"I seem to recall that the East Germans called the Berlin Wall - or 'Berlin Fence' as I suppose we would have to call it if built by the Israelis - a 'security barrier'."
The Independent April 4, 2006 Another Brick in the Wall By Robert Fisk We have been conned again. The Israeli elections, we are told, mean that the dream of "Greater Israel" has finally been abandoned. West Bank settlements will be closed down, just as the Jewish colonies were uprooted in Gaza last year. The Zionist claim to all of Biblical Israel has withered away. Likud, the nightmare party of Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu, has been smashed by the Gaullist figure of the dying Ariel Sharon, whose Kadima Party now embraces Ehud Olmert and that decaying symbol of the Israeli left, Nobel prizewinner Shimon Peres. This, at least, is the narrative laid down by so many of our journalists, "analysts" and "commentators". But it is a lie. Only in paragraph two - or three or four - of the groveling news reports from the Middle East do we read that Olmert's not very impressive election victory will allow him to "redraw" the "frontiers" of Israel, a decision described as "controversial" - the usual get-out clause of newspapers that wish to avoid the truth: that Israel is about to grab more land and claim it to be part of the state of Israel. Yes, true, the smaller and more vulnerable Jewish colonies illegally built on Palestinian-owned land may be abandoned - stand by for more of the grief and tears that we witnessed in Gaza. But the rest - the great semi-circle of concrete that runs around east Jerusalem, for example - will not be depopulated. Let's start with the wall. It will soon run from top to bottom of the occupied Palestinian West Bank - and it is going to stay. It is higher in the long sectors where it has been completed (east of Jerusalem, for example) than the Berlin Wall. Yet journalists go on calling it a "security barrier" or a "fence" - because the as-yet-uncompleted sectors of the wall are still coils of barbed wire. This is part of the dream world that editors and reporters have constructed for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It exists in the same Potemkin landscape that allows journalists to call the occupied Palestinian territory "disputed territory" - after former US secretary of state Colin Powell ordered his diplomats in the region to use this mendacious phrase - and to call Jewish colonies illegally built on Arab land "settlements" or, my favorites now, "Jewish neighborhoods" or "outposts". It is the same stage on which Israelis are killed by Palestinians, which they are, but on which Palestinians die in anonymous "clashes". (With whom - and killed by whom - exactly?) And each of these little lies, of course, contains a kernel of truth. The occupied territories are "disputed" between Israelis and Palestinians, the first claiming that God gave them the land, the second producing land deeds to prove that the law entitles them to their own property. If illegal colonies such as Maale Adumim are built adjacent to Jerusalem - itself illegally annexed by Israel - then of course they are "neighborhoods". And since the wall - which has gobbled up 10% more Palestinian land for the Israelis - is to prevent suicide bombers (and has been fairly successful in doing so), it is a "security barrier". I seem to recall that the East Germans called the Berlin Wall - or "Berlin Fence" as I suppose we would have to call it if built by the Israelis - a "security barrier". Forget the illegality of occupation, then, and the illegality of stealing someone else's home and land, and the illegality of building a wall that thieves yet more property from the 22% of mandate Palestine that the Palestinians are supposed to negotiate for. Let me be frank. If I were an Israeli I, too, would have built a wall to prevent the suicide executioners of Islamic Jihad and, earlier, of Hamas. But I would have built it along the international frontier of Israel - not used the wall as a cheap method of stealing more land. Indeed, under UN Security Council Resolution 242, which is meant to be the foundation of any peace, the acquisition of land through war is stated to be illegal. The wall itself is illegal. The International Court also ruled it to be illegal. And Israel ignored this ruling. So, of course, did the US. But now the burden of all this post-election theft is to be placed upon Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. This colourless, helpless man, who presided over the Palestinian Authority's continuing corruption, is supposed to persuade the new Hamas government to accept all of Israel's land-grabs, to pick up where the Oslo process left off (which still left Jerusalem exclusively in Israeli hands), and to abandon all violence - which means to surrender whenever Israeli troops raid refugee camps or cities in the West Bank. The point is that Hamas members have been as assuredly elected representatives of the Palestinians as Olmert and his forthcoming allies in government are representatives of Israelis. But this does not allow them to make any "controversial" plans to redraw their "border" with Israel, not even to insist that Israel withdraws - or redeploys - to its internationally recognized borders. (I'm talking about the pre-1967 frontier, not the 1948 one.) They cannot demand fulfillment of UN Resolution 242 because President George W Bush has already made it clear that the vast Jewish colonies east of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem itself, will remain in Israeli hands. Sure, 14 of the 24 Hamas ministers have been in Israeli prisons. But what are Palestinians supposed to think when they realize that 15 Israeli generals have been elected to the new Knesset, along with six secret service agents? Yet even this is not the point. If the Israelis want Hamas to acknowledge the state of Israel, then Hamas should be expected to acknowledge the state of Israel that exists within its legal frontiers - not the illegal borders now being dreamt up by Olmert. We will have to abandon the idea that Ariel Sharon - an unindicted war criminal after his involvement in the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacres - was really going to give up the major Jewish colonies built illegally on Arab land or the illegal annexation of Jerusalem. Certainly, Olmert is not going to do that. He is going to create wider frontiers for Israel and steal - let's call a spade a spade - more Arab land in doing so. The US will go along with this next illegal land-grab. But will the European Union? Will the UN? Will Russia? Will Tony Blair? Israelis deserve peace and security as much as Palestinians. But "new" and expanded "controversial" Israeli frontiers will not bring peace or security to either. © The Independent *** Ha'aretz 04/04/2006 UN aid workers: Gaza on verge of disaster By Akiva Eldar United Nations aid organizations are warning that the Gaza Strip is on the verge of a humanitarian disaster due to a lack of money and food. David Shearer, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told Foreign Ministry officials that if there is no significant change in the situation, Gaza will face a humanitarian crisis as bad as the one in Kosovo. A report by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) warns of a lack of basic food supplies due to the frequent closures of the Karni crossing that are preventing goods from reaching Gaza from Egypt. The report also said there has been a significant increase in the number of hungry people since financial aid has been halted. World Bank statistics show that if there is no dramatic change, 75 percent of Palestinians will be below the poverty line within two years. The current rate is 56 percent, compared to 22 percent in 2000. An Israeli security official said, "Israel is aware of the difficulties, and an effort is being made to find solutions without violating the decision not to be in contact with the Hamas government. The possibility of transferring funds via the office of the [Palestinian] presidency to the regional rulers who are directly subject to Abu Mazen is being examined. "In such a situation," he continued, "a certain amount of contact will be maintained with the Palestinian security services by creating channels between the Israel Defense Forces and the national security. Israel is aware of the humanitarian problems and does not want such a crisis." In the last two months, as a protest against the Hamas government, Israel has been withholding the transfer of some NIS 200 million a month in tax funds to the Palestinian Authority, and the United States and several other countries have frozen monthly financial aid payments coming to some $45 million. UNRWA officials are concerned that PA workers have not received their salaries this month, due to Israel withholding the tax money. The United Nations estimates that 37 percent of employed people in the Gaza Strip - more than 73,000 people - work for the PA. Basic needs UNRWA commissioner-general Karen Koning Abu Zayd told Haaretz that if the PA workers stop receiving their salaries, the UN organization will have a hard time coping with even the most basic needs of refugees. Abu Zayd expects 25,000 families will be added to the food distribution list and said UNRWA is lacking nearly $120 million of the $457.9 million it needs to fund basic needs. Out of the $150 million needed for projects, such as building schools, the organization has received only $14.3 million, she said. There is also a public health issue facing the Palestinians in Gaza, according to the UNRWA report: Some 850,000 fowl are suspected of having contracted bird flu. Donor nations have yet to transfer in full the money allotted to fight the virus. But the threat is not limited to the Palestinians. A report released last month by Stratfor, a consulting agency that provides intelligence assessments on world issues, noted that it is places such as the Gaza Strip where the bird pandemic is mostly to mutate into a flu that affects humans. The OCHA report, meanwhile, states that if the Palestinian Authority loses its sources of income due to the boycott on donations and the checkpoints remain closed to Palestinian goods, the PA's gross national product is expected to go down by at least a quarter. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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