The Geneva Bubble
By Ilan Pappe, Miftah 12/31/2003
Even though we live in an age of intensive and intrusive media coverage, TV viewers in Israel were lucky to catch a glimpse of the meetings that produced the Geneva Accord. The clip we watched in November showed a group of well- known Israeli writers and peaceniks shouting at a group of not so well-known and rather cowed Palestinians, most of them officials of the Palestinian Authority. Abba Eban once said that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, and that, more or less, was what the Israelis were saying now. This was their last chance, the Palestinians were told: the current offer was the best and most generous Israelis have ever made them.
It's a familiar scene. The various memoirs produced by the major players in the Oslo Accord suggest that much the same sort of thing was said there, while leaks from the Camp David summit in 2000 describe similar exchanges between Clinton, Barak and Arafat. In fact, the Israeli tone and attitude have barely changed since British despair led to the Palestine question being transferred to the UN at the end of the Second World War. The UN was a very young and inexperienced organisation in those days, and the people it appointed to find a solution to the conflict were at a loss where to begin or how to proceed. The Jewish Agency gladly filled the vacuum, exploiting Palestinian disarray and passivity to the full.
In May 1947, the Agency handed a plan, complete with a map, to the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), proposing the creation of a Jewish state over 80 per cent of Palestine - more or less Israel today without the Occupied Territories. In November 1947 the Committee reduced the Jewish state to 55 per cent of Palestine, and turned the plan into UN General Assembly Resolution 181. Its rejection by Palestine surprised no one - the Palestinians had been opposed to partition since 1918. Zionist endorsement of it was a foregone conclusion, and in the eyes of the international policemen, that was a solid enough basis for peace in the Holy Land. Imposing the will of one side on the other was hardly the way to effect a reconciliation, and the resolution triggered violence on a scale unprecedented in the history of modern Palestine.
A child of our time
By Alit Karp and Jackie Khoury, Jerusalemites 12/30/2003
Exposed, exploited, dressed in tatters and desperately knocking on car windows, increasing numbers of Palestinian children are begging for money on the country's roads. -- The Wadi Ara road was largely empty on the last Friday of the holy Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. There was hardly any backups of vehicles at the intersections with traffic lights. On the windows of the cars that were on the roads, small brown hands knocked pleadingly, though hardly any of the drivers - mainly women, it appeared - took the trouble to do a quick search in their purses in order to give the children a handout. In some cases they had to look down to see the face of the child: Many of the child beggars of Wadi Ara are so young that their heads barely reach a car window.
These children, nearly all of them Palestinians from the territories, cross the Green Line into Israel in order to scrounge for a few shekels. This is one more manifestation of the economic plight that exists among the Palestinian society in the territories. You can see the children at other places, too: at intersections in the city of Nazareth, in towns close to the "seam line" (a euphemism for the 1967 Green Line) and also in Arab villages close to Israel's northern border. Some of the children try to make money by selling tissues or dust cloths, but most of them just beg for money. All of them wear plastic shoes and well-worn clothes, and they are very much in need of a hot shower. The smaller ones are usually accompanied by their mothers, some of whom take shelter at bus stops when they send their children - in some cases, at great risk to their lives - to implore the drivers at the intersection to give them money. However, it's far from rare to find a 10-year-old child working the intersections on his own.
Some of the child beggars are out to collect money not just for themselves: The meager handouts will help support entire families in the West Bank, who eagerly await their return. School is not part of their daily routine.
If there's an Inquiry, there Probably Won't be an Indictment
By Akiva Eldar, Miftah 12/30/2003
Israel Defense Forces soldiers who fired at a group of Israelis who demonstrated Friday against the separation fence don't have to worry about the investigation of the incident launched by the army this week. Statistics compiled by the IDF's Judge Advocate General (JAG) indicate that the chances of an inquiry leading to a court indictment are no greater than 15 percent. Data delivered three months ago by the JAG to the B'Tselem human rights organization show that during the first three years of the intifada, during which time more than 1,000 unarmed Palestinian civilians were killed, the IDF opened just 57 inquiries of soldiers for gunfire incidents in which persons were killed or wounded: Only nine of these cases ended up as indictments.
Yesterday, it was impossible to obtain information from the IDF Spokesman about verdicts in these nine cases and their accompanying penalties (if indeed there were any). The majority of shooting deaths of Palestinian civilians are not investigated by the IDF. Under procedures enforced by the JAG, the IDF commander in the field ordinarily investigates such shooting incidents and decides whether further measures are needed.
Even when an investigation is launched, the chances are very high that the soldier who fired at demonstrators will have done so with impunity and end up hiking in the forests of Colombia or enjoying himself somewhere else, far from the reaches of an Israeli military court. This happened in the case of the IDF soldier who was accused of killing four Palestinian civilians, three of them children, as a result of shells fired by a tank in central Jenin in July 2002. The officer finished his tour of duty, was discharged, and embarked on a pleasure trip overseas. The thought that a man accused of negligently causing the death of four Arabs ought to be stopped from leaving the country never crossed anyone's mind.
On the Concrete Wall
By Fadi Kiblawi, Palestine Chronicle 12/29/2003
In 1923, amidst growing unrest within the Zionist movement, Ha’aretz published an article by Ze’ev Jabotinsky entitled, “On the Iron Wall (We and the Arabs),” promulgating the fundamental principles of his Revisionist offshoot. Central to his credo was the notion that the Palestinians, like any native peoples, “will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope…” Accordingly, Jabotinsky proposed, “settlement can thus develop under the protection of a force that is not dependent on the local population, behind an iron wall which they will be powerless to break down.”
As Jabotinsky’s surrogate, Israel’s Likud party, egregiously builds its monstrosity within the West Bank, one would be remised to disregard his “iron wall.” Jabotinsky’s figurative construct intended to strangle the indigenous population into submission, in the face of a foreign invasion and colonization of their land, through unassailable strength (metaphorically, an impregnable iron wall).
Indeed, Ariel Sharon’s obverse concrete wall seemingly sets out to accomplish this same task. According to a United Nations report released last month, 680,000, or 30 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank, will be directly harmed. Already, the completed portion has hastened the isolation of Palestinian communities into enclaves separating the inhabitants from their farmlands, fields to graze their animals, work, schools, universities, and medical care.
As expected, Israel has excused the disastrous humanitarian consequences by brazenly declaring that Palestinian terrorists in effect built this wall, expediting its necessity for Israel’s security. “Truth be told, those responsible for the fence are Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades,” writes Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Peace.
The effects of the Israeli movement restriction on Palestinian health care
By Amineh Ishtay, Jerusalemites 12/28/2003
Since the beginning of the second Intifada (28th September, 2000), Israeli occupation forces (IOF) have been attacking Palestinian civilians by using heavy weaponry from land, air and sea. As a result, around 2744 Palestinians were killed, thousands injured and a big number became disabled.
Thousands of families don’t have a place where to live because their houses where demolished. IOF destroyed hundreds of houses and huge areas of agricultural land.
Additionally, thousands of Palestinians have been living under a siege, which isolates Palestinians communities from each other and prevent people from receiving food, medical care and other basic needs.
The effects of movement restriction on health care under siege have severe consequences on their health care.
Many Palestinians are affected by these policies, since they are dependent on secondary and tertiary health care facilities in urban areas. Patients with cancer and patients requiring kidney dialysis who are in need of continuous medical care are affected by the closures.
Not only that, but this movement restriction imposed on Palestinians has severely influenced as well the activity of health care organization. Medical personnel, including physicians and nurses, have been unable to reach their places of work regularly.
Bound by their conscience
By Joseph Raz, Ha'aretz 12/31/2003
Similarities and differences between conscientious objection and civil disobedience, and between conscientious objection by pacifists and what is called "selective refusal" - when objection is conditioned on something specific, like opposition to serving in the territories - have been widely discussed of late in Israel. Thus, in convicting the five high school graduates who refused to serve in the territories, the military court stated in its decision two weeks ago, among other things, that this case is not one of individual refusal, but a social statement that seeks to induce change and, as such, incorporates an element of civil disobedience.
Acts of conscientious objection may be identified as acts involving violation of a law, a step taken because the objector believes that obedience to the law contravenes his most deeply-felt moral or religious principles. When such acts are termed "not political," the intended meaning is that what gives them the status of conscientious refusal is a personal reason or motivation; the desire not to contravene the demands of one's own conscience. Civil disobedience, by contrast, involves a person's political ideas or motivations; a protest against a law or a policy and the desire to effect change.
Appeal: Web lets Palestinian children find world beyond refugee camp
By Robert Fisk, The Independent 12/31/2003
There are 32 children in the class, all Palestinian, all new experts on the internet. Qassem Sa'ad, a small man with a neat brown moustache, is proud of them and not without reason. Noisy they may be, but enthusiastic they obviously are. And bright.
Where do they all come from, I ask? And the answer, of course, is not Lebanon - even though they were born there. "Safad," says one. "Hitin." "Tabaria." "Shafa'am." "Nimerin." "Sminya," says a little girl wearing a scarf. All are towns that are - or were - in what is present-day Israel.
These children - and dozens of others - are beneficiaries of a project by Save the Children UK, one of the three charities this newspaper is supporting in this year's Christmas Appeal for Forgotten Peoples. Though they live in Ein al-Helweh, Sidon, the biggest and arguably the poorest refugee camp in Lebanon, these children now have their own website, called Eye-to-Eye. When The Independent correspondent admits that he does not use the internet, there are roars of laughter. Palestinians 1, Fisk 0.
Through the website, the children of Ein al-Helweh can talk to children elsewhere in the world. They talk to schoolchildren in Wales, to child workers in India - in a glass-bangle factory near Agra, which sounds, to be frank, an awful lot like being a Palestinian refugee child. They talk to their friends in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. One has found relatives amid the vastness of Ukraine. The introduction to the website is carefully phrased, and Save the Children has gone out of its way to avoid the usual claims of bias. "Save the Children UK recognises the political issues and sensitivities surrounding the current crisis in the Middle East," it says. "Our sole concern is to safeguard the rights and lives of all children, wherever they live." It condemns "explicitly and strongly ... any act of violence against children on both sides".
A trick of the light
Editorial, Ha'aretz 12/31/2003
In his speech at the Herzliya Conference two weeks ago, it appeared that the prime minister succeeded, if only for a fleeting moment, to illuminate the bleak diplomatic horizon with a lightning flash of hope. There were many whose immediate response was to dismiss Ariel Sharon's words out of hand. They found it hard to put any faith in the sincerity of his stated intention to uproot outposts and settlements, and to carry out a significant withdrawal. Others were less doubting. They hoped - or feared, depending on their position - that Sharon was on the verge of an important diplomatic turnaround. The speech made headlines across the globe. Unfortunately, the doubters were right. The news emanating from the Prime Minister's Office and the bureau of Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, about the preparations being made by the government and the IDF to evacuate four ephemeral outposts, can only be described as a mockery; and the country, groaning under the unnecessary and harmful burden of around a hundred illegal outposts, is the butt of the joke.
The Jewish Choice
By Susan Abulhawa, Palestine Chronicle 12/29/2003
I gave a talk on Thursday to a group of bright students from Council Rock South HS. Of course, it was about the Palestine/Israel conflict. I knew that most of the students were Jewish and likely to have strong opinions, but I was not prepared, initially at least, for an onslaught before I had presented less than five minutes of my talk. The gist of their questions and comments boiled down to a belief that the land between the Mediterranean and Jordan River rightfully belongs to Israel and that Palestinians, who have existed on that land for centuries, millennia even, are but trespassers, squatter, mere accidents of history.
From the corner of my ear, I caught the smiling comment of one boy, "Israel kicked their butts and the rest is war booty." While I pretended not to hear, I will admit that I felt a burning at my core. With such ironic, unrepentant racism, a Jewish American high school student had reduced my entire family and the whole nation to which we belong, to "war booty." For a good few moments, I struggled to subdue images bubbling in my mind: Of my grandmother, the heir to a beautiful stone home inside the Old City wall, rotting away as a refugee in a bug infested shack, while an immigrant Jewish family enjoyed the fruits of her heritage, her furniture, money and personal belongings; The ancient olive farms, passed on from one Palestinian generation to the next like family heirlooms, confiscated and then uprooted to make way for another Jews-only settlement; The countless images of ineffable suffering of human beings dispossessed of home and heritage, of dignity and freedom, of water and life.
....I have never understood how an abused child grows up to be an abuser of children, and I shall never understand how a people who endured the foulest racism should come to violate and oppress another people as the Israelis have done for the past half-century. I believe that I shan't ever understand how American Jews, liberal and compassionate defenders of Civil Rights, continue to defend and excuse Israel's horrendous abuses of Palestinians.
A cursed blessing in disguise
By Gideon Samet, Ha'aretz 12/31/2003
That old, little remembered question - what would Yeshayahu Leibowitz have said had he seen this - came up this week when Golani infantry soldiers appeared to have crossed into the twilight zone of war crimes. Leibowitz, the first commentator to speak aloud about the unavoidable corrupting tendency of the occupation was in his day considered an overwrought prophet of doom. In his unsparing prose, he cited quotes by a German author who spoke about the transition from humanism to nationalism, and then to barbarism. Many loathed him and refused to forgive him for daring to warn about the degeneration of IDF conduct, and about its becoming one of the lowliest of armies. Today, would it really be so easy to point to the error of his words?
Of course, the incident near Masha village was not the first in which trigger-happy soldiers shot innocent victims. But, in contrast to the normal targets of IDF fire in the territories, the shooting of Jews tied together virtually all of the elements of Israel's corruption under the shadow of conquest. Golani soldiers, poisoned like quite a few of our finest sons in the territories, fired shots in what appears to be a state of wanton blindness and rage - a state of insensitivity that is deepening among the benumbed fighters of the intifada.
Then, in a dizzying spin of facile explanations, spokesmen moved from one disingenuous account to the next. The IDF, which has the wherewithal to see hundreds of meters into the distance at night, was unable in this case to identify the demonstrators. The soldiers believed the protesters were terrorists because their faces were masked. The soldiers feared for their lives. They followed the customary rules of engagement.
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