Sharon's Speech: Decoded Version
By Uri Avnery, Media Monitors Network 12/22/2003
He read out the written text of his speech, word for word, without raising his eyes from the page.
It was vital for him to stick to the exact wording, since it was an encoded text. It is impossible to decipher it without breaking the code. And it is impossible to break the code without knowing Ariel Sharon very well indeed.
So it is no surprise that the flood of interpretations in Israel and abroad was ridiculous. The commentators just did not understand what they had heard. That’s why they wrote things like “He did not say anything new”, “He has no plan”, “He is marking time”, “He is old and tired”. And the usual Washington reaction: “A positive step, but…”
Nonsense. In his speech, Sharon outlined a whole, detailed – and extremely dangerous – plan. Those who did not understand – Israelis, Palestinians and foreign diplomats - will be unable to react effectively.
Here is the deciphered text of Sharon’s “Herzliyah speech”:
The name of the game is Hitnatkut (“cutting ourselves off”). Meaning: most of the West Bank area will become de facto a part of Israeli, and the rest we shall leave to the Palestinians, who will be enclosed in isolated enclaves. From these enclaves, the settlements will be removed.
Daily dehumanization
By Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz 12/21/2003
Bashar Awis was dying in a hospital. Though there was no doubt that he only had a few hours left, none of his relatives were by his bed at Haemek Hospital in Afula. Awis, a 29-year-old father of two from the Balata refugee camp in Nablus, was a prisoner at Megiddo Prison. Circumstances surrounding his death on December 8 remain unclear.
This much is known: Had it not been for one minimally respectful doctor, he would have died alone. After one of the hospital's physicians discretely phoned Physicians for Human Rights, the organization brought Awis' mother and wife to Haemek Hospital. Up to that point, nobody thought to notify the family, as is done in human society.
As it turns out, even in a hospital - a place where human compassion is supposed to be the sole operating norm - a Palestinian is still not on the same footing as other human beings. This process of dehumanizing the Palestinians has spread to every sector of Israeli society. What started in the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service, and spread to other branches of power and to the media (which has, for years, deliberately emphasized the violent side of Palestinian reality) has now permeated every part of Israel's social fabric. That's apparently the only way a state can continue with a conquest and oppression without being overly concerned about what it means to the conquered.
The Political Legacy of Edward Said
By Irene Gendzier, Palestine Chronicle 12/21/2003
"Said's recent writings speak to political realities in the Palestinian landscape that remain little known and inadequately appreciated. And they do so by giving voice to 'emerging alternatives', those that reveal the dogged determination of hope and human solidarity as the bases of a Palestinian and Israeli future, unlike the past .."
In the fall of 2002, before the U.S. led the invasion of Iraq, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz ran an article by Akiva Eldar on a meeting held in Washington for some members of the Pentagon. The host was Richard Perle, then Chair of the U.S. Defense Policy Board. The sponsor was an unnamed think tank. The subject was the future shape of the Middle East. The slide show depicted "Iraq: a tactical goal, Saudi Arabia: a strategic goal," as well as describing "Palestine is Israel, Jordan is Palestine, and Iraq is the Hashemite Kingdom."[1]
Several months later, a leading Palestinian doctor and grassroots activist, Mustafa Barghouthi, Director of the Health Development and Information Policy Institute, in Ramallah, appeared to confirm the ominous "visions" described earlier in Washington. Denouncing "Israeli measures taken against the Palestinians," as "perhaps more dangerous than those taken in 1948," Barghouthi observed that, "under Sharon's plan for the Palestinians, they may now be clustered in ghettoes over no more than 9% of historic Palestine."[2]
In the interval, a handful of Israeli journalists and activists regularly denounced the very same Israeli policies, demonstrating their solidarity across the landscape of checkpoints and ghettoes, pointing, as did Gideon Levy, to the role of the Israeli military in promoting the progressive dehumanization of the Palestinians.[3]
The Geneva Accord: War against Memory and Denial of Reality
Palestine Monitor/PENGON/Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign 12/19/2003
The signatories and supporters of the Geneva Accord are spreading the idea that the Accord will achieve a historic reconciliation, defined primarily as each party recognizing the other’s right to a state. While the Palestinians would have to recognize--for the millionth time—Israel as a Jewish state, the Israelis will recognize a Palestinian state, in whatever form it will take, at a later date. Most notable is that this reconciliation that the Accord refers to is a final resolution to the conflict in which the Palestinians will no longer be able to make any “claims related to events prior to this agreement.” And yet, the main issue does not lie in the recognition of a Palestinian state, but in the composition of the Palestinian state, as the kind of state the Accord refers to is the main reason why Palestinians, overwhelmingly, reject the Accord. The fact remains that the Accord is almost totally removed from the reality of the Occupation, which, like the Wall, continues unhindered.
The Geneva Accord is built upon the structure of the Oslo Accords which have already proved through their failure that the signing of any "agreements" cannot happen while the Occupation is in place. In Oslo, both parties signed agreements and began the implementation of so-called negotiations which, while continuing for more than seven years, neglected Israel’s intensifying land confiscation, expansion of existing and building of new settlements, as well as the construction of a network off by-pass roads throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip—all of which destroy the continuity of the land and limit the growth of Palestinian communities. This escalating reality compounded by the many other restrictions on Palestinians’ lives led to the Israeli intended deterioration of the Palestinian life economically, socially and politically which brought resistance for the second Intifada.
Bush Administration is Undermining Democracy in Palestine
By Kevin Murray, Miftah 12/20/2003
Aid to Palestinian civil society organizations has always been a tough sell in the United States, but perhaps never as tough as it is today. Images of Palestinians as doctors providing trauma treatment, human rights workers documenting abuses on all sides, or city dwellers planting urban gardens in Gaza seldom appear on the evening news. Palestinians are doing all of these things and more. Their work is central to any vision of a democratic future for the Palestinians, and a just solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
But in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, anti-terror legislation combined with divisive rhetoric surrounding the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan have created a vicious climate of suspicion around any charitable work in the Middle East, especially in Palestine.
The Bush administration has used this climate to challenge the independence of all U.S. aid organizations. Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said last May that any U.S. organization taking USAID funding should consider itself an "arm of U.S. foreign policy." The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank that counts among its distinguished alumni many Bush administration officials, has launched a well-financed aid-monitoring project called NGOWatch to counter what it calls the "growing power of an unelected few."
Everyone sees no one to talk to
By Danny Rubinstein, Ha'aretz 12/22/2003
Recent public opinion polls reflect a familiar tale of a willingness to make concessions, but accompanied by a familiar complaint - "there's no partner, no one to talk to." The Israeli public, for the most part, realizes that a Palestinian state will be established, that settlements will be uprooted, and even that concessions will be made in Jerusalem, but they don't see anyone on the other side who can be relied on.
....The facts are known - apart from the bloodshed and other terrible damage done to Israelis and Palestinians during the 40 months of the intifada, there is also the great damage to trust on both sides. "You don't believe Abu Amar (Chairman Yasser Arafat), and we don't believe Abu Omri (Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whose son's name is Omri)," said an editor of one of the Palestinian newspapers recently.
In this connection, Ariel Sharon's plan to "disengage" from the Palestinians constituted the climactic expression of lack of trust on Israel's part. The Palestinians understand that with this plan, Ariel Sharon, and perhaps most of the Israelis, are confronting them with certain facts. Israel is building fences and separating walls according to the borders of its choosing, and it will remove from the areas beyond the fences most of the Israelis who have settled there. You Palestinians will have to manage with what is left for you. Place whoever you want at the head of the PA - Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, Ahmed Qureia, maybe even the leaders of Hamas - it doesn't interest Israel.
If Libya can do it, why not Israel?
By Peter Preston, The Guardian 12/22/2003
We can no longer turn a blind eye to the fifth largest nuclear power -- There's a logic to these things. Muammar Gadafy, growing older, and his isolated Libya, growing poorer, were getting nothing worthwhile from the atomic bomb they hadn't built yet or chemicals they had scant residual use for. Logic - and common sense - meant changing tack. Good for logic. But logic doesn't stop there. What next? If weapons of mass destruction are a menace in unstable regions such as the Middle East, if their availability must be reduced, then logic begins to move us closer to the confrontation we never seek with the nuclear power we - let alone Messrs Bush and Blair - seldom mention: Israel.
Nobody, including the Knesset, quite knows what happens inside the Dimona complex, but if you put together a compote of usually reliable sources (the Federation of American Scientists, Jane's Intelligence Review, the Stockholm Institute), a tolerably clear picture emerges. Ariel Sharon probably has more than 200 nuclear warheads this morning - more if the 17 years since Mordechai Vanunu's kidnapping have been devoted to building stockpiles.
That makes Israel the world's fifth largest nuclear power, boasting more bangs from Washington's bucks than Blair's Britain. And over in the other WMD basket, nobody much dissents when a report by the office of technology assessment for the US Congress concludes that Israel has "undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities" and is "generally reported as having an undeclared offensive biological warfare programme". Bombs, missiles, delivery systems, gases, germs? Tel Aviv has the lot. We only forget to remember because it's not a suitable subject for polite diplomatic conversation.
Tango of the blind
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz 12/22/2003
Since the disappointment of Camp David 2000, we have been hit by an epidemic of blindness of political leaders on the right, which has not passed by some members of the "peace camp" and the leaders of the security establishment -- How typical it is that the name of Libya was missing from the hundreds of headlines produced by the oh-so prestigious conference on the "Balance of Israel's Security" and the dozens of politicians and experts that swooped down on Herzliya. The preoccupation with terror and weapons of mass destruction that threaten Israel masked any signs of positive change going on right under our noses. Who even bothered to note that Muammar Gaddafi was one of the Arab leaders that last year supported the important decision made at the Beirut conference of the Arab League? Who mentioned the statement by the Jordanian foreign minister, Dr. Marwan Muasher, who recently said that he has learned that Libya belongs to the countries that continue to adhere to that decision?
Gaddafi's son, Sayf al-Islam, recently had no problem meeting Knesset members, officials and academics from Jerusalem. He told them that Israel had missed the opportunity for a two-state solution and would have to live in peace with the Palestinians in a bi-national state. Who bothers to remember that in April 2002, the Arab League recognized Israel's right to live in peace and security within the 1967 borders, as determined in UN Resolution 242? Who cares what the Arabs say about the Geneva Accord and the Nusseiba-Ayalon document?
Ink of ID numbers may wash off, but humiliation is everlasting
By Rime Allaf , Lebanon Wire/Daily Star 3/12/2002
If one puts to the side, momentarily, the moral, ethical, principled aspects of marking numbers on prisoners’ foreheads and forearms, then one could perhaps work out why the Israeli armed forces have begun using this method with Palestinian prisoners: Given the immense death toll that is rising faster than victims’ lists can be updated, it is clearly easier to count the dead when they are numbered, just as it is clearly easier to calculate how many more must be killed before Israel is purged of the Palestinian “problem.”
Naturally, not all the marked Palestinians have died. Not yet, that is. But when they are eventually killed, one by one or 30 by 30, some lowly officer in the Israeli Army will probably routinely check the name of the “victim,” find the corresponding ID number, and remove it from the database. This routine may prove wearing in the long run, considering the sheer magnitude of the task. As it stands today, counting from the beginning of the intifada, there are only about 1,000 or more victims down, with some 2,999,000 to go. But the Israeli Army is nothing if not persistent, and ethnic cleansing is easier when the logistics are regulated early on. The Israeli Army has been continuing this brutal mission since last week in various West Bank cities, completely unchallenged. It apparently makes perfect sense to everyone that Palestinians, refugees in their own land, are dragged by the hundreds from their homes, blindfolded and handcuffed, and taken to “interrogation centers.” It apparently makes perfect sense to everyone that Israeli soldiers are scribbling ID numbers on the foreheads and forearms of these so-called suspected terrorists.
Israelis commanded through loudspeakers that all men aged between 15 and 45 give themselves up or face the consequences (death without an ID number?). Since army officials were quoted as saying they only arrested “people suspected of terrorist activity,” Israeli logic is that all Palestinian men are suspected terrorists a logic that seems to be accepted, equally unchallenged, by the civilized world.
Jordan is caught between Iraq and a hard place
By Rana Sabbagh-Gargour, Daily Star 12/19/2003
Jordanians are bracing for a harsh winter, their resource-poor country trapped in the shifting sands of regional political turmoil, even as daring economic reforms have yet to affect the lives of most people.
Thinking big has become a luxury for many of the 5.2 million Jordanians scurrying to meet their daily needs. Poverty is increasing in a country where 70 percent of the population is under 40 and unemployment stands at 15 percent. The wounds in Palestine and Iraq are still open, and the government is about to take the unpopular measure of raising the price of gasoline and other oil derivatives to maintain the budget deficit. The increase will touch every Jordanian, and will be a reminder of the advantages of the previous availability of cheap Iraqi oil, despite a $1.1 billion injection of US emergency aid this year to help the kingdom cope with the fallout of the Iraq war.
Austerity could become the rule rather than the exception. This will likely add to growing popular anger and Islamization in a society already seething because of the US occupation of Iraq and Israel’s clampdown on the Palestinians. The official commitment to political reform and a more open press could provide a safety valve to ease pent-up frustrations, but the dejection in the region will remain hostage to the policies of Washington and its strategic partner, Israel.
The Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being a Palestinian in Iraq"
By Kathy Kelly, CounterPunch 12/22/2003
Saturday evening, in Amman, we met with Fadi Elayyan and Jihad Tahboub, two Palestinian young men who were imprisoned for two months, without charge, by US Occupying forces who seized them, in Baghdad, on April 10, 2003
They are trying to help four of their companions who are still held by the US military, presumably in a prison compound at Umm Qasr, in southern Iraq.
"On April 10, the US Marines kidnapped us," Jihad began in a matter of fact tone. "We were students, and we stayed in Baghdad during the war because we did not want to give up our studies or leave our friends. The Marines wanted to occupy our building because it is high and gives a good view of the area. "
Some of the students had Palestinian passports. When they asked what they were guilty of, the soldiers said, "You are guilty of being Palestinian." The soldiers told them, "You are not studying education in Baghdad. You are studying terrorism."
"We said that we had citizen IDs and we are students," said Fadi, but the soldiers insisted, with guns pointed at their heads, "You are in Iraq and you are terrorists."
The
soldiers at my front door
By John Dear, S. J., Straight Goods 12/15/2003
A priest
in New Mexico faces intimadation from the militia over his anti-war stance --
I live in a tiny, remote, impoverished, three block long town in the desert of
northeastern New Mexico. Everyone in town--and the whole state--knows that I am
against the occupation of Iraq, that I have called for the closing of Los Alamos,
and that as a priest, I have been preaching, like the Pope, against the bombing
of Baghdad.
Last week, it was announced that the local National Guard
unit for northeastern New Mexico, based in the nearby Armory, was being deployed
to Iraq early next year. I was not surprised when yellow ribbons immediately sprang
up after the press conference.
But I was surprised the following morning to hear 75 soldiers
singing, shouting and screaming as they jogged down Main Street, passed our St.
Joseph's church, back and forth around town for an hour.
It was 6 a.m., and they woke me up with their war slogans, chants like "Kill!
Kill! Kill!" and "Swing your guns from left to right; we can kill those guys all
night."
....I decided I had to do something. I put on my winter
coat and walked out the front door right into the middle of the street. They stopped
shouting and looked at me, so I said loudly, publicly for all to hear, "In the
name of God, I order all of you to stop this nonsense, and not to go to Iraq.
I want all of you to quit the military, disobey your orders to kill, and not to
kill anyone. I do not want you to get killed. I want you to practice the love
and nonviolence of Jesus. God does not bless war. God does not want you to kill
so Bush and Cheney can get more oil. God does not support war. Stop all this and
go home. God bless you."
Countdown
to Armageddon?
By M. Raphael Johnson, AmericanFreePress.com November 2003 |
