The holy war Israel wants
By Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, July 11, 2003
The inhabitants of Nazareth, Israel's only Arab city, often talk of the "invisible occupation": although they rarely see police -- let alone soldiers -- on their streets, they are held in a vise-like grip of Israeli control just as much as their ethnic kin in neighbouring Palestinian cities like Jenin and Nablus are. In September 2000, for example, when Israel's one million Palestinian citizens, including Nazarenes, demonstrated against Ariel Sharon's visit to the mosque compound in Jersualem -- known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount -- 13 of their number were shot dead by police in four days. Not a single protester had been armed. Last week the veil was again briefly lifted from the occupation inside Israel. More than 500 heavily armed police officers stormed Nazareth's city centre at dawn, arresting a handful of Muslim clerics and demolishing the foundations of a mosque that has been making headlines since a "holy tent" was first erected in 1998 at the site of the grave of Shihab ad-Deen, the nephew of Salah ad-Deen. In all the excitement over Israel's withdrawals from Gaza and Bethlehem, the invasion of Nazareth was overlooked, except in the Hebrew press, where it was presented as a brave attempt by the government to rein in lawlessness and calm religious tensions in a city that is now 70 per cent Muslim and 30 per cent Christian. But the case of Nazareth's "rogue" mosque is far more complicated than this -- and potentially more revealing of the political games Israel is playing with the delicate balance of forces between the country's religious communities. In fact, far from being patently illegal, the mosque had actually won approval from two governments, Binyamin Netanyahu's in 1998 and Ehud Barak's in 1999. Both backed the plan, even though the mosque was to be located a few provocative yards from one of the holiest churches in the Middle East, the Basilica of the Annunciation. (Built on the site, say Catholics, where the Virgin Mary was told she was carrying the son of God.) Violent clashes briefly erupted between Christians and Muslims in the wake of these decisions. The government's position, however, changed last year, apparently after the Pope and President George W. Bush got wind that local Muslims had started laying the mosque's foundations. Bush put heavy pressure on Sharon to intervene, and dutifully the Israeli prime minister set up a committee to consider the question again. It used a loophole -- that the building work had begun before all the official papers had been received -- to justify finding against the mosque's completion in March 2002.

Arabs in Israel returning to roots
By Wadea Awawdeh, Jerusalem Times, July 10, 2003
Despite the measures of displacement that accompanied the catastrophe of 1948, about 150,000 Palestinians remained in the Galilee, the northern cities and Al-Naqab Desert. Arabs in Israel, who today number over one million, were forced to become Israeli citizens when the land was occupied, and since then, there have been treated as third-rate citizens. But injustice served by one's own folk is more painful. For a long time Arabs in Israel were accused of treason by their own people because of the "sin" they committed by staying on their land. Then the Uprising of Land Day in 1976 erupted, and their image began to change for the better. We spoke about changes in the Arab community in Israel with Khawla Abu Bakr, sociology lecturer, who has written several books, the latest of which titled 'The Standing Generation,' an important book about Palestinians and Israeli written in Hebrew in cooperation with Danny Rabnovic. We asked Abu Bakr whether Israel was able to force Arabs into submission. We also asked her how the Hebrew state helped Palestinians living in it return to their roots and how the third generation is different from its predecessors. Abu Bakr also spoke about Arab representation in the Israeli parliament and the historical opportunity that Arab leaders wasted, in addition to the role the same leaders could play in the peace process. Where does the Arab community in Israel stand between tradition and social and cultural changes? Our community is constantly changing because it has been affected by several factors. We belong to several cultures: Islamic, Palestinian, and Middle Eastern, and have been affected by 55 years of Israeli influence, during which certain changes were forced upon us and others we adopted. It is natural for the minority to be influenced by the majority, and a community cannot be expected to freeze itself for half a century and avoid influence from surrounding cultures. Since the nakbeh (the catastrophe of 1948) Arabs in Israel witnessed several social changes, most importantly those concerned with education for women. Important changes were also made concerning work. There is no comparison between what was before and what exists now. There is a general wave of change in tradition and customs.

I am back in Cedar Falls. Now what?
By Germana Nijim, MIFTAH, July 10, 2003
I left Hebron, Palestine, on May 30, flying to Milano, Italy, where I was met by a dear friend. "How are you?" he asked. I started to cry. This is not my usual reaction on returning to my country of birth. The cappuccino, as good as it was, did not cheer me up, and the bag of cherries handed to me made me smile, but I did not touch them. We sat at a little table in the terminal, while the tears kept falling. I did not want to be here. I did not want to be anywhere except in Palestine. My friend understood and gave me time and space. As we headed toward Verona on the autostrada, I continued crying, uttering short sentences that did not convey my feelings of desolation. Eventually, Italy took over. There are so many things I love about my old country that I was soon caught up in the joy of being back. But I dreaded the nights. For almost a week, IDF soldiers would infiltrate my dreams and rob me of my rest. The mornings brought relief mixed with feelings of guilt for having "abandoned ship," for having left behind my CPT teammates and the people we served. It was not until we drove to the Dolomite Mountains that I regained some peace. I grew up in the mountains, and I love them with a passion. Near Corvara, the tall, imposing peaks rose all around us like strong, protective arms. I wanted to hug them back. The valleys were incredibly green and full of a dazzling mix of wild flowers. In my walks I often stopped to marvel at them. And the feelings of guilt came back; what had I done to deserve being in such breathtaking place when there was so much injustice and violence and oppression in this world; when so many people would never be able to gaze at this majesty or experience its peace?....Reluctantly, I finally got in my car to drive back to Cedar Falls. Having lived in community in Hebron, with people I liked very much, I was dreading the empty, silent house. The drive in the sunny and cloudless day took me over five hours. On the road, I stopped twice, but voluntarily, not because of checkpoints where I had to show my passport to kid soldiers armed to the teeth. I watched farmers working in their fields without the threat of settlers descending on them and causing them harm. Lucky for them, soldiers of an occupying army would not suddenly declare their fields a "closed military zone". If some of their land were wanted for road expansion, the farmers would be compensated. The state would not rob them of their land to settle an alien and hostile population. Bulldozers would not uproot their trees. The worst criminals would not have their houses blown up in the middle of the night. They could hop in their pick-up trucks or SUVs and drive miles even across state lines to see family and friends without having to apply for a travel permit, which most probably would be denied. Nowhere would they be stopped and made to wait hours under the summer sun without food or water while soldiers decided their fate. They could make appointments and keep them without military interference. They could make vacation plans. Military snipers were not likely to kill their children or assassinate their neighbor for his political views and activities.

Prisoners as hostages
By Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly On-line, 10 - 16 July 2003
As Israel drags its feet on the release of Palestinian political prisoners, anger rises in the Palestinian territories -- Israel's adamant refusal to free as many as 6,500 Palestinian political and resistance prisoners is once again galvanising the Palestinian public and infuriating resistance groups. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have warned this week that the fragile truce with Israel would be terminated if the prisoners were not released. Earlier this week, the Israeli government agreed to release around 350 prisoners, including mostly "administrative detainees", "agitators", and prisoners whose prison sentences are about to expire. According to the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, many of the detainees Israel plans to release could be classified as "prisoners of conscience" who have been in detention without charge or trial on the mere suspicion of encouraging or aiding resistance fighters. What the Palestinians fear most is a repetition of the Israeli tactics during the "Oslo years", when successive Israeli governments sought to keep thousands of Palestinian prisoners as bargaining chips, ostensibly in order to blackmail the Palestinian Authority and extract fundamental political concessions pertaining to such central issues as Jerusalem, settlements, and the right of return. Such fears are reinforced by the Israeli government's decision to adopt stringent criteria for releasing Palestinian detainees, which would effectively keep more than 90 per cent of the detainees behind bars. According to the Israeli criteria, all prisoners who have killed or injured Israelis would not be released. And it doesn't matter if the Israelis killed were soldiers attacking Palestinians, or paramilitary Jewish terrorists, or civilians, nor, indeed, if the killing was in self- defense or in the battlefield. For Israel, all Palestinian fighters are "terrorists" and all Israelis killed are "victims of terror". Moreover, prisoners affiliated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are also to be doomed for open-ended incarceration. This, said one PA official on condition of anonymity, is the perfect prescription to provoke Hamas and the Islamic Jihad to break the cease-fire and resume the armed Intifada. Likewise, detainees whom Israel deems might revert to active resistance in the future and those who are still undergoing "legal" proceedings, would not be freed. More to the point, the 350 prisoners Israel plans to release would be freed in trickles, depending on the extent to which the Palestinian Authority fights "terror". Adding insult to injury, Israeli Transportation Minister Avigdor Liberman urged the Sharon government to drown Palestinian POWs in the Dead Sea rather than release them. This is the same minister who last year urged the Israeli army to bomb Palestinian markets, banks, schools, hospitals and shopping centers for the purpose of driving them out of the country!

Nameless, Faceless People
By Aline Batarseh, Alternative Information Center, July 11, 2003
I see children, women, the young and the old sitting in two buses pulled over to the side of a road that divides East Jerusalem from West Jerusalem. They are waiting for their identity cards to be checked by two Israeli soldiers who appear to be acting like gods of their small world with the power to control the lives of these nameless, faceless people. The soldiers are busy finding out whether they have the right IDs, whether they have the needed permits to be in Jerusalem (which has been closed off to Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1991), or whether they are on a list of wanted “terrorists.” Needless to say, these people are Palestinians. While to the Israeli soldiers they seem to have “terrorism” written on their foreheads, to me they represent the suffering that my people have been forced to endure for the past 55 years since the establishment of Israel. I pass by them and I cringe at the humiliation that I see in front of my eyes. Over the years, Israel has taken several measures that have led to the desolation of Palestinians living under military occupation. Israel uproots trees, commits assassinations, demolishes homes, confiscates Palestinian land for the purpose of building Jewish-only settlements and by-pass roads (illegal under international law), sets up military checkpoints, imposes curfews and closure in more than one form. Israel has in effect imprisoned Palestinians in their towns and villages through internal closure that prevents them from traveling from one town/village to another within the occupied territories. Israel also imposes general closure that prevents Palestinians from traveling from the occupied territories to Israel proper or to and from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. All in the name of security, a word that has become meaningless in light of Israel’s double standard policies towards Palestinians and Israelis. Whose security and why? Israel needs to protect itself from suicide bombings, you say? Why then did Israel first impose closure in 1991, when the phenomenon of suicide bombers was non-existent? In fact, since then not once was closure lifted for Palestinians. Even after Oslo was initiated and the Palestinian Authority was established, Palestinians were still prevented from practicing the most basic of rights, that of freedom of movement. It is understandable that Israel is afraid for the security of its people, but Israel’s sense of insecurity must be seen in the context of a greater insecurity; the insecurity of Palestinians living under occupation since 1967, the insecurity of enduring nightly shelling since the resumption of the Intifada in September 2000, living under siege, and the death of 2,500 people. Not only has this failed in quelling Palestinian resistance against Israel’s oppressive policies but it also hasn’t brought Israel security. The more Israel increases “security” measures, the more insecurity it brings to the Palestinians. Israel is now moving towards making the daily lives of Palestinians even more unbearable with the building of “the wall of separation.” Does it not come as a surprise to Israel that by imposing all those “security” measures the Palestinian struggle for survival and independence has not subsided? Is it surprising that no peace effort has succeeded in the face of continuing Israeli oppression?

"Coin of Empire" Too Costly for Israelis, Palestinians, and U.S. Taxpayers
By Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus, July 9, 2003
"The coin of empire is always bought dear" was an expression that emerged from the great Irish Tithe War of the 1830s, when the British taxed the Catholic Irish to support the Church of England. After three years of opposition, bloodshed, and financial chaos, one colonial officer glumly pointed out that it was costing the Crown, "a shilling to collect tuppence." That is a lesson the government of Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon might heed as it continues to occupy the West Bank and Gaza at a cost that threatens to destroy the Israeli economy, impoverishing both occupiers and occupied. The moral of the story also might encourage U.S. President George W. Bush's administration to influence Israel's economic policies. For the second year in a row, Israel's GDP has contracted. Unemployment overall is 10.8%; it is more than double that rate in Israeli Arab towns. Over 300,000 Israelis are jobless. According to government reports, 1.2 million Israelis--one-fifth of the population--now live in poverty. The official poverty line income is $934 a month for families with two children. The number of poor families has risen 30% in the past 14 years and the number of children in poverty 50%. Some 27% of Israel's children are officially designated poor. While poverty is growing among Israelis, it is definitive among the Palestinians. Over 50% of the West Bank and Gaza populations are jobless, and 75% of Gaza's residents live on less than $2 a day. The U.S. Agency for International Development found that 13.2% of Gaza's children and 4.3% in the West Bank suffer from what it called "body wasting" or inadequate nutrition. Almost one in five children has moderate anemia. The settlements are a massive drain on the Israeli budget. Aside from the cost of deploying the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to guard the settlements, a vast network of special roads labeled for "settlers only" has been constructed, along with an enormous water and electrical power infrastructure. Tel Aviv also subsidizes the 220,000 settlers (plus the 200,000 in East Jerusalem). Mortgage rates in the occupied territories are one quarter of those in Israel, education is subsidized, and settlers receive a 10% break on their income taxes plus a 7% discount on their social security. According to Peace Now, the occupation costs the Israeli government about $1.4 billion a year, a figure that will surely rise with the continued expansion of the settlements. According to the Associated Press, Sharon told his Cabinet ministers June 22 that despite the directives of the multilateral Road Map for Middle East Peace, construction would continue "quietly." The cost of occupation is partly borne by U.S. loan guarantees and outright grants. U.S. aid to Israel--the bulk of it military--amounts to some $3 billion a year. Several months ago the Sharon government asked for more, figuring the White House owed it for Israel's staunch support of the Bush administration's war on Iraq. Washington agreed to pony up $9 billion in loan guarantees and $1 billion in military aid, but with a catch: Israel must cut taxes, welfare, and public service jobs. In short, it must adopt a U.S.-style economic system.

The Parallel That Wasn't: John Marshall and Kofi Annan 
By Paul deLespinasse, CommonDreams, July 10, 2003
Most Americans are aware that this year is the hundredth anniversary of heavier-than-air flight. Only a few remember that it is also the two hundredth anniversary of the Supreme Court's major decision in Marbury v. Madison. Even fewer people realize that Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, had an opportunity this year to do the same kind of thing that Chief Justice John Marshall did back in 1803, but did not take advantage of that opportunity. The 1803 Marbury case may be the most important decision ever made by the United States Supreme Court because it established the principle of national judicial review. It was already clear that federal courts could strike down state legislation if it conflicted with federal law or with the Constitution, but it was not so clear that the courts also had the power to strike down acts of Congress, a co-equal branch of the federal government. Under Chief Justice Marshall's leadership, the Supreme Court announced in Marbury that it had this latter power, and it did so in a context in which the other branches of government were unable to do anything about it. Political parties were just beginning to emerge in 1803, and the Marbury case was brought about by a conflict between the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans (which later became the Democratic Party). In 1801 outgoing President John Adams, a Federalist, had appointed some new federal judges at the last minute, but the official paperwork had never been delivered to the new judges. James Madison, Secretary of State for the new Republican President, Thomas Jefferson, refused to deliver the "commissions" to the new judges. He thought that the appointments were an illegitimate attempt by the defeated Federalists to preserve their influence by ensconcing themselves in the judicial branch of the government.....It is ironic that exactly two hundred years after Marbury v. Madison, the U.N. Secretary General was presented with an opportunity this spring to pull a "John Marshall" but failed to seize that opportunity. During the run up to the American attack, U.N. inspectors were in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction. When the attack was imminent, President George Bush asked Kofi Annan to remove the inspectors, getting them out of harm's way before the bombing started. The Secretary General promptly withdrew the inspectors. Instead, Kofi Annan could have announced that he lacked the power to withdraw the weapons inspectors from Iraq unless the Security Council ordered him to do so. The Security Council, of course, would have done no such thing, since a resolution to that effect would have been vetoed by France or by Russia even if it had gotten the required nine out of fifteen votes.

Camino Re'al and the Real Road in Palestine
By Daniel Jacob Quinn, Electronic Intifada, July 11, 2003
While talk of "The Roadmap" continues, what also continues are relentless attacks on Palestinian civilians who try to travel the real roads within Gaza and the West Bank. Strange how the natterings of diplomats are rarely informed by the cries of the people. It is reminiscent of Tennessee Williams' brilliant play, Camino Real,in which we witness the depths of human despair through a nightmare vision of what our world may be coming to, and in some cases has already become. Williams juxtaposes the "Royal Road" (Camino Re'al) with the "Real Road" (Camino Real). The so-called "Roadmap" is the royal road of presidents, prime ministers, and pundits. The real road is something altogether different, as evidenced by what has happened in Palestine in just the few days that I have been back. The Washington Post, unfortunately, reports only from the royal road and ignores the reality of life on the ground for millions of Palestinians. Last week, as reported in the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, 32-year old Nadia Shehadeh was ready to give birth to her baby. Knowing her husband would not be allowed to pass through the checkpoints, she and her mother-in-law made their way through the dirt and concrete barricades and sewer channels used to seal off their village of Salam and made their way towards the Raffidiyeh Hospital in Nablus. At the Beit Furik checkpoint, Nadia and her mother-in-law were forced to wait two hours in scorching heat before the Israeli soldiers agreed to allow only Nadia to pass. In the end stages of her pregnancy, Nadia was forced to walk on foot, alone, to the hospital. She returned to the checkpoint on Thursday, with her newborn baby in her arms. The Israeli soldiers forced her to wait three hours before they allowed her to walk back to her village.