"As Jayous Struggles to Live, Jawal Wants to Die"
BostontoPalestine 2003-07-17
Jayous is a northern West Bank agricultural village slowly being choked to death by Israel's "Apartheid Wall or "security fence". The fence, as it is best described in this area, cuts well into the West Bank, wraps in around Jewish settlements and cuts off land from Palestinian farmers. Palestinians are literally awakening to find their land, homes, and even whole villages suddenly on the "Israel" side of an illegal, defacto border. The fence's security guards say that land on the west side of the fence, with its many Palestinian water wells, greenhouses, irrigated citrus trees and gardens, is now "Israel".The Boston ISM delegation has spent the last two weeks accompanying Jayous villagers through the one access gate to their land. The Israeli government promised unencumbered passage, but after several beatings from the machine gun toting private security guards at the gate, many farmers are too terrified to approach it. As a result, the village with its 4000 inhabitants is dying a slow death. Should the gate be closed for any length of time, that death will come more quickly with the resulting loss of 75% of the village,s farmland.Today the gate was open. Jayous, farmland, and beyond it, Israel proper, lay spread before the farmers passing through the fences construction area. Needless to say, any of them could have walked right into Israel and carried out an attack, but these are not that sort of people.Not needed at the gate, John, Michael R and I walked through town, killing time. As we passed a shop, a teenage youth named Ibrahim called us over. Sitting with him was another youth of the same age with tattered, dirty clothes and dark, sun baked skin. Ibrahim said his name was Jawal, and he and his mother could not get home. After a few minutes of conversation in broken Arabic, English and gestures, we gleaned that the fence construction workers had laid razor wire in front of his home today. Knowing that the fence cuts close to but not into town, we asked to see for ourselves. Ibrahim said he would show us. Jawal had to wait behind for his mother who was at the doctor.

Generosity and good will
Editorial, Ha'aretz 2003-07-22
The Palestinians had great expectations of the meeting between Prime Ministers Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon, and they have been disappointed. The hopes of Palestinian leaders and the public was that the relative calm in the territories, the efforts they are making to prevent terrorism, the intelligence cooperation, and the start of re-establishing Palestinian Authority institutions, would lead Israel to make an important gesture in the form of promising to release a large number of prisoners and detainees. Instead, they were told that Israel intends to release only a few hundred prisoners and that the process will involvenegotiations between Israeli and Palestinian representatives. The result has been described in the Palestinian press as a failure,or at least meaningless. The road map does not oblige Israel to free Palestinian prisoners and there is no dispute that under normal circumstances freeing prisoners would raise piercing moral and legal questions. But the issue is now perceived as amain axis on which Abbas's ability to negotiate anything with Israel now turns. Without a substantial release of prisoners and detainees, Abbas won't be able to win his public's confidence, the rejectionists will regard themselves as no longer bound by the hudna, and the current calm could quickly deteriorate into a renewed violent conflict that will claim more casualties. After a bitter argument, the Israeli government recognized the need to free Palestinian prisoners and the decision to that effect paved the way for continuing negotiations between the sides. But apparently, there are other consideration now attached to the issue that could make it devoid of meaning and turn the entire gesture into an excuse to renew the conflict. 

Mr. Abbas Goes to Washington
Miftah 2003-07-23
Marking the first visit by a high ranking Palestinian official in two-and-a-half years, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Mazen) will go to Washington on Friday. It is the kind of occasion that could suitably fit in the category of momentous history-making events. But will the meeting between Abu Mazen and President George W. Bush on Friday mean much? If it is anything like the other anticipated meeting of this earlier week – between Abbas and Sharon – then it will very likely produce no fireworks, not even any sparks, at most nothing more than a fizzle. Abu Mazen intends to take with him a portfolio of subjects to present to President Bush. Primary among them will be prisoner release, settlements, and the so-called “Security Wall,” which Israel is building at breakneck speeds to encapsulate Palestinian land, large portions of which are being confiscated in the process. In addition, Abu Mazen will broach the touchy – and from the American perspective, highly inappropriate not to mention inconsequential topic – of lifting the siege of President Arafat. To say that there is a high probability that most of these topics will fall on essentially deaf American ears, though it may sound pessimistic, may not be entirely unrealistic. However, there seems to be some reason to suggest that the Bush Administration, which has in several instances professed that it does not look favorably on the construction of the Security Wall, may take note of Mr. Abbas’ requests on this point. According to Israel Army Radio, an American official stated serious opposition to the Wall this week.

An Old Heresy Haunts Israel
By Guy Chazan, Miftah 2003-07-23
What if Palestinians Reject a State And Ask for Equal Rights Instead? -- JERUSALEM -- As Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas heads to Washington this week to meet with President Bush, some Palestinian intellectuals are questioning a fundamental goal of the so-called road map to peace the two will discuss: the creation of a Palestinian state to exist alongside Israel. They argue that the continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza might render a Palestinian homeland unworkable, a mere collection of discrete cantons or reservations. Instead of campaigning for independence, the theory goes, Palestinians should be pressing for equal rights within a single, democratic Israel. It is an idea many Israelis say threatens the very identity of the Jewish state -- and therefore one that might also prod Israel to speed progress toward a two-state solution. Which is more likely to lead to peace, a separate Palestinian state or a single democratic state of Arabs and Jews? What motivates the one-state idea -- and explains why Israelis overwhelmingly reject it -- is demography. Israel already has more than one million Arabs, aside from the 3.1 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. High Arab birth rates mean there will soon be as many Palestinians as Jews living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Arnon Soffer, professor of geography at Haifa University, predicts the proportion of Jews in that area will fall to 39% by 2020. In these circumstances, if Israel annexed the occupied territories and granted all Arabs living there citizenship and voting rights, there would soon be enough of them to elect a Palestinian to run Israel. "What they're saying is that their chief aim is not to create an independent Palestinian homeland but to destroy the Jewish state," says Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the foreign and defense-affairs committee of the Knesset, Israel's parliament. To be sure, some analysts see the one-state idea as little more than a Palestinian ploy to speed implementation of the road map. Still, the idea poses a dilemma for Israelis.

The First Three Women Victims of Sharon
By Azmi Bishara, Al-Hayat 2003-07-24
Safia Mohammad Mahmoud Shamasna, Amina Isa Abdulhalim Al Fakih, Halima Hasan Ahmad Taha, from the village of Qatana in North Western Jerusalem, were gunned down by an ambush as they were on their way to the village water well. Their names were never published, and people never got to know that the person who gave the order to shoot them 50 years ago was Major Ariel Sharon.Between 1952 and 1953, Sharon almost became a student, busy with his studies, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, when he was appointed head of an airborne Brigade. A few days later, he gathered his officers and told them that Arab women from the Arab village of Qatana had been crossing the borders during their trip from their village to the well. And in order to correct that "mistake," he wanted to ambush the women and shoot them. The scenario was carried out as planned by Sharon.This was carried out before the establishment of the 101 brigade in August 1953, which was led by Sharon. The brigade was created as a special unit with a mission to carry out retribution attacks against Palestinians villages alongside the borders with Jordan, as well as against civilian targets in Gaza and along the ceasefire lines with Syria.The first attacks carried out by that brigade were storming the Bureij refugee camp during the night of August 28-29. The attackers killed 43 Palestinian refugees, including seven women, while 22 were wounded. The Israeli forces suffered two wounded. Sharon himself led the operation.

The Heresy of Jewish Zionism
By Baha Abushaqra, Palestine Chronicle 2003-07-24
If we seek solace in the prisons of the distant past / Security in human systems we're told will always always last / Emotions are the sail and blind faith is the mast / Without a breath of real freedom we're getting nowhere fast - If God is dead and an actor plays his part / His words of fear will find their way to a place in your heart / Without the voice of reason every faith is its own curse / Without freedom from the past things can only get worse - (Sting, History will teach us nothing) -- "In an article published in the Washington Post of 3 October 1978, Rabbi Hirsch (of Jerusalem) is reported to have declared: 'The 12th principle of our faith, I believe, is that the Messiah will gather the Jewish exiled who are dispersed throughout the nations of the world. Zionism is diametrically opposed to Judaism. Zionism wishes to define the Jewish people as a nationalistic entity. The Zionists say, in effect, 'Look here, God. We do not like exile. Take us back, and if you don't, we'll just roll up our sleeves and take ourselves back.' 'The Rabbi continues: 'This, of course, is heresy. The Jewish people are charged by Divine oath not to force themselves back to the Holy Land against the wishes of those residing there.'" (Sami Hadawi, Bitter Harvest, quoted in Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict by Jews for Justice in the Middle East.) [1] This view -that Zionism contradicts the teachings of Judaism- is held by a sizeable number of non-Zionist Jewish groups, such as Neturei-Karta, Satmar, Jews not Zionists, etc. As Neturei-Karta put it, "the founders of Zionism were all atheists who denied the Torah. All the Torah Sages of that time opposed them and opposed Zionism, saying that Zionism would lead only to destruction." The message such groups try to deliver is that Zionism is a political movement championed by atheists or secular Jews for the political purpose of colonizing Palestine and is not, never was, an enterprise mandated by God Himself. In fact, the so-called "father of Zionism," Theodore Herzl, confessed in his diaries that he is an agnostic [2]. The political-colonialist nature of Zionism is best illustrated by its definition in Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary [3]: "Among the Jews, a theory, plan, or movement for colonizing their own race in Palestine, the land of Zion, or, if that is impracticable, elsewhere, either for religious or nationalizing purposes; -- called also Zion movement."

From Brussels to Guantanamo, the US obstructs justice
By Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 2003-07-21
The first act of Belgium's new government was to move to abrogate the 1993 "universal jurisdiction" law that allowed the trial in Belgium of any case involving war crimes and crimes against humanity anywhere in the world.Only one trial has been conducted under this law, resulting in the conviction of four Rwandans for participation in their country's 1994 genocide. But ever since survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres brought a case in Brussels against Ariel Sharon and other Israelis, Israel's apologists have campaigned against it.Last April, under strong US pressure, Belgium changed its law so any case against a foreign leader would first be referred to the authorities of the leader's country. This was to reassure the US that Belgian courts would not be a venue for 'political' proceedings against American officials. But it did not. US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld threatened to cut funding to NATO's new Brussels headquarters if Belgium did not repeal the law entirely. As proof that its new safeguards were sufficient, the Belgian Justice Ministry in June dismissed war crimes complaints filed against George W. Bush and Tony Blair within 24 hours of receiving them.But the US was still not appeased. Peter Moors, an adviser to Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said on July 13: "The abrogation of the 1993 law will allow us to improve our relations with certain allies," adding: "The problem was becoming urgent."

The embers smoulder
By Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 17 - 23 July 2003 0000-00-00
Israel remains determined to exacerbate, rather than redress, Palestinian grievances -- The latest crisis between PA Chairman Yasser Arafat and his Premier Mahmoud Abbas had just been resolved when Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman arrived in Ramallah on Tuesday. Which is not to say that Suleiman's mission is now redundant. On the contrary Suleiman found many smouldering embers which, left unattended, could easily burst into flames capable of consuming the fragile truce between Palestinian resistance groups and Israel. Before Suleiman's arrival Hamas had warned that it would resume the armed struggle if Israel continued its attempts to subjugate the Palestinian people rather than negotiating with them in good faith. While it is not certain if the warning is serious it is amply clear that Hamas -- and especially its more radical leaders -- feel increasingly deceived, not to say threatened, by Israel's stalling and equivocation on such key issues as the release of Palestinian POWs and withdrawal from Palestinian population centres. "We will not allow ourselves to be deceived again. We learned many lessons from the bitter experience of the Oslo years. We shall not fall in the same trap twice," said Hamas leader Abdul-Aziz Al- Rantisi. Rantisi, who on 10 June narrowly escaped an Israeli assassination attempt, was referring to Israel's refusal to address, much less meet, Palestinian grievances. These include Israel's refusal to release Palestinian prisoners, the daily arrest by Israeli forces of Palestinian activists, draconian restrictions on Palestinian movement and Tel Aviv's insistence on completing the separation wall being built inside the West Bank which is effectively reducing many Palestinian population centres to detention camps and inaccessible ghettos.

Democratization as hypocrisy
Daily Star 2003-07-22
Change will come about only when the US begins exerting pressure on its allies, not just its foes. -- With US President George W. Bush vowing to bring democracy to Iraq and the Middle East, Arab governments have begun professing a willingness to play along. Kings, emirs and dictators alike suddenly appear to have discovered the value of human rights and civil society and are trumpeting initiatives to promote them. The problem is that there is a huge gap between the rhetoric used and the reality of how Arab regimes respond to peaceful dissidence and to opposition groups. For every democratic or democratizing action, there’s an authoritarian reaction. In Morocco, King Mohammed VI has been trying to shed his country’s autocratic image and embrace democracy. Yet a court recently imprisoned a journalist for daring to criticize the monarch. In Saudi Arabia, the royal family said it would confront religious hard-liners and open up the political system after terrorist bombings in May that killed 34 people. Yet two weeks later the Saudi government ordered the dismissal of Jamal Khashoggi, the editor in chief of the daily newspaper Al-Watan, after he published articles criticizing the clergy for propagating extremism. His dismissal revealed that the royal family was more interested in appeasing the conservative religious establishment than in engaging in genuine reform. In Jordan, King Abdullah II, who dissolved Parliament in 2001, organized legislative elections in June. However, a court barred Toujan Faisal, a democracy advocate and the only woman who had ever won a seat in the Parliament, from running. It ruled that she was disqualified because she was convicted last year for “insulting the dignity of the state” by exposing government corruption. In Egypt, the ruling party has proposed democratic reforms that include the establishment of a new National Council for Human Rights and the abolition of state security courts and hard-labor sentences. At first glance the moves appear promising, but they are deceptive. By establishing its own human rights council, the government is seeking a way to force out existing independent human rights organizations. These groups often complain of intimidation by the Egyptian authorities. Some human rights advocates have spent time in prison. It took three years of American and European pressure to free democracy activist Saadeddin Ibrahim, who was arrested in 2000 and sentenced to seven years with hard labor for daring to monitor parliamentary elections.

’Tis the Season to Be Worried
By Hussein Shobokshi, Arab News 2003-07-22
Paul Wolfowitz, in the latest Vanity Fair, basically justified using a “convenient” argument, i.e. weapons of mass destruction, to achieve the great goal: Iraqi oil. Such politically vulgar messages are not new from Wolfowitz and his neo-con gang, but they spread reasonable doubt regarding America’s “democratic” intentions for the Middle East. Now as Wolfowitz is visiting Baghdad, his face can’t conceal a sense of worry. Worry regarding the exposed lies, the increased number of killings of American military personnel, and the growing public opinion against the war. Wolfowitz is like a stray cat stuck in a corner. Stray cats when stuck in a corner usually attack. The question that is asked frequently is: Who fed all these lies about the Iraqi weapons WMD program to the president? Most fingers point at the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, headed by Adam Shulsky, a hard-line neo-conservative. The Office of Special Plans was set up in the fall of 2001 as a two-man shop, but it grew into an eighteen-member nerve center of the Pentagon’s effort to create disinformation, alleging that Iraq possessed WMD and had connections with terrorist groups. Much of the garbage produced by that office found its way into speeches by Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush.It should be noted that the office was created after Sept. 11 by two of the most fervent and determined neo-cons: Paul Wolfowitz himself, the deputy defense secretary, and Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, to probe into Saddam’s WMD programs and his links to Al-Qaeda, because, it is alleged, they did not trust other intelligence agencies of the US government to come up with the goods.

30 unnecessary villages
Ha'aretz 2003-07-21
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's vigorous initiative to build 30 new communities in the Negev and Galilee is a pretense of a welcome Zionist activity. Uzi Keren, the prime minister's adviser on settlement affairs says Sharon reached the conclusion that after the extensive investment in Judea and Samaria, the focus should now be on theGalilee and Negev.  Presumably, Sharon may be preparing the groundwork for absorbing tens of thousands of settlers to be evacuated from their homes when a peace agreement is signed with the Palestinians. But that is atransparent deception. The plan to establish new settlements in the Galilee and Negev is notnew. Sharon began pushing it last August, and ran into vehement criticism from various planning and Green organizations. That didn'tdeter him, but the bitter opposition from the mayors of the development towns, mostly Likud politicians, resulted in some of the original plan being shelved. But most of the plan remained in force, and the interministerial committee that tracks the process of establishing a settlement evenmanaged to create a new settlement in the Negev and affirmed the establishment of two new settlements in the Lachish district and theYatir region.