Witness to Israel’s war crimes
Leah Linder Siegel, Socilaist Worker 3/27/2009 James Leas is a lawyer and longtime activist in Burlington, Vt. He works with Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine-Israel, and he recently traveled to Gaza with a National Lawyers Guild (NLG) delegation to investigate the impact of Israel’s 22-day offensive against Gaza. He spoke with Leah Linder Siegel about what he witnessed there. DID YOUR observations and experiences on the ground in Gaza confirm that Israel committed war crimes during its attack? WE SAW an enormous amount--with our own eyes. We saw the aftermath of the war, but there were a few bombs that went off during the time we were there, because Israel was bombing the tunnels. When we were crossing into Gaza from Egypt, we heard an explosion. Most of what we actually saw was the destruction of buildings and rubble--in residential areas as well as government buildings and humanitarian supplies. We also saw the aftermath of the bombing of the UN compound, where we saw residue of white phosphorous [weapons] on the floor. These buildings had been gutted--they had been destroyed by fire. We saw the rubble of schools and medical facilities that had been attacked. We saw a number of ambulances and United Nations vehicles that had been destroyed. We also interviewed people who had been victims or whose families had been victims of attacks. In one neighborhood, where many of the houses included people from the same extended family, we interviewed a woman whose two daughters had been killed and whose two sons and husband were wounded severely... more..e-mail
Palestinians remember Land Day
Jonathan Cook writing from Arrabeh, Electronic Intifada 3/30/2009
Palestinians across the Middle East were due to commemorate Land Day today, marking the anniversary of clashes in 1976 in which six unarmed Palestinians were shot dead by the Israeli army as it tried to break up a general strike.
Although Land Day is one of the most important anniversaries in the Palestinian calendar, sometimes referred to as the Palestinians’ national day, the historical event it marks is little spoken of and rarely studied.
"Maybe its significance is surprising given the magnitude of other events in Palestinian history," said Hatim Kanaaneh, 71, a doctor, who witnessed the military invasion of his village.
"But what makes Land Day resonate with Palestinians everywhere is that it was the first time Palestinians inside Israel stood together and successfully resisted Israel’s goal of confiscating their land."
The confrontation took place between the army and a group usually referred to as "Israeli Arabs," the small minority of Palestinians who managed to remain in their homes during the 1948 war that led to the founding of Israel. Today they number 1.2 million, or nearly one-fifth of Israel’s population. more..e-mail
Pressure, Self-Censorship, and The Israel Lobby
Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine -- CJPIP, ZNet 12/7/2007
When the Chicago Council on Global Affairs cancelled a scheduled talk by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt on the topic of their new book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, the Council was accused of capitulating to pressure from The Israel Lobby itself. The Council’s President Marshall Bouton denied that the action was due to external pressure, or even that a cancellation had, in fact, happened. Bouton says a Council event with Mearsheimer and Walt will occur at a date in the future, but that the authors will be joined in a panel format by other speakers with contrasting views. The Chicago Council on Global Relations is not the first institution to experience the force of controversy generated by criticism of Israeli policy and the U.S. government’s long-standing support of it. Nor is the Council alone in trying to calculate how to maneuver around the heated controversy that these topics generate. Less than two months after the cancellation of Mearsheimer and Walt’s talk at the Chicago Council, administrators at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, cancelled a scheduled talk by the Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The cancellation came, university administrators explained, because some past statements by Tutu about Israeli policy were "hurtful to some members of the Jewish community." Julie Swiler, an employee of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, was consulted by university administrators, along with a few rabbis teaching within St. Thomas’ Center for Jewish-Christian Learning. Swiler explained, "I think there’s a consensus in the Jewish community that [Tutu’s] words were offensive."(1) -- See also: Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestinemore..e-mail
Defending Zionism: Defending the Indefensible
Stephen Lendman – Chicago, Palestine Chronicle 3/30/2009
Pearl (second from right): anti-Zionism ’hate more dangerous than anti-Semitism.’ This article responds to a March 15 Los Angeles Times Judea Pearl one headlined: "Is anti-Zionism hate?" Pearl teaches computer science at UCLA, is the father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation. It was "formed....to continue Danny’s mission and to address the root causes of this tragedy in the spirit" of the man it represents, including "uncompromised objectivity and integrity....and respect for people of all cultures...." Pearl calls anti-Zionism "hate more dangerous than anti-Semitism, threatening lives and peace in the Middle East." Zionism is precisely the opposite as numerous Jewish writers, including this one, have addressed. In his book "Overcoming Zionism," Joel Kovel explained how it fosters "imperialist expansion and militarism (with) signs of the fascist malignancy;" that it turned Israel "into a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses" led by terrorists posing as democrats. Kovel’s book and his work got him fired from the Bard College faculty effective July 1 when his current contract expires - for daring to criticize Israel, its Zionist ideology, state-sponsored terror, and decades of lawlessness and egregious behavior. more..e-mail
BMW garage among the targets of Israel’s attacks
Report, PCHR, Electronic Intifada 3/30/2009
Nasser al-Amoudi, with his biker’s jacket and sunglasses, embodies the essence of a car enthusiast. For years he has been the proud owner of the only BMW spare parts shop in the Gaza Strip. People would travel from every corner to purchase second hand parts from his shop. Now Nasser’s workshop and garage, which were worth $300,000 before the Israeli army destroyed them during its latest offensive, lie in tatters, and his financial security has gone.
Al-Amoudi BMW Spare Parts is situated on a main street running through the Salateen area of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza. This area was one of the worst affected during Israel’s ground offensive -- hundreds of houses and greenhouses were completely destroyed in Salateen, thousands of trees were uprooted, and there are still 100 families living in a tent camp just a few meters away. This predominantly fishing community has sustained many Israeli incursions over the years but the scars of the latest one are all pervasive and have made the area almost unrecognizable to its residents. Even the cemetery with its cracked gravestones and deep tank tracks, was not spared. more..e-mail
Israel may have deliberately attacked sewage infrastructure
Marian Houk, Electronic Intifada 3/31/2009
During Israel’s invasion of Gaza, it was predicted that the heavy bombing and shelling across the territory could breach the earthen walls of the sewage collection ponds there and cause a large, potentially catastrophic, sewage overflow. These fears arose from recent experience. In March 2007, six people drowned in a sudden flood of wastewater when the earthen retaining walls at a sewage lagoon, weakened by neglect and heavy rains, collapsed in the northern Gaza hamlet of Umm Nasr, near Beit Lahiya.
During the Israeli attack in January, there was a breach in one of the earthen embankment walls of a sewage containment lagoon in Gaza due to some form of Israeli military activity resulting in a large sewage flood.
Although the incident was only reported recently, it was evident from a United Nations analysis of QuickBird satellite images taken from space on 16 January, and confirmed by photos taken by a UN Environmental Program team on the ground in Gaza on 30 January , was an outflow from a sewage lagoon in Sheikh Ejleen, next to the main wastewater treatment plant in Gaza City. more..e-mail
New York kicks off boycott campaign against Motorola
Press Release, NYCBI, Electronic Intifada 3/31/2009
More than 50 New Yorkers protested outside the Motorola office in downtown Brooklyn this morning. The protest launched a new city-wide campaign to boycott Motorola over the company’s complicity in the Israeli government’s apartheid practices against Palestinians. In a heavy wind, human rights campaigners from the newly formed group The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel (NYCBI) chanted, sang and passed out a thousand flyers to passersby. The Brooklyn protest coincided with Palestinians’ annual commemoration of Land Day, and was part of the Global Day of Action for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel, which included over 40 events in Europe, the US and worldwide.
Protesters greeted commuters with chants like: "No More Fuses, No More Bombs, Moto’s Killing Kids and Moms," and "Motorola You Can’t Hide, You’re Supporting Apartheid." Signs, fluttering in the wind, read "Don’t Cell Out, Boycott Motorola," "Goodbye Moto! Goodbye Apartheid!," "Israeli Apartheid, We Don’t Buy It, Boycott Motorola," and "Friends Don’t Let Friends Ethnically Cleanse." To the tune of Hava Nagila, participants loudly sang a new boycott song, "Don’t Buy Israeli" that included the lyrics, "Don’t buy Israeli, don’t buy Israeli, Don’t buy Israeli goods today!" and "Motorola, Sabra Hummus, You won’t take our freedom from us. more..e-mail
It Was Never about Democracy
Mamoon Alabbasi – London, Palestine Chronicle 3/30/2009
The Americans ’ got rid of our dictator and brought us democracy..’ "Those dirty A-rabs don’t deserve democracy. We give them freedom and they kill our troops. We should nuke them all in their shit-hole." "Bring our troops home. What are they doing dying in some far away land trying to bring democracy to people who don’t want it?" "We Arabs are not yet ready for democracy. We need strong authoritarian governments to keep the peace and ensure economic growth." "We should be grateful to the Americans. They got rid of our dictator and brought us democracy." "Is this democracy? Is this freedom? The Americans killed all my family and destroyed my house. If this democracy, I tell you my brother, we don’t want it!" Such comments and their likes are unfortunately not uncommon among some Americans and Iraqis regarding the US-led invasion of Iraq. Whether American or Iraqi, pro-war or anti-war, one fallacy lies at the bottom of their reasoning: that somehow ’democracy’ had anything to do with the Iraq war. more..e-mail
Tristan Anderson Deserves Medal of Freedom
Mahmoud El-Yousseph, Palestine Chronicle 3/30/2009
’Tristan .. was shot directly by tear gas canister fired by an Israeli soldier.’ Tristan Anderson is a young American fighting for his life 5000 miles away in a hospital after being shot in the face. Upon learning of what happened, his parents rushed to Tel Aviv. The family is holding hope and a vigil at his bedside. Mom is holding one of his hand while his girl friend, Gaby Silverman holding the other hand. Tristan -- 38 years old and of Oakland, California -- was shot by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on March 13th while peacefully protesting against the "separation wall" deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in the Palestinian West Bank village of Bi’ilin. Israel was ordered to halt building the wall and compensate Palestinians for land illegally annexed. The wall -- longer and taller than the infamous Berlin wall -- zigzagged into Palestinian lands, thus preventing farmers and villagers from reaching their farms, hospitals, and schools. more..e-mail
The Arab League: Snakes, lies and satellites
Talal Nizameddin, Daily Star 4/1/2009
Allow me to entertain the reader with a tricky riddle: What has two big eyes guiding its way, a forked tongue and no backbone? Those of you rushing to answer "snake" should pause and remember that snakes do have a vertebral column and even ribs, so they are not spineless. If you forgive my distortion, instead of "two eyes," read instead "two Is" as in the letter of the alphabet after H and before J, and the answer is none other than the Arab League. The two ’Is’ signify non-Arab Israel and Iran, both of which have in recent years been the prime movers in regional affairs. The Arab leaders have merely been passengers as Iran and Israel acted and they tried to react, usually with little effectiveness. Watching live satellite broadcasts of the Arab League summit in Doha, I could not help but feel that the show contained, as it does every year, a mixture of comedy and tragedy. more..e-mail
Shame on us!
Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian Information Center 3/29/2009
What will happen next? Will Palestinian kids be duped to play music to Israeli pilots who exterminated Gaza children with White Phosphorus? It is really hard to write on this subject without getting angry. We all know the extent to which Israel can be evil and satanic. After all, we Palestinians have been on the receiving end of Israeli savagery for decades. In fact, being thoroughly tormented and killed by the children, grand-children and great grandchildren of the holocaust has always been and continues to be "the"ť Palestinians’ way of life. However, for some Palestinians to allow themselves to be duped to sing and play music to their oppressors and child-killers is simply beyond the pale of human dignity. It is at least as insulting and humiliating as some Jews were forced or duped to play music to SS, Gestapo and Wehrmacht soldiers during the Second World War. more..e-mail
Saturday morning in At Tur: more home demolitions
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 3/14/2009
It is cold in East Jerusalem’s eastern neighborhood of At Tur Sahel this morning. The rain came last night: weather here is as predictable as home demolitions. "They’re taking the whole thing, the entire neighborhood," says a man who is unshaven and tired on Saturday morning, nine o’clock. He refuses to be identified in the news. "There are a lot of houses they want to destroy or overtake. They’re going after 50 houses. I have 10 dunams that are going." He takes me to a roof top where about five people are working to rebuild part of a house, with or without an Israeli-issued "permit." It doesn’t matter anymore, permit or not. The Israelis abide no law other than their own. International law is absent under the policies of the occupying administration: that has become clear even to the most cautious observer these days, including the new US administration, the UN, the NGOs who attempt to be “neutral” regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestine. more..e-mail
Meet BilĂn: A Village Dedicated to Stopping the Wall
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 3/14/2009
A collection of interviews from one of Palestine´s most famous sites of popular resistance. Four years ago, construction started on the Separation Wall through the middle Bil’in, a village outside of Ramallah. They have lost about 60% of their land—agricultural land where most of the income of the village was made. Since then, the village has organized weekly, non-violent protests against the wall. Men and women of all ages from Bil’in meet outside the mosque in the center of the village every Friday and walk together to the site of the wall along with the internationals and international press that participates in solidarity with the villagers. I interviewed four villagers in Bil’in about how life has changed since the beginning of the construction of the wall and what they think about Bil’in’s future. Ahmad Abu Rahmeh lives in Bil’in and is the director of the Al-Hadaf cultural center. The cultural center is dedicated to preserving Palestinian heritage, culture, and folklore. Its aim is to upgrade the quality of life for the village while maintaining their identity. He attends the demonstrations every Friday—I asked him what he thinks about the wall and how it affects life in the village. What economic effects do you think the wall will have on Bil’in? “There are a lot of economic effects—we were working and living on the lands that got taken—eating the olives and selling the oil.” more..e-mail
Mazin Qumsiyeh: action is the best antidote to despair
Mazin Qumsiyeh, Palestine News Network 3/14/2009
Beit Sahour - A good friend of ours, Tristan Anderson (US Citizen) was critically injured yesterday (Friday) and is in intensive care. Other friends there reported that the Israeli soldiers were not in any danger when they fired new kinds of projectiles and other weaponry. Tristan was actually to the side and was hit while standing and observing the attack by the Israeli soldiers on the Palestinian and International nonviolent and unarmed demonstrators. So far in the last 9 years over 6000 Palestinians and several Internationals were murdered by Israeli occupation forces (including a 23 year old American student Rachel Corrie). Ofcourse none of the killers will be brought to justice because they are occupation soldiers “doing their duty” (to colonize, murder and oppress). This week an Israeli court acquitted an Israeli French settler after he repeatedly stabbed a Palestinian taxi driver (24 y.o. Tayseer Karaki) to death. The court claimed he was not guilty by reason of insanity despite the fact that even Israeli psychiatry experts who examined him after the incident ruled him sane and fit for trial. None of the 12-13,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails could claim the insanity defense because after 60 years of colonial occupation, apartheid and slavery and massacres, we are all very sane! more..e-mail
The One-, Two-, Five-State Solutions
The Jordan Times, MIFTAH 3/14/2009
We enjoy the counting game when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, hypothesising about the number of states that must be created to end this conflict. The one-state solution is an idea coming from part of the Palestinian liberal elite that calls for one state for two nations: Israelis and Palestinians. The idea is rejected by Israelis as political suicide because demographic trends will mean a Palestinian-dominated state in 20 years or so. The three-state solution, advocated by John Bolton, is equally provocative. It calls for solving the Arab-Israeli conflict by divvying up Palestinian land between Jordan and Egypt. These two countries would fulfill the international community’s expectation that Israel’s security be protected while maintaining the well-being of the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. Jordan and Egypt view this solution as contrary to their interests. Indeed, it would place the brunt of the political and economic burdens on them. It is also provocative because it is reminiscent of past Orientalist policies that viewed Arab states as simply space on the map, not autonomous political actors with their own interests. more..e-mail
Some Hope, much Pessimism, on Palestine
The Daily Star - Editorial, MIFTAH 3/14/2009
There are many reasons to feel more pessimistic than optimistic about the possibility of any major breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this year. The inaction by the international community, especially the United States, over the past few years has made the situation more complicated, with increased violence and hardened public opinions on both sides. In the aftermath of the Gaza war, Hamas’ popularity has increased, both inside Palestine and in the wider Arab and Muslim world, with growing support among Palestinians for military resistance. Israel has shifted politically to the right, with broader acceptance of the "fifth column" theory, which views Palestinian citizens of Israel as a security threat. Any talk of a peace process has negative connotations for both sides. For many Israelis, it raises fears that land returned to the Palestinians in the West Bank will eventually be used for launching rockets, as happened in Gaza. Similarly, for many Palestinians, the continuation of the peace process means endless talking without results as Israel continues to annex more Palestinian land for building or expanding settlements. more..e-mail
Gaza 2009: De-Osloizing the Palestinian Mind
Dr. Haidar Eid - Gaza, Palestine Chronicle 3/14/2009
’De-Osloizing Palestine is a precondition for the creation of peace with justice.’ "Not only have the whites been guilty of being on the offensive, but by some skilful manoeuvres, they have managed to control the responses of the blacks to the provocation. Not only have they kicked the black, but they have also told him how to react to the kick. For a long time the black has been listening with patience to the advice he has been receiving on how best to respond to the kick. With painful slowness he is now beginning to show signs that it is his right and duty to respond to the kick in the way he sees fit." -- Steve Biko One of the most important outcomes of the Gaza massacre (2009) has been the unprecedented tremendous outpouring of popular support for the Palestinian cause; something the signatories of the Oslo accords (1993) must have not been happy with. The return of the pre-Oslo slogans of liberation, as opposed to independence, have, undoubtedly, created a new dilemma, not only for Oslo political elites, but also for the NGOized, Stalinist Left. more..e-mail
The Key is an End to Occupation
Daoud Kuttab, MIFTAH 3/14/2009
Following the words and efforts of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Sharm El Sheikh, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Ramallah, one gets the feeling that she was on a hard-sell campaign trying to convince the majority of Israelis to accept the concept of the two-state solution. For now, Palestinians are more interested in the end of the decades-old occupation of their lands. Clinton’s pleading with Netanyahu to adopt the international consensus on the two-state solution is wrong. She should focus instead on the choices that Israel has, namely, to share the land of Palestine/Israel with the Palestinian side or agree to power sharing, among the people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. The two-state solution has been on the books for some time. An independent Palestinian state alongside Israel has been a demand of some Palestinians since the 1970s, but became official PLO policy in one year, after the relatively nonviolent Intifada began. more..e-mail
March 12: When a 2nd home isn’t due to wealth
Sharon Lock, Tales to Tell - From Gaza 2009 3/13/2009
....We were visiting hospital dietician S’s family in Al Fukhary. They all fled their home during the attacks, except for S’s dad who stayed behind to confront the tanks. And literally did - S shows us where the tanks got to: the back garden. At this point, his dad went to the back door and looked the solider in the tank in the eye. The soldier in the tank looked back. And then he turned the tank around and left. I guess Abu S has one great stern look. As we are leaving we pass several houses totally destroyed, in amongst houses still standing. Why these houses? Nobody knows. A kindergarten is also destroyed, and there is no logic in that either. We notice that all the road ways are planted with dense cactuses, and speculate if they are deliberately planted to obstruct border-originating bullets. They look fierce enough to do it. At S’s family land, near the border, Israeli tanks have destroyed the roadside cactuses, so maybe the soldiers have the same theory about them as us. Earlier in the afternoon we were with J and L and their six kids (the youngest is 3) in Al Faraheen. You’ll remember before I referred to the fact that they stay in a house in the middle of the village now, because their regular home at the edge, about 500m from the border, feels too dangerous. Before the attacks, J and his oldest son at least were sleeping at their farmhouse, now, no-one does.In the taxi on the way back from Al Fukhary tonight, E is on the phone checking if we can visit Abd tomorrow in Al Wafa hospital to deliver the chess set. “Fil asr.” she finishes. more..e-mail
Not Every Day is Purim
Ori Nir, Middle East Online 3/13/2009
WASHINGTON, DC – A colloquial Hebrew expression says “not every day is Purim”, which can loosely be translated to “you can’t fool all the people all the time”.
Israelis - and many in our pro-Israel community in the United States – in the past wanted to believe that Palestinian economic development is the path to resolving Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians: If only the Palestinians have full stomachs and some cash in their pockets, they will forget about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, about their land being gradually eaten up by Israeli settlements, and about their aspirations for independence and sovereignty being ignored.
History and common sense taught us how wrong that thinking was. The lessons are as compelling today as they ever were.
In August of 1987, the Israeli military government in the West Bank and Gaza published a fancy brochure boasting the achievements of twenty years of Israeli “Civil Administration”. The booklet, 110 pages, contrasted the prosperous smiling Palestinians of 1987, in colour, with the black-and-white photos of the underdeveloped Territories in 1967, when Israel conquered the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. The brochure was not factually wrong. In fact, there was a dramatic improvement in the Palestinians’ standard of living under Israeli rule. But there was also a dramatic increase in national sentiments, which were nurtured, in part, by the occupation. more..e-mail
British MP Galloway in Gaza - Interview
Motasem Dalloul – Gaza City, Palestine Chronicle 3/13/2009
British MP Galloway and other activists after entering Gaza. (Aljazeera) British lawmaker George Galloway and hundreds of human and civil society activists braved all odds to come to the bombed-out Gaza Strip. They travelled through two continents and crossed scores to countries to bring hope and much-needed help to the 1.6 million population of the coastal enclave, reeling under a long-running watertight Israeli siege. Israel’s recent three-week war on Gaza killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and left its infrastructure in ruins. The Viva Gaza aid convoy included 12 ambulances and a fire engine and carried aid worth more than 1.4 million dollars, which were all handed over to Hamas-run government. IslamOnline.net interviewed Galloway, the main organizer who personally donated three cars and 35,000 dollars, a few hours before leaving the Palestinian territory. Mr. George Galloway can you tell us what’s the real reason for your visit? Thank you very much. My visit has more than one reason. The first one is to walk a step toward lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip. more..e-mail
Joining the blacklist
Yossi Sarid, Ha’aretz 3/13/2009
Netanyahu is making promises to us just as one makes promises to a battered woman: Give me just one more chance. But anyone who lies down with Bibi will get up with black and blue marks. Even before he has formed a government we already miss the bad old Bibi. Ten years ago it ended badly; now it’s beginning badly. This is the man we knew - an adventurer and a man who causes rifts. He is starting a battle on the interior front by appointingLieberman’s envoys to the Justice Ministry and the Public Security Ministry of all things; and he’ll be starting a battle on the exterior front with Lieberman himself. Although Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann is going, Friedmannism remains. The Land of Israel of Dan Meridor and Benny Begin is acquired through prohibitions. And until they get their country whole, they’re getting it flawed. If we’re already committing national hara-kiri, then let’s do it in the soft underbelly. In any case, this right-wing, ultranationalist government has a horrifying image, and from now on it looks like Yvet will be its mouthpiece; and what a big, ugly mouth. more..e-mail
Messengers from Washington
Ayman El-Amir, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/12/2009
While Turkey and Iran are at the heart of any prospects for forward movement on the Middle East, Israel is the new US president’s primary challenge. A slew of senior US officials swept the Middle East recently to prepare the ground for President Barack Obama’s new strategy of engagement and dialogue to address the challenging problems of the region. Led by new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the diplomatic pageantry included George Mitchell, the US special envoy to the Middle East, the State Department’s top Middle East expert Jeffrey Feltman, and senior National Security Council official Daniel Shapiro, both of whom were assigned to open up the Syrian track -- a member of the Bush administration’s trilateral "axis of evil". Dennis Ross, the administration’s special adviser to the Gulf, and Iran, is being kept in the wings for the right moment to enter on stage. They were all preceded by visits of four congressional delegations that focussed on Syria, the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. In keeping with the plan to make the Middle East one of its top priorities, the Obama administration is launching an attack on all Middle East problems, albeit from the fringes. It remains to be seen if, in pursuing its agenda of engagement instead of containment, the Obama administration is biting off more than it can chew. more..e-mail
Building on bold-faced lies
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/12/2009
Leaked Israeli settlement expansion plans prove that interminable peace talks are but cover for the material destruction of Palestinian horizons. While Israel never stops claiming that it has a sincere desire for peace with the Palestinians, the Israeli Housing Ministry, in coordination with other government agencies as well as the occupation army, is finalising plans to build tens of thousands of Jewish settler units all over the West Bank, especially in occupied East Jerusalem. The plans, it is generally agreed, would put an end to Palestinian dreams of establishing a viable and territorially contiguous state that they could call their own. According to a detailed document by the Israeli Peace Now group, which monitors the proliferation of Jewish colonies in the West Bank, the Housing Ministry is planning to build more than 73,000 new apartments and settler units on occupied Palestinian land. If implemented, the plan means that existing settlements would more than double, both in the sheer number of apartments and in terms of the settler population. That population now stands at more than half a million in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, one major obstacle that could impede the implementation of the plan is the growing dearth of Jewish immigrants from abroad. more..e-mail
Stepping out, not down
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/12/2009
Fayyad’s resignation is an attempt to get foreign powers to influence Palestinian dialogue talks, in particular to declare that they will only do business with a government he heads. Although he attempted to make it sensational, the resignation of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad came as no surprise. Fayyad justified his resignation by saying that it was aimed to allow national dialogue efforts, including efforts entrusted with the issue of forming a new government, to succeed having begun in earnest. Rival Palestinian factions opened talks on forming a unity government Tuesday, at the start of 10 days of negotiations in Cairo. Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s General Intelligence chief and mediator of the talks, urged all participants to forget their recent clashes and focus on the future. "The Palestinian people are watching the results of these talks, so please do not let them down," Suleiman said. "We are only looking towards the future, and your meeting today is the beginning of that path." more..e-mail
The West should feel shame over its collusion with torturers
Robert Fisk, The Independent 3/14/2009
I want to know why those complicit in Almalki’s ordeal are not tried in court. I invited Abdullah Almalki to breakfast in Ottawa but he only took coffee. And while I wolfed down my all-English breakfast in the Chateau Laurier Hotel (beloved of Churchill and Karsh of Ottawa fame), he sipped gingerly at his cup with much on his mind. Snooped on by the Canadian secret service and then tortured in Syria while the Canadian authorities did nothing for him – save supplying his perverted torturers with questions – he had much to think about. A carbon copy of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident who had his penis cut up while the Brits sent questions to his perverted Moroccan torturers. In Abdullah Almalki’s case, he wasn’t renditioned. He simply flew into Damascus to see his Syrian family, got banged up in the city’s secret police headquarters and was then beaten into submission, not much different from an even more famous case – that of Maher Arar, who was a Canadian citizen and got renditioned to Damascus by the Americans while the US authorities sent questions to his perverted Syrian torturers. Arar has received apologies from US senators – though not from the war hero George Bush (battle honours: the skies over Texas during the Vietnam conflict) -- and compensation from the Canadian government. The details of each case are shockingly similar. Tim Hancock of Amnesty International has supplied similar information on Khaled al-Maqtari, a Yemeni man, who was apparently threatened with rape and beaten in chains by his perverted American torturers. Western nations simply assisted the perverts by providing them with pages of questions while their citizens/residents lay in agony, wishing they had never been born. more..e-mail
Israel’s war crimes
Richard Falk, Le Monde Diplomatique 3/1/2009 Israel blamed its earlier wars on the threat to its security, even that against Lebanon in 1982. However, its assault on Gaza was not justified and there are international calls for an investigation. But is there the political will to make Israel account for its war crimes? For the first time since the establishment of Israel in 1948 the government is facing serious allegations of war crimes from respected public figures throughout the world. Even the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, normally so cautious about offending sovereign states – especially those aligned with its most influential member, the United States – has joined the call for an investigation and potential accountability. To grasp the significance of these developments it is necessary to explain what made the 22 days of attacks in Gaza stand shockingly apart from the many prior recourses to force by Israel to uphold its security and strategic interests. In my view, what made the Gaza attacks launched on 27 December different from the main wars fought by Israel over the years was that the weapons and tactics used devastated an essentially defenceless civilian population. The one-sidedness of the encounter was so stark, as signalled by the relative casualties on both sides (more than 100 to 1; 1300-plus Palestinians killed compared with 13 Israelis, and several of these by friendly fire), that most commentators refrained from attaching the label “war”. more..e-mail
American citizen critically injured after being shot in the head by Israeli forces in Ni’lin
ISM 3/13/2009
Ni’lin Village: An American citizen has been critically injured in the village of Ni’lin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a tear-gas canister. Tristan Anderson from California USA, 37 years old, has been taken to Israeli hospital Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. Anderson is unconscious and has been bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. He sustained a large hole in his forehead where he was struck by the canister. He is currently being operated on. "Tristan was shot by the new tear-gas canisters that can be shot up to 500m. I ran over as I saw someone had been shot, while the Israeli forces continued to fire tear-gas at us. When an ambulance came, the Israeli soldiers refused to allow the ambulance through the checkpoint just outside the village. After 5 minutes of arguing with the soldiers, the ambulance passed." - Teah Lunqvist (Sweden) - International Solidarity Movement The Israeli army began using to use a high velocity tear gas canister in December 2008. The black canister, labeled in Hebrew as “40mm bullet special/long range,” can shoot over 400 meters. The gas canister does not make a noise when fired or emit a smoke tail. A combination of the canister’s high velocity and silence is extremely dangerous and has caused numerous injuries, including a Palestinian male whose leg was broken in January 2009. Tristan Anderson was shot as Israeli forces attacked a demonstration against the construction of the annexation wall through the village of Ni’lin’s land. Another resident from Ni’lin was shot in the leg with live ammunition. Four Ni’lin residents have been killed during demonstrations against the confiscation of their land. more..e-mail
Constraining Palestinian Resistance
Dina Jadallah-Taschler, Palestine Chronicle 3/13/2009
’Reconciliation talks have put a very low ceiling for the achievements.’ There is much press over the most recent ’reconciliation’ and ’reconstruction’ ’talks’ that were launched in the wake of the Israeli assault on Gaza. The former has the avowed intention of putting the Palestinian’s internal house in order so that they would ostensibly present a united front to Israel when ’negotiating.’ Reconciliation talks have also put a very low ceiling for the achievements that they hope to accomplish. These are based on only partial and temporary band-aids related to internal governance and control problems, as opposed to fundamental issues of independence and the restoration of national rights. The reconstruction talks are focused on supposedly facilitating Palestinian rebuilding, development, and economic and political re-integration back into the fold of the "consensus"/"moderate" group of nations. Both are patent attempts by regional and international powers to channel Palestinian discontent and resistance into a route that is deemed acceptable. Both follow the same course that was prescribed and largely adhered to ever since the Oslo "peace process" created the Palestinian Authority (PA) and appointed the current crop of leaders to (ostensibly) speak and negotiate on behalf of Palestinians. Sadly, for the purposes of the "peace process" and the subsequent "roadmap to peace," the Palestinians as a national group were intentionally circumscribed and diminished by the non-inclusion of the refugees and diaspora, as well as by the marginalization and ossification of the PLO. more..e-mail
Honest Talk on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
David H. Young, Middle East Online 3/13/2009 The fundamentals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that have existed since 1967 are somehow becoming more obvious and less accessible every day. As rhetoric bleeds into strategy, sobering arguments are polluted by perverse distortions and the only thing that makes sense is confusion. Virtually nothing about this conflict was changed with Israel’s military operation in Gaza. Nothing on the surface, nothing lurking in the shadows, nothing for the history books. Yet the fundamentals of this conflict that have existed since 1967 are somehow becoming more obvious and less accessible every day. As rhetoric bleeds into strategy, sobering arguments are polluted by perverse distortions and the only thing that makes sense is confusion. As a humble remedy, perhaps, the following conversation is a synthesis of hundreds of hours of candid discussions (and screaming matches) between Israeli and Palestinian colleagues and friends. It offers no solutions or common ground, but only pain. Until we get through the meat of this war, the bones will never heal. Here is how these enemies think and argue: Ahmed: Why do you humiliate us every day, with your checkpoints, your raids, and your occupation? Why won’t you leave us alone. Avi: Because we believe that you would continue terrorizing us even if we give up the West Bank. If you were eager to kill Israelis long before any of us ever lived in the West Bank or East Jerusalem, how could we possibly believe that you would be satisfied by anything short of our expulsion from the region?... more..e-mail
$30 Billion For Israel's Military
Haitham Sabbah, Palestine Think Tank 3/13/2009
Same old story, new president: "U.S. President Barack Obama will not cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel, a senior U.S. administration official said Wednesday. The $30 billion in aid promised to Israel over the next decade will not be harmed by the world financial crisis, the official told Israel Radio. He spoke on condition of anonymity." The U.S. military aid to Israel was increased in a decade-long deal agreed to by Bush in 2007. OTOH, U.S. will pay close to $1 billion for rebuilding the wreckage in Gaza mostly caused by armaments paid for by the U.S.! To add insult to injury, there is a condition on that money: "Clinton: Some $900 million pledged by the United States to the Palestinians will be withdrawn if the expected Palestinian Authority coalition government between Fatah and Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, Western and Israeli diplomats said Wednesday." Key Facts: * Total direct aid to Israel, 1948-2003, $89.9 billion (uncorrected for inflation) * Since 1976 Israel has been the largest annual recipient of US aid. It is the largest cumulative recipient since World War II. * Direct U.S. aid for each Israeli citizen in 2001 (per capita annual income of Israel = $16,710) — over $500 * Direct U.S. Aid for each Ethiopian citizen in 2001 (per capita annual income of Ethiopia = $100) — about $0.45... more..e-mail
Border areas bombed again
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa Al-Omrani, Electronic Intifada 3/13/2009
CAIRO (IPS) - Almost two months after the attacks on the Gaza Strip, the border area between the battered coastal enclave and Egypt continues to come under frequent Israeli aerial bombardment. Israeli officials say the strikes target cross-border tunnels used to smuggle weapons to Palestinian resistance factions.
"Israel is still regularly launching air strikes on the border area," Ibrahim Mansour, political analyst and executive editor-in-chief of independent daily Al-Dustour told IPS. "Such attacks represent a violation of all international rules and agreements, including the Egypt-Israel Camp David peace agreement."
Throughout the course of Israel’s recent assault on the Gaza Strip (27 December to 17 January), the border zone between Egypt and Gaza was pummeled by hundreds of Israeli air strikes. Sources in the area also say that Egyptian airspace was repeatedly violated by Israeli aircraft during the campaign.
The onslaught officially ended with a unilateral ceasefire announcement by Israel. Since then, however, Israel has continued to strike at targets both inside the Gaza Strip -- governed by Palestinian resistance faction Hamas -- and along the strip’s 14-kilometer border with Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. more..e-mail
Gaza fishing industry reeling
IRIN, Electronic Intifada 3/13/2009
GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IRIN) - A combination of damage to fishing resources caused by the Israeli offensive, and a restriction on the zone in which Gazans are allowed to fish is reducing catches and adversely affecting people’s diets in Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
In January 2009 the Israeli authorities reduced the area in which fishermen can fish from six to three nautical miles from Gaza’s coastline.
In Rafah (southern Gaza) fishing has almost completely stopped due to the damage inflicted on fishing gear and boats during the 22-days of attacks that ended on 18 January.
Fishing nets, rope, twine and gas mantles are in short supply due to the Israeli blockade of Gaza since June 2007, according to OCHA, along with engines and spare parts.
"During Operation Cast Lead a naval closure was imposed on the Gaza Strip. Following the end of fighting the navy decided to allow fishing from up to three miles from the coast," said an Israeli military source who preferred anonymity. "The closure was imposed to prevent the smuggling of weapons and ammunition into the Gaza Strip by sea." more..e-mail
Israel Lobby Knocks Out Freeman
Melvin A. Goodman, Middle East Online 3/13/2009
Israel is capable of debating sensitive national security issues dealing with a variety of Israeli-Arab issues, but this does not appear to be possible in the United States.
During the presidential campaign last fall, Barack Obama told a Jewish gathering in Cleveland that he was "struck" while visiting Israel by "how much more open the debate was around these issues in Israel than they are sometimes here in the United States."
And now that he is President, Obama has learned that the Israeli lobby in the United States can successfully block a distinguished appointee. Retired Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr., who had been selected to fill an important position in the intelligence community, was forced to withdraw from consideration after a storm of criticism organized by the Israel lobby.
Freeman was a regular lecturer at the National War College between 1986 and 2004, when I served on the faculty there. He was asked to return time and time again because of his independent, somewhat contrarian, unbiased, and trenchant views on policy and intelligence issues. more..e-mail
Timidity Derails Obama Intel Choice
Ray McGovern, Middle East Online 3/13/2009
On Tuesday morning, Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, employed the indicative mood in describing the high value that Chas Freeman, his appointee to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC), will bring to the job — “his long experience and inventive mind,” for example.
By five o’clock that afternoon, Freeman announced that he had asked that his selection “not proceed.”
Not one to mince words, Freeman, spelled out the strange set of affairs surrounding the flip-flop and the implications of what had just happened.
Borrowing from George Washington’s Farewell Address the pointed warning against developing a “passionate attachment” to the strategic goals of another nation, Freeman made it clear that he was withdrawing his “previous acceptance” of Blair’s invitation to chair the NIC because of the character assassination of him orchestrated by the Israel Lobby. -- See also: Freeman's post-withdrawal statementmore..e-mail
Freeman Affair Puts Israel Lobby in Spotlight
Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service 3/13/2009
WASHINGTON, Mar 13(IPS) - Although the successful campaign to keep Amb. Charles "Chas" Freeman out of a top intelligence post marked a surface victory for the pro-Israel hardliners who opposed him, the long-term political implications of the Freeman affair appear far more ambiguous. Freeman’s withdrawal has provoked growing - if belated - media scrutiny of the operations of the so-called "Israel Lobby", and aroused protests from a number of prominent mainstream political commentators who allege that he was the target of a dishonest and underhanded smear campaign that, among other things, accused him of shilling for the governments of Saudi Arabia and China.
For the neo-conservatives who led the charge against Freeman’s appointment, his withdrawal may therefore prove to be both a tactical victory and a strategic defeat. At the same time, the Freeman affair has highlighted the yawning disconnect between the career professionals in the intelligence and diplomatic communities, from whom Freeman enjoyed strong support, and political leaders in Congress and the White House, none of whom came to his defence publicly. -- See also: Freeman's post-withdrawal statement and 'Israel lobby' blamed as Obama's choice for intelligence chief quitsmore..e-mail
Charles Freeman’s Victory
Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com 3/13/2009
Forced to withdraw, he took the Israel lobby down with him. The nixing of Charles "Chas" Freeman from a post as head of the National Intelligence Council is not, as is commonly averred, a victory for the Israel lobby. It is, instead, a Pyrrhic victory – that is, a victory so costly that it really amounts to a defeat for them. Sure, they managed to keep out a trenchant critic of their Israel-centric and grossly distorted view of a proper American foreign policy, and, yes, they managed to smear him and put others on notice that someone with his views is radioactive, as far as a high-level job in the foreign policy establishment is concerned. And yet – and yet …. They – the Lobby – have now been forced out in the open. "A lobby," says Steve Rosen, the ringleader of the "get Freeman" lynch mob, "is like a night flower: it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun." If so, then the Israel lobby is slated for oblivion, because as frenetically – and pathetically – as they tried to mask the centrality of their involvement, and as much as they tried to make this about other issues (his alleged ties to Saudi Arabia, his supposed views on China), everybody knows it was really all about Israel and Freeman’s contemptuous view of the "special relationship" which requires us giving Tel Aviv a blank check, moral as well as monetary. As a foreign policy realist, he thinks we ought to put our own interests first, in the Middle East and elsewhere, not those of a foreign country, no matter how much political clout – and campaign cash – its American fifth column can muster. more..e-mail
Charles Freeman, Roger Cohen and the changing Israel debate
Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com 3/9/2009
Updated Anyone who doubts that there has been a substantial -- and very positive -- change in the rules for discussing American policy towards Israel should consider two recent episodes: (1) the last three New York Times columns by Roger Cohen; and (2) the very strong pushback from a diverse range of sources against the neoconservative lynch mob trying, in typical fashion, to smear and destroy Charles Freeman due to his critical (in all senses of the word) views of American policy towards Israel. One positive aspect of the wreckage left by the Bush presidency is that many of the most sacred Beltway pieties stand exposed as intolerable failures, prominently including our self-destructively blind enabling of virtually all Israeli actions. First, the Cohen columns: Two weeks ago, Cohen -- writing from Iran -- mocked the war-seeking cartoon caricature of that nation as The New Nazi Germany craving a Second Holocaust. To do so, Cohen reported on the relatively free and content Iranian Jewish community (25,000 strong). When that column prompted all sorts of predictable attacks on Cohen from the standard cast of Israel-centric thought enforcers (Jeffrey Goldberg, National Review, right-wing blogs, etc. etc.), Cohen wrote a second column breezily dismissing those smears and then bolstering his arguments further by pointing out that "significant margins of liberty, even democracy, exist" in Iran; that "Iran has not waged an expansionary war in more than two centuries"; and that "hateful, ultranationalist rhetoric is no Iranian preserve" given the ascension of Avigdor Lieberman in Benjamin Netanyahu’s new Israeli government. more..e-mail
What policy?
Salama A Salama, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/12/2009
Apart from Shimon Peres giving Hillary Clinton a kiss on the cheek, nothing much emerged from the first visit to the Middle East of the new US secretary of state. We have no indication of where the policies of the Obama administration are heading. Actually, it seems so far that there is no tangible change from the policies of the former administration. During her visit to Israel, Clinton spoke in favour of the two-state solution but said she has no intention of talking to Hamas. Clinton had nothing to say about the need for Israel to stop building settlements all over Palestinian land. Nor did she have anything to say about the Gaza tragedy. She didn’t mention the need to open the crossings and follow up on the efforts Egypt is making to bring about a calming down period. And yet Clinton made a point of empathising with Israel with regards to Palestinian rockets. And she fully understood Israel’s concern over the prospects of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Clinton kept her options open concerning future talks with Syria and Iran. Washington seems prepared to engage the Syrians in dialogue if this helps Damascus distance itself from Tehran. And the Syrians seem willing to go to any lengths to stay on Washington’s good side. It seems that the US wants to see moderate Arabs and Palestinians negotiating with Israel, although actually the Palestinians have been doing just that for quite some time now to no avail. more..e-mail
Is a right-wing government the answer?
Henry Siegman, Ha’aretz 3/13/2009
A right-wing Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu is widely seen as spelling the end of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Given the ongoing expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which Netanyahu has promised to accelerate, no other outcome seems conceivable. While this view is undoubtedly correct, the belief that a center or center-left government would conclude a two-state agreement is a delusion Western leaders seem unable to discard, no matter how egregiously the current Kadima/Labor government continues to undermine a two-state solution - with continued seizures of Palestinian territory, expansion of existing settlements, and closing off Jerusalem to West Bank Palestinians. And yet, a good case can be made for the counter-intuitive notion that only a right-wing government of the kind now being formed by Netanyahu holds the remaining hope for viable Palestinian statehood. Such an argument has nothing to do with the popular Israeli belief that, like Nixon’s 1972 visit to China, "only Likud can make peace, and only Labor [or Kadima] can make war," for it ignores the fact that Nixon wanted to go to China, whereas no member of a right-wing Israeli government wants a Palestinian state. What Netanyahu and his prospective radical-right coalition parties want is more Palestinian territory and a Palestinian entity emptied of every vestige of sovereignty. more..e-mail
Durban II: Politicizing Racism
Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 3/13/2009
Many countries are set to participate in the Conference against Racism, scheduled to be held in Geneva, April 20-25. But the highly touted international meet is already marred with disagreement after Israel, the United States and other countries decided not to participate. Although the abstention of four or more countries is immaterial to the proceedings, the US decision in particular was meant to render the conference ’controversial’, at best. The US government’s provoking stance is not new, but a repetition of another fiasco which took place in Durban, South Africa in 2001. Israeli and US representatives stormed out in protest of the "anti-Israeli" and the "anti-Semitic" sentiments that supposedly pervaded the World Conference against Racism (WCAR), held in Durban in 2001. The decision was an ominous sign, for the Bush Administration was yet to be tested on foreign policy in any definite terms, as the conference concluded on September 8, three days before the 911 terrorist attacks. The US justified its denunciation of the international forum, then on the very same, unsubstantiated grounds cited by Israel, that the forum was transformed to a stage for anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic rhetoric. more..e-mail
Kafka’s Metamorphosis hits hard in Palestine
Kristen Ess, Lovisa Farrow, Palestine News Network 3/13/2009
The feeling of uncomfortable self-recognition was delivered by Al Harah Theater to a small but enchanted audience at Dar Annadwa in Bethlehem last night. When Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella "The Metamorphosis" was produced as a play in a Palestinian context, performed with deep empathy, it introduced a familiar nightmare. The main character, Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning from uneasy dreams and finds himself transformed into a gigantic insect, growing overnight. He is a travelling salesman by trade and asks, "How am I going to get to work?" This is the first Palestinian question of any day stuck behind checkpoints that divide one town from another. Gregor lamented the miserable weather outside; he is the sole financial provider for his family. But as a travelling salesman, he is accustomed to waking up in unfamiliar surroundings and varying circumstances. He resists any conscious recognition regarding his change or the fact that a change had indeed happened. This man was still the same man, the change came from the reactions from those around him who no longer recognized his humanity. In a dim light the audience followed Gregor, played brilliantly by Bethlehem’s own Nicola Zrieneh, in his struggle to maintain his humanity, despite the radical changes to his body. more..e-mail
Freeman’s post-withdrawal statement
Daily Star 3/12/2009 EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the full text of a letter posted on the Internet by Charles (Chas) Freeman after withdrawing from his new post as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. "The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, and an utter disregard for the truth." You will by now have seen the statement by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair reporting that I have withdrawn my previous acceptance of his invitation to chair the National Intelligence Council. I have concluded that the barrage of libelous distortions of my record would not cease upon my entry into office. The effort to smear me and to destroy my credibility would instead continue. I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country. I agreed to chair the NIC to strengthen it and protect it against politicization, not to introduce it to efforts by a special interest group to assert control over it through a protracted political campaign. -- See also: Withdrawal of Obama's top intel pick marks victory for pro-Israel lobbymore..e-mail
What Israeli Peace Process?
Franklin Spinney, Former military analyst for the Pentagon, Counterpunch, Palestine Monitor 3/12/2009
On March 2, 2009, the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now issued a report saying that the Israeli housing ministry plans to build 73,ooo housing units in the West Bank. Peace Now said 15,ooo of these units had already been approved, with another 58,000 awaiting approval. On March 7, 2009, the Guardian reported that a confidential report issued by the EU said Israel continues to annex property in East Jerusalem. It said Israeli housing authorities had submitted plans for 5,500 new housing units (3,000 of which have already been approved) since the Annapolis "peace" conference in November 2007. Readers may recall that the Annapolis conference was supposed to resusitate George W. Bush’s moribund so-called Road Map to Peace. Assuming these housing plans are implemented, and only 2.5 Israelis on average inhabit each new unit, the entire program could add as many as 196,ooo Israelis to the 490,000 Israelis already living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Yet as recently as September 30, 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Omert said Israel should withdraw from almost all of the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem in order to achieve peace. Of course, Omert’s profession of normative behaviour would be deemed gatuitious nonsense in an international court of law, because all these settlements are clearly illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. So what gives? more..e-mail
Why America’s Man in Ramallah Quit
Tim McGirk, MIFTAH 3/12/2009
Memo to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: In the Middle East, a compliment can swiftly become a curse. Clinton may have thought she was boosting Salam Fayyad’s credentials by lavishly praising the Palestinian prime minister during her tour of the region last week. However, Fayyad’s resignation on Saturday suggests that Washington’s support may have sealed the fate of the ex-World Bank official and technocrat who brought a modicum of transparency to the rambunctious affairs of the Palestinian Authority. The public gloss on Fayyad’s departure, set for the end of this month, is that it would pave the way for a new Hamas-Fatah unity government. Talks between the rival Palestinian factions began in earnest on Tuesday in Cairo, and according to Palestinian officials involved in the talks, the Egyptians, at Washington’s behest, may be trying to reposition Fayyad for a comeback. It won’t be easy; Hamas had long made clear that it did not recognize Fayyad’s legitimacy as Prime Minister. Fayyad, a former Finance Minister, was appointed Prime Minister in 2007 of a West Bank-based emergency government by President Mahmoud Abbas, in a bid to outflank Hamas. The Islamists hold a majority in the Palestinian parliament, but many legislators were placed under Israeli arrest, preventing the legislature from sitting. But Hamas wasn’t Fayyad’s only problem. more..e-mail
Washington’s Middle East War
Nadia Hijab, Middle East Online 3/12/2009
From euphoria to the depths of despair: that was how the progressive blogosphere greeted first the appointment of Chas Freeman as head of the National Intelligence Council and then his decision to withdraw his acceptance. It looked like the Israel lobby in the United States, which had mobilized its considerable forces against the former ambassador, had won not only a battle but the war.
Yet the war to shape Washington’s Middle East policy is not over. The stakes are high: They extend beyond the Israel-Palestine conflict to world peace, with Iran’s nuclear weapons program as a key driver. ...Just this week US Director of Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told Congress that Iran has not produced highly enriched uranium, contradicting what the Israeli military intelligence chief told the Israeli cabinet a few days earlier. Freeman’s appointment tipped the balance further against Israel’s ambitions to take out Iran. Does his withdrawal mean Israel now has a bigger window of opportunity? Unlikely, since the US stance on Iran cuts across administrations and the intelligence community. But it could make life harder for the Obama Administration’s efforts to resolve US differences with Iran peacefully. And it has sent a signal that Obama is not willing to take the lobby head-on over the Middle East. more..e-mail
Letters of the law
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 3/12/2009
GAZA - During the past 10 days, the Defense Ministry’s claims and insurance division received a registered letter including an official document describing the damages suffered during Operation Cast Lead by Sabbah Abu Halima. Also in the envelope were 12 similar notices, detailing the damage sustained by members of her family (seven of whom were killed and six wounded). According to the short letter accompanying the forms, they were sent as per "the Civil Damages Regulations (State Responsibility) 2003." "Please fax us confirmation of receipt," added (in Hebrew) the signatory: Iyad al-Alami, attorney, Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza. The center has to date sent about 500 such registered letters with forms enclosed to the claims and insurance unit in the last month, detailing the damage done during the Israel Defense Forces offensive from December 27, 2008 until January 10, 2009. Another 300 letters are expected to be sent in the coming weeks, referring to the period of January 11-18. The letters are just the first step in a process being undertaken by the PCHR and various Palestinian, Israeli and foreign organizations, lawyers and civil rights advocates. Their aim: to put an end to what they see as the impunity Israel enjoys after it attacks the Palestinians. more..e-mail
Everyone agrees: War in Gaza was a failure
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 3/12/2009
Suddenly we’re all in consensus: The recent war in Gaza was a failure. The bon ton now is to list its flaws. Flip-floppers say its "achievements" were squandered; leftists say the war "should never have started" and rightists will say the war "should have lasted longer." But on this they all agree: It was a blunder. Because we consider the war to have been almost cost-free, with just 13 Israeli dead, it will be the first in 36 years without a Commission of Inquiry formed in its wake. Of course, the war’s blunder was just as serious as its predecessors, but because we did more killing than being killed, because we caused more damage than we sustained, there’s nothing deemed worthy of investigation. It was all in vain: no progress made, no goal achieved, nothing. ..... And what of the cheerleaders who sat on the sidelines of this hellish nightmare? Perhaps we should at least hold them accountable? They sat in their television studios and at their newspaper desks. Oh, how the commentators were excited and stirred excitement. They goaded and urged, pushed and applied pressure, begging for more and more war. For months they had been clamoring for their "wide-scale operation," their hearts’ desire. When their wish came true they cheered in support and whistled in excitement. more..e-mail
Installation criticizing occupation, Veolia causes stir
Adri Nieuwhof, Electronic Intifada 3/12/2009
Visual artist Van Thanh Rudd recently created a stir in Melbourne, Australia with his installation "Economy of Movement - A Piece of Palestine." Rudd was invited to exhibit at an art space called the Platform in the group show Resisting Subversion of Subversive Resistance. The Platform is situated directly beneath Melbourne’s major Flinders Street train station. Rudd, 35 years old, has won several awards and his work has been shown in Australia since 1993. In 2004, he established an arts movement called The Carriers Project, which involves carrying artwork on foot through public and private spaces of major cities to expose challenging artwork to mass audiences. Although Rudd has declined to talk to the media about his latest artwork, he commented on his installation to The Electronic Intifada.
When asked what inspired him to create "Economy of Movement - A Piece of Palestine," Rudd replied that "As Melbourne’s city rail network is operated by Connex [a subsidiary of the French company Veolia], I thought it would be a great opportunity to make artwork that would clearly outline Veolia’s illegal operations on occupied Palestinian territory." more..e-mail
Experts to Obama: Political Islam not the enemy
Ali Gharib, Electronic Intifada 3/12/2009
WASHINGTON (IPS) - Scores of Middle East and democracy experts released an open letter to US President Barack Obama Tuesday asking him to focus more of his foreign policy efforts at making reforms in the region, including boosting human rights. Signed by more than 120 academics, scholars, experts and others, the letter said that previous US policy had been "misguided" and "produced a region increasingly tormented by rampant corruption, extremism, and instability."
The signatories, ranging from liberal Democrats to neoconservatives, called for the Obama administration to "encourage political reform not through wars, threats, or imposition, but through peaceful policies that reward governments that take active and measurable steps towards genuine democratic reforms."
In doing so, the letter said the US should end its "fear of Islamist parties coming to power" because most of them are "nonviolent and respect the democratic process."
Citing Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the group said "the US should not hesitate to speak out in condemnation when opposition activists are unjustly imprisoned." more..e-mail
Arming Terrorist Israel
Dr. Elias Akleh, Palestine Think Tank 3/11/2009
Since their occupation of Palestine in 1948 to establish illegal Israel in the heart of the Arab World until the present, Zionist Israelis had initiated seven wars against their Arab neighbors. Six of those were waged after 1967 to maintain their occupation of the rest of Palestine, Lebanese Sheb'a Farms, and Syrian Golan Heights; formally recognized by the international community as an occupation. Israel had maintained its occupation of the land for the last sixty years. The question that poses itself, here, is how a small state like Israel, 7 million Zionist Jews in an area of 8 thousand square miles (excluding the 1967 occupied territories), could maintain such an occupation against hundreds of millions of Arabs and against the disapproval of the civic (not political) international community? Bullying with extreme brutal force is the answer. Israel is a military society with every Zionist Israeli citizen, from childhood to old age, being militaristic in one form or another. Israel possesses all kinds of weapons including weapons of mass destruction (WMD) such as nuclear and chemical weapons. more..e-mail
George Galloway, the noble man
Khalid Amayreh, Palestinian Information Center 3/10/2009
Unlike many politicians who would rather stay on the safe side, even if that means betraying their conscience, George Galloway represents a rare breed of morally-guided politicians who are willing to call the spade a spade even in the face of danger and brutality. The British lawmaker has displayed immense courage in speaking up against crimes and injustices inflicted by Israel, the United States and their European allies in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine. In 2003, Galloway was expelled from the Labor Party when a party body decided that the strong statements he had made in opposition to the invasion of Iraq by the US and its allies had brought the party into disrepute. Unshaken and defiant, Galloway then co-founded the Respect party, a new leftist-leaning coalition with a number of small groups. Galloway had castigated the horrible genocide of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who died as a result of the draconian sanctions imposed on that Arab country and enforced by the United States. more..e-mail
To preserve America’s security, Obama will need to break a taboo
Editorial, Daily Star 3/12/2009
One of the biggest challenges that President Barack Obama will face in office will be to confront a problem that directly impacts US national security, but that is so taboo that few people in Washington are willing to talk about it openly. That problem is America’s blind support of Israeli terrorism. Now before anyone in the US sends this newspaper a letter accusing us of anti-Semitism, let us be clear: By Israeli terrorism, we do not mean the state of Israel; rather, we mean exactly what appears here in print. America’s friendship with Israel and its support for the Jewish state’s security are entirely defensible. But enabling the slaughter of hundreds of women and children, allowing scores of civilians to be held hostage in a besieged territory and facilitating the littering of fields and playgrounds with deadly US-made cluster bombs are not. These are war crimes that have served to stoke public anger and thereby undermine security in both Israel and the United States. Addressing this issue will require a degree of honesty and moral clarity that has hitherto rarely been seen inside the beltway. In fact, those who have tried to even raise the topic - including those who have done so because they believed it is in Israel’s best interest to behave responsibly and in accordance with international law - have almost always been smeared and tarred as anti-Israel or anti-Semitic.... more..e-mail
Peace in the abstract
Noam Dvir, Ha’aretz 3/12/2009 Pundak does not view the center as an accomplice to the property-takeover crime being perpetrated in Jaffa, and he has no regrets. At first glance, the building that houses the Peres Center for Peace in Jaffa is a spectacular structure. The green-tinged concrete, the bands of glass, its modest height and the surrounding wooden deck, along with the view of the sea, render it an architectural gem with few rivals in Israel. However, a glance to either side reveals a rather more complex reality. The building is perched in the middle of the Ajami neighborhood, adjacent to a Muslim cemetery, amid crumbling dwellings and glittering for-Jews-only real estate. As always with Shimon Peres, it’s a building of "yes and no." Two years ago, in an effort to mitigate the opposition of its neighbors in Ajami, the center launched community activities. Twenty children benefit from an after-school program that includes help with homework, another 40 take part in various other activities; there is also a women’s empowerment program at the local community center. "It’s not from a desire to buy people," says Ron Pundak, the center’s director general and one of the key players in the peace talks with the Palestinians in the 1990s. "Like it or not, we are a bull in a china shop. And we want to show that we are a friendly bull." The center is not alone in Ajami. Jewish entrepreneurs long ago spotted the neighborhood’s huge potential, with its abundance of Ottoman architecture and streets going down to the sea. In an ongoing gentrification process, they bought properties, drove up the price of real estate and effectively forced out the indigenous Arab population.... more..e-mail
In Ruins for 18 Months, a Palestinian Enclave Languishes in Disrepair
Nicholas Blanford, MIFTAH 3/12/2009
Rebuilding Gaza isn’t the only effort under way to improve the Palestinians’ plight. Eighteen months after it was wrecked in fighting between the Lebanese Army and Islamist militants, this impoverished refugee camp is just beginning to be put back together again in a project hampered by a political crisis, slowed by donor apathy, and overshadowed by the war between Hamas and Israel. "We are telling donors if you really want the camps improved and to end the misery, which makes these places fertile grounds for extremism, then we need resources," says Khalil Makkawi, a former Lebanese ambassador and chairman of the Lebanon-Palestinian Dialogue Committee. Even though Lebanon has been trying to raise funds to improve conditions for Palestinians across the country, it may not even have enough money to rehouse some 30,000 refugees left homeless after the 2007 battle in Nahr al-Bared. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which is responsible for the welfare of Palestinian refugees, only has sufficient funds to rebuild homes for a quarter of the camp’s population. "Are there concerns of the money running out in the long term? Yes. There is a danger that the rebuilding of Gaza will suck away resources for Nahr al-Bared," says Rex Brynen, a professor of politics at McGill University in Canada and an expert on Palestinian refugee issues, who is on a visit to Lebanon. more..e-mail
Twilight zone / Preferential treatment
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 3/12/2009
Was it a coincidence? The day after Israel’s Davis Cup tennis match in Sweden, played in a practically empty arena this week, a brief item appeared on the Haaretz Web site: Historians have discovered that Sweden, former tennis superpower, aided the Nazi war machine by extending credit to German industrial plants. Coincidence or not, neutral in 1941 or not, 68 years later, public opinion in Sweden is definitely not neutral: Thousands demonstrated there against Israel, which was forced to wield its racket like a leper, with no audience in attendance. Did anyone in Israel even ask why it was considered a pariah in Sweden? No one dared question whether the war in the Gaza Strip was worth the price we’re paying now, from Ankara to Malmo. It’s enough to recall that the Swedes were always against us. The fact that there were times when they were awash in love for Israel was erased from our consciousness. The world is always against us, period. But the world is not against us - to the contrary: The truth is that there is no other nation toward which the world is so forgiving, even today.... more..e-mail
The Makings of History / A tale of two cities
Tom Segev, Ha’aretz 3/12/2009
Next Independence Day will also celebrate Tel Aviv’s centenary. Ahead of the Ministerial Committee for Symbols and Ceremonies’ decision to choose this theme, the deputy cabinet secretary, Lior Natan, tracked down a stormy argument over what the first Hebrew city should be named. Prime minister David Ben-Gurion demanded that it be called "Yafo," in Hebrew. Jaffa was conquered in the War of Independence, most of its Arab residents fled or were expelled, and an influx of new immigrants took their place. The city was not annexed to Tel Aviv in one go, but rather in three separate acts. At a cabinet meeting held on October 4, 1949, the interior and immigration minister, Haim Moshe Shapira, suggested conjoining Jaffa and Tel Aviv, and explained: "I am very concerned that a city of immigrants will arise next to Tel Aviv, with all that this implies, and it is not such a healthy thing, nor is it natural, that a narrow road separate two cities. Ben-Gurion concurred. He, too, was afraid of the gap between the cities: "As it is, it’s as if there are two peoples coming into being here, but that must not be exacerbated artificially," he explained, adding: "I hope that someday the name ’Tel Aviv’ will be abolished and that only ’Yafo’ will exist." The ministers passed the proposal to unite the two towns by a 7:2 majority. Ben-Gurion submitted the new city’s name to a vote. more..e-mail
Ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem
Dr. Marcy Newman writing from occupied East Jerusalem, Electronic Intifada 3/10/2009
Last week when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a press conference in Ramallah with Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as Palestinian Authority president officially expired on 9 January, a Washington Post reporter questioned her about the 143 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem that Israel intends to demolish in the coming weeks. She responded: "clearly, this kind of activity is unhelpful and not in keeping with the obligations entered into under the roadmap." While some hailed this remark as a condemnation of Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing project, it appeared to many on the ground as callous and flippant.
Since the press conference, the number of Palestinian homes Israeli occupation forces intend to level has increased from 143 to 179. It seems that the number of homes and families who will be forced from their homes, and many from their villages entirely, increases every day. Just this past week in the East Jerusalem area, 88 homes in al-Bustan, 55 homes in Shufat refugee camp, 35 Bedouin homes on the Jerusalem-Jericho Road, and 66 homes in al-Isawiyya were slated for destruction, affecting more than 2,000 Palestinians, most of whom have lived there for generations. Ras al-Amoud, al-Abasiyya, Sheikh Jarrah and Ras Khamis appear to be next on the list of targeted areas. The affected families see this method of adding new neighborhoods to the demolition list every day as a means of making it more difficult to challenge and protest these eviction orders. more..e-mail
East Jerusalem settlements ratchet up tensions
Helena Cobban, Electronic Intifada 3/10/2009
JERUSALEM (IPS) - As the fires of human misery continue to smolder in Gaza, the situation in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem is emerging as another potentially explosive issue in, and far beyond, the Middle East.
The future of the city is considered an issue of prime importance to both Palestinians and Israelis, as well as to their supporters around the world. Jerusalem-related tensions have sparked several earlier rounds of violence between the two peoples, including when former (and future) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started work on the new East Jerusalem settlement of Har Homa in 1997.
In September 2000, it was a visit by opposition leader Ariel Sharon to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount -- accompanied by 1,000 armed security people -- that sparked the second intifada. Now, Israeli and Palestinian peace activists warn that the provocative actions of government-backed settler activists within Jerusalem could spark yet another serious escalation of tensions.
Some 220,000 Palestinians live in East Jerusalem, which until 1967 was the commercial and administrative hub of the whole West Bank region, of which it is an integral part. Since Israel occupied the city in 1967, successive Israeli governments have implanted vast (and very expensive) Israeli settlements into the city, whose boundaries they also unilaterally expanded. more..e-mail
The expulsion of the expelled and photo essay
Nadia Hasan, Palestine Think Tank 3/10/2009 Lebanon: the "reconstruction" of the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, destroyed a year and a half ago by the Lebanese army The stone base that initiates the process of rebuilding the camp of Nahr al-Bared was laid on Monday, March 9 at a ceremony organized by the Lebanese Government and the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, 18 months after that the camp was completely destroyed by the Lebanese army during fighting against militants of the group Fatah al Islam. Invited to the event were persons in charge of the agencies involved in the process of reconstruction, journalists, diplomats, as well as a selected and limited Palestinian representation. In a improvised tent, and under the direct supervision of the army and the intelligence service of the government of Lebanon, Tarek Mitri, Lebanese Minister of Information, Abbas Zaki, the Palestinian Authority Ambassador in Lebanon, Khalid Makkawi, chairman of the Committee for Dialogue Palestinian-Lebanese and Karen Abu Zayed, General Commissioner of UNRWA in Lebanon, expressed their thanks to all those involved in the process of rebuilding the camp and the efforts that they have been making to assist more than 40 thousand refugees whose homes were razed after they were forced to flee from them, ultimately taking refuge in the neighboring Beddawi camp. Only 17,000 of them were able to return and resettle in fragile emergency shelters built by UNRWA. more..e-mail
Straight From the Mouths of Babes
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 3/10/2009
I have always said that children should never be underestimated. Unlike adults, children are untainted with biases, their judgment unclouded by stereotypes. They are the purest form of humans and thus exude a wisdom and perspective that grownups could never offer. I came upon this infinite wisdom in my own daughter the other day, a wisdom and rationale that embodied the whole of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in one short childlike sentence. I was struck with awe, no doubt, that my daughter, a mere six years of age, could have figured out the inherent predicament between us and our occupiers without ever having been explicitly told. We live in Jerusalem’s Old City, in the heart of the Muslim Quarter. On the way to our house, predominantly crammed with Palestinian shops selling foods, trinkets, souvenirs and Islamic garb for women, there are two or three buildings that stick out like a sore thumb. These have been taken over by Jewish settlers, who have ensured that all who pass understand who lives inside. Huge Israeli flags flutter from the windows, a Hebrew sign is posted outside what has now become a religious center and armed settlers are constantly coming in and out of the doors in sharp contrast to the Palestinian men, women and children who frequent this stretch of the city. more..e-mail
Group Highlights ’Memoricide’ in West Bank
Jonathan Cook - Canada Park, Palestine Chronicle 3/10/2009
As spring sets in early, Israelis have been pouring into one of the country’s most popular leisure spots. Visitors to Canada Park, a few kilometres north-west of Jerusalem, enjoy its spectacular panaromas, woodland paths, mountain-bike trails, caves and idyllic picnic areas. A series of signs describe the historical significance of the landscape, as well as that of a handful of ancient buildings, in terms of their Biblical, Roman, Hellenic and Ottoman pasts. Few, if any, visitors take notice of the stone blocks that litter sections of the park. But Eitan Bronstein, director of Zochrot (Remembering), is committed to educating Israelis and foreign visitors about the park’s hidden past -- its Palestinian history. "In fact, though you would never realize it, none of this park is even in Israel," he told a group of 40 Italians on a guided tour this past weekend. "This is part of the West Bank captured by Israel during the 1967 war. But the presence of Palestinians here -- and their expulsion -- is entirely missing from the signs." more..e-mail
Israel’s Occupation – Book Review
Ludwig Watzal, Palestine Chronicle 3/10/2009
Israel’s Occupation, Neve Gordon, University of California Press, Berkeley 2008. Israel has used Gaza as a free fire zone for 22 days and nights. Inevitably, the question arises how could Israel’s occupation become so brutal taking into account the country’s claim of being a "benign occupation power". Neve Gordon’s book asks exactly that question. Did it happen because of decisions made by politicians or military officers or did the reasons lay in certain elements of the occupation’s structure? The author sees the latter as the main cause of the conflict. Initially, "the occupation operated according to the colonization principle" which means the administration of people’s lives, while exploiting the territories’ resources. Structural contradictions undermined the original principle and gave way in the mid-1990 to the separation principle. By separation, Gordon means "the abandonment of efforts to administer the lives of a colonized population". This lack of interest towards peoples’ lives that is characteristic of the separation principle "accounts for the recent surge in lethal violence". Neve Gordon, professor for Politics and Government at the Ben-Gurion University in Be’er Sheva, has written the first comprehensive history of the Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967. Early on, he makes it clear that the conflict started way before 1967. The struggle for land began in the late 19th century and reached its peak in 1948. One cannot understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “without taking into account the ethnic cleansing that took place during and after the 1948 war”. .... more..e-mail
The New Contenders
Tariq Alhomayed, MIFTAH 3/10/2009
The first comment we heard from Hezbollah with regards to its opening of channels of communication with the British Foreign Office is that this is "a step in the right direction." However Westminster has said that this step is nothing more than floating a trial balloon, yet Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qasim welcomed the new language! Let us forget the significance of this step, even though it does raise a lot of questions, especially since there is no difference between the political and military wing of Hezbollah except in the eyes of the British. For in the end this whole issue is connected to the Wali Al Faqih. What is striking is that Hezbollah considers this step to be a positive one, and here the question is: If all Hezbollah opponents in Lebanon are met with a stream of insults and accusations calling them agents of the US and Britain, why is re-establishing communication with the West a positive move? Why is [Jeffrey] Feltman no longer seen as the devil lurking in the details? Why is the West no longer considered a Colonial outlet for Zionist schemes, as was previously said? Or is the whole story in accordance with the principle "Unless I’m involved nobody will be". more..e-mail
Gaza: Where Are the Arab Convoys?
Ahmad Barqawi, Palestine Chronicle 3/10/2009
Something happened in Gaza that shook the very core of my foundation and being. If this is what the ’progress’ and ’evolution’ of the human species have yielded so far, then I don’t even want to imagine what our fated future is holding in store for us. It gives me shudders to think that I am living in a day and age where rationalizing the bombing of unaided infants and children audaciously live on T.V. is just as effortless as opening a soda can; all you have to do is throw in broad and ambiguous justifications -the most common one of course being “Fighting Terrorism” - and you’re automatically immune against the slightest form of protest, condemnation or even friendly critique. The Viva Palestina convoy arrived last night to its final destination after a long and heroic journey leaving us emotionally jam-packed with feelings of gratitude not only as Arabs or supporters of the Palestinian cause but also as human beings, for the flicker of hope this convoy has symbolized; that there is still goodness in humanity after all amid the never-ending injustice and cold materialism that seem to have become the most common characterization of our world as of late; a world that has gone a stray for more than 60 years turning its back on all sorts of massacres and atrocities in our region and elsewhere; a world that’s growing even more vile and prejudiced with each and every new American administration. Real hope and change can be found in everyone who contributed to the success of this convoy; from the organizers to the donors; the drivers; the loaders and even those who prayed for it to reach the people of Gaza; that’s real hope and change if you ask me. (With all do respect for President Obama and his promises of "hope and Change", which I can assure you do not even remotely concern us and our righteous issues.) more..e-mail
Recognizing Two-State Principle Condition for Negotiating With Netanyahu
Huda al Husseini, MIFTAH 3/10/2009
The Gaza aid conference will not divert attention from the internal problems that the Palestinians are facing. PNA head Mahmud Abbas wants a national unity government that accepts the two-state solution and previously signed agreements. As for Hamas, it responds by saying that the required government should be one that embraces the resistance. Accordingly, Hamas refuses to differentiate between its position as a movement and the obligations that a Palestinian government is required to meet. It continues to cling to its victory in the parliamentary election. Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat, who enjoys a very close relationship with the Palestinian president, responded to all this by saying: "Never before in history has a political party won the election then announced later its intention to cancel UN resolutions, the Arab initiative, and previously signed agreements." He added: "Throughout history, contractual obligations upheld by political societies have always been binding to the governments that come to power through coups, elections, or hereditary rule." He holds the view that "Hamas must understand that any Palestinian government to be formed will be a responsible component of the international community that will have political, financial, and economic obligations." more..e-mail
Histadrut: Israel’s racist 'trade union'
Tony Greenstein, Electronic Intifada 3/10/2009
Histadrut has always been a strange creature. In most countries one joins a trade union which is affiliated to a national trade union federation. In Israel one first joins Histadrut and then one is allocated to a union. It is only outside Israel that Histadrut is seen as a normal trade union, the Israeli equivalent of the British Trade Union Congress or the American union movement AFL/CIO.
Less well known is the fact that Histadrut, an organization of the settler Jewish working class, was the key Zionist organization responsible for the formation of the Israeli state. As former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir remarked: "Then [1928] I was put on the Histadrut Executive Committee at a time when this big labor union wasn’t just a trade union organization. It was a great colonizing agency." [1] Pinhas Lavon, as secretary-general of Histadrut, went so far as to describe it in 1960 as "a general organization to its core. It is not a trade union ..." [2] Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, held that without Histadrut, "I doubt whether we would have had a state." more..e-mail
Loss of dignity, Mohammad’s story
Eva Bartlett In Gaza, ISM 3/10/2009
An elderly man saw me walking the other morning. "Bless you, bless you,"ť he said, holding out his palm as I gave him 20 shekels. What has rendered a man in his late years impoverished and begging, in a manner Palestinians are not accustomed to? I followed him home yesterday. It took some doing, as the name he had told me, while correct, didn’t seem to register with his wife when my friend Mohammed called. Establishing that he was the same man I’d met on the street took some time two days ago. Then locating his home in a swirl of alleys after the Sahaa market area took more doing. But we finally reached it and I saw the same beaming older man, greeting us with the same enthusiasm and gratitude of two weeks ago. Mohammad Ahmad Kahawish lives in the Tuffahh area, a neighbourhood in Gaza city’s older area. His family is unusually small for a Palestinian family, with only 3 children. His house is also small, and now is quite damaged from the intense shelling during Israel’s 3 weeks of attacks on Gaza. more..e-mail
’Friends of Israel’ at Westminster: Zionist Lackeys
Stuart Littlewood – London, Palestine Chronicle 3/9/2009
In January, while Israel’s military was pulverising Gaza for 22 days and nights and incinerating its women and children with phosphor bombs, the Liberal Democrat Party in the UK published an article by its Friends of Israel wing, entitled ’Israel has no option but to defend itself against Hamas and Iran’. According to this, "Israel is fighting in Gaza to stop the firing of rockets at towns and cities well within Israel’s internationally recognized, pre-1967 borders. These rockets are not home-made fireworks; they are sophisticated weapons, which often kill innocent people. They are fired without precision..." So sophisticated are the rockets, in fact, that only 1 in 400 actually kills somebody. But rockets never were the issue. There are no rockets coming out of the West Bank. Yet the illegal Israeli occupation there continues and so does the ethnic cleansing, the land theft, the illegal settlements, the colonization, the demolition of Palestinian homes, the throttling of the economy, the abduction and ’administrative detention’ of civilians and the massive block on freedom of movement. There is no let-up in the oppression of West Bank Palestinians who DO NOT fire rockets, and no sign of an end to their misery. more..e-mail
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Alice Walker, CODEPINK Founder Medea Benjamin in Gaza to Mark International Women’s Day
Democracy Now! 3/9/2009
Millions around the world marked International Women’s Day on Sunday by celebrating advances made by women and honoring the ongoing global struggle for gender equality and equal rights. We go to Gaza, where a women’s delegation just made it in, to speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker and CODEPINK founder Medea Benjamin. ....Alice Walker and Medea Benjamin, welcome to Democracy Now! Alice, can you tell us how you came over the border into Gaza? ALICE WALKER: Well, we came through the Rafah Gate, which Medea and everyone else thought would be very difficult to get through, because it had been closed and there was talk of nobody ever coming through it. But we managed. And the Red Crescent was a big help, including the wife of Mubarak, the president of Egypt. So we’re very, very happy that we managed to get here to be with the women on International Women’s Day. AMY GOODMAN: Medea Benjamin, talk about your purpose in Gaza, how long you will be there, what you’re doing. MEDEA BENJAMIN: We’ll be here for five days. We have come with a sixty-person delegation, I think the largest mostly US delegation to visit Gaza. And our purpose was to connect with the women for International Women’s Day to show our support and to educate ourselves so that we can go back to the United States and work hard on our policies. And we’ve been told by so many of the people we met with that one of the greatest obstacles to any kind of improvement in their lives is the United States government. So we know that our real work happens when we get back home. -- See also: Listen / Watch and CodePink: Women Say No to Warmore..e-mail
Interview: Children Need More Support in Gaza - UNICEF Head
IRIN News, Palestine Chronicle 3/9/2009 UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Director Ann M. Veneman recently paid a visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory to assess the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with special focus on children. As of 5 February, 431 Palestinian children had died and 1,872 had been wounded in the 22-day Israeli offensive which ended on 18 January, according to the Gaza health ministry. Veneman spoke to IRIN in Gaza City during her visit. IRIN: After visiting Gaza, what are your first impressions and priorities? Veneman: We focused on the impact of the conflict on children. So often children are the ones that are hurt by the wars of adults. The total population of Gaza is about 1.4 million, of which 56 percent - approximately 793,520 - are children, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Humanitarian access to all, especially to the most vulnerable, must be unhampered. IRIN: How are the health and nutrition standards for Gaza’s children since the recent war. Veneman: UNICEF remains concerned that the nutritional status and general health of children in Gaza is likely to deteriorate given the dependency of Gazan families on food aid and cash assistance, as well as the lack of access to clean tap water. more..e-mail
Walaja farmer stands the ground he loves
Mary Arthur, International Middle East Media Center News 3/9/2009
Abed al Fatah lives in a tiny natural cave on his land near Walaja village just outside Jerusalem. It is on the steeply stepped side of a wildly beautiful valley with the soft shade of Cremisan monastery woods behind and wide rural views all around. Abed is farming his ancestral lands here as father and grandfather did before him and he hopes his children will in years to come. The land has been in the family for over 400 years and it is deeply precious to Abed: ’I love this land; without it, I can’t live. It is my life, it courses through my veins; the earth here has the smell of my ancestors,. I want to live here, like others across the world, in peace and love.’ Abed’s gentle good nature shines out of his deep brown eyes, his heart as golden as his skin. But his will is as strong as his muscles; he has farmed this land all his life and he swears he will die before he gives it up. And this is beginning to look like a possibility. Two days ago he had a visit from officials saying they were from the Israeli Interior Ministry. They broke down the door of his dwelling and threw out all his things. more..e-mail
Doctors struggling to treat Gaza war wounded
Report, IRIN, Electronic Intifada 3/8/2009
GAZA CITY (IRIN) - Mohammed Abu Shabah, aged 22, lies in al-Wafa rehabilitation center in northern Gaza, paralyzed from the waist down after a missile fired by an Israeli drone on 11 January left pieces of shrapnel near his spine. Doctors at the center, Gaza’s only rehabilitation hospital, fear removing them could lead to complete paralysis.
"I was just walking down the street," said Abu Shabah, recounting the incident near his home in Rafah. He was eventually sent to al-Madee military hospital in Cairo for emergency care.
He needs, his doctors say, a vasotrain machine to improve blood circulation to his limbs and a urodynamic machine to measure bladder capacity, but both machines are currently unavailable in Gaza.
"They were destroyed by Israeli tank fire on 15 January," Tareq Dirdes, head of the men’s unit at the al-Wafa centre, told IRIN, adding "the machine’s keyboard was hit by shrapnel, and there are no spare parts available."
Some 2,315 (43 percent) of the injured were wounded by shrapnel, and spinal cord injuries are common, according to the health ministry. Hospital staff told IRIN they were struggling to provide medical care with intermittent electricity supplies and shortages of items like wheelchairs and medication as well as the more sophisticated equipment needed for patients with paralysis. more..e-mail
Gaza Or Bust
Yvonne Ridley reports from Viva Palestina, band annie’s Weblog 3/8/2009
The last 24 hours have probably been the blackest since the Viva Palestina convoy set off from London. Yesterday the convoy members became the target of an orchestrated wave of violence first started by Egyptian police and then culminating in vicious attacks by unknown thugs. The end result was a number of peace activists whose only aim is to take humanitarian aid into war torn Gaza were treated in hospital for head injuries. Mercifully the string of casualties was not too serious but the experience denied us the chance of fulfilling our mission to deliver aid to Gaza yesterday. And dramatic images of the rioting and attacks could not be relayed to Press TV viewers because someone sabotaged the satellite van by deliberately cutting through a vital cable which would have beamed the shameful attacks across the world. However, every cloud has a silver lining and I would like to take this opportunity of personally thanking the Egyptian authorities and those dark forces who tried to derail Viva Palestina. The event has only served to make us stronger, unite and bond us together more and created a wave of international media interest in Viva Palestina. -- See also: Viva Palestina and Aid convoy enters Gaza Stripmore..e-mail
No Headlines As Epic Journey To Gaza Nears End
Sonja Karkar, Palestine Chronicle 3/9/2009
An epic journey across eight countries is nearing its end. Gaza is almost within sights of the weary drivers and their navigators. On Day 21, the British convoy leaders decided to by-pass the towns of Benghazi and Bayda in Libya after consulting with Libyan officials to cut the time it would take to get to Gaza. This meant a desert crossing of some 400km - enduring not what many would think to be hot and stifling conditions, but rather the bitter cold of winter winds unbroken by vast expanses of emptiness. Perhaps few thought of what would await them on this journey when they first set out, but certainly, despite the hardships no one is complaining. What the Palestinians in Gaza are suffering is so much more and that is uppermost in everyone’s minds. Nevertheless, poor and oftentimes non-existent phone signals, no landmarks, breakdowns, sandstorms and security restrictions are just some of the hiccups that have made the epic journey a writer’s dream story - after all, there are some 300 people sharing in the experience and each with their own story to tell. Under normal circumstances, it would be splashed across pages and TV screens in large headlines with a blow-by-blow account of various travellers’ tales. Not so on this voyage. The media is strangely silent, seemingly uninterested even in the historic opening of the border between Morocco and Algeria that has been closed since 1994. more..e-mail
Obama and his magic lamp
Spengler, Asia Times 3/10/2009
For the United States to borrow the US$2 trillion a year that it wants, a poor country like Turkey cannot borrow the $30 billion a year that it needs - unless, that is, the United States borrows it first and re-lends it to Turkey. When President Barack Obama respectfully suggests that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan might like to jump, Erdogan will ask, "How long should I remain in the air?" Turkey requires a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at which the US has the biggest vote. News that an IMF loan might be delayed sent Turkey’s lira crashing to a new low against the dollar last week. Just then, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton turned up in Ankara to announce that Obama would visit Turkey in April. Most analysts expected Obama to adjust American foreign policy to the modesty of his circumstances, constrained by rising foreign debt and enervating entanglements. Instead, Obama has entered the foreign policy area with a magic lamp in hand, namely America’s bottomless capacity to borrow, and the whole of the world seems to him a Cave of Wonders - at least for the moment. Does America want logical support for its withdrawal from Iraq, or mediation with Iran, or a back channel to Hamas, or anything else? Obama’s wish is Erdogan’s command, as long as Erdogan can hold onto power. more..e-mail
Hot Air Brings no Winds of Change
Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler, Inter Press Service 3/9/2009
JERUSALEM, Mar 9(IPS) - Last November, on the day marking the assassination of Israel’s peace-making leader Yitzhak Rabin, the now outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Israelis something which, for decades, not even Rabin had dared say - we must end the occupation of the Palestinian territories and return to the 1967 borders. Olmert’s call sounded revolutionary, but it was rather hollow: he had himself been elected on the ticket to settle Israel’s permanent borders, yet never dared to put into practice what he preached. When he spoke out, Olmert was already on the way out.
Hollow, or not, was it an opportunity missed? Is it now a lost opportunity? Israelis have since elected the hard Right to form their next government. The call to end occupation sounds more hollow still. The regression into hidebound positions has gone further: prime minister designate Benjamin Netanyahu resolutely resists committing to the two-state solution that has been part and parcel of formal Israeli policy with the Palestinians over the past 16 years. But the further Israel seems intent on retreating, the more open the rest of the region seems to be to possibilities for compromise in keeping with the spirit of change being disseminated by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. more..e-mail
The Promise of ’Normal Ties’
Rami G. Khouri, Middle East Online 3/9/2009
BOSTON - Well, well, what do we have going on this week? The US State Department invites the Syrian ambassador for a long chat, and then sends two senior envoys for more chats in Damascus. The US Secretary of State announces a few days later that she wants Iran invited to a meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbors to discuss conditions in that country. The following day, the British government announces it is resuming contacts with the political wing of Hizbullah in Lebanon.
What we have going on, I suspect, is that the two leading proponents of Western arrogance in the form of colonialism and neocolonialism -- the United States and United Kingdom -- have recognized that their approach has failed, and that they are better off having normal diplomatic talks and negotiations with the three leading centers of resistance to them, namely Iran, Syria and Hizbullah. The pace of change in American policies, in particular, has been impressive since President Barack Obama’s administration took over six weeks ago, though it will take some time for the results of the current shifts to materialize. more..e-mail
Lieberman’s Charm Offensive
Editor Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 3/9/2009
Israel’s ’Rising Political Star’ tries to convince the West that he ’shares their values’. INTRODUCTION: BACKGROUND ON ISRAELI ELECTIONS Israel’s February 10th National Election results confirmed the country’s worrying rightward political shift.The election results were basically a tie between Tzipi Livni of Kadima with 28 seats in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) and Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud with 27 seats.Coming in third was Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beitenu, an extremely nationalist and right-wing party. Because of Israel’s political shift to the far right, he was the deciding factor in Likud’s being granted the opportunity to lead the new government"”earning him the nickname "kingmaker"ť. WHO IS AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN? Lieberman was born in Ishinev, Soviet Union (now Moldova). He studied at an agricultural institute and after finishing he worked as a nightclub bouncer and broadcaster in Baku, Azerbaijan. He moved with his parents to Israel in 1978, served in the army and studied social sciences at university before starting his career in politics. more..e-mail
Iran’s Anti-Israel Rhetoric Aimed at Arab Opinion
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service 3/9/2009
WASHINGTON, Mar 9(IPS) - After Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called in October 2005 for an end to the state of Israel, Israeli leaders began stepping up talk of an "existential threat" to the country. Likud Party leader Binyamin Netanyahu, who is now forming a new government, has even used it support his argument that the Iranian president is threatening a new "holocaust" against Jews.
Serious Israeli and Iranian analysts of Iran’s national security policy, however, have long viewed similar statements by Iranian leaders - and its assistance to Hamas and Hezbollah - as having nothing to do with ending the Israeli state, much less using military force to destroy it.
The Iranian condemnation of Israel and embrace of the Palestinian cause, according to these analysts, have been largely a strategic ploy to turn Arab public opinion against the Sunni regimes’ policies of hostility toward Iran. Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was Israel’s foreign minister and minister of public security from 1999 to 2001, observed in a lecture in Bologna in November 2007 that Iranian policy toward Israel has been misunderstood. Iran has been "more an enemy of an Israeli-Arab reconciliation than of Israel as such," said Ben-Ami. more..e-mail
Reconciliation at Last?
Joharah Baker, Palestine Chronicle 3/9/2009
It has been almost two years since the fabric of Palestinian unity was torn down the seam. For almost two years Hamas and Fatah have duked it out on the ground and in political corridors, claiming hundreds of lives and creating an almost irreparable split between the West Bank and Gaza. Today, although terribly overdue, Palestinians are cautiously squinting into the future, at the possible light at the end of this very dark tunnel. On March 3, Fatah announced the members of the five joint committees agreed on at the recent Cairo talks. The five committees will deal with the issues of the transitional government formation, reconciliation, security, elections and the PLO. If all goes well, a transitional government will be formed by the end of March and will conduct the affairs of the state until presidential and legislative elections take place at the beginning of 2010. To an outsider, this may seem like a small step. To Palestinians it is definitely not. There have been numerous attempts to reconcile the two Palestinian political giants, Hamas and Fatah, but to no avail. Ever since the international community refused to accept Hamas’ victory in the 2006 PLC elections, the situation has gone in one direction only: downhill. Thereafter, Hamas refused to relinquish power in Gaza and Fatah refused to let go of its historic reins over the Palestinian Authority, naturally resulting in the metaphorical clash of the Titans. The bloody Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007 left hundreds dead in its wake and bad blood between brothers. The clashes between the two have been on again off again since then with intermittent lulls in between. This new development is the first glimmer of hope in a long time. more..e-mail
Systematic failure to enforce the law against Israeli occupation forces in the Palestinian territories
Valentina Azarov, International Law Observer 3/8/2009
Ben-Naftali and Zamir have recently published an article in the Journal of International Criminal Justice titled ‘Whose ‘conduct unbecoming’? The shooting of a Handcuffed, Blindfolded Palestinian Demonstrator’. The work considers the case of HCJ 7195/08 Abu Rhama et al. v Military Advocate General - the petition in the case is available in English. The case of this 27-year old Palestinian demonstrator who was handcuffed, blindfolded, detained and then shot at from less than 2 meters away whilst being held by the soldiers following a command given by the officer in charge. This story has reawakened the focus on the non-enforcement of the law and the lack of access to justice for Palestinian who wish to pursue their right to receive a remedy and to see that the perpetrator that has violated their rights and most basic freedoms is prosecuted and punished appropriately. The work commences by placing the incident in the context of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) conduct towards Palestinian demonstrators and detainees. It proceeds to outline the applicable normative framework of IHL and ICL; namely, the application of the principle of human dignity in IHL, and inhuman and degrading treatment as war crimes. Finally, the paper examines the policy of tolerance towards systematic violence and its implications and the possibility of such conduct by the occupation forces to amount to a ‘crime against humanity’. In this light, it concludes by considering at brief the significance of both the doctrine of universal jurisdiction and the role of the HCJ in such cases. The abstract reads as follows... more..e-mail
Another war crime in Jerusalem
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, Stop The Wall 3/8/2009
A lot of anxiety and worry hovers over the lives of the people of Silwan in the Bustan neighborhood. This emotional strain is the consequence of the occupied municipality’s plan in Jerusalem (Plan E/J/9) which calls for the demolishing of 88 buildings housing 115 families. Simply, this will make around 1500 Jerusalemites homeless; the number includes women, babies, and elderly people. All will lose houses they inherited from their parents and grandparents, most of which have been built before the Israeli state came to existence.
The coming demolishing campaign for the 115 families in Bustan is not the only expected one, and a similar destiny awaits around 60% of the houses in Wad Hilwa in the same village. All these places are facing the threat of demolition on grounds that they have been built either without a building permit or upon archeological sites. more..e-mail
Women’s Day on the Radio: their children must be released from Israeli prisons
Mazin Qumsyieh, Palestine News Network 3/8/2009
Beit Sahour - Driving from Beit Sahour to Birzeit yesterday, I was listening to a program on radio Falastin titled "Wala Budda LilQayd An Yankasir". The term is a verse from a poem that roughly translates that "the chain is destined to be broken." The program is a lifeline for the nearly 13,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails to hear from their families outside the prison walls.Since visitation rights are routinely denied or highly restricted, family members call in and have three minutes to say something on air.For those prisoners who have access to radio, it is a way to hear and connect with their loved ones.I listened for nearly one hour to impassioned messages and harrowing stories. All the voices I heard were of women. One woman started her message by saluting women prisoners on International women’s day and specifically mentioned one leading prisoner, a friend of hers whom she shared a prison room with the year before. She went on to encourage all prisoners to be steadfast. Then she directed her message to her husband, still in prison. more..e-mail
Where Every Day Is a Woman’s Day
Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler, Inter Press Service 3/8/2009
BET SAHOUR, West Bank, Mar 8 (IPS) - We’ve been warned she’s a "harsh case". Hesitantly she enters, a withdrawn smile hidden behind glasses and a canopy of thick black hair. Impassively, she tells her life story - as if it’s about someone else entirely: She’s 19. Since seven, she’s been sexually assaulted by "an influential family relative." He used to tell her what they were doing was "normal between a man and a woman." She felt secluded from her own family by a vow forced upon her not to reveal their ’little secret’: "I didn’t know what to do - he’s so well-known in our community. I couldn’t speak to my dad whom I love so much. My mother was of little comfort. I was afraid." Last year, she heard two younger sisters suffered the same ordeal. But, they were now married, whereas she remained at home, alone in her helplessness. Two months ago, she left, "not knowing where to go." Finally, she found a haven within the ochre walls of this new complex on a Bethlehem hillside looking down on the rugged Judean desert - the Mehwar Centre for the Protection and the Empowerment of Families and Women. At this centre every day is a woman’s day, every week a woman’s week. more..e-mail
No more excuses for Egypt: refuse British aid convoy entrance to Gaza
PNN, Palestine News Network 3/8/2009
Gaza -- No longer can we make excuses for the Egyptians, no matter how often they put their names atop "negotiations" between Fateh and Hamas, and with the Israelis. Today, after a journey that began on 14 February, the largest British convoy finally arrived to its final border passage bringing humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza. Hundreds of people and vehicles made it through Europe and northern Africa, but it was the Egyptian authorities who refused today the introduction of a convoy for Gaza. Instead the Egyptians insisted they pass through the Israeli border crossing of Karem Abu Salem. For his part the Minister of Social Affairs in the government of Gaza, Dr. Ahmed Kurd, confirmed at a press conference at the gate of the crossing on Sunday night that the convoy included British Parliamentarian George Galloway. He, and other officials, held talks with the Egyptian authorities imploring them to allow the entrance of critically needed medicine, food and blankets. more..e-mail
Israeli right-wing cabinet will increase extremism in the region, challenge the US
Riad Kahwaji, Daily Star 3/9/2009
As the majority of governments in the Arab world struggle to win the battle over the spread of extremism in order to defeat Al-Qaeda, and as the new US administration of President Barack Obama starts an uphill battle to undo the mess left behind in the greater Middle East region by the Bush administration, an extreme right-wing government starts to take shape in Israel under Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu threatening to place the volatile region on a steady course toward more extremism and instability, and likely new military confrontations. Just when there are new efforts in Washington to revive the Middle East peace process that suffered serious setbacks during the George W. Bush era, hardline parties advocating anti-peace policies have won a majority of Knesset seats, poising them to form the next Israeli government. While moderate Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt fiercely push their way to consolidate and unify Arab ranks against growing Iranian influence and rise of Islamist extremism in the region, Israel’s shift to the far right with more radical policies expected to take form will likely seek to push Palestinians out of Jerusalem, build up to 70,000 housing units in West Bank Jewish settlements, and carry out heavier attacks on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. more..e-mail
Space to play in Samoud Camp, Jabalia
Sharon Lock, Tales to Tell - From Gaza 2009 3/6/2009
Photostory Yesterday I went along to the second day of the new kids play space, set up in the temporary (insha’allah) Samoud Camp in the ruins of Jabalia’s Hi Salaam area. EJ and C have partnered up with local youth leaders to put the space together, naming it after the FreeGaza project, and using some one-off donations from various folks outside, to buy the (scarce and hard to obtain) tents, toys, and snacks for the kids to last the next while. Kids from about 5 to 12 crowded excitedly in the dust outside the gate, then headed into the separate girls and boys tents, only stopping to fling off their shoes at the doorways. Most of them come from houses now flattened or no longer even locatable, and their families are attempting to live in temporary shelters or the tent towns such as Samoud, which are too small for the number of homeless and have few facilities. The tents didn’t look up to the job when I first saw them, and are looking even more forlorn now after recent rain, snow, and strong winds. It was lovely watching how much the girls enjoyed the various games that made up a big part of the session. Some games (guess who has the ball behind their back?) were just for fun. Others had children identifying their fears - “the dark.” “when the bombs fall.” “Israeli soldiers”. more..e-mail
A public stoning in Germany
Raymond Deane, Electronic Intifada 3/6/2009
Hermann Dierkes is a respected politician with an honorable record of campaigning for social and political justice in the German Rhineland city of Duisburg. He represented his party Die Linke (The Left Party) on Duisburg City Council, campaigning tirelessly on anti-racist and anti-fascist issues. Most recently, he was his party’s candidate for the post of Lord Mayor.
On 18 February 2009 Dierkes addressed a public meeting on the question of Palestine. To the question of how to take action against the injustice being suffered by Palestinians, he responded that the recent World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil had proposed an arms embargo, sanctions and the boycott of Israeli exports. He added: "We should no longer accept that in the name of the Holocaust and with the support of the government of the Federal Republic [of Germany] such grave violations of human rights can be perpetrated and tolerated ... Everyone can help strengthen pressure for a different politics, for example by boycotting Israeli products." A few days later, Dierkes gave an interview to the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), a conservative paper based in the nearby city of Essen. He explained the demands of the World Social Forum, and requested that the published interview should stress that this had nothing to do with anti-Semitism -- a qualification that invariably needs to be made in Germany, except when there is suspicion of Islamophobia. Predictably, his precautions were in vain; scenting a political coup, the reporter published his article without including the qualification. more..e-mail
Hatred has turned him into a Jew - Deconstructing Nick Cohen
Gilad Atzmon, Palestine Think Tank 3/7/2009
In an article published by the Jewish Chronicle, Observer columnist Nick Cohen argued that ‘Hatred turned him into a Jew’. Initially, I was rather amused by the revealing confession. Cohen must have a lot of hatred in him. He was one of the very few supporters of the illegal war against Iraq within the British media. He really believed that liberating the Iraqis was the way forward. Incidentally he also possesses an incredible record of Islamophobic ranting. Hence, I at first tended to interpret Cohen’s declaration as an acknowledgment that it was the loathing towards others which he finds in himself that made him into a Jew. I was obviously wrong, Cohen was quick to clarify that it is actually other people’s hatred, specifically that of the ‘British Left’ that ‘indulges antisemitism’, which made him ‘feel Kosher’. As we noticed many times before, it is always someone or something else that transforms the ‘innocent’, ‘atheist’, ‘cosmopolitan’, ‘secularist’, ‘egalitarian’ person into a ‘Jew’. I have previously heard Jewish leftists arguing that it was Hitler who made them into Jews, now we have Nick Cohen of the Observer who claims that it is actually the ‘Left’ that makes him ‘feel Kosher’. If it wasn’t very funny, it would be very sad, may even be tragic. One again I find myself admitting that the more I elaborate on issues concerning contemporary Jewish Identity, the more I realise that it is actually the so-called ‘secular’, ‘enlightened’, ‘emancipated’, ‘assimilated’, ‘cosmopolitan’ Jew who provides us with a real meaningful insight into the subject of Zionism, Israeli genocidal policies, Jewish lobbying and Jewish institutional support of the Zionist crime. Cohen’s JC article is an exemplary case study of the Zionisation of world Jewry and the transition of Jewish identity into a hawkish carrier of brutal, expansionist, murderous ideologies. -- See also: Hatred is turning me into a Jewmore..e-mail
Israeli Elections: From Bad to Ugly
Dr Ahmed Yousef, Palestine Think Tank 3/6/2009
Pundits have asked Palestinians of every persuasion what they think of Israeli elections over the past several weeks. Opinions are varied and thoughtful; yet the truth is that to prefer one of the leading groups over another is an exercise in futility. Asking for a choice is akin to opting hypothetically for France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen (Lieberman), Dutch parliamentarian Geet Wilders (Livni), or Russia’s Vladimir Zhirinovsky (Netanyahu), with South Africa’s Pieter W. Botha (Peres) playing the presidential role of whom to ask for the formation of a national unity government. Israeli democracy is an oxymoron, a reality underscored by the abuse of any non-Jewish party vying for equal representation. Palestinian parties entering elections in 2006 were represented by Muslims, Christians and even atheists, with no obligation or pre-condition other than those recognized by international law. The Israeli State, however, routinely purges or inhibits Arab political movement, such as those of Azmi Bishara, with unsubstantiated claims of treason or treachery. And the political neutering of indigenous Arabs is negligible compared with the dismissive approach to any popular presence across the 1967 border. more..e-mail
The United States of Israel
Khalid Amayreh, Palestinian Information Center 3/6/2009
It seems that one doesn’t have to wait four years to find out that Hillary Clinton is just a fraud, very much like her predecessor in the job, Condoleezza Rice. The infamous Rice paid 24 visits to Occupied Ramallah and Occupied Jerusalem, babbling about the "peace process"ť and George Bush’s vision of two states living side by side in peace, Israel and Palestine. Eventually, however, it was proven beyond any doubt that she was a lying emissary representing even a more lying boss. So one may really wonder if Hillary Clinton will be re-enacting the same absurd show, same lies, and same deception. In her recent visit to Occupied Palestine, the former NY senator, who had proven herself a submissive pawn in the service of Zionist circles, reiterated the same old platitudes about US commitment to the "two-state"ť solutio However, she didn’t dare utter a word against the unmitigated expansion of Jewish colonies in the West Bank. Needless to say, it is obvious that the relentless intensive building of Jewish-only colonies has already rendered the prospect of a viable Palestinian state utterly unrealistic, if not outright impossible. more..e-mail
Being there
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 3/6/2009
"Paris Hilton with an agenda," as someone called our man in the territories, was almost lured into joining the "Big Brother VIP" reality show. But he doesn’t regret his decision to decline; or does he? Korin Alal suggested freezing the leftover meat and saving it for the next day. For a few minutes she was busy doing just that. For a long while, her look had been frozen, her anguished face even sadder than usual and she seemed quite lost, but the highly regarded rock singer had found herself a momentary occupation. All around, the young and the beautiful cavorted. Model Adi Neuman prattled nonstop, singer Maya Bouskilla goggled her eyes, the fashion designer Pnina Tornai washed the dishes in her black sequined dress. Everyone looked absolutely a-m-a-z-i-n-g. But Alal looked lost in the villa. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and the camera also kept zooming in on her. The sadness in her eyes could be my sadness, too, her lost way could be mine. I looked at Alal and saw myself. more..e-mail
Lessons from the I-97 Seattle divestment initiative
Dave Jette, Electronic Intifada 3/6/2009
"This is a farce!" Washington state senator Adam Kline could barely control his rage. It was a sunny August Friday in Seattle, and he had been standing outside the Madrona neighborhood farmers market waiting for the volunteers who showed up regularly, collecting signatures for Seattle ballot initiative 97. He would pass out a single sheet of paper listing truths, half-truths and outright fabrications, in an attempt to keep voters from signing the ballot initiative.
What was in I-97 that had gotten this liberal Democrat from a diverse neighborhood of a progressive city so enraged? Seattle ballot initiative 97, known locally as the Seattle Divest from War Initiative, if adopted by voters, would have required the Seattle Employees’ Retirement Fund to divest its funds from companies who are directly involved in illegal wars and occupations in the Middle East.
Of course, this would have covered Halliburton and other military contractors in Iraq. But I-97 didn’t stop there. It had the audacity to apply the same standards to companies involved in all illegal wars and occupations in the Middle East, including the apartheid wall in the West Bank, Israeli settlements in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Golan Heights, as well as a possible Israeli attack on Iran -- all of them illegal under international law. more..e-mail
Pots of Urine, Feces on the Walls - How IDF Troops Vandalized Gaza Homes
Amira Hass, Ha'aretz, MIFTAH 3/7/2009
We had already visited this house, belonging to the Abu Eida family. It is the only one of the family’s nine large houses that remained standing at the eastern edge of the city of Jabalya following Operation Cast Lead. The demolition of the family’s houses and its four cement factories spells the loss of 40 years of hard work. One Hebrew word scrawled on a wall tells the story of the 10 days when young Israeli soldiers became the ostensible prison wardens of five people. The youngest is Suheila Masalha, 55; the eldest is her mother Fatma, who is perhaps 85 or 90 or older. The only man is her brother Mohammed, 65, who is paralyzed and dependent on the women of his family. And there were two more women from the Abu Eida family - Rasmiya, 70, who owns the house, and her sister-in-law Na’ama, 56, who is blind. "Jail" ("mikhla’a" in Hebrew), wrote the soldiers on the wall of the room where they kept the man and the four women. They did not allow them to use the toilet, but forced them to use all kinds of plastic containers kept in the room, for nine of the days. more..e-mail
Lancet Removes Gaza Article, Author responds
Pulse, Palestine Think Tank 3/7/2009
On 2 February 2009, The Lancet Medical Journal’s Global Health Network online published Dr Swee Ang and Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta’s `The Wounds of Gaza’, first published here at PULSE. It introduced the article by stating: Two Surgeons from the UK, Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah and Dr Swee Ang, managed to get into Gaza during the Israeli invasion. Here they describe their experiences, share their views, and conclude that the people of Gaza are extremely vulnerable and defenseless in the event of another attack. On 2 March 09 the Journal removed the article (though The Lancet Student still has it), stating: "We have taken down the blog post The Wounds of Gaza because of factual inaccuracies." No specific faults or amendments to the alleged inaccuracies are suggested. The reader comments, overwhelmingly in support, remain posted. A letter penned by four israelis (surprise, surprise!) that objects to the article was published on February 18. Our friend Dr Swee responds to this development and elaborates on the figures. -- See also: The Wounds of Gaza and The Wounds of Gaza or the Demise of Editorial Review?more..e-mail
All Be Aware
Yousef Abudayyeh, Palestine Think Tank 3/7/2009
The surge in the "Pro-Palestinian" activities in the United States after the Zionist massacre in the Gaza Strip is at least suspicious if not alarming. I am not saying this because I do not want the support for our people to be the norm in this country, but because I see who is riding this wave, and understand that those elements and what they represent are still dangerous and their agenda will not die unless we reach liberation and return. The fundamentals of the Palestinian struggle are clear and not complicated: - Palestine is not that section that was occupied in 1967, or Gaza or Jericho. Palestine is from the River to the Sea and from the Lebanese border to Egypt. - Palestine is Arab, it’s the heart of the Arab World, and thus are the Palestinian people. - The Palestinian struggle is not about religion. We have nothing against the Jewish faith or the Jews. - No just and acceptable solution to our cause will have in it anything less than a complete liberation of Palestine and the return of the Palestinian people to their homes and villages and towns that they or their parents or grandparents were forced to leave in the early part of the last century. Any activity that will not consider these fundamentals, safeguard them and uphold them will not help our cause. People who are putting on activities that take away any of these fundamentals are not helping our cause. We cannot and we do not have the legal or ethical right to trade any of the Palestinian rights, so the “American people” can stand with us or even understand our cause. Anyone or group that attempts to do this should and will be discredit and exposed, and all of us should be vigilant and calling them on it when they do this. more..e-mail
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, Middle East Online 3/7/2009
The unconditional support of Israel’s expansionist agenda has made America fiscally and morally bankrupt. As a result of bowing to Israel’s pressures, March 2003 figures show that the US imposed sanctions on trade with Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria, cost Americans more than 80,000-100,000 jobs a year. "I call’d the devil, and he came, And with wonder his form did I closely scan; He is not ugly, and is not lame, But really a handsome and charming man. A man in the prime of life is the devil, Obliging, a man of the world, and civil; A diplomatist too, well skill’d in debate, politics, yea, the devil I call’d and he came, to devour my soul, and the whole of humanity". - Heinrich Heine On November 4, 2008, the world watched as Americans filed into polling booths to decide who should be the next occupant of the White House. The excitement of the elections veiled the removal of the single most important choice: the option to cancel the neoconservatives’ lease on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In the absence of that choice, “change” is continuity in the White House. President Obama’s actions belie candidate Obama’s speeches and give meaning to Jacob Heilbrunn’s words who wrote: "Don’t look now, but neoconservatism is making a comeback-and not among the Republicans who have made it famous, but in the Democratic Party”[i]. more..e-mail
Hillary in the Holy Land
Seth Freedman, The Guardian 3/7/2009
Hillary Clinton’s Middle East visit this week was hailed by many as the latest manifestation of America’s new get-tough stance towards Israel. Still left in a starry-eyed daze by the effect of Obama’s ascent to power, pundits took the view that the world would never again be the same since his victory, hence anything he or his entourage touched would turn inevitably and immediately to gold. The Middle East peace process, long stalled (if not furiously backpedalling) under Bush’s eight-year reign, was signalled by the Obama camp as a top priority, therefore all eyes were on Clinton’s inaugural trip to the Holy Land in her role as secretary of state. However, now that she’s been and gone and the fanfares have died down somewhat, it is clear that - as far as the Israeli government are concerned - it’s business as usual, regardless of who’s calling the shots in the halls of US power. One example of the new reality mirroring the old was Clinton’s feeble outburst against the demolition of Palestinian homes, in which she described the actions as simply "unhelpful", a charge which was immediately rejected out of hand by Jerusalem’s mayor, who scoffed at her pronouncement with all the petulance of a child complaining that mum and dad "just don’t get it". more..e-mail
Hillary, Iran, Dennis and Israel
Robert Dreyfuss, Middle East Online 3/7/2009 The threatening views of Dennis Ross that talks with Iran operate under an artificial, urgent deadline - due to a possible Israeli attack on Iran - only serve to undermine the possibility of successful US-Iranian diplomacy. In the first concrete overture by the Obama administration to Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has invited diplomats from Tehran to attend an international conference on Afghanistan on March 31. For the past several years, the United States has had no official contacts with Iran, other than severely circumscribed talks between the United States and Iran in Baghdad that focused solely on Iraq.
President Obama wants a dialogue with Iran that is expected to include a wide range of issues, including Iran’s nuclear research program and Tehran’s support Hezbollah and Hamas.
Problem is, a key official involved is Dennis Ross, a staunch opponent of Iran who, until recently, served as a top official of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The think tank is an integral part of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington and Ross, a former US special envoy to Middle East, is widely seen as biased in favor of the Israelis. more..e-mail
’You don’t have a house any more’
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem, The Guardian 3/7/2009
The bulldozer came for the Abbasi family house just before 10am on Monday, grinding up the steep, narrow hill in the district of Silwan, in East Jerusalem. Dozens of policemen and security forces surrounded the house and then banged on the metal front door. "They pushed me and shoved me. I was terrified," said Ghadir al-Abbasi, who was in the house with the three youngest of her six children. "I told them, ’This is the only place we have, where else are we going to live?’ They shouted back to me: ’Silence. You don’t have a house any more.’" She persuaded them to let her collect her identity card, then the police removed some of the family’s furniture, including a red sofa which was dumped in the street. Moments later the bulldozer demolished the single-storey, breeze-block house. Now Ghadir and her husband Mahmoud, a labourer, live with their children in a tent pitched next to the rubble. Since 2004 around 400 houses have been demolished in East Jerusalem. Israeli authorities say the demolitions are the result of a strict legal process because so much Palestinian construction in the east of the city is done without a permit. The municipality said this week that it was only following the law and that enforcement of its planning policies was "completely equal between East and west Jerusalem." more..e-mail
Suddenly, Home Was Gone
Eva Bartlett, Inter Press Service 3/7/2009
BEIT HANOUN, Gaza, Mar 6 (IPS) - Dates in the calendar to mark the rights of women mean little to Manwa Tarrabin (56) and her two daughters. They have lost home, and any rights to it. Until Jan. 17, they were living in a small bungalow in the Al-Amal quarter of Beit Hanoun, within 200 metres of Gaza’s eastern border, in a region declared by the Israeli authorities a ’closed military zone’. Prior to the three weeks of Israeli air, sea and land attacks on Gaza it had been a tidy home at the top of a slight rise, surrounded by open fields and a smattering of olive and fruit trees. Following the withdrawal of Israeli troops, the house is a pancake of angles and debris, one of 80 homes demolished in the Beit Hanoun border area. A dirt path leading to the Tarrabin house crosses agricultural land torn up by tank and bulldozer tracks, and passes numerous former homes, likewise demolished on the day before Israel unilaterally declared a ceasefire. A farming and herding family, the Tarrabins lived off what their sheep and goats produced, and what they could sow in the fertile agricultural land around them. After the attacks began Dec. 27, they continued to stay in the house. On the afternoon of their forced eviction, Manwa and her daughter Sharifa (22) were in the house. "I was so scared when I saw the tanks. My heart dropped to my feet," Tarrabin said, recounting how the Israeli army demolished her house. more..e-mail
The heroes of southern Bethlehem: steadfastness and compassion
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 3/6/2009
It was rough in Umm Salamuna today: no Jayyous or Bi’lin as far as the weaponry employed by the army (no gas, no bullets), but a hatred was palpable. Clearly ready to pounce it was still surprising the amount of aggression in the eyes of 35, maybe 50, Israeli soldiers in green with army vehicles and the border police: the type sporting blue with white jeeps ready to arrest the foreigners. The heroes of southern Bethlehem: steadfastness and compasion Rushing attacks, soldiers swinging fists and rifle butts, was the scene as the southern Bethlehem nonviolent resistance movement demonstrated against land confiscation for the Wall and settlements. Tens more acres are being taken by an Israeli court decision last week. The resistance shouted for justice, for freedom. Palestinians were also marking international women’s day, but that did not stop soldiers from rushing an elderly mother, one who has lived a life of pain sprinkled with joy. She shouted with hands in the air that this was her land. The Palestinian flags wafted in a light breeze, the unseasonable sun shining through. It was a gorgeous day on beautiful Palestinian land, marred as most of it now is by the occupying forces. It was about 100, maybe 150 Palestinians, out on Friday afternoon, journalists both foreign and local, their supporters on hand. A woman came from Bethlehem City in support of the Day of Women. She was impeccably dressed and well-spoken, as were the group of women with her. “This is our land, you can see this. And you can see what they are doing to it, how much they are taking. Soon it will all be gone, but where will we go. This is Palestine and it belongs to the Palestinians.” She did not want to be named. Repercussions are hardly unheard of. more..e-mail
Rising Beyond Bullets
Natalie Abou Shakra – Gaza City, Palestine Chronicle 3/6/2009
’Acres of land across the borders are lost because farmers are targeted by Israeli bullets.’ There is a limit to the sea, and there is a limit to the land. To a Palestinian’s life in Gaza, there is a limit that is not determined by natural death or an unfortunate accident. The harvest seasons forcibly altered, and the fishing boats from their routes blocked. Tanks and bulldozers have plucked the roots of citrus fruits and olive trees kilometers away from the northern and eastern borders of the strip, pushing the borderlines further in, and forcing the inhabitants around these areas out of their homes and into other areas within. The population is already strangled with an Apartheid wall and a suffocating siege and the rope around its neck continues to tighten with the encroachment of the occupation forces from the boundaries inwards by weapons no one is supposed to defy. Local economy, currency, basic resources, medication, technology, academic development and material, are entirely dependent on the Occupier and the allowance of equipment and supplies in through the crossings in a process of importation only, as exporting to the outer world has been prohibited ever since the blockade was enforced on the population in Gaza. A few days before Valentine’s, and at the demand of the farmers and the Dutch government, 25,000 Carnation flowers were allowed to be exported to Europe, which is one of the few exceptions. But, exceptions’ are merely exceptions; no rule from the oppressive codes imposed by the occupation has been altered in favor of the Palestinians in the Strip. more..e-mail
Palestinians Need Help, Not Charity
Aijaz Zaka Syed – Dubai, Palestine Chronicle 3/6/2009
This is a strange world. All those who stood around and stared while Israel pounded Gaza for three weeks have now come together apparently to rebuild it. From UN chief Ban ki-Moon to the so-called Middle East Quartet’s so-called envoy Tony Blair to new US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, all the global movers and shakers turned up for the international donors’ conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt this week. Of course, Hamas hasn’t been invited. How could they have invited the terrorists any way? So what if the Palestinians elected them and they still control Gaza? At the Sharm El Sheikh meeting, everyone talked about reconstruction and committing billions in aid for Gaza. The Arab states came up with $1.65 billion in aid. Saudi Arabia led the charge with its billion dollar commitment. The European Union committed itself to 436 million Euros. And the mighty United States did not disappoint either by offering $900 million of which $300 million is to be paid up front in urgent aid. All in all, $5.2 billion have been promised to rebuild Gaza. more..e-mail
Putting hope on the horizon
Abdul Malik Al-Jabr, Ha’aretz 3/6/2009
On a recent visit to a Cairo hospital to meet children wounded in the recent Israeli operation in Gaza, I talked with 10-year-old Riad, who was recovering from serious injuries caused by an Israeli missile. Replying to my question about what he plans to do after he recovers and returns to Gaza, he said his goal is to study telecom engineering, in order to work in telecommunications. In addition to his own injuries, Riad lost several family members. Nonetheless, what he dreams of is a job and peace - not revenge. How do we advance the hopes of this young boy, at a time when Israelis and Palestinians are at a political stalemate? For some of us in the Palestinian business community, the answer is to it take upon ourselves to create of a viable, thriving and democratic Palestinian society and state. This means preparing our youth to be able to participate fully in a future state that can compete globally, but it also means building a vibrant private-sector economy, which will be able to function only if paired with the clear promise of a two-state solution. more..e-mail
On a low simmer
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/5/2009
"Bomb, bomb, bomb Gaza" is the extent of Israeli strategic thinking these days. Mustafa Barghouti, Fatah official Ahmed Qurei and exiled Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouq agree on a unity government by the end of March following reconciliation talks in Cairo Last Saturday night, Adel Zareb was on his way home in Rafah, near the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, when a massive explosion shook the area. Its force made Zareb take to the ground, and when he rose again he found that his hand was bleeding. The explosion’s source was an Israeli F-15 fighter jet that was attacking the border strip with bombs that weighed up to a tonne, and flying shrapnel from this attack struck Zareb’s arm. Zareb, who is a spokesperson for the Palestinian Crossing Authority, told Al-Ahram Weekly that he’s lost count of how many times Israeli jets have attacked the border area. Its features are unrecognisable due to the many deep pits caused by bombing aimed at destroying the tunnels that Israel claims are used to smuggle arms into the Gaza Strip. The hopes of Zareb and his neighbours for calm following the declaration of a ceasefire and an end to the war were dashed at the end of last week when the Israeli government announced that it cannot agree to the Egyptian truce proposal that Hamas has agreed to. Many Palestinian families who live in the Egyptian border area have begun to search for other apartments to rent since it has become difficult for them to remain in their homes. Area resident Hassan Al-Shair told the Weekly, "We’re no longer able to sleep due to the intense shelling, not for even an hour. It feels as though an earthquake were taking place -- the glass in the windows breaks, the walls shake, and my children are terrified.". more..e-mail
Beyond the pledge
Assem El-Kersh, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/5/2009 Can Israel be prevented from destroying anything that is rebuilt in Gaza? Assem El-Kersh speaks with European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner about the implications of the Sharm El-Sheikh donors conference. What message has the Sharm El-Sheikh International Conference for the Reconstruction of Gaza sent? It is certainly a message of hope, that we won’t let the Palestinians down. The European Commission has always been on the side of the Palestinians. We have been the biggest donor so far. The 440 million euros we are pledging here is for all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Some will go to UNRWA, some to other humanitarian organisations such as the Red Cross. A great deal will be channelled through our own financial mechanisms, directly reaching Gazans. There is cash for the poorest of the poor. Distribution has been working very well in terms of control and monitoring. Both Israel and Hamas will be asked to make changes before reconstruction can take place. What are the odds on their agreeing? We are not wearing rose-tinted glasses. We know the situation is not an easy one. First it is necessary that the new government in Israel be formed and that it return to a peace process that results in actual peace-making. On the other side we want to see the Palestinians together in a national unity government, a government of reconciliation that will also pursue peace. If the Palestinians want a state they have to work for that state. That is what we are hoping for as part of the international Quartet. more..e-mail
Zionists in 1948: poised for expansion
Shahid Alam, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/5/2009
Exponents of a pure form of settler-colonialism, the Zionists in 1948 smashed Palestinian society and dramatically altered an important part of the Islamic heartlands in what was an affront to the whole Islamic world. "The Achilles’ heel of the Arab coalition is Lebanon. Muslim supremacy in this country is artificial and can easily be overthrown. A Christian State ought to be set up there, with its southern frontier on the river Litani. We should sign a treaty of alliance with this State. Then, when we have broken the strength of the Arab Legion and bombed Amman, we could wipe out Transjordan; after that Syria would fall. And if Egypt dared to make war on us, we would bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. We should thus end the war, and would have settled the account with Egypt, Assyria and Chaldea on behalf of our ancestors." (Ben-Gurion, 1948) In their first test of strength with the "natives" in 1948, the Zionists had gained control of nearly four-fifths of Palestine, expelled most of the Palestinians from these territories, and repulsed the combined forces of five Arab proto-states. Yet, the Zionists were not about to rest on their laurels: their interests did not lie in making peace with the Arabs. The events of 1948 had demonstrated what they could achieve; with minor losses of their own, they had obliterated Palestinian society and handily beaten back the Arabs. more..e-mail
The haggling continues
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/5/2009
It appears Labour will join the Likud-led government, says NetanyahuAs Israeli politicians continue to haggle over the formation of the next government, sources in Tel Aviv this week unveiled a plan by the outgoing government of Ehud Olmert to build tens of thousands of settler units in the West Bank. If implemented, the plan would irreversibly kill any realistic hope for a viable Palestinian state in the Palestinian territories seized by Israel in 1967. According to a detailed report released by the Peace Now Movement, which monitors Jewish settlement expansion, the Israeli government is planning to build as many as 72,000 settler units in the West Bank. The organisation said the plan would mean an increase by 100 per cent of the Jewish settler population, now estimated at more than half a million. According to the report, approval has already been granted for the building of 15,000 settler units, with plans for building an additional 58 units being worked out by various governmental agencies. Peace Now said it was highly likely that the next Israeli government, expected to be dominated by right-wing extremists, will expedite settlement building at a rapid pace, which would mean the utter destruction of whatever chances there still are for peace with the Palestinians. more..e-mail
It takes a village
Ran Shapira, Ha’aretz 3/5/2009
After being forced by the state to pull up stakes in 1952, the Abu Alkiyan tribe relocated to Umm al-Hiran, but was never granted formal recognition or status. Now the Bedouin have been deemed illegal trespassers and must move again. A few minutes after sunset, Raed Abu Alkiyan’s house is filled with darkness and the temperature drops quickly. "The children are growing up in unsuitable surroundings," says Raed, a father of five. "There is no heater to warm them at night, no light in the house and no health services." His house, like all the others in the village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev, is not connected to the national electricity grid, nor are there telephone connections or a sewage system. Water comes from a makeshift pipe, connected to a building owned by the Jewish National Fund in the Yattir Forest, a few kilometers north of the village. ....Umm al-Hiran and its neighboring, twin village, Attir, are unrecognized Bedouin towns. Unlike the majority of similar locales in the Negev, they were founded some 55 years ago - in effect, at the government’s behest - when their residents were forced to move there. The residents of both villages belong to one large, extended family: the Abu Alkiyan tribe. more..e-mail
Identity crisis
Sherine Bahaa, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/5/2009
Can money make peace? Hillary Clinton seems to thinks so. Give the Palestinians money to show support and solidarity. It’s been the received wisdom seemingly forever, prevalent in Washington, in European capitals, but above all in the Gulf sheikhdoms. The Palestinians have been showered with cash. Peace, though, has never seemed so far away. This week Hillary Clinton arrived in Sharm El-Sheikh with $900 million, $300 million for Gaza, the remaining $600 earmarked for the Palestinian Authority to cover budget shortfalls, institutional reform and economic development. After the conference Clinton left for Israel and the West Bank to talk with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Pledges at the donors conference far exceeded what Palestinian officials had hoped to raise for reconstruction efforts. The challenge now is putting the money to work to rebuild Gaza. Clinton made no bones about what Washington wanted. American aid was being pledged as part of overall US policy, which is to push aggressively for a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. Her address to the conference spoke eloquently about the need for a Palestinian state and American commitment to achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace. more..e-mail
Anatomy of dialogue
Abdel-Moneim Said, Al-Ahram Weekly 3/5/2009
It’s still the same old story, the plot depressingly familiar. The need for inter-Palestinian dialogue has loomed over Arab politics since 1948, or even before. Some of you may recall how in the 1960s everyone wanted the Ahmed Shoqeiri-led PLO to sort things out with the Yasser Arafat-led Fatah, the latter being back then a bit of an enigma. Was it an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, some wondered, or a pawn of Israel? Having taken control of the PLO after the 1967 war, Fatah found itself having to talk to the George Habash-led Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Then the PFLP had to talk to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Fatah had to talk to the Revolutionary Council, and all the above had to contend with the General Command or whatever splinter group was up and coming. You cannot be smart enough to know what’s going on in the dark recesses of Palestinian politics. You cannot be up-to-date enough to know who is incensed by who, what and why. At any point some Palestinian official will be haranguing another about something, while the nation suffers. more..e-mail
Remember Ophira?
Uri Avnery – Israel, Palestine Chronicle 3/6/2009
’Clinton was the star; Mubarak celebrated his achievement in getting them all together.’ This week I had a nostalgic experience. I met a parliamentary delegation from one of the European countries. What turned this meeting into a special occasion for me was its location. The "Pasha Room" of the "American Colony" Hotel in East Jerusalem is a beautiful square hall, decorated in traditional Arab style. I was in this hall at the moment Yitzhak Rabin held out his hand to Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn at the Oslo agreement signing ceremony. We gathered there spontaneously, Israeli peace activists and Fatah leaders, to celebrate the event together. We watched the proceedings on TV and cracked bottles of champagne. I still have one of the corks. Just an hour before, I had witnessed a no less exciting meeting. A group of young Palestinians, delirious with joy, marched through the streets, olive branches in their hands and a large Palestinian flag fluttering over their heads. At the street corner, a unit of the Border Police -- the most aggressive anti-Arab force in Israel -- was waiting. At the time, even the simple possession of a Palestinian flag was a crime. more..e-mail
Must Jews always see themselves as victims?
Antony Lerman, The Independent 3/7/2009
Fierce debate has been raging in ’The Independent’ about Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Here, one leading Jewish thinker argues that until Jews shake off their persecution complex, there can never be peace in the Middle East. In the wake of Israel’s attack on Gaza, eager voices are telling us that anti-Semitism has returned – yet again. Eight years of Hamas rockets and the world unfairly cries foul when Israel retaliates, they say. Biased media are delegitimising the Jewish state. The Left attacks Israel as uniquely evil, making it the persecuted Jew among the nations. Even theatres keep wheeling out those anti-Semitic stereotypes, Shylock, Fagin and the "chosen people", just to torment us. If this bleak picture were an accurate portrayal of what Jews are experiencing today, who could deny that suffering is the determining feature of the Jewish condition? In most Jewish circles, if you pause to question this narrative and suggest that it might be exaggerated, that it unrealistically implies a level of dreadfulness and victimhood unique to Jews, you’ll attract hostility and disbelief in equal measure, and precious little public sympathy. But in the work of Professor Salo Baron, probably the greatest Jewish historian of the 20th century, we find powerful justification for just such a questioning. more..e-mail
Keys to health: justice, sovereignty, and self-determination
Andrea Becker, Katherine Al Ju'beh, Graham Watt, The Lancet 3/5/2009
In this Lancet Series on the occupied Palestinian territory, a team of nearly 40 Palestinian and international academics present evidence both to the scientific community and to the powers that have determined the health status of Palestinians living in the occupied territory of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip. A very powerful determinant of Palestinian health is the State of Israel, whose economic, political, and military superiority continue to be applied, not only to the blockade and recent bombardment and invasion of Gaza, but also to the territorial project within the West Bank, involving 149 new Israeli settlements (housing nearly half a million settlers), and their exclusive road systems, the separation wall, military checkpoints, confiscations, and economic uses of 70% of land in the West Bank over which the Palestinian Authority has no control. The international community, led by the USA, either endorses or largely tolerates these uses of Israel’s power. Lesser powers include many internationally funded agencies, whose combined activities, despite huge financial investment, lack coordination and coherence, and the Palestinian Authority, which has lacked the ability to develop a coherent health system and has failed too often to rise above factional interests. Although any current assessment of the health of Palestinians is dominated by the consequences of Israel’s siege, bombardment, and invasion of the Gaza Strip, the Series describes the more complex background of a strangulated Palestinian economy, gross restrictions on ordinary movement, and a pervasive environment of intimidation, uncertainty, and insecurity, in which attempts to establish a coherent health system are set to fail. -- See also: Articles and Reports from The Lancet, March 2009more..e-mail
This little boy’s dad: he was very bright and he was great with animals
PCHR, Palestine News Network 3/5/2009
Gaza City - On the 14 of February 2009, almost a month after Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza, thirteen year old Hammad Silmiya was grazing his sheep and goats in northeast Gaza, about 500 metres from the border with Israel. This is the only remaining photo of the boy, taken when he was seven. An Israeli military jeep patrolling the border opened fire on him and his teenage friends. Hammad was shot in the head and he died almost instantly. Hammad’s death barely made the news -- just another casualty in the Gaza Strip, where civilian injuries and deaths continue to mount daily. His family had already endured the killing of Hammad’s grandmother, his two cousins, aged four and eighteen months, and the destruction of their homes and livestock during Israel’s offensive. "It was Saturday morning and Hammad woke up at six," says Hammad’s aunt Jomai’a, 40. “He left with his brother and a couple of young friends to graze the animals. At around ten in the morning Hammad was preparing some breakfast in the field like he always did. An Israeli military vehicle fired at them and shot him in the head.” Jomai’a pulls out a plastic bag from the folds of her black shawl and unties the knot. Inside a small envelope is the only remaining photograph they have of Hammad, taken when he was seven years old. More recent photographs of him were lost in the rubble of their home. more..e-mail
Adults Acting Like Children
Rami G. Khouri, Middle East Online 3/5/2009 Throwing large amounts of money into Palestinian reconstruction while reinforcing a political context that only perpetuates Israel’s regular destruction of Palestinian institutions is wasteful folly at best, and complicity in criminality at worst,
BEIRUT - The international pledges of some $4.5 billion in aid to the Palestinians to rebuild the Gaza Strip and promote the development of the West Bank seem like a monumental folly in view of the surrounding political context of this gesture. The financial generosity of the donors is largely offset by their political cowardice on two fronts:
• Challenging Israel to live according to the norms of law in its treatment of Palestinian land and people under its occupation; and,
• Coming to grips with Palestinian political realities, especially the legitimacy and role of Hamas. On both counts, generous donors seem unwilling to admit that they are perpetuating a wasteful cycle of Palestinian and international construction in Palestine that is set back by repeated Israeli destruction through war, followed by repeated rounds of reconstruction. This recurring cycle is striking for its sheer waste, but also for what it reveals about the willingness of the international community to use reconstruction aid as a political tool -- a failed tool that should be abandoned in favor of a more productive approach. more..e-mail
Palestinian Women are Israel’s Demographic Nightmare
Iqbal Tamimi, Palestine Think Tank 3/5/2009
No condolences to apartheid Israel….yes, it has killed 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza because its fears are of a demographic nature, its army never cared what age or gender it killed, Israel’s machine was harvesting Palestinians of all ages and sizes…young and old, disabled and healthy, pregnant women and young girls, the ones resisting the occupation and the ones who are still too young to understand such expressions….. Israel’s nightmare is of a demographic scale, it is frightened to be outnumbered…so the answer was to starve people to death, stop them from receiving medication so that they would die of ‘natural causes’ then bar the media from investigating that and then knit a freshly made lie to suit its new tailored fib. Israel’s actions mean there was a terrorist in every cradle, there were tunnels turning bread to arms. During the time Israel was feeling victorious and happy counting 1,300 massacred Palestinians in cold blood, Palestinian women retaliated by giving birth to 3,570 babies. The Palestinian woman is considered a demographic bomb, a highly fertile creature as fertile as the soil of Palestine. The more Israel sends Palestinian on a one way trip to the womb of the land, the more Palestinian women’s wombs show generosity, giving birth to more heroes. more..e-mail
Jerusalem: Waiting for the bulldozers
Ma’an News Agency 3/5/2009
Jerusalem – Ma’an – Mousa Muhammad Ahmad Ouda’s new name is “Number 59.” Ouda’s house is marked 59 of a total of 88 houses in one East Jerusalem neighborhood that are slated for demolition by the Israeli-controlled Municipality of Jerusalem. The Municipality says it plans to turn the area into a park. The houses are marked in red on an official map drawn up by the Israeli authorities. On the satellite map the neighborhood, Bustan, is a sliver marked with a thick red boundary, an outline oddly similar to the outline of Mandate Palestine. The Municipality says the houses were built without construction permits, but the residents say that the demolition orders are a calculated attempt to remove them from the land their families have inhabited for centuries. “This house is more important to me than the Al-Aqsa Mosque. If I lose this house, I lose everything,” Ouda said during an interview in his one-story home, which lies a few hundred meters from the iconic mosque itself. Land claims Residents say that the demolition orders threaten the homes of 1,500 people just in the Bustan area, an enclave in the Silwan neighborhood, a densely-packed Palestinian area tucked in a valley adjacent to Jerusalem’s Old City. more..e-mail
Gaza conference: conspiracy wrapped up as compassion
Jean Shaoul, World Socialist Web Site, Palestine News Network 3/5/2009
The donor conference Monday at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt had nothing to do with alleviating the appalling humanitarian crisis in Gaza and rebuilding the homes, factories, infrastructure and schools destroyed by Israel—its ostensible purpose. This stated goal was a cover for furthering Washington’s geopolitical interests in the oil-rich Middle East, by overthrowing Hamas and restoring the discredited Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas to power in Gaza so as to help police the region in American and Israel’s interests. The meeting followed Israel’s US-backed 22-day war against Gaza at the end of last year, an assault that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, wounded many thousands more and drove 400,000 people from their homes. Attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the donor conference is part of an attempt by the Obama administration to portray itself as more even-handed in its approach to the Middle East in general and the Israel-Palestine conflict in particular. This is vital in order to provide cover for the Arab regimes' collusion with the US in the occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and any offensive against Iran. -- See also: WSWSmore..e-mail
The makings of history / A light in the dark
Tom Segev, Ha’aretz 3/5/2009
The Green Line is 60
The new biography of King Hussein of Jordan by Nigel Ashton contains numerous revelations that Amir Oren reported in Haaretz last week - among them, the fact that the secret of the Israeli decision to launch a war against Egypt on June 5, 1967 was leaked to Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser via Hussein. According to Oren, the source of the leak was, astonishingly, none other than chief of the Mossad espionage agency, Meir Amit. This wasn’t a matter of malicious intent, heaven forbid, but merely the result of the rather convoluted way in which secrets are passed from intelligence agency to intelligence agency, and from country to country. Amit was in Washington, D.C. on June 1, 1967; he met with top officials from the Central Intelligence Agency and with the U.S. secretary of defense, Robert McNamara. But he could not have divulged when the war would break out, because he did not know: The date was set only after he returned from Washington, at a meeting held at the home of the prime minister Levi Eshkol, in which the participants discussed various dates. Amit himself suggested postponing the start of the war by a week. more..e-mail
Was Hamas the Work of the Israeli Mossad?
Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 3/5/2009
While various Western governments are struggling to define a possible relationship with the Palestinian movement Hamas, some progressive and leftist circles are also uneasy regarding their own perception of the Islamic movement. Some have even made the claim that Hamas is, more or less, an Israeli concoction. In fact, the accusation that Hamas was created by Israeli intelligence has become so commonplace that it often requires no serious substantiation. While the claim, as it stands, is erroneous, there is certainly a reason and history behind it. But was Hamas, in fact the work of the Israeli Mossad? The mere suggestion is consequential, for not only does it discredit one single faction, but implies that Palestinians are deceived into thinking that they actually have some control over their collective destiny. This notion - that Hamas is the brainchild of Israel - is simply incorrect. It could very well be complicated for one to grasp how such a movement could take a foothold and flourish with such popular support if one has no familiarity with the social, economic and religious history of the Gaza Strip, the birthplace of Hamas. more..e-mail
Avigdor Lieberman: A Profile of Israels’ Next Foreign Minister
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 3/5/2009
Avigdor Lieberman is a “hot” topic in the political world at the moment. With the latest Israeli election in February, his party Israel Beiteinu came in third, making him into the “kingmaker” able to decide the next Prime Minister of Israel - Livni or Netanyahu. He chose Netanyahu. The irony though is that Lieberman does not dream of being the power behind the throne, he wants the throne itself. He was born in Kishinev, Soviet Union (now Moldova) in 1958, and given the name Evet Lvovich Lieberman. He went on to study at the local agricultural institute and worked as a nightclub bouncer and a broadcaster in Baku (the capital city of Azerbaijan) before moving with his parents to Israel in 1978. Once there, he served as an army corporal and took a social science degree at the Hebrew University. It was and while studying in Jerusalem that he began his career in politics. Between 1983-88 he helped found the Zionist Forum for Soviet Jewry, and was also a member of the Board of the Jerusalem Economic Corporation and the Secretary of the Jerusalem branch of the Histadrut Ovdim Le’umit (“national workers union”). more..e-mail
Barak for defense
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 3/5/2009
If I were Shelly Yachimovich, I would beg Ehud Barak to join the next government as defense minister; if I were Ophir Pines-Paz, I would form a public lobby to promote Barak’s appointment. The Labor chairman simply belongs in the defense post and on the right’s dream team. The public wants it and the Labor electorate wants it - so run, Barak, run and get the desired job. It’s his natural place: the right. After the proven success of the worthless war in the Gaza Strip, we cannot do without his outstanding services. Iran will tremble, Hamas will shake: Hurray! Hurray! The next defense minister is on his way. Together with Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, we will have a lovely pair: Bibi-Barak, two graduates of "the unit," the commander and the subordinate, in an exchange of roles. With all they learned in the Sayeret Matkal elite commando unit, they will easily solve any problem. They will prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Hamas from having Qassams, Hezbollah from getting Katyushas. They have waged war and made peace, economically feasible or not. They have proved they can do it all. more..e-mail
Obama’s spy ruffles hawks’ feathers
Daniel Luban and Jim Lobe, Asia Times 3/6/2009
WASHINGTON - The appointment of a top-ranking retired diplomat and vocal critic of Israel to a key intelligence post has triggered an intense backlash from hawkish Israel supporters in Congress and the media who are pressing the administration of President Barack Obama to reconsider. Critics have seized on retired ambassador Charles "Chas" Freeman’s ties to Saudi Arabia and views on human rights in China to argue against his appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), but Freeman’s defenders charge that their real aim is to impose an ideological litmus test on top government officials and ensure a continued policy of reflexive US support for Israel. Observers are watching the campaign against Freeman, who enjoys strong support among intelligence professionals and realists in the national-security bureaucracy, as an early test of how much influence the so-called "Israel lobby" will be able to exert on the new administration. Freeman was formally appointed NIC chairman last week by Obama’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI), ambassador Dennis Blair. A polyglot with unusually wide-ranging foreign policy expertise - he has served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, and has shaped US policy in areas ranging from Asia to the Middle East to Africa - Freeman is reported to have been Blair’s hand-picked choice for the job. more..e-mail
Iraq’s Palestinian refugees back at square one
Anaheed Al-Hardan writing from Syria, Electronic Intifada 3/5/2009
When images and news of the new border tent-camps that the Palestinian refugees from Iraq fled to after the US invasion began to spread through Arabic-language media, a concurrent anecdote began to circulate: "Word is that the Palestinians will even be hosted in tent-camps in the afterlife." The nightmare of the approximately 25,000 to 30,000 Palestinians whose families sought refuge in Iraq in 1948 is but the latest manifestation of the ongoing tragedy of Palestinian stateless refugeehood. This is a story of multiple uprootings and dispossessions since 1948 by both Israel as well as Arab host states that have turned what is known as the Nakba of 1948 into a persistent and ever-present condition that has led to, and allowed for, multiple post-1948 Nakbas.
The central reason for this condition has been the lack of a resolution and restitution for the Nakba of 1948, leaving the Palestinians refugees in a peculiar hereditary refugee-stateless politico-legal status. Its peculiarity lies in the fact that it was supposed to be both transitional as well as temporary whereas after six decades it seems to have become an ad infinitum status. Their right to return to their homeland has thus far been withheld by Israel, under whose territorial jurisdiction their homeland now lies. At the same time, Israel by definition and in praxis ethnically excludes the indigenous inhabitants of the land on which it was established. The Palestinian refugees are therefore simultaneously stateless, denied their homeland as well as the right to return. Since 1948, this reality has left the Palestinians expelled beyond the borders of historic Palestine vulnerable to the fate and at times even whims of their Arab host-states as they have nowhere to return to. more..e-mail
Iran in the Crosshairs
Gareth Porter and Ray McGovern, Middle East Online 3/5/2009 Netanyahu has made no bones about the fact that his preferred solution to the problem is a massive air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and other military targets, and that he would not wait for any evidence that Iran had actually manufactured a weapon before doing so. Last year, the Middle East dodged the danger of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and the inevitable spread of hostilities. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen was sent to tell the Israelis that the United States would not support such an attack, and after the fiasco in Georgia, the Russians too sent stern warnings to Tel Aviv. But now the specter of an Israeli strike has reappeared. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s incoming prime minister, is far more committed to an attack on Iran than his predecessors. Remember when Joe Biden told supporters of Barack Obama last October that Obama would be tested in his first six months in office? There is good reason to believe he was referring to the likelihood that Netanyahu would become prime minister after the February 2009 Israeli election, and that he would waste little time finding a pretext to attack Iran. Netanyahu has been laying the groundwork for such an attack for years, constantly repeating that Tehran is “preparing another Holocaust” a la Germany in the Thirties. more..e-mail
Imprisoned at home
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 3/5/2009
GAZA - We had already visited this house, belonging to the Abu Eida family. It is the only one of the family’s nine large houses that remained standing at the eastern edge of the city of Jabalya following Operation Cast Lead. The demolition of the family’s houses and its four cement factories spells the loss of 40 years of hard work. One Hebrew word scrawled on a wall tells the story of the 10 days when young Israeli soldiers became the ostensible prison wardens of five people. The youngest is Suheila Masalha, 55; the eldest is her mother Fatma, who is perhaps 85 or 90 or older. The only man is her brother Mohammed, 65, who is paralyzed and dependent on the women of his family. And there were two more women from the Abu Eida family - Rasmiya, 70, who owns the house, and her sister-in-law Na’ama, 56, who is blind. "Jail" ("mikhla’a" in Hebrew), wrote the soldiers on the wall of the room where they kept the man and the four women. They did not allow them to use the toilet, but forced them to use all kinds of plastic containers kept in the room, for nine of the days.... more..e-mail
The occupied Palestinian territory: peace, justice, and health
Richard Horton, The Lancet 3/5/2009
The distances seem short. From Jerusalem to Ramallah is only a few kilometres; from Gaza City in the north of the Gaza Strip to Rafah in the south, 30 km; from Ramallah to Gaza, 70 km. One can drive the length of the West Bank in just a few hours. Yet for those living outside the occupied Palestinian territory, the distances—to peace and justice—seem impossibly vast. The impression conveyed through western media is of a land in perpetual war, a people drenched in hatred, aggression, and violence. Visiting the territory reveals a very different reality.1 This week, The Lancet publishes the results of a 2-year collaboration between Palestinian public-health scientists, WHO and associated UN agencies, and a broad group of international scientists from the USA, UK, Norway, and France.2—6 The goal of this Series on Palestinian health is to change the way health professionals, politicians, policy makers, media, and the public view, think about, and discuss the predicament facing this region of the Middle East. The pursuit of health as a political objective and the creation of a strong health system for Palestinians could be one fruitful diplomatic path to reconciliation, peace, and justice. The people of the Palestinian territory matter, most importantly, because their lives and communities are continuing to experience an occupation that has produced chronic de-development for nearly 4 million people over many decades. But the future of Palestinians also matters because of the continued conflict with Israel, the failure of the peace process to make any substantial progress, and the internally catastrophic and violent divisions within Palestinian politics. These characteristics are, in the words of one respected commentator, “the oldest and most powerful driver of discontent, disequilibrium, and radicalism in our region”.7 If a way could be found to strengthen Palestinian political institutions and find common ground for negotiations with Israel and western governments, great regional and even international benefits could follow. -- See also: Articles and Reports from The Lancet, March 2009more..e-mail
The Israel donors conference
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 3/4/2009
The extent of the funding pledged to the Palestinian Authority by donor countries reflects the extent of their support for Israel and its policies. The American taxpayers’ contribution to the Ramallah government’s bank account is dwarfed by the large sums the U.S. government donates to Israel every year. It’s impossible to get excited over the American pledge of $900 million (two-thirds of it for strengthening Salam Fayyad’s government and the rest for Gaza’s recovery) and forget the $30 billion the United States has promised Israel in defense aid by the end of 2017, as last week’s Amnesty International report noted. The $900 million pledged to the Palestinians in Sharm el-Sheikh should be seen as part of the regular American aid to Israel. As an occupying power, Israel is obligated to assure the well-being of the population under its control. But Israel is harming it instead, after which the United States (like other countries) rushes to compensate for the damage. The Clinton and Bush administrations - and Barack Obama appears to be following in their footsteps - erased the phrase "Israeli occupation" from their dictionaries and collaborated with Israel in ignoring its commitments as enshrined in international law. The billions of dollars that Israel receives from the United States for weapons and defense development - which played a significant role in the destruction in the Gaza Strip - are part of Israel’s successful propaganda, which presents the Rafah tunnels and Grad rockets as a strategic threat and part of the Islamic terror offensive against enlightened countries. more..e-mail
Palestinian astrophysicist in US reunited with family from Gaza
Middle East Online 3/4/2009
PACIFICA – Suleiman Baraka is a Palestinian astrophysicist working at Virginia Tech with NASA. His eleven-year-old son Ibrahim was killed in an air strike during Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza. After he first told his story on Democracy Now!, the US consulate in Jerusalem contacted him and got his surviving family members out of Gaza. This weekend, at Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport, he was reunited with his wife and three remaining children. Below is the bittersweet reunion. SULEIMAN BARAKA: The reunion is very special, and I’m sorry that the reunion comes after a tragedy. It would be much better if we have this reunion without any sad stories, the destruction of houses, killing of my son. But there is always a bright side of the story. SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: You may remember Suleiman Baraka. He’s a Palestinian astrophysicist who came to the United States in October to work with Virginia Tech and NASA. His wife and four children stayed behind in Gaza. Then, on December 29th, day three of Israel’s assault on Gaza, tragedy struck. Israeli warplanes bombed Suleiman’s house. His eleven-year-old son Ibrahim was critically wounded in the attack. Shrapnel was lodged in his brain, hand and leg. He was evacuated to Egypt for medical treatment. Suleiman immediately left for Cairo to be with his son. On January 5th, Ibrahim died of his injuries. Unable to return to Gaza to mourn with his family, Suleiman returned to the United States. Days later, he told his heart-wrenching story for the first time in an interview on Democracy Now! -- See also: Palestinian Astrophysicist in US Reunited with Wife & Three Remaining Children After Story of His 11-Year-Old Son’s Death in Israeli Air Strike Broadcast on Democracy Now! and Palestinian Astrophysicist in US Recounts How His 11-Year-Old Son Died When Israeli Warplanes Bombed His Family’s Housemore..e-mail
UK gov’t boycotts settlement financier Leviev
Press release, Adalah-NY, Electronic Intifada 3/4/2009
The government of the United Kingdom has decided to boycott Israeli diamond and real estate mogul Lev Leviev over his companies’ construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported today. The decision by the UK government followed a coordinated advocacy campaign by human rights advocates in New York, the UK, Palestine and Israel demanding that the UK government end plans to rent the new UK Embassy in Tel Aviv from Leviev’s company Africa-Israel.
The UK’s Tel Aviv Ambassador notified Leviev of the decision by letter, following a British parliamentary debate, and inquiries with Leviev’s company Africa-Israel over its activities in the West Bank, Haaretz reported. According to Haaretz, "The embassy in Tel Aviv confirmed the details of the story."
The Haaretz article did not note the construction of the settlement of Zufim on the land of the village of Jayyous by Leviev’s company, Leader. The Israeli army has recently intensified efforts to crush Jayyous’ protest campaign against the construction of Leviev’s settlements and Israel’s wall on village land. Sharif Omar, the head of Jayyous’ Land Defense Committee, commented, "We feel heartened by the UK government decision opposing Leviev’s settlement construction, and we expect our brothers and sisters in the UAE to follow the UK government’s example by banning Leviev from selling his diamonds in Dubai. We need more pressure in order to end Israeli repression, return our land, and restore our rights." more..e-mail
Opening eyes in Israel
Seth Freedman, The Guardian 3/4/2009
The dominant strand of Zionism does not make a comfortable bedfellow with core Jewish values. In the wake of the devastating earthquake of 1927, the early Zionist pioneers were quick to come to the aid of the local Arab community, regardless of the political schism between the two camps. Millionaire Nathan Straus sent an unsolicited $5,000 to the residents of Nablus, where scores of homes had been levelled, while the impoverished Jews of Tel Aviv immediately despatched three truckloads of food aid to the battered city. "This is the way we are," noted Chaim Shalom Halevi in a letter to his family in the Diaspora, referring to the millennia-old Jewish adherence to the commandment "love thy neighbour as thyself". As has been proved throughout the build-up to the state of Israel and in the decades since its inception, the dominant strand of Zionism does not make a comfortable bedfellow with core Jewish values, thanks to the callous way in which all those frozen between the headlights of the Zionist juggernaut are treated. Nationalism has trumped religious values to the point (seemingly) of no return, and as every year passes, the malaise seeps deeper into the collective Israeli psyche. In order to challenge the attitudes prevalent in the camp of mainstream Zionism, the best way forward is to search for the chink in the armour – the soft underbelly where can be found those whose politics and ideologies are not fully formed, and who are open to considering a new way of thinking in relation to Israel and Zionism. more..e-mail
Recommendations to the ’International Community’
Abu Yussef from Occupied Palestine, Palestine Monitor 3/4/2009
The aim of these recommendations is to advise world leaders of what needs to be done or changed if the dream of regional peace is to be realized in the near future. It is a plea for understanding, engagement and a rejection of practices which have already failed so many times before. If the time for peace is in fact upon us, these recommendations must be taken into account. Failure to do so will only result in more death and violence on our Israeli-Palestinian part – and more wasted time on your own. 1. Stop Politicizing Aid to Gaza For nearly two years the world has watched while Gazans suffer and starve under the weight of Israel’s siege. They have been denied every basic right and nearly every basic necessity in an internationally sanctioned collective punishment on one of the world’s youngest, poorest and most densely huddled populations only for the sin of having voted democratically. Even after the bombs have stopped devastating the Gaza Strip, the siege continues. Despite the fact that every window in the Strip was shattered, glass or plastic are not allowed in to make repairs as the cold winter months set in. Food trickles through, but never enough - and then only what is allowed. Not only our lives, and our borders and the suitability of our leaders are determined by Israel, even our diets have been under their control, with devastating consequences. more..e-mail
Did Clinton sabotage a Palestinian reconciliation?
Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 3/4/2009
Still reeling from the Israeli massacres in the occupied Gaza Strip, Palestinians have lately had little to celebrate. So the strong start to intra-Palestinian reconciliation talks in Cairo last week provided a glimmer of hope.
An end to the schism between the resistance and the elected but internationally-boycotted Hamas government on the one hand, and the Western-backed Fatah faction on the other, seemed within reach. But the good feeling came to a sudden end after what looked like a coordinated assault by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, European Union High Representative Javier Solana, and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas whose term as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) expired on 9 January.
On Friday 27 February, the leaders of 13 Palestinian factions, principal among them Hamas and Fatah, announced they had set out a framework for reconciliation. In talks chaired by Egypt’s powerful intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, the Palestinians established committees to discuss forming a "national unity government," reforming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to include all factions, legislative and presidential elections, reorganizing security forces on a nonpolitical basis, and a steering group comprised of all faction leaders. Amid a jubilant mood, the talks were adjourned until 10 March. more..e-mail
What Bibi faces in liberated Washington
Gershom Gorenberg, Ha’aretz 3/4/2009
Washington at the beginning of the Obama era has the feel of a city that has just been liberated from foreign occupation, or of a person who just snapped out of an inexplicable psychotic episode. The paranoia of the Bush days has passed. The world is no longer divided into children of light and children of darkness. The standard assessment says that after his return to power, Benjamin Netanyahu will have a tense time when he visits Washington - just as he did during his first term when he faced a president who demanded that he advance a peace process. That assessment isn’t quite right - because this time, Netanyahu is likely to have an even more tension-fraught time than he did in the 90s. In his new term, he won’t be able to count on Congress as a counterweight to the administration in his relations with America. During his first visit to Washington as prime minister in 1996, Netanyahu spoke before Congress to repeated applause. The part of his speech praising deregulation and tax cuts helped him by warming the hearts of the Republican majority. Today that economic approach is correctly seen as the cause of a worldwide disaster, and the Republicans are a defeated minority. Economic spin won’t help Netanyahu build a responsible image. more..e-mail
After Gaza War, a Harder Coexistence for Jews and Arabs
Joshua Mitnick, MIFTAH 3/4/2009
The Hagar bilingual kindergarten was founded as a rare cocoon from ethnic alienation for children and parents in Israel. But even this place of innocence and coexistence isn’t immune to the deeper divisions between Jews and Arabs here that has followed the Gaza war. "When Assin came back from her first day [after the war] she said, ’Mommy, today we played war between Israel and Gaza,’ " says Suha Farhat, about her 5-year-old daughter. The school intended to meet Tuesday, in part to address students’ and parents’ feelings following the battle between Israel and Hamas, but discussing it may have proved too painful. Few parents came. Groups that focus on Jewish and Arab coexistence are just beginning to wrestle with the fallout from the war but despite an ideological commitment to living together in peace, the search for political common ground has been largely seen as too controversial. "I wasn’t against the war. I think that we have a right to defend ourselves, but that isn’t something I bring up," says Debra Mathias, whose has sent two children to the kindergarten. "I don’t expect [the school] will change the world, but I at least hope for my children to be open minded, and to really understand the complexity of living here." more..e-mail
Washington ends its diplomatic embargo on Syria
Jim Lobe, Electronic Intifada 3/4/2009
WASHINGTON (IPS) - Ending a four-year diplomatic embargo on Damascus, the administration of United States President Barack Obama Tuesday confirmed that it is sending two high-level officials to Syria this week for "preliminary conversations," presumably on improving relations.
The trip, which will be undertaken by Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman and Daniel Shapiro, a senior staffer on the National Security Council who also served as one of Obama’s top Middle East advisers during his presidential campaign, was announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Jerusalem.
"It is a worthwhile effort to go and begin preliminary conversations," she told reporters after meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. "We have no way to predict what the future of our relations with Syria might be."
The announcement of the trip drew praise, particularly from organizations and individuals here who were disappointed by former US President George W. Bush’s refusal to become involved in what they felt were promising Turkish-mediated peace talks between Damascus and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. more..e-mail
Israel boycott movement gains momentum
Mel Frykberg, Electronic Intifada 3/4/2009
RAMALLAH (IPS) - "Standing United with the People of Gaza" is the theme of this week’s Israel Apartheid Week (IAW), which kicked off in Toronto and another 39 cities across the globe Sunday.
A movement to boycott Israeli goods, culture and academic institutions is gaining momentum as Geneva prepares to host the UN’s Anti-Racism Conference, Durban II next month amidst swirling controversy.
Both Canada and the US are boycotting the Durban II conference in protest over what they perceive as a strongly anti-Israel agenda.
The first UN Anti-Racism conference, held in the South African city Durban in 2001, saw the Israeli and US delegates storm out of the conference, accusing other delegates of focusing too strongly on Israel.
United States and Canadian support might have offered some comfort for Israel. However, international criticism of Israel’s three-week bloody offensive into Gaza, which left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead and thousands more wounded, most of them civilian, has breathed fresh life into a boycott, divest, sanctions (BDS) campaign. more..e-mail
As Dangerous as Netanyahu
Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Palestine Chronicle 3/3/2009
The Palestinians in the occupied lands and the refugee camps must have been puzzled by those Palestinian leaders’ declarations and commentators’ peppy articles lamenting the loss of the butchers of Gaza, Kadima-Labor coalition, to the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu coalition. Have the Palestinian leaders in the West Bank established mystical bonds with the butchers of Gaza who became their only accepted partners for peace? I can’t see the teensiest difference between the policies of the two camps. If there is any difference, it is that unlike Kadima and Labour leaders, Netanyahu practices what he preaches. Netanyahu is a dangerous leader but Olmert, Livni, Peres and Barak are no less dangerous. The only competition among these leaders is the level of the horrors inflicted on the Palestinians and the blood wantonly spilled under their leaderships. When Peres was the minister of defense under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin he helped Gush Emunim movement followers launch several settlements next to the Arab population centers in the West Bank. For the Gush Emunim members, the right of the Jewish people to Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) is nonnegotiable. At Peres order, the Israeli army provided water and electricity for Elon Moreh settlers and the military invited the settlers to establish a settlement at the military camp inside the Arab village of Kufur Qadum. The Israeli military declared the main road to the village as Jews-only-road and its Arab residents had to build new road leading to their homes and schools. more..e-mail
Back home in Zaytoun
Eva Bartlett, Tales to Tell - From Gaza 2009 3/4/2009
Last night E and I went to visit Amer and Shireen Al Helou, and surviving kids Saja, Foad, and Mahmoud. They are back living in their Zaytoun house, which looks like a home again inside, instead of the disaster area the Israeli soldiers occupying it left behind. Shireen showed us the cupboards full of scrubbed folded clothes, all of which had been left soiled for her to clean. It was a relief to E and me to see everyone there, in their proper place with their belongings back in place around them. Amer’s now-widowed mother is living with them, and his younger sisters too. But all the mirrors that are carefully back on the wall are cracked, and the ceiling still has holes in, and the clean folded clothes in the smallest cupboard belong to Farah, who will never wear them again. And at the top of the stairs is a new, framed martyr poster, where the faces of baby Farah, her grandfather, and her uncle Mohammed (who was one of only about 100 resistance fighters who died during the invasion, as compared to more than 1000 civilians) are printed. And her other uncle Abdullah is in the next room, subdued under many blankets, slowly recovering from his multiple gunshot wounds. Not that they have a choice, but I cannot comprehend how this family can go about their daily lives feeling at home in a home where such horrible things happened to them. Run outside and play, kids. Where you all hid in terror under the stairs as they shelled your house, and then watched the soldiers shoot your grandfather and leave him to bleed to death. more..e-mail
Aid as a weapon
Ben White, The Guardian 3/3/2009
International donors’ approach to the Palestinian people lacks consistency, courage, and plain common sense. Ever since the beginning of the second intifada in 2000, there has been a familiar pattern in the Occupied Territories: Israel destroys Palestinian civilian infrastructure, and the international community foots the bill. This has been reproduced once more, on a grand scale, as billions of dollars were promised this week at the Egypt-hosted donor conference for devastated Gaza, far exceeding the Palestinian Authority’s initial target. It remains to be seen how much of this aid will actually get through to the Palestinians imprisoned in Gaza, who continue to live in the rubble of thousands of homes, and hundreds of businesses, factories and schools. Two-thirds of the US contribution of $900 million, for example, is not even earmarked for Gaza. There is also the question of how the aid will make a practical difference on the ground, given that Israel refuses to let in even tomato paste and paper – not to mention construction materials, generators (or "an entire water purification system"). Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth observed: "Israel’s blockade policy can be summed up in one word and it is punishment, not security." more..e-mail
Failed siege
Editorial, The Guardian 3/3/2009
Pledging aid for Gaza is the easy bit. Getting it delivered to Gazans living in tents after Israel’s three-week bombardment is another matter. The $3bn that donors promised in Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday will have to penetrate a labyrinth of barriers and conditions, the complexity of which King Minos of Crete would have been proud. The money will be given to the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, even though the PA’s writ does not run in Gaza. The aid will pass through crossings currently closed by Israel. It will be distributed in such a manner as to avoid ending up in the hands of its governors. But how? This is like trying to spoon a thin gruel into a dying man, without letting it touch any part of his throat. Forget the difficulty of getting macaroni or paper into Gaza, neither of which fell into Israel’s definition of humanitarian aid. How can the 14,000 homes, 219 factories, 240 schools, which Israel destroyed, or damaged, be repaired without cement? Cement, Israel argues, has a dual use. It can be used to build Hamas’s bunkers and tunnels, although the dual use of macaroni and paper is harder to fathom. But why repair Gaza’s infrastructure, if Israeli warplanes could return at any moment to destroy it again? Operation Cast Lead did not re-establish Israeli deterrence over Hamas and Gaza’s other rejectionist groups. About 120 rockets and mortars have been fired into southern Israel since the army withdrew. Which means, short of re-occupation and putting the leadership of Hamas on a boat to Tripoli, the only way to stop the rockets is political, not military. more..e-mail
An Atmosphere Suitable for Palestinian Reconciliation
Elias Harfoush, MIFTAH 3/3/2009
It is a sizeable and thorny issue with a difficult background of blood, prisoners, mutual accusations, and accusations of treason. Moreover, profound disagreements surround the peace process and the progress of negotiations with Israel, as well as perspectives on the map of Palestine and the borders of an independent state. Yet the step taken towards Palestinian agreement is a much better one than it had previously been. Indeed, the earlier state of affairs would have led the Palestinian national project to suicide. A fellow journalist who attended the press conference held by the Palestinian factions in Cairo to announce that they had reached an agreement asked: was it necessary for Israel to destroy Gaza in order for the Palestinians to reach an agreement? A meaningful question, although it never received a conclusive answer, one that would at least offer something like an apology to the families of those who were killed, the wounded and those who lost their homes and livelihoods as a result of the massacres perpetrated by Israel. The only answer was that Israel does not need justifications to commit its aggressions. more..e-mail
Understanding 'Bibi’
Abu Yusef from Occupied Palestine, Palestine Monitor 3/3/2009
A brief review of the life, works and beliefs of the incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin "Bibi’ Netanyahu. Many have painted a picture of the "Bibi’ as a stupid or even crazy person, but this seems to overlook his incredible academic background - probably inspired or inherited from his father, a former professor at the esteemed Cornell University. Netanyahu’s family origins trace back to Lithuania, as well as British Mandated Palestine. However, his family kept close ties with the United States where Benyamin moved at the age of fourteen to attend high school and then a number of outstanding American institutions of higher learning. Netanyahu has earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a master’s degree in Management from the same institution. He went on to study Political Science in both MIT and Harvard. Despite popular beliefs, Benyamin Netanyahu is not an idiot. more..e-mail
The Right to No Right in Gaza
Natalie Abou Shakra – Gaza City, Palestine Chronicle 3/2/2009
"Can we take more massacres? Answer me! Can we?" demanded Fadi, an 18 year old student at Palestine University in Gaza. The hall was packed with students in a two-hour seminar entitled "Still Alive" organized by student committees. Many pupils consecutively took the stage and narrated the events in their own subjective way, speaking about their realities from day one, aligning their confrontations with the human slaughtering, displacement, apprehension, shelling, destruction and incomprehensible chaos. Mazen, one of the speakers, expressed his disgust at the Israeli Occupation Forces’ doings at the Azbet Abed Rabbu area, where the soldiers would imprison families of a single neighbourhood in one house. They would then ask one of the fathers to choose a boy amongst his sons for them to shoot, and if he doesn’t, they would slaughter the whole family keeping only the boy alive. “How can we express this hurt, this pain, the deaths and wounds that we have lived?&rdquo. Slides from a projector repeated statements of “Happy New Year? No! Happy New Fear!” amongst photographs and amateur brief documentaries that the students prepared from what they collected during the attacks of photos, videos, audios, and statements. Despite the lack of resources, despite the psychological aftermath of the perpetual traumas, anger, shocks, frustrations and despair, they managed to build sturdy, influential and moving presentations to the rest of the audience. more..e-mail
The Kids and the War on Terror
Sarah Whalen, Palestine Chronicle 3/2/2009
What can you say about the kids who despised the war on terror? They painted ’Freedom’ in giant letters on walls. They tied a scarf around the eyes of the ’Justice’ courthouse statue. They flung black tar on national flags. Kid stuff. But then, they wrote four little essays, made copies, and mailed them to addresses pulled randomly from phonebooks. They wrote anonymously, but threateningly: “We shall not be silent.” Who were they? “We,” wrote the kids, “are your bad conscience.” Like college kids everywhere, they quoted Lao Tzu and Aristotle, babbled a bit, but complained that the war on terror was unwinnable and causing countless, “meaningless” deaths. They called upon grownups to defend democracy and end the war quickly. “Why,” they screeched, “do you allow these men who are in power to rob you, step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanized state system presided over by criminals and drunks?” How could they defeat “the enemy,” they asked, if their own democracy perished? And was not “the enemy” also a human being? Did defending democracy require human beings to be tortured, abused, and even “annihilated” on the basis of religion or politics? more..e-mail
Abu Mazen’s Choice: Resist or Surrender
Iqbal Jassat - Pretoria, Palestine Chronicle 3/2/2009
’Mahmoud Abbas as head of the Palestinian Authority remains unimpressive.’ As Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) struggles to hold onto power, his Israeli-backed reign of the Occupied West Bank is turning into a colossal disaster for the Palestinians. Amidst encouraging signals from Cairo’s unity talks between Hamas and Fatah, it appears that in Ramallah, Abu Mazen remains determined to excel as the Zionist state’s most obedient surrogate. His role as head of the Palestinian Authority remains unimpressive. Not merely despite his dual position as leader of Fatah and the PLO, but in spite of this, Abu Mazen has dismally failed to advance the cause of his people beyond the rim of his framed lenses. This is evident in the hopelessness of his leadership characterized by constantly yielding to pressure and "giving" without "receiving" anything in return. It’s a disastrous failure by him and his utterly discredited fellow elites to recognize the asymmetry in power relations between Israel and the PA. Tragically, remaining static as a functionary of a colonial settler state allows him no mobility, neither does it permit him the space to permit the mobilization of any form of resistance. more..e-mail
Israel’s crimes in Gaza
Reem Salahi writing from the United States, Electronic Intifada 3/3/2009
Having returned from Gaza, I am trying to come to terms with what I saw, what I heard and honestly, what I don’t think I will ever understand -- the justification. While Israel’s recent offensive has been the most egregious of any historical attack upon the Palestinians in Gaza, it is just that, one of many. Gaza has been under Israeli bombardment and sanctions for decades. Prior to the Israeli pullout in 2005, Gaza was under complete Israeli control and occupation. Nearly 8,000 Israeli settlers occupied 40 percent of Gaza while the 1.5 million Palestinians occupied the remaining 60 percent. Settlements were located on the most fertile lands and along Gaza’s beautiful coastal regions and checkpoints prevented Palestinian mobility.Despite being one-fifth the size of Rhode Island, 25 miles long and 4 to 7.5 miles wide, Gaza was divided into three sections and Palestinians had to pass through multiple checkpoints to get from one section to the next. Often Israeli forces would close these checkpoints and not allow the Palestinians access to the other regions in Gaza as a form of collective punishment. Yet with Israel’s pullout in 2005, the Palestinian experience has not improved. Rather, it has become even more unpredictable and isolated. Palestinians who celebrated the exodus of the Israeli settlers and the return of some of their land could not have imagined what would follow and how Israel would subsequently unleash its brutal force against them. As the saying goes, nothing in life is free and the Palestinians have paid, and continue to pay, a dear and unforgivable price for Israel’s withdrawal from their legally rightful land. Ironically, the majority of Palestinians living in Gaza are refugees who fled from their homes that were previously located in what has become Israel proper due to the influx of Zionist settlers.... more..e-mail
Dennis Ross: The Most Important Dossier
Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, MIFTAH 3/3/2009
There are many political envoys in the administration of the new American President, Barack Obama. But assigning diplomat Dennis Ross the dossier of Iran and the Gulf means that his [mission] is the most serious and important of all. Despite the importance of the Arab-Israeli conflict and its historic value, it remains confined to a 35-year-old case, counting the years from the last war that changed the political situation. It can continue as it is, with its disputes and wars confined in the area of its conflicts. As for Afghanistan and its neighbor Pakistan, and with them Al-Qaeda organization, it is true that this is a problem capable of exploding but it is similarly confined to its area. But Iran is the problem number one in the world. It presents a recipe of uranium, religious extremism, and limitless ambitions. It is the most energetic force in managing anarchy and financing wars. It is also accused of being behind the Lebanon turmoil and the emergence of Hamas, and of being the only threat to Iraq as well as to the Gulf nations. Add to this that it is about to give birth to its first nuclear weapon which will make it more dangerous. more..e-mail
Alter Info Communiqué - Never will the police have spies comparable to those who serve hate
French Jewish Union for Peace (UJFP, Palestine Think Tank 3/2/2009
Since its first days, Palestine Think Tank has been supported by a wonderful site and by the truly dedicated activists there. Alter Info has been under a lot of pressure from the usual Israeli Lobby organisations, this time in France. We wish to express our support of Alter Info, to hope that they are able to win this case, and that some benefactors are able to help them with the growing legal costs. Please read their press communiqué and, if you are able to, show your support of those who provide information so that the lies and propaganda will not win, and that peace and justice will prevail. Dear friends, Alter Info readers, Since the beginning of our legal issues, many have supported us and showed their solidarity. Thanks to you, we managed to face adversity with dignity and honour. Therefore it is natural that I keep you informed of the legal outcomes and political games around this case in order that each of you realizes to what great extent not only this website but more generally freedom of speech and particularly individual freedoms are under attack. .....At the end of December 2007, we received a letter from Mr Lilti, attorney for the UEJF & J’Accuse organisations, formal notification asking for the removal of a translated article by Henry Makow entitled Capital Imperialism and published in September 2007. In this letter, Mr Lilti, among the usual clichés and predictable accusations of anti-Semitism, declared that even if we removed Ms Skandrani’s article, he would nevertheless file a case against me for "hate incitement." What I find a little bit puzzling is that the Attorney General added a "crime against humanity" charge to the other insanities my detractors are accusing me of. more..e-mail
Hope for Palestinian State Recedes as Both Sides Edge Towards Other Options
James Hider, MIFTAH 3/3/2009
Hillary Clinton starts her first tour of the Middle East as Secretary of State today with a mandate to reinvigorate collapsed peace talks. She will find, however, that support for a two-state solution – the central plank in US-led efforts to tackle the crisis for almost two decades – is at a record low. Not only is it waning on the Israeli side, which is under the new leadership of the right-wing hawk Binyamin Netanyahu, but it is also collapsing among Palestinians, who increasingly view the Oslo peace process, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) that was formed under it, as dead. Palestinian officials and civil leaders told The Times that their governing body was all but defunct and would either waste away or turn into a kind of Vichy regime providing a cover for Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank. Many Palestinian civil leaders believe that time is running out for a two-state solution, thanks mainly to increasing Jewish settlement activity and Israel’s refusal to relinquish military positions. Some Palestinians even said that if Israel did not soon agree to statehood, the Palestinians should abandon dreams of independence and confront the Jewish state with its worst nightmare – a one-state solution, in which Arabs would, in decades to come, outnumber Jews. “Oslo is dying and so of course is the Palestinian Authority,” said Mustafa Barghouti, an independent politician and head of the increasingly popular Palestinian National Initiative. “They are transforming the authority into a security subagent for Israel. It’s becoming a Bantustan government, a Vichy,” he said. more..e-mail
Gaza solid waste management in dire straits
IRIN - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 3/2/2009
GAZA CITY, 2 March 2009 (IRIN) - The lack of technical means to transport and process solid waste in Gaza is posing a severe risk to people’s health in the enclave, experts say. Many Gazans, especially children, have developed breathing problems as a result of the stench emanating from rubbish dumps and the indiscriminate burning of waste; insects attracted to the rubbish tips and ground pollution pose further health risks, according to Bahaa Alagha, planning and project manager in Gaza’s Environment Quality Authority. Solid waste is managed by three main entities: municipalities in the main cities; local councils in towns and villages; and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in refugee camps. There are three official collection sites for solid waste - Rafah (south), Der Albalah (central), and Gaza City (the biggest). Gaza Mayor Rafiq Mikki told IRIN the city’s 550,000 people produce 550-600 metric tonnes (mt) of solid waste a day, but that the enclave lacked the means to transport the waste to the main waste station near the Gaza-Israeli border for processing. Mayor Mikki says the municipality does not have the capacity to solve the problem and has appealed for help from international organisations. more..e-mail
Young Gaza couple begin married life in a tent
Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 3/2/2009
Last Thursday, relatives, friends and local community representatives attended an unusual wedding party in Gaza. The celebration was held in a newly-erected refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabaliya.
"My wife and I planned to marry at my house, where we furnished an apartment, just shortly before Israel’s war on Gaza. Yet, as you see, we were forced to stay at this tent in the al-Rayyan refugee camp," said newly-married Ahmad al-Hersh of Jabaliya refugee camp.
"We had no other option; after the war, there have been so many difficulties to find a house to rent, as the demand is higher than before. My wife Eman initially objected but later on she agreed as we don’t have any other choice. And thanks to those who helped furnish this marriage set," recalled Ahmad while sitting at his tent’s bedroom.
Ahmad used to live in a three-story house in the al-Khulafa neighborhood inside the town of Jabaliya, before it was bombed by Israeli warplanes during the 22-day siege of Gaza. The tent where the newly married Palestinian couple will live has a bed, table, cupboard and a small bathroom. more..e-mail
Expelling Jerusalem’s Palestinians, One House at a Time
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 3/2/2009
There are some people whose faces betray the difficulties they have encountered throughout their lives. Salah Shweiki is one of them. Sitting under the large tent set up in Silwan’s Bustan Quarter, seeking warmth from the wood burning in an old wheelbarrow, Shweiki emanates the aura of an elderly sage.In his 56 years of life, he has seen a lot, maybe too much, but today, he is focused, his face determined and his will iron solid. Salah Shweiki is one of approximately 1,500 people who are being threatened with expulsion from their homes by the Israeli Jerusalem municipality. According to the eviction order distributed among the residents of the Bustan neighborhood, the demolitions are being carried out under the pretext of lack of proper licensing. Once the homes are torn down, Israel plans to construct a national park in its place, a park, its archeological experts say, is part of the ancient City of David. Shweiki disregards any and all of these claims, saying the eviction order falls under a larger scheme for Jerusalem, which is to expel as many Palestinians from the city as possible. more..e-mail
Surrounded by all sides, choices go from bad to worse for devastated Palestinians of Gaza Strip
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 3/2/2009
The Palestinian donor conference is underway in Sharm el-Sheikh bringing in billions of dollars. Now the Secretary General of the Arab League, Amr Mousa, says that Sharm el-Sheikh is a strong message to Israel that the world is with Palestine. During the major attacks Palestinians from all corners demanded the presence of the UN, of the international community. Now they have their attention, but to what end. However the obvious question is who has garnered the most attention. Is it the "Palestinian people" that some parties note, or is it who will wrest control in an Arab world divided by the internal Palestinian conflict, or is it the western powers who concentrate of the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" such as Berlusconi who said today that Italy proposes to host a conference on the issue in Sicily. At the same time reconstruction efforts for Gaza after the bombings and during the ongoing siege are a moot point as Amnesty International and Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi are among dozens who have rightly pointed out that the crossings remain closed and all reconstruction materials are banned. Oddly enough, out of the initial statements at Sharm el-Sheikh were the clearest words of the day coming from of all people, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Very simple: You should not isolate the attacks on Gaza from the gravity of the entire Palestinian issue which includes the takeover of Jerusalem, the settlements and Wall of the West Bank and the continued control over the Palestinian government in whatever makeup it chooses. more..e-mail
The pasta, paper and hearing aids that could threaten Israeli security
Anne Penketh, The Independent 3/2/2009
Members of the highest-ranking American delegation to tour Gaza were shocked to discover that the Israeli blockade against the Hamas-ruled territory included such food staples as lentils, macaroni and tomato paste. "When have lentil bombs been going off lately? Is someone going to kill you with a piece of macaroni?" asked Congressman Brian Laird. It was only after Senator John Kerry, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, raised the issue with Defence Minister Ehud Barak after their trip last month that Israel allowed the pasta in. Macaroni was considered a luxury item, not a humanitarian necessity, they were told. The total number of products blacklisted by Israel remains a mystery for UN officials and the relief agencies which face long delays in bringing in supplies. For security reasons such items as cement and steel rods are banned as they could be used by Hamas to build bunkers or the rockets used to target Israeli civilians. Hearing aids have been banned in case the mercury in their batteries could be used to produce chemical weapons. Yet since the end of the war in January, according to non-government organisations, five truckloads of school notebooks were turned back at the crossing at Kerem Shalom where goods are subject to a $1,000 (£700) per truck "handling fee". Paper to print new textbooks for Palestinian schools was stopped, as were freezer appliances, generators and water pumps, cooking gas and chickpeas. And the French government was incensed when an entire water purification system was denied entry. Christopher Gunness, the spokesman for the UN agency UNRWA responsible for Palestinian refugees, said: "One of the big problems is that the ’banned list’ is a moving target so we discover things are banned on a ’case by case’, ’day by day’ basis. more..e-mail
Israel as a cancer on Palestine
R.L in Ramallah, Palestine Monitor 3/2/2009 In the previous article "The Battle of terms behind the conflict", the author explained why often used terms such as ‘holocaust’, ‘genocide’, ‘apartheid’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ are not fully appropriated to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although these are descriptive in some ways of the Palestinian context, the author argued that "they are ‘used’ terms—they are connected to a different situation in a separate time and historical context in most people’s minds—and their recycling ends up creating confusion and controversy more than anything else." The Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs its own, unique term that accurately and comprehensively describes the situation. In the case of Israel, I will offer a new idea: it is a ‘cancer’. Israel as a Cancer on Palestine… The medical definition of the word cancer is “a class of diseases in which a group of cells display uncontrolled growth (beyond the normal limits), invasion (intrusion on and destruction of adjacent tissues), and sometimes metastasis (spreading to other locations in the body). These are three ways that a cancer changes from being benign—which is self-limited, does not invade, and does not metastasize, and becomes malignant or harmful. If Israel was a cancer on Palestine, it would definitely be a malignant cancer. Israel has shown uncontrolled growth (beyond the normal limits) in the Israeli settler communities that have been established illegally on Palestinian land. Currently there are 121 Israeli settlements and 102 Israeli outposts built illegally in Palestinian territory—and instead of removing these settlements as required by International Law or at least stopping their growth as agreed upon in the Annapolis framework; the settlers are increasing at a rate of 4-6% per year. Just like cancerous cells cause destruction in the body, these settlements are destructive to the Palestinians and the peace process in many ways. -- See also: Previous Article "The Battle of Terms Behind the Conflict"more..e-mail
Defend Freedom of Speech on Palestine
Various undersigned, Tadamon 2/27/2009
Open Letter to university community on Palestinian Rights and Canadian Universities: The last two years have seen increasing efforts to limit advocacy of Palestinian rights on Canadian universities, amounting to a pattern of the suppression of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. these include: * Statements from 19 university presidents in the summer of 2007 to foreclose debate on the academic boycott of Israel, citing “academic freedom” * Visits to Israel by eight university presidents in the summer of 2008, with no equivalent outreach to Palestinian institutions * Efforts to ban the use of the term “Israeli Apartheid” at McMaster University in February-March 2008, overturned only through a campaign of protest * Discipline against students involved in peaceful protests for Palestinian rights at York University in March in 2008 * Attempted discipline against a faculty member who addressed a rally against Israeli Apartheid at York University in 2008 * A pattern of cancellation of room bookings for meetings concerning Palestinian rights at the University of Toronto and York University in 2008 * The use of security clearance requirements and fees to cover security costs to impede campus meetings about Palestinian rights... more..e-mail
Prisoners of Apartheid: Soha Bechara
Tadamon 3/1/2009
Lecture from Soha Bechara, Lebanese author and former political prisoner. - Montréal, Quebe - Soha Bechara, Lebanese author, resistance fighter and former political prisoner will speak in Montreal on the struggles and realities experienced in Israeli prisons within Israeli Apartheid Week 2009. Bechara born in Beirut in 1967, originally from southern Lebanon, is a celebrated figure who was involved in the Lebanese national resistance, a hero to many in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East. After occupying southern Lebanon since 1978, Israel launched a military attack on Beirut, bombarding and besieging Beirut in 1982, killing an estimated 10 000 Lebanese and sparking the national resistance movement to the Israeli occupation in Lebanon. Shortly after the Israeli invasion in 1982, Bechara joined the Lebanese National Resistance Front against Israel’s occupation, in the struggle to liberate Lebanon from Israel’s military occupation. Israel’s 1982 invasion also sparked the origins of Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed political movement that eventually succeeded in pushing Israeli forces from Lebanon in 2000, an event celebrated in Lebanon and across the Middle East as a profound victory against Israeli colonialism in the region. In 1988 Bechara, only twenty-one years old, attempted to assassinate General Antoine Lahad commander for the South Lebanon Army, a Lebanese proxy army administering the Israeli occupation in Southern Lebanon. Lahad survived the assassination while Bechara was arrested and imprisoned in the infamous Khiam detention center without trial, during which time she was repeatedly tortured. -- See also: Photos: Khiam Detention Centermore..e-mail
Descent into Bestiality – A Poem
Rassool Jibraeel Snyman, Palestine Chronicle 3/2/2009
I look for the stars in Gaza I cannot see them The smoke blinds me The acrid smell of burned flesh chokes me Bodies litter the landscape My hands covered in blood My uniform stained scarlet What beast have I become Israel what have you done to me What have you turned me into In the name of your twisted dreams I became inhuman In the name of your ideology A mindless predator A military criminal Who kills without second thought... more..e-mail
Fatah and Hamas on an uphill road to rapprochement
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani, Electronic Intifada 3/2/2009
CAIRO (IPS) - Representatives of rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas met in Cairo this week for talks aimed at national reconciliation and the formation of a unity government.
"Egypt hopes this meeting is the real start of a new period ending the state of division which has gone on too long," Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s point-man on Palestinian affairs, was quoted as saying.
On Wednesday (25 February), delegations from both Fatah and Hamas held preliminary meetings in Cairo aimed at removing obstacles to rapprochement. Delegation members later described the meetings as "positive."
According to the state press, the two groups agreed to release each other’s detained members, currently being held in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and the Fatah-controlled West Bank respectively. As a gesture of goodwill, Fatah reportedly released 42 Hamas members from West Bank prisons, with promises of additional releases soon.
The issue of detainees has tripped up reconciliation talks in the past. Last November Hamas and other resistance factions pulled out of a scheduled reconciliation summit in Cairo at the last minute, citing the ongoing mass arrest of their members in the West Bank. more..e-mail
Al-Haq receives prestigious Geuzenpenning prize
Adri Nieuwhof, Electronic Intifada 3/2/2009
The Palestinian rights organization Al-Haq, together with the Israeli rights organization B’Tselem, will receive the prestigious Dutch Geuzenpenning award for human rights defenders on 13 March 2009. Al-Haq is an independent Palestinian non-governmental human rights organization based in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah. The organization was established in 1979 to protect and promote human rights and the rule of law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The award is an initiative of the Foundation Geuzen Resistance 1940-1945, named after the De Geuzen resistance group active during World War II around Vlaardingen, Maassluis and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The resistance group, in turn, took its name from the Geuzen, a collection of armed groups that fought the Spanish occupation of the Low Countries in the 16th century, during the Dutch Revolt. German forces executed 15 De Geuzen members in the dunes of the Waalsdorpervlakte near The Hague on 13 March 1941. The Waaldsorpervlakte has become one of the most important war memorials in the Netherlands. After the war, surviving members of the group started the foundation to honor the memory of their fallen comrades, and the Geuzen ideals of promoting and maintaining democracy in the Netherlands and heightening global awareness of all forms of dictatorship, discrimination and racism. Shawan Jabarin, General Director of Al-Haq, told The Electronic Intifada, "We are proud to receive The Geuzenpenning, because of the history that is linked to it. The award is an acknowledgement of our resistance to the [Israeli] occupation." more..e-mail
Feminism and War – Book Review
Nathaniel Mehr, Palestine Chronicle 3/2/2009
’Imperial democracy mainstreams women’s rights discourse into foreign policy.’ -- Robin L. Riley et al Eds, Feminism and War: Confronting US Imperialism (London: Zed Books, 2008). ’Feminist geopolitics,’ writes Jennifer Hyndman, "aims to recast war as a field of live human subjects with names, families, and home towns." The intersection of feminist critique and anti-imperialist resistance to the so-called "war on terror" forms the subject of this illuminating collection of essays from a range of scholars and activists who convened at the "Feminism and War" conference in New York in October 2006. The essential premise of the project is to wrest back from pro-war mainstream discourse a feminism which it had appropriated for the purpose of furthering an imperialist agenda. As Zillah Eisenstein explains, "Imperial democracy mainstreams women’s rights discourse into foreign policy and militarizes women for imperial goals". In particular, Jennifer Fluri and Shahnaz Khan identify the Bush administration’s attempt at rallying people around the cause of women’s rights in Afghanistan as a disingenuous appeal which not only misrepresents the history of that oppression as a relatively recent phenomenon, but also serves to cast Afghan women as a people waiting to be rescued -- a practice that is by no means unprecedented in colonial history. more..e-mail
Gaza Reconstruction?!
Mazin Qumsiyeh, Palestine Think Tank 3/2/2009
A donor conference is underway in Sharm Alshaikh in Egypt is "to raise funding"ť for Gaza but is turning out to be similar to all previous conferences: lots of huff, puff and posturing. For the US administration, it is a way to prop the government of Mahmoud Abbas (whose term ended January 9). The US "pledged"ť $900 million but $200 million of those will go to cover deficits of the administration of Mahmous Abbas, $400 million to West Bank projects (many profiting Israel), and the remaining $300 million will be slated for Gaza but may never get there because the US refuses to deal or help anything associated with Hamas and Hamas is the de facto government (and most of the people) of Gaza. The European Union is trying to buy its way out of the nagging conscience of having supported a failing US/Israeli policy (a policy that tries to bypass democracy and find compliant leaders or pressure them into compliance). This money is also getting entangled in the "no discussion with Hamas"ť mantra (which only strengthens Hamas and their fundamentalist ideology). Hamas said it will not allow aid to achieve what the Israeli military failed to achieve by force (subjugation of the Palestinian people). Other money pledged is also ending up with so many strings attached that hardly any of it is likely to enter Gaza. But even if all these issues are solved, Israel simply continues to blockade Gaza and prevent reconstruction supplies from entering (a blockade that is not only an act of war but a crime against humanity)..... more..e-mail
Ministry of Housing’s Plans for the West Bank - March 2009
Settlement Watch Team, Peace Now 3/1/2009 The Ministry of Construction and Housing is planning to construct at least 73,300 housing units in the West Bank. An examination of the data available on the Israeli government Website (http://www.govmap.gov.il/) that contains maps and information from the Ministry of Housing, reveals that in plans for the West Bank at least 15,000 housing units have already been approved, and plans for an additional 58,000 housing units are yet to be approved. This Peace Now report is based on this data published on the official government website. However the plans published are only a small part of the overall housing plans for the Occupied Territories, there are other thousands of housing units in plans of the local authorities, private initiators and other public authorities, all of which we are in the process of collating. Main findings: • Total number of housing units in the published plans – 73,302, out of which, 5,722 are in East Jerusalem • Total number of housing units in approved plans – 15,156, approx. 8,950 of which have already been built. • Total number of housing units in planning stages – 58,146. • If all the plans are realized, the number of settlers in the Territories will be doubled (an addition of approx. 300,000 persons, based upon an average of 4 persons in each housing unit).... -- See also: Full report, including photos and maps (PDF)more..e-mail
Israel’s death squads: A soldier’s story
Donald Macintyre, The Independent 3/1/2009
A former member of an Israeli assassination squad has broken his silence for the first time. The Israeli military’s policy of targeted killings has been described from the inside for the first time. In an interview with The Independent on Sunday, and in his testimony to an ex-soldiers’ organisation, Breaking the Silence, a former member of an assassination squad has told of his role in a botched ambush that killed two Palestinian bystanders, as well as the two militants targeted. The operation, which took place a little over eight years ago, at the start of the present intifada, or uprising, left the former sharpshooter with psychological scars. To this day he has not told his parents of his participation in what he called "the first face-to-face assassination of the intifada". As the uprising unfolded, targeted assassinations became a regularly used weapon in the armoury of the Israel military, especially in Gaza, where arrests would later become less easy than in the West Bank. The highest-profile were those of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi in 2005, and of Said Siyam in the most recent offensive. But the targeting of lower-level militants, like the one killed in the operation described by the former soldier, became sufficiently common to attract little comment. The incident described by the ex-soldier appears almost trivial by comparison with so much that has happened since in Gaza, culminating in more than 1,200 Palestinian casualties inflicted by Operation Cast Lead this January. It might have been forgotten by all except those directly affected, if it had not been for the highly unusual account of it he gave to Breaking the Silence, which has collected testimony from hundreds of former troops concerned about what they saw and did – including abuses of Palestinians – during their service in the occupied territories. -- See also: Breaking the Silencemore..e-mail
Dennis Ross and Iran
Sasan Fayazmanesh, CounterPunch 2/28/2009
The Fox Guarding the Chicken Coop In October 2008 I presented a paper, entitled “What the Future has in Store for Iran,” at a conference on Middle East Studies. The paper, which was subsequently posted at Payvand.com , examined what the US policy toward Iran might look like if either Barack Obama or John McCain came to office. The conclusion of my essay, stated in its last two lines, was: “In the case of McCain, the war [waged against Iran] might come sooner than later. In Obama’s case, one might see a period of ‘tough’ or ‘aggressive diplomacy’ before hostilities begin.” My conclusion was based on the argument that the US foreign policy toward the Middle East has become institutionalized and it makes very little difference who is the president. The starting point of the argument was an analysis that appeared in The Jerusalem Post just before the Bush Administration took office, predicting that the US Middle East policy would be made more by the neoconservative forces within the new administration than anyone else. In one essay, on December 8, 2000, The Jerusalem Post wrote that both Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz “are the type of candidates the pro-Israel lobby is pushing.” In another article on January 19, 2001, entitled “All the president’s Middle East men,” The Jerusalem Post expressed how the “Jewish and pro-Israel communities are jumping for joy,” knowing that people like Wolfowitz will be in the new administration. The essay predicted: “What you will have are two institutions grappling for control of policy.” It then added: “It is no secret in Washington–or anywhere else for that matter–that the policies will be determined less by Bush himself and more by his inner circle of advisers.” The message of the Israeli analysts was clear: the Middle East foreign policy of the US has become institutionalized; and rather than watching the US president, one has to watch the institutions that would make the policy..... .... given his close ties with Israel and the fact that his containment plans were well known to the Iranians, [Ross] had to settle for a less provocative title. Needless to say that the new title, “Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for the Gulf and Southwest Asia,” is still quite provocative as far as Iran is concerned.... .....With the help of Richard Holbrooke, Stuart Levey—Bush’s Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, who is now in Obama’s Administration—and all the other “president’s Middle East men,” Dennis Ross might be able to finish the unfinished business of the neoconservatives, the containment of Iraq and Iran. The Israelis and pro-Israel communities must be jumping with joy once again. more..e-mail
10 Ways to Kill Fatah
Uri Avnery - Israel, Palestine Chronicle 2/28/2009
’Israeli leaders asserted publicly that they were waging the war for Abbas’ sake.’ 979 days have passed since the soldier Gilad Shalit was taken prisoner. On any one of these days it would have been possible to free him for the price fixed by Hamas right from the beginning: 450 ’important’ Palestinian prisoners, in addition to hundreds of others, as well as all the women and juvenile prisoners. In the eyes of our government, it is all about the return of the "kidnapped" soldier in exchange for "heinous murderers" who have "blood on their hands". In the eyes of Hamas, it is about releasing a Jewish "prisoner of war" in return for the freeing of hundreds of "resistance fighters" who have "carried out heroic attacks deep in the territory of the Zionist occupier." Many had hoped that Ehud Olmert would tie up the affair before leaving office in the next few weeks. But Olmert is afraid. Recently he has made several U-turns. One moment he decides this way, another time the other. Which would be more popular? To act or not to act? more..e-mail
Abbas has no right to ask Hamas to recognize Israel
Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Palestine, Palestinian Information Center 3/1/2009
The de facto chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas is once again asking Hamas to recognize Israel as a precondition for the formation of a prospective national unity government. In a speech in Ramallah on Saturday, 28 February, Abbas said any Palestinian unity government " will have to be committed to our values and respect agreements previously signed by the Palestinian Authority."ť Abbas didn’t explicitly say that Hamas would have to recognize Israel. However, this is exactly what every Palestinian listening to his speech understood from his statements. Well, it is really sad and lamentable that the Palestinian political discourse has stooped to this level of national apostasy. Palestinian leaders from time immemorial never stopped urging our masses to resist Zionist aggression, and never give up the dream of earning our freedom from the cruel hands of Zionism. Hence, the fact that a late comer shamelessly urges his own people to recognize the legitimacy of their oppressors and dispossessors, who have just incinerated hundreds of children in Gaza using White Phosphorus bombs, is more than demeaning and injurious to our collective national spirit. more..e-mail
Not as mighty now
Amin Howeidi, Al-Ahram Weekly 2/26/2009
While some saw Israel’s war on Gaza as an attempt to restore Israel’s military cachet, it was Israeli deterrence that was the final victim of Israel’s failed offensive. If there is anything to learn from Operation Cast Lead, the codename for Israel’s latest onslaught on Gaza, it is that Israel is not as invincible as it likes to think. I am not talking here about who won and who lost. In conflicts such as this a few points won here or there is not what matters. What matters is deterrence; something Israel used to have and is now losing. By dictionary definition, deterrence is the ability to make political gains with the mere threat of force. In other words, one must have enough power and a willingness to use it, to force the enemy to make concessions. In Gaza’s case, none of this worked. Israel threatened force and the resistance stood its ground. Then Israel attacked and the resistance still stood its ground. This must be scary for Israel, for it makes the future rather uncertain. Israel used to have it easy. It maintained overwhelming force, which means that it didn’t have to attack. Then, if it attacked, it had the ability to score fast victories, or retaliate with a convincing second strike. Israel likes its wars short. First, this means that it doesn’t need to call in the reserves. And it obviates the need to confront angry world public opinion. more..e-mail
Al-Kurd Family Becomes Symbol of Palestinian Struggle
Palestine Media Center 2/24/2009
Father Dies of Sorrow, Future of the Family Unknown Mohammad al-Kurd, 62, also known as abu-Kamal, the father of a Palestinian family who were evicted from their home in East Jerusalem on November 9 by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) died at the weekend of sorrow after his family’s eviction from the house where they had lived for more than 50 years. Abu-Kamal, a 1948 refugee from Jaffa, left behind his wife Fawzieh al-Kurd (umm-Kamal), five children and their families. Al-Khad for weeks been hospitalized due to diabetes and related health problems. People around him for the last couple of months stated that before the evacuation of his family from their home in Sheikh Jarrah, he was in a better condition than he had been for a long time. However, the Israeli authority’s forceful evacuation of him and his family from their house, where they had been living since 1956, put him under severe pressure and affected his condition. The situation for the al-Kurd family has been dramatic the last two weeks. While abu-Kamal was hospitalized, his wife had for two weeks been living in a tent, not far away from their home from which they were evicted, along with international peace supporters. Last week, Israeli police and military personnel came three times to demolish this tent. The last time was Friday, on November 21, when a representative of the Jerusalem Municipality arrived at 9:30 a.m. with an order stating that within two hours the tent would be destroyed. more..e-mail
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Witness to Israel’s war crimes 
