Baby Steps toward Peace
By MIFTAH, July 7, 2003
Last weekend, Palestinian factions called a truce. They agreed to halt all attacks on Israelis for three months. Then, Israeli forces withdrew from the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, a move significant because it opened up the main road there to Palestinians for the first time since September 2000. On Tuesday of last week, Prime Ministers Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon met, renewing commitments to the road map and an end to violence. Then, Israeli troops withdrew from Bethlehem. And now, Israel is proposing to release Palestinian prisoners. We are back on the road to peace. Or are we? Because on Thursday morning, less than four days after withdrawing from Beit Hanoun, the Israeli army re-blocked the main thoroughfare of the Gaza Strip. Then, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian man. They were pursuing Ibrahim Mansour, an Al-Aqsa Brigades activist, who was critically wounded, and they killed his aide Mahmoud Shawer, aged 31, in the process. And even though Israeli troops have withdrawn from Bethlehem, its effects are limited. The main barrier to freedom in Bethlehem remains – in the form of checkpoints surrounding the city, cutting it off from the rest of the Occupied Territories, entrapping its residents. Finally, the list of prisoners being proposed for release amounts to a paltry 350 (out of some 6,000), more than half of whom are administrative detainees; stripped of their right to due process, they were never charged in the first place. Still more colossal than these individual impediments to peace is the overarching cause of the current manifestation of the conflict in the first place: the occupation. Under the “road map” plan, Israel must start by withdrawing from areas it occupied after September 2000, and so the present back-and-forth is basically a negotiation to return to the pre-Intifada status. Before then, in the “Oslo years,” the Palestinian Authority had nominal control over just two-thirds of Gaza and only about 40 percent of the West Bank. What many are not discussing is that pre-Intifada conditions are what led to the Intifada in the first place. That is, justifiable Palestinian frustration with the occupation, lack of Palestinian autonomy, and Israeli aggression is what led to the uprising in September 2000.

'A wall cannot withstand freedom'
By Sherri Muzher, Jordan Times, July 7, 2003
FEW PRESIDENTIAL speeches have made a mark on history, but on June 12, 1987, then-president Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, Germany and said: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation, come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Now it's time for President George W. Bush to give a similar speech to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who insists on continuing the construction of another Berlin-type wall. The so-called security fence, which will be three times as long and twice as high as the original Berlin wall, did elicit concerns from National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice a short while ago. However, no demand was made of the Israeli government to halt construction of the wall. The lack of resolve on the part of our government is unfortunate, given our loud demands that both sides work towards confidence-building measures. And the negative ramifications of this wall cannot be overstated. Consider the following facts as provided by the Palestinian Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations Network: — Contrary to popular world-wide media reports, the wall is not being built on the Green Line — which has long been understood to be the “separation line” between the Palestinian territories and Israel after the 1967 War. In fact, the wall is often being built far from and far into the Green Line. — 10 per cent of the West Bank will be confiscated by and for Israel because of the route to the wall. — Water pipes have been and continue to be destroyed, resulting in a number of Palestinian villages losing their only source of water. — About 14,000 Palestinians will be trapped between the wall and the Green Line. — Another 20,000 Palestinian farmers in the northern areas will live east of the wall, while their farmland is west of the wall. This will result in a loss of income and sustenance. — 2,200 tonnes of olive oil and 50 tonnes of fruit production are expected to be destroyed with the erection of the wall. Furthermore, 6,500 jobs will be lost. — A June 24, 2002, poll in Israel's Maariv newspaper showed that 69 per cent of Israelis support the wall.

Dramatic leaps needed to clear hurdles
By Danny Rubinstein, Haaretz, July 7, 2003
Israel and the Palestinians will find it very difficult to clear the first hurdle on the long track of obstacles in the political process known as implementing the road map. It's the hurdle of releasing Palestinian security prisoners. The issue is loaded, on both sides, and it's nearly impossible to see an Israeli-Palestinian agreement on the list of prisoners to be released. On the Palestinian side, they are very clear: For every family celebration over a freed prisoner, there will be anger in another family because of someone left in jail. Meanwhile, something new has come up to cloud the atmosphere between the sides - visits by Jews and foreigners to the Temple Mount. While the police have been organizing visits by Jews to the Al-Aqsa plaza, they closed access to the mosques on Friday to tens of thousands of Muslim worshipers. All the streets around the Old City were blocked. Only worshipers over the age of 46 were allowed on to the plaza plateau for prayers. Yasser Arafat and the PLO executive called for speedy international intervention to halt the new Israeli provocation, and the Arab press once again described a process of "Judaization of East Jerusalem," which Israel is turning into a military barracks. The Palestinian speakers were not exaggerating by much when they described how the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron has been turned from a mosque into a synagogue. Now they are warning that if they aren't on guard, the same thing could happen to Al Aqsa.

Needed: A new cognitive road map for peace
By George E. Irani and Laurie King-Irani, Electronic Intifada/Daily Star, July 6, 2003
The internationally sponsored "road map" to peace between Palestinians and Israelis will fail if it doesn't confront the important psychological dimension of peacemaking. And yet this vital on-ramp is not even mentioned in a plan destined to bring genuine peace to the troubled Middle East. Perusing the Middle East map today, we find a region strewn with populations traumatized by decades, if not centuries, of suffering. Unless they are helped in overcoming their traumas, all talk of peace that does not begin with a search for justice and an honest acknowledgement of past wrongs is a waste of time. The Palestinians have suffered one of the most traumatic events in the history of the contemporary Middle East. And it is not a single, acute trauma, but one lived and relived each day. They have paid the price for Western European, then Israeli and Arab, and now American hypocrisy. All the evils of the world seem to have been projected onto this people, to better justify the appalling treatment they have endured for the past 55 years. The Palestinians are also traumatized from within. They lack a viable leadership and their elite has lost its bearings, roots and vision. Both intellectually and politically, the Palestinians are in a dangerous state of regression and mental depression, wandering aimlessly in a darkness partly of their own making. To make their way out of this impasse, they will have to engage in self-criticism and begin to "grow a new leadership." Ironically, despite their political triumphs, Israeli Jews are also in a state of trauma. They and their state are powerful militarily, but vulnerable psychologically. A nation that has gone through pogroms and discrimination in the West now seems to be projecting its traumas, fears, and anger onto the Palestinians. What makes a dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians so impossible now is the marked sense of superiority most Israelis feel toward the Palestinians and Arabs in general.

A humorous occupation?
By William Cook, The Guardian, July 7, 2003
Jackie Mason and Ivor Dembina are both Jewish comics, but the style and substance of their comedy couldn't be more different, especially when it comes to their views on Israel -- In a tiny pub basement, beneath the affluent, leafy streets of Hampstead, Anglo Jewish comedian Ivor Dembina is premiering his new one-man show. It's an informal, ad hoc performance in front of a modest midweek audience, yet the atmosphere in this crowded cellar bar is alive with anticipation. And the reason this raw first draft is generating so much interest and adrenaline is that it's all about Dembina's recent trip to the West Bank, as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement - a Palestinian led group engaged in direct non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation. The working title of Dembina's work-in-progress is This Is Not A Subject For Comedy, but like every crucial topic, this brave, provocative show is actually dripping with dark laughs. Dembina begins with a dry, self-deprecating quip about how he's spent the last six months trying to write the joke that would solve the Middle East crisis (only to have his efforts scuppered by the current peace process) before rewinding, back to his childhood introduction to the Promised Land - in an Orthodox Synagogue in 1950s Finchley - and his teenage support for Israel during the Six Days war. It's an intriguing starter, but the main meat of Dembina's monologue is his journey to the West Bank. There's a degree of dramatic licence (Dembina's confrontation with Israeli soldiers destroying the home of a suicide bomber's family is actually based on the experience of other volunteers) but there's also plenty of straight reportage, and lots of insightful satirical commentary. After just one public performance, it's already a powerful (and surprisingly funny) show about an issue that affects us all.

A desperately-needed Road Map goodwill measure
By Catherine Hunter, The Electronic Intifada, July 7, 2003
After several false starts, let's hope that Israel makes a real concession towards paving the 'road map to peace' in this week's prisoner releases by freeing the 350 Palestinian child detainees who are currently confined in Israeli military detention centres and prisons. Many of these children will have suffered the terrifying experience of torture and abuse inside Israeli military camps and jails as well as the denial of basic rights such as parental contact and a fair trial. Those who have been sentenced have been tried according to military orders and procedures that should play no part in juvenile justice, while others have been detained without charges under Israel's draconian system of administrative detention, which requires neither published evidence nor specific charges. Previous prisoner releases have not included child detainees, concentrating instead on prisoners who have only minimum terms left to serve, and bundling them together to be touted as a significant concession before the international audience. Meanwhile, Israel has continued its arrest campaigns in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, detaining 160 'suspects' on June 24 alone in Hebron and Nablus. This figure included at least 7 children who are being held in Atzion detention centre, where most have been beaten and tortured, although strangely not questioned, which suggests that they are being held more as political pawns, than real threats to Israeli wellbeing.

An Act of Peace
by Elizabeth McAlister and Susan Crane, CommonDreams/Baltimore Sun, July 6, 2003
IT IS a dangerous time to be alive in our world, for those under our bombs and for those resisting them. Dressed in white mop-up suits, with "Citizens Weapons Inspection Team" printed on the back and "Disarmament Specialists" on the front, Dominican Sisters Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert and Jackie Hudson entered Minuteman III silo N-8 near Greeley, Colo., on Oct. 6, the anniversary of the bombing of Afghanistan. They cut single links in the chains securing the gates in the outer and inner fences surrounding the silo. They left the gates open and peeled back a section of the fence, opening it to reveal the presence of a weapon of mass destruction. They poured their blood, in the form of a cross, six times on the 110-ton silo lid and on the tracks that carry the lid to the firing position. Then, in a ritual of prayer and symbolic disarmament, they used household hammers on the silo and the tracks. The nuns were arrested, jailed, charged and convicted of obstructing the national defense, which is listed under sabotage, and destruction of government property - felonies that carry up to 30 years in federal prison. They refused an offer of personal recognizance, knowing that they could not in conscience abide by conditions of their release (which forbid civil resistance) as this nation prepared to mount another war. The nuns hoped to bring attention to the weapons of mass destruction covering more than 1,950 square miles of Colorado farmland (33,700 square miles in other states). The 49 nuclear-armed missiles in Colorado had recently been refitted with W-87 nuclear warheads, each with an explosive power of 300 kilotons (about 25 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb). The trial, which began March 31 in a Denver federal court, was preceded by a hearing Feb. 21 at which defendants' motions for dismissal were denied. The sisters could not defend their actions using international law or the Nuremberg war crimes trials as a defense during their trial. At their trial, the prosecution offered many witnesses from F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. They testified that the nuns did nothing to interfere with national defense or the mission of the base and that neither the bloody crosses nor the pinging of their hammers damaged, contaminated or destroyed the cement or rails. Testimony on the value of property damaged could not meet the $1,000 required for felony destruction. Yet Judge Robert Blackburn denied defense motions for a directed verdict of acquittal. Stripped of every other defense, the nuns testified that their intent was to uphold national and international law (which they couldn't discuss) and to call for the disarmament of weapons that inflict unspeakable, unconscionable and indiscriminate devastation and death. They were simple and eloquent in their orange jail suits. They were convicted of two felonies: obstructing national defense and damaging government property. From media interviews with jurors after the verdict, it was clear that jurors understood that the nuns had done something wrong and that they were required to bring back a guilty verdict. The jury had no sense of the seriousness of the charges. Federal sentencing guidelines require that the judge sentence them to between 72 and 97 months in prison.

Stop all the attacks
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, July 6, 2003
Palestinian leaders can promise the earth and infuse hopes in the Prime Minister's Bureau, but as long as mothers are giving birth and infants cannot get to hospital on time and return home in a humane way, as long as a groom cannot get to his wedding - there will be no quiet here.  --  Last Wednesday, Nadia Shehadeh was having a baby. She is 32, a resident of the village of Salam, east of Nablus. Dirt rampart blockades and sewage channels prevent any way out of the village, but somehow she made her way to the Beit Furik checkpoint, accompanied by her mother-in-law. Her husband knew there was no chance the soldiers would let him through the checkpoint. Shehadeh wanted to reach Raffidiyeh Hospital in Nablus, which is the most blockaded city in the West Bank nowadays. The soldiers made her wait at the Beit Furik checkpoint. She says she had to wait two hours until she was allowed to go through on foot - without her mother-in-law. The checkpoint is between a Palestinian village and a city, at a time when another effort is underway to open a new chapter in relations with the Palestinians. But that didn't matter to the soldiers at the checkpoint. For them, the brutal routine continues. The next day, when Shehadeh returned with the baby in her arms, the soldiers delayed her for a longer period of time - three hours, she reckons - until they allowed her through on foot to go back to her village with the day-old baby. Fortunately, this story did not end as badly as many others. While Shehadeh was pleading with the soldiers to be allowed to go home, another resident of her village, Munir Awad, 24, wanted to return in his car after visiting the nearby Balata refugee camp. He had no alternative but to circumvent the Beit Furik checkpoint by going through the fields. An army jeep caught him and the soldiers made him get out of the car. According to Palestinian eyewitnesses, they beat Awad until he bled. Much later, he was seen still at the Beit Furik checkpoint, and even later at the Hawara checkpoint, bleeding and shackled. A day earlier, on Wednesday, Saher Basharat, a paramedic, reported to the Physicians Association for Human Rights that he, too, had been beaten senseless by soldiers at the Shavei Shomron checkpoint, after he was taken off his ambulance and refused to sit on the road, as the soldiers had ordered. An army spokesman said "a preliminary examination did not uncover the incidents as described ... But if they turn out to be true, the matter will be dealt with in the most severe manner." The spokesman added that anyone trying to circumvent a checkpoint is immediately suspected of involvement in terror activity and, on the day in question, cars that tried to bypass the checkpoint were stopped for examination. But, the spokesman added, the army wants "anyone who feels they were mistreated to file a formal complaint."

Interview: 'Unholy alliances'
By Omayma Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 3 - 9 July 2003
John Esposito speaks about the struggle for America's soul -- John Esposito acknowledges the fact that in the US he is "a controversial figure". One of America's foremost authorities and interpreters of Islam, as the Wall Street Journal once described him, Esposito is also considered to be one of the few voices of dissent within American academia. His opponents charge that he is an "apologist for Islam and soft on Muslims" and that he and his colleagues have misinformed the US administration about the true dangers of Islamist groups, contending that they underestimated the so-called Islamic threat. Esposito dismisses such charges as "ideologically-inspired". He defines himself as simply "a scholar of Islam". For him it is almost an article of faith that there is a war being fought by some ideologues to win "the hearts and minds" of the American people. "In the old days, being controversial was fine because we had a more open society. Now we don't, so we get nailed," said 63- year-old Esposito in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly during a brief stop in Cairo last week. Over the past three decades, and long before the "green menace" replaced the red one, Esposito has been carving a niche for himself as an authority on matters Islamic. He is founding director of the reputable Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, a centre established in 1993 to address the issue of dialogue between Islam and the West. Esposito, once chair of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESNA), has written numerous articles, books and essays about Muslim politics, beliefs and cultures. His books are usually described as jargon-free and provide "a lucid introduction to truths on Islam which must become common knowledge", as Karen Armstrong, the famous theologian once said of his latest book Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. Dressed in a simple T-shirt and shorts, Esposito spoke to the Weekly of another United States, "an America which promises freedom of speech, equality and multiple positions of thought". He acknowledges that both the Arab world and the United States have been experiencing tense times since 9/11. Almost two years after the tragic events, Esposito and other like-minded scholars both in the US and the Arab world are still reeling from the fall-out of those events. "We still bounce between a feeling of being confused and depressed," said Esposito. "It -- 9/11 -- was not just a passing war or some small situation. This was -- in some ways -- a major moment in modern history which was global in its proportions."