Well-Calculated Stunt
Editorial, Arab News 9/13/2003
Has the Israeli government lost all grip on reality? That question is being asked all over the world. The decision to oust Yasser Arafat seems crazy. It is going to make peace impossible. Even Washington opposes it — albeit for the wrong reasons. It wants to sideline Arafat, but it knows that every time the Israelis target him, his popularity soars among the Palestinians. Exiling him is not going to remove him from the political process, it is going to put him firmly at the center of it. In exile he will be able to morally claim the political leadership that has been ebbing away from him over the past year. But look a little deeper. Dangerous the plan may be, yes, but it is not without thought. It is yet another of Sharon’ stunts to dupe Israelis into thinking that he has answers to the suicide bombers. He has persistently peddled the lie that he can stop the violence, that hammering the Palestinians is going to produce peace. In the two-and-a-half years since he became Israel’s prime minister, it has not. The violence has increased under him, not decreased — and it is going to get a lot worse if Arafat is exiled; there will be more suicide bombs. The tragedy is that the Israeli public, in the face of all the evidence, will once again swallow the deception because it is desperate to believe the impossible — that it can have both security and land. Israelis are terrified of the truth, that that the two cannot go together, that the only route to peace and security is through an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories. Their belief in the impossible is Sharon’s salvation.
Targeting the Agricultural Sector
By Ali Sumudi, Jerusalem Times 9/11/2003
The Israeli authorities took advantage of the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and the world attention to Iraq to wage an old-new series of campaigns to drive out the Palestinians and confiscate their land. Palestinian sources have revealed that the Dead Sea Valley, the primary source of food products in Palestine, is under a fierce campaign targeting its land. Occupation authorities have announced war against the area and began exercising measures, including deprivation of water, to drive its residents off their land. Amr Daraghmeh, president of the Committee for Fighting Settlement, said that the Israeli measures are meant "to force us to surrender and abandon our land. Occupation tries every method to confiscate the land of the Dead Sea Valley, but the perseverance of the residents has thwarted those schemes." Historical look: Ahmed Asaad, director of the National Organizations Office in Tobas, said that the Dead Sea Valley makes up one-sixth of the West Bank and that 80 percent of it is fertile agricultural land that enjoys a moderate climate. "Those features and the strategic location of the valley granted it special importance throughout history. Tobas has always been a strategic source of food thanks to its abundant subterranean water and fertile soil. Its plains produce high quality grains and the mountains are prime locations for trees and grazing pastures, which made it the target of Israeli greed immediately after the war of 1967." Israel began confiscating land along the Jordanian border to control the area and establish a defense zone, and then expedited settlement activity, especially agricultural settlement. Asaad said that the objective was to secure a food source for the Hebrew state.
Three NGO's Discuss the Labor Market in Israel
Challenge September - October
On July 21 about 80 people gathered in Jaffa's Baqa Center to watch Video 48's most recent documentary, A Job to Win. The audience included social activists, leftists and Arab laborers from Galilee, who work at construction sites in the Tel Aviv area and sleep in nearby hostels. The film was followed by a panel discussion....The participation of the Arab workers lent an air of urgency. Foreign workers were also invited, but they did not attend. Dani Ben Simhon: The film A Job to Win brings the policy of the unholy trinity –government, contractors and personnel companies – into focus. They import foreign workers into construction while creating chaos in the local labor market. For Arab society, this chaos signifies social and economic devastation, which came to explosion, for instance, when the Arabs in Israel joined the Intifada in October 2000..... Ella Keren: This film is very sad. It focuses on the heavy price that local workers are paying, and less on the viewpoint of the foreign workers. We at the Hotline put more stress on this viewpoint, and in this we definitely complement each other's work. The film is an eye-opener. It brings the issue home with enormous power, even for me – and I know the subject. I think it hits on the essential topics that concern the labor market, but it doesn't do enough to present the responsibility of the government, the official policies. In my view, the problem is not so much the contractors as it is the policy makers, who let the contractors get what they want. And what they want isn't workers, it's slaves. The government has three major ways of doing this, which together turn the foreign workers into slaves.... Yossi Dahan: There aren't many films in this country about workers and their life. I saw A Job to Win today for the second time, and the most moving part was the ending, where food is prepared at dawn. It makes concrete in a very human way what it means to go out to a day's work. I think the film does something else as well, which I also heard from you: it exposes the lie that people don't want to work..... Response by Abed al-Majid from Majd al-Krum: I represent 60 workers who've come from Galilee to work in the Tel Aviv area and stay here during the week. In our view, this very fact is living proof that the government is lying when it claims there are no workers. Here we are, ready for the sake of decent work to leave our villages and families.....
From the Fish’s Mouth to Palestine’s Heart
By Sarah Whalen, Dissident Voice 9/13/2003
A fish spoke in Brooklyn. Half a year ago. Do you not remember? Was it God? An Ecuadorian fish cutter in New York, ready to slice up a 20-pound live carp for appetizers, swears the fish on his chopping block flapped at him for attention and spoke Hebrew, a language he doesn't speak but recognizes because he works for Hassidic Jew fish wholesalers. Jewish witnesses confirm the fish warned listeners to repent and account for themselves because the end is near. Some Hassidic Jews think the carp's voice is a reincarnated customer. Or a joke. Or, like the burning bush, the cloud, and the pillar of fire, God has spoken to men. In the language of Jews. From the mouth of a fish. What can this mean? In wartime, wooden crucifixes and stone Virgin Marys weep tears for the ravaged and the dead. But the fish story speaks to all Believers, Muslims, Christians, and Jews. And if the voice is indeed from God, nothing is without meaning. God first addressed the fish cutter, a Christian. The fish is an instantly-recognized Christian symbol that transcends spoken language. In pagan Rome, Christians used fish drawings to secretly identify themselves. Many of Jesus' first disciples were fishermen and miraculously, Jesus fed hungry multitudes with a handful of fish. For Muslims, the Qur'an says Moses followed a fish that "took its course through the sea (straight) as in a tunnel" to a place of Divine instruction reached only when the fish disappeared from sight. But Moses soon tired and forgot about the fish. And Satan made Moses’ servant, who was traveling with him, forget that the fish had taken "its course through the sea in a marvelous way" before disappearing. This indicates that spiritual knowledge, beginning where worldly knowledge departs, is often missed in distraction. Or lost in translation between the secular and esoteric. ...Who is the voice of the fish? Let us ask, who has the voice of honest indignation today? Go back half a year ago. Think of Rachel Corrie, the girl who died with a megaphone in her hand, stepping up to the blade of a giant bulldozer, trying to persuade the Israeli in it from killing Palestinians and destroying Palestinian homes. Western news photos shows a girl defiant, indignant and still alive, standing tall in the dirt, defying a harbinger of death, a bulldozer driver, a wrecker of family homes. Challenging him to quell his angry blade and be human again.
Contemplating Unacceptable Evenhandedness
By Kim Petersen, Dissident Voice 9/13/2003
Now that Howard Dean is emerging as a frontrunner in the battle to nominate a presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, he is increasingly subject to intra-party sniping. Associated Press reports: “Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman is hammering former Vermont governor Howard Dean over remarks he made recently about the Middle East conflict. But Dean maintains that he has not retreated from the strongly pro-Israel positions he articulated early in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.” (1) Mr. Lieberman calls the statement by Dean “without precedent,” and “irresponsible.” Mr. Dean chalked it up to trouble-making by Mr. Lieberman and notes: “The position of every Democratic candidate is the same as mine.” Mr. Dean avers this position is the same as the failed position of former President Bill Clinton -- a bizarre position to stake a claim to. This position backs former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s “generous offer.” The corporate media failed to elucidate that the generosity of the offer was only to be forthcoming from the Palestinian side. A look at a map of the proposal reveals that Palestinians would be left with a Bantustan-like patchwork state with Israel in effective control. Mr. Dean was also under fire for courting the Arab vote in the upcoming Michigan primary. “That's silly,” he said. “I’m not thinking about who’s going to vote where.” Surely this is just politicking. It is a rare politician who is indifferent to demographics and doesn’t seek to broaden his/her political base accordingly. Dean says his view is closer to AIPAC than Peace Now. Yet, clearly this does not reflect a progressive US position on Israel and Palestine. Mr. Dean’s pretense to the progressive platform is risible. (2)
Holding Syria accountable, though selectively
Daily Star 9/13/2003
With US President George W. Bush stubbornly insisting that the US is making “progress” in the “central phase of the war on terror” in Iraq, pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans in Congress figure it is time for phase three. Some think-tankers want to train Washington’s gun-sights on Iran, but next week Congress will reconsider a measure targeting Syria. The Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003, a reheated and amended legislative proposal proffered and then refrigerated in 2002, vows additional US sanctions to “hold Syria accountable for the serious international security problems it has caused in the Middle East.” According to its advance press, the bill enjoys widespread support in Congress. Should the Bush administration decide to thwart its passage, it may have to mount a more intensive effort than last year. However, thwart it the administration should. To the injury of focusing on alleged Syrian sins abroad, the act adds the insult of silence about the Syrian regime’s comportment at home. A few components of the Syria Accountability Act’s case against Damascus recall Washington’s conjuring up of the “mortal threat” accusation against Iraq. The 2003 version of the legislation quotes from a January CIA report that accuses Syria of stockpiling the nerve agent sarin and making clandestine contacts with Russia about a nuclear program. But in July, when ultra-hawkish Undersecretary of State John Bolton planned to tell Congress that Syria’s arsenal threatened regional stability, the CIA pre-emptively issued a 35-page rebuttal that compelled Bolton to stand down. Weapons? Maybe. Offensive threat? No. The act also echoes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s lame accusation in March that Syrian-smuggled night-vision goggles were imperiling American troops in Iraq. Syria also imported Iraqi oil in violation of UN sanctions, say the Congressional accountability watchdogs, but they fail to note that US allies Jordan and Turkey did the same thing for years with nary a cross word from the State Department.
Weddings and martyrs
By Emma, International Solidarity Movement 9/5/2003
Gaza - 5 Sep 03 -- Friends, I am sorry my reports have been slow. Sometimes it is so hard to find the words to write about the things that i see everyday in Rafah. In the last two weeks there have been seven assasinations in the Gaza Strip. These are done with missles that are fired from F16s. Sometimes as many as seven missles are fired in one assasination, killing innocent bystanders, and destroying shops. Last night i stayed at Abu Ahmed’s house. His daughter is getting married today, and the whole house feels the excitement. His neighbor Abu Fati invited us over for tea, so we went. We sat with his whole family for about an hour, and i talked with his daughter who is trying to learn english. While we were there we heard several tanks drive by the border, sometimes shooting. When we left, we noticed that there was no one out in the street. We heard a tank drive by, and cautiously walked toward Abu Ahmed’s. After a few steps, the tank opened fire in our direction. We darted back, and waited until it continued on. Back at Abu Ahmed’s i could feel my heart racing. This is what the people of Rafah face everday when walking in their neighborhoods, to school, or the store. It is so hard for me to imagine, even living here, what it must feel like to own the house that is being shot at every day, or not be able to leave like i can. The tank continued to fire at Abu Ahmed’s house all night, for about five minutes every hour. The sounds of rapid machine gun fire have been incorporated into all of my dreams. Several days ago our group went to the nearby city of Khan Younis to visit the shahiid tent of an eight year old girl who was shot while playing next to her house. A shahiid tent is a tent that is put up for three days after someone is killed by the Israeli military. The family welcomes guests to pay their respects. We went inside, and spoke with the mother and sisters of Aisha (the shahiid).
From Sweden with Love (Anna Lindh)
By Hanan Ashrawi, Miftah 9/12/2003
Sweden, a “small, remote” Scandinavian country, has had more of an impact on Palestinian history (and human reality) than closer or greater powers throughout the world. The impact has been consistently constructive, positive, and human—with a deep-seated tradition of fairness, justice, and peaceful intervention. Unfortunately, three such Swedish champions had met with violent and untimely deaths, each a tragedy unto itself, but a national and global loss in the larger scheme of things. The assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte, UN Mediator on Palestine, in 1948 at the hands of the Israeli terrorist organization—the Stern Gang—began a lethal Swedish connection with Palestine. An ardent champion of the underdog, particularly of the Jewish victims of the holocaust, and as a global humanitarian, Count Bernadotte was recruited on behalf of the UN to mediate among all parties to oversee the peaceful implementation of the Partition Resolution in Palestine. He was brutally murdered, shot at point blank, by three Jewish Stern Gang members in Jerusalem. Palestine had lost its first Swedish champion.
Israel’s burgeoning alliance with India is part of a bizarre menage a quatre with Pakistan, Iran
By Ed Blanche, Daily Star 9/13/2003
As an added bonus for the Israelis, the alliance with India cuts off the Palestinians from one of their oldest and most important supporters. -- When Osama bin Laden’s suicide squads attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, Major General Uzi Dayan of Israel’s National Security Council was sitting in the New Delhi office of India’s National Security Adviser, Brajesh Mishra, discussing what an Indian official described as “a joint security strategy.” Their dialogue at such a catastrophic moment was ironic and undoubtedly coincidental, but the events of that day transformed a security partnership into a strategic alliance. This could have a profound impact on the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East and South Asia that goes far beyond the two countries’ fight against Islamic fundamentalism or the fact that both are nuclear powers who refuse to sign the 1972 nonproliferation treaty surrounded by hostile neighbors with ballistic missiles. The burgeoning alliance between the two most potent non-Islamic powers in the Middle East and South Asia was cemented by Ariel Sharon’s visit this week to New Delhi the first by a serving Israeli prime minister even though it was dramatically cut short by Tuesday’s suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Sharon’s visit, however abbreviated, gave new prominence to a partnership that has been building since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1992. With 2002 sales totaling nearly $2 billion, Israel is now India’s second-largest arms supplier after Russia and is expected to take the top spot within the next two or three years.
The roadmap of human folly
Asia Times 9/11/2003
Part 2 of 2 - The Twin Towers and the Tower of Babel -- PARIS - "I wonder whether there can be a future for the UN in Iraq," asks an European diplomat. Some Iraqis recognize that the United Nations' humanitarian aid, in the shape of the oil for food program, may have saved lives during the embargo. But many hate the UN exactly because of the embargo: for them, the UN just enforces what Washington decides. The undisputable fact is that the UN supervised the harsh sanctions that, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, were directly responsible for the deaths of half a million Iraqi children and an explosion in the mortality rate. Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, two senior, respected UN officials, resigned in disgust against the way in which the oil for food worked (or not) - for them, the UN had betrayed the people of Iraq. ....European intelligence reads the death of the roadmap in the Middle East as a coup deliberately orchestrated by the Israeli military, with Ariel Sharon and his Defense Minister Shaoul Mofaz as commanders (and following Wolfowitz's advice). That's the same view of Israeli writer and peace activist Uri Avnery, "The military was upset when it saw the new hope that took hold of the Israeli public, the bullish mood of the stock exchange, the rise in value of the shekel, the return of the masses to the entertainment centers, the signs of optimism on both sides. In effect, it was a spontaneous popular vote against the military policy." Sharon's strategy was first to isolate and discredit Palestinian prime minister Abu Mazen; then not even trying to fulfill roadmap commitments (remove settlements, stop the construction of the "Wall of Shame" separating Israel and Palestine, withdraw the army from the whole West Bank). Finally, with the end of the hudna (truce), Sharon has given Israeli army tanks and helicopters the chance to wreak havoc in Palestine all over again.
Most Dangerous Job in the World
By Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid , Arab News
Sadly for Ahmad Qorei (Abu Alaa) he has now become prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. It is bad luck for anyone to become part of the government now that Mahmoud Abbas has thrown in the towel and left — thus leaving the office to Arafat’s men, who drove him to distraction. Who would want to be prime minister in Ramallah? It is a foolish politician indeed who would agree to work there and offer himself up to internal conflicts, Israeli insults and constant disappointment from the Americans. His job is to negotiate on behalf of Arabs and Palestinians, and for that reason he will be insulted on all Arab TV channels and become the subject of poisonous caricatures. He will head a government some of whose members are only waiting to stab him in the back while outside they will put up roadblocks until he announces that he is leaving — just like Abbas, who was told upon his appointment that his most important quality would be patience. Qorei wasn’t able to escape being harmed by Israelis nor will he be able to escape the meddling of colleagues. It doesn’t matter very much that he has great experience. In future negotiations he will be able to draw on his record in Oslo, on all that he has learned from his time as a parliamentarian. But the more important point is that Qorei deals with problems by confronting them head-on. The events of last year exemplify this. Soldiers of the occupying forces fired eight shots at his car at a roadblock near Ramallah on the West Bank, but instead of turning around and running, Qorei stopped his armored car and shouted at the Israelis until they stopped shooting and allowed him to pass through the roadblock.
Reacting peacefully
By Ehud Ein-Gil, Ha'aretz 9/10/2003
Why has the government decided to develop military weapons in the nuclear center at Nahal Soreq? Isn't this a violation of an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency - and doesn't it endanger residents of Gush Dan, and of Yavneh in particular? -- In 1960, while Israel was secretly building its nuclear reactor near Dimona, another reactor was inaugurated in the center of the country, publicly and with much fanfare. The reactor at Nahal Soreq, at the edge of the Gush Dan (metropolitan Tel Aviv) region and not far from the town of Yavneh, was earmarked from the outset solely for "peaceful purposes" and "research." That was the official position of the Israeli government, which it has reiterated time and again. This being the case, a narrow "security belt" was left empty around the reactor, to protect the population in the vicinity from radiation, as Haaretz reported in February 1961. In the bilateral agreement signed with the United States, which supplied the reactor and the nuclear fuel to operate it, Israel undertook to use the nuclear equipment and materials exclusively for peaceful purposes. The agreement empowered the Americans to supervise the facilities and the materials they were to supply - but only them. As a result, Israel effectively received a free hand to use the reactor's facilities for military purposes, provided that in doing so, it would not use equipment and materials supplied by the Americans.
Aliens in Ein Al-Hilweh
By Musa Al-Hindi, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 11 - 17 September 20
The 21st anniversary of the Massacre of Sabra and Shatilla will be commemorated September 16-19. Palestinians living in Lebanon, numbering between 380,000 and 400,000, will observe this anniversary feeling more apprehensive about their precarious existence in their host country. The political climate within Lebanon, Palestine and the rest of the Arab world has rendered them vulnerable to adverse political, economic, and social circumstances. By highlighting some of those conditions, many of which are the result of discriminatory policies by the Lebanese state, this article hopes to draw attention to the suffering of Palestinian refugees. Lebanon should realise that granting the refugees their civil rights would bolster their resistance to any agreement that fails to repatriate them to their original towns and villages. One must emphasise from the outset that the main, underlying cause of the refugees' plight was their expulsion by the Zionists. As such, Israel bears the ultimate responsibility for their predicament. The United Nations is equally responsible, owing to its decisive role in the creation of Israel, as well as to its failure to enforce its numerous resolutions calling for the repatriation of the refugees to their original lands and homes. The international community's failure to adequately finance the UNRWA's (United Nations Relief and Work Agency) provision of temporary health, educational and social assistance to Palestinian refugees, coupled with their abandonment by the PLO, have deprived the them of essential basic services.
A matter of choice
By Azmi Bishara, Arabic Media Internet Network 9/11/2003
Just as the resignation of the new Palestinian prime minister, coming only after 100 days in office, was announced, news reports spoke of an assassination attempt mounted against Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and of Hamas labeled a terrorist group by none other than the European Union. It would be a waste of time to try and find a link of causality among these developments, beyond the obvious fact that all are products of the same political situation, symptoms of the same crisis. Right now, the Palestinians need to view the current crisis as a whole and formulate a unified strategy to deal with it. The current developments are linked, one way or the other. More relevantly, whoever took the decision to mount the operation against Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader and founder of Hamas, has done so according to intelligence reports and in response to a standing high-level political decision. Israel's security services were just waiting for the right moment to make their move. For several weeks, particularly since the Jerusalem operation, it has been clear that Israel was determined to wage an all-out war against Hamas leaders. The Israeli army and the security services had their orders and were standing ready to carry out the attacks at the right time. In the past, Israel used to launch preemptive or retaliatory attacks against Hamas leaders. It did so in the assassinations of Jamal Salim and Jamal Mansur (31 July 2001) in Nablus and the attempt on Al- Rantissi's life two months ago (10 June 2003). Now, things are different. Israel is targeting Hamas as a whole, regardless of whether or not the latter is mounting operations.
The Israelisation of America
By Ahdaf Soueif, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 11 - 17 September 20
The US's unqualified backing of Israel goes back a long way, but 9/11 was the neo-cons' chance to take it one step further: full identification -- Once again it's funny mirrors time. The world watches the events taking place in Palestine, and Western media see one process taking place while the Arabs generally see another. Interpreting these events is largely a matter of how you view the relationship between the USA and Israel. A few weeks ago I heard a well-known British columnist say he was sick of being told that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict was the 'litmus test' for how people can expect the American Imperium to influence the world. Yet "Freedom for Palestine" was the demand on millions of the banners in the anti-war demonstrations that swept the world last February. America's support for Israel dates to the beginning of the Zionist project in the late 19th century and grew stronger throughout the 20th. From 1949 to the present, for every dollar the US spent on an African, it spent $250.65 on an Israeli, and for every dollar it spent on someone from the Western Hemisphere outside the US, it spent $214 on an Israeli. As Israel grows stronger the support becomes more solid. According to Stephen Zunes, chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Programme at San Francisco University, "99 per cent of all US aid to Israel took place after the 1967 War." In the United Nations the US has used its veto against 34 resolutions related to the Arab/Israeli conflict.
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