Ethnic cleansing must never be allowed to win - By Khalid Amayreh

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=22054

Ethnic cleansing must never be allowed to win - By Khalid Amayreh

Date: 15 / 05 / 2007 Time: 15:32

Palestinian refugee holds
the key to his house which
he abandoned in 1948
(MaanImages)

President Husni Mubarak of Egypt reportedly told visiting Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni recently that “no Arab leader would dare give up the right of return,” for Palestinian refugees uprooted from their homes when Israel was created in 1948.

Mubarak’s words, which must have irked Livni, were a significant assertion of the central importance of the refugee plight, the heart and soul of the Palestinian problem.

Moreover, Mubarak’s remarks seem also to reflect a growing trend among Palestinians and their Arab, Muslim and international allies to accentuate the right of return and never allow Zionist circles to dilute or downplay its paramount importance.

The right of return remains the heart and soul of the Palestinian question, despite the passage of 60 years since ethnic East European Ashkenazi supremacists massacred and terrorized the bulk of the native Palestinians to flee for their lives.

Today, Israel, in concert with its guardian ally, the United States, continues to reject the concept of repatriation of the Palestinian refugees to their former homes and villages in what is now Israel.

To rationalize this essentially racist discourse, Israeli and Zionist apologists present four main arguments, which are as unethical as they are mendacious.

They claim that the bulk of the refugees were not expelled but left voluntarily and that some of them were asked to leave by the Arab leaders of that era. Well, the truth of the matter, as recognized by a growing number of Israeli historians and leaders, including former cabinet ministers; is that the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by Israel was carried out according to a well-devised plan prepared by the Zionist leadership.

But even if some Palestinians had left because they feared for their safety and the safety of their families, would it mean that they didn't have the right to return home when the dust of war settled?

The rule of international law is very clear on this. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948, states in its Article 13 that, “Everyone has the right to leave any country including his own and to return his country.”

The second argument cited by the Zionists in this regard is that the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes and villages in what is now Israel would undermine the Jewish identity of Israel.

This is a purely racist argument because the right of a refugee to return to his home overrides Israel’s alleged “right” to religious and ethnic purity.

Besides, Israel has no more right to be racist, e.g. exclusively Jewish, than Apartheid South Africa had the right to be exclusively or predominantly white.

Indeed, the absurdity of this argument becomes especially relevant when we remember that maintaining Israel’s Jewish identity is only a euphemism for having the right to discriminate against non-Jews by denying them their human and civil rights.

In short, this an inherently racist attitude that reminds us of the Aryan supremacy that triggered the Second World War, which destroyed much of the world and caused the death of tens of millions of human beings.

The third argument voiced by Zionists, especially these days, is that hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees were uprooted from the Arab world and that Arabs have to deal with their refugees as Jews have dealt with theirs.

Of course, this is transparent mendacity to say the least. The Jews of the Arab world who left their native Arab countries following the creation of Israel were actually bullied, terrorized and invited by Israel to make Aliya (immigration) to Palestine.

They were not expelled and their arrival in Israel was the ultimate fulfillment of Zionism. Well, isn’t bringing all the Jews of the world to Palestine Zionism’s ultimate goal and raison d'étre?

Hence, the equation of bringing Jewish immigrants into Palestine to live on land that belongs to the Palestinian people with the violent uprooting and expulsion of an entire people from their homes goes beyond the pale of acceptable logic. It is very much like fornicating with language.

Finally, some Israeli and Zionist leaders are trying to outsmart themselves by arguing that only those Palestinians who had lived in Palestine prior to 1948 had the right to return home, but not their descendants. In other words, those refugees who are over sixty years old?

Well, what kind of logic is this? Even the Nazis didn’t stoop to this level of intellectual depravity and dishonesty?

In brief, the right of return for Palestinian refugees is a sacred right that should never ever be compromised or dealt with lightly. Nor should it be subject to controversy and dispute just as the rightful owner’s right to recover his or her stolen property from a thief is not subject to dispute and controversy. More to the point, the passage of sixty years must never be allowed to erode or undermine that right.

Sixty years of homelessness, pain and dispersion in the four corners of the globe should be enough for these miserable victims of Zionist supremacy. Ending this obscene and sinister nightmare wouldn’t be an act of charity to the Palestinians. It would be a belated application of UN resolution 194, which calls for the repatriation of the refugees.

Finally, it is imperative to point out that those Palestinian “leaders” who from time to time make stupid remarks suggesting “flexibility” on the right of return are actually indulging in the moral equivalent of national treason, knowingly or unknowingly.

After all, who gave them the right to speak on behalf of the refugees who are scattered all over the globe?

If they want to appease their Zionist bankrollers, let them do it at their own expense, not at the refugees’ expense.

After all, by what logic do the purported descendants of Jews who allegedly left Palestine more than 2,000 years have the right to “return” to Palestine, whereas the true natives of the land who still retain the keys to their homes, from which they were expelled at gunpoint sixty years ago, are robbed of the right to return to their homes?

Refugees key for Mideast peace...& more from IMEU

A Palestinian family walks past Israel's separation wall on their way home, in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis. (Aisha Mershani)

The Institute for Middle East Understanding provides journalists with quick access to information about Palestine and the Palestinians, as well as expert sources, both in the U.S. and the Middle East. Need story assistance? Contact us. New to the issue? See our Background Briefings

Cementing control
Ravi Nessman, The Associated Press, May 26, 2007

Palestinian vendors sell fruit beside Israel's separation wall in the village of Al-Ram, on the edge of Jerusalem. (Moamar Awad, Maan Images)

The view from Mervat Zayeha’s balcony is a portrait of Israel’s unceasing effort to solidify its control over East Jerusalem since the capture of the city’s Arab sector from Jordan 40 years ago.

On the edge of the Palestinian woman’s backyard, cranes and laborers are methodically building a big Israeli housing complex that will sit inside the East Jerusalem neighborhood known as Jabel Mukaber.

To the right is the towering concrete security barrier being built by Israel, which is dividing the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem - traditionally the focus of Palestinian life - from the Palestinian heartland of the West Bank.

Straight ahead, past the construction, the midday sun reflects off the golden stones of the Old City, the most feverishly disputed of all the areas contested between Palestinians and Israel.

Soon after Israel seized East Jerusalem in the lightning-fast 1967 Mideast War, it began a second, more methodical, offensive, which continues to this day. The goal is to unify the city and its holy sites under Jewish control. Instead of rifles, its weapons have been concrete and building stones.

After 40 years of building new neighborhoods, the number of Jews in East Jerusalem now rivals the Arab population.

“Jerusalem is the holiest and most important city for the Jewish people. We want to keep Jerusalem united, but we also need to make sure it retains its historical Jewish character,” said Yitzhak Levy, who was the Israeli construction minister in 1999-2000.

Related stories

Occupation and the mind

Out of bounds

Natives, not immigrants

A separate and unequal reality

East Jerusalem: no state in sight

Many Palestinians fear that the city - or at least the ancient section with its sites holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims - now can never be split between Israel and a future Palestinian state, making peace impossible.

"You get angry. But what can we do?" Zayeha asked, looking at the construction. "It is not in our hands."

Almost immediately after Israeli troops routed the Jordanian army and swept over the barbed wire that had divided Jerusalem since the Jewish state’s founding in 1948, Israeli city planners sprang into action.

They were in such a hurry to create Jewish neighborhoods in the captured areas, which were quickly declared annexed, that they grabbed a blueprint for a planned Tel Aviv neighborhood, added some golden stone and arched windows, and built it in Jerusalem, said Israel Kimhi, the former head of long-range planning for the city.

The government began by establishing a string of neighborhoods to connect the Israeli enclave of Mount Scopus, which holds the Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital, with Jewish populated West Jerusalem.

In a second wave of building from the mid-1970s until the ’80s, Israel took the high ground on the periphery of East Jerusalem to create the neighborhoods of Neve Yaakov, Gilo and Ramot Allon.

"All those areas were looking over Jerusalem ... all of them were army positions, so it was quite easy for the government to enter the shoes of the Jordanians that left and expropriate it," said Kimhi, now the head researcher at the Jerusalem Institute think tank.

Israel also expanded the boundaries of East Jerusalem from two square miles to a sprawling area of 27 square miles, incorporating outlying Arab villages.

In the 1980s, the government began building a string of West Bank settlements just outside the city, including the vast hilltop enclave of Maaleh Adumim. This created a ring around East Jerusalem, further solidifying Israeli control, Kimhi said.

Israel swept aside complaints that it was violating international law by moving its own citizens onto occupied territory, arguing that the land was not technically occupied.

During this process, Israel made it difficult for East Jerusalem’s Arabs to obtain building permits, forcing many to move from the city, Palestinian officials and human-rights activists said.

“The plan was very simple: to get hold of the area and to consolidate control over the area, creating urban facts,” said Meron Benvenisti, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem in the 1970s. “It was exactly like a military strategic plan to take hold of the high ground, empty land and build there.”

Israeli officials at the time promised to never give up the area, which includes the Western Wall, the last remnant of the biblical Second Temple compound and the holiest site in Judaism. The wall sits below the Al-Aqsa compound, where Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad made his night journey to heaven.

Today, construction continues. Extensions are being developed for Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and only the finishing touches remain for a police station in an area known as E1, where plans - currently frozen under U.S. pressure - envision a major new settlement between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim.

To read the full article please visit The Winston-Salem Journal.

Occupation and the mind
Samah Jabr, New Internationalist

Natives, not immigrants
Nimer Sultany, The Guardian

Untold stories: Ibrahim Fawal
IMEU

Obstacles to peace: borders and settlements
BBC (May 26, 2007)

Israeli army arrests another Hamas cabinet member
Ali Waked, Ynet News (May 26, 2007)

Israel continues Gaza air strikes
Al Jazeera (May 25, 2007)

Israel, US, and Egypt back Fatah's fight against Hamas
The Christian Science Monitor (May 25, 2007)

Egypt to host Palestinian factions for talks
Reuters (May 25, 2007)

Europe must remain neutral in Gaza
Stuart Reigeluth, The Daily Star (May 25, 2007)

Israeli employer fires Palestinians for praying
IMEMC (May 25, 2007)

Israeli airstrike near Palestinian PM's home
Maan News (May 25, 2007)

Refugees key for Mideast peace
BBC (May 24, 2007)

Refugee camps of 1948 became permanent residences in exile

"Under a 1947 UN-sanctioned plan to partition Palestine, Israel would have been established on 55% of the former territory, without a significant transfer of population, the Jews in the territory would have scarcely have exceeded the Arab population there."

'Remants of my Lute' by: umkahlil ... on My Left Wing

'Remants of my Lute'

by: umkahlil

Fri May 25, 2007 at 13:09:41 PM PDT

The aftermath of the war of 1967 has been a story of squandered opportunities and deepening divisions among Israelis and Palestinians alike

"But as tends to happen in the Middle East, events had already been overtaken by other events. The Arab League's first offer came at the blood-soaked height of the second intifada; its reiteration found both Israeli and Palestinian politics at new lows of divisiveness and desperation. Israel now sees itself as fighting not just 200m Arabs but 1.2 billion Muslims, armed with weapons it cannot resist and an ideology it cannot counter. Palestinians feel that a viable state is practically impossible, so deeply has Israel encroached on their land and dismembered their society. Like many wars, 1967 created opportunities. A shame that everyone has squandered them."

More divided than ever

Israel and the Palestinians

Forty years on

May 24th 2007 | JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition

The aftermath of the war of 1967 has been a story of squandered opportunities and deepening divisions among Israelis and Palestinians alike

The Economist Cover Story: Israel's wasted victory

North America Issue Cover for May 26th 2007

On the cover

Six days of war followed by 40 years of misery. How can it ever end?

Israel and the Palestinians

Israel's wasted victory

BBC: Obstacles to peace: Refugees The BBC News website is publishing a series of articles about the attempts to achieve peace in the Middle East and

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6659239.stm

Obstacles to peace: Refugees

The BBC News website is publishing a series of articles about the attempts to achieve peace in the Middle East and the main obstacles. Today, Martin Asser looks at the emotive issue of the Palestinian refugees.

Refugee camps of 1948 became permanent residences in exile

Forty years after the Middle East war of 1967 and nearly 60 since the establishment of Israel, there is no Arab-Israeli issue that remains as utterly divisive as the fate of Palestinian refugees.

In the course of Israel's creation in 1948 and its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, more than half the Arabs of pre-1948 Palestine are thought to have been displaced.

Today there are millions of Palestinians living in exile from homes and land their families had inhabited for generations.

Many still suffer the legacy of their dispossession: destitution, penury, insecurity.

Palestinian historians, and some Israelis, call 1948 one of the biggest, most comprehensive examples of ethnic cleansing in history - perpetrated by the Haganah (later the Israeli Defence Forces) and armed Jewish gangs.

Official Israeli history, by contrast, says most Palestinian refugees left to avoid battle or at the behest of Arab leaders, though it admits a "handful" of expulsions and unauthorised killings.

What is undisputed is that the refugees' fate is excluded from most Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts because, given a right of return, their numbers endanger the future of the world's only Jewish state.

The issue of the refugees is therefore seen by many Israelis as an existential one.

Massive displacement

Four million UN-registered Palestinian refugees trace origins to the 1948 exodus; 750,000 people belong to families displaced in 1967 - many for the second time.

REGISTERED REFUGEES

A Palestinian in Lebanon, Nayef Khatib, shows the deeds to his house in Safad, now northern Israel.

Jordan: 1,835,704

Syria: 434,896

West Bank/Gaza: 1,699,025

Lebanon: 405,425

Total: 4,375,050

Source: UN (31 March 2006)

Palestinian advocacy group Badil says another million and a half hail from pre-1948 Palestine but were not UN-registered, while an additional 274,000 were internally displaced inside Israel after 1948, and 150,000 were displaced in the occupied territories after 1967.

That makes more than six million people, one of the biggest displaced populations in the world.

Israel steadfastly argues that all refugees - and it disputes the numbers - should relinquish any aspirations to return to what is now its territory, and instead be absorbed by Arab host countries or by a future Palestinian state.

It disavows moral responsibility by arguing that 800,000 Mizrahi Jews were displaced from Arab countries between 1945 and 1956 (most of whom settled in Israel) and insists Palestinians left willingly.

But that view is at odds with UN General Assembly Resolution 194 and Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Resolution 194 asserts the refugees' unconditional right of return to live at peace in their old homes or to receive compensation for their losses.

Disputed status

Whatever the rights and wrongs of their cause, the practicality of return and questions of moral justice, in Mid-East diplomacy the refugees' fate has been largely ignored.

This has been achieved by a dual process pegging all solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict to the 1967 war, and discounting the events of 1948 as a element of the conflict.

Palestinians and Israelis talk about displacement and exile

In pictures

Israel has effectively deployed a number of arguments to justify this, such as saying that it is the only Jewish state, the refuge of Jews from around the world, while there are 22 Arab countries where the refugees could go.

It also points out that UN General Assembly resolutions have no force under international law and says the unassimilated refugee population has been held hostage by frontline Arab states waiting for Israel's destruction.

The diplomatic focus on 1967 has been advantageous for Israel: territory occupied at that time is regarded as the entire problem, and solutions can therefore be limited to dividing up that land.

This is problematic for Palestinians, however, because it sidelines the Nakba, the "catastrophe" of 1948 - an issue that for them lies at the heart of the conflict.

Demographic prerogative

Palestinians accuse Israel of a kind of "Nakba-denial", absolving itself of liability, but thereby condemning itself to perpetual conflict with its Arab neighbours.

Israel vigorously denies such a characterisation. Official histories justify what happened in 1948 by saying the new Jewish state was threatened with annihilation by invading Arab armies.

But so-called revisionist Israeli historians say Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, exaggerated the Arab threat, so he could implement a covert plan to expel Palestinian civilians and grab as much of the former Palestine as possible.

Demography - the need to have a large majority of Jews to sustain a Jewish state - has certainly been a key concern for Israel since its foundation.

Under a 1947 UN-sanctioned plan to partition Palestine, Israel would have been established on 55% of the former territory, without a significant transfer of population, the Jews in the territory would have scarcely have exceeded the Arab population there.

The 1948 war ended with Israel in control of 78% of the former Palestine, with a Jewish-Arab ratio of 6:1.

The equation brought security for Jewish Israelis, but emptied hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns of 700,000 inhabitants - the kernel of the Palestinian refugee problem today.

With the justification of not wanting to jeopardise its Jewish majority, Israel has kept Palestinian refugees and their descendants out of negotiations on a settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

But for most Palestinians, their fate remains an open wound, unless there is a Middle East peace deal that acknowledges what happened to the refugees.

... Or are they just dammed?

May 24, 2007 10:57

What do you call refugees who are forced to flee their refugee camp?

Posted by Andrew Lee Butters | Comments (0) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This

Internally Displaced Persons (IDP's) is the term of art used by NGOs to describe people fleeing violence who remain within the borders of their own country. But that term doesn't work for the Palestinians who have fled Nahr al-Bared refugee camp outside Tripoli in northern Lebanon to escape the violent standoff between Al-Qaeda inspired militants and the Lebanese army. They stopped being internally displaced when they left Palestine in 1948 and became refugees from the violence that preceded the creation of Israel. Almost 60 years later, they are still foreigners in Lebanon, since this country refuses to give them citizenship.

So are they externally displaced persons? Are they displaced refugees? Or are they just dammed?

--Andrew Lee Butters/Tripoli

Terrorist organization ride on the suffering and the struggle of the Palestinian people....

"Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, in an address to the nation, said that his government would stamp out Fatah Islam.

"We will work to root out and strike at terrorism, but we will embrace and protect our brothers in the camps," Saniora said in a TV speech, insisting Lebanon has no quarrel with the 400,000 Palestinian refugees who live in the country.

Saniora said Fatah Islam is "a terrorist organization that claims to be Islamic and to defend Palestine" and was "attempting to ride on the suffering and the struggle of the Palestinian people." "

Middle East
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10371616

Authorities Vow Showdown at Lebanon Camp

NPR.org, May 24, 2007 · As sporadic gunfire erupted again Thursday inside the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in Lebanon, government officials pledged to uproot insurgents who have barricaded themselves inside.

Meanwhile, some of the 10,000 to 15,000 people who left the camp on Wednesday described a hellish three-day ordeal without water food or medicine.

Islamic militants have been holed up at the camp all week, trying to hold off the Lebanese army. Lebanon's defense minister has told the Fatah Islam fighters to surrender or face a military onslaught. Lebanon's leader has vowed to "root out" the insurgents.

Many in the camp took advantage of a cease-fire Wednesday to scurry away from the fighting any way they could. One man described stuffing 18 members of his family into a Mercedes taxi cab.

But as many as 20,000 people remain in the line of fire. One man who did leave said he couldn't convince his father to come with him. The father has lived in the camp since it was created in 1948 and said he was willing to die there.

Clinics inside the camp are said to be overwhelmed by the dead and wounded after three days of what amounts to urban warfare.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, in an address to the nation, said that his government would stamp out Fatah Islam.

"We will work to root out and strike at terrorism, but we will embrace and protect our brothers in the camps," Saniora said in a TV speech, insisting Lebanon has no quarrel with the 400,000 Palestinian refugees who live in the country.

Saniora said Fatah Islam is "a terrorist organization that claims to be Islamic and to defend Palestine" and was "attempting to ride on the suffering and the struggle of the Palestinian people."

It was not clear what sparked shooting in the camp Thursday, as a truce had held since Tuesday afternoon. Half a dozen soldiers followed by an armored car and a light vehicle headed toward a forward army position at the camp's northern entrance.

The army's first checkpoints are some 500 yards from the buildings on the edge of Nahr el-Bared. Militant positions begin farther down inside the sprawling maze of houses.

Lebanon's government appeared to be preparing in case the showdown sparks violence elsewhere in the country. In a sign of the danger, a bomb exploded Wednesday night in the Aley mountain resort overlooking Beirut, a 90-minute drive south of Nahr el-Bared. The blast, which injured 16 people, was the third in the Beirut area since Sunday.

June is tourist season in Lebanon and the nation's damaged economy depends on tourist dollars. A bombing at a resort sends a message to Arab tourists that the nation is not safe.

However, authorities are not certain that the rash of bombings are directly tied to the violence at Nahr el-Bared.

Already some of the other refugee camps in Lebanon, which are rife with armed groups, are seething with anger over the fighting.

The government's pledge to stamp out the Fatah Islam fighters at Nahr el-Bared seems to have the support of most in Lebanon and many in the larger Arab world surrounding it. Yet a massacre inside the camp carries potential political risks.

The military appears determined to uproot Fatah Islam after three days of heavy bombardment of the camp — an assault sparked by an attack by the militants on Lebanese troops Sunday following a raid on its fighters in the nearby northern Lebanon city of Tripoli.

"Preparations are seriously under way to end the matter," Defense Minister Elias Murr said in an interview Wednesday with Al-Arabiya television. "The army will not negotiate with a group of terrorists and criminals. Their fate is arrest, and if they resist the army, death."

Members of Fatah Islam said they were ready to fight.

"We are not going to let those pigs defeat us," said one of a half-dozen fighters standing outside the group's office inside the camp Wednesday. The fighter, who identified himself with the pseudonym Abu Jaafar, wore a belt hung with grenades.

— From The Associated Press and reports by NPR's Deborah Amos.

Israeli army attacks West Bank charitable institutions with alleged links to Hamas and Islamic Jihad

http://maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=22283

Israeli army attacks West Bank charitable institutions with alleged links to Hamas and Islamic Jihad

Date: 23 / 05 / 2007 Time: 13:28

A previous attack on a charitable
organisation in Hebron (MaanImages)

West Bank - Ma'an - The Israeli army broke into and ransacked a number of charitable institutions and organizations across the occupied West Bank on Wednesday. Israel considers the targeted institutions to be related to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements.

In Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank, the Israeli forces attacked the Nafha Organization for Palestinian Prisoners and the Defence of Human Rights, damaging the doors and seizing prisoners' files. The Israeli forces also used sound bombs inside the building, causing extensive damage. The Nafha organisation looks after Palestinian prisoners' affairs.

In Tubas in the north east of the West Bank, Israeli forces attacked the local office of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) and seized its contents including computers and detainees' files.

Eyewitnesses said that the Israeli forces invaded Tubas in the early morning and besieged the PLC office from every direction. The witnesses added that the Israeli forces fired sound bombs and besieged some houses close to the PLC building. The troops also questioned local residents.

In the Bethlehem area in the south of the occupied West Bank, the Israeli forces also invaded a women's charitable organization and damaged much of the building's contents.

Local sources said that fifteen jeeps invaded the village of Ad-Duha, west of Bethlehem, and besieged the women's organization before invading it and damaging its contents. The organization was closed by the Israeli authorities two years ago when the head of this organization, Ms. Itaf 'Alian, was arrested on suspicion of leading female Islamic Jihad activists.

In Jericho in the east of the West Bank, the Israeli forces attacked the Al-Isra' charitable organization in the city centre. The Israeli troops damaged the doors and fired sound bombs. They also assaulted the janitor Mohammad Abu Rumi.

Abu Rumi told our Jericho reporter that the Israeli soldiers blindfolded him and held him indoors. Then they invaded the building and started breaking down the doors.

The head of the organization, Sheikh Abu Rumi, complained that the Israeli forces also seized the financial and administrative files as well as destroying the main door of his office. He stressed that his organization is a humanitarian organisation and does not represent any political party.

In Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank, the Israeli forces damaged the An-Natsha School for Girls in As-Salam Street. The Israeli forces seized a number of computers and files in addition to breaking down doors and damaging much of the furniture. This school has approximately 450 students.

'World must take responsibility'

Palestinian minister of information, Dr Mustafa Barghouthi, condemned the Israeli forces attack on PLC office and charities.

In a statement Barghouthi described the targeting of such organisations as "just one more crime in the series of the crimes that the Israeli forces commit against Palestinians in the occupied territories."

The minister said "Israel has crossed all the limits of decency through destroying the Palestinian peoples' establishments." He specifically expressed astonishment at the attack on the Natsha School in Hebron.

The statement added that Israel is violating international law through the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, land confiscation and the construction of the separation wall.

He added "the world is requested to act in a more responsible way and to impose punishment on Israel in order to stop its crimes".

Words instead of actions by Amira Hass...& more from IMEU

Words instead of actions

Amira Hass, Haaretz

May 24, 2007

Dozens of researchers and economic attaches are busy researching the Palestinians' economic deterioration, and many reports will yet be written, as long as the countries that finance them settle for words and do not take steps to halt the policy of destruction that Israel is imposing.

Natives, not immigrants
Nimer Sultany, The Guardian

The youngest victim
Gideon Levy, Haaretz

Untold stories: Ibrahim Fawal
IMEU

Israel arrests more than 30 Hamas politicians
Al Jazeera (May 24, 2007)

Army shells Gaza, four injured
IMEMC (May 24, 2007)

Israel, EU, PA to extend EU's monitoring mission
Haaretz (May 24, 2007)

Amnesty report slams Israel's activity in the territories
Ynet News (May 23, 2007)

Palestinian leaders in Gaza talks
BBC (May 23, 2007)

Israeli army attacks West Bank charitable institutions
Maan News (May 23, 2007)

The result of bad politics
Hasan Abu Nimah, The Jordan Times (May 23, 2007)

Israeli jets bombard Gaza as Special Forces botch arrest operation
Maan News (May 23, 2007)

Obstacles to peace: Water
BBC (May 23, 2007)

Words instead of actions
Amira Hass, Haaretz, May 24, 2007

This article was originally published by Haaretz and is republished with permission.

A Palestinian boy stands in front of a line of trucks waiting at the Gaza Strip's Karni crossing with Israel. (Wesam Saleh, Maan Images)

Every few weeks some international body issues a report directly linking the policy of restricted movement imposed by Israel on the occupied territories and the state of economic deterioration there. The report is often accompanied by a warning that the situation cannot persist. Last week it was the turn of the World Bank to issue a cautionary report, entitled "Movement and Access Restrictions in the West Bank: Uncertainty and Inefficiency in the Palestinian Economy."

Dozens of international researchers and economic attaches are busy researching the Palestinians' economic deterioration, and many more similar reports will yet be written, as long as the countries that finance them settle for words and do not take steps to halt the policy of social and economic destruction that Israel is imposing on the Palestinians. The newest report is comprehensive, but there is nothing new in it and it stresses what has been written and said for years: Israel is inflicting enormous damage on the Palestinian economy and on its private sector.

In 2002, following the release of a report on the impact of Israel's closure policy, the previous World Bank representative in the occupied territories, Nigel Roberts, praised the Palestinian society's endurance and suggested that any Western society would have collapsed had it undergone an economic disaster similar to that experienced in the territories. Today, five years after that report's warnings and pleas, Palestinian society's collapse is more worrying than ever - primarily in the Gaza Strip and Nablus, which not coincidentally are the areas facing the harshest Israeli siege.

And why should Israel take into consideration the warnings of the World Bank when they have no teeth? It is not enough to mention the apartheid roads in connection with the expansion of the settlements, or the fact that around 50 percent of West Bank territory is not accessible to Palestinians. It is not enough to count the trucks at the Karni crossing that do not enter and exit, or to calculate the small number of days when the Rafah terminal is open. It is not enough to adorn the reports with scholarly charts presenting the Palestinian territories as a perpetual disaster area.

Related stories

World Bank exposes the obvious

Occupation and the mind

Movement and access restrictions in the West Bank: Uncertainty and inefficiency in the Palestinian economy (PDF)

Salwa Mikdadi: Bringing Palestinian art into the spotlight

Desperately seeking security

The United States and Europe knew very well how to punish the Palestinians when democratic, free elections gave rise to a Hamas government: with a political boycott and a freeze on financial aid earmarked for development and for encouraging independent production and rebuilding. True, the donor countries, primarily Arab nations, nearly tripled in 2006 the funds they donated to the Palestinians ($900 million, compared to $349 million in 2005), but these were provided mostly in the form of nonproductive grants to an impoverished population, as detailed in the paper prepared by economist Karim Nashashibi, a former International Monetary Fund official, for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The generous donations quell some of the humanitarian fires set by Israeli policy, but at the same time they subsidize it. They encourage Israel to continue to rob the tax and customs monies that make up approximately two-thirds of the Palestinian treasury's revenues. Non-transfer of the funds, of course, creates a chain reaction of economic and social regressions in the private and public sector.

The countries issuing the warnings continue to purchase Israeli manufactured arms and other security-related products. They host military officers who are directly responsible for the killing of hundreds of Palestinian citizens and fervently implement the siege policy. They invite Israeli ministers who are responsible for the economic and social de-development of a whole people. Their representatives also meet with ministers whose remarks and actions negate the rights of the Palestinian people with no less determination than those of Hamas ministers, who refuse to declare their recognition of Israel's right to exist. The Western countries chose to punish the occupied with very concrete means - but not the occupier, which it sees as part of their Enlightened Civilization. They thus signal to Israel that it may adhere to the same policies whose impact the reports are warning against.

War games by Laila El-Haddad writing from Gaza City, occupied Palestine...& more from EI

War games
Laila El-Haddad writing from Gaza City, occupied Palestine, Live from Palestine, 23 May 2007

Palestinians children peer into the Hamas building targeted in an Israeli air strike on Gaza, 22 May 2007. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)

Just to re-assure my readers, we are alive and well. I've just been busy reporting and filming and simply trying to go on with my life. The situation has a way of getting in your head, but to quote my friend Taghreed, you have to put it aside, compartmentalize, and move on with your life.

I published this article in al-Jazeera after speaking to a number of people about how the situation is affecting them.

I was down in Rafah again this week. While inspecting the site of a future park project my friend Fida is working on (and which we are making a film about), we were disrupted every few minutes by the voracious sound of multiple F-16 fighter jets flying overhead in unison. Sometimes one or two, then four or five.

Children scurried about playing football with a deflated basketball on the sand lot.

"Do you think I will be assassinated one day?" one child asked another. He didn't say this jokingly.

I can't sleep. I get up maybe once every two hours. Go to the bathroom, walk around a little, and then doze off again. Only to be awakened by the drones, followed by the manic hovering of helicopter gun ships.

This time they were directly over our apartment building. I would have been afraid, except this happened once before, maybe two years ago. Panicked and fearful at the time, I called my cousin, who reassured me that when an Apache is directly overhead, it means its intended target is about 500 metres to one kilometre away. It is information I wish I did not know.

So this time, I didn't flinch. I just waited for the dreadful conclusion. The intensity of the propeller's sound waned and intensified at various intervals, until finally two missiles were fired. I could hear them hissing, and then, exploding.

My friend Saeed, who is staying in a hotel next to us, said he saw flashes of light outside -- apparently the drones taking pictures of the resulting explosions for keepsakes (and of course to show off to the media how "precise" their attacks are).

Former Israeli Prime Minister and current leader of the opposition Benyamin Netanyahu has called for Israel to cut water and electricity to Gaza. Because that will do a great deal of good, obviously. We are still feeling the effects of last summer's attack on Gaza's power plants -- especially as summer nears. Electricity is beginning to be rationed and power outages are becoming more frequent now. The UN says there are solutions -- but the energy authority, like every other institution in Gaza, is simply too financially strapped.

Electricity for about 50,000 people was cut off two days ago.

Meanwhile, Rafah Crossing is still closed. It has only been open four days over the past month, less than 40 percent of the time over the past year. There are an estimated 5,000 people waiting to cross on either side.

Freelance journalist and blogger Laila El-Haddad lives in Gaza City. Laila's blog, Raising Yousuf, is named after her two-year-old son.

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BY TOPIC
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The result of bad politics by Hasan Abu Nimah

The result of bad politics
Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, 23 May 2007

Palestinian security forces take up positions in the streets of Gaza City, 10 May 2007. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)

Bad politics create bad consequences, but because linking the effect with the cause implicates the initiators, the tendency is often to attribute man-made disasters to unrelated circumstances.

It is easier, therefore, to blame the tragic fighting amongst the Palestinians in Gaza on a foolish and selfish struggle for positions, rather than the rotten politics of Oslo, cooked a decade and a half earlier. Indeed, and in many ways, it is a fierce struggle for power, but the roots of even that should be traced further back than the election results that swept Hamas into power at the very high cost for the party which had hitherto secured an unchallenged monopoly on power since Oslo, under the umbrella of perpetual Israeli occupation.

Those who have been describing the current carnage as the second Palestinian catastrophe, or Nakba as commonly known, are absolutely right in expressing their deep pain, but the real second catastrophe was the Oslo Agreement in 1993. In 1947, the tragedy that befell the Palestinians was the result of a combination of international and regional factors that neither the Arab people of Palestine nor the Arab states combined had the means to confront; it was an inevitable injustice fiercely and forcefully imposed. The Oslo agreement, on the other hand, was a self-inflicted disaster by leaders who had for long placed themselves at the top of the "Palestine Liberation Organisation", leaders who had hitherto shamed and accused of treachery anyone who ever dared contemplate any settlement with the "Zionist enemy" that did not reverse the course of history to the pre-1947 era.

Here, and according to the appalling Oslo arrangement, Israel succeeded for the first time in its history to secure the voluntary, if not enthusiastic, consent of the widely recognised "sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" to legitimise its occupation and to consolidate all its war gains, practically at no cost.

Israel had for years objected very strongly to any trend of recognising or dealing with the "terrorist" PLO. As a result, the PLO was excluded from the Madrid peace process launched in late 1991. It could not have occurred to the Israelis at the time, obviously, that any wholesale concessions such as the ones the PLO representatives easily made in Oslo, would bear more political weight coming from a recognised, rather than a rejected PLO. Probably Israel never thought the PLO would be so conciliatory or generous in selling out an entire cause.

It was Oslo, in fact, which divided the Palestinians. It did indeed take time before the depth of the split assumed such a violent nature, but problems have been building up, and there is always an ignition point.

Oslo was an Israeli opportunity, if not an Israeli device altogether, to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without many -- indeed any -- changes on the ground. Rather than removing the occupation and liberating those suffering under it for decades, the acclaimed "liberators" opted to slip under it too, and to join those they loudly crowed they were determined to liberate. Under Oslo, the Palestinian Authority and its security forces were meant to act as an extension of the occupation, and to only relieve the occupiers of their burdens.

Palestinian soldiers, rather than Israeli, would deal with any Palestinian disorderly behaviour or unrest. Money would pour in from the so-called international community, the EU in particular, to finance the occupation by proxy, and via the PA. And that required blind eyes on corruption, profiteering or accountability with the certain result of hundreds of millions of dollars of aid money going into private "liberator's" pockets. The whole point was to allow the PA operatives to swim in oceans of individual privileges and all kind of material temptations, and to forget about the "cause", and they did.

In the meantime, and during the assigned five-year interim period, Israel put on high gear its campaign to create more of the planned facts on the ground: more colonial settlements, more Jewish only bypass roads linking the settlements to Israel, more land confiscation, and more arrangements for cantonising the Palestinians in isolated, truncated enclaves which would never form any reasonable basis for statehood, or even for continued existence in place.

Many Palestinians were opposed to the "Oslo sellout", but they either opted to patiently keep quiet in the hope that things may improve and that the promise of peace would one day materialise, or raised their voices in protest and were harshly dealt with by the many-faceted Palestinian security forces, for being "enemies of peace" and saboteurs.

The crackdown on the opposition was severe, as there were flagrant violations of human rights. The occupation atrocities had in fact been compounded, with many under it suffering both Israeli and PA oppressive measures. The level of frustration kept rising, with Israel continuing to obliterate Palestinian rights, on the one hand, and the PA sinking deeper in corruption and incompetence, on the other.

Voting Hamas in office in the last general election was a major step towards polarising Palestinian politics, with the gap becoming clearly wide and deep between those who wanted to stay the course of Oslo and enjoy their privileges to the end and the others who came up with redefined terms of reference for a possible peaceful settlement. The split became all the more grave, with the Oslo side gathering external support from the entire so-called "international community" (a misnomer for those who either support Israel or fear it) and the other side, led by Hamas, instantly put under tight economic and diplomatic sanctions had generally enjoyed scant moral support which could barely translate into practical help.

The current clashes in Gaza, not the first, and certainly not the last, once placed in their proper context, should reveal a deeper clash between two contradictory trends, not simply two competing factions. It is not easy to put an end to this clash without agreement on one Palestinian approach to the issue of peace and settlement. The agreement in Mecca has achieved very little in that sense, by appealing only to the need to avoid fighting between brothers for the sake of the "sacred cause". The goal was reduced to a mere gloss over, but varnish does not long last.

Instead of following up on the modest achievements of Mecca with serious efforts to build Palestinian consensus and reconcile policies, rather than allocate Cabinet seats and shares, ominous attempts to enable the PA presidency and Fateh to wipe out Hamas continued openly, with arms and money pouring in that direction. The one fruit of the Mecca agreement, the national unity government, was rejected by the international community and the financial boycott continued. That government was not given any chance to function, as if, it were, like the election results before, the exact undesirable outcome which needed to be

Annie's letters

Saturday, May 26, 2007