Two Eyewitness Accounts of Israeli Military Violence Against Palestinian Children
By Adi Dagan and Peleg Levy, Dissident Voice, May 14, 2003
Two Israelis who witnessed Palestinians being shot by the IDF could not believe their eyes. -- In recent weeks, columnist Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz described two violent incidents in the territories in which a Palestinian boy was killed and a Palestinian girl was injured. In the wake of these articles, two eyewitnesses sent their testimonies on the circumstances of the shootings. Both raise serious questions concerning the behavior of IDF soldiers.   1. Deliberate shooting at children: I read Gideon Levy's article about the death of Omar Matar ("The 144th Child," Ha’aretz Magazine, April 11) following my own personal familiarity with the events that are described in it. As someone who personally witnessed the incident at the Qalandiyah checkpoint, on Friday, March 28, I can say that it was a traumatic, terrible, unimaginable experience. My girlfriend and I arrived at the site as members of WATCH, a group of Israeli women who oppose the occupation and who observe the checkpoints every day in the area of Jerusalem and the West Bank. This was not the first time we have seen what has become routine at the checkpoints: Children throwing stones at the fence near the Qalandiyah neighborhood and burning tires. Within a few minutes, a group of about 10 soldiers advanced in the direction of the children and began shooting at them. Stunned by what we were seeing - soldiers armed with rifles, wearing helmets and flak jackets shooting at a small group of schoolchildren - we immediately called the Benjamin Brigade commander, who told us that the orders to the soldiers that we had seen were to shoot rubber bullets in the air. I told him that I could see with my own eyes that they were not shooting in the air, but that they were shooting right at the children and that it is known that rubber bullets (which are really steel bullets covered in rubber) can kill. Within a short time, an ambulance came to the neighborhood's main street and we learned that a boy, Omar Musa Matar, had been shot in the head. Our warnings to the army had fallen on deaf ears and failed to prevent Omar's death. This incident brings a number of difficult thoughts to mind - thoughts about the imperviousness, cruelty and total contempt for Palestinian lives, which is reflected in the fact that after years of intifada, the Israel Defense Forces and the police have not yet found ways to disperse civilian riots that comply with international law; about the soldiers armed with rifles facing off against little children with stones; about the horrific disparity between the orders given by senior commanders and the reality on the ground, in which each soldier acts as he sees fit in the full knowledge that he will not be tried for murder, abuse, robbery or any other trampling of the law and human rights.

This conflict will be solved by liberation
By Uri Avnery, The Guardian, May 15, 2003
Tension between Abu Mazen and Arafat reflects a national dilemma -- The clash between Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen is not a personal matter, as it is presented by journalists. Of course, egos do play a role, as in all political fights. But the controversy goes deeper. It reflects the unique situation of the Palestinian people. An upper-class Palestinian defined it on Israeli television as "the move from the culture of revolution to the culture of a state". Meaning: the Palestinian war of liberation has ended, and the time has come to put the affairs of state in order. Therefore Arafat, who represents the first, must go and Abu Mazen, who represents the second, must take over. No description could be further from reality. The Palestinian war of liberation is now at its height. The Palestinians are faced with existential threats: ethnic cleansing (so-called "transfer") or imprisonment in Bantustan-style enclaves. How has this illusion - that the national struggle is over and it is time to turn to administrative matters - arisen? The situation of the Palestinian people is unique. Following the Oslo agreements, a Palestinian mini-state came into being, consisting of several small enclaves on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. These enclaves have to be administered. But the national Palestinian aim - a viable, independent state - is far from being attained. In order to achieve it, an arduous struggle lies ahead. Thus, two different, and contradictory, structures exist side by side: a national liberation movement requiring strong and authoritative leadership, and a mini-state that needs a democratic and transparent administration. Arafat represents the first. He is much more than a "symbol". He is a leader possessing an unequalled moral authority among his people and vast experience in international affairs. He has steered the Palestinian movement away from subjugation to Arab and international interests and led it from near-oblivion to the threshold of independence. Abu Mazen and his colleagues represent the second reality. They have no solid base among their own people, but do have connections with powerful players, most importantly the US and Israel.

The age of seeing
By Aziza Sami, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 8 - 14 May 2003
Discovering one clear outcome of the Iraq war -- the sudden political awakening of the younger generations -- Until the events of the recent war, my 16- year-old son, a high-school student in Montreal, had appeared to me to be a "typical teenager" -- wrapped up in his own daily affairs, oblivious of anything not directly under his own nose. I could see him in my mind's eye, so far away in Canada, sitting in his room for hours. He is lost in his world of rap music, downloading songs, swapping CDs and listening to his hero Tupac Shakur, who has reached heights no other rapper ever will. For eight months I had engaged him in a one- sided monologue comprised of more than 40 e-mails to which he had typically responded, after a lengthy silence, with two monosyllabic messages. Ironically, it was the issue of the war in Iraq that enabled me to get to know a part of him that I never knew existed. Why not probe him one more time, I told myself. I e-mailed him a couple of questions about Iraq and Palestine, not sure whether he ever thought about them. Less than 10 minutes later, the response popped up on the screen: "re: about Iraq", the questions neatly re-typed along with the answers: Q. What do you think about the war in Iraq? Are you for or against it and why? A. Of course I think about it and am against it because I think it is unjustified. If Bush really wants to free Iraq from Saddam's oppression, he shouldn't do it by killing innocent people. Two wrongs don't make a right. Q. What about the Palestinian question? A. I think about it and see history repeating itself. It's like when the Europeans "entered" North America and "settled" there. Isn't it enough that the Middle East gave civilisation, writing and learning to the world? Do they have to come and take its land too? Q. Do you think either of these problems can be resolved soon? A. Probably not, not as long as America is the world's superpower.

Deterring the Empire
By Ian Williams, AlterNet, May 13, 2003
While the Bush administration focused its diplomatic might on the Middle East, the more important developments for the future of the American empire were taking place in Europe. First, Germany, France, Belgium and Luxemburg got together and agreed to cooperate more fully in military matters. Then Greece, as the current EU president, called on member nations to come together to hold joint military preparations. And just this week, even close ally and Iraq war supporter Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi made a surprising argument for the admission of Turkey and Russia to the Union: "Europe will only be able to look at the United States not as a subordinate if it becomes a great Europe, not only great in the economic sense but also important in the sense of military authoritativeness," he said. Washington is not amused. As Elaine Sciolino wrote in the New York Times, "(T)heir timing could not have been worse." While the Bush administration complains often and bitterly about Europe's low levels of defense spending, it wants them to stick to the script: provide the 21st Century equivalent of the British Empire's Indian sepoy troops, cough up colonial levies to support U.S. military initiatives, and police fallen cities after the Marines have stormed through. Unhappily for the neoimperialists, the Europeans have other ideas. Last month's meeting was only the first tentative step toward creating a military counterbalance to the overweening power of the United States. But as Washington's apoplectic reaction revealed, any hint of independent military might, no matter how small, is galling, especially if, as now, there is a Gallic component to it. Both the Russians and the French have sound reasons for pursuing a diplomatic strategy quite different from that of Britain, which has hitched its fortunes to American coat-tails since World War II. Russia is faced with domestic dissatisfaction over the failure to emulate the United States. On the domestic front, the much-touted liberal economic policies have not brought the promised magical transformation. In the international arena, Washington seized on Gorbachev's hand of friendship as a sign of surrender and the demise of Russia's superpower status. Putin's fortunes are tied to restoring Russia's injured national pride. Similarly, France has never reconciled itself to a dependent role in its relationship with the United States. Be it through the auspices of the EU, the UN or NATO, the French want recognition. However, American diplomacy being what it is, Washington has never bothered to stroke their national ego. But their strategy is based on more than just wounded pride. France, Russia and China agree on the need to counter the U.S. push to create a unipolar world – and they possess the economic and military means to offer the required resistance.

Silencing an Uppity Immigrant
By Kari Lydersen, AlterNet, May 12, 2003
When a mentally ill Somali man was shot and killed by police in March 2002, Omar Jamal was there. When a 66-year-old Somali was beaten to death at a bus stop in Oct. 2001 and the FBI was hesitating to investigate it as a hate crime, Omar Jamal was there. When brawls were breaking out between African-American students and Somalis at a large high school in Sept. 2001, Omar Jamal was there. And when the FBI began investigating Somali charities and currency transfer businesses after Sept. 11, he was there as well. Jamal is currently facing federal criminal and civil charges that he gave false information on his immigration documents when he entered the country five years ago. If convicted, he would likely be ordered deported, though given the fact that there is currently a ban on deportations of Somali immigrants, he might find himself facing an indefinite stint in detention. The Department of Homeland Security and Attorney General John Ashcroft are still seeking the right to deport Somalis, with the war on terrorism bolstering their arguments. Since he arrived in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area five years ago, Jamal has been an outspoken advocate for the nation's largest community of Somali immigrants. The 30-year-old immigrant, trained as a microbiologist, is the founder and executive director of the St. Paul-based Somali Justice Advocacy Center, which does pro bono legal work for Somali immigrants along with community organizing and activism. There are an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 Somalis in the Twin Cities, though the 2000 census lists only 11,164 in the state. Most came since the start of the civil war in Somalia 1991. There are substantial strips of Somali restaurants and bazaars, and many residents describe it as a welcoming place for Somali immigrants. But as in most cities and towns with large immigrant populations, there are plenty of tensions and problems. In a metropolis which is 60 percent white, Somalis are not only African but Muslim as well, making them targets of racism and prejudice manifested in housing discrimination, hate crimes and police brutality. Somalis say the release of the movie Blackhawk Down, about the United States' ill-fated intervention in Mogadishu in 1993, noticeably added to the racism and misunderstanding they encountered from non-Somali residents.

Did anyone notice what Assad said?
By Michael Young, The Daily Star, May 14, 2003
Many observers missed the most interesting item in Syrian President Bashar Assad’s much-publicized interview with the Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth last weekend. It had to do with the conditions under which Syria would agree to resume negotiations with Israel. Weymouth asked Assad: “What is the basis on which you are offering to start talks with Israel?” He responded: “UN resolutions, Madrid, and the Saudi initiative.” She followed up with this question: “Do you demand that Israel agree to give back what Prime Minister (Ehud) Barak offered, or will you negotiate without conditions?” Assad replied: “If you want to negotiate, you need a basis. So the basis is the Madrid conference.” This dovetailed with a statement last week by Butheina Shaaban of Syria’s Foreign Ministry, in which she remarked: “Syria is always ready to resume negotiations on the basis of the Madrid Conference, UN Security Council resolutions and the principle of land for peace.” Shaaban was speaking after an Israeli newspaper reported that Assad’s brother, Maher, had met with a high-ranking Israeli Foreign Ministry official in Amman to see about resuming talks with Israel. Something fundamental seems to have changed in Syria’s negotiating stance vis-a-vis Israel, and the statements by Assad and Shaaban, as well as those by unofficial Syrian representatives in the past year, indicate what it is: Syria has quietly abandoned its demand that past understandings reached bilaterally with Israel after Madrid be the basis for any new negotiations. Why should this matter? Because in his rounds of talks with successive Israeli governments, the late President Hafiz Assad fought tooth and nail to ensure that prior understandings would be respected. There was a reason for this: Syria had extracted significant concessions from Israel, helping push their talks, in the words of Israeli negotiator Itamar Rabinovich, to the brink of peace.

Road Map: Last Call for Peace
By Fawaz Turki, Arab News, May 15, 2003
Those of us who have been following Mideast peace plans for well over three decades, from the Rogers Peace Plan to the Geneva Conference, and from Camp David I to the Oslo Accords, are to be forgiven for thinking of them as situation comedies that keep turning up as reruns. They begin as goodwill initiatives that make their excruciatingly slow progress from the drawing board to the negotiating table and then to the real world — where they founder. Then, years later comes the rerun, albeit under a new name. And so it goes. For months, we wondered whether this time around, the latest American-brokered, internationally backed peace effort known as the road map would make it to the finish line. As Colin Powell, the American secretary of state, ended his official visit to Palestine last weekend, we stopped wondering. Israel, very simply, refused to accept this latest peace plan. Powell claimed, improbably, that despite that posture by the Israeli side, there was “sufficient agreement on elements” in it to move forward, but failed to convince anyone how that would be accomplished. Further compounding the picture during Powell’s tour was the Israeli military’s imposition of the tightest crackdown on travel into and out of Gaza since the current uprising began in September 2000, and its killing of three Palestinians there, including a farm worker tilling a field near an army observation post — making a mockery of the whole notion of a “peace process.” What it boils down to is this: It is all up to President Bush and whether he is willing to stand up and be counted. In other words, does he have the resolve to free himself from the stranglehold of the Christian right — whose fanatic support of Israel derives from kooky beliefs about “the second coming” in the Holy Land — and the armlock that Ariel Sharon has around his neck?

We're All Israelis Now – Except for the Palestinians
By Matthew Barganier, Antiwar.com, May 12, 2003
Westernization is proceeding smoothly in Iraq, if imitation of Israel is your yardstick, anyway. Iraqis have demonstrated that they too can evict Palestinians, and with admirable swiftness. You see, many of those who fled to Iraq after 1948 were placed, ironically, in the confiscated homes of dissidents. Now, as if to remind the Palestinians that neither justice nor injustice will ever smile upon them, they have been expelled again. Of course, one understands the expropriated Iraqis. They aren't asserting some nebulous claim to an ancestral homeland – they're reclaiming specific properties that were ripped from their hands. The new residents were not magically entitled to anything because of past sufferings. No matter how sad your story is, I can't give you my neighbor's house, and it won't become yours just because you stay there for 55 years. Unless the U.S. government says so, that is. But at least justice prevailed in this case. Or did it? Yes, those Iraqis had a right to their property, but what crime had the Palestinians committed? They moved into homes that were stolen before they arrived. They could not return those homes to the rightful owners (who were, after all, enemies of the state), and refusal of these "gifts" would have meant deportation or worse. Thanks to U.S. meddling throughout the region, they are now homeless and despised, with nowhere to go. Not that the Middle East lacks marketable real estate. Take the Negev. The Israeli government has lost interest in its once promising southern frontier, what Lova Eliav, the man appointed to settle the area 50 years ago, believed would become the country's heartland. Today, Eliav is bitter, and the Negev remains a void where few live and none prosper. One of its few population centers is Ansar, a prison holding thousands of convicts from the second intifada. Why, then, do settlers flood the West Bank as tumbleweeds bounce across the south? Eliav interviewer Daniel Ben Simon smells "the rotten messianic fruit that captured the country after the Six-Day War." In Eliav's words: "How absurd. It goes on to this very day. The state invests billions in the territories, and abandons the Negev. Everyone is guilty in this crime. Right-wing governments and left-wing governments preferred settlements in the territories to settlements in the Negev. It's simply crazy." The Negev's malaise has not been quarantined. Even though terrorism is down, soup kitchens are booming in Jerusalem, and Israeli economists expect unemployment to hit 12% this year. Given these bleak omens, one wonders why successive governments squander the nation's fortune on expansion, an appetite long divorced from reason. When Ariel Sharon must import Indians from Peru to fill the void his bulldozers leave, one wonders whether Zionism retains any meaning.

When Bush comes to shove, he'll hug  
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz, May 15, 2003
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon believes his meeting with President George Bush next week will be as successful as the seven previous ones. There are indications this will be so. For the first time, Sharon and his entourage have been invited to dinner at the White House after the formal working session. American officials this week said the administration understands Israel's comments on the road map very well. It agrees to 12 of the 14 amendments and assumes a creative solution can be found for the two remaining. The prime minister's aides expect the final version of the road map to include the Israeli comments. Colin Powell and David Satterfield, the envoy who remained for follow-up talks after the secretary of state's visit, told every Israeli they met that President Bush is determined to be personally involved in solving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The war in Iraq ended in victory and now it's time to implement the presidential vision of "the Palestinian flag, raised above a free, independent state," as Bush said in his speech last Friday. His listeners had difficulty being convinced after more than two years of the Americans keeping out of the crisis. But those who listened to Bush in private conversations got the impression that he takes the "two-state vision" seriously. The president speaks of freedom and liberation for the Palestinians, and after reading the road map he said it corresponded with the principles of his speech of June 24. He seems to believe the Palestinian state will indeed by established.

The mountain roared: Powell's Road Map fiasco
By Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, May 14, 2003
Once more the mountain roared and produced nothing. The much acclaimed visit of the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, to Israel and Palestine has ended with no yield, instantly deflating any hopes that may have developed earlier as a result of the repeated promises and the "firm" commitment from President George Bush on his unwavering determination to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict by implementing the road map. Taking stock of the losses of this disappointing move for all concerned parties reveals a very disturbing picture that goes far beyond the bitter reality of another "promising" attempt and another instant failure, into the erosion of any superpower credibility and efficacy for a long time to come, and leaving many losers and no winners. One loser is the Palestinian prime minister. The Palestinians, their new prime minister in particular, will find themselves now in a very untenable and indeed highly critical situation, stuck with a commitment to implement their share of a road map which they had unconditionally accepted, but without getting anything in return, except the vague and the empty goodwill words from the secretary of state's concluding remarks in his press conference. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has been severely let down by his American guest whose constant demand from the Palestinians to dismantle the "terrorist" groups as a prerequisite for any further action, constantly affirmed during the visit, was not matched by any credible promise of any reciprocal Israeli measure to make Abbas' task approachable. Ariel Sharon had already been deliberately placing impassable roadblocks ahead of Abbas, not only by maintaining but by significantly escalating attacks on Palestinian towns and camps, assassinations by firing air to ground missiles, detentions, incursions and demolition of houses. More than 23 Palestinians were killed in the week which followed the publication of the road map, in addition to being subjected to many other barbaric atrocities. Of course, a few Israelis were also killed, but that precisely is the point; it is the needed, and indeed the provoked Palestinian response which Israeli propaganda spreads and magnifies as proof of continued Palestinian terror. This violence is the needed cover for Israeli rejection of the road map and it is used to place the blame squarely on the Palestinian side for its inability to end "terror".