We are all human beings
By Mohammed Shaker Abdallah, Jerusalem Times 8/14/2003
People outside this region might not believe that Palestinians have resentful reactions against suicide bombings- the scenes of scattered limbs and blood-covered body parts are terribly horrible to the Palestinian eye as they are for any human viewer everywhere else. Palestinians- and this not to defend them, are very. sensitive to violence and this fact has been established all through their history.Everytime I, and certainly many Palestinians, take a bus to work or shop, the potential of its being shattered by a bomber is always a floating threat. Israeli buses in Jerusalem and other cities inside the green line carry a tangible percentage of Arab passengers and it has occurred more that once that suicidal bombings took their toll on the regular users of the Israeli vehicles.Many Palestinians also frequent malls, restaurants, cafes and supermarkets inside Israel raising the risk of their being the next victims of the upcoming explosion should it be denoted in one place or another of these facilities. It is more than a theoretical assumption that the potentiality of the Palestinians being hit by these attacks is more than a realistic fact. So why do Palestinians or some of them resort to that mutually devastating tactic.It is not to justify or defend that horrible act that many outsiders are trying to trace the social, economic, ideological, and psychological motives which affect the would-be suicide bomber into this fatal decision. Those observers and analysts could freely hypothesize from their faraway comfortable offices and imagine the situation under which the vast majority of Palestinians live. But so far almost none of them looked to the other direction toward what the Israelis are doing.
Is the hudna over?
By Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 14 - 20 August 2003
"The new realities Israel is creating in the occupied territories are prompting a growing number of Palestinian intellectuals to demand that their leadership abandon the idea of a two-state solution. Several Palestinian writers, intellectuals and academics this week called on the Palestinian Authority to adopt the idea of a bi-national state, where Palestinians and Jews would live as equal citizens in all of mandatory Palestine." In an apparent retaliation for the killing of five Palestinians by the Israeli military earlier in the week, Palestinian resistance groups on Tuesday carried out two suicide bombings against Israeli targets. In the first attack a Palestinian blew himself up at the entrance of the northern West Bank settlement of Ariel, killing one Jewish settler and badly injuring two others. In the second attack, a Palestinian woman blew herself up at the entrance of a small shopping mall in the small Israeli town of Rosh Ha'yen, east of Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring 14 others, four seriously. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack in Ariel, while Al- Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsiblity for the attack in Rosh Ha'yen. Accusing the government of Mahmoud Abbad of "failing to prevent the attacks", the Israeli government reacted by cancelling the expected release of nearly 67 Palestinian prisoners, mostly labourers who had been imprisoned for entering Israel without a valid permit. In another retaliatory measure, the Israeli army tightened its originally harsh restrictions and collective punitive measures against Palestinian civilians.
On Iraq and America’s Friends
By Muhammad Al-Shibani, Arab News 8/15/2003
JEDDAH, 15 August 2003 — The reason the Kuwaiti government rejected a visit to Kuwait by Palestinian prime minister was not, as Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad claimed, that Kuwaiti officials are demanding an apology for Yasser Arafat’s support of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait back in 1990. This demand is very old. The Iraqi regime that invaded Kuwait has been brought down and the Palestinian president who supported the invasion has been under siege for more than a year and a half in Ramallah. The late rejection of the visit was nothing more than revenge from the Kuwaiti government. Abu Mazen cannot be held accountable for the actions of Arafat or the Iraqi regime. Kuwait does not want to be responsible for any future financial aid to the Palestinian cause. Kuwait knows that the reason for such visits is to demand some financial assistance. It does not want to open the door for that. But it will not mind offering political support. America remains the same; its goals have not changed. What has changed is its behavior and its way of dealing with others. The US government is putting enormous pressure on the Arab world to recognize the Iraqi Governing Council and engage with it. But the US will find it difficult to force Arabs to do so.
The Real Terror Masters
By Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com 8/15/2003
Terrorism embraces ethnic 'diversity' -- In the terrorism business, it seems, diversity is all the rage. What Hemant Lakhani, an international arms dealer of British nationality and Indian ethnicity, Moinuddeen Ahmed Hameed, a Muslim from Malaysia, and Yehuda Abraham, a Jewish-American gem dealer who works out of New York City's diamond district, have in common is that they are all being held in connection with a plot to purchase surface-to-air missiles on behalf of terrorists. Except that the alleged terrorists they were dealing with were really FBI agents and informants, who had been tracking them for over a year in an effort to smoke out the rest of Osama bin Laden's worldwide network.A leak to the media, however, forced the feds to go public before the trap could be fully sprung, at least according to Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball.Several aspects of this case are extremely odd, starting with the ethnic "diversity" of the players.....NOTE IN THE MARGIN: The title of Ilana Mercer's recent piece in WorldNutDaily, "Libertarians who loathe Israel," is all wrong. It isn't Israel we loathe, it's Israel's American amen corner, typified by La Mercer.Why, we just love Israel, and would love it even more if only its leaders and supporters would commit war crimes on their own dime, without American aid and without continually hectoring us for more. Look, nobody really cares about Israel, per se: the problem is the effect that nation's knee-jerk supporters have on the American political process and the way their shrill cries distort and degrade the national debate on U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Inalienable and sacred
By Salman Abu Sitta, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 14 - 20 August 2003
For the Palestinians, the right of return to their pre-1948 homes is sacred. For the international community, the right of return is enshrined in international law, as evidenced by the sustained affirmation of this right by the UN 135 times so far. For planners, the implementation of the right of return is quite feasible according to serious and unchallenged studies in the last decade. Who then undermines the right of return? Israel, of course, and its supporters. One of the basic tenets of Zionism involves taking the land of Palestine and getting rid of its people. This tenet was realised by all possible means: expulsion, massacres, closures, house demolitions, starvation, harassment and other means made possible by the great imbalance of power between the occupier and the occupied. This is called "ethnic cleansing" in modern parlance and in the language of the Statute of Rome of July 1998 which gave birth to the International Criminal Court. Ethnic cleansing, that is expelling inhabitants from their homes, is a war crime. To prevent these once slighted inhabitants from return, no matter what the reason for their exodus, is also a war crime. That is why international law is very clear and specific on this point. It is no accident that article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed by the UN on 10 December 1948, stipulates that every person has the right to return to his home. It is also no accident that on the following day, 11 December, the UN passed the famous resolution 194, calling for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes.
Suggested keys to an Arab educational revival
By Graham Leonard, Daily Star 8/15/2003
Recently, in opinion pieces in US newspapers and in a major speech to African-American journalists, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice made a new and long-range commitment to the revitalization of Iraq, the Middle East and, by implication, the Muslim world. Is this the beginning of a tremendous undertaking a new Rice-Bush plan? Rice and her speechwriters listed almost every one of the complex problems involved in redirecting Iraq, the Middle East and the many cultures of Islam worldwide. It is a brave concept, but as a specialist in Islam and the Arab world with over 35 years experience as an educator in the Middle East, I wish to respond to Rice’s call for a “more modern education” for Iraq (as an example for the region and for all Muslims). I refer you to the revival of the educational methods of teaching and learning of the early Muslims, which contributed intellectually to the “Golden Age” of Islam from 755 to 1055 one of the most creative periods in world history until the modern era. The key to that creativity was discussion-based methods of teaching and learning the humanities. Rice has used the Marshall Plan as her analogy. When it comes to education, however, the example of General Douglas MacArthur’s Japan may be more relevant. Missionaries like E. Stanley Jones and the general’s Quaker ideologues transformed Japanese culture at its deepest levels by transforming its German-model, Samurai-inspired, regimented schooling into a “more modern education.”
Strange Bed-fellows
By David Hirst, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 14 - 20 August 2003
Caught between the involuntary complicity of two improbable bed-fellows -- anti-Arab zealots in Washington and anti-American reformists in Syria -- Syria's "old guard" is just playing the waiting game -- Fadil Shururu, chief political officer of Ahmad Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, has come a long way since I first met him 35 years ago in Jordan's Ghor Valley, seed-bed of the new-born guerrilla movement that was to liberate the whole of the Palestinian homeland lost to Israel in 1948; the Syrian Ba'thist regime, also in its fire-breathing youth, was its militant Arab backer. He could not even receive me in his own office; he came to my hotel instead. For the PFLP is now one of four Palestinian "terrorist" organisations whose Damascus-based branch the Americans have called on Syria to shut down completely. In the case of the militarily inactive PFLP, Syrian acquiescence seems to have been cosmetic at most, more substantive in the case of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. "But mark my words," said Shururu, "the time is coming when George Bush will need Bashar Al-Assad more than Bashar needs him." What is not in doubt is that the Arab government which, in the aftermath of the Iraq war and open support for Saddam Hussein during it, most feared that it, too, was about to be attacked, believes that the US is now sinking inexorably into an Iraqi "quagmire", and that the deeper it does the less inclined it will become to take on Syria too. "Who is more comfortable now?" asks, Deputy Foreign Minister Walid Muallam, "Syria or the US."
Hudna boom
By Avi Temkin, Globes 8/14/2003
The consumer spending rise shows what growth depends on. -- Like the politicians, Israeli households may also prefer to give the Palestinian ceasefire another chance before announcing a return to military action against the terrorists. If that is what happens, it will be a blessing for the Israeli economy, which needs buyers in the stores, shopping malls, and entertainment centers. From this viewpoint, the increased uncertainty over the future, as far as security is concerned, will have a negative impact on Israel’s chances for an economic recovery in the first quarter of 2004. Israeli consumers responded with joy to the declaration of the Palestinian hudna (ceasefire), and voted with their feet. Unlike some generals, households decided that they were part of the ceasefire, that it had relevance for them, and it was time to implement various plans, even if cautiously, and even if the figures do not indicate a return to the consumer behavior of two years ago. It is clear that a final collapse of the ceasefire will mean the return of the consumer behavior that prevailed in the second half of 2002 and the first half of 2003. Anyone who claims that he can get along without a ceasefire and without a diplomatic process, and that a return to an open armed conflict is preferable, should ask the restaurant and theater goers, football fans, airport duty-free and shoppers, families strolling through shopping malls, and those starting to think about replacing their car, buying a TV set or an air-conditioner, and even extending their homes.
How to suffocate a people
By Lynda Wafi and Saud Abu Ramadan, Middle East Times 8/14/2003
Raed Zeid, a six-year-old Palestinian boy from the village of Toura Al Sharqeya, west of the northern West Bank town of Jenin, used to carry his schoolbag and walk to the adjacent village of Nazlet Zeid, where his elementary school is located. He ignored Israeli bulldozers and workers building the security fence between the West Bank and Israel.Every day, he crossed on foot vast areas of land that were being leveled and razed by the Israeli army, and passed Israeli army machinery. He was indifferent to what was happening.One cool, sunny morning, Raed left his home as usual and started his morning walk to school, but when he returned, there was a big fence separating him from the solitary house that was built in line with the Jewish settlement of Shakid.Despite international opposition to the security wall, Israel has continued to build it between the West Bank and Gaza. The wall is not situated on the 1967 borders between the occupied territories and Israel; it has been constructed where a vast area of Palestinian property has been confiscated and villages isolated from the Palestinian community.That day, Raed did not know what to do. He searched for a gap in the fence, but there was not even enough space for a cat to cross. He grabbed the fence with his small hands and shook it as hard as he could, but still it was there and his home unreachable.Nael Zeid, Raed's father, said that discovering the fence left a psychological impact on his child. He has lost concentration in class, and fear crosses his face when he sees armored vehicles and Israeli troops working on the fence.
Resolution194: The ceiling of concession
By Adli Sadeq, Jerusalem Times 8/14/2003
The so-called Public Campaign for Peace reappeared, but its content has not changed. The campaign placed an ad in a newspaper, this time adding democracy to its name to become the Public Campaign for Peace and Democracy. The main objective remained to gather people in favor of relinquishing the right of return. The names of signatories approving this step appeared in the ad, indicating that "democracy."What concerns us in the ad at present is the right of refugees to return. Resolution 194, issued by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 11 December, 1948, provides in Paragraph 11 "The right of return at the earliest practicable date for refugees wishing to return to their land and live peacefully with their neighbors and offering compensation for those that do not choose to return." This resolution does not approve the general right of the Palestinians to reclaim their homeland and gain political independence, but provides only the right of individuals to reclaim their private property, also indicating the need to live peacefully with neighbors. The resolution was rejected by Palestinians and Arabs at the time because it did not refer to the right of the Palestinian people in an independent state. Palestinians and Arabs began to heed the resolution only after official institutions depleted their options and accepted the existence of the state of Israel, after which they focused on the right of return.
|
