Cry, the beloved two-state solution
By Ari Shavit, Ha'aretz Friday Magazine 8/8/2003
As negotiations with the Palestinians lurch forward and the separation wall snakes its way through the West Bank, two veteran leftists have reached a startling conclusion: There cannot be two states for two peoples in this land. -- 1. The groundwater: Meron Benvenisti and Haim Hanegbi did not exchange views. Benvenisti lives in Jerusalem, on the edge of the desert, and is trying to write a last book,a summing up. Hanegbi lives in Ramat Aviv, not far from the sea, and is trying to formulate a last, definitive, manifesto. Yet this summer both Benvenisti and Hanegbi reached an intriguing point in their conceptual development. They both reached the conclusion that there is no longer any prospect of ending the conflict by means of a two-state solution. Each of them separately has come to believe that the time has come to establish one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea: a binational state. On the face of it, they come from utterly different worlds. Benvenisti's roots lie deep in the old Zionist establishment. He was the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek's right-hand man, a candidate of Ratz (the predecessor of Meretz) for the Knesset. Hanegbi, in contrast, is a retired revolutionary. He was a central activist in the radical-left Matzpen group, one of the founders of the Progressive List, a partner in the leadership of the peace movement Gush Shalom. However, Benvenisti and Hanegbi also share a deep common background. Both are from Jerusalem and are graduates of the city's Beit Hakerem high school, both are Ashkenazi-Sephardi whose ideas were shaped in the latter stages of the British Mandate period. And both of them love this land and love human beings. Both are surging rivers of emotions and stories and sheer human vitality. It's precisely because they are not cut of the same cloth, because they are not from the same ideological circle, that the parallel, albeit not identical, processes they are undergoing are so fascinating. True, they are both end-figures, lone wolves, sensitive sentimentalists who are sometimes perceived as eccentrics. Nevertheless, each is an original thinker with finely tuned senses. Both have a knee-jerk aversion to falsity, whitewashing, and uniform thought. So perhaps the fact that the two of them arrived during the past year at the conceptual place they now occupy is of some significance. Possibly it says something about the groundwater of the current Israeli reality.
Gate no. 542
By Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz Friday Magazine 8/8/2003
The occupation's latest wrinkle is the separation fence and its permanent gates. A visit at `Open Sesame' time. -- About a dozen farmers stood around late last Sunday afternoon, in the fields of Zita, a farming village north of Tul Karm, waiting for the men in the Border Police Jeep to open the gate in the fence built without permission on their fields. They knew the Jeep would arrive between 5:30 P.M. and 6 and they waited patiently on both sides of the fence, a few squatting on the ground. Those on the way home stood to the west of the fence, and those going out to their greenhouses stood on the eastern side. Anyone going out to the greenhouses now won't be coming home tonight; this is the last time today the gate will be opened. At six precisely, the Jeep arrived. Five armed policemen in head-to-toe protective gear exited the armored vehicle, made a report by phone and formed a half-circle by the gate. Feet planted wide, weapons cocked; one lit a Marlboro, another took out a key. Wordlessly, he opened the big, silver-plated lock hanging on the gate in the fence, a fence made of wire and electronic sensors. Barbed wire, electric cables, iron posts and dirt trenches to besiege farmers whose lives, liberty and honor are now crushed a little more thoroughly."That's how hatred is sown," comments Taysir Jeda, the village lawyer and English teacher, and who has also come to tend his fields. Indifferent to the action around them, frogs croak rhythmically from the drainage ditch, nearly 100 meters across, that borders the intimidating fence. Shortly the gate will close. Whoever made it through, made it; whoever did not, will spend the night in a greenhouse. The Jeep with the key won't be back here again until tomorrow morning, come what may.
Forbidden city
By Yossi Klein, Ha'aretz Friday Magazine 8/8/2003
It's difficult to write about ordinary life in a place where life is within an outstretched arm of electrified fences and roadblocks, and where the local population languishes away in 40 percent unemployment and an atmosphere of bitterness and boredom. A portrait of Bethlehem. -- The spacious lobby of the Bethlehem Hotel was quiet last Thursday. The reception clerk, who is also the owner of the hotel, turned off the television set, which was constantly screening images of Uday and Qusay. For a few more minutes he wandered about, bored, a small ring of keys around his finger, and then switched off the light. Large wooden camels that were grazing in the lobby disappeared in the dark, along with huge copper vats and rows of armchairs. Silence descended on the 210-room hotel. It was 9 P.M. and all the guests - three in number: me, an Austrian tourist and an Italian journalist - were in our rooms. The prospects of another guest turning up were slim.It's very quiet in Bethlehem at night. Every shuffling of feet kilometers away sounds like a gathering of Hamas outside my door; every slamming of a door in Beit Sahur sounds like the end of the hudna. There was no reason to worry, of course, because everything was as it should be: The back of the chair was wedged beneath the door handle, bolstered by a heavy armchair, and the blinds were pulled down tightly. Things stayed quiet until the moment the hotel shook, and with it all of Bethlehem, for all I now: I flushed the toilet. The sound roared through the long corridors and reverberated there like the noise of thousands of icebergs breaking up.At a distance of a 10-minute ride from the hotel in a yellow cab (fare: NIS 1.50), the Oudeh family, who live in the Deheisheh refugee camp, began its Friday activities. Raja Oudeh, the father of five daughters of whom the eldest is 13, is a thin man in his mid-30s. He wears fashionable khaki trousers that end close to his ankles and rimless eyeglasses that are mounted on a large nose. He has a black mustache and his hair style is almost up to date. Raja Oudeh works for an organization funded by American and European groups, wwhose aim is to disseminate democratic ideas in Palestinian society. It's easy enough to speak in praise of democracy, but you need an audience, and Oudeh doesn't have a permit that would enable him to move around the West Bank freely. Democracy, it seems, have to wait for another disseminator.
Time to change the diskette
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz 8/11/2003
It is difficult to believe that a veteran combat fighter like Ariel Sharon really takes seriously the entire matter of "dismantling the terrorist infrastructure." Would the prime minister of sovereign Israel dare send Israeli troops door-to-door through the settlements to collect weapons from the right-wing extremists among the settlers, who daily harass and abuse their Palestinian neighbors? The dozens of new and renewed outposts set up since the government adopted the road map, which are supposed to be removed "immediately" according to the road map, show that even a prime minister as strong as Sharon doesn't dare challenge the extremists. Sharon knows how to assess the chances that under the political conditions and mood in the territories, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) will be able to fulfill the article in the road map referring to "dismantling the terrorist infrastructure." CIA director George Tenet, who fathered the idea, has admitted in closed forums that the entire matter of "infrastructure" is somewhere between problematic and impossible. One doesn't need to be the chief of the CIA or head of the Shin Bet to understand what Abu Mazen and his security minister, Mohammed Dahlan, can expect on the day they order their forces to charge Hamas activists. Because of far more modest concerns, Sharon is avoiding sending the IDF to charge the darlings of his comrades in the government: Avigdor Lieberman, Benny Elon, Effi Eitam and perhaps Benjamin Netanyahu. In Sharon's case, the U.S. and even ex-Meretz politicians like Avraham Poraz (who has compared Hamas to the settlers in the outposts) show understanding for the prime minister's political constraints. They allow him to enjoy the benefit of the doubt, and assume he wants to dismantle all the settlements set up since March 2001 and freeze construction in all the others, as required by the road map, but simply can't do it.The attitude toward Abu Mazen's constraints, and the place they get on Sharon's agenda, can serve as an effective litmus test regarding Sharon's intentions. A leader who regards a neighboring leader as a partner does not impose decrees that the putative partner cannot execute. If Sharon were interested in a political arrangement, he would have identified Abu Mazen as a partner and tried to strengthen his position. The praise the prime minister showers on President Bush, whose popularity has been eroded, proves Sharon knows how to do it. On the other hand, Sharon and Bush are turning Abu Mazen into an Israeli collaborator and American puppet in the eyes of Abbas' own public.
As long as the hudna lasts, Abu Mazen lasts
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz 8/11/2003
The prisoner issue is not going away in the West Bank and Gaza. There are daily demonstrations and sit-ins, and hunger strikes are planned in the prisons. What should have been, as far as Israel was concerned, a confidence-building measure has turned into a move that destroyed the little confidence in Israeli intentions that had begun to develop on the Palestinian side after the appointment of Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). "If that's your way of freeing prisoners, it would have been better had you left them all in jail and not released anyone," said Palestinian Minister for Prisoner Affairs Hisham al-Razak over the weekend, during a discussion of the issue at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem.Palestinian Security Minister Mohammed Dahlan declared that the Israeli handling of the prisoner issue exposed the fraud in Israeli propaganda. And in the Palestinian press there was a plethora of articles about the fraud and evasiveness of the Israeli government in the affair. One of the papers said the third intifada was coming and this time, at the end of the hudna cease-fire, it would be an intifada against Israeli lies. The Palestinians hoped they would be made partners in the process of drawing up the list of detainees and expected a much larger number of prisoners and veteran inmates among them to be released, so they felt the government had made fools of them. Prisoners and detainees who were going to be released anyway were freed, joined by common criminals and day laborers illegally in Israel, looking for work.The anger created by the prisoner affair in the Palestinian public forced Abu Mazen to cancel a planned meeting last week with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Abu Mazen's office said the frustration on the prisoner issue has created a situation in which there wasn't anything for Abu Mazen to discuss with Sharon. "There's nothing to discuss about further Israeli withdrawals now," Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz announced after the shooting at the Hayoun family car near Gilo.
Sharon And Mofaz Oppose Cease Fire
By Abdulwahab Badrakhan, Al-Hayat 8/9/2003
Israel fought the Palestinian Intifida with planes, tanks and missiles. But its main weapon was provocation, from Sharon's 'break-in' into the holy mosque to the separation wall. In between, as always, there is the successful employment of the American administration and the containment of its Middle Eastern policy, and the also successful employment of the political-security hysteria that hit Washington after the attacks of September 11. As well as the disparate success of exaggerations and lies that showed the war on Iraq to be a tool of making policy and decision-making in the United States and Britain by involving Congress and the House of Commons and misleading and luring them to specified standpoints.Sharon began his tenure in power, along with another criminal, Shaul Mofaz, by vowing to end the Intifada, whereas the Palestinian side was using any period of relative calm to declare a cease-fire or truce. The Israelis abandoned the thought of peace by carrying out assassinations and limited invasions in order to keep the fire alight. Since the continuous confrontation gave Sharon and his gang an "American legitimacy" to carry on with the killings, the destruction, the starvation and the torture, until it reoccupied the West Bank in March 2002.That was what the most that Sharon could do, since the Israelis had occupied the West bank and Gaza Strip for over 20 years and could not prevent the rise of the Intifada. By renewing the occupation, Sharon thought he could prove something: either to gain an international approval for the occupation as the only "good" solution for Israel's security, or to win a clear Palestinian surrender, which could be included in any final peaceful solution in which his conditions would be imposed on the Palestinians.
Who Will Save Abu Mazen?
By Uri Avnery, Arab News 8/11/2003
TEL AVIV, 11 August 2003 — Abu Mazen will fall before the end of October — this conviction is gaining ground in leading Palestinian circles.This forecast is based on the belief that Abu Mazen will not get anything, neither from the Americans nor from Sharon. No release for most of the prisoners, no complete removal of the checkpoints inside the Palestinian territories, no stop to the building of the wall, no total withdrawal of the army from Palestinian towns, no lifting of the blockade on President Arafat, no freeze of the settlements, no dismantling of the settlement outposts that were put up in the last two and a half years (as stipulated by the road map).If they had wanted to “help Abu Mazen”, to quote the formula current in Washington, they would have fulfilled at least some of these demands. But nothing of the sort has happened. The well-publicized release of a handful of prisoners, most of whom where due to be released anyhow, only highlighted the absence of goodwill and increased the anger.Abu Mazen became prime minister because the Americans demanded it. The Palestinians hoped that the Americans would give him things that they were unwilling to grant Yasser Arafat. This would have meant the US exerting real pressure on Sharon in order to compel him to deliver the goods. This has not happened. The terrible conditions of life in the occupied territories have not improved. In some places they have even deteriorated.
A Debate Over U.S. 'Empire' Builds in Unexpected Circles
By Dan Morgan, Washington Post 8/10/2003
At forums sponsored by policy think tanks, on radio talk shows and around Cleveland Park dinner tables, one topic has been hotter than the weather in Washington this summer: Has the United States become the very "empire" that the republic's founders heartily rejected? Liberal scholars have been raising the question but, more strikingly, so have some Republicans with impeccable conservative credentials.For example, C. Boyden Gray, former counsel to President George H.W. Bush, has joined a small group that is considering ways to "educate Americans about the dangers of empire and the need to return to our founding traditions and values," according to an early draft of a proposed mission statement. "Rogue Nation," a new book by former Reagan administration official Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Washington-based Economic Strategy Institute, contains a chapter that dubs the United States "The Unacknowledged Empire." And at the Nixon Center in Washington, established in 1994 by former president Richard M. Nixon, President Dimitri K. Simes is preparing a magazine-length essay that will examine the "American imperial predicament." The stirrings among Republicans are still muted. Most in the GOP -- as well as a large number of Democrats -- support bigger military budgets and see no alternative to a forceful U.S. role abroad. But those leading the debate say it is, at the very least, bringing in voices across the ideological spectrum for a long overdue appraisal of what the nation's role should be. After World War II, the United States was instrumental in setting up a web of international economic, military and political organizations founded on American principles of democracy and free markets. To combat communist influence, real or imagined, the United States also used covert operations to undermine or topple governments in Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Chile and other countries.
The Painful Horrors of Political Autism
By John Chuckman, Dissident Voice 8/8/2003
I've read that severe autism involves receiving a storm of sensory perceptions, literally assaulting a mind unable to properly sort them out. It is a terrifying experience, driving sufferers to avoid human contact. That description of autism resembles what I briefly sometimes experience from the passing parade of political events.A Canadian citizen of Syrian origin, a man with a family and career in Canada, was arrested and deported last fall on his way to Europe while simply changing planes in New York. In an act of aggressive stupidity, despite his travelling on a Canadian passport, he was deported by American authorities to Syria. His family has not heard from him since. Now, we have received reports that the man has been severely tortured. After all, Syria is a closed society, and he would be wanted for avoiding military service if nothing else, the very thing that motivated millions of people to migrate to America from Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.The American Secretary of State announced in his dignified baritone that the U.S. will indeed pay its promised blood-money of $15 million dollars each for the lives of Hussein's sons. I thought this a fitting cap to Mr. Powell's career in the State Department. Apparently, he thought so, too, for not long after, he let it be known he would retire after Bush's next inauguration. I guess he felt he had to get this out before it became clear to the whole world that Bush's crowd was as likely to re-appoint him as give up root-beer socials over smoldering cows down at the ranch. There will almost certainly be a second inauguration, despite all those desperately silly count-down clocks on the Internet telling us how long Bush has left. This most inarticulate President in American history, a man who has set in motion policies we will all live to regret, remains fairly popular. I don't know which is the more appropriate analogy, the vast ship that takes a very great time to swing into a turn or the lab critter that learns only by banging its head into the walls of a maze, to best describe America's capacity for political advance, but it is painfully slow.
Road Map diplomacy conceals 'politicide' of the Palestinian people
By Steve Niva, Electronic Intifada 8/11/2003
With media coverage so tightly focused on the diplomatic maneuvering surrounding President Bush's Road Map peace initiative, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that Israel continues to implement a devastating set of policies that are endangering the social and national existence of the Palestinian people. In fact, Israel's grudging participation in the Road Map process is little more than an effort to buy time for these policies to achieve this outcome.While this charge may sound like overheated political rhetoric, it is coming from no less a source than the eminent Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling in his important new book Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians (Verso, 2003).Kimmerling, a self-described "Israeli patriot" deeply concerned about Israel's future, coined the term politicide to describe the strategic goal of the package of policies Israel has implemented against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the past few years, especially since Ariel Sharon's ascension as Israel's Prime Minister in February 2001. He believes that politicide is a danger not only to the existence of the Palestinian people but also to the state of Israel.By politicide he means a multi-leveled process of Israeli political, economic and military policies "that has, as its ultimate goal, the dissolution of the Palestinian people's existence as a legitimate social, political and economic entity." It does so through the planned destruction of both the Palestinian public and private spheres of life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel And North Africa
By Rashid Khashana, Al-Hayat 8/11/2003
At this stage, Iraq and North Africa represent Israel's first two priorities. With regards to Iraq, the road to Baghdad is now open to Israel for the first time ever, and so the Israelis are setting detailed plans, most of which were ready before the war in Iraq, to invade the country through trade, politics and security. As for the North African countries, they have a symbolic role, as well as a certain strategic importance, because Israeli views them as the weakest link towards initiating the normalization process they hope to establish with all Arab countries. Indeed, it hopes that by establishing such relations with North Africa, it would become better accepted and "appreciated" by its neighbors. The fact is that the U.S. is exerting considerable pressure on the North African governments to take more measures towards normalizing relations with Israel, just like Mauritania did. But in doing so, the U.S. overlooks all the danger that such policy could have on the stability of these regimes, as the last events in Nouakchott demonstrated. The Americans aren't settling for the distribution of Israeli goods in North African markets, which mainly transit through Europe, or for the steady communication between Israeli and North African intellectuals and academics, or even for the secret communications existing between government representatives. They insist - in accordance to Israel's wishes - that there be official and public relations that would break the "psychological barrier" and encourage the normalization process with the rest of the Arab countries. It is in this context that the last meeting was held in London between the foreign ministers of Morocco and Israel. Even though the results were kept secret, it was no secret that the Israeli government presented a list of initiatives and steps to foster bilateral relations at the political, cultural, security and sports levels, in an attempt to exploit the ceasefire agreement reached with the Palestinians, even though it is clear that not one move was made towards reaching a true and comprehensive solution. This means that Israel is selling the crops that haven't been sown yet, knowing in advance that it will never present them.
The Arab-Israeli peace camp still lives
By David Kimche, Daily Star 8/11/2003
Have you ever stood at a busy street intersection, holding up a large placard, demonstrating against your prime minister? I did that, back in May 1998, when then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had brought the peace process to its knees. I felt very foolish and embarrassed at first until I grew accustomed to the stares, the catcalls, the hooting of the cars and also – luckily – the well-wishers. For a whole week, some of my colleagues and I stayed in a “peace tent” that we erected on the pavement near the prime minister’s home in Jerusalem. During that week, many hundreds of citizens visited our tent, to identify with us or to argue with us. More to the point, we had full media coverage, especially after the city council tried to evict us and we appealed to the High Court.I believe the fact that some prominent professors and I, a former director-general of the Foreign Ministry, were willing to spend a week on an inhospitable Jerusalem sidewalk had an effect on some people. A hundred, nay, a thousand such acts would have had considerably greater effect. And this, in a nutshell, is the dilemma of the peace movements in Israel – how to make an impact that can affect public opinion.There are today some 30 major peace movements in Israel, and a similar number of smaller, fly-by-night groups of concerned citizens who meet to discuss how they can become relevant. Representatives of those 30 movements met together recently under the aegis of the Peace Coalition to discuss possibilities of greater cooperation, but there was no breakthrough on the vital question of how to impact public opinion. One of their major problems is the dearth of funds needed to organize activities. Another problem is the lack of interest in their activities on the part of the media. A newspaper editor once cynically told me: “Peace stories don’t sell newspapers, nor do stories about Arabs, unless there is a negative slant.”
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