The "Road Map" to Further Colonization
By Mazin Qumsiyeh. Ph.D., Palestine Chronicle, May 1, 2003 
I think it is rather telling that the so called "road map" for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict failed to include the words: "international law" and "human rights." That these four simple words can be skipped in a document of 2221 words suggests that this latest effort will not produce peace. The map also seems to ignore the wall of apartheid being built and their is no mention of getting input from people affected regarding their future. Like the defunct Oslo accords these latest trials were also based on an underlying assumption that with the disparity of power, Israel can dictate agreements. Israeli leaders wanted and got recognition of sovereignty on 78% of Palestine (land they stole from native Palestinians). But they want more. They want parts of the remaining 22%, they want acceptance of their demand to forfeit the most elemental of human rights such as the right of refugees to return to their homes and lands (all simply because they are not Jewish). What this means is that the victims of Israeli colonialism are expected to certify that it is OK for Israel to remain the only country in the world that identifies its lands as belonging not to its citizens but to "Jewish people everywhere". The Palestinians must recognize that Israel can remain the only country in the world that gives members of a particular religion (including converts) automatic rights (citizenship, land, homes, subsidies) that supercede and mostly replace those of "citizens" and native people who belong to other religions. Israel grants automatic citizenship to any individual who has one Jewish grandparent while denying citizenship to native Christians and Muslims simply for being of the wrong religion. Israel is the only country in the world whose legitimacy does not flow from rights of self-determination of natives but Zionist claim of biblical authority. Without consulting the inhabitants (Jews, Christians, and Muslims), a UN general assembly resolution in 1947 called for partition of a native land to give 55% of the land to a colonial people who at the time represented 30% of the population and owned 7% of the land. Yet, this same resolution, while unfair and accomplished by much arm-twisting by the US, rejected any population transfer and insisted on Internationalizing Jerusalem, on an economic union, and on free movement of people (all these provisions where and are still unacceptable to the Zionist leaders).

Don't Stand in the Way of Our Joy
By Doris 'Granny D' Haddock, AlterNet, May 1, 2003
Editor's Note: Advance text of remarks to be delivered this Saturday at the Asheville, NC Rolling Thunder event. -- You and I can agree and disagree about many things, and still respect each other as friends and as fellow Americans with strong opinions. I was among the many people who thought Mr. Bush should have disarmed Iraq peacefully through the United Nations process that was already underway. But Mr. Bush took the road he took. There was, as a result, a time of killing and looting, and the spoiling of the treasures of an ancient civilization. Though I do not take lightly the great loss suffered by so many parents, children and elders because of the American government's approach, we must, as a historical matter, agree that what's done is done and that most people are relieved and generally satisfied with the outcome. Though we disagreed with the means employed, there is now an opportunity for peace and for freedom in Iraq, and that can be a very good thing if it is properly advanced by people who respect the rights of the people of that region to be free, which means politically self-governing and the masters of their own resources. If that is what Mr. Bush has in mind for them, then we can still hope for a happy outcome. It is our experience, however, to expect otherwise. It has been interesting to me to notice that, though the leaders speaking on the rally stages of the great peace marches have often spoken with righteous anger, and even though death was hanging in the air before and after this little war, and even though the marchers understood, and still do understand, that our American and global environment is also under attack, as are the working poor, and as is our dear Bill of Rights, that nevertheless the people in these marches were joyful. Did you notice that? Did you feel it yourself if you were among them? The best smiles I have seen in years have been in these marches. This leads me to think that the peace movement is about something far deeper than the Bush Administration's attack du jour. And if the movement is not only about the war, I must wonder if the movement is indeed being ineffective, as its inability to stop the war might indicate, or if it is succeeding or failing at a deeper and therefore more important level.

What was Newt thinking?
By Patrick Buchanan, WorldNet, April 30, 2003
Last week's pre-emptive strike by ex-Speaker Newt Gingrich on the State Department and Colin Powell may appear purest madness. But there is method in Newt's madness. For in his attack on State, Newt – front man for the neoconservatives – fired a shot across the bow of the West Wing, i.e., you have blundered in backing off the threats against Syria, but do not believe you can pressure Israel, with impunity, into making concessions to the Palestinians. Consider the site Newt chose to launch his attack. The American Enterprise Institute, the creation of Lebanese-American William Baroody Sr., was begun as a think tank with ties to Taft-Goldwater Republicans. In the 1990s, it was captured by neocons and converted into their principal nesting ground inside the Beltway. It is now Centcom for the War Party. Even before Bush took his oath, AEI issued an astonishing paper urging us to ally with Israel and "strike fatally" at Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli, Teheran and Gaza, to "establish the recognition that fighting either the United States or Israel is suicidal." "Crises can be opportunities," wrote AEI's David Wurmser. He urged us to be on the lookout for an opportunity to execute the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes. Opportunity knocked on 9-11. Consider the issues on which Newt attacked Powell and State. The first was Powell's coming trip to Syria. Bellowed Newt: "The concept of the American secretary of state going to Damascus to meet with a terrorist-supporting, secret police-wielding dictator is ludicrous." Ludicrous? But Powell's trip was personally approved by Bush. State's second sin is in creating the "Quartet" – America, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union – and approving its "road map" for a Middle East peace. To Newt, this is "a deliberate and systematic effort to undermine the president's policies ... by ensuring they will be consistently watered down and distorted" by Russia, France and the U.N. But it was Bush himself who committed us to the "road map." Thus, the White House rightly saw Newt's attack on Powell as an attack on, and warning to, the president himself. Newt also blasted State for making us friendless in the world and failing to convince Turkey to let us use its territory in the Iraq war. But the man who failed to persuade Turkey was not Colin Powell but Paul Wolfowitz of Defense. And our alienated allies do not point to Powell as America's problem, but to the neocons clustered around AEI and to Newt's icon, Donald Rumsfeld.

Weapons and settlements present daunting obstacles
By Yossi Beilin, The Guardian, May 1, 2003
The road map which was placed yesterday on the table of the prime minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, and the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has been awaiting publication for many long months. It has now been taken out - from the bottom drawer, it would seem - as a result of the unequivocal commitment of Tony Blair to present it to the parties after the war in Iraq. This is an attempt to resume the political negotiations which ceased on January 27 2001 when talks between the Israeli and Palestinian delegations ended at Taba. Will this attempt be any more successful than the long list of other attempts to resume the negotiations? It may well be. If the commitment of George Bush is resolute, rather than mere lip service to Blair, there is a chance that the two parties will be forced to relate seriously to this new outline and to put it into practice - or, alternatively, to find a way to courteously undermine it, while purporting to make every possible effort to put it into practice. The road map lengthens the process begun in Oslo in 1993, which was supposed to have culminated in the final status settlement in May 1999, but is now due to come to an end in late 2005. It adds a new element which was not contained in the original agreement: a Palestinian state with provisional borders, which will hold negotiations with Israel concerning its permanent borders. The problem is that Ariel Sharon is not ready to pay the price of the final-status settlement, Mr Abbas will be wary of embarking upon the adventure of a provisional state, out of fear that the provisional borders will remain a permanent fixture for many years to come, and they will both find it difficult to comply with the confidence-building measures required, given their respective support groups: the rightwing in Sharon's government will object to the dismantlement of any settlements, and the militants in the Palestinian camp will be in no hurry to put down their weapons.

On the road again?
Editorial, The Guardian, May 1, 2003
America is the key to Middle East peace -- Mr Abbas could prove to be a modern-day Solomon and yet still fail utterly if Mr Sharon is not prepared in practice to make the "painful" decisions of which he has often spoken in theory. That means doing all that the road map proposes, on withdrawals, settlement closures, permanent borders and more. In turn, that means sustained, high-level US pressure on Mr Sharon. Whether the Bush administration, lacking its predecessor's drive and divided over how hard to push Israel, will actually deliver on its post-Iraq vow to build the peace is doubtful. As usual in the Middle East, for all concerned, it boils down to a matter of will. -- If sporadic, fatal violence of the kind that exploded in Tel Aviv and Gaza this week is allowed to dictate or subvert Israeli and Palestinian policy, there is little chance that the latest Middle East peace plan, published yesterday, will succeed. For too long, Ariel Sharon's government has cited suicide and other extremist attacks as a bar to political engagement with the Palestinian majority. For too long, Mr Sharon has refused to accept any parallels with Israeli violence against Palestinians. For his part, Yasser Arafat has consistently failed to curb the militants linked to his own Fatah faction, let alone those of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. By squandering the chance of peace at Taba in 2001, he lost the political initiative and condemned his people, and Israelis, to another two years of misery. The overall challenge for Palestine's new prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, and Mr Sharon is to prevent the failures of this shared, bitter past obscuring the prize of shared, peaceful co-existence, based on a secure, recognised state of Israel and a viable, independent Palestine. First and foremost, this means doing everything possible to end the violence - and an understanding, particularly by Israel, that a permanent cessation of all hostilities by all groups and individuals is not achievable overnight. Progress towards a lasting settlement for the many cannot be held hostage to the random acts of destruction of the obdurate few. That point was underscored last night by the dramatic revelation of the British origins of a recent suicide bomber.

The hunter who lost his way
By Anne Karpf, The Guardian, May 1, 2003
His pursuit of Nazis was vital, but Simon Wiesenthal ended up promoting a mystifying view of the Holocaust -- The announcement by Simon Wiesenthal that he's retiring has produced a torrent of tributes to the incorrigible pursuer of Nazi war criminals. Some aged Nazis may now rest easier in their beds. But while Wiesenthal played a crucial role in opening up debate about the Holocaust, he has ended up propagating an a historical idea of the Shoah that impedes rather than enhances our understanding. No one can deny the importance of Wiesenthal from the late 1940s to the 1970s, those long decades of silence before the term Holocaust gained currency. A survivor of Buchenwald and Mauthausen, he was determined to remember when almost everyone else wanted to forget. His detective work, through the Jewish Documentation Centre he established in Austria, helped bring more than 1,000 Nazis to trial, among them Franz Stangl, commandant of the Treblinka and Sobibor extermination camps, and Karl Silberbauer, the police officer who arrested Anne Frank. After the collapse of communism, he used eastern European archives to pursue a fresh band of killers....Wiesenthal isn't a team player. Though he didn't choose the sobriquet of the "Nazi hunter", he helped to mythologise himself by acting as consultant on the 1978 film The Boys from Brazil (partly modelled on his life). Both Wiesenthal's public profile and the film apply to the Holocaust the iconography of the thriller, evoking a world where Jews are never safe, stalked by a Fourth Reich of lurking Nazis. It's a formulation that reduces the Shoah to the acts of psychotic people, with Wiesenthal as hero, and Jews permanently vulnerable. Seeing the Holocaust in terms of demonic or saintly individuals makes it more incomprehensible.

The Dixie Chicks & Civility
Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed, Arab News, May 1, 2003
A crisis in human history is likely to reveal more about the human condition than we might be comfortable with. The war on Iraq is no exception: It has revealed more than the inside of Saddam’s palaces. If anyone ever doubted it, we now know for a fact that in spite of the “global village” we are supposed to live in, we still more or less build our relationships on fault lines that threaten to shake and thunder at a moment’s notice. We also know that virulent nationalism is alive and well. There is nothing wrong with nationalism except the fact that it is a prime breeding ground for hate and prejudice. Smaller countries can justify their “nationalism” as fear of being swallowed by bigger and mightier states. The bigger the country, the harder it is to cling to such notions. In America, for example, nationalism has a code: Patriotism. During this crisis patriotism as practiced in the United States reached alarming levels of intolerance and violence. The right of the other to dissent was unceremoniously thrown aside. If we take what happened to the Dixie Chicks as an example, one is hard-pressed to justify or even comprehend the incident. One of the ladies said she was ashamed of Bush being from her home state of Texas. She said it while performing on a stage in London. Had the Chicks been living under Saddam, we know a priori what would have happened. But knowing they lived in the United States one thought that the debate would have maintained a semblance of civility. Instead, they were attacked, taken off radio stations, and callers to the same stations spewed so much venom that it inevitably culminated in on-the-air death threats. Obviously, democracy is skin deep. I thought it was just foreigners like me who received death threats and viruses through their emails. I was wrong. This raises another issue: Could the Homeland security people tell the world why such people were not apprehended? Those who threaten to kill someone for reasons of ideology or a point of view are terrorists. No argument there. In this time of high security alert, it is amazing that such people get away with it. In all honesty, it is not very different from any petty dictatorship where the party clique and those close to power can do what they like when the rest are robbed of their basic rights.

In Reverse? Check Your Mirrors!
By James Brooks, CommonDreams, April 30, 2003
It's been awhile since racist and bigoted statements were considered acceptable in America. Now they're back, on the lips of powerful and influential people. Language that would get people fired if applied to blacks or Jews now passes without comment when used against Arabs and Muslims. We view this disturbing trend as resulting from recent politics and events. But we are children of a history we do not know. The roots of our "new" bigotry stretch through our racist American past to a thousand-year old blind spot, one big enough to drive half the world through. It's high time we adjusted our rear-view mirrors. It's true that decades of growing propaganda from neoconservative, fundamentalist, and Hollywood sources made us easy marks for politicians brewing a spirit of national retribution after 9/11. Bush foreign policy and the continuing roundup of Arab citizens and immigrants make the enemy's identity crystal clear. Now a preacher can rant that Muhammad was "a demon-possessed pedophile" and Allah will "turn you into a terrorist", and be commended by the Southern Baptist leadership. But what's the background to this picture? In a recent article in the New Statesman, Ziauddin Sardar writes that "the west's hatred of Islam stems from, more than anything else, the denial of its true lineage. The western world as we understand it is a child of Islam. Without Islam, the west - however we conceive it today - would not exist. And, without the west, Islam is incomplete and cannot survive the future." The western world is "a child of Islam"? Welcome to your blind spot. Happily, it's not about theology, but to clear it up we'll have to go way back in history, to the first contacts between Islam and Christian Europe.

Where will this road map really lead?
By Nick Pretzlik, Electronic Intifada, May 1, 2003
LONDON -- Recently I listened to a BBC World Service report on the situation in Colombia, where for decades, FARC, a left wing faction, has waged an unrelenting campaign against government forces. Both sides have committed atrocities and the civilian population has suffered accordingly. No end to the conflict is in sight. Yet in the report, the BBC never once used the word "terrorist" in referring to FARC fighters -- guerrillas, yes; militants, yes; armed revolutionaries, yes. Terrorists, no. This was not an oversight. The FARC insurrection exceeds the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in terms of intensity, perhaps even in terms of pain and suffering. Furthermore, FARC's aims are unclear. Consequently, FARC has been unable to legitimise its struggle in the way that Palestinians justify theirs. In contrast, the Palestinian cause -- the liberation of land from foreign occupation -- is understood and generally considered to be just by objective observers. Gaza and the West Bank -- the Occupied Territories -- are all that remain of the territory the Palestinians have tended and farmed for centuries. The building of illegal Israeli settlements and settler roads, and the annexation of Palestinian wells and aquifers, are remorselessly eroding even this rump of land. Is it not strange, therefore, that the BBC awards FARC fighters the sobriquet of guerrilla and Palestinians the title of terrorist? Why is it that the Palestinian and FARC cases are treated so differently? Is it because of the resistance tactics employed by the Palestinians? Israeli tactics are nothing to gloat about either -- firing tank shells into civilian areas, bombing crowded refugee camps from F16s and undertaking extra-judicial assassinations. No media outlet calls the IDF (the Israeli Army) terrorists, yet as an occupying force, Israel has the added duty of care for civilians under the Fourth Genevan Convention.

The tone has changed in Jerusalem
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz, May 1, 2003
As the Abu Mazen confidence vote drew closer, the tone changed in Jerusalem. At first Israel presented his election as a large celebration, as Israel's fruit of victory in the intifada. Now the prime minister, foreign minister and defense establishment are warning of another trick of those cunning Palestinians. -- The history of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in the past year is divided into waiting periods. First was the nine months of waiting for the Iraq war. Then came the six weeks of patience until the appointment of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). This week the third count began - until Abu Mazen and his new cabinet "fight terror," or in the American version, "until they establish themselves in power." All the signs indicate this waiting period will be long, perhaps indefinite. The terrorist attack on the Tel Aviv promenade, a few hours after the new Palestinian prime minister was sworn in, and the IDF's assassination in Khan Yunis on Tuesday, demonstrated that the political experiment launched in Ramallah is not set in a laboratory but in violent reality that threatens to erupt. The terror organizations will want to show that they are not giving up, and Israel will increase its pressure to force the Palestinian government to act against them. A few more attacks like that, and the rigo his "heirs." The chief of staff yesterday gave Abu Mazen a grade of "one third," i.e. failing.

For Palestinians, this is a map that leads nowhere
By Sa'id Ghazali , Islamic Association of Palestinian/The Independent, May 1, 2003
The release of the "road-map" peace plan, and the appointment of the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, are being seen around the world as a new window of opportunity to resolve the Middle East conflict. But most Palestinians, from those on the street to political leaders, do not think the road-map is a such a big deal - or that it will end their suffering and meet their national aspirations. The road-map is no more than an entrance ticket to the dance hall where the Israelis will play the same old tunes against "terror". The Palestinian officials, with their VIP cards and what's left of their fancy cars, have been readying themselves for the thrilling dance that will put them once again at the centre of international attention. A careful reading of the road-map predicts an unhappy ending. The peace plan deals with the Israeli demand that the suicide bombings and other attacks by the Palestinian militants end. But it does not give the demands of the Palestinians equal importance. Why doesn't the road-map clearly and unequivocally include the main demand, that Israel withdraw to its internationally recognised pre-1967 borders? Instead, it refers back to UN resolution 242, which Israel has ignored for a long time. What about the future of Jerusalem's Arab quarters and the city's Muslim and Christian holy sites? Where is the solution for the millions of Palestinian refugees across the Middle East? The road-map does not recognise the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the primary source of instability in the region. On the contrary, everything is the fault of the Palestinians, who unleashed the intifada against Israel. In fact, the road-map is no more than a phased security initiative for Israel, opening the gate for the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israelis to work together to quell Hamas, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and the other militant factions. The PA must do this first. Until it succeeds - no easy task - there will be no steps forward from Israel. The Israeli army will not even pull back from the re- occupied Palestinian cities.

The Priority of Politics, The Tyranny of Legalism
By M. A. Muqtedar Khan, Salaam, May 1, 2003
The Islamic intellectual tradition—which includes Islamic legal thought (Usul al-fiqh and fiqh), theology (Kalam), mysticism (Tasawwuf) and philosophy (falsafa)—is one of the most developed and profound traditions of human knowledge. In the area of political philosophy, however, this intellectual heritage remains strikingly underdeveloped. One of the reasons for this lacuna is the “colonial” tendency of Islamic legal thought. Many Islamic jurists simply equate Islam with Islamic law (Shari‘ah) and privilege the study of the latter. As a result we have only episodic exploration of the idea of a polity in Islam. Hundreds of Islamic schools and universities now produce hundreds of thousands of Islamic legal scholars but hardly any produce political theorists or philosophers. With some rare exceptions, this intellectual poverty has reduced Islamic thought to the status of a medieval legal tradition. The extraordinary influence of the idea of “Islam as Shari‘ah” has made law prior to the state and political life. Instead of thinking of law as serving the changing needs of the political community, the polity is said to be legitimate only if it properly implements Shari‘ah. Abou El Fadl’s own erudite discussion of the compatibility of Islam and democracy reflects this mistaken view of law and politics. Thus instead of concluding with a sketch of an Islamic democracy, he ends by imposing Shari‘ah-based limitations on democracy. He claims that a case for democracy from within Islam should not substitute popular sovereignty for divine sovereignty and should recognize that democratic lawmaking respects the priority of Shari‘ah. He begins his essay as a political philosopher and ends it as an ayatollah laying down the edict—you can have democracy but only as long as people are not sovereign and Shari‘ah is not violated. Abou El Fadl presents a brilliant discussion of the Islamic moral and ethical principles that can help make a case for democracy. But, ultimately, he reinforces traditional barriers rather than deconstructing them. One of the most prominent Islamic theologians, Sheikh Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328)—a source of great inspiration to conservative Muslims who advocate authoritarianism—argued for an Islamic leviathan that would defend the Islamic world from external military threats and Islamic doctrines from internal heresies. He claimed that the object of an Islamic state was to impose the Shari‘ah.