Nobel Laureate: There is a way towards peace for Palestine
Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Electronic Intifada 11/29/2008
The following is a speech delivered by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire at the seventh International Sabeel Conference in Jerusalem on 19 November 2008:
I am very happy to be here with you and to be invited to speak to you. I want to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Naim Ateek, and all those who helped to organize this conference. I am deeply grateful to have the freedom to come here to East Jerusalem and the freedom to speak and meet with you.
In this the 2lst century many of us take freedom for granted, but not everyone has freedom here in Israel/Palestine. I realized this, yet again, when I told a Palestinian friend I was attending this conference and he told me that though he was born in Jerusalem he is not allowed to come into East Jerusalem.
This brought home to me that East Jerusalem is indeed an integral part of the occupied territory of Palestine and many Arab people born here are not allowed into East Jerusalem. Many Arabs who do live in East Jerusalem live in fear of their homes being demolished or expulsion by the Israeli Government. more..e-mail
Will James Jones and Hillary Clinton Butt Heads over Palestinian – Israeli Conflict?
Eli Lake,
The New Republic, Palestine Media Center 11/27/2008
What will be Barack Obama’s policy towards the Middle East? During the campaign, this was a question that flummoxed partisans of both the Israeli and Palestinian causes. There was enough conflicting evidence of his intentions to lead everyone to believe that they would have a friend in the White House.
But now, we have actual foreign policy appointments to look at. And, guess what? They haven’t clarified the direction of his administration. In fact, there’s a chance that we will be in store for at least four more years of muddle. His administration could be split by the same internal debates that divided the Bush administration. During the Bush administration, the State Department was the source of every call for envoys, roadmaps, summits, and efforts to revive the peace process. And for most of the Bush era, these calls were rejected by the White House and Pentagon--which believed that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle was a symptom of deeper pathologies within the Islamic and Arab world, and not the underlying cause of Middle Eastern terrorism. Within the Obama administration, this dynamic is likely to be reversed. It may be the White House--and, more specifically, the likely national security advisor, James Jones --that will be the passionate proponent of peace processing. Or, as he told the newsletter Inside the Pentagon last month, "’Nothing is more important" to regional security in the Middle East than resolving the Israeli Palestinian conflict. more..e-mail
So what if the High Court ruled?
Haaretz Editorial, Ha’aretz 11/30/2008
For many years, the Israeli government has accepted responsibility for upholding court rulings in general and those of the High Court of Justice in particular. This is an inseparable part of recognizing that the rule of law is an indispensable requirement for democracy. Last week, however, it became clear that this tradition has been seriously undermined. In two sternly worded rulings issued that week, High Court justices analyzed two different cases in which government ministries viewed binding High Court decisions as recommendations only. The first dealt with a High Court ruling handed down in early 2006 that voided a government decision to grant preferential status to certain regions of the country with regard to state funding for education. The court struck down this decision because it discriminated against Israeli Arabs. Last week’s verdict, written by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch with the entire extended panel of seven justices concurring, termed the Education Ministry’s prolonged deferment of the initial ruling’s implementation a "grave expression" of the freedom the government has asserted to disregard the ruling and act in accordance with its own priorities. more..e-mail
Mis-shaping Public Understanding of Israel/Palestine Struggle
Jerome Slater,
Tikkun, Palestine Media Center 11/27/2008
[PMC Editor’s Note: Jerome Slater’s critique of Thomas Friedman raises important questions about the role of journalists in mis-shaping public understanding of the Israel/Palestine struggle. As we have repeatedly argued in Tikkun, the mistakes made in the creation and perpetuation of that struggle come from both sides, and any historical reading must acknowledge the continued propensity on both sides to engage in acts of violence. Palestinian extremists and terrorists are culpable too—not just Israelis. Because this magazine emerges from the West, where Israel’s side of the story is well known and largely accepted blindly, while the Palestinian side is systematically kept from public consideration, we have often tried to re-balance the story by presenting the facts that the American media and the cheerleaders for the right wing in Israel have kept out of public view. Slater’s critique of Thomas Friedman is part of that effort. In 2003 Tikkun published the book Healing Israel/Palestine in which we try to give a more fully balanced account of the struggle, recognizing that both sides have full culpability for the origin and continuation of the struggle, and we are proud to say that the book is as relevant today as it was when we first published it. Saying that does not diminish the importance of Slater’s challenging of the deep misunderstandings of the situation perpetrated in Western media—misunderstandings which continue to constrain the possibilities of rational pro-peace intervention by the United States.] As close observers of the century-old conflict between the Zionist movement and the Arab residents of Palestine increasingly understand, the Zionist narrative is riddled with historical mythologies that do not stand up under close and dispassionate examination. But these myths have had the devastating consequence of blinding Israelis—and their unthinking American supporters—to their own role in the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as in the wider Arab-Israeli conflict. more..e-mail
My Story: Olive harvest 5769
Sarah Kreimer, Jerusalem Post 11/27/2008
"Where are we going?" I asked Arik, as we drove out of Jerusalem in his beat up Subaru, with three other volunteers: an older gentleman and a newlywed couple.
I was beginning the New Year of 5769 with a practical mitzva: serving as a "human shield" between Palestinian families, trying to harvest their olive trees in the West Bank, and Israeli settlers, trying to prevent them. My old friend, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Rabbis for Human Rights, had invited me to come with him - to help in a small grove of trees in the southern West Bank. I hadn’t asked for details; scores of volunteers were being assigned daily to olive groves throughout the West Bank - depending on the readiness of Palestinian owners, the weather and the permission of the Israeli Civil Administration. I was happy to be a foot-soldier, and help out wherever I was needed. "We’ll be in Hebron," answered Arik, driving slowly past the Beit Jala checkpoint. Hebron?! Why hadn’t I asked before? A year ago I had visited the old city of Hebron, home of the ancient Tomb of the Patriarchs, burial site of Abraham - the Father claimed by Judaism and Islam. For weeks after, I was haunted by images of humiliation. The Arab bazaar shuttered; Israeli combat soldiers patrolling its eerie, silent streets. Hebrew graffiti, signed with a Star of David - "Policeman, Soldier: I hate you; Death to Traitors" - scrawled on a rusted door. Two Palestinian girls with book bags hurrying to school, heads down under a barrage of foul language from Jewish pupils outside Beit Hadassah. I wondered if I could still get out of the car and go back to Jerusalem. more..e-mail
Palestinian Forces Dilute Hebron’s Volatile Brew
Ethan Bronner, MIFTAH 11/27/2008
It was a scene that revealed both its medieval origins and its contemporary significance. On one side of the concrete schoolyard sat the Rajabi clan, wearing their finest kaffiyeh headdresses. On the other side were the Ajnounis, similarly decked out. These ancient Hebron families had been feuding in the lawlessness of this city, leaving nine dead in recent months. Yet here they were last week, brought together by the newly installed Palestinian security forces, and being obliged to reconcile. Some 2,000 men sitting on plastic chairs looked on as a judge read the ruling — 9.5 kilograms of gold or $210,000, $70,000 now and the rest in four monthly payments to the Rajabis. Old men rose, signed their names and embraced. Wads of cash held by rubber bands were produced. The audience burst into applause. Hebron, the West Bank’s most explosive city, with a combustible mix of hard-line Jewish settlers and Palestinian militants from Hamas and other groups, is undergoing a shake-up through the introduction of hundreds of Palestinian security officers who over the past month have stopped car thefts, foiled drug deals and arrested scores of Hamas gunmen, even seizing explosives and suicide belts. They have also focused on quality-of-life issues like fighting clans and the sales of outdated food and medicine by criminal gangs. more..e-mail
Kristallnacht in Hebron
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/27/2008
When will Israel wake up to its gruesome legacy? Unconcerned about arrest by the police or prosecution by the Israeli justice system, fanatical Jewish settlers in the Palestinian town of Hebron (Al-Khalil) have been attacking Palestinians, damaging and ransacking their property, exactly like Nazi thugs did to Jewish-owned property in Germany 80 years ago. The settlers, who claim to be acting in the name of true Judaism, espouse a messianic doctrine advocating violence and terror against non- Jews in Israel-Palestine for the purpose of creating a pure Jewish kingdom that would be ruled by Halacha, or Jewish religious law. The settlers, who represent the core of religious Zionism, believe that the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in the Holy Land will eventually usher the messianic age and accelerate the appearance of the Jewish Messiah, or Redeemer, who would bring about redemption for Jews and rule the entire world from Jerusalem. more..e-mail
Bruiting about brutes
Rachel Shabi, The Guardian 11/29/2008
A marketing campaign to rebrand an Israeli army unit notorious for its role in the West Bank? Talk about doomed to failure. Whenever I see the words "IDF" and "creative" in the same sentence, I’m inspired to read on. In this case, it was an article in Haaretz recently about a particular army unit revamping its image to appeal to fresh recruits. Kfir ("Lion Cub") Brigade has put a new mock-up of a Palestinian village – complete with Kasbah, mosque, market and, of course, checkpoint – in its induction base as a cool informational aid. This comes months after another Israeli newspaper announced the same brigade was embarking on a recruitment campaign in the face of dwindling applicants. The village mock-up is a lovely idea. It reassures anxious, soon-to-enlist teenagers about what the enemy street looks like, while, at the same time, casting the unit soldier as a sort of cheerful Bobby on the beat, comfortably strolling West Bank city streets and chatting with local market traders. If only reality would replicate this charming, dummy street-life. For, as Haaretz points out, the Kfir Brigade – permanently posted in the West Bank – is the army unit responsible for most of the crimes and violations perpetrated against the Palestinians last year. more..e-mail
It’s not the economy, stupid
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 12/1/2008
They say that this time, for a change, the elections will focus on the economy rather than on peace and security. It’s impossible for us to manage without security, so they’re talking about a financial "security net" for savers and pensioners. That way, it’s more convenient for everyone. And instead of talking about dividing Jerusalem, Tzipi Livni will be free to display her integrity. Who remembers that she washed the corruption off Ariel Sharon, who sent his son to sit in prison in his stead? Dealing with the economy also frees Ehud Barak from troublesome questions like whether Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is a peace partner, and if not, what will the heir of Yitzhak Rabin propose to do with the territories. And Benjamin Netanyahu, instead of explaining how his "economic peace" goes together with occupation and settlements, will be able to wave about his reputation for being an economic messiah. However, shifting the agenda to the financial security/safety net doesn’t, of course, obligate the neighbors to do the same. Indeed, while Israelis are busy with election campaigns, in the guise of a debate over the future of the economy, Iran and Syria are focusing on the future of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Last week the two countries sponsored a conference on the right of return of Palestinian refugees, which took place in Damascus. The conference attacked the relevant clause in the Arab peace initiative, and declared that the right of return is an individual right reserved for every refugee, and that no one has the authority to negotiate over it. more..e-mail
The Ongoing Nakba and Vanunu
Eileen Fleming, Palestine Think Tank 11/28/2008
[Occupied east Jerusalem] On November 19, 2008, during the final day of Sabeel’s [Arabic for The Way] 7th International Conference: THE NAKBA: MEMORY, REALITY AND BEYOND, Noble Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Maguire inspired nearly 300 internationals to rise up and honor Mordechai Vanunu. Vanunu has been nominated for the Noble Peace Prize annually since 1986 for his courage and truth telling, by providing the photographic eveidence that warned the world that Israel had already manufactured upwards of 200 nuclear warheads in 1985. Israel locked Vanunu up for 18 years, has held him under house arrest since April 2004, yet Israel continues to get away with nuclear ambiguity, has never allowed IAEA inspectors into the Dimona, nor have they signed the NPT. Vanunu’s Supreme Court appeal fighting a three month jail sentence [reduced from six] for speaking to foreigners-who happened to be media-in 2004, is scheduled to be heard in the New Year. more..e-mail
Gaza: Show No Mercy, Dispense No Justice
Stuart Littlewood - London, Palestine Chronicle 11/28/2008
’We can only guess at the horrific conditions the siege has created.’ Who could have believed that by Christmas 2008 the West would still be unable to summon up courage to discipline Israel for crimes against the Palestinians? The cruel siege of Gaza has been going on for at least 30 months. "It started March 2006 -- I was there," says a friend’ in other words, as soon as Hamas was inconveniently elected to power. In early April the EU turned off financial aid and the economic blockade had begun. Gaza was already suffering severe hardship when I visited a year ago. I wrote afterwards: I noted the deserted beaches and disused fishing boats’ Israel has banned fishing off the Gaza coast, ruined the livelihood of 3000 fishermen and deprived local people of a proper diet. Boats defying the ban are fired on. The Gaza Strip is sealed off from the outside world with an Israeli fence guarded by watchtowers, snipers, tanks, armoured bulldozers and drones. Israel pretended to withdraw two years ago but still controls Gaza’s airspace, coastal waters and airwaves. more..e-mail
Gaza’s Death Throes, and No One’s Listening
Sonja Karkar, Palestine Chronicle 11/28/2008
’What is truly astonishing is the world’s silence in the face of all this.’ What kind of government in the 21st century can deny another people basic human rights -- that is, the right to food, water, shelter, security and dignity? What kind of government imposes draconian sanctions on another people for democratically electing a government not to its liking? What kind of government seals a heavily populated territory of 1.5 million people so that no person can enter or leave without permission, fishermen cannot fish in their own waters, and world food aid cannot be delivered to the starving population? What kind of government shuts off fuel, water and electricity and then rains down on the people, bombs and artillery fire? The answer is: no government of integrity. And yet, government after government in Israel continues to demand recognition and accolades as a first world democracy superior to all others, despite Israel’s flouting of international law, its human rights abuses and the criminality and corruption of Israeli leaders. Worse still, the world has acquiesced and has welcomed every Israeli administration into its fold as a favored guest. more..e-mail
Olive harvest suffers under the blockade
Mohammed Ali Abu Najela, Oxfam, ReliefWeb 11/27/2008
Oxfam’’s Mohammed Ali Abu Najela reports on the impact of Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip on the territory’s olive oil industry.
The agricultural sector in Gaza has been severely affected by the ongoing conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Since the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada in 2000, 112,000 olive trees have been destroyed in the Gaza Strip by the conflict and Israeli military incursions. Also, one third of agricultural land - thousands of dunums (1 dunum=.25 acre) along the border with Israel - has been inaccessible to Palestinian farmers since Israeli settlements were dismantled in 2005. Israel then carved out a security zone that included valuable Gazan farming land. Farmers have been killed and injured trying to access and cultivate these lands.
When Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007 the Israeli government imposed a blockade on the occupied territory, which has remained in place for nearly 18 months. The agricultural sector and food security situation has deteriorated during that time. Many Gazan farmers are now unemployed and have succumbed to poverty, unable to export their crops and facing drastically decreased market trade. The availability of raw materials needed for farming fell sharply and the limited materials that are available have become very expensive. more..e-mail
Gaza: A Human Tragedy under Siege
Hany Ramadan – Cairo, Palestine Chronicle 11/27/2008
’Gaza’s tragedy is one of the most appalling in modern history.’ The Gaza Strip has been living under an Israeli 16-month-old despicable siege, which is now reaching its most harshly shocking pinnacle. In addition to blocking the flow of food, medical supplies, and basic needs, Israel has recently barred the fuel supplies from reaching the impoverished strip. As a result, wide blackouts have reigned over the besieged city of about 1.6 million civilians. The majority of Gazans are now using candles to light up their homes and streets. Several law experts and human rights activists agree that Gaza is now the world’s largest "open-air prison" where civilians are denied their basic human rights. "Israel is atrociously controlling the lives of 1,700,000 civilians in Gaza, which is now the world’s largest open-air prison," Raji Sourani, law expert and director of the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), told IslamOnline.net. Lack of fuel supplies in Gaza is toughly affecting its hospitals andbringing about death to hospitalized patients of critical health conditions. more..e-mail
Holding Gaza hostage
Dina Ezzat reports from Cairo, Saleh Al-Naami from Gaza, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/27/2008
Gaza’s humanitarian crisis escalates as the world watches in silence. HOPE UNDER SIEGE: A Palestinian child flashes the victory sign during a demonstration calling on Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossingAs Al-Ahram Weekly went to press Wednesday Arab foreign ministers were convening for an extraordinary meeting against the backdrop of an explosive humanitarian crisis in Gaza where 1.5 million Palestinians are suffering the effects of Israel’s 22-day long blockade. Gaza’s population has been systematically deprived of electricity, medicine, medical supplies, fuel and food. Over the past week Arab TV news channels have been transmitting live footage of the human tragedy, including scenes of critically ill Palestinians awaiting treatment in Gaza’s hospitals pleading with the Arabs, and not Israel, for "mercy". One elderly woman suffering from heart disease and diabetes asked Al-Jazeera on Monday: "We are Muslims, why are the Arabs leaving us to die? Why isn’t Egypt opening the [Rafah] borders?". more..e-mail
Free Gaza Movement’s Story
Joe Fallisi, International Middle East Media Center News 11/27/2008
Interview with Greta Berlin & Mary Hughes-Thompson Dear Greta, dear Mary, you’re two of the founders and deeply involved organizers of Free Gaza. In my opinion, it is one of the few new world realities in the fight for human rights. It truly was and is able to make something concrete, new, positive and useful change - as well as a radical change. A change that otherwise very probably wouldn’t even happen. The initiative comes from civil society and has nothing to do with the old politics. How, where and when did it start, and what did you personally do and are continuing to do within this movement? Greta Berlin (*) : The Free Gaza Movement was organized two years ago by five people on two continents. Paul, Mary and I were working from California, and Eliza and Bella were working in parallel in the UK. We found each other and thought sailing a boat to Gaza would be a great idea. The original idea came from Michael Shaik in Australia who thought we should sail a boat from the US to Gaza. more..e-mail
Bread is Missing in Gaza
Ola Attallah – Gaza City, Palestine Chronicle 11/26/2008
’Bread has become something of a rarity in the impoverished Gaza Strip.’ Abu-Samir Nafei is desperate. The father of seven toured Gaza City for hours trying to buy bread for his hungry children back home. "I sought every single bakery around, and in each time the answer is the same: ’sorry no bread’," he told IslamOnline.net. "It was like searching for a hidden treasure." Bread has become something of a rarity in the impoverished Gaza Strip, home to 1.6 million, under Israel’s stifling blockade of fuel, power and food supplies. The majority of Gaza bakeries have shut down, and even those still powered are hit by severe shortages of wheat. "About 30 of a total 47 bakeries in Gaza have closed," said Abdul-Nasser Al Ajrami, head of the Association of Bakeries in the Gaza Strip. "They started grinding secondary wheat, originally used for birds and animals, to meet the demands of the hungry population," he added. "Ever since I have heard about this, I stopped even trying to search for bread," said Salma, a civil servant. more..e-mail
Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine
Stephen Lendman – Chicago, Palestine Chronicle 11/26/2008
’Gazans are grievously harmed, impoverished, slaughtered and now starved.’ Imagine life under these conditions: Living in limbo under a foreign occupier. Having no self-determination, no right of return, and no power over your daily life. Being in constant fear, economically strangled, and collectively punished. Having your free movement denied by enclosed population centers, closed borders, regular curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences, and separation walls. Having your homes regularly demolished and land systematically stolen to build settlements for encroachers in violation of international law prohibiting an occupier from settling its population on conquered land. Having your right to essential services denied - to emergency health care, education, employment, and enough food and clean water. Being forced into extreme poverty, having your crops destroyed, and being victimized by punitive taxes. Having no right for redress in the occupier’s courts under laws only protecting the occupier. more..e-mail
UN Aid Chief to EI: Gaza People ’Stripped of their Dignity’
Rami Almeghari, MIFTAH 11/29/2008
The Electronic Intifada’s correspondent in Gaza, Rami Almeghari, sat down with UNRWA Chief of Operations in the Gaza Strip, John Ging, to discuss how the siege, and the latest closures are affecting UNRWA and the civilian population in Gaza. UNRWA is the UN agency responsible for providing aid to millions of Palestinian refugees. On 4 November, Israel sent tanks into the Gaza Strip and carried out attacks which killed six Palestinians, breaking a ceasefire that had generally held since June. Palestinian militias retaliated by firing rockets at Israel. Since then Israel has tightened its blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Electronic Intifada: Mr. Ging, How do you describe the situation in the Gaza Strip under strict Israeli closure for more than two weeks now? John Ging: The situation is very desperate at the humanitarian level, I mean people have been stripped of their dignity here, it is a struggle to survive for every body. 750,000 of the people here in Gaza are children of the one and half million population. more..e-mail
Gaza Blockade Approaches 4 Week Mark [November 23 – November 29]
MIFTAH, MIFTAH 11/29/2008
November 29 marked the 25th day of the Israeli imposed closure on the Gaza Strip. Throughout the week, Israeli allowed a few deliveries of food and fuel supplies into Gaza, but not enough to make a dent in the humanitarian crisis ravaging the area. On November 25, Gaza’s sole power plant was closed due to a breakdown of its electricity-generating units because of the all too frequent shutdowns. The plant has been forced to close down several times in the last 3 weeks as Israel refuses to allow regular shipments of industrial fuel. Currently, only certain sections of the plant are working, while the equipment and spare parts necessary to repair the damage have not been allowed through. On November 26, in the first such action by an Arab government, a ship has set sail from Libya to Gaza in order to deliver 3,000 tons of humanitarian aid. If successful, it will be the fourth such vessel to reach Gaza in defiance of the Israeli military blockade of the coastal territory. On the same day, another Arab government, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), accused Israel of refusing to deliver donated aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip, calling the siege "the main cause behind the unprecedented deterioration in the humanitarian economic and social situation in Palestine." On November 25, the EU announced it was giving a 5 million Euro donation to help Palestinian refugee families in Gaza, but it is unclear whether that aid will reach them. more..e-mail
’Everything is from the tunnels’
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 11/30/2008
At 9 A.M., the children noticed that the numbers on the electric clock were flashing. "The electricity is back," they cried, but 8-year-old Sereen said dismissively: "It came back a long time ago. Didn’t you notice?" She points to the colored pencils and says: "They are from the tunnels. Everything is from the tunnels. The notebooks, too. And the pencil case. Dad, isn’t it true that they bring everything from the tunnels?" Her father, Mustafa, confirms: "Almost everything, that’s right." Sereen: "The potato chips, too. Are you sure you don’t want any? The potato chips used to be half a shekel. Since they’ve been bringing things in from the tunnels, it costs a shekel. And the big bag used to be NIS 5. Now it’s NIS 10. Everything comes from the tunnels, because the Jews" - she stops talking, probably recalling a previous conversation about the differences between Jews, Israelis and the army, and corrects herself - "because the Israelis are closing in on us on all sides. None of our neighbors have water now [the pumps operate on electricity], we’re the only ones, because we have a large water tank. more..e-mail
Deaths and no dinner
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/27/2008
Electricity cuts in Gaza continue to kill and distort normal life. Fadiya Al-Zaher, 55, was supposed to return last Thursday to her house following routine kidney dialysis at Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital in the centre of the Gaza Strip. She used to go three times a week. Her son Amin, was with her when the power supply to the hospital was cut off and the backup generators, short of fuel, failed to kick in. Amin was running up and down the corridor leading to her room, not knowing what to do. His sister, Tahani, suggested that they take their mother to another hospital in Gaza. Amin phoned the hospital and was told that it wasn’t ready to take in more patients. Then a nurse came and told Amin that his mother had gone into a coma. An hour later, she was pronounced dead. Fadiya’s story illustrates the fate awaiting hundreds of people diagnosed with chronic illnesses in Gaza. more..e-mail
Israel’s Settlement on Capital Hill
Robert Weitzel, Palestine Chronicle 11/28/2008
’Israel’s hilltop settlement in our nation’s capital (must be) dismantled.’ "With [traditional Israeli defense strategists] it’s all about tanks and land and controlling territories... and this hilltop and that hilltop. All these things are worthless." - Incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Soon after the sand settled following the Six Day War in 1967, Jewish settlements began dotting the hills in the occupied territories. These settlements are typically located on the high ground to better control the surrounding landscape. Today there are 127 Jewish settlements with a population exceeding 468,000 in the West Bank, the Golan Heights and in the suburbs of East Jerusalem—the last of nearly 8,000 settlers were removed from the Gaza Strip in 2005. According to a recent Amnesty International report, "In the first six months of 2008 Israel has expanded settlements in the West Bank/East Jerusalem at a faster rate than in the previous seven years." more..e-mail
What if?
Hassan Nafaa, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/27/2008
Is the region ready for Israel to accept the Arab peace initiative? No, says What would happen if Israel accepted the Arab peace initiative? Some would respond that the question is hypothetical, if not totally absurd, so why bother? I disagree. The question merits immediate attention. Israel is going through a difficult time and will have to make some tough choices. It is likely that the current controversy over available options, especially that raging within the Israeli military establishment, may result in a fundamental policy shift and the acceptance of the Saudi peace initiative, adopted as the Arab peace initiative, in the Beirut summit of 2002. There is much evidence pointing in this direction, not least the remarks made by Ehud Olmert in an extended interview with the Israeli journalists Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer. The interview was published in Yediot Aharonot on the eve of the Jewish new year and excerpts appeared, translated into English, in the latest edition of The New York Review of Books (Volume 55, Number 19, 4 December 2008). For the first time an Israeli prime minister dared to ask his fellow citizens, openly and in Hebrew, in a message directed more to local than for foreign consumption, to let go of their dreams of a "greater Israel" with Jerusalem as its eternal capital. It was now time to seriously contemplate the setting of final, internationally recognised borders for the state of Israel so that the international community could deal with it as an ordinary state. Olmert also seems to have realised that Israel must accept the pre-June 1967 borders as the final boundaries or, in the event that it annexes portions of Palestinian land upon which major Israeli settlements have been constructed, it must give the Palestinians an amount of territory elsewhere. more..e-mail
Not even Palestine
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/27/2008
Once again, the Arab collective order is in disarray, even on fundamental Arab issues, reports The extraordinary Arab foreign ministers meeting that was scheduled for yesterday evening at the headquarters of the Arab League did not appear set to achieve its objective of agreeing an Arab plan of action for Palestinian reconciliation and underlining Arab support for the Palestinian team negotiating with Israel the basis of a peace settlement. Even less, the meeting appeared incapable of reaching a consensual stand in solidarity with Palestinians starving in darkness in Gaza as Israel continues to impose a punitive siege on the Strip. Prior to their arrival to the meeting, Arab delegations had already been arguing via the pan-Arab organisation, leaving its secretary-general overwhelmed with the task of reconciling the conflicting views of disagreeing Arab capitals, especially influential ones -- Cairo and Riyadh, on the one hand, and Damascus and Doha on the other. A crucial point of disagreement is how to handle the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Egypt, that failed to convene a Palestinian reconciliation meeting 10 November due to what it qualifies as Hamas’s cold feet, wants the Arab League and Arab capitals to exercise pressure on Hamas to prompt its participation in reconciliation dialogue. For this to happen, Cairo particularly wants Damascus and Doha to "use their influence" with Hamas, whose key leaders are hosted by Syria and financed by Qatar, so it would agree to a reconciliation format it thus far rejects. Hamas sees Egypt as biased towards rival President Mahmoud Abbas, who insists that Hamas should agree to an indefinite end to all military resistance to the Israeli occupation. Saudi Arabia, among others, supports Cairo and Abbas, Arab diplomats argue. more..e-mail
Too hot to handle
Amira Howeidy, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/27/2008
Boycotting a UN anti-racism conference and trying to bypass Arab media through an Arabic YouTube channel, Tel Aviv appears on the defensive. It has been 31 years since Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat broke ranks with Arab states in their boycott of Israel, travelling to Jerusalem on a "peace" mission that others saw as "normalisation". Since then most Arab states came to recognise Israel officially or unofficially. Gone are the days when the Arabs boycotted international events because of Israel’s participation or representation. Hosting Israeli pundits and spokespeople on Arab television is also no longer taboo. The top news channel Al-Jazeera regularly gives airtime to Israelis. So much has changed since Sadat’s 1977 "historic" visit that Israel’s recent defensive posture has gone unnoticed by the Arab media. On 19 November, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced that her country will boycott the UN "Durban II" conference slated for next April in Geneva for fear it would be too critical of Israel. Now it is Israel, not the Arabs, that is boycotting conferences it cannot face. In October 2006, Livni boycotted a UN-sponsored democracy conference in Doha because a delegation from Hamas was participating. And in February 2005, Israel boycotted the oral hearings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legal consequences of Israel’s annexation wall built on occupied Palestinian land. Today, Israel is pulling out of international efforts to eradicate racism, discrimination and intolerance. more..e-mail
Gazan bakers cope under siege
Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 11/27/2008
Israel’s 17-month siege, tightened over the past three weeks, has forced Palestinians to find other ways to meet their basic needs. Because Israel has closed border crossings into Gaza, the 1.5 million residents lack many essential supplies including food, medicines, fuel, cooking gas, and now, electricity.Even Gaza’s bakeries, which supply bread to hundreds of thousands of people in the besieged coastal territory, have been forced to shut down due to lack of gas and prolonged blackouts.
Mustafa al-Banna, 70 years old of Deir al-Balah, owns al-Banna Bakery, the largest bakery in central Gaza Strip. He explained that "We have been staying idle for the past three days as we are unable to bring cooking gas from nearby stations. Before this closure, we used to make 12,000 pieces of bread per hour, but in the past two weeks, our production capacity has become much less than half."
The closure of bakeries impacts all sectors of society, as they also provide bread to hospitals, local community organizations, and schools. Mahdi Temraz, 32 years old, provides bread for 4,000 schoolchildren at two schools along Salah al-Din road, Gaza’s main thoroughfare. He complained of his inability to provide breads for the children stating that "For the third day consecutively now I come to this bakery and ask about bread, but there is none. Really I can not handle this situation as the children should have their morning meal, as designated by UNRWA [the UN agency for Palestine refugees]." more..e-mail
Death of Annapolis Defines Bush Failure
Iqbal Jassat – South Africa, Palestine Chronicle 11/27/2008
’Annapolis didn’t survive its first year.’ The imminent departure of America’s leader from the White House, signals the end of eight disastrous years under the Bush administration. As biographers and others prepare to document a comprehensive list of the failures of George W Bush, they certainly will not be able to ignore his Middle East policies. In fact, it is safe to assume that alongside his illegitimate wars of aggression resulting in the invasions of two sovereign states, Iraq and Afghanistan, his much vaunted desire to establish a subservient Palestinian "state" -- albeit ala Bantustan -- in the service of a nuclear power Israel, lies in tatters. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has as much as shrugged her shoulders in frustration, following years of to and fro between Washington and Tel Aviv. In seeking to follow her boss’s blinkered views on Palestine, which amazingly included ignoring the results of a free and fair election (endorsed as such by former US President Jimmy Carter), Rice adamantly refused to recognize the legitimacy of a Hamas victory. Instead in traditional colonial style, Rice has been courting Mahmoud Abbas, the failed leader of defeated Fatah, to collaborate with Israel in order to be installed as a stooge in a so-called "independent" Palestinian state. more..e-mail
License to Kill
Uri Blau, Palestine Media Center 11/27/2008
The announcement made by the Israel Defense Forces’ spokesman on June 20, 2007 was standard: "Two armed terrorists belonging to the Islamic Jihad terror organization were killed last night during the course of a joint activity of the IDF and a special force of the Border Police in Kafr Dan, northwest of Jenin. The two terrorists, Ziad Subahi Mahmad Malaisha and Ibrahim Ahmed Abd al-Latif Abed, opened fire at the force during its activity. In response the force fired at them, killing the terrorists. On their bodies two M-16 rifles, a pistol and ammunition were found. It was also discovered that the terrorists were involved in planning suicide attacks against the Israeli home front, including the attempt in Rishon Letzion last February." The laconic announcement ignores one important detail: Malaisha was a target for assassination. His fate had been decided several months earlier, in the office of then head of Central Command, Yair Naveh. As far as the public was concerned, on the other hand, the last declared assassination carried out by the IDF in the West Bank took place in August 2006; at the end of that year the High Court of Justice set strict criteria regarding the policy of assassinations in the territories. more..e-mail
Clinging to hope
Sameh Habib, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/27/2008
Following Israeli raids that killed around 15 Palestinians within one week, many rockets were fired into Israel in a reprisal against Israeli provocations. As usual Israel blamed Palestinians despite it being the one who initiated the violence. The Israeli assault was an obvious breach of an agreed calm held with Palestinian fighting groups five months ago. It has provoked some Palestinians to fire some light rockets into Israel. Afterwards, Israel started a new phase of collective punishment. With the latest Israeli manoeuvres to tighten the siege imposed on Gaza, more life necessities vanished. The key power plant shut down eight days ago and more than 75 per cent of the Gaza Strip faces severe power cuts and some other areas are completely plunged into darkness. The remaining power shares provided by Israel and Egypt are not enough to cover the whole coastal strip. Pumped fresh water is not reaching all cities, farms and central water wells. Sewage and treatment water machines are halted. Additionally around 40 million tonnes of sewage water leaked into the Mediterranean contaminating it and damaging fish resources. more..e-mail
Absent good intentions
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/27/2008
The sheer level of bitterness between the conflicting parties may forestall all attempts at Palestinian reconciliation dialogue. With only a candle providing dim light, he searched for the new mobile of an Egyptian official. He eventually found and dialled the number. The official’s wife told him that her husband had gone to bed and to call back in the morning. This is how Ghazi Hamad, charged with maintaining contacts between the Haniyeh government in Gaza and the Egyptian government, has been spending nights in his office. He is trying to put together a formula that would enable Hamas and Fatah to agree to resume dialogue between them. In addition to contacting Egyptian officials, Hamad has also been calling top officials in Damascus, Sanaa, Doha and other Arab capitals. What gives him some heart is the assurances that he has received from several officials that the Arab League will not take sides in the internal Palestinian factional dispute and will refrain from apportioning blame in the event that dialogue collapses again -- contrary to the wish of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas. more..e-mail
Gaza: Salvation in a News Broadcast
Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 11/27/2008
’Gazans are still flipping through the channels..’ When Gaza’s electricity is in working order, most Palestinians in the impoverished and overcrowded Strip huddle around their television screens. It’s neither "American Idol" nor "Dancing with the Stars" that brings them together. It’s the news. Gazans’ relationship to news media is both complex and unique. Like most Palestinians everywhere, they intently watch and listen to news broadcasts the world over, with the hope that salvation will arrive in the form of a news bulletin. Evidently, salvation is yet to be aired. That infatuation is hardly coincidental, however, as their purpose of reading, listening and watching is unmistakable. Palestinians deeply care about what the rest of the world is saying about their plight and struggle. Most importantly, they wonder if anyone out there cares. During the first Intifada’s long and harsh Israeli military curfews in Gaza, my family would gather around a small radio, always nervous that the batteries would die, leaving us with a total news blackout; a horrible scenario by Gaza’s standards. more..e-mail
Adalah files an objection against the new 'Israeli Master Plan for Jerusalem'ť
Adalah, International Middle East Media Center News 11/27/2008
Adalah and Civic Coalition: New Master Plan for Jerusalem District will Place Palestinians in the City in a Stranglehold, Further Entrench the Settlements and Alter the City’s Demographic Composition. On 24 November 2008, Adalah filed an objection to the National Council for Planning and Building (NCPB) to the Jerusalem Regional Master Plan, which was submitted two months ago. The objection was filed in cooperation with the Civic Coalition for Defending the Palestinians’ Rights in Jerusalem (CCDPRJ) on behalf of 73 objectors (56 Palestinians from East Jerusalem and 17 local organizations). The objection was written by ’s Urban Planner, Hana Hamdan andAttorney Suhad Bishara. Today, 27 November 2008,held a press conference to mark the submission of the objection, which was attended by tens of local and international journalists, as well as representatives from a number of foreign embassies and consulates and international organizations. The Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, and the Palestinian Governor of Jerusalem, Mr. Adnan al-Husseini, opened the press conference and emphasized the grave dangers facing the Palestinian community in East Jerusalem and the importance of the legal and professional work on land and planning issues in the city. more..e-mail
‘Our Family Has Died’
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, Palestine Media Center 11/27/2008
The apartment in the town of Dura, south of Hebron, is spacious, but Osama Rasras lives there alone. His home is as elegant as it is empty. In the room he shared with his wife, the bed is made and covered with a blue bedspread on which a few books are lying. The children’s room is empty, too; only a plastic model tractor evokes its former occupants. The kitchen is spotless and shining, as are the other rooms: All are immaculately clean, all are deserted. Osama has learned to cook, clean and launder by himself.
A photograph of his son, Ahmed, hangs on the wall, and Rasras’ mobile phone displays a photo of both Ahmed and his sister, Dalal. Looking at their images makes Osama sad. Not so long ago - though it seems like an eternity - he and his wife, Soniya, lived here contentedly with their two children. Now Soniya and the little ones are in Rafah, in the northern Gaza Strip, and Osama is in Dura, in the southern West Bank. They are only an hour and a half apart by car, but neither can cross the hills of darkness on the way. They have been living separately for a year now. more..e-mail
Just a stone’s throw from the Cave of the Patriarchs
Meron Benvenisti, Ha’aretz 11/27/2008
The controversy over the evacuation of the House of Contention in Hebron is being conducted according to a script where the ending is known in advance. The only surprise is that the story’s banality can arouse such emotion. Everyone involved is simply playing the same standard roles in a drama that has been running for years. The High Court of Justice makes an unclear ruling, the settlers divide up between the moderates who declare they will not be dragged into violence and the extremists who threaten a violent response; thus they enjoy the best of both worlds. The left denounces those who repudiate the rule of law and expect others to do their work, and the "responsible authorities" search for a compromise and try to put off the confrontation in the name of aspirations for unity and conciliation. The results are known in advance because only the settlers have the troops ready for a stubborn and drawn-out battle, and the left is only willing to give the matter a few minutes for writing a blog or something, and maybe holding a demonstration on a Friday afternoon. The legal authorities try to avoid a confrontation, and sophisticated lawyers are busy contriving legal opinions that allow the issue of the House of Contention to be dumped on the ash heap of other decisions that were never carried out - and never will be. more..e-mail
This is Gaza
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 11/27/2008
If it’s not the power getting cut, leaving entire neighborhoods in darkness, then it’s the water not reaching the top floors or the cooking gas running out. If you have an electric generator, some small part of it is bound to be broken and unfixable, because even before the hermetic three-week siege, Israel prohibited bringing in any spare parts for cars, machines and household electric appliances. And if you somehow manage to find the money for a generator that was smuggled through the tunnels (its price has doubled or tripled since last month), it’s at the expense of buying a heater (not electric, of course), English lessons, clothes for the children and visits to the doctor. This is Gaza in November 2008. Just as Gaza is the emptying of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency storehouses and the farmers who sowed and watered, but cannot market, their tomatoes, guavas and strawberries out of the Gaza Strip because Israel forbids it, it is also the calmness with which people receive the sudden darkness and the jokes that there is not much food in the refrigerator to spoil anyway. more..e-mail
Settlers Stay, Or It’s Civil War
Cherrie Heywood, Inter Press Service 11/27/2008
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov 26(IPS) - The resolution of the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict and future stability in the Middle East could hinge on Hebron, a little town in the southern Palestinian West Bank, 30 km south of Jerusalem. Thousands of Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers were put on high alert over the weekend as 20,000 Israeli settlers from across the West Bank descended on Hebron.
The settlers were there to mark an annual Jewish pilgrimage and lend their support to a group of fellow settlers threatened with eviction by an Israeli court ruling. The Israeli government feared an outbreak of rioting.
Hebron is home to approximately 600 of Israel’s most extreme Israeli settlers, who are surrounded by a Palestinian population of more than 170,000, and protected by several thousand Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers. Baruch Goldstein, a doctor who had emigrated from the U.S. machine-gunned 29 Palestinians to death in 1994 as they prayed in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan. more..e-mail
You Harvest What You Plant: Debunking the myth of 'Palestinian Hate'
Reham Alhelsi, Palestine Think Tank 11/26/2008
Last week a friend of mine told me that she’d been invited to a debate at her University about the “Palestinian Mickey Mouse” Farfour, which is a Hamas-created children’s show that was broadcast on the Al-Quds TV in Gaza. The show was accused of conveying messages of hate by Israel, the US and a number of European countries. I never saw the show, but I remember the storm that was created because of it on a number of American and European networks. I remember also reading that there was some sort of mistranslation of what was being said on the show, which in a way had lead to the misinterpretations, and that none of these networks attacking the show “bothered to get independent verification of the translation“(1). This reminded me of the several occasions where I was confronted with questions about the Palestinian textbooks, and that they were breeding and spreading hate and Anti-Semitism. When the second Intifada began in 2000, I was already in Germany to start my higher studies there. I remember one evening when a German friend of mine called and said she had a shocking article to show me. As far as I remember, the article was published by the New York Times. It talked about Palestinian children being pushed by their parents to go out to the streets and to the checkpoints and throw stones at the IOF, so that they get shot at and killed, and subsequently the family gets money for their dead child. I remember distinctly reading something about the parents giving their children a few Shekels to take the bus and reach the checkpoint. I was of course outraged, as was my German friend, who had lived a number of years in Palestine and saw the realities of Palestinian suffering by the hands of the “peace-loving” Israelis.... more..e-mail
Abbas Goes Double Duty
Joharah Baker, MIFTAH 11/26/2008
On Sunday, November 23, the PLO Central Council elected Mahmoud Abbas the President of Palestine. The last president the Palestinians had was Yasser Arafat, or Abu Ammar, who died four years ago. Now, Abbas, who is already president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and head of Fateh, is wearing the new cap of head of state. The fact of the matter is that since the election, the average Palestinian is scrambling to make sense of who is in what position, how or why this position even exists, and what this actually means in practical terms. This is especially true given our current state of affairs. The West Bank and Gaza are both geographically and politically isolated from one another, with Hamas and Fateh alternately scratching out eyes and stabbing backs in their respective bids for power. Putting together the puzzle of Palestinian politics and its quagmire of systems is not always easy. Before the advent of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was the sole legitimate representative authority for the Palestinians. Traditionally established with the goal of liberating all of Palestine by means of, but not exclusively through, armed struggle and resistance, the 1987 Intifada changed the political paradigms for the leadership. The result of this shift was the PLO acceptance of a deal with the international community to relinquish armed struggle and enter into negotiations with Israel on the basis of UN Resolution 242, which called for an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967 and a peaceful settlement to the conflict. more..e-mail
A monument to intolerance?
Abe Hayeem, The Guardian 11/26/2008
The whittling away and destruction of Muslim memory and history has been a key aim in Jerusalem’s development (as in the rest of Israel). This is especially so with the recent acceleration of the Judaising of illegally-annexed East Jerusalem, by infiltrating it with more Jewish settlements built on expropriated land and homes in the heart of Palestinian neighbourhoods. In Silwan, below the Old City wall, fundamentalist settlers, wishing to establish "the City David" in the Arab neighbourhood, are illegally digging under people’s houses, and ancient burial remains are being bundled away into boxes, preventing documentation of important evidence of the Islamic era of Jerusalem. The Muslim cemetery in Mamilla, West Jerusalem, is suffering a similar fate in one section, where hundreds of skeletons are being unearthed and boxed, to make way for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s euphemistically-named "Museum of Tolerance". The recent judgment by Israel’s Supreme Court to allow the construction of the museum complex to proceed on top of this cemetery of religious and historical importance defies all satire and irony, making it a flashpoint for more conflict and hatred, and still engendering strong protests. more..e-mail
The struggle is not over: Remembering Mohammed al-Kurd
Pam Rasmussen writing from the United States, Electronic Intifada 11/26/2008
The saying that a man’s home is his castle goes back to the 1500s. Whether it is a mansion or a mud hut, a home to which you can retreat and be safe is a basic human need. But since 2001, Abu Kamel (Mohammed al-Kurd), his wife and five children were forced to fight every day for the right to stay in the East Jerusalem home his family had lived in for decades. And although the Jewish settlers who tried to push them out -- literally -- didn’t put a gun to his head and pull the trigger, they might as well have.
Two weeks after the al-Kurds were finally evicted from their home on 9 November, Abu Kamel suffered a fatal heart attack. Now, Um Kamel (his wife, Fawzieh) who I grew to admire and respect while I camped on their patio as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) must wage the fight alone.
In October, my friend Jean and I traveled to Palestine from the United States to volunteer with the ISM during the fall olive harvest. When a foot injury ended my usefulness at olive-picking, we left Nablus for East Jerusalem, where the ISM had been keeping watch on the al-Kurds patio since the summer hoping to prevent the eviction that eventually came. more..e-mail
Holocaust; Not Again but in Gaza
Dr. Elias Akleh, MIFTAH 11/25/2008
The state of Israel was allegedly established to give world Jewry, in general, and “holocaust surviving” European Jews, in specific, a safe homeland. But the international humanitarian cry of “Holocaust, never again” has become so blind and so disillusioned that it has been, for the last sixty years, perpetrating the same thing it is trying to prevent, namely another holocaust, against another nation; the Palestinian Arabs. The holocaust was perpetrated in Europe against Jewish Europeans by Christian Europeans. Arabs, who, for generations, received persecuted European Jews with hospitality, harbored and protected them, should not be made to pay their heartland, Palestine, for the sins of Europeans. Palestinians had never sinned against true Jews, but when Zionist militant Jews attack Palestinians, destroy their towns, massacre their families, forcefully evict hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes, and usurp their lands to build their terrorist Israeli state, Palestinians had no choice but to defend themselves with whatever means available to them. more..e-mail
UNGA President calls for sanctions against Israeli apartheid
Stop The Wall 11/25/2008
The following speeches were given on November 24 by Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, President of the United Nations General Assembly. Mr. Brockmann should be applauded for this speech, as he uses powerful content – including references to apartheid, American-imposed obstacles to peace, Israeli intimidation and last but not least, the BDS movement – that has not been heard yet at this level of UN diplomacy.
The fact that this statement was made by such a high level official at the General Assembly is an important step forward for Palestine. At the same time, however, it points to the serious flaw of the UN system, that the real power lies not in the decisions of the General Assembly, but in the hands of a few world powers in the Security Council.Thus, while Mr. Brockmann’s speech should certainly be seen as a sign of progress for Palestinian solidarity, the achievement of substantive success will only come when the UN system is reformed, and the executive body of the institution is truly representative of global sentiment. Full text of the speeches.... more..e-mail
Gaza Held Hostage Should Outrage Us All
Linda S. Heard, Gulf News, Palestine Media Center 11/25/2008
There are 1.5 million men, women and children currently imprisoned without food, water, fuel or essential medicines. There is little to cook and nothing to cook on except open-air wood fires.
Students do their best to learn by candlelight. Adults struggle to find transport to take them to work, those lucky enough to have a job; 60 per cent are unemployed. The lives of the sick hang on a lottery. Soon they will face the worst of the winter in the dark. Worst of all, there is no escape.
As if all this suffering isn’t enough, their neighbourhoods are regularly bombed; their leaders assassinated. They stood by helplessly as their life-sustaining olive groves were wilfully destroyed and their homes demolished. Most of the people of Gaza have been captives throughout their lives. Today, they have nothing; no real champions, no future, no hope; not even bread. And what is the so-called international community doing about their man-made plight? The answer is nothing. Indeed, many neighbouring countries are colluding, albeit reluctantly. more..e-mail
The Rights of Women as Casualties of War
Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 11/25/2008
’The issue of women’s rights is a pressing one, not just because of the horrifying statistics.’ Qurban-Bibi and Nahil Abu-Rada are two women, one Afghan and the other Palestinian, who made news with similar tragedies. But their losses also helped further delineate the plight of millions of women in war zones and poor countries. The United Nations news service reported on the troubles of Qurban-Bibi, a pregnant woman who simply needed to reach a hospital. Doctors had instructed that she must deliver in an equipped medical facility, considering her previous Caesarean delivery. The desperately poor husband and her brothers opted for a delivery at home, citing the unaffordable taxi ride. The woman almost bled to death. When the delivery turned for the worst, the family rushed her to Faizabad hospital in a nearby province. Her life was saved, but, evidently not that of her baby. Nahil’s story also fails to deviate from the ever-predictable norm. The pregnant Palestinian woman was joined by her family on their way to a hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus. The hospital was so close, yet so far. Between their ambulance and salvation was an Israeli army checkpoint, Hawara. "Nothing helped. Not the pleas, not the cries of the woman in labor, not the father’s explanations in excellent Hebrew, nor the blood that flowed in the car. The commander of the checkpoint, a fine Israeli who had completed an officers’ course, heard the cries, saw the woman writhing in pain in the back seat of the car, listened to the father’s heartrending pleas and was unmoved," reported Israeli journalist Gideon Levy in Haaretz. He added, "Nahil Abu-Rada is not the first woman to lose her baby this way because of the occupation, and she won’t be the last." more..e-mail
Appointing Hillary Clinton Secretary of State
Bill and Kathleen Christison, Palestine Chronicle 11/25/2008
’Appointing Clinton secretary of state would be utterly disastrous.’ In 2005 Hillary Clinton stood in Palestine and praised the apartheid wall that the government of Israel was building with large amounts of U.S. aid in furtherance of the Zionist goal of destroying one of the world’s peoples -- the Palestinians. This is the wall that the United Nations’ World Court has declared contrary to international law. And this is just one example of Hillary Clinton’s total support for all of Israel’s policies to oppress and eventually expel whatever elements of the Palestinian population remain west of the Jordan River. On the evening of November 14, 2008, we sent a message to Barack Obama’s transition website urging him not to name Mrs. Clinton as his secretary of state. The text of our message said: "Appointing Hillary Clinton secretary of state would be utterly disastrous. Combined with the earlier appointment of Rahm Emanuel, it would be seen by all Palestinians, all Arabs, all Muslims, and many others around the world as the ultimate insult, eliminating any hope of a just resolution of the Palestinian situation during the presidency of Barack Obama.It would reduce any good will toward Obama that has built up among Muslims in recent months and would spell finis to hopes for an end of the global hatred that continues to grow against America and its allies.More and more, the "War on Terror" would become a never-ending part of our existence and over time would introduce further limitations of our domestic liberties and of living standards everywhere in the world. more..e-mail
Photo essay: A dark night in Gaza
Sameh A. Habeeb writing from occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 11/25/2008
Over the past few weeks, Israel has tightened its inhumane siege of the Gaza Strip’s 1.5 million residents. Ignoring international appeals, Israel closed all border crossings with Gaza thereby preventing basic supplies from entering the tiny coastal strip. This included industrial fuel for Gaza’s sole power plant leaving roughly one million people without power as well as food supplies for the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, despite the call by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to end the siege.
The recent power blackout has pervaded every Palestinian house.Several hospitals have been forced to suspended surgeries and medical treatment. Today, at Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical center, one of the generators stopped working leaving parts of the hospital without power. In addition, prices of alternative sources of fuel have increased dramatically and are unaffordable to most in the impoverished Strip. Without power, Palestinian homes and farms do not have access to fresh water, forcing Gazans to travel long distances for potable water. Moreover, sewage water is not being treated and officials fear that it will leak into and contaminate groundwater wells, spreading disease across Gaza. more..e-mail
Likud Rising
Uri Avnery, Palestine Chronicle 11/25/2008
’For several months now Netanyahu has been behaving like a model pupil.’ Israel Two documents appeared side by side in Haaretz last week,on November 21: a giant advertisement from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the results of a public opinion poll. The proximity was accidental, but to the point. The PLO ad sets out the details of the 2002 Saudi peace offer, decorated with the colorful flags of the 22 Arab and the 35 other Muslim countries which have endorsed the offer. The public opinion poll predicts a landslide victory for Likud, which opposes every single word of the Saudi proposal. The PLO ad is a first of its kind. At long last, the PLO leaders have decided to address the Israeli people directly. The ad discloses to the Israeli population the exact terms of the all-Arab peace offer: full recognition of the State of Israel by all Arab and Muslim countries, full normalization of relations - in return for Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders and the establishment of the Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. more..e-mail
What Preoccupies Young Palestinian Minds
Daoud Kuttab, Palestine Media Center 11/25/2008
The occupation is foremost on Palestinian youth’s mind. This was made clear in the Palestinian village of Beita, near Nablus, at an event held on November 17: the opening of the youth development resource centre, funded by USAID and some private international technical companies.
The audience included US Undersecretary of State James K. Glassman, responsible for public diplomacy and public affairs, Ziad Asali, president of the American Task Force on Palestine, Jean Case, chief executive officer of the Case Foundation (the two are co-chair of the US Palestinian public-private partnership), senior Palestinian officials, town leaders and practically all 8,000 residents of Beita. After the speeches of the minister of youth, the governor of Nablus and a senior USAID official, Iqab Attari the chair of the youth centre reminded donors of the larger problem facing the Palestinians. more..e-mail
Gazans unable to use newly-issued IDs due to Israeli closure
Ma’an News Agency 11/25/2008
Gaza – Ma’an – Nairouz Qarmout has not seen her husband since their wedding three years ago. Qarmout lives in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip. Her husband lives in the West Bank. The two were married when he travelled to Gaza through the Egypt-controlled Rafah crossing. Making her situation more complex, Qarmout was one of thousands of Palestinians who had no identification card, making it nearly impossible for her to obtain an Israeli-issued permit to leave Gaza and travel to the West Bank. Israel places limits on the number of ID cards the Palestinian Authority can issue, making it difficult for Palestinian families to reunite. This is often a problem for West Bank and Gaza residents who were exiled during the 1967 occupation and then returned to their homeland after the creation of the Authority in 1994. more..e-mail
Olive Culture in Palestine
Dr. T. Jayasinghe, Asian Tribune, Palestine Media Center 11/24/2008
Olive branch is a universal symbol of peace. This was highlighted when Chairman Yasser Arafat raised the olive branch in UN assembly and declared that he is for peace in Palestine. Unfortunately olive tree continues to be an object of conflict in Palestine.
Olive tree is an inseparable part of Palestinian culture while playing a vital role in its agriculture, economy and national identity. As in the case of paddy cultivation in Sri Lanka there is a culture woven around the olive tree along with many rituals associated with harvesting. In Palestine olive picking season is traditionally considered a joyous and important time specially in the villages. There are olive harvesting festivals held all over Palestine. Olive picking or harvesting usually commences by end September and goes on till end November. In Sri Lanka teachers in paddy cultivation regions complain that children do not attend schools during the paddy harvesting season but in Palestine children are given time off so that they can help their parents in this "time honored endeavor". more..e-mail
Without Unity, Palestinians Have No Way to Fend off Israeli War Crimes
Editorial, The Daily Star, Palestine Media Center 11/25/2008
No sane person can look at the tragedy unfolding in the Gaza Strip and not mourn the passing of Palestinian unity. At a time when a coherent message demanding statehood might help create public pressure for Western countries to finally stop allowing Israel to break international law, the Palestinian people have been reduced to the point where the United Nations is begging on their behalf for permission to bring food into the besieged enclave. Zero progress has been made on liberating Palestine Hamas’ way, which is to fire ineffective rockets that only give the Israelis a pretext to maintain their attacks and starve children. In addition, even Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah has now acknowledged that his way - that of engaging in negotiations with the occupier - has also achieved nothing after a whole year of talks initiated by the Annapolis summit. Far from appearing ready for the necessary compromises, both Hamas and Fatah have willfully sabotaged efforts to reconcile them, including preconditions for talks, abuse of constitutional mechanisms, and arrests of one another’s members. Unfettered by any consistent Palestinian opposition, the Israelis have therefore been granted a free hand to have their way with Gaza - and, when it pleases them, to prey on innocent people in Occupied Jerusalem and the Occupied West Bank as well. Collective punishment is being carried out against their people on a mass scale, and the two principle Palestinian parties are more concerned with their own feud than with bringing the enemy to account. more..e-mail
Organize to stop apartheid dance troupe’s North America tour
Michelle J. Kinnucan, Electronic Intifada 11/25/2008
The Batsheva Dance Company of Tel Aviv is touring the US and Canada in January, February, and March, 2009. A recipient of public financing since the 1990s, the dance troupe is clearly an Israeli apartheid cultural institution. Writing October 26, 2008, in The Independent of London, Jenny Gilbert reports that the dance company is "funded by Israel’s government, its performers include none of Arab extraction, and it is ’proud to be considered Israel’s leading ambassador.’"
Ohad Naharin, the dance company’s current Director, served in the Israeli army. In a 2005 interview with a Canadian newspaper, Naharin stated that "I continue to do my work, while 20 km from me people are participating in war crimes ... the ability to detach oneself from the situation -- that is what allows one to go on." Needless to say, the victims of Israeli "war crimes" cannot avail themselves of the luxury of detachment.
In the summer of 2006, Israel turned Lebanon into a free-fire zone and killed over a thousand Lebanese civilians and wounded thousands more. Just a few weeks later, in October 2006, Dance Magazine asked Naharin: "How does the current conflict between Israel and Lebanon affect you as an artist?" He responded that "I don’t separate my artistry from my life. My life and my work is all one thing. I’m affected by what’s going on, of course." Later in the same interview Naharin noted, "We have two Israeli soldiers in our junior company." and "I don’t like that people think Israel: war, guns, army." more..e-mail
"We, as Lebanese, are here to confirm that we cling to freeing every grain of our soil. We will not abandon the great national cause, which is the continuation of the liberation of our land. The resistance looks forward to hoisting the flags of victory again over the Kfarshuba hills, Shebaa Farms, Ghajar and Abbasieh where 80 percent of the land is still occupied" - Sheik Nabil Qwork, Hezbollah leader addressing villagers at Abbasieh Village, 10/2008
Under pressure from the lame duck Bush Administration to withdraw from territory that the Lebanese Resistance (moukawamah Lubnaniyah) did not liberate during its May 2000 rout of the Israel army and its surrogate SLA militia, Israel to date remains unwilling to budge. One reason is that it claims the Bush Administration reneged on secret pledges to bomb Iran. As the blind eyes turned by five consecutive US administrations to Israel’s 22 year brutal occupation of South Lebanon (1978-2000) make plain, Israel remaining on Lebanese territory normally would not be of much concern to Washington even as it is learning that its own hard-line policy in the region did not succeed. more..e-mail
Don’t Suppress Carter (or Opportunities for Middle East Peace)
Ralph Nader, Palestine Chronicle 11/25/2008
’Silencing Carter involved behind the scenes tensions..’ Now that the season of electoral expediency is over, Barack Obama owes Jimmy Carter an apology. At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the Party denied Jimmy Carter the traditional invitation to speak that is accorded its former presidents. According to The Jewish Daily Forward, "Carter’s controversial views on Israel cost him a place on the podium at the Democratic Party convention in late August, senior Democratic operatives acknowledged to the Forward." Silencing Carter, who negotiated the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement, involved behind the scenes tensions between supporters of the hard-line AIPAC lobby and those Democrats who argued both respect and free speech to let Carter join Bill Clinton on the stage and address a nationwide audience. First, there was a compromise offer to let Carter speak but only on domestic policy subjects. This would have kept him from mentioning his views on securing peace between the Israelis and Palestinians through a two-state solution essentially back to the 1967 borders. He previously elaborated his analysis and recommendations in his 2006 bestseller titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. more..e-mail
Praying at the Wall
Dr. Bernard Sabella, MIFTAH 11/25/2008
In the Holy Land there are many walls and of all kinds. Palestinians often ask themselves if being walled in or out is the way of life since for many of them, particularly the young, the Wall has become part of their physical and psychological setting. Someone just told me that the best thing the Palestinian Authority can do, aside from unifying the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, would be to announce a hefty prize for practical ideas to bring down the Separation Wall. Anyone or any interested companies and parties worldwide can apply and an international board would determine the winner. When I asked my ingenious acquaintance on what to do with the concrete that would be left out when the Wall is brought down, he suggested shipping it to Holland to make more land and/or examine the possibility of making more land off Gaza shore. Ideas like this, though they may appear out of touch with reality, simply emphasize that Walls are not and cannot be the way to live out our lives, not now and not in the future. Irrespective of the pretenses, pretexts, justifications presented for building “political and psychological” walls, they remain unconvincing. Similarly, embargoes or sieges that wall in people and deny them basic necessities are also obsolete in terms of political return. The example of Gaza tells of a 1.4 million convincing reason why the Israeli siege on the Strip has failed miserably. An American Jewish rabbi on a visit to the Holy Land went to Bethlehem and as he saw and stood by the Wall, he started crying. I could not believe his reaction and I thought he was feigning it to please me and the other Palestinians around. No, he said, it is simply a horrible barrier and I could not have imagined it so. Some would say that the example of this Rabbi is simply one of out of million but in reality it is an example that says what any decent person would say: no future for Israelis and Palestinians with this Wall. more..e-mail
The slow death of Gaza
Andrea Becker, The Guardian 11/24/2008
It has been two weeks since Israel imposed a complete closure of Gaza, after months when its crossings have been open only for the most minimal of humanitarian supplies. Now it is even worse: two weeks without United Nations food trucks for the 80% of the population entirely dependent on food aid, and no medical supplies or drugs for Gaza’s ailing hospitals. No fuel (paid for by the EU) for Gaza’s electricity plant, and no fuel for the generators during the long blackouts. Last Monday morning, 33 trucks of food for UN distribution were finally let in - a few days of few supplies for very few, but as the UN asks, then what? Israel’s official explanation for blocking even minimal humanitarian aid, according to IDF spokesperson Major Peter Lerner, was "continued rocket fire and security threats at the crossings". Israel’s blockade, in force since Hamas seized control of Gaza in mid-2007, can be described as an intensification of policies designed to isolate the population of Gaza, cripple its economy, and incentivise the population against Hamas by harsh - and illegal - measures of collective punishment. However, these actions are not all new: the blockade is but the terminal end of Israel’s closure policy, in place since 1991, which in turn builds on Israel’s policies as occupier since 1967. more..e-mail
The Siege on Gaza: We Share the Blame
Akram Awad, Palestine Think Tank 11/24/2008
As an international community, we all share the responsibility for the ongoing brutal siege on Gaza, and not until we utilise all possible means of peaceful and nonviolent resistance shall we hope for a close end of that siege. There is not much to say about the Holocaust of Gaza’s people - assuming that the reader has at least followed the media coverage of what is happening in the traumatised Strip. It comes as no surprise that Gazan’s have resorted to euthanasia to end the lives of thousands of newly hatched chicks, for even Gazan birds would prefer dying with honour over being victims of starvation. There is nothing exceptional about Gazans keeping their children alive with animal feeds, because even those who know the least about Gaza are aware that this is only one of the means used by its people to save the whole region from a definite explosion. The only shocking aspect of the whole current scene is that as much as Gazans are trying to convince their children that this life has at least some goodness that makes it worth clinging to, as much as the world strives to disprove such theories, and establish in the minds of those children that this life and world deserve no more than the curse of Gaza. more..e-mail
Book review: Abdel Bari Atwan’s 'Country of Words'
Atef Alshaer, Electronic Intifada 11/24/2008
A Country of Words: from the Refugee Camps to the Front Page is a remarkable Palestinian memoir, exceptional because of its abundance of compassion, humor and humility. Its author is Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Arabic-language daily al-Quds al-Arabi who also wrote The Secret History of al-Qa’ida. Individuals have their own lives and create their own narratives, and for Atwan, his story begins in Palestine.Born in the Gaza Strip refugee camp of Deir al-Balah in Gaza in 1950, Atwan’s life has been marred by tragic incidents, including the premature death of his father and later his brother, who supported his education.
Atwan grew up in Gaza, moved to Jordan to continue his education, and then to Alexandria for further schooling. He then moved to Cairo for university, then to Libya, Saudi Arabia and finally for work to London, where he grew in stature as a defender of Palestinian rights and Arab dignity. In his memoirs, Atwan comes across as a sympathetic, principled and international figure all at once, aware of the temptations of power and the universal value of humaneness, which cannot be cheapened or compromised. more..e-mail
’Just Married’ - now the trouble begins
Lana Gerstein, Ha’aretz 11/25/2008
On July 31, 2003, the Israeli Knesset enacted the Nationality and Entry Into Israel Law, prohibiting any residency or citizenship status to Palestinians who live in the territories and are married to Israeli citizens. The law, initiated in the midst of the second intifada by prime minister Ariel Sharon, impacted thousands of people and forced them to choose between their families and their homes. Against this backdrop comes journalist Ayelet Bechar’s first feature-length documentary, "Just Married," which was recently screened at the Other Israel Film Festival in Manhattan. (Full disclosure: Bechar is a recent contributor to the Forward.) The film follows two couples, both of whom married shortly after the law was enacted, as they attempt to start their lives together under impossible circumstances. The documentary opens with a home video at the wedding of Kifah, an Arab citizen of Israel, and her husband, Yazed, who was born in Gaza. A typical wedding scene, with bride in white, guests clapping and music playing, is interrupted by the acknowledgment that the groom is absent. According to the law, Yazed cannot travel to Israel - not even to attend his own wedding. The couple decides to live in Germany, where Yazed already resides, and so Kifah, after giving up her prestigious job at the Israeli Ministry of Culture, faces a lonely new life in a foreign country. more..e-mail
A new spin on Iran’s nuclear fuel
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times 11/25/2008
As United States president-elect Barack Obama prepares to take over the White House two months from now, the mainstream US media have been awash reports about Iran’s nuclear "threat" that will likely influence the coming Obama administration away from introducing any major change in the US’s hitherto coercive Iran policy. The latest anti-Iran spin is that Tehran has accumulated enough nuclear fuel for one nuclear bomb and that given Iran’s rapid progress in installing more centrifuges at its uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran’s nuclear bomb-making capability will substantially increase in the near future. Leading the pack in this media endeavor for a Chomskyian "manufactured consensus" on Iran’s nuclear threat is the nation’s leading newspaper, the New York Times. Although known as the voice of the liberal "eastern establishment", the Times is perceived by many as a pillar of support for pro-Israel global public diplomacy and, therefore, it comes as little surprise that the respected newspaper may have been churning out alarmist and misleading articles about Iran’s purported nuclear threat. more..e-mail
A Palestinian action plan to combat Israeli racism
Adri Nieuwhof, Electronic Intifada 11/24/2008
In October 2008 the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) published a strategic position paper for the upcoming Durban Review Conference, which will be held from 20-24 April 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland. At the Conference, attending nations will assess the progress made toward the Program of Action adopted at the 2001 World Conference against Racism, which called for end racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. However, Western governments have repeatedly sidelined efforts to bring the case of the systematic violation of the rights the Palestinian people forward in the Durban review process. It is incomprehensible how the issue of institutional racial discrimination of Palestinians by the Israeli government cannot be a topic in the UN global process to eliminate racial discrimination.
The BNC, representing over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations that united around the call for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions initiatives against Israel, is currently the sole unified voice for the Palestinian political parties, unions, associations, coalitions and organizations representing all Palestinians. In preparation for the conference, the BNC has developed a well-documented position paper that is firmly rooted in the language of international law. It presents an overview of practical measures undertaken by international civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and suggests recommendations to work jointly on an effective action program. more..e-mail
A disarmed Palestinian state?
Amitai Etzioni, Jerusalem Post 11/24/2008
During an off-the-record meeting in Washington, DC on November 10, one of Obama’s senior foreign policy advisers stated that pushing a two-state solution on Israel and the Palestinians had to take place with great urgency, as it was the best way to turn around the Middle East (which he defined as including Afghanistan and Pakistan). Three elements of the plan the United States is to push are well known (no refugee return, a divided Jerusalem, and redrawn 1967 borders), but the fourth is much less often explored. Namely that the Palestinian state be disarmed and that US or NATO troops be stationed along the Jordan River.
I suggest that this fourth condition is a dangerous trap, despite the fact that such troops played a very salutary role in the DMZ in Korean and - during the Cold War - in Germany. Before I proceed I should note that I am free to quote what was said at the meeting, but not to mention who said what or the name of the organization that hosted the meeting. I should also note that the same ideas are found in a new book America and the World, wholly composed of interviews with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, conducted by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. In the book, both interviewees agreed that "They [Israel and the Palestinians] need a heavier hand by the United States than we have traditionally practiced." Brzezinski suggests "an American line along the Jordan River," and Scowcroft favors putting a "NATO peacekeeping force" on the West Bank.
more..e-mail
Gaza’s hospitals struggle to save lives amid Israeli siege
Rami Almeghari, International Middle East Media Center News 11/23/2008
Over the past two weeks, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have faced a sharply deteriorating humanitarian situation as Israel further tightened its closure of the border crossings. Virtually no food, medicine or other vital supplies have been allowed in to the territory that is home to 1.5 million people. The impact of the siege is most directly observed in Gaza’s health sector. Despite desperately needed medication, equipment, supplies, and spare parts, doctors continue to try to save lives and look after their patients at the European Gaza Hospital, one of territory’s largest medical centers. Dr. Zaki Azzaq Zouq, an oncologist, explained, "There is a widespread shortage of essential medicines which we used to give to patients prior to the blockade. Currently, there are no tools for physicians to treat patients who suffer from lung, stomach, colon or brain cancers." more..e-mail
Eyes Wide Shut
Uri Avnery, Palestine Media Center 11/23/2008
THE DAY before yesterday, two documents appeared side by side in Haaretz: a giant advertisement from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the results of a public opinion poll.
The proximity was accidental, but to the point. The PLO ad sets out the details of the 2002 Saudi peace offer, decorated with the colorful flags of the 22 Arab and the 35 other Muslim countries which have endorsed the offer.
The public opinion poll predicts a landslide victory for Likud, which opposes every single word of the Saudi proposal.
THE PLO ad is a first of its kind. At long last, the PLO leaders have decided to address the Israeli people directly. The ad discloses to the Israeli population the exact terms of the all-Arab peace offer: full recognition of the State of Israel by all Arab and Muslim countries, full normalization of relations - in return for Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders and the establishment of the Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The refugee problem would be solved by mutual agreement – meaning that Israel could veto any solution it considered unacceptable. more..e-mail
Obama Opens Door to Resolving Palestinian Issue
Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski,
The Washington Post, Palestine Media Center 11/23/2008
The election of Barack Obama to be the 44th president is profoundly historic. We have at long last been able to come together in a way that has eluded us in the long history of our great country. We should celebrate this triumph of the true spirit of America.
Election Day celebrations were replicated in time zones around the world, something we have not seen in a long time. While euphoria is ephemeral, we must endeavor to use its energy to bring us all together as Americans to cope with the urgent problems that beset us.
When Obama takes office in two months, he will find a number of difficult foreign policy issues competing for his attention, each with strong advocates among his advisers. We believe that the Arab-Israeli peace process is one issue that requires priority attention. more..e-mail
Gaza’s hospitals struggle to save lives amid Israeli siege
Rami Almeghari writing from occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 11/21/2008
Over the past two weeks, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have faced a sharply deteriorating humanitarian situation as Israel further tightened its closure of the border crossings. Virtually no food, medicine or other vital supplies have been allowed in to the territory that is home to 1.5 million people. The impact of the siege is most directly observed in Gaza’s health sector. Despite desperately needed medication, equipment, supplies, and spare parts, doctors continue to try to save lives and look after their patients at the European Gaza Hospital, one of territory’s largest medical centers.
Dr. Zaki Azzaq Zouq, an oncologist, explained, "There is a widespread shortage of essential medicines which we used to give to patients prior to the blockade. Currently, there are no tools for physicians to treat patients who suffer from lung, stomach, colon or brain cancers."
The situation is just as dire in Gaza’s other hospitals. Unable to get life-saving treatments close to home, Israel also prevents patients from Gaza leaving the tiny coastal territory to receive medical care. Nael Alfaqawi, 28, has kidney problems, but was denied entry to Israel so he could seek treatment abroad. Instead, he is now being treated at the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. more..e-mail
'Tales from Gaza': Dr. Mustafa Barghouti and Mairead Maguire returns from the Strip and call for international solidarity with the Palestinian people
Palestinian National Initiative, Palestine Monitor 11/21/2008
Ramallah, 20-11-08: Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP, the Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, held today a joint press conference with Mairead Maguire, the Irish Nobel Peace Laureate. Late October, they both were member of the crew of the SS Dignity, the second boat that sailed and broke the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip. The deputy and the peace activist reported what they witnessed in Gaza, as the Strip being totally isolated from media coverage and the rest of the world, tales from the grounds are rare. The deputy emphasized on the importance of a international solidarity movement that supports the Palestinian people as a whole, as Palestinians are suffering from occupation conditions whether they are living in the West Bank, Gaza or Jerusalem. During her stay in Palestine, Mrs. Maguire was invited by Dr. Barghouthi to discover –in order to witness- the multiple aspects of the Palestinian peaceful resistance, by supporting the popular resistance against the apartheid wall along with Ni’lin residents, house demolitions in Jerusalem, or the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as a result of the siege. more..e-mail
Only feeble protest over family’s eviction
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada 11/21/2008
The middle-of-the-night eviction last week of an elderly Palestinian couple from their home in East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers is a demonstration of Israeli intent towards a future peace deal with the Palestinians.
Mohammed and Fawziya Khurd are now on the street, living in a tent, after Israeli police enforced a court order issued in July to expel them.
The couple have been living in the same property in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood since the mid-1950s, when East Jerusalem was under Jordanian control. The United Nations allotted them the land after they were expelled from their homes in territory that was seized by Israel during the 1948 war.
Since East Jerusalem’s occupation by Israel in 1967, however, Jewish settler groups have been waging a relentless battle for the Khurds’ home, claiming that the land originally belonged to Jews.
In 1999, the settlers occupied a wing of the house belonging to the couple’s son, Raed, though the courts subsequently ruled in favor of the family. The eviction order against the settlers, unlike that against the Khurds, was never enforced. more..e-mail
Bearing out the betrayal
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/20/2008
Hassan Karim, 34, has been making the rounds of real estate offices in the hope of finding an apartment to rent in the western part of Gaza city. He is doing all in his power to move out of the Shajaiya neighbourhood in the eastern part of the city where he and his family currently live. It has become too risky to stay there now that the Israelis have reverted to attacking border areas of Gaza adjacent to Israel. "It took a full year for my daughters to recover from the trauma they experienced from the quaking of our house during the last wave of Israeli bombardments," he told Al-Ahram Weekly, adding that one of his daughters feared that if they remained where they lived under those conditions she would suffer a nervous breakdown. The staff in the real estate office said that hundreds of people living in the eastern part of the city have been making inquiries into the availability of apartments in the western districts, which are regarded as somewhat safer. The rise in cross-border assaults by Israeli death squads targeting Palestinian militants guarding the roads leading to residential quarters has triggered growing alarm among people in Gaza. An eerie suspense prevails as pilotless Israeli reconnaissance planes constantly patrol the skies, relaying back to IDF headquarters images of the damage caused by the strikes and gathering intelligence on the movements of Palestinian resistance forces. more..e-mail
Come January
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/20/2008
Hamas is determined that if Mahmoud Abbas is to remain president beyond 9 January 2009, it is only through "a package agreement". Moussa Abu Marzouk Moussa Abu Marzouk, the Damascus-based deputy chief of the Hamas politburo, is non-committal about the fate of Palestinian national reconciliation talks that were called off before they began in Cairo earlier this month. He is, however, clear about one thing: on 9 January the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah and an angry adversary of Hamas, ends. Any attempt to extend it by force, direct or indirect, will create a serious political problem on the Palestinian scene -- much serious than what has been unfolding over the past two years of animosity between Hamas and Fatah. Intimating Hamas’s possible reaction, "Yes, we could have two presidents," Abu Marzouk stated in his Damascus residence this week. For Hamas, and some argue for the Islamic Jihad and other Islamist and leftist Palestinian factions, Abbas will automatically lose his legitimacy on 9 January. "Any attempt to re-interpret Palestinian basic law to extend his term in office would be simply void of legitimacy. We will not acknowledge him as a president one day beyond 9 January. So he has [less than two months] to go," Abu Marzouk said. more..e-mail
The gas conundrum
Sherine Nasr, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/20/2008
Time will only tell what effect this week’s court ruling freezing Egyptian gas exports to Israel will imply, reports The Cairo Administrative Court ordered a halt on Egyptian gas exports to Israel on Tuesday. The ruling came in favour of former diplomat Ibrahim Yosri and members of the opposition who filed the case a few months ago as public criticism against a 15-year gas export deal with Israel was mounting. "National resources belong to current and future generations and the executive must first get parliament’s approval on gas export deals," AFP quoted a source at the court as saying. But before the ink had dried, the state’s Cases Authority yesterday announced that it was taking the necessary procedures to appeal against the Administrative Court’s earlier ruling. Ibrahim Yosri’s lawsuit, filed in May 2008, is one of some other six cases raised against the Egyptian government and the Ministry of Petroleum to stop decision 100/2004 which allowed Egypt to pump Egyptian gas to Israel starting May 2008. The Egyptian government has been under fire since then as opposition parties and members of the People’s Assembly described the deal as corrupt and unfair. more..e-mail
Assassination as Official Israeli Policy
Stephen Lendman – Chicago, Palestine Chronicle 11/20/2008
’Just war principles rule out gratuitous violence, assassinations ..’ Extra-judicial killings are indefensible, morally abhorrent, and illegal under international laws and norms. Article 23b of the 1907 Hague Regulations prohibits "assassination, proscription, or outlawry of an enemy, or putting a price upon an enemy’s head, as well as offering a reward for any enemy ’dead or alive.’ " Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." UDHR also recognizes the "inherent dignity (and the) equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family." So do "just war" principles that rule out gratuitous violence, assassinations, especially if premeditated, war against civilians, and so on, despite the difficulties of distinguishing between combatants, those who’ve laid down their arms, and the innocent in times of war - let alone dealing with "terrorism" or what one analyst calls the "twilight zone between war and peace." Others say it’s justifiable resistance or "blowback" in response to state-sponsored violence and other crimes of war and against humanity. more..e-mail
Journalists shouldn’t
Hussain Abdul-Hussain, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/20/2008
Syrian propaganda is behind stories of Lebanese terror in Syria, and some journalists are playing along. Seymour Hersh, investigative reporter with The New Yorker, concluded a two-week trip to Damascus during the first half of October, according to The Guardian. The British daily reported that Hersh was in the process of writing a piece on Syria, yet one can only wonder what Hersh will reveal this time, more than a year after publishing one of his most uninformed pieces on terrorism in Lebanon. Hersh’s expected report fits perfectly, with or without his knowledge, into a concerted Syrian propaganda campaign to prove that Saudi-funded terrorism is taking hold of northern Lebanon and, consequently, spilling over to Syria. The Syrian campaign started in early September when President Bashar Al-Assad, upon receiving his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy, accused unnamed Arab countries of instigating terrorist groups in northern Lebanon. For this purpose, Al-Assad called on his Lebanese counterpart Michel Suleiman to deploy Lebanese army units north. more..e-mail
Invisible casualties of war
Ramzy Baroud, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/20/2008
Women may not be regularly fixtures of the front line but inevitably they form the bulk of the victims of any conflict. Qurban-Bibi and Nahil Abu Rada are two women, one Afghan, the other Palestinian, whose tragic plight has made news. Their losses also help delineate the plight of millions of other women in war zones and poor countries. The United Nations news service reported on the troubles of Qurban-Bibi, a pregnant woman who needed to reach a hospital. Doctors had instructed that she must deliver in an equipped medical facility. Her desperately poor family opted for a delivery at home, citing the unaffordable taxi ride. The woman almost bled to death. When the delivery went wrong the family rushed her to Faizabad hospital in a nearby province. Her life was saved but not that of her baby. more..e-mail
Gazans Resist by Surviving
Ramzi Kysia - Gaza, Palestine Chronicle 11/20/2008
’The greatest act of nonviolent resistance in Gaza has been simply surviving.’ "I will send fire upon the walls of Gaza’" -- Amos 1:7 In a small cafe in Gaza City, Amjad Shawa, the coordinator for the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), sips black coffee and ruminates on the Israeli blockade of Gaza. "This siege isn’t about ’security’ or even about Hamas," he says. "Israel’s ultimate aim is to separate Gaza from the West Bank and kill the Palestinian national project." The Gaza Strip, a 25-mile-long narrow coastal plain wedged between Israel and Egypt, is home to 1.5 million Palestinians. Despite its small size, Gaza in many ways encapsulates the essence of two of the world’s major conflicts: the rise of political Islam and the use by the West of collective punishment and economic coercion as a brutal counterweight. Since Hamas won parliamentary elections in January 2006, Israel has subjected Gaza to an increasingly severe blockade. In June 2007, after Hamas defeated militants aligned with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and forcibly asserted control of Gaza, Israel tightened the blockade to include everything except occasional deliveries of humanitarian goods. The local economy has shattered as a result, leading to steep increases in unemployment, poverty and childhood malnutrition rates. more..e-mail
Gaza: a Dire Life Zone Still Clings to Hope
Sameh A. Habeeb, Palestine Think Tank 11/20/2008
Gaza Strip, 20, Nov, 2008- Following Israeli raids that killed around 15 Palestinians within one week, many rockets were fired into Israel in a reprisal of Israeli’s provocation. As usual Israel started to blame Palestinians despite it was the one who initiated with violence again. The Israeli assault was an obvious breach of an agreed calm held with Palestinian fighting groups 5 months ago. It has provoked some Palestinians to fire some light rockets into Israel. Afterwards, Israel started a new phase of collective punishment and began more violent prevocational measures against 1.5 million people. With the last Israeli maneuvers’ of tightening the siege imposed on Gaza, more life necessities vanished. The key power plant shut down 8 days ago and resulted in tremendous direful outcomes. More than 75% of the Gaza strip faces severe power cuts and some other areas completely plunged into darkness. Power cuts and daily blackouts resulted in hindering of all facilities depending on power. The remaining power shares provided by Israel and Egypt are not enough to cover the whole costal strip. Pumped fresh water is not reaching all living places, farms and central water wells. Sewage and treatment water machines are halted. Additionally around 40 million tons of sewage water leaked into the Mediterranean contaminating it and damaging fish resources. more..e-mail
Historical oversight
Tom Segev, Ha’aretz 11/20/2008
....Aryeh Kizel, a lecturer in the Oranim Academic College and the Gordon College of Education, and a fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute, read all of the textbooks on general history published in Israel from the state’s establishment to up until two years ago - about 75 in all. His study, entitled "Historia meshuabedet" ("Enslaved History," published by the Mofet Institute) identifies three generations of writers and discusses substantial changes in writing. The bottom line: Just as was the case in my youth, the books broadcast narrow-mindedness and do not encourage critical thinking. According to Kizel, the Zionist narrative has consolidated opinions about the history of other countries, too, and tends to harness it for own its purposes. This is reflected in the fact that the books emphasize national movements and just wars. The state is more important than the individual, politics supersede everyday life. The French Revolution, for example, is considered "good for the Jews," which is why textbooks fail to discuss many of its murderous phases. The textbooks of 1950s’ socialist Israel also tended to praise the Russian Revolution. more..e-mail
Protest fundraiser for agency that abets Israeli land confiscation
Press release, Independent Jewish Voices - Canada, Electronic Intifada 11/20/2008
The Jewish National Fund (JNF) of Canada is holding its annual Negev Dinner at Canada’s Museum of Civilization on 24 November 2008.Canadians trust that the incumbent president/CEO and board of the museum will faithfully safeguard and honor the museum’s guiding principles for its choice of activities -- i.e. "that activities are informed by respect" and "that we will not engage in activities or present materials which may promote intolerance."
In hosting the JNF event, the Museum of Civilization is violating principles which it is charged with safeguarding on behalf of all Canadians. Approximately 500,000 out of almost 625,000 acres owned by the JNF were confiscated from Palestinians fleeing war in 1948, and were not purchased with contributions from Jews around the world, as the JNF commonly claims.During 1948-53, the Israeli state transferred ownership of this land to the JNF for the sole use of Jews -- as per the JNF’s governing articles -- without any compensation to its rightful Palestinian owners.This confiscation violates international law and is an ongoing source of grievance inside Israel amongst its Palestinian citizens and amongst Palestinian refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and neighboring Arab states. more..e-mail
British charity aiding Palestinian refugees ordered to close
Assed Baig, Electronic Intifada 11/20/2008
Interpal, a British charity providing development and relief for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, has been served notification from the Islamic Bank of Britain (IBB) that the charity’s account will be closed as of 8 December. This comes as a result of Lloyds TSB, the Islamic Bank’s clearing bank, serving notice to "cease all dealings with Interpal," according to a statement released by the charity.
The notice comes into effect as of 8 December 2008, during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, a time when Muslims are encouraged to give charity.
The charity said "all transactions into or out of Interpal accounts will be blocked and IBB will be at further risk of all its customer payments being suspended," also stating: "This is not only an attack on Interpal, a leading British charity, but on all other Muslim charities, all charities working in politically-sensitive regions, all customers of IBB and the Palestinian people, 80 percent of whom are completely dependent on international aid for survival." more..e-mail
Shameless in London, obscene in Israel, stupid in Ramallah
Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Jerusalem, Palestinian Information Center 11/20/2008
The decision by the Buckingham palace to bestow an honorary knighthood on Israeli President Shimon Peres should be viewed as a blatant disregard for propriety and moral conduct by Queen Elizabeth II and the British government. It is also a definitive sign of the decadence of our time. The symbolic honorary title, we are told, is accorded to people who have made distinguished accomplishments in various fields, ranging from world peace to scientific achievements. In the past few decades, however, the honorary knighthood was often bestowed on decidedly evil people who carry on their hands the blood of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent people. For example, in the early 1990s, Queen Elizabeth bestowed the honorary knighthood upon Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf who was responsible for the annihilation of tens of thousands of retreating Iraqi troops north of Kuwait. more..e-mail
Dividing Jerusalem, one wall at a time
Bradley Burston, Ha’aretz 11/20/2008
JERUSALEM - There is a new wall in the downtown heart of the Holy City. It is, in fact, a new security fence. It is not tall, nor built to last. But the wall, and what it protects, may do more to undermine Israel’s moral claims to Jerusalem than the huge concrete structure that has marred the city’s Arab eastern half for years. There is no sign on the wall. There is no explanation for the need of a uniformed guard posted at its entrance. There is no indication, therefore, that it protects construction on a quarter-billion dollar monument to insensitivity. It is a testament, as well, to the principle that Israel’s only reliable natural resource is irony. The walled area is a construction site where a Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights organization dedicated to instilling the lessons of the Holocaust and combating hatred, is building a Museum of Tolerance and Center for Human Dignity atop an ancient Muslim cemetery. more..e-mail
Economy first in Palestine?
Ben White, The Guardian 11/20/2008
With Israeli domestic politics focused on the election early next year, the various players are busy manoeuvring themselves into positions they feel will count in their favour come voting day, including Likud’s strong contender, Binyamin Netanyahu. On Sunday, Netanyahu repeated his belief that the best way forward with regard to Israeli-Palestinian peace was to prioritise helping the Palestinian economy from the bottom up. Insisting this was not an "alternative" to negotiations, ’Bibi’ argued that "economic prosperity significantly reduces terror and the foundations of war". This was not the first time Netanyahu had staked out his "economy first" position. previous occasions have included an interview with the Financial Times last month. But these most recent comments drew a strong reaction from veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who denounced Netanyahu’s talk of "economics and fragmentation" as "closing the door to any chance for peace". more..e-mail
Poor showing
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 11/20/2008
Between Tyre and Gaza, there isn’t a single Arab town or village on the coast, except Acre, which is actually a mixed city, and Jisr al-Zarqa. There’s no other place like this. It may be the poorest and most wretched of all Israel’s Arab towns, this fishing village on the banks of Nahal Taninim and the Mediterranean coast. Can there be a better location? But location isn’t everything where there are years of poverty and ignorance, filthy streets and overcrowding, unemployment and crime-in stark contrast to the neighboring villas of Caesarea and the fish ponds of Kibbutz Ma?agan Michael, along the main road to Haifa. Jisr al-Zarqa is a tough place. And like other municipalities, it held elections last week. The voting public of Jisr isn’t an easy one. Indeed, the celebration of democracy here is a disaster. Base instincts, hate, family rivalries -all rise to the surface on Election Day. Not for nothing did the current council head, Murad Amash, a former imam, say that the first thing he would do when reelected would be to try to help mend the town’s wounded electoral system. He wasn’t reelected. more..e-mail
Arabs have heard Western promises before, Mr. Miliband
Editorial, Daily Star 11/20/2008
It is telling that some of the loudest applause during British Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s hour-long question-and-answer session at the American University of Beirut on Wednesday could be heard when the visiting official came under fire over his government’s policies in the Middle East. Considering that most members of his audience were students under the age of 22, their reactions offer clues about where the region is heading - and about the results of efforts to win over the hearts and minds of members of the very generation that Al-Qaeda and other terrorist outfits tend to target for recruitment. Miliband had come to AUB with an optimistic message: that his tour of Syria, Lebanon Israel and the Palestinian Territories, along with recent events such as the election of Barack Obama as US president, had given him a sense of hope that 2009 could be a "decisive year" that might see a comprehensive peace agreement between feuding Arabs and Israelis. But this positive message was largely drowned out by the critics, who pointed to British policies that serve to perpetuate conflict, such as the UK’s refusal to embargo products made in illegal Israeli settlements, or its support for Israel’s barbaric war on Lebanon in 2006. Moreover, his audience members are old enough to have heard similar empty promises, including George W. Bush’s pledge to oversee the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005 - a target that he later pushed back to 2008 and now appears to have abandoned altogether. more..e-mail
Born in sin
Ha’aretz 11/20/2008
The Israeli peace camp was born in sin and died because of a lie: It was born as the legitimate son of the sin of occupation, and died the illegitimate son of the lie that "there is no partner" with whom to negotiate on the other side. Between September 1967 and October 2000, it spent 33 years waging the brave and determined struggle of a minority against a majority, "traitors" against "patriots," "defilers of Israel" against "lovers of Israel," David against Goliath. Today, we must painfully admit that it was struggle that did not produce much. The peace camp was born of a small ad - a statement bearing only a dozen mostly unknown signatures - addressed to the general public, and then began to die a pathetic death, which is lamented by no one. Since then, its body has laid in public squares that are void of protesters, in streets empty of struggle and in public discourse free of ideas. On occasion, it lets out a desperate and dying gasp from the direction of a group of determined but marginalized groups, near the separation fence in Na’alin or in Gush Shalom’s advertisements in the Friday paper. On occasion, it wraps itself in the guise of a mass demonstration, mostly at deceptive memorial rallies for Yitzhak Rabin - also featuring pop stars Aviv Geffen and Ninet - and in public opinion polls in which the majority claims to adopt its positions. But the interim balance sheet of history is clear and razor sharp: The occupation, the settlements, the police thugs and the brutality have been victorious over everything else. Never have so many people said we need to put a stop to things, and never have so few done anything about it. more..e-mail
End the siege of Gaza
Azzam Tamimi, The Guardian 11/21/2008
For five months, until the first week of November, the Gaza Strip and its neighbouring Israeli towns to the north and the east enjoyed unprecedented peace that was the product of the hudna, or truce, agreed between Hamas and Israel through Egyptian mediation. Despite the continuation of the siege that denied the population of Gaza much of what other people around the world may consider life necessities, men, women and children could walk the streets of the Strip without fear and spend hours of their free time enjoying the beach. On the other side of the divide, Israel saw tourism flourish. Then, suddenly, the Israeli government decided to authorise the army to act against perceived threats within what it calls the "security parameter" - a several hundred-metre strip beyond the border between Gaza and Israel. On November 4 the Israeli army penetrated Gaza, killing six Hamas officers under the pretext of having discovered a tunnel close to the Kisufim roadblock. Since then, and despite statements made by spokespeople on both sides that they still wished to observe the hudna, Israel forces have crossed the border several times and Hamas, joined later by other Palestinian factions, resumed shelling nearby Israeli towns. more..e-mail
Who Will Stop the Settlers?
Jonathan Cook - Nazareth, Palestine Chronicle 11/19/2008
’The separation wall is being crafted to include these blocs.’ The middle-of-the-night eviction last week of an elderly Palestinian couple from their home in East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers is a demonstration of Israeli intent towards a future peace deal with the Palestinians. Mohammed and Fawziya Khurd are now on the street, living in a tent, after Israeli police enforced a court order issued in July to expel them. The couple have been living in the same property in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood since the mid-1950s, when East Jerusalem was under Jordanian control. The United Nations allotted them the land after they were expelled from their homes in territory that was seized by Israel during the 1948 war. Since East Jerusalem’s occupation by Israel in 1967, however, Jewish settler groups have been waging a relentless battle for the Khurds’ home, claiming that the land originally belonged to Jews. In 1999, the settlers occupied a wing of the house belonging to the couple’s son, Raed, though the courts subsequently ruled in favour of the family. The eviction order against the settlers, unlike that against the Khurds, was never enforced. more..e-mail
Report on Israeli settlement in the occupied territories Nov - Dec 2008
Geoffrey Aronson, Foundation for Middle East Peace, ReliefWeb 11/19/2008
INKERING AT THE MARGINS OF ISRAELI RULE WILL NOT END OCCUPATION OR SETTLEMENT - "Israel’s continued settlement expansion and land confiscation in the West Bank makes physical separation of our two peoples increasingly impossible," wrote Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas in the Wall Street Journal on September 19, 2008. "We are impatient for our freedom. Yet partial peace, as proposed again by my current [Israeli] interlocutors, is not the way forward. Partial freedom is a contradiction in terms. Either a Palestinian lives free or continues to live under the yoke of Israeli military occupation.
"We want our children to live with hope and the opportunity to realize their potential," Abbas continued." Yet our daily reality worsens.We are walled into shrinking pockets of land, reminiscent of the Bantustans of South Africa. Abbas, having despaired of an agreement with Israel, has reportedly turned his efforts to winning a letter of support from outgoing U.S. president George W. Bush for a "political solution based on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the June 4, 1967 borders.". more..e-mail
Letter: Opposition to Jerusalem museum
Various Undersigned, The Guardian 11/15/2008
A recent judgment by Israel’s supreme court will allow the construction of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Museum of Tolerance, designed by renowned US architect Frank Gehry, over a Muslim heritage cemetery of great historical importance in the centre of Jerusalem. It is a blow to peaceful coexistence in an already divided city. This project, started in 2006, had been frozen due to public outcry and legal challenge, most especially from Muslim religious leaders and the Israeli Islamic movement, with the backing of Orthodox Jews concerned about disturbing graves. The site in Mamilla, near Jerusalem’s Independence Park, is on disputed burial land taken over by the Israel’s Land Administration in 1948, whose ownership is claimed by the Islamic authorities. To pursue this divisive project that will include two museums, a library-education centre, a conference centre and a 500-seat performing arts theatre, would seem highly insensitive, a statement of Israel’s hegemony over the Palestinians, rather than any expression of "tolerance". All the architecture in the world cannot engender harmony on the basis of trampling over people’s rights and history. It is inflaming passions in an already combustible Middle East and will push any peace accord further off the horizon. more..e-mail
Gaza bakeries, mills forced to close
Report, PCHR, Electronic Intifada 11/19/2008
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) calls upon the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, United Nations agencies and all international humanitarian organizations, to immediately intervene and exert pressure on Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to reopen border crossings of the Gaza Strip, whose closure has caused further deterioration to living conditions of approximately 1.5 million Palestinians, who have suffered from shortages in foods, medicines and other basic needs, including electricity and fuel supplies.
According to PCHR’s field observation of humanitarian conditions, on Monday, 17 November 2008, IOF allowed the entry of 31 containers of foods and medicines into the Gaza Strip through Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing, southeast of Rafah, which has been closed together with other border crossings of the Gaza Strip for two weeks. The containers were directed to UNRWA, World Food Programme, the ICRC and a number of traders of dairy and frozen products. These amounts do not meet the minimum daily needs of the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip, and they constitute less than 10 percent of the amounts allowed into the Gaza Strip before tightening the siege imposed on by IOF since June 2007. It is worth noting that IOF further tightened the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip on 5 November 2008. They closed all border crossings and cut off food, medical and fuel supplies and other basic needs. Since that date, IOF have allowed the entry of only 427,410 liters of energy fuel, which can hardly operate the Gaza power plant for one day. As a consequence, the plant has been completely stopped and at least 30 percent of the population of the Gaza Strip have lacked electricity. more..e-mail
Another Showdown in Gaza?
Osama al-Sharif, Palestine Chronicle 11/19/2008
’Kicking Gazans where it hurts serves many sides.’ Gaza is bracing itself for a harsh winter. Less than a week has passed since Israel slammed shut doors to all land crossings, leaving a million-and-half hapless Palestinians to a miserable fate. We have seen the images before; long queues at petrol stations, Gaza city engulfed in an eerie darkness, children huddled together around a kitchen table doing their homework and trying to make use of little light from a burning candle. And then there are the surprise commando incursions, the dead bodies of Palestinian activists arriving at badly maintained hospitals, the wailing and crying of women and children, the angry shouts of youths calling for revenge and the occasional firing of rockets from olive groves at nearby Israeli population centers. Gaza’s saga has become predictable and banal. Israel’s collective punishment of millions of civilians in Gaza has become a normal event for the rest of the world. So much so that only a handful of Arab and international news media are following it. The plight of Gazans barely makes front-page headlines. Israel is politely reprimanded by the U.N., but it doesn’t care. The Arab world is silent, busy with other things. The Palestinian National Authority’s response is timid, almost suspicious. more..e-mail
Target Practice in Gaza
Nadia W. Awad - The West Bank, Palestine Chronicle 11/19/2008
’On November 5, Israeli forces entered Gaza, killing six Palestinians.’ (Reuters) What came first: the chicken or the egg? And who started the latest round of clashes in Gaza: the Israelis or the Palestinians? Depending on whom one asks, the answer will be different every time - the Israelis, the Palestinians, both are guilty, it depends’ On November 5, Israeli forces entered Gaza, killing six Palestinians in the process. Since then, Palestinian fighters have been clashing with Israeli troops and dodging Israeli missiles. In response to every Israeli action, they play their only card- they fire homemade rockets into Israel. To date, 16 Palestinians have been killed, with zero Israeli fatalities recorded. Palestinians say Israel made the first move by entering Gaza in an unwarranted and aggressive manner. Israel, on the other hand, says it was responding to rumors of possible kidnapping attempts against Israeli soldiers and the threat of more rocket attacks. But debating who started the latest round of violence is an unproductive pastime. Instead, considering the timing and the consequences of these hostilities yields a much more interesting though sad tale. more..e-mail
The Shooting of Brian Avery, and the Israeli Cover Up
Lasse J. Schmidt, Palestine Chronicle 11/19/2008
Brian Avery in Jenin on April 4, the day before the shooting. In background, Israeli tank. (Photo: Lasse Schmidt) While the Israeli military’s investigation into the 2003 shooting of the American human rights worker Brian Avery did little to nothing in actually investigating the near-fatal injury, it was highly effective in covering up Israeli soldiers’ involvement, thereby sheltering them from criminal charges. That became clear some time ago when, in a Jerusalem court, none other than the soldier who pulled the trigger and his commander severely incriminated the official account of the shooting on critical points. However, there appear to be no regrets within the military system. Today, eleven months later, the military has not yet made any official comments on these disclosures and at the policy level things are going from bad to worse. "These internal, military investigations are designed to whitewash soldiers," says Brian Avery’s Israeli lawyer, Michael Sfard, "and the military keeps finding more and more excuses to use them." more..e-mail
Hamas-Fatah split deepens
Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani, Electronic Intifada 11/19/2008
CAIRO (IPS) - Palestinian resistance factions were roundly blamed in the mainstream media for their last-minute decision to boycott last week’s Egypt-sponsored "comprehensive dialogue" summit, ostensibly aimed at Palestinian national reconciliation. But some independent commentators say the move, led by Gaza-based resistance faction Hamas, was justified.
"It’s unreasonable to expect Hamas to hold ’dialogue’ when the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) is persecuting its members in the West Bank," Magdi Hussein, secretary-general of Egypt’s Islamist-leaning Labour Party, officially suspended since 2000, told IPS.
The event scheduled for 9 November was planned after intensive talks between Egyptian officials and a dozen Palestinian factions, including both Hamas and the United States-backed Fatah movement of PA President Mahmoud Abbas. Egyptian mediators had hoped the summit would lead to the adoption of an Egypt-backed "comprehensive dialogue" proposal defining the terms of a future Palestinian national-unity government. more..e-mail
A rift too deep
Ghassan Khatib, Jerusalem Post 11/19/2008
The failure to convene the Palestinian reconciliation dialogue, scheduled for November 10 in Cairo, between rival Palestinian factions is an illustration of two important realities. First, it shows the depth of the domestic Palestinian crisis, particularly between Hamas and Fatah. Second, it illustrates the weakness of Egypt in its influence on major Arab-Arab issues. Egypt is still working to reschedule the talks and hasn’t given up yet. Nevertheless, the fact that Hamas felt able at the last moment to turn down the Egyptian invitation indicates that Cairo is struggling with the issue. One immediate reaction to Hamas’ move was to blame Syria, which, according to some analysts, wanted to exact a price for the recent US raid inside Syria. However, the failure of the talks seems to indicate other and more serious causes. First, Hamas is not really losing out in this ongoing crisis with Fatah and needs better incentives to reconcile. In other words, there can be successful mediation only if Egypt can find and present a win-win formula. Fatah will gain automatically from the unification of the West Bank and Gaza under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas. What Hamas gains is less clear. more..e-mail
The limits of American racism, and the Arab exception
Ziad Asali, Daily Star 11/20/2008
The electoral silly season is over and it is time for a serious discussion removed from partisan passions and manipulation. Racism, the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room, has shrunk and is now no bigger than a jackass. In his eloquent endorsement of Barack Obama, another African-American statesman, Colin Powell, took direct aim at racism and pulled the trigger: "It is permitted to be said such things as, ’Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is?" He went on to describe a photo of a Muslim American mother grieving at the tomb of her soldier son at Arlington Cemetery. Racism has just been wounded and permanently disabled. But racism in other forms is still alive and kicking. Its targets, defenseless against a larger-than-life metaphor, are Muslim and Arab-Americans. One voter famously said of Obama, the African-American candidate, "He is an Arab," while John McCain, the white candidate, reassured her that, "No, he is a decent, family man." Another voter complained, "I don’t trust him. He is a Muslim." more..e-mail
James Zogby and the Politics of Perception
Remi Kanazi, Palestine Chronicle 11/18/2008
’Wouldn’t Arab Americans expressing their concerns be a good thing?’ James Zogby isn’t just an Arab American with an opinion. He is the president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a well known writer, and an esteemed leader within the Arab American community. Many non-Arab Americans highly regard his analysis and look to his articles as a resource to understand the Middle East. This is precisely why his latest article, "Rahm Emanuel and Arab Perceptions" is so disturbing. In the piece, Zogby tries to calm the fears of Arab Americans about Barack Obama’s first appointment, Rahm Emanuel, to White House Chief of Staff. Zogby expressed shock and dismay that his constituency, once euphoric over the election of Obama, was now sending him angry and cynical letters. Zogby described the emails and calls to his office as "troubled and troubling—because much of the reaction was based on misinformation and because of what the entire episode reveals about the larger political dynamic." Zogby immediately followed up with what he calls "the facts" (i.e. a long list of Rahm Emanuel’s accomplishments), while conveniently leaving out any of his troubling positions related to the Middle East, namely that he was a staunch supporter of the war in Iraq and he has expressed hawkish pro-Israel views. The forcefulness of Zogby’s tone is elucidated in phrases such as "he knows how to get the job done" and "it’s as simple as that." Right off the bat, Zogby informs his readers that if they don’t understand what a gem Emanuel is, they either cannot properly discern the facts, or their judgments are based on wild misinformation. more..e-mail
Israeli forces arrest Gaza fishermen and solidarity activists
Press release, Al Mezan, Electronic Intifada 11/18/2008
At around 9am on Tuesday, 18 November 2008, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) attacked Palestinian fishing boats off the central Gaza Strip’s shore. IOF continued to seal off the Gaza Strip for the thirteenth day in a row, allowing only a limited number of trucks loaded with commodities and food to enter the Strip. The IOF continue to ban the entry of fuel supplies, especially the industrial diesel necessary to run Gaza’s power plant, causing blackouts across the Strip.
According to Al Mezan’s sources, Israeli gunboats opened fire towards three Palestinian fishing boats. Fishermen and one foreign supporter were aboard each fishing boat. The Israeli gunboats surrounded the fishing boats and arrested Andrew Muncie, 34, an Irish supporter, and four Palestinians. In the last phone call with Vittorio Arrigoni, 33, an Italian colleague of Muncie, he said that the IOF arrested Muncie and the Palestinian fishermen and that another force boarded another fishing boat, which Darlene Wallach, 57, a US supporter, was aboard. He also said that there was another force heading towards the boat he was on before the phone call with the Center was disconnected. The three fishing boats sailed today at around 7am from Gaza’s seaport and headed towards the south. The IOF attacked them nearly six nautical miles off al-Nusseirat shore, central Gaza Strip. more..e-mail
Putting a final end to the Israeli soldiers’ arbitrary humiliations on our people
Palestinian National Initiative, Palestine Monitor 11/18/2008
Ramallah, 18-11-08: Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP, the Secretary General of the , strongly condemns the public humiliation carried out by the Israeli army on a Palestinian youth this Tuesday. The young man was arrested and stripped publicly at Beit Iba checkpoint, West of the city of Nablus. Dozens of soldiers surrounded the boy and searched him, while he was standing naked in the eye of the crowd. The Israeli army claimed he was in possession of explosive devices. However, bystanders are reported as having had doubts regarding the youth actually being in possession of explosives, as the Israeli army often falsely accuses young men in the Nablus directorate as an excuse for public humiliation. "The international community and the foreign media should focus and report on those -dramatically common- events. As long as the daily humiliations of the Palestinian people will be kept unreported, the State of Israel will not feel pressurised and will surely not stop its mistreatments"ť, the deputy said. "The most devastating thing is not the daily harassment, but the indifference." more..e-mail
Caught in Bed with Evil
Gilad Atzmon, Palestine Think Tank 11/18/2008
Crossing points into Gaza have been shut down for almost two weeks, forcing the only power plant there to stop functioning, due to the lack of fuel. Last week, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency ran out of food and stopped rations’ deliveries to 750,000 residents of Gaza. Though the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is now immanent, Western media refrains from reporting about the emerging disaster. Apparently, there are far more interesting things to write about, much more interesting than millions of Palestinians who are being starved by the Jewish state. However the press was kind enough to report that British foreign minister David Miliband spent some time in Israel this week. He had been very concerned with issues concerning the Avocado and other ethical grocery matters. He wanted to propose a clearer method of labeling food products that are sourced in the occupied west bank and sold to consumers in Britain. This could as well be an opportunity for Britain and the EU to restrain Israel’s lethal enthusiasm, but Miliband failed short, far too short. At the end of the day, Miliband is what you may call a grocery humanist. His ethical thinking is orientated around nutrition and ethical digestion. This is apparently the most deteriorated and probably the lowest form of left thinking. At least I really want to believe that left cannot go any lower than that. more..e-mail
Ramallah Palestinian Authority blocks website reporting on corruption
Report, Electronic Intifada 11/18/2008
The Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah has blocked access to a popular news website because of the site’s reporting on widespread corruption among the entourage of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
For several days, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been unable to view the website Donia al-Watan ( http://www.alwatanvoice.com ) as access has been blocked through the PA-controlled telecom company. Readers outside Palestine and a few inside the country using proxies are still able to access the site.
The Electronic Intifada confirmed that several users attempting to access the website in Ramallah and other parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank could not do so and instead saw a message in English stating "We are sorry, the site was blocked based on attorney General instructions [sic]."
Donia al-Watan operates from the Gaza Strip which is under a tight Israeli siege that has led to severe shortages of food and long periods of darkness as fuel for the territory’s only power plant runs dry. Israel has imposed a news blackout on the Gaza Strip, preventing journalists from entering the territory, hence indigenous Palestinian media are one of the few ways for the outside world to know what is happening in the besieged territory that is home to 1.5 million persons. more..e-mail
Palestinian banks are better than Israeli banks
Sami Peretz, Ha’aretz 11/19/2008
Jihad al-Wazir, governor of the Palestinian Monetary Authority, was 25 years old when his father, Khalil al-Wazir - better known as Abu Jihad - was assassinated. It happened in their Tunis home in April 1988. Foreign press reports accused Israel of his assassination. At the time of the strike, Abu Jihad’s wife and their two young children, Nidal and Hanan, were in the home. Jihad himself, the eldest son of five children, was studying in the United States at the time. Abu Jihad was Yasser Arafat’s deputy and the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s military operations at the time, and was responsible for several murderous attacks in the 1970s. I heard about the assassination on BBC Radio. I came home right away and began to make the arrangements for the funeral in Damascus," he says, in his first interview with Israeli media. Asked about his family history and their fate, he said dryly, "I’m a pragmatic person. My interest is that the Palestinians realize their hope for the establishment of an independent state." more..e-mail
A time to speak out
Joel Schalit, The Guardian 11/18/2008
"Of course it’d happen in the UK first," said the veteran American Jewish peace activist. "They create a diverse – however temporary – coalition, and get a major newspaper to do their publicity for them. We’d never be able to pull something like that off here." For anyone involved in Israeli-Palestinian peace advocacy in the US Jewish community, such statements were all too common as word began to filter out about the emergence of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) last year. Already familiar with the work of a number of the contributors to the IJV series being published at the time in The Guardian, my colleague concluded rather glumly: "It’s not like we don’t have the same drive. The American Jewish left is just too factionalised, and will never get similar support from mainstream national media." The activist’s words held particularly strong significance for me, having just stepped down after two-and-a-half years as the managing editor of the US Jewish left’s original flagship publication, Tikkun. Ever since the height of the conflict in Vietnam, American Jews have sought to connect the dots between their liberal politics and their relationship to Israel. Following every major Middle East war there had been a number of attempts to create similar organisations to IJV, none of which achieved any reasonable mass until the early 2000s, when my former employer helped create the Tikkun Community, and other likeminded activists founded parallel national organisations such as Brit Tzedek veh Shalom and Jewish Voice for Peace in light of the collapse of the Oslo process, and the intensification of the settlement enterprise in the occupied territories. more..e-mail
Meet the Lebanese Press: Strategic defense or strategic shift?
Hicham Safieddine, Electronic Lebanon, Electronic Intifada 11/18/2008
Civil strife usually ends when there is truth and reconciliation. In Lebanon, it subsides when a truce poses as reconciliation. Top Lebanese leaders are doting over each other, calling for a new pact of political rivalry that is confined to the arena of democratic and peaceful confrontation. Meetings between top March 14 and March 8 officials have calmed fears of further clashes on the streets. With the notable exception of Christian leaders, all sectarian heads are trying to unite their ranks in the run up to next year’s parliamentary elections. The combination of the Bush Administration’s exit from the White House and an incoming United States president unlikely to take aggressive measures on the foreign front in the first few months, has forced the pro-US parties to reconsider their options in terms of relations with Syria. It is too early to say whether Lebanon is entering yet another stage of a stronger alliance with Syria but that is the direction in which things have been going lately. Pre-election developments in Lebanon, an upset of Syrian relations with the West or another Arab-Israeli war could tip the balance back. For the time being, questions of border security with Syria, dealing with Salafi groups in Lebanon, and devising a strategic defense policy as an entry point to disarming Hizballah are the hot topics of the press. more..e-mail
Who Will Evict Israel from Lebanon?
Franklin Lamb - Northwest of Ghajar Village, South Lebanon, Palestine Chronicle 11/18/2008
Hezbollah’s pressure on Israel will likely reward it at the polls. "We, as Lebanese, are here to confirm that we cling to freeing every grain of our soil. We will not abandon the great national cause, which is the continuation of the liberation of our land. The resistance looks forward to hoisting the flags of victory again over the Kfarshuba hills, Shebaa Farms, Ghajar and Abbasieh where 80 percent of the land is still occupied" -- Sheik Nabil Qwork, Hezbollah leader addressing villagers at Abbasieh Village, 10/2008 Under pressure from the lame duck Bush Administration to withdraw from territory that the Lebanese Resistance did not liberate during its May 2000 rout of the Israel army and its surrogate SLA militia, Israel to date remains unwilling to budge. One reason is that it claims the Bush Administration reneged on secret pledges to bomb Iran. As the unseeing eyes everted by five consecutive US administrations from Israel’s 22 year brutal occupation of South Lebanon (1978-2000) make plain, Israel remaining on Lebanese territory normally would not be of much concern to Washington even as it is learning that its own hard-line policy in the region did not succeed. more..e-mail
President-elect Obama and the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 11/18/2008
United States President-elect Barack Obama’s election victory has revived hopes that stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations could finally lead to a two-state solution. Few new presidents have been greeted with such optimism and associated high expectations.
However, the chances for progress depend on more than a new American president. There are several interrelated factors: US engagement, the availability of a viable peace agreement, Israeli and Palestinian internal politics and the broader international situation.
An examination of these factors indicates that the optimism is unjustified and that President Obama will not be more successful in bringing about a two-state solution to the conflict. This does not however mean that the situation will remain static or that those pursuing a just peace have no recourse for action.
Early US engagement is not enough
Days after Obama’s election, speaking on CNN, Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to President George Herbert Walker Bush, advised the President-elect to start early on reviving peace negotiations as a way to "psychologically change the mood of the [Middle East] region" and "because the Palestinian issue ... gives the members of the region a deep sense of injustice" (Fareed Zakaria GPS, 12 November 2008). Former US President Jimmy Carter echoed these views, urging Obama to avoid the mistakes of other presidents who waited until their final year in office to push for an agreement (see "Obama will waste no time pursuing Middle East peace," Haaretz, 12 November). In a June speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby, Obama himself pledged, "to do all I can to advance the cause of peace from the start of my administration." more..e-mail
Encyclopaedia of Race and Racism under Zionist Attack
Haitham Sabbah, Palestine Think Tank 11/17/2008
Earlier this year, Macmillan Reference USA - a leading publishing house - published "The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism". The Encyclopaedia is the first such work examining the anthropological, sociological, historical, economic, and scientific theories of race and racism in the modern era. The set delves into the historic origins of ideas of race and racism and explores their social and scientific consequences. Some of the nearly 400 articles address broad theoretical topics that have helped to shape modern ideas about race and racism; others address more specific subjects in the larger fields. Zionism is one of those racist ideas explored in this book. It was written by Dr. Noel Ignatiev. In October 2008, the American Jewish Committee objected to the encyclopedia article on Zionism that Dr. Ignatiev wrote for "The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism". In an effort to hide the truth behind Zionism, Zionist lobbies are now putting huge pressure on the publishing house to remove the article in which Dr. Ignatiev described Israel as a racial state, where rights are assigned on the basis of ascribed descent or the approval of the superior race and likened it to Nazi Germany and the Southern United States before the civil rights movement. more..e-mail
Dark days in Gaza: Residents worried about winter
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 11/18/2008
The sound of generators on the sidewalks of Gaza on the weekend made it hard for pedestrians to hear one another. Even though only a few of the well-kept stores on Omar el-Mukhtar Street, one bank and two carpentries, used generators, the noise was still great. The power outage meant most stores were dark, but it did not matter much anyway: There were no shoppers on the street. Traffic was also sparse, much less than what one might expect on a Saturday that is followed by a national holiday: 20 years since Yasser Arafat’s declaration of Palestinian independence. Many of Gaza’s neighborhoods experienced power cuts at different times of day. In the neighborhood surrounding the square named after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, where the Fatah politician’s empty house still stands, the electricity was interrupted six times over the course of 24 hours. Power went out for two, four and then six hours. After a while people stopped counting. In fact, this neighborhood is one of the luckier ones - it is connected to both the Israeli and Palestinian electricity grids. The power outages in those neighborhoods that are not connected to the Israeli grid last between eight to 12 hours. Some areas have no running water: The Sheikh Radwan refugee camp has had no running water for two days. more..e-mail
The real meaning of hope
Dina Elmuti writing from Nablus, occupied West Bank, Electronic Intifada 11/17/2008
That day, I expected to see sights that would reside with me for a while, but little did I know that they would continue to haunt me every day since. Stepping out of the taxi cab and onto the gravel road, I walked towards the notorious Huwwara checkpoint near Nablus in the northern West Bank. To my left, I passed throngs of people waiting in lines barely inching along in the blistering summer heat, awaiting the apathetic wave of an Israeli soldier’s hand to be let through.Caged like animals in a zoo, they waited, and waited, and waited some more. Whether or not they would be let through, well, that was subject to the jurisdiction of indifferent, bored soldiers, texting on their phones, idly passing the time away.
Past the checkpoint, I walked a very short distance before I was startled by a roaring behind me, that of an armored military vehicle rumbling. Standing there transfixed, I watched the monstrous contraption swiftly take a detour to the right and roll on down the path. I stood there for a minute in sheer disbelief and awe, watching until it was nothing more than a small dot in the distance. Before I could formulate a thought or muster a word, a woman along with her children, carrying bags of groceries, came up behind me. "Aadi, aadi ... it’s normal, normal," she said, "but don’t worry, they don’t cause trouble. They just patrol the area." By whose definition was it normal to have such intruders patrolling an area? Less than an hour into my trip, I was already having trouble digesting what I had seen. more..e-mail
'Occupied Space 2008' adds Palestinian color to London’s art world
Isabelle Humphries, Electronic Intifada 11/17/2008
Using what they call the "simplest language," the Eltiqa Group for Contemporary Art seeks to challenge the harsh obstacles of life in their native Gaza: "we color life for the others." In the past month some of their work has reached London as part of a new exhibition organized by the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) in association with the A.M. Qattan Foundation. Occupied Space 2008: Art for Palestine brought together over 100 works not only from Palestinian artists, but from those across the globe from Algeria, Tunisia and Jordan to the UK to China. Beautifully curated by Nicola Gray, it is the first exhibition to be put on in the Qattan’s new West London exhibition space, the Mosaic Rooms. Raeda Saadeh ( Occupied Space 2008
Palestinian exhibits crossed different styles, generations and locations of the Diaspora. Basel El Maqousy, of the "Windows from Gaza" group and an art teacher at the Jabaliya Rehabilitation Centre, contributes a photograph showing boys looking out towards a setting sun as they duck under waves crashing on the Gazan shoreline. Crossroads is the work of Raeda Saadeh, one of the million Palestinians living inside Israel but whose work speaks across human-imposed borders. In the photograph, she stands at a front door, suitcase on the floor to her right, her left foot encased in a block of concrete. In entirely different forms both El Maqousy and Saadeh speak eloquently of Palestinian imprisonment as the same time as vividly expressing Palestinian dreams. more..e-mail
Gaza Expecting The Worst
Hiyam Noir – Gaza, Palestine Chronicle 11/17/2008
Protesting power cuts in Gaza. (Fady Adwan/PalestineFreeVoice) Last Friday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the Israeli government to keep in mind its legal responsibility to deliver urgent and steady supply of sufficient fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza Strip. The Israelis have blocked fuel delivery and turned away trucks with food distributed by UNRWA. Ban Ki-moon said in a statement that he is deeply concerned about the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the risk of a possible humanitarian disaster. The Israelis have blocked the shipment of fuel to Gaza for over 10 days; as a result of the fuel embargo, a large part of the coastal Palestinian territories has plunged into darkness. Loud speakers from police cars and from Mosques across the Gaza Strip warned the residents on Friday that electric generators from the only local power plant would soon cease. In the northern and central parts of Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, the residents have spent the night in total darkness. The electric power in Gaza Strip will remain turned off until the Israel military allows fuel to pass into the area. more..e-mail
Open Appeal to Australian Prime Minister: Help Gaza
Syd Walker, Palestine Chronicle 11/17/2008
Mr. Rudd: ’Please act with great urgency’ Dear Prime Minister, I am writing to you about the situation in Gaza and the urgent need for the world community -- including Australia -- to require Israel to relieve the immediate humanitarian crisis. It may be objected that Gazans are, in some way, to blame for their own appalling plight. That is false for several reasons. First, such a claim betrays utter contempt for democracy. The Hamas leadership in Gaza won government through the ballot box, by a solid majority in elections widely acknowledged as free and fair. It ill-behooves ’democratic nations’ such as Australia to reject the democratic choice of others.. Second, the root cause of continuing conflict in Palestine (including Gaza) is continuing occupation and control by the Zionist regime. There is a long-established principle that resistance to occupation is legitimate. Australia applauded the French Resistance during Word War Two -- who opposed, often with violence, a less brutal and much more short-lived occupation. more..e-mail
What if It Happened to Them?
Joharah Baker – The West Bank, Palestine Chronicle 11/17/2008
’What would have happened if a Jewish family were evicted from their home in Tel Aviv..’ For the Jews, certain words have become taboo, especially when used by non-Jews. These include Holocaust, Apartheid and Nazism. Because of the atrocities that took place against Jews throughout history, namely the killing of six million during World War II, political Judaism has allowed itself a near monopoly over human suffering. What is worse, anyone who dares parallel this to the atrocities now carried out by the Jewish state of Israel against Palestinians risks being branded as "Anti-Semitic", a "Jew hater", or an "Israel basher." Perhaps this fear of being ostracized and branded with such ugly labels is Israel’s most clever tactic because it gives it a guise under which to implement its own schemes, unhindered and largely un-judged. This must be the case in Jerusalem, where so many injustices and racist policies are being carried out on a daily basis against its Palestinian residents, with the world community hardly batting an eyelid. more..e-mail
The real goal of Israel’s Gaza blockade
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada 11/17/2008
The latest tightening of Israel’s chokehold on Gaza -- ending all supplies into the Strip for more than a week -- has produced immediate and shocking consequences for Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants.
The refusal to allow in fuel has forced the shutting down of Gaza’s only power station, creating a blackout that pushed Palestinians bearing candles on to the streets in protest last week. A water and sanitation crisis are expected to follow.
And on Thursday, the United Nations announced it had run out of the food essentials it supplies to 750,000 desperately needy Gazans. "This has become a blockade against the United Nations itself," a spokesman said.
In a further blow, Israel’s large Bank Hapoalim said it would refuse all transactions with Gaza by the end of the month, effectively imposing a financial blockade on an economy dependent on the Israeli shekel. Other banks are planning to follow suit, forced into a corner by Israel’s declaration in Sept 2007 of Gaza as an "enemy entity." more..e-mail
Inside Hebrons H2 Area
Palestine Monitor 11/17/2008
A tour with the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence revealed the zealousness of the reputed settlers in Hebron. The city of Hebron is a ’hot potato’ politically; it is disputed among Israelis, it arouses indignation among Palestinians, it is contested in the international community. It is also one of the focal points for any future peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, especially because of the some 800 Israeli settlers living in the midst of the ’former’ city center, in the area carved out by the Hebron Protocol of 1997 as Hebron H2. Hebrons H2 is often filled with a certain mystique about what actually goes on ’in there’ as it is not the easiest place to access. Palestine Monitor took on a quest to try to unravel at least some of this curious mystique of the city - and what better way to start than by a guided tour? Two reporters went on the tour that The Independent’s Donald MacIntyre has described as ’a unique and tragical history tour’. more..e-mail
Is Israel deliberately strengthening Hamas?
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 11/18/2008
Let’s not be dragged into calculating how many tons of rice, flour and cooking oil there are in the Gaza Strip 10 days after Israel once again hermetically sealed all the crossings into the enclave. Let’s not count the number of children who wait for a nutritious meal at UN Relief and Works Agency schools, and the number of families to whose doorstep Hamas delivers boxes filled with grocery staples. (There are those who swear that these groceries are only given to Hamas members and supporters.) Let’s not calculate the number of people dependent on their families for sustenance. There is food in the Gaza Strip, and there will continue to be. Does anyone really think that Israel, the state of the Jews, would allow 1.5 million people to be tossed, crowded and crammed, behind the barbed-wire fences and watchtowers surrounding the narrow strip and starve to death. Let’s leave aside the stories of darkness, of how children do (or don’t do) their homework by the light of a candle or kerosene lantern. Let’s even put off the discussion on the serious environmental hazards - pollution of the groundwater and sea - posed to the people of Gaza and Ashkelon alike as a direct consequence of the intentional fuel shortage, or of Israel’s refusal to permit the entry of pipes to upgrade the water and sewage infrastructure. Let’s not go now into descriptions of how the sewage flows directly into the sea because there’s not enough electricity to operate the sewage treatment plant. Let’s not talk about fears that sewers will back up in the winter and flood residential neighborhoods because parts needed to fix the treatment plant were not brought in. more..e-mail
Israeli Settlers Steal Land, Distort Truth
Paul J. Balles, Middle East Online 11/14/2008
In April 2008, Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote in Forward about Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine: "
Somehow, for American politicians or activists to express opposition to settlement expansion – or support for active American diplomacy, dialogue with Syria or engagement with Iran – has become subversive and radical, inviting vile, hateful emails and a place on public lists of Israel-haters and anti-Semites. For the particularly unlucky, it leads to public, personal attacks on one’s family and heritage."
My own experience bore out Jeremy’s. In one article, I had referred to the settlers as “land thieves”. A reader complained, saying the label was “a racial slur, and textbook anti-Semitic”. While it was a slur against illegal settlers in Palestine, and critical of Israeli occupation and settlement behaviour, it could not qualify as anti-Semitic, textbook or otherwise. more..e-mail
Israel Tightens Chokehold on Village of Nilin
Jonathan Cook, Middle East Online 11/14/2008
The sun is sinking fast behind the trees of an olive grove on the outskirts of the West Bank village of Nilin. After a day of confrontations between the Israeli army and the Palestinian villagers over Israel’s building of its separation wall on Nilin’s land, the soldiers appear finally to have gone.
Overlooked by the homes of the neighbouring Jewish settlement of Hashmonaim, a handful of Nilin’s braver teenagers finally come out to work.
Jamal and Abed are sweating from their efforts to beat both nightfall and the return of the army. They stand proudly, the fronts of their T-shirts turned out to hold a bulging stash of used tear gas canisters and stun grenades. Each is worth one shekel (25c) in scrap value, and between them they have at least 50 canisters. Nilin, midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, is home to nearly 5,000 Palestinians. Known as the “village of entrepreneurs”, it has more than its share of millionaires. But that looks set to change. more..e-mail
Mending the broken wing
Abdallah Mesleh writing from Nilin, occupied West Bank, Electronic Intifada 11/14/2008
Thousands of hectares of land have been confiscated, hundreds of olive trees were uprooted and tens of thousands of trees were burned at the hands of Israeli occupying forces. In Palestinian villages, where social and economic development is sustained from the land, the villagers are left asking: What’s left for next generations?!
The olive harvest in Palestine is a special occasion in Palestinian life that reveals the importance of the land and the olive tree in the past, present, and the future of Palestinians. Palestinians depend on the olive harvest, and it has come to reflect a wonderful image of self-sufficiency and Palestinian social unity.
For 500 years my family has harvested olives. Our trees have been passed from one generation to the next. Each year, generations of my family have gathered to pick from our trees. Each generation, like each branch that grows from our family’s trees, is considered a gift.
But today, the olive harvest in my village, Nilin, located in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is no longer the wonderful occasion for families to come together and express their deep relation of solidarity and love for each other and for their land. more..e-mail
Testimony: Israeli navy shoots and wounds fisherman off Gaza coast
Report, B'Tselem, Electronic Intifada 11/14/2008
Muhammad Jihad Rizeq Musleh, 18, is a fisherman and a resident of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. The testimony was given to Muhammad Sabah on 7 October 2008 at the European Hospital in the Gaza City:
I live in the Sultan neighborhood in Rafah with my parents, three brothers, and three sisters. In 2006, I began to work as a fisherman. My father taught me the trade and I worked with him for about two months. Then I went to work with Omar al-Bardawil. Omar has two boats, one a motorboat and the other a rowboat. When gas is available in the Strip, we use the motorboat, and when there isn’t gas, we use the rowboat.
Two days ago [Sunday, 5 October], around 3:00am, I went fishing in the rowboat with Ahmad al-Bardawil, Omar’s son. We rowed west about two kilometers from shore, with our back to the Rafah fishermen’s port. At that point we were three kilometers from the Palestinian-Egyptian border. We knew the distances exactly because we have a GPS device.
We stopped by some rocks in the sea, where there are usually a lot of fishermen, and started to lower our fishing lines into the sea. We have a rope that that is 1,800 meters long and has floats and 600 hooks attached to it. We put bait on the hooks to catch different kinds of fish, like grouper and bream. more..e-mail
Palestinian refugees in the Arab world: the right to have a right
Sari Hanafi, Daily Star 11/15/2008
The borders between states in the Arab East were historically porous so that refugees were able to move quite easily. Waves of refugees were able to be managed with tremendous tolerance: 800,000 Palestinians, 1 million Iraqis in the 1990s and 2.4 million Iraqis since 2003, 1 million Sudanese since the 1990s. Since the Arab nation-states cannot stop the waves, they instead organize later on their marginality and exclusion from the right to have a right, to paraphrase Hanna Arendt. Nation-states are often composed of authoritarian or security regimes that formulate a tough definition of who is inside or outside the nation. This way produces a mass of non-citizens, such as around 150,000 Kurds in Syria, many thousands of bidoon [stateless Bedouins] in Kuwait, and around 150,000 stateless kids from Egyptian mothers and Gulf fathers. Although the construction of national identity in the region began during the British and French mandates, the crystallization of this national identity - which occurred within a multilayered context of space and time - is a relatively recent phenomenon. Because of the relative tenuousness of this process of crystallization, the state in the Arab world became a nationalizing state. i.e., "after making Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan ... it must make the Syrians, the Lebanese, the Jordanians ..." The process of importation of state-formation has a tremendous impact on identity formation. The citizenship relationship becomes an exclusionary force that embodies the techniques and processes by which states secure their legitimacy in the eyes of the people they govern. Citizenship process becomes not part of the process of democratization and creation of citizens but struggles that are at the heart of state legitimization strategies, including the formation and transformation of political identities and communities; the distribution and redistribution of rights, responsibilities and resources; and negotiations over representation and participation. more..e-mail
Mahmoud Darwish Joins Long Line of Palestinians Buried away from Home
Isabelle Humphries, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Palestine Media Center 11/13/2008
On the same day that Mahmoud Darwish was given full honors at his funeral in Ramallah, a much smaller gathering met by an Israeli petrol station in an industrial zone off the road to Acre. Carrying sheaves sof wheat and Palestinian flags, we climbed a winding track up the Galilee hillside, behind a coffin carried at the head of the procession. Hearing of the passing of Mahmoud Darwish I immediately thought of the overgrown cemetery of al-Birweh, perched overlooking the fertile plain which reaches the sea. In the summer of 2005, three villagers had taken me there: two who remembered life in this village paradise, a third born in the 1950s in the zinc shacks in which his parents sheltered. Following Israel’s 1948 occupation of al-Birweh, many villagers were forced across the border to Lebanon, where they still wait in camps and cities to return home. Hundreds of other villagers, however, including the family of Mahmoud Darwish, managed to stay in the area, and now live less than three miles away from al-Birweh, in the overcrowded village of Judayde. more..e-mail
Sort out the real conflicts from the zealotry
Rami G. Khouri, Daily Star 11/15/2008
US President-elect Barack Obama has much on his foreign policy plate and he will have to make some hard decisions about prioritizing issues his team will address. The Middle East is likely to emerge quickly as a high priority area, given that many of the key concerns of the United States and the world directly emanate from, or are closely linked to, the Middle East, i.e., energy, terrorism, religious radicalism, illegal immigration, drugs and non-proliferation of nuclear fuels and weapons of mass destruction. When the region’s many conflicts are boiled down to their essence, however, two core sources of tension account for most of the regional and global confrontations that plague the Middle East. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict (and its wider Arab-Israeli conflict) is one, and the other is the Iranian-American confrontation (with its wider Iranian-Western-Israeli tensions). more..e-mail
Double agents, car bombs and antics worthy of James Bond
Robert Fisk, The Independent 11/13/2008
When it comes to spy stories, Ian Fleming couldn’t match Lebanon -- and Sister Syria -- for the kind of head-spinning espionage and murder mystery now engulfing the Levant. The contents page must include the murder of a prominent pro-Iranian kidnapper and guerrilla leader in Damascus, Israeli Mossad spies, bomb explosions in both Lebanon and Syria, claims that the pro-American son of an assassinated ex-prime minister in Beirut funds an Islamist killer group -- not to mention an intriguing connection to the Lebanese hijacker of United Flight 93 on 11 September 2001. If the tale is even half-true -- and I’ve had a visitation from a Syrian suggesting his countrymen believe quite a lot of it -- there has to be a bid for the film rights. On 14 February 2005, the former prime minister and billionaire Rafik Hariri – along with 21 others – was liquidated by a massive bomb on the Beirut Corniche. The Americans and much of Lebanon suspected his Syrian enemies were to blame, and the United Nations set up an international inquiry – now the longest running police investigation in the world – into his death. The cops fingered Syria, and the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Damascus protested its innocence. A further series of murders and a bloody battle between pro-Syrian, pro-Iranian Hizbollah fighters and gunmen paid by the majority Future Movement MP Saad Hariri (son of the aforesaid Rafik) finished up with a conference in Doha which ensured that Lebanon’s pro-American prime minister would lead a cabinet whose pro-Syrian opposition would have veto powers over cabinet decisions. more..e-mail
’The ebb, the tide, the sighs’
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 11/13/2008
The young fisherman is now in hospital, feeble and pale, one leg in a cast held in place by iron screws. He is awash with pain. His mother does not leave his bedside. A blind Palestinian physician takes him for a brief physiotherapy session in the corridor. Mohammed Masalah leans on a walker. The blind orthopedist encourages him to take one step and then another, but the pain defeats him and he asks to be taken back to bed. The sea is the same sea and the Arabs are the same Arabs, as an Israeli prime minister once said. Only the cease-fire is no longer the same cease-fire. On land and in the air it is generally maintained, but not at sea. There, Israeli forces continue to shoot at fishermen from besieged Gaza, who are trying to wrest from the sea a living that is so difficult to make on land. Gaza’s 40,000 fishermen have been deprived of their livelihood. Before the siege, they caught 3,000 tons of fish a year; now it is 500 tons. The fishing season begins with the advent of winter, when schools of fish migrate from the Nile Delta and the waters off Turkey toward the Gaza area. But few of them are now entangled in the nets of Gaza’s fishermen. Today, most of the fish can be found about 10 miles offshore, in an area that is off-limits to the fishermen. Israel has restricted them to a six-mile limit, though sometimes navy boats attack at three miles - just to keep the fishermen honest. more..e-mail
EU parliamentarian: 'Hamas is fighting an occupation'
Cherrie Heywood, Electronic Intifada 11/13/2008
RAMALLAH (IPS) - The assault on Chris Davies, Liberal Democrat party spokesman for the environment for the north west of Britain and a member of the European Union’s parliamentary delegation to the Palestinian Legislative Council, has delivered a firm political message to the European parliament.
Davies was assaulted when he was taking part, together with several Israelis, Palestinians and people from other countries, in a protest rally against Israel’s barrier that divides Palestinian farmers from their land in the central West Bank village of Bilin.
Davies slammed the United States bias towards Israel, and questioned the EU policy on Hamas.
IPS: Why did you attend the demonstration, and what led to the assault?
Chris Davies: I did this as a personal initiative. I had read about Israelis and Palestinians working together to cross the divide by taking part in these weekly demonstrations to remove the [wall], and wanted to see the situation for myself.
Our group walked peacefully towards the wall and held up our hands to show that we were unarmed and nonviolent. Immediately about 30 tear gas canisters were fired at us. Twenty Israeli soldiers then shoved us backwards, forcing a number of us to fall over backwards. I was also manhandled. We then withdrew. more..e-mail
Global Threats, Coordinated Responses
Rami G. Khouri, Middle East Online 11/12/2008
DUBAI -- What happens when you put on the table all the major crises facing the world, identify how they are linked to each other, and attempt to start charting a path towards their resolution? What happens when you do this by bringing together 700 experts and leaders in their fields from around the world who analyze and recommend action on 68 issues and regions of the world?
This is what took place in Dubai last weekend when the World Economic Forum (WEF) convened the inaugural Summit on the Global Agenda, in partnership with the Government of Dubai. WEF founder and chairman Klaus Schwab audaciously but accurately called it “the biggest brainstorming exercise ever held on a global agenda.” The 700 “thought leaders” from business, government, academia and civil society assessed a very wide range of issues of relevance to the entire world, including water, energy, youth, terrorism, health care, climate change, food, sustainable development, women’s rights, education, capital flows, and four dozen other topics. Simultaneously, teams analyzed the current state and future prospects of all the world’s geographic regions and a few major countries like Russia, China, Korea and India. more..e-mail
The Makings of History / Green Leaf in the Bukharan quarter
Tom Segev, Ha’aretz 11/13/2008
For some 20 years, maybe even more, I have known a Palestinian housepainter who used to sneak into Jerusalem to look for work. Over the years, much has befallen him. He has been a collaborator of the Shin Bet security service, a heavy drug user and a thief; for about 10 years he was in and out of prison. In the meantime he has turned into a real "mensch," a husband and father. He survives with legal methadone and works, too. He now holds a blue Israeli ID card, given to temporary residents, and lives in a hostel for the homeless in Jerusalem, not far from Mea She’arim and the Bukharan Quarter, where his polling station is located. What excitement! He will soon turn 40, but this week was the first time in his life that he was allowed to participate in an election. He lost his polling information card, of course. What excitement! He will soon turn 40, but this week was the first time in his life that he was allowed to participate in an election. He lost his polling information card, of course. The telephone number where residents can find out the location of their polling station was constantly busy - of course. We sent a fax to the special number reserved for the deaf. An hour or two later someone called and in a booming voice gave us the number and address of his station. more..e-mail
'My Son Tom': Mother continues the solidarity that Israeli bullets cut short
Raymond Deane, Electronic Intifada 11/13/2008
In April 2003, the 21-year-old English photojournalism student Tom Hurndall was shot in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip.
The Israeli authorities absurdly claimed "that a Palestinian gunman wearing fatigues had been shooting a pistol at a watchtower and had been targeted by a member of the Israeli Defense Force [’IDF’]."
His mother Jocelyn, the author of the harrowing memoir, My Son Tom - The Life and Tragic Death of Tom Hurndall (with Hazel Wood), travels to Israel. At the Soroka Hospital in Beersheva she recognizes her comatose son "despite the bandages surrounding [his] dreadfully swollen head, covering [his] eyes." She learns that one senior doctor has suggested that his wound was "commensurate with a blow from a baseball bat," and realizes that the cover-up culture is not unique to the Israeli army.
She travels to Rafah where members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) explain how Tom -- wearing the orange fluorescent jacket unmistakably identifying a peaceworker -- had witnessed children being targeted by an Israeli sniper, had picked up a little boy and brought him to safety, and was on his way back to collect two terrified girls when he was shot. She meets Salem Baroum, the child Tom rescued, who is "completely silent, utterly traumatized." Later she visits Salem’s home, "a very small house only partly covered by a roof," where tea is drunk "sitting on chairs with the rain dripping in." more..e-mail
The Route to Durable Peace
Sam Leibowitz and Mazin Qumsiyeh, Palestine Chronicle 11/13/2008
As the endless negotiations between Israeli government and Palestinian Authority officials regurgitate old arguments while making no progress, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians are paying attention to other solutions than the supposed "two-state" outcome. They focus on the "one-democratic-state" solution—a proposal to establish a single, democratic and secular state in the area known as Israel/Palestine. The concept of coexistence in a bi-national or one secular democratic state, granting equal rights to all its citizens regardless of their religion, is worthy of critical consideration. It is not a new concept. In the early days of the Zionist movement, it was promoted by Albert Einstein, Martin Buber, and Rabbi Judah Leib Magnes, who argued vociferously against a "Jewish state". It was also a political position adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in its more visible days, and by some Israeli parties in the 1950s. Although it did not garner significant support in past decades, the idea has received new interest with the collapse of the Oslo process, and recently it has been the subject of books, research papers and conferences. more..e-mail
Israel continues to coerce Gaza patients into collaboration
Press release, Al Mezan, Electronic Intifada 11/12/2008
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) continue to blackmail Palestinian patients who need to travel for treatment in Israeli hospitals or Palestinian hospitals in the West Bank. They seek to travel outside Gaza due to the deteriorating conditions of the Palestinian health system there, which is unable to deal with their critical medical conditions. Such practices of the IOF continue on a semi-regular basis amidst the ongoing, tight siege imposed on the Gaza Strip and the continued silence of the international community.
According to Al Mezan field investigations, Khalid Abu Shammala, 38, passed away on Tuesday morning, 28 October 2008, after he was denied access to a hospital. The IOF at Erez asked him to collaborate with them otherwise he would not go through to the West Bank. Abu Shammala underwent a surgery to plant a supporting rod in his coronary artery in early 2006 in Ein Shams Hospital in Cairo, Egypt. His medical condition started deteriorating in July 2007 as an obstruction was detected inside the planted rod. It is noteworthy that the deceased was married with four children. more..e-mail
Under the cover of a commander’s orders
Meron Benvenisti, Ha’aretz 11/13/2008
A short while ago, the GOC Central Command published an order establishing in the occupied territories "The Ayosh Second Authority," which duplicates the Second Authority for Television and Radio in Israel. ["Ayosh" is a Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza.] The order was published in response to a High Court of Justice petition against the decision to grant the settlers a permit to operate a radio station, on the grounds that an Israeli body - the Second Authority - does not have the authority to operate in the territories. This legal maneuver drew hardly any attention, since it did not contain any striking innovation. Hundreds of previous "commanders’ orders" have for a long time duplicated Israel’s system of government, law and administration, and turned the territories into annexed areas; of course, only when the issue relates to, and is in the interest of, the Israelis. more..e-mail
Gaza border crossings closed for sixth day
Press release, PCHR, Electronic Intifada 11/12/2008
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is deeply concerned over continued policies of collective punishment imposed by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip. These policies have included ban on delivery of food supplies and basic goods, including energy fuel required for electricity generation, grains and wheat. Following the halt of fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip in the past six days, more than 30 percent of the population of Gaza was in complete darkness last night, and people lined up in front of bakeries to buy flour and bread. Although IOF allowed the delivery of 427,410 liters of energy fuel this morning, which is enough to operate Gaza’s power plant for a single day, PCHR in concerned that humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip may further deteriorate.
IOF have closed all commercial crossings of the Gaza Strip since Wednesday, 15 November 2008, banning the delivery of the limited quantities of supplies that had been allowed into the Gaza Strip. IOF have also stopped the delivery of fuel supplies that had been already reduced, which has caused further deterioration to humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip that had been deteriorating since 15 June 2007 when IOF imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip. more..e-mail
Gaza: A Flicker of Power
Eva Bartlett - Gaza, Palestine Chronicle 11/12/2008
Gaza in total darkness, again. Gaza is host to a new power outage. It came the evening of the day when a delegation of 11 European Members of Parliament had visited Gaza’s only power plant, which supplies about 1/3 the electricity used in Gaza (the amount used, not the amount needed. People are making due with regular power cuts, particularly in the northern areas of the Strip). The plant used to supply 50% of Gaza’s needs before Israel bombed it in June 2006, destroying all 6 of the plant’s large transformers. Since then, ten smaller, temporary transformers have had to function, inadequately, as permanent replacements. With the siege on Gaza, importing new transformers, or even replacements parts, has become impossible. During the visit, Dr. Rafik Maliha, Project Manager of the plant, warned that a power outage was imminent, as the plant hadn’t received fuel from Israel in 6 days and had no reserves. Israel closed all commercial and humanitarian border crossings on November 5, following a volley of home-made rockets, fired into Israel with no injuries reported. The rockets came as retaliation for the targeted assassination of 7 Palestinians in Gaza late on November 4, a major violation, but not the first, of the truce between Hamas and Israel. more..e-mail
Disaster of Israel’s Making
Sonja Karkar - Melbourne, Palestine Chronicle 11/12/2008
’Palestinian society has been taken on a rollercoaster ride of promises (and) lies’ The illegal settlement movement, supported by every Israeli administration to date, has burgeoned out of control and its right wing leaders are vehemently opposed to negotiating land for peace. We will probably see the present Foreign Minister and Kadima party leader, Tzipi Livni - if she forms the next government and takes over from Ehud Olmert, now interim PM - use the same stalling tactics with the Palestinian Authority that have, up until now, allowed land grabs from the Palestinians for the Zionist dream of a greater Israel. After all, Livni was nurtured on that dream. Her main rival, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, has vowed to allow expansion of the settlements if he wins expected early elections. A 15-year-old peace process is ominously poised for failure, not just politically but economically. The 1993 Oslo Peace Accords were supposed to offer the Palestinians the political freedom and economic independence to which they have always been entitled. Since then, Palestinian society has been taken on a rollercoaster ride of promises, lies, provocations and chaos with not a single benefit to show for its painful concessions. more..e-mail
Rabin’s assassination is still a turning point
Ghassan Khatib, Daily Star 11/12/2008
There is no doubt that the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin 13 years ago was a turning point in the history of the Palestinian-Israeli peace process and that the period that followed could have turned out very different in his presence. Rabin had three reasons to enter into a serious peace process. The first was his experience in trying and failing to suppress by force the first Palestinian intifada, a period of popular Palestinian non-violent resistance against the occupation. The failure came in spite of his direct orders to be as tough as "breaking their bones," an order Israeli soldiers followed to the letter. This experience led him to conclude that there could be no military solution to the conflict. The second reason was his long experience of negotiations with the Palestinian delegation in Washington. During this time, the Israeli government, first under Yitzak Shamir but later under Rabin himself, tried to bypass the legitimate Palestinian leadership, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), to reach an agreement on creating an autonomous body led by local Palestinian leaders in the Palestinian territories. That experience led him to the conclusion that Israel would have a better chance of achieving its objectives by dealing directly with the PLO. more..e-mail
Al-Khadr: Daily brutality in a West Bank village strangled by the Wall
Ma’an News Agency 11/12/2008
Bethlehem - Ma’an - The symbol of the village of Al-Khadr it is its grapes. There are fields upon light green fields of them. They hang in heavy bunches. About a third of the 10,000 residents of the town earn their living from cultivating grapes and other crops. Yet Al-Khadr is a shrinking preserve. Once a 22,000 dunum (1 dunum is 1,000 square meters) swath of territory spreading southwest from Bethlehem, some 5,000 dunums have already been confiscated for the construction of four major Israeli settlements. More land is pending confiscation. According to Mayor Ramzi Salah, 90% of the village’s landed is slated for confiscation, between the expanding settlements and outposts, the nearly complete Israeli separation wall. Welcome to ground zero of the refugee-campization of Palestine. The people of all Khadr are being severed from their land, from their agricultural culture, from their personal and collective history. They are becoming displaced people without physically moving. Rather, Israel is rapidly remolding the physical environment around them, enveloping them in concrete, hemming them in with concrete walls and modern hilltop suburb-cum-settlements. more..e-mail
The Meeting that Never Was
Joharah Baker – The West Bank, Palestine Chronicle 11/12/2008
’Hamas and Fateh leaders need to peel away the sheath of factional agendas..’ Whichever way you slice it, the cancelled reconciliation talks slated to have taken place in Cairo on November 9 is bad news. If our goal is to merely cast blame, there is plenty to go around. Yes, though the talks were supposed to include a multitude of Palestinian factions under Egyptian mediation, we all know the major players here are Palestine’s Titan rivals, Hamas and Fateh. Unfortunately, the bitter fighting between the two has dichotomized Palestinian society almost surgically -- if you are not a loyal supporter of the Palestinian Authority, you are, by assumption, a Hamas proponent. On the street, this seemingly clear cut fission which has sharply manifested itself in and basically taken over Palestinian politics for the past several years, is not without its shades of gray. There are those who criticize both, who categorize themselves as independent Palestinians or those who still cling to leftist philosophies the Palestinian Communist/Marxist movements embraced long ago during their years of glory. Nevertheless, given the sheer power of both Hamas and Fateh -- the former because of their stronghold on the Gaza Strip and the latter given its historical position at the helm of the Palestinian leadership -- this battle has come down to these two. All others, no matter how sincere they may be in their intentions, have been pushed to the far margins of Palestinian political life. more..e-mail
Obama, Rahm-bo and the End of the New American Century
Paul Craig Roberts, Palestine Chronicle 11/12/2008
’The change that is coming is the end of American empire.’ If the change President-elect Obama has promised includes a halt to America’s wars of aggression and an end to the rip-off of taxpayers by powerful financial interests, what explains Obama’s choice of foreign and economic policy advisors? Indeed, Obama’s selection of Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff is a signal that change ended with Obama’s election. The only thing different about the new administration will be the faces. Rahm Emanuel is a supporter of Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Emanuel rose to prominence in the Democratic Party as a result of his fundraising connections to AIPAC. A strong supporter of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, he comes from a terrorist family. His father was a member of Irgun, a Jewish terrorist organization that used violence to drive the British and Palestinians out of Palestine in order to create the Jewish state. During the 1991 Gulf War, Rahm Emanuel volunteered to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. He was a member of the Freddie Mac board of directors and received $231,655 in directors fees in 2001. According to Wikipedia, "during the time Emanuel spent on the board, Freddie Mac was plagued with scandals involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities." more..e-mail
The only way out
Eva Bartlett writing from Cyprus, Electronic Intifada 11/12/2008
Over the past year, Muhannad Omar al-Helo has twice petitioned the Israeli government to leave Gaza in order to study in Europe for a master’s degree.He has also contacted Israeli lawyers and human rights groups about his case. On 2 November aboard the SS Dignity, the third Free Gaza boat, he was finally able to leave Gaza and the 16-month Israeli siege, which has imprisoned the 1.5 million Palestinian residents of the tiny coast territory, and sail to Cyprus.
Al-Helo smiled broadly as he held up the bag of clothes purchased in Cyprus that he is sending back to Gaza for his wife and their 18 month-old daughter. "Some of this is available in Gaza," he said, cradling an adult running shoe, "but it is extremely expensive, as it has been brought in through the tunnels," referring to the network of tunnels through which smugglers bring goods in from Egypt. He sorted through the articles: a dress for his baby, a belt for his wife, a warm winter coat for the girl, a pretty scarf for his wife. more..e-mail
Boycotting Israeli settlement products: tactic vs. strategy
Omar Barghouti, Electronic Intifada 11/11/2008
There has been a spate of recent news reports on international companies moving out of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) to locations inside the internationally-recognized boundary between Israel and the West Bank. The impression is made that boycotting products originating in Israel’s illegal colonies in the West Bank is on its way to becoming mainstream, handing the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement with a fresh, substantial victory. While this development should indeed be celebrated by all BDS activists anywhere, caution is called for in distinguishing between advocating such a targeted boycott as a tactic -- leading to the ultimate goal of boycotting all Israeli goods and services -- and as an end in itself. While the former may be necessary in some countries as a convenient tool of raising awareness and promoting debate about Israel’s colonial and apartheid regime, the latter, despite its lure, would be in direct contradiction with the stated objectives of the Palestinian boycott movement. Most recently, the Swedish company Assa Abloy heeded appeals from the Church of Sweden and other prominent Swedish organizations and decided to move its Mul-T-Lock door factory from the industrial zone of the Barkan colony in the occupied West Bank to a yet-unannounced location inside Israel, following the lead of Barkan Wineries, a partially Dutch-owned company that had already left Barkan to Kibbutz Hulda. The fact that part of this kibbutz sits on top of an ethnically cleansed Palestinian village whose name, Khulda, the Kibbutz had -- typically -- appropriated was not viewed, apparently, as worthy enough to be mentioned in the documents accusing the wine maker of wrongdoing, according to international law. more..e-mail
Israel Must Crack Down on Violent Settlers Now
Steve Breyman, Palestine Chronicle 11/11/2008
’The violence of extremist Israeli settlers threatens to crush this hope.’ The director of Israel’s domestic security agency—the Shin Bet—expressed his deep concern in a cabinet meeting on November 2 that Israeli leaders who seek peace with the Palestinians may be assassination targets for Jewish extremists. Given the very strong support in the Israeli and other publics for a peace agreement with the Palestinians, the concern seems unbelievable. Yet as crazy as the warning sounds, the Israeli government must take it seriously. November 4 was the anniversary of the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin was gunned down by an Israeli settler angered by the Prime Minister’s meager concessions at the Oslo peace talks. In a recent interview, Rabin’s killer—Yigal Amir—expressed no remorse for the assassination. The current caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appears to understand the increased threat posed by Israel’s lunatic fringe. "There is a group, that is not small, of wild people who behave in a way that threatens proper law and governance. . . . This is unacceptable and we cannot countenance it," Olmert said, according to a statement from his office. "Attacking soldiers and their commanders, attacking policemen and other security personnel and injuring them is unacceptable." Escalation to the use of firearms is not out of the question. Recall that a sizable number of the quarter million settlers have government-issued assault rifles with which to protect themselves. more..e-mail
Testimony: Twelve-year-old beaten and imprisoned with adults
Report, B'Tselem, Electronic Intifada 11/11/2008
Muhammad Salah Muhammad Khawajah, 12, is a student and a resident of Nilin in the Ramallah District. His testimony was given to Iyad Hadad on 18 September 2008 at the witness’s home:
I live with my family in Nilin. We live on the ground floor of the house, my two uncles and their families live on the first floor, and my grandmother lives on the second floor.
Last Thursday [11 September] around 3:00am, I woke up from my mother’s shouts. She was shouting, "Get up! Get up! The army is here!" My father wasn’t home that night. I got up and went out with her to the inner courtyard of the house. There were about 12 soldiers there, and their faces were painted black. One soldier wore a black hat that covered his face. He sat on the stairs outside the house and didn’t take part. I think he was a collaborator who led them to houses.
The soldiers were on the first floor. I heard them tell my Uncle Sami to direct them to our floor. One of the soldiers asked, "Where is Muhammad?" and I realized he was asking about me. The soldier told my uncle to call me, so he did. I started walking towards them. Two soldiers grabbed me and took me outside. I realized they wanted to arrest me. I was afraid, and began to cry, and called my uncle to come with me. more..e-mail
The School Run
Ron Taylor, Palestine Chronicle 11/11/2008
’The effect on the emotional well being of the children can only be imagined.’ "The children face beatings from settlers," says O. "Sometimes they spend all day in fear. The settlers must leave. If the settlers are here there is no safety, only fear." O is a Palestinian farmer from the tiny hamlet of Maghaer al-Abeed in the South Hebron Hills. He is also the father of young children who attend primary school in the nearby village of At-Tuwani. But the journey to school is a dangerous one. "We usually start from home and then to Tuba, and then on to the chicken barns," says M, one of the 20 or so children who make the journey to At-Tuwani. "And there we wait for the soldiers. There we face the settlers. The settlers try to crash into us with their cars. They sometimes catch us, hit us with rocks and knock us down." The settlers live in the red-roofed Jewish settlement of Ma’on and its outpost of Havat Ma’on or Hill 833 -- a collection of huts largely hidden in the trees and the chicken barns. Both stand there in defiance of international law. The latter is even illegal under Israeli law. Many of those living here moved to the West Bank from the United States, France and South Africa as well as from Israel itself. They are armed and claim the land as their own. more..e-mail
Israel Re-brands Oppression
John Chuckman, Palestine Chronicle 11/11/2008
’We see no check-points bristling with guns, no razor-wire..’ There has been an ad on television recently, one featuring a young couple walking or drifting into a place of enchantment, a warm and colourful fantasy world, a kind of biblical Disneyland. Every step of their brief journey is met by people smiling warmly, moving slowly, even bowing, greeting them at each turn with Shalom! It is interesting that all the faces in the ad are the same kind of faces we might see in New York or London, except that here they are all bathed in glowing antique light. We see no harsh fundamentalist types cutting down someone else’s olive groves and cursing anyone, even other Jews, as interlopers. We certainly see no arrogant settlers, strutting around with machine guns, sneering at the camera. The couple quick-cuts their way through pleasant scene after scene -- images of ancient middle-eastern streets and buildings and finally a man watering a garden, back-lighted by sun so that each drop he sprays is seen like blessing making the desert bloom. more..e-mail
Hamas and the Art of Time-Wasting
Tariq Alhomayed, MIFTAH 11/11/2008
An official Egyptian statement released the day before yesterday expressed regret over Hamas’s decision to boycott the reconciliation talks with Fatah in Cairo and in the process wasting an opportunity for national unity, despite the strenuous efforts exerted by the Egyptians the statement said. But the question here is; what’s new about that? This is Hamas, and the way its leaders operate. Hamas has not fulfilled a single promise to date, except those made to Iran, Syria, and Israel. They have never been critical of Damascus, while at the same time dwelling within Tehran’s political sphere. Hamas has committed to a truce with Tel Aviv that does not bring peace, and has not improved the quality of life for the people in Gaza. Besides this, Hamas has thrown away many other opportunities, including backing out on the Mecca Agreement, using arms to take over the Gaza strip and in the process splitting Palestinian ranks. Moreover, Hamas’s leader Khalid Mishal only remembers his fellow Arabs when the Israeli military machine targeted him, and then he appeared on our screens wearing a mufti turban trying to reconcile the Arab world, recalling stories of doom and gloom. more..e-mail
We are Sick of the American-Israeli Interference
Kawther Salam, Palestine Think Tank 11/10/2008
I am writing this article after I escaped from the criminal action of Israelis on November 1, 2008, who came to Vienna to watch and to harass me. I wonder if the mission of these criminals to terrorize me in exile was coordinated between the Israelis and the Palestinian "security" team, just like what is happening in Palestine now. We Palestinians are sick and tired of the Palestinian Authority, which is implementing the Israeli-American so-called "security plan" instead of the Israeli military, with a mission of terrorizing, chasing, arresting people, destroying the houses of civilians and boasting about their vile crimes in the streets. Everybody knows that these forces are useless cowards during the Israeli raids on Palestinian cities under their authorities. The Palestinian civil society is sick of the so-called "Hamas authority", the radical Palestinian movement which distorts the face of Islam, and which has turned the holy mission of the Palestinian struggle into a struggle for their own pockets and unknown foreign agendas. more..e-mail
Our inept justice system
Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank, Palestinian Information Center 11/10/2008
Everything seems to be collapsing in the nominally-autonomous enclave, known as the Palestinian Authority these days. The executive authority, which really has no authority or sovereignty of its own, has become too authoritarian and tyrannical and, of course, too corrupt. The legislative authority is paralyzed due to the mass incarceration by the Nazi-like Israeli occupation regime of dozens of lawmakers for their refusal to recognize the "legitimacy"ť of Zionism and the Israeli apartheid state. And the media, the fourth estate, has likewise been thoroughly corrupted due to the virtual absence of press freedom and freedom of speech as a result of the consolidation of an American-sustained reign of terror now being consolidated in the West Bank. Now, the Palestinian Justice System seems to be collapsing as well, mainly due to its growing subservience to the executive power, particularly to the police-state apparatus. more..e-mail
Israel Demolishes Homes for ’City of David’ Heritage Site
Donald MacIntyre, MIFTAH 11/11/2008
Israel has been accused of demolishing Palestinian houses in Arab East Jerusalem while international attention was focused on the election of Barack Obama. Palestinian leaders and Israeli human rights organisations have said Israeli authorities displaced more than 20 people – mostly children – by demolishing three homes in the Silwan district of Jerusalem to make way for an archaeological park. Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator, said: "While the international media was transfixed by the results of the US election, Israeli forces were tearing up the homes of Palestinian families to build new settlements, furthering their control of occupied East Jerusalem and pre-empting final status negotiations." Mr Erekat called on the international Quartet of the US, EU, Russia and the UN, "to protect Palestinians and their homes" and hold Israel to commitments made at last year’s Annapolis summit, to halt confiscations and demolition of Palestinian property. The Quartet is meeting in Sharm El Sheikh on Sunday. more..e-mail
Where there’s a will
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/6/2008
The Israelis can be defied. But it requires courage, especially from Arab countries. The auditorium of the Rashad Al-Shawwa Cultural Centre reverberated with applause as Joe Fallisi, the Italian tenor, finished his song. Fallisi is one of 27 foreign and Palestinian activists who arrived to Gaza last week aboard the boat "Dignity" in a blockade- busting trip organised by the Free Gaza Movement. During the three days they spent in Gaza, the activists toured the strip, inspecting the damage that two years of blockade and Israeli incursions have incurred. On Thursday, they went to Dar Al-Shifaa, the largest hospital in Gaza, where dozens of patients face death if they are not allowed to receive treatment abroad. Iman, the wife of a heart patient, said, "I cannot believe that my husband is going to die just because they won’t let him travel. His life could be saved with a simple medical procedure." Scenes of demolished houses, destroyed olive groves, uprooted orange orchards, and filled-in wells left a profound impact on the activists. Hassan Bakr, whose farm the Israelis had destroyed, said he hoped the activists would relay what they saw to the outside world and "force Israel to stop the crimes it is perpetrating.". more..e-mail
The Bilbao Initiative – Civil Society Action for Justice in Palestine
Final Declaration and Action Plan, Palestine Media Center 11/6/2008
Final Declaration and Action Plan For the past 60 years, the indigenous Palestinian people has been scattered in the Diaspora and fragmented within its homeland by walls and policies of segregation and domination. However, the Palestinian national struggle cannot be divided, and the rights of the Palestinians to return to their homes of origin, enjoy freedom, and exercise self-determination can only be achieved if the root causes of their denial are addressed and if Palestinian national unity is preserved. During the Bilbao Initiative gathering, we, Palestinian, progressive Israeli and international organizations and social movements discussed and embraced the latest Palestinian in-depth examination (1)of Israel’s legal and political regime over the Palestinian people. This analysis exposes Israel as a state which is built on the massive ethnic cleansing of 1948 and which for six decades has systematically committed injustices against all segments of the Palestinian people – refugees in exile, citizens of Israel and those in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) – on grounds of their national identity, in order to prevent Palestinian self-determination and to cement colonization and domination via racist laws, including promoting exclusively Jewish immigration while barring the Palestinians’ right to return. From a legal perspective, this study has concluded that Israel’s regime is a system that uniquely combines apartheid, settler-colonialism and belligerent occupation. more..e-mail
Paid Bigots Including Walid Shoebat Teaching Religious War At U.S. Air Force Academy
Lawrence Swaim, Palestine Think Tank 11/8/2008
The U.S. Air Force Academy just can’t seem to get it right. Six major cheating scandals in four decades. Endemic sexual harassment against female cadets. Christian evangelical officers proselytizing non-Christian cadets. But in February 2008, on the occasion of their fiftieth annual assembly, the Academy brass outdid themselves. They presented three discredited Islamophobes who spewed religious bigotry and advocated religious war, in the process trampling on the First Amendment and exposing the Air Force to international ridicule. Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani all claim to be "reformed terrorists." The three men’s narratives "border on the fantastic," as a Feb. 7 New York Times story delicately put it, including their claims that they killed hundreds of people while still children. Even members of Shoebat’s own family apparently believe that his stories of terrorism are fabricated. Most experts have concluded that they are frauds. ....However ludicrous their claims may be, the trio provided Academy brass with yet another opportunity to push the bigoted worldview of the Religious Right, this time under the guise of educating about terrorism.... more..e-mail
WAR alert: Obama Advisors Discuss Preparations for War on Iran
Peter Symonds, Palestine Think Tank 11/8/2008
On the eve of the US elections, the New York Times cautiously pointed on Monday to the emergence of a bipartisan consensus in Washington for an aggressive new strategy towards Iran. While virtually nothing was said in the course of the election campaign, behind-the-scenes top advisers from the Obama and McCain camps have been discussing the rapid escalation of diplomatic pressure and punitive sanctions against Iran, backed by preparations for military strikes.
The article entitled "New Beltway Debate: What to do about Iran"ť noted with a degree of alarm: "It is a frightening notion, but it not just the trigger-happy Bush administration discussing"”if only theoretically"”the possibility of military action to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program"¦ [R]easonable people from both parties are examining the so-called military option, along with new diplomatic initiatives. Behind the backs of American voters, top advisers for President-elect Barack Obama have been setting the stage for a dramatic escalation of confrontation with Iran as soon as the new administration takes office. A report released in September from the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank, argued that a nuclear weapons capable Iran was "strategically untenable"ť and detailed a robust approach, "incorporating new diplomatic, economic and military tools in an integrated fashion." more..e-mail
Differing directions
Hassan Nafaa, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/6/2008
Despite being pro-Israeli, Obama will face an Israel radicalised to the right while the US he promises, and that the world awaits, is of the centre. With the US presidential elections at hand it is hard to resist the temptation to turn to recent history. Around this time in 2000, Bill Clinton was gathering his papers as he prepared to leave the White House, weighed down by disappointment in the results of strenuous efforts he had exerted over the preceding months to reach a final settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He had succeeded in persuading Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak to come to Camp David to discuss final status issues in talks that he attended personally. Now Arafat and Barak had to reorder their cards, each in their own way, in order to ready themselves for a new phase in the conflict following the failure of Camp David II. Whereas Arafat realised that he had to prepare the Palestinian people to take on the burdens of another phase in the struggle that would be exceedingly difficult after Sharon’s provocative visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque that triggered the second Intifada, Barak had to scramble to mend rifts in his coalition government and get ready for early elections. Within a short space of time after the US elections, which resulted in a Bush victory, Israeli Knesset elections were held and resulted in the victory of Sharon. more..e-mail
US President Obama’s Gatekeeper
Fikret Erta, Zaman, Palestine Media Center 11/9/2008
Rahm’s surname was adopted by his family in 1933, after Rahm’s paternal uncle, Emanuel Auerbach, was killed in a confrontation with Palestinians in Jerusalem.
The White House chief of staff is the highest-ranking member of the Executive Office of the President of the United States and a senior aide to the president. It is, therefore, of the highest importance. The duties of the chief of staff are both managerial and advisory, and depending upon the president’s choice and style they can cover the following: managerial -- selecting key White House staff and supervising them, structuring the White House staff system, controlling the flow of people into the Oval Office and managing the flow of information; and also advisory -- advising the president on issues of politics and policy, negotiating with Congress, other members of the executive branch and extra-governmental political groups to implement the president’s agenda. In short, the chief of staff is responsible for overseeing the actions of the White House staff, managing the president’s schedule and deciding who is allowed to meet with the president. Because of these duties, the chief of staff has been dubbed "the Gatekeeper" and "the Co-President". -- See also: Zaman: President Obama’s gatekeepermore..e-mail
Neither hell nor heaven
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/6/2008
Egyptian-Israeli relations will endure a recent Israeli affront, reports"I think we should call back our ambassador and throw out their ambassador. These people hate us and they don’t want peace with us," said Hassan, a Cairo taxi driver. Hassan was commenting on an affront directed by Israeli parliamentarian Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beitenu ("Israel is our home" Party, to President Hosni Mubarak over the president’s reluctance to visit Israel. "If Mubarak does not want to come to Israel then he can go to hell," Lieberman said to the shock of official and public quarters in Egypt. "Let them go to hell. This is what we should tell them: ’You go to hell, all of you!’" Hassan added. Not that Hassan is a strong supporter of the Egyptian president. On the contrary, he is unsatisfied with the prevailing economic conditions that are forcing him, though a civil servant "with a university degree", to work extra time as a taxi driver to make ends meet. "But this is different. We criticise the president. But no Israeli has the right to criticise the president of Egypt." more..e-mail
I Hope The Palestinians Will Use Nonviolence In Their Struggle For Human Rights And Freedom
Mairead Maguire, November 4, Palestine Monitor 11/9/2008
(Journey to Gaza, 28th October, 1st November, 2008) On 28th October, 2008, the Free Gaza Movement set sail in SS Dignity from Larnaca, Cyprus, for Gaza. On board were 27 Internationals from 13 countries, Including Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, five physicians, human rights lawyers, etc., I felt deeply privileged to be part of this group going to Gaza. On this the second boat journey into Gaza the siege-breakers brought with them 6 cubic meters of medicine, and their hope that by going to Gaza across the sea (only the second boat to do so in over 41 years) they would give hope to the people of Gaza and that the outside world would break its silence to the tragedy of Gaza’s suffering and act to get the siege lifted. It’s hard to image that in the 2lst century a country can be so cut off from the Outside world. Sixteen months ago, when Gazans voted Hamas in free and fair elections, the reaction of Israel was not to open up dialogue with the Elected representatives (as they eventually must do) but to put in place a Policy of collective punishment of the entire population, which has lead to an humanitarian catastrophe. Israel said it was ending the Occupation of Gaza, but in truth it maintained it by closing all border entrances and isolating The Gazans from the entire world. Gaza is like an open air prison with Israel holding the keys but it’s worse, at least in prison, the inmates are Fed and taken care of. The people of Gaza are drinking polluted water and have not enough food and medicines and materials for existence. And in the words of one Gazan “we are slowly choking to death with this siege”. Before we sailed to Gaza the Israeli Gov., warned we would not be allowed to sail into Gaza. However, we were determined to do so and just 20 miles off the coast of Gaza, held our breath as two Israeli navy gunboats stalked us but took no action. Common sense had prevailed; hopefully a sign for the future, that in the final analysis those in power in Israel will realize that dialogue not Gunboats and F.16’s, is the only way to solve this too long and painful Palestinian Occupation. We arrived in Gaza exhausted and sea-sick. We were met by dozens of Palestinian heavily armed Police and though, before leaving Gaza, I had requested not to be so guarded, we were informed that the Hamas Government wanted to ensure our safety, and throughout the entire 4 day visit we were escorted by armed Palestinian police. Our reception by the people of Gaza was deeply moving.... more..e-mail
Contesting the subtext
Muqtedar Khan, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/6/2008
Bigotry has made Arab and Muslim a pejorative in the US presidential elections. All men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities -- The Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom (1786) In this presidential election cycle, American Muslims became a subtext of American politics that exposed the profound religious bigotry embedded in some segments of American society. A few months ago, some unscrupulous activists were sending e-mails claiming that Barack Obama was secretly a Muslim and in spite of repeated denials -- vehement ones often -- by the Obama campaign, for a long time nearly 10 per cent of the country believed them. The main assumption behind this tactic was that for some the mere possibility that Obama was Muslim was sufficient to discredit him. The irony of this episode during the campaign season is that the cads who were claiming that Obama was secretly a Muslim were banking on the existence of religious bigotry amongst McCain’s supporters. The subtext is this: We have many bigots in our society; let us exploit this reality by spreading lies about Obama’s faith. more..e-mail
EU MPs urged to rethink refugee issue
Etgar Lefkovits, Paris, Jerusalem Post 11/10/2008 How to sell violations of human rights: "We are asking why the UNHCR has the mandate to solve the problem of refugees and UNRWA does not," Elon said. "There are cynical political reasons to maintain the status of the refugees." A gathering of hundreds of European parliamentarians who support Israel concluded over the weekend in Paris with a politically loaded discussion on the rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees - one of the most sensitive issues facing Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.
The debate, part of a conference sponsored by the Brussels-based European Friends of Israel, came amid a groundswell of parliamentary activity around the world, including in the US and Canada, to reroute funding from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the mammoth UN body that deals with Palestinian refugees and their descendants, towards the resettlement of some of the refugees and their descendants in third countries.
The session, which was hosted by the Israel Allies Caucus Foundation, the international arm of the Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus, included addresses by European parliamentarians as well as by MK Benny Elon of the National Union-National Religious Party and MK Amira Dotan of Kadima. The two co-chair a new Knesset caucus on the rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees. more..e-mail
Arabs in British and Israeli History
Robert Fisk, Middle East Online 11/8/2008
LONDON – In Damascus, a massive statue of the late President Hafez al-Assad sits on a mighty iron chair outside the 22,000 square meters Assad Library, a giant book open in his right hand.
Behind him lie the archives of his dictatorship. But not a single state paper is open to the people of Syria. There are no archives from the foreign ministry or the interior ministry or the defence ministry. There is no 30-year rule—for none is necessary. The rule is forever. There is no Public Record Office in the Arab world, no scholars waiting outside the National Archives.
It is the same in Cairo, in Riyadh, in Beirut and in Tripoli. Dictatorships and caliphates do not give away their secrets. The only country in the Middle East where you can burrow through the files is called Israel—and good for the Israelis. But the result is obvious. While Israeli scholars have been able to deconstruct the traditional story of little Israel – proving that there were no Arab radio stations calling for the Palestinians to leave their land, that the Arabs were indeed ethnically cleansed from their towns and villages by Irgun and the Hagana – there is no Arab scholar who can balance the books by drawing on the archives of his own history. They must go to the National Archives in London to read General Cunningham’s dispatches from 1948 Palestine, or quote from Israeli books. The record stops there. Aside from the self-serving biographies of Arab dictators and generals, that’s it. Even Walid Khalidi’s huge tome on the destroyed villages of Palestine relies heavily on the work of Israeli historian Benny Morris. more..e-mail
The Intra-Palestinian Rift
Jihad el-Khazen, Middle East Online 11/8/2008
LONDON – According to Hamas leaders, Palestinian President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas has stood against any bilateral meetings between the two factions because he wants to end his term in office on 9 January 2009 without paying any price. On the eve of the upcoming reconciliation sessions in Cairo, Hamas leaders fear that Abbas may rally the Palestinian factions and the Arabs against them.
This fear is partly justified. Abbas has rejected any bilateral meeting between Fatah and Hamas—despite the efforts made by Syrian, Egyptian and other ministers and officials. Yet the reasons behind that fear are merely an "opinion." I heard the Palestinian president express a different opinion in recorded conversations I had with him in Amman and New York. The reconciliation meeting in Egypt represents a critical turning point. It will be held under the auspices of President Hosni Mubarak, which means failure is forbidden. Hence, if the negotiations fail, the party responsible for failure will find itself in further confrontation with Egypt, not just with the other Palestinian factions. more..e-mail
Palestine’s Partner for Peace?
Nadia Awad, Middle East Online 11/8/2008
JERUSALEM – After a month of haggling, Tzipi Livni, appointed to replace outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, announced last week that she has not been able to form a coalition government to support her rule. “Let the people choose their leaders,” she said instead, calling for early elections likely to take place in February of next year. Most observers called her decision a huge blow to peace. Livni’s inability to create a coalition government sends more than just the message of snap elections. It tells us that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas may not have a partner for peace in Israel’s government after all. Israel’s political system is a notoriously complicated one, with a large number of small parties effectively preventing any one party from winning a majority of the Knesset’s 120 seats. In order for any government to survive, they must create an often unstable coalition with small parties with whom they do not necessarily have much in common with. This requires sacrifices on their part for a precious few seats. PM Olmert’s Kadima party succeeded in 2006 in building a coalition that included Labour, a large centre-left political party, and Shas, a right-wing ultra-orthodox faction with 12 seats. This time around, Labour again agreed to join a new coalition.... more..e-mail
'The Israelis attack us every day'
Report, PCHR, Electronic Intifada 11/8/2008
"I’ve been a fisherman for 15 years now, ever since I was 15 years old. My father was a fisherman and so was my grandfather. I have spent half my life at sea. But every day we face problems from the Israeli gunboats: they follow us, and then they start shooting at us because they want to force us to stop working."
Saber al-Hissie comes from a Gazan family of fishermen. His 20-meter vessel belongs to his father, who, after many years of fishing, has finally passed the family business over to Saber. There are more than 3,500 professional fishermen in the Gaza Strip, and the majority of them live in and around Gaza City, where the main harbor is located. The al-Hissie family live in the sprawling refugee camp, known locally as the Beach camp, near the Gaza harbor.
The Gaza harbor awakens before dawn. The fishermen land the night catch, the fishmongers gather to buy the fish, and those fishermen who have spent the night in the luxury of their own beds at home arrive to start preparing for the early morning fishing. Nets are mended, fuel and water supplies replenished, and the boats are back out at sea before 7am. Saber al-Hissie has a crew of seven men and boys with him today, including 13-year-old Mahmoud, and 18-year-old Ali, who both regularly work as fishermen. Mahmoud is still at school, but Ali says he never went to school. "I always wanted to be a fisherman" he says, grinning. more..e-mail
An Open Letter from an Uprooted Palestinian to Obama
Adib Kawar, Palestine Think Tank 11/8/2008
Dear Mr. Barack Obama We take the opportunity to congratulate you for being elected for the presidency of the presently mightiest military power and thus most influential political post in the world. We are sure that a man of your caliber and intelligence who was able to overcome the doubt to achieve a big victory in spite of the old inherent prejudice against electing an Afro-American to lead the American people during at least the coming four years. Mr. President Elect, we are sure that you are aware that your emulator to the post, as is evident, requested the outgoing president not to openly extend support to him in the presidential election campaign, though they belong to the same political party, because he was afraid that Mr. Bush’s reputation would smear his and strongly affect his chances of winning the post as a Republican candidate; which had actually strongly contributed to his failure, which is simply a result of the foolish, both internal and international, policy the outgoing regime had followed, which caused unprecedented global tragedies, especially as a result its directly waged wars - as is the case against Iraq and Afghanistan - and threat to wage other wars, and indirectly by supporting the rogue states, the outstanding example of which is the Zionist state of Israel, with its continuous wars against the indigenous Arab population of Palestine, and other Arab states especially during the 2006 war against Lebanon, and Israel’s role in the devastating war against Iraq.... more..e-mail
Let’s hope Obama won’t be a ’friend of Israel’
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 11/9/2008
The march of parochialism started right away. The tears of excitement invoked by U.S. president-elect Barack Obama’s wonderful speech had not yet dried, and back here people were already delving into the only real question they could think to ask: Is this good or bad for Israel? One after another, the analysts and politicians got up - all of them representing one single school of thought, of course and began prophesizing. They spoke with the caution that the situation required, gritting their teeth as though their mouths were full of pebbles, trying to soothe all the fears and concerns. They searched and found signs in Obama: The promising appointment of the Israeli ex-patriots’ son, whose father belonged to the Irgun, and maybe also Dennis Ross and Dan Kurtzer and Martin Indyk, who may, God willing, be included in the new administration. But in the background, a dark cloud hovered above. Careful, danger. The black man, who had associated with Palestinian expats, who speaks of human rights, who favors diplomacy over war, who even wants to engage Iran in dialogue, who will allocate more funding for America’s social needs than to weapons exports. He may not be the sort of "friend of Israel" that we have come to love in Washington, the kind of friend we have grown accustomed to. more..e-mail
Report from Gaza-bound blockade-busting ship
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 11/9/2008
Saturday morning, 7:25 A.M., about 40 kilometers west of the Gaza Strip we discovered that we were led by a different ship than we previously hasd been. Within a few minutes, our suspicions that it was actually a Israel Navy vessel were confirmed when it identified itself to us through its loud speaker system. It asked which port we set sail from and 15 minutes later asked us to report the names of the passengers aboard. "That is not necessary," our vessel, part of the Free Gaza Movement, responded. "You can find our names on the internet and also make a donation." The movement’s previous successful attempt to sail to Gaza from Cyprus encouraged people to donate money, allowing our vessel to be purchased for 240,000 euros. A few minutes later the voice coming from the Israel Navy vessel was heard again. "Have a nice day," it said. "You too," we responded. We would be allowed to sail to Gaza. No surprise as the organizers had reached an agreement with the Israel Defense Forces because it justly realized preventing us from passing would only damage Israel’s image. more..e-mail
A Clear Case of Provocation
Palestine Monitor, Palestine Monitor 11/8/2008
After reading the Jerusalem Post article “IAF Kills Islamic Jihad Terrorist in Northern Gaza Strike” this morning [Nov 6th- see link below] I felt like I was living in an alternate reality. Then I decided that I was not, and that perhaps the Post had mixed things up. This is the response to their confusion and a call for a return to rationality. Some useful facts to keep in mind: 1. Prior to the Israeli invasion of Gaza on Tuesday night, which resulted in the deaths of six people, there had been an ongoing but uneasy truce between Hamas and Israel for five months. Ma’an News quotes an Israeli spokesperson as saying that the invasion was intended to “protect the ceasefire”. An interesting strategy, but nevertheless, one which failed to raise any eyebrows at The Post. I will ask the question that they seem to have forgotten: “How could an attack protect a ceasefire?” 2. “Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, former National Security Adviser to the prime minister’s office, and the former head of the IDF’s Planning and Operation Branches” spoke to Jerusalem Post about the need to pre-emptively attack the tunnels as a result of the lessons learned from the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. He said it should have been done years ago. The reason for the threat: “We don’t control what goes in and out of Gaza”. I beg to differ. Israel may not control the arms and money flowing in through the tunnels-that is for certain. They do however control the import and export of goods and services to the civilian population of Gaza and have severely restricted them for well over a year. This makes the population dependant on the tunnels for more than weapons, but also for basic goods. The Post failed to mention the siege on Gaza or the proliferation of tunnels that it has caused. Ha’aretz mentions that Gaza has been sealed in response to the rocket fire, but declined to comment on how this would effectively strengthen Hamas and its ability to provide for people through the tunnel system. The siege affects civilians and does little to undermine the influence of Hamas in the Strip. -- See also: IAF Kills Islamic Jihad Terrorist in Northern Gaza Strikemore..e-mail
Ill Will
Khalid Amayreh, Palestine Think Tank 11/8/2008
Barring last-minute glitches, Palestinian political factions will meet in Cairo Saturday in a last ditch-effort to end the two-year rift between the Islamic group Hamas and the American-backed and financed Fatah organization. (It has been announced that the talks will be postponed indefinitely).
The Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks are being closely monitored by the Palestinian masses whose national cause has suffered immensely as a result of the enduring crisis between the two largest Palestinians political parties.
Israel and the US are also monitoring the talks, hoping that the Palestinians will remain divided for as long as possible in order to give Israel an additional pretext to keep up building Jewish-only colonies on stolen Arab land.
Israel and her guardian-ally, the US, have played a pivotal role in creating the showdown between Fatah and Hamas. more..e-mail
In league with the enemy!
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/6/2008
The Arab League will be at Union for the Mediterranean meetings. But is this confronting Israel or part of a process of normalisation, asks European Union foreign ministers and their counterparts from the members of the 43-member Barcelona Process Union for the Mediterranean concluded their two-day meeting in Marseille, France, on Tuesday with a decision to allow the participation of the Arab League in all meetings of the new union. This overrode an Israeli veto that wanted to restrict the Arab organisation to a more ceremonial, less influential role. As such, Arab countries that are not member of the Union for the Mediterranean will now be indirectly represented through the Arab League. "The Arab League will be present in all meetings of the Union for the Mediterranean. This is final," said Hisham Youssef, chief of the cabinet of the Arab League secretary-general. Youssef accredited the decision to "the firm Arab stance" that declined to succumb to pressures exercised by Israel on the European partners to exclude the Arab League from meetings of senior officials where all projects and decision-making is orchestrated. He also praised "high-level intervention on the part of President Hosni Mubarak, the co-chair of the Union for the Mediterranean," during a meeting last week with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the other co-chair, and "much support from within the European Union" including the support of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. more..e-mail
Pre-dialogue doubts
Saleh Al-Naami, Al-Ahram Weekly 11/6/2008
Hamas is insistent that it must be treated as an equal partner in Egyptian-sponsored reconciliation talks. Hamas leaders cross the Rafah borders on their way to Egypt The surprise visit by several Hamas leaders to Cairo this week was a sign of the lingering doubts Hamas leaders harbour about Cairo’s intentions, a well-informed Hamas source told Al-Ahram Weekly. Three things bother Hamas. One is Egypt’s refusal to respond to any of the amendments the movement suggested to the Egyptian paper on reconciliation. Another is Egypt’s desire to set a deadline for the conclusion of the talks. A third has to do with the way Cairo is likely to treat Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during the talks, due to start 9 November. Hamas is not going to attend the dialogue sessions, the source said, unless these three points are clarified. Specifically, Hamas leaders don’t want Abbas to take part in the dialogue as an independent sponsor of the dialogue, but as a party to the conflict. The movement doesn’t see Abbas as president of the Palestinian people, but rather as a "partner in the conspiracy against the movement and an accomplice in the blockade on Gaza". Consequently, Hamas doesn’t want Abbas to sit on the main podium while its representatives sit below with the rest of the factions. more..e-mail
Israel’s Man of the Year Eluded Justice
Mahmoud El-Yousseph, Palestine Chronicle 11/7/2008
’How on earth is this man not on the US no-fly list?’ After reading about Israel’s most recent Man of the Year Award recipient, I did not know whether to laugh or cry.It looks like the judging panel at the Israeli television station Channel 2 is in need of a public relations consultant. The recipient of this yearʼs award was Meir Dagan, the Chief of Mossad - the Israeli foreign intelligence agency. Meir Dagan is an unindicted war criminal with Arab blood on his hands. Major Israeli daily newspapers Ha’aretz and Yediot Ahronot immediately denounced the choice and described it as an embarrassment to Israelis. Ha’aretz ran an editorial on Mr. Dagan that was titled, "Killer of the Year". While Yediot Ahronot described Dagan as an opportunist who does not know the meaning of humanity or sympathy. It is amazing that a media outlet would select such a man for this prestigious title that does not make Israelis feel proud at home and respected abroad. There are several noted and noble Israeli men that come to mind who would be worthy of this distinction. more..e-mail
Politics versus civic life in Gaza
Rami Almeghari writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Electronic Intifada 11/7/2008
As the rival Palestinian political parties are set to engage in serious national unity talks in Cairo, the factional divisions have also led to a series of strikes by workers in the public sector. For the past 16 months, the ruling Hamas party in Gaza and the Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas have been at odds. While Hamas has taken measures against Fatah in Gaza, in the West Bank the reverse has occurred.
Abbas ordered a boycott of Hamas after the Islamist party took over Gaza amidst fighting with Fatah in June 2007, demanding that employees of the public sector not deal with a Hamas-run government. The repercussions from this decision have already been observed throughout many public services, as more than 45,000 government employees have been sitting idle since last summer.
The past few months have witnessed strikes in the education and health sectors.According to Samir Imtair, Director General of the Hamas-run chamber of governmental employees, 4,000 teachers have gone on a strike since August.Although the Ramallah-based government has distanced itself from these strikes, arguing that it continues to pay the salaries of those striking and non-striking teachers, these actions were initiated by Ramallah-based institutions, like the public employees syndicate and the teachers union. more..e-mail
Obama, Emanuel and the Promised Land
John V. Whitbeck, Palestine Chronicle 11/7/2008
’Obama named as his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran.’ In the first major appointment of his administration, President-elect Barack Obama has named as his chief of staff Congressman Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran whose father, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was a member of Menachem Begin’s Irgun forces during the Nakba and named his son after "a Lehi combatant who was killed" -- i.e., a member of Yitzhak Shamir’s terrorist Stern Gang, responsible for, in addition to other atrocities against Palestinians, the more famous bombing of the King David Hotel and assassination of the UN peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte. In rapid response to this news, the editorial in the next day’s Arab News (Jeddah) was entitled "Don’t pin much hope on Obama -- Emanuel is his chief of staff and that sends a message". This editorial referred to the Irgun as a "terror organization" (a judgment call) and concluded: "Far from challenging Israel, the new team may turn out to be as pro-Israel as the one it is replacing." more..e-mail
First Sign of No Change: Obama Hires Chief of Staff
Mazin Qumsiyeh – The West Bank, Palestine Chronicle 11/7/2008
As an immigrant who thrived in every way in the US for 29 years having arrived with nothing but my will to learn, I know that indeed anything is possible in the land of change. I have now relocated to the occupied West Bank, my birthplace, to help achieve other dreams of change I always had for other lands. We desperately need change here after 41 years of military occupation, 60 years of dispossession, and countless futile and destructive wars. Millions here and in forced exile hope and pray that a President Obama fulfils his pledge and immediately starts to work to bring peace to our tormented land and that he does it based on International law. Others also pin their hopes on Obama. Like African Americans, Arab-Americans (Muslims and Christians) and Muslim-Americans suffered significant prejudice that only increased after September 11, 2001. We looked with dismay as many took the wrong lessons from the events of that day and supported disastrous and self-destructive policies.Instead of looking at US foreign policy and the havoc it was reaping especially in the Middle East, neoconservative Zionists took charge of our foreign policy deciding that might makes right and that endless wars are the answer. more..e-mail
For Palestinians, There Are Two Obamas
Hasan Afif El-Hasan, Palestine Chronicle 11/7/2008
Barack Obama, the son of a black father from Kenya swept to victory as the US first black president. Despite the long campaign, the mud slung, the ugly inferences and demeaning charges, the elevation of Obama to the White House is a proud transcendent moment in the US history. It is a mile-stone that will be the start of a new age in race relationship in the US. A black family will reside in the White House that was originally built by slave black labor two centuries ago! America came a long way! Congratulations! There are many reasons for Obama’s success in the election of the first black president in the US. High among them is the ruinous legacy of President Bush foreign and domestic policies. The two costly wars and the economy in ruins would have failed any Republican nominee including the war hero and former POW, Senator John McCain. Mr. Obama ran an impressive campaign and he also received help from unsolicited source, Osama Ben Laden. Ben Laden could have released a message threatening the US, reminding the American people of 9/11 terrorist attack and got McCain elected, but he did not. Political analysts called such a Ben Laden message "October surprise". more..e-mail
Who Wants Arab Money?
Aijaz Zaka Syed – Dubai, Palestine Chronicle 11/7/2008
’Why should the Arabs offer their money without being assured of substantial returns?’ At the height of the Asian financial crisis and meltdown of Russia in 1990s, a pundit said that Boris Yeltsin went to bed drunk and Brazil woke up with a hangover. The Asian crisis was little more than a patch of rough weather, compared to the current financial catastrophe. This may be the biggest financial crisis the world has ever seen, even bigger than the 1929 Crash. The Depression was confined to the US and the world was not as globalized as it is today. For once one finds oneself agreeing with Tom Friedman. The world is indeed flat.Which is why from Asian tigers to India and China, and from the old Europe to Latin America, no one has emerged unscathed from the Wall Street carnage. Although the Gulf states have taken some drubbing, the region has largely managed to insulate itself against the total collapse as the US, Europe and other economies have experienced. Of course, this is not thanks to some clever thinking on the part of Arabs. It’s because of the simple fact that the region isn’t still fully integrated into the global financial system. more..e-mail
Bush’s Last Bullet: Why the US Attacked Syria
Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 11/7/2008
’US commandos killed eight Syrian civilians, including a father and his four sons.’ The sovereignty of an independent, stable country that has carried out many constructive moves in recent months and weeks, which could have surely contributed to the stabilization of the Middle East, has been violated, its borders breached and its civilians killed. But when the country targeted is Syria, an Arab country, and the perpetrator is the US military, then, somehow things are not as appalling as they may seem. The US raid on a small farming community near the Iraq-Syria border on October 26 is being treated differently than the Russian attack on Georgia in August 2008. The latter was vehemently condemned by every last leading US official, who specifically decried Russia’s violation of international law, laws governing the sovereignty of nations, and the destabilization of a whole region. Few in the US government, and fewer in the ever-willing mainstream media, dared offer any alternative reading to what truly triggered the conflict. For example, Georgia’s initial violent attacks on South Ossetia, killing many Russian citizens and peacekeepers, seemed a negligible fact. more..e-mail
’The life of an Iraqi is worth no less than that of an American’
Tariq Ramadan, The Guardian 11/8/2008
Barack Obama’s election is to be welcomed for several reasons. Yet we must not be lulled into complacency by naive estimates of what lies ahead. The eight years of George Bush’s presidency have accustomed us to errors, lies and manipulation. Since September 2001, the Bush regime has been obsessed by "war on terror" and the "axis of evil". Over time, Americans have awakened to the emptiness of these bellicose and arrogant slogans. Obama’s roots and his multiple cultural identities could not be of a greater contrast to that of his predecessor. His understanding of the countries of the world, particularly of the global south, point to a different future. Taken together, his life and experience make hope for a new understanding of domestic and international issues possible. Obama should become the symbol of a new United States, promoting domestic policies that favour justice and equality, improve urban life, broaden opportunity, and empower citizens of all origins. The first black president’s greatest achievement would be to cause people to forget his colour, and to implement more equitable social policies. more..e-mail
Let’s go to Egypt with optimism
Ibrahim Al-Laham, Ma’an News Agency 11/7/2008
Bethlehem – Ma’an – We are just 48 hours away from the beginning of Palestinian national unity talks in Cairo, and every side is now deciding whether or not to join in with live ammunition in a bid to disturb the atmosphere in preparation for its failure or postponement. To name just one of these underhanded preparations, Israel carried out a military operation in the central Gaza Strip, itself a violation of the truce that has prevailed for the past five months. The attack was carried out with a weak pretense but carries a strong message who whomever it may concern. Ever since Israel realized that the time for Palestinian national reconciliation had arrived, it had no other option but to attempt to stop it. An operation to press “reset” on the deepening rift among Palestinians. Hamas leaders took the bait, releasing pessimistic statements, carrying out wide-scale arrests, in which dozens of Fatah leaders were detained. more..e-mail
Protecting Yanoun
Paul Adrian Raymond, MIFTAH 11/6/2008
I consider myself an immensely privileged person. While my friends back home spend the rainy British afternoons indoors, fretting about global financial meltdown and wondering if there’s any chance of sunshine this year, I sit in the shade of an olive tree on a hillside overlooking a rust-red Mediterranean valley, and ponder. Compared to London, life in the northern West Bank village of Yanoun moves slowly. A boy of seven or eight stands near me with a plastic pipe and a bottle of detergent, blowing bubbles into the breeze. Lizards dart among the rocks and sparrows scrap noisily in the cracks of a barn wall. The only other sounds are cries from olive pickers in the valley, bleats of sheep and once every half an hour or so, the revs of a distant tractor. For Yanounis, the terms "credit crunch" and "financial crisis" are, like Tony Blair and the Icelandic Krona, largely irrelevant. But Yanoun, like many West Bank Palestinian villages, is no stranger to crisis. Six years ago, armed civilians from the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Itamar forced the entire population to evacuate. They smashed up property, destroyed the village’s electricity generator, mutilated sheep and cut down hundreds of ancient olive trees. Eventually, the village residents, fearing for their children, packed their bags and left. They only came back when Israeli and international peace organizations established a permanent base in the village. Since then, "foreigners" have been a constant presence. more..e-mail
Travesty of tolerance on display
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Intifada 11/6/2008
Israel seems to have little time for the irony that a modern Jewish shrine to "coexistence and tolerance" is being built on the graves of the city’s Muslim forefathers.
The Israeli high court’s approval last week of the building of a Jewish Museum of Tolerance over an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem is the latest in a series of legal and physical assaults on Islamic holy places since Israel’s founding in 1948.
The verdict ended a four-year struggle by Islamic authorities inside Israel to stop development at the Mamilla cemetery, which lies in the shadow of Jerusalem’s Old City walls, close to Jaffa Gate.
After the judgment, Jerusalem’s mufti, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, called the museum’s building "an act of aggression" against the Muslim public.
The furore from both religious and secular Palestinians has apparently bemused most Israeli observers.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, initiator of the project, dismissed objections last week as cover for "a land grab by Islamic fundamentalists, who are in cooperation with Hamas." His view that Muslim concerns are really an attack on the Jewish state’s sovereignty is shared by many. more..e-mail
A Palestinian refugee’s open letter to Obama
Abdelfattah Abusrour writing from Ramallah, occupied West Bank, Electronic Intifada 11/6/2008
Dear President-elect Barack Obama,
I would like to congratulate you on this victory, a victory that is not only yours, as you said in your speech, but also for those who believed in you, and who are full of hope for the change you promote and the wish that it comes through you and your efforts to lead your country and the world for a legacy and a heritage that is meaningful, and plant hope in a time of despair.
I have been fortunate and blessed in my life. I received a scholarship to continue my studies in France where I stayed nine years. I returned to my occupied country with a PhD because I believed that I could make a change and that I am a change-maker in breaking cultural stereotypes, and could show another image of my people and their beauty and humanity through nonviolent resistance against the ugliness and violence of the Israeli occupation. This was my goal in creating the Al-Rowwad Center with a group of friends, to allow our children to use theatre and the arts for social change and nonviolent means of self-expression to keep them alive, instead of becoming a number on a list of martyrs, or handicapped for the rest of their lives, or perish in prison. more..e-mail
An Open Letter to President-Elect Barack Obama - Mr. President, We Too Have A Dream
Abdul Basit, MIFTAH 11/6/2008
Dear Mr. President-Elect, Barack Obama, First of all, let me convey my heartiest congratulation to you on your election as the President of the United States of America. I consider your election as President of United States of America as a miracle in itself. Born as the son of a Kenyan man and a white woman from Kansas who weren’t well-off or well-known, through hard work and perseverance today you have become the President of United States of America. Unlike most of your predecessors, your humble background and past experience including your work as community leader will surely provide a different perspective about the reality from the grassroots level. Taking into consideration the path you treaded to reach the pinnacle of power, I surely believe that it is not without a purpose, particularly as you campaigned and got elected on the platform of ’Change’. I only hope that this purpose is for the well being of humanity as a whole. In fact, your election as the President of USA has suddenly brightened the image of your country and hope you enhance this expectation with the right policies that will unite humanity. more..e-mail
Liars
Khalid Amayreh, Palestinian Information Center 11/4/2008
Palestinian Authority (PA) officials and spokesmen have been lying through their teeth lately about their increasingly vile treatment of the Palestinian people. These people have been claiming, nearly on a daily basis, that their American-paid and trained forces are not arresting political activists and that only "criminals"ť and "terrorist elements"ť are being hounded and arrested. Well, we who live here in the West Bank, don’t have to be presumptive about what is happening in our neighborhoods, streets, towns and villages these days. We see the daily arrests with our own eyes, we know the detainees, we know their families and their friends. Hence, we don’t even have to compare and contrast various accounts of the disgraceful onslaught by the PA against the Palestinian masses. Things are simply too plain to be controversial. Hence, it is our responsibility as journalists to communicate the truth and facts concerning this unmitigated wave of repression by the Ramallah regime against its perceived political opponents. more..e-mail
Playgrounds for Palestine: One Marathon at a Time
Ramzy Baroud, Middle East Online 11/6/2008
My right knee is wrapped. My left ankle is iced. I lost the nail on my right big toe, and have about 20 blisters and a similar number of bruises on both of my feet. This doesn’t even begin to convey half of the story of the punishment that my body has been subjected to in recent months. Why, you ask? Because I will join Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian American activist, writer and founder of Playgrounds for Palestine -www.playgroundsforpalestine.org - in running the Philadelphia Marathon on November 23. Our goal is to raise enough money to build a large playground in a Palestinian refugee camp, likely in Lebanon. We are more than half of the way there, but have about 5,000 dollars to go. I ran a full marathon before (the Vancouver Marathon in Canada in May 2008). I finished at a 4:10:29 and intended to break the four-hour mark in the next run. But since then, I sustained a knee injury. Compounded with an old back injury, training for the Philly Marathon has been much harder than I thought it would be. more..e-mail
Twilight Zone / Child bride
Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz 11/6/2008
The incredible story of Khaleda Ghosheh - from the birth of her first son when she was 13, to her successful career as an author and magazine publisher
The scent of aromatic candles wafted through the crammed, ornate pink-walled room. A painting of a naval battle covers most of the wall behind her. The furniture is very stylized. On her desk - near a laptop, a fax machine, a pack of thin Parliaments from which she pulls a cigarette, and a good deal more - sits a photograph of her between her two sons. These are her two boys: The one she had when she was 13, who was taken from her at birth and whom she did not see again for 18 years, and the one she raised by herself. Khaleda Ghosheh is out to capture the attention of the Arab reader. After publishing two books (in Arabic) - "The Secrets of Life," the unbelievable story of her own trials and tribulations, and "The Key to Dreams," which she calls a spiritual work - she launched a glossy monthly magazine called Hatun (Hard Rain). The 48 well-designed pages of newly published issue No. 5 contain articles and photographs about a murder in the Old City of Jerusalem, a sheep pen used as a school, the Border Police’s "slaughterhouse" at the Atarot checkpoint, minibuses where drivers sell tickets for only NIS 4 but think they are in the Grand Prix, a triple murder in Ramallah and an interview with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ adviser on Jerusalem, in which he "talks about everything," according to the blurb on the cover. There are also recipes for an eggplant salad in tahini and advice on dealing with diabetes. more..e-mail
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Nobel Laureate: There is a way towards peace for Palestine 
