Syria
By Uri Avnery, Redress Information & Analysis 2/20/2005
Uri Avnery looks at the moves, already underway, to implement the next two stages of the US neo-conservative plan for the extension of the American empire, now that the occupation of Iraq has been accomplished. He sees the likely appointment of an airman, General Dan Halutz, as Israeli chief of staff as a sign that Israel is preparing to attack Iranian nuclear facilities at Washington''s behest, while yet unsubstantatiated accusations that Syria was behind former Lebanese Premier Rafiq al-Hariri''s killing are paving the way for action against Damascus.
It is not very flattering to be paraded like a Rottweiler on a leash, whose master threatens to let him loose on his enemies. But this is our [Israeli] situation now.
US Vice-President Dick Cheney threatened a few weeks ago that, if Iran continues to develop its nuclear capabilities, Israel might attack her.
This week, President George Bush repeated this threat. If he were the leader of Israel, he declared, he would have been feeling threatened by Iran. He reminded those who are a little slow that the United States has undertaken to defend Israel if there is a threat to its security.
Israeli officials smile, and build more outposts on the ground
By Issa Samandar, Daily Star 2/25/2005
Saeed Talib is an American citizen and a West Bank farmer. Neither is standing him in good stead at the moment. He has not been able to tend to his land in the village of Turmus Ayya on the road north to Nablus for four years, and he is afforded no legal recourse from any quarter.
Some six years ago, a settlement outpost was established near the village. The settler who first drove up his caravan on an empty hilltop has since become notorious. All the villagers know him as Boaz. He is no longer alone. Now, some 50 caravans stand beside his. According to Israeli law, these settlement outposts are illegal. But the Israeli government has nevertheless provided them with paved roads, electricity and running water.
Saeed and his fellow villagers have been allowed onto their land for only a few days a year since the second intifada began in 2000. These are during the October-November olive harvest season. The farmers are desperate. Two days a year, only to harvest, is neither here nor there. For the rest of the year they are prevented from tending their land, from planting seedlings or from weeding and trimming.
Before the intifada, farmers used to defy the settlers. There were many confrontations and arguments. Just before the uprising broke out, Boaz awoke to find his herd of sheep gone and his dogs dead.
Transforming reality
By Mustafa Al-Barghouti, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 2/25/2005
Sharon''s tactics will now focus on turning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into an internal Palestinian one
Throughout the Arab-Israeli conflict Israel has concentrated its energies on imposing its own version of events and its own version of a solution so successfully that the Palestinians and Arabs have invariably been cornered and forced to make concessions.
Following the 1948 war Israel claimed that the Arabs refused to recognise its existence and negotiate with it. In the process it gobbled up 78 per cent of Palestinian land, shredding the UN partition resolution to which it had originally agreed. Following the 1967 war Israel protested that it had no intention of holding on to the territories it had occupied -- all the Palestinians and Arabs had to do was recognise it, halt the resistance to occupation and enter into negotiations.
When the Arabs did recognise Israel and entered into negotiations it continued its expansionist policy, annexing the Golan Heights and Arab Jerusalem, building over a hundred settlements in the West Bank and, during the Oslo period, dissecting the occupied territories with a web of ring roads and checkpoints.
During the second Intifada the problem, according to Israel, became one of Palestinian violence and its own security needs. On this basis Israel began the construction of the racist separating wall, decimated the foundations of the Palestinian economy, continued with the annexation and judaisation of Palestinian territories and pressed ahead with its project to transform any possible Palestinian entity into a collection of Bantu states.
Is peace in Palestine about to break out
By Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 2/25/2005
Are Israelis and Palestinians finally on the road to peace? A cursory glance at commentary in the US press would seem to suggest so. Since Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced a truce in early February at the Sharm al-Sheikh summit, many observers see a "window of opportunity" they are encouraging both sides to leap through.
Sharon has announced he is now coordinating with the Palestinians on his originally unilateral plan to pull Israeli troops and settlers out of Gaza and the Israeli cabinet voted to approve the "disengagement."
The New York Times editorial gushed about the disengagement that "it would be churlish to greet [Sharon''s] historic decision with anything other than enthusiasm." (24 February). The Chicago Tribune praised Sharon''s "impressive" perfomance and marveled as he "defies death threats and warnings of a civil war to move his nation toward the kind of actions that are imperative for a two-state solution and a lasting peace." (24 February).
Death, lies and politics
By Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 2/24/2005
Whatever the true legacy of Rafiq Al-Hariri, it will be shredded and reassembled to fit the goals of others -- Crimes such as the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister and entrepreneur Rafiq Al- Hariri send the mind spinning. Thoughts come fast, so fast that it is difficult to set them down in words. Nor am I interested in writing an obituary. There are specialists at that sort of thing, people who are good at patching together biographical sketches and enumerating -- inventing, if necessary -- the virtues of the departed. There are those who can fondly reminisce, among them former adversaries and political blackmailers of the wealthy businessman. And there are those who condense the many demands they had expected him to fulfil over the coming year and package them in a single somber speech appropriate to the occasion.
The death of a politician is ripe for political plucking. Even a politician who dies a natural death is powerless to control how his life will be summed up and then used in political debate. Everything depends on the nature of his political legacy, on who does the summing up and towards what ends. Assassinations complicate the matter. If the assassin is apprehended, as was the case with Robert Kennedy, analysts still have to agree on the motives of the assassin and the identity and motives of those who hired him. Worse yet are cases, such as the assassination of John Kennedy, where the identity of the assassin remains a matter of conjecture and attempts to weave the threads of the crime together continue for decades. (Until now no one has demanded an international investigation into this assassination and especially the validity of the rumours of CIA involvement.) And then there are cases such as the assassination of the Moroccan opposition leader Al-Mahdi Bin Baraka. His assassin was identified but never subjected to an official investigation.
Gaza for the West Bank
By Graham Usher, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 2/24/2005
Israelis and Palestinians agreed: Israel''s latest Cabinet decisions were historic. But the reasons were entirely different -- They were "two of the most important decisions since the founding of the state", editorialised Israel''s Ha''aretz newspaper. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said one of them was the "hardest" of his life. And all Israelis said the decisions were "historic". But whatever the epithet, rarely in modern times have decisions on the future borders of one country so fatally prejudiced the future borders of another.
The two decisions were taken by the Israeli Cabinet on 20 February. The first gave final authorisation to Sharon''s plan to withdraw soldiers and settlers from most of the Gaza Strip and from four small settlements in the West Bank, with the first evacuations set for July. The second was to approve the final route of the so-called separation barrier in the Israeli occupied West Bank.
Palestinians paid scant attention to the first decision. They were outraged by the second.
At an emergency meeting on Sunday night, the PLO Executive Committee denounced Israel for "exploiting the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip to cover up for its expansionist policies in the West Bank." It described the route of the barrier as the "gravest strategic" threat to the Palestinian core aspiration of an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank "with Jerusalem as its capital".
Assassination of Hariri is Only the Prelude
By Ramzy Baroud, Arabic Media Internet Network 2/24/2005
Indulging in speculation regarding the identity of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri’s real assassins is of little value now. What demands urgent scrutiny is how his murder was intended to play a large part in the remolding of Lebanon’s role in the overall Arab-Israeli conflict and the balances of power in the region.
So while the February 14 blast was reported in Beirut, its tremors were felt in Damascus.
The tide is turning against Syria and it is turning fast. Both Israel and the United States are up in arms to bring an end to Syria’s hegemony over Lebanese affairs. But one must not be too hasty to believe that the American-Israeli action is motivated by their earnest concern for Lebanese sovereignty. Look a few miles to the East, to Iraq, and be affirmed that meaningful national sovereignty is the least of Washington’s concerns at this point. Skip through the brief, albeit bloody history that adjoined Israel and Lebanon, and reach the same conclusion: Lebanon’s sovereignty is nowhere to be found on Israel’s list of things to do. In fact, Israel’s violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty continue unabated.
Back to proper borders
By Sever Plocker, YNetNews 2/25/2005
The Greater Israel dream has dissipated and is no longer on the agenda, at least in this generation.
Gaza pullout under Prime Minister Sharon''s leadership is only a first step -- In the past 27 years, Israeli governments took numerous decisions to establish, expand, and retrospectively authorize settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
However, since former Prime Minister Menachem Begin''s government vote on the Camp David Accord with Egypt, Israeli ministers were not asked to raise their hand in favor of evacuating Israeli communities across the Green Line.
The question of settlement evacuation was not included in the original Oslo Accords. Neither was the option of dismantling settlements mentioned in later agreements with the Palestinian Authority, not even as a symbolic gesture.
On occasion, Israeli prime ministers were forced to make vague pledges to the American administration to "freeze construction in the settlements," but those pledges were not honored and did not limit the speedy growth of "Settlement Land."
It will suffice to note that since the senior Bush''s administration conditioned loan guarantees to Israel on a slowdown in the settlement project, the number of residents across the Green Line more than doubled.
The security of Israelis cannot be divorced from that of Palestinians
By Mustafa Barghouti, Arabic Media Internet Network 2/24/2005
Since a cease-fire was declared February 8 in Sharm el-Sheikh, the Palestinian people have demonstrated their desire to end the bloodshed with Israel. We have acknowledged that the security of Israeli and Palestinian civilians is a legitimate concern.
Moreover the recent elections in Palestine have demonstrated to the world that the Palestinian people are committed to democracy and fully capable of governing their own independent state.
But let us be clear: The security of Israelis cannot reasonably be divorced from that of Palestinian civilians, whose collective security has been shattered by 38 years of Israeli occupation. If peace is to have a chance of truly taking hold, Israel cannot demand a seemingly endless list of security concessions from the Palestinians while ignoring the core issues of the conflict.
The occupation has placed overwhelming restrictions on millions of lives for nearly four decades. It has severely disfigured, if not destroyed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families, neighborhoods and livelihoods. Even during the Oslo years, the settlers more than doubled their population and vastly intensified their stranglehold over Palestinian land, water and movement — a stranglehold which the separation wall Israel is now building is set to entrench even further.
Ceasefire! What Ceasefire
Editorial, MIFTAH 2/23/2005
Despite the promise to ‘end all Israeli army operations against Palestinians, anywhere’ by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, eight Palestinians have been killed and many more injured by Israeli armed forces’ gunfire since the so-called ‘Sharm El-Sheikh Ceasefire’ was agreed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on 8 February. All attacks took place on Palestinian territory and were carried out by Israeli occupying forces. At least two killings took place during a premeditated and carefully planned army operation. Two of the other fatalities were children. Meanwhile, Palestinian militants have attempted a few attacks on Israelis but failed to cause any casualties. Aside from this, Palestinian security forces have worked hard to prevent Palestinian militants from responding to Israeli attacks. This has resulted in the death of one Palestinian security officer and several sackings of officials held responsible for failing to prevent armed Palestinian responses to Israeli breaches of the ceasefire agreement. The result is a marked asymmetry between an Israeli failure to honour the ceasefire due to Israeli belligerence with impunity and an earnest Palestinian attempt and success in honouring its side of the deal. If this asymmetry is not remedied immediately, Israel must be held responsible by the international community for unprovoked, systematic and large-scale aggression, i.e. for attempting to start a new war....
Gaza withdrawal obscures West Bank land grab
By Dr. Dominic Moran, International Relations and Security Network 2/23/2005
With his latest cabinet victory in winning approval for the Gaza disengagement, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - known as the “hawk” and the “father of settlements” - has marginalized the ideology of radical and national-religious right-wing parties as no Labor party leader could have done.
The Israeli cabinet voted on Sunday for an unprecedented withdrawal from Gaza and part of the northern West Bank in a unilateral move that will see the ouster of 8’500 Jewish settlers. The evacuation was approved by an unexpectedly large 17-5 margin, with the five “no” votes coming from Likud rebels. Former prime minister and current Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu voted against the plan, no doubt seeking to cement his profile as leader of the rump Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) faction within the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, after having voted in favor of disengagement in previous Knesset ballots. Previously, Netanyahu''s failure to support the government would have resulted in his automatic demotion, but Sharon went into Sunday''s cabinet deliberations with an assured majority that allowed him to signal that he would overlook his no-vote. The seven-hour cabinet discussion on the planned evacuation was relatively uneventful apart from a brief skirmish between Netanyahu and Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert over the dead issue of a national referendum on disengagement....
Rewarding aggression in Palestine
By Hasan Abu Nimah, Electronic Intifada 2/23/2005
News that a billionaire businessman from the United Arab Emirates has offered to pay $56 million for evacuated Israeli settlements in the occupied Gaza Strip is deeply disturbing. The BBC, quoting Israeli media sources, reported that the businessman, Mohammad al-Abbar, chairman of the Dubai-based, Emaar development company met with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, to discuss the plan.
According to reports, Palestinian Authority leaders are not only aware of these dealings, but are facilitating and encouraging them. Such policies, if indeed they are being pursued, mark a new low, and indicate either total ignorance or wilful disregard of basic Palestinian rights and international law.
The settlements in Gaza that Israel promises to evacuate (while at the same time continuing to build other settlements all over the West Bank) were built illegally on occupied Palestinian land in flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and numerous UN Security Council resolutions.
Limor Livnat and the Palestinian "problem
By Uri Yaakobi, Electronic Intifada 2/23/2005
Recently, a law was passed in one of the Israeli Knesset''s many committees saying that settlers who will be evacuated following a future retreat from the Gaza Strip will be given compensation. There was a minimal majority of one committee member for this law, which is an essential part of prime minister''s Ariel Sharon''s plan of "Gaza Disengagement", and in order for it to be passed the balance was tipped to the side of the government from outside the coalition by Member of Knesset Mohammad Barake.
Barake, a MK from "Hadash" party (the former communist party) is, as his name might indicate, an Israeli Arab. Limor Livnat, the Israeli minister of education, who had also voted in favor of the law, was one of the most noticeable politicians in a group of right wing Knesset members and others who had each expressed outrage that an Arab (who had, like any other Member of the Knesset, been elected democratically) was the one to determine the future of Israel in such an important question.
Because of Livnat''s high position in the government there was a mini uproar in the Israeli media about the fact that the minister of education, the person who is in charge of what children will be taught in schools, had said something so bluntly racist. In actuality, no one was surprised. No one has any illusions that Ariel Sharon and the rest of the ministers besides — maybe — politicians from the Labor Party, think any differently from Livnat, in spite of them remaining more or less silent about the subject.
The Politics of Hariri''s Assassination
By Naseer Aruri, CounterPunch 2/23/2005
Remapping the Middle East -- The tragic assassination of Lebanon''s former Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri, in Beirut on Monday, February 14, 2005, reverberated across the region, as it evoked vivid memories from Lebanon''s 14-year civil war. In itself, the act is a political earthquake, the fall- out from which will have profound local, regional and international implications. Hariri was not an ordinary Lebanese politician. Inside Lebanon he symbolized a fragile economic recovery reflected in the economic and political rebuilding of a shattered society. Moreover, he was a new breed of Lebanese politician, one who would cast his net fairly wide across a broad political spectrum.
Unlike the days of the civil war, the realignment after Hariri''s death now reflects a novel political divide where the fault lines are no longer religious but national. The opposition to the Lahoud/Karame pro-Syrian government is no longer focused on Maronite centrality; today the Maronite Patriarch Sfeir walks hand in hand with Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, and an undifferentiated slew of Sunni politicians. Druze and Sunnis were of course pillars of the Lebanese Nationalist Movement of the 70s and 80s, which allied itself with the Palestinians against a Syrian/ Maronite thrust united in the need to thwart the emergence of a Lebanese " communist Cuba" on Syria''s strategic periphery.
Israel''s Criminalization of Nonviolent Protest
By Pat O''Connor, Electronic Intifada 2/22/2005
14 February 2005 -- According to Israeli authorities, one reason for my arrest two weeks ago in Biddu and my denial of entry into Israel in 2003 is that I "organized and participated in illegal demonstrations." Israeli authorities frequently use the term "illegal demonstrations" to describe peaceful protests against Israeli government violations of international law. This twisted reasoning needs to be exposed and rejected. What is legal often does not completely correspond to what is moral. However, when what is moral is described as illegal, there is a major problem.
Why is it "illegal" for hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children to march peacefully to assert their right to their land in the face of Israeli soldiers, who are defending the construction of a wall that has been declared illegal by the world''s highest legal body, the International Court of Justice? Why is it "illegal" for communities to try and implement the ICJ decision by walking together to their farmland to try peacefully to block Israeli contractors from bulldozing their land, from building a wall to cut them off from their land and from imprisoning them in their villages?
The natives'' time is cheap
By Amira Hass, Ha''aretz 2/22/2005
Every day between 8 and 9 A.M., or between 3 and 4 P.M., two lines of cars - one short, one long - stretch beyond the concrete cubes, the guard tower and the soldiers at the eastern exit from Ramallah. In the morning the lines are heading for Ramallah. In the afternoon they are leaving it. The Israelis call this the Beit El checkpoint, which separates the Ramallah salient from the Jewish settlement in the West Bank, the buildings of the Civil Administration and the huge military base. The Palestinians call it the DCO checkpoint, after the former location of the Israeli-Palestinian District Coordination Office, which is intended for foreigners and Palestinians with pull and special permits, including ambulances and service vehicles.
The short line of cars is in the middle lane of the crossing point. The longer one in the outer lane. The short line is short because it is populated by VIPS, who have preferential crossing rights: first of all the diplomats, the representatives of foreign countries; respected directors and employees of international organizations; and of course Palestinian VIPs of the first rank. The cars in the long line sometimes wait 10 to 15 minutes for the foreign and Palestinian VIPs who have just arrived to go through first.
....Each of the two lines collaborates the consistent Israeli policy of creating apartheid roads in the West Bank. There is one system of roads for the natives, and it is winding, narrow, long, bumpy, sown with military checkpoints and frequently closed. And there is the system of road for "Whites," that is, Israelis, or all kinds of people who have been whitened - diplomats, VIPs, wealthy people with permits, merchants, journalists.
The hardest decision of all
By Uzi Benziman, Ha''aretz 2/23/2005
Ariel Sharon''s words must be taken at face value: The decision to evacuate settlements in the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria is the hardest he has ever had to make. That is what he said to the nation in clear Hebrew, during his Sunday night appearance at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Before addressing the conference itself in English, the prime minister read written comments, with a frozen expression, more like one who is reciting by rote than one who is speaking his heart. But he seemingly said something from the depths of his heart. It doesn''t matter if he wrote it himself or it was scripted by his spin doctors: The message he chose to pass on to the public is that the disengagement plan is the toughest decision he has made in a rather eventful life.
Sharon, as he said himself that night, has made "hundreds and thousands of decisions. Many of them were crucial. Some were life and death. But the decision on disengagement was the hardest of them all."
This is an instructive confession, assuming his heart is really in it: The man who in the 1950s carried out retaliation operations, some of which were controversial, and some resulted in mass rage directed at him due to their human cost....the man who brought the IDF deep into Lebanon under pretenses that turned two declared days of fighting into years, which led to hundreds of Israeli and thousands of Palestinian victims. That man admits that giving up 1,200 square kilometers in the West Bank and Gaza is the toughest choice of them all.
The calm before the storm
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha''aretz 2/21/2005
The impression one gets from the goings-on among the Palestinian public and leadership is that the question isn''t whether the bloody clashes will start up again - but when. In other words, when will the relative calm end and the routine of terror attacks and violence return? The reason for the few-and-far-between terror attacks in recent weeks is not only the efforts of the new government of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and his deals with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but primarily the public mood in the territories, where people are weary of the hardships of the intifada. There''s a desire for some peace and quiet in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This was expressed well by the Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, who explained over the weekend that his organization had agreed to participate in maintaining the calm because Hamas and its activists are committed to rebuilding and development in the territories to the same degree that they are committed to the struggle and liberation.
But there are limits to this weariness, and the seeds of trouble can be seen in the field. The first is the prisoners'' affair. The publication of the list of 500 prisoners whom Israel is about to release (and it doesn''t include prisoners from East Jerusalem) was met with protest rallies in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as threats of hunger strikes. Palestinian spokespersons said it was an insult, that it was like spitting in the face of Abu Mazen, while Palestinian cabinet minister Ghassan al-Khatib, exaggerating somewhat perhaps, said that since the Sharm al-Sheikh summit, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service had arrested approximately the same number of Palestinians they had hoped to release now....
A Handshake Without Meaning
By Saree Makdisi, Palestine Chronicle 2/17/2005
We all saw the photograph: a handshake between Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon. We heard the happy interviews: Palestinians and Israelis, contemplating peace. But the optimism generated by new Palestinian leadership, the talk of Israeli army redeployments, the summit and even the truce amounts to little more than false hope.
In fact, except for the growing toll of shattered Palestinian communities, bulldozed Palestinian homes, obliterated Palestinian olive groves, expropriated Palestinian land and snuffed out Palestinian (and Israeli) lives, the situation today bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the summer of 1994. That was when Israel began redeploying its army during a similar thaw in relations with the Palestinians, the first implementation of the Oslo "peace" process.
But once the years of optimism and negotiation that followed that redeployment ran their course, Palestinians, enduring their third decade under Israeli military occupation, faced more — not fewer — obstacles to their everyday lives. Their freedom of movement and access to their own towns and cities, including Jerusalem, were severely limited. The population of Israel''s illegal settlements in the West Bank and Gaza had essentially doubled. And Palestinians had gained a kind of control of only about 18% of the West Bank.
How long does it take to demolish a house
By Gideon Levy, Ha''aretz 2/20/2005
At the end of last week, the defense minister and the army realized they had made a small mistake: It turns out that demolishing homes in the territories is not a deterrent, and might even do harm. Acting on recommendations from a military committee headed by Major General Udi Shani that reached those astounding conclusions, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz ordered an end to the punitive practice of house demolitions. The outgoing chief of staff should be praised for appointing the committee and the minister who adopted its recommendations, but they should also be told: Shame on you, you and all the chiefs of staff and generals who for decades were behind that mass destruction. Shame on the prime ministers and defense ministers who backed it up and shame on the heads of the Shin Bet who gave the precise orders, and shame on the High Court that rejected dozens of petitions against the demolitions, with disgustingly blind support for the defense establishment''s position, and shame on the media that rarely reported on the demolitions and hardly ever criticized them.
They were all partners to one of the worst deeds ever committed by Israel, especially because of its enormous scope. According to B''Tselem, since the start of the current intifada, the IDF demolished 675 houses for punitive purposes; more than 4,000 people were left homeless. For each person who took part in a terror action, 12 innocent people were harmed.
Palestine Through the Arts: A nation defined by culture not politics
By Maureen Clare Murphy, Electronic Intifada 2/21/2005
One of my closest friends in high school was the daughter of a Palestinian refugee of Al-Nakba. Ironically enough, I didn''t have any idea of what it meant to be Palestinian or who the Palestinians were until my entire class was required to watch the Steven Spielberg film Schindler''s List in the school auditorium, followed by a talk by a concentration camp survivor and one of the American GIs who liberated the camps.
I remember my friend was very upset after watching the film, particularly with the scene in Israel in which visitors put the stones on Oscar Schindler''s grave. I couldn''t believe that she would question the value of the film or its historical worth. But she told me that to her, the film failed to tell what she considered to be the second chapter of the Holocaust -- the establishment of the state of Israel and the expulsion of three quarters of a million people, including her father, from their homes and land.
A year later I was a freshman at a fine arts university in Chicago, specializing in painting and drawing, when the Al-Aqsa Intifada broke out. Like everybody else, I was shaken by the visual imagery coming out of the conflict -- the video stills of the killing of 12-year-old Muhammad Al-Dura in Gaza, the bloody lynching of the two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, and later the utter destruction in the Jenin refugee camp in spring 2002 and the horrible aftermath of suicide bombings in Israel.
The Republican Jewish Coalition and the pro-Israel Lobby
By Bob Feldman, Electronic Intifada 2/21/2005
Most U.S. anti-war activists are opposed to the Bush Administration''s policy of using U.S. tax money to provide military weapons to various governments in the Middle East, including the Israeli government. But the Republican Jewish Coalition [RJC], which describes itself as "the sole voice of Jewish Republicans to Republican decisionmakers and the Jewish community" on its website [www.rjchq.org], promotes continued U.S. aid to the Sharon regime and favors an expansion of strategic cooperation between the U.S. government and the Israeli government.
Founded in the 1980s by its chairman emeritus Max Fisher, the "Dean of Jewish Republicans," the Republican Jewish Coalition has built a network of Jewish Republican activists and has at least 20 chapters throughout the United States. Although its most media-exposed board member in recent hears has probably been a former Bush II White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer of Fleischer Communications, Republican Jewish Coalition board member Lewis Eisenberg has also been an influential figure in U.S. politics in recent years, as a finance chairman of the Republican National Committee [RNC].
Between 2000 and 2004, for instance, Republican Jewish Coalition board member Eisenberg personally contributed over $307,000 to various Republican Party campaign committees or candidates and, additionally, raised millions of dollars in campaign funds for the Republican National Committee.
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
By Alison Weir, CounterPunch 2/18/2005
Do Americans Even Care? -- As is often the case with AP''s coverage of news having to do with Israel, there''s a serious omission in its reporting on the Russia-Israel connection even when it involves oil and the United States.
The day after the State of the Union Address, two Interpol fugitives attended the "National Prayer Breakfast" held in Washington DC. The day before that, these fugitives from the law were the guests of honor at an hour-long meeting of the International Relations Committee on Capitol Hill, invited by ranking Democrat Tom Lantos (Calif.)
You would think it would be hot news when wanted men being hunted by European police suddenly pop up in the US particularly on Capitol Hill and at events attended by the US president.
Yet, there was not a single AP story in the US on any of this. [1] Not a single national network television or radio news program even mentioned these facts. In fact, Google and LexisNexis searches four days after these events took place turned up only three newspaper articles on them anywhere in the entire country. [2]
Who are these fugitives from the law, wanted by Interpol, who are meeting at the highest levels of the US government? And why didn''t we learn of them?
An unsolved mystery
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 2/17/2005
False premises can adversely affect whatever positive results were achieved in the Sharm El-Sheikh summit -- The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was given a send-off rarely accorded to any world leader, his passing marked by no less than three funerals, one in Paris, another in Cairo and the third in Ramallah, where he was buried amid an outpouring of genuine grief by his people. And yet this was not followed up by a serious investigation into the cause of his sudden death, no coroner''s report to still rumours that he had been poisoned. Although I am as a rule wary of conspiracy theories, the way Arafat died and the news blackout surrounding his death lend credence to the poison scenario. It becomes even more plausible in the light of the dramatic developments we are seeing in the post- Arafat era, which are changing the map of alignments and confrontations in the region. For the first time since he was elected prime minister, Sharon has come to Egypt, the first time he meets with Egypt''s president on Egyptian soil. Significantly, Arafat''s name was not mentioned once at the Sharm El Sheikh summit, which introduced a whole new political equation in the Middle East.
The main contradiction that characterised the Arab-Israeli conflict before Arafat''s demise was the one between Palestinians and Israelis. With his passing, the main contradiction is now between the PLO and the Israeli government on one side, and "rejectionist" forces in both camps who oppose their common plan to reach a settlement on the other. The contradiction has moved from being a "horizontal" one between the two protagonists of the Arab-Israeli conflict to a "vertical" one between the proponents of a settlement and its opponents, between those for a peace process on the one hand and those against it on the other.
Testing times
By Graham Usher, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 2/17/2005
Abu Mazen faced down one test to his leadership this week but there are graver ones to come -- Flush from his success at the Sharm El-Sheikh summit Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is about to take another step in translating his separatist plans for the occupied territories into fact. On Sunday his cabinet is set to approve two of the "most important" decisions "since the founding of the state", in the opinion of Israel''s Haaretz newspaper.
The first is to authorise the evacuation of 21 settlements in Gaza and the northern West Bank under Sharon''s so-called disengagement plan. The second is to approve the southern route of the West Bank wall, including the incorporation of the vast Gush Etzion settlement bloc 12 miles south of Jerusalem and deep within occupied Palestinian territory.
The reason for the simultaneity is transparent, says Haaretz. "The two decisions are being brought at the same time in an effort to neutralise international criticism of the fence route by coupling it with the decision to evacuate settlements." If so, the cabinet decisions are going to provide the severest test for the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the diplomatic strategy on which his leadership rests.
He has already been bloodied by one test. Two days after he declared a ceasefire on the part of the Palestinian factions, three of those factions -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees -- fired over 40 mortars at Jewish settlements in the occupied Gaza Strip, causing some damage but no injury.
Sharm-al-Sheikh, We Have Come Back Again
By Uri Avnery, Palestine Chronicle 2/17/2005
Nobody called it the “Ophira Conference”. Not even the papers of the extreme right. Who today even remembers the name Ophira, which was given to Sharm-al-Sheikh during the Israeli occupation, as a first step to its annexation?
Who wants to remember the famous saying of Moshe Dayan that “Sharm-al-Sheikh is more important than peace”? A few years later, the same Dayan took part in the peace negotiations with Egypt and gave Sharm-al-Sheikh back. But in the meantime, some 2500 young Israelis and who knows how many thousands of Egyptians paid with their lives for that statement in the Yom Kippur war.
While the conference went on, I could not clear my head of a song that was haunting me: “Sharm-al-Sheikh, we have come back again…” It was sung with gusto in the days of the stupid euphoria after the Six-Day war. It reminded people at the time that we had already conquered the place during the 1956 Sinai war but were compelled by the Eisenhower-Bulganin ultimatum to withdraw. So here we were again.
I was there in 1956. A beautiful gulf (“Sharm-al-Sheikh means “the bay of the old man”), a few small houses and a distinctive mosque. Before our army withdrew, a few months later, it blew up the mosque in a fit of pique.
Assassinating Al-Hariri Fits Washington''s Plan
By Mike Whitney, Palestine Chronicle 2/17/2005
"Rafik Al Hariri’s assassination provides the raison d''ętre for severing ties with Syria and for transforming Lebanon into a US vassal.." -- To understand who assassinated Rafik al-Hariri we don’t need to look any further than the $1.5 billion dollar US Embassy currently under construction in Baghdad.
The new embassy, the largest of its kind in the world, will facilitate 1,800 employees and serve as the regional nerve center for American political and economic activity.
What does this have to do with al Hariri?
It demonstrates that the US is establishing a massive command center for its future domination of the entire Middle East. This suggests that Lebanon must be entered into the family of client states who accept a subservient role to American military and economic power, and who willingly comply with the requirements of the regional constable, Israel.
Al Hariri’s assassination provides the raison d''ętre for severing ties with Syria and for transforming Lebanon into a US vassal. This conforms nicely with Israel’s ambition to surround itself with non-threatening states as well as affording access to the vital water resources of Lebanon’s Wazzani River.
In other words, the murder of al Hariri has created some extremely fortunate opportunities for both Israel and the US; merging seamlessly with their overall objectives in the region.
Herzog''s Greater Jerusalem
By Shahar Ilan, Ha''aretz 2/17/2005
Jerusalem''s new neighborhoods, the ones that effectively separate the Arab eastern parts of the city and the West Bank, were built by Labor people and especially by former Jerusalem mayor, Teddy Kollek. It was also during Kollek''s tenure that plans were made for the new neighborhood of Har Homa, an attempt to separate eastern Jerusalem and Bethlehem, which was to be created from numerous land appropriations and stirred international controversy.
Construction and Housing Minister Isaac Herzog has highlighted his intention to halt the massive flow of funds into Itamar and Yitzhar and even set up a committee to review security in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem''s Old City. However, it seems that he really does not plan to stop construction in the Jewish neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem. On the contrary, Herzog, as he told Haaretz, plans to promote the next stages of Har Homa to create territorial continuity between Jerusalem and Ma''aleh Adumim. Herzog explains that "strengthening Jerusalem in a smart manner, without damaging Israel''s political standing" is one of the issues at the top of his agenda. The need for construction on Har Homa, he says, stems from his opposition to the Safdie plan for building west of the city. There are no building options in Jerusalem''s west, says the construction and housing minister, "unless it is decided to destroy the Jerusalem forests."
A letter to America
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times 2/17/2005
In what Noam Chomsky described as "a shameful chapter in American history", academic Kaveh L Afrasiabi fought a decade-long losing battle with Harvard University that went all the way to the US Supreme Court. Afrasiabi recounts this harrowing chapter in his life, and while he was the "loser", he hopes that others will learn from his bitter experience.
President George W Bush recently sent a message to the Iranian people, promising to support them "as you stand for your own liberty". I would like to take up the promise, since my human and civil rights in America have been seriously trampled on, yet the legal system has turned a blind eye to my cry for justice.
It is a fair request, I assume, that America delivers at home first before trying to "spread liberty around the world", to paraphrase a New York Times headline after Bush''s recent inaugural address, otherwise I am afraid the labels of hypocrisy and double standards may stick. Unfortunately, revisiting in my head the sad spectacle of the justice system in America like a horror movie, I am inclined to believe that it''s mostly just ice, floating feebly above a glacier of might.
Of might and rights. How can I summarize in a letter the ordeal of a decade-long battle with the mighty Harvard University, some seven years of it in various state and federal courts, all the way up to the US Supreme Court, knowing that I was naive all along to think that there is actually justice in America.
A shameful kind of Zionist
By Meron Benvenisti, Ha''aretz 2/10/2005
It''s been a long time since Zionism had such a revival. Everyone''s joining in the cause to affirm their contradictory position on the issue that is the heart and soul of Zionism - "redemption of the land." The attorney general''s decision to put an end to the Jewish National Fund''s discrimination when it comes to leasing land to Arabs - and his finding of a way to perpetuate that discrimination through "alternative lands" - has been praised by Yossi Beilin, who found it was a "redemption of Zionism," and vehemently condemned by MKs on the right, who called it "anti-Zionist."
Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went so far as to enlist Zionism to legitimize the injustice of the decision to apply the absentee property owner''s law to East Jerusalem, calling it "a proper Zionist decision."
When Zionism is called upon to excuse, legitimize and justify theft and discrimination, and when known facts are knowingly distorted, it becomes embarrassing and outrageous. Those proud of reprehensible deeds that are best served by silence are the first to be upset when haters of Israel and Zionism rely upon them to prove the accusations.
Democratic Occupation
By Neve Gordon, ZNet 2/16/2005
A specter is haunting the Middle East: the specter of "democratic occupation." -- It is not surprising that, following the Sharm El-Sheikh summit on Feb. 8, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas used almost the same language to announce a cessation of hostilities between the two peoples. Reading from a prewritten script, they both stated that the Palestinians would stop all acts of violence against Israelis, while Israel would cease all military activity against Palestinians. The director of the show was not Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the host of the event, but newly appointed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. To be sure, neither Rice nor any other American was present at the summit, but the Bush administration’s spirit was ubiquitous.
Many reporters and analysts applauded the meeting, claiming that it will pave the way for a resumption of dialogue and cooperation. They seemed to suggest that Israelis and Palestinians are on the doorstep of a new era. All of this begs the question: Will the Bush administration manage to stop the seemingly endless cycle of violence and rekindle the so-called Israeli-Palestinian peace process?
The answer is a resounding yes; on the condition, of course, that one believes in magic.
Looking towards Palestine: Photographic projects in Madrid
By John Collins, Electronic Intifada 2/16/2005
Rubble.
When Stephen Eric Bronner, Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, spoke to a conference on Palestine at the University of Minnesota in April 2004, his message boiled down to one word: Rubble.
Bronner had just returned from a fact-finding trip to Israel/Palestine, where he had a chance to view the aftermath of "Operation Defensive Shield," the euphemistic name given to Ariel Sharon''s brutal 2002 invasion of Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank.
"People would ask me to describe in a sentence what I had seen," recalled Bronner. "I would tell them that I don''t need a sentence -- I can sum it up in a single word."
Rubble.
I found myself thinking of Bronner''s observation this week as I viewed a powerful new photographic exhibition at La Boca del Lobo, a cultural center in the Lavapies neighborhood of Madrid....
Come pray, and tell us about your ''military'' connections
By Amira Hass, Ha''aretz 2/16/2005
"I had been in the hotel for six days. The Be''er Sheva prison hotel. I had a shower every day, good food, snacks, TV, fruit, regular clothes," relates D., a young Palestinian from Ramallah who was detained and interrogated for 40 days from mid-November 2004, following the six days he spent in Be''er Sheva jail. Only on his last day there, before he was transferred to detention in Ashkelon prison, he realized that the "hotel" in which he was being kept was not a regular wing of the prison but rather the wing used to house prisoners with "asafir" - birds in Palestinian slang, who were to "chat them up."
Prisoners are brought to that wing when interrogators are unsuccessful in obtaining or extracting incriminating information. The birds masquerade as regular prisoners, as fighters with a glorious past, whose job is to gain the newcomer''s trust and give him the impression that his interrogation is over, that he withstood the questioning like a hero, and now he has been transferred to detention until a decision is made regarding an indictment or an order for his release.
Yo Peace, Bo Shalom
By Sankha Guha, MIFTAH 2/15/2005
Life is good. I hear the words repeated like a mantra in Tel Aviv. I am in the city to find out how rap music has migrated from the mean streets of inner-city USA into a real war zone - albeit one tentatively negotiating a new peace settlement.
But, on first appearances, I can see very little evidence here of tension. Despite the crisp weather, all the fit young dudes are surfing the frothing Med without a care in the world. "This war has not been a major part of our life," says Univ, 24, a bartender. "Life is like in every normal place. People should come and visit Israel, and see it''s a very, very nice place to live."
Notwithstanding the prevailing optimism, the endorsement sounds slightly shrill. I am looking across Hayarkon Street at Mike''s Place. It was here on 30 April 2003 that a young Brit about the same age as Univ detonated his suicide bomb, killing three others. Suicide bombings are nothing new in the city, but rarely has the subject been addressed in Israel''s popular culture - a culture now freshly infused with talk of peace. It''s just one of the subjects, along with poverty and religious toleration, that Tel Aviv''s rap artists are at last trying to address.
"The main problem here is that people get numb from looking at images on TV and the newspapers - they don''t really feel the news inside them," says Quami De La Fox, the DJ and rapper. "All the Israeli showbiz - it''s just a way off telling people there''s not really a war going on. There is no intifada, no poverty, nothing collides between Palestinians and Israelis - the sun always shines. From musicians to politicians, to models, to TV hosts. Everyone who has that kind of power is getting tons of respect."
A West Bank Story: New Year''s in a Garden on the Moon
By Pamela Olson, Electronic Intifada 2/15/2005
Writing from Jericho, occupied Palestine -- 3 February 2005 -- The Jericho Intercontinental is a very posh hotel built next to a casino, both of which were finished just as the Second Intifada started and thus never really opened. But they dusted themselves off and offered a New Year''s Eve party, a night in a big lavish room, and two meals for $90 each. Several Palestinians and internationals jumped at the chance, eager for a change in scenery and atmosphere.
I loaded up with some Palestinian officemates and friends into a service taxi on New Year''s Eve, and we made the long journey bypassing the Qalandia checkpoint. The detour added more than an hour to the trip. If we''d been Jewish settlers, we could have breezed right through.
....The Israeli government and the newspapers keep saying they are minimizing checkpoints in the run-up to the elections, which is simply a lie. Even if they have taken out some fixed checkpoints, which I haven''t seen or heard of them doing, they have added a lot more ''flying checkpoints,'' which can show up anywhere. Flying checkpoints are even more nerve-wracking than fixed checkpoints because they are so unpredictable.
We hit a flying checkpoint near the entrance of Jericho, and the girl beside me crossed her fingers and said, "Let''s hope nobody gets turned back. Including me."
Israel is failing the moral test
Ha''aretz 2/14/2005
According to Israeli authorities, one reason for my arrest two weeks ago in Biddu and my denial of entry into Israel in 2003 is that I "organized and participated in illegal demonstrations." Israeli authorities frequently use the term "illegal demonstrations" to describe peaceful protests against Israeli government violations of international law. This twisted reasoning needs to be exposed and rejected. What is legal often does not completely correspond to what is moral. However, when what is moral is described as illegal, there is a major problem. Why is it "illegal" for hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children to march peacefully to assert their right to their land in the face of Israeli soldiers, who are defending the construction of a wall that has been declared illegal by the world''s highest legal body, the International Court of Justice? Why is it "illegal" for communities to try and implement the ICJ decision by walking together to their farmland to try peacefully to block Israeli contractors from bulldozing their land, from building a wall to cut them off from their land and from imprisoning them in their villages?
Apparently, it is forbidden for Palestinians to use the tactics of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. to try to save their land and their communities from destruction. Apparently, Israeli authorities believe that it is legal for Israeli soldiers to club Palestinian men, women and children, to use tear gas on them, shoot rubber bullets and live ammunition at them and arrest them for peacefully protesting. This use of violence against peaceful protesters is "legal" even though the ICJ declared the construction of the wall on Palestinian land illegal. The Israeli government explains the soldiers'' violence as "Palestinian clashes with security forces," even though the Israeli military invariably initiates the violence and young Palestinian men only occasionally respond with rocks.
The Problem with Western Democracy
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 2/10/2005
The people of the Middle East are hardly the ultimate recipients of ''Western democracy'' as understood by most Arabs and as demonstrated by US actions. Why?
A recent online poll carried out by the Arabic website of Al Jazeera satellite television found that more than 80 percent of respondents distrust "Western democracy." The results simply restated the obvious. The query, of course, hardly meant to question "Western democracy" in its own right, but rather its imposition on the Arab world.
Needless to say, one needs no poll, scientific or otherwise, to conclude that the majority of Arabs are in desperate need of democratic measures. But they need democracy for their own sake, not for the sake of one who wishes to legitimize an occupation and to tout the virtues of a superpower. If Al Jazeera tested its readers'' views on democracy, as a model without the word "Western" trotting along, the overwhelming votes would probably have been cast in favor of democracy - that honorable value first coined by the ancient Greeks as "citizenry rule."
Sunday''s admittedly impressive turnout in Iraqi elections - and the Western spin that it suggests a vote of satisfaction for the post-Saddam Hussein US occupation notwithstanding, the prevailing sense in the Arab media continues to be that the Iraq experiment is a charade democracy that still has little to do with rule of the citizenry.
Good morning to the Israeli left
By Gideon Levy, Ha''aretz 2/13/2005
Good morning to the Israeli left. After an eternally long hibernation, we are starting to hear the sounds of its awakening. Only when the wind is once again blowing in its direction - and not because of anything it did - does the extra-parliamentary left dare to come out of the closet where it locked itself up more than four years ago. Perhaps one should welcome these signs of awakening, but it is impossible not to hold it accountable for its lengthy, disgraceful and cowardly silence that abandoned the street to the right and the settlers. For more than four years Israel has been doing anything it wanted in the occupied areas, practically without any domestic criticism. It killed and demolished, uprooted and brutalized, and practically nobody protested. The world saw what was going on and shouted about it. But not us. When Israel desperately needed an alternative view, a clear sound of protest, practically nothing was heard, not a peep, except from a few small and brave organizations.
Fraud and corruption
By George Monbiot, The Guardian 2/10/2005
Forget the UN. The US occupation regime helped itself to $8.8 bn of mostly Iraqi money in just 14 months -- The Republican senators who have devoted their careers to mauling the United Nations are seldom accused of shyness. But they went strangely quiet on Thursday. Henry Hyde became Henry Jekyll. Norm Coleman''s mustard turned to honey. Convinced that the UN is a conspiracy against the sovereignty of the United States, they had been ready to launch the attack which would have toppled the hated Kofi Annan and destroyed his organisation. A report by Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US federal reserve, was meant to have proved that, as a result of corruption within the UN''s oil-for-food programme, Saddam Hussein was able to sustain his regime by diverting oil revenues into his own hands. But Volcker came up with something else.
"The major source of external financial resources to the Iraqi regime," he reported, "resulted from sanctions violations outside the [oil-for-food] programme''s framework." These violations consisted of "illicit sales" of oil by the Iraqi regime to Turkey and Jordan. The members of the UN security council, including the United States, knew about them but did nothing. "United States law requires that assistance programmes to countries in violation of UN sanctions be ended unless continuation is determined to be in the national interest. Such determinations were provided by successive United States administrations."
...Last week a British adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council told the BBC''s File on Four programme that officials in the CPA were demanding bribes of up to $300,000 in return for awarding contracts. Iraqi money seized by US forces simply disappeared. Some $800m was handed out to US commanders without being counted or even weighed. A further $1.4bn was flown from Baghdad to the Kurdish regional government in the town of Irbil, and has not been seen since...
The False Promise of Western Democracy
By Nora Bassiouni and David, Electronic Intifada 2/14/2005
The recent election of Mahmoud Abbas in the Occupied Territories was hailed by the Western press as a milestone in the democratization of the Palestinian people. However, recent reports coming out of that region have questioned the legitimacy of this supposed triumph in democracy.
For starters, demographic studies of voter turn-out have revealed that a relatively small proportion of the overall Palestinian population worldwide actually participated. Along these lines, several election commission officials resigned the day of Abbas'' inauguration, citing various violations of the agreed-upon election protocol. Finally, many Arab activists, scholars, and community leaders have critiqued the representativeness of the Abbas administration''s policies, including yesterday''s announced cease-fire agreement with Israel.
These elections have added to a growing worldwide skepticism about Western notions of democracy (i.e. institutionalized suffrage, parliamentary procedures, etc.). It seems Western democratic practices, here in the form of an internationally-supervised day of voting, do not, in and of themselves, guarantee a truly democratic society. Logistical procedures have been defined as democracy with limited concern for dynamic, ongoing, and diverse public opinion.
Blocking Out the Sun
By Mike Odetalla, Electronic Intifada 2/14/2005
Writing from Beit Hanina, occupied Palestine -- My Palestinian mother has a favorite expression that she likes to use. Whenever she wants the curtains pulled back, a window or door opened to the outside world, or just wants to get out of the house, to be outdoors, she would always say that she wants to "ashoof wijih rabie" (roughly translated: to see the face of my God).
The "face of God" to her, meant the beauty of God''s creation, visible to all! The blue skies, the green hills, the moonlit nights, and the dew covered flowers, were all symbolic of the face of God, meant to be seen and enjoyed!
Last summer, while my family and I were in Palestine, we got to see and experience, first hand, the magnificence of God''s face and the ugly face of occupation and oppression, the Apartheid Wall that is being built by Israel.
Even as a small child, I was enthralled by the simple yet awe inspiring natural beauty that surrounded me. The ancient olive trees, swaying in the morning breeze or covered in a blanket of white snow, the daily display of exquisite sunsets as the sun dipped below the surrounding hills, and my favorite one of them all, the magnificent moonlit nights whereby the moon would first appear to be resting on top of the hills, as if it were a giant spot light, and then arc across the sky, saturating the entire country side in its golden hue!
The Sharm El-Sheikh Summit: An interview with Saleh Abdel Jawad
Electronic Intifada/Palestine Report 2/11/2005
This week Palestine Report Online interviews Saleh Abdel Jawad, professor of political science at Birzeit University, on the Sharm Al Sheikh summit.
PR: Do we now have peace and is everything back on track?
Abdel Jawad: Peace? We have perhaps a serious ceasefire. I''m not sure if we have peace. There is an attempt. I think the Americans have pushed hard to arrive at a certain situation. If peace will come, or if a political process will go further, this is another story.
PR: But things appear to have moved very fast since President Mahmoud Abbas was elected president. Do you attribute this only to American pressure?
Abdel Jawad: Not, of course, only. Abbas is serious, he is committed to what he says, and I think the ball is now mainly in the Israeli court. Abbas is still obliged to do certain things on the Palestinian side: he has to apply the ceasefire fully and control the situation. The Israelis have to get to, at least, the pre-September 28, 2000 situation. Then we can maybe move on the roadmap.
From Aqaba to Sharm: Fake Peace Festivals
By Tanya Reinhart, Electronic Intifada 2/11/2005
The Sharm El-Sheikh summit of Sharon and Abbas is hailed in the Western media as the opening of a new era. This is the climax of a wave of optimism that has been generated since the death of Arafat. In the last four years, the Israeli leadership singled Arafat out as the main obstacle for peace. Adopting the Israeli perspective, the media world believes that his departure would enable a renewal of the peace process. This, in the media world, is coupled with the faith that Israel is finally led by a man of peace. Sharon, who might have had some problems in the past, so the story goes, has changed his skin, and now he is leading Israel to painful concessions.
The same euphoria has been of course dominant also in the Israeli media, as Aluf Benn noted in Ha''aretz in December 7,: "The media atmosphere over the last few days has been reminiscent of the Oslo-era euphoria, or the early days of Ehud Barak''s government... There is once again talk of cooperation, public embraces and peace conferences. International diplomats are once again viewing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an arena for diplomatic successes instead of a guaranteed recipe for frustration and failure".[1]
Judging from the optimistic language of the media, the new era exists not just at the level of declared plans. The praises for Sharon, the feeling of huge progress, would let one almost believe that things have actually changed on the ground - some settlements evacuated, the occupation almost over, cessation of Israeli violence....But the bitter reality is that nothing has changed.
Peace Without Justice
By Robert Fisk, ZNet 2/11/2005
So, the Palestinians will end their occupation of Israel. No more will Palestinian tanks smash their way into Haifa and Tel Aviv. No more will Palestinian F-18s bomb Israeli population centres. No more will Palestinian Apache helicopters carry out "targeted killings" - ie: murders - of Israeli military leaders.
The Palestinians have promised to end all "acts of violence" against Israelis while Israel has promised to end all "military activity" against Palestinians. So that''s it, then. Peace in our time.
A Martian - even a well-educated Martian - would have gathered that this was the message, supposing he dropped in on the fantasy world of Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday. The Palestinians had been committing "violence", the Israelis carrying out "innocent" operations. Palestinian "violence" or "terror and violence" - the latter a more popular phrase since it carried the stigma of 11 September 2001 - was now at an end. Mahmoud Abbas - who told a close Lebanese friend this year that he wore a suit and tie so that he would look "different" to Yasser Arafat - went along with all this. Just which people were occupying the homes of which other people remained a mystery.
Silver-haired and wisdom-burdened, Mahmoud Abbas looked the part. We had to forget that it was this same Abbas who wrote the Oslo Accords, who in 1,000 pages failed to use - even once - the word "occupation", and who talked not of Israeli "withdrawal" from Palestinian territory, but of "redeployment".
MK Elon reaches out to evangelicals
By Gil Hoffman, Jerusalem Post 2/11/2005
Not many members of Knesset have written a book. Fewer still have written a book in English. And only one has written a book in English especially for evangelical Christians.
National Union MK Benny Elon, who is an Orthodox rabbi, will present his new book, God''s Covenant with Israel: Establishing Biblical Boundaries in Today''s World, on Monday at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Anaheim, California.
The convention is expected to draw more than 6,000 Christian communicators from all over the world, who broadcast to the 141 million Christian Americans who tune in to religious media on a regular basis.
A Jerusalem bus that exploded in a terrorist attack will be on display at the convention to encourage prayer for peace in Jerusalem and remind participants that terror can strike anywhere.
Elon, who has had ties with evangelical Christians for several years, is set to meet at the convention with a who''s who of Christian evangelists and broadcasters, including Pat Robertson, Kay Arthur, and Janet Parshall. Elon told The Jerusalem Post that he does not believe it is odd that a Knesset member and a rabbi wrote a book especially for American Christians.
....Elon: "Gaza was clearly part of the biblical land grant to Israel and God has a plan for Gaza and its inhabitants in the future," Elon wrote. "As the preparations for this withdrawal increase, please keep the inhabitants of Gaza and northern Samaria in your hearts and prayers. The people of the book have a responsibility to uphold and protect the covenant between God and Israel."
The role of the Palestinian women in Local Government
By Abdulnasser Makky, Arabic Media Internet Network 2/11/2005
1. The role of the Palestinian women before PNA: One consequence of Israel''s occupation policies was the proletarianization of Palestinians, as increasing numbers of both men and women were uprooted from their lands and livelihood and pressured to join the Israeli labor force in order to support their families. Many worked as poorly paid manual laborers, or as seasonal agricultural workers in Israeli enterprises.'' Women from all sectors of society began to enter the education system, including higher education, in order to improve their chances of finding gainful employrtient. Women often took up jobs in the service sector, in teaching, nursing, and the like, or else received training in vocational skills which they could use to supplement their families'' incomes (Sabagh, 1993).
These socioeconomic transformations inevitably acted back upon the women themselves. Increasingly, Palestinian women began to take upon themselves the task of defining their roles as productive members of Palestinian society under occupation and of developing avenues through which they would ''butte to the struggle against Israeli rule (Haj, 1992). Given these conditions became a virtual dally onslaught against their Palestinian identity, it is not surprising that men and women alike regarded their collective national oppression as the first priority. Yet because Palestinian women''s traditional structural position was different from that of men, gendered differences in Palestinian responses to Israeli Occupation did eventually emerge (Kuttab, 1993).
This politicization and mobilization occurred initially within the bounds of the sixty or so charitable societies that had been established within the West Bank before 1967. Under the Occupation, these societies expanded their purview from traditional welfare functions, to place greater emphasis on education, health and vocational training.
Instruments of doom
By Mounzer Sleiman, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 2/10/2005
Mounzer Sleiman examines Israel''s nuclear history and capabilities and the indispensable US role in developing and sustaining the Israeli nuclear arsenal
No other development has done so much to make the Middle East unstable than Israel''s decision to become a major nuclear power, with a wide arsenal of advanced nuclear weapons. Unlike other nations that have considered nuclear weapons for deterrence purpose only and were satisfied with the production of a limited number of atomic weapons, Israel has continued to produce a suite of weapons that can be used to do everything from blunt an armoured attack to annihilate a national capital city.
Israel''s pursuit of nuclear capability hasn''t been a solo effort. Other countries like France were very involved in making Israel the nuclear power it is today. But, while these countries have provided official, if covert, assistance, Israel has also been involved in the aggressive acquisition of nuclear secrets through espionage, even from its largest sponsor, the United States. There, the large community of Jewish nuclear scientists and the lax security has allowed Israel to pursue a nuclear weapons programme without even paying the economic costs usually associated with such endeavour.
The fact that many of America''s nuclear weapons scientists were Jewish and pro-Israel is no secret. The father of the neutron bomb, Sam Cohen, himself a pro-Israel nuclear scientist noted of the scientists at Los Alamos during WW II, "many of them were refugees from Hitler, whose friends and relatives had suffered hideously at his hands and who harboured little affection for the Nazis." On the evening after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Oppenheimer told the assembled nuclear scientists that his biggest regret was that they hadn''t completed the bomb in time to use against the Germans. "that brought the house down".
Notes on violence
By Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 2/10/2005
Instinct and moral constructs: Azmi Bishara examines definitions of terror
The urge towards violence is an instinct human beings inherited from the animal kingdom. Proponents of totalitarian ideologies that tolerate or even encourage violence as a legitimate means towards an end take refuge in this legacy from the stuggle to survive. They are the self- appointed defenders of nature against an artificial and distorted society. But the premises of their self-serving, fascist theories are simply false. The advancement of a civilisation is gauged by the degree to which it has distanced itself from the world of natural violence and its capacity to regulate this instinct non-coercively. One test of a society''s strength resides in the extent to which violence is needed in order that laws be imposed, and political systems can be measured according to the extent to which they require violence to reproduce themselves. In short, the less need a society has for violence to regulate itself the higher it is on the scale of civilisation. From this standpoint, right and violence belong to two entirely different worlds.
The suppression of instinctual violence is a prerequisite for any society to treat violence as a moral value and, hence, its ability to create legitimate outlets or channels for violence and to condemn as evil all forms of violence that occur outside of these channels. Protecting society and its organised structures then becomes a good while any assault on this entity becomes an evil, a crime society must deter through organised violence which it terms punishment or retribution. Another type of violence is that which emanates from the intrinsic psychological warps within a civilisation. Once regarded as hostile and antithetical to the social fabric of society, such violence was eventually morally neutralised: "deviant", "perverse" and "pathological" became terms with which society labelled its hidden fears and aversions, perhaps because it reminded them of the costs of civilisation.
Abbas never won a popular mandate
By Peter Lagerquist, Daily Star 2/11/2005
This week, in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced a mutual truce that both hope will bring an end to the second Palestinian intifada. "We agreed that all Palestinians will stop all acts of violence against all Israelis everywhere, and, at the same time, Israel will cease all its military activity against all Palestinians everywhere," declared Sharon. The agreement carried further the enthusiasm that invested Mahmoud Abbas with a "popular mandate" following his election in early January as Yasser Arafat''s successor.
However, drowned by the rhetoric from Egypt came a reminder of how inconsequential were both Abbas''s election and the latest would-be milestone in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the same day, the Israeli High Court approved further construction of Israel''s separation wall in occupied East Jerusalem. It is telling that Sharon does not consider this an example of violence. "Israel wants the [Sharm el-Sheikh] summit to focus as much as possible on security and as little as possible on the ''political horizon''," noted Israeli commentator Aluf Benn in the daily Haaretz.
Indeed, a "peace" process by which Palestinians keep quiet and Israel continues its building does not lead toward new possibilities, but only into that old dead end known as the Oslo process.
Jew'' or ''Israeli
By Avirama Golan, Ha''aretz 2/10/2005
The call for a referendum may be coming closer to the prime minister''s bureau, with the help of his good friends like Uri Dan and others, but in the settlements and the various divisions of the religious-Zionist public, there seems to be a fair amount of hesitation about it. As the disengagement becomes more and more real, other voices are being heard from this public, asking, "Where did we go wrong?" Most of these individuals refer to the same major errors. Some writers are warning of "a disengagement from the State of Israel." Rabbis and thinkers are asking if the settlement movement hasn''t lost the battle for consciousness, if it wasn''t a mistake to move so far away from the general public and make the settlement enterprise a narrow sectarian issue, and whether a violent response to disengagement is not liable to crush the religious camp along with Israeli society in its entirety.
It would not be prudent to put down this breast-beating of the settlers. This sector feels threatened, for the first time after many years in which it itself scorned the secular public, feeling simultaneously all-powerful (actually) and discriminated against (ostensibly). ...The internal quarrel in the religious-Zionist camp reveals that the moment of choice between being a "Jew" and an "Israeli," between the Land of Israel and the State of Israel, is nearly at hand. Those who decide they are part of the State of Israel must declare that they will accept the decision of the majority in Israel, including its Arab citizens, as regards the future of the territories. Anyone who is not willing to accept this decision automatically aligns himself with the "Jewish" camp that sets itself apart from the state. It is a crucial choice, one that defines who is for and who is against democracy. And while it is liable to tear up the religious camp from within, it could save the "ideological core of the left" and the state.
The blood of Iman al-Hamas
By Amira Hass, Ha''aretz 2/9/2005
And the blood of Iman al-Hamas - on whose hands is her blood? With or without the confirmed killing, the soldiers in R.''s unit, with him or without him at the Girit outpost in Rafah, killed the 13-year-old schoolgirl who was walking on October 5 with her schoolbag in broad daylight. She wasn''t even infiltrating in the middle of the night, trying to find work in Israel. Someone in the IDF, after all, drafted the orders that allow soldiers to shoot Palestinians walking in an open field near an IDF outpost or a settlement built on that field. Someone, after all, gave the order that day to shoot the girl. Someone executed the order. With perjury or without it, the girl is not coming back to life. An army that takes pride in its night-vision equipment, in its precise sniping instruments, that same army''s soldiers could not see it was a little girl?
Iman''s name became famous because of the perjury of the soldiers. Her futile death was reported in the Israeli media, which very rarely reports on dead Palestinians. There is a long list of Palestinian civilians whose blood was spilled neither in battle nor because they endangered someone, and their blood has evaporated from our consciousness.
Analysis / Enough with the talk
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha''aretz 2/9/2005
Despite Palestinian fatigue after more than four years of the intifada and a strong desire to return to a routine of quiet and prosperity, there were no festivities in the territories yesterday to celebrate the Sharm el-Sheikh summit.
There were no joyful headlines announcing "The end of the intifada" in the Palestinian press, unlike its Israeli counterpart, and you could not hear such talk in the West Bank or Gaza yesterday.
From the Palestinian perspective, it was impossible to make do with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas'' declaration about "an end to all the violent activity against Israelis and Palestinians wherever they may be," nor with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon''s parallel declaration about an end to military operations in the territories.
Palestinian commentators wrote that construction of the separation fence, always dubbed "racist" in Palestinian reports, constitutes violence against them, like the checkpoints, roadblocks and all the other limits on their freedom of movement. In general, the occupation in its entirety is one big form of violence against them, the reports said.
In dozens of Arab and foreign press man-in-the-street interviews in Ramallah and Gaza, nearly everyone spoke in the same manner: We''re fed up and want to live in quiet....
.....Hamas'' leader in the West Bank, Sheikh Hassan Yusuf of Ramallah, who was recently released from administrative detention, said it well: He declared that the Palestinian problem is not a security problem, but a problem of rights, sovereignty, a state and the right of return.
Palestinians suspect their leaders don''t care about the prisoners
By Amira Hass, Ha''aretz 2/8/2005
A trail of suspicion accompanies every announcement of negotiations concerning the release of prisoners. It is internal Palestinian suspicion, which has deepened since it turned out that the prisoners and their release were left out of the discussions on the 1993 declaration of principles that was the basis for the Oslo Accord. The mistrust only became more bitter during the negotiations for an interim agreement, when the release of every few hundred prisoners was preceded by exhausting negotiations, and when it became clear that Israel was not willing to release all the Palestinian prisoners arrested before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. Doubts regarding their future were particularly heavy among the more veteran prisoners and their families. They found it hard to believe that they had been left out not due to apathy toward their cause and therefore a lack of effort, but due to an asymmetrical balance of power in which the Palestinian side is too weak to effect changes in the Israeli position, too weak to prevent the inclusion of Palestinians caught in Israel without permits and criminal prisoners in the Israeli "gestures" and too weak to demand the release of Israeli Palestinians who joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization before Oslo and operated in its framework.
This suspicion sheds light on the sociopolitical tensions with which PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and the Fatah leadership must contend if they want any power and if they want to succeed in the current negotiations.
Israelis Act to Encircle East Jerusalem
By John Ward Anderson, Washington Post 2/7/2005
Enclaves in Arab Areas, Illegal Building Projects Seen Intended to Consolidate Control -- JERUSALEM -- The Israeli government and private Jewish groups are working in concert to build a human cordon around Jerusalem''s Old City and its disputed holy sites, moving Jewish residents into Arab neighborhoods to consolidate their grip on strategic locations, according to critics of the effort and a Washington Post investigation.
The goal is to establish Jewish enclaves in and around Arab-dominated East Jerusalem and eventually link them to form a ring around the city, a key battleground in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of its Jewish and Muslim holy sites, according to activists involved in the effort and critics of the campaign.
The Israeli government has sometimes violated its own laws and regulations to advance the encircling effort, the Post investigation found. Critics of the plan charge that the government is subsidizing and protecting Jewish groups that are deliberately scuttling peace efforts by establishing Jewish enclaves in overwhelmingly Palestinian neighborhoods.
As part of the effort, the Israeli government began work on expanding the West Bank''s largest settlement, Maleh Adumim, without required building permits and in violation of the settlement''s master development plan. The work was ordered stopped in September after Post inquires about the project.
Sharon and Abbas Hold Summit, Call For End of Violence
Electronic Intifada/Democracy Now! 2/8/2005
Interviewer: Amy Goodman -- AMY GOODMAN: We''re joined by two guests. Hussein Ibish joins us in our D.C. studio. He''s a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine. And on the phone with us from Chicago, we''re joined by Ali Abunimah, the founder of Electronic Intifada. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Hussein Ibish, let''s begin with you. Can you talk about the latest developments today and the cease-fire?
HUSSEIN IBISH: Well, I think it''s extremely interesting. First of all what -- I think what you''re looking at, actually, is a series of events that are putting Prime Minister Sharon increasingly out of step with the other actors. And I think putting him in a diplomatic box in a very interesting way....
ALI ABUNIMAH: Well, it''s good to try to put an optimistic and positive spin on things, but I really can''t share the optimism. I think what we''re seeing is absolutely nothing new. We have seen the total replacement of substance with form, and I don''t see that Ariel Sharon is coming under increasing pressure from any of the other actors....
Amandla Ngawethu! South Africa and Palestine compared
By Jeff Handmaker, Bangani Ngeleza, Electronic Intifada 2/8/2005
On 28 December 2004, The Electronic Intifada featured an article, ‘Boycott as Resistance: The Moral Dimension’, by Omar Barghouti. While Barghouti argues that the situation in Palestine is “not identical to South Africa; that it is more complex, more multi-dimensional and even more sinister, in some respect”, he also acknowledges “that a sufficient family resemblance between Israel and South Africa exists to grant advocating South Africa style remedies”. Barghouti furthermore reflects on the “insurmountable hurdles” that South Africans faced throughout the anti-apartheid struggle. Finally, Bhargouti argued that the “militaristic establishment” of Israel would eventually weaken, if it were systematically challenged, just as it was in South Africa.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in 1989, while the apartheid regime was still choking the South African people, “I am a black South African, and if I were to change the names, a description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could describe events in South Africa.”
Years later South Africans that were involved in the anti-apartheid struggle paid visits to the occupied Palestinian territories. They have remarked that the situation in Palestine is in many respects far worse than what they faced during the anti-apartheid struggle.
Which Foreign Policy
By David Ignatius, PostWritersGroup/Washington Post 2/3/2005
WASHINGTON -- Are the neoconservatives ``up'''' or ``down'''' in the second Bush administration? Will their agenda of transformational regime change in the Middle East be dominant in Bush II, or will th |
