Children of Death
By Uri Avnery, Palestine Chronicle, June 16, 2003
A week after the ship of peace was solemnly launched on its perilous voyage from Aqaba harbor, it was hit by a torpedo. It is not yet clear whether it is wrecked or can continue on its way in spite of the damage. The story of its voyage so far: An Israeli helicopter gunship tried to kill Abd-al-Aziz al-Rantisi, one of the leaders of the political wing of Hamas. He miraculously survived. Immediately afterwards the gunships killed other Hamas leaders. Clearly, this was the beginning of a campaign to kill the leaders of all the wings of Hamas – military, political, social, educational and religious. Such a campaign is, of course, the outcome of long preparations, which take weeks and months. It was evidently planned even before the Aqaba summit conference convened, but postponed by Sharon in order to afford President Bush his moments of photographic glory on the shore of the Red Sea. Immediately after the President and his entourage went home, radiant with success, the machinery of death went into action. In establishing intent, all courts around the world act upon a simple principle: a person who carries out an action with predictable results is held to have intended that result. That is true for this campaign, too. The killing of the Hamas leaders (together with their wives, children and casual bystanders) is intended to attain the following results: (a) acts of revenge by Hamas, i.e. suicide bombings, (b) the failure of the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to secure the agreement of Hamas to a cease-fire, (c) the destruction of Abu Mazen’s political standing right from the start, (d) the demolition of the Road Map, (e) compensation for the settlers after the removal of some sham “outposts”.

A moment lost
By Hanan Ashrawi, Daily Star, June 17, 2003
The Israeli missiles that rained down on Gaza from Apache gunships last Tuesday may have missed Hamas political leader Abdel-Aziz Rantissi, but they certainly had more than one target in sight. The tragic toll of 230 Palestinian victims assassinated by Israel in such a manner since September 2000 includes more than 100 bystanders, among them 17 women and 28 children. Assassination as a political tool is a particularly repugnant form of extrajudicial execution that inflicts tremendous pain and anguish while generating spirals of revenge. We are now in a new cycle of violence, clearly evident in Wednesday’s bus bombing in Jerusalem followed by further helicopter attacks in Gaza City. The assassination attempt on Rantissi, with its particular timing and the prominence of its target, will ripple out to targets beyond Gaza City. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is sending a message to his hard-line constituency, within and outside the Likud Party, that he can be just as brutal as before, and that neither the “road map” nor US President George W. Bush’s involvement will force a change in the Israeli government’s policy of violence and assassination. The fragile domestic dialogue among the different Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, is one other target. These groups have been seeking to arrive at an agreement for the cessation or suspension of violent and armed resistance that would enable the Palestinian Authority to fulfill its obligations under the road map. Simultaneously, Tuesday’s missiles were also aimed at the credibility of, and potential support for, newly appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and his government. After the attack, Abbas would not only be seen as attempting to disarm the resistance ­ and hence render it vulnerable to continued Israeli military assaults ­ but his whole political program would be placed in serious doubt as one of capitulation rather than peace. The political “assassination” of Abbas is further enhanced by the converse effect of bringing Hamas to ascendancy with its program of armed resistance. The Palestinian public would move from Abbas and gravitate to those factions that could respond in kind to Sharon’s logic of violence and victimization of civilians. The celebrated road map, meanwhile, has received a direct hit as a possible political alternative to the lethal dynamics of military occupation and armed resistance.

Washington plays into Iranian clerics' hands
By Hooman Peimani, Asia Times, June 17, 2003
Increasing American pressure on Iran, as evident in the propaganda campaign on its alleged harboring of al-Qaeda members and its alleged nuclear weapons program, for which no evidence has been produced, will unlikely help the Americans with their regime change program. As a logical component of the seemingly irrational American government's design on Iran, its counterproductive policy towards the ongoing Iranian student pro-democracy movement, which is striving for democracy as envisaged by the Iranians, will only help Iran's ruling elite to suppress that indigenous movement as a Washington-inspired riot. American allegations on Tehran's pursuit of a nuclear weapons program are not something new. In fact they have been around since the early 1980s. Nor are the accusations of Tehran backing terrorists. What is new about them is Washington's trying so hard to create an unfounded sense of urgency to justify its regime change in Iran, just as it did in the months preceding its March attack on Iraq. This is notwithstanding the fact that factors such as Iran's social, economic and political developments as well as its strong military force benefiting from a home-grown military industry make any foreign-orchestrated plan for regime change unrealistic. Washington's policy towards the new wave of student protests in Iran has been equally unrealistic. Although they began last Tuesday as a move against the Iranian government's plan to privatize universities, the Tehran University student's protests turned political immediately. They have since expanded to other universities in Tehran and elsewhere in the country, such as in Shiraz, Isfahan and Ahwaz, the capitals of three major provinces, Fars, Isfahan and Khuzestan, respectively. Not only have there been efforts by ordinary citizens to support the students through various means, such as honking car horns, there are reports on the outbreak of non-student anti-government demonstrations in at least one city, Gohardasht, a Tehran suburb, in which a few hundred teenagers took part.

Deja vu as Bush pushed aside
By Jim Lobe, Asia Times, June 17, 2003 
WASHINGTON - As beloved New York Yankee catcher and phrase-maker Yogi Berra once said, it seems like "deja vu all over again". Fourteen months ago, US President George W Bush demanded that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon halt incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas, withdraw from cities Israeli forces had re-occupied, and refrain from further unilateral actions that would inflame the conflict. "Enough is enough," snapped the president, who had conquered Afghanistan four months before. Sharon, of course, treated Bush's demands in much the same way as he would the yapping of a chihuahua, politely explaining that protecting Israeli citizens from suicide bombs was his first responsibility, and otherwise ignoring him. Two weeks later, the president was praising Sharon as a "man of peace", while stepping up his rhetoric against Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, and then ostracizing him altogether just two months later. One might have thought - and many people, including Arabs and Israelis, did - that 14 months and a decisive US military victory in Iraq later, Bush's demands for Israeli cooperation in a new, US-backed initiative to calm tensions, bolster the authority of a new, more-moderate Palestinian leader - Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas - and impart some hope for an eventual peace agreement might be received by Sharon with somewhat more respect. But it now seems that Bush has once again gotten the chihuahua treatment, and the big question is whether he will do something about it this time. The president thought that he had an understanding with Sharon coming out of the Aqaba summit: the Israelis would refrain from taking any unilateral action, especially selective assassinations, that could undermine Abbas' fragile authority and his efforts to persuade militant Palestinian factions, especially Hamas, to halt attacks on Israelis. But less than 24 hours after a coordinated attack by several militant groups, including Hamas, on a Gaza checkpoint that left four Israeli soldiers dead, Israeli helicopter gunships launched two attacks intended to assassinate prominent Hamas political leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Those attacks, which killed five Palestinians and wounded more than 60 others, including Rantisi, drew an uncharacteristically strong response from Bush, reminiscent of his initial demands on Sharon 14 months ago.

Globalisation and its discontents
By M Shahid Alam, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 12 - 18 June 2003
Two decades of neoliberal policies have pauperised the South -- Contrary to the grandiose claims made by the ideologues, the neoliberal, open- door economic regimes imposed on the Periphery by Core capital -- starting in the 1980s -- have produced no economic miracles. Instead, the neoliberal policies have brought economic ruin or, at best, lack-luster performance to the countries they have touched most deeply. Starting with the October Revolution of 1917, sections of the Periphery began to break away from, or attenuate their linkages to, global capitalism. After Second World War, this decentralising movement embraced nearly all of Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, who now joined Latin America to form the Third World. Several of these countries chose communism and severed their links to global capital. Others used their newfound sovereignty to re-structure their relations with global capital, using the power of government to develop indigenous capital. This was the Periphery's window of opportunity -- its golden hour. However, this window began to close, starting in the 1980s. For a variety of reasons, which included geopolitical luck as well as the still-strong expansive power of capitalism, Core capital staged a comeback both in the Core countries and in the Periphery. Taking advantage of the debt crisis, the World Bank and the IMF began to dismantle the developmental states in the Periphery. In 1994, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Core capital created the World Trade Organisation in order to deepen and police the neoliberal, open-door regimes it had imposed on the Periphery. After a hiatus of some three decades, power was once again centralised in the Core states. The orthodox economists argued, as they had since Adam Smith, that these neoliberal regimes created the best bargains for all parties concerned. Free markets and open economies, so they argued, would direct production to countries where their unit costs were lowest; and if capital were mobile, it would flow copiously from the capital- rich to capital-poor countries. Indonesia, with cheap labor, would produce shoes; and the United States, abundantly endowed with capital and skills, would design, finance, advertise and market them. In the neoliberal paradigm, the capital and skills of Core countries would fertilise labour from the Periphery. This was a marriage made in heaven: it would produce prosperity for everyone, and especially for the poor countries. There was one problem with this marriage. It had been forced on the Periphery once before for nearly a century and a half, and it had only led to abuse and rape of their economies.

Dems Have Shot In '04 -- If They Don't Go Wobbly
By Helen Thomas, CommonDreams/Heart Newspapers, June 17, 2003
Doubts About Bush's Postwar Credibility Could Lift Left -- Democratic presidential aspirants might have a monumental issue for their 2004 campaign against President George W. Bush -- if they don't go wobbly. It's based on growing doubts that Bush was on the level when he tried to whip up public support for a U.S. attack on Iraq by claiming that the Saddam Hussein regime had a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. It's a question of presidential credibility and reflects on the character of the American people and the country. Understandably, the Democrats may calculate that voters will always rally to the commander-in-chief in wartime. And, like columnists, they should always recognize the possibility that those weapons will eventually be found. But that should not stop them from raising the question of whether Bush initiated the Iraq war on the basis of possibly flawed, politicized or flimsy information. Of course, the Democratic aspirants run the risk of being called "unpatriotic" or "un-American" -- labels that go with any dissent. But if they spout a "me-too" foreign policy in their bid for support, what choice will the voters have? If the Democrats remain timid and duck a serious debate on the war, they will be endorsing the president's policies of preemptive war. Those policies have alienated us from much of the world and erased our image as a peace-loving nation. Are the Democrats willing to assume that the public doesn't care if the WMD threat was exaggerated? As the argument goes: Does it matter? After all, Saddam Hussein has been deposed. Well, it does matter -- a lot. With Iraq now occupied, Bush's hawkish advisers have begun to pinpoint North Korea and Iran as the next potential targets because those countries are defiantly plunging ahead with their nuclear programs. Watching history every day from a ringside seat in the White House, I have become convinced that a president's greatest stock in trade is to be believed. That quality is the key to the ability to convince, persuade and govern. Two presidents -- Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon -- found out the hard way that their support vanished when they attempted to deceive.

Palestinians` Right of Return is `Legal, Moral and Possible`
By Nikolai Hadad, Palestine Media Center/Green Left Weekly, June 18, 2003
In his reply to my article, “55 years of oppression: Palestinians demand freedom!” (Green Left Weekly #539), Sol Salbe (GLW #541) correctly notes that it was the United Nations General Assembly, and not the UN Security Council, that voted for the partition of Palestine. However, in 1947 the General Assembly was even more heavily dominated by the colonial and European powers than it is today. Many former colonial territories, now largely African, Asian and Arab nations, were not included in this vote of just 53 countries. There was also considerable controversy about the role of the USA in securing a positive vote by bringing “certain Latin American republics into line” with “diplomatic intimidation” and “terrific pressure” (see Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict, 1995). Salbe reminds us that the Australian labour movement supported Zionism and that Labor Party leader Herbert Evatt played “a pivotal role” in the process of partition. This does not make partition right or just. At that time, both the ALP and Evatt were open advocates of the White Australia Policy and therefore it should come as no surprise that they also supported Zionism. Salbe contends that we “lose credibility” if “we claim that [the Palestinians] were all expelled”. He reminds us that “many feared for their lives and fled”. This amounts to a rehashing of the moderate Zionist line that the Palestinian refugee population “was born of war, not by design”. It is an account that seeks to limit or preclude Israel's direct accountability for what happened in 1948.  Expulsions: In fact, the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes was the express policy of the Zionist leaders and as Norman Finkelstein writes, Palestinians “were expelled systematically and with premeditation”. Finkelstein's account refers to the operational guidelines of the Haganah's (regular Zionist forces) “Plan Dalet”, which constituted nothing less than “a strategic-ideological anchor and basis” for expulsions by military commanders. That many Palestinians were not directly expelled at gunpoint and simply fled their homes under artillery fire or from the threat of massacres and atrocities is not contested. However, the overwhelming balance of evidence, including the stated aims of Zionist leaders, leads us to conclude that what was being undertaken was a systematic program of ethnic cleansing to relieve the future Jewish state of its Palestinian majority. I refer readers to Nur Masalha's seminal work Expulsions of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer' in Zionist Political Thought.

Diplomacy by Assassination
By Jackson Diehl, Washington Post, June 13, 2003
June 2001: The Bush administration was engaged in one of its sporadic efforts to end the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. On June 28 Secretary of State Colin Powell announced in Jerusalem that the government of Ariel Sharon and the Palestinian Authority had agreed on a timeline for restarting the peace process, beginning with a complete halt to violence. Just three days later, Israeli helicopters launched eight missiles at a car in the West Bank, killing a commander of Islamic Jihad. The cease-fire never began. On July 31 another helicopter attack killed two senior political leaders of the Hamas movement. Days later Hamas staged one of its most horrendous suicide attacks, slaughtering children in a Sbarro pizza parlor in Jerusalem. Instead of ending, the war escalated. December 2002: Under heavy pressure from the United States, Yasser Arafat finally declared a cease-fire. For three weeks in December and early January there was no violence, though the Israeli capture of a ship bearing Iranian arms for the Palestinians nullified any political benefit. Then Hamas staged an attack against an Israeli army outpost. Several days later Israel assassinated Raed Karmi, a senior figure in Arafat's Fatah movement. The cease-fire was immediately called off, and in the following two weeks Israel suffered the worst wave of suicide bombings in its history. In March its troops reoccupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank. They are still there. That brings us to June 2003. Another U.S.-brokered peace initiative has been followed by a Hamas attack on an Israeli military post, then a spectacular Israeli assassination strike against a Hamas political leader, then a horrendous suicide bombing in Jerusalem, and then a new wave of Israeli military raids. A couple of patterns spring out from this history. One is the bid by Hamas, a sworn enemy of a Palestinian settlement with Israel, to disrupt any attempt to start a peace process. The other is Sharon's more paradoxical habit of following up his acceptance of U.S. peace initiatives with spectacular assassination raids -- raids that without exception have been followed by the retaliatory slaughter of Israeli civilians and major escalations of the conflict.