The Time Has Come For The Mandela Alternative
By Samir Rantisi, Al-Hayat 8/17/2003
Getting the Palestinian elite leadership to adopt the nonviolent resistance strategy, and convincing the leadership of the Palestinian national movement of the validity of peaceful protest method, is the only means remaining of reviving the Palestinian nonviolent peaceful resistance option. This option is capable of transforming the Palestinian struggle against occupation to a peaceful protest movement and will enable it to enjoy the largest possible international support and assistance. -- In the midst of the first Palestinian Intifada, a few months before the 1990 Madrid Conference, I adopted an unusual form of nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation. I headed from my place of residence in Al-Bireh to the entrance of the Israeli military occupation headquarters in Beit Eil, carrying banners with slogans demanding the Israeli occupiers leave the land they occupied in 1967. I placed the banners in front of the Israeli military leadership headquarters and chained my body to a light post.Within a few moments, Israeli soldiers congregated around me, with one soldier contacting his superiors to report what I had done while the others looked on with confused and astonished eyes. Soon, it was clear that the soldiers thought I was a foreigner collaborating with the Palestinian people. They could not imagine for one moment that the person in front of them was one of the Palestinian youth who had been throwing stones at them. I had, after careful consideration and thorough examination, decided to try this form of nonviolent resistance instead of throwing stones at occupation forces and exposing myself to their fatal gunfire.The soldiers were confused as to how to deal with this new form of protest; and highlighting the confusion was the arrival of various television stations' cameras documenting my persistence in continuing with my protest. The soldiers stood unable to take any action, until a highranking officer showed up and asked me in English what I was doing. I answered him in Arabic, further increasing his surprise. He could not believe his eyes when I threw my orangecolored identity card in front of him, which indicates that I am a Palestinian. He boiled with anger, ordering the soldiers to untie me from the light post and take me to jail immediately.
Favors that breed contempt
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz 8/18/2003
There is a significant gap between the way the Israelis and Palestinians view how to deal with the cease-fire's current danger. The difference can be found in all of the gestures and easements Israel has been granting Palestinians to preserve the hudna - moves the Palestinians perceive as mockery. For example, the possibility was brought up this past weekend of Israel's allowing Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to travel to Gaza for two days to visit the grave of his sister Yusra, who died last week and was buried alongside family members in Khan Yunis. The Israeli side depicted this as a humanitarian gesture, while the Palestinian side looked at it quite differently. Customers at the Damascus Gate newsstand in Jerusalem's Old City who saw a report about this on Saturday asked jeeringly: For how long did Arafat receive a permit from Israel? Did he wait a long time? Will Israel agree to extend his stay in Gaza? As far as the Palestinians are concerned, giving Arafat permission represents the patronizing and humiliating attitude of Israel's government toward their national leader, and nothing more. Certainly not a humanitarian gesture. Easements at the checkpoints that will allow the transporting of goods into Palestinian cities, an increase in the number of permits for Palestinians to work in Israel, and permission to re-open the Palestine Polytechnic Institute in Hebron are, according to an editorial in the daily Al Quds, nothing but "a farce." "What right at all does Israel have to prevent the passage of goods into Palestinian cities? And what did Israel get out of the closure of the polytechnic college apart from deepening hatred?" asks the editorial.Near the Qalandiyah checkpoint in north Jerusalem this weekend, an elderly man was heard saying cynically: "From the bottom of my heart, I really thank the soldiers of the Israeli army at the checkpoint for letting me return home at 9:30 in the evening from a visit to my sick mother." (The checkpoint is closed to people coming from Jerusalem at 9:00 P.M.) One of the women volunteers from Machsom Watch said she had met quite a few Palestinians who circumvented the roadblock via the tortuous path passing through the quarries to the east, and was amazed to find they had official documents allowing them to cross the checkpoint. They said it was better to go through the hills than to go through the humiliating roadblock.
‘Christian Zionists’ Resist Bush on Mideast Peace
By Douglas Turner, Palestine Media Center/Buffalo News 8/18/2003
The relationship between President Bush's administration and the evangelical right are under severe strain in the wake of a meeting the White House called to brief religious leaders on the president's road map for Middle East peace. The rift is over the key part of the peace plan, creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. The gap is widening as a result of the resumption of attacks on Israel by Palestinian terrorist groups backed by Syria and Iran. About 40 church representatives were briefed here July 14 by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. But The News has learned that the secret session failed to quiet the evangelicals' opposition to an independent Palestinian state. The White House acknowledged only that the meeting took place. Most evangelicals oppose the plan on grounds that it represents a mortal threat to Israel's existence. Some believe carving out territory for Palestinians conflicts with Scriptural promises that the Holy Land is destined to belong to the Jews. Even so, the Bush administration is pushing hard for adoption of the peace strategy at the urging of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and moderate Jewish groups here and overseas. The State Department, under Secretary Colin L. Powell, believes giving statehood to the Palestinians will undercut recruitment incentives for al-Qaida and lessen the risk that Americans will be future targets of terrorism. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, chancellor of Liberty University and a prominent religious broadcaster, said he respects and admires Bush for crafting the road map and trying to bring peace. But Falwell said the plan will fail."I believe the plan is doomed unless (Palestinian leader Yasser) Arafat is expelled" from the Holy Land, he told The News. He said Arafat still controls the Palestinians despite the elevation of Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister. "I cannot see how the road map can work . . . unless Mr. Bush is successful in getting Palestinian leaders to stop their barbarism. And they won't," he said.
Daniel Pipes
By Jihad Al Khazen, Al-Hayat 8/18/2003
Can there be anyone lower and filthier than Ariel Sharon? I vote for Daniel Pipes, a radical Zionist who supports Sharon whenever possible.I wouldn't have written about this sick American-Jewish with all of history's grudges and illusions had President Bush not appointed him to become a member of the American Peace Institute board. In fact, it is a peculiar appointment, which Arab-American organizations, as well as Islamic and shared religious organizations, as well as liberal and moderate Jewish groups opposed, as they all are familiar with that man's ideas.Daniel Pipes serves peace as mush as Mother Theresa served the high jump in the Olympic games, as he is a racist war advocate whose activities against the Arabs and Muslims I used to follow; then I became more interested in him when he attacked my friend, Professor Edward Said, and claimed that he was not from Jerusalem and had not lost his family house during the Naqba.I know Edward Said very well, and I used to know his mother and siblings. His sister, Joyce, worked with us, and I used to visit the family's apartment on Makdessi Street in Ras Beirut, which is no further than 200 meters from my old house on that same street. I clearly remember pictures of the family in Jerusalem, over a round table in a corner of the living room. And then comes Pipes denying Said's origins. It is just as if I were denying the holocaust, which I will not do, and leave Pipes to lie alone.Surely, lying about Edward Said is nothing compared to Pipe's racism against the Arabs and Muslims. He actually comes from a long dynasty of Zionists who imitated the Nazis in their racism, starting with Jabotinsky, who said that no peace shall reign unless the Arabs are psychologically, not only militarily, oppressed, not to mention Ben Gurion who wrote in 1936 that the rise of Israel necessitated the total despair of Arabs, and last but not least, there is Pipes. Actually, a man who denies Edward Said's origins would also be denying the fact that the Palestinians were forced to leave their country in 1947 and 1948. Hence, he believes there is no reason to negotiate the right of return. Moreover, he is demanding a complete Israeli military victory and a total Palestinian defeat, so as to crush the Palestinians' will to resist. So Pipes believes that "Palestinians need to be defeated more than Israel needs to triumph," an opinion that I won't argue with, but will settle with spitting in Pipe's face.
These People Who Taught Us How To Love
By Nayef Hawatmeh, Al-Hayat 8/18/2003
Each time a political delegation comes to visit us in the West Bank, Gaza, in Jordan Lebanon or Syria, we suggest taking them to visit the Palestinian camps. We have become experts in the reactions they have when they visit them: every time they see a camp like Jermana or Danoun in Syria, Shatila or Mar Elias in Beirut, the Wahdat or Boqaa in Jordan, Rafah or Jabalia in Gaza, Blata or Jenin in the West Bank, we see confusion and surprise in their eyes. We read in their eyes a saying that became familiar to us: is possible that martyrs and the right-holders of the most sacred cause come from these old tin houses? Did they walk in these alleys that are smaller than the coffins of their martyrs toward the freedom space in order to remove from the face of humanity the crimes of Zionist racism and their perpetrator Israel the occupier. But very quickly this surprise vanishes and they forget the time limit of their visit to launch rich, warm and hot political discussions, with three generations gathered by the sufferings of exile and obstinacy to return home through struggle and pure blood baptism. Their eyes are once again full of confusion for the discussion reaches the children of Gaza, Nablus, Jenin and Bethlehem, which remove the faint geographic borders that never hindered them. They were banned from living in their own country, but their country lives on in them. The sparkle in their eyes opens before the startled visitor endless horizons. A child pointing out one of the camp's walls is enough to remove the confusion once again. The pictures of martyrs that decorate proudly the wall tell the story of the Palestinian dream that flourishes every morning on the windows of the camp like dew, a secret thread linking the Palestinian children to the struggles and sacrifices of their fathers and transmitting them to the new generation.
It takes three to tango
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz 8/18/2003
To save us and the Palestinians from distress when the next terrorist attack sends the Israel Defense Forces back to Ramallah, it is worth looking at the opening sentence of the road map - "a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be achieved only through an end to violence and terrorism." How many Palestinians believe that an end to violence will in fact lead them to independence? How many Israelis believe that a two-state solution will bring an end to the conflict? The affair of the prisoner releases demonstrates the width of the credibility gap between both sides during the first faltering steps of the map, and which threatens its failure. What one side considers a generous gesture, the other side sees as a ploy to humiliate it.Without a belief that it will lead to an end of the occupation (rather than to a Bantustan) - Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has no motivation to risk a frontal clash with Hamas. So long as his public suspects that the Oslo Accords were a plot to destroy Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will not pay the political price of a clash with the settlers. Each side's avoidance of fulfilling its commitments encourages the other side to follow suit. Thus the two adversaries are pushed into a never ending game of mudslinging at the enemy until the enemy buries another political initiative underneath it and deepens the credibility gap even further. Lieutenant Colonel (res.) Kobi Michael, one of those who established the security coordination and liaison apparatus between Israel and the PA and was in charge of it, claims that a lack of confidence, in addition to cultural and structural differences, doomed the joint patrols to failure.
Israeli-Egyptian Peace: How People Like Mofaz Misread History
By Uri Avnery, Arab News 8/18/2003
TEL AVIV, 18 August 2003 — Sometimes a single sentence is enough to reveal a person’s mental world and intellectual profundity. Such a sentence was uttered by Shaul Mofaz, the minister of defense, some days ago during a visit to the Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip.“With our enemies, it seems, no shortcuts are possible. Egypt made peace with Israel only after it was defeated in the Yom Kippur War. That will happen with the Palestinians, too.”This means that there is no political solution. There is only war, and in this war we must “defeat” the Palestinians. A simple, simplistic, not to say primitive, view.But the revealing sentence is: “Egypt made peace with Israel only after it was defeated in the Yom Kippur War”.Revealing, because it utterly contradicts the almost unanimous view of all the experts in Israel and around the world — historians, Arabists and military commentators. These believe that the exact opposite is true: Anwar Sadat was able to lead Egypt toward peace only because he was admired as the commander who had defeated Israel in the Yom Kippur War. Only after the Egyptian people had won back their national pride were they able to consider peace with the enemy (with us).When the war broke out, the Egyptians did something that amazed the world and shook Israel: They crossed the Suez Canal and overcame the celebrated “Bar-Lev line”. Everybody considered this a brilliant military feat. The stupidity of Israeli Army intelligence and the arrogant complacency of Prime Minister Golda Meir allowed the Egyptians to achieve total surprise, destroy a large number of tanks and pin down the Israeli Air force. Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan was in shock and talked about the “destruction of the third Jewish state”. (In traditional Jewish historiography, the first two Jewish states are symbolized by the first and second temple in Jerusalem.)
The invisible Palestinians of Egypt
By Oroub El Abed, Daily Star 8/18/2003
Refugees face discrimination, poverty and no access to basic services -- Palestinians in Egypt have been living for the last 25 five years without any international or national assistance or protection. Very little is known about their status, especially that there are no refugee camps hosting them. The Palestinians as refugees in Egypt and their living situation has not been a matter of concern in most of the literature, neither for the PLO nor for people in Egypt as an issue to draw attention to. To fill this gap, for the last two years I have conducted research on the Palestinians and their condition and livelihoods in Egypt. Along with searching literature about what has been written about those “forgotten Palestinians,” we also conducted a qualitative field study to collect vivid experiences from Palestinians in Egypt about their daily struggles as refugees. Palestinians in Egypt were estimated to be about 53,000 by the end of 2000, according to the ambassador of Palestine to Egypt, Zuhdi al-Qudweh. Two main reasons brought Palestinians to Egypt over the years. First, the two Palestinian-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967 brought Palestinians en masse to Egypt. They were put in temporary camps in Egypt before being asked to either leave to Gaza when possible or to settle in Egypt.Second, socio-economic reasons, especially after Egypt administered the Gaza Strip as of 1949, brought many Palestinians, mainly from Gaza, to work and to be educated in Egypt. With time, and due to the 1967 war, they were unable to return to Gaza and had to remain. Except for the unions supported by the PLO, Palestinians are not seen as a community in the areas in which they live in Egypt. They are dispersed in small numbers and assimilated in the main urban governorates in Egypt, such as Cairo, Alexandria, Ismailieh, Port Said, Shariqieh Qualyibieh, Rafah and Ariesh.
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