Refusing pessimism
By Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 8 - 14 May 2003
Arab assessments of the invasion of Iraq cannot be allowed to derail the Palestinian struggle -- The recent experience of Iraq, certainly as it plays out in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, leads to a single conclusion -- the US expects its dictates to be accepted without discussion. Any attempts to water down this message or make its substance contingent on the similarity of circumstances or systems of governments, or on the need to fight terror, does not stand up. There are no similarities between Iraq and Palestine. The Palestinians have not occupied and will not occupy Kuwait or any other neighbouring state. They have not produced and will not produce chemical weapons, nor are they running a state of their own to start with. The Palestinians cannot be threatened with occupation because they are under occupation. Not that it matters: chemical weapons et al were, after all, only the pretext to attack and occupy Iraq. There is no room for comparison. What those who want the Palestinians to learn from the Iraqi experience are actually saying is do not defy the will of the United States. This is the same conclusion France should reach as it seeks to salvage the remnants of Third World independence. France is not acting out of a sense of noblesse oblige. It strives to maintain some independence from US policy. It wants alliances and consultations and refuses to jump every time the US asks it to do so. Perhaps environmental and human rights activists within the US should, by extension, begin listening without complaint to the dictates of the US right, now in control of the White House and the Pentagon. There are no boundaries to the totalitarian logic that is turning US military, economic, and technological superiority into a belief that the world is an organic body with Washington at its head and heart; that orders should pass unhindered through the US nervous system to the various limbs of this world body. The latter have to respond or be amputated. But there is another, perhaps more realistic way of thinking, which makes allowances for the contradictions still working their way through the political life of America and the world, albeit in a new form. The Palestinian issue is one case among many cases in which these contradictions interact with the conflicts ongoing within US society. Even the argument presented by the formidable Condoleezza Rice -- a woman not given to soft diplomacy -- that Israel's security is the key to world security, even this argument, which adopts a position of theological mysticism in dealing with Israel, can be taken as indicative of a simple fact: the Palestinian problem is a crucial, and global, issue.

‘A Technological Power of Inferior Culture and Values’
By Mohammed Alkhereiji, Arab News, May 12, 2003
"The requirement that cessation of violence must be a precondition for political progress is a sure formula for no progress. So many of us, including hundreds of military officers and expert journalists, have come to the conclusion that it is an intended policy of the Israeli government to provoke Palestinian violence, whenever it senses a political process that may threaten the continuation of the occupation and the settlements." -- JEDDAH, 12 May 2003 — Dr. Daniel Amit, a prominent Israeli professor at the University di Roma, refused a request in March to review a study by the American Physical Society. In explaining his refusal, he wrote: “I will not at this point correspond with any American institution. Some of us have lived through 1939.” What followed was an exchange between Dr. Amit and the editor in chief of the American Physical Society, which dealt with everything from the second Gulf War to the merits of scientific research for the good of mankind. “What we are watching today, I believe, is a culmination of 10 to 15 years of mounting barbarism of the American culture the world over,” he wrote. “It is crowned by the achievements of science and technology as a major weapon of mass destruction.” “We are witnessing a manhunt and wanton killing of a type and scale not seen since the raids on American-Indian populations by a superior technological power of inferior culture and values. We see no corrective force to restore the insanity, the self-righteousness and the lack of respect for human life — civilian and military — of another race,” he added, in reference to the US-led war on Iraq. In the end both parties agreed to disagree, and the exchange was posted online. Arab News interviewed Dr. Amit by e-mail about his exchange with the American Physical Society. ARAB NEWS: Why did you refuse to review a paper for the American Physical Society? DR. AMIT: The reason I took this step is that, with the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, all hope against hope that this pure aggression could be avoided were dashed. I felt that the basic values of enlightened culture were destroyed in a most blatant way, in a world where such values are increasingly needed. One of the central problems of modern global society is that the culture that publicizes itself as the example of democracy, enlightenment, modernity, culture, and freedom, is the one that puts global survival in danger. It does that by robbing the environment, and the war indicates that it can put such destruction into open military practice, with no internal (American) corrective forces.

Yanks go home
By Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, May 12, 2003
The UN should resist the US steamroller and press for an early end to the occupation of Iraq -- The speed with which the US is forfeiting the goodwill it had in Iraq is breathtaking. With the exception of the Kurds, most Iraqis opposed the invasion of their country, and once US troops had succeeded in toppling Saddam Hussein without massive casualties or tides of refugees the dominant emotion was relief. Public displays of gratitude were few, but there was widespread satisfaction that the dictator and his regime were gone. A month later, the mood has changed. Iraqis are staggered that the efficiency of the US fighting machine was not matched by post-conflict competence worthy of a superpower. Overriding everything is the issue of governance. Who is going to run Iraq, and will it be done for the benefit of Iraqis or of outside powers? Some reports suggest that Iraqis do not care who governs them, as long as someone competent ends the chaos soon. That is a false perception. American mismanagement in the first month of occupation has led an increasing number of Iraqis to distrust the whole US enterprise. Even America's Iraqi friends are having second thoughts. Many Iraqi exiles who were recruited months ago by Washington's Future of Iraq project, to work in Baghdad ministries alongside American "advisers" after regime change, are hesitating to take up their posts for fear of being seen as collaborators. The draft resolution on Iraq which the US put forward at the UN last Friday adds to the suspicions. It makes no mention of letting UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq. It threatens within four months to abolish the system of subsidised food rations on which 60% of Iraqis depended before the war, and which even more need now that the economy has collapsed. It awards the US almost total control over Iraq's oil revenues.

Visit Yasser Arafat? For God’s Sake, Why?
By Uri Avnery, Arab News, May 12, 2003
TEL AVIV, 12 May 2003 — ”Have you gone mad? Now? He is irrelevant! He’s finished!” These were the reactions of some people when Israeli TV showed my meeting with Yasser Arafat in Ramallah this week. Is Arafat “finished”? If so, he has not heard about it. I found him in splendid shape. At some of my meetings with him over the last few years he frequently looked tired, even distant and self-absorbed. This time he was in good spirits. He talked energetically, reacted rapidly, poked gentle fun at his assistants and made some biting remarks. For example, when we spoke about Sharon’s demand that Abu Mazen conduct mass arrests, he laughed: “But the Israelis have destroyed all our prisons, except the one in Jericho. And if we want to transfer a criminal there, we must ask the Quartet for a car, so as to be able to pass the Israeli checkpoints!” One can understand his lively mood. For the last year, his life has been hanging on a thread. Sharon could have sent his men to kill him at any moment. (Several times this danger seemed so close that my friends and I found it necessary to rush there as a human shield.) One of the Israeli officers boasted this week that “only a thin wall separated me from him.” Now this danger has been rendered more remote — even if Arafat is still confined to his small building, amid surrealistic ruins. During the last 45 years, his life has been in danger many times. Dozens of attempts have been made on his life. Once his airplane crash landed, killing several of his entourage. He survived it all. This time, too. His sense of relief is understandable. There is also physical relief. Since he returned to Palestine, his workload has been incredible. As he insisted on attending to practically everything himself, big things and small, he worked inhuman hours, often until the early hours of the morning. Now he is free of a substantial part of the routine work, and the results are obvious. But the main thing is that Arafat’s standing with his own people is now stronger than ever. Curiously enough, it is the appointment of a prime minister that has caused this. The appointment of Abu Mazen, which was intended by Sharon and Bush to “weaken” Arafat and to “push him aside”, has had the opposite effect.

It’s Culture Change in Iraq
By Afnan Fatani, Arab News, May 12, 2003
On April 10, during a pro-war demonstration in New York, Gov. Pataki told a cheering crowd: “The war started here on Sept. 11, 2001.” Like President Bush, Pataki is just one of countless US officials busy justifying the invasion of Iraq and promoting the lie that the Iraqis were responsible for the death of 3,000 people in the World Trade Center. Nobody mentions Osama Bin Laden anymore. Nobody mentions the fact that half the population of southern Iraq will die from cancers linked to the use of US uranium-tipped shells and missiles. Nobody mentions the chaos, lawlessness, looting and torching prevalent in postwar Iraq under US leadership and occupation. What these politicians are doing is basically denying the relevance of morality in politics and preaching the Machiavellian self-serving doctrine of the “end justifies the means.” The logic is it’s good to destroy and kill and maim thousands of civilians if it means getting rid of their leader who never actually attacked you but could possibly think of doing so in a distant future; it’s good to leave millions of people without water, power, food, sanitation or security just as long as you bring American democracy to the region. The last time I checked the American Heritage Dictionary, Machiavellian was an ugly word suggestive of deceit, cunning and expediency. It will continue to be ugly, even if American dictionary compilers decide to change the hard-core meaning of the word and impose a new definition. In effect, the ongoing looting and torching of museums, libraries, universities, schools, hospitals and other cultural and civic institutions in Iraq is not an attempt at regime change but at culture change. By stripping the Iraqi people of their collective heritage and destroying their ancient Mesopotamian roots, the Bush administration thinks it can recreate Iraq from scratch, reshape and remold its proud and nationalistic people and turn them into a nation of illiterates, thieves, cutthroats, and informants who willingly accept US occupation and Zionist hegemony.

The Roadmap to Serfdom
By Karen Kwiatkowski, LewRockwell.com, May 12, 2003
The spontaneous and magnificent order seen in among birds in flight is hard to understand, much less simulate. Yet, that is the noble challenge of the modern state. Woe to her! To manage from above a million details with a billion variations in time! Certainly a state can’t be expected to do it alone. It needs thousands of willing participants in its machinations, millions more silent and standing by, and it needs a roadmap. The latest roadmap is given to us from above by a Quartet of dominant states and superstates (US, EU, Russia and the UN). This roadmap, while appearing bland and spineless to the casual observer is really bland and spineless for a reason, and beyond that, it is a Very Important Document. I know this from my time working in the Pentagon where my bosses and co-workers spent an inordinate amount of time working on modifications to the roadmap over the past year. Why the Office of the Secretary of Defense was so interested in something more naturally seen as the purview of the State Department is a mystery; perhaps members of the Defense Policy Board found the subject intriguing. Dare I say neo-con cabal?....The Palestinians are wondering about water, too. They need wonder no more. Phase II of the Roadmap provides for a "Revival of multilateral engagement on issues including regional water resources, environment, economic development, refugees, and arms control issues." Well, isn’t that nice. Water is the most critical of regional issues, and the Jordan River Basin is its turbid soul. Israel gets this, figuratively and literally, as illustrated by the occupation of the Golan Heights (preventing non-Israeli approved diversion of the Jordan’s headwaters and managing the Yarmuk River) and its occupation of the West Bank (controlling the Yarqon-Taninim aquifer, reportedly the source of 20–40 percent of Israel’s sustainable water supply). The third major source of Israel’s water supply is the coastal aquifer bordering the Mediterranean Sea. However, this source, entirely under control of the state of Israel, has been over-drafted for years, is extensively salinized and a fourth of it is otherwise polluted. Fortuitously, the United States now controls the other big regional basin, the Tigris-Euphrates. With combined US and Israeli pressure on Turkey, Syria and Jordan, US-Israeli superstate …err… cooperative regional management of water is assured.

Peace and broken promises
Global Agenda Editorial, The Economist, May 12, 2003
No sooner has Colin Powell urged Israelis and Palestinians to follow a new “road map” towards peace than promises begin to unravel -- IT WAS an “historic moment”, said Colin Powell during his visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. But by the time America’s secretary of state left on Monday May 12th to continue his tour of the Middle East to promote the latest peace initiative, things had begun to unravel. With regime change accomplished in Iraq, a new prime minister installed in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and a new government in Israel, there was a momentous opportunity to end the violence that has flared between Israelis and Palestinians, Mr Powell announced. The two sides should follow the “road map” drafted by America with the support of the European Union, the United Nations and Russia. This calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state with “provisional” borders by 2004 and a fully fledged peace treaty by 2005. But Israeli ministers told Mr Powell they could not accept the road map as it was. Israel’s leader, Ariel Sharon, will meet President George Bush in Washington on May 20th to try to iron out a dozen or so “reservations”, including the plan’s call for an immediate freeze on the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. PA officials expressed bitter disappointment. Mr Powell did not see it that way. From the outset, his aim was said to be to get the two governments to concentrate less on the big issues that divide them (like settlements) and more on smaller issues where progress can more easily be made. The problem for the PA’s new prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen), is that unless the small issues are linked to the big ones he will be unable to rally most Palestinians behind the commitment he has made to accept the peace plan in its entirety.

Investigate Sharon
Editorial, Haaretz, May 12, 2003
Police Inspector General Shlomo Aharonishki said Saturday during an interview on Channel Two's "Meet the Press" that, "we will investigate whomever needs to be" with regard to the Greek island affair. He confirmed that the police recently received a request from the state prosecution to complete the probe into the affair and added, "we will do what is necessary, and it seems to me the prime minister knows that." The state attorney's office has already had about a year to examine police findings in the affair, which involves the prime minister and his son Gilad, Minister Ehud Olmert and others. The contract between David Appel and Gilad Sharon was revealed last week, during a civil court case (Olmert's libel suit against Yedioth Ahronoth), showing that Ariel Sharon's son was to get $3 million for his help in advancing Appel's plans to build a resort on the Greek island. Grave suspicions now allegedly hang over the heads of all those involved, including the prime minister. As published, the police are still completing their investigation, but there is no more room for procrastination. Based on what has so far been published, the need to investigate the prime minister is self-evident and presumably the time has come for an investigation that confronts him with all the evidence so far accumulated. The Basic Law for Government says the prime minister cannot be investigated on a criminal matter without the assent of the attorney general. It is not difficult to guess that the attorney general would agree to such a police request. The Greek island affair is not the only one in which the prime minister's name has been tied to behavior that is apparently ethically inappropriate and which could be perceived as allegedly criminal behavior. Last January, there were reports about the Sharon family receiving a $1.5 million loan from a family friend in South Africa, Cyril Kern. Such a loan is against the rules of ethics laid down by the Asher Committee, which prohibits ministers from receiving any personal benefits, whether directly or through relatives. On the face of it, receipt of such benefits raises suspicions of apparently criminal behavior involving bribery or breach of trust.

Which Sharon Will We See Next? Both, of Course
By Aluf Benn, Washington Post, May 11, 2003
On April 30, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave two senior White House officials his customary VIP treatment: a helicopter sightseeing tour over the West Bank. From the air, Sharon's distinguished guests -- deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and National Security Council senior director Elliott Abrams -- could gaze at the disputed Judea and Samaria mountains, green after an exceptionally rainy winter. And they could see the interwoven landscape of Palestinian towns and villages and Jewish settlements and "outposts" on recently captured hilltops. Sharon likes to take visitors on this trip. It's the same trip he made with then-Gov. George W. Bush in late 1998 to impress upon him Israel's small size and need for "security zones" surrounding Palestinian areas. But Sharon's office tried to keep this recent helicopter tour mum. Instead, the main news of that day was the presentation by U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, who gave Sharon an official copy of the "road map," the current magic formula for ending Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, and establishing a viable, peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel. Hadley and Abrams had come to Jerusalem on a discreet mission: to figure out where Sharon is leading Israeli policy in the wake of the Iraq war, and to assess the chances for movement on the stalemated Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It remains doubtful, however, whether afterwards Hadley or Abrams could give a definitive answer to the most vexing question of Mideast peacemaking these days: What does Sharon want? Since he took office in March 2001, the "Sharon riddle" has puzzled diplomats and commentators. Will Sharon make good on his recent talk of "painful concessions" and drag the Israeli right with him, or will he continue to rule as he has in the past, with a mixture of blunt force, agile (though not daring) domestic political maneuvers and skepticism of, if not outright contempt for, a negotiated peace with Palestinian leaders? Even senior Israeli officials sometimes admit in private that they have no idea about their prime minister's intentions.

Don't expect a Palestinian civil war  
By Danny Rubinstein, Haaretz, May 12, 2003
There isn't much chance Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) will try to use force to make Hamas and Islamic Jihad give up. He has often declared the need to cease all violent intifada activity and to maintain a single Palestinian Authority under a single law. He has also spoken of the need to collect the illegal weapons held by the various factions. But it's a long way from rhetoric to deeds. Abu Mazen's problem isn't Yasser Arafat breathing down his neck. He has a much graver problem - he doesn't have the political strength to fight Hamas. After the struggle to name Mohammed Dahlan as minister in charge of security, much was said about how Dahlan can take action against Hamas, the way he did in 1996. Dahlan, then head of Preventive Security in Gaza, and Jibril Rajoub, his counterpart in the West Bank, proved themselves - as far as Israel was concerned. Starting in 1996, they chased down Hamas activists and drastically reduced the number of terror attacks. With their help, the Netanyahu and Barak terms (until September 2000) were the quietest, security-wise, since the start of the peace process. But what happened then cannot repeat itself. In those years, from mid-1996 to the outbreak of the intifada, there were relatively few militant Islamic cells in the territories. The military wings of the opposition from the left (the Popular Fronts and the Democratic Fronts) were falling apart. And Fatah didn't even have a military wing. Dahlan and Rajoub didn't really have a lot of work. A few members of Hamas cells were killed in mysterious circumstances, a few hundred were arrested, and the activities of the Islamic fanatics were blocked.

The Ill Wind Blowing from the Border Police
By Gideon Levy, Palestine Media Center/Haaretz, May 12, 2003
The most brutal soldiers sometimes man the line of encounter between us and the Palestinians. Instead of sending the most elite units - if the occupation is doomed to continue - Israel chooses to send the Border Police, the corps with the history of the greatest violence against civilian populations. Instead of being kept well away from any contact with civilians, the Border Police continue to man some of the largest and most sensitive checkpoints in the West Bank and to patrol in the heart of the Palestinian cities and around them. The IDF is aware that the harm they do far outweighs their usefulness - and indeed, in a few cases Border Police units were removed from sensitive areas such as Hebron and Gaza. However, they are still present in most of the territories, and are as violent, crude and cruel as ever. True, we must not generalize, and certainly there are soldiers in the Border Police whose behavior is impeccable, but an extremely ill wind has always blown from that corps. The indictments filed last week against four members of the Border Police for killing a teenager, Amran Abu Hamadiya, in Hebron, who was physically abused and then thrown out of a moving jeep, and acts such as the abduction of other Palestinians as part of the appalling "punitive campaign" carried out by Border Policemen, have long since ceased to be "anomalies." This tendency has been apparent for as long as the Border Police has been stationed in the territories. Equally typical are the attempts to whitewash the affair: "The Border Police have nothing to do with the incident, and the Palestinians are trying to foist a libel on the corps," officers in the Border Police stated immediately after the story was reported. "There was no Border Police patrol there at the time," the sources added. Thus, the successes of the Border Police undercover unit are accompanied by a lengthy series of acts of abuse, looting and killing by members of the corps. There are several examples from the recent past.

Israel’s Covert Policy in Targeting Palestinian Antiquities
Editorial, International Press Center, May 11, 2003
The protection and preservation of the national heritage has been a part of the strategies of the national security for nations, as it gives a deep perspective in history, and enlightens the path towards superiority and development. Thus, the preservation of this heritage was a top priority in many countries. Palestine is rich with ancient monuments and archeological sites that provided documentation of a civilization that extended through history, and built by the Arabs. In an attempt to alter these historical facts, Israel has been keen on erasing history and creating a gap between time and place, as well as defaming the impressions of civilization, and to rip Palestinians the right in their land, culture and antiquities, slamming international legitimacy and human rights treaties against the wall. The occupation authorities' clandestine plot to loot, destroy and promote Palestinian heritage across the world as its own "Jewish" one, to legitimize all its actions, and give itself the right to exist on this occupied land – a plot that has been carefully planned in parallel with the daily aggressions, practiced in an unprecedented way against the Palestinian civilians. These allegations have been continuously confronted, and if several internal or external events have hindered these efforts, they didn't prevent them from moving on with its intended path.   Means adopted by Israel: Israel uses different means in carrying out its schemes. Mr. Ayman Hassouna, director general of antiquities department in the Palestinian ministry of tourism, pointed out in an interview with IPC that there're several Jewish schools specialized in biblical studies that are trying to fix stories in the Torah (holy book for Jews) and attempt to embed these stories, a thing that ignores several historical periods and sheds more light on others, for mere purpose of interpreting and establishing a history based on the Torah. Mr. Hassouna further said that the expansion of the illegitimate Jewish settlement forms a huge obstacle to experts’ excavations, which led to an increase in the area of the so called "C-territories", and it became more and more difficult to reach the excavation sites, as it involves great risk and the danger of annexation to the settlements.