I do what I want - You do what you're told

January 4, 2008


It apparently never occurred to anyone in our leading human rights organisations or the Western media that the same moral and legal standards ought be applied to the behaviour of Israel and Hizbullah during the war on Lebanon 18 months ago. Belatedly, an important effort has been made to set that right.

A new report, written by a respected Israeli human rights organisation, one representing the country's Arab minority not its Jewish majority, has unearthed evidence showing that during the fighting Israel committed war crimes not only against Lebanese civilians -- as was already known -- but also against its own Arab citizens. This is an aspect of the war that has been almost entirely neglected until now.

The report also sheds a surprising light on the question of what Hizbullah was aiming at when it fired hundreds of rockets on northern Israel. Until the report's publication last month, I had been all but a lone voice arguing that the picture of what took place during the war was far more complex than generally accepted.

The new report follows a series of inquiries by the most influential human rights groups, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, to identify the ways in which international law was broken during Israel's 34-day assault on Lebanon. However, both organisations failed to examine, except in the most cursory and dismissive way, Israel's treatment of its own civilians during the war. That failure may also have had serious repercussions for their ability to assess Hizbullah's actions.

Before examining the report's revelations, it is worth revisiting the much-misrepresented events of summer 2006 and considering what efforts have been made subsequently to bring the two sides to account.

The war was the culmination of a series of tit-for-tat provocations along the shared border following Israel's withdrawal from its two-decade occupation of south Lebanon in 2000. Almost daily for those six years Israel behaved as though the occupation had not ended, sending war planes into Lebanese air space to create terrifying sonic booms and spy on the country. (After the war, it resumed these flights almost immediately.)

In response Hizbullah, a Shia militia that offered the only effective resistance during Lebanon's period of occupation, maintained its belligerent posture. It warned repeatedly that it would capture Israeli soldiers, should the chance arise, in the hope of forcing a prisoner exchange. Israel had held on to a handful of Lebanese prisoners after its pullback.

Hizbullah also demanded that Israel complete its withdrawal from Lebanon in full by leaving a fertile sliver of territory, the Shebaa Farms. Israel argues that the area is Syrian territory, occupied by its army along with the Golan Heights in 1967, and will be returned one day in negotiations with Damascus. UN catrographers disagree, backing Hizbullah's claim that the area is Lebanese.

The fighting began with a relatively minor incident (by regional standards) and one that was entirely predictable: Hizbullah attacked a border post, capturing two soldiers and killing three more in the operation. Hizbullah's leader Hassan Nasrallah proposed a prisoner swap. Israel declared war the very same day, unleashing a massive bombing campaign that over the next month killed nearly 1,200 Lebanese civilians.

An editorial in Israel's leading newspaper Haaretz noted again this week that, by rejecting Hizbullah's overtures, "Israel initiated the war".

In the last days of the fighting, as a UN-brokered ceasefire was about to come into effect, Israel dropped more than a million cluster bombs on south Lebanon, of which several hundred thousand failed to detonate. Since the end of the war, 39 Lebanese civilians have been killed and dozens more maimed from these small landmines littering the countryside.

Israel's own inquiry into its use of the cluster munitions wrapped up last month by exonerating the army, even while admitting that many of the bombs had been directed at civilian population centres. In Israel's books, it seems, international law sanctions the targeting of civilians during war.

Veteran Israeli reporter Meron Rapoport recently noted that his newspaper, Haaretz again, has evidence that the army's use of cluster munitions was "pre-planned" and undertaken without regard to the location of Hizbullah positions. The only reasonable conclusion is that Israel wanted south Lebanon uninhabitable at any cost, possibly so that another ground invasion could be mounted.

Human Rights Watch, which has carried out the most detailed examination of the war, was less forgiving than Israel's own investigators -- as might have been expected in the case of such a flagrant abuse of the rules of war. Still, it has failed to condemn Israel's actions unreservedly. In a typical press release it noted the wide dispersal of cluster bombs over civilian areas of south Lebanon but concluded only that their use by Israel "may violate the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks contained in international humanitarian law".

In this and other respects, HRW's reports have revealed troubling double standards.

During the war two charges were levelled against Hizbullah, mainly by Israel's supporters, and investigated by the human rights group: that the Shia militia fired rockets on northern Israel either indiscriminately or in a deliberate attempt to target civilians; and that it hid its fighters and weapons among its own Lebanese civilians (thereby conveniently justifying Israel's bombing of those civilians).

Hizbullah was found guilty of the first charge, with HRW arguing that it was irrelevant whether or not Hizbullah was trying to hit military targets in Israel as its rockets were not precision-guided. All its rockets, whatever they were aimed at, were therefore considered indiscriminate by the organisation and a violation of international law. Worthy of note is that HRW expressed certainty about the impermissibility of Hizbullah firing imprecise rockets but not about Israel's use of even less precise cluster bombs.

On the second charge Hizbullah was substantially acquitted, with HRW failing to find evidence that, apart from in a handful of isolated instances, the militia hid among the Lebanese population.

Regarding Israel, the human rights organisations investigated the charge that it violated international law by endangering Lebanese civilians during its bombing campaigns. Given that Israel's missiles and bombs were supposed to have pinpoint accuracy, the large death toll of Lebanese civilians provided indisputable evidence of Israeli war crimes. HRW agreed.

Strangely, however, after submitting both Israel and Hizbullah to the same test of whether their firepower targeted civilians, HRW deemed it inappropriate to investigate Israel on the second allegation faced by Hizbullah: that it committed a war crime by blending in with its own civilian population. Was there so little prima facie evidence of such behaviour on Israel's side that the organisation decided it was not worth wasting its resources on such an inquiry?

HRW produced two lengthy reports in August 2007, one examining events in Lebanon and the other events in Israel. But the report on what happened inside Israel, "Civilians under Assault", failed to examine Israel's treatment of its own civilians and focused instead only on proving that Hizbullah's firing of its rockets violated international law.

HRW did made a brief reference to the possibility that Israeli military installations were located close to or inside civilian communities. It cited examples of a naval training base next to a hospital in Haifa and a weapons factory built in a civilian community. Its researchers even admitted to watching the Israeli army firing shells into Lebanon from a residential street of the Jewish community of Zarit.

This act of "cowardly blending" by the Israeli army -- to echo the UN envoy Jan Egeland's unwarranted criticism of Hizbullah -- was a war crime. It made Israeli civilians a potential target for Hizbullah reprisal attacks.

So what was HRW's position on this gross violation of the rules of war it had witnessed? After yet again denouncing Hizbullah for its rocket attacks, the report was mealy-mouthed: "Given that indiscriminate fire [by Hizbullah], there is no reason to believe that Israel's placement of certain military assets within these cities added appreciably to the risk facing their residents."

In other words, Israel's culpability in hiding its war machine inside civilian communities did not need to be assessed on its own terms as a violation of international law. Instead Israel was let off the hook based on the assumption that Hizbullah's rockets were incapable of hitting such positions. It is dubious, to put it mildly, whether this is a legitimate reading of international law.

An additional criticism, one that I made on several occasions during the war, was that Israel failed to protect its Arab communities from rocket attacks by ensuring they had bomb shelters or early warning systems -- unlike Jewish communities. On this issue, the HRW report had only this to say: "Human Rights Watch did not investigate whether Israel discriminated among Jewish and Arab residents of the north in the protection it provided from Hezbollah attacks."

Of Hizbullah's indiscrimination, HRW was certain; of Israel's discrimination, it held back from judgment.

Fortunately, we no longer have to rely on Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International for a full picture of what took place during what Israelis call the Second Lebanon War. Last month the Arab Association for Human Rights, based in Nazareth, published its own report, "Civilians in Danger", covering the ground its much bigger cousins dared not touch.

The hostile climate in Israel towards the fifth of the population who are Arab has made publication of the report a risky business. Azmi Bishara, Israel's leading Arab politician and a major critic of Israel's behaviour during the Lebanon war, is currently in exile under possible death sentence. Israel has accused him of treason in helping Hizbullah during the fighting, though the secret services have yet to produce the evidence they have supposedly amassed against him. Nonetheless they have successfully intimidated most of the Arab minority into silence.

Also, much of the report's detail, including many place-names and maps showing the location of Hizbullah rocket strikes, has had to be excised to satisfy Israel's strict military censorship laws.

But despite these obstacles, the Human Rights Association has taken a brave stand in unearthing the evidence to show that Israel committed war crimes by placing much of its military hardware, including artillery positions firing into Lebanon, inside and next to Arab towns and villages. These were not isolated instances but a discerible pattern.

The threat to which this exposed Arab communities was far from as theoretical as HRW supposes. Some 660 Hizbullah rockets landed on 20 Arab communities in the north, apparently surprising Israeli officials, who believed Hizbullah would not target fellow Arabs. Of the 44 Israeli civilians killed by the rockets, 21 were Arab citizens.

Israel has cited these deaths as further proof that Hizbullah's rocket fire was indiscriminate. The Human Rights Association, however, reaches a rather different conclusion, one based on the available evidence. Its research shows a clear correlation between an Arab community having an Israeli army base located next to it and the likelihood of it being hit by Hizbullah rockets. In short, Arab communities targeted by Hizbullah were almost exclusively those in which the Israeli army was based.

"The study found that the Arab towns and villages that suffered the most intensive attacks during the war were ones that were surrounded by military installations, either on a permanent basis or temporarily during the course of the war," the report states.

Such findings lend credibility to complaints made during the war by Israel's Arab legislators, including Bishara himself, that Arab communities were being used as "human shields" by the Israeli army -- possibly to deter Hizbullah from targeting its positions.

In early August 2006, Bishara told the Maariv newspaper: "What ordinary citizens are afraid to say, the Arab Knesset members are declaring loudly. Israel turned the Galilee and the Arab villages in particular into human shields by surrounding them with artillery positions and missile batteries."

Such violations of the rules of war were occasionally hinted at in reporting in the Israeli media. In one account from the front line, for example, a reporter from Maariv quoted parents in the Arab village of Fassuta complaining that children were wetting their beds because of the frightening bark of tanks stationed outside their homes.

According to the Human Rights Association's report, Israel made its Arab citizens vulnerable to Hizbullah's rockets in the following ways:

* Permanent military bases, including army camps, airfields and weapons factories, as well as temporary artillery positions that fired thousands of shells and mortars into southern Lebanon were located inside or next to many Arab communities.

* The Israeli army trained soldiers inside northern Arab communities before and during the war in preparation for a ground invasion, arguing that the topography in these communities was similar to the villages of south Lebanon.

* The government failed to evacuate civilians from the area of fighting, leaving Arab citizens particularly in danger. Almost no protective measures, such as building public shelters or installing air raid sirens, had been taken in Arab communities, whereas they had been in Jewish communities.

Under the protocols to the Geneva Conventions, parties to a conflict must "avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas" and must "endeavour to remove the civilian population from the vicinity of military objectives". The Human Rights Association report clearly shows that Israel cynically broke these rules of war.

Tarek Ibrahim, a lawyer and the author of the Association's report, says the most surprising finding is that Hizbullah's rockets mostly targeted Arab communities where military installations had been located and in the main avoided those where there were no such military positions.

"Hizbullah claimed on several occasions that its rockets were aimed primarily at military targets in Israel. Our research cannot prove that to be the case but it does give a strong indication that Hizbullah's claims may be true."

Although Hizbullah's Katyusha rockets were not precision-guided, the proximity of Israeli military positions to Arab communities "are within the margin of error of the rockets fired by Hizbullah", according to the report. In most cases, such positions were located either inside the community itself or a few hundred metres from it.

In its recommendations, the Human Rights Association calls for the removal of all Israeli military installations from civilian communities.

(Again noteworthy is the fact that Israel has built several weapons factories inside Arab communities, including in Nazareth. Arab citizens are almost never allowed to work in Israel's vast military industries, so why build them there? Part of the reason is doubtless that they provide another pretext for confiscating Arab communities' lands and "Judaising" them. But is the criticism by Arab legislators of "human shielding" another possible reason?)

The report avoids dealing with the wider issue of whether the Israeli army located in Jewish communities too during the war. Ibrahim explains: "In part the reason was that we are an Arab organisation and that directs the focus of our work. But there is also the difficulty that Israeli Jews are unlikely to cooperate with our research."

Israel has longed boasted of its "citizen army", and in surveys Israeli Jews say they trust the military more than the country's parliament, government and courts.

Nonetheless, the report notes, there is ample evidence that the army based itself in some Jewish communities too. As well as the eyewitness account of the Human Rights Watch researcher, it was widely reported during the war that 12 soldiers were killed when a Hizbullah rocket struck the rural community of Kfar Giladi, close to the northern border.

A member of the kibbutz, Uri Eshkoli, recently told the Israeli media: "We deserve a medal of honor for our assistance during the war. We opened our hotel to soldiers and asked for no compensation. Moreover, soldiers stayed in the kibbutz throughout the entire war."

In another report, in the Guardian newspaper, a 19-year-old British Jew, Danny Young, recounted his experiences performing military service during the war. He lived on Kibbutz Sasa, close to the border, which became an army rear base. "We were shooting missiles from the foot of this kibbutz," he told the paper. "We were also receiving Katyushas."

So far the Human Rights Association's report has received minimal coverage in the Hebrew media. "We are facing a very difficult political atmosphere in Israel at the moment," Ibrahim told me. "Few people inside Israel want to hear that their army and government broke international law in such a flagrant manner."

It seems few in the West, even the guardians of human rights, are ready to hear such a message either.

Jonathan Cook is a journalist and writer based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest book, "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East", is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

Leila Khaled marching with other PFLP leaders in the Baddawi refugee camp in Lebanon during a demonstration marking the 40th anniversary of the PFLP, 9 December 2007. (Matthew Cassel)

January 7, 2008

One of the most legendary figures of the Palestinian struggle for national liberation, Leila Khaled was recently in the Palestinian refugee camps of northern Lebanon. Visiting for the first time since last summer's battle between the non-Palestinian Islamist group Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese army, during which the Nahr al-Bared camp was destroyed, Khaled sat down with EI editor Matthew Cassel to discuss Annapolis, Nahr al-Bared, and how the Palestinian movement must move forward.

A refugee herself, Khaled was forced to flee Haifa as a young girl in 1948 and later became the first female member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1967 and remains a member in the PFLP Leadership Council. Khaled put herself and Palestine in the front pages of newspapers by hijacking two passenger airplanes in 1969 and 1970, under the PFLP motto "Going after the enemy everywhere."

Forty years later, Palestine is still not yet liberated and the situation of the refugees is as dire as ever. More than 30 civilian refugees were killed during last summer's camp battle, and thousands of refugees in Lebanon are wondering when they can return to their camp, let alone their homes and property in historic Palestine.


ELECTRONIC INTIFADA: Recently the US, Israel and the Palestinian Authority met in Annapolis, Maryland to try and advance the "peace process." However, the fate of Jerusalem, the occupation and the right of return for Palestinian refugees are no closer to being resolved. Do Palestinians, especially a refugee like yourself, believe that these types of negotiations will ever bring about a real solution to the conflict?

LEILA KHALED: What happened in Annapolis is a process only, a process that will [only] give the Israelis more time [to make] more settlements and at the same time normalize the relationship between Israel and the Arabs as a whole, not every country by itself, and to make a big distance between the Palestinian question and the Arabs.

By the way, the reference [point for a political settlement at] that conference [was] that [of] the United States ... and not the United Nations ... And while the meeting was going on the Israelis were making incursions into Gaza, [raiding] in the West Bank ... attacking and arresting people.

It's a game, and we know that very well and we are against negotiations with the Israelis because the balance of forces is not for us, neither on the Palestinian level or the Arab level or the international level. Negotiations could be efficient and of interest to us [only] when we are nearer to being on equal sides. In history negotiations were between the fighting parties when they became on the same level. But we are not on the same level. We are still under occupation, we are still refugees -- what [do] we [have] to negotiate?

They say it's a peace process but we don't see the peace, we see the process. It's just to make public relations, [nothing] more. That's why we are against it.

EI: Do you consider Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, especially the Palestinian refugees?

LK: Yes. He was elected by our people as the president of the [Palestinian] Authority. And in the executive committee and the legislative council he was elected as the chief of the PLO [the Palestinian Liberation Organization]. So he is legitimate. But let's think again, what is it to be legitimate? ... In the stage of national liberation to be legitimate [means] to fight our enemies.

EI: Now that Palestinians seem divided, especially with the recent fighting between Fatah and Hamas in Gaza, what do you see as the way forward for Palestinians to continue their struggle to bring about their rights?

LK: First of all, we [the PFLP] condemned the way that Hamas used [force] in solving the interior contradictions, because the main contradiction is with occupation, and that is not of the culture of the Palestinian struggle.

In all the revolutions in the world there were differences in ideas and differences in attitudes, but always people [resort] to national dialogue among factions [to solve them]. We [the PFLP] were against the Oslo agreements but still we are part of the PLO. What Hamas did is condemned by us and by others. So we are asking Hamas to retreat .. and come back to the larger revolution. ... On the other side, there are many problems in the Israeli society and in the government and in the Knesset, but they don't solve them with arms.

The [Palestinian] Authority has taken many measures against general liberties and these measures were expressed by decrees by the president ... To be democratic is to give more freedom to the people despite that they are under siege or being imprisoned in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. We don't accept that the PA goes to negotiations with the Israelis, meetings with the Israelis every two weeks according to what [US Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice asks them [for the sake of] public relations, not solving any problem of our people, neither on the economical [level] or the security [level] or the political level ... Israel sees that only the whole issue is how to secure itself from us while we are the ones who are suffering from occupation.

[Secondly, we must] rebuild the PLO because the PLO has become marginalized. So we are also mobilizing our people so that the PLO is the sole representative and the legitimate representative of the Palestinians inside and outside Palestine. So really doing it will give us more strength that all factions can be part of it, including the Islamic groups.

Thirdly, on the international level, these meetings will reach nowhere -- but all the time we were calling for an international conference led by the United Nations based on [UN] resolutions beginning from 194 until now that give us our rights. This conference [should be about] how to implement the resolutions because resolution 194 was [issued] in 1948, now it's 59 years [on]. It's not [about] having more resolutions but how to implement the resolutions that were taken by the international community [through] the United Nations.

This is the only way. But all this is based on our resistance. Without resistance we cannot get it.

EI: And what kind of resistance are you referring to?

LK: All kinds of resistance, resistance means everything. Beginning with the word "no" and ending with holding arms. And in between there are many ways, [including] a political struggle, a popular struggle. They want us to accept them as they are: racist, discriminating, an apartheid regime in Israel. This is what we don't want. We cannot coexist with such people. But we can coexist with people like us. This is the way we are looking for. And when we speak about an independent state it's not the [just] end result of the historic conflict between us and the Israelis and the Zionists. It's a step forward to have a democratic state in Palestine for all of us. But the key or the solution is the return of the Palestinians -- without that this conflict will continue.

EI: What do you think is the best way for internationals to support and do solidarity work with Palestine?

LK: I think we have received many means of solidarity with us as a people under occupation and in the diaspoa ... When we are speaking it is an act of supporting the Palestinians because you are spreading our word whether it's by Internet or newspapers or all kinds of media, just to spread the story of the Palestinians that there was and still is injustice against them. Now there are other means that people can extend treatment like dealing with health, making workshops with children, women, supporting some projects for the betterment of the lives of Palestinians. These are all kinds of solidarity. Im not here to say what means because the progressive forces in the world [have] extended their support and their solidarity by their own means and it was effective and is still effective.

EI: How does the destruction of Nahr al-Bared fit into the history of the Palestinian struggle?

LK: The camps [reflect] the historic crime that is inflicted by the Zionists and the imperialists against the Palestinians. [Since] the beginning of the armed struggle for revolution the camps are the target ... because they are the witness of the Nakba. It's not by coincidence that we had massacres in Palestine in the camps, and Jenin is one of those massacres that happened by the Israelis.

The camps in Lebanon which also faced massacres, Tel al-Zater, in Nabatiyeh camp that were totally destroyed by the Israelis ... this is the ... plan to end up the camps because ... in 1948 when our homeland was occupied and we were driven out by force but the witnesses [remained]. So now it's time to end the only witness itself: the camp. But every time it takes a different scenario; sometimes it's by the Israelis sometimes it's by other hands, Arab hands.

EI: Like the Lebanese army this time?

LK: This time and before. The Lebanese army faced us in 1973 and sieged our camps and it was obvious at that time that the resistance was still at its peak so they couldn't [come] near our camps in Beirut. Now it's time according to the Arab situation which is divided [because] the Palestinian situation [is divided], the PLO is now divided and what happened in Gaza added to the division, so it's easy to [destroy] another camp. But this time by having the excuse of Fatah al-Islam.

EI: You just returned from your first visit to the refugee camps in northern Lebanon since the summer war. Is there anything you would like to talk about?

LK: This is not the first destruction of one of our camps. We have to be careful ... to rebuild this camp and by ourselves. Those who want to support us have to support us directly, not through governments ... We are not asking [the Lebanese or other governments] to come and build our camps. We build our camps, our people build [them].

And it's a real suffering for our people to find their houses like this, burnt and destroyed and so on. We have experience with that. But we are not used to it and we will never be used to it. My message to our people is that we can build more and we are patient enough, but this doesn't mean that it's an endless patience.

... This is a crime for all the world that look, because we are Palestinians our camps are destroyed in this savage way. Why [did the Lebanese army] burn the houses just to not let the people go back to their houses and to make it more difficult for them [to return]?

Shatila camp was destroyed too and now it's rebuilt, and it was built by our people ... First responsibility is the PLO and all other factions including us [the PFLP] and ... then the Palestinian community, the Arab community and then the international community are also called up to come and extend their help to our people. Because we are really [facing] injustice every day in our lives.

New settlements being built under Abbas's nose are a time-bomb, warns Khaled Amayreh.

January 4, 2008

A visibly cordial meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in West Jerusalem last week had all the trappings of a good beginning. The smiles were broad, the atmosphere cheerful, an aura of optimism was hovering over them. The meeting, which took place at Olmert's official residence on 27 December, was meant to launch the final-status talks between the two sides, in the hope that they would lead to a final resolution of the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

In addition to re-launching the revived talks, which many critics already term doomed and futile given Israel's insolence and intransigence, the PA leadership had hoped to use the meeting to get Olmert to cancel recently-announced plans to build thousands of fresh settler units all over the West Bank, particularly in Israeli-occupied Arab East Jerusalem.

Olmert and Abbas did agree to re-launch the peace talks and to refrain from taking any steps that would be prejudicial to the final-status issues. However, on the central subject of settlement expansion, which is a central final-status issue, Olmert made it clear to Abbas that he couldn't and wouldn't halt the construction since such a step would mean the collapse of his coalition government. Interestingly, this is the same pretext and the same rationale that successive Israeli prime ministers have always cited whenever they were pressed, even by the US, to stop or freeze settlement expansion.

Olmert didn't tell Abbas outright that Israel would fly in the face of the Annapolis spirit and go ahead with building new settler units all over the West Bank. Instead, he resorted to prevarication and stratagems. He told Abbas that Israel wouldn't create new settlements in the West Bank, but made no mention of plans to expand existing settlements by building thousands of apartments on newly- confiscated private Arab land in the vicinity of these settlements. The extent of Olmert's deception and mendacity was revealed soon after his photo-op with Abbas.

This week, the Israeli media revealed that the Israeli government decided recently to issue two construction tenders in East Jerusalem, including the building of 440 settler units in the Arab suburbs of Sur Baher and Jabal Al-Mukaber. This is in addition to the 307 settler units Israel is planning to build in the settlement of Har Homa, or Jabal Abu Ghneim, adjacent to the Christian Palestinian town of Beit Sahur, in the Bethlehem region.

The new campaign of settlement expansion in and around occupied East Jerusalem, which Israel doesn't consider part of the West Bank, coincides with the building of thousands of apartments throughout the West Bank.

The latest meeting between Abbas and Olmert was dismissed even by pro-Fatah pundits as a fiasco, with Hani Al-Masri, a prominent columnist, accusing the PA leadership of effectively dropping East Jerusalem from the negotiations. "If beefing up Jewish settlement activities in Jerusalem, the future capital of the Palestinian state everyone is talking about, isn't prejudicial to the final status settlement, then what issues are they talking about," asked Masri.

Constantly rebuffed by an insolent and contemptuous Israeli refusal to freeze settlement expansion, a frustrated and effectively helpless Palestinian leadership appealed to the Bush administration, especially to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to pressure Israel to stop. Rice appealed to Olmert to be mindful of the consequences of unchecked settlement expansion on the peace process.

Olmert assured Rice that no new settlements were being planned, that he was powerless to stop natural growth, and that the settlers were after all Israeli citizens and were entitled to have a roof over their heads.

In one instance, the Israeli government actually added injury to insult when Israeli soldiers shot and killed a personal bodyguard of chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurei southwest of Ramallah. The cold-blooded killing occurred only a few hours after the meeting in West Jerusalem, which Qurei also attended.

Having to repeat the same platitudes every day and mouthing words about the illegality of Jewish settlements, Palestinian officials are finding themselves facing an unenviable situation. On the one hand, they realise, although they wouldn't say so openly, that talks with Israel are doomed to failure, even if these talks go on for 100 to come. They also realise that neither the Bush administration nor any other subsequent American administration have either the will or the inclination to pressure Israel to end the occupation that started in 1967.

On the other hand, the PA is aware that the influx of billions of dollars pledged by the donor countries during the Donor Conference in Paris in mid-December hinges to no small extent on the continuation of at least a semblance of peace-making efforts irrespective of whether these efforts produce results.

However, this mode of thinking is problematic to say the least since it doesn't take into account the shifting mood and growing indignation of the Palestinians.

This week, the Israeli army significantly stepped up its unprovoked murder of Palestinian civilians, just for the sake of it, as one human rights operator put it. At the Beit Hanun border crossing at the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers suffering from boredom opened fire on Palestinian pilgrims returning from Mecca, killing a woman and injuring five other people, one seriously.

The Israeli army issued four different accounts of the haphazard murder of the woman, whose children and grandchildren were awaiting her just a few hundred metres away. First, the Israeli army spokesman said he had no knowledge of the incident. Then five hours later, a different spokesperson claimed that it was likely the woman was hit by Palestinian fire. A third narrative alleged that the woman was killed in an exchange of fire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian security personnel stationed in northern Gaza. Finally, the Israeli army issued a fourth narrative, saying that soldiers at the Erez border-crossing felt threatened and had to open fire.

Of course, the woman was not hit by Palestinian fire, there was no exchange of fire between Israeli and Palestinian soldiers in the vicinity, and the soldiers manning the Erez crossing didn't feel threatened by the presence of exhausted pilgrims who had been subjected to meticulous frisking and searches, fraught, as usual, with every conceivable form of humiliation.

A similar incident occurred last week near Ramallah when trigger-happy Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian, a father of two small children, who was hiking with his brother and a friend outside their home. The soldiers claimed the three unarmed Palestinians were acting suspiciously.

The frozen rage accumulating as a result of the murderous Israeli onslaught, coupled with the Israeli policy of deception, as evident from continuing settlement expansion, is deepening in the hearts of Palestinians. "I think most people are convinced that Israel is deceiving the Palestinian leadership and that it is not sincere about reaching peace with the Palestinians. To put it in a nutshell, the policy of murdering Palestinians and expanding settlements is not compatible with a genuine desire for peace," said Ziad Abu Zayad, himself a former Palestinian negotiator.

Writing in the East Jerusalem-based Al-Quds, Abu Zayad accused Israel of playing tricks for the purpose of building more settlements, stealing more Arab land and misleading the international public opinion. It is the same movie, the same deception, the same lies. Abu Zayad urged the Palestinian leadership of Abbas to immediately declare the futility of talks with Israel if the Jewish state refuses to stop all settlement expansion activities in the West Bank.

There is another element which doesn't augur well for Abbas and his western-backed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. The Fatah movement is now in turmoil over the provocative policies of the Ramallah government and is trying to convey an unmistakable message to Fayyad, stating that either you be at our beck and call, or resign. This week, a small Fatah military wing, the Aqsa Martyr Brigades, now nearly completely dissolved by the Fayyad government, warned that it would assassinate Fayyad if he continued to deny Fatah a preferential treatment.

Fayyad recently alienated many in Fatah when he reportedly stopped paying salaries to thousands of Fatah cadres who had been on the PA payroll since the mid-1990s. Fayyad also infuriated many Palestinians recently when he publicly offered condolences to the families of two off-duty Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinian guerrillas in Hebron in the southern West Bank. Israel killed many hundreds of Palestinians in 2008, including dozens of children.

According to some Palestinians observers, the most expected scenario in case the peace process collapses, which most Palestinians see as a foregone conclusion, will be a new Intifada, this time against both Israel and the PA government itself.


© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly

Gaza Strip, January, 1, 2008, (PCAS) - Part of the endless activities organized by Popular Committee against sieges (PCAS), the committee organized a rally for besieged children in Gaza Strip. Hundreds of children participated in the rally which took place in Gaza city with massive media coverage.

The Protesters (children) formed a human chain in Omar Al Mokhtar street, the largest street in Gaza city for almost two hours. Protesters call upon ending Gaza Siege which affects their lives in every single way.

PCAS chairman, member of Palestinian Parliament Jamal Naji El Koudary alongside members and volunteers of PCAS participated in the event.

Chairman El Khoudary asserted that children have the right to live far from conflicts and political problems. He added that siege imposed on Gaza affected all life aspects for the past 7 months, with no interference from Arab or Islamic countries or International ones as well.

El Khoudary said about this rally, "occupation is killing innocent Palestinian children day by day in all ways. Children are here today to tell the world we are being killed and you are completely silent. Children must be protected in all times and this is a guaranteed right by all humanitarian charters."

Mr. Chairman touched upon the ongoing deadly health crisis in Gaza Strip asserting that it must come to an end. "Patients are in same situation; their health status is on continuous retreat. About 56 died and other poor patients are waiting their inevitable death as they are in the death Blacklist set by Israeli occupation.

"On behalf of oppressed besieged Gazans, PCAS calls upon the free world to lift the tight illegitimate siege. This siege threatens lives of all Gaza residents. It's flagrant and obvious violation for all humanitarian charters and conventions.

PCAS met some of children who said, "We need to play and to get fun like other children around the world. Why we are besieged? We didn't commit any mistake?"

The 7-year-old Hend started to cry when we tried to spoke to her, "All I need is to see my father back in Gaza, he is trapped in Egypt and not able to get into Gaza as crossings are closed."

It's remarkable that PCAS is running extensive activities against siege. Yesterday there was a very crucial joint press conference hold by El Khoudary and Pastor Manuel Musalam, leader of Latin sect in Gaza. They both sent a message to the Pope to end Gaza Siege.

For more information:

www.freegaza.ps

- freegaza.ps@gmail.com

January 6, 2008

Before I get going, consider this map. It shows why all talk of a "two state solution" in Palestine is absurd. The red areas are where Palestinians live in the occupied territories. These areas are not accurate, and not to scale. Around each red area is a gray line representing apartheid walls, plus other barriers – again, not to scale.

The Israeli plan is to restrict Palestinians to these isolated ghettos, and starve them inside. Isolation is achieved by the apartheid walls, plus the other barriers, fences, Jews-only roads, and so on.

The walls and barriers have nothing to do with Jewish "security." They are designed to squeeze Palestinians into oblivion.

Whenever Jews talk about a "two-state" solution, the red areas you see here are literally what Jews mean by a "Palestinian state," namely a patchwork of prison-ghettos. How would Palestinians move back and forth between the red areas? Answer: they wouldn’t. Each area is cut off from all other areas.

Is that a "state"?

Incidentally, in a "two-state solution," all Palestinians outside the occupied territories would have to move into the tiny red zones. This is what the collaborationist Abbas is pushing for.

But wait . . . wouldn’t the Jews tears down the walls between the Palestinian ghettos? What do you think? -The point is that that the Haaretz document (see below) confirms that Jews have one goal: to get all Palestinians out of Palestine. All talk of "peace" or a "two-state solution" is lies, lies, and more lies.

Haaretz document confirms Jewish plan for Palestinians

I thought this was interesting from a historical perspective.

You know that Israeli "peace processes" are meant to distract everyone while Jews continue to push all Palestinians out of Palestine.

You also know the Palestininians were wrongly blamed for the breakdown of the Camp David "peace" talks in 2000.

Jonathan Cook wrote a piece at Electronic Intifada that mentions some interesting things.

He notes that former prime minister Ehud Barak dreamed up the whole process of "separation" as you see in the map above. The main designer was Barak’s deputy defense minister, Ephraim Sneh.

Even before the Camp David "peace talks," the Israelis planned to isolate Palestinians in ghettos, exactly as was done in South Africa with the Bantustans (black ghettos). Barak used the Camp David talks to concel this fact.

Cook says that Haaretz recently published a document that reveals this Israeli plan, and shows that the Israelis deliberately checkmated the Camp David talks.

This document was presented to Ehud Olmert to prepare him for the Annapolis farce. (It ignores the fact that in the late 1980s, the PLO offered to accept a Palestinian state in the two separate territories of the West Bank and Gaza -- on only 22 percent of historic Palestine. The Israelis rejected that offer.)

The Annapolis farce was identical to the Camp David farce. In both, an outgoing U.S. president made a sham attempt to broker "peace." In both, the Israelis used the talks as a distraction. In both, Jewish proposals were intended to ultimately remove all Palestinians from Palestine.

The document says that in 2000, Barak insisted on the following principles before he would talk about establishing a "Palestinian state":

1. All illegal Israeli housing (400,000 Jews) would remain on land stolen from Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Jewish housing units would be connected by Jewish-only roads, guarded by the Jewish army. Any Palestinian "state" would look something like the map above. In return, Palestinians would be given a tiny wedge of worthless land in the Negev desert.

2. Israelis would retain the most fertile area in Palestine: the area along the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, from the Dead Sea to the northern Jewish settlement of Meholah. This is a fifth of the West Bank. Today only Jews may enter it.

3. Jews would claim most of East Jerusalem, and cut it off from the West Bank. (250,000 Jews already live in East Jerusalem, in violation of numerous U.N. resolutions.)

4. In the old city, Jews would claim everything except the Muslim quarter. Jews would also claim most of the "sacred basin" outside the walls.

5. Jews would place the Temple Mount (with the al-Aqsa mosque and all the other buildings) under an "ambiguous" sovereignty in preparation for Jewish theft.

6. Palestinians would no longer call occupied territories "occupied territories."

7. All Palestinians would move out of Jewish areas.

8. Palestinians would recognized Israel as a "Jewish state" -- thus relinquishing their right of return.

9. Palestinians would live in isolated ghettos on an area that was 14 percent of their historic homeland.

These Israeli demands were non-negotiable.

What did the Palestinians ask for in return? (1) that Israelis not steal more than 2.3 percent of the West Bank, (2) that any land swap be based on the principle of equality. (3) That Palestinians have a corridor through which they could move between Gaza and the West Bank: the two halves of their "state."

The Israelis rejected all these conditions.

And so the Camp David talks collapsed.

And the world blamed the Palestinians.

The document confirms that Ehud Barak intended for the Camp David talks to collapse. He used them as cover for the separation plan that we see today in the apartheid wall, plus all the other barriers designed to squeeze Palestinians out of Palestine.

Moreover in 2000 the Jewish terrorists quietly demanded that Palestinians recognize Israel as a "Jewish state," but now the Jews are open and blatant about this. They would not meet with the collaborator Abbas at Annapolis until Abbas first recognized Israel as a "Jewish state," which Abbas did.

Back in June 2000, a month before the Camp David talks started, Barak already had his separation plan ready to go, and had no intention of honoring any peace agreement. The Jews began implementing this plan in October 2000. The result is the apartheid wall, etc.

After the CAMP David charade, Barak’s military mentor Ariel Sharon became prime minister, and did not like the separation plan at first. Sharon wanted to exterminate all Palestinians. Gradually, however, he realized this would be too obvious, so he agreed to the West Bank wall in summer 2002, and to disengagement from Gaza in early 2004. The Jews left Gaza in 2005, and then built a prison wall around it.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

© 2007 Abdul Alhazred

Ilan Pappe: the peace process means what piece of Palestine Israel is supposed to annex and what Bantustan is supposed to be given to the Arabs

December 29, 2007

Ilan Pappe arrived in Italy without causing any sensational uproar. He is IEMASVO’s guest [1], at the ISIAO’s Roman venue [2], for a conference over Israel-Palestine. Title: "One land, two peoples".

After having denounced in recent months the impossibility of working peacefully in a hostile milieu, namely at Haifa University, Pappe moved to Britain where he now teaches at Exeter University. Historian of dissent, "revisionist", born in 1954 in Israel, son of Jews who fled from the Germany of the '30s, he has published a half dozen books. Amongst the most recent works there is "The ethnic cleansing of Palestine", not yet translated into Italian. The core of the exploration by the great historian is the Zionist policy comprised of deportations and compulsory expulsions carried out against the Palestinians during and after the 1948 war, when some 400 villages were evacuated, razed and destroyed in the space of five years.

Professor Pappe, you write of ethnic cleansing, in 1948, as the foundational moment of Israel. In this way you shatter the "topos" of the voluntary exile of the Palestinians.

"The Palestinians were driven out in 1947-48, even though the official historical record speaks about pressure from the Arab leaders who ostensibly persuaded them to flee. The idea of finding a refuge for the Jewish community, persecuted in Europe and annihilated by Nazism, clashed with a native population who was in a phase of redefining itself. A colonial project that practiced ethnic cleansing, tackling the demographic problem beforehand: the existence of 600 thousand Jews against one million Palestinians. In February 1948, before the Arabs decided to oppose it in a military manner, the Israelis had already expelled over 300 thousand native people."

How was the ethnic cleansing carried out and why had everyone kept silent?

"It lasted eight months and only in October 1948 did the Palestinians start to defend themselves in any serious way. The Zionists’ response to this were the slaughters in the province of Galilee, the confiscation of houses, of bank accounts, of lands. The Israelis erased a people and its culture. Nobody denounced the situation because the World War had just ended. The UN couldn’t admit that one of their resolutions (note of the author: the resolution 181, about Palestine’s partition) was ending up with ethnic cleansing. The Red Cross had already been accused of not having impartially reported what happened in the Nazi concentration camps and the most important media wanted to avoid a clash with the Jews."

A guilt complex and "diplomacy" in the governments’ actions: and what were the consequences?

"During the Holocaust, the countries that are today criticizing Israel, either were accomplices or they kept silent. These are the reasons why the international community has renounced its right to judge us. It bears guilt which it can no longer find a remedy for. Thus losing, still today, the right to criticize Israel’s government. The consequence is that when the state of Israel was established, nobody blamed it for the ethnic cleansing which it had been founded on, a crime against humanity carried out by those who planned and fulfilled it. From that time on, ethnic cleansing has become an ideology, an infrastructural decoration of the state. A matter that is still topical, since Israel’s primary target is demographic: to seize as much territory as possible with the least number of Arabs living in it as possible."

By what forms and means does the ethnic cleansing go on?

"Through 'cleaner and more presentable’ systems. The Minister of Justice has been trying for a month to legitimize the illegal settlements by leaving the outposts in place. We’ve learnt that the High Court of Justice is pondering whether to authorize the government to make a cut-down on fuel supplies, thus leaving Gaza without electricity, where there are a million Palestinians who would find themselves in the situation of not being able to have access to drinking water, since the water-bearing stratum is polluted with sewage and people can drink it only if there is an electrical water purification system. Yet, there are many other ways and examples to annihilate the Palestinians, in primis the Wall, accepted by the US and the EU."

What is Israel asking from its allies?

"It wants them to accept its model as such. During the 1967 war, 300 thousand Palestinians were expelled from the West Bank, in the last seven years ethnic cleansing has become 'building the Wall’, that pushes the Palestinians back towards the desert, outside the area of Greater Jerusalem reserved for them. The problem is that the Israeli leadership thinks of its own state by ethnic, racial yardsticks and therefore it is racist by all means. All of this is perceived by the Palestinians and this fact embodies the biggest hindrance to peace between Palestine and Israel. The so-called ’peace process’ is thus reduced to deciding what part of Palestine has to again be annexed by Israel and what tiny part can perhaps be given to the Palestinian population."

What can be done to reverse this process?

"First of all, we have to change our terminologies. It’s not about a clash between Jews and Palestinians. It’s matter of colonialism. It’s incredible how a colonialist policy can be still accepted in the 21st century. We have to force Israel to comply with the same measures that were imposed on racist South Africa in the '60s and the '70s. Today there are opinion movements of young Jews, in Europe and in the US, who point the finger at Israel’s colonialist policies and accuse it as a colonialist and racist state, not because it is a state founded by Jews."

In France and in other European countries there are laws that place restrictions on the right to express "revisionist" opinions towards Israel, yet there are no steps taken against the continuous violation of the UN resolutions.

"I underwent such an experience about two years ago. One of my lectures was interrupted by a group of extremists, composed of Jews like me, who prevented me from continuing. The police came in, to protect rather than to accuse me. As to keeping silent, it’s by far easier for people to think in a conventional manner. One has to have a lot of energy and originality to act in non-conformist ways. For instance, UN Resolution 194 states that the Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their land. Yet it’s much easier to do nothing and keep thinking in the usual identical formula."

Are these the very reasons why the Italian left goes on proposing the "two peoples, two states" model?

"Certainly, the Italian left isn’t courageous. Yet it has no choice but to change, since the situation on the ground is becoming catastrophic. If Israel invades Gaza, as it’s quite likely to do, many Palestinians will be killed and yet the situation won’t change. Gaza is a big prison, and what might happen, just as in many prison uprisings, is: the army will restore the ’law and order’ by beating and killing. It’s bound to be a slaughterhouse but as soon as they leave the situation will remain exactly the same."

What would the outcome of a "two peoples, one state" formula be instead?

"It’s necessary that the populations accept one another, that the Jews acknowledge their Arab neighbours and brothers and vice-versa. Not before they both recognize history for what it has been and only after they both shoulder their own responsibilities. Recognition, responsibility and mutual acceptance. Only by following this way a single state may be fulfilled, one depending on the "one person, one vote" principle and where citizens, in spite of not loving each other, may coexist. It’s a project that can be achieved if we are allowed to continue to criticise and prevent the crimes Israel is continuously carrying out and if the disinvestment campaign goes on being applied as was done with South Africa."

Translated by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo, members of Tlaxcala , network of translators for linguistic diversity.

Italian version at:
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/23-Dicembre-20
07/art36.html

notes:
1) IEMASVO: Enrico Mattei Institute of High Studies on Mid-East
2) ISIAO: Italian Institute for Africa and East

December 31, 2006

As two of the authors of a recent document advocating a one-state solution to the Arab-Israeli colonial conflict, we intended to generate debate. Predictably, Zionists decried the proclamation as yet another proof of the unwavering devotion of Palestinian - and some radical Israeli - intellectuals to the "destruction of Israel". Some pro-Palestinian activists accused us of forsaking immediate and critical Palestinian rights in the quest of a "utopian" dream.

Inspired in part by the South African Freedom Charter and the Belfast Agreement, the much humbler One State Declaration, authored by a group of Palestinian, Israeli and international academics and activists, affirms that "the historic land of Palestine belongs to all who live in it and to those who were expelled or exiled from it since 1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national origin or current citizenship status". It envisages a system of government founded on "the principle of equality in civil, political, social and cultural rights for all citizens".

It is precisely this basic insistence on equality that is perceived by Zionists as an existential threat to Israel, undermining its inherently discriminatory foundations which privilege its Jewish citizens over all others. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was refreshingly frank when he recently admitted that Israel was "finished" if it faced a struggle for equal rights by Palestinians.

But whereas transforming a regime of institutionalised racism, or apartheid, into a democracy was viewed as a triumph for human rights and international law in South Africa and Northern Ireland, it is rejected out of hand in the Israeli case as a breach of what is essentially a sacred right to ethno-religious supremacy (euphemistically rendered as Israel's "right to be a Jewish state").

Palestinians are urged by an endless parade of western envoys and political hucksters - the latest among them Tony Blair - to make do with what the African National Congress rightly rejected when offered it by South Africa's apartheid regime: a patchwork Bantustan made up of isolated ghettoes that falls far below the minimum requirements of justice.

Sincere supporters of ending the Israeli occupation have also been severely critical of one-state advocacy on moral and pragmatic grounds. A moral proposition, some have argued, ought to focus on the likely effect it may have on people, and particularly those under occupation, deprived of their most fundamental needs, like food, shelter and basic services. The most urgent task, they conclude, is to call for an end to the occupation, not to promote one-state illusions. Other than its rather patronising premise - that these supporters somehow know what Palestinians need more than we do - this argument is problematic in assuming that Palestinians, unlike humans everywhere, are willing to forfeit their long-term rights to freedom, equality and self-determination in return for some transient alleviation of their most immediate suffering.

The refusal of Palestinians in Gaza to surrender to Israel's demand that they recognise its "right" to discriminate against them, even in the face of its criminal starvation siege imposed with the backing of the United States and the European Union, is only the latest demonstration of the fallacy of such assumptions.

A more compelling argument, expressed most recently on Cif by Nadia Hijab and Victoria Brittain, states that under the current circumstances of oppression, when Israel is bombing and indiscriminately killing; imprisoning thousands under harsh conditions; building walls to separate Palestinians from each other and from their lands and water resources; incessantly stealing Palestinian land and expanding colonies; besieging millions of defenceless Palestinians in disparate and isolated enclaves; and gradually destroying the very fabric of Palestinian society, calling for a secular, democratic state is tantamount to letting Israel "off the hook".

They worry about weakening an international solidarity movement that is "at its broadest behind a two-state solution". But even if one ignores the fact that the Palestinian "state" on offer now is no more than a broken-up immiserated Bantustan under continued Israeli domination, the real problem with this argument is that it assumes that decades of upholding a two-state solution have done anything concrete to stop or even assuage such horrific human rights abuses.

Since the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo agreements were signed in 1993, the colonisation of the West Bank and all the other Israeli violations of international law have intensified incessantly and with utter impunity. We see this again after the recent Annapolis meeting: as Israel and functionaries of an unrepresentative and powerless Palestinian Authority go through the motions of "peace talks", Israel's illegal colonies and apartheid wall continue to grow, and its atrocious collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza is intensifying without the "international community" lifting a finger in response.

This "peace process", not peace or justice, has become an end in itself -- because as long as it continues Israel faces no pressure to actually change its behaviour. The political fiction that a two-state solution lies always just around the corner but never within reach is essential to perpetuate the charade and preserve indefinitely the status quo of Israeli colonial hegemony.

To avoid the pitfalls of further division in the Palestinian rights movement, we concur with Hijab and Brittain in urging activists from across the political spectrum, irrespective of their opinions on the one state, two states debate, to unite behind the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, as the most politically and morally sound civil resistance strategy that can inspire and mobilise world public opinion in pursuing Palestinian rights.

The rights-based approach at the core of this widely endorsed appeal focuses on the need to redress the three basic injustices that together define the question of Palestine - the denial of Palestinian refugee rights, primary among them their right to return to their homes, as stipulated in international law; the occupation and colonisation of the 1967 territory, including East Jerusalem; and the system of discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Sixty years of oppression and 40 years of military occupation have taught Palestinians that, regardless what political solution we uphold, only through popular resistance coupled with sustained and effective international pressure can we have any chance of realising a just peace.

Hand in hand with this struggle it is absolutely necessary to begin to lay out and debate visions for a post-conflict future. It is not coincidental that Palestinian citizens of Israel, refugees and those in the diaspora, the groups long disfranchised by the "peace process" and whose fundamental rights are violated by the two-state solution have played a key role in setting forward new ideas to escape the impasse.

Rather than seeing the emerging democratic, egalitarian vision as a threat, a disruption, or a sterile detour, it is high time to see it for what it is: the most promising alternative to an already dead two-state dogma.