Winners and Losers in the National Unity Government
By Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj, Ma’an News Agency 3/24/2007
In an office not far from the White House, we met with Mr. Elliot Abrams, assistant to the US President national security advisor and in charge of the Middle East file. We were a small delegation participating in a conference on development in Palestine, when a few meetings were arranged for us. It was few months after the Hamas electoral triumph and formation of its government. Before the meeting, a friend said to me: "Mr. Abrams is a Neo Conservative, and is known for his outright frankness." That was fine with me. We entered the room and the first words we heard were, "We have to remove Hamas from the government by any means". I felt insulted, not because I am a Hamas supporter, but because of the arrogant fashion in which he made the declaration. A conversation then ensued between the delegation and Mr. Abrams during which he reiterated the same idea in the same arrogant manner asserting that what the US, or he himself willed, should come true and that he was sorry that some people would suffer from impoverishment, starvation and even death, but the goal was one and the same: to remove Hamas from the Palestinian government. When asked about democracy, he simply talked to us derisively saying that we had the right to elect whomever we wished to elect and that they had the right to deal with whomever they wished to deal with. Then he proceeded to talk about the invincible empire that shapes the world as it wishes. His words were too provocative to be tolerated, and I retorted, straightforwardly and candidly; "You have excelled in making the whole world hate you, and if there is something that has to be changed, it should be your Administration which gleans and accumulates failure." more..
Jenin child tells the story of how soldiers killed his father in 2002
By saed at imemc dot org, International Middle East Media Center 3/28/2007 Translated by Saed Bannoura "My father was not a fighter. He was not armed. The [Israeli] soldiers took him from our house and tortured him without any mercy, they killed him and gave us his body, my brothers and I are orphans now. Where is the international conscience, where is the United Nations that puts the victim and the attacker on the same scale? My father was a peaceful man supporting his six children.” With these words, Mustafa Husny Fayid, 13, started talking about the tragedy that beset his family when the Israeli army carried out the Jenin refugee camp massacre in 2002, during an invasion that Israel calls “Operation Defensive Shield”. Five years after the massacre, the child was finally able to talk about what happened when he was seven. He expressed his anger that “the world is still unable to stop the Israeli atrocities”. “The world is talking about justice, peace and human rights but when it comes to us, and to what Israel is doing to us, they change their concepts and principles. We are refugees dreaming of a stable life, a country and a humble home”, Mustafa stated, “Where is the world justice, were is the international law, how come the committee set up to investigate the massacre in our camp was never allowed to be formed? They should come here and see how we are living, and the destruction inflicted on us and on our future. The occupation is the cause of all our problems, but nobody wants to see the truth, they want us to be silent." more..
Tsunami in Gaza, Celebration of Peace in Jerusalem
By Gilad Atzmon, Palestine Chronicle 3/28/2007 This devastating picture of total surreal detachment between the two events, between a meaningless political intercourse and a devastating destruction on the ground is the true reality of the Palestinian disaster. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced yesterday the decision of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas to meet bi-weekly with the US mediating. Indeed ‘great news’ for the Palestinians and the Israelis. More or less at the same time at least five Palestinians drowned in a “sewage Tsunami” when a water treatment reservoir burst, flooding Umm Naser, a village in the northern Gaza Strip. While in a peaceful news conference in Jerusalem Rice once again said NO to the democratically elected Hamas referring to the PA chairman as a “partner for peace”, a Bedouin village in Gaza was submerged in sewage. This devastating picture of total surreal detachment between the two events, between a meaningless political intercourse and a devastating destruction on the ground is the true reality of the Palestinian disaster. This reflects upon the zero Western political leadership’s commitment to humanist and ethical thinking, it reflects upon our abandonment of the Palestinian people, it is a reminder of our general negligence towards people who are mercilessly dispossessed for six decades, our blindness towards what seems to be a suffering with no end and no limit. more..
What Riyadh will mean for Palestinian-Israeli peace
By Camille Mansour, Daily Star 3/28/2007
More than ever, insofar as Saudi Arabia is concerned, a serious Palestinian-Israeli settlement process is a regional necessity and not a luxury that can be postponed to an indefinite future. The Saudis have lobbied hard for their own peace proposal, which was adopted by the Arab League in 2002, to top the agenda again in Riyadh this week, at a League summit that could be one of the most crucial in recent memory. What a difference a year makes. In March last year at the Khartoum summit, Saudi Arabia said it wouldn’t host the 2007 summit. Several factors in the meantime have caused this U-turn: the outcome of the second Lebanon war, which is threatening to pit Iran, Syria and Hizbullah against Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan; grave internal Lebanese divisions along these two axes (including noticeable Sunni-Shiite tension); the Iraq civil war with its Sunni-Shiite and Al-Qaeda dimensions; the possibility of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear sites and the armed confrontation between Fatah and Hamas in the streets and neighborhoods of the Gaza Strip. These developments, which reverberate negatively inside the kingdom itself (with the presence of a Shiite minority in the east, public frustration with the international boycott of Hamas, the appeal of Al-Qaeda among some youths), have put the Saudi leadership on the defensive. In this threatening environment, Riyadh has undertaken a number of initiatives to calm the region. It has tried to find a modus vivendi with Iran. It has played a mediating role in Lebanon; and, most successfully, it brokered the Mecca agreement to ease tensions between the Palestinian factions. Furthermore, no global or regional power is currently in a position to criticize Riyadh for playing this moderating role, specifically on Hamas or Hizbullah, even if it constitutes an acknowledgment of the political strength of these two movements. The United States is embroiled in the Iraqi quagmire and whether it decides to withdraw from Iraq or escalate there or against Iran, it can offer nothing to alleviate Saudi fears. more..
’Israel’s right to exist’: Is it a real issue?
By Jeff Handmaker and Gentian Zyberi, Electronic Intifada 3/28/2007
There are many aspects of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in urgent need of legal scrutiny as part of a much-needed critical dialogue. One such issue is Israel’s claim towards Hamas to acknowledge that it has a ’right to exist’. This claim has not only been uncritically taken on board by the Quartet. It has become one of the top conditions to be fulfilled by Hamas for receiving aid by the Quartet and other international donors. At the risk of stating the obvious, we argue that this position lacks any basis under international law and will serve no constructive political purpose in seeking to resolve the conflict. What makes a State? The criteria for statehood are laid out in the 1933 Montevideo Convention, namely: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and capacity to enter into relations with other States. While Israel is a State and has been recognized as such by many States, it should not be forgotten that there is a fundamental distinction between the act of recognising a State and the mere fact of being of a State, or a State’s ’right to existence’. Recognition of a State is accorded under international law by way of two processes, namely recognition on the basis of objective criteria and explicit recognition by States. Explicit recognition by States is not necessary if the first factors (criteria for statehood) exist, though it obviously carries much political significance. This was illustrated by the Peoples Republic of China, a State of considerable size and stature, which was not recognized by many States for a long time and took its place in the UN only in 1971. There are also many States which do not have diplomatic relations with other States, who withhold explicit recognition or who withdraw diplomatic relations for a variety of reasons, including objection to a government’s human rights record. In the past this included the Soviet Union and South Africa. Many States, members of the UN, have also refused to recognise Israel, or have withdrawn diplomatic relations, for similar reasons. This includes the government of Venezuela, which withdrew its ambassador from Tel Aviv in August 2006 in protest at Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Lebanon. more..
Film review: "Summer 2006, Palestine"
By Shuruq Harb, Electronic Intifada 3/28/2007
Summer 2006, Palestine -- a crossover between film, video art, individual expression and a collective voice -- is a unique experience in the Palestinian cultural scene. This collection of short films brings together 13 individual artists with different degrees of experience within the Palestinian film scene and other visual arts disciplines to convey the summer of 2006 in Palestine. The project is the result of an initiative led by several Palestinian filmmakers from the Palestinian Filmmakers’ Collective. Since its inception in 2005, the collective has generated a platform for discussion and exchange amongst Palestinian filmmakers. "Summer 2006, Palestine" is their first "filmic" production. Originally, the idea behind a short film collection was to encourage Palestinian filmmakers to create scenes that would develop into a feature length film. The idea evolved into an expression of an experience around a central theme. In August 2006 an open call was made to all Palestinian filmmakers to create a three-minute short film in one month, using one shot and expressing an experience of summer in Palestine 2006. As such, this collection of films conveys different Palestinian experiences while exploring various technical and creative approaches to sound and imagery. Viewers are constantly asked to zoom into each film individually and then to zoom out and think of the film within the context of the others. more..
A Gaza Visit
By Dr. Bernard Sabella, Palestine Chronicle 3/28/2007 While the advancement of peace is a cherished goal, the efforts and offers of the Riyadh Arab Summit cannot bear fruit if the Israeli counterpart refuses to budge. As a Palestinian parliamentarian I was in Gaza for the few days prior to the formation of the Palestinian National Unity Government and for the vote of confidence on Saturday March 17th. My impressions of Gaza, both in terms of it being a big prison encampment with Israeli guards all around its borders and of the effects of internal fighting between different Palestinian factions, reinforced my belief that the formation of a national unity government is a needed step in the right direction. Gaza’s economic situation as well as its social fabric, particularly relations between clans and extended families caught up in internal strife, is cause for serious concern. Of the Gaza population of 1.4 million living on 365 square kilometers 68.2% are below the age of 24 years. Children, 14 years and younger, make up 48.5% of the entire population. Gaza has the Mediterranean, as a limited outlet, but even the sea does not provide long term solace as it is monitored closely by the Israelis, which leads to the sporadic killing of Palestinian fishermen by Israeli gunboats when they are spotted off limits. Another cause for concern is the environmental disaster that the Mediterranean is suffering due, in part, to the untreated sewage and waste spilling onto its shores. There were projects planned to increase the treatment of sewage and waste but these had to be scrapped because of the election of Hamas and the subsequent boycott by donor states. Desalinization projects remain limited but one can spot medium sized trucks with motors for desalinization of home water. Gaza pipe water is not suitable for drinking because it contains an unacceptably high concentration of salt. Civil society organizations remain active and together with international partners continue to offer services to the population that cover physical and mental health, educational and vocational programs, youth activities and sports, human rights and advocacy among others. These, however, remain limited but offer much needed hope in a dismal situation. I had the opportunity to visit a Primary Family Health Clinic and a Mobile Dental Clinic both run by the Near East Council of Churches. The fact that there were well over fifty expecting mothers in the Family Clinic says much to the quality of service offered and the professionalism with which the Clinic is run. more..
31st Land Day Anniversary - "We will continue to claim our land!"
Stop The Wall 3/27/2007 Full Text of the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign Statement “Against concessions on our rights and our lives; We will continue to claim our land!” On March 30th, as Palestinians in our homeland and the diaspora, we remember Land Day and strengthen our struggle for Land, Justice and Return. In 1976, 6 Palestinians were killed and a hundred injured by Israeli forces as Palestinians went on strike against a massive land confiscation scheme in the Galilee. Land theft and colonization continues in the Galilee and Naqab until today. More than 30 years later, we will be again out in the streets and in the fields confronting the Occupation in dozens of protests and demonstrations, uniting the people in villages and cities across the West Bank in a week of continuous mobilization. In the West Bank, including Jerusalem, the Apartheid Wall, settlements and their road system are de facto confiscating over half of our land and most of our water resources and agricultural fields. Israeli apartheid is creating something worse than Bantustans: open air prisons surrounded by 8-meter high cement walls and sealed by gates, checkpoints and terminals. Thousands of families are in danger of losing their homes to make space for Israeli colonization and entire communities are to be razed to the ground. Dispossessed farmers watch industrial estates growing on their land in a system designed to exploit and control. Thanks to the unbroken resistance of the Iraqi people that has led the US and its allies into an impasse, diplomacy of the unipolar world focuses again on Palestine. Our homeland and people have become the card, which might save global imperialism from drowning in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the US-Israeli axis has never been willing to allow any of our rights to be implemented, the continuous presence in our region of US and Western envoys and officials is aimed to pressure Arab leaders into... -- See also: 31st Land Day Anniversary - Full Program of Activities -- See also: 31st Land Day Anniversary - Full Program of Activitiesmore..
Farewell Tanya, Palestine has Lost a Friend
By Joharah Baker, Palestine Chronicle 3/21/2007 It was not only this act of courage that made this woman so remarkable. It was the fact that, as an Israeli speaking out against the atrocities of her own people, Reinhart knowingly placed herself in a constant line of fire. Most people hope that after they are gone, there will be something, however miniscule, that others will remember them by. Linguist, researcher and Palestinian rights advocate Tanya Reinhart far surpassed this goal, because for many, the Palestinians in particular, she has left behind a legacy larger than life. She will never be forgotten. Tanya Reinhart passed away in New York City on March 17. Born an Israeli citizen who lived most of her life in Israel, Reinhart lived her final days in the United States, not by chance but by meticulous design. After years of exposing Israel’s policies against the Palestinians in her articles, lectures and two major books, Reinhart became one of the precious few in this world who truly practices what she preaches. Feeling she could no longer live in the place she called home because of the injustices it perpetrated against another nation, Reinhart made the painful decision in 2006 to leave the prestigious position of emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University, and to leave her home, forever. more..
A Tribute to Shimon Tzabar
By Gilad Atzmon, Peacepalestine blog 3/22/2007 (Note by Peacepalestine: I found the books by Mr Tzabar extremely original and interesting, and highly recommend them, if you can still find them. I consider myself fortunate enough to have heard a fascinating and insightful observation on Israeli society from Mr Tzabar. In an email he once sent me, he wrote this: They say there are two kinds of people in Israel - Hawks and Doves. I agree that there are two kinds of people, but I would call them Hawks and Super-Hawks.) Shimon Tzabar, one of the very few Israeli genuine and authentic peace enthusiasts, died three days ago (19 March 2007). He was Eighty-one. Shimon was a friend. Though we hardly ever agreed on anything, though he was sometimes harsh in his criticism, he has always managed to be charming, loveable and a good laugh. Maybe even the best laugh around. As well as being a fabulous artist, a landscape and portrait painter, Shimon was probably one of the best storytellers one could find. This is hardly surprising, the man obviously had some stories to share. He was born in Tel Aviv in 1926. Already in his teens he had managed to join every Israeli Paramilitary organisation. He knew everyone and it is more than likely that everyone knew him. Shimon participated in three Israeli wars. However, it was only after 1967 that he fully internalised the scale of the Zionist fallacy. Repulsed by emerging Israeli imperialism, Shimon left Israel and settled in London. I believe that it was then that Shimon started regarding himself as a ‘Hebrew-Speaking Palestinian’. By doing so he detached himself from the classic Zionist collective attribution to world Jewry, he instead identified himself with an esoteric geographical orientation. Like my peers, I came across his name as a young kid. Every Israeli child knows Tzabar’s ‘Tusberindi the Hero’ (Tusberindi Ha’gibor). We grew up with his special wit and captivating sketches. Before leaving Israel, Shimon was an established author. He was also a columnist for a number of years for both the daily Haaretz and Uri Avnery’s Ha’olam Haze. In fact, till his last days, Israeli journalists, intellectuals, academic researchers and solidarity campaigners who visited London tried to approach him and to learn his views about things. more..
Planning For Ethnic Cleansing In Palestine
By Nizar Sakhnini, Uruknet 3/27/2007 Annie’s Letter - A Compilation Zionist ethnic cleansing operations of 1948 were planned way before 1948. Ethnic cleansing was part and parcel of the Zionist plans for the creation of the Jewish State they had in mind. The Haganah, an illegal military organization, was formed in 1920 headed by an elected political leadership and was transferred to the joint authority of the Jewish Agency Executive and the Va’ad Leumi in 1929. The Arab rebellion in 1936-39 was quelled by the British forces in cooperation with the Haganah. Palmach, the Haganah’s strike force, was formed in 1941. In 1931, a group of the Haganah members seceded from the organization and became knows as the Irgun Tzeva’i le’umi or its acronym, Etzel. In 1940, a small group led by Abraham (Yair) Stern, seceded from Etzel and began to operate separately under the name "Etzel in Israel" (the Stern group). In 1939 differences of opinion emerged between Stern and Raziel, then commander of the Irgun, which led to a split in the organization and the establishment of the new organization Irgun Zvai Leumi Beisrael, which later became to be known as the Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Lehi). Yitzhak Shamir was one of the leaders of Lehi. By the end of WWII, Haganah, Etzel, and Lehi joined together to carry out terrorist actions against the mandate government in Palestine. Moshe Sneh, head of the Haganah national headquarters, laid down the foundations for an alliance with Etzel and Lehi, which grew into the "Hebrew Resistance Movement". (Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion: A Biography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977, p. 130) more..
Salam Fayyad: Everyone’s favorite Palestinian
By Barak Ravid, Ha’aretz 3/27/2007
The old-new Palestinian finance minister, Salam Fayyad, took advantage of last weekend, before the new Palestinian unity government was sworn in, to say "farewell" to his Israeli colleagues. In effect, already at the end of February, when Fayyad held talks with senior Israeli officials at the Finance and Foreign Ministries, he was aware that by joining a government which includes Hamas, he - the Palestinian politician most esteemed in the West - would be added to the growing list of Palestinians Israel is boycotting. "I very much enjoyed working with you," Fayyad told one senior Israeli official during that weekend. "It is a shame that we will not be able to continue talking. I can only hope that this will change in the future." Fayyad was not the only one who regretted the end of contacts. Many Israelis, both senior and less so, were sorry to see him leave. Everyone who met him in the past few years was enchanted by him. In Jerusalem, Washington, Paris, London and many other capitals, Fayyad became the ultimate Palestinian "icon," the ideal partner. Tzipi Livni, Ephraim Sneh and other Israeli politicians enjoyed sitting and talking with him in the captivating garden of the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem, or on the terrace of the King David Hotel, in the city’s west. Fayyad is the only Palestinian in whose hands they were prepared to place hundreds of millions of dollars in the belief that these monies would indeed be used to pay salaries. Fayyad’s close relationship with the Israeli establishment can be gauged from the following story. About two years ago, the daughter of Dov Weisglass, who was then the head of the Prime Minister’s Bureau, got married. Fayyad was also invited and until today he enjoys a warm relationship with Weisglass. When the seating arrangement was set, Fayyad was placed next to then-prime minister Ariel Sharon. The two had a long conversation between the end of the "chuppah" and the start of the refreshments. more..
Now is the time to call the bluff of the land of missed opportunities
By Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian 3/27/2007 The Arab League should bypass Ehud Olmert and go directly to the Israeli people with its offer for a Palestinian settlement Call it peace process envy. If they have any sense, Israelis and Palestinians will have a bad case of it this week, as they eye with jealousy the photographs flashed around the world from Belfast. How they must pine for the luck of the Northern Irish, as they gaze at Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley sitting side by side, promising their war is over and vowing to govern their bruised land together. How the people of Tel Aviv and Ramallah must wish their leaders would show some of that same Belfast determination which, after a long, torturous decade, has finally wound up what once seemed an intractable conflict. Instead, Israel and Palestine watch months turn into years without progress. Now there is a chance to break the deadlock. The 22 member nations of the Arab League are meeting for two days in Riyadh, with the Arab-Israeli conflict high on their agenda. They are preparing to make a remarkable offer: if Israel withdraws to its 1967 borders, pulling out of the West Bank and Gaza, they will agree to a full and comprehensive peace, including normal relations, between the entire Arab world and Israel. This, in case anyone has forgotten, is what Israel says it has yearned for since its creation 59 years ago, the acceptance of a Jewish state in the Middle East by its neighbours. What’s more, Israel has always feared that a separate accord with the Palestinians would not hold because the Palestinians would be too weak to make historic compromises - on, say, the holy sites of Jerusalem - alone. An accord with 22 Arab nations would remove all such worries. Any final settlement between Israel and the Palestinians would be underpinned, with the leading Muslim states giving their blessing to the concessions that would be required. And they would promise what Yasser Arafat never could: that the conflict was truly, finally, over. How could Israel pass up such a great opportunity? The answer is that it already has. The Arab League approved what began as the Saudi peace plan when it met in Beirut back in 2002. Among the signatories then were Libya’s Muammar Gadafy and Saddam Hussein of Iraq. That’s right: Saddam Hussein was ready to recognise the Jewish state. more..
Will Arab Peace Initiative Lead to Peace?
By Nadia Hijab, Palestine Chronicle 3/27/2007
The Arab summit in Riyadh on 28-29 March 2007 is expected to "re-launch" the Arab peace initiative that was unanimously approved at the 2002 summit in Beirut. What does the plan offer and why didn’t it fly at the time? Why is Israel making welcoming noises - and the United States pushing the plan? The Significance of the Arabs’ 2002 Offer The Arab peace initiative was proposed in March 2002 by then crown prince now King Abdullah Bin Abdel Aziz of Saudi Arabia. [1] It spelled out for the first time the unwritten understanding of the Arab parties to the conflict that a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace would lead to full Arab normalization with Israel. The Saudis paved the way to acceptance of their initiative by reassuring the Syrians that full withdrawal from the Golan Heights would be a precondition to full normalization. The Arab states also added a reference to United Nations Resolution 194, which deals with the right of Palestinian refugees to return. As adopted, the initiative referred to UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 and the principle of land for peace in the preamble, which also included two significant statements: that a just and comprehensive peace was "the strategic option of the Arab countries" and that a "military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties." It then called on Israel to affirm: * Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon. * Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN Resolution 194. * The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. more..
From Sharpsville to Nablus: Tragedies of Ethnic Apartheid
By Anna, International Solidarity Movement 3/26/2007 March 21st, 2007 Almost two weeks ago, my friend Dawud, a high school English teacher from Kufr ‘Ain, called me nearly in tears to report the checkpoint hold-up that had cost him his six-month-old son. Shortly after midnight on March 8th, my friend’s baby began having trouble breathing. His parents quickly got a taxi to take him to the nearest hospital in Ramallah, where they hoped to secure an oxygen tent, which had helped him recover from difficult respiratory episodes in the past. As the family was rushing from their Palestinian town in the West Bank to their Palestinian hospital in the West Bank, they were stopped at Atara checkpoint, where an Israeli soldier asked for the father’s, mother’s, and driver’s IDs. Dawud explained to the soldier that his son needed urgent medical care, but the soldier insisted on checking the three IDs first, a process that usually takes a few minutes. Dawud’s was the only car at the checkpoint in the middle of the night, yet the soldier held the three IDs for more than twenty minutes, even as Dawud and his wife began to cry, begging to be allowed through. After fifteen minutes, Dawud’s baby’s mouth began to overflow with liquid and my friend wailed at the soldier to allow them through, that his baby was dying. Instead, the soldier demanded to search the car, even after the IDs had been cleared. At 1:05am, six-month-old Khalid Dawud Fakaah died at Atara Checkpoint. As the soldier checked the car, he shined his flashlight on the dead child’s face and, realizing what had happened, finally returned the three ID cards and allowed the grieving family to pass. Checkpoints and ID cards. Mention these words and any victim or witness of Apartheid can produce dozens of horror stories like Dawud’s. South Africa employed a similar system with its former Apartheid “Pass Laws,” which the South African Government used to monitor the movement of Black South Africans. Blacks had to carry personal ID documents, which required permission stamps from the government before holders could move around within their country. Similarly, Palestinians in the West Bank are required to carry Israeli-issued ID cards that indicate which areas, roads, and holy sites they are or are not allowed access to. Pass Laws enabled South African police to arrest Blacks at will. Similarly, Israeli Occupation forces use ID cards not only to monitor Palestinian movement, but also to justify frequent arbitrary detention and arrest with general impunity. Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank (like all Jewish Israelis) have different ID cards, proclaiming their “Jewish” nationality, granting them automatic permission to access the modern roads and almost all holy sites that most Palestinians are restricted from. more..
Twilight Zone / Dress Code
By Gideon Levy, Palestine Chronicle 3/26/2007 Psychiatrist Dr. Yaakov Elish of the Be’er Yaakov Mental Health Center, who examined the prisoner for the High Court, wrote: "In the wake of distress over imprisonment, he has developed a depressive response with tendencies to self-injury." What won’t the Shin Bet security service do to break the spirit of a Palestinian detainee? Before, interrogators used threats and told detainees that their loved ones were being arrested because of them. Now they even put on the show. Under false pretenses, agents brought the wife and the aged father of a security detainee to a Shin Bet interrogation facility, where they forced him to remove his kaffiyeh in order to humiliate him, then dressed him in a prisoner’s uniform, held him by both arms and, through a window, displayed him to his son, who has been kept for weeks in isolation, without the opportunity to meet with a lawyer. The result: Prisoner M. launched a hunger strike. He has attempted to kill himself in his cell three times, twice by bashing his head against the wall and once by hanging. In its ruling prohibiting the use of torture, the High Court of Justice wrote: "A reasonable investigation is necessarily one free of torture, free of cruel, inhuman treatment of the subject and free of any degrading handling whatsoever." The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel argued in its petition to the High Court regarding M.: "The use of the interrogation technique by which the petitioner’s father and wife were presented to him as prisoners, caused and is causing the petitioner genuine psychological suffering which has led him to hurt himself and even to attempt suicide." Justices Ayala Procaccia, Elyakim Rubinstein and Devora Berliner ruled two weeks ago on M.’s case. The High Court ordered the Shin Bet to tell M. that his wife was never arrested and to arrange for a psychiatrist to examine M. by the end of the week. In addition, it said that M.’s representatives could ask the relevant authority to review the staged imprisonment of his father to determine "the degree of legitimacy of the use of this method." The result: In Ashkelon Prison there is a prisoner in a state of severe psychological distress, while at his home in Beit Awa his wife and father are absolutely distraught over the dirty trick played on him. The state has not permitted them to visit him since the arrest. more..
Lessons from Jerry the Water Turtle
By Rami Khouri, Middle East Online 3/26/2007 How does Rami Khouri’s pet water turtle, Jerry, remind him of Arab-Israeli diplomacy? Immobility and hiding in the shadows of safe corners always follows the occasional activity and exertion of seeking something new. BEIRUT - Every morning I sit in my living room, read the newspapers to track the latest Arab-Israeli developments, and watch my water turtle Jerry exert heroic efforts and make lots of noise in his tank as he burrows beneath the colorful stones, fake coral, and large wooden driftwood stump that dominates his world. As he churns hard with all four arms and legs together, he always ultimately pushes his entire body beneath the driftwood and the stones, with only the tip of his small head, with his alert eyes and long, shapely nose, sticking out into the water, watching for food and predators. Tired from exerting so much energy, but feeling safe in his camouflaged state, he sleeps, only to repeat the whole ritual the next morning, when I also repeat mine, sitting nearby in my easy chair reading the newspapers to see if there is anything new in the quest for Arab-Israeli peace. A year ago, when he was smaller and more feisty, Jerry would occasionally muster all his energy, paddle furiously with all four feet, swim across the entire water tank making believe he was a flying fish, and leap out of the water towards the tank rim. Grabbing the rim with his front legs, he would paddle like a maniac with his back legs, and leap out of the tank. Once out, and finding life in our living room either uninteresting or disorienting, he would scamper to the nearest dark, sheltered corner, pull his head into his shell, and sleep. We would find him eventually, scold him mildly while secretly admiring both his daring spirit and muscular prowess, and put him back into the water, where he would repeat this drama days later. Once he made it out of the living room and into the kitchen, where, perhaps unable to open the refrigerator, he found a dark corner and went into sleep mode. more..
Breaking the Silence on the Israel Lobby
By Jeffrey Blankfort, Palestine Chronicle 3/26/2007
Why is the Israel Lobby a taboo subject among the left and the anti-war movements? Why was it not on the agenda of the conference in Berkeley that weekend? On a Saturday in mid-February a little less than a year ago, I had two experiences, one very positive and encouraging --the other negative and disturbing. The first was at the Marin Community Center in Mill Valley, across the Bay from San Francisco, where more than 200 (210 signed in) people, and not what we refer to as "the choir" or "the usual suspects," turned up to hear Palestinian legal scholar Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian professor Jess Ghannam, Stanford-based Israeli scholar Yael Ben-Zvi and myself speak on the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The event was sponsored by a relatively new organization, "If Americans Knew." Initiated by Alison Weir, a Marin county resident who had been stimulated into action in behalf of the Palestinians after a visit to Israeli-occupied Gaza the year before. All of the presentations were well received but the enthusiastic reception for mine, in particular, was significant because my subject was the pro- Israel lobby and its negative influence on the American body politic. I placed much of the blame for the escalation of violence in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict on the actions of the organized American Jewish community and by individual Jews working independently who over the years have successfully stifled, intimidated, and marginalized critics of Israeli policies. I expected uproar from the audience because, from my experience, Marin had always been another "occupied territory," but even among the many Jews there, none challenged by premise or my evidence. more..
On Israel, America and AIPAC
By George Soros, New York Review of Books 4/12/2007
The Bush administration is once again in the process of committing a major policy blunder in the Middle East, one that is liable to have disastrous consequences and is not receiving the attention it should. This time it concerns the Israeli–Palestinian relationship. The Bush administration is actively supporting the Israeli government in its refusal to recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas, which the US State Department considers a terrorist organization. This precludes any progress toward a peace settlement at a time when progress on the Palestinian problem could help avert a conflagration in the greater Middle East. The United States and Israel seek to deal only with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in the hope that new elections would deny Hamas the majority it now has in the Palestinian Legislative Council. This is a hopeless strategy because Hamas has said it would boycott early elections, and even if their outcome would result in Hamas’s exclusion from the government, no peace agreement would hold without Hamas’s support. In the meantime Saudi Arabia is pursuing a different path. In a February summit in Mecca between Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, the Saudi government worked out an agreement between Hamas and Fatah, which have been clashing violently, to form a national unity government. According to the Mecca accord, Hamas has agreed "to respect international resolutions and the agreements [with Israel] signed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization," including the Oslo Accords. According to press reports on March 15, the new government, like the present one, will be headed by Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister, but Hamas will get nine of the government’s twenty-four ministries, as well as an additional minister without portfolio; President Abbas and his Fatah party will control six ministries, and independent representatives—some said to be under the control of Hamas or Fatah—and other political factions will fill the nine remaining ministries. more..
Arab summit = Israel’s last opportunity for peace
By Nasser Al-Lahham, Editorial, Ma’an News Agency 3/26/2007
Bethlehem - There is no need to write again about US President George Bush carrying out experiments on the world’s poor and oppressed peoples. However, the Arab summit in Riyadh will mark the last chance for Israel to survive in peace. There will be no new Arab generation to trust political solutions while Israel forcibly depends on military might. The issue is not only related to direct threats to the existence of Israel. It is a more comprehensive threat to the whole Arab political system which prevails in the Arab orient. Israel does not bear the elements for political cessation, and the Arab summit will be of great influence on the prevailing Arab system. According to human political theory, occupation is not only about political disagreement that could be settled through more and more concessions. It is rather a brutal behavior which should be immediately stopped because it is impossible for any human or group of people to adapt to it. Israel has always gone to the extreme regarding time. The Israelis have always undermined the time element, and depended on military power since their beginning in 1948. Then they occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. In 1978, the Israeli prime minister at the time, Menachem Begin, abandoned the Camp David treaty after he signed it with the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat. At the Madrid conference, Yitzhak Shamir counted on the emigration of millions of Jews to Palestine. Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin once said a famous phrase: ’time is not sacred’. more..
’Bush House Man’ would hate the fuss
By Stewart Purvis, The Guardian 3/26/2007 There was no one more aware than Alan Johnston of the dangers of reporting from Gaza, but he thought the risks were worth taking in the pursuit of a good story As BBC staff campaigning for the release of Alan Johnston put up posters of him last week they were certain of one thing - if he could see them doing it, he would hate the fuss. He has been called "quiet", "low-key", "softly-spoken" and "easy-going". But the quality that probably matters most at the moment is being "calm". Johnston does not do emotion, either in his reporting or his personal manner. The BBC Gaza’s correspondent is very much "Bush House Man", schooled in the BBC World Service’s focus on fact rather than opinion, reportage over comment. Johnston was my Gaza guide a year ago when I visited the BBC bureau as part of the external review into the BBC’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He showed me around the media building where some of the neighbouring offices had been taken out by Israeli fire. We watched Hamas TV and Hizbullah TV put out their programmes. We ate lunch at the Diar hotel, which was his favourite place after somebody blew up the bar at the UN club. Johnston talked about the possibility that one day somebody with a gun would come for him just as they had come for so many foreigners before. And the probability that, like them, he would be released after a couple of days unharmed. He was calm, even relaxed, about the prospect but that didn’t mean that he and the BBC didn’t think about his security all the time. more..
’My son lived a worthwhile life’
By Emine Saner, The Guardian 3/26/2007 In April 2003, 21-year old Tom Hurndall was shot in the head in Gaza by an Israeli soldier as he tried to save the lives of three small children. Nine months later, he died, having never recovered consciousness. Emine Saner talks to his mother Jocelyn about her grief, her fight to make the Israeli army accountable for his death and the book she has written in his memory. It is one of the poignancies of Tom Hurndall’s short life that he had gone to Gaza in search of a story, and ended up becoming it. A 21-year-old photography student at Manchester Metropolitan University, he went to Baghdad in February 2003 to photograph human shields, activists who were trying to protect ordinary Iraqis from the threat of Anglo-American attack. While he was there he heard about Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who had been protecting a Palestinian’s family’s house in Rafah, in the southern Gaza strip, when an Israeli bulldozer crushed her to death. Tom went to Gaza to find out what had happened. All that is clear from the book his mother, Jocelyn, has written about Tom’s life, and about his family’s battle to bring the Israeli army to account for killing him. It’s not a political book, she stresses, though the anger, frustration and disappointment she feels towards the army, and the Israeli and British governments, is obvious. Tom was in Rafah, in the Israeli-occupied Gaza strip, on April 11, at an ISM demonstration. Suddenly low shots were fired from an Israeli army watchtower in the direction of children playing on a mound of rubble. Most of them ran - but three froze. Tom, wearing a bright orange ISM jacket, ran to help them. He scooped up a boy and carried him to safety. He ran back for the two girls, bent down to put his arm round one of them and was shot in the head. more..
The trek of a lifetime in our own backyard
By Amin Abu Wardeh, Palestine News Network 3/26/2007
Nablus - PNN spent the day north of Nablus City, accompanying a local expert in the field of flora. A slow start was typical with the four of us being treated to a rural breakfast of fresh cheese, bread, olive oil and zatar in Yassid Village. The dewy grass began to dry. The day was lovely. We tested our shoes and made certain we were carrying enough water. We were going to have to “walk with zeal," our guide told us. Our goal was to proceed in the direction of Wadi Fara, more than 10 kilometers away. But the first minute brought shame, the remembrance of our lives under occupation that is sometimes, somehow forgotten in the smell of green grass and light spring sun. Our guide, Bashir, said, “Look at the remnants of this vehicle, parked here, left behind. There is no where to put it. The car was shot to bits in the assassination of Mahmoud Abu Hanoud five years ago. People were picking up the remnants of his body scattered at a distance of hundreds of meters.” We walked and Bashir took notes, telling us about the wild plants while documenting them in his notebook. After just an hour we thought that perhaps we should offer him more paper. All of a sudden one of our colleagues, Amir, pointed to the corpse of a pig with his abdomen riddled with bullet holes. This indicated two dangers: Israeli settlers were nearby, as were wild pigs. more..
Changing Middle East
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 3/26/2007 My fear is that Arabs will play a long, willingly or not, and Palestinians would be forced to partake in the charade, for their reliance on international handouts for their mere survival will make it impossible to defy the US-Israeli regional designs forever. The rapid, almost hasty, developments on the Arab Israeli front, almost immediately following the Saudi sponsored Makkah Agreement on February 2, should be examined in their proper context, as a part and parcel of the regional shifts, exasperated by the US war in Iraq and the dramatic adjustment in Iran’s position vis-à-vis the region and its sectarian, religious composition. Two prevailing analyses have been offered; one that is skeptical, and argues that the Arab initiative, which will be articulated at a coming Arab league conference in Saudi Arabia on March 28, was brought back to the scene on the behest of the US administration: by engaging Hamas, Arabs will deny Iran the opportunity to further galvanize its regional alliances — Syria and Hezbollah — against the US and Israel, thus further cemented the Shia crescent, at the expense of the Sunni majority. The other analysis is overtly optimistic, ranging between the view of Palestinian and Arab commentators talking of a ‘historic opportunity’ and Western commentators wondering if the league has finally taking charge of the Arab people’s own destiny. "Worried by what they see as the Bush administration’s failings, and the new regional power of Iran, the Arabs are struggling to take their destiny into their own hands," is how BBC Middle East analyst Roger Hardy worded the conclusion of his analysis, "Mid-East Package Diplomacy." more..
Without Borders
By Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom 3/24/2007
INCREDIBLE! In Palestinian schoolbooks, there is no trace of the Green Line! They do not recognize the existence of Israel even in the 1967 borders! They say that the "Zionist gangs" stole the country from the Arabs! That’s how they poison the minds of their children! These blood-curdling revelations were published this week in Israel and around the world. The conclusion is self-evident: the Palestinian Authority, which is responsible for the schoolbooks, cannot be a partner in peace negotiations. What a shock! Truth is, there is nothing new here. Every few years, when all the other arguments for refusing to speak with the Palestinian leadership wear thin, the ultimate argument pops up again: Palestinian schoolbooks call for the destruction of Israel! The ammunition is always provided by one of the "professional" institutions that deal with this matter. These are foundations of the far-right, disguised as "scientific" bodies, which are lavishly funded by Jewish-American multi-millionaires. Teams of salaried employees apply a fine-tooth comb to every word of the Arab media and schoolbooks, with a pre-ordained objective: to prove that they are anti-Semitic, preach hatred of Israel and call for the killing of Jews. In the sea of words, it is not too difficult to find suitable quotes, while ignoring everything else. more..
Out of the ashes
By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, The Guardian 3/24/2007
The war in Lebanon last summer did little for Israel and weakened the Beirut government. Only Hizbullah gained strength - and the fighters can’t wait to take up their guns again. Muhammad looks like someone who has stepped out of a Calvin Klein underwear ad. He has spiky hair styled with gel, and long eyelashes shadow his eyes. He is wearing tight jeans and trendy trainers. A silver medallion of the two-headed sword of Imam Ali hangs on a chain around his neck and in his hand is an ultra-slim mobile phone. But Muhammed does not work in advertising; he is a devoted Shia, an active member of Hizbullah - the Party of God - and a leader of the Hizbullah-run student union in his university. He is part of what the US government and Israel describe as a terrorist organisation. He calls it the Resistance. "We are the heroes of resistance against the forces of oppression," Muhammed says. "If we collapse, everything that the Shia have achieved in the past three decades will disappear." ....Muhammad is one of the new generation of the party, bright, sophisticated and very conscious of the geopolitics of the region. They are far removed from the traditional image of menacing, bearded, Kalashnikov-toting fighters. ...."You don’t join the party - you are born in the party," Muhammad tells me. From the time you are a small boy, he says, the party watches you; they monitor your behaviour to see if you are committed - if you pray, if you commemorate Ashura, if you fast. "When they are sure you are committed and that you don’t drink and don’t have problems in your neighbourhood, a party officer approaches you." more..
Leaders to the Right, Followers to the Left
By Leonard Fein, Forward 3/23/2007
On March 12, by action of its executive committee, the Union for Reform Judaism became the first national Jewish organization to take more than a tongue-clucking position on the Iraq War. It did what the Senate has been unable to do: It voted overwhelmingly to oppose President Bush’s “surge” of new troops, and it called on the president to set and announce a specific timetable for the phased withdrawal of troops. Alas, the URJ decision is very much non-binding. What’s surprising, bordering on astonishing, is that the URJ is the only major national Jewish organization to have spoken out so decisively on this misbegotten and misconducted war. I say “astonishing” because the American Jewish public, which is represented by a broad array of organizations, has very clear views on the war. At the end of February, the Gallup organization conducted a poll of more than 12,000 Americans. Overall, it found that 52% of Americans think the war a mistake, while 46% do not. When the numbers are broken down, we find that white Protestants favor the war — that is, do not think it was a mistake to have launched it — by 55% to 42%; black Protestants differ sharply, splitting 78-18% against the war. Catholics divide 53%-46% against, while Mormons are 72%-17% in favor. But ah, the Jews: Seventy-seven percent of us call the war a mistake, 21% of us do not. And the data strongly suggest that it’s not just Jewish liberalism or the Jewish preference for the Democratic Party that prompts the response. more..
Professor Sami Al-Arian Enters 54th Day of Hunger Strike
Palestine Chronicle/Democracy Now 3/21/2007
Sami Al-Arian is in dire condition. The jailed Palestinian professor has lost over 50 pounds as he enters the 54th day of a hunger strike to protest the circumstances of his continued imprisonment. DN speaks with his wife, Nahla Al-Arian. Sami Al-Arian has spent the past four years in jail despite a jury’s failure over a year ago to return a single guilty verdict on any of the 17 charges brought against him. He eventually signed a plea deal with the government in exchange for being released and deported. This past January, with just three months left before his scheduled release, a judge found him in contempt after he refused to testify before a Virginia grand jury. The date of his release could now be extended by a year and a half. On January 22nd, Al-Arian - who is a diabetic - stopped eating in protest. Last month he was transferred to the Federal Medical facility in Butner Virginia as his health deteriorated. A week before his transfer, we spoke with Sami Al-Arian from prison in his first broadcast interview since his 2003 arrest. He explained why he was on hunger strike. His wife, Nahla Al-Arian, is going to Virginia today to visit him along with their five children. She joins me now from Tampa, Florida where she lives. more..
Olmert’s testimony reveals the real goal of the war in Lebanon
By Jonathan Cook, Arabic Media Internet Network (AMIN) 3/13/2007
Nazareth- Israel’s supposedly “defensive” assault on Hizbullah last summer, in which more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed in a massive aerial bombardment that ended with Israel littering the country’s south with cluster bombs, was cast in a definitively different light last week by Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. His leaked testimony to the Winograd Committee -- investigating the government’s failures during the month-long attack -- suggests that he had been preparing for such a war at least four months before the official cases belli: the capture by Hizbullah of two Israeli soldiers from a border post on 12 July 2006. Lebanon’s devastation was apparently designed to teach both Hizbullah and the country’s wider public a lesson. Olmert’s new account clarifies the confusing series of official justifications for the war from the time. First, we were told that the seizure of the soldiers was “an act of war” by Lebanon and that a “shock and awe” campaign was needed to secure their release. Or, as the then Chief of Staff Dan Halutz -- taking time out from disposing of his shares before market prices fell -- explained, his pilots were going to “turn the clock back 20 years” in Lebanon. Then the army claimed that it was trying to stop Hizbullah’s rocket strikes. But the bombing campaign targeted not only the rocket launchers but much of Lebanon, including Beirut. (It was, of course, conveniently overlooked that Hizbullah’s rockets fell as a response to the Israeli bombardment and not the other way round. more..
Report: The continued closure of Rafah Crossing Point
Electronic Intifada/Al Mezan 3/12/2007
PIn September 2005, Israel completed its unilateral ’disengagement’ plan; it evacuated the Israeli settlements that had been built -- in violation of international law -- during the almost 40 years of occupation, and withdrew the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) from within the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government then claimed that the implementation of this ’disengagement’ plan would "invalidate the claims against Israel regarding its responsibility for Palestinians within the Gaza Strip". Since then, the State Attorney’s Office has also argued that, with the termination of the military government of the Gaza Strip, Israel has no obligations whatsoever towards the citizens of Gaza, who should now direct their claims to the Palestinian Authority (PA). However, both legal and factual accounts have indicated to the contrary. As Al Mezan and other human rights organizations continue to assert, Israel has retained full control over Gaza, and hence its illegal occupation. The military control of Gaza has simply changed forms; while Gaza was once controlled from within the Strip, it is now controlled from around it, through its borders, airspace, and sea space – as well as by frequent incursions. In its continued occupation of Gaza, the Israeli government and armed forces have repeatedly and routinely violated both international humanitarian law and the non-derogable human rights of the 1.4 million residents of Gaza. The almost continued closure of Rafah Crossing Point (RCP) is one of the most insidious examples of this, and, as one of the biggest disappointments following the ’disengagement’, is the focus of this study. more..
Open-Ended Negotiations
By Mahmoud Labadi, Arabic Media Internet Network (AMIN) 3/9/2007
The Tripartite Summit Meeting of Jerusalem between Olmert, Abbas and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on February 19, 2007 is but one episode of an open-ended tragedy, called the "Peace Process" in the Middle East. With all the respect to the good intentions of Secretary Rice to broker a peace deal between the two "Adversaries" very little has been reached in this round. Nonetheless it was a positive step in the right direction. Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority more than a decade ago, the peace process is still stumbling. Unlike verbal promises of peaceful intentions, both sides are still stuck in their traditional narratives: (1) The Palestinians talk about occupation to justify their violence, or "terrorism", and their rejection to Israeli dictate, or to the countless preconditions, such as Israel’s right to exist, stopping violence etc. (2) the Israelis retaliate even more violently by assassinations, demolitions, detentions and by creating facts on the ground, such as Settlements, the expansionist Wall, Checkpoints and by strangling the Palestinian daily life through economic sanctions or collective punishment measures etc. (3) The Europeans and the Americans who hold a predicator sense of preaching Democracy and Human rights around the world stop short of tackling seriously the Palestinian issue. They are wavering between their declared sense of justice and their tacit bias with the occupier. An Arab proverb says: "A man beaten by the whip is not like the one counting the whips from a far distance". This is the case with the Palestinians who are beaten on daily basis by the Israeli whip, while the Americans and the Europeans are carelessly watching. more..
Art from Gaza and the West Bank: Gallery of a troubled nation
By Donald Macintyre, The Independent 3/13/2007 The Palestinian answer to Charles Saatchi pursues the elusive dream of a permanent home for his unique but unheralded collection. Mazen Qupty had always planned to study film - the seventh art as he calls it. Yet the irony is that if he hadn’t reluctantly taken a friend’s advice to do a law degree instead, he wouldn’t now, at 52, be embarked on the great project of his life, the establishment of a national museum of contemporary Palestinian art. For even in the negligible market there is for Palestinian painting, Mr Qupty, a successful lawyer whose clients include most of the churches in the Holy Land, would never have been able to afford to collect the 170 pieces that he and his wife, Yvette, have promised to donate as the nucleus of the museum that is their dream. It says something about international ignorance of contemporary Palestinian art that the richness, technical mastery and vibrancy of the works Mr Qupty has hung and stored in his home in the East Jerusalem suburb of Beit Hanina come as a complete shock. Sip a glass of wine in Mr Qupty’s living room and you are mesmerised by the variety of the works on the opposite wall, its centrepiece the first picture Mr Qupty ever bought and the only one from his collection - the largest single one of Palestinian art assembled anywhere - that he never rotates back into storage to make way for others. By Taysir Barakat, born in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza 48 years ago and a graduate of the College of Fine Arts in Alexandria, it’s a haunting, memory-laden oil painting just over a metre square, its colours dominated by a luminous dark red, of a boy standing in a swing, with female figures in the background framed by open windows, entitled "The Children of Our Neighbourhood". In the current circumstances, in which Palestinians have more pressing priorities than the arts, the dream of a national museum might seem as impossible as indeed it did to Mr Qupty when it first came up at a dinner he was giving for a group of diplomats in 2004. But he has shown since then that if anyone can make it happen, he can. Mainly thanks to Mr Qupty - whose mantra is that "everything starts with a dream" - the museum, albeit in embryonic form, already exists. A few months after that dinner, Mr Qupty assembled a group of artists together with sympathetic businessmen and professionals - including Tim Rothermel, the former Jerusalem head of the UNDP which provided some of the initial funding - to found a new, and these days the only, gallery in the heart of East Jerusalem. By any standards Al Hoash, which opened December 2005, is a busy place, its modest but airy, first-floor space in the Nablus road rapidly turning into a cultural focal point for Palestinians in the city and - on the all too rare occasions when closures and roadblocks in the West Bank permit - well beyond. more..
Obama, the Lobby, and the Next War
By Justin Raimondo, Palestine Chronicle/AntiWar.com 3/12/2007
The Democratic candidates have all prostrated themselves before the Lobby and pledged their undying fealty to a foreign policy distorted by its pro-Israel bias. It had to happen sooner or later, and Barack Obama’s startling rise to near the top of the Democratic presidential pack made it sooner – I’m talking about his speech to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It starts out with a riff about his ride in an IDF helicopter and how this made him "truly see how close everything is and why peace through security is the only way for Israel." But of course the Palestinians are just as close to the Israelis as the Israelis are to them – and the Israelis have far more arms (provided by the U.S.) and are surely not averse to using them. So what is "the only way" for the Palestinians? Yet there can be no "peace through security" for the Palestinians, since there is no security from Israeli air strikes and repeated invasions of Palestinian territory. The maudlin emotionalism of Obama’s appeal is nowhere more apparent than in this speech, and nowhere more inappropriately one-sided. But, here, listen to Obama tell it: "Our helicopter landed in the town of Kiryat Shmona on the border. What struck me first about the village was how familiar it looked. The houses and streets looked like ones you might find in a suburb in America. I could imagine young children riding their bikes down the streets. I could imagine the sounds of their joyful play just like my own daughters. There were cars in the driveway. The shrubs were trimmed. The families were living their lives." Oh, please spare us! Does Mr. Obama really not know that there are – or were – similar communities in the occupied territories? Does he really not know that countless Palestinian villages – with "houses and streets like you might find in a suburb in America" – have been demolished by Israeli tractors? Can Obama imagine a young Palestinian child riding his bike down the street – can he imagine his joyful play? Can he imagine a car in the driveway, the shrubs trimmed – the families living their lives in the moment before the Israelis wiped it all out in their ruthless campaign of conquest and ethnic cleansing? more..
Peace and Justice Movement in UK at Crossroad
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 3/8/2007 I plead to all of you, to work for peace, to redress injustice or at least to do nothing that would jeopardize the work of the peace and justice movement, neither in Britain, nor anywhere else. Growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, it was a very familiar encounter: Israeli soldiers storming our house accompanied by shouts of terror and a barrage of insults. Such recollections make me shudder to this day. Just the mere summoning of those memories of my childhood in the Nuseirat refugee camp haunting me not only in childhood but in my adulthood as well, shall most likely accompany me for the rest of my life - almost instantaneously forcing me to relive my mother’s agonizing cries, my father’s pleas for the welfare of his children, my brothers and I clutching to each other as the soldiers try to break us a part, the physical degradation, the verbal abuse, then the utter silence when the soldiers finally leave, the sounds of the engines fading away into the camp’s darkened roads, followed by far away screams from some other family in some other place, as the tragic scenario faithfully repeats itself. My family’s house was positioned in a location that was simply a nightmare, since it stood at the helm of the camp’s main square, often referred to as Red Square by locals, remembering the many Palestinians killed in and around it while protesting the occupation during the uprising or Intifada of 1987. Israeli soldiers began their nightly hunts for terrorists, i.e. stone throwing kids, from that central point. My house was often the first in the soldiers’ route: it was there where they initiated their formidable mission. As horrifying as it was, it was a most predictable routine: we would turn all lights off in anticipation, my parents would take their positions to open the door as quickly as possible once the loud banging at the door commenced; once the Israeli jeeps’ engines were turned off, it was the matter of a few seconds before it all began: a fury of pounding at the door; “who is it?” my dad would ask, as if he suspected anyone else but the tormenting soldiers: their reply was always the same, always as confident as it was terrifying; “Yahoud”, they would reply. more..
Jerusalem’s Apartheid Tramway
By Philippe Rekacewicz and Dominique Vidal, Middle East Online 3/12/2007 Two French companies are involved in the construction and operation of a light rail system from the centre of Jerusalem to a northern terminus. It is promoted as a unifying project: In fact, it will be yet another way to isolate the Palestinians. The tram will not operate before 2009 but it’s already a presence across Jerusalem, and garish ads show it running beside the walls of the Old City. The strangest ad features a pensive Theodor Herzl; in his book Altneuland, published two years before his death in 1902, Herzl dreamed of an electric tram system as a symbol of the Jerusalem of the future. A century later this ecological and economic solution is a necessity. “Our city is in gridlock,” said Shmulik Elgarbly, Israeli spokesman for the mass transit system. “Ever since cars got cheaper, we’ve had terrible congestion in Jerusalem. By 1980 the percentage of urban dwellers using public transport dropped from 76% to 40%.” New roads jam up almost as soon as they are finished. Most streets are too narrow for bus lanes. The geological structure under the city would be ideal for the construction of a subway system, but why not let passengers see the most beautiful city in the world? Ten years ago those arguments convinced Jerusalem’s mayor, then Ehud Olmert, of the need for a light rail system. The project would be financed by the private sector under a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contract and the network would be handed over after 30 years. An international tender was put out in 2000 and the French company Alstom won the construction bid. Two years later Connex, the subsidiary of another French company, Veolia, won the operating rights. They formed a consortium called Citypass with two Israeli companies, Ashtrom Construction and Pollar Investment, as well as two banks, Hapaolim and Leumi. The contract was signed in July 2005. The initial aim is to carry 500 passengers by 2009 on each of 25 trains running between the terminus points of Pisgat Ze’ev and Mount Herzl. more..
Olmert’s Truth
By Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom 3/10/2007
IF GOD wills, even a broomstick will shoot. That is an old Yiddish adage. One could add now: If God wills, even Olmert can sometimes tell the truth. The truth, according to the Prime Minister’s testimony before the Inquiry Commission headed by Judge Vinograd that was leaked to the media yesterday, is that this was not a spontaneous reaction to the capture of the two soldiers, but a war planned a long time ago. We said so right from the start. Olmert told the commission that immediately after assuming the functions of acting prime minister, in January 2006, he consulted with the army chiefs about the situation on the northern border. Until then, the prevailing doctrine followed Ariel Sharon’s decision - logical from his point of view - not to react in force to provocations in the north, so that the Israeli army could concentrate on fighting the Palestinians. But this enabled Hizbullah to build up a large stockpile of rockets of all kinds. Olmert decided to change that policy. The army prepared a two-pronged plan: an operation on the ground aimed at the elimination of Hizbullah, and an aerial offensive, aimed at the destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure, in order to put pressure on the Lebanese public which in turn would put pressure on Hizbullah. As the Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, said at the beginning of the war: "we shall turn Lebanon’s clock back 20 years." (a rather modest aim, compared to the famous proposal of an American colleague: to "bomb Vietnam back to the stone age".) The Air Force was also tasked with destroying Hizbullah’s rocket arsenal. more..
On the road from Mecca to Riyadh
By Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 3/13/2007
The news that Ehud Olmert expects Mahmoud Abbas not to include his "associates" in the new government suggests that the prime minister recognizes that the Palestinian unity government is a done deal. He has apparently read the intelligence assessments, according to which the concessions Hamas was driven to make in Mecca have led Arab states to recognize it as a legitimate ruling authority and thus undermined the stance of the Quartet. Nonetheless, even though the Quartet itself announced over the weekend that it was sufficient for the new Palestinian government to "reflect" (instead of "adopt") the three preconditions for lifting the boycott, Israel insists on fighting a battle that has already been decided by the Mecca agreement. Even though the caravan has passed , the government continues to lay mines along the road the Palestinians are taking toward a unity government. More than 13 years after the signing of the Oslo accords, which aimed to divide the country anew, the bypass method continues to contribute to deadly accidents. Yitzhak Rabin paved bypass roads the length and breadth of the occupied territories, in order to keep all the settlements in place "until a final settlement." The result: The settlers took advantage of the generosity of successive governments in order to expand their boundaries. Ariel Sharon forced the Palestinians to bypass an "irrelevant" chairman Yasser Arafat by way of selecting an "irrelevant" prime minister and having to contend with a unilateral disengagement. The result: the Palestinians realized that the only thing the camp of pragmatists, led by Abbas, can be counted on to provide are the benefits of a government to its associates. The Hamas victory was just a matter of time. more..
Northeastern Jerusalem villages accessible only via maze of bad roads, settlers and soldiers
By Maisa Abu Ghazaleh, Palestine News Network 3/7/2007
After the Israeli authorities closed the road leading to villages in northwestern Jerusalem, the new route for 50,000 Palestinians includes 10 kilometers of bumpy road via Beit Hanina. Mousa Baudoin takes rough roads and passes several checkpoints and roadblocks in order to access his place of work in Jerusalem. Baduoin describes the maze. “Everyday I leave at 6:15 a.m., taking a car that carries us to Ramallah and then back to Beit Hanina Al Balad for a link to the northwestern villages." He said, "This route is dominated by dug-up dirt roads, water, scraps of asphalt and stones that have born the brunt of tens of years. These are the same roads the Jordanian army used to transfer supplies to the northwestern villages of Biddu, Beit Surik, Beit Iksa, An Nabi Samwil, Beit ’Anan, Beit Ijza, Qatanna, Beit Duqqu and Beit ’Anan parallel to the Green Line.” The 32 year old professional continued to tell PNN, “The taxi goes slowly, shaking to the right and left, until another car comes from the opposite direction and it takes at least five minutes to shimmy past each other. Each stone, each mound, is a hindrance.” Badouin points out that cars often stop altogether after being damaged by stones underneath, which is why he uses public transportation and not his own car. Eight months have passed since this road of stone became the forced route for the population of nine northwestern Jerusalem villages. That was the time that the Israeli administration separated the settlers on the bypass roads in the vicinity of Jerusalem, when driving on the four major routes toward Ramallah became illegal for Palestinians. more..
Is Israel Falling Apart?
By Dror Wahrman, Ma’an News Agency 3/7/2007
Foreign observers of Israel tend to focus so intently on the dangers the country faces from its Arab neighbours that they have largely missed an astonishing story that has been accelerating over the past few months: that of the Jewish state’s possible move toward internal collapse. If you consider this an exaggeration, just take note of what the past couple of weeks have brought about. A few days ago the chief of the Israeli police resigned after an investigation that found several of Israel’s highest police officers guilty of corruption and negligence. This came within a week of the forced resignation of Israel’s Chief of Staff from the military because of the fiascos of the second Lebanon war. It was also some ten days after Israel’s minister of justice was convicted of sexual assault while on duty, and a couple of weeks after Israel’s president – who holds a largely symbolic position – resigned temporarily following charges of rape and sexual misconduct. It was also the same day that the head of Israel’s tax authority resigned because of possible corruption charges. In the meantime, several other investigations are still pending, not least two or three directed at the Prime Minister himself, Ehud Olmert, concerning corruption and favoritism. And an appeal to the Supreme Court has already been filed against the minister of police’s choice for a new police chief – again, because of old charges of corruption of which the nominee had been acquitted only through a particularly narrow benefit of the doubt. Do these events really presage the collapse of the Israeli system of governance and democracy? There certainly has never been such a deep crisis of leadership in the country that touts itself as the only democracy in the Middle East. The leader of the ruling parliamentary coalition, Avigdor Yitzhaki, said so publicly a few days ago. And the Minister of Education has suggested that all schools devote special classes to the “government crisis”, so that children can speak out about what might well seem to them like a total collapse of all systems that control their lives. Suddenly the Palestinians and the Hizbullah, and even Iranian nukes, have taken a back seat: Israel does indeed seem in danger of imploding from within, at least as a viable democracy. There are at least two narratives that can help situate why Israel finds itself in such a worrying place on the eve of its sixtieth birthday. For convenience we can tag them by the country’s most decisive formative moments: the story of 1948 and the story of 1967. more..
Judea Pearl and Ramzi Khoury exchange opinions on finding a solution for the Palestinian refugees
Ma’an News Agency 3/1/2007 Judea Pearl, president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, wrote to Common Ground News after reading the letter exchange between Salameh Nematt and Akiva Eldar published by CGNews and republished on Ma’an News. It stimulated a subsequent dialogue between him and writer Ramzi Khoury, on the major stumbling block to peace: refugees. Their exchange was originally published in the Saudi Gazette. 1) On the Saudi Peace Initiative - By Judea Pearl LOS ANGELES - While attending a Muslim-American conference in Doha, Qatar, in 2005, an Arab leader asked me at the dinner table: "Tell me, why didn’t Israelis accept the Saudi peace proposal of 2000; in fact, they did not even respond to it. Did it not offer them everything that they ever wished for: peace, recognition, security, you name it?" I confessed to him what I knew about my friends in Israel: "Do you know what Israelis see when they read a peace proposal in the newspaper?" I asked. "They skip the text about peace, recognition and security and search for one word: ’refugees’. The rest is trivial; if that word is embedded in ’right of return’ or ’a just solution’ or ’Resolution 194’ or some other phrase that may threaten the demographic makeup of Israel, the proposal is automatically deemed a non-starter.... 2) When justice is an obstacle - By Ramzi Khoury KUALA LUMPUR - We see an environment that is very conducive to peace making today: much better than that of the Madrid process that ended in collapse with the bloodshed and misery that is part and parcel of failure. Undoubtedly, all concerned parties are scrambling to make use of this environment; thus the sudden whirlpool of diplomacy. As the end of the second term of the Bush administration nears, there isn’t much hope for an impressive accomplishment that President George Bush Jr and his team can take with them into the history books. The one and only historic accomplishment that can be achieved in two years, due to the fact that a lot has been already achieved through Oslo and Madrid, is to create a Palestinian state on lands occupied in 1967 with Jerusalem its capital.... more..
Seymour Hersh and Iran
By Michael Young, CounterPunch 3/5/2007 The Dark Side of Spun a Lot? It’s become a habit to greet whatever journalist Seymour Hersh writes with reverence. However, after his ludicrous claim last summer that Israel’s war in Lebanon was a trial run for an American bombing of Iran - an accusation undermined by postwar narratives showing the confused way Israel and the United States responded to the conflict - my doubts hardened. In his latest New Yorker piece, Hersh maintains that he has unearthed more dirt on the Bush administration: The US is involved in containing Iran by directly or indirectly "bolstering Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda." The broad tropes of Hersh’s arguments are correct. The US has indeed abandoned the neoconservative approach to the Middle East (which Hersh so loathed), to return to political "realism" based on imposing a balance of power. Much like the US did during the 1980s when it supported Iraq in its war against Iran, the Bush administration is today using Sunnis against Shiites (though in Iraq it is mainly using Shiites against Sunnis). The policy is risky - fiddling with sectarianism may ultimately backfire - but the problem with Hersh is that he offers little hard evidence for many of his controversial assertions. In fact his discussion of Lebanon in particular and his broader charge that the administration is engaging in clandestine activities without proper legislative approval are ill-informed or partial. The New Yorker has signed off on a piece shoddily constructed, often tendentious, and driven almost entirely by Hersh’s sources (most of the more significant ones left unnamed), rather than his own independent confirmation of the details. more..
What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks?
By Christopher Ketcham, CounterPunch 3/7/2007 High-Fivers and Art Student Spies On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, an FBI bulletin known as a BOLO - "be on lookout" -- was issued with regard to three suspicious men who that morning were seen leaving the New Jersey waterfront minutes after the first plane hit World Trade Center 1. Law enforcement officers across the New York-New Jersey area were warned in the radio dispatch to watch for a "vehicle possibly related to New York terrorist attack": White, 2000 Chevrolet van with ’Urban Moving Systems’ sign on back seen at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ, at the time of first impact of jetliner into World Trade Center Three individuals with van were seen celebrating after initial impact and subsequent explosion. FBI Newark Field Office requests that, if the van is located, hold for prints and detain individuals. At 3:56 p.m., twenty-five minutes after the issuance of the FBI BOLO, officers with the East Rutherford Police Department stopped the commercial moving van through a trace on the plates. According to the police report, Officer Scott DeCarlo and Sgt. Dennis Rivelli approached the stopped van, demanding that the driver exit the vehicle. The driver, 23-year-old Sivan Kurzberg, refused and "was asked several more times [but] appeared to be fumbling with a black leather fanny pouch type of bag". With guns drawn, the police then "physically removed" Kurzberg, while four other men - two more men had apparently joined the group since the morning - were also removed from the van, handcuffed, placed on the grass median and read their Miranda rights. They had not been told the reasons for their arrest. Yet, according to DeCarlo’s report, "this officer was told without question by the driver [Sivan Kurzberg],’We are Israeli. We are not your problem.Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.’" Another of the five Israelis, again without prompting, told Officer DeCarlo - falsely - that "we were on the West Side Highway in New York City during the incident". From inside the vehicle the officers, who were quickly joined by agents from the FBI, retrieved multiple passports and $4,700 in cash stuffed in a sock. According to New Jersey’s Bergen Record, which on September 12 reported the arrest of the five Israelis, an investigator high up in the Bergen County law enforcement hierarchy stated that officers had also discovered in the vehicle "maps of the city with certain places highlighted. It looked like they’re hooked in with this", the source told the Record, referring to the 9/11 attacks. "It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park." more..
Seven Countries In Five Years: An interview with General Wesley Clark
Information Clearing House/ Democracy Now! 3/5/2007
[Includes video and audio links] We are going to hear General Wesley Clark on the possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran, the impeachment of President Bush, the use of cluster bombs, the bombing of Radio Television Serbia during the Kosovo War and much more.... .....AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a replay in what happened in the lead-up to the war with Iraq -- the allegations of the weapons of mass destruction, the media leaping onto the bandwagon? GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, in a way. But, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself exactly twice. What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn’t be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran. I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.” So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” -- meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office -- “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you. -- See also: Audiomore..
One narrative of the Arab world’s encounter with modernity
By Jim Quilty, Daily Star 3/8/2007 Samir Kassir’s ’Being Arab’ - last testament of an engaged intellectual -- Review BEIRUT: Before he was assassinated in June 2005, columnist and academic Samir Kassir completed a slim book in French called "ConsidŽrations sur le malheur arabe." He promised an Arabic edition and in late 2006 "Being Arab," an English-language version of his work, appeared. Kassir was Lebanon’s embodiment of the engaged intellectual, providing the ideological basis of the Democratic Left Movement - the only secular leftist political group to participate in 2005’s Beirut Spring. "Being Arab" is significant as one of the few artifacts of his thought that’s been translated into English, all the more since he reassures his readers that it isn’t a political program. It’s basically a cultural history of the Arab world’s encounter with modernity, albeit one told with a forthright political agenda in mind. In his introduction, Kassir sums up the Arab misfortune in existential terms - the feeling that "Arab" denotes an "ethnic label with overtones of censure, or, at best, a culture that denies everything modernity stands for." Arabs feel powerless to improve their situation, he observes, because of political realities in the Arab states. From Morocco to the Gulf, Arabs are pinned between authoritarianism, foreign occupation in Iraq and Palestine, and political Islam, which grew out of authoritarianism’s repressing all other effective political associations. Like so many Arab writers and politicians before him, Kassir contrasts the malaise in the contemporary Arab world with the historic accomplishments of Umayyad and Abbasid-era civilization. This nostalgia for the Arab golden age, he argues, is itself part of the problem. During the nahda, the Arabic intellectual renaissance 19th and early 20th century, he says, that glorious past was the source of a creative tension. With the nahda’s perceived failure - with the defeat of the "Palestinian revolution" and the discrediting of the secular-leftist ideologies with which it was associated - that past became "crushingly oppressive". more..
Raiding Nablus
By Sonja Karkar, Palestine Chronicle 3/6/2007 If it’s not Nablus, it is Jenin or Gaza or any one of the other Palestinian cities and neighbourhoods regularly targeted by Israel’s military that leads to the seeds of discontent being sown from one generation to the next. Every overture of peace made by the Palestinians in recent times, has been met with Israeli silence or violence. Last week, Israel said it would not negotiate with the Palestinian unity government signed off by Fatah and Hamas leaders in the Saudi-brokered Mecca Agreement. A few days later, Israel began a series of aggressive incursions into the beleaguered city of Nablus, deep inside the occupied West Bank. Returning again barely 24 hours later, Israel continued the "Hot Winter" offensive by sending 100 tanks and heavily armoured vehicles thundering into Nablus--a blatant provocation that could well trigger a new spate of violence. Israeli soldiers began forcing Palestinian families out of their homes at gunpoint whilst looking for the relatives of "Wanted Palestinians". Homes were vandalised and young men were blindfolded, handcuffed and arrested. There was no discriminating between the relatives: an old man with a heart condition and a 5-month pregnant woman were amongst those rounded up and kept under surveillance at a city school. Since the incursions began, some 150 Palestinian civilians have been detained. One man was killed and at least 30 people have been injured. Large areas of this city of 50,000 people are now being held under military curfew, and once again, Palestinians are being confined to their homes for an indeterminate period. This, of course, has terrible implications for the sick and elderly who are not able to even seek medical assistance. Medics have had to find ways of reaching patients in crisis putting their own lives at risk, particularly since soldiers have taken up positions in peoples’ homes and are using the rooftops as sniper towers. Soldiers have also stationed themselves in the corridors of Rafidiya Hospital and are checking IDs and the belongings of doctors, patients and staff. The old city of Nablus is progressively turning into rubble as soldiers and bulldozers arbitrarily destroy buildings that they decide are security risks. more..
Crossing the Line: Violation of the Rights of Palestinians in Israel without a Permit
B’tselem Information Sheet 3/6/2007
Severe economic hardship now prevails in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Poverty is extremely high and many Palestinians have trouble finding work to support themselves and their families. The State of Israel bears a substantial part of the blame for this dismal situation, and, given that it maintains effective control of these areas, it is responsible for rectifying the problems. Not only does Israel do nothing to ease the hardship, it aggravates the situation. It has done this, for example, by imposing a tight closure, which prevents Palestinians to leave the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and enter Israel unless they have permits, which Israel grants sparingly. Many Palestinians who have been unable to obtain the entry permit violate the closure and stay in Israel without a permit, hoping to find work and deliver themselves and their families from the anguish of poverty. Over the years, B’Tselem has issued numerous reports on the abusive conduct of police officers and soldiers against Palestinians who violate the closure to seek work. While the Israeli authorities condemn the acts of abuse that are reported in the media, claiming they are lamentable exceptions, the report shows that these cases are not exceptions at all. In fact, they are the tip of the iceberg, under which is concealed a harsh routine of violence and abuse, including the use of illegal force, illegal damage to property, use of illegal force to extract information and recruit collaborators, and unlawful use of firearms. The report also documents how these forbidden acts occur upon the express instructions of commanding officers, and that the authorities, which officially condemn the actions, transmit a contradictory message to the soldiers and police officers by turning a blind eye and giving tacit consent. The faulty patterns of conduct described in the report all flagrantly breach Israeli law and international law. However, because of the failures and omissions that prevent the submission of complaints and thwart proper investigation of complaints that are filed, the authorities rarely punish police officers and soldiers who commit crimes of the kinds described in the report. more..
Four decades of confiscation leave a fraction of the former "bread basket"
By Ali Samoudi, Palestine News Network 3/6/2007 Jenin -- Despite having completed building the Wall in the Jenin District, Israeli forces continue intensifying settlement activities to overtake more of the northern West Bank. Abdel Razeq Abu Al Hija, involved with settlement monitoring, reported Tuesday that settlement activity is ongoing at a frantic pace in the western Jenin Governorate and in several other pockets to the southeast. One of the most afflicted areas is Tubas. The settlement project not only means the loss of land and increased dangers, it translates into economic devastation and daily deprivation of basic rights, including freedom of movement. The five Israeli settlements built in the Jenin District between 1980 and 1981, Hananit, Shaked, Djinit, Rehan and Haresh, “began small,” says Abu Al Hija. “Two hundred to 500 acres a piece, but then swelled after the 1991 Madrid peace conference to reach the area of Jenin with Shaked at 3,000 and then the bypass road and linking Hananit to the Green Line which resulted in confiscating another 750 dunams and 225 dunams for roads, and then the bypass road for Rehan heading south to reach the Haresh settlement that expanded to the Green Line.” Abu Al Hija described settlements in the West Bank as a “constant threat to Palestinian existence and a serious violation of the right to self-determination.” He said that there is no government that will have the power to undo the damages done by these settlements, all of which directly contravene international law and existing United Nations resolutions. Abu Al Hija reports that Israeli forces use several methods to confiscate the land, notably for "military purposes" beginning between 1967 and 1968. The Israelis closed 140,000 dunams of land in Tubas under the pretext of aligning the Jordanian border and proceeded to destroy all irrigation projects, amounting to 140 wells. They destroyed 40 housing complexes and sealed off the area, citing “security reasons.” Northwest of Tubas to the hills east of the Rift Valley (As Sharq Al Ifriqi), they confiscated 130,000 dunams and used 70,000 dunams as a military training course, and so forth. Within a year the Tubas area, which had once been considered the "food basket of Palestine," became just 60,000 dunams of difficult to reach land. more..
Gaza’s fishing industry under siege
By Rami Almeghari, Electronic Intifada 3/5/2007
Since the abduction by Palestinian resistance groups of Israeli soldier Gila’d Shalit on 25 June 2006, Israeli gunships have prevented Palestinians from fishing off the Gaza coast. This has severely affected both fishermen and food security for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Thirty-thousand people are dependant on Gaza’s fishing industry, but since last June, the Israeli naval forces have harassed those Palestinian fishing boats that dare leave the dock. In the main fishing site of Gaza City, called Almina, there are dozens of fishermen trying to feed their children under harsh economic conditions. Abdurrahman Abu Riyala approached us and spoke out about his daily suffering. "I have recently come under fire. While I was working on my boat, I was surprised by them approaching me. They took me to the west, then to Almajdal. They also forced me to strip off my clothes and jump into the water," Abu Riyal said. The practice of forcing sailors to strip and swim naked from their boats has become a routine method of humiliation. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reports that near-naked fishermen must then endure freezing temperatures while being taken to an Israeli port. Fishermen are later returned to their boat and again forced to swim across. Israeli gunboats have carried out hundreds of such attacks -- shooting at fishing boats and forcing them back to shore or detaining those on board. more..
How the Saudis stole a march on the U.S.
By Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry, Conflicts Forum/Asia Times 3/5/2007
Palestinian Authority advisers Saeb Erakat and Yasser Abed Rabbo arrived in Washington at the beginning of February confused and uncertain. Their mandate from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, was to talk to State Department officials about US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s upcoming visit to Ramallah, where she was planning to hold a three-way meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Palestinian president about restarting the peace process. But beyond that, neither Erakat nor Abed Rabbo had a clue about why Abu Mazen had insisted they travel to Washington. They weren’t alone. In the immediate wake of their visit, State Department officials wondered aloud why the two had even bothered to come: “The real question for both men was the same,” an official familiar with the Erakat-Abed Rabbo meetings remarked, “and that was - what the hell are you doing here?" The same confusion was apparent at the White House, where National Security Council (NSC) official Elliott Abrams - the architect of US policy in the Middle East - was growing increasingly irritated with Rice’s attempt to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks. Abrams, supported by officials in the Office of the Vice President, had consistently argued that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a morass better left in the hands of the Israelis. That viewpoint was clear from the first days of the administration of President George W Bush, when Vice President Dick Cheney knocked down any attempt to re-engage with Israelis and Palestinians. A Republican Party stalwart describes Cheney’s views in blunt terms: “People would come to Bush and say we have to get focused on the peace process, and Cheney would sit there and say, ‘Mr President, don’t do it. These people have been fighting for 50 years. To hell with them. And look at what happened to [former president Bill] Clinton when he tried. It just got worse.’ And Bush would nod his head and that would be the end of the discussion.” more..
Snatching war out of the jaws of peace
By Spengler, Asia Times 3/6/2007
Washington had the opportunity at the turn of 2007 to isolate and neutralize the Mahmud Ahmadinejad regime in Tehran, but through stupidity and arrogance has made war the most probable outcome. Misreading Russia (see Russia’s hudna with the Muslim world, February 21) may have been the irreparable blunder. Meddling in the Muslim-majority states of the former Soviet Union and expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization prompt Russia to step on Washington’s toes in the one place that hurts, namely West Asia. Russia drags its feet on United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran to send Washington a message of extreme displeasure about the overall state of Russian-US relations. But this has an unintended consequence: it has led Iran to believe that without Russian support, the United States will be isolated and impotent to act against it. That is not true, for the US can and will act to forefend a nuclear-armed Iran, alone if need be. A three-way tragedy of errors is in progress. Russia can make a reasonable case for US mistreatment given the construction of anti-missile radar in Eastern Europe, the increasing US military presence on its southern border, and - worst of all - fostering what may become hostile Islamic political movements in Central Asia. But Moscow has misread the consequences of a tactical maneuver to embarrass Washington in the Persian Gulf. The Iranians, in turn, have taken false hope from the disagreement among the former Cold War antagonists. -- See also: Russia's hudna with the Muslim worldmore..
From rebel movement to political party: the case of the Islamic Resistance Movement
By Alastair Crooke, Conflicts Forum 3/4/2007
The view held by many in the West that transformation from an armed resistance movement to political party should be linear, should be preceded by a renunciation of violence, should be facilitated by civil society and brokered by moderate politicians has little reality for the case of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). This is not to suggest that Hamas has not been subject to a political transformation: it has. But that transformation has been achieved in spite of Western efforts and not facilitated by those efforts. While remaining a resistance movement, Hamas has become the government of the Palestinian Authority and has modified its military posture. But this transformation has taken a different course from the one outlined in traditional conflict resolution models. Hamas and other Islamist groups continue to see themselves as resistance movements, but increasingly they see the prospect that their organizations may evolve into political currents that are focused on non-violent resistance. Standard conflict resolution models rely heavily on Western experience in conflict resolution and often ignore the differences of approach in the Islamic history of peace-making. Not surprisingly, the Hamas approach to political negotiation is different in style to that of the West. Also, as an Islamist movement that shares the wider optic of the impact of the West on their societies, Hamas has requirements of authenticity and legitimacy within its own constituency that bear on the importance attached to maintaining an armed capability. These factors, together with the overwhelming effect of long term conflict on a community’s psychology (an aspect that receives little attention in Western models that put preponderant weight on political analysis), suggests that the transformation process for Hamas has been very different from the transformation of arms movements in traditional analysis. In addition, the harsh landscape of the Israeli – Palestinian conflict gives the Hamas experience its special characteristics. -- See also: Read the complete briefing paper (PDF)more..
US Tactics of Containing Regional Roles in ME
By Nicola Nasser, Palestine Chronicle 3/3/2007 The “containment strategy” has been always a national bipartisan U.S. strategy against what she labels as “rogue” states, which do not identically fall in line with the American strategies abroad. Two-pronged U.S. tactics of confrontation and engagement unfolded last week and described by some media as “turnabouts” in the strategy of containment of what Washington perceives as adverse regional roles in the Middle East, but in the Iraqi context and in historical perspective these tactics are revealed only as old diplomatic manoeuvres in the drawers of the State Department. In remarks before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Unite States will engage Iran and Syria, previously condemned by President George W. Bush as two pillars of the world “axis of evil,” in two meetings of Iraq neighbours and the veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSEC) next March and April and expressed hope they “will seize this opportunity.” In face-saving remarks Rice noted her administration was just responding to a “new diplomatic initiative” by the Government of Iraq because “Prime Minister (Noori) Maliki believes and President Bush and I agree that success in Iraq requires the positive support of Iraq ’s neighbours.” She did not miss the opportunity to remind that, “This is one of the key findings, of course of the Iraq Study Group.” In fact this finding was also recommended recently by Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel among other world powers, mainly Russia , and by friendly Arab states as well as the U.S. bipartisan James Baker-Lee Hamilton Iraq Study Group. However Rice stressed that this seemingly “turnabout” was just an “additional component” to an U.S. “diplomatic offensive” aimed at cementing concrete action on the ground, including upgraded military naval presence in the Arabian Gulf (“Persian” to Iran) and a surge of 21.000 troops in Iraq, to guarantee “the security and stability of the Gulf region” and the success of the recently-launched “security plan” in Iraq. (1). more..
Iran and the GCC could solve many problems by working together
Editorial, Daily Star 3/6/2007
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is actively considering the development of nuclear technology, an ambitious move that has been cast as a reaction to Iran’s controversial progress in the same field. Some fear that the result may be a new regional arms race with far higher stakes than anything seen in the past. Provided the right attitude is adopted by the key players, though, the current situation could be used to the advantage of the entire Gulf region. The path to this potentially happy state of affairs runs through an area too rarely trammeled by governments in this part of the world: cooperation. Since both the GCC and the Islamic Republic assert that their goals revolve purely around energy production, working together should not compromise their respective security concerns. On the contrary, it would help alleviate many of them by serving to restore trust. If a joint nuclear fuel bank were established and opened to monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for instance, all parties would be able to share in the rewards - and reduce the threat of fissile materials being diverted for weapons development. GCC members - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - have plenty of capital, and Iran has acquired considerable know-how that could be expanded in short order with additional support. Apart from reducing regional tensions, a joint venture could also help Tehran to rebuild its relationship with the IAEA and lessen the fears of the United States and other major powers that the Iranians are using their civil nuclear program to conceal a bomb-making effort. And since Iran has spent years calling for the formation of a regional security framework built around indigenous forces rather than foreign overlords like America, nuclear cooperation would allow the Gulf Arab states to test their powerful neighbor’s intentions on other fronts as well.... more..
Interview: The Sadr movement ’will eventually triumph’
By Mahan Abedin, Asia Times 3/7/2007
Dr Munthir al-Kewther was born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1965. He has studied Islamic and Western philosophy at various Western and Iraqi universities. Kewther completed his PhD in Islamic philosophy at Iraq’s Kufa University in 1995. Kewther is currently dean of the faculty of media and journalism at al-Huraa University in the Netherlands. He has an extensive background as a television presenter and broadcaster. Mahan Abedin: Let’s begin by discussing the so-called "surge" of American troops into Baghdad. What is the real American military objective behind this campaign? Munthir al-Kewther: Maybe they are preparing the ground for a military campaign against Iran. They feel they have to sort out the mess in Iraq before they attack Iran. But I don’t think they can solve the mess in Iraq. MA: Do you think it is too much of a coincidence that the briefing on alleged Iranian meddling in Iraq - including allegations that the Iranians are indirectly involved in the killing of American soldiers - came just before the start of the new military campaign in Baghdad? MK: The two are clearly linked. They have been preparing the ground for a war against Iran for a long time. But obviously they are accelerating the media, propaganda and psychological warfare campaign as the date for their campaign approaches. MA: What is your assessment of how the surge started? The Americans were very keen to start it in as low-profile a way as possible. MK: That tells you that the Americans and their allies in Iraq lack confidence. They don’t really know what they are doing. They expect to fail, so they confuse things and try to blame others for their failures. But the [Nuri al-]Maliki government ends up getting most of the blame because its only role is to enforce American edicts in Iraq. The Americans use Maliki as a scapegoat. MA: The Americans claim the surge is targeted equally at the mostly Sunni insurgents and the mostly Shi’ite militias. Do you believe them? MK: The real objective is to weaken the Jaish al-Mehdi [Mehdi Army] because this is - by far - the largest and most popular resistance movement in Iraq. The Americans are also hoping to weaken the Sadrist movement as a whole. For the Americans there is no difference between Shi’ites and Sunnis. The Americans fight anyone that resists them, but they talk about Shi’ites and Sunnis in order to pretend the problem is among the Iraqis themselves, not between the American occupation army and the Iraqi resistance. more..
Portents of joy for the Palestinians
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha’aretz 3/7/2007
The chances for setting up a Palestinian unity government are greater now than ever. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is scheduled to be in Gaza this weekend to finalize the details of government structure with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The sides are formulating the documents, submitting lists of ministerial candidates and, if all goes well, within a short time a Palestinian unity government will be established with the participation of Hamas, Fatah, the Popular Front and the People’s Party (the former Communists) and independents. Perhaps even within a week or two. Although the Palestinian spokesmen aren’t connecting the two issues, the presentation of the unity government is clearly supposed to be part of a more comprehensive move that will include a deal for the release of Gilad Shalit, parallel to the first stage of the release of hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners. Without Shalit’s release in return for prisoners, the unity government will not be able to begin its work. On the Palestinian side, it is possible to discern the first portents of the near completion of the prisoner release deal. Announcements and slogans in newspapers call for "Liberty for the Prisoners" (from their perspective, they are prisoners of war, and not criminals). Hamas politburo member Osama Mazzini, who at the end of last weekend announced a breakthrough in the negotiations concerning Shalit and the prisoners, explained: "It is possible that this time the occupation leaders are evincing seriousness about bringing to an end the dealing with a case that has brought them domestic and international embarrassment ... and in the coming days several reports will be made public that will bring joy to the Palestinians, especially to the families of the prisoners." more..
How Barack Obama learned to love Israel
By Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 3/4/2007
I first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic. I distinctly remember thinking ’if only a man of this calibre could become president one day.’ On Friday Obama gave a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Chicago. It had been much anticipated in American Jewish political circles which buzzed about his intensive efforts to woo wealthy pro-Israel campaign donors who up to now have generally leaned towards his main rival Senator Hillary Clinton. Reviewing the speech, Ha’aretz Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner concluded that Obama "sounded as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly as Giuliani. At least rhetorically, Obama passed any test anyone might have wanted him to pass. So, he is pro-Israel. Period." Israel is "our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy," Obama said, assuring his audience that "we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs." Such advanced multi-billion dollar systems he asserted, would help Israel "deter missile attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza." As if the starved, besieged and traumatized population of Gaza are about to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles. Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. more..
How easy it is to put hatred on a map
By Robert Fisk, The Independent 3/2/2007
Our guilt in this sectarian game is obvious. We want to divide our potential enemies Why are we trying to divide up the peoples of the Middle East? Why are we trying to chop them up, make them different, remind them - constantly, insidiously, viciously, cruelly - of their divisions, of their suspicions, of their capacity for mutual hatred? Is this just our casual racism? Or is there something darker in our Western souls? Take the maps. Am I the only one sickened by our journalistic propensity to publish sectarian maps of the Middle East? You know what I mean. We are now all familiar with the colour-coded map of Iraq. Shias at the bottom (of course), Sunnis in their middle "triangle" - actually, it’s more like an octagon (even a pentagon) - and the Kurds in the north. Or the map of Lebanon, where I live. Shias at the bottom (of course), Druze further north, Sunnis in Sidon and on the coastal strip south of Beirut, Shias in the southern suburbs of the capital, Sunnis and Christians in the city, Christian Maronites further north, Sunnis in Tripoli, more Shias to the east. How we love these maps. Hatred made easy. Of course, it’s not that simple. I live in a small Druze enclave in the west of Beirut. But my local grocer and my driver are Sunnis. I suppose they have no business to be in the wrong bit of our map. So do I tell my driver Abed that our map shows he can no longer park outside my home? Or that the Muslim publisher of the Arabic edition of my book The Great War for Civilisation can no longer meet me at our favourite rendezvous, Paul’s restaurant in east Beirut, for lunch because our map shows this to be a Maronite Christian area of Beirut. more..
Apartheid in Israel
By Michael Jansen, Palestine Chronicle 3/2/2007 It is important for Israel to silence or smear anyone who compares Israel to apartheid South Africa. On the one hand, Israel argues that the Jewish state has a moral basis for existence: recompensing the Jews for centuries of Western persecution. The latest report published by the UN rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories compares Israel’s policies there to those of South Africa during the apartheid era. John Dugard, a South African law professor and former anti-apartheid campaigner, called upon the international community to give "serious consideration" to his recommendation that the International Court of Justice in The Hague issue an advisory opinion on Israel’s policies and actions. In the 24-page document, posted on the council’s website, Dugard states: "The international community, speaking through the United Nations, has identified three regimes as inimical to human rights -- colonialism, apartheid and foreign occupation" and accuses Israel of practising all three. Of the three, Israel is most incensed by being accused of instituting apartheid in the occupied and colonised Palestinian territories. Dugard says that Israel’s policies "certainly resemble aspects of apartheid". He points out that Israel is committing many violations of the 1973 Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and cites Israel’s restriction of Palestinian movement, construction of walls and fences to separate Israelis and Palestinians, building of Israeli settler only cities, towns and roads, and demolition of Palestinian houses built without Israeli permits. He compares Israel’s lists of security risks -- 180,000 names long -- who may not pass through the hundreds of checkpoints to South Africa’s notorious "pass laws" which obstructed the free movement of black Africans. Dugard challenges Israel’s contention that West Bank checkpoints, barriers and blockades are intended to protect Israelis from attacks by Palestinian fighters and suicide bombers. He states: "It has become abundantly clear that the wall and checkpoints are principally aimed at advancing the safety, convenience and comfort of [Israel’s 430,000] settlers" who live in the West Bank in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. more..
Towards a unified Arab vision of Israel
By Hassan Nafaa, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/1/2007 Israeli jockeying around the Mecca Accord proves that it is not interested in a just peace, only pacification and the continuance of its colonial plans The fanfare surrounding Condoleezza Rice’s visit to the region, in which she has made herself a frequent guest these days, does little to convince any that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is just around the corner. What we have is yet another episode in that everlasting American serial called managing the Arab-Israeli conflict the Israeli way. To me, more than 30 years into the so-called peace process, it is clearer than ever that the Arab governments that signed "peace" treaties and entered into official relations with Israel made a fatal strategic error. They had based their negotiating positions on the assumption that Israel was ready to conclude a final settlement that would be acceptable to all concerned parties. So as not to lay myself open to misinterpretation, I had better say that I do not believe there is such a thing as an irresolvable conflict. Any conflict can be solved if two conditions are met: that both sides are sincere in their desire to reach a peaceful settlement and negotiate with good intent, and that there exists an even balance of forces prepared to aid the search for a compromise solution and to ensure the ongoing implementation and commitment to agreements even after the governments that signed them are no longer in power. In the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict, these two fundamental ingredients have been sorely lacking and are doubtful to be supplied within the foreseeable future. The confidence gap is still too great, even among those parties that have signed accords with Israel, and the balance of powers on the ground is still too skewed to ensure ongoing commitment to any agreements that have been signed or may be signed in the future. Close inspection of the more than 30-year old peace process reveals an underlying conflict between the negotiating strategies of each side. Whereas the Arabs, from the outset, have taken a "conflict resolution" approach, the Israelis have been set on "conflict management". The former approach presumes the possibility of reaching a settlement satisfactory to both sides; the latter aims to utilise all possible means to debilitate the adversary until finally he has to cave in to the conditions dictated to him. Like two parallel lines stretching to infinity, the two strategies are destined never to meet. Certainly, this helps explain why the settlement process has dragged on for so long, in the stumbling way it has, and why it will probably continue to do so unless one of the sides radically alters its negotiating strategy, with either the Israelis resigning themselves to "conflict resolution" or the Arabs switching over to "conflict management". more..
Hajj Ibrahim Jaddallah: "We have to defend each centimeter that is left to us."
Stop The Wall 3/1/2007
Zakariya is located south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank and is now completely surrounded by the Gush Ezion settlement bloc. There are only 58 buildings in Khirbet Zakariyya, 18 of which were built after the Occupation extended its grip to the West Bank in ’67. Since then, the Occupation forbids the villagers to construct any new buildings but as the population grew they built simple constructions of rough cement and zinc roofs to house families and basic services. All of those 18 buildings are now under demolition order, including one school and the clinic inside it. Hajj Ibrahim Jaddallah is 97 years old. He lives in Khirbet Zakariyya, south of Bethlehem, and has witnessed many different events and periods in the village’s history. The stories that have affected the village and the resistance of the villagers are etched in his memory. Since his youth he has been an active member of the community and has spent his life fighting against the occupation’s plan to annihilate the village and to expel its’ inhabitants. Jadallah begins the story of his village long before the Occupation came. The History of the Village Hajj Ibrahim recounts “I was born on this land. My grandfathers lived here before me. The village founder was one of my ancestors. He came from Irtas, another village located south Bethlehem, and some 200 years ago he bought the land from the owners in Surif, in northern Hebron district. Since then it has been inherited by each new generation. Since he bought this land, our clan has been living in the houses here. more..
Open Letter to the People of Six Nations and the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island ("Canada")
By Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, Stop The Wall 2/28/2007
On the anniversary of the Six Nations Land Reclamation we express our solidarity to you and to all those that are defending today their land and livelihoods against theft and colonization. On February 28th, 2006, after the Canadian government gave a construction company the permission to build a settlement on their land, the people of Six Nations took it back, demanding an end to the theft and destruction of their land and to settler encroachment on their territory. Many of them now face charges in Canadian courts for defending their land. This sounds tragically familiar to us in Palestine and to many others around the world. For over 500 years the same mechanisms have been used against indigenous peoples, to colonize and dispossess. 500 years ago empires and their missionaries spread Christianity and civilization with their swords. Today, these empires and their TV channels spread their so-called “freedom” and “democracy” with cluster bombs. The truth behind this ‘democratization’ became clear when we practiced their democracy, albeit under Israeli occupation and apartheid. The international community imposed on us a brutal siege for not choosing their candidates to lead us. As Palestinians we are still victims of a colonial project and a state that continues to refer to itself as the “only democracy in the Middle East”. The fact that it has been scrutinized by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination for its policies and even the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights accuses it of apartheid policies seemingly does not detract from its status. Apparently only technology has improved. After the swords, in the Americas came the agreements. Agreements were to settle land “disputes” for lasting peace. The violations and renegotiations of these agreements by the colonizers – in other words the continuation of land theft - are proverbial today. Here in Palestine, we are facing the same colonial tactics. more..
The recognition trap
By Alex Stein, The Guardian 2/19/2007 Condoleezza Rice is visiting Jerusalem, but nothing will change until the Quartet drops its demand for Hamas to accept Israel’s right to exist. It better be worth it, I thought to myself, as I waited for my heavily delayed bus to take me into town. The reason for the delay? Condoleezza Rice’s latest "babysitting" visit, this time for a three-way summit with Ehud Olmert and Abu Mazen, at the David’s Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem. As the bus finally arrived, I suppressed my hysteria and reminded myself that the meeting would have about as much chance of resurrecting the Middle East peace process as my trilateral pint the previous night with fellow Comment is free bloggers Seth Freedman and Josh Freedman Berthoud. There are many reasons for the moribund state of Israeli-Palestinian relations at the moment, but the central issue is that of recognition. One of the Quartet’s demands for ending the boycott on the Palestinians is that the new government recognise Israel. This is clear enough. De facto recognition is a clear concept in international relations; actors in the international system (state, non-state and quasi-state) only have formal relations with one another once there is mutual recognition. If the Palestinian government refuses to recognise Israel, it cannot expect Israel (and by extension many of Israel’s allies) to deal with it. But it’s not that simple. The issue of Palestinian recognition of Israel has been deliberately conflated with another idea - that of Israel’s "right to exist". This is an unknown concept in the international system, and seems to have been invented by Israel/America in the 1970s, so as to raise the bar even further in response to tentative steps by the PLO towards acceptance of a two-state solution. Asking the Palestinians to accept the right of Israel to exist is akin to asking them to accept the moral legitimacy of its creation. more..
Israeli Democracy
By Michel Warschawski, ZNet 12/12/2004 This essay has been adapted from chapter 8 of Michel Warschawski’s Toward an Open Tomb: The Crisis of Israeli Society (Monthly Review Press, 2004), which presents an important dissident Israeli perspective that is rarely given a hearing in the United States. Warschawski is cofounder and director of the Alternative Information Center (AIC) in Jerusalem and a well-known anti-Zionist activist. With the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin on November 4, 1995, a long interval of relative openness, liberalization, and attempts at peace and normal relations with the Arab world came to an end. By assassinating Rabin the Israeli right not only seized political power —including inside the Labor Party—but also drove the last nail in the coffin of a certain kind of Israel. That Israel gave way to a new kind of country, with its own particular values and, in the end, a new constitutional framework and set of institutions. How was the transformation to this new Israel accomplished? .... A Fake Democracy During the last three years we have seen many signs that the most basic democratic norms are disappearing. Arabs suspected of links with terrorism have had their Israeli citizenship taken away. Arab MKs have been stripped of their parliamentary immunity. Openly racist opinions, political programs and bills—particularly projects for ethnic cleansing of the occupied territories and of Israel itself—have gained legitimacy. This development could take place quickly, without leading to a major crisis, because Israel has always had an idiosyncratic conception of democracy. Democracy for Israelis has always been restricted to two things: predominance of the majority over the minority by means of elections and the acts of the executive branch being based on laws adopted by a parliamentary majority (AIC Special Reports, winter 1986). This is obviously a rather meager conception of democracy, which completely neglects the concept of rights. Contrary to what has often been claimed, the fact that Israel has never had a constitution is not the sole responsibility of the religious parties. The real reason is that Zionist politicians have never been capable of writing a real democratic constitution, guaranteeing equality of all citizens and fundamental rights independent of the will of the majority... -- See also: Toward An Open Tomb by Michel Warschawskimore..
The Gaza Strip - State of Disaster
Gaza Community Mental Health Programme/Physicians for Human Rights September 2006 "Decent folks must be allowed to sleep easy o’nights, mustn’t they? Really it would be shockingly bad taste to linger on such details, that’s common knowledge. But personally I’ve never been able to sleep well since then. The bad taste remained in my mouth and I’ve kept lingering on the detail, brooding over them." - Albert Camus, The Plague (1947). Physicians for Human Rights Report: Introduction: Over the past several months, changes have taken place in the management of the occupation by the Israeli government and the Israeli army. Since the second Intifada, Israel has exercised its power over the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories through nearly absolute control over day-to-day life. This is expressed most prominently in Israeli control over Palestinians’ movement, through a system of sieges, roadblocks, closures, and an arbitrary permit regime. Direct violence, e.g., Operation "Defensive Shield" and the policy of assassinations and arrests, comprises a substantial part, but not all of the means through which Israel perpetuates the regime of occupation. The illusion of unilateral moves in order to "get rid" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - the self deception which promoted the belief that the removal of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip is equivalent to the end of the occupation- the firing of Qassam rockets on the Israeli towns near the Gaza border and the capture of Gilad Shalit, are amongst the circumstances that led in the recent period to a change in the management of the occupation. Now more than ever, emphasis is placed on control by means of killing and destruction. more..
Myths of the Global Market
By John McMurtry, ZNet 2/26/2007
At the end of 2006, the journal of world economic affairs, The Economist, produced a banner issue on “Happiness and Economics”. The lead article unwittingly revealed an Achilles heel of Economics. It has no way of telling the universal needs of human beings from junk commodities for the masses, or gold toilet-seats for the rich. Happiness Not In fact, not even consumers in the developed world are happier by ever more market commodities. When scientific studies like Robert Lane’s The Loss of Happiness in Market Societies (Yale, 2000) show that population satisfaction declines across the first world as income and commodity consumption rise above a certain level, the message does not compute to economists or policy makers. The reason for this is that neoclassical economics is based on the first premise that market growth produces more happiness the more commodities are bought - so-called “marginal utilities” that correspond to prices paid. If this baseline assumption is false, the paradigm collapses. So the ground is shifted to other claims. The Economist explains that many “goods” can be “only enjoyed if others don’t”. The falsehood of the first principle is diverted from by a nudge-nudge that some can only enjoy at others’ expense. All that well-being means in economics is willingness to pay a market price if one can afford it, the only measure of welfare that exists in the doctrine. Efficient , No A logical person might think that the equation of paid prices to happiness is inane. But the problem is ignored. Instead, another shift of ground is relied on - how “productive and efficient” the global market is. This assumption does not hold up any better. The global market system produces many times more wastes than any economic order in history. In his world-renowned text, Economics Paul Samuelson defines economic efficiency as “absence of waste”. But like all economists of the dominant paradigm, Samuelson includes only wastes that cost private enterprises money. So as long as pollution and damages to others can be externalized, it is “more efficient” - even if it is supremely wasteful. That is why global depredation of the most basic means of human life - breathable air, water aquifers, ocean life-systems, and people’s capacities to produce - are ignored in the economic models which governments use. These “externalities” are kept off the books by public as well as private accounts. more..
Resistance wears new look
By Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/1/2007 Meshaal is as charismatic as ever, but his language is changing The debate is still on. No one can tell whether or not Hamas will eventually say in plain words that it recognises the right of Israel to exist, relinquishes all militant resistance action, and accepts all past agreements signed between Palestinian leaders and Israel. These three demands, set out by the Quartet and Israel as pre-conditions for the resumption of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, in some measure were met when Hamas agreed to be part of a national unity government that accepts these three principles. For Washington and Tel Aviv, however, this is not enough. Both capitals insist that Hamas as a movement must succumb. Speaking at a press conference in Cairo Friday at the conclusion of a two-day visit, Khaled Meshal, Hamas politburo chief, refrained from fiery invective against the US and Israel. He was clear, however, and underlined, that it is the national unity government’s position, not that of Hamas itself, that should matter to the international community. The stance of Hamas, as an Islamist resistance movement, should not be questioned either by Israel, an occupying power, or the US, which has been supportive of the occupation. During this press conference and others made during a tour that also included Khartoum and Moscow, Meshal appeared keen to adopt a new language of compromise -- indeed, he reiterated the acceptance by Hamas of the idea of an independent Palestinian state on pre-1967 borders. Nonetheless, Meshal was unequivocal in his message that Hamas would by all means -- including resort to internationally legal resistance to occupation -- protect the interests of Palestinians should Israel fail to meet the Palestinians half-way. A similar sense of new realism -- some suggested pragmatism even -- was echoed in the wake of the meetings that Meshal held in Cairo where he met with Chief of Egyptian Intelligence Omar Suleiman, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa. more..
Dr Kana’nah: Burning my book "Speak bird, Speak again" is like burning my son
Ma’an News Agency 3/5/2007
Ramallah - Professor of sociology and anthropology at Bir Zeit University, Ashraf Kana’nah, has commented on the decision of the Palestinian ministry of education to burn copies of the book he collated with his colleague, Dr Ibrahim Mhawi. The book, collated from Palestinian oral narratives, is entitled "Speak bird, speak again". Dr Kana’nah described the ministry’s decision as "cultural terrorism"; while the ministry claims that stories in the book contain "immoral expression". Kana’nah told Ma’an’s correspondent in Ramallah that "those who conducted such measures are not related to academia", since he found no more than three references to sexual activity in a 400 page book. Dr Kana’nah expressed his disturbance over the burning of his book, saying that "every book one writes is continuity of his own ideology, as much as the son is the biological continuity of his father." He added that it was the ministry of culture who decided to distribute the book at the schools, and they also funded the printing of 3000 copies. The book was misinterpreted, explained the author, "since it was not meant to be taught to children, as it is taught at the masters and doctorate level [in literature studies]". Kana’nah himself taught the study of the book in the masters programs at Bir Zeit University. In addition, the English version of the book is studied as part of literature courses at both Berkeley and Chicago Universities. It was the best-selling Palestinian academic text book in foreign countries. "The book should be read by teachers at schools, rather than be given to students, and if the teacher is embarrassed to read some expressions, which the students hear every day, he does not deserve to be a teacher," declared Dr Kana’nah. more..
In Nablus, There’s an Aggressive Israeli War for Baseless Reasons
By Ahmed Dabba, Al Jazeerah.info 2/27/2007 What is the Israeli war machine perpetrating in Nablus? What is the Israeli war machine perpetrating in Nablus? Militarily, this large-scale attack is baseless against the already injured besieged city. It is crystal clear that Nablus has no weapons factories and it is also embraces no intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launching bases, but it has a people who want to live; people who love to see their city free and have decided to throw out oppression and submission. In Nablus, Israeli occupation forces are killing civilians and injuring scores others in addition to arresting tens of Palestinians, demolishing homes and converting others to military outposts while keeping the families living there hostage, forbidden to move or contact the outside world Thus the Israeli aggression against Nablus has no military ambitions with the best sense of the word, but it is rather meant for political reasons which synchronize with Israel’s racist belligerent policy followed by its military and political ruling branches and the Palestinian always pay the price for such a policy. Simultaneously Israel also continues its campaign to create a new demographic composition in Occupied East Jerusalem and to alter its cultural and religious heritage through the ongoing demolition and diggings at Bab Al- Magharibeh. These provocative actions, which are continuing unabated under the cover of night, clearly demonstrate the intransigence of the Israeli Government and its persistence in defying the will of the international community and violating international law and United Nations resolutions. more..
Does the Israeli Tail Wag the American Dog?
By Kathleen and Bill Christison, Palestine Chronicle/Journal of the Mental Environment 3/2/2007
If the United States is unable to distinguish the world’s or its own real needs from those of another state and that state’s lobby, then it simply cannot say that it always acts in its own best interests. A quarter century ago, the executive director of AIPAC —the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—established an analytical unit inside the organization to write in-depth advocacy papers for policymakers. The year was 1981, the president was Ronald Reagan, and AIPAC had just lost a hard-fought battle in Congress over the sale of AWACS surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia. The AIPAC leader was an energetic former congressional aide named Thomas Dine, who used the setback to build AIPAC into a formidable political force. Over the next few years, Dine quadrupled AIPAC’s grassroots membership as well as its budget and aggressively expanded contacts with Congress and policymakers. He set out to supply politicians with analyses geared toward advancing Israeli interests, in the stated belief that anyone who wrote papers read by policymakers would effectively “own” the policymakers. This was a seminal moment in the decades-long growth of the lobby’s influence on US Middle East policy, often to the detriment of US national interests. Many have characterized the relationship between what the United States does in the Middle East and what the lobby wants it to do as a case of the Israeli tail wagging the US dog. Israel and its US supporters, although constituting the junior partner in the relationship, are seen as virtually dictating policy to whatever administration and Congress are in power. There are myriad examples of this dynamic, most notably Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which dragged the US into a disastrous intervention, and Israel’s invasion of the West Bank in 2002, during which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon openly and repeatedly defied President George Bush’s demand for a withdrawal. Others maintain that the tail-wagging is the other way around: that the United States, as the superpower, patron of Israel, and its major aid donor, is unmistakably the senior partner and the dog that wags the tail. The question, therefore, is which is the accurate assessment, or is the cynical view of Israeli commentator Michel Warschawski correct, that “there is neither a dog nor a tail, but one global war of re-colonization, and one aggressive monster with two ugly heads”? more..
Give Mecca a Chance to Deliver
By Dr. Daud Abdullah, Palestine Chronicle 3/1/2007 The massive loss of land to the Wall and settlements and the one-year embargo have reduced the Palestinian people in the territories to such abject poverty that the World Food Programme (WFP) has declared that 46% of them are malnourished. The Makka Agreement had the basic elements of success. The protagonists, the setting and commitment were all in place. Even the time was spot on. It came at a juncture of heightened Israeli threat to Al Aqsa Mosque. Everyone concerned including the Saudis recognized the lurking dangers and rose to the occasion. That the two main players, Hamas and Fateh, were able to come to an agreement in Makka was first and foremost a reaffirmation of the will of the Palestinian people to pursue their quest for freedom and independence. The ecstatic welcome it received on the streets demonstrated the degree of pressure both parties were under to hold the Palestinian society together. Across the territories from Jenin to Rafah women, religious and civil society leaders had marched for weeks pleading for an end to the infighting and commencement of national reconciliation. For all its worth, it should never have taken the deaths of scores of Palestinians to produce something like the Makka Agreement. Now that it has been successfully negotiated and consecrated in Makka it can only be regarded an important turning point in their national struggle. more..
A Day in the Life of Nablus Under Curfew
By Kirsten Sutherland, Electronic Intifada 3/1/2007 Nablus, 26 February 2007 Dr. Ghassan Hamdan, Director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in Nablus, got up at five o’clock this morning after just two-and-a-half hours sleep. Until that time, he had been distributing medicines and food and providing emergency healthcare services to the residents of Nablus’ Old City, who had been under an Israeli-imposed curfew and thus forbidden from leaving their homes since early Sunday morning. He was woken up by a call saying that a house just outside the Old City had been set on fire by Israeli soldiers and that there may be civilian casualties. When he arrived at the scene, he was told that Israeli troops had arrived at the residential apartment building at around 04:45 and had forced all the building’s residents out onto the street. One of the residents, Mona Tbeileh, was accused by soldiers of harbouring ’wanted’ men in her home. Mona adamantly denied this, telling the soldiers that her husband was abroad and that she and her son were the only people in the ground-floor apartment. She told the soldiers that they could search the apartment as proof, and even offered herself as a human shield. They refused to search the apartment, and at around 05:15, they tossed explosives through the door of the apartment, setting it on fire. [1] Mona and her family showed us around the devastation: the bullet holes in the walls, and the piles of charred furniture and family belongings, still smouldering from the morning’s blaze. Mona’s 19-year-old daughter, Niveen, pointed to a blackened structure, telling me, "this was my bed. Thank God I slept at my cousin’s house last night. When they called me to tell me what had happened, I went crazy. I was worried about my mummy and brother. It took five hours to put the fire out. Everything was destroyed." more..
After Mecca: Engaging Hamas
International Crisis Group 2/28/2007 Executive Summary And Recommendations It has been a year since Hamas formed its government – and what a dismal year it has been. The Islamists thought they could govern without paying an ideological price, Fatah that it could swiftly push them aside and regain power. By imposing sanctions and boycotting the government, the Quartet (U.S., European Union (EU), Russia and UN) and Israel hoped to force Hamas to change or persuade the Palestinians to oust it. Washington promised security and economic aid to encourage Fatah to confront Hamas and help defeat it. The illusions have brought only grief. The 8 February 2007 Saudi-brokered Mecca Agreement between the Palestinian rivals offers the chance of a fresh start: for Hamas and Fatah to restore law and order and rein in militias; for Israelis and Palestinians to establish a comprehensive ceasefire and start a credible peace process; and for the Quartet (or at least those of its members inclined to do so) to adopt a more pragmatic attitude that judges a government of national unity by deeds, not rhetoric. The adjustment will not be comfortable for anyone. But the alternative is much worse. That Palestinians have wasted the past twelve months is difficult to contest. Treated as an international outcast and an intruder by much of the Fatah-aligned civil service and security forces, Hamas has been unable to govern. It has survived, and under these conditions survival is an impressive achievement. But it arguably is the only one. Fatah, obsessed with recovering power, has done virtually nothing to restore popular credibility and reform itself. Its periodic threats to call early elections or a referendum to unseat the Islamists exacerbated tensions without offering a way out of the stalemate. Palestinian Authority (PA) institutions are collapsing, law and order vanishing; relations between Hamas and Fatah deteriorated to near civil war. Israel and the Quartet also squandered the year. Sanctions did not achieve their objectives. The EU – justifiably reluctant to starve the Palestinian people – pumped more money into the PA but more ineffectively and less transparently. Years of investment in now decrepit Palestinian institutions have gone down the drain. Western commitment to democracy in the Middle East has been roundly discredited. Hamas, weakened but still strong, is not going away. Diplomacy has been non-existent, violence between Israelis and Palestinians continues, and there has been no movement on prisoner exchanges. By almost every conceivable standard – governance, security, economics, institution-building and the peace process – there has been only regression. -- See also: Full Report in MS-Word format and Full Report as PDF file in A4 formatmore..
Made in USA, Tested in Lebanon
By Mitchell Kaidy, CounterPunch 2/27/2007 Israel’s Cluster Bombs: Still Killing and Maiming After Israel’s no-holds-barred attack on population centers in Lebanon last year, thousands of little bomblets were left behind that exacted little damage on the Islamic cleric and his rocket-armed Hizbullah forces. But those little things are still causing misery and damage to the Lebanese populace,its homes, farms and apartments. In addition to massive destruction in the cities, Israel left millions of cluster bomblets scattered in villages and countrysides. Like nearly all of Israel’s ordnance, the bomblets were manufactured in the United States. Nothing new about that. When U.S. forces exited Kosovo ten years ago, they also left a legacy of millions of cluster munitions armed with decades-long killing power. In both Lebanon and Kosovo, these tiny munitions become evident only when they blow up people or body parts. In legislation seeking to prove that the Democrats are really dedicated to peace under a Democratic Congress, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Patrick Leahy have introduced tricky new legislation appearing to curb cluster weapons. Both claim to want to reduce "appalling" civilian deaths and injuries wherever the U.S. has employed-or will employ--cluster weapons. Even more the two Senators say they want to reduce the cluster bombs’ use by other nations-although it’s apparent "other nations" including Israel, are still receiving everything from mass-wrecking bulldozers to massive tanks, supersonic jets, plus village-busting bombs, all emblematic of the U.S. as the world’s leading arms supplier. more..
Senator Hillary Clinton’s ILLEGAL Jewish-Only Colony of Gilo and George’s Ancient Indigenous Christian Village of Beit Jala
By Eileen Fleming, Al Jazeerah.info 2/26/2007 Clinton’s "neighboorhoods" are illegal colonies on Palestinian land On February 1, 2007 Senator Hillary Clinton’s delusional remarks to AIPAC/ American Israel Public Affairs Committee, prove she has never outgrown her favorite movie and for she remains a resident in the land of Oz. The Democrat Demimondaine and Consummate Pandering Politician purred to AIPAC, "I’ve been a strong supporter of Israel’s right to build a security barrier to keep terrorists out. I have spoken out against the International Court of Justice for questioning Israel’s right to build that fence of security." Clinton not only cares naught for the rule of law, she apparently does not read the august Washington Report on Middle East Affairs , "Financed with U.S. aid at a cost of $1.5 million per mile, the Israeli wall prevents residents from receiving health care and emergency medical services. In other areas, the barrier separates farmers from their olive groves which have been their families’ sole livelihood for generations." [Page 43, Jan/Feb. 2007] Clinton continued selling out we the people of America and the cause of peace and justice, "On my trip to Israel a little over a year ago, I went to see the fence with my own eyes. During a trip to Gilo, a Jerusalem neighborhood, I was greeted by Col. Danny Tirza, who was overseeing the construction of the security fence." The facts on the ground are that Clinton ’s Orwellian spun ’neighborhoods’ are all ILLEGAL colonies for every one exists on legally owned Palestinian land. more..
A Review of Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis
By Stephen Lendman, Palestine Chronicle 3/1/2007 Our democracy and way of life are now threatened because of our single-minded pursuit of empire with a well-entrenched militarism driving it that’s become so powerful and pervasive it’s now an uncontrollable state within the state. Chalmers Johnson is professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego where he taught for 30 years as well as at UC, Berkeley (where he was educated). At Berkeley, he was chairman of the Center for Chinese Studies and its Department of Political Studies. He’s currently president of the Japan Policy Research Institute (JPRI), a not-for-profit research and public affairs organization involved in public education relating to Japan and international relations in the Pacific region. Johnson is also a prolific writer and author of 17 books, numerous articles and various other publications. From 1967 through 1973, he served as well as a consultant to the Office of National Estimates (ONE) within the CIA, and during the Cold War years was, by his own characterization, a former "spear-carrier for the empire." At least since the age of George Bush, however, Johnson radically transformed himself into one of the nation’s sharpest and most important intellectual critics of the current administration having now completed the third and last volume of his "inadvertent trilogy" in his newest book Nemesis that’s the subject of this review. The previous two he refers to are Blowback based on 1953 CIA terminology in the aftermath of the spy agency’s first ever engineered overthrow of a foreign leader - democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq ushering in the 26 year tryannical rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi who was himself forcibly ousted in the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Volume two was The Sorrows of Empire - Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. Volume three is Nemesis - The Last Days of the American Republic and subject of this review that hopefully will encourage readers to get the book and read the others in Johnson’s trilogy to get the full picture of his powerfully vital message. more..
Beating ploughshares into swords
By Ayman El-Amir, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/1/2007 The Arab Gulf is arming itself, but why? Gulf Arab states are going on a shopping spree for the purchase of sophisticated Western weaponry at an estimated cost of $60 billion. A recent report in The New York Times, of which The Daily Telegraph had published another version two months earlier, said the lethal weapons order would include Apache attack helicopters, cruise missiles, Typhoon fighters and tanks, in addition to other war accessories. Saudi Arabia, which already has US-installed and operated Patriot anti- missile batteries, will reportedly spend $50 billion, representing the lion’s share of the military package. The UAE has earmarked almost $8 billion to buy fighter aircraft, missiles and other military materiel. Other states vying for modern armament are Kuwait and Oman. And money is no problem. The oil revenues of Middle Eastern producing countries in 2006 is estimated at more than $400 billion, based on an average price of $57 per barrel. Suddenly, the Gulf Arab region has become a vendor’s paradise for Western arms manufacturers. An arms race is accelerating in the region, with incalculable consequences. The question is: for what purpose? Self-defence in the face of a threat is a historically legitimate right of individuals and nations. In the past two decades, military conflict in the Gulf region surpassed cyclical violence that has ravaged the Middle East since the State of Israel was created almost 60 years ago. Saddam Hussein invaded Iran and fought a senseless war for most of the 1980s. It left deep political scars and more than one million casualties on both sides. Then Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 in a revenge war over oil prices, which took another war by a US-led international coalition in 1991 to dislodge his army from Kuwait. After a decade of international sanctions, the Bush administration concocted flimsy pretexts to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003. The Gulf region has turned into a cobweb of wrecked nerves. There is the confrontation between the US and Iran over the latter’s nuclear activities, with veiled threats of US military action ("all options are on the table," says US Vice-president Dick Cheney). Iran is also accused of stoking violence in Iraq, to which the US is responding with harassment of pro-Iranian Iraqi politicians. The US and Israel are actively cultivating sedition between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq and in Lebanon. US invasion, intimidation, hegemony and military bases and facilities have spread insecurity throughout the region. more..
The Shia-Sunni divide: myths and reality
By Omayma Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/1/2007 Omayma Abdel-Latif examines the causes, and effects, of the growth of sectarian rhetoric across the region As the US-led occupation of Iraq enters its fifth year, conflicts and political rivalries in the region appear to be assuming a sectarian edge unseen since the 1982-1989 war between Iraq and Iran. The debate over why this should be so is increasingly dominated by two approaches. Proponents of the first argue that concepts corruption, autocracy, occupation, nationalism, etc..., can no longer explain the range of conflicts and alliances within the region. "It is, rather, old feuds between Shia and Sunnis which will forge attitudes and define prejudices," writes Vali Nasr in his book, The Shia Revival. As a consequence, argues Nasr and his fellow travellers, sectarian identity will play an increasingly significant role in drawing political lines and determining regional alliances, shaping not just how states and sub-state actors behave but the political attitudes of ordinary people as well. Sectarian-inspired conflicts, along the lines of those seen in Iraq, will come to constitute a major fault line in Middle East politics. Seen from this perspective, the political conduct of Iran or Hizbullah can be explained as a reawakening of Shia identity. By the same token Saudi Arabia’s condemnation of Hizbullah as provoking Israel’s attack on Lebanon last summer can be reduced to Riyadh’s concern over growing Shia influence in Lebanon. Supporters of such a view would also argue that the Saudi Arabian mediation that resulted in the Mecca agreement between the two main Palestinian factions was also a product of Riyadh’s desire to reassert Sunni influence. "Saudi Arabia fought to get Hamas back," said Martin Indyk, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute, in a recent New York Times interview. Concerned over Tehran’s growing influence in Palestine, the Saudis were determined to reassert themselves. Hamas, argued Indyk, may well be viewed as extremists by Riyadh, but at least they are Sunni extremists. more..
Activists protest settlement real estate sale in New Jersey
By Andrew Muhab El-Kadi and Abraham Greenhouse, Electronic Intifada 3/1/2007
On a sunny but chilly Sunday morning, Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun was preparing to welcome temple members and other local Jewish families to his synagogue to "strengthen the Zionist dream" by purchasing new houses in the occupied West Bank. The enticement of Jews to move to restricted, Jewish-only enclaves on land seized from Palestinians is nothing new: whether through the lure of cheap housing or the dream of bringing about the coming of the Messiah by "redeeming the land", religious and secular Jews alike have been drawn to these enclaves since the first settlement Kiryat Arba was established in 1968. What was new this time was the location of the sales pitch: Teaneck, New Jersey. Pruzansky insisted to reporters that this was in fact the third such sales presentation to be held at his synagogue. However, it was certainly the first to attract significant press attention, which began with an article that appeared in the English-language Jerusalem Post on February 9th. The article drew the attention of human rights watchdogs around the world from Amnesty International -- whose Executive Director condemned the planned sales pitch in a statement, to the Israel-based P The choice of Teaneck as a forum to encourage ethnically-based discrimination is not without its own significance. More than being home to a growing community of Modern Orthodox Jews, clearly targeted by the sales pitch, Teaneck has been a major flashpoint in the ongoing struggle for civil rights in the United States. In 1990, an unarmed 16-year-old African-American, Phillip Pannell, was shot in the back by white police officer Gary Spath. The resulting firestorm of protest, including large rallies led by the likes of Jesse Jackson and the Reverend Al Sharpton, also served to draw attention to the illegal blockbusting practices of local real estate agencies, which had helped to fill the powder keg ignited by Spath’s deadly bullet. more..
Norman Finkelstein & Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami Debate
Democracy Now! 2/14/2006
Complete Transcript - Download MP3 audio AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to one of the longest running and most bitter conflicts in modern history: Israel and the Palestinians. Well over a decade has passed since the historic Oslo Accords that brought hopes for a lasting peace. Today, relations between the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority are virtually nonexistent. Israel and the P.A. have not held final status peace talks in over five years. With the recent election of Hamas, Israel says it will cut off all ties to any Palestinian government that includes the group. After the election Israel withheld tax funds it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. It finally transferred the funds but says any Hamas-led Palestinian government will get, quote, "not even one shekel." That’s, well, a dime in the United States. The Palestinian Authority is on the brink of financial disaster. This week, the P.A. announced it will be unable to issue paychecks to its more than 130,000 employees. It’s the largest employer in the Occupied Territories. Hamas’s victory is seen as, in part, as a reaction to what many Palestinians see as the corruption of the old guard. An internal Palestinian inquiry has found at least $700 million has been stolen from Palestinian public funds due to corruption in the last few years. The total figure could be billions more. Meanwhile, the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank continue to expand. The Israeli group Peace Now reported 12,000 new residents moved into West Bank settlements in 2005, 3,000 more than the total number removed as part of Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip, and construction continues in settlements located both inside and outside the route of Israel’s separation barrier. Today, we bring you a discussion with two of the world’s leading experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both of them have new books on the subject. We’re joined by Shlomo Ben-Ami, both an insider and a scholar. As Foreign Minister under Ehud Barak, he was a key participant in years of Israel-Palestinian peace talks, including the Camp David and Taba talks in 2000 and 2001. An Oxford-trained historian, he is currently Vice President of the Toledo Peace Centre in Madrid. His new book is called Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. President Bill Clinton says, quote, “Shlomo Ben-Ami worked tirelessly and courageously for peace. His account of what he did and failed to do and where we go from here should be read by everyone who wants a just and lasting resolution. more..
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Winners and Losers in the National Unity Government 
