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Jewish Hebron market heir opposes settlers
Tovah Lazaroff, Jerusalem Post 8/26/2007
     The descendent of the Jewish owner of Hebron’s disputed marketplace is left wing, secular and lives in Tel Aviv.
     Unlike the Hebron Jews who were forcibly evicted from the marketplace on August 7, retired journalist Haim Hanegbi, 72, does not dream of returning to the city where his family lived for more than 200 years.
     There, settlers have placed a large white banner over the empty shops in which they demand: "Return the stolen property."
     They believe that because this marketplace was once owned by Hanegbi’s grandfather, Haim Bejayo, and used by the city’s Jewish community, they have a right to settle the area situated at the entryway to their Avraham Avinu neighborhood.
     It’s a claim Hanegbi rejects.
     "I have more rights than the settlers and the army," he told The Jerusalem Post last week.
     He wants the marketplace to revert to the Palestinians who made use of it from the 1930s to 1994, when Israel forced them to shut down the shops after Baruch Goldstein, from nearby Kiryat Arba, killed 29 Palestinians as they prayed in a mosque attached to Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs. more..

Bureaucratic dispossession
Ben White, Electronic Intifada 8/29/2007
     On 20 August 2007, a story appeared in the Israeli daily Haaretz about the disputed ownership of a piece of land in East Jerusalem. The "land in question," the report said, is "an olive grove called Kerem Hamufti" and part of the "Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood." [1] According to Haaretz, the "Israel Lands Administration (ILA) is working together with the Ateret Cohanim association to wrest from Palestinian landowners control of 30 dunams (7.5 acres) of land in East Jerusalem and to transfer it to the association without a tender." Petitioning the High Court, the land’s owners, the Palestinian Arab Hotels Company, described the purpose of this expropriation as "extraneous, illegitimate, racist and discriminatory."
     But who are these groups responsible for the attempted robbery, the ILA and Ateret Cohanim? The latter, is a religious, ultra-nationalist organization, whose main objective is "Judaizing" Jerusalem. Coincidentally, they had in fact already hit the headlines earlier in the month, when one of their private security guards shot dead a Palestinian who, it was claimed, attacked two guards in the Old City before being overpowered and killed. [2] The juxtaposition of these two stories is striking. Unintentionally or otherwise, the alleged shooter, Ahmad Khatib, struck out at a para-state organization whose symbiotic relationship with the powerful colonizing state embodies the agent of his people’s Catastrophe. more..

Hamas; A History From Within - Book Review
Jim Miles, Palestine Chronicle 8/29/2007
     While discussing recent events, Tamimi also discusses more of the philosophical underpinnings of the Hamas movement and the discussion that takes place within Hamas itself concerning its goals and means.
     Most of the world knows the superficial history of Hamas as presented by western media, the stories of the suicide bombers, the election results that were argued to be a vote against the PLO/Fatah but not for Hamas, the resulting denial of that democratic vote by all western governments, and most recently, the Hamas takeover of the dysfunctional governance of the Gaza Strip. Azzam Tamimi’s book, Hamas -- A History From Within, presents a much broader and much more accurate perspective on a group that has had much more significance for the Palestinian people than simply being a militant suicidal terrorist group.
     Consistent with the title, Tamimi presents a history that shows Hamas’ development from its roots within the Muslim Brotherhood, from its aspects of international cooperation and denial, and from ’within’ -- the development of the ideas, policies, and implementation of ideas that is rarely seen in western media sources. It is not a fawning sycophantic review, as it also reveals the internal struggles within Hamas between the various people and political institutions involved in its history and development, and further reveals the precarious hold it had on survival, a survival that became ensured only with the advent of more serious Israeli atrocities during the first Intifada. more..

Playground better than a grave
Yossi Beilin, YNetNews 8/29/2007
     Religious coercion has infiltrated our lives and now also seeks to dictate how we die.
     There is a non-religious majority in Israel that wants to lead a normal life, and there is a religious minority that tries to dictate its way of life, and it has been going on like this for 60 years. Israel is one of few democracies in the world that has no constitution - because of the religious and strictly Orthodox. We are probably the only democracy in the world where matrimonial laws, which pertain to each and every one of us, are religious rules, where you can only marry within your religious community (for the Jewish majority - only with Orthodox rabbis.
     "Who is a Jew?" should be answered with national, not religious definitions. There is no public transportation on Saturday, and if you open your place of business on the weekly day of rest, you will be fined. The religious minority enters our plates (with various bans on pork products and on eating leavened bread in Passover); our beds (with its laws on marriage, divorce, yibum, halitza, "unfaithful wives," and mamzerut - bastards); and now they want to enter our graves too. The currently ruling coalition, in its weakness, surrenders to all kinds of strictly Orthodox madness: it releases them from the duty to teach their children the state-dictated core subjects (like English and math); forces local authorities to finance their unofficial schools; extends our military service term by exempting them from service; and soon it will surrender to their surreal bill that attempts to legally deny the people who wantthe right to have their bodies cremated, making a manipulative use of the memory of the Holocaust. more..

Audio: Crossing the Line interviews ARIJ director Jad Isaac
Podcast, Crossing the Line, Electronic Intifada 8/29/2007
     This week on Crossing The Line: Host Christopher Brown speaks to Jad Isaac the director of the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ), a Palestinian environmental non-governmental organization based in Bethlehem, about the crucial issue of water and how the Israelis have continually denied Palestinians access to a life source that they desperately need.
     Next, Brown speaks with Nachy Kanfer a Canadian-American environmental activist about the need for Palestinians to determine their own destiny with regards to Palestine’s natural resources. Kanfer talks especially about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza where residents are living in unsanitary conditions and even drinking water unfit for human consumption.
     As always, Crossing the Line begins with "This week in Palestine," a service provided by he International Middle East Media Center. -- See also: Listen Now [MP3 - 39.9 MB, 43:37 min] -- See also: Listen Now [MP3 - 39.9 MB, 43:37 min] more..

Walking in Palestinian Shoes
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 8/29/2007
     Many times, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict deserves lengthy and deep analyses.There are historical, cultural, political and religious considerations that need to be picked apart before reaching some sort of theory as to why this tiny slice of earth is so tormented.
     Then there are those times when a simple glance at the obvious is enough to clarify the complete injustice of the Israeli occupation. This is not even about the more significant issues such as political assassinations, home demolitions, prisoners or military operations that claim scores of lives. No, this is about everyday matters, most often taken for granted, which when one takes a moment to contemplate, show just how sinister a military occupation can be.
     Take an innocuous trip to the coastal town of Herzeliya. One of the more ritzy areas in Israel, the main mall in the town center is picture perfect.Not only is the actual structure aesthetically appealing, but the spacious piazza onto which the mall opens is breathtaking, overlooking the equally picturesque port, lined with sailboats, motorboats and luxurious yachts. more..

Arabs here to Stay
Ali Haider, MIFTAH 8/28/2007
     The notion known as "population exchange," a term that aims to conceal the transfer principle inherent in disengaging from the Wadi Ara region and handing it over to the Palestinian Authority, has again been placed on the public agenda.
     Yet what is special this time around and arouses great concern is the fact this issue was raised by the country’s two top figures: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Shimon Peres. We are talking about ideas that were apparently agreed to by the prime minister and are being discussed with the Palestinian Authority as a basis for engaging in diplomatic negotiations.
     Before Avigdor Lieberman joined the government, all those concerned about democracy warned against the possibility that he would make use of his status to implement his racist plans to disengage from Wadi Ara and hand it over to the Palestinian Authority. Now, it appears that the government adopted Lieberman’s way as its official policy towards Arab citizens.
     Those who thought that by bringing Lieberman into the government it would be possible to restrain him and thwart his plans erred gravely. On the contrary, Lieberman was able to inculcate most Knesset members, as well as the government and presidential institution, with his ideas. more..

Little Expected from Abbas-Olmert Meeting
MIFTAH, MIFTAH 8/28/2007
     Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet today in Jerusalem, ostensibly to outline an agenda for the planned November international summit in Washington. While Abbas has agreed to meet with Olmert, he has expressed concerns that the upcoming summit would be a “waste of time” if Israel only offers a “declaration of principles,” maintaining that real progress must be made in order for the summit to have any success.
     According to media sources, Olmert is pushing for a non-committal position limited to a “declaration of intent” while Abbas wants a detailed plan on Israel’s position on primary issues between the two sides.
     The two meeting between the two leaders is meant to smooth out a number of issues before the scheduled arrival of US Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice in mid-September.This seems highly unlikely however, given that Israel has yet to implement promises it made to the Palestinians two months ago as part of their “good will gestures”, such as the removal of a number of checkpoints throughout the West Bank and other means of easing restrictions on the people. more..

West Bank: Food parcels for Hebron families
International Committee of the Red Cross - ICRC, ReliefWeb 8/27/2007
     One woman describes how she and her family survive in the West Bank town of Hebron – just one of more than 1,700 families supported by the ICRC through the monthly distribution of food parcels.
     For centuries, Hebron was a flourishing economic centre, the most dynamic urban centre in the West Bank. The Old City served as a transportation hub connecting the city and the district to the rest of the West Bank. Thousands of passengers used to pass through Hebron every day. However, with the establishment of Israeli settlements in the Old City in 1979, a long economic decline began. A series of curfews and closures imposed since the beginning of the second Intifada has now turned the pulsing heart of Hebron into a ghost town.
     As the settlements continued to expand, the central bus and taxi stations were closed down. The main commercial thoroughfare of the Old City, Shuhada Street, was declared off limits to Palestinians as settlers had moved into three nearby settlements.
     Zahira Qafisheh lives in the Israeli-controlled area of Hebron (H2), the heart of the city. more..

Three governments and one closed crossing
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 8/28/2007
     There are three different governments in this land, and all three are absolutely sure that Western nations and Arab countries will continue to pay for food packages for the million and a half residents of the Gaza Strip for an unlimited period of time.
     That is the only explanation for the continued closure of the Karni Crossing, the single transfer point for goods to and from Gaza for the last two and a half months. This is the only way to explain why the three governments - Israel, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and Hamas in Gaza - are not taking seriously the solutions proposed by the Palestinian private sector to operate Karni privately with outside help.
     It is still possible to transfer food, medicine and a small amount of raw materials through the Sufa and Kerem Shalom crossings. But the vast majority of the raw materials needed to continue production in Gaza and all of the products intended for sale outside of Gaza can only pass through Karni. And when Karni is closed, almost all production shuts down completely.
     In the first two months of the closure, according to PalTrade, the Palestine Trade Center, the direct damage to local industry amounted to $8 million in the furniture sector, $15 million in textiles and $3 million in foodstuffs. The losses to agriculture reached $16 million. more..

Muslim Democracy in Action
Jackson Diehl, MIFTAH 8/28/2007
     The notion that democracy and Islam are fundamentally incompatible is about to get a resounding rebuke, just at the moment it is threatening to congeal as conventional wisdom in Washington.
     Barring a last-minute surprise -- such as a military coup -- a liberal and pro-Western politician named Abdullah Gul will be elected president of Turkey by the country’s parliament tomorrow. Gul speaks fluent English and has been a steady if somewhat quiet friend of the United States during more than four years as foreign minister. He also identifies himself as a religious Muslim in a country with an 85-year history of militant secularism. His wife wears a headscarf, which is banned from public offices, universities and -- until now -- the president’s Cankaya Palace in Ankara.
     A lot of people in Turkey say they’re worried that Gul’s election will mark the beginning of the end of Western-style modernization in their country. Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also has political roots in Islam. The Justice and Development (AK) Party will then control two branches of government, with broad power to enact new laws, appoint judges and university rectors, and, in theory, command the military. Some people in Washington are worried, too -- including partisans of Israel who suspect Erdogan of sympathy for the Palestinian Hamas movement and conservatives who charge him with plotting to undermine Turkey’s secular democracy. more..

Face-to-Face with Top Hamas Leader in Secret Location
Cal Perry, MIFTAH 8/28/2007
     Sitting in a room with the top Hamas leader -- a man Israel would prefer dead -- is not an easy feeling, knowing that at any second a missile could shatter the building, killing everyone inside, myself included.
     And, of course, it is no surprise why Israel has Khaled Meshaal at the top of its hit list. He is known to have ordered bombings that have targeted Israeli civilians, blowing up cafés, markets and malls across Israel.
     CNN senior correspondent Nic Robertson and I recently sat down with Meshaal in a secret Hamas "safe house" in the middle of Damascus. Hamas security guards were all around, their automatic rifles draped over their shoulders. The walls were adorned with the pictures of Hamas members who have carried out suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israelis.
     We sipped coffee uneasily as we waited for Meshaal to emerge for an interview that was more than three years in the making. Suddenly and without warning, the Hamas leader appeared. more..

People First
Shimon Shiffer, MIFTAH 8/28/2007
     Cutting off electricity in Gaza in the dead of summer was unconscionable. Fortunately, the EU resumed financing fuel deliveries after having earlier suspended payment because of differences with the Hamas-led authority in the Gaza Strip.
     Half the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip were denied electricity for five days and nights; 700,000 people were kept in darkness and deprived of a basic means of preserving food in this hot weather, due to a cruel decision that was based on whim, not reason - if ever there is a reason for acting this way.
     The EU stopped funding the electricity bill alleging that the Hamas-led authorities in the strip were taxing the grant to generate revenues, an accusation Hamas refuted all along. Fortunately their differences were resolved, but they shouldn’t have been used as justification for the blackout in central Gaza in the first place. The act amounted to collective punishment of the worst kind; hospitals, schools, houses were cut off from the mains, making the danger of epidemics ever so real.
     No punitive measure against Hamas, if deemed necessary, must touch upon the basic human needs of the population. more..

How do Salafist-Jihadists happen?
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 8/29/2007
     Lebanon in the past year has emerged as the latest terrain where Islamist militants and terrorists have taken root and, literally, exploded onto the political landscape. The three-month-old battle in the Nahr al-Bared camp in North Lebanon, near Tripoli, is the most dramatic manifestation of this phenomenon, in this case pitting the Lebanese armed forces against a Salafist-Jihadist group that calls itself Fatah al-Islam. This battle appears to be nearing its end, but the war between such militants and their societies is in its early days.
     The 30,000 or so Nahr al-Bared refugee camp residents long ago left the area for safer ground. The wives and children of the Fatah al-Islam fighters were evacuated a few days ago, and the remaining militants - anywhere between 50 and 100 is the general estimate - now seem ready for the final battle against the Lebanese Army. Fatah al-Islam has threatened to take the battle beyond the camp to other parts of Lebanon, and officials and analysts alike assume that sleeper cells and sympathizers are waiting to carry out attacks once they get the signal.
     Fatah al-Islam fighters have already carried out attacks in other parts of Lebanon, including firing rockets into North Lebanon communities from Nahr al-Bared and bombing civilian targets in Mount Lebanon earlier this year. Their capabilities are not to be frowned upon. Everyone has been taken by surprise by the ability of the several hundred militants in Nahr al-Bared to continue fighting for three months and more, as well as by their logistical supply capability and technical proficiency. more..

The Holocaust scholar who was hard on the Jews
Dan Michman, Ha’aretz 8/28/2007
     Raul Hilberg, a professor of political science at the University of Vermont, died on Saturday, August 4. He was certainly one of the most influential scholars in Holocaust research in the world, despite the fact that his list of publications was relatively short. But his relationship with Israeli Holocaust research was ambivalent.
     Hilberg fled as a child with his parents from Vienna to the U.S. after the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938). He was recruited to the U.S. army at the age of 18, toward the end of the Second World War, and took part in the last American campaign on German soil. Afterward, he started his studies at Columbia University in New York, attending courses taught by another refugee scholar, Franz Neumann. Through Neumann’s mediation, Hilberg became a member of the U.S. War Documentation project, and thus encountered much German-captured documentation. He became intrigued by these documents and by the modes of functioning of the Third Reich as revealed by them, and when he had to decide on a topic for his PhD-thesis in 1950, to be supervised by Neumann, he chose to focus on the bureaucracy of Nazi Germany. more..

Rich Wiles: Behind the Wall
Rich Wiles in the West Bank, Palestine Chronicle 8/28/2007
     These two teenagers live just a few kilometers apart. One of them wore full military uniform and carried US funded lethal weapons. The other wore a Brazilian football shirt and carried a birth certificate, a change of clothes, and some money for his sick grandfather.
     "I will see if I can join you tonight, I am afraid it will be difficult because my father is going to ’another country’ tomorrow! A country that is located at the end of the world!"
     I received this response to an email I sent to Nidal asking if he had time to join me for coffee one night in Aida Camp. His father, Abu Waleed, is sadly ill and must receive hospital treatment. The ’country’ Nidal was referring to is in fact not at the end of the world although it seems that way. Abu Waleed was in reality only traveling around 8kms from Aida Camp to Al Makasad hospital in Al Quds, the capital of Palestine. But despite being the capital of Palestine Al Quds is now trapped the wrong side of the Wall’ more..

What do Palestinians really think?
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 8/27/2007
     "Palestinian poll finds support for Fatah government over Hamas." That headline from the International Herald Tribune, one of many similar ones last week, must have warmed the hearts of supporters of the illegal, unelected and Israeli-backed Ramallah "government" of Salam Fayyad. Last June Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and the national unity government he headed, and appointed Fayyad without the legally required endorsement of the Palestinian legislative council. This followed Hamas’ rout of the US and Israeli-backed militias of Fatah warlord Mohammed Dahlan in the Gaza Strip.
     Does this poll vindicate the US and Israeli strategy of funding and arming Palestinian collaborator leaders in Ramallah, and Abbas’ strategy of embracing Israel, cracking down on the resistance, colluding in a cruel siege on his people in Gaza, and refusing all dialogue with Hamas? A closer look at the poll results as well as the context suggests the opposite. more..

The ongoing Nakba: Sickness and health among Palestinian refugees in Lebanon
Rosemary Sayigh, Electronic Lebanon, Electronic Intifada 8/27/2007
     Public health expert Michael Marmot underlines the relation between health and two fundamental human needs: autonomy and full social participation, adding that "deprived of a clean safe neighborhood, meaningful work, freedom from police harassment and arrest, and freedoms from violence and aggression, it is harder to have control over one’s life or be a full social participant." [1] The values Marmot describes are ones that camp refugees in Lebanon -- like Palestinians in many other places -- do not have. That such conditions should be allowed to continue by the international community is in clear contravention of the first principle of the 1992 Rio Declaration: "Human beings are at the center of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature."
     Before looking at health, we must therefore look at politics. The two main factors that structure the situation of Palestinians in Lebanon -- the majority who hold refugee IDs, and live in the camps -- are insecurity and poverty. Local, regional and international forces combine to create a situation characterized by absence of autonomy, participation and hope. There has been no improvement on any aspect of well-being since 1982. more..

The language of force
Uri Avnery, Middle East Online 8/27/2007
     In order to accommodate President Bush’s request, Olmert is now ready to cooperate with Abbas in writing something like a ‘framework agreement’ that will lay down the principles of an agreement that may be achieved later on - but without details or a time-table.
     Soon after coming to power, Ariel Sharon started to commission public opinion polls. He kept the results to himself. This week, a reporter of Israel’s TV Channel 10 succeeded in obtaining some of them.
     Among other things, Sharon wanted to know what the public thought about peace. He did not dream of starting on this road himself, but he felt it important to be informed about the trends.
     In these polls, the public was presented with a question that came close to the final Clinton Proposal and the Geneva Initiative: Are you for a peace that would include a Palestinian state, withdrawal from almost all occupied territories, giving up the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and dismantling most settlements?
     The results were very instructive. In 2002, 73% (seventy three percent!) supported this solution. In the next two years, support declined, but it was still accepted by the majority. In 2005 the percentage of supporters slipped under the 50% line. more..

EXHIBIT: "LEBANON: Open Skies of Struggle"
Mostafa Heneway, Electronic Lebanon, Electronic Intifada 8/27/2007
     Interview and Flash slide show
     In the context of historical political events occurring in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East, photojournalist Stefan Christoff is currently touring a photo exhibition entitled Lebanon: Open Skies of Struggle. Christoff, who is a regular contributor to The Electronic Intifada, was interviewed by Montreal-based independent journalist Mostafa Heneway on the current Lebanon exhibition traveling across Canadian galleries.
     Mostafa Heneway: Can you explain the context that led you to travel from Canada to the Middle East and specifically to Lebanon on three different occasions in the past five years?
     Stefan Christoff: Over the past five years I have been traveling between Montreal and the Middle East as a social justice activist. My implication in social justice struggles in Canada pertaining to the Middle East, from Lebanon to Palestine both brought about and rooted my travels to the region in multiple ways.
     My travels to the Middle East have always occurred within the context of political initiatives that have emerged in Montreal, in solidarity with liberation struggles in the Middle East. Montreal is of course an international city, where you have a major presence of the Arab Diaspora, from both Lebanon and Palestine. As a social justice activist I have worked heavily within these Middle East Diaspora communities and it is this community work that first lead me to the region. more..

Turning the rubble of war into a temporary residence
Bojan Preradovic, Daily Star 8/28/2007
     BEIRUT: "A good solution is a simple solution," says Nachaat Ouayda, managing partner of IDEA sarl. Ouayda and his partner, Sami Markus, are both architects who met while teaching at the American University of Beirut in the late 1980’s. The brainchild of their collaboration is IDEA sarl, an architectural and professional management practice and consultancy firm, which a year after the 2006 war with Israel is attempting to raise awareness of an innovation in temporary housing, engineered by Ouayda and Markus themselves.
     The relevance of IDEA’s conception is even more prominent in the minds of its creators because of the problem posed by the current conflict between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam militants, and the extensive destruction that the latter has caused in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp.
     "Project R" evolved as a solution to the problems that arose as a result of Israel’s 34-day massive bombing campaign against Lebanon - most notably, the rubble that countless houses in the South of the country had been reduced to. The latter, coupled with an urgent need to find shelter for close to a million displaced people, compelled Ouayda and Markus to come up with an alternative to the conventional prefabricated concrete housing units and porta-cabins. more..

MIDEAST: Not Another International Force
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani, Inter Press Service 8/6/2007
     CAIRO, Aug 27(IPS) - Since the Gaza Strip was taken over by Palestinian resistance faction Hamas in June, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has twice appealed for the deployment of an "international force" to the troubled territory. But with international contingents already deployed in hotspots from Lebanon to Afghanistan, some observers see the trend as a challenge to principles of national sovereignty.
     "The phenomenon represents a return of the region to the foreign colonialism of days past, albeit in a new, internationalised form," Abdel-Halim Kandil, political analyst and former editor-in-chief of opposition weekly al-Karama told IPS. "An international presence in the Gaza Strip would be especially dangerous because many would consider it no different than the Israeli occupation."
     Within the last five years, the Middle East and neighbouring regions have seen international force deployments proliferate. Some of these have been mandated to simply keep the peace, but others have been deployed with military objectives in mind. more..

American party aid institutes are in the Arab line of fire
Dina Bishara, Daily Star 8/28/2007
     Foreign democracy assistance organizations working directly with political parties have come into the line of fire as some Arab governments have pushed back against democratization initiatives in the past two years.
     In Algeria, Bahrain and Egypt in particular, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), both of them American election assistance organizations, have been among the first to feel pressure. In Iraq, where such institutes expend the vast majority of their funding for the Middle East, not only do their employees face danger - an NDI employee was killed in Baghdad in January - but their programs are subject to constant political uncertainty.
     Such is also the case in Palestine. In Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and Yemen, party institutes have maintained their freedom of operation, but even there the governments have sometimes exploited suspicions of foreign governments’ agendas to put pressure on parties that accept US assistance. In many other Arab countries institutes have no significant activities yet because they deem the atmosphere too restrictive. more..

Prison within a Prison
Gideon Levy, MIFTAH 8/27/2007
     Synthetic grass symbolizes the good earth; red bathroom tiles represent the blood that has been shed; the six scarred concrete pillars stand for the walls and fences. It’s naive to the point of being pathetic. But why six pillars? "Six is many," explains the director and curator, Fahed Abu al-Haj, a former prisoner himself, ignoring other possible associations Israelis might have in this part of the exhibit.
     Al-Quds University in Jerusalem presents: the Abu Jihad Political Prisoners Museum. In other words, the Palestinians have established their own version of the Yad Labanim institution - the Israeli sites of commemoration for fallen soldiers. Built at a cost of $850,000, the museum is housed in a stylized three-story stone structure that looks like a cross between a high-tech firm and a community center. Combining naivete and sophistication, propaganda and documentation, it features a glass elevator that travels silently between the air-conditioned spaces and an impressive archive on the heights of the third floor.
     Some 10,000 photocopied and bound letters written by prisoners in Israeli jails; documents and monuments; arts and crafts; a culture of bereavement, heroism and commemoration - the Palestinian narrative, and all of it revolving around the Palestinian prisoner. No other nation has seen a quarter of its daughters and sons incarcerated. There is no Palestinian home without a prisoner or a detainee, whether in the past or the present. And now the museum. An ethos is born. more..

Ugly mountain air
Yehuda Litani, YNetNews 8/26/2007
     Israelis vacationing at Kfar Etzion’s guest house will have no problems traveling to their destination. The same is not true for the area’s Palestinian residents.
     Kibbutz Kfar Etzion’s guest house, in the heart of Gush Etzion, is offering the public the chance to stay there over Rosh Hashana and enjoy "its magical, countryside atmosphere". An email sent out by Kfar Etzion’s field school says that guests will enjoy "pleasant and peaceful surroundings, large lawns, wide-ranging lessons from top rabbis, tours of Kfar Etzion, the Song of Songs garden, and mountain air as clear as wine and a spectacular view".
     And indeed, why not take up such a pastoral offer? Particularly given that the guest house is "only 12 minutes from Jerusalem and 15 minutes from Beit Shemesh".
     But what can be done about the fact that stuck within these short distances, as if to annoy, are the Arab communities, towns and villages that surround Gush Etzion? The residents of these communities are not as lucky as those of Gush Etzion, or any other Israeli citizen, because they cannot travel to Jerusalem, a journey of 12 minutes, or to Beit Shemesh, a 15-minutes’ drive.
     Most of these people are not permitted to leave the area, while those fortunate enough to receive the authorization to do so, face a far longer journey because of searches and security examinations at checkposts and crossing points.
     Often, permission to travel is turned down for petty bureaucratic reasons, or just plain heartlessness, such as in the case of 18-year-old Radi al-Wachash, who was injured in a road accident in the Bethlehem area on June 29. more..

Action Alert: Al-Hadidiya and Hamsa (Jordan Valley) to be evacuated
Stop The Wall 8/25/2007
     Update On Hadidiya
     Occupation forces on the morning of 23rd of August razed the Bedouin village of Humsa close to Haddidiya for the second time in two weeks.
     At around 8.00 am, ten occupation vehicles and a bulldozer rolled into the village. They demolished three barns owned by Abdullah Hussein Bsharat, along with three houses belonging to his family, and confiscated a water tank. His son Salah Abdullah Hussein Bsharat had his tractor confiscated. A third villager, Abdullah Hafez Sharat had his house destroyed along with two sheds, for the second time in 10 days. The Occupation forces later demolished the home of Suleiman Abu Liqbash and his animal shacks.
     A taxi driver who brought passengers to the area had his car documents, taxi permit and identity card confiscated by occupation forces. Muwafaq Abu Wahdan, from the nearby town of Tubas, was forced to abandon his vehicle, and was detained at the Hamra checkpoint for a number of hours until his ID was returned. The targeting of an individual simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time is typical of the arbitrary repression that characterises life under the Occupation.
     As a consequence of the destruction of Humsa and al-Hadidiya, two families numbering 25 people are without shelter under the burning August sun (temperatures were reaching 43 degrees in the shadow that day) and deprived of their only access to water resources. The villagers were unable to remove all of their belongings from their homes before the demolitions began, although they saved what they could. -- See also: For Photo Story, Click Here -- See also: For Photo Story, Click Here more..

Outposts and peace don’t mix
Haaretz Editorial, Ha’aretz 8/26/2007
     Aside from the publication date, it is hard to find any differences between the weekend reports of an emerging agreement on settlement outposts between Defense Minister Ehud Barak and settler representatives and those on the outposts agreement Barak reached with the Yesha Council in 1999 when he was prime minister and defense minister. Once again, talks are reportedly being held on how many outposts the settlers will evacuate voluntarily, in exchange for the state "laundering" other outposts. Judging by the previous round, the outposts slated for laundering will indeed be legalized, the settlers will vacate a few rusty shacks, and most of the outposts will remain in place. The defense minister’s office is not embarrassed to say that Barak "is studying the issue and has not yet formulated a position."
     The incentive for these talks is not a governmental commitment to enforcing the law in the West Bank, sparing the Israel Defense Forces from having to devote troops to defending land thieves and saving the public treasury tens of millions of shekels a year in expenses. Nor does the urgency stem from the previous government’s promise, under the road map peace plan, to evacuate all outposts established after March 2001. The talks also have no connection to the report on the outposts that attorney Talia Sasson submitted to Ariel Sharon’s government two and a half years ago. Just as with the nine houses that were evacuated in the Amona outpost in early 2006, here too, were it not for fear of a Peace Now petition to the High Court of Justice, it is very doubtful the authorities would have roused from their lengthy slumber. more..

Failed marks in comprehension
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 8/26/2007
     If a law student had written that a Supreme Court ruling ordering changes to the route of the separation fence could be compared to a situation in which the judiciary intervened in a government decision to bomb the nuclear reactor of an enemy state - he would receive an "F." Had he compared the situation of Palestinian landowners, whose rights are violated by the fence, to the victims of a vital military operation, it would have shown that he did not read the assigned material. However, when such comparisons are being made by the recipient of the Israel Prize in Law, it is hard to decide which is worse: the fact that Prof. Daniel Friedmann has not read the Supreme Court rulings, or that Justice Minister Friedmann is deviously enlisting security issues in his war against the Supreme Court.
     Indeed, the petitions to the High Court of Justice and the rulings ordering corrections in the original route of the separation fence are causing delays in the completion of the work, and are harmful to the security of Israeli citizens. But those responsible for this ongoing failure are not the people sitting on the bench of the Supreme Court. It is not the justices who drew the route of the fence near the settlement of Tzofin in the northern West Bank, in keeping with the blueprints of plans for an industrial zone that is to be set up in that area (and whose establishment has not even been approved). The Defense Ministry, with the full backing of the Prime Minister’s Office, has presented this encroaching settler route as a "security route." According to a letter sent by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to then defense minister Amir Peretz, this was arranged behind his back. more..

The IDF in the toy store
Reuven Pedatzur, Ha’aretz 8/26/2007
     At first, it was the concerned parents who contributed about NIS 8 billion to the coffers. Next, the uncle from America sent a surprise package containing an additional NIS 2.5 billion, with a promise of NIS 126 billion during the coming decade. And now the children are quarreling - after they have all of a sudden received permission to buy anything they want in the world’s largest toy shop.
     Thus, representatives of the Israel Defense Forces’ branches are surveying the shelves loaded with the best of combat equipment and are finding it difficult to decide on how to divide the spoils. The one with the blue uniform wants the F-35 stealth fighter aircraft, while the one wearing the white uniform argues that it is necessary to purchase modern warships, and the third, dressed in khaki, insists on hundreds of Striker-model American armored personnel carriers and lots of Merkava 4 tanks.
     And above them sits a new-old supervisor who coined the slogan "small, smart army." Yet all this is not enough for him; he contends that the army should be enlarged by two additional armored divisions. Further still, he insists that many more billions must be invested in "a multi-layered defense system," to protect us from Iranian missiles, Hezbollah rockets and Hamas Qassams. more..

Israel’s phony peace camp
Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian Information Center 8/26/2007
     On 17 August, the Guardian published a small article by Colin Shindler, a self-styled Israeli peace activist in which he berated Hamas for not talking to the Israeli “peace camp.”
     Shindler argued that Hamas ought to engage peace-minded Israelis very much like the PLO, which he said assiduously cultivated Zionist and non-Zionist adherents.
     Well, to begin with, the so-called Israeli left has always adopted mercurial, vague and hypocritical stands regarding the Palestinians and their enduring plight. The hypocrisy was a necessary tactic to blur the inherent contradiction between the ugly reality on the ground and the pretended leftist ideals.
     Indeed, as Palestinians are being tormented, killed, decimated in ways reminiscent of Nazi oppression of Jews during WWII, the so-called Israeli left, including the bulk of the so-called peace camp!!, played deaf, dumb, and looked the other way as if the pornographic oppression was happening on another planet, not next door.
     Eventually, the Israeli left, or the bulk of it, chose to be more faithful to Zionist ideals of racism, particularism and colonialism than to the universal ideals of justice, and human equality.
     Hence, I can say that the Israeli left, with a few exceptions, is a big farce and has little if any to do with true leftist ideals. The rubric may be leftist in name, but the heart and mind are fascist to the core. more..

Eyal Weizman Interview: Israel’s Oppressive Architecture of Occupation
International Solidarity Movement/Anindya Bhattacharyya 8/24/2007
     Dissident architect Eyal Weizman explains the mechanics of Israel’s occupation of Palestine to Anindya Bhattacharyya.
     The occupied West Bank, 1999. A group of Israeli settlers complain that their mobile phone reception cuts out on a bend in a road from Jerusalem to their settlements.
     The mobile phone company Orange agrees to put up an antenna on a hill overlooking the bend.
     The hill happens to be owned by Palestinian farmers, but since mobile phone reception is a “security issue”, the mast construction can go ahead without the farmers’ permission.
     Other companies agree to supply electricity and water to the construction site on the hill.
     In May 2001 an Israeli security guard moves on to the site and connects his cabin to the water and electricity mains. Then his wife and children move in with him.
     In March 2002 five more families join him to create the settler outpost of Migron. The Israeli ministry for construction and housing builds a nursery, while donations from abroad build a synagogue.
     By mid-2006 Migron is a fully fledged illegal settlement comprising 60 trailers on a hilltop around the antenna, overlooking the Palestinian lands below.
     This blow-by-blow account of just one example of the ongoing Israeli colonisation of Palestine appears in the opening pages of a fascinating new book by Eyal Weizman, the dissident Israeli architect. more..

When the Lights Went Out in Gaza
Tim McGirk, TIME 8/22/2007
     Sources in Ramallah, one close to the Palestinian President and another from within the Fatah movement’s ruling council, have told TIME that Abbas’s advisers provoked the power cut by falsely warning the Europeans that Hamas was pocketing the electricity bill payments. Abbas’s office has publicly denied trying to influence the Europeans; and the E.U. has declined to reveal the source of its initial allegation that Hamas was pocketing the electricity bill payments.
     Last Friday, the lights went out in Gaza because the electric bill wasn’t being paid. The European Union which, for humanitarian reasons, is financing the Palestinian enclave’s power supply, suddenly refused to continue the subsidy because of allegations that Gaza’s government - run by the Islamist party Hamas - was about to tax electricity to bolster its armed militants. Ever since those same militants ousted the forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last June - thereby creating two Palestinian territories, in Gaza and in the West Bank - western governments have refused to send aid that would in any way assist Hamas’s armed ambitions. And with the electricity thus tainted, the E.U. cut off payments. The Israeli power company supplying half of Gaza’s fuel just as promptly shut off supplies.
     On Wednesday, the lights were coming back on in Gaza. That was after Ismael Haniyeh, Prime Minister of Gaza’s Hamas-led government, assured the E.U. that electricity funds were being properly utilized. The 1.5 million Palestinians who live in the tiny strip of land on the Mediterranean, however, were seething - not at Haniyeh and Hamas but at Abbas, who sat out this crisis in air-conditioned comfort farther inland in the West Bank with his supporters in Fatah, the other main Palestinian group. Why blame Abbas? Because the Gazans believe he is trying force them to rebel against Hamas and that he is doing this by breaking their backs. more..

Four witnesses in one day (August 20, 2007)
Freedom to Give 8/21/2007
     The Holy Land Foundation Trial: The Family’s Perspective
     His face was cherry red. He was outraged at this mockery of a trial. Defendant Ghassan Elashi’s voice was loud and clear. As U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish and jurors exited the courtroom after a mid-morning break Monday, August 20, 2007, Elashi let out his frustration toward the unjust judge. This is an extension of the Zionist occupation. We can’t win the case with this judge because he is a bigot, Elashi said. The judge later replied, We can’t have outbursts like that. I’m warning you that a further outburst wont be tolerated. If another outburst occurs, you will waive your right to be present in the courtroom. The jurors followed closely as four witnesses were put on the stand. The jury box was exceptionally colorful as the 15-member jury wore bright red, green, yellow, purple and blue shirts. Maybe they were in a jubilant mood. Or maybe they were eager to learn.
     Defendant Mohammad El-Mezain’s attorney, Josh Dratel, continued the cross-examination of Avi by displaying several posters that the prosecutors showed the jury. He pointed out that most of the posters that the Israeli government seized from the zakat committees in occupied Palestine were created after the U.S. government shut down the Holy Land Foundation in 2001. He specifically talked about a poster announcing the death of Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin. He made clear that Israeli forces assassinated Yassin with a missile in 2004 as he was being pushed in his wheelchair on his way back from a mosque in Gaza. Dratel wanted to conclude by showing the jury a 1993 document that would prove that the Israeli government permit the construction of a Jenin hospital, which was a zakat committee project partially funded by the HLF. The government objected to the document on the grounds of hearsay and the judge sustained their objection, thereby not allowing Dratel to discuss the document. This frustrated many people, including Elashi. more..

Palestine since Gaza ’disengagement’
Jake Hess, ZNet 8/24/2007
     This month marks the two-year anniversary of Israel’s ’disengagement’ from the Gaza Strip. Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School wrote the following in September, 2005: "Israel’s successful evacuation of the Gaza Strip demonstrates the desire and ability of the Israeli government to make and implement tough decisions necessary for a pragmatic peace based on a two-state solution."[1]
     Dershowitz is right. Although his article misrepresents the Israeli government’s intentions as benign, the Gaza ’disengagement’ can only be understood as the first step in Israel’s long-term objective of imposing what they call a ’two-state solution’ on the Palestinians. Many analysts sympathetic to the Palestinian cause have written, correctly, that the Gaza withdrawal has coincided with settlement expansion in the West Bank. Few, however, define the political endgame Israel is moving toward.
     The purpose of this article is to outline, briefly, the long-term objectives of the ’disengagement’, to show how they’ve been implemented in the West Bank during last couple of years, and to describe current conditions in Gaza. Doing so can help provide a framework for interpreting the recent and upcoming diplomatic summits in the region, including the renewed talk of moving toward a final settlement.[2] more..

The Next Intifada
Miko Peled, Palestine Chronicle 8/25/2007
     It would be a serious mistake to think that cosmetic changes like the Oslo Accords could bring an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The era of cosmetic changes together with the Two State Solution is gone forever.
     With his latest statements and unrestrained violence, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, has once again confirmed that the occupation, the oppression and the slow genocide of Palestinians by the Israeli war machine he heads will not stop. Any talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders are meaningless he says, and as far as he is concerned there will be no relief for the Palestinians, not even symbolic relief for people trying to cross the checkpoints. After all, even a short delay at the checkpoint can put an end to the life on an innocent Palestinian. Barak who has earned the dubious distinction of Israel’s most decorated soldier, by killing mostly unarmed Palestinian civilians, will do nothing that might hinder the liquidation of Palestinians, young or old. With Barak in control of Israel’s security apparatus Israelis and Palestinians can expect more violence and more losses of innocent lives.
     Barak and his generals all have innocent blood on their hands and should be tried at Haag for violations of international law and crimes against humanity. But instead they direct Israeli soldiers, government trained assassins, secret police, and so-called border patrolmen to shoot and kill innocent Palestinians. Because in Israel all "security" personnel are all above the law neither the perpetrators of these crimes, their commanding officers or the government ministers in charge are brought to justice. more..

NGO Efforts Prior to Mideast Conference
Rene Wadlow, Palestine Chronicle 8/25/2007
     I believe that there are three points which we should stress in our efforts. These three points will probably not be on the agenda if people outside the governments do not first raise them.
     President George W. Bush has proposed holding a conference on the Israel-Palestine conflict in November 2007.In addition to the Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority, there would be representative of the "International Quartet": the US, Russia, the European Union (usually represented by foreign policy specialists of the European Commission) and the United Nations (which in practice is represented by members of the UN secretariat).It is also hoped that some or all the members of what is increasingly called the "Arab Quartet" would attend. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is now a representative of the International Quartet, would probably be present.
     The Israeli-Palestine conference would be held against the backdrop of other interlocking Middle East issues: the conflict, the resurgence of , Lebanon-Syria politics.
     While personally, I believe, that the USA has "burned all its bridges" in the Middle East and can not play a useful role in the Israel-Palestine issue, there are still some people who believe that the USA can play a leading role as the international facilitator.What is true, I believe, is that there is no other State which can be the substitute leader in the short run.Therefore, we, as world citizens, have two months, September and October 2007, to try to influence US policy on the Middle East and to use what contacts we have to reach foreign policy specialists in Russia, the Arab Quartet, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. more..

Nasrallah’s Surprise
Rannie Amiri, Palestine Chronicle 8/25/2007
     Nasrallah’s surprise will only come as one to those who believe he is bluffing. As history has shown, that is something he does not do.
     "If you, the Zionists, are considering attacking Lebanon, I am reserving a surprise for you that will change the fate of the war and the region." - Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, in a speech marking the end of last year’s war with Israel.
     "We have to take Nasrallah seriously. He has never lied." - Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, infrastructure minister and member of Israel’s security cabinet, in reference to his speech.
     Arab leaders have historically relied on hyperbole rather than accomplishment in rallying their people or boasting of their success. But even the Israelis now recognize Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah is to be taken at his word. Not only does he refreshingly avoid self-aggrandizement, his achievements speak for themselves. more..

Kathy Kelly: We Shouldn’t Be Causing This
Kathy Kelly in Amman, Jordan, Palestine Chronicle 8/25/2007
     I can’t know what nightmare fears awakened her when she cried out, "I shouldn’t be filming this." I hope she’ll be soothed by appreciation for her initiative. I think she’ll help many adults cry out, "We shouldn’t be causing this."
     Here in Amman, Jordan, a British teenager, Sonia, age 12, recently spent four days interviewing and befriending Iraqi youngsters close to her in age. She wanted to learn, firsthand, about the experiences of Iraqi youngsters who have fled war and violence in their home country.
     A versatile and talented child, Sonia loves to play the trumpet and perform classical Indian dances, the latter being somewhat unusual for a Muslim girl. When she was eight years old, shortly before the U.S. and the U.K. attacked Iraq, she wrote a poem urging respect for the rights of Iraqi children whose lives and hopes would be destroyed by war. The poem reached many people, intensifying efforts of peace activists to stop the war before it started. Sonia continued her efforts on behalf of Iraqi children, even founding an organization called "Children Against War." more..

Why Does Egypt Choose to Stoop Low?
Rami Khouri, Middle East Online 8/25/2007
     The Egyptian government increases repression and harassment, contrary to the legacy of its statehood. Most recently, the Mubarak government has retrenched its legal system with thirty-four constitutional amendments intensifying its authoritarianism.
     BEIRUT -- There is a special sadness to the diminution of giants, to great men and countries that choose to stoop low. Egypt, in this respect, mystifies us once again, as its ruling regime resorts to repression and harassment of those who would challenge it politically and demand more democratic governance.
     Why a society with such a tremendous reservoir of human talent, historical legitimacy, state credibility, and modern political leadership in the Arab world would need to use authoritarian police state tactics against its own citizens who engage in peaceful politics is one of the great, painful tragedies of the Arab world. Egypt is one of the few Arab countries that can influence the rest of the region, given the power, legitimacy, and respect of its unique legacy of Arab statehood, nationhood, citizenship rights, constitutionalism, and pluralism. To lose Egypt to the emotional and intellectual dungeons of authoritarianism is to lose immense Arab treasure and potential. more..

Lobbying for a Foreign Country (Israel)
Ron Forthofer, Ph.D, Palestine Chronicle 8/25/2007
     It is difficult to identify all the pro-Israel PACs because they fly under the radar with innocuous sounding names such as Metro PAC, Badger PAC, Pacific PAC, etc.
     In March 2006, two respected academics, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt from the University of Chicago and Harvard University, respectively, wrote a paper that shook up the academic and foreign policy communities. These authors broke the taboo among the elite and openly discussed the Israel lobby.
     ....The Lobby indeed has tremendous influence on U.S. Middle East policy. For example, during the two-year 1988 election cycle, pro-Israel PACs spent over $5.4 million on Congressional campaigns and Israel received well over $6 billion in direct taxpayer grants, a return of roughly $1000 for every dollar spent lobbying Congress. (“Stealth PACs: Lobbying Congress for Control of U.S. Middle East Policy” by Richard H. Curtiss, 1996).
     It is difficult to identify all the pro-Israel PACs because they fly under the radar with innocuous sounding names such as Metro PAC, Badger PAC, Pacific PAC, etc. that don’t say anything about Israel or the Middle East. By using many dozens of PACs, the Lobby defeats the purpose of campaign finance laws and is thus able to invest large amounts of money in a favorite candidate or in someone serving on an important congressional committee. Money can also be used in campaigns to defeat politicians who are not sufficiently subservient to Israeli interests. The Lobby takes credit for defeating a number of well-respected politicians such as Senator Charles Percy and Representative Pete McCloskey, people who thought that they were in Congress to represent U.S. interests, not those of Israel.... more..

A Pattern Of Closure
Amira Hass, MIFTAH 8/25/2007
     This coming fall, designer Shelly Gueta’s jackets will have no lining. This is her way of dealing with the prolonged closure of the Karni border crossing terminal. Sewing a lining is complicated work that demands a high level of professional skill. There are professional tailors in the Gaza Strip who are capable of doing this, but for more than two months now, there has been no way of sending them the sewing patterns or to get the prepared garments out to shops in Israel.
     The hope on both sides is that the closure of the border crossing is temporary. Having no alternative, Gueta will send the simpler designs to sewing shops in Nablus. The workers in the West Bank aren’t as skilled and careful as those in the Gaza Strip, she says. And others in the fashion business agree with her. For example, Zvi Lieberman, the director of the Textile and Fashion Industries Association, and Yehuda Shoshani, the proprietor of Vanilla Fashion, Gueta’s employer. And also Muhammad Abu Shanab, the head of Gaza’s Sewing Shop Owners Association. more..

What Do They Expect from Abbas?
Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 8/23/2007
     In the months leading to the November peace conference, Abbas is expected to further demonstrate his trustworthiness to Israel and the US, at the expense of the Palestinian people.
     The rash and self-defeatist behavior emanating from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his close circle in the West Bank cannot possibly be intended for the benefit of the Palestinian people or for their internationally sanctioned struggle for human rights, freedom and equality. Abbas, and his self-serving Palestinian elites seem hell-bent on exploiting the unfolding Palestinian drama to further cement their status and position, even if such an attitude will lead to the total decimation of any little hope left of recovering denied Palestinian rights.
     The Palestinian, Israeli and international response - spearheaded by the Bush Administration - to the Hamas election victory and formation of a government under military occupation, in January and March 2006 respectively, indicated that democracy for all of these players falls into the category of political opportunism: to unleash wars, rationalize illegal occupations or profit financially. Under Abbas’ rule, democracy was and remains a vehicle. It is mostly constituted from a bizarre mix of rhetoric, never to be substantiated by any meaningful action. True democracy is intended to prevail over all threats and challenges; alas, Abbas’ has failed miserably. more..

Too many authorities
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 8/23/2007
     Not only are some 1.5 million Gaza residents living like prisoners in the largest jail in the world, but they are also subjected to daily attacks by Israel that leave them with more dead to bury. Two children were killed on Tuesday, and not only those suspected of firing Qassam rockets. And if there’s no shelling, there’s a short-term incursion, and dozens of people are arrested and undergo a day-long campaign of humiliation.
     There are also murders by fellow Palestinians, though fewer than during Fatah rule. But the vendetta cycle continues to be a threat. Fatah members were arrested and tortured, and a Fatah supporter’s wedding was raided by Hamas gunmen.
     The economy has been completely paralyzed for two months now. Tens of thousands of private-sector workers have not made even NIS 100 in the past two months. There is zero export because the Karni crossing is closed. This situation will continue for a long time if Israel’s attitude toward Hamas remains as is. more..

Lost landscapes
Ian Black, The Guardian 8/23/2007
     Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh, published by Profile books
     In 1978, when the Palestinian lawyer Rajah Shehadeh returned to his native Ramallah in the West Bank after studying in London, he found solace in walking the hills, admiring the stone walls and wild flowers - and trying not to think about the Israeli settlements sprouting like mushrooms after spring rain. It was not easy to ignore them, especially as his professional life centred on fighting land expropriation orders issued by the occupation authorities.
     Back then, the 1967 war - when Israeli forces conquered the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip (as well as the Egyptian Sinai and Syria’s Golan Heights) - was still a fairly recent memory. Now, 40 years on, Shehadeh has written a book about Palestinian walks that is a poignant reminder of what has happened. Its subtitle - Notes on a Vanishing Landscape - succinctly captures the essence of his story. This is a personal take on a depressingly familiar theme. The wadis are choked with wild cyclamen, thyme and asphodels. As he wanders, Shehadeh passes olive groves and fruit trees, encounters gazelles and goats as well as bare rock and its evidence of dramatic geological change over millennia. But, as one West Bank hilltop after another is claimed by the Israelis (Palestinians built their villages along the contours of the hills), and yet more settlements are established, the familiar view changes beyond recognition. more..

Village near Jerusalem, perfect example of the Israeli Apartheid
Missa Abu Ghazalah NEWS, International Middle East Media Center 8/23/2007
     Sheikh Sa’ad village south east of the city of Jerusalem, became like an island that is isolated, the Israeli occupation on one hand, and nature on the other hand, the Israeli illegal Wall now separated it from the village of Sur Baher in the south and Jabal Al Mukaber in the north and north-east, while the valleys to the south creates a natural geographic separation between the village and Obeidiyya town.
     Currently the village of Sheikh Sa’ad is left with one and only entrance which goes throw its neighboring village of Jabal Al Mukaber. 3000 Palestinian residents, most of whom carry Jerusalem identity cards, inhabit Sheikh Sa’ad village. Families are forced to send their children to get education in the city of Jerusalem.
     Nearly four years since the Israeli army closed the entrance to Sheikh Saad using dirt, thus closed the only entrance of the village so that residents can no longer drive to get to Jerusalem city which is only moment away. Residents were forced to carry fuel tanks and bring them to the village to fill their cars up. more..

Internal Complications
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 8/22/2007
     The Bush initiative to convene an international meeting on the Middle East has caused contradicting reactions in the region.
     Some politicians and analysts, particularly in Israel and Palestine, have greeted the initiative with optimism. They believe that as a result, a political process may be reactivated along with the American engagement that the conflict has long been waiting for. They see in this plan an attempt to reverse American support for former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon’s unilateral approach and a return to the bilateral process that the US has traditionally supported.
     But others have been very skeptical about the real American motives and the ability of this administration to deliver anything positive on the Middle East. The skepticism stems from the absence of any reflection of a new American attitude in American-Israeli relations of a kind that can significantly affect ongoing Israeli policies and practices that consolidate the occupation. Such a change is seen by many as the most important criteria in judging the seriousness of any US initiative. more..

Bush’s New War Drums for Iran
Ray McGovern, Middle East Online 8/22/2007
     The National Intelligence Estimate on if and when Iran is likely to have the bomb has been ready since February. It has been sent back four times—no doubt because its conclusions do not support what folks like Cheney and Woolsey are telling the president, says
     It is as though I’m back as an analyst at the CIA, trying to estimate the chances of an attack on Iran. The putative attacker, though, happens to be our own president.
     It is precisely the work we analysts used to do. And, while it is still a bit jarring to be turning our analytical tools on the US leadership, it is by no means entirely new. For, of necessity, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been doing that for almost six years now—ever since 9/11, when “everything changed.”
     Of necessity? Yes, because, with very few exceptions, American journalists lose their jobs if they expose things like fraudulent wars. more..

The Money Surge
Nicholas von Hoffman, Middle East Online 8/22/2007
     It seems that there actually have been two surges. The first, and most publicized, is the one that brought re-enforcements to Iraq this spring. It is the second surge, the money surge, that has delivered measurable returns so far.
     If you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em off.
     The newest news coming out of Iraq has it that the United States is hiring the people we were fighting not many weeks ago.
     "U.S. commanders are offering large sums to enlist, at breakneck pace, their former enemies, handing them broad security powers in a risky effort to tame this fractious area south of Baghdad in Babil province and, literally, buy time for national reconciliation," writes the Washington Post’s Sudarsan Raghavan.
     "Officially, we will not deal with those who have American blood on their hands," said Col. Robert Balcavage, 42. "But how do you know? You don’t. There’s a degree of risk involved. A lot of it is gut instinct. That’s what I’m going on. They didn’t teach me how to do this at West Point." -- See also: US recruits Iraq volunteer police -- See also: US recruits Iraq volunteer police more..

Welcome to Hillary’s wars
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times 8/24/2007
     I would say, "I’m sorry, it’s over. We are not going to babysit a civil war." - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, February 2007.
     PARIS - It’s 2015, President Hillary Clinton is way into her second term, and she is babysitting a savage war still going on in still-occupied Iraq. Hillary’s de-escalation was half-hearted: she opted for leaving tens of thousands of boots on the ground to "fight al-Qaeda" and to "stabilize" a Kurdistan mired for years in, what else, total war after the disastrous referendum in Kirkuk. After all, Sunni Arabs and even a large percentage of Shi’ites would never forget that the Kurds were always US collaborators.
     Clinton’s "surge" - troops basically concentrated in secluded US bases, with more reliance on military contractors (now ballooning to more than 150,000), plus an all-around, nationwide air-strike campaign against "terrorist" targets, Sunni and Shi’ite alike - still has not delivered the expected results. The president constantly reminds the nation, "General David Petraeus told Congress the ’surge’ will take as much as 10 years to work, so we must be patient." Thus all eyes are set on 2017.
     The Iraqi government for its part still does not and will never have enough funds to rebuild the country’s infrastructure destroyed by George W Bush’s and Hillary’s war because billions of dollars of the reconstruction budget simply keep "disappearing" into US contractors’ deep pockets and those of their associated Iraqi gangsters. more..

Reclaiming Christian values
Corinne Whitlatch, Middle East Online 8/23/2007
     Some churches and denominations in the United States have direct partner ties with Palestinian churches and to churches in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Israel. All feel a strong attachment to the Holy Land and long for peace and reconciliation with all members of the Abrahamic family of faiths - Jews, Christians and Muslims, says
     WASHINGTON - The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and the broader schism between Israel and Arab states, is of deep concern to a great many people who have no personal connection to either side. While Arab and Jewish Americans are on the front lines of citizen advocacy regarding US policy toward the conflict and peacemaking efforts, secular and Christian Americans are also involved and consider the conflict important to their lives and to the United States. Many people of all three faiths hold a profound attachment to the Holy Land. As an example, Christians grieve the severing of the natural and historic connection between their holy sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem by Israel’s separation barrier.
     Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) is a coalition which seeks to influence the US Congress and Administration to adopt polices and take actions that would resolve the conflict and ease human suffering. The coalition brings together Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant national churches, denominations, and agencies to speak to the government with one clear voice, calling for justice and peace. The goal of CMEP is a negotiated agreement that would bring recognition and security to Israel and a sovereign viable state to Palestinians, with Jerusalem being shared by the governments and the people. more..

Letter to the Editor: Robbing Palestinians
Dear Editor, Palestine Chronicle 8/23/2007
     What is being pulled in Palestine is exactly what the US is trying to impose in Iraq -- where the Iraqis would get next to nothing for their resources and international corporations would take nearly all.
     Since the Palestinian election in January 2006 that brought Hamas to power, the United States , their western allies, and Israel have successfully boycotted, sealed off, and starved 1.3 million citizens of Gaza. Along with non-stop military assaults by Israeli Occupation Forces, the US and Israel have poured 10s of millions of dollars into arming and training Fatah to take on and destroy the popularly elected Hamas government. According to reports out of Gaza , Mohammed Dahlan - President Abbas’ right hand man until his recent "resignation" - had employed one hundred 5-man death squads across the region.
     What is not widely known is that British Gas (BG) has a joint franchise in the Gaza Marine gas field off the Gaza coast, which contains some 37 billion cubic meters of gas. It is believed that large oil reserves are also present. However, the Palestinian Authority is slated to receive only 10% from the deal. According to the Gulf Times, Hamas claims it is unreasonable that the owner of the gas, Palestine , gets 10% only. The recently Fatah-deposed Prime Minister Ismail Haniya intends “to ask for changes in the agreement with BG Group, giving it a bigger slice of the proceeds from a pending natural-gas deal with Israel .&rdquo more..

The Great Middle East Peace Process Scam
Henry Siegman, MIFTAH 8/22/2007
     When Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush met at the White House in June, they concluded that Hamas’s violent ousting of Fatah from Gaza – which brought down the Palestinian national unity government brokered by the Saudis in Mecca in March – had presented the world with a new ‘window of opportunity’.[*] (Never has a failed peace process enjoyed so many windows of opportunity.) Hamas’s isolation in Gaza, Olmert and Bush agreed, would allow them to grant generous concessions to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, giving him the credibility he needed with the Palestinian people in order to prevail over Hamas.
     Both Bush and Olmert have spoken endlessly of their commitment to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it is their determination to bring down Hamas rather than to build up a Palestinian state that animates their new-found enthusiasm for making Abbas look good. That is why their expectation that Hamas will be defeated is illusory. Palestinian moderates will never prevail over those considered extremists, since what defines moderation for Olmert is Palestinian acquiescence in Israel’s dismemberment of Palestinian territory. In the end, what Olmert and his government are prepared to offer Palestinians will be rejected by Abbas no less than by Hamas, and will only confirm to Palestinians the futility of Abbas’s moderation and justify its rejection by Hamas. Equally illusory are Bush’s expectations of what will be achieved by the conference he recently announced would be held in the autumn (it has now been downgraded to a ‘meeting’). In his view, all previous peace initiatives have failed largely, if not exclusively, because Palestinians were not ready for a state of their own. The meeting will therefore focus narrowly on Palestinian institution-building and reform, under the tutelage of Tony Blair, the Quartet’s newly appointed envoy. more..

U.S.-Backed Campaign Against Hamas Expands to Charities
Adam Entous, MIFTAH 8/22/2007
     A U.S.-backed campaign against Hamas is being expanded to include Islamic charities that helped propel it to power, Palestinian, Israeli and Western officials said.
     Salam Fayyad, whom Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appointed prime minister after Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June, aims to reduce the influence of Hamas and its welfare arm and to build an alternative, government-run social service system using Western and Arab funds.
     Mahmoud al-Habbash, Fayyad’s social affairs minister, said the government had a right to target Islamic charities that "help Hamas in their fight against the authority". Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in January 2006, has challenged the legality of Fayyad’s government.
     Fayyad’s government is expected to approve new anti-money laundering rules that one official said would include a ban on "anyone bringing in money illegally". Another official said the rules, drafted by the Palestinian Monetary Authority, could be applied to funds for Hamas, its allies and others. more..

Let us Never Forget
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 8/22/2007
     These are extremely trying times for the Palestinians. Not only have they failed to rid themselves of a 40-year old military occupation, which has only become more solidified, they are struggling against poverty, unemployment, land expropriation and national annihilation. To top things off, they are squabbling among each other, turning their hostilities against one another instead of directing it at the source of the problem, which is the foreign rule over Palestinian land.
     In the midst of these troubling times, it is easy to lose ourselves in the myriad of difficulties we face everyday. However, in order for us not to lose our humanity in the mix, it is important to take a step back from it all and remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. It is not enough to count off those who lost their lives to Israeli military violence like a teacher taking morning attendance. Just like funding granted from Japan or the United States makes the morning news with all the hullabaloo that comes with it, the same importance and reverence should always be given to those who died in the service of our struggle.
     This is particularly relevant at present. Over the past 24 hours, Israeli military forces have killed 12 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Yesterday, two of those who died were children, 12-year-old Ubeid Ashour and 9-year-old Fadi Kafarneh, who were killed by Israeli artillery shelling east of Beit Hanoun. more..

Letter: We have held peace talks with Hamas
Uri Avnery, The Guardian 8/21/2007
     In his letter (August 17), Dr Colin Shindler mentions that Gush Shalom, the Israeli peace movement in which I am active, predicted that the "broad Israeli peace movement" would conduct talks with Hamas, yet "this has yet to take place". This could mean either that we broke our promise, or that Hamas refused to talk with us. Not so. After the election victory of Hamas, I met one of their outstanding leaders, Muhammad Abu-Ter, when we were tear-gassed together in a demonstration against the separation wall. He invited me to his home in East Jerusalem, where we met several times publicly. Several of his colleagues took part.
     Abu-Ter and all the other Hamas leaders who participated in these talks were soon after arrested by the Israeli police and are still in prison. We protested in front of the military court during the proceedings. Since the Gaza Strip is hermetically closed, there is no way we could possibly meet with other Hamas leaders. We believe that it is absolutely essential to talk with Hamas - for the good of Israel, Palestine and peace.
     Uri Avnery -- See also: 'Hamas leaders still reject peace links' -- See also: 'Hamas leaders still reject peace links' more..

Hour for Statemanship
Arab News - Editorial, MIFTAH 8/21/2007
     THE Israeli military’s decision to open a border crossing with the Gaza Strip for a few hours to allow fuel deliveries to the territory might solve the immediate problem of darkness, but the light at the end of the tunnel is still a long way from shining. Going by the dire predictions of UN officials, unless Israel eases border restrictions there could be a humanitarian disaster in Gaza not limited to fuel restrictions.
     Gaza is a sealed-off ghetto, politically and economically. It is now almost entirely dependent on aid, with practically everyone reliant on handouts provided by the United Nations. The strip risks becoming a virtually 100 percent aid-dependent, closed down and isolated community within a matter of months, or even weeks, if the present regime of closures continues.
     Israel has sealed off Gaza from the outside world since the takeover of Gaza by Hamas. Hamas and Fatah did the rest with their bloody feud, which effectively divided the Palestinian camp into two. Perhaps they wouldn’t be skidding down this steep slope had Fatah gracefully accepted the decisive win of Hamas in the parliamentary elections. It is, though, too late to wish what might have been. Still, the Palestinian cause may still be able to garner sufficient political will and enable leaders to emerge who see beyond their own or their factions’ interests, to chart a new course. A vast majority of Palestinians are for reconciliation and for ending a feud detrimental to their political aspirations. more..

Starving Gaza
Chris Hedges, MIFTAH 8/21/2007
     Gaza has become the Sarajevo of the Middle East. Israel, in an action similar to that of the Serbs in Bosnia, has surrounded and cut off nearly a million and a half Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since the Islamic militant group Hamas took control in June. Electric fences and watch towers manned by Israeli soldiers keep the Palestinians trapped inside the strip. The land and sea blockade, the halting of all but minimal humanitarian aid and the refusal to allow Gaza to receive financial support are crushing Gaza’s industry, farming and infrastructure.
     The tactic is clear: Israel and the United States will strangle Gaza by cutting off all money and goods, including fuel and most food, to reduce one of the most densely populated places on the planet to an impoverished ghetto. Hunger and anarchy, they hope, will motivate Gazans to turn on Hamas, and the anarchy will perhaps be used to justify a reoccupation by the Israeli military and see the return of the quisling President Mahmoud Abbas, who was ousted after he led an abortive coup to overthrow the democratically elected Hamas government. He is now in the West Bank. more..

Q & A: Dr. Nabil Kukali, Palestinian Center for Public Opinion
World Public Opinion, MIFTAH 8/21/2007
     Dr. Nabil Kukali is director of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, which he founded in 1994. The center, based in Beit Sahour, studies Palestinian opinion in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. He spoke with WPO via email.
     Palestinians generally express strong support for allowing the UN Security Council to use force to protect people from genocide—and even believe it has the responsibility to do so—and for its right to intervene militarily in a variety of situations. But there is a notable exception: they do not support UN action to stop proliferation. Why?
     The UN tolerates that Israel comes in possession of many hundreds of nuclear heads, which might be carried to and dropped on any Arab capital, or on Teheran, by the Israeli air-force. This fact is known to everybody. On the other hand, the UN, under the US pressure, denies this right of possessing WMD to Iran. Why? The reason, [Palestinians] argue, is simple: Israel is a strategic ally to the United States in the Middle East, whilst Iran is pursuing a policy of national interests adverse to that of the United States. The Middle East with its oil reserves is a vital region for the US. Are the Americans really concerned about the democratization of the Middle East, with Iraq as the leading democracy model? The answer is definitely: No, they are only concerned about the Iraqi oil. Why did the UN keep silent as other more powerful countries than Iran, like India or Pakistan, were decisively working to be nuclear powers? The answer, once again, is simple: Pakistan or India are not so important for the US oil interests and don’t "threaten" the US interests, as Iran allegedly does. How can the Palestinians trust such a super power, which measures with two different scales? more..

LEBANON: Israel Strengthens its Enemy
Anand Gopal, Inter Press Service 1/22/2007
     MAROUN AL-RAS, Southern Lebanon, Aug 22(IPS) - It has been especially difficult for Ali Nasrallah to tend to his garden this time of year. Nasrallah, a 40-year-old construction worker from Taybeh in southern Lebanon, lost his mother, father, brother and sister during last year’s war between Hezbollah and Israel.
     "Every time I water my garden, I remember the atrocity that happened to my family," he says. "It is a deep wound on my soul."
     Almost exactly a year ago, Israeli soldiers arrived at the Nasrallahs’ modest two-floor home. As Ali’s sister stood near the small garden that marks the home’s entrance, the soldiers tossed a grenade at the house, killing her instantly, Nasrallah says.
     The soldiers then shot his brother at point-blank range and severed his father’s arms and feet as the rest of the family watched, he says. Finally, the soldiers emptied cartridges into his mother. The bodies and limbs lay there, at the foot of the garden, for almost two weeks. When villagers returned to Taybeh after the end of the war they found the decomposed bodies and a slick of congealed blood on the marble patio. more..

In Gaza’s darkness, life goes on
Rami Almeghari writing from occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 8/22/2007
     On Tuesday, Gaza was plunged into complete isolation and darkness as the electricity was cut off. It was like being in the stone age; movement was paralyzed during the day and there was total blackout at night.
     When there is no power, there is also no water: most houses use electricity to pump water up to their roof tanks. Muhammad, six, and his little sister had to carry water bottles home because they had no household supply.
     Many business owners had to resort to gasoline generators to keep going. Ala’a Eldin al-Salahat, from central Gaza, is a seller of frozen foods. He was forced to rent a power generator for eight hours at a cost of 100 shekels ($22 US).
     "What shall I do," says Ala’a, "I must prevent my goods from going bad, or I would lose even more money, and I cannot afford that."
     Ahmad Bohairi, a goldsmith, maintains that the power outage has caused him great loss as well as some of his credibility with his clients. He held both Fatah and Hamas responsible. "They are both responsible for us, so we hold them both responsible for the crisis," he says angrily. more..

A witness to the Al Aqsa mosque fire tells the story of the atrocity
Maisa Abu Ghazala, International Middle East Media Center 8/22/2007
     Nearly four decades have passed since the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third most holy site in Islam, was burned by Israeli arsonists.Consecutive Israeli governments have laid claim to the mosque, and high officials in the Israeli government have publicly stated their desire to demolish the mosque and replace it with a synagogue.
     The Israeli government continues to attempt to change the geography and structure of the mosque, and continues to challenge the beliefs of Muslims, and Christians, in addition to the Arab and Islamic World.
     In spite of the fact that many years have passed since the attack, Hajj Nader Eshtiyya (Abu Akef), who worked for 48 years in the maintenance department of the mosque, still remembers every single moment of the day when the mosque by burnt.
     "I was working along with my colleague on the top of the Dome of the Rock, and then we heard one of our colleagues screaming and telling us that the Al Aqsa was being burnt", he said."I looked and saw smoke coming out from the dome and we ran towards it and found the Salah Ed Deen platform of the mosque burning.We found residue of explosive materials on the stones and wood. more..

Ma’an interviews leader of radical right wing Jewish settlers in Hebron
Ma’an News Agency 8/22/2007
     Hebron – Ma’an’ report – The Israeli settler Barukh Marzel is a radical right wing Israeli who has played a major role in the establishment of several Israeli settlements. Since childhood, he has been a member of the radical ultra-right wing Kach movement, under the leadership of Meir Kahana.Marzel moved to live in Hebron in 1984, where he still lives.
     "Thanks to God, 10 more Jewish families moved to live in Hebron, and our situation is improving. Everything is going on in the right direction, and we estimate that around 40,000 Arabs have left Hebron in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]. Everybody knows there will be no Palestinian state, and half a million Jewish people will be living here.The question will be whether the remaining Arabs will accept that situation.If they fight, they will be expelled," Marzel told Ma’an’s reporter in Hebron.
     Q: Do you believe that the 1929 events [the killing of 29 Jews by Arabs] will be repeated?
     A: We are worried about such events, and so we prepare ourselves.We possess a lot of weapons and we conduct training. more..

Power Cut in Gaza is Shocking
Gulf News - Editorial, MIFTAH 8/22/2007
     "They’ve closed the borders, they’ve cut jobs. Today they’ve cut the electricity, tomorrow they’ll cut the air for us," says Palestinian Umm Jaber, a 40-year-old mother of six in Gaza City.
     Life in the city was paralysed for the third day as the power remained cut.
     The blackout is the latest blow to hit the Gaza Strip that has been effectively sealed off by the Israelis since Hamas movement seized control two months ago, sparking fears of a humanitarian crisis.
     It is also another point of contention between Hamas and the Western-backed Palestinian government, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, in the occupied West Bank, as the two sides blamed each other for the power cuts.
     But Umm Jaber got it right. Gazans are being punished for the election victory they had handed Hamas one year ago. more..

Watching Gaza collapse
Yassmin Moor writing from Rafah, Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 8/21/2007
     4 August 2007
     Today I went with my cousin’s wife and her children to Gaza’s social welfare office to pick up her monthly paycheck from the government. My cousin was killed last September by an Israeli sniper while he stood in front of his house. Overnight his children and wife became eligible to receive 375 NIS (a little less than $100) a month from the Palestinian government because their father was now a martyr.
     This is our third time coming to the office in the last month, because every time we go it’s closed.The gates are open with guards out front, but the office isn’t operating and there were no staff members to help us. "Why closed?" I asked one of the guards. "On strike," he replied. "So what do we do now?" I asked. "Hope we get paid so we can come back to work," he replied. I glared at him with frustration but I knew I could not really blame him or the office staff for not coming to work. He was just like any other employee in Gaza.I guess the government staff had enough; after all, they haven’t been paid since January 2006 but yet still come to work. I’ve met people who would borrow from their neighbors just to pay for a taxi to take them to a job for which they don’t even get paid.
     Every attempt I make to write about Gaza to give the world an idea of what the people here are going through is overwhelming. I am never sure where to begin to give readers an idea of life in Gaza and the accelerating humanitarian and economic crises. Do I begin by describing the effects of the border closures that are, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, the reason that Gaza is on the verge of an economic collapse and if there are no changes in the upcoming weeks the entire population will be completely aid dependent? We can all certainly feel the closure’s effects as all we have in the market are a few vegetables and are forced to rely on UNRWA’s food packages of flour, rice and cooking oil. We cannot even grow our own food if we wanted to because farmers have run out of supplies, including fertilizer. However, Israel does allow Israeli-grown fruits and vegetables into Gaza when it so chooses. We are forced to purchase and eat out of our occupier’s hand and support their economy while watching ours collapse. Divestment isn’t an option here in Gaza. more..

Border Control / Ramallah fiddles, Gaza burns
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 8/21/2007
     RAMALLAH - Four armed policemen in pressed blue and green camouflage uniforms sat in a command car, looking down the main street from the Beit El checkpoint to the center of town. It was 6 P.M. The last construction workers came down from the scaffolding around the high-rise buildings popping up on every corner in downtown Ramallah. There was not a single living soul in the lobby of the shiny stone building housing the Foreign Ministry, which Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has placed in the hands of his prime minister, Salam Fayad. Traffic in the commercial district was light, only a few horns honked, and the drivers, as usual, passed each other wildly, ignoring traffic lights.
     The Darna Restaurant is hidden in a side alley. This is where the who’s who meet - politicians, journalists, merchants and the few people of means. A cup of coffee costs 10 shekels - the daily income of the average family on the adjacent street.
     A waiter arranged narghiles, and his colleague showed an elegantly dressed family to a table in the restaurant’s spacious courtyard.
     Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who helped form the alliance between Fatah and Hamas, and was rewarded with a brief term as information minister in Ismail Haniyeh’s government, politely shook hands with Yasser Abed Rabbo, a member of Fayad’s tiny party. Azzam al-Ahmad, the Fatah faction head in the Palestinian parliament, which has been emptied of content and members, also came over to offer a modest welcome. Everyone knew each other. One used to be an important man and now doesn’t have even a driver. Another was an ally yesterday and a bitter foe today. more..

Against all planning logic
Eli Elan, Ha’aretz 8/21/2007
     The numbers leave little room for doubt: not recognizing Bedouin villages in the Negev means blatant discrimination. There are 500 to 5,000 Israeli citizens living in each unrecognized village, which, according to all planning criteria accepted elsewhere in the country, are official communities in every respect.
     The Central Bureau of Statistics defines a community as a place where residents live regularly, with at least 40 adults and a local council, outside other communities’ jurisdictions and recognized by the Interior Ministry. Accordingly, the Bedouin villages meet all objective criteria, and their official recognition is being blocked only by the government’s capriciousness.
     As a result, the 50,000 residents of these unrecognized villages are not eligible for social services, even the most basic ones. These communities have no master plans, and have had no infrastructure development, including roads, and water, sewage and electricity networks. The residents cannot obtain building permits and therefore build their homes illegally, and live under the threat of demolition. more..

MIDEAST: Bush Could Have Given Fatah That Kiss of Death
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani, Inter Press Service 8/21/2007
     CAIRO, Aug 21(IPS) - Ever since the takeover of Gaza two months ago by Palestinian resistance faction Hamas, Washington and its allies have steadfastly supported the rival Fatah movement headed by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas. But public support for Fatah, which has come to be seen by many as a stooge of Washington and Tel Aviv, has dropped off markedly.
     "Popular support for Abbas and his Fatah party has fallen for several reasons," Essam al-Arian, a leading member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement told IPS. "For one, Abbas seems prepared to give Israel all the concessions it wants without getting anything in return."
     In mid-June, Hamas wrested control of the Gaza Strip from the U.S.-backed Abbas government, essentially splitting the Palestinian body politic into two distinct geographical entities. Since then, the U.S. Bush Administration -- along with most of the western media -- has consistently portrayed the dispute as one between an "extremist" Hamas in the Gaza Strip and a "moderate" Fatah in the West Bank.
     "The conflict in Gaza and the West Bank today is a struggle between extremists and moderates," U.S. President George W. Bush declared in the immediate wake of the upset. more..

MIDEAST: When the Occupation Gets Really Filthy
Nora Barrows-Friedman, Inter Press Service 8/21/2007
     BETHLEHEM, Aug 21(IPS) - In the orange glow of another sunset, Awad Abu Swai, 36, stands underneath a towering fig tree, a sample of its fruit in his hand. He peels back the bright green skin to expose crimson jelly and seeds inside.
     "The Israeli military came inside the valley and cut about 50 apricot and walnut trees since May. And now, they are coming to cut more trees. This is all because of what they are building through this land -- my land. Here, they are building a sewage channel to run raw sewage through this valley collected from four Israeli settlements near here."
     Abu Swai is one of approximately 4,000 residents of the Palestinian village of Artas, located southeast of Bethlehem city. Artas is known regionally for its succulent vegetables, and fruit and nut trees. But over the last few months Israeli occupation forces have brought dozens of bulldozers to the eastern valley fields of Artas to construct a wall that will cut villagers off from this fertile land, while a concrete tunnel for raw settlement sewage grows longer each day.
     Efrat settlement colony, part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc that stretches around several villages and towns near Bethlehem, sits perched on a hill over Artas. Below the settlement, a colony which houses approximately 9,000 Israelis and immigrants, Israeli bulldozers and earth movers work day and night constructing the sewage channel and building the wall. more..

Philip Rizk: Gaza and the Jordanian Option
Philip Rizk, Palestine Chronicle 8/21/2007
     With the Jordanian Option Israel will be able to do the same for the West Bank what it did in Gaza by negotiating away its responsibility of finding a just solution for the blood of the past.
     In recent weeks the Jordanian Option has been floated in the media as a viable way forward in negotiations to resolve the current Palestinian statelessness. Haaretz ran the initial large piece explaining that Jordanian officials, supposedly with king Abdullah’s blessing, had been in Israel recently as well as Washington in order to float Jordan’s ideas of a confederation.
     "According to the plans of the king’s assistants, the Hashemite monarch--as the direct descendant of the prophet Mohammed--will serve as the president of the confederation, in addition to his position as the monarch of the Jordanian kingdom; and a federal government will be set up together with an elected parliament that will be composed of both Jordanian and Palestinian representatives.
     The security forces will come under the control of the federal government, and this will supposedly allay the fears of Israel about the activities of independent Palestinian military forces. The condition for the establishment of the federation, Abdullah’s aides say, is an Israeli-Palestinian agreement over the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Only after that will the independent state be invited to join the proposed confederation." more..

North Lebanon between food and gun
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 8/22/2007
     When you can hear the mortar and artillery of active warfare in the same car ride as the pestle and mortar pounding raw meat into a legendary culinary treat, you know that you are in Lebanon. Glory and tragedy coexist naturally in the country: epic human valor, passion and an indomitable love for life, alongside the most cruel and violent behavior.
     Despite decades of political tension and wars, Lebanon remains the most dynamic, culturally effervescent, intellectually stimulating and economically entrepreneurial place in the Arab world. Last Sunday, it set a new standard for affirming its best and worst attributes. I had the pleasure of experiencing the former - a food festival in the renowned tough-guys mountain stronghold of Ehden, in the north of Lebanon, celebrating the famous Lebanese dish called kibbeh.
     The first annual Ehden kibbeh festival was newsworthy in its own right - where else can you taste 15 different kinds of kibbeh at once? But it was more striking for its juxtaposition against the ongoing fighting in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp north of Tripoli, at the foot of the mountains below Ehden. For three months now, the Lebanese Army has been fighting to uproot and arrest or kill the several hundred fanatical fighters of the Al-Qaeda-like Fatah al-Islam group holed up in the camp. more..

Audio: Crossing the Line interviews journalist Nora Barrows-Friedman
Podcast, Crossing the Line, Electronic Intifada 8/21/2007
     This week on Crossing The Line: Host Christopher Brown speaks with Crossing the Line correspondent Nora Barrows-Friedman about the ongoing lack of fair coverage concerning the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Barrows-Friedman, a senior producer with Flashpoints Radio, also speaks about her work with Palestinian youth aiming to "become the media" and tell their own stories of struggle in occupied Palestine.
     Next, Crossing the Line’s special correspondent Nora Barrows-Friedman conducts an interview with Palestinian negotiator and attorney Diana Buttu about her encounters with Elliot Abrams. Abrams, a convicted former Reagan aide, is now advising the Bush administration on the Middle East.
     As always, Crossing the Line begins with "This week in Palestine," a service provided by.
     Listen Now. [MP3 - 51.6 MB, 56:24 min. more..

The Palestinian wrestling match
Danny Rubinstein, Ha’aretz 8/21/2007
     In a telephone interview broadcast on BBC’s Arabic-language network a few days ago, an Arab journalist asked Yasser Abed Rabbo in Ramallah: "Who, in your eyes, is the enemy: Israel or Hamas?" Abed Rabbo, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s steering committee, was a minister in previous Palestinian governments and is currently considered one of the people closest to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). His views against Hamas are among the most rabid in the PA.
     Even before Abed Rabbo managed to answer, the journalist hastened to explain that he was asking who the enemy is because the PA is conducting a dialogue with the government of Israel, whereas it is refusing to speak to Hamas. Abed Rabbo, who sounded astonished by the question, did not reply; instead, he lambasted the journalist: "You are cheap and insulting." The journalist replied: "I suggest that you watch your tongue." Abed Rabbo repeated, "you are cheap and insulting" and slammed down the phone.
     The fact that Abu Mazen and representatives of Prime Minister Salam Fayad’s government in the West Bank are holding talks with Israel’s government at the same time as they are boycotting and refusing to talk with the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip is the harshest accusation that Hamas spokesmen have leveled against Abu Mazen. Last Friday, Abbas issued a presidential order that sentenced every member of Hamas’s Executive Force in Gaza to three to seven years in jail. This force is in complete control of the Gaza Strip, and Abu Obeideh, a spokesman for the organization, responded to the order with mockery and scorn. more..

"We will replant these trees again"
Anne Paq, International Middle East Media Center 8/20/2007
     Resisting the ongoing Nakba: the story of Artas
     Visitors of Artas are amazed by the beauty of this small village located South-East of Bethlehem. Artas is renowned for its water sources and fertile lands that run throughout the valley covered by greenhouses and trees. It has around 4,000 inhabitants and hosts and annual Lettuce Festival.
     Artas, however, is also located close to the ever-expanding Gush Etzion settlement bloc and the route of the Wall. Last year, construction started on the hills surrounding Artas. In May this year, inhabitants discovered with concerns that the bulldozers were moving increasingly down, in the direction of the valley. The first land threatened with confiscation and destruction was a plot covered with beautiful apricot trees belonging to the Abu Sway family.
     Unofficial information was disclosed to the family according to which the land would be confiscated and all the trees uprooted in order to build a sewage facility for the nearby settlements. It has also become increasingly obvious that the Wall would be built in this location. Construction of the illegal Wall and its associated regime, combined with the expansion of the settlements at the mouth of the valley and surrounding hills, will be a disaster for the whole village of Artas. It will not only entail more confiscation and pollution of agricultural lands, but also the destruction of a beautiful landscape and important natural heritage. more..

Miss C.
Uri Avnery, MIFTAH 8/20/2007
     INTRODUCING Miss Calculatsia, that fashionable foreigner, the new star in Israeli discourse.
     To a Hebrew ear, she sounds like a young beauty, like "Miss Israel". But Miss-Calculatsia, the Hebrew version of "miscalculation", is neither young nor beautiful, nor even female: just another pretentious foreign word taking the place of a perfectly good Hebrew one.
     (In Latin, "calculus" is a small stone. These were built into the abacus, which was used by the Romans long before they ever dreamed of computers.)
     The miscalculation spoken of is not a beauty queen, but a queen of ugliness: a war between Israel and Syria that may break out any minute - not because Israel wants it, nor the Syrians, but because one side misjudges a provocative act that will push the other into war.
     Like all wars, it will be a campaign of death and destruction, with bereavement and refugees, suffering and misery for both sides. And nobody can foresee how it will end.
     ALMOST EVERY day the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense and their minions declare that Israel is not interested in war. Not at all. Perish the thought. more..

Why Israel?
Jason Kunin, ZNet 8/19/2007
     In January 2007, a group of us who are active in District 12 of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (OSSTF) tried to pass a motion supporting the international campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Since I was the mover of the motion, many people afterwards became angry with me. Others were merely confused. Everyone, however, wanted to know the same thing: Why Israel? After all, they would correctly point out, there are so many terrible countries, so many other human rights abuses in the world – some of them here in Canada. Why does Israel alone deserve sanctions and not the myriad of other countries committing gross human rights violations? Why not Sudan, for example? Or Saudia Arabia? Or China? For that matter, if colonialism is the issue, why not shed a light on the Canadian government’s on-going abuse of our own aboriginal peoples? There’s certainly plenty of work to do here.
     The premise that lies behind such questions is that Israel is, if no better than other countries, at the very least no worse. And indeed, there is a certain truth to the fact that all states contain varying degrees of inequity, state enforced imbalances of power and privilege (always gendered and frequently racialized), and a predatory ruling class who view the state as a tool for expanding their own power and wealth to the detriment of other nations.
     Acknowledging all this, however, has no bearing on the argument for boycotting Israel. Indeed, to object to a campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel on the basis that all states do bad things is to miss the point. As the British BDS activist Roland Rance recently told a small group of Toronto activists, no one believes that boycotting Israel is going to bring the Israeli economy to its knees – not unless BDS activists are somehow able to reach the hearts and minds of international arms dealers and diamond traders. (Highly unlikely.) The boycott campaign, rather, is primarily an educational tool aimed at provoking awareness and action at the grassroots level. Given the way political leaders, even in the Arab world, have retreated from supporting the Palestinian cause, a grassroots campaign that can put pressure on political leaders is one of the few recourses left to Palestinians and their supporters. more..

Israelis airdrop an occupation
Simba Russeau, Electronic Lebanon, Electronic Intifada 8/20/2007
     BEIRUT, 17 August (IPS) - With an estimated one million unexploded land ordnances meaning lack of access to their lands, many farmers in southern Lebanon see cluster bombs as an Israeli "occupation."
     An estimated 25 percent of cultivated land is now inaccessible in the south. Last summer, Israel pounded Lebanon with over four million cluster bombs and artillery shells that destroyed villages, displaced thousands and wrecked more than 70 percent of the southern economy. Financial losses to the livestock sector alone were estimated at nearly 22 million dollars.
     "In the village of Aita al-Shaab (on the border between Lebanon and Israel) there were three farms where all the animals died not just because of the destruction but also because after the villagers left they were without food or water," says Saada Allaw, a reporter with the Arabic language Lebanese newspaper As-Safir. more..

Electricity cuts exacerbate dire situation in Gaza
Report, Al Mezan, Electronic Intifada 8/20/2007
     Gaza’s only power plant has completely ceased providing power after Israel’s four-day closure of the border crossing through which fuel supplies enter the Strip and the European Union’s freezing of funds. Gazans’ already hard living conditions are expected to rapidly aggravate without proper power supplies.
     Israel, which has full control of Gaza’s border crossings, has continued its policy of closure, a serious measure of collective punishment against Gaza. Since 2000, it tightened the closures, but completely sealed off the Strip in June and imposed unprecedented restrictions on the movement of people and goods. Gaza has seen substantial shortage of food and other basic goods, and its economy is at the verge of full collapse. On 16 August 2007, Israel closed the fuel crossing for alleged security reasons.
     Israel’s abuse of its control, including control over fuel supplies into Gaza, has extensively contributed to the deterioration of the humanitarian and human rights situation, especially economic and social rights. more..

MIDEAST: U.S. Arms Create New Divisions
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani, Inter Press Service 8/20/2007
     CAIRO, Aug 20(IPS) - Last month, Washington approved massive military-aid packages and arms sales to its Arab allies, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and a number of smaller Gulf States. But while U.S. officials say the deals aim to bolster the "forces of moderation" in the region, some local commentators see the move as an unnecessary -- and dangerous -- provocation.
     "The arms deals represent a continuation of U.S. policy aimed at creating tension and polarising the region," Ahmed Thabet, professor of political science at Cairo University told IPS.
     On Jul. 28, the Bush administration announced its intention of providing Egypt with a 13 billion dollar military assistance package, to be paid out over the next ten years. The deal comes within the framework of the Camp David peace accord, to which Egypt, along with Israel, has been a signatory since 1979.
     The White House also announced its willingness to sell some 20 billion dollars worth of advanced U.S. weapons systems to several Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Despite a degree of domestic opposition, the sales are expected to be approved by the U.S. Congress next month. more..

Iraq, the Unavoidable Global Trauma
Pablo Ouziel, Middle East Online 8/20/2007
     If we are not courageous enough to stand up for other human beings and the carnage infringed upon them by western imperialist foreign policy, maybe we can research our recent history and reflect on the consequences of such actions on ‘us’ and ‘our’ children. Many decades ago in Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler stated the following; "I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator." By now we have all had a chance to evaluate the consequences of that "will". In 2003 an article by the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, quoted a Palestinian leader claiming Bush said to him; “God told me to strike at Al-Qaeda. And I struck them. And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.”
     Studies conducted over the last few decades in regards to the impact of National Socialism on ordinary life in Germany during and after that period have catalogued a serious of civilian attitudes such as keeping silent, looking over one’s shoulder and feeling frightened, and have moved on to evaluate the aftermath of such attitudes and the results of accepting such extreme violence perpetrated on others. A lot of these studies have shown collective signs of guilt, depression and even collective post-traumatic stress disorder. more..

Israel Covets Palestinian Natural Gas (Possibly Oil Too!)
Genevieve Cora Fraser, MIFTAH 8/20/2007
     Since the Palestinian election in January 2006 that brought Hamas to power, the United States, their Western allies, and Israel have successfully boycotted, sealed off, and starved 1.3 million citizens of Gaza. Along with non-stop military assaults by Israeli Occupation Forces, the US and Israel have poured 10s of millions of dollars into arming and training Fatah to take on and destroy the popularly elected Hamas government. According to reports out of Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan - President Abbas’ right hand man until his recent “resignation” - had employed one hundred 5-man death squads across the region. That fed Hamas’ desire to rid itself of Fatah intervention.
     What is not widely known is that British Gas (BG) has a joint franchise in the Gaza Marine gas field off the Gaza coast, which contains some 37 billion cubic meters of gas.It is believed that large oil reserves are also present.However, the Palestinian Authority is slated to receive only 10% from the deal.According to the Gulf Times, Hamas claims it is unreasonable that the owner of the gas, Palestine, gets 10% only.The recently Fatah-deposed Prime Minister Ismail Haniya intends “to ask for changes in the agreement with BG Group, giving it a bigger slice of the proceeds from a pending natural-gas deal with Israel.” more..

Audio: Islamic democracy and the "war on terror"
Podcast, Electronic Intifada 8/20/2007
     Radio Tadamon! speaks with the Washington editor of Harpers Magazine, Ken Silverstein, who recently published an article entitled Parties of God: The Bush doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy," which examines the current democratic developments in the Middle East within the context of the US supported "War on Terror."
     Silverstein discusses the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine and Hizballah in Lebanon as examples the growing role of Islamic movements in democratic political systems in the Middle East. Silverstein addresses a range of topics concerning the role of Islamic movements in Middle East, from the struggle for democratic reform, to the impacts of US military policy in the Middle East on the establishment of democracy.
     Listen Now - [MP3 - 8.7 MB, 18:55 min] more..

Islam doesn’t strive for a mullah-led theocracy
Mohammad Habash, Daily Star 8/21/2007
     I am often invited by religious authorities in the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia to attend meetings that are held to urge people to follow Islamic faith and law, while avoiding any debate connected to politics or political rights. Political rights, my hosts insist, are maintained by the ruling regimes themselves, and these follow the teachings of the Koran.
     But recently an invitation came from the Faisal Center for Islamic Research and Studies, which actually wanted me to talk about democracy, or "good governance," as the participants called it. Until recently, this topic was taboo in Saudi Arabia, where the regime doesn’t allow any margin for political debate, and commands people to listen, obey, and leave matters of government to their rulers.
     It was obvious that the conference organizers’ goal was to revive religious and political speech in order to find a middle ground between Islamic faith and democracy. I argued that, as many Islamic scholars have recognized, Islamic jurisprudence is compatible with democratic values. Every country that has chosen democracy has come closer to achieving Islam’s goals of equality and social justice. more..

ILA leasing Arab-owned land in J’lem to Ateret Cohanim
Meron Rapoport, Ha’aretz 8/19/2007
     The Israel Lands Administration (ILA) is working together with the Ateret Cohanim association to wrest from Palestinian landowners control of 30 dunams (7.5 acres) of land in East Jerusalem and to transfer it to the association without a tender. Such is the claim outlined in a petition submitted two weeks ago to the High Court of Justice, and appearing in documents which Haaretz has received. Ateret Cohanim promotes settlement of Jews in and around the Old City, and at times takes over Palestinian assets in East Jerusalem so as to "Judaize" that area.
     The land in question, an olive grove called Kerem Hamufti, is in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. From the documents received, it emerges that the ILA has signed a contract with Ateret Cohanim for "the agricultural cultivation" of the land, even though the association has no experience in such work. The documents indicate that the contract was signed even though the land that the ILA leased apparently does not belong to it and the Interior Ministry recognizes that the Palestinian landowners "have an interest" in it. A senior source at the ILA has said the contract was signed in order "to keep the territory in Jewish hands." more..

Land grab in East Jerusalem
Haaretz Editorial, Ha’aretz 8/19/2007
     It is difficult to escape the sense that the Israel Lands Administration, a governmental body, worked hand in glove with the settlers’ non-profit organization Ateret Cohanim to take control of the 30-dunam (7.5-acre) plot in East Jerusalem known as Kerem Hamufti. (See article by Meron Rapoport, Page 4.) This plot, one of the most expensive and desirable in East Jerusalem, is located on the slopes of the Sheikh Jarra neighborhood, facing the ridge of Mt. Scopus.
     The area is named for the grand mufti of Jerusalem during the British Mandate, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, who aided the Nazis in the Second World War and whose family owned the land. After the Six-Day War, the government announced it intended to expropriate the land for public use, but it was only last March - nearly 40 years later - that the state carried out the expropriation, by force of an order issued by then finance minister Abraham Hirchson.
     The conflict over the land is between the Arab Hotels Company, which argues that its claim to the land has been recognized, and the ILA, which leased the plot some years ago to Ateret Cohanim for "agricultural purposes." more..

Who is loony?
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 8/20/2007
     Benjamin Netanyahu has once again demonstrated he is a political virtuoso. One may even start to suspect that he invented Moshe Feiglin. Talk is one thing - "we’ll uproot Feiglin" - but the result is something else: The Feiglins helped reinvent the Likud Party leader. Now Netanyahu is portrayed exactly as he wished: as a moderate leader, responsible, enlightened and level-headed, as opposed to all those Feiglins. They are "loony," and he is a statesman; they are extreme, a foreign growth, and he is the next prime minister, who will bestow peace and security on Israel. Netanyahu should be grateful to the man who enabled him to deceive the media and the public.
     Nonetheless, the question must be asked: What exactly is the difference between Netanyahu and Feiglin? How are Netanyahu’s positions - while it’s doubtful anyone knows exactly what they are - different from his rival’s "extremist" positions? This question was not raised at all in the ridiculous Likud party primaries. The bitter truth is that Netanyahu is essentially no different than Feiglin. They are all Feiglins in the Likud. The difference lies only in the media coverage and the rhetoric. more..

Give them the Temple Mount
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 8/19/2007
     The good news is that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recognizes that the only way to restore Mahmoud Abbas’ stature, which Ariel Sharon stripped from him, is to translate the concept of "political horizon" into practical terms - i.e., into a document of principles for a final status agreement. The bad news is that Israel is sticking to the same basic conceptions that thwarted earlier attempts to deal with the "core issues" of borders, Jerusalem and the refugees.
     Just like at the Camp David summit seven years ago, policy-makers today expect that the Palestinians will give up on the issues of the territory on which the settlement blocs are built, the Temple Mount and the right of return. Once more, the language being employed in the country is of a zero-sum game. Palestinian concessions mean an Israeli victory; Israeli concessions mean a Palestinian victory. Except the price may be much higher. The Gaza Strip’s fall into the hands of Hamas may only be a "down payment" before the transfer of control over the towns of the West Bank - a mere five minutes from Kfar Sava, as they say - to the government of Hamastan. more..

Violence in God’s name: the Islamists’ debate
John L. Esposito, Daily Star 8/20/2007
     Why is Islam such a violent religion? Does the Koran condone acts of terrorism? Why haven’t Muslims denounced the 9/11 attacks and suicide bombing?
     Whether in the media or public discussions, these are common and persistent questions. But, in fact, major Muslim religious leaders and Muslim organizations have and do speak out. The media tends not to find these fatwas (religious legal opinions) and statements newsworthy but they are available on the Internet.
     Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, for example, Muhammad Abdul-Rashid, the most senior Muslim chaplain in the American armed forces, asked for a fatwa about whether American Muslim military could participate in the war in Afghanistan and in other Muslim countries. A group of prominent religious authorities concluded that "[a]ll Muslims ought to be united against all those who terrorize the innocents, and those who permit the killing of non-combatants without a justifiable reason," and that it was acceptable "to partake in the fighting in the upcoming battles, against whomever their country decides has perpetrated terrorism against them.
     Islam, like other religions, distinguishes between legitimate and illegitimate acts of violence. The Koran does not advocate or condone illegitimate violence or terrorism. The Islamic tradition places extensive limits on the use of violence and rejects terrorism, hijackings and hostage taking. However, Muslims are permitted, indeed at times required, to defend their religion, their families and the Islamic community from aggression. more..

Suffering in Numbers
Saleh Al-Naami, MIFTAH 8/18/2007
     Prayer time and afternoon naps excepted, Mohamed Saleh and Hassan Barak spend most of their day together conversing at the crossroads separating their homes in the southern quarter of Al-Maghazi Refugee Camp in central Gaza. Saleh and Barak, who both work in construction, have been unemployed since Hamas took exclusive control of the Gaza Strip. Since then, Israel has tightened its stifling siege of the Strip and prohibited the entrance of materials used in construction, putting the entire sector out of work. The housing project begun with European and Arab funding in the suburbs of the Tel Sultan neighbourhood south of Rafah has ground to a halt, as have the infrastructure projects of local councils across the Strip.
     Industrial activity in Gaza has practically halted as well. According to statistics of the Palestinian Businessmen’s Association, 3,190 factories in the Strip have closed because of the inability to import raw materials. This has rendered 56,000 workers unemployed. Further aggravating the situation, Israel has barred Palestinian farmers from exporting their agricultural crops through commercial crossings along the border separating the Strip from Israel, crashing prices and the internal market for producers. more..

Lights Go out in Gaza
MIFTAH, MIFTAH 8/18/2007
     “We have not received fuel since Thursday morning”. This was the message conveyed by the agitated Chairman of the Gaza Generating Company, Rafik Malikha, following the closure of three out of four of the company’s generators on Friday.
     Although it is unsure as to how many people in Gaza will be affected by this fuel shortage, with estimations varying between sources over whether the Gaza Generating Company is responsible for a quarter, a third or three quarters of Gaza’s electricity, it is clear that Israel supplies the plant with all of its fuel.According to Palestinian and Israeli officials, Gaza utilizes roughly 200 megawatts of power per day. Sixty percent is from the Israeli Electric Corporation, 32% from the Gaza Generating Company and 8% from Egypt.
     Israeli sources claim they have ceased the transportation of fuel to Gaza for “security reasons”, namely the consistent attacks on Israeli border crossings by Palestinian activist groups.
     Since Hamas took control of Gaza on June 14, Israel has closed all crossings, transforming Gaza into an enclosed prison of poverty and humanitarian crisis. Erez, Karni and Nahal Oz are now partially open but not nearly transporting the sufficient amount of aid required. In addition, when these crossings are attacked, they are closed thus further exacerbating the situation in the Strip. more..

Most of the war crimes were Israel’s
Jonathan Cook, Middle East Online 8/18/2007
     Relying on military sources, Haaretz reported last month: ‘Most of the rockets fired against Israel during the war last year were launched from the nature reserves.’ In short, even Israel is no longer claiming that Hizbullah was firing its rockets from among civilians, says
     This week marks a year since the end of hostilities now officially called the Second Lebanon war by Israelis. A month of fighting -- mostly Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon, and rocket attacks from the Shia militia Hizbullah on northern Israel in response -- ended with more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and a small but unknown number of Hizbullah fighters dead, as well as 119 Israeli soldiers and 43 civilians.
     When Israel and the United States realised that Hizbullah could not be bombed into submission, they pushed a resolution, 1701, through the United Nations. It placed an expanded international peacekeeping force, UNIFIL, in south Lebanon to keep Hizbullah in check and try to disarm its few thousand fighters.
     But many significant developments since the war have gone unnoticed, including several that seriously put in question Israel’s account of what happened last summer. This is old ground worth revisiting for that reason alone. more..

Rannie Amiri: Tancredo’s Screedo: Ignorance and Insanity
Rannie Amiri, Palestine Chronicle 8/18/2007
     Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other radical Wahabi/Salafi groups would like nothing more than for the United States to just say an attack on Mecca or Medina is an option.
     Republican congressman and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo of Colorado once again floated the centerpiece of his foreign policy platform, this time before a gathering of Iowa voters:
     "If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland’would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina."
     (He was a bit more specific during a 2005 radio interview when he indicated he would drop a nuclear bomb on Mecca in retaliation).
     Assuming any attack on the United States will either be attributed to or claimed by al-Qaeda, what deterrent would knowing that Mecca or Medina would subsequently be hit provide?
     None. more..

Ramzy Baroud: Managing Consent
Palestine Chronicle 8/17/2007
     The carefully managed relationships have undermined democracy and unleashed sadistic wars and uncontrollable violence, of which Freud had warned, but which his nephew shamelessly exploited.
     It is Edward Bernays who fine-tuned the art of public relations in the 20th century. Using many of the psychoanalytic theories put forward by his uncle Sigmund Freud, he developed a mastery of public manipulation, suggesting that such manipulation was essential to democracy itself. Bernays strongly believed that people are simply "stupid" and in need of being told how to behave, what to believe, what to eat, what to wear, and how to vote. The outcomes of such an experiment reverberate to this day.
     Some historians credit Bernays’s efforts in the 1920s and 1930s for turning the modern citizen into a modern consumer. Not only did he convince Americans that a "hearty breakfast" must include eggs and bacon, as opposed to the traditional toast and coffee, he also managed to convince women at the time that cigarettes were a symbol of man’s power and domination; to challenge the male sense of superiority, women needed to smoke. A few public stunts later, sales of cigarettes (which Bernays termed "torches of freedom") soared, eventually doubling the market for tobacco manufacturers, who, among many other businesses, were Bernays’s clients. more..

Who killed Yasser Arafat?
Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian Information Center 8/12/2007
     Who killed Yasser Arafat? This is the question that has been boggling many people’s minds ever since the late Palestinian leader’s mysterious death in November, 2004.
     Then, many people, politicians and ordinary citizens alike, even Arafat’s own physician, Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi, seemed convinced that Arafat didn’t die a natural death and that he was actually killed as a result of a certain poisonous substance injected into his body probably by agents of the Israeli Mossad.
     This writer spoke to Sakhr Habash, a close former aide to Yasser Arafat shortly after Arafat’s death. Habash, now ill as a result of a stroke, said that Arafat was killed by “ Israel ’s agents.”
     I remember him telling me “they killed him, they killed him.” And when I asked him who he was alluding to, Habash said “he was referring to Arafat’s opponents within the Fatah organization.”
     Habash gave no names, but anyone could conjure up some of the people he had in mind.
     The PLO and the Palestinian Authority formed a commission of inquiry to look into the matter of Arafat’s death. However, the commission went into dormancy as soon as it was formed as all cues led to a dead-end or to inaccessible figures or sovereign foreign governments, e.g. France, that wouldn’t cooperate. more..

Hasan Afif El-Hasan: If Not Insanity, It Must Be Treason
Dr. Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Palestine Chronicle 8/18/2007
     Abbas and his aids have no conscience or shame joining the government of the settlers in the fight against the Palestinian resistance and starving and killing the people he claims to be their president.
     By releasing $120 million of frozen Palestinian tax revenues to Abbas and Fayyad government, Israel had the best deal money can buy. It was Palestinian money used to buy a Palestinian partner in the fight against the Palestinian resistance to occupation and settlements. Better yet, the partner is the Palestinian President and the money is a reward for his collaboration with the Israelis on condition that he and his Prime Minister Fayyad must not renew contacts with Hamas.
     Abbas kept his side of the bargain. He rejected reconciliation with Hamas and refused to pay the salaries of 19,000 civil servants hired by the previous government of Hamas. Whether it crossed Abbas mind or not, discriminating against large segment of the Palestinians makes him even a weaker leader than he really is. He cannot deliver the ceasefire that Israel demands before engaging in negotiations if there will be one, without the acquiescence of Hamas. more..

Paul de Rooij: ‘Humanitarian Wars’ and Associated Delusions
Paul de Rooij, Palestine Chronicle 8/18/2007
     A review of Jean Bricmont’s Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War, translated by Diana Johnstone, Monthly Review Press, 2007.
     Most inhabitants of Western countries are afflicted by nefarious delusions about the nature of their societies and government policy; the public at large is led to believe that their societies are superior, and their governments’ policies are noble and generous. The illusions have to do with the dissonance between the fabricated image and the reality of state power, especially when it entails wars waged against third world countries. Awful wars are waged for crass motives, yet they are sold on the basis that they are driven by benevolent intent. Promotion of democracy, freedoms, human rights, women’s rights, and even religious tolerance are some of the purported motives for current interventions, subversion or wars. Since the 1990s, in the lead-up to the wars against former Yugoslavia, the primary justification offered to wage war was that it was necessary to safeguard human rights or to improve the humanitarian conditions of the target population. If the blatant hypocrisy wasn’t bad enough, the Left’s delusions regarding the stated humanitarian rationale for wars has had a distinctly deleterious effect on the Left as a movement and the organized opposition to the depredations of their states. Jean Bricmont’s Humanitarian Imperialism is an extensive analysis of the "humanitarian war" rationale, and how its twisted arguments should be countered and its rationale for war rejected. One of the defining aspects of the Left of yesteryear was an opposition to imperialism and its consequent wars; Bricmont’s important contribution aims to resurrect the principled opposition to the new imperial wars waged primarily by the United States and Britain. more..

The one clear solution
Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly 8/16/2007
     A workable and just solution in Palestine is predicated on one principle, tested in South Africa: side with racism or be against.
     The world looks different from the southern tip of Africa. There, in that country that liberated itself from a colonialist apartheid regime a decade ago, the people have embarked on a bold venture to build a nation. They have a sophisticated democratic constitution that officially recognises 11 languages within the framework of a multi- ethnic, multi-tribal, multi-religious civil polity founded on the concept of equal citizenship. This constitution embodies different aims and different priorities. It embodies a revolution that has transformed itself into a state, not only by means of the fight until victory but also by means of the arts of negotiation and compromise that made the transition possible.
     Some believe that compromise went too far. They say that while the African National Congress (ANC) won the right to rule, it failed to win effective economic and political power. The descendants of the white settlers, indeed the very children of the old order, still control the nation’s major companies and the bulk of the media. There are still gross disparities in land ownership and standards of living, and chronic poverty among non-whites. The government is still encumbered by debts from the former regime and it is obliged to abide by all international agreements to which that regime committed itself, including those it signed with Israel.
     On the other hand, there is no denying that there is a growing African middle class and that the South Africa is gradually changing in many other ways -- and radically so.
     In South Africa, the victims of apartheid had to suffice with the confessions and pleas for forgiveness offered by their oppressors before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But those who issued the orders that led to crimes against humanity and those who carried out these orders with excessive zeal did not escape punishment. Still, the commission was the result of a spirit of compromise. In fact, some attempted to take advantage of this spirit and stretch it as far as they could. They held that the violence perpetrated by the ANC resistance should be treated no differently to the violence perpetrated by members of the white regime and, therefore, that ANC officials responsible for actions that led to the death of civilians should be brought to justice. More recently, there was even debate over whether the names of white "victims" should be etched alongside the names of the actual martyrs of the resistance on the liberation monument that would be erected in a large park in Pretoria. Such arguments are clearly indicative of a bid on the part of the remnants of the former regime to exploit the nation’s historic breakthrough to re- write history. Their intent is to promote the idea that there had existed some kind of parity between the oppressor and the oppressed and to recast the victims and victimisers as equally empowered parties. To me, nothing could be more guaranteed to keep wounds open and to court losing battles. more..

A Year After Israel’s Second Lebanon War
Jonathan Cook, ZNet 8/16/2007
     This week marks a year since the end of hostilities now officially called the Second Lebanon war by Israelis. A month of fighting -- mostly Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon, and rocket attacks from the Shia militia Hizbullah on northern Israel in response -- ended with more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and a small but unknown number of Hizbullah fighters dead, as well as 119 Israeli soldiers and 43 civilians. When Israel and the United States realised that Hizbullah could not be bombed into submission, they pushed a resolution, 1701, through the United Nations. It placed an expanded international peacekeeping force, UNIFIL, in south Lebanon to keep Hizbullah in check and try to disarm its few thousand fighters. But many significant developments since the war have gone unnoticed, including several that seriously put in question Israel’s account of what happened last summer. This is old ground worth revisiting for that reason alone. The war began on 12 July, when Israel launched waves of air strikes on Lebanon after Hizbullah killed three soldiers and captured two more on the northern border. (A further five troops were killed by a land mine when their tank crossed into Lebanon in hot pursuit.) Hizbullah had long been warning that it would seize soldiers if it had the chance, in an effort to push Israel into a prisoner exchange. Israel has been holding a handful of Lebanese prisoners since it withdrew from its two-decade occupation of south Lebanon in 2000. more..

No Way around Conciliation
Jordan Times - Editorial, MIFTAH 8/17/2007
     o much for the only democracy in the Arab world. Having experimented with real, representative and fair elections, the Palestinian Authority, or the part that is controlled by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has announced that in effect it will not allow Hamas, the victors in the last elections, to take part in any new elections.
     In a presidential decree yesterday, the Palestinian electoral law has been changed so that candidates for both legislative and presidential elections must “respect” the political programme of the PLO and previously signed agreements between Israel and the PA.
     In other words, Palestinian politicians must now be fully paid-up members of the two-state solution as defined by the Oslo accords. Not only do Hamas and Islamic Jihad fall foul of the law, anyone, and this includes many Palestinian intellectuals and independents who believe Oslo was a trap, and everything since has been proof of that, will walk the wrong side of the line.
     The law is problematic in the extreme. It stymies Palestinian options and robs Palestinians of genuine choices. It means that Palestinians will, in essence, only now be able to vote covering a few percentage points of the West Bank with regard to the thing that really matters to them: how to achieve statehood and freedom. more..

Arab League Should Play a Key Role in Bush Summit
Francis Matthew, MIFTAH 8/17/2007
     The Arab League is conspicuous by its absence in seeking to take the political lead as the Arab world struggles with some of the largest challenges it has faced for decades.
     The future of Iraq hangs in the balance as the Nouri Al Maliki government struggles to find new coalition partners; Iran continues to impose its renewed strength on the region, both in the nuclear sphere and in Iraq; and Palestine faces the horrors of a divided political leadership as Israel and the US administration prepare for President George W. Bush’s autumn summit on the Middle East.
     Not only is the Arab League silent, but there is little feeling across the region of any need for the Arab nations to plan how to take the political initiative on these issues. Individual countries are very active where they have special concerns, but as a group the Arab states seem to have run out of their collective energy.
     Of course, it is hard for the Arab League to take the initiative on any of the issues such as Iraq, Iran, Darfur and others, where there is no formal Arab position, but that cannot be said about Palestine. more..

Arabs in distress
Nazir Majali, Ha’aretz 8/17/2007
     Two leading figures spoke out last week in a way that is hurtful to the Arab public in Israel. The first is "everyone’s" President Shimon Peres and the second is Public Security Minister Avi Dichter. In the president’s name, a good and serious plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was published here ("Olmert and Peres: Palestinian state on 100% of West Bank, with swaps," August 7), but it includes a most peculiar provision that proposes exchanges of territory between Israel inside the 1967 borders and the Palestinian state that will arise - which clearly also applies to Israeli-Arab locales that will be assigned to be part of this state, if they agree.
     The writers of the article explained that in his proposal, Peres intended to mollify Yisrael Beiteinu so it would not resign from the coalition. However, he was not thinking about the Arabs of Israel, the vast majority of whom want to remain part of the State of Israel. And not only for geographical reasons. When the proposal to "open the exit door" comes from a person like Peres, of all people, whom many see as the last of the peace prophets, this is taken as further proof that "they don’t want us." We can all imagine what the results of a thought like this are.
     By way of contrast, Dichter, in his appearance at a Kadima rally in Shfaram, complained of the separatism that the Arabs of Israel are nurturing and wanted the Arab population of Israel to be "Israeli Arabs and not Palestinian Arabs." Dichter, who used to be head of the Shin Bet security service, has pretensions of knowing Arabic better than any Arab. But his knowledge has not prevented him from understanding that there is a problem with our belonging to the Palestinian people: Being Arabs is fine and dandy, but being Palestinians is forbidden - this is separatism. more..

Al-Faraheen’s victims of Israeli pretexts
Rami Almeghari writing from Al-Faraheen, occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 8/17/2007
     Surveillance cameras and watchtowers loom over more than 800 meters away from the scene of destruction left by Israeli army tanks and bulldozers following the latest Israeli invasion of the al-Faraheen area in Abbassan al-Kabeera town, to the east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
     "Fifteen dunums [four acres] of tomatoes along with 400 meters of irrigation pipes were crushed by the Israeli tanks during the invasion into our area, where myself and two other partners make our living," says Samir al-Naqa, a local farmer in the al-Faraheen area.
     Samir affirms that the invasion took place in the middle of the day. "I’d bet whether there was a single resistance fighter in the area; I’d bet the Israeli army whether there is a single tunnel in the area. It’s our land, through which we feed our children. Where to go, we have no other choice, despite the fact they invaded the area about four times this year." more..

What comes next in Palestine? The view from Hamas
Ahmed Yousef, Daily Star 8/18/2007
     Following the bloody events in Gaza in June many have wondered what next. Hamas’ position is clear: the government headed by Ismail Haniyya will keep calling for dialogue. It will work toward this by exhorting Arab, Islamic and other international parties to encourage a Fatah-Hamas dialogue. This dialogue will aim at national reconciliation to end the disagreements and the boycott and install the political partnership that was rejected by influential parties who succeeded in hijacking the Fatah movement and determining its political direction.
     We know that the Bush administration is working to obstruct any dialogue between President Mahmoud Abbas and the prime minister of the Hamas-led government, Ismail Haniyya, indeed is planning to expand the rift between Palestinians, and we don’t count on any breakthrough in the American position. But we are working with a view to the post-Bush phase by reinforcing our ties with European states even if at the unofficial level and behind the scenes. We have sensed there is a better European understanding of Hamas; that Europeans understand that the movement enjoys credibility and stays away from exercising violence outside the context of its legitimate resistance against the occupation.
     Thus it is important to clarify what happened in Gaza during those bloody days in June. First, what occurred was not a preplanned matter as some try to claim. It came as a result of the repeated failure of attempts to control the security chaos and the blatant violations against leading figures in and members of Hamas as well as parties sympathetic toward the movement. The escalation was a clear provocation and took on an unacceptable dimension to the point where killings were based on the shape of one’s beard or attendance at prayers, and there were several violations against mosques and Imams. more..

US steps closer to war with Iran
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times 8/18/2007
     The Bush administration has leaped toward war with Iran by, in essence, declaring war with the main branch of Iran’s military, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which it plans to brand as a terrorist organization.
     A logical evolution of US President George W Bush’s ill-defined, boundless "war on terror", the White House’s move is dangerous to the core, opening the way for open confrontation with Iran. This may begin in Iraq, where the IRGC is reportedly most active and, ironically, where the US and Iran have their largest common denominators.
     A New York Times editorial has dismissed this move as "amateurish" and a mere "theatric" on the part of the lame-duck president, while at the same time admitting that it represents a concession to "conflict-obsessed administration hawks who are lobbying for military strikes". The political analysts who argue that the main impact of this initiative is "political" are plain wrong. It is a giant step toward war with Iran, irrespective of how well, or poorly, it is thought of, particularly in terms of its immediate and long-term implications, let alone the timing of it. more..

Beyond the Concrete Wall
Yigal Sarna, MIFTAH 8/17/2007
     In Nadem’s backyard there’s a large shadow of an old eucalyptus tree that draws its water from the underground pipes of the crowded refugee camp of Deheishe, as well as from the sewer and old wells. Dates grow nearby, and purple grapes fall from the grapevine that has climbed to the roof.
     Yet inside the house, there has been no water for two weeks. The camp’s water supply was disconnected and the pipes were empty, Nadem tells me. Those who could afford to pay NIS 300 (roughly $70) ordered a tanker that filled the water tanks placed on the roof for the frequent periods of shortage.
     There was drinking water, but no water for bathing. At the height of the heatwave, which was also suffered by Israelis despite our many air-conditioners and large quantities of water, there was not even one drop of water in the camp’s faucets.
     I didn’t know about it, and Nadem didn’t tell me about it on the phone. It only became apparent when I went to visit Deheishe, like a concealed secret of the poor, or the hidden distress of a neighbor in your building, where you don’t know what’s happening beyond your walls. more..

Extra-credit question
Daphna Berman, Ha’aretz 8/17/2007
     In the five years since Nefesh B’Nefesh was established aliyah from North America has soared, but the organization’s role in the rise is not definitive. NBN, whose estimated 2007 budget is $11 million, brought over 3,100 new immigrants from the U.S. and Canada in 2006. In 2001, by contrast, the year before NBN was founded, only 1,760 olim came from these countries. The increase - a sizable 80 percent - has received considerable attention.
     NBN officials say that in addition to the hard numbers, the organization has brought aliyah into the Jewish mainstream. "You couldn’t talk about it before, now it is normative," cofounder Rabbi Yehoshua Fass said. "Now, you have people saying, ’I’ll either move to Teaneck [in New Jersey] or Ra’anana.’"
     NBN Co-chairman Danny Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, agrees. "Nefesh realized the potential of aliyah from the West, which was visionary," he said. "People said Jews would only come from countries in distress, that aliyah from wealthy countries won’t work. [NBN cofounders] Tony Gelbart and Yehoshua Fass realized that Zionism is alive and well in wealthy countries." more..

In the role of party pooper
Meron Benvenisti, Ha’aretz 8/17/2007
     Poor Ehud Barak. All he did was repeat recently the "there’s no partner" formula he bequeathed to the Israeli discourse after his failure at Camp David and during the intifada - the formula that has become a consensus uniting right and left. And now he is discovering that the very same formula being explained as his attempt to "pass Benjamin Netanyahu on the right" is being described as a blow to the first signs of a diplomatic process. It is being condemned as interfering with the consolidation of new diplomatic programs. He is also accused of defying the leadership of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is suddenly being described as a responsible leader hoping for a two-state solution.
     Barak has not changed his views; after all, the diplomatic-security situation has not changed. Some people even think it has worsened because severing the West Bank from the Gaza Strip makes the chances for an agreement less likely. In addition, the power and authority of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and the PA in the West Bank have been undermined, Israel continues to control the West Bank, there is nothing new in the diplomatic plans and the ability to implement them, and the United States has lost the strength to use pressure to realize the plans. Barak will do everything he can to prove that "there is no partner."
     In that case, why did his words provoke such a hostile reaction? Because commentators, experts and columnists adapted their response to their new mood. Until now they needed the "there is no partner" formula. Now, when they are becoming devoted to the illusion of the peace process, they have turned the formula and its inventor into party poopers. more..

Tallying up Lebanon’s war a year later
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 8/18/2007
     A year ago this week, the 34-day war between Israel and Hizbullah came to an end, but since then the wider ideological battle between Israel the United States and their friends and Hizbullah, Iran, Syria and their friends has only escalated and expanded. A regional diplomatic balance sheet one year after the war suggests that conditions have deteriorated on all fronts, with the possible exception of a renewed focus on resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Even there, however, the sincerity and the efficacy of the main players - Israel, the US, the Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas - are very suspect.
     Lebanon has been the main loser from last year’s war, despite the sense of achievement among Hizbullah supporters who rightly take pride in the organization’s ability to fight Israel for 34 days and force it into a diplomatic draw. Hizbullah is discovering that proving one’s prowess in unconventional warfare and armed resistance requires very different skills from proving one’s skill and agility in political contests.
     Hizbullah now finds itself in a much more difficult position than it did a year ago. Militarily it is more constrained by the presence of Lebanese and international troops in South Lebanon. The international community is maintaining and raising the pressure on the party’s military re-supply routes from, presumably, Syria and Iran primarily. Within Lebanon, Hizbullah’s bold challenge to the Lebanese government in which it once served has elicited a firm counter- reaction of political resistance, commensurate with Hizbullah’s military resistance to Israeli aggression. more..

Hamas is ready to talk
Mousa Abu Marzook, The Guardian 8/16/2007
     While Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert is busily courting Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas as a "partner for peace", successive voices continue to speak out against efforts to sideline the democratically elected Hamas government. As the Britain’s Commons foreign affairs committee concluded on Monday, this strategy is counterproductive and doomed to fail, for the simple reason that the support of the Palestinian people is unmistakably lacking. Abbas’s party does not democratically represent the Palestinians, yet what is in effect now a dictatorship in the West Bank is being welcomed by Israel and its western allies. The duplicity of this situation is shameful. Israel and its allies were quick to dismiss Hamas and the national unity governments and isolate both, and are now equally as quick to welcome an illegally formed self-proclaimed government for the Palestinians. Is this democracy?
     The Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom has been continuing for almost a century. During this time, we have faced every form of challenge, from persecution, abuse and humiliation, to military assaults, engineered starvation and social anarchy. All these trials have been deliberately imposed by an occupying power that is breaching international law on a daily basis.
     Yet despite this, it is the popular Palestinian people’s liberation movement that is being targeted by Israel and its allies for boycott and isolation. Hamas was formed in response to the pressures of the occupation and the need for change in Palestinian society. It was on this basis that it was given a popular mandate by its people in 2006. Hamas represents a guarantee that Palestinian people’s rights will not be compromised. We have continued to insist that the rights of the Palestinian people be respected by the occupying power. Quite simply, in the present situation, it is not Israel that is threatened with annihilation but the Palestinian people. more..

My shoes – I can’t find my shoes – they are in the rubble
Yeela Raanan - Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages in the Negev, International Middle East Media Center 8/16/2007
     It seems that the words of the Minister of Planning and Construction have no effect on the demolitions in the Negev. A week ago the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages closed the refugee camp by the Israeli Knesset, after the declaration of the Ministers of Interior and of Planning and Construction that they wish to halt demolitions for a year -- until a new process can be instigated, as the ministers wish for the cooperation of the Bedouin community. There is still a need for the recommendation of the Legal advisor to the government. But the local Negev officials are interested in showing the Ministers who is the boss around here -- and what better way than to demolish another house.
     Adel Abu-Sbeit lives in the unrecognized village of Saaweh. He has eight young children. For the first ten years of his marriage he lived in the sheep den -- he cleaned it up, put a pretty tiled floor, but it still was not a home. Adel is a successful businessman. In the end he tired with living in his beautified sheep den and he dared build a beautiful home. Together with the rest of his village, he had been waiting since 1998 for the government to open a new neighborhood in the Bedouin town of Hura. He and his village members were ready to give up their village life, living on their ancestral lands, in order to comply with Israel’s unjustified demands that they live in an urban setting. But there seemed to be no end to this waiting, and Adel has only one life to live. So he built his beloved wife and children a beautiful home, in their village, on their ancestral land. more..

No American President can stand up to Israel
Paul Craig Roberts, Middle East Online 8/16/2007
     The suspicion is rife that the reason the war against Iraq cannot end, and the reason Iran and Syria must be attacked, is that the US must destroy all Muslim opposition to Israel’s theft of Palestine, turning an entire people into refugees driven from their land.
     ‘No American President can stand up to Israel’
     These words came from feisty Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations (1967-1970) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1970-1974).Moorer was, perhaps, the last independent-minded American military leader.
     Admiral Moorer knew what he was talking about.On June 8, 1967, Israel attacked the American intelligence ship, USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 173.The Israelis even strafed the life rafts, machine-gunning the American sailors leaving the stricken ship.
     Apparently, the USS Liberty had picked up Israeli communications that revealed Israel’s responsibility for the Seven Day War.Even today, history books and the majority of Americans blame the conflict on the Arabs. more..

An interview with Ali Jarbawi- Abbas’ Moment
Bitterlemons, MIFTAH 8/16/2007
     bitterlemons: There has been some fanfare surrounding the biweekly Abbas-Olmert meetings. Will they lead anywhere?
     Jarbawi: First we have to understand the motive behind these meetings. Israeli PM Ehud Olmert is very weak; he has many internal problems with the Winograd report coming out and with his coalition government. He wants something that will at least delay his downfall. The only thing that might give him that is a resumption of talks with the Palestinians and a sense that there is something in the air, that there is progress.
     bitterlemons: And Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas?
     Jarbawi: This is the only track Abbas has. He believes in it and not only on the tactical level. He believes that this is the only way to reach an agreement with the Israelis. He wants the Americans on board, he wants the Israelis on board and he is ready to talk. Before he was prevented, first by [former President Yasser] Arafat, and then by Hamas. Now he is out of their respective shadows and he is going full steam ahead to bring about what he believes in.
     bitterlemons: But one thing is having biweekly meetings, another is getting practical results. So far little has been seen...
     Jarbawi: At the beginning no one thought these meetings would yield anything, but the idea of an international gathering in the autumn has breathed some life into them. The Americans--for their own reasons, the crisis in Iraq, the region, etc.--want progress on this front. They know they are not going to solve the issue but they may at least put some wind in the sails for a new administration to continue. These biweekly meetings will continue until that autumn meeting and the Americans want these meetings to focus on a general framework to give the autumn meeting something tangible: a document outlining a framework on the core issues for final status. more..

Mourning and the Morning After
Dr. Bernard Sabella, MIFTAH 8/16/2007
     Transitions that accompany separation have a built in mourning process. Experts say that the period of mourning depends on the nature of separation, personal and group characteristics, attachments and values.
     Yesterday, I visited with a group of Fateh legislators in the Palestinian Legislative Council the towns of Qalqilya, Jayyus, Azzun and smaller villages in the vicinity. These beautiful towns, close to the Green Line of 1948 that separates the West Bank from Israel, are experiencing a variety of mourning processes.
     One separation that stands out and that recalls the mourning process is the forceful detachment of the people of these towns, mostly farmers, from their lands. Standing on the roof of the local municipal council at Jayyus one can see how the Israeli built separation wall, a fence in this case, forcibly stops Palestinian farmers from attending to their land. Yes, the Israeli military authorities have introduced a permit system but it is highly selective and does not allow able bodied farmers to access their fields. Besides, the opening hours of the two gates in the separation fence are so restricted; 7 to 8 in the morning; 12:00 to 1:00 pm and 6:00 to 7:00 pm that if one farmer misses one day, his agricultural produce would irreparably be damaged. more..

Rights group protests death of Bethlehem teen at checkpoint
Lily Galili, Ha’aretz 8/15/2007
     A gigantic inscription stretches across the separation wall behind the roadblock cutting Bethlehem off from Jerusalem. Put up by the Tourism Ministry, it reads "Jerusalem-Bethlehem - love and peace."
     It’s nice to see that the government ministries have a sense of humor, even if a chilling one. Radi Alwahash, 18, died at the roadblock, after a traffic accident, while his body systems failed, and it took an hour and a half to get him from Bethlehem to the hospital in Jerusalem.
     Here’s a first in the history of deaths at roadblocks: Physicians for Human Rights has filed a criminal complaint with the Tel Aviv police against the Civil Administration’s health coordinator, Dalia Basa, accusing her of negligent homicide.
     In a small room in the Bethlehem Red Crescent offices, Abdelhalim Ja’afra, director of emergency services for the Bethlehem area, pulled out a thick file containing its records of roadblocks and ambulances. Each patient’s name and address are inscribed in hand-written columns, along with the time of the call and the time of going to and from the roadblock.
     The file also records the dichotomy of the occupation, noting that an Israel Defense Forces doctor and Magen David Adom emergency service staff worked tirelessly to save the life of the young Palestinian, who had been run over right after completing his last matriculation exam; an army helicopter was called, before it was decided that an ambulance would be quicker. But Alwahash died in the ambulance, which was denied permission to cross into Israel. more..

MIDEAST: Settlers Anchoring In
Nora Barrows-Friedman, Inter Press Service 8/16/2007
     BETHLEHEM, Aug 16(IPS) - Israeli forces began Wednesday to bulldoze hundreds of trees on land owned by a Catholic convent near the city of Beit Jala near Bethlehem. This section of forest is being razed, according to Israeli plans, to complete a section of the separation wall, which continues to carve the West Bank into pieces.
     Near the convent, the Israeli settlement colonies of Gilo and Har Gilo, behind the wall on Palestinian lands, continue to expand over the rocky hillsides.
     When this section of the wall is completed, several villages will be separated from each other and the greater Bethlehem area. But this is not an isolated incident these days in the West Bank.
     A few kilometres east of the Cremisan convent and Bethlehem city, the small Palestinian village of Wadi Rahaal is facing extinction as a result of expanded Israeli settlement policy and the widening path of the wall.
     "We are now surrounded by the settlement of Efrat," Suha Ziyada, 22, one of the 750 residents of Wadi Rahaal tells IPS. "They started constructing the wall several months ago...and the settlement is growing every day." Efrat settlement colony, part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, currently houses approximately 9,000 settlers, including Israelis and immigrants from the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Britain and Russia. more..

A Disneyland of Militant Ignorance
Phil Rockstroh, Middle East Online 8/16/2007
     What do platitudes such as, ‘I support the troops’ translate to when those troops are engaged in an illegal and immoral occupation of a foreign land, invaded under false pretenses? Where is the line to be drawn between having empathy for an army comprised to a large degree of economic conscripts and giving tacit approval to the war crimes they commit? Asks
     Given the nation’s tottering infrastructure, imperial overreach abroad and vandalized constitutional process by a lawless executive branch, what will it take to scare the general public, mainstream press and political classes into immediate action to bring about meaningful change?
     At this twilight hour of the American republic, there must come a paradigm shift of seismic proportions or else the republic will perish. I’m less than optimistic.
     Insomuch as, I suspect, that if, during a rare press conference, George W. Bush’s face were to suddenly shed its skin, right on camera, live on national television, on all channels, broadcast and cable, to reveal the countenance of a Gila Monster -- the elitist beltway punditry would begin to catalog the merits of his reptilian single-mindedness. more..

Domination
Joe DeVoir, ZNet 8/17/2007
     Throughout history there has been a misconception concerning the true nature and influence of power. Many of us recognize correctly that power comes from strength, but where we fail to capture it is in the recognition of its ultimate use. To most of us power, especially within the context of occupation, is determined by one’s ability to inflict violence unilaterally and with impunity…this is wrong. Power, in its ultimate and perhaps most abusive form, is the ability to pardon. Anyone can kill but only the king can pardon-the acceptance of which by the pardoned is the recognition of the king and his power.
     I was reminded of this fact while sitting at a check point for four hours outside of Tulkarm on my way back to Ramallah. It was hot and we chose to turn off the air conditioner, and eventually the car itself, in order to conserve gasoline. Hours pass like agonizingly elongated days in the heat and the wait was exacerbated further by the knowledge that these checkpoints do very little for anyone’s security. We would not after all be traveling to Israel, rather from one town in the West Bank to another. Moreover, the soldiers manning the checkpoints did not appear to be looking for ‘terrorists’ only laughing and playing around – stopping every ten minutes to allow a single car to approach, assume a grim posture, aim their guns at chests and then demand to see identification before deciding arbitrarily whether you are free to pass.
     I observed this for quite some time as I left the car for ‘fresh’ air and wandered up the long line of automobiles until the checkpoint was visible. As I got nearer, a soldier approached me on foot yelling in Hebrew and pointing over my head to the long line of cars, obviously telling me to go back where I had come from. As he got close enough to see that my eyes were green and that the passport in my hand was American, he switched to a crude English ‘don’t come closer’ before marching back to the line of cars to bark orders at the people waiting/cooking in the heat. more..

Boycott Movement Targets Israel
George Bisharat, MIFTAH 8/16/2007
     When does a citizen-led boycott of a state become morally justified?
     That question is raised by an expanding academic, cultural and economic boycott of Israel. The movement joins churches, unions, professional societies and other groups based in the United States, Canada, Europe and South Africa. It has elicited dramatic reactions from Israel’s supporters. U.S. labor leaders have condemned British unions, representing millions of workers, for supporting the Israel boycott. American academics have been frantically gathering signatures against the boycott, and have mounted a prominent advertising campaign in American newspapers - unwittingly elevating the controversy further in the public eye.
     Israel’s defenders have protested that Israel is not the worst human-rights offender in the world, and singling it out is hypocrisy, or even anti-Semitism. Rhetorically, this shifts focus from Israel’s human rights record to the imagined motives of its critics.
     But "the worst first" has never been the rule for whom to boycott. Had it been, the Pol Pot regime, not apartheid South Africa, would have been targeted in the past. It was not - Cambodia’s ties to the West were insufficient to make any embargo effective. Boycotting North Korea today would be similarly futile. Should every other quest for justice be put on hold as a result? more..

Can you hear the cries from Gaza?
Sonja Karkar, ZNet 8/16/2007
     No one seems to hear the cries from Gaza enough to act, despite the reports that talk about imminent economic collapse, dangerous food shortages, total aid dependency and impending humanitarian disaster. Neither the cries nor the reports appear in the headlines or news alerts in our mainstream media. And, while the statistics make shocking reading when they do emerge, it is the cries that we should be hearing because they come from people like us – real flesh and blood people who bleed, feel pain and grieve. They are the cries that give rise to the statistics, the cries of Palestinians no less human and no less vulnerable than any one of us would be as prisoners of Israel’s merciless occupation.
     For all the recent news about the infighting that has gripped internal Palestinian politics, there is no mistaking under whose suffocating matrix of control, the Palestinians are actually forced to live. Israel has threatened the Palestinians’ right to exist on their own land since it was created and it has no more disengaged from Gaza than it has from the West Bank. Instead, Israel has made a prison of Gaza and completely sealed it off from the West Bank and the outside world. Deeming it a place too dangerous to visit, Israel likes to portray the Palestinians as a violent people whose acts of resistance threaten Israel’s existence and necessitate the punitive measures that Israel takes against them. However, according to international law, resistance is a legitimate response of an occupied people and collective punishment by an Occupying Power against a civilian population is prohibited. The outrage in all this is the world’s acquiescence to Israel’s suppression of the Palestinians and the oppressive force it uses to reduce them to a sub-human existence. This cuts to the core of our humanity and it is simply not enough to say, “there but for the grace of God go I”. more..

’Quiet Transfer’ Pushes Palestinians Out
Peter Hirschberg, Inter Press Service 8/15/2007
     JERUSALEM, Aug 15(IPS) - Arab residents of East Jerusalem are finding themselves increasingly under threat of what one Israeli human rights organisation calls "quiet transfer."
     According to information obtained by the B’Tselem rights group from Israel’s Interior Ministry, the number of Arab residents on the eastern side of the disputed city who had their permanent residency status revoked in 2006 increased dramatically -- more than six fold. While the number stood at 272 in 2003 and was 222 in 2005, last year 1,363 residents of East Jerusalem had their residency status revoked.
     Permanent residency status grants the quarter of a million Arabs who live in East Jerusalem most of the rights afforded to Israeli citizens. They can’t vote in parliamentary elections, but they can vote in municipal elections, can work in Israel and are eligible for state social security benefits and state-provided healthcare. These benefits make East Jerusalem residency a valuable and prized status.
     After Israel annexed the eastern side of Jerusalem in 1967 -- a move never recognised by the international community -- the Arab residents there were allowed to apply for full Israeli citizenship. But most refused to do so, because naturalisation required they swear allegiance to the State of Israel and renounce any other citizenships they may have. more..

Saving Hamas from its Victory
Ghassan Charbel, MIFTAH 8/15/2007
     A human being will usually need someone to save him from his defeat, or help him overcome it. Hamas’ position today is different; it needs someone who will save it from its victory. The movement made the mistake of a military victory on June 14th in the streets of Gaza. It won against the Palestinian Authority and its apparatuses, namely Fatah, and now, two months later, it needs to be saved from the burden of its triumph.
     This statement is not an exaggeration. Ismail Haniyeh can hold numerous meetings within his government. He can state repeatedly that his is the only legitimate government. He can remind people of the justifications for conducting what its detractors call a "bloody coup". He can talk about the chaos that used to pervade Gaza, and the corruption that permeated through the ranks of the Authority and Fatah. He can lay the blame for the blockade on the Israeli enemy, and he can denigrate the biased position of the United States. But Ismail Haniyeh knows that repeating these words will not change a thing.
     The opposition can distribute dreams and propel fantasies, but it is also forced to deal with figures. Haniyeh knows that 70% of the families in Gaza are living under the poverty level. He knows that unemployment is 60%, and that approximately one million people are dependant on outside assistance to live. He can go back to what Filippo Grandi, Deputy Commissioner General of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said in Gaza. He said, "Gaza risks becoming a virtually 100 per cent aid dependent, closed down and isolated community". Haniyeh does not need someone to supply him with additional details; Gaza’s economy is in the verge of a breakdown, and the situation is a warning of tumultuousness that will multiply the feelings of despair and open up the way for the emergence of Al Qaeda and similar groups. more..

Hamas Optimism vs. Fatah Despair
Dan Murphy, MIFTAH 8/15/2007
     Gaza City, Gaza; and Ramallah, West Bank - Even in the face of possible economic collapse, Hamas leaders want to figure out a better way to collect garbage in Gaza. The Islamist movement, which now controls the coastal strip, is working out ways to create new jobs and reduce petty crime.
     A new enthusiasm has swept through this territory in the aftermath of the violent split in June between the two Palestinian factions. Among many young Gazans there is excitement for a Palestinian enclave that fully embraces the principles of their Islamic Resistance Movement without the interference of Fatah rivals.
     "We’ve taken control, we’ve gotten rid of people who were collaborating with Israel, and we’ve restored order," says Khalil al-Haja, a mid-ranking member of Hamas Qassem Brigade militia. "Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] will eventually have to realize that we’re hear to stay. In six months, we’ll be reunited."
     While that vision may indeed be only a Hamas dream, the good spirits among Hamas officials in Gaza are in stark contrast to the low morale of their Fatah counterparts.
     In talking to Fatah members in the West Bank, a picture of despair, disorganization, and exhaustion emerges, not only due to what they feel was a humiliating defeat at the hands of their rivals but because Fatah as a movement appears to be losing touch with its own ideological moorings. more..

Face to faith
Samantha Kirby, Middle East Online 8/15/2007
     I am ready to engage fully in those difficult conversations for which I used to hold my breath. I am ready to collaborate with my diverse peers to bring a new kind of peace to the world through pluralism.
     CHICAGO, Illinois - During a recent four-month stay in Morocco, I was faced with the challenge of genuinely adapting to a new and drastically different cultural context. The delicate balance of honesty and selectivity, the issue of disclosure and exposure, was never more in question than during my first encounter with my host brother. After asking my name and birthplace, he inquired if I was religious. My immediate response shook me as the words passed through my lips: "No, not really."
     Before I embarked on my journey to Morocco, friends and family wondered how I would reconcile my Jewish identity with this Muslim society. They wanted to know my strategy for navigating sensitive issues and seemingly inevitable conflicts. I was the least concerned of all; I thought that when the time came, answers would flow. I had faith in the power of cross-cultural exchange to facilitate understanding and dialogue. more..

A review of Patel’s Acts of Faith
Matthew Weiner, Middle East Online 8/15/2007
     Patel explores the interfaith world, realises a major moral gap in that there is no good setting for youth involvement - because it is youth who are easily swayed to intolerance or fostered to justice - and decides he should create the ‘Interfaith Youth Core’. NEW YORK CITY - There is a growing phenomenon within the Muslim community in America that will change the history of Islam. Young Muslims, mostly the children of immigrants, are publicly reflecting on their identity. Many are becoming, or have become, Islamic scholars and activists on behalf of a civic Islam. Often, these young men and women were raised in fairly secular households and so as they become self consciously Muslim, they must re-imagine what being Muslim, as Americans, means. Certainly, this growing and internally diverse group will change how Americans understand Islam, and how Muslims across the globe understand Islam. Pay attention.
     A star of this group is Eboo Patel. Founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, Patel not only represents this new face of Islam, but he does so specifically by reaching across religious lines. His being Muslim is centrally focused on embracing difference - and what could be more important in this day?
     As he tells his story, it is his very encounter with difference that leads him to understand his own faith better, and to become a good Muslim. Patel’s story is an important one if for no other reason that it shows how interfaith initiatives, that is reciprocally working with religious others, need not lead to a kind of religious Esperanto or a purely liberal understanding of religion, but rather can enforce and deepen one’s own faith while building an appreciation of the other. more..

No roadblocks, no preventive action
Haggai Alon, Ha’aretz 8/15/2007
     If this signals the start of an official policy, then let it continue. It indicates that the security establishment is beginning to realize its important role in shaping Palestinian public opinion. Israel should formulate a strategic policy to plan its security and diplomacy beyond the number of roadblocks or the length of the separation fence. A change in the everyday routine of West Bank residents will enable them to renew their faith in the seriousness of Israel’s intentions, and above all, in the Ramallah government. Assuming that this is the start of a policy, which is being led by the defense minister and the chief of staff, then this fall’s regional conference may be a step on the way to resolving the conflict.
     The diplomatic process’ success depends on leadership and broad public support. However, Palestinians will not vote for a regime that cannot give them a modicum of civil dignity and human rights, as expressed through law, order and freedom of movement.
     Moreover, the isolated illegal outposts must be evacuated. This cannot be a goodwill gesture toward the Palestinians or the keeping of a promise to the United States, but rather a measure to show the Israeli public its leaders’ reliability and determination to bring peace. Nationalist violence and the trampling of the law must not be fought only due to some diplomatic plan. Immediately evacuating all the outposts will let the government testify to its people that it is serious about its intentions to maintain the rule of law and its commitment to the two-state vision. more..

Time to attack
Avraham Burg, Ha’aretz 8/15/2007
     The system of "sacred balance" is Israel’s way of surviving and feeling normal. If something happens on the left, it immediately must be canceled out by an event on the right - and then everyone can relax. These equations create the illusion of sanity and save the sticky majority, which is searching for the warm and opinionless center, from having to relate to matters in a matter-of-fact way. It is from there, from the wide open spaces of a valueless and content-free consensus, that Israel’s ruin will come - because if everything is balanced and canceled out, there is no need to take a position, or to do anything. It is therefore not surprising that Israel, with all its equations, cannot make decisions on matters of morality and state.
     The latest equation bridges between draft-dodgers and the soldiers who refuse to evacuate homes in Hebron. On the face of it, we have draft-dodgers - the left-wing bleeding hearts from greater Tel Aviv - and evacuation refuseniks - nationalistic and idealistic, but "a little" too extreme, too patriotic and too religious. And we are in the middle: We live outside Tel Aviv, but not in Hebron; we want peace but are not prepared to pay the Arabs the price. Instead of being flooded with concern over the fanatics and rabbis who have penetrated the fabric of Israeli statehood like cancerous cells, we have created an equation. We were furious for two days, we condemned them - and we went on our merry way. Everything is balanced, thank God.
     After the waves of demagoguery, spin and media opportunism have passed, it will become clear that this equation is extremely dangerous, because it releases us from dealing with this country’s unruly elements. The more we ignore the cancer of rabbinical nationalism, the closer and more concrete the mortal danger is. The real equation is between the refuseniks of Hebron and their foundation in Torah - and Hamas, Hezbollah, Christian fundamentalists and their fanatic brethren. more..

Saving the Children
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 8/15/2007
     In any seemingly inconsolable situation, you can always fall back on the maxim, “It could be worse.” There is truth in this, no doubt. After watching, “Hotel Rwanda” in horror, I realized that our children have not yet seen their neighbors being hacked to death by another neighbor, or scores of bodies blocking off main roads.
     So yes, it can be worse. But for Palestine’s children, it is bad enough. While our politicians continue to vie for meaningless positions of power, vilifying each other with an unprecedented vengeance and the Israeli army continues to invade, shell and kill our people, an entire generation is being raised and molded in a place that offers little hope for a healthy and prosperous future.
     Palestinian society, like many developing societies is mainly comprised of young people. According to Save the Children, 53 percent of the population is under the age of 18, that is, approximately 1.2 million Palestinians. This is a significantly large sector of society and one which constitutes the future generation. However, what sort of future is in store for our children? What value system are they being raised on when everything around them is violence, poverty and dashed hopes? more..

Israel’s ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine
Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, Ph.D, Palestine Chronicle 8/14/2007
     Palestinians and many Israelis are encouraged that civil society in Europe and North America has now engaged in other forms of struggle for peace with justice, including the growing movement of boycotts.
     I just returned from my latest trip to Palestine, or at least to the part of Palestine I still have access to as a Palestinian Christian. You see, we Palestinians from the Bethlehem area (the birthplace of Jesus) are now denied entry to over 90 percent of Palestine and even to our capital and major economic center, Jerusalem (which is merely 7 miles from Bethlehem).
     Israeli colonies dot the landscape from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan on land stolen from the native people. Six of the 10 million Palestinians in the world are now refugees or displaced people and the remaining Palestinians live in increasingly shrinking and impoverished ghettos (à la South African Bantustans at the time of Apartheid).
     In all areas we visited the trend is the same: maximizing geography (under Israeli control) and minimizing demography (Palestinians on their land). Israeli authorities have evolved ingenious ways of ethnic cleansing since the more direct uprooting practiced in 1947-1949, when 850,000 Palestinians were driven out. The details of how this is done differ from area to area. A few examples may illustrate this. more..

What Role for Palestinian Supporters Today?
Agustin Velloso, Palestine Chronicle 8/14/2007
     Before asking Palestinians to close ranks, it would be much more useful if Western leftists made public whether they plan to continue offering Palestinians empty ethical principles or whether they plan solid support for the resistance.
     1. Supporting Palestinian resistance: today as in 1947
     After receiving from Chilean e-journal www.hojaderuta.org ("hoja de ruta" means "roadmap") the question "What does it mean today to engage in political action for the Palestinians?" the first thing I thought was : the same thing it meant forty years ago (in 1967) and sixty years ago (in 1947). That is to say, to support Palestinian resistance, which amounts to fighting the Zionist project in Palestine . The reason is that the problem has not changed: a colonialist enterprise is in motion of a scope that threatens the very existence of Palestinians as a people.
     Israel’s colonialism is the most extreme kind, since its aim is to expel Palestine ’s original inhabitants and appropriate their land to make room for Jews from all over the world who want to settle in the whole of Palestine . Since 1947, the way to achieve this aim has been through violence: combining the expulsion of as many persons as possible with repression of the ones who stay put and resist. more..

Saying No to the Hunters of Goliath
Gilad Atzmon, Palestine Chronicle 8/14/2007
     The Israeli army had become used to smashing Palestinian civilians in their homes, to murdering their emerging leadership, to terrorising pregnant women in roadblocks, and to shelling young kids in their school classes.
     "A few reasons help to create the Nasrallah obsession (’dibuk’), that influenced decision makers along the (Second Lebanon) war. Primarily, Israel always perceived the Arab (leaders) as (private) people rather than representatives of political systems. Even amongst media analysts and politicians the references were pointing at "Assad", "Arafat" or "Nasrallah" rather than the states and organisations they represent. In the eyes of the (Israeli) decision-makers, as well as the media and public, the Arab world was led by individuals rather than by governmental systems and the best way to influence it was in most cases to drop a bomb in the right place." ("Captives in Lebanon", Ofer Shelah and Yaov Limor)[1]
     The Israelis tend to personalise conflicts. Yet, by doing this, they are neither original nor innovative. They in fact follow a Biblical lesson. Within the Judaic worldview, history and ethics are often reduced into a banal single binary opposition principle. For instance, the deadly battle between the ’righteous’ David and the ’evil’ Goliath personalises the struggle between the ’good’ Israelites and the ’bad’ Philistines. Though the Biblical specific tale could be understood in a mere literary terms, the similarities to the Israelite of our time are rather concerning. In Israel, there is a direct express path that leads from the ’role of the assassin’ to the Government seat. Time after time our contemporary Israelite supplicate their highly decorated assassins to become their kings, to lead their army and then to integrate into the cabinet. This obviously happened to Sharon, Barak, Mofaz, Halutz, Dichter and many more. more..

Another Inconvenient Truth
Caelum Moffatt, MIFTAH 8/14/2007
     My walk to work in the morning normally involves a brief ‘sabaah ilkheer’ to around five soldiers in recognition of their presence, as they contribute to the protection of the ‘Muqata’. On August 2, however, I found myself saying ‘good morning’ to a soldier every couple of paces.
     It took a couple of seconds for my drowsiness to escape me before I realized that Thursday was the day US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice was visiting Ramallah to offer America’s support, in person, to Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas.
     Probably unknown to Ms. Rice, many of the employees at the office faced a two hour commute into Ramallah from Jerusalem on Thursday on account of the Israeli-commanded Qalandia checkpoint being temporarily closed for security reasons. On that Thursday I watched in amazement as soldiers cut access to the road from both sides and then suddenly, at least five smart, black, four by fours came speeding down the road accompanied by sirens and escorted by Palestinian troops in their vans.
     Soon, if they haven’t already, Palestinians are going to start associating such visits as problematic rather than positive. more..

Audio: Crossing the Line interviews author Ramzy Baroud
Podcast, Crossing the Line, Electronic Intifada 8/14/2007
     This week on Crossing the Line: Independent journalist Ben White joins host Christopher Brown to discuss the Israeli Ministry of Education’s "inclusion" of the Palestinian Nakba into students’ textbooks. White points out a number of concerns regarding the supposed enlightenment of the Israeli school system and its broader implications.
     Next Brown speaks with author, editor and activist Ramzy Baroud on the notion of "peace talks" between Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, the continued exclusion of Hamas from talks with Israel and Fatah, and the neo-cons and AIPAC’s attempts to get Bush to go to war with Iran.
     As always, Crossing the Line begins with "This week in Palestine," a service provided by The International Middle East Media Center.
     Listen Now - [MP3 - 51.4 MB, 56:07 min] more..

Courting and Countering the Christian Zionists
Nadia Hijab, Institute for Palestine Studies, ZNet 8/15/2007
     Notwithstanding its apocalyptic agenda, Christians United For Israel, the newest pro-Israel group on the Washington block, is courted by serious presidential candidates like Senator John McCain. Pro-peace evangelical Christians and Jews are seeking to counter its fundamentalist agenda. How close is it to Israel and AIPAC? And what are the consequences for the Middle East?
     Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel (CUFI) attracted over 4,000 participants at its second annual convention held in Washington DC 16 - 19 July 2007, nearly a thousand more than in 2006. The self-described "one-issue organization" is a recent offspring of a relationship between the US Christian Zionists, who are believed to account for some 20% of US evangelicals, and the Israeli right that dates back to the 1970s. The relationship began as a response to the growing criticism of Israel’s human rights policies by mainstream Protestant churches as well as to former president Jimmy Carter’s 1977 statement that the Palestinians need a homeland.1 The late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was one of the first Israelis to reach out to the US Christian Zionists, and former premier and current Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu has assiduously cultivated these ties.
     How Close is the CUFI Agenda to AIPAC and the Israeli Right?
     CUFI says it is not a political action committee but a "non-profit association" whose funds are used to educate "the Christian Community ... on the biblical reasons why Christians should support Israel." CUFI-watchers believe that its appearance on an already crowded pro-Israeli stage owes much to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose support included printing materials for CUFI’s 2006 conference.2 CUFI’s lobbying agenda closely mirrors that of AIPAC and the Israeli right. The printed handouts given to participants in the 2007 conference set out these issues for discussion during visits to their members of Congress... more..

Get to Work
Kathy Kelly in Amman, Jordan, Palestine Chronicle 8/14/2007
     We can’t just blame it on Bush, as though he will somehow turn around and suddenly become a responsible leader. We must hold accountable those who bear responsibility in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
     "GET A JOB!" These three words are very familiar to activists bearing signs calling for an end to war, whether standing on street corners, walking along highways, holding vigils, or nonviolently occupying the offices of elected representatives. Listen to the activists, and you’ll often hear, "We’re doing our job. We’re trying."
     I’m convinced that our work must always have one foot placed in nonviolent resistance to the forces that design and wage wars, with the other foot standing among people who bear the physical and mental affliction caused by these forces. Today, I’m thinking especially about two young women who found themselves in nightmare circumstances because, in their view, they simply wanted to have a job. more..

Israeli soldiers express pain of war
Colin Hinshelwood, Asia Times 8/15/2007
     "One day I saw an elderly Palestinian. Really old. With a long white beard, his face all wrinkles, carrying two shopping bags, passing by a small religious Jewish boy, probably a first-grader, six to seven years old, maximum nine. The child came up, looked at the Arab in the eye - mind you, this is a street that both Jews and Arabs are allowed to use - and said to him: ’You filthy Arab!’ spat in his face and ran off. Far away, he climbed some roof and threw stones at him. I was shocked."
     This is just one excerpt from a catalogue of testimonies from Israeli soldiers who have recently come forward and spoken out for the first time about the mind-numbing situation they find themselves in while on duty in the Palestinian occupied territories. Many of the accounts make for macabre reading.
     The soldier in the testimony above goes on to say that when he approached the child’s parents to tell them what their son had done, he was rebuked by the parents for siding with a Palestinian and told that their son had acted legitimately. Time and again, the collected testimonies bear witness to crimes of hate and racism carried out by either Israeli soldiers or by the Jewish "settlers" within the occupied territories on unarmed Palestinian civilians, including women and children.
     After finishing high school, most Israeli teenagers are expected to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Boys will serve a minimum of three years, while girls are required to put in two years’ service. Young, impressionable and taught by a hawkish society that it is their divine duty to protect the State of Israel, these young people become the front line in the streets, commanding absolute power over Arab residents and often abusing that power with impunity. more..

Unmercifully Trespass Humanitarian Borders In Gaza
Nicola Nasser, ZNet 8/14/2007
     The major political players who are involved in sealing off 1.5 million Palestinians into an open air prison in the world’s most densely populated 360-square-kilometre area of the Gaza Strip are unmercifully trespassing humanitarian borders there; they perceive in the collapsing economy of the Mediterranean coastal strip, which is rapidly developing into a humanitarian crisis, a political “window of opportunity.”
     Ironically they are counterproductively citing security and peace making as their casus belli, but they are creating on the ground an explosive humanitarian disaster that could blow off the local as well as the regional security in a way that precludes any credible efforts towards reviving a deadlocked peace process, moribund since 2000. Human rights and morality as well as realpolitics are facing a critical test in the Gaza Strip, where the culprits of the tragic status quo perceive a “window of opportunity.”
     According to Yoram Meital, Chairperson of the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies & Diplomacy at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University (ynetnews.com on August 6), the first to point to this “window of opportunity” was the U.S. president, George W. Bush, who last month vaguely proposed an ambiguous public relations “international” conference on Middle East in the fall with the aim of advancing the peace process. In parallel, the Israeli prime minister suggested an “agreement of principles” for a final-status deal with the Palestinians. On August 8, Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni joined Bush’s new “vision” on the opportunity: “Gaza creates a security threat for us, while the other part (West Bank) controlled by the new Palestinian government (of Salam Fayyad) can create an opportunity,” she said.
     A flurry of diplomatic traffic followed. Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the region and met with Palestinian President Mahmoud abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before they held their latest bimonthly meeting in Jericho, the special envoy of the Quartet of the U.S., U.N., EU and Russia Tony Blair also made a regional visit, which coincided with another historic and first of its kind by the foreign ministers of Egypt, Ahmed Aboul Ghei, and Jordan, Abdul-Ilah Khatib, to Israel to present the Arab Peace Initiative of the League of Arab States. None of these events cared to put the looming disaster in Gaza on the agenda. more..

Palestinian doctor paints picture of Gaza under siege
Mark Almberg, Electronic Intifada 8/13/2007
     Dr. Mona El-Farra, speaking in Chicago as part of a 17-city US tour, related how recently a Palestinian woman in the Occupied Territories had gone into labor and was heading to a hospital.
     "She was about to give birth, but she was detained at an Israeli checkpoint for three hours," El-Farra said. "Amazingly, she eventually got through and was able to deliver her child."
     "But it was only after she left the hospital and returned home with her baby that she saw that her house had been demolished by Israeli bulldozers while she was away."
     El-Farra, a Palestinian physician in the northern Gaza Strip, noted that over the past three years, 59 Palestinian women have given birth while waiting to cross an Israeli military checkpoint.
     "It’s not just the numbers," she said. "It’s a matter of human rights. Just one case would be bad enough."
     El-Farra certainly knows her numbers, however. As vice president of the Gaza Palestine Red Crescent Society, the equivalent of the US Red Cross, she has a firm command of the grim statistics that define Gaza today: 140 square miles, 1.4 million people -- one of most densely populated areas on earth. more..

Refugees, again
Dina Awad and Matthew Cassel writing from Baddawi refugee camp, Electronic Intifada 8/13/2007
     In June 2006, Dr. Tawfiq Assad stepped out of the seaside Rafiq Hariri airport in Beirut and took a deep breath of the Mediterranean air. It wasn’t home but it was as close to it as he had ever been.
     Dr. Assad returned to Lebanon to visit family and friends for what he thought would only be a few weeks’ stay. A Palestinian refugee himself, Dr. Assad’s story is not uncommon.His family was forced from their home in Nazareth during the Nakba in 1948 when the Zionist armies invaded to make way for the Jewish state. As many as 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes and many went to seek refuge in Lebanon where they have remained ever since.
     Dr. Assad was born and raised in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, located near Tripoli, in northern Lebanon. In 1980, at the age of 20, he headed to Tashkent in the former Soviet Union (now the capital of Uzbekistan) where he studied medicine. After finishing his studies he worked there as an ER doctor for 18 years. more..

Oslo Revisited
Uri Avnery, MIFTAH 8/13/2007
     ON THESE hot, sticky days of the Israeli summer, it is pleasant to feel the coolness of Oslo, even if the visit is only virtual.
     Fourteen years after the signing of the Oslo agreement, it is again the subject of debate: was it a historical mistake?
     In the past, only the Right said so. They talked about "Oslo criminals", as the Nazis used to rail against "November criminals" (those who signed the November 1918 armistice between the defeated Germany and the victorious Allies.)
     Now, the debate is also agitating the Left. With the wisdom of hindsight, some leftists argue that the Oslo agreement is to blame for the dismal political situation of the Palestinians, the near collapse of the Palestinian Authority and the split between Gaza and the West Bank. The slogan "Oslo is dead" can be heard on all sides.
     What truth is there in this?
     ON THE morrow of the agreement, Gush Shalom held a public debate in a large Tel-Aviv hall. Opinions were divided. Some said that it was a bad agreement and should not be supported in any way. Others saw it as a historic breakthrough. more..

A time for reflection, a call for action
Geir 0. Pedersen, Daily Star 8/14/2007
     "...however, significant divisions have emerged on the political scene. The tensions they bring about hinder progress and threaten stability once more. In this climate, the Lebanese people and their leaders have a choice. If they wish to forge a prosperous and peaceful future for their country, they must be able to overcome their differences and work together toward that purpose.
     When the almost 1 million displaced Lebanese began to return to their homes on August 14, 2006, many were wrought with despair. In total, 30,000 housing units were destroyed or heavily damaged. The country’s infrastructure was also badly affected. Cluster munitions dropped during the war, and particularly at its end, still contaminate the South, having already killed over 30 people since the end of the conflict and wounded injured over 100.
     In light of these difficult circumstances, the progress made in reconstruction, and restoring stability in the country has been positive but is still incomplete. The passage of Security Council Resolution 1701, and the subsequent deployment of UNIFIL alongside the Lebanese Army with the cooperation and support of all parties and factions, has been instrumental in safeguarding peace in Lebanon. The continued support of all parties for the resolution and UNIFIL, however, will be imperative toward maintaining this climate of stability. Lebanese NGOs, the government, and other local organizations, with support from bilateral donors, the United Nations and other multilateral actors, have worked to help rebuild homes and lives, and restore a sense of normalcy in areas affected by last summer’s war. However, there are many people and areas which have yet to see the full benefit of these programs. more..

What ‘Progress’ in Iraq Really Means
Tom Engelhardt, Middle East Online 8/13/2007
     The American experience in Iraq - another attempted occupation of a foreign country and culture - has been like a heat-seeking missile heading for the still-burning American memories of Vietnam, says.
     Escalation by the Numbers.
     Someday, we will undoubtedly discover that, in the term "surge" -- as in the President’s "surge" plan (or "new way forward") announced to the nation in January -- was the urge to avoid the language (and experience) of the Vietnam era. As there were to be no "body bags" (or cameras to film them as the dead came home), as there were to be no "body counts" ("We have made a conscious effort not to be a body-count team" was the way the President put it), as there were to be no "quagmires," nor the need to search for that "light at the end of the tunnel," so, surely, there were to be no "escalations.
     The escalations of the Vietnam era, which left more than 500,000 American soldiers and vast bases and massive air and naval power in and around Vietnam (Laos, and Cambodia), had been thoroughly discredited. Each intensification in the delivery of troops, or simply in ever-widening bombing campaigns, led only to more misery and death for the Vietnamese and disaster for the U.S. And yet, not surprisingly, the American experience in Iraq -- another attempted occupation of a foreign country and culture -- has been like a heat-seeking missile heading for the still-burning American memories of Vietnam. more..

Deconstructing the Jordan option
Osamah Khalil, Electronic Intifada 8/13/2007
     Last month the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the US and Israel were considering a revival of the "Jordan option."In spite of the fervent denials emanating from Amman, the report caused a rash of speculation and concern among Palestinians.Many fear that if implemented it would mark the end of hopes for an independent Palestinian state.Resurrecting the Jordan option, in which the West Bank and possibly Gaza would be united in a political and economic confederation with Jordan, demonstrates not just the poverty of ideas in Washington and Israel, but their desperation as well.Perhaps the allies believe that by trapping the Palestinians between the "rock" of Israel’s apartheid wall and the "hard place" of Jordan’s vaunted Arab Legion and dreaded Mukhabarat intelligence service, they will extinguish Palestinian nationalism.However, they and whichever Arab leaders agree to such a policy are sadly mistaken.If history is any guide, the Hashemite regime has more to fear from such a confederation than the Palestinians.
     Initially proposed as a response to the outbreak of the "Great Arab Revolt" against the British Mandate in 1936, a confederation with Jordan has consistently been used by the global and regional powers as a mechanism to punish Palestinian political activity and reward loyal clients. The Peel Partition Plan called for the creation of a small Jewish state in northern Palestine and for an Arab state united with Transjordan under the rule of the first King Abdullah, who until his death remained a willing British tool. This plan was soundly rejected by the Palestinian Arab leadership, who objected to the partition of Palestine, the leadership of Abdullah, and the proposed population transfer of roughly 225,000 Palestinians from the territory allotted for the Jewish state. more..

Book review: The fantasy of hermetic closure
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 8/13/2007
     The image of the separation wall that Israel began building in the occupied West Bank in 2002 has emerged as a trope in literature about Palestine. Its concrete slabs are found on covers of recent books, including Jimmy Carter’s Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, Norman Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah, Rashid Khalidi’s The Iron Wall, Joseph Massad’s The Persistence of the Palestinian Question, and Tanya Reinhart’s The Roadmap to Nowhere, and it is the subject of a growing number of films by Palestinian and Israeli directors, including Simone Bitton’s Wall (2005) and Najwa Najjar’s 2006 short feature Yasmine’s Song. The UK graffiti artist Banksy "hacked" the wall in the summer of 2005 and his subversive surrealist images painted directly on its surface have become iconic.
     Several contributions draw on Giorgio Agamben’s concept of "state of exception," to describe the spaces Israel attempts to create, transforming Palestinians into homo sacer (sacred men), who are included in the juridical order only in the form of their exclusion and reduced to "bare life," mere biological existence that can be killed without consequence. For Sari Hanafi, this idea is central. Dean MacCannell distinguishes the social and communicational functions of walls from their purported security and defense purposes. Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir introduce the concept of an "economy of violence" made up of "spectacular violence" and less visible, but more devastating "suspended violence" (p. 3), of which the West Bank wall is the greatest instrument yet; it must be seen, they argue, not as a departure, but a continuation of decades-old oppressive Israeli systems. Lindsay Bremner, in an essay discussing how perceived skin color was the signifier that formed the moving wall determining all social relations in apartheid South Africa, complements articles by Terry Boullata and Rebecca Solnit (who focuses on the US-Mexican border), and a piece coauthored by Oren Yiftachel and Haim Yacobi. Through their contrasting lenses, each returns to the theme that every fantasy of hermetic closure or separation has been undermined by a reality of porosity, fluidity, resistance, and illicit exchange that constantly reasserts itself against the ever-close, but never attainable purity that the builders of walls in their physical and virtual manifestations desire. The varied styles include a few fairly theoretical passages, and some conversational and even humorous first person pieces such as Suad Amiry’s magical realist encounter with the animals at Qalqilya zoo. Against the Wall provides many challenging insights, and successfully ranges far from its title subject without losing sight of it in unrelated ruminations. more..

Israel boycott campaign momentum grows
Emma Clancy, Green Left Weekly, ZNet 8/11/2007
     The campaign to isolate Israel through boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) has taken meaningful steps forward in the past few months, with major trade unions in Britain, Ireland, South Africa and Canada declaring their support for an international boycott.
     The BDS campaign has been gathering momentum since the 2004 "Call for Boycott" was issued by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a coalition of more than 50 Palestinian civil society organisations. A May 27 PACBI statement explained that the boycott campaign "is based on the same moral principle embodied in the international civil society campaign against the apartheid regime in South Africa: that people of conscience must take a stand against oppression and use all the means of civil resistance available to bring an end to oppression".
     At its inaugural conference in May, the University and Colleges Union (UCU), which represents 120,000 academic and teaching staff, passed a resolution with a clear majority calling for a discussion within union branches about an academic boycott based on the PACBI call. The motion also encouraged UCU members to "consider the moral implications" of links with Israeli academic institutions.
     In June, Unison, Britain’s largest trade union representing 1.3 million public sector workers, passed a comprehensive resolution at its national conference in support of an "economic, cultural, academic and sporting boycott", and the right of return for the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel. In early July, the Transport and General Workers’ Union conference, representing 80,000 members, voted to organise its members in an economic and cultural boycott of Israeli products and sports contacts. more..

Time to talk to Hamas
Mike Gapes, The Guardian 8/13/2007
     A year after the end of the Lebanon war, prospects for peace in the Middle East remain distant. Diplomacy in the region has never been easy, but the challenges now in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, set against the backdrop of rising Iranian influence, are particularly daunting. These are the critical issues confronted in a report published today by the Commons foreign affairs committee.
     The most pressing, and demanding, matter for Gordon Brown’s cabinet is the Palestinian territories. The appointment of Tony Blair as envoy for the Quartet (US, Russia, EU and UN) presents an opportunity to take a new approach.
     Hamas was democratically elected as the majority party in the Palestinian legislative council in January 2006. As a consequence of its failure to explicitly endorse the three Quartet principles - non-violence, recognition of Israel and commitment to previous agreements - it has faced a boycott ever since. Though a Hamas-Fatah national unity government was established at Mecca in March, the EU and US deemed that Hamas had not gone far enough. In June Hamas carried out a "coup" against the secular Fatah to take control of the Gaza Strip. The decision not to engage with Hamas after the Mecca agreement has proved to be counterproductive. Hamas is not a homogenous organisation. It is an Islamist movement that includes more pragmatic and more extreme elements. The current policy helped isolate the pragmatists. This must be reversed. Ways must be found to engage politically with more moderate elements to help move Hamas towards the three Quartet principles and become a true partner for peace in the Middle East. Such an approach will also help to peel Hamas away from Iran, its main international sponsor. more..

Reply to the Arab peace plan now, to advance in the Fall
Editorial, Daily Star 8/13/2007
     Months remain before the scheduled convening of the gathering to promote Arab-Israeli peace negotiations that US President George W. Bush proposed recently, but it is not too early to start exploring whether this could be a real opportunity for change, and not simply another hoax. Expectations are not high for this meeting, whose participants and agenda are not yet clear. Nevertheless, this could be seen as another marker on a long road otherwise full of disappointment and failed peace initiatives. Bush is on the ropes politically due to Iraq and other problems, and will want to earn a victory somewhere so he does not leave office a discredited and broken man. Arab-Israeli peace-making is a notoriously difficult terrain in which to make one’s mark, especially for American presidents who find themselves seriously constrained by pro-Israeli sentiments and forces in Washington.
     Yet the Middle East cries out for progress on this issue, and the American people clearly would support a president who pushes for even-handed peace-making. Now is the time to lay the groundwork for progress in the Fall. The Arab world has done its part by relaunching the Arab peace plan and making it clear that it seeks a negotiated permanent peace based on UN resolutions and reasonable compromises. Israel and the US need to make a reciprocal gesture now, so that the Fall meeting can bear fruit. more..

The epic story of Arab ordinariness
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 8/13/2007
     I had a very unusual experience last Friday morning as I was going through my pleasant early morning routine while sitting in my easy chair on our balcony overlooking the Mediterranean, reading the newspapers, drinking coffee, listening to BBC radio news, and watching my water turtle Jerry show me his back flips and other maneuvers that he perfected while the rest of us slept. The unusual thing was that there was not a single news item about the Middle East on the BBC radio news.
     I do not exaggerate when I say that this may be the first time in around 36 years of regular listening that the morning bulletin did not carry Middle East news. Jerry the water turtle seems to have picked up on the fact as well, for he was particularly athletic that morning, even slightly exuberant, perhaps because of the refreshing change of not having to listen day in and day out to items that dominate Middle East coverage: violent wars, terrorism, assassinations, kidnappings, refugees, civil strife, stalemated governments, foreign invasions, hostage-taking, beheadings, militias, sanctions, regime changes, military occupations, armed resistance, illegal immigrants, religious fanaticism, corruption, police states, rigged elections, human rights abuses, stressed economies, presidents for life, and many other such depressing phenomena.
     I wondered whether consumers of radio, television and newspaper news around the world who primarily receive a diet of depressing and violent news about our region are receiving an accurate picture of the realities of my Arab society and other Middle Eastern lands. more..

Radio Tadamon! reflects on Lebanon war
Podcast, Radio Tadamon, Electronic Intifada 8/12/2007
     This special edition of Radio Tadamon!, a monthly hour-long radio program broadcasted in Montreal and uploaded to the Internet, focuses on commemorating the July 2006 Israeli military assault on Lebanon. The 34-day war left over 1,300 Lebanese civilians dead, large parts of the national infrastructure destroyed and southern Lebanon littered with over a million unexploded cluster bombs.
     The program features multiple testimonies and reflections on the 2006 war on Lebanon recorded at a Montreal community commemoration event that attracted hundreds of participants from the Montreal region.
     Also included in the program is an interview with May Hayder, a Lebanese community organizer in Montreal with Al-Hidaya Association who touches on a number of key issues regarding the current political turmoil in the Middle East, from the history of conflict between Israel and the Arab world, to the impact of the 2006 war on Lebanon on the Lebanese Diaspora in Canada and finally to the designation of Hizballah as a terrorist organization in Canada. more..

Was Arafat HIV-positive?
Danny Rubinstein, Ha’aretz 8/12/2007
     A magnificent mausoleum was built over the grave of Yasser Arafat in the courtyard of the Muqata in Ramallah, but the ghost of the late Palestinian Authority chairman continues to haunt the Palestinian leadership. Last week Arafat’s admirers commemorated the 78th anniversary of his birth, and former aide Bassam Abu Sharif convened a press conference to mark the event. Abu Sharif demanded that former French President Jacques Chirac disclose the cause of Arafat’s death, or, to be more precise, the type of poison that killed him.
     Many Palestinians believe that the Mossad poisoned Arafat. A senior Palestinian official once said he did not understand why Israel did not admit to it. When Israel’s plan to assassinate Saddam Hussein ended in the Tze’elim 2 training accident, nothing was concealed, he said. And when the Mossad agents who attempted to assassinate Khaled Meshal in Amman failed, then, too, Israel accepted responsibility for its actions. In other words, Israel admits its failures, so why is it denying its success in this case?
     Every once in a while, a witness emerges. A few months ago, Ramallah residents reported that Arafat’s dentist died when his immune system collapsed, possibly after coming into contact with poison while treating Arafat. more..

Ramzy Baroud: A Palestinian Miracle at the UN?
Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 8/11/2007
     A few months ago, one would have thought such an event to be simply impossible: A Palestinian delegation, lobbying tirelessly at the UN to block a UN call for helping half of the Palestinian population living in complete isolation.
     For 62 years since the foundation of the United Nations’ Security Council, the Palestinians did not manage to have any kind of sway that would allow them to block or amend a proposed resolution in any meaningful way.
     But miracles do indeed happen, as, for the first time, and after days of intense lobbying, a Palestinian delegation recently killed a draft resolution. Not only this, it also managed to block a presidential statement which is usually made when a resolution is buried, by way of explaining the circumstances behind its rejection.
     But this ’miracle’ has a bizarre twist. The resolution, drafted by Qatar and seconded by Indonesia, was merely expressing concern over the humanitarian disaster intensifying in the Gaza Strip and the deteriorating plight of one and a half million Palestinians dwelling, or more accurately, imprisoned there, lacking all imaginable necessities — electricity, fuel, clean water, food and medicine. more..

Lebanese strike a blow at US-backed government
Robert Fisk, The Independent 8/7/2007
     They’ve done it again. The Arabs have, once more, followed democracy and voted for the wrong man.
     Just as the Palestinians voted for Hamas when they were supposed to vote for the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, so the Christian Maronites of Lebanon appear to have voted for a man opposed to the majority government of Fouad Siniora in Beirut. Camille Khoury - with a strong vote from the Armenian Tashnak party - won by 418 votes the seat that belonged to Pierre Gemayel, murdered last November by gunmen supposedly working for the Syrian security services.
     While the Maronite vote had increased against Gemayel’s showing in 2005 elections, the result was a stunning blow to the American-backed government - how devastating that phrase "American-backed" has now become in the Middle East - in Lebanon and allowed Hizbollah’s ally, ex-General Michel Aoun to claim that "they cannot beat me". Mr Aoun is a candidate in presidential elections later this year.
     True, the voting figures showed huge support for Pierre Gemayel’s father Amin - himself an ex-president- who was standing for the parliamentary seat of his murdered son. Although he was a weak and fractious leader - Amin paid a state visit to Damascus to re-cement "fraternal" ties after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon - he proved himself a brave man in the aftermath of his son’s murder, calling upon Lebanese to support the government rather than submit once more to the domination of Syria. more..

Settlers launch first drive in U.S. to sell homes
Daphna Berman, Ha’aretz 3/3/2007
     A campaign launched this week to convince American Jews to buy homes in the West Bank is the first organized sales effort of its kind, activists from both sides of the political spectrum said.
     Amana, the settlement arm of Gush Emunim, hosted housing fairs in New York and New Jersey this week and plans are underway for similar events in Miami and Chicago.
     Never before have Diaspora Jews been asked to directly underwrite settlement expansion by either buying or financing the building of West Bank homes. But spurred by what they have termed a successful start, Amana has set its sights on Jewish communities throughout the U.S., with hopes of expanding the new and somewhat surprising trend.
     About eight homes in settlements, including Kiryat Arba and Karnei Shomron, were sold this week and dozens of American buyers are "seriously considering" purchasing in the coming weeks, representatives of Amana told AngloFile.
     Ranging in price from $93,000 to $165,000, the homes are to be rented to settlers for $250 to $400 a month and are as being marketed as a way to "leave your thumbprint on the destiny of Israel." The campaign essentially allows Israeli settlers, who will pay the American owners monthly rent, the opportunity to live in homes they would not have been able to afford to buy. more..

The Resort to Indiscriminate Killings
Ghali Hassan, Middle East Online 8/11/2007
     The indiscriminate killings of Iraqi civilians have increased during US massive military assaults in 2006 and 2007, including the recent US ‘surge’, a euphemism for increase in armours and troop numbers. Before each military assault, towns and villages were cut-off, bombed and besieged, and civilians were prevented from leaving their homes.
     “Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them: If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you.” - US President George W. Bush [1].
     To prove the sincerity of his message to the Iraqi people, Bush indiscriminately bombed the al-Nasser market in the al-Shu’la [al-Sholeh] residential area in Baghdad on the morning of March 28, 2003, killing more than 60 innocent civilians and injuring many more. This followed by the “Shock and Awe”, the most murderous form of barbaric terrorism. Thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians were killed every day in one of the most premeditated and unprovoked acts of aggression in history. Why the US is resorting to indiscriminate killings of Iraqi civilians?
     Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire in the US documents in details the March 2003 wanton destruction of Iraq, mass murder of innocent civilians and acts of terrorism committed by the Anglo-American fascist forces against the Iraqi population [2]. Except for the building of the Iraqi Oil Ministry, the Iraqi State was destroyed and the complete looting and burning of the capital Baghdad was rightly described by many people as an “Iraqi Holocaust”.
     The atrocity in Iraq exposed the reality of Western “progressives” and their “anti-war” movements. Once the atrocity began, Western moral conscience evaporated. The so-called “Second Superpower” to counter US terror, fell silent and melted away like snow under the summer sun. The new fabricated pretext to justify the silence is Saddam Hussein (and his alleged crimes). Saddam provides a “compass” to normalise and justify greater and more horrendous crimes by the invading forces. more..

No to evacuation
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 8/11/2007
     The Yahalom and Bar Kochba families must be returned without delay to their homes in the wholesale marketplace from which they were expelled. The Israel Defense Forces must immediately reconnect their electricity and water and ensure their safety, day and night, as it does for all the settlers in the city. In return the Yahaloms and Bar Kochbas will serve the soldiers coffee and cookies, and kugel for Shabbat, as they always do.
     We must also apologize to the families for expelling them: They should not have been discriminated against in comparison with the city’s other settlers. There is no difference between their act of robbery and the other acts of robbery in the city. Bar Kochba and Yahalom stole property that was stolen long ago; the store owners on whose property they squatted have not seen their shops for years and will not get them back now, so there is no reason to complain about the squatters’ behavior. That’s what everyone does in Hebron.
     It would also have been better had the self-righteous evacuation performance, which incorporated a very large force, 3,000 soldiers and policemen, never taken place - including the staged acts of refusal and violence that are a hallmark of the well-timed show. These absurd acts of evacuation don’t help anyone, they only cause damage. In Hebron there should be one rule: all or nothing. Either the government has the courage to uproot the entire abscess, or it should allow it to grow unabated. more..

Even the spin has become tired
Doron Rosenblum, Ha’aretz 8/11/2007
     In one of Federico Fellini’s films, the young hero falls ill and, hallucinating and feverish, begins to speak dramatically, swearing and promising great things. His good mother sits next to him, nursing him and calming him with nods of agreement, without taking a single word of his seriously: "Yes, yes," she repeats.
     That is more or less how the public has been receiving Ehud Olmert’s words. After his meeting with Abbas, he said he is ready - only ready? really yearning! - to establish a Palestinian state as quickly as possible. The promises of his interlocutor are not even worth mentioning. Yes, yes: There will be peace, there will be a Palestinian state soon, the Palestinian gangs will be dismantled, the settlements will be removed, there are agreements and there will be meetings. Yeah, sure: The same government that cannot move a stone in an outpost will give the Palestinians "100 percent of the area of the West Bank." Even 200 percent. Yes, yes.
     A long time ago - last year - those same declarations, which are now being received with a weary nod and half a yawn, could make the public jump, send it into the streets, and ignite debates. But now? Nobody would care if Olmert and Abbas were to announce that they had given birth to twins and were handing over Jerusalem to the Pope. more..

No laughing matter
Ray Hanania, Middle East Online 8/11/2007
     We went on with our shows reminding audiences that the terrorists and extremists do not speak for the majority of Palestinians or Israelis. We can have compromise and peace if we stop demonising each other; the best way to do that is through humour. And that’s no joke.
     CHICAGO – In the post Sept. 11th world, I learned several things.
     It is easier to hate a stranger than to hate someone you know. And, anger often appears as "hate" when coupled with excessive fear and lack of knowledge.
     There is a rising sense of hatred, of "anger gone wild" in America against Arabs and Muslims because of Sept. 11. And there seems to be a growing resignation among Palestinians and Israelis that peace and compromise are no longer possible.
     Peace and compromise are always possible. What has changed, though, is attitude. People are discouraged by the unending violence, the failure of the peace process, and the increased negative rhetoric and speech.
     Do we just stand by and allow extremists to control us? Or do we take unorthodox steps to remind everyone that we are both human beings and that peace and compromise are in fact the only alternatives to the conflict and violence? more..

Gaza: The Auschwitz of our time
Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem, Palestinian Information Center 8/9/2007
     In 1940, several months after invading Poland in September 1939, the Nazis forced about 500,000 Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto, surrounding it with a high wall. Tens of thousands died from hunger and disease. Eventually, 300,000 were sent to death camps, mainly Treblinka in eastern Poland.
     Similarly, Israel is now incarcerating nearly a million and a half helpless Palestinians in the Gaza Strip into a hell similar in nature to the Warsaw Ghetto. The Gaza concentration camp is not only fitted with a wall, but also with every conceivable tool of repression, such as electric fences and watch towers manned by Gestapo-like trigger-happy Jewish soldiers who shoot first and ask questions later.
     Moreover, thousands of Israeli soldiers, are surrounding Gaza in a hermetic manner, shooting and killing any Palestinian trying to escape, e.g. enter Israel to search for work or even food.
     Palestinian kids survive on bread and tea
     Even Palestinian kids playing soccer near the hateful fences, are routinely riddled with bullets or reduced into pieces of human flesh by the "most moral army in the world."
     As a result of these genocidal designs, Gazans in the thousands are dying of malnutrition and illness resulting from anemia. Moreover, Children in great numbers are surviving on a meager and totally inadequate diet consisting mainly of bread and tea. more..

An Interview with Hedy Epstein
Silvia Cattori blog 6/14/2007
     Hedy Epstein, 82, was born in Freiburg, Germany, in 1924 (*) and lived in Kippenheim, a village located approximately 30 km north of Freiburg. She was the only child of parents who died in the Nazi extermination camps. She is a tireless worker for human rights and for the dignity of all people. Hedy decided to visit Palestine in 2003. She returned terribly shocked with what she had seen there, women and children defenceless, Palestinians locked up into ghettos, an entire people brutalized.
     She had learned to love the people that she met, and was determined to tell the world of the injustices she had seen. Palestinians were being dispossessed of their land,removed from the homes that they had lived in for centuries. Nothing that anyone has done, no protests that have been made, has made Israel stop its treatment of the Palestinians. In fact, it has become worse every time Hedy has returned.So, she is joining other human rights advocates who are sailing to Gaza on the boat, FREE GAZA [1] to demand justice for the Palestinians, and a correction of 60 years of oppression by the Israelis.
     Silvia Cattori: Your entire life has been devoted to justice. But, since 2003, you have increased that commitment by advocating for justice for the Palestinians. I understand you are going to take some risks to make the world aware of the crimes perpetrated against them!?
     Hedy Epstein: I was invited to join the Free Gaza boat by the organizers, and I feel honoured that I was invited to join [2] more..

Inside Gaza: Redemption Games
Kevin Peraino, MIFTAH 8/10/2007
     At the Game Zone video arcade in Gaza City, the most popular new attraction, according to its owner, Hamdi Abu Sido, is the "redemption machine." Winning involves using a joystick to successfully direct a mechanical puppet on a surf board—the "Shark Hunter"—to wave-riding glory. If you win, the machine spits out a string of white tickets printed with the word WONDERFUL that can be redeemed at the counter for prizes. Game Zone is one of the few places that wealthier Gazan families can bring their kids for a break from the seemingly endless conflict of their region. The only time things get tense at the arcade is when the power flickers off—as it does several times a week—prematurely restarting the electronics. If you’ve ever flipped the switch on a kid in the middle of a video game, you know what kind of rage that can spawn. Abu Sido just shrugs. "This is Gaza," he says, chuckling.
     On a recent night I sat at a table at the Game Zone with Mona and Ibrahim Shawan, both of whom work at Gaza’s Palestinian Center for Human Rights. "There was another one killed," Mona told me, as her 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old twin boys ran around the place beaming and collecting strings of tickets. Mona was referring to another honor killing; even after the stir caused by the murder of the three Juha sisters a week ago, the trend was continuing, she said. Mona nodded at her kids across the room. "They don’t understand what’s happening," she said. "We just try to give them a normal life." The Shawans have been planning to take their kids to Cairo for two summers straight now, but their trips always seem to get cancelled. Last summer it was war with Israel, this year it’s because the Hamas takeover of Gaza has left the border crossings still locked shut for most residents. "People are really depressed," added Mona’s husband, Ibrahim, pointing out that the Game Zone is their palliative. "Even in jail you have something to do for fun—ping-pong or something. That’s the same thing we’re doing here. We’re trying to escape." more..

Mahmoud Abbas’ war against the Palestinian people
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 10 August 2007, Electronic Intifada 8/10/2007
     "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was apparently more delighted by the banquetprepared for him by the wife of Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat than he was with meeting President Mahmoud Abbas in Jericho the day before yesterday," the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir reported on its website on 8 August, citing Israel’s Channel 10 television station.
     Channel 10’s correspondent spoke of the "hospitality and warmth" that marked Abbas’ reception of Olmert and his delegation, noting that "Erekat’s wife insisted on personally preparing and serving" the banquet. Olmert, the report added, "was unable to conceal his delight and appetite for the rich food and for the hospitality and generosity" the Israelis received from their Palestinian hosts.
     Behind all the theater, the results of the meeting were as meagre as can be expected. Olmert publicly affirmed his commitment to the "two-state solution," while spokesmen briefed the press that Israel was not ready to discuss any fundamental issues, such as borders, halting colonial settlements, or the rights of refugees. The exercise was aimed at maintaining the fiction of a "peace process" from which Abbas will supposedly one day be able to deliver results. more..

Even Comatose, Israel’s Sharon Casts a Long Shadow
Christoph Schult, MIFTAH 8/9/2007
     Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been lying in a coma for more than a year and a half now, but his sons have not given up hope that he will recover. Political camps haven’t given up claiming his support for their sides.
     Sheba Hospital on the outskirts of Tel Aviv looks like a small, self-contained city. Eight-hundred-and-fifty doctors and 2,000 nurses work on a campus the size of 80 football fields. The rehab center is located in the eastern section of the complex, and the respiration rehabilitation department is on the building’s first floor.
     Two nurses are busy with paperwork at a reception desk and behind them, the doors to the hospital rooms in the short hallway are all open, except the last one. There is neither number nor name on this door, but two powerful-looking young men in civilian clothes seated on either side of it look very warily at anyone who comes within four meters of the room.
     The men are with Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, and they’re guarding the country’s most famous patient, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. More than a year and a half ago, the then-prime minister, 77 at the time, had a stroke and went into a coma after surgery. more..

From "Manifest Destiny" to the "End of History"
Roger H. Lieberman, Palestine Chronicle 8/9/2007
     The responsible patriot has a moral obligation to rescue the libertarian vision of America’s Founding Fathers from the small-minded ideologues who wish to permanently impress upon the world our image as an empire of violence and hypocrisy.
     Sixty-two years ago this week, the most destructive terrorist bombings in world history took place. On August 6, 1945, the United States Air Force dropped a 15-kiloton atom bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, and three days later proceeded to devastate the port of Nagasaki with a similar weapon. By current estimates, 140,000 men, women, and children in Hiroshima, and nearly 80,000 in Nagasaki, perished in the immediate explosions, and in the ensuing months and years from radiation poisoning.
     These horrible acts of political violence illustrate in somber colors the power of a military-industrial complex to pervert the academic pursuit of science for destructive ends. The advent of nuclear weaponry ushered in an age of almost unfathomable danger for humanity, from which we have yet to emerge. The revelations of early 20th Century physicists, harnessed to the mass-production of missiles and bombs, have provided the leaders of powerful nations with the means to turn man’s most nightmarish myths into self-fulfilling prophecies. more..

Empty-Hearted Secularism
Azmi Bishara, Palestine Chronicle 8/9/2007
     False oppositions and machinations are rife in the Arab world, where secularism has become a corrupted political fashion.
     Modern Turkey has never experienced as extended a period of stability and economic growth as it has under the last government. This government was led by the Justice and Development Party, which just scored another major electoral triumph in the Turkish general elections. In its victory speeches, the Islamist party pledged to safeguard the constitution of Turkey’s secular republic. As I recall, in the trial over the murder of the Egyptian writer Farag Fouda, some mainstream members of the Muslim Brotherhood testified on the behalf of the accused that the killers had been rightfully motivated by religious zeal, because the secularism that Fouda advocated was heresy. What a striking difference! One Islamist party swears to uphold the state’s secularist system while another rules that secularism is anathema and justifiable grounds for murder. Not that this kept mainstream Islamist movements from jubilation, in turn, over the victory of a party whose position on secularism they would roundly condemn if that party had declared it openly in their own countries.
     The Justice and Development Party is far from a leftist or liberal democratic party. But it has certainly governed Turkey better than any other Turkish party that I know of, leftist, liberal, republican or otherwise. Even so, it did not have any easy ride. At one point it had to dissolve and change its name. More recently, it was the victim of a massive hate campaign waged by the left and right in concert in the name of secularism. more..

Play on Corrie Takes the US by Storm
George S. Hishmeh, MIFTAH 8/10/2007
     She is described as "the most talked about playwright in America today" but because she had cast her dice in support of the Palestinians her play, My Name is Rachel Corrie, is the target of vicious attacks by pro-Israeli elements in the country.
     Corrie did not actually write the play. She couldn’t because she was crushed to death in March 2003 while blocking a 60-tonne Israeli-driven Caterpillar bulldozer that was planning to demolish a Palestinian home she was protecting in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
     The bulldozer passed over her body twice and the Israeli authorities unabashedly claimed that her death was an "accident". Her colleagues in the International Solidarity Movement witnessed the incident and were able to retrieve her badly damaged body. The State Department has said that the investigation was neither transparent nor credible.
     British actor/director Alan Rickman and journalist Katherine Viner (of The Guardian) composed the 90-minute monologue from Corrie’s letters home, e-mails and journal entries while living in the Gaza Strip with a Palestinian family. more..

A historian’s joy
Tom Segev, Ha’aretz 8/9/2007
     When people in Damascus at the end of the 19th century talked about the "Jewish Quarter," they meant the prostitutes’ quarter. The women were called "poets," "players" (as in people who played instruments) or "chanteuses" - and they were all real Jews, between 150 and 200 in number. Non-Jewish prostitutes came to the quarter, too, because they were expelled from other neighborhoods. Prostitution begat crime: "The Jewish Quarter was infested with pimps, drunks, thieves, murders and ordinary thugs," historian Yaron Harel, from Bar-Ilan University, writes in a new book. In the parlance of the time, they were referred to as "brawlers and lovers of scandal."
     The sexual permissiveness among the Jews of Damascus was not confined only to the margins of society: Harel places it within the general atmosphere of what seemed to be the new secularity, which is at the center of the community politics he reconstructs - 170 years of plots and intrigues, chicanery, a lust for dominance, power struggles, corruption, perjury, mutual slander and political hooliganism.
     One of the major scandals took place in the city of Aleppo, the biblical Aram Soba, in northern Syria. In August 1862, the British consul-general in the city reported to his queen that one of the most important rabbis was trying, incredibly, to found a Reform congregation. This was the hakham (great Torah scholar) Raphael Kassin. more..

The United States and ‘Regime Change’ in Iran
Stephen Zunes, Middle East Online 8/9/2007
     Despite claims by the Bush administration that the United States has always supported ‘liberty’ and ‘democracy’ in Iran, the history of US-Iranian relations during both Republican and Democratic administrations has demonstrated very little support for a democratic Iran.
     Though the Bush administration has repeatedly emphasized its desire for democratization and regime change in Iran, there are serious questions regarding how it might try to bring this about. There is, however, little question about the goal of toppling the Islamist government, with the Bush administration threatening war, arming ethnic minorities, and funding opposition groups.
     These efforts come in spite of the 1981 Algiers Accords, which led to the release of American hostages seized from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, in which the United States pledged to never again attempt to overthrow the Iranian government. The failure of the United States to honor this signed bilateral agreement has contributed to the Iranians’ lack of trust in the U.S. government and overall anti-American sentiment in that country. more..

When Olmert and Abbas shake hands
Nora Barrows-Friedman writing from Deheisheh refugee camp, occupied Palestine, Electronic Intifada 8/10/2007
     On Monday, Israeli occupation Authority Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and occupied Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas once again met and shook hands, each promising respective constituents that a so-called "peaceful solution" is near. Olmert "agreed" that cooperation between Israel and the PA will expand, something that is not lost on the millions of occupied Palestinians who continue to suffer each day as many other things expand beneath their feet -- the settlement colonies, the apartheid wall, the egregious acts of violence and oppression enacted by the Israeli occupation military.
     What does an expansion of cooperation between the PA and Israel mean when the prisons of the foreign occupier, the nuclear state, are filled to the brim with Palestinian political prisoners, as many as 12,000 people who are tortured and broken and humiliated? An expansion of cooperation comes with Abbas’ capitulation to Olmert’s designs of an ethno-centric state for Jews only, whose second-in-command, Avigdor Lieberman, is an unashamed proponent of ethnic cleansing from Moldovia who consistently demands that all Arabs be "transfered" or wiped out. An expansion of cooperation is called for as Mahmoud Abbas’ private militia continues to beg Israel for arms and power moves against the democratically-elected Hamas party, like a kid asking a rich man for a few pennies to buy candy. more..

The Catch in Israel’s ‘Generous Offers’ at Jericho
Jeff Halper, Palestine Chronicle 8/9/2007
     It would be extremely helpful if the Palestinian Authority would raise publicly its concerns over the issues of sovereignty and viability instead of giving Olmert an uncontested field in which he can make initiatives and produce PR spin.
     On paper, the headlines sound promising, even stirring. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas at their meeting in Jericho that he would push for the establishment of a Palestinian state as "fast as possible" on "the equivalent to 100 percent of the territories conquered in 1967." The Palestinians, according to the report, would cede just 5% of the West Bank in return for territorial swaps. In other words, Israel would withdraw from 95.6 % of the combined West Bank and Gaza -- although whether Olmert includes East Jerusalem in this calculation is unknown.
     It looks like another "generous offer," one the Palestinians could not possibly refuse. "The aim is to achieve US President George Bush’s vision of two countries for two peoples, living in security and peace side by side" based on the road map, Olmert said, adding "We want to achieve this as soon as possible." more..

Something that burns the heart
Aviva Lori, Ha’aretz 8/9/2007
     The home of Samaher and Salman Abu Jlidan is easy enough to find. Deep in the Negev desert, a little past the Midreshet Sde Boker school, on one of the turns in the road leading to Mitzpeh Ramon, stands a large green garbage bin. Hidden behind it is a dirt road that leads to the Bedouin homes. Five children on one bicycle in the middle of the desert, one riding piggyback and two in front and two in back. They seem to float in the air between the tents and the corrugated tin huts, the goats and the chickens, above the parched yellow earth. The "house" is a large tent with four openings for air. On the floor is a faded carpet and colorful cushions, and at the center is the traditional finjan for cooking coffee. "This is our living room," Salman says, "it is for the guests." The living room, and the attached family room, are part of an "estate" that also includes a permanent structure, in an "unrecognized" Bedouin village called both "Ramat Tziporim" ("bird heights") and also "Har Boker" ("morning hill"). A few weeks ago, the Tel Aviv Cinematheque screened a documentary film about the Bedouin living in the unrecognized villages in the Negev. Entitled "Recognized," the film was made by Ori Kleiner, an M.A. student at Hunter College in New York. Kleiner, 35, who has lived in New York since 1993, has studied the relations between Israel and its Bedouin citizens. The film’s protagonists were invited to the screening, which was followed by a discussion in the hall.
     Samaher Abu Jlidan listened quietly to the discussion, until a young woman in the audience questioned the Bedouins’ demand to receive from the state what its Jewish citizens get, electricity in their homes, for example, which would make it possible to run a computer. Abu Jlidan asked for the floor, and delivered a remarkable extemporaneous speech in fluent Hebrew ("No one taught me Hebrew; I learned from life"). The hall fell silent when Abu Jlidan, a very comely woman, her face covered with a veil ("Not because of religion, but because there are men here - that is our custom") and holding a 6-month-old baby on her knees, invited her fellow audience members to visit her home and see for themselves the conditions in which she and her family live. more..

’You have no future in this country’
Daniel Ben Simon, Ha’aretz 8/10/2007
     At the height of the fury and the humiliation, the children of Hebron wandered around among the men in uniform, trying to figure out who was Jewish and who was not - who is from "our" seed, and who is from the seed of Amalek. At a time when most Israeli children were spending their summer vacation at day camps and on trips, splashing in the sea and in swimming pools, the children of the Hebron day camp looked as though they lived on another planet. Glowering with hatred, with huge skullcaps and long curly earlocks, children age 10 and younger walked among the men in uniform and examined their dog tags.
     Anyone whose non-Jewishness was discovered received the appropriate treatment: The wild, bleary-eyed little ones mercilessly hurled curses and insults at them. They are mere children and already experts in racial theory. Every possible epithet was hurled at the soldiers, but they, perhaps on orders from above, were silent as though catatonic. Their faces showed no emotion.
     "If someone comes to kill you, kill him first!" shouted one of the children at a Border Policeman with a non-Jewish name [both Russian and Ethiopian immigrants and Druze were among the security units present], moments after the evacuation of the families from the market began on Tuesday. The youngster brought his face close to that of the soldier until they were almost touching. "It says in the Torah that I have to kill you. You are from the seed of Amalek ... You are a goy [gentile] and you are not allowed to tread on this holy ground. Get out of here, you and your friends!" more..

Hypocrisy in Hebron
Benny Ziffer, Ha’aretz 8/9/2007
     The infamous enthusiasm of the citizens of ancient Rome for watching human beings being devoured by wild animals did not disappear with the fall of the Roman Empire, but only takes on different guises in various places, depending on the taste of the audience. The masses are always in need of loathsome entertainment of this kind, where two unequal forces conduct a duel in which the weaker side has no chance of winning, but whose desperate struggle itself arouses emotions.
     The evacuation on Tuesday of the Jewish families who had squatted in the wholesale market in Hebron was a popular television entertainment of this type: One could almost say that it was designed exclusively for television, and had the squatters not squatted where they did, such an invasion would almost have to be invented, to allow for some violent spectacle, as part of the festivities of the ascent of the new emperor, Ehud Barak, to the throne of the Defense Ministry.
     I am far from justifying the Jewish settlement in Hebron and the daily injustice that is caused there to the Arab residents of the city by the Jewish extremists. But it’s a far cry from that to the presentation of these bearded men with the flashing eyes and their headscarf-wearing wives as a serious or dangerous force. After all, anyone who has visited there knows that the settlement in Hebron is mainly a curiosity, a kind of nature preserve of extremism, which is entirely dependent on the good will of the security forces that protect it and terrify the Palestinians. Without the Israel Defense Forces the settlers would not last there for even a day.
     ....And nobody had the courage to tell the truth, that the IDF, on the instructions of the politicians, is playing a double and hypocritical game here: One hand holds the dagger and waves it for the purpose of propaganda against the monster called the Jewish settlement in Hebron, and another hand caresses the behind of that very same monster, for internal purposes. more..

Twighlight Zone / ’The terrorist was neutralized’
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 8/9/2007
     The taxi to Bethlehem was delayed, and Jihad stood at the dusty taxi stand and waited. He was on his way to the Open University in Bethlehem, to register for the upcoming school year. His father says that he hadn’t decided what he wanted to study. Maybe that’s what he was thinking about while he stood at the stand, exposed to the burning sun.
     And what was going through the heads of the soldiers who beat him mercilessly, with a club, with the butt of a rifle and with kicks to his head, so that he died? Is it possible that he tried to attack them with a knife, even though two eyewitnesses didn’t see it? Even if he did, why did the soldiers continue to beat him, even after he lay on the ground, unconscious and perhaps bound as well, as an eyewitness told us? And what kind of monstrous behavior is it to handcuff the bereaved father, and then leave him on the ground, in front of the body of his beaten and dying son? Above all, why did the Israel Defense Forces rush to dismiss this grave incident, "after an initial investigation," during which nobody interrogated the eyewitnesses, with the conclusion, "the soldiers acted properly"? more..

European hypocrisy
Saifedean Ammous, Electronic Intifada 8/9/2007
     While in Paris a few weeks ago, whenever I would discuss Middle East politics with anyone, I would be overwhelmed with the traditional refrains of classical anti-Americanism: "they have no culture and deal with the world as if it had no culture," "they have no morality in their foreign policy," "they go to war for oil and money" and so on with inane over-simplified stereotypes. Soon after would come the cackle of self-righteous pride: "we Europeans are different," "we want our foreign policy based on a concept of morality," "we attempt to promote justice in the world and fix up the mess left behind by the Americans." I would then usually be told something about all the aid that Europeans give to Palestinians as proof of the decency of Europeans as opposed to the rabidly Zionist Americans who give billions to fund Israel’s murderous army.
     Would that this were true.
     Europe’s policy with regard to Palestine/Israel is so racist, short-sighted, counter-productive and hypocritical that it could almost pass for American policy. more..

Who governs?
Zeev Sternhell, Ha’aretz 8/9/2007
     Ever since Niccolo Machiavelli first waved the banner of politics’ autonomy in the early 16th century, many people have perceived politics as an arena "liberated" from morality’s accepted norms. However, with political life’s gradual democratization in Western countries and politics’ transformation into a matter for society at large, demands have grown that the use of political force be judged in accordance with moral values. An additional demand has thus emerged for a sharp distinction between truth and falsehood, and this distinction has become a hallmark of the health of a democratic system.
     A regime where the concepts of truth and falsehood have become blurred is generally considered a form of government whose democratic character is steadily eroding. The fundamental issue in democracy is, naturally: Who governs?
     In Israel today, immense power is concentrated in the hands of a few corporations, controversial billionaires and well-connected lawyers, rather than with the Knesset. And most Knesset members, supposedly "the people’s representatives," are not elected in any kind of primary, but are appointed by party chiefs and are dependent on them. more..

Both are Wrong
Jihad el-Khazen, MIFTAH 8/9/2007
     The present situation in the Palestinian territories has placed me in a position of objection par excellence as I oppose everything that is taking place in Palestinian politics today.
     I object to the Hamas-staged coup in the Gaza Strip, as I object more to the attempts at isolating this faction. I object the two governments of Ismail Hanyia and Salam Fayad until they reach an agreement. I object to the corruption of Fatah and then I object to the intimacy prevailing in the meeting of Abou Mazen and Ehud Olmert.
     Since I am not a party and I can be more objective than the supporters of this or that party, I find that both parties are wrong. Hamas will not be able to monopolize power and the authorities, in order to preserve their national feature, must not attempt at isolating Hamas and will not succeed in doing so. Then, I do not want Ismail Hanyia to become the first Prime Minister coming from Hamas ranks and the last prime minister. Nor do I want Salam Fayad to fail after he had been the best minister and the most successful minister in consecutive Palestinian governments. more..

Change on Iraq? Ask the Israelis
Shmuel Rosner, Ha’aretz 8/10/2007
     Hoyer added that he attaches great importance to the Israeli point of view. To this end, he will ask Defense Minister Ehud Barak and several Israeli generals about their opinions on the possible implications of a change in Iraq. There are quite a few Democratic congressmen - including possible candidates for the presidency, such as Hillary Clinton - who are not enthusiastic about a speedy withdrawal. Yet they express this opinion, which is less popular among the voters, with a great deal of caution, so as not to jeopardize their chances in the upcoming primary.
     WASHINGTON - This week the temperatures in Washington soared to 38 degrees Centigrade and the humidity reached 70 percent. Just the right time to flee the capital, first back home - every congressman to his or her state and constituency - and then abroad. For example, to Israel’s shores, which are so well known for their cool temperatures in mid-summer. More than 20 Republican congressmen finished this kind of trip this week, and some 20 Democrats will leave for Israel the day after tomorrow.
     Steny Hoyer is the leader of the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, No. 2 in the hierarchy of the house and one of the leading congressmen in the United States. He is one of the senior members of this Democratic delegation. Hoyer is from Maryland, and this is his third trip to Israel as a senior legislator and his "eighth or ninth" altogether, he says. He first visited Israel in 1976.
     A visit of 40 congressmen in Israel within the space of two weeks is no small feat, but Hoyer, speaking on Wednesday morning, insists that a tour of this kind is of "crucial importance" for them. Israel, he reminds all those who have forgotten, is "our most important ally and friend," and its friends have to understand the challenges it faces from up close. more..

Between the Lines - Book Review
Jim Miles, Palestine Chronicle 8/9/2007
     Along with other authors who have developed similar themes (Ilan Pappe, Ramzy Baroud, Tanya Reinhart, Jonathan Cook, Mishal and Sela) this story expands the library of information and consciousness concerning the occupation and ethnic cleansing that is the story of Palestine.
     Between the Lines -- Readings on Israel, The Palestinians, and the U.S. "War on Terror". Edited by Tikva Honig-Parnass and Toufi Haddad.Haymarket Books, Chicago, Ill., 2007.
     This work is a powerful compilation of articles relating the story of the al-Aqsa Intifada, tying it into a broader world vision of the Middle East and American Empire. That serves as the main theme for the book, "the continuation of the Zionist colonial project, which has aspired to’control all of historic Palestine with the full backing of U.S. imperialism."Expressed similarly from another angle, "Israel plays a key role in enforcing U.S. imperial strategy regionally and internationally, particularly subsumed beneath the "war on terror." It is essentially a partnership, not Israel controlling Congress, or the U.S. manipulating Israel, but a more cooperative partnership, perhaps not of equals of power in a military-economic sense, but certainly equals of ideology. more..

Muslims and Jews
Eric Walberg and Youssef Rakha, Al-Ahram Weekly 8/15/2007
     Israel, America and the Muslim world: Eric Walberg takes a hard look at the reasons behind the crisis, arguing from the viewpoint of the history of religion, while Youssef Rakha plays the devil’s -- Enlightenment -- advocate. They argue against contemporary Jews and Muslims, respectively, but end up reaching the same conclusion.
     Critiques of Israel as the cause of the Middle East crisis and of the Jewish lobby propping it up and censoring debate are now a dime a dozen. In "The closing of the Jewish mind" (Al-Ahram Weekly 1/8/7), for example, Egyptian-US intellectual Issa Khalaf points to the "profound indifference of the American Zionists, the Dershowitz-like triumphalism, Jewish political tribalism whose roots extend deep into the past", but can only suggest that Zionist Jews and Israelis should "refrain from killing". As the Arabic saying goes, the dogs bark but the caravan moves on. Extremist Zionist rabbis continue to "visit" Al-Aqsa Mosque, hoping to provoke war and the destruction of one of Islam’s most sacred sites, preaching hatred of Muslims and the non-Jewish world; and all we can say is "Please refrain from killing"?!
     It has long been fashionable in popular discourse to criticise Islam as reactionary and the supposed source of terrorism through its doctrine of Jihad. What’s left of Christianity -- gay ministers or Rapture-ready millenniarists -- is mostly the object of disdain and the butt of off-colour jokes. Yes, Islam has been unique in holding to its traditions, established 15 centuries ago and still vibrant, despite the incessant pressures of modern society. It rejected the transformation in thinking that led to the Western explosion of technology that led, in turn, to capitalism and imperialism, and is roundly dismissed as having "missed the boat" as a result. Now the countries to which the Muslim world has given way are subjecting it to incessant lectures from all sides to hurry up and become "liberal democratic states" and "join the West"... more..

Francis Boyle: Destroying Democracy in Palestine
Francis Boyle, Palestine Chronicle 8/8/2007
     When the Palestinians democratically elected a government that the Neo-Conservatives in the Bush Jr. administration and their Kadima/Likudnik confederates in Israel did not prefer, they jointly did everything humanly possible to destroy it.
     The belligerent Bush Jr. administration’s policies against the state of Palestine in order to depose its democratically- elected government by organizing an internal coup d’état in Gaza by means of Palestinian surrogates under the command of General Mohamed Dahlanprovide yet another compelling reason why it is too dangerous for world peace to keep these Neo-Conservatives in power any longer.
     If there had ever been any doubt about it, the Bush Jr. administration’s aggression against Palestine ’s democratically-elected government proved that their alleged program of "democratization" for the Arab and Muslim world was a joke and a fraud to begin with. To be sure, Article 21(3) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which constitutes customary international law, expressly provides: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures." more..

A Palestinian View - Elections one Way out of Impasse
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi, by bitterlemons, MIFTAH 8/8/2007
     bitterlemons: President Mahmoud Abbas has called for early elections. Do you support the idea of early elections?
     Ashrawi: I support the idea of elections. I think elections are an absolutely necessary instrument of democracy and therefore the only way to settle disputes and allow the public to elect representatives and hold their representatives accountable. Elections are an essential tool for the creation of a responsible system of good governance.
     On the issue of early elections, clearly the situation in Palestine is one of tremendous crisis in which we have reached an impasse. Elections are a positive way out rather than resorting to violence. Going back to the public is much more constructive than attempting to resolve things by a show of force and confrontation.
     The timing is essential of course, because if you do have elections at a time in which the conditions are extremely volatile or in which you have a lack of consensus, or you have one party, regardless of how big or small, refusing to participate, then that can easily destroy the process itself and its credibility. more..

Fatah: The ’Moderate’ Alternative?
Caelum Moffatt, MIFTAH 8/8/2007
     Recently, President Mahmoud Abbas urged the PLO Central Council to support his decision to call early elections. The usually composed Fatah leader showed signs of agitation in his address, directing his words towards his rivals Hamas, the victors of the bloody battle for Gaza over a month ago.
     ‘We will not wait for approval from those sitting over there in Gaza or from those sitting abroad…Hamas dug their own grave with their own nails as a result of the crimes they carried out in Gaza.’
     While Hamas controls the Gaza Strip under the self proclaimed authority of deposed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, the Fatah dominated West Bank is currently administered by new Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, appointed by Abbas and supported by Western leaders. Following the collapse of the unity government after the battle in Gaza between Fatah and Hamas, the two state solution has now taken on a new meaning. Seeking a solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict was proving a difficult task within itself but now Palestine must resolve divisions within their own people before they can even contemplate resuming means to ensure an independent sovereign state. more..

Touring Israel’s Barrier with its Main Designer
Scott Wilson, MIFTAH 8/8/2007
     From his stone balcony, Dan Tirza looks out over a rippling expanse of Judean desert, the biblical landscape of the Jewish people. A student of that history, the retired army colonel is a leading actor in Israel’s modern story of statehood, conquest and the volatile task of erecting a boundary that divides Arab from Jew.
     Soon Israel’s $2.5 billion separation barrier will rise around Tirza’s settlement, where 350 Jewish families live among palms, playgrounds and a synagogue 10 miles inside the West Bank.
     The Israeli government says it is building the 456-mile barrier to protect its citizens from Palestinian attacks and not to establish a border. But the route does not follow the boundary defined when Israel emerged as a modern state in the late 1940s, drawing complaints from Palestinians that the barrier’s path is designed to seize land and dictate the terms of a future peace deal.
     Tirza’s settlement is among dozens of hilltop redoubts that Israel has built over the past generation, creating a mosaic of Jewish communities in the Palestinian territories. When the barrier is complete here, it will place on Israel’s side nearly 25 square miles of the West Bank, the proposed heartland of a future Palestinian state. more..

Four Circles of Lebanese Christian Political Symbolism
Rami Khouri, Middle East Online 8/8/2007
     The Christians of Lebanon are now severely split and polarized politically, and their behavior will affect the three other concentric ideological battles underway in Lebanon, the Middle East, and globally.
     BEIRUT -- Lebanon and its politics have always been at once provincial and cosmic, both local and global. Last week’s bye-election in one predominantly Christian district confirmed this once again. The flood of analyses, opinions and predictions concerning the election result has been -- like most things political in Lebanon -- dazzling in its intensity but either fleeting or imprecise in its consequences.
     The election results are important, though, for several reasons, both provincial and cosmic. This was a play within a play within a play within a play, with four distinct levels of symbolism at stake. First is the balance of power among Lebanese Christian leaders in the traditional Maronite mountain heartland; second, the balance of power between the Fouad Siniora government and the Hizbullah-led opposition, who are stuck in a devastating stalemate that has crippled the government and threatens to suffocate the economy; third, the relative strengths of Syrian friends and opponents in Lebanon and the Middle East, given the continued tensions that define Syria’s lingering posture in Lebanon and the intense resistance to it by many Christians and other Lebanese; and, fourth, the state of Arab popular support on both sides of the American- and Iranian-led ideological contest that defines much of the Middle East today. more..

Data-Mining US Liberties
Aziz Huq, Middle East Online 8/8/2007
     Despite blistering criticism of its warrantless surveillance program, the Bush Administration rammed a law through Congress that authorizes spying on US calls and e-mails.
     After enduring weeks of blistering criticism for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s inartful elisions about the National Security Agency (NSA) spying activities, the Bush Administration has successfully forced on Congress a law that largely authorizes open-ended surveillance of Americans’ overseas phone calls and e-mails. How did they do it?
     The Protect America Act of 2007 -- the title alone ought to be warning that unsavory motives are at work -- is the most recent example of the national security waltz, a three-step Administration maneuver for taking defeat and turning it into victory.
     The waltz starts with a defeat in the courts for Administration actions -- for example, the Supreme Court’s extension of the rule of law to the US military prison at Guantánamo in the 2004 case of Rasul v. Bush, or its striking down of the military commissions in 2006 in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The second step does not follow immediately. Rather, some months later, the Administration suddenly announces that the ruling has created a security crisis and cries out for urgent remedial legislation. Then (and here’s the coup de gr"ce) the Administration rams legislation through Congress -- the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, or the Military Commissions Act of 2006 -- that not only undoes the good court decision but also inflicts substantial damage to the infrastructure of accountability. more..

Missile interception system to be launched in 18 months
Ha’aretz 8/8/2007
     Israel’s short-range rocket-based missile interception system will become operational in 18 months, officials at Rafael, the national authority for the development of weapons and military technology, told Haaretz yesterday. A future pullout from the West Bank could be hinged on the system’s deployment. Yesterday, Haaretz reported that Defense Minister Ehud Barak is insisting on commissioning an operational Iron Dome system as a prerequisite for an Israeli pullout from the West Bank. Barak is insisting on a dependable means of protection for Israeli settlements from the threat of Palestinian ballistic capabilities, like the Qassam rockets which Gaza militants have been firing at the northern Negev for the past five years.
     The Iron Dome system will use the Israel Defense Forces’ early warning radar system to identify short-range missiles and rockets in flight. In addition to Qassam rockets, Iron Dome is meant to protect against Hezbollah and Syria’s Katyusha rockets. After the launch is confirmed, Iron Dome will locate the speeding rocket through a dedicated radar developed by Elta Systems, a group and subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries. Once the system acquires the rocket as a target, it will launch a rocket of its own to intercept the hostile missile mid-flight. The Iron Dome intercepting rocket is designed to travel at a much greater speed than the Qassam’s 300 meters per second. Additionally, Iron Dome aims to intercept the hostile rocket at the highest altitude possible, for fear it might carry a chemical or biological warhead. High interception would make contamination less concentrated. The entire target acquiring process is performed in less than one second. And so, the system is designed to launch the intercepting rocket approximately one second after the hostile rocket is detected on radar. The cost of a single Iron Dome launch is $30,000 to $40,000. The system will, however, not launch an intercepting rocket if its calibrations indicate the hostile rocket will land in an open, uninhabited area - thereby dramatically reducing costs. Before going ahead with Rafael’s Iron Done, the Defense Ministry reviewed 13 other suggestions. Some of the proposed systems were rejected because their development process would have been too lengthy for the defense establishment’s needs. Others, like the Israel Military Industries (IMI) Magic Shield proposal, were abandoned because of cost efficiency considerations. more..

Palestine: a policy of deliberate blindness
Régis Debray, Le Monde Diplomatique 8/7/2007
     Last year President Jacques Chirac asked Régis Debray to study the situation in the Middle East. On 15 January 2007 Debray sent the French authorities the following document on Palestine. It is an important key to understanding a long policy drift whose results are now obvious.
     Dennis Ross, formerly the United States envoy to the Middle East, admitted back in 2000 that mistakes had been made in the 1978 Camp David accords: the diplomatic process had not taken enough account of developments on the ground, especially the settlements. The number of Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories doubled from 1994 to 2000. As many Israelis have settled in the West Bank since the Oslo accords of 1993 as in the previous 25 years. With an international conference again being discussed, it would be a mistake to continue to ignore the real state of affairs. There is no need for a committee of inquiry. The report has already been drawn up, many times over. No conflict in the world is as well documented, mapped and recorded.
     The OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), a United Nations agency, keeps up-to-date, detailed maps of the disputed territories, with photographs, population counts and graphs. It takes an hour to look at them, but doing so might forestall some of the never-ending statements of good intentions.
     The maps show that the physical, economic and human basis for a viable Palestinian state is disappearing. The two-state solution and Israeli writer Amos Oz’s “fair divorce” (a territory shared between two national homes, one smaller than the other and demilitarised but sovereign, viable and continuous) are now empty phrases belonging to the realm of might-have-been. Some might argue that we have not yet reached the point of no return and that the Israelis may have won the territorial battle (with only 22% of British mandate Palestine now outside their control) but the Palestinians are sure to win the demographic battle. They invoke the resilience of the local population in the face of the steam roller that is slowly but surely implementing the 1968 Allon Plan and the 1984 “Road Plan 50”. more..

Ground to a Halt: Denial of Palestinians’ Freedom of Movement in the West Bank
B’tselem 8/7/2007
     Since the beginning of the second intifada, in September 2000, Israel has imposed restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank that are unprecedented in scope and time. As a result, the fundamental right of West Bank Palestinians to freedom of movement, their exercise of which was limited in any event, has become a privilege that Israel extends to them as it deems fit. Indeed, Palestinian travel in the West Bank is now an exception, which must be justified to the Israeli authorities, and almost every trip entails uncertainty, friction with soldiers, much waiting, and often great expense.
     Israel combines a number of means in implementing the restrictions-on-movement regime. The means include fixed and temporary checkpoints, 47 of which control Palestinians’ movement inside the West Bank , 455 physical obstructions on roads, and the Separation Barrier. Certain areas are under siege: entry is possible only through checkpoints and is subject to checks and possession of a permit. On 312 kilometers of main roads in the West Bank , vehicles bearing Palestinian license plates are forbidden or restricted.
     The restrictions on movement that Israel has imposed on Palestinians in the West Bank have split the area into six major geographical units: North, Center, South, the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea, the enclaves resulting from the Separation Barrier, and East Jerusalem . In addition to the restrictions on movement from section to section, Israel also severely restricts movement within the sections by splitting them up into subsections, and by controlling and limiting movement between them. more..

The Hebron tactic
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 8/7/2007
     For about 25 minutes, they behaved liked lords of the land: One man, followed later by a young guy, descended from Mitzpeh Yair, one of the unauthorized outposts in the southern Mt. Hebron area, and prevented a United Nations jeep from traveling. UN directives prohibit leaving the vehicle in such cases, in order to avoid an escalation of friction. And so we, three Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) staffers and two Haaretz journalists, were forced to watch them demonstrate their lordliness from inside the car: The older one blocked the vehicle, in the middle of the unpaved road, with his body. Using hand movements, he ordered the engine shut down. When that didn’t happen, he jumped on the hood and then on the roof and back on the hood, and finally lay back on the windshield and played with the wipers, taking them apart. The driver progressed slowly down the track, and the man leaned back on the windshield with force, until it broke and shards went into the driver’s eyes.
     In the meantime, the younger guy appeared. He tried opening the doors of the jeep, screaming, "show me your identity cards" and placing big rocks in front of the wheels. By the time the army and police drove up, the older man yelled at Haaretz photographer Alex Levac: "Go back to where you came from." When he realized that Levac was a Jew and born in this country, he shouted: "Traitor, going with the UN." Both the older man and younger guy living at the outpost were born abroad. The younger man, a British citizen, has not yet been given new-immigrant status.
     But what does that matter? It also didn’t matter that the soldier described them as "problematic" and that the police are familiar with the older man from previous incidents of harassment. Nor did it matter that the police officers did not believe their absurd story that we had been in their olive grove and that we had tried to run the older man over. The tactic is one that is well-known from Hebron, the same tactic that helped to cleanse the Old City of most of its Palestinian residents: Jews harass and bully and then threaten to lodge complaints against their victims with the Israeli police. more..

’Voices’ lets readers into the private lives of Palestinian women
Louisa Ajami, Daily Star 8/8/2007
     Digital e-book narrates displacement, occupation, hardships suffered and triumphs achieved.
     Review - BEIRUT: "Should I introduce myself or not?" asks Amneh Zakkour. "I’m a Palestinian citizen. My family - my mother and father, my ancestors - are from a village called Makhzuk. After [they] left for Gaza ... their life was very hard ... They hoped to go back to Palestine, their home. They were waiting for so long, but they couldn’t - khalas - they didn’t return ... Time passed and we grew up."
     "Do you think I remember?!" asks Umm Said Shmeis. "I was 6 years old when my mother died. My mother was married before my father. She married two men, one from Tiberias. She loved him ... and he loved her, and they married. Before they married she used to go to him secretly, without her parents’ knowing ... She went to him and they married against her parents’ wishes."
     "I am Sara Adwan. I [became part of the resistance movement] in 1966. In 1968, three years after the emergence of Fatah ... I joined the organization. Our work was secret. My father and mother didn’t know."
     The colorful, frank, mischievous and tragic stories that Zakkour, Umm Said and Adwan tell are among the many that 70 Palestinian women - and a few Palestinian men - tell in a new book entitled "Voices: Palestinian Women Narrate Displacement." A collection of oral histories recorded between 1998 and 2000, "Voices" is devoted to men and women living in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and Israel.... more..

Book: Palestinian Walks
Raja Shehadeh, Middle East Online 8/7/2007
     Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh will be published by Profile books on 23 August 2007.
     LONDON - Palestine is a land of biblical beauty – of olive groves, grapevines, stone buildings, rolling hills, wadis and cliffs.It is also a land of violence and war. Human rights lawyer and writer Raja Shehadeh has lived on the West Bank since his family fled Jaffa in 1948. A peace activist of independent temper, he has seen at first hand the horrors of occupation – including the siege of Ramallah.For decades Raja has found comfort in walking, following what in Arab culture is called sarha – meaning to roamfreely, at will, without restraint: to go where the spirittakes you. In Palestinian Walks he invites the reader to come along for the unique experience of a sarha in Palestine. The six walks that comprise the book span a period of twenty six years evoking the land, its history and some of Palestinian’s political struggles, disappointments and hope.
     Palestinian Walks describes a vanishing landscape.Raja takes us to beautiful hills, past rivers and sacred springs, to famous landmarks from A’yn Qenya, the Shukba Caves, from Wadi Qelt to the Dead Sea (now receding by a metre every year thanks to Israel’s diversion of the river Jordan, an environmental catastrophe in the making).We take a walk with Selma Hasan, a PLO functionary from Tunis, who returned after the Oslo Accords (a settlement that undermined decades of Raja’s legal work on land rights).And we experience the everyday humiliations and harassment by Israeli soldiers – including a chance meeting with a settler who lives next to Raja’s hometown. more..

How the US is Reshaping the Middle East
Rannie Amiri, Palestine Chronicle 8/6/2007
     No doubt a portion of the $30 billion allotted to Israel will help keep "moderates" like Abbas and Dahlan the corrupt, subservient figures they have proven themselves to be.
     Sometimes a foreign policy gambit is anticipated to be so successful there is no need to keep it secret. In fact, it can be made public. Such was the case when the United States announced multi-billion dollar military assistance packages to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt this week. Lest anyone think the United States plan for the greater Middle East has failed, this arms deal makes it clear just how much of the region is firmly under their control. And thanks to venal Arab regimes, it has been a task made easy.
     The proposal would provide Saudi Arabia and the five other nations comprising the Gulf Cooperation Council (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and United Arab Emirates) with $20 billion worth of arms over the next ten years while upgrading their existing military equipment. Not to be outdone (and to make sure it gets through Congress), Israel will be guaranteed $30 billion over the next decade, a full 25% increase in the amount they normally receive. Egypt will also garner $13 billion. According to Secretaries Rice and Gates, one reason for the aid packages will be to bolster Sunni Arab governments to counter Iran’s perceived expanding influence. Before embarking on a tour to the area, they claimed mobilizing support for the current Iraqi leadership among these countries will be an additional priority. more..

Iran faces challenges from within
Chris Zambelis, Asia Times 8/7/2007
     ...Another factor contributes to Iran’s anxiety about US strategy in the Middle East. Tehran is convinced that the United States and other foreign powers are actively exploiting Iran’s diverse ethnic and sectarian society by supporting violent secessionist and insurgent movements - including terrorist groups - in an effort to destabilize the government.
     The domestic threat
     Iran believes that a marked increase in domestic unrest orchestrated from abroad will precede any US attack. Indeed, Tehran attributes the steady rise in incidents of violence and terrorism across the country by ethnic Baloch, Arab and Kurdish minority rebel groups and signs of growing ethnic Azeri and Turkmen dissent to foreign meddling in its internal affairs by US and other foreign intelligence services. Iranian security forces are currently engaged in low-intensity counterinsurgency operations across the country against an array of nationalist and terrorist groups.
     In principle, the United States supports political opposition groups seeking an end to clerical rule. Some US proponents of an attack against Iran have gone as far as to call for enlisting the People’s Mujahideen of Iran, also known as Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) - a bizarre militant group cited by the US Department of State as a foreign terrorist organization whose ideology combines a mix of leftist and Islamist discourse with a fanatical cult-like veneration for its leaders - as an armed proxy in a future invasion. more..

Magical mystery tour: Project brings an outlandish bus and a mobile movie theater to an outdoor square near you
Maya Khourchid, Daily Star 8/8/2007
     TIBNEEN, Lebanon: As the sun set on a recent, balmy evening in Tibneen, a small village southwest of the Lebanese city of Tyre, a crowd of around 100 residents drifted toward a grid of white plastic chairs arranged in the outdoor courtyard of a municipal high school. Young, old and every age in between, the audience took advantage of the social setting as some chattered and laughed. Others remained silent, their eyes fixed on a cartoon flickering across a mobile movie screen set up in the square.
     The animation began typically enough. A cartoon boy and a cartoon girl are walking merrily through the countryside. The weather is pleasant and the birds are chirping. Then they discover a curious object. It looks like a toy. But their curiosity is tempered by the arrival of a frantic yellow bird, who warns them - the cartoon children and by extension the real children seated in the courtyard in Tibneen - "This is not a toy. This is a landmine."
     "Landmines are the most disgusting things invented," said Paolo Cernuschi as he watched the cartoon. "Unfortunately, it’s usually the kids that get [hurt]. They see an object and say: ’Hey, what it this?’" Cernuschi trails off. Tebneen is a strong stone’s throw from the Israeli border. Landmines leftover from the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon and subsequent conflicts, including the war last summer and its showering of cluster bombs, are an unfortunate reality here. Even if the area has been cleared by the UN anti-landmine initiative, UNMACC, it can never be guaranteed as fully safe, explained Cernuschi. more..

White Elephants
Uri Avnery, Middle East Online 8/7/2007
     Together with the 20 billion dollar deal with the Saudis, President Bush decreed that the American yearly grant of military assistance to Israel should be raised from 2.4 billion to 3 billion dollars.
     The king of Siam knew how to deal with domestic opponents: he would present them with a white elephant.
     White elephants are rare in nature, and therefore sacred. Being sacred, they may not be put to work. But even a sacred elephant does eat, and eat a lot. Enough to turn a rich man into a pauper.
     My late friend, General Matti Peled, one time Quartermaster General of the army, pointed out the similarity between this elephant and many of our gifts from the President of the United States.
     According to the stipulations of the grant, most of it must be spent in the United States. Let’s assume that Israel needs Merkava tanks, made in Israel. Or anti-missile systems, also made in Israel. Instead of acquiring these in Israel, the Israeli army buys American airplanes, which it does not need.
     A state-of-the-art military airplane is an immensely expensive object. True, we get it for nothing. But like the white elephant, the airplane is very costly to maintain. It needs pilots, whose training costs a fortune. It needs airfields. All these expenses add up to much more than the price of the airplane itself. more..

Israel’s illegal settlement project compromises a viable Palestinian state
Sonja Karkar, Women for Palestine, ZNet 8/7/2007
     Israel’s illegal settlement project and security policies are being pursued relentlessly and without interruption in the West Bank, despite the latest attempts to allow the Palestinian Authority (PA) to administer its own security arrangements as well as most civil Palestinian affairs. The settlement project has devastatingly undermined the territorial basis for Palestinian self-governance established by the Oslo II accord of 1995 and gives Israel an excuse to intensify security which only adds to the unbearable day-to-day conditions endured by every Palestinian living under occupation.
     The reality on the ground now is that the whole of the Palestinian West Bank is utterly fragmented: the Palestinians have been pushed into smaller and smaller sealed enclaves (about ten in all) while Jewish immigrants are being illegally settled on large tracts of Palestinian land which are then consolidated into even larger settlement blocs to allow for population growth - and all of them are connected to Israel by an exclusive by-pass road system. These illegal settlements and the security that surrounds them divide and separate the Palestinian enclaves so that there is no contiguity between them. In this way, Israel can ensure that it controls Palestinian movement between the enclaves and also Palestinian access to the outside world.
     Despite the seemingly amicable talks going on between Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian President Abbas, Israel is not countenancing in the slightest ending the occupation or dismantling and removing the settlements and the matrix of control. Over the past decade, some 102 “illegal outposts” have been authorized by Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz. A cabinet-approved report by Israeli lawyer Talia Sasson in March 2005, strongly recommending the dismantling of the illegal outposts, changed nothing. Even the “settlement freeze” requirement in the Quartet’s roadmap was blatantly ignored, and with every move, the international community accordingly adapted itself to accommodate Israel. Consequently, Israel has not been reined in by the US and other Western governments for contravening international law and UN resolutions, and it therefore, has little reason to change its policies and practices. And now that the PA is in shambles - with Abbas in no position to negotiate anything of worth - Israel will simply be looking to consolidate its rule as it has always done. more..

A borderless state is no solution
Leader, The Guardian 8/7/2007
     For weeks now, America and Israel have talked up the idea that, contrary to all appearances, a peace initiative may be afoot in the Middle East. Last week Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, announced a $63bn package in military aid to the Middle East, aiming to counter Iran’s growing influence in the region, but also shoring up Arab support for a peace initiative. Yesterday the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert met the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank town of Jericho. Mr Olmert said that Israel and the Palestinians would expand negotiations to "formulate a framework" that would allow both sides to move towards establishing a Palestinian state. These meetings lay the groundwork for a regional summit including Saudi Arabia, in Washington in November. Ms Rice has vowed it will be more than a photo-opportunity.
     Tackling Iran’s nuclear ambitions may be a higher priority in Washington than ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, but the two are inseparably linked. The support of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states against Iran still requires movement on Palestine. The question is how much and in what direction. On the immediate issues facing the Palestinian Authority - lifting the roadblocks, dismantling settlements, releasing prisoners, restoring tax revenue - there has been little progress in the West Bank, and none at all in Gaza, which is cut off from the outside world. Israel released 255 prisoners last month as well as some of the withheld revenue. But these are small steps, given what remains to be done. On the distant issues - the so-called final status issues of the future borders of a Palestinian state, the right of return of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war, and the status of Jerusalem - no progress has been achieved since the last talks ended seven years ago. Mr Olmert refuses to discuss "core issues" on the pretext that failure to reach agreement on them could jeopardise progress on the smaller ones. That leaves talks about an intermediate stage. These would be about a Palestinian state with provisional borders, the stage of negotiation that was originally envisaged in phase two of the road map. By attempting to jump straight to this stage, without first negotiating an end to the occupation, Israel is leading Mr Abbas into dangerous waters. more..

Border Control / A fatal hospital discharge
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 8/6/2007
     Mariya Aman, a Palestinian girl who is almost 6 years old, is an intifada survivor. Until the age of four years and nine months she had a normal childhood in Gaza. Her father, Hamdi, worked in construction in Israel for years. On May 20, 2006, Maria and her family took a drive in their car to visit her sick aunt. At the exact same time, the Israel Defense Forces tried to assassinate Islamic Jihad’s Mohammed Dahdouh. An Israel Air Force plane circling above Gaza fired a missile at his car, which was traveling through Gaza City.
     But the missile hit the Amans’ car, depriving Mariya of her mother, her 6-year-old brother, her grandmother and her uncle. A second brother, Muaman, 4, sustained moderate injuries. Mariya was critically wounded in her spine. She was left completely paralyzed, and her Israeli doctors determined that she would never be able to talk or even breathe on her own, much less walk, run or jump. Mariya is on a respirator at Alyn Children’s Hospital in Jerusalem.
     Israelis and journalists from Israel and abroad, who were touched by the family’s story, had managed to persuade the authorities to keep her at the hospital up to now, and even reserved a small room there for her father and her injured brother (who has recovered). Four months ago the Civil Administration’s Health Coordinator, Dalia Bassa, told Hamdi Aman that within a few days he would have to remove his daughter from the only hospital in the Middle East that specializes in artificial respiration for children. The media’s intervention won Mariya a reprieve, but only temporarily. Last Wednesday the Defense Ministry informed the family that the three of them would be moved to a rehabilitative hospital for adults in Ramallah. more..

Family Reunification
MIFTAH, MIFTAH 8/6/2007
     Since the beginning of Israeli occupation in 1967, all policies towards curbing the process of Palestinian family reunification have greatly threatened normal and stable family life for many.This has been especially true for residents of Jerusalem, whose linkage with the West Bank has been severed, not only geographically but also socially.Families have had to establish two homes, one in Jerusalem and one in the West Bank, which is disruptive to children’s educational process to say the least.
     Israel’s policy is far from benign; its control of people’s basic right to choose a spouse and create a family is a malicious attempt to drive people out of the city of Jerusalem, specifically, and even to encourage Arab migration outside the boundaries of Palestinian Authority areas and Israel proper.This “silent transfer” does not get the attention it deserves, because it is just that, a quiet but consistent pressure on Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and Arab citizens of Israel to leave.
     Brief Timeline.
     1967 – Family unification of a limited number of Palestinian refugees was allowed.45,000-50,000 persons were approved for family unification between 1967 and 1972 under this policy.The original requests amounted to 140,000 and approval was denied to males between the ages of 16-60. more..

Palestinian Refugees Must Act
Dr. Hasan El-Hasan, Palestine Chronicle 8/6/2007
     It is important for the refugees to develop new approaches for presenting their grievances in international conferences and negotiating their case with the Israelis in case there will be negotiations.
     Golda Meir said in 1969 "there is no such thing as Palestinian people ..It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t’t exist". I wonder how many Zionist supporters and sympathizers still believe Golda Meir big lie!! The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) estimated that there are more than nine million Palestinians scattered throughout the world today. More than one million are living in Israel proper, three and a half million live in the West Bank and Gaza, Two and a half million live in Jordan, and the rest are dispersed through the Arab world, Europe and North and South America. American-Israel Demographic Group disputed these findings and concluded that the PCBS total numbers are inflated by one million three hundred thousand.
     Regardless whether they are nine millions or eight, fourteen years after signing the Oslo agreement and the recognition of Israel by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Palestinians, dispossessed and oppressed, are either living under occupation or in refugee camps across the Middle East and throughout the world. more..

A visit to the jungle
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 8/7/2007
     Last week the prime minister congratulated Ariel College for being elevated by the Judea and Samaria Council of Higher Education to university status. Today, Ehud Olmert is traveling to Jericho, in order to hold talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, on an agreement of principles (and perhaps even "agreed-upon principles") for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
     According to all maps, including those of our American friends, the land on which the new university sits is supposed to be an inalienable part of the new Palestinian state. How, then, should the common Palestinian citizen interpret the news about the upgrading of the large Israeli college in the very heart of the West Bank? What value could Olmert’s promise to Abbas, that he will further a peace accord that will bring about an end to Israeli occupation, have in the Palestinians’ eyes?
     It is conceivable that the prime minister had no ill intentions. Olmert, like most Israelis, has become accustomed over the past 40 years to living in a world of double meanings. Throughout history, Israeli governments have extended one hand "to peace with the Arabs" while the other hand lays further claim to the occupied territories. In order to maintain the industry of contradictions between what is said and what is done, legal experts constructed a splendid system of overpasses for the politicians. These allow the de facto annexation of Palestinian land, without the need to annex Palestinian residents. more..

If Hamas isn’t in the game
Danny Rubinstein, Ha’aretz 8/7/2007
     The Olmert government in Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, are in the midst of renewed political activity, encouraged by intensive American efforts. There have been frequent meetings, discussions of an agreement of principles and plans for a regional conference. Although there still are many problems in the field, like the amnesty agreement for wanted men that the two sides haven’t managed to finalize, there certainly has been progress. The liaison committees between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have begun operating again, the government headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayad is receiving substantial financial support, and the security services in the West Bank are beginning to be restored.
     The Palestinian media has been reporting that a new city is being planned in the West Bank, between Nablus and Ramallah. One newspaper said it would be a top-priority national project: the first new Arab city since Arab conquerors founded Ramle 1,500 years ago. The Americans and the Saudis will fund the construction, which will provide work for tens of thousands of unemployed Palestinians.
     This backdrop makes an apparently marginal disagreement interesting. The dispute in question began after Israel announced that it would allow a few dozen Palestinian refugees who fled Iraq to return to the West Bank. The refugees are members of families that lived in villages in the southeast Carmel region. The Iraqi army, which reached northern Samaria in the 1948 War of Independence, was assisted by some of the residents of those villages. After the Arab defeat, they were allowed to go to Iraq, and lived there until they were compelled to flee, due to the war there. Some had been living in temporary camps on the Jordanian and Syrian borders, and now Israel is allowing a few dozen of them to move to the West Bank and become PA citizens. more..

Audio: Crossing the Line interviews journalist Glen Ford
Podcast, Electronic Intifada 8/6/2007
     This week on Crossing The Line: Host Christopher Brown speaks with Glen Ford of the Blackagendareport.com about the ever-growing complicity of Black lawmakers with regards to the Israel/Palestine issue. The Congressional Black Caucus -- at one time the conscious of the Congress -- now does nothing to question Israel’s injustice against Palestinians.
     In the second segment, she is one of the best young comedians in the country but many people have still not heard of Maysoon Zayid, a Palestinian-American woman, who has risen through the ranks of comedy clubs in New York and toured the country and world with her provocative style of comedy. Brown speaks with Zayid about why she started in comedy and the role it plays in changing the face of the conflict in Palestine.
     Listen Now - [MP3 - 14.8 MB, 32:13 min] more..

Amy Goodman: The Uncounted Casualties of War
Amy Goodman, Palestine Chronicle 8/6/2007
     Jeffrey Lucey’s suicide note begins, "Dear Mom and Dad, I cannot express my apologies in words for the pain I have caused you but I beg for your forgiveness."
     U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Jeffrey Lucey is not counted among the Iraq war dead. But he did die, when he came home. He committed suicide. His parents are suing the Department of Veterans Affairs and R. James Nicholson, the secretary of veterans affairs, for wrongful death, medical malpractice and other damages.
     Kevin and Joyce Lucey saw their son’s rapid descent after he returned from combat in Iraq in June 2003. Kevin said: "Hallucinations started with the visual, the audio, tactile. He would talk about hearing camel spiders in his room at night, and he actually had a flashlight under his bed, which he could use to search for the camel spiders. His whole life was falling apart."
     Jeffrey told his family that he was ordered to execute two Iraqi prisoners of war. After he killed the two men, Jeffrey took their dog tags and wore them until Christmas Eve 2003, when he threw them at his sister, calling himself a murderer. A military investigation concluded the story is without merit, but Kevin Lucey says: "An agency investigating itself, I have a lot of problems with that. We fully believe our son." Joyce Lucey added: "It really, to us, didn’t make a difference what caused Jeffrey’s PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. We know that he came back different, so something happened to him over there." more..

War Against Iraqi Women
Hussein Al-alak, Palestine Chronicle 8/6/2007
     The war against Iraqi women, did not start under the occupation but, after the Gulf War and in the 1990’s, when the "allies" saw the concept of the "Iraqi family" as being a pack of wild dogs in need of being destroyed.
     Just how far is the occupation willing to turn the clocks back, on the rights and civil liberties of women in Iraq, with the forced separation of families and the use of rape as a weapon to humiliate and control the population.
     The present day situation is a continuation of “mediaeval traditions”, which is being enforced by the “civilised colonialists”, in a scene which was first described in 1982 by Suad Khari of the Iraqi Women’s League.
     During the colonial occupation of Iraq, Dr. Khairi explained, “Under tribal laws the woman could be murdered and the murderer escape punishment”. “Women were “regarded as deficient human beings”.“Women suffered from the consequences of backwardness and dependency, and the cruelty of the mediaeval traditions that the “civilised” colonialists strove to maintain.”
     Under the atmosphere of colonial repression, women also took an active role in resisting the presence of British troops, by taking arms to the rebels and actively protesting for the release of those captured. Women also took a leading role in resisting the ill treatment that was being forced upon them by the British occupation, along with mounting a direct challenge to the forced wearing of the veil and for a woman’s right to receive an education. more..

Rifkah and my mother
Tala A.Rahmeh writing from Ramallah, Occupied Palestine, Electronic Intifada 8/6/2007
     Today was the first time in the past seven years that I entered Jerusalem legally. I have a green West Bank Palestinian ID, which means that since the 2000 intifada started and the wall was built, I’m forbidden from entering any part of Israel as well as Jerusalem, which is only 20 minutes away from my home town of Ramallah.
     However, this hasn’t stopped me from going there. I would climb sandy hills opposite to Qalandia checkpoint (the main checkpoint at the entrance of Jerusalem), hide behind buildings from the sight of the Israeli soldiers, and sneak into Jerusalem. The danger was worth a chance to get into the town for the day, walk through the Old City, and be in the world on the other side of the wall.
     It was also important for me to see Israelis, to be able to interact with them and see them stripped of the army uniform; it was important for my sanity, and a necessary need to destroy the image of a collective nation of green-uniformed monsters.
     Today was different. I was given a permit to accompany my mother to the hospital for her chemotherapy, a treatment that is not available in Ramallah or any other Palestinian city in the West Bank. Basically, cancer gave me the green light to step into Jerusalem. more..

Mimicking Oslo
Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian Information Center 8/5/2007
     A few days after the 2006 parliamentary elections in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, E. Jerusalem and Gaza, which Hamas won decisively, Fatah leaders and activists held a “soul-searching” meeting in Dura, near Hebron.
     Nabil Amr, now Mahmoud Abbas’s political advisor, who failed to win a seat, attended the meeting, apparently in order to boost his defeated faction’s moral
     And when a Fatah activist and student leader asked Amr how Fatah could rehabilitate itself and regain stature and preeminence among Palestinians, Amr reportedly said, without patting an eyelash “Concessions, concessions, concessions.”
     Amr often describes himself as a “secular pragmatist” and “firm believer in real politike"
     In 2003, he played a leading role in effecting American-backed efforts to weaken the late Palestinian leader, along with people like Mahmoud Abbas and Muhammed Dahlan.
     The “gang of conspirers” as Arafat called his critics within Fatah, sought, with full American backing, to strip the late Palestinian leader of at least some of his powers, including control over security agencies.
     Arafat’s presence was then quite dominant and Amr, Abbas and Dahlan couldn’t successfully challenge Arafat’s autocratic leadership. In fact, on 20 July, 2004, Amr himself was shot and nearly killed by a Fatah gunman, apparently on instructions from Arafat who had apparently thought that Amr was going too far in criticizing and undermining his benefactor. A few weeks later, Amr got his right leg amputated in Germany. more..

A map of what might have been
Jim Quilty, Daily Star 8/6/2007
     BEIRUT: In the year since last summer’s war with Israel, the reconstruction process in Lebanon has been painfully slow and multifaceted. Many actors are involved - foreign state donors, international non-governmental organizations, companies and funding agencies (and their local agents), local political parties, politicians and entrepreneurs, Lebanese para-state institutions and, from the sidelines, the state.
     The Department of Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut (AUB) has been busy, too. Witness the 67-page pamphlet "The Reconstruction of Haret Hreik: Design Options for Improving the Livability of the Neighborhood," which went into free circulation a few weeks ago.
     Shortly after the war ended in August 2006, members of the AUB faculty formed the Reconstruction Unit (RU), a multidisciplinary group of professionals with public- and private-sector experience. Made up of architects, urban designers, landscapers, planners and engineers, the RU’s aim was to assist in the reconstruction of Beirut’s southern suburbs (Dahiyeh) and the ruined villages of South Lebanon. more..

Some Hamas ideas to reform the PLO
Ghazi Hamed, Daily Star 8/6/2007
     The issue of reform of the Palestine Liberation Organization is one of the most complex and important issues on the Palestinian political agenda. The organization is considered the "sole, legitimate" representative of the Palestinian people, but it currently suffers from an inability to translate that theory into a practical reality accepted by all Palestinian factions.
     Over the past 40 years, the PLO has undergone several political and administrative changes that have left several question marks over its ability to perform its designated duties. Hence all the major Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, agree on the importance of restructuring and undertaking serious reform of the organization to save it from the negligence and inertia that has characterized its functioning in recent years.
     One of the biggest problems in the PLO’s structure is how to resolve the competition for influence and representation by the many Palestinian factions while avoiding unnecessary bureaucratic and administrative bloating or impotence of the organization’s decision-making capacity. The strict control exercised by the late President Yasser Arafat - imposed partly as a result of his strong personality - led to the impression that the PLO was his private domain or that of his Fatah party. It is partly as a result of that state of affairs that the PLO’s Oslo solution caused such a deep rift within the organization, pushing already integrated factions such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine into the opposition. more..

Fuelling the arms race doesn’t make peace
Editorial, Al-Ahram Weekly 8/2/2007
     US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s current tour of the region had been heavily trailed as a mission to promote peace in the Middle East. Indeed, it is their first visit in this part of the world since US President George W Bush called on 16 July for an international Middle East peace summit to be held in autumn.
     Yet the only tangible outcome of the Rice-Gates visit so far has been $63 billion worth of arms deals concluded with America’s "allies" in the region -- $30 billion for Israel, $13 billion for Egypt and $20 billion to be shared between Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Oman and Bahrain. Little has been heard of peace, or even Bush’s hoped-for conference.
     The two US officials -- purposefully vague on the agenda of the proposed peace summit -- have been far more focussed on rallying Washington’s allies against the state’s perceived-to-be enemies. According to the current US administration its allies -- Israel, Egypt, Jordan, the Lebanese government, Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf countries -- must unite against Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and Iran. It’s the same "moderate" versus "extremist" scenario that Washington has been pushing for some time now. The region, according to Bush, should be one in which Arabs are pitched against Arabs, Muslims against Muslims. more..

Letter from the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the UN Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council
United Nations General Assembly, ReliefWeb 7/27/2007
     July 26 - Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory - Security Counci
     I write to you at the end of another violent day in the Occupied Palestinian Territory due to the continuation by Israel, the occupying Power, of its illegal policies and practices against the Palestinian people and its determination to continue on the path of violence rather than peace. While the Palestinian leadership is taking every step possible to promote stability and enhance the chances for peace, the occupying Power continues taking actions that undermine these steps and threaten the prospects for peace and stability.
     The Israeli occupying forces continue carrying out military incursions and raids throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. The ongoing raids have included daily arrest campaigns in which dozens of Palestinians have been arbitrarily detained in addition to the thousands of Palestinians already being detained and imprisoned by the occupying Power. Moreover, these incursions are typically violent operations endangering the safety and well-being of the Palestinian civilian population in those areas and involve the harassment, humiliation and physical ill-treatment of the civilians. One tragic example in this regard occurred in the village of Taqu’ near Bethlehem, where Israeli soldiers beat 20-year-old Jihad Al-Sha’er to death. According to medical reports, the young man was bludgeoned to death and had not received any gunshot wounds, contrary to the story presented by the Israeli occupation forces. The brutal murder of this civilian is yet further indication of the total disregard for Palestinian life that the occupying Power has repeatedly displayed through its lax treatment of such blatant criminal acts by its forces. In addition, the occupying Power continues to carry out illegal extrajudicial killings of Palestinians, with at least three Palestinian men killed today by the occupying forces in a targeted missile airstrike at their car in Gaza City and another two men killed in military raids in the southern Gaza Strip. more..

Dreaming of Nahr al-Bared
Dr. Marcy Newman writing from Beirut, Lebanon, Electronic Intifada 8/4/2007
     How do we get people to place the situation of the displaced from Nahr al-Bared at the forefront of people’s minds? How do we get the media to cover the fact that according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society and Save the Children Sweden there are still 15 minors between the ages of 13-18 years old, 10 people between the ages of 18-35 years old, one 67-year-old man, and 21 women from Fatah al-Islam and 45 of their children trapped inside Nahr al-Bared. Two days ago one 17-year-old and one 19-year-old were killed by the army. Those remaining chose to stay inside the camp when the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) attempted to negotiate their evacuation last week. And while the army allowed the ICRC inside to try to retrieve these people, no aid -- neither food nor medicine -- was brought into the camp.The army’s position seems to be that allowing aid inside necessarily means that one is supplying Fatah al-Islam. But there are human beings inside, including children, some of whom are under a month old. These children are facing an intense military bombardment every minute. But in this "you’re with us or you’re against us" universe one cannot even provide diapers to children in need.
     As I ate lunch at a friend’s house last week in Baddawi refugee camp, approximately 10 kilometers from Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, I was struck by the intensity of the bombing down the road. Every minute I could feel the vibration of and hear the bombings -- several times each minute. With several thousand Palestinians from Nahr al-Bared living in Baddawi I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that these families who fled this military bombardment must be reliving the trauma of their flight with each bomb each day. Each minute. How does one get the average Lebanese person or the average person more generally to understand, to feel, to work to end this siege? How can the situation be rendered more complex so that aiding families inside Nahr al-Bared is not automatically an indication that one supports Fatah al-Islam. more..

Anti-war voices aren’t necessarily pro-peace
Ben Tanosborn, Middle East Online 8/4/2007
     It seems that much of the anti-war sentiment in the US is more an anti ‘how the war is being conducted’ with little or no moral basis or consideration to the universal concept of peace.
     In most countries that come to mind, there seems to be a very strong direct correlation between being anti-war and being pro-peace.Not in the United States. In our America being anti-war has little correlation with being pro-peace. It seems that much of the anti-war sentiment is more an anti “how the war is being conducted” with little or no moral basis or consideration to the universal concept of peace.It was true during the Vietnam War years and it is true today, as America resolutely pursues its imperial destiny.
     You need only visit some of the high-profile, high-traffic anti-war web sites based in the US and dig into their lists of contributing writers.Although you are unlikely to see any neocon names among them, and only a handful of Republicans (Pat Buchanan comes to mind) and Libertarians (Ron Paul heading the list), it’s a safe bet that the majority of these writers are in disagreement either with the economics of the war, or perhaps the way it is being run, or the casualties the military takes and the suffering of their families.There is a pronounced lesser concern expressed in their writings, however, about the destruction of other nations’ infrastructures, or the suffering of tens of millions civilians caught in the fray – with millions forced into exile – or the inordinately high civilian casualty count, or the repugnant militaristic nature of wars of choice declared by the bullyocratic powerful.Even more important, America’s fundamental foreign policy principles never seem to be questioned… only Bush’s style of implementation. more..

As American as you are
Mohja Kahf, Middle East Online 8/4/2007
     Pious Christian and Jewish values are not inherently in conflict with American civic life, as secular folk tend to forget. Devout immigrant Muslims don’t belong? That ship has sailed. This is a letter to your beautiful heart: We are your blood.
     Fayetteville, Arkansas - A certain Middle Eastern religion is much maligned in this country. Full of veils and mystery, it is widely seen as sexist. Often violent, sometimes manipulated by demagogues, it yet has sweetness at the core, and many people are turning to it in their search for meaning.
     I’m talking about Christianity.
     This Muslim squirms whenever secular friends – tolerant toward believers in Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam and Native American spirituality – dismiss Christians with snorts of contempt. "It’s because the Christian right wants to take over this country," they protest.
     That may be, but it doesn’t justify trashing the religion and its spectrum of believers. Christianity has inspired Americans to the politics of abolition and civil rights, as well as to heinous acts. Christian values have motivated the Ku Klux Klan to burn houses, and Jimmy Carter to build them. You can’t say that when Christianity informs politics, only bad things happen. more..

Abbas staring at oblivion
Mark Perry, Asia Times 8/4/2007
     In the summer of 1997, I found myself seated in the office of Yasser Arafat in Gaza. I had known Arafat for many years, and was a welcome visitor. Being an American and a friend gave me privileges. Others weighed their words, but I was constrained by no such requirement. So as he thumbed through a stack of papers, I pleaded clemency for a friend who had been under house arrest in Gaza for the better part of a year.
     The man, a prominent security official, had ordered Palestinian security forces to fire on a Hamas demonstration the summer before and Arafat, enraged, had ordered him home. "He made a mistake," I said. "It’s time to bring him back." Arafat ignored me.
     There was a long moment of silence as Arafat’s aides eyed one another in discomfort. Arafat motioned to one of them and handed him a paper. This was typical of him. You could spend hours with the man in silence. He continued to pretend he hadn’t heard, so I plunged on. "The man is dedicated," I said. Arafat stopped, his eyes widening, but he still refused to look at me. I waited many moments and pleaded my case again. "He’s a good man."
     Finally, he spoke, but he bit off each word, making his point. "This is not your concern." And he was silent again. "I think that it is," I said. "He is a friend of mine." Arafat was suddenly exasperated and locked me in his gaze, to emphasize his point: "He crossed a line." more..

Guillotining Gaza
Noam Chomsky, ZNet 8/4/2007
     07/30/07 -- The death of a nation is a rare and somber event. But the vision of a unified, independent Palestine threatens to be another casualty of a Hamas-Fatah civil war, stoked by Israel and its enabling ally the United States.
     Last month’s chaos may mark the beginning of the end of the Palestinian Authority. That might not be an altogether unfortunate development for Palestinians, given US-Israeli programmes of rendering it nothing more than a quisling regime to oversee these allies’ utter rejection of an independent state.
     The events in Gaza took place in a developing context. In January 2006, Palestinians voted in a carefully monitored election, pronounced to be free and fair by international observers, despite US- Israeli efforts to swing the election towards their favourite, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party. But Hamas won a surprising victory.
     The punishment of Palestinians for the crime of voting the wrong way was severe. With US backing,
     Israel stepped up its violence in Gaza, withheld funds it was legally obligated to transmit to the Palestinian Authority, tightened its siege and even cut off the flow of water to the arid Gaza Strip. more..

Iran feels the chill in US cold war tactics
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times 8/3/2007
     Washington has dispatched its frontroom team, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to the Middle East, ostensibly to give the peace process a big push. In reality, they are acting as shrewd arms merchants, while at the same time talking of the struggle for people for freedom against oppression. Someone please order Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 as mandatory flight reading for them.
     Indeed, echoes of Heller’s nerdy bombardier, Captain John Yossarian, who alerted the world to the insanity of modern capitalistic warfare more than anyone else, can be heard aplenty, eclipsing the trailblazers of Washington’s new manifest destiny who are "spreading Jeffersonian democracy" to the dark Middle East.
     But don’t expect Rice to push for women’s suffrage in Saudi Arabia and other US client states when her plane lands in the oil region. Her obligatory "we will push for reform" is for domestic consumption. Not so with the rest of her rationale for the huge arms sales to the Saudis and a generous aid package to the other Arab "moderate", Egypt, which recently shied away from normalizing ties with Iran precisely out of fear of losing Washington’s assistance. It all boils down to one word: Iran. more..

Syracuse University Enlists in the Global War on Terror
Linda Ford and Ira Glunts, Palestine Chronicle 8/3/2007
     My alma mater now informs me that to be a citizen of the Maxwell School is to team up with Israeli military institutions in order to learn the methods that they have found successful against the Palestinians, a people they have occupied and suppressed for over 40 years.
     Imagine my surprise as I leafed through what is usually a fairly bland magazine that, as an alumna (PhD. History ’84) , I periodically receive from the Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship, to find that therein is a new ideal of citizenship. My alma mater now informs me that to be a citizen of the Maxwell School is to support continual and all-out war against a vaguely defined "terrorist" enemy, to condone lethal collateral damage to civilians, and to team up with Israeli military institutions in order to learn the methods that they have found "successful" against the Palestinians, a people they have occupied and suppressed for over 40 years.
     Shouldn’t an institution of higher learning stand for peace, diplomacy and understanding among all nations? Why does my alma mater’s magazine feature photos of men masked, armed, and in full combat gear? Paul McCartney said his song "Maxwell’s Silver Hammer" involved a story of how bad things get much worse, and how senseless killing leads to more senseless killing. Definitely not the ideal of the humanities. more..

John V. Whitbeck: The Five Percent Solution
John Whitbeck, Palestine Chronicle 8/2/2007
     Under pressure even from their only unconditional supporters, Israelis might well recognize that their own security will never be ensured so long as they illegally occupy any Arab lands.
     In an eloquent speech before the US Congress in early March, Jordan’s King Abdallah emphasized the urgent necessity of achieving an Arab-Israeli peace this year. Sadly, there was little sense of urgency evident on July 25, almost five months later, when the Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers visited Jerusalem. The impression conveyed during this rather awkward visit was, rather, one of resignation to further years of drift.
     A sense of urgency remains justified, and acquiescence in further years of drift is not. The Arab world is not impotent. It has it within its power to achieve Middle East peace with some measure of justice -- not in some distant future but soon and not through enhanced violence but through the intelligent and responsible application of restrained but sustained economic pressure. A concerted, concrete and effective plan of action could take the form of a simple, easily understood and ethically unimpeachable "carrot-and-stick" approach. more..

Joharah Baker: What Nationality Did You Say You Were?
Joharah Baker, Palestine Chronicle 8/2/2007
     The Israeli Interior Ministry recorded a 500 percent increase in Palestinians who lost their residency rights compared to previous years, estimated at 1.363 people last year alone.
     My older brother recently informed me that his three children were eligible for US passports, given that he, like myself and my other siblings, were all born in the United States. But my nephew and niece were hardly without citizenship even before this most recent discovery. Married to a Palestinian/German woman with both German [or EU] and Israeli citizenship, my brother’s children also have European Union passports while the baby, born in Palestine is also the bearer of an Israeli passport.
     Not bad, for one family. It is safe to say that my brother, his wife and their three beautiful children are secure for life, never having to worry about finding themselves nation-less or without citizenship.
     This is hardly the case for most Palestinians living in the eastern sector of Jerusalem. Following Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 War, those residents who happened to be present in the city at the time of the national census were granted "permanent residency status" in the city. Less than citizenship, this status placed these residents in a somewhat stable but constantly precarious situation. more..

POLITICS: U.S. Arms Sales Preserve Israel’s Edge
Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service 8/2/2007
     UNITED NATIONS, Aug 3(IPS) - When the United States sells state-of-the-art weapons systems to Arab nations, it invariably provides even more lethal and sophisticated arms to its steadfast ally, Israel, in order to help counter the firepower of its neighbours.
     So, when Egypt gets the M60A3 and M1A1 Abrams battle tanks, Israel gets the TOW-2A and Hellfire anti-tank missiles to blow up the Egyptian vehicles -- in the event of a military confrontation between the two countries currently wedded to the 1979 Camp David peace treaty.
     Likewise, when the United States grudgingly provides McDonnell Douglas F-15 fighter planes to Saudi Arabia, Israel is armed either with Sidewinder and Sparrow air-to-air missiles or Hawk and Stinger surface-to-air missiles to bring down the U.S.-supplied Saudi aircraft.
     Every U.S. government has ensured that no weapons sales to Arab nations would undermine Israel’s traditional "qualitative (military) advantage" over its perceived rivals.
     Last week, the administration of President George W. Bush ran true to form when it announced its decision to simultaneously sell arms both to Israel and seven Arab nations: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. more..

Amira Hass: Back to a Corrupt Occupation
Amira Hass, Palestine Chronicle 8/3/2007
     Fatah has not distanced itself from protectionism and the system by which those close to the right people have convenient opportunities to get richer - in a sea of impoverishment.
     In one of the alarming news items of the past week, it was reported that Israel has green-lighted the transfer of 1,000 rifles from Jordan to the security forces loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
     This is not the first time Israel has permitted the transfer of weapons and security equipment to Abbas’ forces. The alarming thing about this report is that Abbas and his circles continue to cling to the illusion that the failure in the Gaza Strip was purely military. Equally alarming is Fatah’s determination to do what Israel and the United States expect (and which it failed to do in Gaza): Fight Hamas.
     And there have been several other disturbing news items in recent days: Once again Israeli representatives are permitted to talk with official Palestinian representatives abroad; Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas will meet again in the near future, this time in Jericho; civil coordination between Israel and the PA has been renewed; and at the Muqata in Ramallah a new American-Palestinian business project has been launched after President George W. Bush approved a loan of $228 million for small and medium-sized Palestinian businesses to improve the Palestinians’ living standard. "The United States is committed to strengthening the Palestinian economy ... as an important step toward a peaceful and independent Palestinian state," declared the official July 27 State Department announcement. Why are these news items worrying? Because they show that things have gone back to the way they were - that is, to the style of "managing the occupation" that reigned between 1994 and 2001, into which the Fatah movement integrated well. Now, as then, there is a Palestinian government (the legality of which is temporary and shaky) acceptable to Israel and the West; talks are supposedly taking place; the occupation continues; and the Palestinians are quarreling. Didn’t this all lead to the second uprising? more..

Dry twigs
Smadar Lavie, Electronic Intifada 8/3/2007
     The following is a speech delivered at a rally against the demolition of 30 families’ homes in Kfar Shalem, Israel, 7 July 2007:
     If we want to try comprehending the recent events in Kfar Shalem, we need to delve into the wounds of our past. [1] Exploring these wounds can help us strengthen ourselves in the present, so we can plan for our future, and for our communities’ healing. Such healing might give us the stamina we will need to struggle together.
     In 1882, "’E’eleh ba-Tamar" [the Hebrew phrase is borrowed from Song of Songs 7:9], the first organized Yemenite labor migration wave, or "’aliya," the value-laden Hebrew term meaning "ascendance," arrived in Palestine. Considered "natural laborers," they were expected to live frugally and thus lighten the burden of the Yiddish-speaking "ideological laborers" who were colonizing Palestine. The Ashkenazim in the colonies (moshavot) refused to allow the "natural laborers" to dwell among them. These workers were forced to live in the fields, the cowsheds or the stables. When they rebelled, they were permitted to live in segregated ghettos in wooden huts and tin shacks.
     I want to tell you about the dry twigs.
     At the end of the workday, Yemeni women agricultural laborers used to gather dry twigs from the vineyards and orchards for cooking or heating water. The colonies’ farmers thought of these twigs as still their private property, but the Yemeni women laborers thought collecting this firewood was one of the very few benefits their agricultural labor entitled them to. When farmers caught the women gathering branches, they punished them with fines taken from their paltry weekly pay. more..

After Gaza
International Crisis Group - ICG, ReliefWeb 8/2/2007
     EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
     Hamas’s takeover of Gaza and President Abbas’s dismissal of the national unity government and appointment of one led by Salam Fayyad amount to a watershed in the Palestinian national movement’s history. Some paint a positive picture, seeing the new government as one with which Israel can make peace. They hope that, with progress in the West Bank, stagnation in Gaza and growing pressure from ordinary Palestinians, a discredited Hamas will be forced out or forced to surrender. They are mistaken. The Ramallah-based government is adopting overdue decisions to reorganise security forces and control armed militants; Israel has reciprocated in some ways; and Hamas is struggling with its victory. But as long as the Palestinian schism endures, progress is on shaky ground. Security and a credible peace process depend on minimal intra-Palestinian consensus. Isolating Hamas strengthens its more radical wing and more radical Palestinian forces. The appointment of Tony Blair as new Quartet Special Envoy, the scheduled international meeting and reported Israeli-Palestinian talks on political issues are reasons for limited optimism. But a new Fatah-Hamas power-sharing arrangement is a prerequisite for a sustainable peace. If and when it happens the rest of the world must do what it should have before: accept it.
     The events in Gaza have given rise to wholly conflicting accounts. For Fatah and those close to Abbas, they were a murderous, illegitimate coup that exposed the Islamists’ true face. The plan, they say, was premeditated and carried out with Iranian backing. They claim to have video proof of a Hamas-led plot to assassinate Abbas. Hamas, too, denounces an attempted coup, though one planned by Fatah elements determined to rob the Islamists of their electoral victory and overturn the Mecca Agreement between the two rival organisations. They say those elements were fostering lawlessness in the Gaza Strip and that the U.S., Israel and several Arab countries conspired to isolate Hamas as well as arm and train forces loyal to Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan in anticipation of a showdown. Hamas’s actions, they insist, were preemptive. more..

Abbas to the rescue
Ayman El-Amir, Al-Ahram Weekly 8/2/2007
     As Bush scrambles to save face from his bloody presidency, Palestinians should not be fooled into accepting what their so-called leaders deem the best peace on offer.
     Arab foreign ministers met in Cairo recently to reconfirm the Riyadh land-for-peace initiative which their colleagues from Egypt and Jordan, the two Arab states that signed formal peace treaties with Israel, had presented to Israeli officials one week earlier. Israel did roll out the red carpet and organised meetings with all the powers that be in the Israeli political and legislative spectrum, though did little beyond that. The generalities in which Israeli officials spoke, and the semblance of positive spirit exhibited, reflected Israeli awareness of the severe limitations on the mandate of the two foreign ministers, and the fact that talking alone does not hurt anyone. The Arab peace initiative has been broached to Israel time and again; it is aware of its rhetorical bluntness, nuances and weaknesses and is waiting for more Arab concessions. That ushers in the Bush initiative for a Middle East peace conference.
     Arab governments are under increasing pressure to revive the deceased peace process. The Palestinian national movement has been split into two camps and Arab governments are divided in their support. Incessant Israeli aggression and assassination of Palestinians, regional tensions arising from the deteriorating situation in Iraq and the confrontation with Iran, the looming spectre of civil war in Lebanon and the showdown between Turkey and the Kurds in northern Iraq are fuelling seething domestic dissent in several Arab countries. Moreover, the failure of half-hearted democratic reforms in key Arab countries is creating a volatile political environment that is being addressed by iron-fist police state repression. To make things worse, Al-Qaeda has made sporadic but lethal appearances in some Maghreb Arab countries. Arab regimes feel the need to make some progress on the Palestinian front to take the wind out of the sails of fundamentalists. more..

Abu Mazen’s White Coup
Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, MIFTAH 8/1/2007
     I cannot describe the events since the formation of a committee to investigate into the defeat of Fatah in Gaza as anything but a second coup  that is, following the coup Hamas staged against Fatah in Gaza. However this time, the coup was led by President Mahmoud Abbas, the leader accused of having a weak personality and the incapacity to elicit any change.
     President Abbas chose the critical time and the appropriate event to finally stage his coup after enduring a long wait since he assumed the presidency in 2004. And thus the most powerful figures in Fatah, including Mohamed Dahlan and Yasser Abd Rabbo, in addition to 60 other senior Fatah officers have either fled or fallen at the first sign that the president meant business. Abu Mazen has abandoned his position as a peaceful leader to become a combatant leader who seems to be leading the new battle himself.
     Apart from his hesitant decisions, Abu Mazen remains a Palestinian necessity after the Palestinians were orphaned following the death of Yasser Arafat; a nation without a real leadership that is embroiled in war. The Palestinians had become accustomed to Arafat who was their front in the Diaspora and who governed over them internally for 36 years. Abu Ammar succeeded in overshadowing all those who tried to compete with him for the seat of power, including the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who despite his huge following and popularity still could not take his place, like many others who tried before him. more..

A negative trend
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 8/1/2007
     Understanding the trends among the younger generation is an important way of predicting the future opinions and direction of any nation. It also gives us an early warning capability of negative trends that may be dealt with before it is too late.
     Palestinian youths are different from most nations’ youths. They are especially vulnerable to political factors affecting their reality, including their social and economic situations. Indeed, education and later job opportunities, access to decent health and social services, in addition to access to the special needs of youth like places of entertainment and sports, all depend on the political situation. This explains why Palestinian youths are so political.
     There are many reasons to believe that the political opinions of Palestinian youths are not average but rather veer to the relatively hard line. First, cross tabulation of poll results conducted in the Palestinian territories since the peace process began show that age is a significant factor in determining answers to political questions such as attitudes to the political process, signed agreements and means of struggle. more..

For youths in the Middle East, less optimism to go around
Yossi Alpher, Daily Star 8/3/2007
     In all societies, youth are the ones who actually fight wars; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no exception. Israeli youth fill the ranks of the Israeli armed forces; Palestinian youth populate the diverse groups that fought two intifadas and carry out suicide bombings. Youth also bear the demographic message of the future. In Gaza, for example, the population is heavily weighted in favor of youth, thereby guaranteeing social, economic and political crisis as it doubles roughly every generation. In Israel, ultra-orthodox Jews and Arab citizens will constitute nearly half of all 18 year-olds 10 years from now, presenting the disturbing specter of only half the population doing military service and bearing an increasingly heavy security burden unless radical changes are introduced to Israeli society.
     Youths also embody idealism and initiative to a far greater extent than most adults. Recently, I came across two very positive examples of this in the context of the Israel-Arab dispute - at least from an Israeli point of view - in two very different forums.
     First, at an international convocation that brought together people from all over the Middle East, I was approached by a group of university students from one of the Gulf emirates. They had never met Israelis, they explained breathlessly; this was their first opportunity. They had so much to talk about. Could I arrange for them to meet a similar group of Israeli students? If only, I mused, this sort of initiative could be multiplied a thousand-fold. more..

The Nakba in Israeli textbooks and official discourse
Ben White, Electronic Intifada 8/2/2007
     The contents of school textbooks in Palestine/Israel have often been the cause of controversy, normally when a report is published purporting to reveal "shocking revelations" about the alleged indoctrination of Palestinian schoolchildren. Last week, however, it was Israeli textbooks in the spotlight, as the Ministry of Education approved a new textbook with a difference.As the BBC reported, "for the first time" the "Palestinian denunciation of the creation of Israel in 1948" had been included. This incident afforded a perfect opportunity for seeing how the Nakba -- what Palestinians called their expulsion by Zionist forces from their homes and villages in what is now Israel during 1947-48 -- is viewed by "official" discourse in the West (through the filter of the mainstream media), and within Israel itself.
     Most mainstream news stories about the Israeli textbook were infused with a positive tone, and typical headlines described the development as "acknowledging" Palestinian suffering, "adding perspective," or "admitting" the Palestinian view (LA Times-Washington Post, San Francisco Gate, Sydney Morning Herald). Taking the online BBC report as an example, however, we find that this apparent move towards objectivity is deeply problematic. In fact, the closer we look, the more we find that the official discourse about 1948 is still bound by Zionism-forged fetters. more..

Jenin by night
Gideon Levi, Ha’aretz 8/2/2007
     "Tonight you should not be a journalist, tonight you should be a poet," says our host Jamal Zbeidi, as soon as we arrive. It’s early evening, and a dull dusky light enveloped the homes in the camp, while a pleasant breeze caressed the faces of the children playing outside. The Jenin refugee camp is getting ready for the night. The television is tuned to Al-Aqsa, the Hamas station in Gaza. Into the house strides our old acquaintance, Zakariya Zbeidi. He had seen our car and wants to say hello. Wearing a Kenvelo T-shirt, and for the first time walking around without a weapon, he is on his way to the Muqata in Ramallah, where he spends his nights, according to an arrangement worked out with Israel. Now he is a student, majoring in social work.
     The old ceiling fan has slightly cooled the room, whose walls are covered with photographs of martyrs. Not long ago, the Lebanese writer Elias Khoury sent Zbeidi an e-mail, imploring him not to align himself with either Hamas or Fatah. "The people here are confused," Zbeidi’s uncle, Jamal, says. "To go with [Palestinian Authority Chairman] Abu Mazen is to go with America, and to go with Hamas is to go with religion. Both are bad.
     I seem to be the only one who is nervous about the oncoming night. A poetic mood descends on those present: "We sowed and others will reap," Zakariya says in a melancholy tone. more..

Facing challenges on all fronts
Maysa Hindaileh, MIFTAH 8/2/2007
     Palestinian youths form one of the largest sectors of Palestinian society, a sector that is often overlooked and requires close attention when trying to solve the challenges facing it.
     Broadly speaking, young Palestinians face challenges and conflicts on three fronts: "family" conflicts, "social" conflicts and "political" conflicts.
     A subject that is rarely broached in Palestinian society is that of family conflicts. There are enough dysfunctional families in society for this to be an issue of serious concern and there is now also a major problem of families that have been separated, especially in the past seven years and as a result of the difficulties imposed on the movement of Palestinians within and between the Palestinian areas.
     Youths from such families become victims as their insecurities at home affect behavior. It is clear that young people who suffer conflict within their families face a lack of motivation in school and at work, can become violent and generally lack confidence in themselves. more..

Deja vu
Meron Benvenisti, Ha’aretz 8/2/2007
     It is hard to get over the feeling of D?j? vu when facing the current political arena and public discourse. A person listens to the Palestinian prime minister’s declaration - "Resistance [to the occupation] is legitimate, but this in fact means making every possible effort to hold onto Palestinian land. This is the [Palestinian] government’s plan" - and cannot help but recall a slogan that was heard 14 years ago: a slogan that was quickly replaced by muqawama (armed resistance). After years of bloodshed that has brought the Palestinians only terrible disaster, Prime Minister Salam Fayad is returning to the formulas that his teacher and spiritual mentor Yasser Arafat declaimed when he was on the skids after the first Gulf War and was in desperate need of American aid.
     In moments of weakness, Palestinian leaders say what the Americans want to hear: "Peace is not just a strategic choice," declares Fayad, "but rather a necessity; and we will achieve it by means of negotiations." In the coded language of the conflict, there is no need for loquaciousness. Erasing the word muqawama from the press release and then calling attention to the erasure suffices to hint at a highly significant change in the national strategy. It is possible to dismiss the value of statements from a weakened Palestinian government that needs all the help it can get from the Americans, and also from the occupying side. However, the clear formulations of those who head the Palestinian Authority leave no room for doubt: The circular path of time that characterizes this conflict has completed another circuit. We are at the start of a "peace process" like the one that occured from 1993-2001 and all concerned will shake the dust off the messages of Oslo and its addenda. more..

Anarchists Under Fire
Neve Gordon, ZNet 8/3/2007
     Over the past five years the Israeli peace camp has dwindled. Last month marked the occupation’s 40th anniversary, and no more than 4,000 people gathered in Tel-Aviv to protest Israel’s longstanding military rule. Of the demonstrators who did show up, only a few hundred are what one could call ardent activists -- people who have dedicated their life to peace and justice
     Among the most committed of these are Israel’s anarchists. Yet, over the past two years they have been under an ongoing attack, and it is becoming more and more difficult for them to continue their struggle. Established in 2003, the anarchists are made up of young Israelis, mostly in their twenties, who work closely with the Palestinian popular village committees in order to resist Israel’s occupation. They have no official leaders, no office, and no paid staff, and yet they have managed to accomplish more than many well-oiled NGOs and social movements. They are perhaps best known for their efforts in the small village of Bil’in, where for more than two years weekly demonstrations have been staged against the wall that Israel is building on Palestinian land.
     The anarchists are active in numerous other villages and towns as well. Day in and day out, they travel in small groups through the West Bank, supporting non-violent direct action that help Palestinian farmers gain access to their fields and crops, while opposing the construction of the separation barrier and the confiscation of occupied land. more..

Senior Palestinian officials still in wrongful Israeli detention
Report, B'Tselem, Electronic Intifada 8/2/2007
     Shortly after the abduction of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, in June 2006, Israel detained dozens of Palestinians holding senior positions in the Palestinian Authority, some of them ministers in the Hamas government, and most of the members of the Palestinian Legislative Council on behalf of Hamas in the West Bank. The Judge Advocate General’s Office informed B’Tselem that forty-five members of the PLC had been detained. According to B’Tselem’s information, at least twenty-two of them remain in detention. In May 2007, following a Qassam attack on Sderot, the army arrested dozens more senior Palestinian officials, among them Minister of Education Nasser a’-Din Sha’er and the Minister for Fence and Settlements Affairs Wasfi Qaba. These two ministers and forty-five members of the PLC continue to be held in detention in Israel.
     The timing of the arrests raises the suspicion that the action was taken to put pressure on the Palestinian population and its leadership. That suspicion is strengthened by statements made by Israeli officials. For example, in an interview with the Associated Press a few hours after the first wave of arrests, on 29 June 2006, Major-General Yair Naveh, OC Central Command, said that the decision to arrest senior Palestinian officials was made by the political echelon and that they would be released upon the release of Gilad Shalit. In an interview with the army radio station on 24 May 2007, the day that the second wave of arrests took place, the then-Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, stated that "the arrest of those heads of Hamas is to show the military organizations that we demand that the firing stop." It is clear, therefore, that the senior Palestinian officials are being held not to prosecute them for acts they had committed, nor even out of concern for what they might do in the future; rather, it is to benefit from neutralizing their political activity and from the hardship they, their colleagues, and the public they represent will suffer. If this is indeed the case, Israel is misusing the arrest power and is employing the criminal process to achieve extraneous objectives. more..

Sacrificed to Zionism
Jonathan Cook, Al-Ahram Weekly 8/2/2007
     Just as Jews in Egypt and Iraq in the 20th century were manipulated by Israel, so now Iran’s Jewish community is in peril.
     Iran is the new Nazi Germany and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new Hitler. Or so Israeli officials have been declaring for months as they and their American allies try to persuade doubters in Washington that an attack on Tehran is essential. And if the latest media reports are to be trusted, it looks like they may be winning the battle for hearts and minds. US Vice-President Dick Cheney is said to have diverted the White House back on track to launch a military strike.
     Earlier this year former premiere Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s opposition leader and the man who appears to be styling himself scaremonger- in-chief, told us: "It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs." Of Ahmadinejad, he said: "He is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state."
     A few weeks ago, as Israel’s military intelligence claimed -- as it has been doing regularly since the early 1990s -- that Iran is only a year or so away from the "point of no return" on developing a nuclear warhead, Netanyahu was at it again. "Iran could be the first undeterrable nuclear power," he warned, adding: "This is a Jewish problem, like Hitler was a Jewish problem... The future of the Jewish people depends on the future of Israel." more..

Amid all the politics, a defeat for humanity in Iraq
Cesar Chelala, Daily Star 8/3/2007
     A new report titled "Rising to the Humanitarian Challenge in Iraq," published by Oxfam, the British aid agency and NCCI, a network of aid organizations working in Iraq, offers some alarming conclusions. Iraq is undergoing a humanitarian crisis of dramatic proportions, with 8 million Iraqis - nearly one in three - in need of emergency aid. Lack of response to this situation threatens to engulf the country in total chaos.
     According to Jeremy Hobbs, director of Oxfam International, "The terrible violence in Iraq has masked the ongoing humanitarian crisis. Malnutrition among children has dramatically increased and basic services, ruined by years of wars and sanctions, cannot meet the needs of the Iraqi people. Millions of Iraqis have been forced to flee the violence, either to another part of Iraq or abroad. Many of those are living in dire poverty."
     The report estimated that 28 percent of children are malnourished, compared with 19 percent before the 2003 invasion. In 2006, more than 11 percent of newborn babies were born underweight, compared with 4 percent in 2003. Malnutrition contributes to death from other conditions such as intestinal and respiratory infections, malaria and typhoid. But their suffering doesn’t end there: 92 percent of Iraqi children have learning problems, a situation exacerbated by the climate of fear in the country. What can one say to those that are responsible for the destruction of children’s lives and hopes? more..

The Murder of Ahmad by the IDF in Hebron
Kawther Salam, The Daily Life of Kawther Salam 7/31/2007
     On July 3, 2007, soldiers of IDF Brigade Commander Yehuda Fuchs murdered the 14-year-old child Ahmad Mohsen Al-Skafi in Hebron. After I called the family last weekend to ask them about the incident, I was shocked not only because of what the family told me, but also by the complete decline in the level of professionalism among the journalists in the area of conflict. The measures of the IDF to restrict the work of Palestinian journalists hinder them in fulfilling their important mission in the Palestinian cities. IDF commanders declare the places where they intend to commit crimes as “military zones” and then arrest any journalist who reaches these areas of conflict under that pretext. It is very important for the occupation regime of the IDF to cover up the evidence of the daily crimes of their soldiers against unarmed civilians, specially the children who they kill for no reason but “fun”. This incident was reported previously, but the reports, also on the Internet, were based on the lies of the IDF.
     According to the wishes of the Israeli occupational regime, the IDF spokespersons should be the only sources which supply the local and the International media with news about IDF “activities” in Palestinian cities. The IDF press releases are usually based on lies, rumors and innuendo, and they always seek to “justify” the crimes of the IDF against Palestinians.
     The Execution of Ahmad Mohsen Al-Skafi:
     At about five in the afternoon of Tuesday, July 3, 2007, troops of Colonel Yehuda Fuchs assassinated Ahmad Mohsen Al-Sfaki and declared the area near their crime a military zone in to hinder the access of journalists. All this happened in Lossah, a part of Eissa, a suburb in the south-west of Hebron near Wadi Taffouh in area H1 under the Palestinian control. Ahmad had gone to a nearby supermarket to buy chocolate and some sweets for Isra’a, his younger sister of age 4. The soldiers watched Ahmad on his way to the supermarket, and when he got out they showered him with 30 bullets and a grenade, which exploded in his abdomen, blowing out his intestines. The soldiers then sent their dogs to eat part of the body. more..

Defense Ministry: Palestinians’ requests for travel permits can no longer be ignored
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 8/1/2007
     Under orders from the High Court of Justice, the Defense Ministry recently drafted regulations requiring all the relevant bodies - the Israel Defense Forces, the Civil Administration and the Shin Bet security service - to respond within a reasonable time frame to Palestinians’ requests for travel permits.
     The regulations, which were issued on June 27, require permit requests to be answered at least five days before the scheduled trip, as long as the request was submitted at least 14 days beforehand. To date, many Palestinians who have requested travel permits have received no response.
     The regulations were formulated pursuant to a High Court ruling issued about a year ago on a petition by nine lawyers from Gaza who had been invited to a professional seminar in the West Bank. The attorneys applied for travel permits well in advance and followed up with dozens of letters and telephone calls, but never received a response to their applications. For a year, the ruling was ignored, prompting additional petitions to the court over other incidents. Finally, a Gaza resident whose request for permission to visit a sister in an Israeli hospital was ignored - the court ordered the ministry to submit appropriate regulations to it by June 14. more..

It’s organic, but where was it grown?
Tamara Traubmann, Ha’aretz 8/1/2007
     Shortly after human rights lawyer Michael Sfard and Nirit Ben-Horin of Tel Aviv joined the city’s organic co-op, they began to suspect that the free-range eggs the group was buying came from a farm on an illegal outpost. The farmer, right-wing activist Avri Ran, lives on the outpost of Gva’ot Olam, south of Itamar in the northern West Bank. Ran, a leader of the Hilltop Youth, is also a local organic farming guru. After Sfard and Ben-Horin confirmed the source of the eggs, they left the co-op.
     "I can’t close my eyes," Sfard says, given his work with Palestinians harmed by settlers. "The chickens may be ranging free, but the Palestinians in the area were employed under slave conditions, and their lands were stolen. Organic consumerism doesn’t mean only healthy eggs, but also making consumer choices that don’t harm the environment, people or animals," he adds.
     Ran’s eggs are marketed through various intermediaries, and in many cases the farm’s address does not appear on the package. The only hint is the farm’s initials, G.O., which appear in small print on the eggs.
     Avi Levy, a long-time organic consumer who is active in Green Action, an organization that promotes social and environmental change, says the Ram farm is not the only one that does not mark its products. He says a growing number of organic products are not marked with the farmer’s name and address; sometimes only a producer’s code or the address of the company offices are listed. more..

The Saudi Link / Bush’s reward for the arms deal
Zvi Bar'el, Ha’aretz 8/1/2007
     Coincidences are rare in the Middle East. Exchanging gifts, by contrast, is quite common.
     And so, Saudi Arabia’s recent announcement that it will participate in U.S. President George W. Bush’s international conference on peace in the Middle East next fall comes as no surprise. After all, it closely followed Washington’s announcement that it would sign a whopping $20 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia to "maintain the existing strategic balance."
     Should a Saudi delegation attend the summit alongside a delegation from Jerusalem, it will be an important - albeit not unprecedented - breakthrough for Israel. In 1991, Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan unexpectedly showed up at the Madrid Peace Conference between Israel and the Palestinians. Today, the prince presides as Secretary-General of the Saudi National Security Council, and is apparently involved in forging the Israeli-Saudi connection.
     Saudi Arabia’s participation in the international summit bears tremendous significance for consolidating the consensus reached at the Arab League summit of 2002, in what became known as the Arab Initiative. more..

Political obfuscation and stranded Palestinians in Egypt
Serene Assir, Electronic Intifada 8/1/2007
     Seven weeks into their displacement from Gaza, up to 700 of 6,000 stranded Palestinians returned home this week via the Egyptian-Israeli-controlled border crossing at al-Oja, north Sinai. Their return via this terminal, traditionally used for the transportation of goods into Israel, is described as a one-time-only solution designed to solve the immediate crisis. The plan was forged by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), with the approval of the Egyptian government. In total, by the third day of the repatriation process, 1,627 Palestinians had received approval to return home following a registration procedure stipulated by Israel, the PA and Egypt.
     But already there is speculation as to the effectiveness, and indeed the actual intentions of the plan. Such speculation is only heightened because "repatriation for those whose names have not yet been approved is going to prove more difficult," said Maj. Gen. Salaheddine Selim, an Egyptian expert in military and strategic affairs. Selim admitted that Egypt is unable to determine just when the total displaced population will be able to return to Gaza.
     The ongoing crisis at the Egypt-Gaza border began 9 June when Israel imposed the closure of the Rafah terminal, ostensibly the Gaza Strip’s only land gateway to the outside world beyond total Israeli physical control. The majority of the displaced had temporarily left Gaza for purposes of study, medical treatment or travel, to visit relatives or to embark on ’Umra, the lesser religious pilgrimage to Mecca. Demands to repatriate the stranded have been made by the Palestinians themselves, Hamas, Egypt and international organizations including the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. more..

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