Barbed-wire Screen, Smoke Screen
By B. Michael, Translated by Tal Haran, Arabic Media Internet Network/Yediot Ahronot 10/31/2003
A lot of “separating” can be achieved with 3,000 km (2,000 miles) of barbed-wire: separating livestock from its owners, olives from their harvesters, vines from their pickers, a doctor from his patients, a worker from his place of work, a teacher from his students. Especially the farmer from his land. One kind of separation will not be obtained by the thousands of barbed kilometers: Separating the suicide-bomber from his victims.
Three thousands kilometers of barbed-wire have been stretched along the “first phase” of the “separation fence”. Three million meters. Equal to the distance between Israel and Switzerland . A lot of “separating” can be achieved with 3,000 km of barbed-wire: separating livestock from its owners, olives from their harvesters, vines from their pickers, a doctor from his patients, a worker from his place of work, a teacher from his students. Especially the farmer from his land.
Only one kind of separation will not be obtained by thousands of barbed kilometers: separating the suicide-bomber from his victims. He – as we have learned from the State Comptroller's report on security procedures – will continue to reach his objective as he does today: through the checkpoints, usually in a motor vehicle, in appropriate disguise, in possession of false identification. And he will continue to storm his way towards his wretched loss, taking with him the lives of innocents. The fence will not stand in his way. Quite the contrary: the criminal will go to his death reassured that thanks to this fence, his dispatchers will easily recruit his potential successors. The fence will supply them with the infrastructure of despair, loss of hope, and fortify hatred, frustration, madness. It will hand them the infrastructure for terrorism.
Israel: an apartheid state?
By Leila Farsakh, Le Monde Diplomatique November 2003
BISHOP DESMOND TUTU, the South African Nobel Prize winner, described how he saw on his visit to Israel "much like what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about" (1). Comparisons between apartheid South Africa and Israel/Palestine have often been made, but not always clearly explained. Many factors have made the comparison attractive.
The first, perhaps most important, is the historical colonialist foundation of the two conflicts. White settlers in South Africa, like Zionist pioneers, colonised a land already inhabited. As in South Africa, the settlers in Palestine expelled the indigenous population, some two-thirds of the Palestinians in the land that became Israel in 1948, took possession of their properties and legally segregated those who remained.
However, admitting that Israel’s foundation was colonialist does not mean that it is compar able to apartheid South Africa. As Gershon Shafir, a leading Israeli sociologist, has noted, while both conflicts were about control of the land, they took place in different historical and economic conditions that had an impact on their evolution and their relation to the natives (2).
White South Africans and Israelis dealt differently with the indigenous demographic reality. In Palestine the Zionist project wanted to negate the idea of a native non-Jewish population, coining the phrase "people without a land for a land without a people" (3). It sought to establish Jewish demographic dominance by expelling Palestin ians and preventing structural dependence on the Palestinian economy, particularly on its labour. Before 1948 fewer than a third of the workers in the Jewish sector were Palestinian (4). From 1948-67, the remaining Palestinian Arabs supplied no more than 15% of the labour force (5).
"A brave and moving response to the refusenik pilots. A must read..."
By Yehuda Nuriel, Alternative Information Center 12/1/2003
[AIC Note: The following Hebrew piece was published on 10 October 2003 in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv's chain of local magazines. Within 48 hours, Ma'ariv's editor in chief fired its author, columnist Yehuda Nuriel. The item, part of Nuriel's weekly column Midbar Yehuda (The Yehuda Desert), was titled "A brave and moving response to the refusenik pilots. A must read..."] -- Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.
What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence of our people, the sustenance of our children and the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator.
The world has no reason for fighting in our defense, and as a matter of principle God does not make cowardly nations free.
Our nation wants peace because of its fundamental convictions. We want peace also owing to the realization of the simple primitive fact that no war would be likely essentially to alter the distress in our region. The principal effect of every war is to destroy the flower of a nation. We need peace and desires peace!
The war against our enemies cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. Man has become great through struggle. Whatever goal, man has reached is due to his originality plus his brutality. If you do not fight, life will never be won. The man who has no sense of history is like a man who has no ears or eyes. It must be thoroughly understood that the lost land will never be won back by solemn appeals to God, nor by hopes in any United Nations, but only by the force of arms.
Tension and depression
By Laura Gordon, Electronic Intifada 12/1/2003
1 December 2003 -- Every time I write I marvel at how many hours it takes me to pass through the intimidation of the computer screen's obliterate pixelation to decide that how I feel about Rafah might come with words attached.
The days are suddenly sliding full speed into winter. The sun, like a cheerful pop-up birthday card closing in the distracted hands of a child, is sliding behind the clouds. Some days it rains just enough to lay small buds of water on the taxi windows and I run between two worlds, crouching in the memory of the rain of rainy bus stops back home, the wind blowing through my clothes. But the wind is not simple wind here, it carries the emptiness of destroyed homes at the edge of town, the flat sand as obscene as an open door permitting an unwelcome dinner guest. And the puddles are not innocent but bring to mind images of sewage water surfacing after tanks have uprooted the streets and bulldozers broken the water pipes.
As winter creeps through the door uninvited, Abu Jameel grows his beard from the first day of Ramadan and doesn't shave for Eid. I've seen pictures of him from years ago, and in all of them he is cleanshaven and smiling.
The killing fields of Rafah
By Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz 11/30/2003
Quietly, far from the public eye, Israeli soldiers continue killing Palestinians. Hardly a day goes by without casualties, some innocent civilians, and the stories of their violent deaths never reach the Israeli consciousness or awareness. If there is one consistent piece of data in the current intifada, it is the number of Palestinian casualties: dozens a month, unceasingly.
There were 30 in November, 57 in October, 33 in September. In May and June, the number of casualties reached 60 a month (all data supplied by B'Tselem). While Palestinian terror shocks us with its brutality, the daily killing of innocent Palestinians in far greater numbers is ignored - unless it is a case of an army operation as in Nusseirat refugee camp in October.
Here's a list of victims from the last month, taken from the margins of the daily newspaper chronicles: A 32-year-old motorcyclist shot to death in the chest after soldiers said he tried to escape a checkpoint near Iskar refugee camp; a 10-year-old boy from Sejaya in Gaza who was bird hunting with a slingshot near the separation fence around Gaza, killed by a tank shell fired at him; an eighth-grader from Barukin, near Jenin, who threw stones at soldiers, shot dead; a youth shot to death during "disturbances" after the funeral of his friend in Jenin; a taxi driver and father of six shot to death in Tul Karm by soldiers who thought he was trying to get away; a 15-year-old killed in Yata during some arrests; a nine-year-old killed by IDF fire in Rafah; and three Palestinians who were on their way to the holiday dinner last Wednesday in Gaza, killed by soldiers who claimed they thought the three were an armed cell.
One Road Under the Vast Blue Sky
By Tala A-Rahmeh, Miftah 12/1/2003
As we cross roadblocks all around West Bank and Gaza, we get a million different feelings, and we get lost between agony, humiliation, fear and a strange desire to live.
How can a small roadblock, set this fire inside us?
We Palestinians are always afraid of getting used to it, of reaching this frightening stage and being broken internally.
But each morning as we pass these roadblocks, we are equipped with our humanity knowing that we are the ones who will defeat this space, and create endless horizons…
SURDA: For me this word doesn’t need definition! When I hear it, something inside of me aches.
The name Surda is actually the name of a village that is located near Ramallah, and the roadblock was named after it because it’s the closest to it. The roadblock is situated at the Ramallah end of the road, less than one kilometer beyond the borders of the town on the main artery to 33 villages. This road has been blocked for two years now and it is the only remaining road to reach Ramallah since all the other roads were systemically closed off by the Israeli army.
Then the roadblock became closed to vehicular traffic, including public transportation, so taxis started parking on both ends of the roadblock to pick up people after their walking journey.
Incident in Lisbon
By Uri Avnery, Arabic Media Internet Network 11/29/2003
A few days ago I had a collision with Miguel Angel Moratinos, the astute Spanish diplomat who for several years acted as the emissary of the European Union in our region.
Together with experts from a dozen countries – from Brazil to Pakistan - we took part in a conference of the Portugese Institute for Strategic Studies. In the debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ahmad Khalidi, the editor of a prestigious Palestinian publication and the scion of one of the most distinguished families in Jerusalem , also took part.
In my lecture I criticized the reluctance of Europe to exert pressure for peace. I said that this attitude was “scandalous”. Khalidi, on his part, also harshly criticized the Europeans.
When it was Moratino's turn to speak, he reacted angrily. How do you have the impertinence to complain about Europe ? he asked, raising his voice. Where is the Israeli peace movement that should have changed the political situation in Israel ? Why is its voice not heard? Do you want Europe to do your job for you? And, addressing Khalidi: You want Europe to do something for you? Than first of all please put an end to terrorism! If you are not able to do this, don't blame Europe! Blame yourself! If both of you do your part, Europe will do its share, too!
(By the way, during the official dinner, Moratinos recounted that after the failure of the Camp David summit, the Europeans talked the Americans into setting up a Clinton-Arafat meeting. Arafat was due to fly to Washington on January 1, 2001. But Ehud Barak opposed it so violently, that the meeting was cancelled and the Taba talks took place instead.)
Moratinos was quite right in his criticism. We tend indeed to blame others for our own failures. We cannot demand that foreigners – whether Europeans or Americans – do our job for us. If the peace camp does not constitute a political power in Israel , we should not blame others. The same goes for the Palestinians.
Normal life in Rafah
By Melissa, Electronic Intifada 12/1/2003
27 November 2003 -- Most of the time life in Rafah seems normal. A bustling city -- taxis honking and speeding through the crowded streets, schoolchildren in their uniforms on their way to and from school, merchants of all types with their colourful wares lining the streets -- fruits, clothes, household items -- the perfume of life filling the air. Everywhere things seem normal, then all of a sudden something will happen and the facade of normalcy will disappear, and the ugliness of the reality will show through.
A few days ago I was walking down the street with a friend, going to visit his sister. We had just come from his family's house where we ate a delicious meal, breaking our Ramadan fasts. As we turned a corner and entered another neighbourhood the illusion of normalcy disappeared. The buildings beside us were punctuated with several bullet holes. A normal sight in Rafah, bullet ridden buildings are a constant reminder that life here is not normal, as you and I who make our homes in the West, who have never seen conflict, define normal.
Along with the bullet-ridden buildings comes the reality of how they are created. Starting in the early evening and continuing until dawn there is regular gunfire -- coming from any number of sources. Sniper towers surround Rafah, thereby controlling it almost completely. At almost any point in the city you could be shot and killed by a sniper. Bullets fired from the towers can kill for up to 5 kilometres.
The Case of a Rape Foretold
By Paul de Rooij, Miftah 11/28/2003
Amnesty International is primarily motivated not by human rights but by publicity. Second comes money. Third comes getting more members. Fourth, internal turf battles. And then finally, human rights, genuine human rights concerns. - Francis Boyle, Prof. of International Law and former board member of Amnesty International [1]. -- Human Rights organizations used to play an important role raising awareness of human rights abuses, scoring an occasional point with one state or another, and were instrumental in releasing a handful of hapless prisoners. However, they have increasingly abdicated their role as modern-day paladins of justice, to become politically manipulated organizations that are more concerned with fundraising or appearing on TV. Several authors have described how human rights organizations have played a role in priming the propaganda pump prior to war; these accounts make sobering reading, and they dispel preconceptions about some of these organizations [2].
A recent UN report confirmed that the situation for the Palestinians is desperate and has reached crisis proportions [3]. The report goes so far as to state: "a UN committee monitoring human rights abuses of Palestinians [for the last 35 years] has concluded that the situation in the Israeli-occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank was the worst ever last year." This situation is chronic, and indeed, mass abuses of human rights have been going on for decades. Anyone concerned with justice for the Palestinian people must wonder what position human rights organizations have taken on the issue and what they have reported. In the case of Amnesty International, it is a sorry and dubious record. This article presents an in-depth look at AI's poor record in monitoring the plight of the Palestinians during the second Intifada. [This article is a follow-up to: "AI: Say It Isn't So" (CounterPunch, Oct. 31, 2002).]
Adam Shapiro: “A Clean Break, A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”
Institute for Research - Middle Eastern Policy 11/26/2003
Thank you ladies and gentlemen, and thank you to IRmep for inviting me, and also to Congresswoman Holmes-Norton. I actually have, I want to thank her and commend her for hosting this event also issue something of a warning: the last time I was invited to speak on Capitol Hill the staff that invited me received threatening phone calls from other Congressmen, as Ms. Williams alluded to, the cowardice here on Capitol Hill. And one staff member was actually threatened, her job was threatened.
....There are two basic assumptions of the ‘Clean Break’ report which are based on complete falsehoods and sort of, almost fabrications in an attempt to create new realities on the ground. And it’s important to note that this ‘Clean Break’ report was prepared for Prime Minister Netanyahu, who, at the helm of the Israeli government and, of course responsible for participating in the peace process during those years, 1996-1999, did more damage to the peace process, which then set the stage, of course, for the current Prime Minister, Sharon, to pretty much bury it.
The first assumption is that the peace process years, under the Labor leadership, the labor Party, and notably Prime Minister Rabin and Prime Minister Barak, that these were years that undermined Zionism and undermined Israel in some way. And one of the reasons, one of the ways, that this report points to, is economic policies, that Israel was suffering economically in this period, this peace process period, and that this was undermining the character of the Jewish state, the character of Zionism, in Israel.
Nothing could be more untrue.
How Occupation can Corrupt the Occupiers Absolutely
By Mustapha Karkouti, Palestine Monitor/Gulf News 11/26/2003
Occupation is, indisputably, an effective tool of corruption. Apart from the large scale destruction inflicted on "the occupied", history has shown that occupation can do a lot more damage on "the occupiers". The Vietnam legacy still lives within the American social fabric three decades after it ended. Though it was a difference in nature and goals to the continuous Israeli occupation of Arab lands, the American adventure in Vietnam brutalised US moral and political standing in the world.
For years, Israeli liberals and peace activists and sections of Jewish society in the Diaspora, had the slogan in demonstrations against the Israeli occupation of Arab lands, has been "the occupation corrupts."
Decades have elapsed since Israel first occupied Arab territories in 1967. The Jewish state seems to be reaping what it sowed: ordinary Israeli kids join the army and become sadistic monsters, just by complying with its rules.
Soldier's Account: To understand to what extension occupation corrupts Israeli young men and women serving in the army, one has to read one soldier's account about his regular service at the army's checkpoints in the Palestinian territories.
The leading Israeli writer, Gideon Levy, brought this issue to the open in Haaretz last week. He revealed how checkpoints, which are measures in theory meant to secure movements in emergency situations only, have become breading ground for growing human "monsters." His article, gave a partial answer from an Israeli Staff Sergeant. It is a frank introduction to only one aspect of occupation: checkpoints.
No legitimate peace talks without elections
By Dr. Mustapha Barghouthi, Palestine Monitor 11/26/2003
This may only be Ahmed Qurei''s second attempt, albeit in as many months, at forming a government, but the cabinet ratified on November 12 is the fifth Palestinian government to be formed in the space of a year.
Furthermore, the circumstances from which it arises have altered only negligibly from those surrounding all previous attempts.The still dominant unrepresentative ''old guard'' continues to rob the political system, and peace negotiators, of any legitimacy.
Meanwhile, the continuing impasse provides both Ariel Sharon, Israel''s prime minister, and Hamas, the Islamist militant group, with justification for maintaining the status quo and pursuing their respective interests.
Gloomy predictions about the fate of Ahmed Qurei''s government are perhaps inevitable in the light of the fate of the previous four. Yet the dynamics responsible for the succession of failures remain all too clear.
The fact that Palestine has experienced five consecutive governments in less than a year clearly reflects a profound crisis in the Palestinian political structure - a crisis bound to persist as long as the Palestinian political system remains a "closed" system.
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