Facility 1391: Israel’s Guantanamo
By Jonathan Cook, Middle East Peace/Le Monde Diplomatique November 2003
Representatives of the Israeli left and Palestinian political forces signed a peace agreement in Geneva last month, promising a Palestinian state in the territories occupied in 1967, apart from 2.5% of the West Bank ceded to Israel for settlements. Its capital will be East Jerusalem and it will control all the Old Town except the Jewish quarter and the Western Wall. This shows peace is possible and the Israelis have partners in building it. Ariel Sharon's virulent denunciation of the agreement proves that it has embarrassed his government: refusing it would mean continuing violence.
FACILITY 1391, a concrete fortress in central Israel on a rise overlooking a kibbutz, is almost obscured by high walls and fir trees. Two watchtowers give armed guards extensive views of surrounding fields. From the outside it looks like many other police stations built by the British in the 1930s across the Mandate of Palestine. Today many serve as military bases, their location revealed by signposts showing only a number.
Facility 1391, close to the Green Line, the pre-1967 border between Israel and the West Bank, is different. It is not marked on maps, it has been erased from aerial photographs and recently its numbered signpost was removed. Censors have excised all mention of its location from the Israeli media, with the government saying that secrecy is essential to "prevent harm to the country's security". According to lawyers, foreign journalists divulging information risk being expelled from Israel. But, despite government attempts to impose a news blackout, information about more than a decade of horrific events at Facility 1391 are beginning to leak out. As a newspaper described it, Facility 1391 is "Israel's Guantanamo" (a reference to the Camp X-Ray prison for al-Qaida and Taliban captives run by the United States on occupied Cuban territory).
The Second Half of 1948
By Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, International Middle East Media Center 11/13/2003
Despite International opposition, Israel is building what it calls its "security fence" in the occupied Palestinian areas. Palestinians and human right advocates call Israel's separation barrier the "Apartheid wall." Over 300 cities had events against this project November 9 (chosen for the date another wall was dismantled: the Berlin wall). Sharon once said that this current "war" is "the second half of 1948". Is he right and how does the barrier fit in this?
The barrier is a 360 km system of fortifications consisting of very high concrete walls in some areas and of trenches, rows of barbed wires and high steel fencing in other areas. In the places where it is not made of 30 foot high concrete walls, it involves ditches, fences (both barbed wire and high steel wires), security roads along both sides of the fence for army patrols, and more ditches and barriers. It is a very expensive venture at roughly $1.6 Billion. US taxpayer gave Israel $5 billion this year in direct aid and many more billions in indirect aid. So perhaps we should learn a bit more about this project.
The first striking feature is where this wall is being built and it is an amazing route (maps at http://stopthewall.org). If you are building a wall or a fence for your security and want to patrol both sides of it you would build it two miles inside your territory. In this case it would be inside the armistice border of 1949. Instead the wall snakes its way in some places 10-20 miles inside Palestinian areas leaving them disjointed. It de facto annexes 50% of the West Bank to Israel.
Switzerland and the Geneva Accord: Undermining the Rule of Law
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights 11/13/2003
PCHR Position Paper: The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly denounces Switzerland’s involvement and endorsement of the so-called “Geneva Accord.”[1] PCHR asserts that Switzerland’s support of the Geneva Accord contradicts its duties both as the depository of the Geneva Conventions[2] and as a High Contracting Party to the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 1949 (Fourth Geneva Convention).
The Geneva Accord and International Humanitarian Law: The “Geneva Accord” an unofficial “peace proposal” drafted and endorsed by a group of Palestinian leaders and Israelis, including former members of the Israeli government,[3] with the sponsorship of the Swiss Foreign Ministry, was released in October 2003 and promoted as “the realization of the permanent status peace component envisaged in…the Quartet Roadmap process.”[4] The document is intended to give a detailed and comprehensive over-view of the “compromises” that are required[5] for “reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis”[6] to occur. The Geneva Accord has been marketed as a “breakthrough” in peace negotiations. However, PCHR asserts that the document’s “recommendations” undermine the fundamental individual and collective rights of Palestinians and undermine the rule of law by circumventing Israel’s obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law, specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The sad fate of a Bekaa family
By Julie Flint, Daily Star 11/13/2003
His crime was to have held captive an enemy pilot captured on Lebanese soil in the course of a bombing raid on Lebanese villages. His punishment was nine years incarceration, without charge or trial in Israeli jails. Seven of those years were spent in solitary confinement, in which he was denied virtually all contact with the outside world. There is more. But this much, at least, is undisputed.
The ordeal of Mustafa Dirani, kidnapped in May 1994 by Israeli commandos operating 80 kilometers inside Lebanon, may end soon if the prisoner exchange with Hizbullah agreed by the Israeli Cabinet on Sunday overcomes two final obstacles a dispute over the inclusion of Samir Kantar, a Lebanese sentenced to 542 years imprisonment for killing three Israelis in 1979; and an attempt by the family of Ron Arad, the navigator once held by Dirani, to bring criminal charges against the Lebanese detainee for allegedly torturing and beating Arad.
In an affidavit before a Tel Aviv court on Monday, Dirani denied ever torturing Arad. He claimed he treated him humanely, tending to a shoulder injury Arad sustained when he parachuted from his crippled plane and introducing him to his wife, Zeinab, and his children in the Bekaa Valley. The truth is unlikely to ever be known. Arad, shot down in 1986, has not been heard from since 1987 and may well be dead. He left Dirani’s custody in 1988 sold to the Iranians, according to Israeli intelligence; snatched by another armed group, according to Dirani. Only one thing is certain: the Arad family will fight tooth and nail to prevent Dirani’s release.....
Frightening Winds Swirl Around the House of Saud
Dissident Voice 11/11/2003
Osama bin Laden has an awful lot of friends in Saudi Arabia. In the mosque, among the disenchanted youth, among the security forces, even - and this is what the West declines to discuss - within the royal family.
Saudi ambassadors routinely dismiss these facts as "unfounded", but Sunday's attack in the capital, Riyadh, is part of a growing insurrection against Bin Laden's enemies in the House of Saud.
Whether or not the bombers were Saudi security force members - they were certainly wearing Saudi military uniforms - the Riyadh Government's own "war on terror" is now provoking bombings, gun battles and killings almost every day in the kingdom.
The enemies of the House of Saud want to make the kingdom ungovernable - just as America's enemies in Iraq want to make its occupation ineffective. Iraqis are still the principal victims of the bombings in Baghdad, just as Saudis were the principal victims on Sunday.
Clearly, after years of procrastination, the Saudi authorities are passing on some of their own intelligence to the US. For once, the latest warning from Washington - that al Qaeda's next attack was moving from the "theoretical" to the "operational" stage was spot on the mark.
But the Saudi royal family - that part still desperate for US assistance - provided plenty of reasons during the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq for their Arab enemies to attack them.
Divide and destroy
By Alex Klaushofer, The Guardian 11/13/2003
Israel's separation wall is creating a new kind of humanitarian crisis for the Palestinians who live in its shadow. Christian Aid's Alex Klaushofer witnesses the devastation of communities -- Over the past few months, the barrier that Israel is building to cut itself off from the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank has come to symbolise the divide between the two peoples at the heart of the Middle East crisis.
Cutting into Palestinian lands by up to six kilometres, the barrier takes different forms along its length - here an imposing concrete construction, there a steel fence and a tangle of barbed wire.
But whatever the barrier's form, its impact on the communities it dominates is devastating. In the farming villages of the northern West Bank, what was once a self-sufficient way of life is dying out because farmers cannot access their land.
The fertile valley that supported most of Jayyous's 3,500 people with yields from olive groves and citrus orchards is now locked behind the barrier, accessible to some only through gates administered by the Israeli army.
A few farmers are just managing to cling onto their land, forced to accept the permit system imposed by the Israeli authorities to get through the gate. Yet even with permits they must queue for the gate openings at the beginning and end of each day.
Sometimes the soldiers refuse to open the gate at all. In September it was closed for 20 days during the Israeli holiday season. At other times the soldiers just do not allow farmers through.
Correcting CNN's measurement of Israel's Apartheid Wall
By Michael F. Brown, Electronic Intifada 11/10/2003
For months CNN has misrepresented the facts of where Israel's apartheid barrier will run. Repeated interventions by Partners for Peace have only brought marginal improvements. Efforts on November 5-6, however, brought significant change.
On November 5, CNN wrote: "Israel has already constructed 93 miles (150 km) of the barrier in the north. When finished the barrier will stretch 217 miles (350 km) at an estimated cost of $200 million."
This simply is not the case. Numerous sources have put the anticipated length of the barrier at 400 miles and Molly Moore in the Washington Post of October 31 -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44374-2003Oct30_2.html -- cited the Finance Ministry as saying the final cost was expected to be $2.3 billion. Both figures are significantly higher than the totals cited by CNN.
Efforts by Partners for Peace brought the following change from CNN on November 6: "According to Defense Ministry spokeswoman Rachel Niedak-Ashkenazi, the planned fence route, which has been approved by the government, will be 690 kilometers (429 miles) long. Cost is estimated at $1.5 billion."
While the cost is not as high as stated in the Washington Post, it is far more accurate than the $200 million figure noted earlier. More importantly, Israeli Defense Ministry spokeswoman Rachel Niedak-Ashkenazi went on record with the highest figure Partners for Peace has seen to date on the anticipated length of the barrier. This is a clear indication that Israel intends to run the barrier right through the Jordan Valley -- effectively imprisoning Palestinians not just to the west but to the east as well.
Time to do away with the PA
By Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz 11/9/2003
This farce should have been ended long ago. If the leaders of the Palestinian Authority had been blessed with a greater measure of self-respect, readiness for personal sacrifice and political audacity, they would have long since declared the PA liquidated and left all the responsibility solely in Israel's hands.
If they were more concerned about the subjects they are supposed to be in charge of - the well-being of their nation - they would have resigned and thereby torn the mask from the false impression of the supposed government and the "state in the making." They would have ceased to be the fig leaf that serves and perpetuates the Israeli occupation. Instead, they cling to the few honors and benefits that Israel continues to confer on a few of them, and they go on lending a hand to the great deception that a sovereign Palestinian Authority and a government with powers exist.
Under a cover of empty titles, they continue to take part in the fraud while many in Israel and elsewhere find it convenient to go on believing that the Israeli occupation of the territories has not reverted to being total, and that there is a Palestinia government. "Ministers," "director-generals," "deputy ministers" and "governors," whose titles are empty and lack any authority, and who cannot rule or make decisions about anything except for the official cars and the VIP cards that enable them to go through checkpoints, continue to make a mockery of their nation and the international community.
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