| Al Jazeera, Oct 7, 2008 |
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The Palestinian group Hamas that governs Gaza says it will stop recognising Mahmoud Abbas as the Palestinian president in three months. Hamas, citing a Palestinian law, said one of its own leaders must fill the top post after Abbas’s tenure officially expires on January 8. The announcement came after Hamas legislators voted on a resolution in Gaza City on Monday, a move seen as at attempt to step up pressure on Abbas and his Fatah party ahead of talks brokered by Egypt over a power-sharing deal between the rival camps. A Fatah member said the vote was simply “an attempt to sabotage the Egyptian effort to reconcile the Palestinian division”. The Basic Law, a forerunner to a Palestinian constitution, says that both president and parliament are elected to four-year terms. Legal loophole But a loophole in the law, which Fatah is relying on, suggests that Abbas’s term could be extended another year if it were deemed to be in the “national interest”.
Abbas was elected president in January 2006 but a year later Hamas defeated his movement by a landslide in parliamentary elections in Gaza.Neither Hamas nor Fatah appear keen to share power in governing the Gaza Strip, which has been under Hamas control following a violent takeover in June last year, leaving Abbas with only nominal control of the occupied West Bank. During Monday’s vote, Hamas threatened to install Ahmed Bahar, the deputy parliamentary speaker, as Abbas’s temporary successor if Abbas fails to announce a new presidential election by Wednesday. Shalit talks Meanwhile, Khaled Mashaal, the exiled Hamas political leader, said talks with Israel over the possible release of an Israeli soldier have stalled and blamed Israeli negotiators for continuing to rehash previously-agreed issues. He was quoted in Le Figaro newspaper on Monday blaming “a lack of reliability of Israeli negotiators” in discussions pertaining to Sergeant Gilad Shalit who was captured two years ago. |
Archive for the ‘Palestine’ Category
Hamas says Abbas must step aside
October 7, 2008
RIGHTS: U.N. Report Castigates Israel for Harassing Journalists
October 4, 2008By Thalif Deen | Inter-Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 3 (IPS) – A new United Nations report on the human rights situation in Palestinian territories blasts the Israeli government for its heavy-handed treatment of journalists reporting on the military occupation.
The 20-page report, which will go before the 63rd sessions of the General Assembly currently underway, singles out the mistreatment of award-winning Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer who was stripped, interrogated, kicked and beaten up when he returned from Europe to his home town in the occupied territory of Gaza last June.
A stringer for Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, Omer, 24, was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism for “displaying courage and ability in covering war zones”.
The U.N. report, by Richard Falk, the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, says that Omer was convinced the brutal assault on his person was carried out by personnel from Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency.
The security agents “were fully aware that he had received the Gellhorn Prize while abroad, and were attempting to confiscate the award money, but were frustrated because it has been deposited in a bank account and was unavailable.”
When he left Gaza for Europe to pick up his prize, he was assured of the benefit of a Dutch diplomatic escort on his return.
But the escort arrived late at the Allenby Bridge border, where he was interrogated and beaten up and lost consciousness.
According to Omer’s testimony, he was forced to strip by an Israeli officer wearing a police uniform. He was pinned down on the floor with a boot on the neck. He says he collapsed during interrogation, and when he came round his eyelids were being forcibly opened. He was then dragged along the floor by his feet by officials of Shin Bet.
Omer was taken by ambulance from the Allenby crossing to the Jericho hospital in Palestinian territory in the West Bank. From there he was transferred to Gaza after a few hours.
A note from the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) denies Omer’s account of physical abuse in Israeli custody. “In contradiction to his claims, at no time was the complainant subjected to either physical or mental violence.”
But an ambulance report of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society says: “We note finger signs on the neck and chest.” A report from the European Gaza Hospital of the Palestinian National Authority’s Ministry of Health includes the following notation following examination of Omer: “Ecchymosis (discolouration caused by bleeding underneath, typically caused by bruising) at upper part of chest wall was found.”
Following the assault, international press freedom groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders called for an immediate and public investigation of Omer’s treatment.
By private communication, Falk was assured by the Dutch Ambassador in Geneva that the incident is being taken “extremely seriously” and that an explanation is being sought from the government of Israel.
But at the time of the U.N. report, no response had been received to either request for an account and an explanation.
Falk says the unfortunate incident “cannot be discounted as an accident or an anomaly involving undisciplined Israeli security personnel.”
“The treatment of Mr. Omer seems to have been motivated by Israeli anger over international recognition of his journalism describing the occupation of Gaza, his willingness to repeat his descriptions abroad and his dedication and intention to continue in the professional role of bearing witness to the excesses of the occupation.”
Falk also points out that all Palestinians are subject to arbitrary harassment and abuse at borders and military checkpoints, “although the hostility towards journalists seems particularly severe.”
During his time in Europe, Omer had also spoken before European parliamentary audiences, describing the suffering in Gaza caused by the Israeli siege, closures and fuel and food shortages.
“It should be noted,” says Falk, “that Mr. Omer was not charged with any offence, nor was he carrying any prohibited materials.”
His treatment, as described, appears to constitute a flagrant violation of article 3(1)(a)(c) of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits “outrages on personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” of persons under military occupation.
Nadia Hijab, senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Palestine Studies, told IPS: “Richard Falk is absolutely right.”
She said other journalists have been killed or injured by Israeli security forces, even though they and their vehicles were clearly marked as “press”.
But there are several particularly chilling aspects to Israel’s assault against Mohammed Omer, she added.
“He had just been on a successful European speaking tour and received a prestigious award, and he was being met by European diplomats on his return home,” she noted.
Through its actions, said Hijab, Israel was sending a message that no Palestinian, journalist or otherwise, is safe and that even European diplomats are no match for Israel.
“That is a very chilling message to a defenceless people,” she added.
In his report, Falk also says that although the incident affected only one individual, it inevitably has “a chilling effect, and appears to be part of a broader pattern of Israeli punitive interference with independent journalistic reporting on the occupation.”
Falk says the United Nations has a “clear responsibility and definite obligation to protect independent journalism, especially in war zones and areas under occupation, as part of its commitment to human rights and international law.”
Asked if the United Nations is doing enough to protect reporters covering the occupied territories, Hijab told IPS: “The United Nations is not equipped to protect reporters covering the occupied territories, just as it is not equipped to protect civilians.”
“The only possible protection would be for the U.S. and/or Europe to make it very clear to Israel that they do not condone its violations of international law,” she added.
Robert Fisk: When it comes to Palestine and Israel, the US simply doesn’t get it
October 4, 2008Biden and Palin hid like rabbits from the centre of the Middle East earthquake
The Independent, Saturday, October 4, 2008
Palestinians ceased to exist in the United States on Thursday night. Both Joe Biden and Sarah Palin managed to avoid the use of that poisonous word. “Palestine” and “Palestinians” – that most cancerous, slippery, dangerous concept – simply did not exist in the vice-presidential debate. The phrase “Israeli occupation” was mercifully left unused. Neither the words “Jewish colony” nor “Jewish settlement” – not even that cowardly old get-out clause of American journalism, “Jewish neighbourhood” – got a look-in. Nope.
Those bold contenders of the US vice-presidency, so keen to prove their mettle when it comes to “defence”, hid like rabbits from the epicentre of the Middle East earthquake: the existence of a Palestinian people. Sure, there was talk of a “two-state” solution, but it would have mystified anyone who didn’t understand the region.
There was even a Biden jibe at George Bush for pressing on with “elections” – again, the adjective “Palestinian” went missing – that produced a Hamas victory. But Hamas appeared to exist in never-never land, a vast landscape that gradually encompassed all the vast and black deserts that stretch, in the imagination of US politicians, from the Mediterranean to Pakistan.
“Pakistan’s (nuclear) missiles can already hit Israel,” Biden thundered. But what was he talking about? Pakistan has not threatened Israel. It’s supposed to be on our side. Both vice-presidential candidates seemed to think that our ally in the “war on terror” was now turning into an ally of the axis of evil. Even Islam didn’t get a run for its money.
Indeed, one of the funniest reports of the week, yet another investigation of Obama’s education, came from the Associated Press news agency. The would-be president, the Associated Press announced, had attended a Muslim school but hadn’t “practised” Islam.
What on earth did this mean, I asked myself? Would AP have reported, for example, that McCain had attended a Christian school but hadn’t “practised” Christianity? Then I got it. Obama had smoked Islam but he hadn’t inhaled!
Travelling across the US this week – from Seattle to Houston to Washington and then to New York – I kept bumping into the results of America’s White House-induced terror. A well-educated, upper-middle-class lady at a lunch turned to me and expressed her fear that Islam “wanted to take over America”. When I suggested that this was pushing things a bit, she informed me that “the Muslims have already taken over France”.
How does one reply to this? It’s a bit like being informed by a perfectly sane and rational person that Martians have just landed in Tennessee. So I used the old Fisk trick when confronted by ravers of the “admit George Bush did 9/11” school. I looked at my watch, adopted a shocked expression and shouted: “Gotta go!”
But seriously. There was Biden on Thursday night, telling us that along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan – he was referring, of course, to the old frontier drawn by Sir Mortimer Durrand which most Pushtuns (and thus all Taliban) regard as fictional – “there have been 7,000 madrassas built … and that’s where bin Laden lives and we will go at him if we have actually (sic) intelligence”.
Seven thousand? Where on earth does this figure come from? Yes, there are thousands of religious schools in Pakistan – but they’re not all on the border. In another extraordinary bit of myth-making, Obama’s man told us that “we kicked the Hizbollah out of Lebanon” – which is totally untrue.
And, of course, Israel – a word that must be uttered, repeatedly, by all US candidates – became the compass point of the entire Middle East, this “peace-seeking nation … our strongest and best ally in the Middle East” (quoth Palin) of whom “no one in the United States Senate has been a better friend…than Joe Biden” (quoth Biden).
Israel was “in jeopardy” if America talked to Iran, Palin revealed. “We have got to assure them that we will never allow a second Holocaust.” Thus was the corpse of Hitler dug up yet again – just as McCain resurrected the shadow of the Second World War last week when he blathered on about Eisenhower’s sense of responsibility before D-Day. That Israel can quite adequately defend herself with 264 nuclear warheads went, of course, unmentioned, because acknowledging Israel’s real power undermines the image of a small and vulnerable country relying on America for its defence.
Israelis deserve security. But where were the promises of security for Palestinians? Or the sympathy which Americans would immediately grant any other occupied people? Absent, needless to say. For we must gird ourselves for the next struggle against world evil in Pakistan.
Biden actually demanded a “stable” government in Islamabad, which was a little bit hypocritical only a few days after US troops had crossed its sovereign border to shoot up a Pakistani house allegedly used by the Taliban. As General David Petraeus told The New York Times this week, “The trends in Afghanistan have been in the wrong direction … wresting control of certain areas from the Taliban will be very difficult.”
It’s an odd situation. Obama and Biden want to close down Iraq and re-conquer Afghanistan. The Palin College of Clichés characterised this as “a white flag of surrender in Iraq” while continuing to warn of the dangers of Iran, the name of whose loony president – Ahmadinejad – defeated McCain three times in last week’s pseudo-debate.
But it’s the same old story. All we have learned in America these past two weeks, to quote Joan Littlewood’s Oh! What a Lovely War, is that the war goes on.
MIDEAST: Breaking the Silence
October 3, 2008
By Cherrie Heywood | Inter-Press Service
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Oct 2 – An Israeli police commander has called them “provocateurs”, “militants”, and, “lawbreakers”. Earlier in the year the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) decided that their presence in the city of Hebron, 30km south of Jerusalem in the Palestinian West Bank, constituted a security threat and banned them from the city, stating that any member of the organisation caught there would be expelled forthwith.
They’ve been spat at, stoned and assaulted, but these former members of the IDF, many of whom served in Hebron, are determined to expose what is being done in their name and in the name of Israel’s security.
Breaking the Silence (BTS) was co-founded in 2004 by Yehuda Shaul, 26, an Israeli soldier who served for nearly three years in the volatile city of Hebron.
The organisation’s main aim is to break the silence and taboo surrounding the behaviour of Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian territories in an endeavour to enlighten ordinary Israelis on what happens behind the scenes as their sons and daughters, husbands and wives serve the Jewish state.
Hebron is an especially tense city as clashes break out frequently between the city’s approximately 600 illegal Israeli settlers, protected by over a thousand Israeli soldiers, living amongst a Palestinian population of about 170,000.
The Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron used to be the home of the U.S. doctor and immigrant Baruch Goldstein, who mowed down 29 Muslim worshippers as they prayed in the Ibrahimi Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan in 1994. Survivors beat him to death.
BTS has used the anonymous testimony of more than 500 Israeli soldiers who served in the Palestinian territories to hold photo-exhibitions as well as conduct fact-finding tours of Hebron for the Israeli public.
Jerusalem-born Shaul was so horrified by what he witnessed and the kind of person he felt he was turning into that he decided to do something about it. “As the term of my military service was drawing to a close, I started questioning who I was and what I wanted from life as a civilian and what I had become,” recalls Shaul.
“It’s a very terrifying moment because, in one second military terminology and way of thinking doesn’t apply to you any more, and in one second you lose the justification for 95 percent of actions you took part in over the past two years and ten months,” said the former soldier.
Shaul began talking to many of his fellow soldiers about their mutual experiences. “We all felt that something wrong was going on around us. We started talking about what we’ve done, and that’s how BTS got started,” said Shaul.
The group kicked off their campaign with a photo-exhibition ‘Bringing Hebron to Tel Aviv’ in 2004 which was attended by thousands. The exhibition was put up at Harvard University in the U.S. in 2006.
Shaul explains how many Israeli soldiers changed, and eventually grew accustomed to abusing Palestinian civilians.
Following the initial excitement after first arriving in the Occupied Territories, the soldiers soon got bored, and would invent games to amuse themselves.
“You aim your rifle at kids and see them through the scope of your rifle and take a picture. The rifle is no longer a killing machine, the rifle becomes a part of your game, a way to pass time,” said Shaul.
Another game would involve detaining Palestinians for many hours “to educate them” if they broke a curfew to get food. Hebron was under curfew for 500 days from 2002-2003 during the second Palestinian uprising, or Intifadah.
“If you call on a Palestinian to show his ID and you don’t like his reaction, you then detain him for as long as you feel like. It just depends on which side of the bed you woke up on that morning,” he said.
At other times the soldiers would randomly spray a suburban area indiscriminately in response to gunshots from the area. Testimony from other soldiers included actions such as tanks randomly driving over parked Palestinian cars even when they were not in the way and the road was wide enough for the tanks to pass.
Stealing from Palestinians and assaulting them in their homes while soldiers conducted searches happened regularly.
“Over time,” Shaul says, “the Palestinians stop being people and simply become objects.”
Following the success of the Tel Aviv exhibition, BTS started organising weekly tours for the Israeli public in Hebron. More than 5,000 people have participated in over 300 tours during the last three years.
But these tours have been interrupted and marred by attacks by Israeli settlers. The IDF responded by banning BTS from the area earlier this year. Following a successful appeal to the Israeli High Court BTS had the ban overturned, and the tours resumed.
But the resumption of the first tour in June was stopped yet again as Israeli settlers blocked the path of the bus and poured scalding water over several tour participants while the police stood by.
None of the settlers were charged.
Angry Israeli intellectuals and left-wing activists, including internationally renowned Israeli author Amos Oz, signed a letter of protest which was published in the Israeli daily Haaretz. They demanded that the Israeli police enforce law and order in Hebron and make the settlers accountable.
BTS follows in the footsteps of another group of peace activists, Yesh Gvul (Hebrew for ‘There’s a Limit’). Yesh Gvul comprises Israeli soldiers who refuse, on the basis of moral objections, to serve in the Palestinian Occupied Territories.
Yesh Gvul was established in 1982 following Israel’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon when more than a thousand Palestinian civilians were massacred by Israel’s Christian Phalangist allies in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.
This followed the assassination of Phalangist leader and Lebanese president Bashir Gemayal. The Phalangists, incorrectly, suspected Palestinian involvement.
Israeli troops were later found to have surrounded the camps, preventing any escape, and fired flares into the night making it easier for their butcher allies. Israel was also largely held responsible for arming, training and financing the Phalangists.
While hundreds of Yesh Gvul activists have been jailed for being conscientious objectors, Ofer Neiman, 37, a computer science lecturer from Jerusalem, was kicked out of an intelligence unit of the Israeli Air Force (AIF) where he served.
“I refused to be part of an intelligence unit which provided information on the possible bombing of civilian targets in the territories,” Neiman told IPS. “I also began a campaign of letter writing to the then IDF chief of staff, Dan Halutz.”
Halutz was responsible for ordering the dropping of a one-tonne bomb on a crowded residential apartment building in a densely populated Gaza neighbourhood in 2002. The bomb killed Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Amongst the civilian casualties were 14 children. (END/2008)
West Bank settler violence challenges Israel
October 1, 2008Mohammed Assadi
Reuters North American News Service | Wiredispatch.com
Sep 30, 2008 04:15 EST
ASIRA AL-KIBLIYA, West Bank, Sept 30 (Reuters) – Armed with guns, slingshots, knives and stun grenades, Jewish settlers pelted the house of Palestinian Nahla Makhlouf with stones, uprooted young trees and painted the Star of David on her walls.
In Makhlouf’s West Bank village of Asira al-Kibilya, Palestinians brace for possible attack by their Jewish settler neighbours from nearby Titzhar almost every weekend. But the latest attack exceeded their expectations.
“They sprayed some sort of tear gas through the window. It smelled strong and made our eyes run and made it hard to breath, especially for my baby,” said the 33-year-old mother of four.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reacted strongly to the Sept. 13 attack, saying he would not tolerate “pogroms” by Jewish extremists who are determined on religious grounds to stop Israel swapping occupied land for peace.
Last week, an outspoken Israeli critic of the settlements was wounded by a pipe bomb outside his Jerusalem home, in what Olmert said was evidence of “an evil wind of extremism, of hatred, of violence” threatening Israeli democracy.
Settlers and the Israeli army said the Asira assault was triggered by the wounding of a nine-year-old settler boy by a Palestinian whom he had disturbed in the act of setting fire to a house in the Yitzhar settlement while the family was away.
But settler vigilante violence is growing, according to a recent U.N. report, which recorded 222 incidents in the first half of 2008, versus 291 in all of 2007.
HARDLINE
Some half a million Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, including Arab East Jerusalem. Their presence, viewed by major powers as illegal under international law, is partly shielded by a 790 km (490 mile) barrier Israel has been building since 2002.
In a newspaper interview on Monday, Olmert broke new ground by urging Israel’s withdrawal “from almost all the territories” captured in the 1967 Middle East war in return for peace.
But Olmert says Israel plans to keep major settlements in the West Bank in any peace deal, and would have to compensate the Palestinians for land lost.
The Palestinians say they cannot have a viable country of their own if it is chopped into pieces by Israeli settlement islands and the snaking walls and fences of the new barrier.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called the settlements “an obstacle to peace” which must go.
Some settlers justified the attack on Asira, saying the army failed to protect them against a violent infiltration.
“If the Israeli army had done what it should, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. They should either have prevented that infiltration or carried out a raid after,” Renana Cohen said.
Dani Dayan of Israel’s mainstream settlers’ organisation says the Arabs do not want peace. A Palestinian state would be a “launching pad” from which they would conduct “ethnic cleansing” against the Israelis, he argues. Many Israelis feel the same.
Most settlers oppose vigilante violence. But most agree that withdrawal would be “a sure recipe for war”, as Dayan puts is, because there will no “peace-loving Palestinians taking over”.
A younger, more aggressive breed of religious ideologues vows a violent response to any eviction threat, warning a heavy price would be exacted for any bid to close settlements down.
NO PROTECTION
Residents of Asira say the settlers need no provocation or pretext. Attacks on Asira date back three years, Makhlouf said.
Palestinians complain of unremitting harassment, such as the burning of their olive trees and stoning attacks on farmers in the fields, as a prelude to land-creep and confiscation.
The garden and rooftop of Makhlouf’s neighbour, Ahmed Dawood, were littered by stones rained onto his house in the settler rampage. The water tank was holed by four bullet.
Dawood’s son and a labourer in his field were shot and wounded. The army, he said, made no effort to stop the attack.
“I complained to the soldiers and they shouted back ‘Get inside’ and started shooting,” he said.
“We have nothing to protect ourselves with. We just take precautions such as putting metal grids on the windows. But the solution is to have them uprooted from here.”
Asira’s predicament is well known to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, who gave Makhlouf a small video camera in 2007 to document violence. The lens was knocked off focus by a rock in the latest attack but still provided an audio record.
Yoav Gross of B’Tselem said the settlers can be heard giving the army a one-minute ultimatum to act against the Palestinians or they would do the job themselves.
“They started counting one, two, three…,” he said. “They were giving orders to the soldiers, not the other way around.”
One Israeli human rights lawyer, Michael Sfard, says most soldiers do not realise they have not only the right but also the duty, as the occupying power, to defend Palestinians.
Settler attacks may rise in the upcoming olive harvest, when Arab farmers work the groves close to settlement perimeters.
One Palestinian woman in Asira was stocking up on corrosive cleaning fluids to throw at the attackers next time they visit.
“They have the army to protect them even while they are attacking us,” said the woman, who was afraid to give her name.
“But we have no one to defend us.”
(Editing by Douglas Hamilton and Samia Nakhoul)
Olmert advocates Israeli pullouts
September 30, 2008| Al Jazeera, Sep 29, 2008 |
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Ehud Olmert, Israel’s outgoing prime minister, has said that Israel will have to leave much of east Jerusalem and allow Palestinians to form a state equal in size to the area of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In an interview with the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, published on Monday, Olmert also said that peace with Syria would require withdrawal from the Golan Heights. “[I am saying] what no previous Israeli leader has ever said: we should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in East Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights,” he was quoted as saying. Olmert resigned on September 21 amid corruption allegations and will officially step down once a new government has been formed. Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, agreed at a meeting in the United States last November to push for a comprehensive peace deal before the end of the year. Yediot Ahronot noted that the remarks in its “legacy interview” go further than any the prime minister made before he effectively became a lame duck in September. “I am not trying to justify retroactively what I did for 35 years. For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at reality in all its depth,” Olmert said. “A decision has to be made. This decision is difficult, terrible, a decision that contradicts our natural instincts, our innermost desires, our collective memories, the prayers of the Jewish people for 2,000 years.” Stalled talks The construction of new Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, which Palestinians see as the capital of a future state, have also proved to be a major obstacle.
According to Western and Palestinian officials, Olmert has previously proposed an Israeli withdrawal from some 93 per cent of the occupied West Bank. Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005.In exchange for settlement enclaves, Olmert has suggested handing over a desert territory adjacent to the Gaza Strip, as well as land on which to build a transit corridor between Gaza and the West Bank. “We will leave a percentage of these territories in our hands, but will have to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace,” Olmert said in Tuesday’s interview. Olmert has previously argued that the issue of Jerusalem be considered at a later date because the difficulties in reaching an agreement. But on Tuesday he said that giving up parts of the city was critical to securing Israel’s security. “Whoever wants to hold on to all of the city’s territory will have to bring 270,000 Arabs inside the fences of sovereign Israel. It won’t work,” he said. Concrete offer Saeb Erakat, a senior adviser to Abbas, said Israel must “translate these statements into reality” if it is serious about wanting to achieve a peace deal. “We haven’t seen these statements translated into a piece of paper, into a concrete offer,” he told the AFP news agency, stressing that “the road to peace is through ending the occupation and [Israeli] settlements in the West Bank”. “I’d like see if there is one serious person in the State of Israel who believes it is possible to make peace with the Syrians without eventually giving up the Golan Heights,” he said in the interview. Israel annexed the territory in 1981, a move never recognised by the world community. More than 18,000 Syrians, mostly Druze, are left from the Golan’s original population of 150,000 people. The region now is home to nearly 20,000 Jewish settlers. |
Remembering Edward Said Five Years On
September 29, 2008 |
| Edward Said. ‘He stood for everything that is virtuous.’ |
By Stephen Lendman – Chicago | The Palestine Chronicle, Sep 22, 2008
Said was passionately against Palestine being turned into an isolated prison wherein Israel repeatedly attacked mostly defenseless civilians with tanks and F-16s.Born in West Jerusalem in 1935. Exiled in December 1947. Said was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in 1991, a malignant cancer of the bone marrow and blood. At 6:45AM on September 25, 2003, he succumbed (at age 67) after a painful courageous 12 year struggle. Tributes followed and resumed a year later. In a testimony to his teacher, Professor Moustafa Bayoumi called him “indefatigable, incorruptible, a humanist and devastatingly charming….leav(ing behind) legions of followers and fans in every corner of the world. I am lost without him….I miss him so.”
Chomsky called his death an “incalculable loss.” A year later, Ilan Pappe said “his absence seems to me still incomprehensible. What would have happened if we still had Edward with us in this last year….another terrible (one) for the values (he) represented and causes he defended.” Tariq Ali referred to his “indomitable spirit as a fighter, his will to live, (my) long-standing friend and comrade,” and described his ordeal:
“Over the last eleven years one had become so used to his illness – the regular hospital stays, the willingness to undergo trials with the latest drugs, the refusal to accept defeat – that (we thought) him indestructible.” Leukemia kills, and in response to Ali’s questions, his doctor said there was “no medical explanation for (his) survival.” No doubt Dr. Kanti Rai made a difference. Said spoke of him reverentially – of his “redoubtable medical expertise and remarkable humanity” that kept him going during his darkest times, and there were many. He later described months in and out of the hospital, “painful treatments, blood transfusions, endless tests, hours and hours of unproductive time spent staring at the ceiling, draining fatigue and infection, inability to do normal work, and thinking, thinking, thinking.”
Yet, as Ali recounted, in the end the “monster (overpowered him), devouring his insides (but when) the cursed cancer finally took him the shock was intense.” Palestinians had lost their “most articulate (and powerful) voice….(he’s) irreplaceable.”
Veteran Palestinian-American journalist Ramzy Baroud agrees. He called 2003 a bad time for Palestinians to lose one their iconic best and described him like many others: He “stood for everything that is virtuous. His moral stance was even more powerful than (his) essays, books and music (as critic, scholar and consummate artist)….He was an extraordinary intellectual, thoughtful….inimitable” and never silent or compromising in his beliefs or virtue. No “wonder he….was adored by (his) people (and) detested by the” forces he opposed.
Phyllis Bennis called him “one of the great internationalist intellectuals of our time….a hero of the Palestinian people (and) the global peace and justice movement as well….(my) great mentor, a challenging collaborator, a remarkable friend….his passion, vision, wit (and fury against injustice) will be terribly missed.”
Daniel Barenboim called him a “fighter and a compassionate defender. A man of logic and passion. An artist and a critic….a visionary (who) fought for Palestinian rights while understanding Jewish suffering.” In 1999, they jointly founded the West-East Divan – an orchestra for young Arabs and Jews who collaboratively “understood that before Beethoven we all stand as equals….Palestinians have lost a formidable defender, the Israelis a no less formidable adversary, and I a soulmate.”
Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia where Said taught for nearly 40 years as a Professor of English and Comparative Literature. He called him “a man of vast erudition and learning, of extraordinary versatility and remarkable (interdisciplinary) expertise.” We’ve lost “one of the most profound, original and influential thinkers of the past half-century (and) a fearless independent voice speaking truth to the entrenched powers that dominate the Middle East.”
On September 30, 2003, Columbia University paid tribute as well. It mourned the passing of its “beloved and esteemed university professor.” Called him one of the world’s most influential scholars, and said “the world has lost a brilliant and beautiful mind, a big heart, and a courageous fighter.”
When he learned of his illness and its seriousness, Said decided to write (from memory) a biographical account of his childhood, upbringing and early years in Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt. Titled “Out of Place, A Memoir,” he called it “a record of an essentially lost or forgotten world….a subjective account of (his life) in the Arab world” of his birth and formative years. Then in America where he attended boarding school, Princeton for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and Harvard for his doctorate.
He began “Out of Place” in 1994 while recovering from three early rounds of chemotherapy and continued to completion with the help and “unstinting kindness and patience” of the “superb nurses” who spent months caring for him as well as his family and friends whose support helped him finish.
He recounted a young man’s coming of age. Of coming to terms with being displaced. An American. A Christian. A Palestinian. An outsider, and ultimately the genesis of an intellectual giant. An uncompromising opponent of imperialism and oppression, and an advocate for his peoples’ struggle for justice and self-determination. No one made the case more powerfully or with greater clarity than he did – in his books, articles, opinion pieces, and wherever he spoke around the world. He made hundreds of appearances and became a target of pro-Israeli extremists. They threatened him and his family. Once burned his Columbia University office, but never silenced him or ever could. Nor did the FBI in spite of over 30 years of surveillance the way it monitors all prominent outspoken activists and intellectuals and many of lesser stature.
Said’s great writings include Orientalism (1978) in which he explained a pattern of western misinterpretation of the East, particularly the Middle East. In Culture and Imperialism (1993), he broadened Orientalism’s core argument to show the complex relationships between East and West. Colonizers and the colonized, “the familiar (Europe, West, us) and the strange (the Orient, East, them).”
His writings showed the breath of his scholarship, interests and activism – on comparative literature, literary criticism, culture, music and his many works on Israeli-Palestinian history and conflict – combining scholarship, passion and advocacy for his people in contrast to the West’s one-sided view of Arabs and Islam. He championed equity and justice. Denounced imperialism, and believed Israel has a right to exist but not exclusively for Jews at the expense of indigenous Palestinians.
The 1967 war and illegal occupation changed everything for him. It radicalized him. Set the course of his intellectual career and activism, and made him the Palestinians’ leading spokesperson for the next 37 years until his death. He advocated a one-state solution and wrote in 1999: “The beginning is to develop something entirely missing from both Israeli and Palestinian realities today: the idea and practice of citizenship, not of ethnic or racial community, as the main vehicle of coexistence.”
In a lengthy January 1999 New York Times op-ed he elaborated: “Palestinian self-determination in a separate state is unworkable (after years earlier believing otherwise). The question (now isn’t separation) but to see whether it is possible for (Jews and Palestinians) to live together (in the same land) as fairly and peacefully as possible. What exists now is a disheartening…bloody impasse. There is no way for Israel to get rid of Palestinians or for Palestinians to wish Israelis away….I see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way, with equal rights for each citizen.”
This diminishes life and aspirations for neither side. It affirms self-determination for them both together in the same land where they once lived peacefully. But it doesn’t mean “special status for one people at the expense of the other.” For millennia, Palestine was the homeland for many peoples, predating the Ottomans and Romans. It’s “multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious.” There’s no “historical justification for homogeneity” or for “notions of national or ethnic and religious purity….The alternatives (today) are unpleasantly simple: either the war continues (with its unacceptable costs)” or an equitable way out is found, obstacles notwithstanding.
Oslo wasn’t the answer, and Said denounced it in its run-up and weeks later in a London Review of Books piece titled “The Morning After.” In stinging language, he referred to “the fashion-show vulgarities of the White House ceremony, the degrading spectacle of Yasser Arafat thanking everyone for the suspension of most of his people’s rights, and the fatuous solemnity of Bill Clinton’s performance, like a 20th century Roman emperor shepherding two vassal kings through rituals of reconciliation and obeisance (and) the truly astonishing proportions of the Palestinian capitulation.”
For him, Oslo was plainly and simply “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles,” and worst of all is that a better deal could have been had without so many “unilateral concessions to Israel.” The same goes for the 1978 Camp David Accords and every “peace” negotiation to the present except the “permanent status” 2000 Camp David “generous” and “unprecedented” offer that Arafat turned down and was unfairly pilloried for spurning peace for conflict.
Said was on top of everything to the end as reflected in “The Last Interview” – a documentary film less than a year before his death. After a decade of illness, he agreed to a final film interview at a time he was drained, weakened and dying, yet found it “very difficult to turn (himself) off.” It was a casual conversation between himself and journalist Charles Glass reflecting on his childhood, upbringing, writing, scholarship, involvement with Yasser Arafat, and strong opinions and activism on Palestinian issues.
It was in all his writings and outspokenness – so powerful, passionate, virtuous and a testimony to his uncompromising principles. He described “Sharonian evil.” His blind destructiveness. His terrorism in ordering the massacring of children, then congratulating one pilot for his great success. The patently dishonest media. Its one-sided support for Israel. Its suppressing other views. Its turning a blind eye to the grossest crimes against humanity, day after day after day. Of relegating public discourse to repetitive official propaganda. Of subverting truth in support of power and privilege.
Of turning Palestine into an isolated prison. Suffocating an entire people of their existence. Of impoverishing, starving and slaughtering them. Of attacking defenseless civilians with tanks and F-16s. Of blaming victims for their own terror. Of creating a vast wasteland of destruction and human misery. Of sanctioning torture and targeted assassinations as official policy. Of committing every imaginable human indignity and degradation against people whose only crime is their faith, ethnicity, and presence. Whose only defense is their will and redoubtable spirit. Of enlisting world support for the most unspeakable, unrelenting campaign of terror and genocide.
Of pursuing an endless “cycle of violence” and consigning Palestinians to a “slow death” in defense of imperial interests and the national security state. Of pursuing peace as a scheme for “pacification.” Of placing the onus for it “squarely on Palestinian shoulders.” Of “putting an end to the (Palestinian) problem.” Of placing huge demands on Palestinians and making no concessions in return. Of calling resistance “terrorism” while ignoring oppressive occupation as the fundamental problem. Of seeing Palestinians endure and survive in spite of every imaginable assault, affront and indignity. Of piling on even more and seeing an even greater will to survive and prevail.
Said was passionate on all this and more. He was uncompromisingly anti-war and denounced America’s “war on terror.” The country “hijacked by a small cabal of individuals….unelected and unresponsive to public pressure.” The Democrats supporting them “in a gutless display of false patriotism.” The entire power structure characterizing Muslims as enemies. Passing repressive laws. Creating the obscenity of Guantanamo and other prisons like it.
Their self-righteous sophistry of so-called “just wars” and evil of Islam. The near omnipotence of the Zionist Lobby, Christian fascists, and military-industrial complex. Their hostility to Arabs and claim to be “on the side of the angels.” Their inexorable pursuit of war and power. The media in lockstep supporting “hypocritical lies” masquerading as “absolute truth.” The silencing of dissent. Of mocking and betraying democracy. Of making a total sham of decency, humanity and justice. Of letting a few extremists create their own “fantasy world” to run the country for their own corrupted self-interest.
Said said it all, and ended one opinion piece as follows: “Jonathan Swift, thou shouldst be living at this hour.” But even he might have blanched in disbelief considering the current state and potential horror of its consequences. Said understood. He’s sorely missed when we need him most.
-Stephen Lendman contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. (Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com, and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM—1PM US Central time.)
UN debates West Bank settlements
September 27, 2008| Al Jazeera, Sep 27, 2008 |
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The Palestinian president and Arab countries have criticised Israel over its settlement expansion policy in the West Bank during debates at the United Nations. In a speech to the General Assembly on Friday, Mahmoud Abbas deplored as “racial terrorism” what he said were daily attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians, and urged the international community to take action. “[The settlements] will not allow for the emergence of a viable Palestinian state because they divide the West Bank into at least four cantons,” he said. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, whose country formally called for the debate, said Israel must halt settlement activity and obey international law. “Settlement makes the creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible,” he said. “The only path to Israel’s security is peace and it is time for Israel to understand that it cannot continue to exempt itself from behaving in accordance to international law,” Prince Saud said. The Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League urged the UN Security Council to encourage the faltering peace process by demanding an end to Jewish settlements on Palestinian land. In August, Israel approved the construction of 400 new homes in a Jewish neighbourhood in east Jerusalem and invited bids for the construction of another 416 settler homes in the occupied West Bank. The Middle East diplomatic Quartet on Friday pressed Israel and the Palestinians to seal a peace deal this year, but also expressed “deep concern” over continuing settlement expansion in the West Bank. A ministerial session of Quartet members, the US, Russia, the European Union and the UN, ended with a call on the parties “to make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008”. Quartet members “expressed deep concern about increasing [Israeli] settlement activity, which has a damaging impact on the negotiating environment and is an impediment to economic recovery and called on Israel to freeze all settlement activity.” They also reiterated that the parties “must avoid actions that undermine confidence and could prejudice the outcome of the negotiations”. In Annapolis, Maryland last November, Israel and the Palestinians revived negotiations toward resolving core problems such as the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future Palestinian state and refugees, by the end of 2008. Settlement expansion Settlement expansion has nearly doubled since 2007, despite Israel’s pledge to freeze such activities, Peace Now, the Israeli watchdog, said last month. “The situation necessitates a serious stand by the international community and a clear call upon Israel to begin withdrawing its settlers and dismantling its settlements,” Abbas said.
“It was recognised [in Annapolis] that this was a prerequisite for allowing negotiations towards ending the conflict to progress,” he said.But Gabriela Shalev, Israel’s UN Ambassador, told council members that while the settlements are a “delicate issue,” they “are not an obstacle to peace”. “They have been used here as another instrument to bash Israel instead of addressing the realities on the ground,” she said. “There is much that those in the region can do to support that peace process, but it is not about more UN meetings. “It is, first and foremost, about commitment to prepare the people of the region for the price of peace, to accept the true meaning of peace,” Shalev said. The West Bank has been under military occupation by Israel since 1967 and at least 400,000 Israelis have been settled in the territory, including East Jerusalem. The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this. Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, whose country currently chairs the European Union, restated the EU view that Israeli settlements, “wherever in the occupied Palestinian territories, are illegal under international law.” He added that settlement “harms the credibility of the process started in Annapolis and affects the viability of the future Palestinian state.” Reaching out Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, shifted the focus of the debate away from settlements, instead urging Arab countries to “consider ways they might reach out to Israel”. She said the Arab world needed to fully understand that: “Israel belongs to the Middle East and will remain” in the Middle East. Meanwhile, a group of 21 leading aid agencies said on Thursday that the Middle East Quartet was “losing its grip” on the peace process and must radically revise its approach. The aid agencies said the Quartet has failed to hold Israel to account for expanding settlements in the West Bank. |
Peace and Justice Post 
Palestinians Must Unite against Racist Israel
October 10, 2008Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal
There is a striking similarity in the anti-Muslim policies of the so-called “democracies” like basically conservative India, Israel and USA, both at home and abroad. The anti-Islamic chord has worked quite well to the regimes in covering up their state corrupt and criminal activities in the country and abroad. Practices of anti-Islamism have kept these regimes in good stead at least outwardly. These racist and fascist trends continue to dominate the national politics and, as a result, have resulted in genocide, and torture and insults to Islam and Muslims. Leader after leader, Israel keeps its flock together on an emphatic anti-Arab platform. So much so, any move towards peace with Palestinians evokes loudest protest and regime change in Israel.
ONE: Israel Racism and Terrorism
In 1948 Israel came into being on lands annexed from Palestine. Palestinians in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, have lived under Israeli occupation since 1967. The settlements that Israel has built in the West Bank are home to around 400,000 people and are deemed to be illegal under international law. Leaders like Yasser Arafat sacrificed their lives for the establishment of Palestine state and safeguard the lives of innocent Palestinians living at the mercy of a terrorist Israel. Israel under Ariel Sharon evacuated its settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and withdrew its forces, ending almost four decades of military occupation. But after his disappearance form public scene, things have gone worse for the Palestinians. USA and Israel worked over night to split the Palestinians and they succeeded. After the Islamic group Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007 following the dismissal of its elected government by PLO President Mahmoud Abbas at the behest of the USA and Israel, Israel intensified its economic blockade of the Strip.
While Kadima is embroiled in peace talks with the Palestinians, Likud says it will wait until there is a stronger negotiating partner on the other side and try to boost the West Bank economy in the meantime. The Kadima party was formed nearly three years ago when then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon split from Likud in what has been described as a “big bang” of Israeli politics. Instead of throwing out the rebel leaders from his Likud party, he himself came out to float a new party Kadima and came to power in the next poll. The issue that tore Likud apart was Sharon’s plan to withdraw, or “disengage”, Israeli troops and settlers, first from the Gaza Strip, and then from parts of the West Bank. It was an abrupt U-turn from a man who had urged Israelis to “settle every hilltop”.
Israel considers the Palestinians as ‘terrorists” because they have been struggling to get back their lands form the terrorist Israel. Racist Jews have been cruel to the Palestinians. More evidence is available to show how shabbily Israel treats the Palestinians whose lands it occupies. An Israeli civil rights group, the Association for Civil Rights, has said racism against Arab citizens of Israel has risen sharply in the past year. In a report, it said expression of anti-Arab views had doubled, and racist incidents had increased by 26%. Christian or Muslim Arab citizens of Israel make up 20% of the population. But the civil rights quoted polls suggesting half of Jewish Israelis do not believe Arab citizens of Israel should have equal rights. About the same amount said they wanted the government to encourage Arab emigration from Israel.
TWO: Human Rights Evasions
Israel considers Arabs less clean and less intelligent than themselves and Americans. Anti-Arab policies being pursued by Israel for decades have created a wedge between them and Arabs. A prominent Israeli Arab politician, Mohammed Barakeh, said the poll results were the natural outcome of what he called the anti-Arab policies of successive Israeli governments. Commenting on the findings of the report, the association’s president Sami Michael warned: “We live in a democratic regime whose foundations are constantly weakening.”
Occupied territories Part of the group’s annual report is dedicated to the situation in Gaza and the West Bank. The report says: “Most of the human rights violations in the occupied territories are by-products of the establishment of settlements and outposts.” Restrictions on the movement of Palestinians designed to allow settlers “free and secure movement”, have virtually split the West Bank into six separate parts. The organization says that the West Bank barrier “does not separate Palestinians from Israelis, but Palestinians from other Palestinians”. The report also asserts that despite its withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Israel retains “moral and legal responsibility” for the Palestinians there because Israel controls access to the coastal territory.
As usual, a government spokesman Mark Regev responded that the Israeli government was “committed to fighting racism whenever it raises its ugly head and is committed to full equality to all Israeli citizens, irrespective of ethnicity, creed or background, as defined by our declaration of independence”. As Israel keep expanding its illegal settlement projects in Palestine, Israel’s Construction and Housing Minister Zeev Boim said the rights group’s report was biased and without credibility.
THREE: Palestine Unity
The success of the fascist and racist terror forces of India, USA and Israel has much to do with the global “terrorism” trend and inability of the Muslims under siege and tortures to unite against the global enemies. There are many freedom groups in Kashmir, though they have just one point program of gaining sovereignty back from occupying India. Similarly Fatah and Hamas have been waging a mutual war, instead of fighting the enemy tooth and nail. Islamic world is hopelessly divided amongst themselves and unable to fight the global terrorists USA, and its “allies” Israel and Hindu India.
Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – who is also leader of Fatah – ends his term in office on 8 January 2009. The parliament – which is controlled by Hamas – is currently scheduled to remain in power until January 2010. Hamas MPs have demanded Abbas hold presidential elections before 8 January, and said they would no longer recognize his legitimacy after that time. Many feel this would deepen the already-protracted rift.
There have been strenuous efforts from several quarters to bring about a unity among the Palestinian groups to force Israel to come up with a final settlement plan. Egypt, the mediator in the dispute, has proposed establishing a government of technocrats acceptable to all factions, re-organization of the Palestinian security forces, and new parliamentary and presidential elections. Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk said the factions would form technical committees to discuss the issues. The committees will take their time, one or two or three months, these are issues that cannot be resolved in days or weeks. Another official from Gaza said: “We in Hamas accept that elections are on the table for discussion.” However, he expressed opposition to simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections for the Palestinian Authority.
Israel will finally concede and surrender the Palestinian lands only if they see the need and they are under international pressure to do so and a united force in Palestine. This writer had suggested way back for creating a Islamic Security Organization ISO (ref: Middle East Online) to defend the Islamic states and Muslims the world over from the anti-Islamic forces. Meanwhile the peace move from concerned Muslim nations could continue. Hamas officials in Cairo say they will meet representatives of the rival Fatah movement this month to discuss the timing of fresh Palestinian elections. Hamas leaders, the popular “militant” movement in control of Gaza, made the announcement after talks with Egypt’s intelligence chief in Cairo. Egypt hopes the Palestinian groups will reach a reconciliation agreement including elections and other reforms. But some analysts say there are few signs of a narrowing of their differences. Abbas should, without worrying about reactions form USA and Israel, take bold initiatives to unite the Hamas Fatah factions and form a government or hold the elections for smooth functioning of an elected government. As the senior most leader of Palestine, it is his duty– and has obligation — to take all factions into confidence in whatever he does about the establishment of Palestine state.
Dr Abdul Ruff Colachal has been a university teacher, and worked in various Indian institutions like JNU, Mysore University, Central Institute of English FL, etc. He is also a political commentator, researcher, and columnist. He has widely published in India and abroad, and has written about state terrorism.
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Tags:anti-Islamism, anti-Muslim policies, Gaza and West Bank, Hamas and Fatah, illegal settlements, Israel, Kadima party, Kashmir, occupied territories, Palestinians
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