The Palestinian Truce
By Waddah Charara, Al-Hayat, July 8, 2003
The Palestinian truce reflects the confusion prevailing on the Palestinian scene. While the Palestinian Authority was the one to announce the truce, it has no control over the forces on the ground engaged in resistance. These forces have conditioned their truce, and most of the terms they imposed were on the Palestinian Authority, which they expect to obtain from the Israelis. If the Authority fails to bring Israel to fulfill these conditions, stipulated by the resistance groups, it could lose some of its influence. Still, the Palestinian resistance groups have said it loud and clear that they mainly agreed to the truce to avoid a military confrontation with the Authority. This truce is based on the agreement that has existed between the Palestinian resistance and the Authority since the start of the second Intifada. Had it not been for that agreement, fighting between the Palestinians would have been unavoidable. It was the Authority, with Yasser Arafat as its leader, which supported and encouraged the second Intifada. Moreover, some Palestinian leaders highlight the role of the Egyptian mediation in achieving the truce. Thus, one may conclude that the appointment of Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian Prime Minister, together with the Egyptian mediation, were decisive factors in producing the truce. But should the government of Abu Abbas prove to be unable to confront the militant Palestinian factions, or should the Egyptian mediation efforts tone down, nothing will stop the militant Palestinian groups from "fighting until total victory." Thus, the Palestinians are carrying out the truce as two separate parties: the Authority and the resistance groups. This duality reflects the break between the Authority, which is the core of statehood, and society. Thus, the Authority does not truly represent the Palestinian society. Following the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, missiles were fired at an Israeli settlement. The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack while Al Aqsa Brigades, which never accepted the truce, hesitated between claiming responsibility for the attack and taking its distances from it. But when the Israelis killed one of their fighters, the Brigades reminded the Authority of its reservations against the truce. This attitude appears like the resistance organizations have a role of guardianship over the Palestinian society, while the role of the Authority is restricted to maintaining the ceasefire.

Apropos victory
By Yoel Marcus, Haaretz, July 8, 2003
The headlines about whether or not the chief of staff said or didn't say "We won"; and if he did say it, whether he meant it or was just being sarcastic, are symptomatic of the banality of public discourse in this country. Some of the most important issues are being reduced to media spin. He said; he didn't say; he meant; he didn't mean. Was the defense minister personally ticked off, or were his associates ticked off on his behalf? Rating is everything, even in the most critical matters. The main thing is to pander to the lowest level of public taste and push for the highest level of thrills and chills. As Benny Begin once put it, for an Israeli politician, tactics means how to get interviewed on a TV news program at 5 P.M., and strategic thinking means how to swing another interview that same evening on the news roundup at 9 P.M.  This business of "Who won?" doesn't really matter. The important thing is that negotiations are under way. Maybe we'll get somewhere and maybe we won't. What should matter is who will win the battle over the character of the state. Fifty years ago, Ben-Gurion had visions of Israel becoming a "light unto the nations." Meanwhile we're closer to being a Third World country, judging by the yawning gap between rich and poor, the erosion of the middle class, the corruption in government and the low educational standards. The data on the poor performance of Israeli schoolchildren in reading comprehension, science and math is proof that the exceptionalness of this country is slipping through our fingers. One sees it in the pidgin Hebrew spoken by Knesset members, not to mention the incoherent stammering of our high school graduates, with their culture of laziness and mindless partying, and the embrace of trashy entertainment, while serious theaters are being forced to close their doors.

My Fellow Americans
By Jihad Al Khazen, Al-Hayat, July 9, 2003
Can a man of peace such as Mahmoud Abbas get a war criminal such as Ariel Sharon to do something that serves peace? I hope he will today, and that he will achieve palpable and serious results knowing that the truce, which the Islamic resistance announced, is coming to an end, even though it barely started. Hamas accuses Sharon and his government of provoking it to break the truce, by pursuing its assassination operations and invasions, not to mention arresting followers of Hamas and Jihad and depriving these prisoners from their plan of releasing hostages and detainees. Hamas also believes that by allowing tourists and Jews to visit the Al-Aqsa mosque is a deliberate provocation, especially since Sharon knows he was the one to provoke the Al-Aqsa Intifada following his visit that soiled the temple. Khaled Mishaal, head of Hamas' politburo, reminded me of what we had discussed about Hamas and Jihad having declared the suspension of military operations temporarily and conditionally. Other groups joined it for pure Palestinian reasons and also to prevent the Zionists' attempts to destroy the internal Palestinian situation. He added: "We are still capable of resuming the resistance and are ready for it, and all those who say the opposite are wrong, as the resistance will always exist and the battlefield will determine who is the stronger party… the resistance will go on, and nothing will stop it except the end of the occupation." I had also spoken with Ramadan Shallah, leader of Islamic Jihad a couple of days ago, and I called Khaled Mishaal yesterday to get more information regarding the current situation. He was not angry; he spoke clearly and deeply, so I would rather present to the reader his own interpretation of the situation than mine.

A Diplomat's Undiplomatic Truth
By Robert Scheer, AlterNet, July 8, 2003
They may have finally found the smoking gun that nails the culprit responsible for the Iraq war. Unfortunately, the incriminating evidence wasn't left in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces but rather in Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson publicly revealed over the weekend that he was the mysterious envoy whom the CIA, under pressure from Cheney, sent to Niger to investigate a document — now known to be a crude forgery — that allegedly showed Iraq was trying to acquire enriched uranium that might be used to build a nuclear bomb. Wilson found no basis for the story, and nobody else has either. What is startling in Wilson's account, however, is that the CIA, the State Department, the National Security Council and the vice president's office were all informed that the Niger-Iraq connection was phony. No one in the chain of command disputed that this "evidence" of Iraq's revised nuclear weapons program was a hoax. Yet, nearly a year after Wilson reported back the facts to Cheney and the U.S. security apparatus, Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, invoked the fraudulent Iraq-Africa uranium connection as a major justification for rushing the nation to war: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa." What the president did not say was that the British were relying on their intelligence white paper, which was based on the same false information that Wilson and the U.S. ambassador to Niger had already debunked. "That information was erroneous, and they knew about it well ahead of both the publication of the British white paper and the president's State of the Union address," Wilson said Sunday on "Meet the Press." Although a British Parliament report released Monday exonerated the Blair government of deliberate distortion to justify invading Iraq, it urged the foreign secretary to come clean as to when British officials were first told that the Iraq-Niger allegation was based on forged documents. The report noted: "It is very odd indeed" that the British government has still not come up with any other evidence to support its contention about an Iraq-Niger connection. Nor has the U.S. administration told its public why it ignored the disclaimers from its own intelligence sources. In order to believe that our president was not lying to us, we must believe that this information did not find its way through Cheney's office to the Oval Office.

What I Didn't Find in Africa
By Joseph C. Wilson IV, New York Times, July 6, 2003
WASHINGTON -- Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council. It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me. In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office. After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government. In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible. The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.

Cruel and illegal: U.S. leaves injured Iraqis untreated
By Ali Abunimah, Electronic Iraq, July 7, 2003
United States occupation forces in Iraq are refusing to treat wounded and sick Iraqis if their injuries are not directly caused by the United States. This shocking behavior is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. On June 30, dozens of Iraqis were killed and scores injured in an explosion at an abandoned ammunition dump at Haditha, 260 kilometers northeast of Baghdad. The victims had apparently been searching for shell casings to sell as scrap. According to the BBC, a spokesman for US Central Command in Baghdad said that, because the dump was Iraqi, not American, US forces in the area were not taking responsibility for caring for the wounded. But the United States is responsible at every level. First and foremost, as the occupying power, the US is supposed to provide security for Iraq's people. The fact that Iraqi civilians can walk into abandoned Iraqi Army stores shows that the US is dismally failing to do that. A few weeks ago, Iraqi villagers became ill after taking radioactive canisters from a known Iraqi nuclear site that US forces had failed to secure. Second, the US is legally and morally obliged to render assistance to the injured. Article 16 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: "The wounded and sick, as well as the infirm, and expectant mothers, shall be the object of particular protection and respect." Article 55 states: "To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the occupying power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate." Almost three months into the occupation, the US has done little to meet its legal obligation to restore Iraq's collapsed medical system. Richard Alderslade, a spokesman on health policy for the World Health Organization, told Reuters on June 26 that Iraq's health system was "extremely fragile," and running at no more than 30-50 percent capacity at a time when the public health situation is deteriorating, with an increase in child sickness, communicable diseases, and threats from unexploded munitions. Third, the fact that Iraqis are reduced to searching for scrap ammunition in such a dangerous place to sell for subsistence is a testament not only to the devastation of decades of sanctions and war, but of the utter failure of the occupiers to provide the Iraqi people with the food and work they need.

Making stupid comparisons
By Amira Hass, Haaretz, July 9, 2003
Last week, the Israel Defense Forces improved the appearance of the roadblock at the northern entrance to Ramallah - the one used by diplomats and Palestinian VIPs. The road, which was full of potholes, was paved, and the concrete blocks that mark the entrance and exit were straightened. A few months ago, signs and slogans were painted on these blocks in fluorescent pinks and yellows, such as "Stop" (in English) and "Za'am" ("Anger") in Hebrew, being the name of one of the units that served at the roadblock. Some of these blocks were removed last week. On one, which greeted those entering Ramallah for many months, the soldiers wrote "Achtung" ("Caution") for the benefit of German-speaking diplomats and aid agency workers. Against the background of wire fences, a watchtower and armed soldiers who sometimes aim their weapons at threatening movements, that "achtung" grates terribly on the ears of someone raised on parents' memories and photograph albums that told of how this word was used by those who implemented the Final Solution. But the only thing to be learned from its inscription on a concrete block at an IDF roadblock is that this word means nothing to modern-day Israeli youths, the 18- to 20-year-olds and their commanders, who are only a few years older. Descriptions of Israeli control over the Palestinians naturally arouses certain associations in certain Jews. A child raising both hands in the air before a soldier pointing a rifle; a hidden, fenced-in detention center (Ofer) only a few dozen meters away from a multilane highway, traveled by hundreds of Israelis, that shortens the distance between the West Bank's Binyamin region and Israel; an enormous detention center buried somewhere in the Negev (Ketziot), with more wire fences, more watchtowers and searchlights around them. These associations create a sense of pain, a sense of helplessness over the fact that they are not shared by many in Israel and have certainly not inspired people with a need to eliminate their source - our control over the Palestinian people and their dispossession from their land. Sometimes the pain, the anger and the helplessness lead people to turn these associations into stupid comparisons. A month ago, a Jewish member of the British parliament, Oona King, came on a visit. She happened to be here when Air Force helicopters tried to assassinate Abdel Aziz Rantisi of Hamas. She learned about the rampant poverty in the Gaza Strip, about the comfort in which Jewish settlers live, about Israel's closure policies, about the Palestinians' economic dependence on Israel. In an article written afterward for The Guardian, she denounced Palestinian terror, but also recalled Jewish terror during the Mandate era in this context. She mentioned her decision to boycott Israeli products in response to the "atrocities" committed by Israel and its collective punishment of the Palestinians. But she also wrote: "The original founders of the Jewish state could surely not have imagined the irony facing Israel today. In escaping the ashes of the Holocaust, they have incarcerated another people in a hell similar in its nature - though not its extent - to the Warsaw Ghetto."

A recipe for civil war
Editorial, The Star, July 6, 2003
Israel’s insistence on dismantling Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups as a prerequisite for the implementation of the roadmap peace plan can be understood within the context of the Jewish state’s desire to see Palestinians kill each other. -- JORDAN (Star) - Israel’s insistence on dismantling Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups as a prerequisite for the implementation of the roadmap peace plan can be understood within the context of the Jewish state’s desire to see Palestinians kill each other. What is not understandable is the US approach to this extremely sensitive matter. A week ago President George Bush came out with the same idea: Hamas should be dismantled if peace is to be reached in the Middle East. His call amounts to a recipe for a Palestinian civil war. Hamas can only be dismantled by vigorous force and this will lead to an internal bloody strife stripping the Palestinian leadership of its legitimacy and creating widespread chaos that aggravates an already complicated situation. The Palestinian government of Mahmoud Abbas is neither willing nor capable of taking such a huge disastrous step. With the Palestinian security forces reduced by persistent Israeli attacks and brutal killing to a pitiful state, Abbas has neither the power nor the will to engage in such a battle which is bound to produce grave consequences to the cause of the Palestinian people. Hamas, after all, represents a very broad sector of the Palestinians inside the Occupied Palestinian Territories and among the Palestinians living in the diaspora. A war against its ranks by the government will severely undermine the standing of Abbas among his people and set the stage for inter-Palestinian wrangling that could only yield a calamity for the entire peace process. We all know that Hamas, beside its warfare activities against the Israelis, provides wide-range social services to the poverty-stricken families of bereaved Palestinians. To ignore this humanitarian dimension is by itself a very cruel concept that should be resisted by the international community. The United States, among other nations, is called upon to show understanding of this simple logic: Hamas is not only a fighting force but also a charitable establishment that supplies thousand of families with the requirements of basic living.