Fortress Jerusalem Endangers Palestinians
Editorial, Foundation for Middle East Peace November -December 2
One decade after the beginning of the Oslo process raised the prospect of Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem, the government of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon is implementing a program that aims at undermining not merely the option of a sovereign Palestinian political presence in the city, but also its historical role as the hub of Palestinian civic and economic existence. The creation of a "Fortress Jerusalem" is symbolized not only by burgeoning communities of Israeli settlements, but most starkly by the construction of physical barriers of walls, fences, barbed wire, and trenches that threaten to encircle the city in the north, east, and south.
This new policy marks a crossroads in the extraordinary conceptual transformation that underlies Israel's contemporary approach to East Jerusalem. Israel once viewed its presence in East Jerusalem with confidence and enthusiasm. Fortress Jerusalem, in contrast, envisages a permanent confrontation with and subordination of Palestinian East Jerusalemites that promises a battlefield vision of the future. Despite its vaunted security function, the barriers now being constructed will fail as a security measure and will cause endemic Palestinian poverty, bloodshed, and resistance.
The original architects of Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem shared Sharon's objective--unchallenged Israeli rule over the city and its inhabitants--but they had a far different vision of the way to manage Palestinian opposition. Immediately after Israel's June 1967 conquest of the West Bank, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan fashioned a policy for East Jerusalem based upon Israeli annexation and expansion; extensive Jewish settlement; open borders with Israel as well as the city's West Bank hinterland, including unhindered trade and transport; and the creation of a preferred status for East Jerusalem's residents and institutions, symbolized by blue identity cards that distinguish them from West Bank residents.
A cruel game with rigged rules
By Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, Palestine Media Center 11/20/2003
Amnesty International stated that the major flaw of the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo accords was that they ignored human rights. These rights were affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International conventions. Yet Zionist leaders, backed unquestionably by our government, continue to peddle one after another "agreement" that ignores reality and human rights. The dozens of plans from the Roger's plan to the "road map", and to the Geneva accords only served to increase the violence and injustice. To understand this one has to understand the systematic and ongoing nature of the Zionist project. The truth of a brutal and ongoing colonization onslaught over 55 years has left 6 million of the 9 million native Palestinians as refugees or displaced people and cost countless lives well beyond its intended victims. Such plans will fail precisely because they do not address a reversal of these colonization practices but merely legitimizing them.
The facts of this systematized ethnic cleansing are shielded from American eyes by a media subverted by the minority in America who label themselves as Christian and Jewish Zionists. The facts are shielded from many Jews who travel to Israel on well-choreographed "tours" that shows them only what Zionist leaders want them to see. Some 5000 American Jews attended the conference of "United Jewish Communities" in Jerusalem recently. They heard speaker after speaker stressing the importance of "Jewish unity" in support of Israel in its supposed time of need. No visits were planned to the facilities where Israel holds the fourth largest stockpile of WMDs in the world (according to intelligence analysts). There were no planned visits to the dozens of unrecognized villages inside Israel. Nor were visits planned to refugee camps in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. There were no visits to the latest horror: the apartheid wall.
The wound that refuses to heal
By Amit Baruah, The Hindu 11/20/2003
Whether it was a hospital, a church, a mosque or a bank, the Israelis did not discriminate when they withdrew from Qnaytra — they bulldozed and blasted everything. -- IT IS as if time has stood still in Qnaytra. The Israelis razed everything to the ground in what was a town of 51,000 Syrians before pulling out after the Yom Kippur war of 1973. The 70-km-long ceasefire line between Syria and Israel almost touches the rubble of what must have been the bustling town of Qnaytra in 1967. Today, just a couple of families live there.
The Syrians have deliberately chosen not to rebuild the town. They have left it as a reminder of the Israeli occupation, and to impress upon the international community the need to undo the injustice done to them. Whether it was a hospital, a church, a mosque or a bank, the Israelis did not discriminate when they withdrew from Qnaytra — they bulldozed and blasted everything.
The ceasefire line and the areas around it are eerily silent. Barring the odd blue-bereted soldier of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force manning the checkpoints, and a solitary Syrian soldier in the dilapidated Golan Hospital, there are only huge blobs of mangled concrete.
But Qnaytra is not just about the past. It is about the Israeli present as well. A country that has deployed its vast armoury against the helpless Palestinians is showing continuity of a policy that has been sharply condemned by the U.N. General Assembly. On November 29, 1974, the General Assembly, in Resolution No.13240, regarded "Israel's deliberate destruction and devastation of the town of Qnaytra as a grave breach of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War, of August 12, 1949," and condemned "Israel for such acts."
"Spartheid" in Jerusalem
By Dr. Menachem Klein, Jerusalemites 11/20/2003
Enveloping Jerusalem is an attractive line for Israel since it is built on the Zionist ethos of 'taking our fate into our own hands', undertaking unilateral action and creating facts on the ground in accordance with exclusive Israeli interests. This ethos has an enormous attraction in Israel and it has only been strengthened by the assumption, a wrong one in my view, that 'there is no partner for a peace arrangement' or that 'there is nobody to talk to'. This has been the prevalent assumption since the summer of the year 2000: there is a great temptation to use unilateral action as an instrument that will be decisive in determining the wishes and deeds of the other party.
In 2002, Israel began to build systems of physical and electronic separation between Israeli and Palestinian territories and within the Palestinian areas, similar to the border systems between Israel and Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt. On the ground, up to now only part of the line has been built, but the government decided on its planned course in July 2003, and expropriation orders for the land have already been issued. If and when the plan will be implemented, it will constitute the most dramatic change effected by Israel in East Jerusalem since it was conquered and annexed in 1967. From the geographical point of view this de facto complex of walls changes the border of annexation. In many places the new line extends into the West Bank beyond the 1967 annexation, but without officially annexing the area. Israel is working to include Rachel's Tomb and the settlement Har Gilo in southern Jerusalem in the area of Israel, at the expense of areas belonging to Bethlehem and Beit Jalla.
Court to IDF: Stop Mistreating Pacifists
CounterPunch 11/13/2003
The Ben Artzi Verdict -- For an hour we sat in the overcrowded and badly ventilated courtroom of the Jaffa Military Court, listening to presiding judge, Colonel Avi Levi, reading out a long verdict--hard to understand as he was rushing through the document. The text gave different and contradicting pointers as to the outcome.
"We have become convinced of the sincerity of Yoni Ben Artzi's pacifist convictions, and we are far from feeling that the Conscience Committee acted at its best when it rejected his request for exemption. The assertion that he wanted to avoid military service for personal convenience does not stand up to the proven record of his spending than a year behind bars, and to his rejecting offers of easy and comfortable military service made to him by various high officers. Nor do we accept the prosecutor's contention that his participation in the Yesh Gvul rally proves him to be a political refuser rather than a pacifist. A pacifist could have political opinions, too. Objecting to Israel's rule behind the Green Line is exactly the opinion which we would expect a pacifist to hold and we would have been surprised to find him holding a different one.
"In his testimony in this court, Colonel Simchi--head of the Conscience Committee--admitted to many shortcomings of the committee which he led. He is to be commended for his honesty. Nevertheless, this committee is the constituted authority entrusted with determining whether or not a person liable for military service would or wouldn't get an exemption. This court is not empowered to act as a court of appeal upon the Conscience Committee.
The Swiss Agreement: A Promise or a Pretense?
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle 11/20/2003
The “Swiss Agreement”, thus far a symbolic peace initiative devised by ex-Israeli and Palestinian officials, embodies the perfect formula for an equally emblematic remedy to the Arab-Israeli conflict. As far as any association with reality is concerned, the agreement, as also seen by many Palestinians and Israelis, is another charade, whose only objective is to gratify the political fervor of the “publicity hounds”, as described by a Palestinian opposition leader.
Even before the hungry eyes probed the agreement’s blueprint, mistrust flared; even before the Israeli Labor Party’s media offices mailed out hundreds of thousands of copies to every Israeli household, the Sharon government was able to conclude that the agreement “reeked with bad odor.”
While the Israeli right has an abundance of reasons to feel threatened by the Geneva “breakthrough” – on political, ideological and religious grounds - Palestinian skeptics mulled over the peace proposal using another framework: the last time they rejoiced for a similar ‘breakthrough’, they forfeited more territories to Israeli settlements and militarized zones at yet a more rapid pace. In fact, since the last breakthrough in Oslo, in September 1993, the number of Israeli Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories has doubled in number.
Jenin: the massacre the world did not acknowledge
By Peter Lagerquist, Daily Star 11/20/2003
Israel wins propaganda battle from media perspective; Palestinians tell a different story - In the wake of intensified Israeli demolitions of Palestinian “lifescapes” in Gaza and the West Bank during the summer and fall of 2003, The Daily Star looks back at events that remain a tragically contested watershed for Palestinian narratives of their vanishing space, and international indifference in the face of its consequences:
JENIN: The low slung room lies just behind two stories of bullet-scarred community center off an indeterminate road, ground to dust by tank treads and corridors wrapped in martyr’s portraits. Here, the Jenin refugee camp stores the archives of its apocalypse. On the newly whitewashed walls exclamatory press clippings hang alongside gritty photographs of demolished houses, bodies disinterred from rubble and pictures of tanks and bulldozers rendered in bright children’s crayons. Graphic close-ups of charred torsos, severed limbs and bloodied faces swathed in bandages and martyr’s headbands all covered by somber patches of black cloth that both demur and titillate momentarily absorb two middle-school boys weaving through the small clutch of afternoon visitors. There are camp politicos and a handful of local journalists quietly talking shop in a corner, among them freelance photographer Mohammed Turkman.
The tall, terse man was among the first on the scene. He lights a cigarette before crossing to the image of an old woman crying in the rubble of her home.
“Look at this, is this not a massacre?” he asks.
Time to impose a solution on Israelis and Palestinians
Editorial, Daily Star 11/20/2003
The only given in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process at present is that the once-vaunted “road map” is in deep trouble. There have been many suggestions as to how the internationally backed proposal might be revived, but these have foundered on the same disagreements that fueled the breakdown in the first place. Much of the cause for the vulnerability of diplomacy on this front can be traced to poor leadership on the part of the principals. But the formula that keeps Israelis and Palestinians engaged in mutual mass suicide is not so simple: Dysfunctional personalities like Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat are not often found at the top of a political heap unless there is something fundamentally wrong with it. This is where Israelis and Palestinians have the most in common and so where any effort to save them from one another must begin.
Arafat is the only one of his kind: an Arab ruler freely and fairly elected by his own people. But the political hinterland to which he is answerable and by which his legacy will be determined extends far beyond the still-undetermined borders of the state he hopes to establish in Palestine. The agenda he represents also belongs in part to the entire Arab and Islamic worlds. No man could easily bear such a towering responsibility, least of all one with Arafat’s manifest limitations.
Sharon has won two consecutive mandates from a weary electorate that wants peace but increasingly sees it as a chimera. Again, though, the forces that act on the former general’s leadership are only partly based in his own country. Like all Israeli leaders, he is also beholden to the institutions of international Jewry, specifically its hefty American component. Their concerns and demands have to be taken into account, often before their repercussions can even begin to be calculated. For more than 50 years these levers have acted to keep the floodgates open for a flow of blood and tears.....
Just where does the optimism come from?
Ha'aretz 11/20/2003
ROME - On his last visit to Rome, in the summer of 2001, Ariel Sharon was greeted by a stormy demonstration in Venice Plaza, the city's main square. When he was back there this week, the demonstrators were gone, replaced by hundreds of wreaths laid in memory of the Italian policemen killed in Iraq. The national mourning in Italy, which for the first time suffered a blow from Arab terrorists, was a convenient backdrop to Sharon's visit.
Sharon effused affection and expressed his condolences, and the Italians responded in kind. His hosts, led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, avoided the usual criticism of Israeli activities in the territories so common in Europe. According to the Israeli entourage, the only criticism about the separation fence was that Israel is not properly explaining its importance.
....Sharon couldn't have asked for more in Europe. There's a chasm of misunderstanding between him and the Europeans: Sharon interprets their criticism of Israel's actions against the Palestinians as an expression of anti-Semitism, meant to deny the Jewish state its right to self-defense. He believes Israel must struggle for its legitimacy, and that the campaign is not lost.
....It is difficult to find any real enthusiasm for Qureia among Sharon and his aides. The great expectations from Mahmoud Abbas have disappeared with regard to his heir, who is perceived as much more sophisticated and practical. But the Israeli approach is full of hope - even though it is not clear what it is based on, unless it is meant to prepare the groundwork for blame in the future.
Sonallah Ibrahim’s nostalgia for failure
By Charles Paul Freund, Daily Star 11/20/2003
These should be pleasing years for Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim. He ought to be enjoying fame not only among Arab readers, but among all readers for his lifetime of political involvement and literary achievement. At a minimum, the West’s anti-globalization left should be acknowledging Ibrahim’s prophetic foresight. More than 20 years ago his most accomplished work of fiction, The Committee, addressed many of the issues of globalization before “globalization” had emerged as a debate; indeed, before many of today’s student protesters in Europe and the United States were even born.
Indeed, not only was Ibrahim a generation ahead of his time, he managed to play the political prophet with humor, a rare virtue in modern Arabic fiction. In The Committee, Ibrahim’s narrator says of Coca-Cola that nothing “embodies the civilization of this century or its accomplishments, let alone its future, like this svelte little bottle, which is just the right size to fit up anyone’s a**.” At another moment, the same character “celebrates” the arrival of Arab unity, noting that at last Arabs are united in something: filling their homes with goods made somewhere else.
Yet, despite his sharp wit, despite his appreciation for the power of a good story, Sonallah Ibrahim’s own story becomes less satisfying and increasingly combative as the years go by. Last month, he was in the news for refusing Egypt’s major literary award, choosing to do so in a manner that not only maximized the embarrassment to Egypt’s cultural establishment, but that probably sealed his own estrangement from that establishment though that surely does not matter to him....
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
By Kurt Nimmo, CounterPunch 11/18/2003
"Israel has been urging America to invade Syria, but America seems to be reluctant. So, in order to force the hands of America, Israel is going to invade Syria," Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told the official Bernama news agency recently. "When that happens, the Americans will have to support Israel due to domestic political reasons that make Jewish votes a major factor in its presidential election."
It's hardly a secret that pro-Zionist financial contributions exact disproportionate influence on American politics and foreign policy. Israel "has become a veritable state of the United States," Mitchell Kaidy wrote in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs back in 1997. "Indeed, with media cooperation and assistance, Israel has ascended to the ranks of an affluent, belligerent yet untouchable super-state." It is precisely this inviolable status that allows Ariel Sharon and the Likudites to do almost anything they please.
"No one in authority will admit a calamitous reality that is skillfully shielded from the American people but clearly recognized by most of the world: America suffered 11 September and its aftermath and may soon be at war with Iraq, mainly because US policy in the Middle East is made in Israel, not in Washington," wrote Paul Findley, a former congressional representative. "Israel is a scofflaw nation and should be treated as such. Instead of helping Sharon intensify Palestinian misery, our president should suspend all aid until Israel ends its occupation of Arab land Israel seized in 1967.
Which kind of binational state?
By Meron Benvenisti, Ha'aretz 11/20/2003
In the rush of refreshing statements heard lately, the warnings have come from the length of the political spectrum - from Ami Ayalon to Ehud Olmert and the Geneva accord initiators and Jewish intellectuals in America - Israel faces "a threat that could spell the end of the Jewish state," meaning the danger of the binational state. Within a few years, there will be a Palestinian majority between the Jordan and the Mediterranean and according to Olmert "more and more Palestinians are no longer interested in a solution of two states for two peoples." The result is "a disaster - one state for two people."
The vast majority of public opinion rejects that option and the academic sector is revolted by the binational concept, "which hasn't solved any conflict in the world and does not work anywhere except in Switzerland." The opposition is so strong and emotional that seemingly there's no need to even define what kind of regime it would be and what the term "one state for two peoples" might mean. Examining various regimes included in the binational model might show perhaps that one or more of the options could actually please some of those who meanwhile so vehemently denounce the binational approach as a disaster.
The connection between losing the Jewish demographic majority and the fear of the demand for equal voting rights for everyone - one man, one vote - that would bring an end to the Jewish state shows that the type of regime identified with binationalism is a classic liberal regime of individual rights in a unitary, centralized state, without any regard for ethnic-collective rights.
|
