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Anti-Arab racism and incitement in Israel
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 3/30/2008
     A prominent strategy of Israeli hasbara, or official propaganda, is to deflect criticism of its actions in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip by stressing that within the country’s 1948 boundaries, it is a model democracy comparable to the societies in Western Europe and North America with which it identifies and on whose diplomatic support it relies to maintain a favorable status quo. In fact, Israeli society is in the grip of a wave of unchecked racism and incitement that seriously threatens Israel’s Palestinian community and the long-term prospects for regional peace. This briefing examines societal and institutional racism and incitement by public figures against Israel’s Arab population and considers some policy implications.
     Background and context When Israel was established in 1948, most of the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants were driven out or fled from the area that became Israel. Approximately 150,000 Palestinians remained behind. Until 1966, these Palestinians lived under martial law. Today, having increased in number to approximately 1.3 million or about one fifth of Israel’s population (not including the Palestinian population of occupied East Jerusalem), they are citizens of the state of Israel and can vote in elections for the Knesset. Despite this, most view themselves as second-class citizens. As indigenous non-Jews in a self-described Jewish state, they face a host of systematic social, legal, economic and educational barriers to equality. Israel lacks a constitution and has no other basic law guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or national origin. more.. e-mail

New Home for ex-Gaza Settlers: Deep in W.Bank
Akiva Eldar, MIFTAH 3/31/2008
     Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently approved the construction of 48 new apartments in Ariel, deep inside the northern West Bank.
     Last week, Olmert told foreign correspondents that Israel is not building in the territories outside the settlement blocs. Ariel has been considered a settlement bloc by all Israeli governments, but the United States refuses to recognize it as such.
     Because of Washington’s objections, Ariel Mayor Ron Nahman used to complain that former defense minister Amir Peretz consistently refused all his requests for permission to build new housing in the city. But Peretz’s successor in the ministry, Ehud Barak, ended the freeze.
     Barak’s office said in a statement that the new construction was meant to allow evacuated Gaza settlers, who had relocated to Ariel with the government’s consent, to move from temporary to permanent housing.
     Last week, Haaretz reported that Barak also approved bringing five trailer homes to the settlement of Tene Omarim to house evacuated Gaza settlers. That settlement is located east of the separation fence, meaning that Israel almost certainly does not intend to keep it under any future agreement. more.. e-mail

Crossing the Line interviews journalist Jonathan Cook
Podcast, Electronic Intifada 3/31/2008
     This week on Crossing the Line: According to much of the international media, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai was apparently "misunderstood" when he said that Gaza faced a "shoah," the Hebrew word for "holocaust." But was his comment really misunderstood? Host Naji Ali speaks with Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook about Vilnai’s remarks and the Israeli government’s longer-term strategy for Palestinians in the occupied territories.
     Listen Now [MP3 - 21.4 MB, 46:50 min] Crossing the Line is a weekly podcast dedicated to giving voice to the voiceless in occupied Palestine. Through investigative news, arts, eyewitness accounts, and music, Crossing the Line does its best to present the lives of people on the ground.
     Crossing the Line’s host, Naji Ali, is an independent journalist currently living in San Francisco.Ali’s South African roots and desire for social change are the reason for his strong solidarity with the Palestinian people. In 1990 Ali was arrested in South Africa where he was detained and tortured for nearly two years by the South African secret police. Ali also lived and worked in the Old City of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. more.. e-mail

The Farce goes on
Khalid Amayreh, Palestinian Information Center 3/31/2008
     As prospects of true peace in Palestine look as bleak as ever, mainly because of Israeli intransigence and American complicity with the Zionist state, peace-loving  people in the Middle East and around the world are once again affronted by yet another disingenuous visit to the region by US Secretary of State.
     Rice has made numerous visits to Ramallah and occupied Jerusalem ever since she became Secretary of State more than three years ago.
     However, the overall situation pertaining to the Palestinian plight  has more or less remained unchanged. In fact, one can safely contend  that the Israeli occupation and apartheid are now much worse than they were three years ago.
     Hence, it is highly unlikely that  Rice’s current visit is going to make any difference.
     It is really not difficult to pinpoint the causes and reasons for the failure of American  "peace efforts"�  in this part of the world
     The US knows very well that Israel will not move even one centimeter toward peace without  serious American pressure. But the US government lacks both the inclination and the willingness to do so. The Jewish-control of Congress and the virtual complete subservience of Bush administration to the powerful  Jewish lobby, known as AIPAC,  as well as to pro-Israeli neocons, make any breakthrough, even any genuine progress in peacemaking , extremely unlikely. more.. e-mail

Fooling ourselves
Haaretz Editorial, Ha’aretz 4/1/2008
     Had Peace Now not published reports from time to time, it is doubtful anyone would have been aware of the continuing construction in the settlements. One might have assumed from the declarations by Ehud Olmert’s government that construction had been suspended and that efforts were being made to reach a peace agreement to include withdrawal from most of the West Bank. From the complaints by the settlers’ leadership as well, one might have concluded that there was a freeze on building and that the settler youth were really and truly homeless.
     But quite different things are happening in the territories. The dynamic of deception is continuing. Deception of the Americans, deception of the voters for parties that etched peace on their standard, deception of the Palestinians and above all self-deception. Our top leaders have joined together on a course that has no objective. These include Defense Minister Ehud Barak, whose political path no one understands and which he himself is not bothering to clarify, the prime minister, who serves as a commentator on reality instead of shaping it, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is conducting negotiations on evacuation while the government is continuing to build. more.. e-mail

Backs to the demolished wall
Hanna Swaid, Ha’aretz 4/1/2008
     Protest tents against the demolition of houses have recently become part of the landscape surrounding Arab communities and Arab neighborhoods in mixed cities. In the Negev, it appears the planning and building authorities have been mainly demolishing houses in unrecognized Arab communities instead of planning and building. In Lod, seven homes of Arab families were demolished recently (in the Ta’ayush neighborhood, whose name means "coexistence"). In Tira, Kalansua and most of the communities in Wadi Ara (Nahal Iron) and the Galilee, public committees are fighting the authorities’ plans to demolish houses and buildings put up over the years without building permits.
     The authorities are conducting the campaign to demolish houses, which is accompanied by very heavy fines on their owners, in the name of the rule of law. But as long as the rule of law works in a selective way, it becomes an instrument of discrimination and revenge. It is right that Arab citizens, who suffer from a housing shortage and a dearth of legal building solutions, are wondering: What about the construction in the Jewish settlements in the territories, in the outposts and the Jewish agricultural sector, where illegal construction for business purposes is flourishing? The only difference is that in those places there are politically connected local authorities and lobbies that ensure illegal construction or the turning of a blind eye. more.. e-mail

A Gaza Diary: Falling Sick in Gaza
Najwa Sheikh, MIFTAH 3/31/2008
     I have been long wondered about the feelings, fears, concerns of those whose meant to fall sick in Gaza, real sick, and have denied access to treatment either because of lack of equipment in Gaza or by the arrogance and prejudice of other human beings who enjoy putting more suffering on the people of Gaza.
     I have always asked myself about these people as I was sure of the huge burden that they have to bear, and the trauma they have to suffer, shattered, and lost between their own pain, and between the images, memories, they wanted to keep for their families, kids, and beloved ones.
     However, I guess I have the chance to tell part of their pain now. A week ago I went to my doctor for regular pregnancy check, though the pregnancy was going well, my doctor suspected that I have a problem in my heart, therefore, he transferred me to another specialized doctor, who confirmed the diagnosis.
     If I received the news in another place in the world except Gaza I would not feel that bad, but because in Gaza things can dramatically changed easily to the worst, I felt that something different had stricken my life and change my perspective to every thing. Even though I believe in God, I felt that it is not the time to fall sick; I still have more to tell to my children, I still have plans I wanted to fulfill, and still have life that I wanted to live. more.. e-mail

Palestinian orgs: Israel’s anniversary nothing to celebrate
Appeal, Various undersigned, Electronic Intifada 3/31/2008
     How can you celebrate? The establishment of the state of Israel 60 years ago was a settler-colonial project that systematically and violently uprooted more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from their lands and homes. Sixty years ago, Zionist militias and gangs ransacked Palestinian properties and destroyed hundreds of Palestinian villages. How can people of conscience celebrate this catastrophe?
     Israel at 60 is a state that continues to deny Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned right to return to their homes and receive compensation, simply because they are "non-Jews." It still illegally occupies Palestinian and other Arab lands, in violation of numerous UN resolutions. It persists in its blatant denial of fundamental Palestinian human rights, in contravention of international humanitarian law and human rights conventions. It still subjects its own Palestinian citizens to a system of institutionalized discrimination, strongly reminiscent of the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa. And Israel gets away with all this, thanks to the unprecedented immunity granted to it by the unlimited and munificent US and European economic, diplomatic, political, and academic support. more.. e-mail

Bjork, cancel your Tel Aviv concert!
Open letter, PACBI, Electronic Intifada 3/30/2008
     You uttered one word ["Tibet"] in a concert in Shanghai that sent ripples across many disapproving seas. This time, say it louder, and support another just cause: that of the Palestinian people.
     Do not sing in Israel, so that your silence will prove to be more deafening.
     The concert you plan to give in July in Israel will coincide with the celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of this state over the ruins of another country, Palestine. With the creation of this state 60 years ago, three quarters of a million Palestinians were dispossessed and uprooted from their homes and lands, condemned to a life of exile and destitution.
     At Hayarkon park in Tel Aviv, where you plan to sing, the Palestinian village of Jarisha was wiped off the map by the Zionist forces 60 years ago. more.. e-mail

Palestinian Land Day: time for reflection and demonstration
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 3/30/2008
     For Palestinian Land Day, some just walked on the land, did not really demonstrate, but instead took in the air, reflected, watched the subtle steps of the hills.
     For others it was a day to shout at occupation forces and hold nonviolent demonstrations. In Umm Salamuna, between Hebron and Bethlehem in the southern West Bank, there was demonstration of between 150 and 200 people around 1:00 pm, the number estimated by residents.
     I walked with a friend from Umm Salamuna. He told me that Israeli soldiers had arrived at 7:00 am and began blocking the roads. "They put up rolls of barbed wire. You could get in, but you couldn’t get out."
     Another woman who I did not know before, also from Umm Salamuna, walked with me and her three little kids before sending two to their grandparent’s house. "Are you afraid?" She asked me as a larger than usual jeep pulled up in front of us. "No," I answered plaintively. She laughed. She was not afraid either. more.. e-mail

What Journalists Avoid Asking About Israel
Stuart Littlewood, Middle East Online 3/30/2008
     The abysmal performance of Western TV and radio interviewers when dealing with issues surrounding Israel – that “rogue regime” or “Zionist entity”, as many now call it – is not only embarrassing, but a blot on the escutcheon of journalism.
     Even the most fearsome inquisitors purr like a pussycat. Their rottweiler instincts evaporate, their investigative skills desert them, objectivity takes a nosedive. Penetrating questions are seldom asked, lies go unchallenged. Any Israeli spokesperson or cheerleader is guaranteed an easy ride.
     Have the nation’s truth-seekers fallen under some wicked Zionist spell? Are their researchers on strike? Did somebody nobble the programme editors?
     While we wait with mounting frustration for our broadcasters to get their act together, here are 20 simple questions the BBC and others seem anxious not to ask:
     On rockets and sieges.
     1) The numbers of home-made Qassam rockets launched at Israel are diligently counted and quoted, but how many sophisticated munitions have Israel’s F-16s, helicopter gunships, armed drones, tanks, occupation troops and navy patrol boats fired into the crowded humanity that packs the Gaza Strip? We are never told... more.. e-mail

‘Death to the Arabs!’
Uri Avnery, Middle East Online 3/30/2008
     Tomorrow will be the 32nd anniversary of the first "Day of the Land" - one of the defining events in the history of Israel.
     I remember the day well. I was at Ben Gurion airport, on the way to a secret meeting in London with Said Hamami, Yasser Arafat’s emissary, when someone told me: "They have killed a lot of Arab protestors!"
     That was not entirely unexpected. A few days before, we - members of the newly formed Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace - had handed the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, an urgent memorandum warning him that the government’s intention of expropriating huge chunks of land from Arab villages would cause an explosion. We included a proposal for an alternative solution, worked out by Lova Eliav, a veteran expert on settlements.
     When I returned from abroad, the poet Yevi suggested that we make a symbolic gesture of sorrow and regret for the killings. Three of us - Yevi himself, the painter Dan Kedar and I - laid wreaths on the graves of the victims. This aroused a wave of hatred against us. I felt that something profoundly significant had happened, that the relationship between Jews and Arabs within the state had changed fundamentally. more.. e-mail

Her ongoing silence
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 3/31/2008
     It happened exactly 30 years ago: the first demonstration by Peace Now. There were 40,000 people in the square that was then called Malkhei Yisrael. On April 1, 1978, they demonstrated in favor of accelerating the peace talks with Egypt. One of the energetic organizers was the princess of the extra-parliamentary left in those days, Yuli Tamir.
     Scion of the aristocracy of the Israeli workers’ movement, Tamir stood out among the founders of Peace Now. When, a short time later, the question arose as to whether to demonstrate against the demolition of houses in the territories, Tamir was among those who enthusiastically called for taking to the streets and protesting. Afterward she became an activist in the Ratz party in the 1980s and the chair of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) in the 1990s. Her academic activity also related to similar issues: One of her books discussed liberal nationalism. Isaiah Berlin was her teacher and mentor.
     Thirty years after that demonstration Tamir is the minister of education. Her last two projects: granting Israel Prizes for contribution to society to eight different organizations, including the Manufacturers Association and the Jewish Agency, and the initiative Derech Eretz V’Shamayim (a play on words meaning both "the Golden Way and the Sky" as well as "Across Land and Air"). In this initiative, 8,000 army officers and soldiers visited schools across the country last week to speak to the students about values and national pride. In a nutshell, these two projects tell the entire story of the long way Tamir has come from then until now. When Shulamit Aloni was minister of education, she battled to award the Israel Prize to Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz; Tamir will award the prize to the Manufacturers Association. She sent the Israel Defense Forces officers to schools to impart values to our children. Post-leftist. more.. e-mail

Palestinians march to call for healthy generation of refugees
Tzovig Seferian, Daily Star 3/31/2008
     BEIRUT: Hundreds of Palestinians marched through the alleys of the Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp Sunday morning, carrying banners and chanting slogans, while drawing the attention of many sleepy households adjusting to Daylight Savings time in Lebanon.
     But their message was quite different from what one might expect. "Yes for dialogue, no for hitting," one banner showed, held by small children dressed in traditional Palestinian robes
     "Use soda to clean your sinks, drink water to clean your body," shouted Khaled Masri, aged 13, and his younger sister, Mona, aged 12, whose family originated in Kabri village, near Acca in Palestine.
     These camp inhabitants, mostly women and children, were calling for a healthy generation of Palestinians who might one day return to their country.
     "Land needs healthy people, both physically and mentally, to look after it," explained Olfat Mahmoud, director of the Palestinian Women’s Humanitarian Organization (PWHO), a local women’s non-governmental organization launched in 1993 with the goal of empowering Palestinian women and children. Their mandate has since expanded to include working with entire communities, as well as other refugee populations in Lebanon. more.. e-mail

No impunity, whether in Iraq or Lebanon
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 3/29/2008
     It is depressing but not surprising that almost exactly five years after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the dissolution of the Baathist-led regime and state, we now witness just about every conceivable possible party fighting one another in Basra, Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.
     Ironically, I have been following this during a trip between Geneva, London and Boston. I say ironically, because the United States and the United Kingdom chose to launch this war that has caused immense damage and suffering, while in Geneva I was involved in meetings at the International Committee of the Red Cross, where among the issues discussed were crimes against humanity and impunity for war crimes.
     For now, we continue to witness the consequences of the war that the Americans and British unleashed after decades of brutal governance by the Baathist regime headed by Saddam Hussein. Whether he and his partners in crime and cruelty will be the only ones held accountable for their conduct will not be determined for some years. The issue is critical, though, if the Middle East is ever going to emerge from its evil and painful custom where crime is a policy tool and a routine mode of conduct. more.. e-mail

Food prices double in besieged Gaza
Report, PCHR, Electronic Intifada 3/27/2008
     "There have been rapid price increases over the last few months because of the closure. Three months ago, for instance, a liter of corn oil cost 19 shekels [the equivalent of $4.50]. Now it costs 29 shekels [$7]. The price of flour has also doubled; three months ago a kilo of flour was two shekels. Now our customers have to pay four shekels."
     The Abu al-Kass mini-market has been a popular feature of central Gaza City for more than 30 years. Anwar Abu al-Kass has worked here since he was a teenager, and now manages the mini-market with his brother. "We used to have a lot of fresh goods on sale, but now the majority of our goods are dry products," he explains. "Every business has been affected by the closure -- we used to sell lots of fresh milk and different kinds of cheese -- but now we are forced to depend on two Israeli companies for our dairy imports. Their products are expensive for us, but we have no choice."
     After declaring the Gaza Strip a "hostile entity" on 19 September last year, Israel tightened its siege and closure of Gaza, adding additional restrictions on the movements of all civilians and goods, and limiting food imports to seven basic categories: flour, sugar, dairy products, rice, salt, oil and frozen foods, including frozen meat. Many foods and drinks are now only sporadically available, whilst others, such as Coca Cola and fresh fruit juice, completely disappeared off the shelves several months ago. Fresh meat is increasingly scarce in Gaza, as is imported chocolate and cheese. Alongside every other store, restaurant and food retailer in the Gaza Strip, Anwar Abu al-Kass has had to adapt to these restrictions whilst also trying to keep his business going. more.. e-mail

Normality in the West Bank
Maria Urkedal York writing from Nablus, occupied West Bank, Electronic Intifada 3/27/2008
     You need to upgrade your Flash Player You have reached an Electronic Intifada slide show. The Electronic Intifada (EI), found at electronicIntifada.net, publishes news, commentary, analysis, and reference materials about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from a Palestinian perspective.
     A familiar scenario takes place in front of me. A little boy, no more than four years old, is laughing as he runs back and forth between the line of adults’ feet, feet twice the size of his. Typically, with a combination of innocence and courage only found in children’s eyes, he is testing how far he can go before his mother will call him back. The reason why this ordinary scene remains in my consciousness is that it is took place at Huwwara military checkpoint, one of the manned posts restricting the movement of people and goods in and out of the West Bank town of Nablus. Although the boy is laughing, making some of us waiting in the line smile, he is also about to be checked by young armed soldiers before he is let out on the other side where dozens of yellow taxis are waiting to take people traveling from Nablus to Huwwara, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Qalandia, and the elsewhere in the West Bank. more.. e-mail

Nazareth, the neglected city of Jesus
Christine Bro, Electronic Intifada 3/27/2008
     Last weekend, Catholics in Nazareth and around the world celebrated the most holy and significant events to Christianity, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, marking the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a man in Biblical times known simply as "Jesus of Nazareth." However, today Nazareth faces a slow and painful death in the face of land theft and colonization.
     In 1948, during what Palestinians call the Nakba, over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes and country through direct physical expulsion, ethnic cleansing or psychological warfare, leaving only one third of the original inhabitants in historic Palestine. Even the indigenous Palestinians who remained during the period of 1947-49 became internally displaced refugees in the newly created state of Israel, due to laws passed by the Israeli government that transferred land to the state by declaring it a military zone and did not allow for Palestinians to return to their original homes. Until today, these internally displaced refugees have no right to return to their original land, towns or villages and presently account for more than 355,000 refugees inside Israel. more.. e-mail

Who’s winning in Iraq?
Mustafa El-Labbad, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/27/2008
     Having handed Iraq to Iran, the US faces a strategic dilemma of enormous proportions.
     Up to 1.2 million Iraqis may have been killed since the invasion of Iraq five years ago and many more have been displaced or have left the country. The US invaded Iraq to seize its oil, and what it did altered the balance of power in the region for years to come. Iraq, being a neighbour to six countries all with considerable weight in the region, is a major geopolitical asset.
     Since the Bush administration declared itself victorious in Iraq in summer 2003, resistance operations have not abated. Many inside and outside the region may agree today that the war was a big mistake and that the political process that followed was disastrous. But no one wants to see the Americans out yet -- no one, that is, except Iran. more.. e-mail

Grave suspicion of extra-judicial execution in Bethlehem killings
B’Tselem - The Israeli information center for Human Rights, Palestine Monitor 3/27/2008
     B’Tselem wrote to Israel’s Attorney General and the military’s Judge Advocate General demanding that they order criminal investigations into the killing of four Palestinians, Muhammad Shehadeh, Ahmad Bilbul, "˜Imad a-Kamal, and Issa Marzuq Zawahreh in Bethlehem on March 12, 2008. The four were defined "wanted persons"� by Israel’s security forces. The media reported that the senior command echelon took part in planning the action and authorizing it. Accordingly, B’Tselem’s demand includes an investigation into the personal command responsibility of the Judea and Samaria Division commander, the OC Central Command and the chief of staff.
     Israel’s High Court of Justice has ruled that the state is prohibited to intentionally kill Palestinians taking part in hostilities if less harmful means can be employed, such as arresting and trying them. B’Tselem’s investigation of the incident raises the suspicion that in violation of the High Court’s ruling, no attempt was made to arrest the suspects, and that the security forces operated as though on an assassination mission, shooting the suspects from behind with massive automatic gunfire although the latter did not try to escape or use their weapons. more.. e-mail

The Strange Case of Robert Malley
Gershom Gorenberg, MIFTAH 3/29/2008
     Of all the recent efforts to smear Barack Obama, none strikes me as stranger than the claims that one of his informal advisers on foreign affairs, Robert Malley, is anti-Israel. This, in turn, is supposed to prove that as president, Obama is liable to institute dangerous changes in U.S. policy toward Israel.
     As a campaign trope, the calumny may have begun with Ed Lasky, news editor of the right-wing Web site The American Thinker, who posted a fervid attack on Malley in January. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America has taken time off from its hawkish media-bashing to post a blast at Malley on its Web site. Journalists regularly speculate on whether the Malley connection will hurt Obama among Jewish voters, though there’s no evidence of that. Meanwhile, Malley’s diplomatic colleagues -- including Sandy Berger, Dennis Ross, and Martin Indyk -- have issued an open letter defending him.
     There’s more at work here than the usual, nearly boring, attempts to slime a liberal candidate as anti-Israel for the "sin" of supporting what Israel needs most -- determined diplomatic efforts to achieve peace. Lurking in the background is another of the battles over how Israel-Palestinian history is told. In that fight, the original furious critic of Barack Obama’s adviser is former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. There’s also a lesson about Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy: Besides settling the practical questions, it requires resolving the conflicting narratives about the past. To approach this task, the next president will need not just hard work but a gift with rhetoric, with words. more.. e-mail

Powerful lessons: Ultra-orthodox awkward squad
Donald Macintyre, The Independent 3/27/2008
     Rabbi Obadia Yosef’s hardline Shas party is an implacable opponent of the two-state solution. And its influence over a generation of young Israelis is growing.
     In a schoolroom in the heart of the growing immigrant town of Beit Shemesh – its Jewish origins dating back to biblical times – Rabbi Pinchas Mazuz is conducting a boisterous class of teenage boys who attend this yeshiva with a difference. This afternoon’s lesson seeks answers to the question of what you would tell a visitor from abroad about how to conduct the Seder, the ritual family meal on the first night of Passover, and the students, preparing for a test on just this subject eagerly shout back their answers: clearing the house of chametz, or leavened bread, the reading of the Haggadah, the account of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt after generations of slavery, the drinking of four glasses of wine.
     What makes this yeshiva, or Jewish seminary, untypical is the students themselves, from families that are Sephardic, or originally from Arab countries, and dressed in white shirts, black trousers and black velvet kippas for their lessons in maths, English and Bible studies. All are drop-outs from other more conventional yeshivas in the town. Some had behavioural problems; some come from broken homes; all felt out of place in what they saw as the stifling atmosphere of religiosity and scholarship in those institutions. more.. e-mail

A devastated town recovers, in a way
Rebecca Murray, Electronic Lebanon, Electronic Intifada 3/26/2008
     SIDDIQINE, Lebanon, 26 March (IPS) - Ali Mohanna lives in a two-room cinderblock structure with his wife and brain-damaged son. By the side is a small, freshly plowed tobacco field and the plot of rubble he once called home.
     Mohanna’s house was bombed by Israel during the 34-day conflict in 2006, as were houses of most residents of Siddiqine -- an impoverished village of 6,000, about 10km inland from the coastal town Tyre. Siddiqine resembled a flattened moonscape in the bitterly cold and damp winter that followed, with more than 700 homes out of a total 1,050 hit, and half that number completely destroyed.
     Mohanna lost two tobacco harvests from the bombardment and unexploded cluster munitions, and is now 10,000 dollars in debt to his bank. Forced to give up supplementary work in construction after his heart surgery, the 62-year-old struggles to provide for his family and pay a monthly 100-dollar medication fee for his grown up son Ibrahim, who has violent seizures related to a lifelong affliction with chronic meningitis. more.. e-mail

Death of the Two-State Solution
Patrick Seale, Middle East Online 3/28/2008
     It is now clear beyond reasonable dispute that a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has passed into the realm of fiction. The project -- if it ever was a real project -- is stone dead.
     Some Western politicians, U.S. President George W. Bush among them, continue to pay lip service to the notion of an independent and viable Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security. But their actions belie their words.
     There is today no effective pressure on Israel -- either from the United States, or Europe, or indeed from the Arab states themselves -- to end its occupation of Palestinian territories, halt its settlement expansion, or agree to the creation of a Palestinian state. In the absence of such pressure -- and it would have to be severe -- Israel will not comply.
     Ever since its emergence on the ruins of Arab Palestine six decades ago, Israel has sought to crush any resurgence of Palestinian nationalism. That determination is as real today as it was then. Israel continues to be driven by the belief that any concession to the Palestinians -- and any recognition of its responsibility for their dispossession -- would undermine Israel’s own legitimacy. more.. e-mail

The Third Choice
Roni Ben Efrat, MIFTAH 3/27/2008
     The blood still boils at the sights that came out of Gaza when Israel invaded in March. At least 107 Palestinians were killed, mostly civilians. Houses collapsed on their inhabitants. Hamas went underground, so that the "strongest army in the Middle East" again found itself in a dirty war against unarmed people.
     Israel has no solution to its Gaza problem. It cannot afford to re-occupy the Strip, exposing its soldiers to guerrilla attacks. Short of that, it cannot stop the rockets. Now we can comprehend the function of Annapolis in November: the conference established a framework enabling PM Ehud Olmert to pepper his incursions with protestations of peace. In America he is Dr. Jekyll, in Gaza Mr. Hyde. Or to vary the tale, his tailors meet daily with the tailors of PA President Mahmoud Abbas to patch a suit they can hang in the closet till Hamas magically dissolves. The emperor meanwhile remains unclothed: Israel remains unwilling to withdraw from the lands conquered 40 years ago—the minimum the Palestinians require. more.. e-mail

The high road to freedom
Ziyaad Lunat, Electronic Intifada 3/28/2008
     Last week, Fatah and Hamas officials held direct talks for the first time since Hamas’ June takeover of Gaza. Mediated by Yemeni officials in the capital, the talks led to the recently announced "Sana’a Declaration."However, it is unclear whether these talks, like those that preceded the Gaza takeover, will result in reconciliation and national unity. While there is general consensus among Palestinians that national unity is a matter of great urgency there are doubts whether a return to the troubled past is the only viable option. What guarantee do the majority of the Palestinian people have that the shameful spiral of violence will not return?
     The prospect for Palestinian unity, under joint Fatah and Hamas leadership, is unfeasible due to a basic ideological gap between both movements and a US-backed framework that is overtly favorable to Israel. True unity and progress for the Palestinian cause can only be achieved when the US-backed Road Map and the Oslo Accords, designed to bypass international law and Palestinian rights, are replaced by a unified civil rights movement, motivated by universal values and free from party politics and exclusionary nationalist or religious rhetoric. more.. e-mail

Investing in Fayyad
Akiva Eldar, MIFTAH 3/27/2008
     RAMALLAH - "I had a wonderful day," Salam Fayyad says with a big smile, in his spacious office. A few hours earlier, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority had received $150 million from the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem. This is far from the largest amount ever handled by Fayyad, a veteran official at the International Monetary Fund, who holds a Ph.D. in economics. What moved him was the American government’s readiness to deposit its rapidly thinning dollars into the PA’s bank account. And not in controlled infrastructure or a specific project, but as aid to finance the activities, and even the salaries, of his civil servants. At a time of economic distress in the United States, generous financing like this can truly be considered a certificate of appreciation and trust.
     Fayyad worked hard to earn that certificate, and is paying for it in hard political currency. Last Friday, when Fayyad learned that Defense Minister Ehud Barak had decided to send his aide Amos Gilad to the first meeting of the tripartite monitoring team (U.S., Israel, PA) in Jerusalem, his staff drew up a sharply worded declaration, castigating the disdain being shown by the Israeli defense minister for the forum designated at Annapolis to implement the first stage of the "road map," and cautioning their boss that if he took the affront lying down, the Palestinian public would not forgive him. They said (rightly, as it turned out) that Fayyad’s political rivals from Fatah, not to mention Hamas, would make a laughingstock over the meeting of a Palestinian prime minister with an Israeli civil servant. more.. e-mail

Settling for less?
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 3/27/2008
     A pungent aroma of hot coals filled the small car that passed the checkpoint and then sped up the road to the settlement of Mevo Dotan. On both sides of the twisting road, small bonfires cast a bit of light on a row of shabby homes. Benny Raz, from the Bayit Ehad (One Home) organization, stepped on the gas and passed a battered Subaru with Palestinian license plates.
     Raz, a resident of the Karnei Shomron settlement whose organization is promoting the passage of an "evacuation-compensation" law for the settlers living on the eastern side of the security fence, explained that we were passing through the village of Yabad. The villagers make a living by producing coals for barbecues, but they sometimes also engage in less-friendly fire. Four settlers have been murdered on this road in recent years. No one is counting the number of people hurt by stones being thrown at their cars. Men and women travel the road with weapons on their knees, at the ready. Relatives of the settlers stay away, as though the place were a leper colony.
     The 49 families who remain in Mevo Dotan do not have a "bypass road." Why waste money on building one? On the eve of the last elections, which Ehud Olmert won on the wings of the magic word "convergence," the settlement’s residents were ready to leave. They remember that cabinet minister Gideon Ezra, a member of Olmert’s Kadima party, came to visit and suggested that they "stop watering the gardens." The evacuation was just a matter of time then - and residents believed it wasn’t a matter of a lot of time. more.. e-mail

Where do Iraqis stand?
Ramzy Baroud, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/27/2008
     In all the analysis accorded to the sad anniversary of the US invasion and destruction of Iraq, few words have focussed on the human toll for Iraqis, writes Five years after the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, mainstream media is once more making the topic an object of intense scrutiny. The costs and implications of the war are endlessly covered from all possible angles, with one notable exception -- the cost to the Iraqi people themselves.
     Through all the special coverage and exclusive reports, very little is said about Iraqi casualties, who are either completely overlooked or hastily mentioned and whose numbers can only be guesstimated. Also conveniently ignored are the millions injured, internally and externally displaced, the victims of rape and kidnappings who will carry physical and psychological scars for the rest of their lives.
     We find ourselves stuck in a hopeless paradigm, where it feels necessary to empathise with the sensibilities of the aggressor so as not to sound "unpatriotic", while remaining blind to the untold anguish of the victims. Some actually feel the need to go so far as to blame the Iraqis for their own misfortune. Both Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have expressed their wish for Iraqis to take responsibility for the situation in their country, with the former saying, "we cannot win their civil war. There is no military solution." more.. e-mail

‘New imperialists’ under study
Jim Miles, Middle East Online 3/27/2008
     Book review of:“The new imperialists – Ideologies of Empire”, edited by Colin Mooers (Oneworld Publications, Oxford, England, 2006).
     The new imperialism is part a recognition that, yes, the United States is an imperial power as accepted and supported by various neocon pundits and apologists, and part a recognition that it takes a different form than previous empires, no longer so much as colonial-settlement projects but an economically-ideologically based empire. There is still very much a land base to the empire with over seven hundred fifty military establishments of one form or another in over one hundred thirty countries. Yet it is the institutional structuring of global enterprises that now determines the nature and kind of empire, with a somewhat different rationale behind these structures. It could be argued that the ‘new’ imperialism is only different from the ‘old’ imperialism as a matter of degree and a few not so cleverly disguised rationalizations, as the military is a necessity to support the economic push of free-market capitalism, as militarism had always supported either the greed of the original corporate entities – the Hudson’s Bay Company, the East India Company (Dutch and British) – or the settlement policies that frequently accompanied them, especially in North America, South Africa, and Australia. more.. e-mail

The Main Issues are Political, not Economic
Yossi Alpher, MIFTAH 3/27/2008
     The growing global financial crisis will not be a significant factor in the resolution, or for that matter the ongoing deterioration, of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The past 40 years of Israeli occupation, full and partial, have witnessed a variety of attempts to alleviate or solve the conflict along with two prolonged intifadas and several additional Israel-Arab wars, all of which have demonstrated that the conflict is affected primarily by politics, not economics.
     The ups and downs of the Israeli economy or the global economy have never been a significant factor in determining the direction of the conflict. Nor have the economic pressures of conflict radically affected the cycle of prosperity and recession in Israel. Moreover, since 1967 virtually all Israeli governments, and particularly ministers of defense, have implemented a broad spectrum of economic carrots and sticks with the objective of manipulating the Palestinian political will--with little or no effect on the overall attitude of Palestinians toward Israelis and the conflict. more.. e-mail

The Gaza I live
Tom Garofalo/Catholic Relief Services, ReliefWeb 3/27/2008
     Most Americans think of Gaza as a place of suffering and militancy, but the reality is that Gaza is home to some of the most inspiring and creative people in the Middle East. For the past two years, as the area’s representative for Catholic Relief Services, I’ve traveled there as much as I can. I see what the front-page newspaper photos don’t show you: this tiny sliver of land on the Mediterranean is a place of energy and dynamism, of humor and warmth and unbelievable hospitality, of delicious fish and crabs and the romantic fragrance of apple tobacco.
     But these days, heartbreakingly, it is a place of fear and pain. In mid-January, Gazans took matters into their own hands and tore down the wall separating them from Egpyt. After a few days of freedom, the borders were closed and they returned to life on a strip of land usually cut off from supplies and short on opportunity; 40-50% of more.. e-mail

Gaza’s suffering children
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/27/2008
     The Israeli occupation and its relentless attacks destroy the mental health and lives of children of Gaza.
     The Israeli occupation and its relentless attacks destroy the mental health and lives of children of Gaza, writes Click to view caption A Palestinian woman holding a her country’s flag and photos of some of the 9,000 prisoners held in Israeli jails during a protest calling for their release outside the International Red Cross building in Gaza Every once in a while Ibrahim Hawash, 42, calls his wife Noha from his nightshift job to make sure that she has followed the treatment course prescribed by their family doctor for the involuntary urination of their four children, who are in primary school. The doctor says that the four children lost their ability to control urination due to the fear they underwent when Israeli army jets bombed a home near theirs in the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip during the "Warm Winter" military campaign three weeks ago. The four children still remember the terrifying night when they woke frightened up to the sound of a thundering explosion in the area and found that the glass of their home’s windows had fallen onto their bed. Hawash, who works in one of the Palestinian security agencies, says that his children refuse to sleep alone, insisting on sleeping in the same room as their parents because they are scared of the night. He adds that he exerted great efforts to convince two of his children to go back to school, for they were afraid that they would be killed in an Israeli bombing operation on their way there, or while at school. Thousands of Palestinian children have experienced what Hawash’s four children are undergoing. Mohamed Kharsa, 10, lives in the Tufah neighbourhood northeast of Gaza City, which has been subject to severe Israeli attacks. He runs away to his family home whenever he hears the roar of Israeli planes in the sky. more.. e-mail

Food prices double in besieged Gaza
Report, PCHR, Electronic Intifada 3/27/2008
     "There have been rapid price increases over the last few months because of the closure. Three months ago, for instance, a liter of corn oil cost 19 shekels [the equivalent of $4.50]. Now it costs 29 shekels [$7]. The price of flour has also doubled; three months ago a kilo of flour was two shekels. Now our customers have to pay four shekels."
     The Abu al-Kass mini-market has been a popular feature of central Gaza City for more than 30 years. Anwar Abu al-Kass has worked here since he was a teenager, and now manages the mini-market with his brother. "We used to have a lot of fresh goods on sale, but now the majority of our goods are dry products," he explains. "Every business has been affected by the closure -- we used to sell lots of fresh milk and different kinds of cheese -- but now we are forced to depend on two Israeli companies for our dairy imports. Their products are expensive for us, but we have no choice." more.. e-mail

Separation or unity
Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/27/2008
     The first and second Intifadas in the West Bank and Gaza steered the Palestinian liberation project away from unity with the rest of Palestine. In his second instalment on Israel’s historic options, argues that there is no reason now why unity cannot be recaptured.
     Negotiations on the "two-state solution" have been voided of all substance. The Palestinian national liberation movement has lost all its sources of strength as a liberation movement, including its ability to rely on the Arab community instead of the "international community". It lost and forfeited its sources of strength before ever becoming a state and securing national sovereignty. It became the Palestinian Authority, an entity totally dependent upon negotiations, America’s and Israel’s good intentions, Israeli public opinion and other such factors. Negotiations over the Palestinian state have been reduced to a process of blackmail in which concessions are demanded and offered and fundamental rights are bartered away.
     From the attitude that negotiations are an alternative to resistance, as opposed to the culmination of resistance, a new Palestinian leadership was born, a leadership so bound to the negotiating process that it is existentially dependent upon it. Israel knows that; we know that. Moreover, in this process, what is most essential to the concept of negotiation has been drained and replaced by Israeli handouts and the tokens of good intention that this leadership needs in exchange for laying siege to, hunting down and killing those Palestinian forces that have chosen and adhered to the path of resistance. more.. e-mail

Blaming the victim
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 3/27/2008
     Ghassam Burqan’s wife was tired of doing all the laundry by hand. With five children at home, the couple decided to buy a washing machine. Now, says Burqan with a bitter smile, had he known what buying a washing machine would get him into, he would have passed on this particular luxury, and his wife could have gone on doing all the laundry by hand forever. Because of that washing machine, Burqan is now holding a plastic bag containing his bloodstained clothes, the result of the night of terror he says he was subjected to after some soldiers, and Border Police officers especially, attacked and abused him for an entire night, while he was bound, blindfolded and bleeding from a blow to the head from a rifle butt. If his description is accurate, this would be a particularly severe story of abuse.
     Meanwhile, the upshot is not what one might expect: An indictment was issued against Burqan for assaulting Border Police officers. more.. e-mail

Useless conferences
Salama A Salama, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/27/2008
     Angela Merkel, German chancellor, was not yet born when the Nazis came to power and proceeded to commit crimes of war and genocide, of which the Jews were among the victims. She doesn’t need, therefore, to recreate the guilt a previous generation must have felt. But for utterly pragmatic reasons, she did. Since World War II, German governments have made a point of placating the Israelis, mostly for reasons related to Israel’s international influence.
     The recent visit by Merkel to Israel was full of symbolism. The chancellor reiterated her country’s lasting support for Israel and apologised for a crime in which she, and her entire generation, had no part. The move was criticised by German academics. A statement by 25 university professors said that Germany has paid its debts for the Holocaust in full and must stop favouring Israel and embrace a more even-handed policy in the Middle East.
     Merkel wasn’t willing to listen. Unlike some German politicians, including Gerhard Schroeder, who had the vision to take a relatively impartial stand on the Middle East conflict, Merkel, with her fragile coalition, chose to take sides. The German chancellor voiced her support to Israel despite the latter’s sabotaging of peace efforts and its building of settlements on Palestinian land. Merkel, who denounced at length Iran’s nuclear programme, had nothing to say about Israel’s stockpiling of nuclear warheads and its opposition to the creation of a weapons of mass destruction free zone in the Middle East. more.. e-mail

A de facto calm
Khaled Amayreh from Jerusalem, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/27/2008
     The fragile truce between Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza and Israel is holding
     While Israeli officials continue to deny they are engaged in either direct or indirect talks with Hamas, the uneasy calm along the Israel-Gaza border has held for a third consecutive week, despite Israeli provocations.
     On 24 March the Israeli army shot and killed a Palestinian farmer working in a field inside the Gaza Strip. Youssef Abu Dhair, 55, was killed east of Khan Younis by soldiers erecting a watchtower in the area. Two days earlier Israeli troops killed a member of the resistance group Islamic Jihad, prompting the faction to threaten to retaliate if Israel did not halt its attacks.
     The tahdia (calm) has been made possible thanks to intensive diplomatic efforts by Egypt. Egyptian officials have been meeting with representatives of the Gaza-based resistance factions, particularly Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, in a bid to convince them to observe a ceasefire with Israel. According to both Egyptian and Palestinian sources, Egypt and Hamas reached a "tacit understanding" under which Hamas would stop firing homemade rockets at Israeli settlements for a week in return for Israel halting any operations in Gaza for the same period of time. Earlier this month representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad met with Egyptian officials in Arish where a general -- unannounced -- agreement was reported to have been reached on Egypt’s ceasefire proposals. more.. e-mail

Precarious accord
Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/27/2008
     No sooner signed than ignored, reactions to the Sanaa Declaration are indicative of deep rifts that persist in the Palestinian Fatah movement.
     Representatives of Fatah and Hamas this week signed a generally worded agreement in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, with both sides hoping it would end the present national rift between the two largest Palestinian political factions.
     The Sanaa Declaration, drafted under the auspices of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, called for ending the internal struggle between Fatah and Hamas and returning the Gaza Strip to the "status quo preceding the events of June 2007", an allusion to Hamas’s counter- coup that ousted forces answerable to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.
     "We, the representatives of Fatah and Hamas, agree to the Yemeni initiative as a framework for resuming dialogue between the two movements to return the Palestinian situation to what it was before the [June 2007] Gaza events," the document reads. more.. e-mail

Normality in the West Bank
Maria Urkedal York writing from Nablus, occupied West Bank, Electronic Intifada 3/27/2008
     You need to upgrade your Flash Player You have reached an Electronic Intifada slide show. The Electronic Intifada (EI), found at electronicIntifada.net, publishes news, commentary, analysis, and reference materials about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from a Palestinian perspective.
     A familiar scenario takes place in front of me. A little boy, no more than four years old, is laughing as he runs back and forth between the line of adults’ feet, feet twice the size of his. Typically, with a combination of innocence and courage only found in children’s eyes, he is testing how far he can go before his mother will call him back. The reason why this ordinary scene remains in my consciousness is that it is took place at Huwwara military checkpoint, one of the manned posts restricting the movement of people and goods in and out of the West Bank town of Nablus. Although the boy is laughing, making some of us waiting in the line smile, he is also about to be checked by young armed soldiers before he is let out on the other side where dozens of yellow taxis are waiting to take people traveling from Nablus to Huwwara, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Qalandia, and the elsewhere in the West Bank. more.. e-mail

Nazareth, the neglected city of Jesus
Christine Bro, Electronic Intifada 3/27/2008
     Last weekend, Catholics in Nazareth and around the world celebrated the most holy and significant events to Christianity, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, marking the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a man in Biblical times known simply as "Jesus of Nazareth." However, today Nazareth faces a slow and painful death in the face of land theft and colonization.
     In 1948, during what Palestinians call the Nakba, over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes and country through direct physical expulsion, ethnic cleansing or psychological warfare, leaving only one third of the original inhabitants in historic Palestine. Even the indigenous Palestinians who remained during the period of 1947-49 became internally displaced refugees in the newly created state of Israel, due to laws passed by the Israeli government that transferred land to the state by declaring it a military zone and did not allow for Palestinians to return to their original homes. Until today, these internally displaced refugees have no right to return to their original land, towns or villages and presently account for more than 355,000 refugees inside Israel. more.. e-mail

Al Nakba of 1948: How Long will it Persist?
Khalil Nakhleh, MIFTAH 3/27/2008
     I am not really certain when we started labeling what happened to our people and our country, following the establishment of the state of Israel, as "Al- Nakba". But this is not really the important point. What is important, from my perspective as a Palestinian, is that there is a need to understand what happened to us in and around 1948; and why it happened the way it did; and what should we do to circumvent Al-Nakba from persisting into our future.
     As it has been characterized officially, Al-Nakba, or "the catastrophe", is a short-hand euphemism for the disaster that befell the Palestinian people and society in historical Palestine, in and around 1948, when Israel declared itself to be an independent country. Thus, we started equating and associating the "independence" of Israel, or the 15th of May of every year since 1948, with our "catastrophe". more.. e-mail

A Gaza Diary: Tale of Two Families
Najwa Sheikh, MIFTAH 3/27/2008
     Gaza, the land of the continuous pain, and the unfolded stories, the lines of Gaza days are curved by the blood of it’s people, while its nights are drawn by the screams and cries of its inhabitants, of those who recall their bitterness, their loss, and found that the silence of these nights as their chance to show their pain without any fears, any limitations.
     In Gaza every day have it own devastating story, a story that it is special of the details it has, special of the pain it holds, and of the misery of its characters. Every story shows the real face of the occupation that haunted us, of the ugly force of hearted that directed towards us not as humans, but as Palestinians.
     The story of Abu Salameh family from Jabalya camp shows how the life of the Palestinians in Gaza can hold all the misery and sufferings that no one can hold, after the last IDF operation in the northern Gaza, Abu more.. e-mail

Deaths of four "terrorists"
JR Malsin writing from Bethlehem, occupied West Bank, Electronic Intifada 3/26/2008
     Few other words shut down critical thought as completely as the word "terrorist." Few other labels are so morally loaded, so totalizing, so antithetical to reasoned, measured debate. Almost no other term evokes such facile, muddled thinking.
     Thus, when a local leader of Islamic Jihad and three other Palestinian "terrorists" were killed by Israeli special forces in Bethlehem on Wednesday night, 12 March, few outside of Palestine will mourn their deaths.
     In the eyes of many in Israel, Europe and North America, another menace has been eliminated. Mohammad Shehadah, Issa Marzouq, Imad al-Kamel, and Ahmad Balboul will likely be remembered as murderous scum.
     In Palestine, however, and in Bethlehem in particular, these men, and the event of their deaths, will be remembered differently.
     I had just sat down at a restaurant down the street from my Bethlehem office when the shooting took place. more.. Deaths of four "terrorists"
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The same air, the same water
Meron Benvenisti, Ha’aretz 3/27/2008
     Ecological issues have become central in public discourse, with almost all activity in the fields of transportation, infrastructure, industry and agriculture spurring a lively debate on their environmental impact. The discussion long ago went beyond the limited themes of protecting nature reserves, wild animals and plants, and has begun to bite into sacred myths about the "conquest of the wilderness" and the dressing of the land "in a frock of cement and concrete."
     Many people understand that the old Zionist slogans have become a tool in the hands of cynical real estate sharks and that continuing the cult of development will lead, if it has not already done so, to an environmental disaster that could destroy the health of Israeli society. Many activists who are worried about the environment’s fate avoid radical statements about shattering the Zionist dream so as not to send the debate more.. e-mail

Bad for the Economy, Bad for Peace
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 3/26/2008
     While economists are puzzling over the global financial crisis that started in the US and is most dramatically illustrated by the fall in the value of the US dollar, the effect in this region is massively and disproportionately felt. Most countries in the region either have their currencies directly tied to the dollar or are heavily invested in economic relations with the US.
     The Palestinians are quite possibly most negatively affected from the turbulence. Although neighboring countries such as Israel, Jordan and Egypt are also suffering, they all have their own state and currency and thus the economic and monetary tools to deal with the crisis. The Palestinian government has no such tools to respond with and the Palestinian economy, moreover, is heavily dependant on foreign aid, most of which comes in dollars.
     The Palestinian Authority, furthermore, is in such a poor state that it cannot more.. e-mail

4,000 Dead, Zero Accountability
Robert Parry, Middle East Online 3/26/2008
     Passing the grim milestone of 4,000 dead American soldiers in Iraq -- not to mention hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis -- George W. Bush can now see a clear path to the finish line of his presidency, with no accountability lurking in the shadows and almost no chance that he will be forced to relent on his “stay-the-course” strategy.
     Plus, with Hillary Clinton continuing her trench-warfare battle for the Democratic nomination – even knowing it could damage Barack Obama’s chances against John McCain – President Bush may end up with the happy opportunity to hand over the White House to a Republican successor who has promised to keep US troops in Iraq for possibly a hundred years.
     Indeed, the only marginal hope for Bush facing any accountability at all – for deceiving the American people into an unprovoked war in Iraq and abusing his constitutional powers – may be the diminishing more.. e-mail

The Battle of Baghdad
Michael Schwartz, Middle East Online 3/24/2008
     Iraq’s Most Fearsome Militia, the US military, on the Offensive.
     In early April, General David Petraeus, the flavor of the year in American military officers, will return to Washington to report to President Bush and the Democratic Congress on the state of post-surge Iraq. His report will be upbeat, with cautious notes thrown in, and the reception will be warm. The Republicans will congratulate the President, hoping that Americans will stop complaining and finally learn to tolerate, if not love, his war; the Democrats will be quietly unhappy because they would like Iraq to remain a major election issue.
     In the meantime, the Iraqis will continue to endure the results of the surge, yet another brutal chapter in the endless war that once promised them liberation.
     Over the course of five years, Baghdad, the capital city of Iraq, has been transformed from a metropolis into an urban more.. e-mail

The Coming Uncertain War against Iran
Ramzy Baroud, Middle East Online 3/23/2008
     When Admiral William J "Fox" Fallon was chosen to replace General John Abizaid as chief of US Central Command (CENTCOM) in March 2007, many analysts didn’t shy from reaching a seemingly clear-cut conclusion: the Bush administration was preparing for war with Iran and had selected the most suitable man for this job. Almost exactly a year later, as Fallon abruptly resigned over a controversial interview with Esquire magazine, we are left with a less certain analysis.
     Fallon was the first man from the navy to head CENTCOM. With the US army fighting two difficult and lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and considering the highly exaggerated Iranian threat, a war with Iran was apparently inevitable, albeit one that had to be conducted differently. Echoing the year-old speculation, Arnaud de Borchgrave of UPI wrote on 14 March 2007 that an attack against Iran "would fall on the US Navy’s more.. e-mail

Southern town still hurting from 2006 war
Rebecca Murray, Daily Star 3/27/2008
     Inter Press - SIDDIQINE: Ali Mohanna lives in a two-room cinderblock structure with his wife and brain-damaged son. By the side is a small, freshly ploughed tobacco field and the plot of rubble he once called home. Mohanna’s house was bombed by Israel during the 34-day conflict in 2006, as were houses of most residents of Siddiqine - an impoverished village of 6,000, about 10 kilometers inland from the coastal town of Tyre. Siddiqine resembled a flattened moonscape in the bitterly cold and damp winter that followed, with more than 700 homes out of a total 1,050 hit, and half that number completely destroyed.
     Mohanna lost two tobacco harvests from the bombardment and unexploded cluster munitions, and is now $10,000 in debt to his bank. Forced to give up supplementary work in construction after his heart surgery, the 62-year-old struggles to provide for his family and pay a monthly $100 more.. e-mail

Israel, Shame on You
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 3/26/2008
     Earlier this month, Israeli occupation forces shut down the Islamic Study Center in the heart of Hebron on claims that the charitable society, which hosts an orphanage, library, bakery and shopping center, is linked to Hamas and even trains young recruits there. The center, which was established in 1962, has provided a home for hundreds of disadvantaged Palestinians who would otherwise have nowhere else to turn.
     Since its inception, shops, a school, bakeries and even medical clinics in the city have been established by the center, thus catering to thousands of Hebronites. The Israeli army raid and subsequent closure has left children without shelter, others without a school and hundreds of citizens without their businesses and therefore their livelihood. Not only were these places shut down by military order, much of their content was confiscated – computers, files, refrigerators, frozen foods and ovens. more.. e-mail

Gaza’s sewage system in crisis
IRIN, Electronic Intifada 3/26/2008
     JERUSALEM/GAZA, 25 March (IRIN) - Design errors, a fast growing population, the halting in recent years of development projects, and Israeli restrictions on imports have rendered the Gaza Strip’s sewage system incapable of handling the enclave’s waste, experts said.
     The result is the pumping of partially treated or untreated sewage directly into the sea, and the seepage of dirty water into the ground and groundwater.
     "The environmental situation in Gaza is bad and getting worse," an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expert on water and sanitation said in an interview with IRIN.
     While exact statistics are unavailable, 30,000-50,000 cubic meters of partially treated waste water and 20,000 cubic meters of raw sewage end up in rivers and the Mediterranean Sea. Some 10,000-30,000 cubic meters of partially treated sewage end up in the ground, in some cases reaching the aquifer, polluting Gaza’s already poor drinking water supply. more.. e-mail

We heard you, Mr. Boim
Kadura Fares, Ha’aretz 3/25/2008
     Housing Minister Ze’ev Boim explained away the construction of 750 new housing units in the settlement of Givat Ze’ev by saying that the permits had been issued in 1999, but that construction had stopped due to, as he put it, the "outbreak of violence." That is, the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising. According to Boim, the contractors went to court, and as a result of their petition, the government ordered the construction’s approval. Boim was talking, it seems to me, to Israelis and overseas leaders critical of the renewed construction. He did not notice that Palestinians were also listening to him.
     I am one of those who listened, and I understood from his statements that Boim is inviting us - the Palestinians - to start another intifada. Boim’s statements reminded me how, at the end of the last decade, at the height of the peace talks, when we were closer to the finish line than ever before, the Israelis continued unremittingly to build settlements. That is the case today: After Annapolis, the Paris conference, and the renewal of talks on the highest level, Israel is once more expanding its settlement construction. more.. e-mail

The 10 commandments of the peace process
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 3/26/2008
     In the few days I have spent in Geneva this week discussing such issues as Europe’s role in the world, the relevance and application of international humanitarian law, and Switzerland’s experience in impartially promoting conflict-resolution negotiations, the conversation inevitably returns to the Middle East. My pleasure at absorbing the lessons of Switzerland’s dynamic neutrality has been partially offset by the irritation of following US Vice President Dick Cheney in his travels around the Middle East.
     Cheney speaks about promoting peace, but spends most of his time scheming to confront those nationalist and Islamist forces in the region that happen to represent a majority of citizens in Arab-Islamic societies. Defeating Hamas and Hizbullah and checking the Iranian and Syrian governments have become his primary diplomatic focus, rather than offering the United States as an even-handed and dynamic mediator that could make a historic contribution to peace if it really wanted to. more.. e-mail

The world has betrayed the Israelis and Palestinians who want peace
Editorial, Daily Star 3/26/2008
     The Palestinian-Israeli peace process has been unmasked, not as failed diplomacy, but as poor fiction. As a commentary in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper noted earlier this week, a parade of high-profile visitors continues to wend its way through the region, all prostrating themselves in Israel in this 60th year since its foundation, some flitting through the Occupied West Bank, but few so much as casting a glance at the eyesore in the Gaza Strip. They fall over themselves in an effort to congratulate the Jewish state on its imagined good fortunes and its supposed good deeds. In so doing, they are ignoring the Palestinians, lying to themselves, and betraying those Israelis for whom they claim to have so much respect.
     They all have their reasons, but none of these is worth the damage being done to all concerned. Some are rightly ridden with a sense of national guilt at the appalling crimes committed against European Jews during World War II. more.. e-mail

The dollar crisis only heightens Palestinian misery
Sam Bahour, Daily Star 3/26/2008
     As if the Palestinian economic reality was not complicated enough, the rapid drop in the value of the dollar has put many Palestinians between a rock and a hard place, not knowing how to make ends meet and not seeing an end to this perplexing situation. The Palestinian market uses four main currencies. The Israeli shekel is traded in daily purchases; the Jordanian dinar (JD), euro and US dollar are used for business and real estate transactions. The JD is pegged to the dollar at 0.709 so any devaluation of the dollar directly devalues the JD.
     The vast majority of private-sector employee contracts are in either JDs or dollars. Very few employee contracts use the Israeli shekel, mainly due to its historic fluctuation and because using it is a sign of Israeli dominance over the Palestinian market, which many prefer not to contribute to. And while all civil servant contracts are in shekels and thus the devaluation of the dollar benefits public employees, this is not so for the other major employment sector, the NGO sector, which is very reliant on the dollar and where the devaluation is deeply felt.
     more.. e-mail

Gaza and the failure of Israel’s deterrence strategy
Daoud Kuttab, Daily Star 3/26/2008
     Every day in the Gaza Strip, strategic deterrence - the inhibition of attack by a fear of punishment backed up by superior military power - is being put to the test. The escalating spiral of violence by Israel and Gaza militants indicates not only that deterrence is failing, but also that its effectiveness depends on adherence to fundamental standards of morality.
     Some security strategists and just war theorists argue that there may be nothing morally objectionable about deterrence in cases where the lives and welfare of a civilian population are not directly affected. The threat of retaliation that underpins its strategic effectiveness remains implicit and hypothetical. However, when deterrence becomes indistinguishable from collective punishment - barred under international law by Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention - it is far less likely to achieve its intended result. more.. e-mail

Transforming Israel
Miko Peled, Electronic Intifada 3/25/2008
     Now that Kosovo is the newest independent state to emerge out of the ruins of the former Yugoslavia parallels are being drawn between the Balkans and the Middle East. One response to this development came from Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni who said that as she does not mind if the Palestinians follow the Kosovars and declare statehood; what worries her is that Palestinians will demand equal rights with Israelis.
     Adding to Israeli fears of the impending demand for equal rights, in an article published recently in The Guardian, Ahmad Khalidi wrote that the state now being offered to the Palestinians is less attractive than ever and that Palestinians may just opt to "evoke Olmert’s worst nightmare" and call for a "genuine partnership of sharing the land." Both Livni and Olmert have stated that the possibility of equality keeps them awake at night, and with good cause. Once the discourse moves from "self determination to that of freedom and democracy" as Ahmed Khalidi puts it, the Zionist brand of apartheid will have to fold and a secular democracy will have to emerge in its place. more.. e-mail

The Vision of an Arab-Free Knesset
Shahar Ilan, MIFTAH 3/25/2008
     MK Zevulun Orlev’s rage was not provoked by last week’s pogrom at Jabel Mukkaber, where right-wing protesters attempted to storm the house of the terrorist behind the Mercaz Harav attack; rather, the National Religious Party lawmaker’s anger was sparked by a remark made by Balad chairman MK Jamal Zahalka, who claimed Jerusalem was occupied land and that he refused to recognize a law stating otherwise. "If each member of the Knesset decides which laws to recognize on an individual basis, then you will be the first to suffer," he informed Zahalka, "and I will see to that personally."
     Truth be told: As a member of a party that supports illegal outposts, Zevulun would be best advised to keep a low profile on the subject of the rule of law. But what really matters in this story is the new habit of threatening Arab Knesset members; the dizzying increase in incitement, curses and insults leveled at them, a spike that has gone almost without protest or the involvement of the Knesset Ethics Committee. more.. e-mail

The Science of Terror
Jim Miles, Middle East Online 3/25/2008
     Sometimes the science community, hiding behind the guise of empirical research, cannot see its own bias even while correctly analyzing a situation.The latter statement may seem contradictory, but given the manner in which it studies ‘terror’ and then applies those findings and definitions only to some ‘other’ group, it ignores the reality of terror at home and the reality of terror perpetrated by the ‘homeland’.Not ‘home grown terror’ such as the Timothy McVeighs of the world, nor the terror inflicted on the people by the very infrequent acts of foreigners acting on the homeland, but the terror of the country itself, the acts of the people in government, in the military, in politics, in religion, who either spread terror themselves or spread the fear of terror in order to control not only the domestic audience but foreign audiences as well.
     This has been presented before with the National Geographic magazine’s “World of Terror”[1] article that dutifully recorded acts of terror throughout the world without recognizing the United States’ historical and current acts of terror in the homeland and abroad. From that geographical perspective, one man’s terror is another man’s “civilizing mission”, bringing the benefits of superior technology and enlightened wisdom to the masses of the world who are otherwise disenfranchised “others” with little value until they embrace the “freedom” of the market place and their rightful place in it. more.. e-mail

Winter Soldier
Laila Al-Arian, Middle East Online 3/25/2008
     While on tank patrol through the narrow streets of Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad, Pfc. Clifton Hicks was given an order. Abu Ghraib had become a "free-fire zone," Hicks was told, and no "friendlies" or civilians remained in the area. "Game on. All weapons free," his captain said. Upon that command, Hicks’ unit opened a furious fusillade, firing wildly into cars, at people scurrying for cover, at anything that moved. Sent in to survey the damage, Hicks found the area littered with human and animal corpses, including women and children, but he saw no military gear or weapons of any kind near the bodies. In the aftermath of the massacre, Hicks was told that his unit had killed 700-800 "enemy combatants." But he knew the dead were not terrorists or insurgents; they were innocent Iraqis. "I will agree to swear to that till the day I die," he said. "I didn’t see one enemy on that operation."
     Hicks soberly recounted this bloody incident to a packed auditorium in Silver Spring, Maryland, as part of Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, a summit hosted March 13-16 by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Modeled after the 1971 Winter Soldier Investigation -- in which Vietnam veterans, including John Kerry, testified in Detroit about US atrocities in Vietnam -- this incarnation featured more than fifty veterans and active-duty service members testifying about engaging in or witnessing atrocities and war crimes against Iraqi and Afghan civilians. As a precondition for participation, IVAW required veterans to provide corroborating evidence such as photographs, videos and additional witnesses. Former marine Scott Camil, 61, who spoke at the first Winter Soldier event, attended the conference along with seven fellow Vietnam-era witnesses. "When we came home, the World War II and Korean War veterans did not support our activities. I know how that feels," Camil said quietly. "We’re not going to let it happen to these guys." more.. e-mail

Towards a viable academic boycott campaign
Laith Marouf, Electronic Intifada 3/24/2008
     For the past few years student and academic groups in North America and Europe have been openly campaigning for the boycott of Israeli academia. Some actions produced results (even if not long lasting) and some were unsuccessful. It is important for us working towards the defense of Palestinians’ human rights to learn from these experiences so we may meet our goals in the future. One thing is clear, the stakes are very high and all the major Zionist organizations are responding accordingly.
     Let us first look at the boycott campaign in the UK led by the British Committee for Universities in Palestine. The campaign was a well-thought-out initiative, though it was taken on a wild roller coaster ride. The leading organizers worked for over three years educating fellow academics about the case for boycott.
     Professors succeeded in getting pro-boycott motions passed by two major academic unions, the Association of University Teachers and the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education. At that time, these two unions were also in the process of merging. The day after the merger, the executive of the new union, the University and College Union (UCU), claimed to have no mandate for a boycott. Pro-boycott professors mounted a new campaign and triumphantly passed a motion for boycott in the first UCU General Assembly. In response, Harvard Law School’s Alan Dershowitz threatened to unleash an army of lawyers ready to file perpetual lawsuits that would "devastate and bankrupt" any union that boycotted Israel. The UCU lawyers balked and eventually the campaign was vetoed by the UCU executive. more.. e-mail

Gaza’s Situation: Frustration and Determination
Rami Almeghari, MIFTAH 3/24/2008
     A few kilometers from where the Israeli army attacked Gaza’s coast, a coalition of 27 women’s organizations held a festival marking International Women’s Day. Organized by the Women’s Affairs Center based in Gaza City, the event titled, "Gaza women defy the Israeli siege," was held at the Beach Hotel along the coast.
     The hall overlooking Gaza’s shore is crowded with dozens of attendees and a number of booths selling various products. One woman sells traditional folk dresses, while another delivers homemade Palestinian foods, and another stand offers homemade accessories and household items.
     Reem Elneerab, organizer of the exhibition says that today’s festival is "exceptional as it comes during a crippling siege," enforced by Israel since June 2007. "The exhibition is sending out a message of steadfastness by Gaza women that despite the Israeli closure and measures, the Palestinian women more.. e-mail

High Court ruling closes off Route 443 to Palestinians
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 3/24/2008
     The interim decision issued 10 days ago by the High Court of Justice on the use of Route 443 marks the first time the justices have issued a ruling to close a road traversing occupied territory to Palestinian use, for the convenience of Israeli travelers. The interim ruling on a petition by six Palestinian villages adjacent to the highway, which links the coastal plain to Jerusalem, gave the state six months to report progress on the construction of an alternative road for Palestinian use. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which submitted the petition on behalf of Palestinians who have been injured by the travel ban, noted that had the justices sincerely sought to consider opening the road to all, without regard to race or nationality, they would not have requested details on the building of an alternate route, which entails the destruction of additional land and costs tens of millions of shekels. more.. e-mail

The Jewish Advocate : This land was theirs
Hannah Mermelstein, International Solidarity Movement 3/24/2008
     On March 20, 1941, Yosef Weitz of the Jewish National Fund wrote: "The complete evacuation of the country from its other inhabitants and handing it over to the Jewish people is the answer."� On this day in 1948, almost two months before the first "Arab-Israeli war"� technically began, the 1,125 inhabitants of the Palestinian village Umm Khalid fled a Haganah military operation. Like their brethren from more than 500 villages, they likely thought they would return to their homes within a few weeks, after the fighting blew over and new political borders were or were not drawn.
     Instead, more than 6 million Palestinian people remain refugees to this day, some in refugee camps not far from their original towns, others in established communities in Europe and the US, all forbidden from returning to their homeland for one reason: they are not Jewish. more.. e-mail

The PA Dissolution Discourse
Caelum Moffatt, MIFTAH 3/24/2008
     Emotions are running high and tempers are flaring amongst Palestinians - a populace becoming increasingly beset by exhaustion and frustration. The end of March marks four months since the Annapolis Summit took place and four months since President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, under the eyes of the international community, agreed to meet regularly, implement stage one of the roadmap and strive towards a peace agreement by January 2009.
     Has any progress been made? It seems as if Palestinians gave up on the definition of “progress” and all its implications long before Annapolis Some analysts and academics trace the problems of the present back to the Oslo Accords of 1993 and their subsequent failure. Why is the Palestinian Authority, an interim governing body established under the Oslo Accords that was to be bolstered by a state after five years, still representing more.. e-mail

When Disaster Strikes
Gideon Levy, MIFTAH 3/24/2008
     It looks, terrifyingly, like Gaza. Behind tin fences, at the northern entrance to the Askar refugee camp in Nablus, hides a compound characterized by poverty, one of the most miserable we have seen. Brown hens peck at garbage in the backyard, a yard that has become much larger since the Israel Defense Forces demolished one of the two buildings in the compound. Two crushed and shattered skeletons of cars - a yellow taxi and a white private car - were destroyed beneath the ruins of the building and lie like a silent memorial in the front of the yard. Only the floor of the demolished building is left.
     The only housing that remains to the extended family - 40 souls, most of them children - is a three-story heap with a dangerous staircase. The third floor was added hastily after the destruction of the adjacent building. Walls of unplastered gray brick, alcove after alcove of neglect and darkness, some of them with sand floors. more.. e-mail

Blogging from Gaza
Suzanne Baroud, MIFTAH 3/24/2008
     "I am writing to let you know that in less than 2 hours the last turbine of the Gaza Strip’s only power plant will stop working. The fuel for the power plant … will run out in 2 hours," blogs Mona El-Farra, a mother from Gaza.
     There are new blogs popping up all the time, and several of them coming out of Gaza are a very much welcomed addition to web-based media. From a doctor and feminist in Gaza city to a college-aged young man in Rafah, their message of hope, determination, and humanity penetrates the vindictive Israeli siege. Thanks to these citizen journalists, anyone in the world can capture a glimpse of life in Gaza, their blogs are like little windows into their caged world.
     The Gaza Bloggers’ accounts contribute many things, but mostly a strong affirmation of the failure of world media who has decidedly determined to omit, ignore, and totally disregard countless crimes that are more.. e-mail

An Interview with Ahmed Yousef - No Way to Avoid Hamas
Bitterlemons, MIFTAH 3/24/2008
     bitterlemons: Have there been any official or unofficial contacts between Hamas and Israel on a ceasefire?
     Yousef: There have been no official contacts between Hamas and Israel. What has happened is that the Egyptians approached Hamas regarding a short ceasefire, to allow Cairo time to mediate an end to the embargo on Gaza, perhaps an opening of the gate to Egypt and maybe the other crossings into Israel. The calm is meant for a short period, but I hope it will open the door for a more comprehensive and reciprocal ceasefire.
     bitterlemons: You say a short period. Is there a timeframe?
     Yousef: We are talking about a week, ten days of calm, in the hope that this will lay the foundation for further Egyptian mediation. Right now Cairo is consulting with everybody regarding the terms for a ceasefire. more.. e-mail

Scapegoat upon Scapegoat: Angela Merkel Addresses the Knesset
Raymond Deane, MIFTAH 3/24/2008
     German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s historic speech to the Israeli Knesset on 18 March 2008 has been almost universally applauded, and has been described by Charlotte Knobloch, President of the Central Council of German Jews, as having "opened a new chapter in the relationship between Israel and Germany."
     Given the huge influence of Germany within the European Union, it is imperative to subject Merkel’s speech to a close reading and to question the assumptions implicit both in the speech itself and in the German media response to it.
     Having expressed Germans’ "shame" for the Holocaust, she goes on to point out that "while we are speaking here, thousands of people are living in fear and terror of Hamas’s rocket-attacks and terrorism." Her clumsy choice of words seems to emphasize the failure to mention the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are living in daily fear and terror of Israeli more.. e-mail

Only in Gaza
Yossi Alpher, MIFTAH 3/24/2008
     The past two weeks witnessed a familiar pattern of events. Israel retaliated against Palestinian terrorists firing rockets from Gaza at Israeli civilians. This produced an escalation, in the course of which the city of Ashkelon with its 100,000 inhabitants was brought into the circle of hostile rocket fire. Israel responded with a modest ground and air operation that took a heavy toll in Palestinian lives, mainly Hamas combatants. Egypt intervened with a proposal for a tahdiya, or pause in the fighting. Israel and Hamas, both wary of the wages of further escalation, appeared to signal their agreement.
     PM Olmert denied that Israel had agreed to a pause; his cabinet had just issued a directive to the IDF to eliminate all rocket-firing capability from Gaza--an impossible task. Defense Minister Ehud Barak continued to talk of preparations for a massive attack on the Strip. more.. e-mail

Loving Jesus, fearing the neighbors in Ariel
Yair Ettinger, Ha’aretz 3/24/2008
     Police and sappers were once again dispatched to Ariel’s IDF Street during the Purim holiday Friday morning. A few minutes earlier, a man had knocked on the door of the Leibovitz family home and left a cardboard box with the boy who answered the door. "It’s mishloach manot, a Purim gift basket," explained the visitor before disappearing.
     The boy and his older brother trembled with fear. Their parents, who were out of town, ordered the boys by phone to get away from the package and call the police. In another residential building, 50 meters away, a bomb planted in a Purim gift basket had exploded the day before.
     "This is not hysteria; it is alertness," police told the two boys after they finally opened the box to reveal candy and other treats from the ultra-Orthodox Chabad movement in honor of the holiday.
     This is only one example of the tension that has gripped city residents after the booby-trapped gift basket injured a boy on Thursday. more.. e-mail

Two Americas
Uri Avnery, Middle East Online 3/23/2008
     "War is much too serious a thing to be left to military men," in Talleyrand’s memorable words. In the same spirit, one could say: The American presidential elections are much too serious to be left to the Americans.
     The US is now the only super-power on earth. It will remain so for quite some time to come. The decisions of the President of the United States affect every human being on this planet.
     Unfortunately, the citizens of the world have no part in these elections. But they may, at least, voice an opinion.
     Availing myself of this right I say: I am for Barack Obama.
     First of all I must confess: my attitude towards the US is one of unrequited love. In my youth I was a great admirer. Like many others of my generation, I grew up on the legend of the new, idealistic country of pioneers, the world’s torch of freedom. more.. e-mail

ISRAEL: Israeli sanctions backfiring?
IRIN, IRIN - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 3/22/2008
     JERUSALEM, 21 March 2008 (IRIN) - The Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip has hit the business sector, farmers and those who might benefit from development projects, but helped Hamas consolidate its authority in Gaza, says a new report by the International Crisis Group (ICG).
     Over three quarters of the population receive humanitarian aid, making them more dependent than ever on the international community.
     The report, entitled Ruling Palestine I: Gaza Under Hamas, quoted a political analyst who described Gaza as an "internationally-supplied welfare project".
     "International donors, along with the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, also have infused massive amounts of money, substituting humanitarian aid for development assistance, in effect turning most Gazans into wards of the international community," the ICG said. -- See also: REPORT - Ruling Palestine I: Gaza Under Hamas more.. e-mail

Shattering a ’national mythology’
Ofri Ilani, Ha’aretz 3/22/2008
     Of all the national heroes who have arisen from among the Jewish people over the generations, fate has not been kind to Dahia al-Kahina, a leader of the Berbers in the Aures Mountains. Although she was a proud Jewess, few Israelis have ever heard the name of this warrior-queen who, in the seventh century C.E., united a number of Berber tribes and pushed back the Muslim army that invaded North Africa. It is possible that the reason for this is that al-Kahina was the daughter of a Berber tribe that had converted to Judaism, apparently several generations before she was born, sometime around the 6th century C.E.
     According to the Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand, author of "Matai ve’ech humtza ha’am hayehudi?" ("When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?"; Resling, in Hebrew), the queen’s tribe and other local tribes that converted to Judaism are the main sources from which Spanish Jewry sprang. more.. e-mail

Israel Demolishes Palestinian Homes in West Bank
The Jordan Times, MIFTAH 3/22/2008
     Israeli bulldozers, backed by armed troops, have destroyed five homes in an Israeli-controlled section of the West Bank.
     The Israeli military said the houses were demolished because they had been built without construction permits.
     Israeli human rights groups say few building applications are ever granted. That forces Palestinians to build without approval.
     The houses razed Wednesday in the village of Deirat, south of Hebron, were home to 38 adults and children. 65-year-old Abed Abu Aram said it was the second time his home has been knocked down, but he had no intention of leaving.
     He said: "We are staying, even if we have to live in a cave or a tent."
     Meanwhile, Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned on Wednesday that failure to reach a peace deal with Israel this year could lead to a collapse of the moderate Palestinian Authority. more.. e-mail

Israel: Time to Boycott, Divest and Sanction
Frank Scott, Middle East Online 3/21/2008
     "I am a black South African, and if I were to change the names, a description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could describe events in South Africa." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
     The situation in Israel has become more murderous and unjust than ever in the sixty year life of that nation. Founded over the bodies of an indigenous population, and rationalized as somehow permissible because of the Nazi persecution of European Jews in World War Two, the Jewish state has been treated by the USA as a holy land beyond criticism, and often beyond rational thought. The Palestinian people were thrown out of their homeland, into refugee camps, or forced to live in Israel as second class citizens, maligned and forgotten souls who had done nothing to incur the vengeful wrath that was visited upon them, and has grown worse over the years. more.. e-mail

Have a Nice Holiday
Susan Halpin, Middle East Online 3/21/2008
     A journey through occupied Jerusalem and Gaza.
     When you say you are going to be away for a couple of weeks, “have a nice holiday” is often the response. To explain that you are going to Gaza can meet with a blank look and even when you say Palestine this is confused with Pakistan. Maybe I am being hard but with a husband who has dedicated his later life to do all he can for the plight of Palestinians I feel, like him, that the Israel/Palestine “conflict” is at the heart of world peace and everyone should know about it.
     I have just returned from our joint visit – the first for me but the eighth for David. Little did we know when we booked our tickets that Israel was to invade Gaza and kill over 130 people, including many children and mothers, on the very weekend we were due to arrive. Our timing was set well in advance to coincide with a medical symposium in Gaza at which David was more.. e-mail

Racist? Us?
Haaretz, MIFTAH 3/22/2008
     The television interview conducted by Orly Vilnai Federbush on Monday with Dmitri Bogotich - the head of a local "neo-Nazi gang," who later fled to Moscow - constituted good journalism under conditions of real risk. But more than the conversation revealed a violent criminal, it revealed the authorities’ weakness in dealing with the case.
     Bogotich, the guiding spirit behind a series of violent assaults on anyone who he considered insufficiently white or insufficiently Jewish, easily evaded the police, and now he is studying law in Moscow. Vilnai admittedly urged him to return and serve his sentence, but one can safely assume that he will not. His romance with Israel ended in a miserable absorption, military service, a violent sowing of wild oats, and flight.
     Yet both Vilnai’s report, aired on television’s Uvda ("Fact") program, and the media and public responses to the affair, leave a disturbing impression of an evasion of responsibility. more.. e-mail

A Victory for Settler Machismo
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 3/22/2008
     There was no shortage of anger and violence at the settler rally in the Jabal Al Mukaber area of Jerusalem last Monday, as a crowd of over 500 ultra-Zionists flocked together with the intention of bringing to the ground the house of the Palestinian gunman who killed eight Israelis at a yeshiva on March 6. Parallels of religious and racist fanaticism were manifested as the crowd chanted "Death to the Arabs"� in unison, and a number of teenagers breached police barriers to throw stones at the vacated house and smash up whatever cars were in the vicinity.
     I went to the rally with little intent other than witnessing first-hand the kernel of racialized nationalism that so dominates the Knesset’s agenda - one that has brought discussion of ethnic cleansing and bald-faced apartheid into the arena of acceptable political discourse in Israel. more.. e-mail

Yemeni Talks Yet to Yield Concrete Results [March 16 – March 22]
MIFTAH, MIFTAH 3/22/2008
     Representatives from Hamas and Fateh met yet again in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa’ on March 22 in an effort to reach an agreement to jumpstart talks between the two rival parties. The talks, which began last Thursday, have ebbed and flowed with the two sides blaming the other for any lack of real progress.
     On March 20, Yemeni officials announced that the two sides had agreed to the initiative but were still mulling over when to begin actual talks. According to presidential spokesperson and longtime Fateh veteran Nabil Abu Rdeineh, Hamas is rejecting to acknowledge and start a dialogue with the PLO as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
     Meanwhile, Hamas through its representative Mousa Abu Marzouq, said on March 19 that Hamas was willing to return to the situation before his movement’s takeover last June but that this necessitates discussions first. more.. e-mail

In Praise of Al-Jazeera
Avi Weinberg, MIFTAH 3/22/2008
     Several journalists in Israel immediately stood up to defend the Arab network and condemn the boycott, and this condemnation is indeed justified, because it is improper for a government to limit journalists even if their reports are not to the liking of some cabinet members. Yet al-Jazeera does not need this protection: It can easily continue to report even without Israel’s official spokespersons appears on its shows. In order to document what’s happening on the ground there is no need to interview tie-wearing officials who utter sophisticated messages.
     This principle is true for all areas dealt with by television networks and the press. In fact, it is too bad that we don’t see many more boycotts in Israel by official bodies unpleased with media outlets and journalists – because a boycott on a journalist is in fact a citation. more.. e-mail

Opinion: Iraq’s corporate genocide
Nofa Khadduri, Al Jazeera 3/18/2008
     Five years ago, I understood very little about the Iraq war. When asked to write an anti-war speech, I didn’t even know where to begin. Today, I know why it happened, and I cannot say this is a war like any other, or even that it is a just war.
     This war has been too long, too painful, too costly, too evil, too inhumane and too unjust to simply be deemed an invasion, or even worse, a liberation. Today, right here, right now, I want this war to be recognised for what it truly is - a genocide against the Iraqi people.
     It is a corporate hate crime. It is not a "just" war. It does not have a "just" cause. It lacks legitimate authority, it was executed with all the wrong intentions, it was certainly not a last resort, the probability of success was slim and most of all the weaponry has gone beyond "smart bombs".
     If the international community recognises the conflicts in Bosnia, Armenia more.. e-mail

Stalemate is Increasing Hamas’ Popularity
Rami Khouri, MIFTAH 3/22/2008
     The likelihood of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks making real progress this year is very slim, but that does not keep the parties from meeting and making hopeful statements. US President George W. Bush’s planned trip to Israel in May looms for many as a critical moment when any progress toward a permanent peace accord will have to be clear.
     Events on the ground suggest that Washington will continue to go through the motions of mediating a peace accord, without necessarily exercising its full political clout in an evenhanded manner to help bring one about. This was suggested by its recent performance in the tripartite committee established at Annapolis to monitor implementation of the "road map" to peace, particularly the compliance of Israelis and Palestinians with specific political and security conditions.
     The committee held its first meeting in Jerusalem last week, chaired by American more.. e-mail

Naftul and Arabesque
Doron Rosenblum, Ha’aretz 3/20/2008
     Naftul
     In the shadow of the bloodshed, between the appalling terrorist attack at Merkaz Harav Yeshiva and the rioting by right-wing protesters in East Jerusalem, at the height of the raging passions and the calls for revenge and reprisal for the revenge, we met for a conversation with Rabbi Shmuel Naftali ("Naftul") Haron-Aff-Al (Plontrovich), one of the unofficial leaders of "precipice youth," author of "Hewed to pieces by Samuel" and head of the Spill Your Wrath Yeshiva, which is located on the roof of a house in the Palestinian village of Odrov.
     Anyone who imagines Rabbi Haron-Aff-Al as an extremist angry prophet of the fire-and-brimstone spitting type will undoubtedly be "disappointed" at the sight of this cordial fellow who speaks quietly as he runs his hand softly through his white-flecked reddish beard. Few know that the rabbi, who recently added his signature to a petition calling for "the scalping of the Palestinian leaders and their children," the "crushing of Amalek" and the declaration of a "war of Gog and Magog" "without mercy or compassion for the other side (or for the Arabs)," is considered one of the moderate voices of the extreme right. Indeed, it is said that only his moderation prevented the formulation of a really extreme petition. more.. e-mail

Rachel Corrie’s case for justice
Tom Wright and Therese Saliba, Electronic Intifada 3/20/2008
     The darkness is infinite As I leave the curtain’s edge It is filled with watchers Silent judges - Rachel Corrie, about 11 years old As their plane touched down in Tel Aviv recently, Cindy and Craig Corrie marked five years since their daughter’s death. On March 16, 2003, Rachel Corrie, 23, was crushed to death beneath an armored Israeli bulldozer. The Corries are a short distance from Gaza, where Rachel was killed, and where in the past few weeks, an Israeli military incursion killed over 100 Palestinians, including many women and children.
     This week, the Corries come to Israel to attend the first Arabic-language performance of the acclaimed one-woman play, My Name is Rachel Corrie. Compelling though her story was -- an American peace activist killed trying to block the demolition of her Palestinian host family’s home, killed by the military of her own government’s major regional ally -- Rachel’s story might well have faded quickly, subsumed in the weekly news cycle just three days before the "Shock and Awe" of the attack on Iraq. But her family’s instinct, even in the first hours of grief and bewilderment, felt imperative: "We must get her words out." Rachel’s emails home during her month in the Gazan border town of Rafah, volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), had stirred and shaken her family and friends. Having traveled from her comfortable life in her hometown of Olympia, Washington, she had sat smoking late into the night, passionately reporting the other-worldly scenes of violence and destruction from the military occupation around her. more.. e-mail

2008 International Day Against Racism Marked by Deepening of Israel’s Apartheid System
Palestinian National Initiative, Palestine Monitor 3/20/2008
     March 21 will mark the International Day on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, but for Palestinians, there is little to celebrate in this respect.
     In a context whereby Israel’s ongoing occupation is steadily mutating into a system of Apartheid, the text of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, has become of greater pertinence than ever before in any case outside of that of the former Apartheid regime in South Africa.
     "Palestinians under occupation are now facing a fully-fledged Apartheid system characterised by systematic discrimination," said PNI Secretary General, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP.
     "Tell me of any other case in the world where roads are segregated on the basis of ethnicity? Where a population of illegal settlers consumes 48 times more water per capita per year than the local population? Where an occupied people pay twice the amount for basic utilities such as water and electricity, than those who occupy them? Where Palestinians are obliged to purchase goods at the same market prices as Israelis - whose income per capita is 30 times higher - and who are prevented from building their own independent economy? Where the chronically ill are denied access to health treatment because of their nationality, and are simply left to die?" more.. e-mail

Houseless on a Hillside
Pennie Quinton, International Middle East Media Center 3/20/2008
     The Christian Peacemaker Teams, a human rights action group based in the area telephoned the office of IMEMC (the International Middle East media Centre) in Beit Sahour near Bethlehem. "Three houses belonging to Palestinian villagers are being destroyed by the Israeli army with bull dozers."
     Drive for 1 hour south of Hebron, through steep rock scattered hills, used for centuries by Palestinian shepherds and farmers for grazing their herds and olive growing.Yet despite this being the West bank, and technically Palestine, the Israel occupation is visible from every hill-top, the red roofed houses of illegal settlements cluster on every summit, land stolen by Israeli settlers, using force, no contracts or money has been exchanged with the families who have cared and nurtured these hills for hundreds of years, this land was taken from them at the butt of a gun.
     Along a deserted road we reach the remains of a home, now a mass of broken concrete and twisted metal.About ten women and children sit on a dry stonewall their backs turned to the road.The Red Cross unload emergency supplies.The entire family, in total around 20 people seem very quiet and contained as they attempt to deal with this catastrophe. more.. e-mail

Western Ramallah village ringed by Israeli settlements
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 3/20/2008
     The road west of Ramallah is lush with grass, pine trees, cactus and the immortal olive tree. It is a four kilometer trip up hill on gravel and dust once we have passed the turn-off to Bil’in Village where weekly nonviolent demonstrations against the Wall and settlements are held. A colleague who is from this small town is walking through the fields, next to the sheep, being careful not to step on the flowers.
     He says, "It’s a four kilo detour to get here. The Israelis want to take the beautiful areas, confiscate what is the best. And part of the Israeli strategy is to take the high areas and put their settlements there. So we now, because the road from our town to Ramallah is closed, we have to take a longer route because they took our road and put in another settlement. Now as you can see we’re taking a four kilometer detour since we can’t drive on our own street anymore for the settlement. And last year, or two years ago, there was another road that was even better, but they took our land again, put in another settlement, and made our lives with a different route even harder." more.. e-mail

Scapegoat upon scapegoat: Angela Merkel addresses the Knesset
Raymond Deane, Electronic Intifada 3/20/2008
     German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s historic speech to the Israeli Knesset on 18 March 2008 has been almost universally applauded, and has been described by Charlotte Knobloch, President of the Central Council of German Jews, as having "opened a new chapter in the relationship between Israel and Germany."
     Given the huge influence of Germany within the European Union, it is imperative to subject Merkel’s speech to a close reading and to question the assumptions implicit both in the speech itself and in the German media response to it.
     Having expressed Germans’ "shame" for the Holocaust, she goes on to point out that "while we are speaking here, thousands of people are living in fear and terror of Hamas’s rocket-attacks and terrorism." Her clumsy choice of words seems to emphasize the failure to mention the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are living in daily fear and terror of Israeli incursions, home demolitions, assassinations, air-strikes, arbitrary arrest, imprisonment and torture. more.. e-mail

Gaza’s situation: frustration and determination
Rami Almeghari writing from occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 3/20/2008
     A few kilometers from where the Israeli army attacked Gaza’s coast, a coalition of 27 women’s organizations held a festival marking International Women’s Day.Organized by the Women’s Affairs Center based in Gaza City, the event titled, "Gaza women defy the Israeli siege," was held at the Beach Hotel along the coast.
     The hall overlooking Gaza’s shore is crowded with dozens of attendees and a number of booths selling various products. One woman sells traditional folk dresses, while another delivers homemade Palestinian foods, and another stand offers homemade accessories and household items.
     Exhibit organizer Reem Elneerab. Reem Elneerab, organizer of the exhibition says that today’s festival is "exceptional as it comes during a crippling siege," enforced by Israel since June 2007. "The exhibition is sending out a message of steadfastness by Gaza women that despite the Israeli closure and measures, the Palestinian women can emerge with more creativity and ability to sustain," she explains. more.. e-mail

On violent and nonviolent struggle: what about our personal responsibility?
Mazin Qumsiyeh, Palestine News Network 3/20/2008
     Mazin Qumsiyeh - What is your position on Israeli violence? Palestinian violence? What do you think Israelis and Palestinians should or should not do? What do you think of Barak Obama? What makes Christian Zionists support Israel?
     These and many other questions came during over 30 talks given over the past three weeks as Qumsiyeh and others tour the United States.
     In a few minutes available in a Q&A segment, addressing these questions is by nature limited to making few comments and summarizes a lot of available material from my and other books and data available. But these questions also always give us opportunity to ask about personal responsibility. After all, the only people you and I can change are ourselves. Sometimes this leads to follow up conversations over dinners and via emails and phones about where we go from here. more.. e-mail

Shocked, awed and left to rot
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times 3/20/2008
     Future non-biased historians may well regard March 19, 2003, as a crucial mark in the annals of Western imperial arrogance. Five years later, the pre-emptive war celebratory fireworks have turned to dust. For months now Iraq has been an invisible American war. It’s seldom on TV. It does not "sell". Thus, it does not exist. US Vice President Dick Cheney, one of its key architects, has just been to a whirlwind Baghdad tour. He said he sensed "phenomenal changes" since his last whirlwind tour 10 months ago. He praised security progress as "dramatic".
     The "dramatic" progress was celebrated in style by a Sunni Arab female suicide bomber who managed to detonate her payload under her black abaya near the ultra-protected Imam Hussein shrine in holy Karbala, killing at least 42 Shi’ites and wounding 73.
     Cheney did not see the real Baghdad, drowning in sewage, desperate for water and plunged in the dark - lacking 3,000 megawatts of electricity (it may take as many as 10 years before the city gets power 24 hours a day; so much for "reconstruction"). As no US official was suicidal enough to take Cheney, for instance, to a real life suicide bomber-targeted vegetable market in Sadr City - or to Imam Hussein’s shrine in Karbala for that matter - these "phenomenal changes" warrant examination. more.. e-mail

Twilight Zone / When disaster strikes
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 3/20/2008
     It looks, terrifyingly, like Gaza. Behind tin fences, at the northern entrance to the Askar refugee camp in Nablus, hides a compound characterized by poverty, one of the most miserable we have seen. Brown hens peck at garbage in the backyard, a yard that has become much larger since the Israel Defense Forces demolished one of the two buildings in the compound. Two crushed and shattered skeletons of cars - a yellow taxi and a white private car - were destroyed beneath the ruins of the building and lie like a silent memorial in the front of the yard. Only the floor of the demolished building is left.
     The only housing that remains to the extended family - 40 souls, most of them children - is a three-story heap with a dangerous staircase. The third floor was added hastily after the destruction of the adjacent building. Walls of unplastered gray brick, alcove after alcove of neglect and darkness, some of them with sand floors. Broken furniture, clothing and torn blankets thrown on the floors. A torn sack of flour from the UN food program is one of the only items of food in the filthy kitchen. more.. e-mail

High Court ruling closes off Route 443 to Palestinians
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 3/19/2008
     The interim decision issued 10 days ago by the High Court of Justice on the use of Route 443 marks the first time the justices have issued a ruling to close a road traversing occupied territory to Palestinian use, for the convenience of Israeli travelers. The interim ruling on a petition by six Palestinian villages adjacent to the highway, which links the coastal plain to Jerusalem, gave the state six months to report progress on the construction of an alternative road for Palestinian use. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which submitted the petition on behalf of Palestinians who have been injured by the travel ban, noted that had the justices sincerely sought to consider opening the road to all, without regard to race or nationality, they would not have requested details on the building of an alternate route, which entails the destruction of additional land and costs tens of millions of shekels.
     The decision was issued after both parties argued their positions. According to ACRI, the ruling marks a High Court precedent in upholding a policy of separation and discrimination with regard to movement that has already earned the name "road apartheid." It violates international law, ACRI holds, permitting the expropriation of land from the local population for the protection of the occupying power. more.. e-mail

Israel’s ’Religious Right’ Gains Clout, Complicating Peace with Palestinians
Ilene Prusher, MIFTAH 3/19/2008
     On a hilltop far enough from the existing Israeli settlement of Givat Zeev that one needs directions to get here stands the framework of a settlement meant to house up to 750 families.
     Eli Yishai stood on an unfinished balcony of one of the new development’s shell homes. He’s a key coalition partner of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the leader of the religious party Shas, which is feted by some and decried by others for having broken Israel’s "settlement freeze."
     "The world might want us to freeze, but there’s no doubt that we look at it a bit differently," says Mr. Yishai. "We will make this into a continuous, meaningful block connecting this whole corridor to Jerusalem. I see many possibilities to start building again, according to the demands of natural growth."
     A new spate of West Bank settlement construction not only complicates efforts to resume Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, but points to a palpable rightward shift in Shas, a party that used to be considered moderate and amenable to the land-for-peace formula on which any solution to the conflict is based. more.. e-mail

Far from Palestine’s sea
Diana Buttu writing from Ramallah, occupied West Bank, Electronic Intifada 3/19/2008
     In September 2000, I decided to do my part to bring peace to the Middle East. As a Canadian attorney of Palestinian origin, I believed I could use my legal skills to help broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Naive? Perhaps.
     I left my comfortable life in California and moved to the West Bank. Moving there was not easy: I did not know what life is like under military rule. My Western upbringing left me unprepared for life without freedom. Seven years later, I am still not used to it.
     As a lawyer for the Palestinian peace negotiating team, I met presidents, prime ministers, Nobel laureates, secretaries of state and other important figures. But none of these individuals hit me with the same emotional wallop as a young woman named Majda.
     Like me, Majda is in her thirties. Like me, she enjoys classical music, theater and books. But unlike me, Majda has never lived a day as a free human being, for she was born Palestinian in the Israeli-dominated West Bank. more.. e-mail

Sisters killed in Gaza "reborn" through cousins
Sami Abu Salem writing from occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 3/19/2008
     Three young Palestinian sisters; Shahd Okal, eight months old, Maria Okal, five years old and Somaia Okal, 15 years old, and their mother were killed when an Israeli rocket hit their house on 26 July 2006 while they were swinging inside their house. But on 18 March 2008, Shahd, Maria and Somaia were born in the same Izbet Abed Rabbu neighborhood of Jabaliya town in the northern Gaza Strip.
     Nisreen Okal, 23 years old, gave birth on tuesday to quadruplets, three girls and one boy, all in good health at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
     The unemployed father, Ata Okal, 31 years old, decided to give the three sisters the names of their cousins who were killed less than two years earlier. He gave the name of his grandfather to the boy, Abdelkareem.
     "We are so happy, we feel that God helped us to compensate the three sweet girls who were killed by Israeli troops two years before," the father said. more.. Sisters killed in Gaza "reborn" through cousins
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9405.shtml



link courtesy www.vtjp.org">e-mail

In prison, who knows why?
Mohammed Omer, Electronic Intifada 3/19/2008
     GAZA CITY, 19 March (IPS) - You would think the baby boy named Yousef has his life ahead of him. But who knows, with a child born to Palestinian parents from Gaza. What’s more, Yousef was born in an Israeli prison.
     He is the only one of Fatima al-Zeq’s nine children who is with her for that reason -- she was arrested nine months ago. But these days the baby is not with her. He developed stomach pain, began to vomit, and has been transferred to a hospital inside Hasharon prison in Israel.
     Fatima has written to human rights organizations in Gaza asking for their help in seeing that the baby is looked after, something she cannot do herself.
     Her other children do not know why mother is in prison; the Israelis haven’t told them or the Palestinian authorities. And they declined to tell IPS. If anything, the Israelis say the arrests are for "security reasons." more.. e-mail

Merkel’s visit / With the zeal of a convert
Tom Segev, Ha’aretz 3/19/2008
     German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier left Israel only hours before Chancellor Angela Merkel took to the Knesset podium. The Germans meticulously calculated that the entourage of ministers accompanying Merkel might make her seem imperious, as though she were a ruler surrounded by subjects.
     Indeed, there was something imperious about the inclusion of so many ministers in Merkel’s delegation. The Germans already have held joint government sessions with other governments, such as France and Poland. No foreign government has held a session in Jerusalem since the British mandate.
     Prior to her arrival, Merkel made an effort to call Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayad. But her joint session with Olmert’s government was a show of complete and unequivocal support for its policies. more.. e-mail

Crossing the Line interviews daughter of Sami Al-Arian
Podcast, Crossing the Line, Electronic Intifada 3/19/2008
     This week on Crossing The Line: As the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip continues, the world listens with a deaf ear as Israel continues its siege and incursions into the coastal territory. Host Naji Ali speaks with physician and human rights activist, Dr. Laila Al Marayati, about the physical and emotional effects of occupation.
     Next, acquitted of terrorism charges brought by the US Government, Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a tenured professor of computer science embarks on another hunger strike to protest the government’s attempt to coerce him into testifying to a grand jury for a third time. Ali speaks to Sami Al-Arian’s daughter, Laila, about his condition and the campaign to free him.
     Listen Now [MP3 - 17.4 MB, 43:30 min] more.. e-mail

Viewing Iraq ’Winter Soldier’ Testimony
Jeff Cohen, Middle East Online 3/19/2008
     In 1971 at age 19, I had a life-changing experience when I met dozens of Vietnam veterans who’d descended on my hometown of Detroit to testify at the “Winter Soldier” hearings organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
     In anguished presentations, the vets painstakingly described the horrors against Vietnamese they’d seen or taken part in. And the attitudes of racism and bloodlust that motored the war.
     Many vets blamed the lies in mainstream media for convincing them to go to Vietnam in the first place.
     Virtually every soul in that Detroit hotel banquet hall wept openly at the heartfelt, bone-chilling revelations pouring out of the Vietnam vets struggling with bloody memories and post-traumatic stress.
     But no one outside that hall could see or hear the proceedings. No TV or radio networks covered the event. more.. e-mail

No Faithfulness without Evolution
Tariq Ramadan, Middle East Online 3/19/2008
     Muslims today are facing two fundamental problems: the first directly related to the founding texts themselves; the second, to differences in interpretation shaped by the societies in which they live. For Muslims, the Qur’an is the word of God; yet it is a word revealed over a period of 23 years in a specific socio-historical context. Several Qur’anic verses can be interpreted only in the light of that context. A literal, ahistorical reading has the effect of making the text rigid, and in turn of preventing us from grasping the objectives of Revelation. Only by carrying on the task of reinterpretation in the light of new geographical and historical contexts can Muslims to be faithful to the ethics and the finalities of the revealed message.
     Likewise, the texts that make up the prophetic tradition (ahadith: reports of what the Prophet of Islam said, did and approved) must also be subjected to critical analysis for both authenticity and substance. Numerous scholars have pursued this task down through the centuries. It must be continued, and the efforts of the Ankara theological school—which should not, however, be overestimated—to engage in a critical re-reading of the prophetic traditions is of capital importance; their collective effort should be saluted. Of course, the results have yet to be evaluated, but the strength of the critical approach is that it will further broaden the potential field of critical reading and contextualization. Muslims today who wish to remain faithful to the finalities of Islamic teachings (maqasid) are in sore need of this process in order to meet the challenges of democratization, individual rights, economic justice, and of course, the status of women. more.. e-mail

No less than the Second Lebanon War
Uzi Benziman, Ha’aretz 3/19/2008
     At the time of writing, yesterday afternoon, the top officials of the Jerusalem District Police were meeting to discuss the findings of the investigation into the district’s performance during the terrorist attack at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva. The findings were supposed to be released to the public last night or this morning. Whatever the conclusions might be, they are unlikely to rock the Jerusalem District to its core. At most, the police will acknowledge their own faulty functioning during the attack and consider the event a one-time failure.
     That is also how police officials describe the police’s performance at Jabal Mukkaber earlier this week: an error in preparation. Police sources reject the suggestion that officers are reluctant to confront disturbers of the peace because they fear that complaints will be lodged against them; hey confirm that right-wing protesters have indeed been in the habit lately of filing complaints against officers, but insist that these complaints do not prevent the police from using force. What happened at Jabal Mukkaber, according to the police, were some flaws in performance, but no lack of motivation. more.. e-mail

It will Always be about Jerusalem
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 3/19/2008
     “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Sir Isaac Newton postulated his law of motion eons ago and today, it still rings true, not only in the laws of physics but right here in the streets of Jerusalem.
     No doubt, certain modifications come into play when the matter at hand is not pure unadulterated physics. But nonetheless, the law is there, glaringly evident of an undeniable force of nature that proves true no matter how much it is denied.
     A 49-year old rabbi was stabbed and lightly wounded on March 18 inside Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, apparently by a Palestinian man who later fled the scene. The rabbi, on his way to a seminary inside the walled city, was accompanied by an armed bodyguard at the time of the attack.
     The stabbing comes less than two weeks after eight right-wing Israelis were gunned down by another Palestinian in a west Jerusalem seminary. more.. e-mail

Stalemate is increasing Hamas’ popularity
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 3/19/2008
     The likelihood of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks making real progress this year is very slim, but that does not keep the parties from meeting and making hopeful statements. US President George W. Bush’s planned trip to Israel in May looms for many as a critical moment when any progress toward a permanent peace accord will have to be clear.
     Events on the ground suggest that Washington will continue to go through the motions of mediating a peace accord, without necessarily exercising its full political clout in an evenhanded manner to help bring one about. This was suggested by its recent performance in the tripartite committee established at Annapolis to monitor implementation of the "road map" to peace, particularly the compliance of Israelis and Palestinians with specific political and security conditions.
     The committee held its first meeting in Jerusalem last week, chaired by American General William Fraser, who was immediately insulted by the Israeli decision to send a mid-level Defense Ministry official, Amos Gilad, while the Palestinians sent Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. The Americans are playing their critical arbiter’s role in a very low-key manner that borders on nonchalance, guaranteeing failure. more.. e-mail this link

Farmers struggle to stay on their land
Rebecca Murray, Electronic Lebanon, Electronic Intifada 3/18/2008
     TYRE, Lebanon, 17 March (IPS) - "I think the biggest challenge is to stay in the village," says Ibrahim Sayyed, a 28-year-old municipality accountant from the beleaguered farming town of Aitaroun, situated barely a mile from the heavily patrolled Blue Line and Israel beyond.
     "My father and grandparents told me stories going back to 1948. All this time there has been war."
     Sayyed is watching the distribution of up to 120 goats to impoverished local dairy farmers in Aitaroun’s dusty town square, a joint effort by the Tyre-based Mine Action Coordination Centre in South Lebanon (MACC-SL) and international charity World Vision, to improve agricultural livelihoods for those hit especially hard during the conflict with Israel in 2006.
     Hassan Issa, a bearded 25-year-old family man, hauls three goats towards his truck parked along the edge of the square. He lost two-thirds of his 250-strong herd during the conflict, and an additional 40 to unexploded cluster munitions scattered in the fields. Issa himself fell victim to an exploding sub-munition just over a year ago, losing his hearing in one ear, and scarring the side of his head, torso and leg. more.. e-mail this link

Rendering the PA Irrelevant
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 3/18/2008
     Although the calm in Gaza did not last for more than a few days it marks a very significant development in the ongoing power struggle between Israel, Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.
     Israel has always avoided giving any impression that Hamas could be a counterpart for anything, whether peace or war. Hamas, in turn, has been willing to take all the necessary steps in order to appear, in the eyes of the Palestinian public and maybe the Arab public at large, as the only Palestinian party that is either fighting the atrocities of the occupation or representing the Palestinian side in any ceasefire.
     The Palestinian Authority, for its part, worries about the possible development of any kind of interaction between Israel and Hamas, because that will affect not only its credibility, but also the legitimacy of the PA as the leadership of the Palestinian people and thus the proper counterpart in any arrangement with Israel. more.. e-mail this link

Hizbullah’s valor is best served by discretion for now
Marc J Sirois, Daily Star 3/19/2008
     These are not easy days for Hizbullah and its leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Subjected to heavy and conflicting pressures from both inside and outside Lebanon, it and he have several crucial decisions to take in the coming days, weeks and months. How these are handled will have an enormous impact on the fate of the entire country - and so on the organization’s ability to pursue its political, social and strategic goals.
     This weekend, it will have been 40 days since the assassination in Damascus of Imad Mughniyeh, a man reputed to have been the brains behind Hizbullah’s martial endeavors for a quarter-century. The Israeli government, which the resistance accuses of having orchestrated the hit, has issued some not very convincing denials - and vowed both publicly and privately that there will be hell to pay for any revenge attack, which it expects to ake place about 40 days after Mughniyeh’s death, traditionally a period of mourning. Through various organs, the Israelis have threatened to do even more damage to South Lebanon than they did during the summer 2006 war, and/or to attack Syria as well. more.. e-mail this link

Take off the Masks
Gadi Gvaryahu, MIFTAH 3/18/2008
     One cannot but recall that Jewish murderers who massacred others with a machinegun at the Cave of the Patriarchs and in the Islamic College in Hebron.
     One cannot but recall the funeral held for “Baruch (Goldstein) the man” at his magnificent gravesite and the park around it. And this is what one of the important rabbis of Religious Zionism said in his eulogy for the killer from Hebron: “He is a martyr killed by gentiles for being a Jew, and therefore he joins the victims of the Nazi Holocaust.” One cannot but recall the honor bestowed upon his relatives. So take off the masks.
     One cannot but recall the Jew who entered the Islamic college in Hebron armed with a machinegun and murdered three students. He was sentenced to life in prison and later pardoned by the president. Today he is known as a rabbi and publishes articles. And we have not forgotten the Jewish murderer who killed seven Arab laborers at the Gan Havradim junction in 1990. So take off the masks. more.. e-mail this link

Book Review: "An Israeli In Palestine Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel"
Raymond Deane, Electronic Intifada 3/17/2008
     In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King wrote that he had "almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the ... Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ’order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice ..."
     Jeff Halper’s new book is, in part, the story of the evolution of a "white moderate" peace campaigner from Hibbing, Minnesota, to a radical Israeli campaigner for justice for the Palestinians. En route, he maps his development from "ethnic Jew to Jewish national to Israeli," disregarding his grandmother’s warning that "Israel is no place for a Jewish boy!"
     If to an ingenuous Gentile this might seem like a meagre itinerary, a quick look at the Kahanists’ indispensable "S.H.I.T. List" reveals, on the contrary, that Halper is seen by red-blooded ultra-Zionists as a "sick self-hating Kike" whose primary concern, and that of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) which he helped found, "is the demolition of Israel." more.. Book Review: "An Israeli In Palestine Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel" http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9392.shtml">e-mail this link

IOF shuts down two radio stations in Jenin
Report, Al Mezan, Electronic Intifada 3/16/2008
     On 11 March 2008, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) stormed into Al Quds Radio and Al Majd Radio headquarters in Jenin, West Bank and confiscated most of the contents in the buildings. According to sources from Al Quds Radio, the IOF, which carried out an incursion into the town of Jenin, in the northern West Bank, raided the headquarters of the radio station. They seized the main radio transmission device and other appliances, archives, and all documents from the office. As a result, work at the radio station was suspended.
     That same day, the IOF raided and confiscated the contents of Al Majd Radio headquarters, also in Jenin. The IOF stormed in and searched the Al Maiseloni building, where Al Majd Radio is located. Al Majd was also forced to suspend its work as a result.
     On 10 March 2008, the IOF arrested Hassan Abdul Jawad, a board member in the press syndicate from his home in Bethlehem and assaulted his family. more.. e-mail this link

Vilifying Arabs
George S. Hishmeh, MIFTAH 3/17/2008
     The most exhilarating idea emerging from the ongoing and fiercely competitive US primary election has been the likelihood of the Democratic party’s frontrunners - Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - running jointly as members of a “dream ticket” in the upcoming national elections, regardless of who will be president or vice president.
     The point to emphasise here is that the pair, each very popular but with a different segment of the population, will mark the first opportunity for a white woman and a black man to run for the country’s two top positions, something unheard of previously because of the ubiquitous racism and sexism in the United States.
     Whether this will be the case will depend on many significant factors, not least of all the ongoing racist slurs that are hurled at Obama, the tenderfoot senator from Illinois whose father was a Kenyan Muslim who died in an automobile accident and whose mother, a white American, passed away from cancer. Despite his assertion that he is a practising Christian, he is often suspected by various groups here and overseas that he is a Muslim like his father, pointing that his middle name is Hussein. more.. e-mail this link

How Many Generations of Palestinians are Expendable?
Elias H. Tuma, MIFTAH 3/17/2008
     Two and a half generations have already been wasted since 1948, the year of the Nakba or catastrophe for the Palestinians and of Independence for the Israelis. Unfortunately both people have been selfish, blindly nationalistic, driven by ideology, and oblivious to the suffering they have caused themselves and each other. In this issue of AVP I am addressing the Palestinians who have let more than half of their own people continue to live as refugees, stateless, in poverty, lacking in education, and dependent on others for survival. They have made that "sacrifice" in the name of what they consider their Right of Return, with little attention to the practicality of their return to their homes, villages, and country, which, since 1948, has been Israel. They quote UN General Assembly Resolution 194 to justify their Right, even though that resolution is not binding. It can be enforced by the Security Council only if it is passed by a majority, and unanimously by the five permanent members of that Council, which includes the US, Russia, China, France, and England. All the permanent members are supporters of Israel, and any one of them is capable of using its Veto power to prevent implementation.Since 1967 the Palestinians have cited Security Council Resolution 242 as another justification for the Right of Return. However, Resolution 242 addresses the whole issue of peace between Israel and its neighbors, and a "Just" solution to the refugee problem, with little indication that "just" means the Refugees’ Right to Return to their homes and villages, which are now within Israel. more.. e-mail this link

Israel’s Execution of Realpolitik
Caelum Moffatt, MIFTAH 3/17/2008
     The Greek historian Plutarch documented that Alexander the Great, while on campaign, slept with a copy of Homer’s Iliad under his pillow. The Iliad, the epic account of the Trojan War, was an inspirational and popular work that promoted the valor, dignity, glory and heroism of the ancients. There is little substantial or conclusive evidence to suggest that the event even existed – viewed more as myth transcending history, not to mention that it ostensibly occurred five centuries before Alexander even crossed the Hellespont to confront the Persian Empire. Nevertheless, the man supposedly dubbed “little Achilles” used the epic poem to reminisce and idealize about the era of heroes, attempting to rejuvenate this standard of excellence in his own time and viewing the poem as a handbook for the art of warfare.
     One must only refer to Alexander’s epithet to decipher his legacy – “Great”. If the Iliad was the impetus or driving force behind Alexander’s success from which he extracted great influence and counsel, as some scholars maintain, then one must seriously laud this piece of literature as an integral component of Alexander’s modus operandi. more.. e-mail this link

Resurrection and its Message
Bernard Sabella, MIFTAH 3/17/2008
     Easter in the folkloric traditions of Palestine is a season for celebration. The community celebrates itself as it goes through the rites and rituals of Holy Week. The blessed land of Palestine celebrates itself as the hills change colors to announce the coming of spring. But springtime in the Holy Land is also a season when occasional sandy storms from the desert remind all of us of the vicissitudes of geography and the problematic cohabitation of the sown and the desert.
     Mother Nature’s celebration at this time of year remains always associated with the message of resurrection. The heart beats happily at the sights of the greenery of the land and its kaleidoscopic scenery. Yet the heart is pained by the continuing unabated conflict and its many victims. As the desert sandy storms hurt the body and weigh down on the soul, the political situation with its many victims, one victim is too many, equally weighs down on body and soul. more.. e-mail this link

Meet the Lebanese Press: US military "tourism"
Hicham Safieddine, Electronic Lebanon, Electronic Intifada 3/17/2008
     A man smokes a water pipe outside a cafe in the Tariq al-Jadide neighborhood of Beirut. The densely populated Sunni neighborhood is considered to be a stronghold for March 14 leader Saad Hariri’s Future Movement, March 2008. ( Matthew Cassel Supporters of Lebanon’s March 14 movement tend to complain about the damage to tourism caused by the current status quo in Lebanon. Many of them cheered recently when the wheels of fortune seemed to swing their way as the US destroyer USS Cole approached Lebanese shores.
     But to many analysts, the arrival of the warship signaled to many yet another level of escalation towards an immanent break out of an all-out confrontation between Syria, Iran and Hizballah on one side and Israel and the US on the other. The destroyer may not have come with a specific mission other than a symbolic show of support for the March 14 movement that backfired as it undermined the group’s constant claim to protect Lebanese sovereignty. But attributing US military maneuvering to the desire for a symbolic gesture towards March 14 reveals a lack of understanding at best and conceit at most by those who make such claims. Amassing military power in the Mediterranean, if it continues, does and could seriously tilt things towards outright conflict and mobilizing these ships is likely to be linked to the further tying in of the regional crises. more.. Meet the Lebanese Press: US military "tourism" http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9399.shtml">e-mail this link

Talking Like Meretz, Behaving Like the Likud
Akiva Eldar, MIFTAH 3/17/2008
     Judging by his declarations, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could have run tomorrow for the Meretz party’s leadership. Judging by the behavior of his government in the territories, he could return to Likud. Even Zehava Gal-On, the most left-wing candidate contending for the Meretz leadership, did not say that if we don’t achieve a two-state solution soon, the country is "finished." Haim Oron would gladly sign the prime minister’s statement that the failure to evacuate the outposts is a "disgrace." Ran Cohen would unhesitatingly stand behind the decision of the Israeli government to evacuate several hundred internal roadblocks that are embittering the lives of the subjects of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen).
     But for Olmert, saying is one thing and doing is another. Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu could learn from him how simultaneously to hold on to all the territories, bomb civilians, expand the settlements and greet all the world leaders in turn on the red carpet at Ben-Gurion International Airport. more.. e-mail this link

Will Israel honour a truce?
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/13/2008
     With an unannounced truce in place, attention turns to Israeli actions, given past precedent of ignoring all agreements with the Palestinians, reports in Gaza Click to view caption Palestinian anger at Israeli brutish oppression escalates as demonstrators hurl stones at Israeli soldiers during a protest in Bilin, near the West Bank city of Ramallah Top Israeli television commentators competed last Friday night to justify reneging on positions they had held until three days earlier when they had believed that the only way of countering resistance operations in the Gaza Strip was through the use of violence. There is a consensus among Israeli commentators that Israel can only wait for the worst if Palestinians continue to fall victims to the fire of the Israeli occupation. This consensus was reached after a chain of operations conducted by Palestinian resistance movements in the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem and the popular outcry in the West Bank following massacres Israel committed in the Gaza Strip at the beginning of this month that resulted in the deaths of 144 Palestinians with hundreds of others injured.
     Rafif Droker, political commentator on Israeli television Channel 10, considers what is currently taking place in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza as the "harbingers of a third Intifada". He said, "it is not wise for military operations in the Gaza Strip to contribute to the outbreak of a third Intifada. The government must study all the means possible for putting out the fire that’s raging in Gaza, or else not only the cities of the West Bank will burn, but there is reason to believe that our cities will turn into an arena for suicide operations once again." more.. e-mail this link

’Anything is possible’
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/13/2008
     Negotiators from the Palestinian Authority and Israel resume "peace" talks today. Why?
     Just two weeks after Israel began its bloody incursions into the Gaza Strip Israeli-Palestinian negotiations resumed today under American auspices.
     Despite repeated decisions by the Israeli government to step up settlement and Judaisation activities in the West Bank, and a week following the attack on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem, and the two sides are meeting against the backdrop of an un- announced truce that, with the exception of minor violations, appears to be holding.
     The level of US interest in what is currently taking place between the Palestinians and Israelis is reflected in the visits both Vice-President Dick Cheney and Republican presidential candidate John McCain intend to make to the region. more.. e-mail this link

When Charity Ends at Home
Gideon Levy, MIFTAH 3/15/2008
     The ovens have been brought downstairs, into hiding. The two bagel and cake bakeries have already been closed by army order. The Israel Defense Forces confiscated the ovens in one of them, but the employees in the other bakery managed to rescue and hide theirs. The popular clothing shop Pretty Woman, in the heart of the bustling mall in Hebron, and its neighbor, Mama Care, the high-end shop for baby clothes, are about to close. The same is true of the new and spacious supermarket, the modern physical-therapy institute, the beauty salon, the barbershop and the library: Everything will be closed by order of the GOC Central Command. Local food and clothing warehouses were also emptied out by the IDF last week, with an inventory worth about NIS 750,000, designated for the impressive orphanages of the Islamic Charity Movement. The goods were loaded onto trucks and confiscated.
     In the well-kept orphanage we visited this week, the hundreds of children were eating only majadera (a rice-and-lentil dish) and yogurt for lunch: There is no meat, no chicken, no fish; everything has been taken away. The gates of the movement’s new school, a handsome stone building designed for 1,200 pupils, have also been welded shut by the IDF. more.. e-mail this link

Papers detail settlers’ West Bank land grab
Meron Rapoport, Ha’aretz 3/17/2008
     West Bank settlements have expanded their jurisdictions by taking control of private Palestinian land and allocating it to settlers. The land takeover - which the Civil Administration calls "theft" - has occured in an orderly manner, without any official authorization.
     The method of taking over land is being publicized for the first time, based on testimony from a hearing on an appeal filed by a Kedumim resident, Michael Lesence, against a Civil Administration order to vacate 35 dunams (almost 9 acres) near the Mitzpe Yishai neighborhood of the settlement. Official records show the land as belonging to Palestinians from Kafr Qaddum.
     Lesence’s lawyer, Doron Nir Zvi, admitted at the hearing that the land in question was private Palestinian property. However, Lesence claims ownership on the grounds that he has been working the land for more than a decade, after he received it in an orderly procedure, complete with a signed agreement, from the heads of the Kedumim local council. more.. e-mail this link

A minister of war
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 3/17/2008
     Defense Minister Ehud Barak is a bitter disappointment. He was the first statesman who dared suggest brave, though lacking, solutions. Now, he has turned into the chief saboteur of any chance for a calm in the fighting, a cease-fire or diplomatic progress. Barak has long forsaken talk of peace. He certainly does not believe in Olmert’s peace initiative and istrying his best to destroy it.
     If you fear Likud Chair Benjamin Netanyahu, how much worse can his potential damage to the peace process be than Barak’s? Their rhetoric, as well as their actions, have now become indistinguishable. If calm seems at hand, Barak gives the go-ahead for a silly and dangerous assassination attempt in tranquil Bethlehem; just to rekindle the fire, lest there be a lull.
     If there’s a lull in Qassams fired, then Barak does everything he can to ensure their renewal to justify the "large-scale op" in Gaza he intends to make. IF Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is desperately trying to push forward talks, Barak eliminates any chance of bolstering his support. If Hamas suggests a cease-fire, Barak responds: "We will witness harsh scenes in Gaza before a calm is reached." If all’s quiet on the northern front, then Israeli pyromania claims Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyah, according to allegations. The security establishment does as it pleases: Killing; destroying; barring; seizing funds; issuing orders. more.. e-mail this link

Militant’s death unites Bethlehem
Toni O'Loughlin in Bethlehem, The Observer, The Guardian 3/16/2008
     Stalled peace process fuels support for Hizbollah - Outside Betlehem’s Nativity Church, Christians yesterday queued not to celebrate the birth they believe happened here but to mourn a death - that of a Palestinian militant with close links to neighbouring Lebanon’s Islamic militia, Hizbollah.
     Mohammed Shehadeh was one of four Palestinians shot in an Israeli undercover ambush here last week, killings that have fuelled support for Hizbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, among Christians and Muslims alike.
     School principals, teachers and students from the Bethlehem School, the Catholic School and the Greek Orthodox School paraded to the mourning tent outside the church chanting and waving placards praising the Palestinian ’martyr’.
     People admired Shehadeh’s ability to stand up to the Israelis,’ said Sami Awad, Christian executive director of the Holy Land Trust, dedicated to promoting non-violent action against Israel’s occupation. ’There’s a lot of admiration for the charisma that Nasrallah has and the way he speaks and presents his views in public’. more.. e-mail this link

Ethnic Cleansing Cannot be Ignored
Rami Khouri, Middle East Online 3/16/2008
     BEIRUT -- At the summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Dakar, Senegal, March 13, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that the Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, “are facing an ethnic cleansing campaign through a set of Israeli decisions such as imposing heavy taxes, banning construction and closing Palestinian institutions in addition to separating the city from the West Bank by the racist separation wall."
     The ethnic cleansing accusation is serious, but not new. It is galling to Israelis, but pivotal for Palestinians. President Abbas is Israel’s and America’s preferred peace partner, though a peculiarly inefficient one after more than 40 years in politics. Yet for him to charge Israel with ethnic cleansing at the level of a global Islamic summit suggests that the issue deserves to be examined in some depth. Peace-making and eventual coexistence require that the core claims of both sides be put on the table and examined fully. more.. e-mail this link

I Came, I Saw, I Destroyed
Uri Avnery, Middle East Online 3/16/2008
     What happened this week is so infuriating, so impertinent, that it stands out even in our familiar landscape of governmental irresponsibility.
     On the near horizon, a de facto suspension of hostilities was taking shape. The Egyptians had made great efforts to turn it into an official cease-fire. The flame was already burning visibly lower. The launching of Qassams and Grads from the Gaza Strip into Israel had fallen from dozens a day to two or three.
     And then something happened that turned the flame up high again: undercover soldiers of the Israeli army killed four Palestinians militants in Bethlehem. A fifth was killed in a village near Tulkarm.
     The modus operandi left no doubt about the intention.
     As usual, the official version was mendacious. (When the army spokesman speaks the truth, he is ashamed and immediately hurries on to the next lie. more.. e-mail this link

Germany’s immoral policy toward the Palestinians
Khalid Amayreh in Occupied E. Jerusalem, Palestinian Information Center 3/16/2008
     German Chancellor  Angela Merkel arrived in Israel Sunday on a three-day visit during which she is expected to reassert Germany"™s "œsolidarity"� and "œspecial relations"�  with the Zionist state.
     In her weekly video message broadcast last week, Merkel said she planned to stress Germany"™s deep commitment to "œdefending"� Israel when she addresses the Israeli Knesset or parliament on Tuesday.
     Well, I am not quite sure that Israel, which possesses more than 300 nuclear bombs and warheads, along with their delivery systems, and also tightly controls the politics and policies of  its guardian-ally, the United States, needs a foreign power to  defend her against any real or imagined aggressor.
     Hence, Merkel"™s statement should only be construed as another cheap  expression of Germany"™s  humiliating subservience to Zionism. more.. e-mail this link

Gaza: Oxfam has the Answer
Stuart Littlewood, MIFTAH 3/15/2008
     To help straighten out their addled thinking, western leaders should pay attention to the charities operating on the ground. They have first-rate intelligence and shrewd judgement. Furthermore they remain uncorrupted, one hopes, by pests like the Israel lobby.
     Last week a coalition of eight leading charities or NGOs, including Oxfam, Save The Children and Christian Aid, issued a powerful report warning of the appalling situation that has been allowed to develop in Gaza by the international community.
     And it clearly signposts a sensible way to resolve the problem.
     Their report The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion says in a measured and polite way all the things that activists have been shouting for months. It is written in simple language and provides an excellent ‘idiot’s guide’ for politicians and government ministers. more.. e-mail this link

The Democrats’ Palestine problem
Mohammed Herzallah, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/13/2008
     The left may be swooning over Obama, but he and other Democrats parrot conventional US justifications for Israeli crimes against humanity.
     You would think Democrats in the United States would show Palestinians some flicker of sympathy, seeing that their presidential contenders keep talking about human rights, destitute people, and equality; but it goes without saying, American politics doesn’t always overlap with common sense.
     Personally -- as a Palestinian -- I don’t resent Republicans because of their uncritical support of Israel’s policies. In fact, I completely understand: such is the circumstance of human affairs, and often when conflict between nations becomes inevitable, you have to pick a side. Considering their belligerent conservative principles and intransigent evangelical base, it is no surprise that Republicans are more inclined to back Israel.
     Nevertheless, I do have considerable qualms with Democrats, whose position on Israel’s policies in the occupied territories contravenes many of their oft-stated values. Take for instance Barack Obama, who has the audacity to lecture us about his life-long principled career of standing up for dispossessed and victimised people as a "community organiser", and then turn his back on Palestinians, suggesting that they are responsible for their contemporary condition. The senator from Illinois said "nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people," because of "the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognise Israel, to renounce violence and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region." Never mind, according to Obama, all that military occupation nonsense, it is the Palestinians who brought all this upon their children. more.. e-mail this link

Stop Israel!
Galal Nassar, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/13/2008
     Instead of slamming the Palestinian resistance, the Arabs should formulate a better strategy for stopping Israeli atrocities.
     Israel’s military campaign against Gaza, coming at a time when the Arab world is sorely divided, is proof of how unbalanced our confrontation with the enemy has become. We’re spending too much time debating the merits of resistance and legitimacy, the absurdity of rockets, and what kind of government the Palestinians should have. We’re worried about whether the Arab summit will meet on time, but the pain of children and the screams of the maimed and wounded have failed to entice us to do more.
     Over the past two weeks, nearly 130 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, and more are likely to succumb to their wounds. The Israeli occupation forces have committed atrocities on a scale unknown since 1967. Entire families have died under the rubble, finally becoming one with the land they lived in hope of setting free. The valiant resistance, undaunted by the horrors, forced the Israelis to end the first phase of the incursion. Israel recalled its forces from Gaza but only after fierce aerial bombardment took the lives of six more Palestinians. What will happen now? Most likely, the Israelis are going to resume their attack, for nothing has been done to stop them. more.. e-mail this link

’A matter of days’
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/13/2008
     Is Egypt’s attempt to broker a truce between Hamas and Israel any closer to success?
     One day it is yes and the following it is no. Egyptian officials continue offering contradictory assessments of the fate of a truce -- temporary and fragile though it is likely to be -- that they have been trying hard for the past few months to broker between Hamas and Israel. This week, expectations ran high. "I think eventually it will work... But I don’t know if it is exact to say that it is a matter of days," commented an informed Egyptian source on condition of anonymity.
     Egypt’s master plan for the truce is quite basic. "It is really very simple. Each side should exercise maximum restraint," commented one Egyptian official. Cairo is proposing that Hamas halt firing Qassam rockets -- qualified by some Egyptian officials as "silly fireworks" -- in return for Israel suspending all ground and air aggression against Gaza and Hamas members. Were this arrangement to hold for a few weeks, Cairo would then propose that the Rafah Crossing be promptly but cautiously re-opened, in accordance with a new arrangement largely based on an agreement reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) under US patronage in November 2005. more.. e-mail this link

Ilan Pappe: I’m not a traitor
Ayelet Negev, YNetNews 3/15/2008
     Controversial historian Ilan Pappe left Israel last year after his endorsement of an academic boycott of Israel exposed him and his family to death threats. Now a professor in England, Pappe maintains that a cultural boycott on his homeland is the only way to end the occupation.
     Last summer, the Pappe family packed its belongings, rented out its spacious house in Israel and moved to Britain. Ever since his support of an academic boycott on Israel’s universities became public, historian Ilan Pappe, 54, has felt like public enemy number one. Pappe says he had received death threats by phone almost on a daily basis.
     Did it not occur to you that calling for an academic boycott on Israel might incite the public against you?
     "I supported the boycott because I believe that without pressure, Israel will not end the occupation. Even before then I reached the conclusion that the peace process enables Israel to stall for time. When in 2003 several international organizations approached me and asked whether I would support the boycott I replied positively. more..

It’s not oil, it’s water
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 3/15/2008
     Kristen Ess -- "Even getting a water or sewage treatment plant in the West Bank takes 10 years for Israeli approval, since the occupation government controls most all aspects of Palestinian life," a woman working in the field told me in Ramallah last month. "And the Israelis drink that same contaminated water, so why would they hold up treatment plants?"
     Every summer Palestinians endure a water crisis. This comes due to the Israeli control of water resources from years on end, not just in the past few years as they strategically placed the West Bank Wall route in order to take water supplies into their boundaries. And this summer is expected to reach the worst water shortage in 10 years.
     Our water bills have already risen and throughout the winter there were several periods when no water was available at all.
     We have been reporting for years that the real "war" in this region of the Middle East has nothing to do with oil: it’s the water. The tables in the Dead Sea are already dangerously low, and when Israeli forces demolished hundreds of homes in southern Rafah in 2002 - 2003, it was intended to build a gully in order to bring water from the Mediterranean into Israeli hands. more..

US/IRAQ: Rules of Engagement "Thrown Out the Window"
Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service 3/15/2008
     SILVER SPRING, Maryland, Mar 15(IPS) - Garret Reppenhagen received integral training about the Geneva Conventions and the Rules of Engagement during his deployment in Kosovo. But in Iraq, "Much of this was thrown out the window," he says.
     "The men I served with are professionals," Reppenhagen told the audience at a panel of U.S. veterans speaking of their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, "They went to Iraq to defend the U.S. But we found rapidly we were killing Iraqis in horrible ways. But we had to in order to remain safe ourselves. The war is the atrocity."
     The event, which has drawn international media attention, was organised by Iraq Veterans Against the War. It aims to show that their stories of wrongdoing in both countries were not isolated incidents limited to a few "bad apples", as the Pentagon claims, but were everyday occurrences. more..

When the cartoon is as cutting as the occupation
Olivia Snaije, Daily Star 3/14/2008
     Exhibition of Naji al-Ali’s work reveals that, 20 years on, it’s still eerily contemporary.
     LONDON: It has been just over 20 years since master political cartoonist Naji al-Ali was assassinated in London. To commemorate this sad anniversary, an exhibition of original artwork, "Shooting the Witness: The cartoons of Naji al-Ali" opened here last week. The venue, fittingly, is London’s respected and alternately serious and rollicking, Political Cartoon Gallery.
     There are many elements that make Ali’s work compelling but what is initially striking is how contemporary his drawings remain, after 30 years. The Palestinian situation is possibly worse than ever, the US and Israel continue to be military partners, oil is at the top of everyone’s agenda and some fear Lebanon’s present political paralysis will lapse back into chaos.
     Ali, who left his Palestinian village in Galilee during the Nabka, came of age in the refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh, then on the outskirts of Sidon, in South Lebanon. As political awareness made its way into the camps in the 1950s, Ali began to draw on the walls of the camp and in Lebanese prisons, where he was confined for his political activities. more..

Dissolve this impotent entity called "the Palestinian Authority" now
Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank, Palestinian Information Center 3/14/2008
     I really don’t understand why  these brilliant Palestinian "negotiators"� are still commuting between Ramallah and West Jerusalem for "peace talks"�  that even little kids in the streets of  the smallest refugee camp in Gaza realize will lead nowhere.
     Indeed, the vast majority of Palestinians are fed up with  this despicable peace process under whose rubric Israel has is murdering our children, stealing our land, demolishing our homes and narrowing our horizons.
     On Wednesday, 12 March, an Israeli death squad murdered in cold blood four Palestinians in Bethlehem, a city where the PA claims to have "authority."� The four Palestinians thought that the purported ceasefire in the Gaza Strip also applied to the West Bank, and that the PA had reached a tacit understanding with Israel according to which their lives would be spared. The four poor victims obviously didn’t know that the credibility of PA assurances were as valid as its claims of "authority"� and "sovereignty"� in the shadow of the Israeli occupation army. more..

Bay of Pigs in Gaza
Tom Segev, Ha’aretz 3/13/2008
     One day in the fall of 2006, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, Jake Walles, went to Ramallah to meet with Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). As diplomats do, he took with him a document known as "talking points" - a prepared memo listing the main elements of what he was going to tell the Palestinian leader. For some reason, perhaps by accident, Walles left the document behind when he left, with the result that the American monthly Vanity Fair is able to publish a first draft of a chapter in the history of the rise of Hamas and its takeover of the Gaza Strip. (The article can be accessed at www.vanityfair.com under "The Gaza Bombshell" in the April 2008 issue.)
     According to the paper left behind by the consul general, he wanted to pressure Abu Mazen to take action that would annul the outcome of the elections that had catapulted Hamas to power. The author of the article, David Rose, reminds his readers that President George W. Bush had pressed for the elections to be held, contrary to the advice of several experts, who warned that Hamas would emerge from them strengthened. But Bush wanted democracy. Now he effectively wanted Abu Mazen to cancel the elections in retrospect. more..

Hegemony through free trade: Interview with Daoud Hamoudi
Stefan Christoff, Electronic Intifada 3/10/2008
     Economics is a central element of US-driven military policy in the Middle East. A series of free trade agreements initiated by the US are currently being negotiated or have recently been signed throughout the region.
     From Bahrain, to Jordan, to Egypt to Saudi Arabia, these economic agreements aim to crack the long-standing boycott of Israel maintained by the majority of countries in the Middle East. These bilateral trade accords include a condition for countries to recognize Israel.
     Apartheid economics is critical to US and Israeli policy in the region, implemented through neo-liberal bilateral trade accords, or on the ground in Palestine where Israel is pushing a plan to build industrial processing zones. Proposed industrial zones will see Israeli corporations’ factories operating with a Palestinian labor force, similar to maquiladoras, Mexican factories which became notorious for human and labor rights abuses in the 1990s. more..

A Middle East Regime Needing Change
Patrick Seale, Middle East Online 3/14/2008
     Bernard Lewis, 93, historian, scourge of Islamic radicalism and spiritual god-father of America’s neocons, gave a word of advice to Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at a meeting in Jerusalem this month. There could be no negotiation, he warned, with the regimes of Tehran and Damascus. They would have to be ‘replaced’.
     So it was back to regime change! As if nothing had happened since 2003! As if the catastrophic war in Iraq had not demonstrated the bankruptcy of the neocon fantasy of using American power to overthrow and ‘reform’ Arab regimes to make the Middle East safe for Israel and the United States.
     If the region is to be spared another disastrous explosion of violence, one might argue, the one regime that urgently needs changing is that of Olmert and his Defence Minister, Ehud Barak.
     Both are failed Prime MinistersOlmert for his lamentable, ill-conceived and destructive war in Lebanon in 2006, and Barak for his stubborn inability to seize the chance of peace with the Palestinians and Syria in 2000 -- when, as a newly-elected Prime Minister, the chance was there to be seized. more..

Is Israel engaging in ethnic cleansing?
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 3/15/2008
     At the summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Dakar, Senegal, on Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that Palestinians in Occupied East Jerusalem "are facing an ethnic cleansing campaign through a set of Israeli decisions such as imposing heavy taxes, banning construction and closing Palestinian institutions, in addition to separating the city from the West Bank by the racist separation wall."
     The ethnic cleansing accusation is serious, but not new. It is galling to Israelis, but pivotal for Palestinians. Abbas is Israel’s and America’s preferred peace partner, though a peculiarly inefficient one after more than 40 years in politics. Yet for him to charge Israel with ethnic cleansing in a global Islamic summit suggests that the issue deserves to be examined in some depth. Peace-making and eventual coexistence require that the core claims of both sides be put on the table and examined fully.
     For Palestinians, the modern conflict between Arabism and Zionism - since the birth of modern political Zionism in the late 1800s - has always centered around the expulsion of indigenous Palestinian Arabs from their ancestral lands by Jewish colonial settlers who came from abroad, threw out as many Palestinian Arabs as they could, and created the Jewish state of Israel... more..

Two-state dreamers
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada 3/14/2008
     If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s most intractable, much the same can be said of the parallel debate about whether its resolution can best be achieved by a single state embracing the two peoples living there or by a division of the land into two separate states, one for Jews and the other for Palestinians.
     The central argument of the two-staters is that the one-state idea is impractical and therefore worthless of consideration. Their rallying cry is that it is at least possible to imagine a consensus emerging behind two states, whereas Israelis will never accept a single state. Thus, the one-state crowd are painted as inveterate dreamers and time-wasters.
     This argument is advanced by Israel’s only serious peace group, Gush Shalom. Here is the view of the group’s indefatigable leader, Uri Avnery: "After 120 years of conflict, after a fifth generation was born into this conflict on both sides, to move from total war to total peace in a single joint state, with a total renunciation of national independence? This is total illusion." more..

Israel raises the ante against Iran
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times 3/14/2008
     "We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us. We cannot say so too openly, however, because we have a history of using any threat in order to get weapons ... thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the US and Germany." - Israeli author, Martin van Crevled , June 2007.
     Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is on a speaking tour in the United States, putting her considerable personal charm in the service of a shrewd salesmanship - of a US war on Iran.
     Although considered a dove by Israeli standards, Livni is now on a historic mission that has begun with a pre-travel warmer in the form of a highly publicized telephone call to the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, assuring him that there is direct linkage "between Iran and the terror groups". more..

A recipe for Israel’s security
Ghada Ageel, Electronic Intifada 3/12/2008
     Time after time, Israel has failed to provide its citizens with either actual security or even a sense of security, whether inside or outside the country. This is so despite the fact that it possesses all means of military power and superiority including the nuclear weapons making it the strongest regional power in the Middle East. In fact, despite all its power, Israel lives in a continuous security crisis. Despite its power, Israel has been unable to prevent even Palestinian children from picking up stones and throwing them at Israeli tanks and forces. Faris Odeh, a 13 year old Palestinian boy from Gaza, was doing just that when he was killed by Israeli bullets in the autumn of 2000. Moreover, despite Israel’s continuous shelling and bombardment of most of the iron workshops in Gaza, home-made rockets still keep falling on the Israeli town of Sderot. And, despite all the security measures taken by Israel, Palestinian suicide bombers have repeatedly entered Israeli areas and blown themselves up on buses and in markets.
     The question, then, is why has Israel been unable to provide security despite all its military might? And what is the solution to this complicated problem, one that has become part and parcel of the psychology, the rhetoric and the culture of Israeli society? more..

Dreaming of a better future in Gaza
Fida Qishta writing from Rafah, occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 3/11/2008
     Israeli officials said on 3 March that they finished their military operation in the Gaza Strip, but the Israeli attacks continue, and we fear that Israel is still planning a major invasion. On 29 February, Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai warned of "a bigger holocaust" for Palestinians.
     From 27 February through 2 March, the Israeli army killed around 110 Palestinians in Gaza, about half of them civilians, and nearly a quarter children, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza. Hundreds were injured. Palestinians killed two Israeli soldiers and one Israeli civilian.
     What is happening in Gaza hurts all Palestinians, not just Hamas. Before this assault, the Gaza Strip, with 1.5 million residents, was already like a prison under siege, with dwindling supplies of food, medicine, fuel, clean water and electricity, and growing poverty. Many families eat just one meal a day. We have no electricity for 6-12 hours daily. more..

Photos of the Sea
Diana Buttu, Middle East Online 3/14/2008
     Diana Buttu recalls her experience of meeting a Palestinian family in occupied Palestine who have never seen the sea despite living just 10 miles away from the shore.
     In September 2000, I decided to do my part to bring peace to the Middle East. As a Canadian attorney of Palestinian origin, I believed I could use my legal skills to help broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Naive? Perhaps.
     I left my comfortable life in California and moved to the West Bank. Moving there was not easy: I did not know what life is like under military rule. My Western upbringing left me unprepared for life without freedom. Seven years later, I am still not used to it.
     As a lawyer for the Palestinian peace negotiating team, I met presidents, prime ministers, Nobel laureates, secretaries of state and other important figures. But none of these individuals hit me with the same emotional wallop as a young woman named Majda.
     Like me, Majda is in her thirties. Like me, she enjoys classical music, theatre and books. But unlike me, Majda has never lived a day as a free human being, for she was born Palestinian in the Israeli-dominated West Bank. more..

Israeli sniper bullet takes 12-year-old girl’s life
Sami Abu Salem writing from Jabaliya, occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 3/10/2008
     "I put my hand on her chest to stop the streaming blood. She told me that she could not breathe, her body trembled and she closed her eyes," said Ra’d Abu Saif of his 12-year-old daughter Safa’s last moments after she was shot by an Israeli sniper last Saturday.
     Safa was shot in the left side of her chest while she was inside her home in Jabaliya, northern Gaza. An ambulance tried to reach her but Israeli soldiers opened fire at it, wounding a paramedic and causing the tires to lose air, and so she bled to death three hours after she was wounded.
     Her 39-year-old father Ra’d, 37-year-old mother Samar, and the rest of Safa’s family surrounded her, praying for her safety. Her father pressed on the wound while her brother Ali held her hands as her body was severely trembling. She asked her father to help her to breathe.
     "Dad, I cannot breathe, all of you leave me please, let me breathe, enough, enough," were Safa’s last words, according to her father. more..

Italian solidarity with Palestinian filmmaker on trial in Israel
Nicola Perugini, Electronic Intifada 3/10/2008
     At the end of last November, filmmaker Mohammad Bakri furiously left a press conference organized at the Library of the Auditorium of Rome. He was present because of the performance of the opera Al Kamandjati based on the story of Palestinian musician Ramzi Aburedwan and his music school in Ramallah. The reason for his anger was that not a single journalist asked him any questions when he announced that he would soon be tried in Israel because of his 2002 film Jenin Jenin.
     Jenin Jenin documents the aftermath of Israel’s April 2002 siege of the northern West Bank refugee camp, during which many of the residents were killed and a large part of the camp was leveled by bulldozers. Journalists were not allowed into the camp during the incursion and Israeli forces did not allow human rights organizations in immediately afterwards, and the film documents the destruction of the camp and the exasperation of camp residents during this time. Jenin Jenin co-producer Iyad Samudi was killed by Israeli forces shortly after the film’s completion. more..

The Nakba generation
Ziad Abbas writing from the United States, Electronic Intifada 3/10/2008
     This year, it will sixty years since the Nakba (Catastrophe). Sixty years since we Palestinians became refugees. More than six million Palestinian refugees are still living far from their villages, towns and cities as a result of the Zionist invasion that uprooted them from their homeland in 1948. Generations have been born, have grown up, and have died in refugee camps, but the international community still continues to ignore the political rights of the Palestinian refugees. What makes it sad for me as a refugee -- one who was born and grew up in a refugee camp, and struggling not to die in a refugee camp -- is that the Nakba generation is dying. There are only a few people still left in the camp who remember the experience of living in the villages that were stolen from us. There are only a few who can tell stories about what it was like to be uprooted, to be sent to live in a tent in a refugee camp. Part of my work in the oral history and media projects at Ibdaa Cultural and Community Center in Dheisheh refugee camp is to interview people and collect the stories and history that is still undocumented, so that when the people die their memories and stories do not die with them.
     This year, the sixtieth year, I came to finish my studies here in the United States and to complete an internship working with Middle East Children’s Alliance. I was planning before I left to do my best to raise awareness about the Nakba, and to raise the question of what these past sixty years have meant for the Palestinian people. Since I’ve been here I see that the American people are busy; many are working two jobs; their minds are occupied with their daily lives. Most people either don’t care, don’t have time to pay attention, or don’t want to know what is happening in Palestine, Iraq, or the rest of the world. This reminds me of what my uncle Mahmoud told me just before I left. more..

Big bang or chaos: What’s Israel up to?
Ramzy Baroud, Asia Times 3/12/2008
     Why did Israel attack Gaza with such brutality? Did Israeli officials think, even for a fleeting moment, that their army’s attacks could halt, as opposed to intensify, Palestinian rockets or retaliatory violence? Indeed, was Palestinian violence at all relevant to the Israeli action? Was the Israeli bloodletting in Gaza solely relevant to the Gaza/Hamas context, or is there a regional dimension that is largely being overlooked?
     In an al-Jazeera English TV discussion, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy and al-Quds al-Arabi editor-in-chief Abd al-Bari Atwan attempted to decipher Israel’s actions in Gaza which have, since February 27, killed more than 120 Palestinians and four Israeli soldiers. These attacks were followed by incursions and further violence, including an attack on a Jewish seminary school in Jerusalem.
     Levy explained that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak wanted to demonstrate to the Israeli public that he was "doing something" about the regular launching of rockets from Gaza. Although Levy wasn’t justifying the Israeli government’s inhumane and misguided logic, he disagreed with Atwan over the use of terminology. The latter (who is also an outstanding journalist) had asserted that the killings in Gaza represented a form of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing". more..

Four deaths: whose security?
Report, PHR-Israel, Electronic Intifada 3/12/2008
     Access-related deaths of patients referred to medical care outside Gaza are hard to determine with statistical certainty. Since several factors are involved, it is very difficult to define how far the delay or denial of a permit has influenced the final outcome in each case. However, there is no doubt that every delay lessens the patient’s chances of recovery, and denies them the right to the best available medical care. The fact that in Gaza the delay has nothing to do with medical constraints of any kind, but with external reasons, makes the violation all the more serious and raises questions regarding the definition of the term "security" in the Israeli Secret Police (GSS) lexicon. For the individual patient, the difference between receiving a permit and receiving a rejection, or no answer at all, may be the difference between life and death.
     An additional constraint is the fact that many patients in Gaza, knowing the current situation at the border crossings, prefer to forego the hopeless process, and die at home, their stories untold and their voices unheard.
     Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has therefore chosen to tell the stories of the deaths of three women and one baby girl, as told by their families. The stories give a small glimpse of the Kafkaesque process, in which the suffering of sickness and the cruelty of a hostile bureaucracy combine to embitter the last days of these people’s lives. more..

Interview with single-state activist Dr. Haider Eid
Anna Weekes, Electronic Intifada 3/12/2008
     The following is an interview by Anna Weekes with Dr. Haidar Eid, Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University, Gaza Strip, Palestine:
     Anna Weekes: What is the current situation in the Gaza Strip?
     Haidar Eid: One cannot talk about the situation in the Gaza ghetto without feeling disillusioned. What is happening here is a slow genocide taking place before the eyes of a very indifferent world.
     The siege of Gaza and the continued illegal collective punishment of its residents by Israel has resulted in soaring food prices. Many foodstuffs, medicines and other goods, such as building material are no longer available. There are zero stocks available for 91 drugs. Hospitals are reporting zero stock availability of pediatric drugs, antibiotics, as chronic disease drugs, cancer treatment drugs, a range of kidney dialysis drugs and IV glucose solution. In addition, there are also shortages of kidney dialysis machine equipment. There is an increase in diarrhea amongst children and the possibility of outbreaks of typhoid and hepatitis if the blockade is not lifted. And the closure of the border crossing has resulted in [the dealths of] dozens of Palestinians in urgent need of medical treatment, including some terminally ill cancer patients [who] were refused entry to Israel or Egypt by the Shin Bet [Israel’s intelligence agency]. Dozens of other sick patients have also been denied access to hospitals in Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the West Bank. Thirty-eight of them, including children, have died over the last two weeks. more..

Crossing the Line interviews Gaza-based journalist Rami Almeghari
Podcast, Electronic Intifada 3/13/2008
     This week on Crossing the Line: Israel continues its siege and steps up attacks on the Gaza Strip killing more than 100 Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians according to various human rights organizations. Host Naji Ali* speaks with journalist, Rami Almeghari, to get an update on the situation in Gaza.
     Next, in Canada the Jewish Defense League has been accused of arson at a student organization’s office, and at another campus a university provost bans student activists from using the term "Israeli Apartheid." Ali speaks with Laith Marouf, chapter coordinator of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, about these incidents and the other difficulties Palestine solidarity activists face in Canada.
     Also in the program, a poem by award winning Palestinian-American poet, Suheir Hammad. more..

Democracy, according to Shas
Avner Bernheimer, Ha’aretz 3/13/2008
     In the last few years, I’ve declined to react to the nonsense spewed by various Shas representatives regarding matters of current interest. Shas is a party that missed its historic opportunity to be important and to improve the standing of Mizrahi Jews. Its leaders are selected for their powers of rhetoric and sex appeal, which sometimes earns them the affection of certain liberal Ashkenazi media types, who quickly develop paternal and patronizing feelings for them.
     I’ll admit that I, too, once felt some ambivalence toward them for, having experienced years of discrimination and neglect, I could identify with their social struggle. But I was repulsed by their tendency to belittle the rights of anyone who didn’t toe the line of the Shas ideology as propounded by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Nothing disgusts me more than one oppressed public that’s willing to trample all over another oppressed public. more..

The Rise of the Haredim in Israel
Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Northwest Ethnic Voice 1/10/1999
     Chapter 2 of Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel
     Although expanding steadily from the early 1970s, Jewish religious fundamentalism in Israel attracted relatively little interest in the dominant secularly oriented Israeli society until 1988. Members of the various Haredi sects, generally self-contained in residentially segregated areas of Israeli cities, led lives absorbed by concerns and preoccupations that appeared exotic at best to outsiders. Although some members of these sects clashed sharply over specific issues with the secular part of Israeli society and at those times acquired a bit of public attention, they were mostly ignored. The sensational Haredi political success in the Israeli parliamentary elections of 1988, predicted by none of the professional pollsters, surprised many people. Because of their continued political successes in succeeding elections through the 1990s, the Haredim put themselves into a position at various times to be able to dictate to the Israeli secular majority.
     The Haredi political successes not only caused many Israeli Jews to look more closely at and to be more concerned with the Haredim but also sparked increased attention abroad, especially in the United States. The interest generated in the United States prompted the writing and publication of many new books and articles in English that focused upon the folkloristic aspects of the Haredim but unfortunately largely ignored their basic ideology and world outlook. The following discussion will attempt to analyze, particularly for those readers who are not literate in Hebrew, the political importance of the Haredi upsurge. A crucial part of this analysis is the acceptance of the well-documented proposition that an understanding of the entire Israeli political right is to some extent dependent upon an understanding of the basic elements of Haredi politics, apart from the disagreements, splits and reunification efforts of many Haredi individuals and sects. The two major questions to be analyzed are:
     How have the Haredi parties secured their political influence?
     What organizational structure have the Haredi employed for maximum political success? more..

Dangerous fringes
Editorial, Ha’aretz 3/14/2008
     Four days after the attack on the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem, we are discovering a tense and disturbing situation. The massacre, which was directed against Jews who study in one of religious Zionism’s flagship institutions, exposed the extent of the rift between some parts of the religious right and the government.
     Flyers distributed yesterday in Jerusalem and the settlements and signed by 11 extreme-right rabbis deserve not only a harsh condemnation, but a determined response from the legal authorities. "Each and every one of us must imagine what the enemy is plotting to do to us, and to match it measure for measure," wrote the rabbis, including Daniel Staveski, Yitzhak Shapira, Yaakov Yosef, Gadi Ben-Zimra and Ido Elba, who in the past was convicted of racist incitement.
     We cannot accept the statement by one of the signatories, to the effect that the flyer does not call for private acts of revenge. The rabbis specifically write that "we must work to achieve a proper Jewish leadership, aside from welcome local actions" and hope for a situation in which "Jews will congregate in their cities ... and strike those who wish them ill, in those days at this season" - borrowing a verse from the Book of Esther to be read next week on Purim. more..

The PA’s hollow protests
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 3/14/2008
     Senior Palestinian Authority officials can justifiably say that settlement construction continues despite everyone’s protests and condemnations - not only theirs. Europe is protesting, Peace Now is protesting, the United Nations is protesting and even Condoleezza Rice protests occasionally, not to mention Israel’s literary elite.
     The settlements continue to expand, along with the number of roads closed to Palestinians.
     PA officials will say that the antithetical tactics to negotiations and protests - the Qassam rockets, guerrilla operations and suicide attacks - have not helped matters. In fact, they have only provided Israel with more excuses to confiscate land.
     The evacuation of the settlements in the Gaza Strip, it should be said again, was a brilliant move by Israel to speed up the political separation between the West Bank and Gaza; it all the while masqueraded as "the beginning of the pullout". more..

A letter from a mother in Gaza to a mother in Sderot
Electronic Intifada 3/13/2008
     Dear Rima Haimov
     When I read your words the only thing I can say is that I feel sorry for your son, and that I can understand you as a mother and the traumatic events that your child is experiencing. I cannot deny the fact that life becomes very difficult in such circumstances when you realize that you and your family are in danger at any moment; I fully understand your worries, your feelings and concerns. I am addressing this letter to you with the hope that you will understand my pain too
     Like I feel sorry for your son, I feel sorry for my Palestinian children who are born and will die in Gaza, unable to have the chance of seeing other worlds, and who have to face F-16s, Apache helicopters and the Israeli army’s brutal invasions into Gaza. However, my children are not fortunate enough to have the excellent medical care that your son has. My children do not have the chance to run to a shelter and there is no alarm to tell them that there is a strike coming. My children cannot be guaranteed the love and care that your son found because all of their family might be killed in one strike, they might witness the death of their parents, or any of their dear family members as the Palestinians are targeted everywhere, even in their homes and among their children. more..

Kill a Hundred Turks and Rest
Uri Avnery, Middle East Online 3/9/2008
     I was reminded this week of the old tale about a Jewish mother taking leave of her son, who has been called up to serve in the Czar’s army against the Turks.
     "Don’t exert yourself too much," she admonishes him, "Kill a Turk and rest. Kill another Turk and rest again…"
     "But mother," he exclaims, "What if the Turk kills me?"
     "Kill you?" she cries out, "Why? What have you done to him?"
     This is not a joke (and this is not a week for jokes). It is a lesson in psychology. I was reminded of it when I read Ehud Olmert’s statement that more than anything else he was furious about the outburst of joy in Gaza after the attack in Jerusalem, in which eight yeshiva students were killed.
     Before that, last weekend, the Israeli army killed 120 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, half of them civilians, among them dozens of children. That was not "kill a Turk and rest". That was "kill a hundred Turks and rest". But Olmert does not understand. more..

No discounts and no installments
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 3/10/2008
     When soldiers fell in defense of the settlers in Gush Katif, the Jewish brain invented the patent of unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. When a terrorist from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jebel Mukaber murders yeshiva students in the west of the city, the Israeli genius proposes unilateral withdrawal from the capital’s "outer neighborhoods."
     How easy and simple: Wherever they shoot, we pull out. The rest of the territories will wait patiently for convergence, Annapolis, a shelf agreement, or the next catastrophe. Whatever comes first.
     We don’t understand why, after we left Gaza, they continue to fire rockets at Sderot from there. Is that how they want to build trust with the Israeli public? Is it any wonder that even the most ardent Meretz supporters are afraid that if we leave the West Bank, their homes in Kfar Sava will enter the range of the Qassams?
     ...Nobody asks himself what would happen if a foreign conqueror were to withdraw, say, from the North of the country, leaving the other parts of Palestine-Eretz Yisrael, including Jerusalem and the Western Wall, under occupation. Would the Jewish community in Tel Aviv give the occupier a moment’s peace, or would it turn Haifa into a base for continuing the struggle for the liberation of the rest of the country? more..

What Israel says and what Israel does are two very different things
Editorial, Daily Star 3/10/2008
     The Israeli government has directed yet another blow at the sputtering peace with the Palestinians, this time by authorizing the construction of hundreds of new homes for colonists in and around Occupied East Jerusalem. From its inception following the 1967 war, the illegal policy of establishing "settlements" on occupied land was designed, in part, to create a constituency within Israeli society that would always be against making peace. But the timing of Sunday’s announcement that Olmert had approved 1,100 new homes also demonstrated another result of the project: to deliberately undermine Palestinian and other Arab leaders willing to engage with the Jewish state.
     The recent slaughter carried out by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip had already put Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a difficult position, opening him up to accusations of what amounts to collaboration. Abbas even declared that he was suspending his negotiations with Olmert before being forced to back down by American pressure. Now insult is being added to injury by making clear just how little value Israel puts in the peace process. Abbas is risking his life and his reputation by trying to strike a deal with his people’s enemies - and Olmert responds by humiliating him. more..

Fatah must reinvent itself, or risk irrelevance
Mouin Rabbani, Daily Star 3/10/2008
     With preparations accelerating, it seems increasingly likely that Fatah, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, will hold its Sixth General Conference during 2008. Yet given the advanced state of disintegration in which the movement finds itself, it may well be a case of too little too late. Simply put, Fatah’s very survival now hangs in the balance.
     Much has changed since Fatah held its Fifth General Conference in 1989. The movement’s leader, Yasser Arafat, has departed from the scene, along with a third of the 21-member Fatah Central Committee (FCC). Yet none have been replaced because the power to do so rests with the General Conference. The surviving members - though drawn from a society whose median age is well below 30 - are over 65, often considerably older, and in several cases incapacitated by illness.
     Moreover, Fatah in recent years has fragmented, not just into two or three rival camps, but into multiple, competing power centers. These power centers - generally associated with individual leaders engaged in constantly shifting alliances - consist of networks based on patronage, shared history, geography, foreign sponsorship, ideology, policy, or various combinations of the above. more..

Tragedy of Israel and Palestine
Mark Levine, Al Jazeera 3/9/2008
     Americans have grown so accustomed to the disastrous dynamics operating between Israelis and Palestinians today that the failure to reach a peace deal amid the soaring death tolls assumes an aura of normalcy in their minds.
     This reflects a situation we imagine ourselves to be powerless to help change and only adds to the tragedy unfolding in the Occupied Territories and Israel as well.
     Today the world’s attention has turned to the aftermath of the murder of eight students of an ultra-Zionist Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, established by the founder of religious zionism, Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook in 1924.
     Last week the focus was the ongoing war in Gaza which will likely be the centre of attention next week as well.
     The attacks on religious students in the midst of study and prayer - coupled with the ongoing rocket attacks from Gaza on the Israeli towns of Sderot and Ashkelon - are already being offered as the latest examples of continued Palestinian unwillingness to make peace with Israel more than two years after its unprecedented withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
     But there are many problems with this argument; firstly, most of the acts of Palestinian resistance to the occupation have always been non-violent. more..

The wrong man for the ILA
Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar, Ha’aretz 3/10/2008
     The appointment of a new director of the Israel Lands Administration could very rapidly go from being a bureaucratic issue that primarily concerns land experts to a ticking bomb for society, due to the sensitivity of the matter of land and its influence on majority-minority relations in Israel. That is precisely what is liable to take place in the wake of the expected appointment of Yoel Lavi, the mayor of Ramle, as director of the ILA.
     Last year Lavi responded quite brusquely to a request from Arab Ramle residents to give Arab names to the streets in Arab neighborhoods of Ramle. Among his less scathing comments, he suggested that the people who complained about the street names move to Jaljulya.
     During Lavi’s term as mayor, he also worked to keep the Jews and Arabs of his city apart. He initiated the construction of a wall between the Jewish neighborhood of Ganei Dan and the Arab neighborhood of Juarish and supported housing projects that, using various methods and excuses, kept Arabs out. For instance, the municipality gave its blessing to the establishment of a new neighborhood called Park Tzafon, which offered deals to army veterans only. more..

Neither God, nor Judea and Samaria
Tom Segev, Ha’aretz 3/10/2008
     The terrorist who murdered eight students of the Mercaz Harav yeshiva last week could not have picked a more symbolic target. Naturally, the yeshiva students expressed their pain and anger in very political language. The incident was not yet over when one of them nearly grabbed the microphone from the hands of a television reporter and screamed that Shimon Peres was at fault: Peres had given the terrorists guns - and he is guilty of the murder.
     These things can happen during live broadcasts, and this is a fine reason not to air raw material that is still not appropriate to be aired to the rest of the world. But recorded and edited material does not always deserve to be broadcast. MKs on the right were allowed during the week to say terrible and embarrassing things, competing with each other over who will propose a more spectacular act of vengeance against the family of the terrorist, his village, the entire population of East Jerusalem, the Arabs at large. more..

Countdown to Arab defeat
Wafaa' Al-Natheema, Al Jazeera 3/8/2008
     In November 1966, an Israeli contingent of some 400 men, 10 tanks and 40 armoured vehicles attacked the village of Samu in the Jordan-controlled West Bank and destroyed some 100 buildings and killed many Arabs.
     This was one of many incidents of confrontation between Israel and Syria in the months prior to the war, and between Israel and the Palestinian fida’iyeen, or resistance fighters. In Rami Tai’s 1997 book The Dayan Memoirs and interviews conducted in 1976, Moshe Dayan, Israel’s defence minister at the time, said that 80 per cent of these confrontational episodes were planned and executed by Israel.
     When asked if the Syrians initiated cross-border wars of attrition from the Golan Heights, he stated:
     "It went this way: We would send a tractor to plough some place where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarised area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance farther, until in the end [the] Syrians would get annoyed and shoot." more..

No day is women’s day in Gaza
Mohammed Omer writing from occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 3/8/2008
     GAZA CITY, 7 March (IPS) - Mahasen Darduna suffers in ways the world recognizes; her suffering comes at the hands of the Israelis. But there are many Palestinian women whose suffering the world does not see, because their hell is inflicted on them by fellow Palestinians.One way or another, no day is woman’s day in Gaza.
     For a week, Mahasen Darduna, 30, has sat day and night by her son’s bedside in the hospital. The boy, Yahiya, nine, was among a group of children hit by an Israeli missile while playing football on a field at the Jabaliya refugee camp. Yahia survived, but with severe injuries.
     "He needs my support, he has been confined to this bed since he was maimed by the Israeli missile," Mahasen says. But she must also slip away often to see her other five children, who she has moved to her mother-in-law’s house in belief they will be safer there.
     "I think of them constantly when we are apart. I feel terrible: two are getting sick, and they all cry each time we say goodbye. I can’t be at both places." more..

Interview with Fouad al-Khuffash about Palestinian women prisoners
Saed Bannoura, International Middle East Media Center 3/9/2008
     Q. Please introduce yourself for our listeners.
     Fouad al-Khuffash, the Director of the Ahrar Center for the Rights of Detainees. Our Center runs a website documenting the stories of Palestinian detainees - their issues and the suffering they face in the prisons of the Israeli occupation.
     Q. Recently, you published a report about detainee Ahlam Jawhar.Can you tell us, first, when was Ahlam abducted by the Israeli occupation forces, and what has happened to her since then?
     Sister Ahlam Jawhar is a thirty-year old Palestinian woman who was living with her family in Huwwara village near Nablus.She works in the human rights field as a peace activist, with the group ’Friends of Humanity International’, based in Vienna, Austria.Sister Ahlam was kidnapped forty days ago on January 12th, 2008.Since then, she was subjected to the ugliest sorts of torture in Peta Tikva interrogation facility, located on the part of Palestine that has been occupied by Israel since 1948. She was barred from meeting with her lawyer during interrogation. They subjected her to psychological torture by preventing her from sleeping, and forcing her to stand with her hands raised for long periods of time. more..

Global sisterhood: Pillars of Humankind
Leila Diab, Middle East Online 3/8/2008
     One of the most powerful and heart wrenching photographsI have ever seen or have takenwas the scene of a Palestinian woman, while walking arm and arm, and shoulder to shoulder, with hundreds of Palestinian women and children in the streets ofManger Square in the occupied territories of Palestine. Then all of a sudden she hurled and raised up a Palestinian flag high enough to reach the sky.Her voice was not heard alone as she tried to invoke change in the lives of the unheard voices.However, many women inside and outside the occupied territories of Palestine and in the world regions of despair today, continue to create a global sisterhood and rebuild the pillars of humanity.
     In the month of March, Women’s History andduring the recognition of International Women’s Day on March 8th,women and young girl pillars of humankind from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, China, New Zealand and throughout our global universe, will once again echo a very loud solemn encouragement to world nations and its leaders to restore a struggling humanitarian environment that is in desperate need to aid those without food or shelter, no running water, severe unemployment as well as a lack of basic human rights. And as half of the world’s population, women are affected the most by virtually an ever to visible and alarming gender inequality and social violence. more..

Tear down Israel’s wall and dance!
Checkpoint 303 – JERUSALEM, Middle East Online 3/8/2008
     We had nearly finished getting our gear off the stage when someone from the audience came up to congratulate us on our show. After telling us how much he enjoyed the music and video projection, he added, with a slightly troubled look on his face: “…but I have a problem. Isn’t it somehow wrong to dance to music that deals with the Palestinian cause?” He explained that while he found himself dancing to some of the more up-beat songs, he could not help asking himself whether it was okay to dance to the message our music embodies.
     We were pleased to hear about his ‘dilemma’. This is precisely what our band, Checkpoint 303, is all about. Instead of telling the audience what to think about the issue of Palestine, which would be a ridiculously naïve attitude, we try to trigger a reflective process in our listeners. more..

Consistent demands
Serene Assir, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/6/2008
     In response to Israel’s brutal incursion into the occupied Gaza Strip which began last Friday and during the course of which at least 115 Palestinians have been killed, Egyptians voiced their anger in a series of demonstrations. The largest came on Sunday when over 1,000 students at Cairo University called for an immediate end of the incursion, as well as the siege of Gaza. Protesters also demanded that Egypt open the Rafah terminal unilaterally.
     "Though the protest began inside university grounds gradually we made our way to the gate and broke through the police line," said fourth- year law student and member of the Socialist Students organisation May El-Bassiouni. Reiterating the stand of opposition movements, she added that, "we also demanded Israel’s diplomatic presence in Egypt be expelled". more..

Dressed up diplomacy
Doaa El-Bey, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/6/2008
     US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a two-day visit to the region in the hope of reviving the stalled momentum of the Annapolis meeting which had attempted to kick-start the peace process, improve humanitarian conditions for Palestinians on the ground and move towards implementing the international peace plan known as the roadmap. "My intention is to focus on those three pillars of Annapolis," she said before a joint press conference with her Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Abul-Gheit.
     There was no sign any plans had emerged capable of promoting a sustained ceasefire though Abul-Gheit said at the press conference that they had at least agreed on the necessary steps: a halt to the firing of rockets from Gaza and an end to what he called Israel’s "unequal use of force". What the region needs, said Abul-Gheit, is "a period of quiet to open the way for energetic pursuit of peace". more..

Full steam ahead
Lucy Fielder, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/6/2008
     Washington dispatched the USS Cole destroyer to Lebanon’s shores late last week, a gesture that intensified fears of a coming war and deepened already sharp divisions between the US- supported government and the opposition led by Hizbullah.
     US officials ironically said the move was aimed at regional stability, though it is clear to both sides of the political divide in Lebanon that the very opposite could well be the outcome. Many saw the deployment as a way to step up pressure on Syria, which the US and the Lebanese government blame for a political deadlock and three-month-old presidential vacuum, and force a resolution to Lebanon’s political crisis that would favour its allies.
     The opposition’s most powerful component, Iranian and Syrian-backed Hizbullah, said the decision to send the warship threatened stability in Lebanon and the region and highlighted US policy failures. Three weeks after vowing retaliation against Israel for the assassination of its military commander Imad Mughniyah, Hizbullah also promised not to be deterred by the US action. more..

Semantic quibbles
Salama A Salama, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/6/2008
     When Israel says it will unleash "a holocaust" in Gaza -- the words are those of Israel’s [deputy] defence minister -- the threat must be taken seriously. Israel has repeatedly shown that it is capable of turning genocide, which the Nazis once inflicted on the Jews, against others, using state-of-the-art technology to pursue its aims while simultaneously creating such an effective media smokescreen as to successfully cover up its crimes, winning the understanding and pardon of the international community, and even of Arab states.
     The acts of war Israel has unleashed on Gaza -- indiscriminate strikes against civil structures that have turned many buildings into rubble and caused hundreds of innocent deaths, children among them -- have all the marks of a holocaust in the making. All that is needed is a few more Qassam missiles (the crude homemade canisters that have more in common with firecrackers than the ordinance Israel is dropping on Gaza) to give Israel an excuse to invade Gaza, raze it to the ground and kill and kidnap, as the world remains silent. more..

A long way from home
Shiri Lev-Ari, Ha’aretz 3/9/2008
     Gilad Elbom left Israel seven years ago and moved to the United States. He was following his love - of the English language. After completing his bachelor’s degree at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Elbom began writing stories in English. He traveled to Los Angeles, where he earned a master’s degree in creative writing. Now he is finishing his doctorate in English at the University of North Dakota. Elbom’s first book, "Scream Queens of the Dead Sea," has just been released in Hebrew (titled "Adon Hasimptomim," translated with Lea Shashko and published by Babel and Yedioth Sfarim).
     "Scream Queens of the Dead Sea" tells a partly autobiographical story of a discharged Israeli soldier who goes to university to study linguistics. In order to earn a living and fill his time, he finds a job at a mental health center in the Jerusalem area.
     "... I published an article online about the security fence, praising and extolling the wall for dividing between the good people of Israel and the Arabs who do not look nice, unwashed and unshaven, with their worn-out clothes. I wrote that the wall has no security justification, but rather an aesthetic one. A ton of Americans wrote me spiteful letters, calling me a racist. In Israel, on the other hand, people immediately caught on that it was satirical, and sent me spiteful letters, ’Leftist traitor, stay there. No one needs you here.’ That made me happy, because Israel has a tradition of satire and slightly more sophisticated writing." more..

Destructive Emotion
Arab News - Editorial, MIFTAH 3/8/2008
     Arabs are often accused of being too emotional over the Palestinian situation rather than calculating and manipulative like the Israelis. It is a notion to which many Arabs subscribe as well, seeing it as a major reason for Israel’s continued dominance over the Palestinians.
     It is, in fact, impossible not to be emotional in the face of the suffering and injustice endured by the Palestinians, especially at the moment with the brutal slaughter in Prison Camp Gaza? Only the inhuman can remain unmoved.
     But the theory of overemotionalism is not so simple. It is not a straightforward case of weak, divided, emotional Arabs outmaneuvered by calculating, manipulative Israelis.
     Events in Gaza provide evidence of that. The Israelis are being just as emotional and illogical as anyone else — indeed far more so. Their response to the rocket attacks from Gaza has been one of cruel, bullying blind rage — a mad outburst of bombs, tanks and missiles, killing well over a hundred men, women and children in response to just one Israeli killed. Hysterical threats of a “holocaust” in the Strip attest to a political mindset that is out of control, illogical and in conflict with Israel’s own long-tern interests. more..

A Human Tragedy Called Gaza
Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, MIFTAH 3/8/2008
     The picture of the human tragedy in Gaza is appalling.In the space of a few days, the Israeli army managed to kill 126 Palestinians and injure over 300.Over 40 of those killed were children.On the Israeli side, 2 soldiers and one civilian were killed and 7 injured.Watching the news on different TV channels and seeing the dead and injured was heartbreaking.Violence has a very ugly face and it has trapped both sides by its snares.
     This is not the first time that the government of Israel has used disproportionate force against Palestinians.Some analysts feel that Israel’s objective was to pressure the Palestinian leadership into calling off the bi-lateral talks resumed after Annapolis and especially after President Bush’s January 2008 visit to the area.
     At Annapolis, it was agreed that negotiations would resume in order to address the core issues of the conflict.After 18 rounds of talks between Abbas and Olmert, the negotiations have not advanced one iota.The fact is that Israel does not want the talks to come near Jerusalem, refugees or the settlements.... more..

West Bank Barriers Keep Rising Despite Promises of Relief
Griff Witte, MIFTAH 3/8/2008
     Karim Edwan’s skepticism about the U.S.-backed Middle East peace process is rooted in his morning commute.
     To travel from his home in this West Bank village to his job as an emergency room doctor, the 35-year-old must take at least two cabs, skirt a barbed-wire fence, climb a dirt mound, talk his way through multiple Israeli checkpoints and remove his shoes for a full-body security check.
     Before the obstacles were imposed, the trip to his hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus took 30 minutes. Now it takes two hours.
     "It’s my daily humiliation," he said.
     It’s also part of the explanation for why there is little enthusiasm in the West Bank for negotiations with Israel, and why Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is in a bind over how to proceed.
     The hope of Abbas and other participants in the Annapolis peace talks last November was that the Israeli-occupied West Bank would become a model for what negotiations could bring. more..

Nakba again
Jonathan Cook, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/6/2008
     Clearing the Palestinians out of Gaza appears the ultimate aim of Israel’s declared strategy of genocide in the Strip.
     Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai’s much publicised remark about Gaza facing a "bigger shoah" -- the Hebrew phrase for the Holocaust -- was widely assumed to be unpleasant hyperbole about the army’s plans for an imminent full-scale invasion of the Strip.
     More significantly, however, the comment appears to indicate the direction of Israel’s longer-term strategy towards the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
     Vilnai, a former general, was interviewed by Army Radio last Friday as Israeli forces were in the midst of unleashing a series of air and ground strikes on populated areas of Gaza that by Monday had killed more than 100 Palestinians. Israeli Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi claimed that almost all the dead were armed; however, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem revealed that at least half of those killed were not involved in hostilities, and 25 were children. more..

How Israel Taught Hamas All It Knows
Mamoon Alabbasi, Middle East Online 3/7/2008
     Once more, as Israel continues its ruthless attacks on the Palestinian population (against both civilians and resistance fighters), mainstream media outlets direct the blame on the victims. This time the villain is none other than the democratically elected Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.
     Of course, no one is suggesting that Hamas is a movement comprised of angels that have been inspired by the words of Mother Teresa and had picked up their self-defence strategy from Ghandi. Frankly, I am not aware of any political movement that is. What is put forward, however, and has been missed by ignorant or hypocrite Israel apologists, is the fact that Hamas is least to blame in the plague that had haunted the region for over sixty years – i.e. 40 years before the resistance movement ever came into being.
     So what do some have against Hamas? Or, more accurately, why is Hamas singled out?
     Violence.
     Why doesn’t Hamas join the peace talks and end its armed resistance as a method of liberating the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel?
     Hamas has learned from Israel that, despite it being a good idea, it will not happen... more..

A defeated policy, not a defeated people
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 3/7/2008
     Compared with the international silence that surrounded Israel’s recent massacres of Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Gaza Strip, condemnation and condolences for the victims of the shooting attack that killed eight students at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem have been swift.
     "I have just spoken with [Israeli] Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert to extend my deepest condolences to the victims, their families, and to the people of Israel," US President George W. Bush said. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon added his "condemnation" and "condolences," as did EU High Representative Javier Solana.
     The day before the Jerusalem attack, Amira Abu ’Aser was buried in Gaza. She had lived just 20 days on this earth before being shot in the head by Israeli occupation forces who attacked the house of friends she and her family were visiting. Needless to say, she had not been firing rockets at Sderot when she was killed. One of the house’s inhabitants was found the next day, shot dead and his head crushed by an army jeep, an apparent victim of an extrajudicial murder by Israeli forces. more..

Massacre in Gaza
Patrick Seale, Middle East Online 3/7/2008
     Israel killed 116 Palestinians in Gaza last week in an orgy of air strikes and ground incursions, turning the besieged and starved Strip into an unbearable inferno. Hundreds more Palestinians were wounded. At least half the dead and wounded were civilians, including many young children.
     So great was the catastrophe that Egypt, under pressure from an enraged public opinion, opened the Rafah crossing into Sinai and sent 27 ambulances to shuttle scores of badly wounded Palestinians to hospital in Al Arish.
     What is to be done? The international community has expressed its usual alarm and outrage at Israel’s appalling behavior -- with protests coming from the UN Secretary General and the Pope among many others, while Saudi Arabia has compared Israel’s actions to Nazi war crimes. But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert remains defiant. No one, he declared, can teach Israel morality. more..

Australian government continues its love affair with Israel
Sonja Karkar, Electronic Intifada 3/7/2008
     So much for the new Australian government taking an even-handed position on Israel-Palestine.Before our politicians even warmed their seats in the new parliamentary sittings, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that he will lead a parliamentary motion to honor Israel on 12 March acknowledging Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day. The opposition leader will second the motion. Then, celebrations will take place at a reception in the Mural Hall of Parliament House.
     If Palestinians and their supporters had any hopes of a sympathetic hearing from the new Rudd government on the multiple human rights abuses being perpetrated by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, those hopes are now dashed.
     This year marks 60 years of Palestinian dispossession and displacement and a savage, relentless occupation that is smothering the lifeblood of the Palestinians while Israel celebrates its ill-gotten gains. Palestinians are starving in Gaza, Palestinians are being sold out in the West Bank, Palestinians are dying. Their very existence is under threat. It is as simple and as awful as that. more..

Fight fiercely for peace, for a change
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 3/8/2008
     As terrible as it is to see civilians killed in Israel and Palestine, the sharp escalation in the Palestinian-Israeli war in recent weeks has not been surprising, given the context of existential defensive warfare that both sides believe defines them and their actions. What we are seeing is yet another round in a war that has been going on for decades.
     The attack Thursday against a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem was a sharp reminder that those fighting Israel retain the capacity to strike inside its major cities. They did so in the wake of two significant recent Israeli actions: the assassination of Hizbullah special operations leader Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus; and the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip that left over 120 people dead, many of them civilians.
     It remains unclear if Israel itself killed Mughniyeh or who was responsible for the seminary attack. More significant than the perpetrators of such attacks is the reality that both sides are as willing as ever to engage in fierce, brutal warfare, with civilian casualties apparently an inconsequential or even a deliberate aspect of their work. more..

Slaughtering civilians does nothing to serve the Palestinian cause
Editorial, Daily Star 3/8/2008
     The general right of Palestinians to resist occupation is enshrined in international law, and the specific impulse to avenge the past week’s atrocities in the Gaza Strip is perfectly understandable, but those who exercise these prerogatives have a responsibility to choose targets that will not undermine their cause. Thursday night’s shooting attack on a Jewish seminary in West Jerusalem, which killed eight young civilians, did not meet that standard. Its effect will be to damage the interests of the Palestinian people, including those who, like the gunman, hold Israeli identification documents.
     There are contrary arguments, but none are very realistic. Some will argue that because military service is mandatory for virtually all Jewish citizens of Israel, all of them are legitimate targets. But this approach ignores the fact that the civilians in question were in a library, not waging war for the Jewish state. Others will point out that while yeshiva students like those who were killed on Thursday are commonly granted exemptions from conscription, they contribute heavily to the conflict by helping to drive the so-called "settler movement" which protects and expands Israel’s illegal colonization of occupied land. But killing them only causes more Israelis to acquiesce in the evil settlement project itself - and to demand that their government refuse to accept the compromises required if peace is ever to be achieved. more..

Twilight Zone / A great darkness has fallen
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 3/6/2008
     Operation Warm Winter ended without a single Israeli journalist setting foot on the Gaza side of the Erez border crossing with Israel. Even the military correspondents, who usually recount the brave acts of our forces from inside their jeeps and armored vehicles, were not taken this time to report on the raids in Jabalya and Sajiyeh. A handful of other correspondents, those who are still interested in what the Israel Defense Forces leaves behind after its campaigns of killing and destruction, stayed home. They have been holed up in their houses for over a year and a half already.
     Don’t believe the microphones you sometimes see in TV reports on Gaza, adorned with the logo of the Israeli television channels. They are meant only to deceive us. Don’t believe the meager reports in the press from Gaza that are written by Israeli correspondents. They are all done by phone, with all the limitations that involves. Not one local journalist, neither Jewish or Arab, neither Shlomi Eldar nor Suleiman al-Shafi, neither Amira Hass nor this writer, has passed through the Erez terminal since the end of November 2006. more..

Crossing the Line interviews Israeli historian Ilan Pappe
Podcast, Electronic Intifada 3/6/2008
     This week on Crossing The Line: The word "genocide" is one of the most powerful words used to describe criminal killing and destruction. It has been used to describe the Nazi holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, and Rwanda. More recently, Israeli author and historian Ilan Pappe has used this word to describe Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip. Host Naji Ali* speaks with Pappe about why he sees Israel’s ongoing occupation and killing of Palestinians in Gaza as genocide.
     As always, Crossing the Line begins with "This week in Palestine," a service provided by The International Middle East Media Center Listen Now [MP3 - 14.9 MB, 37:07 min] Crossing the Line is a weekly podcast dedicated to giving voice to the voiceless in occupied Palestine. Through investigative news, arts, eyewitness accounts, and music, Crossing the Line does its best to present the lives of people on the ground. more..

’Birthright Palestine’ Mimics Jewish World’s Flagship Program
Haviv Rettig, MIFTAH 3/6/2008
     A new Palestinian NGO is taking a page out of the Jewish educator’s handbook in its search to strengthen the connection of Palestinians overseas to their "historic homeland" and Palestinian society.
     The name of the program leaves no doubt as to its intent, or its inspiration. Birthright Palestine is described on its Web site as a "program created by native Palestinians for diaspora Palestinians."
     The program, which will begin its first session in May, is run by the newly established Palestine Center for National Strategic Studies, which says it is a "nonprofit, nongovernmental Palestinian organization" based in the Dehaishe refugee camp in Bethlehem.
     The group is not shy about its motivation. Its Web site explains: "Simply coming back to visit the land that your parents or grandparents were forced to flee from is a form of active nonviolent resistance against the illegal Israeli occupation. This is because this simple act opposes everything that the ’State of Israel’ was founded on (the idea to ethnically cleanse the Holy Land/Palestine of all Arabs, so as to create a purely Jewish state)." more..

Water, water everywhere
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 3/6/2008
     By now, Clemens Messerschmid’s friends in Ramallah and Jerusalem understand the message of his dagger-like stares when they’re caught washing dishes with the tap water flowing nonstop. Even when he is not around, they close the tap, thanks to this 43-year-old hydrogeologist from Germany.
     Messerschmid cheerfully confirms this. But this place, he says, is far from being an arid country with meager water resources, as is commonly thought. In Berlin and Paris, he notes, annual rainfall is less than in Jerusalem and Ramallah, respectively: 550 millimeters in Berlin compared to 564 millimeters in Jerusalem, based on a 150-year average (the Israel meteorological service puts the figure at 554 millimeters). Paris gets an average of 630 millimeters, while the yearly average in Ramallah, from 1975-2004, was 689.6 millimeters.
     When Palestinians say there is not enough water in the country, this is one of four Palestinian misconceptions that Messerschmid lists. When the Israelis say the same thing, it is a myth that serves a specific purpose - preserving an unjust distribution of water resources that discriminates against the Palestinians. This is one of five Israeli "water myths" on another list. more..

Daze of reckoning in Gaza
Zvi Bar'el, Ha’aretz 3/7/2008
     It took the Palestinian Authority investigative committee, headed by Tayeb Abdel Rahim, 49 sessions, 29 days and 128 hours to investigate the capture of Gaza by Hamas in June 2007. An original name was found for the committee: "The Investigative Committee on the Matter of the Failure of the Confrontation with the Illegal Armed Militias."
     This is fascinating reading material, not only for the Palestinian leadership that kept the report secret until it was leaked, and not only for Palestinian citizens. It paints a terrifying picture of military and political helplessness, internal disputes, family loyalties, a lack of talent and ability to administer military and political forces, a huge waste of money (Mohammed Dahlan received $25 million to build a trained military force, which collapsed in one moment), an absence of coordination between headquarters and the forces in the field, many cases of fear along with some demonstrations of courage, and personal and party hatred between members of Fatah themselves, not to mention toward Hamas. more..

What Israel has done for them lately
Cnaan Liphshiz, Ha’aretz 3/7/2008
     Instead of trying to explain why Israel killed 100 Palestinians in Gaza last week, the Los Angeles-based pro-Israel news site Israel21c informed Americans about a new Israeli drug which could help them lose weight. During a visit to Israel last month, Israel21c’s executive vice president, Larry Weinberg, told Anglo File this strategy of focusing on Israeli contributions to society rather than on the Middle East conflict uniquely suits the U.S. public.
     Israel21c appears to be an American success story. During its six years of existence, this online newsletter-turned-news site has placed hundreds of positive Israel-related stories in U.S. media and vastly increased its readership to around 20,000 subscribers. Last month the site upgraded its look, offering video content and a slick new design.
     But even the proud Weinberg concedes his nonprofit’s editorial strategy would probably crash and burn in Europe. "Americans don’t want to know what the Arabs and Israelis did in 1948," Weinberg says at a Yemenite restaurant in Tel Aviv. "Also, people in America don’t know anything about Israel’s contribution to medicine and technology. If you ask them about the system of government, many say they think Israel is attempting democracy." more..

Refugee stories - Letters from Gaza (7) - thinking and knowing
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in, ReliefWeb 3/2/2008
     Have you ever lived knowing this moment might be your last? Have you ever lived wondering if you will see another sunrise or the faces of your children again? Have you ever chosen not to remember the first word your child says because you know it could be her last and all you will have is the pain of that memory? Have you ever lived wondering what your son will grow up to be and what he will look like, knowing you might not have the chance to see for yourself?
     Each day in Gaza, we live with these thoughts and with this reality.
     Have you ever lived knowing you could wake up to find yourself alone, without your loved ones by your side for no other reason than because they are Palestinian? I’m preparing for the worst – for the possibility that I might lose my children and my husband or that they might lose me. The TV images are evidence that there’s no respect for humanity or for the innocence of childhood. There’s no room left for forgiveness or tolerance. All that remains is anger, enormous bitterness and a growing desire to take revenge. more..

The mega prison of Palestine
Ilan Pappe, Electronic Intifada 3/5/2008
     In several articles published by The Electronic Intifada, I claimed that Israel is pursuing a genocidal policy against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip , while continuing the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank . I asserted that the genocidal policies are a result of a lack of strategy. The argument was that since the Israeli political and military elites do not know how to deal with the Gaza Strip, they opted for a knee-jerk reaction in the form of massive killing of citizens whenever the Palestinians in the Strip dared to protest by force their strangulation and imprisonment. The end result so far is the escalation of the indiscriminate killing of Palestinians -- more than one hundred in the first days of March 2008, unfortunately validating the adjective "genocidal" I and others attached to these policies. But it was not yet a strategy.
     However, in recent weeks a clearer Israeli strategy towards the Gaza Strip’s future has emerged and it is part of the overall new thinking about the fate of the occupied territories in general. It is in essence, a refinement of the unilateralism adopted by Israel ever since the collapse of the Camp David "peace talks" in the summer of 2000. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his party Kadima, and his successor Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, delineated very clearly what unilateralism entailed: Israel would annex about 50 percent of the West Bank, not as a homogeneous chunk of it, but as the total space of the settlement blocs, the apartheid roads, the military bases and the "national park reserves" (which are no-go areas for Palestinians). This was more or less implemented in the last eight years. These purely Jewish entities cut the West Bank into 11 small cantons and sub-cantons. They are all separated from each other by this complex colonial Jewish presence. The most important part of this encroachment is the greater Jerusalem wedge that divides the West Bank into two discrete regions with no land connection for the Palestinians. more..

Has the Die been Cast?
Caelum Moffatt, MIFTAH 3/5/2008
     On January 10 49BCE, Julius Caesar led his army across the River Rubicon in defiance of the Roman Senate claiming that “the die is cast”. This bold maneuver initiated a civil war with his adversary Pompey but ultimately led to Caesar’s dictatorship over the Roman Empire.
     “The die is cast” referred to the predicament facing Caesar. Either he could succumb to the wishes of his superiors and back down, or he could fight for what he believed was right. The phrase represents a point of no return, an idea that cannot be retracted, suppressed, compromised, where one surrenders to fate and a line that once crossed, cannot be reverted back to as a feasible option.
     Israel is on the brink of this decision. more..

Israel’s only outlet is to rescue the Annapolis process
Shlomo Ben-Ami, Daily Star 3/6/2008
     The Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that began three months ago at Annapolis do not suffer from a lack of ideas about how to address the Middle East conflict’s core issues. After years of frustrated attempts to reach a settlement, and with dozens of official and back-channel peace plans at the negotiators’ disposal, there remains little room for creativity in producing an agreement.
     But the deeper problem lies elsewhere, in the poverty of the leadership, and in the fragmentation of Palestinian politics. Indeed, the only man who could have made a peace agreement based on a two-state solution legitimate in Palestinians’ eyes, Yasser Arafat, took this legitimacy with him to the grave.
     President Mahmoud Abbas was never an inspiring figure for Palestinians. With the loss of Gaza to Hamas, his political clout has been diminished even further. n fact, Abbas does not even control the militias of his own party, Fatah, which have been even more active than Hamas in staging terrorist attacks against Israel. The Palestinian Authority’s rule over the West Bank would have collapsed long ago if it were not for the Israelis’ daily incursions against Hamas and Fatah in areas under Abbas’ control. more..

Too much to expect
Moshe Arens, Ha’aretz 3/6/2008
     It was just too much to expect. That Ehud Olmert, the prime minister who brought us the disaster of the Second Lebanon War, had finally learned the lesson of that war. That he now understood that the only way to protect civilians from short-range rocket attacks is to have soldiers on the ground at the rocket-launching sites. That there is no substitute for this.
     That the "leverage" theory - which holds that the destruction of enemy infrastructure and attacks on the enemy’s civilian population will produce pressure on decision makers to cease their attacks against Israeli civilians - simply does not work in the Middle East. It did not work in Lebanon, and it certainly does not work in Gaza.
     That raising the "price tag" that the Palestinian population will have to pay after every rocket attack against Israeli towns and villages has not convinced the terrorists to abstain from further violence, and will not do so. Quite the contrary, it only increases the support that the terrorists receive from the civilian population. Cutting off fuel, cutting off electricity, preventing food from reaching them is both counterproductive and immoral. more..

Apart from the security problems
Haaretz Editorial, Ha’aretz 3/6/2008
     The security problems in the South and the Gaza Strip, and the shakiness of the relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, are drawing attention away from everyday civil issues, which also have serious implications. As in other places in the world where waste is transferred from wealthy countries to developing countries, Israel too disposes of wast scandalously, in areas of the West Bank. Every day trucks carry large quantities of building waste, including toxic substances that endanger the environment and public health, to pirate sites near Palestinian villages.
     The transfer of waste is carried out contrary to the government’s policy, but until now it has been convenient for the government to turn a blind eye and not to invest resources in dealing with the problem.
     However, this approach must be changed, since the problem of building waste, like other environmental problems, constitutes a direct threat to the health of both Palestinians and Israelis. The waste is ruining the landscape precious to all the inhabitants of this land, and is endangering the water sources on which both peoples depend. more..

Canada’s Response to Israel’s Actions in Gaza
Jim Miles, Middle East Online 3/5/2008
     Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier issued a
     news release
     expressing his concern about the escalating violence in the Gaza Strip.It does nothing to help resolve the situation and only demonstrates that the Canadian government is only putting out more face-saving rhetoric for the international community and to placate the home crowd with platitudes about the non-existent peace process.It is an empty statement, devoid of any real suggestions to improve the situation in Gaza.
     Language is all important within his statement.While he “deplores” the actions of Hamas, Israeli actions - which have resulted in far more misery and deaths – receive only the approbation that we are “very concerned about the impact” of Israeli actions.More language continues the bias.While the Hamas personnel are “terrorists” the Israelis are only defenders with a “clear right to defend itself."
     The Canadian government does not recognize, and was one of the first to deny, that Hamas won the Palestinian elections with a clear majority in elections regarded globally as being one of the fairest ever presented. more..

Britain Remains Silent to the Crimes of Israel
Stuart Littlewood, Middle East Online 3/5/2008
     The Israel lobby is now deeply embedded at the heart of British politics. Israel’s stooges keep up an endless flow of misinformation calculated to corrupt Parliament, blind MPs to the truth and bend decisions to suit the foreign regime’s interests.
     We saw it in the run-up to the Iraq war. The public were well aware of the lies but politicians in their hundreds let themselves be persuaded to vote for an illegal, unjustifiable military adventure that was bound to cost countless thousands of innocent lives and ruin our reputation abroad.
     The other day there was a House of Commons debate on settlements and closures in Palestine. Here’s the kind of nonsense those stooges expect us to swallow.
     Mrs Louise Ellman (Labour/Cooperative, Liverpool, Riverside):
     Does the Hon. Gentleman recollect that Israelis left all the settlements in Gaza? Indeed, the settlements were demolished and 8,000 settlers were removed, many forcibly, by the Israeli army... more..

No more Power to America
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 3/5/2008
     The article recently published in Vanity Fair entitled “The Gaza Bombshell” has gotten tongues wagging among the Palestinians in particular. The article, which basically accuses the United States of instigating a civil war in Gaza last June, more or less confirms what we have all suspected long ago. The Americans are up to no good.
     The Palestinians have always been extremely critical of US policy in Palestine, for very good reason. They are even more critical of those Palestinians who cater to American desires in the region, considered by some as tantamount to treason.
     The most recent bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, which claimed almost 120 Palestinian lives in the course of less than a week, is evidence that all is not well, neither in terms of the international community’s attitude towards the Palestinians nor between the Palestinians amongst themselves. The ordinary citizens, men, women, children and babies are, as always, those caught in the middle and the ones who pay the highest price. more..

The Rabbi of hate
Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank, Palestinian Information Center 3/5/2008
     "So I believe that I act in the spirit of the Almighty God. By defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."� Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1924
     "A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s  fingernail"� Dov Lior, Rabbi of Kiryat Arba
     "We will carry out a greater holocaust against the Palestinians,"� Matan Vilnai, Deputy Defense Minister, 1 March, 2008
     Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the ultra-orthodox Shas party, which represents Jews from the Middle East, has urged Jews around the world  to pray for Israeli soldiers, not only on the Jewish Sabbath, Saturday, but also on Mondays and Thursdays.
     According to the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, Yosef told his followers that Israeli soldiers need to be blessed by the Almighty for killing and maiming hundreds of Palestinians, mostly innocent civilians, in the past few days. more..

The first time I was called a self-hating Jew
Mike Marqusee, The Guardian 3/4/2008
     The first person to call me a self-hating Jew was my father. It was in the autumn of 1967. Dad was 39, a successful businessman who was also, along with my mother, active in the US civil rights and anti-war movements. I was the oldest of his five children and had already, at age 14, intoxicated by the ideals of justice and equality, begun my career as a footsoldier of the left. It was not only the first time I had been called a self-hating Jew, it was the first time the phrase, the idea, entered my consciousness, and it was a shock
     As a young man, against the family grain, my father had taken an interest in social and especially racial justice and at college was drawn to the Communist party, which is how he met my mother, who was the product of a very different strand of the New York Jewish tapestry. This was in the heyday of anti-communist hysteria, of which my parents were first victims, then accomplices. After giving a speech against the Korean war at a student conference in Prague in 1950, dad was denounced as a traitor. His passport was seized. His father told the press that if his son had said such things, he was no son of his. It was in this period, I think, that he came to rely implicitly on my mother, the girlfriend who stood by his side when his life seemed most precarious. more..

Seeking Alternatives
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 3/5/2008
     Most Palestinians, from the general public to officials, have already concluded that the current negotiations, initiated at the Annapolis conference, have very little or no chance of success. For that reason, several debates have been held and initiatives offered to find an alternative strategy for the Palestinian leadership to pursue.
     Public opinion polls show there is little faith in the ongoing peace process and that the level of optimism is declining. Prominent officials, meanwhile, have been making pessimistic public statements. The most prominent one was Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s declaration, during his last visit to Washington, that he does not expect an agreement in 2008, contrary to the express wishes of US President George W. Bush.
     The most obvious two reasons for this are the Israeli practices on the ground and domestic Israeli political constraints. Israel continues its consolidation of the occupation mainly by continuing the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, especially in and around East Jerusalem. Domestic political constraints, meanwhile, have ensured that negotiations have led to no real engagement. more..

Revealed: the US plan to start a Palestinian civil war
Report, Electronic Intifada 3/4/2008
     United States officials including President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice participated in a conspiracy to arm and train Contra-style Palestinian militias nominally loyal to the Fatah party to overthrow the democratically-elected Hamas government in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, an investigative article in the April 2008 issue of Vanity Fair has revealed. [1] The allegations of such a conspiracy, long reported by The Electronic Intifada, are corroborated in Vanity Fair with confidential US government documents, interviews with former US officials, Israeli officials and with Muhammad Dahlan, the Gaza strongman personally chosen by Bush.
     The article, by David Rose, recounts gruesome torture documented on videotape of Hamas members by the US-armed and funded militias under Dahlan’s control. Hamas had repeatedly alleged such torture as part of its justification for its move to overthrow the Dahlan militias and take full control of the interior of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. -- See also: The Gaza Bombshell, by David Rose and Who is Mohammad Dahlan? more..

Gaza’s Holocaust
Dr. Elias Akleh, MIFTAH 3/4/2008
     Holocaust is the genocidal crime against people based on their ethnicity. This genocide could be perpetrated through different means such as poison gas, guns, tanks, air raids, biological warfare, economical siege, starvation, destruction of vital natural resources, eviction into desert, and deprivation of basic vital materials among others, to produce the same result; mass deaths. For the last sixty years Palestinians have been suffering from all these methods in a deliberate programmed holocaust. The perpetrators are not Nazis, but those who claim to be survivors, and their descendents, of Nazi-caused holocaust; Zionist Jewish Israelis.
     The threat of Israeli Deputy Defense Minister, Metan Vinai, to inflict “bigger Shoah” (Holocaust) [British Telegraph 2/29] on Gaza’s Palestinians reflect the adopted policy of the Israeli government towards Palestinians.Encircled by 8 foot high cement wall on three sides and a sea filled with hostile Israeli gun boats on the fourth, Gaza, with a dense population of 1.5 million people, has become the largest concentration camp ever on this globe. Israeli army is the prison guards of this concentration camp.Controlling all borders, sea and air Israeli army controls and restricts all vital materials going into Gaza. Life in Gaza is dependent on the whims of the Israeli army guarding all crossings into Gaza. They close these crossing whenever they want for a long periods of time to starve Palestinians. UN reports had warned that the majority of Gazans live under the poverty line. To make things worse Israel had turned Gaza into a military exercise theatre for its snipers shooting children in the streets, for their special forces conducting offensive operations within civilian areas, for long range artillery practice, for tanks offensive exercises, for navy gun boats shooting exercises, and for air raid targeting. Starting Wednesday February 27th Israeli terrorist army had started their “bigger Shoah” against Gaza. more..

A conflict without any possible victor
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 3/5/2008
     The tragedy of the Palestinian people is not only that over and over again they get slaughtered by Israeli gunfire dozens at a time - militants and civilians alike - while their land is encircled, choked and colonized. It is also that they must suffer the added ignominy of listening to an increasingly bizarre American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who seems to live in another world in believing her pleas can restart peace talks, and a Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who has transcended the arena of political dysfunction to the historically pathetic and tragic.
     It is hard to imagine a worse situation than that which now defines the Palestinians of Gaza. The world does not accept their right to use military means to resist occupation, strangulation and assault - while Israel is allowed to use any means it wishes to kill hundreds at a time, as it did last week. Nor does the world accept the right of the Palestinians to democratically elect Hamas as their leadership. more..

To blame the victims for this killing spree defies both morality and sense
Seumas Milne, The Guardian 3/5/2008
     Washington’s covert attempts to overturn an election result lie behind the crisis in Gaza, as leaked papers show.
     The attempt by western politicians and media to present this week’s carnage in the Gaza Strip as a legitimate act of Israeli self-defence - or at best the latest phase of a wearisome conflict between two somehow equivalent sides - has reached Alice-in-Wonderland proportions. Since Israel’s deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, issued his chilling warning last week that Palestinians faced a "holocaust" if they continued to fire home-made rockets into Israel, the balance sheet of suffering has become ever clearer. More than 120 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces in the past week, of whom one in five were children and more than half were civilians, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. During the same period, three Israelis were killed, two of whom were soldiers taking part in the attacks.
     So what was the response of the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, to this horrific killing spree? It was to blame the "numerous civilian casualties" on the week’s "significant rise" in Palestinian rocket attacks "and the Israeli response", condemn the firing of rockets as "terrorist acts" and defend Israel’s right to self-defence "in accordance with international law". But of course it has been nothing of the kind - any more than has been Israel’s 40-year occupation of the Palestinian territories, its continued expansion of settlements or its refusal to allow the return of expelled refugees. -- See also: The Gaza Bombshell, by David Rose more..

More Forceful Action Needed
The Jordan Times, MIFTAH 3/4/2008
     It is indefensible if the UN Security Council fails to adopt an appropriate resolution on the latest Israeli violence against the Palestinians in Gaza.
     As it convenes today to consider an Arab-sponsored draft resolution condemning the Israeli attacks and calling for an immediate ceasefire, the Security Council should, for once, exercise its responsibility and prerogative, and force Israel to cease its barbaric onslaught on the Palestinians.
     So far the council appears paralysed, as usual, unable to take forceful measures to stop the Israeli attacks that have taken a heavy toll on Gazans.
     During an emergency meeting of the council, the “deeply concerned” members stopped short of adopting a formal resolution condemning the Israeli attacks, only agreeing to a statement censoring the violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
     It failed to condemn Israel for its disproportionate use of force that killed scores of Palestinians, including many children. more..

Al-Khader village protests the wall
Adri Nieuwhof and Samer Jaber, Electronic Intifada 3/3/2008
     For the last two months the residents of al-Khader have demonstrated every week against the illegal construction of the Israeli wall on their land. The demonstrations are organized by the al-Khader Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements, with the support of al-Khader institutions, residents as well as Israeli and international activists. Al-Khader’s mayor, Ramzi Salah, said last week that the wall has a devastating effect on the village, effectively annexing 90 percent of its land. Two-thirds of the residents rely for their livelihood on farming. Although the Israeli forces have responded aggressively, it has not stopped the protesters from raising their voices. Every week they send a clear message to the world that they want an end to the construction of the wall and the settlements on Palestinian land.
     The village of al-Khader is located four kilometers east of the internationally-recognized Green Line marking the boundary between Israel and the West Bank, and almost four kilometers west of the city of Bethlehem. In 2006 the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics counted 9,285 inhabitants in al-Khader and the total area within the boundaries of the village is 20,090 dunums (one dunum is 1,000 square meters). more..

Losing the Jews of Arabia
Rachel Shabi, Al Jazeera 2/24/2008
     "The war between Israelis and the Arabs made it impossible for them to stay," says the Israeli historian, Tom Segev of the almost one million Jews who had lived in Arab countries for several millennia prior to 1948.
     Jewish populations, who once were a significant and largely harmonious minority presence in countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran, migrated en masse following the establishment of Israel in 1948.
     In 1949-50, 49,000 Jews from Yemen were flown to Israel; in 1951, 120,000 Iraqi Jews did the same; by 1967, around 200,000 Jews had left Morocco – although not all of them to Israel.
     Why did they go? Some argue that the Zionist movement, at the time predominantly European, recruited those Jews to the cause of settling Israel and setting up underground movements in Arab countries with that purpose in mind. more..

Time for Turkey to step forward and play its natural regional role
Editorial, Daily Star 3/5/2008
     Several parts of the Middle East are locked in crisis, the core cause remains the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the resultant complications have pitted world and regional powers against one another. Despite myriad complications, one country deals with virtually all other players in the region but has yet to realize its potential as moderating force: Turkey, whose good relations with seemingly apposite forces was clearly demonstrated when its recent campaign against Kurdish rebels inside Iraq was supported by both Iran and Syria on one hand, and America on the other.
     Turkey is a mostly Muslim country in a mostly Muslim region, but it also has a secular and democratic government in an area where most regimes manifestly lack such pedigrees. In addition, it maintains a close relationship with Israel and has done much to earn the Jewish state’s trust. Officially, the lead sponsor in any peace process is likely to remain America, but even the tatters of Washington’s credibility as a fair broker have gone up in smoke because of its unconditional support for Israel. Having the Turks take a major supporting role could therefore do much to protect the interests of the Palestinians - as well as to gain the trust of Arabs and Muslims in a process that will be difficult under even ideal circumstances. more..

Another Mideast Peace Plan Slipping Away
International Herald Tribune, MIFTAH 3/4/2008
     For the first time, an Israeli leader and a Palestinian leader seem genuinely committed to peace. They set a deadline for a deal by year’s end.
     Yet the likelihood of achieving the two-state solution they have embraced diminishes with every rocket lobbed into Israel from Hamas-controlled Gaza and with every Israeli military strike or squeeze on civilian life in Gaza.
     The political and security situation is growing more desperate.
     Since last Wednesday, at least 100 Palestinians and three Israelis have been killed. On Sunday, the violence spilled over to the West Bank, as Palestinians there protested Israeli attacks on Gaza.
     A spokesman for the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said contacts with Israel would be temporarily suspended.
     Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has rightly decided to go forward with a visit to the region this week. If she is to salvage the U.S.-led peace talks, she must push urgently for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. And she must press key Arab states to do a lot more to support Abbas and to pressure Hamas to halt the rocket attacks. more..

Vanity Fair: Abbas, Dahlan conspired with Israel, US, to topple Hamas
Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah, Palestinian Information Center 3/4/2008
     The famous American magazine Vanity Fair has published  a meticulously-researched expose showing that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, his aide Muhammed Dahlan actively conspired with the Bush administration to topple the democratically-elected government of Hamas and engineer civil war in the occupied Palestinian territories.
     In a lengthy article in the magazine’s latest issue, Vanity Fair said it obtained "œconfidential documents"�  corroborated by sources in the US and Palestine, which lay bare a covert American operation, approved by the President Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war
     According to the magazine, the plan was for forces led by Dahlan and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. -- See also: The Gaza Bombshell, by David Rose more..

How to Become an Israeli Journalist
Yonatan Mendel, The London Review of Books, Palestine Monitor 3/3/2008
     A year ago I applied for the job of Occupied Territories correspondent at Ma’ariv, an Israeli newspaper. I speak Arabic and have taught in Palestinian schools and taken part in many joint Jewish-Palestinian projects. At my interview the boss asked how I could possibly be objective. I had spent too much time with Palestinians; I was bound to be biased in their favour. I didn’t get the job. My next interview was with Walla, Israel’s most popular website. This time I did get the job and I became Walla’s Middle East correspondent. I soon understood what Tamar Liebes, the director of the Smart Institute of Communication at the Hebrew University, meant when she said: ‘Journalists and publishers see themselves as actors within the Zionist movement, not as critical outsiders.’
     This is not to say that Israeli journalism is not professional. Corruption, social decay and dishonesty are pursued with commendable determination by newspapers, TV and radio. That Israelis heard exactly what former President Katsav did or didn’t do with his secretaries proves that the media are performing their watchdog role, even at the risk of causing national and international embarrassment. Ehud Olmert’s shady apartment deal, the business of Ariel Sharon’s mysterious Greek island, Binyamin Netanyahu’s secret love affair, Yitzhak Rabin’s secret American bank account: all of these are freely discussed by the Israeli media.
     When it comes to ‘security’ there is no such freedom. It’s ‘us’ and ‘them’, the IDF and the ‘enemy’; military discourse, which is the only discourse allowed, trumps any other possible narrative. It’s not that Israeli journalists are following orders, or a written code: just that they’d rather think well of their security forces. more..

A Dark Overcast Warm Winter
Dr. Bernard Sabella, MIFTAH 3/3/2008
     The weather here in Jerusalem and Gaza is overcast with many a dark cloud. It mirrors what is felt inside by so many Palestinians whose loved ones have been killed or injured by Israel’s army “Warm Winter” campaign against Gaza. The 110 Palestinians killed so far since Wednesday February 27th include at least ten children, the youngest a few months old, and an equal number of women. “Warm Winter” continues and it has put all of us Palestinians in a state of shock.
     Amidst the rubble of homes, devastated families and destroyed public buildings in Gaza, faith in the peace process has altogether disappeared. What is called the peace process feels so distant from the preoccupations of people in their every day pursuits. Complete control by the Israeli military of the population, the crossing points, the checkpoints, the resources, the siege on Gaza and the separation wall are all reminders that Israel does not have a peace vision but a security vision. To Palestinians what is happening in Gaza nowadays goes to prove that for Israel everything has a security/military response. The same principle applies to the entire Middle East. Political maneuvering for the sake of advancing peace prospects is undertaken by some in the Israeli body politic in order to portray Israel as a peace seeking country. If there is no Israeli military supremacy then there could be no peace. Both politicians and Israeli military believe in the same principle. Israel ’s position and predicament may be reflected accurately by Abraham Lincoln’s quote:“you can fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all the people all of the time.” more..

More Time to Transform Jerusalem
Hasan Afif El-Hasan, MIFTAH 3/3/2008
     Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated recently that the status of Jerusalem will not be negotiated with the Palestinians at this time. Right wing Israelis are against conceding any part of the Old City or any suburb of Jerusalem municipality to the Palestinians. The ultra-orthodox right wing party in Olmert government threatens to leave the governing coalition if the question of Jerusalem comes up for discussion with the Palestinians and that is why Olmert will not discuss it now. This has been the same rationale that successive Israeli governments have always cited whenever they were pressed to stop settlement expansion. And if Israel says no negotiations on the future of Jerusalem, the Palestinians cannot do anything about it.
     The Palestinians’ concession to keep Jerusalem out of the Oslo interim agreement in 1993 gave Israel the time to alter its status quo prior to any possible permanent status talks. Israel since Oslo has expanded the boundaries of the City, confiscated more Arab lands and constructed new settlements. Schemes have been devised to take over private Arab and Church properties inside and outside the Old City, and large settlements have been built on its outskirts. Some of these are Har Homa (Jabal Ghaneim), Gilo, Piscat Ze’ev, Atarot, Ramot settlement. Jewish settlers evicted Palestinian residents from their quarters in the Old City and took over St. John’s Hospice and other church and Islamic endowment (wakf) properties. The Israeli government dug Hasmonean Tunnel under al-Aqsa Mosque compound endangering the structure of the Islamic shrine. more..

Israel keeping true to its racist words
Rami Almeghari, Electronic Intifada 3/2/2008
     Following Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai’s Friday warning that the Gaza Strip faces "a holocaust" if homemade rocket fire continues, Vilnai’s aides rushed to downplay the remarks, claiming the minister did not mean a holocaust exactly.
     However, the following day, the Israeli army, through ground forces and helicopters in the sky, killed 61 Palestinians in Gaza, at least ten of them children. Since Wednesday, 26 March, Israeli occupation forces have killed at least 77 Palestinians in Gaza and injured approximately 130, including children who won’t live to see their first birthday.
     Vilnai’s racist declarations against the Palestinian people are certainly not the first from a high-ranking official in the allegedly democratic state of Israel.
     Last Thursday, 28 February, Israeli cabinet minister Meir Sheetrit said that the solution to the rocket fire would be for Israel to "hit everything that moves with weapons and ammunition." Earlier in the month, during a cabinet session Sheetrit stated that "exactly what I think the [Israeli army] should do [is] decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it." more..

Disengagement and the Frontiers of Zionism
Darryl Li, International Solidarity Movement 3/2/2008
     In mid-January, when Israel further tightened its blockade of the Gaza Strip, it hurriedly assured the world that a "œhumanitarian crisis"� would not be allowed to occur. Case in point: Days after the intensified siege prompted Hamas to breach the Gaza-Egypt border and Palestinians to pour into Egypt in search of supplies, Israel announced plans to send in thousands of animal vaccines to prevent possible outbreaks of avian flu and other epidemics due to livestock and birds entering Gaza from Egypt.[1] Medicines for human beings, on the other hand, are among the supplies that are barely trickling in to Gaza now that the border has been resealed
     More than an act of enlightened self-interest — or, more bluntly, a recognition that "œthe virus doesn"™t stop at the checkpoint"�[2] — the reported animal vaccine shipment is a clue to how Israel is reconfiguring its control over the Gaza Strip. The story of the recent restrictions, when told at all to the outside world, has been conveyed largely through statistics: 90 percent of private industries in Gaza have shut down, 80 percent of the population receives food aid, all construction sites are idle and unemployment has broken all previous records.[3]... more..

The time for worldwide boycott is now
Omar Barghouti, Electronic Intifada 3/2/2008
     On Friday, 29 February 2008, Israel’s deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatened Palestinians in Gaza with a "holocaust," telling Israeli Army Radio: "The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."
     This date will go down in history as the beginning of a new phase in the colonial conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, whereby a senior Israeli leader, a "leftist" for that matter, has publicly revealed the genocidal plans Israel is considering to implement against Palestinians under its military occupation, if they do not cease to resist its dictates. It will also mark the first time since World War II that any state has relentlessly -- and on live TV -- terrorized a civilian population with acts of slow, or low-intensity, genocide, with one of its senior government officials overtly inciting to a full-blown "holocaust," while the world stood by, watching in utter apathy, or in glee, as in the case of leading western leaders. more..

Israeli Army Vets Speak Out
Eyal Press, Middle East Online 3/2/2008
     Breaking the Silence’, a group of Israeli combat veterans who bear witness to the moral cost of the Palestinian occupation, have a touring photo and video exhibit in the United States. The exhibit captures the mundane inhumanity of a decades-long occupation - especially its subtle and horrifying effect on the occupier.
     Critics of the State of Israel are often faulted for failing to appreciate the dangers that country faces and for ignoring the burdens that those who risk their lives to defend it bear. But even Israel’s staunchest backers would likely hesitate before leveling these charges at the men and women whose photographs and video testimonials were recently on display at The Rotunda, an arts center on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The exhibit, which on March 1 will open at the Harvard University Hillel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, catalogs the daily routine of life in the West Bank city of Hebron, as seen through the eyes of Israeli soldiers who’ve been dispatched to serve in an occupation now in its forty-first year. more..

An Interview with Ali Jarbawi - Israel will not Succeed in Imposing a Settlement
Bitterlemons, MIFTAH 3/3/2008
     bitterlemons: The Palestinian Authority has trumpeted its achievement in imposing law and order in Nablus and convincing people to lay down their arms. Do you think this is a significant achievement?
     Jarbawi: It is a significant domestic achievement for the Palestinians and for their own security and stability. The Israelis have tried hard to turn the West Bank into cantons, divided from each other. The plan was to sever each canton and let it control itself. What was happening in Nablus represented a success for this Israeli plan and its objective to erode any central Palestinian authority.
     Having the Palestinian police deployed in Nablus and calm on the streets, shows that the central authority in the West Bank is in control. It also shows that the West Bank is an integral territory and the Israeli policy of trying to carve it into cantons, in spite of the roadblocks and obstacles, is not working. If the PA is allowed, it can function and function successfully. more..

For God’s sake, Dissolve the Palestinian Authority now
Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem, Palestinian Information Center 3/3/2008
     As Zionist Jewish supremacists continue to emulate their Nazi mentors, by carrying out pornographic mass killings of stateless and helpless Palestinians, the so-called Palestinian "national"� Authority (PA) is still basking in its impotence and morbid illusions about "peace talks"� with Israel.
     This is   despite the present Israeli blitzkrieg in the Gaza Strip and the equally murderous  policy of narrowing Palestinian horizons in the West Bank where we are told ad nauseam  by a scandalously mendacious western media that "Abbas is in control".
     On Saturday, 1 March, the PA leader himself  rightly called  Israel’s hideous  crimes in Gaza  " virtual holocaust"� and "œNazi-like atrocities."�  He has also ordered the suspension of  "peace talks"� with Israel until the "aggression is over".
     Well, does Abbas really  think that after the aggression is over, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak and the rest of Judeo-Nazi elite would  suddenly and  miraculously be  transformed into doves of peace? more..

Colonial realities
Nimer Sultany, Electronic Intifada 3/3/2008
     Once again Israel defies an impotent international community which offers nothing but timid calls for ceasefire on "both sides." And once again Palestinian suffering and death tolls continue to break records in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967.
     Perhaps it is easy to dismiss this suffering by blaming the victims and resorting to ready cliches. Indeed, Israeli propagandists go out of their way to repeat the sound bite: we withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and since then the Palestinians have been firing rockets on our southern towns. This sound bite might fly in the western media; after all it resonates with a simplistic world view that ignites stereotypes which have been in the making for centuries, producing demonic and degrading representations of Muslims and Arabs. It becomes easy to describe the Palestinians in this context as the carriers of incomprehensible and irrational rage. This kind of representation has intensified since September 2001 with the "rediscovery" of Israel, and its supreme court, as a western lighthouse amid the darkness of the Middle East. more..

Israeli Missiles Silence Baby’s Laughter in Gaza
Sami Abu Salem, MIFTAH 3/3/2008
     The innocent laughter of six-month-old baby Mohammed al-Bor’i stopped forever on Wednesday night when shrapnel from an Israeli missile and rubble struck the infant in the head, minutes after he enjoyed his last meal.
     "The baby sucked milk, he was playing with his mother; I was reading a book when a rocket hit the Ministry of Interior," said Nasser al-Bor’i, the baby’s father.
     With the first missile, the electricity was cut and darkness filled the ill-fated house. Stones and pieces of the asbestos ceiling fell onto the head of the laughing child. The explosions continued as two other missiles hit the building.
     "I looked for my baby in the darkness between the rubble; I did not know where he was. When he cried once I followed the direction of his voice," Nasser al-Bor’i said. "My hands touched my baby who was breathing hard; I felt warm liquid on my two hands and realized that he was wounded." more..

Not about rockets
Fares Akram, Ha’aretz 3/3/2008
     I started to become convinced that the current Israeli army operation in Gaza Strip is not aimed primarily at lessening the barrages of homemade rockets that the armed Palestinian groups fire into southern Israel and the Western Negev. Yet, the offensive seems to be part of many previous incursions and airstrikes, which so far have failed to repress Palestinian rocket squads.
     On Wednesday morning, the Israeli air force assassinated five members of Hamas? military wing in the southern Gaza Strip. Their van had been heading away from the border area, where most of the rocket attacks take place. During the past week, Hamas and Islamic Jihad - the two Islamist groups with the most advanced rockets - had not taken credit for any rocket attacks.
     When the five Hamas fighters were killed, Israel should have known that this incident would provoke Hamas into resuming its rocket attacks against Israel. The same was expected of Islamic Jihad, which was waiting to go back to the rocket attacks after ceasing them unwillingly. more..

The Gaza genocide
Laila El-Haddad writing from the US, Electronic Intifada 3/2/2008
     We celebrated Yousuf’s fourth birthday today. We ate cake. And we counted the bodies. We sang happy birthday. And my mother sobbed. We watched the fighter jets roar voraciously on our television screen, pounding street after street, then heard a train screech outside, and shuddered. Yousuf tore open his presents, and asked my mother to make a paper zanana, a drone, for him with origami; we were torn open from the inside, engulfed by a feeling of impotence and helplessness, fear and anger and grief, despondence and confusion.
     "We are dying like chickens" said my husband Yassine last night as we contemplated the media’s coverage of the events of the past few days.
     Even The Guardian (UK), in a newswire-based piece, mentioned the Palestinian dead, including the children, in the fourth to last paragraph.
     In fact, a study by If Americans Knew found that the Associated Press Newswire (AP) coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict significantly distorts reality, essentially over-reporting the number of Israelis killed in the conflict and underreporting the number of Palestinians killed. The study found that AP reported on Israeli children’s deaths more often than the deaths occurred, but failed to cover 85 percent of Palestinian children killed. A few years ago, they found that The New York Times was seven times more likely to comment on an Israeli child’s death than that of a Palestinian. more..

Letter from Gaza: Sorry, Amjad, that we could do nothing to help you
Amjad Al Shawa, Director of the Palestinian Network of NGOs, Palestine Monitor 3/2/2008
     Dear friends all over the world,
     I’m calling on you in this moment while the Gaza Strip where I’m living is under attack by the Israeli occupation forces. They are showing no mercy; killing children, our beautiful youth and women. Sixty Palestinians were killed since Wednesday, the youngest of whom was six months old. Tens have been injured.
     One of the people killed by an Israeli air strike was one of the PNGO staff in Gaza. Amjad Almrety was 26 years old. That young man was smiling all of the time, and was energetic and looking for the future with big dreams. There are no words to express our sad feelings towards our loss of Amjad, and of course the loss of all of the others
     Sorry, Amjad, that we could do nothing to help you. Our hands are cuffed with nothing to do except just carrying some hope that people who hold the value of justice will act to end the Israeli genocidal crimes against our people.
     This morning another three children were killed while they were in their beds. What kind of crime did they commit, what kind of guilt did they possess, to be killed in such a way? more..

Ma’an’s Editor in Chief - Israeli home front showing signs of rejecting leaders’ belligerent tactics
Ma'an's Editor-in-Chief, Nasser Laham, Ma’an News Agency 3/2/2008
     After five days of tacit support for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Ehud Barak’s new war in the Gaza Strip the Israeli home front is beginning to show signs that they are against their leaders’ belligerent tactics.
     The Israeli home front will not wait for Olmert like they did in the July 2006 war in Lebanon. Nor will they wait until Palestinian rockets hit Ashkelon.
     I believe that the Israeli public "revolution" against Olmert’s government started last Tuesday when Israelis staged demonstrations in Sderot and Ashkelon that spread to Tel Aviv. Israeli television broadcast the demonstration and the Hebrew newspapers published pictures of Jewish children, cowering under the threat of missile attack.
     Conjuring up reminders of Hitler’s persecution of the Jewish people, the image of a Jewish child crying in fear is too much for the Israeli public to take. When confronted with such images the Israeli home front will agree to any war. more..

Good Morning, Hamas
Uri Avnery, Middle East Online 3/2/2008
     We Israelis live in a world of ghosts and monsters. We do not conduct a war against living persons and real organizations, but against devils and demons which are out to destroy us. It is a war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, between absolute good and absolute evil. That’s how it looks to us, and that’s how it looks to the other side, too.
     Let’s try to bring this war down from virtual spheres to the solid ground of reality. There can be no reasonable policy, nor even rational discussion, if we do not escape from the realm of horrors and nightmares.
     After the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections, Gush Shalom said that we must speak with them. Here are some of the questions that were showered on me from all sides:
     Do you like Hamas?
     Not at all. I have very strong secular convictionI. I oppose any ideology that mixes politics with religion - whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, in Israel, the Arab world or America. more..

Kosovo and Palestine: Why Different Standards?
Walid Awad, MIFTAH 3/1/2008
     In July 2000, President Clinton, at the insistence of Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak, invited President Arafat and Barak to Camp David. In less than two weeks of intensive negotiations, Clinton expected Arafat and Barak to arrive at a solution to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Incomplete progress was achieved at Camp David, but an agreement was not.
     Follow-up negotiations resumed in the months ahead, and by January 2001 an agreement was reached, but as far as Clinton and Barak were concerned, it was too late. Clinton evacuated the White House, and Barak lost the elections in Israel. Ariel Sharon, who worked relentlessly to sabotage all peacemaking efforts between Israel and the PLO after Oslo, assumed office in Israel and the intifada against the Israeli occupation intensified. Much blood has been spilled since then, but two more nonofficial “peace” agreements between Israelis and Palestinians were worked out — the Geneva agreement between Yaser Abed Rabbo and Yossi Beilin, and another one between Sari Nussiebeh, currently head of Al-Quds University, and Ami Ayalon, a minister in the current Israeli government. Outlines, frameworks, and parameters, call them what you wish, for solving the conflict were reached between the sides after Oslo, but never formally or officially adopted or signed. more..

Salata Baladi or Afrangi?
Joseph Massad, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/28/2008
     Nadia Kamel’s documentary on the Jews of Egypt, to be screened this week in Cairo, has won many international awards.
     While Zionism’s atrocities against the Palestinian people have not stopped for the last century, Israel’s atrocities against other Arabs in the last sixty years have remained consistent, albeit intermittent. This not only includes Israel’s bombings and killings of Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, Tunisians, Egyptians, and Libyans, but also its terrorism against Arab Jews, specifically Iraqi Jews whose exodus to Israel it brought about in the early 1950s after a series of bombings in Baghdad, and the tragedy it caused to Egyptian Jews, to say nothing of Yemeni and Moroccan Jews whose lives Zionism successfully interrupted and transformed. While Zionism’s activities in Egypt among Egyptian Jews bore little fruit before or after World War II, Zionism’s insistence that it speaks and acts in the name of all Jews have put Jewish communities inside and outside Palestine in a precarious position.
     The situation would become more dangerous after the establishment of Israel in 1948. However, it was not until the uncovering of the Israeli espionage ring that committed terrorist acts in Egypt in 1954 (known as the Lavon Affair) and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Egypt in 1956 that Israel would make the lives of Egyptian Jews unlivable and their continuation as a community virtually impossible. This is not to say that Arab nationalism was not guilty of accepting Zionism’s and Israel’s false claims that they spoke for all Jews, including for Arab Jews, or that the Egyptian government at the time could not have done more to protect Egyptian Jews from popular anger and from the harassment of its own agencies, it is rather to emphasise that the sizeable portion of the responsibility for the tragic departure of Egyptian Jews between 1954 and 1957 (which is when the vast majority of them left) should be laid down on the doorstep of Israel more..

What are the Americans saying, and to whom are they saying it?
Editorial, Daily Star 3/3/2008
     The deployment of the USS Cole and two other warships to waters near Lebanon is just the latest in a long line of misguided moves by US President George W. Bush. Given the painful history associated with US naval shelling of Lebanon - and the attacks on American targets which that shelling helped to make inevitable - sending ships now can only undermine the stability that Washington claims to support. And the manner in which the move was made public, by an unidentified official who offered only a vague explanation of its purpose, has served only to intensify suspicions.
     The movements of US naval assets in this part of the world are not a secret for very long: Several players - including the Egyptians, the Israelis, the Syrians and even the Russians - employ a variety of means to keep tabs on the superpower as it keeps tabs on them and other actors. What makes this deployment different - and highly provocative - is that the Americans made a point of announcing it in the way they did. They apparently intended to "send a message," but no one knows what it contains or who the recipient should be. This can only cause several state and non-state powers to assume the worst about US intentions and prepare themselves accordingly. more..

’Restraint’ is deceitful, and ’forbearance’ is vain
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 3/3/2008
     Even yesterday evening, after the IDF already had killed about 50 Palestinians, at least half of them unarmed, and including quite a number of women and children, Jerusalem continued to claim, "At present there will be no major ground operation." It’s incredible: The IDF penetrates the heart of a crowded refugee camp, kills in a terrifyingly wholesale manner, with horrible bloodshed, and Israel continues to disseminate the lie of restraint. Two days earlier Israel killed more Palestinians than have been killed by all the Qassams over the past seven years. Among the dead were four children and an infant. The next day Israel killed another five boys. And who is the victim? Israel. And who is cruel? The Palestinians.
     This victimhood is not new, nor is our self-deception. The current lie: ’restraint.’ Israel is demonstrating ’restraint’ in the face of the Qassams; this assertion continues to spur the commentators and security experts to urge it to embark on the anticipated ’major operation.’ But this operation began long ago. It reached its peak yesterday. more..

Laughable but real
Jonathan Cook, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/28/2008
     The fate of one college professor who refuses to celebrate militarism epitomises the fanaticism at the heart of Israeli academia, writes in Nazareth An Israeli college is threatening to dismiss a prominent Arab filmmaker from his position as lecturer in its film school unless he declares his "respect for the uniform of the Israeli army". The bizarre demand has been made of Nizar Hassan, director of several award-winning films, after he criticised a Jewish student who arrived in class wearing his uniform and carrying a gun.
     The incident sheds light on the veneration afforded to the military in Israel as well as a less remarked phenomenon: the close, verging on incestuous, ties between the army and Israeli academia.
     Meanwhile, for many of Israel’s 1.2 million Palestinian citizens, who make up nearly a fifth of the country’s population, Hassan’s treatment confirms fears that decades of discrimination, especially in higher education, are far from over. Hassan has faced a storm of criticism, including claims that he is anti-Semitic, since the Israeli media mistakenly reported in November that he had thrown one of his students, Eyal Cohen, out of class over the way he was dressed. Hassan and most of the students present say Cohen was simply warned not to attend class in future wearing his uniform. more..

Gaza abandoned
Serene Assir, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/28/2008
     With Egypt hosting separate talks with Hamas and Palestinian Authority (PA) representatives over the course of the past week, the possibility of Cairo defying the renewed siege of Gaza by unilaterally lifting it was confirmed non-existent at this stage. With the Hamas delegation warned in talks in the border city Arish not to repeat the border breach Hamas’s armed wing committed late last month, and PA President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) welcomed in Cairo by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and Egyptian General Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s growing intent on sidelining Hamas contrasted dramatically with its heightened rapprochement with Fatah and the PA.
     Cairo’s stance follows from a media campaign which according to observers was orchestrated by the Egyptian authorities, and was most apparent in state-run newspapers, which depicted last month’s border breach as an attempt by the Palestinians to "invade" Egypt, apparently at the same time as an Israeli-machinated plan to expel Gaza’s population into the Sinai permanently. more..

The very last moment
Yossi Sarid, Ha’aretz 3/3/2008
     A moment before the conflagration breaks out, standing on the edge of an abyss from which those who fall do not return, the call comes: Stop! Will the government have the courage to stop before calamity hits?
     Those who sowed this wind of ongoing, not-necessarily-targeted strikes, of locking the gates and suffocating Gaza on all sides, are now reaping the whirlwind. A cabinet meeting no longer need be called today to decide, nor an inner-cabinet meeting Wednesday. The extensive ground operation is already rolling, so it can be told in the streets of Ashkelon. It has already exacted a heavy price on both sides.
     The decision on war was made without realizing it, and the cabinet still does not know that this was the decision, exactly as happened in the summer of 2006. This war, too, will end in bitter disappointment. The losses on the Palestinian side, mostly innocent civilians, will only increase solidarity and the willingness to sacrifice. Hamas rule will not be weakened; it certainly will not fall. The same is true for its status in the West Bank. more..

Israel kills some more children
Mohammed Omer, Electronic Intifada 3/1/2008
     GAZA CITY, 1 March (IPS) - Tamer was nine, and no child soldier. He did not live in the area from where homemade rockets are launched into Israeli territory. The day he was killed, he was at least two kilometers from the place Israeli troops had entered Gaza, and met with return fire by Palestinian resistance.
     His tragedy was that the family home was near Deir al-Balah in the middle of the Gaza Strip, close to the area the Israelis have set up as their Kussfim base.
     "We were all inside the house when shooting started," Tamer’s aunt Etaf tells IPS. "It was right after members of the Palestinian resistance stopped shooting at Israeli troops," she said, pointing towards the scene of those clashes a couple of kilometers away. But the Israelis marched into this area as well, hardly for the first time.
     Members of the family decided to crawl out into the rain after a bullet hit a gas cylinder, Etaf said. "But Israeli soldiers continued to fire on us from a tank and Hummer military jeep." After some time, seeing that the gas cylinder had not exploded, Etaf said she crawled back into the house. Tamer followed, but never made it. "I saw Tamer shot, with a bullet in his head." more..

Israel’s Holocaust against Gaza
Khalid Amayreh, Middle East Online 2/29/2008
     In June, 1942, in reprisal for the assassination of the Nazi commander Reinhard Heydrich, the Germans carried out a murderous rampage of murder and terror throughout Czechoslovakia. The small Czech village of Lidice bore the brunt of the German revenge, with the SS killing all the men, deported all women and children and razed the village to the ground.
     Similarly, in March 1944, thirty-three German soldiers were killed when members of an Italian resistance group set off a bomb close to a column of German troops who were marching on via Rasella in Rome. Adolph Hitler got furious and ordered that within 24 hours, ten Italians were to be shot for each German soldier that had been killed. Herbert Kappler, the local German commander, quickly compiled a list of 320 civilians who were to be assassinated as vengeance. On March 24, the victims were transported to the Ardeatine caves where they were summarily executed by the SS. more..

Third Intifada in sight
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/28/2008
     With political negotiations going nowhere, Hamas is preparing to unleash mass popular action to end the Gaza siege and reconfigure the strategic balance with Israel
     It is sometimes difficult for Ghazi Hamad, former spokesperson of the dismissed Ismail Haniyeh government, to recall all the international parties that have taken an interest in mediating between Palestinian factions -- and also between Hamas and Israel -- in order to reach an agreement resulting in a ceasefire and a lifting of the siege on Gaza. The Norwegians, Germans, British, Turks and South Africans, in addition to traditional Arab parties, are all enthusiastic about landing such an agreement, though Egypt seems the most committed. This level of interest, however, has not yet succeeded in breaking the political deadlock or mitigating the humanitarian disaster created by Israel.
     The Hamas movement conveyed its vision of a comprehensive agreement to several foreign diplomats so that they could convey this vision to Israel. Yet all indicators show that Israel has not exhibited any enthusiasm for treating this vision in a positive manner," Hamad told Al-Ahram Weekly. Undeterred, Hamas is intensifying its initiative efforts in order to embarrass Israel and is exposing it as a party intent on maintaining tension. At the same time, protest activity within the movement against the siege is growing, climaxing recently in the organisation of a global day for breaking the siege observed in 90 countries and the organisation of the world’s longest human chain, at 40 kilometres long, stretching from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip. more..

Nearly 70 Palestinians Dead as ’Shoah’ Imminent
MIFTAH, MIFTAH 3/1/2008
     The Associated Press reported on the morning of March 1 that 66 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip since February 27. The four day assault has proved one of the bloodiest acts of Israeli violence since Hamas seized the Gaza Strip almost nine months ago. Different agencies disagree over the exact number of Palestinians who have perished in the last four days as the identities and fatalities are still being collected from the devastation and debris caused by the Israeli attacks.
     The precise number may be disputed but does not distract from the fact that almost 70 Palestinians have been killed with almost half of that number comprised of innocent civilians. One day into the attacks on February 28, Israeli based Human Rights organization B’Tselem released figures documenting that the 11 killed on the eve of this week’s demonstrations of Israeli aggression had brought the total number of Palestinians killed during January and February to 146. 132 of this number, according to B’Tselem, have been killed in the Gaza Strip while the remaining 14 have occurred in the West Bank. Forty-two of the deceased have perished while not participating in fighting and the final figure also consists of 11 minors. Alternatively, Palestinians were responsible for killing two Israelis in the same time frame... more..

The Israeli Intransigence
Randa Takieddine, MIFTAH 3/1/2008
     Every time the Israeli army or its leadership loses a certain battle, it treats its investigation into the causes behind this fiasco as some form of repentance. Many reports and investigations followed the war on Lebanon in 2006 as well as the horrible massacres in Qana and before that Sabra and Shatilla. But nothing really changed in the perspective of an Israeli leadership that fails to see that its policies will backfire and haunt its fate in the future.
     The current siege imposed by the Israeli authorities on Gaza under the pretext that the Strip is controlled by Hamas is evidence of the Israeli blindness to their future. Forcing the Gaza Strip to suffer inhuman conditions and preventing United Nations staff from entering are nothing new and are not just associated with Hamas. Israel’s policy and its use of Hamas as an excuse is unacceptable, especially as it has been besieging Gaza and the Palestinian territories for decades. Gaza too has been suffering miserable human conditions for decades. Israel simply turns a deaf ear to the advice coming from the international community. The siege, the security wall, and the continued settlements are all policies that reinforce Hamas and its position amidst the Palestinian people, while at the same time weakening the moderate leadership represented by President Mahmoud Abbas and his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. more..

Economy under Occupation
Report 'Diakonia-Aida International Humanitarian Law Forum on The Economy and, Palestine Monitor 3/1/2008
     The Israeli Occupation of Palestine is noticeable in a whole range of aspects. People’s lives are being affected by the Occupation on a direct and daily basis. Being divided by walls and fences, humiliated and harassed at checkpoints, bereft of jobs, income and freedom to move, it’s impossible to deny the devastating effect that the Occupation exerts on the life of the Palestinian people. Less visible however, is the effect of the Occupation on the Economy, and the other way round. Economy and Occupation are strongly interwoven, but often the connection remains unclear for people trying to study or fight the Occupation. One must realise the relevance of economic arguments, policies and practices when it comes to defending human rights, assisting in development issues or fighting the Occupation in any other way.
     This idea was the main motivation for DIAKONIA and AIDA to organise a conference in order to raise consciousness on this topic within the Civil Society Organisations. The ‘International Humanitarian Law Forum on Economy and Occupation’ took place in Al Quds University (Abu Dis, oPT) on Monday February 25, and consisted of a series of 5 lectures, all addressing separate topics within the main theme of Economy and Occupation. The organisers believed that this issue is urgent, as many economic arrangements are now being put in place that may be irreversible, and have great impact on the Palestinian negotiation position and the ability of the Palestinian people to participate in choosing the economic system and arrangements they might want for their future state. They consider that few of the people active in the NGO-world know and think enough about these issues, how they relate to their work, and how they can be integrated in their advocacy strategies. more..

Saving the Palestinian sinking boat
Lamis Andoni, Al Jazeera 3/1/2008
     Israel’s military assault on Gaza appears to ignore the desire of most of the Israeli people to see talks opened with the territory’s Hamas leadership.
     But rather than exposing a conflict in Israeli attitudes, it actually reveals two sides of a calculated perennial method of manipulating the leaders of the Palestinian people.
     The Israeli establishment’s purpose is to ensure that whichever group leads the Palestinians – Hamas, Fatah or any other group or coalition – it will protect Israel by containing Palestinian resistance, while Israel is free to continue its systematic violence aimed at crushing opposition to its power over the territory.
     The support of the Israeli public for talks with Hamas follows the same logic, that Israel should talk to the party that can control the Palestinian population and the Palestinian resistance. more..

An Explosive, Dangerous Balance
Meron Benvenisti, MIFTAH 3/1/2008
     It is hard to say who was responsible for fueling the recent uproar over warnings that Palestinian protesters would try to break through the borders and checkpoints of the Gaza Strip. Was it the defense establishment, or perhaps the media? In any case, the hysteria-mongers succeeded all too well, for the mountain became a molehill. The artillery batteries and thousands of Israeli soldiers who stood before a few thousand Palestinian children turned the Israeli response into a fiasco.
     Of course, it was impossible to admit afterward that the defense minister and military chiefs had panicked. They spent hours debating how to thwart the danger of a Palestinian march and what would be the appropriate response if the marchers broke through the fence, which apparently they never planned to do. Predictably, army officials claimed later that the massive military preparations prevented the Palestinians from attempting such a clash. The Palestinians, meanwhile, boasted that a mere false warning was enough to exhaust the Israeli army. more..

Academic freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel
Jonathan Cook, Middle East Online 2/29/2008
     In the strange world of Israeli academia, an Arab college lecturer is being dismissed from his job because he refused to declare his “respect for the uniform of the Israeli army”. The bizarre demand was made of Nizar Hassan, director of several award-winning films, after he criticised a Jewish student who arrived in his film studies class at Sapir College in the Negev for wearing his uniform and carrying a gun.
     The incident raises disturbing questions about the freedom of Israeli academics, sheds light on the veneration of the military in Israeli public life, and exposes the close, verging on incestuous, ties between the army and Israeli academia.
     Meanwhile, for many of Israel’s 1.2 million Palestinian citizens, who are nearly a fifth of the country’s population, Hassan’s treatment confirms their fears that decades of discrimination, especially in higher education, are far from over. more..

Horror and shame
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/28/2008
     The torturing to death of a Palestinian Islamist by Palestinian Authority intelligence sends out shockwaves of revulsion while the occupation continues to attack Palestinian society
     The popular standing of the Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, suffered a serious moral setback this week when agents of the Palestinian mukhabarat, or general intelligence, allegedly tortured an Islamist detainee to death.
     Majd Al-Barghouti, 44 and a father of eight, was reportedly abducted from the local mosque in the village of Kobar near Ramallah two weeks ago for interrogation pertaining to a firearm the mukhabarat alleged he possessed and was hiding.
     According to prison inmates, who were being detained in a neighbouring chamber at the mukhabarat headquarters in Ramallah, Barghouti was subjected for eight successive days to severe bodily torture
     quot;We heard him screaming day and night. His screams were heart-rending, but we could do nothing to help him," said one detainee who was released following Barghouti’s death. more..

Walking towards oblivion
Ramzy Baroud, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/28/2008
     Mahmoud Abbas is on a losing path, plain and simple
     Time is running out for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Although both men are still committed to their risky venture of marginalising Hamas at any cost, the latter’s obduracy and recent events in Gaza point to the inescapable conclusion that the undertaking was doomed from the beginning.
     For Olmert the issue of demographics remains key. He told the Israeli daily Haaretz in an interview published in November 2007 that if it didn’t agree to an independent Palestinian state, Israel would "face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, and as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished". The apartheid analogy is of course not new. Leading South Africans themselves were the first to make the comparison, and Israel’s history of aiding and abetting infamous apartheid South African governments is no secret either. more..

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