Pre-empting an Independent and Viable Palestinian State
By Stephanie Khoury and Fuad Hallak, Miftah 2003-07-22
Israel's Apartheid Wall: The Final Act in Pre-empting an Independent and Viable Palestinian State. -- With a total projected length of 650 kilometers-twice the size of the Green Line-Israel's so-called "security" Wall is the final act in pre-empting an independent and viable Palestinian state. Israel, argued Stephanie Khoury, a legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) Negotiations Affairs Department (NAD), is using the Wall to consolidate and expand Israel's hold on Palestinian land in order to facilitate further settlement expansion. According to Khoury and Fuad Hallak, a technical advisor to the NAD, the Wall is a means for Israel to de facto annex approximately 55 percent of the West Bank from its central, western, and eastern areas, including the Jordan Valley. Speaking at a 18 July 2003 Palestine Center briefing, Khoury and Hallak explained that Israel's Separation Wall will enclose and isolate the Palestinians in cantons and enclaves on 45 percent of the West Bank. The Wall will physically and functionally sever the northern and southern West Bank. In total, the Wall is projected to include all of the Jewish colonies-with the exception of approximately 15-some 98 percent of all settlers and 440,000 Palestinians. Approximately half of the Palestinians caged in by the Wall do not have Israeli residency, and 30 percent of them will be in double fenced areas. Khoury and Hallak stated that these Palestinians are in an extremely tenuous and vulnerable situation, they are deprived of their livelihood and access to necessary social services such as health and education. The remaining 1.56 million Palestinians in the West Bank will be enclosed by the fence in large cantons.
The holes in Israel's road map
By Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah, The Financial Times 2003-07-22
Despite the declaration of a unilateral Palestinian ceasefire with Israel, and the frequent meetings between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the "road map" for peace is in serious trouble. This is because the Bush administration, the plan's chief sponsor, has allowed Israel to reinterpret it so that it is gutted of the elements that offered hope of progress. Two elements distinguish the road map from the failed Oslo process. First, it requires Israel to freeze all settlement construction in the occupied territories at the outset and to remove all colonies established since March 2001. Second, the road map spells out explicitly the objective of the peace process: an end to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory; and two states, Palestine and Israel, living side by side. Because Israel depends on the US for the military and diplomatic backing that allows it to continue its occupation of Arab land indefinitely, the success or failure of the plan lies in Washington's willingness to confront an Israel that remains committed to the settlements and opposed to a genuinely independent Palestinian state. The first signs that President George W. Bush would not follow through on his verbal commitment to the stated objectives came in his closing statement at the June 4 summit in Aqaba, Jordan, to launch the road map. While Mr Bush demanded that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, concentrate on ending any and all Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, he allowed Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, to commit to far less than the plan demands.
Letter from Sam Bahour
Palestine Monitor 2003-07-21
Dear friends, Well, we're back home - for a few more days at least. First, I must send out my sincere thanks for all of you that sent me messages of support during the last few days. They were all heartwarming and deeply appreciated. I will be following up on those that offered to help, especially my Israeli friends that know best what this episode could mean to me and my family - separation! It was a long haul up North to cross the border into Jordan, but my father and I finally made it back today with one minor hiccup. Instead of getting the usual 3 month visitor's visa, we got a 3 month visitor's visa with a scratched out "3-months" and handwritten "2 weeks" visa. So, we moved up from a 2 day permit last week to a 2 week permit this week. I try to take these challenges in stride, but my 63-year old father had a hard time accepting a 19-year-old Russian Jewish girl immigration officer decide that 2 weeks is plenty of time for him to "visit" his home. So, our family has just entered a stage that millions of Palestinians have been suffering in for decades - the issue of the Palestinian Right of Return. The Right of Return sounds complicated when politicians put all of the political spin on it, but in fact, it is super simple. Does my father, who was born in Palestine, or me, born in the US to a Palestinian parent, have the right to return to Palestine and live? "Live" may not be the most accurate word these days since life is equated by most as something positive, whereas here for 34 months we have lived in chaos, destruction, war, and hopelessness.
Dreamless Hebron
By Leila Saad, Miftah 2003-07-21
The kids piled on my lap once they saw that I had a camera. More than an everyday camera, it was digital and possessed the unique ability to display the immediate results of what I was attempting to capture around me. I showed them the last picture I had taken, and they squealed. It was of one of the nine children swarming around me – a handsome, almond-eyed boy facing the camera with a simple, and distinctively sorrowful, expression. He was holding his hand in a gesture that crosses all boundaries of language, politics, geography, and religion: “Peace.” Mrs. Al-Iwiwi and her husband and nine children live in the center of the Old City in Hebron, and if there is anything they do not experience in abundance, it is peace. What they do have in abundance is violence and harassment – at the hands of the ultra-radical Jewish settlers who have infiltrated this neighborhood as well as the Israeli forces here to protect them. Mrs. Al-Iwiwi tells us about life here. She has nine beautiful children around her, but that does not assuage the loss of a tenth child. The city was under curfew when Mrs. Al-Iwiwi was ready to give birth, so she could not leave the house to get to the hospital. The ambulance could not reach her either, and her baby was born dead. Just 17 days later, the settlers who live no more than an arms-length away tried to burn down her house. The family has no phone so they shouted out the windows to neighbors for help, and as they ran to the stairs, they passed out from the smoke. On an average day life is simpler, but still Mrs. Al-Iwiwi must insist that her children stay indoors, because the settlers next door have been known to entertain themselves by throwing stones or even shooting at Palestinian children.
The roadmap — a truce, not a peace
By Gwynne Dyer, Jordan Times 2003-07-21
A CEASEFIRE has rarely been breached faster than the one announced by Palestinian resistance groups on Sunday. The two biggest Islamist groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, declared a three-month suspension of attacks on Israeli targets at lunch time. By Sunday night, Yasser Arafat's ruling Fateh Party had endorsed the ceasefire, and Israeli troops began withdrawing from positions in the northern Gaza Strip that they have occupied since 2000. And Monday morning, gunmen from the Jenin branch of Al Aqsa Brigades shot dead a foreign truck driver near an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. It's enough to give you whiplash, especially since Al Aqsa Brigades are formally part of Fateh. The Israeli government's response, even as its tanks rolled out of Gaza, was to dismiss the ceasefire as a trick: “In the long-term this is a ticking bomb,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. So why, in that case, has Israel pulled its troops out of the northern Gaza Strip? Because it had to give the US government a concession somewhere. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, was in Israel on Sunday, complaining publicly about the “security fence” Israel is building in the West Bank, which effectively makes huge chunks of Palestinian land accessible only from the Israeli side. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had to do a little damage control, especially since Rice had also just invited Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen to Washington for the first time — but neither of these men actually thinks this ceasefire is going anywhere. You could count the number of Israelis and Palestinians who truly believe that the Bush-sponsored roadmap will actually lead to a lasting Middle Eastern peace on the fingers of one badly mutilated hand. However, the leaders on both sides are under strong US pressure at the moment to do things that they don't want to do or dare not do, so they are yielding a bit and playing for time.
Abu Mazen: a prisoner to the prisoner issue
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz 2003-07-21
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) heads off today on the most important mission in his short period in office, a journey that could determine the fate of the cease-fire and the road map. He is being accompanied by the key people in the Palestinian leadership: Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala), speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council; External Affairs Minister Nabil Sha'ath; Minister for Security Mohammed Dahlan; and Finance Minister Salam Fayyad. They will go to Egypt and Jordan, see Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah, and then at the weekend will be in Washington for talks with President George W. Bush. Yasser Arafat gave his blessing for the trip. That was necessary because after he became prime minister Abbas was asked when he would go on state missions overseas, and he said it was unreasonable to expect him to travel the world while Arafat is imprisoned in his office. Arafat's blessings were accompanied by a veiled warning: "This is a decisive test of the American position," said Arafat's aide, Ahmed Abdul Rahman, and the intention was clear - we'll see what Abu Mazen can get out of the Americans. One PLC member, Hatem Abdul Kadr of Jerusalem, said it even more bluntly. "If Abu Mazen doesn't bring about an Israeli withdrawal (meaning a lifting of the checkpoints), and freedom for the prisoners, then he won't last and will have to resign."
Border Crossings
By Jordan Topp, Electronic Intifada 2003-07-20
Bourj Al Barajneh refugee camp, Lebanon -- A miniature airplane hangs in the center of the ceiling fan. Mohammad points up at it, Nadia brought it for my nephew, Ahmad, but I took for myself. An airplane. The center piece of a room filled with symbols of a ravaged homeland. Palestine. Mohammad explains his increasing desperation to leave this place. Earlier this month he got turned down for a visa to Italy. And he regrets not going with 2 of his friends who left through Turkey. They are traveling to Cuba from there, but will go down illegally when they stop in London, I should have gone. I have to get out of here. I ask Mohammad if there is any news from Bilal and his friends. Last I heard the 8 young men from Bourj al Barajneh had been arrested in the Ukraine - after paying large sums to take illegal channels through Moscow. All the young men were arrested except Bilal. His mother tells us he got away because he doesn't look Arab. Mohammad confirms the rumor circulating around the camp. The 8 men are being returned any day now. Returned. The statement causes uneasy silence in the room. Returned. To the camp. I enquire about another rumor - Bassam, one of the young men - is he dead? They had actually begun funeral preparations last week, before realizing no one could confirm the facts. And so now his family and friends wait to see if he returns with the rest.
Offshore Company Captures Online Military Vote
By Lynn Landes, Dissident Voice 2003-07-21
Last year, while President Bush marshaled U.S. forces for the invasion of Iraq, the patriots at the Department of Defense awarded the contract for a new online voting system for the military... to an offshore company. It gets worse. Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) is the system and Accenture (formerly Anderson Consulting of Enron bankruptcy fame) is the company. And although Accenture has not been officially implicated in the Enron scandal, they have created a reputation of their own that is already raising eyebrows. This is hot off the newswire: 7/15/03 NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Accenture Ltd., the former Andersen Consulting, disclosed Tuesday that it might have violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Chairman and CEO Joe Forehand, on an earnings call with analysts and reporters Tuesday, said the consulting firm's Middle East operations could be in non-compliance with the Act, which prohibits the bribery of foreign government officials by U.S. persons. The Canada-based Polaris Institute published a scathing report on Accenture, saying, "Accenture's efforts in government outsourcing have often been very expensive and/or of poor quality. There is good reason to question Accenture's track record in outsourcing of government services." Accenture is the leading offshore beneficiary of government contracts whose main business is the privatization of government services, according to Lee Drutman of Citizen Works, a non-profit founded by Ralph Nader. Accenture has a troubling track record, a close business relationship with Dick Cheney's Halliburton, and 2500 partners - more than half are not U.S. citizens. Since 2001 Accenture and Election.com have been strategic partners "to jointly deliver comprehensive election solutions to governments worldwide," according to their press release. Last month Accenture bought the public-sector election assets of Election.com, which suffered its own scandal this year when it was discovered that Osan Ltd, a firm of Saudi and other foreign investors, bought controlling interest in it. According to Mark Harrington of NewsDay.com, "Several shareholders of the company said they were surprised by the recent buyout and have asked for securities regulators to investigate." Election.com has had other problems. In January 2003, during Canada's New Democratic Party leadership convention, the Canadian Broadcasting System reported, “Earl Hurd of Election.com said he believes someone used a "denial of service" program to disrupt the voting – paralyzing the central computer by bombarding it with a stream of data”…service was restored, then… "Toronto city councilor Jack Layton's victory on the first ballot surprised many, who had expected a second or even third round of voting before a leader was chosen from the pack of six candidates." For election security experts, a strong and growing suspicion is that computer glitches or disruptions are actually vote rigging. A surprise election result should raise a red flag.
The Crime and the Cover-Up
By William Rivers Pitt, Dissident Voice 2003-07-21
"When the American government gets hijacked by extremists like the men staffing the Office of Special Plans, when intelligence data stating flatly that Iraq presents no threat to America is disregarded or exaggerated because the truth does not fit ideological desires, when Congress is lied to, when the American people are lied to, when innocent civilians at the sharp end of these lies are left to rot in the dust and the bomb craters on purpose, when American soldiers are shot down in the street because of these lies, no kind of cover-up can be allowed to succeed." -- The scandal axiom in Washington states that it is not the crime that destroys you, but the cover-up. Today in Washington you can hear terms like 'Iraqgate' and 'Weaponsgate' bandied about, but such obtuse labels do not provide an explanation for the profound movements that are taking place. Clearly, there is a scandal brewing over the Iraq war and the Bush administration claims of Iraqi weapons arsenals that led to the shooting. Clearly, there is a cover-up taking place. Yet this instance, the crimes that have led to the cover-up are worse by orders of magnitude than the cover-up itself. The simple fact is that America went to war in Iraq because George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and virtually every other public face within this administration vowed that Iraq had vast stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. America went to war because these people vowed that Iraq had direct connections to al Qaeda, and by inference to the attacks of September 11.
What's the rush?
By Gideon Levy, Palestine Monitor/Haaretz 2003-07-20
A month ago, a small hope beat in the hearts of the five children of the al-Haija family from the Jenin refugee camp, whose parents and eldest brother are incarcerated in an Israeli prison. The children heard that Israel was about to release prisoners. They were convinced that their mother, Asmaa, who has been imprisoned for nearly six months without a trial and is suffering from a tumor in her head, would be released immediately. They hoped their father, Jamal, the Hamas spokesman in Jenin, would also be among those freed, as he has already served much of his sentence. The parents have not seen their children since their arrest and have not been allowed to make even one phone call to them. Neighbors saw to it that the family's apartment, which was demolished by missiles when the Israeli army invaded the camp, was repaired ahead of the parents' return, so the children were able to come home after being without one for a year and a half. However, the days have gone by without any sign of the parents' homecoming. Nearly two months have gone by since Israel promised to release Palestinian prisoners, but apart from Ahmed Jabara, who was released after spending 27 years in jail, and Suleiman Abu Mutalak, who was released because he is a friend of the Palestinian security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, very few have been freed. Israel is in no hurry. A ministerial committee was formed, the Shin Bet drew up lists, the ministers expressed their reservations, Transportation Minister Avigdor Lieberman made an obscene remark, the Knesset debated the subject, the General Staff was convened, the news media inflamed the emotions against the release - and nothing happened. Even the 350 prisoners whose release was agreed on are still in prison. And really, what's the rush? Abu al-Haija's children can wait. The thousands of prisoners and their tens of thousands of relatives, and with them the entire Palestinian nation, which is eagerly awaiting the prisoners' release, can wait. We alone, as usual, will decide unilaterally the scale and timing of the releases.
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