Weather adds to suffering caused by closures in Gaza

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/SHES-7BETPP?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=ACOS-635PFR

Date: 01 Feb 2008

Weather adds to suffering caused by closures in Gaza

The UN agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, says that unusually cold weather, heavy rains and winds are exacerbating the suffering of Palestinians caused by the Israeli closure of crossings into Gaza.

According to the agency, the Kerem Shalom crossing remains closed, forcing its trucks which arrived at the Israeli side of the crossing to return to Ashdod.

UNRWA spokesman Matthias Burchard says that the agency has more than 160 trucks loaded with food waiting in Ashdod to be allowed into Gaza to deliver crucial food supplies.

He says that no commercial food and other imports have been allowed into Gaza since January 18th.

"I do not want to sound cynical, but you must be allowed to wonder that fear of animal disease due to livestock brought in from Egypt prompted Israel to send in thousands of vaccines immediately, but not enough food to feed hungry people."

Mr. Buchard says that lack of fuel supplies in Gaza has resulted in garbage piling up along the streets.

Occupied Palestinian Territories: Settlements Established and Evacuated 1967 - 2008

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/CMAS-7BET4E?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=ACOS-635PFR

Occupied Palestinian Territories: Settlements Established and Evacuated 1967 - 2008

Date: 01 Feb 2008
Source(s):
Foundation for Middle East Peace
Type: Complex Emergency
Keyword(s): Access; Population and Demographics
Format: PDF *, 385k
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Palestinian Dispossession and Israeli Apartheid are no Cause for Celebration- Beatles, don't let it be!

The Land and Love (painting by Palestinian Ismail Shammout)

http://www.pacbi.org/boycott_news_more.php?id=655_0_1_0_C

Beatles, don't let it be!
Palestinian Dispossession and Israeli Apartheid are no Cause for Celebration

PACBI | | February 2, 2008

Open Letter to the Beatles

Forty-three years ago, the government of Israel banned your performance in the country for fear you would corrupt the minds of Israeli youth. Now, Israel is extending an apology and an invitation to you, hoping you will forget the past and agree to help celebrate its 60th "birthday." The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) urges you to say no to Israel, particularly since the creation of this state 60 years ago dispossessed and uprooted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and lands, condemning them to a life of exile and destitution.

There is no reason to celebrate! Israel at 60 is a state that is still denying Palestinian refugees their UN-sanctioned rights, simply because they are "non-Jews." It is still illegally occupying Palestinian and other Arab lands, in violation of numerous UN resolutions. It is still persistently and grossly breaching international law and infringing fundamental human rights with impunity afforded to it through munificent US and European economic, diplomatic and political support. It is still treating its own Palestinian citizens with institutionalized discrimination.

Now, more than ever, Israel is committing horrific war crimes, especially in the occupied Gaza Strip, where its illegal and immoral policy of collective punishment -- through a hermetic military siege and an almost complete blockage of fuel, electric power, and even food and medicine -- is pushing 1.5 million Palestinian civilians to the brink of starvation. Without electricity, incubators are shutting down; hospitals are fast coming to a standstill; water is not being properly purified nor separated from raw sewage; whatever is left from the local economy is undergoing a meltdown; and the most vulnerable sectors of the population, the children, the elderly, and the acutely ill, are languishing under unspeakable hardships. Do you see any reason to celebrate?

Israel's military occupation -- the longest in modern history -- is not an abstract notion to us. It manifests itself in wilful killings of civilians, particularly children; wanton demolition of homes and property; uprooting of more than a million fruitful trees; incessant theft of land and water resources; denial of freedom of movement to millions; and cutting up the occupied Palestinian territory into Bantustans, some entirely caged by walls, fences and hundreds of roadblocks.

In light of the above, performing in Israel at this time is morally equivalent to performing in South Africa at the height of the apartheid era. Indeed, Israel has created a worse system of apartheid than anything that ever existed in South Africa, according to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Prof. John Dugard, and South African government minister Ronnie Kasrils, among others.

In 2005, inspired by the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, Palestinian civil society called for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) [1] against Israel until it fully complies with international law and recognizes the fundamental human rights of the people of Palestine. A specific call for cultural boycott of Israel [2] was issued a year later, garnering wide support. Among the many groups and institutions that have heeded the Palestinian boycott calls and started to consider or apply diverse forms of effective pressure on Israel are the British University and College Union (UCU); the two largest trade unions in the UK; the Church of England; the Presbyterian Church (USA); prominent British architects; the British National Union of Journalists (NUJ); the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU); the South African Council of Churches; the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Ontario; Aosdana, the Irish state-sponsored academy of artists; celebrated authors, artists and intellectuals led by John Berger; and Palme d'Or winner director Ken Loach.

We strongly urge you to uphold the values of freedom, equality and just peace for all by joining this growing boycott against Israeli apartheid. Nothing less would do justice to the legendary legacy of the Beatles.

PACBI

www.PACBI.org
---------------------------------------

[1] http://www.pacbi.org/boycott_news_more.php?id=66_0_1_10_M11

[2] http://www.pacbi.org/boycott_news_more.php?id=315_0_1_0_C

Posted on Feb 02, 08 | 2:54 pm

The image “http://www.pacbi.org/boycott_banner4.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Israel's Gaza mess...& more from IMEU

The Institute for Middle East Understanding offers journalists and editors quick access to information about Palestine and the Palestinians, as well as expert sources — both in the U.S. and in the Middle East. Read our Background Briefings. Contact us for story assistance. Sign up for e-briefings.

The strangulation of Gaza
Saree Makdisi, The Nation, Feb 2, 2008

This article was originally published by The Nation and is republished with the author's permission.

Palestinians carry goods across the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, after the border was breached last week. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

The people of Gaza were able to enjoy a few days of freedom last week, after demolition charges brought down the iron wall separating the impoverished Palestinian territory from Egypt, allowing hundreds of thousands to burst out of the virtual prison into which Gaza has been transformed over the past few years - the terminal stage of four decades of Israeli occupation - and to shop for desperately needed supplies in Egyptian border towns.

Gaza's doors are slowly closing again, however. Under mounting pressure from the United States and Israel, Egypt has dispatched additional border guards armed with water cannons and electric cattle prods to try to regain control. It has already cut off the flow of supplies crossing the Suez Canal to its own border towns. For now, in effect, Suez is the new border: even if Palestinians could get out of Gaza in search of new supplies, they would have to cross the desolate expanses of the Sinai Desert and cross the canal, on the other side of which they would find the regular Egyptian army (barred from most of Sinai as a condition of the 1979 Camp David treaty with Israel) waiting for them.

Now that Gaza's fleeting taste of freedom is beginning to fade, the grim reality facing the territory's 1.5 million people is once again looming large. "After feeling imprisoned for so long, it has been a psychological relief for Gazans to know that there is a way out," said John Ging, the local director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). "But it does not resolve their crisis by any stretch of the imagination."

Indeed, all the frenzied shopping in Egyptian border towns brought into Gaza a mere fraction of the food that UN and other relief agencies have been blocked by Israel from delivering to the people who depend on them for their very survival. As long as the border with Egypt is even partially open, Israel refuses to open its own borders with Gaza to anything other than the bare minimum of industrial fuel to keep the territory's one power plant operating at a subsistence level, and a few trucks of other supplies a day.

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UNRWA has almost depleted the stocks of emergency food aid it had previously built up in Gaza. Only thirty-two truckloads of goods have been allowed to enter Gaza since Israel imposed its total closure on January 18; 250 trucks were entering every day before last June, and even that was insufficient to meet the population's needs.

On January 30 UNRWA warned that unless something changes, the daily ration that it will distribute on the 31st to 860,000 destitute refugees in Gaza will lack a protein component: the canned meat that is the only source of protein in the food parcels - which even under the best of circumstances contributes less than two-thirds of minimum daily nourishment - is being held up by Israel, and the stock of those cans inside Gaza has been exhausted. The World Food Program, which feeds another 340,000 people in Gaza, has brought in nine trucks of food aid in the past two weeks; in the seven months before that, it had been bringing in fifteen trucks a day.

Gazans have been ground into poverty by years of methodical Israeli restrictions and closures; 80 percent of the population now depends on food aid for day-to-day subsistence. With the aid, they were receiving "enough to survive, not to live," as the International Red Cross put it. Without it, they will die.

All this is supposed to be in response to Palestinian militant groups' firing of crude homemade rockets into Israel, which rarely cause any actual damage. There can be no excuse for firing rockets at civilian targets, but Israel was squeezing Gaza long before the first of those primitive projectiles was cobbled together. The first fatal rocket attack took place four years ago; Israel has been occupying Gaza for four decades.

The current squeeze on Gaza began in 1991. It was tightened with the institutionalization of the Israeli occupation enabled by the Oslo Accords of 1993. It was tightened further with the intensification of the occupation in response to the second intifada in 2000. It was tightened further still when Israel redeployed its settlers and troops from inside Gaza in 2005 and transformed the territory into what John Dugard, the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories, referred to as a prison, the key to which, Dugard said, Israel had "thrown away." It was tightened to the point of strangulation following the Hamas electoral victory in 2006, when Israel began restricting supplies of food and other resources into Gaza. It was tightened beyond the point of strangulation following the deposition of the Hamas-led government in June 2007. And now this.

When Israel limited commercial shipments of food - but not humanitarian relief - into Gaza in 2006, a senior government adviser, Dov Weisglass, explained that "the idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet but not to make them die of hunger."

Israel's "diet" was taking its toll even before last week. The World Food Program warned last November that less than half of Gaza's food-import needs were being met. Basics including wheat grain, vegetable oil, dairy products and baby milk were in short supply. Few families can afford meat. Anemia rates rocketed to almost 80 percent. UNRWA noted at about the same time that "we are seeing evidence of the stunting of children, their growth is slowing, because our ration is only 61 percent of what people should have and that has to be supplemented."

By further restricting the supply of food to an already malnourished population, Israel has clearly decided to take its "diet" a step further. If the people of Gaza remain cut off from the food aid on which their survival now depends, they will face starvation.

They are now essentially out of food; the water system is faltering (almost half the population now lacks access to safe water supplies); the sewage system has broken down and is discharging raw waste into streets and the sea; the power supply is intermittent at best; hospitals lack heat and spare parts for diagnostic machines, ventilators, incubators; dozens of lifesaving medicines are no longer available. Slowly but surely, Gaza is dying.

Patients are dying unnecessarily: cancer patients cut off from chemotherapy regimens, kidney patients cut off from dialysis treatments, premature babies cut off from blood-clotting medications. In the past few weeks, many more Palestinian parents have watched the lives of their sick children ebb slowly, quietly and (as far as the global media are concerned) invisibly away in Gaza's besieged hospitals than Israelis have been hurt - let alone actually killed - by the erratic firing of primitive homemade rockets from Gaza, about which we have heard so much. (According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, these rockets have killed thirteen Israelis in the past four years, while Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the occupied territories in the past two years alone, almost half of them civilians, including some 200 children.)

Israel's squeeze is expressly intended to punish the entire population for the firing of those rockets by militants, which ordinary civilians are powerless to stop. "We will not allow them to lead a pleasant life," said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when Israel cut off fuel supplies on January 18, thereby plunging Gaza into darkness. "As far as I am concerned, all of Gaza's residents can walk and have no fuel for their cars."

Olmert's views and, more important, his policies were reaffirmed and given the legal sanction of Israel's High Court. In what human rights organizations referred to as a "devastating" decision, on January 30 the court ruled in favor of the government's plan to further restrict supplies of fuel and electricity to Gaza. "The decision means that Israel may deliberately deprive civilians in Gaza of fuel and electricity supplies," pointed out Sari Bashi, of the Gisha human rights organization in Israel. "During wartime, the civilian population is the first and central victim of the fighting, even when efforts are made to minimize the damage," the court said. In other words, harm to the civilian population is an inevitable effect of war and therefore legally permissible.

That may be the view of Israel's highest legal authority, but it is not how the matter is viewed by international law, which strictly regulates the way civilian populations are to be treated in time of war. "The parties to a conflict must at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants in order to spare the civilian population and civilian property," the International Red Cross points out, invoking the Geneva Conventions and other founding documents of international humanitarian law. "Neither the civilian population as a whole nor individual civilians may be attacked."

Moreover, no matter what Israel's High Court says, what is happening in Gaza is not a war in the conventional sense: Gaza is not a state at war with the state of Israel. It is a territory militarily occupied by Israel. Even after its 2005 redeployment, Israel did not release its hold on Gaza; it continues to control all access to the territory, as well as its airspace, territorial waters and even its population registry. Over and above all the routine prohibitions on attacks on the civilian population and other forms of collective punishment that hold true in case of war, in other words, international law also holds Israel responsible for the welfare of the Gaza population. Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) specifically demands, for example, that, "to the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate."

Israel's methodical actions make it clear that it is systematically grinding down and now actually starving people for whose welfare it is legally accountable simply because it regards Gaza's 1.5 million men, women and children as a surplus population it would, quite simply, like to get rid of one way or the other: a sentiment made quite clear when Israel's chief Ashkenazi rabbi proposed, shortly after the current crisis began, that the entire Palestinian population of Gaza should just be removed and transferred to the Egyptian desert. "They will have a nice country, and we shall have our country and we shall live in peace," he said, without eliciting even a murmur of protest in Israel.

The overwhelming majority of Gazans are refugees or the descendants of refugees who were expelled from their homes when Palestine was destroyed and Israel was created in 1948. Like all Palestinian refugees, those of Gaza have a moral and legal right to return to the homeland from which they were expelled. Israel blocks their return for the same reason it expelled them in the first place, because their presence would undermine its already tenuous claim to Jewishness (this is the nature of the so-called "demographic problem" about which Israeli politicians openly complain). As long as the refugees live, what Israel regards as the mortal threat of their right of return lives on. But if they would somehow just go away...

"Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and - some would say - encouragement of the international community," the commissioner-general of UNRWA warned recently.

The question now is whether the world will simply sit and watch, now that this unprecedented threshold is actually being crossed.

Having taken matters into their hands and destroyed the wall cutting them off from the outside world, it is most unlikely that the people of Gaza will simply submit to that fate. A hermetic closure ultimately depends not merely on Israel's whims but on Egypt's willingness - or ability - to cut off the Palestinians of Gaza and watch them starve. For all the US and Israeli pressure on Egypt, and for all the steps Egypt is now taking, it seems most unlikely that it would let things go that far. Not intervening to save fellow Arabs from the Israeli occupation is one thing; actually participating in their repression is quite another. The Egyptian government would have to answer not only to the people of Palestine but to its own people, and indeed to all Arabs.

Working together, Hamas and the people of Gaza have forced Egypt's hand and made much more visible than ever before the role it had been playing all along in the Israeli occupation and strangulation of Gaza; now that its role in assisting Israel has been revealed, it will be difficult for Egypt to go back to the status quo. Gazans have thrown Israel's plans into disarray, because Israel's leaders could do little more than watch with pursed lips as the people of Gaza burst out of their prison. And they have placed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the government of Ramallah in a corner: they will have to choose between defending their people's rights and needs or confirming once and for all - as indeed they are doing - that the PA is there to serve Israel's interests, not those of the Palestinians. In which case they too will one day be called to account.

A long term gain for Israel
Ghassan Khatib, Bitterlemons.org

Culture and hope in Gaza
This Week in Palestine

The rough guide to Hebron
The Independent

Palestinian divide allows despair to rule
Roula Khalaf, Financial Times (Feb 2, 2008)

Canadian probe blames Israeli army for UN observer deaths in Lebanon
The Associated Press (Feb 2, 2008)

The fallout from the Gaza earthquake
Patrick Seale, Dar Al-Hayat (Feb 2, 2008)

Israel's Gaza mess
Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram Weekly (Feb 1, 2008)

Gaza blockade threatens education crisis: UNESCO
Agence France Presse (Feb 1, 2008)

Angry Arabs protest in Israel
Al Jazeera (Feb 1, 2008)

Yet another nothing
Khaled Amayreh, Al-Ahram Weekly (Feb 1, 2008)

Egypt tightens Gaza border gaps
BBC (Feb 1, 2008)

Gazans demanding passage out of Egypt continue sit-in for ninth day
Maan News (Feb 1, 2008)

Calling for open borders
IMEU, Feb 2, 2008

A Palestinian boy stands near the Rafah border fence, during a demonstration against attempts to reseal the crossing. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

How can India be Israel’s friend? BY AIJAZ ZAKA SYED

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2008/February/opinion_February7.xml&section=opinion&col=
How can India be Israel’s friend?
BY AIJAZ ZAKA SYED

2 February 2008

IT'S hard not to admire Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi whose 60th death anniversary India commemorated earlier this week. Without Gandhi, the history of India's freedom struggle would be as incomplete as Shakespeare's Hamlet without Prince of Denmark.

But the lasting impact of the man derided by Churchill as a 'half-naked fakir' is hardly limited to the sub-continent. From Nelson Mandela to Martin Luther King, every aspiring leader has turned to him for inspiration and guidance. What really wins hearts and minds of ordinary people like me is Gandhi's utter humility and equally unshakable faith in his beliefs and ideals.

And the more you read about him, the more he impresses you as a leader who looked far ahead of his time. More importantly, he had the courage of conviction and spoke the truth as it is.

|Look at the following lines, written 70 years ago, in 1938. Commenting on the campaign by imperial powers and Zionist groups to found Israel on Palestinian land, Gandhi wrote in his paper Harijan on Nov 26, 1938: “My sympathies are all with the Jews. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close.

“But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?

“Palestine belongs to Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It's wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. It would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred.”

Historic words or what? It's as if the Mahatma's far-sighted eyes saw the disastrous consequences the creation of Israel in the heart of the Arab world at the gunpoint by the Western powers would unleash.

Reading Gandhi's prophetic words today, I wonder how the Mahatma would react to the growing proximity between the country he fought hard to liberate and the state whose creation he warned would be a 'crime against humanity'.

Given his strong views on Palestine and the imperial attempts to impose their own Jewish population on the Arabs, I wonder what the visionary leader would have said on the Indian establishment's current wooing of Israel, the world's most racist and ruthless regime. It was Gandhi's unwavering support for Arab position that set the direction of independent India's foreign policy and consistent backing for the Palestinian cause.

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister and a formidable leader in his own right, carried the Gandhian legacy forward with his passionate championing of the Palestinian cause and identification with the Arabs.

Nehru's successors including his daughter Indira and grandson Rajiv Gandhi followed in his footsteps. India led the developing world in vehemently speaking out against Israel's persecution of the Palestinians at every available opportunity and platform. No wonder India had a special place in the hearts of the Palestinians too. The inimitable Yasser Arafat used to be a frequent visitor to India and very close to the Gandhis, especially to Indira. She had been the sister Abu Ammar never had. This is exactly why this newfound love of the current Indian leaders for Israel and all that it stands for is most bewildering, to say the least. It's all the more disconcerting considering the present government is led by the Congress, the party of the Gandhis, the Nehrus, the Ali brothers, Azad and millions of other freedom loving people.

I wonder what Gandhi and Nehru would make of the recent launch of an Israeli spy satellite by India. Even though the Indian government has been rather coy about this whole spooky business, Israel itself has reassured its people that the satellite would help it spy on Iran, Syria and 'other enemies of Israel' in the Middle East.

You don't have to be a genius to know who Israel's enemies are. In other words, the whole of Arab and Muslim world has come under the hawk eyes of this satellite.

What was the Indian government thinking? Are we now going to spy on our friends for Israel?

India's ties with the Middle East go way back in time, even before Islam. These relations have developed and strengthened over the past thousand years or so, thanks to India's large Muslim community. With a population of over 200 million, the community is the world's biggest Muslim community.

No wonder the whole of Arab and Muslim world including Iran has always seen India as a great friend and ally; a friend who has always stood by them and spoken out against injustice everywhere. On the other hand, the only thing common between India and Israel is the letter 'I'.

This is why these growing ties between India and Israel are so profoundly disturbing.

This is what we had all feared when US president Bush inked that now infamous nuclear deal with PM Manmohan Singh.

As many courageous Indian leaders including Prakash Karat of CPM have warned, this deal with the US comes at a great price to India's ideals and interests.

The reigning superpower, already thinly spread in the Middle East and Central Asia, is desperately looking for a surrogate power to promote its own agenda and protect its geopolitical interests. And India is that surrogate power.

There are no free lunches in the world of international relations. Everything is quid pro quo. And India's growing 'cooperation' with Israel is part of this quid pro quo. You marry Uncle Sam and you end up with Israel as stepson.

But even if this new love of Indian leadership for Israel is driven by the national interest, it's overlooking some fundamental facts at a great cost to India's long-term geopolitical interests. In case the memory of the South Block mandarins has deserted them, here are some home truths to refresh it:

The Middle East is home to a large Indian population. In fact, it is the biggest Indian Diaspora, much bigger than our more pampered cousins in the US and Europe. While the people of Indian origin in the West are never likely to return home for good, Indians in the Gulf eventually go home. More important, the Indians in the Gulf are the biggest single source of vital foreign exchange for their country.

If India is one of the fastest growing economies today and has emerged as a key economic player on the world stage, this steady source of income from the Gulf has played a crucial role in it.

Does the Indian leadership want to jeopardize all this by dumping its traditional friends in the Muslim world for a murderous, apartheid state based on lies and deception?

Besides, isn't it strange that at a time when an energy-hungry world is increasingly reaching out to the Middle East -- home to the world's most known reserves of oil and gas -- India is snapping out of its historical ties with the Muslim world? Just look at China. Why do you think it's bending backwards to woo the Arabs and Iranians?

But even if we rise above this business of national interest, just look at what Israel, backed by the US, has been doing to the Palestinians? The whole of Palestine has been transformed into a large concentration camp and gulag with its people being deprived of daily basics like food, water and fuel? Hundreds of thousands of innocents have paid with their lives for the Holocaust the Zionists have inflicted on the Holy Land. And we want to be partners and friends with such people? Would Gandhi approve of it? Given his beliefs and ideals, I bet the Mahatma would be leading another long march against this betrayal of India's cherished ideals.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is a senior editor and columnist of Khaleej Times. Write to him at aijazsyed@khaleejtimes.com

letters

RE: Hamas won't go away- Palestine's Islamists can't be defeated or ignored, but embracing them won't be easy http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10608398

Dear Sir,

Rather than foolishly obsessing on and on about HAMAS, we need to be noticing ALL of Palestine- and the Palestinians' just cause for complaint: "Former Information Minister, Dr. Mustafa al-Barghouthi, the Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative stated on Thursday Zionist measures, especially the expansion of settlements and the building of the wall, expose the future of the whole region to danger.... The lawmaker also stated that the Zionist aggressions increased by 220% since the Annapolis conference at the end of last November." Zionist aggressions increased by 220% after Annapolis

220% !!!! Racist Israel's multiple violations of international law and the Palestinians' basic human rights continues unchecked- no one should make peace with that.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

***********************************************
RE: Grim reality in Gaza: The occupation is still the problem, EXCELLENT letter by Chris Doyle- Director, Council for Arab-British Understanding
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article3284766.ece

Dear Editor,

I am very grateful to see the excellent letter by Chris Doyle- Director, Council for Arab-British Understanding "Grim reality in Gaza: The occupation is still the problem".... although I think we need to take it all a step further to see that the occupation itself is mainly a symptom of something so much larger, and that is the ongoing Israeli made Nakba- the catastrophe created by sovereign Zionist bigotry armed and eager to impoverish, displace and destroy the native non-Jewish people of historic Palestine.

We need to know the full story, not Zionist spin & religious fantasies by deluded rabbis & priests but the truth about how all this began “... Jewish fighters stormed the house, screaming “Out! Out! Get out!” My mother and my sister’s children – including a small child we had to carry – ran out, as did other relatives and neighbours. We had no idea where to go, but the Jewish soldiers ordered us to get moving. So we walked. It was a hot day in Ramadan. Some people around us were saying it was the Day of Judgement, others that we were already in Hell. When we reached the outskirts of town, we found a Jewish checkpoint where those leaving were being searched. We had no weapons. But our neighbour’s son, Amin Hanhan, apparently had some money concealed on him and wouldn’t let them search him. A Zionist soldier shot him dead right in front of our eyes. His mother and sister rushed to him, wailing. His brother, Bishara, had been in elementary school with me and we were friends. We used to study and play together … You wonder why I have chosen this road, why I became an Arab nationalist. This is what Zionism is about. After all this, they talk about peace. This is the Zionism that I knew, that I saw with my own eyes.” George Habash http://www.haloscan.com/comments/lenin/8108367474201115799/ Habash interview in 1997, published in the Journal of Palestine Studies , (1998) vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 86-101
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0377-919X(199823)28%3A1%3C86%3ATSAIWG%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M (

Habash died a Palestinian refugee- but his words will live on and on, his compelling eye witness account verified by three quarters of a million more such tales of early Zionist terror and violence, now joined by millions more as the children of Palestine continue to be tormented and seriously harmed by Zionist brutality.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

***********************************************
RE: The state of Gaza should shame us all By Barbara Stocking, Director of Oxfam
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=ZCGCTCPQAQI51QFIQMGCFF4AVCBQUIV0?xml=/opinion/2008/02/01/do0108.xml

Dear Sir,

It is a huge relief to see Barbara Stocking's boldly honest "The state of Gaza should shame us all"... for indeed it should shock and sicken us as the situation goes from bad to worse in every possible way: Israel's abject cruelty towards Palestinian men, women and children officially starts in 1948 with Israel's racist refusal to respect the native non-Jewish population of historic Palestine... Break the siege- believe in basic human rights including but not limited to the Palestinian refugees' very real right to return to original homes and lands.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

The Strangulation of Gaza by Saree Makdisi

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080218/makdisi

article | posted February 1, 2008 (web only)

The Strangulation of Gaza

Saree Makdisi

The people of Gaza were able to enjoy a few days of freedom last week, after demolition charges brought down the iron wall separating the impoverished Palestinian territory from Egypt, allowing hundreds of thousands to burst out of the virtual prison into which Gaza has been transformed over the past few years--the terminal stage of four decades of Israeli occupation--and to shop for desperately needed supplies in Egyptian border towns.

Gaza's doors are slowly closing again, however. Under mounting pressure from the United States and Israel, Egypt has dispatched additional border guards armed with water cannons and electric cattle prods to try to regain control. It has already cut off the flow of supplies crossing the Suez Canal to its own border towns. For now, in effect, Suez is the new border: even if Palestinians could get out of Gaza in search of new supplies, they would have to cross the desolate expanses of the Sinai Desert and cross the canal, on the other side of which they would find the regular Egyptian army (barred from most of Sinai as a condition of the 1979 Camp David treaty with Israel) waiting for them.

Now that Gaza's fleeting taste of freedom is beginning to fade, the grim reality facing the territory's 1.5 million people is once again looming large. "After feeling imprisoned for so long, it has been a psychological relief for Gazans to know that there is a way out," said John Ging, the local director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). "But it does not resolve their crisis by any stretch of the imagination."

Indeed, all the frenzied shopping in Egyptian border towns brought into Gaza a mere fraction of the food that UN and other relief agencies have been blocked by Israel from delivering to the people who depend on them for their very survival. As long as the border with Egypt is even partially open, Israel refuses to open its own borders with Gaza to anything other than the bare minimum of industrial fuel to keep the territory's one power plant operating at a subsistence level, and a few trucks of other supplies a day.

UNRWA has almost depleted the stocks of emergency food aid it had previously built up in Gaza. Only thirty-two truckloads of goods have been allowed to enter Gaza since Israel imposed its total closure on January 18; 250 trucks were entering every day before last June, and even that was insufficient to meet the population's needs.

On January 30 UNRWA warned that unless something changes, the daily ration that it will distribute on the 31st to 860,000 destitute refugees in Gaza will lack a protein component: the canned meat that is the only source of protein in the food parcels--which even under the best of circumstances contributes less than two-thirds of minimum daily nourishment--is being held up by Israel, and the stock of those cans inside Gaza has been exhausted. The World Food Program, which feeds another 340,000 people in Gaza, has brought in nine trucks of food aid in the past two weeks; in the seven months before that, it had been bringing in fifteen trucks a day.

Gazans have been ground into poverty by years of methodical Israeli restrictions and closures; 80 percent of the population now depends on food aid for day-to-day subsistence. With the aid, they were receiving "enough to survive, not to live," as the International Red Cross put it. Without it, they will die.

All this is supposed to be in response to Palestinian militant groups' firing of crude homemade rockets into Israel, which rarely cause any actual damage. There can be no excuse for firing rockets at civilian targets, but Israel was squeezing Gaza long before the first of those primitive projectiles was cobbled together. The first fatal rocket attack took place four years ago; Israel has been occupying Gaza for four decades. .....[more]

Palestinian refugees in Iraq call for unity

http://www.imemc.org/article/52556

Palestinian refugees in Iraq call for unity

Saturday February 02, 2008 01:13

by IMEMC Staff

saed at imemc dot org

Palestinian refugee in Iraq, facing repeated attacks, abductions and killings, voiced an appeal to the Palestinian people in Palestine and to all factions in order to save them and place their issue as a high priority. The refugees called on all Palestinian factions to end the internal tension and to unite.

File- Palestinian Refugees in Iraq

In a letter that was written by the refugee in Iraq, they said that since the US occupation of Iraq in 2003, they have been subjected to murder, displacement and abductions carried by armed militias supported by the US forces.

The refugees added that they are also being attacked by the Iraqi police and military and other armed militias that came to Iraq.

“Every Palestinian refugee in Iraq is subjected to danger, either abduction or killing, we are surrounded and there are dozens of refugees who went missing long time ago and remained without a trace”, the refugees said in their statement, “We are being subjected to all of these violations, including torture and murder, and nobody is trying to help us”.

The statements also revealed that a large number of Palestinian refugees were abducted by the US army and are now in American and Iraqi run prisons, while others are missing.

Attacks against Palestinian neighborhoods in Iraq are still ongoing; some of these attacks are carried by armed militias while other attacks are carried by joint Iraqi and American forces.

Dozens of students stopped going to school or college in fear of abduction while most families had to sell their furniture in order to feed their children. Dozens of Palestinian employees were fired from their work as well.

Most of the refugees are now dependent on humanitarian aid as they lost their jobs, houses and shops, and dozens of families are now stranded on the Jordanian and Syrian border after their fled to save their families.

The refugees appealed in their letter all Palestinian factions to launch Arab and International campaigns to their relief, and to contact the Arab countries to open their borders for the refugees who had to flee from their homes and are living a new catastrophe.

They also appealed the UNRWA to intervene and provide them with the needed help and security.

Fri Feb 1, 5:45 PM ETPrev 1 of 400 NextPalestinian youths climb on a destroyed part of the Egypt-Gaza border metal wall, during a demonstration to support the open border with Egypt, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Friday, Feb. 1, 2008. Hamas blew open the border wall on Jan. 23, ending a seven-month blockade of the Gaza Strip that began after the Islamic group violently wrested control of the territory. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have been moving in and out of Egyptian border towns since, and in the meantime, Hamas bulldozers have pried open new gaps and blocked Egyptian efforts to narrow existing ones. (AP Photo/Eyad Baba)

Fri Feb 1, 9:28 AM ETPrev 57 of 400 NextA Palestinian boy looks through a destroyed section of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt February 1, 2008. Egypt called in police reinforcements and sealed gaps at the breached border with the Gaza Strip on Thursday. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (GAZA)

Fri Feb 1, 9:20 AM ETPrev 58 of 400 NextPalestinians place flags at a destroyed section of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt February 1, 2008. Egypt called in police reinforcements and sealed gaps at the breached border with the Gaza Strip on Thursday. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (GAZA)

Fri Feb 1, 9:14 AM ETPrev 59 of 400 NextA Palestinian makes his way to Egypt through a destroyed section of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt February 1, 2008. Egypt called in police reinforcements and sealed gaps at the breached border with the Gaza Strip on Thursday. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)

Fri Feb 1, 9:10 AM ETPrev 61 of 400 NextPalestinians buy cows from Egypt through a destroyed section of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt February 1, 2008. Egypt called in police reinforcements and sealed gaps at the breached border with the Gaza Strip on Thursday. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (GAZA)

Fri Feb 1, 8:44 AM ETPrev 65 of 400 NextPalestinians stand on top of a destroyed section of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt February 1, 2008. Egypt called in police reinforcements and sealed gaps at the breached border with the Gaza Strip on Thursday.

REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (GAZA)

Thu Jan 31, 10:47 PM ETPrev 74 of 400 NextMembers of the Palestinian community in Chile light candles during a protest during a rally in Vina Del Mar city February 1, 2008, against what they said are Israel's military operations in Gaza. REUTERS/Eliseo Fernandez (CHILE)

Thu Jan 31, 10:38 PM ETPrev 75 of 400 NextMembers of the Palestinian community in Chile light candles during a protest during a rally in Vina Del Mar city February 1, 2008, against what they said are Israel's military operations in Gaza. REUTERS/Eliseo Fernandez (CHILE)

Thu Jan 31, 7:54 PM ETPrev 77 of 400 NextClimbing the fence : A Palestinian boy climbs over the destroyed fence in the divided border town of Rafah between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

(AFP/Mahmud Hams)

Thu Jan 31, 7:53 PM ETPrev 78 of 400 NextBorder view : Palestinians walk along the breached border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. (AFP/Mohammed Abed)

Thu Jan 31, 7:51 PM ETrev 79 of 400 NextBorder sunset : Palestinian children play during sunset at the breached border between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip in the divided town of Rafah. (AFP/Mohammed Abed)

Thu Jan 31, 4:49 PM ETPrev 81 of 400 NextA Palestinian man walks past a destroyed section of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt January 31, 2008. (Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

Thu Jan 31, 7:10 AM ETPrev 171 of 400 NextPalestinians build a snowman as the snow line can be seen on the edge of the desert on Mount Scopus after a winter storm, near Jerusalem, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008. Early Wednesday a rare snowfall hit Jerusalem and the surrounding areas closing schools and businesses. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

Thu Jan 31, 11:55 AM ETPrev 107 of 400 Next The Dome of the Rock in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, is seen covered with snow Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008. A rare snowfall hit parts of Israel and the West Bank on Wednesday, closing schools and businesses. (AP Photo/Atta Awisat)

Thu Jan 31, 8:02 AM ETPrev 166 of 400 NextPalestinian children build a snowman next to the Dome of the Rock, background, in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008. A rare snowfall hit parts of Israel and the West Bank on Wednesday, closing schools and businesses. (AP Photo/Atta Awisat)

Thu Jan 31, 7:28 AM ETPrev 167 of 400 NextA Palestinian woman throws a snowball outside Jerusalem's Old City, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008. Early Wednesday a rare snowfall hit Jerusalem and the surrounding areas closing schools and businesses. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

Thu Jan 31, 10:34 AM ETPrev 110 of 400 NextPalestinian children play in the snow after a winter storm, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008. A rare snowfall hit parts of Israel and the West Bank on Wednesday, closing schools and businesses. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

Thu Jan 31, 11:48 AM ETPrev 108 of 400 NextIsraeli soldiers detain Palestinian youths who had a playful snow fight with Jewish settlers in the West Bank town of Hebron,Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008. The youths were released after less than an hour. A rare snowfall hit parts of Israel and the West Bank on Wednesday, closing schools and businesses. (AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi)

Thu Jan 31, 11:20 AM ETPrev 109 of 400 NextA Palestinian sprays a snowman with the words 'Palestine' and 'Free Gaza' in the West Bank city of Hebron ,Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008. A rare snowfall hit parts of Israel and the West Bank on Wednesday, closing schools and businesses.

(AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi)

Thu Jan 31, 8:50 AM ETPrev 145 of 400 NextBoys build a snowman in front of the Dome of the Rock Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem January 31, 2008. Jerusalem, some of northern Israel and hilly areas in the occupied West Bank were covered in a blanket of snow for the second day in a row on Thursday and many cars stayed off roads due to hazardous driving conditions. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (JERUSALEM)

Thu Jan 31, 9:54 AM ETPrev 125 of 400 NextPalestinian youths build a snowman nest to the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008. A rare snowfall hit parts of Israel and the West Bank on Wednesday, closing schools and businesses. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty)

Thu Jan 31, 8:47 AM ETPrev 147 of 400 NextPalestinians build a snowman near the controversial Israeli barrier after a snowstorm, near the Qalandiya checkpoint, just outside the West Bank city of Ramallah January 31, 2008. Jerusalem, some of northern Israel and hilly areas in the occupied West Bank were covered in a blanket of snow for the second day in a row on Thursday and many cars stayed off roads due to hazardous driving conditions. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (WEST BANK)

Thu Jan 31, 9:14 AM ETPrev 140 of 400 NextA Palestinian stands on the Egypt-Gaza border, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, during an Islamic Jihad demonstration demanding the continuous opening of the border, Thursday Jan. 31, 2008. Egyptian officials say they have worked hard to keep Palestinians bottled up near the border since hundreds of thousands poured across after last week's breach in parts of the border. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

NETUREI KARTA of THE ORTHODOX JEWRY

JERUSALEM, PALESTINE

Jan 31.08

URGENT PRESS RELEASE

In the past week the so-called Chief Rabbi of the so-called State of "Israel", Yona Metzger, has made vicious and provocative statements asserting that the Palestinians living in Gaza should be moved from their homes into the Sinai.Desert.

Yona Metzger is not an authentic rabbi, despite the fact that he carries the title of “Chief Rabbi”. Chief rabbis of the Zionist State only carry legitimacy in the eyes of Zionist Jews. His status as a rabbi is not unlike the leadership of Theodor Herzl, who also wore a beard!

The State of “Israel” is an illegitimate rogue regime whose very existence is leading the world to World War III. Palestinians have an inherent right, guaranteed under international and moral law, to return to their land in historic Palestine and to establish their independent state in the entire Holy Land, which was forcefully taken from them by the Zionists. Indeed, many Gazans are refugees who were expelled from other areas of Palestine by the Zionists ever since 1948.

Chief rabbis of the Zionist state, whether Metzger or anyone else, are merely very well-paid stooges of the Zionists and serve their Zionist masters without regard for the welfare of the Jewish People, the Palestinians, or any other nation in the world.

The Chief Rabbinate of the Zionist State, just as all Zionist institutions, has importance only because of its coercive power over the religious, economic and everyday life of the Jewish residents of Zionistoccupied Palestine. Whoever recognizes and supports the Zionist State, even innocently, has been taken over by the heretical Zionist movement, no matter how large the halo that it is granted by Orthodox rabbis.

Chief rabbis, and other rabbis who support the existence of the Zionist state, are wicked emissaries of Evil. Such “rabbis” promote hatred and war, and use their coercive powers to demand subservience of Jews to the Zionist enterprise. This description of such people has been the long-standing position of authentic rabbis for the last century.

Yona Metzger, like all Zionist rabbis, expresses feelings of cruelty and inhumanity which originates in his loyalty to the cult of Zionism, is perfectly prepared to sacrifice Jewish lives on the altar of his idolatry, the State of “Israel.” Any moral person would much prefer to see the Zionist warmongers, including Metzger, removed from the Holy Land. METZGER AND ALL ZIONIST RABBIS DO NOT REPRESENT THE JEWISH RELIGION.

We urgently appeal to the leaders of the world nations, especially the great powers, to stop supporting the Zionist regime. Many nations believe that supporting Zionism shows friendship to the Jewish People. This is incorrect! True friendship to the Jewish People can be demonstrated by saving all the peoples of the Middle East, including Jews, from the bloodthirsty machinations of the dangerous State of “Israel” and by dismantling the Zionist regime entirely.

May Almighty G-d protect us from the influence of Zionism in general, their evil warmongering bloodthirsty leaders, and from their wicked servants who call themselves “rabbis.”

Neturei Karta Palestine

nkp@neto.bezeqint.net

BBS News: Raw Sewage Changing the Face of Gaza By Mohammed Omer

Raw Sewage Changing the Face of Gaza

Friday, February 01 2008 @ 11:31 AM EST
Edited by: Michael Hess

GAZA CITY: A stream of dark and putrid sludge snakes through Gaza's streets. It is a noxious mix of human and animal waste. The stench is overwhelming. The occasional passer-by vomits

BBSNews 2008-02-01 -- By Mohammed Omer. Over recent days this has been a more common sight than the sale of food on the streets of Gaza, choked by a relentless Israeli siege.

Medical crisis in Gaza.

Image Credit: Mohammed Omer, Rafah Today 2008-01-21.

Hundreds of thousands of Gazans, almost all of its able male adults among a population of 1.5 million, crossed over into Egypt last week to buy essential provisions – and a new lease of life. That has staved off starvation. But streets continue as sewers.

The rain has not helped. The sludge has spread, and the stench with it. Starved of timely income and essential supplies, municipal services have all but ceased.

"The smell," says Ayoub al-Saifi, 56, grimacing as he holds a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. "The stench of the sewage…my wife has asthma, and she can't breathe."

Saifi lives next to what has become a newly formed pool of waste. This used to be the street leading to home. "It's getting worse day by day," says neighbor Said Ammar, an engineer, and father of four.

The sewage treatment plant in al-Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City requires 20,000 litres of fuel a day. Last week Israel ceased delivery of all fuel and supplies to Gaza. The consequences have been catastrophic.

Without fuel to pump it away, the waste backs up, flooding the streets and clogging the plumbing. The local ministry of health has declared this an environmental catastrophe.

Doctors have warned that a medical catastrophe could follow by way of spread of cholera and other diseases. That is at a time when not even life-saving medical services are on offer any more.

"We have to choose between cutting the electricity on babies in the maternity ward, cutting it to heart patients, or shutting down our operating rooms," says Dr. Mawia Hasaneen, director of emergency at al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza.

The World Health Organization released a statement Jan. 22 warning of serious health difficulties arising in Gaza Strip, isolated by the Israeli siege, the Egyptian border and the Mediterranean Sea.

"Frequent electricity cuts and the limited power available to run hospital generators are of particular concern, as they disrupt the functioning of intensive care units, operating theatres, and emergency rooms," the WHO said. "In the central pharmacy, power shortages have interrupted refrigeration of perishable medical supplies, including vaccine."

Christine McNab, acting director in the communications department in Geneva adds that "our current concerns are about the supply of electricity to health facilities, the ability to move medical supplies into the region, and the ability of people to seek care outside of Gaza."

McNab notes that even if the full blockade is lifted, additional measures would need to be taken by the international community against any further disruptions.

Israel has blocked off fuel and supplies to Gaza because it says it faces rocket attacks from the Palestinian area, which elected Hamas, the Palestinian party that does not recognize Israel.

Official Israeli sources say that about 150 homemade rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel since Israel commenced this latest raid. Two Israelis have been slightly wounded and several others treated for shock.

Israel has retaliated with firing from tanks and attacks by F-16 aircraft firing Hellfire missiles into Gaza's neighborhoods. At least 76 Palestinians have been killed, and another 293 injured since Jan. 1, officials here say.

Through the suffering, many Palestinians still do not blame Hamas.

"Hamas has never been the problem. The occupation has always been the big problem," says Ammar. He instead blames Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who administers the West Bank Palestinian area, and who has been in talks with Israel.

"Abbas doesn't deserve one percent of the respect that (former Palestinian leader Yasser) Arafat earned. Israel will never find someone as good as Arafat. He gave them a historical chance at two states. Yet despite this, they (Israel) laid siege to him."

Rajaa Shalil, 38, and mother of four in Rafah at the Egyptian border, says "my respect for Hamas has increased more than ever. I love them for their empathy for the weak."

But not all of Gaza's residents feel this way. "Both Israel and Hamas are the reason for this," says resident Abu Mohammed. "Before, we were all in better conditions, but since Hamas took over Gaza they have been unable to handle it."

Top Issues: Where Candidates Stand....

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TOP ISSUES

Palestinian State

HILLARY CLINTON:

Support for the two-state solution hinges on Arab support for Palestinian leadership willing to negotiate. Clinton apparently does not see Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as such a partner and would prefer one who accepts Israeli demands and would make no counter demands of Israel. It goes without saying that the election of such a "leader" could be disasterous for the Palestinian people, who have little to negotiate with as it is. Clinton also gives full support to the wall and demands that the American Embassy be moved to Jerusalem.

BARACK OBAMA:

After stating this past summer that the Palestinian people were among the most oppressed in the world, Obama withstood intense backlash. Since the incident, he has not spoken specifically about the two-state solution, but has strongly reiterated that his foreign policy would be to isolate Hamas and strengthen Palestinian moderates. He has been the ONLY candidate to get involved with the Gaza blockade, urging the U.S. Ambassador to the UN to halt any resolution that does not support Israel's defense against qassam rockets. Dennis Ross, a pro-Israeli foreign policy pundit, has been named as an advisor; but more than anything else, Ross' role has been as liason to pro-Israeli organizations to keep Obama from losing the significant support they offer.

MIKE HUCKABEE:

It is startling to see that this candidate likely has the best understanding of the origins of Islamist fundamentalism, certainly from an academic standpoint. But more startling is that he is the one who ignores America's unbalanced support for Israel against the Palestinian people as a source of contempt. He avoids the term "Two-state solution" because it, by definition, gives Palestinians the rights to the West Bank. Huckabee fiercely believes in Israel's claim to the West Bank and Gaza, and has said that a Palestinian state should be established in Saudi Arabia or in Egypt.

JOHN MCCAIN:

McCain does not comment on the two-state solution, but pledges to cooperate with Israel in assuring security. He advocates isolation of Israel's enemies and supported Israel's use of overwhelming force in Lebanon in 2006. If elected, McCain could put his security expertise to good use, one of the first steps in a lasting peace would be to encourage cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security agencies, and to ensure that the Palestinian forces have what they need to accomplish the goals the U.S. demands of them.

RON PAUL:

A fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy, Paul believes U.S. interference and aid have only intensified the conflict between Israel and her neighbors. As president, he has said he would use all of the U.S.'s diplomatic resources to moderate negotiations, but would avoid "further entanglement." Paul advocates cutting all foreign governmental aid.

MITT ROMNEY:

Romney's foreign policy would rest on combating Islamic radicalism, of which he shows little more than an elementary understanding. Without mentioning the two-state solution specifically, he has called on Arab states to stop providing support to militant groups and on Palestinians to recognize Israel. Both formal and informal negotiations have shown Fatah's de-facto recognition. As president, Romney's role in negotiations between Israel and Palestine would likely be more of the same hype and rhetoric we have seen with the Bush administration.

Iraq

HILLARY CLINTON:

Within the first 90 days of her Presidency, Clinton would convene with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, her Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council to develop a practical plan for redeployment. Troops would be needed in some areas, to provide extra security for the new government and along the Turkey-Kurdistan border. She foolishly promises to use diplomatic incentives for neighboring countries to "stay out of the civil war."

BARACK OBAMA:

Obama pledges a "responsible" end to the Iraq War by March 31, 2009. Although he has been fuzzy on the details of a redeployment, he has by far the longest list of military and foreign policy endorsers of any candidate.

MIKE HUCKABEE:

Huckabee would invite financial and military - not specifically diplomatic - commitment from Iraq's neighbors, especially Turkey. His general support for the Bush Administration's war policies suggest that little would change strategically. He has said he will follow the recommendations of Gen. David Petraeus, and calls a timetable for withdrawal a mistake. Although he does not use the term withdrawal, he suggests a redistribution of troops throughout the country. "…we must stop using active-duty forces for nation building and return to our policy of using other government agencies to build schools, hospitals, roads, sewage treatment plants, water filtration systems, electrical facilities, and legal and banking systems."

JOHN MCCAIN:

"…I oppose a preemptive withdrawal strategy that has no Plan B for the aftermath of its inevitable failure and the greater problems that would ensue." Whether or not we should have taken military action in Iraq, he reasons, it is both strategically and morally imperative that we do not leave the country unstable.

RON PAUL:

Paul is possibly the most outspoken Republican critic of the War in Iraq. If elected, he promises an immediate withdrawal of troops, not only from Iraq, but from the rest of the world as well. He names U.S. occupation as the fuel for sectarian violence. Such intervention is not in America's best interest, he says, and has made us more enemies than friends. More weight needs to be given to the recommendations of our intelligence agencies, and less to the powerful business interests in Washington.

Afghanistan

HILLARY CLINTON:

We need a strategy to keep terrorism recruitment at bay. Clinton stresses a stronger approach in counter-narcotics efforts, crop-substitution programs, roads and infrastructure, governance training, and the integration of women into larger public roles.

BARACK OBAMA:

We need to further isolate the Taliban and support "more effective development programs that target aid to areas where the Taliban are making inroads."

MIKE HUCKABEE:

In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, "We can nurture moderate forces," to provide alternatives to fundamentalist parties. "Such moderation may not look or function like our system -- it may be a benevolent oligarchy or more tribal than individualistic."

"We must first destroy existing terrorist groups and then attack the underlying conditions that breed them: the lack of basic sanitation, health care, education, jobs, a free press, fair courts … If we do not do the right thing to improve life in the Muslim world, the terrorists will step in and do the wrong thing."

JOHN MCCAIN:

To follow through with our commitment to Afghanistan, McCain will negotiate to increase NATO forces and remove beaurocratic obstacles to their forces, expand the training of the Afghan National Army with NATO cooperation.

Pakistan

HILLARY CLINTON:

Clinton appears faulty over Pakistan. On one hand, she has criticized Barack Obama's criticism of Pakistan President Musharraf. She has also criticized the Bush administration's support of Musharraf. On the other hand, Clinton has said that she would not hesitate to use force on al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan.

BARACK OBAMA:

Like his strategy for Afghanistan, Obama will pursue policies to improve the lives of the people, thus isolating and cutting the recruitment efforts of terrorist organizations. He has been tough on Musharraf's regime and has said he would encourage negotiations between Pakistan and India over Kashmir.

MIKE HUCKABEE:

Criticizing the Bush administration's policy in Pakistan, Huckabee pledges to pursue terror groups in Pakistan and provide aid to Pakistan's poor.

JOHN MCCAIN:

We need to increase our cooperation with Pakistan in their anti-terrorism efforts, especially by investing in their security forces and supporting Pakistani moderates. He has criticized the Musharraf regime for their agreements with militant groups.

RON PAUL:

In clear opposition to the other candidates, Paul opposes an alliance with the Musharraf regime and aid to Pakistan. Although he has not said so, Paul's policy stances would indicate that he would not pursue al-Qaeda or Taliban forces in Pakistan.

MITT ROMNEY:

Romney would focus aid on strengthening the Musharraf regime's "foundation of democracy and freedom." This misguided and murky statement should serve as a warning on the lack of both foreign policy and reform experience. It is equally unclear whether or not he will pursue military action in Pakistan.

Iran and Nuclear Weapons

HILLARY CLINTON:

We must work with the international community to offer incentives for compliance with international law, Clinton maintains that we must keep all options on the table, not withholding military action. Taking initiative in decreasing our own nuclear stockpile no longer poses a threat to our national security. Such measure would, increase our world standing and open doors for international cooperation, as many allies see the hypocrisy in our current policy and refuse to allow it. Clinton promises Senate approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by 2009.

BARACK OBAMA:

Standing out from all other candidates, Obama advocates direct dialogue with Iran's leaders. Economic sanctions can be effective when applied with broad international cooperation. He would be open to Iranian involvement in the reconstruction of Iraq. This could promote dialogue and stability in the Middle East, but an easily manipulated situation could empower militants, so Iranian involvement is probably not a good idea for U.S. interests. Obama also endorses the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Mike Huckabee:

A nuclear Iran will encourage Sunni regimes to develop a nuclear program. Huckabee will not take military action off the table, but will use diplomatic options first.

JOHN MCCAIN:

Stressing that a military option must remain, McCain urges isolation by tougher sanctions and a disinvestment campaign to de-legitimize the regime. "There is only one thing worse than military action," he has said, "and that is a nuclear armed Iran. He would invite an international summit on nonproliferation that stresses the rights of nations to seek nuclear energy technologies, but prohibits nuclear weapons technologies. The use of nuclear power is a foundational component in his plan towards energy independence.

RON PAUL:

Paul extends his policy on non-intervention to Iran. He cites CIA information that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and we are not in danger of them developing one.

MITT ROMNEY:

Romney will not erase military options against Iran. He stresses that the U.S. needs to pursue diplomatic isolation and bolster moderate Muslims so they can oppose a nuclear weapons race internally. He would also consider Iranian involvement in Iraq.

Intelligence and Military Reform

BARACK OBAMA:

"We need to deepen our knowledge of the circumstances and beliefs that underpin extremism," to accomplish this, our intelligence agencies will need to invest in specialists in local cultures and languages. Obama also promises to increase ground forces and provide more funding to the National Guard.

MIKE HUCKABEE:

Referring to the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force, Huckabee will focus development on elite units capable of swift and heavy attacks on terrorist cells.

JOHN MCCAIN:

Along with increasing our ground forces to 900,000 troops, McCain will establish an Army Advisor Corps to partner with ally militaries and expand our post-conflict reconstruction abilities. While none of the candidates are openly inviting European nations to help in the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, McCain's Army Advisory Corps may be far more successful in that specialty if given adequately specialized training and are allowed to cooperate with foreign partners. McCain also advocates the development of a League of Democracies, he believes an organization of like-minded democracies could better cooperate without having to overstep a Security Council that includes Russia and China.

MITT ROMNEY:

Romney pledges to increase military spending to 4% of the national GDP, a $30-40 billion annual build-up. Other than offering these numbers and promising to make energy reform his number two priority, Romney says the least of all the candidates.

Additional Strategies for Stability and Democracy in the Middle East

HILLARY CLINTON:

If the U.S. wants to make good on our promises of democratic ideal, Clinton says, we need to do a better job building stable institutions, rather than just focusing on elections.

BARACK OBAMA:

To help regimes enact democratic reforms, Obama would increase foreign aid to $50 billion by 2012. He will also devote $2 billion to a Global Education Fund.

Mike Huckabee:

Huckabee's foreign policy would seek to find a balance between security and democratic stability. His unspecific plan includes building schools, democratic institutions and Middle East job markets.

JOHN MCCAIN:

"As president, I will employ every economic, diplomatic, political, legal, and ideological tool at our disposal to aid moderate Muslims… who are resisting the well-financed campaign of extremism that is tearing Muslim societies apart. My administration, with its partners, will help friendly Muslim states establish the building blocks of open and tolerant societies." If - as we read it - this means McCain will grant aid directly to moderate parties and locally effective non-governmental organizations, McCain could re-build America's reputation. But that is a questionable if.

MITT ROMNEY:

Democracy-promotion is a long-term strategy to "defeat the jihadists." He would gather a coalition.

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Palestinian family life in caves in the southern Hebron hills

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7213184.stm

Palestinian family life in caves in the southern Hebron hills
Your portfolio: Eddie Gerald
Palestinian cave dweller lighting up a kerosene lantern

Palestinian cave dweller lighting up a kerosene lantern

BBC News website reader, Eddie Gerald, took these pictures of a Palestinian family living in a cave at Mufakara in the hills south a of Hebron in the West Bank.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Arab Israelis stage strikes after shooting probe dropped

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080201/wl_mideast_afp/mideastunrestjusticeisraelarab_080201165420;_ylt=AkpE8RBes3CB2IpwYbgApnyaOrgF

Arab Israelis stage strikes after shooting probe dropped

by Majeda el Batsh 1 hour, 16 minutes ago

SAKHNIN, Israel (AFP) - Israeli Arabs staged mass strikes in the north of the country on Friday in protest at a government decision to drop an inquiry into a police shooting in 2000 which killed 13 people.

Towns including Sakhnin saw a complete shutdown of Arab-owned shops, while in other areas including Nazareth around three quarters of stores closed in protest at the decision, announced on Sunday.

A group of Arab Israeli representatives, the so-called "Follow-up Committee," on Monday urged all Arab Israeli businesses and public services to join a general strike in protest at the decision.

Later on Friday, more than 10,000 protesters marched in central Sakhnin against Attorney General Menahem Mazuz's announcement that there would be no legal action against police over the death of 12 Arab Israelis and a Palestinian in October 2000.

Among the marchers were Arab members of the Israeli parliament, area mayors and religious dignitaries.

Protesters carried 14 coffins. Each of 13 bore the names of one of the people killed and the 14th was labeled as "justice, which is being buried."

Among the crowd, some protesters carried black flags in a sign of mourning, the red, white, green and black Palestinian flag and portraits of the victims.

"We will make sure that their blood was not spilled in vain. Let us stop the next crime," a banner read.

Mazuz had said that there was insufficient proof for a conviction and that the families of the victims would not allow post-mortems to be carried out for ballistics purposes.

Representatives of the Arab minority reacted angrily to the news, with the committee's head, Shawki Khatib, accusing Israel of "giving its backing to the murder of Arab citizens."

"We want to live in dignity and we want justice from the world," he added.

A state commission into the killing of the 13 civilians during violent protests after the Palestinian uprising broke out in 2000 found that police were largely to blame. It also criticised the attitude of Israeli authorities.

The Orr Commission's report of September 2003 found that government prejudice and police incompetence lay at the heart of the incidents during the pro-intifada demonstration.

Israel's Arab minority, the descendants of the 160,000 Palestinians who remained in the Jewish state when it was created in 1948, today accounts for 1.2 million of Israel's seven-million population.

Palestine Red Crescent: working and living under siege in Gaza

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/AMMF-7BEJFZ?OpenDocument&rc=3&emid=ACOS-635PFR

Palestine Red Crescent: working and living under siege in Gaza

Ola Skuterud, International Federation, and Erab Al Fuqaha, Palestine Red Crescent, in Gaza

Since the sealing off of the Gaza strip by Israeli authorities in June 2007, the humanitarian situation of Palestinians has deteriorated significantly, leaving tens of thousands of families living in extreme poverty. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has mobilized its volunteers and emergency teams to provide essential relief to some of the most vulnerable people through its medical services, health centers, programme for disabled children and psychosocial services. PRCS volunteers are going door-to-door, doing needs assessments and distributing emergency items, including blankets, candles, hygiene articles, mattresses, water and lamps, to alleviate some of the suffering.

Despite support from the International Federation, the International Committee of the Red Cross as well as from other Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the Palestine Red Crescent is greatly limited in what it can do to help the people in Gaza, due to the strict regulations imposed at the border on the movement of people in and out of the territory, and the importation and exportation of goods, controlled and restricted to the most basic needs.

During most of 2007, goods or equipment destined for development projects managed by national and international organizations or agencies have not been allowed into the Gaza Strip and material or spare parts to keep industry running cannot enter. The population in this tiny and very densely populated land of just 365 km², is suffering from isolation, poverty, and lack of everything.

According to the World Food Program, some 80,000 inhabitants of Gaza have lost their jobs since June 2007, bringing the already high rate of unemployment to 44% of the active population. Many local industries have shut down and Israel's decision, a few days ago, to completely seal off the Gaza Strip, preventing even fuel and the most essential commodities to enter the territory, worsened the situation. People had no more electricity from the power plant as fuel tanks were empty, and hospitals were running on generators, putting the survival of many patients at risk, such as premature babies surviving in incubators.

Meanwhile, Israeli-Palestinian tension continues as militant groups shoot rockets over the border into nearby Israeli villages, causing injuries and stress to people living there.

Every day, the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza face rapidly growing poverty and faint hopes for the future. They feel they are taken back to the nineteen century, with candles as the main source of light after sunset. In the cold, dark and rainy winter nights, and with no heating for most people, the candles can only provide dim lighting. Candles cannot replace the heating needed for people to stay healthy and avoid respiratory and other diseases. Witnessing the humanitarian impact of the blockade and years of siege, the Palestine Red Crescent as well as United Nations agencies and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement are warning about a worsening humanitarian disaster.

A few days ago, like a balloon bursting, half of the Gaza Strip population jumped over cut barbed wire and fallen concrete blocks, spilling over the border into Egypt after sections of the wall were destroyed by explosions. Some seven hundred thousand people rushed to Egyptian markets to buy essential goods. Suddenly they got the feeling once again of freedom of movement and normal life.

Commenting on the situation faced by his National Society, Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Palestine Red Crescent, said: "The closure and its devastating impact on the humanitarian situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and mainly in the Gaza Strip is putting more responsibilities on the PRCS shoulders and other national and international humanitarian agencies. Our staff and volunteers are working tirelessly to ease the misery of the Palestinians whose basic and critical health, social and humanitarian needs are increasing due to the Israeli occupation measures against Gaza. The measures of the policy of collective punishment have surpassed all limits and comprehension. Our priority now is to ensure full access to humanitarian assistance and to protect the lives of the families who are trying to cope with the hardships of such a situation. As for the international community, they should force the occupying power to adhere to International Humanitarian Law and ensure free access for humanitarian agencies to Gaza."

Vignettes

In the Palestine Red Crescent Al Quds Hospital in Gaza City, Yasser, a ten-year-old boy, is kept alive by an oxygen ventilator. Since he was shot in the chest during intra-Palestinian violence close to one year ago, Yasser has been hospitalized, first in an Israeli hospital, and then, for the last four months, in the PRCS hospital. But the doctors have not been able to bring Yasser back to a normal life, where he can enjoy playing with his friends and being with his relatives. His future is shaped by a complete dependency on this machine, powered by electricity from the power plant. Yasser whispers to his visitors, through tubes and the sound of artificial breathing, that he dreams of having a machine of his own to be able to go home to his family instead of staying in the hospital for the rest of his life. What he does not know is that the risk of this machine stopping is high, if the fuel needed for the power plant and the generator to operate is not delivered.

Mohamad Al Zrei'I, Abdelaziz Abou Sha'ib and Abdallah Mahmoud Washah have much in common when it comes to the reality of their daily life. They live in refugee camps in Central Gaza, they are all unemployed and they are trying to address the needs of their large families, including their medical needs.

Mohamad, 65, has seven children, a bedridden brother who suffers from severe psychological problems, an elderly mother and a wife who has asthma and high blood pressure. Life has been unkind to him and his face reflects the traces of despair and deprivation. Mohamad, who is also battling diabetes, shares his tiny house with his family of 14. They survive thanks to relief assistance from UNRWA, help from the PRCS and gifts from neighbours. Candles became a daily part of this family's life a very long time ago, providing them with a bit of light, a bit of hope, and just a little bit of heat during the cold winter nights.

The complete closure of the Gaza Strip has increased his and his family's daily suffering. "Of course it affected my life and the health of my family," he says, "mainly because of the quasi-continuous power cuts and my poverty, which prevents me from buying enough candles. I can accept living in humiliation and deprivation, but what hurts me most is my inability to provide medical care for my mother and brother and enough to feed my children."

A road full of potholes and littered with chunks of wood leads to the home of 70-year-old Abdelaziz, who shares his small house with 13 members of his family, four of whom are his handicapped children. The house has only two small rooms and family members have to sleep on the floor, wrapped in blankets, the only thing they have to keep away the winter cold. In one room, two little boys were sleeping, huddled against each other to keep warm and using each other's feet as a pillow, without any covers. A candle dimly lit the kitchen, with its worn pots and pans and dry pieces of bread on the table.

Abdelaziz, who suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure, uses what little money he has to pay for the university education of two of his children. After receiving essential blankets and for his whole family, candles and other relief goods from the Palestine Red Crescent team, he explains how the embargo on the Gaza Strip affects his life. "I am unemployed and I need to provide for my four disabled children. I cannot even pay for the candles to light their nights, let alone cover their medical expenses or provide them with food and bread. Our family relies on charity from our neighbours as well as on food aid provided by UNRWA. I have a shabby house with worn out furniture, but the most humiliating time of the day is when we go to sleep. The house is so small that we either sleep huddled against each other or we take turns. My wife even found insects and small rats in our closets and clothes." Thanking the PRCS disaster management team, he adds: "God bless you. You have managed to bring us moral support and humanitarian solidarity and to safeguard what little is left of our dignity.

Abdallah Washah, 57, supports his wife and his eleven children (eight children go to school and three are under six). He used to work in Israel to put bread on the table, but has been unemployed for ten years. He suffers from high blood pressure, asthma and chronic psoriasis, but cannot afford to buy the necessary medication. He and his family depend on relief aid provided by UNRWA. As if current living conditions were not difficult enough, a fire destroyed his house recently, and family members had to be separated to go and live with friends and other relatives. Abdallah describes what happened: "On the 8th of January at around 11 p.m, I was awakened by my children's screams and my neighbours pounding on the door. I saw thick black smoke filling the house. We all woke up and ran out. The fire was caused by one small candle. We stood in the rain and watched our house burn down in just a few minutes, amidst my children's screams and tears."

The candle was the only source of light the family had since electricity was cut off more than a week before. Abdallah lacks the financial means to reunite his family even in a small tin house, but he continues his daily fight with life, sometimes with tears, sometimes with smiles, in order to cater for his own needs and to provide for his family.

The Palestine Red Crescent has provided relief items including blankets, water supplies, candles, gasoline lamps, window sealing material, kitchen utensils and hygiene articles to families in Deir Al Balah and Al Breij refugee camps, in response to the humanitarian needs of the most vulnerable families in Gaza.

Postcard: Gaza... from Time Magazine

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1708831,00.html

Postcard: Gaza

Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008 By TIM MCGIRK

A Gazan returns from a trip into Egypt after the border wall was breached

Karim Ben Khelifa / Oeil Public for TIME

Amran Lubbad lay sleepless in Gaza early in the morning of Jan. 23. Lubbad, a darkly handsome Palestinian, was going to be united with Hiba, his fiancé in Egypt. He had treated himself to a sharp new haircut. The pair have been engaged for two years, but Israel and Egypt sealed off the border with Gaza in early 2006, and Hiba was trapped on the other side. At last, Lubbad had scraped together $1,500 to smuggle her through a sandy tunnel under the border fence.

It was a huge risk: tunnels at the Rafah crossing often cave in. At other times, Israel bombs the tunnels, which Hamas militants use for smuggling weapons into Gaza. So when Lubbad's cell phone rang at 5 a.m., he feared the worst. But the news couldn't have been better. "No need for the tunnel or your money," a friend told him. "The wall is down. Exploded. Now your fiancé can walk across. Gaza is free."

Free for now, that is...[more]

Israeli delays mean no Gaza schoolbooks: UN

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080201/wl_mideast_afp/mideastgazaisraeleducation_080201151440;_ylt=AjpL_dCiDhU85dcJl5L_9yoUvioA

Israeli delays mean no Gaza schoolbooks: UN

1 hour, 58 minutes ago

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Children in Gaza will start the second half of their school year on Saturday without textbooks because Israeli authorities delayed authorising imports of paper to print them on, a UN official said.

"It will take 45 days and four printing presses working full-time to get those books ready," Christopher Gunness, spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, told AFP.

Gunness said 200,000 children in grades one to nine would be affected until the 42 different titles are ready.

He said UNRWA had applied in November for Israeli authorisation to import 754 tonnes of paper but only received it on Thursday evening.

Barghouthi: Zionist aggressions increased by 220% after Annapolis

http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s7OLU6hSo%2fMK8hcqPmL1nk49sm0xpbcDeCLMb5kXwZ2gaBPzjTZwY4J4bH%2fWIVndPTALaK4ZnJjbxG5HzVqZpgp0afPNwJPZ6qwKCysKAKRzA%3d

Barghouthi: Zionist aggressions increased by 220% after Annapolis

[ 01/02/2008 - 12:25 PM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- Former Information Minister, Dr. Mustafa al-Barghouthi, the Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative stated on Thursday Zionist measures, especially the expansion of settlements and the building of the wall, expose the future of the whole region to danger.

The lawmaker also stated that the Zionist aggressions increased by 220% since the Annapolis conference at the end of last November.

In a meeting in Ramallah with the President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Mr. Pier Ferdinando Casini and its Secretary General Mr. Anders Johnsson, Barghouthi asked them to exert all possible efforts to get the Palestinian lawmakers released from Israeli detention and explained how Palestinian democracy is threatened by the continued detention of those lawmakers.

Barghouthi also called on the visiting delegation to work for an end of the aggression and siege on the Gaza Strip.

Finally Barghouthi called on all Parliamentary blocks of Inter-Parliamentary Union to accept Palestine as a permanent member of the Union.

Grim reality in Gaza: The occupation is still the problem ...EXCELLENT letter by Chris Doyle, Council for Arab-British Understanding

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article3284766.ece

From The Times

February 1, 2008

Grim reality in Gaza

The occupation is still the problem

Sir, It is a pity that someone from Chatham House has such a poor knowledge and understanding of Gaza (“A constant barrage against Israel”, Jan 31).

The fence around Gaza was set up in 1994 to isolate it. This has only intensified since then. Also, the United Nations and human rights groups emphasise that Gaza still remains occupied: it has no sovereign control of its land, sea and airspace. If Gaza was not occupied, the UN and others would be able to fly in the vital medicines that Israel has blocked. So the occupation is still the problem.

Moreover, Robin Shepherd ignores the other actions of the Israeli army. Last year it killed 373 Palestinians, 290 in Gaza. By contrast, Palestinian groups killed 13 Israelis. Might this level of killing not be an additional reason why Palestinian rocket fire has continued? Israel’s only solution is a full and final end to the occupation as part of a comprehensive deal which would also allow Palestinians to breathe, trade and travel freely, a basic right denied to them for years.

The firing of Qassams should stop, but on no possible barometer of what is civilised behaviour can 1.4 million people be held accountable for the illegal actions of the militants.

Chris Doyle
Director, Council for Arab-British Understanding
London EC4

Two patients in Gaza die due to the Israeli siege.... & more from IMEU

The Institute for Middle East Understanding offers journalists and editors quick access to information about Palestine and the Palestinians, as well as expert sources — both in the U.S. and in the Middle East. Read our Background Briefings. Contact us for story assistance. Sign up for e-briefings.

A Palestinian police officer plays in the snow near the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. (Luay Sababa, Maan Images)

People power in Gaza

Ramzy Baroud, IMEU

Feb 1, 2008

In an interview prior to the US invasion of Iraq, Noam Chomsky was asked what ordinary Americans could do to stop the war. He answered, "In some parts of the world people never ask, 'What can we do?' They simply do it. "For someone who was born and raised in a refugee camp in Gaza, Chomsky's response required no further elucidation.

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Osamah Khalil, The Electronic Intifada (Jan 31, 2008)

A Palestinian boy in Rafah stands atop the destroyed border fence which separated Gaza from Egypt. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

Direct action from Birmingham to Gaza ...& more from EI

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9267.shtml

Direct action from Birmingham to Gaza

Anna Baltzer writing from Minneapolis, US, Live from Palestine, 31 January 2008

Last week, the US celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the official end to segregation and racial discrimination in this country. As we celebrate certain historic advances, we mustn't forget that these policies are far from over in this country, and that as we struggle against one injustice we are perpetuating another system of discrimination and segregation on the other side of the world in occupied Palestine, a land where there are separate roads, schools, hospitals, neighborhoods, and legal systems, access to which depends on one's ethnicity or religion.

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. King "wept" from disappointment with the laxity of the church and its leaders in taking action against the status quo for fear of being considered "nonconformist." I recently met a young Palestinian Christian dancer (one of those censored in New England last December) who echoed similar frustration with churches around the world who are doing nothing to ease the suffering of Christians and others in the Holy Land. She spoke to a group of church-goers in Old Lyme, Connecticut:

My name is Mary Qumsiyeh. I am an English teacher from the little town of Bethlehem. My husband works in tourism and I have met many groups that said "We are here to walk in the footsteps of Jesus." But are they acting the way that Jesus did?

Our churches are now like museums. Tourists visit, take pictures, and leave. What about the living stories? Jesus in his time was living under the Roman occupation. Today, after 2000 years, we are still living under occupation -- now the Israeli occupation that has confiscated 88 percent of Bethlehem's land. If Jesus were alive today, would he permit this to happen? Jesus helped the oppressed and the ones in need. He made the blind see.

I ask you all to see how many times in the Bible the word justice is mentioned. And remember that Jesus did not avoid politics. Please spread our message, a message of joy, happiness, and justice, a message from youth full of life, willing to live and die in the little town of Bethlehem.

Thankfully, churches eventually stepped up to play a large and historic role in the civil rights movement, and it's worth remembering how: it was not simply by hoping for change, or by praying for change, or even by voting for change. It was by making change happen, by Christians stepping out of their comfort zones and challenging the status quo even if it meant going to jail or being ostracized.

Making change happen is never comfortable. It's what Dr. King called "tension." He confessed, "I am not afraid of the word 'tension.' I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth."

Notice the word "necessary." This necessity is often hard for people of privilege to grasp. We think, "if only we educate our leadership, or the Israeli government, they'll come to their senses ..." How much more comfortable it would be if it were just a matter of waiting, and listening, and sharing! But we forget Dr. King's clear wisdom:

"We have not made a single gain without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges [until they have to] ... Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

Last week in Gaza, Palestinians demanded freedom from the Israeli siege that has endured for years since the so-called "disengagement" and before. After several days under even tighter isolation by Israel, which had sealed the borders of the small strip and cut off electricity, food, medical supplies, and other lifelines, Palestinians blasted through a wall of their collective prison and flooded into Egypt in search of medicine, soap, fuel, cement, and other desperately needed supplies.

Some might call blowing up a wall "extreme." In fact, just about any action taken unilaterally for Palestinian liberation is portrayed as such. Dr. King was also called an "extremist," and eventually embraced the word, calling on others to join him in creative extremism. Criticism of the status quo will always be dismissed as ideological or extreme, and that's what makes challenging power structures so uncomfortable. We would prefer to affect change through consensus and the blessing of communities that have traditionally supported the status quo, like mainstream Jewish temples and US legislators. But, my friends, this is unrealistic; these groups will hopefully become a part of the movement someday, but they will not lead the movement today. They probably won't even consent to it. And while it would be nice to wait until a day when it feels more convenient, remember that change will never be convenient for those who are profiting off of the way things are. Let us not forget that Palestinians, like people of color in Dr King's time (and still today), have not had the luxury waiting and choosing a convenient time. Indeed, there is no convenient time. But inconvenience and discomfort are a small price to pay for justice. Remember that prophets have always been scorned in their own time.

In Palestine, that inevitable discomfort -- or tension, as Dr. King calls it -- has taken the form of popular nonviolent resistance met with army brutality, checkpoints, roadblocks, invasions, curfews, house demolitions, and mass imprisonment. In this country, that inevitable tension has taken the comparatively mild -- but admittedly unpleasant -- form of moral blackmail: anyone who dares criticize Israel's violations of human rights and international law is labeled anti-Semitic. But this is absurd. Occupation, oppression -- these things have nothing to do with Judaism, and to oppose them in Israel, Palestine, or anywhere else in the world is simply not anti-Semitic. On the contrary, it is in line with the Jewish tradition of critical thinking, open debate, and social justice, which have been a source of pride for Jews through history.

The Israel-Palestine struggle is portrayed in our media and elsewhere as an endless religious rivalry, but it is no more a war between Jews and Muslims than the civil rights struggle was one between African-Americans and whites. This is a struggle for justice, one that affects us all and in which we all play a part. In the words of Dr. King, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny."

This mutuality is clear in the collaboration today between Palestinians and the Israelis who support their struggle, working together towards an end to discrimination and the occupation, towards a common future of integration and coexistence. In the United States, churches are once again taking the lead. The United Methodists, the Presbyterians, and others have started campaigns calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli government until it complies with international law. This is a crucial campaign not only because it has the potential to be successful in conjunction with Palestinian resistance (after all, it was Black South African resistance supported by international solidarity and divestment that ultimately contributed to the end of Apartheid there), but also because it was called for by Palestinian civil society. This is a Palestinian struggle, and we need to be taking our lead from Palestinians. They have been reaching out for support through the years, particularly last week in Gaza as they were cut off even further from the world. We need to reach back.

Anna Baltzer is a 28-year-old Jewish American Columbia graduate, Fulbright scholar, and the granddaughter of Holocaust refugees. She is a three-time volunteer with the International Women's Peace Service in the West Bank and is currently touring the United States with her book, Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories. For more information visit: www.AnnaInTheMiddleEast.com. This essay is adapted from a sermon she delivered at Linden Hills United Church of Christ in Minneapolis, MN.

Related Links

BY TOPIC: Israel declares Gaza "enemy entity" (19 September 2007)

Latest articles on EI:

Palestine : Opinion/Editorial: Rebel from a bygone era (1 February 2008)

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Palestine : Opinion/Editorial: Another world is necessary (31 January 2008)

Palestine : Human Rights: Israel threatens further supply cuts to Gaza (31 January 2008)

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Highlighting the ongoing effects of the Nakba for Palestinians.... US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

http://www.expressionsofnakba.org/mainmenu.html

Expressions of Nakba Competition 2008
http://www.expressionsofnakba.org
International Call for Entries

The year 2008 marks the 60^th anniversary of the Nakba ("the catastrophe"): the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948.

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is soliciting entries for a commemoration of the Nakba through personal expressions in the form of visual arts, essays, poetry, music, video and digital media.

"Expressions of Al-Nakba" is an international competition which seeks to present the extraordinary narrative of a dispossessed people through a diverse range of expressions that inter pret the collective identity, historic struggle, and emotional experience of the Nakba for Palestinians. The competition strives to highlight the ongoing effects of the Nakba on the contemporary life of Palestinian refugees along with a deeper exploration of the many emerging notions of being in "exile" today.

COMPETITION

The Competition accepts original entries pertaining to the themes of the Nakba in the following five categories:

Written Work - Poetry and Short Essays (no more than 1500 words)
Recorded Audio - Spoken Word and Music (less than 5 minutes)
Visual Arts - Illustration, Painting, Photography and Mixed-Media Work
Poster Design - Poster-quality Graphic Design for use in Public Awareness Campaign
Digital Media - Digital Video Shorts and Interactive Media (less than 10 minutes)

Selected poster designs will be used for a nation-wide awareness campaign to be launched in May 2008 for display in print media and billboard advertising. Suitable entries must consider design requirements for large scale printing and dissemination.

Entries from youth (age 18 or under) are encouraged for special recognition by the Competition. All written or spoken entries must be submitted in English or Arabic. Along with the submission, all entries must provide a Title, Abstract, and Names/Biographies of the entrants (in English).

We encourage submission of the entries in both high-resolution (for printing/screening) and compressed media (less than 10 MB for the website). There is no Entry Fee.

Deadlines and Awards

Submission Deadline: March 30^th, 2008 (commemorated as Land Day)

Winning Entrants will be notified via email by May 10^th, 2008.

The Competition will award a sum of $500 to each of five winning entries selected in each submission category (for a total of $2,500 in awards provided). All U.S. taxes (federal, state and local, if any) are the responsibility of all winners who have U.S. citizenship. International entrants are subject to a 30 per cent reduction in prize money for U.S. tax purposes.

A subset of the most compelling entries will also qualify for inclusion in the online gallery of the Competition website as well as showcased in public exhibitions held upon completion of the Competition. Two public exhibitions are currently planned by the US Campaign, to be held in Washington , D.C. and Boston during the week of May 15, 2008 to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the Nakba. Other exhibitions may be held in 2008 in conjunction with partner organizations in the United States and abroad.

COMPETITION WEBSITE

A new website is being setup for submission and display of selected entries from the Competition:

http://www.expressionsofnakba.org

Please check this website regularly for updates and details on the Competition and entries selected.

Download the competition guidelines and submission form:

http://www.expressionsofnakba.org/cfe/Nakba-CFE2008.pdf

Contact Address:

Expressions of Nakba Competition
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
PO Box 21539
Washington , DC 20009

Contact: info@expressionsofnakba.org
Phone: (202) 332-0994

US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

http://expressionsofnakba.org/CFE_English.pdf

"Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law" (From Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948)

The state of Gaza should shame us all By Barbara Stocking, Director of Oxfam

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=ZCGCTCPQAQI51QFIQMGCFF4AVCBQUIV0?xml=/opinion/2008/02/01/do0108.xml

The state of Gaza should shame us all

By Barbara Stocking, Director of Oxfam

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 31/01/2008

On the day last week that thousands of Gazans began streaming across the breached border with Egypt, looking for food, medicine and a taste of freedom, one of Oxfam's staff in Gaza told us that his children are now too frightened to sleep anywhere except in their parents' bed. They are six and two, and desperately confused, he said.

"What they understand the least," he went on to explain, "is why their lives are being affected by something which they are not responsible for. " 'Why us? Why are we cold? What is happening?' I explain to them that it is because of the blockade and the fuel and electricity cuts, but still they ask 'Why us?'"

After seven months of siege, it is a good question. And there are others: how have we allowed this situation to develop? Why are the children of Sderot also unable to sleep for fear of rocket attacks from Palestinian militants? With all the international community's avowals of action to move the peace process forward, its hand-wringing and protests over the illegal blockade of Gaza, why do we now have this unmovable stalemate? For the 1.5 million people of Gaza, many of whom last week ran out of flour and fuel, who have sewage running in their streets, whose children are hiding in their parents' beds, our politicking and procrastination must look futile.

I was in the Gaza Strip a few weeks ago - it is a place of many absurdities. A refugee camp now for three generations, it should feel like a dump for unwanted humanity: but everywhere you go you are impressed by the resilience of people, their deep desire to get on and lead better lives. The world's largest prison, Gaza is often called - but that understates it. At least in a prison, people know more or less how long they are going to be there. Gaza is the world capital of uncertainty, of lives unfulfilled. So much suffering for so many in such a confined space is literally unbearable...[more]

Laws are better than war- letter by Felix Rosenthal (Wash Times)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080201/EDITORIAL/596944946/1013/EDITORIAL&template=nextpage

Commerce produces peace

The headline "War can't be legislated away" on Patrick McGinn's letter on Wednesday in response to Deborah Metke's earlier letter ("Creating a war-free world," Sunday) may be true, but Mr. McGinn's reasons for why law cannot replace war misses her main points. Those points are extremely relevant and urgent in today's world.

Mr. McGinn is correct that nothing can be "legislated away." However, laws and legal systems do provide people, groups and even nations a viable, proven alternative to the use of violence to solve differences. Also, laws are an effective step above diplomacy and economic, social or financial incentives. Finally, laws are better than war.

Laws won't stop war, but with a global legal system to which conflicting nation-states can appeal, there would be a far smaller chance of states going to war. Mr. McGinn fails to realize that we in Virginia don't have to maintain an army or draft our children into service to protect our water rights to the Potomac from our chief competitor, Maryland. We have a superior legal system for dealing with the "sovereign" difference between our states. After two massively bloody, destructive world wars, the nation-states of Europe finally adopted a legal system to avoid future wars to settle differences. There is no reason why this civilizing concept that allows the European Union to avoid war cannot work equally well globally.

Mr. McGinn neglects the extent of recent advances in powerful technology that have changed everything. We can no longer rely on a powerful military and the use of armed force to maintain our security. The force of law, however, remains a viable option.

The use of military force may very well be needed to respond to, or deter, a future aggressive state, but that force would be used in the context of law enforcement with which the vast majority of nations and peoples of the world agree. We might also have to use military weapons and armed forces against international drug cartels. However, that doesn't mean we have to fight wars in which the loss of innocent lives in the form of "collateral damage" is deemed acceptable.

FELIX ROSENTHAL

Annandale

NY Times Multimedia Feature A Tightened Grip on Gaza

Multimedia Feature

A Tightened Grip

Four Gazans describe their straitened lives under the economic quarantine that came with Hamas’s rise to power.

Don't put entire blame on Hamas-excellent letter by Mumtaz U. Khan in the Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/chi-0201ledeletterfeb01,0,4355560.story

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE (Letters)

Don't put entire blame on Hamas

-- Mumtaz U. Khan

February 1, 2008

Chicago - The Tribune's Jan. 24 editorial "The enemy within" is a slap in the face of the civilized world and the trust we put into the Western media. The free press is supposed to give us the true picture of what is really happening and in this case the plight of the Palestinians.

The editorial says Israel closed border crossings and blockaded food and fuel supplies in response to the rocket fire from the Palestinian territory. It puts the entire blame on Hamas and tries to prove that Hamas has an advantage for putting its people at risk.

But it fails to show the fact that Israel has been trying to suffocate the Palestinians for decades in order to bring them to their knees. It fails to show why Palestinians fire those rockets at Israel. It fails to show that Palestinians with so much misery, destruction and loss of human life are proud people as their fight for freedom continues.

It fails to show that the younger generation is growing up in this real-life war camp instead of an educational atmosphere and a promise of a good future.

Their rocket fire and suicide bombings could not stop Israel from the occupation and destruction of their orchards. What hope can they expect by giving up their resistance?

So instead of putting the blame on Hamas, let Israel make the first move and go back to its 1967 border if it expects the Palestinians to renounce violence.

The editorial further implicates Iran and Syria as the benefactors of this tragic drama but fails to mention the devastating impact it has on the United States for the enemies it has made for the unrelenting support of the illegal occupation by Israel.

Therefore Hamas is not the enemy; it has the mandate of the people to push Israel off the occupied territories.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/chi-0201letters1_briefs1feb01,0,7747353.story

Illegal occupation

February 1, 2008

As long as Israel continues its cruel, illegal occupation of Palestinian land, then the Palestinians have the right and the obligation to resist by any means necessary.

What happens in Gaza is just one small patch of the same dirty fabric.

And the United States of America and its ally Israel are the key culprits behind the awful plight of the Palestinians.

If, as the Tribune asserts, the Palestinians in Gaza deserve what is happening to them because they freely elected Hamas as their representative, then what do Americans and Israelis deserve for electing the governmental leadership that has ground and pounded the Palestinians into the dirt?

—Peter L. Flemister

Richton Park

The aftermath of the Gaza tsunami By George S. Hishmeh

http://gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10185982.html

Illustration by Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News

The aftermath of the Gaza tsunami

By George S. Hishmeh, Special to Gulf News
Published: January 31, 2008, 01:28

It was very uplifting to see Palestinian men, women and children, hundreds of thousands of them, climb up the corrugated iron wall that separated their Israeli-besieged Gaza Strip from Egypt and watch them on Al Jazeera run freely to shop for much-needed supplies, visit with relatives and friends they have not seen for years, and play joyfully.

The scenes of cows, camels and bicycles carried by cranes across the border will not be easily erased from anyone's fondest memories.

If nothing else, it was a testament to people's power and a slap in the face of Israel, which like other world powers, believes that by its military might alone it can subdue its adversary.

It was also a memorable coincidence that Dr George Habash, the admired founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who had long struggled against Palestinian dispossession and for Arab unity, should pass away in Jordan as some Palestinians were celebrating their new-found freedom.

It was a scene reminiscent of the downfall of the Berlin Wall except for a major difference.

In Germany, the whole world, particularly the Western world, was supporting the East Germans, while in the case of the Gazans few had raised a finger to condemn Israel's shameful and illegal treatment of the impoverished Palestinians, one and a half million of them who have endured Israeli military occupation for over 40 years.

Had it not been for the exposure provided by the various humanitarian groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as other UN agencies and even a few Israeli peace groups, the miserable situation in Gaza brought about by the merciless Israeli siege may have escaped international attention.

A case in point has been the failure of the 15-member UN Security Council to issue a unanimous statement critical of the blockade which has been attributed to the refusal of the US to go along with the 14 other members.

"Gaza's power plant depends on imported fuel, the supply of which has been disrupted by Israel's blockade," wrote a spokesman of Amnesty International in a published letter in

The Washington Post protesting its despicable editorial of January 24. "The shortages have resulted in insufficient supplies of clean water as well as inadequate sewage treatment, adversely affecting the health and well-being of the population."

Zahir Janmohamed of Amnesty International USA added: "UN agencies have repeatedly complained that the blockade hinders passage of the humanitarian assistance upon which more than 80 per cent of Gaza's people depend.

"Compounding the crisis is that those in need of urgent medical treatment not available in Gaza are often prevented from leaving the territory by Israeli authorities."

Blockade

Israel justified its blockade as a consequence of rocket attacks by armed Palestinian groups from Gaza, but the Amnesty International official stressed that "cutting off essential supplies" to the Gazans "in retaliation for the actions of a few is also a violation of international law and should be condemned with equal vigour".

But will the Gazans, now that they have experienced the taste of freedom, accept to go back to the harsh conditions of yesteryears? Obviously not. but what can the two main powers in the region - Egypt and Israel - and the two main Palestinian factions - Fatah and Hamas - do about it?

A half-step is in the making, an agreement between Egypt, Israel, and the European Union to allow the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas to man the frontier post with Egypt.

This is unlikely to be accepted by Hamas, which must feel triumphant after helping in opening the flood-gates to Egypt, an action which is undoubtedly appreciated by the Gazans.

The Arab countries ought to step up their efforts in finding a workable solution to the internecine fighting among the Palestinians.

The immediate step should include an agreement on policing the border posts with Egypt which would be unlike the previous arrangement that had EU inspectors supervising Palestinian personnel who, in turn, were linked by video to Israeli officers sitting behind a screened window.

Even if this were to work, there is no guarantee that the Israeli side can come clean since the ruling coalition there may splinter should the Winograd commission report, due Wednesday evening, may discredit Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for his lacklustre war on Lebanon in 2006.

If so, the defence minister, Ehud Barak, who concocted the Gaza blockade, may see in the findings of the Winograd report an opportunity to withdraw his Labour Party from the government and hopefully replace Olmert as prime minister.

No wonder Uri Avnery, the Israeli peace activist, finds Barak as "now perhaps, the most dangerous person in Israel ... dangerous to the very existence of Israel in the long run." No wonder the Gaza tsunami has turned some tables upside down!

George Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com

EXPRESSIONS OF NAKBA COMPETITION 2008

enter

Ramzy Baroud: People’s Power in Gaza

http://palestinechronicle.com./story-013108182747.htm

Ramzy Baroud: People’s Power in Gaza

Palestinian people have succeeded where politics and thousands of international appeals have failed. They took matters into their own hands and they prevailed.

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By Ramzy Baroud
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

In a radio interview prior to the US invasion of Iraq, David Barsamian asked Noam Chomsky what ordinary Americans could do to stop the war. Chomsky answered, “In some parts of the world people never ask, ‘what can we do?’ They simply do it.”

For someone who was born and raised in a refugee camp in Gaza, Chomsky’s seemingly oblique response required no further elucidation.

When Gazens recently stormed the strip’s sealed border with Egypt, Chomsky’s comment returned to mind, along with memories of the still relevant - and haunting - past.

In 1989, the Bureej refugee camp was experiencing a strict military curfew, as punishment for the killing of one Israeli soldier. The soldier’s car had broken down in front of the camp while he was on his way home to a Jewish settlement. Bureej had previously lost hundreds of its people to the Israeli army and killing the soldier was an unsurprising act of retaliation.

In the weeks that followed, scores of Palestinians in Bureej were murdered and hundreds of homes were demolished. The killing spree generated little media coverage in Israel.

I lived with my family in an adjacent refugee camp, Nuseirat, at the time. Characterised by extreme poverty, it was a natural home for much of the Palestinian resistance movement. Our house was located a few feet away from what was known as the ‘Graveyard of the Martyrs’. It was an area of high elevation that the local children often used to watch the movement of Israeli tanks as they began their daily incursion into the camp. We whistled or yelled every time we spotted the soldiers, and used sign language to communicate as we hid behind the simple graves.

Although watching, yelling and whistling were the only means of response at our disposal, they were far from safe. My friends Ala, Raed, Wael and others were all killed in these daily encounters

During Bureej’s most lethal curfew yet, the sound of explosions coming from the doomed camp reached us at Nuseirat. The people of my camp became engulfed in endless discussions which were neither factional nor theoretical. People were being brutally murdered, injured or impoverished, while the Red Cross was blocked access to the camp. Something had to be done.

And all of a sudden it was. Not as a result of any polemic endorsed by intellectuals or ‘action calls’ initiated at conferences, but as an unstructured, spur-of-the-moment act undertaken by a few women in my refugee camp. They simply started a march into Bureej, and were soon joined by other women, children and men. Within an hour, thousands of refugees made their way into the besieged neighbouring camp. “What’s the worst they could do?” a neighbour asked, trying to collect his courage before joining the march. “The soldiers will not be able to kill more than a hundred before we overpower them.”

Israeli soldiers stood dumbfounded before the chanting multitudes. While many marchers were wounded only one was killed. The soldiers eventually retreated to their barricades. UN vehicles and Red Cross ambulances sheltered themselves amidst the crowd and together they broke the siege.

I still remember the scene of Bureej residents first opening the shutters of their windows, then carefully cracking their doors, stepping out of their homes in a state of disbelief breaking into joy. My memory - of the chants, the tears, the dead being rushed to be buried, the wounded hauled on the many hands that came to the rescue, the strangers sharing food and good wishes -reaffirms the event as one of the greatest acts of human solidarity I have witnessed.

The scene was to be repeated time and again, during the first and Second Palestinian Uprising: ordinary people carrying out what seemed like an ordinary act in response to extraordinary injustice.

The father who lost his son to free Bureej told the crowd: “I am happy that my son died so that many more could live.”

Later than day, our refugee camp fell under a most strict military curfew, to relive Bureej’s recent nightmare. We were neither surprised nor regretful. We had known the right thing to do and “we simply did it.”

Now Palestinian women, once more, have led Palestinian civil society in a most meaningful and rewarding way. Just when Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak was being congratulated for successfully starving Palestinians in Gaza to submission, ordinary women led a march to break the tight siege imposed on Gaza.

On Tuesday, January 22, they descended on the Gaza-Egypt border and what followed was a moment of pride and shame: pride for those ever-dignified people refusing to surrender, and shame that the so-called international community allowed the humiliation of an entire people to the extent that forced hungry mothers to brave batons, tear gas and military police in order to perform such basic acts as buying food, medicine and milk.

The next day, the courage of these women inspired the same audacity that the original batch of women in my refugee camp inspired nearly twenty years ago. Nearly half of the Gaza Strip population crossed the border in a collective push for mere survival. And when people march in unison, there is no worldly force, however deadly, that can block their way.

This “largest jailbreak in history”, as one commentator described it, will be carved in Palestinian and world memory for years to come. In some circles it will be endlessly analysed, but for Palestinians in Gaza, it is beyond rationalization: it simply had to be done.

Armies can be defeated but human spirit cannot be subdued. Gaza’s act of collective courage is one of the greatest acts of civil disobedience of our time, akin to civil rights marches in America during the 1960’s, South Africa’s anti-Apartheid struggle, and more recently the protests in Burma.

Palestinian people have succeeded where politics and thousands of international appeals have failed. They took matters into their own hands and they prevailed. While this is hardly the end of Gaza’s suffering, it’s a reminder that people’s power to act is just too significant to be overlooked.

-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

Framework of a siege...& more from IMEU

The Institute for Middle East Understanding offers journalists and editors quick access to information about Palestine and the Palestinians, as well as expert sources — both in the U.S. and in the Middle East. Read our
Background Briefings. Contact us for story assistance. Sign up for e-briefings.

Framework of a siege
IMEU, Jan 31, 2008

A Palestinian boy in Rafah watches over the family livestock as it passes into Gaza from Egypt through the recently opened border gate. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

Abbas rejects Hamas border demands
Reuters (Jan 31, 2008)

A break in the siege
Osamah Khalil, The Electronic Intifada (Jan 31, 2008)

Israel bars a Gaza cancer patient from entering Israel for Chemical treatment
IMEMC (Jan 31, 2008)

Experimenting with famine
Neve Gordan, The Palestine Chronicle (Jan 31, 2008)

Israel court approves Gaza fuel cut
Al Jazeera (Jan 30, 2008)

Light through the wall
Fida Qishta, International Herald Tribune (Jan 30, 2008)

Hamas is not the real issue
Neve Gordon, The Guardian (Jan 30, 2008)

Israel bars aid convoy to Gaza
Al Jazeera (Jan 30, 2008)

Palestine wears a white cloak of snow
Maan News (Jan 30, 2008)

Finally, a popular uprising
Amira Hass, Haaretz (Jan 30, 2008)

Culture and hope in Gaza
This Week in Palestine

The rough guide to Hebron
The Independent

Born in the shadow of a checkpoint
Haaretz

from International Solidarity Movement: Ilan Pappé's "Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank"

http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2008/01/30/aic-genocide-in-gaza-ethnic-cleansing-in-the-west-bank/

AIC: Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank

January 30th, 2008 | Posted in Press clippings, Gaza Region, Boycott & sanctions

Written by Ilan Pappé

Wednesday, 30 January 2008

“There is no other way of stopping Israel than that of boycott, divestments and sanctions. The only soft point of this killing machine is its oxygen lines to ‘western’ civilization and public opinion.”

Original article can be read here:
www.alternativenews.org/news/english/genocide-in-gaza-ethnic-cleansing-in-the-west-bank-20080130.html

Not long ago, I claimed that Israel is employing genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. I hesitated before using this very charged term and yet decided to adopt it. The responses I received indicated unease in using such a term. I rethought the term for a while, but concluded with even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip.

On Dec. 28, 2006, the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem published its annual report on Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories. In 2006, Israeli forces killed 660 citizens, triple the number of the previous year (around 200). Most of the dead are from the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and have slain entire families. Since 2000, almost 4,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, half of them children, and more than 20,000 wounded. The point is not just about escalating intentional killings but the strategy.

Annexation

Israeli policy makers are facing two very different realities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the former, they are finishing construction of their eastern border. Their internal ideological debate is over, and their master plan for annexing half of the West Bank is gaining speed.

The last phase was delayed due to the promises made by Israel, under the Road Map, not to build new settlements. Israel found two ways of circumventing this. First, it defined a third of the West Bank as Greater Jerusalem, which allowed it to build towns and community centers within this new annexed area. Second, it expanded old settlements to such proportions that there was no need to build new ones.

Creeping Transfer

The settlements, army bases, roads and the wall will allow Israel to annex almost half of the West Bank by 2010. Within these territories, Israeli authorities will continue to implement creeping transfer policies against the considerable number of Palestinians who remain.

There is no rush. As far as the Israeli are concerned they have the upper hand there; the daily abusive and dehumanizing combination of army and bureaucracy effectively adds to the dispossession process.

All governing parties from Labor to Kadima accept Ariel Sharon’s strategic thinking that this policy is far better than the one offered by the blunt “transferists” or ethnic cleansers, such as Avigdor Liberman. In the Gaza Strip there is no clear Israeli strategy, but there is a daily experiment with one. The Israelis see the Strip as a distinct geo-political entity from the West Bank. Hamas controls Gaza, while Mahmoud Abbas seems to run the fragmented West Bank with Israeli and American blessing.

There is no land in the Strip that Israel covets and there is no hinterland, like Jordan, to which the Palestinians can be expelled.

Ethnic cleansing is ineffective here. The earlier strategy in the Strip was ghettoizing the Palestinians there, but this is not working. The Jews know it best from their history. In the past, the next stage against such communities was even more barbaric. It is difficult to tell what does the future hold for the Gaza community: ghettoized, quarantined, unwanted and demonized.

Throwing Away the Key

Creating the prison and throwing the key to the sea, as South African law professor John Dugard has put it, was an option the Palestinians in the Strip reacted against with force in September 2005. Determined to show that they were still part of the West Bank and Palestine, they launched the first significant number of missiles into the Western Negev. The shelling was a response to an Israeli campaign of massive arrests of Hamas and Jihad people in the Tul Karem area.

Israel responded with operation “First Rain.” Supersonic flights were flown over Gaza to terrorize the entire population, succeeded by heavy bombardment of vast areas from the sea, sky and land. The logic, the Israeli army explained, was to weaken the community’s support for the rocket launchers. As was expected, by the Israelis as well, the operation only increased the support for the rocket launchers.

The real purpose was experimental. The Israeli generals wished to know how such operations would be received at home, in the region and in the world. And it seems the answer was “very well;” no one took interest in the scores of dead and hundreds of wounded Palestinians.

Following operations were modeled on First Rain. The difference was more firepower, more casualties and more collateral damage and, as expected, more Qassam missiles in response. Accompanying measures ensured full imprisonment of Gazans through boycott and blockade, with which the European Union is shamefully collaborating.

The capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006 was irrelevant in the general scheme, but it provided an opportunity for the Israelis to escalate even more. After all, there was no strategy that followed the decision of Sharon to remove 8,000 settlers from Gaza whose presence complicated “punitive” missions. Since then, the “punitive” actions continue and have become a strategy.

First Rain was replaced by “Summer Rains.” In a country where there is no rain in the summer, one can expect only showers of F-16 bombs and artillery shells hitting the people of the Strip.

Summer Rains brought a novel component: the land invasion into parts of the Gaza Strip. This enabled the army to kill citizens and present it as an inevitable result of heavy fighting within densely populated areas and not of Israeli policies.

Summer Rains, Autumn Clouds

When the summer was over came the even more efficient “Autumn Clouds:” beginning on Nov. 1, 2006, the Israelis killed 70 civilians in less than 48 hours. By the end of that month, almost 200 were killed, half of them children and women.

Some of the activity was paralleled the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, making it easier to complete the operations without much external attention, let alone criticism. From First Rain to Autumn Clouds there is escalation in every parameter. The first is erasing the distinction between “civilian” and “non-civilian” targets: the population is the main target for the army’s operation. Second is the escalation in the means: employment of every possible killing machine the Israeli army possesses. Third is escalation in the number of casualties: with each future operation, a much larger number of people are likely to be killed and wounded. Finally, and most importantly, the operations have become a strategy-the way Israel intends to solve the problem of the Gaza Strip.

A creeping transfer in the West Bank and a measured genocidal policy in the Gaza strip are the two strategies Israel employs today. From an electoral point of view the policy in Gaza is problematic, as it does not reap any tangible results; the West Bank under Mahmoud Abbas is yielding to Israeli pressure and there is no significant force that arrests the Israeli strategy of annexation and dispossession.

Gaza Fights Back

But the Strip continues to fire back. This would enable the Israeli army to initiate larger genocidal operations in the future, but there is also the great danger that, as in 1948, the army would demand a more drastic and systematic “punitive” action against the besieged people of the Gaza Strip. Ironically, the Israeli killing machine has rested lately. Its generals are content that the internal killing in the Strip does the job for them.

They watch satisfied the emerging civil war in the Strip that Israel foments and encourages. The responsibility of ending the fighting lies of course with the Palestinian groups themselves, but U.S. and Israeli interference, the continued imprisonment, the starvation and strangulation of the Strip all make such an internal peace process very difficult.

Cutting Israel’s Oxygen

What unfolds in Gaza is a battleground between America’s and Israel’s local proxies-perhaps reluctant and unintentional, but who dance to Israel’s tune nonetheless-and those who oppose their plans. The opposition that took over Gaza did it in a way that one finds very hard to condone or cheer.

Once fighting there subsides, the Israeli Summer Rains will fall down again on the people in the Strip, wreaking havoc and death. There is no other way of stopping Israel than that of boycott, divestments and sanctions. The only soft point of this killing machine is its oxygen lines to “western” civilization and public opinion. It is still possible to puncture them and make it at least more difficult for the Israelis to implement their future strategy of eliminating the Palestinian people either by cleansing them in the West Bank or genocide in the Gaza Strip.

——
Dr. Ilan Pappé is senior lecturer in the University of Haifa Department of political Science and Chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies in Haifa. His books include, among others, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London and New York 1992), The Israel/Palestine Question (London and New York 1999), A History of Modern Palestine (Cambridge 2003), The Modern Middle East (London and New York 2005) and his latest, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).

The Exodus
by Ismail Shammout

George Habash's contribution to the Palestinian struggle by As'ad AbuKhalil...& more from EI

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9266.shtml

George Habash's contribution to the Palestinian struggle
As'ad AbuKhalil, The Electronic Intifada, 30 January 2008

Palestinian women in Nablus demonstrate to remember the life of George Habash, the founder of the PFLP, 27 January 2008. (Rami Swidan/MaanImages)

I lived more than half of my life in the US and I never felt the alienation that I felt on the day I read George Habash, the Palestinian revolutionary who passed away last week, labeled as a "terrorism tactician" in a front page obituary in The New York Times. What do you when they want to convince you that a kind and gentle man you met and respected as a person is a terrorist when you know otherwise? Do you quibble with their definitions to no avail? Do you go back and see how they wrote glowing obituaries for Zionist militia leader and later Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, a man whose record of killing civilians is as horrific and grotesque as that of Osama Bin Laden, former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, Fatah Revolutionary Council founder Abu Nidal or Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet?

But they can't invent facts, and they can't distort the narrative of Palestinian history. Many of my generation and older knew and respected George Habash. We did not worship him or declare him infallible. We respected that on the personal level he was incorruptible. Here was a man who refused more than the $300 monthly pension he was receiving in Amman, Jordan. Once, a group of wealthy Palestinians schemed to try to pay him in his later years because they did not want the symbol of the Palestinian -- the Arab -- revolution to die in poverty. He would not budge, not even to accept funds to hire a research assistant to help with his memoirs.

George Habash was the antithesis of Yasser Arafat: he was honest, while Arafat was dishonest; consistent when Arafat was inconsistent; principled, while Arafat was shifty; transparent, while Arafat was deceptive; sincere, while Arafat was fake; dignified while Arafat was clownish; modest, while Arafat was arrogant; tolerant of dissent, while Arafat was autocratic, and on and on.

George Habash embodied an era that extended from the Nakba, or mass expulsions of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948, until the beginning of the Lebanrse civil war in 1976, when the decline of the Left, and the launching of Sadatism began. Up until that time, when a deep ideological transformation took place in the Arab world, Habash was a major actor on the Arab political stage. He was feared by Arab regimes, and respected and loved in the refugee camps. I don't believe I have ever seen the ordinary people of the camps react to a person as they reacted to Habash. Their love for him was genuine because they felt that he was genuine.

If there is a world revolutionary symbol for the second half of the 20th century, it should be George Habash. He may not be widely known in 2008, but anybody who read a newspaper prior to the rise of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, when Islamism eclipsed the Arab Left, would know him. Habash is one of the main makers of Arab contemporary history and one of the handful of names who changed the course of the Palestinian political struggle.

It is often said that Habash's "Christianity" -- as if he was religious -- was the only reason why he was not the leader of the Palestinian national movement, instead of Arafat. I never agreed with the view. Habash's sincerity, honesty and integrity were the reason why he did not lead the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), while Arafat's "skills" kept him in power for all those decades. For those who were privileged to have met Habash, his sincerity and honesty came through, as did his natural modesty, and clear sense of himself. Shafiq al-Hout wrote in As-Safir that Habash was a distinctive kind of revolutionary, but then added that he was how a revolutionary should be.

George Habash was shaped by the Nakba. He was born in al-Lydd, Palestine, and his middle class family, like thousands of other families, were violently evicted from their homes by Zionist militias led by Yitzhak Rabin.

Habash was at that time a student at the American University of Beirut (AUB), where he had already been inspired by the Arab nationalist ideas in the student club al-'Urwah al-Wuthqah. He did not wait long to initiate action in revenge after the founding of Israel (we should refer to it as "the destruction of Palestine," as Zionist propaganda in the West has succeeded in portraying Palestinian national aspirations as an act of "destruction") -- and revenge was his motive early on. He joined ranks with an Egyptian activist to engage in small-scale bombings in Lebanon and Syria. Some of the attacks were actually terrorist: as when a synagogue was bombed. The early Habash was anti-Jewish, but that would change with time. But this small group, Kata'ib al-Fida' al-'Arabi, was easy for the authorities to dismantle.

Habash subsequently realized that mass movement and collective action was required. He joined forces with his fellow AUB medical student, the brilliant tactician Wadi' Haddad, who wanted action and was impatient with theorization and ideological squabbles that occupied hours of meetings. (Haddad's slogan, "Going after the enemy, everywhere" became the motto for his organization when he was forced to split off from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1971.)

Habash and Haddad joined with other students (who were influenced by the writings and ideas of AUB history professor Constantine Zurayq) to form the Movement of Arab Nationalists. This movement was one of the early political and organizational echoes of the occupation of Palestine in 1948 and left a mark on Arab contemporary politics, inspiring and initiating political organizations throughout the Arab world.

After their graduation from AUB, Habash and Haddad established a clinic for poor refugees in Jordan. There they contributed to the Arab nationalist stirrings that forced King Hussein to oust Glubb Pasha, the British officer who commanded the army, in 1956.

Habash and his comrades also tried to reunite with the Ba'th but came away with the impression that the liberation of Palestine and "armed struggle" were not a priority for the Ba'th or for its founder Michel 'Aflaq.

Any evaluation of Habash's career should also take into consideration the mistakes, errors and shortcomings of the experience -- some of which can only be seen in hindsight. The Movement of Arab Nationalists was late in realizing the desire of Palestinians for an armed response to the Zionist occupation and threat. It also was not clear in formulating a political explanation of "liberation." "Revenge" was one of the mottos of the movement, but that scarcely amounted to a political program.

The Movement should also be criticized for developing into an arm of the Egyptian regime; Habash met Egyptian president and symbol of Arab nationalism Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1964, and the two men clearly hit it off. In his later years, Habash would cry whenever Nasser's name would be mentioned. Habash put a high premium on an Arab sense of dignity, which he felt Nasser represented in his dealings with the West -- in contrast to the behavior of Sadat and other Arab rulers. One wonders what Habash must have thought when he saw Arab oil rulers literally dancing with US President George W. Bush.

Even in the wake of the Arab defeat in the 1967 War, Habash did not want to break with Nasser despite rising political disillusionment and even anger among the refugees. Habash's only serious disagreement with Nasser was when the latter accepted the 1969 Rogers Plan, a US political framework for ending the Arab-Israeli conflict.

After the war, Habash founded the PFLP which quickly become the second most important Palestinian organization after Fatah, and held that place until the rise of Hamas and the Islamization of Palestinian and Arab politics in the 1980s. The Movement of Arab Nationalists had effectively decided to transform into Marxist-Leninist organizations and adopted the belief that guerrilla warfare against Zionism would achieve the final liberation of Palestine. Unlike Fatah, the PFLP stressed political indoctrination and carefully screened recruits. Young Arabs from different countries joined the struggle, receiving training in camps in Jordan, and later in Lebanon -- this was well before the emergence of Dubai as the object of aspiration of Arab youths. Palestine was the destination then.

The PFLP quickly suffered from schisms and defections; the first was by Ahmad Jibril, a recruit of Syrian intelligence, who formed his own splinter group, the PFLP-General Command in 1968 when Habash was in a Syrian jail. The following year, Palestinian politician Nayif Hawatmeh, who was mystified by Habash's enormous charisma especially as a public speaker, split off and formed the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). Other smaller defections followed, and the DFLP would not have long survived if it was not for the support and funding from Arafat who encouraged, funded, and armed many defections in Palestinian organizations to keep himself in control.

The PFLP argued that the liberation of Palestine would be impossible without the liberation of Arab countries from the regimes imposed by the West and Israel. Looking to Vietnam, Habash called for Arab "Hanois," and stated that the liberation of Palestine passed through every Arab capital. "Armed struggle" was the major path to liberation.

In its early phase, the PFLP showed the promise of charting an independent leftist path, not loyal to the USSR and even flirted with Maoism. But by 1973, it had joined the ranks of Arab communist organizations that pledged allegiance to the Soviet Union.

The PFLP was active in Jordan, and played a major role in Black September -- the series of massacres committed by the Jordanian regime in 1970 (with the support of the United States and Israel) against the Palestinians and their fighters. The PFLP like other organizations targeted during Black September relocated to Lebanon and helped agitate the Lebanese political situation.

Earlier in 1970, Habash and the PFLP became famous worldwide when the group orchestrated the hijacking of several airliners to Jordan, releasing all passengers and crew before the planes were destroyed. I once met a German flight attendant who told me that she became a supporter of the Palestinian cause after she heard Habash speak in English to a group of hostages in the Intercontinental Hotel in Amman -- and she was one of the hostages. Habash would be a bit defensive about the hijackings in later years; he would hate to be associated with the terrorism of Bin Laden or Abu Nidal. He would argue that the practice was limited to a specific reason (highlighting the plight of the Palestinians when former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir insisted that the Palestinian people did not exist) and for a limited duration. But no fair evaluation should, for better or worse, ignore or gloss over that experience.

Habash also had to deal with Wadi' Haddad who insisted on continuing with "international operations" despite directives to restrict armed actions to within Palestine. As a result of several actions seen as reckless, Haddad's membership of the PFLP was "frozen."

Haddad's standards for action against Israel and its allies were different from Habash's. Habash believed that high ethical and political standards should inspire any political and military action. This is not to say that his organization did not commit some acts that violated those standards, but Habash tried not always successfully to reign in the adventurist tendencies of his friend and comrade. For several years, Haddad continued to carry out operations using the name "International Operations of the PFLP" without the blessing of the organization until he was finally expelled.

George Habash was hit hard by the Mossad's assassination of his PFLP comrade the writer Ghassan Kanafani in 1972, and he suffered a debilitating stroke. Habash himself survived several Israeli assassination attempts; in one, Israel hijacked a plane that it thought carried Habash (he had switched planes only minutes before the flight).

In 1974, Habash froze the PFLP's membership in the PLO when he realized that Arafat was working for the two-state solution. Habash was instrumental in forming the Rejectionist Front which advocated a non-compromising stance on the liberation of "every millimeter of Palestine," as Habash was fond of saying in his public speeches. But here was one of Habash's major mistakes: the front included many organizations that were loyal to or creatures of Arab governments. This gave the Iraqi, Syrian and Libyan regimes tremendous influence over the organizations, including the PFLP.

Generous financial subsidies were too hard to resist, and the corruption of the revolution, which had hit Fatah much earlier through Saudi and Gulf funding, also hit the PFLP, and compromised its political independence. The Lebanese base of operations, especially after the eruption of the Civil War in 1975, also compromised the revolution. It quickly became too comfortable a base and the PFLP, like other Palestinian and Lebanese organizations, did not want a radical shift of power on the battlefield. (But the major responsibility for that lies with Arafat and the Syrian regime who did not want to create a radical political order that could trigger a confrontation with Israel.) The PFLP, at least, pursued a policy of supporting the Lebanese National Movement, while Arafat and his associates dragged their feet.

The Rejectionist Front was disbanded in 1977 when Syria and Iraq briefly reconciled following Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's trip to Jerusalem. This period marked the beginning of the decline of the Left and the rise of the Islamic Revolution. Habash began a gradual withdrawal from politics. He had tried for years to leave but his comrades would not let him. They knew that his symbolic presence was too valuable for the PFLP, and feared it would collapse without him. They were right, of course. One can't speak of the PFLP since 2000, when Habash's voluntarily resigned from the leadership.

I last saw Habash a few years ago in Damascus, after his retirement. It was very sad for me because I had to compare the last image with the first image when I first met him as a high school student in 1977. His revolutionary impulse and his passions had not waned, but the empty office spoke volumes. The PFLP was almost dead, and Habash was politically irrelevant. I shared with him some of my criticisms of the Popular Front's long experience, and typically, he was open-minded and very democratic. I was bothered that he seemed too resigned to the rise of the Islamists (Hamas and Hizballah). In my judgment he was too uncritically supportive of both. "We have tried, so let them now try," he would say, "It is their turn." I was hoping to hear words regarding the revival of the Left but I did not.

George Habash lived his life for Palestine -- every minute of it. He represented a model of revolutionary struggle that is exemplary in its dedication and asceticism, no matter what one thinks of the PFLP or its long political and military experience. One should not hesitate from rendering a harsh judgment against the PFLP; ultimately it failed politically and militarily. And any evaluation of Palestinian political violence must be made in the context of Zionist mass violence that for decades had set out to destroy Palestinian society and resistance and replace it with its own exclusivist vision. But whatever that judgment it should not detract from an appreciation of the profound influence of the PFLP's founder who helped shape the politics and worldview of a generation. The present political scene is devoid of any leaders of such character.

As'ad AbuKhalil is professor of political science at California State University and founder of the Angry Arab News Service (http://angryarab.blogspot.com/)

Latest articles on EI:

Palestine : Opinion/Editorial: George Habash's contribution to the Palestinian struggle (30 January 2008)

Palestine : Diaries: Live from Palestine: Power of the people (29 January 2008)

Palestine : Opinion/Editorial: A break in the siege (29 January 2008)

Palestine : Opinion/Editorial: The PeaceMaker (29 January 2008)

Palestine : Human Rights: Medical supplies in Gaza running low (29 January 2008)

Palestine : Human Rights: Closure turns Gaza's streets into sewers (28 January 2008)

Palestine : Development: Alarm bells sound over "Jewish state" (28 January 2008)

Palestine : Diaries: Live from Palestine: Gaza scrambles for supplies as border forced open (25 January 2008)

Palestine : Diaries: Live from Palestine: Down goes the wall (25 January 2008)

Palestine : EI in the Press: Ali Abunimah discusses US presidential candidates on Democracy Now! (25 January 2008)

Hamas is not the real issue...& more from IMEU

The Institute for Middle East Understanding offers journalists and editors quick access to information about Palestine and the Palestinians, as well as expert sources — both in the U.S. and in the Middle East. Read our Background Briefings. Contact us for story assistance. Sign up for e-briefings.

Sunset in Rafah
IMEU, Jan 30, 2008

Palestinians cross over the Rafah border fence as the sun sets in the southern Gaza Strip. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

A fight for life in a power struggle
Donald Macintyre, The Independent, Jan 30, 2008

A Palestinian child holds a candle at a protest against Israel's power cuts to the Gaza Strip last week. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

It's 8pm on Monday evening and the Aseli family is in full emergency mode. The power has just gone down in their apartment - for the second time that day - blacking out the lights and the electric heater.

Abed al Aseli, father of the household, rises to light a lamp powered by cooking gas while one of his sons moves in a swift, practised way towards the bed of Maher, 12, in what is literally a life-or-death mission. Maher, paralysed from the neck down for the past six and a half years, normally relies on an electric respirator to breathe. When there is no power, the only alternative, however long the outage lasts, is to maintain his breathing manually with an Ambo hand pump.

Which is why, since last week's cut in fuel supplies to Gaza's power station, Mr al Aseli has recruited his five teenage nephews and nieces to help him, his wife, Alia, and their four other sons and two daughters, aged between eight and 21, working in rotation throughout the night, if necessary, with the nerve-racking, exhausting, task of keeping Maher alive.

Mr al Aseli says this is stressful for the whole family, and that his wife has to spend a disproportionate amount of time caring for Maher in what the family has made, in effect, into a home intensive care unit. "It is very difficult," he says. "If the power goes out at 1am, I have to shout and immediately wake up the kids."

The tragedy which first put Maher into this state had nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As Mrs al Aseli explains, when Maher was five and a half years old, he was driven by his father to a local supermarket. Mr Maher

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left his son in the car while he nipped into the store, but as he started to make his way back, he saw in horror that Maher had managed to get out of the car and was crossing the road towards him. Mr Maher shouted at him to stop where he was but Maher was run down close to the family car by a fast-moving taxi whose driver failed to see him. Maher's spinal cord was injured between the second and third vertebrae, leaving him quadriplegic.

He was eventually allowed home - with regular visits from a nurse and doctor - on condition the family used their $36,000 insurance payment to provide everything needed for his home care, including everything from the respirator; suction equipment (also electrical but luckily capable of being run on batteries for 12 hours) for keeping Maher's lungs clear; a medical bed; regular supplies of sterilised tubing and surgical gloves. And, of course, a hand pump for when power is not available.

The reason Maher's case is under discussion now is that it was jointly cited last Sunday in the Israeli Supreme Court - complete with an affidavit from Mr al Aseli - by two Israeli human-rights organisations: Gisha and Physicians for Human Rights.

The two groups were among ten petitioning the court against what they described as the "punitive" cuts in fuel Israel had already imposed - and the planned cuts in electricity directly provided to Gaza - in response to the continued firing of Qassam rockets by Gaza militants, rockets which have been inflicting misery on the Israeli border town of Sderot and other communities in the western Negev.

They were seeking to illustrate that it is impossible to make such cuts without humanitarian cost and that the response constituted what the petitioners insisted was "collective punishment" of Gaza's 1.5 million population.

In the affidavit submitted to the court on Sunday, Mr al Aseli testified to the "terrible anxiety" suffered by the family "especially at night" and said the problem was compounded by the fact that Maher's condition meant he also needed to be kept warm on cold winter nights. With the loving and vigilant family he has, Maher is not going to die. His uncle Mahmoud, a doctor, says that even with only 75 per cent of his respiratory muscles totally dysfunctional, Maher could probably manage - in extremis and with difficulty - to breathe alone for about an hour.

And there is some help from a generator belonging to a nearby health centre, though that only normally operates between 8am and 8pm (apart from interruptions when it breaks down or runs out of diesel) between Sunday and Thursday, shutting down at weekends.

But the strain of looking after his son during the lengthy periods - often around eight hours - that it has been off in recent days is etched on Mr al Aseli's face. When Gaza's power station was put out of action by an Israeli missile strike in the summer of 2006, after the abduction by militants of the Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit, Mr al Aseli bought a large generator for $8,000, which guaranteed 24-hour power for Maher's ventilator. But last year, with power more or less back to normal, and the combination of crossing closures and the international embargo on the Hamas-led administration elected in 2006 hitting his business hard, he sold it. "I didn't need the generator and I did need the money," he explains.

To read the full article please visit The Independent.

Culture and hope in Gaza
This Week in Palestine

The rough guide to Hebron
The Independent

Born in the shadow of a checkpoint
Haaretz

Israel court approves Gaza fuel cut
Al Jazeera (Jan 30, 2008)

Light through the wall
Fida Qishta, International Herald Tribune (Jan 30, 2008)

Hamas is not the real issue
Neve Gordon, The Guardian (Jan 30, 2008)

Israel bars aid convoy to Gaza
Al Jazeera (Jan 30, 2008)

Palestine wears a white cloak of snow
Maan News (Jan 30, 2008)

Finally, a popular uprising
Amira Hass, Haaretz (Jan 30, 2008)

Not a shopping spree, just a taste of freedom
Mark Steel, The Independent (Jan 30, 2008)

Egyptians host Gaza rival talks
BBC (Jan 30, 2008)

Passports to progress
Daniel Barenboim, The Guardian (Jan 30, 2008)

Medical supplies in Gaza running low
IRIN (Jan 29, 2008)

Narratives Under Siege (2): Beit Hanoun, Northern Gaza Strip

From: Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 5:23 AM

Subject: Narratives Under Siege (2): Beit Hanoun, Northern Gaza Strip

Dear Supporters

In order to highlight the impact of the siege and closure of the Gaza Strip on the civilian population, PCHR is publishing a series of "Narratives Under Siege" on our website. These short articles are based on personal testimonies and experiences of life in the Gaza Strip, and we hope they will highlight the restrictions, and violations, being imposed on the civilians of Gaza.

Please circulate these narratives as widely as you can.

Many thanks from PCHR

Narratives Under Siege
In order to highlight the impact of the siege and closure of the Gaza Strip on the civilian population, PCHR is publishing a series of "Narratives Under Siege." These short articles are based on personal testimonies and experiences of life in the Gaza Strip, and we hope they will serve to highlight the restrictions, and the violations, being imposed on the civilians of Gaza.

Tom Lantos and his attack of condolences for George Habash

PLO Mission
Washington, DC

January 30, 2008

STATEMENT BY THE PLO MISSION IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

On January 28, 2008, The PLO Mission in Washington, D.C. issued a public statement announcing the passing of Dr. George Habash, a prominent Arab and Palestinian leader, who died in Amman, Jordan at the age of 82. In accordance with diplomatic and cultural norms, the PLO Mission offered the diplomatic corps and the Palestinian-American community the opportunity to visit its offices to express their condolences to the family of the deceased and the Palestinian people by signing a book of condolences. Similar steps were announced in Ramallah where President Abbas declared a three-day period of national morning.

In a gross misinterpretation of this gesture, the office of Representative Tom Lantos issued a statement accusing the PLO Mission and its director of making "asinine comments" and for "having the temerity" of availing a condolence book to the community to express its feelings on this sad occasion. The PLO Mission rejects this unfortunate and insensitive characterization by Mr. Lantos, which is deemed as a direct insult to the Palestinian people as a whole.

As Mr. Lantos is fully aware, honoring the memory of a national leader of the historical magnitude of Dr. George Habash does not constitute an endorsement of every ideological position or method used by Dr. Habash over the past 60 years of political struggle on behalf of the Palestine cause. The whole world knows quite well the considerable differences between Dr. Habash and the PLO leadership throughout this period. These differences, however, do not in any way, shape or form detract from his commitment to the liberty and independence of his people. Dr. Habash was undeniably the second most important figure in the contemporary Palestinian national movement.

The PLO Mission and its staff are not interested in engaging Representative Lantos in semantic debates. However, it is important to state publicly, that Palestinians are quite capable of recognizing their national leaders and honoring their memories. They are quite entitled to write their own history.

PLO Mission

Contact Information

phone: (202) 974-6360

Fax: (202) 974-6278

Email: plomission1@aol.com

Website: www.plomission.us

from Window into Palestine: The importance of writing letters to the editor

http://windowintopalestine.blogspot.com/2008/01/importance-of-writing-letters-to-editor.html

The importance of writing letters to the editor

30 Jan 2008 Filed under: Media, Palestine, Palestinian Solidarity, Palestinians, Solidarity Author:

Please get in the habit of writing letters to the mainstream media on the various Palestinian issues.

Journalists will tell you they are always shocked at how little Arab Canadians interact with the media.

Frequently newspapers will receive 20 or 50 or even more letters or complaints from the Israeli lobby on an issue but will receive only one or shockingly even NO letters from Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians and the solidarity community.

True even when we write it is a challenge to be published. But keep trying.

Keep your letters short. Absolutely no more than 150 words, less is better. Speak on only one topic or point at a time. Leave the next point or argument for the next letter.

Be polite. Focus on facts. Some people interpret an emotional letter as the writer being irrational and therefore not convincing.

Include your name, daytime telephone number and address (it will not be published, it's just for verification purposes). Most newspapers phone the letter writer before a letter is published.

If your letter is not published or if you see that no letters are published which challenge the perspective of the Israeli-lobby, you can complain to the newspaper's ombudsman about lack of journalistic "balance".

Publishing letters on only one side of the argument shows "bias".

The email address, fax number and mailing address for letters to the editor and the ombudsman are included in the newspapers and on their websites.

LETTER FROM GAZA: Light through the wall By Fida Qishta

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/30/opinion/edqishta.php

LETTER FROM GAZA

Light through the wall

By Fida Qishta Published: January 30, 2008

RAFAH, Gaza Strip:

Life in Rafah, Gaza's southern-most city, has always been difficult. But the period since March 2006 has been the worst in my 25-year life. Israel placed Gaza under a siege after Hamas won the Palestinian elections and tightened the siege after Palestinians captured an Israeli soldier near Rafah in late June 2006. We have had little electricity, fuel, money, food or medicine since.

We felt some hope last week, however, when Palestinians knocked down the wall that Israel built along Rafah's border with Egypt, allowing us to escape our prison and cross to Egypt to buy essential goods.

The Israeli Army has destroyed about 2,000 homes in Rafah in the last seven years. In January 2004 they demolished our home. My grandmother, aunt, uncles and cousins had gathered in our house because their homes had just been demolished. Then an Israeli bulldozer started destroying our home. I helped my grandmother because she has trouble walking. My mother passed out, so I dragged her to a safer place. That day Israeli bulldozers destroyed 50 homes in our neighborhood.

When the siege intensified in late June 2006, my family and I were trapped for 14 days along with 4,000 Gazans at the Rafah border crossing trying to enter Gaza from Egypt, because Israel had closed the border. We had little food or water. Nine people died. Finally, armed men from Gaza broke the border wall, allowing us to return home.

But the last months have been the hardest, with the borders sealed, growing poverty, dwindling supplies of food, medicine and other goods, and parts of Gaza without electricity due to lack of fuel. Israel's military kills Palestinian fighters and civilians almost daily.

We are waiting for our destiny. Slow death or fast death, it's the same result. Last week eight-year-old Huda from Rafah told me, "I have kidney problems and need to visit the hospital three times a week, and now the Israelis are threatening to shut off the electricity. That means I will die."

Many times, I've said my heart must be stronger. I stopped every voice that told me that I can't write, that said people will not understand me; I've stopped every fear that says things will never change, because there are always ways to live and to change. My people have a great deal of courage, but what is happening is very hard.

I am no longer the person I was before these experiences. When the Israelis kill innocent people, they turn the children of those killed into different people. It is not hard to guess whether these will become kind children, or sad children ready for revenge.

Still, when I look at our children, I somehow feel everything will change for the better someday. Every one of us can change things in small ways and make the sun shine, even in a dark box like Gaza.

Three a.m. on Jan. 23rd was a moment of victory. Rafah's wall on the border with Egypt was gone. I could barely wait to see it. I wanted to see the smile on every Palestinian face that has been missing for a long time.

Yes, my children, now you can see Egypt. The wall is gone, and one day all the walls will be gone.

Nine-year-old Amal and 11-year-old Yasmine told me, "Remember when we told you it's our dream to see Egyptian children, play with them and see Egypt? We went there and bought sweets and chips, but we didn't see children."

Mohammed, 22, from Rafah, explained, "It doesn't matter who destroyed the wall, Hamas or Fatah. It was rubbish the Israeli army left behind. I hope the crossing will be opened to movement in a legal way, not like this."

When I visited the United States in 2006, people asked why Palestinians voted for Hamas. Some in the Palestinian Authority were corrupt. They lost people's trust. The U.S. government sent observers to monitor our elections and accepted Hamas's participation. Hamas won democratically. For years Hamas built social infrastructure and improved people's daily lives. Hamas needed to be given a chance. Instead, the world punished us.

I think that if ordinary people in the U.S. and Europe knew what was happening to ordinary Palestinians, they would be more compassionate. We need food, water, homes, work and access to the world. We need justice. And when ordinary Palestinians have justice, there will be peace.

Fida Qishta, an educator and journalist, is the founder and manager of the Lifemakers Center, which serves 70 children aged 6-18 in Rafah.

Gaza then and now — Daoud Kuttab

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C01%5C27%5Cstory_27-1-2008_pg3_5

VIEW: Gaza then and now — Daoud Kuttab

Clearly, the false trappings of a state provided as part of the Oslo peace process have resulted in little tangible change for Palestinians. They got an elected president (who for a while was trapped in his headquarters), a parliament and government (whose MPs and ministers are not guaranteed passage from Gaza to the West Bank), and passports (whose numbers must be entered into Israeli computers)

When the Gaza Strip was plunged into darkness last week as a result of the Israeli fuel blockade, many people around the world were surprised. But the optimism produced by the Annapolis peace process, which included President George W Bush’s promise of an agreement in 2008 to create a Palestinian state, was clearly unrealistic.

Gaza is usually viewed in terms of Hamas’s overwhelming support there, but the reality is much different. Opinion polls conducted in Gaza by the Near East Consulting Group in late November 2007 indicated 74 percent popular support for a peace agreement with Israel. Only 15 percent would vote for Hamas MPs or a Hamas presidential candidate, compared to 55 percent for Fatah candidates. The Annapolis-inspired peace process received 81 percent support.

Like many territories in the region, Gaza has had a long history of foreign occupation, extending to ancient times. In 1949, the Arab-Israeli war ended with an armistice agreement that divided Palestine into three parts, each under separate political control. Israel encompassed more than 77 percent of the territory, Jordan was left to rule East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Egypt took control of Gaza. The Palestinian Arab state envisioned by the United Nations’ 1947 partition plan, which was to include Gaza, was never established.

Economic development in the Gaza Strip was limited under Egyptian rule, and the region suffered the burden of absorbing Palestinian refugees fleeing the fighting in the southern part of mandatory Palestine, which would later become Israel. Palestinians’ access to Egypt was restricted, and much of Gaza’s largely unskilled workforce was dependent on the UN Relief Works Administration, which built and maintained the local refugee camps.

The 1967 war placed all of mandatory Palestine (as well as Sinai and the Golan) under Israeli military occupation. Nevertheless, although one-third of the West Bank was closed to Palestinians to make room for a few thousand Jewish settlers, only 10 percent of its largely rural population were refugees, many owned their land, and a variety of jobs was available. By contrast, 70 percent of the Gaza population comprised refugees, who lived in difficult conditions in scores of refugee camps and were largely dependent on work in Israel. At one time, more than 150,000 Gazans crossed the Erez checkpoint daily.

Gaza’s poverty was fertile ground for Islamic radicalism. Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, a paraplegic refugee from the village of Jora (now on Israel’s southern coast), worked quietly to build a grass-root movement with the tacit assent of the Israeli army, which sought to encourage an alternative to the PLO. But, with the 1987 uprising (Intifada), Yasin’s supporters announced the creation of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Better known by its Arabic acronym, HAMAS, Yasin’s group competed with the secular PLO groups by staging amateurish attacks on Jewish settlers and kidnapping Israeli soldiers.

While the 1987 Intifada brought about the Oslo process and the return of the PLO leadership, it failed to produce a real economy in Gaza. The flow of money to the new Palestinian Authority was evident mostly in high-rise buildings, which the PA built to deal with overcrowding. Non-PA groups like Hamas acquired their own weapons mostly by buying them from Israeli soldiers or on the Israeli black market. Later, after the Israelis withdrew from Gaza, weapons, ammunition, and cash were smuggled through tunnels from Sinai.

During the second Palestinian Intifada, which erupted in 2000, Hamas used its weapons and explosives to attack Israelis and create their own small protectorate. But the more that Hamas and others attacked Israelis, the more the Israelis tightened the siege on Gaza. The number of Gazan workers in Israel was reduced to a few hundred, and rising unemployment and poverty empowered armed factions, gangs, and warlords — a development that intensified after Hamas’s electoral victory in 2006, which resulted in an international siege that cut off public servants’ salaries overnight.

As a largely refugee population, most Gazans had weak social roots. Those with a university education left to work in either the West Bank or the Gulf States, while Gaza’s armed groups became a magnet for most young people — the only job they understood and which gave them power. Armed men joined Fatah, Hamas, or other groups and sub-groups, and clans like the Dugmush family (which kidnapped the BBC journalist Alan Johnston) boasted a few hundred members willing to kill for pay.

Clearly, the false trappings of a state provided as part of the Oslo peace process have resulted in little tangible change for Palestinians. They got an elected president (who for a while was trapped in his headquarters), a parliament and government (whose MPs and ministers are not guaranteed passage from Gaza to the West Bank), and passports (whose numbers must be entered into Israeli computers). What they did not get was real sovereignty, without which it is difficult to imagine any improvement.

Gaza’s history, and evaporating support for Hamas there, suggests that integrating Gazans into mainstream Palestinian life would not be difficult. But it also suggests that maintaining the current siege would merely punish a peace-loving population while strengthening the grip of its worst elements on society and public life. —DT-PS

Daoud Kuttab, an award-winning Palestinian journalist, is Professor of Journalism at Princeton University

Bush says 'time has come' for Israeli-Palestinian peace

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080129/wl_mideast_afp/mideastustalks_080129061359

Bush says 'time has come' for Israeli-Palestinian peace

Tue Jan 29, 1:13 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said Monday "the time has come" for a democratic Israel and democratic Palestine living side by side in peace, vowing to help the two sides strike a deal by year end.

In his annual State of the Union speech, Bush said diplomatic efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were part of the broader US-led war against terror.

"We are also standing against the forces of extremism in the Holy Land, where we have new cause for hope," Bush told both houses of Congress.

"Palestinians have elected a president who recognizes that confronting terror is essential to achieving a state where his people can live in dignity and at peace with Israel," he said.

"Israelis have leaders who recognize that a peaceful, democratic Palestinian state will be a source of lasting security," he said.

Bush made his first trip as president to the West Bank and Israel earlier this month in a bid to bolster a new peace process he launched at an international conference in Annapolis, Maryland in November.

"This month in Ramallah and Jerusalem, I assured leaders from both sides that America will do, and I will do, everything we can to help them achieve a peace agreement that defines a Palestinian state by the end of this year," he said.

"The time has come for a Holy Land where a democratic Israel and a democratic Palestine live side-by-side in peace," he concluded.

Alarm bells sound over "Jewish state" by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9258.shtml

Alarm bells sound over "Jewish state"

Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani, The Electronic Intifada, 28 January 2008

Jewish settlers demonstrate at the construction site of road being built on confiscated Palestinian land near the West Bank village of Al Nu'man, east of Bethlehem, and call for the banning of Palestinians from the road, December 2006. Magnus Johansson/MaanImages)

CAIRO, 28 January (IPS) - Within recent months, several Israeli and US officials have stressed Israel's unique character as a "Jewish state." But according to many Arab observers, the designation negates the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel, and leaves the door open to expulsion of Israel's Arab citizens.

"The idea of a 'state for Jews' neutralizes the right of some five million Palestinian refugees to return to what is now Israel," Abdel-Halim Kandil, former editor-in-chief of opposition weekly al-Karama told IPS. "It would also subject Arabs resident in Israel to the possibility of expulsion at any moment."

The description was mentioned several times by top-level Israeli officials in the run-up to the US-sponsored Annapolis peace conference held in late November.

Weeks before the summit, convened with the ostensible aim of restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said recognition of Israel "as a state of all the Jewish people" constituted a starting point for negotiations. Such recognition, he added, would represent a "condition" for Israeli acknowledgment of any future Palestinian state.

"Whoever doesn't accept this can't hold negotiations with me," Olmert was quoted as saying. "This has been made clear to the Palestinians and the Americans."

Days later, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni made similar statements.

"It must be clear to everyone that the state of Israel is a national homeland for Jewish people," she said.

Livni went on to say that a future Palestinian state would provide a homeland for Palestinians worldwide, including those currently residing in Israel.

"The national demands of Israeli Arabs should end the moment a Palestinian state is established," she said.

The comments drew angry reactions from Arab figures in Israel. Some said the statements portended the eventual expulsion of Israel's Arab citizens, who represent roughly 25 percent of Israel's population of about six million.

"The residence and citizenship [of Israel's Arab population] are not open for discussion," Arab Knesset member Ghaleb Majadleh was quoted as saying. "Anyone who raises the idea of transferring the Arab population in Israel ... is anti-democratic."

The notion of Israel as a nation exclusive to the Jewish people has not been limited to officialdom in Tel Aviv.

At the Annapolis summit, attended by representatives of 16 Arab countries as well as Israel and the Palestinian Authority, US President George W. Bush repeatedly stressed Israel's specifically "Jewish" character.

Nor was it the first time: at an April 2004 meeting with then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, Bush -- still in his first term -- emphasized his administration's commitment to Israel as a "Jewish state."

The US President also used the occasion to provide Sharon with "guarantees" -- ratified by both houses of US congress -- unilaterally affirming Israel's right to retain major Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. Bush further stated that Palestinian refugees should be expected to return to a future Palestinian state rather than to Israel.

According to Ahmed Thabet, professor of political science at Cairo University, Bush's stand on the issue comes as little surprise given his well-known ideological affiliations.

"The Republican Bush administration represents the neo-conservative movement, which -- along with the Israeli right wing -- adheres to the racist notion that Israel should be exclusive to Jews," Thabet told IPS. "But this position conflicts with liberal concepts, like the equality of races and creeds, on which America was founded.

"It also flies in the face of the common perception of Israel as a democratic country," he added.

But Arab critics also note that, within US political discourse, the contentious designation has also been embraced by prominent members of the US Democratic Party.

"I think everyone knows what the basic outlines of an [Israeli-Palestinian final status] agreement would look like," Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said in a recent campaign speech. "It would mean that the Palestinians would have to reinterpret the notion of right of return in a way that would preserve Israel as a Jewish state."

Echoing a widespread Arab grievance, Thabet noted that overwhelming support for Israel extended across the US political spectrum, regardless of party affiliation.

"When it comes to support of Israeli positions," he said, "there doesn't appear to be any difference between the US Republican and Democratic parties."

According to Kandil, the latest push for acknowledgment of Israel as a distinctly Jewish state is a result of changing demographic realities inside Israel.

"Israel depends on high levels of Jewish immigration to keep up with the Palestinian population, but this source is running dry," he said. "Jews in Europe and America -- who enjoy political and economic influence -- might support Israel financially, but they don't want to move there."

Kandil went on to cite official Israeli statistics indicating that only some 20,000 Jews immigrated to Israel in 2007. "At this rate, the number of Palestinians living in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will surpass the number of Jews in Israel within 20 years," he said.

Egyptian government officials, meanwhile, have played down the significance of Israel's "Jewish" designation.

"Bush and Olmert can use whatever phrases they want," Mohamed Basyouni, former Egyptian ambassador to Israel and head of the (upper) Shura Council's committee for Arab affairs, told IPS. "In any case, we reject the term because it negates the Palestinian right of return and suggests the possibility of the expulsion of Israel's Arab citizens."

Nevertheless, recent developments on the border have led some local commentators to warn of long-standing Israeli designs to resettle Palestinian refugees in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Last week, the border fence separating Egypt from the Gaza Strip was largely destroyed by a series of explosions. As a result, an estimated half a million Gazans -- suffering from a severe Israeli embargo on the territory -- flocked into Sinai to buy essential commodities.

"Israel hopes to exploit the situation ... to bring about calls by the international community for the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in Sinai," editor-in-chief Mohamed Ali Ibrahim wrote in the 27 January edition of official daily al-Gomhouriya. "But Egypt will never allow Sinai to be a part of this devious solution to the refugee problem."

Ultimately, said Thabet, official recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state" per se would not only imperil the future of Israel's Arab citizens, but would also lead to "disastrous consequences" for the entire region.

"Such a move would only encourage notions of religious exclusivity and lead to more conflict and intolerance in the Middle East," he said. "If Israel becomes a nation for Jews only, there will inevitably be calls to establish states exclusive to the followers of other religions as well."

All rights reserved, IPS - Inter Press Service (2008). Total or partial publication, retransmission or sale forbidden.

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Fireside chat in Gaza
IMEU, Jan 29, 2008

Palestinians sit around a bonfire in the border town of Rafah between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. (Wissam Nassar, Maan Images)

Short term gain for Hamas, long term gain for Israel

Ghassan Khatib, Bitterlemons.org

Jan 29, 2008

The dramatic recent developments on the Palestinian-Egyptian border are direct and predictable results of the internationally supported Israeli siege on Gaza.

Born in the shadow of a checkpoint
Haaretz

Fady Joudah: Doctor and poet
IMEU

The lessons of violence
Chris Hedges, Truthdig

Fresh efforts to seal Gaza border
BBC (Jan 29, 2008)

Popular front man
Karma Nabulsi, The Guardian (Jan 29, 2008)

EU raises return of Gaza monitors, agrees aid fund
Reuters (Jan 29, 2008)

Palestinian teenager killed as Israeli forces invade Bethlehem
Maan News (Jan 28, 2008)

Israeli Arab group declares strike over decision on 2000 riots
Haaretz (Jan 28, 2008)

Fuel deliveries to Gaza resume at a fraction of normal levels
Maan News (Jan 28, 2008)

For West Bank head-scarf maker, it may be a wrap
The Globe and Mail (Jan 28, 2008)

Israel's 'economic warfare' to include electricity cuts in Gaza
The Washington Post (Jan 28, 2008)

Despite break, crisis builds in Gaza
Los Angeles Times (Jan 28, 2008)

Mohammed Abed / AFP/Getty Images

Egyptian soldiers use barbed wire to close a section of the border between the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah and Egypt.

Palestinians may have shopped in Egypt, but services such as power and water deteriorate amid Israeli blockade.

Habash laid to rest

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=5336

Habash laid to rest

Laila Khaled, member of the National Palestinian Council, and Nayef Hawatmeh, leader of the Damascus-based Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, stand near the coffin of George Habash during a funeral service at an Orthodox Church in Amman on Monday. Habash passed away on Saturday (AP photo by Nader Daoud)

AMMAN (AP) - George Habash, a former leader of the PLO, was buried in the capital on Monday after a packed, chaotic church service that included defiant shouts of support from his followers.

Habash, whose PLO faction shot to fame after the simultaneous hijackings of four Western airliners in 1970, died of a heart attack in his Jordanian hospital bed on Saturday.

The former PLO leader’s rivalry with the late Yasser Arafat spurred him to start the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1967, which became the second-largest in the PLO after Arafat’s Fatah Party.

Habash promoted the Palestinian cause through guerrilla attacks in the 1970s, including the 1976 hijacking of an Air France airliner to Entebbe, Uganda, where four civilians were killed during a rescue operation by Israeli paratroopers.

The 81-year-old paediatrician from a Christian Palestinian family had been living in Jordan since 1992.

Monday’s solemn church service was interrupted by shouts of “We sacrifice our souls and blood to you, Al Hakim,” which in Arabic is “doctor” or the “wise one” - Habash’s nom de guerre.

A large throng of mourners spilled into the ornate sanctuary and walked behind the coffin, draped in a Palestinian flag and carried by a green-clad force from the Palestinian army, known as the Badr Brigades.

His body was later driven in a motorcade to an Amman cemetery where he was buried.

The mourners - some carrying posters with Habash’s photo and a map of Palestine- included women in fur-trimmed black suits and low-income Palestinians wearing the symbolic white-and-black chequered headdress.

In the crowd were Habash’s wife, Hilda, Nayef Hawatmeh, leader of the Syria-based Marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Palestinian officials from the Fateh faction, like Yasser Abed Rabbo, an aide to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Palestinian lawmaker Mustafa Barghouti said Habash left a legacy of “loyalty to the Palestinian cause in a very principled manner - honesty, clean politics and great devotion to the Palestinian cause and to humanity.”

Many Jordanians also attended the funeral.

Ihsan Halaseh, a retired Jordanian English-language teacher who taught in a West Bank school for 30 years defended PFLP’s method of hijacking planes, saying Habash allowed his followers to do that to “show the world that the Palestinian problem needs attention”.

“Today, things are different; we need the world now to finally resolve the Palestinian problem,” Halaseh said.

29 January 2008

Supplies run out in Egypt-Gaza border town

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080128/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictgaza_080128235202;_ylt=AgFh6sXsLRbK.8Otk0_P8HEUvioA

Supplies run out in Egypt-Gaza border town

by Ines Bel Aiba 45 minutes ago

RAFAH, Egypt (AFP) - Khaled Salah's shop in the border town of Rafah is almost empty, to the immense disappointment of Palestinians who fled a blockaded Gaza to stock up on vital supplies across the border in Egypt.

Only two tins of vegetable oil and a few honey jars sit on the shelves of his modest grocery shop in the divided town that straddles the Sinai peninsula and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Several hundred thousand Palestinians have swarmed into Egypt since militants blew up the Rafah barricades on Tuesday night after a punishing Israeli lockdown of the territory cut vital fuel and aid supplies.

But after six days, supplies are running dry and Egyptian authorities are barring trucks from bringing in fresh deliveries.

"The shops are empty and they won't let us go to El-Arish (further west). Never mind, we'll have a look around Rafah," sighs Sabah al-Arji surrounded by her 11 children.

Around the town, desperate shoppers are scrounging for goods, their trousers rolled up and their feet dipping in the mud caused by the rare rainfall.

"It is incredible, there is nothing left!" exclaimed a stunned Walid, 45, who had come from Khan Yunis in northern Gaza with a simple shopping list -- jam and washing powder.

"They bought everything, good for us. Thank God, we made a lot of profit," Salah, the young grocer, told AFP.

"But now we are waiting for new supplies," he said. "We don't know when they will arrive, the trucks are still stuck."

On Sunday, Egyptian authorities began preventing trucks from coming from Cairo to the border town, where a security cordon has been imposed to prevent Palestinians travelling further afield.

On the road leading to Salaheddine, the main border entry point, shop owners shut their doors as they waited to re-stock.

But the pavement in front of the deserted shops was crackling with activity as local Bedouin sought to sell goats and a young man from El-Arish negotiated the price of a motorbike with a Palestinian.

Cigarettes, packets of crisps, cheese, oil barrels exchanged hands.

"I'm looking for a mobile phone! Who can sell me a mobile phone?" shouts one Palestinian in the middle of the crowd.

Neither mobile phones, nor clothes or shoes can be found.

"I was stripped of goods from day two," said a smiling Sami Ibrahim, 25, who runs the shoe shop Midou, now full of empty boxes.

"The sooner they let the goods pass the better. Demand is still very high," said the savvy young Egyptian who quickly priced his goods in shekels, the Israeli currency used in Gaza.

"We are mostly missing vaccinations for the children which ran out on the first day," said one pharmacist in Rafah.

"We have ordered a shipment but authorities have blocked it at the Peace Bridge," which leads into Sinai, she said.

Despite the shortages, thousands of Palestinians continue to make the back and forth trek between Gaza and Egypt, in the desperate hope of re-stocking.

Authorities in Egypt are struggling to control the flow of people and goods.

The Egyptian army on Monday resealed a part of the breached border near the Brazil entrance to Gaza, but there are many gaps yet to fill.

Palestinian Americans : Fady Joudah: Doctor and poet

http://imeu.net/news/article005755.shtml

Home > Palestinian Americans
Fady Joudah: Doctor and poet
IMEU

To interview Fady Joudah contact the IMEU at 510-451-2600 or info@imeu.net

Palestinian-American doctor and poet Fady Joudah.

When he was seven, Fady Joudah proclaimed his intention to become a doctor. "I remember telling my mom while we were watching TV," Joudah recalls. "I said, 'When I grow up I'm going to be a doctor and buy a big house and have all my family in it and take care of all of you when you get sick.'" Now a physician, humanitarian worker and poet, Joudah has dedicated his life to serving the human family.

Born in Austin, TX, in 1971, Joudah grew up in Libya and Saudi Arabia. He returned to the U.S. to go to college, attending the University of Georgia-Athens, the Medical College of Georgia, and completing his training in internal medicine at the University of Texas. Currently based in Houston, when he's not writing award-winning poetry or volunteering with Doctors Without Borders, Joudah is an ER physician at the VA hospital.

"Some of this idealism I had as a child relies on the notion that the doctor is a healer, a participant in the vision and the wisdom of the society of which he's part," Joudah says. "This is one reason why I sought to work with Doctors Without Borders.

The son of Palestinian refugees, Joudah has done two six-month tours with Doctors Without Borders, helping other refugees - one in the Meheba refugee camp in Zambia and another in Darfur. Working in such environments can be trying. "Sometimes you feel your duty as a physician is endlessly manipulated and the impartiality and neutrality of the physician is threatened," he says. "But you just close your eyes and dive into the pool of the living and the dying and try to do the best you can."

His poetry has appeared in Poetry magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Drunken Boat, Prairie Schooner and Crab Orchard. Copper Canyon Press released The Butterfly's Burden, Joudah's translations of the preeminent Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish's recent work in the fall of 2006. "A Palestinian grows up to the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish," Joudah explains. "If the victim has the right to have their story told, it is the most baffling experience to be a Palestinian, to be one of the few peoples in the world that still fights to be recognized as a victim. Yet, paradoxically, there is nothing more you want as a Palestinian than to rid yourself of that title and simply be recognized as a human being."

Joudah was the 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition, the oldest literary prize in the U.S., for The Earth in the Attic, to be released in March 2008.

The right of any person to leave his homeland and return to it is sacrosanct, well enshrined in all international human rights treaties.

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=5288
Jordan Times Editorial

Inalienable rights

His Majesty King Abdullah’s official proclamation that the Jordanian nationality does not and will not compromise the Palestinians’ right to repatriation or compensation corresponds accurately with international law.

This legal and political decision does not depend solely on UN General Assembly Resolution 194, that gave the Palestinians forced out of their country a choice between return to their homes or a fair and just compensation for their lost properties, but on other UN resolutions as well, including UN Security Council Resolution 242 and all subsequent UN resolutions on this issue.

The Jordanian stance on this matter faithfully reflects general international law principles, including those stipulated by various international human rights conventions, the UN Charter and international humanitarian provisions.

This well-established position should put an end to any fear or anxiety Palestinian refugees may have when acquiring citizenship anywhere in the world.

There are many Jordanians of Palestinian origin; there are also many Palestinians who acquired citizenships in various other countries, notably the US, Canada and Australia. What the King was alluding to was not only Jordanians of Palestinian origin, but all Palestinians who emigrated and acquired different citizenship.

The right of any person to leave his homeland and return to it is sacrosanct, well enshrined in all international human rights treaties. The right to compensation for properties seized by whatever means is also well established in binding international norms.

Palestinians cannot be expected to remain marginalised in countries where they sought refuge, deprived of the basic right of attaining decent living conditions and of acquiring citizenship rights, or at least permanent residency permits.

Those who chose, and were granted the right, to become citizens of countries where they made a living have no cause to fear the loss of the right of return or compensation, which is not subject to any statutory limitation.

28 January 2008

The Gaza wall by Nermeen Murad

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=5292

The Gaza wall

Nermeen Murad

What would make a people physically push their way through a border crossing and risk being beaten, shot at or even killed? Anger? Hunger? Fear? Desperation? Political frustration? Or all the above?

I suspect we all know the answer. I also suspect that we could all argue very effectively defending the frantic attempt by Gazans to escape their prison if only for a few hours and if only to replenish their supplies.

After their foray into border towns on the Egyptian side, they willingly return to their detention centre, as prescribed by Israel and sanctioned by the international community’s silence, to continue their struggle against occupation. They come back to live again under Israel’s forcible control and almost sadistic micro-management of their lives in the West Bank and Gaza.

I know most of us have long ago reached the conclusion that war will not bring the required peace in the Middle East. Apart from the obvious futility of violence, as shown in Iraq already, we have developed an aversion to violence as a mode of political expression.

Most of us would have been extremely satisfied if the peace talks of the 1990s had produced tangible results and peaceful coexistence with the state of Israel. But it didn’t, and will not as long as we have a divided and self-serving leadership on one side (Palestinians) and a ruthless and irresponsible one on the other (Israel).

The conundrum created by the fact that peace hasn’t produced dividends to showcase in support of state-supported negotiations has not only put moderates in the Arab world in a bind but also left the Palestinian civil society with nowhere to turn to for leadership or support.

Coupled with the increase in Arabs and Muslims who now define themselves as followers of Islamist or extremist organisations, Palestinians have no option left to them save take their lives and affairs in their own hands and take actions similar to what we see on the Gaza-Egypt border.

The only method that had worked in Palestine before was civil action and disobedience. It worked in the first Intifada that came without planning or guardianship from any of the Palestinian factions. The Palestinians gained the sympathy of the world because their action was an honest human expression of frustration, anger and resistance. It had no negative labels. The image of the children of the stones standing up to Israeli military tanks captured the imagination of the world and rallied support for the Palestinians.

The Palestinian instantaneous and unplanned break through the borders Gaza shares with Egypt is another such example of the success of civil action. At minimum, it allowed the Gazans to express their disappointment with their political leadership and lack of faith in the ability of that leadership to provide even the most basic commodities for its people.

My guess is that Gaza’s Intifada this past week will now be hijacked by each of the Palestinian factions, as was the Intifada before it. Already we have Fateh’s Mahmoud Abbas putting conditions on negotiating with Hamas. The latter, represented by Khalid Mishaal, which usually prefers rejection to accommodation, has seen the political opportunity, created by Abbas’ intransigence, in accepting the political call to negotiations without preconditions.

Both will drag the Palestinians back to their political wrangling. Israel will watch from the sidelines as the Palestinian leadership again misses and squanders the opportunity created by this spontaneous civil action.

The Palestinian people will continue to suffer. Palestine will continue to be a distant dream.

Nermeen34@aol.com

28 January 2008

"In Gaza we have nowhere to go," she said. "I just wanted to see something different."

"...Shuber, a salary-earning member of the Palestinian security forces, had borrowed money from his friends to shop for goods they could not find in Gaza, where an Israeli economic blockade has tightened over the past two years. "We were hoping that opening the borders with Egypt would bring us relief," he said. "But it doesn't solve the problem. It's only going to be temporary and things are likely to get worse again."

The only shops open in El Arish yesterday were pharmacies. Sameh Ghoul, 26, the owner of one pharmacy, had sold dozens of packets of cold and flu medicines to Palestinians who relished the far cheaper prices. As he spoke, another Gazan customer came in and ordered several tubes of face cream and sun screen.

"I came here to buy tables, chairs, carpets, even cheese. All the things I thought I could sell back in Gaza," said the Palestinian.

Some had put up with long and difficult journeys. Sara el-Masri and her son, Ahmad, 12, had been made to walk through the desert for three hours on Saturday to bypass the checkpoints. She returned only with a handful of gifts from a friend she had visited. "I wanted to come for the adventure. In Gaza we have nowhere to go," she said. "I just wanted to see something different." "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2247965,00.html

Egyptian police frustrate stream of Palestinian shoppers

Rory McCarthy in El Arish, Egypt
Monday January 28, 2008
The Guardian

Palestinian factionalism is speeding up its trip to nowhere By The Daily Star

Palestinian factionalism is speeding up its trip to nowhere
By The Daily Star

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&article_id=88434&categ_id=17

Editorial

The anarchic situation in the Gaza Strip marks a new low in terms of the performance of Palestinian resistance organizations. From its beginnings in the 1960s, the movement has been depressingly vulnerable to petty internecine disputes exacerbated by conflicting loyalties to regional powers with little or no interest in liberating Palestinian land - but plenty of appetite for falsely aggrandizing their own images at home and abroad. Reduced to implements in the maladroit hands of cynical regimes, many of the Palestinian factions have been so badly diverted from their raison d'etre that one is tempted to ask whether their respective leaders even know where Palestine is - or was.

The Arab governments that have contributed to this sorry state of affairs deserve their share of scorn, but it is the Palestinian groups that are especially worthy of derision because the cause they have served so poorly is supposed to be their own. Instead they have loaned out their services to a plethora of disinterested police states concerned primarily with the short-term shoring up of their own security by pretending to back the right side in the Arab-Israeli dispute.

The result has been an inexorable decline in the fortunes of the movement. A few short years ago, the mainstream goal was a state on 22 percent of historic Palestine, itself a humiliating setback on many levels but palatable to many given the paucity of alternatives. Today even so paltry an "achievement" looks increasingly unlikely because even before the commitment of the US and Israeli governments can be tested by the usual uber-Zionist backlash, intra-Palestinian disagreements are helping to prepare the excuse that the Jewish state "has no partner" in the peace process. This plays conveniently into the hands of Israeli hard-liners and their supporters in America, subverting the one thing all Palestinians have in common - a longing for the restoration of their legitimate rights - to imbecilic feuds over how to proceed.

The current manifestation of this tendency is the power struggle between Hamas and Fatah, which has provided the Israelis with a pretext to besiege the Gaza Strip. Moves are now afoot to cobble together a new system for regulating Gaza's border with Egypt, but in yet another sign of how pathetic the situation is, it will be something of a breakthrough if representatives of the dueling factions can so much as agree to sit in the same room to discuss the logistics.

Neither of the parties is doing its constituents any favors by prolonging a dispute that has sown division and blighted the dreams of several million people. If even the extreme conditions now prevailing are not enough to convince them that they have to bury the hatchet, the chance for justice may be lost for several more years. Far from being on the verge of statehood, many Palestinians (especially those in Gaza) are now on the edge of starvation, their principal aim at present being to obtain handouts from the international community so they can have a few scraps of food to eat while their "leaders" call each other names. Haram.

Israel will not indict police for killing of Arabs

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L27355169.htm

Israel will not indict police for killing of Arabs

27 Jan 2008 18:51:05 GMT

Source: Reuters

JERUSALEM, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Israel's attorney general said on Sunday he would not indict police officers involved the killing of 13 Israeli Arab protesters in 2000, prompting accusations of discrimination from Arab citizens.

Meni Mazuz's decision, consistent with the findings of past Israeli inquiries, effectively closed the case against police over the protesters' deaths soon after the eruption of a Palestinian uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"There is insufficient evidence in the investigative material to indict any of the suspects," Mazuz's decision said. Police used live ammunition to disperse Israeli Arabs who threw stones and Molotov cocktails at police and passersby in October 2000 during demonstrations in northern Israel in support of the Palestinian uprising.

A Jewish motorist was killed by a rock that went through his car windscreen, and several police were injured. None of the protestors was found to have used guns.

"Mazuz's decision doesn't reflect Israel relating to Arabs as citizens but as enemies," said Suhad Bishara, a lawyer with the advocacy group Adalah, which represents the families of those killed in 2000.

Some Arabs became Israeli citizens after the Jewish state was created in 1948 in part of British-ruled Palestine. Hundreds of thousands of other Palestinian Arabs fled or were driven from their homes during fighting at the time.

Israeli Arabs now make up about a fifth of the country's population and often complain of institutional discrimination. The government rejects this. (Writing by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

The true miracle of Israel by Ramzy Baroud

		24 - 30 January 2008 Issue No. 881 Opinion	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/881/op131.htm

The true miracle of Israel

What is remarkable is not Israel's creation, but rather the perpetuation of the lies and the injustice upon which it survives, Ramzy Baroud*

Israelis and their supporters tend to depict Israel as a country of miracles. What else could explain the country's astonishing "birth" and subsequent survival against all sorts of "existential threats"? How else would Israel develop at such a phenomenal pace, making the "desert bloom" and continually scoring a high ranking amongst developed nations in most noteworthy aspects?

Meanwhile, Palestinians continue to be depicted as "their own worst enemies", a people who "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" and who stand outside the parameters of rational human behaviour. Israel is often, if not always, contrasted against a regional backdrop of "backward", "undemocratic" and essentially violent Arabs and Muslims.

Such depictions -- of luminous, civilised Israelis facing wicked, backward Arabs -- are the building blocks of a polemic sold tirelessly by Israeli, American and Western media. Most often, it goes unchallenged, thus defining the West's understanding of Israel and its moral "right to exist". The argument is rooted in the horrors of the Jewish holocaust; however, Israel's handlers have managed to turn deserved sympathy for that tragedy into an unwarranted assertion, somehow equating Palestinians with Nazi Germany in order to justify a constant state of war in the name of self-defence.

In this specific context, the power of the media cannot be over-emphasised. It has defined a fallacious reality based on a skewed narrative. Never in history has a story been so slanted as that of Palestine and Israel. Never has the victim been so squarely blamed for his own misfortunes as the Palestinian. This is not an arrogant counter-narrative to Israel's concoctions. It's a glaring truth that continues to be either ignored or misunderstood.

The "miracles" often associated with Israel are not random; they are assertions. Miracles are a religious notion, referring to the unexplained and supernatural. Thus they become exempt from rational questioning. This formula has served Israel's strategic purposes well. On one hand, Israel's existence is portrayed as a resurrection of sorts: from near-annihilation to a "miraculous" rebirth. Indeed, considering how the birth of Israel story is offered, the narrative is no less impressive than biblical legends. Such discourse has been used successfully to appeal to a much larger group than those who identify with Israel on ethnic or religious grounds. It has impressed tens of millions of Christian fundamentalists worldwide. In the United States, Christian Zionists represent the popular backbone of the pro-Israeli camp. While American Jews tend to vote based on economic or political interests, Christian Zionists see their allegiance to Israel as a religious duty.

Like all religious miracles, Israeli miracles are "matters of faith". They can either be accepted as one package or rejected as such; the bottom line is that they are beyond argument, beyond the need for tangible proof. Those foolish enough to deconstruct this -- and thus question Israel as a state accountable to law, like all others -- are subjected to the wrath of God (in the case of the "true believer") or the wrath of the media and the Zionist lobby (in the case of the sceptic). When an American politician, for example, is accused of not standing "fully behind Israel", the accusation doesn't warrant justification. It stands on its own, like a biblical command that has survived the test of time and reason: Thou shalt stand fully behind Israel. The accused politician can only defend his record of support for Israel; he cannot question why this is necessary in the first place, or ever acknowledge the fact that the latter's track record is soaked in blood, sullied by illegal occupations, and grounded on human rights violations and defiance of international law.

As the 60th anniversary of the so- called birth of Israel draws near, a most impressive -- albeit grotesque -- misrepresentation of that history will be offered in abundance. Media pundits and politicians will celebrate the miracle, omitting how Israel was delivered on top of the ruins of hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages. The killing and ethnic cleansing that became known as the Palestinian Catastrophe -- or Nakba -- was not the work of invisible and miraculous seraphs, but rather well trained and well-armed Zionist gangs and their supporters.

Nor did Palestinians lose the battle due to their laxity or backwardness. Their bravery, for those who care to consult serious historical works (such as those of Israeli historian Ilan Pappe or late Palestinian Professor Edward Said), is a badge of honour that will be carried by Palestinians for years to come. They lost because, as parallel historic experiences demonstrate, neither bravery nor fortitude are enough to withstand so many powerful forces at play, all plotting for their downfall.

Moreover, those celebrating Israel's miraculous efforts in making the desert bloom -- the inference being that "nomadic Palestinians" failed to connect with the "neglected" land, and only the "return" of its rightful owners managed to bring about its renewal -- will most likely forget that its was the Palestinian proletariat -- the cheap, oppressed, and dispossessed labour force -- that mostly worked the land, erected the homes and tended to the gardens of the miracle state. No less than $100 billion of American taxpayers' money contributed to Israel's current economic viability, as well as military preparedness.

All of this is likely to be overlooked as Israel and "friends of Israel" around the world celebrate another miraculous year of survival and affluence. Will they pause to wonder why over five million Palestinian refugees are dispossessed and scattered around the world? Will they lend a moment's silence to the many thousands who were brutally murdered so that Israel could live this fallacious miracle? Will they ever understand the pain and the tears of successive generations dying while holding onto the keys of homes that were destroyed, deeds to land that was stolen, and memories of a once beautiful reality from which they were violently uprooted?

If there is any miracle in Israel's existence it is that the lies upon which it is founded could be perpetuated for so long, despite glaringly obvious truths to the contrary. Indeed, it is a miracle that such grave injustice could reign for so long uncontested.

* The writer is editor of Palestine Chronicle.com .

Sun Jan 27, 3:10 PM ETPrev 1 of 413 NextPalestinian cross the damaged border wall between Egypt and Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Sunday Jan. 27, 2008. Egyptian forces moved to close their breached border with the Gaza Strip by stopping vehicle traffic Sunday and further tightening their security cordon around the small frontier town of Rafah in effort to contain Palestinians crossing freely into Egypt for the fifth day in a row. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Sun Jan 27, 3:10 PM ETPrev 2 of 413 NextPalestinian cross the damaged border wall between Egypt and Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008. Egyptian forces moved to close their breached border with the Gaza Strip by stopping vehicle traffic Sunday and further tightening their security cordon around the small frontier town of Rafah in effort to contain Palestinians crossing freely into Egypt for the fifth day in a row. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Sun Jan 27, 1:42 PM ETPrev 23 of 413 NextPalestinians returning from Egypt, are reflected in a puddle at the border crossing in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Sunday Jan. 27, 2008. Egyptian forces moved to close their breached border with the Gaza Strip by stopping vehicle traffic Sunday and further tightening their security cordon around the small frontier town of Rafah in effort to contain Palestinians crossing freely into Egypt for the fifth day in a row. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

Sun Jan 27, 1:39 PM ETPrev 24 of 413 NextPalestinian children play during sunset near the breached border in Rafah between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Israeli and Palestinian leaders met over the Gaza crisis on Sunday as Egypt battled to regain control of its breached border with the impoverished territory and contain the exodus of Palestinians. (AFP/Mahmud Hams)

Sun Jan 27, 1:39 PM ETPrev 25 of 413 NextPalestinians carry a sick man across the breached border in Rafah between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Israeli and Palestinian leaders met over the Gaza crisis on Sunday as Egypt battled to regain control of its breached border with the impoverished territory and contain the exodus of Palestinians. (AFP/Mahmud Hams)

Sun Jan 27, 1:01 PM ETPrev 31 of 413 NextA Palestinian woman crosses the border wall on her way from Gaza into Rafah, Egypt, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008. Egyptian forces moved to close their breached border with the Gaza Strip by stopping vehicle traffic Sunday and further tightening their security cordon around the small frontier town of Rafah in effort to contain Palestinians crossing freely into Egypt for the fifth day in a row. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Sun Jan 27, 12:17 PM ETPrev 54 of 413 NextA Palestinian boy carries a gas canister as he makes his way through the Rafah border crossing back into the Gaza Strip from Egypt January 27, 2008. Palestinians streamed home through the breaches in Gaza's border with Egypt on Sunday as Egyptian authorities choked off supplies to the area and moved to restore control.

REUTERS/Nasser Nuri (EGYPT)

Sun Jan 27, 11:23 AM ETPrev 73 of 413 NextPalestinians are seen on both sides of the border between Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, and Egypt, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008. Divided by a twist of history 26 years ago, this remote town straddling the Gaza-Egypt border has been reunited in just as haphazard a fashion. After the towering border wall slicing through Rafah was toppled earlier this week, long-separated relatives, friends and even former soccer buddies just had to walk a few yards to embrace and reminisce. (AP Photo/Eyad Baba)

Sun Jan 27, 11:01 AM ETPrev 83 of 413 NextPalestinians cross the border between Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, and Egypt, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008. Divided by a twist of history 26 years ago, this remote town straddling the Gaza-Egypt border has been reunited in just as haphazard a fashion. After the towering border wall slicing through Rafah was toppled earlier this week, long-separated relatives, friends and even former soccer buddies just had to walk a few yards to embrace and reminisce. (AP Photo/Eyad Baba)

Sun Jan 27, 10:55 AM ETPrev 89 of 413 NextA Palestinian boy carries empty canisters for fuel as he crosses a destroyed section of the border wall from Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, into Egypt, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008. Divided by a twist of history 26 years ago, this remote town straddling the Gaza-Egypt border has been reunited in just as haphazard a fashion. After the towering border wall slicing through Rafah was toppled earlier this week, long-separated relatives, friends and even former soccer buddies just had to walk a few yards to embrace and reminisce. (AP Photo/Eyad Baba)

Sun Jan 27, 10:50 AM ETPrev 91 of 413 NextA Palestinian man holds his son as they crossed a destroyed section of the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt January 27, 2008. Palestinians streamed home across Gaza's breached border with Egypt on Sunday as Egyptian authorities choked off supplies to the area and vowed to restore control. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (GAZA)

Sun Jan 27, 10:45 AM ETPrev 93 of 413 NextA Palestinian boy crossed a breach on the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt January 27, 2008. Palestinians streamed home across Gaza's breached border with Egypt on Sunday as Egyptian authorities choked off supplies to the area and vowed to restore control. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (GAZA)

Sun Jan 27, 10:42 AM ETPrev 94 of 413 NextA Palestinian family falls down from a donkey cart after they crossed a breach on the border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt January 27, 2008. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will hold crisis talks on Sunday on how to limit Hamas control over Gaza's breached border with Egypt. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem (GAZA)

Sun Jan 27, 10:41 AM ETPrev 95 of 413 NextA Palestinian woman, holds a portrait of George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP), attends a rally to mark his death in the West Bank city of Nablus Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008. George Habash, a longtime rival of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, led the PLO's second-largest faction which pioneered airliner hijackings, died Saturday in Jordan. (AP Photo/Nasser Ishtayeh)

Sun Jan 27, 10:30 AM ETPrev 98 of 413 NextPalestinian children sit on the damaged border walll between Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, background, and Egypt, Sunday Jan. 27, 2008. Divided by a twist of history 26 years ago, this remote town straddling the Gaza-Egypt border has been reunited in just as haphazard a fashion. After the towering border wall slicing through Rafah was toppled earlier this week, long-separated relatives, friends and even former soccer buddies just had to walk a few yards to embrace and reminisce. (AP Photo/Hatem Omar)

Sun Jan 27, 9:01 AM ETPrev 114 of 413 NextPalestinians take part in a mock funeral for George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in the West Bank city of Ramallah January 27, 2008. Habash, the founder of a radical movement that staged hijackings and kidnappings to highlight the Palestinian struggle, died in Jordan on Saturday, his family said. He was 80. REUTERS/Ammar Awad (WEST BANK)

Sun Jan 27, 8:03 AM ETPrev 131 of 413 NextPalestinian youth carry a huge Palestinian flag during a rally to mark the death of George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP), in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008. George Habash, a longtime rival of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, led the PLO's second-largest faction which pioneered airliner hijackings, died Saturday in Jordan. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

Sun Jan 27, 7:45 AM ETPrev 134 of 413 NextA Palestinian man walks on a part of the breached border wall between Rafah, southern Gaza Strip and Egypt, Sunday Jan. 27, 2008. Divided by a twist of history 26 years ago, this remote town straddling the Gaza-Egypt border has been reunited in just as haphazard a fashion. After the towering border wall slicing through Rafah was toppled earlier this week, long-separated relatives, friends and even former soccer buddies just had to walk a few yards to embrace and reminisce. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Annie's letters

Saturday, February 02, 2008