The Palestinians don't even have weather
By Tanya Reinhart, The Electronic Intifada/Yediot Aharonot, March 11, 2003
To the extent that the recent military acts in the territories are debated in Israel at all, the debate almost solely revolves around the question whether or not it is possible to end the Palestinian terror this way. The Palestinians, as human beings, simply do not exist. A few days ago it snowed in Jerusalem. On Tuesday, Ferbruary 25th, the cold wave featured in all Israeli papers as the main news. Even in my heated home in Tel Aviv it was cold. My thoughts wandered to my Palestinian friends -- colleagues from Bir Zeit University. How does the snow fare with a family that still has a home, but not that much money to heat it? And what's with those who no longer have a home? It snowed in Jenin as well. How did the Jenin refugees survive the cold, and those who were recently made to flee from Hebron? And what about the old people, for whom the cold is particularly dangerous? Where did the new homeless of Gaza spend the night - those whose homes were destroyed that same day? Is UNRWA still able to provide them with blankets and tents?

People and Politics: They just can't hear each other
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, March 11, 2003
The fingers of one hand are sufficient to count the number of people closer to both the cradle and the sickbed of the peace process than Shaul Arieli. At the end of 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed, Colonel Arieli was commander of the Gaza Brigade, and he is the one who withdrew the Israel Defense Forces from the Gaza Strip. In 1995, he was appointed to head the "Interim Agreement Administration," and five years after that, in his capacity as deputy military secretary to then prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak, he was appointed to head the "Peace Administration." He was closely involved with every stage of the negotiations on a final-status agreement, from the talks that preceded the Camp David summit in July 2000 to the Taba talks in January 2001. Since retiring from the army a year ago, Arieli, along with studying for his doctorate, has participated in several negotiating channels, both open and secret, between Israeli and Palestinian organizations. He believes that it is possible to breathe new life into the Oslo process, which he considers the high point of relations between the parties. He also believes that the myth that "Barak gave them almost everything and Arafat responded with terror" has become one of the deepest pits blocking the road back there. Only the violence and the Palestinians' difficulty in publicly waiving the right of return can compete with the theory "there is no partner for peace," which he believes is false.

It's the motivation, stupid
By Yoel Marcus, Haaretz, March 11, 2003 
"With our excessive retaliation, rolling through their streets with tanks and blowing up their houses, we are not wiping out terrorist infrastructure. Because terrorist infrastructure starts with motivation, with the popular support of the people - not the number of lathes. The harder we crack down, the more terror will grow. The more "we win," the more support Hamas will enjoy."  -- In a properly run country - America, for instance - the president needs congressional permission to go to war. Around here, the prime minister and the defense minister wrap that sort of thing up on their own. Shaul Mofaz is still having trouble adjusting to the move from soldier to statesman, and getting used to the idea that Israel's defense problems don't have to be viewed through a gun-sight. The fact that he's not an MK, and thus utterly dependent on Sharon's goodwill, has not made it easy for him to shed the cape of Superchief of Staff. When he goes around telling the public that Israel has declared war on Hamas in Gaza, you start to wonder who decided on this war, and what exactly its goals are, apart from killing too many citizens, blowing up houses and turning lathes into scrap iron.

Murder of a Population Under Cover of Righteousness
By Shulamit Aloni, Palestine Chronicle, March 9, 2003
We do not have gas chambers and crematoria, but there is no one fixed method for genocide. Dr. Ya'akov Lazovik writes ("Academic Genocide", "Ha'Aretz", 4 March) that in the State of Israel it is impossible that the regime and the nation will plan and commit a genocide. It is difficult to determine if this is naivety or self-righteousness. As we know, there is no single fixed method for murder and not even for genocide. The author Y. L. Peretz wrote about "the righteous cat" who does not spill blood, but only suffocates. The government of Israel, using the military and its instruments of destruction, is not only spilling blood, but it is also suffocating. What other name can be given to the dropping of a one-ton bomb over a dense urban area, when the justification uttered is that we wanted to murder a dangerous terrorist and his wife? The rest of the citizens who were killed and injured, among whom are children and women, do not count, of course. How is it possible to explain the expulsion of citizens from their homes at three o'clock in the morning on a rainy night, then depositing bombs in the house and then departing without warning? When those expelled returned to their home, the bombs were exploded and a brutal murder and destruction of property was thus committed. And what is the justification for what happened in Jenin? We did not destroy the whole neighbourhood, just 85 houses; it was not slaughter, we killed only 50-some citizens. How many does one need to murder and destroy for it to be a crime? - A crime against humanity, as determined by the Laws of the State of Israel, not only the laws of Belgium. And more: A curfew and closure of an entire city so that a few celebrants from the racist bunch in Hebron could walk to the Cave of the Fathers, and tanks destroying fruit and vegetable stands, and bulldozers that destroy houses, and Generals who, in their arrogant hubris, are willing to destroy a whole neighbourhood for the convenience of a group of settler hooligans.

Why the Olives From Gaza Strip are Bitter
By Linda Heard, Palestine Chronicle, February 27, 2003
(PalestineChronicle.com) - "Let me tell you about those Gaza olives. First of all, they are the bitterest ones in the entire world. Gaza people say that the olives get their bitterness from life in the Gaza Strip, from the pressure of the Occupation. And not only are these olives bitter, they can also drive you crazy with their saltiness. And that is because of the tears of the Gaza women. Tears they shed in the olive groves seep through into the olives". These are words written by Tal Belo, a Staff Sergeant in the Armoured Corps of Israel's occupying forces. Tal Belo is one of more than 500 Israeli "Refuseniks" – conscientious objectors currently refusing to serve in the West Bank and Gaza. Part of a letter they have signed and delivered to their government reads: "We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people." Another signatory, Sergeant Noam Livne, makes an emotional appeal to the Israeli people: "People wake up! This is now! Now it is happening! Just a few kilometres from where you are sitting now there is a war which is taking place, a brutal, awful, idiotic, unjust, voluntary war."

Jordan: Between Two Genocides
By Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice, March 11, 2003
We must bear in mind, then, that there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state.  – Niccolo Machiavelli  -- The rapidly unravelling events in the Occupied Palestinian territories are undoubtedly of particular concern in Egypt and Jordan, two Mideast regimes that signed peace treaties with Israel. This is acutely so for the Jordanian oligarchy. Jordan is declaimed by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, of Qibya, Sabra, Shattila massacres and other infamy, as the homeland of the Palestinians. This seemingly serves as a future pretence for his implicit objective of ethnically cleansing the Occupied Territories. Jordan now is squeezed between two ongoing genocides. Iraq, reeling under genocidal UN sanctions, is threatened with ‘Shock and Awe’ -- a massive bombardment never before unleashed -- by the world hegemon. There is fear and economic hardship in Iraq, so much so that Iraqis take refuge by the hundreds of thousands in resource poor Jordan. There are fears that Mr. Sharon will undertake his Orwellian program of ‘transfer’ during the chaos of war.  While Iraqis are streaming in from the East the Israelis might be ethnically cleansing the Occupied Territories of its indigenous Palestinians to the West. Jordan will be overwhelmed on both flanks. Jordan already has a sizable Palestinian population estimated at anywhere from 40 to 60 %. Other Jordanians, however, reject the notion that they are a minority. The Sharonian bombast that Jordan is the Palestinian homeland has been ridiculed as right-wing Israeli hysteria. But expulsion seems to have found more widespread acceptance in Israel of late. (1) Indeed Mr. Sharon already did deport hundreds of young Palestinians men to Jordan in 1971. (2)