Terror in Nablus
By Kate Gillam, Electronic Intifada 8/26/2003
I just had the hardest day of my life. Let me start off by telling you that yesterday i had to get into Nablus while it was under curfew. I was with three Palestinians. I had a hard time getting here and, once in Nablus, I had to walk up to a tank and another armored vehicle and negotiate with them to let us through and they didn't let the one male go past so he walked around. We eventually got around.
Last night they invaded a hospital and shot it up, injuring two and killing one. Today, I went to the UPMRC a medical agency that has ambulences to help. Internationals and local UPMRC workers split into groups. I was in one with three Palestinians and one other international. We were delivering food to the Old City because we are the only ones who can get to the people. We walked by many tanks and jeeps and various armed vehicles.
We almost got to where we were going when a jeep stopped us and took into custody myself and the other international. We were arrested. Then we were forced to sit with them at their makeshift base in the Old City with their two tanks (there are tons more spread throughout the city) and many jeeps and armed vehicles.
I cannot describe the horror. The soldiers were all around me and then there were clashes, rocks and glass were being thrown, sound bombs, tear gas, tank firing, machine guns, automatic weapons -- the whole nine yards were being shot and the soldiers were all next to me. They were shooting at the Palestinians. They shot someone in the head. Every time a child would look at the window they would point their guns and scream at them and cock their triggers.
Dialysis, Checkpoints and a Palestinian Madonna
By Juliana Fredman, CounterPunch 8/26/2003
Collective Punishment on the West Bank -- Although it is cliché to say so, her beauty and serenity evoke an aging Virgin Mary, especially in this setting. She sits on her donkey expression unchanged as she bounces along among the olive trees through the rocky valley pass eyes glancing outward, watchful and placid.
Her donkey has an open sore on its behind and she has a grotesquely bulbous and purple arm irritated to elephantine proportions by the holes made to clean her blood three times a week.
It is this arm that she offers to the soldier as proof of her right to pass. The man she travels with, also a dialysis patient, on a healthier donkey with less corroded looking track marks, speaks English,"Please", he says looking up at the two boys lounging on the hill, guns cocked, "Dialysis, we are dialysis."
Nidal has no common language with these people. She offers the arm and a slight faraway smile.
The soldiers let them pass with very little trouble. Around the corner, invisible from the informal checkpoint, sat the 25 people who had already been detained by 5:30 this morning, quietly beneath the olive trees not lucky enough to have a life threatening illness and luck with the soldiers. Their huweas (identification cards) have been taken tying them invisibly to this spot.
Jewish terror and its sources
Editorial, Ha'aretz 8/26/2003
Nine young Jewish men were arrested recently on suspicion of planning and carrying out attacks against Palestinians. At least one of them is suspected of attempted murder, weapons violations, and planning a crime involving dangerous materials. All of the suspects are rooted deep in Yesha (the Hebrew acronym for the West Bank and Gaza) and its culture. All grew up on settlements and all are faithful sons - to the point of hallucinatory extremism - of the national religious Zionism of the post-Six Day War period. Some reside on outposts; some are the sons of well-known rabbis and others are the younger brothers of local leaders.
It is difficult to track and collect evidence among the groups of Jewish terrorists, and sometimes it is nearly impossible. The resources and legal measures the Shin Bet and police use against Israeli citizens living in the territories are significantly weaker than those used by the Shin Bet and army against Palestinians.
The Shi'ite-Sunni divide
By Sultan Shahin, Asia Times 8/27/2003
Part 2: Slowly building bridges -- NEW DELHI - Many Muslims throughout the world, both Sunni and Shi'ite, are working towards dialogue and reconciliation between the two sects. They argue that it is just not possible to fully comprehend and much less to judge the historical figures of Islam and their motivations today, 13 or 14 centuries after the event, that led to the schism in Islam. Indeed, it is not possible to judge people even when events take place now in full view of the world media.
If one cannot say for sure, for instance, whether Saddam Hussein did indeed pose an imminent threat to the Western (civilized?) world, how can one judge whether Hazrat Ali was at all involved in the murder of Hazrat Usman in 656, even though he continued to shield the killers throughout his caliphate? And do we even need to judge them today?, many ask.
The ideological differences between the two sects that arose from these distant events have continued to bedevil relations, yet they are hardly of any vital significance to the practice of the religion of Islam. In fact, these are no more significant than the differences in the four recognized schools of thought among Sunnis themselves. Yet, many Sunnis complain that Shi'ites seem to take the fundamentals of Islam very much for granted, mainly focusing on glorification of Ali and martyrdom of Hussein and his family members.
No, it's not anti-semitic
By Judith Butler, London Review of Books 8/21/2003
When the president of Harvard University declared that to criticise Israel at this time and to call on universities to divest from Israel are 'actions that are anti-semitic in their effect, if not their intent', he introduced a distinction between effective and intentional anti-semitism that is controversial at best. The counter-charge has been that in making his statement, Summers has struck a blow against academic freedom, in effect, if not in intent. Although he insisted that he meant nothing censorious by his remarks, and that he is in favour of Israeli policy being 'debated freely and civilly', his words have had a chilling effect on political discourse. Among those actions which he called 'effectively anti-semitic' were European boycotts of Israel, anti-globalisation rallies at which criticisms of Israel were voiced, and fund-raising efforts for organisations of 'questionable political provenance'. Of local concern to him, however, was a divestment petition drafted by MIT and Harvard faculty members who oppose Israel's current occupation and its treatment of Palestinians. Summers asked why Israel was being 'singled out . . . among all nations' for a divestment campaign, suggesting that the singling out was evidence of anti-semitic intentions. And though he claimed that aspects of Israel's 'foreign and defence' policy 'can be and should be vigorously challenged', it was unclear how such challenges could or would take place without being construed as anti-Israel, and why these policy issues, which include occupation, ought not to be vigorously challenged through a divestment campaign. It would seem that calling for divestment is something other than a legitimately 'vigorous challenge', but we are not given any criteria by which to adjudicate between vigorous challenges that should be articulated, and those which carry the 'effective' force of anti-semitism.
Iraq Could Become U.S.'s West Bank and Gaza
By James Pinkerton, Newsday 8/26/2003
George W. Bush is on to something when he argues that the United States and Israel face a common enemy in the Middle East. However, insight is not the same as good news; if Bush is correct, then the United States can look ahead to years, if not decades, of conflict in the area.
In his Saturday radio address, the president linked the two suicide bombings, in Baghdad and Jerusalem, taking scores of lives on Aug. 19.
Both acts were committed, he said, by terrorists animated by a "malicious view of the world."
Bush's words are hard to argue with, but it's also clear that the bombers see the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel as their chief enemy; those are, after all, the three nations that are occupying territory they inhabit. But wait a second, one might say, the terrorists blew up the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. Yes, but that's the brutal logic of insurgency: Insurgents aim to make occupation impossible, by any means necessary. And so humanitarian workers are often "collateral damage."
That was also the case on Sept. 17, 1948, when a Swedish diplomat, Count Folke Bernadotte, on assignment from the UN as a Middle East mediator, was murdered in Jerusalem by Israeli militants. Back then, the British were the colonizing power; independence-minded Jews viewed the British and other foreigners as enemies to be expelled. Their strategy worked.
Today, Anglo-Americans find themselves similarly targeted in Iraq. The coalition once blamed the Iraqi resistance on "Saddam loyalists." But the problem with that argument was that Saddam Hussein never commanded much loyalty. Iraqi army units mostly broke and ran in the 1991 war; they melted away again in 2003. By contrast, the resistance English speakers are facing today in Iraq is oftentimes suicidally brazen.
Arab reform minus the US sledgehammer
By Ali Abunimah, Daily Star 8/27/2003
The Arab states are in desperate need of reform. Their hundreds of millions of people ? the vast majority of them under age 30 ? lack the basic freedoms and opportunities that they crave. In no Arab country are the people free to change their government by peaceful means. No Arab country observes the rule of law, and each society is riven by fundamental inequalities that seem only to be growing. Education and scientific and social research lag, and many of the best and brightest emigrate at the earliest opportunity.
More vexing is trying to identify what can be the agent for change. Can reform come from within? Saudi Arabia, suffering a deep crisis at home and under severe pressure in the US, where many believe, without basis, that the Saudi government was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, has shown little capability to respond pro-actively to the multiple challenges of reform. In Morocco, there was much hope following the death of King Hassan II in 1999 that his son and successor, Mohammed VI, would bring about rapid democratization and economic reform. The Moroccan press is considerably freer, and open, party-based parliamentary elections were held, but power is still centralized in the hands of the king and his advisors. Despite the successes, reality has fallen well short of expectations.
They must come to me
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz 8/27/2003
What kind of power struggle is under way in the Palestinian Authority? Is it a struggle between two camps and two people - Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas? Or is it a struggle over who will follow the aging chairman? Those elements are certainly part of it, but the main element is Arafat's own struggle to survive. Visitors who met with him this week said that he told them, "I am the most veteran leader in the Arab world, followed only by [Libyan ruler Moammar] Ghaddafi. Israel and the U.S. have to learn that if they want to achieve something, they must come to me. Otherwise nothing will happen."
The struggle is now focused on who will be in charge of the Palestinian security establishment. After Oslo in 1993, Arafat made sure to hold onto the Interior Ministry portfolio, which meant ministerial responsibility at the cabinet level for the security apparatus. About a year-and-a-half ago, when he was pressed to institute security reforms, Arafat gave in and appointed Gen. Abdul Razak Yahya as interior minister. After a few months, he replaced Yahya with his own confidante, Hanni el Hassan.
While forming his new government, Abbas wanted to appoint Mohammed Dahlan as interior minister. Arafat didn't want him, and passed a resolution through the all-important Fatah Central Council - a kind of politburo for the ruling party - saying that Abbas, a member of the council, would hold the Interior Ministry portfolio, while Dahlan would be a minister without portfolio in the ministry in charge of domestic security.
They're not afraid of the IDF in Nablus
By Amira Hass, Ha'aretz 8/27/2003
Speaking off the record, residents in Nablus admit that they welcomed the curfew that Israel Defense Forces troops enforced in their city on Thursday. The curfew prevented, or at least delayed, a collapse of internal order and security in the large West Bank city, a locale which in recent months has been convulsed by a series of killings and reprisal murders and by shooting sprees on the street perpetrated by gunmen whose aim is to intimidate the locals or to carve out turf for themselves. In Nablus, residents in recent days had little patience for reports of the musical chairs game being played in the Palestinian Authority compound in Ramallah. Jibril Rajoub or Mohammed Dahlan, Nasser Yussef or Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) - anyone can grab the reins of power, people say in Nablus, just as long as he does something about the state of siege and terror that grips the city.
And this reign of terror, local residents emphasize, has not been caused by Israel's army: the problem is roaming, armed Palestinians who claim they belong to the Fatah movement. Just let some Palestinian leader do something about these gunmen, the locals say.
It's not easy for residents to admit that they were happy about the curfew. At the end of the day, the policy has been enforced by the same Israeli army which has (in past days) damaged seven of 14 health clinics in a compound operated by the non-government Work Committees Union of Health. These facilities provide free health care to the city's residents.
The Courage it Takes..
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 8/26/2003
People often refer to the Arab-Israeli conflict as the “Arab-Jewish conflict”. The basis for such an assumption is simple: Israel is a “Jewish-state”, and most of world Jewry backs Israel. As a result, stretching the boundaries of the conflict may not seem to be geopolitical exaggeration.
Despite the secular background of Israel’s founders, the conflict was purposely tainted with a religious face to dilute the actual political discourse upon which history was meant to be written.
Understanding the lingering Middle East conflict as one fueled by an imperialistic conquest (which, in spite of its uniqueness, modeled after a racist western imperialistic hegemony displayed so vividly in the 19th and early 20th centuries), is likely to evoke harsh judgment by misled world communities, and dare I say, many within world Jewry itself.
There is nothing holy about Israel, in the practical sense, unless one argues that God is chauvinistic, unmerciful and dissolute. However, the association between Israel and holiness only stems from one factor to which Israel and its supporters hold dearly: the real estate aspect.
Millions of Americans, and of course Israelis, are continuously reminded that Israel belongs to the Jewish people, because God promised the land to them in the Old Testament. No other argument is more effective in silencing dissident voices, or guaranteeing the support of religious zealots among misled Christians and Jews around the world.
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