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Boats and Prisoners Considered Minor Victories for Palestine [August 24 – August 30]
MIFTAH, MIFTAH 8/30/2008
     There has been some good news this week in Palestine. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were overjoyed to host the two freedom boats on August 24 bringing with them 44 international peace activists intent on breaking the Israeli siege on Gaza. During their days-long stay in the Strip, the internationals, hailing from 17 countries, toured the Strip, met with Palestinian officials including some from the de facto Hamas leadership there and took in the scenes of deprivation resulting from the year-long siege.Deposed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh even promised to grant all of the activists Palestinian passports in appreciation of their solidarity.
     Before most of them sailed out of the Strip on August 29 – nine have stayed behind to continue humanitarian work there – they took with them seven Palestinians who would otherwise have had no means of traveling out of Gaza. On board was Saeed Musleh, a young boy who lost his leg in Israeli shelling and was never allowed to leave the Strip to seek medical treatment. He is now in a Larnaca hospital along with his father. Others, including students and a mother and her children who were reunited with family in Cyprus were also on board. The boats arrived safely in Cyprus early August 30. more.. e-mail

To Carry a Camera in Gaza
Diana Mukkaled, MIFTAH 8/30/2008
     Anybody carrying a camera in the Gaza Strip is a potential target.
     This is the simple conclusion that can be reached following the Israeli military prosecutor’s report that was issued a few days ago. The report cleared Israeli soldiers who shot dead Palestinian cameraman Fadel Shana who died on April 16, 2008 along with eight unarmed youths under 16 years of age.
     Why did Israeli soldiers venture upon launching two missiles towards a group of unarmed youths and the Reuters cameraman who was holding his camera and whose clothes and equipment were clearly marked ‘press’?
     This may seem like a silly question to many or may bring about answers that further complicate the conflict with Israel and the continuous targeting of Palestinians. But it is a question that should be contemplated. This is what the international news agency Reuters, for which Fadel Shana worked, has embarked upon.
     Reuters rejected the Israeli military’s report and launched a large campaign to gain the support of scores of media figures, journalists, civil associations and others who want to see Shana’s killers brought to justice because the conclusion that was reached by the Israeli military prosecutor is a green light for more killings. more.. e-mail

Hamas Seeking to Come in from Cold
Sana Abdallah, MIFTAH 8/30/2008
     Chances of coming in from the cold are looking better for Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement ruling the Gaza Strip, as the world braces itself for crucial changes in political leaderships and power shifts that might also bring strategic policy turns in the Middle East.
     The U.S. George W. Bush administration, which has led a fierce campaign against Hamas and is widely seen as the friendliest U.S. government yet to Israel, has fewer than 150 days left in office, with no sign that the peace talks it is sponsoring between the Palestinian Authority (PA), led by President Mahmoud Abbas, and Israel are getting anywhere.
     The Israeli leadership is also on its way out, as a corruption scandal forced Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to announce his resignation next month to elect a new Kadima party leader who will need to keep the coalition government together or else hold snap elections.
     Abbas, too, has not yet said whether he will seek re-election if a Palestinian presidential poll is held next January. And he has indicated on several occasions he wants to step down out of frustration that peace negotiations are not making headway toward statehood; neither has he been able to reunite Palestinian ranks and mend the split between Gaza and the West Bank. more.. e-mail

As a Palestinian state recedes, Jordan contacts Hamas
Saad Hattar, Daily Star 9/1/2008
     Jordan’s move to thaw relations with the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) following nine years of estrangement has raised eyebrows as to the timing and the motives behind this tactic. Internal and external factors dictated the rapprochement amid growing Jordanian dismay at American and Israeli behavior - the kingdom’s main strategic allies since the turn of the century. Hence, the timing bears significance considering the last months of President George W. Bush’s tenure and Israel’s political paralysis. On the other side, the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Mahmoud Abbas looks headed toward failure in light of Hamas’ pounding and US-Israeli indifference.
     Anxious about the deadlocked Palestinian track, the dwindling prospects for a viable Palestinian state and disenchanted with the lip service paid by the outgoing Republican administration, Jordan has moved fast to rebuild ties with Hamas - an arch-enemy of the PA in the West Bank and an offshoot of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood.
     Jordan’s concerns are strategic. If the prospects for a Palestinian state diminish, it revives the old notion of the Jordan option, positing the kingdom as an alternative state for Palestinians. Jordan is home to 1.9 million Palestinian refugees - 41 percent of the UNRWA-registered refugees in the region and more than 50 percent of Jordan’s population. more.. e-mail

Woman who wore a suicide bomb takes up fight for Middle East peace
Kim Sengupta and Said Ghazali in Tulkarem, West Bank, The Independent 9/1/2008
     Shifa al-Qudsi stood in the dark corner of a room while a young man from the Al-Aqsa Brigade checked the suicide vest rigged to her body to make sure the explosive charge was correctly connected. "All you have to do is press the button," he said, before stressing the importance of ensuring that she produces her martyr’s will in front of a video camera.
     "It was the hardest, cruellest moment of my life," Ms Qudsi recalls. "I did what was asked, and I made my will trying to explain to my six-year-old daughter and my parents what I was doing. I also sent a message to the Israelis and the outside world that I was a freedom fighter and not a terrorist."
     The 24-year-old beauty technician was being sent from her home in the West Bank town of Tulkarem to blow up a supermarket in the nearby Israeli town of Netanya. In the bitter hatred spawned by years of savage violence between Israelis and Palestinians, she had convinced herself her action was a justified response to the brutality inflicted on her people. more.. e-mail

A dirty business?
Josh Scheinert, Jerusalem Post 8/28/2008
     Three years ago, privately owned garbage trucks from west Jerusalem began dumping their loads in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Dahiyat a-Salam to avoid paying for designated dumping sites near Abu Dis.
     Today Dahiyat a-Salam is home to a giant, illegal garbage dump, hundreds of meters wide, where one can find anything from construction materials to medical lab supplies and dead animals. Local air quality has been affected as dust and fumes are swept upward into the residential area that borders the site, with apartment buildings and houses dotting its perimeter. At times children can be seen playing in the refuse.
     In total, there are 16 sites in east Jerusalem that have been used for illegal dumping - Dahiyat a-Salam is the biggest. While area residents have managed to stop the dumping there, the city has yet to begin a promised clean-up.
     Human rights organizations say the problem is illustrative of an overall neglect of east Jerusalem by the municipality, noting that Dahiyat a-Salam is not even on the list of illegal dumping sites slated to be cleaned up. Furthermore, human rights groups and residents say, the municipality has said debris from the dump will be used to help level land to facilitate construction of the West Bank security fence in the area.
     However, on a visit to the site, workers constructing the fence said they had heard of no such plans.... more.. e-mail

They failed to free Shalit
Haaretz Editorial, Ha’aretz 8/31/2008
     A ministerial committee headed by Haim Ramon will begin work this morning on a list of 450 Palestinian prisoners whom Israel will be willing to release in exchange for Gilad Shalit. It is difficult to offer an explanation for this puzzling story. Is this the first time that someone is busying himself with preparing a list of 450 prisoners? Is it really true that they have only managed to come up with 80 candidates for release "who meet the criteria"? Or was a decision made to release to the press news of the preparations, in order to give the people a sense that something is happening.
     The more time goes by, the tougher Hamas’ stance is becoming, making Israel’s shame all the more evident. If immediately after the abduction it was possible to gain Shalit’s release for a few prisoners, today Hamas is signaling that it will not accept only the 450 about whom there was talk in the past, but will demand the release of 1,000 prisoners, and maybe as many as 1,500.
     In response to these demands come proposals by the Shin Bet security service to impose sanctions on the Gaza Strip and bar the shipment of fuel, even if this will threaten the calm - just as long as Hamas recognizes that Israel does not succumb easily to blackmail. Ofer Dekel, who is in charge of the negotiations, argues that the calm in the Gaza Strip has led Hamas to toughen its stance, even though in the past the defense minister expressed a contrary opinion. more.. e-mail

Israeli PR Fails the Test
Stuart Littlewood - London, Palestine Chronicle 8/31/2008
     When Ron Prosor arrived in London last year to take up his post as Israeli ambassador he was eager to step up public relations. He told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: "I’m not afraid to appear anywhere, and there is no platform’ that I will not utilize for PR work."
     We are familiar with the usual Israeli PR mantras:
     - having to contend with suicide bombers - how Arafatturned down former prime minister Barak’s so-called ’generous offer’ in 2000
     - how the Israeli public has moved to the left in recent years whereas Palestinians have moved to the extreme right
     - Israel is a democracy under attack - Jerusalem is the capital of Israel forever
     - Israel is against any negotiations with Hamas because it as a terrorist movement
     This last is all the more preposterous when echoed by the US, Britain and the EU, which have connived to keep Palestine under Israel’s military jackboot for 40 years. more.. e-mail

Food may break the Middle East’s back
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 8/30/2008
     If you think the Middle East is already a source of trouble for itself and the rest of the world in the form of violence, extremism, refugees and illegal immigrants, hold on tight, because rougher days are ahead. Discussions with researchers and executives of leading international organizations, as I have just had during a working visit to Geneva, unambiguously reveal the problematic position of the Middle East region amidst the complex, interconnected stresses the world faces.
     The crisis of food prices and availability, in particular, may be the straw the breaks the back of many camels, in this case vulnerable states and societies. Communities and some countries could slowly unravel in years to come, under the combined, cumulative stress of five simultaneous crises: higher prices and curtailed availability of basic foodstuffs; higher energy prices that will raise the cost of almost every other service or product we buy; increasingly scarce and poorer quality water; population growth rates that outpace the economy’s ability to generate new jobs for a disproportionately young population; and national environments characterized by political crises, active wars, intermittent terrorism and low-quality governance, and that are increasingly dominated by security agencies and their considerations. more.. e-mail

Palestinian Laws Get Overhaul with Little Oversight
Mohammed Assadi and Adam Entous, MIFTAH 8/30/2008
     President Mahmoud Abbas and his government are rewriting economic, social and security laws for the Palestinian territories with little public oversight, Palestinian and Western officials say.
     Reuters has obtained hundreds of Abbas decrees and a five-year legislative plan that could transform the Palestinian political and economic systems from top to bottom, yet which few of the four million residents of the territories have heard of.
     Many of the proposed changes have long been sought by liberal reformers and could help promote foreign investment, but some constitutional experts and legislators contend that Abbas’s approach to legislating by decree lacks transparency and is part of an erosion of democratic institutions.
     Some say Palestinian democracy, once held up as a model for other Arabs, has been suspended -- both in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Abbas is based at Ramallah, and in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas Islamists seized full control a year ago. more.. e-mail

The Israeli ambassador is wrong
Mandy Turner, The Guardian 8/29/2008
     The Israeli ambassador’s article yesterday was astonishing in its disregard for the facts. To argue that Israel is not to blame for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is an incredible attempt to rewrite history. Israel largely controls the purse strings of the Palestinian Authority, it controls goods and services into and out of the occupied Palestinian territories, and it controls all borders. This was enshrined in the Paris Protocols and the Oslo Accords. The PA was supposed to be the first step towards an independent state. The cruel truth is that it is more akin to a ship in a stormy sea with no engine or navigation tools.
     These facts go a long way in explaining why the Palestinian economy has collapsed resulting in widespread poverty, unemployment and social deprivation. The Palestinian Authority is a terminally ill patient kept alive only through the life support machine of international aid, which can be turned off at any point. The sanctions after Hamas was elected in January 2004 merely accelerated these problems. -- See also: Israeli ambassador's article more.. e-mail

Why do we keep letting the politicians get away with lies?
Robert Fisk, The Independent 8/30/2008
     How on earth do they get away with it? Let’s start with war between Hizbollah and Israel -- past and future war, that is.
     Back in 2006, Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers from their side of the Lebanese frontier and dragged them, mortally wounded, into Lebanon. The Israelis immediately launched a massive air bombardment against all of Lebanon, publicly declaring Beirut’s democratically-elected and US-backed -- but extremely weak -- government must be held to account for what Hizbollah does. Taking the lives of more than 1,000 Lebanese, almost all civilians, Israel unleashed its air power against the entire infrastructure of the rebuilt Lebanon, smashing highways, viaducts, electric grids, factories, lighthouses, totally erasing dozens of villages and half-destroying hundreds more before bathing the south of the country in three million cluster bomblets.
     After firing thousands of old but nonetheless lethal rockets into Israel – where the total death toll was less than 200, more than half of them soldiers – Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah’s leader, told a lie: if he had known what Israel would do in revenge for the capture of two soldiers, he announced, he would never have agreed to Hizbollah’s operation.
     But now here comes Israel’s environment minister, Gideon Ezra, with an equally huge whopper as he warns of an even bigger, more terrible war should Hizbollah attack Israel again. "During the (2006) war, we considered the possibility of attacking Lebanon’s infrastructure but we never (sic) resorted to this option, because we thought at the time that not all the Lebanese were responsible for the Hizbollah attacks... At that time, we had Hizbollah in our sights and not the Lebanese state. But the Hizbollah do not live on the moon, and some (sic) infrastructure was hit." This was a brazen lie. Yet the Americans, who arm Israel, said nothing. The European Union said nothing. No journalistic column pointed out this absolute dishonesty. more.. e-mail

Bedouin Nomads Under Threat in Holy Land
Carolynne Wheeler, MIFTAH 8/30/2008
     Thanks to drought and increasing Israeli security restrictions on where they can wander, their nomadic lifestyle, which predates the birth of Christ, is likely to die out within a generation.
     Lack of rainfall over the past three years, thought by some to be due to climate change, is gradually rendering many already sparse grazing lands unusable for their flocks of goats and sheep. At the same time, the steady growth of Jewish towns and settlements in the Israeli Negev desert and the West Bank has left the 280,000 Bedouin of the region with ever fewer options for moving to better pastures, their traditional way of surviving when times are hard.
     "This is the worst dry year for the Bedouin," declared Suleiman al-Hathalin, standing among the ramshackle collection of tin shacks and tents that mark his family’s land at Khirbet Umm al-Khair, an unrecognised Bedouin village in the West Bank hills south of Hebron. "My father and my uncle had the chance to live a true Bedouin life. But I am being deprived of this and now so are my children. The life of the Bedouin, the freedom of movement – it’s finished." more.. e-mail

A Summer Camp for Political Dissenters in Israel
Danna Harman, MIFTAH 8/30/2008
     Weeks before her scheduled conscription into the Israeli army, at a time when most other 18-year-olds were gearing up for mandatory service, Saar Vardi was in the forest – talking about pacifism.
     One of a small group of Israeli conscientious objectors, Ms. Vardi spent her last days of summer at a unique camp – counseling others who might follow in her activist footsteps.
     "A lot of us don’t get why we should give up years, not to mention maybe our lives, for what seems like someone else’s wars," explained Vardi, a facilitator at Alternative Camp, a program for 15- to 19-year-olds outside Neve Shalom, a cooperative Israeli-Arab village. "Here, we talk about options."
     On Monday, instead of reporting for duty, Vardi exercised her option to refuse service and, as expected, was promptly marched into jail.
     While the camp is not billed as a conscientious objectors’ gathering, the theme hung over the forest as thick as the smoke from the environmentally friendly cookers. Most of the 30-odd counselors were draft dodgers, deserters, or declared conscientious objectors who hoped to foster a greater understanding of their desire not to fight. -- See also: The Ordeal of Sahar Vardi, Refusenik more.. e-mail

The Ordeal of Sahar Vardi, Refusenik
Neve Gordon, Counterpunch, Palestine Monitor 8/30/2008
     Eighteen-year-old Sahar Vardi is currently in an Israeli military prison. She is being punished for the crime of refusing to be conscripted into the Israeli military.
     A few weeks before her imprisonment she wrote Israel’s Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, explaining her decision to become a conscientious objector. "I have been to the occupied Palestinian territories many times, and even though I realize that the soldier at the checkpoint is not responsible for Israel’s oppressive policies, that soldier is still responsible for his conduct"¦"� She summed up her letter to Barak with the following words: "The bloody cycle in which I live—made up of assassinations, terrorist attacks, bombings, and shootings—has resulted in an increasing number of victims on both sides. It is a vicious circle that is sustained by the choice of both sides to engage in violence. -- See also: A Summer Camp for Political Dissenters in Israel more.. e-mail

How Arab normalization is undermining the boycott movement
Wassim Al-Adel, Electronic Intifada 8/29/2008
     While boycott and divestment campaigns in the West become more sophisticated and widespread, the Arab world’s longstanding boycott of Israel is being undermined by Arab governments, companies and businessmen. This attempt at no-concession normalization with Israel must be countered by all those working for justice in Palestine. The recent Adalah-NY campaign against Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev sheds light on the burgeoning relationship between Arab governments and businesses, and Israel.
     Earlier this year, the New York-based coalition Adalah-NY successfully spearheaded a campaign to prevent Leviev from opening a branch of his diamond chain in Dubai. Leviev is the chairman of Africa Israel Investments, which is constructing illegal Jewish-only settlements in the area of the West Bank village of Jayyous through its subsidiary, Danya Cebus. A mixture of media exposure and public outcry forced the Emirati authorities to deny that the jeweler had been granted any permission. This was a victory for those who wish to see an end to the Israeli occupation. more.. e-mail

Sectarianism and the nation
Galal Nassar, Al-Ahram Weekly 8/28/2008
     It is important to draw a distinction between following a particular school of Islamic theology and adhering to its rites and the tendency to turn that creed into a distinct and exclusivist culture and identity with prohibitions, attitudes and barriers that keep its adherents from assimilating into wider society and embracing a more overarching culture and identity. This distinction between religious commitment and sectarianism is not arbitrary. It is fundamental to our ability to understand and appreciate the threat of sectarianism to national unity. One adds to the nation’s moral and cultural assets, the other diminishes them. The different schools of Islamic jurisprudence and their philosophical production greatly stimulated and enriched Islamic thought. Conversely, the exploitation of these theological outlooks and disciplines for political ends was disastrous. The internecine conflict it precipitated led to the downfall of the caliphate, the decline of the Arabs’ civilisational role and the fragmentation of the Islamic empire.
     In their transformation from a means for understanding the fundamentals of faith and morals to a politicised cultural identity, the different schools of Islamic thought became wedges that drove Muslims apart. When affiliates of the sects closed ranks against one another and claimed superior rights the collective spirit and force of the Islamic nation crumbled.
     In the modern era the Arab peoples fought for national liberation and independence. Their motto was national unity, a banner beneath which most liberation movements succeeded. more.. e-mail

The other face of western democracy
Khalid Amayreh, Palestinian Information Center 8/30/2008
     It is really difficult to blame millions of young men and women throughout the Third World, especially in the Muslim world, for their mounting disenchantment with western democracy.
     A few years ago, many people in this part of the world were made to believe that the "American way"� would empower the masses and help build a society based on liberty and justice which would also eventually produce economic prosperity.
     However,  these people soon discovered that they had been duped and deceived as they saw how democracy looked like "in action"� in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, and, of course, in Palestine.
     The often pornographic dichotomy between the ritualistic pronouncements by western leaders on democracy and human rights, on the one hand, and their scandalous actions, behaviors, and policies, on the other, served only to deepen people’s disillusionment with a "democracy"� that preaches one thing and does the opposite. more.. e-mail

Tenth Grader Zeinab M’ali imagines Ramallah without the ravages of war
Zeinab Mohammed Abdel Salam M'ali, Palestine News Network 8/30/2008
     From Common Dreams and the Imagine Palestine 2018 essay contest: " A cry of the past... and shock of present"
     AL BIREH, Ramallah -- Here are my eyes wandering in a country with wonderful clean streets, where there are no signs of burned tires or broken stones! The sky is pure without the impact of smoke bombs or rocket shells. No barriers, separation walls, or checkpo ints. Markets, roads, parks, schools, workplaces are filled up with people. I no longer see the fear reflected on the faces of people or the anxiety in their eyes...
     I shut my eyes, time carries me to a past that I do not want to recall: the sound of shelling and screams. Suffering from poor economic conditions; the political situation is worse still—the scenes of murder, mayhem, destruction, the stinking smell of bombs and blood, and the taste of oppression, bitterness, and anguish.
     I quickly open my eyes to push back the past, which is it still pursuing me. I am tired of hearing cannons and screams. I want to feel something new and beautiful other than pain and suffering. I do not want such alien smells to enter my body. I no longer want to taste oppression, bitterness, and anguish. more.. e-mail

A mobile circus to challenge immobility
Palestine Monitor 8/28/2008
     The beautiful story of the First Palestinian Circus School.
     The First Palestinian circus school was set up in 2006 when Shadi Zmorrod and Jessika Devlieghere -"father and mother circus"�- launched that original project. Based in Ramallah, the school teaches circus arts to children from the West Bank. Bringing much more than circus knowledge to the kids, the school aims to break the barriers- both physical and social- within the Palestinian society, gather people with art, and provide a new way of expression for Palestinian kids. This summer, the Circus school was touring all across the West Bank to present a "˜mobile circus’ filled with Palestinian and Danish performers, joy, motivation and audience’s smile.
     It all started in a checkpoint, like many Palestinian stories. At one of the biggest one in the West Bank -Qalandia- were we met on a Saturday the members of the Palestinian Circus School. It is 3’0 clock in the afternoon, and the sun is burning while some 25 teenagers and circus performers are waiting and queuing behind the gates of the checkpoints to leave Ramallah for a day and attend their first performance in Jerusalem. more.. e-mail

Abie Nathan
Lawrence Joffe, The Guardian 8/29/2008
     To rightwing fellow Israelis, Abie Nathan, who has died aged 81, was a figure of fun, or, worse, a traitor. Nathan did seem an unlikely warrior for peace in the Middle East, but he invariably had the last laugh. When, in 1968, he mooted the idea for an offshore pirate radio station that would spread regional goodwill, sceptics predicted that it would sink, metaphorically if not literally. Instead, the Voice of Peace blasted out pop, political commentaries and celebrity interviews for 21 years.
     Many also thought Nathan mad when, in 1977, he sailed through the Suez Canal distributing chocolates and toys to Arab children. By the year’s end, though, Nathan and fellow Israelis were negotiating directly with President Sadat. Their meeting presaged Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem, and the 1979 bi-national peace treaty.
     Israeli security chiefs regarded Nathan as dangerously naive for talking to the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Yasser Arafat in 1989, and he spent nine months in prison in 1991 for his contact with the PLO. Yet within four years, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shaking hands with Arafat at the White House. Nathan was an entrepreneur, a man with business acumen, an ability to exploit photo opportunities - and a hatred of injustice and suffering. more.. e-mail

Letters: Boats of hope for desperate Gaza
The Guardian 8/29/2008
     We do not idealise Palestinian society, fractured and divided as it is, though this is in good measure the result of sustained Israeli policy over many decades of occupation (Showboating over Gaza, August 28). Nor do we recall Israel extending a great hand of friendship to the Palestinians under President Arafat when that society wasn’t fractured. Rather, he was routinely labelled a "terrorist".Now, suddenly, we all have to "steer the Palestinians through the choppy waters to statehood". The fact is that about half the West Bank is under the authority of Jewish settlements and the Israeli military, and that the Israeli government shows no signs of yielding up this occupied territory to the new Palestinian state Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor purports to want.
     You do not have to be a fan of Hamas - we definitely are not - to recognise that they prosper as the result of the criminal and illegal policy of collective punishment that Israel insists on inflicting on the people of Gaza. Gaza is still occupied, still a prison, as evidenced by Israel’s land, air and sea blockade. The two boats of protesters that broke the Israeli blockade last week aimed specifically to draw attention to this. They have now set a precedent. May they be followed by hundreds of others bearing food, medicines and other desperately needed goods to the people of Gaza.
     Richard Kuper more.. e-mail

School opens, minds close
Gershom Gorenberg, Ha’aretz 8/29/2008
     The season for buying schoolbooks has come: Math and Mishnah, history and humash with commentaries. On the first day of classes, parents will drop their kids off at religious schools on their way to the office. Someone with an eye for detail might notice that the female teachers are nearly all wearing headscarves or hats. Most mothers have their hair uncovered. If you ask a father the date, he’ll answer, "September 1." On the chalkboard, a teacher will write, "Elul 1.
     At the gates of the state religious schools, in many places in Israel, two cultures meet. One, religious and modern, turns over its sons and daughters to the other, more insular, to educate them in its stead. The parents live with their children alongside secular families in mixed neighborhoods. A quick glance at a list of the teachers’ phone numbers reveals that many live in settlements or in neighborhoods known as Haredi or Hardali - religiously ultra-Orthodox, politically ultra-nationalist.
     The geographic gap reflects a rift in attitudes toward religion and toward the wider world. It expresses itself in how each side relates to secular culture, to non-Jews, to the limits of rabbinic authority, and to the manner of thinking about politics. The parents are often unaware of the gap. Most lean rightward politically. But their views are based on pragmatic and nationalist considerations - in contrast to the messianic politics of many of the teachers. And the minority of parents who lean leftward? If they pay attention to the right-wing atmosphere in the schools, they accept it as the price of religious education. more.. e-mail

ISRAEL: Where the Slave Trade Heads
Mel Frykberg, Inter Press Service 8/30/2008
     JERUSALEM, Aug 29 (IPS) - Israel continues to be a favourite destination for the trafficking of women for the sex industry, also known as the white slave trade, and for a form of modern day slavery where migrant labourers from developing countries are exploited.
     The U.S. State Department placed Israel in Tier 2 position in its 2007 Trafficking in Persons report. And an Israeli court ruled against the country's work visa policy, which forces foreign workers into indentured labour with a single employer.
     quot;Israel was only upgraded to Tier 2 last year," Romm Lewkowicz, a spokesman from Israel's Hotline for Migrant Workers, an advocacy group which defends the rights of foreign workers, told IPS.
     The U.S. State Department divides countries into three tiers. Tier 1 is for countries that have successfully implemented measures to control trafficking (most Western countries fall into this category). Tier 2 is for countries that are trying to eradicate this modern day slavery but still fail to meet the necessary standards. Tier 3 is reserved for countries that have not addressed the issue at the most basic level. more.. e-mail

Is Israel One Disaster from Collapse?
Ghassan Michel Rubeiz – New York, Palestine Chronicle 8/28/2008
     ’Israel has recently joined this club of high-risk countries.’
     Israelis are not united in supporting their government’s policies of a four-decade festering occupation of Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese territories. The occupation is costly, morally troubling and beyond the capacity of Israel to maintain.
     Israelis are relatively free to question the occupation; surprisingly, American politicians, especially politicians who are running for national elections, find it hard to question the occupation. If for nothing else, mere concern for Israel’s future should embolden Americans to be more discerning on issues of the Middle East. An important Carnegie study recently showed that Israel is precariously open to breakdown.
     The study implies that tight-lipped Americans need to open their minds to Israel’s vulnerability as an occupier. The heaviest cost of the 1967 occupation of Arab land is the impact on Israel’s national security. Israel received dire warning in the July-August issue of Foreign Policy magazine in the article "The Failed States Index of 2008. The Index’s latest results give the Israel/West Bank regime a rank of borderline on national security. The Index lists and discusses a long list of vulnerable countries and identifies twelve variables that undermine their national security. According to this ranking tool, the Israel/West Bank regime is among sixty fragile countries that are "just one disaster away [from] collapse." more.. e-mail

Israel’s US Missile Shield
Galal Nassar, Al-Ahram Weekly, Palestine Media Center 8/27/2008
     During his visit to the US last month, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak announced that Washington would soon link Israel to two advanced missile detection systems that would strengthen Israel’s preparedness against any Iranian threat. Following his meeting with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Barak also announced that Israel and the US were at an advanced stage in talks on upgrading Israel’s Arrow-II ballistic shield, though they disagreed over whether it should incorporate an American interceptor missile. He told reporters that Washington would also increase Israel’s access to its Defence Support Programme (DPS) satellites that can detect missile launches, adding that the US and Israeli governments "see eye to eye on the need to keep all options on the table, though we may not agree on each and every detail. It’s important the Americans understand our position, and I think that they understand it a lot better after this visit."
     The Pentagon has also agreed to install a powerful radar system in Israel in the coming months. Israeli officials described the system as capable of tracking an object the size of a baseball from about 4,700 kilometres away; it would enable Arrow to engage an Iranian Shehab-3 ballistic missile about halfway through what would be its 11 minute flight to Israel. more.. e-mail

Torture as Official Israeli Policy
Stephen Lendman – Chicago, Palestine Chronicle 8/28/2008
     ’Israel’s military and security forces have systematically practiced torture.’
     The UN Convention against Torture defines the practice as:
     "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain and suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity...."
     Although its language in part is vague, contradictory and protects abusive practices, Section 277 of Israel’s 1977 Penal Law prohibits torture by providing criminal sanctions against its use. It specifically states in language similar to the UN Convention against Torture:
     quot;A public servant who does one of the following is liable to imprisonment for three years: (1) uses or directs the use of force or violence against a person for the purpose of extorting from him or from anyone in whom he is interested a confession of an offense or information relating to an offense; (2) threatens any person, or directs any person to be threatened, with injury to his person or property or to the person or property of anyone in whom he is interested for the purpose of extorting from him a confession of an offense or any information relating to an offense." However, Israel clearly discriminates against Palestinians, (including Israeli Arab citizens), denies them rights afforded only to Jews, and gets legal cover for it by its courts. More on that below. more.. e-mail

The Distant Political Horizon of a Just Israeli-Palestinian Settlement
Connie Hackbarth, Alternative Information Center (AIC, Palestine Media Center 8/28/2008
     With all sides openly acknowledging, privately and even publicly, that the Annapolis process has failed in its promise to provide a viable political vision and structure for relevant negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel that would result in an agreement by the end of this year, what comes next? The Americans are preoccupied with their presidential elections, elections that regardless of the outcome will result in a new administration and unknown set of domestic and international priorities. The Israelis are also busy with elections.
     The first wave on 17 September in the Kadima Party primaries to select a new leader following the decision by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to step down in September in the face of extensive police investigations and possible indictments. Then, perhaps, if and when the new leader of Kadima is unable to form a government, national elections will be held in Israel in early 2009. Meanwhile, the Palestinian internal situation has been in a fractured state—between the Hamas and Fatah, Gaza and the West Bank—in large part due to US and Israeli meddling and pressure on the Palestinians to reverse their democratic choice of January 2006. Once again, the Palestinians are compelled to understand, be patient and wait due to the crises of the Israelis and Americans. more.. e-mail

The last of the dreamers of peace
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 8/28/2008
     It was a Saturday afternoon in the late 1980s. We entered The Voice of Peace’s rickety Subaru truck and drove to Gaza to Mahmoud Zahar’s house. Afternoon coffee with the Hamasnik, just imagine. Imagine that once it was possible to visit Zahar on a Saturday afternoon. Just think  there once was a man here who dreamed of peace.
     Picture a pilot who never drove a car. All those things sound like hallucinations now, even more than they used to.
     Abie Nathan was perhaps the only Israeli who felt guilty about 1948. As a volunteer pilot from overseas he had bombed Palestinian villages and then wanted to make up for it. He didn’t shoot and whine about it but actually tried to make amends.
     Today that sounds like science fiction. Israeli? Very doubtful. He lived among us for decades, but Abie dreamed in English and thought in Hindi. He helped Palestinian children, but also hastened to every disaster area in the world. In that, too, he was perhaps the last Israeli who saw compassion and aid as global notions. Our Mother Teresa. more.. e-mail

Israel pushes ahead with settlement expansion
Mel Frykberg, Electronic Intifada 8/27/2008
     JERUSALEM, 27 August (IPS) - Israel has published tenders for the construction of 1,761 illegal housing units for Israeli settlers in occupied East Jerusalem alone, according to the Israeli rights group Peace Now.
     The expansion plans come despite promises by the Israeli government at last year’s peace summit at Annapolis, Maryland to freeze all settlement growth.
     "Once again this government has shown that its words and commitments are meaningless, and they have no intention of keeping to their word," says Peace Now.
     United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has stressed repeatedly that settlement construction or expansion in the West Bank is contrary to international law and Israel’s commitments under the "road map" peace process.
     The road map was a series of peace-building measures proposed by US President George W. Bush in 2002 and subsequently developed by the diplomatic Quartet of the European Union, the United Nations, Russia and the United States.
     Ban Ki-moon further urged Israel to freeze all settlement activity and to dismantle outposts erected since March of 2001. more.. e-mail

Rights Advocates Defy Israeli Blockade of Gaza
Isabel Kershner, MIFTAH 8/27/2008
     Two boats carrying more than 40 international human rights advocates landed in Gaza on Saturday, challenging an Israeli blockade of the Hamas-run territory.
     About 2,000 residents came out to greet them at the small seaport near Gaza City. Many were singing, while others swam or set out in fishing vessels to meet the boats.
     Israel had told the activists to keep their boats away but ultimately decided to allow them to land, apparently to prevent a potentially more damaging public relations drama.
     Arye Mekel, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the decision was made “to avoid the provocation they had planned at high sea,” and because the Israeli authorities knew exactly who was on board and what cargo they were carrying.
     The human rights advocates, ranging in age from 22 to 81 and coming from about a dozen countries, set sail from Cyprus on Friday morning to make a symbolic stand against what they called Israel’s “illegal” and “immoral” siege of Gaza. They were carrying 200 hearing aids for children in Gaza and thousands of balloons. more.. e-mail

Sailing into Gaza
Huwaida Arraf, International Solidarity Movement 8/27/2008
     August 25, 2008
     On Saturday, after 32 hours on the high seas, I sailed into the port of Gaza City with 45 other citizens from around the world in defiance of Israel’s blockade. We traveled from Cyprus with humanitarian provisions for Palestinians living under siege. My family in Michigan was worried sick.
     They are not naïve. They knew that Israel could have attacked us "” as Israeli forces did in 2003, killing nonviolent American witnessand Brit Tom Hurndall as well as thousands of unarmed Palestinian civilians over the years.
     My family members, though, remember that 60 years ago part of our own family was uprooted and driven from their homes in Palestine by Israeli forces. This loss no doubt fueled my decision to risk my safety and freedom to advance the human rights of innocent men, women and children in Gaza. more.. e-mail

Palestinian herders double suffer
Middle East Online 8/27/2008
     ISFEY FOQA - Hard-hit by a severe three-year drought and tough restrictions on movement imposed by Israel, Palestinian shepherds are facing what some elders call their worst crisis in living memory.
     "All we have left is hope," says Musa Abdullah Awad, a wizened 49-year-old herder as he looks down at the remaining water in his cistern, which he says is barely enough to keep his goats alive a little longer.
     As far as the eye can see there is nothing but dust, rocks and grinding poverty.
     With more than 100 goats, Awad is better off than many of his neighbours whose homes dot the Hebron Hills on the southern edge of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, one of the most drought-stricken areas in the region.
     "These are people who are used to a tough life but they are now on the edge," says Helge Kvam of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has been providing emergency relief to the herders. more.. e-mail

Break the Siege by Sea boats plan to return quickly
PNN, Palestine News Network 8/27/2008
     Gaza City - The Free Gaza Movement’s Greta Berlin confirmed via press release Wednesday that "several Palestinian students" will be leaving Gaza with the activists on Thursday. It was earlier believed that just two Fulbright Scholars would be going out with the boats, but now the number of students has increased.
     The Israeli government refused to issue exit permits to several Fulbright students, as well as hundreds of other students who have been accepted to study abroad, regardless of the fact that the denial of the right to education contravenes international norms. The US government in turn took exception to at least two of the Fulbright Scholars, revoking their entry visas.
     On the boats heading for Cyprus, the group will also be joined by a Gaza professor who teaches in Europe and a young woman wishing to be reunited with her husband. Both are among the 1.5 million residents of the Gaza Strip who cannot get out via land or air due to decades of occupation and over a year of siege. more.. e-mail

The ‘One-State Solution’ is Full of Dangers
The National - Editorial, MIFTAH 8/27/2008
     Every so often comes a remorseful Israeli leftist academic, a well-meaning Western peace activist, or a frustrated Palestinian official like Ahmed Qurie, the head of the Palestinian peace delegation, who pronounces the death of the two-state formula and advocates a one-state solution on the whole land of historic Palestine as a way to end the 60-year Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
     The appeal of this solution is indisputable. Imagine two people divided by decades of rancour and blood agreeing to share the same land, the same resources, the same future. Imagine reciprocal recognition of all suffering and dispossession. Imagine a new citizenship that would weave together all the complexities of Israeli and Palestinian identities. Imagine the power of this model for the Middle East and the world.
     The problem with this dream? It is just that, a dream. Worse, pursuing this fantasy could deal a deadly blow to the national aspirations of the Palestinians and postpone indefinitely any peace agreement. more.. e-mail

More than ’Unhelpful,’ Settlements are Detrimental
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 8/27/2008
     In what will probably be her last trip to the region in her capacity as US Secretary of State this week, Condoleezza Rice called Israel’s settlement activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem, "unhelpful." As if this weren’t bad enough, Rice continued to make excuses for Israel, saying she still has faith in their intentions. "I don’t believe that it is Israel’s policy to increase activity in the settlements, rather it is to decrease activity."
     Does anyone really listen to Condi anymore? If we are to measure just how much the parties, Palestinians in particular, should put their eggs into her basket based on statements like these, the answer is definitely no.
     The biased and at best, lukewarm official US position on illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem is nothing new. No one was shocked out of their seats by Rice’s obvious failure to acknowledge the detrimental impact of these all-Jewish colonies in the heart of Palestinian land. Consecutive American administrations have all but given their seal of approval to the major settlement blocs in the West Bank and especially those encircling east Jerusalem, with US President George W. Bush stating in his 2004 letter to then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." In basic English this means, the settlements Israel regards as strategic and imperative to Israel’s security and national identity are there to stay. more.. e-mail

The zoo on the road to Nablus
Amelia Thomas, Electronic Intifada 8/27/2008
     Dr. Sami greeted the journalist at the ticket office.
     "Welcome," he said. "Please come this way."
     He began a tour of the zoo, first heading north up the zoo’s main avenue, past the dry fountain, the restaurant, and a dusty playground. At the top, he introduced Ruti, his prize giraffe. An impassive silver-haired keeper trailed casually a few footsteps behind. Along the back wall ranged the herbivores: Fufu, a sleek, bearded ibex, another of Sami’s favorites. Four piebald ponies. An irritable camel. A collection of sheep.
     "The people want to see something in every cage," Sami explained, "so I filled them with whatever I could find."
     Halfway along, the path cut left across the playground to a narrow central boulevard that bisected the zoo. A row of cramped, bare quarters contained the smaller animals. A porcupine. A gaggle of fat geese. Five tawny owls. Pigeons. A plump, solitary badger taking a dust bath in the sunshine. more.. e-mail

Book depicts Palestinian struggle in Israel
Reviewed by Jim Miles, Middle East Online 8/20/2008
     Book review of: “A Doctor in Galilee – The Life and Struggle of a Palestinian in Israel” by Hatim Kanaaneh (Pluto Press, London/Ann Arbor, 2008).
     "A Doctor in Galilee” is a wonderfully descriptive narrative of life and times in Palestine/Israel. Clearly written, with a mix of personal anecdotes, historical tales, and much in the way of a reality based philosophy of a people living under an occupying force that treats them distinctly as a lesser ‘other’. The emotional impact is powerful as Hatim Kanaaneh uses basic descriptors to transport the reader into a world consisting of family, friends, hope and persistence on one side, and racism, prejudice, discrimination, manipulation, and apartheid on the other.
     Hatim Kanaaneh is now a retired Doctor, a profession that through his work liaisons with the Israeli Health Ministry provides a deeper and more personal look at the more subtle manipulations and racism that underlie the overt acts of land confiscation, road blocks, and military occupation that the usual narratives concentrate on. It is hard to put the book into one theme, one word, as the author best defines his own theme. more.. e-mail

Here We Go ’Round the Mulberry Bush
Joharah Baker – West Bank, Palestine, Palestine Chronicle 8/19/2008
     ’Weak from day one, Mahmoud Abbas has only grown increasingly weaker.’
     It’s amazing how the Palestinians and Israelis can twist and turn, flip and flop and go round and round and always end up almost exactly where they started. What’s even more flabbergasting is that after all this water-treading, leaders on both sides still insist that all is not lost and that their peoples should not lose faith in them in or in this process they call negotiations.
     Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly offered his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas a proposal in which 93 percent of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip would be returned to the Palestinians under a final settlement, but without a commitment to establishing Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state.
     According to the proposal, in exchange for the seven percent of West Bank land Israel would annex, it would offer the Palestinians 5.5 percent of land in the Negev Desert. The seven percent, is of course, land on which Israel’s illegal settlements are built in and around Jerusalem and also in the northern West Bank. These areas, Olmert maintains, must remain in Israeli hands and will never be relinquished in any final solution with the Palestinians. more.. e-mail

Good Israelis and Corrupt American Media
Iqbal Tamimi, Palestine Think Tank 8/20/2008
     After many years of humiliation and despair experienced by many Palestinians like myself, I took the liberty after moving to the UK of starting an individual project - searching to find out why Israeli’s are very cruel, how come they never see that their acts are inhumane, and how come they know nothing about ethics.
     I could not start any dialogue with Israelis while I was residing in any Arab country, because I am a Palestinian and a practicing Muslim. Many Arabs and Muslims are still marked with deep wounds caused by the Israeli occupation not for Palestinians only. The majority of Arabs will not understand my mission if I brushed against their inflamed memories of loss and grief. I have been able to anticipate most people’s reactions, after publishing a few articles about not judging others on faith choice basis, and refusing the ideologies of feelings of superiority thus judging others upon such criteria. I ended up with a large number of e mails calling me all kinds of names, the least of which was "˜praising’ Jews and Christians, and being a bad Muslim woman who does not deserve to wear her Hijab. more.. e-mail

Israel to Treat Gaza Peace Boats ’Like Pirates’
Carolynne Wheeler, MIFTAH 8/20/2008
     The SS Free Gaza and the SS Liberty, which are sailing from Crete to Cyprus and then on to Gaza after being delayed by a storm, will carry about 40 protesters campaigning against Israel’s economic sanctions on the Palestinian territory, including an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor and Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of Tony Blair, who is the international special envoy to the Middle East.
     The boats, which will also carry a cargo of balloons, musical instruments and thousands of hearing aids, are expected to approach Gaza early next week.
     The territory’s land borders have been closed to all but essential humanitarian aid for more than a year, plunging it into deep poverty, and the tiny strip of land is rarely visited by foreign dignitaries. An attempt by Mr Blair last month was aborted at the last minute due to security concerns.
     Israeli officials are thought to see the protesters’ efforts as a dangerous precedent. The foreign ministry sent a letter advising organisers that Gaza coastal waters are subject to a no-go warning from the Israeli navy and that any attempt to approach would be interpreted as assistance to a terrorist regime. more.. e-mail

The Gaza Concentration Camp: Ancient Colonialism through a Nazi filter
Agustin Velloso, Translated By Toni Solo, Palestine Think Tank 8/20/2008
     Photos
     When you approach the Erez crossing point to enter Gaza from the north, you notice a concentration camp straightaway even if you may never have seen one like the ones turned into museums or educational centres, or like the ones that appear in documentaries or photographs.
     An observation balloon, innocently painted white, rocks gently to and fro in the air over the wall surrounding Gaza. It makes sure no unhappy soul moves beyond arbitrary limits set by the camp guards. The visitor is overwhelmed by the mammoth steel-reinforced wall. This imprisons a million and a half inmates inside an area approximately 38 kilometres long and 12 wide at its widest.
     Apart from cases you can count on the fingers of one hand, Palestinians quite simply cannot pass through Erez. Full stop. Besides, they are not allowed out via the South, crossing into Egypt, nor via the West, since the Mediterranean Sea is barred to them, nor via the air, since that too is likewise barred, despite there being no boats or planes to travel in. In any case, the airport was destroyed by the bombs of Israel air power. Gazans are not allowed to exit by digging underground either. more.. e-mail

Standing up for justice in the Middle East
Ramzi Kysia, Electronic Intifada 8/20/2008
     The Free Gaza Movement, a diverse group of international human rights activists from 17 different countries, will soon set sail from Cyprus to Gaza in order to challenge the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. I’m proud to stand with them. Over 170 prominent individuals and organizations have endorsed our efforts, including the Carter Center, former British Cabinet member Clare Short, and Nobel Peace Prize laureates Mairead Maguire and Desmond Tutu.
     Adam Qvist, a 22-year-old student and filmmaker from Copenhagen, Denmark, is one of the human rights workers sailing to Gaza. He explains his participation in the project:
     "I’m interested in telling narratives and advocating people’s existent feelings. The idea of sailing to Gaza is kind of crazy, but it’s also very straight-forward. The whole idea of having just one Palestinian who’s been forced off their land and who is able to return to Palestine -- this is something that could demolish the whole Zionist venture. And it just has to be one person. If one person can do it, then others can do it. This project, this boat, is about giving people the freedom to take responsibility. You shouldn’t expect something from others if you can’t do it yourself, and this is true both on a very personal but also on a political level." more.. e-mail

Charity Raids Coordinated by the US and Financed by the EU
Kawther Salam, Palestine Think Tank 8/20/2008
     Following the interchanging of the roles of coordination between the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli occupation raided the Palestinian charities of Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah and Jenin in the West Bank cities, closing, vandalizing, looting, destroying, and transferring their respective properties to the Israeli military central command Gadi Shamni, and the Palestinian Authority lead by the appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who is lead by the American criminals Lt. Gen. William Fraser and Lt. General Keith Dayton, implemented several raids and attacks on Palestinian charities and orphanage in Hebron and its district Taffouh, Beit Ummar, Beit Ula and other cities.
     The continuous illegal raids by the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Authority are coordinated by the US air force criminal Lt. Gen. William Fraser and Lt. General Keith Dayton, the US coordinator for the genocide against Palestinians. Both lead the Palestinian authority security groups according to some of the accords of the Annapolis summit. The accords are based on targeting the Palestinian opposition parties and their charitable organizations, like the orphanages, medical centers, kindergartens, and confiscating and freezing their banks accounts in order to strengthen President Mahmoud Abbas and protecting the Israeli security. The European Union is financing this plan with the funds which they transfer for the PA security system. more.. e-mail

Gaza children begin to heal at summer camps
Middle East Online 8/20/2008
     Reclaiming what’s left of their childhood.
     GAZA CITY - Huda Ghalia, still haunted by the Israeli-caused explosion on a Gaza City beach that killed most of her family, has found a place to heal at a new UN-run summer camp along with other war-scarred Palestinian children.
     An iconic photograph taken after the June 9, 2006 blast shows Huda screaming next to the bloodied remains of her father, minutes after he and seven other picnickers were killed in a blast which the Palestinians and international rights groups said was caused by an Israeli artillery shell.
     But now the tall, slender 14-year-old can be seen playing and laughing with other children at a summer camp, run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, where she has become an inspiration to other children scarred by war.
     She leads a group of around 20 children between the ages of eight and 15 in games of handball and helps them with drawing and painting. "I like to draw flowers and children playing, not tanks and planes," Huda said. more.. e-mail

Blocking a Gazan’s Path to San Diego
Fidaa Abed, MIFTAH 8/19/2008
     As a young Palestinian from Gaza, I had been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to study at the University of California San Diego on a Fulbright scholarship. The chance to escape Gaza’s confines and immerse myself in an American education was deeply thrilling. With Israel controlling Gaza’s border exits, air space and sea access – notwithstanding its “pullout” of 2005 – I imagined the long, open roads of the United States and its people’s unchallenged freedom of movement.
     I love my people and my homeland, but a young person needs opportunities. These are far more abundant in the United States than in the besieged Gaza Strip.
     Last week, I landed in Washington, D.C., brimming with optimism. Upon arrival, I was whisked into a separate room. An American official informed me that he had just received information about me that he could not reveal. However, it required him to put me on the next plane home. I was shocked. And I was taken aback at the cruelty of snatching away my educational dreams at the last possible moment. more.. e-mail

Georgia: Israel’s Home Sweet Home
Hesham Tillawi, MIFTAH 8/19/2008
     The Israeli Georgian Connection is more than a thousand years old. Most of the Jewish residents of Israel are of the same stock as of the Jews of Georgia. Non should be shocked to discover the depth of Israel’s involvement in the Georgian/Russian conflict. Once examined, the historical blood relation between Israeli Jews and Georgian Jews, it all becomes clear. Let us take a look first at the current relationship after which we will prove the historical connection between them a little later..
     Georgian Minister Temur Yakobashvili said Saturday August 9, 2008 one day after Georgia attacked South Ossetia–“The Israelis should be proud of themselves for the Israeli training and education received by the Georgian soldiers…”
     The Jerusalem Post on August 12, 2008 reported: “Georgian Prime Minister Vladimer (Lado) Gurgenidze(Jewish) made a special call to Israel Tuesday morning to receive a blessing from one of the Haredi community’s most important rabbis and spiritual leaders, Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman.” The Prime Minister of Georgia, principally a nation of Orthodox Christians called Rabbi Steinman saying ‘I’ve heard he is a holy man. I want him to pray for us and our state.’ more.. e-mail

Swiss bank excludes company involved with illegal tramway
Adri Nieuwhof, Electronic Intifada 8/19/2008
     Palestine solidarity activists based in Basel, Switzerland demanded Bank Sarasin to divest from Veolia Environnement in early June, because of its involvement in the illegal tramway being built by Israel that runs through occupied East Jerusalem. Within a month Bank Sarasin replied with a five-page response, to explain its longstanding practice of assessing its sustainable investments. In its letter, Bank Sarasin referenced articles published by The Electronic Intifada, and stated that while it "is completely aware that the project in East Jerusalem is significant from a local perspective," it evaluates Veolia from the perspective of its worldwide activities.
     Another financial institution, The Swiss Alternative Bank (ABS), refers clients to Bank Sarasin’s sustainable investment funds. Established in 1990 at the initiative of people active in the area of development cooperation and environment, ABS holds offices in several parts of Switzerland and is a member of the the European Federation of Ethical and Alternative Banks. Inspired by the initiative of Palaestina-Solidaritaet, a client informed ABS about Bank Sarasin’s refusal to divest from Veolia. In response, ABS acknowledged that these investments are controversial and explained that Veolia does not meet its newly developed strict criteria for investment. As a result, ABS expects Bank Sarasin to influence Veolia to withdraw from the tramway project or to sell its shares in Veolia. more.. e-mail

Is this the way?
Daniel Gavron, Jerusalem Post 8/19/2008
     Why would a pamphlet published 60 years ago be of any interest today? This was the question I asked myself, when it arrived on my computer recently, in response to a public discussion in which I had participated in London. Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian, noted academic and peace activist Tony Klug and I had debated "Two-states for two peoples: solution or illusion?" At the end of the evening, Prof. Michael Zander approached me about his late father, Walter Zander, and subsequently e-mailed me his Web site (www,walterzander.info). I was fascinated by both the books and essays, but particularly struck by a 45-page pamphlet he wrote in 1947.
     "Is This the Way?" was published early in 1948 by Victor Gollancz, price one shilling. While much of the material relates very much to its own time, I was astounded at how relevant its insights are to our situation today. The German-born Zander was the secretary of the Friends of the Hebrew University in Britain for almost three decades. A lawyer by training, he was a prolific author, writing about everything from economics and legal matters to Soviet Jewry and the holy sites in this country.
     "Is This the Way?" was composed in the dramatic period between the United Nations vote partitioning Palestine in November 1947 and the declaration of the State of Israel in May 1948. Very much in defiance of the triumphal mood in the Jewish community at that time, Zander criticizes the Zionist policy toward the Arabs. IN ITSELF, this is not remarkable. There were several critics of the Zionist movement’s policy - or rather lack of policy - toward the Arabs. What makes Zander’s essay special is his insistence that, with a Jewish state on the way, we Jews should stop blaming everybody else for our problems and take responsibility ourselves. In the shadow of the Holocaust and with the nascent Jewish state fighting for its life, it must have required great courage to stake out such a position. more.. e-mail

The Only Alternative to Two States is Conflict
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 8/19/2008
     With Palestinians facing greater and greater difficulties in their struggle to achieve an independent state in the territories occupied by Israel in the war of 1967, a serious debate has been sparked over the viability of the two-state solution.
     The continuing Israeli changes to the reality of these territories--whether through the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements and related infrastructure including the wall, or the disintegration of these territories through a comprehensive system of checkpoints and other forms of barriers--and the stagnation of the political process have further shaken Palestinian faith that a two-state solution is the most viable and suitable.
     The Israeli-imposed separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank--which was deepened after the Israeli redeployment from Gaza and further exacerbated by the subsequent confrontations between Fateh and Hamas that left Gaza under the control of one and the West Bank under the control of the other--have also raised further question marks about the possibility of a two-state solution. more.. e-mail

Failing Darwish’s legacy
Sumia Ibrahim, Electronic Intifada 8/19/2008
     Last Wednesday’s state funeral in Ramallah for the revered Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish revealed how far the Palestinian people are from realizing the justice imagined in Darwish’s writing, and was a sad reminder of how the Palestinian Authority (PA) helps undermine his people’s struggle.
     On the day that Darwish’s body was laid to rest, amid tens of thousands of Palestinians mourning in the streets and many more in their homes, his criticisms of and hopes for the Palestinian and Israeli governments and societies remained unheeded and unrealized. However, Darwish’s official funeral at the PA headquarters, with all of its military pomp, demonstrated that the PA had its own interests in mind over that of respecting, never mind fulfilling, Darwish’s message and legacy.
     Darwish joined the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1973 but broke 20 years later in disagreement with their signing with Israel the Oslo Accords which Darwish believed did not even minimally fulfill Palestinians’ rights. The Oslo Accords established the PA and initiated the "peace process" supposedly aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state, but were null and voided after Israel doubled its illegal settlement population in the years that followed, dashing any hopes of Palestinian sovereignty. more.. e-mail

Palestinians Lose a Voice
Mohammed Omer, Inter Press Service 8/19/2008
     GAZA CITY, Aug 19(IPS) - In the death of poet Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine has lost a voice.
     It was a voice that carried into the hearts of Palestinians, and far across the world. His poems were translated into 22 languages, including Hebrew.
     Darwish, who died last Saturday Aug. 9, was born in the northern Palestinian village Birwah, six years before the state of Israel came into being. When that happened in 1948, Darwish and his family fled the massacres to Lebanon.
     He returned the following year, too late to be included in Israel’s census of Palestinians who had remained. There was no record of his existence, his village had been erased from the new map drawn up by the Israelis.
     This was the fate of at least three-quarters of a million Palestinians. more.. e-mail

The Anger, the Longing, the Hope
Uri Avnery, Middle East Online 8/19/2008
     One of the wisest pronouncements I have heard in my life was that of an Egyptian general, a few days after Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem.
     We were the first Israelis to come to Cairo, and one of the things we were very curious about was: how did you manage to surprise us at the beginning of the October 1973 war?
     The general answered: "Instead of reading the intelligence reports, you should have read our poets."
     I reflected on these words last Wednesday, at the funeral of Mahmoud Darwish.
     During the funeral ceremony in Ramallah he was referred to again and again as "the Palestinian National Poet".
     But he was much more than that. He was the embodiment of the Palestinian destiny. His personal fate coincided with the fate of his people.
     He was born in al-Birwa, a village on the Acre-Safad roa more.. e-mail

People: DARWISH, Mahmoud -- Writer
Electronic Intifada 8/19/2008
     Described as the Arab world’s poet laureate, Mahmoud Darwish passed away in Houston, Texas on 9 August 2008 at the age of 67.His life and words reflect the experience of a generation of Palestinians, and upon his death, observers noted that his words will preserve the spirit of resistance that Israel failed to destroy as it wreaked destruction wherever Darwish and his people went.
     Darwish’s birthplace, al-Birweh village near Acre, was destroyed by invading Israeli forces during the Nakba -- the period that witnessed the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and the destruction of the Palestinian homeland. Along with hundreds of thousands of other Palestine refugees, Darwish’s family fled to Lebanon, but later risked death by returning to what became Israel. There Darwish’s family lived under military rule second-class citizens in a self-declared Jewish state.
     The author Ahdaf Soueif, writing in The Guardian, recalls: "He was seven when -- in the Nakba of 1948 -- he fled from Birweh, his village in the Galilee. At the age of 12, living in Deir al-Asad, in what had become Israel, with a reputation as a precocious child poet, he was asked to compose a poem for a public reading. The occasion was the celebration of Israel’s "Independence Day" and the poem he read described the feelings of a child who returns to his town to find other people sleeping in his bed, tilling his father’s lands. He was summoned to the military governor who told him that if he continued to write subversive material his father’s work permit would be revoked." Decades later, Israeli officials continued their attempts to muffle Darwish’s voice by preventing the Education Minister from including even Darwish’s non-political poems in the Isareli education curriculum. more.. e-mail

Qurei’s pathetic warnings
Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank, Palestinian Information Center 8/17/2008
     Ahmed Qurei’, the leading Palestinian Authority (PA)  negotiator, is behaving very much like Alice in Wonderland. Last week, he warned for the umpteenth time that the "Palestinian leadership"� would switch to the "one-state solution"� if Israel continued to obstruct the two-state solution.
     Speaking before Fatah delegates in Ramallah,  Qurei’ reiterated the mantra that the PA would never settle for anything less than a viable state on all the Palestinian  territories occupied by Israel in 1967, with "al-Quds al Sharif"� or "Noble Jerusalem"� as its capital.
     Qurei’ and some other PA leaders have been voicing similar warnings for years. These leaders, however, seem to utterly lack the will and inclination to abandon the defunct Oslo process. The reasons for that apparently have more to do with personal and partisan expediency and less with  true Palestinian national considerations.
     This is why Qurei’s  remarks shouldn’t be taken seriously. After all, the very survival of the PA depends, almost completely, on its subservience to Israel. more.. e-mail

Passing in passing words
Sasson Somekh, Ha’aretz 8/14/2008
     Between 1960 - when "Birds Without Wings," Mahmoud Darwish’s first book, was published in Acre - and 2005, when the Hebrew version of his "Like the Almond Blossom or Further" came out, the Palestinian poet traveled a long and exhausting road. In the space of those years Darwish published some 20 packed volumes of poetry, collections that became classics in contemporary Palestinian literature.
     Darwish, who died last Sunday, left Israel in 1970 and went to live in Egypt, Lebanon, France and Jordan. He finally settled in Ramallah, within the territory of the Palestinian Authority in the mid-1990s. His political affiliation evolved from supporting communism in his youth, to becoming an adherent of inveterate Palestinian nationalism. His poetry underwent extensive changes in form, language and imagery. more.. e-mail

Not the good guys vs. the bad guys
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 8/17/2008
     TBILISI- The weekend edition of The Georgian Times left no room for doubt. The weekly, which is published in English and edited entirely by women, enlisted in the cause with all its might: "For Georgia and victory," "Georgia alone in stand-off with Russia," and "Europe learned nothing from Hitler’s crimes" screamed the paper’s front-page headlines. When the cannons are roaring in this spectacular Caucasian country, as in almost every country, everything serves a melodramatic purpose and self-criticism falls silent.
     But one does not have to be a propagandizing Georgian newspaper to paint this new war in stark black and white. After all, the West and Israel are doing it, too: Georgia, a tiny democracy, dear to the West and darling of the U.S., is facing off against the aggressive, conquering, bullying Russian bear, not to mention the new Nazi.
     Good guys versus bad guys, David versus Goliath, "Adolf Putin" versus the freedom fighters.
     It has been years since we have had a war in which it is so clear to spectators in the West who constitute the Children of Light and who constitute the Children of Darkness.
     It is a matter of propaganda. The U.S. president’s remarks on Friday that the world would not accept bullying and intimidation could only raise a bitter smile. more.. e-mail

Ofra first
Haaretz Editorial, Ha’aretz 8/17/2008
     For two years now, a raging debate has centered on the question of when, if ever, the government will evacuate the illegal outpost of Migron. Meanwhile, observe as the settlers add yet another caravan to the outpost, Peace Now monitors warn us. Watch as the Americans pressure the government to evacuate the outposts immediately. See the High Court of Justice instruct the state to clear out the buildings because they were built on private land owned by Palestinians who filed the court petition. Then we hear the state prosecutors announce that the evacuation will be carried out no later than August. The settlers, meanwhile, take pains to remind us of the bloody riots at Amona and threaten an encore. And Defense Minister Ehud Barak cooks up a deal to relocate Migron a few hundred meters away in exchange for "legalizing" the outpost and turning it into a settlement.
     Shifting the discussion on the future of the settlements from the political arena into the realm of law, thus changing the crux of the matter from setting a border between us and the Palestinians to the legality of the settlements themselves, does not bring us closer to a diplomatic solution. Rather, it moves us further away.
     Focusing public attention on marginal issues, sending paperwork that proves property ownership from one lawyer to the next and distinguishing between a legal settlement and an illegal outpost are all means designed to preserve the status quo... more.. e-mail

When the Boats Arrive in Gaza
Stuart Littlewood – London, UK, Palestine Chronicle 8/15/2008
     Volunteers from around the world are making an effort. Can we hope for the same from those who claim to govern?
     Is the Palestinian Authority for or against the siege?
     While others put on a show of solidarity with the brave ’freedom’ voyagers as they set sail to break the siege of Gaza, where is the voice of the PA?
     The siege has been going on for more than 2 years but here in the UK I have heard the Palestinian Delegation speak only once of the injustice, suffering and devastation. As far as I know, these ’official’ representatives of the Palestinian people have said nothing in the media about the freedom boats, which potentially present the most important challenge to the Israeli occupation for a very long time.
     Volunteers are doing in their small way what the EU -- if it had a shred of moral decency -- should have done massively with cargo ships, helicopters and the necessary armed escorts when this offence against every code of humanity was first committed. The slightest interference by Israel, or attempt to re-seal Gaza’s borders, should have resulted in the EU-Israel Agreements being torn up and consigned to the wastepaper basket of history. more.. e-mail

Poem: At the Israeli Checkpoint
Sam Hamod, Palestine Chronicle 8/15/2008
     In memory of Mahmoud Darwish, the greatest of Arab Poets.
     At the checkpoint, the
     Israeli private asked me my name, I told
     her, my name is
     Zaitoun, she asked, what does that mean,
     I told her 4,000 year old trees, she laughed,
     asked for my real name, I told her, "Dumm," what?
     i said, it means blood, she said, that’s no name, I told her
     blood of my grandfather, my father, my uncle
     and even mine if necessary, she bridled, called the corporal,
     he came running up, said, what kind of threat is that,
     I said, it’s no threat, it’s just a fact,
     he called the sergeant, he came up and hit me before he spoke,
     my mouth bled, I told him, this is the blood I mean, that same
     blood, you are afraid of, it’s over 4000 years old, see how dark it is
     he called the lieutenant, who asked why my mouth was bleeding.... more.. e-mail

Fleeting words
Haim Gouri, Ha’aretz 8/15/2008
     The death of poet Mahmoud Darwish, in an American hospital, far away from his land, grieves me. This man and his multifaceted poetry has occupied me since the 1960s. Even then he was already known as a young member of the group of poets and writers from Maki - the binational Israel Communist Party - whose work appeared in the party newspaper, Al-Ittihad, and its literary supplement, Al-Jadid. There you found names such as Emile Habibi, Saliba Hamis, Dr. Emile Toma, Samih al-Qasim, Mahmoud Darwish, Salem Jubran, "and others."
     In those years a few encounters took place between Arab and Hebrew artists, which, if they did not offer a balm to the wounds of our land, stimulated mutual curiosity and forged personal ties that proved to be enduring. I remember one such instance in Haifa, in 1970, which still haunts me. My wife and I came from Jerusalem for a protest meeting held in a cinema in the lower part of the city. On the agenda: a military censor order demanding that Arab poets submit their manuscripts for review prior to publication! I no longer remember everyone who spoke. One of the speakers was Amos Kenan. We told a few of our Arab colleagues that despite the dispute between us, we shared their protest against a directive which we perceived as insulting, foolish and pointless. more.. e-mail

Sixty Minutes Becomes Israeli-Occupied Television
Ira Glunts, NY, US, Palestine Chronicle 8/15/2008
     The Sixty Minutes segment is not a news report, but a paean to ’The Israeli Air Force’.
     As Philip Giraldi points out in his article "America’s Israeli-Occupied Media,"(1) the Israeli government is continuing its campaign to get the U.S. military to attack Iran or at least give a "green light" for a massive Israeli bombing strike. In pursuit of this reckless and ill-conceived plan Tel Aviv has a willing co-conspirator in the mainstream American media, who will present the Israeli world-view without criticism or qualification.
     The recent CBS broadcast (2) of the Sixty Minutes segment "The Israeli Air Force" (3) provides a rather startling example of how the American news media will permit the Israelis to present their point of view to the exclusion of any competing narrative. The report, which is presented by correspondent Bob Simon, first aired on April 27 and was rebroadcast on August 10.
     The message of "The Israeli Air Force" is clearly and succinctly communicated by the CBS report as: Iran is a threat to Israel’s existence and to the rest of the world; Iran will obtain a nuclear weapon soon; when it does it will use it to destroy Israel. Thus it is apparent that if Iran does not quickly agree with the demands of Western powers to cease its uranium enrichment program, the Israeli Air Force can and will attack and incapacitate the Iranian nuclear facilities. more.. e-mail

Family Politics and the New Gaza Crisis
Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 8/15/2008
     Clan militants became a necessary phenomenon to protect each family’s interests.
     Yet more haunting images of blindfolded, stripped down Palestinian men being contemptuously dragged by soldiers in uniform from one place to another. Yet more footage of bloodied men lying on hospital beds describing their ordeals to television reporters who have heard this story all too often. Yet more news of Palestinian infighting, tit-for-tat arrests, obscene language and embarrassing behaviour from those who have elected themselves -- or were elected -- to represent the Palestinian people.
     Once again, the important story that ought to matter the most -- that of a continually imposing and violent Israeli occupation -- is lost in favour of Palestinian-infused distractions, deliberate or not.
     In Gaza, the story of the Israeli siege, which represents one of today’s most catastrophic man-made disasters, is relegated in favour of renewed infighting between Hamas and Fatah, whether directly or by proxy. As always, the Gaza story is largely told with biased and presumptive undertones: to indict one party as terrorist and extremist and to hail another as a champion of liberty and a defender of democracy. Such nonsensical conclusions cannot be further from the truth as in the latest clashes between Palestinian police under the command of the deposed Hamas government and militants from the Helis family, concentrated mostly in Gaza City. more.. e-mail

’We are running out of time’
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 8/15/2008
     At the end of my conversation with Sari Nusseibeh at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, the highly respected president of Al-Quds University - and cosignatory of "The People’s Choice" [see box below], a peace plan that he formulated with former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon - told me he wouldn’t be surprised if one of the Palestinian residents of the city ran for mayor in the municipal elections in November. The candidate would not run as a representative of Jerusalem per se, Nusseibeh stressed. Rather, he would be running on behalf of all Palestinians in the occupied territories.
     "Why don’t you do it?" I blurt out. The 59-year-old son of Anwar Nusseibeh, a Jordanian government minister, does not smile. "It’s possible," says the professor of Islamic philosophy, who briefly replaced Faisal Husseini a few years ago as the top Palestinian official in East Jerusalem.
     "Anything is possible," he adds without batting an eyelid.
     Nusseibeh’s previous contention that the Oslo "house of cards" had begun to collapse was further confirmed by this week’s report in Haaretz regarding Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s latest peace offering (Israel would annex 7 percent of the West Bank and compensate the Palestinians with territory in the Negev, which would be equivalent to 5.5 percent of West Bank land; an agreement on the future of Jerusalem would be postponed to a later date; there would be no right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel; and the entire plan would be implemented after Hamas is removed from power in the Gaza Strip. -- See also: The plan's terms more.. e-mail

It stinks
Yossi Sarid, Ha’aretz 8/15/2008
     What is actually new about that invention that scatters demonstrations and is called "The Skunk"? It has a "source in the Border Police" waxing lyrical: "Here the effect is tremendous. People can’t stand themselves and they leave the site." For over 40 years we’ve been stinking, in the words of the Border Policeman, we can still tolerate ourselves and we have yet to leave.
     Colonel Amir Baram just ended his term as commander of the Samaria Brigade. In a summarizing report, he identifies Daniella Weiss of Kedumim and Gabi Ben Zimra of Ma’aleh Levona as "major provocateurs," and warns of the harm caused by the gangs of settlers, which is steadily escalating without anyone stopping it.
     In contrast, another brigade commander, one Udi Ben Moha, who began his tour of duty three months ago, identifies the provocateurs elsewhere; he wakes up to work on the left side: Were it not for the presence of the leftist groups in Hebron and its satellites, in his opinion, the city of apartheid would be a model of coexistence.
     How is it that such a huge gap separates two brigade commanders? The occupation is the same occupation, the Palestinians are the same Palestinians and the settlers are the same settlers. There is no real difference between the strong-armed men in Yitzhar and the empty-headed ones in Hebron. The explanation is simple: One brigade commander is leaving the territories, the other is just beginning. more.. e-mail

HLT: Israeli forces destroy and we rebuild
Osama Awwad, Palestine News Network 8/15/2008
     Israeli forces uprooted tens of trees and demolished a home in Wad Rahal in southern Bethlehem. This is not new for the Israelis, but this time a group of nonviolent demonstrators rebuilt the house and replanted trees.
     The keys have been handed back to the family.
     The reasons for Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes range from confiscating the land for the Wall, for settlements, or for declaring an area where ones house is a "closed military zone." Also a "lack of permit" is often invoked in certain areas, particularly East Jerusalem. But most say the real reason is for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
     But the Palestinian nonviolent resistance continues to fight back. A small part of the sun rose on this home today after the Bethlehem-based NGO Holy Land Trust rebuilt it. They had their own crew and also many foreign volunteers with them. Even if it is one house at a time out of thousands, then they will do it. more.. e-mail

Imagine if the Kids Took Over
Khaled Diab, Middle East Online 8/15/2008
     BRUSSLES – A couple of months ago, as Israelis celebrated 60 years of statehood and Palestinians marked six decades of dispossession, I wondered whether there would ever be peace between the two peoples.
     Rather than dwell on the depressing present or venture into the minefield of the past, I decided to look forward in time, to a fictional future where peace prevailed.
     Commenting on my article, Hitham Kayali of OneVoice, a grassroots movement which has gained the written support of 600,000 Palestinians and Israelis for a two-state solution said: "Only [by using their imagination] will people understand why compromises should be made."
     I was pleased to learn from Kayali that Israeli and Palestinian schoolchildren have been involved in a similar experiment: using their imagination in an essay contest to dream of what life could be like, 10 years from now, in a peaceful 2018. more.. e-mail

Inside the funeral of Mahmoud Darwish
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 8/13/2008
     I have a small handful of rose petals given to me from inside the funeral of Mahmoud Darwish. They were covering a table in white silk laid in front of his coffin as he was carried in by members of the Presidential Guard dressed in the palest brown of uniforms.
     There were thousands of people outside on the grounds of the Muqata, the Presidential Headquarters, and more in the streets. His body was driven through Ramallah just after the service finished around 2 pm. Posters of the great poet are hung everywhere in the central West Bank city.
     He was laid in the ground at 2:30, with the Grand Mufti overseeing the Sunni Muslim burial. Palestinian and black flags flew and wreaths of yellow, white, orange and red flowers with messages of condolences were all around. They are the same that were laid on the ground of the parking lot when the journalists first arrived on Wednesday morning. We were taken to them first by the Presidential guards. more.. e-mail

A guest of eternity: Mahmoud Darwish in memoriam
Raymond Deane, Electronic Intifada 8/13/2008
     At a time when many feel that the Palestinian cause is dying, the death of the poet Mahmoud Darwish following open-heart surgery acquires added poignancy.
     Variously described as "the Palestinian national poet" or "the Arab poet laureate, Darwish was 67, exactly the same age as his friend Edward Said when he died five years ago. Both men were seen as embodying the aspirations of their people, both served on the Palestinian National Council, and both resigned in protest against the Oslo Accords which, as they rightly anticipated, sold out Palestinian rights for no tangible result.
     While Said philosophically endured the status of icon and saw it as helpful in his task of representing Palestinian claims, Darwish repeatedly but unsuccessfully rebelled against it and felt burdened by being forever associated with a poem such as "Identity Card," from his first collection. more.. e-mail

Arrows in the quiver
Hani Al-Masri, Al-Ahram Weekly 8/14/2008
     The Palestinian premiership, while not without faults, has made valuable advances that should be built upon.
     The Badael (Alternatives) Centre for Media and Research recently organised a "horizon scanning" seminar with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Attended by dozens of politicians, scholars and media figures representing all shades of the political spectrum, the conference had essentially a two-fold purpose. This was, first, to assess the performance of the Fayyad government just over a year since its establishment, and second, to shed light on a number of the prime minister’s recent ideas and actions that reflect a new policy and perhaps a new outlook.
     Some claim that this meeting was a form of electoral campaign publicity even though Fayyad has declared that he has no intention of fielding himself in the next elections or accepting a new post. They also suggest it was a tactical gambit, an attempt to pre-empt some of the fallout of an impending economic crisis or a response to Israel’s flagrant bid to undermine the Fayyad government in spite of its having met all Palestinian obligations under the US roadmap plan. more.. e-mail

We may be near a ’cold peace’ between the US and Iran
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, Daily Star 8/15/2008
     So does it really matter if it is the erudite liberal or the macho neoconservative who enforces the universal "embrace" of the idea of America? It does, in one very significant way: today, the neocons’ ability to pool diplomatic power to legitimate aggression is minimized. The slick, charismatic liberal who looks and speaks as if he understands the despair of the voiceless, on the other side, may get the benefit of the doubt.
     There is a discernible progression in the rapprochement between the United States and Iran, even during the presidency of George W. Bush. This progression was forced upon the Bush administration by the emerging new regional order in Western Asia and North Africa and the reshuffling of world politics toward a "post-imperial" era. Let me sketch a few signposts of these developments in the following paragraphs.
     It has been one of the rather more salient effects of Bush’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq that the United States has lost its power to push and shove states, much less societies, toward accepting the "war on terror" as a global reality. Today, the US cannot enforce its legitimacy as the universal "Leviathan" anymore. The country’s short indulgence in the "unipolar transition moment," the period immediately after the demise of the Soviet Union, is over. If it could attack Iraq without a clear international mandate; if it could turn a terrorist attack on its soil into a global war, then nobody is safe.
     States and societies, especially in the wider Arab and Muslim worlds, feel compelled to protect themselves from this penetrative source of instability, not least because governments are increasingly scrutinized by assertive civil societies from Cairo to Riyadh. These have made it that much more difficult for authoritarian states to favor regime survival over national interest. Incidentally, this is why US presidential candidate Barack Obama constantly stresses the necessity to repackage the American brand. What he is trying to do, in essence, is to reposition the United States in world politics, not in order to pacify its foreign policy but to re-appropriate the country’s diplomatic power to legitimate future adventures. This is meant to make it easier for the allies of the US to re-navigate toward an explicitly pro-American position. more.. e-mail

Obama and America’s Wall of Ignominy
Robert Weitzel, Madison, US, Palestine Chronicle 8/13/2008
     ’Greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us one from the other.’
     "The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down." -- Barak Obama When Barak Obama visited Germany in July, he stood at the site where a wall once separated East and West Berlin. With his usual eloquence he praised the crowd of 200,000 for having had the courage to tear that wall down. He reminded them that the "greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us one from the other."
     The day before his Berlin speech Obama was in Israel standing less than two miles from the 400-mile-long apartheid wall that separates Israel from the West Bank. He did not call on Israeli courage to tear their wall down, nor did he mention that wall to his Berlin audience.
     I recently wrote about Obama’s Berlin speech and his politically "prudent" silence regarding Israel’s apartheid wall. I challenged him to walk his talk should he be elected president and work to tear down the world’s most unconscionable wall. more.. e-mail

The poetry of loss
Richard Silverstein, The Guardian 8/14/2008
     Mahmoud Darwish, who died last week, should have been honoured as a national poet of both Palestinians.
     Mahmoud Darwish, the greatest Palestinian poet of his generation, died last Saturday after open heart surgery in Houston. His loss is a deep and severe blow to all who loved his magnificent poetry and the example of humanity and decency he represented.
     For those who may not be aware of Darwish’s role in Palestinian culture and society but who may know something of Israeli society, the nearest poet I can think of in stature would have been
     And although the two came from different cultures, the roles they played as progressive voices of conscience and poets of their respective nations are comparable. In the US, you might have to go back to either Robert Frost or Ezra Pound to find someone of comparable stature. more.. e-mail

Mahmoud Darwish: Palestine’s prophet of humanism
Saifedean Ammous, Electronic Intifada 8/12/2008
     It is impossible for me to express what I feel about the passing of Mahmoud Darwish. Like many Palestinians, I had grown up reading his poetry in order to express how I feel about whatever significant events happen to Palestinians. I turned to his writings to understand the periods of Palestine’s history that happened before I was born. If ever anyone in history deserved the title of a Poet Laureate, it was indeed Darwish, who spoke the mind of his people in a way I doubt anyone has ever been able to do for any other people. Today, I wake up missing my voice. The real travesty of Darwish’s death is that it revealed to me that he is no longer there to eloquently express to me how I feel about such travesties.
     An often underemphasized aspect of Darwish’s life is how he truly lived every single episode of modern Palestinian history, and lived in all the significant locations and periods of Palestinian life. He was born in 1942 in al-Birweh, Galilee, before the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine that made him a refugee in Lebanon in 1948. His father decided to return his family to Palestine in 1949, risking death by Zionist militias that had murdered countless Palestinians who attempted to "escape home." Somehow, Darwish succeeded in returning, and thus lived the years of his youth as a second-class Israeli citizen. He would then leave to study in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s, joining the growing Palestinian Diaspora in Europe. His political activism lead to Israel stripping him of his second-class citizenship, and thus returned him to the ranks of Palestinian refugees and the Diaspora. He would then live in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, getting to savor the experience of the homeless Palestinians wandering across the Arab World. more.. e-mail

Shame On Us
Joharah Baker - Palestine, Palestine Chronicle 8/12/2008
     ’Yes, we are in trouble.’
     An uneasy calm has taken over the Shujaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City after a weekend of bloodletting that has, frankly, put us all to shame. Eleven people in all were killed and over 100 injured in one of the bloodiest inter-factional episodes between the two rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fateh since the former’s takeover of the Strip over a year ago.
     The fighting was ostensibly triggered by a ’security campaign’ carried out by the de facto Hamas government in the Gaza Strip against those they claim were involved in the seaside bombing two weeks ago that left five Hamas military operatives and a six-year old girl dead.
     Since the bombing, Hamas has swept through the Strip, arresting scores of Fateh loyalists and closing down Fateh-affiliated institutions and offices. The mainstream Palestinian movement, which is also at the helm of the Palestinian Authority, squarely denies Fateh’s involvement in the killings, claiming Hamas is using the unrest to deflect efforts towards national conciliation. more.. e-mail

Double Standards Guide Western Diplomacy
Stuart Littlewood – London, UK, Palestine Chronicle 8/12/2008
     ’Georgia’s military is modelled on the IDF/IOF, so heaven help its neighbours.’
     While the fragile ’freedom’ boats and their courageous volunteer crews steer a course for Palestinian territorial waters in an effort to break Israel’s illegal siege of the Gaza Strip, our western leaders are once again tripping over their double standards.
     "X has invaded a sovereign neighbouring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people," lectures Bush. "Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century. X’s government must respect Y’s territorial integrity and sovereignty."
     On cue, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown chips in. X’s military action in Y "threatens the stability of the entire region and risks a humanitarian catastrophe," he chirps. "We are committed to working’ to ensure a peaceful and speedy resolution’ which maintains Y’s territorial and political integrity." more.. e-mail

Tel Aviv to Tbilisi: Israel’s role in the Russia-Georgia war
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 8/12/2008
     From the moment Georgia launched a surprise attack on the tiny breakaway region of South Ossetia last week, prompting a fierce Russian counterattack, Israel has been trying to distance itself from the conflict. This is understandable: with Georgian forces on the retreat, large numbers of civilians killed and injured, and Russia’s fury unabated, Israel’s deep involvement is severely embarrassing.
     The collapse of the Georgian offensive represents not only a disaster for that country and its US-backed leaders, but another blow to the myth of Israel’s military prestige and prowess. Worse, Israel fears that Russia could retaliate by stepping up its military assistance to Israel’s adversaries including Iran.
     "Israel is following with great concern the developments in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and hopes the violence will end," its foreign ministry said, adding with uncharacteristic doveishness, "Israel recognizes the territorial integrity of Georgia and calls for a peaceful solution." more.. e-mail

Painful historic miss
Haaretz Editorial, Ha’aretz 8/13/2008
     At the dusk of his term, Prime Minister Ehud Barak is offering Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a "shelf agreement" on borders, refugees and security arrangements. In keeping with the principles of the Annapolis summit, the proposal will serve as the foundation for the establishment of a Palestinian state, when conditions permit. Olmert believes the agreement is within reach and that it would improve Israel’s international standing. It would also allow him to leave behind a foreign affairs legacy, rather than be remembered as the prime minister who had to step down as a criminal suspect.
     Olmert’s offer - Israel’s annexation of West Bank settlement blocs in exchange for land in the Negev; a passageway between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; the demilitarization of the Palestinian state and the settlement of a majority of the refugees within its borders - is almost an exact replica of the ideas discussed eight years ago, at the end of the Barak and Clinton administrations. This similarity can be seen as an expression of a painful, historic missed opportunity. After all the deaths and bloodshed, the parties are returning to the exact same place and facing the same difficulties in coming to a decision. more.. e-mail

Ministry refusing to cooperate with new Arab education body
Or Kashti, Ha’aretz 8/13/2008
     The founding conference for an Arab pedagogical council is to be held this fall, several weeks after the scheduled September 1 start of the school year. The purpose of the new, independent body is to formulate a comprehensive educational policy for the country’s Arab community. Among the issues on the council’s agenda are the history and civics curriculum taught in the schools, the textbooks translated from Hebrew and the high drop-out rate and low matriculation rate among Arab students.
     For 60 years now, the Education Ministry has conducted a policy of ’gap management’ - rather than gap solutions," said Dr. Ayman Agbaria of the University of Haifa and Beit Berl College, who heads the council. The ministry is currently refusing to cooperate with the new initiative.
     In a statement, the ministry said a decision was made recently to integrate Arab academics into the subject committees of its Pedagogical Secretariat as well as to appoint a committee to examine the educational achievements of Arab students in the core subjects. The ministry said some of the committee’s recommendations will be implemented in the coming school year, including changes in teacher training and emphasizing language acquisition skills starting in the first grade. more.. e-mail

Unity has ensured low HIV and AIDS infection rates
Mel Frykberg, Electronic Intifada 8/12/2008
     EAST JERUSALEM, West Bank (IPS) - Palestinians from all ranks of society have pulled together to tackle the issue of AIDS, despite the increasing factional violence and chaos in the Palestinian territories.
     Hamas, which has authority in Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in charge of the West Bank, and Christian and Muslim leaders, in conjunction with various UN organizations and non-governmental organizations, have worked together to ensure that the Palestinian territories retain a very low rate of HIV and AIDS infection.
     Simultaneously, further awareness and prevention are being proactively tackled.
     "We have implemented an ABC strategy [’A’ stands for abstention, ’B’ for beware and ’C’ for condoms]," Ziad Yaish from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) based in Jerusalem and active in AIDS prevention told IPS.
     Dr. Saad Ramlawi, chairman of the Palestine National AIDS Committee (NAC) and director-general of Palestinian healthcare and public health, told IPS that the Palestinian territories had recorded just about 80 cases of HIV since 1987, mostly men. Gaza accounted for 24 cases. more.. e-mail

Did we learn nothing from loss and hardship?
Seth Freedman, The Guardian 8/12/2008
     "We will never share our homeland and Jerusalem with anyone else." So said Nadia Matar, de facto shepherd of her flock of acolytes as they marched around the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City on Saturday night to commemorate Tisha Ba’av, the saddest day in the Jewish calendar.
     Orthodox Jews traditionally mark the occasion by adopting an air of mourning, reading the Book of Lamentations, fasting and quietly remembering all of the tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people throughout history. However, in the twisted world of Matar and her supporters, the best way to deal with the pain of our historical suffering is to take out our anger on others, namely the Palestinians, in an annual show of force infused with hardline nationalism.
     Several hundred marchers gathered in the courtyard of the Jerusalem Municipality headquarters on the edge of the Old City, eagerly awaiting Nadia’s orders to begin their parade. Despite the unabashedly sectarian nature of the march – "The land of Israel for the people of Israel" was emblazoned across dozens of flags and banners – the authorities seemingly had no issue with the event taking place. Neither, apparently, did any opposition group – as I reported last year, the demonstration goes unchallenged by counter-protest. more.. e-mail

Mahmoud Darwish, the greatest poet of our time, dies at 67
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 8/10/2008
     There is no news today of more importance: There is only sorrow as we mourn the loss of Mahmoud Darwish.
     The greatest Palestinian poet, his works translated more often than any other Arab writer, died from complications due to his third open heart surgery.
     The announcement came from the 67 year old’s doctors in the United States where he underwent his final surgery. The Palestinian Presidential Spokesperson had announced earlier that Darwish was still alive, but in critical condition.
     Wednesday’s surgery was declared a success at first. The Palestinian Minister of Culture also announced earlier that Darwish was still in critical condition, but his situation had ceased to deteriorate. An advisor to the President issued the statement: "The health status of the great poet is very critical."
     And then on Saturday night he died. more.. e-mail

Al Aqaba: The war of nerves
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 8/10/2008
     In Pictures
     For more than 40 years the people of Al Aqaba have been struggling for the right to exist on their land. Surrounded by three military training camps, they are facing continuous house and public infrastructure demolitions. Located in the Jordan Valley, on the border with the area "˜C’, the villagers are now threatened by the new Israeli route for the apartheid Wall. A War of nerves that began 40 years ago, with Haj Sami Sadiq, a charismatic character from the town, leading the Aqaban peaceful resistance.
     Al Aqaba is a small village of 300 inhabitants located in one of the most fertile areas of the West Bank, between Jenin and the Jordan Valley. The green valley would be a paradise, if the village hadn’t been the target of Israeli aggressions since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, when Aqaba was declared a closed military zone. Since then, the Israeli government has been literally trying to get rid of the town and its Palestinian residents, using many ways to achieve their plan.
     Two Israeli military bases are stationed near Al-Aqaba, and until June 2003, when the town won a groundbreaking victory in Israel’s Supreme Court, a third was located directly next to the village. For the last 40 years, the villagers have been surrounded by military training fields, where the officers train with live ammunitions, injuring tens of the residents. more.. e-mail

Gulf News: Law of Return and the dilemma
Abbas Al Lawati, Gulf News, International Solidarity Movement 8/10/2008
     Dubai: Adam Shapiro, 36, and the International Solidarity Movement have in many ways been the face of the foreign activism that complemented the second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, against the Israeli occupation.
     Founded by Shapiro and his former colleague, Palestinian-American Huwaida Arraf [now his wife], the ISM was established as a non-violent resistance organisation against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
     Shapiro has been vilified in the United States and Israel for his work with the ISM. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post once called him the "Jewish Taliban", in reference to John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban".
     He received much media attention in the United States after he gained access to late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s compound in Ramallah during the 2002 Israeli siege, where he had breakfast with him.
     The ISM’s activities have proved to be a nuisance for Israel, particularly with the bad press it received after a bulldozer operated by the Israeli Defence Forces crushed and killed American activist Rachel Corrie, who was acting as a human shield to prevent the demolishing of a Palestinian home in Gaza. The driver is said to have crushed her, reversed the bulldozer then run over her again. Israel said it was an accident. -- See also: Gulf News: Law of Return and the dilemma more.. e-mail

Obama: the Israelis would be crazy to reject this offer
Daoud Kuttab, Amman / Jerusalem, Palestine News Network 8/10/2008
     Election related news continue to be made in the Middle East weeks after the Barack Obama visited the region. The office of the Palestinian president released, Wednesday, a copy of the peace poster that Abbas presented to Obama. The peace poster based on the Arab peace initiative states that 57 Arab and Muslim countries will establish "full diplomatic and normal relations with Israel in return for comprehensive peace agreement and end of occupation." The text of the peace plan quotes the full resolution of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic states.
     In an interview with the London based independent Arabic daily Al Hayat, Abbas said that when he showed the poster to Obama, the presidential nominee reacted by saying that the Israelis "would be crazy to reject this offer." After the one hour meeting with the Palestinian president Obama went on to spend a total of 36 hours with Israeli officials and visiting locations of their choosing. The presumptive Democratic nominee didn't repeat what he had said to Abbas to his Israeli hosts.
     In a related event, a leader of the tiny Christian Palestinian community in Jerusalem sent an angry complaint to Barak Obama for his failure to visit Christian holy sites during his most recent visit. Naim Tarazi, an Arab Orthodox community leader complained to Jim Zogby president of the Arab American Institute and one of Obama's Arab American advisors. In the complaint Tarazi reportedly asked Zogby to pass the following message to Obama. "People say your father was Muslim, and you insist you are Christian but why is it that when you visited the Holy city of Jerusalem you only stopped by the Western Wall and the Holocust memorial?". more.. e-mail

Obituary: Mahmoud Darwish
Peter Clark, The Guardian 8/11/2008
     Poet, author and politician who helped to forge a Palestinian consciousness after the six-day war in 1967.
     They fettered his mouth with chains,
     And tied his hands to the rock of the dead.
     They said: You’re a murderer.
     They took his food, his clothes and his banners,
     And threw him into the well of the dead.
     They said: You’re a thief.
     They threw him out of every port,
     And took away his young beloved.
     And then they said: You’re a refugee.
     With poems from the 1960s such as this, Mahmoud Darwish, who has died in a Texas hospital aged 67 of complications following open-heart surgery, did as much as anyone to forge a Palestinian national consciousness, and especially after the six-day war of June 1967. His poems have been taught in schools throughout the Arab world and set to music; some of his lines have become part of the fabric of modern Arabic culture. more.. e-mail

A war for war’s sake
Mahmoud Darwish, Al-Ahram Weekly 4/11/2002
     April 11, 2002 - What we are now seeing is the expression of the will of a people that has no choice but to resist.
     This is a war for war’s sake, since it has no other aim than its self-perpetuation. Everyone knows this; and, once again, the sword will prove incapable of crushing the spirit. The Arabs have offered Israel a collective peace in return for Israeli withdrawal from a fifth of our historical homeland. Israel’s answer to this generous offer was to declare all-out war against the Palestinian people, and against the Arabs’ very imagination.
     Once again, we will prove that we occupy the moral high ground -- nothing remaining to us now but this proof. Those who control the international balance of power will continue to shape events without respect for intellectual or legal argument until we awake to the realisation that, just as they have proved themselves incapable of ensuring deterrence -- though there is no option other than peace -- they have also shown themselves incapable of ensuring peace.
     In every corner crimes are being committed. On every street lie the bodies of the murdered. On every wall is blood. The living are deprived of the basic right to life, and the martyrs are denied graves in which to rest in peace. Above all, however, what we are now seeing is the expression of the will of a people that has no choice but to resist. Between one beat of a wounded heart and the next we ask: how long will we carry on cheering as Christ ascends to Golgotha. more.. e-mail

Is it all lost?
Gershon Baskin, MIFTAH 8/9/2008
     A Palestinian friend who is a senior official in the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah spoke with me this morning. Usually optimistic and positive, this morning she said to me “We lost it all; it is just a matter of time before the West Bank turns into Gaza”. That is the overall mood and sense of reality held by most Palestinians today.
     Over the past month I have participated in international conferences with senior Palestinian leaders at the European Parliament, in a regional meeting in Athens, in several Israeli-Palestinian Track II meetings held in Israel – all of the Palestinian participants, officials and non-officials voiced expressions of pessimism and despair.
     The same message can be heard on the grass-roots as well throughout the West Bank and even East Jerusalem.
     There is no known progress in the peace process. Despite ongoing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, since President Bush’s Annapolis summit in November 2007, no noticeable change can be felt or seen in Palestine. In fact, there is a growing sense that the Israeli occupation is becoming harsher and that the hopes and promises of President Bush and Tony Blair for stability, prosperity and peace have once again blown away with the shifting sands of the Middle East. more.. e-mail

Summer heat and winter cold destroy the bodies of Palestinian political prisoners in Al Naqab
PNN, Palestine News Network 8/9/2008
     Ramallah -- Political institutions and human rights organizations gathered on Saturday to activate their role in trying to protect Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. The place in question for today is Al Naqab Prison. It is in the desert. In the summer the heat burns the bodies of those held captive in the tents and open air. In the winter, they freeze.
     The Director of Statistics in the Ministry of Political Prisoners, Awni Abdel Nasser Farwana, said that all the Palestinian institutions dealing with prisoners and human rights, and various media organizations, are on the case to activate their role and support the prisoners detained in Al Naqab Desert Prison. They are highlighting that the suffering is worsening.
     Farawana issued a detailed report on the memorial of the death of Mohammad Saleh who died due to medical neglect in Al Naqab.
     The desert climate is harsh and the lives of those trapped their behind the barbed wire and Israeli machine guns in harsh to say the least. The guards use routine beatings, the doctors and nurses are cruel and inhumane. In order to save the lives of the Palestinians inside, immediate action need to be taken. more.. e-mail

‘Declined to Comment’
Iqbal Tamimi, Middle East Online 8/9/2008
     One of the most interesting frequently consumed terms in media is ‘declined to comment’.
     When such term is used in stories related to protecting personal privacy, one understands why that person ‘declined to comment’. I do sympathise with individuals harassed by some media colleagues who insist on squeezing the yeast out of people to ferment the gossip columns.
     But when the ‘declined to comment’ is used in political articles, and when the matter is related to policies, one can be sure that there is a fishy thing going on behind closed doors.
     Readers are often offered incomplete information, and spreading such limping news is certainly going to benefit some devious people somehow, regardless of the different possibilities emerging from such propaganda.
     The term ‘declined to comment’ is not as it sounds lik One should not be mislead to think that the person who declined to comment does not know what is going on. more.. e-mail

Beyond Chutzpah
Khalid Amayreh, Palestinian Information Center 8/9/2008
     Israel is very much behaving like a whore who urges her town’s folks to erect a great memorial plaque to celebrate and glorify her chastity.
     This week, some Zionist pundits both in Israel and North America have urged the Israeli government to boycott the Olympic Games in China to protest that country’s dismal human rights record.
     These self-righteous Zionists claimed that a country that rose from the ashes from the holocaust shouldn’t have normal relations with a country that systematically violates human rights and civil liberties.
     There is no doubt that China is a prominent violator of human rights (Is the US any better)!!! But the more important question in this context is really whether Israel, a state that has been murdering, enslaving and tormenting another people for the past sixty years, is in a position to lecture or criticize China or any other country on the subject of human rights.
     One can argue with little exaggeration that Israel itself is a crime against humanity since its very creation in Palestine in 1948 entailed the extirpation and dispersion of 90% of Palestine’s indigenous inhabitants. more.. e-mail

Under Siege - Poem
Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine Chronicle 8/9/2008
     Mahmoud Darwish, the world’s most recognized Palestinian poet passed away in a US hospital Saturday, August 9, 2008 after undergoing complicated heart surgery. Darwish has published more than two dozen books of poetry and prose rooted in his experience of Palestinian exile and struggle in a career spanning nearly five decades.
     Under Siege By Mahmoud Darwish (1942-2008)
     Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time
     Close to the gardens of broken shadows,
     We do what prisoners do,
     And what the jobless do:
     We cultivate hope.
     *****
     A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent
     For we closely watch the hour of victory:
     No night in our night lit up by the shelling
     Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us
     In the darkness of cellars.... more.. e-mail

Report: Israel coerces medical patients into collaboration
Report, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Electronic Intifada 8/8/2008
     The increasing restrictions imposed by the state of Israel on entry and exit of money, goods, services and persons via Gaza crossings and the closure of Rafah Crossing into Egypt since June 2007 have led to a sharp decline in the ability of to provide services to patients.
     The results have been a sharp increase in the number of patients referred to external medical centers (in Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Jordan) via Israeli-controlled Erez Crossing, and a much sharper increase in the proportion of patients denied exit permits: from 10 percent in the first half of 2007 to 35 percent in the first half of 2008.
     Whereas this process raises urgent questions regarding the responsibility of the state of Israel, as Occupying Power, to ensure the health and welfare of the civilian population of Gaza, the present report focuses rather on the mechanisms of denial of access to medical care, on the increasingly central role played by the Israeli General Security Service (GSS, shabak) [1] within this mechanism, and on the coercion of patients in the course of this process. more.. e-mail

The ’security vacuum’ in Jerusalem
Nicola Nasser, Daily Star 8/9/2008
     Occupied Jerusalem, the casus belli of the Palestinian national struggle of liberation and the rallying cry of the Zionist movement for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, was recently described as becoming "a terror hub," a "hotbed" of violent Palestinian neighborhoods and as being "encircled" by "a security vacuum," where going into the Palestinian refugee camp of Shuafat "is more dangerous than the [northern Occupied West Bank] Jenin refugee camp," according to the former Israeli "defense" minister who now holds the transport portfolio, Shaul Mofaz, and the director of Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, respectively.
     Those descriptions of the holy city came as commentary on the lone Palestinian payloader attack in Occupied Jerusalem on July 2 and a similar attack 20 days later. Both "lone" attacks and an earlier bloody one on a Jewish seminary in March were used by Israeli officials to whip up a mounting internal and external campaign of incitement and hatred against the native Palestinian Jerusalemites, which led Martin Sieff, a conservative defense industry editor for United Press International to stretch the exaggeration out of proportion to write on August 6 that, "A new front in the global war on terror has opened up" in Occupied Jerusalem. more.. e-mail

The Zionist Stratagem
M. Shahid Alam, Palestine Chronicle 8/8/2008
     ’Despite its military superiority, Israel feels paranoid.’
     "Anti-Semitism has grown and continues to grow, and so do I." -- Theodore Herzl [1] As a self-defined movement for the national ’liberation’ of European Jews, Zionism had an anomalous relationship with its perennial Other, the Gentile nations, from whom it wanted the Jews to secede and become a distinct nation under a Jewish state.
     The Zionists did not define Europe’s Gentile nations as the adversary they would have to oppose, and against whom they would struggle, to secure the rights of Jews to emerge as a distinct nation.
     On the contrary, the Zionists would harness the strength of their perennial Other -- their adversary -- to gain their nationalist objective. Unlike nationalists who secede from a state or empire by drawing new borders, the Zionists did not demand any European territory; they planned to establish their Jewish state outside the borders of Europe.
     In other words, the Zionists were offering to execute what any state facing secessionist demands would have embraced quite avidly: the Jewish ’secessionists’ would sail away from Europe and establish their state in the Middle East, well-removed from Europe. more.. e-mail

A voice from Gaza: All I need is my freedom
Sameh Habeeb, Palestine Think Tank 8/8/2008
     Freedom is a broad expression that includes a mosaic of freedoms for humans in all aspects of life. It means being guaranteed certain things by all laws for all the time that law has been for the people, adopted by civilized countries and widely acknowledged by the few democratic nations - headed by the USA and Israel. I really like and highly respect the Israeli Democracy from the inside. This democracy accepts the other and allows multiplicity. It gives much freedom to Israelis that we really miss here in Gaza and the Arab world.
     I respect and love that democracy, but unfortunately when it comes to Palestine, specifically Gaza, it becomes the most pejorative expression. Around 1.5 million are not allowed to move feely into and out of Gaza. They are being collectively punished for crimes they never committed. If a useless and innocuous homemade rocket is being fired into Israel; it retaliates excessively against not those who fired it, but the innocent civilians. Yet, the only loser from this policy is Israel. It grows more hatred and spirit of revenge from those civilians. Not far from Gaza, Israeli settlers in the West Bank have successfully manufactured their homemade rockets. They have shelled many Palestinian villages in the West Bank. I hope this would debunk the pretext of Israel that we fire rockets, now we have Israel and its settlers shelling at Gaza and the West Bank. -- See also: Gaza Today more.. e-mail

United by Misery: Two Boys from Gaza and Nilin
Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 8/8/2008
     Mohamed Bahloul is suffering from kidney failure.
     Ahmed Moussa was a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from the West Bank village of Nilin, near Ramallah. Mohamed Bahloul is a 12-year-old Palestinian boy from Gaza City. The former was shot and killed 29 July by Israeli forces following a peaceful protest against the Israeli apartheid wall. The latter is awaiting death in a dilapidated hospital in Gaza.
     Reports on Moussa’s death vary. The Anti- Apartheid Wall Campaign’s report said that the boy was "sitting under a tree with his friends when a military jeep drove up and the army shot him -- a live bullet pierced his head. The boy died immediately."
     Agency France Press’s report, the day following his death, confirmed the nature of the death but said that the boy was killed during the demonstration. Nilin, one of the numerous villages losing land to the Israeli wall -- deemed illegal according to the International Court of Justice in 2004 -- holds regular protests against the confiscation and destruction of the village’s farms. It’s part of a sustained non- violent campaign that brings together Israeli, Palestinian and international peace activists. more.. e-mail

Report: Israeli violence enjoys impunity
Mel Frykberg, Electronic Intifada 8/8/2008
     RAMALLAH, West Bank (IPS) - Only six percent of probes into offenses allegedly committed by Israeli soldiers and settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank yield indictments, a new report says.
     The report "Justice for All" released last week by the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din examined 205 cases of alleged assault by Israeli settlers that were reported over the years. Only in 13 cases were indictments filed, while 163 cases were closed.
     "Conviction rates of Israeli settlers and soldiers involved in violence against Palestinians are around six percent of cases opened due to what we consider unprofessional investigations," Yesh Din’s research director Lior Yavne told IPS.
     "In many instances the paperwork is either ’lost’ or the police or military personnel involved in the investigations claim they are ’unable to identify the perpetrator,’" said Yavne.
     The report followed an Israeli investigation into the death of a young Palestinian boy who was shot dead by Israeli troops during a protest against the building of Israel’s wall on Palestinian land in the village of Nilin near Ramallah in the West Bank. more.. e-mail

The refuge that allows Gaza to reflect on past glories
Donald Macintyre in Sudaniya, Gaza, The Independent 8/9/2008
     It may seem an odd dilemma in a territory where more than half of families live below an internationally defined poverty line, but Jawdat Khoudary is wondering whether there should be museum charges in Gaza.
     As the owner and creator of the Strip’s first purpose-built archaeological museum, he has no doubt that the most prized patrons, the organised parties of schoolchildren already starting to flock to it, must come for free. And having sunk a small fortune -- he won’t say how much -- into building this elegant and air-conditioned space overlooking the Mediterranean just north of Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, he certainly isn’t trying to make money from it. But the 48-year-old owner of one of Gaza’s biggest construction companies worries that if he doesn’t charge a couple of shekels for individual entry, Gazans may not realise the value of their heritage as much as he does. more.. e-mail

Apologies Remain Due
Robert Thompson, Middle East Online 8/8/2008
     The old British Empire and the former French Colonial Empire have now ceased to exist, but the damage which they wreaked in their greed and arrogance lives on.
     Every nation has black spots in its past, and it often seems appropriate that, in such a case, it should apologise for the wrongs done to others, even if long ago, especially when the present effect of such wrongs is the cause of much present trouble.
     On 16th May 1916, roughly half-way through the First World War, two of the then major powers in the world (which they have long ceased so to be), the British Empire and the French Colonial Empire signed an infamous agreement drawn up during negotiations between their representatives. The subject of this document was the proposed "carve-up" of the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire after their victory and its collapse, and the negotiators were Sir Mark Sykes and Mr François-Georges Picot (which explains why it is known as the "Sykes-Picot Agreement.
     The lands concerned became, as a direct result of this agreement, the modern states of Iraq, Syria, the Lebanon, Jordan (originally known as Transjordan) and Palestine. Neither of these colonial powers considered that the inhabitants had any right of self-determination, despite the magnificent efforts made during the war against the Ottoman Empire by the Arab forces, and they divided the lands into zones of influence. Using the present-day names, the British Empire was to have power over Iraq, Jordan and Palestine and France was to control Syria and the Lebanon.... more.. e-mail

Our Living Dead
Reham Alhelsi, Palestine Think Tank 8/5/2008
     During a seminar I attended in Germany about journalism and its role in conflicts, some participants were against the idea of TV stations like Aljazeera showing the horrific photos of Palestinian victims. They argued that seeing such pictures would only increase the hate and the anger and fuel the conflict. I was against that, and said that when we talk about the Zionist crimes committed against us, we are either accused of lying or exaggerating, and since the written word in western press is mostly pro-Israeli, we have only these photos left to speak for us. It is because one single such photo speaks a thousand honest words, many prefer not to see them or pretend not to know of their existence. When Palestinians distribute pictures of the victims killed by the IOF to news agencies, they are accused of using their dead for propaganda. But when the Israelis spread pictures of their dead, they are pitied for their loss and their dead are glorified. The world is allowed to see Israeli mothers crying near their dead sons and allowed to see scenes of suicide bombings with blood all over the place, but not that of Palestinian mothers crying the loss of their loved ones, or of the scenes of the various massacres or Palestinian houses covered with blood after an Israeli raid. How come we are not allowed to see photos of Palestinian victims who were killed while on their way to school or work, or who were simply killed by an Israeli air strike while sitting in their own living rooms? It has nothing to do with the photos being too graphic, too horrific to be seen, too inappropriate for the viewers or even the excuse that it might increase the hate. It is true that many of these photos are horrific and painful to look at, but they constitute the very few instruments available to us to speak about our suffering in a world that practices a selective freedom of press. And because these photos speak for themselves and on behalf of the victims condemning the killers, they are forbidden. As far as I can remember the Israeli TV was continuously showing films about the Holocaust, the concentration camps and photos of the victims. Western media does the same. Almost 70 years after the Holocaust, we are reminded of it on an almost daily basis through all forms of media, but there is almost no mention whatsoever in this same media about the Palestinian victims and their ongoing Holocaust. more.. e-mail

War with Iran: On, Off or Undecided?
Stephen Lendman – Chicago, Palestine Chronicle 8/8/2008
     ’Talks on Iran’s nuclear program have been ’Kabuki theater’’
     There’s good news and bad, mostly the latter but don’t discount the good. On May 22, (non-binding) HR 362 was introduced in the House - with charges and proposals so outlandish that if passed and implemented will be a blockade and act of war. It accused Iran of:
     -- pursuing "nuclear weapons and regional hegemony" that threatens international peace and America’s national security interests;
     -- overtly sponsoring "several terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah;"
     -- having close ties to Syria;
     -- possibly sharing "its nuclear materials and technology with others;"
     -- developing "ballistic technology" and ICBMs exclusively to deliver nuclear weapons;
     -- calling for the "destruction of Israel;"... more.. e-mail

The sins of their fathers
Tanya Gold, The Guardian 8/6/2008
     A relative of Hitler is now Jewish and living in Israel. So is the son of a Waffen-SS man. Tanya Gold talks to the descendants of Nazis who have embraced Judaism.
     Two years ago I read a strange little story in an obscure American magazine for Orthodox Jews, claiming that a descendant of Adolf Hitler had converted to Judaism and was living in Israel. I had heard rumours in Jewish circles for years about "the penitents" - children of Nazis who become Jews to try to expiate the sins of their fathers. Could it be true? I dug further and discovered that a man with a family connection to Hitler does indeed live in Israel as an Orthodox Jew. Virtually unnoticed in the English-speaking world, he was exposed seven years ago in an Israeli tabloid. Then he sank from sight. I went to Israel to meet him - and on the way I was plunged into the strange subculture of the Nazi-descended Jews.
     ...So why did she convert? She grimaces. "It isn’t rational. We are talking about religion here." But she says she ran away to Israel to convert when she was 25. And today, she berates herself for her immaturity in doing it. She was shocked by the racism in Israel. Towards her? "Towards the Arabs," she replies. "I felt that I was being told that to be a good Jew, you had to hate Arabs." So she stands at West Bank checkpoints to observe the behaviour of Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians.... more.. e-mail

Ten rules for the US in the Middle East
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 8/2/2008
     Discussions of US policy in the Middle East mostly focus on Iraq and Iran these days. Yet Americans who follow their country’s Middle East policy ask about their posture throughout the region. The question comes up regularly in discussions on the Middle East in Washington and in other parts of the United States: What should the US do differently in the Middle East? I’ve discussed this often with colleagues and friends in recent months, generating my list of 10 principles and policies that I believe should define American policies in the Middle East:
     First, politically engage all legitimate actors. The American tendency to boycott or try and destroy major players in the region, like Hizbullah and Hamas, is childish and counter-productive. All those whom the US has held at arms’ length have tended to become stronger in the region, partly by garnering public support for defying and resisting the US.
     Legitimacy should be the main criterion for engaging major players in the region, and legitimacy should be defined as emanating from two sources: validation from the people in the Middle East (especially through elections), and adherence to international norms and standards. Where a locally legitimate and powerful player comes up short on one of these (such as Hamas’ occasional terror bombs in Israel), the response should be to bring them into a process that leads to their stopping such deeds and achieving their legitimate goals peacefully, as the United States, the United Kingdom and others did with the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland so deftly. more.. e-mail

Islamobamaphobia Enters the Political Lexicon
Rannie Amiri, Palestine Chronicle 8/1/2008
     ’When it comes to Islamophobia, Barack Obama has been both its victim, and its villain.’
     After verifying that a Google search yielded no results, I decided to take the liberty myself and inject the term Islamobamaphobia into the language and discourse of the 2008 United States presidential campaign.
     Before proposing a definition though, it is first important to understand its origin and derivation from the more familiar word, ’Islamophobia’.
     Islamophobia was actually coined well before Sept. 11, 2001, and is simply defined as the fear of, or aversion to, Islam and/or Muslims. A formal analysis of it was undertaken in 1996 by the Runnymede Trust, a United Kingdom think tank promoting multiculturalism and diversity. Authored by the Commission of British Muslims and Islamophobia on their behalf, Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All was published in 1997 (1).
     The report laid out eight features characteristic of Islamophobia. Included among them is the perception that Muslims are the "separate and other -- not having any aims or values in common with other cultures" and, exhibiting a "hostility towards Islam used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society." more.. e-mail

Join the club
Ramzy Baroud, Al-Ahram Weekly 7/31/2008
     The "candidate of change" will bring more of the same.
     True, Obama has promised some degree of withdrawal from Iraq and a level of communication with Iran. But even these promises are ambiguous and can be easily modified to fit political interests and lobby pressures at any time. Any military redeployment in Iraq would, now we are told, be matched with greater military build up in Afghanistan, a sign that the militant mentality that motivated the war hawks in the Bush administration is yet to change; the valuable lesson that bombs don’t bring peace, yet to be heeded.
     Even talking to Iran is an indistinct promise. To begin with, various officials in the Bush administration have already been talking to Iran -- in less touted meetings, but they have engaged Tehran nonetheless -- in matters most pertinent to US, not Israeli, interests (i.e. the Iraq war). Moreover, in what was widely seen as "a shift of policy", senior US diplomat William Burns joined envoys from China, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and the EU in their talks with Tehran in Geneva 19 July. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad praised US participation and the "respect" the US envoy had shown during the meeting. more.. e-mail

Death Penalty, a punishment for Palestinians, is not sufficient in Israel
George Rishmawi, International Middle East Media Center News 8/3/2008
     The immediate punishment that comes to Israeli officials and security forces for Palestinians who attack Israelis is to raze their homes.This has become a norm in Israel since a very long time.
     Hundreds if not thousands of Palestinian homes were demolished as an additional punishment for families of Palestinians who carry out attacks against Israeli civilians or military.
     Razing the homes in some cases is not enough.Sometimes the brothers are taken prisoner and the parents are detained.
     When identified, the case in most attacks, the attacker would be executed on the spot.Therefore, the punishment is inflicted on the family of this person, which indicates that death penalty is not enough; the family must suffer as well.
     This indicates that the Israeli government and officials have retaliation mentality rather than bringing justice. more.. e-mail

Gaza and Humanity
David Halpin, Middle East Online 8/2/2008
     David Halpin details the torturous effort of people of conscience who are determined to open a humanitarian link to the Palestinians of Gaza.
     27 July 2008: Exeter Airport – The 2330 hours flight to Larnaka is delayed by two hours. Estimated time of departure now 0140 hours on 28 July. These little discomforts in order that we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people whose “discomfort” started at the point of a gun and with stories of terrible savagery as at Deir Yassin in April 1948! Anything that an outsider suffers in his efforts for justice now is but a speck within the imprisonment, torture, suffocation and life-denial of the Palestinian. About 1 million have been imprisoned since 1948 and some for many years. Currently 11,000 are in prison and about a tenth are there under “administrative detention”, a convenient extension of the perfidious Albion’s Palestine Mandate law. About 37 of this human mass are legislators belonging to the Hamas party. A scrupulous election was no bar to stifling a democracy emerging under brutal occupation. In spite of generous offers to include the main opposition party Fatah in government, that attempt at plurality invited the annihilation of Hamas by the engine of destruction and its many subservient nations, led by the USA. Any adherents to Islam must be isolated and driven by goading to division and self-destruction. Thus was the medieval siege laid on Gaza in March 2006 against all morality and all major international laws.
     The Hague Rules and Nuremberg Principles were never enunciated and they do not exist; barbarism is the only rule. Hillary Clinton calls for the obliteration of Iran and wishes for a high speed version of Enola Gay. more.. e-mail

Inspiring Community Activism
Khaled Islaih, This Week in Palestine, Palestine Think Tank 8/2/2008
     We live in challenging times. The world around us is changing very rapidly. The World Watch Institute - an independent research organisation known for its analysis on critical global issues - reported in its new 2008 state-of-the-world review, "the world is very different, physically and philosophically, from the one that Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and other early economists knew - different in ways that make key features of conventional economics dysfunctional for the twenty-first century. Humanity’s relationship to the natural, the understanding of the sources of wealth and the purpose of economics, the evolution of markets, governments, and individuals as economic actors - all these dimensions of economic activity have changed significantly over the last 200 years that they signal the close of one economic era and the need for a new economic beginning.
     Sustainable living in this changing global environment requires community involvement - building the power of a group to change the surrounding conditions by finding solutions for people’s problems. Powerful community organisations are expected to facilitate social inclusion and grassroots engagement by changing people’s behaviours, practices, beliefs, and attitudes. It also fosters a sense of community within individual members. Sense of community refers to the sense of belonging to a group. Group members receive this feeling when they are actively involved in their communities.... more.. e-mail

A Vote For Military Force Against Iran?
Ira Glunts – Madison, NY, Palestine Chronicle 8/1/2008
     ’Olmert proposed (to Pelosi) that a naval blockade be imposed on Iran.’
     Ordinarily, the American Israel Policy Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has an influence on U.S. foreign policy which goes unchallenged. In the case of the current House resolution, H. Con. Res. 362, despite the intense pressure exerted by AIPAC, some members of the United States House of Representatives who initially were about to rubber stamp this reckless non-binding resolution promoted by the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, are having a change of heart. After receiving many thousands of messages which pointed out that the resolution could be interpreted as Congressional authorization for military action against Iran, some legislators began expressing their own reservations.
     On May 19, 2008, a 12-member House delegation led by House Speaker Pelosi met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. At that lunch meeting, Olmert proposed that a naval blockade be imposed on Iran in order to stop its uranium enrichment program. Present at this meeting were: Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman, and AIPAC loyalists Reps. Nita Lowey and Gary Ackerman. Three days after this meeting, Mr. Ackerman introduced the resolution H. Con. Res. 362 in the House. more.. e-mail

The Murder of Ahmed, Age 10
Kim Bullimore – The West Bank, Palestine Chronicle 8/1/2008
     On Tuesday, July 29, Ahmed Ussam Yusef Mousa, aged 10, was shot dead with a single shot to the head by Israeli occupation forces.Ahmed was murdered, just before 6pm, when he and a group of youth from Ni’lin village attempted to dismantle a section of barbwire fencing erected on the village’s land by the Israeli occupation forces.
     Ahmed is now the twelfth person and seventh child to be killed by the Israeli occupation forces in demonstrations against the apartheid fence [1].He is one of more than 840 Palestinian children killed by the Israeli Zionist state since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada in September 2000 [2].
     My IWPS team mate and myself received the news of Ahmed’s death last night as we arrived in Ramallah. Within fifteen minutes we were at the hospital.As we arrived Ahmed’s little body was being brought into the hospital.My teammate and myself were "lucky" in that we did not see Ahmed but two of our friends and activists from the ISM, who were at the hospital, did. Both experienced activists, they spoke quietly and with disbelief of how tiny Ahmed was. more.. e-mail

PA torments Palestinians on Israel’s behalf
Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank, Palestinian Information Center 7/31/2008
     In recent days, the American-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) carried out a shameful crackdown against non-conformist Palestinian intellectuals, journalists as well as civic and religious leaders all over the West Bank.
     PA security agencies have also violently suppressed peaceful rallies by the pan-Islamic Liberation party commemorating the downfall of the Ottoman Caliphate. Eyewitnesses said undisciplined policemen beat participants using plastic truncheons.
     In Beit Jala, PA men beat four camera men who were filming police cars. And in Hebron, a Reuter cameraman, Yosri al Jamal, was assaulted and his camera broken.
     The latest acts of violence took place under the watchful eyes of the Israeli occupation army without whose consent the PA can hardly function.
     In Nablus and neighboring towns and villages,  US-trained security personnel  raided private homes, municipal buildings and public institutions,  elected mayors, public figures, college professors, student leaders and prominent religious figures. more.. e-mail

Media war and war on media
Fadi Abu Sa'ada, Palestine News Network 7/31/2008
     Our PNN Arabic Director wrote the following, a similar version of which appeared on Menassat.com
     Since Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007, and one year after Hamas’ victory over the Fateh party in early parliamentary elections, the battle for the hearts and minds of Palestinians has been waged in the media. For over two years now, there has been a well-documented media war between the two rival political factions. A new media battle was ignited on the night of 25 July after three explosions, all targeting members of Hamas, killing six Palestinians, including a child, and wounding more than twenty.
     On 26 July the front pages of several newspapers and websites affiliated with the two movements pulled no punches in ascribing blame for what happened.
     Given that five of the dead where known to be from Hamas' armed resistance wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, the first salvos came from Hamas, which soundly accused Fateh of being the masterminds behind the bombings. more.. e-mail

Palestine, Palestinians and International Law
Stephen Lendman – Chicago, Palestine Chronicle 8/1/2008
     ’Justice won’t come easily, but it’s up to people of conscience to fight for it.’
     Francis Boyle is a distinguished University of Illinois law professor, activist, and internationally recognized expert on international law and human rights. He also lectures widely, writes extensively, and authored many books, including the subject of this review: "Palestine Palestinians and International Law." In addition, he’s represented, advised and/or testified pro bono in numerous cases involving anti-war protesters and activists, the death penalty, human rights, war crimes and genocide, nuclear policy and bio-warfare, Canada’s Blackfoot Nation, the Nation of Hawaii, and the US Lakota Nation.
     Boyle is currently a leading proponent of an effort to impeach George Bush, Dick Cheney and other administration figures for their crimes of war, against humanity and other grievous violations of domestic and international law. Earlier in 1987 he was the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) legal advisor in the drafting of its 1988 Declaration of Independence. Then from 1991 - 1993, he served in the same capacity for the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations in the run-up to the Oslo process.
     Palestine Palestinians and International Law reviews his work during that period, prior 1980s and earlier events that led to it, and what followed in its aftermath. Like all Boyle’s work, it’s rich in international law and makes a powerful, easy to follow case for Palestinian self-determination. Relevant events and the law are reviewed. more.. e-mail

Gaza on the precipice of disaster…again
MIFTAH, MIFTAH 8/2/2008
     Tensions between Hamas and Fateh reached dangerous levels this week following the July 25 seaside car bombing, which killed five Hamas activists and one little girl. While Hamas officials squarely put the blame on Fateh for the bombing, Fateh has vehemently denied involvement in the incident. Nevertheless, this has not stopped the enmity between the two rival parties from rising to toxic levels, causing even more damage.
     Hours after the bombing, police forces belonging to the deposed Hamas government began making blanket arrests throughout the Strip, picking up scores of Fateh members or supporters. They also closed down approximately 150 institutions, clubs and offices affiliated with Fateh, ransacking many of them and confiscating equipment, computers and documents in the process.
     In response, police and security forces belonging to the Fateh-run West Bank government began making similar arrests of Hamas activists.
     Tensions and accusations ran so high, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on July 31 while visiting Tunisia for all political prisoners arrested after July 25 to be released from both sides. He also said the leadership encouraged a restart of conciliation talks between Palestinian parties and demanded that an independent investigation be opened into the bombing. more.. e-mail

Museum in Gaza to Display Area’s Rich Cultural History
Ethan Bronner – Gaza, Palestine Chronicle 8/1/2008
     It may sound like the escapist indulgence of a well-fed man fleeing the misery around him. But when Jawdat Khoudary opens the first ever museum of archaeology in Gaza this month, it will be an act of Palestinian patriotism, showing how this increasingly poor and isolated coastal strip ruled by the Islamists of Hamas was once a thriving multicultural crossroad.
     The exhibit is housed in a stunning hall made up partly of the saved stones of old houses, discarded wood ties of a former railroad and bronze lamps and marble columns uncovered by Gazan fishermen and construction workers.
     And while the display might be pretty standard stuff almost anywhere else -- arrowheads, Roman anchors, Bronze Age vases and Byzantine columns -- life is currently so gray in Gaza that the museum, with its glimpses of a rich outward-looking history, seems somehow dazzling.
     "The idea is to show our deep roots from many cultures in Gaza," Khoudary said as he sat in the lush, antiquities-filled garden of his Gaza City home a few miles from the museum. "It’s important that people realise we had a good civilization in the past. Israel has legitimacy from its history. We do too." more.. e-mail

Truth and Consequences Under Israeli Occupation
Mohammed Omer, Middle East Online 8/1/2008
     Israeli attacks on journalists are not new; nor are they rare, but the story of award-winning Palestinian journalist and photographer Mohammed Omer is shockingly egregious. The youngest winner of the Gelhorn Prize for Journalism recently, Omer was detained and severely beaten by Israeli authorities on his return from accepting the award in London. I am a Palestinian journalist from Gaza. At the age of 17, I armed myself with a camera and a pen, committed to report accurately on events in Gaza. I have filed reports as Israeli fighter jets bombed Gaza City. I have interviewed mothers as they watched their children die in hospitals unequipped to serve them because of Israel’s embargo. I have been recognized for my reporting, even in the United States and United Kingdom, where I have won two international awards. I have also been beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers.
     This summer, at age 24, I was honored to learn that I had become the youngest journalist to receive the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, named for the famed American war reporter and awarded to journalists who counter propaganda with the truth. Although Israel has sealed Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians in what many now call the world’s largest open-air prison, Dutch MP Hans Van Baalen lobbied the Israeli government to let me leave Gaza to receive my award in person. Upon my return from London, I was surrounded by Israeli security officers. I was stripped naked at gunpoint, interrogated, kicked and beaten for more than four hours. At one point, I fainted and then awakened to fingernails gouging at the flesh beneath my eyes. An officer crushed my neck beneath his boot and pressed my chest into the floor. Others took turns kicking and pinching me, laughing all the while. They dragged me by my feet, sweeping my head through my own vomit. I lost consciousness. I was told later that they transferred me to a hospital only when they thought I might die. more.. e-mail

The struggle against Jerusalem’s quiet ethnic cleansing
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada 8/1/2008
     In the first hours of dawn, Nader Elayan was woken by a call from a neighbor warning him to hurry to the house he had almost finished building. By the time he arrived, it was too late: a bulldozer was tearing down the walls. More than 100 Israeli security guards held back local residents.
     The demolition, carried out four years ago, has left Elayan, his wife, Fidaa, who is now pregnant, and their two young children with nowhere to live but a single room in his brother’s cramped home. It is the only land he owns and he had invested all his savings in building the now destroyed house.
     Over the past few years, the Elayans’ fate has been shared by two dozen other families in the Palestinian village of Anata, on the outskirts of East Jerusalem. Hundreds more families have demolition orders hanging over their homes. "Not one person in my neighborhood has a [building] permit," Elayan, 37, said.
     The problem of house demolitions affects Palestinians throughout the occupied territories. But according to Hatem Abdelkader, an adviser to Salam Fayyad, the appointed Palestinian Authority prime minister, the situation is particularly acute in the East Jerusalem area. more.. e-mail

Free Gaza Movement to break the siege via sea
Debbie Menon, Palestine News Network 7/31/2008
     Edward Said reminded the world shortly before his death in 2003 that it is easier for the West to demonise the Palestinians -- through ’the vicious media and government campaign against Arab society, culture, history and mentality’ -- than actually attempt to humanize what they don’t fully understand.
     The Gaza imprisonment in the summer of 2005, paraded as an Israeli generous withdrawal, produced the Hamas and Islamic Jihad homemade missile attack and capture of an Israeli occupation soldier.Even before the capture of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli army bombarded indiscriminately the Gaza Strip.
     Putting a human face to the Palestinian people and explicitly saying Israeli policies towards Palestinians are immoral should be acceptable in Western democratic mainstream news media."It is Not!"Why is it controversial to advocate Palestinian human rights and an independent homeland? After all, the Jews already have Israel. It is time for radical thinking of the conflict. more.. e-mail

The Nakbah Project: A nightmare of shattered lives
Jane Frere, Electronic Intifada 8/1/2008
     Bethlehem, the cradle of Christianity, is caught in an unending nightmare. "What can we do?" Amal, a Palestinian woman, asked me when I met her in the town. A 17-year-old boy was shot dead in Bethlehem Square in the snow. "A [Israeli] tank came in looking for a couple of kids and he threw a single stone as it passed by. They put two bullets in him, one in the chest and the other in the leg. His friends started to carry him to try and get him to hospital, but he was dead."
     "What time of day?" I asked, incredulous. I had just returned from my Christmas break in the UK, and such scenes still belonged in my mind to TV news. "Two o’clock in the afternoon," said Amal. "We were shopping, then my son came dashing up to me -- ’Don’t go into the square, Mum, they just shot a boy.’"
     I was in Bethlehem working on The Nakbah Project, a program of artistic workshops with Palestinians to create an art installation, Return of the Soul, marking the 60th anniversary of their expulsion from their homeland in 1948. Amal was one of three women I worked with in the ancient town -- the others were called Imurad and Shama -- who had agreed to make 200 figures. Normally these three ladies would eke out a living by creating the most exquisite Palestinian embroidery, or other craft folklore, to sell to the dwindling tourist trade. But now such tourists comprise only the most dedicated of pilgrims, bold enough to venture beyond the eight-meter-high towering wall, through hostile check points, to seek out the birthplace of Christ. more.. e-mail

Education in the Palestinian Authority Era
Yousef Joudeh, Palestine News Network 7/31/2008
     Gaza - Since the formation of the Palestinian National Authority in the Gaza Strip and West Bank in 1994, governmental institutions have been nationalized. The Ministry of Education was, in the eyes of many observers, one of the most active, least corrupt and continuously operating of those ministries.
     A large number of new elementary, middle and high schools have been built to meet the very fast increase in the local population and to improve the quality of education by limiting the number of students in each class.
     Other accomplishments were the enhancement of teachers through courses in educational methods, workshops and regular meetings with supervisors. New teacher occupations were introduced in order to modernize the whole system such as the position of ’school counselor’ who is considered a source of help and comfort for the students, especially those who face difficulties at home or in school. more.. e-mail

Palestinians on the Iraqi borders: How did this story start?
Iqbal Tamimi, Palestine Think Tank 8/1/2008
     The methods used by the Zionists to drive Palestinians out of their country 1948, including claiming they had a Nuclear bomb like the one dropped on Hiroshima.
     The story starts almost here..
     The Zionist Haganah gangs worked on expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland in 1948, supported by the British mandate then, through the Balfour Declaration which gave away Palestine to the Zionists on a gold platter, besides using various other mechanisms to terrorize the Palestinians to force them to evacuate their properties and lands.
     They exercised terrorism against Palestinian towns and villages, committing many massacres against its inhabitants. As well as spreading false news and rumours among the people of Palestinian cities and villages to terrorize and intimidate them. Forcing them to leave their homes, and never to think of returning back - ever.
     For example the newly arrived Jewish in Palestine has sent a message to the people of the Palestinian city of Safad saying that they have a Jewish atomic bomb exactly like the one dropped on Hiroshima, and they are intending to use it on them. One can imagine the impact of such rumours on the people of the city. more.. e-mail

Square one again
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 7/31/2008
     A horrific beach bombing takes Hamas and Fatah back to the edge of open strife.
     Palestinian mourners carry the bodies of killed Hamas militants through the streets of Gaza Saturday after an overnight bomb blast killed five senior Palestinian militants and a five-year-old girl; Palestinian President Abbas speaks to the press after meeting with President Mubarak in Cairo Sunday; Palestinians inspect the destroyed house of Hamas member Shihab Al-Natche, 25, following an Israeli army operation in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron Sunday. Israeli soldiers arrested three other men in the raidThe enduring strife between Hamas and Fatah took a turn for the worse this week when an explosive device went off beneath a car parked at a Gaza beach, killing five Hamas military personnel as well as a six-year-old girl. The incident occurred Friday 25 July, as thousands of Gazans flocked to the sea, fleeing the unusually severe heat of summer.
     The victims, who were also vacationing at the beach, included prominent figures in Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades, including the son-in-law of Khalil Al-Hayya, a key Hamas leader. Hamas held "the treasonous trend" within Fatah -- an allusion to the US-backed group led by former Gaza strongman Mohamed Dahlan -- responsible for the bombing, vowing to capture the perpetrators and punish them severely. more.. e-mail

Enshrining resistance
Lucy Fielder, Al-Ahram Weekly 7/31/2008
     Lebanon’s leaders are haggling again, though the true balance of power has been laid bare, Lebanon’s politicians squabbled this week over whether or not to enshrine Hizbullah’s resistance to Israel in a ministerial statement to be adopted by the fledgling national unity government. But with the balance of power in favour of the Shia movement laid bare since the May strife, analysts said there was little doubt the alliance they dominate would again prevail.
     A ministerial committee met 11 times at the time of writing to try to draw up the statement, with some from the "14 March" anti-Syrian movement opposing including the "right to resist" clause in the document. Hizbullah wants that right spelled out in the statement, as it was in the 2005 policy statement when the last government was sworn in, but the 14 March team wants a more vague wording.
     This week, ministers have been expressing optimism that agreement was close. President Michel Suleiman, elected in late May under the Doha deal that halted Lebanon’s descent into crisis, reportedly brought some pressure to bear. Analysts said capitulation was in any case all but inevitable. Hizbullah is in a strong position to push its demands, particularly following its lopsided prisoner swap with Israel in mid-July. more.. e-mail

Do not pass go
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 7/31/2008
     Were last week’s bombings in Gaza intended to push Palestinian national dialogue out of reach?
     The bombs that targeted Hamas military and political leaders returned Palestinian domestic relations to square one. In one attack a small girl was killed alongside five leaders of Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzeddin Al-Qassam Brigades, and dozens were injured. The bombings also targeted the home of Marwan Abu Ras, head of the Palestine scholars’ confederation and a Hamas representative in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).
     After the dismissed Haniyeh government announced that initial investigations indicated the involvement of Fatah members in the bombings Hamas security agencies arrested dozens of Fatah activists and closed many of the organisation’s offices. Hamas leaders say the offices will reopen once it is established staff are not involved in cases of financial or managerial corruption. A statement attributed to Al-Awda Brigades, a group affiliated with Fatah, claimed responsibility for the bomb targeting Al-Qassam Brigade leaders. A second statement then appeared in which the group denied any link with the operation and accused others of attempting to cover up the "real perpetrators". more.. e-mail

Advice to Heed
Rami Khouri, Middle East Online 8/1/2008
     WOODS HOLE, Massachusetts -- It is difficult to get an impartially accurate perspective on US-Middle East relations in Washington. This is because people involved with the region are either Middle Easterners who have brought their torrid battles to the United States, or Americans who have exacerbated our region’s own proclivity for extremism with their romantic adventurism, ignorant militarism, or shameless pro-Israeli obsequiousness.
     The lack of any knowledgeable and neutral American policy input on the Middle East leaves the United States these days incredulously enjoying dwindling credibility, impact and respect simultaneously, even while it unleashes its armed forces. A smarter approach would benefit from the rich reservoir of knowledge that exists among some of America’s seasoned diplomats who have devoted their entire professional lives promoting US national interests in the region.
     I had a chance to experience this last weekend during a working visit to the idyllic town of Woods Hole, on Massachusetts’ enchanting Cape Cod. I spend several days intermittently discussing US-Middle East relations with a man who spent 35 years in that world -- Robert Pelletreau, Jr., former Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, and ambassador to three Arab countries. more.. e-mail

Search for conspiracy
Doris Norrito, International Middle East Media Center News 8/1/0200
     The other man’s story
     Yesterday, I visited with Sameeh Hammoudeh and his family. He was a co-defendant in the terrorism trial of Dr. Sami Al-Arian. It was a very important visit and before I describe it, you’ll need this background.
     In February 2003, at the same time Dr. Sami Al-Arian was arrested, Sameeh Hammoudeh was also arrested. Accused of terrorist activities, Hammoudeh was one of the three co-defendants who appeared with Al-Arian in the high-profile federal case that took place in Tampa, Florida. The six month trial ended in December 2005. All defendants were found "not guilty"� of any terrorist activities."� Before the trial, U.S. citizens Ghassan Ballut and Hatim Fariz were released on bail. Bail for Hammoudeh and Al-Arian had been denied and they spent two and a half years before the trial in prison, most of the time in solitary.
     As of today, Al-Arian remains imprisoned. The other defendants were freed. But for Sameeh Hammoudeh, who was exonerated of all charges and had already served two and a half years of pre-trial imprisonment, the suffering and anguish continued for another six months. Held in a detention center awaiting deportation, we began to correspond by letter. more.. e-mail

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