Fighting the conspiracy of silence
By Huwaida Arraf, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 29 May - 4 June, 2003
The International Solidarity Movement's efforts to protect the Palestinians from Israeli oppression -- The newest threat to Israel's massive security establishment -- that is, the entire Israeli state project itself, most significantly the settlements and military bases throughout the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem -- is an unarmed, multi-ethnic, multi-national entity called the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). In recent weeks, this Palestinian-led movement of Palestinian and international activists pursuing civilian-based, direct action, strategic unarmed resistance to the Israeli occupation, has come under attack by Israeli forces and the Israeli government. First there were the attacks against the international activists -- threats, intimidation, the shooting of Caiohme Butterly in the leg in Jenin, then her deportation; a few months later the Israeli military killed Rachel Corrie, 23-year-old American citizen; less than three weeks later Israeli soldiers shot Brian Avery, 24-year-old American citizen, in the face, and six days later shot Tom Hurndall, 21- year-old British national, in the head; all of these victims were protesting against or trying to stop Israeli military aggression against Palestinian civilians. Then Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli chief of staff, stated that the Israeli army would arrest and deport ISM activists, which led to at least seven arrests in the last month. Last week, the ISM office in Beit Sahour was raided and equipment and files were damaged and looted by Israeli soldiers. And in the latest measure, any foreigner wishing to enter Gaza must now sign a form relinquishing the Israeli army of its obligations under international law, and even Israeli law, in agreeing that their lives as civilians are at the mercy of the army and its vast array of weapons -- and that any injury suffered is in no way the responsibility of Israel. How can the Middle East's only democracy sanction murder by agents of the state in this way, and get away with it? Only with the conspiracy of silence of the international community.

Don't let Israel pull its old tricks
By Ahmed Bouzid, Philadelphia Inquirer, June 2, 2003
We've read a great deal about how Israel has "finally accepted" the "road map" for the creation of a Palestinian state in 2005 and the end of hostilities among Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab states. But anyone who has followed this conflict and has a minimum sense of history can only view the latest declarations from the Israeli government as nothing more than a stalling tactic. First is this fact: Israel has fought, every step of the way, the establishment of a truly sovereign Palestinian state, has pursued the relentless infiltration of Palestinian land by illegal settlements, and, since the second /intifadah/ started in September 2002, has consistently frustrated attempts at calming the situation down and getting back to real negotiations. Second, Ariel Sharon insists that the Palestinian territories are part  of "the Land of Israel" and is willing at best to tolerate a token  "state" in no more than 40 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. Third, the last time an American President (George Bush the father) leaned on an Israeli prime minister (Yitzhak Shamir), we saw a reluctant Israel drag its heels to the negotiating table, and then pretend for a whole decade that it was willing to make peace - while frantically doing everything to sabotage any real progress. Indeed, during the so-called "peace process" between 1993 and 2000, a period during which Israel was supposed to gradually withdraw from Palestinian land, the size of the settler population in the Occupied Territories doubled. And when at last the United States tried to force the final settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians (mainly the Palestinians), the proposed state was nothing close to sovereign or economically viable. Since then, under both Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, Israel has done all it can to create roadblocks against any return to the negotiating table - assassinating Hamas leaders and officials, closing down whole towns, killing children for violating curfews, demanding seven days of uninterrupted "calm" before even talking to the Palestinians, building more settlements, demolishing houses, destroying the infrastructure of civilian Palestinian institutions, and refusing to allow international monitors to act as buffers between the Palestinians and the occupying military forces.

Evidence and deceit: how the case for war became unstuck
By Glen Rangwala, Middle East Reference, May 30, 2003
The disclosure from a British official that the "intelligence" dossier on Iraq's weapons presented by Tony Blair to Parliament on 24 September last year was beefed up on Downing Street's orders came as little surprise to those who have watched the British government's use and suspected misuse of intelligence information over the past six months. The series of leaks and off-the-record briefings to journalists from serving and recently retired members of the US and UK intelligence community has been without recent parallels. Transcripts of interviews, classified briefings on Iraq's links with al-Qa'ida and assessments of the likelihood of the spread of democracy in the Middle East on the back on an invasion of Iraq have all found their way into the public domain. There have been a number of sources for the dissatisfaction, but one of the more palpable factors is the sense that the intelligence agencies were being credited with providing a rationale for an invasion of Iraq that was at odds with their actual findings. With a war being justified primarily on the basis of putative intelligence assessments, the intelligence services did not want to risk being the subject of the political backlash if those assessments were found to be faulty.That there were significant problems with the material presented by the British government on Iraq's weapons cannot seriously be questioned. After all, Qusai Hussein did not use Iraq's prohibited weapons at 45 minutes notice, as the dossier alleged three times that he could -- a claim that, we now find, came from a single source whose evidence was considered unreliable. The twenty 650km range missiles that the dossier claimed were hidden in Iraq were not fired at Israel or Cyprus. And there were no drones in the skies above British troops, spraying them with chemical or biological weapons. Despite his earnest protestations on the accuracy of his evidence, Tony Blair told a press conference in Poland on Friday that finding the weapons in Iraq is "not the most urgent priority". And yet, according to the claims of the dossier that he defends, Saddam Hussein "has a useable chemical and biological weapons capability" and that his "current military planning specifically envisages the use" of these weapons. Saddam Hussein and the commanders whom the Prime Minister claimed had the authority to order the use of these weapons are still at large, presumably still within Iraq.

Three tests awaiting Bush  
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, June 3, 2003
A desperate desire for any shred of hope has caused many good people to turn every verbal gesture by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon into a historic breakthrough. The cries of despair from the Cossacks of the Samarian hills drown out the voices of their victims - Palestinians whose lands are being stolen from them in broad daylight. Transportation Minister Avigdor Lieberman's threat that dismantling settlement outposts will cause a crisis in relations with the right is set against U.S. President George W. Bush's threat that refusing to dismantle them will cause a crisis in relations with the United States. In order to assess Sharon's intentions, one must examine his actions. It is undoubtedly pleasant to hear the word "occupation" emerging from his lips, but at most, this is a different tone, not a different melody. Had MK Gila Gamliel bothered to inquire into the past a little, she would have discovered that the prime minister did not come up with any innovations: Sharon is not the first Likud leader to have recognized the occupation. The Camp David Accords of September 1978, which bear Menachem Begin's signature, state that negotiations over the West Bank and Gaza "shall be based on all the provisions and principles of UN Security Council Resolution 242. The negotiations will resolve, among other matters, the location of the boundaries." (This document appears in the appendix to the book "Paths of Peace" by Elyakim Rubinstein, who took Sharon to task for his error in using the term "occupation.") But Resolution 242, adopted in November 1967, opens by "emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war," and states that peace must be based on the "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." Israel, it is true, attaches importance to the use of "territories" rather than "the territories." But the word "occupied" has only one meaning: not administered territories, not disputed territories, but occupied territories.

Bypass roadmap
By Benjamin Counsell, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 29 May - 4 June, 2003
The spaces left empty by the US-sponsored roadmap for Israeli-Palestinian peace  -- With the publication of the much anticipated roadmap, it is apparent that the issue of refugee rights has been completely sidelined. Any mention of refugees is left until the final phase of negotiations and there appears to be no commitment on Israel to adhere to the relevant international laws. We are once again looking at a possible deal that addresses virtually none of the fundamental grievances of the Palestinians. Any settlement that relies on the dissolution of human rights and international law would be catastrophic for the millions of refugees whose rights, few doubt, would have been bargained away at a lop-sided negotiating table. The legitimacy of their claim would remain unaltered since it is enshrined in humanitarian law and therefore cannot be simply signed away. However, the political reality may be somewhat different. It is the fundamental demographic questions and their ramifications on human rights that the plan fails to address. Why is Israel's 20 per cent "Arab" population excluded from purchasing 92 per cent of Israeli territory? In any other country it would be called "apartheid" and rightly decried -- why not in Israel? What will happen to this growing population in the years to come given its "demographic threat" to the "Jewish state"? Make no mistake, if Israel is to maintain its Jewish majority, it has just two options -- mass expulsion or mass murder. It is this ugly truth that the roadmap is incapable or unwilling to tackle. The right of return is not some cunning negotiating tactic dreamt up by the Palestinians. It is a right in every sense. Enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and endorsed in United Nations Resolution 194, these five million-plus refugees will not simply disappear in order to facilitate a political agenda. At some point in time their grievances simply must be dealt with. But wouldn't the return of Palestinian refugees mean the "destruction of the state of Israel"? Well that depends on how one defines Israel. One could argue that it would facilitate the expansion of Israel -- by all means, annex the West Bank and Gaza strip, but only if you grant the vote to its inhabitants. What a wonderful opportunity for the US to bring democracy to the Arab Middle East. What better example to those cynics who doubt their intentions in Iraq? But there of course is the rub, Israel is a "Jewish state" before it is a democratic one. It wants the land but not its people -- an aim it has largely achieved in 78 per cent of mandated Palestine and is currently working towards in the occupied territories.

Now dissent is 'immoral'
By Gary Younge, The Guardian, June 2, 2003
Just about the only person criticising Bush in the US media is Sean Penn - and he paid $125,000 for the privilege -- Some of you, many of you, are not going to like what you hear tonight," said Ted Koppel, the senior American news anchor as he introduced Arundhati Roy, the Indian novelist, activist and critic of US foreign policy, to his show shortly after September 11. "You don't have to listen. But if you do, you should know that dissent sometimes comes in strange packages..." The introduction, such as it was, told us less about Roy than it did about both Koppel and the mindset that has dominated the American media since the collapse of the twin towers. It reflects at best a reluctance, and at worst a downright refusal, to engage with views and voices opposed to George Bush's foreign policy. It illustrates a tendency to dismiss rather than discuss, and deride rather than debate - to circle the wagons around nationhood, leaving questions about what is being done in the nation's name and why, on the outside. "This nation is now at war," said Peter Beinart, the editor of the liberal magazine New Republic. "And in such an environment, domestic political dissent is immoral without a prior statement of national solidarity, a choosing of sides." As such, American journalism has been embedded not only militarily but politically as well. At a press conference in March, a journalist offered the following searching inquiry: "Mr President, as the nation is at odds over war, how is your faith guiding you?" Dissident voices do exist. While you will rarely hear them on television, most big newspapers have at least one columnist who was opposed to the war, and several magazines have published articles that are critical or revelatory. The problem is not so much that such views are unavailable as that they have been effectively marginalised. Only those sympathetic to them might seek them out, while others looking to form opinions are unlikely to stumble across them. Presumably Sean Penn would not have paid around $125,000 (£76,000) to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times on Friday to write an essay against Bush if he thought he could read it elsewhere. In short, views that offer an informed critical analysis of the Bush administration's foreign policy, particularly with regard to the Middle East, are not part of the national conversation in the United States. And until Americans can have that conversation with themselves they will not be equipped to converse with the rest of the world about the relative legitimacy or otherwise of their government's actions but will instead continue to retreat into a combination of belligerence, bemusement, defensiveness and demagogy.

No Weapons in Iraq? We'll Find Them in Iran
By Neil Mackay, CommonDreams/The The Sunday Herald (Scotland), June 1, 2003  
They told us Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but they've found none. Were they lying? -- British intelligence source: The best Humint (human intelligence) on Saddam was held by the French who had agents in Iraq. French intelligence was telling us that there was effectively no real evidence of a WMD program That's why France wanted a longer extension on the weapons inspections. The French, the Germans and the Russians all knew there were no weapons there -- and so did Blair and Bush as that's what the French told them directly. -- THE spooks are on the offensive. In their eyes, it still remains to be seen whether Tony Blair lied to the British public by claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), but as the Prime Minister's own intelligence officers now say, Parliament was misled and subjected to spin, exaggeration and bare-faced flim-flammery. It is now seven weeks since the war in Iraq ground to a confused, stuttering halt and still not one WMD has been found. A couple of possible mobile bio-weapons labs have been located, but a close examination showed they hadn't seen so much as a speck of anthrax or nerve gas. Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw made clear before the invasion that the UK was entering the war to disarm Saddam. We were specifically told this was not a battle about regime change, but a battle to 'eradicate the threat of weapons of mass destruction'. Ironically, it was the ultra-hawkish US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who let the cat out of the bag when he said on Wednesday: 'It is possible Iraqi leaders decided they would destroy (WMDs) prior to the conflict.' If that was true then Saddam had fulfilled the criteria of UN resolution 1441 and there was absolutely no legal right for the US and UK to go to war. Rumsfeld's claim that Iraq might have destroyed its weapons makes a mockery of the way the US treated the UN's chief weapons inspector Dr Hans Blix. The US effectively told him he wasn't up to the job and the Iraqis had fooled him.

The Map is not the Territory 
By Caroline Arnold, CommonDreams/Kent-Ravenna Record Courier, June 1, 2003
What would you feel and how would you respond if these stories mapped events happening where you live. If your child threw rocks, would you expect him to be shot? What if your house collapsed when the police dynamited the house next door because they suspected terrorists lived there? What if your orange-grove were destroyed because some criminals had hidden their weapons in it? -- In the end, the success or failure of the roadmap depends on how we talk about it. If our discourse is framed by the premise that Palestinian violence is the primary problem, the roadmap does not have a chance: "Misleading Media Story May Doom Middle East Roadmap", Ira Chernus, Common Dreams, 5/20/03 -- Most of us believe our mass media do not inform us especially well. And given the vast magnitude and fractal complexity of information that deluges us every day, it probably doesn't. At the news desk, at our breakfast tables, this chaotic volume of information must be wrestled down into manageable maps -- stories -- that make sense in the context of our experience. Even when we have reasonably accurate and complete representations of a territory, we are challenged to interpret them and understand their meaning -- what we should do about them. And this is further vexed as we all try to graph these stories onto our pre-existing maps for certain destinations. We like simplified maps and prefer not to have to make hard choices. It's easier to assign a cause or blame for every event, define as liars everyone we disagree with, and divide everyone into Good Guys and Bad Guys, with the Bad Guys as evil by nature -- irredeemable, barely human beings who must be controlled, punished or eliminated because they can never be reformed. Take these three mappings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Associated Press, Ravi Nessman, 5/21/03 "In new violence, six Palestinian children, ranging in age from 9 to 14, were wounded by army fire after throwing stones at Israeli tanks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip." New York Times, Greg Myre, 5/22/03: "The Israeli troops pulled out of Beit Hanun on Tuesday after a five-day incursion during which soldiers blew up houses belonging to suspected militants and flattened large orange groves that had been used as cover to fire the rockets."

There is hunger in Israel
By Itamar Levin, Globes, June 2, 2003
The situation is getting worse and you, our country's leaders, are responsible. -- One the eve of the Aqaba summit, the cabinet yesterday took time to discuss a critical matter: reports overseas depicting Israel as a hunger-stricken country. These are not just any reports, but reports by Jewish organizations headed by the American Joint Distribution Committee. Nor are they mere words, but requests for donations to help Israel’s poor. The cabinet decided that the reports are misleading and harmful, and asked that they be avoided. The cabinet decision raises the question: On what planet do Israel’s ministers live? They have their Volvos, offices, and aides. Have they read the newspapers lately, or do they only look for their names in print? Do they watch the TV news, or do they channel-surf when items appear that don't interest them? Maybe they won’t read these lines, but I’ll say it anyway: Ladies and gentlemen, there is hunger in Israel. There are tens of thousands of hungry Israelis, maybe hundreds of thousands. The situation is getting worse, and you - our country’s leaders - are responsible. I’m not talking about distressed regions or development towns. I have personal testimony from central Tel Aviv. Right before the Purim holiday, a parent at my son’s school asked the principal if there were any needy pupils whose families should be given alms. The principal replied, “You can’t imagine how many.” This is in wealthy Tel Aviv, at a school with computers and air-conditioners in every classroom, where everyone has supplemental afternoon study hours and goes on school trips each month. If that's the case in Tel Aviv, what's happening in the poorer areas of the city and country?

Clueless about the occupation
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, June 1, 2003
At long last, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has started to talk about the occupation, but doesn't have a clue about the subject. Nor do many in his close circle - cabinet ministers, advisers, army generals, politicians - have any idea what the occupation is all about. When the prime minister's confidants boast about the wealth of experience the veteran statesman has accumulated - "He has already seen it all," they say - they need to be reminded that there is one thing, at least, that Sharon has never seen: He has never seen the Israeli occupation, certainly not the occupation as it has evolved in the past few years, with all its ugliness and cruelty. What does Sharon know about life under curfew, in communities that have been under siege for years? What does he know about the humiliation at checkpoints, or about people being forced to travel on gravel and mud roads, at risk to their lives, in order to get a woman in labor to a hospital? About life on the brink of starvation? About a demolished home? About hildren who see their parents beaten and humiliated in the middle of the night? About prisoners and detainees held without trial who haven't spoken to their families for more than two years? About dialysis patients who are unable to reach the hospital for treatment? Tul Karm, for example, was under continuous curfew without a break last week. Does Sharon try to imagine what it's like to live under unbroken curfew for days and weeks, without leaving the house, without a fresh supply of food or medicines, in crowded homes filled with children and old people? What in the world does the prime minister of Israel know about the soldiers' behavior and the distress of the local residents? Isn't it important for him to know, to at least know?

The story of Nazeeh
By Oren Medicks, YellowTimes.org, May 30, 2003
(YellowTimes.org) -- Perhaps you need to be an Israeli in order to fully appreciate the improbability of the following situation: A group of Israelis, Palestinians and international peace activists living together in an olive grove deep inside Palestinian territory. Palestinians and Israelis search together for firewood at night, preparing information boards during the day, or washing dishes -- pouring a very careful trickle from a battered, old coke bottle because running water is unavailable. They sit quietly next to each other on the short guarding shifts -- fearing, not each other -- but a possible raid by the Israeli army. Any Israeli who could imagine such a situation would shudder with a reflex vision of some murderous scenario. Being in the middle of "Intifadah-land" in the middle of the night? Surrounded by Palestinians with no soldier in sight to protect you? Even the most diligent researcher could not come up with a handful of Israelis who would be willing to put their lives in such jeopardy. Two months ago, even those who were on that hill could not fully believe they were actually there. As often happens, the camp started as something quite different. Three months ago, Nazeeh, a farmer from the Palestinian village of Mas’ha, received a confiscation order issued by the Israeli authorities. According to the order, 95 percent of his land was to be confiscated in order to build the separation fence. The separation fence is marketed to the Israeli public as a reasonable security measure meant to separate Palestinians from Israelis; in reality, the only separation it offers is between Palestinians and their land.

To my brothers and sisters on the right
By Yitzhak Frankenthal, Haaretz, June 1, 2003
Truly there has been a momentous development in Israel. At long last, the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, stated publicly what the supporters of  peace have been saying for many years: It is impossible to go on with the occupation; it is wrong to rule another people. The occupation has destroyed Israel's economy and, therefore, the solution is compromise on our beloved land for the sake of our children and our future. I will not ask you why Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. I will not ask you why it is only now that some of you have discovered that the occupation is ruinous. I will not ask why you used your dreams to rend the country's social fabric and caused the collapse of the economy by building the settlements. I will not ask what happened to the rabbis of the precept of the supremacy of life, the rabbis who saw death being sown on the roads - the loss of hundreds of souls because of misleading and mistaken religious rulings. What I will ask you today is this: Will you now start fighting against Prime Minister Sharon? Will you support his path or will you lend a hand to Palestinian terrorists who will try to abort the nascent hope and are operating contrary to the desire of the Palestinian leadership? I will ask you this: Will you be ready to support a generous peace settlement with the Palestinian people, one that may create a true foundation for conciliation between the two nations?