Articles archives 08-04-02

Burying the ceasefire
By Graham Usher, Al-Ahram Weekly, 1 - 7 August 2002
Israel's bombing of Gaza last week not only killed 15 Palestinians. It buried the most serious Palestinian move toward a ceasefire in seven months, say Palestinians. Graham Usher reports from Jerusalem

Suffer the little children
By Taghreed El-Khodary, Al-Ahram Weekly, 1 - 7 August 2002
Most of the victims of Israel's attack on a residential area in Gaza were children. Taghreed El-Khodary tells the story of seven of the 11 children who lost their lives:
The smell of death continued to linger in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza, days after an Israeli F-16 fighter jet dropped a one-ton laser-guided bomb last week to assassinate Hamas military leader Sheikh Salah Shehada. Israel did manage to kill Shehada and one of his aides, but it also killed 15 civilians, 11 of them children. More than 140 people were injured in the incident, according to Shifa Hospital emergency room head, Dr Moawiya Hassanein.

'Soft power' can win the battle for hearts and minds
The US must embrace true multilateralism in the Middle East
By Martin Woollacott, The Guardian, August 2, 2002
George Washington has become such a faded figure in the consciousness of American young people that an effort is now being made at Mount Vernon, his house near Washington, to relaunch him. Out goes the middle-aged man with wooden false teeth and a large kitchen garden, in comes the war hero and ladies' man. It is a story that perhaps has more than national implications, for America's revolutionary heritage shaped its international reputation until very recent times. Now the US is rarely seen as a liberator, even when it is, as in the case of Kosovo. Yet within living memory Asians, Arabs and Africans all looked to America for inspiration and help.

Israel-Palestine Update
By Noam Chomsky, May 6, 2002
Note: The following is a draft of an Chomsky introduction to a Verso collection of essays on the Intifada, edited by Roane Carey. Dr. Chomsky was kind enough to share it with me.

The latest phase of the Israel-Palestine conflict opened on September 29, 2000, the Muslim day of prayer, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak dispatched a massive and intimidating police and military presence to the Al-Aqsa compound. Predictably, that led to clashes as thousands of people streamed out of the mosque, leaving 7 Palestinians dead and 200 wounded.[1] Whatever Barak may have intended, there could hardly have been a more effective way to set the stage for the shocking sequel, particularly after the visit of Ariel Sharon and his military entourage to the compound the day before -- which, surprisingly, passed without incident.

Israeli Violence: Horrific Smoke Screen for a Political Agenda
By Tariq Shadid, MD, Palestine Chronicle, August 01 2002
On the internet, as well as in other international news media, one can see and read the horrors of war, the details of lives destroyed, many of them young and innocent, about the gruesome details of what happens when explosive power tears apart human bodies that are no different from our own.

A Secret Plan to Supplant Arafat
By Hichem Karoui, Palestine Chronicle, August 01 2002

Some signs are currently pointing to a possible secret plan for the Palestinian areas, expected to lead the American policy and to monitor the next evolutions. In this context, the Bush administration is said to be forging forward alone with a grand scheme for overhauling the Palestinian Authority politically, economically, militarily and administratively. But the most interesting feature in this current evolution concerns the manipulation of an international development agency - USAID - for that purpose.

The Effects of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield on Palestinian Children Living in the West Bank
By Samia Halileh, Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University, Ramallah, West Bank, June 29th, 2002
Introduction: The Israeli Operation Defensive Shield began on 29 March 2002 with the reoccupation of the city of Ramallah followed soon after by the rest of the Palestinian cities. The reoccupation lasted variable lengths of time, with the longest in Bethlehem for 45 consecutive days. For Palestinian children, this meant the interruption of normal life including education, social interactions, accessibility to health care, and loss of income for their families. In addition, there was psychological trauma from exposure to shelling, shootings and beatings that led injuries, disabilities and loss of life.

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