Israel making things worse
By Hasan Abu Nimah, Jordan Times, July 16, 2003
ISRAEL'S RULERS have renewed their threats to arrest or deport Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. In the past, the Israeli government even hinted at murdering him. In interviews with British and Italian newspapers, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Arafat of undermining his own prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas. He also urged Europeans to boycott Arafat and to end all contacts with him, following the example of the United States, Israel and Italy. Arafat has been confined to his shattered headquarters in Ramallah since Israel placed him under house arrest over fifteen months ago. The UK government refused this request when Sharon pressed it during his recent visit to London. Yet, despite the fact that many European and other countries have refused to abide by Washington and Tel Aviv's decree that Arafat is no longer the Palestinian leader, his real authority has been steadily declining. The appointment of Abbas, pushed by the Bush administration, was supposed to finish him off. Both US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, during their recent visits to the region, not only avoided Arafat but travelled all the way to Jericho to meet Abbas, thereby avoiding even the city of Ramallah where Arafat is being held prisoner by the Israelis. Arafat was originally dropped because the Israelis claimed that he was behind the continuation of the Intifada and that he had not kept his promises to crush those among his people who insist that as long as there is foreign military occupation there must be resistance. But Arafat did, in fact, repeatedly condemn violence — in English and in Arabic — and called on his people to end resistance or violence in all its forms. He even condemned some Palestinian groups as “terrorist” and pledged to pursue and dismantle them. Responding to Israeli and American demands, Arafat kept calling on his people to observe instant and unconditional ceasefires, ordering them to even refrain from firing in self-defence when attacked by the occupier. He continued to do that long after his security forces were virtually destroyed, many of their members murdered or arrested by their former Israeli colleagues. He did all this even after cruel atrocities, which provoked international outrage, were inflicted on his people by Israel, and even after Sharon declared that Palestinians should be killed in large numbers so that they understand Israel's “message.” None of this, not even the major concessions Arafat made within the framework of the Oslo accords, has been enough to spare him the wrath of the Americans and the Israelis whose reward to him was demonisation, humiliation and abandonment.

Arafat And The Painful Demands
Ghassan Charbel, Al-Hayat, July 17, 2003
Yasser Arafat's situation is painful. He is being asked to do what many people refuse to do. He is being asked much more than he can bear. They want him to be a resigned official, with the status of a president. They want him to be a president in "the mandate of Mahmoud Abbas." It is impossible for Yasser Arafat to accept for Yasser Arafat to play such a role. His constitution does not allow him. His history neither. He is an elected president. But deep inside, he considers that the elections only came to confirm the legitimacy he got when he waged and led the revolution. Deep inside, the leader of the revolution is stronger than the President of the Authority; hence, it is difficult for him to gather his papers and leave. The constitution itself came late. The revolution's interest, according to him, comes before the constitution's clauses. Some people forget these differences that are basic and essential. He is not Tony Blair, so he can leave after a vote of confidence is passed in the House of Commons. He is not the Danish Premier who can be toppled by a headline in the press. He came from the democracy of "the guns' hood." He got his legitimacy with the first bullets. And with so many others that followed. And with keeping the cause alive until it was time to return to its territories, after touring the capitals and after the capitals' wars. What Yasser Arafat is being asked today is more than he can bear. He does not lack the ability to take harsh decisions. He is courageous enough to make painful concessions. But what he is being asked of him, put simply, is to admit that he belongs to a past period. That he does not hold the keys for the future. His role from now on is to facilitate someone other's role, so as not to be turned into an obstacle to the Palestinians' future and to the state according to Bush's vision.

Abbas' New Style: Strategy or Suicide? 
By Charmaine Seitz, Alternative Information Center/Palestine Report, July 17/16, 2003
BODIES PRESS against each other in the scorching heat as Qalandiya checkpoint fills up faster than the lone Israeli soldier on duty can check Palestinian IDs. Complaints and curses fill the air, but the loudest of them comes from a young man of college age. "Where is Abu Mazen?" he sings out over the heads of the crowd. His accusing lament, directed at Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, is only one of the worrying tremors in a carefully stacked house of cards. Abbas, also know as Abu Mazen, has staked his career on three precepts: ending the armed Palestinian uprising, protecting Palestinian political cohesion (i.e., "national unity") and implementing the incremental process of fiscal reform underway in the Palestinian government. He has chosen to do this by manipulating all of the tools he has: getting into the good graces of the United States, cajoling the political factions to a ceasefire (even if it was Fateh leader Marwan Barghouti who actually stitched the truce together), and applying Palestinian law. "He is doing everything in his power," says former negotiator Saeb Erekat of Abbas' efforts. But the tool that escapes Abbas is that which may bring his house of cards tumbling down. Unless the Israeli government demonstrates a meaningful commitment to peacemaking through a substantial release of Palestinian prisoners or troop withdrawals that make a difference in daily Palestinian life, two key elements of ceasefire - and subsequently US largesse - will slip quickly from Abbas' hands. The Palestinian consensus says that the gift of ceasefire may only be given in return for substantial Israeli concessions, and while Abu Mazen may personally believe in the need to end the Intifada without conditions, his view persists only due to the public's good graces.

Fateh: A crisis of power sharing
By Bassem Shehadi, Jerusalem Times, July 17, 2003
President Arafat and Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas succeeded during their meeting in Ramallah on Monday to settle  their dispute over how to run negotiations with Israel and who wields the power. The power-sharing crisis was aggravated last week when Abbas offered to resign from Fateh Central Committee, following criticism over the way in which he was handling negotiations with Israel. According to the agreement, Arafat will regain authority  over talks and security matters. President Arafat will chair the higher steering committee of negotiations; a PLO body will be handling talks with Israel, and the newly founded security committee, which is made up of Abu Mazen as Interior Minister, Muhammad Dahlan, Minister of Security Affairs, and other security leaders.  Abu Mazen also agreed also to focus on the problem of  the siege imposed on President Arafat by the Israeli Army , already into its second year, when he meets  Israeli counterpart Ariel Sharon for talks scheduled for next week, Abu Mazen has been criticized by the central committee members, who are under Arafat's guidance, for being too soft towards Israel during negotiations. They said that he had failed to extract significant concessions, particularly on the question of prisoners and the siege imposing on territories, in return his cabinet carried out most f its commitments stipulating under roadmap. The Prime Minister is coming under a lot of pressure from the various factions that he can't keep having meetings with Sharon when things aren't really improving on the ground, said Ahmad Hulas a Fateh official in Gaza, adding, "Abbas would have to rethink his negotiating strategy to avoid the Israeli attempts to renegotiate the Roadmap." Nothing changed after the Israel Army withdrew from Gaza and Bethlehem, which remain closed off by the Israeli forces and Palestinians are no more able to travel through the West Bank than they were before the peace plan went into force," the official complained. Muhammad Dahlan’s increasing control over the Interior Ministry and Security Services without the mandate of Fateh Central Committee and in contravention of a law passed by the Legislative Council several months ago, as well as the meeting held last week in East Jerusalem between PNA ministers of Prisoner's Affairs and Justice, Hisham Abdul Razek and Abdul Kareem Abu Salah with  Israeli Minister of Justice Yosef  Lapid are also reasons that  inflamed the current crisis. The Central Committee Members are demanding that security be managed by the "National Security Council" recently established and headed by President Arafat.

Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner
By Fawaz Turki, Arab News, July 17, 2003
The White House decided last week to provide the Palestinian Authority with $20 million for “social service projects.” With that chump change the administration hopes to “counter Hamas” and “bolster the standing” of the new Palestinian prime minister — about whom more later. And where, pray tell, is Yasser Arafat, the PLO chairman? Like a dinner guest who abruptly left before dessert, the man is missed. To those Palestinians of my generation who grew up knowing no other leader, Arafat’s persona — his visage, his name, his style — evokes intimate memories, much as would private jokes and old photo albums shared among activists who had lived a common cause. He had been with us for close to four decades as we went about acquiring a past of our own, anchored in national struggle. Today, this individual, driven all his life by a peripatetic bent, is confined to his compound in Ramallah, prevented from traveling anywhere in his homeland, let alone abroad, and rendered not just “irrelevant” but mute. And once this was a revolutionary leader who had considered himself a man of history, a man who had been around the block a few times and knew how to fight on with a few arrows still in his back. On those occasions these days when you see him on a television screen, you see an elderly fellow unsteady of gait, with grizzled features and a strangely sad face, as if it were a craggy map of Palestine. Happy now, George? Well, we’re not. We resent the idea that an American president, colluding with our foreign occupiers, would come to our crushed part of the world, throw stink bombs at our leaders and then depose them in favor of ones he prefers. Lest we forget, this is the year 2003, not 1903, when colonial overlords could pick and choose indigenous rulers responsive to their geopolitical whims. To be sure, I’m not here holding a brief for Yasser Arafat, a simple man who had not read half a dozen decent books in his life nor grown with his job, and who, as a national leader, had chalked up a dismal record over the years, leading his people from one diplomatic disaster to another, one military defeat to another, and one act of social grief to another, without it once occurring to him to fold his tent and head into the sunset, leaving new blood to lead.

The Violence of the Global
By Jean Baudrillard, CTHEORY, May 20, 2003
[Translated by Franηois Debrix] -- Today's terrorism is not the product of a traditional history of anarchism, nihilism, or fanaticism. It is instead the contemporary partner of globalization. To identify its main features, it is necessary to perform a brief genealogy of globalization, particularly of its relationship to the singular and the universal. The analogy between the terms "global" [2] and "universal" is misleading. Universalization has to do with human rights, liberty, culture, and democracy. By contrast, globalization is about technology, the market, tourism, and information. Globalization appears to be irreversible whereas universalization is likely to be on its way out. At least, it appears to be retreating as a value system which developed in the context of Western modernity and was unmatched by any other culture. Any culture that becomes universal loses its singularity and dies. That's what happened to all those cultures we destroyed by forcefully assimilating them. But it is also true of our own culture, despite its claim of being universally valid. The only difference is that other cultures died because of their singularity, which is a beautiful death. We are dying because we are losing our own singularity and exterminating all our values. And this is a much more ugly death. We believe that the ideal purpose of any value is to become universal. But we do not really assess the deadly danger that such a quest presents. Far from being an uplifting move, it is instead a downward trend toward a zero degree in all values. In the Enlightenment, universalization was viewed as unlimited growth and forward progress. Today, by contrast, universalization exists by default and is expressed as a forward escape, which aims to reach the most minimally common value. This is precisely the fate of human rights, democracy, and liberty today. Their expansion is in reality their weakest expression. Universalization is vanishing because of globalization. The globalization of exchanges puts an end to the universalization of values. This marks the triumph of a uniform thought [3] over a universal one. What is globalized is first and foremost the market, the profusion of exchanges and of all sorts of products, the perpetual flow of money. Culturally, globalization gives way to a promiscuity of signs and values, to a form of pornography in fact. Indeed, the global spread of everything and nothing through networks is pornographic. No need for sexual obscenity anymore. All you have is a global interactive copulation. And, as a result of all this, there is no longer any difference between the global and the universal. The universal has become globalized, and human rights circulate exactly like any other global product (oil or capital for example). The passage from the universal to the global has given rise to a constant homogenization, but also to an endless fragmentation. Dislocation, not localization, has replaced centralization. Excentricism, not decentralization, has taken over where concentration once stood. Similarly, discrimination and exclusion are not just accidental consequences of globalization, but rather globalization's own logical outcomes. In fact, the presence of globalization makes us wonder whether universalization has not already been destroyed by its own critical mass. It also makes us wonder whether universality and modernity ever existed outside of some official discourses or some popular moral sentiments. For us today, the mirror of our modern universalization has been broken. But this may actually be an opportunity. In the fragments of this broken mirror, all sorts of singularities reappear. Those singularities we thought were endangered are surviving, and those we thought were lost are revived.

Israel also made commitments
Editorial, Haaretz, July 17, 2003
Israel has an enormous interest in strengthening the cease-fire, and especially Abbas' ability to rule. Foot-dragging on the prisoner releases, the suspension of the removal of outposts, and a miserly approach to allowing freedom of movement are a guarantee of achieving the opposite result.  -- The period of calm that began with the declaration of the hudna among the Palestinian factions is not absolute. Terror attacks, including lethal ones like the recent murder in Jaffa, are still taking place. The number of alerts might have dropped sharply, but nonetheless, the fact that Israeli intelligence services are still receiving such warnings shows that the readiness to conduct attacks has not disappeared completely. On the other hand, there is a growing impression that the Palestinian authorities, particular the security services, are making a greater effort to foil attacks. There has been some attempt to collect illegal weapons, security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinians has been restored after three years of no connection, and there has even been a substantial reduction in what is defined as incitement in the Palestinian media. This state of relative calm could lead to the wrong conclusion that this is permanent, with no time limit. It would be best to remember that the cease-fire is accompanied by conditions that make obligations of Israel no less than those made to the Palestinian Authority. The rejectionist organizations are demanding, as a basic condition for the hudna, prisoner releases, the cessation of targeted killings and house demolitions, and freedom of movement for Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza. These demands are also being made by the Palestinian Authority and, in particular, by its prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas.

Are Palestinian Refugees Defying Reality?
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle, July 16, 2003 
Outraged Palestinians have reportedly protested a survey, allegedly conducted by a Palestinian research center in Ramallah, which concluded that not many refugees are enthusiastic about their right to return to today’s Israel. The alleged survey, now dismissed as sheer lies by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), reported that only 10 percent of Palestinian refugees dwelling in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and Jordan wish to return to their land in Palestine, ending a forced exile that lasted for decades. The survey was attributed to PCPSR. As a result, a crowed of angry Palestinians protested at the center’s main office in Ramallah, chanting angry slogans, and reportedly throwing eggs and the institute’s chief, Khalid Shikaki. In a statement, quoted by Islam Online news service, the center vehemently denied that its survey offered such a conclusion; rather, “the poll conducted by the center in the Occupied Territories, Jordan and Lebanon asserts that any solution for the refugee issue that does not guarantee the right of return will never work out.” The entire episode concerning this issue is indeed unfortunate. Shedding light on this event is vital, for it would prevent such regretful episodes in the future. However, while egg throwing is certainly not an encouraged form of dialogue, one must recognize the fear that grips the hearts of Palestinians all over the world. Once again, history is of essence. In 1947-48, Jewish gangs and militias forced nearly one million Palestinian to evacuate their villages and towns in historic Palestine, setting the stage for the Palestinian exodus, which continues to taint Palestinian memory and serve as a symbol of the Palestinian quest for freedom. The UN General Assembly recognized the injustice of the situation by adopting Resolution 194 in its third session, on December 11, 1948. The resolution concurred the Palestinian refugees wish to return home, and went even further by detailing the mechanisms of such return. The often repeated claim that such resolution has been rendered irreverent is false, considering the fact that the General Assembly reaffirmed its decision over one hundred times since its original passing in 1948.

Arab Thumbs Down on Free Trade
By Reese Erlich, AlterNet, July 16, 2003
Beirut, Lebanon – In recent weeks the Bush administration has hyped formation of a free trade zone with Arab countries as a means to reward those that "fight terrorism." At a major economic forum held in Jordan recently, the U.S. dangled the possibility of $1 billion in economic aid to cooperating countries. But a funny thing happened on the way back from the forum. Many Arabs are saying "no thanks" to this gesture of American munificence. In the wake of the occupation of Iraq and shortcomings in NAFTA, the Bush administration is having a harder time selling globalization as an economic panacea for the third world. Syrian textile merchant Samir Kassem, whose business would theoretically benefit from a free trade agreement with the U.S., nonetheless strongly opposes it. "Why should the U.S. suddenly want to help Arabs with 'free trade?'" he asks. "The American administration doesn't have any interest in helping developing countries. It cares about maintaining its position as a superpower."   Jordan's Not-so-free Trade Pact: In late June, the administration trotted out its plans for a Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) during the World Economic Forum held in Shuneh, Jordan. The U.S. trumpeted its free trade agreement with Jordan, signed in 2000, as a model for future deals with other Arab countries. Thanks to that trade pact, claimed U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, Jordan had expanded exports by a factor of thirteen, attracted new foreign investment and created some 30,000 new jobs over the past three years. Secretary of State Colin Powell touted the U.S. trade deals as a road map for economic development. "We want peace in the region," he said. "With peace you need economic development of people, or people will not benefit from peace." But critics of MEFTA say U.S. claims about the Jordanian success story are misleading. Jordan has mainly attracted South Asian textile and luggage manufacturers who assemble parts that are purchased abroad – a economic pattern that does little to stimulate local production. Moreover, about half the workers in the country's duty-free zone aren't even Jordanian and many receive less than the official minimum wage of $3.50 a day.