Bezetting / Oorlog :

 

Rapport 2007-tot nu over medeplichtigheid Israëlische artsen aan marteling -Engels
+ Ned.Persbericht

Persbericht: http://www.nu.nl/buitenland/2658927/artsen-israel-medeplichtig-marteling.html


Rapport 2007 tot heden: http://www.stoptorture.org.il/files/Doctoring%20the%20Evidence%20Abandoning%20the%20Victim_
November2011.pdf

GOLDSTONE FACTS
The Real Story behind Israel's Invasion of Gaza

Chapter 11 of the Goldstone Report

Deliberate Attacks against the Civilian Population
Factual Findings narrated by Ross Vachon
Factual and Legal findings narrated by Noam Chomsky

Chapter 13 of the Goldstone Report
Attacks on the Foundations of Civilian Life in Gaza
Destruction of Civilian Infrastructure, Food Production
Factual Findings narrated by Ross Vachon
Legal findings narrated by Noam Chomsky
The Destruction of Sawafeary Chicken Farm and al Bader Flour Mill

"A faithful and compelling dramatization of a historic document" -- Norman G Finkelstein


Watch the videos:
http://www.goldstonefacts.org

Moving procession to protest the annual fundraising dinner of the friends of the Israel Defense Force.

protest

Bekijk de video op Youtube.

GEEN GELD VOOR GAZA - 5 JULI 2009
In Gaza filmde ZEMBLA de verwoestingen van de oorlog en zag dat de anjers van het door Nederland betaalde bloemenproject gevoerd worden aan de schapen.

Door de blokkade kan er niks in en niks uit Gaza. De bevolking leeft in armoede en scholen en ziekenhuizen worden keer op keer vernield. In maart beloofde de wereld 3,5 miljard euro aan de Palestijnen. In Zembla de vraag of al die hulp aan de Palestijnen wel helpt. Houdt het niet juist de erbarmelijke situatie van de Palestijnen in stand?

Bekijk deze aflevering van Zembla

Nederlandse economische relaties die de Israëlische bezetting van Palestijnse en/of Syrische gebieden ondersteunen

Een onderzoeksrapport in opdracht van United Civilians for Peace

Israël houdt vanaf 1967 de Westelijke Jordaanoever (inclusief Oost-Jeruzalem), de Gazastrook en de Golan Hoogvlakte bezet. Deze gebieden bevinden zich voorbij de Groene Lijn, de internationaal erkende grens van de staat Israël. Israël heeft nederzettingen in deze bezette gebieden gevestigd, wat volgens het internationaal recht (de Vierde Conventie van Genève) illegaal is.
Israëls nederzettingen in de Gazastrook zijn in augustus 2005 ontmanteld. Op de Westelijke Jordaanoever en de Golan Hoogvlakte echter worden nederzettingen continu uitgebreid en nieuwe nederzettingen gevestigd. Deze nederzettingen zijn een bron van ernstige en systematische mensenrechtenschendingen, die het dagelijkse leven van miljoenen Palestijnen en enkele duizenden Syriërs schaden die onder de Israëlische bezetting leven. Daarnaast vormen deze nederzettingen een serieuze belemmering om vrede te bewerkstelligen tussen Israëli’s en Palestijnen.

Zakelijke activiteiten en mensenrechten
Zakelijke activiteiten in de nederzettingen en de daaraan verbonden industriële zones zijn van groot belang voor de economische levensvatbaarheid van de nederzettingen. Landbouwbedrijven die groente, fruit en bloemen produceren spelen een belangrijke rol, maar industrieën die voedselproducten, plasticproducten, cosmetica en vele andere producten produceren zijn ook van betekenis voor de economie van de nederzettingen. Vele internationale bedrijven hebben handel- en investeringsrelaties met deze nederzettingenbedrijven, waardoor ze betrokken zijn bij activiteiten die leiden tot mensenrechtenschendingen.
United Civilians for Peace (UCP) - een samenwerkingsverband van zes vredes- en ontwikkelingsorganisaties in Nederland - pleit voor een oplossing van het Israëlisch-Palestijnse conflict die in overeenstemming is met het internationale recht. Volgens UCP belemmeren internationale handelsrelaties met de bezetting een dergelijke oplossing. UCP heeft daarom opdracht gegeven voor dit rapport, dat als doel heeft de Nederlandse economische relaties met de Israëlische bezetting van Palestijnse en Syrische gebieden in kaart te brengen.
Het onderzoek heeft 35 Nederlandse bedrijven geïdentificeerd die directe of indirecte relaties onderhouden met de bezetting van Palestijnse en/of Syrische gebieden: 21 bedrijven met een Nederlands hoofdkantoor en 14 Nederlandse dochterondernemingen van Israëlische bedrijven.

Handelsbetrekkingen
Producten uit de nederzettingen zijn niet gemakkelijk te identificeren op de Nederlandse markt, aangezien zij meestal het etiket “Made in Israel” dragen. De etikettering van nederzettingenproducten als zijnde Israëlisch moet tegen de achtergrond van het EU-Israël Associatieverdrag worden gezien. Volgens dit akkoord, dat in juni 2000 werd gesloten, zijn Israëlische exportproducten bestemd voor de Europese Unie vrijgesteld van importheffingen.
De EU neemt al lange tijd het standpunt in dat producten uit de nederzettingen niet in aanmerking komen voor deze handelsvoordelen. Sinds februari 2005 is een overeenkomst van kracht die vereist dat op Israëlische goederen die naar de EU worden geëxporteerd de plaats van herkomst wordt aangegeven. Dit stelt de douaneautoriteiten van de EU-lidstaten in staat om Israëlische producten van nederzettingenproducten te onderscheiden. Of deze overeenkomst effectief werkt, is niet bekend.
Ondanks deze verwarrende etiketteringspraktijken zijn in totaal 23 Israëlische nederzettingsbedrijven geïdentificeerd die naar Nederland exporteren:
Groente en fruit: Agrexco, Arava, Hadiklaim, Jordan Plains
Andere voedselproducten: Adanim Tea, Amnon + Tamar, Oppenheimer
Bloemen: Agrexco
Wijn: Barkan, Carmel, Golan Heights, Tishbi
Andere dranken: Soda-Club
Cosmetica: Dead Sea Laboratories, Intercosma
Plasticproducten: Keter Plastic, Mapal Plastic Products, Tip Top Toys
Metaalproducten: A.R.I. Flow Control Accessories, Mul-T-Lock
Andere producten: Afic, Bio-Lab, Caesarea Carpets, Ofertex Industries
In de meeste gevallen exporteren deze bedrijven goederen die in nederzettingen zijn vervaardigd naar Nederland, in sommige gevallen vermengd met goederen die in Israël zijn geproduceerd. In sommige gevallen zijn de geëxporteerde producten in Israël vervaardigd, maar wordt het bedrijf toch in dit rapport opgenomen aangezien het een groot kantoor of een fabriek in een nederzetting heeft.
Van een deel van deze 23 bedrijven zijn bij elkaar 25 Nederlandse handelspartners gevonden: 8 Nederlandse marketingdochters van de betreffende Israëlische bedrijven en 17 Nederlandse verkopers en importeurs. Groente en fruit die door deze bedrijven uit de nederzettingen worden geëxporteerd, worden door de meeste Nederlandse supermarktketens verkocht, voornamelijk onder de merknamen Carmel en Jaffa. Bloemen van Agrexco worden breed gedistribueerd in Nederland. Andere producten die geëxporteerd worden door bedrijven uit de nederzettingen, worden verkocht door bekende Nederlandse winkelketens.

Andere bedrijfsrelaties met de bezette gebieden
Er zijn twee Nederlandse bedrijven geïdentificeerd met investeringen in nederzettingen in door Israël bezette gebieden:
Soda-Club is een Israëlische producent van frisdrank, die zijn juridische zetel naar de Nederlandse Antillen heeft verplaatst en zijn houdstermaatschappij naar Nederland. Soda-Club produceert koolzuurtoevoegende apparaten in een nederzetting op de bezette Westelijke Jordaanoever.
Unilever is een van oorsprong Brits-Nederlands bedrijf voor voedselproducten, schoonmaakmiddelen en lichaamsverzorgingsproducten, dat 51% van de aandelen bezit van een zoutjes- en snackfabriek in een nederzetting op de bezette Westelijke Jordaanoever.

Twee Nederlandse bedrijven hebben infrastructurele diensten en producten geleverd die de Israëlische bezetting van Palestijnse gebieden ondersteunen:
Interwand Eibergen levert glazen wanden voor een nieuw terminalgebouw bij de Erez grensovergang tussen Israël en de bezette Gazastrook, die beheerd wordt door het Israëlische Departement voor Veiligheid.
Riwal verhuurt mobiele kranen die gebruikt worden bij de bouw van de Israëlische afscheidingsmuur op de bezette

Zes Israëlische bedrijven met activiteiten in de door Israël bezette gebieden hebben in totaal 14 dochterbedrijven in Nederland:
Agrexco: heeft twee marketingdochters in Nederland voor de verkoop van bloemen, groenten en fruit;
Arava: heeft twee marketingdochters in Nederland voor de verkoop van groenten en fruit;
Bio-Lab: heeft in Nederland een dochteronderneming die chemische middelen op de markt brengt;
Keter Plastic: heeft verschillende dochterondernemingen in Nederland die plastic huishoudartikelen en opbergproducten op de markt brengen (Allibert, Curver), die plastic tuinmeubelen produceren (Jardin Netherlands) en die andere BV’s beheren (Jardin International Holding);
Mapal Plastic Products: heeft een dochteronderneming in Nederland die plastic producten op de markt brengt;
Mayanot Eden: heeft een joint-venture in Nederland met Danone die gebotteld water op de markt brengt en daarnaast twee financierings- en houdstermaatschappijen in Nederland.

Bevordering van economische relaties
De Nederlandse minister van Buitenlandse zaken stelde in november 2005 dat “indien een Nederlands bedrijf de ambassade zou verzoeken om hulp bij het zakendoen met een bedrijf in een nederzetting (of vice versa) de Nederlandse ambassade geen medewerking verleent.” Maar in de praktijk is het beleid van Nederlandse overheidsorganen en -instellingen betreffende economische banden met Israëlische nederzettingen in door Israël bezette gebieden minder eenduidig:
EVD: economische relaties met nederzettingen zijn niet uitgesloten;
Atradius: economische relaties met nederzettingen zijn niet uitgesloten;
Ministerie van Landbouw: verwijst vragen naar de Nederlandse ambassade;
Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency: beleid onduidelijk;
Nederlandse Ambassade in Israël: economische banden met nederzettingen worden niet gefaciliteerd, maar bedrijven uit de nederzettingen kunnen gebruik maken van het handelsportaal van de ambassade op het Internet.
Verschillende Nederlandse particuliere bedrijven en organisaties bevorderen ook economische relaties tussen Nederland en Israël. De volgende informatie is aangetroffen over hun beleid ten aanzien van economische relaties met Israëlische nederzettingen in de bezette gebieden:
Kamer van Koophandel Nederland-Israël: economische banden met nederzettingen zijn niet uitgesloten;
Christenen voor Israël / Israël Producten Centrum: import van verschillende producten uit nederzettingen;
Federatie Nederlandse Zionisten: onderdeel van de World Zionist Organisation die actief investeert in de nederzettingen;
Israël Office Delft: relaties met Kfar Sava, niet met nederzettingen;
Joods Nationaal Fonds: onderdeel van de Jewish National Fund die nederzettingen financiert;
Israël Desk van KPMG: economische banden met nederzettingen zijn niet uitgesloten;
OPTIN: economische banden met nederzettingen zijn niet uitgesloten.

Economische banden met geselecteerde buitenlandse bedrijven

Tot slot zijn de Nederlandse economische relaties met drie buitenlandse bedrijven onderzocht, omdat deze drie bedrijven internationaal sterk worden bekritiseerd door de Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Amnesty International en andere organisaties om hun bijdrage aan de Israëlische bezetting van de Palestijnse gebieden.
Caterpillar is een Amerikaanse producent van zware apparatuur die door het Israëlische leger gebruikt wordt voor het vernielen van Palestijnse huizen en de aanleg van infrastructuur in de Israëlische nederzettingen. Caterpillar heeft verschillende dochterondernemingen in Nederland die zich bezig houden met logistiek, productie en financiële dienstverlening en een bankrelatie met ABN AMRO Bank.
Het Ierse bedrijf Cement Roadstone Holdings is mede-eigenaar van de belangrijkste cementleverancier van de Israëlische afscheidingsmuur op de bezette Westelijke Jordaanoever. CRH heeft verschillende dochterondernemingen in Nederland, inclusief 129 Gamma en Karwei winkels.
Het Franse bedrijf Veolia Environnement bouwt een light rail system dat Jeruzalem verbindt met Israëlische nederzettingen in en rond bezet Oost-Jeruzalem op de bezette Westelijke Jordaanoever. In Nederland bezit Veolia Environnement verschillende publieke transportondernemingen die bus-, taxi- en veerpontvervoer aanbieden in een aanzienlijk deel van Nederland.


Download de gehele publicatie:
"not on any map" - the unrecognized Arab villages in Israel

forgottrn_village

For more information about the unrecognized Arab villages in Israel - visit the

 

Red Pepper Magazin, UK March 2009


Divide and torture

by Ewa Jasiewicz


‘We don’t want aid, we need our rights, we need a political solution’

tor•ture   (tôr'cher)  n.
1.         a. Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion.
            b. An instrument or a method for inflicting such pain.
2.         Excruciating physical or mental pain; agony: the torture of waiting in suspense.
3.         Something causing severe pain or anguish.
            The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 2006
4.         The act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to
            mean [syn: distortion]
            Princeton University 2006

Israel’s winter assault further disfigured the Palestinian body politic. If the Gazan limb had been kept alive on a drip of international aid, with the West Bank strapped down for economic shock therapy, December and January’s events saw both repeatedly shocked, with Gaza flattened after 22 days of bombardment. In spite of Israel’s destruction of communications masts in the northern Gaza strip, the blockade of basic journalistic materials for Palestine’s main news agencies and attacks on reporters – killing five – news, images and voices from Gaza continued to stream forth into ’48 Palestine, the West Bank and the world.

People all over the world were collectively traumatised as they watched more than a million and a half people locked into a ghetto bombed with phosphoric bombs, tank shells, flachete shells, surveillance aircraft, warships, F16s, F15s, Apache and Cobra helicopters and M16 machine guns for 22 days.

Holding onto humanity

A typical torture technique used by many a state is to torture prisoners alongside each other. In Pinochet’s Chile, prisoners were locked in special cages stacked one on top of another; family members were forced to witness and listen to the torture being meted out to others in their family. The humanity of the witness is used to traumatise them, the overbearing force of the torturer re-inscribed on the body and the memory of the tortured and the witness. ‘You cannot stop this,’ is the message, ‘unless you give us what we want.’

The human urge and need to stop the pain of another is unrealised and its frustration exploited. The man-made powerlessness of both is used to terrorise both into submission and to reject their own humanity, to try to de-sensitise and numb the painful need to stop the torture.

The students in occupation of their universities, those praying and collecting funds in mosques, churches and synagogues, those throwing shoes at Israeli embassies and businesses, those marching in the streets, those smashing up arms manufacturers, and those taking up arms to militarily resist the torturing – their own and that of a people – are fighting for their own humanity.

The torturing and the traumatisation continue. The media spotlight may have passed over, but Gaza remains under siege with thousands physically unable to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives as aid is prevented from reaching the homeless and patients blocked from leaving the country for urgently needed treatment.

Israel’s land grab

Off the news agenda is Israel’s de-facto land grab and ongoing injuring and killing of civilians by snipers, gunfire and bombing from naval ships. Approximately 11 have been killed and 71 injured since the ‘ceasefire’ on 18 January. Fighters have also continued to launch operations. The 500-metre buffer zone around the Israeli border fence has in effect been extended to one kilometre.

Approximately 100 homes were totally destroyed in the border areas of Beit Hanoun and 160 homes close to the border in Khoza’a. People still cannot reach their belongings without being shot at. Farmers and residents continue to be targeted and are leaving their land and homes.

I accompanied Manwa Tarabeen, mother of six, to her bulldozed home in Beit Hanoun, Northern Gaza to collect belongings last month. After being shot at she declared, ‘I’m not coming back, I don’t want to be killed. We’re going to move to Jabaliya or inside Beit Hanoun.’

Seventeen-year-old Wafa Al Najar from Khozaa, eastern Gaza, was shot in the left kneecap while trying to visit her bulldozed home for the first time since the war. Her family say children are being shot at as they walk to the Khoz’a Martyrs elementary school on a daily basis. In Faraheen Anwar Al Bureim, 27, was shot in the neck and killed while picking peas. Earlier this month in Faraheen Israeli snipers hit 20-year-old disabled Mohammad Al Ibrahim in the leg while he was being accompanied by international activists. The result is that farmers are wrenching up their irrigation pipes, clearing their land and clearing out.

Blood pressure

The blood pressure being exerted on the Palestinians of Gaza is not just about getting them to renounce Hamas, the movement that they voted for two years ago, but to renounce the principles it represents – a liberated Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital, a contiguous state with the right of return for refugees – a de-Osloisation of the Palestinian struggle, according to Professor Haidar Eid of Gaza’s Al Aqsa University. ‘Israel’s massacre told us, if you don’t renounce these principles, then we will kill your children.' Israel's siege and continuous attacks on both the armed and unarmed Palestinian resistance, are intended to contort the meaning of the principles of liberation held for 60 years, '(to) distort something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean', that holding on to these principles – represented for many by Hamas – won't bring liberation, but further collective isolation and torture.

Abo Mahmoud al Eid, a former Palestinan Authority employee, lost his son and six neighbours – all civilians – when they were hit by a missile from a drone while eating chocolate and drinking tea outside a local shop in Jabaliya. He told me: ‘The war on Gaza can be summed up in two words. All the fighters underground, all the civilians overground.’ After the loss of his son, he has vowed to join the armed resistance if Gaza is invaded again. ‘I was sitting in my home, not doing anything, not even working, not part of any group, but I tell you now, if Gaza is invaded again, both me and my sons will be in the front line of resistance,’ he says. The resistance groups declared losses of just over 100 fighters between them - (The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights later declared a figure of 236)  – with structures of command and fighters still intact, if the tunnels they used to hide and operate from
are not.

It can all happen again. The far right holds the balance of power in the Israeli Knesset. Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beitenu party and newly appointed foreign minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, inferred during the offensive that Gaza should be bombed with nuclear weapons. He recently said: ‘I want the State of Israel to remain a Zionist, Jewish and democratic state.’ If this vision is realised, more than a million Palestinian Muslims could be ‘transferred’ to the West Bank or Gaza, a process mentioned by successive Israeli ministers, including former foreign affairs minister and Kadima party leader Tzipi
Livni.

Attendees at Beitenu rallies chant ‘Death to the Arabs’. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared the job of removing Hamas from Gaza still undone, and Lieberman recently told Y-Net Israeli news ‘[Hamas] is a fanatic religious movement supported by a fanatic religious Iranian regime. So if we want to stop rockets from Gaza, there is no choice but to uproot the Iranian regime in Gaza.’ With men such as these running the Israeli government, prisoners in the open prison of Gaza and the 11,800 in the prisons of ’48 Palestine and the bantustans of the West Bank face a future of torture.

No aid


UNRWA chief John Ging said in February that food aid for just 30,000 people was reaching Gaza when 900,000 are dependent on it. Food aid consists of rice, sugar, dried beans, tomato paste, flour, corn oil, lentils and a few tins of corned beef.

Thousands are still living with relatives, spending days in makeshift tents that are washed away in heavy rain, waiting for humiliating handouts. Construction materials have been banned from entry, including steel for badly needed water tanks. Less aid has been reaching the strip than before the war. Islamic Relief has been paying more to store medicines it has been unable to truck into Gaza in warehouses inside Israel than the cost of the actual medicine.

Aid and recovery

The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the UK's Department for International Development unveiled a 44-page Palestinian National Early Recovery and Reconstruction Plan, at the Sharm al Sheikh donors’ conference in March. Neither Hamas authorities or civil society organisations were consulted or shown the plan, according to Gazan economist Omar Shaban, president of the PalThink think tank.

The proposals within are to be ‘fully synchronised’ with the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan, first published in 2007. Like the NERRP, the PRDP was written with the DfID, together with the World Bank. Both promote a classic neoliberal shock therapy programme that will see checkpoint and apartheid-walled free trade zones, de-regulation, and privatisation of public services, including electricity and water in the West Bank. Gaza’s reconstruction is set to spearhead this re-asserted ‘National’ PRD Plan, propelled by billions of dollars of foreign investment.

$4 billion was pledged in donations from the EU, UK, USA and Saudi Arabia. A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the International Herald Tribune that of the $900 million donated by the US government, ‘None of the money will go to Hamas, it will be funnelled through NGOs and UN groups.’

Omar Shaban states, ‘The issue isn’t the content or finances, it’s that this plan has been drawn up in a non-participatory way. There has been no public debate or discussion. Nobody is even talking about it. We want Gaza businesses and civil society to be involved in deciding how and what is rebuilt and where. This is about building a nation, this is about a long term vision. Reconstruction should enhance internal peace, and not the reputations of Fatah or Hamas. We should be participants and not recipients.’

Palestine as a whole and Gaza in particular is institutionally weak due to the occupation. In 1998, Gaza was a donor country, supporting Ethiopia and Sarajevo. Now, the Hamas authority has been usurped by the United National Relief and Works Agency and United Nations Development Programme, which effectively economically run Gaza. In the West Bank, the PA is overshadowed by powerful Palestinian companies such as Jawwal, PalTel, the Consolidated Contractor Company and the Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF). ‘These companies are more powerful than the PA, they are stronger than the political system,’ says Shaban.

Reconstruction and destruction

I asked the minister of social affairs in Gaza, Ahmed al Kurdi, how the reconstruction process could pan out and whether privatisation could happen here.

‘All the funds earmarked for reconstruction are set to go through World Bank and United Nations projects – nothing will be paid into the public sector,’ he says. ‘These institutions will take some 20 per cent in overhead and administration costs. Nation states will be prioritising their own companies for reconstruction. The Japanese government want to reconstruct a school for us, for example, but they want the contract carried out by a Japanese company.

‘Gaza could be reconstructed tomorrow. We have 60 per cent unemployment, we have the money, we have the skills. The problem is we are occupied and under siege, and the plan has always been to keep Gaza and the Palestinians dependent on aid and donations.

‘Israel doesn’t want us to exist. We have many buildings and facilities built by donors which have been wrecked and re-built in the past 20 years. We have no public sector, we depend on Israel for everything, even for our daily bread. All reconstruction is meaningless and open to destruction without an end to the occupation and this siege. If foreign companies try to privatise here, it will never work, we will resist it, our rights come first.’

Dr Faisal Abu Shala, a Fatah minister in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and participant in the reconciliation negotiations in Egypt this March thinks Hamas has set the Palestinian struggle back decades. 'Hamas didn’t stick to international commitments, it de-recognised the PLO, we were on our way to statehood and now we are being shunned by the international community. When they took over Gaza, we let them, despite their attacks on us, Palestinian blood is a red line, noone is allowed to cross it'.

Gazan Minister of Social Affairs Ahmed Kurdi disagrees that the PA was on the road to real autonomy, 'For 15 years they were doing everything Israel wanted them to do, but what happened? Israel kept building settlements and attacking us and stealing our land, we failed'. But Dr Faisal believes success is still possible, despite the building of 3,500 new housing units in East Jerusalem, and demolition orders for 1000 Palestinian homes. Fatah believe in the international community's agency to rein in Israel. 'The negotiation didn’t succeed because Israel is not interested in the solution, the international community is part of the solution – and we have been alienated from them by Hamas' stance – and we need their support, we can't cut relations with them'.

The Ramallah Consensus?

Political power sharing is the subject of the unity governments negotiations but what of economic power sharing or sovereignty? Dr Faisal was Chairman of the Parliamentary Oversight Committee in the PLC yet he admits the Gazan side of the PA never got to analyse the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan when it was first published in 2007. 'We never had the chance to revise it and discuss, usually we do multiple workshops with specialists, government, NGOs, the private sector, but because of the split, we cannot make our plan nor go to the West Bank'. The PLC also never saw the controversial gas deal signed between British Gas, the Lebanese Consolidated Contractors Company and Arafat's Palestinian Authority in 1999,  nor were they party to re-negotiations in 2007.

The free market is enshrined in the Palestinian Authority's 2003 constitution. Article 21 states that the economic system in Palestine corresponds to the Free Market Economic model. Dr Faisal states, 'The Free Market, Free Trade, we (Fatah) believe in that, we adopted it in our law, and it is the system in most Arab countries now – it is better than government control. In Egypt most of the public services have been sold off, it works'. With both Palestinian Authority sides frequently accused of corruption, the free market and private companies can be percieved as a neutral, safe-bet, 'good guys'.

NGOs, politics and peace

Some groups in the 130-strong Palestinian NGO Network recently rejected project funding from their international partners, saying they wanted political pressure and advocacy against Israeli war crimes instead. Families living in the ten Red Cross and governmental refugee camps, based mostly in the north, repeatedly state, ‘We don’t want aid, we need our rights, we need a political solution.’ Speaking to an audience of European parliamentarians at UNRWA’s headquarters – one of the tens of delegations touring Gaza after the Israeli onslaught –Sharhabeel Al Za’eem, the founder of Sharhabeel legal consultants was blunt: ‘Our case is not a humanitarian one, this is a purely political issue.’
Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee for the Red Cross, said recently, ‘Humanitarian action can be no substitute for an honest and courageous peace process involving all states, political authorities and organised armed groups that can influence the situation. Reconstruction is unlikely to succeed unless there is a prospect of a lasting peace.’
But what kind of peace? Many believe that post Oslo, Palestinian civil resistance committees have been inexorably pacified by and subsumed into western models of social peace that neutralise political demands and an integrated political and military programme of resistance in favour of ‘stakeholder dialogue’ and ‘roundtable discussions’ that falsely equalise interests and imbalanced power relationships.

This process legitimises the silence of the international NGO community in the face of war crimes, and separates humanitarian issues from political issues and solutions. Under this rubric, the occupation of Palestine is normalised, and Palestine pathologised, forever broken and needing fixing, with all state-level narratives cleansed of reference to occupation and injustice and the perpetrator never challenged. Israel is the naked emperor the international aid community sees as swaddled in robes.

The Palestinian NGO Network has been consistently challenging the Fatah-Hamas political polarisation in Palestinian society. The Gaza reconstruction process is no exception. It says: ‘If the formation of a “government of consensus” is not possible in the near future, the reconstruction process should be overseen by a national committee representing all stakeholders, mainly from the civil society and the private sector. The national committee should be supported by specialised technical committees from ministries in Gaza and the West Bank.’

The entire process cannot be de-contextualised from the militarily occupied bantustans and ghettos it is taking place in. However, the internal politics, manipulated by apartheid Israel, also need scrutiny when answering: ‘what kind of peace?’, ‘what kind of justice?’ and ‘what
kind of reconstruction?’

The Palestinian economy is as much a battleground as Palestinian land and political representation. Whether the economic privatisation plans will succeed in furthering the political privatisation of the Palestinian struggle – tendencies seen with the Fatah Palestinian Authority in Gaza and now in the West Bank, and also with the Hamas authority in besieged Gaza – remains to be seen.

Ewa Jasiewicz is a co-co-ordinator of the Free Gaza Movement in Gaza,
writer and paramedic services volunteer
www.freegaza.org

International Law and Israel's War on Gaza

Towards an international response

January, 23 2009

By Francis A. Boyle

Francis A. Boyle's ZSpace Page
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When the Oslo Document was originally presented by the Israeli government to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations in the Fall of 1992, it was rejected by the Delegation because it obviously constituted a bantustan. This document carried out Menachem Begin's disingenuous misinterpretation of the Camp David Accords--expressly rejected by U.S. President Jimmy Carter--that all they called for was autonomy for the people and not for the land too.

Soon thereafter, unbeknownst to the Delegation and to almost everyone else, the Israeli government opened up a secret channel of negotiations in Norway. There the Israeli government re-presented the document that had already been rejected by the Palestinian Delegation in Washington, D.C. It was this document, with very minor modifications, that was later signed at the White House on 13 September 1993.

Before the signing ceremony, I commented to a high-level official of the Palestine Liberation Organization: "This document is like a straight-jacket. It will be very difficult to negotiate your way out of it." This PLO official agreed with my assessment and responded: "Yes, you are right. It will depend upon our negotiating skill."

Of course I have great respect for Palestinian negotiators. They have done the best they can negotiating in good faith with the Israeli government that has been invariably backed up by the United States. But there has never been any good faith on the part of the Israeli government either before, during or after Oslo. Ditto for the United States.

Even if Oslo had succeeded, it would have resulted in the imposition of a bantustan upon the Palestinian People. But Oslo has run its course! Therefore, it is my purpose here today to chart a NEW DIRECTION for the Palestinian People to consider.

An agenda for an international legal response:
First, we must immediately move for the de facto suspension of Israel throughout the entirety of the United Nations System, including the General Assembly and all U.N. subsidiary organs and bodies. We must do to Israel what the U.N. General Assembly has done to the genocidal rump Yugoslavia and to the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa! Here the legal basis for the de facto suspension of Israel at the U.N. is quite simple:

As a condition for its admission to the United Nations Organization, Israel formally agreed to accept General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) (1947) (partition/Jerusalem trusteeship) and General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) (1948) (Palestinian right of return), inter alia. Nevertheless, the government of Israel has expressly repudiated both Resolution 181 (II) and Resolution 194 (III). Therefore, Israel has violated its conditions for admission to U.N. membership and thus must be suspended on a de facto basis from any participation throughout the entire United Nations System.

Second, any further negotiations with Israel must be conducted on the basis of Resolution 181 (II) and its borders; Resolution 194 (III); subsequent General Assembly resolutions and Security Council resolutions; the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949; the 1907 Hague Regulations; and other relevant principles of public international law.

Third, we must abandon the fiction and the fraud that the United States government is an "honest broker." The United States government has never been an honest broker from well before the very outset of these negotiations in 1991. Rather, the United States has invariably sided with Israel against the Palestinians. We need to establish some type of international framework to sponsor these negotiations where the Palestinian negotiators will not be subjected to the continual bullying, threats, harassment, intimidation and outright lies perpetrated by the United States government.

Fourth, we must move to have the U.N. General Assembly impose economic, diplomatic, and travel sanctions upon Israel pursuant to the terms of the Uniting for Peace Resolution (1950), whose Emergency Special Session on Palestine is now in recess.

Fifth, the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine must sue Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for inflicting acts of genocide against the Palestinian People in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention!

Sixth, An International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) can be established by the UN General Assembly as a "subsidiary organ" under article 22 of the UN Charter. Article 22 of the UN Charter states the UN General Assembly may establish such subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the performance of its functions. The purpose of the ICTI would be to investigate and Prosecute suspected Israeli war criminals for offences against the Palestinian people.

On January 4, 2009, Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Maguire wrote to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon and Father Miguel D'Escoto President of United Nations General assembly adding her voice to the many calls from International Jurists, Human rights Organizations, and individuals, for the UN General Assembly to seriously consider establishing an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel in view of the ongoing Israeli atrocities against the people of Gaza and Palestine.

Maguire said:

"In November 2008 I visited Gaza and was shocked at the suffering of the people of Gaza, being under 'siege' as they are for over two years. This collective punishment by the Israeli Government, has lead to a great humanitarian crisis. Collective punishment of the civilian community by the Israeli Government breaks the Geneva Convention, is illegal and is a war crime and crime against humanity.

"Instead of protecting the civilian community of Gaza and relieving their Suffering by lifting the 'siege', the Israeli military have carried out 7 days consecutive bombardment of civilians, by sea and air. Dropping Israeli bombs from the air and sea on unarmed civilians, many women and children, destroying mosques, hospitals, and and homes, and infrastructure, is illegal and constitutes war crimes. The deaths of people in Gaza is now over 600 with over 2,500 people injured - many women and children. The infrastructure of Gaza has been destroyed, and the people cut off from the world - including journalists, Humanitarian workers, locked out of Gaza, and unable to go to the aid of the people.

"The UN must help uphold Human rights and Justice for Palestinian People, by seriously considering establishing an International criminal tribunal for Israel, (ICTI) in order that Israeli Gov., be held accountable for war crimes."

NOTE:  Professor Boyle's call for an International Criminal Tribunal on Israel is now being circulated by member states of the UN General Assembly.

Francis A. Boyle is a leading American professor, practitioner and advocate of international law. He was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court. Professor Boyle teaches international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign, author of, inter alia, World Politics and International Law, The Future of International Law and American Foreign Policy, Foundations of World Order,  The Bosnian People Charge Genocide, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, Destroying World Order, Biowarfare & Terrorism, Breaking All the Rules,and Tackling America's Toughest Questions (forthcoming). He holds a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University.

From: 
Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL:  http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20352

 


NRC - 23 januari 2009

'Israëlische bulldozers pletten mijn legkippen'
Inwoners Gazastrook over vernielzucht door militairen

Door Alexander Weissink.

Tijdens het Israëlische offensief in de Gazastrook is volgens de VN voor miljarden dollars schade aangericht. Kippenboer Sawafiri is zijn bedrijf kwijt. „Ze haten ons.”

De kippenboerderij van de El-Sawafiri familie werd 4 januari 2009 door het Israelische leger bezet en als sluipschutters plaats gebruikt.  Foto Dirk Jan Visser
Foto Dirk Jan Visser: De kippenboerderij van de El-Sawafiri familie werd 4 januari 2009 door het Israelische leger bezet en als sluipschutters plaats gebruikt.

Zeitoun, 22 jan. Samih al-Sawafiri staat hopeloos verloren tussen duizenden kippenkadavers. Een week lang werd hij met zijn gezin van elf leden door Israëlische soldaten gegijzeld in zijn eigen huis in Zeitoun, ten zuidoosten van Gaza-stad. Opgesloten in een kamer zag hij door het raam hoe zijn bedrijf met 60.000 legkippen met de grond gelijk werd gemaakt door Israëlische tanks en bulldozers. De weeë stank van de dode kippen gevangen in hun geplette hokken is ondraaglijk.

Aangeslagen vertelt hij dat Israëlische soldaten op 4 januari met helikopters neerstreken voor zijn boerderij. „Vijftig militairen legden beslag op mijn huis en schoten vanaf het dak en door de gaten in de muur op alles wat bewoog.” De grond ligt bezaaid met patroonhulzen. Het hele huis draagt de littekens van de Israëlische aanwezigheid. Los van schade door de beschietingen richtten de soldaten ook lukraak vernielingen aan. Op de muren staan varkenskoppen getekend en leuzen in het Hebreeuws en Russisch: „Alle Palestijnen dood” en „Vertrek of je sterft”. In een koran was een Davidster gekalkt. Sawafiri toont een oude familiefoto van zijn vrouw en dochter naast een kameel waarop de soldaten borsten en een penis hebben geklad.

„Dit is puur sadisme”, zegt de kippenboer. „Ze haten ons.” Hij ziet geen kans om zijn totaal verwoeste bedrijf te herstellen. Hij moet nog schulden aflossen van de leningen die hij twee jaar geleden afsloot om de potentieel lucratieve boerderij op te richten.

Na enkele dagen te hebben vastgezeten, verzamelde hij moed om met de buitenwereld te bellen. Onder een stapel dekens – zodat de soldaten hem niet zouden horen – legde hij contact met het Rode Kruis. Na een week werd zijn gezin, onder wie kinderen van twee, vier en zes jaar oud, door hulpverleners ontzet. De Israëlische soldaten bleven nog een week.

Nog altijd, zegt hij, begrijpt hij niet waarom het Israëlische leger het op dit gebied had gemunt. De meeste huizen hier in het gebied zijn met de grond gelijk gemaakt. Gevraagd of Palestijnse militanten de velden gebruikten om raketten op Israël af te vuren, antwoordt hij resoluut: „Nooit.” Echt niet? „Het verzet kwam hier niet, het was hier altijd rustig.” Hij is geen aanhanger van Hamas, maar maakt de militante beweging geen verwijt. „Het zijn de Israëliërs die hier alle verantwoordelijkheid voor dragen. Ze hebben mijn leven verwoest.”

Hij dankt god dat zijn gezin het er levend vanaf heeft gebracht. Dat kunnen zijn buren niet zeggen. De Samouny-clan waarvan de huizen werden verwoest door bombardementen en bulldozers, verloor 29 familieleden. Op het puin is een tent opgezet waar de overlevenden condoleances ontvangen. Kinderen zoeken tussen het kapotte beton naar bruikbare spullen. Dagenlang zijn er lijken geborgen.

Nael al-Samouny (14) was met haar kleine broers en zussen alleen thuis toen de Israëlische soldaten om 7 uur ’s ochtends met veel geweld het gebied introkken.

„Eerst dacht ik dat het Hamas-strijders waren, want ze waren helemaal gecamoufleerd”, vertelt ze geëmotioneerd. „Ik begon te gillen dat ze weg moesten gaan omdat de Israëliërs anders zouden toeslaan”.

Toen ze in het Hebreeuws antwoord kreeg, raakte iedereen in paniek. Ze kreeg opdracht om het gebied onmiddellijk te verlaten. In de bombardementen verloor ze haar moeder, oudere zus, grootmoeder en grootvader die in een nabijgelegen huis verbleven.

Waarom dacht ze eerst dat het Hamas-strijders waren? „Omdat het verzet hier wel vaker oefeningen hield”, zegt ze wijzend naar de sinaasappelboomgaard op zo’n vierhonderd meter afstand.

Haar oudere broer beaamt het. „Tot de dag dat de soldaten kwamen schoten ze raketten af.” De hele familie steunt Al-Fatah, de Palestijnse beweging van president Mahmoud Abbas die midden 2007 door Hamas uit de Gazastrook werd verdreven. Voor de condoleance-tent hangt een poster van Fatah-oprichter Yasser Arafat.

Geven zij Hamas de schuld van de Israëlische invasie? Naels broer haalt zijn schouders op. „De raketten zijn de enige manier waarop we ons tegen Israël kunnen verzetten.”

Hij vertelt dat Israëlische soldaten vier jaar geleden, toen de Israëlische nederzettingen er nog waren, regelmatig langskwamen om thee te drinken en een praatje te maken. „Ze waren best vriendelijk”, herinnert hij zich. „Ik begrijp niet waarom ze ons nu kapot willen maken.”

Het gezin heeft met tientallen anderen tijdelijk onderdak gevonden bij familieleden in Gaza-stad. Zaterdag moeten de kinderen weer naar school. „Maar we hebben geen schooluniformen meer”, zegt Nael bezorgd. „Ik weet niet hoe we verder moeten

 


chomsky.jpg20 januari 2009



Noam Chomsky over de oorlog tegen Gaza, deel 1

klik hier voor deel 2
klik hier voor deel 3
hier een link naar het origineel in het engels

Vertaling Engelbert

“Roei al die beesten uit”: Gaza 2009
Door Noam Chomsky

Op zaterdag 27 december werd de meeste recente Amerikaans-Israëlische aanval op weerloze Palestijnen uitgevoerd. De aanval was zorgvuldig voorbereid - gedurende meer dan 6 maanden volgens de Israëlische pers. De voorbereiding had twee componenten: een militaire en een propagandistische. Ze was gebaseerd op de lessen die men had geleerd van Israëls invasie van Libanon in 2006 die werd gekenmerkt door slechte voorbereiding en een even slechte publiciteitscampagne. Derhalve kunnen we erop vertrouwen dat het meeste dat is gedaan en gezegd, met voorbedachte rade en een duidelijke bedoeling is gedaan.

Zeker het moment van de aanval hoort daarbij: vlak voor de middag, toen kinderen terugkwamen uit school en men elkaar verdrong in de menigte in de straten van het dichtbevolkte Gaza Stad. In slechts enkele minuten tijd werden meer dan 225 mensen gedood en 700 verwond; een mooi begin voor de massaslachting van weerloze burgers die gevangen zaten in een kleine kooi, zonder mogelijkheid tot vluchten.

In zijn terugblik “Winsten ontwarren van de oorlog in Gaza“ (“Parsing Gains of Gaza War”) noemt de Ethan Bronner, correspondent van de New York Times, deze prestatie als een van de belangrijkste voordelen. Israel ging ervan uit dat het gunstig zou zijn om “waanzinnig” te lijken door het gebruik van buitensporige terreur, een doctrine die teruggaat tot de jaren vijftig. “De Palestijnen begrepen de boodschap vanaf de eerste dag”, schrijft Bronner, “toen Israëlische gevechtsvliegtuigen gelijktijdig vele doelen bestookten op een zaterdagmorgen. Zo’n 200 vonden direct de dood, Hamas, heel Gaza in verbijstering achterlatend.” De tactiek van de “waanzin” lijkt succesvol te zijn, concludeert Bronner: er zijn “enkele aanwijzingen dat het volk van Gaza zo geleden heeft onder deze oorlog dat zij zullen trachten Hamas te beteugelen.” De gekozen regering. Alweer zo’n oude doctrine van staatsterreur. Ik kan me overigens niets herinneren van een terugblik in de Times genaamd “Winsten ontwarren van de oorlog in Tsjetsjenië”, hoewel de voordelen daar groot waren.

De zorgvuldige voorbereiding behelsde vermoedelijk ook het eind van de aanval, net voor de inauguratie, teneinde de (mogelijke) dreiging van wellicht wat kritische woorden van Obama over deze door de VS gesteunde verfoeilijke misdaden te beperken.

Twee weken na het sabbat-begin van de aanval, met het grootste deel van Gaza reeds kapotgebombardeerd en een dodental dat de duizend naderde, verklaarde het VN agentschap UNRWNA – van wie de meeste inwoners van Gaza afhankelijk zijn om te kunnen overleven – dat het Israëlische leger weigerde schepen met hulpgoederen toe te laten tot Gaza, aangezien de crossings gesloten waren wegens de sabbat. Om deze heilige dag te eren moeten Palestijnen, die nog maar net overleven, voedsel en medicijnen worden ontzegd, terwijl er honderden mogen worden afgeslacht met Amerikaanse bommenwerpers en helicopters.

De rigoureuze inachtneming van de sabbat op deze tegenstrijdige wijze kreeg nauwelijks aandacht. Dat is begrijpelijk. In de annalen van de Amerikaans-Israëlische misdaad verdienen dergelijke wreedheden en cynisme zelden meer dan een voetnoot. Ze zijn te bekend. Om een relevante parallel te noemen: in juni 1982 opende de door Amerika gesteunde aanval van Israel op Libanon met het bombarderen van de Palestijnse vluchtelingenkampen Sabra en Shatila, die later bekend zouden worden als de plek van verschrikkelijke slachtpartijen onder supervisie van de IDF (Israeli “Defense” Forces). Het bombardement raakte het lokale ziekenhuis - het Gaza Ziekenhuis – en kostte het leven aan meer dan 200 mensen volgens het ooggetuigeverslag van een Amerikaanse Midden-Oosten-deskundige. Het bloedbad was de eerste akte van een invasie waarbij 15-20.000 mensen werden afgeslacht en een groot deel van zuidelijk Libanon en Beiroet werd vernietigd, dit alles met de onontbeerlijke militaire en diplomatische steun van de Verenigde Staten. Onder andere veto’s van resoluties van de Veiligheidsraad die tot doel hadden de nauwelijks verholen criminele agressie tegen de dreiging van vreedzame politieke overeenstemming te stoppen, in tegenstelling tot vele handige verzinsels over het lijden van Israel onder intense raketbeschietingen, een fantasie van apologeten.

Dit alles wordt gezien als normaal en openlijk besproken door hoge Israëlische functionarissen. Dertig jaar geleden merkte stafchef Mordechai Gur op: sinds 1948 “hebben we gevochten tegen een bevolking die leeft in dorpen en steden.” Israëls meest prominente militaire analist, Zeev Schiff, vatte zijn opmerkingen als volgt samen: “het Israëlische leger heeft altijd burgers aangevallen, opzettelijk en bewust.. het leger, zei hij, heeft nooit onderscheid gemaakt tussen burgerlijke [en militaire] doelen.. [maar] opzettelijk burgerdoelen aangevallen.” De redenen werden verklaard door de gerenommeerde staatsman Abba Eban: “er was het rationele vooruitzicht – uiteindelijk vervuld – dat de betrokken bevolkingen druk zouden uitoefenen om de vijandigheden te beëindigen.” Het effect was, zoals Eban goed begrepen had, dat Israel ongestoord z’n programma van illegale expansie en wrede onderdrukking kon implementeren. Eban gaf commentaar op een overzicht aanvallen van de Labor-regering op burgers door minister-president Begin, die een beeld schetste, zei Eban: “van een Israel dat willekeurig elke vorm van dood en angst aan een burgerlijke bevolking oplegt, in een stemming die herinnerde aan regimes die de heer Begin noch ikzelf bij name zou durven noemen.” Eban betwistte niet de feiten die Begin de revue liet passeren, maar nam het hem kwalijk dat hij ze openbaar had gemaakt. Noch maakten Eban en zijn bewonderaars zich zorgen over het feit dat zijn verdediging van massale staatsterreur ook herinneringen oproept aan regimes die hij niet bij name zou durven noemen.

Ebans rechtvaardiging voor staatsterreur wordt gezien als overtuigend door gerespecteerde autoriteiten. Terwijl de huidige Amerikaans-Israëlische aanval voortraasde, legde Times-columnist Thomas Friedman uit dat de tactiek van Israel zowel tijdens de huidige aanval als tijdens de invasie van Libanon in 2006 gebaseerd was op het gezonde principe van “trachten Hamas ‘op te voeden’, door het toebrengen van zware verliezen onder de militante Hamas-leden en zware pijn aan de bevolking van Gaza.” Dat is begrijpelijk op pragmatische gronden, zoals in Libanon waar “de enige bron van afschrikking op lange termijn was om de burgers zoveel leed te berokkenen – de families en werknemers van de militanten – dat ze zich in het vervolg afzijdig van Hezbollah zouden houden.” Dezelfde logica volgend zijn Bin Ladens poging om de Amerikanen ‘op te voeden’ op 9/11 zeer lovenswaardig, evenals de aanvallen van de Nazi’s op Lidice en Oradour, Poetins vernietiging van Grozny en andere opmerkelijke pogingen tot ‘opvoeding’.

Israel heeft veel moeite gedaan om z’n toewijding aan deze leidende principes duidelijk te maken. Volgens Stephen Erlanger, correspondent bij de New York Times, zijn Israëlische mensenrechtenorganisaties “bezorgd over de aanvallen van Israel op gebouwen die volgens hen burgerlijke doelen zijn, zoals regeringsgebouwen, politieposten en het presidentiële paleis” – en, zouden we kunnen toevoegen, dorpen, huizen, volgepakte vluchtelingenkampen, water- en rioleringssystemen, ziekenhuizen, scholen en universiteiten, moskeeën, VN hulpposten, ambulances, en eigenlijk alles wat de nood van de onwaardige slachtoffers zou kunnen lenigen. Een Israëlische senior intelligence officer legde uit dat de IDF “beide aspecten van Hamas” aanviel, “z’n verzet of militaire vleugel en z’n dawa of sociale vleugel”, dat laatste is een eufemisme voor burgermaatschappij. “Hij stelde dat Hamas allemaal een pot nat was”, vervolgt Erlanger, “en in een oorlog waren politieke en sociale controle-instrumenten een even geldig doel als de verborgen wapenvoorraden.” Erlanger en zijn redacteuren voegen geen commentaar toe over de openlijke verdediging, en in praktijk brengen, van massaal op burgers gericht terrorisme, hoewel correspondenten en columnisten hun tolerantie, of zelfs expliciete verdediging tonen van oorlogsmisdaden, zoals we zagen. De norm volgend mist Erlanger niet de kans het nog eens te benadrukken: het afschieten van raketten door Hamas is “een overduidelijke schending van het discriminatieprincipe en beantwoordt aan de klassieke definitie van terrorisme” .

Net als anderen die vertrouwd zijn met de regio, merkt Midden-Oostendeskundige Fawwaz Gerges op dat “Wat Israëlische ambtenaren en hun Amerikaanse bondgenoten niet inzien is dat Hamas niet enkel een gewapende militie is maar een sociale beweging die gedragen wordt door een brede laag van de bevolking die diep verschanst zit in de maatschappij”. Wanneer ze hun plannen ten uitvoer brengen om de “sociale vleugel” van Hamas te vernietigen, streven ze derhalve naar de vernietiging van de Palestijnse maatschappij.

Gerges is wellicht nog te aardig. Het is hoogst onwaarschijnlijk dat Israëlische en Amerikaanse functionarissen – of de media en andere commentatoren – deze feiten niet inzien. Eerder adopteren ze het traditionele perspectief van hen die het monopolie bezitten over geweldsmiddelen: onze gepantserde vuist kan elke oppositie verpletteren, en als onze furieuze aanvallen een hoge burgerlijke tol eisen dan is dat alleen maar goed: wellicht zijn de overgeblevenen netjes opgevoed.

IDF-officieren begrijpen heel goed dat ze de burgermaatschappij verpletteren. Ethan Bronner citeert een Israëlische kolonel die zegt dat hij en zijn mannen niet erg “onder de indruk zijn van de Hamas-strijders”. “Het zijn dorpelingen met geweren”, zei een schutter op een bewapend personeelsvoertuig. Ze lijken op de slachtoffers van de moorddadige “ijzeren vuist” operaties van de IDF in het bezette zuidelijk Libanon in 1985, onder leiding va Shimon Peres, een van de grote terroristenleiders van het tijdperk van Reagans “War on Terror”. Gedurende deze operaties verklaarden Israëlische bevelhebbers en strategische analisten dat de slachtoffers “terroristische dorpelingen” waren, moeilijk uit te roeien aangezien “deze terroristen met steun van het grootste deel van de lokale bevolking opereren.” Een Israëlische bevelhebber klaagde dat “de terrorist… hier vele ogen heeft, aangezien hij hier woont”, terwijl de militaire correspondent van de Jerusalem Post de problemen beschreef waar de Israëlische strijdkrachten mee geconfronteerd worden in hun strijd tegen de “terroristische huurling”, “fanatiekelingen die allemaal hun zaak zo toegewijd zijn dat ze het risico willen lopen te sneuvelen in hun acties tegen de IDF” die “orde en veiligheid moet handhaven” in zuidelijk Libanon, ondanks “de prijs die de bewoners zullen moeten betalen”. Het was een bekend probleem voor de Amerikanen in Zuid-Vietnam, Russen in Afghanistan, Duitsers in bezet Europa en andere agressors die de Gur-Eban-Friedman-doctrine toepassen.

Gerges gelooft dat de Amerikaans-Israëlische staatsterreur zal falen. Hamas, schrijft hij, “kan niet weggevaagd worden zonder een half miljoen Palestijnen af te slachten. Als het Israel lukt om de oude leiders van Hamas te doden, zal een nieuwe generatie, radicaler dan de huidige, hen spoedig vervangen. Hamas is onderdeel van het leven. Het gaat niet weg en zal niet de witte vlag hijsen, hoeveel slachtoffers het ook moet incasseren.”

Misschien, maar men heeft vaak de neiging de doeltreffendheid van geweld te onderschatten. Het is met name curieus dat men er een dergelijk geloof in de Verenigde Staten op na zou houden. Waarom zijn wij hier?

Hamas wordt regelmatig beschreven als “het door Iran gesteunde Hamas, enkel uit op de vernietiging van Israel”. Het zal niet meevallen iets te vinden als “het democratisch gekozen Hamas, dat als sinds jaar en dag vraagt om een tweestatenoplossing, in overeenstemming met de internationale consensus” – al meer dan 30 jaar geblokkeerd door de Verenigde Staten en Israel, dat het Palestijnse recht op zelfbeschikking verwerpt. Allemaal waar, maar geen bruikbare bijdrage aan de Partijlijn en derhalve overbodig.

De eerder genoemde details, hoewel onbeduidend, leren ons iets over onszelf en onze aanhang. Andere doen dat ook. Om er nog een te noemen: toen de jongste Amerikaans-Israelische aanval op Gaza begon was een kleine boot, de Dignity, op weg van Cyprus naar Gaza. Aan boord waren dokters en mensenrechtenactivisten die Israëls criminele blokkade wilden doorbreken om medische hulpgoederen naar de gevangen bevolking te brengen. Het schip werd in internationale wateren onderschept door schepen van de Israëlische marine die het ramden en bijna deden zinken, hoewel het met moeite nog Libanon kon bereiken. Israel debiteerde de bekende leugens, ontkend door de journalisten en passagiers aan boord, waaronder de CNN-correspondent Karl Penhaul en voormalig Amerikaans afgevaardigde en presidentskandidate voor de Green Party, Cynthia McKinney. Dat is een ernstige misdaad – erger bijvoorbeeld dan het kapen van schepen voor de Somalische kust. Het gebeuren kreeg weinig aandacht. Het stilzwijgend goedkeuren van dergelijke misdaden toont aan dat Gaza bezet gebied is en dat Israel het recht heeft het beleg voort te zetten, zelfs gemachtigd door de bewakers van de internationale orde om in open zee misdaden te plegen teneinde z’n programma’s voor het straffen van burgers wegens het niet opvolgend van bevelen op te leggen – onder voorwendsels waarop we nog terugkomen, bijna universeel geaccepteerd maar duidelijk ongegrond.

Wederom is het gebrek aan aandacht duidelijk. Decennia lang heeft Israel boten in internationale wateren tussen Cyprus en Libanon gekaapt, waarbij passagiers werden gedood of gekidnapt; soms werden ze naar gevangenissen in Israel gebracht, inclusief geheime gevangenis/martelkamers, om jarenlang als gijzelaar vastgehouden te worden. Aangezien deze praktijken routine zijn, waarom zou je de nieuwe misdaad dan op meer dan een geeuw onthalen? De reacties van Cyprus en Libanon waren beduidend anders, maar wat betekenen zij in de schikking der dingen?

Wie kan het bijvoorbeeld iets schelen als de meestal pro-westerse redacteuren van de Daily Star in Libanon schrijven dat “Ongeveer 1,5 miljoen mensen in Gaza zijn onderworpen aan de moorddadige macht van een van ’s werelds technologisch meest geavanceerde maar moreel vervallen militaire machines. Men heeft vaker geopperd dat de Palestijnen voor de Arabische wereld zijn geworden wat de joden waren voor het Europa van voor de Tweede Wereldoorlog, en er zit enige waarheid in deze interpretatie. Hoe ziekmakend toepasselijk is het dan ook dat, net als de Europeanen en Noord-Amerikanen de andere kant op keken toen de nazi’s de Holocaust pleegden, de Arabieren een manier vinden om toe te kijken nu Israëliërs Palestijnse kinderen afslachten.” Het meest beschamende Arabische regime is wellicht de wrede Egyptische dictatuur, die na Israel het meest profiteert van Amerikaanse steun.

Israel “ontvoert stelselmatig Libanese burgers aan de Libanese kant van de Blauwe Lijn [de internationale grens], meest recentelijk in december 2008”, volgens de Libanese pers. En natuurlijk “schenden Israëlische vliegtuigen dagelijks het Libanese luchtruim, een schending van de VN-Resolutie 1701” (de Libanese academicus Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Daily Star, 13 januari). Ook dat gaat al heel lang door. In zijn veroordeling van Israëls invasie van Libanon in 2006 schreef de prominente Israëlische strategisch-analist Zeev Maoz in de Israëlische pers dat “Israel het Libanese luchtruim heeft geschonden door praktisch elke dag luchtverkenningsmissies uit te voeren sinds de terugtrekking uit zuidelijk Libanon zes jaar geleden. Het is waar dat deze vluchten geen Libanese slachtoffers maakten, maar het schenden van grenzen is het schenden van grenzen. Ook hier heeft Israel geen hogere morele grondslag.” En in het algemeen is er geen basis voor de “kamerbrede consensus in Israel dat de oorlog in Libanon tegen de Hezbollah is een rechtvaardige en morele oorlog”, een consensus “gebaseerd op selectief en korte termijn geheugen, op een introvert wereldbeeld en op een dubbele moraal. Dit is geen rechtvaardige oorlog, het gebruik van geweld is buitensporig en willekeurig, en het uiteindelijke doel is afpersing.”

Maoz herinnert zijn Israëlische lezers er tevens aan dat het gebulder van de overvliegende jets met als doel de Libanezen te terroriseren, nog de minste van de Israëlische misdaden zijn in Libanon, zelfs naast de vijf invasies sinds 1978: “Op 28 juli 1988 ontvoerde een Israëlische Speciale Eenheid sjeik Obeid en op 21 mei 1994 ontvoerde Israel Mustafa Dirani, verantwoordelijk voor het gevangen nemen van de Israëlische piloot Ron Arad [toen deze Libanon bombardeerde in 1986]. Deze en nog 20 andere Libanezen die onder onopgehelderde omstandigheden gevangen waren genomen, werden door Israel gedurende lange tijd en zonder proces opgesloten. Ze werden gebruikt als menselijke “ruilmiddelen”. Kennelijk is het ontvoeren van Israëliërs met als doel het uitwisselen van gevangen, moreel laakbaar en militair strafbaar als Hezbollah het doet, maar niet als Israel precies hetzelfde doet,” en op een veel grotere schaal, en gedurende vele jaren.

Israëls veelvuldige praktijken zijn opmerkelijk, zelfs los van wat ze onthullen over Israëlische criminaliteit en de Westerse steun ervoor. Zoals Maoz aangeeft onderstrepen deze praktijken de volslagen hypocrisie van de standaardbewering dat Israel het recht had Libanon opnieuw binnen te vallen in 2006 toen er soldaten gevangen waren genomen aan de grens; de eerste grensoverschrijdende actie van Hezbollah in de zes jaar na de terugtrekking van Israel uit zuidelijk Libanon, dat het bezet had gehouden tegen het bevel van de Veiligheidsraad in, 22 jaar eerder, terwijl Israel zelf gedurende die zes jaar bijna dagelijks straffeloos de grenzen schond, en hier hoorde je niets over.

Opnieuw is de hypocrisie tot routine geworden. Zo schrijft Thomas Friedman, terwijl hij uitlegt hoe de lagere rassen “opgevoed” moeten worden door middel van terreur, dat de invasie van Libanon door Israel in 2006 - opnieuw goed voor het vernielen van een groot deel van zuidelijk Libanon en Beiroet en het doden van nog eens 1000 burgers - een rechtmatige daad van zelfverdediging was, een antwoord op Hezbollah’s misdaad van “het uitlokken van een ongeprovoceerde oorlog over de door de VN erkende grens tussen Israel en Libanon, nadat Israel zich eenzijdig had teruggetrokken uit Libanon.” Even los van deze misleiding, als we deze logica volgen, zouden terroristische aanvallen op Israel – veel vernietigender en moorddadiger dan die welke hebben plaatsgevonden – volledig gerechtvaardigd zijn in antwoord op Israëls criminele praktijken in Libanon en op open zee, die Hezbollah’s misdaad van het gevangen nemen van twee soldaten aan de grens verre te boven gaan.

Natuurlijk schieten al dergelijke conclusies over adequate acties tegen de rijken en machtigen tekort: Dit zijn wij en dat zijn zij. Dit cruciale principe, diep genesteld in de westerse cultuur, volstaat om zelfs de meest nauwkeurige analogie en de meest waterdichte redenering te ondermijnen.

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Deel 2

Terwijl ik dit schrijf is er nog een boot onderweg van Cyprus naar Gaza, “geladen met medische goederen waar dringend behoefte aan is, in verzegelde dozen, ingeklaard door de douane op Larnaca International Airport en de haven van Larnaca”, bericht de organisatie. Onder de passagiers leden van het Europees Parlement en artsen. Israel is op de hoogte gesteld van het humanitaire doel. Als de publieke opinie meewerkt kunnen ze hun missie wellicht vreedzaam volbrengen.

De nieuwe misdaden die de afgelopen weken door de Verenigde Staten en Israel zijn begaan passen niet zomaar in een standaardcategorie – behalve dan in de categorie van het vertrouwde; ik heb net enkele voorbeelden gegeven en kom later nog terug op andere. De misdaden vallen letterlijk onder de officiële definitie van “terrorisme” die gehanteerd wordt door de Amerikaanse regering, maar die duiding doet onrecht aan hun mateloosheid. Ze kunnen niet als “agressie” bestempeld worden, aangezien ze in bezet gebied worden begaan, zoals de Verenigde Staten stilzwijgend toegeven. In hun overzichtelijke en geleerde geschiedenis van de Israëlische nederzettingen in de bezette gebieden, Meesters van het land (Lords of the Land), wijzen Idit Zertal en Akiva Eldar op het feit dat na de terugtrekking van de Israëlische strijdkrachten uit Gaza in 2005, het verwoeste gebied “nog niet een enkele dag onder de greep van het Israëlische militaire apparaat uit kwam, noch onder de prijs van bezetting die de bevolking dagelijks betaalt… Israel heeft verschroeide aarde achtergelaten, een verwoeste infrastructuur en mensen zonder heden of toekomst. De ontmanteling van de nederzettingen was een niet-genereuze daad van een niet-verlichte bezetter die feitelijk doorgaat met het beheersen van het gebied en het vermoorden en treiteren van de bevolking, met behulp van een enorme militaire macht” – uitgevoerd op een gruwelijke manier en dankzij steun en medewerking van de Verenigde Staten.

De Amerikaans-Israëlische aanval op Gaza escaleerde in januari 2006, enkele maanden na de formele terugtrekking, toen de Palestijnen een werkelijk afschuwelijke misdaad begingen: ze stemden “op de verkeerde” tijdens vrije verkiezingen. Zoals zoveel anderen leerden ook de Palestijnen dat je niet ongestraft bevelen kunt negeren van de Meester, wiens gewauwel over “hunkeren naar democratie” niet eens hoongelach uitlokt bij de ontwikkelde klasse, eveneens een indrukwekkende prestatie.

Aangezien de termen “agressie” en “terrorisme” de lading niet dekken, moeten we op zoek naar een nieuwe term voor de sadistische en laffe marteling van een in een kooi opgesloten volk, zonder mogelijkheid te ontsnappen aan de meest geavanceerde producten van de Amerikaanse militaire technologie waarmee ze worden platgebombardeerd. Het gebruik van dergelijke wapens is in strijd met het internationale en zelfs het Amerikaanse recht, maar voor zelfbenoemde schurkenstaten is dat slechts weer een onbeduidend technisch detail. Een ander onbeduidend detail is het feit dat op 31 december, terwijl de bevolking van Gaza wanhopig op zoek was naar beschutting tegen de meedogenloze aanval, Washington een Duits vrachtschip huurde voor het transporteren van een enorme lading – 3000 ton – onbekende “munitie” van Griekenland naar Israel. Deze nieuwe lading “volgde op het huren van een commercieel schip in de VS in december met bestemming Israel, gevuld met een nog aanzienlijker lading wapens als voorbereiding op de luchtaanvallen in de Gazastrook”, meldde het persbureau Reuters. Dit alles staat nog los van de meer dan 21 miljard dollar aan militaire steun die Israel van de regering Bush mocht ontvangen, voor het grootste deel in de vorm van schenkingen. “De bemoeienissen van Israel in de Gazastrook werd voor het grootste deel gevoed met Amerikaanse wapens, waarvoor de Amerikaanse belastingbetaler opdraait”, staat in een verslag van de New America Foundation, die de wapenhandel in de gaten houdt. Deze nieuwe lading werd belemmerd door een beslissing van de Griekse regering om het gebruik van elke Griekse haven te verbieden “voor de bevoorrading van het Israëlische leger”.

Het antwoord van Griekenland op de door de VS gesteunde Israëlische misdaden staat in schril contrast met de lafhartige houding van de meeste Europese leiders. Het contrast onthult dat het wellicht realistisch van Washington was om Griekenland als deel van het Nabije Oosten te zien en niet van Europa, totdat de door de VS gesteunde fascistische dictatuur omver werd geworpen in 1974. Misschien is Griekenland wel te beschaafd voor Europa.

Mocht iemand de timing van de leveranties merkwaardig vinden en eens doorvragen, dan heeft het Pentagon een antwoord klaar: de zending zou te laat komen voor de aanval op Gaza en het materieel – wat het ook is – wordt uit voorzorg in Israel geplaatst voor eventueel gebruik door het Amerikaanse leger. Dat zou kunnen kloppen. Een van de vele diensten die Israel z’n beschermheer aanbiedt is het voorzien in waardevolle militaire bases aan de rand van ’s werelds belangrijkste energiebronnen. Zo kan het dienen als een vooruitgeschoven legerpost voor Amerikaanse agressie – of, om de technische termen te gebruiken, om “de Golf te verdedigen” en “voor stabiliteit te zorgen”.

De enorme stroom wapens richting Israel dient ook vele ondergeschikte doelen. Mouin Rabbani, die het Midden-Oostenbeleid analyseert, merkt op dat Israel nieuwe wapensystemen kan testen op weerloze doelen. Dit is van grote waarde voor Israel en de Verenigde Staten, “van dubbele waarde eigenlijk, aangezien minder efficiënte versies van dezelfde wapensystemen vervolgens voor enorme bedragen worden verkocht aan Arabische staten, waarmee weer de Amerikaanse wapenindustrie en de militaire schenkingen aan Israel gesubsidieerd worden.” Dit zijn extra functies van Israel in het door de VS gedomineerde Midden-Oostensysteem, en onder andere de reden dat Israel het zo goed doet bij de autoriteiten, de Amerikaanse high-techbedrijven, en uiteraard bij de militaire industrie en de geheime dienst.

Afgezien van Israel zijn de Verenigde Staten op afstand de grootste wapenleveranciers ter wereld. Het recente rapport van de New America Foundation concludeert dat “Amerikaanse wapens en militaire trainingen een rol speelden in 20 van de 27 belangrijkste oorlogen in 2007”, waarmee de VS 23 miljard dollar opstreek, oplopend tot 32 miljard dollar in 2008. Geen wonder dat tussen de vele VN-Resoluties waartegen de VS zich verzetten tijdens de VN-sessie van december 2008, er eentje zat die opriep tot regulatie van de wapenhandel. In 2006 stemden de VS als enige tegen dit verdrag, maar in november 2008 voegde zich een partner aan hun zijde: Zimbabwe.

Tijdens die VN-sessie van december waren er meer opmerkelijke stemmen. Een resolutie over “het recht van het Palestijnse volk op zelfbeschikking” werd aangenomen met 173 tegen 5 stemmen (VS, Israel, Pacifische Eilanden, de VS en Israel met vage smoezen). De stemming herbevestigt het Amerikaans-Israelische rejectionisme, in internationale isolatie. Op soortgelijke wijze werd een resolutie voor “universele vrijheid van reizen en het vitale belang van familiehereniging” aangenomen met de VS, Israel en de Pacifische Eilanden die tegenstemden, vermoedelijk met de Palestijnen in hun achterhoofd.

Toen de VS tegen het recht op ontwikkeling stemden verloren ze Israel, maar wonnen ze de Oekraïne. Toen ze tegen het “recht op voedsel” stemden waren ze alleen, een bijzonder frappant feit in het licht van de enorme globale voedselcrisis, die de - de westerse economieën bedreigende - financiële crisis in de schaduw stelt.

Er zijn goede redenen waarom het stemgedrag consequent niet wordt bekendgemaakt en diep weggestopt wordt door de media en de conformistische intellectuelen. Het zou niet slim zijn om het volk kennis te laten nemen van wat dit zegt over hun verkozen vertegenwoordigers. In het onderhavige geval zou het contraproductief werken om het volk te vertellen dat het Amerikaans-Israëlische rejectionisme – de vreedzame oplossing blokkerend die de wereld al lang bepleit – zulke extreme vormen aanneemt dat het de Palestijnen zelfs het abstracte recht op zelfbeschikking onthoudt.

Een van de helden onder de vrijwilligers in Gaza, de Noorse arts Mads Gilbert, beschreef het horrorschouwspel als een “Totaaloorlog tegen de burgerbevolking van Gaza”. Volgens zijn inschatting bestond de helft van de slachtoffers uit vrouwen en kinderen. Bijna alle mannen zijn ook burgers, volgens fatsoenlijke normen dan. Gilbert verklaart dat hij slechts zelden een militair slachtoffer zag tussen de honderden lichamen. De IDF is het daarmee eens. Hamas “vecht alleen op afstand – of helemaal niet”, verklaarde Ethan Bronner toen hij de “winsten ontwarde” van de Amerikaans-Israëlische aanval. Dus de mankracht van Hamas blijft intact, het waren voornamelijk burgers die moesten lijden: een positief resultaat volgens een algemeen geldende doctrine.

Deze schattingen zijn bevestigd door John Holmes, hoofd van de humanitaire operaties van de VN, die journalisten vertelde dat het “een redelijke aanname” is dat het grootste deel van de burgerslachtoffers uit vrouwen en kinderen bestaat, in een humanitaire crisis die “van dag tot dag erger wordt zolang het geweld aanhoudt”. Toch kunnen we gerustgesteld worden door de woorden van Israëls minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Tzipi Livni, de leidende duif in de huidige verkiezingscampagne, die ons verzekert dat er geen “humanitaire crisis” is in Gaza dankzij de Israëlische welwillendheid.

Net als anderen die geven om menselijke wezens en hun lot, drongen Gilbert en Holmes aan op een wapenstilstand. Maar nu nog niet. “De Verenigde Staten voorkwamen dat de Veiligheidsraad van de Verenigde Naties op zaterdag een formele verklaring deed uitgaan met een oproep tot een onmiddellijk staakt-het-vuren”, meldt de New York Times terloops. De officiële reden was dat “er geen indicatie was dat Hamas zich aan enige afspraken zou houden”. In de annalen van rechtvaardigingen voor zwelgen in moordpartijen hoort deze zonder meer bij de meest cynische. Dat kwam uiteraard van Bush en Rice, binnenkort te vervangen door Obama, die vol medeleven herhaalt dat “als raketten zouden neerkomen waar mijn beide dochters slapen, dan zou ik alles doen om het te stoppen”. Hij verwijst naar Israëlische kinderen, niet naar de honderden die in Gaza in stukken worden gereten door Amerikaanse wapens. Hierna deed Obama er het zwijgen toe.

Enkele dagen later steunden de VS onder enorme internationale druk een resolutie van de Veiligheidsraad die opriep tot een “duurzame wapenstilstand”. Ze werd goedgekeurd met 14-0, de VS onthielden zich van stemming. Zoals gebruikelijk waren Israel en de Amerikaanse haviken kwaad dat de VS hun veto niet hadden gebruikt. Die onthouding gaf Israel echter misschien geen groen maar dan toch een oranje licht om het geweld verder uit te breiden, zoals het ook deed tot praktisch het moment van de inauguratie, zoals was voorspeld.

Toen het staakt-het-vuren (theoretisch) werd afgekondigd op 18 januari, publiceerde het Palestijns Centrum voor Mensenrechten de cijfers voor de laatste dag van de aanval: 54 Palestijnen gedood, waaronder 43 ongewapende burgers, 17 van hen waren kinderen, terwijl de IDF doorging met het bombarderen van huizen van burgers en VN-scholen. Het dodental schatten zij op 1.184, waaronder 844 burgers, waarvan 281 kinderen. De IDF ging door met het gebruik van brandbommen overal in de Gazastrook en met het vernietigen van huizen en landbouwgrond, zodat burgers gedwongen werden hun huizen te ontvluchten. Enkele uren later meldde Reuters al meer dan 1300 doden. Het personeel van het Al Mezan Center, dat nauwkeurig de vernietiging en slachtoffers bijhoudt, bezocht gebieden die voorheen ontoegankelijk waren vanwege voortdurende bombardementen. Ze ontdekten tientallen lichamen van burgers die lagen te verrotten onder het puin van vernielde huizen, of verplaatst waren door Israëlische bulldozers. Complete stadswijken waren verdwenen.

De aantallen doden en gewonden worden zeker te laag ingeschat. En het is niet waarschijnlijk dat er een onderzoek komt naar deze wreedheden. Misdaden van officiële vijanden worden diepgaand onderzocht, maar die van ons worden systematisch genegeerd. Dat, nogmaals, is de normale gang van zaken, begrijpelijk vanuit het oogpunt van de meesters.

De resolutie van de Veiligheidsraad behelsde ook een eind aan de stroom wapens die Gaza binnenkwamen. De VS en Israel (Rice-Livni) waren het snel eens over maatregelen om dit voor elkaar te krijgen: door zich te concentreren op Iraanse wapens. Het is niet nodig het smokkelen van Amerikaanse wapens naar Israel tegen te houden, want er wordt niet gesmokkeld: deze enorme wapenstroom is openbaar, zelfs wanneer niet bekendgemaakt, zoals in het geval van de aangekondigde wapenleveranties toen de slachting in Gaza in volle gang was.

De resolutie riep tevens op tot het “verzekeren van een duurzame opening van de doorgangen op basis van het Agreement on Movement and Access (Overeenkomst over beweging en toegang) uit 2005 tussen de Palestijnse Autoriteit en Israel”; dit Agreement bepaalde dat de doorgangen naar Gaza permanent open zouden blijven en dat Israel tevens het verkeer van goederen en mensen tussen de West Bank en de Gazastrook zou toestaan.

De Rice-Livni overeenkomst maakte geen gewag van dit aspect van de resolutie van de Veiligheidsraad. De VS en Israel hadden het Agreement uit 2005 reeds verworpen als onderdeel van hun straf voor de Palestijnen, die tijdens de vrije verkiezingen van 2006 op de verkeerde partij hadden gestemd. De persconferentie van Rice na de Rice-Livni overeenkomst benadrukte de onvermoeibare pogingen van Washington om de resultaten van de enige vrije verkiezingen in de Arabische wereld te ondermijnen. Ze zei: “Er kan veel gedaan worden om Gaza uit de duisternis van Hamas te halen naar het licht van het goede bestuur dat de Palestijnse Autoriteit kan brengen” – kan brengen, althans, zolang zij een loyale aanhanger blijven, vol van corruptie en genegen brute onderdrukking toe te passen, maar gehoorzaam.

Terug van een bezoek aan de Arabische wereld bevestigde Fawwaz Gerges met klem wat anderen ter plekke reeds hadden gemeld. Het effect van het Amerikaans-Israëlische offensief in Gaza was om de bevolking woedend te maken en om bittere haat jegens de agressor en diens collaborateurs op te wekken. “Het volstaat om te zeggen dat de zogenaamde gematigde Arabische staten [dat wil zeggen, zij die hun bevelen uit Washington krijgen] zich gedeisd houden en dat het verzetsfront, geleid door Iran en Syrië, hier het meest van profiteert. Wederom hebben Israel en de regering van Bush de Iraanse leiders een zoete overwinning geschonken.” Bovendien “zal Hamas hieruit waarschijnlijk te voorschijn komen als een sterkere politieke macht dan voorheen overtreft het Fatah, het heersende apparaat van president Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestijnse Autoriteit”, de favorieten van Rice.

Het is interessant te bedenken de Arabische wereld niet angstvallig beschermd wordt tegen de enige live TV verslaggeving van wat er gaande is in Gaza, namelijk de “kalme en gebalanceerde analyse van de chaos en vernietiging” verzorgd door de uitstekende correspondenten van Al-Jazeera, die “een krachtig alternatief voor andere zenders” vormt, zoals de London Financial Times stelt. In de 105 landen zonder onze efficiënte vormen van zelfcensuur kunnen mensen van uur tot uur zien wat er gebeurt en de impact daarvan blijkt enorm te zijn. In de Verenigde Staten, bericht de New York Times, “komt de bijna complete blackout… zonder twijfel door de scherpe kritiek op Al-Jazeera door de Amerikaanse regering gedurende het begin van de oorlog in Irak, vanwege hun weergave van de Amerikaanse invasie.” Cheney en Rumsfeld protesteerden, dus, uiteraard, wat konden de onafhankelijke media anders doen dan gehoorzamen.

Er wordt veel nuchter gedebatteerd over wat de aanvallers hoopten te bereiken. Sommige doelstellingen worden vaak bediscussieerd, waaronder wat men noemt “het vermogen tot afschrikking” dat Israel was kwijtgeraakt als gevolg van het Libanese fiasco in 2006 - hetgeen wil zeggen, het vermogen om elke potentiële tegenstander met terreur tot overgave te dwingen. Er zijn echter meer fundamentele doelstellingen die wel eens over het hoofd worden gezien, hoewel ze overduidelijk zijn als we even naar de recente geschiedenis kijken.

Israel verliet Gaza in september 2005. Rationele Israëlische hardliners zoals Ariel Sharon, de beschermheilige van de kolonistenbeweging, begrepen dat het onzinnig was om enkele duizenden illegale kolonisten te subsidiëren in de puinhopen van Gaza, beschermd door de IDF terwijl ze een groot deel van het land en de beperkte hulpbronnen gebruikten. Het lag meer voor de hand om Gaza om te bouwen tot ’s wereld grootste gevangenis en de kolonisten naar de West Bank te verhuizen, een veel waardevoller gebied waar Israel zeer duidelijk is over z’n bedoelingen, in woord en, belangrijker, in daad. Een doel is het annexeren van vruchtbare grond, de waterbronnen en de lieflijke voorsteden van Jeruzalem en Tel Aviv binnen de scheidingsmuur, tevergeefs illegaal verklaard door het Internationaal Gerechtshof. Dat behelst een enorme uitbreiding van Jeruzalem, een schending van de bepalingen van de Veiligheidsraad van 40 oud, ook tevergeefs. Israel neemt ook de Jordaanvallei over, ongeveer een derde van de West Bank. Wat overblijft zit daardoor gevangen en bovendien opgebroken in fragmenten door de prominente joodse nederzettingen die het gebied in drieën hebben gedeeld: een deel ten oosten van Groot-Jeruzalem, dwars door de stad Ma’aleh Adumim, tijdens de Clinton-jaren ontwikkeld om de West Bank op te splitsen; en twee delen in het noorden, door de steden Ariel en Kedumim. Wat voor de Palestijnen overblijft wordt gescheiden door honderden grotendeels willekeurige checkpoints.

De checkpoints spelen geen rol in de veiligheid van Israel en als sommige bedoeld zijn om de kolonisten te beschermen, dan zijn ze simpelweg illegaal, zoals het Internationaal Gerechtshof bepaalde. In werkelijkheid is hun belangrijkste doel de Palestijnse bevolking te treiteren en de “machtsmatrix” te versterken, zoals de Israëlische vredesactivist Jeff Halper het noemt, bedoeld om het leven ondraaglijk te maken voor de “tweepotige beesten” die als “verdoofd ongedierte krioelen in een fles“ als ze trachten in hun huizen en op hun land te blijven. Dat is niet meer dan normaal, want ze zijn “als sprinkhanen vergeleken bij ons” zodat hun hoofden kunnen worden “verpletterd tegen de keien en muren”. Deze terminologie is afkomstig van de hoogste Israëlische politieke en militaire leiders, in dit geval de achtenswaardige “prinsen”. En het gedrag vormt het beleid.

Het geraaskal van de politieke en militaire leiders is mild vergeleken bij de preken van rabbijnse autoriteiten. Zij zijn geen marginale figuren. Integendeel, ze hebben veel invloed in het leger en de kolonistenbeweging, die volgens Zertal en Eldar de “Meesters van het land” zijn, en drukken een belangrijke stempel op het beleid. Soldaten die in het noorden van Gaza vochten kregen een “inspirationeel” bezoek van twee rabbi’s, die uitlegden dat er geen “onschuldigen” bestaan in Gaza, dus iedereen is een legitiem doelwit, daarbij een beroemde passage uit de Psalmen citerend met een oproep aan de Heer om de kinderen van Israëls onderdrukkers te grijpen en tegen de rotsen te vermorzelen. De rabbi’s deden niets nieuws. Een jaar eerder had de voormalige Chief Sephardic Rabbi aan premier Olmert geschreven dat alle burgers van Gaza collectief schuld hadden aan de raketbeschietingen, zodat er “absoluut geen morele belemmering is om zonder onderscheid burgers te doden tijdens een groot militair offensief in Gaza, gericht op het stoppen van de raketbeschietingen”, zoals de Jerusalem Post zijn oordeel weergaf. Zijn zoon, de Chief Rabbi van Safed, deed er nog een schepje bovenop: “Als ze niet stoppen nadat we er 100 hebben gedood, dan moeten we er duizend doden, en als ze niet stoppen na 1000 dan moeten we er 10.000 doden. Als ze dan nog niet stoppen moeten we er 100.000 doden, zelfs een miljoen. Wat er voor nodig is om ze te doen stoppen.”

Dergelijke zienswijzen worden uitgedragen door prominente Amerikaanse seculiere lieden. Toen Israel in 2006 Libanon binnenviel verklaarde professor Alan Dershowitz van de Harvard Law School in de liberale online krant de Huffington Post dat alle Libanezen legitieme doelwitten waren voor het Israëlisch geweld. Libanese burgers “betaalden de prijs” voor het steunen van “terrorisme” – beter gezegd, voor steun aan het verzet tegen de Israëlische invasie. Derhalve waren Libanese burgers net zo min immuun voor geweld als de Oostenrijkers die de nazi’s steunden. De fatwa van de Sefardische rabbi is op hen van toepassing. In een video op de website van de Jerusalem Post ging Dershowitz verder met het belachelijk maken van het extreme verschil in dodental tussen Palestijnen en Israëliërs: het zou verhoogd moeten worden tot 1000 tegen 1, zei hij, of zelfs 1000 tegen 0, oftewel de beesten zouden volledig uitgeroeid moeten worden. Natuurlijk bedoelt hij “terroristen”, een ruime categorie waarin de slachtoffers van Israëlisch geweld vallen, aangezien “Israel nooit burgers als doelwit kiest”, verklaarde hij met nadruk. Daaruit volgt dat Palestijnen, Libanezen, Tunesiërs, eigenlijk iedereen die de meedogenloze legers van de Heilige Staat in de weg staat, een terrorist is, of een toevallig slachtoffer van hun rechtvaardige misdaden.

Het valt niet mee om historische vergelijkingen te vinden voor deze vertoningen. Het is wellicht veelzeggend dat ze zonder meer als fatsoenlijk worden beschouwd in het heersende intellectuele en morele klimaat – dat wil zeggen, als ze aan “onze kant” opduiken; uit de mond van officiële vijanden zouden zulke woorden terechte verontwaardiging uitlokken en oproepen tot wraak met massaal preventief geweld.

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Deel 3

De bewering dat “onze kant” nooit burgers als doelwit kiest is een vertrouwd dogma onder hen die het geweld monopoliseren. En er zit enige waarheid in. Over het algemeen proberen we geen specifieke burgers te doden. We voeren liever moorddadige acties uit waarvan we weten dat die vele burgers zullen doden, maar zonder de duidelijke bedoeling om er sommigen in het bijzonder te doden. Wettelijk zouden deze bekende praktijken onder laaghartige onverschilligheid kunnen vallen, maar dat is geen adequate benaming voor standaard imperialistisch handelen en doctrine. Het lijkt meer op het lopen over straat, in de wetenschap dat we mieren vertrappen, maar zonder de bedoeling om dat te doen, aangezien ze zo’n lage status hebben dat het niets uitmaakt. Dat geldt ook voor Israel wanneer het acties uitvoert waarvan het weet dat ze de “sprinkhanen” en “tweepotige beesten” zullen doden die het land infecteren dat het wil “bevrijden”. Er is geen goed woord voor deze vorm van moreel verval, aantoonbaar erger dan weloverwogen moord, en maar al te bekend.

Wellicht gunnen de rechtmatige eigenaren (bij goddelijk besluit, volgens de “heren van het land”) in het voormalige Palestina het verdoofde ongedierte enkele verspreide stukken land. Echter niet omdat ze er recht op hebben: “Ik heb altijd geloofd, en geloof nog steeds, in het eeuwige en historische recht van ons volk op dit gehele land”, informeerde premier Olmert het Congres in mei 2006 onder luid applaus. Tegelijkertijd maakte hij zijn “convergentie”-programma bekend om dat wat van waarde was in de West Bank te confisqueren en de Palestijnen te laten wegrotten op geïsoleerde eilandjes. Hij was niet duidelijk over de grenzen van het “gehele land”, maar de zionistische onderneming is dat ook nooit geweest en voor goede redenen: permanente expansie is een zeer belangrijke interne dynamiek. Als Olmert nog steeds trouw is aan zijn wortels in de Likud-partij, dan bedoelde hij misschien aan weerszijden van de Jordaan, inclusief het huidige Jordanië, of op zijn minst de waardevolle delen ervan.

Het “eeuwige en historische recht op dit gehele land” van ons volk vormt een schril contrast met de afwezigheid van elke vorm van zelfbeschikking voor de tijdelijke bewoners, de Palestijnen. Zoals eerder opgemerkt werd die visie herhaald door Israel en z’n baas Washington in december 2008, zoals gebruikelijk in complete isolatie en vergezeld van een oorverdovende stilte.

De plannen die Olmert in 2006 uiteenzette zijn sindsdien aangezien ze niet extreme genoeg waren. Maar wat het convergentieprogramma vervangt, en de acties die dagelijks ondernomen worden om het te implementeren, zijn min of meer gelijkwaardig. Ze zijn terug te voeren tot het begin van de bezetting, toen minister van defensie Moshe Dayan op dichterlijke wijze verklaarde dat “de situatie van vandaag veel weg heeft van de complexe relatie tussen een Bedoeïen en het meisje dat hij ontvoert tegen haar zin.. Jullie Palestijnen, als een natie, willen vandaag niets van ons weten, maar wij zullen jullie houding veranderen door onze aanwezigheid aan jullie op te dringen”. Jullie zullen “leven als honden en wie vertrekt, vertrekt”, terwijl wij nemen wat we willen.

Dat dit misdadige programma’s zijn is nooit betwijfeld. Direct na de oorlog van 1967 werd de Israëlische regering ingelicht door haar hoogste rechterlijke autoriteit, Teodor Meron, dat “burgerlijke nederzettingen in de bezette gebieden druist expliciet in tegen de bepalingen van de Vierde Geneefse Conventie”, de basis van internationaal humanitair recht. Israëls minister van justitie beaamde dit. Het Internationaal Gerechtshof heeft de essentie unaniem bekrachtigd in 2004 en het Israëlisch Hooggerechtshof was het er technisch mee eens, maar niet in de praktijk, zoals gebruikelijk.

In de West Bank kan Israel met Amerikaanse steun ongestoord doorgaan met z’n programma’s, dankzij de efficiënte militaire overheersing en nu ook de hulp van de collaborerende Palestijnse veiligheidstroepen, bewapend en getraind door de Verenigde Staten en hun dictatoriale bondgenoten. Het kan ook regelmatig moorden en andere misdaden plegen, terwijl kolonisten zich uitleven onder bescherming van de IDF. Maar terwijl de West Bank metterdaad onderworpen is met behulp van terreur, is er nog steeds verzet in de andere helft van Palestina, de Gazastrook. Ook dat moet gesmoord worden om het mogelijk te maken dat de Amerikaans-Israëlische programma’s van annexatie en vernietiging van Palestina ongestoord uitgevoerd kunnen worden.

Vandaar de invasie van Gaza.

Het tijdstip van de invasie werd vermoedelijk beïnvloed door de komende verkiezingen in Israel. De Israëlische commentator Ran HaCohen berekende dat Ehud Barak, die het niet goed deed in de peilingen, won een zetel per 40 gedode Arabieren tijdens de eerste dagen van de slachtpartij.

Dat kan echter veranderen. Naarmate de misdaden aan de zorgvuldig geslepen Israëlische propagandacampagne ontglipten, werden zelfs overtuigde Israëlische haviken bezorgd dat het bloedbad “[Israëls] ziel en imago vernielt. Vernielt op de televisies van de wereld, in de huiskamers van de internationale gemeenschap en bovenal in Obama’s Amerika” (Ari Shavit). Shavit was in het bijzonder bezorgd over Israëls “beschieting van een VN-installatie… op de dag dat de algemeen-secretaris van de Verenigde Naties Jeruzalem bezoekt”, een daad van “complete waanzin” volgens hem.

Een paar details. De “installatie” was het VN-terrein in Gaza Stad waar zich het depot van de UNRWA bevond. De beschieting vernietigde “honderden tonnen aan noodhulp, voedsel en medicijnen, die klaarstonden voor transport naar schuilplekken, ziekenhuizen en voedselcentra”, volgens de directeur van de UNRWA John Ging. Tegelijkertijd vernietigden militaire aanvallen twee verdiepingen het het Al-Quds ziekenhuis, dat in vlammen opging, en ook een tweede magazijn, van de Palestijnse Rode Halve Maan. Het ziekenhuis in de dichtbevolkte wijk Tal-Hawa werd door Israëlische tanks vernietigd “nadat honderden angstige Gazanen daar hun toevlucht hadden gezocht toen de Israëlische grondtroepen de wijk binnentrokken”, aldus AP.

Er kon niets gered worden uit de walmende ruïnes van het ziekenhuis. “Ze beschoten het gebouw, het ziekenhuis. Het vloog in brand. We probeerde de zieken, gewonden en anderen te evacueren. Brandweermannen kwamen om het vuur te blussen, maar het laaide opnieuw op en ze blusten het opnieuw en voor de derde keer laaide het weer op”, vertelde hulpverlener Ahmad Al-Haz het persbureau AP. Men vermoedde dat de gloed het gevolg was van witte fosfor, vermoedelijk eveneens verantwoordelijk voor vele andere branden en ernstige brandwonden.

Deze vermoedens werden bevestigd door Amnesty International die onderzoek deed na afloop van het intense bombardement. Israel had van tevoren wijselijk alle journalisten de toegang ontzegd, zelfs Israëlische, terwijl het met overgave zijn misdaden beging. Het gebruik van witte fosfor tegen de burgerbevolking van Gaza is “duidelijk en onbetwistbaar”, berichtte Amnesty International. Het herhaaldelijk gebruik ervan in dichtbevolkte gebieden met burgers “is een oorlogsmisdaad”, was de conclusie van AI. Ze vonden stukjes witte fosfor verspreid in woonwijken, nog steeds brandend en “nog steeds de bewoners en hun bezittingen bedreigend”, met name kinderen “die aangetrokken worden door de rommel van de oorlog en zich vaak niet bewust zijn van het gevaar”. Het belangrijkste doel, meldden ze, was het UNRWA-terrein, waar “de witte fosfor vlakbij enkele tankwagens landde en een enorme brand veroorzaakte die de vernietiging van tonnen aan humanitaire hulpgoederen tot gevolgd had” , nadat de Israëlische autoriteiten “hadden verzekerd dat er geen nieuwe aanvallen op het terrein zouden plaatsvinden”. Dezelfde dag nog “landde een witte-fosforbom in het Al-Quds ziekenhuis in Gaza Stad die ook een brand tot gevolgd had, waardoor het personeel gedwongen was de patiënten te evacueren… Witte fosfor die met de huid in aanraking komt kan dwars door de huid branden tot op het bot, en blijft branden zolang het in contact blijft met zuurstof”. Met voorbedachten rade of erger dan laaghartige onverschilligheid, deze misdaden zijn onvermijdelijk als zo’n wapen wordt ingezet tegen burgers.

Het is echter een vergissing om te veel aandacht te besteden aan Israëls grove overtredingen van jus in bello, de wetten die zijn ontworpen om al te wrede praktijken te verbieden. De invasie zelf is een veel ernstiger misdaad. En als Israel deze onvoorstelbare schade met pijl en boog had aangericht, dan zou het nog steeds een extreem verdorven misdaad zijn.

Agressie heeft altijd een smoes klaar: in dit geval dat het geduld van Israel “op was” met betrekking tot de raketbeschietingen van Hamas, zoals Barak het uitdrukte. Het mantra dat uitputtend herhaald werd is dat Israel het recht heeft om geweld te gebruiken om zich te verdedigen. De stelling is gedeeltelijk te verdedigen. De raketbeschietingen zijn misdaden en het is waar dat een staat het recht heeft zich te verdedigen tegen criminele aanvallen. Maar er volgt niet uit dat het het recht heeft om zich met geweld te verdedigen. Nazi Duitsland had niet het recht om geweld te gebruiken om zichzelf te verdedigen tegen het terrorisme van de partizanen. De Kristallnacht wordt gerechtvaardigd door Herschel Grynszpans moord op een Duitse diplomaat in Parijs. De Engelsen hadden niet het recht om geweld te gebruiken ter verdediging tegen de (zeer reële) terreur van de Amerikaanse kolonisten die onafhankelijkheid wilden, of om de Ierse katholieken te terroriseren in antwoord op de terreur van de IRA – en toen ze uiteindelijk het beleid volgden om legitieme klachten serieus te nemen, eindigde de terreur. Het is geen kwestie van “proportionaliteit”, maar allereerst de keuze van de actie: Is er een alternatief voor geweld?

Elke toevlucht tot geweld draagt een zware bewijslast met zich mee en we moeten ons afvragen of die wel gedragen kan worden door Israëls poging om elk verzet tegen z’n dagelijkse criminele activiteiten in Gaza en de West Bank – waar ze al 40 jaar onvermoeibaar doorgaan - de kop in te drukken. Misschien mag ik mijzelf citeren uit een interview in de Israëlische pers over Olmerts aangekondigde convergentieplannen voor de West Bank: “De VS en Israel dulden geen verzet tegen deze plannen, geven er de voorkeur aan te veinzen – onterecht natuurlijk – dat er ‘geen gesprekspartner is’, terwijl ze hun programma’s uitvoeren die al een lange historie hebben. We kunnen ons wellicht herinneren dat Gaza en de West Bank een erkende eenheid vormen, dus als verzet tegen de Amerikaans-Israëlische annexatie- en versnipperingsprogramma’s legitiem is in de West Bank, dan is het dat ook in Gaza”.

De Palestijns-Amerikaanse journalist Ali Abunimah merkte op dat “Er geen raketten op Israel zijn afgeschoten vanaf de West Bank en toch zijn Israëls onwettelijke moorden, het stelen van land, pogroms van kolonisten en ontvoeringen nog geen dag gestopt tijdens het bestand. De door het westen gesteunde Palestijnse Autoriteit van Mahmoud Abbas heeft toegegeven aan alle eisen van Israel. Onder het trotse oog van de Amerikaanse militaire adviseurs heeft Abbas ‘veiligheidstroepen’ samengesteld om het verzet ten behoeve van Israel aan te pakken. Niets van dat alles heeft geholpen om ook maar een enkele Palestijn op de West Bank te vrijwaren van Israëls tomeloze kolonisatie” – dankzij stevige steun van de Verenigde Staten. De gerespecteerde Palestijnse parlementariër dr. Mustapha Barghouti voegt hieraan toe dat na de uitspatting van Bush in Annapolis in november 2007, met veel verheffende retoriek over toewijding aan vrede en gerechtigheid, de Israëlische aanvallen op Palestijnen flink toenamen, met een bijna 50% toename op de West Bank, tezamen met een toename in het aantal nederzettingen en checkpoints. Deze criminele acties waren overduidelijk niet het gevolg van raketten uit Gaza, maar het omgekeerde zou wel eens waar kunnen zijn suggereert Barghouti overtuigend.

De reacties op misdaden van een bezettende macht kunnen veroordeeld worden als crimineel en politiek onverstandig, maar zij die geen alternatief aanbieden hebben geen morele basis om een dergelijk oordeel te vellen. Die conclusie heeft met name betrekking op diegenen in de Verenigde Staten die ervoor kiezen om direct betrokken te zijn bij Israëls doorlopende misdaden – door hun woorden, hun acties, of hun zwijgen. Des te meer omdat er duidelijk niet-gewelddadige alternatieven zijn – die evenwel het nadeel hebben dat ze de programma’s van illegale expansie belemmeren.

Israel bezit een eenvoudig middel om zichzelf te verdedigen: stop de misdadige activiteiten in de bezetten gebieden en accepteer de oude internationale consensus van een tweestatenoplossing die al sinds 30 jaar wordt tegengehouden door de Verenigde Staten en Israel, vanaf het moment dat de Verenigde Staten voor het eerst hun veto gebruikten tegen een resolutie van de Veiligheidsraad die in deze termen opriep tot een politieke oplossing in 1976. Ik zal niet opnieuw de beschamende lijst aflopen, maar het is belangrijk te beseffen dat het Amerikaans-Israëlisch rejectionisme vandaag de dag zelfs opvallender is dan in het verleden. De Arabische Liga ging zelfs verder dan de consensus met een oproep tot volledige normalisatie van de betrekkingen met Israel. Hamas heeft herhaaldelijk gevraagd om een tweestatenoplossing in overeenstemming met de internationale consensus. Iran en Hezbollah hebben duidelijk gemaakt dat zij akkoord gaan met elke overeenkomst die de Palestijnen accepteren. Dat isoleert de VS-Israel volkomen, niet alleen in woorden.

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bron nederlandse tekst:http://anjameulenbelt.sp.nl/weblog/
bron engels origineel:http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20316

Israel rains fire on Gaza with phosphorus shells

Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem and Michael Evans, Defence Editor
source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5447590.ece


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00459/Gazanew_459761a.jpg

(Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images) Israeli artillery shells explode with a chemical agent designed to create smokescreen for ground forces
Israel is believed to be using controversial white phosphorus shells to screen its assault on the heavily populated Gaza Strip yesterday. The weapon, used by British and US forces in Iraq, can cause horrific burns but is not illegal if used as a smokescreen.

As the Israeli army stormed to the edges of Gaza City and the Palestinian death toll topped 500, the tell-tale shells could be seen spreading tentacles of thick white smoke to cover the troops' advance. "These explosions are fantastic looking, and produce a great deal of smoke that blinds the enemy so that our forces can move in," said one Israeli security expert. Burning blobs of phosphorus would cause severe injuries to anyone caught beneath them and force would-be snipers or operators of remote-controlled booby traps to take cover. Israel admitted using white phosphorus during its 2006 war with Lebanon.

The use of the weapon in the Gaza Strip, one of the world's mostly densely population areas, is likely to ignite yet more controversy over Israel's offensive, in which more than 2,300 Palestinians have been wounded.

The Geneva Treaty of 1980 stipulates that white phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas, but there is no blanket ban under international law on its use as a smokescreen or for illumination. However, Charles Heyman, a military expert and former major in the British Army, said: "If white phosphorus was deliberately fired at a crowd of people someone would end up in The Hague. White phosphorus is also a terror weapon. The descending blobs of phosphorus will burn when in contact with skin."

The Israeli military last night denied using phosphorus, but refused to say what had been deployed. "Israel uses munitions that are allowed for under international law," said Captain Ishai David, spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces. "We are pressing ahead with the second stage of operations, entering troops in the Gaza Strip to seize areas from which rockets are being launched into Israel."

The civilian toll in the first 24 hours of the ground offensive — launched after a week of bombardment from air, land and sea— was at least 64 dead. Among those killed were five members of a family who died when an Israeli tank shell hit their car and a paramedic who died when a tank blasted his ambulance. Doctors at Gaza City's main hospital said many women and children were among the dead and wounded.

The Israeli army also suffered its first fatality of the offensive when one of its soldiers was killed by mortar fire. More than 30 soldiers were wounded by mortars, mines and sniper fire.

Israel has brushed aside calls for a ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into the besieged territory, where medical supplies are running short.

With increasingly angry anti-Israeli protests spreading around the world, Gordon Brown described the violence in Gaza as "a dangerous moment".

White phosphorus: the smoke-screen chemical that can burn to the bone

— White phosphorus bursts into a deep-yellow flame when it is exposed to oxygen, producing a thick white smoke

— It is used as a smokescreen or for incendiary devices, but can also be deployed as an anti-personnel flame compound capable of causing potentially fatal burns

— Phosphorus burns are almost always second or third-degree because the particles do not stop burning on contact with skin until they have entirely disappeared — it is not unknown for them to reach the bone

— Geneva conventions ban the use of phosphorus as an offensive weapon against civilians, but its use as a smokescreen is not prohibited by international law

— Israel previously used white phosphorus during its war with Lebanon in 2006

— It has been used frequently by British and US forces in recent wars, notably during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Its use was criticised widely

— White phosphorus has the slang name "Willy Pete", which dates from the First World War. It was commonly used in the Vietnam era

www.fpif.org Foreign Policy In Focus

War of Choice: How Israel Manufactured the Gaza Escalation Steve Niva | January 7, 2009

Editor: Erik Leaver

Israel has repeatedly claimed that it had "no choice" but to wage war on Gaza on December 27 because Hamas had broken a ceasefire, was firing rockets at Israeli civilians, and had "tried everything in order to avoid this military operation," as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni put it.

This claim, however, is widely at odds with the fact that Israel's military and political leadership took many aggressive steps during the ceasefire that escalated a crisis with Hamas, and possibly even provoked Hamas to create a pretext for the assault. This wasn't a war of "no choice," but rather a very avoidable war in which Israeli actions played the major role in instigating.

Israel has a long history of deliberately using violence and other provocative measures to trigger reactions in order to create a pretext for military action, and to portray its opponents as the aggressors and Israel as the victim. According to the respected Israeli military historian Zeev Maoz in his recent book, Defending the Holy Land, Israel most notably used this policy of "strategic escalation" in 1955-1956, when it launched deadly raids on Egyptian army positions to provoke Egypt's President Nasser into violent reprisals preceding its ill-fated invasion of Egypt; in 1981-1982, when it launched violent raids on Lebanon in order to provoke Palestinian escalation preceding the Israeli invasion of Lebanon; and between 2001-2004, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon repeatedly ordered assassinations of high-level Palestinian militants during declared ceasefires, provoking violent attacks that enabled Israel's virtual reoccupation of the West Bank.

Israel's current assault on Gaza bears many trademark elements of Israel's long history of employing "strategic escalation" to manufacture a major crisis, if not a war.

Making War 'Inevitable'
The countdown to a war began, according to a detailed report by Barak Raviv in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak started planning the current attack on Gaza with his chiefs of staff at least six months ago — even as Israel was negotiating the Egyptian brokered ceasefire with Hamas that went into effect on June 19. During the subsequent ceasefire, the report contends, the Israeli security establishment carefully gathered intelligence to map out Hamas' security infrastructure, engaged in operational deception, and spread disinformation to mislead the public about its intentions.

This revelation doesn't confirm that Israel intended to start a war with Hamas in December, but it does shed some light on why Israel continuously took steps that undermined the terms of the fragile ceasefire with Hamas, even though Hamas respected their side of the agreement.

Indeed, there was a genuine lull in rocket and mortar fire between June 19 and November 4, due to Hamas compliance and only sporadically violated by a small number of launchings carried out by rival Fatah and Islamic Jihad militants, largely in defiance of Hamas. According to the conservative Israeli-based Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center's analysis of rocket and missile attacks in 2008, there were only three rockets fired at Israel in July, September, and October combined. Israeli civilians living near Gaza experienced an almost unprecedented degree of security during this period, with no Israeli casualties.

Yet despite the major lull, Israel continually raided the West Bank, arresting and frequently killing "wanted" Palestinians from June to October, which had the inevitable effect of ratcheting up pressure on Hamas to respond. Moreover, while the central expectation of Hamas going into the ceasefire was that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza, Israel only took the barest steps to ease the siege, which kept the people at a bare survival level. This policy was a clear affront to Hamas, and had the inescapable effect of undermining both Hamas and popular Palestinian support for the ceasefire.

But Israel's most provocative action, acknowledged by many now as the critical turning point that undermined the ceasefire, took place on November 4, when Israeli forces auspiciously violated the truce by crossing into the Gaza Strip to destroy what the army said was a tunnel dug by Hamas, killing six Hamas militants. Sara Roy, writing in the London Review of Books, contends this attack was "no doubt designed finally to undermine the truce between Israel and Hamas established last June."

The Israeli breach into Gaza was immediately followed by a further provocation by Israel on November 5, when the Israeli government hermetically sealed off all ways into and out of Gaza. As a result, the UN reports that the amount of imports entering Gaza has been "severely reduced to an average of 16 truckloads per day — down from 123 truckloads per day in October and 475 trucks per day in May 2007 — before the Hamas takeover." These limited shipments provide only a fraction of the supplies needed to sustain 1.5 million starving Palestinians.

In response, Hamas predictably claimed that Israel had violated the truce and allowed Islamic Jihad to launch a round of rocket attacks on Israel. Only after lethal Israeli reprisals killed over 10 Hamas gunmen in the following days did Hamas militants finally respond with volleys of mortars and rockets of their own. In two short weeks, Israel killed over 15 Palestinian militants, while about 120 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel, and although there were no Israeli casualties the calm had been shattered.

It was at this time that Israeli officials launched what appears to have been a coordinated media blitz to cultivate public reception for an impending conflict, stressing the theme of the "inevitability" of a coming war with Hamas in Gaza. On November 12, senior IDF officials announced that war with Hamas was likely in the two months after the six-month ceasefire, baldly stating it would occur even if Hamas wasn't interested in confrontation. A few days later, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly ordered his military commanders to draw up plans for a war in Gaza, which were already well developed at the time. On November 19, according to Raviv's report in Haaretz, the Gaza war plan was brought before Barak for final approval.

While the rhetoric of an "inevitable" war with Hamas may have only been Israeli bluster to compel Hamas into line, its actions on the ground in the critical month leading up to the official expiration of the ceasefire on December 19 only heightened the cycle of violence, leaving a distinct impression Israel had cast the die for war.

Finally, Hamas then walked right into the "inevitable war" that Israel had been preparing since the ceasefire had gone into effect in June. With many Palestinians believing the ceasefire to be meaningless, Hamas announced it wouldn't renew the ceasefire after it expired on December 19. Hamas then stood back for two days while Islamic Jihad and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militants fired volleys of mortars and rockets into Israel, in the context of mutually escalating attacks. Yet even then, with Israeli threats of war mounting, Hamas imposed a 24-hour ceasefire on all missile attacks on December 21, announcing it would consider renewing the lapsed truce with Israel in the Gaza Strip if Israel would halt its raids in both Gaza and the West Bank, and keep Gaza border crossings open for supplies of aid and fuel. Israel immediately rejected its offer.

But when the Israel Defence Forces killed three Hamas militants laying explosives near the security fence between Israel and Gaza on the evening of December 23, the Hamas military wing lashed out by launching a barrage of over 80 missiles into Israel the following day, claiming it was Israel, and not Hamas, that was responsible for the escalation.

Little did they know that, according to Raviv, Prime Minister Olmert, and Defense Minister Barak had already met on December 18 to approve the impending war plan, but put the mission off waiting for a better pretext. By launching more than 170 rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians in the days following December 23, killing one Israeli civilian, Hamas had provided reason enough for Israel to unleash its long-planned attack on Gaza on December 27.

The Rationale for War
If Israel's goal were simply to end rocket attacks on its civilians, it would have solidified and extended the ceasefire, which was working well, until November. Even after November, it could have addressed Hamas' longstanding ceasefire proposals for a complete end to rocket-fire on Israel, in exchange for Israel lifting its crippling 18-month siege on Gaza.

Instead, the actual targets of its assault on Gaza after December 27, which included police stations, mosques, universities, and Hamas government institutions, clearly reveal that Israel's primary goals go far beyond providing immediate security for its citizens. Israeli spokespersons repeatedly claim that Israel's assault isn't about seeking to effect regime change with Hamas, but rather about creating a "new security reality" in Gaza. But that "new reality" requires Israel to use massive violence to degrade the political and military capacity of Hamas, to a point where it agrees to a ceasefire with conditions more congenial to Israel. Short of a complete reoccupation of Gaza, no amount of violence will erase Hamas from the scene.

Confirming the steps needed to create the "new reality," the broader reasons why Israel chose a major confrontation with Hamas at this time appear to be the cause of several other factors unrelated to providing immediate security for its citizens.

First, many senior Israeli political and military leaders strongly opposed the June 19 ceasefire with Hamas, and looked for opportunities to reestablish Israel's fabled "deterrent capability" of instilling fear into its enemies. These leaders felt Israel's deterrent capability was badly damaged as a result of their withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and especially after the widely criticized failures in the 2006 Israeli war with Hezbollah. For this powerful group a ceasefire was at best a tactical pause before the inevitable renewal of conflict, when conditions were more favorable. Immediately following Israel's aerial assault, a New York Times article noted that Israel had been eager "to remind its foes that it has teeth" and to erase the ghost of Lebanon that has haunted it over the past two years.

A second factor was pressure surrounding the impending elections set to take place in early February. The ruling coalition, led by Barak and Livni, have been repeatedly criticized by the Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister, who is leading in the polls, for not being tough enough on Hamas and rocket-fire from Gaza. This gave the ruling coalition a strong incentive to demonstrate to the Israeli people their security credentials in order to bolster their chances against the more hawkish Likud.

Third, Hamas repeatedly said it wouldn't recognize Mahmud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority after his term runs out on January 9. The looming political standoff on the Palestinian side threatens to boost Hamas and undermine Abbas, who had underseen closer security coordination with Israel and was congenial to Israeli demands for concessions on future peace proposals. One possible outcome of this assault is that Abbas will remain in power for a while longer, since Hamas will be unable to mobilise its supporters in order to force him to resign.

And finally, Israel was pressed to take action now due to its sense of the American political timeline. The Bush administration rarely exerted constraint on Israel and would certainly stand by in its waning days, while Barack Obama would not likely want to begin his presidency with a major confrontation with Israel. The Washington Post quoted a Bush administration official saying that Israel struck in Gaza "because they want it to be over before the next administration comes in. They can't predict how the next administration will handle it. And this is not the way they want to start with the new administration."

An Uncertain Ending
As the conflict rages to an uncertain end, it's important to consider Israeli military historian Zeev Maoz's contention that Israel's history of manufacturing wars through "strategic escalation" and using overwhelming force to achieve "deterrence" has never been successful. In fact, it's the primary cause of Israel's insecurity because it deepens hatred and a desire for revenge rather than fear.

At the same time, there's no question Hamas continues to callously sacrifice its fellow Palestinian citizens, as well as Israeli civilians, on the altar of maintaining its pyrrhic resistance credentials and its myopic preoccupation with revenge, and fell into many self-made traps of its own. There had been growing international pressure on Israel to ease its siege and a major increase in creative and nonviolent strategies drawing attention to the plight of Palestinians such as the arrival of humanitarian relief convoys off of Gaza's coast in the past months, but now Gaza lies in ruins.

But as the vastly more powerful actor holding nearly all the cards in this conflict, the war in Gaza was ultimately Israel's choice. And for all this bloodshed and violence, Israel must be held accountable.

With the American political establishment firmly behind Israel's attack, and Obama's foreign policy team heavily weighted with pro-Israel insiders like Dennis Ross and Hillary Clinton, any efforts to hold Israel accountable in the United States will depend upon American citizens mobilizing a major grassroots effort behind a new foreign policy that will not tolerate any violations of international law, including those by Israel, and will immediately work towards ending Israel's siege of Gaza and ending Israel's occupation.

Beyond that, the most promising prospect for holding Israel accountable is through the increasing use of universal jurisdiction for prosecuting war crimes, along with the growing transnational movement calling for sanctions on Israel until it ends its violations of international law. In what would be truly be a new style of foreign policy, a transnational network that focuses on Israeli violations of international law, rather than the state itself, could become a counterweight that forces policymakers in the United States, Europe, and Israel to reconsider their political and moral complicity in the current war, in favor of taking real steps towards peace and security in the region for all peoples.

Steve Niva, a professor of International Politics and Middle East Studies at The Evergreen State College, is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. He is currently writing a book on the relationship between Israel's military violence and Palestinian suicide bombings.

v

Palestine: The Never Before Campaign Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXmApwqppYk

Jan 6, 2009

Gazing at Gaza's Destruction: Israelis Sip Pepsi, US Progressives See 'Silver Lining'

by Chris Floyd


Here we see Israelis in Sderot – the chief target of the homemade bombs which we are told are the cause of the current ravaging of Gaza. These Hamas "terror bombs" are so frighteningly powerful and destructive that no response against them can be "disproportionate," we are told by Israeli and American leaders; everything is justified in "retaliation," including the complete destruction of the social, civic and physical infrastructure of an entire human community, and the killing and terrorizing of innocent people. It's those homemade bombs falling on Sderot, you see; they are such an overwhelming, ever-present, inescapable threat.

So threatening, in fact, that some of the Israelis in this picture drove down to Sderot from Jerusalem to sit out in the open air – on a hilltop in plain sight of the Gaza village from which many of the rockets have been launched, and calmly sip Pepsi as they watch the military action taking place not two miles away. Shouldn't "terror" be made of sterner stuff? Especially terror which merits the widespread slaughter and suffering of innocent people? Could there possibly be some – how to put it? – disconnection between the stated cause of the military action and its true purpose?

McClatchy Newspapers relates a tale of two cities in an excellent piece on the suprisingly calm, unthreatened, unfrightened folk of Sderot – and the hell of innocent families two miles away in Beit Hanoun. Some excerpts below:

A tower of white smoke rose from the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun after another Israeli bombardment Monday morning, and a half-dozen Israelis, perched on a dusty hilltop, gazed at the scene like armchair military strategists.

Avi Pilchick took a long swig of Pepsi and propped a foot on the plastic patio chair he'd carried up the hillside to watch the fighting. "They are doing good," Pilchick, 20, said of Israeli forces battling Palestinian militants in Gaza, "but they can do more."

Somewhere in Beit Hanoun, Ashraf El-Masri's family cowered in their concrete tenement home, their neighborhood surrounded by Israeli soldiers. El-Masri said that five residents had been killed by Israeli shelling that morning, and the blasts had traumatized the youngest of his nine children into a terrified silence...

On the hilltop overlooking Beit Hanoun, Pilchick squinted into the sharp sunlight. He'd taken time off from his job at a foreign exchange bureau in Jerusalem and driven down to Sderot with a friend on Saturday, the day the ground operation opened...Sderot residents — some of them carrying binoculars — have gathered on the hilltop since the offensive began for a glimpse of the fighting...

In their darkened home in Beit Hanoun, Ashraf El-Masri's children were in utter distress. No one has stepped outside since Israeli ground forces entered the town Saturday night, and more Israeli shelling awakened them Monday morning, including a strike on a nearby mosque.

El-Masri's 12-year-old son, Abdelatif, has suddenly begun to wet the bed. His 10-year-old, Ahmad, a talented soccer player and popular kid in the neighborhood, spends the days hiding in a corner of the room where the whole family now sleeps. Four-year-old Mahmoud, usually a nonstop talker, is barely saying a word...

This harrowing of innocent children and their families is not confined to Beit Hanoun, of course, as the Guardian reports in "Besieged families flee homes for shelter under UN flag":

Mahmoud Khalil looked around the classroom and decided the safest place for his children was under the desks. UN officials had reassured the father of five he and his family would be protected by the large blue and white flag flying above the UN-run school turned refugee shelter. But with the sound of large explosions on the edge of Jabaliya refugee camp, just north of Gaza City, and his children still terrified from the trauma of their escape, Khalil was taking no chances.

"They will kill us anywhere. If they can bomb the mosque, if they can kill small children, if they can blow up our parliament, why should they care if they bomb this school? They don't care what the United Nations thinks.They don't care what the whole world thinks," he said, when reached by telephone....

"God willing, [the desks] will protect them," he said. "They are terrified after what they have seen. Explosions near our house. Everybody running away. The Israelis dropped leaflets and said on the radio we must all get out or they will kill us because they are going to bomb our houses."

But where to flee? In other conflicts refugees move across borders or to quieter regions. But Gaza's 1.5 million residents are trapped behind the long Israeli fence, dotted with machine gun posts and watchtowers, that makes their home a prison. There is no way out.

But of course, all of this suffering is worth it, if it makes the audience sitting on the open hill in terrorized Sderot feel a little bit better.

[Not that the Israeli assault has stopped the homemade rocket fire -- but then, it was never intended to do that. The Israeli power structure doesn't want to do that, any more than the Washington powerstructure wants to end, or even "win," the "War on Terror." After all,if the "terror" ends, what will happen to all those groovy"anti-terror" powers -- and the even groovier gravy of unlimited warpork?]

But yes, we all certainly want Israeli yuppies to feelcomfortable as they sip soft drinks and watch children beingtraumatized and terrorized a couple of miles away. So this kind of thing is also worth it (Reuters, via Antiwar.com):

The three little children lying on the floor of the overcrowded morgue looked like sleeping dolls.

"Get up, boy, get up" cried the weeping father, who lost a total of 13 close relatives when an Israeli shell hit his house east of Gaza City.

"Please get up. I am your dad and I need you," he implored helplessly. The oldest was 4 years old. Their mother was killed too.

Mourning is also dangerous in Gaza.

Jaber Abdel-Dayem was watching over the body of a nephew, a paramedic killed in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza Strip. "We were sitting in the mourning tent when suddenly they bombed us, we ran to rush the casualties to hospital but they bombed again," he said. He did not really know if it was bombing or tank fire. Medics said three people were killed and 17 wounded.

Abdel-Dayem stood beside their bodies. "Those include my son, my nephew, my cousin. Oh God," he cried as tears started from his eyes.

"Please get up. I am your dad and I need you."

Oh yes, that child's death -- and many, many, many, many more – are worth it to keep the open-air, comfy-chaired Pepsi drinkers fromfeeling so threatened that they can, er, sit out in the open air in comfy chairs and drink Pepsi in the face of the, uh, overwhelming threat that terrorizes them beyond all reckoning. Yes, yes, yes, worth every drop of blood.

And yes, of course, it is wonderfully wise of Barack Obama to remain steadfastly silent in the face of this suffering. Our progressives tell us that he is being so marvelously cagey and politic, that he is hoarding his political capital now in order to bring real hope and change to the Mid-East as soon as he dons the imperial purple.

Over at Huffington Post, that hotbed of steely-eyed progressive realism, human rights lawyer Lisa Gans assures us that Obama's silence at the mass murder of children in Gaza is actually maybe probably an implicit criticism of Bush's support for the invasion. And in fact, the whole invasion itself could well be due to Israel's "sophisticated" understanding of U.S. politics: they knew that Obama would never ever let them get away with a stunt like this, so they pulled the trigger while Bush was still in office.

Why, in fact, this whole kerfuffle, this whole little spot of bother, the death of those little children who won't get up for their grieving father, could well be a blessing in disguise for "those hoping that the U.S. might once again provide moral leadership in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," says Lisa Gans, who is not only a human rights lawyer but a member of the Council on Foreign Relations too, so she is a very serious person who knows what she's talking about for sure. Gans tells us that:

There may be a silver lining to the tragic events unfolding in Gaza, as Israel's actions may suggest that it expects, as Hamas should too,greater pressure from the U.S. for serious concessions from both sides.

Well, every cloud has a silver lining, they say. In fact, I read that in one of my children's Care Bear books the other day, so it must be true. In the Bear's case, a search for a tragically lost hat led to the discovery of a perfect place for a picnic -- and the hat too, of course! In the case of Gaza, the corpses of three dead children laid at the feet of their father will probably maybe conjecturally lead to "greater pressure" from Washington for "serious concessions" from bothHamas and Israel. And they'll probably all find their hats as well!

Except for all the dead children, of course. And the surviving children traumatized into silence and torment. Oh, and also for the Israelis, who will now face the inevitable -- and doubtless clearly forseen -- radicalization of the survivors, as Reuters also noted:

Hundreds of Palestinians queued from early morning outside bakeries in Gaza City, their patience running out.

"I've been here for three hours and I will have to wait longer. Maybe a missile will bomb us so we can be rid of such a miserable life," said Abu Othman, a father of seven.

He said his sympathy was growing for the Hamas Islamists whose rocket fire into Israel triggered the offensive.

"I used to criticise the rockets. Maybe I still do but not like before. Now I want to see buses blown up in Israel," said Othman.

Mission accomplished! For this attitude actually represents a clear-cut victory for the makers of Terror War. The more radical the targeted people become, the easier it is to maintain the vast military-security complexes in their wonted (and profitable) ascendancy. It also simplifies diplomacy too. No more messing around with long, protracted negotiations with the legitimate representatives of your targets (such as the democratically elected administration of Hamas); no, all you have left are "extremists" full of "pure evil" who can be attacked and killed as your own political and financial agendas require.

This dynamic of state terror and deliberate radicalization is now the operating system for much of the world: we see it at work in the US, Israel, Britain, Russia, China, Turkey and elsewhere. And as long as our elites -- even our "progressive" elites, even our earnest "human rights lawyers" -- can see "silver linings" in state terror and sheer butchery, can see "silver linings" in a four-year-old child killed and laid out on the floor, then absolutely nothing will change.

Israëli education based on heterophobia and racism.


Nurit Peled-Elhanans speech op avond van Ander Joods Geluid 7.5.2008 te Amsterdam:

I wouldlike to dedicate my words today to a young woman of thirty years old Miasar Abu Maatak, and to her children Rudeina and Hana, ages 3 and 6, to her son Salah age 4 and to her baby Musaab, age 15 months who were all killed on the 28.4.2008 by Israeli soldiers as they were eating in their home yard in Gaza. Four children and their mother have joined the evergrowing underground kingdom of dead children where my own little girl lies alongside Palestinian children in perfect equality.

Israel said it was sorry – as if it was a wrong move in a ping-pong game - but immediately blamed the Hamas, which was compared to Nazis. Foreign minister Zipi Livni said to the Jerusalem Post:

“I would expect that when Israeli civilians are harmed by deliberate Palestinian terrorism, people won't make a comparison between them and Palestinian civilians that are harmed during Israel's defense operations."

And the murderers? What about them? Do they know they have committed a crime? Do they toss and turn in their beds at night? Are they tormented by images of the small bodies that convulse and fall under their rifles, bombs and shells? Probably not. We know of no case in which an Israeli or any other soldier turned himself in and expressed remorse for his actions. This is the biggest success of Israeli education: the distinction between blood and blood, between a Jewish dead child and an Arab dead child, and the inculcating of the conviction that the murder of Palestinians and their children is not a crime. Everyone who enlists in the Israeli army knows that and is being prepared for that in 12 years of schooling.

However, no child is born evil. Not even Israeli children. The young men who killed the Al-Maatak family, like those who invaded the Centre for Remedial Education in Gaza and wrecked it to pieces, those who torture people in the checkpoints and order old women to undress at gun point, who harass and destroy and spread terror around them, were not born evil. They are all the product of education.

The cruelty that cannot be expressed in words, the orderly, ingenious abuse, that the best Jewish brains have been put to work planning and perfecting, did not emerge from a void. It is the fruit of systematic, deep, total education.

Israel's children are educated within an uncompromisingly racist discourse. A racist discourse that does not stop at checkpoints, but governs all human relations in this country.

Israel's children are educated to see in the evil that they are destined to implement immediately after the end of their schooling, a necessity of the reality in which they are called to fulfill their roles.

For sixty years now, racism, heterophobia and megalomania have dictated our lives. Sixty years during which Israeli children are educated in racism of the type that has been unknown in the civilized world for decades. Sixty years during which they have learned to hate the neighbours just because they are neighbours, to fear them without knowing them, to equate them with Nazis, to see a quarter of the citizens of the State as a demographic danger and an enemy within, and to relate to the residents of the ghettos created by the policy of occupation as a problem that must be 'solved'. Only sixty years ago Jews were residents of ghettos and seen in the eyes of their oppressors as a problem that needed to be solved. Only sixty years ago the Jews were enclosed behind ugly concrete and electrified walls topped with watchtowers manned by erect armed figures, and deprived of the ability to make a living or to raise their children with dignity. Only sixty years ago racism exacted its price from the Jewish people. Today racism rules in the Jewish state, tramples people’s dignity underfoot and deprives them of liberty, condemns all of us to lives of hell. For forty years now the Jewish head has unceasingly been bowed in worship of racism while the Jewish mind is devising the most creative ways to devastate and demolish and destroy the holy land which has become a wasteland. That is what remains of the Jewish genius, once it becomes Israeli. Jewish compassion, Jewish mercy, Jewish cosmopolitan spirit, love of humanity and respect for the other have been long forgotten. Their place was claimed by hate and suspicion and racism. It was only racism that motivated the soldiers to kill innocent children and their parents in Gaza. It is only racism that motivates the drivers of bulldozers to demolish houses on top of their occupants, to destroy vineyards and fields, to uproot centuries-old olive trees. Only racism can invent roads on which circulation is classified on the basis of race, and it is only racism that motivates our children to humiliate women who could be their mothers and to abuse old people at the evil checkpoints, to strike young people their own age who, like them, want to drive with their families to bathe in the sea, and to look on impassively as women give birth on the road. It is only pure racism that motivates our best pilots to drop one-ton bombs on residential buildings in Gaza and it is only racism that permits those criminals to sleep well at night.

This racism has erected for itself a monument in its own image – the monument of an ugly, rigid, menacing and invasive concrete wall. A monument that proclaims to the whole world the banishment of shame and compassion from the holy land. Because racism eliminates shame. This wall is our wall of shame, it is testimony to the fact that we have turned from being a light unto the nations to “an xobject of disgrace to the nations and a mockery to all the countries.” **

And yet we succeed in packing endless daily suffering, hunger, malnutrition, children’s trauma, disablement, orphanhood and bereavement into one alienating word: “politics”?

And yet our children continue to strut and swagger in the uniforms of brutality that they wear when they serve in the army of slaughter and destruction?

And yet all the splendid institutions of the world stand aside and cannot do a thing to save one child from death or to remove one concrete block from the wall of shame? And yet none of the peace and human rights organizations is able to stop the jeeps of the Border Guards that come to terrify schoolchildren and to kill them, or to demolish houses on top of their occupants, to rescue one olive tree from destruction or one schoolgirl who lost her way to school and found herself in the gunsights of the soldiers of the Occupation?

The reason for this success is that the State of Israel is able to silence and paralyze the entire world because there was a Holocaust. The State of Israel has acquired a permit to abuse an entire nation because there is anti-Semitism. The State of Israel is bringing existential disaster – economic, social and human, on its citizens and on its subjects and no one dares to stop it because once there was Hitler. And all that while the survivors of the Holocaust are suffering the ignominy of hunger in the Jewish democracy of Israel.

This evening I want to appeal to you for help in ridding Israel of the shame. To explain to the world that if it wants to rescue the people of Israel and the Palestinian people from the imminent holocaust that threatens all of us it is necessary to condemn the policy of occupation, the dominion of death must be stopped in its tracks.

The time has come for us to stop handing our children over to an educational establishment that plants in them false and racist values and teaches them that their contribution to society is summed up in the abuse and killing of other people’s children. The time has come for us to reveal to them that the local population of the world is not divided into good Jews and Anti-Semitic non-Jews as is written in their school-books, but into human beings who want to live in peace and quiet in spite of everything, and to those who crave for war and bloodshed, and that both groups include Jews and non-Jews. Because Israel's children are educated to see international resolutions, laws and orders as empty utterances that do not apply to us because they were devised by non-Jews. Today, while the entire civilized world enjoys slandering and smearing the Palestinian education system, there is no school-book in Israel that presents a picture of a Palestinian as a modern ordinary human being. The only representations of Palestinian citizens and non-citizens are Primitive farmers or nomads – usually in the form of a caricature - refugees that go from nowhere to nowhere, and face-covered terrorists. There is no school-book in Israel that presents a map that shows the true borders of the State. Israel's children learn that the real geographical entity that belongs to us is the biblical promised Land of Israel, which includes parts of Jordan and Lebanon and of which the State of Israel is only a small and temporary part.

There is no school-book in Israel in which the word “occupation” appears. Our children are conscripted into the army of occupation without knowing the place in which they are living and without knowing its history and its people. Israel's children know more about Europe their imagined homeland and the heart's desire of the rulers of the country than they do about the Middle East in which they live and from which more than half of the Israeli population derives its origins. Jewish children in the State of Israel are educated to legitimate past and present massacres of Palestinian in the name of the Jewish Democratic state and its vital need to keep a Jewish majority.

They join the army imbued with hate and fear. Our children are educated to see everyone who is not Jewish as the Goy, the Other, who generation after generation seeks to destroy us. This is not education, this is mind infection. And infected minds are very easy to manipulate and therefore very convenient for the military establishment which turns our children into monsters.

Therefore the only way to prevent our children from becoming tools in the hands of the machine of destruction is to teach them the real history of their region, to draw for them its real borders, to help them to know the neighbours, their culture, their customs, their courtesy, their beauty and their rights on the land where they live and lived for many generations before the Zionist Pioneers arrived at the Promised Land of Israel. And above all to teach them not to submit to the State, not to respect its authority, because the State is ruled by petty thieves and base opportunists who do not control their impulses even in the most dire times and run the country according to the laws of the Mafia. You killed one of mine - I’ll kill a hundred of yours. You threw a home-made bomb at me - I’ll drop on you a hundred of the most elaborate and destructive bombs in the world that will leave no trace of you or your family or your neighbours. You burned one of my cars so I’ll burn one of your cities. That is the logic of the criminal world.

This is the logic inculcated to Israeli children in their schools.

This evening we must think about those who are condemned to death in the next year, and of those who are condemned to fall into crime under the cover of the law and the uniform. We must rescue all of them. We must teach all of them not to obey orders that, even if they are legal according to the race laws of this State, are manifestly inhuman.

Some young people like Israeli refusniks such as 'Combatants for Peace' have managed to free theselves from the virus of racism, but most of our mind infected children would not be free of the grip of those viruses until they find their final rest in the evergrowing, underground kingdom of dead children . Only there will they realize that is doesn’t matter whether their head was bare or not in a synagogue or a church or a mosque, whether they were circumcised or not, whether they pronounced forbidden words, ate pig or cow or whether they had a hot chocolate after their salami pizza just before they were blown up by someone who didn't. And when these children die for the profits of somebody else their parents bear it with dignity and pride, as they were taught, put their dead children's photographs on the mantelpiece and sigh: He was so handsome in uniform. It is time to tell these parents that no-one is handsome in the uniform of brutality. It is time to tell them uniforms and ranks and medals have become ugly. Tell them their dignity and pride are misplaced.

It is time to tell Jewish people that the only way to discourage anti-Semitism is by condemning the only government in the world who deliberately sends young Jewish boys and girls to their certain death in unnecessary wars and who persecutes to the point of genocide a whole Semitic nation, explain to them that it is the Jewish government and the actions of its army, not some primordial hatred for the Jewish race, which are the reasons for the invention of the new sign we often see in pro-Palestinian demonstration, where the Star of David is equated with the swastika.

It is a terribly hard task for people who were educated in Israel or in the USA or in Holland, to admit we were raised on false racist values. On heterophobia and racism. The only thing that can enhance such a change of spirit is the constant image of the mutilated small bodies of the victims of these values .Nevertheless, we must all ask our children's forgiveness for not being more alert, for not fighting sooner to keep our promises for a better world, and for letting them be the victims of the horrible, mental infection we are all suffering from. Our crying need today is to expose this racist system of education and to demand its revision. Unless we do that, very soon there will be nothing else to say, nothing else to write, nothing else to hear except for the muted cries of dead children.

Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan: Laureate of the 2001 Sakharov Prize awarded by the European Parliamant

is a lecturer in Language Education, TelAvivUniversity and the DavidYellinTeachers College

e-mail: nuritpeled@gmail.com

Fax: ++972-2-5700112, tel:++972-2-5700112, ++972-547-578703.

Address : 5a Hamitnahalim Bahar st. Ramat Motza,Jerusalem 96771

Awards:

1999: Donna de l'anno – woman of the year: from the region of Val d'Aosta and Rai

2001 – The Sakharov Prize for human rights and the freedom of thought, Awarded by the European Parliament.

2007 – Prix de la Fondation Paul K. Feyerabend: "Un monde solidaire est possible.»

Education:

1967- Graduated from high school – major: Languages (English and French)

1968-1971: Undergraduate studies at U.C.L.A major: French, Minor: History

1969-1970: A year of studies at the Sorbonne in Paris.

1980-1981: Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from The Hebrew University. Thesis: An analysis of the Hebrew and the American translations to Racine’s Phedre. (supervisor: Prof. Shimon Zandbank)

1995- Phd. from the Institute of Communication at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem: Between Speech and Writing: the development of oral and written text production by Israeli schoolchildren from 3d to 9th grade.(Supervised by Prof. Shoshana Blum-Kulka)

1997-1998- Post-Doctorate at the Culture, Communication and Society group

In the Institute of Education, University of London: Social Semiotics and Academic Literacy.

July 1998 - Summer Institute of Systemic Functional Grammar with MAK Halliday, Cardiff University.

2003-2004- A Leverhulme Visiting fellow at the Institute of Education London University. Culture, Communication and Society group.

Current research:

1.The Semiotics of Ideology – a multimodal analysis of Israeli schoolbooks in History, Science, Civics and Geography (Partly granted by the Leverhume Foundation through The Institute of Education, LondonUniversity and the Mofet institute for Educational Research, Israel.).

2. Dialogue in the Multicultural Class in Israel (1992-2008): An ongoing independent research regarding the dialogue between teachers and new-comers in Israel.

Previous research:

1. Language Education at home and at school : 1993-2004.

2. The development of oral and written text production at school 1994-1998

Publications

Edited Volumes:

Peled, N. and Valdan, Z. editors 1996: On the Way to Literacy, vol. 1: From

Speech to Writing: An anthology .Carmel Publishers, Jerusalem.

Peled, N. editor (2000): On the Way to Literacy: Vol.2: From Speech to Story. Carmel Publishers, Jerusalem.

Authored Books:

Peled, N. 1998: Genres in Speech and Writing The Mofet Institute for research in Education.

Forthcoming books:


1. Palestine in the Israeli Classroom: A social Semiotic analysis of Israeli text books in History and Geography 1996-2003. Accepted by Tauris Publishers, London (see contract below).To be submitted October 2008.

Forthcoming papers:

Layout as a punctuation of Semiosis: the analysis of ideological layout in Israeli History schoolbooks (submitted and accepted, Visual Communication. To be published 2008).

Processes of Legitimation: reports about massacres of Palestinians in Israeli History school books (invited by the Journal of Applied Linguistics)


Recent Articles in Refereed Journals and Invited Chapters in Edited Volumes:

Peled-Elhanan, N. 2000: The Nature of Narrative School text, in: Peled, N ed.: On the Way to Literacy, vol. II: From Speech to Story. Carmel Publishers, Jerusalem, Israel. (Hebrew)

Blum-Kulka, Sh. and Peled, N. 2002: Child-directed "Ulpanit" the teaching of Hebrew to new-comers. In: Claudia Ramer Ed. Festschrift for Willis Edmondson. (English)

2005 - The perpetuation of Jewish National and Territorial identity in Israeli schoolbooks .in: Approaches to Discourse Analysis Research Papers presented at the CDA international conference proceedings 2004. Ed. M.Labarta-Postigo. Spain. University of Valencia publishers. (English).

2006: Dialogue in the Israeli classroom (co-written with Sh. Blum-Kulka) The Journal of Language and Education March 2006. UK(English)

2007- When the other is neither seen nor heard: From teaching as socialization to teaching as access and inclusion: Some examples form dialogue with immigrant children in the Israeli multicultural class: In: Bamichlala 19- The College Voice: Research, Essays and Literary Works, vol. no.8, Autumn 2007, Jerusalem. The David Yellin Teachers College Publications

2008 - Education or Mind Infection? In: Mary Compton and Lois Weiner, Editors

The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and their Unions: Stories for Resistance pp. 201-213. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™.New York and Hampshire, England

The establishment of Israeli identity through Racist Discourse. In: The International Journal of Diversity: Organisations, Nations and Communities. no. 7/6 Melbourne, Australia. Common Ground Publishing Pty Ltd.)To be published 2008.

The denial of Palestinian National and Territorial Identity in Israeli Schoolbooks of History and Geography 1998-2003 in: Rosana Dolón & Júlia Todolí Editors: Analysing Identities in Discourse John Benjamin publishers.


Articles in Refereed Journals and Invited Chapters in Edited Volumes before 2000:

Peled, N. and Blum-Kulka, Sh. 1992: From Speech to Writing: Children’s Text Production. Maagalei Kriah (A Magazine for Reading Research) 21 July 1992 University of Haifa Press.p.111-127 (Hebrew)

Peled, N. 1992: Interlanguage and error analysis: Some examples of interlanguage of Russian speaking children. in Ole Al Hadaat, A magazine for the study of Hebrew as a second language, no 2, September 1992 The Ministry of Education. P.3-6 (Hebrew)

Peled, N. 1993: How do teachers and pupils conceive of writing tasks in: Ornan,U. , Touri, G & Ben-Shahar, R. Eds: Hebrew is A Living Language. eds, University of Haifa Press.p. 35-63 (Hebrew)

Peled, N. 1993: Discourse in new-comers classes as enhancing or inhibiting learning: Some examples from Hebrew classes to newcomers. Maxshavot Ktuvot10-11 A Magazine for the study of language education, The Bet Berl Institute Press.p.8-30 (Hebrew)

Peled, N. 1994: On spoken language: The characteristics of classroom discourse in: Maxshavot Ktuvot 12-13 A Magazine for the study of language education, The Bet Berl Institute Press.p.3-18. (Hebrew)

Peled-Elhanan, N. 1996: The Nature of Literacy development at school in: Shai, A. and Burstein, R. Eds. Bamichlala – The College Voice: Research, Essays and Literary Works, vol. no.8, Autumn 1996, Jerusalem. The David Yellin Teachers College Pub. P. 114-176. (Hebrew)

Peled, N. and Blum-Kulka, Sh. 1997: Dialogue in the Israeli classroom Xelkat

Lashon, 24. Seminar Levinsky Publishers. P. 28-61. (Hebrew)

Papers to be submitted:

1. The Geography of Hostility – a Multimodal analysis of Geography textbooks in Israel. (to Visual Communication).


Chapter accepted for refereed books:

Education to Hostility: The representation of Palestinians in IsraeliSchool books (in Hebrew. For The book of Periphery and Centre. Mandel institute.)

Ideological Layout: Some examples of the representation of Israeli-Arab relationships in Israeli history School-Books (For: The Shoshana blum-Kulka Jubilee Book)

Invited talks:

2003 - Israeli Textbooks: The European Parliament political committee on Palestinian and Israeli Textbooks, Oct.23. Paris.(with Dr. Sami Adwan, BethlehemUniversity)

2004 - Dialogue in the Israeli multicultural classroom – The institute of Education, LondonUniversity, 5.4.2004.

2004- Talking to children in times of War: The institute of Education, LondonUniversity, 10.6.2004.

June 27.2006: (Key-note lecture) University of British Columbia- Peace Education Conference: Social-Semiotic Analysis of the Israeli narrative as presented in Israeli textbooks in History and Geography.


Recent Papers Presented in Conferences:

November 14-16, 2007- The Semiotics of Israeli Racist Education. DUO- Dialogue Under Occupation Al-Quds university, Abu-Dies.

July 3-6, 2007- The function of racist discourse in the establishment of Israeli identity: Examples from Israeli classrooms for new-comers. - 7th International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations. Amsterdam, the Netherlands

September 20-23. 2006. Journées d’études - Education et transmission en terre de conflits. University of Paris 8(Saint-Denis): Coopération Paris 8 – Israël – Territoires Palestiniens: The narrative of the Other – Analysis of Israeli and Palestinian narratives in the joint History textbook: Learning to read the Narrative of the other (PRIME Publishers).(co-presented with Dr. Sami Adwan, BethlehemUniversity)

June 22-25. 2006: The Learning Conference, Montego Bay, Jamaica: Layout as a punctuation of semiosis: the analysis of ideological layout in Israeli History schoolbooks.

11.5.2006: When the other is neither seen nor heard: dialogue with children in the Israeli multicultural class: Dilemmas in the implication of literacy policies. In commemoration of Zvi Lam conference, The David Yellin College,

2005 – Genre and discourse analysis of Racist Discourse in Israeli schoolbooks of History and Geography : The annual conference of the Israeli association for the study of language and society, Bar-Illan university 16.6.2005.

2005- Processes of Legitimation: A critical multimodal and discourse analysis of reports about massacres in Israeli schoolbooks of History. EARLI annual conference, Nikosia, Cyprus, 23-27.8.2005.

2005- Language as Ideology - A critical multimodal analysis of Israeli schoolbooks. Ilah annual conference, Jerusalem, The David Yellin College, 25.10.2005.

5.5.2004 – The Establishment of Israeli National and Terrirorial Identity in Israeli textbooks, international CDA conference Valencia.

July 2004: The semiotics of ideology in education: multimodal ways to analyze textbooks. Summer Institute for Palestinian and Canadian teachers, University of Manitoba. Canada

2003 – Language and ideology in schoolbooks: a critical discourse and genre analysis of History, Geography and Science text books. The annual conference of the Israeli association for the study of language and society, Jerusalem 16.6.2003

2003 – Literacy profile as an instructive tool: the establishment of a literacy profile of students through dialogue. Script, Zichron Yaakov.

2001 – Language, Science and Ideology – A critical Analysis of verbal and visual discourse of textbooks in the natural and social sciences – the annual conference of SCRIPT –The Israeli Association for Literacy, Shfayim.

2001 - Dialogue and Motivation: SIGEARLI conference on motivation. University of Moscow and the Vygotski Institute.

2000 - Ideology and the Discourse of Science – Israeli Textbooks in Geography. Paper presented in the annual conference: Literacy in changing democracies, Culture, Communication and Society, The Institute of Education, LondonUniversity

www.icahd.org November 10, 2008


A Bone in America's Throat

By Jeff Halper

Even before the voting began, Israeli politicians and pundits were asking: Will an Obama Administration be good for Israel? "Be good for Israel" is our code for "Will the US allow us to keep our settlements and continue to support our efforts to prevent negotiations with the Palestinians from ever bearing fruit?" For Americans the question should be: Will the Obama Administration understand that without addressing Palestinian needs it will not be able to disentangle itself from its broader Middle Eastern imbroglios, rejoin the community of nations and rescue its economy?

The Israel-Palestine conflict should be of central concern to Americans, near the top of the new Administration's agenda. It may not be the bloodiest conflict in the world – its minor when compared to Iraq – but it is emblematic to Muslims and to peoples the world over of American hostility and belligerence. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not merely a localized one between two squabbling tribes.
It lies at the epicenter of global instability. Go where you may in the world and you will encounter the same phenomenon: a sense that the suffering of the Palestinians represents all that is wrong in an American-dominated world.

As Obama comes into office, he will encounter a global reality very different from that of eight years before: a multilateral one in which a weakened and isolated US must find its place. He will discover that much of America's isolation comes from the view that the Occupation of the Palestinian territories is, in fact, an American-Israeli Occupation. If restoring a weakened American economy depends on repairing relations with the rest of the world, he will learn that without resolving the Israeli-Palestine conflict he will not create those conditions in which the US will be accepted once more into the wider global community.

To be more specific, the Israel-Palestine conflict directly affects Americans in at least five ways:

  • It isolates the US from major global markets, forcing it to embark on aggressive measures to secure markets rather than peaceful accommodation;
  • It thereby diverts the American economy into non-productive production (tanks not roads), making it dependent upon deficit spending which only increases dependency upon foreign financing while diverting resources into the military rather than into education, health and investment;

  • Support for the Israeli military costs US taxpayers more than $3 billion annually at a time of deepening recession and crumbling national infrastructure;

  • It leads to an American involvement in the world that is mainly military, thus begetting hostility and resistance which produce the threats to security Americans so greatly fear; and

  • It ends up threatening American civil liberties by encouraging such legislation as the Patriot Act and by introducing Israeli "counterinsurgency" tactics and weaponry developed in the West Bank and Gaza into American police forces.

For many peoples of the world, the Palestinians represent the plight of the majority. They are the tiny grains of sand resisting what most Americans and privileged people of the West do not see. They are a people who are denied the most fundamental right: to a state of their own, even on the 22% of historic Palestine that Israel has occupied since 1967. For the majority of humanity that lives in economic and political conditions unimaginable in the West, the suffering caused by Israel's occupation – impoverishment and a total denial of freedom that can only be sustained by total American support – is emblematic of their own continued suffering. Israel's oppression of the existence of a global system of Western domination that prevents others from achieving their own dreams of political and economic well-being.
Like a bone in the throat, the issue of Israel's occupation can be neither ignored nor by-passed. To make things even more difficult, it is doubtful if a two-state solution is still possible, since Israeli settlement activity has largely eliminated that option. Whatever the eventual solution, if this most destabilizing of conflicts is not addressed, the US – even under Obama – will remain mired in conflicts with Muslim peoples and reviled by peoples seeking genuine freedom. Neither the US nor Israel will find the security they claim they seek. We live in a global reality, not Pax Americana. The logic of the Bush Administration has run its course. No longer can the US throw its weight around in a War Against Terror. No longer can its involvement be purely military. The new logic that will accompany Obama into office can be summarized in one word: accommodation. And the US will not get to first base until it achieves accommodation with the Muslim world, which means ending the Israeli Occupation. What happens to the Palestinians takes on a global significance. Clearing the bone in the throat – that is, ending the Israeli Occupation and allowing the Palestinians a state and a future of their own – should be a top priority of the next American administration. Indeed, America's attempt to restore its standing in the world depends on it. In the global reality in which we live, the fate of Americans and Palestinians, it turns out, are closely intertwined.

(Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.)
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions is based in Jerusalem and has chapters in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Please visit our websites:
www.icahd.org
www.icahduk.org
www.icahdusa.org

 

 

pal.meisje

“You’re shooting at kids. Just pull back.”

Palestijns meisje staat voor soldaten met gerichte geweren en verbiedt ze te schieten

Bron: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQyIKyd2gqA&NR=1

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

To subdue an enemy without fighting is the acme of skill…’ - Sun Tzu

12/05/07

"
ICH" -- -- Under the current administration, it is increasingly difficult to know who the enemy is, but what is certain is that the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is a brilliantly executed psychological warfare by way of misinformation. This dastardly plan is so devious that even the anti-war groups are jubilant at its release, and they are naively sharing its contents. Perhaps non are as enthusiastic about the report as the most powerful lobby group in America hostile to Iran.

The AIPAC was quick to announce: "Far from acquitting Iran, the NIE reveals that Tehran continues to violate the international community's calls to end the pursuit of the fuel cycle and the ability to make highly enriched uranium, concludes that Iran has utilized and has at its disposal a hidden, secret second unacknowledged, unmonitored track for enriching bomb fuel, and has engaged in a nuclear weaponization program, an assessment never before made public by the American intelligence community". "All in all, it's a clarion call for additional and continued effort to pressure Iran economically and politically to end its illicit nuclear programs”
(source JTA ).

The NIE claims that ‘Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003’. This report now in circulation, and being repeated by every media outlet, and as importantly, by way of word of mouth, is giving credibility to the warmongers that Iran actually had a nuclear weapons program, with the idea that ‘repetition begets belief’. Drumming home a false message, the White House will get the justification it needs to impose further sanctions, with the idea of escalating into a war.

In December 2002, an Iranian terrorist group, the Mojahedeen-e Khalg (MEK), listed on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, informed the U.S. government of the existence of two nuclear sites in Iran. Sy Hersh later revealed in *The New Yorker* that Israel had provided them with this information. It must also be pointed out that as a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran is not under any obligations to inform the IAEA of construction sites. However, members must inform the Atomic Agency 180 days prior to introducing uranium processing equipment and material to the site. Once the United States confirmed the existence of the sites by satellite, it accused Tehran of "across-the-board pursuit of weapons of mass destruction." To dispel such accusations, Iran agreed to intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. This accusation was false.

Iran was late in reporting which is a Safeguard issue. In a spirit of cooperation, and in an attempt to demonstrate its in October 2003, after meeting French, German and British foreign ministers, Tehran voluntarily stopped the process of enriched uranium; it also allowed the IAEA to carry out intrusive, spot inspections. No country has allowed as many inspection hours as Iran. In the meanwhile, it proposed to operate Iran’s enrichment program as joint ventures with private and public sector firms from other countries; this would ensure that the program remained transparent and could not be secretly diverted for military purposes, at the same time it would maintain Iran’s sovereignty by having an indigenously enriched uranium cycle (source: IAEA Bulletin Online, vol 46, no 2, 2004 “Nuclear fuel cycle: which way forward for multilateral approaches?”) . Although this was rejected, Iran continued to cooperate.

Iran suspended its enrichment activities for two and half years, but each time under pressure from the U.S., the burden of proof was transferred to Iran knowing the negative could not be proved. Instead of Iran getting the full cooperation of the IAEA for the development of nuclear technology, it was ordered to stop preparations for large-scale uranium enrichment. In 2005 U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell labeled Iran a growing danger and called for the UN Security Council to impose sanctions.

According to Article 19 of Iran’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA, the Agency may refer Iran to the UN Security Council if it is “unable to verify that there has been no diversion of nuclear material required to be safeguarded under this agreement, to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”. The IAEA had reported that all declared fissile material in Iran had been accounted for, and none has been diverted. (source: http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2005/ebsp2005n009.html)

In December 2006, Congress overwhelmingly signed a controversial bill to expand the sale of civilian nuclear technology to India. Not only is this bill in violation of Article III of the NPT given that India is not a member state of the NPT, but the irony is that the catalyst for the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG)) in 1976 was India’s nuclear test. This group (first called the London Group) met to restrain the transfer of uranium-enrichment and plutonium-extraction equipment and technology. What added to the Iranian grievance was the speech given by undersecretary of State, Nicholas Burns, as he announced the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation: “after 30 years we have realized that the NPT is ineffective, therefore we are going to reward India for non-proliferation . In response to a reporter who quizzed him about Iran, he said we plan to punish Iran for violating the NPT. Iran was sent to the UNSC, however, later it was revealed by (former) undersecretary for arms control Radermaker that the U.S. had coerced India into voting against Iran.

As for the covert operations Iran is accused of, again, it is worthwhile examining the facts versus the mainstream media propaganda.

In 1982 Iranian officials announced that they planned to build a reactor powered by their own uranium at the Isfahan nuclear technology centre after the Iraqis destroyed the one almost completed under the Shah. The IAEA inspected that and other facilities in Iran in 1983, and planned to assist Iran in converting yellowcake into reactor fuel. The IAEA report stated clearly that its aim was to “contribute to the formation of local expertise and manpower needed to sustain an ambitious program in the field of nuclear power reactor technology and fuel cycle technology” – the inalienable right of an NPT signatory under Article IV, but the agency’s assistance program was terminated under US pressure (source: Mark Hibbs, “US in 1983 stopped IAEA from helping Iran make UF6", Nuclear Fuel, 4 August 2003).

Undeterred, Iran searched for alternatives sources of uranium and in 1984 Iranian radio announced that negotiations with Niger on the purchase of uranium were nearing conclusion. In 1985 another broadcast openly discussed the discovery of uranium deposits in Iran with the director of Iran’s atomic energy organization. [In 1992, an IAEA spokesperson, Melissa Flemming, confirmed that its inspectors had visited the mines and Iran had announced plans to develop the full nuclear fuel cycle. Source: Associated Press, 10 February 2003 and “Front End nuclear capability being developed”, Nuclear Engineering International, 31 March 2003.

Tehran had openly entered into negotiations with several nations, including Brazil, Russia, India, Argentina, Germany, Ukraine and Spain, for the purchase of nuclear energy facilities and components. Almost all of these deals ultimately fell through after pressure from Washington. Iran finally turned to the Soviet Union (later Russia) and concluded a deal in.

Despite economic ties with Iran and a foothold into the Moslem world, under pressure from the U.S., Russian officials expelled Iranians studying nuclear physics and missile science from Russian schools in late 1997 (Iran Times, August 22, 1997). They also halted all vocational training of Iranian students in fields that may have had applications for nuclear weapons and missiles. In addition to this, the power stations that Iran bought from Russia and China are peaceful nuclear technology. President Yeltsin assured Washington that Iran would not be able to make weapons-grade plutonium and that he had canceled the "military components" of two nuclear reactors bound for Iran. Under U.S. pressure, both Ukraine and China have made some adjustments. China also suspended the sale of a plant for the conversion of uranium hexafluoride, which is required for making fuel rod.

Non of this points to a covert nuclear program.

For readers who feel some relief that the prospect of an imminent war has somewhat faded, let us be reminded of the report’s ‘findings’, its implications, and of recent history.

Word is being circulated that sanctions were effective in curbing Iran’s nuclear weapons program. First, as discussed above, Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program, and second, Iran voluntarily halted its enrichment program two years BEFORE sanctions were imposed on it.

The international community must put pressure on world leaders to lift current sanctions on Iran. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that sanctions are a form of long warfare. How can we forget the 500,000 Iraqi children who died as a result of our sanctions? We shamelessly overlook the other Iraqis whose lives we took with our sanctions. As citizens of the country we live in and as members of a global community, each one of us must be reminded of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and act on it:

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations, Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

icrc

Occupied
Throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, in the Gaza Strip as well as in the West Bank, Palestinians continuously face hardship in simply going about their lives; they are prevented from doing what makes up the daily fabric of most people's existence. The Palestinian territories face a deep human crisis, where millions of people are denied their human dignity. Not once in a while, but every day.
Nothing is predictable for Palestinians. Rules can change from one day to the next without notice or explanation. They live in an arbitrary environment, continuously adapting to circumstances they cannot influence and that increasingly reduce the range of their possibilities. Read more>>>
Christoph Von Toggenburg/ICRC
In 2006,

The Nation, www.commondreams.org, Friday, June 15, 2007

Gaza: Not Just a Prison, a Laboratory
by Naomi Klein

Gaza in the hands of Hamas, with masked militants sitting in the president's chair; the West Bank on the edge; Israeli army camps hastily assembled in the Golan Heights; a spy satellite over Iran and Syria; war with Hezbollah a hair trigger away; a scandal-plagued political class facing a total loss of public faith.

At a glance, things aren't going well for Israel. But here's a puzzle: why, in the midst of such chaos and carnage, is the Israeli economy booming like it's 1999, with a roaring stock market and growth rates nearing China's?

Thomas Friedman recently offered his theory in the New York Times. Israel "nurtures and rewards individual imagination," and so its people are constantly spawning ingenious high-tech start-ups - no matter what messes their politicians are making. After perusing class projects by students in engineering and computer science at Ben Gurion University, Friedman made one of his famous fake-sense pronouncements: Israel "had discovered oil." This oil, apparently, is located in the minds of Israel's "young innovators and venture capitalists," who are too busy making megadeals with Google to be held back by politics.

Here's another theory: Israel's economy isn't booming despite the political chaos that devours the headlines, but because of it. This phase of development dates back to the mid-nineties, when Israel was in the vanguard of the information revolution - the most tech-dependent economy in the world. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Israel's economy was devastated, facing its worst year since 1953. Then came 9/11, and suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners.

Within three years, large parts of Israel's tech economy had been radically repurposed. Put in Friedmanesque terms: Israel went from inventing the networking tools of the "flat world" to selling fences to an apartheid planet. Many of the country's most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel's status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom-a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war. And the reason Israel is now enjoying supergrowth is that those companies are busily exporting that model to the world. Discussions of Israel's military trade usually focus on the flow of weapons into the country-US-made Caterpillar bulldozers used to destroy homes in the West Bank and British companies supplying parts for F-16s. Overlooked is Israel's huge and expanding export business.

Israel now sends $1.2 billion in "defense" products to the United States-up dramatically from $270 million in 1999. In 2006 Israel exported $3.4 billion in defense products-well over a billion more than it received in US military aid. That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world, overtaking Britain.

Much of this growth has been in the so-called "homeland security" sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2 billion-an increase of 20 percent. The key products and services are high-tech fences, unmanned drones, biometric IDs, video and audio surveillance gear, air passenger profiling and prisoner interrogation systems - precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock-in the occupied territories.

And that is why the chaos in Gaza and the rest of the region doesn't threaten the bottom line in Tel Aviv, and may actually boost it. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the "global war on terror."

It's no coincidence that the class projects at Ben Gurion that so impressed Friedman have names like "Innovative Covariance Matrix for Point Target Detection in Hyperspectral Images" and "Algorithms for Obstacle Detection and Avoidance." Thirty homeland security companies were launched in Israel in the past six months alone, thanks in large part to lavish government subsidies that have transformed the Israeli army and the country's universities into incubators for security and weapons start-ups (something to keep in mind in the debates about the academic boycott).

Next week, the most established of these companies will travel to Europe for the Paris Air Show, the arms industry's equivalent of Fashion Week. One of the Israeli companies exhibiting is Suspect Detection Systems (SDS), which will be showcasing its Cogito1002, a white, sci-fi-looking security kiosk that asks air travelers to answer a series of computer-generated questions, tailored to their country of origin, while they hold their hand on a "biofeedback" sensor. The device reads the body's reactions to the questions and certain responses flag the passenger as "suspect."

Like hundreds of other Israeli security start-ups, SDS boasts that it was founded by veterans of Israel's secret police and that its products were road-tested on Palestinians. Not only has the company tried out the biofeedback terminals at a West Bank checkpoint, it claims the "concept is supported and enhanced by knowledge acquired and assimilated from the analysis of thousands of case studies related to suicide bombers in Israel."

Another star of the Paris Air Show will be Israeli defense giant Elbit, which plans to showcase its Hermes 450 and 900 unmanned air vehicles. As recently as May, according to press reports, Israel used the drones on bombing missions in Gaza. Once tested in the territories, they are exported abroad: the Hermes has already been used at the Arizona-Mexico border; Cogito1002 terminals are being auditioned at an unnamed US airport; and Elbit, one of the companies behind Israel's "security barrier," has partnered with Boeing to construct the Department of Homeland Security's $2.5 billion "virtual" border fence around the United States.

Since Israel began its policy of sealing off the occupied territories with checkpoints and walls, human rights activists have often compared Gaza and the West Bank to open-air prisons. But in researching the explosion of Israel's homeland security sector, a topic I explore in greater detail in a forthcoming book (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism), it strikes me that they are something else too: laboratories where the terrifying tools of our security states are being field-tested. Palestinians - whether living in the West Bank or what the Israeli politicians are already calling "Hamasistan" — are no longer just targets. They are guinea pigs.

So in a way Friedman is right: Israel has struck oil. But the oil isn't the imagination of its techie entrepreneurs. The oil is the war on terror, the state of constant fear that creates a bottomless global demand for devices that watch, listen, contain and target "suspects." And fear, it turns out, is the ultimate renewable resource.

Naomi Klein is the author of many books, including her most recent, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which will be published in September.Visit Naomi's website at nologo.org .

Volkskrant -14 juni 2007

Marcel van Dam
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UN envoy: anti-Hamas rhetoric undermines democracy

Alvaro de Soto, the just-retired UN coordinator for the Middle East, has warned that international hostility to the Palestinian Hamas movement, now fighting in the bitterly escalating civil conflict in Gaza, could have grave consequences by persuading millions of Muslims that democratic methods do not work.

The Peruvian diplomat's sensational valedictory dispatch, written last month and published exclusively in the Guardian today, traced increasingly violent responses to the victory of the Islamist group in the Palestinian elections in January 2006.

These included a continuing boycott of the freely-elected government - which he admits has had "devastating" consequences, which have contributed to the current violence between Hamas and Fatah.

"The steps taken by the international community with the presumed purpose of bringing about a Palestinian entity that will live in peace with its neighbour, Israel, have had precisely the opposite effect," he wrote in his confidential internal memo.

The US and Israel had both erred in seeing Hamas as a passing phenomenon, the envoy argued. "Hamas is deep-rooted, has struck many chords, including its contempt for the Oslo process, and is not likely to disappear," he wrote.

"Erroneous treatment of Hamas could have repercussions far beyond the Palestinian territories because of its links to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose millions of supporters might conclude that peaceful and democratic means are not the way to go."

In a key passage that may already have been overtaken by the rapidly deteriorating situation, Mr De Soto wrote: "Hamas is in effervescence and can potentially evolve in a pragmatic direction that would allow for a two-state solution - but only if handled right.

"If the Palestinian Authority passes into irrelevance or collapses (as now seems likely) calls for a one-state solution to the conflict "will come out of the shadows and enter the mainstream."

Mr De Soto is critical of the UN as well as of the US and Israel. He also attacked the Palestinians' record on violence directed at Israeli civilians as "patchy at best, reprehensible at worst" and described the Hamas charter as "abominable" while highlighting the movement's "alleged links to an Iranian regime which makes bloodcurdling statements about Israel."

"Palestinian terror strengthens the hardliners and weakens the peace camp in Israel," he wrote, but added: "If Israel was less heavy-handed about the way it conducts its military business, and... was seen to be moving earnestly to end the occupation, it would aid rather than handicap its legitimate fight against terrorism."

The effect of the quartet's intense focus on Hamas, (which still refuses to formally recognise Israel or renounce violence), was to take all pressure off Israel, Mr de Soto argued. That allowed the construction of yet more Israeli settlements and the separation barrier, which have in turn damaged the slim hopes that a viable Palestinian state can ever be created.

It would need a "Sherlockian magnifying glass," to find allusions to Israel's failure to comply with its "road map" obligations.

"No amount of magnification" would find references to its responsibilities as an occupier to ensure the welfare of Palestinian civilians."

On the UN and Israel he wrote: "We are not a friend of Israel if we allow it to fall into the self delusion that the Palestinians are the only ones to blame, or that it can continue blithely to ignore its obligations under existing agreements without paying an international diplomatic price in the short-term and a bitter price regarding its security and identity in the long-term."

www.haaretz.com 07/06/2007

In the shadow of occupation
By Meron Benvenisti


At the reception desks of hotels in East Jerusalem, and in the few dozen hotels in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the June edition of This Week in Palestine was available. The magazine, similar to others at tourist destinations all over the world, is particularly interesting both because it is published and because of its content. The magazine makes a great effort to communicate business as usual; an image of normal life. This includes evenings of theater, chamber music and dance; art galleries and restaurants.

An Israeli browsing through the magazine is puzzled: He is accustomed only to reports of violence, roadblocks, settlers and operations by the Israel Defense Forces. But through the magazine he is exposed to a society that is sophisticated, up-to-date on advances in technology and graphics - an entirely different picture.

The "empty market square" syndrome, epitomized in the Naomi Shemer song "Jerusalem of Gold (which ignores the existence of a Palestinian civil society and only feels its presence in connection with confrontation and terrorism), contributes to our surprise at discovering that the Palestinians are holding several festivals this summer. A chamber music festival that will include 22 concerts and 50 musicians - most from abroad - will be held in six towns; in July, Bethlehem will host a musical festival for youth; and in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Festival will include performances by artists from South America, Poland, Spain, Britain and France, in addition to seven local groups. In June, there will be six concerts in Jerusalem, four in Bethlehem, one in Jenin, eight in Ramallah, and also 16 plays, dance performances, children's shows, and even seven new art exhibitions in different venues.

There are more than 100 cultural centers in the territories; the largest concentration is in Ramallah-El Bireh, where 30 such institutions operate. The most active theater is Ishtar which, since April, has hosted the "Theater Season of the Oppressed" festival, with the participation of local and foreign troupes, and with funding from the European Union and other sources. Loyal to its motto, "Building Bridges, Destroying Roadblocks," the theater is holding performances in June in seven villages in the Jenin area. According to statistics from the theater, in recent years it has held 179 performances in villages and refugee camps, and 262 in the cities. Genuine culture for the masses.

The difficult reality of life emerges in nearly every article in the magazine and from every bit of information, in spite of the effort to hide it behind the colorful graphics and the article on the fashion show in Beit Sahur in July.

The magazine is also reporting a new initiative: To encourage tourists to wander around independently in East Jerusalem and Bethlehem to dispel the myth that it is dangerous and that one can easily get lost there." Industrialists and importers are complaining about the difficulties posed by the Israeli authorities in ports and at roadblocks, and about the restrictions on the free movement of businessmen. "Selling," says one businessman, "is a difficult thing, if you cannot physically meet the buyer. So, how is it possible to work when there are so many roadblocks?" Nonetheless, they have announced a large Palestinian food exhibition in Ramallah at the end of the month.

The most poignant expression of the harsh reality is found on the page that offers data from the Palestinian Stock Exchange: the Al Quds Index has dropped some 20 percent from mid-March to mid-May, and the days of trading have dropped from 23 to 18; of the 31 firms traded in the exchange, the stock of 25 has dropped, and only three have shown a rise.

This is not an encouraging picture of the economy, but there are those who point to the mere existence of a stock exchange in Nablus, a city under siege, as an encouraging sign, hinting at the strength of Palestinian society and its ability to carry on conducting a normal life, in so far as that is possible under Israeli oppression.
Ronnie Kasrils' speech to S. African Parliament on 40th anniversary of occupation

Transcript, The Electronic Intifada, 6 June 2007

In Al-Bureij Younis refugee camp in Gaza a Palestinian artist paints a mural to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the naksa or setback of 1967 when Israel began its occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula, 5 June 2007. (Hatem Omar / MaanImages)

The following is a speech given to the South African Parliament by Minister Ronnie Kasrils, MP, on 6 June 2007:

Madam Speaker, Honourable members, this speech is dedicated to the memory of David Rabkin, South African freedom fighter, who died in Angola.

Forty years ago this week Israel's military unleashed lightning attacks against Egypt, Jordan and Syria, alleging provocations as justification for its strikes.

Within six days the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights had been captured.

Apart from the Sinai from which Israel withdrew in 1977, the other areas remain under Israeli military occupation and control to this day.

Whilst some justify Israel's actions on the grounds of pre-emptive self-defence, the obverse was the truth. From the horse's mouth we learn whom the aggressor was:

Israel's military Chief of Staff, Yitzhak Rabin stated: "I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 [1967] would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it." [1]

Menachem Begin, later Israel's Prime Minister, reminisced that the Egyptian army deployment in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was about to attack Israel. "We must be honest," he explained. "We decided to attack him." [2]

General Moshe Dayan explained that "many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel." He said that the kibbutz residents who pressed the Government to take the Golan Heights ... did so less for the security than for the farmland ..." [3]

These are clearly statements of an aggressor. Nevertheless, some claim that Israel is justified and obligated, from its birth as a state in 1948 in fact, to defend its land and people by force whenever necessary. But where is the morality in this? Fortress Israel, a militarist aggressive state, defends a stolen land that belonged to another people.

Moshe Dayan unabashedly explained:

"Before [the Palestinians'] very eyes we are possessing the land and villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived ... We are the generation of colonizers, and without the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a home." [4]

Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, stated in the 1950s:

"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them. Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, its true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis ... but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country." [5]

Such statements contextualise Israel's position and show it has not been interested in real peace terms. In 1897 the founding father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, stated that once in power the aim would be to: "Spirit the penniless population (the Palestinians) across the borders." [6]

Therein lies the fundamental cause of the conflict -- lest anyone remains unclear. It stems from the Zionist world view -- its belief in a perpetual anti-Semitism that requires that Jewish people around the world -- a faith group -- should have a national home of their own. The biblical narrative was evoked to proclaim Palestine as the promised land reserved exclusively for God's "chosen people" and their civilizing mission. It sounds all too familiar as a vision the Voortrekkers had in this country. It gives rise to racism, apartheid and a total onslaught on those who stand in your way, whether blacks or Arabs or red Indians. Many Jews do not agree with this Zionist world view, and declare that being anti-Zionism and critical of Israel does not equate with anti-semitism.

Far from being a land without people, as Zionist propaganda falsely proclaimed, to attract and justify colonial settlement, the fact was that an indigenous people -- the Palestinians -- lived there, developed agriculture and towns since the Canaanite Kingdom over 5,500 years ago.

Indeed a delegation of skeptical Vienna rabbis traveled to the Holy Land in 1898 to assess the Zionist vision and cabled home: "The Bride is indeed beautiful but already married." [7]

This did not deter the Zionists who plotted to abduct the bride and murder or expel the groom by whatever means necessary; and then defend what they had stolen at all costs by creating a supremacist Fortress State.

That exactly sums up the bloody and tragic history that befell the Palestinian people, and their Arab neighbours, at the hands of a rapacious, expansionist Zionist project that has been the source of war and untold suffering in the Near East for the past sixty years, and is the root cause of the conflict that threatens the entire region and beyond.

With the adoption of the United Nations Partition Plan of November, 1947, a Jewish homeland was accorded 56 percent of the territory although they owned only seven percent and were one-third of the population (most of whom had recently arrived as Holocaust refugees from Europe). The Palestinian majority were given 44 percent and were never consulted nor had they anything to do with the abominable suffering of the European Jews. The Zionists accepted partition with alacrity but never intended to honour the decision.

According to the Zionist's strategy, which has become public record with the declassification of documents, the intention was to roll-out a systematic reign of terror, massacres, dispossession and expulsion. This drove out the Palestinian population in a horrific episode of ethnic cleansing that saw over 750,000 or two-thirds of the indigenous people at that time becoming penniless refugees, as Herzl had promised. By the 1949 Armistice the Israeli state had expanded to 78 percent of the territory.

That was almost 60 years ago. The result of Israel's war of aggression of forty years ago this week, an extension of 1948, saw Israeli military occupation of the remaining 22 percent of the land.

The people within the West Bank and Gaza are literally imprisoned under the most unjust conditions suffering hardships and methods of control that are far worse than anything our people faced during the most dreadful days of apartheid. In fact any South African, visiting what amount to enclosed prison-ghettoes -- imposed by a Jewish people that tragically suffered the Nazi Holocaust -- will find similarity with Apartheid immediately coming to mind; and even more shocking, comparisons with some of the methods of collective punishment and control devised under tyrannies elsewhere. An Israeli cabinet Minister, Aharon Cizling, stated in 1948, after the Deir Yassin Massacre:

"Now we too have behaved like Nazis and my whole being is shaken." [8]

If anyone has any doubt what the 1948 and 1967 wars were about, listen to Ben Gurion who stated in 1938: "after we become a strong force, as the result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine."

And mark these words of Moshe Dayan:

"Our fathers had reached the frontiers which were recognized in the UN Partition Plan of 1947 [56 percent of the land]. Our generation reached the frontiers of 1949 [78 percent of the land]. Now the Six Day Generation [of 1967] has managed to reach Suez, Jordan and the Golan Heights. This is not the end." [9]

Indeed the saga of agony for the Palestinians continues, inevitably creating insecurity for Israelis as well; because as we know from our own South African experience -- injustice and repression generates resistance. It is no good blaming the victims when they hit back.

The Palestinian people's fate clearly reflects that of South Africa's indigenous majority during the colonial wars of dispossession of land and property, and the harsh discrimination and suffering of the apartheid period classified as a crime against humanity and violation of international humanitarian law. Israel is as guilty as the Apartheid regime. Israel's conquest and occupation, with the latest land grab caused by its monstrous Apartheid Wall and continued construction of the illegal settlements has reduced the West Bank into several disconnected pockets amounting to 12 percent of former Palestine. No wonder that Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Tutu and others compare the situation to Apartheid and the infamous Bantustans -- which gave 13 percent of land for South Africa's indigenous people.

This people's Parliament should be unanimous in calling for Israel's immediate withdrawal from the occupied territories -- lifting the physical, economic and financial blockade and siege of Gaza and the West Bank -- removing the physical impediments to the freedom of movement of Palestinians including the Wall and over 500 check-points - dismantling the illegal settlements -- releasing 10,000 political prisoners (113 women and children amongst them) -- negotiating a just solution with the elected representatives of the Palestinian people and implementing the UN Resolutions, including Resolution 194 of 1948, concerning the Right of Return of the Refugees. These are necessary steps to create lasting peace, justice and security for Palestinians and Israelis alike, reinforced by international guarantees, so they may live in harmony. Since 1988, when Chairman Yasser Arafat and the PLO agreed to accept 22 percent of historic Palestine in the interests of peace they show they have been ready for negotiations.

Let us unanimously extend our solidarity and support to the forty-two members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, including the Speakers of the West Bank and Gaza, who together with ten Ministers have been summarily detained without trial, most for nearly a year, by the Israeli security forces. This is a shocking illustration of Israel's disrespect for parliamentary democracy, the law and basic human rights so reminiscent of what we suffered under apartheid. We call for their immediate and unconditional release; and all prisoners held by both sides.

In support of these demands let us join with the people of our country, and the international community, in the solidarity marches, rallies and demonstrations this week, the 40th anniversary of Israel's unjust occupation. And we make it clear to our Jewish community, these peaceful and disciplined actions, are aimed solely at that government. The struggle for freedom and justice is against a system and not a people.

Let me conclude with the words of President Mandela, who declared in 1998 during the visit to South Africa by Chairman Yasser Arafat:

"We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians." [10]

Endnotes
[1] David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch
[2] Naom Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle
[3] New York Times, 11 May 1977
[4] Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel
[5] Nathan Goldman, The Jewish Paradox
[6] The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, Vol 1, p 86
[7] Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall
[8] Tom Seger, The First Israelis
[9] London Times, 25 June 1969
[10] Speech by Nelson Mandela at the Banquet in Honour of President Yasser Arafat of Palestine on 11 August 1998

Le Monde Diplomatique 05 juni 2007

Forty years of conflict in the Middle East
Was 1967 a victory too far for Israel?


The Six Day war transformed Israel from relative poverty into a regional military superpower. It also began an occupation which has been slowly destroying the country’s meaning and identity – and may yet dissolve its existence.

By Meron Rapoport

Memory deceives us. Forty years after June 1967, many in Israel view the time before the Six Day war as a golden age, a paradise lost when Israel was a small, just society where hard work, modesty and solidarity prevailed over greed and selfishness; everyone knew each other and no-one occupied land belonging to anyone else.

That, of course, is a delusion: 1966, the last year before Israel occupied territories, was terrible. Unemployment had reached a record 10%, there was a sharp recession and for the first time in the country’s history, migration from it was higher than that to it (aliya). Although military rule over 400,000 Arabs living inside Israel, in place since the 1948 war, was abolished in 1966, their situation remained tough as their lands were confiscated to build new Jewish towns and villages.

The 1967 war changed all that. Everyone knows that afterwards Israel was considered a regional, if not an international, military superpower. What is less known is that the war changed economic history. The recession ended, unemployment decreased and the economy began to prosper. In 1967 gross domestic product per capita in Israel was only $1,500. By 2006 GDP per capita was $24,000, putting Israel in 23rd place in the UNDP’s Human Development Report. This is reflected in migration to Israel. More than 1.5 million Jews have arrived in the past 40 years and the population has increased from 2.4 million in 1967 to 5.5 million in 2006. No wonder that many consider the war was a turning point in the “Israeli success story”.

Yet the war can also be seen as the source of all evil. The amazing victory, in which the Israeli army smashed the three biggest Arab armies – Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian – should have made Israel feel secure. Instead, Israel is anything but a safe place. Since 1967 it has engaged in six conflicts – a war of attrition on the Suez Canal, the 1973 war, two intifadas and two wars in Lebanon. More than 5,000 Israelis have been killed and there have been about 50,000 Arab deaths (Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian).

The problem is not just that the wars go on and on, but that Israel is not winning them. Dov Tamari, a retired Israeli general turned historian, remarked after the end of the second Lebanon incursion that the 1967 war was the last in which Israel won an outright victory. All others had ended in a draw, if not defeat. Every war has forced Israel to give up something. The 1973 war was followed by total withdrawal from Sinai as part of the peace agreement with Egypt in 1979; the first intifada in 1989 led to the Oslo accords in 1993; the first Lebanese war in 1982 ended in unconditional retreat in 2000; and the result of the second intifada was the dismantling of the Gaza settlements two years ago.

Last year’s war in Lebanon is another example. While politicians claimed victory, a Haaretz survey showed that only 20% of Israelis thought that Israel had won. This failure to win wars may explain why a senior Israeli politician recently said in a private conversation that he was not sure Israel would survive another 20 years. Decades of occupation have worsened the fears of Israelis instead of alleviating them.

Waiting for a phone call?
Where did it all go wrong? Quite early. General Moshe Dayan, the defence minister and most prominent Israeli politician in 1967, said right after the victory: “We are waiting for a telephone call from the Arabs”, meaning – so it seemed – that if the call came, Israel would withdraw from the territories it had occupied, the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank and Golan Heights, in return for peace agreements with the Arab world. In his book 1967 the historian Tom Segev proved that the Israeli government did not mean it that way, but that is what the world, and Israeli public opinion, believed.

At the same time Israel set in motion a process that would later make the deal of territories for peace difficult, if not impossible. Levi Eshkol, the supposedly dovish prime minister, allowed the first settlers to build a settlement, Kfar Eztion, in the West Bank before the end of 1967, while Dayan ordered the destruction of Syrian villages and towns on the occupied Golan Heights and the building of an Israeli settlement on the ruins of the Syrian town of Kuneitra.

In early 1968 Israelis were allowed to live in Hebron. The results of this can be seen 40 years later: the centre of this ancient city is a ghost town, where no Palestinian is allowed to live or walk or shop so that the place is clear for the 500 Israelis who live there. It was not by chance that Hebron was the location of the first suicide attack in 1992, after Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Palestinians in the mosque of Abraham (also known as Cave of the Patriarchs). The first Palestinian suicide attacks were in retaliation for this incident.

Looking at the map it is easy to see that the settlements in the West Bank were planned to separate Palestinian communities from each other, and create a continuum between the settlements and pre-1967 Israel. Settlements were built around Palestinian East Jerusalem to separate it from towns and villages close to the city. Further settlements were constructed in the Jordan Valley as a barrier between the West Bank and Jordan; and roads with settlements beside them were built in heart of the West Bank, separating Nablus from Ramallah, and Kalkilia from Tulkarem.

Ariel Sharon, the architect of the settlement project, said openly in 1975 that his aim was to prevent the creation of a Palestinian entity. This project, which over the years has been supported by governments right and left, has proved successful. More than 250,000 Israelis live today in hundreds of settlements in the West Bank – and 200,000 live in neighbourhoods built in occupied parts of Jerusalem. Their numbers have helped change the political attitude. Apart from the Communist and Arab parties, all political leaders in Israel, from Yossi Beilin to Ami Ayalon, from Ehud Olmert to Ztipi Livni, claim that the settlement blocs should be a part of Israel in any peace agreement. The separation wall is built along the lines of these blocs.

Obstacle to peace
Yet political leaders, even perhaps Sharon before his illness, acknowledge in private and sometimes in public that the settlements are the biggest obstacle to a possible peace agreement with the Palestinians and the Arab world. Israel has been trapped by this huge monster it built during 40 years of occupation. It cannot swallow the settlements as this would lead to the annexation of the West Bank, which even the most rightwing governments decline to do because of its international, legal and demographical implications; and it cannot get rid of them because the settlements have already entered the bloodstream of Israeli society. The settlements are a cancer.

Is it possible that Israel has trapped itself voluntarily? Perhaps it has become so used to the occupation that it cannot live without it. For 40 years Israelis have lived in a society based on privilege. Before the 1967 war, new immigrants from Arab countries had fewer rights than those who came from Europe, while Palestinians living inside Israel had fewer rights than anybody else; but after 1967 Israel set up an official system of discrimination. The one million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza (now grown to 3.5 million) were deprived of political rights, and the military commanders controlled every aspects of their lives.

Relations between Palestinians living under occupation and Israelis have changed for the worse over the past 40 years, but the situation in which Israelis had rights and Palestinians did not became natural to most Israelis. The worsening restrictions on the lives of Palestinians over the years, and the apartheid – many Israelis only meet Palestinians when doing military service on the West Bank – intensified these distinctions. Giving up the occupation means giving up privilege. That will be hard.

After 1967 Israel was quickly transformed into a capitalist society. The huge public works after the war created a much stronger entrepreneur class. The billions of dollars (the US has given Israel $3bn military aid every year since 1973) spent on military technology, which progressively advanced, have helped make Israel a small high-tech superpower. At the same time, because of the privileges resulting from the occupation, Israel became a much more fragmented society. In 1967 more than 80% of the workforce was organised in one big labour union, which controlled 33% of the economy; kibbutzim were held in high esteem. Today, only 25% of Israeli labour is organised and Israel is rated as among the most unequal societies in the West: according to the Gini Index Israel is in 62nd place among the highest advanced economies, and 18 families control 75% of the Israeli economy. This is also a result of the 1967 war.

There is another important result. After 1967 the Israeli-Palestinian conflict became one of the most significant in the world, if not the most significant. Israel has gained from this. Its excellent relations with the US, its international importance, its strong army and wealth all derive from this. That the Arab League, which refused any deal with Israel after the war, is desperate for Israel to make full peace with all Arab countries is another result.

There is a negative aspect. Israel’s position in the West also depends on the view that it is the frontline between the West and the East, between Judeo-Christian civilisation (a peculiar hyphenation given the terrible historical confrontations between the divergent beliefs) and Muslim civilisation. After the 9/11 attacks in the US, belief in this frontline position became widespread in Israel and not just among the religious right, who have claimed since 1967 that building settlements in Israel is a fulfilment of the will of God, thereby making the Israeli-Arab conflict cultural-religious instead of territorial. Avigdor Liberman, deputy prime minister and head of the pro-transfer party Israel Beitenu (Israel is our home), told Haaretz in a recent interview that Israel is “the front outpost of the whole free world”.

This may explain the doomsday feeling in many parts of Israeli society after the war with Lebanon. Hizbullah was described as an arm of Iran, and Iran was damned as a leader of a clash of civilisations. So the failure of the big and ultra-sophisticated Israeli army to crush a few thousand half-trained Hizbullah fighters (plus the thousands of rockets that were fired by Hizbullah into north Israel for over a month) convinced many Israelis that they were not wanted in the region and in the long run they might lose the war against Islam. Four decades of occupation have so paralysed Israeli society that its leaders lack the courage to look for a real solution to the conflict. The occupation has occupied Israel.


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Uri Avnery's Column on Gush Shalom:

Worse than a Crime

26.01.2008



IT LOOKED like the fall of the Berlin wall. And not only did it look like it. For a moment, the Rafah crossing was the Brandenburg Gate.

It is impossible not to feel exhilaration when masses of oppressed and hungry people break down the wall that is shutting them in, their eyes radiant, embracing everybody they meet - to feel so even when it is your own government that erected the wall in the first place.

The Gaza Strip is the largest prison on earth. The breaking of the Rafah wall was an act of liberation. It proves that an inhuman policy is always a stupid policy: no power can stand up against a mass of people that has crossed the border of despair.

That is the lesson of Gaza, January, 2008.

ONE MIGHT repeat the famous saying of the French statesman Boulay de la Meurthe, slightly amended: It is worse than a war crime, it is a blunder!

Months ago, the two Ehuds - Barak and Olmert - imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, and boasted about it. Lately they have tightened the deadly noose even more, so that hardly anything at all could be brought into the Strip. Last week they made the blockade absolute - no food, no medicines. Things reached a climax when they stopped the fuel, too. Large areas of Gaza remained without electricity - incubators for premature babies, dialysis machines, pumps for water and sewage. Hundreds of thousands remained without heating in the severe cold, unable to cook, running out of food.

Again and again, Aljazeera broadcast the pictures into millions of homes in the Arab world. TV stations all over the world showed them, too. From Casablanca to Amman angry mass protest broke out and frightened the authoritarian Arab regimes. Hosny Mubarak called Ehud Barak in panic. That evening Barak was compelled to cancel, at least temporarily, the fuel-blockade he had imposed in the morning. Apart from that, the blockade remained total.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid act.

THE REASON given for the starving and freezing of one and a half million human beings, crowded into a territory of 365 square kilometers, is the continued shooting at the town of Sderot and the adjoining villages.

That is a well-chosen reason. It unites the primitive and poor parts of the Israeli public. It blunts the criticism of the UN and the governments throughout the world, who might otherwise have spoken out against a collective punishment that is, undoubtedly, a war crime under international law.

A clear picture is presented to the world: the Hamas terror regime in Gaza launches missiles at innocent Israeli civilians. No government in the world can tolerate the bombardment of its citizens from across the border. The Israeli military has not found a military answer to the Qassam missiles. Therefore there is no other way than to exert such strong pressure on the Gaza population as to make them rise up against Hamas and compel them to stop the missiles.

The day the Gaza electricity works stopped operating, our military correspondents were overjoyed: only two Qassams were launched from the Strip. So it works! Ehud Barak is a genius!

But the day after, 17 Qassams landed, and the joy evaporated. Politicians and generals were (literally) out of their minds: one politician proposed to "act crazier than them", another proposed to "shell Gaza's urban area indiscriminately for every Qassam launched", a famous professor (who is a little bit deranged) proposed the exercise of "ultimate evil".

The government scenario was a repeat of Lebanon War II (the report about which is due to be published in a few days). Then: Hizbullah captured two soldiers on the Israeli side of the border, now: Hamas fired on towns and villages on the Israeli side of the border. Then: the government decide in haste to start a war, now: the government decided in haste to impose a total blockade. Then: the government ordered the massive bombing of the civilian population in order to get them to pressure Hizbullah, now: the government decided to cause massive suffering of the civilian population in order to get them to pressure Hamas.

The results were the same in both cases: the Lebanese population did not rise up against Hizbullah, but on the contrary, people of all religious communities united behind the Shiite organization. Hassan Nasrallah became the hero of the entire Arab world. And now: the population unites behind Hamas and accuses Mahmoud Abbas of cooperation with the enemy. A mother who has no food for her children does not curse Ismail Haniyeh, she curses Olmert, Abbas and Mubarak.

SO WHAT to do? After all, it is impossible to tolerate the suffering of the inhabitants of Sderot, who are under constant fire.

What is being hidden from the embittered public is that the launching of the Qassams could be stopped tomorrow morning.

Several months ago Hamas proposed a cease-fire. It repeated the offer this week.

A cease-fire means, in the view of Hamas: the Palestinians will stop shooting Qassams and mortar shells, the Israelis will stop the incursions into Gaza, the "targeted" assassinations and the blockade.

Why doesn't our government jump at this proposal?

Simple: in order to make such a deal, we must speak with Hamas, directly or indirectly. And this is precisely what the government refuses to do.

Why? Simple again: Sderot is only a pretext - much like the two captured soldiers were a pretext for something else altogether. The real purpose of the whole exercise is to overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza and to prevent a Hamas takeover in the West Bank.

In simple and blunt words: the government sacrifices the fate of the Sderot population on the altar of a hopeless principle. It is more important for the government to boycott Hamas - because it is now the spearhead of Palestinian resistance - than to put an end to the suffering of Sderot. All the media cooperate with this pretence.

IT HAS been said before that it is dangerous to write satire in our country - too often the satire becomes reality. Some readers may recall a satirical article I wrote months ago. In it I described the situation in Gaza as a scientific experiment designed to find out how far one can go, in starving a civilian population and turning their lives into hell, before they raise their hands in surrender.

This week, the satire has become official policy. Respected commentators declared explicitly that Ehud Barak and the army chiefs are working on the principle of "trial and error" and change their methods daily according to results. They stop the fuel to Gaza, observe how this works and backtrack when the international reaction is too negative. They stop the delivery of medicines, see how it works, etc. The scientific aim justifies the means.

The man in charge of the experiment is Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a man of many ideas and few scruples, a man whose whole turn of mind is basically inhuman. He is now, perhaps, the most dangerous person in Israel, more dangerous than Ehud Olmert and Binyamin Netanyahu, dangerous to the very existence of Israel in the long run.

The man in charge of execution is the Chief of Staff. This week we had the chance of hearing speeches by two of his predecessors, generals Moshe Ya'alon and Shaul Mofaz, in a forum with inflated intellectual pretensions. Both were discovered to have views that place them somewhere between the extreme Right and the ultra-Right. Both have a frighteningly primitive mind. There is no need to waste a word about the moral and intellectual qualities of their immediate successor, Dan Halutz. If these are the voices of the three last Chiefs of Staff, what about the incumbent, who cannot speak out as openly as they? Has this apple fallen further from the tree?

Until three days ago, the generals could entertain the opinion that the experiment was succeeding. The misery in the Gaza Strip had reached its climax. Hundreds of thousands were threatened by actual hunger. The chief of UNRWA warned of an impending human catastrophe. Only the rich could still drive a car, heat their homes and eat their fill. The world stood by and wagged its collective tongue. The leaders of the Arab states voiced empty phrases of sympathy without raising a finger.

Barak, who has mathematical abilities, could calculate when the population would finally collapse.

AND THEN something happened that none of them foresaw, in spite of the fact that it was the most foreseeable event on earth.

When one puts a million and a half people in a pressure cooker and keeps turning up the heat, it will explode. That is what happened at the Gaza-Egypt border.

At first there was a small explosion. A crowd stormed the gate, Egyptian policemen opened live fire, dozens were wounded. That was a warning.

The next day came the big attack. Palestinian fighters blew up the wall in many places. Hundreds of thousands broke out into Egyptian territory and took a deep breath. The blockade was broken.

Even before that, Mubarak was in an impossible situation. Hundreds of millions of Arabs, a billion Muslims, saw how the Israeli army had closed the Gaza strip off on three sides: the North, the East and the sea. The fourth side of the blockade was provided by the Egyptian army.

The Egyptian president, who claims the leadership of the entire Arab world, was seen as a collaborator with an inhuman operation conducted by a cruel enemy in order to gain the favor (and the money) of the Americans. His internal enemies, the Muslim Brothers, exploited the situation to debase him in the eyes of his own people.

It is doubtful if Mubarak could have persisted in this position. But the Palestinian masses relieved him of the need to make a decision. They decided for him. They broke out like a tsunami wave. Now he has to decide whether to succumb to the Israeli demand to re-impose the blockade on his Arab brothers.

And what about Barak's experiment? What's the next step? The options are few:

  1. To re-occupy Gaza. The army does not like the idea. It understands that this would expose thousands of soldiers to a cruel guerilla war, which would be unlike any intifada before.

  2. To tighten the blockade again and exert extreme pressure on Mubarak, including the use of Israeli influence on the US Congess to deprive him of the billions he gets every year for his services.

  3. To turn the curse into a blessing, by handing the Strip over to Mubarak, pretending that this was Barak's hidden aim all along. Egypt would have to safeguard Israel's security, prevent the launching of Qassams and expose its own soldiers to a Palestinian guerilla war - when it thought it was rid of the burden of this poor and barren area, and after the infrastructure there has been destroyed by the Israeli occupation. Probably Mubarak will say: Very kind of you, but no thanks.

The brutal blockade was a war crime. And worse: it was a stupid blunder.

Bron: Gush Shalom

Zie ook onze Vrouwen in het Zwart- nieuwsbrief van februari.

The Guardian, Comment Monday February 23, 2004

In the shadow of Sharon's wall
Israel must tear down its ring of concrete, razor wire and watchtowers around my town


By Marouf Zahran

My town and its people are slowly suffocating. The government of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is building a grotesque wall. He is building it on land that belongs to Palestinians: land occupied by Israel and held in violation of international law. He is building it, like a tightening noose, around my town, Qalqilya.

Qalqilya is a lovely town, an ancient Canaanite town, home to approximately 45,000 Palestinian men, women and children. We are a town of farmers and, as is traditional in Palestinian society, our farmland surrounds the town centre. For centuries, Qalqilya's citizens have risen each morning to work their fields, returning in the evening to their families, friends and neighbours. Qalqilya is on the Green Line, the border between what became Israeli in 1948 and the Palestinian territory Israel occupied in 1967. In 1948, Israel took nearly 80% of our farmland. Since then, we have made do with the rest.

We had a decent life, we prospered. We were a rare oasis of coexistence where Israelis came to buy our fruit, eat in our restaurants and visit our zoo. More than 40 Palestinian-Israeli business ventures were based in our town. Almost all of us speak Hebrew and see Israelis as our neighbours, not our enemies.

Then came Sharon's wall - a wall of concrete 8m high, with razor wire, sniper towers, trenches and electric fences. The wall tightly encircles our town and cuts us off from our farmland and our livelihood. Armed Israeli soldiers control one narrow gateway from which we are allowed to enter and leave - if we are lucky enough to have a permit. On the rare occasions when our farmers are able to visit their fields, they are met by withered, untended crops, dying in the shadow of an ugly concrete wall. In the process of building its wall, Israel confiscated our land, demolished greenhouses and uprooted orchards. One-third of Qalqilya's water supply is inaccessible - the wells now lie outside the wall.

Israel allows very few people to enter Qalqilya, thereby cutting us off fromfamily and friends in 32 neighbouring villages and devastating our local businesses. More than 75% of our citizens are unemployed and our tax revenues are a mere trickle. Meanwhile, the Israel Electric Company, which provides our electricity, has threatened to cut off power to Qalqilya if I cannot come up with $1.5m (£800,000) to pay our municipal electric bill. As mayor, I am responsible for Qalqilya's wellbeing. But I can only watch helplessly as Israel squeezes the very life out of my town.

Sharon claims that he is building his wall to provide Israelis with security. If that were true, he would have built the wall on the Green Line. But his wall has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with his final plan for the "Palestinian problem". Sharon's "vision" is to confiscate as much Palestinian land as possible, leaving millions of Palestinians to live in ghettos - decaying, impoverished towns, encaged by concrete walls, electrified fences and razor wire, breeding only hopelessness and despair. If Sharon gets his way, today's Qalqilya will be the prototype for tomorrow's Palestinian "state".

For nearly three years before the start of the current Intifada, not a single Israeli civilian was killed inside Israel by an act of terrorism. There was no wall then - but there was a peace process and a genuine Palestinian belief that Israel would end its occupation and allow the Palestinians to live in the same freedom and security it demands for Israelis.

Instead of reinstilling that belief, Israel is only creating more animosity. Since the wall's construction, the number of Qalqilya residents supporting Palestinian extremist groups has risen sharply.

Sharon's wall is not about peace. It is not about security. It is about the hatred that Sharon has for my people as non-Jews in land he wants for his Jewish state, the hatred he has for our quest for freedom and independence based on equality.

Today, the international court of justice will begin its hearings on the legal consequences of Sharon's wall. The residents of Qalqilya are praying that the court and the international community will finally take action. At what point in the implementation of Sharon's final plan for the Palestinians will Israel be held legally and morally accountable for its actions?

When President Bush next meets Israeli leaders, he will have a wonderful opportunity to win the Muslim and Arab hearts and minds that he wants for his war against terrorism. Just as President Reagan changed the world by challenging President Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, so too can Bush change the world by calling on Sharon to tear down his wall. It is time to start building bridges instead.

Marouf Zahran is Mayor of the Palestinian town of Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank

 




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