‘I never leave this place, I live here and I play here.’ (Photo: PalestineFreeVoice)

By Hiyam Noir and Fady Adwan in Gaza

Amid all levels of infrastructural devastation in the Gaza Strip, many families are hit by increasing poverty, and many are forgotten, living absolute marginalized.

In the heart of Gaza City is an old cemetery, where some families have found shelter, and where they live their lives among the dead. One family we meet have lived on the old Gaza City graveyard, for over five decades. Others have become poor and dispossessed during the last decade. Because of the many difficult conditions and the hardship under occupation, many have lost their employment or a business, and without income there is very little money over to pay for the rent, or to build or buy a new home.

“I came here, to live between the tombs, with my husband and children, 50 years ago,” says Um Suhail Jilo, 72. Her family was forced out from their village in the 1948 expulsion, the Al Nakba, this is the time of disaster for the Palestinians. The time when the Jews on Arab Palestinian land erected the illusory state, that became the Zionist state of Israel. Jewish armed gangs like Irgun, the Stern - gang, and the terrorist organizations Palmack and Haganah terrorized and brutalized hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, forcing the inhabitants to flee their homeland and leave their possessions, to search for safe shelters abroad, in other countries.

“In that time, so long ago, no one helped us to build for us a simple house… so we found no other choice, but to find a roof over our heads here inside the Gaza City old graveyard. We bought tin plates to build a house for our family. The house became impaired and corroded by time or wear, so a few years later, we made some small improvements and added cement onto the walls “. Um Suhail tell us, she lives here with 16 of her family members, her sons and daughters, her in-law’s and grandchildren, in a house consisting of three bedrooms.

Um Suhail’s husband, as so many other husband’s and family- supporters were forced to move outside Gaza Strip to work, to be able to support the family. “Now I have not heard from him in tens of years,” Um Suhail says with a sad voice. “I do not know what happened to him.” Mean while she is making food using a wood burning stove, Um Suhail says: “We have got used to live among the graves of the dead… we are like them, depending on charities and handouts.”

Due to the Israeli-led international siege imposed on Gaza Strip since June last year, the son’s of Um Suhail have lost their jobs, and the family have lost their main source of income. For years, this worn out and exhausted woman has hand washed all the clothes for her large family, until a well doing family bought her a modern washing machine.

Mohammed, a six-year-old boy, born in the home on the graveyard tell us , “I never leave this place, I live here and I play here, and I do not fear ghost’s or the tomb’s.” But in the night, Mohammed fear most the snakes and the spiders, says his grandmother Um Suhail. “Last month, we found and killed, a one and half meter long snake in our house, it was not a pleasant experience, believe me.”

In Sderot, sighs of relief. Children venture out. But the people of the town are angry.

By Uri Avnery

And suddenly: quiet. No Qassams. No mortar shells. The tanks are not rolling. The aircraft are not bombing.

In Sderot, sighs of relief. Children venture out. Inhabitants who have exiled themselves to other towns return home.

And the reaction? An outburst of jubilation? Dancing in the streets? Applause for the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense, who at long last have come to their senses?

Not at all. The expression on the nation’s face is a grimace of disgust. What kind of thing is that? Where is our victorious army?

The people of Sderot are really angry. OK, so there are no Qassams, but this was supposed to happen only after the army had entered Gaza and wiped it out.

Haaretz headed its front page with the mendacious headline: “Israel pays with deeds - and gets promises”.

“It’s fragile,” Ehud Olmert soothes us, it can come to an end any minute. And the other Ehud, Barak, who pushed for the cease-fire, has an excuse: we have to go through the motions before starting the Big Operation in Gaza. For the sake of Israeli and international public opinion.

And nobody says: Thank God, the killing has stopped!

Why? What causes this almost unanimous reaction of disappointment? Why is there a general feeling of humiliation, almost of defeat?

It’s because the national ego is hurt. How wonderful it would have been to see the Israeli army in Gaza destroying Hamas, together with the entire city. But, instead of the crushing victory, we have something that smacks of a rout. And that in spite of the assertions of those now rooting for re-occupying the Gaza Strip: that at any minute, with just a little more starvation and closure, the population would have broken and rebelled against Hamas.

From the military point of view, a year of war in the Gaza Strip has ended in a draw. IDF-Hamas 1:1. But the IDF and Hamas are not two football teams of equal standing. Hamas is an armed political-religious movement, what is termed in current Western parlance “a terrorist organization”. When such an organization achieves a draw with one of the mightiest armies in the world, it can justifiably claim victory.

The aim of Olmert’s war was to topple the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip and to destroy the organization itself. This has not been attained. On the contrary, according to all reports, Hamas is stronger than ever, and its hold on the Strip is solid. Even in Israel that is not questioned.

For a year, the Israeli government has maintained a total blockade of the Strip - on land, at sea and in the air. It has enjoyed the unqualified support of Europe, which assisted in starving a population of one and a half million men and women, children and old people. The US was, of course, a full partner in this glorious enterprise. Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, dependent on the US, collaborated, if unwillingly.

All this was not enough to beat poor and crowded Gaza, a narrow strip of land 35 km (22 miles) long and 10 km (6 miles) wide, into submission. Not only did the rockets not stop, but their range increased. Their victims in Israel were few, a child could count them, but their impact on morale was immense.

The Israeli army was helpless against this primitive weapon, which costs next to nothing. The army killed wholesale and in retail, on land and from the air, with missiles, shells and infantry weapons. To no avail.

Hamas has survived, but it, too, did not achieve its aim. It had no answer to the blockade. Only the pressure of international public opinion (as well as the Israeli peace forces) prevented total starvation, but in the Strip there was a shortage of everything. Unemployment was rampant, fuel disappeared, many inhabitants suffered from undernourishment, bordering on starvation.

That is the nature of a draw: neither of the two sides is able to force a decision and impose its will on its opponent.

A ceasefire only comes about when both sides need it. (True, Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military philosopher, has said that in war it is impossible for a situation to be beneficial to both sides at the same time, that something that is good for one side is necessarily bad for the other. But in real war there are exceptions.)

Indeed, the Israeli army needed the ceasefire no less than Hamas. That became clear from the comments of the “military correspondents”, almost all of whom are thinly disguised army spokesmen. Of course, not one of the cabinet members would have agreed to a ceasefire if the army brass had objected.

Usually, the army bosses press for one more action, one more operation, one more war. Have they suddenly turned into doves? Not really. But they knew that they had to choose between two “bad” options: a ceasefire or the “Great Operation” - the re-conquest of the entire Gaza Strip.

The commanders did not like the first option, and that is an understatement. It means admitting failure. But the second option they liked even less - much, much less.

The Great Operation, which a large part of the public yearned for, which almost all the media demanded at the top of their voices, is very problematical. Hamas has had a lot of time to prepare for it. No army likes to fight in a built-up area, among a crowded population. Every alley is a potential trap, every man - and every woman - a potential suicide bomber. Even if the army succeeded in entering and occupying the strip with only “tolerable” casualties, that would just be the beginning of the troubles. Every day soldiers would be killed. The mutual bloodletting would be endless. See: the Iraq war.

Public opinion is fickle. Every dead soldier whose smiling picture is shown on television increases the pressure to get out. Sooner or later the army would be compelled to leave - and the situation would revert to what it was before, only worse.

The army chiefs know this. Olmert and Barak also know this. The lesson of the Second Lebanon War has not been forgotten. There is no mood for war.

The ceasefire has far-reaching political implications. It changes the Palestinian - and perhaps the regional - map.

One can protest from here to eternity, one can shout from the rooftops that “we don’t negotiate with Hamas” and that “we have no agreement with Hamas” - every child understands that we indeed do, and indeed have.

This is an agreement between the Government of Israel and the Gaza authorities. It means a de facto recognition of the Hamas government there. In Gaza, too, every child understands that the Israeli government was compelled to agree because it was unable to break Hamas by force.

In the eyes of the Palestinians, the situation is clear: Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah has not got anything from the Israelis, Hamas has.

Abbas tries by peaceful means. He is the darling of the Americans and the Israelis. But since the great performance in Annapolis, not only has he not achieved any meaningful concessions at all and not freed a single prisoner, but additional prisoners are being taken every night, the settlements are being enlarged and the Israeli government announces grandiose new building projects in East Jerusalem and the entire West Bank. And the Israeli government would not dream of agreeing to a ceasefire there.

While at the same time Hamas, besieged by the whole world, losing fighters every day, has attained a significant military and political achievement: goods will flow into the Strip, cars will again bounce along the potholed roads, the Rafah crossing, which cuts off the Strip from the world, will be opened. In the coming prisoner exchange, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be released in return for the captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

The conclusion? Everybody can ask themselves: if I were a Palestinian, what conclusion would I draw?

The ceasefire affects the balance of power within the Palestinian people. Hamas has proved that it can maintain an orderly government. Now it is proving that it can control the radical organizations, too.

The wisest thing Mahmoud Abbas can do now is to form a Unity Government, based on both Hamas and Fatah.

Will the ceasefire hold? The correspondents report that nobody expects it to.

When Olmert says that it is fragile, he knows what he is talking about.

There is no written agreement. No orderly mechanism for settling disputes. No arbitrator to decide, in case of need, which side is responsible for a violation.

If somebody in Israel wants to break the ceasefire, nothing will be easier: a squad leader opens fire on a group of Palestinians near the border fence, because he suspects that they are about to plant an explosive device. A spy helicopter pilot believes that he is being shot at and launches a missile. The army intelligence chief claims that large quantities of arms are being smuggled into the Strip.

It can be done in other ways, too. The army will kill half a dozen Islamic Jihad militants in the West Bank. In response, the organization will fire a salvo of Qassams at Sderot. The army will announce that this is a violation of the agreement and answer with an incursion into the Gaza Strip. It will even be right formally, since the ceasefire does not cover the West Bank.

Every agreement holds only as long as both sides believe that it serves their interests. If one of them thinks otherwise, it will break it (and assert that the other side broke it first). In this case, the first to break it will most likely be the Israeli side.

A ceasefire is not peace (salaam), and not even an armistice or truce (hudnah). It is no more than an agreement between combatants to stop shooting for some time.

In the nature of things, each side will use the ceasefire to prepare for the next round of fighting - to breathe deeply, to rest, to train, to plan, to obtain more advanced weapons.

But the ceasefire can become more than that. It can lead to Palestinian unity, to Israeli re-thinking, to a practical advance towards a peaceful solution. At the very least, every day of the ceasefire saves human lives.

And in the meantime the Hebrew and the international dictionaries have acquired another Arabic word: Tahdiyeh, calm.

-Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.

(Photo: Musa al-Shaer/PalestineChronicle.com)

By Joharah Baker

Israeli intellectuals and political pundits often accuse the Palestinians of living in the past, hashing up the old excuse of “the occupation” to push aside any “real and genuine” Israeli efforts for peace. They say that not only is their argument “old”, Israelis cannot possibly consider arriving at a peace deal with a people who continue to attack them. Palestinians, of course, see this approach as just one more way of postponing any final settlement to the conflict and furthering even more Israeli facts on the ground.

Over the past few years, Palestinians have provided fuel for this fire, with the internal split between Hamas and Fateh, the geographical and political separation between the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the various Palestinian factions that continue to fire homemade rockets into Israeli territory, even though these rockets cause minimal or no damage at all.

However, recently, the Palestinians have been showing increasing signs of willingness to put these divisions both between themselves and even with Israel, aside for the sake of creating an atmosphere of calm. Unfortunately, however, Israel is not reciprocating, proving once again that its goals are far more insidious than they seem and are fundamentally expansionist in nature.

Ever since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Israeli rhetoric has focused primarily on the isolation and condemnation of the Islamic movement’s hold on the Strip. Israel, the United States and by proxy, almost the entire international community, has shunned Hamas and insisted that no peace talks would ever move forward if its de facto government in Gaza remains in place.

For a long time, Hamas also towed a similar line – Israel was not to be recognized, its only capacity on any political playing field being one of a belligerent occupation which by no means should be negotiated with. Coupled with the Fateh-headed West Bank government under President Mahmoud Abbas in place and towing a similar line vis-à-vis Hamas, the internal situation and that with Israel took turn after turn for the worse.

Keeping this status quo was in Israel’s best interests, no doubt, in spite of all of its hullabaloo about the constant threat Israeli citizens are under from the rocket attacks coming out of Gaza. Yes, the rockets, if nothing else, are a nuisance and have occasionally killed a few Israeli citizens. However, the benefits reaped by Israel from maintaining the situation in Gaza far exceed any real threats to its “security.” For one, it has the full backing of the international community in isolating and besieging Hamas and therefore the entire Gaza Strip. Israel has blockaded Gaza, killed scores of innocent civilians and has denied the population food, medical supplies and fuel for days on end, with virtual impunity, all under the guise of combating this “terrorist” organization and trying to curb the rocket attacks.

Furthermore, the continued internal Palestinian divisions have played straight into Israel’s hands. Especially now with peace talks restarted after the Annapolis conference in November of last year, Israel is keen on keeping a united Palestinian front at bay. A weak Palestinian leadership at the negotiating table equals fewer concessions from the Israelis.

Luckily, the Palestinians seem to have realized this, even if considerable damage has already been done. On the Palestinian front, President Abbas has called for reconciliation talks with Hamas based on the Yemeni Initiative last March. This time, it looks as if the two sides may actually make some headway as opposed to previous efforts.

Furthermore, Hamas in Gaza is also trying to put its best face forward, offering a truce agreement – mediated by the Egyptians – to Israel. It has said it would withhold rocket attacks into Israeli territory and has presented a letter – via the Carter Center in Ramallah – penned by captured Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit, which was handed to his parents as a gesture of good faith.

These are quantum leaps for Hamas, particularly when coupled with its efforts to reunite with the leadership. But like the old saying goes, “It takes two to tango.” Rather than embrace this offer, Israel is threatening wide scale military action in the Strip. This morning, on June 11, a nine-year old Palestinian girl, Hadeel Al Sumeiri, was killed by an Israeli tank shell in the town of Qarara, east of Khan Younis. Civilian casualties in Gaza have become the rule rather than the exception, with Israel continuing its attacks, which it claims are defensive rather than offensive.

Should Israel carry out a massive military operation into the Strip, this would all but obliterate any talks of a truce and most likely hinder Palestinian-Palestinian talks as well given that Abbas’ government opposes Hamas’ hold on Gaza and its militarization of the conflict there. Israel will thus have more time to stall any peace talks with the Palestinians at the negotiating table, all under the pretext that its number one priority is to protect its citizens from “terror.”

Understanding Israel’s intentions better exposes its bogus argument about Palestinians holding on to the past. It also proves how imperative it is for Palestinians to retain this position if they are ever to make major strides in negotiations. Israel does not want to talk about the illegal nature of its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. For one, this would de-legitimize its presence there, which it cannot afford because of the high stakes, least of which are the Israeli settlements in these areas. Israel has adopted a policy of imposing virtually irreversible facts on the ground in the form of settlements, bypass roads, the separation wall and the airtight encirclement around Jerusalem. Hence, the more physical structures there are on the ground, the more wiggle room they have for negotiations.

In the past, the Palestinians have fallen into this Israeli-concocted trap. As a result, the Palestinian leadership signed the Oslo Accords, the Wye River Agreement and the Roadmap all of which do not demand the one thing that would ensure an end to the conflict, which is the complete end to the Israeli occupation of 1967.

Israel’s belligerent attitude today towards Gaza despite of Palestinian efforts to bring about calm is further evidence that with Israel, there is just no winning. Palestinians have brought calm to their areas before under Israeli pressure but this has never stopped Israel from continuing its expansionist and oppressive policies towards them.

That is why Palestinian efforts to unite and to relieve the pressure off of Gaza’s residents should be applauded. If Israel continues to shun these efforts, perhaps this will sound the final wake-up call for the international community. It’s about time the alarms go off.

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Programme at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mip@miftah.org.

By Stuart Littlewood

Some time ago Hamas complained that the Palestinian Authority was not getting its message across thanks to “poorly qualified or unqualified spokespersons with inadequate political and linguistic abilities”.

Diplomacy had failed and the Palestinians needed “professional spokespersons with excellent knowledge of the world and mastery of foreign languages, especially English, to tell the world in a straightforward manner that Israel is a murderer, liar and land thief…”

How right Hamas is. Israel is the undeserving winner in the propaganda game. The Palestinians squander their chances and make little impact even though truth and justice are on their side. They occupy the moral high ground but consistently lose the all-important war of words. Why? The Palestinian General Delegation in London, for example, is blessed with two very talented people who should be making an impression.

Professor Manuel Hassassian took up his post as ambassador two and a half years ago, arriving at a critical moment in Palestinian diplomacy. He’s an academic “big gun” – a BA in Political Science from the American University of Beirut, an MA in International Relations from Toledo University, Ohio, USA, and a PhD in Comparative Politics from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

Before his appointment to this vital London job he was executive vice-president of Bethlehem University as well as professor of political science and president of the Palestinian-European-American Cooperation in Education (PEACE) programme. Among other things, he’s an expert on Palestinian civil society and citizenship, the right of refugees to return and church affairs. And he’s very articulate.

Husam Zomlot is the Oxford Research Group’s Middle East consultant and political adviser to the Palestinian diplomatic effort in the UK. Another highly qualified academic, Zomlot has a BA in Economics and Political Science, an MSc in Development Studies, and his PhD thesis dealt with international peace building and post-conflict reconstruction aid programmes.

He has worked with the UN, the London School of Economics and the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute. He lectured on international economics at the University of London and has contributed to several books, including State formation in Palestine: viability and governance during a social transformation – heavy stuff by the sound of it. Zomlot is an expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Palestinian and Arab politics, transitional economies, and bilateral and multilateral negotiations.

These are the voices appointed to speak to Western diplomats and media on behalf of a dispossessed, tormented and humiliated people in what is possibly the world’s hottest of hot-spots. The General Delegation also has a public relations person, so with a team like this the Palestinians surely can’t go wrong.
During the Palestinian elections (January 2006) I tuned in to British TV and radio expecting informed comment from key Palestinians. The BBC wheeled in people whose English was often so bad as to be almost unintelligible, while giving generous air-time to well-rehearsed Israeli propagandists.

This prompted a letter of frustration to the BBC. “Why wasn’t the Palestinian ambassador at the forefront of your election news coverage?” I wanted to know. “I understand from the Palestinian Delegation in London that he was interviewed for the World Service and one or two digital channels, but that hardly gave mainstream viewers such as myself a chance to hear the authentic voice of Palestine…”

The BBC’s reply gave links to a few reports most of which had indeed been broadcast on the World Service rather than domestic channels. “I saw and heard none of them,” I wrote back. “Also you do not say why the official voice of Palestine in the UK, Professor Manuel Hassassian, is so seldom heard.”
Is Hassassian’s team not pushy enough? Has the tame Fatah administration in Ramallah ordered them to dumb down and not rock the boat? Or is it a case of not being “savvy” enough? One thing is certain: they are no match for the Israeli lie machine.

I twice asked the General Delegation’s London office to copy me on all press releases, and they twice promised to do so. I have received nothing except a few notices about forthcoming demonstration and suchlike, nothing a journalist could use to develop a good story. Are they not bothering to brief the press and TV? Is there no attempt to educate and inform?

How are British people supposed to understand the Palestinian point of view? The appalling situation in the West Bank and Gaza, which can be traced back to Britain’s foolishness 90 years ago, is massively relevant to us in the West today: it’s about Israel’s grand theft of the Holy Land, no less, and the terrorizing of its Christian and Muslim communities.

Hamas’s Haniyeh, Al-Zahar and Abu Zuri, and even the Catholic priest Fr Manuel Musallam, all bottled up in Gaza, seem far more effective with their limited access to news organizations than Hassassian and Zumlot in London with the world’s media on their doorstep. It is puzzling that Prof Hassassian, who comes from the besieged town of Bethlehem and ran a university that has been closed 12 times by the Israeli invader and shelled by Israeli tanks, apparently cannot make himself heard. As a Christian Palestinian with the highest credentials, one might have thought he’d find a ready audience here in Britain.

But academic guns are not necessarily the right calibre for counter-propaganda work, and Hamas have a point. Getting the message across, exposing Israeli disinformation, broadcasting the truth and setting the news agenda are tasks that require diplomats and senior politicians to be properly trained in Western media and publicity skills. The Palestinian Authority needs a shrewd communication strategy, a more proactive style and the right people to carry it off.

They must be able to refute and demolish Israel’s distorted definition of the conflict and re-frame it in Palestine’s terms, based on truth and justice.

Otherwise, the General Delegation in London might as well pack its bags.

-Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. For further information visit: www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk.

Jonathan Power

Osama Bin Laden has made Al-Qaeda’s position crystal clear in his latest tape released on May 16. He said the fight for the Palestinian cause is the most important factor driving Al-Qaeda’s war with the West and that was the primary reason for 9/11.

It sounds topical enough given the amount of attention that the Washington is presently giving the Israel/Palestinian peace quest. But, in truth, Bin Laden may well be behind the curve.

A two-state solution can no longer be a viable political goal, because: a) in terms of the demographics a Muslim majority in Israeli-controlled territory is less than a decade away, b) the Israelis have effectively created a single state encompassing both Jews and Palestinians. To all intents and purposes it imitates the South Africa of apartheid days, a unitary state with a minority group attempting to rule by oppression over a minority.

The only way to bring peace is to do what the white South Africans did under President F.W. de Klerk. As he once explained it to me, he felt compelled to negotiate with the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela, not because of the outside world’s sanctions, but because he realized that South Africa was becoming unlivable for all and a way had to be found for the minority to live safely under the rule of the majority.

Perhaps it’s time overdue for the US and Europe to make clear that the preservation of Israel as a pure Jewish state is no longer of strategic concern whose interests must be preserved at all costs, by money, by political muscle and, in case of a showdown, by the support of the force of arms. If this penny can be made to drop in the Israeli mind and the Jewish diaspora then, as did the white South Africans, it would be time to sit down with the Palestinians and work out how to hold an election in a unitary state.

But first, for this to happen, the West has to shed its notion of the whole of the Middle East being strategically important. In an important essay last year in Prospect magazine Edward Luttwak from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, made a convincing argument for this.

Israel and Palestine are not at “five minutes to midnight”, he argues. “It is the same old cyclical conflict which always restarts when peace is about to break out, and always dampens down when the violence becomes intense enough.”

In strategic terms the Arab-Israeli conflict has become almost irrelevant since the end of the Cold War. The conflict has had no impact on oil prices since the 1973 Saudi embargo, the last time the “oil weapon” was wielded.

Continuously, the West seems to have bought the Israeli argument that they are up against the threat of the combined armies of the Arab world. But military expenditure in all the Arab states has fallen rapidly since the 1973 war. Even when Egypt was aided by massive Soviet military purchases and gifts in the 1960s it was quickly defeated in both 1967 and 1973.

The West made the same mistake of overestimating Iraqi military power in the 1990s. Saddam Hussein’s divisions were counted as if they were well-trained German Panzers. But when the war came the Iraqi air force fled to Iran and the tanks became target practice for the Western invaders. The second Gulf War had an even more farcical rationale (but it wasn’t that funny) with the assumptions that well-sanctioned Iraq had built a terrifying arsenal of ultra modern weapons of mass destruction.

Even with non-Arab Iran and its acolytes, Hezbollah and Hamas, we are whipped into hysterics of “fear of the terrorist”. Yet their activities are very localized, unlike the Palestinian strikes of the 60s and 70s, and Iran’s special international terrorist department has produced only one major bombing in the Middle East in 1996. Compared with what the Soviet Union threatened the West with and with what Hitler actually did, this is derisory. Even if Iran is developing nuclear weapons to say that the people of Iran patriotically support the endeavor is a large overstatement. Persian nationalism is a minority position in a country where half the population is not even Persian. Clever diplomacy would play to these cleavages.

In short, the West should de-couple itself from the Middle East, from both the Arab side and the Israeli side. It should declare it has no strategic interest in the region. This would create the space for both the Palestinians and the Israelis to look each other in the eye and realize it is they who have to find a way to peace.

B’Tselem: 231 Palestinians have been assassinated, 385 innocent bystanders murdered since 2000.

By Stuart Littewood

Some readers will remember the 1969 film The Assassination Bureau, a tongue-in-cheek romp based on Jack London’s unfinished novel. The setting is the turn of the century a hundred years ago, a fanciful time for regime change and the purging of corrupt monarchs and cruel tyrants. The Bureau’s hit team is for hire provided that Ivan Dragomiloff, founder and mastermind, deems the targeted killing “socially justifiable” and there’s proof of the candidate’s misdeeds.

Eventually, however, the moral rectitude of the enterprise gives way to financial greed, and the day comes when the Bureau accepts a mission to eradicate an unnamed but prominent public figure. The fee is paid in advance, proof supplied, job accepted… then the name is revealed. The target is Dragomiloff himself. The Assassination Bureau cannot go back on its word and Dragomiloff finds himself pitted against the killing machine he himself created and perfected…

Assassination is the targeted killing of persons usually for political or ideological (and often insane) motives. This is OK, but not OK.

In 1976, US President Ford issued an Executive Order which was enacted after revelations that the CIA had made several attempts on the life of Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Henceforward targeted political killings were outlawed: “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.” Every US president since then has upheld Ford’s prohibition on assassinations… or somehow got round it.

Carter and Reagan reaffirmed the ban, although it didn’t stop the US bombing Gaddafi’s home in 1986 in the hope of rubbing him out, or the Clinton administration firing cruise missiles at suspected guerrilla camps in Afghanistan in 1998, or Bush instructing the CIA to engage in “lethal covert operations” (based on an intelligence ‘finding’) to destroy Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation.

Nice and Legal, Though

White House and CIA lawyers claim that an intelligence ‘finding’ makes a difference because the ban on political assassinations doesn’t apply in wartime. Hey presto! the right sort of finding puts everything on a war footing. They also say that the prohibition won’t prevent the US taking action against terrorists. And in the wake of 9-11 it won’t stop the United States acting in self-defence. So… all the US has to do is invent or manufacture a ‘finding’, label the folk who stand in their way ‘terrorists’ and claim the murder was an act of self-defence in a war situation, and they’re home and dry.

Reports suggest the Bush administration has got together with Israel to establish the legal framework for a new American targeted-assassination policy. The Israelis, of course, are world experts. Annoying pockets of resistance to their land-grabs, ethnic cleansing, abductions, illegal settlements and other criminal activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are answered with the wholesale imposition of specially concocted warfare laws for the benefit of Israel’s ’self-defence’, or ‘homeland security’, but which trample on everyone else’s rights. This is the sort of chicanery that suits Bush admirably as he presses ahead with his war-without-end on terror.

Israel’s liking for assassination and murder goes way back to pre-State days when such atrocities were practised against Arab and British targets by the Irgun, a thoroughly unpleasant organisation that believed political violence and terrorism were legitimate tools for removing obstacles to the Zionist cause and driving the Arabs off their lands. Assassination became official Israeli policy in 1999 when the military planned ‘initiated attacks’ to stop Yasser Arafat’s militia, the Tanzim, from firing on illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Israelis demonstrated rare ingenuity in bumping off bomb maker Yahya Ayyesh. In 1996 this master-technician in the art of suicide bombing had been on Israel’s most-wanted list for 3 years. Shabak (Israel’s secret service) finally tricked a friend into giving Ayyash a booby-trapped cell phone. When Ayyash used it, Shabak detonated it.

Earlier this year they excelled themselves again by terminating Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyeh, ‘the Fox’, with an exploding headrest in his Mitsubishi.

However, their preferred method of assassination is the airstrike, which is lazy, lacking in finesse and often messy. In 2002 Israeli F-16 warplanes bombed the house of Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, the military commander of Hamas, in Gaza City scandalously killing not just him but at least 11 other Palestinians, including seven children, and wounding 120 others.

In 2004 at the second attempt Hamas’s spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, wheelchair-bound since the age of 12, and nine innocent bystanders were killed in a helicopter gunship attack. Yassin had survived an F16 bomb blast the previous year. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon characterised Yassin as “the mastermind of Palestinian terror” and a “mass murderer”, which was comical coming from the war criminal who ran Israel’s death squad, Unit 101, and was found indirectly responsible for the massacres in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem 231 Palestinians have been assassinated, 385 innocent bystanders murdered and heaven knows how many injured or mutiliated by Israel since the second intifada in 2000. “The use of state assassinations by Israel against Palestinian suspects is undermining the rule of law and fuelling the cycle of violence in the region” warns Amnesty International.

But this systematic extermination is regarded as “legal and legitimate” by Israel’s attorney-general. “If anyone has committed or is planning to carry out terrorist attacks, he has to be hit. It is effective, precise, and just,” said Israeli minister Ephraim Sneh in 2001, careless of the frequent lack of precision, the collateral casualties and the possibility that his information is wrong… and the justice of it?

It’s catching though. The US State Department similarly describes its own hits on Al-Qaeda as “legal and necessary.” But pre-emptive strikes are not America’s only tool. There’s the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay where hundreds of prisoners of ‘war’, from 13 years old upwards, are held long-term under inhuman conditions, without ‘due process’ and in flagrant breach of Geneva Conventions. Many have now been ‘rendered’ to other countries. It’s a living death and many will actually die in unlawful captivity, victims of a quite different form of assassination.

US Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox News: “If you’ve got an organisation that has plotted or is plotting some kind of suicide bomber attack, for example, and they [the Israelis] have hard evidence of who it is and where they’re located, I think there’s some justification in their trying to protect themselves by pre-empting.”

This endorsement gave a welcome boost to Sharon’s accelerated assassination programme. Arafat claimed the Israeli cabinet had approved a plan to kill a large number of leading Palestinians. Sharon denied it but defended assassinations as a “defensive counter-terrorism measure”. He said he had sent the Palestinians a list of 100 terrorists the Palestinian Authority must arrest, otherwise Israel would continue to “exercise our right of self-defence.”

We’re told Israeli advisers are now training US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency methods in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders. Urban warfare specialists are sharing the skills they have honed against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in order to help the US set up its own hunter-killer teams.

Israeli Death Squads in the UK?

Even more worrying are reports that Israeli death squads have been authorised to enter “friendly” countries and kill those suspected of being a threat to the Jewish state wherever they are hiding. Targeted killings were pretty much restricted to Occupied Palestine but the appointment of a new Mossad director, Meir Dagan, in 2002 changed all that.

Sharon was said to have given his old friend Dagan a mandate to revive the traditional methods of Mossad, including assassinations abroad, even at the risk to Israel’s bilateral relations. So our Home Secretary, the fragrant Jacqui Smith, had better tell us truthfully whether Mossad hoodlums are at this moment prowling the streets of London, Bradford, Glasgow and Manchester snuffing out plotters against their regime.

-Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.

Bush began by praising Sharon as ‘one of Israel’s greatest leaders.’

By Ira Glunts

In a talk eerily reminiscent of his “Axis of Evil” speech, President George W. Bush told the Israeli Knesset on May 15 of his commitment to vanquish any group that opposes his vision of American hegemony in the Middle East. He specifically included Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda as the enemies in his “war against terror and extremism.” Oddly he did not include the Taliban, whom the US military is currently fighting in Afghanistan, on his list of Muslim enemies. Perhaps this is because his Israeli hosts do not perceive the Taliban as an immediate threat to their security.

It is difficult to know whether Bush’s exaggerated bellicosity derives from his desire to please the Israelis, play to his political base in the United States, or is simply another occasion for him to engage in the type of ominous saber-rattling that has been characteristic of his administration. President Bush emphasized his dedication and resolve to press on with his aggressive foreign policy by proclaiming that the war on terror is “an ancient battle between good and evil.” Considering the current unstable political situation in both Gaza and Lebanon, plus the diplomatic crisis in US/Iranian relations, one has to wonder if the President’s words signify that the US has immediate plans for an increased military engagement in the region.

Bush began his remarks by praising Ariel Sharon as “one of Israel’s greatest leaders” and reiterating his provocative statement that the former Israeli Prime Minister was “a man of peace.” Sharon, who is considered the major architect of the Israeli settlements, is reviled among Palestinians. Apparently oblivious to how his Sharon statement compromised his credibility, Bush compounded his flight of fancy by telling his listeners that “Israel has always worked tirelessly for peace.” I imagine that many of the members of the Knesset in their self-serving obtuseness may actually believe that this is true, but to the rest of the world this is simply a statement that Israel will not, at least under Bush’s watch, be required to make any concessions to its enemies.

The present practice among American politicians is to shamelessly pander to Israeli and Jewish-American interests as they are understood and transmitted by lobbying groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Bush, rising to the celebratory occasion, did not disappoint his listeners. First Bush substituted the name “Eretz Yisrael” for Israel. This biblical term is generally associated with the settlers who believe that Israel should retain all of the West Bank. He then reiterated the false argument, albeit popular among Israelis, that to be against a Jewish state is anti-Semitic. This is obviously not true, since all Jews do not support the State of Israel, especially as it is represented by its current policies of occupation and human rights violations. Bush further endeared himself to his audience by comparing the futility of negotiating with the groups he labeled “terrorists” with trying to negotiate with the Nazis in 1939. The Israelis often recall the British appeasement of the Nazis when attempting to counteract criticism of their own actions. Ariel Sharon famously employed the appeasement argument to criticize the US for opposing his 2002 reinvasion of the West Bank. In that case, President Bush backed down from his blunt admonitions to the Israelis to withdraw their invading troops from Palestinian-controlled areas.

The Palestinians were notably excluded from Mr. Bush’s speech except for one brief mention of a future state. In the context of this speech, such a state could be easily interpreted as the truncated mini-state that many in the Israeli establishment would be willing to consider. There was no mention of the so-called Annapolis Peace Process that the Americans are currently sponsoring, and which Bush occasionally trumpets as his Israeli/Palestinian plan for peace. There was no mention of the ongoing creation and expansion of settlements, which the Bush administration sometimes timidly proclaims are not helpful in moving the peace process forward. These omissions surprised and delighted many of the Israelis who were present. The fact that Bush was so effusive in his praise of the Israelis and basically neglected the Palestinians was a clear signal that the President is not committed to the peace negotiations in which his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is now involved.
The best Bush could come up with as a rosy future for the Middle East in 60 years was decidedly modest. He described the relationship among nations there by stating “it doesn’t mean Israel and its neighbors will be the best of friends.” The American President’s hope for the region in the future is a Pax Isra-Americana over which the Arabs will have no choice.

What was most startling about the speech was Bush’s aggressive talk about Israel’s enemies and how the US was ready to act against the many groups that both countries consider “terrorists,” groups that in the US President’s mind, are beyond redemption. One such group is the Iranian government. The US administration’s war drums are beating louder and louder for military confrontation against Iran. There have been reports that the neocons in the government feel that now is the time for at least a “surgical” attack against that country’s nuclear sites. In Lebanon there is an increasingly unstable political and security situation where Hezbollah forces are flexing their military muscle. In 2006 Israel, with American backing, tried to vanquish Hezbollah, but failed. Will Bush now use the American military in Lebanon or encourage the Israelis to do so? In Gaza, Hamas is gaining support due to the failure of its opponents to deliver on their promise to improve conditions and achieve statehood. Could this bellicose tone from Bush signal that the Israelis have a green light for a massive reinvasion of the Gaza Strip, as proposed by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak?

In a speech filled with hyperbole and emotional appeals, Bush derided those who cannot “fathom the darkness in these men [the terrorists]” and those that harbor the “foolish delusion” that we can negotiate a peaceful settlement. This latter statement has been interpreted to be an implied criticism of ex-President Jimmy Carter who met with Hamas leaders recently. It has also been seen as directed against Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who, despite the pointed objection of administration officials and his Democratic primary opponent Senator Hillary Clinton, has continually expressed a willingness to negotiate with Syrian and Iranian leaders. Obama issued a statement which said that he has never advocated negotiating with terrorists. The Illinois Senator does not perceive the governments of Iran or Syria to be terrorists, as Bush does. Additionally, by criticizing those who want to talk to the terrorist enemy, Bush is again telling the Israelis that the US will not pressure them into engaging in meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians, since Hamas is part of the evil enemy. Unfortunately, like Bush Obama also considers Hamas a terrorist organization who is not an appropriate negotiating partner, despite its standing as a legally and democratically-elected government.

As we learned from the “Axis of Evil” speech, tough talk from George Bush can foreshadow disastrous consequences for both his enemies and the people of the United States who will be paying for his military adventures in countless ways for many years. Hopefully, Bush’s term will expire before he can act militarily against those whose names he called out during his speech. However, even if Bush does not order US forces into another ill-conceived military engagement, the next President will inherit not only the armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a huge war lobby with a very effective propaganda machine, that will make it difficult for any US leader to avoid staying the same horrific course.

Ian Jack, The Guardian

At Birzeit University in Ramallah last week a young woman student in a head scarf asked how it was that Nadine Gordimer, the South African novelist and Nobel laureate, could agree to visit and speak in Israel. Hadn’t Gordimer fought apartheid for years — famously fought it in her writing and her actions? And now she was about to appear at the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem, a guest in one way or another of the Israeli government. What did we think of this? Weren’t these double standards? Wouldn’t we condemn her?

The question was asked of Roddy Doyle and myself, both of us participants in another literary jamboree, the first Palestine Festival of Literature, whose six-day tour of the West Bank and East Jerusalem ended last Monday.

Like every other writer and journalist on the tour, Doyle and I agreed to do “workshops” at universities. Six or seven students were waiting in the classroom; they were all young women — men rarely study English literature at Palestinian universities — mostly wearing headscarves and very bright. One knew the work of Edith Wharton, which I do not, and there was an interesting exchange about writers ranging from Austen to Orwell. Then came the Gordimer question, to which Doyle gave the wisest answer: “We don’t know what she will say. Let her come and let’s hear what she says before we condemn her.”

Perhaps less wisely, certainly less clearly, I suggested that to equate apartheid in South Africa with Israeli behavior toward Palestinians in the occupied territories was still “a big step” for most people in Europe and North America. Two days’ experience of the West Bank didn’t seem enough to reach such forthright condemnation, and yet the evidence was already abundant that Israel’s behavior toward its captive Palestinian population is profoundly racist, oppressive and unjust. It started when we crossed the border from Jordan at the Allenby Bridge. All of us had EU or American passports and most us got through immigration in less than an hour. Then we waited for our colleagues with Arabic names. One hour, two hours, three hours. Khalid Abdalla, the actor, got out first; a conversation about his co-star Matt Damon seemed to be key. Last were our two American-Palestinian women poets, Suheir Hammad and Nathalie Handal. What had detained them was hardly rigorous research into their political connections.

According to United Nations figures, there are now 621 Israeli Army checkpoints and barriers spread throughout the West Bank — this week Tony Blair was celebrating the good news that he had persuaded the Israelis to remove four of them (though “subject to Israeli security assessments”) and at most of those we passed through we witnessed the same kind of caprice in action: Palestinians of all kinds — women, children, old men with hospital appointments — sent back for “security reasons” or because they had the wrong piece of paper, journeys abandoned or started again by circuitous routes.

On our last evening in Jerusalem our program of readings was meant to include a performance by a sextet from the Edward Said Conservatory of Music in Ramallah, which turned into a quartet because the lute player and the percussionist were refused entry to the city. Nobody could say why. Perhaps a security manual categorized lutes and drums as more dangerous than flutes and violins. More likely, a soldier broke his boredom by the small exercise of power.

But checkpoints are the least of it. Throughout the West Bank, Israel is steadily, relentlessly and apparently unstoppably imposing what old South African regimes used to know as “separate development”. Israeli and Palestinian cars have different number plates (yellow and green) and travel on separate roads (the Israeli roads newer and straighter). Jewish settlements march east into Palestinian territory in acts of illegal conquest unknown even to Dr. Verwoerd. And then there is The Wall, more properly known as the West Bank Barrier, which when complete will run eight meters high for 400 miles north to south, often looping forward impudently to take 10 percent of the West Bank’s land that before the 1967 war belonged to Jordan. The wall separates neighbor from neighbor, farmers from their olive groves, and strikes into the heart of Bethlehem to “protect” Rachel’s tomb, which is sacred to the Jews.

Most of this is well-known; it can be read about on dozens of campaigning websites and in any decent newspaper. But I was completely unprepared for Hebron. I’d last came to Hebron in 1981 to see the famous Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who had arrived in the city as its only Jew some years before. Levinger was (and is) a religious Zionist who believed that the borders of Israel should accord with the Book of Deuteronomy. In 1974 he helped establish the settler movement, the Gush Emunim. In 1981 he seemed a lonely, crazy figure with a house full of guns (later he served a brief prison term for “negligent homicide”). But consider his achievement: the occupied territories now contain around 400,000 settlers and their number grows every day. Government subsidies and tax breaks have become as great a motive as Deuteronomy. Their presence in Hebron has killed the commercial and social life of the biggest city in Palestine, home to 160,000 Muslims and Christians who have had their bazaars and thoroughfares blocked by 4,000 Israeli troops who are there to guarantee the safety of the 500 Jewish settlers who have moved in. Hebron is a ghost town. Three-quarters of its shops have closed. Among the few people moving freely through the streets were groups of settler joggers, each including a man carrying an automatic rifle. In the empty tunnels of the old bazaar, our bus driver said: “They do it to scare and humiliate us.”

How could the “peace process” begin to dismantle what Ariel Sharon called these “facts on the ground”? Nobody knows. Sharon himself is being kept alive at vast expense in an Israeli hospital (Palestinian joke: “Is Sharon alive or is he dead?” “Neither, he is still going through the checkpoints.”) In fact, no Palestinian I met believed in the peace process, “a process gyrating in an empty circle” in the words of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Our audiences were touched that we had come. They were, they said, glad to be recognized by the outside world as a people who read and wrote and talked, rather than simply as silent victims or vengeful suicide bombers. What angered and puzzled them was the world’s neglect of their isolation and the justice of their cause. I couldn’t explain it; European guilt over Jewish history no longer seems a sufficient excuse. The comparison with apartheid may not be completely apposite, but that hardly matters. What is happening in Palestine is a great and tragic wrong.

James P. Rubin, The Washington Post

If the recent exchanges between President Bush, Barack Obama and John McCain on Hamas and terrorism are a preview of the general election, Americans are in for an ugly six months. Despite his reputation in the media as a charming maverick, McCain has shown that he is also happy to use Nixon-style dirty campaign tactics. By charging recently that Hamas is rooting for an Obama victory, McCain tried to use guilt by association to suggest that Obama is weak on national security and won’t stand up to terrorist organizations, or that, as Richard Nixon might have put it, Obama is soft on Israel.

President Bush picked up this theme Thursday. Without naming Obama during his speech Thursday night to Israel’s Knesset, Bush suggested that Democrats want to “negotiate with terrorists” while Republicans want to fight terrorists.

The Obama campaign was right to criticize the president for his remarks and for engaging in partisan politics while overseas. Many presidents have said things abroad that could be construed as violating this unwritten rule of American politics. But it is hard to remember any president abusing the prestige of his office in as crude a way as Bush did Thursday. Charging your opponents with appeasement and likening them to Neville Chamberlain in the Knesset is a brutal blow. It is bad enough that Republicans use the politics of personal destruction here at home, but to deploy that kind of political weapon at an occasion as solemn as an American president addressing the Parliament of a friendly government marks a new low.

McCain, meanwhile, is guilty of hypocrisy. I am a supporter of Hillary Clinton and believe that she was right to say, about McCain’s statement on Hamas, “I don’t think that anybody should take that seriously.” Unfortunately, the Republicans know that some people will. That’s why they say such things.

But given his own position on Hamas, McCain is the last politician who should be attacking Obama. Two years ago, just after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections, I interviewed McCain for the British network Sky News’s “World News Tonight” program. Here is the crucial part of our exchange:

I asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy toward Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so … but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

For some Europeans in Davos, Switzerland, where the interview took place, that’s a perfectly reasonable answer. But it is an unusual if not unique response for an American politician from either party. And it is most certainly not how the newly conservative presumptive Republican nominee would reply today.

Given that exchange, the new John McCain might say that Hamas should be rooting for the old John McCain to win the presidential election. The old John McCain, it appears, was ready to do business with a Hamas-led government, while both Clinton and Obama have said that Hamas must change its policies toward Israel and terrorism before it can have diplomatic relations with the United States.

Even if McCain had not favored doing business with Hamas two years ago, he had no business smearing Barack Obama. But given his stated position then, it is either the height of hypocrisy or a case of political amnesia for McCain to inject Hamas into the American election.

— James Rubin, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs, was an assistant secretary of state and the State Department’s chief spokesman during the Clinton administration.

Seth Freedman, The Guardian

In sharp contrast to last week’s Independence Day celebrations on the streets of West Jerusalem, the east side of the city took on an air of mourning Thursday, as the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) was marked. All over Gaza and the West Bank, demonstrations took place to commemorate the fate that befell the Palestinian people in 1948, and — despite their residing inside Israel proper — East Jerusalem residents were just as eager to make their voices of protest heard.

I headed to Damascus Gate on Thursday morning, to see for myself how high emotions were running amongst the demonstrators — yet before I’d even arrived I was already knee-deep in discussion about the conflict. Upon learning my reasons for crossing the divide into East Jerusalem, my Arab cab driver poured out a stream of invective against the Israeli authorities, bemoaning the situation he and his people had been forced to endure for 60 years.

Beginning with a scathing attack on George Bush — “He only cares about the Israelis; he’s not done a single thing for the Arabs in all his time as president” — he grew steadily angrier and more bitter as we circumvented the Old City walls en route to the protest. “We have no rights in our own land,” he muttered, “and even then the Israelis aren’t satisfied. It’s not enough for them to control us and humiliate us in our homes; now they want to drive us out of Jerusalem completely.”

“It’s a systematic program to get rid of us”, he assured me, sucking furiously on his cigarette. “They make our lives hell — they give us no (municipal services); they don’t let us build in our own neighborhoods, so people are forced to move out as the population grows; and they make us feel as though we don’t belong.” As I got out of the cab, next to a phalanx of border policemen fanning out to encircle the protesters, he beckoned me back to deliver his parting thoughts: “If you think I sound angry now, wait till the 70th anniversary of the Nakba. As long as Israel carries on behaving like this, our rage is only going to get worse.”

His words rang in my ears as I watched nine- and ten-year-old children stand defiantly alongside their parents at the protest. Several of them clutched cheap plastic poles with the UN flag flying atop them in the breeze; the words “Right of Return — 194” emblazoned across them in bold black letters. The children were under no illusion about what measures had to be taken to redress the injustices suffered by their forebears, and demanding the right of return suggested the time for talk of two states had been and gone.

A local shopkeeper told me just as much, asking me not to attach his name to his words, “since this country isn’t quite as democratic as they’d like you to think”. The right of return for Palestinian refugees was, he said, “something we can never give up on, not whilst every Jew on earth is allowed to move here without hindrance. Maybe if they said ‘no more Jewish immigrants — we’re full up’, then I’d consider it, but that’s not going to happen. They let people from Europe and Africa move here, yet refuse to discuss the issue of refugees (who came from here originally).”

“Any agreement with the Palestinian Authority must include the right of return, or at least significant compensation for those expelled. I know that Jews were kicked out of Arab lands too, and they should also be compensated, but on a much smaller scale. After all, they might have lost property, but we lost an entire country.”

At this point, his eyes glazed over and his tone took a marked shift away from the here and now and into the realms of fantasy born out of years of frustration with the status quo. “The truth is, my friend, that Nasser was right. He said that ‘What’s taken by force can only be returned by force’. We’re never going to get what we deserve from the Israelis. The only way we’ll have our dignity restored is when the Arab world stands up and fights for us and our rights.”

“And it will happen”, he declared forcefully, his eyes blazing as he spoke. “It might not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen in the next 50 years. I am one of the most moderate men around here, but — believe me — if an Arab army rises up to fight the Israelis, I’d join them myself. Not the groups carrying out suicide bombings, mind you, but a real army that had the power to take on the Israelis.”

“My son gets so furious when he is humiliated at checkpoints”, he went on. “He asks me ‘why should we deal with these kind of people at all? Better to live under the occupation, sign no agreements whatsoever, and wait for the Arab world to come to our aid’”.

His sentiments were distressingly similar to those of the embattled Jews in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, who bore their oppression at the hands of the Cossacks and others by falling back on waiting for messianic redemption. By retreating into an otherworldly shell, they were able to block out the injustice and iniquities that they were dealt, and focus on a time when they would be delivered salvation by a higher power.

For the shopkeeper, the “Arab world” is the messiah; the white knight who will ride in on his trusty steed to right all the wrongs and restore to the Palestinians their dignity and honor. Despite the last 60 years of history suggesting otherwise — that the Arab world is neither powerful nor interested enough to take serious action on the Palestinians’ behalf — he clings to this belief like a shipwreck survivor to a narrow plank of wood.

As each year passes, and the Palestinians feel ever more scorned by Israel and her allies, it’s no wonder that they seek comfort in droves in the arms of the extremists. Dogmatism and fundamentalism can promise them the moon, whilst the facts on the ground remain the same, and the longer the status quo persists, the stronger groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad grow. For them not to achieve utter domination amongst their people before the 70th anniversary of Israel’s creation, much must be done to convince the Palestinians that there is an alternative — but no one on the Palestinian side is holding their breath.

Israeli tank near the Gaza border.[ 03/03/2008]

By Uri Avnery

War with Syria? Peace with Syria?

A big military operation against Hamas in the Gaza strip? A cease-fire with Hamas?

Our media discuss these questions dispassionately, as if they were equivalent options. Like a person in a showroom making a choice between two cars. This one is good, and so is the other one. So which should one buy?

And nobody cries out: War is the height of stupidity!

Carl Von Clausewitz, the renowned military theorist, famously said that war is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means. Meaning: war is there to serve policy and is useless when it does not.

What policies did the wars in the last hundred years serve?

Ninety-four years ago, World War I broke out. The immediate cause was the assassination of the Austrian heir apparent by a Serbian student. In Sarajevo they showed me how it happened: after a first attempt on the main street had failed, the assassins had already given up hope when one of them came across the victim again, by sheer accident, and killed him. After this almost accidental killing many millions of human beings lost their lives in the following four years.

The assassination served, of course, only as a pretext. Every one of the belligerent nations had political and economic interests that pushed it into the war. But did the war really serve these interests? The results suggest the opposite: three mighty empires - the Russian, German and Austrian - collapsed; France lost its standing as a world power beyond all hope of recovery; the British Empire was mortally wounded.

Military experts point to the shocking stupidity of almost all the generals, who threw their poor soldiers again and again into hopeless battles, which achieved nothing but slaughter.

Were the statesmen any wiser? Not one of the politicians who started the war imagined that it would last so long and be so horrible. In early August 1914, when the soldiers of all the countries marched into the war with merry enthusiasm, they were promised that they would be home “before Christmas”.

No political aim was achieved in that war. The peace agreements that were imposed on the vanquished were monuments of unbridled imbecility. It can be argued that the main result of World War I was World War II.

The Second War was, seemingly, more rational. The man who launched it practically single-handed, Adolf Hitler, knew exactly what he wanted. His opponents went to war because they had no choice, if they did not want to be overrun by a monstrous dictator. Most of the generals on both sides were far more intelligent than their predecessors.

And in spite of this, it was a stupid war.

Hitler was, basically, a primitive person who lived in the past and did not understand the Zeitgeist. He wanted to turn Germany into the leading world power - an aim that was wildly beyond its capabilities. He intended to conquer large parts of Eastern Europe and to empty them of their inhabitants, in order to settle Germans there. That was a hopelessly obsolete concept of power. Like all ideas of establishing settlements as a national instrument, it belonged to centuries past. Hitler did not understand the meaning of the technological revolution that was about to change the face of the world. It can be said: Hitler was not only an evil tyrant and a monumental war criminal, but ultimately also a thoroughly stupid person.

The only aim that he almost achieved was the annihilation of the Jewish people. But even this mad endeavor failed in the end: Jews today have a strong influence on the most powerful country in the world, and the Holocaust played an important role in the establishment of the State of Israel.

Hitler wanted to destroy the Soviet Union and reach a compromise with the British Empire. He belittled the United States and almost ignored it. The result of the war was that the Soviet Union took over a large part of Europe, America became the main world power and the British Empire disintegrated forever.

Indeed, the Nazi dictator proved, more than anybody else, the utter futility of war as a political instrument at this point in time. After the destruction of Hitler’s Reich, Germany did achieve his goal. Germany is now the dominant economic and political power in a united Europe - but this was attained not with tanks and heavy guns, without war and military might, solely by diplomacy and exports. One generation after all the German cities had become heaps of ruins in the Nazi adventure, Germany was already flourishing as never before.

The same can be said about Japan, which was even more militaristic than Germany. It achieved by peaceful means what the generals and admirals had failed to achieve by war.

From time to time I read enthusiastic reports by American tourists about Vietnam. What a wonderful country! What a friendly people! What good business can be done there!

Only a generation ago, a brutal war was running amok there. Masses of people were killed, hundreds of villages burned, forests and harvests destroyed by chemical agents, soldiers fell like flies. Why? Because of dominoes.

The theory went like this: if all of Vietnam were to be taken over by the Communists, all the other countries of Southeast Asia would fall. Each one would bring down its neighbor, like a row of dominoes. Reality has shown that this was complete nonsense: the Communists took over all of Vietnam, without affecting the stability of Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. When the war memories faded, Vietnam indeed followed the path of its northern neighbor, Red China, but in the meantime China has a flourishing capitalist economy.

In the Vietnam War, the stupidity of the generals competed with that of the politicians. The champion was Henry Kissinger, a war criminal whose towering ego disguised his basic stupidity. At the height of the war he invaded the neighboring peaceful Cambodia and broke it into pieces. The result was a gruesome auto-genocide, when the Communists murdered their own people. Yet many still consider Kissinger a political genius.

There are those who maintain that for sheer futility, the invasion of Iraq takes the cake even in this fiercely competitive field.

It seems that the political leadership in Washington foresaw the dramatic rise of the world-wide demand for oil. They decided, therefore, to strengthen their hold on the oil of the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea basin. The war was intended to turn Iraq into an American satellite and to station there, under a friendly regime, a permanent American garrison that would keep the whole area under control.

The results, up to now, have been the opposite. Instead of consolidating Iraq as a united country under a stable pro-American regime, a civil war is raging, the state is tottering on the brink of disintegration, the population hates the Americans and considers them a foreign occupier. The output of oil is less than it was before the invasion, the immense costs of the war undermine the American economy, the price of oil is increasing incessantly, America’s once elevated position in world public opinion has reached rock bottom and the American public is demanding that the soldiers be brought home.

There is no doubt that American interests could have been safeguarded far better by diplomatic means, using the economic clout of the US. That would have saved thousands of American soldiers and ten times as many Iraqi civilians, and trillions of dollars. But the problematic ego of George Bush, who hides his hollowness and insecurity behind a bluster of noisy arrogance, caused him to prefer war. As to his cerebral prowess, a world-wide consensus has been achieved even before the end of his term in office.

In the 60 years of its existence, the State of Israel has fought six major wars and several “smaller” ones (the War of Attrition, the Grapes of Wrath, the two intifadas and more.)

The 1948 confrontation was a war of “no alternative”, if one justifies the Jewish intrusion into Palestine by the fact that there was no other solution for the problem of their existence. But already the second round, the war of 1956, was an example of incredible short-sightedness.

The French, who initiated the war, were in a state of denial: they could not admit to themselves that in Algeria a genuine war of liberation was taking place. Therefore, they convinced themselves that the Egyptian leader, Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, was the root of the problem. David Ben-Gurion and his aides (and particularly Shimon Peres) wanted to remove the “Egyptian Tyrant” (as he was then uniformly called in Israel) because he had raised the banner of Arab Unity, which they considered an existential threat to Israel. Britain, the third partner, was longing for the past glories of Empire.

All these aims were totally negated by the war: France was expelled from Algeria, together with more than a million settlers; Britain was pushed to the margins of the Middle East; and the “danger” of Arab Unity proved to be a scarecrow. The price: a whole Arab generation was convinced that Israel was the ally of the nastiest colonial regimes, and the chances of peace were pushed back for many years.

The 1967 war was intended at the beginning to break the siege on Israel. But in the course of the fighting, the war of defense became a war of conquest which drove Israel into a vertigo of intoxication from which it has not yet quite recovered. Since then we have been captives in a vicious circle of occupation, resistance, settlements and permanent war.

One of the direct results was the 1973 war, which destroyed the myth of our army’s invincibility. Yet without this being the intent of our government, this war had one positive result: three unusual personalities - Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter - succeeded in translating Egyptian pride over the successful crossing of the Suez Canal into a peace agreement. But the same peace could have been achieved a year earlier, without war and without the thousands of killed, if Golda Meir had not arrogantly rejected Sadat’s proposal.

The First Lebanon War was, perhaps, the most hopeless and dim-witted of Israel’s wars, a cocktail of arrogance, ignorance and complete lack of understanding of the opponent. Ariel Sharon intended - as he told me in advance, to - (a) destroy the PLO, (b) cause the Palestinian refugees to flee from Lebanon to Jordan, (c) drive the Syrians out of Lebanon, and (d) turn Lebanon into an Israeli protectorate. The results: (a) Arafat went to Tunis, and later, as the result of the First Intifada, returned to Palestine in triumph, (b) the Palestinian refugees remained in Lebanon, in spite of the Sabra and Shatila massacre that was intended to panic them into fleeing, (c) the Syrians remained in Lebanon for another twenty years, and (d) the Shiites, who had been downtrodden and beholden to Israel, became a powerful force in Lebanon and Israel’s most determined foe.

The less said about Lebanon War II the better - its true character was obvious right from the start. Its aims were not frustrated - simply because there were no clear aims at all. Today Hizbullah is where it was, stronger and better armed, shielded from Israeli attacks by the presence of an international force.

After the First Intifada, Israel recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization and brought Arafat back to the country. After the Second Intifada, Hamas won the Palestinian elections and later took over direct control of a part of the country.

Albert Einstein considered it a symptom of madness to repeat again and again doing something that has already failed and to expect a different result every time.

Most politicians and generals conform to this formula. Again and again they try to achieve their aims by military means and obtain contrary results. We Israelis occupy an honorable place among these madmen.

War is hell, as an American general pronounced. It also rarely achieves its aims.

-Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com

McCain criticises Carter’s meeting with Hamas, calling it ‘a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader.’ (Photo: Reuters)

By Stuart Littlewood

I don’t know about you, but Hillary Rodham Clinton scares the pants off me.

“I want the Iranians to know that if I am president, we will attack Iran,” she ranted when asked what she’d do if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel. Not only that, she’ll “totally obliterate them”… 70 million people.

Jeepers… what kind of lunatic would drag us all into World War 3 to defend a lawless, racist regime like Israel?
I see the Council on Foreign Relations helps keep tabs on the stooge-for-Israel inclinations of each presidential candidate, so how’s Hillary doing? “Clinton co-sponsored the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006,” says the CFR. “She also sponsored a Senate resolution in 2007 calling for the immediate and unconditional release of soldiers of Israel held captive by Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Was she concerned about the 9,000 Palestinians, including women and children, abducted from their homes and held in Israeli jails? Apparently not.

Since taking office in 2000, Clinton has regularly supported military and financial aid packages to Israel. In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) she spouted the now-compulsory mantra: Hamas should not be recognised “until it renounces violence and terror and recognises Israel’s right to exist.”

She supports Israel’s ‘security wall’ and its declared purpose of preventing terrorist attacks. Does she support the wall’s undeclared purpose - which has nothing to do with security - and the way it bites deep into Palestinian territory?

Barack Obama has said the United States must isolate Hamas. He also co-sponsored the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006 and called on the Palestinian leadership to “recognise Israel, to renounce violence, and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region”. OK, why don’t America and Israel get serious about implementing the dozens of UN resolutions on the subject? He doesn’t say.

He called Carter’s meeting with Hamas leaders “a bad idea”, so what’s his pledge to talk with US adversaries without preconditions worth? If elected, Obama will insist on fully funding military assistance to Israel. Does this mean paying them even more billions of US tax dollars so that they can fire even more high-tech munitions at Gaza, vaporize more women and kids and knock out more infrastructure that Britain and the EU paid for?

John Sidney McCain the Third says he’s “proudly pro-Israel” and argues that there can be no peace process “until the Palestinians recognise Israel, forswear forever the use of violence, recognise their previous agreements…” Has he asked Israel to do the same? No.

He criticises Carter’s meeting with Hamas, calling it “a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader”. And he wants the United States to continue providing Israel with whatever military equipment and technology it needs. If elected McCain would “work to further isolate the enemies of Israel”. Surely his time would be better spent worrying about why half the world hates the US.

McCain even thinks Israel’s military action in Lebanon in 2006 was justified. He’s willing to use military force against Iran if it acquires a nuclear weapon and poses a “real threat” to Israel. Well, we know from past experience what “real threats” boil down to. And guess what: he too co-sponsored the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006.

What is this Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act they all so desperately wanted? It doesn’t make nice reading. The idea is to heap misery on any Palestinian government in which Hamas has a hand, ignoring the fact that the resistance movement is democratically elected and shows no sign of running away. The Act demands everything from the Palestinians and nothing from Israel, which can do no wrong in Washington’s eyes but, as everyone outside America knows, is the biggest terror organisation and law-breaker in the region.

Palestinians are perfectly entitled to put up armed resistance against illegal military occupation. Nevertheless the US requires them to end their struggle, get on their knees and publicly kiss their tormentors’ ass. They must re-commit to the Road Map and the two-state solution even though the ‘irreversible facts on the ground’ Israel is hurrying to establish and the impoverished, fragmented leftovers of land the Palestinians will be left with (less than 20% of what was originally theirs) are not a recipe for peace.

The plan is plainly to support Israel’s lust for prime land and strategic resources and end all hope of Palestinian viability and self-determination.

So the three main presidential candidates are singing off the same hymn-sheet and running neck-and-neck for the job of Stooge-in-Chief. Whichever finally makes it into the White House can count on us Brits being equally well prepped, thanks to the Israel lobby’s energetic string-pulling on this side of the Atlantic too.
Israel’s prime minister Olmert says AIPAC is “the greatest supporter and friend that we have in the whole world”. It is certainly busy, claiming that “through more than 2,000 meetings with members of Congress… AIPAC activists help pass more than 100 pro-Israel legislative initiatives a year… procuring nearly $3 billion in aid critical to Israel’s security.” Lobbyists meet every member of Congress and cover every hearing on Capitol Hill that touches on the US-Israel relationship.

Ariel Sharon is famously quoted as saying: “We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” (1) Had he been available for comment today he’d probably be saying the same about the UK where AIPAC’s little brother, Friends of Israel, has succeeded in embedding itself deep inside British politics and at the heart of government. Its stated aim is to promote Israel’s interests in Parliament and sway policy.

Conservative Friends of Israel, for example, claims 80 percent of Conservative MPs and provides a programme of weekly briefings, events with speakers, and delegations to Israel. It also operates a ‘Fast Track’ for parliamentary candidates fighting target marginals at the next election.

According to senior Conservatives Israel is “a force for good in the world… In the battle for the values that we stand for, for democracy against theocracy, for democratic liberal values against repression - Israel’s enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together”.
Are they mad? We’re talking here about a ruthless ethnocracy with racist policies, an apartheid agenda, advanced skills in state-terrorism and contempt for the UN Charter and international law.

Nevertheless MPs of all parties, and ministers, are basking in Israel’s hospitality, absorbing the propaganda and allowing themselves to be persuaded to push the interest of this foreign military power sometimes at the expense of our own. Such conduct is at odds with the second of the Seven Principles of Public Life, namely Integrity – “Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.”

Efforts are being made to have the influence of the Israel lobby investigated, but the people’s watchdog - the Committee on Standards in Public Life - is itself infiltrated and refuses to act.

This week former Serb officers went on trial at The Hague for ethnic cleansing. They face life sentences for murder, persecution, forced deportations and inhuman acts during the 1991-95 Balkan wars. Many people feel it’s time Israelis faced charges for similar crimes during the 60 years of occupation and catastrophe they have inflicted on the Holy Land. The list includes

• torture
• collective punishment
• targeted assassinations
• house demolitions
• wholesale slaughter
• use of indiscriminate and prohibited weapons against civilians
• land theft
• engineering humanitarian disasters
• creating medical and public health crises
• the wanton destruction of key infrastructure and public & private property
• restrictions on movement and trade
• illegal detention
• suppression of education
• denial of basic human rights
• denial of the right of refugees to return
• illegal settlements
• violation of every convention and code of conduct.

Speaking of the Holy Land, are the three stooges aware that Christian communities under Israeli occupation are being oppressed and crushed along with their Muslim neighbours?

It was heartening to read in The Guardian this week a letter signed by more than 100 prominent Jews saying they cannot celebrate the 60th birthday of a state “founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land… and that even now engages in ethnic cleansing.” They’ll celebrate when Arab and Jew live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.

So there you have it. Hillary/Barack/John the Third, you would do well to steer a different course in the Arab-Israel conflict. Quit stooging, kick AIPAC into touch, back off and re-think US foreign policy.

How much support do you think you’d get for annihilating 70 million Iranians?

-Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.

Photo Essay : What the Israeli military does with the Palestinian property it steals

Seth Freedman, The Guardian

Supporters of the Israeli authorities love to blame the country’s poor reputation as being a result of woeful PR, believing that all that is required to redress the balance is a slick hasbara campaign. However, given the harsh reality of the occupation, to suggest that a superficial gloss job would do the trick is to totally miss the wood for the trees.

I found as much on Sunday, when I went to Hebron as a guest of the Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT), who are desperate to highlight the plight of a Palestinian orphanage threatened with closure by the IDF. For nearly a month, the scores of children have been living with a sword of Damocles over their heads, after the army issued an eviction order, claiming that the Islamic Charitable Society (ICS) — which runs the orphanage — is a front for Hamas.

According to an army spokesman, ICS “masquerades as a charity organization in order to cover its activities of increasing support of the Hamas terror network”, and as such any property connected to the charity must be seized in order to maintain the “general order … and security of the area”. Despite a legal challenge in the Israeli high court, “our chances of stopping the eviction are nil”, said Rasheed Rasheed, who teaches English at the ICS boys’ orphanage up the road.

He noted that this was the first time an entire organization had been targeted in such a way by the IDF: “It’s a new trend — they used to arrest individuals; now they’re taking on the institutions themselves,” he said.

As we toured the orphanage, we were mobbed by dozens of bright-eyed students, all eager to greet their visitors and beaming as they ran excitedly round the playground. They are all local children, who either lost their parents or, due to financial crises, can’t live at home, and the ICS has stepped into the breach to rebuild their lives and offer them a better future by way of education and employment.

To support the orphanage’s vital work in the community, the ICS runs several small businesses to raise funds, such as a bakery, sewing workshop and a warehouse where goods from foreign donors are stored. I was taken to see the results of the army’s heavy-handed treatment of these facilities, and the results weren’t pretty, to say the least.

The bakery looked as though it had been on the receiving end of a D9 — huge chunks missing from the masonry, debris everywhere, and the coup de grace being the torched skeleton of the industrial-sized oven, which the soldiers poured petrol over and set alight in order to totally destroy the bakery’s ability to function. Similar treatment was meted out to the warehouse, where around $300,000 worth of donations were commandeered and confiscated by the army, who smashed up the storeroom’s interior and left it utterly ruined.

Next up was the sewing workshop, which was still in operation when I visited it, with several local women hunched over their machines turning out intricately-embroidered dresses. The army had warned that the workshop would suffer the same fate as the bakery and warehouse and ordered that every piece of equipment and fabric be left in place so that it could be sequestered by their troops when they decided to pounce. (Two days after our visit, the army came in the dead of night and made good its threat, confiscating everything within the workshop’s four walls, despite the staff’s plaintive appeals)

Ghassan Mohammed, one of the orphanage’s supervisors, told me in desperate tones that “the organization (ICS) has no connection whatsoever with Hamas”, and that the army clearly knew that, “otherwise they’d have brought the world’s media to see the evidence they’d uncovered”. As far as Mary Anne, one of the CPT team, was concerned, the IDF’s motivation was simply “sociocide — they want to chip away at the Palestinian infrastructure in order to take over the whole area”.

She said that any time the Palestinians find a way to stand on their own two feet — such as supporting the weaker elements of their society, such as the orphans, or educating their children and building up their economy — the Israeli authorities sought to find a way to crush their efforts. “This area is meant to be under Palestinian control according to the Oslo Accords,” she said, “but the Israelis are still here; still asserting their authority.” Rasheed agreed: “Most of us have got over what happened in 1948,” he remarked, “and we are ready for a state based on the 1967 borders. The question is, do the Israelis even want to give us that? I don’t think so.”

Meanwhile, the orphans whose lives are being turned upside down by the army’s actions. “Our kids are terrified when the soldiers come,” said Rasheed, “and all they ask is ‘why?’.” One 13-year-old student in the boys’ orphanage told us: “This is my home — if they come to shut us down, I won’t leave.” His predicament, as well as his youthful defiance, should serve as a warning to the Israeli authorities as to what really causes animosity toward Israel from the Palestinian population. As I wrote in Occupation Breeds Terror, punitive measures such as the orphanage eviction will never win the hearts and minds of the Palestinians, and will only serve to strengthen the extremists, who will point to such actions as proof that the Israelis couldn’t care less about the wellbeing of the Palestinian people.

As I wrote in Occupation Breeds Terror, punitive measures such as the orphanage eviction will never win the hearts and minds of the Palestinians, and will only serve to strengthen the extremists, who will point to such actions as proof that the Israelis couldn’t care less about the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. Similarly, when Israel’s supporters think it’s all about PR, they should look behind the headlines and see whether the source of all the smoke is actually the ever-smouldering fire in the West Bank and Gaza.

Until they do, the Israeli authorities will continue to get away with their sadistic treatment, and the pressure will be ratcheted up another notch on the Palestinian street. Which will only bring more death, more misery, and more retaliation on both sides - leaving the likes of CPT to wonder how they can ever achieve their goal of bringing peace to a region that so desperately cries out for it.

SECOND CLASS

Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel’s Schools

A HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH (HRW ) PUBLICATION

Here is the Summary of the Publication by Human Rights Watch taken from the HRW official site .

I. SUMMARY

Nearly one in four of Israel’s 1.6 million schoolchildren are