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Israel’s breeding ground for Jewish terrorism
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada 9/30/2008
     The words "Jewish" and "terrorist" are not easily uttered together by Israelis. But just occasionally, such as last week when one of the country’s leading intellectuals was injured by a pipe bomb placed at the front door of his home, they find themselves with little choice.
     The target of the attack was 73-year-old Zeev Sternhell, a politics professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem specializing in European fascism and a prominent supporter of the left-wing group Peace Now.
     Shortly after the explosion, police found pamphlets nearby offering 1.1 million shekels ($300,000) to anyone assassinating a Peace Now leader. The movement’s most visible activity has been tracking and criticizing the growth of the settlements in the West Bank.
     Sternhell, whose leg was injured in the blast, warned that this attack might mark the "collapse of democracy" in Israel. He has earned the enmity of the religious far-right by justifying the targeting of settlers by Palestinians in their resistance to occupation. more.. e-mail

Forgotten at the Gaza-Egypt Border
Eva Bartlett, Palestine Chronicle 9/30/2008
     "His father died this morning," a hotel guest explained, gesturing to Raed, slumped and silent in his chair, face long.
     It was Wednesday, August 20 in Sinai’s al-Arish, a town about 50 kilometers west of the Gaza-Egypt border. Two days earlier, the approximately 450 Palestinians who had been waiting to enter Gaza were finally supposed to be permitted entry. Days before, the announcement had been made that the Rafah Crossing between Egypt and Gaza would open to allow passage into and out of Gaza. Many of the Palestinians at al-Arish had been waiting since the beginning of June for the border to open. Others had been exiled for over a year, outside of Gaza when Egypt sealed the border shut following Hamas’ taking control of Gaza in June 2007.
     Silenced and out of the international spotlight, the Palestinians waiting in al-Arish said that their plight at the closed crossing is either ignored or politicized. Many were running out of money, while others had completely run out, having waited for the opening of Rafah for weeks without earning an income. Approximately 200 of the Palestinians who waited to re-enter Gaza were in dire financial circumstances, many borrowing money, others begging, some sleeping in the streets. more.. e-mail

Despair, trauma, discontent among Nahr al-Bared’s impoverished Palestinians
Report, Electronic Lebanon, Electronic Intifada 9/30/2008
     NAHR AL-BARED (IRIN) - They look like cargo crates: long lines of prefabricated steel units, stacked two high, set on the edge of the ruined Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.
     Inside each airless 18 square meter unit there is a toilet, gas burner and tatty mattresses on the bare wooden floor. This is the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen for Palestinian families like Hayat Jundi’s, whose home in Nahr al-Bared was destroyed in last summer’s battle between the army and Islamist militants.
     "All I do all day is fight with the neighbors above about the water that spills down into our room," said Jundi, 55, as some of her four young children bustle around. "I’m irritable because I have backache from sleeping on the floor."
     Jundi’s husband, a bin man for the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, has two other wives with children, so is only able to give her around $150 a month, she said. Food comes from UNRWA handouts and donations from the Lebanese Future Movement of parliamentary leader Saad Hariri. more.. e-mail

Canadian media attempt to silence on Israel
Robert Jensen, Electronic Intifada 9/30/2008
     When the bottom line is threatened, corporations typically show little concern for holding the line on political principles such as freedom of expression. In capitalism, freedom is too often just another word for maximizing profits.
     But even when we have no illusions about the predatory nature of modern corporate capitalism, there’s something particularly disheartening when a media corporation abandons free-speech principles. Journalists are supposed to be the good guys on freedom of expression, right? If for no other reason than self-interest, shouldn’t media managers support these principles?
     Yes, but apparently not when ideology gets in the way, as seems to be the case at Canada’s largest media corporation.
     CanWest -- owner of newspaper, television, and online properties, including one of the country’s national dailies and a TV network -- is trying to use trade-mark law to punish political activists’ free speech in a classic SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation). more.. e-mail

Hamas and Israel: a hostile but symbiotic relationship
Ali Jarbawi, Daily Star 9/30/2008
     It is difficult to conceive of two more natural enemies than Hamas and the Zionist movement dominating Israeli politics. In different ways, each is rhetorically committed to the destruction of the other. However, their relationship is much more complex and symbiotic than a casual observer might expect.
     Israel initially turned a blind eye to the activities and expanding influence of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood and the Mujamma (the "Islamic Center" and institutional home of the Brotherhood in Gaza). Israel believed the traditionalist, non-violent ideology of the Brotherhood would be a counterweight to the secular, nationalist Palestinian political factions. However, with the outbreak of the first intifada, younger leaders within the Mujamma successfully forced the organization to adopt a "jihad now" policy that led to the founding of Hamas. This marked a stark ideological transition from a movement that sought Islamization through communal and educational reform into one that turned to armed resistance and nationalism to achieve its vision of an Islamic society.
     The further transformation of Hamas over a period of two decades into a political movement in government would surely have surprised its founders. Its willingness, along with Fatah, to compromise basic health and education services and to engage in technical-legal sophistry in pursuit of hegemony over Palestinian secular government institutions would have unsettled them. more.. e-mail

Identifying Palestinian options
Ida Audeh, Electronic Intifada 9/29/2008
     What do you want?
     As you march from a legend to a legend.
     A flag?
     What good have flags ever done?
     Have they ever protected a city from the shrapnel of a bomb?
     How large the revolution,
     How narrow the journey,
     How grand the idea,
     How small the state!
     -- Excerpts from Mahmoud Darwish, "In Praise of the High Shadow" [1]
     Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote "In Praise of the High Shadow" in the wake of Israel’s 1982 invasion and devastation of Lebanon, the negotiated exile of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from the country and the subsequent massacre of 1,500-2,000 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. At the time, it was hard to imagine how Palestinians could ever recover from the loss of Lebanon, and no one, not even Darwish (whom Palestinians buried in August), could have foreseen when he wrote that poem that our fortunes could sink even lower. But sink they did, and a good chunk of the responsibility for that can be given to Palestinians who have gamely assumed the roles that Israel and the United States have assigned to them. more.. e-mail

No Eid with the siege
Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 9/29/2008
     Ramadan al-Hour’s four children have not seen their father for the past year.Ranging in age from five years to four months old, Amal, Aya, Sulaf and Walid live with their mother in the town of Kufr Qassem inside Israel. Israeli authorities have prevented al-Hour’s wife and children from entering Gaza. Ramadan, 35 years old, is from the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip and used to work in Israel.A year ago he was arrested by Israeli security forces from his home in Kufr Qassem.Since then, he has been prevented access into Israel.
     "What I can say, I am increasingly feeling depressed because I am unable to see them, to embrace my children or to pamper my four-month-old baby. My life has become miserable under this siege," al-Hour said.
     "Every time I speak to my daughter Amal over phone, she asks me the same questions: when does your work finish, dad? We want to see you badly. The work never finishes, she wonders every time. For how long I can lie to them that I am busy working?" more.. e-mail

The Red and White Bird in Gaza
Mats Svensson, MIFTAH 9/29/2008
     The young girl from Gaza tells me how she yearns for the red and white bird. It used to come every morning to the little veranda where her mother served a breakfast of bread, tea, water and fruit when the weather was good. Each morning her father left to look for work in Gaza City, and sometimes he was successful. Most of the time he came home late at night. She used to throw out a few seeds or breadcrumbs to the red and white bird. It came every morning at the same time, as if it had its own clock. They used to have breakfast together.
     The girl talks about the time before that day in 2004, when everything disappeared.
     That was the day when one of the many wars ended. Before then, Israeli soldiers had passed by every day in their big metal boxes. She could see them clattering by when she drank her morning tea. Behind the thick grey steel sat the young soldiers. On these days, she would remain at home rather than going to school.
     They were all scared of the uncertainty and of the unknown. They often heard them in the distance, the sound of big machines with their heavy engines, the roar of rockets, the rattling of machine guns. They were afraid that the machines would come too close, that the sounds would come up to them and stop, and that the machines would turn their jaws directly at them. It was on these days that the red and white bird would not appear. more.. e-mail

Gaza’s Only Growth Industry
Nadia W. Awad, MIFTAH 9/29/2008
     After Hamas defeated Fatah in the ’Battle for Gaza’ in June 2007, the Hamas-led government became solely responsible for the Gaza Strip. Israel, the US and the rest of the international community refused to deal with them and embarked on a form of collective punishment, imposing an economic and political blockade on the Strip. These blockades have plummeted the people of Gaza into a humanitarian disaster of gigantic proportions. When people such as Lauren Booth (sister-in-law of former British PM Tony Blair) call Gaza the world’s largest concentration camp, or the world’s largest open-air prison, they are not exaggerating. More than 1.4 million Palestinians are surrounded by Israeli soldiers on one side, Egyptian soldiers on another, with the sea visibly taunting them with its apparent openness. Of course, it is not open. Israel’s navy blockades Gaza from that side as well. Goods are not allowed across Gaza’s borders in either direction. Even essential items such as medical equipment are prohibited, while only some humanitarian assistance is allowed in. Israel tends to summarily switch off water and power to thousands, as well as prevent fuel deliveries from entering Gaza. Hence, Gazans truly live at the mercy of Israel. Yet despite these tribulations which would normally destroy one’s will to live, Gazans have found a way of venting the economic blockade imposed on them. Allow me to introduce you to Gaza’s only growth industry: the tunnel trade. more.. e-mail

Double Talk: No To Settlements, Yes to Leviev?
Stuart Littlewood – London, Palestine Chronicle 9/29/2008
     Protesting Leviev’s practices in Palestine and around the world. (Photo: Adalah-NY) The pantomime season will soon be upon us and the British government can always be relied on for amusement. This year a Foolish Fairy in the Foreign Office plans to move the British embassy in Tel Aviv from a decent spot on the seafront to a brooding tower block owned by Africa-Israel Investments and occupied mostly by Israeli government departments.
     The British Foreign Office is evidently so in love with the Israeli regime that it wants to ’shack up’, and never mind the gossip. Here in London the same Fairy is making the Foreign Office’s magnificent Locarno Suite available to the Zionist Federation for "a Champagne Reception and Commemorative Lecture at the Foreign Office in honour of the 91st anniversary of the Balfour Declaration of 1917".
     What sane person would dream of commemorating an individual who wrote, in all seriousness, "In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. The four powers are committed to Zionism and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now occupy that land"? more.. e-mail

Rights org: Eight years of intifada, international failure
Press release, Al Mezan, Electronic Intifada 9/29/2008
     On Sunday, 28 September 2008, the second intifada (uprising) entered its ninth year in the midst of the Israeli Occupation Forces’ (IOF) gross violations of international humanitarian law and the international community’s failure to intervene.
     Monitoring and documenting work of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) shows that the IOF continue to kill civilians and demolish civilian property especially homes. This is in addition to arbitrary arrests and degrading treatment of civilians that IOF carry out during military incursions and at checkpoints.
     Tight siege and blockade were the most remarkable practices over the last year of the intifada. The IOF tightened their siege on the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the intifada in September 2000. They deprived the Strip’s population from freedom of movement and travel. They imposed a trade blockade on the Strip by severely reducing, and sometimes banning, imports and exports. The IOF continued to close the Rafah Terminal, the Strip’s sole outlet to the outside world. Exceptional openings of this terminal did not help change the closure’s negative impacts on a large number of human rights, including the right to education, health, work and family life. more.. e-mail

South Lebanon’s Witches Brew
Rannie Amiri, Palestine Chronicle 9/29/2008
     Have we already started to see al-Qaeda’s influence in South Lebanon?
     "I hope there won’t be a confrontation with Hezbollah, but I do see one coming." - Sheikh Bilal Baroudi, Salafi leader and imam of As-Salam mosque in Tripoli, Lebanon.
     While much of Lebanon’s recent attention was focused on fighting in the north between Tripoli’s Sunni Muslims backing Rafiq Hariri’s Future Movement and Alawites allied with Hezbollah, a potentially larger conflict looms in the south.
     Ain al-Hilwah, located on the eastern outskirts of the southern port city of Sidon, is home to anywhere between 45,000-70,000 Palestinian refugees. The uncertainty in population is reflective of it being the largest and most autonomous of all the 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Ain al-Hilwa is also completely off-limits to the country’s armed forces. Security is therefore solely the responsibility of the factions located within it. As one might expect, the political schisms found in the Palestinian territories are likewise mirrored in the camp. more.. e-mail

Fascism in Israel: It Can Happen Here
Uri Avnery, Palestine Chronicle 9/29/2008
     ’The Settlers’ pogroms are violent by nature, both in thought and deed.’
     The German name Sternhell means bright as the stars. The name fits: the positions of Professor Ze’ev Sternhell indeed stand out sharply against the darkness of the sky. He warns against Israeli fascism. This week, Israeli fascists laid a pipe-bomb at the entrance of his apartment and he was lightly injured.
     The choice of victim seems surprising at first. But the perpetrators knew what they were doing.
     They did not attack the activists who demonstrate every week against the Separation Wall in Bil’in and Na’alin. They did not attack the leftists who mobilize every year - this year, too - to help the Palestinians pick their olives near the most dangerous settlements. They did not attack the "Women in Black" who demonstrate every Friday, or the women of "Machsom Watch", who keep an eye on events at the army checkpoints. They attacked a person whose entire activity is in the academic field. more.. e-mail

Ramallah organization: from Bay Area grocery stores to universities
Leigh Cuen, Palestine News Network 9/29/2008
     San Francisco - Palestinians students have a legacy in the Bay Area. What started as a banding of San Francisco college students from Ramallah meeting in the backs of grocery stores in the early 1950’s has since blossomed into a network of clubs dedicated to celebrating Palestinian heritage.
     Today, the American Federation of Ramallah Palestine, the AFRP, has clubs with chapters in 26 major American cities spanning from coast to coast.
     Born in Jerusalem and raised in Ramallah, Charles Shamieh moved to the States when he was 18 to attend university. Now the University of San Francisco alum serves as Deputy President to this national federation. Shamieh is a busy man, fulfilling both the roles of unpaid, volunteer leader to the AFRP and breadwinner for his own smaller community of Ramallahians at home. He juggles multiple responsibilities and discussions at once, slipping fluidly from conversations in Arabic to English. He says "amazing" with an exaggerated exhale when he's excited about something. more.. e-mail

The settler and the shepherd: an unfair tale
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 9/28/2008
     This Saturday, Yahya Atta Riahin, an 18 year-old shepherd from the town of Aqraba, in the Northern district of Nablus, was executed by Israeli settlers while grazing his sheeps in the fields surrounding his village.
     That night, Yahya was suppose to get back from the fields, like any other Palestinian teenager during Ramadan, to share Iftar -the fast-breaking meal- with his family. As they didn’t see the boy coming back and started being anxious, knowing the risk of an - unfortunately common- settler attack in the Region, they alerted the neighbours and the entire village organised a search to find the missing boy.
     The body of the young shepherd was found with gunshot wounds late Saturday night, in the fields between the neighbouring settlement of Itamar and the villages of Aqraba and Awarta.
     According to eyewitnesses, the teenager has been attacked by a group of settlers from Itamar and Jettit, the illegal Israeli settlements that surround Al Aqbraba village. To the witnesses, the boy was pursued by a settler’s car before they heard gunshots but did not see him being shot. From a first forensic report, the settlers shot at him at least 20 times, from close range. more.. e-mail

The ongoing terror inflicted on the residents of Asira al Qibliya, Nablus
International Solidarity Movement 9/28/2008
     Nablus Region - Following constant violence by the residents of the illegal Yitzhar settlement and the Israeli army, which culminated on Saturday 20 September with the murder of 14 year old Suhayb Salin, the terror inflicted on the village of Asira al Qibliya has not abated. For the last 4 nights villagers have reported that at least 2 army jeeps have entered the village releasing sounds bombs between midnight and the early hours of the morning each night before leaving.
     In the last month the residents of Yitzhar settlement have been inflicting a reign of terror on the local Palestinian population. Footage taken on a camera supplied by B’Teselm showed settlers and the army attacking residents of the village and vandalising their property. In a statement to the BBC the Israeli army said that they see "the wounding of civilian Palestinians as severe, and will continue to enforce law and order"�. Indeed the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated the attack was "intolerable"� and police would be investigating.
     International activists visited the village on Friday 26 September and no Israeli police or army officials had interviewed the villagers about the events that took place during the invasion by the Yitzhar settlers. more.. e-mail

The Etzion illusion
Gershom Gorenberg, Ha’aretz 9/29/2008
     History - the history everyone thinks they know - misleads us. Take the story of Kfar Etzion, the first Israeli settlement in the West Bank, established 41 years ago this week.
     In the Israeli consciousness, Kfar Etzion has played a double role. On one hand, it has been the ultimate "consensus settlement." After all, the settlers returned to the site of a kibbutz that was overrun, along with the rest of the Etzion Bloc, on the eve of Israel’s independence. Even veteran opponents of settling in occupied territory shrug, smile and say "that’s different" when the Etzion Bloc is mentioned.
     On the other hand, Kfar Etzion is seen as the starting point of the religious, messianic settler movement. In the narrative accepted by both supporters and opponents of that movement, a group of young religious Jews imposed its will on Levi Eshkol’s hesitant government. And that was an omen of what was to come.
     But the accepted understanding of the return to Kfar Etzion is built on mistakes and deceptions. The Kfar Etzion settlers did not defeat Eshkol. Rather, they broke through an open doorway.
     ....The survivors of the Etzion Bloc and their children knew nothing of this. They saw his decision as a response to their pressure. But the memory of secular politicians being dragged along by settlers conceals the partnership that was actually created between them. more.. e-mail

Archaeology used politically to push out Jerusalem Palestinians
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada 9/26/2008
     From just outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls, the simple stone and cinder-block homes of Silwan cascade southwards into a valley known as the Holy Basin.
     The Palestinian residents are used to living in the shadow of history and religion, given dramatic physical form as the great silver dome of the al-Aqsa mosque and the looming presence of the Mount of Olives. But of late, history has become a curse for most of Silwan’s residents.
     "We have cameras everywhere watching us night and day," said Jawad Siyam, 39. "Armed Israeli guards wander through our alleys. Our open areas, the places where I played as a child, have become no-go zones."
     The reason is the growing number of settlers who have moved into Silwan since the early 1990s claiming a biblical right to the land. At least 50 Jewish families, comprising 250 people, have taken over Palestinian homes dotted across Silwan and turned them into secure compounds over which Israeli flags flutter.
     Similar takeovers are occurring out of sight in other Palestinian areas of occupied East Jerusalem. The settler organizations, backed by private donors from abroad, hope to make a peace agreement impossible and so ensure East Jerusalem never becomes the capital of a Palestinian state. more.. e-mail

In the Name of the Mother
Akiva Eldar, MIFTAH 9/25/2008
     It doesn’t take long for Siham Nashashibi, 62, to allude to his family’s distinguished lineage. "My uncle brought Israel the Nobel Prize in Literature, and my Nobel Prize is that Israel has informed me that I am not a Jerusalemite," he says.
     Nashashibi, a blood relation of renowned Israeli author S.Y. Agnon, is yet another victim of the ongoing battle for Jerusalem. Siham is the son of Esther Wiener, Agnon’s niece, and he suffers in both the Jewish and Arab worlds. The National Insurance Institute has decided he is not a Jew, or even a Jerusalemite, and has revoked his disability pension and health benefits. His Palestinian neighbors, and even some of his relatives, treat him as an infidel who prefers the Jewish roots of his mother, who converted to Islam, to the Arab roots of his father, Jawad Nashashibi. Siham says he defines himself as a Jew and is meticulous about fasting on Yom Kippur. more.. e-mail

Freedom of the press under occupation: You are treated first as a Palestinian, then as a journalist
Kristen Ess, Palestine News Network 9/26/2008
     Today is Palestinian Journalists Day where freedom of the press is enjoyed by the chosen few. As is well-documented, Israeli forces routinely target and deny access to Palestinian journalists and much of the foreign press in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
     Reuters photographer Abed Kuseemi says "you are a Palestinian first, and then a journalist," noting also that freedom of movement for Palestinian journalists "depends on the situation and it depends on the soldiers themselves."
     He continues, "Everyone has their own mentality. The first problem is to reach the area where there is a problem, where there is something going on like Asira Village," addressing the ongoing Israeli settler and soldier attacks on Palestinians and their land in the southern Nablus villages.
     "I was very near there and I was the only journalist coming in the early morning because I was already in Burein Village. But the army closed the roads. You can’t pass!” Kuseemi becomes frustrated saying, “They can’t understand that you...” his sentence breaks off and ends with a simple, “No way!" more.. e-mail

My occupied Utopia
Dina Elmuti writing from occupied Jerusalem, Electronic Intifada 9/26/2008
     On jagged roads, unpaved and covered in mounds of dust, enclosed by a monstrous, towering wall slithering like the venomous snake that it is, I await the bus that will take me to the place I’ve waited to see for far too long. A bus ride that would have taken me no more than 20 minutes 10 years ago will take me nearly two hours today, but I wait, ever so patiently. I figure I’ve waited 10 years -- what’s 10 more minutes of my time? Even at such an early hour in the morning, the small, provincial bus stop, the center of the hustle and bustle of Ramallah, is full of animated characters from all walks of life, gathering to share stories, trade daily bits of gossip, laugh boisterously, and radiate resilience.
     I think back to the year I lived here, when things were different, a time of "relative calm," they all refer to it as.Today, everything just seems so different. Maybe, being away had allowed my clouded vision to suddenly clear, opening my eyes to what I had left behind. Maybe, things just seemed so much bigger to me then. They are a bit sadder to me now. Maybe I had just been away for too long. more.. e-mail

Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish
Mona Anis, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/25/2008
     It is five years today -- Thursday 25 September -- since the death of the Palestinian public intellectual and political activist Edward Said, "the most brilliantly eloquent emissary of Palestine to the outside world" in the words of an equally eloquent and brilliant fellow compatriot -- Mahmoud Darwish.
     The anniversary of Edward Said’s death will be commemorated next Tuesday at Columbia University in New York, the city and university where Said lived and taught for the last 40 years of his 68-year-life. Conspicuously absent from the event will be Mahmoud Darwish, who had been invited by Columbia University to give the keynote address. Sadly, his sudden death last month -- at about the same age at which Said died -- prevents him from addressing next Tuesday’s gathering in New York.
     Darwish, who died on 9 August following open-heart surgery in Houston, was very keen on keeping this appointment, so much so that he had even contemplated postponing surgery until the end of September and after he had delivered the Edward Said Memorial Lecture in New York. "I am going to see what the doctors say in Houston, but I will try to postpone a decision until after my visit to New York in September," he told me over the phone at the beginning of July. more.. e-mail

We stole their right to education
Hillel Bardin, Ha’aretz 9/25/2008
     Ahmad and his brother Muhammad, who live in Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina neighborhood, completed second and fourth grades last June in the "unofficial recognized" Shirin school in the capital’s Shekhunat Hashalom neighborhood. Their parents paid NIS 4,925 tuition for the two of them for the year. Little Diaa, who also lives in Beit Hanina, completed second grade in the unofficial recognized Bridge International school in that neighborhood; his parents paid NIS 3,800 tuition.
     The parents of Ahmad, Muhammad and Diaa decided to send their children to private school, after their requests to have them study at public schools were turned down, due to a shortage of over 1,000 classrooms for Arab schools in Jerusalem. The children have now petitioned the High Court of Justice (case number HCJ 5373/08) to recover the tuition their parents were forced to pay the private schools. The petition does not relate to parents who prefer to send their children to study in private schools, but rather to those who chose public education but who were rejected by government officials. All sides to the case agree that the petitioners have the right, according to Israeli law, to a free education.
     more.. e-mail

Gilad Atzmon - Taking Elder Peres Apart
Gilad Atzmon, Palestine Think Tank 9/25/2008
     Truth must be said, I do admire fierce President Ahmadinejad almost as much as I despise war criminal Shimon Peres.
     However reading the rant Peres gave Wednesday during the UN’s General Assembly is a rather amusing experience. The man who has more blood on his hands than any living Israeli politician was rather daring. 
     "The Iranian people are not our enemies," declares Peres. This is a pretty interesting statement, bearing in mind that Israeli Minister Mofaz threatens to nuke Iran on a daily basis. "Their leader (Ahmadinejad) is a danger to his people, the region and the world." Again, a very bold statement considering the established statistical fact that the vast majority of Europeans actually see Israel and the USA as the leading threat to world peace. 
     But Peres wouldn’t stop just there, following the tradition of the Jewish Marxists who always know better than anyone else what is good for the world proletariat, the Palestinians and so on, Peres, the Yiddishe Mullah knows what Islam is all about. more.. e-mail

Palestinians and Lebanon’s Elections
Franklin Lamb – Beirut, Palestine Chronicle 9/25/2008
     Nassarallah has often spoke of the Party’s moral duty to help return Lebanon’s Palestinian Refugees to their lands.
     "We in Hezbollah want to demonstrate to our adversaries and doubters what we can achieve for our fellow Lebanese and our Palestinian brothers and sisters and to show them that our Party is 10% about military matters and 90% about ending corruption and improving the quality of lives of all who live in Lebanon. We will offer the voters a clear choice and they will decide. If we win, our friends and foes alike can observe and evaluate our achievements and then work with us on a basis of mutual respect, dialogue, and cooperation if they so choose or, if we fail, vote our deputies out of Parliament. We must respect their decision." - Zeinab, a Hezbollah supporter studying at the American University of Beirut 12 September 2008 Lebanon’s 2009 election campaign is underway!
     As this note is written, Hezbollah election strategists are meeting nearby studying, analyzing, debating and formularizing plans for Lebanon’s make or break 2009 elections. That poll, if it happens, may determine the foreseeable future of Lebanon and is arguably this fractured country’s most important referendum since the French more on less left in 1943. more.. e-mail

Shattered dreams
Abdallah El-Ashaal, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/25/2008
     The full-blown Zionist project is over. Even Israel’s prime minister admits it.
     At a meeting of the Israeli cabinet on 15 September, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister who soon afterwards stepped down, made an earth- shattering announcement. The long-held Zionist dream of a Greater Israel, a country running from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, was no longer feasible, Olmert admitted.
     In the Arab world, two interpretations have long persisted of the Arab-Israeli conflict. One is that the Zionist scheme is making inroads inside and outside Palestine, with the full backing of Washington, the endorsement of Europe, and the compliance of Arab governments. This interpretation accounts, at least partly, for the gushing forth of resentment in the region over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza. But one mustn’t forget that many Europeans, and even some Israelis, expressed sympathy for the suffering of Gaza, an area that is on the verge of becoming a collective grave by the admission of UN reports. more.. e-mail

The view from Jericho
Seth Freedman, The Guardian 9/26/2008
     Dr Saeb Erekat, in his role as chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, has seen plenty of Israeli promises broken during his tenure. Despite this, he clings to the belief that there will be a successful resolution to the decades-old conflict which will bring peace to his people as well as their Israeli counterparts.
     However, in the short term, his refusal to entertain the proposition that there will be no end to the hostilities doesn’t prevent him condemning what he sees as a serious failure on behalf of both the Israeli government and the international community overseeing the peace process. "Virtually every indicator "¦ shows that Israeli has accelerated its settlement activity since Annapolis," he said this week, "while we have proven our commitment to our obligations under phase 1 of the road map.
     Presaging the heavy criticism levelled against the Quartet this week by a coalition of aid agencies Erekat also stressed that the Quartet was falling well short in its role of compelling the Israeli government to adhere to the road map’s requirements. "Experience of the past year has shown that [the Quartet’s] mechanism needs to be coupled with stronger enforcement of road map compliance by the Quartet and the broader international community. more.. e-mail

Palestinian parties and organizations to Abbas: Right of return non-negotiable
Open letter, Various undersigned, Electronic Intifada 9/25/2008
     The following letter was presented to Palestinian Authority President and PLO Chairperson Mahmoud Abbas’s office on behalf of 78 Palestinian organizations on Wednesday, 22 September 2008:
     Dear Mr. President, Greetings of Return We, the undersigned Palestinian refugee organizations, civil society movements and institutions in the Palestinian homeland and in exile are national organizations working to defend the right of return. We appeal to you now because we are convinced that the alignment of the official Palestinian position and the position of the Palestinian people with regards to the final status negotiation issues is of the highest priority. Foremost among these issues is the cause of the Palestinian refugees.
     We are convinced that the alignment of popular and official positions is the main guarantee of a strong Palestinian position in the current negotiation process, which is taking place in a local, regional and global context that jeopardizes the national rights of the Palestinian people. In this context, we are concerned in particular about the rights of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons to return to their original lands and properties, restitution of their homes, lands and properties and compensation for damages incurred over the past 60 years. Based on the fact that all of these rights are guaranteed under international law, and based on our awareness of the enormous pressures faced by Palestinian negotiators and the tactics of negotiations, such as secrecy with regards to the negotiation proceedings, we call upon you to adopt a negotiation strategy that is based on openness with the entirety of the Palestinian people -- irrespective of their current place of residence -- regarding all aspects and details of the negotiation process.... more.. e-mail

Gaza’s useful mercenaries
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/25/2008
     According to Hamas sources, groups supposedly affiliated to Al-Qaeda in Gaza are but paid and protected pro-Fatah criminal cells.
     Despite the exhaustion apparent on his face, the young officer made a point of shaking hands with his soldiers and thanking them for their efforts. It had been a long night of clashes and incredibly harsh conditions. For over 11 hours last Tuesday night, this officer and his rapid response soldiers had pursued members of the Daghmash family that lives in Al-Sabra, a southwest neighbourhood of Gaza City. The dismissed Haniyeh government and its security forces announced that the targets of this campaign had been charged with several cases of murder and theft but had refused to hand themselves over to security. The military confrontation resulted in the death of 11, including a policeman, and the injury of dozens. Forty-eight hours following this showdown, the Army of Islam organisation -- one that embraces the programme of Al-Qaeda -- issued a statement claiming that seven of those killed were from its ranks. It further accused the Haniyeh government of targeting the organisation.
     At first glance it may seem difficult to reconcile the two statements. The Palestinian police said it was targeting members of the Daghmash family charged with crimes while the Army of Islam organisation said the Haniyeh government and Hamas targeted it due to its affiliation with Al-Qaeda. Yet a closer look at the real source of difference between Hamas and the Army of Islam provides a window onto small Palestinian organisations that emulate Al-Qaeda. Following the development of these organisations provides answers to several questions. Is the environment in Palestine conducive to the development of organisations espousing the thought of Al-Qaeda? What are the real motives for the creation of these organisations? Do they serve the agendas of Palestinian forces that are inimical to Hamas? What is their future? more.. e-mail

The Middle East Quartet - A progress report
CARE, Christian Aid, Oxfam, Save the Children Alliance, World Vision, ReliefWeb 9/25/2008
     EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
     The humanitarian crisis in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) continues (see ’The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion’). Its population of 3.7 million people, 52 per cent of whom are children, struggle for their basic needs. Palestinian women, children, and men are increasingly dependent on aid as their livelihoods are destroyed. The only sustainable solution to the crisis is a comprehensive peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians based on international law. As humanitarian and development agencies, we believe that immediate steps can and must be taken to relieve suffering, as well as to ensure that a peace agreement is eventually reached.
     As this report demonstrates, the lack of progress on key goals calls the Quartet’s current approach into question. In its Berlin statement, the Quartet expressed the "urgent need for more visible progress on the ground in order to build confidence and support progress in the negotiations launched in Annapolis". This "visible progress" has not materialised. Analysis of the reality on the ground demonstrates that in five of the ten areas in which the Quartet has laid down clear recommendations, there has been either no progress or an actual deterioration in the situation. Clearly, a new approach is warranted. Moreover, the Quartet’s capacity to encourage positive developments has been weakest in the three areas where progress is now most urgent: settlements, lifting obstacles to movement and access, and bringing an end to the blockade of Gaza. The Middle East Quartet, comprising Russia, USA, EU, and UN, identified 2008 as a crucial year for the Middle East Peace Process (MEPP) and the period in which to realise agreements made at the Annapolis Conference on 22 November 2007. Quartet members committed to assisting parties to meet their specific obligations and to promoting a just, comprehensive, and lasting settlement of the conflict in the Middle East. -- See also: Full_Report (pdf* format - 252.9 Kbytes) more.. e-mail

Gaza diary: the Middle East Quartet
Omar, a humanitarian aid worker, in partnership with Oxfam, Al Jazeera 9/25/2008
     Tomorrow [Friday, September 26, 2008], some of the world’s most powerful leaders are coming together in New York. The EU, US, Russia and the UN (also known as the Quartet) are meeting with the aim of bringing an end to the Middle East conflict.
     If I were with you in New York...
     As I think about this, I begin conjuring a dream in my mind. In this dream, I have left the Gaza Strip, where I am an aid worker and also a Palestinian suffering the effects of the blockade here.
     I close my eyes tighter and I am on a plane flying to New York. After arriving, I am suddenly free, standing in front of these leaders, ready to deliver the most important speech of my life.
     Address to the Quartet
     "Ladies and gentlemen, honourable members of the Quartet, I come to you today, all the way from a tiny bit of land called the Gaza Strip.
     "I come to you to have a frank and honest talk. I come to you dressed in my working clothes, the clothes of a Palestinian humanitarian worker, a water engineer, whose life revolves around providing relief to people in Gaza who continue to suffer..." more.. e-mail

Against the current
Nicola Nasser, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/25/2008
     Mahmoud Abbas appears alone in still taking peace negotiations with Israel seriously.
     For the first time since the US-hosted Annapolis conference in November last year re-launched Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, interrupted by the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 after the collapse of Camp David II, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo 6 September expressed "doubt" on striking a peace deal with Israel by the end of the year "because very little time is left". He reiterated his scepticism 10 September in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz.
     Accordingly, Abbas dispelled US President George W Bush’s pledge to reach such a deal before his term ends and at the same time practically announced that peace talks have now been frozen for at least a year by imminent change in Washington and Tel Aviv. Abbas was reportedly scheduled to hold his last meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem 16 September, one day before Kadima, Olmert’s ruling party, elected his successor ahead of his scheduled meeting with President Bush at the White House 25 September. It seems all partners to the Annapolis process are trying to strike a last-minute impossible deal or are simply saying goodbye to each other. more.. e-mail

The living illusion
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/25/2008
     The friendly smile hides a sinister agenda
     With Tzipi Livni succeeding Ehud Olmert as Israel’s next prime minister following her slim victory over former defense minister Shaul Mofaz on 18 September, most Palestinians are pinning few hopes on the "new" Israeli government’s ability to make a real difference in relations.
     Initially, Livni’s victory generated a modicum of euphoria, especially among observers not well-versed in Israeli politics. However, a more sobre analysis of the political realities in Israel suggests that Livni won’t be able to do much in terms of reaching a final status agreement with the Palestinian Authority without having the backing of a solid majority in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.
     One Israeli writer remarked following Livni’s victory that "the heart wants to hope, but the brain cannot." Some observers on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides are already predicting that the government Livni is going to form will not last long and that early general elections will have to be held in Israel sooner rather than later. more.. e-mail

Damascus fears deviation on peace road
Sami Moubayed, Asia Times 9/26/2008
     DAMASCUS - Syria looked on with especial interest as Israeli prime minister-in-waiting Tzipi Livni became the head of the Kadima Party and was asked to form a new cabinet by President Shimon Peres. Damascus has two theories on how Livni, the former foreign minister, will react to the indirect peace talks currently underway between her country and Syria. Optimists are willing to give Livni the benefit of the doubt, claiming she will uphold the talks begun by her predecessor, Ehud Olmert.
     Others believe that while trying to form a government, Livni will certainly call off the Syria talks, to get the domestic house in order before returning to the negotiating table. This is despite Livni having sent off several messages to Syria pledging to uphold the talks once elected premier. Livni has just over a month to form a government by winning the support of a majority of the Knesset (parliament).
     Syria reacted to Livni’s election as Kadima leader at the weekend through a state-run daily, saying, "If she demonstrates a truthful desire to make peace, she will harvest peace. Otherwise, the region will remain in a state of no-war and no-peace and in a tense and unstable climate." more.. e-mail

Jerusalem is now
Mustafa Al-Barghouti, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/25/2008
     The US and Israel think they can impose on Palestinian negotiators a distorted peace that effaces all Palestinian rights. They cannot.
     One doesn’t need to be an expert in the so-called "peace process" to know that Israel’s aim for the past 40 years has been to deny the Palestinians their rights. Having failed to break the backbone of the Palestinians and end their resolve to resist, Israel resorted to delay tactics. When not postponing urgent issues, it tried to empty from them all meaning. Thus the idea of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state was diluted into that of creating a self-rule entity, shorn of any real authority, over fragmented patches of land.
     This is what the Oslo process managed to produce over the past 15 years or so. The number of settlers in the occupied territories has doubled. A wall of racial segregation has been erected. The West Bank has been cut off from Gaza. And Jerusalem is now surrounded on all sides and stranded, with little or no connection to other Palestinian areas. When negotiations resumed, Israel tried to impart legitimacy on its major settlements, refusing to discuss the matter of the refugees and insisting on postponing any decision on Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Israelis tirelessly tried to change the face of Jerusalem, building settlements inside and around it, altering and Judaising it by the day. more.. e-mail

Look beyond Rafah
Galal Nassar, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/25/2008
     Hamas needs to set its sights on the good of the Palestinian people, not simply its own self-interest.
     Once again, Palestinian factional leaders come to Cairo in search of elusive reconciliation. The deal they once signed in Mecca looked good, but it didn’t stick for long. Is anyone keeping track of all the rounds of talks that have been held? Dozens, hundreds perhaps! Some may recall that Fatah and Hamas started talking in the early 1990s in Sudan. Well, they’ve been talking ever since, in various venues around the region.
     A few years back, the positions of the two sides were far apart. Hamas posed as a resistance movement that was not going to compromise, that didn’t care about power, that was not about to sell out. And it was fond of portraying Fatah, or the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), as a sell-out. Now, these claims are hard to maintain. Hamas is in government, self-proclaimed and all. It is worried about its own survival, Jerusalem and refugee rights put on the backburner for the moment. And yet Hamas and Fatah are still at loggerheads. Instead of working out their grievances, the list keeps getting longer as time goes by. Fatah is mad at Hamas’s so-called coup. Hamas, for its part, is sure that Fatah is going to manipulate Palestinian presidential and legislative elections. more.. e-mail

Marathon for Children: Running for the Right to Play
Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 9/25/2008
     Palestinian children ’need safety, security, protection and a promise for a better future.’
     I was ecstatic as I read an email sent by a manager at a Canadian toy company. The company donates a large number of toys each year to inner city kids throughout North America, using various NGOs. A few years ago, they decided to ship several thousand toys to Palestinian children. They asked for my help.
     The feeling of joy that I felt that day was unparalleled. Rarely do I experience in my job as a writer, whose main focus is war and conflict, this overpowering sense of elation. I had to tell someone that 11,000 toys would be shipped to Palestinian refugee camps before the Muslim holiday. This will certainly be a memorable Eid for so many children denied the simple pleasure of holding a teddy bear, or watching a toy police car running in circles with blazing sirens. My friend, Mohammed, a reporter from Egypt, however, was not very impressed.
     "Toys?" he asked with an irritated tone. "What Palestinian children need is weapons, to defend themselves," he exultantly explained, as various colleagues nodded their head with agreement. more.. e-mail

How do you explain to a Palestinian child he must ration his drinking water so an Israeli can swim?
Mitri I. Musleh, Editorial, Palestine News Network 9/25/2008
     Over the past 60 years or so the situation in Palestine has reached astronomical dimensions that stretch far beyond what could have been expected.
     In the midst of it all, Palestinians past and present have watched their young killed, jailed or exiled, their homes blown up, their fields ravished and their olive trees uprooted, their freedoms ripped away from them and their country depleted by the day.
     All of this was done to them by Israel and its supporters in the name of freedom, godly wish and imperialism.
     How do you explain to a young Palestinian that his father is being kept in Israeli jail because he was born Palestinian? How do you explain to a young Palestinian that his sibling was shot because he or she wanted to look out of the window? How do you explain to a young Palestinian that he has to ration his drinking water so an Israeli youngster can swim? How do you explain to a young Palestinian that all of the countries in the world are against you because you keep saying no to occupation, corruption and imperialism? more.. e-mail

PCHR Position Paper: Controversy over End of Presidential Term in Office
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights 9/24/2008
     There has recently been widespread national controversy regarding the end of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ term in office, which ends in January 2009. National media have published and broadcast conflicting statements and positions by Fatah and Hamas officials and politicians, as well as official statements from the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which remains split between both sides. These have included statements issued by the Acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), Dr. Ahmad Bahar, and the President of the Fatwa Legislative Office, Abd El-Karim Abu Salah.
     Hamas supporters claim the current Presidential term ends on 8 January, 2009, in accordance with the end of the four-year period since the last Presidential Election was held on 9 January, 2005. They state that, unless new Presidential elections are held at this time, the Presidential post will become vacant. At this point the PLC Speaker would temporarily fill the vacancy for 60 days, during which period new elections would be held in order to elect a new President of the PNA, as stated in the Palestinian Basic Law.
     However, Fatah supporters claim that Election Law No. 9 (2005), which was passed by the PLC, extended the President’s term in order to allow simultaneous elections for the PLC and the Palestinian Presidency to be held at the end of the PLC term in January 2010. more.. e-mail

Palestine: From bad to wretched
Ramzy Baroud, Asia Times 9/25/2008
     The numbers are grim, whether in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian economy is in one of its most wretched states, and the disaster is mostly, if not entirely, man-made, thus reversible.
     The World Bank made no secret of the fact that Israeli restrictions are largely to blame, as poverty rates in the Gaza Strip have soared to 79.4% and in the West Bank to 45.7%. It concluded that "with a growing population and a shrinking economy, real per capita GDP is now 30% below its height in 1999 ... With due regard to Israel’s security concerns, there is consensus on the paralytic effect of the current physical obstacles placed on the Palestinian economy."
     With a declining economy, lack of developmental projects and Israeli restrictions, Palestinians are increasingly reliant on foreign aid, which is largely controlled by political interests. For example, the US proved more generous than ever in supporting the Ramallah-based government of Mahmoud Abbas as it led an international regime of sanctions and embargo against the Gaza-based Hamas government. Such funds are often conditioned on such murky concepts as "cracking down on the terrorist infrastructure", which is duly understood as fighting those who challenge Israel and Palestinian Authority rule in the West Bank. more.. e-mail

Why We Should Never Forget
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 9/24/2008
     September 16 and 17 mark a very difficult anniversary for the Palestinians. Twenty-six years ago, approximately 2,000 Palestinian men, women and children were massacred in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in Lebanon by Israeli-aligned Phalangist troops under the chief of the Lebanese Intelligence Forces Elie Hobeika and Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon.
     Unarguably some of the darkest days of Palestinian history, the Sabra and Shatilla massacres are now a reminder of a cause we as Palestinians should never allow ourselves to forget. The plight of Palestinian refugees has remained unresolved since its creation in 1948, with atrocities such as Sabra and Shatilla painful reminders of why a just resolution to it must be found.
     Israel’s part in the massacre should also not be forgotten. In 1982, Beirut was under siege by the Israelis. The Palestinian resistance was to quit Beirut under an American-brokered deal but only after the PLO was given guarantees by the US that the Palestinian civil population would be immune from attack. Days after Palestinian troops had evacuated, Israel occupied West Beirut and encircled the Sabra and Shatilla camps. It then allowed the Phalangists in. Israel provided them with weapons, protection and most importantly, a green light, to enter the two camps – now devoid of armed Palestinian fighters – and carry out one of the most gruesome massacres in history. Thousands of Palestinians were killed, women raped and slaughtered, men lined up on walls and shot down and babies killed alongside their horror-stricken mothers. more.. e-mail

Neo-cons, ex-Israeli diplomats push Islamophobic video
Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton, Electronic Intifada 9/24/2008
     WASHINGTON (IPS) - A group of hard-line United States neo-conservatives and former Israeli diplomats, among others, are behind the mass distribution, ahead of the November US presidential election, of a controversial DVD that critics have denounced as Islamophobic.
     The group, the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), is working with another organization called the Clarion Fund, which produced the 60-minute video and is itself tied closely to an Israeli organization called Aish Hatorah.
     The Fund is currently distributing some 28 million copies of the DVD through newspaper inserts in key electoral "swing" states -- states like Michigan, Ohio, and Florida that, according to recent polling, could go either way in November’s presidential election.
     According to Delaware incorporation papers, the Clarion Fund is based at the same New York address as Aish Hatorah, a self-described "apolitical" group dedicated to educating Jews about their heritage.
     The Clarion Fund’s street address as listed on the group’s website and a DVD mailer for the film is apparently not a physical address, but rather a "virtual address" that goes to a post office box in New York City. more.. e-mail

'Incoherent' agreement spells the way forward
Mona Alami, Electronic Lebanon, Electronic Intifada 9/24/2008
     Lebanese President Michel Suleiman leads a divided government struggling to achieve unity. ( Matthew Cassel BEIRUT (IPS) - The Lebanese unity government has finally came to terms with its ministerial declaration after weeks of political haggling. What promises and threats does the incoherent declaration hold for Lebanon in a polarized local and regional context?
     "The ministerial declaration is an impossible document that carries many contradictions," says Oussama Safa, director of the Lebanese Center for Political Studies, a local Lebanese think tank.
     The declaration, which was passed by parliament on 12 August, underlined the program of the newly formed cabinet in the wake of the 21 May Doha Accord. The agreement put an end to a week-long war between the pro-Western and Arab parliamentary majority -- comprised of the Christian Kataeb and Lebanese Forces, the Sunni Future movement and the Progressive Socialist Party -- and the pro-Syrian and Iranian opposition, which includes the Shia Hizballah and Amal parties as well as the Christian Free Patriotic Movement. more.. e-mail

Time and negotiations
Daoud Kuttab, Jerusalem Post 9/24/2008
     The issue of time has always played a major role in most negotiations. Whether they be labor negotiations or political ones, each side of any conflict waits literally till the very last minute before revealing its true position. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have been quoted as saying that they wish they had just a little more time to reach a solution.
     Time and again we have seen the Palestinian-Israeli conflict reach a potential breakthrough point only for the hopes of both peoples to be dashed because of the failure to reach a resolution. After six years of the Palestinian nakba and the creation of the State of Israel and following more than 40 years of the military occupation of the rest of Palestine, it is a joke for negotiators to wish they had just a little more time. more.. e-mail

’The Secret’: Coming soon to a bookstore near you
Yossi Melman, Ha’aretz 9/25/2008
     The eternal question, "Who gave the order?" to operate the espionage network in Egypt 54 years ago will soon get a new twist. It will happen if a book by former Military Intelligence head Binyamin Gibli, who died last month, is finally published. In a recent conversation with Haaretz, Gibli’s widow, Elisheva, confirmed that she has decided to to do so, "and then there will be some surprises."
     It is not yet clear, however, who owns the rights to the manuscript. They, like the other substantial assets left by Gibli, who was also a successful businessman for 45 years, are in dispute between Elisheva and Gibli’s first wife, Esther Pinhasi, her daughter Tami and Tami’s three granddaughters. Tami is married to former journalist and businessman Eitan Lifshitz, who told Haaretz yesterday that to the best of his knowledge Gibli’s will does not mention the manuscript, even though it is in Elisheva’s possession. According to Lifshitz the absence of the manuscript from the will makes it unclear who should inherit it.
     For close to 40 years Gibli swore himself to silence and refused to comment on the Egyptian espionage affair. Then in 1992, Shabtai Tevet, an author who is the official biographer of David Ben-Gurion, published "Kalban" (the Hebrew acronym for "Banana Skin") - two volumes of details on the scandalous Lavon affair, known throughout the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s as the Esek Bish ("the rotten business") due to the military censor’s restrictions. more.. e-mail

Culture criminals
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 9/25/2008
     A program on a remote television channel brought back memories from the past. Channel 33 recently broadcast a rerun of "The Way It Was" with Yaron London. We once had a different kind of television. It consisted of intelligent, challenging, inoffensive language and conversation, sometimes even subversive. That’s what Israelis used to watch - and loved. Today there isn’t one show whose ratings can match those once reached by the weekly political interview program "Moked," "The Third Hour" and "Boomerang."
     Indeed, that’s the way it was and is no more - nothing remains. The sea is the same sea, the nation is the same nation and only television is different. Someone is responsible for that; someone must be made to answer. The managers of commercial TV - Keshet CEO Avi Nir, Reshet CEO Yohanan Zangan, and Modi Friedman, Channel 10’s outgoing general manager - these are our culture criminals, cynically dumbing down an entire society for profit. And not a word is raised in protest. Everyone blames parents, but nobody is calling these garbage-peddlers to account. One day it will dawn on us that the only spiritual food fed to generations has been the reality show and the game show, with even news twisted into entertainment. Then, let us remember who did this to us. more.. e-mail

Israel has made all the wrong choices if it wants to be accepted
Editorial, The Daily Star, Daily Star 9/25/2008
     Israeli officials have long warned about the dire threat posed to their country by the Islamic Republic of Iran, as President Shimon Peres did during his address on Wednesday to the United Nations General Assembly. Peres and his colleagues are right in their assessment that Iran’s current behavior poses a strategic challenge, not just to Israel but to the entire Middle East region. However, the Israelis are facing a far greater danger that might eventually bring about the demise of the Jewish state: themselves.
     In order to appease a tiny, radical segment of their society, Israeli leaders have turned down the Arab Peace Initiative, which represents a historic opportunity to reach a comprehensive peace agreement with all Arab states and to firmly cement Israel’s place within the community of Middle East nations. Instead, they have deliberately chosen to delay peace and maintain Israel’s illegal settlements and occupation, as well as the Jewish state’s status as a tiny country surrounded by hostile neighbors. But time is not on the side of the state of Israel. Already Palestinians who have grown frustrated with the pace of peace negotiations are talking about changing strategies and pursuing the cause of a binational state that would spell the end of the "Jewish homeland." Others have given up entirely on the very notion of peace and have joined the swelling ranks of Islamic resistance movements. Moreover, the decision to remain in conflict has exacerbated the brain drain that results from the flight of an increasing number of educated Israelis who have no interest in raising their children in a war zone. more.. e-mail

Will Livni be another horror show?
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 9/24/2008
     In Israel today, the curtain opens on the new political performance of Tzipi Livni, who last week was elected leader of the Kadima Party. It is not clear if Livni will dazzle or disappoint; if she will generate historic change or just another hour of horror. I am chromosomally optimistic about the world, so I hope for the best. I have immense, interminable faith in the goodness of the human spirit, among Israelis and Arabs alike, which is only slightly and momentarily tempered by the gross incompetence and occasional criminality of Arab and Israeli political leaders. Arab leaderships and strategic policies rarely change, and transitions are usually from father to son, or great leader to trusted cousin, or one colonel or security chief to another. More frequent leadership changes in Israel are often accompanied by choruses of expectations and exhortations.
     Livni will try to forge a ruling coalition, and if she fails the country will hold general elections, which the Likud Party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, is expected to win. Many in the Arab world argue that there is no difference between any of the Israeli parties insofar as peacemaking and coexistence with the Arabs are concerned. Indeed, Labor, Likud, Kadima and coalitions of all of them with many smaller Israeli parties have all perpetuated much the same policies for four decades now. more.. e-mail

Journalist discloses details of Israeli-PA security meeting
Khalid Amayreh, Palestine Think Tank 9/23/2008
     In the picture, two of the generals who are arranging military actions with Fatah military leaders and the new Prime Minister of Israel… These same generals met with top Fatah military leaders to plan Jenin 2
     Nahum Barnea is a prominent Israeli journalist and regular columnist at the mass-circulation newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth.
     On Friday, 19 September, he revealed shocking details of a recent  "security coordination"� meeting between Israeli and Palestinian security commanders.
     Barnea, well known for his journalistic reliability, attended the meeting which took place at the Israeli occupation army’s West Bank headquarters at the settlement of Beit El near Ramallah.
     The following is a verbatim translation of Barnea’s report as published in Yedioth Ahronoth:
     "They  (the PA security commanders) arrived at the IDF headquarters Sunday night, passing through the ‘Court roadblock,’ only a 3-minute-drive from Ramallah. They drove through the road leading to the old Beit El settlement, going through the gate of the former Jordanian camp which houses the Command of the Judea and Samaria Brigade.
     All of them were dressed in civilian attire with the exception of the Inspector-General of the Palestinian Police. They were eight commanders, all of them veteran Fatah leaders. This is the last chance for the generation that came from Tunis to retain their grip on power before Hamas could take over and devour everything. more.. e-mail

Border control /In the name of the mother
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 9/24/2008
     It doesn’t take long for Siham Nashashibi, 62, to allude to his family’s distinguished lineage. "My uncle brought Israel the Nobel Prize in Literature, and my Nobel Prize is that Israel has informed me that I am not a Jerusalemite," he says.
     Nashashibi, a blood relation of renowned Israeli author S.Y. Agnon, is yet another victim of the ongoing battle for Jerusalem. Siham is the son of Esther Wiener, Agnon’s niece, and he suffers in both the Jewish and Arab worlds. The National Insurance Institute has decided he is not a Jew, or even a Jerusalemite, and has revoked his disability pension and health benefits. His Palestinian neighbors, and even some of his relatives, treat him as an infidel who prefers the Jewish roots of his mother, who converted to Islam, to the Arab roots of his father, Jawad Nashashibi. Siham says he defines himself as a Jew and is meticulous about fasting on Yom Kippur. more.. e-mail

The Current Situation in the Occupied Territories
Khalil Nakhleh, Ph.D. – Ramallah, Palestine Chronicle 9/23/2008
     ’The average citizen is being bombarded daily by contradictory statements.’
     1. Our current Palestinian situation can be characterized candidly, as one observer described it over 20 some years ago, as a "fragmented national mood"; where more than 80% perceive themselves to suffer from depression and worry; where the percentages of the poor are in constant upward increase and difficult to keep track of; where our poor are rapidly joining the inconsequential global pool of "surplus humanity"; where corruption is perceived as a sign of success and compared positively with Israeli society; where Palestinian society under occupation is sliding with an alarming increase towards the rule of the "security forces"; and where there is obvious, predetermined, and politically-sanctionedextension of military jurisdiction over civilians, and total disregard for civil judiciary. This is producing a clear visible tendency towards the emergence of a "police state", dependent for its establishment and continuity on external funds.
     2. Palestinian society under occupation is almost entirely dependent for its survival on aid from outside, and not on its own productive resources and energies: nearly one million live on their PA monthly salaries, the dispensation of which is conditioned by receiving donations from outside on time; no less than 40 -50 thousand live directly on their salaries from externally-funded NGOs, and some many more thousands live on NGO projects, etc. Thus, the livelihood of most Palestinians who have “steady” income is mortgaged by political decisions external to them, and beyond their control. more.. e-mail

Criminal Complaint To The Attorney General of Israel
Kawther Salam, Palestine Think Tank 9/23/2008
     What follows is a cover letter and a criminal complaint sent by me to the Attorney General of Israel Menachem Mazuz. This letter was sent by registered mail at the end of August 2008. I expect no answer and no action, and I expect that Mazuz will protect the accused criminals - and it is exactly because of this why I am sending these criminal complaints to Mazuz. This is the second criminal complaint which I have sent to Mazuz because of the crimes of State of Israel against the Palestinians, others will follow.
     The Attorney General of Israel, Menachem Mazuz
     Salah-a-Din 29
     Jerusalem 91010
     Attached to this cover letter you will find the document titled
     "Charges against certain civil and military officials of Israel for Genocide, Crimes of War, Crimes against Humanity and Conspiracy to commit these crimes in Hebron, under the "Law for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide of 5710 - 1950?, which was passed by the Knesset on 29 March 1950, as well as under other currently valid laws which require the punishment of these crimes.”. more.. e-mail

Mutual censorship in the West Bank and Gaza
Mohammed Omer, Electronic Intifada 9/23/2008
     GAZA CITY (IPS) - So much is missing as you walk down the street along the shops of Gaza. Food and medicines kept out by the blockade enforced by Israel; but also newspapers once a part of the street landscape.
     Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda and Al-Ayyam, two newspapers loyal to Fatah, are not around any more. And for once, you couldn’t blame the Israelis for censorship.
     Of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Gaza is ruled by elected Hamas government, and the West Bank by Fatah. Fighting between the two groups has led to a silencing of voices on both sides.
     Hamas-affiliated police forces banned three newspapers in Gaza on 28 July of this year; of them Al-Quds has now been allowed back in. Earlier in June the West Bank authorities banned Falsteen and Al-Risalah, two newspapers affiliated with Hamas.
     "We have given them some guidelines to report more professionally, but they have refused to deal with us," Hamas spokesman Taher al-Nounno told IPS, speaking of the Fatah publications. "The newspapers have been publishing lies and instigating unrest." more.. e-mail

Crossing the Line focuses on Arab undermining of boycott movement
Podcast, Crossing the Line, Electronic Intifada 9/23/2008
     This week on Crossing The Line: While boycott and divestment campaigns in Europe and the United States become more sophisticated and widespread, the Arab world’s longstanding boycott of Israel is being undermined by Arab governments and private companies. Host Naji Ali speaks with Wassim Al-Adel, a London-based Syrian blogger about this disturbing trend.
     Also this week, Glen Ford of The Black Agenda Report offers a commentary about the state of the American economy and its impact on the rest of the world, especially the Middle East.
     And as always, Crossing the Line begins with "This week in Palestine," a service provided by The International Middle East Media Center Listen Now [MP3 - 17.9 MB, 39:09 min] Crossing the Line is a weekly podcast dedicated to giving voice to the voiceless in occupied Palestine. Through investigative news, arts, eyewitness accounts, and music, Crossing the Line does its best to present the lives of people on the ground. more.. e-mail

Settler Violence Out of Control
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 9/23/2008
     The latest attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank against Palestinians has once again proved the Israeli government impotent when it comes to dealing with its own fanatic citizens.
     Last week all hell broke loose yet again. When a Palestinian man stabbed and injured a 9-year-old boy in Shalhevet, a Jewish settlement outpost in the Israeli occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers took matters into their own hands. About 100 settlers, primarily from the adjacent settlement of Yitzhar, attacked the near by Palestinian village of Asira al-Kabaliya. They stoned houses, turned over a car, and shot live rounds in the streets. At least eight people were injured, four of them by gunshots.
     The attacks and the violence around Yitzhar have been going on intermittently for more than 20 years, and just a few weeks earlier a group of settlers went house to house in Asira al-Kabaliya, spray-painting Stars of David on the walls. more.. e-mail

Racism in the name of religion
Elana Maryles Sztokman, Jerusalem Post 9/23/2008
     There are moments when I find myself truly ashamed to be part of Israeli society. I had a moment like that recently as I stood outside the Supreme Court with women from Ahoti, a Sephardi feminist organization, waiting for a ruling on the religious girls’ school in Emanuel where racism is so entrenched that parents will do all it takes to keep antiquated Jim Crow-like separations in place.
     What is happening in the Beit Ya’acov school is nothing less than the formalization of racism. Here the school implements a policy in which Sephardi girls are not allowed to be in a class with Ashkenazi or hassidic girls, and they have different teachers, different classes and even different recess times and a fence between their yards just to ensure that the two groups do not mingle during the breaks.
     It’s not just Emanuel, but in other religious girls’ schools around the country, such as Elad, where parents protested to ensure that a Sephardi girl would not be allowed in to the class. Protested! There have been reports from around the country of girls being rejected or ejected from schools because of the color of their skin or their last name. And even though the High Court ruled last week that the apartheid has to end, the school and parents are refusing to comply, thus rejecting civil as well as moral obligations. This is not the post-Civil War South, but Israel of 2008, where I would have expected more people to be outraged by this blatant racism. more.. e-mail

Irish trade union delegation report criticizes Israel, governments
Eamon Mc Mahon, Electronic Intifada 9/23/2008
     In November 2007 the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) sent a very senior delegation of trade union leaders including the President of ICTU and several General Secretaries of major trade unions on a seven-day fact-finding mission to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
     The express aim of the delegation was to produce a report that was as impartial and as objective as possible. The delegation met therefore not only with Palestinian representatives but also spent several days in Israel and met with a wide range of Israeli spokespeople from the business, trade union and political sectors. A stormy meeting took place with the leadership of Histadrut and the Israeli business community. The delegation also met with Yitzhak Herzog, the Israeli Minister of Welfare and Labour Party member who blithely informed them that "Israel is the realization of biblical prophecies."
     On the Palestine side they met with a number of senior figures in both the West Bank and Gaza, including the leadership of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions; with Rafiq Husseini, the Chief of Staff of the Palestinian Authority; and in Gaza with Dr. Basem Naim, deputy leader of the Hamas government and Minister of Health. The delegation also met with a number of human rights groups including in Ramallah with Al-Haq, in Gaza City with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, and in Hebron with Yehuda Shaul, an orthodox Jew and founding member of Breaking the Silence, the movement of ex-Israeli soldiers who are determined to highlight the injustices of the occupation. more.. e-mail

Israeli, Palestinian Bereaved Families Meet
Anat Shalev, MIFTAH 9/23/2008
     This weekend a series of meetings between Jewish and Palestinian families was held under the auspices of the "Parents Circle," a group connecting bereaved families from both sides.
     The Palestinians listened to the accounts of families of individuals who were killed by Qassam rockets, while the Israelis heard stories from Palestinian parents who have lost their children in the West Bank village of Naalin. Both sides agreed that peace must prevail to stop the bloodshed.
     "Our organization is very special," said Nir Oren, the Israeli chairman of the Parents Circle. "Everyone of us has lost a family member as a result of the conflict. Each one of us is working for peace so that neither side will gain more bereaved families."
     Oren said that on Saturday a group of 20 Palestinians and 10 Israelis visited the Kibbutz Kfar Aza home of the late Jimmy Kdoshim, who was killed by a mortar round. "The encounter was exciting, and everyone sympathized with the pain Jimmy’s family was going through and the fear of rockets that still looms over this kibbutz," he said. more.. e-mail

She stood firm defending her home, and, like an Olive tree, died standing
Maisa Abu Ghazala, Palestine News Network, Translated by Saed Bannoura, International Middle East Media Center News 9/22/2008
     The daughter of Mariam Ayyad, 60, tells the story of her mother’s last moments -- she describes an argument that ensued when Israeli soldiers broke into her home in Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem, and repeatedly hit the 60-year old woman and threw her on the ground until she dropped dead in front of her children and grandchildren.
     Mariam died on Saturday evening after a lengthy argument with Israeli soldiers and border policemen who invaded Abu Dis. The argument ended with the soldiers beating her and throwing her to the ground, killing her.
     Her daughter, Hiba, 21, was standing next to her when she died. She could not express her feelings in words and with her eyes filled with tears she said, “Yesterday my mother became a martyr, as she died at the hands of the occupiers. And it wasn’t enough for them to kill her in cold blood! They also barred the ambulance from reaching our home!&rdquo. more.. e-mail

West Bank Settler Riot: What the Media Left out
Kim Bullimore, Palestine Chronicle 9/22/2008
     ’Unprovoked attacks by the Yitzhar settlers have increased substantially.’
     On September 13, in response to a 9-year-old Israeli settler child living in the ’wildcat’ outpost of Shalhevet, about half a kilometre from the illegal Israeli colony of Yitzhar, being stabbed by a lone Palestinian, hundreds of illegal settlers rioted en-mass and terrorised several thousand villagers in the Palestinian township of Asira al Qibliya. In the course of the riot at least 8 Palestinians were seriously injured, six by live ammunition fired by the illegal settlers, who also vandalised residential homes and beat unarmed children and adults, while members of the fourth strongest army on earth stood by and let the settlers riot [1].
     While much has been made by the illegal settlers and some of the Israeli and international press of the stabbing and "terrorist" attack on Yitzhar, little was said -- if anything at all -- about the fact that for the past decade the heavily armed settlers of Yitzhar and other nearby illegal Israeli settlements have been violently terrorising the unarmed Palestinian villages around them. Neither was it mentioned that in the last twelve months, such unprovoked attacks by the Yitzhar settlers have increased substantially. Nor was it mentioned that there had also been an increase in similar attacks by other illegal settlers against Palestinian villages in the Qaliqilya and Hebron region of the Occupied Paletinian Territories (OPT). more.. e-mail

Forgotten at the Gaza-Egypt Border
Eva Bartlett, MIFTAH 9/22/2008
     "His father died this morning," a hotel guest explained, gesturing to Raed, slumped and silent in his chair, face long.
     It was Wednesday, 20 August in Sinai’s al-Arish, a town about 50 kilometers west of the Gaza-Egypt border. Two days earlier, the approximately 450 Palestinians who had been waiting to enter Gaza were finally supposed to be permitted entry. Days before, the announcement had been made that the Rafah Crossing between Egypt and Gaza would open to allow passage into and out of Gaza. Many of the Palestinians at al-Arish had been waiting since the beginning of June for the border to open. Others had been exiled for over a year, outside of Gaza when Egypt sealed the border shut following Hamas’ taking control of Gaza in June 2007.
     Silenced and out of the international spotlight, the Palestinians waiting in al-Arish said that their plight at the closed crossing is either ignored or politicized. Many were running out of money, while others had completely run out, having waited for the opening of Rafah for weeks without earning an income. Approximately 200 of the Palestinians who waited to re-enter Gaza were in dire financial circumstances, many borrowing money, others begging, some sleeping in the streets. more.. e-mail

Remembering Edward Said Five Years On
Stephen Lendman – Chicago, Palestine Chronicle 9/22/2008
     Edward Said. ’He stood for everything that is virtuous.’
     Said was passionately against Palestine being turned into an isolated prison wherein Israel repeatedly attacked mostly defenseless civilians with tanks and F-16s.Born in West Jerusalem in 1935. Exiled in December 1947. Said was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 1991, a malignant cancer of the bone marrow and blood. At 6:45AM on September 25, 2003, he succumbed (at age 67) after a painful courageous 12 year struggle. Tributes followed and resumed a year later. In a testimony to his teacher, Professor Moustafa Bayoumi called him "indefatigable, incorruptible, a humanist and devastatingly charming....leav(ing behind) legions of followers and fans in every corner of the world. I am lost without him....I miss him so."
     Chomsky called his death an "incalculable loss." A year later, Ilan Pappe said "his absence seems to me still incomprehensible. What would have happened if we still had Edward with us in this last year....another terrible (one) for the values (he) represented and causes he defended." Tariq Ali referred to his "indomitable spirit as a fighter, his will to live, (my) long-standing friend and comrade," and described his ordeal. more.. e-mail

The Forgotten Story in Gaza, the Slaughter of Innocents
Sameh Habeeb, Palestine Think Tank 9/22/2008
     [Al Shj’aya, East Gaza City, September 22, 2008] The faulty Israeli policy of collective punishment has had a great effect on civilians lives in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Those people are being punished for no reason but being part of the area they live in. In the Gaza Strip, the siege imposed since more year ago still going on. The West Bank is still under complete control of Israeli army and settlements swallow more Palestinian lands. In the Gaza Strip where I live there are many hidden stories for those punished people!
     I knew lately a story of people who were severely harmed by the Israeli army. I made all efforts, collected all data, hold up my Camera and then visited the house! In the house I was shocked with facts I saw; innocent people with no legs but sad and terrified hearts!
     "The morning of that day was cloudy, scary and vague. My heart was leaping up so fast and my 7-month fetus was quarreling inside of me. The more minutes advanced, the more my heart strongly and horribly was beating until the decisive moment happened. I saw amputated legs and hot blood covered my face." more.. e-mail

Turning the Palestinian Cause into Medusa
Sherri Muzher - Michigan, Palestine Chronicle 9/22/2008
     (Medusa, by Swiss painter Arnold Bocklin) In Greek mythology, there is a famous story about the beautiful Medusa who was turned into a horrific monster with hair of serpents. The transformation came about as "punishment" by the goddess Athena after the sea god Poseidon raped Medusa at Athena’s sacred temple. The story goes on to say that anyone who looked at Medusa afterward turned into stone.
     Like Medusa, the Palestinian Cause began as a lovely maiden; innocent and irresistible to anyone who loved justice. But she has been raped repeatedly by despotic Arab and Islamic regimes, as well as extremist groups either to increase their base of support or to divert the public’s anger at impotent policies. The Palestinian Cause has truly proven to be a great rallying cry, however insincere.
     But most bothersome has been the rape of the Palestinian Cause by the groups Fateh and Hamas.
     Both Fateh and Hamas have been seduced by their own self-importance and insatiable love for power. The internal strife led by these two groups is turning genuine supporters of Palestinian justice into stone. more.. e-mail

Palestinian politics on the road to nowhere
Mel Frykberg, Electronic Intifada 9/22/2008
     RAMALLAH, West Bank (IPS) Israeli-Palestinian peace talks appear to have hit a dead end, while efforts to bridge the yawning chasm which divides Hamas and Fatah politically and ideologically appear to be going nowhere.
     The two main streams of Palestinian politics are already locking horns over when the next legislative and presidential elections will be held, and whether Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, or Abu Mazen as he is better known, is legally entitled to stay in power beyond January 2009.
     Abbas said earlier that presidential elections would be held in January 2009 and legislative elections in January 2010. But he has now stated categorically that he would not step down until 2010. "I think that the elections for parliament and the presidency should take place together, in January 2010," he said last week.
     Abbas further said that any future unity government would have to respect agreements signed with Israel.
     The more militant factions in Hamas have stated they will not recognize Israel. But there are more moderate and pragmatic factions within the resistance movement who have hinted that some kind of future accommodation with Israel is possible. more.. e-mail

The Joke of Palestinian 'democracy'� under Fatah, Israel
Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine, Palestinian Information Center 9/20/2008
     Jockeying for an advantageous public posture vis-à-vis Hamas, the Fatah movement has been calling for the organization of presidential and parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
     The  proposal is being touted as the only way to resolve the enduring crisis between Fatah and Hamas, following the latter’s counter-coup in Gaza in June of last year.
     The proposal, however, seems to be  more of a  propagandist gambit  than a  sincere effort aimed at achieving inter-Palestinian reconciliation.
     And it doesn’t suggest that Fatah, now solidly backed and financed by the United States, has undergone a true democratic transformation.
     Indeed, Fatah today remains the same Fatah that only reluctantly and under American pressure agreed to allow general elections to take place in 2006- and only because Fatah leaders seemed then certain they would win. more.. e-mail

Remembering Sabra and Shatila Massacres
Mahmoud El-Yousseph, MIFTAH 9/22/2008
     Sabra and Shatila are two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, Lebanon where over two thousand Palestinians were massacred during three days in September 1982 by hundreds of Lebanese Phalange and Haddad militiamen with the aid and support of the Israeli Defense Forces.
     During the1982 Israeli invasion into Lebanon and siege of Beirut, U.S. Envoy Phillip Habib managed to have a written agreement whereby Palestinian fighters would leave Lebanon, providing a U.S. guarantee to the safety of Palestinian refugees left behind in the camps.
     After Palestinian fighters evacuated Lebanon, the Israeli army sealed off Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and established a command post at the Kuwaiti embassy, a seven-story building over looking both camps.
     Present at the command post were the primary architects of the atrocity: Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Chief of Lebanese Forces Intelligence Elie Hobeika, along with high-ranking Israeli army officials. more.. e-mail

Fly, Tzipora, Fly!
Uri Avnery, Palestine Chronicle 9/22/2008
     ’Will Tzipora the bird reach these heights? The heart hopes. The brain has its doubts.’
     The polls were wrong, as usual. And in a big way. As usual.
     Instead of winning by a huge margin, as predicted until the very last moment by all the polls, she just squeaked through. Of the 72 thousand or so registered Kadima members, only 39,331 troubled themselves to go to the polls, and among these she defeated Shaul Mofaz by just 431 votes.
     But a majority is a majority. Tzipi Livni was duly installed as Kadima chairperson.
     What does that say about the Israeli public?
     First of all: this is the victory of a person without a military background over someone with almost nothing apart from a military background.
     On the advice of his right-wing American political strategist, Stanley Greenberg, Mofaz emphasized the word "security" on every occasion, almost in every sentence. A popular talk-show turned this into a parody: Security, security, security, security.
     Well, it did not work. T-h-e general, the chief of Staff, the Defense Minister, was beaten by a mere woman devoid of any military experience (even if she did serve for 15 years in the Mossad.) more.. e-mail

Overcoming Shame in Postville
Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, The Jerusalem Report, Jerusalem Post 9/15/2008
     Since the 1990s, I had read scathing reports about the owners of the plant, the Rubashkin family, and their bad rapport with the town’s residents, about the unnecessary pain caused to animals through sloppy slaughtering practices and the "enslavement" of foreign workers and abuse through poor wages, beatings, child labor and 17-hour work days.
     I had come along with hundreds of others from Minnesota and Chicago to protest the federal raid and imprisonment of 381 undocumented workers from Agriprocessors in May. It was the largest raid of any single site in the history of the U.S. Now fathers and mothers are separated from families, facing five months imprisonment and eventual deportment.
     ....As I entered St. Bridget’s Church in Postville for an interfaith service conducted in English, Spanish, and Hebrew, I felt a deep need to do my own teshuva, to ask God to forgive me for not having acted sooner, for continuing to eat Rubashkin meat, for being entertained by the stories coming out of Postville about greed, power and the corruption that comes with it. In Israel, the Agriprocessors story would have been reported as just another one of the endless scandals that divide religious from secular or politicians from law-abiding citizens, stuff that fuels the fires of inter-family gossip, but in the quiet of the American Midwest, the crisis of Postville has been a festering sore, a gaping wound in Jewish-Christian relations. more.. e-mail

The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte
Stanley Heller, International Middle East Media Center News 9/20/2008
     September is a month of memorials. Back in 1982 from September 15th to 18th Lebanese fascists militia supported by Israel massacred at least 1,300 people in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla. The 28th of September in 2000 saw the start of the al-Aksa intifdada, a mass uprising of Palestinians in the occupied territories that was sparked by the “visit” of Ariel Sharon guarded by 1,000 soldiers to the Muslim holy site, the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem. It was Sharon as Defense Minister in 1982 who directed the fascists Lebanese militia to enter the camps. Later he claimed he was “shocked, shocked” that they would massacre the Palestinians there.
     This year September 17th is the 60th anniversary of the anniversary of the assassination of Swedish Count Folk Bernadotte. He was the Vice-President of the Swedish Red Cross during World War II. He saved some 15,000 people from German concentration camps including approximately 8000 Danes and Norwegians and 7000 women of French, Polish, Czech, British, American, Argentinian and Chinese nationalities. He brought them out in buses painted white all over except for the Red Cross. It was dangerous work. The drove on the roads while Allied bombers pummeled Nazi targets with the un-surgical precision of those days.
     In 1944 when Sweden was making serious attempts to rescue Hungarian Jews, the Swedish representative of the U.S. War Refugee Board got a group of Swedish Jews together and asked them to recommend someone to go to Hungary to lead the effort. Their choice was Bernadotte. However, the Hungarian government wouldn’t allow him in and the legendary Raul Wallenberg was sent in his place. more.. e-mail

Jewish ’ultras’ defend morals with menace
Toni O'Loughlin, The Observer, The Guardian 9/21/2008
     Four months ago in the middle of the night, six men dressed in wide-brimmed black hats, black coats, white shirts and black trousers burst into the Jerusalem apartment of a young Jewish woman and taught her a lesson.
     Mikhail, who is reluctant to give her full name, had scandalised members of her ultra-orthodox Jewish community by leaving her husband and embracing a secular lifestyle. The men, all members of the theologically conservative Haredi branch of Judaism, tackled her to the ground, slammed her head against the floor and tied a rag around her mouth. One assailant sat on her head as the others kicked her while demanding to know the names of the men she was seeing.
     They also threatened to kill her if she did not leave the neighbourhood, which contains many secular as well as religious residents. ’A woman is only OK if she has a family, kids and a husband,’ said Mikhail with a sigh.
     Welcome to the new, increasingly orthodox, Jerusalem. The attack on Mikhail, although exceptionally brutal, was only the latest in a string of assaults over the past two years against Jewish women accused of immoral behaviour in the city. more.. e-mail

The Jewish State of Irony
Tirzah Firestone, Middle East Online 9/20/2008
     What a bitter irony it is for a people who have lived as the homeless ‘other’ for centuries to find itself in the position of forgetfulness now. Choking with grief, all I can manage to utter is: I am so sorry. Please believe me, this is not Judaism! Says Rabbi.
     BOULDER, Colorado – Last week I was stopped in my tracks by a letter from Mira. The four-story apartment building next door to her home in East Jerusalem, home to seven families in the Beit Hanina neighbourhood, was demolished before her eyes. Mira described watching border police, ambulances, fire trucks and police cars close off her street and surround Abu Eisheh’s house. They pulled out neighbours by force, beating those who refused to move and taking them to the hospital.
     Home demolitions occur by the hundreds in East Jerusalem, and I have witnessed them with my own eyes. As a rabbi, appalled by Israel’s policy of managing Jerusalem’s demographics by destroying the homes of its unwanted residents, I have felt it was my duty to visit victims in the aftermath of their loss, paying condolence calls, as it were, to the bereaved. People like Abu Eisheh and scores like him are, of course, neither terrorists nor schemers, but simple people who have “built illegally” in a city looking to limit its Arab population. more.. e-mail

Ramadan under siege in Gaza
Eiman Mohammed in Gaza, Ma’an News Agency 9/20/2008
     Gaza’s sunsets this Ramadan are not greeted by the glittering of lantern light that traditionally illuminate the darkness during this month of difficult fasting. This year, as the night sets in and the Muslim’s call to prayer grows louder, the ambient noise of the Gaza streets disappears and sidewalks empty. The difference, however, between day and night is not like it used to be.
     These days there is not much action in Gaza’s shops during the day, when people usually set out to buy vegetables and sweets for the fast-breaking meal, or new clothes in preparation for the end of Ramadan feast. This year the lack of food supplies means we don’t get our basic daily foods, let alone special fruits or pastries for Ramadan.As a result of the ongoing Israeli siege on Gaza strip, shoppers can’t get what they really need for Ramadan provisions.
     And that is just a nutshell description of Gaza this Ramadan, where the odd light-up crescent moon hung from a window does little to cheer up the frustrated population. more.. e-mail

Four crises are blocking a resolution in Jerusalem
Mahdi Abdul Hadi, Daily Star 9/19/2008
     There are varying conceptions in reading, understanding and presenting the question of Jerusalem by the concerned parties in the Middle East. These have led to a number of crises in negotiating Jerusalem. The first crisis is the differing views over what Jerusalem we are talking about. The logical and reasonable approach is to talk about Jerusalem according to the partition plan of United Nations Security Council Resolution 181 of 1947. Resolution 181 provides for the city to be a corpus separatum under international trusteeship and a center for two states, an open city or joint capital embracing a variety of identities and citizenships, Israeli, Palestinian as well as international.
     With the Oslo Accords of 1993, however, the terms of reference changed to the two-state-solution based on UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, which foresaw a division of the city along the pre-June 1967 armistice line. As the leading Palestinian negotiator, now and in Oslo, Ahmed Qorei, has put it: "Palestinians agreed to give up West Jerusalem in Oslo and they cannot afford to share East Jerusalem. more.. e-mail

Enough of the Jerusalem Mantra
Daniel Seidemann, Middle East Online 9/20/2008
     JERUSALEM – I was born American. Thirty-five years ago, I chose to become Israeli. My choice in no way reflects a lack of affection for the United States. But patriotism is monogamous: I am an Israeli patriot, and a platonic friend of the land of my birth. I have never voted in a US election and I belong to no US political party. I see myself as an observer of, rather than a participant in, American presidential election politics.
     But as a Jerusalemite, I do have a stake in the 2008 Presidential race, like it or not.
     Because like in past elections, the candidates and their surrogates are trying to use me – my life, my city—to score points with voters, bolster their pro-Israel credentials, and attack their opponent.
     Because both parties are mindlessly clinging to what I call "the Jerusalem mantra": swearing fealty to the view of Jerusalem as "the-eternal-undivided-capital-of-Israel-that-will-never-be-redivided". Just take a look at the 2008 Democratic and Republican national platforms: "Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths." (Democrats); and "...Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel and moving the American embassy to that undivided capital of Israel." (Republicans). more.. e-mail

Messing with Israel’s Zohan
Gilad Atzmon – LONDON, Middle East Online 9/19/2008
     “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” is a new American comedy film. It tells the story of Zohan Dvir (Adam Sandler), the IDF’s Number 1 counter-terrorism killing machine who has simply grown tired of his military murderous engagement. At a certain stage, he fakes his own death while in action in order to pursue his real dream: that of becoming a hairstylist in NYC.
     The film was anything but praised by the critics. The Sun gave the film one star and wrote: “the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine isn’t exactly the obvious choice of topic for a comedy – which is perhaps why this film is about as funny as a suicide bombing.”
     “By the end,” wrote Christopher Tookey of the Daily Mail, “I felt as though I had been carpet-bombed by comedy’s answer to Vladimir Putin. But, on second thought, Putin is funnier.”
     These are pretty harsh words for critics to write about a film. However, unlike the devastated critic, who didn’t hold back from putting the film down, I regard the film as an important document and another step towards a comprehensive understanding of the Jewish identity. more.. e-mail

Corrupt analogy
Khalid Amayreh, Palestinian Information Center 9/16/2008
     “The ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Israel was not an unintended consequence, or fortuitous occurrence, or even a ‘miracle’, as Israel’s first president Chaim Weizmann later proclaimed; it was the result of long and meticulous planning,” Ilan Pappe, Professor of Political Science at Haifa University, in his book ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’.
     This week, the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sought to rewrite history by equating the violent uprooting and dispersal across the four winds of the native Palestinian community at the hands of Zionist Jews with the ideologically-motivated immigration of Jews from the Middle East to Palestine.
     Speaking during a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on 13 September, Olmert was quoted as saying that he felt sorry for the plight of both Palestinian and Jewish refugees.
     “I join in expressing sorrow for what happened to the Palestinians and also for what happened to the Jews who were expelled from Arab states.”
     Olmert’s largely facetious remarks coincided with highly controversial statements made by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on the sensitive subject of the right of return for Palestinian refugees uprooted from their country more than sixty years ago. more.. e-mail

Tzipi Livni Needs Three Things
Nadia Hijab, Middle East Online 9/19/2008
     Here’s one major difference between Tzipi Livni, the new leader of Israel’s Kadima party, and her rivals for leadership: There are no war crime charges against her.
     In what must be a relief for some in Israel, Livni doesn’t have to look over her shoulder in case she gets arrested when she gets off a plane overseas. Kadima leadership contenders Shaul Mofaz and Avi Dichter are among several Israeli generals that face this possibility due to civil suits brought against them for war crimes. Dichter canceled a trip to Britain in 2007 to avoid arrest.
     So Livni can travel. But can she deliver peace with the Palestinians? She has on occasion expressed more sympathy towards the Palestinians than others and has led Israel’s negotiating team since Annapolis. Her Palestinian counterparts have welcomed her victory.
     If Livni can cobble together an Israeli cabinet, she is likely to continue the peace process. But Israeli-Palestinian peace is more elusive today than at any time since the first Oslo agreement was signed in 1993. more.. e-mail

30 years of peace talks: some lessons
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 9/20/2008
     This week is noteworthy in Arab-Israeli history, because it commemorates two historic events: the Camp David Accords of September 1978 and the Oslo Accords of September 1993. Exactly 30 and 15 years ago, these two agreements were painstakingly negotiated between Arab parties and Israelis, with external assistance. Both held out the promise of breakthroughs for permanent Arab-Israeli peace and coexistence.
     History has turned out to be more complex than the promises of what happened those two Septembers past. Arab-Israeli peace turned out to be much more erratic and cold than many had hoped. Terrible conflicts, characterized by mutual brutality have persisted, with new actors joining the fray every few years. Not surprisingly, Palestinians, Syrians, Israelis and others continue to probe for possible routes to permanent peace agreements, without much success.
     The peacemaking legacy of Camp David and Oslo remains thin, but real. It is certain that Arabs and Israelis, with assorted and eternal mediators, will try again to negotiate permanent peace agreements, perhaps starting as early as next spring. If so, it seems worthwhile trying to identify the lessons of the Camp David and Oslo experiences. Here is my list of key lessons learned. more.. e-mail

Twilight Zone / Dead on Arrival
Gideon Levy, Palestine Think Tank 9/19/2008
     Nothing helped. Not the pleas, not the cries of the woman in labor, not the father’s explanations in excellent Hebrew, nor the blood that flowed in the car. The commander of the checkpoint, a fine Israeli who had completed an officers’ course, heard the cries, saw the women writhing in pain in the back seat of the car, listened to the father’s heartrending pleas and was unmoved. The heart of the Israeli officer was indifferent and cruel. For over an hour, he would not let the car with the young woman in labor pass through the Hawara checkpoint on the way to the hospital in Nablus. Not to Tel Aviv; but to Nablus; not for shopping, not for work; but to get to the hospital in an emergency. Nothing helped.
     Nahil Abu-Rada is not the first woman to lose her baby this way because of the occupation, and she won’t be the last. At least a half-dozen checkpoint births that ended in death have been documented here over the years, and nothing has changed. No punishments, no lessons, not even a request for forgiveness from parents who lose their children because of the coldheartedness of soldiers. more.. e-mail

UN office: Palestinian children’s rights being violated
Mel Frykberg, Electronic Intifada 9/19/2008
     RAMALLAH, West Bank (IPS) - Palestinian children continue to be victims of disproportionate and indiscriminate violence from the both the Israeli occupation and internal Palestinian infighting in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in its August report expressed concern for the inadequate protection afforded Palestinian children.
     "In one of the gravest incidents in July, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy, Ahmad Husam Yousef Mosa, was shot in the head with live ammunition and killed by the Israeli border police following an anti-barrier demonstration in Nilin village in the central West Bank," the report says.
     The following day, 15-year-old Yousef Ahmad Amira was declared brain dead after he too was shot in the head at close range with several rubber-coated metal bullets, also by Israel’s paramilitary border police.
     "Another 44 children were injured this month, all but one in the West Bank. Two children were killed and seven injured in Palestinian internal fighting in the Gaza Strip in July." more.. e-mail

Dutch bank must disinvest from rights abuses
Jeff Handmaker - The Electronic Intifada, International Middle East Media Center News 9/19/2008
     On 26 August 2008, a group including representatives of the Amsterdam-based group A Different Jewish Voice and a prominent Dutch development organization attended a meeting at the offices of SNS Asset Management in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The group also included two international law specialists, including myself.
     We were there to urge the bank -- a full subsidiary of SNS Bank, one of the top five banks in the Netherlands -- to withdraw its investments in the French Veolia Corporation because of Veolia’s direct and indirect involvement in Israel’s violations of international law in occupied East Jerusalem.
     Our group was concerned over Veolia’s involvement in the City Pass consortium to construct a light rail line on occupied and annexed Palestinian land in East Jerusalem. The first phase of the light rail project begins in the settlement of Pisgat Zeev, where illegal construction of houses and infrastructure first began under Israeli military oversight in 1982. The light rail is planned to run through other settlements, including Neve Yaakov. It will pass over a showcase bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava, a prominent Spanish architect, and eventually terminate at Mount Herzl in West Jerusalem. more.. e-mail

A refugee’s open letter to Mahmoud Abbas
Abdelfattah Abusrour, Electronic Intifada 9/19/2008
     Dear Mr. President:
     My name is Abdelfattah Abdelkarim Hasan Ibrahim Mohamad Ahmed Mostafa Ibrahim Srour Abusrour. I was born in the Aida Refugee camp, on rented land from Palestinian owners from Bethlehem. My two eldest brothers as well as my father and his father and all those who were born before them, originate form Beit Nateef village destroyed on 21 October 1948. My mother was born in Zakareya village, also destroyed in 1948 by the Zionist bandits.
     I grew up in the Aida refugee camp. When I was four years old, I remember most of the people in the camp hiding in a cave behind our house. I remember the old people talking about the war. I remember the sky full of planes, and all of the young children covered by black blankets, and cherished by their mothers.
     I remember the first curfew after the Israeli occupation in Aida camp in 1968. I remember the first Israeli soldier, who was an old Iraqi Jew of about 60 years old. I remember the day my second brother was invited for an interview by the military occupation administration in 1972, and never returning back to the house. I remember that he was exiled six months later, without any confession, without any judgment or court sentence. more.. e-mail

The Joke of Palestinian 'democracy' under Fatah, Israel
Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine, Palestine Think Tank 9/19/2008
     Jockeying for an advantageous public posture vis-à-vis Hamas, the Fatah movement has been calling for the organization of presidential and parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
     The proposal is being touted as the only way to resolve the enduring crisis between Fatah and Hamas, following the latter’s counter-coup in Gaza in June of last year.
     The proposal, however, seems to be more of a propagandist gambit than a sincere effort aimed at achieving inter-Palestinian reconciliation.
     And it doesn’t suggest that Fatah, now solidly backed and financed by the United States, has undergone a true democratic transformation.
     Indeed, Fatah today remains the same Fatah that only reluctantly and under American pressure agreed to allow general elections to take place in 2006- and only because Fatah leaders seemed then certain they would win. more.. e-mail

Abu Mazen: don’t mess with the right of return
Khalid Amayreh, Palestinian Information Center 9/14/2008
     In recent days, the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas made two extremely worrying pronouncements  with regard to the paramount issue of the Right of Return.
     Last week,  he  told Al-Arabiya TV that he couldn’t demand that all Palestinian  refugees be allowed to return to their homes and towns from which they were uprooted when Israel was created in Palestine more than sixty years ago.
     This week,  the PA President  uttered even more daring remarks in an interview with the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, published Sunday, 14 September.
     He suggested that Israel was justified in refusing to allow the repatriation of the refugees.
     "We understand that if we demand of you that all the five million refugees be allowed to return to Israel, the State of Israel would be destroyed. But we must talk about compromise and see what numbers you can accept,"� Abbas was quoted as saying. more.. e-mail

Palestinian Unity: Goal or Mantra?
Ramzy Baroud, Middle East Online 9/19/2008
     Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa used exceptionally tough language during a Cairo news conference 9 September, when he lashed out at Palestinian factionalism, saying that the League is going as far as studying the possibility of imposing sanctions on quarrelling Palestinians.
     "I am extremely angry with the Palestinian organisations... We are studying the measures to be taken in the face of the current Palestinian chaos," he said, after a meeting of Arab foreign ministers. He added, "the sanctions would not be against anyone in particular. They would be against the party which obstructs reconciliation and maybe against everyone or against the organisation which obstructs Egyptian efforts."
     Considering Moussa’s devoted efforts in the past aimed at solidifying a Palestinian front and generating a semblance of a Arab unity in its support, one can only sympathise with the head of the League’s frustration and indeed "extreme anger". more.. e-mail

Policies of ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem
International Solidarity Movement 9/15/2008
     Jerusalem Region - In the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, 28 Families are facing the threat of eviction from their homes. In a process of Judaisation of East Jerusalem, Israel aims to erase the presence of 28 Palestinian families by forcefully evicting them from their homes. Israeli settlers have already occupied half the house of the Al Kurd family to enforce this policy of ethnic cleansing. The 24-hour presence of international solidarity activists has been organised for the last two months in the hope of offering support for the Al Kurds family home.
     The neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah was constructed to house 28 refugee families that fled the violence of the 1948 war. This housing project was built by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the Jordanian Government in 1956. With the Israeli occupation following the 1967 war, settlers started claiming ownership of the land the neighbourhood was built on.
     After long legal proceedings it was proved in 2006 the settlers did not, in fact, own the land and had produced false documents to support their claims. In 2001, however, settlers had already occupied half of the Al Kurds family home. Fearing settlers would expand into more houses in the neighbourhood, the Al Kurds family and the neighbourhood as a whole asked for help from local and international Human Rights groups. more.. e-mail

Palestinian Refugees: Past and Present
Nadia Awad, MIFTAH 9/15/2008
     How did Palestinians become refugees?
     The majority of Palestinians became refugees during the wars of 1948 and 1967. The indigenous inhabitants of Palestine, most Palestinians were dispossessed, forced to flee or were expelled when the state of Israel was created in 1948. Jewish terrorist groups such as Haganah, Irgun and the Stern Gang terrorized and destroyed Palestinian villages, killing entire Palestinian families. Thirty-four massacres were documented by Zionist historian Benny Morris to have occurred within just a few months, including in Al-Abbasiyya, Beit Daras, Bir Al-Saba’, Al-Kabri, Haifa, and Qisarya. These attacks were part of Plan Dalet (also known as Plan D), which aimed to expel as much of the Palestinian population as possible. Zionist militants killed an estimated 13,000 Palestinians and forcibly evicted 737,166 Palestinians from their homes and land. Five hundred and thirty-one Palestinian villages, approximately 50% of all the Palestinian villages, were entirely depopulated and destroyed. By 1948, 85% of the Palestinians living in the areas that became the state of Israel had become refugees. more.. e-mail

Jaffa’s 'renewal' aims at expulsion of Palestinians
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada 9/15/2008
     The ground floor of Zaki Khimayl’s home is a cafe where patrons can drink mint tea or fresh juice as they smoke on a water pipe. Located by Jaffa’s beach, a stone’s throw from Tel Aviv, the business should be thriving.
     Khimayl, however, like hundreds of other families in the Arab neighborhoods of Ajami and Jabaliya, is up to his eyes in debt and trapped in a world of bureaucratic regulations apparently designed with only one end in mind: his eviction from Jaffa.
     Sitting on the cafe’s balcony, Khimayl, 59, said he feels besieged. Bulldozers are tearing up the land by the beach for redevelopment and luxury apartments are springing up all around his dilapidated two-story home.
     He opened a briefcase, one of five he has stuffed with demands and fines from official bodies, as well as bills from four lawyers dealing with the flood of paperwork.
     "I owe 1.8 million shekels [$500,000] in water and business rates alone," he said in exasperation. "The crazy thing is the municipality recently valued the property and told me it’s worth much less than the sum I owe." more.. e-mail

Israel’s Dark Arts of Ensnaring Collaborators
Jonathan Cook, MIFTAH 9/15/2008
     Israel’s enduring use of Palestinian collaborators to entrench the occupation and destroy Palestinian resistance was once the great unmentionable of the Middle East conflict.
     When the subject was dealt with by the international and local media, it was solely in the context of the failings of the Palestinian legal system, which allowed the summary execution of collaborators by lynch mobs and kangaroo courts.
     That is beginning to change with a trickle of reports indicating the extent of Israel’s use of collaborators and the unwholesome techniques it uses to recruit them. "Cooperation," it has become clearer, is the very backbone of Israel’s success in maintaining its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
     Collaboration comes in various guises, including land dealers, who buy Palestinian-owned land to sell it to settlers or the Israeli government; armed agents who assist Israeli soldiers in raids; and infiltrators into the national organizations and their armed wings who foil resistance operations. more.. e-mail

Rights group: 13 Palestinian children in administrative detention
Press release, B'Tselem, Electronic Intifada 9/15/2008
     According to B’Tselem’s figures, on 31 August 2008, Israel was holding 13 Palestinian minors, two of them girls, in prolonged administrative detention in Israel, in breach of law. At the end of June 2008, 730 Palestinians were being held in administrative detention in Israel.
     The two girls, Salwa Salah and Sarra Sirwah, both 17 years old, were detained on 5 June 2008 in the middle of the night and are being held in Damon Prison together with adult female prisoners. The detention orders against them were issued for four months, but can be extended an indefinite number of times for up to six months each time.
     Administrative detention is carried out solely on the basis of an administrative order, without a judicial determination, without an indictment being filed, and without a trial. Given that administrative detention infringes the right to freedom and due process, and in light of the clear danger of abuse, international law imposes rigid limitations in its use.
     Over the years, Israel has detained Palestinians for long periods of time without bringing them to court or even telling them of the suspicions against them. When detainees appeal their detention, neither they nor their attorneys are allowed to see the allegedly incriminating evidence. By acting in this way, Israel shows utter disregard for defenses available to suspects in Israeli and international law, which are intended to ensure the right to liberty and due process, the right of persons to state their case, and the presumption of innocence. more.. e-mail

Saliman, Amos or Sara
Awad Abu Freih, Ha’aretz 9/16/2008
     In 2005, the High Court of Justice ruled that the state, which operates schools in Bedouin villages in the Negev, is obligated to build safe access roads to them. Specifically, the court ordered construction of a paved road to the school in al-Fur’a. But the relevant ministries were unmoved by the ruling; access to this school is still via an unpaved road. Over 1,000 students continue to use it daily.
     The threat posed by the lack of safe, comfortable roads has been proved: In 2006, Saliman al-Atrash, 9, was killed while riding the bus to school. Two schoolbuses traveling in opposite directions on the narrow, unimproved road passed each other at close range. Atrash, who had stuck his head out the window, was killed.
     The High Court petition that the Forum for Arab Education in the Negev submitted against the Education Ministry following this incident included photos demonstrating the extent of the danger: The roads are studded with potholes and deep ruts. In the winter, they are often flooded, while in summer, the dust obscures other vehicles as well as the roads themselves. more.. e-mail

So You Think You Can Dance?
Omar Barghouti – Jerusalem, Palestine Chronicle 9/15/2008
     African-American dancer, Abdur-Rahim Jackson (center) was forced to perform twice at Israeli airport. (Photo: NYT) Israeli security officers at Tel-Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport Tuesday forced an African-American member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater -- by far the best-known touring company in the United States -- to perform twice for them in order to prove he was a dancer before letting him enter the country with the dance company, the dancer told the Associated Press. But even after he complied, one of the officers suggested that Abdur-Rahim Jackson change his name. Jackson felt humiliated and "deeply saddened," according to an Ailey spokesperson, particularly because his Arab/Muslim sounding first name, given to him by his Muslim father, was the reason that he was the only member of his company subjected to this typical Israeli ethnic profiling.
     While still officially illegal in the U.S., ethnic profiling, described as "racist" by human rights groups, is widespread in Israel, at entrances to malls, public and private buildings, airports, etcetera. Israeli citizens and permanent residents with Arab names -- or often just Arab accents -- are commonly singled out for rough, intrusive and glaringly humiliating "security" checks. When I, an Israeli-ID holder, travel through the Tel Aviv airport, for instance, I always get stickers with the number "6" stamped on my passport, luggage and ticket. Israeli Jews, in comparison, get "1" or "2." A "6" leads to the most thorough and degrading check of luggage and person. The smaller figures, in comparison, mean you get whisked through security with just an x-ray scan of your luggage. A couple of years ago, people like me used to get a bright red sticker, while Israeli Jews got light pink or similarly "benign" colors. Some astute Israeli officials must have been alerted that color-coding passengers according to their ethnicity and/or religion was too overtly apartheid-like, so they switched to the supposedly "nuanced" number coding. No wonder Nobel-prize winning South African Bishop and anti-Apartheid leader Desmond Tutu described Israeli practices as constituting a "worse" form of apartheid -- it is far more sophisticated than the original version. more.. e-mail

Don’t dance for apartheid
Omar Barghouti, Electronic Intifada 9/15/2008
     Israeli security officers at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport last week forced an African-American member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater -- by far the best-known touring company in the United States -- to perform twice for them in order to prove he was a dancer before letting him enter the country with the dance company, the dancer told the Associated Press. But even after he complied, one of the officers suggested that Abdur-Rahim Jackson change his name. Jackson felt humiliated and "deeply saddened," according to an Ailey spokesperson, particularly because his Arab/Muslim sounding first name, given to him by his Muslim father, was the reason that he was the only member of his company subjected to this typical Israeli ethnic profiling.
     While still officially illegal in the US, ethnic profiling, described as "racist" by human rights groups, is widespread in Israel, at entrances to malls, public and private buildings, airports, etc. Israeli citizens and permanent residents with Arab names -- or often just Arab accents -- are commonly singled out for rough, intrusive and glaringly humiliating "security" checks. When I, an Israeli-ID holder, travel through the Tel Aviv airport, for instance, I always get stickers with the number "6" stamped on my passport, luggage and ticket. Israeli Jews, in comparison, get "1" or "2." A "6" leads to the most thorough and degrading check of luggage and person. The smaller figures, in comparison, mean you get whisked through security with just an x-ray scan of your luggage. A couple of years ago, people like me used to get a bright red sticker, while Israeli Jews got light pink or similarly benign colors. Some astute Israeli officials must have been alerted that color-coding passengers according to their ethnicity and/or religion was too overtly apartheid-like, so they switched to the supposedly "nuanced" number coding. No wonder Nobel-prize winning South African Bishop and anti-Apartheid leader Desmond Tutu described Israeli practices as constituting a "worse" form of apartheid -- it is far more sophisticated than the original version. more.. e-mail

Man of Peace Swimming against the Current
Nicola Nasser – The West Bank, Palestine Chronicle 9/15/2008
     Abbas is determined to swim against the current to prove that he is the ’unrelenting Palestinian partner.’
     For the first time, since the U.S.-hosted Annapolis conference on November 27 last year re-launched the Palestinian -- Israeli negotiations, which were interrupted by the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 after the collapse of the Camp David trilateral summit, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas came out for the first time on record in Cairo on September 6 to "doubt" striking a peace deal with Israel "by the end of the year because very little time is left;" on September 10 he reiterated his skepticism in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz.
     Accordingly he dispelled U.S. President George W. Bush’s pledge to reach such a deal before his term ends and at the same time practically announced that peace talks have now been frozen for at least a year by the government changes in Washington and Tel Aviv. Abbas was reportedly scheduled to hold his last meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, in Jerusalem on September 16, one day before Kadima, Olmert’s ruling party elects his successor, ahead of his scheduled meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House on September 25. It seems all the partners to the Annapolis process are trying to strike a last minute impossible deal or simply saying good by to each other. more.. e-mail

’The Forgotten Fighter’: Nablus’s Will to Live
Frank Barat, Palestine Chronicle 9/15/2008
     Many Palestinians that I met during my travels in the West Bank told me that to know what Palestine really was about and meant, I had to go to Nablus. Most of them also told me that Nablus was their favourite city.
     After spending 5 weeks there this summer, I understand why.
     Arriving from Ramallah (on the fastest taxi/service ride I have ever experienced) the first thing you see on arriving in Nablus is its most famous checkpoint: Huwara.
     Huwara, its people and its colour. Yellow.
     Yellow like the hundreds of taxis and services parked on both sides of the checkpoint. You need them to leave the city and to get inside the city. Since the start of the second intifada, entry to Nablus by car or truck has mostly been forbidden. You cross the checkpoint on foot, on your way in and out.
     Once in a service (cheaper taxis that take people from one set stop to another, most of them old Mercedes) it takes only 5 mins to reach Nablus’ vibrant city centre. more.. e-mail

Harvesting with hope in Gaza
Report, PCHR, Electronic Intifada 9/11/2008
     On a hot afternoon during the month of Ramadan, there are few better places to be than resting beneath the shade of an orchard of guava trees, with the scent of fresh ripening fruit wafting around you. Farmer Sa’id al-Agha sits quietly, his eyes resting on his fruit trees. "My father and my grandfather both grew up here, farming guavas, and I’ve lived here all my life" he says. "This land is in my blood."
     Sa’id al-Agha farms 30 dunams of guava plantations in Mawasi, in the southwestern Gaza Strip, where the loamy soil also encourages date palms and citrus trees to thrive (a dunam is the equivalent of 1,000 square meters). His Mawasi farm is a tranquil haven in Gaza, which has one of the highest population densities in the world. There are some 120 guava farms dotted around Mawasi, and between them the farmers and their families cultivate more than 2,500 dunams of guavas. August and September are the height of the Gaza guava season, and we can hear workers calling to each other as they harvest the fruit by hand. more.. e-mail

Not One Cent For Gaza
Yvonne Ridley, Information Clearing House 9/9/2008
     It seems the Palestinian leader is overseeing the brutal siege of his own people in Gaza without a care or thought for them.
     JUST when you think the Zionist leaders have peaked in arrogance and the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has peaked in ignorance, a new scheme comes along that is almost beyond belief, prompting me to wonder if they are all taking crack cocaine.
     Apparently Defence Minister Ehud Barak and the Pharonic Mubarak opened serious discussions about the deployment of an Arab force in the Gaza Strip consisting largely of Egyptian and some Saudi troops.
     Apparently the two said they would eventually like to expand the deployment of Arab and international forces to the West Bank as well, with those troops consisting largely of Jordanian forces, according to the Israeli plan.
     The reason for this nonsense? Well I believe it is because Hamas, the democratically elected government (certainly in Gaza) is doing such a good job of maintaining law and order and are growing in popularity with ordinary Palestinians that their continued rise is viewed as a huge threat ... not just to the Zionist interlopers but to the rest of the leadership in the Arab world. more.. e-mail

Narratives under siege: This land is in my blood
PCHR, Palestine News Network 9/12/2008
     Gaza - Guava farmer Sa’id Al-Agha is harvesting with his friend Mohammed Al-Ziq. If Gaza farmers could export their produce out of the Strip, the Gazan farming industry would flourish.
     On a hot afternoon during the month of Ramadan, there are few better places to be than resting beneath the shade of an orchard of guava trees, with the scent of fresh ripening fruit wafting around you. Farmer Sa’id Al-Agha sits quietly, his eyes resting on his fruit trees.
     ’My father and my grandfather both grew up here, farming guavas, and I’ve lived here all my life’ he says. ’This land is in my blood.’
     Sa’id Al-Agha farms thirty donumms of guava plantations in Mawasi, in the south western Gaza Strip, where the loamy soil also encourages date palms and citrus trees to thrive (a donumm is equivalent to 1,000 square metres). His Mawasi farm is a tranquil haven in Gaza, which has one of the highest population densities in the world. There are some 120 guava farms dotted around Mawasi, and between them the farmers and their families cultivate more than 2,500 donumms of guavas. August and September are the height of the Gaza guava season, and we can hear workers calling to each other as they harvest the fruit by hand. more.. e-mail

Breaking the Siege of Gaza: Of Pirates, Provocateurs, and Peaceful Pests
Ed Gaffney, International Middle East Media Center News 9/12/2008
     On August 22, two small boats left the port of Larnaca in Cyprus bound for Gaza, with 44 peace activists from around the world on board. The captains and crew were seasoned sailors. Few of the activists had sea legs prior to this voyage.
     The names of the two boats that carried the activists to Gaza identify the movement’s purposes. The SS Free Gaza expresses the central purpose of the action: “to break the siege that Israel has imposed on the civilian population of Gaza…, to express our solidarity with the suffering people of Gaza, and to create a free and regular channel between Gaza and the outside world.” The SS Liberty honors the memory of 34 American sailors killed and over 170 sailors severely injured on the USS Liberty, which came under attack by Israeli fighter planes and torpedo boats in the Mediterranean on June 8, 1967.
     None on board the SS Free Gaza or SS Liberty could be certain that the State of Israel would regard their action as a benign humanitarian gesture. Indeed, if history is prologue, the voyagers had cause to wonder whether their own safety was in jeopardy. more.. e-mail

A blockade of young minds
Abdalaziz Okasha, The Guardian 9/11/2008
     My dream is to become a bone specialist. But the Israeli government won’t let me leave to pursue my studies abroad.
     This was supposed to be my first year of medical school. Instead, I am stuck here in Gaza in my father’s house inside the Jabalia refugee camp, with few options and no way out. After I finished high school last year, I decided to become a doctor. Gaza cries out for bone specialists, but the training I need is available only abroad.
     When I won a place at a medical college in Germany, my parents were proud. I was excited to follow my older brother, who is already studying there. In February, the German authorities granted me an entrance visa. I wasted no time in asking the Israeli authorities for permission to travel to Europe. But I was told that only patients in need of emergency medical evacuation would be allowed out - not students. more.. e-mail

Talk but no more
Ramzy Baroud, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/11/2008
     The Syrian-Israeli peace talks gambit is just that, for now.
     Few would argue that the indirect Israel-Syria talks through Turkish mediation, which were first announced 21 May, were a sign of political maturity and readiness for peace. In fact, while the discussions seemed concerned with the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Israel’s desire for security at its northern borders, the true objective behind the sudden engagement of Syria is largely concerned with Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas.
     A precarious report published in The Jerusalem Post -- citing a news report in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai on 2 September -- claimed that the Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has left Syria and moved to Sudan. "Palestinian sources told the paper that Meshaal had come to an understanding with Damascus whereby the Hamas chief would agree to leave the state," according to the report. It suggested that the indirect negotiations between Syria and Israel "may have played a part in the decision". Hamas soon denied the report. more.. e-mail

Everyone will divide Jerusalem
Haaretz Editorial, Ha’aretz 9/12/2008
     Every time an election looms, be it for the Knesset, local government, or a party primary, the "who will divide Jerusalem" issue miraculously returns to raise the emotional temperature.
     Ehud Olmert was the first to contribute the threat to divide Jerusalem to populist politics, when he charged more than a decade ago that "Peres will divide Jerusalem." Then he tried to persuade everyone that Ehud Barak would not divide the city, and finally, as Kadima’s leader, he agreed to discuss the city’s partition in talks with the Palestinians.
     Yesterday, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, Jacob Walles, introduced the issue of Jerusalem into Kadima’s primary campaign when he told the newspaper Al-Ayyam that Israel had agreed to discuss dividing the city. Since Olmert and Tzipi Livni are the ones presently conducting the talks, the immediate beneficiary of the renewed threat to divide the city was Shaul Mofaz, who left the Likud but remained there ideologically. more.. e-mail

A Palestinian state first
Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/11/2008
     In 2001, Israelis and Palestinians turned away from negotiations. Their differences seemed insurmountable and the alternatives to talks seemed beguiling: many Israelis advocated "letting the IDF win", while many Palestinians hoped a deeper crisis would prompt the international community to intervene to rescue them. Following seven years in which the situation has grown worse in every respect imaginable, the parties find themselves again having virtually the same conversations about the same issues. And faced again with a fractured Israeli coalition and with contentious arguments about the future of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees, voices on each side are calling upon the parties to quit -- to turn away from negotiations.
     By most accounts, Sisyphus’s cycle seems poised to continue. But it need not. It is our hope that the Israeli government will at last make a proposal worthy of serious consideration by the Palestinians. Even if it does not, however, the Palestinians cannot resign themselves merely to rejecting the offers placed before them. Instead, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) must muster the courage to articulate a bold vision of its own for a two-state solution, one that is both clear and capable of realisation. Moreover, it must use every available tool to ensure that the implementation of that vision begins now, not in some hypothetical future. For, if past is prologue, we fear that by that point Palestinians and Israelis will find themselves in a corner from which they cannot both emerge unscathed. more.. e-mail

Patience frays
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/11/2008
     The look on the face of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as he exited meetings with Arab foreign ministers at a late evening hour Monday, or earlier in the week after talks with President Hosni Mubarak, was one of despair. Abbas is all but saying that he cannot conclude a final status deal with the Israelis as he had hoped and that he cannot keep on fighting -- or as hard -- his immediate political adversary, Hamas. Abbas is saying this to all Arab, including Egyptian, interlocutors and is not getting much support from either.
     The statements that were made Monday morning by Arab League Secretary- General Amr Moussa and Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal, the current chair of the Arab Foreign Ministers Council, upon the inauguration of a ministerial meeting at the League’s Cairo headquarters, echoed the look on the face of Abbas. Direct negotiations with the Israelis, as launched at the Annapolis peace meeting last November, "are hitting definite failure", in the words of Moussa, while the internal Palestinian feud has "become more detrimental to the Palestinian cause than the Israeli occupation might be," according to Al-Faisal. more.. e-mail

Overcoming our whirlwinds
Saliba Sarsar, Ha’aretz 9/12/2008
     Dan Bar-On had a story about how he learned to see things through Palestinian eyes. An Israeli Jew, born in Haifa to refugees who had left Nazi Germany in 1933, Dan was a psychology professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and he had long been interested in seeing his nation live in peace with its Palestinian neighbors. At a certain point back in the mid-1990s, however, he realized, as he told me in a formal interview I conducted with him last year, that "I could not live my life in this region without seeing Palestinians, without feeling their pain."
     Unable to tolerate such a situation, he began to watch the interactions of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli students as they participated in dialogue workshops under the auspices of BGU’s behavioral sciences department. Over a three-year period, Bar-On observed their encounters through a one-way mirror.
     Bar-On had already made a name for himself with his studies of the intergenerational after-effects of the Holocaust on the children and grandchildren of both survivors and Nazi perpetrators. Now, by watching the Jewish-Palestinian groups, he explained, he saw how it was easier to do Holocaust-related studies, "because I come from the victim side ... the good side." When it came to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, "I was much more involved [and] under the pressure that I belong to the side that occupies the Palestinians, who prevents them from having their own state, and it was difficult morally for me to be in that role." While he had no doubt that the Jews had a right to their national home, he realized that it was essential to find a way to also "accept the Palestinian need for such a right, and it was not an easy task for me to understand." more.. e-mail

The right of no return
Hasan Abu Nimah, Electronic Intifada 9/12/2008
     The debate on the Palestinian refugee problem has been confused and badly mishandled. While Israel maintains a consistent position, the Palestinians and the Arabs are often contradictory, vague and inconsistent.
     For some unclear reason, the refugee problem has, with time, been limited to only one aspect: the right of return. This narrowed the scope of discussion to an extent that not only shifted emphasis but also played well into the hands of the Israeli hardliners who stubbornly deny all refugee rights as well as denying Israel’s responsibility in creating the refugee problem, first through the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine and then by refusing to allow refugees to come back home. Yet the refugee problem entails more rights than the right of return and should be dealt with on that basis.
     The Arab Peace Initiative of March 2002 provides for the "achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194." more.. e-mail

Where Is The Rage?
Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Palestine Chronicle 9/10/2008
     Where is the rage? Where is the Arab chivalry (nakhwa)? Where is the Islamic passion (Rahmah)? Where are the Arab human rights organizations? Where are Abu Mazin and the rest of the Palestinian leadership? The UN refugee agency says there are about 2,500 Palestinians mostly widows and orphans, victims of the violence in Iraq, languishing for the past two years under canvas tents in the Iraqi desert at the Syrian border. These refugee camps lack basic services or medical facilities and the temperature exceeds 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in summer and dips below zero degrees in winter. Syria and Jordan have accepted more than two million refugees from Iraq but they have denied entry for Palestinian refugees who have been trying to escape the attacks and persecution in Iraq. There is no room for these most vulnerable Palestinians in the Arab countries that stretch from the Atlantic Ocean in the west along the southern shores of the Mediterranean to the borders of Persia in the east, and the Arabian Peninsula. What would happen if these refugees were Jews or French or Japanese?
     Arabs have developed a theory that the only way Palestinian refugees can return to their homes is if they are kept poor, unemployed, illiterate and sick. It never occurred to Arab policy makers that it is the Palestinians, who escaped the poverty and misery traps and invested in their own personal economic and educational potential, keep the Palestinian issue alive and defend the causes of the Arabs who betrayed them. It never occurred to Arab policy makers that the Zionists have used all their human and material resources to shape the policies of the Western powers and triumph over all the Arabs combined. more.. e-mail

Warehousing a ’Surplus People’
Jeff Halper, Palestine Chronicle 9/10/2008
     So rapid is the pace of systemic change in that indivisible entity known as Palestine/Israel that it almost defies our ability to keep up with it. The deliberate and systematic campaign of driving Palestinians out of the country in 1948 was quickly forgotten, the plight of more than 700,000 refugees becoming an invisible "non-issue." Instead a plucky, European, "socialist" Israel became the darling of even the radical left, and for many years after 1967 Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza also remained a non-issue. Even the mention of the word "occupation," not to mention "Palestinians," would get you labeled an anti-Semite in a wink of the eye, especially given the identity of Palestinians with terrorism in the 1970s and early ’80s. Only with the outbreak of the first Intifada in late 1987 did the situation of the! Palestinians under Israeli rule show upon the radar of public consciousness, in Israel as elsewhere, becoming a full-fledged and official "issue" with the opening of the Madrid and Oslo peace talks in the early 1990s. Still, Israeli ruled the all-important realm of PR. Once Arafat refused Ehud Barak’s "generous offer" - a mythical proposal which put a positive spin on a blatant attempt to impose an apartheid regime of "cantons" on the Palestinians - the campaign to re-demonize Arafat and his people proved a relatively simple exercise. Sharon’s imprisoning the Palestinian president in a dark room of his demolished headquarters, eliminating him politically, and I believe, physically, raised virtually no major opposition or even criticism in the international community. more.. e-mail

The Palestinian Horror Story
Sonja Karkar – Melbourne, Australia, Palestine Chronicle 9/10/2008
     ’I was the man paraded blindfolded and handcuffed.’
     Last night as I lay in bed wishing for sleep, I thought I saw a spider scurry across the moonlit ceiling. I closed my eyes only to have uninvited thoughts intrude in that drifting space between wakefulness and slumber.Images floated by. There in that nether world, shimmering threads criss-crossed the darkness of the unknown luring me to come closer until I saw the faces of millions caught in a gigantic, glistening spider’s web. The faces were my own.
     I was the girl screaming on a blood-stained beach strewn with the body parts of her family.I was the boy huddled against his father as the bullets sprayed around them.I was the woman faint with labour pains at the checkpoint willing her unborn child to stay in the womb a few more hours.I was the man paraded blindfolded and handcuffed, tortured and jailed for resisting the occupation of his people. I was the family of thousands clutching the memories of lifetimes as the bulldozers tore down the walls of their homes. I was the generations, terrorised and driven from their land and villages in one of the cruellest acts of inhumanity perpetrated by one people against another.I was Palestinian caught in a web of deceit, despised and shunned by a world blinded by Biblical myths and twenty-first century spin. more.. e-mail

Prisoner Release Yet another Propaganda Tactic
Akram Salhab, MIFTAH 9/11/2008
     As the bus of 199 prisoners (a number oddly short of 200) pulled into Ramallah recently, many will have seen the images of crying mothers and waving Palestinian flags as yet another indication of Israel’s willingness to take risks for peace. Newspapers were filled with op-eds praising Israel for its bravery and courage while the usual international voices hailed it as a step in the right direction.
     Much less coverage was given to the 1,751 Palestinians who have been arrested since the last busload of prisoners was released last November. Many of these prisoners were taken from their homes in the night and held without trial for months on end. For those lucky enough to face trial, they are subject to trial by a military court, which does not meet international standards, and are often convicted on secret evidence. It is fairly obvious, given the increase in the number of prisoners and the unjust conditions in which they are held, that Israel’s latest prisoner release has little to do with a change in policy. more.. e-mail

Playing ’make believe’
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/11/2008
     The US is pushing Abbas into another dead end, observes Despite official denial, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel are formulating a "shelf agreement" which both sides will consider the basis of further negotiations to be resumed in 2009.
     According to well-informed sources at the Muqataa, the headquarters of PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, Israel and the PA have come to the conclusion that a real breakthrough in the current negotiations is highly unlikely this year.
     Hence, efforts will be concentrated on reaching an interim agreement or a "shelf agreement" that would keep the process going and enable both sides to claim that the peace talks didn’t fail.
     Coincidentally, this is what the Bush administration is demanding, at least privately, in order to save the process from the danger of complete collapse.
     In truth, the Israeli-Palestinian talks, and despite the "nearness of a breakthrough", have utterly failed to tackle the main contentious issues such as Jerusalem, refugees and Jewish colonies in the West Bank. more.. e-mail

A New Palestinian Initiative That’s Hard to Read
Stuart Littlewood – London, Palestine Chronicle 9/10/2008
     I have just stumbled across an important-looking report entitled ’Regaining the Initiative - Palestinian Strategic Options to End Israeli Occupation’ by the Palestine Strategy Group. It is dated August 2008, but I don’t recall any fanfare to launch it.
     Were we actually meant to discover it? The only mention I’ve seen was buried deep within the text of an excellent article, ’Coexistence with Occupation Not an Option’ by Sam Behour, recently posted on the Palestine Chronicle website.
     Sam Behour is one of 45 politicians, academics, business people and others who participated in the study. He says the document "reflects an alternative to an official but impotent Palestinian discourse that will very shortly, in the judgment of most Palestinians, run head-on into a brick wall."
     The report is 52 pages long, maintains that Israel’s strategic calculations are wrong and sets out three strategic tasks for Palestinians if they are to bring the present sterile ’peace’ negotiations to an end and re-focus efforts towards achieving the Palestinian dream. more.. e-mail

Still struggling
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/11/2008
     Normally, the holy month of Ramadan, which in most Muslim countries began on 1 September, is a joyful season of charity, prayers and especially exquisite meals at the end of each day. However, for the majority of Palestinian families, hit hard by rampant unemployment and worsening poverty, this year’s Ramadan represents a real challenge to their meagre budgets. Moreover, the enduring rift between Fatah and Hamas, which has become particularly ugly manifestations, is also casting a dark shadow on Palestine.
     Many had hoped the advent of Ramadan would prompt the rival governments in the West Bank and Gaza to start over, as it were, and to free the hundreds of political prisoners each side is holding. However, far from this, the two parties’ security apparatuses, and especially Fatah’s, continued to round up alleged suspects by the dozens, in many cases subjecting them to physical and psychological mistreatment. The politically-motivated detentions, coupled with the worse plight of more than 10,000 Palestinian families whose sons and relatives are languishing in Israeli jails and detention centres, are undoubtedly leaving a depressing mark, especially during Iftar time, when families get together for the sunset meal to break the day’s fast. more.. e-mail

Palestinians in crisis: the Arab solution
Samir Ghattas, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/11/2008
     Arab mediation of internal Palestinian strife need not end up a circus if planned and executed well and backed by collective will.
     It is the regretful opinion of many that the internal Palestinian situation has hit a nadir unprecedented in the history of the Palestinian cause. Compounding their distress is that the Palestinian factions, themselves, are largely responsible for this new calamity that has afflicted the Palestinian people.
     A Palestinian stands at Jerusalem’s Old City Damascus gate ’In spite of the pessimism surrounding the Cairo-sponsored Palestinian dialogue, there remains a glimmer of hope of imposing an Arab solution that would supersede other proposed solutions and be binding on all sides’ The deepening internal fissure has gravely obstructed the Palestinian national project. To make matters worse, influential forces in the Palestinian factions have deliberately sabotaged all attempts to mend the rift that followed bloody internecine fighting and to restore a minimal level of national unity. Indeed, for reasons of their own, some of these factions or portions of these factions appear determined to entrench and perpetuate the current separation between Gaza and the West Bank and to hamper any initiative aspiring to realise inter- Palestinian reconciliation. more.. e-mail

Growing Up Occupied in Gaza
Ahmad Abed, MIFTAH 9/11/2008
     It was a very sudden moment when I realized that I was no longer a child. Occupation, intifada, Israel, enemy, Zionists, curfew, revolution, all these words were repeatedly spoken everywhere and I was very confused trying to understand what they all meant. No place to play or to meet my friends, no freedom. I could no longer go to the fields to pick oranges and grapes and have barbecues with my family and our friends’ families and I was forbidden from going to the sea after 7pm. It was a long list of restrictions that killed my childhood in one moment. Coping with all these dramatic and sudden changes was never easy. When someone misses a dear friend or a loved one it takes him or her a long time to recover, but when one loses one’s childhood suddenly and without notice, one can never recover.
     "The intifada started, we have to sacrifice to get back our stolen freedom and end occupation," my father told me. I was eight years old, the days became too long and the nights were very heavy and even longer. I felt that there would be no mornings. I was terrified, anxious and expecting the occupation to come at any time to raid and destroy our beautiful house, like they had already done to our neighbors when they arrested the father and his oldest son. I was too scared to look from my window to see how close they were. I learned to resist my curiosity as a child. I learned also to cope with the new safety regulations and to stay in my little room, in our house, in our city, or in other words in my cell in the big prison that is Gaza. more.. e-mail

Round two in Gaza
International Crisis Group - ICG, ReliefWeb 9/11/2008
     Step by methodical step, Hamas is consolidating its control over the Gaza Strip. The latest development followed a 25 July explosion that killed five of the movement’s military leaders in addition to a young girl. In response, the Islamist movement mounted a broad campaign during which it overran the Hillis family, one of Gaza’s most powerful and which includes prominent Fatah leaders; arrested hundreds of political activists; and raided more than 200 organisations and offices. The campaign largely wiped out the remains of the Palestinian Authority’s security services in Gaza, brought families and smaller political factions to heel, further encroached on civil society and crippled Fatah’s already limited political and military capacities to mobilise. In Arab capitals, there is continued talk of Palestinian reconciliation. In the U.S., there is discussion of a possible peace agreement between President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert. On the ground, in both Gaza and the West Bank, events are taking a decisively different turn.
     Since Hamas’s June 2007 takeover of Gaza, the U.S., Israel, several Arab states and elements within the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah have been counting on a strategy of weakening Hamas by isolating Gaza. That approach lies in tatters. The Islamist movement has scored a series of significant tactical victories. Internally, it has improved security and marginalised political challengers. It has reshaped the bureaucracy and pushed out those still loyal to the Ramallah-based government. Externally, it concluded a ceasefire with Israel, which is shaky but still holding. Hamas is developing its ties with outside actors, most recently Jordan. more.. e-mail

Smuggled lanterns
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/11/2008
     Seated patiently behind his desk, with a line of women applicants spilling out of his office into the hallway, Tareq Qandil, 35, is taking down names and handing out food. He heads a branch of the Islamic Rectitude Society in Al-Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza, and his society is giving away thousands of food parcels to poor families in an area where at least 20,000 people struggle to survive.
     Each family gets a cash handout and several food parcels during the month of Ramadan. But this year the society is working harder than usual. "Because more families have fallen under the line of poverty due to the siege, we will double the number of parcels we distribute. Many people are unemployed and thus depend on charity for survival," Qandil told Al-Ahram Weekly.
     Societies similar to Qandil’s have sprouted around Gaza to supplement the efforts of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which is also helping thousands of indigent families. Meanwhile, the stranded government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is also doing what it can. Social Affairs Minister in the Hamas government Ahmed Al-Kurd says his ministry is providing financial assistance to over 20,000 families in Gaza. more.. e-mail

Israel Moves to Judaize East Jerusalem
Mel Frykberg, Electronic Intifada 9/9/2008
     EAST JERUSALEM (IPS) - The Israeli government is attempting to Judaize Palestinian East Jerusalem, and maintain a Jewish majority against the demographic threat of a higher Palestinian birth rate.
     To that end, the Israeli government is enforcing a number of policies aimed at establishing facts on the ground in order to limit the number of Palestinian residents in the city.
     To make any future division of Jerusalem almost impossible, the Israeli authorities are applying a combination of strategies including limiting family reunification permits, redrawing Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, enlarging Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and establishing new illegal ones.
     Under international law the Green Line divides Jewish West Jerusalem from Palestinian East Jerusalem. However, Israel has illegally occupied East Jerusalem since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
     Last month Israel published tenders for the construction of 1,761 illegal housing units for Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem alone, according to the Israeli rights group, Peace Now. more.. e-mail

Next Stop, Ramallah
Akiva Eldar, MIFTAH 9/9/2008
     The West Bank not only provides housing solutions for Jerusalemites who cannot afford to buy a house with a garden in one of the city’s veteran neighborhoods. It also cuts their travel time from the coastal plain. First, Route 443 was paved for them, part of which (approximately 10 kilometers) runs through public and private Palestinian lands. Now it turns out that the route of the new rail line between the capital and Tel Aviv also crosses over the Green Line. The sections involved include only a few hundred meters in the area east of Latrun and a small area near Mevasseret Zion. But even the laws of the jungle that apply in the territories do not allow for the appropriation of lands for public uses unless the entire public - regardless of religion, race or nationality - will benefit from the fruits of the appropriation. Otherwise, the High Court of Justice is likely to do to the route of the rail line what it has already done several times to the route of the separation fence. In fact, the first ruling against the route of the fence affected the Beit Furiq section, not far from the route of the rail line. more.. e-mail

Sameera Surour: Loss and struggle in Ni’lin
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, Stop The Wall 9/9/2008
     40-year-old Sameera Surour was sitting on a wooden chair across from the intensive care unit on the first floor of the Ramallah Public Hospital, waiting in silence for word on her husband’s condition. I had not previously met Sameera, but I distinguished her from the other women sitting on those wooden chairs.
     I approached her and asked if she was the wife of Awwad Surour. She bowed her head, trying hard to keep herself from crying, although the tears were about to pour from her eyes. After an introduction, Sameera told me what happened to her husband, the family breadwinner, during a raid on their home during the dark night of September 1st, 2008.
     At about 3:00 am, the residents of the Surour house woke to a continuous banging and pounding on the door of their residence. Awwad sped to answer the door and to stop the pounding which scared the children as well as his elderly mother, who is ill and lives alone on the ground floor of the building. more.. e-mail

Shimon Peres: murderer, liar and hypocrite
Khalid Amayreh in Ramallah, Palestinian Information Center 9/7/2008
     Once again, we are affronted by another despicable statement by Shimon Peres, the deceitful elderly Israeli president who has spent a lifetime serving the evil Zionist enterprise.
     In a statement in Rome on Friday, 5 September, Peres called for barring  Hamas from taking part in any future elections in occupied Palestine until the group terminated all forms of resistance to the Nazi-like Israeli occupation.
     Peres utterly ignored the lingering reign of  murder and  terror inflicted for too long on the helpless and virtually unprotected Palestinians by a morally callous state that  thinks that the events which took place in Europe more than six decades ago justify the genocidal ethnic cleansing being meted out to Zionism’s victims.
     Peres, who apparently would have us believe that Israel is the oasis  of justice and freedom in the Middle East,  also accused the Palestinian Islamic movement of "intolerance"� and of indulging in "religious and military terror"� which he said was incompatible with democratic values. more.. e-mail

Gaza’s tunnel economy stumbles
Philip Rizk in Gaza City, Al Jazeera 9/9/2008
     Fayez Shweikh, one of Gaza’s up-and-coming businessmen, shakes his head as he considers his mixed fortunes.
     In the past year, he had significantly increased his household income by investing in a black-market, "tunnel" economy, which relied on smuggled goods siphoned through underground passages between Egypt and Gaza.
     Israel has always maintained that the tunnels were used to smuggle arms and explosives, but Shweikh says food, gasoline, and household treats -- chocolate, in particular - formed the basis of his trade.
     "I purchase goods from the chocolate company directly in Egypt; from such companies as Galaxy, from Ferrero or the Kinder Company. I buy, I transfer money and they send me the goods, by way of normal businessmen … tunnel businessmen.
     "But since the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel took hold several weeks ago, a trickle of Israeli goods have been entering Gaza." more.. e-mail

In praise of prisoner releases
Yossi Alpher, Jerusalem Post 9/9/2008
     The recent release of 198 Palestinian prisoners, many of them convicted of serious terrorist offenses - including two who were directly involved in the murder of Israelis prior to the Oslo Accords of 1993 - was a smart and courageous move by the otherwise highly problematic Olmert government.
     If it introduces some logic into criteria for future prisoner release, it could have a positive strategic effect beyond its immediate confidence-building impact on Israeli-Palestinian relations. Israeli military and civilian courts tend to sentence Arab terrorists and their accomplices to periods of incarceration that often far exceed the sentences meted out to Israelis for similar ’civilian’ offenses. A succession of governments has long been caught up in a terrorist-prisoner syndrome that combines draconian sentences as strong deterrent punishment with a refusal to use prisoner releases as confidence building gestures toward the Palestinian public and government. more.. e-mail

A new Palestinian strategy or the same failed one?
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 9/9/2008
     Is the Palestinian national movement about to abandon the two-state solution and demand instead a single democratic or bi-national state throughout Palestine-Israel?
     That is the intriguing possibility raised by a new paper published by an ad hoc group called the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG). The New York Times saw the report as another sign that, "Even among the most moderate Palestinians, the credo of a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is beginning to erode" (Isabel Kershner, "Support for 2-State Plan Erodes," The New York Times, 3 September 2008).
     The PSSG paper does indeed provide further evidence of the rapid crumbling of the dogma that the two-state solution is just and achievable and moreover that it has no plausible alternatives. And yet it is far less than a full embrace of the one-state solution. Rather, it would appear that among PSSG participants there are quite different and even contradictory goals. This is hardly surprising because as one participant, Sam Bahour wrote, the group included "Palestinians from all walks of life -- men and women, on the political right and left, secular and religious, politicians, academics, civil society and business actors, from occupied Palestine, inside Israel, and in the Diaspora." This group could never meet in one room due to Israel’s travel restrictions on Palestinians. The PSSG workshops were funded by the European Union and convened by the Oxford Research Group, a British non-governmental organization. more.. e-mail

Where time stands still
Dina Elmuti writing from Deir Yassin, Electronic Intifada 9/9/2008
     Ten kilometers outside of Jerusalem sits a forgotten town. Ten kilometers outside the Old City awaits a hidden piece of land I grew up hearing tales of. Ten kilometers outside -- far enough so the fragrant smell of dates, spices, harissa, the ubiquitous sweet dripping in syrup, and the aromatic smell of cinnamon from the baklava fresh out of the oven, is no longer discernible -- sits Givat Shaul.
     Givat Shaul, they called it, a name whose very sight now elicits a feeling that forever carries with it an expiration date, much like that of a carton of old milk. Givat Shaul, a blatant reminder of the theft, the incursion, the loss of innocence six decades ago. Givat Shaul, a shameless aide memoire of history in its every sinister sense of the word, of pillaging, of inoperable wounds that time could never erase. Givat Shaul, in all its gray desolateness, epitomizes the added insult to injury endured for what seems like an eternity now.
     Strategically covered in identical homes, lacking a single ounce of character, resembling those of your childhood Monopoly game but with nowhere near the innocence, it sits on edge somehow knowing its presence would never be permanent, that in time things would be vastly different. Time would only tell. more.. e-mail

Education, occupation, incarceration
Phil Leech, The Guardian 9/8/2008
     I first met Omar, a final year student at Birzeit University near Ramallah, in the summer of 2007. I was taking part in their Palestinian and Arabic studies programme for international students. Omar was their chief volunteer. He was particularly helpful to me when, in his own time and without payment, he helped me by arranging and translating interviews with young Palestinians. Without his kindness, I could not have completed my research.
     In the early hours of March 27 2008 Omar was arrested at his family home by the Israel Defence Forces. Since being taken into custody he has been transported across territorial borders from the West Bank to Mascobia detention centre in West Jerusalem (contravening the fourth Geneva convention), and was denied access to his family or legal counsel. Omar’s detention was then extended several times and access to legal counsel was systematically impeded. On May 1, Omar was formally placed under administrative detention and charged with throwing stones on an unspecified date between 2001 and 2002. The charges do not make reference to any specific incident making it impossible to defend against them. They also refer to Omar as an adult, even though he would have only been 16 at the time. more.. e-mail

Deadline looms for another student trapped inside Gaza
Report, PCHR, Electronic Intifada 9/8/2008
     During the last two days of August, the Egyptian authorities permitted approximately 3,300 people to cross the Gaza border at Rafah into Egypt "for humanitarian reasons."
     Those who entered Egypt included Gazan patients, students, and an undisclosed number of Egyptians who had been stranded inside the Gaza Strip. The sight of more than 50 busloads of travelers heading out of Gaza may have given the impression that movement restrictions are finally easing inside the Gaza Strip. But almost 900 other Gazans on board the buses were turned back at the border. Among them was 20-year-old Nevin Abu Taima from Rafah, who is still desperately trying to return to the US in order to resume her political science degree.
     "My family lives in the Brazil refugee camp, in [the south of] Rafah" Nevin says. "Our house was destroyed by the Israelis in 2005, and we spent the next six months living in a local UNRWA [the UN agency for Palestine refugees] school. We are a big family of 11 children, and some of my brothers and sisters also have families of their own, all of us were living together in one classroom. Can you imagine that?" Nevin left Gaza while her family was still being housed in the classroom. "I was only 16," she says. "But I had very good grades at school, and I was offered a United World College Scholarship in Italy. I left my home and lived in Trieste [in northern Italy] for two years. I had to study Italian and English at the same time, and after two years I received my international baccalaureate." more.. e-mail

A War Criminal From Gaza to Hebron
Kawther Salam, Palestine Think Tank 9/8/2008
     Some days ago I called some Palestinians to ask about the name of the Israeli military commanders who issued the military orders for raiding, destroying, vandalizing, ransacking, and shutting down three radio stations in the city of Hebron last week, and 40 more shops in Hebron this week.
     One of the people who I asked was Abu Al-Nur, a well known friend of the Israeli occupation officers in Hebron who heads one of the most powerful organizations in the city. Abu Al-Nur claimed that he did not know the names of his friends, the people who he meet regularly, once or twice each week. Abu Al-Nur told me to call the major of Hebron, as he was supposedly the only one who would be able to identify the Israeli commanders.
     I asked a PA “DCL” officer who has an Israeli counterpart at the Israeli “DCL” military office in Jabal Manouh in Hebron. The officer claimed that the Israelis never introduce themselves with their full names to the Palestinian counterparts, only being known by their first names. I called Abu Zuheir, the major of Hebron, while he was in Turkey on a business trip. He told me that the first name of the new Israeli military commander was Udi, and that the first name of the Israeli military governor from the DCL is Aviv. He claimed to not know the second name of both of them, and I believed the major. more.. e-mail

The Seasonal Occupation with Shas
Akiva Eldar, MIFTAH 9/8/2008
     "My opinion is my opinion, but the opinion of a Torah sage determines matters." This admission, by MK Haim Amsalem of Shas, was recently reported in the minutes of the Knesset. His remarks were made during a debate in the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on the "Shai Dromi bill," which absolves from criminal responsibility anyone who kills an intruder into his home or business. "I will request an audience with the rabbi once more and get clear instructions before the second and third readings," the MK continued.
     Not one member of the committee, most of whose members are secular, showed surprise or protested. The debate continued as if there were nothing more normal, in a modern democratic state, than for representatives of the public to get instructions from religious figures.
     In another few days, the opinion of the "Torah sage" - via the offices of Amsalem and 11 of his colleagues in the Knesset faction - may determine the fate of the government of Israel. Shaul Mofaz is preparing his skullcap for his pilgrimage to the home of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Shas’ spiritual mentor, in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood. And it will be interesting to see whether Tzipi Livni covers her head before going there to ask for the support of the soldiers of Shas. It might be worthwhile for the leading candidates in the race for Kadima’s leadership to think of a nice gift too. more.. e-mail

Why it won’t Work Without Jerusalem
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 9/8/2008
     Recently, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak floated an old/new idea of allowing certain Palestinian populated areas around Jerusalem to become the capital of any future Palestinian state. The center of the city, which includes the Old City, would remain in Israeli hands.
     Like each time before, the Palestinian leadership rejected the proposal outright, maintaining the PLO’s political line and all other Palestinian political parties that insist on east Jerusalem becoming Palestine’s capital.
     At this point in the Palestinians’ struggle, frankly, the people would expect nothing less from their leaders.The Palestinian people have been witness to several historic compromises, some of them more painful than others. In November 1988, late President Yasser Arafat declared Palestine’s independence during a special session of the Palestine National Council in Algiers. The future Palestinian state, he announced, would be established on the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. In other words, with one swipe of his mighty pen, Arafat excluded 78 percent of historical Palestine from the national struggle. Palestine would live peacefully side by side with Israel on the land Israel occupied in the 1967 War. Part of that land included east Jerusalem even though Israel unilaterally annexed this sector of the city later in that same year. more.. e-mail

Dealing in Damascus
Rami G. Khouri, Middle East Online 9/8/2008
     BEIRUT -- Regional and international players have been meeting in Damascus for thousands of years, to do one of two things: make war, or make a deal. This week’s four-way summit of the leaders of France, Syria, Qatar and Turkey in Damascus perpetuates the age-old tradition of deal-making -- in this case bargaining over strategic assets and positions, rather than fine-thread carpets.
     Bargaining to strike a deal in Damascus, whether in the world of commerce or politics, is defined by a few basic rules: the process takes time; it often requires third parties to come in and out of the picture like catalysts in a chemical equation; some gains are not calculated immediately but materialize later; and, a deal is consummated only if all sides obtain their key demands in a win-win situation.
     This week’s Damascus meeting testifies dramatically to the changing Middle East, which has become incredibly complicated in view of the many conflicts that are now entangled in a single large regional dynamic. It also points to greater changes ahead, because of Syria’s contradictory position on some core issues related to Iran, Lebanon and Israel. more.. e-mail

Rescuing Peace in the Middle East
Patrick Seale, Middle East Online 9/8/2008
     The four leaders who met in Damascus this past week have this in common: They recognize the extreme danger of the present situation in the region, and the unwelcome fact that U.S. President George W. Bush, far from acting to resolve conflicts, is largely responsible for the prevailing tensions.
     The mini-summit in the Syrian capital brought together President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani of Qatar, and their host, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
     These four leaders are not seeking to expel the United States from Middle East peacemaking. On the contrary, they concede that a U.S. role will ultimately be indispensable. But they feel the urgent need to step into the vacuum created by American failure and wrong-headedness -- a vacuum likely to last well into 2009 -- until the next U.S. President gets into his stride and Israel resolves its current political turmoil. more.. e-mail

East Jerusalem’s education crisis
Tim Franks, BBC NEWS, Palestine Monitor 9/6/2008
     Israel’s main civil rights group is planning a mass protest to highlight the inadequate provision of classrooms and school places in East Jerusalem. Tim Franks has been to meet some of the children who do have places in public classrooms, but finds the conditions in which they are being taught to be crowded and unsafe.
     It is best to wear sturdy shoes to reach the overflow wing of Shuafat Elementary School for Girls. You get to the entrance over a small hillock of rubble and broken glass.
     It has been that way for the last 15 years, the length of time that the school has been open.
     Two hundred and eighty-five girls between the ages of six and 10 are crammed into a house, which was built as a home for a single family.
     We arrived just as the morning lessons came to an end. The children were, in some cases, literally tumbling down the stairs. Stairs that Abdel Karim Laafi, the head of the East Jerusalem Parents’ Association, told us did not even meet local fire regulations (they are too narrow). more.. e-mail

In Gaza, succeeding against the odds
Rami Almeghari writing from Maghazi refugee camp, occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 9/8/2008
     Thirteen-year-old Alaa has grown up in Gaza’s Maghazi refugee camp and her family’s home is an example of the typical "old-new" refugee camp dwellings. Comprised of three rooms, a wretched kitchen and an old-fashioned bathroom, the whole house is in need of urgent repair. Yet, because of the lack of raw materials, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA has been postponing the renovation until further notice. Alaa lives in the same unhealthy house with her mother, two brothers and three sisters. Although poor, Alaa is a brilliant student.
     "In winter, I carry my school books from corner to a corner in the house as drops of rain fall from many parts of the ceiling. But what can I do? I should succeed, I should keep up. I want to be an optical physician to help change our life," Alaa said, smiling.
     Last year, Alaa got the highest marks in her school; her scores on all topics were more than 98 percent. For the past three years, Alaa was recognized as an honor-roll student at Maghazi’s prep school for girls, administered by UNRWA. It is the only prep school in the camp with a population of 30,000. more.. e-mail

Taybeh Oktoberfest in Palestine
Maria C. Khoury, Ed. D, Palestine News Network 9/8/2008
     Editorial - What relates to Taybeh became extremely revolutionary if not extraordinary in the last few years.
     In the middle of intense violence and conflict you find a community striving to be normal and trying to cry out to the world for the need to do astonishing things like festivals in the middle of oppressive conditions such as complete closure and Israeli occupation.
     In response to harsh conditions, Taybeh responds with peaceful resolutions of celebrating its existence to boost the economy and hosted the first and only Oktoberfest that had ever taken place in Palestine (1995).
     Following a very successful two day celebration of support for Palestinian products made in Taybeh, the Oktoberfest has become an annual event under the umbrella of the Taybeh Municipality with all of its local civic organization and organized by the Taybeh Brewing Company as the initiator of the incredible event. The Oktoberfest story is really a reflection of how the private sector can positively influence and boost the Palestinian economy. However, what people need to understand is that the backbone of every economy is the private sector. more.. e-mail

America’s Islamophobia problem
Ghassan Rubeiz, Daily Star 9/8/2008
     In a 2006 interview, Glenn Beck, the host of a CNN talk show, looked Muslim congressman Keith Ellison straight in the eye and said: "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies." You have to wonder where Beck got the license to humiliate someone that way because he was connected with Islam.
     Islamophobia is pervasive in public forums in the United States. Provocative commentary Web sites, culture-clash literature, biased reporting on the Middle East, end-of-time theological fiction, insensitive cartoons, terror-oriented video games and Christian Zionist sermons, all of the above and more, make many Arab- and Muslim-Americans - especially immigrants - feel alien, if not alienated.
     Beck’s obsession with Islam reflects a trend. The US media persist in reporting on the growing numbers of American and European Muslims. These reports have unjustifiably raised public fears of the anticipated return of terrorism. Post-9/11 scare-mongers proclaim that America’s borders are "open and unprotected." Agitated American communicators warn citizens to watch out for Muslim- and Arab-Americans who may be linked covertly to "terror cells" that have penetrated their homeland. An irrational fear of Muslims affects the way they are portrayed and perceived. A negative overload of information about Islam seems to overwhelm and confuse Americans. The compulsion to stereotype, to dissect, to classify, and to caricature Muslims is strong and growing. more.. e-mail

The Middle East and Russia’s return as a ’post-ideological’ power
Editorial, The Daily Star, Daily Star 9/8/2008
     Russia’s bold stroke in the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia last month has added a new dimension to the resurgence under way for the past few years. The Kremlin has signaled that it is back as major player on the world stage, a prospect that carries far-reaching implications for many regions - the Middle East in particular. Governments and peoples in this part of the world have much to gain from a shakeup of the international order as it has existed since the collapse of the former Soviet Union. To do so, however, they will have to recognize that this new Russian challenge to American supremacy is very different from the one that kept the Cold War going for decades.
     For one, today’s Russia might be described as "post-ideological." Its tussles with the United States (and some other Western countries) are no longer potentially existential ones that lead inevitably to zero-sum games. In addition, despite its growing energy wealth, Moscow no longer has the strategic wherewithal to engage in dozens of far-flung contests with Washington. What it retains includes a determination to protect its own interests (especially close to home) and, increasingly, a willingness to be assertive in doing so. It also has a relatively large population infused with considerable amounts of ability and no shortage of national pride. In short, the days when post-Soviet Russia could be ignored are definitively over. more.. e-mail

Al Walajeh under siege as Israeli settlement expansion overtakes the village
Fadi Yacoub, Palestine News Network 9/6/2008
     PNN -- Israeli forces continue their attempt to impose control on agricultural lands located in western Bethlehem’s Al Walajeh Village. The Israeli Interior Ministry will not issue a permit for the construction of a road for farmers to reach their lands, without which Israeli forces will destroy it. The normal route is being overtaken for Israeli settlement expansion.
     Al Walajeh Village is half in Jerusalem, half in Bethlehem, according to a mandate issued by the Israeli government several years ago.
     In the past it was out of reach of Israeli-annexed Jerusalem, but Israeli forces drew a line through the village center indicating that one side was Jerusalem, the other the West Bank. Residents did not have Jerusalem identification, therefore were illegally, under Israeli standards, inside their own homes. Other houses were cut in half by this imaginary line deeming the living room off limits. The village has a strong nonviolent resistance movement with nearly weekly demonstrations against the Wall and settlements the norm. The local council is well-organized with attacks and demolitions recorded, land ownership papers in order, and court cases pending. more.. e-mail

Doing Israel’s work
Khalid Amayreh, Palestinian Information Center 9/4/2008
     With obvious American-approval and encouragement,  the Palestinian Authority (PA) regime in Ramallah is seriously  persecuting the very people it is supposed to protect and whose interests it claims to safeguard.
     "They are worse than the Israeli occupiers,"� an old shopkeeper from the Hebron region whispered to  this writer after local security agents arrested his neighbor for selling Islamic paraphernalia.
     Some observers in Occupied Palestine have begun using  terms such as "reign of terror,"� "fascists,"� "gangs,"�  and "terrorist regime"� to describe the way  the American-backed regime is treating Palestinians.
     This week, a leading Palestinian human rights group, described the status of human rights and civil liberties under the PA regime as "dismal and appalling."�
     Al-Haq, which means "truth,"� pointed out in a detailed report that the PA was letting the security agencies run the country in utter violation of the rule of law. more.. e-mail

The Makings of History /Memoirs of a shadow
Tom Segev, Ha’aretz 9/4/2008
     Israel Galili always operated in the shadow of other people. "In a certain sense there is a resemblance between Galili’s situation and mine," writes his associate Arnan Azariahu, in his memoirs. "Just as he worked in the shadow of others, I myself was his shadow." Because of his slanted eyes, Azariahu, who lives today on Kibbutz Yaron, is called "Sini" - "Chinese" in Hebrew. His recently published book, "Haver ve’ish sod" ("A Friend and Confidant," in Hebrew, Hakibbutz Hameuchad), based on interviews he gave to journalist Ora Armoni, is fascinating.
     Today, mention of Galili’s name may require a reminder: He was one of the founders of the pre-state Haganah and the Israel Defense Forces, a member of Knesset and a cabinet minister, and for most of his life was involved in politics. He was reputedly wise, and therefore was frequently consulted by various leaders; for example, he had great influence on Golda Meir. Apart from politics, it is hard to say exactly what he did. Inflexible, narrow-minded and humorless, even during his lifetime he came across like one of those anonymous, cardboard-like figures on the Kremlin walls during May Day parades. more.. e-mail

US churches seeking justice in Palestine-Israel (Part 1)
David Wildman, Electronic Intifada 9/5/2008
     We denounce as immoral an ordering of life that perpetuates injustice ... Believing that international justice requires the participation of all peoples, we endorse the United Nations and its related bodies and the International Court of Justice as the best instruments now in existence to achieve a world of justice and law." -- United Methodist Church Social Principles.
     For decades, United Methodists have worked with other churches, human rights groups and the broader international community to uphold UN resolutions, human rights conventions and international law as the basis for just and lasting peace for all. Given this human rights-based approach, ending Israel’s military occupation constitutes a necessary first step for establishing equality and mutual security for Palestinians and Israel is alike. Within an international law framework, the situation in Palestine is not a conflict between two equal players, but a case of apartheid, occupation and colonization. -- See also: US churches seeking justice in Palestine-Israel (Part 2) more.. e-mail

End of an Odyssey
Jeff Halper, ICAHD, Palestine Monitor 9/6/2008
     Now, a few days after my release from jail in the wake of my trip to Gaza, I’m posting a few notes to sum things up.
     First, the mission of the Free Gaza Movement to break the Israeli siege proved a success beyond all expectations.
     Our reaching and then leaving Gaza has created a free and regular channel between Gaza and the outside world. It has done so because it has forced the Israeli government to make a clear policy declaration: that it is not occupying Gaza and therefore will not prevent the free movement of Palestinians in and out of the area (at least by sea).
     (Israel’s security concerns can easily be accommodated by instituting a technical system of checks similar to those of other ports.)
     Any attempt on the part of Israel to backtrack on this - by preventing ships in the future from entering or leaving Gaza with goods and passengers, including Palestinians - may be immediately interpreted as an assertion of control, and therefore of Occupation, opening Israel to accountability for war crimes before international law, something Israel tries to avoid at all costs. more.. e-mail

Israeli Restrictions and Employee Strikes Mark Start of Ramadan [August 31 – September 06]
MIFTAH, MIFTAH 9/6/2008
     September 5 marked the first Friday in Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, when Palestinian Muslims look forward to conducting Friday prayers in Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque. This year, similar to the several years prior, Israel continued to place strict restrictions on West Bank Palestinians who want to travel to Jerusalem to perform their religious duties. While Israeli police estimated that 90,000 Muslim worshippers reached Al Aqsa for noon prayers, restrictions were still tight as to who was allowed in. Israeli army directives instructed that only West Bank men over the age of 50 and women over 45 be allowed to enter Jerusalem without Israeli-issued permits to pray at Al Aqsa. Men under 45 were not allowed in at all – with or without a permit.
     These restrictions, of course angered Palestinian Muslims who put special emphasis on praying at Al Aqsa during Ramadan on Fridays. The Islamic Waqf had previously called on Israel to allow Muslims to reach the mosque compound unrestricted and the people obviously were not deterred. Thousands of Palestinians waited for hours at the Israeli manned checkpoints entering Jerusalem in the hopes that they would pass. Clashes broke out at the Qalandiya checkpoint separating Jerusalem from Ramallah during which several people were injured.Hoards of people also flocked to the Gilo checkpoint on the Jerusalem-Bethlehem road in an attempt to cross but most were turned back by the army. more.. e-mail

Ramadan in Palestine
Mazin Qumsiyeh, Palestine Think Tank 9/6/2008
     Palestinian houses are easily distinguished from Israeli houses by one non-variant feature: Palestinian houses have water storage tanks on top of them. Running water 24 hours a day is reserved for Israeli colonial settlers. A trickle is occasionally sent our way and we try to maximize its use. But storage tanks on top of roofs are increasingly not helpful as the water pressure is so low when it is on that water cannot reach that high. Those who can afford it, have started putting new tanks on the ground or buying supplemental water. Drilling and maintaining wells (as our ancestors did) has been forbidden by Israeli regulations for many decades. Our old house is an exception since we do have a well that collects rainwater. Occasionally after long stretches of no or barely running water, a relative asks if they could have a bath at our house. Water here also costs a lot more than it does to Israeli colonial settlers. Not coincidentally the water we are denied is our water. 80% of the water of the West Bank is used by Israeli Jews (illegally according to International law). Yesterday, tens of thousands of Palestinians waited at a checkpoint for hours but most were denied entrance to pray in the holiest site for Islam in Palestine on the first holy Friday of Ramadan. Their denial is also an illegal act by International law. All those people stood and sweated in the sun (36 C, nearly 100 F) for hours to be finally turned back and went to their modest homes with no running water to even take a simple bath before they break their dawn to dusk fast. Images flashed before my eyes of families separated as older members allowed to pass, children getting frustrated, a women fainted (Muslims are also fasting so it is hard to stand in the heat while not able to drink water. more.. e-mail

It’s never good to swap people for bodies
Robert Fisk, The Independent 9/6/2008
     Al-Jazeera – much praised by the now-dying US administration until it started reporting the truth about the American occupation of Iraq (at which point, you may recall, George Bush wanted to bomb it) – is back in hot water. And not, I fear, without reason. For on 19 July, its Beirut bureau staged a birthday party for Samir Kantar, newly released from Israel’s prisons in return for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers. "Brother Samir, we would like to celebrate your birthday with you," allegedly gushed al-Jazeera’s man in Beirut. "You deserve even more than this... Happy Birthday, Brother Samir.
     The problem, of course, was that "Brother Samir" – whose moustache looks as if it has been modelled on that of a former German corporal – had been convicted in Israel for the 1979 killing of an Israeli father and his daughter. The Israelis claim he smashed in the head of the four-year-old with a rifle. Kantar denies this – though he does not deny that another child, this time two years old, was accidentally asphyxiated by its mother when she was trying to avoid giving away their hiding place. Kantar received a conviction of 542 years – long, even by Israel’s standards – and had been locked up for 28 years when he was swapped (along with other prisoners) for the bodies of the dead soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, whose capture started the 2006 Lebanon war. more.. e-mail

If Only My Dream is Realised
Rawan Yousef Salah, Nablus, The West Bank, Palestine Chronicle 9/4/2008
     Finally, it was time for departure. The trip supervisor finished checking the students’ list on the bus. The driver closed the door, and the bus moved slowly in a way that annoys me, but my heart danced for joy. I turned to my colleague in the seat behind me and a smile appeared on my lips: We have started, we will be happy and we will play.
     It was such a bright and beautiful morning! Suddenly there was silence in response to the journey supervisor’s request, to listen to what she was going to say about the guidelines of the journey -- regarding behaviour upon the arrival at a military checkpoint, or in case of objection by an Israeli military patrol to our bus crossing, and other types of instruction.
     Once the supervisor completed her instructions, the bus driver warned us that we were approaching one of the permanent hard military roadblocks and asked us to remain calm and not to worry as we pass through it. The bus stopped and the driver opened the doors and asked us to disembark and stand in a long row. Some of the soldiers boarded the bus to inspect, while others stayed to observe. Their eyes moved on us one after the other; at times we were shivering, and the rest of time we kept quiet, tears here and there, successive breaths, minutes passing like hours, until the soldiers finished the inspection and their questions about the necessary permits and about route and objectives of the trip. Then we were allowed to board -- without believing that we were given the permission to cross after this suffering. We started on our way again. more.. e-mail

Another fig leaf for deception
Hasan Abu Nimah, Electronic Intifada 9/4/2008
     Last Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the last encounter planned before the former leaves office.
     Olmert rebuked Abbas for meeting with Samir Kuntar who Israel recently released to Lebanon during a prisoner exchange with Hizballah.
     "You are not a man of terror and I don’t expect you to meet with such a despicable killer," Olmert told Abbas who could offer no better defense than to say that the meeting was unplanned and that Kuntar had in fact invited himself.
     Abbas’ implied agreement prompted Olmert to insist "that it was still possible for the Palestinian leader not to have met with Kuntar," and the conversation had ended there as reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz.
     Kuntar was indeed convicted of killing three Israelis in 1979, and therefore he is, in Israeli eyes, a "despicable killer." But he was at the time fighting on the side of a Palestinian revolution of which Abbas was a founder and a leader. One wonders, therefore, if Abbas, while struggling before Olmert to hide his embarrassment from his blunder of meeting Kuntar, could not think of that, or of the many thousands of Palestinians who were butchered since 1979, and before, by Israelis whom he, Abbas, has been repeatedly meeting, entertaining, hugging and kissing. more.. e-mail

Israeli policeman sentenced to only 6.5 years for killing a Palestinian in 2002
Saed Bannoura, International Middle East Media Center News 9/4/2008
     The Israeli Central Court in Jerusalem sentenced, Yanai Lazla, an Israeli border policeman to 6.5 years for killing Omran Abu Hamdiyya, a Palestinian resident from the southern West Bank city of Hebron. Abu Hamdiyya was kidnapped and placed in a military jeep and as the jeep sped away Lazla and three other policemen threw him out.
     On December 30, 2002, approximately at 8 P.M Abu Hamdiyya was near his home along with his friends when a border police jeep stopped near them, and the policemen forced Abu Hamdiyya into the jeep and sped away.
     Less the forty minutes later, the friends of Abu Hamdiyya found his body in on the roadside near the Industrial Zone.
     The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem) reported that Abu Hamdiyya was first beaten and abused by the soldiers, and when he was thrown out of the speeding jeep, his head struck the pavement with great force causing instant death. more.. e-mail

Large picture lost
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/4/2008
     With Fatah clamping down hard on Hamas in the West Bank, Palestinian unity is the clearest victim.
     Despite largely facetious denials, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) has been carrying out a vindictive campaign against Hamas sympathisers and supporters. According to various sources, hundreds of schoolteachers, college students, journalists, and other professionals as well as ordinary citizens have been arrested and imprisoned on largely amorphous charges such as "constituting a threat to state security" -- when the PA is neither a state nor a sovereign entity -- and "violating the rule of law".
     In cities and villages throughout the West Bank, PA security agencies raided Islamic-oriented cultural and academic centres, non-governmental organisations, sports clubs as well as schools and charitable associations, closing them down and arresting members. more.. e-mail

Between Israel and Lebanon
Zohar Shechtman, Hulon, Israel, Palestine Chronicle 9/4/2008
     I am driving; the road is quiet. I turn the radio on and a familiar song is playing. He liked this song, liked it a lot’ I remember that ever since he was little he liked this song; he knew all the words by heart, words I will never get to hear him say again.
     Part of coping with a loss this hard, losing a son, is dealing with the title that will always float above your head, like an eternal label with the words "bereaved mother" written on it.
     Today I am going to meet a woman who is going through what I am going through: the feeling, the label, and worst of all, the yearning. But I lost my son in the Israeli Defence Force and she is from Lebanon.
     If I had received this request at another time, I don’t really think I would have agreed. I don’t think I would have understood and been aware that she is probably living, like me, under the burden of bereavement. And still, I have some misgivings about the meeting – how it would actually be to meet her, and would I be able to feel free to honestly talk heart to heart. more.. e-mail

Mistake or manoeuvre?
Raed Rafei, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/4/2008
     Hizbullah’s shooting on a Lebanese army helicopter has raised many eyebrows.
     Hizbullah’s shooting on a Lebanese army helicopter, entailing the killing of an officer on Thursday threatened to create a crisis between the army and the militant group, pushing to the forefront the question of a defence strategy for Lebanon, analysts and politicians said.
     Yet Hizbullah’s seeming readiness to cooperate with the army’s investigation by handing in the culprit to authorities helped put a lid on yet another heated debate over the legitimacy of Hizbullah’s arms and their role as the country’s national army tries to rise.
     With the military probe slowly dying down, the key question remains whether the attack was the result of a lack of coordination between the army and Hizbullah or whether the militant group was trying to draw limits for the army’s activities in South Lebanon. more.. e-mail

Making Peace with Syria
Alain Gresh - Paris, Palestine Chronicle 9/4/2008
     ’Assad has asked Sarkozy to help him and play a role in these negotiations.’
     President Nicolas Sarkozy’s visit to Damascus this month confirms the failure of his policy of isolating the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
     That policy began at the end of 2004, when Presidents George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac formed a common front, following the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1559 of Sept. 2 of that year, which called for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon and the disarmament of all militias — meaning mainly Hizbullah. Some months later, after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, on Feb. 14, 2005, the Syrians were forced to withdraw from Lebanon and the UN set up an international commission of inquiry. The future of the Syrian regime looked increasingly uncertain. Bush and Chirac decided to crack down harder, boycotting it politically and punishing it economically. For the Bush administration, Syria was a part of the "axis of evil". more.. e-mail

Book Review: 'A Doctor in Galilee'
Raymond Deane, Electronic Intifada 9/4/2008
     In his new memoir, A Doctor in Galilee - The Life and Struggle of a Palestinian in Israel, Hatim Kanaaneh tells he that he "was born in 1937 in Arrabeh Village in the Galilee at the height of the Palestinian peasant uprising against the British Mandate ..." On his eleventh birthday, "Israel was officially declared an independent state, marking the Palestinian Nakba or catastrophe," when approximately 750,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homeland by Zionist forces.
     In 1960 his father sold some land so that Hatim could study medicine in the United States, to which he returned in 1970 with his Hawaiian wife to work in public health and where he spurned the first of many approaches from the Israeli secret service seeking to enlist him as a collaborator. In 1976, the year when Israeli troops shot dead six Palestinians protesting peacefully against the confiscation of their lands (commemorated every 30 March since as Land Day, a recurrent theme in this book), he moved to Hawaii, finding his "public work unproductive in light of state systems openly hostile to Arab citizens." Two years later he was back, ironically claiming he and his wife returned because they "were unhappy with the risks to which we were exposing our two children in America: schools where drugs and violence were on the rise ..." more.. e-mail

Damascus rehabilitated
Sami Moubayed, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/4/2008
     Behind today’s four-way summit between Syria, France, Turkey and Qatar lies Syria’s ongoing talks with Israel.
     Damascenes welcomed French President Nicolas Sarkozy with French flags on all major streets in the Syrian capital. It was sweet revenge directed at US President George W Bush and Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, the Syrian way of telling the world "we have overcome".
     Regional and Syrian media described the visit as historic. No French president has been to Syria since the passing of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 in 2004 (calling on the Syrians to withdraw from Lebanon) and the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafik Al-Hariri in 2005, which Chirac blamed on Syria.
     Franco-Syrian relations have moved quickly since Sarkozy came to power in 2007 and in July President Bashar Al-Assad visited Paris. At a press conference with his French and Lebanese counterparts in the French capital, Al-Assad announced that Syria would open diplomatic relations with Lebanon. The French president had been pushing for a Syrian embassy to open in Beirut and a Lebanese one in Damascus. The rapprochement was also aided by Syria’s role in helping end the fighting in Beirut between Hizbullah and the "14 March" government coalition, its support of the agreement reached by all parties in Doha, and the election of General Michel Suleiman as president of Lebanon. All the agreements bore Syrian fingerprints. more.. e-mail

Making a stink
Kobi Ben Shimon, Ha’aretz 9/4/2008
     A terrible stench - the smell of a rotting, dead animal," says left-wing activist Dr. David Nir in disgust. For over three years he has been participating in protests against the separation fence, but he wasn’t prepared for this: Three weeks ago, at a demonstration in the West Bank village of Na’alin, he personally experienced the debut of Boash - the Skunk - a new method of dispersing demonstrations, developed by the Israel Police.
     We are very experienced, very familiar with the rubber bullets, the tear-gas grenades and the water hoses, but suddenly two Border Policemen arrived with strange packs on their backs and began to spray demonstrators with a liquid," says Nir. "It was terrible. Some people got completely drenched. Fortunately, I managed to stay out of range and did not get too much of it, but the smell stuck to me, too. It was absorbed into my skin. It was really unpleasant. I couldn’t stand the stench; you deserve a gold medal for putting up with that smell.
     A week after the demonstration in Na’alin, a white truck arrived at a demonstration in Bil’in," Nir continues. "It began approaching and we tried to keep our distance." The truck stopped near the fence, "and then we heard the motor working harder in order to create condensed air for operating the Skunk cannon. And then it came: Strong bursts of a foul-smelling spray were showered on us, directly hitting those who didn’t move away, at up to a 30- to 50-meter radius. Because the wind was with the cannon, most of us were enveloped in vapors of stench that penetrated our lungs. On the way to Tel Aviv we drove with open windows, but we were unable to get rid of the smell even when we sprayed ourselves with deodorant. There are no words to describe it; it’s the worst odor imaginable. It’s an experience equal to jumping headfirst into a sewer. The Palestinians simply call it ’shit’. more.. e-mail

’We can choose our destiny by ourselves’
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian 9/3/2008
     On the walls outside the home of Hussam Khader, in the narrow streets of the Balata refugee camp, posters, graffiti and flags celebrate his release a week ago from an Israeli jail. Alongside them is a newly-painted sign in large Arabic lettering which reads: "Occupation and corruption are two faces of one coin."
     Last Monday, Khader, 47, was one of 198 security prisoners released by the Israeli authorities as a gesture towards the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. It was the third prisoner release since the latest and still fruitless peace negotiations began a year ago.
     Apart from two long-serving prisoners, most of those freed last week were young men jailed for attacks on the Israeli military or settlers and who were close to finishing their sentences. But the release of Khader was unexpected. He was a prominent youth leader in the Fatah movement, which is led by Abbas, and a former Palestinian legislator who became an outspoken critic of the late Yasser Arafat and the corruption that surrounded him at the top of the Fatah movement and the Palestinian leadership. more.. e-mail

’Ethnic cleansing by stealth’
Seth Freedman, The Guardian 9/4/2008
     With every cruel and unusual punishment meted out against West Bank villagers, Israel is fomenting more and more hate against its own people.
     "When Israel was first created, I had a lot of admiration and respect for the Jews; now I want to throw them all into the sea." The choice of phraseology was no accident on the part of the speaker, who wanted to make crystal clear the effects that more than 40 years of Israeli occupation have had on him and his family.
     We were sitting in his tent in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Kheir, situated just outside the perimeter fence of the West Bank settlement of Karmel. Thanks to Karmel’s proximity, the Bedouins suffer almost daily harassment at the hands of the settlers and their security team, resulting in the vitriolic volte-face performed by the head of the family in terms of his feelings towards Israelis. more.. e-mail

Twilight Zone / Death metal
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 9/4/2008
     What happens when a Bedouin shepherd goes out to look for scrap metal in the desert near his home?
     The middle of nowhere. The narrow highway that crosses the desert was recently widened in order to enable passage of the heavy equipment needed to build the separation fence. But the highway ends suddenly and turns into a gravel road. We keep on driving, raising a long trail of dust. Occasionally we encounter an encampment, occasionally a camel. There is no desert in Israel as arid as this one, the Judean Desert, between Hashem al-Karem and Hashem al-Daraj, on the way to the Dead Sea. Here and there you see a child in a blue school uniform crossing the yellowish expanses on his way from nowhere, where his school is, to nowhere, where his encampment is. One child flees in panic when we try to ask him about the tent of Mukhtar Yussef.
     Here, in the endless expanses, between nothing and nothing, Israel Defense Soldiers sometimes train, and here the shepherd Mohammed Tabaneh walked, together with his son, Abdel Karim, 14, one day this summer, looking for scraps of metal, unexploded shells, for his living. Tabaneh is the poorest shepherd in the tribe. He owns only six sheep, in a place where there isn’t a single piece of grazing land now, only the desert. So he goes out every day to look for scrap metal that the IDF leaves behind, in order to support his eight children. more.. e-mail

Shin Bet to Palestinian: Collaborate or go to jail
Yossi Melman, Ha’aretz 9/4/2008
     On July 27, Gaza resident Hamed Keshta arrived at the Erez border crossing, carrying an entry permit into Israel. He was headed to Ashkelon’s Ganei Dan Hotel to meet with representatives from his employer, EUBAM. The European Union Border Assistance Mission in Rafah supervises and assists the Palestinian Authority in operating the border crossing with Egypt.
     This was the first time since 1994 that Keshta, 33, of Rafah, married with two children, had crossed the border into Israel. It was to apply for a visa at the Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv. Keshta remained in Canada, even obtaining citizenship, until 2004 when he returned to Gaza. Since then he has worked as an interpreter and as a "fixer," a go-between for Western media outlets. He worked for the London Sunday Times, Britain’s Channel 4 TV and the French production company Playprod. He has been at EUBAM since April 2006. The Ashkelon meeting was connected to a promotion from interpreter to assistant security director in the Rafah area.
     "When I got to the border crossing, to my great surprise I was arrested by Israeli security officials," Keshta related in a recent telephone interview. He described the events of that day and the month’s detention and interrogation at a Shin Bet security service facility that followed. more.. e-mail

Settlements as an Obstacle to Peace
Cesar Chelala, New York, Palestine Chronicle 9/4/2008
     ’According to Peace Now, more than 2,600 housing units are under construction in the West Bank.’
     During her visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Israel to stop expanding settlements on occupied Palestinian territory. Hours before, a new report had come out from the organisation Peace Now stating that Israel has nearly doubled settlement construction during the past year. Statements similar to Dr Rice’s have been abundantly made by US administrations over the past two decades without any effect on the rate of new settlements’ construction on Palestinian territory.
     Israel had promised to halt all settlement construction according to the tenets of the "Road Map" international peace plan for the Middle East. However, rather than fulfilling that promise, Israel has constructed thousands of homes in West Bank territory it hopes to keep under its control.
     According to Peace Now, more than 2,600 housing units are under construction in the West Bank, including units in more than 1,000 new buildings. Peace Now’s conclusions, based on aerial photographs and field visits, state that construction is encroaching on the boundaries of important Palestinian towns such as Ramallah and Bethlehem. more.. e-mail

Eye on Gaza
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/4/2008
     Next Monday, Arab foreign ministers will meet in Cairo for their regular autumn gathering that is likely to be preoccupied with Palestinian developments: the fortunes of ongoing Palestinian-Israeli negotiations over a final status agreement (or simply the parameters thereof) and the prospects of containing the inter-Palestinian feud between Fatah and Hamas. For the moment, full reconciliation appears all but impossible.
     No major decisions are expected out of the ministerial meeting. It is left entirely to the Palestinian Authority (PA) under Mahmoud Abbas -- with some Arab influence, especially from Cairo and Riyadh -- to decide whether or not to accept a deal that is being offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for a final settlement. This deal excludes settlement on East Jerusalem or a formula to determine the right of return and/or compensation for millions of Palestinian refugees.
     Arab diplomats in Cairo appear unconcerned with the detail of ongoing negotiations. The overriding tone is that Arab governments would support whatever Abbas would agree to, provided that it is not too embarrassing in terms of giving up control over Muslim sites in East Jerusalem. more.. e-mail

Hard bargaining
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/4/2008
     Hamas is holding fast in the Shalit affair, to the chagrin of Israel, under pressure to see its soldier freed.
     Reacting to Israeli "dithering and procrastination", Hamas has decided to up the ante as to the price Israel has to pay in order to secure the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier Palestinian fighters captured during a cross-border attack in the Gaza Strip more than two years ago.
     Hamas officials in Gaza said this week the group was now demanding the release of 1,500 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails and detention centres in exchange for freeing Shalit.
     The new demands by Hamas, that Israel dismisses as a "bargaining tactic", was conveyed by Egyptian officials to Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak who visited Cairo last week. Barak said the Israeli government was making strenuous efforts to get Shalit released as soon as possible, adding that he expected indirect negotiations with Hamas in this regard to be accelerated.
     Barak also suggested that Egyptian-mediated negotiations be conducted in secret to ensure a successful outcome. more.. e-mail

Teachers listen to Hamas
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/4/2008
     Debilitating the educational and health sectors in Gaza is Fatah’s new strategy for bringing down Hamas -- a strategy that is failing and will likely backfire.
     Amer Boreik, 42, came back to his home in Al-Maghazi Refugee Camp in Gaza at dawn, just as his wife finished preparing the morning meal for the first day of Ramadan. For the past 10 days, Boreik, who runs a non-governmental organisation, hasn’t been home before dawn. He is busy running one of the numerous emergency committees the Ismail Haniyeh government set up to tackle strikes in the education sector. The strikes have been called by a Ramallah- based, Fatah-controlled labour union.
     Boreik has been asked to bring in teachers to keep the schools running. He is pleased with the results. Eight of the 10 schools he is supervising are now fully staffed, and the remaining two are almost so. Boreik says that at the beginning of the strike, 80 per cent of the staff stayed at home. "But thanks to the effort exerted by the emergency committees, schools in Gaza are now operating to near full capacity." more.. e-mail

Palestinians lose faith in two-state solution
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem, The Guardian 9/4/2008
     Study group calls for new form of resistance to Israeli occupation with goal of single, bi-national state.
     A group of prominent Palestinian figures has proposed a radical change in strategy to demand a single, bi-national state if the current round of Middle East peace talks fails.
     The Palestinian Strategy Study Group, an EU-funded project written by 27 leading Palestinian figures from across the political spectrum, argued that the current two-state framework for peace talks is failing to bring the promised independent state. Instead, it suggested ending the negotiation process that has gone on now for nearly 20 years, reconstituting the Palestinian Authority into what might become a "Palestinian Resistance Authority", and developing a form of "smart" resistance. more.. e-mail

Book release: 'Poets for Palestine'
Poets for Palestine, Electronic Intifada 9/3/2008
     Sixty years after the dispossession of the Palestinian people, Poets For Palestine, a unique collection of poetry, spoken word, hip-hop, and art has been released. Unifying a diverse range of poets who have used their words to elevate the consciousness of humanity, this book aims to bridge a younger generation of poets with those who, for decades, have cultivated and strengthened the poetic medium.
     The anthology includes poems by the late Mahmoud Darwish, Naomi Shihab Nye, Amiri Baraka, Suheir Hammad, Nathalie Handal, E. Ethelbert Miller, D.H. Melhem, Junichi P. Semitsu, Fawzia Afzal Khan, Annemarie Jacir, Ibtisam Barakat, Tahani Salah, Remi Kanazi, Ragtop from the Philistines, among many others.
     All of the proceeds of this volume will go towards funding future cultural endeavors in the US that highlight Arab artistry.
     The concept of this collection was conceived after a night of spoken word at the historic Made in Palestine art exhibit in New York, in 2006. Invigorated by the capacity of spoken word to enliven a crowd, Al Jisser, collaborating with the event’s host, Remi Kanazi, decided to publish a brief chapbook to capture the night’s vivacity. more.. e-mail

The greater rift
Nicola Nasser, Al-Ahram Weekly 9/4/2008
     The conflict between Fatah and Hamas disguises a more dangerous divide that threatens the very existence of the PLO, argues The current rift between Fatah and Hamas, with their rival claims to legitimacy whether through incumbency in the presidency or through the ballot box, each dominating a government, one in the West Bank and the other in Gaza, is being used to cover up the promotion of an older and more dangerous divide. I am speaking, here, of the division between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its frame of reference, the Palestine Liberation Organistion (PLO), and of a power struggle between two factions within Fatah over leadership and roles of the PA and PLO. This power struggle is facilitating the real US-Israeli sponsored "coup" that is currently in progress in the Palestinian political arena. However, this coup will determine the outcome of the dialogue between Fatah and Hamas and the future of other crucial issues.
     The Fatah-Hamas and PA-PLO divisions have given rise to a "third" force that has yet to assume an overt political framework. However, its principles and policies are clear: they overlap with, if they are not identical to, the US-Israeli "vision" for an end to the Arab/Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This force, whose constituent elements intersect with a trend within Fatah and factions in the PLO, is keen to fuel both divisions, as it is the sole beneficiary of their perpetuation. As it manoeuvres between the two sides, it wrests a little more ground for itself every day. It, not Fatah, is now the third force. It effectively controls the PA in Ramallah as it strives to assert its control over all decision-making centres in Fatah, the PA and the PLO while simultaneously working to perpetuate the political, military and economic blockade against Hamas because it does not yet have the capacities to infiltrate its ranks in Gaza. In short, it is engaged in a stealthy bid to commandeer the Palestinian national movement. more.. e-mail

About a boy
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 9/4/2008
     One man gives another man an improvised notebook of a child’s drawings (A3-sized pages, stapled together).
     Man No. 1: a schoolteacher, Mohammed Amira
     Man No. 2: David Reeb
     The place: The village of Na’alin
     The time: August 7, just before the regular demonstration against the separation fence
     The time: Shortly before Israeli soldiers arrest Mohammed Amira
     The time: A week before Amira was released from jail (August 14)
     The child: Ahmed Moussa
     Age: 11. That is, was 11. Was? He died. Died? Was killed (if an 11-year-old child had been killed by an armed Palestinian, he would have been "murdered").
     David Reeb: "I read in the paper, ’A 10-year-old youth was killed at Na’alin’ - not, ’Soldiers killed,’ but ’was killed,’ and I’ve never heard of a 10-year-old Israeli youth who was killed." more.. e-mail

Palestinian Village Faces Army Reign of Terror
Jonathan Cook, Middle East Online 9/3/2008
     The window through which Salam Amira, 16, filmed the moment when an Israeli soldier shot from close range a handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainee has a large hole at its centre with cracks running in every direction.
     “Since my video was shown, the soldiers shoot at our house all the time,” she said. The shattered and cracked windows at the front of the building confirm her story. “When we leave the windows open, they fire tear gas inside too.”
     Her home looks out over the Israeli road block guarding the only entrance to the village of Nilin, located just inside the West Bank midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It was here that a bound Ashraf Abu Rahma, 27, was shot in the foot in July with a rubber bullet under orders from an Israeli regiment commander.
     The treatment of the family stands in stark contrast to the leniency shown to the soldier and his commander involved in that incident.
     B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, has accused the Israeli army of seeking “revenge” for the girl’s role in exposing the actions of its armed forces in the West Bank. more.. e-mail

Israelis hinder academic pursuits
Osama Dawoud, Palestine Think Tank 9/3/2008
     Not many people in the Gaza Strip spend their time thinking about Utah’s Great Salt Lake. I have been dreaming of it for months. This year, I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Utah to study in the department of civil and environmental engineering. Palestinians in Gaza suffer from critical water and environmental contamination problems. I planned to focus my Utah education on water resources and environmental engineering so that I could return home and help to alleviate these problems. But I will not be attending this fall. On the basis of secret evidence conveyed by the Israeli government, my American visa was canceled.
     I am a scientist dedicated to advancing the well-being of the Palestinian people. Yet despite playing by the educational rules and excelling in the academic arena, I am being hurt by an Israeli government that has bottled Palestinians up in Gaza rather than allowing them to pursue opportunities abroad. Hundreds of students in Gaza have been accepted to foreign universities but are nonetheless prevented from attending by Israel. more.. e-mail

Bishop Attallah Hanna: a Palestinian Christian Hero
Iqbal Tamimi, Palestine Think Tank 9/3/2008
     I met a teacher on the train during one of my trips from Bristol to London; she was very kind and she encouraged me to start a conversation. This I can assure you does not happen much. We started to talk about different issues to break the silence and the dull and cold atmosphere that was wrapping the two-hour trip.
     I found out that she was a music teacher, and that she was working on compiling an international album about children’s lullabies in different countries. She asked me about my country and where I came from and what kind of lullabies we have. I dare not tell her that maybe my generation was the last to hear lullabies, Palestinian children got used to being awakened by the Israeli bombing most nights.
     I talked about traditional Palestinian music and songs. And without noticing, I found myself telling her about the top Arab Lebanese singer Fayrooz, and the songs she has contributed for Palestine and the Palestinian children. more.. e-mail

The Taste of Occupation
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, Stop The Wall 9/1/2008
     Palestinian youth from Aida Camp have subverted advertisements for Strauss in the West Bank.
     Strauss, an Israeli company that manufactures sweets, coffee and other food products has spread its advertising campaign into the West Bank. Strauss has been pushing its brand of ice cream this summer, using a particular billboard that has become ubiquitous along main streets in major Palestinian cities.
     Palestinian youth for the Aida Camp near Bethlehem have creatively changed the wording of the advertisement of Strauss billboards in Bethlehem. Billboards formally reading, "Mmm...ice cream" now promote the message, "Mmm...ice cream with the taste of occupation."� A number of billboards in the Bethlehem area have been changed in this manner.
     Through movement restrictions and military control of all borders, the Occupation maintains full control over the Palestinian economy. Israeli companies often take advantage of this situation to dump excess products into what have essentially become captive markets. This lucrative practice is especially damaging to Palestinian farmers and small businessmen, who are not only barred from transporting their goods but are also undercut by cheap Israeli products. more.. e-mail

Expenses and Politics Overshadow the Joy of Ramadan
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 9/3/2008
     Every year Palestinians along with the wider Muslim world, observe the Islamic month of fasting, Ramadan. This year, according to the lunar calendar, Ramadan began on September 1, the same day as the new school year. While Ramadan is designed to primarily be a month of fasting, prayer and meditation, it is also a time when families get together to enjoy elaborate meals and desserts, and ironically when food becomes the main focus of the day.
     This would be fine if it were not for the economic slump Palestinians are in today. With the extra expenses of Ramadan coupled with all the necessities of the new school year, most Palestinian families are feeling the financial crunch. For many, instead of being a month of family bonding, good food and enjoyment, Ramadan this year is a financial burden. And for those who have somehow overcome the financial load of the month, the political situation is sure to put a damper on their festivities.
     While Ramadan usually means families spend more money on food, especially since there are more communal dinners with elaborate and meat-laden dishes, this year the burden is even heavier with the rise in prices. Palestinians everywhere are complaining that the price of basic foods such as meat, bread and rice have shot up astronomically. At the same time, salaries are either the same or amount to less with the devaluation of the US dollar. In some instances, they have not been paid at all like in the case of Palestinian Authority civil servants. more.. e-mail

Palestinians Calculating Next Move: Coexistence with Occupation Not an Option
Sam Bahour, MIFTAH 9/3/2008
     Palestinians have been historically outmaneuvered, politically neutralized, and made totally dependent on international handouts. Or have they?A newly released Palestinian strategy document which outlines strategic political options gives witness to a renewed breath of fresh air in the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom and independence.
     After 60 years of dispossession and 40 years of a brutal Israeli military occupation, many of the world’s power brokers are convinced that the Palestinians are successfully being forced into submission and acceptance of the colossal injustices that have been carried out against them.
     Leading the choir is the U.S. and its Israeli ally, along with several undemocratic Arab regimes.
     On the political front, they continue to take great pride in a never-ending “peace process” that has created a peace industry in Palestine, all underwritten by taxpayers from around the world. This peace process has no intention of realizing peace with justice, but rather looks to fragment Palestinians’ national aspirations into bite-sized pieces with state-like trappings -- the antithesis of a state with real sovereignty, let alone self-determination. more.. e-mail

The Evolving Facts of Life
Yossi Alpher, MIFTAH 9/2/2008
     A brief perusal of headlines in the regional media would appear to confirm that, of the two main Palestinian movements, Fateh and Hamas, the latter has recently been the object of the most attention from Israel’s neighbors, particularly Egypt and Jordan.
     To be sure, Palestinian Authority/Fateh leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) periodically makes the rounds of regional capitals to update leaders about the peace process with Israel. And in Cairo, Riyadh, Doha and Sanaa he discusses possible mediation for renewed unity talks with Hamas. No one refuses to see him and he is treated with respect. But then nothing happens.
     On the other hand, Jordan recently renewed its relations with Hamas after nearly a decade of alienation and despite its charges of out-and-out sedition against Hamas two years ago. And Egypt persists in mediating first ceasefire and then prisoner-exchange talks between Hamas and Israel. One is left with the impression that Arab recognition of PLO leadership of the Palestinian people is increasingly pro-forma and ritualistic. more.. e-mail

Gilad Atzmon - 'The Wandering Who?'
Gilad Atzmon, Palestine Think Tank 9/2/2008
     Tel Aviv University historian, Professor Shlomo Sand, opens his remarkable study of Jewish nationalism quoting Karl W. Deutsch:
     "A nation is a group of people united by a common mistake regarding its origin and a collective hostility towards its neighbours"� [1]
     As simple or even simplistic as it may sound, the quote above eloquently summarises the figment of reality entangled with modern Jewish nationalism and especially within the concept of Jewish identity.  It obviously points the finger at the collective mistake Jews tend to make whenever referring to their "˜illusionary collective past’ and "˜collective origin’. Yet, in the same breath, Deutsch’s reading of nationalism throws light upon the hostility that is unfortunately coupled with almost every Jewish group towards its surrounding reality, whether it is human or takes the shape of land. While the brutality of the Israelis towards the Palestinians has already become rather common knowledge, the rough treatment Israelis reserve for their "˜promised soil’ and landscape is just starting to reveal itself. The ecological disaster the Israelis are going to leave behind them will be the cause of suffering for many generations to come. Leave aside the megalomaniac wall that shreds the Holy land into enclaves of depravation and starvation, Israel has managed to pollute its main rivers and streams with nuclear and chemical waste. more.. e-mail

Meet the Lebanese Press: Syria and the Salafis
Hicham Safieddine, Electronic Lebanon, Electronic Intifada 9/2/2008
     Lebanese-Syrian relations witnessed a turnaround this month. The visit by Lebanese President Michel Suleiman to Damascus culminated in a declaration to establish full diplomatic relations between the two countries for the first time. Promises were made to intensify efforts to resolve long-standing disputes around delineating the borders and uncovering the fate of dozens of Lebanese who disappeared during the civil war and are believed to be imprisoned in Syria.
     Relations are far from returning to what they were prior to the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, but stronger ties with Lebanon could further break attempts at isolating Syria by the US, Israel and the "moderate" Arab regimes, in particular Saudi Arabia. Mending fences with the Lebanese political elites coincided with Syrian efforts to strengthen military ties with Russia in the wake of the Georgian conflict and revelations that.
     Israel made a major contribution to the training and arming of Georgian forces. more.. e-mail

Obama’s Zionist Wannabe Veep
Robert Weitzel - Madison, WI, Palestine Chronicle 9/2/2008
     Senator Joseph Biden: ’I am a Zionist.’ (Photo: AP) "If I were a Jew, I would be a Zionist. I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist." - Senator Joseph Biden Considering the last eight years and the current (viable) options, I’ll admit to wanting Barak Obama in the White House in January. Undoubtedly, more people around the world will have a better chance of surviving the next four years with his finger on—or rather off—the button. However . . .
     For all of Obama’s campaign promises of "change," his choice of Joseph Biden as his running mate sends a clear signal to Israel’s lobby in Washington and its right-wing government in Jerusalem that for the next four years there will be no change in the United States’ unconditional support or its annual $6 billion in direct and indirect aid.
     Predictably, neither will there be a change in the hopelessness and the impotent rage of the Arabs suffering under a U.S.-supported Zionist ideology in Palestine. more.. e-mail

Poetry, Hip-Hop and the Palestinian experience
Remi Kenazi, Palestine News Network 9/2/2008
     At a time when Palestinians’ conditions are devastating, Poets For Palestine seeks to give humanity its proper voice.
     In 1948, my grandmother was expelled from Palestine. Like many of the 780,000 evicted that year, she never saw her birthplace again. But she always dreamed of a dignified return: to Yaffa, her home city, a place of warmth and beauty; to her house, which in her heart, towered higher than the hills of Lebanon; and to an unfettered life, which no apology or compensation could ever replace.
     My grandmother passed on her story to inspire and galvanize—to insure that her children and grandchildren, and all those they encountered, would never forget Palestine.
     Poets For Palestine continues this vision as a unique collection of poetry, spoken word, hip-hop and art devoted to Palestine. more.. e-mail

Israel Must Rein in Settler Movement
Joel Gulledge, Palestine Chronicle 9/2/2008
     I left my home in the United States to spend the summer in the West Bank, where I was attacked by Israeli settlers late last month. As a member of the Christian Peacemaker Team, I went to the South Hebron Hills to help keep young Palestinian children safe from Israeli settlers intent on hurting Palestinians. Armed only with a video camera, it was my job to escort the children back and forth from school and summer camp.
     On July 27, the children and I were walking home when a group of Israeli settlers assaulted us from a hilltop with fist-sized stones. Some narrowly missed my head. Focusing my video camera, I recorded an Israeli settler flinging stones at the children from his long-range slingshot. When he saw that I was filming him, he struck me in the leg with a rock. He chased me, kicked me and screamed that he was going to kill me. Wrestling the video camera from my hand, he then repeatedly struck me in the face and upper body with a stone. more.. e-mail

Border Control / Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 9/2/2008
     Some 1.1 million Palestinian children started the new school year in the occupied territories. At least, that is the number of children registered with the education offices in Ramallah and Gaza. Sources at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA) and United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) say many children will be staying at home, with an unemployed father and an anxious mother (the month-long fast of Ramadan started yesterday).
     The teachers who returned to the long lines waiting at the Israel Defense Forces checkpoints are worried about getting to school on time. The question of whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) will reach U.S. President George W. Bush on time is much farther from their thoughts.
     Even in Abbas’ inner circle there is little interest in the Israeli media reports concerning new proposals by the Jewish state’s temporary prime minister. more.. e-mail

Nilin village continues to resist Israeli siege
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada 9/2/2008
     The window through which Salam Amira, 16, filmed the moment when an Israeli soldier shot from close range a handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainee has a large hole at its center with cracks running in every direction.
     "Since my video was shown, the soldiers shoot at our house all the time," she said. The shattered and cracked windows at the front of the building confirm her story. "When we leave the windows open, they fire tear gas inside too."
     Her home looks out over the Israeli road block guarding the only entrance to the village of Nilin, located just inside the West Bank midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It was here that a bound Ashraf Abu Rahma, 27, was shot in the foot in July with a rubber bullet under orders from an Israeli regiment commander.
     The treatment of the family stands in stark contrast to the leniency shown to the soldier and his commander involved in that incident.
     B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, has accused the Israeli army of seeking "revenge" for the girl’s role in exposing the actions of its armed forces in the West Bank. more.. e-mail

Encountering Peace: From concepts to realities
Gershon Baskin, Jerusalem Post 9/2/2008
     It has been reported that the Israeli-Palestinian permanent status negotiations being conducted in parallel by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and PA negotiator Ahmed Qurei are moving toward the final stages. To reach agreement there are issues which are unavoidable and must be addressed. There are also steps on the ground which are necessary to build public support for the potential agreement, which could be implemented immediately, even before a full agreement is reached.
     Apparently Livni will not agree to any kind of treaty that does not fully recognize Israel as a Jewish state. In the preparation for the Annapolis summit in November 2007, we recall that this was one of the major Israeli demands that made it impossible to reach a joint statement of principles for permanent status. The Palestinians rejected the demand. Negotiator Saeb Erekat stated: "We recognize Israel, don’t force us to determine your identity." more.. e-mail

Forcing the Neighbors into Play
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 9/2/2008
     The Israeli strategy for dealing with the Palestinians has changed significantly since the first agreement was reached between the two sides in 1993. This change is forcing Jordan and Egypt, unwillingly, to adapt.
     Until the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by a Jewish extremist, the Israeli vision of a solution was to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and allow for a Palestinian state to emerge. Certainly, this was not a vision in line with international law. At the negotiating table, Israel was bargaining over the exact location of borders as well as aspects of Jerusalem and the issue of refugees. Away from the negotiating table, Israel was creating facts on the ground, expanding and creating settlements, in an attempt at directing the outcome of negotiations.
     Nevertheless, the two sides, as well as interested and involved third parties and the international community in general, were promoting a solution to be reached through negotiations that involved two states on the basis of the 1967 borders. It was a strategy pursued, albeit more hesitantly, in the years between the assassination of Rabin and the assumption to power of Ariel Sharon. more.. e-mail

Local Priorities
Daoud Kuttab, MIFTAH 9/2/2008
     Whether those supporting the moderate leadership of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas admit it or not, Hamas appears to have won. Now, before Islamists around the world start celebrating, it is important to note that the region, let alone the world, is far from embracing hard-line fundamentalists. Hamas, for the record, has made some important ideological and practical changes, the most important of which was the "tahdiya" (ceasefire-like quiet).
     The signs of Hamas’ victory can be seen all over. From the success of the siege-breaking peace boats to the partial opening of the Rafah crossing with Egypt and the serious talks Hamas leaders are holding with Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence chiefs.
     Part of the reason for Hamas’ success is the fact that the region and the world have little choice but to accept the reality that emerged in February 2006 and that Hamas in June 2007, with its takeover of Gaza, served notice was not going away.
     Another reason is global and regional changes. The Russian-Georgian struggle exposed Washington’s geopolitical weakness, a result of its military overstretch in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also comes at a time when George. W. Bush, a president with the lowest approval ratings in decades, seems to have blinked. America is near agreement on a timetable for a withdrawal from Iraq and Washington clearly lacks the stomach for a confrontation with Tehran. The Iranians have called Bush’s bluff and seem to have succeeded. more.. e-mail

Jordan-Hamas: the Historic and Strategic Meaning
Asher Susser, MIFTAH 9/2/2008
     Jordan’s recent widely publicized resumption of contact with Hamas should be seen through the wider lens of the historic and strategic context. In the summer of 1999 King Abdullah II, shortly after his ascension to the throne, expelled the Hamas leadership from Jordan. The recent resumption of contact with Hamas was the first significant reversal of Jordan’s almost decade-long confrontational stand toward the organization.
     Hamas’ expulsion from Jordan was a reflection of the young King Abdullah’s shifting priorities in comparison to those of his late father King Hussein. For Hussein, the Hamas presence in Amman was a card to play against Yasser Arafat in Palestinian politics, from which he never really withdrew. For Abdullah, far more focused on Jordan of the East Bank, it was a political nuisance and a potential domestic security problem. But now, after nearly a decade on the throne Abdullah II is far more confident in the saddle. Moreover, in the Jordanian elections in November 2007 the Islamists were battered into virtual parliamentary insignificance by massive fraud, sanctioned if not directly orchestrated by the regime. more.. e-mail

Israel Turns Gaza into Prison
Zohair M. Abu Shaban – Gaza, Palestine Chronicle 9/2/2008
     ’Though Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it still controls our borders.’
     As a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, I could not have been more proud to learn last June that I had earned a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United States.
     As a child, I would wonder how televisions, computers and washing machines actually worked. I took this fascination to the Islamic University of Gaza, the only Gazan university offering a degree in electrical engineering. There, I developed an ECG monitoring system that enables patients’ hearts to be monitored at home through a personal computer and an Internet link. I won the university prize for distinguished projects for my innovation. I long dreamed of the other advances I might make after an education at the University of Connecticut, where I was scheduled to study this fall for a master’s degree in electrical engineering.
     Now, my dream has been stolen from me. I am devastated; my parents heartbroken. Though Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, it still controls our borders and determines who and what enters or exits. Since a 2006 election that brought a Hamas majority to the Palestinian Legislative Council, Israel has steadily diminished access into and out of Gaza. Many Palestinians reportedly died in the past year because they could not leave to obtain medical care they desperately needed. Food, fuel and medicine are scarce. Hundreds of students like me, with scholarships to study abroad, are being arbitrarily denied the right to leave Gaza to fulfill our educational aspirations. more.. e-mail

The Build Up to the Third World War
Pablo Ouziel, Middle East Online 9/2/2008
     Last century’s great depression ended with the build up to the Second World War, and the unacknowledged economic depression of today will give way to the official beginning of the Third World War.
     Perhaps a couple of decades from now we will all be praising the mainstream media for the wonderful work they have done reporting on our collective insanity. If we could all leave aside for a minute our nationalisms and ideologies, we could see through every page printed, every word aired, or every media image shown, that global confrontation is just around the corner. The media seems to be seeing what its readers, viewers and listeners are not able to grasp. A large scale war is now unavoidable, and we have all contributed to it through our obtuse obsession with ourselves and our ideals, and our lack of holistic understanding of human interaction. That said, it could be that news are no longer news, and are just part of the 21st century satirical entertainment culture. If that is the case, we can safely say that once the television is turned off, the war ends.
     Week after week, escalation is the game being played by “our” governments. Every country flexing its muscle to see what it is able to obtain, as the cake of global resources is safely being distributed between those with access to the knife. The British fighting for the little bit of oil which they might be able to extract, if they push the boundaries of their empire past the legal 200 nautical miles from the shoreline of its colonized Ascension Island. The Americans pushing for their famous missile shield in the ex-soviet states, which for years now professor Chomsky has been labeling as a declaration of war. The Israelis focused on their territorial expansion on Palestinian land, through their now world-renowned settlements. The Russians with their personal conflict in Georgia, which the “international community” of hypocrites is unanimously condemning, with the same might as they unanimously support every aggression they personally wish to impart. more.. e-mail

Growth in the Palestinian Land of Contradictions
Jonathan Cook, Palestine Monitor 9/1/2008
     Today’s West Bank is a land of shocking contrasts - of one set of rules and rights for Palestinians and another for Jewish settlers.
     Palestinian lives are under the absolute control of the Israeli army, which can either seal off communities with roadblocks or invade them at will. The Palestinian economy is being slowly strangled by the separation barrier. Few Palestinians are allowed any longer to seek work inside Israel, and their freedom to move around the West Bank is severely curtailed by hundreds of checkpoints and almost unattainable travel permits.
     If West Bank Palestinians are being hemmed into ghettoes, the 500,000 Jewish settlers living alongside them are in a much better position. Their settlements are connected to Israel by motorways that make their work and families inside Israel a simple, quick drive away. Israelis crisscross over the Green Line, the effective border, unaware of where Israel ends and the West Bank begins.
     The growth of the settlements, all of which are illegal under international law, was supposed to have been frozen under the terms of the 2003 Road Map, the US-sponsored plan to advance a Palestinian state. But a drive through the West Bank around East Jerusalem reveals a skyline of cranes, rapidly expanding these fortress colonies. more.. e-mail

Israel’s Weapon of House Demolitions
Jill Shaw, MIFTAH 9/1/2008
     The four-story building in Beit Hanina, a Palestinian neighborhood a few miles north of East Jerusalem, was clearly home to wealth. As our carload of internationals pulled up the small street leading to Abu Majed Eisha’s house at around midnight on 27 July, I noticed several BMWs parked along the way. Upon exiting the car, we were greeted by a number of middle-aged Palestinian men in suits, asking us if we were there about the house demolition. From what I had learned during my brief time in the West Bank, Palestine, I knew already that this was not going to be an ordinary house demolition.
     And what exactly is an "ordinary" home demolition in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories? According to Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) founder, Jeff Halper, house demolitions are one of Israel’s main weapons in its occupation of Palestine. Sadly, this extraordinary and devastating phenomenon is not at all uncommon to Palestinians. ICAHD, an Israeli group whose primary mission is to resist Israel’s practice of home demolitions, states that 18,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967. Additionally, another 22,000 East Jerusalem homes have demolition orders on them. This does not include the thousands of homes with demolition orders throughout the rest of the West Bank. more.. e-mail

The deceptive logic of Peaceonomics
Sami Aburoza, Electronic Intifada 9/1/2008
     I am often struck by the stark contrast between the endless amounts of advice and wisdom proffered by the ubiquitous international actors and "experts" to help Palestinians ameliorate their condition and the lack of action, comment or consequence from these same quarters toward the naked brutality of Israel’s colonial policies. What’s even more disturbing -- despite the obvious asymmetry between both parties to the conflict -- is the international conflict practitioners’ mindset qualifying the actions of both sides as somehow equally wrong and right, with 50 percent right balancing and eventually canceling out 50 percent wrong, leaving us at zero, a simple equation, a matter of enlightened numeric logic.
     This "balanced" analytical approach -- eloquently pointed out by the late Palestinian thinker Edward Said as a harmful fallacy -- seems to be part of a larger trend reshaping the conflict resolution (or is it conflict management?) professional’s toolkit and lenses in the context of the Israel-Palestine zero-sum game. The international community’s (and by extension Palestinian elite’s) logic of this trend -- what I call peaceonomics -- is rather straightforward: the underlying political causes are too complex and messy to deal with and our input so far has not produced an improved reality, so let’s redesign the input, re-imagine reality and re-arrange the phases of the conflict resolution process. more.. e-mail

Jeff Halper in Gaza: 'We are the oppressors'
Rami Almeghari, Electronic Intifada 9/1/2008
     In an interview with The Electronic Intifada, Jeff Halper, the Israeli-American director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, discussed the ongoing Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip and the Free Gaza Movement (FGM). Halper was one of 46 members to take part in FGM’s action to challenge Israel 14-month siege on Gaza.
     Halper discussed all of this with EI correspondent Rami Almeghari in the occupied Gaza Strip, just hours before he reentered Israel through the Erez crossing, where he was detained and placed in custody by the Israeli army.
     The Electronic Intifada: Now that you are in Gaza, would you please comment on the Israeli siege and the international embargo on the Gaza Strip?
     Jeff Halper: The international community, through the UN, imposed economic sanctions on Gaza, which is an illegal act in international law, showing the poverty and the failure of the international system. That’s why if you [want] justice, if you have to end the siege, end the occupation, end sanctions, the people have to do it, because the governments will not do it and the UN won’t do it because it is controlled by governments. more.. e-mail

Palestinian water strategies subject to Israeli veto
IRIN, Electronic Intifada 9/1/2008
     RAMALLAH/STOCKHOLM (IRIN) - The Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) continues to suffer from drought, but the head of the Palestinian Water Authority told IRIN there was a limit to what he could do to help.
     "Crisis management is the only strategy that I am able to apply," Shaddad Attili, the head of the Water Authority, told IRIN while attending World Water Week in Stockholm (13-23 August).
     He said he did not have the power to plan properly for his constituents, the 3.5 million Palestinians in the OPT, as the Oslo Accords left too much control in Israeli hands.
     "We have to go to the Israelis to get permission to do projects, like drilling, building reservoirs or laying pipes," Attili said this week after attending a round of negotiations with his Israeli counterparts as part of the 2007 Annapolis peace process.
     "It is a very complex procedure," he said, noting that projects have been delayed for over a decade.
     Even in the autonomous parts of the OPT, the Palestinians must still bring project proposals before the Joint Water Committee, where Israel can veto plans. more.. e-mail

Ramattan Reporter Reaches Gaza on Board the Liberty
Sami Abu Salem, MIFTAH 9/1/2008
     Tears filled the eyes of Ramattan News Agency’s Head of African Operations Hayyan Jubeh when he caught his first glimpse of the skyline on the Gaza coast along the horizon of the Mediterranean Sea after a 37-hour voyage launched from Cyprus.
     Jubeh, a 48-year-old Palestinian filmmaker from Jerusalem, is one of 44 international peace activists on board the ships. Spanning 17 countries, they arrived at dusk on Saturday on two boats (The Liberty and The Free Gaza) in a voyage organized by the California-based Free Gaza Movement, to break the Israeli siege on Gaza.
     "It is an indescribable feeling, finally we did it, we broke the siege and arrived to Gaza," Jubeh said while tears showered his face reddened from the sun.
     Jubeh and other activists lived through critical moments on their voyage to the Gaza Strip, passing several hours aboard the ships without any connection to the world.
     He says that an atmosphere of despair filled the boats for a moment when they hesitated, not knowing whether to continue with their adventure or to retreat, especially after they went under attack by electronic piracy. more.. e-mail

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