Before we blame the Palestinians
By Hillel Schocken, Ha'aretz 8/20/2003
In "All talk and no dialogue" (Haaretz, August 15), Ze'ev Schiff states that it's "clear that the truce does not in fact exist," and explains that the Palestinian government "is incapable of implementing the hudna," that Abu Mazen cannot "enforce" the agreement among the various Palestinian organizations, and that "the leading trio - Abu Mazen, Minister of State for Security Affairs Mohammed Dahlan, and Finance Minister Salam Fayyad - is incapable of enforcing the hudna even on the armed groups within its own movement, the Fatah." The cease-fire agreement that is of interest to Israel has three partners - Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the United States - as part of the road map. Has Israel met the conditions of the agreement? Is Sharon able to (or, really, does he want to) enforce the cease-fire on his army? The continuation of the Israeli policy of targeted assassinations - isn't that "fire"? The duo in charge, Sharon and Mofaz - are they able to enforce the moratorium on construction in the settlements, as the road map requires? Do they even want to? And what about the "illegal outposts," a few of which were dismantled under the "revolving door" system so they could pop up again on some nearby hill? Schiff gives good marks to the Palestinian Authority for managing to seize hold of $3 million sent from Iran to Islamic Jihad and for reducing incitement. What good marks can be given to Israel? Has Israel met its obligations with its stingy release of prisoners, which wasn't even part of the cease-fire agreement and was intended, so Israeli leadership claims, to build trust between the sides and to strengthen Abu Mazen?
Is talking to Israelis a betrayal?
By Jamal A. Khashoggi , Daily Star 8/20/2003
A few months ago, I was invited to a conference in Cyprus to discuss Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah’s Arab Peace Initiative, floated at the 2002 Arab League summit in Beirut. It has become an Arab initiative and the bottom line for peace in the region. What encouraged me to accept was the fact that also attending were Israeli intellectuals and journalists, alongside Egyptians, Jordanians and participants from the Gulf and Iran. Since the initiative had seen the light in my country, I felt it necessary to acquaint myself with the views of Israelis on a proposal that concerns them as much as it does Arabs. It is no secret that the Saudi initiative was not directed at the current Israeli government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which evidently cannot deliver peace. Rather, the target was the Israeli people, who enjoy real democracy (at least members of the Jewish population), with the hope that they could redirect their government’s policies or bring in a new leadership that would make peace. Because of the upheaval that accompanied my departure from the Al-Watan newspaper, however, I apologized to the organizers for not being able to attend the Cyprus gathering, since I did not want to further complicate my situation. But two questions kept dogging me: Is talking to Israelis a betrayal? Is there any benefit in doing so? These questions came to mind again recently while I was attending a meeting in London that included Arab and British politicians and researchers interested in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Attendees were divided between pessimists who had given up on the possibility of reaching a solution that would satisfy both parties, and optimistic pessimists who believed that the best that could be achieved today was a solution imposed by the US that would essentially please no one, especially the Arabs.
Road Map obscured by blood
By Michael Shaik, Electronic Intifada 8/20/2003
Last Tuesday, two Palestinian suicide bombers attacked targets in Rosh Ha'ayin in northern Israel and the Jewish settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. Two Israelis were killed and thirteen wounded in the attacks. The Hamas organisation and Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, to which the bombers belonged, claimed that the attacks were in retaliation for an Israeli attack on the Askar refugee camp, in which two Palestinians were killed.Israel's immediate response has been to cancel any further releases of Palestinian prisoners and to demolish the family home of one of the bombers, as well as the homes of those families who had the misfortune of living in the same building. In the longer term, if previous practice is anything to go by, the family home of the other bomber will be demolished and Israel will insist that it can make no further concessions until the Palestinian Authority eliminates all forms of militant resistance to the Occupation.In this they can be confident of the support of the US government, which sees the Road Map to Peace in essentially the same terms as the Clinton administration saw the Oslo Peace Process: a process whereby the Palestinian Authority cooperates with Israel in disarming Palestinian militants, while the issue of Israel's withdrawal from the Occupied Territories is left for future negotiations.
A surprising decision on natural gas
Editorial, Ha'aretz
After repeated delays, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has finally made a decision regarding a second supplier for natural gas, which will be used by the Israel Electric Corporation's power plants and other bodies. Unfortunately, however, the decision was eyebrow-raising, incomprehensible and a priori mistaken. The government had decided that natural gas would be purchased from two of the three realistic possible suppliers: Yam Thetis, an Israeli-American venture controlled by the Delek group that is producing Israeli gas from a well off the coast of Ashkelon; EMG, an Israeli-Egyptian pipeline company set up to transport gas from Egypt, in which Yosef Maiman's Merhav company is a partner; and British Gas, which is producing Palestinian gas from a well off the coast of Gaza. Yam Thetis and EMG initially won he tender, as they submitted the lowest bids; but later, British Gas reduced its bid to the level of the two winners.Though the deal with Yam Thetis was closed, the issue of the second supplier remained open. As time passed, it became clear that EMG was hesitant to open serious negotiations on signing a contract to sell gas to Israel. Rumors abounded that the Egyptian company was not really interested in supplying gas to Israel, or at least not until it agreed to purchase Palestinian gas, and that it would have been pleased if its Israeli partner, Merhav, had linked up with British Gas in order to promote the sale of Palestinian gas to Israel.
On the corner of Acre and Safed streets
By Amira Hass, Ha'aretz 8/20/2003
Will the Israeli peace camp, after it succeeds in persuading the Palestinians to be realistic, continue to turn its back on basic democratic values in their own sovereign state, just to make sure it preserves its Judaism? -- Aka Street (as in Acre) in El Bireh was recently upgraded like all the other streets in the northeast neighborhood of the town, and connected to the sewage grid. At the intersection with Safed Street, a traffic circle was installed. Right next to it a traffic island was built, full of colorful flowers, and in the center a bronze statue of a tall peasant holding a giant key that stands beside him like a spouse. The keffiyeh on his head is shaped like a map of the greater land of Palestine. The upgrading project was paid for by the German government and the United Nations Development Project. Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, born in Safed, lives on Acre Street, five houses away from the statue. Add the statue and the street names to the lengthening list of proof of the Palestinians' hidden (seemingly or not) intentions to take over the state of Israel after "they get" a state of their own. Regard them as more proof of how the Palestinian authorities encourage the people to stick to their demand for return and thus foil any attempt at putting an end to the conflict. Like the statements of their foreign minister, Nabil Sha'ath. But when a veteran Fatah activist, a refugee himself, is asked what he thinks about Sha'ath's statements about fulfilling the right of return inside Israel as part of a peace agreement, he answers without hesitation, "he's a liar." In other words, according to that Fatah activist, Sha'ath knows full well there's no chance for Israeli recognition of the right of return of the Palestinians, let alone fulfillment of that right, as part of any sort of peace deal that the current Palestinian leadership could sign in the foreseeable future. Sha'ath cannot give his voters the right to leave their city to enable them to go to the doctor or pray at Al Aqsa. Like the entire Palestinian cabinet, there's nothing he can do to prevent the expansion of the Israeli settlements in Gush Katif spreading westward from Khan Yunis. So how can he promise them the right of return?
The spectre of Operation Ajax
By Dan De Luce, The Guardian 8/20/2003
Britain and the US crushed Iran's first democratic government. They didn't learn from that mistake -- Ignoring international law, Britain and the US opted for the high-risk strategy of regime change in order to pre-empt a volatile enemy in the Middle East. It was not Iraq, however, that was in the firing line but Iran, and the aftershocks are still being felt. Fifty years ago this week, the CIA and the British SIS orchestrated a coup d'etat that toppled the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The prime minister and his nationalist supporters in parliament roused Britain's ire when they nationalised the oil industry in 1951, which had previously been exclusively controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Mossadegh argued that Iran should begin profiting from its vast oil reserves. Britain accused him of violating the company's legal rights and orchestrated a worldwide boycott of Iran's oil that plunged the country into financial crisis. The British government tried to enlist the Americans in planning a coup, an idea originally rebuffed by President Truman. But when Dwight Eisenhower took over the White House, cold war ideologues - determined to prevent the possibility of a Soviet takeover - ordered the CIA to embark on its first covert operation against a foreign government. A new book about the coup, All the Shah's Men, which is based on recently released CIA documents, describes how the CIA - with British assistance - undermined Mossadegh's government by bribing influential figures, planting false reports in newspapers and provoking street violence. Led by an agent named Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, the CIA leaned on a young, insecure Shah to issue a decree dismissing Mossadegh as prime minister. By the end of Operation Ajax, some 300 people had died in firefights in the streets of Tehran.
Not at that price
By Yossi Beilin, Ha'aretz 8/20/2003
In his article "The future foils Sharon" (Haaretz, August 17), Amir Oren argues that not adding Ariel Sharon to the Barak government in 2000 helped Sharon win the election of 2001 and that if Labor had remained in the Sharon government in 2002, it would have received the credit for the hudna. Maybe Oren is right. But that depends on those in government being there to stay or to get "credit." If being in government is meant to serve a certain policy, then Oren is terribly mistaken. Ariel Sharon is a serial initiator of Likud national unity governments. In 1984, he was the key person behind the establishment of the rotation government, which lasted until 1990. In 1996, he proposed to Shimon Peres that he join the government and postpone the elections. And in 2000 he offered Barak the Finance Ministry. All those various versions of unity had one common thread: preventing or freezing an Israeli-Palestinian political process. I remember a meeting after the wave of terror attacks in the winter of 1996, in then foreign minister Barak's office and attended by interior minister Haim Ramon. Prime minister Peres asked us to recommend to the Labor ministers that the Likud join the government and the three of us said that if it means freezing the political process, there was no point to such a government.The temptation was greater in 2000. The government had three more years to serve, the coalition had collapsed and the political price Sharon was asking for was very low. But the diplomatic price was three years of no negotiations with the Palestinians.
Up against the Apartheid Wall
By Daniel Jacob Quinn, Electronic Intifada 8/19/2003
Life here on the ground in occupied Palestine is rarely reported in the United States. The brutal impact of Israel's military occupation is hidden behind the rhetoric of pundits and politicians, many of whom have never met a Palestinian. They have never, as I have, held a sick Palestinian child in their arms as her parents beg soldiers to let them pass a checkpoint. They have never babysat Palestinian children while their mother goes out to find out what happened to her husband during an armed invasion of their refugee camp. Talk of a "roadmap" is cold comfort to a Palestinian doctor who is not allowed to travel the road from his home to the hospital or to a Palestinian farmer whose lands have been made inaccessible to him due to the construction of a separation wall that is anything but a "security fence." Since my arrival in Palestine on July 1, 2003, I have seen things that most Americans, which sadly includes American journalists, will never see thanks to the blackout in the American media when it comes to factual descriptions of daily life in Palestine.On Tuesday, August 12, I joined over 60 international peace workers and over 200 residents of the West Bank town of Qalqilia to protest Israel's construction of a 25 foot high concrete apartheid wall. In Qalqilia, the wall circles for 7 miles, completely sealing off the town. During the march from the civic center to the wall, children flew kites with ribbons the color of the Palestinian flag. Women's groups carried signs demanding the release of their husbands and sons being held as political prisoners. Young men carried signs with messages such as: "Learn from history: Welcome to the Qalqilia Concentration Camp."
Jewish émigrés seek compensation from Iraq
By Linda S. Heard, Palestine Chronicle 8/19/2003
The Palestinian Information Centre suggests that the Israeli government is set to request Iraqi Jews to file details of property and money they left behind with a view to demanding compensation from the new Iraqi authorities. The Centre alleges that talks between Washington and Tel Aviv are underway to resolve the issue, with $10 billion at stake, including, perhaps, $3 billion of Iraqi funds currently frozen in the U.S., although these have been earmarked for Iraq's reconstruction. In yet another example of Israeli double standards, we learned last week that the Israeli authorities have expressed a firm negative to any right of return for Palestinians forced out of their homes. This verbal roadblock to peace was made in response to a statement by the Palestinian National Authority's External Affairs Minister Nabil Shaath who declared: "We do not see a solution for our brothers (refugees) in Lebanon except their return to their homeland," adding, this is a right "anchored in UN resolutions on refugees and in the Arab (peace) initiative". Indeed, former Israeli governments were reluctant to bring up the issue of compensation for Arab Jews in case a precedent was set and the door opened for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Palestinians to do likewise. Whereas Palestinians, many of whom still carry rusting keys to homes built by their grandfathers now situated in Israel proper, can prove both their title to their land and the fact that their ancestors were ousted, most Jews left Iraq of their own accord, lured by Zionist portrayals of "a promised land".
Human Rights vs. Security: The B’Tselem Challenge
By Chris Sands, Palestine Chronicle 8/19/2003
B’Tselem’s Fight for Human Rights Where Only ‘Security’ Matters -- JERUSALEM, (PC) - Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is built upon the premise that Palestinians have almost no human rights. Under the guise of security, people are regularly killed, injured, tortured, imprisoned and told they cannot move from one area to another. This means B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, plays an essential role in highlighting the plight of Palestinians. Noam Hoffstater, a spokesperson for the organisation, said: “We are public servants in that sense because the public has a right to know what is happening and it has a duty to know.” B’Tselem was established in 1989 by a group of attorneys, journalists, academics and Knesset members. The organisation’s main role is to document the human rights abuses that occur regularly inside Gaza and the West Bank. This work is becoming more important with each passing day as, according to Mr Hoffstater, Palestinians are now suffering in ways they never have before. He said: “Let’s take investigations into shootings, for example. In the first Intifada any incident in which a Palestinian was killed immediately led to an investigation. “Now the army stance says that this Intifada is defined differently legally by the Israeli state so they do not have to open an investigation every time someone is killed.”
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