'It's in the air'
By Amira Howeidy, Al-Ahram Weekly, 3 - 9 October 2002
Demonstrations marking the Intifada's second anniversary are sending a strong message. But will the voice of the people be heard?: It was the third time within a year that activists and political groups dared to make of central Cairo's strategic Tahrir Square a venue for what the 21-year-old Emergency Law strictly bans: street demonstrations. But if a dangerous political climate caused by the assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat in 1981 was the reason for imposing martial law in Egypt for more than two decades, and thus making of demonstrations an exceptionally rare scene, the situation in Palestine and what is expected to be the imminent invasion of Iraq, are driving more and more people to violate the Emergency Law. And stuck between a rock and hard place, the government is obviously allowing them to do so.

A fatal duplicity
By Ibrahim Nafie, Al-Ahram Weekly, 3 - 9 October 2002 
Washington and London stand accused of hypocrisy, and everyone knows why: A frequent complaint voiced throughout the Arab world is that major powers, especially the US and the UK, apply double standards in their handling of issues. Although these powers have taken pains to refute the accusation, events on the ground constantly reaffirm it. While these powers clamour to enforce the principles of international legitimacy and the provisions of international law with stringent rigidity against one party, they diligently overlook the same principles and provisions when it comes to another. And, should there happen to be a movement to pass a resolution against a party they favour, they will work to ensure that such a resolution is moderately worded and tailored to obviate further action in the event this party fails to comply -- by no means will Chapter 7 of the UN Charter be invoked. Arabs who point to such discrepancies are variously told that they are being oversensitive, given to conspiracy theorising or simply disagree in their assessment of the relative urgency of the cases in question. At the same time the international powers try to assure them that after they have dealt with the country that they claim poses a grave threat to international peace and security they will redirect their focus to other issues, thereby putting paid to all allegations of double standards. Recent developments, however, expose such assurances as a sham.

Mixed record of Intifada
By Abdel-Jawwad Saleh, Al-Ahram Weekly, 3 - 9 October 2002 
Two years on, the record of the second Al-Aqsa Intifada is a mixed one, with Israel continuing its policy of war crimes against a defenceless Palestinian population: I am inclined to be critical when we celebrate anniversaries of apparently great significance, and this critical spirit has not left me during the recent celebrations of the anniversary of the second Al-Aqsa Intifada. The notion of Intifada, or uprising, describes a state of collective rebellion, entered into by an entire people in a search for salvation from occupation. For the second time, the Palestinian people have adopted this tool spontaneously as a way of pursuing their freedom. However, the circumstances of the second Intifada are not what they might appear at first sight, and the reasons for this have much to do with prior Israeli actions. Part of these negative circumstances has to do with the spread of arms in the occupied territories before Israel's redeployment. Arms sales by the Israeli mafia, connected either to the Israeli army or directly to Israeli intelligence services through collaborators, were phenomenal in scale at this time, being a trap for leading the Palestinian factions into civil war.

US misuse of the United Nations
By Jonathan Power, Arab News, October 5, 2002
LONDON, 5 October — In last month’s speech to the UN General Assembly President George Bush spoke of “broken treaties” and UN resolutions being “unilaterally subverted”. Yet the United States has one of the worst records of all when it comes to bypassing or subverting important UN resolutions. The US has a long history of continuing to use international law when it works in its favor and to discredit it when it is not. For example, the US filed suit against Iran before the International Court of Justice (the World Court) for taking US diplomats as hostages. Yet, only four years later, when Nicaragua took the US to the World Court for mining the harbor of its principal port, the US refused to accept the court’s jurisdiction. In 1988, the World Court ordered that an execution of a Paraguayan citizen in the US be suspended. It argued that under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which the US is a party, the accused had the right to seek assistance from Paraguayan consular officials, which had been denied. Five days later, ignoring the court, the state authorities in Virginia proceeded with the execution. A similar case was the execution of a Mexican in Texas in 1997. He too was denied consular access. After his execution, Governor George Bush stated that since Texas had not signed the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations it was not bound by it.

Seeking a safe place to raise the Palestinian flag
By Ramzy Baroud, Christian Science Monitor, October 5, 2002
MOUNTLAKE TERRACE, WASH. – Last April, I tried again to enter my Palestinian homeland in the West Bank from Amman, Jordan, but was denied access by the Israeli army. As I waited, brokenhearted, for the beat-up bus to take me back to the Jordanian border, I spotted the remains of a Palestinian flag that once wavered on the side of a building. It was torn to shreds, yet still stirred in the Jericho breeze. Above it, flew a large, brand-new Israeli flag. Somehow, after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the Palestinian flag lost its meaning for me. The Israeli army finally allowed us to display our flag in any form, but I never did – because the four colors, no longer standing for what I adored, had faded. And many of the rights for which we fought, such as the removal of illegal Israeli settlements and the freedom of movement from town to town, were still missing.

Opportunity knocked
By Reuven Pedatzur, Ha'aretz, October 5, 2002
On June 19, 1967, about a week after the Six-Day War had ended, the Israeli government unanimously decided that, in return for a peace treaty with Egypt and Syria, Israel would be prepared to give back all the territory it had captured in the Sinai Peninsula and on the Golan Heights and to return to the international boundary lines. It should be recalled that the same government that was prepared to withdraw from these territories was a national unity government, some of whose members were cabinet ministers representing the Gahal party, including Menachem Begin. The government's decision was so secret that it was not even revealed to the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, who learned about it from the Americans only after he had arrived in Washington to serve as Israel's ambassador to the United States the following year. The Israeli government had authorized Abba Eban, the foreign minister, to convey this far-reaching decision to the American administration so that it could pass it on to the Egyptian and Syrian governments.

Sari Nusseibeh and the Right of Return
By Jaffer Ali, Palestine Chronicle, October 5, 2002
When one is a Palestinian growing up outside one's ancestral home, there is often a contradiction between the Real Politik that one contemplates in the mind, and the dreams one feels in the heart. Today I write from the heart to address what some Palestinians seek to surrender, the inalienable Right of Return. The Right of Return is an internationally recognized principle guaranteeing an indigenous population the right not to be relocated against their will. No nation, however powerful, has the right to ethnically cleanse a population. In short, might does not dictate right. Israel's birth was not the virginal affair depicted in movies and books like Exodus. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were uprooted...and dispossessed. Today, from that number, over 4 million Palestinians, many of them living in refugee camps, are asserting their right to return to their historic homeland.