Turquoise Awnings
By Dianne Roe, Palestine Monitor 2003-07-19
When I tried to visit Ma'moun last week after he was beaten by an Israeli soldier, (see update July 15, 2003) I looked passed the checkpoint toward the turquoise awnings adorning Duboyya Street where he lives. The soldiers said, "No, you cannot go there." I also cannot go past the turquoise awnings on Shuhada Street. Only Israeli soldiers, Israeli settlers and people with the right "tickets" are allowed to walk in certain places in the area of Hebron's Old City. That seems strange to me. I have been here with CPT since 1995. I remember that in 1997 when USAID erected the turquoise awnings and rehabilitated the building facades, it was part of the January 1997 Hebron agreement that would return Shuhada Street to Palestinian usage. Before 1994, Shuhada was the busiest street in Hebron. In the spring of 1994, after Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 praying Muslims, the Israeli army put the Palestinians under curfew and closed the roads. When CPT came to Hebron in June 1995, Shuhada was still closed but shop owners awaited the reopening. According to the 1997 Hebron Protocol "the movement of vehicles on the Shuhada Road will be gradually returned, within four months, to the same situation which existed prior to February 1994." In article 7 of the protocol "the leaders agreed that the process of reopening Shuhada Road will begin immediately, and will be completed within four months based on the premise that the preparations agreed between the two sides have been completed in accordance with the American plan." In the spring and summer of 1997 CPT witnessed the attempted implementation of the American plan. USAID workers completed their part of the bargain in spite of many well-documented attempts by Israeli settler groups to thwart the American efforts. In 1999 when I talked with shop owners, the Israeli government still had not implemented its part of the protocol. Palestinian shopkeepers tried to reopen the large wholesale vegetable market that abuts Shuhada Street on the agreed date but Israeli settlers thwarted them. Soldiers stopped most Palestinian cars from entering the street. Only those who lived on the street were allowed to enter, and on many occasions Israeli settlers vandalized those. Now, more than four years later, Palestinians cannot even walk on Shuhada Street. The Israeli army has bolted the shops closed. Israeli settlers have broken into shops from the back and stolen goods. Palestinian children who live on Shuhada must find another exit if they are to go to school, often from rooftop to rooftop, down ladders and out of windows. The beautiful iron grillwork and street lights from the USAID project have been vandalized by settlers. The Israeli army has prevented the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee from restoration efforts in the Old City.
And they call this paradise
By Amira Hass, Ha'aretz 2003-07-22
Mawasi is surrounded by lush greenery and enjoys a cool breeze off the sea. But for its residents, battling for IDF permits to enter and exit their hometown, life is hell -- A group of bearded men was sitting on a sandy footpath by the mosque in Mawasi, waiting in the shade for the muezzin's call. Most of them have been fellahin since they can remember; some are fishermen. All have land in Mawasi - the fertile agricultural hinterland of the southern Gaza Strip cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah. A pleasant breeze was coming off the sea, which is about two or three hundred meters away. A nearby orchard bathed the eye in green. The sweet brown tea that was prepared in honor of the guests bore a scent of sage. Amer al-Astal, 30, a bushy black Herzl-like beard gracing his face, shot a bemused expression at his bearded colleagues, most of whom, like him, wore long galabias. He is well aware of the associations conjured by their outer appearance. Bin Laden, of course. He jokes: "I stopped shaving, `cause who's got the money to buy shaving cream every few days?'" It's been two years since he's seen his family, parents and siblings. They live two or three kilometers away, in the city of Khan Yunis, but anyone who does not officially live in Mawasi is prohibited from entering the area, even if they have land or family there. His father is 70. His mother is ill. Until three weeks ago, only men aged 35 and above were permitted to leave Mawasi. So Amer al-Astal was not able to leave. About 8,000 Palestinians live in Mawasi, the green farming area in the middle of the Gaza Strip that is situated west of Khan Yunis. It and its beach always provided a refreshing contrast to the teeming grayness of the Khan Yunis refugee camp, which it borders. There was a time when many more than 8,000 individuals earned their livelihood from this tract of land. There were families with deep roots going way back, which lived in the cities of Khan Yunis, Rafah and Dir al-Balah. Some of them lived in Mawasi, others in the cities. Some of them divided their time between town and country. Gradually, Israeli settlements were built up between their fields, orchards and homes. The settlements expanded. The area is now better known as "Gush Katif."
Who said Palestinians gave up the right of return?
By Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 2003-07-23
Khalil Shikaki of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research was attacked by an angry mob when he recently held a press conference announcing the results of a poll conducted among 4,500 Palestinian refugees on the right of return. In his study, Shikaki reported that only 10 percent of Palestinian refugees would insist on returning to Israel and becoming citizens there. Supporters of Israel and others who want to disregard refugee rights in any solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict embraced the findings. Former US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy, writing with David Mack in the International Herald Tribune, seized upon the result to propose that the refugee issue be resolved by inviting the international community to "help fund the permanent settlement of Palestinian refugees either in the new state of Palestine or in third countries." In exchange, the United States would pay to resettle in Israel 200,000 illegal Jewish settlers now in the Occupied Territories. Murphy and Mack were silent about the remaining 200,000 settlers concentrated around Jerusalem, and one can infer that they would remain where they are. M.J. Rosenberg of the left-leaning Israel Policy Forum also welcomed Shikaki's poll, saying: "His findings rebut one of the central tenets of the anti-Israel argument and is (sic) a threat to rejectionist militants. Palestinians are not, apparently, set on returning to homes they left over 55 years ago. On the contrary, they recognize both the reality of Israel and the fact that the partition of Palestine is final and permanent. The terror groups which are attempting not merely to roll back 1967 but also 1948 do not represent Palestinian opinion. Essentially, they do not have much of a constituency." Hence, according to Rosenberg, for Palestinian refugees to insist on their fundamental human rights somehow aligns them with "terror groups" and "rejectionists."
Tell them, "why"
By Shannon Dow, Electronic Intifada 2003-07-23
So how do you feel about going back, now, after having been in Canada? He says to me: Words cannot describe it. It's like, well, here in Canada, you have life, you get up in the morning and you live. If you are bored, you walk out of your home and you find a park down the street to play in. In Lebanon, we don't have this, we don't have life. We can't live in Lebanon. I had the privilege of teaching Shaker two years ago in Bourj El-Barajneh Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon. He has been visiting Canada now for the past three weeks, along with seven other Palestinian refugee youth. His English language skills are excellent, as he stands before audiences filled with hundreds of people, telling us about how he exists in Lebanon - deprived of civil liberties, victim of countless Human Rights abuses, caged within the open prison of a refugee camp. His voice is being heard. Are we listening? He tells me that dogs and cats for pets in Canada are entitled to more rights than Palestinians living in Lebanon on any given day, since their birth. He tells me that he is angry, yes, angry at a world that defines who is important and who is not. That he is living in a world that defines who is worthy of Life, in a world that defines him, purely by virtue of his birth, as a refugee - controlled in a space in a country that excludes him, tied up within an International System that would rather he fade away, than act to challenge the root aspects of what has created his refugee existence. We marched in demonstration Saturday, protesting the deportation of Palestinian refugees from Canada, a situation that has become far to common in the aftermath of 9-11 nearly two years ago. We marched in silence, hours along the streets of Montreal, and as we walked I thought to myself - How many demonstrations have I been to now, along this same route, this same path? Are we listening?
Stonewalling the Peace Process
By Patrick Connors, AlterNet 2003-07-23
George Bush's road map for Middle East peace may soon crash straight into a wall, or to be more accurate, a "security fence." Israeli newspapers report that Condoleezza Rice and President Bush recently raised objections with Ariel Sharon over Israel's construction of a West Bank "security fence," a barrier ostensibly aimed at preventing Palestinians from entering Israel to carry out attacks. In reality, however, the "fence" is a massive wall that serves an illegitimate goal: the seizure of Palestinian land in the West Bank. In many places the "fence" is actually a 25-foot-high concrete wall, with guard towers and trenches. Yet it is not the size but the location of the Wall that worries the Bush administration. It is primarily being built within the West Bank, up to four miles from the "Green Line", the generally recognized border between Israel and the West Bank. Its path is being bulldozed through Palestinian olive groves and greenhouses, surrounding entire Palestinian cities and villages, separating them from their farmland and wells, while trapping other villages in a "no man's land" between the Wall and Israel. The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem found that the Wall's northern phase alone "will likely infringe the human rights of more than 210,000 Palestinians residing in sixty-seven villages, towns, and cities." A World Bank study raises fears that "the Wall will isolate, fragment, and, in some cases, impoverish those affected by its construction." It is choking the life from the Palestinian city of Qalqilya. With 40,000 residents, Qalqilya is entirely surrounded, a ghetto with one narrow, Israeli-controlled entrance for people and goods. The villages of Jayyous and Mas'ha primarily depend on agriculture but will lose virtually all their farmland behind the Wall. Both lie four miles inside the "Green Line." Meron Rappaport of the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth writes that, "Behind the separation fence are thousands of personal tragedies, which are entirely invisible to the Israeli public." The initial route planned for the Wall isolated 10 percent of the West Bank. But in recent months, the Sharon government has proposed a more drastic plan, cutting ten miles into the West Bank to surround major Israeli settlement blocs, and building a second wall in the eastern West Bank to secure Israeli control of the Jordan Valley. If executed, these plans would effectively annex more than 50 percent of the West Bank to Israel, imprisoning Palestinians in three disconnected islands.
Courts And Nonviolence
By Jonathan Kuttab, Al-Hayat 2003-07-23
The issue of appealing to Israeli courts has been a controversial one in Palestinian circles since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967. Some saw it as giving legitimacy to such courts, which were clearly Zionist in their orientation and decisions. Others saw in such appeals a futile exercise in placing ourselves at the mercy of our oppressors. The local proverb was "If your opponent is your judge, to whom you can bring your complaint?" This point of view had great merit, particularly in light of the fact that Israeli jurisprudence followed the positivist theory, which was built on following the literal text of the laws, in a country where there was no overarching constitution allowing someone to challenge the constitutionality of a law or military order under superior notions of justice. The Israeli occupation had taken full advantage of this by making sure that all of its actions were covered by military orders, over 1000 in number, which contained broad language that gave military commanders wide authority, and which the courts did nothing to restrict. For this and other reasons that we cannot discuss at length here, Israeli courts obtained a bad reputation among Palestinians, particularly the Supreme Court, although a number of Israeli lawyers (both Arab and Jew) managed to extract some important decisions from that court. A number of peace and nonviolence activists managed to develop a strategy based, in part, on threats of appealing to the Supreme Court, and even going to it, to restrain some of the worst excesses of the occupation, to gain time until political pressure could be brought, or to embarrass the Israeli rulers and the Israeli legal system itself through bringing carefully prepared challenges before the courts. In addition, with the creation of an International Criminal Court (ICC), the importance of appealing to the Israeli courts increased since the ICC requires that the applicant exhaust local remedies before it looks into war crimes and crimes against humanity. Palestinian use of the courts has, therefore, become a practical model for illustrating one of the fundamental principles of nonviolent resistance, which is based on challenging the opponent morally on the basis of principles and ethical modes that the opponent himself claims to respect. Thus, the principles the opponent (Israel) boasts of, and which he uses to garner sympathy and international support and legitimacy, are turned into restraints and obstacles to the unfettered and excessive use of superior military force against the hapless Palestinians.
Freedom Summer
By Adam Shapiro, The Nation 2003-07-17
The International Solidarity Movement's second Freedom Summer has begun, and much has changed since our last: the war on Iraq, which focused all eyes on the region; the much-hyped road map; full-blown construction on what Palestinians have come to call the Apartheid Wall. Sadly, though, much remains the same: the continuing deterioration of the lives of Palestinians, with poverty and health crises in a crescendo. The ISM itself is in a far more precarious position. This year, volunteers signed up knowing that one ISMer was killed, that others have been shot, expelled or detained. They knew that the ISM headquarters was raided in May, that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) instituted new regulations barring the ISM from entering Gaza. They knew that the military sought to smear the ISM by claiming it has links to terrorists. And still people from all over the world have come, in record numbers, to volunteer. The ISM was founded a few months into the current intifada to engage in nonviolent action against the Israeli occupation. The idea, inspired by the Freedom Rides of the American civil rights movement, was that international civilians could provide a resource for the Palestinian nonviolent struggle-and that their eyewitness accounts of the occupation could affect political debate back home. With internationals mixed in with Palestinian civilians at protests, we believed that Israeli soldiers would be more reluctant to use lethal force. These efforts worked, at least at first. Not that violence was eliminated-tear gas, sound grenades and rubber bullets were still used against Palestinians. But mostly, live ammunition was avoided around internationals, and rubber bullets weren't fired at head or chest level. Last August, for example, I joined 200 Palestinians in a peaceful march near Nablus to break the curfew there. With forty internationals in the crowd, the IDF relied on tear gas and sound grenades, firing only a few rubber bullets into the air. When one soldier fired a rubber bullet lower, into the crowd, I saw one of his superiors grab his gun and berate him. The message was clear: Israeli soldiers respected the lives of international civilians more than Palestinian lives. We, unlike the Palestinians, had governments that could hold Israel accountable-or so we thought.
Turkish-US tensions cast dark clouds
Asia Times 2003-07-22
Expressions of regret over the "wrong" action by the United States after a joint inquiry by Turkish General Koksal Karabay and General John Silvester of NATO into the July 4 arrest and imprisonment of 11 Turkish commandos in Kurdish northern Iraq, has for the time being calmed the twitchy nerves of the two old allies. And while the outgoing General Tommy Franks of the US Central Command did not bid his farewells in Turkey, his successor, General John Abizaid, visited Ankara on July 20 in an effort to pacify Turkey. After this visit, and the earlier one of General James Jones, the two sides reached agreement on four points: The Turkish Kurdish terrorist organization Marxist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)-Kadek will be eradicated in northern Iraq The US will allow the dispatch of three Turkish brigades to Iraq Channels will be set up between Turkey and the US to prevent events such as the detention of the 11 Turkish soldiers Turkey will take part in the rebuilding of Iraq. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul was due to leave for Washington on Tuesday to follow up on this agreement. The latest crisis in Turkey's relations with the US - which have been lukewarm ever since Ankara denied Washington use of its soil to send troops into northern Iraq - is a reflection of the fast deteriorating situation on the ground in Iraq. According to Turkish media, a few US soldiers entered a Turkish liaison office in Sulaimaniya, and after having tea drew their guns. About 100 US troops then barged into the building and handcuffed three Turkish officers and eight non-commissioned officers, covered their heads with sacks like prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and took them to Baghdad. They also took away many dossiers. Despite the subsequent furor, the soldiers were only released after 60 hours. From Turkish President Ahemt Sezer downwards, political parties and leaders, the media and the man in the street, there were expressions of horror, public statements seething with anger and protest marches in many Turkish cities against the humiliation inflicted on Turkey's highly respected armed forces. The US action really hurt the sensitivities of a proud nation, which threatened retaliation if there were a repetition. Now, a letter dated July 14 from US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayep Erdogan, only partially disclosed, but apparently justifying the US action, might keep the crisis simmering.
Now they grovel before Barak
By Avirama Golan, Ha'aretz 2003-07-22
The Labor Party is in turmoil. Ehud Barak, who has described himself for the past two years as a "political reserve officer" will probably join the party's executive committee on Thursday. Party chairman Shimon Peres is not wildly enthusiastic, but other senior party members say they hope the former prime minister is now "attentive to the party." They do not feel hostile to him anymore and might even - how moving - miss him. Barak saw it coming. In his rented house in Kochav Yair, while his enormous villa was being built in Kfar Shmaryahu and his consulting businesses boomed in the United States, he knew his fair-weather colleagues, who hated him with a fervor, would come back and beg him to rescue them from the opposition wilderness. Like an experienced warrior he watched them kick out Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who offered them safe seats in the government and perhaps even some influence, and prostrate themselves before Amram Mitzna. Labor members had forgotten that a party's strength lies in being in power and acting inside the establishment, and followed the attractive political vision, devoid of any special social or economic message, of the gentle general from Haifa. In a whisper that rang around the world Barak said to his confidants at the time that Mitzna was "a good fellow" but not a politician, and would therefore fail. So Mitzna failed, resoundingly and painfully, and fled. From his living room, Barak started the countdown. Now this shattered party, whose members blindly followed anyone they thought might bring them to the coveted seats of power - for it is seats, not leaders, that they miss so much - is willing to forgive Barak. Forgive him for what? Never mind - they have forgotten. Like a battered wife who tells herself her husband has changed, because he said so, they are ready to grovel to him again, if only he can lead them out of the desert. But Barak, brilliant as he may be, cannot do that. What has he to offer the public that Sharon has not already given and taken away? A peace agreement? Better management of state affairs? Integrity and honesty? More than Mitzna? Even if he manages to put the pieces together again, he has no message.
Abu Mazen’s Trap
International Middle East Media Center 2003-07-23
Before his visit to Washington, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) received a hard blow to the face when he left his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon empty handed. Abu Mazen presents a totally new diplomatic style that sounds very strange to all the old guards of Palestinian diplomacy. His performance was more than necessarily direct, forward, and open to all parties he dealt with. Such a style is odd and very unpopular in the Middle East. Abu Mazen succeeded in building credibility with the American administration circles and even the Israeli governmental circles. His openness in addressing issues and the moderate tone of the language he used made it possible to bridge the huge barrier of mistrust that handicapped Palestinian diplomacy for a while. Yet, that credibility has a price tag. On the one hand the hawkish Israeli leadership is not ready to be that open, direct, and forward. Their conservative negotiating attitudes are not only increasing the hardships Abu Mazen is facing internally, but also enforcing his own doubts about the existing chances for a diplomatic solution to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. On the other hand, the American administration still wavers between the desire to use Abu Mazen against the strong Palestinian leader Arafat, and the urge for a breakthrough that can lift George Bush’s chances in the coming elections. Such wavering is diminishing Abu Mazen’s only hope to counter Israeli conservatism, which is a more active American role in the diplomatic process.
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