Articles archives 08-10-02

Update from Nablus:
When they get bored or just angry, the soldiers shoot at the kites - the one beautiful symbol of freedom left in Nablus.
By Jill Dreier and Sam Messier, Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace, August 6, 2002
One school was destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again since April.
This morning the military pulled out most, but not all, of its presence from Nablus. Though still officially under curfew, many people started coming out into the streets and opening their shops. Internationals, including Coloradans, Jill Dreier and Sam Messier, purchased several bags of food to distribute to families who were still too frightened to leave their homes during curfew. While purchasing bread, the internationals witnessed two APC's pull up outside the bread shop. As the shop-owner hurriedly closed up, the internationals shielded him and his customers from the soldiers and escorted the remaining customers to their nearby houses. A molotov cocktail was thrown from an alleyway at street level. It grazed one APC, but caused no injury to the soldier inside. The soldier immediately began firing into the surrounding buildings, not just where the molotov was tossed from but into upper floor apartments. The internationals shouted for him to stop. After a brief stand-off, the soldiers backed away and left.

Israeli 'restraint' still means terror for the Palestinians
Curfews, shootings and house demolitions happen daily
By Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, August 9, 2002
It is hard to know which is more shocking: the mound of rubble in the centre of Jenin, which local residents call "ground zero", or the hole in Gaza city where an aircraft dropped a one-tonne bomb and flattened a house. The aftermath of the two most heavily debated episodes in Israel's latest war has been captured on scores of video clips but no preparation can prevent a wave of awe and anger from flooding over you at the scene - awe at the destructive power of modern weapons, anger at the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians.

Neverland
By Ashraf Fahim, Al-Bawaba, July 28, 2002
In a remarkable postscript to the Likud party’s May 13th decision never to recognize a Palestinian state, a growing number of US public figures are following the lead of the Israeli right in demanding Israeli rule over the entire occupied territories in perpetuity. Primetime television viewers have been treated to the astonishing spectacle of political heavyweights like house majority leader Dick Armey, house whip Tom Delay and spokespersons for the Christian right like Ralph Reed casually suggesting that Israel should annex ‘Judea and Samaria’. With the President conditioning even “provisional” Palestinian statehood on top to bottom reforms, an end to violence, and a change in leadership in his latest ‘landmark’ speech of June 24th, the Israeli right and their allies in the United States should be free to consolidate their rejectionist platform for the foreseeable future.

Peace activists in Palestine — why nobody from Muslim countries?
By Nourah Abdul Aziz Al-Khereiji, Arab News, August 10, 2002
Our heads hang in shame and sorrow when many European young men and women, instead of Arab youths, struggle for our cause against Israel. These Europeans are prompted in their actions by their conviction in the justice of the Palestinian demands and hence they are willing to risk their lives for the Palestinian cause. That is much more than we do.

Fending Off the Threat of Peace
By Norman Solomon, Common Dreams, August 9, 2002
To fend off the threat of peace, determination is necessary. Elected officials and high-level appointees must work effectively with reporters and pundits. This is no time for the U.S. government to risk taking "yes" for an answer from Iraq. Guarding against the danger of peace, the Bush administration has moved the goal posts, quickly pounding them into the ground.

Israel seeks to sell Arrow missile defense system to India
By Jillian Hayes and Victoria Samson, Center for Defense Information, August 8, 2002
Israel’s recent proposal to sell part of the Arrow missile defense system to India has raised concerns both about the consequence ballistic missile defenses will have on South Asian relations and the ripple effects proliferating missile technology might have on the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).

Light with no tunnel
By Uzi Benziman, Ha'zaretz, August 10, 2002
1. Sharon: There was something desperate, even if it was cloaked in humor and good spirits, about the way in which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke with soldiers and officers of the Yosh (acronym for Judea and Samaria) Division this week. It was as though he was asking their advice on how to extricate Israel from the mire. He urged them to use their brains and come up with new methods of operation against Palestinian terrorism. Effectively, he declared that the senior commanders are not supplying an adequate response to the murderous war of attrition that the Palestinians are waging, and he told them that the fate of the country was in their hands. These were not merely standard words of encouragement spoken by a prime minister to the army; they were also an admission by the commander-in-chief that his ammunition is running out.

West Bank Curfews: Politics by Other Means
By Adam Hanieh, Jerusalem Times, August 9, 2002
The Israeli F-16 strike early on July 23 that killed Hamas leader Salah Shehada and 15 Palestinian civilians in the crowded Gaza neighborhood of al-Daraj put the roiling Israeli-Palestinian conflict suddenly back in the Western headlines. It is possible, as some Western diplomats have stated to the press, that Israel timed the assassination to scuttle imminent agreements between the Palestinian Authority (PA), secular Palestinian militias and Hamas to cease armed attacks on Israeli civilians. Such an agreement might have generated international pressure on Israel to end its month-old reinvasion of West Bank towns, dubbed Operation Determined Path by the army.

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