Israel to erect separation wall along main road connecting Jerusalem with Ramallah
Editorial, Miftah 10/29/2003
Israel’s Army General Mickey Levy, head of the Israeli police force in Jerusalem, confirmed his government’s plan to build a three meter high separation wall cutting off what Israel considers as ‘West Bank neighborhoods’ from neighborhoods across the street that are under the Jerusalem municipality.
The wall will start at Beit Hanina, 7 kilometers south of Ramllah, and will stretch along the main road separating residents on the left side of the road from neighbors across the street. According to the Israeli map some 60,000 Jerusalem residents living on the eastern side of the main road will be forced to travel north through Qalandya’s military checkpoint then west and finally south in order to reach Jerusalem. Another military checkpoint will also be erected at the entrance of the town of Beir Nabala and its neighboring 5 villages, home to at least 25000 Palestinians.
Many complications will take place seen as the western side of the wall will be a one-way road heading north forcing all residents on the eastern side of the wall to travel through at least two military checkpoints in an opposite direction when attempting to travel five kilometers south to Jerusalem.
Terrorism under Veto
Editorial, International Press Center/SIS 10/26/2003
"Nitzarim" Has become the size of Al Zahra'a City, with its buildings, police station and population. The Israelis, for the sake of their settlement that was built on robbery, had no other way but to remove everything in front of it, even if it meant tearing down 13-storey apartment buildings.
What madness, swagger, and blind terrorism is this? How can the world accept this entire monstrosity in destruction and killing, while the United States continues to insist on its opinion and persist on its foolish demands about the Israeli security needs even in a settlement that is useless to both sides! All this grotesque destruction, even (Shimon) Perez condemns a settlement like "Nitzarim" for not being dismantled until now. As for Mitzna, he is wondering why Israeli soldiers are still sent to this settlement instead of going back to their mothers.
Yesterday's scene was a disgrace to the United States before it was to Israel; Tanks rolling in and soldiers, armed to the teeth, venting their heat through their tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters. They besieged Al Zahra'a City, stormed in and blew up the police station there, as if they were declaring the end of the Palestinian legitimacy there by it, before going to the three buildings and start a complex rigging operation and then detonation little before dawn.
Lies and waste
Editorial, Ha'aretz 10/29/2003
The U.S. administration has expressed sharply worded reservations about an Israeli government plan to build 152 housing units in the settlement of Karnei Shomron. According to a report in Haaretz yesterday, the American officials termed the Israel decision a "provocation." Apparently the Americans were particularly outraged by the location of Karnei Shomron - deep inside Samaria in the northern West Bank - and Israel's intention to divert the planned security fence to encompass the settlement and its Jewish neighborhoods in the same area.
According to another report, Washington is now demanding "urgent" clarifications from Israel about a Defense Ministry decision, made public this week, to grant semi-official status to a long list of illegal outposts established in the West Bank and Gaza. As a result of that decision, those outposts will enjoy not only security arrangements provided by the army, but also a cornucopia of civil services provided by various state agencies to residents of legal settlements: education, electricity, transportation, communications, and other services.
....The recent string of decisions reflects the true policy of the Sharon government - and not the policy expressed in the sweet tidings the prime minister delivered to a visiting delegation of European parliamentarians or the American diplomats who frequent the country. Sharon tells those guests about his firm commitment to the road map and his readiness - when the time comes - to offer painful concessions for peace.
What Suffering? The Fabric of Life is Not Torn
By Akiva Eldar, Palestine Monitor/Ha'aretz 10/28/2003
When the Defense Ministry director general, Amos Yaron, the chief executive for the separation fence, is asked to comment on the suffering of the thousands of Palestinians whose lives have been made miserable by the fence, he tells the questioner to ask the people who send the suicide bombers.
On the other hand, his boss, Shaul Mofaz, commander in chief of the occupied territories, has never seen a Palestinian who has watched his home being cut off from his fields. The defense minster also has never heard of any Palestinian children needing to ask an Israeli soldier every morning for permission to pass to go to school. Last Friday, Mofaz looked straight into the cameras of Channel Two and said: "I am sure the fence does not harm the Palestinian fabric of life."
Apparently there's a plot by the director general, chief of staff, the major general of the IDF Central Command, and the government coordinator in the territories to hide the difficult conditions of the defense minister's subjects from him. As a service to Mofaz, here is a summary of some incidents that about the routine of the "Palestinian fabric of life." The stories are also evidence of a wide range of areas where the army could actually implement a policy of easing humanitarian conditions.
“Facts on the Ground”: Western Coverage of the Wall & the Settlements
By Isabelle Humphries, Islam Online 10/23/2003
In recent weeks Sharon’s Israel has given the go ahead for over 600 hundred new settler homes and the latest stage of the West Bank wall. But no, I didn’t get these facts from a visit to the West Bank, but by sitting in my UK home and reading the British newspapers. Sure there have always been mainstream journalists who understand something of the wider picture in the Middle East, but Sharon is making it steadily easier for them to convey this picture to the British public.
While the image of bloodstained victims of the Haifa bombing are shown to the British reader/viewer, anyone who read the papers earlier would have known of the context in which a 29 year-old woman might choose to cause such death and carnage. Any reader with critical faculties might connect the fact that this young woman came from a bantustan enclosed by ever increasing settlements, surrounded by high walls and watchtowers with no hope of escape in the future.
Israel presents new stage of wall, gives go-ahead to 600 new settler homes: While settlements have doubled throughout the Oslo period, and Labor’s Barak authorized more settlement building around Jerusalem than did Likud’s Netanyahu, Sharon does the least to try and hide it. Many Palestinians have told me that they prefer Sharon in the Prime Minister’s chair than any Labor leader. At least he makes no attempt to hide what he is doing; western journalists have not had to conduct detailed investigations to find out exactly what is going on.
A Just Peace, Not Just Any Peace
By Ben Saul, Miftah 10/29/2003
The Sydney Peace Prize is Australia ’s pre-eminent way of acknowledging the extraordinary people who risk their lives for the cause of peace. Past recipients have been towering symbols of justice: Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu, Xanana Gusmao, William Deane and Muhammad Yunus. Their achievements speak for themselves.
In stark contrast, the award of this year’s Sydney Peace Prize to Dr Hanan Ashrawi, a well known Palestinian human rights activist, politician and academic, has been dogged by spectacular controversy. The typically laconic pace of Sydney politics has been shaken by claims that Ashrawi supports Palestinian violence and opposes Israel ’s right to exist.
In response, the city council has withdrawn its support for the prize in protest against Ashrawi. The lord mayor has been accused of bowing to Jewish pressure to reject Ashrawi, in order to help her husband get elected to federal politics in an electorate with a large Jewish population. The local university has refused to allow the award to be presented in its ceremonial hall. It seems the full fury of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been dumped on the beaches of the relaxed harbour city. Ashrawi herself arrives in Sydney in early November to collect her prize, surrounded by this turmoil.
Geneva pact revives regional peace process
By Ghassan Khatib, Daily Star 10/29/2003
The significance of the Geneva Accord is that it has brought Palestinians and Israelis back to the political track, securing the continuity of the process that began with the Madrid peace conference. In a way, too, it has further narrowed the gaps between the two sides on the substantial issues of the conflict such as borders, refugees, Jerusalem and security.
While there are some that have dismissed the plan after its flat rejection by the Israeli government, the fact that the government of Israel stands vociferously opposed to the accord actually means little. No sensible politician believes that the political process can possibly continue under the current Israeli right wing leadership. This government comes from an ideological and strategic position that is completely contrary to all of the peace process terms of reference, especially international law. Therefore, if the peace process is to progress in official channels, we will have to wait for the arrival of a government in Israel that is not hostile in principle to the basic tenets of any peace process that has the hopes of succeeding, the most important of these tenets being ending Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
One might even go further and hold up the current Israeli government position against the Geneva Accord as proof that the Israeli government is elevating its narrow ideological interests above the interests of the Israeli people. Even when the Palestinians who negotiated this document showed flexibility over the sticky resolution to the Palestinian refugee issue, still the Israeli government turned up its nose....
Israel steps up its war against the Palestinians
By Ahmad Samih Khalidi, Palestine Media Center/World Socialist Web Site 10/29/2003
The Sharon regime in Israel—secure in the knowledge that it has Washington’s unconditional support—has stepped up its military attacks on Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, occupied illegally since 1967. In the process, it has signalled its contempt for international conventions on human rights, the United Nations General Assembly, and indeed the formal strictures of the US-brokered “Road Map” for peace in the Middle East.
Far from dismantling the “security wall” it has erected in the West Bank, the Sharon government has vowed to press on with it. And it has announced that it will also go ahead with the expansion of the Zionist settlements.
As usual, the world’s press barely reported the incidents, much less condemned them.
On October 20, the Israeli army launched a series of air strikes on the Gaza Strip that have killed at least 11 people and wounded about 100, mostly civilians. Helicopter gun ships targeted a vehicle driven by a Hamas member and a building that Israel claimed was a Hamas weapons workshop.
The Joys and Sorrows of Ramadan
By Suzanne Russ, Palestine Chronicle 10/29/2003
The bittersweet month of Ramadan is here once again, amidst unfathomable sorrows, amidst joy. And yet, as my father-in-law, who is nearly seventy years old reminded me, “Palestine has not seen such a bitter Ramadan in many many years”.
It seemed so painful to me, as I broke bread with my family before dawn, that millions of Palestinians refugees would be fasting with us, and they would have no bread to break their fast at the end of the day. Moreover, thousands would not only continue their fast due to lack of food, but their hardship would be compounded due to forced homelessness, wrought by the Israeli army, just this week in Gaza.
When we heard of the attacks in Gaza, where more than two thousand people were displaced and their homes destroyed in one night, we called my father-in-law right away, who lives in Nuseirat Refugee Camp, outside of Gaza City. He told us that the majority of the “newest refugees” came to Nuseirat for shelter. The army ordered them out of their homes in the middle of the night, and by dawn, everything was in ruins. No time was given for anyone to collect precious things, belongings, no time was given to change clothes. So most of the refugees arrived in their pajamas. It was another little Diaspora, yet another daily “Nakba” or catastrophe.
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