Articles - Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel

Richard Perle’s Stealth Attack on Saudi Arabia
By Richard H. Curtiss, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2002
Former Pentagon official Richard Perle, a long-time supporter of Israel, reached new heights in his mission to distract the American public from dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Perle is chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel to the Pentagon, which is often in the headlines. Former French Ministry of Defense employee Laurent Murawiec, now a Rand Corporation analyst, gave a controversial briefing to the Defense Policy Board on July 10. Although the topic was expected to be Iraq’s Saddam Hussain, there were big surprises in store. Murawiec’s briefing was, to put it mildly, inflammatory. Presented as it was to former senior officials and intellectuals who advise the Pentagon, it might have passed without notice. Perle, however, had ensured that would not happen, with his journalistic cohorts preparing the way for Murawiec’s shocking statements. Prior to the briefing, two articles making similar charges to Murawiec’s already had appeared. One, in the July issue of Commentary, published by the American Jewish Committee, was entitled “Our Enemies, the Saudis,” by Victor Davis Hanson. The other article was printed in a July edition of the Weekly Standard, edited by William Kristol. The article, written by Simon Henderson, an adjunct scholar of the AIPAC-spinoff Washington Institute for Near East Policy, was entitled “The Coming Saudi Showdown.”

More distant than ever
Editorial, The Guardian, October 31, 2002
Israel's crisis offers little hope for peace: Last night's shattering of Israel's national unity government creates a new and potent source of instability in a region that can scarcely afford it. The immediate cause of the rupture - disagreement over the level of government funding for Jewish settlements in the occupied territories - will occasion some wry smiles in places such as Hebron and Jenin. But any pleasure Palestinians may take in Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's discomfiture is likely to be short-lived.

Election or not, the outlook remains bleak
Editorial, The Independent, October 31, 2002
Nothing could now be worse for Israel, let alone what remains of the Middle East peace process, than that Ariel Sharon, having lost the support of the Israeli Labour party in his unity government, should throw in his lot with the religious zealots and extremists on the far right of Israeli politics. Despite all the provocations of suicide bombers, threats from Iraq and the still vocal hostility from other Arab hardliners, the Israeli people must realise that such a coalition would prove the worst of all worlds. A more extreme administration would close down any possibility of dialogue with the Palestinians while provoking Hamas and others into still more atrocities.

The dear high-maintenance sons
By Nehemia Strasler, Ha'aretz, October 31, 2002
One of the disputes over the 2003 budget is about state spending on the settlers. The Labor Party says their funds should be cut, but the finance minister says the cuts already been made across the board affect everyone, including the settlers. Therefore, he says, Labor's demands are groundless, and there's no way the treasury can reverse the cutbacks in pensions, the damage done to single-parent families, and the reduced guaranteed income payments - because there's no money available. However, at times of crisis, it's important to examine everything. So, is it right to give so much money to Sharon's "dear sons?" And aren't there any political-personal reasons for the huge budgets that do go to the settlers, considering the large proportion of settlers who are now members of the Likud central committee and voters in that party's coming primaries?

No legitimate terrorism
Editorial, Ha'aretz, October 31, 2002
The murder of Linoi Saroussi and Hadas Turgeman, aged 14, and Orna Eshel, by a Fatah activist in the Hermesh settlement follows the bloody attack in the Ariel settlement's gas station, which killed three, and a series of attacks against Israeli citizens traveling on West Bank roads. These attacks indicate that Palestinian terrorists are adopting the approach that Israelis living beyond the Green Line, or who happen to be there, are legitimate targets. This approach was outlined by new Palestinian Interior Minister Hani al-Hassan, who said (Ha'aretz, October 29): "The settlers cannot be considered citizens" because "they are not in the right place, they are armed, the army makes use of them and they kill Palestinians." This perception of settlers is in line with statements by leaders of the most radical organizations, who say all Israel is "a military society" in which there is no distinction between citizens and soldiers. The entire Israeli public, according to this view, is "a military public" and therefore a legitimate target.

A white elephant on the Green Line
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, October 31, 2002
The terrorists' choice of Ariel and Hermesh was no accident. The focus on the settlements is a message from the Palestinian organizations. The new Palestinian Interior Minister Hani al-Hassan is doing nothing to conceal the message. In an interview he gave in these pages on Tuesday, he explicitly said the settlers are not immune from attacks. Shortly after the Palestinian Legislative Council gave its blessing to Yasser Arafat's decision to hand the supreme command of the Palestinian security services to Hassan, he chose a slightly more diplomatic way to put it: Occupation and security don't go together, he said.

Good-Byes
By Timothy Rothermel, Palestine Chronicle, October 30, 2002
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PINA) - In the past five days, I’ve said good-bye to friends in two extraordinarily different ways, but both have relevance to life in the Middle East in the current situation and both illustrate the tragedy that is taking place here – for all concerned. The first goodbye was to Michael, over a good lunch and with the warm reminisces that have characterized a friendship of over two decades. Michael and his charming and highly intelligent wife, an internationally recognized professor of biotechnology, both in their 80s, have left Jerusalem for a new life in Australia. Michael had served as a senior civil servant in his government, holding Ambassadorial ranks in important countries as well as in his Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. They had a comfortable retirement life from a material point of view, enjoying the cultural, climatic and social life of a country in which they were both born…in Tel Aviv… before the creation of the State of Israel. Both decided that the conditions to which Palestinians, from within Israel and, more importantly, those under occupation were treated, as well as other internal social developments in their country made emigration an imperative.

In Exile - Bethlehem to Gaza
By Kristen Ess, Palestine Chronicle, October 30, 2002
GAZA CITY (PINA) - In Bethlehem the air in the streets is hesitatingly chaotic. It cannot recover from the 2 month long invasion of the Bethlehem area while under a constant Israeli military occupation. Most residents are not allowed to leave, surrounded by Israeli checkpoints, illegal settlements, and settler by-pass roads chopping up and choking the area. Despite the international media reports that it was a day of celebration in Bethlehem when the Israeli military ended its siege on the Church of Nativity in April, I have yet to locate anyone who did not experience the day as intensely tragic. Although Israel ignored UN Security Resolution 1402 demanding its withdrawal from West Bank cities, including Bethlehem and the Church of Nativity, they did not leave the center of Bethlehem until over a month later, taking with them many Palestinians who were banished from their homes, families, their homeland. I have been repeatedly told that it was the end of the hope.

Injustice by Omission
By Steven Salaita, Palestine Chronicle, October 30, 2002
The red trails trickled slowly, methodically, into puddles of blood. The furious September sun would dry those puddles into crimson tombstones weighing heavily on the earth in Sabra and Shatila. Each droplet that helped construct the red mounds now resting underneath the dusty land tells a story of terror and mutilation. We rarely hear those stories in the United States. One story is particularly infamous, memorable, and unforgivable. It was offered by the woman who shared her unborn son with the earth so the world would never forget his existence. He was ripped from her stomach with a machete. He was paraded on a blade tip around Shatila's rubble. He was later tossed into a mass grave, a tiny body marbled with blood, still awaiting the miracle of parturition. People still tell his story in Shatila.

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