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Seeing the ruin of Gaza from the Ruins of Umm el-Jimal
Bert de Vries, Palestine News Network 2/28/2009
     Jordan - On January 15 my wife and I sat in the guest room sipping tea with Abdullah Serour, the current sheikh of the Umm el-Jimal village in northeastern Jordan.
     I have been working in the area for over thirty years, among other things documenting how archaeological materials have been reused over time.
     As Abdullah described how he used to go to school in a refurbished Byzantine house surrounded by ruins, the television on the wall displayed live coverage of the bombing of Gaza city.
     All day long as I ran errands in nearby Mafraq, I’d been seeing the image of smoke coming from the tall U.N. building in Gaza. Purportedly the Arab news agencies in the building were targeted to hide the mayhem from the world. But Al-A rabiya’s cameras covered the destruction from about a kilometer away, and a reporter on the scene bantered along in Arabic, as though he were covering a football match. He’d been doing this for weeks, and his voice was tired.
     I had last visited Gaza over a decade ago while planning a course on environmental geography to be offered jointly by Birzeit University and my own institution, Calvin College. What struck me then was not only the uneven distribution of water resources between the Israeli settlements (now gone) and the Palestinian towns and refugee camps of Gaza, but also the puny size of the entire Gaza "strip." In one day, we drove from Ramallah, stopped along the way to see the destroyed village of ancient Emmaus (transformed into Canada Park), were held up for an hour at the Israeli entry gate which was closed due to a blockade, toured the entire strip’s antiquities and environmental features, and made it back to Jerusalem by supper time. more.. e-mail

Bil’in resists the cancer of settlements and noxious gas
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 2/28/2009
     Pouring rain, high winds, flooding to the north in Tulkarem’s Qaffin, and the heavy presence of Israeli soldiers wielding machine guns did not stop the Bil’in nonviolent resistance this week or any other.
     It has been four years, every Friday, that the western Ramallah town and its community of neighbors have taken to their lands attempting to stop Israeli forces from confiscation for the Wall and settlements.
     With the M16s that fire gas bombs at will, along with hand held grenades lobbed by literally smirking soldiers, Bil’in came out yesterday to demonstrate on Friday, a week after they marked four years of resistance to the Wall.
     A winding road encircles the town’s land on three sides. The gas was fired from all directions before residents even got close to the gate that is the only possible entrance to their lands.
     Just 250 meters from the center of town, with another 250 to go, demonstrators were pelted with the gas that mixed with heavy rains and burned the skin. Elderly men were on the ground vomiting, children were ducking for cover behind boulders, but the soldiers were on all sides. The explosions were omnipresent and one had to jump and duck, do a hopscotch skip at times, to avoid being hit with the bombs that fired the burning noxious substance. This week was light on the warfare, with previous weeks witnessing rubber coated steel bullets and live ammunition. more.. e-mail

Israel Lobby Howls at Hillary
Ari Berman, Middle East Online 2/28/2009
     In her 2000 race for the US Senate, Hillary Clinton was loudly denounced by uncritical right-wing supporters of Israel for a 1999 trip to Ramallah, where she kissed Palestinian First Lady Suha Arafat and listened as Arafat denounced Israel (in Arabic). Pictures of "the kiss" were repeatedly slapped across the cover of the New York Post, in TV ads and invoked by the campaigns of Rudy Giuliani and Rick Lazio. The flap almost derailed Clinton’s campaign.
     Clinton learned her lesson and for nearly a decade afterward offered only boilerplate praise of Israel, which made her a favorite of the right-leaning Israel Lobby.
     Now, as Secretary of State, she’s forced to confront another reality: the difficulty of forging peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Anything she says that might be perceived as even slightly critical of Israel will land her in hot water with right-wingers back home. Just ask Chas Freeman, who Barack Obama appointed to head the National Intelligence Council despite fierce opposition from war-hungry neoconservatives.
     In advance of her trip to the Holy Land next week, Clinton advisers sent word that the United States was unhappy with Israel for blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza, which was further devastated by Israel’s recent military incursion. more.. e-mail

How the West Abandoned Palestinian Democracy
Terry Lacey – Jakarta, Palestine Chronicle 2/28/2009
     There is a strange post war silence about Gaza and Palestine in Indonesia as if the activists and political leaders that got involved have discovered a can of worms.
     The conflicts and complexity of the political divisions between Palestinians have astounded Indonesians who learned about them as a result of the recent conflict.
     Activists have hunted through web sites to try and understand what happened between Fatah and Hamas that led to civil war and then the Israeli war against Gaza.
     The recent chronology on the BBC web site summed it up. In January 2006 Hamas won Palestinian general elections. In March the Hamas Government was sworn in. Israel, the US and EU immediately suspended all links with it.
     The West abandoned Palestinian democracy, failed to help lead the new democratic government towards dialogue and moderation and instead led by boycott and blockade towards a Palestinian civil war and then a war between Israel and Gaza.
     The Palestinian split cannot be blamed only on Palestinian politics. It was engineered by Israel and the West and they are partly to blame for its consequences. more.. e-mail

US policy and the Palestinian cause
Galal Nassar, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/26/2009
     So far, Obama’s Israel-Palestine policy appears indistinguishable from that of previous US administrations.
     A forecast of US policy towards the Palestinian cause in the Obama era requires not only an examination of the new administration’s actions and positions so far but also a historical contextualisation in which regard specific consideration must be given to a certain prudence long- lacking in US policy on this issue and to the objective circumstances militating towards change.
     In the statements issuing from Washington last week, two delivered by US Vice-President Joseph Biden draw our immediate attention. The first cautioned Iran that it would face international isolation if it refused to halt its nuclear refinement activities. One is nevertheless struck by the almost total absence of the language of intimidation and threat that characterised the Bush administration’s rhetoric towards Iran. As I suggested last week in this column, Biden’s remarks support the likelihood that the Iranian question will remain pending without being addressed face-on by the US administration for the next two years. Additional evidence to this effect is to be found in US Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s remarks regarding his recent talks with Iranians. That his statement made no reference to Iranian nuclear activities also suggests that the subject has been shelved until further notice. more.. e-mail

Obama’s Third War
William A. Cook, Palestine Think Tank 2/28/2009
     “Become more human, and humans will love you.” - (Text of the Gospel of Phillip, 143)
     Predictably, the United States Senate and House of Representatives voted to support Israel’s carnage in Gaza thereby handing the new President yet one more war to contend with, one unhappily more dangerous to America than those in Iraq or Afghanistan. That may seem to be, on its face, a strange thing to say unless one understands that we are in Iraq fighting for Israel and, with this vote, our Congress has indebted itself to the Israeli forces that govern the United States (as Ariel Sharon said long ago), forces that will use endangerment of Israel as leverage to attack Iran and Syria, countries already in their military sites since 1992.
     Our Senate’s indebtedness is unanimous; while 20 in the House abstained and five voted against the resolution, all the rest voted to support. The reasons offered: Israel has a right to defend itself even though we do not know where Israel is: that is, Israel has yet to define its borders and remove itself from occupied territories; and the rockets fired over the last 8 years must stop, even though Israel, with one shell in Gaza, killed 43 at the UN school, twice the number killed by rockets in 8 years. But logic, international law and international opinion, and fundamental moral law cannot sway our Congress; money can and does. Obama may have a Senate majority and a Democratically controlled House of Representatives, but he cannot respond to the desires of the American people for change – no more wars – nor to the United community of nations that have voted with their feet against the actions of the Israeli government in open and defiant dissent against their governments in London, Ireland, Scotland, Europe and through out the Arab world including Jordan and Egypt. Our Representatives represent Israeli wishes and policies not those of the American people; the people voted overwhelmingly for change not the continued support of Israel represented by these votes or the appointments made by Obama as advisors. more.. e-mail

The Israeli Condition Against the Egyptian Role
Dar Al-Hayat, MIFTAH 2/28/2009
     Once again, Israel has thrown a monkey wrench into Egypt’s efforts to deal with the explosive and saddening situation in Gaza, after it had waged the war on the Strip - thus anticipating Egyptian and Turkish efforts to extend and renew the truce, whose effects were over at the end of 2008.
     The suspension by Israeli PM Ehud Barak of the truce agreement with Israel, which Egypt had convinced Hamas of based on ending the siege after stabilizing the ceasefire and starting negotiations over prisoners - through a condition imposed by the Politics and Security Cabinet to release the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, imprisoned by Hamas - did not come as a result of a sudden awakening of Olmert to his "dignity", as he put it when he said "there is no reason for us to comply with the conditions of Hamas and act as if we lost our dignity…"
     It is probable that Olmert has awakened to something else other than his dignity and his wish to retrieve the soldier Shalit. If he did this for internal reasons, it would have been logical for him to insist on this condition before the public elections that were held. His insistence on the liberation of Shalit would have served him to obtain more Israeli votes for his party (Kadima), instead of throwing his condition at Egypt’s face after it succeeded in convincing Hamas of appeasement after the end of elections. more.. e-mail

’Israel Misses the Point’
George S. Hishmeh, MIFTAH 2/28/2009
     Benjamin Netanyahu is not giving up, still hoping that he can entice Tzipi Livni and even Ehud Barak with key portfolios, should they accept to join his projected coalition government, or else, he must know fully well that his days as head of an Israeli government of extreme rightists will be numbered. Hence, the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations will remain at a standstill.
     For a start, Barak, leader of the Labour Party, recognising his diminished status, appears unwilling to join a Netanyahu Cabinet now that his onetime all-powerful party, as a result of the recent election, has only 13 of the 120-member Knesset.
     As far as Livni is concerned, she still seems to be wavering. This prompted leading liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz to call on her not to give up because “her insistence on a ‘different kind of politics’ obligate her to stick to her principles - first and foremost her call to advance the negotiations with the Palestinians”.
     Of course, it is common knowledge that Netanyahu does not favour the establishment of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip. But Livni’s public record in this regard is nowhere to be seen, though she had served as foreign minister. Her continued interest amounts to nothing more than her hunger for power. more.. e-mail

A Massive Moral Black Hole
Rami G Khouri - Beirut, Lebanon, Palestine News Network 2/28/2009
     Israel and its foundational ideology of Zionism have always had a structural problem with how to accommodate Arab and Jewish nationalism in a single country.
     Most of the world believes that the best answer is two Israeli and Palestinian states side by side...
     ...with a negotiated and fair resolution of the Palestine refugee issue that is the core of the conflict for Palestinians and Arabs.
     Some Israelis feel the solution is to expel Palestinians within Israel, and treat those living under Israeli occupation as residents but not as citizens with equal rights. Few Israelis accept the principle that Palestinians and Israelis should enjoy fully equal rights in two adjacent states, with the Palestinian refugeehood issue resolved through negotiations on the basis of UN resolutions and prevailing international law.
     The dilemma increases every year for Israel, as the Palestinian population grows; the 1.5 million Palestinians in 1948 are now over 8 million; the 800,000 Palestinian refugees of 1947-48 are now nearly 4.5 million. No wonder Israelis increasingly fear the "demographic threat" and seek solace in right-wing parties that now form a majority in their parliament. Openly racist parties now seem perfectly legitimate in the Israeli political system -- parties that would be rightly shunned, say, in Europe or the USA. more.. e-mail

Are Palestinians Allowed to Resist? (Part II)
Dina Jadallah-Taschler, Palestine Chronicle 2/28/2009
     There is an abundance of discourse over the means and methods that are pursued and/or justified by the Palestinians in their quest for independence and liberation. In the first part of this essay, I presented the legal, historical, and current context that forms the root of their current predicament. In this segment, I want to address the pros and cons of pursuing an exclusively non-armed struggle both by looking at the uniqueness of Palestinian circumstances and also by comparing it with the Indian National Liberation Movement, which is usually presented in Western narratives as almost exclusively non-violent, and successful, for having (ostensibly) been so.
     A Brief History of Palestinian Non-Violent Resistance
     Palestinians are continuously asked to not resist. The truth is that whether they resist violently or non-violently, Israeli violence continues unabated. Perhaps the scale, ugliness and the immediacy of the trauma are exaggerated in a massacre like we recently saw in Gaza, but the reality of purposeful eradication persists. -- See also: Are Palestinians Allowed to Resist? (Part I) more.. e-mail

A Waltz with the Dogs of Memory
Hussein Ibish, Palestine Think Tank 2/27/2009
     Commentary on "Waltz with Bashir" in The Nation
     Initial reaction to the surprising failure of the Israeli film Waltz with Bashir to win this year’s Academy Award for best foreign-language picture has suggested that it confronts harsh truths and painful realities, especially about Israel, too unflinchingly for the Hollywood mainstream to embrace. As a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz put it, this year’s Oscars demonstrated that "Hollywood knows exactly how it likes its Jews: Victims." Waltz with Bashir obviously provides little to feed that narrative. However, the key to the film’s artistic merit is ironically more a function of its failure than its success as an exercise in the recuperation of intolerable memories and the reassertion of some sort of "truth" in the face of psychic denial.
     The film makes no overt claim to be an accurate historical account of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and is most certainly nothing of the kind. Instead, it presents itself as a psychodrama focusing on the long-term traumatic effects on some individual Israeli soldiers (and, by definition, to some extent on Israeli society in general) of the experience of the invasion. more.. e-mail

VIDEO - They shoot farmers, don’t they? Israeli Snipers shoot at unarmed Palestinians and Internationals
Vittorio Arrigoni, Translated by Mary Rizzo, Palestine Think Tank 2/28/2009
     One heart, two hands, a beating heart and a mind that is still working. Two eyes deep enough to focus on injustice and aimed at by snipers Two hands that are still working so that they can comfort the little child who is A “dispersed son of a lesser God”, and a heart that is skipping beats and pumping blood for a mind that is not ready to show indifference before a tragedy such as this. I am alive, but this could quite easily have been the video of my execution.
     When a bullet (even if it may have been a rubber coated one) rushes past your temple, I can assure you it is like you have received a slap in the face by a heavyweight, something so strong to knock you to the ground. This is what happened, two days ago at Khozaa, when we were accompanying Palestinian agricultural workers (they and we are visibly all unarmed civilians) so that they can work in their own fields, at a distance of approximately 600 metres from the confine, Israeli snipers tried to kill me. The bullets struck at less than 50 centrimetres from where I was standing. Several days earlier, despite the presence of internationals, the same snipers had wounded Mohammad al-Buraim, who is deaf-mute... -- See also: Sniping at the elderly in Khoza'a more.. e-mail

An ideal medium for a stateless people
Ali Abunimah, bitterlemons-international.org, Electronic Intifada 2/26/2009
     This month The Electronic Intifada, an independent online publication about Palestine and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, marks its eighth anniversary. When we started, the co-founders did not realize that we were engaging in an early experiment in what is now called "new media" or "citizen journalism" before those terms were coined.
     EI built on earlier pioneering uses of the Internet by Palestinians and their allies who for the first time had the means to communicate with each other, and with Palestinians inside the homeland, circumventing enforced separation and pervasive media censorship. The Internet provided me, as a Palestinian who grew up in the Diaspora, with a real sense of community, connection and empowerment. It became in one sense a virtual country where Palestinians could meet, debate and even coordinate joint action in defense of their rights. Many of the people whose work I hold in highest regard I first met online.
     Palestinians readily took to the Internet because their narratives and analyses were -- and still are -- systematically shut out of the mainstream media. The Internet brought the cost of communication down: you no longer needed to own a TV network or a newspaper to get your story out. At first, we used the Internet to answer back to what we saw as unresponsive and biased media, but eventually we saw the opportunity to create our own alternatives, providing platforms for many talented writers inside and outside Palestine. Although analysis and criticism are crucial roles, EI for its part has also sought to foster original reporting on every aspect of Palestinian life and culture. It’s a tough struggle with limited resources, but the response shows it is worthwhile. more.. e-mail

The Makings of History / The facts, according to Bibi
Tom Segev, Ha’aretz 2/26/2009
     Benjamin Netanyahu said this week: "There has never been a time of emergency like this, except perhaps [during] the War of Independence." Netanyahu is known not only for his affinity for history, but also for his tendency to put it to political use. In the process, and on more than one occasion in the past, he has said things that made no sense - which is true here as well.
     The truth is that Israel has never been stronger than it is today; it even has an answer to the Iranian threat. The population has never been this large. International organizations such as the World Bank, World Health Organization, UNESCO and others rank Israel among the top 15 countries in their respective assessments, which means most Israelis are living better than ever before, and most are living better than the majority of other people on the planet. more.. e-mail

Soldiers kneecap 17 year old Khoza’a girl
Sharon Lock, Tales to Tell, ISM 2/27/2009
     We went to see 17 year old Wafa Al Najar, who was shot yesterday, in Naser Hospital today in Khan Younis. In Palestinian tradition, both her family and neighbours were keeping her company. But they were able to do little for her, and while they all at once told us the story of her shooting and of Khoza’a, their village (where Israel has been accused of war crimes in the recent attacks) Wafa sobbed intermittently in pain.
     During the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza, somewhere between Dec 27-30, Wafa’s 20 year old brother, Jihad Ahmad Al Najar, died in a Cairo hospital, evacuated there after he was shot in the head. Then, like thousands near the border, her family’s Khuza’a home was one of 163 local homes destroyed by the Israeli army. (The army also bulldozed 1500 denems of farmland there.) Yesterday at about 4pm, for the first time, Wafa (already with her arm bandaged after a fall on the school stairs) her mother Amal (Hope), and her brother Shahdi, ventured out to see their home’s remains.
     Wafa was 70 metres from her home, and and 800 metres from the border fence. Her mother and brother were 300 metres away from her. There were 3 shots, a neighbour who was 900 metres away says they were fired from two army jeeps and he saw a soldier shooting from the top of one. The first two bullets hit the ground beside Wafa. The third destroyed her kneecap, and she collapsed to the ground. Amal immediately thought she was dead. Shahdi tore off his white shirt to wave at the soldiers and began to move towards his sister. -- See also: Tales to Tell - From Gaza 2009 more.. e-mail

Sniping at the elderly in Khoza’a
Eva Bartlett In Gaza, ISM 2/27/2009
     For 2 months, Walid Abu Arjela and his family haven’t dared to return to their land in Am Almad of Khoza’a village, east of Khan Younis, in the lethal Israeli-imposed “buffer zone”. The land in question, 550 m from the Green Line border, used to be productive agricultural land, as with most of the land now confiscated by the Israeli military occupation of Gaza and the imposition of a “no-go zone” on the Palestinian side of the Green Line. And as with the fertile land of the “buffer zone” from south to north, the land was heavily worked and produced vegetables, grains and fruits for much of the Gaza Strip’s residents and even, before the siege, for export.
     On Tuesday, 24 February, Abu Arjela and family hoped to harvest peas and pick the scrubby weeds that donkeys can eat, regular animal feed being on the list of items no longer available in Gaza as a result of the comprehensive, debilitating Israeli, Egyptian and international siege on Gaza.
     In other areas of the region east of Khan Younis, farmers tend to employ local youths to work the land, but whereas the Am Almad farmers are a couple hundred metres closer to the border fence from which Israeli soldier shooting comes, they are no longer confident that they can safely practice daily productive farming. The farmers that do dare to return to their land tend to be elderly, small groups of family members.
     Such was the case with the Abu Arjelas. -- See also: VIDEO - Sniping at the elderly in Khoza’a more.. e-mail

Jaffa: from eminence to ethnic cleansing
Sami Abu Shehadeh & Fadi Shbaytah, Electronic Intifada 2/27/2009
     Jaffa was the largest city in historic Palestine during the years of the British mandate, with a population of more than 80,000 Palestinians in addition to the 40,000 persons living in the towns and villages in its immediate vicinity. In the period between the UN Partition resolution (UNGA 181) of 29 November 1947, and the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel, Zionist military forces displaced 95 percent of Jaffa’s indigenous Arab Palestinian population. Jaffa’s refugees accounted for 15 percent of Palestinian refugees in that fateful year, and today they are dispersed across the globe, still banned from returning by the state responsible for their displacement.
     Jaffa was the epicenter of the Palestinian economy before the 1948 Nakba. Beginning in the early 19th century, the people of Jaffa had cultivated citrus groves, particularly oranges, on their land. International demand for Jaffa oranges propelled the city onto the world stage, earning the city an important place in the global economy. By the 1930s, Jaffa was exporting tens of millions of citrus crates to the rest of the world, which provided thousands of jobs for the people of the city and its environs, and linking them to the major commercial centers of the Mediterranean coast and the European continent. more.. e-mail

Upgrade Palestinian rights
Seth Freedman, The Guardian 2/27/2009
     As it freezes an upgrade of relations with Israel, the EU should now demand respect for human rights, especially for children.
     The disproportionate and indiscriminate actions by Israeli forces during Operation Cast Lead rightly earned Israel’s leaders international opprobrium, and in some cases the verbal outrage was backed by concrete sanctions. Having last year declared an upgrading of relations with Israel, the EU decided last month to put the process on hold in the wake of the carnage in Gaza.
     The freeze was cautiously welcomed by many NGOs working to promote human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, which applauded the EU’s decision but questioned the motivation. According to Gerard Horton, a lawyer for Defence for Children International (DCI), the worry is that the suspension is merely a political ploy, "and that once the dust settles [and Cast Lead is out of the headlines], the process of upgrading will restart once more". more.. e-mail

Time for sanctions
Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/26/2009
     Effective, targeted sanctions against the symbols of Israeli occupation could break the deadlock of the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process.
     In July 2006, after a meeting of Arab foreign ministers, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa declared the Middle East peace process dead. Some found his statement premature and argued that the peace process was only "frozen". A few months later, in fact on Christmas Eve, the US administration intervened in order to resuscitate the ailing process, moving it to what would become the "Annapolis intensive care unit". The peace process was kept there on life support until the end of 2008, and then left to die quietly as the key actors exited the stage. Now that Israel has brought back the master of ceremonies, it is time to bury the dead.
     As we gather in front of the deceased and try to think of something serious to say (which is understandably difficult for many of us given that this is not the first funeral of that morbid process), it is important to come to grips with the basic facts about its ailing life and ultimate death. The diseases of the Middle East peace process were complex and many, but the virus at the core of it all is one: it is more profitable in Israeli politics to oppose withdrawal from the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Advocating such withdrawals, which is the condition sine qua non of peace, would erode any politician’s chances of getting elected. In extreme cases it could cost him his life. Rabin is testimony to that. more.. e-mail

Roots of hatred in Zionist ideology
Salim Nazzal, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/26/2009
     The recent triumph of extreme right-wing elements in the Israeli elections is not an accident, but is the logical outcome of a century of hatred in Zionist ideology, argues Peres (right) and Netanyahu talk about the next Israeli governmentIn 1939 Europe turned a blind eye to the rise of Nazism. The British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, believed that a policy of appeasement would work with Hitler. It did not. Hitler attacked Poland, giving the world a costly lesson -- a policy of appeasement does not work with fascism. The outcome is well known: Europe was ruined, and around 50 million people lost their lives. Yet, thanks to the Norwegian "home front" resistance, Hitler was deprived of the material needed to manufacture the nuclear bomb. Had he acquired enough material to do so, the history of humanity might have been dramatically different to what we know today.
     The fact that Hitler was democratically elected by the German people did not legitimate his policy of mass murder; in the same way the Israeli election of fascists and war criminals should not legitimate the Zionists’ policy of mass murder. However, if Hitler is the starkest example of a fascist politician brought to power by a democratic electoral system, the recent Israeli election is another more recent example of an election that brought another known fascist, Avigdor Lieberman, widely viewed as the Israeli duplicate of contemporary European fascists like Jörg Haider or Jean Marie Le Pen, to power. more.. e-mail

Mubarak, Obama and Bibi
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/26/2009
     A Netanyahu-led government in Israel and Obama in Washington: what are the prospects for Cairo?
     It has been almost 30 years since late president Anwar El-Sadat, late Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and former US president Jimmy Carter signed the first ever Arab-Israeli peace deal initiating what was supposed to be normal relations between Cairo and Tel Aviv. This month, however, there are very few signs that the agreement has fulfilled its promise. After "three decades of cold peace", Egypt and Israel are again having communication and cooperation problems.
     Indeed, tensions between Cairo and Tel Aviv, renewed in the last week, are mounting. Egypt’s frustration with Israel’s last minute demand to condition the conclusion of a truce with Hamas on the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is evident, compounded by statements attributed to Israeli envoy Amos Gilad whereby he suggested the Egypt was party to the harsh sanctions imposed on Gaza.
     Cairo’s anger only deepened when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decided to suspend Gilad to pursue secret negotiations for the release of Shalit in Paris with Qatar. As a result, Egypt has pulled back a trade delegation that was attending periodical consultations in Tel Aviv. According to sources, Egypt also notified Israel that it would suspend for a while all mediation efforts regarding both the truce and the fate of Shalit. more.. e-mail

Rights org: Palestinians in Israel suffer health rights discrimination
Report, Arab Association for Human Rights, Electronic Intifada 2/26/2009
     Since 2003, the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA) has periodically published reports examining different aspects of the discrimination faced by Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel. In 2009, HRA has decided to focus on the right to health -- an important factor that influences other human rights and shapes human dignity.
     Economic and social rights form an important component of universal human rights. These rights, including the right to health, have not been well received by many governments with a capitalist orientation, which tend to see these issues as a manifestation of human needs rather than human rights. This reflects a tendency to avoid granting these rights an obligatory character and to free the state from the need to invest the resources required for their realization.
     The right to health is enshrined in numerous international conventions and declarations. The first reference comes in Article 25(1) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control." more.. e-mail

Reconciliation for lack of another option
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/26/2009
     Israel’s right-wing government will accelerate the process of uniting Palestinian factions.
     A Palestinian girl waiting to cross into Egypt at the Rafah border which Egyptian authorities opened for three daysHamas leader Ghazi Al-Hamed and Fatah Central Committee member Ahmed Qurei were on the phone all through this week discussing how Hamas could accept the Egyptian invitation to dialogue. The major obstacle that was blocking Hamas’s acceptance of the invitation was the presence of Hamas political detainees in Palestinian Authority (PA) prisons in the West Bank. After each of them consulted with their faction’s leadership, an agreement was reached for the PA to release scores of Hamas detainees from prison before the dialogue resumes. Yet Hamas says that the PA is currently detaining 700 of its members in the West Bank, including leading figures.
     Despite the issue of Fatah holding Hamas activists as prisoners, high level representatives of both movements arrived in Cairo on Tuesday evening and started immediately preparing for a comprehensive inter-Palestinian diaolgue that started on Wednesday. The dialogue involves all the Palestinian factions, organisations and other powers, Egypt’s official MENA news agency reported. Preparatory meetings were presided over by Qurei and Hamas exiled politburo deputy chief Moussa Abou Marzouk. more.. e-mail

The Battle of terms behind the conflict
R.L in Ramallah, Palestine Monitor 2/26/2009
     Many times, when people are discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they use terms such as "˜holocaust’, "˜genocide’, "˜apartheid’ and "˜ethnic cleansing’.Although these are descriptive in some ways of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they are "˜used’ terms"”they are connected to a different situation in a separate time and historical context in most people’s minds"”and their recycling ends up creating confusion and controversy more than anything else.
     Let’s start with why using the term Holocaust to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is problematic and ultimately inaccurate. In the Holocaust, 6 million European Jews were killed in a perverse effort to completely destroy a specific ethnic and religious group by a planned and deliberate program of extermination.
     Now, any rational person who support the Palestinian cause should agree that although Israel displays a distinct lack of respect for Palestinian lives—made all the more clear by their latest offensive on Gaza—they are still not actively trying to bring about the ‘ultimate destruction of Palestinians as an ethnic and religious group’. Israel may be trying to make life so horrible for Palestinians that they all leave Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, but Palestinians are not being shipped en masse to death camps. more.. e-mail

The Return of Netanyahu and the Prospect for Lasting Peace
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP, Palestine Monitor 2/26/2009
     The recent election of Former Prime Minister Benyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu of the extreme right wing Likud party does not bode well for the prospects for a comprehensive and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine. In fact, it is my belief that the Israeli leadership will be only too willing to continue consolidating the status quo occupation and repression of our people.
     Development versus Peace
     Throughout his campaign, the cornerstone of Netanyahu’s policy toward the "Palestinian Question" suggests that he is planning to continue deepening the conflict rather than solving it. He has stated repeatedly that he does not want to get tangled up in "final status issues" and instead, intensify the Apartheid regime under the name of "˜economic development’ of the Palestinian Territories.
     In other words, he wants to better accommodate life under occupation, not lift the occupation itself, in the hopes of pacifying Palestinian our desire for freedom and our demand for the recognition of our most basic Human Rights.
     This has been tried many times in the past, and was the case then, such a policy will result in failure. A process with no prospects for peace, as was Annapolis under Olmert, will not much different to Palestinians than no process and no prospects for peace under Netanyahu. more.. e-mail

Commentary: Will history repeat?
Ramzy Baroud, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/26/2009
     When it comes to Israeli-US strategies of dealing with Palestinians and their resistance movements, carrots are also sticks.
     In the aftermath, Hamas can confidently claim that its once indisputably "radical" position is no longer viewed as "extreme". Indeed, "Hamas" is no longer a menacing word, even amongst the Western public, and tireless Israeli attempts to correlate Hamas and Islamic jihadist agendas no longer suffice.
     The Israeli war on Gaza has indeed proven that Hamas could not be obliterated by bombs or decimated by missiles. This is the same conclusion that the US and other countries reached with regards to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in the mid-1970s. Of course, that realisation didn’t prevent Israel from trying on many occasions to destroy the PLO, in Jordan (throughout the late 1960s), getting involved in the Lebanese civil war (1976), then occupying South Lebanon (1978), and then the entire country (1982). Even upon the departure of PLO factions from Lebanon, Israel followed its leadership to Tunisia and other countries, assassinating the least accommodating members, thus setting the stage for political "dialogue" with the more "acceptable peace partners". more.. e-mail

Netanyahu’s dilemma
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/26/2009
     With Kadima refusing publicly to join Likud, time is running out for Netanyahu to form a government.
     Netanyahu and Barak after the former failed to persuade top rivals, including Livni, to join his cabinet Tasked with forming the next Israeli government, Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu has been trying in vain to convince Kadima leader Tzipi Livni to join him in a coalition government that would be acceptable to the international community, particularly the new US administration.
     This week, Netanyahu met with both Livni and Labour Party leader Ehud Barak. However, the meetings ended fruitlessly as both refused to join a Likud-led government, citing "diametrically opposed agendas" and opposition to a partnership with the Likud by their respective constituencies.
     Prior to her meeting with Netanyahu on Sunday, 21 February, Livni told reporters that joining a Likud government would be a "breach of Kadima voters’ trust". "These days are a test for Kadima. People are looking at us. We presented our stance. We spoke during the campaign about content and ideology, about the differences between hope and despair and between ’two states for two peoples’ and no path at all." more.. e-mail

Did Abraham Lincoln support the creation of a Jewish state?
Tom Segev, Ha’aretz 2/27/2009
     America has had 11 presidents in the period from the founding of the State of Israel up to Barack Obama’s election: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. Clinton and Bush Jr. But in his speech in honor of the swearing-in of the new Knesset, President Shimon Peres determined that Israel owes thanks to only seven. It is unlikely that he wanted to insult the other four. He probably just made a mistake. Perhaps he consulted with the historian Benjamin Netanyahu.
     In his speech, Peres also said that president Abraham Lincoln once promised his Jewish "doctor," Isachar Zacharie, to support the establishment of a Jewish state. Peres did not invent Zacharie, but - how shall we put this gently - there are several versions of this story. It seems that one of Lincoln’s acquaintances did indeed tell him about an idea to establish a state for the Jews in the Land of Israel, and Lincoln replied that the option was worthy of consideration. He added incidentally that he had respect for the Jews, since his podiatrist was Jewish. [Mr. Segev does not mention Linclon’s plan to ’transfer’ African-Americans to Central America - Ed.] more.. e-mail

The eighth species
Dror Etkes and Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, Ha’aretz 2/27/2009
     A few weeks ago, Efrat settlers woke up to discover that their town was in the headlines. The process of declaring "state land" 1300 dunams (330 acres) on what is called "Givat Eitam" (Eitam Hill), northeast of Efrat, had been successfully concluded by the Civil Administration, Israel’s governing body in the West Bank. Efrat’s municipal engineer, Moshe Ben-Elisha, was quoted in Efrat’s local newspaper, the Efraton, as saying, "Now what’s important is to keep the area clean of intrusions and cultivation by Arabs for a while."
     The reclassification of the territory as state land means that the Civil Administration now possesses full authority to allocate it as it sees fit. Its intention is to add some 2,500 apartments and houses to Efrat’s real estate. It’s a worrisome development. Beyond our usual concern over settlement expansion, the Givat Eitam scheme incorporates two important truths: First, by allowing Efrat to build a new neighborhood some two kilometers away from the closest part of the existing town, Israel sheds some light on its cynical use of the state land imprimatur as a tool for supporting settlement expansion. Second, the fact that the planned neighborhood will in effect be an entirely new settlement is a development with serious consequences for the 140,000 Palestinian residents of the Bethlehem district. more.. e-mail

Industrial wastelands
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 2/26/2009
     The Abu E’ida company for concrete and construction materials could stand a very good chance of winning any public tender issued during the Gaza reconstruction process - if it ever gets under way. This family business manufactured the concrete and carried out the concrete works in the construction of Gaza’s power station (under joint American-Palestinian ownership). It also supplied the concrete used to build the sewage treatment facility in northern Gaza, known as the "Blair project" because of the former British prime minister’s role in securing the funding. After June 2007, this was the only infrastructure project in the Gaza Strip whose construction Israel allowed to continue.
     Abu E’ida’s company produced and supplied 35-40 percent of all concrete used in the Strip before the crossings between Israel and Gaza were hermetically sealed that summer. The family, which has been in the concrete business since the mid-1980s, has ties with the Israeli firm Nesher, which also manufactures and sells cement, with the Shapir and Reichman quarries, and with companies in the metal works industry, such as Elkayam.
     Abu E’ida stood a good chance of being awarded rebuilding contracts. The only problem is that his company’s plants were destroyed by Israel Defense Forces tanks and bulldozers sometime between January 5 and January 18. The pumps and the conveyor belts were demolished, along with the silo and the laboratory, the control rooms and the cement scale, the ventilation, electricity and water systems, the cement mixers and the trucks and cars. His four factories (two family-owned, two in partnership) were located in the northeast part of the Gaza Strip, in an industrial zone that sprang up on both sides of the eastern road, on the slopes of the hill on which stands I’zbet Abed Rabbo, the easternmost neighborhood in the city of Jabalya. more.. e-mail

New Land Seizure Orders Issued During the Gaza Operation - February 2009
Americans For Peace Now, MIFTAH 2/26/2009
     The Peace Now Settlement Watch Team latest report discloses that a number of new land seizure orders were issued during the Gaza operation, a number of these orders were related to the route of the separation fence.
     In most cases they were irregular orders signed by a brigadier general, commander of the Judea and Samaria Division (as opposed to the Officer in Command of the Central Command who usually signs seizure orders), and are limited to only 60 days.
     Peace Now sees these seizure of orders as an attempt to establish quick facts on the ground and to bypass High Court provisions.
     1. Seizure orders number t/03/09 and t/02/09 - Refencing between the Palestinian villages of Hussan and Jaba’ and some of their lands Order No. t/03/09 was signed by Judea and Samaria Division Commander on January 8, 2009, referring to the construction of a fence along road no. 375, the length of 2 km, south of the village of Hussan.
     Construction of this fence will separate the residents of Hussan from parts of their land. more.. e-mail

The Crisis in Gaza is Far From Over
Joharah Baker, Palestine Chronicle 2/25/2009
     Everyone knew that the timing of Israel’s Cast Lead Operation in Gaza was hardly coincidental. It ended mere days before US President Barack Obama’s inauguration into the White House and weeks before Israel went to early elections. Political pundits postulated that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak wanted to give his Kadima party one last boost before heading out of political life with his tail between his legs. The fact that the US was changing administrations only expedited the operation, especially since Israel understood well that Obama would surely not be as war-oriented as their good friend George W. Bush.
     Hence, Operation Cast Lead. As everyone well understands, the results were devastating. At least two-thirds of the 1,400 Palestinians killed in the Israeli operation were innocent civilians, scores of them children, women and the elderly. Approximately 4,000 homes were destroyed by Israel’s bombardment, subsequently displacing hundreds of thousands of Gazans. Factories, schools, government buildings and agricultural land were devastated, leaving the vast majority of Gaza’s approximate 1.5 million residents in destitution.
     This is not the first time Israel has wreaked havoc in Gaza, destroying homes, buildings and infrastructure. Each time, international parties, the United Nations and Arab and Palestinian governments have jumped in to restore what Israel destroys. Millions of dollars are pledged for the "restoration and reconstruction of Gaza" and the process begins all over again. more.. e-mail

Israel is Blind to its Own Arab Citizens
Fareed Zakaria, MIFTAH 2/25/2009
     Even before a new coalition could emerge, Israel’s latest election was historic. It marked the collapse of Labor, the party that can plausibly claim to have founded Israel and produced its most celebrated prime ministers, from David Ben-Gurion (as head of Labor’s predecessor, Mapai), through Golda Meir to Yitzhak Rabin.
     The last vestige of old Labor is Shimon Peres, who - with fitting irony - is the country’s president only because he quit the party. Israel’s political spectrum is now dominated by three right-wing groups: Likud, Kadima (the Likud offshoot founded by Ariel Sharon) and Yisrael Beitenu, a party of Russian immigrants. But while most commentators focus on the future of the peace process and the two-state solution, a deeper and more existential question is growing within the heart of Israel.
     It’s a question posed by the election’s biggest winner: Avigdor Lieberman. His Yisrael Beitenu party won 15 seats, placing third but gaining enormous swing power in the Israeli system. Whether or not the new government includes him, Lieberman and his issues have moved to center-stage. As fiercely as he denounces the Palestinian militants of Hamas and Hizbullah, his No. 1 target is Israel’s Arab minority, which he has called a worse threat than Hamas. He has proposed the effective expulsion of several hundred thousand Arab citizens by unilaterally re-designating some northern Israeli towns as parts of the Palestinian West Bank. more.. e-mail

Targeting Israel: The Global BDS Movement
Stephen Lendman - Chicago, Palestine Chronicle 2/25/2009
     Enough is enough. After 61 years of Palestinian slaughter, displacement, occupation, oppression, and international dismissiveness and complicity, global action is essential. Israel must be held accountable. World leaders won’t do it, so grassroots movements must lead the way.
     In 2004, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote:
     "The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the past century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure - in particular the divestment movement of the 1980s. Over the past six months, a similar movement has taken shape, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation."
     In July 2008, 21 South African activists, including ANC members, visited Israel and Occupied Palestine. Their conclusion was unanimous. Israel is far worse than apartheid as former Deputy Minister of Health and current MP Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge explained:
     "What I see here is worse than what we experienced - the absolute control of people’s lives, the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere, the total separation and the extensive destruction we saw....racist ideology is also reinforced by religion, which was not the case in South Africa." more.. e-mail

Twilight Zone / ’they told me daddy died’
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 2/26/2009
     As the war in Gaza raged, Israel Defense Forces reservists apparently thought anything was permissible: It was possible, maybe even necessary, to kill innocents, in the West Bank, too. Under cover of war, they thought, they could also kill a handcuffed Palestinian.
     After all, they could always claim he tried to steal their weapons - never mind that he was bound with plastic handcuffs practically impossible to get out of. A bullet in the stomach from close range finished him off. Thus ended the life of Yasser Temeizi, 35, who had a work permit and jobs in Israel all of his adult life; in the past year he had worked for the Harash company in Ashdod. He was a young father who’d never gotten in any trouble with the IDF before. The soldiers arrested him for no reason, beat him for no reason in front of one of his small children and finally executed him for no reason.
     A month and a half has passed since this horrifying incident, and the army’s criminal investigations division is still looking into the case. An investigation that could have been completed in an hour is going on without end. Not a single Palestinian was questioned, as usual; not a single soldier was arrested, and most likely none will be - also as usual. The reservist soldiers who killed Temeizi have likely already been sent back home; perhaps they returned feeling good about their experiences and about doing their national duty. Granted, they didn’t take part in the war in Gaza, but they killed, too. Why not? Herewith, as a service to them, is the story of the consequences of their actions, which senior IDF officers have already termed "a grave incident," that involved "a series of serious failures. more.. e-mail

Are Palestinians Allowed to Resist? (Part I)
Dina Jadallah-Taschler, Palestine Chronicle 2/26/2009
     The issue of Palestinian resistance, in terms of its permissibility and types, is a highly inflammatory question for most Western observers. Mainstream media discourse frequently boils down to criticisms and condemnations of its "violence" or alternatively, asserts its impotence in the face of Israeli military might and Western opposition. It might therefore be helpful to place it in historical and current context and to comparatively evaluate it against that other famous struggle for independence, Indian national liberation. India’s struggle, given the prominent role of Gandhi’s satyagraha’s role, is usually synonymous in Western discourse with non-violent resistance.
     This first part in the essay deals with legal and historical issues that define Palestinians’ struggle for independence, then describes their repercussions on the current status of the occupation. In the second and final part, I will present examples from the history of Palestinian unarmed struggle and then compare it with the Indian one. I will argue that the agreeable and reasonable- sounding frame of the superiority of peaceful resistance sets up a false dichotomy. Presenting satyagraha as the exemplary approach to liberation is deceptive on two levels. First, India’s independence was not achieved through non-violence alone. And second, while inspirational and useful on many levels, it is not sufficient as sole guide or solution to achieving Palestinian liberation. more.. e-mail

Trapped Between the Wall and the Green Line
Mel Frykberg, Inter Press Service 2/26/2009
     RAMALLAH, Feb 26 (IPS) - "They started smashing down doors at 2am last Wednesday before moving through homes and destroying property," says the mayor of Jayyus, Muhammed Taher Shamasni.
     "Residents were assaulted, money was stolen, computers confiscated, over 60 young men arrested and the village placed under curfew. The Israeli soldiers came into my home and threw the contents of cupboards and closets on to the floor," Shamasni told IPS.
     Jayyus, an agricultural community of 3,500 inhabitants, located in the Qalqiliya district of the northern Palestinian West Bank, was invaded by Israeli soldiers using police dogs and backed by military helicopters.
     The village has been the scene of frequent clashes between local youths, their Israeli supporters and international sympathisers on the one hand, and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on the other. Dozens protesting Israel’s continued expropriation of village land were injured last Friday by Israeli soldiers firing live ammunition, rubber bullets and teargas.
     Israel started building a separation barrier (a combination of walls, ditches and fences), most of it on Palestinian land, in 2002 to separate the Jewish state from the West Bank. This followed a wave of suicide bombings carried out by Palestinian militants, some of them originating from the West Bank. more.. e-mail

’Palestine’s’ Next Stage
Peter Marks, MIFTAH 2/26/2009
     George Ibrahim tugs down at the top of his turtleneck and points to the bare skin of his throat. "This," he says in accented English, "is what kasaba means in Arabic. Center of breathing. Center of life."
     It’s Ibrahim’s way of illustrating the role that he wants his theater company to claim, as an artistic lifeline for his people. Located in Ramallah, on the West Bank, the Al-Kasaba Theatre and Cinematheque already inhabits a central place in the hardscrabble landscape of Palestinian culture. Not that there’s that much competition: His organization runs the only multipurpose arts complex in the Palestinian territories.
     And despite its meager resources -- "Up to now, we have no annual budget; we cannot program more than one month ahead," he says -- Al-Kasaba has become an example to the world that Palestinian art is indeed alive, and breathing. Washington gets firsthand confirmation of this tomorrow night, when a performance piece that has become Al-Kasaba’s signature, "Alive From Palestine: Stories Under Occupation," opens for a three-performance run in the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater. more.. e-mail

Amos Gilad 'running Israel'
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada 2/26/2009
     It is not entirely surprising that Amos Gilad, an Israeli general who once sued his own government for "irreversible mental damage" caused by his role in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, has publicly courted controversy again.
     On Monday, Ehud Olmert, Israel’s outgoing prime minister, suspended Gilad as his envoy to Egypt, responsible for negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas, after Gilad called the prime minister’s truce conditions "insane."
     The move threatened to unleash a political storm in Israel. Ehud Barak, the defense minister and a longtime ally of Gilad, rushed to denounce Olmert’s decision. He insisted that Gilad, a defense ministry official in charge of diplomatic and security issues, would continue with his other duties.
     Gilad’s fingerprints are to be found on most of the hawkish policies approved by the political leadership since the start of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000, including the emasculation of the Palestinian Authority, the "disengagement" from Gaza, and the promotion of civil war between Hamas and Fatah. more.. e-mail

The Fact-Finding Mission Mandated by the League of Arab Nations to Investigate Israeli War Crimes Concludes Its Works in Gaza on Friday
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights 2/26/2009
     The fact-finding mission of the League of Arab Nations mandated by the League of Arab Nations to investigate war crimes committed by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) during the latest offensive on the Gaza Strip is going to finish its works in the Gaza Strip on Friday, 27 February 2009, with a tour in Rafah to watch the destruction caused by IOF to the town. The mission has sought to gather evidence and eyewitnesses’ testimonies, and to watch the destruction cause by IOF during the latest offensive on the Gaza Strip to prepare a neutral and objective report to be submitted to the League of Arab Nations.
     The mission consists of 6 international experts in the field of international law and humanitarian law: John Dughard, Former UN Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories; Finn Lenghjem, a judge and legal expert; Paul De Waart, an international legal expert; Gonzalo Boye, a lawyer and representative of PCHR in Spanish courts; Raeleene Sharp, an international lawyer; and Francisco Corte Real, an expert in forensic medicine. The mission is also accompanied by 3 members of the secretariat general of the League of Arab Nations: Radwan Ben Khader, Legal Advisor of the Secretary General; ’Aliaa Al-Ghussain, Director of Palestinian Affairs Department; and Ilham al-Shajani, First Secretary of Demography and Immigration Policies Department.
     PCHR has hosted the fact-finding mission in coordination with the League of Arab Nations. PCHR has prepared an integrated schedule for the visit, which has continued from 22 to 27 February 2009. It has also coordinated field visits and provided logistic support for the mission. During their visit to the Gaza Strip, members of the mission have met with dozens of victims of Israeli crimes, their relatives and eyewitnesses. They have also met with representatives of civil society organizations, human rights organizations, representatives of international organizations, officials, members of the Palestinian Legislative Council and political leaders. more.. e-mail

A Win for Women’s Rights
Diaa Hadid, Nasser Shiyoukhi, MIFTAH 2/26/2009
     The Islamic courts were among the last male-only bastions in Palestinian society, where women have been presidential candidates, police officers and even suicide bombers.
     Now two stern-looking young women in Muslim head scarves and long black robes have smashed through the thick glass ceiling.
     Khuloud Faqih, 34, and Asmahan Wuheidi, 31, made history when they became the first female Islamic judges in the Palestinian territories.
     Across the Arab world, only Sudan has had women judges in Islamic courts, West Bank-based academic experts on Islamic affairs said. Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, all relatively progressive states in the region on women’s rights, do not.
     “I compare us to other Arab Muslim women, and I think we’ve done well,” said Faqih, wearing a sash in the colors of the Palestinian flag across her robe. “I think I’ve opened a door for myself and other women.”
     She spoke between meetings with petitioners in her modest courtroom — an office with a few couches, a desk and a coffee table with plastic flowers. more.. e-mail

Palestinian Women Photojournalists
Iqbal Tamimi, Palestine Think Tank 2/23/2009
     Palestinian women photojournalists: from taking photos of holy places to documenting burned babies.
     The first woman photojournalist in the Arab world was the Palestinian Karimeh Abbud (1896-1955)  
     Palestinian women started taking photographs of families and holy places, ceremonies and weddings, but ended up taking pictures of bodies of killed young children, shelled schools ruined homes, and lots of blood.
     Introduction
     The difficult circumstances in Palestine facing journalists in the occupied West Bank and Gaza forced many media establishments to choose employing local journalists who know the nature of the area, besides minimizing the amount of risks reporters and photojournalists face when covering clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza.
     This Essay will focus on Palestinian women photojournalists working within the Palestinian territories; thus excluding hundreds of Palestinian women journalists who are working all over the world after their families became refugees, or forced to exile.
     Early photography in Palestine
     Photojournalism started after photography was introduced to Palestine in the late-nineteenth century by the British who undertook the first archaeological excavations in the Holy Land and tried to document their findings and the areas they investigated by pictures as Rachel Hallote reported (2007 pp 26-41). The British were followed by the Germans, and eventually by the Americans. Photography was introduced by people who came searching for evidence about biblical subjects and connections. Some elder Palestinians claimed that these excavations were part of a planned agenda to pave the way for the Jews to occupy Palestine well ahead the Nazi’s aggression on the European Jews. Americans were deeply involved in the archaeological photography in Palestine, but the British Palestine Exploration Fund dominated the photography activities in Palestine since the 1860s. more.. e-mail

'They killed me three times'
Eva Bartlett writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 2/24/2009
     Amer al-Helo smiled wanly while saying he is broken inside. Twenty days after Israeli soldiers shot dead his 55-year-old father and his one-year-old daughter in front of him, also shooting his oldest daughter in the elbow and his brother in the shoulder, the pain of the 29-year-old had not diminished. Then again, he’d only just recovered the rotting corpse of his father six days earlier; his entire area of Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood had been cut off from ambulances and emergency teams until Israel unilaterally declared an end to the extensive bombing of Gaza and pulled ground troops out of occupied areas on 18 January.
     "It was a nightmare," al-Helo said of the experience. From the afternoon of 3 January until 5am the next day there was "non-stop shelling in our area. We had F-16 firing missiles out front, tanks shelling all around."
     Al-Helo explained how the family endured the early days of air and land shelling, remaining in their home as they believed it was the safest place to stay. Nonetheless, they’d taken precautions.
     "We were sleeping there," al-Helo said, pointing at a tight space under the stairwell on the west side of the house. "It was the most protected place from the shelling. There are no windows there, and everywhere else in the house our windows had shattered. But we didn’t expect the Israeli ground troops to enter." more.. e-mail

Crime and accountability in Gaza
Toufic Haddad, Electronic Intifada 2/24/2009
     Now that the smoke has at least temporarily cleared from Gaza’s skies, credible human rights reports have filtered in describing the utter devastation that took place throughout the course of Israel’s 22 day assault "Operation Cast Lead." The figures are truly shocking. According to statistics by the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, at least 1,285 Palestinians were killed, of which 895 were civilians, including 280 children and 111 women. Another 167 of the dead were civil police officers, most of whom were killed on the first day of the bombing when they were graduating from a training course. More than 2,400 houses were completely destroyed, as were 28 public civilian facilities, (including ministries, municipalities, governorates, fishing harbors and the Palestinian Legislative Council building), 29 educational institutions, 30 mosques, 10 charitable societies, 60 police stations and 121 industrial and commercial workshops.
     Casualty statistics by Palestinian military groups appear to corroborate the number of civilians killed versus militants. According to their respective Arabic-language websites, Hamas lost 48 fighters, Islamic Jihad, 34, the Popular Resistance Committees, 17, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one. It is not known how many fighters Fatah lost, though their participation in the resistance was certainly less than that of Hamas, which clearly led the Palestinian side. These reports should also be considered credible because it is highly unlikely a group would suppress its casualty figures given that their fighters’ deaths are perceived as acts of martyrdom, for which the faction proudly advertises its sacrifices. Family members of dead fighters would also not accept any other classification. We can safely assume therefore that the remaining killed militants were Fatah members, former or current security force personnel, or individuals who took up arms when the fighting erupted. more.. e-mail

Palestinian olive oil bucks UK recession
Mark Tran, The Guardian 2/24/2009
     Sales expected to double this year after Gaza conflict • Product gets Fairtrade certification for first time.
     In an unintended consequence of Israel’s offensive in Gaza last month, sales of Palestinian olive oil in Britain are soaring, importers have said.
     The devastating conflict, in which 1,300 Palestinians were killed, has prompted a surge in demand for the product in apparent sympathy for the Palestinians. Equal Exchange, a seller of Fairtrade products, reported a threefold increase in sales of olive oil from the West Bank in January compared with a year ago.
     "We have run out of one-litre bottles and we expect sales to double to 400 tonnes this year compared to 2008," said Barry Murdoch, the sales director of Equal Exchange.
     The company Zaytoun, also established to sell Palestinian olive oil in the UK, reported a fourfold rise in sales last month instead of the usual post-Christmas lull. Zaytoun, established by two Britons, Heather Masoud and Cathi Pawson, takes its name from the Arabic word for olive.
     The surprise sales increases coincide with a publicity drive for Palestinian products during Fairtrade fortnight, which runs from 23 February to 8 March. Nasser Abufarha, the chairman of the Palestinian Fairtrade Association, is touring the UK to support the launch of the world’s first Fairtrade Palestinian olive oil. more.. e-mail

Hamas: Welcoming the Americans
Tariq Alhomayed, MIFTAH 2/24/2009
     Hamas considered the visit of a US delegation to Gaza a step in the right direction and it asked the delegation to convey a true image of Israel’s crimes in the Gaza Strip to the US administration. There is no problem with that at all; however, the question is why did Hamas and the Iranian alliance in the region kick up a fuss when an Arab delegation visited New York to embark upon a difficult battle in the United Nations for the sake of reaching a resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire, which Hamas, just like Israel, rejected, in spite of the horror of Israeli atrocities carried out against innocent, defenseless people in Gaza?
     During that period, people argued that an Arab summit should have been held before heading to New York and the efforts of Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal were met with suspicion and criticism from the Iranian alliance in the region. Ironically, this alliance said: let the moderate alliance go visit its American allies and leave us [to deal] with the resistance.
     And now, shortly after a delegation made up of US members of Congress visited Gaza, Hamas has come to praise the US for this visit describing it as a step in the right direction. Why, when only yesterday it considered moderate Arabs traitors and attacked them as part of a campaign in which all kinds of mobs participated? more.. e-mail

New Orleans intifada
Jordan Flaherty, Electronic Intifada 2/24/2009
     In neighborhoods around New Orleans, there’s a buzz of excitement gathering among this city’s Arab population. A new wave of organizing has brought energy and inspiration to a community that is usually content to stay in the background. The movement is youth-led, with student groups rising up on college campuses across the city, but also broad-based, with mass protests that have included more than a thousand persons marching through downtown’s French Quarter. Activists say that their goal is to fight against what they see as a combination of silence and bias from local media, and -- more broadly -- for a change in US policy towards the Middle East. They take inspiration from other movements in the city -- joining in the struggle against the continued displacement of much of the city as well as the slow pace of recovery -- while also following activism across the US and around the world.
     New Orleans’ immigrant communities are often ignored or under-represented. But through grassroots organizing, legal action and political lobbying, Asian and Latino organizations in the city have won some important victories. Activists from New Orleans’ Arab population -- which is largely Palestinian -- have expressed hope that they can follow these examples. more.. e-mail

The Palestinian Perspective: Prime Minister Faya’d in Conversation with TML’s Felice Friedson
Felice Friedson, The Media Line, MIFTAH 2/24/2009
     The Media Line’s Felice Friedson conducted an exclusive interview with Prime Minister Faya’d in his Ramallah office on February 19, 2009. Among the issues they discussed were the current state of the Palestinian Authority, the crisis in Gaza, Fatah vs. Hamas, and the future of relations with Israel.
     TML: Mr. Prime Minister, what is the most serious problem caused by the division of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank: in effect the creation of two Palestinian states?
     Faya’d: You just mentioned one key dimension to the problem. It’s a political dimension, associated with continued separation or apartness, which was set in June 2007 and since then unfortunately, became deeper. The political dimension, simply put, is as follows: with the separation in place, it is very difficult for me to see how our dreams can be realized in terms of getting to the point where we can enjoy that which is an absolute right for people all over the world: to live as free people in a country of our own, that’s Palestine. In fact, with Gaza continuing to be the way it is, and viewed as a different Palestinian entity, I think the biggest risk that entails in my view politically, and given our national aspirations, is that the entire Palestinian cause, after decades of struggle to get to the point of freedom, would be put unfortunately on the path of liquidation. What has happened over the past year and a half, and more so now, there is extreme suffering to which our people in Gaza have been exposed. But in addition, while that was going on, the situation in the West Bank – in terms of settlement activity, expansion, confiscation of land and what have you – activity totally inconsistent with the prospect of an emergence of an independent, viable Palestinian state of which the West Bank including East Jerusalem would form an integral component, that prospect diminished even more.... more.. e-mail

Study: Israel 'retaliates' to Palestinian 'provocation' in UK press
Shipra Dingare, Electronic Intifada 2/24/2009
     A new study by Arab Media Watch demonstrates a strong tendency in the British press to represent Israel as "retaliating" in coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The study, the first to investigate this aspect of British press coverage of the conflict, examined a period from January to June 2008. It found that when the British press represents a party as retaliating or responding in the conflict, that party is Israel 72 percent of the time. The tabloid press showed a particularly marked bias, representing Israel as retaliating in 100 percent of all representations of "retaliation."
     Among broadsheets, The Independent portrays Israel as retaliating in the highest proportion at 80 percent, followed by the Times at 68 percent, the Daily Telegraph at 67 percent, and the Guardian at 59 percent. Not a single newspaper, and only 20 percent of reporters and columnists, portrays the retaliating party as the Palestinians more often than Israel.
     Among reporters and commentators, only 20 percent portray the retaliating party as the Palestinians more often than Israel. Of those reporters and commentators who write frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and who represented a party as "retaliating" at least five times in the period under study, only Rory McCarthy in the Guardian portrays the Palestinians as retaliating more often than Israel (71 percent of representations). The others portray Israel as retaliating more often: Toni O’Loughlin (Guardian and Observer) 86 percent, Donald Macintyre (The Independent) 75 percent, James Hider (Times) 70 percent, and Tim Butcher (Telegraph) 58 percent. more.. e-mail

Israeli Paralysis Calls for Arab Action
James Zogby, Middle East Online 2/24/2009
     Some elections serve as clarifying moments in a nation’s history, others resolve little and serve only as a reflection of internal division. The former provide direction, the latter create paralysis.
     The recently completed Israeli elections and ongoing deliberations over to the shape of the next government serve to demonstrate the profound divisions that exist in Israel and the dysfunctional state of its political system.
     As is widely known, the current governing coalition lost its mandate.The lead party, Kadima led by Tzipi Livni, a centrist configuration (by Israeli calculations), was comprised of an amalgam of individuals spun-off from Likud and Labor. They declined from 29 to 28 seats. Kadima’s coalition partner, Labor, dropped from 19 seats to 13. And Meretz, a more leftist party (not in the coalition but supportive of peace efforts), lost support, going from 5 to a mere 3 seats.
     This gives the Zionist center-left a total of 44 seats - far short of the 61 needed to form a government. But this is only part of the story. Post-election analysis suggests suggested that while Kadima was initially seen as Likud-lite (after all, its founder was Ariel Sharon), it was viewed by voters in this election as a horse of a different color. It is estimated that about 70% of the last-minute support garnered by Livni’s grouping came from Labor and Meretz voters hoping to block a Netanyahu victory. All this may be academic, but is still useful in order to understand the constraints that this will impose on Livni and the strong push that will be made to merge Kadima and Labor as an opposition bloc. more.. e-mail

Be Fair to Hamas, Mr Obama
Stuart Littlewood, Middle East Online 2/24/2009
     Looking through the list of Hamas ministers published shortly after their election victory in 2006, many have professional qualifications and are better equipped for office than their western counterparts. Can it be true? This week in the High Court in London, lawyers acting for an independent Palestinian organization will start proceedings against the British government.
     They seek a judicial review of policy decisions that have brought the UK’s relations with Israel into conflict with international law.
     "The UK has clear international law obligations to do something effective to stop Israel’s attacks on Palestinian civilians,” says Phil Shiner who leads the case. “It must co-operate with other states using all lawful means to bring the situation to an end and it must stop giving aid and assistance to Israel. This means that the UK’s continuing policy of arms trading with Israel is completely out of bounds, as is our role in continuing with the EU preferential trading agreement. The point of this case is to make the Government focus on what it is legally obliged to do, beyond ineffective hand-wringing.”
     At the same time an adviser to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has written to US President Barack Obama asking him to “treat Palestinians fairly and be open-minded in dealing with Hamas”.
     His plea will be echoed by millions who are sick of the hypocrisy and double standards that are at the root of the West’s failure to deliver justice in the Holy Land. more.. e-mail

’Hurricane Israel Approaches’ in Silwan, East Jerusalem
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 2/24/2009
     The small Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, in the Eastern side of Holy City of Jerusalem, is facing imminent destruction. Only Yesterday, Sunday, we were warned that this disaster would affect up to 1,500 Palestinian through the destruction of nearly ninety homes and apartment buildings.
     We are able to warn you about this impending carnage because it is not a ‘natural’ disaster which will wreak havoc on these lives, rather a wholly human one. ‘Hurricane Israel’ is scheduled to make landfall in Silwan in the coming days, and rather create on its rubbles a public park.
     Can any of you imagine watching your home, and the homes of your neighbors, torn down in front of you – often with most of your possessions still inside? Can you imagine being made a refugee twice or thrice over – starting your lives again with only the shirts on your back? Can you imagine rebuilding your life with the knowledge that ‘Hurricane Israel’ could return again at any moment reducing your efforts to shambles?
     Perhaps it is difficult to imagine such things from the Europe and the United States, where decency and Human Rights are championed and heralded. Yet here in Palestine, destruction and utter disregard of our lives and dignity is only too common. Many times ‘Hurricane Israel’ has visited our lives; and if the international community does not begin to take decisive action, this scenario will only be repeated again and again. more.. e-mail

Al-Haq commences legal proceedings against UK Government over breach of legal obligations in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory
Al-Haq 2/23/2009
     Al-Haq, in cooperation with solicitor Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers (PIL), and the support of the Human Rights Legal Aid Trust, will be filing a claim in the UK High Court for judicial review on Tuesday 24 February 2009, challenging the UK government over its failure to fulfill its obligations under international law with respect to Israel’s activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). These obligations arise in the context of Israel’s breaches of peremptory norms of international law, namely interference with the Palestinian right to self-determination, de facto acquisition of territory by force, and breach of “intransgressible” principles of international humanitarian law. Those violations of international law, and the obligations they entail for third states, existed well before Israel’s most recent attacks on the Gaza Strip but the widespread civilian death and destruction caused during “Operation Cast Lead” and the distinct failure on the part of the international community to take any concrete action to stop Israel’s violations have forced Al-Haq to challenge third states directly, starting with the UK, in order to seek an end to the “business-as-usual” approach in relations with Israel.
     On 3 February 2009 PIL submitted, on behalf of Al-Haq, a pre-action protocol letter for the purposes of a claim for judicial review. Al-Haq called on the relevant Secretaries of State for the UK Government to set out in clear terms what evidence or action they point to if their position is that the UK has complied with its international obligations both before and after Operation Cast Lead, with particular emphasis on the UK’s responsibility to investigate whether war crimes have been committed by Israel in Gaza pursuant to Operation Cast Lead, where there is a causal link between the commission of those war crimes and acts within the UK’s jurisdiction. The failure by the UK Government to satisfy the request has led us to proceed with the filing of the claim. -- See also: Palestinian NGO seeks human rights justice and Human Rights Legal Aid Trust more.. e-mail

Al Bustan area of E Jerusalem’s Silwan to be replaced by park
Maisa Abu Ghazaleh, Palestine News Network 2/23/2009
     A park of flowers and trees, breezeways and cafes: this is the Israeli blueprint to cover the ruins of Silwan.
     The East Jerusalem neighborhood is under increasing threat of utter devastation with home demolition orders and forced evictions on the rise.
     When the destruction of the Silwan neighborhood is complete, a park will replace the rubble in Al Bustan.
     Just to the south of Al Aqsa Mosque Silwan is the neighborhood where the floor in the United Nations girls’ school collapsed due to Israeli excavations under the Mosque area. It is the neighborhood where at least 40 homes are sinking due to the same.
     The area of Silwan specifically targeted for the garden is home to 1,500 people and 80 houses. Homes were built decades ago on lands inherited from parents and grandparents. Jerusalemites will be displaced as the takeover of the city becomes more rapid.
     The issue is not new as reported by Fakhri Abu Diab, a member of the Committee for the Defense of the Territory of Silwan and Director of Al Bustan Center. In 2000 the Israelis issued demolition orders for all of the houses on grounds of licensing. However the popular resistance confronted the order including with a solidarity tent, media campaign and demonstrations.
     Abu Diab was among those who engaged in legal proceedings to stop the demolition. With a team of engineers all Israeli requirements were met yet they were still denied. more.. e-mail

Behind the walls of Balata camp
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 2/23/2009
     The Balata Refugee Camp near Nablus is the largest refugee camp in the West Bank by population—but it is the smallest in size. Today, 20-25,000 people live in a camp which is one square kilometer in size. The buildings are so close together and so tall that sunlight does not even reach the ground in many areas of the camp. And in order to get through some alleyways it is necessary to turn sideways or else you will not be able to pass through.
     Residents of the camp recall a raid by Israeli soldiers in the camp when a soldier tried to chase a Palestinian man through the alleyways and actually became lodged in between the walls and unable to move. The Palestinian man was able to escape, and in order to protect the soldier who was stuck the rest of the raiding soldiers had to take positions in the surrounding houses and cover the soldier on the ground. In order to understand why the Balata camp is so overcrowded, it is necessary to learn the history of the camp.
     In 1948, there was a mass exodus of Palestinians because of massacres and the destruction caused by the Israeli military. According to Mahmoud Subuh, the director of International Relations for the Yafa Cultural Center in Balata, “500,000 people became instantly refugees.” The refugees fled wherever they could. Some went to Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank. Others lived in caves, mountains, and in fields until the violence decreased. more.. e-mail

Israeli Soldiers Shoot Deaf Palestinian Farmer, 4th Farmer Shot in 3 weeks
Eva Bartlett - freegaza.org, International Middle East Media Center News 2/23/2009
     (18th February, 2009) The following testimony was written by Eva Bartlett, one of a number of internationals with the Free Gaza movement who have been accompanying Palestinian farmers in Gaza :
     What caused the Israeli soldiers to shoot a deaf farmer today? Was he threatening?
     Was it because the group of farm labourers had successfully worked quickly to harvest their day’s wages? Was the sight of retreating, unarmed, clearly non-threatening civilians too tempting to resist?
     Whatever the motivation, the result is another casualty of Israeli soldiers’ malevolence: a 20 year old deaf farmer, Mohammad al-Buraim, working the land to support his family of 16, may not walk easily again. The bullet which targeted his ankle penetrated straight through and landed in the tire of the truck he’d been pushing.
     Abu Alaa, owner of the land and Mohammed’s uncle, said: “When they first shot, we knew it wasn’t ‘warning’ shots. We started to run away. They shot again.” -- See also: Video - Israeli Military Shoot Palestinian Farmer and Dirty Tricks: Israeli Soldiers Shoot Deaf Palestinian Farmer, 4th Farmer Shot in 3 weeks more.. e-mail

Photo Story - Bil’in: four years of nonviolent resistance
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 2/23/2009
     Bil’in was just an ordinary Palestinian village until four years ago when the villagers decided to organize weekly nonviolent protests against the construction of the Apartheid Wall and the confiscation of their lands. Since then Bil’in has become a symbol of peaceful resistance - first in Palestine, and now across the whole world.
     After the Noon prayer, in which PM Salaam Fayyad, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi and other Palestinian officials took part, people gathered in front of the village’s mosque and began the peaceful march towards the Apartheid Wall, which is built through Bil’in.
     The presence of PM Salaam Fayyad and Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi attracted many local and foreign journalists, but it should be noted that when the former decided to leave directly after the Noon prayer, the latter actively took part in the demonstration. more.. e-mail

EU paying for Gaza blockade
David Cronin, Electronic Intifada 2/23/2009
     BRUSSELS (IPS) - European Union aid has been given to an Israeli oil company which has reduced the supply of fuel to Gaza as part of an economic blockade internationally recognized as illegal, Brussels officials have admitted.
     Almost 97 million euros (124 million dollars) in funds managed by the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, were handed over directly to the firm Dor Alon between February 2008 and January this year. Under orders from the Israeli authorities, Dor Alon has been rationing the amount of industrial diesel brought into Gaza in order to deprive its 1.5 million inhabitants of electricity. Power cuts have been a regular occurrence in Gaza because of Israeli actions undertaken since the militant party Hamas won an unexpected victory in Palestinian legislative elections during 2006.
     Charles Shamas from the Mattin Group, an organization based in the West Bank that monitors Europe’s relationship with Israel, said that the EU has been helping to accommodate the economic blockade of Gaza. This is despite how the Union’s most senior diplomats, including its foreign policy chief Javier Solana and the external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, have condemned the blockade as "collective punishment" of a civilian population. Collective punishment constitutes a war crime, according to the 1949 Geneva convention. more.. e-mail

Netanyahu’s Three Strategies Against Obama
Patrick Seale, Middle East Online 2/23/2009
     Having been asked by Israel’s President Shimon Peres to form a government, Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party, has until 17 March to try to put together a ruling coalition. Looming over his horse-trading with possible partners is the shadow of Barack Obama, America’s new President.
     As he goes about his task, Netanyahu’s prime concern will be to find a way to defuse the threat from Obama, whose views about Iran, about the desirability of a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and about relations with the Muslim world in general, are diametrically opposed to his own.
     Early indications suggest that Netanyahu will resort to three distinct strategies to reduce, evade and eventually dispel any likely pressure from Washington, especially on the Palestine question, to which, unlike Obama, he intends to give no priority whatsoever.
     His first strategy will be to seek to cobble together a ‘moderate’ coalition of the Likud (27 seats), with Tzipi Livni’s centrist Kadima party (28 seats), and Ehud Barak’s much reduced Labour party (13 seats). Such a coalition could no doubt attract smaller factions, so as to produce a reasonably comfortable majority in the 120-seat Knesset. The only problem is that Tzipi Livni is demanding real decision-making powers in the coalition, which Netanyahu is unwilling to grant her, while Barak seems to think it wiser to rebuild his shattered party in opposition. more.. e-mail

The Separate and Unequal Rule
Nadia W. Awad, MIFTAH 2/23/2009
     Israel has managed to do it again. Somehow, they have twisted a distressing event around completely and made themselves look like saints in the process. They have come out looking like the good Samaritans, while making life even more unbearable for about 60,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem. You may wonder what I’m talking about.I’m referring to a Jerusalem Post article along the lines of: ‘Israel removes checkpoint to make travel to Jerusalem easier for Palestinians.’ If only they would, but of course they won’t.
     Imagine a wide, main road connecting two cities – Jerusalem and Ramallah. Now imagine somebody builds a large cement wall straight down the middle of it, so that on one side, you’re driving in Jerusalem, when on the other side, you’re driving in the West Bank. Obviously you can’t cross the road, unless you actually want to smash your car into cement. Confused? In an attempt to explain it more clearly, imagine you live in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Dahiyet Al Barid, just north of the city center, but your house happens to be confusingly on the West Bank side of the street and behind the gate. Now, intuitively, to get to the city center, you would drive south. Not according to Israel. If you drive south, you’ll just hit the wall or the iron gate. Instead, what you have to do is drive further north, go through the Qalandia checkpoint, turn around and drive back south again. Still confused? Probably – I still am. It’s one of those situations where you have to see it to believe (and understand) it. more.. e-mail

Decommissioning the arms trade
Andrew Beckett, The Guardian 2/23/2009
     When government agencies cloak arms exports to Israel in secrecy, we have a moral and legal right to prevent their damage.
     During the night of January 17 2009, the last day of the Israeli attack on Gaza, six peace activists climbed the fence of a Brighton arms factory EDO MBM. Entering through broken windows and wielding hammers, they systematically smashed computers and machinery, and destroyed records. Hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of damage was caused. They then lay down on the floor and waited to be arrested. Prior to the action, the six recorded their motivation in a video briefing. In the words of one protester, Elijah Smith:
     "I don’t feel I’m going to do anything illegal tonight, but I’m going to go into an arms factory and smash it up to the best of my ability so that it cannot actually work or produce munitions ... [which] have been provided to the Israeli army."
     Four of the six are now out on strict bail conditions, while two, including Elijah Smith, are on remand in Lewes prison. While property was damaged, their actions involved no violence to persons.
     What would make someone smash up a factory on an industrial estate and then wait calmly to be taken into custody? Perhaps a belief that the only way to prevent atrocity is not to politely petition the arms traders but to actively disarm them. And perhaps a knowledge that while our government may indulge in public handwringing over civilian casualties, it veils in secrecy a highly profitable arms supply industry to Israel. more.. e-mail

Remove Our Grandmother’s Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem
Michael Neumann and Osha Neumann, Counterpunch, Palestine Monitor 2/23/2009
     To the President of the State of Israel and the Director of the Yad Vashem Memorial
     Following the example of Jean-Moise Braitberg, we ask that our grandmother’s name be removed from the wall at Yad Vashem. Her name is Gertrud Neumann. Your records state that she was born in Kattowitz on June 6, 1875 and died in Theresienstadt.
     M. Braitberg delivers his request with excellent reasons and eloquent personal testimony. His words are inspiring, but they give you – and those who stand with you - too much credit. I will instead be brief. Please take this as an expression of my disgust and contempt for your state and all it represents.
     Our grandmother was a victim of that very ideal of ethnic sovereignty in whose cause Israel has shed so much blood for so long. I was among the many Jews who thought nothing of embracing that ideal, despite the sufferings it had inflicted on our own race. It took thousands of Palestinian lives before, finally, I realized how foolish we had been.
     Our complicity was despicable. I do not believe that the Jewish people, in whose name you have committed so many crimes with such outrageous complacency, can ever rid itself of the shame you have brought upon us. Nazi propaganda, for all its calumnies, never disgraced and corrupted the Jews; you have succeeded in this. You haven’t the courage to take responsibility for your own sadistic acts: with unparalleled insolence, you set yourself up as spokesmen for an entire race, as if our very existence endorsed your conduct. And you blacken our names not only by your acts, but by the lies, the coy evasions, the smirking arrogance and the infantile self-righteousness with which you embroider our history. more.. e-mail

Book review: Avraham Burg and the denying of denial
Raymond Deane, Electronic Intifada 2/23/2009
     Western liberals have a great need of "good Israelis." Hitherto, the novelists Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua and David Grossman have fit the bill: they are against the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they dislike the settlers, they are "for" peace and "against" violence ("on both sides"). In approvingly citing their names, western liberals both attest to their own philosemitic credentials and perpetuate the illusion that Israel is a "vibrant liberal democracy" with a robust diversity of opinion. Of late, however, these bellicose peaceniks have blotted their copybooks by supporting one or two of Israel’s wars too many. A new "good Israeli" was urgently required, and he may have arisen in the shape of Avraham Burg.
     The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), published in Hebrew in 2007 as Defeating Hitler and now translated by Israel Amrani, claims that the Shoah (the Nazi holocaust) has been "nationalized" and "privatized" and seeks to reclaim its memory for a universalist vision. Only thus, claims Burg, can Israelis be rescued from their obsession with spurious victimhood, and Hitler finally be defeated. Burg’s concerns, unlike those of, say, political scientist Norman Finkelstein, are ultimately theological: the English title is taken from his penultimate chapter -- "Make God Smile Again" -- which may make the secularist frown. more.. e-mail

SA Abandoned White Rule; Will Israel?
Iqbal Jassat – Pretoria, Palestine Chronicle 2/23/2009
     In attempting to analyse the article by Peter Fabricius titled "Two-state solution the only viable option" (Star - February 20, 2009), I fail to understand his logic in dismissing a unitary state.
     The scenario he paints in supporting an argument in favour of a two-state solution is not any different to the exaggerated fears propagated by successive Israeli leaders who thus thrive in pursuing policies of expansion and perpetual dispossession of Palestinians.
     An illustration of his faulty analysis is encapsulated in the following words: "The peace process suffered a huge blow when Israel pulled out of Gaza and was rewarded not with peace and gratitude but with a rain of Hamas rockets".
     That it sounds like text from a script repeated ad-nauseum by Zionist spin-doctors like Mark Regev and others during their regular media appearances in defence of Israel’s brutal slaughter in Gaza is to be expected given that Fabricius has regularly displayed pro-Israeli leanings in his columns.
     And by seeking justification for Israel’s iron-fisted control of the West Bank on the grounds that by “pulling out” Ben Gurion airport may come within range of Hamas’s artillery, Fabricius has unwittingly acknowledged its continued occupation. It’s remarkable how apologists for Israel get caught in their own web of deceit. more.. e-mail

Q&A: ’Hamas Won’t Give In To Blackmail’
Mel Frykberg Interviews Hamas Foreign Minister Ahmed Yousef, Inter Press Service 2/23/2009
     RAMALLAH, Feb 23 (IPS) - At the eleventh hour, just as a permanent ceasefire painfully mediated by the Egyptians after weeks of intensive shuttle diplomacy was about to take effect, Israel suddenly changed its preconditions for a settlement with Hamas.
     This has left the Palestinians, especially Gazans, the Egyptians, the Hamas leadership and even some Israeli analysts wondering just what will happen next. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza remains unresolved and the current tentative ceasefire looks increasingly fragile as intermittent violence continues.
     IPS spoke to Dr Ahmed Yousef, the Gaza-based Hamas Foreign Minister and political advisor to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh about the stalemate.
     IPS: What is your understanding of how the ceasefire should have come into effect?
     Ahmed Yousef: It is not only our understanding but also that of the Egyptians, the Israelis prior to their about-face, and the Europeans. After weeks of tough bargaining it was agreed with the Israelis that there would be two stages of negotiations.
     The first stage would involve the permanent opening of some of Gaza’s borders and the implementation of a permanent ceasefire. The second stage would revolve around a prisoner swap and the opening of the other border crossings. The Israelis had previously agreed to this. more.. e-mail

Israeli Elections and Politics of Demography
Dr. Haidar Eid and Neta Golan, Palestine Chronicle 2/23/2009
     After very close Israeli elections, many analysts seem to feel Likud head Benjamin Netanyahu will get the nod to form the next Israeli government. Though Likud lost to Kadima by a small number of votes, Likud’s right-wing bloc as a whole won a majority. Many in the international community are holding out hope that Tzipi Livni, the head of Kadima, will prevail and become Prime Minister because they view her as the candidate of peace.
     In reality however, Livni, while speaking of negotiations, represents continuity with past Israeli policies of the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, just as Netanyahu does. Both Likud and Kadima will leave members of the international community who are committed to human rights with only one appropriate response - boycott.
     Tzipi Livni, was recently quoted in The Jerusalem Post warning that if Israel fails to initiate a peace plan after the elections, "We will get the Arab peace initiative." It is crucial to understand why Livni, who participated in leading Israel in its assault on Lebanon in 2006 and on Gaza in 2009, is threatened by an offer from the Arab world to normalize relations with Israel if it withdraws from the territories it occupied in 1967 and agrees to a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem in accordance with UN Resolution 194. more.. e-mail

The Great Gamble
Uri Avnery - Israel, Palestine Chronicle 2/23/2009
     Iacta alea est - the die is cast - said Julius Caesar and crossed the River Rubicon on his way to conquer Rome. That was the end of Roman democracy. We Israelis don’t have a Julius Caesar. But we do have an Avigdor Lieberman. When he announced his support the other day for the setting up of a government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, that was the crossing of his Rubicon.
     I hope that this is not the beginning of the end of Israeli democracy.
     Until the last moment, Lieberman held the Israeli public in suspense. Will he join Netanyahu? Will he join Tzipi Livni?
     Those who participated in the guessing game were divided in their view of Lieberman.
     Some of them said: Lieberman is indeed what he pretends to be: an extreme nationalist racist. His aim is really to turn Israel into a Jewish state cleansed of Arabs - Araberrein, in German. He has only contempt for democracy, both in the country and in his own party. Like similar parties in the past, it is based on a cult of (his) personality, the worship of brute force, contempt for democracy and disdain for the judicial system. In other countries this is called fascism. more.. e-mail

'Coexistence' and 'Mixed Cities': A Microcosm of Israeli Apartheid
Isabelle Humphries, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs Jan/Feb 2009
     "Acre is a national test. Acre today is Israel in 10 years’ time. What happens in Acre today is what will happen in Israel… Coexistence is a slogan." — Rabbi Yossi Stern, head of the Hesder Yeshiva in Acre
     FOR ONCE this writer finds herself agreeing with an Israeli settler. “Coexistence” between Israel’s Palestinian and Jewish citizens is an empty notion indeed, part of the “democratic” image Israel projects in its ongoing international public relations offensive. After the October events in Acre when Palestinian residents were attacked and their homes and property set on fire (see December 2008 Washington Report, p. 15), the media debate focused on how to return to the state of coexistence that the town supposedly once enjoyed. Yet any study of Israel’s “mixed cities” reveals that contrary to serving as models of coexistence, cities like Acre and Jaffa present a microcosm of the state as a whole—a space in which Palestinians are increasingly marginalized and excluded from the benefits of the state of which they supposedly are citizens.
     The vast majority of the 20 percent of the Israeli population who are Palestinian live segregated from Jewish residential areas. Because the country’s economic life is based in the Jewish sector, most Palestinian employees return at night to the few hundred Arab towns and villages which survived the nakba (catastrophe) of 1948. While the bulk of the Palestinian population was evicted that year from the coastal area cities of Haifa, Jaffa, Ramle, Lydd and Akka, in each town a small number remained. In the weeks and months after occupation they were joined by refugees fleeing from other villages destroyed in the area. Israeli policy was to push these Palestinians into one area of each city which became known by Jews and Arabs alike as the “ghetto”—neighborhoods like the Ajami in Jaffa, al-Jamal in Ramle, or the old city of Acre. For years Palestinians in these areas lived with several families crammed into each overcrowded house. more.. e-mail

Long road to rehabilitation for Gaza’s amputees
Rami Almeghari, International Middle East Media Center News 2/22/2009
     Amidst the thousands of people injured during Israel’s three-week bombardment of the Gaza Strip are many whose lives will be permanently affected because they lost limbs.
     Suheir Zemo, a 47-year-old mother of seven, lost her right leg after an Israeli missile crashed into her home in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City in mid-January, at the height of the Israeli attack.
     "I was in my bedroom when a rocket landed in the room. Suddenly my leg started bleeding severely. Then my husband risked his life and took me to hospital as ambulances were not allowed into the area, said Suheir sitting in a wheelchair at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.
     At al-Wafa rehabilitation hospital in eastern Gaza City, a number of amputees recently began the rehabilitation process. Al-Wafa is the only private rehabilitation center in the Gaza Strip, but even it was not spared damage in the Israeli attack.
     In one of the hospital’s rooms lie two young men in their early twenties; the first had his right leg amputated, while the second had his lower limbs severely injured, preventing their use completely.
     "It was almost 1:15 pm, when an Israeli tank shell hit our home in the Shaaf area of Gaza city. Only my father, my friend and myself were inside the home when it was struck," said Maher al-Habashi. more.. e-mail

Gaza truce held hostage
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/19/2009
     As Netanyahu and Livni jockey for position it is the Palestinians who are paying the price for Israel’s domestic political impasse.
     Last week Osama Salman, a teacher, signed a contract to build an extra storey to his house in the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza. Friends and colleagues were dumbstruck -- Gaza ran out of building materials more than 18 months ago -- but Salman was confident that once the truce came into effect border crossings with Israel would reopen. Now he realises his signing was a precipitous action.
     "Statements by Hamas and Egyptian officials made me think a truce was round the corner. I went off and signed a deal with the contractor. Now that the prospects for a truce have dwindled I realise I acted foolishly," he told Al-Ahram Weekly.
     Osama was not alone. There are no inhabitants of Gaza whose domestic and business interests are not connected to the lifting of the blockade and the opening of the borders. Yet outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is insisting that Israel secure the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit first. On Wednesday, after a Security Cabinet meeting, Olmert repeated his condition that Shalit must be freed: "We will negotiate his release first and only then will we be willing to discuss things like the Gaza crossings and rebuilding" the Gaza Strip. more.. e-mail

Containment continues
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/19/2009
     With Hamas-Israel truce talks on hold, Cairo turns its focus on Palestinian reconciliation, reports Meetings bringing together representatives of the two main conflicting Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, are being hosted by Cairo in preparation for a soft launch to national reconciliation talks that President Hosni Mubarak promised to convene later this month.
     "Egypt is convinced that the Palestinian national reconciliation dialogue it will host 22 February will work," Mubarak said Monday evening in the Bahraini capital Manama following talks with the monarch of Bahrain.
     Egypt previously attempted to kick-start Palestinian national reconciliation dialogue last autumn, but attempts were blocked by the decision of Hamas to boycott the meeting at the eleventh hour due to un-met demands (the release of Hamas members held by the Fatah- controlled Palestinian Authority). This time, things seem to be different. Palestinian and Egyptian sources are not promising full- fledged reconciliation soon; nor is the Arab League, that is supposed to take over the reconciliation process once launched by Egypt. The prospect of a new hardline Israeli government is feeding doubt. However, as one Egyptian official said: "The Palestinian factions are showing a new sense of realism. Their attitudes are different than what they showed late last year." more.. e-mail

Shifting sands
Hossam Tamam, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/19/2009
     Hossam Tamam examines ways in which the Israeli war on Gaza has redefined the contours of the Islamist scene.
     Recent events in Gaza have made it clear that Islamism is now the master of the moment. As an idea, as well as a political manifestation, Islamism occupied centre stage. The most active and influential components of the Palestinian resistance movement are now Islamist forces. Hamas and the Palestinian Jihad triggered the Israeli offensive and led Palestinian defence. Among political groups and movements to take part in protests are the Islamists that led and organised demonstrations. Even at the government level they are the strongest players. Think simply of Turkey’s Justice and Development government.
     Islamism, as an idea and movement, has spread throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds. The Arab cause is no longer, not only because Iran and Turkey have become major players in a political equation that was always Arab in identity, but also because the prevailing ideology of the cause is no longer Arabist. "Palestine is an Islamic stance", a motto contained in the Hamas charter, is among the most potent ideas the movement has given the Palestinian struggle. It has made it possible to transcend nationalist and Arab frameworks. And when war in Gaza struck, Islamism dominated not only banners but also the outlook that governed the logic of the struggle. more.. e-mail

Out in the cold
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/19/2009
     Weeks after Israel curtailed its massive offensive on Gaza, thousands remain homeless, including children, sheltering in fragile tents in the brutal winter.
     When heavy rain poured into the tent and awakened her, 38-year-old Hanan Al-Attar rushed out in a state of hysteria with her three children. Her husband Ahmed pulled at the tent poles, trying to secure them after fierce winds had knocked them over, and her oldest son filled bags with sand, placing them along the sides of the tent in a desperate attempt to keep it from collapsing. Hanan took refuge with her shivering children in the first house she came across.
     The situation this family was in late last week was shared by most of the other families living in Al-Karama Camp, near Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip. The camp is composed of tents that families erected after the Israeli army destroyed their homes in the Al-Atatira and Al-Salatin areas during the recent war on Gaza.
     Hajja Fatima Al-Attar, for example, was in the same situation as Hanan -- she couldn’t do anything to keep her tent up since she and her family were asleep when cold rains suddenly poured in. The only thing they could do, she told Al-Ahram Weekly, was to leave their belongings behind and head to houses nearest the camp, seeking refuge from the cold and the rain. Camp residents, who lack basic services, can see the ruins of their homes in nearby neighbourhoods. more.. e-mail

Israel the exception
Shahid Alam, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/19/2009
     The normal rules governing state conduct do not apply to Israel, it appears.
     Critics of Zionism and Israel -- including a few Israelis -- have charted an inverse exceptionality, which describes an Israel that is aberrant, violates international norms with near impunity, engages in systematic abuses of human rights, wages wars at will, and has expanded its territories through conquest. This is not the place to offer an exhaustive list of these negative Israeli exceptions, but we will list a few that are the most egregious.
     As an exclusionary settler-colony, Israel does not stand alone in the history of European expansion overseas. But it is the only one of its kind in the 20th and 21st centuries. Since the 16th century, Europeans have established exclusionary settler- colonies in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand -- among other places -- whose white colonists displaced or nearly exterminated the indigenous population to recreate societies in the image of those they had left behind. By the late 19th century, however, this genocidal European expansion was running out of steam, in large part because there remained few surviving Neolithic societies that white colonists could exterminate with ease. In tropical Africa and Asia, the climate and present pathogens were not particularly kind to European settlers.
     The Zionist decision in 1897 to establish an exclusionary colonial-settler state in Palestine marked a departure from this trend. In 1948, some 50 years later, Jewish colonists from the West would create the only state in the 20th century founded on conquest and ethnic cleansing. Israel is also the only exclusionary colonial-settler state established by the modern Europeans anywhere in the Old World. more.. e-mail

Lines already drawn
Khalil El-Anani, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/19/2009
     The Middle East is in the throes of a radical transformation and still no one seems to notice.
     The US did not need the bombardment of Pearl Harbour in 1941 in order to break out from its isolationism and end the ambiguity that had prevailed in the world order during the first decades of the 20th century. Nor did the Soviet Union need the collapse of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 to underline that it no longer inspired respect and awe among its enemies and friends alike. In both cases indications of developments existed well beforehand. All that was lacking was the acknowledgement.
     Similarly, the Arabs did not need to be defeated three times by Israel to realise that a new regional order was being constructed, with international approval, aimed at giving Tel Aviv the upper hand in determining the direction of regional interactions for decades to come. This is precisely why Israel threw itself into three wars, determined to prove itself an emerging power that had to be heeded.
     The primary function of conventional Arab forces for five decades has been to try to reach strategic equilibrium with Israel. Egypt steered this process in the 1950s and 1960s, Iraq and Syria took over in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s the entire process fell apart as the official Arab order, which had arisen essentially to confront Israel, crumbled. Yet many Arabs continue to refuse to acknowledge that a new regional order has been in the making during recent decades, or that what is happening today is more than battles of wills at a time of sudden tension. They close their eyes to the fact that what we are experiencing are the upheavals accompanying the birth of a new regional order built on the ruins of the old Middle East.... more.. e-mail

Perpetual stalemate
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/19/2009
     Any near future Israeli government is likely to be stymied by ideological and political contradictions.
     An indecisive elections outcome, coupled with rampant factionalism, is stalling and complicating the task of forming a new Israeli government.
     The 10 February elections gave the Israeli right, with its oft- inharmonious religious and secular camps, 65 seats in the 120- member Knesset. The so-called Zionist "left" took 44 seats, with the remaining 11 going to three Arab parties. The Zionist political establishment normally excludes non-Jewish parties from government, mainly due to racist considerations.
     Since the publication of the election results 11 February, Kadima and Likud leaders Tzipi Livni and Benyamin Netanyahu have been jockeying on the Israeli political arena, trying to woo potential coalition partners to their side. However, neither has been successful, an indication that both may be forced to form a national unity government of some sort.
     Such a government, however, would be one fraught with internal contradictions, given the incompatible platforms of both parties. more.. e-mail

Livni’s Message: Divide and Conquer
Mohannad El-Khairy, Palestine Chronicle 2/21/2009
     On February 2, 2009, then foreign minister Tzipi Livni, one of the architects of the 2008-2009 Gaza Massacre and Israel’s recent election winner, addressed a gathering that draws together both Israeli and international participants from the highest levels of government, business, and academia to discuss Israel’s pressing national, regional and global strategic issues -- known as the Annual Herzliya Conference.
     As her theme centered on how the world around Israel is changing, on how its threats are evolving, and thus how the state was presented with fresh ’opportunities’, she said something that keeps replaying in my mind:
     "Being used to feeling secluded in the Middle East, with the whole Arab world against us, we look around and suddenly notice other countries alongside Israel - Arab, Islamic countries, who no longer view Israel as the enemy, countries who understand that Iran is the main enemy, seeing Iran as no less a threat than we do. Radical Islam is a threat of which these nations understand the meaning better than others do, because they are familiar with the same radical elements at home. And these nations are on the same side as us."
     Broadly speaking, the massacre in Gaza has further bisected the Arab governments along two major ideological lines: One that directs surrendering government to abide by Zionist orders --referred to as “moderates” in Western lexicon; and a second that follows a more pragmatic approach by insisting on appropriate reaction and practical solutions to addressing Israeli Apartheid policies in Palestine. more.. e-mail

Gaza War Strengthened Israel’s Far Right
Roni Ben Efrat, Palestine Chronicle 2/21/2009
     The results of the elections to Israel’s 18th Knesset clearly bolstered the far Right, which won 65 of the parliament’s 120 seats. This outcome is partly due to the paralysis that beset Ehud Olmert’s government. Almost three years ago he received a mandate to advance the peace process, but he squandered it on two wars. The lack of progress toward peace has had the effect of strengthening Hamas. It has also encouraged chauvinistic trends in Israel, as expressed in wall-to-wall support for the Gaza War. Israelis turned their backs on the notion that the conflict with the Palestinians must be solved by diplomacy.
     Avigdor Lieberman, who heads a party called "Israel Our Home," became the elections’ main attraction, advancing from 11 to 15 seats and shoving the venerable Labor Party back into fourth position. His campaign slogan went: "No loyalty, no citizenship!" If he weren’t Jewish, Lieberman would be an anti-Semite. Hatred for Arabs was his strongest card, pulling in thousands of the like-minded.
     The Lieberman surge is largely a result of the Gaza War. His rival parties, Kadima and Labor, timed the offensive prior to elections largely in order to gain popularity, but Lieberman reaped the fruits. The intoxication of force, the abandonment of all restraint –sheer murder – well suited the party of Strong Man Lieberman, who means to teach the Arabs a lesson they won’t forget. more.. e-mail

Fascist Rule in Israel
Stephen Lendman – Chicago, Palestine Chronicle 2/21/2009
     On February 10, Israel held parliamentary elections for 120 seats in its 18th Knesset. The process repeats every four years unless the body calls an earlier election by majority vote. The prime minister may also ask the president to request one early that will proceed unless the Knesset blocks it. Parliamentary terms may be extended beyond four years by special majority vote. Israel has no constitution. Under Article 4 of its Basic Law: The Knesset:
     "The Knesset shall be elected by general, national, direct, equal, secret and proportional elections, in accordance with the Knesset Elections Law." Every Israeli citizen 18 or older may vote, including Arabs who are nominally enfranchised, may serve in the parliament, but can’t govern or in any way influence policy.
     Knesset seats are assigned proportionally to each party’s percentage of the total vote. A minimum total is required to win any seats. Jewish parties alone are empowered. Arab parliamentarians have no decision-making authority. They’re also constrained by the 1992 Law of Political Parties and section 7A(1) of the Basic Law that prohibits candidates from denying "the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people." more.. e-mail

A Netanyahu - Lieberman governing coalition should be a clear signal that there is no Israeli Partner for Peace
Palestinian National Initiative, Palestine Monitor 2/21/2009
     Ramallah 20-2-2009 Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi was in Bilin this morning to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the West Bank City’s popular nonviolence movement. It was at the demonstration, attended by hundreds of Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists, that the doctor first learned of Israeli President Shimon Peres’ decision to approve Netanyahu as the next Prime Minister.
     In a statement before the assembled press, the doctor suggested that Israel has been dragged into new lows of racism and xenophobia. "The next Israeli coalition is not only racist and undemocratic,"� he said, "but also unwilling to even consider a lasting peace based on justice and international law. Today marks the official death of the peace process and a guarantee that Israel will remain in a state of brutal Apartheid - the only one of its kind in this new century. A Netanyahu-Lieberman led Israeli governing coalition should be a loud and clear signal to the international community that there is no Israeli Partner for Peace.
     As the doctor spoke, Israeli soldiers began firing a barrage of teargas into the crowd of protesters, several were injured. more.. e-mail

Israel’s Biggest Danger
Fareed Zakaria, Middle East Online 2/21/2009
     Arab Israelis - who make up 20 percent of Israel’s total population - face discrimination in many aspects of life, including immigration, land ownership, education and employment.
     NEW YORK – Even before a new coalition could emerge, Israel’s latest election was historic. It marked the collapse of Labour, the party that can plausibly claim to have founded Israel and produced its most celebrated prime ministers, from David Ben-Gurion (as head of Labour’s predecessor, Mapai), through Golda Meir to Yitzhak Rabin.
     The last vestige of old Labour is Shimon Peres, who – with fitting irony – is the country’s president only because he quit the party. Israel’s political spectrum is now dominated by three right-wing groups: Likud, Kadima (the Likud offshoot founded by Ariel Sharon) and Yisrael Beytenu, a party of Russian immigrants. But while most commentators focus on the future of the peace process and the two-state solution, a deeper and more existential question is growing within the heart of Israel.
     It’s a question posed by the election’s biggest winner: Avigdor Lieberman. His Yisrael Beytenu party won 15 seats, placing third but gaining enormous swing power in the Israeli system. Whether or not the new government includes him, Lieberman and his issues have moved to centre-stage. As fiercely as he denounces the Palestinian militants of Hamas and Hizbullah, his No. 1 target is Israel’s Arab minority, which he has called a worse threat than Hamas. He has proposed the effective expulsion of several hundred thousand Arab citizens by unilaterally re-designating some northern Israeli towns as parts of the Palestinian West Bank. more.. e-mail

Journalist Robert Fisk talks about the necessity of reporting war from the front lines
Stefan Cristoff, Palestine News Network 2/21/2009
     Montreal / Beirut - Reporting independently from the front lines of war is an increasingly rare engagement for journalists working for major international media outlets.
     From Iraq to Afghanistan, reporters are increasingly embedded with advancing Western forces on the front lines, operating without independence.
     When Israeli military forces launched an invasion into the Gaza Strip, international journalists were barred entry into the territory by the Israeli government for the majority of the conflict. This despite a ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court that called on the government to allow international reporters into the territory. Major international media outlets, including CNN and the BBC, ended up reporting from hilltops in Israeli-controlled territory kilometres away from the actual conflict.
     British journalist Robert Fisk has offered fiercely independent accounts of conflicts throughout the Middle East for decades. Stationed in Beirut, Lebanon, Fisk reports for the U.K.-based Independent newspaper and is widely read around the world. Fisk spoke with Hour to offer comments on the media response to the recent war in the Gaza Strip. Often historical context is not included in daily reporting on the Middle East. Could you offer some historical perspectives to the recent war in Gaza? more.. e-mail

The Cleanser: Lobby Whistles Up Cordesman to 'Prove' Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza
Norman Finkelstein, CounterPunch 2/19/2009
     Anthony H. Cordesman, a leading military analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has published a “strategic analysis” of the Gaza massacre.(1) He reaches the remarkable conclusion that “Israel did not violate the laws of war.” The report is based on “briefings in Israeli [sic] during and immediately after the fighting made possible by a visit sponsored by Project Interchange, and using day-to-day reporting issued by the Israeli Defense Spokesman.” Cordesman omits mention that Project Interchange is funded by the American Jewish Committee.
     Cordesman’s faith in the pronouncements of Israeli notwithstanding, respected Israeli analysts exhibit less confidence. “The state authorities, including the defense establishment and its branches,” Uzi Benziman observed in Haaretz, “have acquired for themselves a shady reputation when it comes to their credibility.” The “official communiqués published by the IDF have progressively liberated themselves from the constraints of truth,” B. Michael wrote in Yediot Ahronot, and the “heart of the power structure”—police, army, intelligence—has been infected by a “culture of lying.”(2) During the Gaza massacre Israel was repeatedly caught lying among many other things about its use of white phosphorus.(3) Recalling Israel’s train of lies during both the 2006 Lebanon war and the Gaza massacre, Human Rights Watch senior military analyst Marc Garlasco rhetorically asked, “How can anyone trust the Israeli military?”(4) more.. e-mail

Free Speech and Fatwa
Aijaz Zaka Syed – Dubai, Palestine Chronicle 2/21/2009
     This appears to be a year of anniversaries. If it was Iran’s Revolution last week, the media spotlight this week has been on the fatwa the late Ayatollah Khomeini issued against Salman Rushdie 20 years ago.
     A great deal has been said and written over the past two decades for and against the Satanic Verses as well as the fatwa condemning its author for his cheap offensive targeting the Prophet. And today as the world revisits the storm Rushdie’s little, dirty book and Iran’s fatwa unleashed back then, a lot of chest thumping and hand wringing is going on in the West.
     Rushdie’s defenders are back with a vengeance and both the rabid right and liberal Left have joined forces to take on the ‘extremist Islam’ that is apparently a clear and present danger to the hallowed ideals and values of great Western civilization. At a time when anything to do with Islam and Muslims looks fair game, the Rushdie saga appears to offer another great opportunity to all Islam bashers. Some cleverly cloak it in a critique of Iran and all the troubles it appears to be unleashing across the Middle East.
     Some target the alleged inherent intolerance of Islam and its followers in the name of debating free speech. The rest simply do not need an excuse to open another front in the ‘war on Islamist terror’. Seems we are the world’s favorite punching bag. Just try using the same freedom against the Jews and see the instant results. more.. e-mail

Rebuilding of Gaza hinges on Hamas-Fatah reconciliation
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 2/22/2009
     An apolitical group of community activists, businessmen and academics in the Gaza Strip is worried that Fatah-Hamas rivalries will undermine the Strip’s reconstruction.
     Both Fatah, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which controls Gaza, have announced separate plans to repair the damages of last month’s Israeli operation in Gaza. The new association plans to urge them to either form a joint leadership for the reconstruction effort or establish a steering committee comprised of "respected, professional and noncorrupt community representatives" to oversee the work.
     An international conference to raise funds for the reconstruction will take place in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt early next month, and representatives of 80 countries are expected to attend. But the Palestinians will be represented only by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, as Hamas has not been invited. The Gaza activists fear that this will merely deepen the rift between the rival parties.
     Several Arab countries that have pledged large sums for reconstruction have conditioned the donations on a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation. For now, however, both the Fatah government in Ramallah and the Hamas government in Gaza have prepared their own plans and are demanding that international donors coordinate solely with them. more.. e-mail

U.S. Trade Unionists Support South African and Australian Dockers’ Boycott of Israeli Cargo
Palestine Monitor 2/21/2009
     "For the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."— Martin Luther King Jr., Beyond Vietnam, April 4, 1967
     We salute the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) in Durban, and Western Australian dock worker members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), for refusing to handle Israeli cargo.
     Theirs is a courageous response to Israel’s attack on Palestinians in Gaza that, since December 27 alone, have left some 1,400 dead and 5,000 wounded — nearly all of them civilians.
     This action is in the best tradition of dock workers in Denmark and Sweden (1963), the San Francisco Bay Area (1984) and Liverpool (1988), who refused to handle shipping for apartheid South Africa; Oakland dock workers’ refusal to load bombs for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (1978); and West Coast dock workers’ strike against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (2008).
     The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) rightly "calls on other workers and unions to follow suit and to do all that is necessary to ensure that they boycott all goods to and from Israel until Palestine is free."
     COSATU’s appeal is particularly relevant for workers in the United States, whose government stands behind Israel’s war against the Palestinians, and without which Israeli apartheid cannot continue. -- See also: Sign the Petition: Labor for Palestine more.. e-mail

The real Israel-Palestine story is in the West Bank
Ben White, The Guardian 2/20/2009
     It is quite likely that you have not heard of the most important developments this week in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the West Bank, while it has been "occupation as normal", there have been some events that together should be overshadowing Gaza, Gilad Shalit and Avigdor Lieberman.
     First, there have been a large number of Israeli raids on Palestinian villages, with dozens of Palestinians abducted. These kinds of raids are, of course, commonplace for the occupied West Bank, but in recent days it appears the Israeli military has targeted sites of particularly strong Palestinian civil resistance to the separation wall.
     For three consecutive days this week, Israeli forces invaded Jayyous, a village battling for survival as their agricultural land is lost to the wall and neighbouring Jewish colony. The soldiers occupied homes, detained residents, blocked off access roads, vandalised property, beat protestors, and raised the Israeli flag at the top of several buildings.
     Jayyous is one of the Palestinian villages in the West Bank that has been non-violently resisting the separation wall for several years now. It was clear to the villagers that this latest assault was an attempt to intimidate the protest movement. more.. e-mail

’EU Paying for Gaza Blockade’
David Cronin, Inter Press Service 2/21/2009
     BRUSSELS, Feb 20 (IPS) - European Union aid has been given to an Israeli oil company which has reduced the supply of fuel to Gaza as part of an economic blockade internationally recognised as illegal, Brussels officials have admitted.
     Almost 97 million euros (124 million dollars) in funds managed by the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, were handed over directly to the firm Dor Alon between February 2008 and January this year. Under orders from the Israeli authorities, Dor Alon has been rationing the amount of industrial diesel brought into Gaza in order to deprive its 1.5 million inhabitants of electricity. Power cuts have been a regular occurrence in Gaza because of Israeli actions undertaken since the militant party Hamas won an unexpected victory in Palestinian legislative elections during 2006.
     Charles Shamas from the Mattin Group, an organisation based in the West Bank that monitors Europe’s relationship with Israel, said that the EU has been helping to accommodate the economic blockade of Gaza. This is despite how the Union’s most senior diplomats, including its foreign policy chief Javier Solana and the external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, have condemned the blockade as ’collective punishment’ of a civilian population. Collective punishment constitutes a war crime, according to the 1949 Geneva convention. more.. e-mail

Celebrities asked to boycott diamonds from settlement builder
Press release, Adalah-NY, Electronic Intifada 2/20/2009
     Adalah-NY and Jews Against the Occupation-NYC (JATO-NYC) have called on 16 Hollywood PR firms and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to ensure that no stars wear Leviev diamonds at this Sunday’s Academy Awards. In a two week campaign involving letters and dozens of phone discussions with PR firms, the groups drew attention to Leviev’s violations of human rights and international law in the occupied West Bank where his companies build Israeli settlements, and in the diamond industry in Angola and Namibia. Leviev reportedly controls one-third of the world’s diamond mines.
     The 16 PR firms contacted include six firms representing the ten nominees for best actress and best supporting actress, and representatives for many other female stars. The PR firms acknowledged receiving the Adalah-NY/JATO-NYC letter, and a number of the firms said the letter had been circulated among their senior staff. In a 18 February phone call with Adalah-NY, a press spokesman for the Oscars also said they had received Adalah-NY and JATO-NYC’s letter, but had no comment on the letter’s appeal to ban Leviev’s jewelry, or the groups’ assertion that "the presence of Leviev jewelry at the Academy Awards would taint the events with complicity in Leviev’s companies’ egregious" human rights violations. more.. e-mail

Global boycott movement marks its successes
Jeff Handmaker, Electronic Intifada 2/20/2009
     Responding to the many calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, solidarity movements around the world have marked many successes. It is important for human rights advocates to build on this momentum and seize the opportunity to do what is within their power to try and hold Israel accountable for its abuses of human rights and other international laws.
     Since the initial BDS call by Palestinian intellectuals and academics in October 2003, which was followed by separate calls for sports, arts, economic and other calls for BDS, there has been a seismic shift in the global solidarity movement for human rights in Israel-Palestine. Lawyers, doctors, academics, students, trade unionists, school teachers and many other activists have marked successes around the world. Their efforts are an inspiring reflection of the South African anti-apartheid movement, where BDS was also used very effectively.
     In first few weeks of 2009 alone, European, North American and South African solidarity movements have made remarkable progress.
     A growing number of politicians in Europe and North America have put forward uncomfortable, probing questions to their governments and clearly want to do more. One example is the "Break the Silence" campaign within the Dutch Labor Party. more.. e-mail

Ramattan’s war: The world’s eyes into Gaza
Toufic Haddad, Electronic Intifada 2/20/2009
     If there is controversy about who won the recent war in Gaza, there is no question that Ramattan News Agency of Gaza City won the war to broadcast it.
     It was Ramattan’s images that beamed Israel’s 22-day "Operation Cast Lead" into millions of households across the globe, capturing the indelible visual moments of the war: the aftermath of Israeli shells that hit a UN school compound killing 46 refugees; the streams of incendiary white phosphorus raining down upon civilian neighborhoods; the family members who desperately dug out the corpses of their relatives beneath the layers of collapsed homes. Ramattan’s images were broadcast uncensored around the clock and only stopped on the few occasions the staff had to evacuate the studios fearing the 11-story building was about to be bombed.
     Recently in the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, journalist Gideon Levy described the effect these images had:
     "The whole world saw the images. They shocked every human being who saw them, even if they left most Israelis cold. The conclusion is that Israel is a violent and dangerous country, devoid of all restraints and blatantly ignoring the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, while not giving a hoot about international law. The investigations are on their way." more.. e-mail

Lieberman is no better than Feiglin
Zeev Sternhell, Ha’aretz 2/20/2009
     Kadima achieved its great accomplishment thanks to votes from the left, whereas Likud did not lose even more seats to Kadima because it succeeded in temporarily concealing and silencing Moshe Feiglin’s Jewish Leadership movement. Now, even though Avigdor Lieberman and his aides - who, when it is convenient, like to wear the mask of pragmatists - are no better than the group from Jewish Leadership, Tzipi Livni and Benjamin Netanyahu are both competing for their favors.
     That is the nature of politics and the reason why politics are loathed by decent people who consider them the opposite of integrity and basic morality. It is no wonder that so many people do not bother to go to the polls.
     But Lieberman is not a unique phenomenon. About one-third of the members of the current Knesset show contempt for democracy’s moral contents.
     Yisrael Beiteinu is joined by the ultra-Orthodox parties, whose patterns of behavior and principles in the political sphere are not substantially different from the concepts held by Lieberman’s party or the Feiglin branch of Likud. Even though the ultra-Orthodox parties’ source of authority is spiritual and the leader who makes the decisions achieved his position due to his intellectual prowess - while Lieberman draws on his skill at sowing hatred - the result is similar. Lieberman and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, along with the factions at the fringes of their parties, represent those in our society who have authoritarian temperaments and tendencies. more.. e-mail

Long road to rehabilitation for Gaza’s amputees
Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 2/20/2009
     Amidst the thousands of people injured during Israel’s three-week bombardment of the Gaza Strip are many whose lives will be permanently affected because they lost limbs.
     Suheir Zemo, a 47-year-old mother of seven, lost her right leg after an Israeli missile crashed into her home in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City in mid-January, at the height of the Israeli attack.
     "I was in my bedroom when a rocket landed in the room. Suddenly my leg started bleeding severely. Then my husband risked his life and took me to hospital as ambulances were not allowed into the area, said Suheir sitting in a wheelchair at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.
     At al-Wafa rehabilitation hospital in eastern Gaza City, a number of amputees recently began the rehabilitation process. Al-Wafa is the only private rehabilitation center in the Gaza Strip, but even it was not spared damage in the Israeli attack.
     In one of the hospital’s rooms lie two young men in their early twenties; the first had his right leg amputated, while the second had his lower limbs severely injured, preventing their use completely. more.. e-mail

Lives buried under the rubble in Gaza
Report, PCHR, Electronic Intifada 2/19/2009
     Three weeks after the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, 16-year-old Maysa al-Louh sits stoically on the pile of sand that consumes half her home in Beit Lahiya. Under the sand, churned up by Israeli bulldozers during incursions into the area on 4 January 2009 lie all her report cards and school awards that were testament to her excellent academic record.
     Nearby her grandmother tries to heat water on a pile of ash. The smell of decomposing chicken carcasses is overwhelming: the family’s chicken coop that provided them with eggs, as well as their vegetable garden, were all destroyed by the bulldozers and tanks.
     Thirty-five people lived in the three-story al-Louh house. The contents of home life -- a refrigerator, notebooks, framed pictures, and plastic flowers, lie scattered over the area. The adjacent Sakhnin Elementary School was also damaged by artillery shells and some of its classrooms are now a masse of mangled chairs, steel rods, shattered concrete and broken glass. Israel says militants were firing rockets from the school grounds. more.. e-mail

If Gazans want compassion from Israelis, they should grow a tail
Mary Rizzo, Palestine Think Tank 2/20/2009
     Sick and starving animals soften Israeli hearts: There never is a limit to the absurd. In a period when Israelis approve of killing and starving human beings, they find enough compassion so that they can get animal feed into the Gaza Zoo. I found this piece in Israel 21C (the site that brags about the high tech of Israel) and was dumbstruck reading it. I will add a few comments within in Blue. [italics]
     Israeli animal charity sends aid to Gaza zoo, By Abigail Klein-Leichman Truckloads of food and medicine for lions, horses, donkeys, and other ill and hungry animals were among the relief supplies flowing into the Gaza Strip from Israel following the recent three-week war.
     It was no easy feat getting help to the inhabitants of the Gaza Zoo and to other wild and domesticated creatures in an area hostile to the Jewish state.
     Oh Gee, I wonder why it would be hostile to the Jewish State, especially now.
     But Eti Altman, co-founder and spokeswoman of Israel’s largest animal-welfare organization, Let the Animals Live (LAL), is tenacious in her mission to alleviate suffering.
     You will note the name of the organisation, which sounds so noble. I suppose the name of the organisation that represents Israel and the policy the absolute majority supports of bombing the living daylights out of Gaza as Let the People Die (LPD). I suppose alleviating suffering is important only for animals. -- See also: Israeli animal charity sends aid to Gaza zoo more.. e-mail

Minding the gap in the Middle East
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 2/21/2009
     When you get off a train in many countries, a sign tells you to "mind the gap" between the platform and the train. We need a sign like that over the entire Middle East, which is facing a dangerous trend of the widening gap between a more extremist Israel and more pragmatic Arabs, Iranians, Americans and Europeans.
     A flurry of recent developments - statements, gestures, hints, trips - suggests that the United States, Iran, Arab states and some Europeans seem interested to explore conciliatory moves and are now making noises to that effect: American members of Congress visit Syria and Gaza; the Iranian and US presidents allude to resuming talks and normal relations; the Syrian president stresses the centrality of the US for peace talks in the Middle East and welcomes a visit by head of US Central Command General David Petraeus to discuss Iraq; Italy ponders inviting Iran to the next G-8 meeting, and assorted European legislators hold quiet talks with Hamas, whose leaders just sent a letter to President Barack Obama.
     The common denominator is that key parties that had been estranged now seek to resume normal contacts, which is a critical first step toward sensible behavior, and then, perhaps, peace and security for all.... more.. e-mail

Obama was unconvinced by Bibi’s desire for peace
Robert Fisk, The Independent 2/21/2009
     Barack Obama, they say, did not get on well with Bibi Netanyahu when he met him in Jerusalem before the American elections.
     Mr Obama, who figured out the Middle East pretty quickly, apparently found Bibi arrogant and unconvincing in his professed desire for peace with the Palestinians. What Mr Netanyahu thought of Mr Obama is not known, but he could scarcely have tried to hide his election line: security for Israel, but no Palestinian state.
     Much depends, of course, on whether Tzipi Livni will consent to join a Netanyahu government. For if Avigdor Lieberman slips into a ministerial position, Obama is in trouble. Does he congratulate a new Israeli prime minister who has introduced into his government a man who is prepared to demand loyalty signatures from his own country’s Arab minority? How would that go down in the United States, where a similar proposal – for a loyalty pledge by American minorities, for example – would be a scandal?
     But those Palestinians who believe that Lieberman should be in a Netanyahu administration – on the grounds that the “true” face of Israel would then be clear to all Americans – are being a little premature. Obama is not going to change the US relationship with Israel. American foreign policy – like that of most states – is based not on justice but on power. more.. e-mail

Statement of Joel Kovel Regarding His Termination by Bard College
Joel Kovel, MR Zine 2/20/2009
     Joel Kovel holds the Alger Hiss chair in social studies at Bard College and is the author of ’Overcoming Zionism’ among other titles. He has recently been informed by the college that his contract will not be extended beyond July 1. In the statement below, by Kovel, he argues that his views are to blame.
     In January, 1988, I was appointed to the Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies at Bard College. As this was a Presidential appointment outside the tenure system, I have served under a series of contracts. The last of these was half-time (one semester on, one off, with half salary and full benefits year-round), effective from July 1, 2004, to June 30, 2009. On February 7 I received a letter from Michèle Dominy, Dean of the College, informing me that my contract would not be renewed this July 1 and that I would be moved to emeritus status as of that day. She wrote that this decision was made by President Botstein, Executive Vice-President Papadimitriou and herself, in consultation with members of the Faculty Senate.
     This document argues that this termination of service is prejudicial and motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations, but by political values, principally stemming from differences between myself and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism. There is of course much more to my years at Bard than this, including another controversial subject, my work on ecosocialism (The Enemy of Nature). However, the evidence shows a pattern of conflict over Zionism only too reminiscent of innumerable instances in this country in which critics of Israel have been made to pay, often with their careers, for speaking out. In this instance the process culminated in a deeply flawed evaluation process which was used to justify my termination from the faculty. more.. e-mail

Europe opens covert talks with ’blacklisted’ Hamas
Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor, The Independent 2/19/2009
     European nations have opened a direct dialogue with Hamas as the US intensifies the search for Middle East peace under Barack Obama.
     In the first meeting of its kind, two French senators travelled to Damascus two weeks ago to meet the leader of the Palestinian Islamist faction, Khaled Meshal, The Independent has learned. Two British MPs met three weeks ago in Beirut with the Hamas representative in Lebanon, Usamah Hamdan. “Far more people are talking to Hamas than anyone might think,” said a senior European diplomat. “It is the beginning of something new – although we are not negotiating.”
     Mr Hamdan said yesterday that since the end of last year, MPs from Sweden, the Netherlands and three other western European nations, which he declined to identify, had consulted with Hamas representatives. “They believe they made a mistake by blacklisting Hamas,” he said, referring to the EU decision in 2003 to add the political wing of the movement to its list of terrorist organisations. “Now they know they have to talk to Hamas.”
     Political contacts with Hamas are banned under the rules of the international Quartet for Middle East peace – which groups the US, the EU, Russia and the UN – on the grounds that the Palestinian faction remains committed to the destruction of Israel. The international community insists that the ban will only be lifted once the Islamists agree to recognise Israel and renounce violence. But the policy, set out in 2006 following the Hamas victory in Palestinian elections, has been called into question since the three-week war in Gaza which is ruled by Hamas. more.. e-mail

Escort service
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 2/19/2009
     GAZA - The question "Who is it?" was answered with: "The Israel Defense Forces." Majdi Abed Rabbo, 39, who is a Palestinian Authority (Ramallah) employee and a member of its intelligence apparatus, went down to open the door. Standing there was the son of his neighbors, Mahmoud Daher, and behind him a soldier whose rifle was jammed into Daher’s back. The soldier pushed Daher aside and aimed the rifle at Abed Rabbo.
     "He ordered me to pull down my pants. I pulled them down. He demanded that I raise my shirt. I raised it. That I turn around. I turned around," Abed Rabbo related. And then the room filled up with soldiers. "Twelve, or something like that."
     This was in the morning of Monday, January 5, 2009, about 40 hours after the start of the Israeli ground offensive in Gaza.
     The soldiers had already taken over Daher’s house on Sunday evening, located in I’zbet Abed Rabbo, an eastern neighborhood of Jabaliya city. First they gathered the family on the ground floor. Gunfire rang out around the house. Then they moved the family up to the first floor. The family wondered why the soldiers had taken them upstairs, to the cold, uncomfortable room - parents, children, two infants and an elderly mother. But they could not refuse, and they did not yet know that the move upstairs brought them closer to the range of fire. Only later did they learn about the three fighters from Iz al-Din al-Qassam, Hamas’ military wing, positioned in the empty house to the northeast of them. The regular occupants of the house, owned by their neighbor Abu Hatem, had long since gone abroad. Abed Rabbo’s tall house stood next to Abu Hatem’s narrow, empty one. more.. e-mail

New species
Sayed Kashua, Ha’aretz 2/19/2009
     Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to inform you that Israel’s Arab citizens’ 15 minutes of fame were officially inaugurated this week. I’m telling you, during the past few days, Arabs have been going like hotcakes. We’re talking the hottest merchandise in today’s international entertainment market. Last week, I was contacted by dozens of foreign reporters, all begging me to consent to an interview. Requests from radio stations, television, newspapers, Web sites - you name it. The Western world has discovered the natural phenomenon known as Israeli Arab citizens, and to the best of my knowledge, the patent is registered under the name of a Russian scientist called Lieberman. That slogan - "No Loyalty, No Citizenship" - really seems to have confused members of the foreign media. "Just a second," wondered editors in Europe and the United States, "what citizenship is he talking about? Since when do the Palestinians have any citizenship?" Anthropologists and zoologists were called upon to provide explanations and after long days of the most delicate laboratory experiments, they reached the conclusion that this was a familiar phenomenon, sometimes referred to among a small group of historians by the scientific term "Israeli Arabs." Other researchers who had documented the occurrence called them "Palestinian citizens of Israel" while still others preferred to catalog them by numbers, calling them the "Arabs of ’48." Some representatives of the foreign media who had amassed years of experience in Israel already knew about the country’s Arab citizens, but for internal reasons, chose, until recently, to conceal this phenomenon from their readers lest it sow confusion and cause the average foreign reader dismay. The whole Israeli-Palestinian story was already becoming thornier than ever, and the introduction of new elements such as Israeli Arabs would only complicate matters.... more.. e-mail

Film review: 'Waltz with Bashir'
Naira Antoun, Electronic Intifada 2/19/2009
     Waltz with Bashir, an animated documentary film charting the director’s quest to recover his lost memories of the 1982 massacres at the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila in Beirut, Lebanon, has been released to international acclaim. The film presents itself, and has largely been received, as a soul-searching and honest account of a journey to face up to guilt and responsibility. More than a quarter of a century after the atrocities in Sabra and Shatila, during which approximately 2,000 civilians were brutally murdered, we are witnessing a perverse moment: an apparently "anti-war" Israeli film wins several Israeli and international film awards in a context not only of Israel’s ongoing brutal occupation, violations of international law, racism and denial of refugee rights, but also while fresh atrocities are committed by Israeli forces in Gaza.
     One night in a bar, a friend tells director, Ari Folman, about a recurring dream connected to his time in Lebanon in 1982, and Folman is alarmed to discover he has no memory of his own army service in Lebanon when he was 19. This serves as the point of departure for Folman’s cinematic journey. In an attempt to piece together what happened, he talks to several old friends who also fought in Lebanon. They are a motley assortment of middle-aged men, self-deprecating, liberal, essentially likeable characters. One of Folman’s first stops is with an old friend he served alongside and who now lives in Holland, having made a living selling falafel. "Healthy and Middle Eastern food is popular" he remarks wryly, unperturbed by the wholesale appropriation of Palestinian and Arab culture. But Waltz with Bashir has bigger fish to fry than falafel; it is a film charting an Israeli quest to remember -- or to unforget -- the Israeli role in the brutal massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila. Or at least, this is the film’s ostensible purpose. more.. e-mail

Twilight Zone / Medal of dishonor
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 2/19/2009
     Everyone now has his fingers crossed for Ari Folman and all the creative artists behind "Waltz with Bashir" to win the Oscar on Sunday. A first Israeli Oscar? Why not? However, it must also be noted that the film is infuriating, disturbing, outrageous and deceptive. It deserves an Oscar for the illustrations and animation - but a badge of shame for its message. It was not by accident that when he won the Golden Globe, Folman didn’t even mention the war in Gaza, which was raging as he accepted the prestigious award. The images coming out of Gaza that day looked remarkably like those in Folman’s film. But he was silent. So before we sing Folman’s praises, which will of course be praise for us all, we would do well to remember that this is not an antiwar film, nor even a critical work about Israel as militarist and occupier. It is an act of fraud and deceit, intended to allow us to pat ourselves on the back, to tell us and the world how lovely we are. Hollywood will be enraptured, Europe will cheer and the Israeli Foreign Ministry will send the movie and its makers around the world to show off the country’s good side. But the truth is that it is propaganda. Stylish, sophisticated, gifted and tasteful - but propaganda. A new ambassador of culture will now join Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, and he too will be considered fabulously enlightened - so different from the bloodthirsty soldiers at the checkpoints, the pilots who bomb residential neighborhoods, the artillerymen who shell women and children, and the combat engineers who rip up streets. Here, instead, is the opposite picture. Animated, too. Of enlightened, beautiful Israel, anguished and self-righteous, dancing a waltz, with and without Bashir. Why do we need propagandists, officers, commentators and spokespersons who will convey "information"? We have this waltz. The waltz rests on two ideological foundations. One is the "we shot and we cried" syndrome: Oh, how we wept, yet our hands did not spill this blood. Add to this a pinch of Holocaust memories, without which there is no proper Israeli self-preoccupation. And a dash of victimization - another absolutely essential ingredient in public discourse here - and voila! You have the deceptive portrait of Israel 2008, in words and pictures... more.. e-mail

How is Erdogan’s sharing of his people’s views considered undemocratic?
Editorial, Daily Star 2/19/2009
     Ever since Recep Tayyip Erdogan lectured Israeli President Shimon Peres at the Davos World Economic Forum about the Jewish state’s indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, a number of scholars and writers in the West have been accusing the Turkish premier of having revealed his true anti-democratic colors. For instance, a recent op-ed published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), entitled"The Islamists Show Their Hand," basically claims that Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) was abandoning its "pro-Western" "reformist" guise and returning to its "anti-Western, anti-Semitic and antisecular" roots. But these empty labels,many of which were also widely used against the Turkish republic when it declined to take part in the US-led invasion of Iraq, are very misleading.
     For one thing, dismissing criticism of Israel as "anti-Western, anti-Semitic and antisecular" ignores the legitimate concerns that many Turks have about Israeli policies in the region where they live. The same WINEP article acknowledges that Erdogan’s Davos remarks would likely boost the popularity of his AKP ahead of the upcoming March 29 local elections, suggesting that a majority of Turks share the views that the premier articulated in Switzerland. Is the author then saying that in order to be pro-Western, a leader must be anti-democratic enough to disregard the foreign policy views of the majority of the people that he governs. more.. e-mail

Singing Martyrdom
Natalie Abu Shakra - Gaza, Palestine Chronicle 2/19/2009
     ’Raise your voice, raise your voice, raise it in your song! Songs are still possible, they are still possible!’
     "Please tell me how he was! How did you find him? Was his body still put together? Was it in pieces?! You have to tell me!" demanded the mother of the martyr Yousef Abu ’Oda.
     On Wednesday February 10, 2009, we were requested to join a team of Beit Hanoun locals in the Bura area in search of the body of Abu ’Oda who has not been found despite two days of searching. We were around twenty individuals and we set search in areas around fifty metres close to the Apartheid wall on the northern borders. For around thirty minutes, as we coupled in pairs, we found the body of 21 year old Abu ’Oda in the close proximity of a hill where the Israeli Occupation Forces were present. It was raining heavily, and small chips of ice were falling from the sky. It was cloudy and grey, and some soldiers were in a jeep that had its headlights on, looking like a spooky object amidst the darkness of the surrounding. Another soldier was in a square like cemented block, hiding, grabbing onto a sniper, with a helmet atop his head. As the soldiers threatened via their megaphone to begin shooting at us, someone behind me screamed "Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!" The corpse had been found. Against the intensity of rain, it was carried in carpets back to an ambulance that could not make it where we were due to fear of the IOF targeting it. more.. e-mail

The Roots of Hatred in the Zionist Ideology
Salim Nazzal, Palestine Chronicle 2/19/2009
     In 1939 Europe turned a blind eye to the rise of Nazism. The British foreign minister Neville Chamberlain believed that a policy of appeasement would work with Hitler; it did not. Hitler attacked Poland, giving the world a costly lesson - a policy of appeasement does not work with fascism. The outcome is well known: Europe was ruined and around 50 million lost their lives. Yet thanks to the Norwegian "home front" resistance, Hitler was deprived of the heavy water needed for manufacturing the nuclear bomb; had he acquired enough material to do so, the history of humanity might have been dramatically different to that which we know.
     The fact that Hitler was democratically elected by the German people did not legitimize his policy of mass murder; in the same way the Israeli election of fascists and war criminals should not legitimate the Zionists’ policy of mass murder. However, if Hitler is the starkest model of the democratic electoral system that brought Nazism to power in Germany, the recent Israeli election is a more recent example of an election that brought another known fascist, Avigdor Lieberman, widely viewed as the Israeli duplicate of contemporary European fascists like Jorg Haider or Jean Marie Le Pen, to power. more.. e-mail

Aftermath (3) 'Is this not forbidden?'
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights 2/19/2009
     In this new series of personal testimonies, PCHR looks at the aftermath of Israel’s 22 day offensive on the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing impact it is having on the civilian population.
     Three weeks after the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, 16 year old Maysa al-Louh sits stoically on the pile of sand that consumes half her home in Beit Lahiya. Under the sand, churned up by Israeli bulldozers during incursions into this area on 4 January 2009 lie all her report cards and school awards that were testament to her excellent academic record.
     Nearby her grandmother tries to heat water on a pile of ash. The smell of decomposing chicken carcasses is overwhelming: the family’s chicken coop that provided them with eggs, as well as their vegetable garden, were all destroyed by the bulldozers and tanks.
     Thirty five people lived in the three storey al-Louh house. The contents of home life – a refrigerator, notebooks, framed pictures, and plastic flowers, lie scattered over the area. The adjacent Sakhnin Elementary School was also damaged by artillery shells and some of its classrooms are now a masse of mangled chairs, steel rods, shattered concrete and broken glass. Israel says militants were firing rockets from the school grounds. more.. e-mail

Fearing One State Solution, Peres Serves Pabulum to Washington
Franklin Lamb - Ain el Helwe Palestinian Refugee Camp, Lebanon, Palestine Chronicle 2/19/2009
     "Whatever will happen in the future, we shall not repeat the mistakes we made in leaving Gaza." - Shimon Peres to members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, 2/18/09.
     "You take my water. Burn my Olive Trees. Destroy my house. Take my job. Steal my Land. Imprison my Mother. Bomb my country. Starve us all. Humiliate us all. But I am to blame:I shot a rocket back". - Sign carried near Hyde Park Corner during a demonstration in London on 2/15/09 by a Member of the British Parliament.
     Israeli President Shimon Peres has participated in shaping the policies of Israel for most of its existence. His Washington Post Op-Ed last week billed as ’a peacepartners prod’ to the Obama administration, evidences a major disconnect within the government of Israel concerning what is urgently required for that country’s increasingly unlikely long-term survival.
     According to a CIA study currently being shown to selected staff members on the US Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Israel’s survival in its present form beyond the next 20 years is doubtful. more.. e-mail

Justifying Israeli War Crimes
Reem Salahi, Palestine Think Tank 2/19/2009
     Having left Gaza now, I am trying to come to terms with what I saw, what I heard and honestly, what I don’t think I will ever understand is the justification. While Israel’s recent offensive has been the most egregious of any historical attack upon the Palestinians in Gaza, it is just that, one of many. Gaza has been under Israeli bombardment and sanctions for many years. Prior to the Israeli pullout in 2005, Gaza was under the complete control and occupation of Israel. Nearly 8000 Israeli settlers occupied 40% of Gaza while the 1.5 million Palestinians occupied the remaining 60%. Settlements were located on the most fertile lands and along Gaza’s beautiful coastal regions and checkpoints prevented Palestinian mobility. Despite being one-fifth the size of Rhode Island, 25 miles long by 4-7.5 miles wide, Gaza was divided into three sections and Palestinians had to pass through multiple checkpoints to get from one section to the next. Often Israeli forces would close these checkpoints and not allow the Palestinians access to the other regions in Gaza as a form of collective punishment. Yet with Israel’s pullout in 2005, the Palestinian experience has not improved. Rather, it has become even more unpredictable and isolated. Palestinians who celebrated the exodus of the Israeli settlers and the return of their land could not have imagined what would follow and how Israel would subsequently unleash its brutal force against them. As the saying goes, nothing in life is free and the Palestinians have paid, and continue to pay, a dear and unforgivable price for Israel’s withdrawal from their legally rightful land. more.. e-mail

’I Will Never Vote for Corruption’
Mats Svensson, Palestine Chronicle 2/19/2009
     He himself intended to vote for Hamas. "I am not religious," he said. "I don’t pray, I don’t fast. But I will vote for Hamas because we are sick of all the thieves, we are sick of seeing them steal our money. We have received billions of dollars from around the world, but where are they?" - Excerpt from an article by Amira Hass in Haaretz, 27 Jan. 2006.
     In meetings with Palestinians in Bethlehem, in Nablus, in Hebron, in Jerusalem and in Gaza have those willing, been able to hear. The message has been clear.
     "I will never vote for corruption."
     "What does that mean?" I asked a Christian man living in Bethlehem.
     "It simply means that I will never vote for corruption."
     And there I stood, 2004. In my hand, I held the World Bank proposition to save the Palestinian Authority, to save Fatah. Save them from what?
     We were afraid of something unclear, something inconstant or maybe too constant. Was it the men dressed in green with the long beards? Men, men, only men. We all saw something scary ahead of us. And the big budget supports were paid out. Not from Sweden but from many other countries. Trust funds, budget support. Paid out to create security, keep something alive. Artificially, it would survive. But what was it that was meant to survive?
     ....At the ballot boxes, the women said that a party with social pathos but without corruption was better than what they had endured. They did not want the whole package, but the majority said no to corruption. They said that the economic abuse of power had to be stopped, that the wall had to be torn down. Every day since the wall’s construction began, the women lost. more.. e-mail

Organize for boycott Israel day of action
Appeal, Secretariat of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National, Electronic Intifada 2/19/2009
     In December 2008, Israel decided to mark the 60th anniversary of its existence the same way it had established itself -- perpetrating massacres against the Palestinian people. In 23 days, Israel killed more than 1,300 and injured at least 5,000 Palestinians in Gaza. The irony of history is that Israel targeted those Palestinians -- and their descendants -- whom it had expelled from their homes and pushed into refugeehood in Gaza in 1948, whose land it has stolen, whom it has oppressed since 1967 by means of a brutal military occupation, and whom it had tried to starve into submission by means of a criminal blockade of food, fuel and electricity in the 18 months preceding the military assault. We cannot wait for Israel to zero in on its next objective. Palestine has today become the test of our indispensable morality and our common humanity.
     We therefore call on all to unite our different capacities and struggles in a Global Day of Action in Solidarity with the Palestinian people and for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel on 30 March 2009.
     The mobilization coincides with the Palestinian Land Day, the annual commemoration of the 1976 Israeli massacre of Palestinians in the Galilee in struggle against massive land expropriation, and forms part of the Global Week of Action against the Crises and War from 28 March 28 to 4 April. more.. e-mail

Obama’s Caterpillar Visit a Thumb in the Eye for Human Rights Activists
Stephen Zunes, ZNet 2/16/2009
     Over the objections of church groups, peace organizations and human rights activists, President Barack Obama decided to return to Illinois to visit the headquarters of the Caterpillar company, which for years has violated international law, U.S. law and its own code of conduct by selling its D9 and D10 bulldozers to Israel.
     In his speech on Thursday, Obama praised Caterpillar, saying, "Your machines plow the farms that feed our families; build the towers that shape our skylines; lay the roads that connect our communities; power the trucks that deliver our goods." He failed to mention that Caterpillar machines have been used to level Palestinian homes, uproot olive orchards, build the illegal separation wall and, in some cases, kill innocent civilians, including a 23-year old American peace activist.
     Given the slump in sales that forced Caterpillar to lay off thousands of workers, the company is emblematic of the problems facing industrial towns of the Midwest in the face of the worse recession in decades and was therefore seen as an appropriate place for Obama to make an appearance. Yet surely there were other heavy equipment manufacturers, or other industries, he could have chosen to visit -- one which doesn’t provide its wares for what have been widely recognized as crimes against humanity and is not the subject of an international boycott by the human rights community. more.. e-mail

Letter on Academic Freedom in Palestine
Undersigned Faculty, Academic Freedom and Columbia University 2/16/2009
     Dear President Bollinger,
     On a number of occasions since becoming president of Columbia University you have expressed your views in public on questions of academic freedom in the Middle East. Yet you have remained silent on the actions by Israel that deny that freedom to Palestinians.
     These actions include Israel’s continuing blockade of Gaza, the imposing of barriers, checkpoints, and closures around and within the West Bank that make academic life unworkable, the denial of exit visas to Palestinian scholars offered fellowships abroad or invited to international conferences, including scholars invited to Columbia, and the recent three-week war against Gaza that included not only the bombing of Palestinian schools and colleges, with great loss of life, but the widespread destruction of the material and social fabric on which academic life depends.
     We, as Columbia and Barnard faculty, ask you now to make public your opposition to these actions and your support for the academic freedom of Palestinians. more.. e-mail

Mine-clearing teams in Gaza waiting for Israeli OK
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 2/17/2009
     GAZA CITY - A team trained to remove and destroy unexploded ordnance has been operating in the Gaza Strip for three weeks, but its work is being held up because Israel has not approved the entry of its equipment nor an area for storing and neutralizing ordnance. For now some of the latter, located by the Palestinian police, is being stored in locations that are dangerously close to population centers in Rafah, Khan Yunis and Gaza City.
     The team was sent by the British humanitarian organization Mines Advisory Group, whose purpose is to reduce the danger to the local population posed by unexploded mines and other weapons in conflict zones around the world. MAG is co-laureate of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. In Gaza, the MAG team works in cooperation with the United Nations Mine Action Service.
     The head of the team in Gaza told Haaretz that the actual work of neutralizing and destroying the explosives is not complicated, and that it is the coordination that takes time. The transfer of the ordnance to a safe location for controlled explosion must be coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces as well as with the Palestinian authorities in the Gaza Strip. The neutralization methods chosen will depend on the equipment Israel will allow in. more.. e-mail

Unmanned aerial vehicles and the warfare of inequality management
Jimmy Johnson, Electronic Intifada 2/17/2009
     Aeronautics Defense Systems, based in the Israeli city of Yavne, was recently awarded a contract by the Dutch Ministry of Defense "to supply unmanned air vehicle capacity to Dutch troops serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan." [1] The Netherlands is not the only nation to employ Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in foreign occupation. They are also utilized by Canadian, US, UK and Australian forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their foreign sale has developed largely because of significant use in the wars against and occupations of Lebanon and Palestine. A variety of Israeli firms are developing new unmanned aerial, terrestrial and nautical vehicles. As these are proven in combat, here it can be expected that they too will be exported to foreign forces.
     Israel was the first country to widely adopt and integrate UAVs into its armed forces beyond their use as gunnery targets for anti-aircraft training. The US made somewhat sporadic use of the machines for intelligence gathering in south China and Vietnam during the Vietnam war but it wasn’t until Israel led the way that Washington started to recognize and exploit their potential value. "The Israeli Air Force pioneered several UAVs in the late 1970s and 1980s that were eventually integrated into the United States’ UAV inventory. US observers noticed Israel’s successful use of UAVs during operations in Lebanon in 1982, encouraging then-Navy Secretary John Lehman to acquire a UAV capability for the Navy." Military esteem of Israeli UAVs further grew after the first Gulf War when Israel Aircraft Industries’ Pioneer "emerged as a useful source of intelligence at the tactical level during Desert Storm. Pioneer was used by Navy battleships to locate Iraqi targets for its 16-inch guns." [2] Earlier restrictions on UAV operational capacity have fallen away with the dramatic increases in computer processing power and sensor technologies that allow for higher resolution photo and video transmissions and improved communications. The speed of technological advance in the field has led to constant reassessment of unmanned vehicles’ battlefield potential and the dedication of increasing resources to development and procurement by armed forces worldwide. The US’s National Defense Authorization Fiscal Year 2001 legislation declared "It shall be a goal of the Armed Forces to achieve the fielding of unmanned, remotely controlled technology such that ... by 2010, one-third of the aircraft in the operational deep strike force aircraft fleet are unmanned." [3] Just five years later, the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review increased that to 45 percent. more.. e-mail

In Morocco, anger at Arab collusion against Gaza
Anouar Boukhars, Daily Star 2/17/2009
     I have just returned from Morocco where I witnessed first-hand the massive emotional reaction to Israel’s brutal destruction of Gaza. Wherever I went, I could not help but notice the pervasive sense of popular anger and despair, powerlessness and humiliation, guilt and shamefulness. The country was a pot of boiling emotions and ardent indignation at both Israel’s indiscriminate killing of innocent children and women and the stunning collusion of a number of Arab regimes in Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza.
     With few exceptions, no Arab leader has ever dared to openly legitimize and endorse a devastating Israeli war on fellow Arabs. However, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other so-called moderate Arab states showed no qualms about going to this length to tilt the regional balance of power from their "radical" Arab rivals, rather than setting aside their personal feuds, tribal mentalities and mutual antagonism for the sake of the battered people of the Gaza Strip.
     The crippling divisions and political posturing of all Arab authoritarian regimes were painful to watch. In a typical authoritarian posture, the eccentric Libyan leader, Muammar Gadhafi, blasted the "cowardly and defeatist" reactions of Arab leaders, while his son and probable successor, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, criticized Arabs for not holding their leaders accountable for their inaction during the Israeli offensive. more.. e-mail

Challenging Zionist Indoctrination: Birthright Israel 'Unplugged'
Corey Balsam - AIC, International Middle East Media Center News 2/17/2009
     There are few international educational trips that can boast a higher participant rate. In just under 10 years, Birthright Israel has flown over 200, 000 young Jews to Israel for a 10 day adventure of touring, partying and a good dose of Zionist indoctrination.
     Despite a significant drop in funding this year, that number is sure to grow by the thousands again in 2009.
     How do they do it? For starters, it’s free. So long as you identify as Jewish, have never been on an organized tour of Israel, and are between the ages of 18-26, you qualify.
     What’s the catch? Well, there really isn’t one. Participants are not required to buy anything or move to Israel and join the army, nor are they force-fed with political lectures and religious tirades. All they need to do is accept an all-expenses-paid "gift" of a seemingly apolitical, non-religious tour. Who wouldn’t accept?
     I did.
     Beneath the surface, however, these "gifts" are indeed politically motivated. Funded by the Israeli government, the Jewish Agency for Israel and wealthy Zionist philanthropists like Charles Bronfman and Sheldon Adelman, the trips are intended in large part to foster support amongst Diaspora Jewish youth for the continued existence of Israel as a "Jewish state" and to ensure a new generation of Israel supporters who can take over the reins from their parents and grandparents. more.. e-mail

Gaza’s forgotten elderly
Report, PCHR, Electronic Intifada 2/17/2009
     At the nursing home of al-Wafaa Hospital in the northeastern Gaza Strip, frail women lie curled in their beds, most of them bedridden. In Gaza’s close-knit society, nursing homes are not very common, as most people prefer to care for their elderly family members at home. However, the patients at al-Wafaa have nowhere else to go.
     While many reports have been released on the effect of the conflict on children, other vulnerable groups such as the elderly and disabled are often disregarded.
     Seventy-five-year-old Rahma Mourad is one of the hospital’s permanent residents. Her face lights up as she remembers her early years in Damascus, where she came from a privileged background and her first language was French. Now, with her children in Syria and no family nearby to visit her, all she has are her memories. "I used to be so beautiful," she says. "I came from a life of culture. Now look at me, I don’t even have teeth."
     Over 4,300 people were physically injured during Israel’s 22-day offensive on the Gaza Strip, many of whom sustained horrific injuries. But the wounds of psychological trauma, caused by shelling and bombardment, will also take time to heal. more.. e-mail

’Salt of the Earth’ Send Aid Convoy to Gaza
Middle East Online 2/17/2009
     Every day since the cowardly blitzkrieg on Gaza ended Israel has carried out further death-dealing air strikes while its soldiers snipe at farmers and sea patrols continue to fire on Gazan fishing boats.
     Unable to attend the Viva Palestina convoy send-off in London, I watched video footage of the occasion with tears in my eyes.
     Here at last were people of courage and moral backbone - a dying breed in Britain, I had thought. How easily they put our leaders to shame.
     The political leadership in London still dances to Israel’s tune in spite of that regime’s never-ending crimes. It is no use looking to them for honest action. A humanitarian response to Gaza has never crossed their mind. They are, after all, the friends of land thieves and racist aggressors.
     Yes, our parliamentary poseurs know which side their bread is buttered on, and they lean over backwards to avoid displeasing the lawless plunderers of the Holy Land.
     The driving force behind the 120-vehicle relief convoy is MP George Galloway. “This is not the British élite," he said, referring to the men and women setting out on this 5000-mile mercy trip. more.. e-mail

Four Solutions for Palestine, Israel
Robin Yassin-Kassab, Palestine Chronicle 2/16/2009
     ’I do not hate (Israelis) for being Jewish or Israeli but because of what they have done to us. Because of the acts of occupation. It is difficult to forget what was done to us. But if the reason for the hate will not exist, everything is possible. But if the reason remains, it is impossible to love. First we must convince in general and in principle that we have been wronged, then we can talk about 67 or 48. You still do not recognize that we have rights. The first condition for change is recognition of the injustice we suffered.’ -- Said Sayyam, martyred in Gaza January 2009, to Ha’aretz, November 1995.
     All Palestine is controlled by Zionism. The Palestinians (not counting the millions in exile) are half the population of Israel-Palestine, but they are victims of varying degrees of apartheid. The Jewish state has already lost its Jewish majority, and is more hated by the Arab peoples than at any time in its brief, violent history. Let’s take it as given that continuation of the present situation is untenable for everyone concerned. We need a solution.
     There are four solutions. The first is for the Arabs to push the Jews into the sea. On the surface this seems like a reasonably just solution. It is, after all, what the Algerians and Vietnamese did with the French, what the Kenyans and Indians did with the British, what the Chinese did with the Japanese: they expelled their oppressive colonist class in order to achieve national independence. In the Palestinian context, all Jews who arrived with the waves of Zionist invasion would be sent home. And this is what most Palestinians understood by the ‘democratic secular state’ which the PLO called for until the 1980s. more.. e-mail

From the Ending We Shall Begin
Natalie Abu Shakra - Gaza, Palestine Chronicle 2/16/2009
     His green eyes divert in the opposite direction as I look into them. He smiles at me shyly, sadly, forlornly. I stand against the magnitude of a man, too great not to be noticed. His tall, dark figure directs me to the car, and his friend drives us to the sea. It is almost noon, and I peek towards his seat. The windows dark, the car white, the sun shining and we stop at the hotel. "We shall come in a minute," he tells me, "find us a seat."
     The darkness of his skin makes his emerald green eyes fire with brightness. His name is Adnan, and he is a father of six children. "The pressure was immense, and its magnitude pushed me forward. It was a magnanimous sound with extreme pressure," he spoke motioning his hands towards his face and his chest, his body leaning towards the table and his head rose forward not surrendering to the excruciating memory of the Israeli bombing of the Jawazat [passports] section of the Ministry of Interior. It was one of the first targets of the Israeli Apache planes at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday December 27, 2008 where around forty Palestinian citizens were slaughtered the day they were finishing their training course in being traffic officers. more.. e-mail

Blogging in Egypt: Rizky Business
Rannie Amiri, Palestine Chronicle 2/16/2009
     "They are trying to silence the voices that criticize the [Egyptian] government’s performance and send a message by assaulting and kidnapping, to say that criticism will not be tolerated." -- Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information on the recent spate of blogger arrests in Egypt.
     Philip Rizk wasn’t "unlucky" or at "the wrong place at the wrong time." Instead, he found himself quite the deliberate target of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
     On Feb. 6, the 26-year-old German-Egyptian blogger and filmmaker took part in a march with fellow activists belonging to the group "To Gaza," an organization under the umbrella of the Gaza Popular Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
     Rizk and 14 others held the six-mile march in Qalyubiya governate, a rural area north of Cairo. Their purpose was to draw attention to, and raise awareness of, the terrible humanitarian situation in Gaza under the Israeli embargo and subsequent attack. They also protested Mubarak’s order to keep the vital Rafah border crossing with Gaza closed and demanded an immediate end to the blockade of the territory. more.. e-mail

Nasrallah tells it like it is - but how does he think it should be?
Editorial, Daily Star 2/18/2009
     One of the reasons that Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has proven such a formidable foe for the Israelis is that the Hizbullah leader has long had a knack for sizing up his enemy. The analysis he provided during his speech on Monday night about the current Israeli situation ought to give pause to those who doubt that Israel poses a grave danger, not only to its neighbors, but also to itself. As Nasrallah pointed out, successive Israeli governments, whether headed by Labor, Kadima or Likud, have showed equal disdain for peacemaking and a similar thirst for conflict and settler-driven conquest. The current assortment of racist parties that now dominates the Israeli political spectrum after the elections has only given the Jewish state a more honest face - one which the international community will eventually recognize for what it is.
     Likewise, Nasrallah’s assessment of the regional situation was insightful and correct. The Hizbullah leader voiced strong support for reconciliation efforts, including a possible Saudi-Syrian rapprochement and an inter-Palestinian accord. Perhaps these stances stem from Nasrallah’s recognition that Israel’s current regional strategy relies heavily on inducing divisions within the ranks of the Arab and Islamic worlds. more.. e-mail

The left’s role must be in the streets
Yitzhak Laor, Ha’aretz 2/17/2009
     It was only during Netanyahu’s term as prime minister that Israel did not embark on any operation of razing villages and towns, including killing civilians, like Operation Accountability (1993), Operation Grapes of Wrath (1996), the Second Lebanon War (2006) and Operation Cast Lead - all wars by center-left governments.
     Benjamin Netanyahu is always reminded of one sin: opening the Western Wall Tunnel in 1996. On the other hand, he is never reminded that the violent confrontation did not deteriorate into a bloodbath. The incident caused bereaved parents on both sides to suffer a price that does not leave them, and still, it did not become another operation that resulted in hundreds of deaths, thousands of people handicapped and a multitude of refugees.
     Four years after the Western Wall Tunnel incident in the fall of 2000, Ehud Barak, the angel of peace who rose to power with the left’s overwhelming support in order to get rid of the "warmongering Netanyahu," took advantage of Ariel Sharon’s provocation at the Temple Mount. Barak ordered the army to pull out one of its preprepared plans and suppress what turned into the second intifada.
     The half a million rounds during the first months of the intifada, even before the suicide bombings started, were fired on orders of a government of the left. And the leftists - in the street, in academia and in the literary world - continued to support Barak and his war. That is when the downfall of the Zionist left began. That is where the deep anxiety about the future stems from.
     The first Lebanon war bred a fear among Likud’s leaders of a leftist opposition. Ironically, the greatest achievement of the popular opposition to that war was the granting of monopolistic rights to the center-left to embark on "operations." more.. e-mail

Barghouti to Obama: 2 States Now, or a Long Violent Struggle Over Apartheid Because ’We Will Be Free’
Phil Weiss, Palestine Monitor 2/16/2009
     It is hard to imagine that after all the coverage of Gaza you could go into an event in New York and walk out stunned, but such was my experience hearing Mustafa Barghouti this afternoon at Columbia University. The Palestinian doctor and politician who lives in the West Bank got into Gaza for a week at the end of the onslaught— it took him two days to get there from Ramallah, through Jordan and Egypt, in what should have been a 1-1/2 hour hour trip—and entered with the belief that his nonstop watching of Al-Jazeera had prepared him for the destruction. It did not.
     "What I’ve seen shocked me.... Believe me, when I went there I was shocked to the level that for the first time in my life, I could not talk about it for four days. And now it is my duty to tell the people of the world what has happened to the people of Gaza."
     The old people Barghouti talked to said they had never seen anything like it either—not in ’48, ’56, ’67, ’88, or 2000. "They all told me that this has been the most brutal thing they have ever seen." And so his job today, before getting to any politics, was to bear witness to a room filled to bursting with 220 people or so, many of them Palestinian intellectuals in the Diaspora, as Barghouti put it.
     It is hard to convey Barghouti’s presentation in a piece of writing without being numbing. He showed us gruesome photos of the mysterious armaments that burned their way down into people’s flesh, eating their skin and tissue away. He told the stories of five daughters killed in one family, and of another two girls who watched their father, who had left the house after three days to get water, shot and bound and left in the street to serve as a target dummy. His wife and daughters watched their father executed. "That is the story I heard from his wife," he said, voice breaking. more.. e-mail

German Media Censorship on Gaza?
Ali Fathollah-Nejad - Gaza, Palestine Chronicle 2/16/2009
     What were the reasons behind the cancelation of Germany’s ’Anne Will’ show on Gaza?
     Germany’s most prominent political debate TV program ’Anne Will’ had announced to run a show on Gaza on 11 January, but in what many observers believe to be an unprecedented step canceled the topic only three days earlier. The talk show is broadcast every Sunday night by the country’s foremost public-service broadcaster ARD while attracting on average 3.6 million viewers.
     Official Germany Adopts Israeli Propaganda On the evening of the second day (28 December) of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the German government’s spokesperson said that in a telephone conversation German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "agreed that the responsibility for the development of the situation in the region clearly and exclusively lies with Hamas". The same further outlined the official version of the conflict according to the Berlin government which assembles the Christian-Democratic (CDU/CSU) and Social-Democratic (SPD) Parties: "Hamas unilaterally broke the agreement for a ceasefire, there has been a continuous firing of [’] rockets at Israeli settlements and Israeli territory, and without question - and this was stressed by the chancellor - Israel has the legitimate right to defend its own people and territory." more.. e-mail

Egypt on offensive after critical Al-Jazeera coverage
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani, Electronic Intifada 2/16/2009
     Egypt’s reluctance to open its border with the Gaza Strip to desperately needed humanitarian aid during the crisis came in for particular censure.
     CAIRO (IPS) - Coverage of Israel’s recent war on the Gaza Strip by regional news stations has reflected longstanding political divisions within the Arab world. Qatar-based Al-Jazeera’s reporting drew a particularly angry response from Egypt.
     "Coverage of the Gaza conflict by certain Arab language news channels aggravated the rift between the Arab ’moderate’ and ’rejectionist’ camps," Mohamed Mansour, professor of mass media at Cairo University told IPS.
     From 27 December to 17 January, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with air strikes and artillery in a three-week campaign that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians. The assault came in ostensible retaliation for rockets fired at Israel by Gaza- based Palestinian resistance factions, chief among them Hamas.
     Over the course of the assault, Arabic-language television channels covered events closely. Day after day, regional news stations broadcast images of the violence, graphically portraying its horrific toll on the Gaza Strip’s defenseless civilian population. more.. e-mail

At a Campus Sit-In against Israeli Occupation
Ron Jacobs, Palestine Chronicle 2/16/2009
     On Friday, February 6, the University of Rochester-SDS (UR-SDS) organized an occupation of Goergen Hall at the University of Rochester for peace and solidarity with the Palestinians. The action was partially inspired by the wave of occupations across the UK in support of Palestine the past few weeks. UR-SDS made a list of demands of the administration (including divestment from weapons manufacturers, educational and humanitarian aid to Gaza, and scholarships for Palestinian students). In a related event, on Thursday, February 12, 2008 Hampshire College of Amherst, MA. became the first US school to divest from corporations profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
     Back at the University of Rochester representatives of the occupying students and the university administration signed a Joint Statement of Understanding.
     The approximate wording of the statement is:
     1. University of Rochester will commit to provide any surplus goods or supplies that could assist the devastated University of Gaza.
     2. University of Rochester will commit resources and information to assist fundraising for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.... -- See also: U of R Students for a Democratic Society more.. e-mail

Hampshire officials: investment decision didn’t single out Israel
Sigmund Roos, Ralph Hexter and Aaron Berman, Electronic Intifada 2/16/2009
     The following statement was sent to The Electronic Intifada in response to the that claimed Hampshire College divested from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine:
     We write to correct numerous reports circulating about actions taken by the Hampshire College board of trustees on 7 February 2009.The facts are as follows:
     On 7 February 2009, the Hampshire College board of trustees accepted the report of its investment committee, which earlier had voted, without reference to any country or political movement, to transfer assets held in a State Street fund to another fund.
     Based on a comprehensive review of the fund by the trustee investment committee, administrators and an outside consultant, the college found that this fund held stocks in well over 200 companies engaged in business practices that violate the college’s policy on socially responsible investments. These violations include: unfair labor practices, environmental abuse, military weapons manufacturing and unsafe workplace settings. -- See also: Dershowitz threatens boycott of Hampshire College and Mass. college denies Israel divestment more.. e-mail

Rebuilding the Islamic University of Gaza
Akram Habeeb and Marcy Newman, Electronic Intifada 2/16/2009
     Since Israel’s bombing of the buildings housing scientific laboratories at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) on 28 December, the rubble that remains debunks Israeli claims that those labs were used to manufacture weapons. Of course such allegations are preposterous; indeed it would be quite foolish for IUG to even entertain the notion of producing weapons given the way in which Palestinian universities have been under constant Israeli attack since the founding of Birzeit University in the West Bank in 1975.
     Rather, it is Israeli universities that contain the laboratories where the weaponry used to destroy Palestinian lives in Gaza and elsewhere is developed. In the 14 June 2007 issue of The Nation, US journalist Naomi Klein makes it clear that the relationship between the State of Israel, its academic institutions and its military are intertwined:
     "Thirty homeland security companies were launched in Israel in the past six months alone, thanks in large part to lavish government subsidies that have transformed the Israeli army and the country’s universities into incubators for security and weapons start-ups (something to keep in mind in the debates about the academic boycott)." more.. e-mail

The Little Things That Pass Us By
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 2/16/2009
     Almost every word is linked to associations. In the case of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, people immediately think of fighting, Israeli settlements, perhaps the separation wall, when this term is mentioned. Images of rock throwing (or rocket firing) Palestinians are conjured up along with gun-toting belligerent Israeli soldiers firing live ammunition and tear gas at protesters. Of course, the images of mangled buses and hysterical Israelis reeling from a Palestinian suicide bombing have become some of the most powerful images in the media, even more so than bombed out houses and dead Gaza children.
     Still, I am a firm believer that part of the reason the Palestinians are so badly misrepresented in the media and political forums is because their reality is also so badly misrepresented. While the things mentioned earlier are certainly the most visible aspects of the conflict, I can’t help but cringe at the thought that there is so much more that nobody knows anything about. To understand just how difficult life can be under an occupation – in this case Israel’s of the Palestinian territories – we can’t afford to ignore even the so-called little things. more.. e-mail

Hamas providing emergency relief in Gaza
IRIN, Electronic Intifada 2/16/2009
     GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IRIN) - The Hamas government in Gaza has said it is trying to help thousands of Palestinians who lost their homes and/or loved ones in the 22-day Israeli offensive which ended on 18 January. According to deputy minister of social affairs, Sobhi Redwan, Hamas has so far spent an estimated $50 million on emergency relief assistance, but more aid is needed.
     Scores of men have been queuing up outside the deputy minister’s office to try to persuade officials they need emergency food assistance and have not received any aid from the UN or other agencies.
     "We are supplying all people in Gaza who are in need. It is the government’s duty to provide relief during and after the war," Redwan told IRIN on 11 February.
     The government has formed a "national high committee for relief" comprised of representatives from all Gaza factions except Fatah. "The goal of the committee is to provide assistance equally to all those who are suffering," Loay Qaryuout, committee spokesperson and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine representative on the committee, told IRIN. more.. e-mail

Between Resistance and Peace Process
Dina Jadallah-Taschler, Palestine Chronicle 2/16/2009
     ’Palestinian oppression continues apace. But resistance only grows.’
     It really is time to be biased, and emphatically so. Biased against racism, injustice and oppression.
     The assault on Gaza and its wake leave the Palestinians on uncertain ground. On the one hand, there is their legitimate right of resistance in order to achieve national liberation. On the other hand, are internal, regional, and international forces that seek to impose an externally imposed and pre-determined hegemonic solution.
     War is consistently used by Israel as the prime means of statecraft. In the past, it has usually succeeded in achieving its goals, being the far more technologically advanced party. But as that gap shrinks, it is less useful against the asymmetric tactics of the weaker and oppressed Palestinians.With the second intifada, it became clear that war was no longer sufficient. It was still useful to terrorize, but not so productive in ensuring submission. Credit here is due to the Palestinians’ resilience and refusal to accept their unjust condition. A second tactic was then pursued (at length) in Oslo: co-opt the leadership who would then make the concessions that are dictated and also use the Palestinian’s own "security apparatus" to control the unruly and resilient population. Since then, war continues, either blatantly, or disguised as the interminable and completely concessionary peace process. more.. e-mail

New Settlement Approved East of the Apartheid Wall
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 2/14/2009
     In 2006 Peace Now and Palestinian land owners petitioned the Israeli high court regarding the evacuation of the illegal outpost know as Migron. The high court finally heard the petition and in 2007 Ehud Olmert gave the defense Ministry two months to have the outpost evacuated. However, with the arrival of the new Defense Minister Ehud Barak, this process was delayed.
     Eventually at the beginning of 2008 Olmert and Barak had declared that Migron would be evacuated by August. It was proposed that 18 of the 26 outposts built since 2001 were to be demolished, and Migron was to be the first.
     Yet a year later and Migron is still standing. The settlers have agreed to evacuate but only if replacement housing is built. In February 2009 Barak agreed to a new 250 house settlement to be built close to Adam, to house the settlers. The first wave of construction will include 50 houses but before construction takes place a plan for 1400 housing units must be drawn up and approved. Planning and construction may take up to 2 to 3 years and in the mean time Eitan Broshi, Baraks advisor regarding settlements, has requested that the evacuation of Migron be left until this time, as to avoid violent conflict.
     The expansion of Israeli settlements east of the wall is considered illegal by international law and goes against agreements made by Ariel Sharon to George Bush in 2003 through the Roadmap. However, this has not halted their development and, while outposts are deemed illegal by the Israeli state, settlements are seen as the result of natural Israeli population growth and their expansion has not been frozen. more.. e-mail

Who here speaks Arabic?
Zvi Bar'el, Ha’aretz 2/15/2009
     As if without Lieberman, it would be a simply splendid government, ready to negotiate to divide Jerusalem, evacuate the settlements and deal with the refugee issue and the sharing of water between Israel and the new Palestinian polity.
     The measure of Avigdor Lieberman’s being "right" on the political spectrum is not the fact that he lives in a settlement. There are many such MKs in other parties. Nor is it his political platform, which is not far from that of Benjamin Netanyahu. Nor is it his attacks on the legal system, in which he is joined by Shas and by the justice minister himself.
     No, it is a single clause in Yisrael Beiteinu’s platform that serves as Lieberman’s war paint: "Responsibility for areas populated by an Arab majority, such as Umm al-Fahm in the Triangle, will be transferred to the Palestinian Authority. In parallel, areas in Judea and Samaria and strongholds of Jewish settlement will be officially annexed to Israel." [The Triangle is the area roughly bounded by the Arab towns of Baka al-Garbiyeh, Taibeh and Tira.]
     This clause was translated into two frightful campaign slogans: "Only Lieberman understands Arabic," and "No citizenship without loyalty," thanks to which his party has been rewarded with 15 Knesset seats.
     Why the apprehension about Lieberman joining the government? It is due not to his policy toward Israeli Arabs, but his potential influence on the peace process, which has in any case virtually dissolved in the supposedly experienced hands of Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak. more.. e-mail

Livni’s Punishment: Ms. Tantalus
Uri Avnery - Israel, Palestine Chronicle 2/14/2009
     ’Now Ms. Tantalus must choose between two bitter options.’
     Tantalus is punished by the Gods for reasons that are not entirely clear. He is hungry and thirsty, but the water in which he stands recedes when he bends down to drink from it and the fruit above his head continually evades his hand.
     Tzipi Livni is now undergoing a similar torture. After winning an impressive personal victory at the polls, the political fruit keeps slipping from her grasp when she stretches out her hand.
     Why should she deserve that? What has she done, after all? Supported the war, called for a boycott of Hamas, played around with empty negotiations with the Palestinian Authority? OK, she has indeed.. But such a terrible punishment?
     However, the results of the elections are not as clear as they might seem. The victory of the Right is not so unambiguous.
     Central to the election campaign was the personal competition between the two contenders for the Prime Minister’s office: Livni and Netanyahu (or, as they call themselves, as if they were still at kindergarten, Tzipi and Bibi.) more.. e-mail

Between dream and reality
Rahim El-Kishky, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/12/2009
     Realism must always be equated with moderation, at least as far as the Arab-Israeli conflict is concerned, argues Last week it seemed obvious that the Arabs had split into two camps. On one side are the radicals meeting in Doha, surprisingly headed by Qatar and joined by countries like Iran, Syria, and by Hamas, all famous for publicly wanting to wipe Israel off the face of the earth or, at least for now, suspending diplomatic ties if any ever existed with Israel and the US. On the other side, and meeting simultaneously, is the moderate camp, headed by Egypt and joined by countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan, which are keen on negotiating a peaceful solution between Israel and the Palestinians. The general atmosphere was not encouraging. Never in our recent history have Arabs’ differences been so obvious. Although disagreements and fights have always existed -- both publicly and behind the scenes -- they at least occurred under one roof.
     The day before the moderates were to meet in Kuwait a local newspaper quoted Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa as saying he was depressed. Other newspapers offered similar headlines that reflected the general Arab mood. The opening note of the host, Sheikh Nasser Al-Sabbah, the prime minister of Kuwait, highlighted the horrible events and the destruction in Gaza, urging the Arabs to come together and end the Palestinians’ suffering. more.. e-mail

Lurch to the right
Khaled Amayreh from occupied East Jerusalem, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/12/2009
     The results of the Israeli elections are a disaster for moderates.
     With most votes now counted the results of the Israeli general elections show a clear drift to the right and a collapse in support for centrist and leftist Zionist parties.
     The Kadima Party, led by Tzipi Livni, is expected to end with 28 seats, followed by Likud, led by Benyamin Netanyahu, with 27, though one, perhaps two Kadima seats may prove vulnerable once the votes of serving soldiers are counted.
     The extreme right Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is our Home), headed by Avigdor Lieberman, has won 14-15 seats, becoming the third largest party in the Knesset. Yisrael Beiteinu has called for the ethnic cleansing of Israel’s Arab minority (23 per cent of the population).
     Lieberman has said his party will refuse to join any government not committed to the destruction of Hamas. Dany Ayalon, former Israeli ambassador to the US who occupied the seventh position on the party list, voiced the hope that "in the next elections, we will be vying for national leadership". more.. e-mail

Religious-Political Cults and Israel
Mary Rizzo, Palestine Think Tank 2/14/2009
     A long time ago, I obtained a degree in Psychology. While I never pursued work in that field, and opted instead for areas giving me greater personal freedom and less risk of falling into an area where there was danger of me controlling other people, becoming a professional art restorer and professional translator and editor to make a living, I have never abandoned my interest in all psychological phenomena, particularly those of a mass nature that are more readily classified as having sociological implications. I did most of my research based on my interest in finding a theory that would "explain"� the apparently contradictory urge for personal liberty (individualism) and the need for being part of a mass (the theorised Crowd Instinct) in a post-industrial world based on transportation and communication by the combination of what I considered the best out of two schools of thought, that of Elias Canetti, (Crowds and Power) and that of Guy Debord and the other Situationists. I never quite found what I was looking for, but very often, I saw the paradigms of their viewpoints on crowd dynamics, which were about the power of persuasion to people who often were convinced they were acting independently, illustrated perfectly in religious cults and political movements, two areas that continue to interest me.
     ....One group that has piqued my interest for a long time is CUFI, and I wrote about their big show “A Night to Honor Israel”. I check them out from time to time, and this morning, I saw something that I think would be worthy of Cult watch, and that is, the campaign for a “Prayer Card for Israel”.
     To spare you having to actually give your personal information or visiting their site, I will show you the campaign. It starts out innocently enough, saying prayers for Israel (and America).... more.. e-mail

Filmmakers hostage to Israeli occupation
Simon Coss, Daily Star 2/14/2009
     RENNES, France: Movies may be able to stimulate debate on the Middle East conflict but a lasting resolution can only be made in the real world, say leading Israeli and Palestinian film directors. Avi Mograbi, one of Israel’s most outspoken documentary makers and a harsh critic of his government’s military campaigns, said during a film festival in Rennes that he was well aware of the limits of his art.
     "I started making films thinking about changing the world," said the 53-year-old director. "Now I am not so sure about that possibility. Cinema can make a difference, but it’s an extremely minor difference."
     Mograbi’s latest documentary "Z32" is a hard-hitting work, the true story of a young Israeli soldier sent on a revenge mission that left two Palestinian police officers dead.
     Like much of his work, it highlights the brutality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is never any suggestion that the assassinated police officers had anything to do with the killings of Israelis. They simply represented "the enemy." Broadcast on Israeli television while Mograbi was in Rennes, the filmmaker said, "I hope that it will at least provoke a debate."
     Palestinian director Enas Muthaffar, who lives and works in Occupied Jerusalem, also stated there were limits to what cinema could do in the midst of a conflict as bitter as the one between her people and Israel.
     "You can’t have peace only with films. You need the real world as well," she said.
     Muthaffar was particularly wary of initiatives designed to encourage Israeli and Palestinian film directors to work together. more.. e-mail

Waiting and hoping
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/12/2009
     With every day that the politicians fudge and fumble, Gaza’s needs go unmet.
     Smoke rises after Israeli aircraft bombed tunnels that run under the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt in the city of Rafah Despite his failing health, Mohamed Abd Rabbo, 65, is attempting to lift stones in a corner of his demolished house in the Jabalya Refugee Camp in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. He is looking for some blankets for his family that lives now in a nearby tent. Abd Rabbo’s family of 10 has five blankets left, one for every two family members.
     Abd Rabbo cannot lift the big stones, and it is doubtful that, had he succeeded, he would have found anything. The bombs that were used in the shelling of his home have incinerated everything. By nightfall, Abd Rabbo and a group of neighbours gather around a fire. They exchange stories and trade jokes. Some say they heard that Israel and Hamas were coming close to a deal.
     A deal would mean a lot for them. You cannot build anything in Gaza unless you have the necessary material, and these have to come through the crossing points. more.. e-mail

On a world so indifferent
Assem El-Kersh, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/12/2009
     The next carnage in Gaza may just be around the corner unless the Arabs understand why the world is always letting them down.
     Have we forgotten Gaza in such a short space of time? That is, except for some residual anger and grief, the occasional mention in the course of endless hours of chat shows on satellite channels, and the paltry dribbles of aid getting through the crossings. Everyone can breathe easy again -- apart from the people of Gaza, of course -- now that the subject is no longer front-page news. After all, the media only stirs into action when there is something sensational afoot and world attention is only riveted in moments of the inferno. So all the minor sparks surrounding the fragile ceasefire, tensions surrounding the Strip’s reconstruction, photos of the martyrs on the remnants of walls, and the desolation of the aftermath, are simply not big enough to grab the headlines.
     ... At times one will be confronted with some inverted logic mesh perfectly with Israeli propaganda: Were it not for the Qassam missiles, Gaza would not have been bombarded, the Israelis say. If the resistance had not bombed coffeehouses and buses, there would not be the "security wall"; the economic blockade is the answer to the tunnels and the smuggling of arms. Such are the skewed fictions that the West and the Western media swallow up like sleeping pills. They proceed from effect to cause, rather than from cause to effect. But our history did not begin with suicide bombers but rather with the theft of Palestine. When you adhere to the actual logic of causality you have to say were it not for the occupation there would be no oppression of an occupied people and hence no resistance.
     The solution to the rest of the puzzle is found in the fact that, in Israel, they are more sly, more shrewd, have greater manoeuvrability, and are more adept at lying, playing dirty, and distorting the truth. One cannot help but to grudgingly concede the diabolic acumen of an enemy that conceived, planned and put into effect an operation that propelled Hamas, step-by-step, towards the trap of 27 December while making the movement look the guilty party. It is no longer a secret -- Haaretz bears witness -- that Israel took the decision to mount this offensive a full six months ago. Working beneath a cloak of secrecy, it proceeded to make its preparations, gather information, shuttle diplomatically between important capitals, feint and parry with the resistance politically and provoke it in the field, while setting into motion a media campaign they call " Hasbara ". Literally meaning "the explanation", while in fact constituting propaganda, its purpose is to persuade global public opinion that Israel faces a life or death threat and is acting in self-defence. more.. e-mail

Hamas’s albatross
Ayman El-Amir, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/12/2009
     Having avowedly chosen the path of resistance, Hamas faces tough choices as it tries to navigate the political terrain following Israel’s campaign of destruction in Gaza.
     The Palestinian Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, has emerged from the three-week-long battle against the Israeli invasion of Gaza with a bagful of challenges. It is caught up between two daunting choices: continued resistance against the Israeli occupation, which could escalate into another confrontation beyond tolerable limits, or pacification that would erode the resistance movement’s ra"son d’être. Pressure by national, regional and international players makes the situation more complex. The movement is hard put to make a choice that would ease the suffering of the people of Gaza as a priority. As there is no choice without consequences, Hamas will probably have to accept a combination of several. Whatever it chooses, the road will be full of hazards.
     Conflicting agendas are at play. Hamas’s urgent priority is to reach agreement on a long-term ceasefire accompanied by arrangements to open up access to the Strip, including the Rafah Crossing, and lifting the Israeli blockade. This is primarily in the hands of Israel, which does not want to give the resistance movement the benefit of claiming victory over the invasion and of ending the Israeli siege while retaining the option of military resistance. Israel has injected the additional factor of the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Egypt, the mediator, is keenly aware of the suffering of the people of Gaza but also wants to demonstrate that, in the face of Arab competitors, it is the only player that could arrange an acceptable compromise. With the exception of the release of Shalit, other issues are the easier part of the bargain. A longer-term ceasefire agreement in return for limited opening of Gaza’s crossing will be worked out to meet some of the demands of each party. The more serious challenges loom beyond. more.. e-mail

Who won the war?
Mamdouh El-Adl, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/12/2009
     Israeli atrocities in Gaza will live on across generations, giving birth to new waves of resistance. This is the essence of defeat.
     Psychological warfare is as old as mankind but has developed over the years from a natural and simple human behaviour to an important weapon guided by science and technology. Mind control is a broad range of psychological tactics to subvert an individual’s control of his own thinking, emotions, behaviour and decisions. Propaganda is a deliberate and systematic attempt to influence perceptions, cognition and behaviour to achieve the response desired by the propaganda maker. Psychological warfare (PSYWAR) is defined by the US Defense Department as "the planned use of propaganda and other psychological action to influence the opinion, emotions, attitudes and behaviour of the enemy in such a way to support achieving national objectives."
     Propaganda or psychological warfare was used as far back as Alexander the Great. He used to leave some of his men in conquered cities to control them, introduce Greek culture, oppress dissident views, and to interbreed. This influenced the psyche of occupied people to conform. Genghis Khan, who conquered more territories than any other leader in the human history, placed as his top priority defeating the will of the enemy. When attacking a city or village he used to demand submission with the threat of total destruction if they refused to surrender. In modern times, Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill both made use of propaganda. Recently, psychological warfare was used in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and in the Israeli war on Gaza. more.. e-mail

Innocence lost
Sameh Habeeb and Janet Zimmerman, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/12/2009
     Habeeb is a 23-year-old journalist based in the Gaza Strip, active to bring out the word of his people’s suffering. Zimmerman is a 21- year-old journalist and American citizen, determined to help after seeing the crimes perpetrated in Gaza by Israel. They became friends united in the struggle to open the eyes of the world to agonies before which they are often closed. One story that has caught their attention is the personal catastrophe of Khaled Abd Rabbo.
     We began our journey and were barely able to reach Abd Rabbo’s town. As we drove along, our car dipped to the right and to the left. The ground was rutted from the holes that the Israelis tore into the streets with their bombs, their bulldozing, and their fires. The land was also wounded. A once lush and tranquil neighbourhood had been transformed into hell on earth. Our eyes were filled with nothing but devastation, and masses of people covered the place like flies.
     Our car came to a halt and we walked down the street to Abd Rabbo’s shattered home. And there was Abd Rabbo himself, sitting in the rubble of happier times.
     "This house used to have four floors, and a nice garden. It brought us peace and tranquillity," he began to tell us. "The Israeli army came to this house many times before, but the last was in March of 2008."
     He explains how they invaded his home and investigated him and his family. "They found nothing. I am a police officer in the Ramallah government; I have nothing to do with Hamas." more.. e-mail

America’s new foreign policy
Muqtedar Khan, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/12/2009
     The change has been announced, but it is one only of tactics.
     US Vice-President Joe Biden unveiled America’s new foreign policy at the 45th Munich Security Conference this weekend. Events preceding the conference underscored the challenging atmosphere the US faces in the world today.
     Just a few days earlier, Iran launched its first homemade satellite into space, advertising the rapid development of its rocket/ballistic capabilities. Iran, a state that has now emerged as America’s principle international rival, is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its Islamic revolution: a revolution that 30 years ago ended US imperial control of Iran’s politics and more recently is pushing to end US hegemony in the Middle East. For 30 years the US has imposed sanctions against Iran and threatened it with war, working diligently to overthrow its regime, without much success. Iran is a reminder of the continued failure of US foreign policy.
     Also just before the Munich Security Conference, Kyrgyzstan announced that it will be closing a vital US air force base in Manas, reportedly under pressure from Russia. Russia lately has begun rolling back growing US influence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia -- regions that Russia considers part of its sphere of influence. more.. e-mail

New weapons used against demonstrations
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, Stop The Wall 2/13/2009
     "...the bullet had entered the bone and left 20 pieces of shrapnel in the bone and muscle...." "...I had been wounded with a live bullet in my right leg, and that the bullet exited from the other side, leaving shrapnel of varying sizes." "...they told me that the bullet had broken in the bone, and left 10 pieces of shrapnel of various sizes.”
     Recently, Occupation forces have been using live bullets against youth at weekly demonstrations. A large number of people have suffered leg wounds from a particular type of bullet fired by snipers often using silenced weapons.
     Ahad Khawajeh, the representative of the Popular Committee in the village of Ni’lin, explained that soldiers have repeatedly promised the demonstrators that they would use live bullets against them in order to inflict permanent injuries on younger activists. In the past month, snipers have been stationed on hills or among trees and have fired upon youth with live ammunition. A type of bullet is employed which explodes inside the body, leaving behind shrapnel that is incredibly difficult to remove.
     Occupation forces fired these bullets for the first time in Jayyous, where they used silenced rifles. Prior to the start of the demonstration, soldiers had hidden themselves amongst the trees. Demonstrators arrived at the gate without confronting the army when five young men were hit with live fire. The group whom we spoke to had been present at the demonstration and reported not hearing any noise or seeing any flash before the targeted youth fell. more.. e-mail

Israelis, in Crisis, Vote for a Government of War
Nicola Nasser, Middle East Online 2/13/2009
     Dust of Tuesday’s voting battle settled down and the battle of forming the next Israeli government has just begun. With Benjamin Netanyahu poised for premiership and Avigdor Lieberman, leader of a “racist and fascist” party (as condemned by Talia Sasson of the Merez party) very well positioned to be the king or queen maker of the next ruling coalition, the Palestinian people and the whole region will have to brace as from next March for an Israeli government of war.
     First on the agenda of the new government will be the approval of 2.4 billion shekels ordered on Monday by the outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to re-equip the army after the war on Gaza as well as an extra military funding of one billion shekels.
     Ironically the Israelis went to early elections as a way out of a government crisis, but the narrowly – won victory of Kadima and the inconclusive results of Tuesday’s elections have put Israel in disarray and plunged it into a political limbo, with both Tzipi Livni of Kadima and Netanyahu of Likud claiming victory while a kingmaker role is awarded to Avigdor Lieberman and his anti-Arab platform. The tie set the stage for weeks of agonizing coalition negotiations. But what is more important, in view of historic experience, is that whenever Israel was in an internal crisis it used to resort to war as a way to unify its ranks, at least for a while. The present crisis is no exception and it doesn’t bode well for the Palestinians and the region more.. e-mail

Rahm the Mechanic Goes to Washington: the Jim Zogby Dilemma
Hesham Tillawi, Palestine Think Tank 2/13/2009
     Every day, I am assaulted by something in the topsy-turvey world of US politics that amazes me and makes me say to myself, ’Well I guess I have seen it all now’, only for it to be outdone and replaced the very next day by something even more outrageous.
     Politics can do that to people. Power and the opportunity to play on the ’big field’ is like a drug that makes people do crazy things, things that defy reason, logic, and sometimes decency.
     Take for example the most recent article by Arab American Institute James Zogby in his defense of President Elect Barak Obama’s decision to appoint Rahm Emmanuel as White House Chief of Staff. In his piece entitled "Rahm Emanuel and Arab Perceptions" he writes "The emails and calls to my office were both troubled and troubling because much of the reaction was based on misinformation". The "misinformation" in this case dealt with Rahm Emanuel, the "brilliant strategist" as Jim puts it and his many "proven" political skills which led to him being "tapped" by Obama. No more no less. That is, as Jim calls it, "First, the facts." I just wonder if Rahm’s ’proven politics’ is also what dragged Obama to AIPAC’s conference this past summer to deliver that infamous shameful speech, as well as the meeting afterwards with the board of AIPAC where he was accompanied by Rahm Emanuel. more.. e-mail

The Holocaust Is Over
Middle East Online 2/13/2009
     [The following is a transcript of an interview with former Avraham Burg by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez from Democracy Now!]
     A former Israeli politician has emerged as one of his government’s biggest critics. Avraham Burg is a former speaker of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. He’s former chair of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization. His new book, though, is called The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise from its Ashes.
     AMY GOODMAN: You’re headed back to Israel today, but we’d like to talk about another journey: how you went from where you were, as head of the Israeli parliament in the Labor Party, to where you are today. Talk about your trajectory.
     AVRAHAM BURG: It’s not easy, but at the time, I felt that political walls are closing on me. I had a feeling that Israel became a very, very efficient kingdom, but no prophecy. Deeds are being done. Decisions are being executed. But the ocean liner got no captain, no vision, no direction. Where is it going.
     So I started digging into it and looking into it. And the way I know—the way I think for myself is by writing. So I wrote the first book, which was God Is Back. It’s about the religious dimension of world conflicts and the Israeli conflictual reality. And then when I finished the book, I read it, and I realized that I didn’t write about the other items which supports our identity, and this is the only presence of the trauma in our life, which is the Holocaust, which prevents us to trust anybody—to trust ourselves, to trust our neighbors, to trust the world—and therefore creates this kind of a reality. And the minute I realized that this is my inner truth, just published it. -- See also: Former Speaker of the Israeli Parliament Avraham Burg: “The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise from its Ashes” and Israeli Professor Neve Gordon and Palestinian Lawmaker Mustafa Barghouti on the Israeli Elections more.. e-mail

Selective reporting from Lebanon
Nate George, Electronic Intifada 2/13/2009
     Bias and selective reporting in favor of Israel is nothing new. We have come to expect sins of omission and commission from the media, and recent weeks proved to be no exception.
     On 19 December, 18 Israeli soldiers crossed into Lebanese territory and abducted two middle-aged men harvesting olives near the village of Blida. They were taken into Israel where they were interrogated, beaten and tortured. The men were repeatedly bitten by dogs and questioned about a possible connection to Hizballah. They were released the next day around 3am. While the event was widely reported in the Lebanese media, it did not register a blip in mainstream Western outlets. The only significant Western report on this incident appeared on the Agence France-Presse news service and did not attract significant attention.
     In striking contrast, on 25 December, The New York Times was one of the first news outlets to publish a report on the Lebanese army’s discovery, in the Lebanese town of Naqura, of eight Katyusha rockets "aimed at Israel" (so they were pointed south?). The Lebanese army then dismantled the rockets. Any threat posed by them was neutralized. Notwithstanding the fact that eight Cold War-era rockets do not pose much of a threat to the fourth largest military power in the world, The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune saw fit to publish the story, along with The International Herald Tribune and a number of Australian newspapers. None of these sources mentioned the kidnapping that occurred the previous week. more.. e-mail

If Israel’s weapons came through a tunnel
Kathy Kelly writing from Chicago, Electronic Intifada 2/12/2009
     Since I returned from Gaza people have asked me, how do the people of Gaza manage? How do they keep going after being traumatized by bombing and punished by a comprehensive state of siege? I wonder myself. I know that whether the loss of life is on the Gaza or the Israeli side of the border, bereaved survivors feel the same pain and misery. On both sides of the border, I think children pull people through horrendous and horrifying nightmares. Adults squelch their panic, cry in private and strive to regain semblances of normal life, wanting to carry their children through a precarious ordeal.
     And the children want to help their parents. In Rafah, the morning of 18 January, when it appeared there would be at least a lull in the bombing, I watched children heap pieces of wood on plastic tarps and then haul their piles toward their homes. The little ones seemed proud to be helping their parents recover from the bombing. I’d seen just this happy resilience among Iraqi children, after the 2003 "Shock and Awe" bombing, as they found bricks for their parents to use for a makeshift shelter in a bombed military base. more.. e-mail

Canada becomes Israel
Yves Engler, Electronic Intifada 2/12/2009
     Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper’s government publicly supported Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and voted alone at the UN Human Rights Committee in defense of Israel’s actions three weeks ago. Now Canada has taken over Israeli diplomacy. Literally.
     In solidarity with Gaza, Venezuela expelled Israel’s ambassador at the start of the bombardment and then broke off all diplomatic relations two weeks later. Israel need not worry since Ottawa plans to help out. On 29 January, The Jerusalem Post reported that "Israel’s interests in Caracas will now be represented by the Canadian Embassy." This means Canada is officially Israel, at least in Venezuela.
     Prior to the recent bombing in Gaza, the Harper government made it abundantly clear that it would support Israel no matter what that country did. It publicly endorsed Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon, voted against a host of UN resolutions supporting Palestinian rights and in January 2008 refused to criticize illegal Israeli settlement construction at Har Homa near Jerusalem (even Washington publicly criticized these settlements). Canada was also the first country (after Israel) to cut off financial aid to the elected Hamas government and Ottawa has provided millions of dollars as well as personnel to create a US-trained Palestinian police force to act as a counterweight to the Hamas government and to oversee Israel’s occupation. more.. e-mail

Crossing the Line: US role in the war on Gaza
Podcast, Crossing the Line, Electronic Intifada 2/13/2009
     This week on Crossing The Line: As US President Barack Obama stood before a crowd of two million and gave his inaugural address, he pledged to work with those in the Arab and Muslim world towards peace. But absent in the address was any condemnation of Israeli atrocities committed against the Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Host Naji Ali speaks with The Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah about the Obama administration, the recent massacre in Gaza and the prospects of peace in the region.
     Also this week, Ali speaks with Gaza-based journalist Rami Almeghari about the current situation on the ground in Gaza in the aftermath of the 22 days of Israeli attacks.
     And as always, Crossing the Line begins with "This week in Palestine," a service provided by The International Middle East Media Center Listen Now [MP3 - 22 MB] Crossing the Line is a weekly podcast dedicated to giving voice to the voiceless in occupied Palestine. Through investigative news, arts, eyewitness accounts, and music, Crossing the Line does its best to present the lives of people on the ground. more.. e-mail

Gaza: Death’s Laboratory
Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus 2/11/2009
     Dr. Mads Gilbert: "..,there is a strong suspicion…that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons."
     Erik Fosse, a Norwegian cardiologist, worked in Gaza hospitals during the recent war."It was as if they had stepped on a mine," he says of certain Palestinian patients he treated. "But there was no shrapnel in the wound. Some had lost their legs. It looked as though they had been sliced off. I have been to war zones for 30 years, but I have never seen such injuries before."
     Dr. Fosse was describing the effects of a U.S. "focused lethality" weapon that minimizes explosive damage to structures while inflicting catastrophic wounds on its victims. But where did the Israelis get this weapon? And was their widespread use in the attack on Gaza a field test for a new generation of explosives?DIMEd to Death
     The specific weapon is called a Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME). In 2000, the U.S. Air Force teamed up with the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The weapon wraps high explosives with a tungsten alloy and other metals like cobalt, nickel, or iron in a carbon fiber/epoxy container. When the bomb explodes the container evaporates, and the tungsten turns into micro-shrapnel that is extremely lethal within a 13-foot radius. Tungsten is inert, so it doesn’t react chemically with the explosive. While a non-inert metal like aluminum would increase the blast, tungsten actually contains the explosion to a limited area. more.. e-mail

Under a white cloth, darkly
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 2/12/2009
     "We thought the army would let us keep going because we raised a white flag." At 1 P.M. on Monday, January 5, 2009, near Rajib Mughrabi’s garage on Saladin Street, in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, a man of about 60 was pushing an elderly woman in a wheelbarrow. A 15-year-old boy walked at their side, waving a white cloth. Behind them, some 80 people were walking northward, their hands in the air. The day before, during Israel Defense Forces advances under cover of heavy fire, Palestinian inhabitants began their great flight westward, inward, into the Strip’s urban centers. If they thought they were in the soldiers’ line of sight, they waved white flags and raised their hands aloft.
     The man pushing the wheelbarrow was Mouin Joha, his mother was sitting inside and his son Ibrahim accompanied them bearing the flag.
     "On the night between Saturday and Sunday, between January 3rd and 4th," Joha recalled a few weeks later, "there was shelling just all around us. They were firing from all directions, and inside the house we were dying of fear. With every shell we thought it was the end. We heard the stones quaking. We ran from room to room. We lay the children down on the floor in the innermost room, like fish, one next to the other." more.. e-mail

Building the case of war crimes
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 2/12/2009
     Successfully prosecuting the Israelis for war crimes stands a good chance this time due to the scale of the recent attacks on the Gaza Strip, the undeniability of the horror.
     Hours of direct footage filmed by journalists from Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are providing some of the proof required to garner international support, Professor of Politics at Gaza’s Al Azar University Dr. Mochamar Abu Sada said on Thursday.
     "It is often difficult to prosecute crimces against humanity cases because of the political reality: the Americans don’t want to see this happen and the Israelis are not signatories. But there has been a lot of European and Arab effort to bring these recent cases to court," he said in Gaza City. "The Israelis kept trying to say that they weren’t targeting civilians, but a third of the Palestinians killed were children under the age of 15."
     Dr. Abu Sada added today that for the killing of 43 civilians in the UN school in the northern Strip at least some in the Israeli forces will most likely see a war crimes tribunal. more.. e-mail

A People Abandoned
Serge Halimi, Middle East Online 2/12/2009
     By 14 January Israeli troops had killed more than a thousand Palestinians confined to a narrow strip of land and subjected to land, sea and air bombardment by one of the most formidable armies in the world.
     A Palestinian school converted into a United Nations refuge had been bombed, a resolution -- issued by the only organisation that really represents the “international community” people are so fond of talking about -- had called in vain for a halt to the military operations in Gaza. So, on 14 January, the European Union showed just how firmly it was prepared to react to this mixed display of violence and arrogance. It decided to suspend the process of rapprochement with Israel! But to lessen the impact of what might, even so, have been seen as gentle reproach to Tel Aviv, it explained that this was a “technical” measure, not a “political” one. And that the decision was taken by “both parties".
     Israel is free to do as it likes. Its army had already destroyed most of the Palestinian infrastructure funded by the EU and there had been little or no reaction, no legal action, no call for reparations. It then imposed a blockade on people already living in poverty, with no water, food or medical supplies. Still no response, only endless admonitions and a general refusal to become involved in the argument, on the pretext that violence of the strong is not always accompanied by submission of the weak. So why should Israel suppose that it cannot continue to act with impunity? more.. e-mail

Ban lifted on Valentine flower exports: an Israeli ruse
Hiba Lama, Palestine News Network 2/12/2009
     The Israeli ban on the export of Palestinian flowers from the Gaza Strip was lifted today for the first time in three years. Twenty-five thousand flowers left the Gaza Strip en route to Europe after years of calls from farmers whose livelihoods are devastated by siege.
     The agricultural sector has suffered heavy losses from the Israeli bulldozing of land, two and a half years of siege and also from the recent three weeks of major attacks.
     A limited amount of exports allowed in the midst of the Valentine’s Day holiday is merely a ruse, Gazans say. Owner of the Green Garden market in Rafah, Majid Abu Hadeed, told PNN Thursday, "This is a fake. Export season is near an end. Farmers have declared bankruptcy. What is this now?"
     He said the limited opening of the crossing for 25,000 flowers comes "too little, too late."
     Abu Hadeed told PNN, “We are at the start of the end of the export season. Usually we stop exporting toward the end of April and so we only have one month left and that month is not long enough for us to put in all of our efforts to take care of the farmland and to use the pesticides and bring workers because the work stopped before. We lost all hope because these flowers require full attention. They need total care and we did not care for them properly because of the war and we did not want to spend our money on them for nothing.&rdquo. more.. e-mail

Book review: Un-erasing the erasure of Palestine
Gabriel Ash, Electronic Intifada 2/12/2009
     I read Jonathan Cook’s new book Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s experiments in human despair before Israel committed its most recent massacres in Gaza. Israel’s massive disregard for Palestinian life and the clearly deliberate destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure shocked many poorly informed observers, but few of those acquainted with the knowledge contained in this book would have been taken by surprise. Cook is a British journalist who made the Palestinian city of Nazareth his home. Over the last six years Cook published a series of highly informative and original articles that broke with the Western tradition of stenographic journalism. Although previously a staff journalist of the liberal British paper The Guardian, few of his recent articles were featured in the mainstream Western press. He knows too much.
     This book is in fact two short books for the price of one. The second half comprises a selection drawn from these articles Cook published over the last six years in a variety of websites and newspapers. The first half is an outstanding essay that seeks to distill the so-called "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and to trace within it the overarching principle that guides Israel’s policies. Cook’s thesis is that "the goal of Israeli policy is to make Palestine and the Palestinians disappear for good." more.. e-mail

Israel lurches into fascism
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 2/12/2009
     Whenever Israel has an election, pundits begin the usual refrain that hopes for peace depend on the "peace camp" -- formerly represented by the Labor party, but now by Tzipi Livni’s Kadima -- prevailing over the anti-peace right, led by the Likud.
     This has never been true, and makes even less sense as Israeli parties begin coalition talks after Tuesday’s election. Yes, the "peace camp" helped launch the "peace process," but it did much more to undermine the chances for a just settlement.
     In 1993, Labor prime minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo accords. Ambiguities in the agreement -- which included no mention of "self-determination" or "independence" for Palestinians, or even "occupation" -- made it easier to clinch a short-term deal. But confrontation over irreconcilable expectations was inevitable. While Palestinians hoped the Palestinian Authority, created by the accord, would be the nucleus of an independent state, Israel viewed it as little more than a native police force to suppress resistance to continued occupation and colonial settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Collaboration with Israel has always been the measure by which any Palestinian leader is judged to be a "peace partner." Rabin, according to Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, "never thought this [Oslo] will end in a full-fledged Palestinian state." He was right. more.. e-mail

Israel’s perilous political stasis
David Hearst, The Guardian 2/12/2009
     With the prospect of a return of Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas according to Haaretz , has being drawing up plans for "diplomatic resistance" to Israel. The Palestinian Authority wants the international community to put Israel under as much pressure to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state as Hamas was put under to accept the existence of Israel. I think we have some way to go before we will see the US Sixth Fleet enforcing an international blockade off the port of Haifa.
     But, again according to Haaretz, Sarkozy, Brown and Berlusconi, apparently told Abbas they would not accept a freeze in the peace process and the abandonment of the vision of a Palestinian state. Note the let-out clauses in that formulation. The French and British foreign ministers , Bernard Kouchner and David Miliband, went further: "We will not allow Israel to perpetuate the occupation in the West Bank under the guise of economic gestures of good will." If that is exactly what Miliband said, it could lead to an interesting conversation with his political father, Tony Blair. According to those close to Netanyahu, Blair is the man the rightwing Likud leader is pinning his hopes on, to deliver economic – but not political – improvements to life in the West Bank.
     However unrealistic Abbas’s expectations are, they represent an obvious truth, and probably the most important lesson to be drawn from Tuesday’s election. The international community, not just President Obama, is going to have to get stuck into the search for a solution to the conflict in a more robust way than it has done for a decade. Until now, the Quartet has largely accepted Israel’s narrative about Hamas, and has been quiescent to the point of being torpid about forcing the pace of negotiations with Abbas.... more.. e-mail

Israeli 2009 Election Winner: Herzl (1895)
William A. Cook, Palestine Chronicle 2/12/2009
     ’We should try to spirit the penniless Arab population across the borders by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.’ (Herzl, founding father of Zionism,1895)
     The mind of Israel’s “decider” in yesterday’s election, Avigdor Lieberman, Head of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, comes out of the late 19th century, a veritable verbal parallel to Herzl: “They (Palestinian leaders) have to disappear, to go to paradise, all of them, and there can’t be any compromise.” This is the same man that casually remarked that Israel should do to the Palestinians what the United States did to the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, drop the atomic bomb on them. This man will decide who speaks with President Obama about “peace in the mid-east.” This man will control the right-wing agenda that will be Israel’s agenda under its newly formed government, whether Tzipi Livni or Bibi Netanyahu hold the title of Prime Minister. This man will see to it that there is no end of the occupation of Palestine, no Palestinian state, and no evacuation of the settlements, in short, no progress toward peace. This man, a Russian immigrant to Israel, will determine the fate of the indigenous people if and when Israel decides what to do with the Palestinians. This man, who won 12% of the vote, determines for Americans what their vote for Obama’s “change” really means. more.. e-mail

PLO: Why an Alternative and Why the Panic?
Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 2/12/2009
     ’Why an alternative to the PLO, and why the fury over a call for a new leadership?’
     When Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal declared before a cheering crowd in Doha, Qatar, on January 28, the need for a new leadership, his words generated panic amongst leaders of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority as well as traditional Palestinian leadership elites stationed in various Arab capitals.
     The reaction to Mashaal’s call was more furious than most of the statements issued by the PA and its backers during the 23-day Israeli onslaught against the Gaza Strip, which killed and wounded thousands of innocent Gazans.
     Mashaal, who spoke triumphantly in Qatar exhorted that the PA "in its current state is no authority." "It expresses a state of impotence, abuse and (it is a) tool to deepen divisions," he stressed. He called for the creation of a new leadership structure that would include all Palestinians.
     Mashaal intentionally remained ambiguous regarding the nature of the new structure, perhaps to examine the reactions to his call before moving forward with any tangible plans. more.. e-mail

The Left and Support for Islamist Resistance
Nadine Rosa-Rosso - Brussels, Palestine Chronicle 2/11/2009
     (Editor’s Note: The following is the text of a speech delivered by Nadine Rosa-Rosso at the Beirut International Forum for Resistance, Anti-Imperialism, Solidarity between Peoples and Alternatives, held from January 16 to 18, 2009.)
     The massive demonstrations in European capitals and major cities in support of the people of Gaza highlighted once again the core problem: the vast majority of the Left, including communists, agrees in supporting the people of Gaza against Israeli aggression, but refuses to support its political expressions such as Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
     The Left not only refuses to support them, but also denounces them and fights against them. Support for the people of Gaza exists only at a humanitarian level but not at the political level.
     Concerning Hamas and Hezbollah; the Left is mainly concerned with the support these groups have amongst the Arab masses, but are hardly interested in the fact that Israel’s clear and aggressive intention is to destroy these resistance movements. From a political point of view we can say without exaggeration that the Left’s wish (more or less openly admitted) follows the same line as the Israeli government’s: to liquidate popular support for Hamas and Hezbollah. more.. e-mail

Obama’s ’War on Terror’
Stephen Lendman – Chicago, Palestine Chronicle 2/11/2009
     ACLU’s executive director: ’The Obama administration’s position is not change.’
     The language is softened and deceptive. The strategy and tactics are not. The "war on terror" continues. Promised change is talk, not policy. Just look at Obama’s "war cabinet," discussed in an earlier article. It assures:
     -- the "strongest military on the planet" by outspending all other countries combined; -- continued foreign wars; -- possible new ones in prospect; on February 7, vice-president Joe Biden outlined continuity of the Bush administration’s policy toward Iran, including "preventive" wars under the National Security Strategy; demands also that Iran abandon its legal nuclear program meaning nothing going forward will change; -- permanent occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan is planned;
     -- a reinvented "Cold War" with Russia; perhaps also with China; "draw(ing) a new ’iron curtain’ (between these) formidable Eurasian powers" to prevent their alliance from challenging America, according to F. William Engdahl;
     -- an "absolute" commitment "to eliminating the threat of terrorism (with) the full force of our power;"... more.. e-mail

Church of England: Dumping Caterpillar
Stuart Littlewood - London, Palestine Chronicle 2/12/2009
     ’What took the Church of England so long to catch onto the Caterpillar scandal?’
     God whispered in the Church of England’s ear and it dumped its shares in Caterpillar. This House of God had about £2.5m invested in a company that manufactures one of Israel’s weapons of mass misery and destruction. After saying for years that they couldn’t see anything unethical about it, Church bosses finally agreed with the rest of us that Caterpillar’s D-9 bulldozer, which is used in the Holy Land for the ugly purpose of demolishing Palestinian homes, uprooting olive groves and destroying civilian infrastructure, is more like a vicious weapon in Israel’s hands than a civil engineering tool.
     Caterpillar simply didn’t look good on the Church’s ethical investments list any more.
     The wholesale destruction of Palestinian homes, and Caterpillar’s part in it, has been going on for a very long time. At the Jenin refugee camp in March/April 2002 Israel’s massive, armoured D-9 Caterpillar bulldozers - driven by army reservists - worked non-stop for three days and nights. More than 300 homes in the densely packed camp were flattened. The bulldozer drivers were instant heroes and showered with medals for valour. more.. e-mail

Hampshire College first in US to divest from Israel
Press release, Students for Justice in Palestine - Hampshire College, Electronic Intifada 2/12/2009
     Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, has become the first of any college or university in the US to divest from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
     This landmark move is a direct result of a two-year intensive campaign by the campus group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The group pressured Hampshire College’s Board of Trustees to divest from six specific companies due to human rights concerns in occupied Palestine. More than 800 students, professors and alumni have signed SJP’s "institutional statement" calling for the divestment.
     The proposal put forth by SJP was approved on Saturday, 7 February 2009 by the Board. By divesting from these companies, SJP believes that Hampshire has distanced itself from complicity in the illegal occupation and war crimes of Israel.
     Meeting minutes from a committee of Hampshire’s Board of Trustees confirm that "President Hexter acknowledged that it was the good work of SJP that brought this issue to the attention of the committee." This groundbreaking decision follows in Hampshire’s history of being the first college in the country to divest from apartheid South Africa 32 years ago, a decision based on similar human rights concerns. This divestment was also a direct result of student pressure. more.. e-mail

Behind the violence in Gujarat, Gaza and Iraq is the banality of democracy
Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian 2/11/2009
     In his memoir, Secrets, Daniel Ellsberg describes how he decided to risk years in prison by leaking the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret record of American decision-making on Vietnam, to the New York Times. Hoping that his wife, Patricia, would help him make up his mind, Ellsberg showed her a few memos on bombing strategies crafted by his former superiors at the Pentagon. She was horrified by some of the phrases in the documents: "a need to reach the threshold of pain"; "salami-slice bombing campaign"; "the objective of persuading the enemy"; "ratchet"; "one more turn of the screw". "This is the language of torturers," she told Ellsberg. "These have to be exposed."
     I recalled this scene while reading about Israel’s objectives in its assault on Gaza, as defined by the country’s political and military leaders and its western supporters. Speaking to a delegation from the Israeli lobby Aipac, President Shimon Peres confirmed that "Israel’s aim was to provide a strong blow to the people of Gaza so that they would lose their appetite for shooting at Israel". Writing in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman, who had previously explained that the US invasion of Iraq was meant to say "suck on this" to the Muslim world, agreed that "the only long-term source of deterrence is to exact enough pain on the civilians".
     Perhaps it is no longer shocking that elected leaders and mainstream journalists in democracies seem to borrow their tone and vocabulary from Ayman al-Zawahiri and Hassan Nasrallah - after all, the war on terror, now officially declared a "mistake", unhinged some of our best writers and thinkers. What is more bewildering and dispiriting than the moral deviancy of our political elites is its tacit endorsement by large democratic majorities. more.. e-mail

UN Envoy: Gaza’s Children Traumatized by War, Despite Ceasefire
Deutsche Presse Agentur, MIFTAH 2/11/2009
     Children in the Gaza Strip continued to suffer and feel insecure despite a ceasefire that has mostly ended three weeks of intense fighting between Israel and Hamas, the UN special envoy for children and armed conflict said Monday.
     Radihika Coomaraswamy said grave violations of child rights had been committed during the fighting that began on December 27 when Israel Defense Forces launched airstrikes against Hamas militants who had been firing rockets and mortars into southern Israel.
     She said those violations included killing and maiming, and denial of humanitarian access. Fifty-six per cent of Gazans are children under 18.
     "During the recent hostilities, there were no safe space for children and the crossings out of Gaza were, and remain, virtually sealed," she said.
     The fighting killed more than 1,300 people in Gaza, one-third of them children and women. Thousands of people were injured.
     Turning to children in Israel, Coomaraswamy said: "There is no doubt that children live in constant fear of missile attacks in southern Israel. The need for psycho-social support has increased recently." more.. e-mail

Israelis vote for more of the same
Marc J. Sirois, Daily Star 2/12/2009
     Israelis have had their say at the ballot box, and their verdict is the clearest indication yet that the great majority of them have no more of a vision for their country’s future than their morally and ideologically bankrupt leaders do. Media reports are full of pap about a "lurch to the right" because while Benjamin Netanyahu’s openly bellicose Likud seems to have finished a close second to Tzipi Livni’s slightly less bellicose Kadima, Avigdor Lieberman’s radically bellicose Israel Beitenu came in third, ahead of Ehud Barak’s Labor, whose own rank on the bellicosity scale varies with the waxings and wanings of its popularity. Forget left and right: Tuesday’s vote was a contest between the perpetrators of the recent slaughter in Gaza (Livni and Barak) and critics who think Israel should kill and starve even more people for no good reason (Netanyahu and Lieberman).
     Even in general, much of the left-right model for defining the nature of a political program breaks down when it is applied to Israel. It is, after all, an apartheid state that makes no secret of extending substandard citizenship rights to individuals who happen not to be "Jewish" according to a bizarre formula that has nothing to do with what anyone actually believes, only with how his or her mother was classified - often by a brutal police state in Eastern Europe. more.. e-mail

Israeli Elections Prove Things Really Can Get Worse
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 2/11/2009
     This year’s general elections in Israel will go down in history as one of the tightest races ever. While Kadima head and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s centrist party has claimed a slight lead over Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu by one Knesset seat, this is by no means an all out victory for her. Without delving into the often confusing details of the Israeli electoral system, it suffices to say that both party leaders have a gargantuan task before them – forming a strong enough coalition – one that would guarantee 61 Knesset seats required by any prime minister to form a government.
     As proven at the polls, it is still unclear which way the pendulum will swing in terms of what shape Israel’s next government will take. One thing is for sure though. Much to the chagrin of the Palestinians, the one key player in this year’s elections is neither Livni nor Netanyahu. It is Avigdor Lieberman.Should either Livni or Netanyahu be called on by Israeli President Shimon Peres to form a government, both will likely lean heavily on Lieberman and his Israel Beitenu party to help them out. more.. e-mail

Mitchell’s First Mission Does Not Inspire Optimism
Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Palestine Chronicle 2/10/2009
     ’Mitchell visited the region .. but refused to include Gaza on his itinerary.’ (Getty) Former Senator George Mitchell has been assigned by President Obama to revive the so called peace process. Mitchell is no stranger to the region and he is not the first to be appointed for assessing the situation and make recommendations. In September 2000 and at the beginning of al-Aqsa intifada, Mitchell chaired an investigative commission that included former senator Warren Rudman, the former president of Turkey, Suleiman Demirel, the former foreign minister of Norway, Thorbjorn Jaland and Javier Solana, a Spanish diplomat. Eight months later, the Mitchell commission published a report that blamed Arafat for countenancing terror bombing and the Sharon government for its harsh military retaliation against the Palestinians and for supporting Jewish settlements.
     Mitchell report included recommendations to be implemented by the Palestinians and the Israelis to create a "confidence-building" environment, but the Israeli Prime Minister Sharon supported by President George W. Bush ignored the report all together. Israel continued its settlement activities, forced curfews on the Palestinians, re-occupied Palestinian cities, invaded refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, bulldozed Palestinians’ homes and destroyed their olive groves. Palestinian casualties in 2001 exceeded 1,300 dead and 9,700 wounded victims of the Israeli attacks. The Palestinians retaliated with suicide bombings in Israel. more.. e-mail

Here Comes the Four-State Solution
Rami G. Khouri, Middle East Online 2/11/2009
     BEIRUT -- The Israeli elections Tuesday are expected to usher in a Likud-led right-of-center coalition. Regardless of the final result (I write this Tuesday morning, as the voting begins), one thing is already clear: Whoever wins, the chances of a negotiated peace based on a two-state solution are slim, and becoming more difficult every year.
     But they are not impossible for two main reasons. The difficulties that plague peace prospects today are all man-made ones that can just as easily be reversed and removed by new men and women leaders who act with courage and wisdom. And, the resort to violence by all parties has emphasized the limits of militarism, and clarified that only a political resolution will bring peace and security. Neither side will surrender, or be eliminated.
     Here is the very complex and challenging political context in which we operate today: The two-state solution is difficult but still possible, the one-state solution is often proposed by many Arabs but is not realistic in the near future, and the current configuration on the ground is in fact a three-state solution: Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. more.. e-mail

Few Peacemakers in Israel’s Knesset
Neve Gordon, Middle East Online 2/11/2009
     Israelis have had their say at the polls, and now it is up to the world, and particularly the Obama administration, to respond.
     Thirty-three parties ran for the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), ranging from the well-known Kadima, Likud and Labor to a variety of lesser known parties that ran on an array of platforms from the rights of the disabled to legalizing cannabis. However, only twelve parties managed to garner enough votes to secure seats in the Knesset.
     The incoming Knesset will have a solid right-wing bloc, made up of Likud with twenty-seven seats, Yisrael Beiteinu with fifteen seats, two ultra-Orthodox parties with sixteen seats and two smaller nationalist parties with seven seats. This bloc has four more than the sixty-one-seat threshold needed to form a coalition.
     The center bloc was able to muster forty-one seats. This bloc consists of Kadima with twenty-eight seats and Labor with thirteen seats. The remaining fourteen seats were won by liberal, leftist and Arab national parties.
     The results clearly testify to the fact that a large majority of the elected politicians are against an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement based on the two-state solution. Moreover, some parties have blatant neo-fascist tendencies. Yisrael Beiteinu, for example, ran under the banner of "no citizenship without loyalty," and would like to strip any person who is critical of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians of their citizenship. People like me. more.. e-mail

More roadblock than roadmap in the Middle East
Benjamin Pogrund, The Guardian 2/11/2009
     As the coalition-building begins, the only certain thing that can be said of Israel’s election result is that peace was not the winner.
     A dark cloud hangs over peace prospects as a result of Tuesday’s elections in Israel. As widely anticipated, there was a discernible move to the right and that will determine the nature and policies of the new government. The bottom line is that there will not be any sustained drive to end the occupation of the West Bank or, perhaps, to relieve pressure on the Gaza Strip. Pursuing a peace deal with Syria is also unlikely.
     Next week, President Shimon Peres will start to call in leaders to decide who will lead the government. Even if he gives Tzipi Livni of the more centrist Kadima a crack at it, she will have no choice but to turn to the right. Indeed, she speaks of a "national unity government" and has been making overtures both to Binyamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman.
     Netanyahu has repeatedly made clear that he opposes creation of a Palestinian state. Instead, he speaks of economic development – "economic peace" he calls it. That is obviously desirable, but it is less obvious how it can be achieved when the West Bank is throttled internally and at the borders by hundreds of checkpoints and barriers to free movement. Nor is it explained why Palestinians can be expected to sit still and put away their demands for political and personal freedoms while waiting for a promised economic heaven. Netanyahu has also declared himself against any withdrawal from the Golan Heights. That halts any progress towards a peace deal with Syria, which insists on getting back the land which it lost when it went to war with Israel in 1967. more.. e-mail

Shallow celebration for a hollow victory
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 2/11/2009
     Three minutes before the results of the television channels’ exit polls were announced, the applause had already started.
     Rhythmic, planned, mechanical, almost automatic. Someone pulled a Kadima flag out - yes, there is such a thing - and waved it. Advertisement
     In the banquet hall of the luxury hotel, with more photographers than party members, there was not even any tension.
     Four, three, two, one, just like before a launch, and then the exciting news: A two seat advantage for Kadima on all the channels.
     A wave of joy? A river of happy tears? Not at all.
     A group of party hacks, minor leaguers all, from this party of refugees broke out in a Hassidic-like circle dance.
     Someone passed out small Israeli flags, another broke out in song - but it all seemed to be overdone.
     An embarrassing election campaign came to its end with a hollow joy, a small comfort. Such an embarrassing campaign could not end any other way.
     Slaps on the back, hugs and kisses.
     "What a victory," cried the hacks. The loudspeakers blared out the party’s theme song continuously, but even the wretched tune could not lift anyone’s spirits, it just reflected on the party itself. more.. e-mail

Israeli 'investigation' whitewashes West Bank execution
Report, Al-Haq, Electronic Intifada 2/11/2009
     On 2 February 2009, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported the findings of an "investigation" into an incident in which, that morning, "a Palestinian gunman opened fire at an [Israeli army] Patrol Force near the Community Yatir [sic], south of Hebron." As a result of the investigation, the Israeli military Central Command "assumes" that the "terrorist," who was shot dead by Israeli soldiers, "was intending to execute a terror attack against Israeli civilians."
     After a full field investigation, Al-Haq has determined serious factual inaccuracies and false assumptions in the Israeli authorities’ version of events, and reports the following findings:
     On the morning of Monday, 2 February 2009, an infantry unit of the Israeli occupying forces was deployed to Janba, southeast of Yatta in the Hebron district of the southern West Bank. Between 7:30 and 8:00am, the Israeli soldiers stopped a total of three vehicles on a dirt road in the Marah al-Tabaka area of Janba. This road is close to the West Bank’s southern border with Israel, and is used by Palestinian merchants who travel to Israel to sell their goods. Two of the three vehicles were returning from Israel, while the other was traveling towards Israel from Yatta. The Israeli soldiers had not set up a visible "flying" checkpoint on the road, but rather each time a vehicle arrived, the soldiers jumped out from positions of hiding off to the side of the road, ordered the drivers to turn off their engines, took the IDs of those in the vehicles, and forced them to wait at the side of the road. By the time the three vehicles had been stopped, a total of 11 Palestinians were being kept by the Israeli soldiers at the side of the road. more.. e-mail

Victory in the Scales of Factual Numbers
Hassan Al-Battal, MIFTAH 2/11/2009
     Experts like to clutch statistics in their hands, but there are some statistics which grab journalists by the throats, especially some “marginal” statistics from the last Gaza War. These less-known statistics include the fact that 88% of the population of the Gaza Strip has become dependent on food assistance, and that 600,000 tons is the approximate weight of the rubble from destruction.
     Why did I describe those numbers as “marginal?” One of the most obvious is that they are quoted among the smaller news headlines whereas the “main” statistics are the number of the dead and injured. As of the latest counts, these are 1,440 dead and 5,380 wounded and still rising.
     Beneath the folds of the headlines of some national newspapers, I read a somewhat cynical calculation which is that the number of Palestinian births in Gaza during the weeks of the war exceeded the number of deaths. If a poet were to write the epic of the noble struggle of the Palestinian life, it might be bracketed between the roles of the midwife and the executioner. In revolutionary political slogans they say that “blood triumphs over the sword,” and in the literature praising the resistance they talk about “the hand that resists the awl.” more.. e-mail

Gaza 2009: Culture of resistance vs. defeat
Dr. Haidar Eid, Electronic Intifada 2/11/2009
     The ongoing bloodletting in the Gaza Strip and the ability of the Palestinian people to creatively resist the might of the world’s fourth strongest army is being hotly debated by Palestinian political forces. The latest genocidal war which lasted 22 days, and in which apartheid Israel used F-16s, Apache helicopters, Merkava tanks and conventional and non-conventional weapons against the population, have raised many serious questions about the concept of resistance and whether the outcome of the war can, or cannot, be considered a victory for the Palestinian people. The same kind of questions were raised in 2006 when apartheid Israel launched its war against the Lebanese people and brutally killed more than 1,200 Lebanese.
     At the beginning of the Gaza war, we were told by certain sectors of the Palestinian political leadership that "the two sides are to blame: Hamas and Israel" and that "Hamas must stop the launching of the rockets from Gaza." Resistance in all its forms, violent and otherwise, was considered, by these same people, "futile." Now that there are fewer bombs raining down on Gaza, the conflict focuses on whether the outcome of the war was one of victory or defeat. For the Israeli ruling class the answer is clear -- in spite of the fact that none of the objectives announced at the beginning of the war have been achieved. It is clear because they, like the defeatist Palestinian camp, simply use the numbers of martyrs, disabled and homeless to determine victory and defeat. more.. e-mail

Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes
National Lawyers Guild, CounterPunch 2/9/2009
     Gaza City
     We are a delegation of 8 American lawyers, members of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States, who have come here to the Gaza Strip to assess the effects of the recent attacks on the people, and to determine what, if any, violations of international law occurred and whether U.S. domestic law has been violated as a consequence. We have spent the last five days interviewing communities particularly impacted by the recent Israeli offensive, including medical personnel, humanitarian aid workers and United Nations representatives. In particular, the delegation examined three issues: 1) targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure; 2) illegal use of weapons and 3) blocking of medical and humanitarian assistance to civilians.
     Targeting of Civilians and Civilian Infrastructure
     Much of the debate surrounding Israel’s aerial and ground offensive against Gaza has centered on whether or not Israel observed principles of proportionality and distinction. The debate suggests that Israel targeted Hamas i.e., its military installations, its leaders, and its militants, and in the process of its discrete military exercise it inadvertently killed Palestinian civilians. While we have found evidence that Palestinian civilians were victims of excessive force and collateral damage, we have also found troubling instances of Palestinian civilians being targets themselves.
     The delegation recorded numerous accounts of Israeli soldiers shooting civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, in the head, chest, and stomach. Another common narrative described Israeli forces rounding civilians into a single location i.e., homes, schools which Israeli tanks or warplanes then shelled. Israeli forces continued to shoot at civilians fleeing the targeted structures. more.. e-mail

Israeli closures prevent import of aid, cement to Gaza
IRIN, Electronic Intifada 2/9/2009
     GAZA CITY (IRIN) - Aid agencies are becoming increasingly frustrated with the difficulties of getting humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip.
     "For us to move ahead with rehabilitation and repairs, we must get building materials into Gaza," Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), told IRIN by telephone. "Two hundred and twenty-one schools for 200,000 children only have 40 percent of their books because we can’t get paper and glue into Gaza."
     Some $93 million-worth of UNRWA construction projects have been on hold since before Israel’s military operation in Gaza began in late December due to a lack of cement, said Gunness.
     Israel’s military offensive in the Strip began on 27 December 2008 with aerial bombardments and combined with a ground assault beginning on 3 January. Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire on 18 January. Hamas declared its own ceasefire later that day. Over 1,300 people in Gaza were killed and more than 5,300 were injured during this period, according to the Gaza health ministry. more.. e-mail

Aftermath (1) 'We Never Feel Safe'
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights 2/9/2009
     In this new series of personal testimonies, PCHR looks at the aftermath of Israel’s 22 day offensive on the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing impact it is having on the civilian population.
     Foreign correspondents and camera crews have now begun to leave Gaza, in search of the next headline grabbing location. But ongoing airstrikes and violations of international law are a stark reminder that there is no real end to Israel’s offensive here.
     Since Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire on 18 January it has continued to launch strikes against targets in the Gaza Strip. Some families in the southern town of Rafah have been evacuated from their homes up to ten times in the last 15 days.
     Faten el Sha’er, a 31 year old mother of one, lives just 150 metres from Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. This area, known as the ‘Philadelphi Route’ has been repeatedly targeted and is now a mass of rubble, sand and bomb craters. Her home is one of the few left standing here, surrounded by the grey concrete remains of homes, and the shreds of tarpaulin which once covered smuggling tunnels.
     “I was baking bread when the bombing of the border area began on 28 December,” says Faten. “Thousands of people took to the streets, trying to escape. Everybody was on the move. My mother, my five year old daughter Nagham and I ran to my uncle’s house, which is further from the border.” Other family members were scattered at the homes of relatives. more.. e-mail

End the Occupation First
Sam Bahour – The West Bank, Palestine Chronicle 2/9/2009
     If Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today he may well have attended President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony wearing a black-and-white checkered kaffiyeh and holding a sign saying, "Mr. President, stop the Gaza nightmare. No more false hopes and delayed dreams. End the Occupation NOW!" Civil rights leaders spent precious political capital to speak out against America’s wrongdoings across the world, most notably the war in Vietnam. President Obama should spend domestic political capital to denounce Israel’s domination of the Palestinians. Nothing would boost desperately needed international capital more.
     Rev. King would have recognized that without unfettered US arms, funds and political cover, Israel would never have been able to inflict the level of brutality it ’proudly’ inflicted on Gaza. Nor would it have been able to keep Palestinians in bondage so long.
     King would have pointed to where the solution to this conflict lies: the United States of America. If President Obama is to be an historic leader, and not just the first African American elected to the presidency, he must not tolerate Israel’s continued slaps in the face, from restricting President Carter’s movements in the Mideast, to using US funds to build illegal Jewish-only settlements, to launching a one-sided "war" on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. He will instead deal with the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict. more.. e-mail

Israel’s forgotten Palestinians
Ahmed El Amraoui, Al Jazeera 2/9/2009
     The rising mistrust of Israelis towards the Palestinian citizens of Israel raises the question of what will happen to the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, who already suffer discrimination.
     While they used to make up the majority of the population of Palestine before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, only 150,000 out of 950,000 native Palestinians remain within what is now known as the state of Israel.
     After this tragic war and the forced expulsion of the people -- known by Arabs as al-Nakba, or the Catastrophe - Israeli forces occupied 213 villages and expelled more than 400,000 refugees before the British mandate ended on May 15, 1949.
     After the defeat of Arab forces in December 1948, Israel confiscated nearly 85 per cent of the territory. Most of this land was taken from about 800,000 Palestinians from 531 villages, cities and tribes, who were thrown out or fled in fear of their lives.
     Those who remain.
     Today, the Palestinians who remain in Israel account for less than 20 per cent of the population, roughly numbering 1.4 million of a total population of 7.3 million.
     As part of its longstanding effort to "divide and rule", Israel identifies them as "Arab Israelis" rather than the Palestinian citizens of Israel to separate them from their kin in occupied territories. more.. e-mail

Israeli University Welcomes ’War Crimes’ Colonel
Jonathan Cook – Nazareth, Palestine Chronicle 2/9/2009
     The Israeli government has moved quickly to quash protests over the appointment of the army’s senior adviser on international law to a teaching post at Tel Aviv University. Col Pnina Sharvit-Baruch is thought to have provided legal cover for war crimes during the recent Gaza offensive.
     Government officials fear that recent media revelations relating to Col Sharvit-Baruch’s role in the Gaza operation may assist human rights groups seeking to bring Israeli soldiers to trial abroad.
     A Spanish judge began investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza under the country’s "universal jurisdiction" laws this month, and a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague is considering a Palestinian group’s petition to indict Israeli commanders.
     Meanwhile, the furore -- by highlighting the close ties between the army and Israeli universities -- is adding weight to a growing campaign in Europe and the US to impose an academic boycott on Israel, say activists.
     Tel Aviv University’s decision to hire Col Sharvit-Baruch to teach international law prompted protests from staff after the local media published details of the military planning for the Gaza offensive. -- See also: How IDF lawyers okayed hitting Gaza homes and IDF colonel to teach TAU law course, despite critics' bid to stop her more.. e-mail

Open letter to UN Secretary-General
Angie Tibbs, Middle East Online 2/9/2009
     Dear Mr Secretary-General,
     The United Nations, the world’s preeminent law-making body, together with its Charter, provides the basis for laws and principles; therefore, people of conscience everywhere look to the UN with hope for upholding its Charter and its pledge to end the scourge of war.As the secretary-general, you, sir, are expected to at least speak words that honour this Charter and its principles.
     However, while people of good conscience world-wide are expressing revulsion at Israel’s terrorist attack on the defenceless in Gaza, you are already seeking to minimize war crimes of monumental proportions while echoing the disinformation of Israel and its supporters.
     For instance, on 16 January 2009 the headlines read: "Ban urges unilateral ceasefire in Gaza conflict; meets with Palestine leaders".
     You did not meet with "Palestinian leaders", sir. Palestinian leaders are either detained in Israeli or West Bank prisons, murdered by Israeli assassins, or in Gaza, where the world, in its sick attempts to placate Israel, refused to allow them to govern the people who elected them. more.. e-mail

Non-Violence? Finkelstein and Gandhi
Robin Yassin-Kassab, Palestine Chronicle 2/9/2009
     When Western liberals call on the Palestinians to renounce violence and to adopt Gandhian passive resistance instead, I usually become enraged. My first response is, they’ve tried non-violence, and you failed to notice. For the first two decades after the original ethnic cleansing of 1947 and 48, almost all Palestinian resistance was non-violent. From 1967 until 1987 Palestinians resisted by organizing tax strikes, peaceful demonstrations, petitions, sit-down protests on confiscated lands and in houses condemned to demolition. The First Intifada was almost entirely non-violent on the Palestinian side; the new tactic of throwing stones at tanks (which some liberals consider violent) was almost entirely symbolic. In every case, the Palestinians were met with fanatical violence. Midnight arrest, beatings, and torture were the lot of most. Many were shot. Yitzhak Rabin ordered occupation troops to break the bones of the boys with stones. And despite all this sacrifice, Israeli Jews were not moved to recognize the injustice of occupation and dispossession, at least not enough to end it. The first weeks of the Second Intifada were also non-violent on the Palestinian side. Israel responded by murdering tens of unarmed civilians daily, and the US media blamed the victims. Then the Intifada was militarized.
     Was it really, or only, non-violence which liberated India? In colonized India there were hundreds of thousands of Indians to each British officer, so the cause of independence had sheer numbers on its side as well as time. The British people certainly came to love Gandhi and to respect the moral courage of his non-violent strategy, but the British officials who counted could also see the tide of violent anti-imperialism rising behind Gandhi, a tide that would dominate if Gandhi’s method failed. Likewise in the American civil rights struggle: behind Martin Luther King stood Malcolm X. It’s a lot easier to deal with the nice guy when you see the nasty guy rolling up his sleeves. more.. e-mail

Pledging Allegiance to Discrimination
Nadia W. Awad, MIFTAH 2/9/2009
     I’m going to risk a limb here and dip my toe into the extremely controversial Israeli ‘loyalty’ debate. This debate heated up when Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman made it one of the major themes for which his party, Israel Beytenu, is campaigning. Translated as ‘Israel Our Homeland’, the party was originally formed by Lieberman as a platform for Russian immigrants. It takes a strong stance against peace negotiations, considers the ‘land for peace’ concept to be immoral and wrong, and aims to reduce the number of Palestinians living in Israel by as many as possible. As part of his Israeli election campaigning, Lieberman is calling for a loyalty test, or pledge of allegiance, for all Israeli citizens, including the Palestinians.You may ask yourself, so what’s the big deal? Don’t most countries require pledges of allegiance? Of course, most countries didn’t begin and maintain an illegal occupation, didn’t create millions of refugees, and don’t treat a large number of their citizens as second class. Lieberman and his supporters argue that they are not asking Palestinian-Israelis to renounce their identity. Instead, they are asking that they recognize and pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state. If they wish to live here as citizens with full rights and benefits, they must contribute to Israel’s success.
     Of course, your average Palestinian-Israeli, after laughing at the part about full rights and benefits, will argue that to pledge allegiance to the Jewishness of Israel does indeed sacrifice one’s own identity as a Palestinian Muslim or Christian. And look at the term ‘Israeli Arab’, which is widely used in Israeli discourse to refer to Palestinians living in Israel. This term in itself reveals a great deal about the Israeli psyche; for if you were to replace it with the phrase Palestinian-Israeli, you would shock many Israelis, even secular, left-wing ones.... more.. e-mail

Breaking the Palestinian impasse
Arjan El Fassed, Electronic Intifada 2/9/2009
     To end the Palestinian political impasse, elections for the Palestine National Council (PNC) should be the top priority for all Palestinian parties. The 669-member Palestinian "parliament-in-exile" has not held a meeting since 1998 and its members have never been elected. Once a central body of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), what is left of the PNC lacks all legitimacy.
     Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal caused an uproar recently when he stated that in its current form the PLO is no longer a reference point for Palestinians. Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as president of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority expired on 9 January, reacted with fury. Having himself lost all legal and political legitimacy, Abbas told a crowd in Cairo that "There will be no dialogue with those who reject the PLO."
     Of course Meshal did not reject the PLO, but he asserted that the PLO has become "a center of division for the Palestinian household." Speaking to Al-Jazeera on 30 January, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan clarified that the "PLO represents a good framework that can be used to solve a lot of our problems and disputes." Hamdan added that the body "is the only organization that is capable of continuing the negotiations and the signing of political agreements with internal factions and external sides alike." Fawzi Barhoum, another Hamas spokesperson, said that when Hamas made the suggestion to create "a new representation" it was not meant to suggest the creation of an alternative to the PLO. "We want to add opposition factions to the PLO, factions that are still not included within the body," he told reporters. more.. e-mail

Gilad Shalit: The Grand Illusion
Gilad Atzmon, Palestine Think Tank 2/9/2009
     A few days ago, Noam Shalit, the ‘father of’ slammed the Hamas for holding his son for no real reason. Miraculously, he managed to forget the fact that his son Gilad was actually a combatant soldier who served as a post guard in a concentration camp and was captured in a fortress bunker overlooking Gaza.
     Father Shalit called upon Hamas to: “stop holding us as hostages of the symbols of yesterday’s wars". He also claimed that the Hamas is engaged in no less than ’imaginary resistance’. Seemingly, these are some very bold statements from a father who is supposed to be very concerned with his son’s fate.
     Gilad Shalit saga is no doubt an exemplary case-study of Israeli identity. In spite of the fact that Gilad Shailt is a soldier who was directly involved in the Israeli military crime against a civilian population, the Israelis and Jewish lobbies around the world insist upon presenting him as an ‘innocent victim’. The leading slogan of the Shalit campaign reads ‘Gilad Shalit, Human being, JEW’. And I ask myself is he really just an ordinary a ‘human being’ as the slogan suggests or rather a chosen one as implied by the ‘Jew’ predicate? And if he is just a human being, why exactly did they add the ‘Jew’ in? What is there in the ‘Jew’ title that serves the Free Shalit campaign?
     Apparently the usage of the predicates ‘Human being’ and ‘Jew’ in such a proximity is rather informative and meaningful. Within the post-holocaust Jewish and liberal discourses ‘human being’ stands for ‘innocence’ and ‘Jew’ stands for ‘victim’. Accordingly, the Shalit’ campaign slogan should be grasped as ‘FREE Gilad Shalit the innocent victim’. more.. e-mail

English actor urged to cancel appearance at Israeli festival
Open letter, PACBI, Electronic Intifada 2/9/2009
     The following is an open letter to English actor and UNICEF ambassador Sir Roger Moore sent on 8 February 2009 by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
     The Palestinian arts community has received the news of your plans to make a special guest appearance at the Red Sea International Music Festival in Eilat this February in a state of disbelief. At a time of unprecedented Israeli war crimes and grave violations of human rights, condemned by leading United Nations officials and international human rights organizations, with Israel just ending its atrocious assault on the occupied Gaza Strip, after more than 18 months of a criminal siege, described as a "prelude to genocide" by the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, your participation in this festival can only be understood as condoning this injustice and celebrating it.
     We feel exceptionally disappointed because of your otherwise significant record in advocating human rights, particularly in your capacity as the UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Israel’s bloody war on occupied Gaza caused the immediate death of over 1,300 people, of whom 410 were children, in addition to injuring another 5,300 people. As UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman noted in her statement regarding the Israeli aggression on Gaza:
     "Each day more children are being hurt, their small bodies wounded, their young lives shattered. These are not just cold figures. They talk of children’s lives interrupted. No human being can watch this without being moved. No parent can witness this and not see their own child." -- See also: Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel more.. e-mail

Gaza Obsession
Hatim Kanaaneh - Galilee, Palestine Chronicle 2/9/2009
     Friends and close associates, whether relatives or DNA-aliens, are an extension of one’s own being. At least that is how I seem to relate to the segment of humanity that I mingle with by choice. With that in mind and with my humanity severely tested by the atrocities committed in part in my name as a citizen of Israel and with my tax money, my mind and my senses have been acutely attuned to relevant signals coming from members of my immediate human circle of contacts.
     At the airport, Ali, my nephew who drove my car over to meet us, couldn’t start it on the first try and cussed Israel’s leaders loudly; he needed to get a certain part from Karmiel but didn’t feel like venturing there. No specific incident or source of fear; just a general feeling of discomfort when in the midst of the inimical environment of a Jewish town. He, his son and his brother have not put a single day’s work since the Gaza invasion started. Mahmoud, his construction contractor friend, has stripped down his crew from a daily fleet of three car-fulls to just one with five workers. It is a combination, he thinks, of the war and the world economic slump.
     Back in Arrabeh, my home town in Galilee, in shops while picking up milk and eggs, at the homes of relatives over meals, and in the yards of friends over coffee in the warm winter sun, people ask politely about my trip abroad and about the health and wellbeing of my children and grandchildren there. As I try to respond with specific information about my kin in America and our three-week trip to Morocco, the conversation keeps reverting back to Gaza.... more.. e-mail

Will the Outcome of Israel’s Elections Really Make a Difference?
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 2/9/2009
     With the upcoming February 10th Israeli election approaching fast, the outcome is still not certain. There’s been talk about alliances, accusations at various levels, and also the banning of three parties. On the 12th of January, the Central Election Committee banned all three Arab parties, Hadash, United Arab List-Ta’al and Balad, by accusing the parties of incitement, support for terror groups and refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland. The Israeli Supreme Court however overturned the decision from the CEC, with a unanimous vote on Wednesday the 21st.
     The rumor of an alliance between Kadima and Israel Beiteinu, has been coming from right-wing parties, whose slogan ”If you vote for Lieberman you are going to get Tzipi Livni as prime minister”, tries to remind people that in 2006, Israel Beiteinu was part of the Kadima-led government. These rumors were spread further by Tzipi Livni herself who would not rule out a coalition with Beiteinu
     The Likud party with Benjamin Netanyahu, is in the lead, according to a broadcast on Channel 2 Wednesday night, but Kadima is a close second - just 3 mandates behind. Kadima is followed by Israel Beiteinu. On Thursday the 5th, Netanyahu reached out to the voters who are planning to vote for Israel Beiteinu, by reassuring them that a vote for Likud would guarantee Lieberman a senior ministry. more.. e-mail

Israel expels Palestinians and other countries are forced to deal with the refugees
Iqbal Tamimi, Palestine Think Tank 2/9/2009
     Since the first minute the Zionists arrived in Palestine during the first half of the 1900s their policy was clear, it was to empty the land of its indigenous people and house immigrant Jews in their place. Almost 6 million Palestinians are now scattered all over the world as refugees since then, and hundreds of thousands were massacred and housed under the soil for resisting to abandon their home land.
     The Telegraph published an article 5 Feb 2009 by Damien McElroy titled Britain offers to accept Palestinians who fled Iraq (30 widows with children!)
     The article is about efforts to resettle Palestinians who have been forced into squalid desert refugee camps on the Iraqi border in the hardest conditions including facing hazards of fires and floods that have claimed many lives such as the story of Ahmed Mohammad who lost his pregnant wife when a fire engulfed his tent last month. "The fire took seconds to burn and I could only rescue my son." said Ahmad. There are more than 800,000 Palestinian refugees still living in Syria and 224,000 are registered with the UN as refugees. more.. e-mail

Demolition in Jahalin community leaves 30 homeless
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, Stop The Wall 2/9/2009
     Occupation forces destroyed tents belonging to five ‘Arab Jahalin families, leaving 30 people, 15 of them children, homeless. These families are part of a community that has been threatened with expulsion for some time, as their land is targeted for the expansion of the nearby Ma’ale Adummim settlement.
     The demolition began at three in the afternoon on 3 February, when a large contingent of soldiers, 200 according to one witness, and military equipment arrived at the community. They declared the area a closed military zone, detained the families that were in the tents, and demolished the structures as well as their contents. The tents belonged to Kayid Salem and his four married sons and were used to house their respective families.
     The operation finished in the evening, with the military withdrawing and leaving the families without shelter for the night. While the affected families did obtain two tents from the Red Cross, these have not been enough to meet their needs. Kayid Salem stated, “They left us outdoors between the evening and the night, where do we go? There isn’t anywhere; everything is confiscated and closed for settlements. Where do we go, who will shelter us?"
     This particular Jahalin community is located east of al-‘Eizariya, in Bir al-Maskub. The whole community is threatened with expulsion; along with the Salem family, 14 other families, around 100 persons, have been told to collect their collect their possessions and leave the area. This is to clear the area for the expansion of Ma’ale Adummim. more.. e-mail

Israeli women expose companies complicit in occupation
Adri Nieuwhof, Electronic Intifada 2/8/2009
     Two years ago the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace set up its project entitled, Who Profits from the Israeli occupation? The coalition has a track record of successfully mobilizing the Israeli public in protests against the occupation, for women’s rights and social-economic justice. For instance, on the day Israel’s onslaught in Gaza began, hundreds of protesters were demonstrating that evening in the streets of Tel Aviv. In January, the Coalition officially launched its on-line database, www.whoprofits.org , listing companies directly involved in the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights. Dalit Baum, coordinator of the project, explains to The Electronic Intifada contributor Adri Nieuwhof how the project came about.
     The Electronic Intifada: Can you please introduce yourself to readers?
     Dalit Baum: Let me first of all emphasize that this database is not just the initiative of a small group of lefties, but of a broad coalition. The Coalition of Women for Peace was founded in the early days of the second [Palestinian] intifada, and represents thousands of women organized in nine organizations, including Machsom Watch, Women in Black, Bat Shalom and New Profile. I am one of the co-founders of the coalition. You can find more info about us on our website. The "Whoprofits" project is carried out by a group of activists in our coalition. It is mainly run by volunteers. -- See also: Who Profits from the Israeli occupation? and Coalition of Women for Peace more.. e-mail

The resistance option
Robin Yassin-Kassab, Electronic Intifada 2/8/2009
     Hamas isn’t Hizballah and Gaza isn’t Lebanon. The resistance in Gaza -- which includes leftist and nationalist as well as Islamist forces -- doesn’t have mountains to fight in. It has no strategic depth. It doesn’t have Syria behind it to keep supply lines open; instead it has Israel’s wall and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s goons. Lebanese civilians can flee north and east, while Gaza’s repeat-refugees have no escape. The Lebanese have their farms, and supplies from outside; Gaza has been under total siege for years. Hizballah has remarkable discipline and is surely the best-trained, most disciplined force in the region. Although it has made great strides, Hamas is still undisciplined. Crucially, Hizballah has air-tight intelligence control in Lebanon, while Gaza contains collaborators like maggots in a corpse.
     But Hamas is still standing. On the rare occasions when Israel actually fought -- rather than just called in air strikes -- its soldiers reported "ferocious" resistance. Hamas withstood 22 days of the most barbaric bombing Zionism has yet stooped to, and did not surrender. Rocket fire continued from Gaza after Israel declared its unilateral ceasefire. more.. e-mail

Interview with Franklin Lamb: Self Defense or War Crime? (Part I)
Lawyers Without Borders, Palestine Chronicle 2/7/2009
     Part I: What Law Applies?
     Interviewer’s Note: On December 27, 2008, Israel launched a devastating 22 day and night bombardment of the Gaza strip. The assault left, amidst an estimated 600,000 tons of concrete rubble, some 1,740 dead (this figure includes more than 350 ’forgotten’ stillbirths and trauma-caused abortions in Gaza during the 22 days of terror), a figure that increases as the severely injured continue to die. A majority of the victims were civilians, including nearly 900 (again including the stillborn) children, approximately 5,500 severely wounded, and more than one third of the 1.5 million population was displaced while more than 14,000 homes were completely destroyed. Approximately 92,000 Palestinians are still homeless with more than 16,000 living as many as 20 to a small tent without latrines, as supplies remain blocked at the borders.
     Single-limb fractures and the walking wounded are not included in the above figures, according to renowned British surgeon Dr. Swee Ang, currently conducting an on-the-ground medical investigation in Gaza. Dr. Swee and her medical colleagues estimate that of the severely injured, 1,600 will suffer permanent disabilities. These include amputations, spinal cord injuries, head injuries, and large burns with crippling contractures. -- See also: Interview with Franklin Lamb: Self Defense or War Crime? (Part II) more.. e-mail

Interview with Franklin Lamb: Self Defense or War Crime? (Part II)
Lawyers Without Borders, Palestine Chronicle 2/7/2009
     Part II: Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law: What Remedy?
     Interviewer’s Note: On December 27, 2008, Israel launched a devastating 22 day and night bombardment of the Gaza strip. The assault left, amidst an estimated 600,000 tons of concrete rubble, some 1,740 dead (this figure includes more than 350 ’forgotten’ stillbirths and trauma-caused abortions in Gaza during the 22 days of terror), a figure that increases as the severely injured continue to die. A majority of the victims were civilians, including nearly 900 (again including the stillborn) children, approximately 5,500 severely wounded, and more than one third of the 1.5 million population was displaced while more than 14,000 homes were completely destroyed. Approximately 92,000 Palestinians are still homeless with more than 16,000 living as many as 20 to a small tent without latrines, as supplies remain blocked at the borders.
     International Lawyers without Borders and Hokok, the International Coalition against Impunity, asked American international lawyer and researcher, Dr. Franklin Lamb, of the Sabra-Shatila Foundation, currently based in Beirut, to comment on Israeli claims. In the following interview Lamb offers his brief analysis of the conduct of Israel and Hamas, against a backdrop of continuing on-the-ground investigations in Gaza. Dr. Lamb was interviewed at UNESCO Palace in Beirut. A transcript follows. -- See also: Interview with Franklin Lamb: Self Defense or War Crime? (Part I) more.. e-mail

When Rice sank, my turtle swam
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 2/7/2009
     The world is a better place today, because Condoleezza Rice has retired from American public service, and my water turtle Jerry has found a new home with friends in Beirut. My water turtle Jerry has always been the best barometer I know of American diplomacy in the Middle East. For the entire five years of his life to date, his antics in and out of his water tank home on our balcony overlooking the Mediterranean have always echoed larger worlds. He had the misfortune five years ago to be born into the era of Condoleezza Rice. He tried his best - within the limits of a water turtle’s world - to help the lady deal with the many challenges she faced.
     Water turtles do not have many ways to easily communicate with humans, but Jerry and I understood the code he developed. When the US was wreaking havoc in Iraq, Jerry would sulk for days on end, neither eating nor swimming. He would burrow under the mound of colored stones I bought him and remain there, signaling that events in progress were not to his liking, and that a change in direction was needed. more.. e-mail

World needs credible body to pursue Israeli war criminals
Khalid Amayreh, Palestinian Information Center 2/7/2009
     On 27th December, Israel carried out a genocidal blitzkrieg against the estimated 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, using state-of-the-art of the American technology of death.
     These deadly weapons used against the imprisoned Gaza inhabitants include , inter alia, F-16 war planes, equipped with all sorts of lethal missiles including bunker buster bombs,  apache helicopters, white Phosphorous shells, flechette dart shells, as well as the  Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME), a deadly weapon recently developed by the United States army to create a powerful and lethal blast over a small area.
     DIME is believed to still be in the experimental stage. However, it is widely believed that Israel had received a green light from the Pentagon to use Gaza as a testing ground.
     In addition, Israel used all other conventional weapons, including tank and artillery shells against densely populated neighborhoods. more.. e-mail

Change the Israel Lobby
Ramzy Baroud, Middle East Online 2/7/2009
     One cannot emphasize enough the stranglehold Israel’s lobbying infrastructure has on US foreign policy. The events of recent weeks undoubtedly attest to this. “The special relationship” that has been historically fostered between the US and Israel in fact, is often a relationship of leverage, manipulation and intimidation, and often leads to the US supporting actions or resolutions that stand at complete odds with the interests of the American people.
     The promise of change echoed the world over as people from all corners anticipated the magic moment Obama could actually change the devastating reality in which we live today. But just weeks before his inauguration, Israel unleashed the most barbaric attacks on defenseless Palestinian civilians since 1948. Civil societies expressed outrage and called for Israeli leaders to be tried for war crimes and genocide. more.. e-mail

Obama’s Mideast ways are pretty similar to Bush’s
Yossi Alpher, Daily Star 2/9/2009
     It is too early to evaluate the direction the Mitchell mission is taking. Mitchell’s preliminary visit, immediately after the war in Gaza and just days before Israel’s elections, can only be defined as an orientation tour. Hence, at this early date we can address the Mitchell mission only in terms of the direction George Mitchell appears to be headed.
     Based on this first foray into the region, Mitchell’s mission can already be characterized as one enveloped in a paradox: He is not addressing all those Middle East actors who will have to be addressed if progress is to be achieved and if the principles laid out by President Barack Obama for dealing with the Middle East are to be honored.
     Here we must recall the backdrop to Mitchell’s appointment and examine the course of this first visit. Back in 2001, it was Mitchell who coined a certain equation linking cessation of both Palestinian violence and Israeli settlement expansion. In the ensuing years, US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon managed to address that equation in rather unique terms: they agreed to the total rejection of Palestinian violence, a wink and a nod at settlement expansion, but also the removal of all the Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip. more.. e-mail

The children of Shatila: no future and no past
Curtis Bell writing from the United States, Electronic Intifada 2/8/2009
     My wife Linda and I went back to Beirut, Lebanon recently to visit the American Community School that I graduated from in the 1950s. One of the counselors at the school, an American named David Bakis, has started a project to bring some cheer into the lives of children in the Palestinian refugee camps near Beirut. No easy task.
     Every Sunday afternoon David takes 20 or so children from one of the Palestinian refugee camps on an outing, traveling by school bus. We accompanied David to Shatila refugee camp one Sunday. Shatila is the camp where a right-wing Christian militia massacred Palestinian men, women, and children in 1982, during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the midst of the country’s ongoing civil war. Estimates of the number killed in Shatila and the neighboring Sabra camp vary widely between 500 and 3,000. The Israeli army occupied Beirut at the time and had the camps surrounded. They allowed the militia into the camps and did not stop the massacre when they knew it was going on.
     The eight- to 10-year-olds of Shatila were waiting for us when we arrived. They were full of smiles, laughter and anticipation as they greeted David. They were very excited about the movie they were going to see that afternoon in downtown Beirut. The bright, smiling faces of the children were in contrast to the generally somber faces of the adults walking by. The children’s happy faces were also in contrast to the squalid conditions of the camp.... more.. e-mail

A Zoo in Rafah – Poems
The Palestine Chronicle is pleased to feature three new poems, Palestine Chronicle 2/8/2009
     At Fakhani, The Shoe: Lebanon, After the Bombing
     It is a
     Shoe a
     Single baby’s
     Shoe
     I pull it from the
     Wreckage in Fakhani, a refugee
     Shoe
     Separated from its
     Foot, it is April
     And it is darkening in the covering
     Black Lebanese earth, the soft earth
     Has cracked its white surface, marked with
     Streaks of blood
    
     And who wore this shoe, what
     Little girl, or was it a
     Boy, what did the
     Father say when he
     Smiled, did he laugh
     Back, or was she a shy girl who had
     Already learned to be a
     Coquette – or was she
     Chubby and withdrawn among
     People, if he was a boy
     Was he already strong, his
     Dark hair flying as he
     Wrestled his father’s
     Arm – and what
     Did her mother say to her.... more.. e-mail

I Rage - A Poem
The Palestine Chronicle is pleased to feature a new poem, Palestine Chronicle 2/8/2009
     I Rage
     I rage
     I rage
     I rage
     I rage against
     The gods who let the world spin out of control
     I rage against the system that deceives us
     I rage against the machinery that destroys
     Fed by silent people
     Acquiescence
     Apathy
     And trickery
     I rage because we should rage
     And not be subdued
     Or pacified
     Or patronized
     I rage against the system that watches with glee
     As we tear ourselves to pieces
     Become monsters that howl at the moon.... more.. e-mail

Israeli Etchings - A Poem
Vi Ransel, Palestine Chronicle 2/7/2009
     Two grim images from Gaza
     acid-etched themselves
     into my consciousness,
     a little girls’ head
     and a baby’s body.
      It was odd to see
     her tousled hair, her smudged small cheeks
     on a pile of rubble as if asleep
     at an IDF soldier’s feet
     severed from the rest of her
     perhaps by the pressure waves
     of limb-slicing, US-supplied
     dense inert metal explosives,
     or DIMES.... more.. e-mail

Gaza shakes American Arab and Muslim youth
Yasmin Qureshi, Electronic Intifada, Palestine Monitor 2/7/2009
     The most recent assault on Gaza has been an awakening for American Arab and Muslim youth.
     The attacks came at the most festive holiday season of the year. Instead of celebrating, many young American Arab and Muslim teenagers and kids spent their time protesting on the streets as they watched disturbing and devastating images streaming into their living rooms and onto their computers.
     This is a new generation of youth: a generation that grew up witnessing gross violations of US civil liberties, under the shadow of the Patriot Act. They grew up watching Iraq and Afghanistan being destroyed by US military weapons; they saw citizens of countries of their ancestors tortured and humiliated. They have not forgotten Israel’s unjustified attack on Lebanon only two years ago. Many youth have profound attachments to the lands that their parents or great-grandparents came from, and where many still have family.
     "We were very young when [the 11 September 2001 attacks] happened. We grew up under Bush’s presidency and witnessed our community being marginalized. We were often questioned about our religion and culture. This brought many of us closer and we started organizing awareness events on campus," said Billal Asghar, a senior global studies and health science major at San Jose State University. more.. e-mail

Israel’s Subtle Propaganda Strategy
Dan Lieberman, Palestine Chronicle 2/7/2009
     Propaganda is most effective when subtly planted and the reader remains unaware that a commentary is actually indoctrination. Sometimes the writer is not cognizant that what he has published has been moved by its propaganda effect – sources for the material are actually misleading and publication is facilitated when the commentary fits a particular agenda.
     Two recent publications, a response by United States Senator Benjamin Cardin to an Amnesty International plea and an article in Newsweek magazine, A Plan of Attack for Peace by Daniel Klaidman, Jan. 12, 2009, demonstrate how far Israel’s supporters can reach to mislead the public. The former remarks, coming from a U.S. Senator, are particularly insidious – careless disregard for a defenseless Palestinian community and an excuse for those whom Amnesty International considers to have shown a lopsided response to the recent violence and who have exhibited lackadaisical efforts to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. more.. e-mail

George Mitchell, a new face on an old sales pitch
Khader Khader, Daily Star 2/6/2009
     The Middle East peace process never depended on the personality of the occupant of the White House. Had it, we might have seen some progress over the past few decades. Some presidents have tried to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; others have ignored it under various pretexts. All have one thing in common: no one ever tried to impose a solution, and the current president, Barack Obama, is no different.
     The period between Obama’s official inauguration and the present moment has not yet witnessed any developments in terms of US policy on the peace process. Although Washington was quick to dispatch its new envoy, George Mitchell, to the region, the statements and foreign policy principles declared so far confirm the above-mentioned paradigm.
     The first indicator can be seen in the Obama administration’s agenda as published on the White House Web page under "Foreign Policy - Renewing American Diplomacy". This states that on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, "Obama and Biden will make progress ... a key diplomatic priority from day one. They will make a sustained push - working with Israelis and Palestinians - to achieve the goal of two states, a Jewish state in Israel and a Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and security. more.. e-mail

Stay in the street
Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/5/2009
     The protest movement against Israel must be sustained, for Obama is not going to change the essence of America’s Middle East course.
     I will sum up the transition in US foreign policy as follows: in the Bush era, since September 2001, US foreign policy entailed the orchestration of crisis that played on the twin themes of the "war against terror" and "those who aren’t with us are against us." The Barack Obama era opened with the two central chords, "diplomacy first" and "those who aren’t with us could be with us, and those who can not be won over will be isolated and boycotted before recourse to force."
     Obama has taken pains to make it clear that the "us" involved is pretty much the same, only having changed insofar as to make it possible for him to become president. Nor is he the one who brought this change, and the change was hardly sudden. It required enormous sacrifices from African Americans and decades of sustained efforts on the part of civil rights movements in order to bring the White House within his grasp. The new president represents the Democratic wing of that "us". Yet he is promoting the greatest possible continuity with what went before and the greatest possible bipartisanship, to which testify keeping Robert Gates as secretary of defence and designating George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East (Mitchell was cosponsor of the Mitchell-Tenet plan that preceded the roadmap). The neoconservatives are out. more.. e-mail

The unity imperative
Hassan Nafaa, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/5/2009
     Only unity in action can save the Arab order from imminent collapse, and the Arab world from new waves of colonialism and desolation.
     "The Arab role has disintegrated and vanished. The Arab position is weak and in tatters. Palestinian ranks are divided and in disarray. These factors combined have given rise to a policy borne of arrogance and contempt of riding roughshod over the Arabs. In Egypt we have a folk saying that goes, ’Once you know it will pay, wring out the last drop.’ Evidently Israel could see the Arabs as easy prey and set about wringing out the last drop by occupying their land, building settlements, imposing blockades and wreaking murder and destruction. This is the heart of the matter. We must change the way Israel looks at us. We must reassess our position in its entirety and forge a solid, respectable collective Arab position. The lives of nations in international relations are like the lives of individuals in society. Those that respect themselves will be respected. Those that abase themselves invite contempt. They might win some pity, or a feeble sympathetic smile, or even a bit of benefit, but they will also be dealt a large amount of mockery and scorn."
     With these moving words, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa opened the extraordinary session of the Arab foreign Ministers Council on 31 December in Cairo. The fiendish Israeli killing machine was thrashing through Gaza reaping a huge harvest of innocent Arab lives. On 19 January, on the fringes of the Arab economic summit in Kuwait, Moussa addressed a large assembly of representatives of Arab civil society and the business community saying: "The Arab League has been placed on the defensive in the face of this assault that may lead to the collapse of the entire Arab order if this uneven situation that we perceive and are experiencing even at this moment persists...." more.. e-mail

Healing Gaza’s wounds
James Zogby, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/5/2009
     Though the drama of war has subsided, the world must not forget Gaza’s victims.
     Viewing the aftermath of the assault on Gaza and listening to the commentary coming from Israel, the Arab world and from Israel’s supporters in the US can be disturbing on many levels. Most troubling is the failure of apologists for both sides to even consider the human and social dimensions of the profound tragedy that has just occurred. What follows from this is their inability to understand the war’s long-term consequences.
     Because, in fact, Palestinians are fully human and, therefore, mourn their dead, feel their wounds and hold their hurt in their hearts as deeply as the rest of us, the impact of this calamity requires attention. It cannot be just passed over, objectified or reduced to faceless numbers, or dismissed with the stroke of an apologist’s pen.
     There is over 1,400 dead, more than 5,000 injured and thousands more (pregnant women, cancer patients, etc.) who suffered irreparable harm because they could not receive the hospital care they needed during this conflict. In addition, thousands of homes were destroyed, affecting the lives and fortunes of hundreds of thousands. Because of Gaza’s strong family ties and its population density, no one in that impoverished strip was untouched -- either by personal loss, or by the pain resulting from this assault. more.. e-mail

Going for the jugular
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/5/2009
     Meshaal’s call to replace the PLO is met by alarm, and not only among so-called moderate Palestinian and Arab players.
     There is no love lost between Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), but no one in Doha, Qatar, expected Khaled Meshaal to go for the jugular, at least not during a festive event to celebrate the Gaza "victory". But soon after the Hamas political bureau chief took the podium, it was clear that this wasn’t going to be just another run-of-the-mill speech.
     The Palestinians need to form a new umbrella organisation to speak for all of them, Meshaal told a stunned audience. Although he didn’t call this new umbrella organisation a substitute for the PLO, few doubted that this was his real aim. The PLO was no longer representing the Palestinian people and its leaders were Israeli collaborators, he stated.
     The next day, thousands of Hamas supporters took to the streets in Gaza, shouting anti-PLO slogans and calling for the key Palestinian organisation to be replaced with another one. The PLO’s leaders were conspiring against the nation and selling Palestinian rights down the river, Hamas supporters claimed. Some pointed out that Yasser Abed Rabbo, the PLO secretary who signed a document called the Cairo Agreement with Yossi Beilin, practically abandoned the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. more.. e-mail

Don’t undermine the PLO
Galal Nassar, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/5/2009
     Hamas’s suggestion of replacing the PLO would take the Palestinian struggle back to square one.
     The first Intifada, launched on 9 October 1987, was a concerted effort carried out by all resistance groups acting under guidance from their umbrella organisation, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Less than two years after the Intifada broke out, a new group came onto the scene. It called itself the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas.
     Since its inception, Hamas disassociated itself from the PLO, refusing to join it, declining to coordinate with it, and generally acting as if it wasn’t there. It is no coincidence, therefore, that Hamas celebrates the Intifada on 8 October, not on 9 October as the rest of Palestinian groups do.
     Hamas sees itself as a group standing outside the mainstream of the resistance, with no obligation to the needs of Palestinian national unity. In fact, Hamas sees itself as an alternative to the mainstream, a force that should rise to the top, eventually replacing the PLO. more.. e-mail

The Forbidden Debate
Sami Jamil Jadallah, Palestine Think Tank 2/7/2009
     In the US and the West, we are able and free to debate God and HIS/HER existence, debate Jesus, Moses, Mohamed, debate America, its failures and its successes, debate our constitution and its interpretations. We are free to debate George Bush and his stupidity, his crimes against America and the world, and his many failures. We are free to debate anything and everything except Zionism, Israel and Judaism. In Palestine and the Arab world, we are allowed to discuss few things but one thing no one dares to discuss is the PLO, its illegitimacy and its failures.
     Israel committed war crimes for over 20 days in Gaza, killing and murdering in cold blood women and children, destroying homes, schools, social centers, UN facilities, mosques and hospitals yet, no one in the US and the West dare to say anything let alone criticize Israel, its racist and criminal practices, as we have seen in the BBC’s refusal to air calls for aid to Gaza and in the attack on Paul Simon and CBC for its airing of the recent special of why a two state solution is not possible any more.
     Mahmoud Abbas, whose presidential term finished and expired a couple of weeks ago and who lost any and all legitimacy as president of Palestine and the Palestinian Authority stood up yesterday in Cairo and declared that under no circumstances will there be any dialogue with those who (Hamas) questions the legitimacy of the Palestine Liberation Organization. more.. e-mail

Upholding justice
Salama A Salama, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/5/2009
     At a time when the Arab League and the Egyptian Foreign Ministry are documenting Israel’s war crimes in the recent onslaught against Gaza, some European countries -- including Spain -- are thinking of changing their laws to ensure that Israeli war criminals are never brought to trial in their courts.
     Fouad Abdel-Moneim Riyad, one of Egypt’s top legal experts and a former judge at the International Criminal Court, says that available evidence indicates that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. His views are shared by fair-minded Israelis, including historian Ilan Pappe. Some of Israel’s crimes are believed to have exceeded in cruelty the crimes committed in the last decade in Bosnia.
     The problem, however, is that the procedures for trying war criminals in any particular country are subject to international calculations and political pressures, some of which are not necessarily in our favour as Arabs. It is therefore advisable for Arab countries to seek the help of civil institutions and appeal to conscientious individuals to assist in building the legal case and bringing Israeli criminals to justice.
     The atrocities that have been committed need to become public knowledge, for they constitute crimes against humanity and an impediment to efforts aiming to promote human rights. more.. e-mail

A humanitarian offensive
Nicola Nasser, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/5/2009
     In tying humanitarian relief to the ceasefire, European and American diplomats are again taking sides against the Palestinians, inevitably sustaining the conflict.
     Stubbornly insisting on putting the cart before the horse as the approach to a "durable and sustainable" ceasefire in Gaza, US and European diplomacy is building on a misleading Israeli premise that the 22-day military operation dubbed "Operation Cast Lead" was a reaction and not a premeditated and long planned scheme that found in the change of guard in Washington DC perfect timing. It was "not simply a reaction", but "a calculation", Daniel Klaidman wrote in Newsweek on 10 January.
     American and European diplomats are reiterating Israel’s propagandistic justification: "What would any normal country do if they were threatened by rocket fire? They would act." US President Barack Obama was the last Western leader to uphold this Israeli claim, but he upheld it nonetheless. "But Israel is not a normal country, it is an occupying power," former Palestinian-Israeli member of Knesset Azmi Bishara said. Moreover what country would tolerate an eight- year siege and not consider it an act of war unworthy of a national reaction? Why should Western diplomacy judge Palestinians in Gaza as abnormal? more.. e-mail

If not fascism, what is?
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/5/2009
     Without censure, a growing current in Israeli politics is calling for the outright killing of Palestinians.
     His name is Avigdor Lieberman and he is widely expected to be the main surprise of the Israeli elections, slated to take place 10 February.
     Many Israeli intellectuals dub Lieberman as the secular equivalent of Meir Kahana, the slain founder of the Kach terrorist group who advocated genocidal ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in Israel-Palestine. Kahana was assassinated in Manhattan, New York, in 1990 shortly after giving a speech in which he called for the annihilation and expulsion of Palestinians from "the Land of Israel".
     According to most opinion polls, Lieberman’s party, Yisrael Beiteinu, or "Israel is our Home", is projected to win 16-17 Knesset seats out of 120 making up the Israeli parliament. This would allow Yisrael Beiteinu to overtake the Labour Party, led by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, to become the third largest party in the Israeli political system, after the Likud and Kadima parties. Lieberman’s party will likely be a chief coalition partner in the next Israeli government. more.. e-mail

Kahane won
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 2/8/2009
     Rabbi Meir Kahane can rest in peace: His doctrine has won. Twenty years after his Knesset list was disqualified and 18 years after he was murdered, Kahanism has become legitimate in public discourse. If there is something that typifies Israel’s current murky, hollow election campaign, which ends the day after tomorrow, it is the transformation of racism and nationalism into accepted values.
     If Kahane were alive and running for the 18th Knesset, not only would his list not be banned, it would win many votes, as Yisrael Beiteinu is expected to do. The prohibited has become permitted, the ostracized is now accepted, the destestable has become the talented - that’s the slippery slope down which Israeli society has skidded over the past two decades.
     There’s no need to refer to Haaretz’s startling revelation that Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman was a member of Kahane’s Kach party in his youth: This campaign’s dark horse was and is a Kahanist. The differences between Kach and Yisrael Beiteinu are minuscule, not fundamental and certainly not a matter of morality. The differences are in tactical nuances: Lieberman calls for a fascist "test of loyalty" as a condition for granting citizenship to Israel’s Arabs, while Kahane called for the unconditional annulment of their citizenship. One racist (Lieberman) calls for their transfer to the Palestinian state, the other (Kahane) called for their deportation. -- See also: Yaalon: Lieberman may recommend Livni more.. e-mail

A shady deal on the West Bank
Haaretz Editorial, Ha’aretz 2/8/2009
     A protocol of discussions with settler representatives on the terms of evacuating Migron, the contents of which were reported in Haaretz last Wednesday, reveals that in exchange for the promise of evacuating the outpost without striking soldiers or abusing police officers, Barak is offering an incentive as a reward for this group of criminals.
     The Olmert government was elected on the basis of its promise to advance a "realignment" in the West Bank, at the center of which stood the evacuation of dozens of settlements. But it concludes its term without having upheld one of the commitments its predecessor made to the U.S. administration - the promise to dismantle all outposts built since March 2001.
     The fate of Migron, the largest illegal outpost, which was built on private Palestinian land near Ramallah, becomes clearer when considering the High Court of Justice’s sluggishness. The state promised to evacuate it, but repeatedly asked to postpone the evacuation in an attempt to reach a deal with the settlers, which would prevent a violent confrontation. more.. e-mail

Hamas Is Not Going Away
Mel Frykberg, Inter Press Service 2/8/2009
     RAMALLAH, Feb 6(IPS) - Despite intensive efforts by Israel, the international community and a number of Arab leaders to weaken and destroy Hamas through economic, punitive and military action, the Islamist organisation continues to be a force to reckon with.
     Hamas won free and fair democratic elections in January 2006. The U.S. pushed for these elections, which were monitored by international observers including ex-U.S. president Jimmy Carter, and Israel permitted them to be held.
     Hamas has since then been dominant, though it took effective control in June 2007, more than a year after its election victory. The Gaza Strip, which the resistance group controls, took a serious battering during Israel’s 22-day military assault, codenamed Operation Cast Lead.
     The coastal territory has also been economically crippled by nearly two years of an Israeli embargo which has hermetically sealed Gaza off from the rest of the world, preventing the import of all but a tiny flow of humanitarian aid and goods. more.. e-mail

Khirbet Tana to be razed, inhabitants expelled
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, Stop The Wall 2/6/2009
     The so-called High Court of Justice issued the final decision relating to Khirbet Tana, east of Nablus city, sanctioning the demolition of the village and the expulsion of the entire population.
     Khirbet Tana is east of Beit Furik and just west of the Mekhora settlement. The people of the village are primarily shepherds and farmers who established themselves in the area some time ago, and who rely on the nearby springs and shared water wells for their animals and crops. Around 75 families live in the area, residing in older homes as well as in caves. There are approximately 25 residential and agricultural structures in the village.
     The residents of Khirbet Tana have been in an ongoing struggle to remain on their land. Like all Palestinians in Area C, they are denied the right to construct new structures or expand their homes. Soldiers have made a point of constantly harassing the villagers, raiding homes, pursuing and detaining shepherds, destroying crops and allowing settlers to carry out attacks. In 2005, Occupation forces razed a group of homes, but families insisted on staying and rebuilt as best they could. more.. e-mail

Deconstructing Israel’s ’Right to Exist’
Rannie Amiri, Palestine Chronicle 2/6/2009
     "There was no such thing as Palestinians ... They did not exist." - Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (The Sunday Times, 15 June 1969)
     Gaza is abuzz with activity.
     Humanitarian groups and relief agencies are trying to squeeze through Israeli and Egyptian bottlenecks to deliver their much-needed supplies; fighter jets bomb tunnels and kill ‘militants’ as Ehud Olmert maintains he is abiding by the ceasefire; international human rights lawyers are busy recording eyewitness testimony and gathering evidence for future war crimes tribunals; Palestinian civilians are returning to their destroyed homes to sift through the rubble and mourn their dead; and intense negotiations underway in Cairo hope to broker an extended truce between Israel and Hamas.
     But even if all of Gaza’s outstanding issues were miraculously resolved to Tel Aviv’s satisfaction, Israel will still find pretext to continue agitating against Hamas and the people of Gaza.
     Why?
     Because they have yet to recognize Israel’s ‘right to exist’. more.. e-mail

A real Arab peace initiative
Ahmad Hijazi, Electronic Intifada 2/5/2009
     The Arab peace initiative, adopted by the Arab League at its 2002 summit in Beirut, misses fundamental ingredients that would make the blood of vitality flow through its weak veins.
     After long years of Arab marketing, repetition and explanations (often very boring), we are still at the starting line. Large segments of Arab public opinion view the initiative with suspicion and doubt, and the Israelis -- for reasons beyond my comprehension -- want to avoid it as much as possible.
     The initiative’s creators have already mourned its demise (or at least they keep threatening to mourn it). Sadly, the great compromises the Arabs offered did nothing to end the conflict, which cannot be ended without treating its root causes. How ironic that an initiative full of compromise was thrown back in our faces to intensify our humiliation.
     So it is time to withdraw the Arab Peace initiative -- indeed it is a duty to do so -- and put forward a new one that starts something like this:
     The Arab peoples and nations -- even though they understand the suffering of the Jewish people, and express their sincere wish to humanely find a peaceful solution -- will not agree to a solution that compromises their own rights and interests and negates the suffering caused by the conflict. more.. e-mail

Fair trade, not aid, is the way forward
Gen Sander, Electronic Intifada 2/6/2009
     Some would argue that fair trade never really existed in the Gaza Strip -- at least not in the "certified" way. Needing to meet certain standards for present-day international export is reasonable enough, but fair trade can also exist domestically or internationally, without all the fuss and formalities. If we understand fair trade to be about dignity, empowerment, sustainability, justice and social responsibility, then any form of exchange that meets those criteria should be recognized as just that.
     Before the days of Israel’s crippling siege of the Gaza Strip, six women’s couscous processing cooperatives were in operation in Gaza, built on the foundation of the above criteria. Their products, however, did not bear a fair trade certification mark that made the product instantly and internationally recognized as being fair trade. They were, however, exported by the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC), a member of the International Federation for Alternative Trade (IFAT, recently renamed the World Fair Trade Organization), so there is no question as to whether or not the products were actually fair trade. With the help of the Fair Trade department of PARC, which also provided their founding infrastructure, these co-ops exported more than 100 tons of couscous in 2006 to fair trade organizations all over Europe. That initiative had so much potential and seemed like a viable and promising avenue for economic development -- "had" being the pivotal word. more.. e-mail

Funding struggle slowing cluster bomb clearance in south
IRIN, Electronic Intifada 2/6/2009
     BEIRUT (IRIN) - Waning international interest and funding is harming efforts to rid southern Lebanon of its hundreds of thousands of remaining cluster bomblets, posing a continuing threat to farmers and children, according to mine clearance organizations.
     Israel dropped a large number of cluster bombs on southern Lebanon during the July 2006. Each bomb can release hundreds of individual bomblets, and about a quarter failed to explode on impact, effectively becoming landmines that can kill or maim.
     "For almost all the organizations, it’s a continuous struggle to generate enough interest and funding to keep the teams on the ground working, which obviously has an impact on the amount of cluster bombs [bomblets] they can clear," said Tekimiti Gilbert, the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre’s (UNMACC) acting program manager.
     This year started with 33 teams on the ground, down from 44 last year, he said. But six of those teams, hired by the UK-based non-governmental organization Mines Advisory Group (MAG) and Denmark’s DanChurchAid, have been dropped since then. more.. e-mail

Justice for Palestinians vs. Balanced Reporting
Dina Jadallah-Taschler, Palestine Chronicle 2/6/2009
     It is relatively easy for many casual observers of Middle East events to be deceived by balanced and ostensibly objective reporting. Simplistic divisions and false dichotomies are often presented. Moderates are juxtaposed against extremists and their identities vary according to current hegemonic agendas. Alternatively, competing narratives are asserted, both of which are assumed to have equal degrees of validity. The aim, of course, is to shape worldviews. Instead of informing readers about asymmetric claims, the reports frequently hide the ugly truth by presenting competing arguments as equivalent.
     As consumers of this information, we must be more analytical and factual. It is time to do what mainstream reporting does not want the reader to do: to think. One must strip down the narrative and discover the basic truth. For Palestinians and beneath all the arguments, is a question of Justice. Without an acknowledgement of injustice, there is no truth in balanced competing narratives. Without it, there will be no solutions, no rights, and no peace. more.. e-mail

No Israeli Goods: Victory for Worker Solidarity
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and Palestine Solidarity, Palestine Chronicle 2/6/2009
     ’COSATU decided to intensify its efforts in support of the Palestinian people.’
     The Congress of South African Trade Union is pleased to announce that its members, dock workers belonging to the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) achieved a victory last night when they stood firm by their decision not to offload the Johanna Russ, a ship that was carrying Israeli goods to South Africa. This, despite threats to COSATU members from sections of the pro-Israeli lobby, and despite severe provocation.
     The Johanna Russ, flying an Antigua flag, is owned by M. Dizengoff and Co., an established "pioneer of the modern era of shipping business in the Middle East" and shipping agent for the ironically named Zim Israel Navigation Company. (Ironic because, last year, the same SATAWU members refused to offload the Chinese ship An Yue Jiang, which was carrying arms and ammunition destined for Robert Mugabe’s army.) The worker action last night took place despite attempted subterfuge on the part of the owners of the shipping company. There was an attempt to confound the plan by arriving earlier than originally scheduled, which was 8 February. Dates for the berthing of the Johanna Russ were changed constantly. Yesterday morning, SATAWU members were told that the ship would dock this morning (Friday) at 02:00. Thanks to the vigilance of the dock workers, SATAWU discovered that the ship had docked on Wednesday morning and was due to be offloaded last night at 21:00. But the vigilant workers were on guard and immediately they realised that it had docked, they then refused to handle it, despite pressures from management. SATAWU members maintained their refusal to offload the ship and also attempted to ensure that scab labour would not be used. more.. e-mail

No place like home
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 2/5/2009
     GAZA STRIP- Within seconds A’amer al-Dayeh lost his parents, two sisters, three sisters-in-law, three brothers and 12 of their children. The youngest, Sansabeel, was 3 months old. The oldest, Ali, was 11. It happened on January 6, when an Israeli plane bombed Dayeh’s house between 5:30 and 6 A.M. He is now living with relatives, his home destroyed. For four years he lived in the West Bank, where he studied education at An-Najah National University in Nablus, and worked in a Palestinian Authority security agency under Yasser Arafat. For a month in 2002 he was trapped with the Palestinian leader in the Muqata in Ramallah during the Israeli siege on the PA headquarters.
     On the morning of Tuesday, January 6, during the 60th hour of the Israel Defense Forces’ ground offensive, soldiers had already deployed among the houses in the southernmost section of the Zeitoun neighborhood, a few kilometers from where Dayeh lived, and from which the frightening noises of explosions and gunfire emanated for two days. Many people started to flee.
     On the narrow, densely built-up street, a rumor spread that the IDF was going to bombard the house of the Dayehs’ neighbors and that the Red Cross had informed the family. Local residents, including the Dayehs, left their homes in a panic and started heading west. But then someone called the Red Cross, which said there was no talk of any such action, "and everyone went back, including our family." more.. e-mail

The Other Side of Gaza
Shafiq Morton - Cape Town, Palestine Chronicle 2/5/2009
     The Israelis invaded Gaza the day I went on leave. My Blackberry started buzzing with messages, and did not let up for 22 days. One of my contacts in Gaza City SMSed me on the first night of bombing: “WE R NOT ALONE. ALLAH + US. 3 YEARS SIEGE. WE STILL STRONG.”
     I have kept those messages. Some are angry, some are desperate and some are heart-rending. All in the upper-case, they tell the story of Gaza in terse electronic shorthand: “SLM. 22 MASJIED DESTROY. 2,100 HOUSES DESTROY. 4,000 BUILDING DESTROY”.
     Or, “SLM…BRKG NEWS…DIS A.M. 6 CHILDREN MARTYR” was a disturbing message that woke me from a deep sleep at 3 am one morning.
     As I was on leave, it was a strange feeling. I’d be on the beach with sand between my toes, and the Blackberry would vibrate and remind me of Gaza. I did a few radio and TV commentaries, but with the luxury of no impending deadlines, was able to spend time observing the disturbing events from a distance.
     There were several things about “Operation Cast Lead” that struck me immediately. Anger in the Arab street stood out in sharp contrast to the coyness of its leaders in capitals such as Riyadh, Cairo, Damascus and ‘Amman. Protest in the capitals of Europe also contradicted the EU’s deference towards Israel. more.. e-mail

Finding Gaza in Tel Aviv
Mona Eltahawy, Daily Star 2/6/2009
     TEL AVIV: "Are you proud of yourself for visiting Israel? Especially now?" I am an Egyptian whose country has been at peace with Israel for almost 30 years but my decision to come to Tel Aviv a day after the ceasefire ended the war between Israel and Hamas did not go down well on Facebook, where I have almost 4,000 "friends," most of whom I’ve never met but who form an invaluable and instant polling pool to current events.
     One Egyptian accused me of being in cahoots with the "Zionists, the Jews, the unbelievers and Islam haters."
     "Don’t forget to take a few lovely flowers along with your sweet smile to Uncle [Ariel] Sharon, your godfather," he wrote to me.
     A Jordanian was a bit more measured in his criticism. "I’m one of the few people remaining in the Arab world who still believes that a fair and just peace with Israel can be achieved," he told me. "But ... it’s not right to visit the Jewish state at this time when you can smell the charred Palestinian flesh from the terrace of your hotel in Tel Aviv."
     Heavy-handed imagery aside, by coming to Tel Aviv I found Gaza itself, its heartbreak, its misery and all its complexity when I met Dr. Izzeldine Abouelaish and his family, or what is left of it. more.. e-mail

Israel’s Home Front
Nadia Hijab, Middle East Online 2/5/2009
     As Israel heads toward its February 10 elections, we should reflect on the significance of Tzipi Livni’s inability to form a government last year.
     When she conceded defeat, setting the stage for a general election, the Kadima leader preferred to fail as a Jew than to succeed as an Israeli.
     How so? Like her predecessors, Livni considered only Israeli Jewish parties as possible coalition partners. When she refused to give in to demands that she exclude Jerusalem from peace negotiations, she couldn’t secure a majority. Had Livni brought in the three Arab parties, Kadima would, together with Labor and the pro-peace Meretz, have had a working Knesset coalition.
     Of course, I know as well as anyone that a coalition government of the Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel is further away than ever. Palestinian Knesset members came closest to an alliance with (but not part of) an Israeli Jewish government during the Oslo negotiations when the late premier Yitzhak Rabin relied on their votes to maintain his majority. Since then, relations have sharply deteriorated. more.. e-mail

Brother of assassination victim: it was horrible
Ali Samoudi, Palestine News Network 2/5/2009
     PNN Jenin -- Early Thursday Israeli forces assassinated 21 year old Aladdin Issam Abu Al Rub. "There was a fleeting moment between us," his brother said. Al Rub was a local commander of Saraya Al Quds, the armed resistance wing of Islamic Jihad.
     Before dawn Israeli special forces penetrated southwestern Jenin town of Qabatiya. Late this afternoon thousands of people walked in a funeral procession.
     It was 4:30 am in the northern West Bank. Al Rub’s father Issam describes awaking to the sound of an explosion in the house. "There were a number of soldiers inside with many of them pushing into the room where Ala’ and two of his brothers were sleeping."
     The father of the 21 year old says that Israeli soldiers fired directly into the bed without a question. The family denies an allegation that the young man was carrying an explosive belt. “These false claims mislead the facts of what the occupation forces committed, the execution in cold blood someone they could have arrested,” Issam Al Rub said today. more.. e-mail

Corrupt Egyptian system: feeds the IDF, starves Gazans, oppresses journalists
Iqbal Tamimi, Palestine Think Tank 2/5/2009
     Once upon an alleged democracy, the Egyptian government decided a couple of days ago to try the journalist Majdi Hussein, the secretary-general of the Egyptian Labour party in a military court - even though he is a civilian - because he broke the law when he tried to "illegally enter the Gaza Strip".
     One wonders what is legal and what is not when it comes to Gaza.  It seems the law in Egypt is extremely elastic and can accommodate all manipulations and tailoring of the law to fit different sizes of growing plots. The good old Egyptian system is abiding by the law to the letter, and that’s why it wants to try a journalist in a military court for entering Gaza "˜illegally’ while the good old authority was providing the Israeli military "˜legally’ with tons of foods through the Gaza crossings while blocking any food sent to the starved to death children of Gaza who were burned to the bone by white phosphorus by that same Israeli army Egypt was feeding. -- See also: Egypt demands international delegates, reporters and supporters to leave Gaza more.. e-mail

The limits of the Spanish 'Left' on its defence of the Palestinian people
Ángeles Diez - Translated by Manuel Talens, revised by Mary Rizzo, Palestine Think Tank 2/5/2009
     During the current Israeli aggression to Gaza both the Spanish Left and Right have built linguistic fences to position themselves around the problem. The case of the Spanish institutional Left is without any doubt paradigmatic: on one side there a party now in office – the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, PSOE – whose Minister of Foreign Affairs pretends to be a personal friend of Palestinians [1], whose Prime Minister Zapatero condemned the Israeli attacks during a PSOE meeting and whose militants (some of them) demonstrated in solidarity with Palestine. But on the other side, the government issued from this same party is among the ten main exporters of weapons to Israel, its secret services cooperates with their Israeli counterparts, it maintains preferential agreements with Tel Aviv, it supports the creation of the Sepharad-Israel House in Spain and it insists that what the party does is irrelevant to both the government’s performance and its State policies, which of course are to maintain very good diplomatic relations with “the great Israeli democracy” (so defined by the current UN President, Nicolas Sarkozy).
     If this schizophrenic performance characterizes the party in office, the case of other Spanish organizations – labour unions and other left-wing groups with institutional vocation – is no less disturbing.... more.. e-mail

Smoke, Mirrors and the Fog of Endless War
Syd Walker, Palestine Think Tank 2/5/2009
     A couple of days ago I wrote an article called Humiliating the USA an Israeli Hobby. As the title suggests, it was about the bizarre, inverted power relations between the mighty USA and the tiny State of Israel.
     The article hinged on a recent boast by Prime Minister Olmert that he ordered the US President to abstain on Resolution 1860 in the UN Security Council.
     I presume that report was accurate. The source was AFP. Major news agencies such as AFP are typically considered ’reliable’ sources. Even so, we can never assume that any source is 100% reliable. Journalists can make mistakes. Their sources can be mistaken, or lie deliberately.
     In the article, I made a brief reference to an older instance of the same type of bragging by an Israeli PM. Back in late 2001, Ariel Sharon was quoted as saying: "don’t worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America" in a conversation with then cabinet member Shimon Peres.
     I reported this outrageous Sharon quotation story for two reasons: (1) I believed it was true, and (2) it was relevant to the story as a whole.
     But is it really true? Two days ago, I thought so. Now I’m not so sure. more.. e-mail

Let Netanyahu win
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 2/5/2009
     Benjamin Netanyahu will apparently be Israel’s next prime minister. There is, however, something encouraging about that fact. Netanyahu’s election will free Israel from the burden of deception: If he can establish a right-wing government, the veil will be lifted and the nation’s true face revealed to its citizens and the rest of the world, including Arab countries. Together with the world, we will see which direction we are facing and who we really are. The masquerade that has gone on for several years will finally come to an end.
     Netanyahu’s election is likely to bring the curtain down on the great fraud - the best show in town - the lie of "negotiations" and the injustice of the "peace process." Israel consistently claimed these acts proved the nation was focused on peace and the end of the occupation.
     For 16 years, we have been enamored with the peace process. We talk and talk, babble and prattle, and generally feel great about ourselves; meanwhile the settlements expand endlessly and Israel turns to the use of force at every possible opportunity, aside from a unilateral disengagement which did nothing to advance the cause of peace. more.. e-mail

Nonviolence. Its histories and myths
Michael Neumann, CounterPunch, Palestine News Network 2/5/2009
     "The Palestinians will continue to choose, sometimes violence, sometimes non-violence. They will presumably base their choices, as they have always done, on their assessment of the political realities’The notion that a people can free itself literally by allowing their captors to walk all over them is historical fantasy".
     Sometime in the early 1960s, I decided I was too scared to participate in the Freedom Rides. I have neither the moral standing nor the slightest desire to disparage the courage of those who engage in non-violence. But non-violence, so often recommended to the Palestinians, has never ’worked’ in any politically relevant sense of the word, and there is no reason to suppose it ever will. It has never, largely on its own strength, achieved the political objectives of those who employed it.
     There are supposedly three major examples of successful non-violence: Gandhi's independence movement, the US civil rights movement, and the South African campaign against apartheid. None of them performed as advertised. more.. e-mail

The Wounds of Gaza
Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah and Dr Swee Ang, Palestine Think Tank 2/4/2009
     Two Surgeons from the UK, Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah and Dr Swee Ang, managed to get into Gaza during the Israeli invasion. Here they describe their experiences, share their views, and conclude that the people of Gaza are extremely vulnerable and defenseless in the event of another attack.
     Israeli weapons - The weapons used apart from conventional bombs and high explosives also include unconventional weapons of which at least 4 categories could be identified: Phosphorus Shells and bombs, Heavy Bombs, Fuel Air Explosives, Silent Bombs. In addition: Executions, Targeting of ambulances, Cluster bombs...
     The wounds of Gaza are deep and multi-layered. Are we talking about the Khan Younis massacre of 5,000  in 1956 or the execution  of 35,000 prisoners of war by Israel in 1967? Yet more wounds of the First Intifada, when civil disobedience by an occupied people against the occupiers resulted in massive wounded and hundreds dead?  We also cannot discount the 5,420 wounded in southern Gaza alone since 2000. Hence what we are referring to below are only that of the invasion as of 27 December 2008,
     Over the period of 27 December 2008 to the ceasefire of 18 Jan 2009, it was estimated that a million and a half tons of explosives were dropped on Gaza Strip. Gaza is 25 miles by 5 miles and home to 1.5 million people. This makes it the most crowded area in the whole world. Prior to this Gaza has been completely blockaded and starved for 50 days. In fact since the Palestinian election Gaza has been under total or partial blockade for several years. more.. e-mail

Gazans set up make shift exhibit of Israeli weapons used in Cast Lead
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 2/4/2009
     The rocket creates a cloud of vapor above the target and the explosions within the cloud create shockwaves that cause the landmines below [sic] to detonate.
     Of all the Israeli weaponry displayed outside the Gaza police station, the Palestinian guards and policemen took greatest interest in the white wings they had never seen before.
     "This is new to us. All the rest we are familiar with from Israeli attacks over the last eight years," members of Human Rights Watch were told last week, as they examined the unexploded ordinance, landmines, and other forms of ammunition that survive on the sandy soil of the parking lot in the center of Gaza.
     The parking lot where the ordinance is displayed abuts the main police station in Gaza, the same one the Israel Air Force attacked on the 27th of December, in a strike that killed dozens of young police cadets who had just finished taking part in a graduation ceremony.
     Even today, under the rule of Hamas and weeks after the IAF attack, the entrance to the compound still displays its official name: Arafat City.
     The white wings it turns out come from a type of rocket developed by Israeli arms manufacturer "Rafael" to detonate minefields. The "carpet" rocket system is affixed to armored platforms, which fire the rockets at mine fields. The rocket creates a cloud of vapor above the target and the explosions within the cloud create shockwaves that cause the landmines below to detonate.
     The phosphorous bombs fired by the IDF were also new to the residents of Gaza. Nonetheless, every child in the Gaza Strip knows that the greenish containers and their fragments contain the white phosphorous that explodes over their heads like some sort of fireworks, causing thick smoke and setting fire to buildings, cars, and trees. more.. e-mail

While the Cats Are Away…
Nadia W. Awad, MIFTAH 2/4/2009
     Of course, raids and arrests are the norm for Palestinians. What is more disturbing, however, is the amount of land, the thousands of dunums that were expropriated while Palestinians, Arabs and the world were looking towards Gaza.
     While the cats are away, it is guaranteed that the mice will go out and play. Of course, the analogy here refers to media, short-span attentions, and Israel’s latest occupation-cementing activities. While the world was focusing on Gaza and the devastation taking place there at the hands of a lethal Israeli army, other alarming events were going on largely unnoticed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Israel may not have appreciated its forces being under critical limelight in Gaza, but they were certainly able to take advantage of a distracted media trying to cope with reporting on the rapidly rising death toll in Gaza.
     In the weeks during and immediately after Operation ‘Cast Lead’, Israeli occupation forces were very busy in the West Bank and east Jerusalem doing what occupation forces apparently do – conducting incursions and raids, arrests, demolitions and land confiscations. In the period just before December 27 and leading up to this week, Israeli forces have killed 10 Palestinians in the West Bank, including children, and arrested at least 214 others (also including children). Moreover, they arrested 584 Palestinians who were working without permits in Israel proper, along with some 16 Israeli employers. Troops also conducted a minimum of 138 incursions into various villages and towns around the West Bank. more.. e-mail

Ongoing Displacement of Palestine’s Southern Bedouin
Hazem Jamjoum, Palestine Chronicle 2/4/2009
     The clearest method to displace Bedouin from ’unrecognised villages’ is house demolition.
     Following government orders, Israeli forces, demolition workers, and two bulldozers entered the village at 9:30 a.m. on 8 May 2007, while all the men of the village were at work. They destroyed every structure in sight, forcing the women, children, and elderly in the village out of the thirty homes before destroying them all, rendering one hundred more Palestinians homeless under the scorching summer sun.(1) This did not take place in the West Bank or Gaza but in the village of Twail Abu-Jirwal in the Naqab, and all one hundred Palestinians who were forcibly displaced were citizens of the state of Israel.
     The residents of Twail Abu-Jirwal have been subjected to home demolitions at least fifteen times since 2006, most of these times the whole village was completely flattened.(2) This village is not the exception, but the rule in the Naqab; Israel has systematically tried to squeeze these Palestinian Bedouin in the south of the country onto smaller patches of land while confiscating the rest of this forgotten half of Palestine.
     On the eve of the Nakba (1947–1949), more than 100,000 Palestinian Bedouin lived in the Naqab, and made up over 99 percent of the area’s inhabitants.(3) The particular lifestyle of the Bedouin in this large and partially fertile desert area was based on animal husbandry, which required vast grazing areas for goats, sheep and camels, and on agriculture in years of adequate rainfall.... more.. e-mail

Israeli army 'subcontracted' by extremist settlers
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada 2/4/2009
     Extremist rabbis and their followers, bent on waging holy war against the Palestinians, are taking over the Israeli army by stealth, according to critics.
     In a process one military historian has termed the rapid "theologization" of the Israeli army, there are now entire units of religious combat soldiers, many of them based in West Bank settlements. They answer to hardline rabbis who call for the establishment of a Greater Israel that includes the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
     Their influence in shaping the army’s goals and methods is starting to be felt, say observers, as more and more graduates from officer courses are also drawn from Israel’s religious extremist population.
     "We have reached the point where a critical mass of religious soldiers is trying to negotiate with the army about how and for what purpose military force is employed on the battlefield," said Yigal Levy, a political sociologist at the Open University who has written several books on the Israeli army. more.. e-mail

The Way of Izvestia: BBC as a Metaphor for State Propaganda
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, Palestine Chronicle 2/4/2009
     ’The BBC cannot be neutral in the struggle between truth and untruth, justice and injustice, freedom and slavery, compassion and cruelty, tolerance and intolerance.’ Thus read a 1972 internal document called Principles and Practice in News and Current Affairs laying out the guidelines for the BBC’s coverage of conflicts. It appears to affirm that in cases of oppression and injustice to be neutral is to be complicit, because neutrality reinforces the status quo. This partiality to truth, justice, freedom, compassion and tolerance it deems ’within the consensus about basic moral values’. It is this consensus that the BBC spurned when it refused to broadcast the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC)’s video appeal to help the people of Gaza.
     The presumption that underlies the decision is that the BBC has always been impartial when it comes to Israel-Palestine. An exhaustive 2004 study by the Glasgow University Media Group -- Bad News from Israel -- shows that the BBC’s coverage is systematically biased in favour of Israel. It excludes context and history to focus on day-to-day events; it invariably inverts reality to frame these as Palestinian ’provocation’ against Israeli ’retaliation’. The context is always Israeli ’security’, and in interviews the Israeli perspective predominates. There is also a marked difference in the language used to describe casualties on either side; and despite the far more numerous Palestinian victims, Israeli casualties receive more air time. more.. e-mail

BBC’s 'impartiality' anything but
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, Electronic Intifada 2/4/2009
     "The BBC cannot be neutral in the struggle between truth and untruth, justice and injustice, freedom and slavery, compassion and cruelty, tolerance and intolerance." Thus read a 1972 internal document called Principles and Practice in News and Current Affairs laying out the guidelines for the BBC’s coverage of conflicts. It appears to affirm that in cases of oppression and injustice to be neutral is to be complicit, because neutrality reinforces the status quo. This partiality to truth, justice, freedom, compassion and tolerance it deems "within the consensus about basic moral values." It is this consensus that the BBC spurned when it refused to broadcast the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC)’s video appeal to help the people of Gaza.
     The presumption that underlies the decision is that the BBC has always been impartial when it comes to Israel-Palestine. An exhaustive 2004 study by the Glasgow University Media Group, Bad News from Israel, shows that the BBC’s coverage is systematically biased in favor of Israel. It excludes context and history to focus on day-to-day events; it invariably inverts reality to frame these as Palestinian "provocation" against Israeli "retaliation." The context is always Israeli "security," and in interviews the Israeli perspective predominates. There is also a marked difference in the language used to describe casualties on either side; and despite the far more numerous Palestinian victims, Israeli casualties receive more air time. more.. e-mail

Israeli elections; an open season for racism
Saed Bannoura, International Middle East Media Center News 2/4/2009
     As different political parties are heating up the debate for the upcoming general elections in Israel, several right wing parties started competing on which party carries more hatred towards the Arabs and Palestinians, and which party is capable of expelling them once and for all.
     Now, such debates are not something new in Israel, a state founded by expelling the indigenous Palestinians from their lands by carrying one massacre after the other, even years before Israel was officially established.
     But right now, in this new world order, racism against the Arabs is being used by some right wing factions in Israel as a means to win more seats in the upcoming elections.
     The Israeli right wing National Union party, one of the strongest parties among Jewish settlers in the West Bank, proposed an initiative to fight the Arabs and Palestinians by expelling them to Venezuela.
     The party said that the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, proved to be the political leader who is very loyal to the Palestinians “therefore, Arabs who do not accept to be transferred to the Arab world, will be comfortable in Venezuela, it will be better for them and more comfortable for us&rdquo. more.. e-mail

The Israel Lobby?
Noam Chomsky, Palestine Chronicle 2/3/2009
     ’Do the energy corporations fail to understand their interests, or are they part of the Lobby too?’
     I’ve received many requests to comment on the article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt (henceforth M-W), published in the London Review of Books, which has been circulating extensively on the internet and has elicited a storm of controversy. A few thoughts on the matter follow.
     It was, as noted, published in the London Review of Books, which is far more open to discussion on these issues than US journals -- a matter of relevance (to which I’ll return) to the alleged influence of what M-W call "the Lobby." An article in the Jewish journal Forward quotes M as saying that the article was commissioned by a US journal, but rejected, and that "the pro-Israel lobby is so powerful that he and co-author Stephen Walt would never have been able to place their report in a American-based scientific publication." But despite the fact that it appeared in England, the M-W article aroused the anticipated hysterical reaction from the usual supporters of state violence here, from the Wall St Journal to Alan Dershowitz, sometimes in ways that would instantly expose the authors to ridicule if they were not lining up (as usual) with power. more.. e-mail

Chomsky on Oil and the Israel Lobby
M. Shahid Alam, Palestine Chronicle 2/3/2009
     ’Protestant Christians believe the ingathering of Jews .. will precede the Second Coming.’
     In the slow evolution of US relations with Israel since 1948, as the latter mutated from a strategic liability to a strategic asset, Israel and its Jewish allies in the United States have always occupied the driver’s seat.
     President Truman had shepherded the creation of Israel in 1947 not because the American establishment saw it as a strategic asset; this much is clear. "No one," writes Cheryl Rubenberg, "not even the Israelis themselves, argues that the United States supported the creation of the Jewish state for reasons of security or national interest."(1) Domestic politics, in an election year, was the primary force behind President Truman’s decision to support the creation of Israel. In addition, the damage to US interests due to the creation of Israel -- al-though massive -- was not immediate. This was expected to unfold slowly: and its first blows would be borne by the British who were still the paramount power in the region.
     Nevertheless, soon after he had helped to create Israel, President Truman moved decisively to appear to distance the United States from the new state. Instead of committing American troops to protect Israel, when it fought against five Arab armies, he imposed an even-handed arms embargo on both sides in the conflict. Had Israel been dismantled [at birth], President Truman would have urged steps to protect the Jewish colonists in Palestine, but he would have accepted a premature end to the Zionist state as fait accompli. Zionist pressures failed to persuade President Truman to lift the arms embargo. Ironically, military deliveries from Czechoslovakia may have saved the day for Israel. more.. e-mail

Gazan children denied treatment abroad
Jonathan Cook - JERUSALEM, Middle East Online 2/3/2009
     For four days running, an ambulance has driven 15-year-old Amira Ghirim from Shifa Hospital in Gaza to the Rafah border in the hope that she will be allowed to cross into Egypt and then on to France, where she has been promised emergency surgery.
     Amira’s left arm and thigh were crushed and her internal organs damaged by falling rubble when a shell hit her home in the Tel al Hawa neighbourhood of Gaza City in the final days of Israel’s offensive. The attack killed her father, brother and sister, leaving her an orphan.
     But, despite her urgent need for surgery, Amira has been turned away at the border each time, said her aunt, Mona Ghirim. “Each morning we arrived at the crossing and the Egyptian soldiers cursed us and told us to go away.”
     Ms Ghirim said Amira’s condition has been deteriorating because of the long periods out of hospital. Yesterday, after hearing news that the border would remain shut, they decided to abandon the journey. “She is very ill and these futile trips are not helping.”
     Amira is one of four children who have been offered potentially life-saving surgery by a team of doctors in France. But she and the other children appear to be victims of a bureaucratic wrangle involving the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Egypt. more.. e-mail

Who Profits?
Dominique Edde, Crises Magazine, Palestine Monitor 2/3/2009
     What does Israel intend to gain at the conclusion of another bombing operation, this time called Cast Lead?
     The provision of security for Israeli citizens. The elimination of Hamas. Do we know from history even one example which proves this system works? Operation Grapes of Wrath, which included the Qana massacre in 1996? It strengthened Hezbollah and ended with a withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2000. Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin, in the spring of 2002? Operation Paved Road, two months later? The years 2002-2003 were bloody for the Israeli population with 293 killed. What about Operation Rainbow in 2004? Or Judgment Day four months later in the northern Gaza Strip, that had the same dire results?
     Murder of the Hamas political leaders, about which Israel bragged without shame? Suicide bombings reached their height in 2005, and at the beginning of the following year Hamas received an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections. Appropriate Response, or the second world war in 2006 that destroyed an entire country and resulted in the death of more than 1000 civilians, of whom 32% were children? Here also, Israel destroyed and gained no tangible results; war booty? The exchange of two corpses of Israeli soldiers in exchange for 5 prisoners and tens of bodies of Lebanese and Palestinians. -- See also: Crises Magazine more.. e-mail

Aid worker: Gaza an 'apocalypse'
Mel Frykberg, Electronic Intifada 2/3/2009
     RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) - As fears rise of renewed violence in Gaza, Elena Qleibo, a French-Costa Rican aid worker from Oxfam, gives IPS a first-hand account of surviving Israel’s three-week bombardment of Gaza.
     Excerpts from her account:
     I was attending a meeting at Gaza City municipality on 27 December when suddenly the meeting was interrupted by heavy booming sounds coming from a short distance away.
     Plumes of smoke were rising from a number of bombed areas surrounding the building I was in. I and a number of colleagues rushed outside to try and establish what was happening.
     Mayhem and confusion reigned as shocked Gazans realized they were coming under a sustained attack from warships off the coast and aerial bombardments from fighter jets circling the skies above. Later on as I tried to gather more information from people in my neighborhood, many appeared in a state of incomprehension at the ferocity of the assault.
     I am a cultural anthropologist, and first decided to make Gaza City my home in 2004 after living and working in the occupied Palestinian territories for a number of years. My first visit to Gaza was in 1987 during the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada. more.. e-mail

It is Time to Say 'Enough'
Gilad Atzmon, Palestine Think Tank 2/3/2009
     It was rather encouraging to see PM Erdogan standing up for a humanist cause in Davos. But it didn’t really take me by complete surprise. Once again it has been proven that as far humanity and ethics are concerned, Islam and Muslim leaders are at the forefront together with only very few decent popular leaders such as Chavez and Morales.
     At the end of the day, it was PM Erdogan who opened his mouth and told the world leaders present that which they should have grasped on their own a long time ago. While Western leaders kept silent about Israeli war crimes, it was PM Erdogan who stood up for the truth, telling President Peres that his hands were soaking with children’s blood. ‘You are raising your voice Mr Peres because you are submerged with guilt.’ I may as well note that unlike PM Erdogan, I myself wouldn’t count on President Peres’ conscience. The old man has spent the best part of his adult life amongst the leading policy makers of a racist state. His name is intrinsically linked with numerous massacres. As if this is not enough, Peres was also a leading figure behind the notorious Israeli WMD project. I guess that if there is any humanity in Peres, it must be very well hidden indeed. more.. e-mail

In Gaza, a 'ranch' turned to rubble
Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 2/3/2009
     Piles of bricks, metal sheets and pieces of wood, are all that remains of tens of Palestinian homes in the Ezbet Abed Rabu (Abed Rabu Ranch) neighborhood, east of Jabaliya town in the northern Gaza Strip.
     "There is nothing left for us to live for -- the house was lost and the furniture destroyed," lamented Suad Muhammad Abed Rabu, a 53-year-old mother sitting in front of a fire stove in a still intact room of her badly damaged home. "We prefer to die in our demolished house rather than live life as outcasts," she said. "Since we were born we have been suffering. Since 1948 we have moved from one refuge to another and from one war to another. All, including Arabs and Europeans, are conspiring against us, they don’t want us to live."
     Abed Rabu’s home used to shelter 14 family members. Although it is almost completely destroyed, the family chose to remain in it rather than live in the tents international aid agencies have recently erected in the battered neighborhood.
     Neighborhood children play amidst the rubble of destroyed homes while their parents huddle in the tents or stand in lines to receive blankets and other items in the newly-installed small refugee camp. more.. e-mail

Mubarak: Abetting the Siege of Gaza
Rannie Amiri, Palestine Chronicle 2/2/2009
     As staggering as the statistics detailing Gaza’s destruction may be, they still do not present a complete picture of the unique travesties and tragedies suffered by individuals, families, neighborhoods and villages during Israel’s savage 22-day assault on the tiny territory. Yet, they bear repeating. From the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (www.pcbs.gov.ps) and various NGOs:
     • 1,334 killed, one-third of them children (more children than ‘militants’ were killed)
     • 5,450 injured, one-third of them children
     • 100,000 displaced, 50,000 made homeless
     • 4,100 residential homes and buildings destroyed, 17,000 damaged (together accounting for 14 percent of all buildings in Gaza)
     • 29 destroyed educational institutions, including the American International School
     • 92 destroyed or damaged mosques
     • 1,500 destroyed shops, factories and other commercial facilities
     • 20 destroyed ambulances
     • 35-60% of agricultural land ruined
     • $1.9 billion in total estimated damages
     In the face of such massive devastation and hardship - and this after the crippling 18-month siege had already reduced Gaza to a state of bare subsistence - the behavior and actions of the regime of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak remain as contemptible after the war as they were before. more.. e-mail

Israel and the politics of friendship
Joseph Massad, Electronic Intifada 2/3/2009
     The status of Israel as the enemy of the Arabs has largely depended in the last six decades on its enmity or alliance with Arab regimes and not with the Arab peoples. Insofar as Israel threatened Arab regimes, it was depicted by them as the enemy, insofar as it did not, it was welcomed as a friend.
     This was certainly the case in Israel’s ambivalent position toward the Jordanian regime with which it has allied itself since the 1920s while at the same time working to undermine the regime when some of its strategies changed. This in turn explains why the Jordanian regime was historically ambivalent about whether Israel was an enemy or an ally. In 1967, some in Israel contemplated unseating King Hussein from the throne while in 1970 Israel sought to extend its military assistance to buttress his throne. While King Hussein became convinced that Israel’s ambivalence had been resolved by the early 1990s in favor of an alliance, many Jordanian nationalists as well as Jordanian chauvinists were not. It is in this context that many anti-Palestinian Jordanian nationalists opposed the peace agreement that Jordan signed with Israel in 1994 and pointed to the continuing Israeli ambivalence towards Jordan. They correctly observed that Israel would sacrifice the regime in favor of establishing a Palestinian state in Jordan after expelling all West Bank Palestinians to the country, a project that Ariel Sharon had been proposing since the 1970s and that retains support among key people in the Labor Party. Indeed, Sharon wanted Israel to support the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1970 against King Hussein. more.. e-mail

Winners and Losers in Gaza: A Palestinian Perspective
Daoud Kuttab, MIFTAH 2/3/2009
     Unlike times of tranquility, wartime brings out the best and worse in many people. Wars are also an opportunity for people to shine or to fail. The Israeli war on Gaza certainly has its winners and losers, although the list could change and protagonists can swap from one side to the other. Here is my preliminary list of winners and losers.
     The first and biggest loser has been the international system which proved unable to stop a clearly disproportional assault from taking place. International humanitarian law, which has been gathering some teeth in recent years, has yet to show whether it is able to deter future Israeli politicians, army generals, air force pilots and other military commanders from carrying out war crimes against civilian populations.
     In politics my choice for a major loser goes to the emir of Qatar who embarrassed himself by insisting on holding an Arab summit when it failed to gather a quorum and allowed the leader of Hamas and two other Damascus-based Palestinian leaders to fill the seats of the Palestinian delegation. Palestinian spokesmen all but called the emir a liar, hinting that he had promised that none of the Hamas leaders would be present at the consultative meeting in Doha. PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s aides (specifically Yasser Abed Rabbo and Saeb Erekat) told the press that they have a recording of the emir’s phone conversation with Abbas without saying what exactly he said and without actually releasing it. more.. e-mail

Irish civil society calls for boycott of Israel
Open letter, various undersigned, Electronic Intifada 2/3/2009
     The following letter was published in a full-page advertisement in The Irish Times on 31 January 2009. The original ad, including signatures . [PDF] Israel’s bombardment of Gaza killed over 1,300 Palestinians, a third of them children. Thousands have been wounded. Many victims had been taking refuge in clearly marked UN facilities.
     This assault came in the wake of years of economic blockade by Israel. This blockade, which is illegal under international humanitarian law, has destroyed the Gaza economy and condemned its population to poverty. According to a World Bank report last September, "98 percent of Gaza’s industrial operations are now inactive."
     The most recent attack on Gaza is only the latest phase in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and appropriation of their land.
     Israel has never declared its borders. Instead, it has continuously expanded at the expense of the Palestinians. In 1948, it took over 78 percent of Palestine, an area much larger than that suggested for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947. Contrary to international law, Israel expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. These refugees and their descendants, who now number millions, are still dispersed throughout the region. They have the right, under international law, to return to their homes. This right has been underlined by the UN General Assembly many times, starting with Resolution 194 in 1948. more.. e-mail

Jerusalem, the Schizophrenic
Joharah Baker, Palestine Chronicle 2/3/2009
     ’East Jerusalemites live in a police city.’
     Coming into work the other day, I passed by what is, to most people, a completely mundane scene - a bus stop. As uneventful as this may sound, it was the venue to which my writer’s muse decided it would visit.
     For 30 seconds or so at this particular bus stop at a main Jerusalem intersection, I realized that this one small place was the microcosmic representation of all the contradictions, tensions and divisions that characterize Jerusalem. There were eight or 10 people standing there, each from a distinct walk of life, each from a distinct ethnic and national group, and each, let me add, completely polarized on one of two sides of the stand. There was no literal line delineating the border between the Palestinians and Israelis, but the split was no less distinct.
     On one side, rigid and tense, two or three Israelis stood, obviously waiting for Israeli-run public transportation to one of the city’s Jewish areas such as French Hill just a few kilometers away. An Israeli soldier with his automatic machine gun slung across his shoulder stood next to a Jewish Orthodox woman in her long black skirt and covered hair. Next to them, another Israeli man, secular perhaps, waited along with them, standing just to the left of the other group of people who were waiting for different, Palestinian bus line. more.. e-mail

Black Flag
Uri Avnery, Middle East Online 2/3/2009
     Chief Army Rabbi declared that his job is to reinforce the ‘fighting spirit’ of the soldiers. Under the auspices of the army rabbinate, religious-fascist brochures of the ultra-right rabbis were distributed to the soldiers. Rabbis openly called upon the Israeli soldiers to be cruel and merciless towards the Arabs. To treat them mercifully, they stated, is a ‘terrible, awful immorality’.
     A Spanish judge has instituted a judicial inquiry against seven Israeli political and military personalities on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The case: the 2002 dropping of a one-ton bomb on the home of Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Apart from the intended victim, 14 people, most of them children, were killed.
     For those who have forgotten, the then commander of the Israeli air force, Dan Halutz, was asked at the time what he feels when he drops a bomb on a residential building. His unforgettable answer: “A slight bump to the wing.” When we in Gush Shalom accused him of a war crime, he demanded that we be put on trial for high treason. He was joined by the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who accused us of wanting to “turn over Israeli army officers to the enemy”. The attorney-general notified us officially that he did not intend to open an investigation against those responsible for the bombing. more.. e-mail

Gaza Delenda Est
Michael Warschawski, Crises Magazine, Palestine Monitor 2/3/2009
     No way we will call it a war! What Israel is perpetuating in Gaza is a genocidal operation, targeting a civilian population without distinction. I am not in the habit of using the term "genocide" lightly, and I have often criticized those who have abused it’s use. However, when artillery and fighter planes are bombarding the center of one of the most densely populated cities in the whole world, I cannot avoid speaking about genocidal intentions.
     Several years ago, the whole Gaza Strip, with its one and a half million residents, was declared by Israeli leaders a "terrorist entity" and therefore had no right to exist. The siege imposed on Gaza by Israel, with the active support of Egypt and the Western states, did not break the population or push it to accept a Quisling-like leadership imposed by Israel and the USA. On the contrary, it dramatically strengthened the popularity of the Hamas party and its democratically elected government. According to the neo-conservative strategy, when one fails to "convince" a people to vote according to the wishes of the self-appointed masters of the world, you eradicate the people itself, by civil wars (Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq) and by military interventions (Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine). Gaza delenda est!
     The martyrdom of Gaza may be the last crime of the neo-conservative era before Barack Obama takes control of the White House. The madness of Israel’s brutality reflects its fear of a turn in US policy, and its actions seem to be guided by a sense of intense urgency. This is similar to the United States at the very end of the Vietnam war, or the last years of French colonial domination in Algeria. Or like the German army in 1944-1945. -- See also: Crises Magazine more.. e-mail

Saudi patience is running out
Turki al-Faisal, Financial Times 1/22/2009
     In my decades as a public servant, I have strongly promoted the Arab-Israeli peace process. During recent months, I argued that the peace plan proposed by Saudi Arabia could be implemented under an Obama administration if the Israelis and Palestinians both accepted difficult compromises. I told my audiences this was worth the energies of the incoming administration for, as the late Indian diplomat Vijaya Lakshmi Nehru Pandit said: “The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war.”
     But after Israel launched its bloody attack on Gaza, these pleas for optimism and co-operation now seem a distant memory. In the past weeks, not only have the Israeli Defence Forces murdered more than 1,000 Palestinians, but they have come close to killing the prospect of peace itself. Unless the new US administration takes forceful steps to prevent any further suffering and slaughter of Palestinians, the peace process, the US-Saudi relationship and the stability of the region are at risk.
     Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, told the UN Security Council that if there was no just settlement, “we will turn our backs on you”. King Abdullah spoke for the entire Arab and Muslim world when he said at the Arab summit in Kuwait that although the Arab peace initiative was on the table, it would not remain there for long. Much of the world shares these sentiments and any Arab government that negotiated with the Israelis today would be rightly condemned by its citizens. Two of the four Arab countries that have formal ties to Israel – Qatar and Mauritania – have suspended all relations and Jordan has recalled its ambassador. more.. e-mail

Adjusting to disaster
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 1/29/2009
     Although he could see the bulldozer tearing at his house, 75-year-old Youssef Al-Najjar, who is paralysed, remained in his bed, unable to take action and submitting himself to his fate. He was spending the night alone after his family had left the house, fearing that Israel would invade the area of the southern Gaza Strip where they live, in Khazaa village.
     As Youssef lay there, a neighbour called Sobhi risked his life to climb up to the window and push his way in. He picked up the paralysed old man and carried him out the back door, out of sight of the occupation soldiers who were protecting the bulldozer razing the three- storey building that consists of six apartments. Sobhi carried him past other buildings that were still intact until they reached an olive grove that concealed them from the soldiers. He then took the old man to nearby relatives he has stayed with since that night, placing a burden on them due to his special needs. Youssef’s wheelchair was destroyed by the occupation bulldozers.
     Al-Ahram Weekly visited the ruins of Youssef’s house and saw the remains of the wheelchair that used to help him move around independently. But no one can linger too long in the southern portion of the house, for the air is filled with the stench of a decomposing donkey corpse. Occupation soldiers razed the house right over the family donkey, killing it instantaneously. This agriculture-dependent family had used the donkey for transport between their village and the surrounding hamlets. more.. e-mail

The message is clear
Ramzy Baroud, Al-Ahram Weekly 1/29/2009
     For Palestinians, so far, the new US president represents no change whatsoever.
     When former US president George W Bush departed for his final trip home, that very moment represented an end of a long and unbearable nightmare, one that Bush epitomised until his last day in office.
     Americans may decry what we can finally dub as the "Bush legacy", for it brought economic ruin and also pushed the country into avoidable, if not completely preventable, wars, disgracing the collective history of a nation that for long imposed its sense of moral authority on the world.
     But the new president is set to change all of that. True, Barack Obama is duly warning of hyped expectations, but frankly he can only blame himself for the eagerness and hope, realistic or otherwise, that has engulfed the US nation, even the world over. During his presidential campaign he made many promises, the gist of which is that an Obama administration would be everything that the Bush administration was not. That was enough for "Obamaniacs" to sing and dance everywhere. more.. e-mail

George Mitchell and Hamas
Rami G. Khouri, Middle East Online 1/31/2009
     BEIRUT -- If George Mitchell is to have any chance to succeed in using American engagement to prod a just and lasting Arab-Israeli peace agreement, he will have to make a very fundamental decision very soon:
     Is his main task and that of US foreign policy to please Israel by shunning Hamas at any cost, or is it to identify and work to implement the equal rights of Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs to statehood and security?
     It is no surprise that Israeli officials and their political hirelings and hit men in the international media and American policy community have launched a campaign to try to perpetuate the role of the American government as subserviently implementing Israeli policy. The main focus of this effort is to prevent Hamas from becoming a legitimate partner in the pre-negotiating process now underway.
     Attacking or defending Hamas diverts attention from the core issue to be resolved: the simultaneous and equal national rights of Israelis and Palestinians. Mitchell should be careful to not allow himself to be dragged into the Israeli-defined game of arguing over Hamas, its tunnels, or other side issues. This will only guarantee diplomatic stalemate and failure. more.. e-mail

Prosecute the crimes
Salama A Salama, Al-Ahram Weekly 1/29/2009
     Many in the Arab world want to see Israel held responsible for the atrocities it committed in Gaza. The barbarity of Israel’s offensive was such that the UN secretary-general, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the chief of the UN Relief and Works Agency all called for an international investigation into Israel’s use of internationally banned weapons and its disregard for civilian life.
     The carnage in Gaza should leave an indelible mark on the Arab psyche. It is time we admit that Israel doesn’t want peace, cannot be trusted, and frankly deserves a taste of its own medicine.
     The first who deserve to be tried for war crimes are Israel’s gang of three: Olmert, Livni and Barak. Unfortunately, they have hoodwinked everyone, including the Palestinian Authority. They have misled Arab countries through a series of manoeuvres and gimmicks, while using the calming- down deal as an excuse. As soon as the calming-down period -- which was never calm by the way -- was over, the gates of hell opened. more.. e-mail

A new beginning?
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 1/29/2009
     As Egypt pursues Palestinian reconciliation and the reconstruction of Gaza it might be narrowing its distance from Hamas, reports Palestinian factions met in Cairo this week and Mitchell started his seven-day trip to the region with a meeting with MubarakIt has been a successful week for General Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman. The shrewd negotiator who is directly in charge of mediating between Hamas and Israel to secure a sustainable truce, and in parallel to strike a reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority (PA), is said to have made a breakthrough on both tracks.
     Informed Egyptian sources suggest that a truce between Hamas and Israel is almost in the offing. Some of the details of the truce are still under negotiation. Sources predict it will take another week, "more or less", to finalise whether or not the truce will start with six months in Gaza and be renewed for a year later in both Gaza and the West Bank. Also pending are the set of guarantees that Hamas wishes to have in relation to the smooth operation of crossing points linking Gaza with Israel as well as Egypt. However, the overall assessment is that progress has been made and that both Israel and Hamas are showing signs of settling down for a truce, probably for a year, monitored by the international community according to a mechanism that does not involve the direct stationing of troops in Gaza. more.. e-mail

Ceasefires, Israeli-Style
Stephen Lendman – Chicago, Palestine Chronicle 2/1/2009
     ’Militarism can’t bring security. Only reconciliation and diplomacy works.’
     Waging war while talking peace is customary Israeli practice. On January 19, Haaretz headlined: "Israel declares unilateral cease-fire. The security cabinet last night authorized a unilateral cease-fire (to take effect) at 2AM (Sunday morning), ending three weeks of intense fighting."
     Declaration notwithstanding, nothing changed. Gaza remains occupied, under siege, and totally isolated. Borders are still closed. On January 28, The New York Times said "truckloads of humanitarian aid" are stuck in Egypt because of Israeli and Cairo restrictions. Little can get in, and attacks merely downshifted to a lower gear.
     Shortly after Sunday’s announcement, an Israeli aircraft killed a Gaza City resident. IDF troops opened fire in Wadi al-Salqa village, southeast of Deir al-Balah. Homes in al-Qarara village were attacked. Helicopter gunships struck areas west of Khan Yunis, and F-16s bombed near the Science and Technology College in the same area. Israeli naval vessels shelled coastal areas and turned back ships with humanitarian aid. Agricultural land was raised. Arrests were made. Gaza continues to be terrorized. more.. e-mail

Likud Charter Does Not Recognize Palestine
Frank Barat - London, Palestine Chronicle 1/31/2009
     Likud platform: "The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values."
     In a few weeks, on February the 10th, Israel will elect its new leaders during legislative elections. The three main contenders are Tzipi Livni from the Kadima party (Ariel Sharon’s party), Ehud Barak from the Labour party and Benyamin Netanyahu from the Likud party.
     Before the Gaza "war", it was a two-horse race: Livni against Netanyahu, with Netanyahu leading by a good margin in all the polls. The race became a three-horse one thanks to the Gaza "war" launched by Livni and Barak. Barak saw his ratings surge and is now back in the race. Even if he does not get elected, his party will get quite a few more seats than it had planned a few months ago.
     But the frontrunner has always been Benyamin Netanyahu and he remains, in the eyes of the majority of Israel’s journalists (Gideon Levy from Haaretz) or activists (Jeff Halper from ICAHD), the more than probable future PM. more.. e-mail

Jingoism all the way
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 1/29/2009
     As elections near, Israel is swinging to the right, the only question being how far.
     Netanyahu, Livini, Barak One of the main but undeclared goals of the recent Israeli blitzkrieg against the Gaza Strip was to significantly enhance the chances of the Kadima and Labour parties in upcoming Israeli elections, slated for 10 February.
     Conventional wisdom has it that Israeli Jewish voters are more likely to give their votes to candidates with a reputation of toughness vis-à-vis the Palestinians. In the popular and political lexicon, this means spilling Palestinian blood, destroying more Palestinian homes and narrowing Palestinian horizons.
     Kadima and Labour party leaders had hoped that the killing and maiming of thousands of Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians, coupled with the relentless bombing and destruction of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and agricultural land, would put both parties in an advantageous position against the Likud, led by Benyamin Netanyahu. However, post-war polls have shown that the genocidal Gaza onslaught didn’t dramatically help Kadima and that the popularity boost it briefly obtained during the Gaza campaign proved variable rather than constant. more.. e-mail

Mission near impossible
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 1/29/2009
     The arrival of George Mitchell to the region is being greeted with both relief and dispassion, report Sherine Bahaa in Cairo Despite an air of optimism in some regional capitals about the recent appointment by US President Barack Obama of Senator George Mitchell as his Middle East envoy, there are serious doubts in many quarters as to whether the veteran diplomat will be able to work the miracles the region so badly needs.
     Sceptics, and they are legion, argue that getting Israel to end once and for all its 40-year-old colonialist occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip (for many the foremost miracle needed) necessitates a transformation, if not revolution of strategic thinking in Washington.
     The US is Israel’s guardian-ally. Absent meaningful US pressure on Tel Aviv, the Jewish state will continue to behave and act as it has always, namely defying international law, savaging the Palestinians, and building more Jewish colonies on occupied Arab land. more.. e-mail

The One-State Solution
Muammar Gathafi, Middle East Online 1/30/2009
     Israelis and Palestinians have also become increasingly intertwined, economically and politically. The compromise is one state for all, an ’Isratine’ that would allow the people in each party to feel that they live in all of the disputed land and they are not deprived of any one part of it.
     TRIPOLI – The shocking level of the last wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence, which ended with this weekend’s cease-fire, reminds us why a final resolution to the so-called Middle East crisis is so important. It is vital not just to break this cycle of destruction and injustice, but also to deny the religious extremists in the region who feed on the conflict an excuse to advance their own causes.
     But everywhere one looks, among the speeches and the desperate diplomacy, there is no real way forward. A just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, but it lies in the history of the people of this conflicted land, and not in the tired rhetoric of partition and two-state solutions.
     Although it’s hard to realise after the horrors we’ve just witnessed, the state of war between the Jews and Palestinians has not always existed. In fact, many of the divisions between Jews and Palestinians are recent ones. The very name “Palestine” was commonly used to describe the whole area, even by the Jews who lived there, until 1948, when the name “Israel” came into use. more.. e-mail

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