My Country Is At War With Palestine
By Richard Hugus , ZNet 10/20/2003
Most US citizens, if asked, would be surprised to learn that their country is at war with the country of Palestine. They wouldn't be aware that Palestine is a country. They've heard of the West Bank and Gaza, not as parts of Palestine, but as territories where Palestinians live, which Israel occupies. They assume the territories were never part of any country and that it is natural for Israel to occupy them.
US citizens haven't heard of US soldiers being sent to Palestine. How, then could there be a war? They are ignorant of the massive support being given to Israel, with their taxes. They are unaware that the US has such power that it can attack another country simply by creating and supporting a compliant power within that country, and let that power do its bidding.
When a country is erased from history, absurdities abound. War cannot be declared against a country which doesn't exist. When people flee such a country and become refugees, how does one account for them; how does one name them? What does one do with the map, the homes, the culture of the people who lived there before and continue to live there? Palestine is such a country.
Since Zionism began its patently insane program of eradicating the indigenous people of Palestine -- beginning officially with the founding of Israel in 1948 -- some 5 million refugees have been forced from Palestine into the rest of the world. The US is very much involved in the issue of Palestinian refugees because its sponsorship of Israel in large part created them.
Israel carrying out policy of ethnic cleansing by inducing poverty, starvation, and cases of forceful expulsion
Editorial, Palestine Monitor 10/20/2003
The Israeli construction of the West Bank apartheid wall is clearly a politically motivated maneuver intent on reshaping the West Bank, rendering a viable Palestinian state, and with it any lasting peace through a two state solution, impossible.
In reshaping the West Bank and slicing off huge portions of Palestinian land east of the 1967 border, Israel has also annexed thousands of Palestinians – Palestinians it is now trying to expel through forceful expulsion but also through destroying any remaining quality of life within this isolated area of land.
On October 2, the Israeli military released an order declaring all occupied West Bank land between the “security” wall and Israel’s pre-occupation 1967 border a “Closed Zone”. The order states that “no person will enter the (Closed Zone) and no one will remain there.” Free access to the Closed Zone will only be granted to “Israelis”. In this October 2nd order, General Moshe Kaplinski defines “Israelis” as any citizen of the state of Israel, resident of the state of Israel, and any one eligible to emigrate to Israel in accordance with the Law of Return, 1950. This means therefore, that while the 15,300 Palestinian residents in this 115 square km area, or those in adjoining communities who own agricultural land here (180,000 people) must now obtain highly unreliable permits to validate their existence, any Jewish person from anywhere in the world is quite free to come and settle on this land.
Military Order Turns Separation Wall into Land Grab
By Huwaida Arraf, International Middle East Media Center 10/18/2003
A new order issued by the military commander of the West Bank announced to Palestinians that they are no longer allowed to be on their land west of the separation wall. The order, which was distributed in Hebrew and illegible Arabic last week, states that the land west of the wall is a closed military area and that only Israelis, those eligible to be Israelis under the Law of Return (i.e. practically every Jew in the world) or those issued special permits would be allowed to be on the land.
Nothing in the order guarantees that permits will be granted to these Palestinian landowners, nor even respecated if granted.
The idea of applying for a permit to be on one’s own land is rejected by Palestinians who have been on these lands for generations. In addition to the thousands of dunams of farmland, water wells, and greenhouses that are being isolated from their owners, thousands of Palestinians reside in 15 villages that fall between the wall and the Green Line. According to this new order, these Palestinians are “illegally” residing in their homes now.
The `nobody to talk to' thesis
By Yuli Tamir, Ha'aretz 10/21/2003
One of the failures of holistic theories, says Karl Popper, is that they are impossible to refute since any argument against them can be changed to fit the desired world view. The more heated the debate around the Geneva understandings, the more it becomes clear that the assumption that `there's nobody to talk to' falls into that Popperian definition of a theory that cannot be disproved because it changes form according to need.
Setting out the various ways used to rebuff the argument there is someone to talk to, might help make clear the nature of the dead end that public discourse has reached. The following arguments come up every time there is hope that there is someone to talk to. The Palestinian ready to sit down and talk with Israelis about the future of the region - let's call him or her the "speaker" - is immediately ruled out through one of the following arguments or a combination of several of the following:
* The speaker is still alive. In the past, whoever spoke with Israelis about significant issues, for example Dr. Issam Sartawi, was murdered by Palestinians. The fact that the speaker is still not dead is proof of his utter inconsequence, so therefore whatever he says cannot be taken seriously; or he's not telling the truth, which is why he hasn't been killed.
* If the speaker is using English, German or even Hebrew, it is assumed he is saying something else in Arabic and therefore only what he says in Arabic should be listened to, and what he says is doubtless incitement....
Geneva Accord - P.A. Selling Out Palestinian Rights?
By Haithem El-Zabri, Alaqsaintifada.org 10/19/2003
The Palestinian Authority has given its blessing to a "symbolic peace treaty" reached in Switzerland between mid-level Palestinian officials and Israeli opposition leaders. In the so-called "Geneva Accord," the negotiators outline what they see as the necessary compromises for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
The Parties: The Palestinian team is comprised of several former Palestinian Authority (PA) ministers, current legislators, and leaders from the ruling Fatah Party. They include Yasir Abed Rabbo, former Minister of Information, Hisham Abdel Razeq, former Minister for Prisoner Affairs, Nabil Kassis, former Minster of Planning, and officials from the Fatah-affiliated Tanzim organization. The talks were conducted with Yasser Arafat's approval, if not direction.
The Israeli side includes former Minister of Justice Yossi Beilin, former Israeli Labor party leader Amram Mitzna, former Parliament speaker Avraham Burg, former chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Brigadier General Giora Inbar, writer Amos Oz, and several current and former Members of Knesset.
Terms of the Accord: The full details of the 50-page document have not been disclosed yet, and participants said they will make the document available only after it has been formally adopted in Geneva later this month. However, reports indicate that the terms are along the following lines...
Israel's age of austerity
By Joseph Algazy , Alternative Information Center 10/22/2003
SINCE the beginning of the summer, ministers, civil servants, shoppers and passers-by on the avenue in front of the finance ministry in Jerusalem have had to file past a row of tents where men, women and children are living. These people - single mothers, the homeless and the unemployed - are the main victims of the current anti-social policies of Ariel Sharon's government.
Vicki Knafo, the woman who started the protest movement, is a 43-year-old divorcee raising her three children on 1,200 shekels ($270) a month that she earns as a part-time cook in a crèche. Until July she received supplementary benefit of around 2,700 shekels ($605) to bring her income up to the official minimum. But after the government's recent austerity measures she gets 1,200 shekels less. Early in July she set out from her home in the Negev desert town of Mizpeh Ramon to walk the 200km to Jerusalem. It took her a week. Others have followed her, sometimes taking their children with them. Among them is Ben Abraham, aged 59, who has a dog but no home. His T-shirt bears the message: "My dog has a kennel - what do I have?"
The police intervene violently whenever these protesters attempt to speak to ministers.
A group of Negev Bedouins who have set up a tent nearby are protesting against the systematic destruction of their villages, which is intended to drive them from their ancestral lands into city slums that some people call "reservations".
New Cheney Adviser Sets Syria In His Sights
By Jim Lobe, Antiwar.com 10/21/2003
A neo-conservative strategist who has long called for the United States and Israel to work together to "roll back" the Ba'ath-led government in Syria has been quietly appointed as a Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.
David Wurmser, who had been working for Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, joined Cheney's staff under its powerful national security director, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in mid-September, according to Cheney's office.
The move is significant, not only because Cheney is seen increasingly as the dominant foreign-policy influence on President George W. Bush, but also because it adds to the notion that neo-conservatives remain a formidable force under Bush despite the sharp plunge in public confidence in Bush's handling of post-war Iraq resulting from the faulty assumptions propagated by the "neo-cons" before the war.
Given the recent intensification of tensions between Washington and Damascus – touched off by this month's U.S. veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution deploring an Israeli air attack on an alleged Palestinian camp outside Damascus – Wurmser's rise takes on added significance.
With Whom, About What
By Uri Avnery, Arabic Media Internet Network 10/19/2003
The Beilin-Abed-Rabbo agreement is the latest hit on the Middle Eastern market.
This week I made a short visit to Germany , where a book of mine has come out, and was asked about it at every event. At my meetings with President Johannes Rau and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, too, the subject came up at once. I used the opportunity to argue for support of this initiative by all possible means.
To avoid misunderstanding, I pointed out that I have no connections with this initiative. The Israeli participants belong to the left wing of the Labor and Meretz parties, and I do not belong to this circle. But I give this initiative all my blessings – all the more so because it continues a process that we ourselves started two years ago.
In August 2001, Gush Shalom published the draft of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. It consisted of 14 paragraphs that included detailed proposals for the solution of all the problems of the conflict. It was an Israeli initiative, but we acted in close consultation with Palestinian colleagues.
The main object of the initiative was educational. The al-Aksa Intifada was in full swing, Ehud Barak's myth (“There is no one to talk with!”) had captured the public, most of the peace camp had collapsed, hopelessness and impotence reigned supreme.
We wanted to light a candle in the darkness. To prove to the public that there is a solution, that there was somebody to talk to and something to talk about. And, most importantly, to tell the people what the price of peace is, and that it was worthwhile to pay it.
Is there Hope for the Palestinians?
By Rev. Jack Sara, Come And See 10/17/2003
The Jerusalem Alliance Church is one of the strongest churches working among the Palestinians. Located in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, it brings hope in the midst of hopelessness. The Pastor of this church writes about their ministry. -- As a Palestinian church which was planted and flourished in the Palestinians territories, we could testify that our situation here is a paradox. We are living between hopelessness and hope, between fire and grace, between enmity and Love and war and peace. The negative side comes from what the people are doing and the positive one come from what God is giving. Therefore we are a channel of his hope, grace, love and peace to the people we live among. It’s not easy to live up to the biblical standard of life in a country like this, but we can’t do but be the light and salt of this area. An area which is filled with suffering!
....Let us look at the Palestinian need in a more particular way. During these times, more than 75% of Palestinians are unemployed. "The Palestinian economy has moved from a relentless economic depression into economic paralysis”, according to Middle East Times. The world appears to be working against the Palestinians. In the midst of an economic crisis, their economy is near collapse.
Most of this unemployment is caused by arbitrary Israeli rules controlling and confining Palestinians. They face restrictions of movement from place to place. They are refused permission for entering Israeli cities and settlements. Checkpoints exist in every main street which Palestinians travel. Arbitrary curfews are imposed. All the people face many unreasonable difficulties for survival. All of this leads to a major strain on the economy. Education becomes an increased challenge when people have no money to pay for schools. Health is deteriorating also because people have no money to pay for healthcare. Simply put, the living situation is very, very hard.
Syria Needs its Friends Amid Israeli Aggression
By Linda S. Heard, Palestine Chronicle 10/21/2003
A female Palestinian lawyer from Jenin blows herself up in a Haifa café - avenging the killing of her brother by Israeli troops - and, incredibly, Israel sees fit to punish its neighbour Syria for the ensuing carnage. Israel professes that its bombing of a long deserted camp north-west of the Syrian capital was in self-defence, which is so ridiculous as to be laughable.
Even if that camp had been in use by Palestinian militants - a claim denied by Syria - Darajat wouldn't have needed training to detonate an explosive belt. The intelligent lawyer with everything to live for wasn't a guerrilla; she was fuelled by raw hatred of the oppressive occupying state, which robbed her of her beloved sibling.
Darajat wasn't a natural-born homicidal maniac, a religious extremist or a political ideologue. She was just a girl with more than her fair share of all-consuming anger against a loathsome regime. That anger resulted in a tragic outcome for both Arabs and Jews. Whatever her motives, they had nothing whatever to do with Syria.
Invasion: Syria hesitatingly supported the American-led UN Security Council Resolution 1441, which partly legitimised the Coalition's invasion of Iraq. However, when Syria recently took its case to that same Council and asked it to pass a resolution condemning the Israeli aggression, instead of offering reciprocal support, the US threatened to use its over-utilised veto.
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