Epitome of Irresponsibility
Editorial, Miftah 9/9/2003
The past several days have witnessed the epitomes of irresponsibility symbolizing the failure of politicians and self-professed peace-makers. An internal power struggle left the Palestinians sans leadership; Israeli assassination operations ensured the rigor of violence, while American disengagement has shrouded the Middle East under a cloud of abandonment. The amateurish, and quite frankly incompetent, handling of the events as they unraveled by all concerned parties reigns grave concerns about the viability of any peace plan at this stage.
A façade of the promise Mahmoud Abbas was intended to fulfill, could not disguise the underlying decrepitude his term evinced. The ambiguity of his powers, coupled with his image of consistently succumbing to US and Israeli demands eroded the little street credibility he had. Perhaps his biggest mistake was not anticipating the power struggle that ensued between him and President Arafat almost instantaneously after he was sworn in. The position of prime minister as drafted required a balancing act by a savvy politician to avoid the minefield that Mahmoud Abbas seems to have heavily treaded on.
Of course, President Arafat played a significant role in the demise of the current government. It is plausible that Abbas’ term only served to show the international community the impossibility of forcing Arafat to the sidelines. In fact with every embarrassment Abbas suffered, Arafat’s popularity grew. Yet on the international arena Arafat continues to be isolated and his options for an intermediary representative have been halved by the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas, leaving him with only one possible appointee, Ahmed Qureia. Should his desired appointee fail to gain the approval of the US, or even worse fail at his new post, Arafat would have effectively isolated the Palestinian people from the international community.
Betwixt, between, bewildered
By Amira Hass, Ha'aretz Week's End 9/5/2003
It used to take five minutes by car for members of the Zawahara family to get to Beit Sahur. Then it was 15 minutes on foot. And then the electronic fence was installed. -- It used to be, up until seven years ago, that the name was apt: the Umm al-Assafir neighborhood, the neighborhood of the "Mother of the Birds." The birds were seen and heard all over the broad, stony expanse between Beit Sahur and the Mar Elias Monastery. For several years now, the bird song has been replaced by the din of bulldozers, and then the sounds of shooting, and then again the bulldozers and the tractors. Now the name has remained and the birds have gone, says Hussein Zawahara, who lives there. His brother-in-law Ahmed even worked for a while on one of those tractors, a tractor belonging to an Israeli company that scratched and dug into the earth of the area in order to stretch the separation fence known as the "Jerusalem envelope" south of the capital. The fence - actually three fences, one of them of coiled barbed wire, with a security road in between - closes in on Beit Sahur.
"Ahmed worked because he had to earn a living after months of not finding work, and shut us and our neighborhood in behind the fence," says Hussein sarcastically.
This is not exactly a neighborhood. These are two small stone houses built over two caves that once served as residences, another two tin-and-aluminum structures that serve as storehouses, a pen for the flock of sheep, 120 head, and a few plots sown with vegetables and planted with trees. This has been the home of the extended Zawahara family for some 55 years now: elderly parents and another six families including some of their sons and some of their nephews. A total of about 40 people, of whom 23 are children - babies, toddlers and schoolchildren.
Is Sharon trying to incite suicide bombings?
Editorial, Palestine Monitor 9/9/2003
It has been almost three weeks since Israeli helicopter gun-ships assassinated Hamas leader, Ismail Abu Shanab formally ending the shaky ceasefire sustaining the US-backed peace plan.
The fact that the ceasefire was littered with Israeli violations, including 16 killings of innocent Palestinians, barely made the news.
The fact that Israel has continued its siege and military closure of the West Bank and Gaza, maintained its policies of assassinations, home demolitions, military checkpoints, the building of illegal settlements, the uprooting of trees, the seizure of land and the horrific construction of an Apartheid wall, actions that completely violate the Road Map, have also been largely ignored. As will the 17 Palestinian deaths of the last three weeks, through extra-judicial assassinations, along with those of a further six Palestinians randomly targeted by trigger happy Israeli soldiers, including 3 children. There will be little coverage of all of this in the world’s press, that is of course until the next young Palestinian, downright desperate with the situation in which he, his friends and his family find themselves in, and, filled with hatred of the Israeli occupier, he walks into a busy street café, or steps on board a crowded bus, and blows himself up.
But this appears to be exactly what Sharon and Shaul Mofaz are working towards. Has nobody noticed that Hamas have vowed revenge for every Palestinian being assassinated? Yet still there has been nothing, so Sharon continues to push and push. There was wide belief that Saturday’s attempt on Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas spiritual leader, would be the last straw but Hamas have remained relatively silent. Can the world’s press please note this restraint?
Sharon Pushed the Right One down The Hill
By Ghassan Andoni, International Middle East Media Center 9/8/2003
Abbas’ letter of resignation pointed to three reasons for his drastic failure in fulfilling his duties: the intentional escalation of violence and attacks from Israel that brought his remarkable truce achievement to a sad end; the troublesome lack of interest from the side of the American administration; and the lack of cooperation and even in certain cases attempts to hinder and obstruct his efforts from the side of circles within the PA.
Reforms in governmental power sharing are in themselves wild steps in the process of democratizing societies. Even in independent and fairly stable Middle Eastern countries, sensitive national security issues are kept in the hands of the heads of states, the president, prince, or king.
Therefore, Abbas’ expectations of accumulating power in the hands of his government, especially in the security arena, were too unrealistic. Combining that with public calls from the side of Israel and the U.S. administration to isolate and marginalize President Arafat, his call for reforms and more authority sounded more like overtaking than sharing.
Apparently the Israeli-American priority was to marginalize Arafat. The level of pressure applied against Abbas’ government from both sides indicates more of an interest in pushing an internal crisis than advancing a diplomatic process.
The Or Commission and the education system
By Amnon Rubinstein, Ha'aretz 9/9/2003
The publication of the Or Commission report a day after the start of the school year was timely. A review of education in the Arab sector corroborates a major finding reached by the Or Commission, which dealt in part with years-long neglect and discrimination of Israel's Arab sector: Since the establishment of the state and through the 1990s, there have been huge gaps, both in terms of allocation of resources to the Arab sector, and in terms of the achievements of schoolchildren.
Through 1995, the Education Ministry refused to allocate to Arab schools the same basket of supplementary hours that was provided to children in the Jewish sector who were considered in need of special attention. The gap between achievement of Jewish and Arab pupils was painfully illustrated in an international research study prepared by the Office of Economic Cooperation and Development, which was released last July. In a battery of tests, Arab pupils ranked 31st in performance out of groups from the various states examined in the survey. (The results of Jewish schoolchildren were low in their own right - their ranking was 12th).
Is there a necessary relation between low resource allocation and low school achievement? It's hard to say: The truth is that performance of pupils from the Arab Christian sector is very impressive, and the gap between Christian and Muslim Arabs with regard to high school matriculation diplomas is larger than the gap that separates Jews and Arabs. Yet the legal and moral obligation to provide equal allocations to population sectors is not dependent upon classroom achievements; and it is also hard to imagine that school performance can be improved without resource distribution being equalized.
Hunting Season
By Zuheir Kseibati, Al-Hayat 9/8/2003
With Ahmad Qureih as head of the new Palestinian government, Sharon's government won't be moving any closer to changing its goal, namely to bury the Roadmap, along with the resistance and its factions' representatives. The only change in the Israeli plans will be to exploit to the full the quasi-similarity between the American and European positions regarding the resistance, which was sullied with the stain of terrorism, as in the case of Hamas.
Despite Washington's objection to remove President Yasser Arafat from his headquarters in the Moqataa and send him to exile, Sharon seems determined to start a new phase in his war against the Palestinian Authority, to the end of destroying it, after he holds the greatest share in burning the stage of Abbas' government: through verbally supporting it, and pushing it to the corner with only one choice, which is to cooperate with the Israeli army in eliminating the resistance.
This choice will remain standing - for the Israelis - with Qureih as the new Prime Minister, thus leaving the possibility for a serious resumption of negotiations down to nil. Everyone realizes that the current phase has gone beyond just thinking about ways to implement the Roadmap, which Sharon never wanted anyway, and has turned to a new chapter in the war against Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, as well as the other resistance groups. The leader of the Likudnik gang is determined to go to the end, without any consideration to the consequences of the great fire he is sparking.
Clearly, Qureih's government will find itself imprisoned in that fire, through the assassinations, the Israeli raids and the retaliatory acts....
Whom are the artists saluting?
By Hanna Kim, Ha'aretz 9/9/2003
The more arrogant and thuggish the regime, the more the "apolitical" plague spreads. One of the recent examples was the artists' gathering at Tel Aviv's Tzavta hall on Friday. They looked so pitiful and wretched, those artists who arrived to greet the education/culture and justice ministers. "Saviors of Israeli culture," the heads of the artists' organizations called the two ministers, asking their colleagues to "pay them tribute" in gratitude for returning NIS 75 million to the culture budget (a promise that has not been kept yet, by the way).
Limor Livnat and Yosef Lapid have a reputation of being no small censors of Israeli media over the years. Lapid did wonders censuring his journalists when he served as Broadcasting Authority director-general during the war in Lebanon. Livnat is remembered for the reprimands she hurled at radio and television directors for reports she deemed too leftist, i.e. critical. The fact that Lapid is promising to distribute money to artists according to the same procedure that the special allocations used to be given out to the Haredim did not stop the artists from holding the sycophancy celebration.
They were not given the harlot's fee for nothing. In the last two years, the artists' organizations refused to join the protests of the social organizations against the government's austerity program. They were looking after their own private sector. For sectorial has become synonymous with "apolitical."
Nonviolence: Ordinary Palestinians Fight For Their Freedom
By Lucy Nusseibeh, Al-Hayat 9/9/2003
The essence of Palestinian resistance is nonviolence: the steadfastness, the resilience, the dignity, and the humanity in the face of the unrelenting humiliations and brutality of the Israeli occupation. Such nonviolent resistance is much more the norm than the violent acts that grab headlines. As daily life for Palestinians becomes increasingly less livable from every point of view, there is growing interest in finding ways to get life back on track and, therefore, in using nonviolence as perhaps the best way to do this.
With or without the glimmer of hope afforded by the Roadmap, Palestinian nonviolence needs to be appreciated and strengthened. Violence is only in the interest of those who would dominate and exercise control through fear. If the Middle East situation is allowed to deteriorate, there will be no guarantee that it will not suck the rest of the world into a vortex of violence and fear. Civil society, both at the local and the international levels, can and must help at this crucial juncture if the cycle of violence is to be stopped in our fragile and interconnected world. Now is the time for the world to understand the centrality of nonviolent action for Palestinians, and to act and speak out in support and solidarity of all those working with it.
Nonviolence is the assertion of one's rights without using violence. Often it involves withholding or withdrawing support from illegitimate sources of power. It is based on the courage and humanity of ordinary people and their determination to live in dignity and decency. It is not surrender, and it is not necessarily even compromise; rather, it is a means to achieve justice and change without using violence.
The 5 Percent Solution
By David Makovsky and Eran Benedek, Foreign Policy September - October
By almost any measure, the Israeli settlement movement has failed. Despite religious, ideological, and financial incentives, only around 5 percent of Israel’s Jewish population has relocated to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since the land was captured in the 1967 war. Moreover, polls indicate a majority of Israelis are now prepared to evacuate the settlements and accept the establishment of a Palestinian state if doing so would bring lasting security.
At the Camp David summit convened by then U.S. President Bill Clinton in 2000, a plan emerged that would have allowed Israel to annex land accommodating 80 percent of the settlers while creating a contiguous Palestinian nation. A closer look at the settler movement suggests the Clinton plan remains feasible. Approximately 63,800 people, or just 1 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, would need to be uprooted to make a two-state solution possible. Habitually described as a “major obstacle to peace,” the settlement issue can be resolved by using a careful hand to redraw just 5 percent of the West Bank map—and by summoning the ample political will required to see the process through. [Includes maps, graphs, Acrobat document]
Through Eyes of Foreigners: U.S. Political Crisis
By Robert Jensen, Palestine Chronicle 9/9/2003
"'Americans seem very cavalier about politics,' one Middle Eastern journalist told me. 'Perhaps if they lived without free speech for a few years they would use it more often ..'" -- Thanks to several exchange programs, every year I have the opportunity to speak with dozens of journalists and professors from around the world who tour the United States to "increase mutual understanding, " as the U.S. State Department's "International Visitor Program" puts it.
Last week, it was two Indonesian professors. Before them, it was a Japanese professor, a group of Middle Eastern journalists, a delegation from Latin America. In the past five years, I have met with people from every continent (except Antarctica).
My job in these meetings is to answer their questions about U.S. media and politics, but the exchanges are truly mutual; I learn a lot about their countries. The most important lesson I have learned from these visitors, however, is about the United States and the crisis in our political system.
Every person with whom I have talked in these exchanges -- and I mean literally every single one, whether from Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia or Australia -- has made the same two observations about U.S. society. They all were surprised to discover:
· How skewed to the right the political spectrum is.
· How depoliticized the entire society is.
The first point is not news to them. They follow U.S. politics at home, and they have watched the steady rightward shift, especially since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. But when they travel in the United States, they develop a more visceral understanding of this country's increasingly reactionary politics. Few of these people are leftists themselves; they're simply struck by the narrowness of mainstream U.S. political dialogue.
One-Sided Pressure
By Rashid Khashana, Al-Hayat 9/8/2003
Following the total war on the Palestinians that Israel has announced, one has the right to wonder about the purpose of the visit of Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom to Morocco, which violated one of the important resolutions of the Arab summit. Did it really serve, as it was said then, to prevent a severance between the two parties and set the reconciliation back on track? The Israeli decision to end the truce and eliminate all of Hamas and Al Jihad political leaders had been previously taken and everyone knew about it. Still, Shalom tried to sell illusions to the Arabs in order to achieve a breakthrough in the diplomatic severance decided by the Arab summit in 2000.
Each time an Arab country makes a concession in favor of Israel, the latter shows its recognition by acting only more severely and violently. Following its Foreign Minister's first visit to the Moroccan capital years ago, Israel pursued the assassinations, infiltrations, bombings, destruction of agricultural lands and expansion of settlements, reaching to targeting the highest ranks of the Hamas leadership.
Instead of using the few pressure cards they have to push Sharon to implement the Roadmap, which he never believed in and never even considered carrying out, certain Arabs rushed to pressure the Palestinian side into offering further concessions, as if what the Israelis obtained with Mahmoud Abbas' government was not enough....The strange thing about it is that European governments, starting with France, Greece and Belgium, have waged a battle with their partners in the Union behind the scenes of Riva Del Garda, to convince them of relinquishing [the decision to blacklist Hamas], whereas the Arab party didn't lift a finger.
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