An open letter to the survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacre
By Ellen Siegel, Electronic Intifada, June 29, 2003
Ellen Siegel is a registered nurse. She volunteered her expertise and services at the Gaza Hospital in Sabra Camp in Beirut in 1982, and was there during the massacre. She testified as a witness befoe the Kahan Commission of Inquiry in Jerusalem in late 1982. Ms. Siegel is the Vice-Chair of the Medical Committee of American Near East Refugee Aid, a member of the Middle East Committee of the Peace Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, and active in the Jewish peace movement. She currently works as a community mental health nurse for a non-profit organization. She wrote the following letter to her friends and fellow massacre survivors and witnesses in Beirut in the wake of Belgium's decision to weaken its universal jurisdiction (anti-atrocity) legislation in the face of arm-twisting by the US Government. -- My dear friends, I met many of you last September, on the 20th anniversary of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. I had not been back to Beirut, or to the camps, or to Gaza Hospital, where I had worked as a nurse, since the summer of 1982. I wanted to return, to re-trace my steps. I wanted to remember, to be there beside you, to stand in solidarity with you. Most of all, I wanted to honor and pay tribute to you and your loved ones. I would like to share my experience with you. My first day, at sunrise, I headed for the camps. I was dropped off at what had been the entrance to the hospital, the very spot where we nurses and doctors were told to assemble twenty years ago by the Phalangist militia. I was met and accompanied by a Palestinian woman familiar with the camps. What had once been a place where Palestinians and Lebanese living in the camps came to have their babies, went to have operations performed, where clinics once served the medical needs of the camp inhabitants and where a huge Red Cross banner once hung, had now become an almost uninhabitable place for displaced persons.

The Alleged Evacuation of Outposts
By Leena Dallasheh, Alternative Information Center, July 1, 2003 
In a declared attempt to implement part of its obligations under the roadmap, the Israeli army announced that 5 inhabited illegal outposts, Biet El (east), Giva’at Yitzhar, Nofeh Nahamia, Shavi Shomron and Havat Gilad would be evacuated on June 10. However, the evacuations were temporarily halted after the settlers’ leadership appealed to the Supreme Court to deem the evacuations illegal. How did the Court deal with the petitions of the settlers in each of these cases? On June 16, the Supreme Court decided to reject an appeal to prevent the evacuation of Giva’at Yitzhar, based on the fact that demolition orders were submitted against the outpost buildings since April 2003, prior to Israel’s endorsement of the roadmap. Hence, the evacuation order was long overdue. Even though the state attorney acknowledged that the outpost is built on Palestinian land, the Supreme Court’s decision overlooked the fact that the outposts were built illegally, even under Israeli law. The Court’s decision was formalistic in that it only dealt with the petitioner’s right for a hearing and the fact that they did not comply with previous demolition orders. Since the Court failed to acknowledge the rights of Palestinians to their land, it could be inferred that the Supreme Court views the illegal outposts as legal, giving a future legitimacy to them. As for the petitions submitted on behalf of the illegal outposts of Havat Gilad and Shavi Shomron, the army agreed to put off the dismantling of the two outposts until allowing a hearing for both, as the Supreme Court judges recommended. Based on the results of the hearings, the court will decide how to proceed with the petitions against the dismantling of the two outposts.

Ayoon wa Azan (Hamas' Initiative)
By Jihad Al Khazen, Al-Hayat, June 30, 2003
We all know by now that Hamas' initiative to freeze its military actions for three months is linked to Israel's stopping its attacks and releasing the detainees. But how does Hamas explain its move? Khaled Mishaal, head of the Hamas politburo, says the initiative to stop military actions is "primarily linked to the internal Palestinian situation, and secondly to protecting the Palestinian national unity and thirdly to preventing the enemy from exploding the Palestinian scene and hence harming our people." Mr. Mishaal said that the initiative was unilateral, but that it was open for other parties to adhere to it, considering that discussions were conducted with and Fatah, and that there are still ongoing internal negotiations. But he expected the initiative to be declared within hours in the name of all those who accept it. The head of Hamas' political wing insisted on the terms he imposed, saying that if the other party was not to abide by them, "then we shall release ourselves from any previous engagement." The latter was the answer to a question regarding the 8,000 detainees, 3,500 of whom are Hamas members. Hamas says Abbas and his government, as well as Arafat, are all part of the initiative, not to mention other Arab camps, primarily Egypt. In fact, Egypt played a major role in mediating this initiative. The party adds that the other parties should exert pressure "on the Zionists to abide by the proposed terms and we shall keep our promises and take responsibility in exchange for having Western and European parties pressure the Americans and Israelis to stop their aggression on our people." I also asked him if Hamas were to expand this initiative in case things go as expected, and he replied that this issue had not yet been discussed, as the initiative is set for a limited time and on clear terms. Hence, Hamas will decide its next move according to the developments.

The Logic Of Illogic
By Salameh Nematt, Al-Hayat, June 30, 2003
The world appears to be suffering from a collective schizophrenia: the U.S. wants democracy in the Middle East, but is working on alienating an elected Palestinian president for the sake of one specific Prime Minister. It seeks democracy the Western way, but refuses to grant a decisive role to the Shiite majority in Iraq. It fought communism with the Islamists, then went to fight the Islamists under the banner of fighting terrorism. Israel wants Hamas to guarantee the security of Israel after it alienated and destroyed the Palestinian Authority, but it doesn't want to end the occupation, which created a security problem with the Authority, Hamas as well as others. Israel destroys the very Palestinian security institutions that it has been asking the Palestinians to use to ensure its own safety. Terrorism is addressed as an isolated phenomenon that has no objective political or economic causes. Arab countries talk about reform and fight reformists. The Davos Conference was held at the Dead Sea. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad declared truce yesterday. It is not absolutely clear whether the truce is with Israel or with the Palestinian Authority or the U.S. The U.S. is negotiating with the Authority to control the opposition for the sake of Israel and in return, Israel will end its war against the Authority and the opposition and anyone moving on Palestinian territories. Israel, in its turn, is negotiating with the U.S. against the Authority and the opposition and Palestine all together! The U.S. and Israel don't recognize Hamas and the Jihad and want to dismantle them, but they demand their commitment to stop suicide missions as a first step towards their dismantlement. The logic of the illogic is on the war against terrorism: the lack of security is being addressed through additional procedures that helped create terrorism in the first place. No one seems to want to deal with the source of the trouble.

Only Ignorance Keeps Islam, West Divided
By Dr. Francis Lamand, Arab News, July 1, 2003 
PARIS, 1 July 2003 — When, 25 years ago, a new organization was created in Paris, going by the name of “Islam and the West” and working to reach a better understanding and a closer rapprochement between the two worlds, international reaction was marked, on the whole, by indifference and skepticism. When this organization launched its first campaign by initiating efforts to correct the image of Islam in history textbooks, interest was sparked off and sustained by several publishers in the realization of this ambitious program of revision, which subsequently proved to be one of the most useful reforms of European history textbooks. Our organization had very early on recognized that the improvement of relations between Islam and the West called first of all for the promotion of the image of Islam in the Western countries. Today, when the Saudi authorities are pushing through the urgent need to “foster a moderate image of Islam”, we can only rejoice at such resolve. That is because, today, each of us is well aware that if there is a deterioration in the image of Islam in Western countries — particularly in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001 — then that deterioration plays right into the allegation of a “clash of civilizations” and fuels arguments for confrontation between Islam and the West. The most formidable enemy of a rapprochement between these two worlds therefore has always been and will continue to be ignorance. Ignorance of Islamic values in Western countries is far from being uprooted despite the latest cutting-edge information and communication technologies and despite the laudable efforts of international Muslim and non-Muslim organizations, which for more than 20 years have been fighting for a fairer perspective of the Islamic civilization.

Musharraf hits the 'Israel' button
By Muddassir Rizvi, Asia Times, July 1, 2003
ISLAMABAD - If it was just an official feeler to gauge public opinion on the controversial question of Pakistan's recognition of Israel, the government has an answer - the Pakistani people are not ready to even consider the option. The controversy started earlier this month when President General Pervez Musharraf said in a television interview that mainly Muslim Pakistan must seriously take up the issue of recognizing Israel and avoid dealing with it on emotional grounds. In view of the changing international scenario and the road map to peace in the Middle East, Pakistan has to consider whether its Israel policy needs a review, Musharraf said a day before his departure for a four-nation visit that also took him to Camp David for a meeting with US President George W Bush. "We all know Musharraf. He knows what to say when to appease his mentors in the West, whether he means it or not. But it was very careless of him to speak of an issue so simply that is very sensitive in nature and close to people's heart," said Afsarul Mulk, a leader of the Pakistan People's Party who belongs to the remote northern district of Shangla in North West Frontier Province. In short, Musharraf's utterance raised tempers in a country where the majority of people sympathize with the Palestinian cause and continue to censure Israel for its continued occupation of Jerusalem, Islam's second holiest place after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. They consider Israel an illegal occupier of the Arab lands, its hands stained with the blood of thousands of Palestinians.

Why Pakistan needs entente cordiale with Israel
By Ehsan Ahrari, Asia Times, June 18, 2003 
Watching India and Israel nurturing a strategic partnership, I frequently wonder why Pakistan is merely sitting on the fence and not building entente cordiale with the Jewish state in order to maximize its own strategic advantage. Pakistan is a county that I thought I knew, since it was once part of "British" India. But I no longer recognize the Pakistan of today. It is a place where Islamists are busy dragging the country back to the Seventh century. It is a country where the government has used Islamist groups to terrorize Indian-administered Kashmir. It is a land where democracy has been occasionally given a chance, and only for a limited duration. It is a place whose elites have long argued that democracy is a luxury, which only the Western-educated populace can and should enjoy, and that Pakistan will not be ready for democracy for a long time. The same type of elitist malady is inordinately manifested in Pakistan by its army, an institution that has sabotaged democracy throughout its existence as a nation since 1947. So, why am I committing political heresy by suggesting the necessity of entente cordiale between a Muslim Pakistan and a Jewish Israel? In my judgment, such a development will be a good thing for Pakistan for two reasons. First, a move on the part of Pakistan to deal openly with the Jewish state will break many taboos - most of which self-created - by that South Asian state and also by its Muslim neighbors. Islamist groups of Pakistan will hold a number of demonstrations against it. Once they blow off their steam, they will learn to live with it. Second, as the India-Israel strategic partnership is evolving, Pakistan will find itself facing yet one more reason why the gap between its conventional military power with that of India"s will be further widened.

The Prisoner of Zion and the Secret of Bassam Abu Sharif
By Mary La Rosa, Dissident Voice, June 27, 2003
He is the Count of Monte Cristo. He is the Man in the Iron Mask. His story is sung in grand opera and viewed daily as a daytime drama. He is as Shakespearean as he is Pinteresque. He is a blockbuster movie waiting in the wings with Tom Hanks or Harrison Ford to be scripted and Spielberged. He is a life waiting for a Book Club discussion and an Oscar presentation. He is a television series ready for prime time. He is a social protest song waiting to be sung. He is living testament to the Nobel Prize and the many times he has been nominated. He is an International Remembrance Day for Peace, 365 days times almost 18 years. He is mortal man once tempted and betrayed and recreated in his own image as living martyr, prophet and saint....Dr. Mordechai Vanunu and his fascinating story meet most of the requirements of an internationally successful media campaign.  By current trends in the entertainment industry, he has potential to become a cult figure. He also rather compliments that sharp stab of ironic pain provided by those people who would accuse or ignore him for 18 years, only to find him to be a new cause for celebration on The Big Screen of Life. Times change. He was imprisoned not for what he said, but for saying it. And when he said it. In the fall of 1986 his disclosures to the London Sunday Times, based upon his nine years as a mid level technician at Dimona nuclear facility, not only provided the world with indisputable evidence of Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program but gave documented proof that such warheads existed far beyond the estimated number given and guessed at by other authorities in the field. His kidnapping and disappearance caused enough of a distraction to move the public away from the real threat and significance of his testimony: as many as 200 nuclear warheads in Israel threatening most, if not all, of the Middle East. Ariel Sharon, before he became prime minister was heard to say, "Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches".

Gaza's Abu Holy checkpoint dismantled
By Laura Gordon, Electronic Intifada, June 30, 2003
We danced past Al-Matahin checkpoint today, waved to the soldiers hidden in the military towers guarding the bridge as we skipped past the warning sign in three languages, "Forbidden to stop under this bridge," and then the bridge itself, and ran past Abu Holy checkpoint to join the crowd of journalists, travelers, and curious people who had gathered to watch the Israeli army do what no one had dared imagine possible. In the early morning heat, we squinted through our exhaustion at the strange young well-armed men overdressed in green flapjackets and sunglasses as they began, in a mostly timely manner, to dismantle Abu Holy checkpoint. And we ran through the checkpoints, from one military sniper tower to the other, where they had begun to remove the roadblock that divides the settler road from the Palestinian road on Salah el-Deen Street. We ran past the meter-cubed concrete roadblocks, past the crane, past the journalists and the crowd and the cars, until we found a table with an old woman selling cola and snacks. We filled our dried-out, sun-tired bodies with warm cola, and she let us pour her washing water over our hair, and it was a perfect day again. We ran back, climbing with the other journalists on the roadblocks that remain, trying to get a better view. It was the biggest party in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of this Intifada. We were among the first people to walk freely through this set of checkpoints in years. Since October 9, 2001, anyone on the occupied side of the street must pass it in a car carrying at least three people, a measure taken to protect against suicide bombings but ostensibly useless as factions have sacrificed seven people and two dummies in attacks here since its implementation.

Picking up the Pieces in Gaza
By Peter Hansen, Palestine Media Center, July 1, 2003
There is a daily grind in Gaza. A grinding of bulldozer gears. The churning of heavy machinery and the crash of concrete on concrete accompany it. Together this is a soundtrack of misery and despair. It is the sound of another family home being demolished. It is the unfortunate lot of many Palestinians that the loss of their homes to the maws of Israeli military bulldozers or powerful explosive charges is now so commonplace that it fails to make the grade as news. After all, something that happens every day, usually more than once a day, eventually stops being news. But it doesn’t stop being terrifying. At the end of May 2003 a total of 1,134 homes had been demolished by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip, making almost 10,000 individuals homeless. Unfortunately this is not a policy on the wane. During the first two years of the Intifada the average number of homes demolished in Gaza a statistical category both depressing and surreal - was 32 per month. Since the start of 2003 that average has risen to 72. Disturbingly, the publication of the "roadmap" to peace has so far had no impact. Very few of the demolitions target the families of suicide bombers or of those wanted by Israel. Instead the victims are simply people living in the wrong place at the wrong time. Those living near the Egyptian border in Rafah in the south of Gaza have the misfortune of being in a place where Israel feels the need to widen its security zone at the border. Hundreds of homes, dozens of small shops, mosques and communities that once huddled there against the border have been churned into rubble. In Khan Younis the residents of a refugee camp who have the bad luck to overlook the Gush Qatif settlement block have similarly had their homes razed. Tanks and bulldozers come in the night. Instructions to evacuate are shouted through loudhailers and families grab what meager possessions they can before their world comes crashing down. This is repeated over and over again, night after night, with an appalling regularity. The United Nations, in the form of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), tries to pick up the pieces after these demolitions. As the agency responsible for the humanitarian needs of more than 75 per cent of Gazans, it immediately supplies tents, blankets, food and drinking water to the newly homeless. If it has the funds, it helps out with rental costs for those refugees the majority without the income to cover their new accommodation costs. And UNRWA picks up the pieces in other ways too. Its schools in Gaza are facing a tidal wave of traumatized children, many of whom have been roused from their beds by the bulldozers or lie awake, fearful that their home will be next. UNRWA now provides trauma counseling in each of its 169 schools for these innocent victims of the Intifada.

The Road Map Avoids Addressing East Jerusalem
By Diana Buttu, MIFTAH, June 28, 2003
In the U.S.-backed road map there is little reference to Jerusalem. It simply states that Jerusalem will be addressed during final status negotiations. The problem with this, argued Diana Buttu, a legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) Negotiations Affairs Department, is that Israel has never recognized east Jerusalem as occupied territory. As a result, Israelis refer to the colonies in and around east Jerusalem as Jewish "neighborhoods" not illegal settlements built over the Green Line. According to Buttu, colony expansion soared since the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles (DOP) in 1993. Speaking at a 19 June 2003 Palestine Center briefing, Buttu explained that beyond the municipal boundaries of east Jerusalem, which Israel refers to as "Greater Jerusalem," there are at least 31 illegal colonies housing about 220,000 Jewish settlers. The colonies cover 440 square kilometers (approximately 273 miles) of which only 25 percent lies in west Jerusalem. In east Jerusalem there are three major colony blocs: Gush Etzion in the south, Adumim in the east, and the Binyamin bloc in the north. Buttu argued that Israel's plan to expel as many Palestinians as possible while holding on to as much of their land as possible is "starkly" clear in east Jerusalem. With the three major colony blocs and other projects that connect these blocs, Israel has cut off Palestinian areas from all sides in an attempt to confine the Palestinians in as little of an area as possible. The Adumim bloc consists of six colonies and an industrial area. It has a planning area of 69,500 dunums (17,375 acres) and the capacity to expand fifteen times its developed size. It lies 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) east of the Israeli-expanded municipal borders of east Jerusalem. One of the six colonies in the Adumim bloc is the Ma'ale Adumim colony. There are 30,000 settlers living in Ma'ale Adumim which has a planning area of 47 square kilometers (29 miles)-only 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) less than the municipal borders of Tel Aviv.