No exit
By Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz 8/18/2003
On Thursday, an item on television: the Jenin-Ya'bad road is now open to Palestinian traffic. The IDF spokesman got the message to all the military correspondents, who rushed to publish it as stated, without checking. "This is part of a series of steps taken by Israel to ease conditions on the West Bank under the road map," the correspondents explain. Not just one step; a series. On TV, we see a bulldozer removing a dirt barrier. On Sunday afternoon, the Jenin-Ya'bad road is deserted. A road just opened to Palestinian traffic, empty? A taxi appears and the driver, clearly upset, gestures for us to turn around, using the sign language of all besieged West Bank drivers. The meaning was unmistakable: The Israeli army was on the road. But we came to see the townsfolk of Jenin enjoying the opportunity to drive unimpeded to Ya'bad, 10 minutes away. Just before arriving at Jenin, we understood: Across the road, near the deserted banquet halls ("A sign of good taste"), stands an IDF armored personnel carrier, completely blocking traffic on the road that was just opened on television. Most Palestinian drivers nowadays don't dare approach an IDF armored vehicle. The sweaty face of a young soldier peered out from the turret. Maybe he was upset, too; he gestured with one hand to the few Palestinian cars that dared approach, telling them to turn around and go back to Jenin. If their business was urgent, they wouldn't get close enough to explain it to him. We approached cautiously from the direction of Ya'bad."Turn off your engine," he shouted. Then: "There's a closure on Jenin, didn't you hear? No one out, no one in." We went back to Jenin the same way we'd left it: by a long, circuitous route.
The Wall in Palestine: Security as Pretense for Dispossession
By Jamal Juma', Electronic Intifada 8/18/2003
Here in Palestine we have been watching with great despair the visits of Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Sharon to Washington. Amidst the rhetoric of negotiations, over 100 bulldozers are working non-stop, every day, to continue construction of the Wall, which highlights the actual path that the Road Map is paving. While President Bush was correct in calling the Wall "a problem" and referring to it as "a wall snaking through the West Bank," on the ground there is no sign of an end to what has been called the largest "project" ever undertaken by Israel.In this context, the negotiation process seems void of any meaning, or a smokescreen for what is being implemented on the ground.Expected to be the largest land grab since 1967, the year Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, current projections suggest the Wall -- with an expected length of 400 miles -- will solidify Israeli control of almost one-half of the West Bank. The Wall is already snaking its way up to 4 miles inside the West Bank, and in some areas may cut 10 miles into the West Bank. It consistently follows a path that ensures maximum settlement annexation and large-scale control of Palestinian lands.The Wall (misleadingly referred to as the "security fence") takes on a number of horrific constructs. In some areas, it consists of an 8 meter (25 feet) high concrete edifice with armed watchtowers hovering over residential areas. In others, the Wall is layers of electric fences and buffer zones of trenches, patrol paths, sensors and cameras. Whatever the structural differences, the effect is the same.
Who undermines the right of return?
By Salman Abu Sitta, Electronic Intifada 8/18/2003
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.
From fence to fiasco: Sharon’s efforts to hijack a security project
By Yossi Alpher, Daily Star 8/19/2003
I was personally involved in campaigning for the West Bank security fence. I am increasingly unhappy with some of the results. Around two years ago, as a member of the executive of the Council for Peace and Security, a nongovernmental organization that groups some 1,200 former senior security personnel, I supported our sponsorship of the fence. Our idea was to base the fence on the 1948 armistice line, or Green Line, between Israel and the West Bank. The primary objective was to keep out suicide bombers, who at the time were walking and even driving across the border freely, with devastating effect on Israel. An earlier fence around the Gaza Strip has proven a formidable barrier against suicide bombers. It seemed to us that it was the primary obligation of any Israeli government to protect the 97 percent of its citizens who live within the Green Line by building a fence. The fence as we conceived it had several additional purposes. First, at the strategic level, it was intended to delegitimize isolated settlements but not large settlement blocs lying beyond it. We advocated their immediate removal, if only to free up the large numbers of Israeli security forces guarding them, so they could patrol the fence. We argued that even if the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did not remove the settlements, the existence of the fence between them and Israel proper would contribute to their withering away. In the context of a failed peace process in the past three years, and amid Palestinian suicidal violence, the fence was a legitimate expression of the desire of a vast majority of Israelis to separate our Jewish democratic state from the Palestinian territories, once and for all not to occupy or annex, but rather to go our separate ways and protect ourselves. The fence had additional, tactical objectives. One was keeping out illegal Palestinian “returnees,” whose numbers inside Israel have risen to around 100,000. Another was to stop rampant thievery of cars, agricultural equipment and produce, etc. from across the Green Line. The only deviations from the Green Line we contemplated were for topographic security considerations, to include settlements located directly across the line.
Israel gets the green light from U.S. to profit and pry
By Linda S. Heard, Online Journal 8/13/2003
August 13, 2003—In one of her recent articles, American National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice seemingly lauds the highly disputable premise that the Iraqi people have reclaimed their country, adding that America is working to provide them with "greater security and greater opportunity."Swap the word "Iraqi" for "Israeli" and "their country" with "Iraq" and Rice's overly optimistic statement holds a ring of truth.As though the Bush administration's cronyism when it came to handing out Iraqi reconstruction contracts wasn't contemptible enough, we are now being told that an Israeli firm—yes, your eyes don't deceive you—an Israeli firm, Iridium Satellite Israel, is set to supply Iraq with five million dollars worth of public telephones and to market mobile phones with the blessing of the Coalition Provisional Authority.Of course, I could be wrong but I'm prepared to bet that if the Iraqis have truly "reclaimed their country" as the piano-playing politician would like to orchestrate in our minds, then an Israeli company wouldn't even make it to the starting line, at least not as long as the Israeli government continues playing charades in an attempt to dupe the Palestinians and the world.Naturally, in an unprecedented spirit of "kiss and make up," Israel's Finance Minister and most hawkish, anti-Arab Member of Parliament Benjamin Netanyahu "graciously" signed a permit authorising trade with Iraq, marking Israel's recognition of Iraq as a friendly nation.
The ironclad law of draft dodging
By Shahar Ilan, Ha'aretz 8/19/2003
It's the ironclad law of draft dodging: Any change in the draft deferment arrangements will only worsen the inequality and deepen the discrimination between blood and blood. That's what happened when the quotas were canceled for yeshiva students who took part in the draft deferment program, or when students were allowed to teach for pay. But it seems the change in the Tal Law that was introduced by the Knesset in July as part of the economic program is breaking all the records when it comes to sheer folly and stupidity. According to the amended law, a yeshiva student who did not serve in the army can go to work only if he is studying in a yeshiva. True, that sentence is so illogical it should be repeated. The new amendment allows yeshiva students who did not go to the army to work only on condition they are going to yeshiva. Like other reforms that have been tried here, the change in the law says that a yeshiva student can work from the age of 23 if they go to school at least eight hours a day, creating the depressing feeling that in Israel any attempt at fixing something will only break it, and that one should never despair because things can always get worse. The original Tal Law went into effect last February. It said yeshiva students could take a year off at the age of 22 to work or acquire a professional skill, without being drafted to the army. At the end of the year they can go back to yeshiva or enlist for a brief period of service in the army or some civilian service. The Tal commission recognized that its proposal dealt a lethal blow to equality but hoped that the transition of ultra-Orthodox men from yeshiva to the labor force would also create a change in values in Haredi society that ultimately would lead to their agreement to serve in the military.
At the end of a ceasefire that never was
By Laura Gordon, Electronic Intifada 8/18/2003
15 August 2003 -- There is shooting along the border and shooting at weddings and for an untrained ear it's hard to tell the difference except by location. A Kalashnikov is low and hollow and echoes. An M-16 is a bit shriller, a bit louder. Machine gun fire comes from the border only. Tank shells come from the border only.The border is under assault again. We are taking more caution with walking to our homestays at night, taking care to arrive early and walk out of sight of military towers. Two days ago, a tank, two bulldozers, and a bulldozer with a large arm for moving things worked threateningly close to Abu Jameel's house from noon until 4:30pm. During this time, the military made four large underground explosions about twenty meters away from their home, supposedly to collapse underground tunnels. The way they do this is with a large machine that looks like a microscope perhaps 5 meters tall.The machine makes a hole ten meters deep and deposits dynamite. We felt the vibrations here in our office half a kilometer away. When we saw the family later in the day, they were tired. They called us only a bit before the bulldozers and the large microscope tunnel-collapsing vehicle left the area (the tank remained for a while but this is "normal"). The military activity in the area that day is so routine that the family is used to having tanks around and only calls us in rare and sustained extreme circumstances.
Israel’s apartheid project in the West Bank
By Ghassan Khatib, Daily Star 8/19/2003
The wall that Israel has been building in the occupied Palestinian territories under the pretext of security the wall that is being called the “apartheid wall” by the Palestinian side has lately attracted a great deal of high-level attention. From a Palestinian point of view, this critical attention, including the pointed comments of US President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, is an achievement of the cease-fire. When things started to calm down, Israel found itself without justification for its practices. The same can be said for its wide-reaching restrictions on Palestinian movement, which make no security sense but, rather, represent collective punishment of the entire Palestinian people. Once the smoke cleared, Israel’s true intentions were laid bare. In this climate, the continuation of Israeli settlement expansion and the construction of the wall a wall I previously dubbed “settlement plus” cannot be defended. The growth of settlements and the expropriation of Palestinian land, both of which have intensified in recent weeks, expose the true nature of Israel’s practices in the Occupied Territories to consolidate occupation by creating immovable facts on the ground and, therefore, prejudice the final outcome of negotiations, including Bush’s 2002 “vision,” based on a two-state solution. To soften the impact of this project on international public opinion, the Israelis insist on calling the massive multi-layered barrier fortified with guard towers, electrified fencing and tiers of barbed wire a “fence,” describing it as a means of preventing Palestinians with violent intentions from infiltrating Israel.But even Powell expressed amazement that one country would try to “defend” its borders by building a concrete wall over seven meters high, deep inside the territory of another country a neighbor with which Israel purportedly wants to live in peace. The wall has been used as a pretext to confiscate more than 20,000 acres of Palestinian agricultural land, causing unemployment in the towns of Tulkarm, Qalqiliya and Jenin to rise to 70 percent. There is no security logic here.
Etzion
By Toine van Teeffelen, Electronic Intifada 8/18/2003
14 August 2003 -- "Don't remind me," says Mary. "I'll go if I have the courage." I asked her about visiting Etzion, the office near the Gush Etzion settlement between Bethlehem and Hebron where the Israeli 'Civil Administration' is located and where Bethlehemites have to ask for their tasreeyeh ("permit"). We are preparing ourselves for a holiday to Cyprus together with the kids and Imm Hannah and Janet, Mary's mother and sister. Jara and Tamer have Dutch passports, Mary and her family however not and they therefore need a permit to enter Tel Aviv airport. The stories of people trying to get a tasreeyeh are numerous and bitter. A supermarket owner was called twice by Etzion to be told that his tasreeyeh was ready but the first time he went there it was not yet issued, and the second time he got a refusal. The aging and sick mother of a colleague of Mary at Bethlehem University was refused a tasreeyeh on "security grounds." A man who submitted the application papers for a tasreeyeh at window 5 of Etzion was told to go to the (police) window 1, where to his own surprise he was taken into custody and released only days later. Most people try to get a tasreeyeh by showing medical documents but it is not clear exactly what documents you have to hand over. After somebody brought a medical statement of the illness of her sister abroad whom she wanted to visit, she was told to bring a medical statement about her own health problems if she wanted to be able to travel.
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