The attack on Jimmy Carter
Bill Fletcher, Jr, Electronic Intifada 5/4/2008
Former US President James (Jimmy) Carter has the ability to appear almost out of thin air, landing in the midst of some of the most complex international crises. He has done it again, this time in going to meet with the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas. For reaching out to this significant section of the Palestinian movement, he is being demonized by both the Bush administration and the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Former President Carter has crossed a line that George W. Bush and his Israeli allies have set, aimed at isolating and destroying Hamas. Despite the fact that Hamas won internationally-recognized elections in Palestine in 2006, Bush and the Israelis have been doing all they can to void the elections, isolate Hamas and destroy them. In fact, a blockbuster article in Vanity Fair revealed details of a plan hatched by the Bush administration along with an anti-Hamas Palestinian leader to carry out a coup against Hamas. The plot failed, leading to a Hamas preemptive strike against the forces of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, with the result being a Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip.
4/17/2008
Returning to Palestine
Aaron Lakoff, International Middle East Media Center News 4/21/2008
What’s in a year? What’s in 60?
Three years can be a long time, or a little blip in history. It has been three years since I was first in Palestine, and now I am back. Years are a funny thing here. Many can go by, and nothing can change. Take, as an example, one of the large billboards outside of Jerusalem right now, which proudly announces this year as the 60 year anniversary of the birth of the state of Israel. And then, of course, the other side of that, the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba ("catastrophe"). 60 years of displacement, 60 years of refugees, 60 years of useless keys and tears shed, and how much has really changed?
Well, quite a lot has changed actually. And it has hit me sooner than expected, even after being in Palestine for only a few days. 2008 will no doubt be a historic and tumultuous year in Israel and Palestine. Beyond the 60-year observations on both sides, there is pressure from many sides to make 2008 the year of the Palestinian state, or a "two-state solution". The slogan "2 states in 2008" has been repeated many times. There is a strong will to see this happen before the next Palestinian presidential elections, or perhaps more importantly, before George W. Bush leaves office later this year.
Complex Regional Rivalry Muddying the Waters
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 4/15/2008
The tension between Israel, Syria and Lebanon has carried indirect negative consequences for Palestinians. Even though it is correct to say that at the moment there is no serious or promising peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis to be disrupted, the tension, on the one hand, and Syria and its regional alliances on the other, can play an important role in influencing the domestic Palestinian situation as well as Palestinian-Israeli relations.
Recent years have witnessed a growing interrelationship between the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and other regional conflicts. This in turn has increased the influence and role of regional actors both on the conflict and on domestic Palestinian affairs. This influence has become especially pronounced with the gradual weakening of the Palestinian leadership that resulted from the deterioration and ultimate failure of the peace process upon which this leadership had gambled so much.
It has become evident that Palestine, like Lebanon and Iraq, is being affected by the ongoing regional rivalry between Iran and the United States that started with the Iraq invasion and US attempts to weaken Iran and interfere in its domestic affairs including with its nuclear program. With an American military presence on its borders in Iraq, the Arab Gulf and Afghanistan, Iran has been motivated to play its cards against this growing American hegemony. These developments coincided with the collapse of the peace process, the moderate and secular leadership associated with it and the rise of Hamas and its victory in Palestinian elections and subsequent takeover of the Gaza Strip.
3/29/2008
Anti-Arab racism and incitement in Israel
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada 3/30/2008
A prominent strategy of Israeli hasbara, or official propaganda, is to deflect criticism of its actions in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip by stressing that within the country’s 1948 boundaries, it is a model democracy comparable to the societies in Western Europe and North America with which it identifies and on whose diplomatic support it relies to maintain a favorable status quo. In fact, Israeli society is in the grip of a wave of unchecked racism and incitement that seriously threatens Israel’s Palestinian community and the long-term prospects for regional peace. This briefing examines societal and institutional racism and incitement by public figures against Israel’s Arab population and considers some policy implications.
Background and context
When Israel was established in 1948, most of the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants were driven out or fled from the area that became Israel. Approximately 150,000 Palestinians remained behind. Until 1966, these Palestinians lived under martial law. Today, having increased in number to approximately 1.3 million or about one fifth of Israel’s population (not including the Palestinian population of occupied East Jerusalem), they are citizens of the state of Israel and can vote in elections for the Knesset. Despite this, most view themselves as second-class citizens. As indigenous non-Jews in a self-described Jewish state, they face a host of systematic social, legal, economic and educational barriers to equality. Israel lacks a constitution and has no other basic law guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or national origin.
Settling for less?
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 3/27/2008
A pungent aroma of hot coals filled the small car that passed the checkpoint and then sped up the road to the settlement of Mevo Dotan. On both sides of the twisting road, small bonfires cast a bit of light on a row of shabby homes. Benny Raz, from the Bayit Ehad (One Home) organization, stepped on the gas and passed a battered Subaru with Palestinian license plates.
Raz, a resident of the Karnei Shomron settlement whose organization is promoting the passage of an "evacuation-compensation" law for the settlers living on the eastern side of the security fence, explained that we were passing through the village of Yabad. The villagers make a living by producing coals for barbecues, but they sometimes also engage in less-friendly fire. Four settlers have been murdered on this road in recent years. No one is counting the number of people hurt by stones being thrown at their cars. Men and women travel the road with weapons on their knees, at the ready. Relatives of the settlers stay away, as though the place were a leper colony.
The 49 families who remain in Mevo Dotan do not have a "bypass road." Why waste money on building one? On the eve of the last elections, which Ehud Olmert won on the wings of the magic word "convergence," the settlement’s residents were ready to leave. They remember that cabinet minister Gideon Ezra, a member of Olmert’s Kadima party, came to visit and suggested that they "stop watering the gardens." The evacuation was just a matter of time then - and residents believed it wasn’t a matter of a lot of time.
3/8/2008
Bay of Pigs in Gaza
Tom Segev, Ha’aretz 3/13/2008
One day in the fall of 2006, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, Jake Walles, went to Ramallah to meet with Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). As diplomats do, he took with him a document known as "talking points" - a prepared memo listing the main elements of what he was going to tell the Palestinian leader. For some reason, perhaps by accident, Walles left the document behind when he left, with the result that the American monthly Vanity Fair is able to publish a first draft of a chapter in the history of the rise of Hamas and its takeover of the Gaza Strip. (The article can be accessed at www.vanityfair.com under "The Gaza Bombshell" in the April 2008 issue.)
According to the paper left behind by the consul general, he wanted to pressure Abu Mazen to take action that would annul the outcome of the elections that had catapulted Hamas to power. The author of the article, David Rose, reminds his readers that President George W. Bush had pressed for the elections to be held, contrary to the advice of several experts, who warned that Hamas would emerge from them strengthened. But Bush wanted democracy. Now he effectively wanted Abu Mazen to cancel the elections in retrospect.
Canada’s Response to Israel’s Actions in Gaza
Jim Miles, Middle East Online 3/5/2008
Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier issued a
news release
expressing his concern about the escalating violence in the Gaza Strip.It does nothing to help resolve the situation and only demonstrates that the Canadian government is only putting out more face-saving rhetoric for the international community and to placate the home crowd with platitudes about the non-existent peace process.It is an empty statement, devoid of any real suggestions to improve the situation in Gaza.
Language is all important within his statement.While he “deplores” the actions of Hamas, Israeli actions - which have resulted in far more misery and deaths – receive only the approbation that we are “very concerned about the impact” of Israeli actions.More language continues the bias.While the Hamas personnel are “terrorists” the Israelis are only defenders with a “clear right to defend itself."
The Canadian government does not recognize, and was one of the first to deny, that Hamas won the Palestinian elections with a clear majority in elections regarded globally as being one of the fairest ever presented.
Good Morning, Hamas
Uri Avnery, Middle East Online 3/2/2008
We Israelis live in a world of ghosts and monsters. We do not conduct a war against living persons and real organizations, but against devils and demons which are out to destroy us. It is a war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, between absolute good and absolute evil. That’s how it looks to us, and that’s how it looks to the other side, too.
Let’s try to bring this war down from virtual spheres to the solid ground of reality. There can be no reasonable policy, nor even rational discussion, if we do not escape from the realm of horrors and nightmares.
After the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections, Gush Shalom said that we must speak with them. Here are some of the questions that were showered on me from all sides:
Do you like Hamas?
Not at all. I have very strong secular convictionI. I oppose any ideology that mixes politics with religion - whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, in Israel, the Arab world or America.
Kosovo and Palestine: Why Different Standards?
Walid Awad, MIFTAH 3/1/2008
In July 2000, President Clinton, at the insistence of Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak, invited President Arafat and Barak to Camp David. In less than two weeks of intensive negotiations, Clinton expected Arafat and Barak to arrive at a solution to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Incomplete progress was achieved at Camp David, but an agreement was not.
Follow-up negotiations resumed in the months ahead, and by January 2001 an agreement was reached, but as far as Clinton and Barak were concerned, it was too late. Clinton evacuated the White House, and Barak lost the elections in Israel. Ariel Sharon, who worked relentlessly to sabotage all peacemaking efforts between Israel and the PLO after Oslo, assumed office in Israel and the intifada against the Israeli occupation intensified. Much blood has been spilled since then, but two more nonofficial “peace” agreements between Israelis and Palestinians were worked out — the Geneva agreement between Yaser Abed Rabbo and Yossi Beilin, and another one between Sari Nussiebeh, currently head of Al-Quds University, and Ami Ayalon, a minister in the current Israeli government. Outlines, frameworks, and parameters, call them what you wish, for solving the conflict were reached between the sides after Oslo, but never formally or officially adopted or signed.
The Arab boycott
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 2/28/2008
Kosovo’s declaration of independence earlier this month sent spokespeople for the Israeli right scurrying to the television studios. "Israel must not recognize Kosovo’s independence," warned MK Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday from the Knesset podium. "Anyone who says it’s not a precedent for anywhere else is mistaken. It is a precedent." The Yisrael Beitenu party chairman noted that Yasser Abed Rabbo, adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, was threatening that the Palestinians would follow the Kosovo precedent and unilaterally declare independence if negotiations with Israel failed. "There is no doubt that this precedent could lead - not today, but in five or 10 years - the Arabs of the Galilee to announce: ’We declare our independence,’" Lieberman warned.
Israeli Arabs did not need the Kosovars to plant the idea of unilateral disengagement from the State of Israel. An internal document, revealed here for the first time - "Arab Society and the Elections for the 18th Knesset" - was prepared several months ago by the bureau of National Infrastructures Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who heads the ministerial committee on non-Jewish sector issues.
The document, which is subtitled: "Arab Representation in the Knesset in Danger," warns that the next Knesset elections could serve "as a catalyst for the realization of the internal election plan for the Arabs in Israel and the beginning of the formation of an autonomous Arab parliament." According to the report, this will happen if the head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, Sheikh Ra’ad Salah, in concert with the other movements that boycott Israeli elections, is able to bring about a situation in which less than half the Arab population votes in the general election.
2/22/2008
Three Scenarios
Ghassan Khatib, MIFTAH 2/25/2008
There are enough reasons to believe that the current escalation between Israel and Hamas in Gaza will continue. There are also reasons to believe that the two sides are pursuing both short- and long-term political objectives for such an escalation.
Separating Gaza from the West Bank, both de facto and de jure, is one component of the unilateral Israeli strategy that started with the withdrawal from Gaza. Israel hopes thereby, among other things, to undermine Palestinian aspirations to establish a state in all the occupied Palestinian territory that includes the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
This plan, however, was interrupted by Hamas’ victory in parliamentary elections in 2006 and then further by the movement’s military takeover of Gaza in 2007. Israel could not allow Gaza under Hamas control to be opened to the world through Egypt, because that would not only increase Hamas’ chances of survival but also allow the Islamist movement to grow in both political and military strength. Hence, Israel modified its strategy and decided to impose a full closure on the impoverished strip to suffocate Hamas as well as the people of Gaza.
2/10/2008
The EU is marginalizing itself in Gaza
Stuart Reigeluth, Daily Star 2/15/2008
Two years have passed since Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections. Two years in which the international boycott has ostracized and further radicalized the Islamic movement, leading to its takeover of the Gaza Strip last July, in a move that consolidated its geographic and political separation from the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Two years, also, which recently culminated in the breaching of the southern Gaza border with Egypt and renewed Israeli preparations for a massive offensive against the strip. The European Union has expressed concern as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has deteriorated to unprecedented levels during the two years in which EU monitors were meant to supervise the passage of Palestinians at the Rafah crossing, but now find themselves restricted to the Dan Gardens beach resort in Ashkelon.
2/6/2008
Where Are the American Jewish Condemnations?
Sherri Muzher, Palestine Chronicle 2/9/2008
For years now, I have heard demands that those of us Americans and of Palestinian descent condemn various military actions.And we do because innocents should never pay for the sins of their military forces and government.
I’d like to know if the Jewish community will ever condemn the intentional starvation and collective punishment of an entire Gazan population?
The silence has been deafening at this inhumanity.
I’ve heard that Palestinians have invited these brutal measures after they elected Hamas during internationally-observed elections, since Hamas refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Setting aside that the elections were about corruption, Palestinians said nothing when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert invited Avigdor Leiberman to his cabinet. Leiberman, once praised by Jewish extremists for supporting the deportation of Palestinians inside Israel, is known as an avid racist.
Putting Humpty Together Again in Gaza
Tim Mcgirk, MIFTAH 2/2/2008
Egypt’s efforts to restore order on its breached border with Gaza suffered a setback Wednesday in Cairo, when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to talk to the leaders of Hamas. Needing a Palestinian partner to police the Rafah crossing, President Hosni Mubarak had invited his Palestinian counterpart to meet with leaders of the Islamist movement that has, since last summer, been the only effective authority in Gaza. But Abbas’s refusal to acknowledge the facts on the ground created by Hamas’s takeover of the territory left the Egyptians with no easy way forward.
By tearing down the border wall between Egypt and Gaza last week and breaking Israel’s siege, Hamas dramatically altered the equation between Israel, the Palestinians and Egypt. It also frustrated attempts by the Bush Administration, its Palestinian protege Abbas and Israel to isolate the radical movement that refuses to recognize the Jewish State. Two years after the Palestinians’ legislative elections made clear that Hamas cannot be ignored, the explosions at the Rafah crossing reaffirmed that reality. But while the Egyptians have recognized that reality, President Abbas surely hasn’t.
IHT: Light through the wall
Fida Qishta, International Solidarity Movement 1/30/2008
Life in Rafah, Gaza’s southern-most city, has always been difficult. But the period since March 2006 has been the worst in my 25-year life. Israel placed Gaza under a siege after Hamas won the Palestinian elections and tightened the siege after Palestinians captured an Israeli soldier near Rafah in late June 2006. We have had little electricity, fuel, money, food or medicine since.
We felt some hope last week, however, when Palestinians knocked down the wall that Israel built along Rafah’s border with Egypt, allowing us to escape our prison and cross to Egypt to buy essential goods.
The Israeli Army has destroyed about 2,000 homes in Rafah in the last seven years. In January 2004 they demolished our home. My grandmother, aunt, uncles and cousins had gathered in our house because their homes had just been demolished.
1/20/2008
Gaza’s last gasp
Sonja Karkar, Electronic Intifada 1/23/2008
By now, people watching their news programs around the world would have caught a glimpse of Gaza City in candle-lit darkness.A pretty sight indeed if it were not for the fact that most of the people in the Gaza Strip will have to depend on these candles as their only source of light now that the power plant servicing much of Gaza’s population has shut down completely. There is no fuel to keep the plant running because Israel has imposed a complete lock-down of this most densely populated place on earth.That means no movement in or out of the Gaza Strip for people, or any kind of shipments in of vital food, fuel supplies and medicines.It is more than a miserable existence: it is a slow death.
This is the sixth day of Israel’s draconian action against a people already suffering from the punitive sanctions imposed on them after their democratic elections in January 2006 did not yield a result palatable to Israel and parts of the international community. Israel’s latest 24-hour reprieve to let in some supplies is not going to change the circumstances under which the Palestinians have had to live for the last two years.At most, these supplies will last two days.The Palestinians have been struggling to survive in conditions that reached emergency levels even before this latest siege. Hunger, poverty and unemployment are widespread and in this maximum-security prison surrounded by Israel’s military cordon, disease, malnutrition and anarchy are dangerously close to breaking out.
1/21/2008
This brutal siege of Gaza can only breed violence
Karen Koning AbuZayd in Gaza City, The Guardian 1/22/2008
Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and - some would say - encouragement of the international community. An international community that professes to uphold the inherent dignity of every human being must not allow this to happen. Across this tiny territory, 25 miles long and no more than 6 miles wide, a deep darkness descended at 8pm on January 21, as the lights went out for each of its 1.5 million Palestinian residents. A new hallmark of Palestinian suffering had been reached.
There have been three turns of the screw on the people of Gaza, triggered in turn by the outcome of elections in January 2006, the assumption by Hamas of de facto control last June, and the Israeli decision in September to declare Gaza a "hostile territory". Each instance has prompted ever tighter restrictions on the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza. Each turn of the screw inflicts deeper indignity on ordinary Palestinians, breeding more resentment towards the outside world.
The Death of the Stalinist Left in Palestine
Randa Abu Naeem, Palestine Chronicle 1/14/2008
To understand the reasons behind the rapid deterioration of the Palestinian Left, especially following Hamas’ June 2007 take-over of the Gaza Strip, one needs to scrutinize the verbalized positions of its’ leaders. Interviews and media statements made by Abdul Rahim Malouh, Deputy Secretary General of the PFLP, following his release from Israeli prisons, indicates that the PFLP has chosen to support the right-wing within Fatah. Amazingly, this is also the position of the DFLP and the People’s Party, in spite of the pro-American agenda spouted and supported by Mahmoud Abbas and his cabal within Fatah.
The U-turn taken by the Palestinian Left should not come as a surprise since it has historically expressed an undemocratic world-view, both in general and in relation to its’ Palestinian agenda in particular. This lack of democracy is, of course, the outcome of its Stalinist ideological orientation. As a result of this dominant orientation, both the People’s Party (which has recognized Israel since its inception) and the DFLP (which made the proposal that led to the interim solution later accepted by the PLO), could not accept the results of the January 2006 Palestinian elections. These elections, in fact, are the only non ethno-religious elections in the entire Middle East to date...
In exclusion, Hamas counts
Mohammed Omer, Electronic Intifada 1/11/2008
GAZA CITY, 10 January (IPS) - As US President George W. Bush began talks Thursday with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas supporters in Gaza were determined to make their absence count.
Leaders from the Palestinian party Hamas that won the elections in Gaza two years back have inevitably not been invited to meet Bush. The US considers Hamas a terrorist organization.
Hamas took control of Gaza by force from the Fatah party headed by Abbas in June last year, about a year and a half after it swept the polls in January 2006.
As Hamas leaders and supporters see it, Bush’s talks with Abbas can count for little if they are kept out. And so with Abbas’s talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert just ahead of Bush’s visit.
Where are Labor and Meretz?
Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz 12/24/2007
On the eve of the trip to the Annapolis summit, a penetrating debate was held at the Muqata on the question of whether Mahmoud Abbas should participate in the George W. Bush and Ehud Olmert show. At the last moment the Palestinians discovered that the Israeli prime minister had retracted his promise that the conference document would address at least one of the core issues specifically, and in a binding manner. The opponents said that they were tired of the Israelis’ empty promises to dismantle roadblocks, evacuate outposts and be more generous about freeing prisoners. They warned that another fruitless peace gathering would be a disappointment that the Palestinian public would not be able to tolerate, and spoke about how Hamas would celebrate the farce in Annapolis. The argument that tipped the balance in the end was that without the conference in Maryland, there would be no donors conference in Paris. Economic distress overcame political distress.
Olmert cited political constraints as his excuse for refusing to mention the June 4, 1967 borders in the Annapolis declaration, and for refusing to commit to a time frame for concluding the negotiations. He explained that Avigdor Lieberman had threatened to take his party Yisrael Beitenu out of the government and to bring about early elections.
On ‘Israel’s Right to Exist’
John Whitbeck, Palestine Chronicle 12/22/2007
There is an enormous difference between "recognizing Israel’s existence" and "recognizing Israel’s right to exist".
Almost two years after the most democratic elections ever held in the Arab world, as Palestinians struggle to survive in two disconnected and hostile fragments of historical Palestine, a besieged Gaza Strip and a coopted West Bank, with the enemies of the Palestinian people sending arms and funds to the side perceived as responsive to Israeli and Western wishes for use against the side perceived as representing Palestinian interests, the justification put forward by Israel, the United States and the European Union for their refusal to accept the result of the January 2006 elections, their determined efforts to overturn that result and their brutal collective punishment of the Palestinian people -- the refusal of Hamas to "recognize Israel" or to "recognize Israel’s existence" or to "recognize Israel’s right to exist" -- merits serious examination.
12/16/2007
Prerequisites for peace
Mustafa Barghouthi, The Baltimore Sun, 17 December 2007, Electronic Intifada 12/17/2007
As one who for decades has supported a two-state solution and the nonviolent struggle for Palestinian rights, I view the recent conference in Annapolis with a great deal of skepticism -- and a glimmer of hope.
Seven years with no negotiations -- and increasing numbers of Israeli settlers, an economic blockade in Gaza and an intricate network of roadblocks and checkpoints stifling movement in the West Bank -- have led us to despair and distrust. Any commitment must be made not only to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008 but also to end Israel’s occupation.
The Palestinians must also heal their internal divisions. This must include institutional reform to root out corruption and nepotism. The first step in that process is democratic elections at all levels of government.
We must rid ourselves of the false dichotomy between Fatah and Hamas. These are not the only options. My movement, the five-year-old Palestinian National Initiative, offers an alternative emphasizing democratic elections, transparent government and institution-building. Our goal is to democratize and engage the Palestinian national movement in a unified strategy to confront Israel’s ongoing occupation and seizure of our land and resources. We strive to achieve our national rights in our homeland and to establish social justice to uphold the rights of the underprivileged and marginalized, including women, children and people with disabilities.
12/14/2007
Prerequisites for Peace
Mustafa Barghouthi, MIFTAH 12/14/2007
As one who for decades has supported a two-state solution and the nonviolent struggle for Palestinian rights, I view the recent conference in Annapolis with a great deal of skepticism - and a glimmer of hope.
Seven years with no negotiations - and increasing numbers of Israeli settlers, an economic blockade in Gaza and an intricate network of roadblocks and checkpoints stifling movement in the West Bank - have led us to despair and distrust. Any commitment must be made not only to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008 but also to end Israel’s occupation.
The Palestinians must also heal their internal divisions. This must include institutional reform to root out corruption and nepotism. The first step in that process is democratic elections at all levels of government.
We must rid ourselves of the false dichotomy between Fatah and Hamas. These are not the only options. My movement, the 5-year-old Palestinian National Initiative, offers an alternative emphasizing democratic elections, transparent government and institution-building. Our goal is to democratize and engage the Palestinian national movement in a unified strategy to confront Israel’s ongoing occupation and seizure of our land and resources. We strive to achieve our national rights in our homeland and to establish social justice to uphold the rights of the underprivileged and marginalized, including women, children and people with disabilities.
Can Hope Triumph Over Mideast Experience?
Dion Nissenbaum, MIFTAH 11/30/2007
The Wednesday morning newspapers trumpeting the latest fresh start toward peace between Israelis and Palestinians hadn’t hit American doorsteps when the first crude Qassam rocket of the day soared out of the Gaza Strip and into southern Israel.
Before lunch, Palestinian Authority police in the West Bank were using truncheons to break up angry mourners trying to bury a demonstrator who was killed a day earlier while protesting the new peace initiative.
By the time Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas joined President Bush in the Rose Garden to launch the latest round of negotiations, an Israeli airstrike had killed two naval police officers in the Gaza Strip, where the militant Islamist group Hamas seized military control in June after winning U.S.-backed elections in January.
Things could have been worse on a day that was supposed to celebrate the beginning of a yearlong march to peace. But Wednesday’s events were a reminder that facts on the ground in the Middle East usually trump expectations in Washington.
Articulating the Unprintable: Ramzy Baroud Discusses Media Response to His Book
Ramzy Baroudinterviewed byJune Rugh, ZNet 11/15/2007
Ramzy Baroud, veteran Palestinian-American journalist and Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Chronicle, recently completed a speaking tour of the United States’ East Coast to promote his second book, The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, 2006). The Second Palestinian Intifada is a far-reaching account of key events of the past five years that transformed the political landscape not only of Palestine and Israel, but of the entire Middle East. With a critical eye, Baroud takes the most controversial issues head-on: the alarming escalation in suicide bombings, the construction of the Separation Wall, the devastating hunger and unemployment in the Occupied Territories, the brutality of the Israeli army, the political surprise of the Palestinian elections.
Peace and Democracy in Palestine
Ramzy Baroud, MIFTAH 11/12/2007
After years of marked absence, the Bush administration has finally decided to upgrade its involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The announcement of a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland has raised red flags for anyone who has learned from past experience how unbalanced and insincere peace efforts actually can lead to further violence. And it requires little cynicism to ponder how genuine these current efforts are.
It has been suggested that President Bush — whose actions have thus defined his legacy as that of a war president — wishes to leave on a more positive note. We heard the same argument in mid 2000 when President Bill Clinton facilitated ill-prepared talks, the failure of which sparked tension and violence, which were of course blamed solely on Palestinians.
Others argue that the conference is motivated not by a desire for lasting peace, but by the wish to further isolate Hamas – the party that was democratically elected by a decisive majority in the Occupied Territories’ legislative elections in January 2006.
Israel Ready to Negotiate on Jerusalem, Its ’Third Rail’?
Dion Nissenbaum, MIFTAH 10/30/2007
The last time Israeli leaders sat down for meaningful peace talks with Palestinian negotiators, then-Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert led a march around the Old City’s ancient walls to protest any plans to divide his adopted home.
"No concessions on Jerusalem," Olmert said on the eve of the 2000 Camp David summit. "For 33 years, Israel has said there will never be a compromise on Jerusalem. Do you think we were joking?"
But seven years, one Palestinian uprising and three Israeli elections later, Olmert, now Israel’s prime minister, is floating the idea of carving up the city he led for 10 years. As he gears up for the most intense round of peace talks since the Camp David talks failed, Olmert has indicated that he’s prepared to turn over Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem to the Palestinians.
In many ways, Jerusalem is the third rail of Israeli politics. Few are willing to touch it, and those who do often get burned. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak came close to ceding control of about half of the Old City to the Palestinians before the Camp David talks crumbled, his government lost its credibility and Palestinians launched their second uprising.
Rice Seeks to Marginalize Hamas
Ashraf Khalil, MIFTAH 10/17/2007
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday expressed hope that a successfully negotiated vision of a Palestinian state would marginalize the militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.
"There will have to come a time when the Palestinian people will have to decide whether the prospect of that state is in their interest, and I think they will decide that it is," Rice said after meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. "But people are going to have to accept that it means accepting the existence of Israel and the right of Israel to exist."
Rice met with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah as part of several days of meetings building toward a proposed peace conference next month in Annapolis, Md.
She repeatedly called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. But Rice made it clear that Hamas, the Islamist movement that won Palestinian parliamentary elections last year and calls for Israel’s destruction, would have no role in the upcoming negotiations.
"We’ve been very clear what the criteria are for involvement in this process," she said. "If you’re going to have a two-state solution, you have to accept the right of the other party to exist. If you’re going to have a two-state solution that is born of negotiation, you’re going to have to renounce violence."
IMEMC Exclusive: Fatah Alyasser’s chief says his group is a reform-based movement
Rami Almeghari, International Middle East Media Center 9/15/2007
In a special interview with the IMEMC, former spokesman of the Hamas’s interior ministry and leader of the newly-established Fatah Alyasser group, Khaled Abu Helal, says his movement has been established to contribute to better reformation of Palestinian politics following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip
What is Fatah Alyasser group Mr. Abu Helal?
Fatah Alyasser is a newly-born Palestinian group initiated by Fatah’s loyal people, after the latter have realized the fact that reforming the current Fatah has turned to be an impossible job, especially amidst the monopoly by some Fatah’s corrupt ranks of the decision-making.
Can the Palestinian arena currently absorb more groups, in a time there are many other based Palestinian organizations such as the Islamic Jihad, the popular front for the liberation of Palestine, etc..?
I believe that the political pluralism in Palestine has turned to be limited, particularly after the last January’s elections, which proved that there are only two major parties, Fatah and Hamas.
Fatah Alyasser movement is a group that combines between Islam as reference and the late President Yasser Arafat’s path of struggle at all levels, the political, the national and the resistance.
Wishful Thinking will not Cure Economic Ills
Bronwen Maddox, MIFTAH 9/20/2007
The original conception of the Government’s report on reviving the Palestinian economy, published yesterday, was a good one – when Gordon Brown commissioned it two years ago.
The aim was to find ways to bolster that economy, deliberately separate from the politics. It is an honourable principle that there are few situations so bad that they cannot be improved, even if they cannot be resolved. The approach appealed to Brown, when Chancellor, as a way to avoid Tony Blair’s grandstanding, while tackling problems on the ground.
But the past two years have made a nonsense of this approach – and incidentally, of Blair’s new job, which is supposed to focus on the Palestinian economy. Hamas’s victory in the January 2006 elections, the collapse of the joint Hamas-Fatah Government, Hamas’s seizure of Gaza in June, and the disintegration of the economy under Israeli security curbs make it impossible to divorce the economic from the political. Without political progress, there will not be economic progress; there may not even be much worth calling a Palestinian economy.
Majda Hassan: The ‘Osloization’ of the Palestinian Left
Majda Hassan, Palestine Chronicle 9/20/2007
In spite of its rich revolutionary tradition, the Left has been hijacked by right-wing cabals, whose interest is intertwined with that of the political elite of Oslo.
The Osloization of the Palestinian Left is now complete. The opportunistic and unprincipled position taken by the right-wing "Left" of the PLO vis-à-vis the current standoff between Hamas and Fatah is yet another indication of the Left’s inexorabledeterioration which followed its’ implicit acceptance of the Oslo accords—despite its alleged opposition to that agreement. In fact, the People’s Party never opposed the accords, but rather legitimized them by its acceptance of ministerial positions in almost every government formed since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.
Judging by statements and analyses presented by the main Left organizations and individuals, one could conclude that, in spite of its rich revolutionary tradition, the Left has been hijacked by right-wing cabals, whose interest is intertwined with that of the political elite of Oslo. Although I fail to understand how a nation can have elections under the boot of a brutal occupying power, I still naively thought that the Palestinian Left, and liberal forces for that matter, would seize the unique opportunity which arose as a result of that democratic process in January 2006 and support and strengthen it. The long held slogans of "from and for the masses" and "long live the people" turned out to be hollow.
Hamas is the key
Ahmed Yousef, Ha’aretz 9/21/2007
While largely unnoticed in American discourse on the topic, much has been said and written to debunk the sanctions regime imposed on Hamas government administrations since its resounding victory in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections of January 2006. These calls and reports show with compelling logic that the sanctions regime is wrong and misguided and, equally important, that it is a reaction to the excessively intense pressure that the U.S. administration has exercised over other nations to induce them to boycott and besiege a government democratically elected by the people and to punish the Palestinians for their democratic choice. The Quartet has been spearheading this campaign of isolation against Hamas, and in the process is advancing a U.S.-Israeli agenda whose goal is to delegitimize Hamas and prevent it from exercising its right to lead the Palestinian people, even though the latter have elected it in a transparent, internationally monitored electoral process. A variety of underhanded methods, both internal and external, have been used to undermine the Hamas-led government, including destabilization from within the fragile Palestinian political system.
The U.S. government expected the first Hamas government to fall in under three months. When that didn’t happen, Washington delegated to a faction inside Fatah the responsibility of overthrowing Ismail Haniyeh’s government, an effort aimed at reinstalling Fatah. Hamas’ ability to rule has been hampered, indeed paralyzed, by crippling Western pressures, which have only been strengthened by the collaboration of regional powers as well as localPalestinian players.
Abbas’ Village League
Arjan El Fassed, Electronic Intifada 9/10/2007
For as long Palestinians have resisted violent Israeli policies against them, successive Israeli governments have tried to undermine Palestinian unity and foment divisions. A principal strategy has been to try to foster alternative leaders willing to abandon fundamental Palestinian demands for justice and focus on an agenda with which Israel is comfortable.
This is taking place now as Israel shuns the elected Hamas movement, and tries to prop up the discredited Fatah leadership headed by Mahmoud Abbas. Following the elections, Israel kidnapped dozens of elected officials belonging to Hamas and is still holding them in its prisons.
There is a great deal of continuity here; a key component of Israeli policy has been to refuse to recognize legitimate Palestinian leadership. While it now embraces the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and shuns Hamas, until 1993 Israel refused to consider the PLO as a possible negotiating partner. Israel could always produce internationally acceptable reasons for such a position. After all, one would not expect a "respectable" country to negotiate with "terrorists," as Israel always did and still does refer to Palestinian leaders. Even after the PLO’s historic concessions in 1988 when the Palestinian National Council, the parliament-in-exile, accepted the two-state solution -- without receiving any reciprocal recognition from Israel -- Israel refused to deal with the PLO directly. The policy goes back even further.
U.S.-Backed Campaign Against Hamas Expands to Charities
Adam Entous, MIFTAH 8/22/2007
A U.S.-backed campaign against Hamas is being expanded to include Islamic charities that helped propel it to power, Palestinian, Israeli and Western officials said.
Salam Fayyad, whom Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appointed prime minister after Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in June, aims to reduce the influence of Hamas and its welfare arm and to build an alternative, government-run social service system using Western and Arab funds.
Mahmoud al-Habbash, Fayyad’s social affairs minister, said the government had a right to target Islamic charities that "help Hamas in their fight against the authority". Hamas, which won parliamentary elections in January 2006, has challenged the legality of Fayyad’s government.
Fayyad’s government is expected to approve new anti-money laundering rules that one official said would include a ban on "anyone bringing in money illegally". Another official said the rules, drafted by the Palestinian Monetary Authority, could be applied to funds for Hamas, its allies and others.
8/17/2007
Hour for Statemanship
Arab News - Editorial, MIFTAH 8/21/2007
THE Israeli military’s decision to open a border crossing with the Gaza Strip for a few hours to allow fuel deliveries to the territory might solve the immediate problem of darkness, but the light at the end of the tunnel is still a long way from shining. Going by the dire predictions of UN officials, unless Israel eases border restrictions there could be a humanitarian disaster in Gaza not limited to fuel restrictions.
Gaza is a sealed-off ghetto, politically and economically. It is now almost entirely dependent on aid, with practically everyone reliant on handouts provided by the United Nations. The strip risks becoming a virtually 100 percent aid-dependent, closed down and isolated community within a matter of months, or even weeks, if the present regime of closures continues.
Israel has sealed off Gaza from the outside world since the takeover of Gaza by Hamas. Hamas and Fatah did the rest with their bloody feud, which effectively divided the Palestinian camp into two. Perhaps they wouldn’t be skidding down this steep slope had Fatah gracefully accepted the decisive win of Hamas in the parliamentary elections. It is, though, too late to wish what might have been. Still, the Palestinian cause may still be able to garner sufficient political will and enable leaders to emerge who see beyond their own or their factions’ interests, to chart a new course. A vast majority of Palestinians are for reconciliation and for ending a feud detrimental to their political aspirations.
No Way around Conciliation
Jordan Times - Editorial, MIFTAH 8/17/2007
o much for the only democracy in the Arab world. Having experimented with real, representative and fair elections, the Palestinian Authority, or the part that is controlled by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has announced that in effect it will not allow Hamas, the victors in the last elections, to take part in any new elections.
In a presidential decree yesterday, the Palestinian electoral law has been changed so that candidates for both legislative and presidential elections must “respect” the political programme of the PLO and previously signed agreements between Israel and the PA.
In other words, Palestinian politicians must now be fully paid-up members of the two-state solution as defined by the Oslo accords. Not only do Hamas and Islamic Jihad fall foul of the law, anyone, and this includes many Palestinian intellectuals and independents who believe Oslo was a trap, and everything since has been proof of that, will walk the wrong side of the line.
The law is problematic in the extreme. It stymies Palestinian options and robs Palestinians of genuine choices. It means that Palestinians will, in essence, only now be able to vote covering a few percentage points of the West Bank with regard to the thing that really matters to them: how to achieve statehood and freedom.
Lebanese strike a blow at US-backed government
Robert Fisk, The Independent 8/7/2007
They’ve done it again. The Arabs have, once more, followed democracy and voted for the wrong man.
Just as the Palestinians voted for Hamas when they were supposed to vote for the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, so the Christian Maronites of Lebanon appear to have voted for a man opposed to the majority government of Fouad Siniora in Beirut. Camille Khoury - with a strong vote from the Armenian Tashnak party - won by 418 votes the seat that belonged to Pierre Gemayel, murdered last November by gunmen supposedly working for the Syrian security services.
While the Maronite vote had increased against Gemayel’s showing in 2005 elections, the result was a stunning blow to the American-backed government - how devastating that phrase "American-backed" has now become in the Middle East - in Lebanon and allowed Hizbollah’s ally, ex-General Michel Aoun to claim that "they cannot beat me". Mr Aoun is a candidate in presidential elections later this year.
True, the voting figures showed huge support for Pierre Gemayel’s father Amin - himself an ex-president- who was standing for the parliamentary seat of his murdered son. Although he was a weak and fractious leader - Amin paid a state visit to Damascus to re-cement "fraternal" ties after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon - he proved himself a brave man in the aftermath of his son’s murder, calling upon Lebanese to support the government rather than submit once more to the domination of Syria.
Francis Boyle: Destroying Democracy in Palestine
Francis Boyle, Palestine Chronicle 8/8/2007
When the Palestinians democratically elected a government that the Neo-Conservatives in the Bush Jr. administration and their Kadima/Likudnik confederates in Israel did not prefer, they jointly did everything humanly possible to destroy it.
The belligerent Bush Jr. administration’s policies against the state of Palestine in order to depose its democratically- elected government by organizing an internal coup d’état in Gaza by means of Palestinian surrogates under the command of General Mohamed Dahlanprovide yet another compelling reason why it is too dangerous for world peace to keep these Neo-Conservatives in power any longer.
If there had ever been any doubt about it, the Bush Jr. administration’s aggression against Palestine ’s democratically-elected government proved that their alleged program of "democratization" for the Arab and Muslim world was a joke and a fraud to begin with. To be sure, Article 21(3) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which constitutes customary international law, expressly provides: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures."
Mimicking Oslo
Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian Information Center 8/5/2007
A few days after the 2006 parliamentary elections in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, E. Jerusalem and Gaza, which Hamas won decisively, Fatah leaders and activists held a “soul-searching” meeting in Dura, near Hebron.
Nabil Amr, now Mahmoud Abbas’s political advisor, who failed to win a seat, attended the meeting, apparently in order to boost his defeated faction’s moral
And when a Fatah activist and student leader asked Amr how Fatah could rehabilitate itself and regain stature and preeminence among Palestinians, Amr reportedly said, without patting an eyelash “Concessions, concessions, concessions.”
Amr often describes himself as a “secular pragmatist” and “firm believer in real politike"
In 2003, he played a leading role in effecting American-backed efforts to weaken the late Palestinian leader, along with people like Mahmoud Abbas and Muhammed Dahlan.
The “gang of conspirers” as Arafat called his critics within Fatah, sought, with full American backing, to strip the late Palestinian leader of at least some of his powers, including control over security agencies.
Arafat’s presence was then quite dominant and Amr, Abbas and Dahlan couldn’t successfully challenge Arafat’s autocratic leadership. In fact, on 20 July, 2004, Amr himself was shot and nearly killed by a Fatah gunman, apparently on instructions from Arafat who had apparently thought that Amr was going too far in criticizing and undermining his benefactor. A few weeks later, Amr got his right leg amputated in Germany.
7/26/2007
Abbas’s gamble
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 7/26/2007
The Palestinian president wants to push ahead with fresh elections, but it’s unlikely to happen.
As the war of words between Hamas and Fatah continues, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas seems determined to organise presidential and legislative elections in the occupied territories, with or without Hamas’s participation.
Last week, Abbas succeeded in convening the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Central Council in Ramallah in an obvious effort to get the council to endorse his recent measures against Hamas following the latter’s takeover of Gaza 14 June.
The unelected (and ageing) council, which acts as a kind of PLO politburo, endorsed the anti-Hamas steps, including the dismissal of the Hamas-led government, the appointment of the Salam Fayyad government in Ramallah, as well as Abbas’s call for early general elections.
The Siren Song of Elliott Abrams
Kathleen Christison, CounterPunch 7/26/2007
Thoughts on the Attempted Murder of Palestine
"Coup" is the word being widely used to describe what happened in Gaza in June when Hamas militias defeated the armed security forces of Fatah and chased them out of Gaza. But, as so often with the manipulative language used in the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel, the terminology here is backward. Hamas was the legally constituted, democratically elected government of the Palestinians, so in the first place Hamas did not stage a coup but rather was the target of a coup planned against it. Furthermore, the coup -- which failed in Gaza but succeeded overall when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, acting in violation of Palestinian law, cut Gaza adrift, unseated the Palestinian unity government headed by Hamas, and named a new prime minister and cabinet -- was the handiwork of the United States and Israel.
The Fatah attacks against Hamas in Gaza were initiated at the whim of, and with arms and training provided by, the United States and Israel. No one seems to be making any secret of this. Immediately after Hamas won legislative elections in January 2006, Elliott Abrams, who runs U.S. policy toward Israel from his senior position on the National Security Council staff, met with a group of Palestinian businessmen and spoke openly of the need for a "hard coup" against Hamas. According to Palestinians who were there, Abrams was "unshakable" in his determination to oust Hamas. When the Palestinians, urging engagement with Hamas instead of confrontation, observed that Abrams’ scheme would bring more suffering and even starvation to Gaza’s already impoverished population, Abrams dismissed their concerns by claiming that it wouldn’t be the fault of the U.S. if that happened.
Abrams has been working on his coup plan ever since with his friends in Israel. As part of this scheme, the U.S. also urged Abbas -- again making no secret of this -- to dissolve the Fatah-Hamas unity government formed in March this year, form a new government, and call for new elections. Abbas acceded to U.S. demands with embarrassing alacrity after Hamas took Gaza. In a further gratuitous turn of the screw, he has appealed to Israel to turn up the heat on Hamas in Gaza by stopping delivery of fuel to Gaza’s power plant and keeping the Rafah border crossing point from Egypt closed so that none of the thousands of Palestinian waiting at the border to return home will be able to enter.
Institutions, order and hypocrisy
Amira Hass, Ha’aretz 7/26/2007
Even in this region, where diplomatic platitudes don’t begin to disguise the preferential treatment afforded Israel (although it is the occupier), the mandate of the new Quartet envoy Tony Blair rings particularly hollow. His role is reported as being "to help create viable and lasting government institutions representing all Palestinians ... and a climate of law and order for the Palestinian people."
Internal Palestinian negotiations between Hamas and Fatah may yet stop the disintegration of the Palestinians’ civil institutions and the complete severance between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, at the last moment. These institutions functioned during the most difficult times under Israeli military attacks, but started to crumble after January last year when the West, Israel and some Fatah elements tried in vain to topple a Hamas government founded on democratic elections.
One can go on about Hamas’ brutal takeover of the security apparatus in the Gaza Strip, and one could go back and discuss the chaos deliberately brought on by the leaders of those organs. Indeed, Hamas appears to be determined to prove that a national-Muslim regime in the "liberated" area is effective. But Hamas is not homogenous, and the boycott and siege policy has merely strengthened its extremists and their anonymous handlers. It is also true that Palestinian AuthorityChairman Mahmoud Abbas and his entourage are still entrenched in their irreconcilable anger with Hamas. But after years of becoming accustomed to receiving money from the West to compensate for its chronic political indulgence toward Israel - and in exchange for their inability to end the Israeli occupation - it is hard to decide to what extent their attitude is autonomous and when it derives from American and Israeli dictates.
7/20/2007
Palestine: Democracy American Style
David Morrison, spinwatch.org 7/16/2007
“It’s interesting that extremists attack democracies around the Middle East, whether it be the Iraq democracy, the Lebanese democracy, or a potential Palestinian democracy.”
Believe it or believe it not, those are the words of President Bush, as he stood beside Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, at the White House on 19 June 2007.
President Bush was speaking a few days after he had finally succeeded in undoing the outcome of the democratic elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in January 2006, when Hamas won 74 out of the 132 seats (compared with Fatah’s 45). It is worth emphasising that nobody, not even President Bush himself, questioned the fairness of these elections. Hamas had won, and won fair and square. NUG dismissed On 14 June 2007, with US encouragement, the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, declared a state of emergency and dismissed the recently formed National Unity Government under Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh. Subsequently, Abbas appointed Salam Fayyad, the Finance Minister in the previous government, as Prime Minister and invited him to form a so-called “emergency” government.
Gaza Showdown
James M. Wall, MIFTAH 7/21/2007
On the morning of January 25, 2006, I was with a group of American churchpeople at a Palestinian Authority polling place in Bethlehem. Having observed many elections over the years, I have learned to detect the difference between enthusiastic reformers hungry for change and members of an old guard, complacent after too many years in power. From what we saw in Bethlehem and heard in the West Bank, we predicted that Hamas would be victorious.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did not share our prediction; the day after the election she called an unusual Saturday morning staff meeting and expressed her frustration over the Hamas victory: "Why was it that nobody saw it coming?" The secretary revealed her lack of understanding of Palestinian politics when she added, "I don’t know anyone who was not caught off guard by Hamas’s strong showing."
According to Arab journalist Zaki Chehab (Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement), two days after the election, Rice flew to London to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, the Middle East conflict and emerging tensions with Iran. Again she claimed that a majority of people were surprised by the election results and added that "some say Hamas itself was caught off guard by Hamas’s strong showing."
7/18/2007
Alastair Crooke: Our Second Biggest Mistake in the Middle East
Alastair Crooke, Palestine Chronicle 7/20/2007
The author argues that the West could not have chosen a worse time to try to make Fatah a proxy dependent on Western financial subsidy and Israeli ’concessions’ to make up for the popular support it patently lacks.
Hamas: Unwritten Chapters by Azzam Tamimi • Hurst, 344 pp, £14.95 / Where Now for Palestine: The Demise of the Two-State Solution ed. Jamil Hilal • Zed, 260 pp, £17.99 / Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict by Sara Roy • Pluto, 379 pp, £16.99
’The situation in Gaza is dangerous, and the danger is that Hamas will take over and turn Gaza into "Hamastan" -- into a kingdom of thugs, murderers, terrorists, poverty and despair.’ This was the reaction of Ephraim Sneh, Israel’s deputy defence minister, to Hamas’s seizure of a number of key security institutions in Gaza in the days leading up to 14 June, when Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah, dismissed the unity government. But, despite what much of the media says, this is not a ’civil war’, and Hamas is not made up of ’gangs beyond the control of their leaders’. Hamas’s action was conducted with the aim of removing the influence of just one of Fatah’s security forces in Gaza, the militia controlled by Muhammad Dahlan, Abbas’s national security adviser. Hamas has insisted that this has not been a conflict with Fatah in general, and it was notable that neither the Palestinian security forces -- effectively the Palestinian ’army’ -- nor the police in Gaza were targets of the recent violence.
The origins of the Hamas action in Gaza lie in the reaction of the international community, and of Fatah, to Hamas’s overwhelming victory in the parliamentary elections of January 2006. Fatah, Yasir Arafat’s movement, saw itself as the founder of the Palestinian Authority; it believed it was the natural party of government; and it had fought a long battle with Arab neighbours to establish itself as synonymous with the PLO, and therefore, implicitly, as the ‘sole representative of the Palestinian people’. Some within Fatah were unable to come to terms with their loss of power, or to reconcile themselves to the claim that, on the basis of the election result, an Islamist party best represented the views of the Palestinian people. At this crucial juncture, the International Quartet intervened: they pressed President Abbas not to yield to Hamas, to hang onto power; and they promised to support him if he did so.
Blockade Drains Life from Gaza
James Haider, MIFTAH 7/18/2007
At the largest crossing point between Israel and the sealed-off Gaza Strip, capable of processing 200 lorries a day, only one vehicle can be seen. Instead of unloading its cargo of soya inside the border facility, the driver dumps it on a conveyor belt normally used to transfer gravel and cement.
The belt runs more than 200 metres across Karni’s deserted parking lot, over the border fence and into Gaza, where Palestinian merchants reload it into lorries. No Israeli sets eyes on a Palestinian in the process. On such narrow lifelines – there are five crossing points from Israel – hangs the survival of Gaza’s 1.4 million people.
The movement of goods into Gaza had been intermittent at best since Hamas won Palestinian elections early last year. After the Islamist movement drove out its secular Fatah rivals in fighting a month ago, it has been reduced to a trickle.
Aid groups give warning that while Gaza’s basic needs are being met, the narrow coastal belt is facing meltdown if more is not done to open up its borders. At Sufa crossing, to the south, there is more activity but no more contact between the two sides. All morning Israeli lorries drive into a fenced-off field on the border, kicking up clouds of dust as soldiers in guard towers watch for snipers. In the afternoon they withdraw, lock the gates and the field fills with Gaza’s merchants, who load the goods and head back to their hungry towns.
Ben White: Blair is Right Man for the Job, Indeed
Ben White, Palestine Chronicle 7/18/2007
As soon as it was confirmed that Tony Blair would be taking up the role of special envoy to the Middle East on behalf of the Quartet (USA, EU, UN and Russia), typical reactions ranged from skepticism to mockery. However, the choice of Blair is only incredible if one takes at face value the stated function and intent of the Quartet regarding the ’peace process’. Most mainstream commentators, therefore, have missed a trick.
Some have coyly hinted at the fact that Blair will be an ’unpopular’ or ’controversial’ choice of envoy in the Middle East (without going into any of the gruesome details). Others have gone further, highlighting specific Blair policies in the Middle East and concluding that the Quartet could have made a better selection. Common amongst all these approaches though is that the Quartet’s intentions are placed beyond serious critique. On closer inspection, the Quartet and Blair are a perfect match for each other, having been consistently on the same wavelength both in terms of practical strategies and the corresponding informing ideology.
Perhaps the most far-reaching policy that both Blair and the Quartet have enthusiastically implemented is the continued boycott of the Hamas-majority Palestinian government, initiated shortly after the PLC elections had passed off successfully. The spectacle of the Quartet simultaneously urging the Palestinians to build a healthy democracy (and in fact, making that a prerequisite for ’earning’ the right to self-determination), yet also boycotting the elected government, has been unsightly enough to draw flak from diverse quarters. UN Human Rights monitor John Dugard, a man with a track record in highlighting Israeli human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories, wrote that "Palestinians understandably find it difficult to comprehend the response of the Quartet and many Western States to the Palestinian elections". While it is Israel that violates UN Resolutions and the ICJ’s ruling on the Separation Barrier, it is the Palestinian people who "have been subjected to possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions imposed in modern times"1. Similarly, Oxfam -- a charity not known for political radicalism -- released a statement just over a year after the PLC elections that, with dry understatement, described how "the Quartet’s decision to withhold funds from the elected Authority has convinced many Palestinians that the Quartet is not genuinely committed to democracy in the Middle East"2
7/15/2007
A Life of Unrest
Steven Erlanger, MIFTAH 7/17/2007
Palestinians never used to do these things to one another. Putting bullets in the back of the heads of men on their knees. Shooting up hospitals. Killing patients. Knee-capping doctors. Executing clerics. Throwing handcuffed prisoners to their deaths from Gaza’s highest (and most expensive) apartment buildings. There is a madness in Gaza now. Hamas — a religious political-military organization that dominated the last Palestinian elections — claimed it was fighting infidels, with a holy sanction to kill. Fatah — the largest group in the Palestine Liberation Organization — was nearly as brutal as Hamas and claimed it was fighting the Nazis. Poor young men from the squalid, stinking refugee camps of Gaza, their heads filled with religious slogans and revolutionary cant, took off their knitted black masks to pose in front of the gilded bathrooms of the once-powerful and rich men of Fatah. Then they stole the sinks, toilets, tiles and pipes, leaving the wiring and the metal scraps for the ordinary, unarmed poor.
Gaza today is so far from the hopes of people like James Wolfensohn — the former World Bank president who tried to coordinate economic redevelopment in the 140-square-mile territory between Israel and Egypt after the Israelis withdrew nearly two years ago — as to seem like the other side of the earth. Rather than a model for a future Palestinian state, Gaza looks like Somalia: broken and ravenous. The civil war that Palestinians insisted could never happen just has, a civil war abetted by Israel and the United States in the name of antiterrorism and stability — another policy that has failed, at least here, where a burning smell still fills the nostrils and where a masked Hamas gunman with an AK-47 recently sat at the abandoned desk of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, lifted up the phone and said: “Hello, Condoleezza Rice? You have me to deal with now.” But the military victory of Hamas may also bring a welcome measure of quiet and security to the 1.5 million people of Gaza, nearly 70 percent of them refugees, who have been living a nightmare of criminal gangs, street-corner vendettas, clan warfare, absent police, corrupt officials, religious incitement and unremitting poverty.
Reality Check on Palestinian Elections
Nadia Hijab and Diana Buttu, MIFTAH 7/17/2007
The 30-day emergency period declared by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas ends July 14. There has been talk of early elections as a way out of the political crisis, but tremendous legal, political, and physical obstacles would face such a move to say nothing of the limits on the power of a new Palestinian parliament or government.
After the Fatah-Hamas clashes in mid-June, Abbas declared a state of emergency, dismissed the government headed by Ismail Haniyeh, appointed Salam Fayyad as prime minister, suspended Articles 65 – 67 and 79 of the Basic Law that require a new government to secure a vote of confidence from the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) before taking office, and called for an international force in Gaza to support the holding of new elections. Since then, the extent of the president’s powers has been challenged.
What Lies Ahead for the PLC?
The powers of each of the executive, legislative and judiciary are spelled out in the Basic Law, the quasi-constitution of the PA. [1] Those who support the actions taken by Abbas argue that during an emergency the president has sweeping powers, including to install a new government and to suspend Basic Law articles. However, independent, expatriate Palestinian constitutional experts who led the drafting of the Basic Law say that the president did not have the power to suspend its articles, and that, while Abbas had the right to dismiss the prime minister, the Haniyeh government should have continued in a caretaker capacity until a new government could secure a vote of confidence from the PLC. [2]
The PLC crisis: where is it heading after the recent dialogue?
Ma’an News Agency 7/14/2007
Gaza – Ma’an – Now that the thirty days for the emergency government are almost over, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, may be able to call for early elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), if he abides by the Palestinian Basic Law.
Hamas is trying to take advantage of the last days of the state of emergency, as it is calling for a PLC meeting to discuss Abbas’s emergency government.
With the end of the thirty days in sight, a number of questions surface. First of all, will Fatah members of the PLC respond to Hamas’ call for a PLC session? Also, it is not clear whether members of other factions and independent PLC members are likely to attend the meeting, because many are unavailable, such as Rawya Al Shawa. And, if Fatah do decide to be present, will the meeting put an end to the conflict between the two main factions within the PLC, Fatah and Hamas?
The deputy speaker of the Council, Ahmad Bahar, has called on all members of the PLC to come to a meeting on Sunday to discuss the state of emergency declared on June 14th.
Abbas Plays on Hamas Boycott to Keep his Cabinet in Place
Steven Erlanger, MIFTAH 7/13/2007
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, convened the Palestinian legislature on Wednesday, but a Hamas boycott meant there was no quorum, which was clearly what Mr. Abbas wanted. With parliament unable to meet, he can extend the life of the emergency cabinet he appointed after Hamas took over Gaza.
Hamas legislators boycotted the session, contending that it was illegal. Salah al-Bardawil, a Hamas legislator, said in Gaza that convening the legislature “without arrangements with the biggest bloc, and with the Israeli arrest of Hamas legislators, was an attack on Palestinian legitimacy.”
The term of the emergency government, led by an independent economist, Salaam Fayyad, is set to expire next week, after 30 days. Some Palestinian legal authorities say that Mr. Abbas, though he had the power to fire the old government under the Palestinian Basic Law, had no power to name a new government without legislative approval. Hamas won 74 seats in the 132-member parliament in elections in January 2006, but 39 Hamas legislators from the West Bank are in Israeli jails without charges. So with only the 35 Hamas legislators not in jail and the 45 seats held by its rival, Fatah, Hamas would have been in the minority if a quorum had been attained.
7/5/2007
Recapturing legitimacy in Palestine
Michael Meyer-Resende and Michel Paternotre, Daily Star 7/11/2007
Western countries got it wrong when they believed that Hamas could not win the 2006 democratic elections they promoted in the Palestinian territories. Western leaders are getting it wrong again when they suggest that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is the only Palestinian player with democratic legitimacy and that he won elections in a "landslide," to quote the United Nations’ official Terje Roed-Larsen.
This is not supported by the facts.
Abbas was elected in 2005 with some 60 percent of the vote, but those elections were not contested by Hamas. He received 500,000 votes from an electorate of some 1.2 million. A year later, in more competitive elections, Hamas gained 44 percent of the votes, amounting to 440,000 votes. Both elections were considered to have been genuinely democratic by many international observers.
The latest opinion poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research indicates that a meager 13 percent of respondents declared themselves satisfied with Abbas’ handling of the Palestinian crisis, and his overall approval rating has fallen to 36 percent. Abbas remains the legitimate president, but not more than Hamas was the legitimate government party. Contrary to perceptions that the West Bank is "Fatahland," last year Hamas won a higher proportion of seats there than in the Gaza Strip.
What Can Abu Mazin Do? (PDF)
Nathan J. Brown, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 10/20/2006
When Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council in the January 2006 elections, many observers asked whether President Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazin), the popularly elected president from the rival Fatah movement, could prevent Hamas from assuming authority. Once Hamas formed a government, many asked whether Abu Mazin could dismiss or replace it.
These questions are natural. From the United States to Korea to Poland, the first election resulting in an alternation of power provoked questions and debates about the precise meaning of various constitutional clauses and phrases. Despite widespread media commentary concerning gaps and silences in the Palestinian “Basic Law”—the interim constitution for the Palestinian Authority—the document is actually unusually clear on most matters. It is untested, however, and its contents are not widely known. For this reason, there has been considerable confusion about its provisions, aggravated by the tendency of Abu Mazin’s advisors to pressure Hamas by hinting that the president might use constitutional powers that he simply does not have. Existing arrangements give Abu Mazin very few tools to act unilaterally. Almost any change would require either Hamas’s consent or a violation of the Basic Law.
Stonewalling in Ramallah
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly 7/5/2007
Even as the Abbas government does Israel’s bidding, it is being targeted by its new patron.
East Jerusalem - The Ramallah-based Palestinian "emergency government" continues to adamantly reject any rapprochement with Hamas, despite growing calls to this effect by a number of key Arab and Muslim countries as well as Palestinian intellectuals.
Instead, the government, backed by the United States and Israel, is asserting its authority (although this doesn’t mean much in real terms given the ubiquitous reality of the Israeli occupation), ostensibly in preparation for holding early general elections with or without Hamas’s participation.
Nabil Amr, an aide to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, was quoted as saying this week that it was likely that the term of the Fayyad government would be extended indefinitely despite "the legal reservations".
Amr suggested that the inability of the Palestinian Legislative Council to convene would eventually force the Fatah-dominated PA leadership to take "extra-judicial" or even "non-lawful" decisions to extend the term of the present government in Ramallah indefinitely.
6/27/2007
Blair must make up for failure in Palestine
Andrew Phillips, The Guardian 7/1/2007
It may well be because Tony Blair has Palestine on his conscience that he took the thankless role of special envoy to that benighted land. When we invaded Iraq, Blair made clear that reconciling Israel and Palestine was the twin challenge. His government failed to rise to it. The road map to nowhere has been compounded by a lack of even-handedness, a want of political imagination and a subservience to Israel and the Bush administration. That has directly contributed to the tragic shambles that is Palestine today. The old Israeli right-wing policy of perpetual divide and rule is again triumphant.
My third personal fact-finding visit to Palestine since 2003 ended a few weeks ago with a one-to-one meeting with Ismail Haniyeh, then Prime Minister. Britain’s refusal to engage with Hamas over its lack of democratic legitimacy is seen there as wholly cynical, given that the boycott continued after elections last year gave them more than 60 per cent of the legislative seats.
Blair will find the Palestinians feel bitterly about the West’s failure to stop Israel building its illegal wall, its rapid colonisation of the West Bank and the humiliation of the checkpoint. When I remarked to some Jewish NGO workers that the pass system seemed Kafkaesque, they said they called the West Bank ’Kafkastan’.
Stephen Lendman: ‘Demonstration’ Government in Palestine
Stephen Lendman, Palestine Chronicle 6/26/2007
It’s a small, maybe temporary victory, but important one nonetheless.It shows mighty America, Israel and the EU can be challenged and forced to back down giving Palestinian people hope more victories will follow.
In 1984 (a year of Orwellian significance), activist and media and social critic Edward Herman wrote one of his many important books titled "Demonstration Elections."In it, he analyzed the US-staged elections in the 1960s in the Dominican Republic and Vietnam and the 1982 one in El Salvador. In the book’s Orwellian glossary of terms, he defined the process as "A circus held in a client state to assure the population of the home country that their intrusion is well received. The results are guaranteed by an adequate supply of bullets provided in advance (and freely used as necessary to achieve the desired outcome)."
This writer calls this ugly business "democracy-engineering, American-style" backed by force to win approval of a rigged process people would never accept another way. Noam Chomsky refers to the notion of "Keeping the Rabble in Line," the title of one of his many books. It can be through soft or hard methods to assure the public goes along with what governments want imposed.
Neither Fatah nor Hamas but Palestine
Redress Information & Analysis, MIFTAH 6/25/2007
Redress Information & Analysis argues that both Fatah and Hamas have forfeited the privilege of representing the Palestinian people and calls upon Palestinians in the occupied territories to form a broadly-based, patriotic national liberation movement that would represent all the people.
For the first time since the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964, the Palestinian people have no leaders and nobody to represent them: no one to defend them in the occupied territories, and no one to speak on their behalf internationally.
Paradoxically, there is no shortage of entities that purport to represent the Palestinians. In addition to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), there are 10 factions that make up the PLO , and there is also the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which was chosen by the Palestinian people to head the PNA in free and fair elections held in January 2006.
Yet, in truth none of these entities represents, let alone cares for, the Palestinians, whether in the occupied territories or in the diaspora.
The West hands Palestinians a poisoned chalice
Sonja Karkar, ZNet 6/25/2007
It seems few can speak the truth anymore and that does not augur well for Palestine or for the world generally. Time and again, law and principles have been compromised for Israel’s benefit and the world has acquiesced; now it seems some Palestinians are prepared to do the same. Shades of Oslo repeated, but this time, without any hope at all for a just end to the Palestine question. Those who thought it would be different, have forgotten Israel’s ruthless masterplan to take all of the land. With 93 percent of Palestine already annexed to Israel and 7 percent under its actual control, a final solution to rid Israel of 4 million Palestinians was always inevitable. Just how Israel was going to do that without resorting to outright genocide seemed to have its abominable solution in transfer and apartheid. Now it looks like the solution will be found by turning Palestinian against Palestinian with consequences too awful to contemplate. Never before has there been such a need to expose the hypocrisy, lies and obfuscations that may well mean the end of a united liberation struggle.
After years of claiming it had no partner for peace, it is interesting to learn that Israel will cooperate with President Abbas and the “new government”. More likely, the Palestinians are being handed a poisoned chalice. Democracy is being offered like some magic elixir, when all the while, the democratic process has been systematically undermined at every turn over the last 18 months. The result has seen Palestinians bitterly divided and the national framework for liberation fractured. What is happening now is more of the same. The Israeli/US-backed “emergency government” in the West Bank is contrary to Palestinian Basic Law and requires approval from a quorum of the Legislative Council in which Hamas holds the majority of seats. Those who would describe President Abbas’ actions as necessary to put down the Hamas “coup” in Gaza are making nonsensical claims. The Hamas government has always been legitimate since it won democratic elections in January 2006 and cannot instigate a coup against itself. That has been conveniently overlooked by the US, Israel, and shamefully by some members of the Palestinian Fatah party, all of whom have done everything to bring the legitimate government down.
6/22/2007
El-Farra: Palestinians must have hope to move forward
Mona El-Farra, International Solidarity Movement 6/23/2007
As a physician from Gaza, I have treated far too many Palestinians wounded by Israeli troops. Now a day has come that I thought I would never see.
Throughout our 59-year struggle to obtain our freedom, we Palestinians debated strategy and tactics. Political factions competed for popular support. But never would I have believed that we would turn guns against each other. What brought us to this point?
In 2006, Hamas won free and fair elections on a platform that promised clean and efficient government. But Israel and the West meddled with our democratically elected choice by imposing devastating economic sanctions. How would Americans feel if a foreign power expressed its dissatisfaction with your elected government in this way? Our economy and our livelihoods have been destroyed, reducing many of us to poverty.
At last, we exploded with a desperation born of decades of oppression, lack of opportunity and loss of hope. We brutalized each other over the crumbs of power. The shame is ours "” but the responsibility is shared between reckless Palestinians and external powers that turned the screws on our people.
6/19/2007
Palestinians Say Hamas and Fateh Equally Responsible for the Infighting
Samar Assad, MIFTAH 6/23/2007
Overview.
Fifty-nine percent of Palestinians surveyed in a 21 June 2007 poll blame Fateh and Hamas for last weeks intra-Palestinian fighting and 71 percent said they consider both groups to be the “loser.” The survey, conducted by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), found that while 75 percent want early presidential and parliamentary elections, 40 percent said they would not participate if the race was between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh. Abbas would slightly edge out Hanyieh with 49 percent of the vote compared to Hanyieh’s 42 percent. The numbers change dramatically if imprisoned Fateh leader Marwan Barghouthi replaced Abbas in the race. The percentage of voter nonparticipation decreases to 31 percent and 59 percent of West Bank respondents said they would vote for Barghouthi compared to 35 percent for Haniyeh. In Gaza, 55 percent of respondents said Barghouthi was their choice compared to 41 percent who said they prefer Haniyeh. The 1270 randomly selected respondents from the West Bank and Gaza Strip were interviewed between 14 and 20 June 2007. The margin of error is 3 percent.
Public Support.
The survey found that a majority are angry over the recent fighting between Hamas and Fateh and have lost confidence in their leadership and in most of the security services. Only 13 percent expressed satisfaction with Abbas’ handling of the recent events and satisfaction with his performance in general stands at 36 percent compared to 48 percent in March.
A restructured PLO
Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly 6/21/2007
Without an organisation capable of representing all Palestinians, both in the occupied territories and the diaspora, the future can comprise little beyond internecine conflict.
The US and its Western followers revealed what democratisation of the Arab world actually means to them when they rejected the results of the Palestinian legislative elections and instead began an economic boycott. The result was escalating internecine violence fuelled by the lure of money.
The Mecca Agreement between Fatah and Hamas to form a unity government opened the horizon for a unified Palestinian strategy that would include the restructuring of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and that would compel Arab governments to face the |
