The Daughter I Can't Hear From
By Carrie Corrie, AlterNet, May 15, 2003
Editor's Note: Remarks delivered at Sylvester Park, Olympia, Washington, May 11, 2003. -- To all moms here, happy Mothers' Day. This is a day some of us wait for in order to have a little reward for all the time we have spent in our lives reminding and making sure that all of the family birthdays, Fathers' Day, and important days in our families' lives are properly acknowledged. We deserve this day! We have earned it! I have had lovely Mothers' Days in my life. When my children were younger, I had to remain in bed until they could serve me breakfast there – French toast (sometimes a little crispier than usual) and orange juice – always lovingly, sometimes messily, most often safely prepared. There were gifts – handmade cards, poems, drawings, and coupon books. The latter promised hours of house cleanings, meals to be prepared on one of my busier days, and sometimes an unlimited number of hugs. I think I always collected on the hugs. I probably didn't redeem all of the other coupons offered; but I knew on those mothers' days that my children's hearts and minds were filled with finding creative, tangible (and inexpensive) ways to say "I love you, Mom." I am not sure that even now they completely, consciously understand that their greatest gift to me has always been simply in their being. This Mothers' Day, of course, is a unique one for me. As my kids grew into adulthood and as we spread out across the country, on Mothers' Day I could count on a phone call from each of them – three kid calls in one day. (For AT&T and Sprint, Mothers' Day is winning the lottery.) This year, I hear from Chris and Sarah by phone and in person. Not from Rachel, who on March 16 was killed by a bulldozer in the Gaza Strip, while trying to protect a Palestinian home from demolition. Rachel is, though, powerfully with me – in the same way, I am sure, that other mothers have their lost children powerfully with them on this day. The possibility of Mothers' Day 2003 having more than the usual significance was sparked for me before Rachel died – a week before, when I was in Washington DC with other women gathered to challenge the pending war with Iraq. I spent a day in workshops and came across mothers planning to take Mothers Day back to its roots in this country, to Julia Ward Howe and her Declaration calling for a Mothers Day of Peace, and her model of challenging injustice and violence wherever it might be.

A Road Map to the Oslo Cul-de-Sac
By Adam Hanieh and Catherine Cook, Middle East Report, May 15, 2003
The "road map" to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the subject of Secretary of State Colin Powell's recent diplomacy in the Middle East, may never reach the conclusion of its first phase. To date, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has yet to accept the initiative developed by the Quartet of the US, UN, European Union and Russia. Powell's May 11 visits with Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas failed to produce any significant developments -- their aftermath punctuated by Sharon's public dismissal of a settlement freeze and advisers close to Abbas reporting that Palestinians will take no action toward militant groups until Sharon formally accepts the road map. In Arab capitals, Powell reached an agreement with governments to assist the Palestinian leadership in cracking down on militant groups, but encountered distrust over Israel's failure to accept the text of the Quartet's document. While most coverage of the road map is informed by the feeling that it is the only option on the table and thus constitutes the best chance of achieving an elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace, reports in the past week have afforded greater attention to the diplomatic comings and goings of US officials and Israel's position on the settlement freeze called for in phase I of the document. But narrow focus on the first phase of the road map misses structural flaws that will plague the initiative even if it outlives attempts to kill it in its infancy. The road map offers no new path forward, but simply repackages many of the flaws that led to the failure of the Oslo "peace process" of the 1990s. Many critics have argued since the 1993 Oslo accord that the Oslo process was not a plan for peace, but a plan to institutionalize the Israeli occupation. By transferring limited powers to the newly established Palestinian Authority, the Israeli army could redeploy outside Palestinian population centers, decreasing the level of risk to its own soldiers while maintaining the occupation through checkpoints and periodic closures. Oslo's phased implementation postponed discussion of the central issues -- borders, settlements, Jerusalem, refugees -- to the end, while allowing Israel to prejudice the outcome of "final status" negotiations with newly created "facts on the ground."

Socialism Lives!
By Barbara Ehrenreich, AlterNet, May 15, 2003
KEY WEST, Fla. – With Washington fixated on the looming war between the departments of State and Defense, almost no one has noticed an even stranger development within the Bush administration – its sudden, and apparently wholehearted, embrace of socialism. Echoing sentiments expressed in an earlier era by Eugene V. Debs and Woody Guthrie, Colin Powell declared recently, "Iraq's oil belongs to the Iraqi people." There's been no comment yet from Exxon Mobil on the possible application of this principle to the homeland, but Powell's words seemed sincere – unlike those other feel-good phrases the right is always tossing off, like "compassionate conservatism" and "free elections." In fact, the conservative press is filled with ideas for how to distribute the wealth to the people and keep it out of the hands of "Iraqi elites." In addition to spreading the oil wealth around, the Bush administration has committed itself to generous public services – though only, so far, in Iraq. Schools will be repaired, damaged infrastructure rebuilt and education made available even to the poorest. There will be quality health care for all. Imagine: A universal health program, of the kind that has eluded Americans for at least half a century, will be created with a snap of the imperial fingers in Iraq. Did I say socialism? Make that democratic socialism, verging on utopian anarchism. In President Bush's vision of the ideal state, there will be perfect democracy combined with a sweetly forgiving attitude toward wrongdoers. Already, Iraqis are free to demonstrate by the thousands, shouting, "Americans get out!" and even ruder things. Commenting on the looting that swept Baghdad in the first days of that city's invasion by U.S. troops, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld stated (defense lawyers please take note): "It's untidy. And freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." That's not, I suspect, what Rumsfeld was saying after the rioting that followed the Rodney King decision.

'Iraq — deconstructed, rather than rebuilt'
By Michael Jansen, Jordan Times, May 16, 2003
"... the Saudis have already rebuilt a hospital, while the office buildings of UNDP and UNICEF are already up and running." -- BAGHDAD'S new rulers camp in the grand rooms of the vast Jumhurriya Palace complex. They sit on ornate, brocade-covered Louis Khamstache (IV) chairs and sleep on folding canvas cots brought in by the army. Three, or perhaps four, heavy helmeted heads of Saddam Hussein mounted on the roof of the main building stare out over Baghdad as its buildings smoulder and its citizens cower in their home while robbers and murderers roam the streets. Baghdad has become another Beirut in the bad old days of the civil war. But Beirut had the advantage of always having some sort of governance. Baghdad has none. Barbara Bodine, a former US ambassador given the task of governing the capital and central sector of the country, has been sent home for failing to impose security and jump-start utilities. General Jay Garner, the Pentagon's man who drew the Kurds from the hills in 1991 while serving as governor of the northern provinces, is departing in less than two weeks' time. The new viceroy is L. Paul Bremer, a “terrorism” expert associated with the neoconservatives who launched the war. He is just beginning his stint in the Jumhuriyya Palace, far below Saddam's grim, stony visage. It is not certain that Bremer is any more fit to govern than his predecessors. “The US is not a nation builder,” said George Bush both before and after he took his seat in the Oval Office of the White House, a far more modest place than the Jumhuriyya Palace, built along the lines of Egypt's spectacular Khedival palaces. Bush was right. The US waged war on Afghanistan, brought down the Taleban, then left it to the warlords. It looks like this is happening here in Baghdad as well.....One excellent example of almost instant rebuilding is the Sheikh Zayed hospital in Baghdad. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) decided to establish a hospital. It took over a building, the Olympic hospital built by Uday Hussein, the former president's elder son. That hospital had been completely looted. Even the electrical wiring had been stolen. A week later, it was a functioning hospital, an island of cleanliness and sanity in a sea of decay and dirt. Its gates are under siege throughout the day, six days a week....The UN Development Programme (UNDP) and UNICEF have accomplished similar miracles of rebuilding in a week's time by drawing upon the skills of Iraqi technicians, contractors and labourers.

A Road Map That Makes All the Difference
Ismail Ibrahim Nawwab, Special to Arab News
Bring two protagonists, a nuclear-armed Colossus and a toothless pygmy, into an arena and have them slog out their differences through “negotiations.” What should any reasonable person expect? The whimpering underdog will be whipped into surrender. This American-orchestrated match is known as the road map to Middle East peace. The two unequal parties are the superpowerful Israelis and the defenseless Palestinians. This map, therefore, carries in its womb the seeds of failure. But there is another promising road map whose time has come. The world should clamor for its realization. Let us first examine the background of the American-backed road map. The United States has proven over the years, and never so much as under the current Bush administration, that it is a meek dog that is wagged by its tail Israel. The US has tried its hand at breaking this explosive impasse, but always on terms favorable to Israel. Because of its intensely blazing love affair with an intransigent Israel and its utterly cold disregard for justice for the helpless Palestinians, the US attempts to settle this problem have met with resounding failures over too many bloodstained years....The world can nevertheless still hope for a realistic solution. Another road map already exists which, if supported by the United States and others, will bring peace to all parties. After unsuccessfully trying other solutions for many years, it is time now to breathe new life into the old road map which has delineated clearly the path to an equitable and fair solution to this issue. This plan requires the immediate implementation of previous UN resolutions which, incidentally, have, years ago, been accepted and endorsed by all Security Council members, including the US. Why do we allow Israel to bypass, dilute and flout UN resolutions? And why does the international community let a partisan United States come up with the preposterous idea of solving a chronic problem through negotiations between two unequal parties?

Sharon A, Sharon B and the dictator
By Gideon Samet, Haaretz, May 16, 2003
This week, the prime minister offered a simple reply to a nagging question. The question: When all is said and done, are you serious about those "painful concessions" for peace? The reply: No. There was a total contradiction, almost an insult to the intelligence, between what he said to Haaretz last month about the need to say good-bye to "some of those places - Bethlehem, Shiloh, Beit El," and his remarks this week to interviewers from The Jerusalem Post ("I'm asking you: Do any of you see such a possibility?"). This is not just Sharon the politician playing another of his little tricks. A week before he meets with the American president, it clarifies the most critical issue on which we are liable to be misled. Denying any wrongdoing, Sharon says he was misunderstood the first time around. He doesn't have to try too hard when it comes to explaining. Disrespect for the truth has become an orgiastic pleasure in Israeli politics. In the current atmosphere of lies and spin, statements like these don't hold up for more than two days anyway. We all know that nothing was misunderstood. It's like Churchill, pardon the comparison, saying he didn't mean "blood, sweat and tears." What he really meant was "cool, awesome, way to go." What Sharon A said was perfectly clear? Sharon B says you've got to be kidding. This week, Sharon had another attack of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde syndrome. It's something he's suffered from for years, but somehow the timing seemed especially bad. Did it have to be right before a tense meeting with Bush? Yet there are more and more signs that the meeting won't be so tense. The president didn't prod Sharon into coming up with any kind of conciliatory gesture to appease his secretary of state, thereby dooming Colin Powell's trip to failure.

Guaranteed Failure Of The Roadmap
By Tanya Reinhart, ZMag, May 15, 2003
Every few months, a "peace plan" is pulled out of the drawers of the white house and keeps the public discourse busy for a few weeks. Although this ritual has a fixed pattern and predetermined end, it is curious that many in Israel are still tempted to believe that this time it is different. The Road Map announces that this time "the destination is a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by 2005". To check if it offers anything concrete in this direction, it is necessary to first get clear regarding what the conflict is about. From Israeli discourse one might get the impression that it is about the right of return: the Palestinians are trying to undermine the mere existence of the state of Israel with the demand to allow their refugees to return, and they are trying to achieve that with terror. It seems that it was forgotten that in practice this is a simple and classical conflict over land and resources (water). The Road Map document as well manifests complete absence of any territorial dimension. The demands from the Palestinians are clear: to establish a government that will be defined by the U. S. as democratic, to form three security forces which will be defined by Israel as reliable, and to crush terror. Once these demands are fulfilled, the third phase is to begin, at which the occupation will miraculously end. But the document doesn't put any demands on Israel at this third phase. Most Israelis understand that there is no way to end the occupation and the conflict without the Israeli army leaving the territories and the dismantlement of settlements. But these basic concepts are not even hinted at in the document, which only mentions freezing the settlements and dismantling new outposts, already the first stage. The first stage is more substantial, because it repeats the Tenet plan. In this stage Israel is expected also to "withdraw from Palestinian areas occupied from Sept 28 2000... [and to restore] the status quo that existed then". There is no doubt that fulfillment of this demand can contribute greatly to establishing some calm, even if a temporary one. Had I believed that the European representatives in the quartet could bring this plan to implementation, I would have welcomed it. But there is no basis for such a belief. The Tenet plan has come into the spotlights many times before. The last round was what appeared to be an American cease-fire initiative in March 2002, for which Zinni and Cheney were sent to the region. Already then Sharon clarified that he does not agree to this demand, and he only agrees to easing the conditions for the population in areas in which quiet will be preserved (Ha'aretz, Aluf Ben, 19.3.02). This did not prevent the U.S. from pointing at the Palestinians as the side that refused the cease fire. With the end of this initiative, Israel embarked on the "Defensive Shield" spree of destruction, with the blessing of the U.S.

Settlements: a user guide
By Gabriel Ash, YellowTimes.org, May 15, 2003
(YellowTimes.org) – Colin Powell's list of humiliations in Israel included a lecture by Prime Minister Sharon explaining to him why Israel cannot stop expanding settlements. Sharon asked Powell, "What do you want, for a pregnant woman to have an abortion just because she is a settler?" The imagery of settlers as benign civilians, just wanting to live their lives as they choose, serves Sharon's intentions of burying the "roadmap" and saving Israel once more from the looming threat of peace. Indeed, the continuing expansion of settlements during the Oslo process already "saved" Israel from peace once. From 1993 to 2001, settler population in the West Bank increased 91 percent, convincing Palestinians that Israel had no intentions to leave the Occupied Territories. But that imagery is false. West Bank settlements are nothing like suburbs in New Jersey. They are a fundamental aspect of what is unique about Israel. It is therefore necessary to understand settlements for what they really are -- weapons. The Hebrew words for "settlement" are yeshuv and hityashvut. Israelis do not apply these words to settlements in the Occupied Territories, but rather to earlier settlements: the kibbutzim and moshavim (collective farming communities) created both before and after 1948 in areas that are today Israel. The opposite of yeshuv is wasteland or desert, Shmamma. The usage hints at the mythical "emptiness" of Palestine in early Zionist imagination -- the desert that awaits the settlers to make it bloom. This myth ignores the fact that Palestinians already lived in Palestine for generations. In contrast, the Hebrew word used to describe post-1967 settlements in the Occupied Territories is hitnakhlut, a word of biblical origin which means roughly "settling down on one's patrimony." The opposite meaning is nomadism, wandering in the desert. The change in usage reflects the transformation of Zionism from the colonial mindset of the early settlers to the religious fanaticism of the post 1967 settlers. Another set of words that describe settlements in Hebrew comes from military terminology: lookout, outpost -- Mitzpe, Ma'akhaz, He'akhzut, etc. The early Zionist settlers are often referred to as "pioneers" in English. However, the Hebrew word they themselves use, khalutz, comes from the military lexicon. It means "scout."

New Front Sets Sights On Toppling Iran Regime
Forward, May 16, 2003
A budding coalition of conservative hawks, Jewish organizations and Iranian monarchists is pressing the White House to step up American efforts to bring about regime change in Iran. For now, President Bush's official stance is to encourage the Iranian people to push the mullah regime aside themselves, but observers believe that the policy is not yet firm, and that has created an opportunity for activists. Neoconservatives advocating regime change in Tehran through diplomatic pressure — and even covert action — appear to be winning the debate within the administration, several knowledgeable observers said. "There is a pact emerging between hawks in the administration, Jewish groups and Iranian supporters of Reza Pahlavi [the exiled son of the former shah of Iran] to push for regime change," said Pooya Dayanim, president of the Iranian-Jewish Public Affairs Committee in Los Angeles and a hawk on Iran. The emerging coalition is reminiscent of the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, with Pahlavi possibly assuming the role of Iraqi exile opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi, a favorite of neoconservatives. Like Chalabi, Pahlavi has good relations with several Jewish groups. He has addressed the board of the hawkish Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and gave a public speech at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, and met with Jewish communal leaders. Pahlavi also has had quiet contacts with top Israeli officials. During the last two years, according to a knowledgeable source, he has met privately with Prime Minister Sharon and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Israel's Iranian-born president, Moshe Katsav. In another parallel to the pre-invasion debate over Iraq, an intense policy battle is heating up between the State and Defense departments over what to do in Iran. "The president, the vice president and, even more so, the Pentagon support regime change," said a source who follows the internal debate closely. "But State does not want to meddle in Iran, so you have a big fight right now within the administration." As was the case during the Iraq debate, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol is leading the charge for a more aggressive policy on Iran. In the magazine's May 12 issue, he wrote an editorial pushing for covert action and other steps to trigger regime change in Tehran.

What would it take to heal the wounds?
By Dr. Daud Abdullah, Palestinian Information Center, May 16, 2003
Under normal circumstances, time can be a natural healer of wounds. The atrocities committed at Deir Yassin on 9th. April 1948 were, however, an exception to this rule. Instead of alleviating their pain, time increased the agony of Deir Yassins survivors. To these victims, Justice was never done, nor seen to be done; even though the massacre constituted an appalling crime not only against themselves but also humanity. In the event, neither Ben Gurions letter of apology to King Abdullah I of Jordan nor the change of its name to Kafr Shaul was enough to cover up the crime or erase the memory of Deir Yassin. While the massacre remains a permanent symbol of Israeli brutality and inhumanity, it was by no means an isolated event. Similar acts of barbarity against civilians were executed with equal impunity throughout the last fifty years. If nothing else changed during the period, the methods of mass murder certainly became more deadly and devastating. The April 1996 bombing of the United Nations camp in Qana, southern Lebanon, was, indeed, one of the more recent and staggering examples. There, over 100 old-men, women, and children perished.   Crimes and atrocities: With regard to Deir Yassin itself, the murder of 254 defenceless civilians was, without doubt, grossly reprehensible. Notwithstanding, the manner in which this was done was itself more revolting. Here was a village whose inhabitants had entered into an agreement of mutual non-aggression with the Jews from the neighboring Givat Shaul and Montefore settlements. In spite of that, the attack it appeared, had become absolutely necessary by April 1948 in order to induce the birth of Israel and make Palestine as Jewish as England is English. The Zionists were, of course, not the only ones who were guilty of bad faith. Having solemnly promised in the Balfour Declaration that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, the British mandatory failed to prevent the massacre. Indeed, when the then High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham heard of the killings he ordered his commander of ground forces, Lt. Gen. Gordon MacMillan, to send troops to Deir Yassin. The latter refused, claiming that such an intervention was not in the pursuit of British interests.