The First Friday Of Ramadan
By Kristen Ess, ZNet 10/31/2003
It is the first Friday of Ramadan. Upwards of 400 elderly Palestinians left their homes in Bethlehem this morning to travel the short distance to pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in east Jerusalem. This journey to the most significant mosque in Palestine should not take longer than 20 minutes. Hours later they have still not arrived.
A UN lawyer trying to pass out of Bethlehem in a UN issue jeep looked devastated and told me, ?They used live fire. This is a group of old people. They shot a man in the head and a little boy saw it. I just saw him walking, his face is covered with tears.?
Israeli soldiers closed the checkpoint leading from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. It is front-page news in the Al Quds newspaper this morning that Bethlehem is once again completely closed. Israeli Occupation Forces never offer real reasons as to why, as if there could ever be reason enough to hold people captive in their towns and homes for years. IOF only says this, as every crime committed against the Palestinian people, is for their ?security.? Security is not a question if one is sitting in a fortified tank or bulldozer, flying over a refugee camp in an Apache helicopter, or holding a gun at the head of an old man wanting to pray on the first Friday of Ramadan, his grandson?s hand in his.
Speaking truth to power
By Mona Anis, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 30 October - 5 Novem
When the distinguished Arab-American scholar and passionate proponent of the Palestinian cause Edward Said died three weeks before the convening of the second conference of the Arab novel in Cairo the organisers -- the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and its Supreme Council for Culture -- announced that this round of the conference would be dedicated to his memory. Thus, Edward Said's name was "forcibly yoked" (the phrase is his) to an already too long and rather clumsy official title: Multaqa Al-Qahira Al- Thani lil Ibda' Al-Riwa'i Al-Arabi, Al-Riwaya wa Al-Madina (the second Cairo meeting for Arab novel creativity, the novel and the city).
Most people recognised this late addition for the symbolic gesture it was and expected little more than the lip service Farouk Hosni, minister of culture, duly paid to Edward Said in his inaugural speech at the conference. This speech, together with a hastily organised round-table discussion on Said and literary criticism, was all that could be managed given the constraints of time and the fact that Said had not exactly been popular with Egyptian officialdom -- or with any other officialdom for that matter. Or so we all supposed.
It took Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim to confound such expectations and, in doing so, to demonstrate how imaginatively impoverished we had become, how accommodating to the constraints of time and bureaucracy. Sonallah Ibrahim's riveting act at the closing ceremony of the conference vindicated, on more than one level, the appending of Said's name to the conference.
The bluff goes on and on
By Ze'ev Schiff, Ha'aretz 11/1/2003
Speaking to the Knesset at the opening of the winter session about 10 days ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared, "There is a real chance that in the months ahead we will be able to break the impasse and renew the progress toward a settlement."
This is not the first time the prime minister has floated a promise of this kind. Still, a tiny hope arises that maybe this time we are in for a major surprise, and that negotiations are under way with the Palestinians behind the scenes. However, a thorough inquiry reveals there are no contacts toward a settlement and that in his remarks the prime minister was throwing sand in the eyes of the public.
The bluff goes on and on, and it's a pity that journalists are accomplices. How many times have they promised their readers and listeners that a political breakthrough is imminent, perhaps because they were told, for example, that former Palestinian prime minister Abu Mazen spoke to the prime minister by phone, or that the former Palestinian security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, had coffee with the defense minister? The deception is now being repeated again. The truth is that nothing serious is afoot with the Palestinians in the political realm.
Ibrahim Shanti: A Journalist's Passion
By Ehab Shanti, Electronic Intifada 10/31/2003
Born in Jaffa in 1910, the founder of the Difaa Newspaper (the Defense), Ibrahim Shanti is without doubt one the most important figures in the establishment of Palestinian, Jordanian, and indeed Arab journalism. After graduating with a political science degree from the American University of Beirut in1932, Shanti went back to his home town of Jaffa to be at the forefront of the anti-colonial struggle against the British mandate in Palestine. In 1934 he established Al-Difaa, which not only was for forty years the most important newspaper in Palestine, but also became the only rival to Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram in the Middle East.
Shanti sought for his paper, as he put it, “to become the newspaper of all Muslims and Arabs, regardless of party or group, with the purpose of fighting colonialism, and its merchants; and to stand in solidarity with independence movements and enslaved nations, to support the worker and the peasant, and to create a respectable and intelligent public opinion.”
Indeed, Shanti’s paper became a central platform for free speech in the Middle East, attracting a number of formidable leaders and intellectuals in the Arab world, from all political stripes, and graduating some of the most important names in journalism in the Arab world such as: Naser Eldin Nashashibi, Ajaj Nuwahed, Mahmoud Abu El-Zuluf, Salim Al-Sharif, Suaad Khouri, Janet Farah, Anbara Al-Khaldi, Yousef Hanna and many others.
Geneva Accord: Why can't the PA learn from its mistakes?
By Hasan Abu Nimah, Electronic Intifada 11/1/2003
It is astonishing how little the Palestinian leadership learns from its past mistakes. The so-called "Geneva Accord" -- an unofficial document agreed upon by former Israeli officials and Palestinians linked with the Palestinian Authority -- is a new blunder that will do enormous harm to the Palestinian position, while doing nothing to extricate the Palestinian leadership from its sinking state.
The contents of the accord contradict fundamental Palestinian rights. The document envisages Israel keeping much of the land it has illegally colonised, especially around Jerusalem, and cancels the inalienable rights of Palestinian refugees.
It should be recalled that the Palestinians repeatedly committed themselves to peace with Israel. Before any negotiations even started, they agreed to settle for a state in just 22 per cent of historic Palestine, relinquishing the 78 per cent from which nearly a million Palestinians were forcibly expelled in 1947-48, when Israel was established on the ruins of the Palestinian nation. This decision has repeatedly been endorsed and backed by individual Arab states, and by the Arab League which reaffirmed its collective offer of full-peace with Israel at its March 2002 summit. This moderate stance is wholly in agreement with the UN, the official position of the US, as well as the EU and most governments around the world.
Chronicling an assault on Terra Sancta
By Genevieve Cora Fraser, Daily Star 10/29/2003
Earthquake in April shakes the reader to the core with graphic account of 2002 Israeli invasion of West Bank -- Gradually I began to smell the scent of blood, crime, massacre, occupation, tyranny, tanks, bulldozers, armored vehicles, soldier’s boots, Apaches, Merkavas, generals, mobilization, Mofaz, Sharon, and Ben-Eliezer. How can there be hatred so intense that all of these gather in old Nablus?” Today, the above quote by Nazmi al-Jubeh resonates as both history and prophesy as Israel flexes the full force of its might throughout the Terra Sancta, the Holy Land. The quote appears in Jubeh’s essay, Nablus, Nero, and other Names, in response to the spring 2002 reoccupation by Israeli forces. The essay was written for a book of essays and photographs, Earthquake in April, published in 2003 by RIWAQ-Center for Architectural Conservation and the Institute of Jerusalem Studies. Jubeh is Riwaq’s co-director.
As armored personnel carriers accompanied by military bulldozers advanced into Rafah and other areas, yet again homes and shops are leveled, Palestinian-owned land is ground into dust, and raw sewage and precious water are spewed together onto the streets. Collective punishment for suicide bombings and tunnels allegedly used to smuggle weapons have left thousands homeless and scores of innocent Palestinians killed and wounded in Rafah, Gaza, Nablus, Ramallah, Jenin, and at other sites large and small throughout the Palestinian territories.
Killing the two-state solution
By Khalid Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 30 October - 5 Novem
Encouraged by international inaction and American acquiescence, the extremist Israeli government of Ariel Sharon is trying to snuff out any remaining possibility for establishing a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank.
This week, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced plans for building yet another apartheid wall or "buffer zone" in the Jordan Valley. The new wall, a supplement to the existing wall under construction, will effectively complete the encirclement of the West Bank, rendering it the largest prison in the world.
The Palestinian Authority, utterly frustrated by Israel's unbridled insolence and what is widely perceived as American connivance with the Sharon government, has condemned plans to extend the apartheid wall into the Jordan Valley.
"This shows that the apartheid wall is not for security reasons. They just want to grab as much Palestinian land as possible and control the water resources," PA official Saeb Erekat said.
According to Israeli peace activists, the real strategic goal lying behind the wall is even more ambitious -- to make the daily life for Palestinians so unbearable to compel many to flee their country. But to where?
'I saw fit to remove her from the world'
By Aviv Lavie and Moshe Gorali, Ha'aretz Friday Magazine 10/31/2003
There was a particularly festive atmosphere at the Nirim outpost on August 12, 1949, the eve of Shabbat. A week of dusty patrols and pursuits of infiltrators in the sands of the western Negev desert was at an end, and the commander of the hilltop site, Second Lieutenant Moshe, gave the order to make the preparations for a party. The tables in the large tent that was used as a mess hall were arranged in rows, sweets of various kinds were laid out on them and even a bit of wine was poured, though not enough to get drunk on. At exactly 8 P.M. the soldiers took their places and platoon commander Moshe recited the blessing over the wine. He then gave a Zionist pep talk, reiterating the importance of the unit's mission and the troops' contribution to the infant state. At the order of his deputy, Sergeant Michael, Private Yehuda read from the Bible. When he finished the soldiers burst into song, told jokes, ate and drank. A merry time was had by all.
Shortly before the end of the party, at about 9:30, the platoon commander asked for quiet. He got up and, with a smile on his face, reminded the soldiers about the Bedouin girl they had caught earlier that day during a patrol in their sector. They had brought her to the outpost and she was now locked up in one of the huts. Platoon commander Moshe said he was putting forward two options for a vote. The first was that the Bedouin girl would become the outpost's kitchen worker; the second was for the soldiers to have their way with her. The proposals got an enthusiastic reception....
Divided they fall
By Jaideep Mukerji, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 30 October - 5 Novem
Accusations of racism and a lack of cooperation are making a bad situation worse for a Balkanised Muslim American community -- Although adversity is often a catalyst in strengthening the solidarity of ethnic and religious communities, recent hardships seem to have had precisely the opposite effect on America's Muslim community. Far from rallying American Muslims, shocks like the arrest of American Muslim activist Abdurraham Al-Amoudi, the vilification of Islam by a high-ranking United States Army general and the detention of three American Muslims for alleged security breaches at Guantanamo Bay have instead exposed a sharply divided and disorganised community.
"It's a mess," says Aminah McCloud, author of several books on Islam in the US and professor of Islamic Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. "There is little unity because everybody is fragmented along regional lines," she told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Although estimates put the number of Muslims living in the US as high as eight million, American Muslims hardly speak with one voice, nor do they have any unifying body or council. To speak of the Muslim lobby is to speak of many different groups that do not necessarily share the same interests.
'It could have been paradise here'
By Dalia Karpel, Ha'aretz Friday Magazine 10/31/2003
In November 1942, at the height of the war and the annihilation of the Jews of Europe, David Ben-Gurion, then head of the Yishuv, the pre-State Jewish community in Palestine, presented a plan to bring a million Jews to the country immediately. The potential target was Jews from Islamic countries, "the present absentees of the Zionist enterprise," claims Prof. Yehouda Shenhav, in the refreshing opening of his new book, "The Arab Jews: Nationalism, Religion and Ethnicity" (Am Oved).
Refreshing, since we are talking about the early 1940s. In the foreword to the book - soon to be published in Arabic and English - Shenhav presents major way stations in his own biography (he was born in Israel to Iraqi-born parents), and investigates the issue of ethnicity in Israel by examining who the "Arab Jews" are, and how they became "Mizrahim" in Israel. In other words, Shenhav examines why the combination "Arab Jew" became impossible, while "European Jew" was and still is entirely legitimate, and analyzes the encounter between Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern descent) and Zionism, and an Israeli identity. In so doing, he seeks to examine the nature of the connection between the Arab Jews and the national struggle of the Palestinians. By transferring the discussion to the 1940s, even before the Jews from Arab countries arrived in Israel, he diverts it for the first time from its usual jumping-off point: the 1950s and the encounter between the olim (Jews who immigrated to Israel) from the Arab countries - whom Shenhav prefers to call "mehagrim" (a term that applies to all immigrants in general) - and the young State of Israel. The foreword adds perspective to the discussion.
Israeli opposition to Sharon
By Ibrahim Nafie, Al-Ahram Weekly on-line 30 October - 5 Novem
The Geneva Agreement, reached by prominent Palestinian and Israeli political and intellectual figures outside official channels, has sparked heated controversy in Israel. It appears that the Israeli left is awaking from years of slumber since the aborted Camp David II talks, and the right is not taking this lying down.
The very fact that two groups of Arabs and Israelis could get together and hammer out an agreement of this sort has delivered a powerful blow to the many spurious claims of the Israeli right. True, the agreement is not without shortcomings. The most salient is its failure to make explicit reference to the Palestinian "right of return" or to include a provision that would make Israel responsible for compensating Palestinian refugees for the loss of their property.
However, it marks a step forward in many other respects. Perhaps its major strength is its symbolic value at a time when the agenda on the Palestinian- Israeli track has been commandeered by an extremist right-wing government in Israel that enjoys the unmitigated support of an equally conservative administration in the US. What it tells public opinion in Israel and the West is that, contrary to the claims of the Likud government there is a Palestinian peace partner to talk to and that the full range of final status issues can be hammered out around the negotiating table. It also conveys the message that the current Israeli government's campaign of death and destruction against the Palestinian people will never bring peace and security to the Israeli people, and that this aspiration can only be realised through an agreement that results in the creation of an independent Palestinian state on all Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in June 1967.
Silenced witnesses
By John Sweeney, The Independent 10/30/2003
In a seven-week period this spring, two overseas observers were killed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, and a third left brain dead. But has the truth yet been told? -- James Miller taught my children to surf. Together, the two of us went to Kosovo, Chechnya and Zimbabwe. He was funny, decent to the core, a genius behind the camera lens. Together, we celebrated winning a Royal Television Society gong by having one shandy too many. I fell into an argument with an irritating cove in a penguin suit. James stepped in, threatening to take said cove outside and sort him out. At which point, some PR floozie whispered in my ear: "Do you know who that is?" No. "It's the head of ITV." Don't watch it much anyway. James and I had so much fun and, occasionally, we did the work.
I was in Baghdad when I heard the news. He had been shot in Rafah, at the fag-end of the Gaza Strip, and was dead.
I phoned his widow Sophy immediately, and wept buckets. When the BBC decided to investigate James's killing, they asked me to report for the film. I couldn't say no.
James was not the first international witness to fall silent in Rafah. He was the third. This spring, in less than seven weeks, and within a radius of less than three miles, the American human-shield activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer; the British photographer and peace activist Tom Hurndall was shot in the head and rendered brain-dead; and James Miller was shot dead.
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