Articles
Archives | Art | Articles | Background Books | Boycott | Cartoons Chemical War | Children | Contact Donate | Elections | E-mail Us Events | Film | Home | Letters Links | Maps | Mission | Music Videos | News | News Links Performance | Photos | Poetry Polls | Prisoners | Products Search | Take Action | The US Role The Wall | Together | Old Home Page
Recent News..                         News Headlines News & Articles in text format Headlines in text format News Archives Get daily News & Articles by e-mail         This webpage uses Javascript to display some content. Please enable Javascript in your browser and reload this page. This webpage uses Javascript to display some content. Please enable Javascript in your browser and reload this page.

Palestinian Negotiators Go Home Frustrated
Khody Akhavi, MIFTAH 4/30/2008
     As President George W. Bush races to ink a deal before his term expires in January of next year, disagreements remain over the final-status issues and the territorial integrity of a future Palestinian state. Following the latest round of talks last week in the U.S. capital between President Mahmoud Abbas and Bush, the Palestinian negotiating team appeared pessimistic about any durable prospect for peace, despite assurances from Bush himself to the contrary.
     Unable to hide his frustration last Friday, chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erakat gave an ominous warning to an audience of journalists: "If we don’t have an agreement by 2008, we stand a chance of disappearing," he said.
     "The issues are very clear cut and you can’t beg peace from anybody. I did not wake up one morning and feel my conscience for the Israeli people suffering to seek negotiations with them, and I don’t think they woke up one morning and felt their conscience aching for my suffering," said Erakat.
     "[Israelis] know that if they want to continue with the pattern of behaviour of creating facts on the ground, and dictating and negotiating among themselves, and then whisper to me, ’boy, we know what’s best for you,’ that’s not going to work." more.. e-mail

Sixty years ago in Battir
Hasan Abu Nimah writing from Amman, Jordan, Electronic Intifada 4/30/2008
     Sixty years ago in Battir, my small hillside village near Jerusalem, I witnessed the chaotic collapse of the British Mandate administration in Palestine and the beginning of the Nakba.
     The previous months had been decisive ones for the fate of Palestine, although we did not yet know it. The Jews, fed up with British procrastination in fulfilling Balfour’s promise of letting them transform our homeland into their "national home," launched a bloody campaign of terror both against the British and the Arabs. The Jewish militias targeted the British to speed up their departure from Palestine, and hit the Arabs to quell the rising resistance to Zionist colonization. Violence broke out in early 1947, after the British announced that they would leave Palestine by 15 May 1948. When the United Nations passed its partition resolution on 29 November 1947, the violence began to lurch into full-scale war.
     Battir’s 1,200 inhabitants were wracked by uncertainty. There were hopes that things would turn out all right, but fear dominated as the atmosphere became bleaker by the day. more.. e-mail

Love and resistance in the Gaza Strip
Dr. Mona el-Farra, The Guardian, International Solidarity Movement 4/30/2008
     In an apparent softening of its position, Hamas has said it will accept a partial truce covering the Gaza Strip. But the lack of water, fuel and medicine has taken its toll and Palestinians continue to die of malnutrition and lack of medical resources. Mona el-Farra is a doctor and human rights activist working with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. She is also the author of From Gaza With Love, a blog through which she keeps the world abreast of conditions under the Israeli occupation.
     I started writing in 2000 when my parents’ home was demolished by the Israeli occupation army at the beginning of this intifada. I felt strongly that I should tell people abroad about my personal experience and about what’s happening in Gaza under occupation.
     As a doctor working in the field and living in Gaza I witnessed so many human rights violations and I wanted people to know about it. About two years ago some friends and supporters of the Palestinian cause in Britain encouraged me to start a blog because they thought that my message was strong, but I didn’t expect the reaction - the response was overwhelming. So I continued. more.. e-mail

Palestinian Plight is Flip Side of Israel’s Independence Joy
Karin Laub, MIFTAH 4/29/2008
     Mohammed Shaikha was 9 when the carefree rhythm of his village childhood - going to third grade, picking olives, playing hide-and-seek - was abruptly cut short.
     Uprooted during the 1948 war over Israel’s creation, he’s now a wrinkled old man. He has spent a lifetime in this cramped refugee camp, and Israel’s 60th independence day, to be celebrated with fanfare on May 8, fills him with pain.
     "For 60 years, Israel has been sitting on my heart. It kicked me out of my home, my nation, and deprived me of many things," he said.
     And each Israeli birthday makes it harder for 70-year-old Shaikha and his elderly gin rummy partners in the camp’s coffee house to cling to dreams of going back to Beit Nabala, one village among hundreds leveled to make way for the influx of Jewish immigrants into the newborn Jewish state.
     Israel’s joy over independence after two millennia of Jewish exile has been the Palestinians’ "naqba" - their catastrophe. The state they were to have in a partitioned Holy land was made stillborn by the 1948 war. The 1967 war that brought the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli rule doubled the catastrophe. And the negotiations that are meant to bring about a Palestinian state are bedeviled by constant violence and distrust. more.. e-mail

A family’s ongoing Nakba
International Womens’ Peace Service 4/30/2008
     On Monday, the 28.04.08, two IWPS volunteers went to Kufr Qadum village in the Qalqilya district to follow up on a night time incursion the day before.Kufr Qadum is half surrounded by the illegal Israeli settlement Qadumim, which blocks its direct access to Nablus City, and also has land bordering on the extremist settlement outposts Havat Gilad and Shvut Ami.
     We first met with the vice major, who informed us that the village has been a victim to intense army harassment since several months, with the Israeli army entering the village almost every night. He fears that this campaign of intimidation might be conducted in preparation for the building of the part of the Apartheid Wall that is planned to separate Kufr Qadum from Qedumim Settlement and that will take up to half of the villages land. In the latest incursion at least 25 military vehicles entered the village after midnight and six family houses were searched.
     We then visited one of the families whose house had been searched. The family includes 9 children between the ages of 2 ½ to 16. Nidal, the father, started off by telling us about the scary experience of heavily armed soldiers with painted faces entering the house at night and trying to force out the family. Not knowing how long the operation might take the father was worried for his frightened little children having to spend the whole night outside and insisted successfully on the family being allowed to stay in one room while the soldiers searched the house. more.. e-mail

ANALYSIS / IDF behaving as if there is no truce on horizon
Amos Harel, Ha’aretz 4/30/2008
     The Israel Defense Forces avoided accepting any form of responsibility for the death of Miyasar Abu Muatak and her four young children in a shanty neighborhood of Beit Hanun Monday. According to the army’s version, the mother and children were not killed by two missiles fired from an aircraft, as the Palestinians maintain, but as a result of "secondary explosions." The missiles were aimed at two Islamic Jihad militants that had been identified carrying large bags, which are believed to have included explosive devices. As a result of the blast, the shed which was the family’s home was destroyed. Defense Minister Ehud Barak did not bother with the details. As far as he was concerned, he said Monday, only Hamas - whose gunmen operate among civilians - are responsible for the death of "uninvolved civilians".
     The Israeli version relies on descriptions by Givati Brigade officers, who called in the aircraft, and on photos of the damage. Also important is the type of munitions that Israel has deployed in recent years in the Gaza Strip. They are lethal, but more precise, so their collateral damage is relatively limited. The damage evident at the site of the killing is much more like that caused by the detonation of a large explosive device. more.. e-mail

Behind Israel’s Independence, a Great Injustice
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 4/30/2008
     Every year, Israel’s independence celebrations are a sore reminder to the Palestinians of the price they were made to pay for this state to be created. This year, on the 60th occasion of Israel’s independence, nothing has been remedied or rectified for those Palestinians who lost their homes over half a century ago.
     The Palestinians hardly spend this time of year, May 15 to be exact, in celebration. While Israeli flags flutter over buildings and cars and Israelis take the day to picnic and barbeque, Palestinians are remembering Al Nakba, the Catastrophe which emerged as a result of the creation of the State of Israel. By the time the 1948 War was over, 800,000 Palestinians from all walks of life had been made refugees, virtually overnight. In days of horror, Palestinians from northern Palestine and along the coastal line fled the fierce fighting and the fear of massacres with the understanding that they would return to their homes once the fighting had subsided. That was never to happen and 60 years later, these refugees have multiplied many times over, with an estimated five million Palestinian refugees in camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, neighboring Arab countries and abroad. more.. e-mail

Inclusiveness most Promising Approach
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 4/29/2008
     Jimmy Carter’s visit to the region and his meetings with several parties including Hamas officials coincided with serious Egyptian efforts to try to forge a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. The former US president’s meetings with the Syrian leadership and Hamas were controversial in the United States, however, and he was brutally criticized in Israel. Only in Palestine were his efforts welcomed by the full political spectrum.
     Among other things, Carter’s meetings brought attention to the fact that the official American strategy of excluding and boycotting Hamas while supporting its domestic rival Fateh has been a failure. On a practical level, meanwhile, the most interesting outcome of Carter’s meetings with Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal were the direct and indirect messages from Hamas to the international community, according to which Hamas is willing to behave with political maturity, contrary to the impressions created by Israel and Israel’s supporters.
     Mishaal promised Carter Hamas would support and accept any political agreement Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas might negotiate with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert if it was put successfully to a popular referendum. That position is compatible with the position of Abbas, who has consistently responded to criticism that he will not be able to deliver his people to such an agreement by saying that Palestinians will get to vote on it and their verdict should be binding on everyone. more.. e-mail

Jewish studies, for Muslims only
Jack Khoury, Ha’aretz 5/1/2008
     "What does Maimonides say about divorce?" That is how Rabbi Shmuel Reiner, the head of Yeshivat Hakibbutz Hadati in Ma’ale Gilboa began a class on Judaism before a group of attentive students: religious clerics from several Galilee villages and settlements. The class, which took place at the Shorashim educational center in the Gush Segev region, focused on the laws of marital relations and family.
     The clerics, imams and muezzins are now in their second consecutive year of studying Judaism, as part of a seminar organized by the Inter-religious Coordinating Council in Israel. Rabbi Mark Rosenstein, the director of the Galilee Association for Moral Education, and Ziad Halalila, a teacher from Sakhnin, took the initiative and brought the project into being.
     "At first, we got help from the Religious Affairs Ministry to invite religious clerics to the meetings," says Rosenstein, "but very quickly it became clear that most of them had a great desire to continue, and they made sure on their own accord, to show up for the monthly class." Initially, the group consisted of 18 imams. Some have left and today around 12 clerics show up for the seminars each time, and each class is devoted to a different subject." more.. e-mail

International Humanitarian Law: The Siege on the Gaza Strip
Yasmin Abou-Amer, MIFTAH 4/29/2008
     Since the declaration of Gaza as a “hostile entity” in September 2007, Israel has employed a strategy which aims to politically cripple Hamas into submission at the expense of the 1.5 million innocent Palestinians who populate the Gaza Strip.Israel justifies its actions by asserting that Hamas is an Islamic group which refuses to recognize Israel and is intent on destroying it by launching homemade Qassam rockets into southern Israel.
     Although Israel claims that it no longer bears the responsibilities of an occupier since its withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005, Israel still controls the borders, the airspace and the sea of the 365km2 area, exploiting this fact to impose a blockade on Gaza.Israel periodically releases resources on a drip and fails to provide adequate amounts of fuel, food and medical supplies.This isolation has plunged the area into a dire humanitarian crisis, with commentators describing Gaza as “the largest open air prison in the world”.
     By collectively punishing the Palestinians to ensure political gain, Israel is in complete violation of international humanitarian law, a fuller discussion of which will now follow. more.. e-mail

Israeli closure of charity may put orphans on street
Zack Baddorf, Daily Star 4/30/2008
     Inter Press Service - HEBRON, Occupied West Bank: Nibaal Shriteh may soon be homeless. The 17-year-old Palestinian lives in a Hebron orphanage but, if the Israeli military has its way, she and 240 fellow orphans like her will be out on the streets. "I am talking to you today from this place, from my home, from my school, from my class," Shriteh told a handful of independent media and assembled local and international supporters at a news conference in early April at Al-Shariya Girls Orphanage. "But tomorrow I’ll be talking to you as a lonely, lost person from the street."
     The Israeli military issued orders on February 25 for the closure and confiscation by April 7 of orphanages, schools and other facilities owned by the Islamic Charitable Society (ICS), claiming the foundation "masquerades as a charity organization in order to cover its activities of increasing support of the Hamas terror network. more.. e-mail

Al Nakba: some of us left without our shoes
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 4/29/2008
     Dr. Nazmi, among the directors of the Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation in Ramallah says that 1948 was not just Al Nakba, the Catastrophe, for the people. He says, ’it was a massacre for the cultural heritage in Palestine."
     In the southern West Bank, refugee Abu Yasser from Deheisha Refugee Camp talks about his experience being driven from Telasafi, now within Israeli boundaries, in 1948. He is a poet and grinds coffee with an old wooden urn, the sound like a song from his past.
     Dr. Nazmi, among the directors of the Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation in Ramallah says that 1948 was not just Al Nakba, the Catastrophe, for the people. He says, ’it was a massacre for the cultural heritage in Palestine."
     He is careful not to use the word Palestinian heritage because the mix is too great. He intends to ensure that the idea is transported that Palestine is a place, was a place, inhabited. It was not a “land without a people for a people without a land,” no matter what the Zionist rhetoric may be. more.. e-mail

The Annapolis Review Minus Israel
Caelum Moffatt, MIFTAH 4/29/2008
     When two parties partake in vigorous discussion in the hope of resolving contentious topics of dispute through compromise and cooperation, it is customary that the respective sides meet frequently to ensure that targets are being met within the timeframe, obligations are respected and that the collective aim of the process is understood in accordance with previous agreements.
     It is almost five months since Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas journeyed to Annapolis and agreed to implement stage one of the 2003 road map – the US instigated initiative which predominantly calls on Israel to cease settlement expansion and alleviate movement and access restrictions in the West Bank. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority is charged with dismantling “terrorist” infrastructure in the West Bank. The parties involved agreed that the road map would be the platform with which to propel to a final peace agreement before US President G. W. Bush officially leaves office in January 2009. more.. e-mail

Tony Blair & the Quartet ... Where are You?
Fadi Abu Sa'ada, Palestine News Network 4/29/2008
     Since Tony Blair was appointed as a envoy to the International Quartet Committee for Palestine and Israel and the Middle East generally, we heard about meetings and meetings between Blair and the Palestinians and Israelis, or joint meetings.
     We heard about launching economic projects, and about easing restrictions in order to facilitate Palestinians lives. Today we still hear about Israeli promises to remove several checkpoints from West Bank roads.
     I do not know whether Blair thought that Israel, after announced the removal of 66 military checkpoints in the West Bank, indicating that it had removed only 44 of them, mostly sand road blocks and not major ones, had impacted Palestinians lives, or facilitated them. The facts were confirmed in a United Nations report. Perhaps Blair did not read the report. more.. e-mail

Breaking the Silence: Israeli Soldiers Speak
Stephen Lendman, MIFTAH 4/28/2008
     They’re called "Refuseniks" but not for refusing to serve. They’ve done it proudly and courageously, and here’s how "Courage to Refuse" members state their position:
     "We, reserve officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)....have always served in the front lines....were first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, (and we did it) to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.
     We....served....long weeks every year, in spite of dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country (but were only given to perpetuate) our control over the Palestinian people. We(’ve)....seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.
     ....the commands issued to us in the Territories (have) destroy(ed) all the values (we learned) growing up in this country.
     ....the (way) the Occupation (undermines the) IDF’s human character and (exposes) the corruption of the entire Israeli society. more.. e-mail

Book review: 'Not Everyone Can Throw Stones'
Adri Nieuwhof, Electronic Intifada 4/28/2008
     In his Dutch-language book launched in the Netherlands last week, The Electronic Intifada co-founder Arjan El Fassed demonstrates how his life is deeply entwined with Palestine. Not Everyone Can Throw Stones tells the history of El Fassed’s life in the Palestinian Diaspora in a personal, moving and tense style.
     In 1963, Arjan’s father Walid El Fassed arrived in the Netherlands along with 65 other Palestinians from Nablus as a migrant worker. He eventually fell in love with and married the girl next door, Maretje Vermeer. During Israel’s initial census after seizing the West Bank in the June 1967 War, Walid was in the Netherlands and thus he became "displaced," like tens of thousands of other Palestinians who were abroad at that time.
     Walid and Maretje’s son Arjan was born 35 years ago in Vlaardingen, a small provincial town in the Netherlands. Inter-religious marriages were not common at the time, and almost unthinkable when one partner was Muslim, making El Fassed’s family a unique one. more.. e-mail

Deep regret would suffice
Uzi Benziman, Ha’aretz 4/30/2008
     On April 17, 1996, during the Grapes of Wrath campaign, Israel Defense Forces artillery fired a number of shells at the Lebanese village of Kanna. One hundred and two Lebanese villagers were killed in the attack. Israel cut short the military campaign and withdrew its forces. In retrospect, the shelling is seen as a decisive mistake which completely upset the campaign and prevented its objectives from being reached. The reactions on the part of the senior brass in the IDF reflected some embarrassment: Accusations were traded between Military Intelligence and the Northern Command over who was responsible for the serious error. The tragic attack, two days ago, on the Abu Muatak family in Beit Hanoun shows that the IDF has not learned a thing but has forgotten a great deal.
     The IDF’s first reaction concerning the killing of the mother and her four children was one of denial of any involvement in the tragedy. Southern Command sources fed alternative information to radio broadcasters: There was no shelling from a tank on the house next to the one in which the family lived; there was firing from the air but it was aimed at armed men; if people who were "not involved" were hurt, the reason for this apparently was extremely powerful explosives that were being carried by the armed men who were hit from the air. These explanations were accompanied by a laconic expression of regret over the fact that there had been casualties and that Hamas chose to wage its struggle against Israel from inside areas densely populated by civilians. more.. e-mail

Letters: We’re not celebrating Israel’s anniversary
Various Undersigned, The Guardian 4/30/2008
     In May, Jewish organisations will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating. Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-semitism and Hitler’s genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasised, what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Naqba is to the Palestinians.
     In April 1948, the same month as the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa’s market square, Plan Dalet was put into operation. This authorised the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of the indigenous population outside the borders of the state. We will not be celebrating.
     In July 1948, 70,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in Lydda and Ramleh in the heat of the summer with no food or water. Hundreds died. It was known as the Death March. We will not be celebrating. more.. e-mail

Syria and Israel: Paradox and Danger
Tariq Alhomayed, MIFTAH 4/29/2008
     We are facing an odd political paradox in the region as Syria and Israel continue to flirt in hope of reaching a peace agreement, the price of which is costly for both parties since both sides want a victory that would exclude it from military confrontation, which seems inevitable.
     Damascus wants the Golan Heights to be returned to it and to break the Arab and international isolation [that it is experiencing] in order to actualize a victory that it could benefit from both internally and externally especially since the Syrians have placed all their eggs in one basket, that is by allying themselves with Iran. Now they have no choice but to achieve peace with Israel and to regain the Golan Heights so that they could outmaneuver their opponents. If they do not accomplish peace then at least they would have benefited from the elapsing of time until the Bush administration leaves office.
     Israel, in turn, also wants to escape the dilemma of unavoidable military confrontation that looms on the horizon. For the first time, and in an unprecedented situation, Israel finds itself surrounded by Iran from three directions. Firstly, there is the South Lebanon front, that is Hezbollah; secondly, there is the Gaza front, namely Hamas, an ally of Tehran; and finally, there is the Syrian front, especially that the Iranians exerted much effort in their preparations on Syrian territories, suffice to mention the Iranian listening stations set up in Syria to spy on Israel. more.. e-mail

For the good of all its people, Israel must pursue diversity
Amitai Etzioni, The Guardian 4/30/2008
     If Jews and Arabs alike had the right to practise their religions - or none at all - violence and hatred would be curbed.
     To ask "Should Israel be a Jewish State?" is like asking if the Pope must be a Catholic. But champions of individual rights do raise this question, frequently using arguments similar to those raised by their counterparts in Britain and many other countries, who argue that unless national identity is greatly attenuated, minorities will not feel at home and will turn into fertile fodder for terrorists. These arguments ignore the nurturing that is provided by the national community, by the core values and identity it provides, and the normative glue that prevents nations falling apart.
     In Israel the argument for minority and individual rights is made in two parts. The relatively easy one points out that a continued occupation of the West Bank forces Israel either to persist as a colonial power or to give up on its Jewish identity by turning into a bi-national state. Withdrawing to the 1967 borders, following some redrawing, is considered vital not merely to end the evils of occupation and its corrosive effect on Israel’s soul, but also to maintain a demographic basis essential for a Jewish, democratic state. more.. e-mail

The New Occupation Managers
Oriol Poveda, International Middle East Media Center News 4/29/2008
     The military operations in Gaza and Bethlehem last May signalled once more that the Israeli security establishment (the military-industrial complex encompassing also the private security sector) has no interest in the so called "peace process."� In Israel it is not only the non-Zionist left that does not believe in Annapolis; neither does the army, though for very different reasons.
     While other layers of the Israeli society regard the Occupation as a burden, for the security establishment the Occupation represents its most valuable asset. The Occupation not only justifies access to massive amounts of public money and the central role of the army in the state’s affairs, recently it has also become profitable through the outsourcing of checkpoints to private security companies and, as the dynamics of globalisation further impact on the conflict, new forms of exploitation are to be expected.
     Since its economic well-being and grip on politics depend on the Occupation, the security establishment does not contemplate the possibility of finding a political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Instead, the army and its aggregates hope to manage the crisis indefinitely.... more.. e-mail

Bombs, bullets & our daily bread
Alex Renton, The Observer, Palestine Monitor 4/28/2008
     Lunch is whistling: the noise comes from Fathiya’s old pressure cooker, which has shuddered scarily on a little gas hob for nearly two hours. I go out into the narrow alley between the concrete shacks of the refugee camp. Here most of the al-Absi family are standing round their home-made oven. From this ancient-looking monument of clay and straw Fathiya is bringing out perfect round flatbreads, brown-gold on either side. We open the balloons of bread, and Fathiya’s 13-year-old daughter Noura offers round a little box of greenish powder that we sprinkle into the moist interior.
     This is the Palestinian great snack, good for mind and body: the bread is baraka, the same as the word for ’blessing’, and the powder is za’atar, a mixture of ground thyme, marjoram, salt and toasted sesame seeds. Neighbours have gathered, enticed by the smell, and everyone smiles as we sample that basic pleasure: new warm bread.
     We are in Gaza City’s Beach camp, one of the world’s oldest and most crowded refugee camps; so it’s strange to be taking part in a foodie idyll straight from the pages of Claudia Roden. The feeling only grows when at last the pressure cooker is opened, revealing a glorious mess of beans inside: Palestinian foules. Into these Fathiya stirs dried mulukhiya (a spinach-like leaf, called Jew’s mallow in England), salt, chilli and crushed garlic. more.. e-mail

Condition of Riad Hamad’s Body Contrary to Suicide
Kurt Nimmo, Infowars 4/22/2008
     On the Alex Jones Show today, Dr. Ibrahim Dremali, Director of the Islamic Center of Greater Austin, described the condition of Riad Hamad Esolh’s body after he allegedly committed suicide by trussing himself in duct tape and throwing himself in the Colorado River in Austin, also known as Lady Bird Lake.
     Islamic law requires the deceased be washed prior to burial and this was what Mr. Dremali did less than 24 hours after Mr. Hamad was pulled from the Colorado River and after an autopsy, although it appears Hamad’s family did not give permission for an autopsy. Normally, according to Dr. Dremali, the “police contact Islamic Center before they do anything” and they did not do this in the case of Mr. Hamad. Dremali described to Alex Jones the condition of Hamad’s body. It appeared as if he had been “attacked by an animal in the jungle,” Dremali said. Hamad was cut from the shoulder to the stomach; his arms were cut and his face was bruised and the rear of his skull was bashed in. Dremali said Hamad’s brain was missing. Alex speculated Hamad’s brain was missing because he may have been shot in the head. more.. e-mail

The Military Option
Uri Avnery, MIFTAH 4/28/2008
     WAR WITH Syria? Peace with Syria?
     A big military operation against Hamas in the Gaza strip? A cease-fire with Hamas?
     Our media discuss these questions dispassionately, as if they were equivalent options. Like a person in a showroom making a choice between two cars. This one is good, and so is the other one. So which should one buy?
     And nobody cries out: War is the height of stupidity!
     CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, the renowned military theorist, famously said that war is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means. Meaning: war is there to serve policy and is useless when it does not.
     What policies did the wars in the last hundred years serve?
     Ninety-four years ago, World War I broke out. The immediate cause was the assassination of the Austrian heir apparent by a Serbian student. In Sarajevo they showed me how it happened: after a first attempt on the main street had failed, the assassins had already given up hope when one of them came across the victim again, by sheer accident, and killed him. After this almost accidental killing many millions of human beings lost their lives in the following four years. more.. e-mail

Our Defense Forces, our war crimes, our terrorism
Bradley Burston, Ha’aretz 4/29/2008
     I want to apologize for the unforgivable.
     It is time for us to stop "understanding" why so many we kill so many Palestinian civilians. It is time for us to stop explaining away the deaths we excuse as the unfortunate and incidental by-product of a terrible war.
     If it had been only an isolated incident, a tragic aberration, I would have kept my peace, said nothing, just moved on.
     But the same crime, the same - let’s call it by its real name - atrocity, has been committed time and again, under the same circumstances, for the same reasons, with the same indefensible result.
     Someone in an IDF uniform, in a position of responsibility, gave an order. We will probably never know who. Nor will we know who loaded the shell into the tank gun, who sighted the target, who gave the order to fire, who carried it out. more.. e-mail

Israel’s 60th: The Marketing Wars
Linda Mamoun, MIFTAH 4/28/2008
     Two weeks before Israel’s 60th anniversary the House and Senate voted unanimously to pass resolutions honoring "the founding of the modern State of Israel" and "reaffirming the bonds of close friendship and cooperation between the United States and Israel." Before the House vote, Speaker Nancy Pelosi weighed in on the deliberations saying, "I urge our colleagues to speak with one voice, and support this resolution recognizing the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel. In doing so, we not only commend Israel, we also bring luster to this House by associating ourselves with that great state of Israel." To further commemorate Israel’s anniversary, Pelosi reserved time throughout the month of June for a weekly series of floor speeches.
     Israel Independence Day has been celebrated within Jewish communities in the United States since Israel was founded. Traditionally the celebrations were organized by synagogues or Hebrew schools. Children would sing Ha’Tikvah, the Israeli national anthem, and read scriptures on the Promised Land. But these days the anniversaries are geared toward the broader public, making headlines in places where there are large Jewish communities, but also in areas where one would be hard-pressed to find a single person identifying as Jewish. Not only are the anniversaries endorsed by celebrities and political committees (this year’s "National Committee" includes former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the three presidential frontrunners, and all living secretaries of state), but the organizers offer a dizzying array of festivities, requiring careful planning by those hoping to partake in all the revelry. more.. e-mail

It’s not just about Manners
Akiva Eldar, MIFTAH 4/28/2008
     In less than four weeks, Air Force One will once again land at Ben-Gurion International Airport. When George W. Bush, the 43rd American president, concludes his Independence Day visit, President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will bid him farewell at the airport. If nothing particularly surprising happens at the very last moment, his plane will once again skip over Damascus. This time, too, Bush will support the boycott against Hamas.
     This week, the 39th president of the United States took off from Ben-Gurion at the end of a diplomatic work visit to the Middle East. Not a single senior official waved good-bye to the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Jimmy Carter, who was instrumental in bringing about the peace with Egypt and the 1979 Camp David Accords, climbed up the ramp of the plane, cries of derision from Israeli politicians echoing in his ears. On the day of his departure, the front page of the daily Yedioth Ahronoth published the picture of 3-year-old Amir Arad from Kibbutz Gevim, who was wounded by Qassam fragments. Next to it, in large letters, was the headline: "Carter, look him in the eye." The paper took the view that he violated the boycott against Hamas and tried to persuade the movement’s leader, Khaled Meshal, to put an end to the rocket fire on Gevim, Sderot and Kerem Shalom. more.. e-mail

Al-Nakba: Nothing to Celebrate
William A. Cook, MIFTAH 4/28/2008
     The voice of your brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground."
     May 14th, 2008, marks the anniversary of two momentous events, the “Declaration of Independence” of the new born state of Israel and the calamitous day of infamy, the al Nakba (The Catastrophe), which marks both the massacre in their homes of Palestinian people or their mournful march into exile. Ironically, like the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, this date carries the mark of the Almighty, brothers in blood, enemies in intent.
     Listen to Cain as he walks beside his brother along the path of death: “There is no judgment and no judge and no world to come! No reward will be given to the righteous nor any account given of the wicked.” Such is the belief of those who would declare their independence of any responsibility for their brother, accept any blame for their deception as they accompany him to his death, or bear any guilt for the wickedness they inflict. Without judgment for behavior determined as good or bad, without reward for acts of love or compassion, without retribution for evil and wickedness against his brother, Cain is free to do what he wills to do. Ultimate freedom, a declaration indeed of independence. more.. e-mail

Interview: Boycotting Israel at the Arab American University in Jenin
Aaron Lakoff, International Middle East Media Center News 4/28/2008
     Ashraf is from Tulkarem, Palestine. He graduated from the Arab American University in Jenin (www.aauj.edu) in the summer of 2007 with a degree in computer information technology. With the student group Green Resistance at his university, he organized a successful boycott campaign which saw Israeli products banned from the campus.
     Ashraf is from Tulkarem, Palestine. He graduated from the Arab American University in Jenin (www.aauj.edu) in the summer of 2007 with a degree in computer information technology. With the student group Green Resistance at his university, he organized a successful boycott campaign which saw Israeli products banned from the campus.
     In this interview, Ashraf talks about boycotts as a highly effective tool of non-violent resistance against the occupation, and also reflects on the campaign as part of an international campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid. -- See also: Download the recorded version of this interview and e Arab American University in Jen more.. e-mail

The World must Step in
MIFTAH, MIFTAH 4/28/2008
     This morning, seven residents of the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun were killed in Israeli shelling. The tank shell directly hit a home in the Azbat Abed Rabbo quarter of the town, taking the lives of an entire family. Khadra Abu Muteq was killed along with her four children: one year old Musaab Abu Muteq, Hana’ Abu Muteq, 3, Saleh Abu Muteq 4, and Rudeineh Abu Muteq, 6. One teen, 17-year old Ayoub Atallah was also killed by the shelling and his friend Mutassem Sweilem injured as they were walking to school. Nine others were injured in the attack, several of them in serious condition.
     An Al Quds Brigades activist, 23-year old Ibrahim Hajouh, the apparent target of the attack, also died in the Israeli shelling after Israeli forces invaded Beit Hanoun at dawn today. Two Israeli soldiers were wounded in the violent clashes that ensued.
     The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy MIFTAH is appalled by today’s events and by Israel’s apparent disregard for the sanctity of human life. MIFTAH not only strongly condemns the attack, which is a flagrant violation of humanitarian law and human rights, but demands that the international community intervene to halt the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians. The silence of the international community and the United Nations has allowed Israel to believe it can act with impunity in the name of its security even when this means the killing of innocent women and children. more.. e-mail

As the blockade continues, life in paralysis hits Gaza; Al Mezan calls for international intervention
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, ReliefWeb 4/23/2008
     The Israeli blockade of Gaza has caused paralysis to most public institutions and private enterprises. This includes the education, health, employment, agriculture, trade, transportation sectors in the Gaza Strip. Paralysis also hit the government, non-government and private institutions. UNRWA’s operations have also started to be affected. The blockade poses serious threats on the provision of humanitarian supplies; on which Gaza’s population depends completely to sustain their livelihood.
     Al Mezan monitoring shows a gradual aggravation of the fuel crisis, and of its effects which began to inflict upon all aspects of life; raising concerns that the crisis brings about graver implications on the livelihood and welfare of the civilian population. This crisis comes at a time when Gaza already suffers from a severe shortage in different supplies and lacks any reserves that can sustain its population, which is the result of years of Israeli closure. more.. e-mail

'Who is safer now that Khadra Abu Moatiq and her 4 young children are dead?'�
Palestinian National Initiative, Palestine Monitor 4/28/2008
     Ramallah, 28-04-08: "A sickening tragedy"� was how Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP, Secretary General of the PNI described the killing of a mother and her 4 children in an Israeli military attack on the Gaza Strip this morning.The deaths have brought the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military since Annapolis to 418, including 59 children.
     Khadra Abu Moatiq and her children Musab (1), Hana’ (3), Saleh (4), and Rudaina (6) were killed when an Israeli military artillery shell tore through their home near Beit Hanoun.Two other Palestinians were also killed in the attack, including 17 year-old Ayoub Atallah.
     "The killing of innocent women and children in their homes is one of the most shocking consequences of the siege and attacks on the Gaza Strip, which the Israeli government is carrying out under the pretext of security,"� said Dr Barghouthi. "But tell me who is safer now that Khadra Abu Moatiq and her 4 young children are dead?" more.. e-mail

Israel is suppressing a secret it must face
Johann Hari, The Independent 4/27/2008
     How did a Jewish state founded 60 years ago end up throwing filth at cowering Palestinians?
     When you hit your 60th birthday, most of you will guzzle down your hormone replacement therapy with a glass of champagne and wonder if you have become everything you dreamed of in your youth. In a few weeks, the state of Israel is going to have that hangover.
     She will look in the mirror and think -- I have a sore back, rickety knees and a gun at my waist, but I’m still standing. Yet somewhere, she will know she is suppressing an old secret she has to face. I would love to be able to crash the birthday party with words of reassurance.
     Israel has given us great novelists like Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, great film-makers like Joseph Cedar, great scientific research into Alzheimer’s, and great dissident journalists like Amira Hass, Tom Segev and Gideon Levy to expose her own crimes.
     She has provided the one lonely spot in the Middle East where gay people are not hounded and hanged, and where women can approach equality.
     But I can’t do it. Whenever I try to mouth these words, a remembered smell fills my nostrils. It is the smell of shit. Across the occupied West Bank, raw untreated sewage is pumped every day out of the Jewish settlements, along large metal pipes, straight onto Palestinian land. From there, it can enter the groundwater and the reservoirs, and become a poison. more.. e-mail

Getting their act together
Lily Galili, Ha’aretz 4/28/2008
     The first time Samar wore an Israel Defense Forces uniform was also his last time. It was a difficult experience. Samar Awad, a 12th grader at the regional school in Sheikh Danoun, an Arab village in the western Galilee, put on the uniform when he played the part of an Israeli soldier in scenes from Hanoch Levin’s first satirical cabaret, "You, and me and the next war." The piece was produced in Arabic by his high school’s theater track.
     Even before taking on such controversial materials, the school made history when, at the initiative of principal Samahar Zini, it introduced the first theater track in Israel’s Arab sector some three years ago. Add to that the cooperation with the theater track of the nearby regional high school at Kibbutz Cabri and the choice of particularly difficult material, and reality takes on a complexity nothing less than theatrical. "It was difficult for me, even though I wanted the part," Samar says. "The main problems came from my village, Mazra. Friends told me not to do it and asked why I wanted to be a soldier. But I didn’t listen to anyone. I wanted to play a soldier who is opposed to war." more.. e-mail

Above all, Olmert must want peace
Uzi Benziman, Ha’aretz 4/28/2008
     It’s not clear whether Ehud Olmert’s situation regarding the possibility of initiating peace moves with Syria resembles that of the man who wants to but can’t, the one who can but doesn’t want to, or the one who can’t and convinces himself that he doesn’t want to anyway.
     Despite his efforts, Olmert has not managed to shake off the image of a hurried person whose judgment is in question. Two years ago he rushed to wage war in Lebanon; now he appears to be sending peace messages to Syrian President Bashar Assad, even though the prime minister has spent his entire term of office rejecting Assad’s conciliatory signals. But whether Olmert’s position has genuinely changed or he is merely making a tactical move, it is worth taking into consideration the public response to it.
     A survey conducted by Mina Tzemach and published in Yedioth Ahronoth a few days ago found that just 32 percent of the public is ready for a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights; among Jewish respondents, this willingness shrinks to 25 percent. Seventy-four percent of the overall population and 80 percent of the Jewish population does not believe that Assad is genuinely interested in peace. more.. e-mail

Palestinian kids and the zoo
Fadi Abu Sa'ada, Palestine News Network 4/25/2008
     For over four years now -- which is my child’s age - I have not succeeded in taking him to the zoo. I want to begin teaching him about simple things, such as the animals.
     The reason for the inability to do so is not simply that I am out of money. I do not I have permission to enter occupied Jerusalem to accompany him to the zoo, as it is the closest zoo to my town of Bethlehem, which is also occupied in the West Bank.
     Last Thursday a group of friends decided to take their kids on an adventure, the destination was the zoo in occupied Jerusalem, I asked them to take my child with them, as I can not leave my work to join them. After a long discussion whether my child, Majd, will be able to cross the military checkpoint at the northern entrance of Bethlehem alone, without parents, without a birth certificate, my friends decided to take him and give it a try. more.. e-mail

Ignoring the madness in Gaza is no different from approving it
Editorial, Daily Star 4/26/2008
     Through its silence, the international community is effectively sanctioning one of the most shameful examples of inhumanity to have occurred in the 21st century. Some 1.5 million people, nearly half of them children under the age of 14, are being denied basic necessities like food and medical services for one simple reason: They live in the Gaza Strip
     For nearly a year now, Israel has imposed a blockade on the territory in what it says is an effort to crush Islamist militants there. But without access to the outside world, the humanitarian situation in Gaza has rapidly deteriorated. Food prices have risen dramatically, garbage is overflowing into residential streets, children are becoming increasingly malnourished and basic health services are being denied for lack of fuel and other supplies. This week, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and other international aid organizations were forced to halt many of their vital operations in the besieged territory, including food-distribution services, due to a lack of fuel. more.. e-mail

Israeli Ex-Soldiers Expose Abuse of Palestinians
Ilene Prusher, MIFTAH 4/26/2008
     Doron Efrati was assigned to the Kfir Brigade, part of an infantry battalion that was especially created to serve in the West Bank following the outbreak of the second intifada.
     He figured if he was going to be drafted anyway, he would agree to serve in the Israeli-occupied territories, "to see what really happens, and maybe to change things," he says. "But I didn’t succeed."
     Today, he is one of 39 recently discharged soldiers whose testimonies are part of a grim new report on the situation in the West Bank city of Hebron, where the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) oversee a volatile population of 700 to 800 Jewish settlers living amid nearly 170,000 Palestinians. The 118-page report, which tells of systematic mistreatment of local Palestinians by both soldiers and settlers, was released during this week’s Passover holiday.
     The timing is not coincidental. Forty years ago this week, a small group of far-right religious Israelis, led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, wrangled with a reluctant Israeli military establishment to hold a Passover seder in Hebron, revered as the burial place of several biblical patriarchs and matriarchs. Rabbi Levinger, who saw in Israel’s 1967 military victory over the Arabs a heralding of a Messianic-era redemption, rented hotel rooms for himself and his followers the following Passover, and refused to leave. Today, his flock constitutes the only Jewish settlement inside a Palestinian city. more.. e-mail

Does anyone really miss Azmi Bishara?
Meron Rapoport, Ha’aretz 4/27/2008
     To judge by the quantity of verbiage spilled over the years by politicians and journalists on both the right and the left to describe the threat posed by Azmi Bishara, Israel should be a better, safer place today, a year after his departure for Jordan with no intention of returning.
     But nothing has changed. The Arabs in Israel do not feel less Palestinian or more Israeli because Bishara is no longer addressing the Knesset, publishing opinion pieces or appearing at rallies.
     Bishara, who seemed to be a significant figure in Israeli - not only Arab-Israeli - public life, faded away, and he is definitely not missed.
     That’s not true for everyone, of course. Last week the party he founded, Balad (the National Democratic Alliance), mark[ed] the one-year anniversary of the "conspiracy" that forced Bishara into exile. more.. e-mail

Peace or real estate
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 4/27/2008
     Israel should be grateful to Syrian President Bashar Assad. It is he who heads a most troublesome regime, who has instigated discord in Lebanon, who has ties with Iran, who supports Hezbollah, who hosts Hamas and who is trying to develop nuclear weapons. It is he, of all statesmen, who is bringing Israel close to its moment of truth. For the first time in its history, Israel must face the fateful, clear and unambiguous choice - peace or real estate.
     Anwar Sadat also placed this choice before us, but at that time real security considerations were still involved. In this new technological age, when the danger of missiles from Tehran and Damascus lurks for Israel, it is no longer possible to disguise real-estate considerations with security arguments - especially as peace with Egypt has proven that the best guarantee of Israel’s security is peace with its neighbors.
     .... If Israel rejects the opportunity it might get now, if the government misses this chance as well - if indeed it is a chance - then we all, both Israel and the rest of the world, will know that this is not a peace-seeking country but a real-estate-seeking country, not to mention a country that provoked war... more.. e-mail

Test Hamas’ offer of a 10-year truce
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 4/26/2008
     Is Hamas’ offer of a 10-year truce with Israel sincere? Is it a plausible gesture that should be carefully studied as a possible prelude to a comprehensive peace?
     Hamas clearly is sending strong signals that it is prepared to play the diplomatic game - but not at any price, as Fatah and Yasser Arafat did for years. Hamas’ offer of a long-term truce with Israel is neither permanent peace nor recognition of Israel. Those might follow from future negotiations, but only if Palestinians enjoy their equal national rights simultaneously, and this requires rules of the diplomatic game that are more even-handed.
     Two pertinent issues are involved here. The first is whether Islamist movements like Hamas, Hizbullah and the Muslim Brotherhood can be trusted and taken at their word when they speak of accepting democratic pluralism or negotiating with Israel. Many in Israel, the West and parts of the Arab world view these groups as insincere opportunists and deceitful tricksters who will speak the language of democracy and peace while actually planning to grab power and turn the region into one large Islamic theocracy or Iranian puppet theater. more.. e-mail

Demonizing Jimmy Carter
Patrick Seale, Middle East Online 4/25/2008
     Why did Israel treat the former U.S. President Jimmy Carter so rudely during his recent visit to the Middle East? Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and senior ministers refused to meet him. The Shin Beth, Israel’s security service, refused to provide him with the protection usually given to distinguished foreign guests. Israel’s lobby in the United States vilified and insulted him, dismissing his brave peace efforts as the work of an ignorant and bumbling old man.
     The most extraordinary outburst came from Israel’s United Nations ambassador, Dan Gillerman, who told journalists that Carter "went to the region with soiled hands and came back with bloody hands after shaking the hand of Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas."
     How can such scandalously undiplomatic language be explained?
     One would have expected Israel to be eternally grateful to Jimmy Carter, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He was the man, after all, who had handed Israel what was possibly the greatest single strategic prize of its history. He brokered the Israeli-Egyptian peace of 1979, which, by removing Egypt from the Arab military line-up, confirmed Israel’s military supremacy over its Arab neighbours. more.. e-mail

Crossing the Line interviews Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj
Podcast, Electronic Intifada 4/25/2008
     This week on Crossing the Line: Haaretz recently reported that Egypt and Israel have agreed in principle that Egypt will assume responsibility for supplying electricity to the Gaza Strip’s 1.4 million residents. But will Israel, who had previously supplied Gaza with most of its electricity, allow for this to continue in the context of their ongoing siege on Gaza? Host Naji Ali speaks with Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj, founder and director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme about the ongoing siege and humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.
     Next, more and more solidarity activists are mobilizing in the US to demand an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. But our guest today argues that Palestinian-Americans need to become more involved in the struggle in the US. Nadeen Elshorafa, a Palestinian-American activist, discusses her efforts to mobilize Palestinian, Arab and Muslim youth in the US.
     Listen Now [MP3 - 19.2 MB, 48:02 min] Crossing the Line is a weekly podcast dedicated to giving voice to the voiceless in occupied Palestine. Through investigative news, arts, eyewitness accounts, and music, Crossing the Line does its best to present the lives of people on the ground. more.. e-mail

Nadine Gordimer: Stand against Israel’s apartheid too
Open letter, Dr. Haider Eid, Electronic Intifada 4/25/2008
     The following is an edited open letter from Gaza lecturer Dr. Haider Eid to Nobel Prize-winning South African author Nadine Gordimer:
     Dear Ms. Gordimer, I am a Palestinian lecturer in Cultural Studies living in Gaza. I happen to also have South African citizenship as a result of my marriage to a citizen of that beloved country. I spent more than five years in Johannesburg, the city in which I earned my PhD and lectured at both traditionally black and white universities. At Vista in Soweto, I taught your anti-apartheid novels My Son’s Story, July’s People and The Late Bourgeois World. I have been teaching the same novels, in addition to The Pick Up and Selected Stories, to my Palestinian students in Gaza at Al-Aqsa University. This course is called "Resistance, Anti-Racism and Xenophobia." I deliberately chose to teach your novels because, as an anti-apartheid writer, you defied racial stereotypes by calling for resistance against all forms of oppression, be they racial or religious. Your support of sanctions against apartheid South Africa has, to say the least, impressed my Gazan students. more.. e-mail

Film review: 'Driving to Zigzigland'
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 4/24/2008
     It is a familiar dilemma. You are on a plane, or at a social gathering, and a stranger asks you where you are from. Your mind races to come up with an answer. If you say "Palestine," you know that it’s not likely to be a short conversation. You will be called on to provide history, political analysis, a personal narrative, and usually condemnation or justification for the actions of others. Sometimes you have to carefully calculate what negative consequences -- large or small -- uttering the words "I am Palestinian" might have. The possibilities are endless and you don’t always want to face them every moment of the day. So, you might answer instead "I am from Chicago," or "I am Jordanian," or any other answer that is true, but does not tell quite the whole story, does not put you on the spot when you just want to enjoy the party or gaze out at the clouds until your plane lands.
     Bashar (Bashar Da’as), the main protagonist of Driving to Zigzigland, Nicole Ballivan’s 2006 feature film, uses a different strategy. An accomplished theater actor in Palestine he has set his sights on conquering Hollywood. He arrives in post-11 September Los Angeles to join his American wife Nicole (played by Ballivan). more.. e-mail

A long view from a small cage
Zvi Bar'el, Ha’aretz 4/24/2008
     On Saturday two weeks ago, the trip from the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron to City Hall, which should be just a few minutes’ drive, took more than 45 minutes. And this was without being stopped at an Israel Defense Forces checkpoint, or being required to present ID cards or being delayed by military convoys - challenges Hebron residents have to contend with practically every day.
     All we had to do was to maneuver between manned checkpoints, metal gates that prevented passage between neighborhoods, and large mounds of dirt put in place by the army between streets. The logical route to take, which leads straight from the Tomb of the Patriarchs to the city center, was closed some time ago, when Shuhada Street became King David Street and the settlers took over this "compound." The 1997 Hebron agreement, which divided the city into two areas, the Arab H1 and the Jewish H2, also thrust a barrier into the heart of the city and physically divided the Jewish part from the Arab part.
     According to the agreement, Israel Defense Forces soldiers are forbidden to cross into area H1 without a Palestinian escort. During the day, foot patrols of soldiers go about the area as if it were theirs. At night, the army arrives to carry out arrests, and just instructs the Palestinian security forces to remain in their headquarters and not to intervene, as if they were its servants. more.. e-mail

Palestinian - Israeli investment conference
Fadi Abu Sa'ada, Palestine News Network 4/24/2008
     Since we are still under the Israeli occupation, Israel has a certain level of control over the Palestinian Investment Conference. It is expected that 100 Palestinian businessmen from the Gaza Strip to join the conference which will be held in Bethlehem in the third week of May. However, their participation, and the participation of a number of foreign businessmen and entrepreneurs is pending Israel’s permit.
     The idea to hold an investment conference in Palestine started in late 2005, however, the latest developments, including Hamas’ electoral victory and the economic blockade imposed on the Palestinian Authority, by Israel, the United States and the European Union and all its consequences delayed holding such a conference. The idea was revived following the Donor countries conference in Paris in December 2007 and the conference will be held despite of the political situation in Palestine.
     No doubt that the conference organizers are marketing Palestine in general and specially Gaza very successful way. It is obvious that they are using very soft words describing the internal situation in Palestine. This was clear when Dr. Hasan Abu Libdeh, director of the conference used the term, “negative dialogue” among Palestinians hinting to the internal infighting which reached its peak in June of 2007, which led to a geographical and political split. more.. e-mail

Uneasy balance
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/24/2008
     General Yoav Galant, commander of the southern zone in the Israeli army, doubled his inspection tours of the positions manned by the elite Givati Brigade, now engaged in military operations against Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza. Israeli media say that the frequent visits by Galant to army sites are intended to boost the morale of the soldiers, who lost many of their comrades in recent operations by Ezzedine Al-Qassam, the military wing of Hamas.
     Israeli military commanders, including General Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, admit that Hamas has become "creative" in its attacks since it stopped firing homemade rockets at nearby Israeli settlements. Israel’s Infrastructure Minister General Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said that the recent spate of attacks shows that the Israeli offensive of last March, in which dozens of Palestinians were killed, failed to discourage Hamas.
     Maariv commentator Ben Kasbit says that many Israeli commanders feel frustrated by the unusual resilience of Hamas. "What else can we do to stop them? We’ve nearly tried everything. We carried out targeted killings and abductions. We destroyed homes and businesses. We used economic pressures and collective punishment. Nothing is working," Kasbit cited one general as saying. more.. e-mail

The essence of an illusion
Zvi Bar'el, Ha’aretz 4/24/2008
     "The Illusion of Return" by Samir El-Youssef, Halban Publishers, 160 pages, 12.99 pounds sterling (translated into Hebrew by Niv Savriago as "Ashlaiyat hashiva," Yedioth Ahronoth Books)
     Samir El-Youssef’s novel lay on the corner of my coffee table for a long time. The first page of it was folded over and a pencil was stuck between the binding and the title page - a sort of promise that one day I would really write a review of it. Almost every day I held a somewhat childish dialogue with the title of the book, "The Illusion of Return": Is it "return" that you want? I will return yet in your illusions. Because Palestinian literature, especially about the right of return, is in fact Israeli literature - only in reverse.
     The right of return is an Israeli "flag" as much as it is a Palestinian symbol. As long as there is no Palestinian return, an Israeli can feel confident in his strength, and well protected from the moral arrows of those who passed on this right - which is properly anchored in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 - to its "owners." The right of return is the opposite of the Jewish Israeli’s right to self-definition. Give the Palestinian a return, and you’ve lost the country with which you identify. more.. e-mail

A Dissipating Agreement
Uzi Benziman, MIFTAH 4/24/2008
     This week Defense Minister Ehud Barak promised that "when the time comes," Hamas will pay for its aggression; two years ago, Prime Minister-elect Ehud Olmert promised that Israel will be a country that is "fun to live in"; during the Second Lebanon War, the government promised a "strong home front"; during last week’s interviews granted on the eve of the holiday, Olmert promised that "Iran will never go nuclear"; the diplomatic and security effort this government is focused on these days is meant to secure a tahdiyeh (lull) in the South during the coming month, so that the Independence Day celebrations, and especially the visit by U.S. President George W. Bush, will not be marred; and the epitome of this method - Israel is conducting negotiations with the Palestinian Authority to reach a "shelf agreement," which it has no intention to implement.
     The modus operandi selected by Olmert to conduct state affairs is drawn from the world of entertainment and anchored in the dominant media culture: He simulates reality and paints virtual solutions to real problems. more.. e-mail

Opening to Hamas
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/24/2008
     This was a week for Egypt and the region in general -- and maybe beyond -- to assess whether Hamas may or may not be engaged by a diplomatic drive aimed at setting long-stalled and ineffective Palestinian-Israeli peace talks back on track.
     "We are making good progress [mediating between Israel and Hamas]," Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit this week said in Washington. The foreign minister made his statement in the wake of a series of meetings held with senior US officials over several issues, primarily the fate of Middle East peacemaking in the remaining months of the tenure of US President George W Bush.
     As he elaborated, addressing months of Egyptian diplomatic/security mediation in an attempt to strike a truce -- or rather "period of quiet" -- between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Abul-Gheit acknowledged that whatever progress he was trying to make was hampered often by "certain trends inside Israel [that] challenge the idea, and certain trends inside Gaza [that also] challenge the idea," and that maybe "there could also be a foreign element." more.. e-mail

Israel suspends family visits to prisoners
Report, Electronic Intifada 4/24/2008
     JERUSALEM/GAZA, 22 April 2008 (IRIN) - For families in the Gaza Strip with sons or daughters in Israeli jails, the past 11 months have been especially hard, as they could no longer visit their imprisoned relatives and have only had contact through brief written messages.
     "This issue is a humanitarian concern for us, for the families and the prisoners," Katharina Ritz, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Jerusalem, told IRIN.
     "It is very important the families have contact with the people in jail; and psychologically, for the prisoners, it is important to have contact with the family," she said, noting that families bring books and clothes for their relatives.
     According to the Israeli rights group B’tselem, over 760 Gazans, including four women, are in Israeli jails. They are all there for "security" crimes -- anything from alleged membership of an "illegal group" to proven acts of militancy. more.. e-mail

This land was theirs
Hannah Mermelstein, Electronic Intifada 4/24/2008
     On 20 March 1941, Yosef Weitz of the Jewish National Fund wrote: "The complete evacuation of the country from its other inhabitants and handing it over to the Jewish people is the answer."
     On this day in 1948, almost two months before the first "Arab-Israeli war" technically began, the 1,125 inhabitants of the Palestinian village Umm Khalid fled a Haganah military operation. Like their brethren from more than 500 villages, they likely thought they would return to their homes within a few weeks, after the fighting blew over and new political borders were or were not drawn.
     Instead, more than six million Palestinian people remain refugees to this day, some in refugee camps not far from their original towns, others in established communities in Europe and the US, all forbidden from returning to their homeland for one reason: they are not Jewish. more.. e-mail

Yes, it is apartheid
Yossi Sarid, Ha’aretz 4/25/2008
     The anchorwoman was clearly shocked: I don’t have time now to respond to what you have said, she told the former U.S. president, allowing Jimmy Carter to make a narrow escape from her clutches. Then she added that she did not want to imagine what would happen to him if he bumped into her colleague from the security affairs desk in Channel 2’s dark alley. And the pundit sitting there, sunk in deep thought as always, nodded his heavy head, confirming: He’s lucky, the bastard, that we didn’t gang up on him and cut him to shreds.
     That’s how it is here: The rulers set the tone, and the media begins to gripe: Not only did Carter’s mission not help, it did damage. He alone was the reason Gilad Shalit was not ransomed out of captivity during the holiday. That’s what happens when an enemy of the human race, the twin of the Twin Towers’ bin Laden, sticks his nose where it does not belong.
     ....The white Afrikaners, too, had reasons for their segregation policy; they, too, felt threatened - a great evil was at their door, and they were frightened, out to defend themselves. Unfortunately, however, all good reasons for apartheid are bad reasons; apartheid always has a reason, and it never has a justification. And what acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck - it is apartheid. Nor does it even solve the problem of fear: Today, everyone knows that all apartheid will inevitably reach its sorry end. more.. e-mail

Remembering the past
Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/24/2008
     It takes more than seminars and conferences to resurrect ways of thinking. Renovation is a process undertaken by individuals at the intersection between the needs imposed by the socio-historical process and the course of the history of ideas. One of the most pressing needs is for thinkers of the type that embraced the concept of the "Arab idea" and who made their mark in the first half of the 20th century. Conferences and seminars will not produce them, just as they will fail to produce any other kinds of innovative thinkers. Ultimately the task of renewal falls upon the individual who must engage in a creative intellectual process.
     Since Arab national thought is not uniform we should not expect any renewal to be so. The factors that distinguish it from other trends of Arab thought are few, but they make all the difference. Even so, the difference is not sufficient to establish a distinct way of thought. Nationalism that is liberal democratic in outlook is a world away from nationalism that is fascistic. Nationalism is not a way of thought but the politicisation of an affiliation and it is as easy to imagine democratic bearers of the idea of politicising national affiliation as a platform for the realisation of sovereignty as it is to imagine fascist ones. more.. e-mail

Israeli soldiers do not shoot at children
Aya Kaniuk, translated by Tal Haran, from Mahsan Milim, Palestine Monitor 4/23/2008
     Israeli soldiers do not shoot children, said the manageress of a shop where I worked. But I have seen this, I told her. And once they murdered a child right in front of my very eyes, shot him with a live bullet to the neck.
     No, she said, don’t say murder. And she did not agree and she could not accept this, for she knows. For her sons have served in the army, and her spouse. For Israelis do not shoot children.
     But they did shoot. Omar Matar, fourteen-years old, from Qalandiya refugee camp. I was standing right there and saw the soldiers chase the children as these were running away, and they sniped away at them like hunters’ prey. And I saw how he fell, bleeding.
     It has been said that the devil himself cannot think up a proper revenge for the blood of a small child. A heart-rending saying, for it is true. The face of a child, the age of a child, the essence of a child is the one thing that crosses all conflicts and borders and races. One does not kill children. Nothing is more normative than that. A child is blameless. A child is a child is a child. more.. e-mail

32 years in an Israeli prison cell
Luisa Morgantini, Palestine News Network 4/23/2008
     This article, written by the Vice President of the European Parliament, was published in the Italian newspaper ’Liberazione.’ The last time that Widad hugged her son was eight years ago, in a prison in Ashkelon, Israel: for many years since she was not allowed to see him, as the Israeli Authorities repeatedly denied her the permit for "security reasons."
     Widad Naief Mohammad Atabeh lives in Nablus, is 78 years old, suffers from hypertension, diabetes and her sight has strongly worsen since the last time she saw Saed, "He hugged me and said that in that moment he was born again to life. Those minutes for us were the most precious, but the moment we had to depart from each other was the hardest and most disappointing."
     This is what she writes today in an appeal to all mothers in the world, in an effort to put pressure on the Israeli Authorities to allow her to see Saed for the last time making her dream come true. more.. e-mail

Israeli pressure on Gaza helps Haniyya at Abbas’ expense
Mohammed Omer, Inter Press Service, Daily Star 4/24/2008
     GAZA CITY: The one political result of Israel’s attacks and sanctions on Gaza has been that the Hamas leadership, and particularly Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya, have emerged greatly strengthened. Over the last three months, support for Haniyya has overtaken that for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah party. Fatah rules the Occupied West Bank, and Hamas governs Gaza, the two main Palestinian territories.
     A poll conducted in March by the independent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research shows that Abbas has lost a 19 percent advantage over Haniyya over the past three months. Now, the poll suggests Haniyya would get 47 percent of the Palestinian vote, and Abbas 46 percent. The poll was carried out among 1,270 adults, 830 in the West Bank and 440 in the Gaza Strip, at 127 randomly selected locations.
     Popularity for Haniyya increased after the breaching of the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt, said Khalil Shikaki, head of the survey center. The breach is believed to have been the work of Hamas, and it helped Palestinians bring in badly needed provisions denied earlier by an Israeli blockade. more.. e-mail

Borderlines and Frontlines
Dina Ezzat, MIFTAH 4/23/2008
     Quiet prevails on the border between Egypt and Gaza, for now. Below the surface, however, tension between Egypt and Hamas is seething. Statements made by Hamas spokesmen last week about a potential replay of January’s mass breakout of ordinary Palestinians over the border "inevitably" led to a firm Egyptian response, threatening "a harsh reaction" while beefing up visible security on the border.
     By Wednesday, Cairo’s fears, high at the weekend, about a potential breakout and its political and humanitarian consequences were somewhat relaxed. "But we are still on standby," insisted one Egyptian official. For its part, Hamas is not ruling out a possible breach of the border. It would be, the movement says, a simple reaction of 1.5 million Palestinians to suffocation via siege. Hamas appeals for Egyptian assistance rather than its fury, spokesmen say.
     In a recent briefing attended by Al-Ahram Weekly, the Damascus-based deputy chairman of Hamas’s politburo, Moussa Aboumarzouk, insisted that it is not in the interest of Hamas to undermine Egyptian national security. "We want to work with, not anger Egypt. This is in our interest and it is in the interest of the Egyptians as well," he said. more.. e-mail

In his Death, a Truth was Told
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 4/23/2008
     One week ago, in yet another Israeli offensive into the Gaza Strip which claimed 21 Palestinians in a day, Reuters photographer Fadel Shana lost his life. According to media reports, the 23-year old cameraman was filming invading Israeli tanks in Gaza City when he stepped out of his van, clearly marked with the word “press”, and was hit by the same tank’s fire. Later photos showed Shana’s blood-soaked flack jacket and his burning van as fellow Palestinians hovered over the young man’s lifeless body.
     Given that Shana worked with an international media organization, it is no surprise that Reuters has demanded an investigation into the death. Reuters Editor-in-chief David Schlesinger fell short of explicitly chiding Israel but got his message across all the same. “This tragic incident shows the risks journalists take every day to report news,” he said. “All governments and organizations have the responsibility to take the utmost care to protect professionals trying to do their jobs.” Later, he continued, “The markings on Fadel Shana’s vehicle showed clearly and unambiguously that he was a professional journalist doing his duty.” more.. e-mail

Analysis: Oops, Jimmy Carter did it Again!
Claude Salhani, MIFTAH 4/23/2008
     Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter started out his latest Middle East trip with dark clouds hanging over him. Both the U.S. administration of George W. Bush and the Israeli government opposed his plans to include a meeting with the Damascus-based leadership of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, otherwise known as Hamas.
     Although one needs to remain extra cautious until any deal is finalized and the ink on the paper is dry - and even then, there is always the risk of something going wrong - Carter’s talks in the Syrian capital seem to have gotten off to a good start.
     However, even Carter remained cautious, telling the New York Times in an interview: "I’m not claiming it’s a breakthrough. I don’t have any control over whether or not Hamas does what they tell me. I just know what they tell me."
     For the moment, however, it would seem that the former American president might have just done it again. For the second time in his life Carter has managed to draw the Arabs and Israelis away from the lines of confrontation and toward the negotiating table. more.. e-mail

Actually, Israel’s Economy can’t do Well Without Peace
Bernard Avishai, MIFTAH 4/23/2008
     Does the Israeli economy really need peace? The prime minister’s office routinely boasts that growth in Israel has outpaced that of other "developed" countries for the past five years, even during 2006, when the country went to war against Lebanon. Business journals report on the more than 80 Israeli and global venture capital funds financing hundreds of start-ups. The April 5 issue of The Economist questions Israel’s economic fundamentals, but expresses doubts about such things as the comparatively thin research budgets of its universities, and the transparency of its bureaucracy. "The most serious threat," the magazine writes, is not political violence, but "the state of the education system." The Bank of Israel projects a slowdown to 3.5 percent growth in 2008, but the governor quickly adds that this is still better than the Western average, and blames sluggishness in the US economy. The sluggishness of the peace process, such as it is, doesn’t feature in his speeches anymore.
     It seems that almost everyone has bought into former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s argument that Israel can enjoy the fruit of its brainpower irrespective of its conflicts; that technology incubated by the Israel armed forces, and coupled with greater market freedom, is the only economic driver Israel really needs. "High-tech" is impervious to war, Netanyahu once told me in an interview, because "real assets are carried around in people’s heads." more.. e-mail

Activists hang up on Motorola
Adri Nieuwhof, Electronic Intifada 4/23/2008
     In March of this year, the US Campaign to End the Israeli occupation launched its newest corporate accountability campaign: "Hang Up on Motorola." Motorola Incorporated and its fully owned subsidiary Motorola Israel benefit from Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Present in Israel since 1964, Motorola supplies the Israeli army with equipment. The campaign was launched because the company failed to respond to the concerns of US activists. Therefore, the campaign demands that Motorola ends its production and sales of all products to Israel that support the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, now in its 41st year.
     United Methodist Church In June 2007 the New England United Methodist Church issued a report on companies, including Motorola, which were identified as supporting the Israeli occupation. On the basis of well-documented research, the United Methodist Church came to the conclusion that Motorola supports the Israeli occupation of Palestine in a significant way. The report states that "Motorola is engaged in a $93 million project to provide radar systems for enhancing security at illegal West Bank settlements deep inside Palestinian territory. Motorola also has a $90 million contract to provide the Israeli army with an advanced ’Mountain Rose’ cell phone communications system. Its wholly owned subsidiary in Israel is contracted to develop encrypted wireless communications featuring vehicle-mounted antenna that will enable military use in the occupied territories and other remote areas. Motorola has operations in the Jordan Valley on occupied land." more.. e-mail

Two Causes of Arab Political Incoherence
Rami Khouri, Middle East Online 4/23/2008
     BEIRUT -- How much are the Arabs responsible for their own political dysfunction, national fragmentation and rampant violence, and how much of their troubles can be blamed on foreign interference and military interventions in the region? Two recent articles in quality American journals highlight how low-class Arab politics that are widely dissatisfying to their own citizens can reflect both indigenous autocracy and foreign mischief-making.
     In an article in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs entitled “The price of the surge: How US strategy is hastening Iraq’s demise,” former US National Security Council official and current Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Steven Simon methodically discredits the year-old “surge” of additional American troops. He sees it as a short-term fix that will have negative long-term consequences for Iraq, because it promotes forces that can degrade national integrity. more.. e-mail

US playwright Sarah Jones urged to cancel Israel performance
Open letter, PACBI, Electronic Intifada 4/22/2008
     The following is an open letter sent from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel to playwright Sarah Jones:
     Dear Ms. Jones, With more than 600 military checkpoints and roadblocks in the occupied Palestinian territory, endless indiscriminate raids, and a medieval siege that prevents for long periods the passage of necessary food, medicine, fuel and all other commerce into or out of Gaza, in particular, Israel is trapping more than 3.5 million Palestinian civilians under occupation in their cities, villages and refugee camps, condemning many of whom into abject poverty. Tens of Palestinian women were killed while giving birth on Israeli military checkpoints for not being allowed to reach hospitals or ambulances waiting on the other side. Hundreds of Palestinian youth and children have been killed by the Israeli occupation army and thousands have been denied entry to their homeland.
     Yes, all prominent human rights organizations have recorded this terrible oppression by the Israeli military in occupied Palestine. Yes, these crimes and gross human rights violations are persistently committed by Israel, "the only democracy in the Middle East." more.. e-mail

Sixty years after the Deir Yassin massacre - What we should remember
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 4/23/2008
     "At two in the morning they came and invaded our village of 750 inhabitants, eventually leaving at six o’clock in the evening.House by house, they rushed inside and shot all the people they could find,"� remembers Abd Al-Qader, one of the survivors.Today, at eighty-two years old, he is speaking to a group of people gathered to remember the massacre that took place in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin on 9 April 1948.
     The attack formed part of the execution of Plan Dalet, a strategy prepared by the Haganah (a Jewish paramilitary organisation) in 1947 with the purpose of conquering as much of Palestine as possible and to expel as many Palestinians as possible, in preparation for the creation of a Jewish state.The massacre has now become a symbol of the events of 1948 that led to Palestinian exodus and dispossession, and that lie at the heart of the Palestinian refugee problem.
     Organized by the Israeli group Zochrot ("remembering"� in Hebrew), the annual ceremony seeks to remember both the massacre of Deir Yassin in particular, and the truth about the events surrounding the Nakba ("catastrophe"� in Arabic) in general. This truth that has been consistently masked, revised and marginalized by Israeli historians, academics, political leaders, and others seeking to conceal the violence and dispossession that preceded the creation of the Israeli state. more.. e-mail

The choice of non-violence: our strategy for Palestine
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP, Palestine Monitor 4/22/2008
     Sixty years after the Naqba, the catastrophe, Palestinians are still without a state. They are living under occupation, many are in refugee camps, others are scattered around the world, and a part of the Palestinian people are no more than second class citizens in Israel itself.
     The Palestinian struggle to achieve freedom and independence is therefore firstly a struggle to exist as a people. In this endeavour, resistance is essential. Resistance through memory, resistance through unwavering demands for their rights, resistance against open or covert attempts to displace them and take their land from them.
     But what sort of resistance?
     Armed resistance to occupation is legitimate and legal under international law, under the strict condition that it does not target civilians. But as someone who truly believes in the sanctity of human life, and as a doctor who always puts human life, and as a doctor who always puts human life first, I have an inherent belief that non-violence is a fundamental philosophical choice. more.. e-mail

Report: Family members used to pressure Palestinians in Israeli detention
Report, PCATI, Electronic Intifada 4/22/2008
     The following is the introduction of a report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel entitled "’Family Matters’: Using Family Members to Pressure Detainees."
     "They said that if I confessed to everything they wanted, they would release my wife, and that she was in the isolation cell because of me."
     "The interrogator told me that my father was in detention (afterwards I discovered that he had lied), and threatened that they would also arrest my grandmother if I didn’t confess."
     These and similar testimonies of detainees interrogated by the Israel Security Agency (GSS, also known as the Shin Bet or Shabak) during the past year indicate a phenomenon whose gravity must not be minimized: the use of a detainee’s family to "break" him. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) is determined to combat and eliminate this immoral practice of "psychological torture."
     Psychological torture does not usually receive the same degree of public attention as physical torture. The Israeli public generally associates torture with the terms "moderate physical pressure," "shaking," "bending the detainee’s back," and "painful shackling," and relatively little attention is given to psychological torture. -- See also: PCATI more.. e-mail

Continuing Land Grab
Arab News - Editorial, MIFTAH 4/22/2008
     In case a comprehensive Palestinian-Israeli accord is reached by the end of this year, as espoused by US President George Bush, Israel is taking no chances. It is seeking whatever it can get its hands on should a peace deal that includes a Palestinian state be reached. Hence, the announcement that 100 new houses will be built in a West Bank settlement.
     The Israeli government argues that it is building new houses in existing settlements, not establishing new settlements. But all Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law. Even the United States has pressed Israel to dismantle about two dozen outposts to comply with the road map peace plan that calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and other areas. Instead, Israel will now go the other way, building 100 houses in the settlement of Ariel as a reward for the recent voluntary evacuation of two unauthorized outposts that held fewer than 10 mobile homes. more.. e-mail

Israel’s £1.8m for family of Briton killed in Gaza · Offer pre-empts civil action over cameraman’s death
Toni O'Loughlin in Jerusalem, The Guardian 4/23/2008
     The family of a British cameraman shot dead by Israeli troops in Gaza five years ago said yesterday they may accept a compensation offer of £1.8m despite their grave concerns that the move was a "ruse" to delay a civil action over the shooting.
     James Miller was killed while filming a documentary in Rafah, near the border with Egypt. The journalist who accompanied him, Abdurahman Abdallah, said he was shot as he tried to leave a house while holding a white flag.
     A British inquiry, based on a video of the incident, said Miller was shot in the neck by an Israeli army patrol. Miller’s family is due to begin a civil action in the Israeli courts next month to decide culpability.
     "We have grave concerns that the suggestion from the Israelis that a settlement has been reached is merely a ruse to allow the Israeli defence submission to be delayed. They have asked for an extension," the family said in a public statement.
     Based on our experience with the Israeli authorities over the past five years and the fact that the action will take place in an Israeli court - albeit a civil one - we do not have a great deal of confidence in a fair or just outcome," it said. more.. e-mail

Carter; Still a Presidential Outsider
Dr. Elias Akleh, MIFTAH 4/22/2008
     Former American President Jimmy Carter had always been atypical president. His personal life, his presidency, his political and humanitarian services are totally different than the rest of the American presidents. He has been “cut from a different clay”. He has been, and is still considered, a presidential outsider. Yet this does not change the fact that he is a real genuine humanitarian figure.
     Being a new comer to the Congress, still not tainted by its corrupting politics, especially after Nixon’s Watergate scandal, the American people trusted Carter more than any other 1976 presidential candidates, and elected him president.
     Since his first day in presidency Carter had implemented reforms on the internal front. His first step was the reduction of unnecessary expense by reducing the size of White House staff to one third, and the reduction of government agencies from 300 to 30. He appointed record numbers of women, blacks, and Hispanics to government jobs and signed legislation to increase the payroll tax for social security. He declared unconditional amnesty for Vietnam War-era draft evaders. He pushed for legislature providing equal state aid to schools in the poor as the wealthy areas. His deregulation acts lessened government control over transportation and travel industry, and over the interest rates to encourage people to save their money. He created the United States Department of Energy to encourage conservation and research in alternate energy resources. He was the only president who installed solar panels on the White House, later removed by President Reagan. Carter’s Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act preserved 103 million acres as national parks in Alaska. more.. e-mail

Carter Causes Controversy
Caelum Moffatt, MIFTAH 4/22/2008
     The visit of the 39th President of the United States to the region has not surprisingly attracted a lot of heated and opinionated discussion as to what his somewhat unconventional itinerary, especially when compared to visits from other international figures of similar repute, plans to achieve during his trip which will take the 2002 Nobel Peace laureate to Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
     Former President Jimmy Carter, who by bringing Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin together in 1978 at Camp David initiated the first peace agreement between Israel and an Arab country, arrived in the region just 18 months after his book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid was published. The book, which compares Israeli occupation with South African apartheid, condemns the Israeli occupation and their settlement expansion policy in the West Bank while highlighting the lack of movement and access as well as the excessive levels of land confiscation experienced by Palestinians as a result of the occupation. more.. e-mail

Crossing the Line interviews author Michael Neumann
Podcast, Crossing the Line, Electronic Intifada 4/22/2008
     This week on Crossing The Line: Many Palestinians and solidarity activists advocate for the one-state solution as the best for both Israelis and Palestinians. Host Naji Ali talks with author and professor Michael Neumann who argues that the one-state solution is an illustion rather than a practical and possible solution to the conflict.
     Next, Israeli Occupation Forces have been given new orders that allow troops to use live rounds against Palestinians demonstrating against the apartheid wall in Jerusalem. Author and activist Anna Baltzer joins Ali to discuss these latest tactics and the broader implications they have on resistance to the occupation.
     And as always, Crossing the Line begins with "This week in Palestine," a service provided by The International Middle East Media Center Listen Now [MP3 - 19.6 MB, 49:00 min] Crossing the Line is a weekly podcast dedicated to giving voice to the voiceless in occupied Palestine. Through investigative news, arts, eyewitness accounts, and music, Crossing the Line does its best to present the lives of people on the ground. more.. e-mail

Palestinian education delegation to UK gets special treatment
Rumy Hasan, Electronic Intifada 4/22/2008
     Following a motion passed at the inaugural Congress of the University and College Union (UCU) in the UK last May, a tour of British universities by Palestinian trade union academics was authorized. Its aim is to raise awareness among UCU members of the extraordinary difficulties of maintaining tertiary education under Israel’s military occupation. After much delay, this tour began on 21 April where four members of the PFUUPE, the union of university and professional educators in Palestine, spoke at several UK universities. To my knowledge, this is a first: never before have Palestinian trade unionists been allowed to give a first-hand account of their lives under occupation -- and for this alone, the UCU should be commended.
     However, the UCU has taken a strong line that only its members will be allowed to attend these meetings and attendees are required to bring identification.Apparently, this draconian line is based on a precautionary principle given the invariably heated nature of debates relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Thus, the tight restrictions on entry to these meetings should obviate any abuse that may be hurled at the Palestinian visitors by those not in the UCU, whilst allowing effective sanctions to be taken against any members who resorted to behavior that breached union rules. more.. e-mail

Mideast Peace Prospects
Ziad Asali, MIFTAH 4/22/2008
     Though I have been to the region many times, my most recent trip to Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan confirmed the alarming new obstacles facing the quest for peace in the Middle East and the urgency with which they need to be addressed by all parties.
     Tackling these issues now is crucial because, even though it is obvious that there will not be a conflict-ending agreement by the end of the year as President Bush and others have hoped, momentum must be maintained. The negotiations, dormant for seven years but restarted recently in Annapolis, require forward movement, no matter how modest, in order to avoid total collapse.
     Progress on the ground is required in coming months not only to encourage both parties to take full advantage of an engaged administration looking for a legacy, but to ensure that the next president of the United States comes into office with some forward movement taking place. Without improvements on the ground, the temptation for the next president to avoid the issue altogether will be difficult to resist. He is unlikely to throw much political capital into a stagnant diplomatic quagmire in which progress appears impossible. We have often witnessed the severe political damage such neglect has caused in the past. more.. e-mail

The Lion and the Gazelle
Uri Avnery, Middle East Online 4/22/2008
     Tonight the Jews all over the world will celebrate the Seder, the unique ceremony that unites Jews everywhere in the defining Jewish myth: the Exodus from Egypt.
     Every year I marvel again at the genius of this ceremony. It unites the whole family, and everyone - from the venerable grandfather to the smallest child - has a role in it. It engages all the senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. The simplistic text of the Haggadah, the book which is read aloud, the symbolic food, the four glasses of wine, the singing together, the exact repetition of every part every year - all these imprint on the consciousness of a child from the earliest age an ineradicable memory that they will carry with them to the grave, be they religious or not. They will never forget the security and warmth of the large family around the Seder table, and even in old age they will recall it with nostalgia. more.. e-mail

EI exclusive: a pro-Israel group’s plan to rewrite history on Wikipedia
Report, Electronic Intifada 4/21/2008
     A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.
     A series of emails by members and associates of the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), provided to The Electronic Intifada (EI), indicate the group is engaged in what one activist termed a "war" on Wikipedia.
     A 13 March action alert signed by Gilead Ini, a "Senior Research Analyst" at CAMERA, calls for "volunteers who can work as ’editors’ to ensure" that Israel-related articles on Wikipedia are "free of bias and error, and include necessary facts and context." However, subsequent communications indicate that the group not only wanted to keep the effort secret from the media, the public, and Wikipedia administrators, but that the material they intended to introduce included discredited claims that could smear Palestinians and Muslims and conceal Israel’s true history. more.. e-mail

Popular Conference: preserving collective identity
Noura Erakat and Monadel Herzallah, Electronic Intifada 4/21/2008
     Especially since the advent of the Palestinian-Israeli "peace process," Palestinian-Arab identity has been severely and systematically fragmented. Like the bantustanization of Palestinian lands, Palestinian national identity has been bantustanized by a series of laws, processes and events. Today there are the Palestinians within Israel, those within the occupied territories, those in refugee camps, those in the global diaspora, and most recently those in the West Bank have become distinct from those in the Gaza Strip. Making Palestinian identity whole necessitates articulating a single narrative that addresses the whole and not just several of its parts.
     Aware that the existing Palestinian leadership, as comprised by the Palestinian Authority, is not interested in articulating this narrative but instead would like to consolidate the power that it can over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Palestinians in the United States and throughout the global diaspora have taken it upon themselves to develop this narrative. Palestinians in France, Britain, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Holland have started similar grassroots and independent initiatives. more.. e-mail

The US Democracy Gap in the Arab World
Rami G. Khouri, Middle East Online 4/21/2008
     BEIRUT - One of the paradoxes of the complex relationship between the Arab World and the United States relates to the rhetoric and reality of democratic values. The George W. Bush administration has made democracy promotion a central pillar of its foreign policy in the Middle East at the level of rhetoric, but in practice it pays little heed to behaving democratically in its interaction with the Arab people.
     If democracy means the rule of the people, ideally a country’s domestic and foreign policies should reflect the majority sentiments of its citizens. The Arab world lacks credible democratic systems. Existing institutions like parliaments are controlled in a manner that sees them reflecting the will of small powerful elites who dominate the country, rather than accurately expressing public sentiment. This control has been overcome to a large extent in recent years by good public opinion polls, conducted by local Arab groups as well as established international firms. more.. e-mail

Returning to Palestine
Aaron Lakoff, International Middle East Media Center News 4/21/2008
     What’s in a year? What’s in 60?
     Three years can be a long time, or a little blip in history. It has beenthree years since I was first in Palestine, and now I am back. Years are afunny thing here. Many can go by, and nothing can change. Take, as anexample, one of the large billboards outside of Jerusalem right now, whichproudly announces this year as the 60 year anniversary of the birth of thestate of Israel. And then, of course, the other side of that, the 60thanniversary of the Palestinian Nakba ("catastrophe"). 60 years ofdisplacement, 60 years of refugees, 60 years of useless keys and tearsshed, and how much has really changed?
     Well, quite a lot has changed actually. And it has hit me sooner thanexpected, even after being in Palestine for only a few days. 2008 will nodoubt be a historic and tumultuous year in Israel and Palestine. Beyondthe 60-year observations on both sides, there is pressure from many sidesto make 2008 the year of the Palestinian state, or a "two-state solution".The slogan "2 states in 2008" has been repeated many times. There is astrong will to see this happen before the next Palestinian presidentialelections, or perhaps more importantly, before George W. Bush leavesoffice later this year. more.. e-mail

Riad Elsohl Hamad - 1952-2008
Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund, International Solidarity Movement 4/20/2008
     Riad Hamad died on April 14, 2008 in Austin, Texas, a victim of drowning in Lady Bird Lake. He was a tireless advocate forPalestinians, and especially women and children living in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon.He created the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund and raised millions of dollars through this organization for schools, charitable organizations, and hospitals.
     We cannot begin to express our sorrow at the death of this fine man who has helped so many and asked for so little. Many of you have written to tell us how much he has done and how much he will be missed. We are grateful for the outpouring of affection, and we want to assure everyone who has been a part of PCWF that its mission will continue.
     One of you wrote of Riad: As beautiful a human being as I have ever met…His charisma, energy, and positive outlook were contagious. He loved the children of Palestine and worked tirelessly on their behalf…He would rather sleep in his car than pay for a hotel room so that he could save the money and send it to the children of Palestine…It was never about him, only the children of Palestine. more.. e-mail

Hurray Gaza.. You might have a partial break!
Saed Bannoura, International Middle East Media Center News 4/17/2008
     Oh well...Gaza residents will apparently be able to collect the bodies of their loved ones, and maybe gather their body parts and bury them peacefully without being afraid of a new Israeli air strike or ground offensives.
     Israeli military analysts stated on Wednesday that the Israeli army "will not rush into invasions, either partial or large until the Jewish feasts are over", which is until the end of this month or even the first week of the coming month.
     Roni Daniel, an Israeli analyst, said that army commanders decided not to rush into large-scale invasions into Gaza until the Jewish feasts are over.
     Yet, another military analyst, Alon Bin David, hinted that the army is still considering expanding its offensive in the Gaza Strip and is still considering more painful strikes against fighters who are firing homemade shells into adjacent Israeli areas.
     Bin David added that these strikes will be carried out against the fighters “even if they are located, or hiding, among the civilian population”. I mean… well, after all the ends justify the means. more.. e-mail

Like gang warfare
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 4/21/2008
     On both sides of the fence locking in the Gaza Strip, there is a war of desperation going on. Hamas is fighting against the insufferable siege that the Gaza Strip has been under for many months, and the Israel Defense Forces is mostly preoccupied with avenging Hamas’ actions. Both sides are busy with displays of power and retaliation. It was sufficient to hear last week the commander of an IDF company, which lost three of its men, who called on his troops to kill as many terrorists as possible and to destroy the area from which the attacks came, to understand that the differences between the two opposing sides are increasingly becoming distorted.
     The ethical differences are also being blurred. For example, if the B’tselem report is correct, and the IDF has resumed using flechette tank shells, then killing is being done without distinction, precisely as Hamas does. Both sides avoid any dialogue with the other, Israel conducts the scandalous international boycott of Hamas and anyone who tries to end this unbearable cycle, such as former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, is immediately and shamefully condemned by Israel. more.. e-mail

Is Dubai helping ethnic cleansing in Palestine?
Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem, Palestinian Information Center 4/20/2008
     The government of Dubai recently allowed a major bankroller of Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank to open at least two Jewelry stores in the Gulf emirate.
     According to reliable sources in the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a key member-state, Israeli billionaire and diamond magnate Lev Leviev is preparing to open two large jewelry stores in Dubai, a world’s hub of Jewelry trading.
     The first store will be opened soon at the Burj Dubai Mall (Dubai Mall Tower) while a second store is slated to be opened later this year in the new Atlantis Hotel on the Jumeirah Palm Island.
     Leviev has already opened one store in Dubai in March, 2008,  in the lobby of al-Qasr Hotel on Madinat Jumeirah.
     The Dubai authorities were initially reluctant to grant the Israeli billionaire a license to do business in the oil-rich emirate. However, Leviev reportedly successfully  lobbied  "North American and European connections"� to convince Dubai officials to reconsider their objections. more.. e-mail

'I don’t talk to Arabs.. I shoot people like you.'
Saed Bannoura, International Middle East Media Center News 4/14/2008
     On Sunday, there were no US flags and lots of Israeli flags in a "street fair" dubbed "Ben Yehuda, Jerusalem Street fair" in Teaneck, NJ.I came a bit early and strolled through the few booths selling Israeli products and Zionist ideas (no mention that Jerusalem is illegally occupied per International law!) to some hundreds of mostly Israeli expatriates and perhaps 30% US Jewish Zionists (In my strolling I identified 4 who were not Jewish and seemed out of place).
     But then some 30-40 ultra-orthodox Jews of the Neturei Karta came and started to picket the "Israel celebration".With dignity, poise, and gentleness, they responded to a barrage of angry Zionists.They explained calmly that "Judaism rejects Zionism" (on one of their signs) and that the Torah forbade the establishment of such a militarized state by people who rejected Judaism and who despised religious Jews (people like Herzl and Ben Gurion supported by the British government). Several Zionists spoke to me and one young man seemed extremely interested and we had a nice lengthy conversation for nearly one hour (he is an Israeli who was sent to liaison with the US Jewish Federation). Others were actually violent and tried to rip banners away. My large banner was highlighting http://PalestineRemembered.com -- See also: Palestine Remembered more.. e-mail

Mario Vargas Llosa: How Arabs have been driven out of Hebron
Mario Vargas Llosa, The Independent 4/19/2008
     Hebron is the image of desolation and pain. I’m talking of the H-2 sector, the oldest part of this ancient city, which is under Israeli military control and where some 500 colonos -- settlers -- live in four settlements. It is one of the holiest places of Judaism and Islam, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where in February 1994, the settler Baruch Goldstein machine-gunned Muslims at prayer, killing 29 and wounding dozens.
     To protect these settlers, the zone bristles with barriers, camps and military posts, and is overrun by Israeli patrols. But such mobilisation will soon be unnecessary because this part of Hebron, subject to ethnic and religious cleansing, will soon have no Arab residents.
     Its centuries-old market, which was once as multi-coloured, varied and bustling as that of Jerusalem, is now empty and the doors of all the shops are sealed. Travelling around, you feel in limbo. So too when you walk through the surrounding deserted streets, with shopfronts shuttered with metal sheets and on whose roofs you glimpse military posts. The walls of this entire semi-empty neighbourhood are filled with racist inscriptions: "Death to the Arabs". more.. e-mail

Thousands attend funeral of slain Gaza journalist
Mohammed Omer, Electronic Intifada 4/18/2008
     GAZA CITY, 18 April (IPS) - Fadel Shana’a just had to go to the scene of the Israeli bombing. As a Reuters cameraman, that was his job. He wasn’t the only one killed, but through his pursuit of attacks as they happen, he was always more at risk than most others.
     Fadel Shana’a was killed Wednesday because he was in the firing line, but also because, eyewitnesses said, he had begun to film the tanks that were firing. A barrage of metal shrapnel pierced his body as a tank missile landed close to him.
     Fadel Shana’a, 23, had been injured in August 2006 in the north of the Gaza Strip in an Israeli missile attack. This time he wasn’t lucky enough to survive.
     After the first missile that killed Fadel, a second tank missile directly hit the Reuters vehicle in which Fadel had been traveling, killing two children and another civilian close by, and injuring 12 others, including five children. Wafa Abu Mezyed, 25, a Reuters sound man, was injured. more.. e-mail

No peace without Hamas
Mahmoud al-Zahar, Electronic Intifada 4/17/2008
     US President Jimmy Carter’s sensible plan to visit the Hamas leadership this week brings honesty and pragmatism to the Middle East while underscoring the fact that American policy has reached its dead end. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acts as if a few alterations here and there would make the hideous straitjacket of apartheid fit better. While Rice persuades Israeli occupation forces to cut a few dozen meaningless roadblocks from among the more than 500 West Bank control points, these forces simultaneously choke off fuel supplies to Gaza; blockade its 1.5 million people; approve illegal housing projects on West Bank land; and attack Gaza City with F-16s, killing men, women and children. Sadly, this is "business as usual" for the Palestinians.
     Last week’s attack on the Nahal Oz fuel depot should not surprise critics in the West. Palestinians are fighting a total war waged on us by a nation that mobilizes against our people with every means at its disposal -- from its high-tech military to its economic stranglehold, from its falsified history to its judiciary that "legalizes" the infrastructure of apartheid. Resistance remains our only option. Sixty-five years ago, the courageous Jews of the Warsaw ghetto rose in defense of their people. We Gazans, living in the world’s largest open-air prison, can do no less. more.. e-mail

Double Standards and Dialogue
Georges Corm, Middle East Online 4/19/2008
     BONN, Germany - Georges Corm is convinced that as long as the West pursues double moral standards and applies international law unequally, its attempts to establish dialogue with the Muslim world cannot be taken seriously. Mona Sarkis, a freelance journalist, spoke to the social scientist and former Lebanese Finance Minister:
     Mr. Corm, in your most recent book, Histoire du Moyen Orient (History of the Middle East) you devote a lot of attention to what you refer to as the geographic "arabesque" that historically characterises the Middle East, by which you mean the present Arab territories, the Mashriq, Turkey, and Iran. Why devote so much space to this concept?
     Georges Corm: Because talk of "Muslim society" – as if it were one unified ethnic or national body – is out of touch with reality and I just wanted to show the diversity that has existed at the geographical level since ancient times. Persians, Turks and Arabs are not a homogenous group that is held together by religion. It is absurd to view Moroccan and Iranian society as one and the same. This presupposes that Islam is a living, unified being that exists in a precisely defined territory. more.. e-mail

Between games and propaganda: the removal of checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 4/19/2008
     At the beginning of April, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak announced to US Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice the removal of 61 roadblocks throughout the West Bank. This was supposed to "make life easier for Palestinians"� and to show that Israel is doing its best to prepare for peace talks later this year.
     The United Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has examined the Israeli claim carefully and has found that only 44 roadblocks had been removed, well short of the promised 61. According to OCHA, 6 more of the roadblocks on Barak’s list have been left in place. The remaining 11 simply never existed.
     A close examination of the 44 roadblocks which existed and were removed reveals that most of them had no implications whatsoever for Palestinians’ freedom of movement. Only 5 of these 44 obstacles were classified by the U.N. as "significant"� for Palestinians living in the area. The remaining obstacles were classified as of "little"�, "no"�, or "questionable"� significance, often noting that there were other major roadblocks nearby, that they were located in insignificant areas (such as open fields) or even that some had been built and removed on the same day. more.. e-mail

Testimonies from Hebron: Soldiers choke, beat Palestinians
Hanan Greenberg, YNetNews 4/18/2008
     Soldiers serving in Hebron testify to violent acts unleashed by troops, settlers on Palestinian residents. Four testimonies below.
     "Everyone there feels like they are doing something wrong. At least my friends felt they were doing something wrong." This was the opening sentence in a pamphlet over 100 pages long, which tells the stories of dozens of soldiers who have served in Hebron over the last few years.
     The pamphlet was published by an organization called Breaking the Silence, and includes horrifying descriptions about the behavior IDF soldiers have adopted towards the Palestinian residents of Hebron, and that of the settlers.
     Representatives of Breaking the Silence claim that their goal is "to encourage a public debate about the moral price paid by Israeli society as a whole due to the harsh reality faced by young soldiers forced to take control of a civilian population."
     According to the organization, all testimonies were investigated fully before being printed and cross-referenced with witnesses’ testimonies and archives of other human rights organizations.
     One of the organization’s activists said that the situation in Hebron has not changed much during recent years, and that Breaking the Silence has been hearing a lot about the "moral deterioration" of the system as a whole and the soldiers subjected to it. He added that Israeli society has a duty to listen to the soldiers and take responsibility for what is being done in its name. -- See also: To read the pamphlet in full, click here more.. e-mail

Our reign of terror, by the Israeli army
Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem, The Independent 4/18/2008
     In shocking testimonies that reveal abductions, beatings and torture, Israeli soldiers confess the horror they have visited on Hebron.
     The dark-haired 22-year-old in black T-shirt, blue jeans and red Crocs is understandably hesitant as he sits at a picnic table in the incongruous setting of a beauty spot somewhere in Israel. We know his name and if we used it he would face a criminal investigation and a probable prison sentence.
     The birds are singing as he describes in detail some of what he did and saw others do as an enlisted soldier in Hebron. And they are certainly criminal: the incidents in which Palestinian vehicles are stopped for no good reason, the windows smashed and the occupants beaten up for talking back – for saying, for example, they are on the way to hospital; the theft of tobacco from a Palestinian shopkeeper who is then beaten "to a pulp" when he complains; the throwing of stun grenades through the windows of mosques as people prayed. And worse.
     The young man left the army only at the end of last year, and his decision to speak is part of a concerted effort to expose the moral price paid by young Israeli conscripts in what is probably the most problematic posting there is in the occupied territories. Not least because Hebron is the only Palestinian city whose centre is directly controlled by the military, 24/7, to protect the notably hardline Jewish settlers there. He says firmly that he now regrets what repeatedly took place during his tour of duty. more.. e-mail

All avenues must be explored to break the war and death cycle
Editorial, Daily Star 4/19/2008
     There is more than ironic timing to the fact that former US President Jimmy Carter is meeting with senior Hamas officials on the same day that Americans and Lebanese in Lebanon commemorated two tragic mass killings - the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut, and the 1996 Israeli attack against the UN peacekeepers’ base at Qana in South Lebanon. The element beyond coincidence is compelling political consciousness - the imperative to learn from the past and to come to grips more forcefully with the realities of waging war and making peace in this region. Lebanon and much of the Middle East still suffer political violence and a widening circle of warfare, occupation, resistance and civil strife. The coincidence of these three events in the past and present should be an opportunity to pause for a few moments and ponder more rigorously the options before us. Further warfare and bombings can continue for decades, and escalate to claim many more victims on all sides - Arabs, Israelis, Iranians and anyone else who happens to be passing through a hotel, restaurant or airport in the region. A better option would try to resolve some of the persisting conflicts, and thereby reduce the likelihood of more mass killings. more.. e-mail

The US Palestine-Israel fairytale
Ramzy Baroud, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/17/2008
     The US is so awash with untruths about the Palestinians and Israel that freedom of conscience on the issue for most Americans is virtually unimaginable, writes A memorable quote in Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) still carries a wealth of relevance. He writes, "They own the [holy] land, just the mere land, and that’s all they do own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven’t any business to be there defiling it. It’s a shame and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them."
     Recently an influential pastor, John Hagee of the Dallas’s Cornerstone mega-church, followed his endorsement of Republican presidential candidate John McCain with some telling remarks. "What Senator McCain, I feel, needs to do to bring evangelicals into his camp is to make it very clear that he is a strong defender of Israel and that he has a strong 24 years of being pro-life. And I think on those two issues they will get on common ground and have a common understanding."
     Such are the views of a man who has ever- growing influence among an ever-swelling culture in the US -- the evangelical Christian bloc. No mention was made of the well being of Palestinians, even Christian Palestinians, many of who are descendants of the early church. more.. e-mail

Borderlines and frontlines
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/17/2008
     Quiet prevails on the border between Egypt and Gaza, for now. Below the surface, however, tension between Egypt and Hamas is seething. Statements made by Hamas spokesmen last week about a potential replay of January’s mass breakout of ordinary Palestinians over the border "inevitably" led to a firm Egyptian response, threatening "a harsh reaction" while beefing up visible security on the border.
     By Wednesday, Cairo’s fears, high at the weekend, about a potential breakout and its political and humanitarian consequences were somewhat relaxed. "But we are still on standby," insisted one Egyptian official. For its part, Hamas is not ruling out a possible breach of the border. It would be, the movement says, a simple reaction of 1.5 million Palestinians to suffocation via siege. Hamas appeals for Egyptian assistance rather than its fury, spokesmen say.
     In a recent briefing attended by Al-Ahram Weekly, the Damascus-based deputy chairman of Hamas’s politburo, Moussa Aboumarzouk, insisted that it is not in the interest of Hamas to undermine Egyptian national security. "We want to work with, not anger Egypt. This is in our interest and it is in the interest of the Egyptians as well," he said. more.. e-mail

The Controversy Surrounding Carter and Meshaal’s Meeting
Tariq Alhomayed, MIFTAH 4/17/2008
     Huge controversy surrounds former US president Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal. Carter has stated that during his meeting with Hamas’s leader in Damascus; he will strive to convince him to accept a peaceful solution with Israel and Fatah.
     It is common knowledge that Saudi Arabia has tried to resolve the Palestinian problem through the Mecca Agreement, but after the utmost faith and the emotional speeches that we saw and heard in Mecca; Hamas, under Khaled Meshaal’s leadership, staged a military coup in Gaza and overthrew the Palestinian Authority (PA). Moreover, Hamas has evaded Egyptian and Yemeni attempts [for reconciliation] while Gaza, under Hamas’s leadership, has transformed into a pressure front [exerting pressure] on Egypt.
     Carter’s meeting with Meshaal cannot be described as anything but an [internal] American skirmish; the outcome of which will be fruitless for the region and the Palestinian cause. In fact, it can only exacerbate the crisis in the region. There is nothing to indicate that Hamas, under Khaled Meshaal’s leadership, will commit to a resolution that unites all Palestinian efforts. more.. e-mail

Israel doesn’t want to know Carter any more
Peter Hirschberg, Electronic Intifada 4/17/2008
     JERUSALEM, 17 April (IPS) - Three decades after he brokered the first-ever peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country, former US president Jimmy Carter has become persona non grata in the Jewish state.
     Both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak refused to meet with him during his four-day visit here. So did former prime minister and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who accused Carter of holding "anti-Israel views in recent years."
     In a highly irregular move, Israel’s Shin Bet security service refused to assist US agents guarding Carter. The Shin Bet, which is overseen by Olmert’s office, is routinely involved in assisting with the protection of visiting dignitaries.
     Israeli leaders are furious over the former president’s plans to meet with Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshal during his trip to Syria this week. Some Israeli politicians have called Carter’s readiness to meet with an organization whose founding charter calls for Israel’s destruction and which has carried out most of the suicide attacks and rocket attacks on Israel a "legitimization of terror." more.. e-mail

Israel’s war on orphans
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/17/2008
     The fate of hundreds of orphans is in the balance after Israel’s army attacked their schools and residence, writes in HebronIsrael has of late been waging a dirty war against established Islamic institutions in this southern West Bank town of nearly 200,000, the largest in the West Bank, Hebron.
     Under the rubric of fighting Hamas, Israeli troops and agents of the Shin Bet, Israel’s notorious domestic security agency, have been raiding and vandalising charities, orphanages, boarding schools and affiliated businesses.
     The unprecedented campaign began mid-February when Israeli troops stormed two orphanages run by the Islamic Charitable Society (ISC), one of the oldest charities in Palestine, and the local Muslim Youth Association building. Having thoroughly terrorised hundreds of sleeping children, the soldiers moved to one building after the other, confiscating furniture, smashing glass, looting valuable items and leaving a trail of destruction.
     Before they left, the Zionist vandals handed charity officials a tersely worded order signed by the local army commander stating that all the schools, orphanages, eateries, apartment buildings and support businesses owned by the charity were confiscated and that the Israeli army was the sole legal proprietor of all the expropriated premises. more.. e-mail

Thieves in uniform
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 4/17/2008
     At about midnight, the house was surrounded by soldiers. Mohammed Abu Arkub, a barber, woke up frightened at the sound of loud knocking on the door and the shouts demanding it be opened. Abu Arkub rushed to open the door and the soldiers pulled him outside and ordered him to take all the members of the household outside immediately. His wife Lubna and his two young daughters were sleeping, along with Lubna’s two younger sisters, who live with them. He woke them up and ordered them to go outside. His brother, Rami, who lives alone in the adjacent hut, was also called to go outside.
     The night of March 19, the village of Wadi al-Shajneh in the South Hebron Hills, south of the town of Dura. The family stood outside for about 10 minutes, half asleep in the cold night air, and then the soldiers ordered them to all go inside Rami’s hut. Two soldiers stood at the door, guarding the family so they wouldn’t go out. The rest of the soldiers in the force entered the home of the barber and his wife and began to conduct a search. Abu Akrub asked to be present during the search, but the soldiers prevented him from doing so. The routine of the occupation. more.. e-mail

Saving the US from Israel
Hassan Nafaa, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/17/2008
     While not the thinking person’s only concern, Israel’s continued hegemony over US foreign policy formulation is the greatest threat to world peace.
     For many years the US was a beacon of light and hope to many. It was easy for the dazzled and awestruck to come up with evidence in defence of that country that in the mere two centuries since its appearance on the world map as an independent nation had accomplished more than any other nation in history. That gleaming new and modern nation had become the most powerful, wealthiest and most influential nation on earth. Its political, economic and social systems were models of dynamism, efficiency and achievement. The American way of life amazed, inspired and lured people around the world. More importantly, that country’s awesome material might remained subordinated to the moral might of the country that was the most democratic on earth, the most respectful of law and vigilant in its defence of human liberties and the rights of peoples to self-determination.
     Not all, however, were gripped by this image. For some, the image of the US was bleak and far from noble. To them, the history of the US was an uninterrupted train of colonialist expansionism, violence and racism. The train of violence had been set into motion even before the founding of the state, with the beginning of the systematic genocide of the indigenous population, and continued through the dropping of two atom bombs on Japanese cities without any military justification whatsoever. The American history of racism began with the importation of millions of Africans to be sold into slavery and it certainly did not end with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.... more.. e-mail

"When I think of tomorrow I feel homeless"
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 4/17/2008
     On 25 February 2008, General Gadi Shamni, Israeli military commander of the West Bank, ordered the closure of fourteen schools and orphanages in Hebron.If carried out, the order will literary force some 7,000 Palestinian children onto the street, leaving them in a situation of homelessness, educational disintegration and poverty.
     Eight of these orphanages and schools are funded by the Islamic Charitable Society and six belong to the Muslim Youth Society.In the mind of the Israeli military, this is enough to indicate a convincing, direct link to Hamas.In addition, official buildings connected to the same organizations, and which provide medical services and house a children’s library, have also been targeted.Some have already been dismantled.
     To date, Israel’s High Court has not yet ruled on whether the military can execute this shutdown legally. Without a final decision from the court, no one knows what will happen over the coming days and the threat hangs continuously, ominously in the air. The expressions of the orphanages’ young inhabitants in response to questions about how they feel reveal a paradoxical and complex composition of hope and helplessness. more.. http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article207



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

Ghetto mentality
Zvi Bar'el, Ha’aretz 4/17/2008
     "Have a peaceful Shabbat," says the soldier in a helmet covering his forehead, the brim extending to his eyes. He is sitting in a guard post in the center of Hebron, at the entrance to "Shapira Street," which leads to another narrow alley once known as "Tnuva Lane." Historians of the occupation would do well to start by collecting the exotic names the Israel Defense Forces has given its sites. "Sheep Junction," "Glass Junction," "Gross Square," "Policeman Square" and "Tnuva Lane" are milestones that belong to the generations that devised them during the decades of occupation. They denote a kind of geographical intimacy accruing to those who "belong" to the experience that engendered the names. They began as random code names used by the soldiers on the two-way radio, but always embody the memory of an event. Over time, they become meaningless place markers for the generations after the "first conquerors".
     "Where are you from?" the soldier asks. This is a question that is repeated a number of times as we walked the few hundred meters that separate the Tomb of the Patriarchs from the Hadassah building at the top of Shuhada Street. The question is accompanied by a puzzled look at the sight of two characters who are clearly not from the "Jewish settlement." Neither of us - photographer Dan Keinan or I - wears a skullcap or has a beard. We do not have a tallit (prayer shawl) or a tzizit (fringed undergarment). We do not sport black trousers and a white shirt, and we do not mumble prayers while walking down the street. On the other hand, neither of us wears a kaffiyeh, a faded checked shirt or striped polyester pants - ruling us out as belonging to the population that is in any case forbidden to take a Shabbat stroll in the world’s most heavily guarded Jewish ghetto more.. e-mail

A long way to go
Galal Nassar, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/17/2008
     The concept of citizenship has yet to take root in the modern Arab state and if it is to ever become part of our lives both the state and civil society will have to do more. One starting point would be to accept that we have never had a culture that accommodates, let alone embraces, the individual citizen, a major reason being that the structures and institutions that regulate both government and non-governmental organisations are inherently flawed. For any kind of meaningful citizenship to emerge in Egypt the concept of the secular state needs to be revisited in its entirety.
     The state is in essence a body of rules and institutions designed to protect the lives and property of the populace while enforcing law and order. Citizenry was a side-product of the state, especially in its modern form. In its intellectual, legal, political, and economic aspects the concept of citizenship is unthinkable without a state.
     Developed in the 18th century with the rise of liberalism, the market economy and individualism, ideas of citizenship were refined in the following hundred years to shore up political participation, ensure a minimum of secular rights and promote the idea of general suffrage. In the 20th century citizenship came into its own as nations subscribed to a wider range of economic, social and cultural rights. The main breakthrough came with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then civic and political rights have become sacred. more.. e-mail

MIFTAH Condemns in the Strongest Terms, the Israeli Military Raid on the Gaza Strip
MIFTAH, MIFTAH 4/17/2008
     The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, MIFTAH condemns in the strongest terms, the Israeli military raid on the Gaza Strip on April 16, which resulted in the deaths of 20 Palestinians, several of whom are civilians.
     Israeli air strikes carried out a series of missile attacks on the Breij Refugee Camp in central Gaza killing 17 Palestinians including three children and Reuters photojournalist Fadel Shana’a. Twenty-five others were injured in the raid. While Israel claims the missiles were shot at Palestinian activists in the camp, at least two of the missiles landed on homes.
     The raid came after an earlier gun battle in Gaza City, in which three armed Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers were killed. Israel says the Palestinians were approaching the security fence near the Nahal Oz crossing.
     MIFTAH is appalled by the sharp escalation in Israeli aggressions in the Gaza Strip and calls on the international community to intervene in the continued shedding of Palestinian blood. MIFTAH does not condone the killing of innocent civilians irrespective of their nationality, which is a stance it urges the international community to adopt equally in its positions towards the Palestinians and Israeli alike. It calls on the UN, in its capacity as an esteemed international body, to treat Israel like any other country in violation of international humanitarian laws and hold it accountable for its transgressions. more.. e-mail

Cheerleading genocide
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/17/2008
     With spectacular fanfare and a plethora of highlighted events, Israel is planning to celebrate its 60th birthday on 18 May 2008.
     According to an Israeli government website called Israelfestival.com, the festival will include "non-stop entertainment, [a] fashion show, a variety of ethnic food for sale, Israeli folk dancing, arts and crafts, Israeli and Jewish cultural and heritage pavilions and art exhibits".
     The centrepiece ceremony is expected to take place in West Jerusalem and be attended by Israel’s political and military leaders as well as foreign dignitaries. Among those expected are US President George W Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
     Israeli media and non-governmental organisations have already begun celebrations in earnest. For example, Israeli television has begun airing a new series called Shishim (meaning "60"), which looks back at the six decades since Israel was created in May 1948. The series, which began 31 March, is divided into six episodes, each devoted to one of the decades following the founding of the state. more.. e-mail

Between truce and escalation
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/17/2008
     With the exception of stray dogs, no one can enter into Al-Maghazi Refugee Camp in the central Gaza Strip after midnight without proving his identity and being carefully searched by members of the marabatin (garrisoned) groups guarding the camp’s entrances.
     In a survey that Al-Ahram Weekly conducted early this week of the sites of the marabatin, who are affiliated with the various military arms of most of the Palestinian factions, it was clear that they have begun to take intensified security measures around all Palestinian residential areas in the Gaza Strip in case Israeli forces should enter.
     Saad (not his real name), the 29-year-old leader of the marabatin groups in Al-Maghazi camp, says that he and his scores of men are operating under the assumption that Israeli forces may raid the camp at any moment, and thus are in a constant state of readiness for battle. "We are taking both publicised and secret security measures, 24 hours a day, so as to limit the enemy’s ability to surprise us," he told the Weekly. more.. e-mail

Love and resistance
Serene Assir, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/17/2008
     By his own admission in Cairo on Tuesday night, composer, oud player and singer Marcel Khalifa’s timing is perfect. His concert, after all, was being performed as Egypt witnessed multi-faceted acts of protest and against the backdrop of mass detentions of Muslim Brotherhood members as well as of supporters of the planned general strike of 6 April.
     tag19 Beyond Egypt’s borders, with nearly a quarter of the population displaced, the people of Iraq continue their five- year-old resistance to the US-led occupation of their country while the Palestinian residents of Gaza, against all odds, remain resilient against the impermeable Israeli siege in force since June 2007.
     Khalifa is fully aware of the way his music feeds into core Arab causes. At his press conference in Cairo he spoke out on both Mahala and Gaza and during the performance itself told his eager audience that, "it seems appropriate we should be meeting on 15 April," a month before the 60th commemoration of the Nakba. more.. e-mail

Critical eye on Israel’s military
Greg Norman, Al Jazeera 4/17/2008
     As part of its Israel Through Its Own Eyes series Al Jazeera spoke with a renowned Israeli documentary maker.
     When asked if it would be possible to make the documentary One Shot today, the film’s Israeli director is unequivocal.
     "Oh no," Nurit Kedar says. "There is no way today the army would ever let anybody have discussions with snipers. The guy who is now the spokesperson for the military is much more nationalistic and so one can only say good things about the army. So no way."
     Many people both inside and outside Israel are surprised that the veteran filmmaker was granted the opportunity to speak with Israel’s combat snipers.
     One Shot combines interviews with the snipers and rare footage from the frontline recorded by combat soldiers on cameras given to them by Kedar and attached to their helmets and kneepads.
     The result is an insight into a little seen aspect of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, an insight that could only have been produced by an Israeli director. more.. e-mail

Goodbye to Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana’a
Fadi Abu Sa'ada, Palestine News Network 4/17/2008
     It seems is not enough to bid farewell to those killed on a daily basis; the funerals are not enough. Today we are bidding farewell to one of our own. He is Reuters cameraman, Fadal Shana’a, in the Gaza Strip.
     His absence was created by the Israeli war machine, which from the beginning did not stop at killing our parents and loved ones. This is the price of our struggle for freedom, and our efforts, as journalists, to deliver our message to the entire world.
     Fadel is not the first one, and certainly not the last. The Israeli occupation still continues, but the loss is too big to handle, and the pain is huge, not only for his people, his family and his friends, but also for us. We are the people in the media and journalists who continue to receive one hit after another, despite our attempts to remain constantly steadfast and careful, in spite of our knowledge that our own deaths would not garner more than a press release or condemnation. more.. e-mail

A Gaza Diary: Nakba for Me
Najwa Sheikh, MIFTAH 4/16/2008
     In a few weeks, Palestinians the world over will commemorate their Nakba (catastrophe) -- the loss of their homelands, their identity, dignity and their life.
     Many countries and organizations that are interested in the Palestinian dilemma will help in this commemoration. The Nakba for them is to speak about the sufferings and loss of a nation, to tell stories from those who witnessed the real event and fled from their homeland with one hope -- that one day they will return.
     As a third generation Palestinian, the Nakba to me is different in terms of the pain and suffering it holds. I am totally aware of the great loss that my grandparents, my parents have to experience when they fled from their homeland in 1948. I know how devastating it is to lose the place that gives you all the feelings of security, and the identity that tells who you really are. The pain that my grandparents held during the years of their life in the camp until they died with their only wish to see their home again is heart breaking. The dreams that my father holds on behalf of his parents, and his own dreams of returning back home, is also heart breaking. more.. e-mail

Israel moves to shut Hebron orphanages, schools
Report, Electronic Intifada 4/16/2008
     HEBRON, 14 April (IRIN) - A Palestinian charity in the West Bank city of Hebron is concerned it will be shut by the Israeli military and forced to close its orphanages and schools, employees at the institution told IRIN.
     The Israeli military has ordered the closure of buildings rented by the Islamic Charitable Society (ICS), saying it is working for Hamas.
     "At first we thought maybe they were just taking the business side of the charity, but now, after we appealed to the Israeli high court, our lawyer realized the orders mean they really want to close everything, including the schools and orphanages," said Rashid Rashid from the ICS.
     Some 240 boys and girls aged 5-18 live at the orphanages, while thousands of other children, many of whom have lost at least one parent, receive schooling, food and clothing from the charity.
     The ICS has received support from both the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron and the Israeli Rabbis for Human Rights.
     It also said the Israeli military had seized US$157,000 worth of goods -- including rice, oil, sugar, clothing and first aid kits -- from its warehouse. The bakery’s equipment, worth over $43,000, was confiscated, along with items at the administrative office. more.. e-mail

Israel’s Strategy in Gaza
Caelum Moffatt, MIFTAH 4/16/2008
     A lot has been made of Israel’s intentions towards the Gaza Strip over the last few months. Commentators have analyzed and deconstructed the Israeli government’s fierce rhetoric with respect to Gaza and its ruling authority Hamas, evaluated its actions against the coastal strip and formulated parallels in the hope of deciphering Israel’s objectives concerning this small and overpopulated entity which continues to incessantly lodge itself under the skin of Israel.
     What does Israel have in store for Gaza and Hamas? Arguments normally fluctuate between three possible theories. First, there is the option of invading Gaza. This is a notion given credence and reinforced by two observations. Israeli ministers and officials use stern language and adopt an effusive manner when it comes to warning or threatening breaches of Israeli security. Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai adopted the term “shoah” to describe what Palestinians could expect in the future if aggression continues [shoah, which literally means “disaster” in Hebrew is normally reserved for the holocaust]. In addition, Vilnai declared that Israel would “settle the score” with Hamas following the attack on the Nahal Oz fuel terminal on April 9. Even the Prime Minister employs this same tactic in keeping the public guessing as to what his actual plans for Gaza may be. After the recent infiltration of four Palestinian activists into Nahal Oz and the shooting of two truck drivers – the fourth offensive which resulted in the deaths of Israeli citizens in three months – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert personally promised that “the response against Hamas will be such that Hamas will no longer be able to act against Israeli citizens”. Preceding operation “Hot Winter” on February 29, an offensive that killed 112 Palestinians in five days, the Prime Minister informed the public that “no one in Hamas…will be immune against this war”. more.. e-mail

Is Art the Answer?
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 4/16/2008
     Art, in all its forms, has always been an elevated expression of reality. Good art has the ability to see beyond the obvious and delve into the unknown, finding hidden secrets and human emotions not seen to the naked eye.
     This week, a new play opened in Israeli theaters, which tells the story originally written by renowned Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani. The play, adapted by Israeli playwright Boaz Gaon, is based on Kanafani’s “Return to Haifa”, an emotionally-charged novella about a Palestinian family who, in their haste, left their baby son behind as they fled their war-torn city in the 1948 War. In 1967, the couple briefly returns to their home in Haifa and find that their son, Khaldun is now an Israeli soldier, taken in by the Jewish couple that occupied their home after Israel won the war.
     In Kanafani’s work, the story ends with the despondent father proclaiming that only another war could rectify the wrongs of the past. In a poignant and impassioned soliloquy, Khaldoun’s (known now by his Israeli name, Dov) father seals the fate of what would prophetically become the Palestinians’ struggle for their right of return. “You can stay in our house temporarily,” he says to the Jewish inhabitants who now call his son their own. “This can only be settled by another war.” more.. e-mail

Leading article: A voice in the wilderness
The Independent 4/16/2008
     Yet again, a toxic combination of violence and strategic myopia is pulling Israelis and Palestinians towards the darkness. There were intense battles in Gaza yesterday. Three Israeli soldiers and four Hamas gunmen were killed in firefights, after Palestinian fighters approached the Nahal Oz crossing. This was followed by an Israeli airstrike on the Bureij refugee camp, which killed eleven Gazans, including two children.
     Israel has resumed fuel deliveries to Gaza’s power station, but the blockade on transport fuel continues; so does the ban on exports. Virtually all economic activity in Gaza has dried up. All that is keeping many Gazans from starvation are humanitarian aid deliveries.
     Meanwhile, attempts by the Egyptian government to mediate a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel have stalled. And, ominously, the Israeli government seems to have hardened its line. A few months ago Israeli ministers were holding out the prospect of an agreed ceasefire if the rockets attacks on southern Israel ended. But now they are talking up a military solution, through air strikes and incursions. The goal increasingly seems to be to crush Hamas at any cost. more.. e-mail

Carter’s visit with Hamas’ Meshal
Hasan Abu Nimah, Electronic Intifada 4/16/2008
     "Carter seems more comfortable with terrorists than with friends like Israel." So said a newsflash on the Israeli daily Haaretz’s website last Sunday.
     The statement was attributed to the American pro-Israel group, the Anti-Defamation League, and was obviously a reaction to news that former US president Jimmy Carter was planning to meet with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal during an upcoming visit to Damascus.
     If Carter does meet with Meshal, and that has not been confirmed, I do not think many sensible people would imagine that Carter’s intent is to seek the comfortable company of a terrorist as a better alternative to meeting peace-loving Israelis.
     Carter may not be counted amongst Israel’s most stalwart supporters, at least compared to other US presidents or the current candidates for office. But in reality, he has done more for Israel than any other US president, and perhaps even any other world leader.
     Without the determined effort and the intense personal diplomacy of president Carter, Israel would not have achieved the one landmark breakthrough in its troubled history: the peace treaty with Egypt. more.. e-mail

Two Arab Worlds Drift Further Apart
Rami G. Khouri, Middle East Online 4/16/2008
     BEIRUT - As oil prices and income to some Arab producers continue to rise, we can witness sharper polarization between the wealthy energy-producing, small population states of the Gulf, on the one hand, and the more populous, energy-importing Arab countries all around it in the Levant region, the Nile Valley, and further west into North Africa. Any person who travels to such places as Dubai, Doha, Bahrain, Amman, Cairo, Casablanca and Beirut moves between two very different worlds that are united by investment and labor flows but are being pushed further apart in most other spheres of life.
     A set of polarizations defining the Arab world today lie along fault lines largely drawn by way of income levels, but also comprising other criteria. The Arab world is steadily disaggregating into two very different sub-worlds, characterized by the following polarizations:
     1. Wealth vs. poverty: The continued rise in oil and gas prices has seen the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) amass enormous sums of cash income -- trillions of dollars in the past decade -- which they cannot spend, and may increasingly have trouble investing safely. Per capita real incomes and real purchasing power in the rest of the Arab world remain flat and, in some cases, are even in decline... more.. e-mail

It’s time to free Vanunu
Yossi Melman, Ha’aretz 4/17/2008
     Next week the interior minister will renew, for the fifth time, the order banning Mordechai Vanunu from leaving Israel. This comes on top of restrictions issued by the Home Front Command, relying in part on British Mandate Emergency Regulations, forbidding Vanunu from approaching foreign embassies and from speaking with foreigners. He has been confined to Jerusalem, and must report his movements outside the city. The restrictions effectively continue to punish him for his crimes, for which he already has paid.
     Vanunu’s harassment by the Israel government is unprecedented and represents a distortion of every accepted legal norm. Vanunu, who in the 1970s and 1980s worked as a junior technician in the Dimona nuclear reactor, gave Israel’s nuclear secrets to The Sunday Times in 1986. As a consequence, he was abducted by Mossad agents while in Italy, drugged, transported back to Israel, tried, convicted on charges of espionage and treason and sentenced to 18 years in prison, some of which he spent in solitary confinement that nearly drove him insane. more.. e-mail

In Gaza, fueling cars with cooking oil
Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 4/16/2008
     Amna Abu Sido was waiting for a ride at the so-called Universities Junction in the heart of Gaza City on Tuesday afternoon when she explained how difficult her commute has become.
     "I take at least two taxis to go back home to the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood from the school I teach at in Talatini street. Taxis are scarce nowadays and this is really adding to our difficulties," said the 45-year-old schoolteacher from Gaza City.
     Transportation has been crippled by Israel’s reduction of fuel imports since last autumn when it declared the Gaza Strip a "hostile entity" after the democratically-elected Hamas government took control of the area. The 25-mile-long coastal enclave has about 4,600 taxis, but the majority of them have stopped operating since last Wednesday, when Israel imposed a closure of fuel imports following an attack by Palestinian resistance fighters on a fueling depot, killing two Israelis. The two fighters were killed by Israeli forces, as well as two Palestinian civilians. more.. e-mail

No ambulance, call the radio
Mohammed Omer, Electronic Intifada 4/12/2008
     GAZA CITY, 12 April - "I am bleeding uncontrollably, I need an ambulance." That was not a call to emergency services, it was an appeal broadcast live on radio in Gaza City.
     Who knows whether there will ever be an ambulance or not. But this way the ambulance services still hear the appeal broadcast on al-Iman FM Radio Station, one of few independent radio stations in Gaza. And if the emergency services cannot help, someone else who hears the appeal might.
     The ambulance dispatcher announces he cannot get the ambulance to the man. An Israeli bulldozer is blocking the road, and an Israeli tank on a hilltop has been firing at the ambulance, he says. Nobody can say if anyone else got to help the man. But at least his SOS could have been heard.
     Appeals again went on air after the Friday attacks on Bureij refugee camp, where the death toll climbed to 16 by the weekend.
     The deaths included six children among nine people killed Friday. Again, ambulance crews confirmed they could not reach many of the injured. But the appeals were made on radio for all to hear. more.. e-mail

How Palestinian children really learn
Carol Scheller, Electronic Intifada 4/15/2008
     On 22 March, The Miami Herald published an article entitled "Dreaming of a peaceful Mideast." The initial reaction to such a headline is naturally one of pleased interest. Reporter Frida Ghitis praises the Israel/Palestine Centre for Research and Information for "working to create" a "culture of peace" in order to "put a stop to incitement and hatred." However, Ghitis goes on to state: "It is absolutely imperative to recast the poisonous message drilled into Palestinian children. In Gaza, in particular, even the youngest children are taught that killing Jews is a duty of Muslims ..."
     This is the stuff of much sensationalist, biased journalism which does its best to neutralize all genuine attempts to foster trust and cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis. Having visited and lived in Gaza four times since a month before the beginning of the second intifada and known many families and children there, I was deeply dismayed.
     It is a common mistake to hold religion as the core issue in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. This is incorrect and harmful. The issue is territorial: two peoples lay claim to the same land, land which they are going to have to somehow share, someday, no matter what form of religion they happen to profess, if they indeed practice a religion. Ghitis’s statement is empty of everything except the very things she criticizes: "incitement and hatred." more.. e-mail

The Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem
Yigal Bronner and Neve Gordon, MIFTAH 4/15/2008
     "Archaeology has become a weapon of dispossession," Yonathan Mizrachi, an Israeli archaeologist, said in a recent telephone interview with us. He was referring to the way archaeology is being used in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood in the oldest part of Jerusalem, where, we believe, archaeological digs are being carried out as part of a concerted campaign to expel Palestinians from their ancestral home.
     That effort is orchestrated by an Israeli settler organization called Elad, a name formed from Hebrew letters that stand for "to the City of David." For several years, Elad has used a variety of means to evict East Jerusalem Palestinians from their homes and replace them with Jewish settlers. Today Silwan is dotted with about a dozen such outposts. Moreover, practically all the green areas in the densely populated neighborhood have been transformed into new archaeological sites, which have then been fenced and posted with armed guards. On two of these new archaeological sites, Jewish homes have already been built.
     Although the balance of power is clearly in the settlers’ favor, Silwan’s residents have begun a campaign, "Citizens for Silwan," to stop the excavations. They are joined by a number of noted international scholars and a handful of Israeli academics, who are trying to help them remain in their homes.... -- See also: Part of Palestinian house in Jerusalem caves in due to Israeli excavations more.. e-mail

They’re Routinely Tortured for Throwing Rocks
Patrick Moser, MIFTAH 4/15/2008
     OFER MILITARY CAMP, West Bank - Mohammed, 14, barely glanced at the Israeli military judge as he was led shuffling into the cramped courtroom, his legs in shackles.
     The Palestinian boy had eyes only for his father, and mouthed the traditional Arabic greeting: Salaam Alaikum” - peace be upon you. Seven minutes later he was sentenced to four months in prison.
     The prosecutor said the boy had hurled rocks at a watchtower and at Israel’s separation barrier in the occupied West Bank. Upon his attorney’s advice, the boy pleaded guilty to avoid spending even more time behind bars.
     Human rights groups say Mohammed’s case is typical for alleged child offenders under the military law Israel imposes on the Palestinian territory.
     As of March 31, 324 Palestinian children were held in Israeli prisons, according to the Geneva-based Defense for Children International (DCI), an international rights group. With conviction rates above 95 percent, Mohammed didn’t stand much of a chance, said his lawyer, Iyad Misk. more.. e-mail

An Interview with Ziyad Abu Zayyad - Moving, but Going Nowhere
Bitterlemons, MIFTAH 4/15/2008
     bitterlemons: Damascus came out in the last couple of weeks saying that recent Israeli military exercises were targeted at Syria. Is there a serious chance of conflagration between Syria and Israel at the moment?
     Abu Zayyad: I think both sides understand the serious consequences of confrontation, one of which is that other parties will be involved. I exclude a bilateral confrontation between Israel and Syria unless it starts somewhere else, like Lebanon or even Iran.
     bitterlemons: But if both sides are aware of the consequences, why the ratcheting up of the rhetoric?
     Abu Zayyad: We should not forget that at the same time as this military exercise in Israel there was a kind of exchange of statements from both sides on the necessity of solving the mutual problem and being involved in a political settlement to the conflict. more.. e-mail

Complex Regional Rivalry Muddying the Waters
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 4/15/2008
     The tension between Israel, Syria and Lebanon has carried indirect negative consequences for Palestinians. Even though it is correct to say that at the moment there is no serious or promising peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis to be disrupted, the tension, on the one hand, and Syria and its regional alliances on the other, can play an important role in influencing the domestic Palestinian situation as well as Palestinian-Israeli relations.
     Recent years have witnessed a growing interrelationship between the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and other regional conflicts. This in turn has increased the influence and role of regional actors both on the conflict and on domestic Palestinian affairs. This influence has become especially pronounced with the gradual weakening of the Palestinian leadership that resulted from the deterioration and ultimate failure of the peace process upon which this leadership had gambled so much.
     It has become evident that Palestine, like Lebanon and Iraq, is being affected by the ongoing regional rivalry between Iran and the United States that started with the Iraq invasion and US attempts to weaken Iran and interfere in its domestic affairs including with its nuclear program. With an American military presence on its borders in Iraq, the Arab Gulf and Afghanistan, Iran has been motivated to play its cards against this growing American hegemony. These developments coincided with the collapse of the peace process, the moderate and secular leadership associated with it and the rise of Hamas and its victory in Palestinian elections and subsequent takeover of the Gaza Strip. more.. e-mail

Through an Iranian Prism
Yossi Alpher, MIFTAH 4/15/2008
     Currently, relations between Israel and Syria are very tense. Any deterioration in the situation--or for that matter, any improvement--could have far-reaching ramifications for Israeli-Palestinian relations. But from Israel’s standpoint, there is more to the picture than just Syria and Palestine.
     The immediate backdrop to the current Israeli-Syrian tension is the assassination in early March in Damascus of Hizballah security chief Imad Mughniyeh, for which Hizballah blames Israel. Now that the 40-day Shi’ite mourning period has passed, Israel anticipates a Hizballah revenge attack that could escalate into new fighting in Lebanon and Israel. Jerusalem believes that Damascus can restrain Hizballah if it has the necessary incentive. Hence it has redoubled Israel’s security preparations in the north, carried out a massive combined military-political-civil defense exercise and threatened Syria that it could suffer as a consequence of any renewed fighting.
     There are numerous intriguing nuances and twists-and-turns to the drama unfolding on Israel’s northern front. For one, Hizballah has an additional incentive to strike against Israel: diverting attention from its prolonged failure to compel the Lebanese political establishment to grant it more power within the country’s faltering political system. On the other hand, Syrian opposition sources claim that the Mughniyeh assassination has brought about an internal shake-up in President Bashar Assad’s entourage, and that Syria’s own investigation of the assassination points to Saudi Arabia, not Israel, as the perpetrator. more.. e-mail

The Very Annoying Washington Post
Robert Parry, Middle East Online 4/15/2008
     One of the many annoyances about living in George W. Bush’s Washington is to read the commentaries about the Iraq War on the editorial pages of the Washington Post. Possibly never in modern times has a major newspaper been more wrong, more consistently with more arrogance than has the Post on this vital issue.
     Beyond getting almost nothing right – from the Post’s certitude over Iraq’s WMD to its reverence for Colin Powell’s UN testimony to its excitement over the purple-ink elections to its enthusiasm over whatever latest corner has been turned – the Post also has this obnoxious tendency to mock Americans who don’t share the paper’s wisdom.
     One might have thought that editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt and the Graham family would have learned a few lessons in humility from their wretched record as cheerleader for what even many Republicans now acknowledge has been a disastrous war. more.. e-mail

Area C strikes fear into the heart of Palestinians as homes are destroyed
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian 4/15/2008
     Israelis defend rules that reject 94% of non-Jewish building applications.
     In the end it came down to a single-page letter, written in Hebrew and Arabic and hand-delivered by an Israeli army officer who knocked at the front door. The letter spelt the imminent destruction of the whitewashed three-storey home and small, tree-lined garden that Bassam Suleiman spent so long saving for and then built with his family a decade ago.
     It was a final demolition order, with instructions to evacuate the house within three days.
     If Suleiman was in any doubt about the Israeli military’s intentions he had only to look outside his back door where large piles of rubble and broken concrete mark the remains of the seven of his neighbours’ houses that were demolished in the same way last year.
     "How would you feel when you’ve spent 20 years finishing your life’s project?" said Suleiman, 38, a teacher. He began moving his furniture out after the letter, from the civil administration of Judea and Samaria, the defence ministry department responsible for the Israeli-occupied West Bank, came on January 31. Now there are just a couple of plastic chairs in his front room and in the hallway the carpets are rolled up and ready to be moved. Clothes are piled on the floor and the shelves are empty, save for a stack of documents charting the story of the impending demolition. His brother, Husam, has already left the ground floor flat but the new washing machine and fridge stand still wrapped in plastic. Suleiman, his wife and two children wait for the bulldozers. more.. e-mail

Who lost? The people of Israel
Meron Benvenisti, Ha’aretz 4/15/2008
     The debate over who won, Peace Now or Gush Emunim, is taking place as if it were a soccer game, and most people agree that at this stage it’s a tie - 1:1. Peace Now won and managed to impose an agenda that represents "near consensus" - support for splitting the territory into two nation states. Gush Emunim won the campaign on establishing settlements, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to establish a viable Palestinian state.
     The focus of the dispute is the significance of this tie on the future, with the assumption being that the "settlements" and "two nation states" are indeed the fateful issues that will shape Israel’s future, and that the ideological confrontation between these diametrically opposed worldviews remains relevant in spite of the fact that more than a generation has passed since it was shaped, in the late ’70s. Both camps are interested in sharpening the issues in dispute in order to stress the importance of their activities, but it is also possible to distinguish, behind the rhetoric, a common denominator, which transforms this ideological flurry into an internal debate, a restricted one, a Jewish-Zionist one. more.. e-mail

Manifest Destiny?
Uri Avnery, MIFTAH 4/14/2008
     NEXT MONTH, Israel will celebrate its 60th anniversary. The government is working feverishly to make this day into an occasion of joy and jubilation. While serious problems are crying out for funds, some 40 million dollars have been allocated to this aim.
     Bur the nation is in no mood for celebrations. It is gloomy.
     From all directions the government is blamed for this gloom. "They have no agenda" is the refrain, "Their only concern is their own survival." (The word "agenda", with its English pronunciation, is now fashionable in Israeli political circles, pushing aside a perfectly adequate Hebrew word.) It is hard not to blame the government. Ehud Olmert speechifies endlessly, at least one speech per day, today at an industrialists’ convention, tomorrow at a kindergarten, saying absolutely nothing. There is no national agenda, nor an economic agenda, nor a social agenda, nor a cultural agenda. Nothing.
     When he came to power, he presented something that sounded like an agenda: "Hitkansut", an untranslatable word that can be rendered as"contracting", "converging", "ingathering". That was supposed to be a historic operation: Israel would give up a large part of the occupied territories, dismantle the settlements east of the "Separation" Wall and annex the settlements between the Green Line and the Wall. more.. e-mail

Our debt to Jimmy Carter
Editorial, Ha’aretz 4/15/2008
     The government of Israel is boycotting Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, during his visit here this week. Ehud Olmert, who has not managed to achieve any peace agreement during his public life, and who even tried to undermine negotiations in the past, "could not find the time" to meet the American president who is a signatory to the peace agreement with Egypt. President Shimon Peres agreed to meet Carter, but made sure that he let it be known that he reprimanded his guest for wishing to meet with Khaled Meshal, as if the achievements of the Carter Center fall short of those of the Peres Center for Peace. Carter, who himself said he set out to achieve peace between Israel and Egypt from the day he assumed office, worked incessantly toward that goal and two years after becoming president succeeded - was declared persona non grata by Israel.
     The boycott will not be remembered as a glorious moment in this government’s history. Jimmy Carter has dedicated his life to humanitarian missions, to peace, to promoting democratic elections, and to better understanding between enemies throughout the world. Recently, he was involved in organizing the democratic elections in Nepal, following which a government will be set up that will include Maoist guerrillas who have laid down their arms. But Israelis have not liked him since he wrote the book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid." more.. e-mail

What is wrong with Egypt?
Khalid Amayreh in Jerusalem, Palestinian Information Center 4/14/2008
     Not since the downfall of the British puppet King Faruq in 1952 has the Egyptian national will been so shamefully subservient to a foreign power, namely the United States, whose politics and policies are tightly controlled by Zionist Jews.
     Today, Egypt, which could have become an African or Middle Eastern economic tiger is facing a hard time feeding its nearly 80 million citizens. Last month, several people were killed while standing in long queues waiting their turn to buy bread, the main staple for most Egyptians.
     Economically, inflation has reached an all time high, with Egyptian civil servants barely able to make ends meet. Some, probably many, Egyptians are forced to "eke out"� some extra pounds to remain afloat, mainly through bribery and other forms of corruption.
     This bleak reality has forced thousands of skilled and highly-educated Egyptians to leave the country in order to seek a dignified life abroad, mainly in oil-rich Arab countries or in the West.
     Fifty years ago, Egypt and South Korea were more or less at the same socio-economic level. However, while the latter succeeded in becoming an industrial and economic giant, the former is still languishing in poverty, perennially awaiting grain shipments from abroad, especially from the US. more.. e-mail

Gaza fuel cuts paralyze education, health and transport sectors
Report, PCHR, Electronic Intifada 4/14/2008
     The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is extremely worried about the continued Israeli ban on fuel supplies required for civilian life in the Gaza Strip. The stoppage in fuel supplies has paralyzed 50 percent of the educational sector as half the students in all educational levels are unable to reach their schools and universities. In addition, educational sector employees have been unable to reach their work. Furthermore, the transportation sector has nearly stopped functioning throughout the Gaza Strip. As a result, all basic functions of civilian life have come to a near standstill, including drinking water delivery, sewage water disposal, and garbage collection. In addition, healthcare facilities registered a 25 percent drop in clients due to the transportation crisis. Furthermore, hundreds of healthcare professionals are unable to reach their work places.
     On 9 April 2008, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) stopped the flow of the heavily reduced fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip. As a result, the humanitarian situation hit hard by continuous collective punishment since 15 June 2006, deteriorated even further. more.. e-mail

A Yank in Palestine: On the Curb
Katherine Mukhar, MIFTAH 4/14/2008
     Piled into a Land Rover, three of us (me, my friend and his driver) began our trek from Jericho to Ramallah over one of the most hazardous roads I have ever been on. It reminded me of what it would be like to drive on the edge of the Grand Canyon…but on terribly pot-holed, extremely narrow roads. I learned that this road was the only way Palestinians were allowed to take in order to travel between Jericho and Ramallah. All roads, even those in the middle of Palestine, are controlled by Israel; we had no choice except to take the dangerous, winding road. I learned that many die on the road and I could easily see why. I tried not to think about what would happen if we came face-to-face with another vehicle coming in the opposite direction. Snaking through the steep mountains, going higher and higher, I took one look down and gasped.
     My friend laughed. “I do this all the time. Don’t worry. We haven’t had an accident… yet.”
     That ‘yet’ concerned me.
     My friend urged his driver to move more rapidly along the winding road. When I protested, he explained it was even more dangerous to remain on the road for too long of a time because the Israelis would often lead air strikes against Palestinians taking the road, claiming the people they had killed were suspected terrorists. more.. e-mail

Israelis stage daring saga of the abandoned Palestinian raised as a Jew
Donald Macintyre in Jaffa, The Independent 4/13/2008
     In one of the many electric moments in The Return to Haifa, the Cameri Theatre’s compelling new play opening in Hebrew here tonight, there is a heart-rending struggle between the adoptive mother of a young soldier in the Israeli army and the natural mother who has arrived with her husband in the desperate hope of reclaiming their son 20 years after she last saw him.
     "Your legs did not hurt when he was in your belly," the natural mother exclaims. "Your ribs didn’t hurt when he was beating you from inside. When you kissed him for the first time after he was born, your lips weren’t filled with blood."
     Breaking down, the adoptive mother, a much older woman, declares: "I taught him to eat, to walk, to speak, and to love. When he had bad dreams he called me ’mum’. Please go. For the kid. I’m asking. Begging."
     As sheer human drama, the play, which will switch to the Cameri’s main theatre in Tel Aviv next week, would be powerful enough. But what makes the – distinctly allegorical – subject matter unprecedented for one of Israel’s leading theatres to tackle is the historical context: the natural mother is a Palestinian refugee who involuntarily abandoned her baby son, Khaldun, in the flight from Haifa during the Jewish-Arab war in April 1948. The adoptive mother is a refugee too, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who took over the Palestinian couple’s house – and brought up their son under the name of Dov.
     There will be many glitzier events to mark the 60th anniversary of Israel’s foundation as a state next month. But there is unlikely to be one more intellectually daring than this production – with a uniformly impressive mixed Jewish and Arab cast – of Israeli writer Boaz Gaon’s play. Daring first because it is adapted from a famous novella by Ghassan Kanafani, widely regarded as the 20th century’s greatest Palestinian writer. more.. e-mail

Alternative media: what role is it actually playing
Fadi Abu Sa'ada, Palestine News Network 4/13/2008
     Across most of the Arab world, the local media have often been likened to official state-run media, even when they are not. Analysts say they are almost uniformly non-independent and most often reflect only one point of view -- that of a political party or another interest group. Others have pointed to what they say is an epidemic of unprofessionalism in the media.
     Against this backdrop, a debate is emerging in the occupied Palestinian territories as to what role if any the alternative media are playing.
     The vast majority of alternative media projects in the Palestinian territories are based on Western funding, whether from the European Union directly, or from European media outlets, or from projects financed by the U.S. State Department, or American media institutions.
     A few days ago, the European Union signed on to a number of media projects in the Palestinian territories. Some of these address specific women’s and children’s issues, others focus on the training of journalists working at local radio stations, while still others hope to promote democracy and respect for human rights through television programming. more.. e-mail

The other evangelicals
Ben White, Palestine News Network 4/13/2008
     Earlier this week, Lee Marsden wrote about how Republican presidential candidate John McCain has managed to pick up the support of Christian Zionist heavyweight John Hagee.
     While Hagee praises McCain’s position on Israel, McCain himself is presumably happy to receive the endorsement of a man whose Christians United for Israel (CUFI) organisation links up with thousands of potential voters.
     From the mobilising might of CUFI and televangelists, to Jerusalem marches and the 65 million copy-selling Left Behind series, to be an American evangelical has become synonymous with fanatically pro-Israel politics. Nor is the image a purely domestic affair. In the Middle East, local Arab evangelical Christians have sometimes found themselves targeted by association.
     However, there is now an increasingly confident and eloquent alternative emerging from evangelicals who are challenging the Christian Zionists with a biblical vision of justice for both Israelis and Palestinians. Despite lacking the resources of their self-confident, flag-waving co-religionists, incremental and discernible progress is being made. more.. e-mail

Don’t go to Masada
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 4/14/2008
     It is unfortunate that Ehud Olmert chose to invite George Bush for a tour of Masada of all places. Perhaps it is still possible to alter the program and offer the guest of honor for the 60th Independence Day anniversary celebrations a visit to the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, where Israeli scientists are working on life-saving medicines. But if the prime minister insists on providing a close-up examination of the legend of brutal and pointless Jewish radicalism, it is not necessary to drag the president’s entourage to the shores of the Sea of Death. There are sites of collective suicide throughout the territories occupied by Israel.
     In order not to give the guest the impression that bleeding-heart military shirkers are pulling him to the left, a few officers, veterans of elite units, can take him on a tour of Masada-Now. Major General (res.) Ami Ayalon, of the naval commando unit and the Shin Bet security service, will surely be thrilled to introduce Bush to the residents of the "quality of life" settlements that have turned into dying communities. There he will find hard-working people who wanted "a home with a garden," and found themselves stuck in a battle zone. Ayalon will tell Bush that a few have left, but many are unable to find anyone who wants to buy their home. The minister will inform the president that the prime minister supports the proposed legislation providing compensation for those settlers who voluntarily leave the West Bank, which was put forth by 16 MKs, but because he fears the extremists, Olmert has abandoned these poor souls to their fate. more.. e-mail

Understanding Hamas’ Six R’s
Rami Khouri, Middle East Online 4/12/2008
     BEIRUT -- The controversy over whether former US President Jimmy Carter should meet with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus during Carter’s upcoming visit to the Middle East can usefully spark a serious debate about two important current issues in the Middle East: Hamas’ ideology and policies, and the US government’s attitude to it.
     Israel, the United States, and some other countries reject dealing with Hamas because they see it purely as a terrorist organization dedicated to the “destruction of Israel.” The reality is more complex than that. Hamas certainly has committed acts of terror against Israeli civilians, and it must be held accountable for such deeds -- in a context in which all who commit murder and terror in the Middle East are similarly held accountable, including Israelis, Arabs, Iranians, Americans and British.
     Hamas argues that its actions are legitimate resistance in the context of a much more brutal Israeli war against Palestinian civilians. One that uses terror, assassination, kidnapping, starvation, imprisonment, colonization, Apartheid-like segregation and racism and other nasty policies. We remain stalemated, but also at war. more.. e-mail

Palestinians versus Tibetans - a double standard
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 4/13/2008
     Israelis have no moral right to fight the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The president of the Israeli Friends of the Tibetan People, the psychologist Nahi Alon, who was involved in the murder of two Palestinians in Gaza in 1967 - as was revealed in Haaretz Magazine last weekend - chose to make his private "atonement" by fighting to free Tibet, of all places. He is not alone among Israelis calling to stop the occupation - but not ours. No small number of other good Israelis have recently joined the wave of global protest that broke out over the Olympics, set to take place in Beijing this summer. It is easy; it engenders no controversy - who would not be in favor of liberating Tibet? But that is not the fight that Israeli human rights supporters should be waging.
     To fight for Tibet, Israel needs no courage, because there is no price to pay. On the contrary, this is part of a fashionable global trend, almost as much as the fight against global warming or the poaching of sea lions.
     These fights are just, and must be undertaken. But in Israel they are deluxe fights, which are unthinkable. When one comes to the fight with hands that are collectively, and sometimes individually, so unclean, it is impossible to protest a Chinese occupation. more.. e-mail

60 Years of Ethnic Cleansing, Land Theft
Nizar Sakhnini, MIFTAH 4/12/2008
     At 4:00 P.M. on May 14, 1948, "State of Israel" was proclaimed in Tel Aviv. About 8 hours later, the White House announced: "This government has been informed that a Jewish State has been proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the provisional government thereof. The U.S. recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel." (De jure recognition came about in January 1949.) Two major factors made this proclamation possible: British and American help, on the one hand, and treachery of the Arab rulers, especially Jordanian King Abdullah who was in tacit agreement with the Zionists, on the other.
     In an effort to bring about a peaceful end to the war in 1948, Count Folke Bernadotte was appointed by the UN as a mediator between the Arabs and Israel. He submitted his report to the UN Security Council on September 16, 1948 and was assassinated by the Zionists on the following day.
     Bernadotte’s proposals to end the conflict were published on September 20 and made it clear that no settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the Arab refugee to return to his home. more.. e-mail

In memory of Esther: Cinema Dunia
Raja Shehadeh, Electronic Intifada 4/10/2008
     When I think of cinema in Ramallah, I think of Esther Jallad. She and her family were expelled from their wealthy home in the port city of Jaffa in 1948 and found themselves in the hilly village of Ramallah. In her displacement, Esther carried one passion with her: she loved to go to the movies. She lived conveniently, next to one of the three cinemas in Ramallah, Cinema Dunia. Every afternoon at 3:15, dressed up to the hilt, with her heavily lipsticked, pursed mouth, eyes smudged with pink eye-shadow, her large purse dangling from her bent arm, she would walk down from her house to the cinema as though on a rendez-vous that could never be missed. The cinema had three classes of seats, stalls the cheapest, circle and balkon (balcony). One of the six balkon in the cinema was reserved to her. Everyone knew it was Madam Jallad’s box, and whenever we went to Cinema Dunia we never missed Esther’s cocked head, occupying one of the four upholstered chairs in the balkon at the far left. A lone figure, quietly concentrating on the film projected on the wide screen. Esther’s love of the movies was magical, but remained uncommunicated. more.. e-mail

A separate peace
Meron Rapoport, Ha’aretz 4/10/2008
     The guests who arrived at the Jerusalem Van Leer Institute this week were archaeologists, as their footwear attested to. Most of them wore hiking boots, though some showed up in biblical-style sandals, toes poking out on a chilly Jerusalem evening, and others in slippers of the type kibbutzim once gave their members. Here and there one could spot regular evening shoes, some of them red, particularly on the feet of young female archaeologists. But whatever their footwear, it seemed to be covered by an invisible layer of dust, accumulated during their excavations in the soil of the Land of Israel.
     The 50 or so archaeologists had come together to discuss a document that had been e-mailed to Israel’s entire archaeological community. The thin document, numbering six pages in all and entitled "Israeli-Palestinian Cultural Heritage Agreement," is the result of four years of discussions between Israeli and Palestinian archaeologists. For the first time, the two sides, aided by American mediators, have mapped out the contours of archaeological peace. more.. e-mail

Another hot summer?
Galal Nassar, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/10/2008
     Whether war on Iran happens or not, tensions in the region are rising to breaking point, writes Galal Nassar Warnings of war have become all too common of late. Arab League chief Amr Moussa warned of a "hot summer", hinting that Lebanon would be the most likely scene of hostilities. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak warned Hizbullah against any provocations, promising that hostilities may erupt "suddenly and without warning". Meanwhile, the Israeli army is conducting one of the largest military drills in recent years on the borders with Lebanon and Syria.
     The news agency Novosti cited a senior Russian source as saying that, "feverish US preparations" are underway for war on Iran. In an article published a few days ago, Paul Craig Roberts, assistant secretary of the treasury in the Reagan administration, said that the American Congress, media and people are blissfully ignorant of the preparations Dick Cheney is making for war. If the predictions are true, open hostilities may erupt anywhere in Iran, Syria, Lebanon and/or Palestine before long -- most likely after Israel celebrates its 60th birthday in mid-May. Dick Cheney is already working on it, and President Bush will only have to sign the orders. more.. e-mail

Watching every move
Lucy Fielder, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/10/2008
     Lebanon viewed Israel’s military manoeuvre with trepidation this week, but opinion was divided over whether it presaged war, reports from Beirut Click to view caption All eyes in Lebanon turned south of the border this week, with Israel’s large-scale five-day military and civil defence exercise stirring the usual talk about a coming war. The exercise comes at a time of stultifying political crisis in Beirut and speculation about the form of Hizbullah’s presumed pending retaliation for the assassination of Hizbullah military commander Imad Mughniyah in Damascus in February, for which the Shia guerrilla group blames Israel.
     Hizbullah and Amal, both Shia movements in the opposition, said in a joint statement the exercises -- including simulated air and missile attacks on cities and getting civilians into shelters -- were hostile, no matter what the cause. "The exercises reflect Israel’s hidden intention to avenge its defeat during the July War," said the statement issued on Monday, the day after the manoeuvre started. "They also reflect the felt powerlessness that the Israeli military institution is witnessing and constitute an attempt to raise its spirits." more.. e-mail

Why Ambassador Safieh should stay in Washington
Mohammad J. Herzallah, Daily Star 4/12/2008
     Contrary to common belief, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ pending visit to the United States later this month is not entirely futile. The president would do Palestinians a great service by using this opportunity to talk the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Ambassador, Afif Safieh, out of relinquishing his post in Washington.
     A couple of weeks ago, I sent Safieh’s office an e-mail asking for a chance to chat with him. My initiative was triggered by reports in the Arab press that the ambassador’s short tenure in Washington is coming to an end. I was curious whether I could get a confirmation, especially since the Palestinian Authority has yet to divulge more details about the matter. Save for the two-hour time-lapse between my e-mail and the response from his secretary, my task proved simpler than I had originally anticipated. "I will be out of here soon," he said with remarkable candor about his determination to leave Washington, declaring that he will most likely be reassigned to head the PLO’s office in Russia. more.. e-mail

Reflections on the Palestine return movement
Muhammad Jaradat, Electronic Intifada 4/11/2008
     When the first news came from Tunis and Tel Aviv in early September 1993 about the secret talks between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli government, the people of Palestine inside and in the exile were torn between enthusiasm and optimism on the one hand, and doubt and skepticism on the other. "Let’s wait and see," said many then.
     The situation of uncertainty did not last long. A week later, the secret Oslo talks were revealed and we learned that the parties had concluded the talks with a Declaration of Principles that was to pave the way for final status negotiations on the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, i.e. the agreement which became known as the Oslo Agreement or the Declaration of Principles.
     Later on, when the text of the agreement was opened to the public, the Israeli press was the first to publish. I ran to the Israeli Press Office in West Jerusalem to get a copy -- it was published then only in Hebrew and English. Reading the original English copy, I was not only shocked but also deeply alarmed and upset, because I had expected that the PLO leadership would not surrender and, at the minimum, uphold the fundamental national rights and base any agreement on UN resolutions and international law. Reading the agreement, I searched for references to the core issue of the conflict, i.e. the refugee issue, and found it mentioned only in a few words as an issue scheduled "for discussion in the final status negotiations." I thus understood that there were no guarantees or principles recognized for dealing with this most central issue of the conflict, and that the future of the large majority of the Palestinian people who are refugees was uncertain. more.. e-mail

Deir Yassin massacre a pivotal event in history
Mazin Qumsiyeh, Palestine News Network 4/11/2008
     PNN - Between 1947 and 1949 over three-fourths of the native Palestinians (Christians and Muslims) were driven out. Quoting Zionist terminology, the land was "cleansed." Over 530 villages and towns were wiped off the face of the map.
     Israeli historians clearly documented, by obtaining declassified material, the meticulous nature of the program that led to the creation of the largest remaining refugee problem in the world.
     Defying international law, and its own promises when joining the United Nations, Israel still refuses to allow Palestinian refugees to return. The Right of Return is known as UN Resolution 194.
     Israel instituted its own laws to remove the remaining inhabitants from their lands: this is includes the occupied West Bank since 1967 and the recent home demolitions in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, the Negev and the Galilee.
     There are 300,000 Palestinian “citizens” of the state of Israel who are considered by Israeli law “present absentees.” This means internally displaced people whose homes and lands were taken over under the Israeli-instituted "absentee property laws." The lands and homes were taken by the Jewish Agency for use by Jews only. more.. e-mail

Gazans’ Latest Crisis: Fuel Cuts
Ibrahim Barzak, MIFTAH 4/10/2008
     Muin Abdul Ghani sleeps in his car, parked among dozens of other vehicles at a gas station, unwilling to give up his place in line in his desperate scramble for gasoline.
     It’s one way Gaza’s embattled 1.4 million residents are adjusting to their newest crisis: a protest by gas station owners who have refused to sell the small amounts they have in stock or accept future shipments after months of restricted Israeli fuel supplies.
     Gaza residents also wrestle with high black market prices and overstuffed taxis. They have turned to bicycles, liquid gas for their cars and homemade fuel recipes to try to deal with the shortage.
     Israel has restricted fuel supplies since September to pressure Palestinian militants into halting rocket fire at neighboring Israeli communities, but with no apparent results.
     "We are like street dogs looking for bones," said Abdul Ghani, a 44-year-old taxi driver, smoking by his car at a gas station in the northern Gazan town of Jebaliya. Around 200 cars, taxis, delivery trucks and farm machinery vehicles were parked there, waiting for the gas station to distribute rationed supplies. Some drivers abandoned their cars, while others sold their places in line. more.. e-mail

Genocide announced
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/10/2008
     Bombs would fall under other circumstances, but when influential rabbis call for the total annihilation of the Palestinians the world watches without blinking.
     "All of the Palestinians must be killed; men, women, infants, and even their beasts." This was the religious opinion issued one week ago by Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, director of the Tsomet Institute, a long-established religious institute attended by students and soldiers in the Israeli settlements of the West Bank. In an article published by numerous religious Israeli newspapers two weeks ago and run by the liberal Haaretz on 26 March, Rosen asserted that there is evidence in the Torah to justify this stand. Rosen, an authority able to issue religious opinions for Jews, wrote that Palestinians are like the nation of Amalekites that attacked the Israelite tribes on their way to Jerusalem after they had fled from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. He wrote that the Lord sent down in the Torah a ruling that allowed the Jews to kill the Amalekites, and that this ruling is known in Jewish jurisprudence.
     Rosen’s article, which created a lot of noise in Israel, included the text of the ruling in the Torah: "Annihilate the Amalekites from the beginning to the end. Kill them and wrest them from their possessions. Show them no mercy. Kill continuously, one after the other. Leave no child, plant, or tree. Kill their beasts, from camels to donkeys." Rosen adds that the Amalekites are not a particular race or religion, but rather all those who hate the Jews for religious or national motives.... more.. e-mail

Occupation in fragments
Ibrahim Nawwar, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/10/2008
     Intra-Shia strife is further evidence that after five years the US occupation cannot provide stability in Iraq.
     The six-day war between the Mahdi Army militia of Moqtada Al-Sadr and Iraqi government armed forces supported by the United States in the last week of March reveals a lot about the situation in Iraq after five years of US occupation. The new political system in Iraq set up by the US is not respected enough to ensure stability. Armed groups in the country are strong enough to challenge the government in Baghdad, including its armed forces. The conflict that lasted six days in Basra, the capital of the south, and in Baghdad, has also highlighted that intra-Shia strife is a severe problem despite all US propaganda that disgruntled Sunnis are responsible for Iraq’s current instability.
     American support for the government of Nuri Al-Maliki during the conflict is clear proof that there exists a "grand deal" between the US administration and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) under Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim and the Daawa Party under Al-Maliki to divide Iraq into three federal regions: one, which is already there, for Iraqi Kurds; a second for Iraqi Shias in the southern provinces; and third for Iraqi Sunnis in the west of Iraq. Sadr has repeatedly expressed his opposition to the idea of a federal southern Iraq, as has Mohamed Al-Yaaqoubi, leader of the Fadhila Party. Many Iraqi secular political leaders, such as Iyad Allawi, and Sunni religious leader Harith Al-Dhari also oppose federalism. The fierce military confrontation in Basra and Baghdad was a culmination of tension between the two sides as members of the Mahdi Army came under heavy pressure from government- backed militias, mainly the Badr Brigades and Al-Baqir, and the Iraqi police and armed forces. more.. e-mail

’A more private occupation’
Daniel Levy, Ha’aretz 4/11/2008
     Imagine Philippe Starck and Daniel Libeskind are commissioned to design an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank - imposing exterior, breezy interior, daring splashes of light and color. Sometimes it seems this is the image being promoted by the newly privatized and civilianized checkpoints and crossings popping up in the territories. When it comes to dress codes, the drab olive of military fatigues is decidedly passe, having been replaced by the crisp uniforms of private security contractors.
     A half-dozen such terminals are operated by private companies - from Al-Jalama near Jenin, to Sha’ar Ephraim near Tul Karm, from Reihan to Tarqumiya. According to a recent Channel 10 news report, the Israel Defense Forces is planning to privatize all the checkpoints in the seam area. No more wasting soldiers’ time. The IDF is selling the idea in win-win terms: better security for Israelis,better service for the Palestinians.
     That we should still be exploring modalities for reinventing and improving the occupation, rather than ending it, after more than 40 years, is troubling enough in itself. But the decision by the state to outsource so basic a national security function with barely an eyebrow raised or question asked, will likely prove, in time, another example of how what we sow in the territories we later reap back home. more.. e-mail

We Need Real Peace, Not a Shelved Piece of Paper
Walid Awad, MIFTAH 4/10/2008
     Unconfirmed reports circulating in the media say that Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is now busy with Palestinians drafting a preamble to a comprehensive peace agreement, a sort of another “declaration of principles”. A shelved document that will spell out all the core issues, and be adopted by the Quartet, the Security Council, and “moderate” Arab countries, to be signed by President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, witnessed and co-signed by President George W. Bush in West Jerusalem during his visit to Israel next month.
     Many recent statements made by American, Palestinian, and Israeli leaders point to a framework agreement being worked out ready for signing in the not too distant future. Therefore, one should not be surprised by the emergence of yet another “Declaration of Principles”. The fact is, such a document will serve many purposes, not necessarily to the advantage of the Palestinian people. Signing another DOP, the implementation of which will be deferred to some future date, will give Israel the time it needs to change realities on the ground. Bear in mind that immediately after the signing of the first DOP in Oslo in 1993, Israel built more Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory than ever before. Furthermore, most of the so-called bypass roads in the West Bank were built in the same period. more.. e-mail

State recycles promise to remove dozens of roadblocks in the West Bank
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 4/11/2008
     More than half of the roadblocks Israel committed to lifting as part of the first stage of measures meant to ease restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank are temporary obstacles that the state had promised the High Court a month ago to remove.
     On March 11, the state promised to lift 27 dirt obstacles that were used to "separate" the northern West Bank from other parts of the territories, following the February terrorist attack in Dimona, and as a check on the potential movement of cars laden with explosives.
     These roadblocks did not appear on the official map of United Nation’s OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) from last December.
     Responding to a petition filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the heads of Palestinian villages in the area, the state attorney’s office said that the orders concerning the movement of Palestinians (which prevented males aged 16-35 from the area of Jenin to exit the area) had expired, and that temporary extensions were issued on February 12 and 20. This was the state’s argument for asking the court to reject the petition against the original restrictions. more.. e-mail

More hopeless talks
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/10/2008
     As Israel engages in nationwide defence drills, Abbas is told that settlement expansion will continue, reports from RamallahIsraeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas held another round of talks in West Jerusalem 7 April. Like numerous previous meetings, however, the latest encounter yielded no substantive results towards a breakthrough in Palestinian- Israeli peacemaking.
     According to Israeli press sources, the two leaders were updated on "secret talks" being held by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurei on final status issues such as Jerusalem, the right of return, Jewish settlements and the borders of a prospective Palestinian entity in the West Bank.
     During the meeting, which lasted for three hours, Olmert and Abbas agreed to hold biweekly meetings and keep up the "secret talks channel" in the hope of reaching a peace agreement before the end of 2008.
     Mark Regev, a senior Israeli spokesman, was quoted as saying that, "it was agreed that despite concerns that both parties have regarding issues on the ground, negotiations will continue with the goal of reaching a historic agreement by the end of the year." more.. e-mail

The Palestinians are Under Inner and Outer Siege
Bassem Eid, MIFTAH 4/10/2008
     Before Oslo, Palestinians primarily desired unity and an end to the occupation. But as soon as the first intifada began to fade, divisions among Palestinians emerged. Throughout the Oslo years, these rifts continued to widen. While scores of Palestinians took to the streets, armed with stones and kitchen appliances, during the first intifada, the present uprising is increasingly characterized by the deadly firepower of small arms.
     In December 2002, then Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas warned of the increased use of weapons - an evolution that he hoped to reverse. His short-lived government was ill-equipped to tackle the problem, and his successor, Ahmed Qurei, proved no more capable of confronting the weapons chaos in the region. The failure to reach a substantive and acceptable peace agreement has given rise to strong feelings of betrayal and futility. As a result of these internal divisions, Palestinians also turn their aggression and feelings of futility against fellow Palestinians. more.. e-mail

Israel puts freedom of expression under ‘house arrest’
Amy Teibel - JERUSALEM, Middle East Online 4/10/2008
     Israel put seven employees of a pro-peace radio station under house arrest Wednesday, two days after police raided the station’s Jerusalem office and seized its transmission equipment, the station said.
     The English-language station, RAM-FM, is headquartered in the West Bank city of Ramallah, with operations in Jerusalem. It plays Western music and tries to bring Israelis and Palestinians together through its broadcasts.
     Israeli police raided RAM-FM’s Jerusalem office Monday, saying the station was broadcasting without a license. Employees detained during the raid were jailed overnight and released Tuesday.
     The station said the seven were placed under house arrest Wednesday for one week and forbidden to speak to anyone but their families. For the eight days after that, they’ll be allowed to leave their homes, but won’t be able to go to work or contact other station employees, news editor Xolani Gwala said. more.. e-mail

UNICEF: Distance yourself from tainted money
Open letter, The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, Electronic Intifada 4/9/2008
     The following is an open letter dated 9 April 2008 from the Palestinian Boycott Campaign’s National Committee to Executive Director of UNICEF Ann Vennemen:
     Dear Ms. Venneman:
     In response to a letter authored by human rights activists in New York, calling upon [UN agency for children] UNICEF to refrain from accepting any contributions from Mr. Lev Leviev, Israeli diamond tycoon and developer of illegal Israeli settlements, due to his "unlawful and unethical activities," UNICEF asserted that: "where UNICEF is the beneficiary of events that are organized by approved partners, UNICEF does not, as a matter of course, conduct diligence on sponsors or advertisers identified by those partners." The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign’s National Committee (BNC) finds this defense morally and politically problematic, if not untenable.
     Would UNICEF have accepted indirect donations from a South African businessman involved in illegal and racist activity during the apartheid era? Would UNICEF accept, even now, indirect financial support from a company that is proven to be complicit in violations of international humanitarian law in Darfur, occupied Iraq or Colombia? more.. e-mail

Barely half the story
Ramzy Baroud, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/10/2008
     When it comes to Iraq, reporters appear intent on omitting or fabricating news.
     The latest battles in Basra, Iraq’s second largest city and a vital oil seaport, furnished ample instances of misleading and manipulative practice in corporate journalism today. One commonly used tactic is to describe events using self-styled or "official" terminology, which deliberately confuses the reader by giving no real indication or analysis of what is actually happening.
     Regardless of the outcome of the fighting that commenced upon the Iraqi army’s march to Basra 24 March, and which proved disastrous for Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, we have been repeatedly "informed" of highly questionable assumptions. Most prominent amongst them is that the "firebrand" and "radical" Moqtada Al-Sadr -- leader of the millions-strong Shia Sadr Movement -- led a group of "renegades", "thugs" and "criminals" to terrorise the strategically important city. Naturally, Al-Maliki is portrayed as the exact opposite of Al-Sadr. When the former descended on Basra with his 40,000-strong US- trained and equipped legions, we were circuitously told that the long-awaited move was cause for celebration. The media also suggested we had no reason to doubt Al-Maliki’s intentions when he promised to restore "law and order" and "cleanse" the city, or to question his determination when he described the Basra crusade as "a fight to the end". If anyone was still unsure of Al-Maliki’s noble objectives they could be reassured by the Bush administration’s repeated verbal backings, one of which described the Basra battle as "a defining moment". more.. e-mail

New York commemorates Deir Yassin massacre
Press release, Adalah-NY, Electronic Intifada 4/9/2008
     Over 80 New Yorkers from diverse communities gathered last Saturday, 5 April in the Salam Lutheran Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Deir Yassin massacre, which occurred on 9 April 1948.Speakers discussed the need to redress the human rights violations that Israel committed in 1948 as a step towards a just future. The audience included a blend of ethnic groups and faiths from around the city. The event, which featured talks by Muhammad Jaradat, a co-founder of the Badil Resource Center in Bethlehem, and Eitan Bronstein, Director of the Israeli organization Zochrot, was part of a year-long series of activities to celebrate the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe when Palestinians were dispossessed of their homeland.
     The commemoration began with poetry about Deir Yassin and a slide show on the massacre. From 1947-49, the Zionist movement, and later the Israeli military, expelled nearly 800,000 Palestinians from their homes and properties. The Zionist leadership destroyed some 418 villages (and by some counts over 500), and renamed the areas, as though the villages had never existed. As part of this greater campaign to expel the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants of the country, the Zionist militias Irgun, the Stern Gang and the Haganah (which were later to form the Israeli army) attacked the village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem. In the battle and massacre that followed, between 107 and 120 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed. more.. e-mail

Settlement Bloc Expansion is the most Destructive
Yariv Oppenheimer, MIFTAH 4/9/2008
     Recently, the Israeli and international media has featured reports on progress in peace negotiations. Chief negotiators Ahmed Qurei and Tzippi Livni maintain silence about the details, but allow that the talks are ongoing, detailed and purposeful. Now of all times, when the core issues never before discussed appear to be on the agenda, the negotiating theater seems to be infinitely distant from the reality unfolding on the ground.
     While the negotiating teams are discussing the ways and principles for partitioning the Land of Israel, the reality on the ground makes it increasingly difficult to establish a sovereign Palestinian state. From week to week, there are more voices on both sides arguing that it has become physically impossible to remove the West Bank settlements and that accordingly the two-state solution is history. The original goal of the settler leaders to prevent any future national leadership from dividing the land is closer than ever to fruition, as the settlements continue to spread. more.. e-mail

Take a Look in the Mirror, Israel
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 4/9/2008
     The Israeli daily Haaretz reported today that Israel would deny entry to Richard Falk, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate human rights violations by Israel. Falk is apparently persona non grata in Israel for comments he made comparing Israel to the Nazis.
     We all know Israel does not take to criticism well but it is most livid when it comes to any reference to the Holocaust. Is it possible that Israel’s radical response is simply a reaction to the fact that Falk’s comments hit too close to home?
     It was not long ago that a member of Israel’s highest political echelons made an offensive comment that could only be construed as a direct reference to the Holocaust. Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said last February that Palestinians could face a bigger “shoah” [the Hebrew word for Holocaust] if the rocket attacks on Israeli territory did not cease.
     Of course, Israel mopped up its media mess almost immediately after it was spilled, saying shoah actually means disaster and was not necessarily synonymous with Holocaust. However, the comparison was not lost on anyone and the statement begged the question of why an Israeli official would handpick this word to use in reference to the Palestinians. more.. e-mail

The Settlements are the Biggest Impediment to Security
Yossi Alpher, MIFTAH 4/9/2008
     At the very heart of the roadmap phase I issues that dominated US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit a week ago are security and settlements. The West Bank-based Palestinian leadership that Israel is negotiating with has little to brag about in terms of improving security. But at least it is sincerely trying. The Olmert government is not trying as hard, particularly with regard to settlements. And settlements are the biggest impediment to security.
     On the occasion of Rice’s visit, Defense Minister Ehud Barak yielded to American pressure and offered a series of modest security concessions. These included the deployment of 25 Palestinian security force APCs in the West Bank and of some 700 Palestinian policemen in Jenin, the removal of a checkpoint near Rimonim east of Ramallah and the opening of 50 earth roadblocks preventing transportation between villages and main roads. These represent the minimum that Barak apparently believes the IDF can implement without risking security damage. more.. e-mail

A Disturbingly Juvenile View of Islam
Rami Khouri, Middle East Online 4/9/2008
     BOSTON -- The United States is a confused and frustrated country when it comes to dealing with the wide variety of voices and actions coming out of Islamic societies. Everywhere in the public sphere, discussions of foreign policy issues inevitably touch on how to deal with “Islamic extremism,” often revolving around the “terrorism” and “violence” of Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, Muqtada Sadr and other such parties that the United States dislikes.
     The debate on these issues in the United States is disturbingly juvenile. I have rarely if ever heard discussions in this country about ordinary, normal, non-violent Arabs and Muslims who make up 99 percent of their societies. Only the intemperate and militant in the Arab/Islamic world are seen and discussed in America.
     The really troubling aspect of this is that the tendency to view entire societies through the lens of a few rascals, criminals and militants is not confined to racists. Politicians and experienced public servants alike frequently offer rhetoric that veers uncomfortably close to the hateful, vengeful rants of radio and television demagogues and purveyors of filth. The widespread fear of and criticism of Arabs/Muslims broadly fails to differentiate between a small number of criminal terrorists and the vast majority of Arabs/Muslims who are peace-loving citizens of their societies. more.. e-mail

The Invisible Right
Rafat Shomali, Palestine News Network 4/9/2008
     Bethlehem - I demand an explanation to a question, a question I just can’t understand, "Why do the Israelis always remember their past and we are asked to forget ours? Why are we asked to forget the 800,000 Palestinians expelled from their home lands in 1948?
     During the time when the world is mourning the tragic event of the Holocaust, Palestinians are entering their own version of the Holocaust in which generations of Palestinians were uprooted from this land.
     Why are we asked to forget the past which the world views as non constructive for a peace solution, whileIsrael makes plans toconstruct a wallto make us forget our future as well. How can we be asked to forget about 530 villages that were depopulated and destroyed, and how can the world not remember the 6,400,000 displaced Palestinian refugees, scattered around the world. Does giving a Home Land to the Jews means we have to become homeless? more.. e-mail

Empty Gestures Destroy Credibility
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 4/9/2008
     There would appear to be two strands of interaction between Palestinians and Israelis in the current negotiations process. One deals with final status issues and involves the top political leadership on both sides, Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qurei and Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni. The other deals with day-to-day practicalities and is led by Salam Fayyad and Ehud Barak.
     Last week’s visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice resulted in all parties proclaiming progress on a number of issues. But those statements only served to leave the Palestinian public bemused. At the same time as these positive statements were made, the Israeli Peace Now organization released a settlement watch report that showed that construction and expansion of 101 illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem was continuing apace.
     The Peace Now report was well documented and carefully researched. It left little room for doubt. It also asserted that as well as "normal" settlements, construction and expansion of settlement outposts--which the Israeli government itself considers illegal and has committed to remove--continues. The expansions undertaken include an increase in the number of housing units, more and better infrastructure and an increase, in some cases, in the expanse of the settlements and the number of settlers. more.. e-mail

Negotiating... or Just Talking?
Issa Samander, MIFTAH 4/9/2008
     Assad is a farmer from a small village near the northern West Bank town of Tulkarm. The family concern has done well over the years, producing some 12,500 liters of olive oil and three tons of almonds and other produce a year. It has been enough to establish Assad’s family in the middle class and pay for all his children to attend university.
     But this year, Assad’s family had to buy olive oil for domestic consumption. Why? Assad’s land, in the illegally Israeli-occupied West Bank, is on the wrong side of Israel’s illegally built wall. He is unable to harvest and unable to reap. His livelihood is devastated through no fault of his own.
     Assad is neither unique nor special. His fate is the fate of thousands of Palestinian farmers who greet every statement about progress in negotiations with disdain. They know, we all know, that what is said on the news simply does not reflect what happens on the ground. more.. e-mail

In Praise of Al Nakba
Salman Abu Sitta, MIFTAH 4/9/2008
     To Palestinians, as well as to an increasing number of people the world over, Al-Nakba represents the largest, longest, planned ethnic cleansing in modern history for which reason the title under which this article appears may appear at first sight cynical, if not downright offensive.
     The trauma of Al-Nakba is imprinted on the psyche of every Palestinian, on those that witnessed it as well as those that did not. They have all suffered, and in a multitude of ways: they lost their livelihoods, nationality, identity and, above all, their homes. In order to survive Palestinians were forced to defend themselves, fighting on many fronts.
     The sheer size of Al-Nakba is overwhelming. Over three quarters of Palestine was conquered in 1948 by Israeli forces that staged their attacks from bases on land acquired during the British Mandate, as a direct result of British policy or with British collusion.
     Some 675 towns and villages were seized and their populations forcibly removed or massacred. On the day that Israel came in to existence 85 per cent of Palestinians whose homes had been on the land occupied by the newly created state found themselves refugees, and remain so until today. more.. e-mail

Sixty years after Deir Yassin
Ronnie Kasrils, Electronic Intifada 4/8/2008
     As a 10-year-old growing up in Johannesburg, I celebrated Israel’s birth, 60 years ago. I unquestionably accepted the dramatic accounts of so-called self-defensive actions against Arab violence, to secure the Jewish state.The type of indoctrination South African cartoonist Zapiro so bitingly exposes in his work, raising the hackles of scribes such as David Saks of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.When I became involved in our liberation struggle, I became aware of the similarities with the Palestinian cause in the dispossession of land and birthright by expansionist settler occupation. I came to see that the racial and colonial character of the two conflicts provided greater comparisons than with any other struggle. When Nelson Mandela stated that we know as South Africans "that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians," [1] he was not simply talking to our Muslim community, who can be expected to directly empathize, but to all South Africans precisely because of our experience of racial and colonial subjugation, and because we well understand the value of international solidarity.
     When I came to learn of the fate that befell the Palestinians, I was shaken to the core and most particularly when I read eye-witness accounts of a massacre of Palestinian villagers that occurred a month before Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence. This was at Deir Yassin, a quiet village just outside Jerusalem, which had the misfortune to lie by the road from Tel Aviv. On 9 April 1948, 254 men, women and children were butchered there by Zionist forces to secure the road. Because this was one of the few such episodes that received media attention in the West, the Zionist leadership did not deny it, but sought to label it an aberration by extremists. In fact, however, the atrocity was part of a broader plan designed by the Zionist High Command, led by Ben Gurion himself, which was aimed at the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the British mandate territory and the seizure of as much land as possible for the intended Jewish state. more.. e-mail

The Yemeni Initiative Oversight
Caelum Moffatt, MIFTAH 4/8/2008
     The symbolism of marriage is universally congruous across different social and belief systems – it is the process and ritual of this special personal and collective experience that differs. Palestine is no exception.
     Last week I attended the wedding of a friend’s brother in Ramallah. The event was a traditional Muslim wedding celebration for the groom, the Middle Eastern equivalent of a “stag” night where the groom commemorates his introduction into manhood with the male members of his family and his male peers. Unlike a western “stag” night which is predominantly viewed as one last night of freedom before the responsibilities of marriage begin and traditionally consists of vast quantities of alcohol as well as ogling women, a Muslim “ehtifal” is alcohol free with not a woman in sight. These omissions, however, do not make the party any less energetic or atmospheric.
     Walking into the hotel function room amidst unfamiliar surroundings, I was amazed by the flamboyance of such an affair. My fellow international friends and I were met at the entrance by my friend’s uncle who welcomed us to the party and to whom we passed on our congratulations. I initially inspected the décor of the hall with seats draped in white covers all facing towards the stage alongside tables sporting ash trays (to accommodate the multitude of smokers), soft drinks and nammourah cake. The arched gateway to the dance floor was adorned with colorful red and white flowers which led to two elaborately designed chairs standing on an elevated position in the middle of the dance floor, almost like thrones, one reserved for the man of the hour and the other to accommodate his distinguished guests in rotation. more.. e-mail

Israeli Siege Bears Strange Fruit
Alex Renton, MIFTAH 4/8/2008
     FADEL DARDAR stares with weary gloom at the wreck of his orange grove. "They used to bring us $3000 a year - just the trees in this one field. Now they’re worth nothing, less than nothing."
     It’s early spring in Gaza, but most of the 100 or so trees have lost their leaves - and the few that remain are brown and brittle. Bizarrely, hundreds of ripe oranges still hang on the branches, but just as many of the fruit are rotting in the stinking, muddy ground.
     "The oranges are poisoned, the trees are poisoned and so is the land," says Dardar. He’s 26, and needs to sell oranges to feed his family, including his three small children. "I don’t know what we’re going to do," he says quietly.
     All around us is a sharp, sweet scent; the smell of fermenting, rotten oranges undercut with a thicker, more cloying smell - semi-treated sewage. This is what has tainted the Dardar family’s fields.
     This is a study in knock-on effects. It began last June, when Israel imposed an economic shutdown on the Gaza Strip, in a bid to bring pressure on the militant Hamas government to cease its attacks on Israel. Many call what has happened since a "siege" - and this does not seem an exaggeration. All but a few Palestinians are unable to enter or leave Gaza, even those needing medical care. As a result, 80,000 have lost their jobs. The flow of supplies - and almost everything in Gaza comes from Israel - is severely limited, and there are shortages of everything from fuel and cement to school books and basic medicines. more.. e-mail

The "humanitarian" sidelining of Nahr al-Bared
Ray Smith, Electronic Lebanon, Electronic Intifada 4/8/2008
     A 5 April 2008 television report by Al Jazeera English from the destroyed Palestinian Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon characterizes the media’s sidelining of the Nahr al-Bared story as a purely humanitarian question rather than one with a political dimension. [1] Since the battle between the Lebanese army and the militant Islamist group moved from the streets of Tripoli to Nahr al-Bared camp about this time last year, the media have mainly only reported on the military strife between the army and the Islamist group. On the rare occasions the media have covered the situation of the camp’s more than 30,000 Palestinian inhabitants who fled the camp during the fighting, they have done so with only a narrow focus on the humanitarian problems they face -- ignoring the glaring political questions that only the camp residents seem to be left asking.
     In the afternoon of 3 April, Al Jazeera English’s film crew along with personnel from the Lebanese security apparatuses appeared in Nahr al-Bared’s Majles Street. The Lebanese army and security apparatuses have so far forbidden any filming or photographing in Nahr al-Bared. At the various checkpoints inside and outside the camp, people are searched for cameras and found equipment is subject to confiscation. Journalists are generally not allowed to enter the camp and even if they get the necessary permission, soldiers or security apparatus agents must escort them. more.. The "humanitarian" sidelining of Nahr al-Bared
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9446.shtml



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

The 60-Year War for Israel’s History
Efraim Karsh, MIFTAH 4/8/2008
     Since Israel’s founding in 1948, there have been two Arab-Israeli conflicts. The first one is military in nature. Played out on the battlefield, it has heroes, villains, martyrs, and victims. The second conflict, less bloody but no less incendiary, is the battle over the historical culpability for the 1948 war and the displacement of large numbers of Palestinian Arabs.
     The Israeli narrative views the Palestinian tragedy as primarily self-inflicted, resulting from their vehement rejection of the 1947 United Nations resolution calling for two states in Palestine, and the violent attempt by regional Arab states to abort the Jewish state at birth. By contrast, Palestinians view the episode as one in which they fell victim to a Zionist strategy that dispossessed them from their patrimony.
     The New Historians In the late 1980s the Palestinian narrative was bolstered by the advent of a group of Israeli "new historians" who systematically rewrote the history of Zionism, warping the saga for Israel’s survival. Aggressors were characterized as hapless victims and victims became aggressors. Rarely found in these revisionist accounts was the outspoken Arab commitment to destroy the Jewish national cause since the early 1920s, or the dogged efforts of the Jews to achieve peaceful coexistence. Instead, Zionism is depicted as an aggressive and expansionist movement, or an offshoot of rapacious European imperialism. more.. e-mail

Animals, humans face similar fate when surrounded by Israeli walls
Jim Miles, Middle East Online 4/8/2008
     Book review of:“The Zoo on the Road to Nablus – A Story of Survival from the West Bank” by Amelia Thomas (Public Affairs, New York, 2008).
     This tale from the West Bank operates at several levels. Nominally it is about one man – Dr. Sami Khader – and his attempts to sustain the dream of having an internationally approved zoo in the town of Qalqilya in the West Bank.Almost completely surrounded by the infamous ‘wall’, impoverished by the conditions of the Israeli occupation, Qalqilya would seem to be one of the least likely places in which to sustain this dream.By keeping this intriguing narrative on a basic descriptive level, an anecdotal history of current events, Amelia Thomas reveals not only the pathos of the situation, but also the indominatable will to survive – for both the human and animal menagerie – and the humour and everyday ‘ordinariness’ of those involved.
     It took a few chapters to become fully involved in the work, perhaps more so as my expectations were not in line with the essential point of the story. But then having realized that this truly was the story of one man and his efforts to sustain his dream, and not a political or religious tract, I let the story speak for itself. more.. e-mail

The Shocking Cost of the Iraq War
Rami G. Khouri, Middle East Online 4/7/2008
     BOSTON - One of the strengths of the American system of government is that a vibrant civil society and private sector usually keep track of what the government is doing, often challenging the president and party in power with independent research and analysis. A case in point is the current debate in the United States that has been sparked by a troubling new book just published by Nobel Prize winner economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University and Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes.
     Entitled The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, the book is both a sobering analysis of the real cost of this (and any other) war, as well as a sharp indictment of the Bush administration’s array of concealment and self-deception in selling the Iraq war to an angry American public that perhaps saw the campaign as a legitimate response to the terror of September 11, 2001. more.. e-mail

Ignore Al-jazeera at Your Own Peril
Lawrence Pintak, MIFTAH 4/8/2008
     It appears that Israel is taking a page from the George W. Bush MBA-Presidents Sep-07 book of public diplomacy: It is attempting to influence coverage in Arab media by boycotting the most influential television station in the Arab world. In the latest news from Jerusalem, it seems that the Ehud Olmert government has decided Al-Jazeera favors Hamas over Israel in the Gaza conflict and will now refuse to deal with its reporters.
     You have to admit, Israel and Al-Jazeera were unlikely bedfellows. But the fact that we are even discussing banning Al-Jazeera reporters from the Knesset speaks volumes about what had previously been a very pragmatic relationship.
     Israelis understood from the start what the Bush administration has only lately come to realize - that it was better for Israeli officials to use Al-Jazeera to explain the country’s policies in their own words to the Arab world than to demonize the station and let its presenters put their own spin on Israeli policy. Not only does Al-Jazeera have a bureau in Israel, but Israelis can watch both the Arabic channel and Al-Jazeera English, neither of which is readily accessible in the United States. more.. e-mail

Road Map to a Gaza War
Jackson Diehl, MIFTAH 4/8/2008
     Seven years ago George W. Bush’s incoming foreign policy team blamed the Clinton administration for an eleventh-hour rush for a Middle East peace agreement that ended with the explosion of the second Palestinian intifada. Now, with less than 10 months remaining in office, Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are engaged in a similar last-minute push -- yet they don’t seem to recognize the growing risk that their initiative, too, will end with another Israeli-Palestinian war.
     Rice visited Jerusalem again last week to press for visible Israeli fulfillment of commitments made at last year’s Annapolis conference, and she appeared to win some incremental steps, such as the dismantlement of a few dozen of the several hundred military roadblocks in the West Bank. Yet a more significant Israeli signal may have been delivered by the stream of senior officials who have quietly been visiting Washington in the past month: Israel, they have been saying, is on course for a major conflict with the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip. more.. e-mail

A Gaza Diary: We can’t Endure Forever
Najwa Sheikh, MIFTAH 4/7/2008
     It is March, the month of flowers, and good weather, however since yesterday it was burning, with hot dry winds. I thought summer is coming so fast this year, and with this idea I have to think of other things, like summer cloths for the kids, enjoying the daily showers of cold clean water, and sitting on the beach sharing with my kids the fun of playing with the sand because we can not enjoy swimming on a sea full of sewage. However, this lovely image is not the true one for the Palestinians who live in Gaza, as since Gaza was sealed, and the borders are closed, Gaza and its people are suffering not only from the brutal Israeli invasions and continuous strikes but also from the lack of both basic and luxurious goods, medications, papers for books, vaccines and many other basics that any person in the world would enjoy these privileges as a guaranteed thing in their life.
     Today in my way to work, I saw long cues of cars in front of the petrol stations; they have been waiting since the early hours of the morning. Drivers of these vehicles were much grumbled as they did not work for weeks, and they have families to support, the taxi they own was their main source of income. Therefore, by the lack of fuel they lost this source and join the unemployed sector in my society. Though we heard that there is fuel in the stations but the owners of these stations keep it so they can sell it in the black market for higher costs. more.. e-mail

Crushed childhoods, cruel choices
Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Daily Star 4/8/2008
     Ayman is a soft-spoken 14-year old boy from Jabalia City, Gaza. His family is poor, as his father has been unemployed since March 2006. Ayman’s parents have already sold almost all their furniture to pay for food and schooling for their children. Recently, after collecting a governmental food handout, Ayman’s father had to sell the milk to get the money for the journey back home.
     Ayman works very hard in school. He dreams of a future career. But with 47 students in his cramped classroom and double shifts the norm, his learning environment is very stressful. Home is no refuge: The recent incursion of Jabalia was 200 meters from where Ayman lives. The shooting and shelling so terrorized his 5-year old sister that she still wakes up screaming in the night.
     Ayman’s experience is all too familiar in Gaza’s crowded, crippled neighborhoods, where those who are least to blame for the troubles are the ones who are suffering most. Indeed, among Gaza’s 840,000 children, out of which 588,000 are refugees, Ayman has a luckier story than many. Since the recent escalation of violence that began last month, at least 33 Palestinian boys and girls have been killed and many more injured or maimed - caught in the crossfire, shot in their living rooms, struck by explosions in their own backyards. On February 28, four children playing soccer were hit by a missile, which dismembered them so completely their own families could not identify their bodies. more.. e-mail

EU "closer than ever" to Israel
David Cronin, Electronic Intifada 4/7/2008
     BRUSSELS, 4 April (IPS) - Israel has been described as "closer to the European Union than ever before" by a leading Brussels official, even though a new EU report laments the ongoing killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces.
     This week, the European Commission published a series of progress reports on its relations with countries neighboring the 27-country bloc.
     Benita Ferrero Waldner, the EU’s external relations commissioner, used the occasion to indicate that she is keener to foster closer ties with Israel than with almost any other country in the Mediterranean region.
     As well as remarking that Israel is "closer to the European Union than ever before," she said that a "reflection group" is studying how relations between the two sides can be upgraded to a "truly special status."
     Formed in March last year by Tzipi Livni, Israel’s deputy prime minister, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister, the reflection group has been tasked with paving the way for Israeli participation in implementing EU policies. more.. EU "closer than ever" to Israel
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9442.shtml



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

Palestinian Authority brings in security forces to stop armed resistance
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 4/7/2008
     Jenin -- Palestinian Authority security forces have begun the new campaign in Jenin which includes US weapons, night-vision goggles, and the like. This is seen as a major play by the United States and Israel to force the hand of the PA to do their bidding.
     And the PA is going right along with it, begging the question: who is the PA working for? Is the new idea of "security," fully sanctioned this time?
     The US deems this a criterion to test the ability of Palestinian forces to work and rein in the armed factions with "less interference" by the Israelis.
     American and European officials with sanction the deployment of troops in the northern West Bank city within weeks, using current members of the National Security Force of President Abbas and the police.
     Jenin is considered a stronghold of the armed resistance, legal under international law for any population under occupation. Yet the PA is working so closely with the US and Israelis, it is unclear what the outcome will be. more.. e-mail

The Arrest of Israeli Activist Jeff Halper
Eileen Fleming, MIFTAH 4/7/2008
     On April 3, 2008, the Associated Press in Jerusalem reported, "An Israeli wrecking crew knocked down Shadi Hamdan’s home in an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem in just a couple of hours, reducing the upholsterer’s savings to a pile of grey rubble…Since 2004, Israel has leveled more than 300 homes in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, citing a lack of building permits. However, critics say the permits are virtually impossible to obtain and consider the demolitions part of a decades-old policy to limit Palestinian population growth in the disputed city."
     "Were Israelis and Palestinians to have an equal chance to get a building permit ... it wouldn’t be a human rights issue. It’s a human rights issue because it’s intentional and purposeful housing discrimination."- Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights
     The Hamden home was first demolished by Israel in 2005 but volunteers rebuilt it last July. "Former Jerusalem city council member and Meir Margalit, one of Hamdan’s supporters, said his group won’t be deterred and plans to rebuild again." more.. e-mail

Israel must Make a Choice
Osama Al Sharif, MIFTAH 4/7/2008
     To say that time is running out for a just and peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict is a gross understatement. But it is a fact that few in today’s world understand its true meaning and harrowing consequences. Israel’s planned celebrations of the 60th anniversary of its ’independence’ is a brutal reminder that, six decades later, the Palestinian people are still struggling to gain their freedom and exercise their inalienable right to self-determination.
     To separate Israel’s celebrations from the ongoing plight of the Palestinians is criminal, hypocritical and irresponsible. It is like attending a wedding party when the neighbors are mourning the loss of a dear one. The birth of the Jewish state in 1948 continues to exact a heavy price, not only through the trauma of its 40-year-old occupation of Palestinian and Arab lands, but in terms of the affront to international laws and conventions over which Israel has trampled for years.
     In fact, it is this organic attachment of both issues, and both peoples, which makes it impossible to view one event in isolation of the other. Israel’s celebrations can never be complete or free of the historical offense and guilt, unless the grievance of its twin, Palestine, is addressed courageously and fairly. Sixty years ago, two creatures emerged from the dark womb of British Mandate in Palestine, but only one was recognized and allowed to thrive. Israel’s birthday is not the property of the Jewish people alone; it marks the beginning of one of the longest and most sinister chapters in the century-old Palestinian odyssey. more.. e-mail

Who Is Committed to the Security and Defense of the Palestinians?
Hasan Afif El-Hasan, MIFTAH 4/7/2008
     The two day-Arab League summit meeting held in Damascus last March called on Israel to accept the Arab land-for-peace initiative that had been offered by Saudi Arabia in 2002 to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, and had been rejected by then Israeli PM Ariel Sharon and ignored by the US. The Arab leaders sent a warning, that they would review the six years old peace offer unless Israel changes its behavior, without stating when such a review would take place and what would be the plan of action should Israel continues to ignore their offer. But, most disappointing was the absence of any reference to the present conditions of the 1.5 million Gazans and the rift between Fatah and Hamas.
     The statement read by the League chief Amr Mousa did not mention how to deal with the siege of Gaza, the suffering of the Palestinians in the West Bank and the fate of the refugees languishing in the camps across the Middle East. The leaders ignored the disastrous humanitarian situation inflicted on the Palestinian population in Gaza by Israel as a collective punishment in response to the firing of Qassam rockets by militants. While the foreign news media and the Palestinian people treated the summit as a non-event gathering, it was Condoleezza Rice who stole the limelight by securing an Israeli pledge to remove a small number of the more than five-hundred roadblocks in the West Bank, although it is doubtful that Israel will fulfill its pledge. The Israelis rejected the Arab land-for-peace initiative before and they will reject it again because they have unqualified support of the US and many European states. more.. e-mail

I want the Palestinians to win
Bradley Burston, Ha’aretz 4/8/2008
     Results of the most recent poll conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, between March 12 and 17, 2008:
     Among Palestinians: An overwhelming majority of 84% support and 13% oppose the shooting attack that took place in a religious school [Merkaz Harav] in West Jerusalem. Support for this attack is greater in the Gaza Strip (91%) compared to the West Bank (79%).
     64% support and 33% oppose launching rockets from the Gaza Strip against Israeli towns and cities such as Sderot and Ashkelon.
     Among Israelis:
     41% think that Israel should carry out ad-hoc military operations against the shelling and then get out. 29% believe Israel should reoccupy the Gaza Strip and stay there.
     27% believe that if the shelling of Israeli communities from the Gaza Strip continues, Israel should use primarily diplomatic rather than military steps. more.. e-mail

Gaza running on near empty
Mohammed Omer, Electronic Intifada 4/6/2008
     GAZA CITY, 5 April (IPS) - Ayman Eid stands as motionless as his orange Hyundai taxi. Never mind taking a passenger somewhere, Ayman has no idea how he will ever get home.
     The queue at the petrol station seems endless. Drivers have run out of petrol even to queue up in their cars; they just queue up themselves, empty cans in hand. Only the lucky leave with a full can by the end of a day.
     Others park near petrol stations and sleep in their cars, in hope that an oil truck will turn up some time. The roads are desolate, emptied of transportation and life.
     Gaza needs 850,000 liters of fuel every week, says Mahmoud al-Khozendar, vice-president of the Petrol Station Owners Association in Gaza. Israel allows in just 70,000 liters of it. He said Gaza also needs 2.5 million liters of coal gas a week. Only 800,000 liters per week comes in.
     Israel has cut fuel and electricity supply since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah party in June last year. That was after winning a democratic election in 2006. The cuts have been made more severe after firing of home-made rockets from Gaza into Israeli territory. more.. e-mail

Building the Palestinian Contras
Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Jerusalem, Palestinian Information Center 4/6/2008
     Israel, the Bush Administration and the Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by Mahmoud Abbas, are collaborating to build a depoliticized Palestinian security force whose main task and raison d’etre will be to crush any popular uprising against a prospective "peace deal"� imposed upon the Palestinians.
     The new force, whose members are being trained in neighboring countries, particularly Jordan, is being prepared to gradually replace the vast bulk of existing Fatah-dominated security forces in the West Bank.
     The PA, acting on instructions from the donor countries, especially the US, has already laid off thousands of Fatah soldiers and officers for a variety of reasons, including retirement age, financial difficulties and the necessity of restructuring PA security agencies, notoriously plagued by corruption, nepotism, cronyism, indiscipline and lack of professionalism.
     Many of the people being laid off, however, are in their early and mid 40s, which suggests that the PA is trying as much as possible to "dispose of"� elements deemed "too patriotic"� and "indoctrinated in hostility to Israel and Zionism". more.. e-mail

The lie of peace and the nonsense of security
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 4/5/2008
     Presumably there is a strange but legitimate dispute between a leader who comes from the right, who believes that if Israel continues to hold on to the territories the Jewish state will be in danger, and a leader who comes from the left, who claims that if Israel stops holding on to the territories Jewish lives will be in danger. Ostensibly one proposes a reaching a quick solution to the conflict by negotiating with Fatah, and the other prefers long-term resolution via a military struggle with Hamas.
     In effect, the argument between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak is divorced from reality. The prime minister’s proximity to a diplomatic solution is more or less identical to the defense minister’s distance from a military solution.
     In his speech at the Annapolis conference last November, Olmert promised that in the upcoming period Israel would conduct intensive negotiations and "we will not avoid any subject, we will deal with all the core problems." In other words, borders and Jerusalem, of course. How does this promise coincide, for example, with approval for building 48 residential units in the settlement of Ariel? As far as we know, the Palestinian negotiating team has not surrendered the "Ariel panhandle," which penetrates deep into the West Bank. more.. e-mail

Tony Blair’s Palestine
Chris Patten, Middle East Online 4/5/2008
     Attempts to destroy Hamas - whether politically or physically - have not worked and cannot work. The Americans and Europeans committed a major error in conspiring to destroy the Fatah-Hamas national unity government.
     LONDON—Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has many positive attributes, including great charm. He will need all his skills to address the bewildering range of global tasks that he has taken on since being shoehorned out of office by his dour successor, Gordon Brown.
     His initial daytime job, after running Britain, was to bring peace to the Middle East by helping establish the governing institutions of a Palestinian state.
     Since then, Blair has become an adviser to banks (which need all the advice they can get these days), is touring the world to promote a sensible policy on global warming and climate change, has created a foundation to help bridge the divide between different faiths, and will lecture on religion at Yale. All that is left is to restore the fortunes of England’s national football and cricket teams. Perhaps he could fit that in on weekends.
     more.. e-mail

Palestinians, Israelis Split over Efforts
Joshua Mitnick, MIFTAH 4/5/2008
     Within days after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice finished another round of Middle East shuttle diplomacy, Israelis and Palestinians are already at odds over a series of confidence-building measures aimed at breathing new life into the stuttering peace process.
     Israel said yesterday it has completed the removal of 50 roadblocks around the West Bank as it promised the U.S. over the weekend, but the Palestinians said they could discern no changes and called on the State Department to confirm the Israeli claim.
     Miss Rice said earlier this week that the U.S. special envoy, Lt. Gen. William Fraser, would systematically assess how each side is doing in upholding its commitments. An official at the U.S. Embassy said Gen. Fraser, who accompanied Miss Rice on her three-day visit, is expected to return to the region soon to begin monitoring work.
     "I call on the Americans to please dispatch General Fraser to the ground, and say what has changed," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. "Because to my knowledge, nothing has changed. It’s all PR." more.. e-mail

Peace Now, for 30 years
Mazal Mualem, Ha’aretz 4/7/2008
     Peace Now will be holding a ceremony in Rabin Square tomorrow to mark 30 years since its inception, but its slogan - "Peace Now - Leading Israel Toward Peace for 30 Years" - raises significant questions about the relevance of the organization.
     Although Peace Now is considered to be a breakthrough movement, in 2008 its political agenda is practically the consensus and does not cause consternation even within the Likud, but still remains little more than a vision.
     What is left of the protest movement that fought for years against illegal settlement in the West Bank but on the eve of the release of the Winograd report on the Second Lebanon War protected Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has consistently avoided evacuating outposts and gives in to Shas every time the "division of Jerusalem" comes up? And it’s all in the name of the "Annapolis process," a process that even the security-oriented National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer referred to over the weekend as "virtual". more.. e-mail

Palestinian child’s day 2008
Defence for Children International/Palestine Section, ReliefWeb 4/6/2008
     Last November we celebrated the 18th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – a universal legal instrument providing all people with standards and tools to promote and protect the fundamental rights of children.
     Today we celebrate Palestinian Child’s Day; and as Palestinians, parents, teachers, doctors, politicians, police-officers, child rights advocates and children, we come together to demonstrate our commitment towards greater respect for the rights of Palestinian children- in Palestine and abroad.
     Today we celebrate the Palestinian child, despite there being little cause for celebration…
     Generations of Palestinian children have never known peace or self-determination. In May this year, we will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Nakba. In June last year we marked 40 years of Israeli occupation. Hundreds of children have been killed, thousands injured, forced to leave their homes or their country, separated from their families, arrested and detained for months or years, used in military and intelligence activities, beaten-up, humiliated and harassed on a daily basis, prevented from going to school or from receiving medical care; prevented from playing, laughing and living normal lives. Israeli occupation policies and practices represent a system of institutionalised violence and discrimination that pervades and distorts every aspect of the life of every Palestinian child. more.. e-mail

Access to health services for Palestinian people - Case studies of five patients in critical conditions who died while waiting to exit the Gaza Strip
World Health Organization, ReliefWeb 4/1/2008
     Collective punishment of the weakest: the urgent patients
     The Jewish German philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that ’the very substance of violent action is ruled by the question of means and ends, whose chief characteristic, if applied to human affairs, has always been that the end is in danger of being overwhelmed by the means, which it both justifies and needs. (1)
     Concerning the Gaza strip situation, there are a lot of means which overwhelms ends. One of these is the quasi total closure of Gaza, since June 2007 by the Israeli authorities for security reasons. The closure is causing physical, psychological and economic isolation of Gaza citizens. ’An affront to the dignity of the people’ as it was recently defined by the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. (2)
     In this publication we would like to focus public attention on the deterioration of access for health patients who need to be referred outside of the Gaza Strip to receive the appropriate medical treatment. more.. e-mail

Political poison
Eric Walberg, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/3/2008
     Western politics is infected with a lethal virus.
     This year’s sixth international Cairo Conference against imperialism and Zionism continued the same themes as last year: dialogue between the left and Muslims, the struggle against Islamophobia, press censorship, torture and dictatorship, and the chance for Western peace groups to network on Middle East issues. The most inspiring project was the growing campaign to boycott Israel in the West and plans to coordinate this on an international level with the long- standing Arab and Muslim boycott campaign.
     Otherwise, there was little to gladden activists, for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue apace, not to mention the increased brutality of Israel against the Palestinian people. There are changes going on in Western countries, with increased activism of students and trade unionists. But the political scene is dismal, despite the overwhelming unpopularity of US-NATO/Israeli wars, as governments continue to bow to Zionist pressures -- both internal and external. more.. e-mail

Pressure mounts on companies involved with illegal tramway
Adri Nieuwhof, Electronic Intifada 4/3/2008
     Recently the French engineering and consulting company Egis Rail joined European companies Veolia Transport and Alstom in their tramway project being built on Palestinian land in Jerusalem. Alstom won the construction bid in 2000 and two years later Veolia Transport obtained the operating rights. The tramway will connect the ring of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank with Jerusalem, for which Palestinian land is being confiscated, on top of other violations of international law.
     On 13 February 2008 The French-Israeli chamber of commerce reported on its website that Egis Rail won a 11.9 million euro contract with Jerusalem Transportation Master Plan (JTMP). A public body, the JTMP team is managed and funded in cooperation with the Israeli Ministry of Transport and the Jerusalem municipality and operates through the Association for Urban Development, Preservation and Planning in Jerusalem with the mayor of Jerusalem as its director. Egis Rail will assist in the project management of the construction of three tramway lines. The contract includes support to a seven-kilometer extension to the north and the south of a line that is already under construction, and a branch of one and a half kilometers towards the Old City. A team of six Egis Rail specialists is currently based in Jerusalem to manage the project. more.. e-mail

What Goes Around, Comes Around
Mitri I. Musleh, MIFTAH 4/2/2008
     As events in the Middle East unfold pointing to the eminent failure of peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis,more and more intellectuals, scholars, politicians and common people, look into the future as they search for a permanent and peaceful resolution to the existing conditions that sadly affect the innocent and helpless in Israel and Palestine.
     On Sunday, March 20, 2008, the Arab Summit, once again, offered its commitment to peace in the region. The Arab countries renewed their previous offer to normalize relations with Israel. All Israel has to do is withdraw its forces from all Arab land they illegally occupied in 1967.
     Unfortunately, Israel continues with its military aggression against the young and the restless within the Palestinian population in Gaza. Also, Israel is turning a blind eye to all offers of peace and security. If Israel can fool one or more people sometimes, can Israel fool all the people all the time? How long can Israel maintain turning a deaf ear to the cries of the people for justice and freedom? more.. e-mail

House of cards
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/3/2008
     Washington may be pushing the Palestinians and Israelis to negotiate, but is the peace process really still alive, asks in Ramallah No sooner had US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left Israel on Monday, wrapping up a three-day visit to the region, than Israel began preparatory construction work on thousands of settler units across the occupied West Bank.
     The new settlement expansion drive, described by an Israeli official as "phenomenal", includes more than 600 settler units that are to be built on confiscated Arab land in East Jerusalem. The Israeli government also approved the building of additional 800 settler units in the Beitar Illit colony, an ultra-orthodox settlement in the West Bank while Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak last week agreed to the construction of an undisclosed number of prefabs in small settlements in the southern Hebron region to be allocated to new immigrants.
     "There are settler units on the way," Roi Lachmanovitch, a spokesman for the Shas Party, a key coalition partner in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government, said on Monday. Other sources within Shas were quoted as saying that Olmert had promised the party’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, that Israel would authorise construction all over Jerusalem, irrespective of talks with the Palestinians. more.. e-mail

Swindler’s List
Gilad Atzmon, Middle East Online 4/4/2008
     It is a common trend amongst rabid Zionists and notorious Islamophobes to quote some isolated and mistranslated verses from the Qur’an for the purpose of collectively libeling Muslims and presenting Islam as a regressive and violent belief system.
     Needless to say, so far, such repetitive attempts have been found futile if not actually counter-effective. Not a single Western politician, Zionist campaigner or Neocon think tank has managed to establish a comprehensive case against Islam. The reason is rather simple, in spite of the clear fact that some devastating atrocities have been committed in the name of Islam and in the name of Jihad, these acts were performed by sporadic radicalized and isolated cells. As at it seems, in the eyes of the Western masses, it takes more than just a few random acts of a very few to undermine a humanist universal belief system and implicate its one billion followers. more.. e-mail

Dr. Joel Kovel on Zionism: Legitimize violence by suggesting those you are conquering are inferior
Palestine News Network 4/5/2008
     "It is necessarily a racist ideology if you think about it, but most people aren’t allowed to think about it thanks to powerful Zionist repression. Typically, when you gain such a state through violence and illegal means, you then have to make it seem legitimate..the best way of doing that is to claim that you are conquering an inferior people who weren’t entitled to full human rights, or who are barbarians, who are not civilized, or who are terrorists by nature...it involves imposing a kind of degraded human nature to the people you are displacing and conquering, and that’s the essence of racism. Racism plays out in the entire history of the state of Israel, which entails a continuous project of ethic cleansing..."
     The following is an interview between Revolution Magazine and Dr. Joel Kovel, the author of, "Overcoming Zionism," which created a censorship struggle when the University of Michigan Press temporarily banned its distribution. more.. e-mail

No Checkpoints in Heaven
Ramzy Baroud, Middle East Online 4/5/2008
     I still vividly remember my father’s face - wrinkled, apprehensive, warm - as he last wished me farewell fourteen years ago. He stood outside the rusty door of my family’s home in a Gaza refugee camp wearing old yellow pyjamas and a seemingly ancient robe. As I hauled my one small suitcase into a taxi that would take me to an Israeli airport an hour away, my father stood still. I wished he would go back inside; it was cold and the soldiers could pop up at any moment. As my car moved on, my father eventually faded into the distance, along with the graveyard, the water tower and the camp. It never occurred to me that I would never see him again.
     I think of my father now as he was that day. His tears and his frantic last words: “Do you have your money? Your passport? A jacket? Call me the moment you get there. Are you sure you have your passport? Just check, one last time…”
     My father was a man who always defied the notion that one can only be the outcome of his circumstance. Expelled from his village at the age of 10, running barefoot behind his parents, he was instantly transferred from the son of a landowning farmer to a penniless refugee in a blue tent provided by the United Nations in Gaza. Thus, his life of hunger, pain, homelessness, freedom-fighting, love, marriage and loss commenced. more.. e-mail

I am Bassam Aramin
Rami Elhanan, Ha’aretz 4/5/2008
     One evening last month, my family was invited to dinner at the home of Bassam Aramin, in Anata. An Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem, Anata is a 20-minute ride from where we live in Motza, and 20 light-years from Jerusalem.
     We ate a mountain of maklubeh, with almonds and yogurt. Bassam told us about his meeting with Israeli actor Shlomo Vishinski, who is slated to portray him in a new play. And my wife, Nurit, gave his wife, Salwa, a gift: a silver pendant inscribed with the name of her daughter Abir, may she rest in peace, made by a Jerusalem silversmith.
     We laughed. It was fun. It was emotional. And then, on television, we saw scenes of the attack on the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva. And again, a cold hand seizes your heart, the blood freezes in your veins, and that sword twists inside you, as you know there will be no rest until the blood is avenged. And indeed, the TV brings stark updates from Gaza: eight Palestinians dead in one hour. more.. e-mail

What we must do
Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/3/2008
     Arab democratisation and development are at the heart of resisting Israel’s strategic choice of permanent war against the Arab nation.
     The floundering negotiations between the Palestinian Authority (under the heading of the Palestine Liberation Organisation) and Israel may eventually produce an agreement that leads to the creation of a Palestinian state. Perhaps even now, an intensive secret parallel negotiating process is in progress, unaffected by reactions from the Israeli right or Arab public opinion. Perhaps, too, negotiations are much deeper and further along than the impression given by the media. Whatever the case, US and Israeli decision-makers clearly believe that the production of a Palestinian state will be all it takes to bring peace to the region, regardless of those conditions of theirs that the new state will have to meet, such as not extending up to pre-June 1967 borders, not having East Jerusalem as its capital and relinquishing the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Israel and the Bush administration have worked hard to fit the Palestinian demand for statehood into a package that clips, trims and essentially eliminates all Palestinian national rights. more.. e-mail

Refugee: we thought it would be a week, but it has been 60 years
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 4/4/2008
     Al Nakba and Israeli settlements; these are in the news lately. They are a fitting combination as they link to Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land and the ethnic cleansing of the population. US Secretary of State was in town again, and once again she told the Israelis to lay-off as the settlements contravene the Road Map, which is not a document complimentary to the Palestinians. Rice’s concern was not international law or the United Nations. A refugee says ironically of the American posturing, "You think Bush wants to come with us to see Beit Jabrin?"
     Preparations are underway for the memorial of Al Nakba, the Catasrophe, with several calls going out for boycotts against Israel’s "celebration of its 60th birthday," including to the remaining members of the Beatles who were asked to play and to Bono. An elderly woman in Bethlehem’s Al Azzeh Refugee Camp says that she remembers everything. more.. e-mail

Nothing to laugh at here
Sousan Hammad, Electronic Intifada 4/4/2008
     Four comedians with recently came together in Houston, Texas "to promote peace through comedy" under the banner of the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour. However, rather than promoting a just end to the conflict, their material exploits it in a disturbing manner.
     "We rely on the conflict; peace would ruin our show," co-founder Ray Hanania said in an interview. When asked by the author if they considered performing for an audience in the West Bank, Hanania joked that he doesn’t want to get shot at by Palestinians angry at him for performing with Israelis.
     Ray Hanania, a Palestinian-American journalist and Charles Warady, an American Jew who moved to Israel 12 years ago, say the group breaks the taboo of Palestinians refusing to appear and perform with Israelis. However, there are numerous artistic and non-profit organizatins (for example, the Freedom Theatre and the Palestinian Circus School) in the West Bank which have culturally collaborated with Israelis while taking a stance against the occupation, unlike how Hanania’s xenophobic image of Palesitnians would lead one to believe. more.. e-mail

Israel’s oil refineries privatized: the Palestinian economy perspective
Shir Hever, The Alternative Information Center, Electronic Intifada 4/4/2008
     Over a year has passed since Israel privatized its oil refineries in Haifa and Ashdod to private companies. The Haifa refineries were bought by a group of investors lead by the Ofer brothers, two of Israel’s richest capitalists through their company Israel Corp. The Ashdod refineries were bought by the Paz petrol company owned by Zadik Bino.
     The privatization, one of the biggest in Israel’s history, has transformed the petrol market in Israel at a time when oil prices are soaring and affect every aspect of the Israeli (and the Palestinian) economy -- through increase in transportation costs, in heating costs in the winter, in the price of electricity and even in the costs of basic foodstuffs (which require oil products as part of their production system).
     A privatization process that raises many questions Throughout the privatization process the Israeli government was accused by Israeli non-governmental organizations that the privatization is handled in a poor fashion, with little regards to issues of proper conduct, to issues of environmental safety and to ensuring that the proper price is paid for the refineries. A smell of corruption was hanging in the air when it was published that one of the main government officials involved in the privatization process was later hired by the Ofer Brothers to occupy a high-paying prestigious position in Israel Corp. more.. e-mail

Apocalypse Now
Joshua Davis, MIFTAH 4/3/2008
     Yitzhaq Hayutman holds the key to peace on Earth - it’s on a floppy disk in his pants pocket. With his full white beard, bald pate, and well-pressed khakis, the 61-year-old Israeli cybernetics expert and tech investor looks like Moses done over for a Banana Republic ad. Right now, he’s showing me how he wants to position an airborne hologram over the Dome of the Rock, a gold-capped shrine that’s one of the most holy sites in Islam. "The blimp will go there," Hayutman says pointing into the blue. "And eventually the Messiah will come."
     Hayutman is excited by the prospect - perhaps too excited. Twenty yards away, two flak-jacketed Israeli police officers finger their machine guns while four plainclothes members of the Islamic Trust - the Muslim force that protects Islam’s holy sites - move cautiously toward us. Violence has a habit of erupting here on the Temple Mount, the world’s most explosive plot of land.
     For 1,500 years, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have fought for control of this 35-acre plateau in the heart of Jerusalem. The dispute remains one of the main obstacles to peace in the Middle East. Jewish teachings say that a temple must be built here - many say on the exact spot where the Dome now stands - in order to induce the arrival of the Messiah and the coming of peace on Earth. Fundamentalist Christians interpret this to mean the Second Coming of Christ and actively encourage Jewish building efforts. Muslims categorically oppose any encroachment on their holy site, from which they believe Mohammed ascended to heaven to receive the Koran. more.. e-mail

There is a Clear Alternative
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 4/2/2008
     Since the violent Hamas takeover of Gaza some nine months ago, the US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority have all seemed to follow roughly the same strategy to reverse both Hamas’ control over Gaza and the parliamentary election results of two years ago. This strategy has simultaneously sought to weaken Hamas and empower the Palestinian "peace camp" led by Fateh and President Mahmoud Abbas.
     The strategy has been articulated in different statements and speeches by US President George W. Bush, advocated verbally by Israel and pursued by both the US and Israel as well as the PA. It comprises several components. Overall, the strategy seeks to make the "West Bank model" more attractive to Palestinians than the "Gaza model". The idea is to do this by imposing political and economic sanctions on Hamas in Gaza and at the same time providing increased economic aid to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and, possibly, through the PA to Gaza. Finally, the strategy is to re-launch a political process of the kind that would empower Abbas politically, partly by reducing Israeli restrictions in the West Bank to improve the conditions for Palestinians there. more.. e-mail

Twilight Zone / Taxi driver
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 4/3/2008
     This happened after the car was officially confiscated from its owner by Israeli security forces, who transferred it to the custody of a military base. This happened after soldiers fired at the vehicle for no reason, when the members of a family - including a three-month-old infant - were riding inside, returning from a family gathering.
     After a car has been shot at, you have to investigate, of course, even if the passengers have not done anything at all. You also have to confiscate the vehicle for "investigation," and then apparently someone has to vent his anger on it and destroy it. A destroyed taxi inside an army base. Nobody takes responsibility. A case of vandalism for its own sake and nobody gets excited.
     "Concerning the purported damage, the driver is allowed to report it to the military authorities, who will deal with it accordingly," says the spokesman of the Judea and Samaria Police District, Superintendent Danny Poleg.
     That’s nice.
     It was the first wedding anniversary of Sahar al-Adam, 29 and her husband Firas al-Adam, 30, a young couple with an infant son named Ahmed. Sahar is a teacher, Firas has been working for the past two years as a taxi driver between Hebron and his village, Beit Ula, west of the city. With his family’s savings he bought the luxurious 2002 Mercedes, at a cost of NIS 145,000, and began to work as an incidental driver, since the gates of Israel were closed and his source of income as a construction worker disappeared. He is a handsome young man, wearing a black leather jacket, with no interest in anything related to politics. more.. e-mail

Land Day: What began in 1976 continues today
Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, Arabs48.com, Stop The Wall 4/1/2008
     In 1976, Palestinians protested a massive expropriation of land in the Galilee region.In 2008 the protests continue to mark March 30th, while Occupation forces continue to occupy land and expand the settlements that creep across Palestine.
     These settlement practices, which are official Occupation policy, come at a time when the military is intensifying a fierce campaign of home destruction and land confiscation.Recently, more than 35 homes have demolished leaving more than 176 people homeless.Thousands of dunums have been confiscated across the West Bank.
     The West Bank and Jerusalem have witnessed a period of widespread settlement construction. What follows is a summary of the settlement work that is being carried out in three different areas: East Jerusalem as well as east and west of the Apartheid Wall. more.. e-mail

Dancing for Palestine
Serene Assir, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/3/2008
     The AUC’s Al-Quds Club celebrated Palestinian Land Day with an evening of cultural events and a display of the famous Palestinian dabke dance.
     The American University in Cairo’s Al-Quds Club celebrated Palestinian Land Day on 30 March with cultural events designed to "bring Palestinian culture to the fore," in the words of Yasmine al-Khodary, the club’s president.
     Based in part on a bid to overcome political differences among the participants, the events were designed to stress that despite disagreements Palestine continues to unite its people. "We have one culture, one history, and one identity," al-Khodary said. "Celebrating our culture, more than discussing political positions, reminds us of that."
     However, there was nothing strained about this bid for unity, and the events showed off Palestinian culture in all its diversity, with poetry, music, embroidery, painting, Palestinian dabke dancing and traditional food representing mutually enforcing symbols of Palestine. more.. e-mail

"When I’m big will I go to jail like Daddy?"
Joy Ellison writing from al-Tuwani, occupied West Bank, Electronic Intifada 4/3/2008
     "Momma, when I’m big will I go to jail like Daddy?"
     That was little Adam’s question for his mother when I came to visit their house, just before leaving the village of al-Tuwani for a brief trip home to the United States. Adam is three years old. His mother tells me that he wants his father to come home from jail and bring him ice cream. "Adam is upset," she says. Looking at her eyes, I can tell that she is too. So am I.
     Adam’s father was arrested on 28 March, just a few days ago. A group of eight to ten Israeli settlers from Havot Ma’on, an illegal Israeli settlement outpost, came inside the village of al-Tuwani where they found Adam’s father and his grandfather. The settlers sprayed them with an aerosol substance, which I can only imagine was pepper spray. They hit Adam’s father in the eyes. Soon, the settlement guard arrived, a man everyone in al-Tuwani knows all too well. He was followed by the Israeli army and total chaos began to unfold. The settlement guard accused Adam’s father of breaking his sunglasses. While the settlers who attacked Adam’s father and grandfather stood by, Israeli police arrested Adam’s father. They didn’t listen to the Palestinians who witnessed the settler attack. They didn’t question the settlers. The police forced Adam’s father, still seriously injured, into a police van and took him away. There was nothing anyone could do. more.. "When I'm big will I go to jail like Daddy?"
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9437.shtml



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

Shedding the Mentality of the Occupied
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 4/3/2008
     Why is it that when a Palestinian motorist approaches a checkpoint, he or she instinctively slows down, rolls down the window and reaches into their pocket to pull out their ID card even before the Israeli soldier hails for the car to stop? And why do Palestinians know to immediately open their suitcases at the airport the moment an Israeli security official approaches them for questioning even before the actual request is made?
     This does not happen with non-Palestinians or even Palestinians abroad. This mentality only plagues those unfortunate enough to have spent the majority of their lives under the Israeli occupation and have, at some level, accepted the stigma of the occupied. And naturally, being the occupied rather than the occupier entails being delegated to the category of second and even third class citizen.
     This is not to say that the Palestinians are not acutely aware of their occupied status. The decades’ old Palestinian resistance movement is proof of their understanding that being an occupied people is less than an enviable position.However, a distinction should be made here between the political awareness of a national status and the state of being of the people who have grown accustomed to turning – albeit begrudgingly – to a hostile power in order that their everyday lives to proceed as smoothly as possible. more.. e-mail

Aftermath of operation ’warm winter’: the tragic story of a boy in Gaza
Defence for Children International - Palestine Section, Palestine Monitor 4/3/2008
     Ahmad, nicknamed "Misho"�, is 16 years old and lives in Block 2 of Jabalia Camp in the North of the Gaza Strip. On 1st March, during the recent Israeli military operation codenamed "Warm Winter"�, he was seriously injured by shrapnel from a missile launched by Israeli tanks invading northern Gaza. For two weeks Misho was thought dead, as his identity was tragically mistaken for that of his friend Mohammad, killed in the same missile attack. He was lying in Al Shifa’ hospital, his body so wounded that everyone failed to identify him and his parents assumed he had been killed. Misho is alive, and has been reunited with his parents, but he is in need of specialised medical assistance. He has been referred to receive professional medical support abroad, as the damage to his brain and spine has hampered his ability to speak and he is paralysed on the right side. Gaza’s hospitals, affected by the Israeli imposed blockade, are not sufficiently equipped to support his rehabilitation and the Palestinian Ministry of Health cannot fully fund the treatment needed for his recovery.
     For this reason, DCI/PS appeals to its partners and to all concerned to help Misho receive appropriate medical assistance. Through this article, we urge organisations willing and able to facilitate Misho’s treatment to get in touch with DCI/PS. more.. e-mail

Gaza patients die as Israel denies treatment
Report, IRIN, Electronic Intifada 4/3/2008
     JERUSALEM, 1 April (IRIN) - "Tragedies that could and should have been avoided," was how Ambrogio Manenti, head of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Jerusalem, described the cases of Palestinian patients who died while awaiting medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip.
     A new report by the WHO on 1 April describes in detail five cases of patients who died either while awaiting an Israeli permit to exit the enclave or after having been denied one. Another 27 cases of patients unable to receive specialized care outside Gaza are also documented in the booklet.
     Manenti chose to read to reporters the case of Amir al-Yazji, aged nine, who died from meningoencephalitis -- an inflammation of the brain and central nervous system -- while waiting.
     However, the reasons for the lack of access to treatment go beyond just the Israeli permit system, the WHO said.
     Strikes in recent years in the health sector; Israeli restrictions on imports to Gaza affecting the ability of the medical sector to bring in spare parts, medicines and other items; and the Islamist Hamas’s takeover of Gaza which affected coordination efforts -- all come on top of a pre-existing need in the occupied Palestinian territory to refer patients abroad for tertiary care, as in many cases the treatments are not available locally. more.. e-mail

Tiny Party Shows Large Clout on Settlements
Griff Witte, MIFTAH 4/3/2008
     Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left Israel on Monday having failed to persuade leaders here to halt settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land. But the setback for Rice was a victory for Rabbi Ovadia Yossef, the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party.
     Within hours of Rice’s departure, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was on the phone with Yossef to tell him that plans for building 800 new homes in the West Bank settlement of Betar Illit had been approved, according to two Shas officials, just as Shas had requested.
     The episode illustrates the extent of the small party’s influence over U.S. efforts to negotiate a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
     Shas is the linchpin of Olmert’s fragile coalition government. Party leaders have threatened to withdraw their support for Olmert if he freezes settlement construction or if the issue of Jerusalem even comes up in the negotiations.
     The threat has put greater pressure on a process that is already faltering. Israeli political analysts say Olmert may face a choice later this year: He can have a peace deal or he can hold his coalition together, but not both. more.. e-mail

Rice Misses the Obvious in Peace-Making
Rami Khouri, MIFTAH 4/3/2008
     It is hard to tell if US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is being deliberately innocent and juvenile, or, as the highest American foreign policy official, she is genetically incapable of being honest when it comes to Palestinian-Israeli issues. There is now only one real test of progress, or criterion of political seriousness, in the Arab-Israeli conflict in the short term: Can the United States make Israel stop expanding its settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories? If not, talk of peace is a cruel hoax that will only raise and then dash expectations, leading to unknown consequences when the backlash occurs.
     Continued Israeli settlement in occupied Palestinian land is the single most destructive and dangerous reflection of the long-running Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It captures in a single dynamic the predatory nature of Zionist aims, the conquest and settlement of Arab land by Israelis, and the continued dispersal and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. If peace-making is to have any chance of success, Israeli colonization of Arab lands must be halted and then largely reversed under final-status agreements. more.. e-mail

’Marching toward total ruin’
Avi Issacharoff, Ha’aretz 4/3/2008
     JENIN - "When you see Zakariya, maybe you’ll be surprised, but he looks like just any other Palestinian man now. Without armed men, without a weapon, just an ordinary guy," related an acquaintance of Zakariya Zubeidi, until not long ago the commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in Jenin.
     ....Why haven’t you received a pardon?
     They lied to us, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The PA promised us that after we spent three months in PA facilities and if we didn’t get involved in actions, we would receive a pardon. The three months ended and nothing happened. We still need to sleep at the headquarters of the security organizations. They promised us jobs and they haven’t materialized either. Some of us are getting a salary of NIS 1,050 a month. What can you do with that? Buy Bamba for your children? They lied to everyone, they made a distinction between those who were really in the Al-Aqsa Brigades, whom they screwed, and groups that called themselves by that name, but in fact were working on behalf of the PA. more.. e-mail

A Fundamental Misconception
Safwat Kahlout, MIFTAH 4/2/2008
     Ever since Hamas overwhelmingly won parliamentary elections in 2006, the international community has been trying to reverse a result that neither it nor Hamas expected.
     At first the international community, led by the US, tried to include Hamas in its designs for the region by offering it three conditions to enter the regional order. Once those were rejected, Washington instead opted to isolate Hamas and ignore the elections.
     Israel, happy to play along with this strategy, was given a free hand to escalate at will and tighten its closure on Gaza to undermine the already fragile economy there in an effort to bring Gazans into the streets against Hamas.
     The strategy had some initial success. Many voted for Hamas in the first place in order to punish Fateh for the corruption of preceding years. Once sanctions hit, people were heard to lament, "better to be led by the corrupt if they put bread on the table". But the fundamental perception remained the same: Hamas were clean and Fateh corrupt, and it is this fundamental perception that has lingered. more.. e-mail

This ’bombshell’ took a year falling
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani, Electronic Intifada 4/2/2008
     A recent article in Vanity Fair magazine "exposing" a US-planned coup attempt against Palestinian resistance movement Hamas last year has ignited a storm of debate about Washington’s Middle East policies. Yet for more than nine months, details of the plot were reported in the independent Arabic press -- and elsewhere -- leading some observers to ask: where was the mainstream media?
     "From the very beginning, Hamas has publicly insisted that what happened in Gaza last year came in reaction to plans being hatched against it," Tarek Abd al-Gaber, former news correspondent for Egyptian state television covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, told IPS.
     Hamas has been widely blamed in much of the mainstream media for carrying out a "violent coup" against the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Gaza Strip last summer. After six days of heavy fighting, Hamas wrested control of the territory from the government of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the US-backed Fatah movement, in mid-June. more.. e-mail

The senator, his pastor and the Israel lobby
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 3/31/2008
     US senator Barack Obama was widely hailed for his 18 March speech calming the media furor about the sermons of his pastor for twenty years Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s remarks, Obama said, "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."
     It might seem odd for Obama to mention Israel and "radical Islam" in a speech focused on US race relations, especially since Wright’s most widely reported comments were about America’s historic and ongoing oppression of its black citizens.
     But for months, even before most Americans had heard of Wright, prominent pro-Israel activists were hounding Obama over Wright’s views on Israel and ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. In January, Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), demanded that Obama denounce Farrakhan as an anti-Semite. The senator duly did so, but that was not enough. "[Obama has] distanced himself from his pastor’s decision to honor Farrakhan," Foxman said, but "He has not distanced himself from his pastor. I think that’s the next step." Foxman labeled Wright "a black racist," adding in the same breath, "Certainly he has very strong anti-Israel views" (Larry Cohler-Esses, "ADL Chief To Obama: ’Confront Your Pastor’ On Minister Farrakhan," The Jewish Week, 16 January 2008). Criticism of Israel, one suspects, is Wright’s truly unforgivable crime and Foxman’s vitriol has echoed through dozens of pro-Israel blogs. more.. e-mail

Beware of Tampering with the Arab Peace Initiative
Tariq Alhomayed, MIFTAH 4/3/2008
     In its closing statement, the Damascus Summit called for the re-assessment of the peace strategy with Israel, furthermore setting the coming May as the latest deadline. This formula appears to be the middle ground in terms of the demands that were proposed during the summit with regards to the reconsideration of the Arab Peace Initiative.
     Doesn’t "reassessing the peace strategy" – if that may be deemed a diplomatic expression – imply that the other option is war? And which among the Arab states is ready to declare war on Israel today?
     The problem with this rhetoric is that it raises the expectations of Arab public opinion – however; it is not accompanied by any real action. Moreover, it grants Israel an opportunity it already wants; which is that the concerned parties cancel their initiative and spare Israel international embarrassment. more.. e-mail

Seeing ghosts
Meron Rapoport, Ha’aretz 4/3/2008
     Author Alon Hilu remembers the moment when the Tel Aviv landscape changed before his eyes. "I was sitting in a cafe near Dizengoff Center, a totally Tel Aviv landscape, and suddenly I saw how this landscape could be different - orchards, an Arab landscape. Like a glimpse into the past." We are sitting in a Herzliya cafe, in a high-tech landscape. Hilu’s successful new book "The House of Dajani" (in Hebrew) takes place in Arab Jaffa just before the Jews established Tel Aviv and 50 years before the Arabs abandoned the orchards there. He continues: "A while later I was sitting with my wife in a cafe in the Tel Aviv port, and this past was haunting me, like a ghost. I thought that I could see before me the Muslim cemetery next to the sea, suddenly even the sea looked Arab to me; I don’t know how a sea can look Arab."
     Eshkol Nevo is the same age as Hilu, 36, and was a classmate of his at a Jerusalem school for a while. For him, the discovery of the Arab past of this country was slower and more incidental. When he began to write "Homesick," which became one of the biggest best-sellers of recent years, he knew that the story would take place in Maoz Zion, a small community near Jerusalem where he had lived in the past. Every time he drove to Jerusalem he stopped in Maoz Zion. more.. e-mail

Returning to Nablus: Collateral damage
Alice Rothchild writing from Nablus, occupied West Bank, Electronic Intifada 4/2/2008
     Since 2003, a health and human rights project developed by members of Jewish Voice for Peace has organized yearly delegations to Israel and Palestine, joining with partners such as Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and Palestinian Medical Relief Society. We document conditions on the ground, bring our stories home, and work on moving the political conversation towards a change in US policy. We focus on issues related to the occupation, its impact on the civilian populations, and the consequences of Israeli incursions, restrictions of movement, and collective punishment. In mid-October 2007 our delegation visited an apartment in Nablus that was the site of an attack by Israeli soldiers days earlier. While we were aware that there are almost nightly Israeli incursions into Nablus, the reality was still jarring and painfully surreal. We walked past a dusty cement-mixer, through a gate and down cracked stone steps to reach the entry to the top floor of a five-story white stone house, built into the hilly landscape in the neighborhood of Ras al-Ein. Potted plants, shattered tiles, and glass were strewn along the path. Men lumbered by, cigarettes in hand, carrying panes to repair fractured windows and the air echoed with the sounds of hammering and electric machinery.
     The delegates were ushered into one apartment after another, richly upholstered living room furniture, formal dining room tables, long white draperies, decorative wooden head boards, posters in a child’s room, a blinking TV, now all splattered with bullet holes. The curtains were shredded and burned by gunfire, walls, floors, and ceilings fissured and pock-marked in every direction. In one apartment we were shown a neat pile of rocket parts, bullet casings, mortar shells, and empty flares, the English lettering clearly visible: "White Star Parachute." Later, a quick check on an internet weapons reference guide revealed that these flares as well as other munitions in the pile were made in the US. There was a sense of grim determination and horror in the faces of the people who belong to this place and everywhere, wide-eyed, terrified, crying children. One teenage boy played on his computer, seemingly oblivious to the destruction around him, American pop music drifting through the open rooms. On the first floor, we were told that a 70-year-old man had been shot and killed when he opened his door for the Israeli soldiers. more.. e-mail

Settlements are their religion
Uzi Benziman, Ha’aretz 4/2/2008
     Three weeks ago, a smug real estate agent appeared on TV and announced with certainty that all the apartments to be built in Givat Ze’ev’s Agan Ayalot neighborhood would be populated immediately. He added that he was convinced of his ability to sell every apartment built in this settlement because there is tremendous demand from ultra-Orthodox families for housing in this area. As if to make his words more concrete, little boys with long peyot and little girls in long dresses were shown playing in the background. Identical messages and scenes were seen in interviews with entrepreneurs and apartment owners in Har Homa, where building had been unfrozen several weeks earlier.
     This week, in the wake of separate meetings between United Torah Judaism and Shas leaders with the heads of the Beitar Ilit settlement, the prime minister’s decision to allow the establishment of 600 new housing units at Pisgat Ze’ev, and 800 at Beitar Ilit, was made public. There is no doubt about it: The ultra-Orthodox factions have become the spearhead of the settlement enterprise over the Green Line, and they are busy competing with one another over which of them will lead it. more.. e-mail

The senator, his pastor and the Israel lobby
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 3/31/2008
     US senator Barack Obama was widely hailed for his 18 March speech calming the media furor about the sermons of his pastor for twenty years Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright’s remarks, Obama said, "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."
     It might seem odd for Obama to mention Israel and "radical Islam" in a speech focused on US race relations, especially since Wright’s most widely reported comments were about America’s historic and ongoing oppression of its black citizens.
     But for months, even before most Americans had heard of Wright, prominent pro-Israel activists were hounding Obama over Wright’s views on Israel and ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. In January, Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), demanded that Obama denounce Farrakhan as an anti-Semite. The senator duly did so, but that was not enough. "[Obama has] distanced himself from his pastor’s decision to honor Farrakhan," Foxman said, but "He has not distanced himself from his pastor. I think that’s the next step." Foxman labeled Wright "a black racist," adding in the same breath, "Certainly he has very strong anti-Israel views" (Larry Cohler-Esses, "ADL Chief To Obama: ’Confront Your Pastor’ On Minister Farrakhan," The Jewish Week, 16 January 2008). Criticism of Israel, one suspects, is Wright’s truly unforgivable crime and Foxman’s vitriol has echoed through dozens of pro-Israel blogs. more.. e-mail

Acting as chief sentry
Ran Cohen, Ha’aretz 4/2/2008
     In May 2006, a Sudanese refugee suffering a severe asthma attack was brought to a hospital emergency room in the center of the country for medical treatment. It may have been his Arabic, his different-looking appearance or the fact that he had United Nations documents in English that caused the security guard to illegally prevent him from entering the emergency room. Two weeks later the same refugee, still suffering from asthma, was brought into the ER once more, this time in the south of the country - and another security guard prevented his entrance there too.
     While the basic right of this refugee to medical treatment was denied by security guards, the basic rights of some 7,500 refugees and asylum seekers is denied day after day by the chief sentry: the State of Israel. Government representatives contend that the asylum-seekers issue is on the agenda, but it seems they are mainly preoccupied with finding ways to deport them. And when it comes to health, there has been no improvement in the state’s treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, and it has even become somewhat worse than before. more.. e-mail

To receive a once-daily e-mail digest of our News and Articles content, write to
OccupationNews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com or visit
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OccupationNews/join
See example: Occupation News

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the material posted on this site are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the webmaster or Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.