Articles archives 08-02-02

Need and anger drive Nablus to defy Israel
Molly Moore The Washington Post Thursday, August 1, 2002
NABLUS, West Bank The mayor, Ghassan Shakah, feared a social explosion. Khaled Abuzant, a butcher, wanted to sell his mutton before his flock died of starvation. Farid Quadah needed to buy milk for his children. First by the fearful dozens, then by the tentative hundreds and now by the defiant thousands, the citizens of Nablus have poured into the streets and marketplaces, reclaiming their besieged West Bank city in the boldest demonstration of civil disobedience against the Israeli military in the 22-month-long uprising against continued occupation.

Unceasing fire
by Graham Usher, Al-Ahram Weekly, 1 - 7 August 2002
As bombs and guns once more fire in Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestinians and some Israelis ponder the cease-fire that might have been, reports Graham Usher from Jerusalem: In what appears to be an inexorably rising tide of violence a bomb blast tore through a cafeteria at the Hebrew University in East Jerusalem yesterday, killing at least seven people and injuring 50. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in revenge for the killing of 17 Palestinians, including 11 children, in Gaza on 22 July.

War and Forgetfulness - A Bloody Media Game
by Norman Solomon
Three and a half years ago, some key information about U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq briefly surfaced on the front pages of American newspapers -- and promptly vanished. Now, with righteous war drums beating loudly in Washington, let's reach deep down into the news media's Orwellian memory hole and retrieve the story.

Above the law
By Nyier Abdou, Al-Ahram Weekly, 1 - 7 August 2002
Has the US turned its back on international law? Nyier Abdou looks at the Bush administration's aggressive stance on the International Criminal Court: The United States has never been known for being a team player when it comes to international treaties. Though host to the United Nations headquarters in New York, even conventions drawn with the loftiest of intentions have not escaped the painstaking legal scrutiny and ultimate rejection of the world's most powerful nation -- among them the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, neither of which have been ratified by the US.

The Middle East, reversed
By Hady Amr, Arab News, August 2, 2002
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 2 August — Imagine if Hamas and Islamic Jihad issued a unified official news release about the past year of suicide attacks on Jewish neighborhoods stating, "We of course have no interest in striking civilians and are always sorry over civilians who were struck."

The Show is Over: The Bitter End of "The Child's Home" Theatre Troupe in Jenin Refugee Camp
By Meiron Rappoport and Faiz Abbas, Between The Lines, June 2002
Last Friday, Juliano Mer went to visit Jenin refugee camp. It was not just a visit, a peep into the ruins, not just another visit of solidarity. Mer went to visit friends: his students that became his friends. For seven years he would come from Haifa to Jenin, where he was teaching creative drama and psychodrama, and was able to establish a theatre troupe - an oasis in the desolate wilderness of Jenin refugee camp's narrow alleyways. The troupe stopped functioning five years ago, but the people of the camp still remember Mer clearly.

SEPARATION THREATENS TO UNDERMINE SETTLEMENTS
By Geoffrey Aronson, Foundation for Middle East Peace
"THEY ARE A F R A I D," screams a blood-red headline in a recent edition of the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv. The accompanying article seeks to answer this question: Who among Israeli performing artists "doesn't come to perform in the settlements during these difficult days"? According to one Gaza settler involved in planning such visits, "If I begin I won't be able to finish. It's much easier to say who does come."

A green light for the next murder
By Yoel Marcus, Ha'aretz, August 2, 2002
A friend who attended the funeral of one of the West Bank terror victims this week told me the following story: It was a quiet, respectable service, a gathering of family and friends, when all of a sudden a rowdy, disruptive bunch of hooligans materialized out of nowhere, brandishing signs reading "Prosecute the Oslo criminals" and cursing everyone who was involved in the peace process or had worked to promote it. Within moments, he related, the funeral had turned into a frenzied, violent demonstration.

Media Distortions and the UN Report on Jenin
by Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 1 August 2002
The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on August 1, 2002 published his report, mandated by the United Nations Security Council, into the Israeli attack on Jenin refugee camp in the Occupied West Bank last April. [http://www.un.org/peace/jenin/index.html]

Condemnation Should Require Action
By Hasan Abu Nimah, Palestine Chronicle, August 1, 2002
A Palestinian “crime” should be condemned and punished. Those responsible should be arrested and tried. The organisations that stand behind them should be declared “terrorist” and should be destroyed. The PA faced dire consequences until those responsible for the assassination of the Israeli tourism minister were arrested, tried, sentenced and jailed under foreign supervision.

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