Sorry friends, I do not know how to send one or two articles, so I thought to change the title of the email instead, and put the article's title. Thank you, Muhaideen
-----Original Message----- From: kiosk0207 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 8:51 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [abunimah] Aug 25: News 7 Analysis _______________________________ WEEKDAY PRESS PICKS FROM THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA AND ELECTRONIC IRAQ http://electronicIntifada.net http://electronicIraq.net _______________________________ 25 August 2004 NEWS: 1) Five injured by Israeli shell attack in Gaza (Xinhua) 2) Palestinian "intelligence chief" attacked, body guard killed (AFP) 3) Hunger-strking prisoners banned from Israeli hospitals (JT) 4) Top Israel commander: barriers 'motivate bombers' (Herald Sun) 5) Israel developing "skunk bomb" to use against Palestinian civilians (AFP) 6) Israel court orders UK journalist expelled (AP) 7) Rumsfeld-appointed panel whitewashes Abu Ghraib torture (NYT) ANALYSIS & VIEWS: 8) Betting on Mr. Sharon (Washington Post) 9) The rise and fall of the Zionist project for Palestine (Abu Nimah/JT) 10) Between violence and non-violence (Amira Hass/Haaretz) 11) Gaza Disengagement: Palestinian concerns ignored (Linh Truong/EI) 12) On Israel's banning of journalists (Guardian) 13) Neocons divided, some desire US invasion of Iran (Kirkpatrick/IHT) Ali Abunimah ********************************************************** (1) Israeli troops wound five Palestinians in Khan Younis Xinhua 25 August 2004 GAZA-- Five Palestinians were wounded on Wednesday when the Israeli Army forces shelled Khozaa town of eastern Khan Younis city in southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian security sources said. Palestinian medics described the residents' injuries as moderate and serious. However, Israeli sources claimed the five Palestinian men were planting a roadside bomb on the border near the area where the bomb exploded and they wounded themselves. Israeli military sources also reported a military force opened gunfire after Tuesday midnight on two Palestinian militants in an entrance gate of southern Gaza city of Beit Hanoun. Israeli sources said the two men were coming out of their car and seemed to be carrying "al Qassam" homemade rockets, adding that the Israeli force shot one of them but they survived and escaped. ********************************************************** (2) Palestinian intelligence chief wounded in deadly ambush on convoy Agence France Presse 25 August 2004 GAZA CITY Aug 25--The acting head of the Palestinian intelligence services was seriously wounded Wednesday when gunmen ambushed his convoy and killed two bodyguards in Gaza City, security and medical sources said. The attack targetted intelligence chief Tareq Abu Rajab's convoy near the Shatti refugee camp in the west of the city as it headed towards his local headquarters. Rajab was wounded in the chest and had been transferred for treatment at Gaza City's main Al-Shifa hospital where two other bodyguards were being treated, one of whom was in a serious condition. The sources said that one of the dead bodyguards, 27-year-old Khamis Abdel Jawad, was killed at the scene while a second, Samir Hijjo, 37, died of his injuries in hospital. Rajab, 58, has been at the helm of the intelligence services since previous incumbent Amin al-Hindi resigned in July after a series of kidnappings in the territory. The attack served to underscore the breakdown of law and order in the Gaza Strip which also saw the overall head of the Palestinian police force briefly kidnapped last month. The attack on the three-vehicle convoy appeared to have been carried out from inside the coastal refugee camp by three masked men who promptly fled the scene of the shooting. Traces of blood could be seen inside the car which had been carrying Abu Rajab while another vehicle had been riddled with bullets. The head of preventive security, General Rashid Abu Shabak, denounced the "cowardly crime" as he visited his colleague in hospital and promised that the perpetrators "will not escape punishment". "The Palestinian Authority must take firm measures to put an end to this deteriorating security situation to which no Palestinian official is now immune," he added. ********************************************************** (3) No hospitals for strikers -- Israel The Jordan Times 25 August 2004 http://jordantimes.com/wed/news/news2.htm OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (Agencies) -- Israel declared its hospitals off-limits on Tuesday for the 2,800 Palestinians on hunger strike in Israeli prisons, saying they could be treated in makeshift facilities behind bars if taken ill. "I am not prepared for there to be a situation where the lives of patients and medical teams are endangered in our hospitals as a result of us having to admit these murderers," Health Minister Danny Naveh told Army Radio. "If a field hospital has to be set up at a Prisons Service installation, then that is what should be done," Naveh said. Israeli Public Security Minister Tzahi Hanegbi, like Naveh a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's right-wing Likud Party, said last week he didn't care if the prisoners starved to death. Seen by Palestinians as symbols of resistance to Israeli occupation, the inmates at 10 jails are refusing food to force wardens to stop strip searches, allow more frequent family visits, improve sanitation and install public telephones. Israeli officials call the liquids-only fast that began on Aug. 15 a ploy by prisoners to secure easier communication with resistance groups waging a four-year-old Palestinian revolt. About 7,000 Palestinians taken into custody in security sweeps are held by Israel. Among the inmates are those who openly identify with Islamic groups sworn to its destruction, and thus elicit little sympathy among the Israeli public. Hisham Abdel-Razek, the Palestinian minister for prisoners affairs, called Naveh's comments "inhuman and arrogant." "Israel is behaving like a state above the law and Israeli ministers are acting as if they are above Israeli law," Abdel-Razek told Reuters. A Prisons Service spokesman said Israel had warned the prisoners in a leaflet they could be force-fed if critically ill, but that daily examinations found no serious health problems yet. "None of the prisoners has required anything more than basic healthcare," the spokesman, Ofer Leffler, said. "In fact, at least 124 of the prisoner have already broken the strike." Businesses and government offices across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Palestinians want for a state, closed on Tuesday in a show of solidarity with the prisoners. Many of their relatives are also fasting. Human rights group challenge A leading human rights group said jailors may have accelerated the debilitating effects of the fast by confiscating salt and other canteen products from striking prisoners' cells. "Salt is important," said Shabtai Gold of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, which has offered to monitor strikers. "People have died from this ... In the upcoming period, if the strike continues, there will be health problems." The Prisons Service said withholding inmate privileges was among tactics learned from Britain's handling of hunger strikes by jailed Northern Irish activists in the 1970s and 1980s. Officials said they also planned to barbecue meat outside the cells to try to break the prisoners' spirit. Challenging Naveh, Gold said: "If the prisoner is at the stage of needing medical care, how dangerous can he be? I don't know. You have security guards ... They can put them in a special ward, in a separate room. "But they have to allow them into the hospital." 'Sensitivity' to international criticism Meanwhile, Israel's defence minister, undaunted by growing resistance within the ruling party to a planned pullout from the Gaza Strip, said Tuesday that the army's blueprint for the withdrawal will be ready next month, according to the Associated Press. Gaza settlers charged that the government is already preparing to throw them out of their homes. Also Tuesday, Israel's attorney general urged the government to consider adopting an international convention governing the treatment of residents occupied lands. This showed increased Israeli sensitivity to international criticism, particularly in the aftermath of a world court ruling against its contentious West Bank separation barrier. In another development, the US said it plans to send to Israel a team to discuss its move to expand settlements in the West Bank. "We are working with the Israelis to clarify their intentions with regard to settlements," State Department deputy spokesman, Adam Ereli, said. The building has prompted protests from Palestinians as well as concern from the international community and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. ********************************************************** (4) Israeli barriers 'motivate bombers' The Herald Sun 25 August 2004 http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,10557206 %255E401,00.html >From correspondents in Jerusalem--A TOP Israeli military commander has admitted that many Palestinian would-be and successful suicide bombers were motivated by the humiliation they experienced at Israeli roadblocks in the West Bank. During four years of conflict, Israel has set up dozens of roadblocks and checkpoints in the West Bank, choking off commerce and travel. Palestinians frequently complain of mistreatment by soldiers - unnecessary delays, insults, and beatings. Colonel Noam Tibon, the chief "Nahal" brigade officer and former commander of the Hebron region in the southern West Bank, told the current issue of the soldiers' weekly, Bamahane, that such behaviour could backfire. "In a large proportion of interrogations of suicide bombers who were captured, we found that they or their relatives had experiences they considered humiliating at the hands of soldiers at roadblocks," Colonel Tibon told the weekly. Israel says it needs the roadblocks and checkpoints to stop attackers from entering Israel. "Unfortunately, we can't give up the roadblocks," Tibon said, "but we can operate them like human beings". The weekly reported on a study that found soldiers lacked proper equipment and training for dealing with large numbers of Palestinians at the roadblocks, where thousands cross every day. Reporting on a Nahal brigade training day, Bamahane quoted unnamed soldiers complaining about roadblock duty. "The roadblock sometimes looks like the wild West," one said. "When the 500th Palestinian passes in front of you, you develop apathy," another said. ********************************************************** (5) Israeli army sniffs opportunity to wipe out Palestinians with skunk bomb Agence France Presse 25 August 2004 DATELINE: JERUSALEM Aug 25--The Israeli army is set to unveil a new weapon designed to get under the noses of Palestinians -- a massive stink bomb. A report in the Maariv daily Wednesday said that the military, which has long used tear gas and rubber bullets, was fine-tuning the so-called "Skunk" bomb as a non-lethal means to disperse crowds. Scientists from the administration for the development of weapons and infrastructure investigated the pong emitted by skunks in nature to make their enemies flee, the paper said. Now security chiefs hope that the odour given off by the bombs will have much the same effect. Trials found that only a few drops of the odour can cause an unbearable stench and can also make clothes smell for five years. ********************************************************** (7) Israeli court orders British journalist to leave country By Laurie Copans Associated Press 25 August 2004 JERUSALEM-- An Israeli court on Wednesday ordered a British journalist with links to a pro-Palestinian group to leave the country, citing security concerns. Ewa Jasiewicz was refused entry into Israel on Aug. 11 and has been detained since then at Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport. Her lawyer pledged to appeal Wednesday's expulsion order to the Supreme Court. Israeli authorities charged that Jasiewicz is an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-led group that leads protests in the West Bank and Gaza. The 26-year-old freelance journalist writes for a leftist monthly and has worked with the group in the past. ISM activists have sometimes disrupted Israeli military operations by placing themselves between soldiers and Palestinians. Israel has recently detained a number of its activists as they tried to enter the country. In her expulsion order Wednesday, Tel Aviv District Court judge Drora Pilpel said that although Jasiewicz doesn't pose a direct threat to Israeli security, Palestinians could manipulate her "naivet'." Israeli authorities have paid extra attention to the ISM since an April 2003 suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed three people. The attackers had briefly visited ISM activists in Gaza before the attack, although the group denied any involvement in the bombing. In an earlier decision, the district court last week had said Jasiewicz could enter Israel, but not travel to the West Bank. The Supreme Court ordered the lower court to reconsider its decision. Jasiewicz's lawyer, Yael Berda, said called the decision "a total blow to the freedom of speech and freedom of the press." The court granted a 48-hour injunction on the expulsion, allowing Berda to appeal the expulsion to the Supreme Court. ********************************************************** (7) A Trail of 'Major Failures' Leads to Defense Secretary's Office By Douglas Jehl The New York Times 25 August 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/politics/25assess.html?hp WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 - For Donald H. Rumsfeld to resign over the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib would be a mistake, the four-member panel headed by James M. Schlesinger asserted Tuesday. But in tracing responsibility for what went wrong at Abu Ghraib, it drew a line that extended to the defense secretary's office. The panel cited what it called major failures on the part of Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides in not anticipating and responding swiftly to the post-invasion insurgency in Iraq. On the eve of the Republican convention, that verdict could not have been welcome at the White House, where postwar problems in Iraq represent perhaps President Bush's greatest political liability. The report rarely mentions Mr. Rumsfeld by name, referring most often instead to the "office of the secretary of defense.'' But as a sharp criticism of postwar planning for Iraq, it represents the most explicit official indictment to date of an operation that was very much the province of Mr. Rumsfeld and his top deputies. "Any defense establishment should adapt quickly to new conditions as they arise, and in this case, we were slow, at least in the judgment of the members of this panel, to adapt accordingly after the insurgency started in the summer of 2003,'' Mr. Schlesinger, a former defense secretary himself, said in presenting the panel's findings at the Pentagon on Tuesday. Beginning in late 2002, the panel said, Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff set the stage for an environment in which abuses later became widespread. They did this first by sowing confusion about what kinds of interrogation techniques would be permitted, then by failing to plan for the intensity of the post-invasion insurgency, and finally by delaying for months in dispatching reinforcements to help the American guards at Abu Ghraib contend with the swelling number of prisoners. The panel sidestepped the broader, even more contentious, question of whether Mr. Rumsfeld had sent enough troops to Iraq. It focused instead on what it described as short staffing among the military police, who were outnumbered by prisoners by a ratio of 75 to 1 at Abu Ghraib, and at the headquarters of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, whose 495-member staff numbered only about one-third of the authorized total. In the four months since the abuses at Abu Ghraib first came to light, some of Mr. Rumsfeld's critics have demanded his resignation, as a gesture of the accountability that the defense secretary himself has promised. But while the panel chronicled failures all the way up the civilian as well as the military command, all four members said that Mr. Rumsfeld's errors were less severe than those made by uniformed officers, and that he should not be forced from office for what they described as primarily failures of omission. "If the head of a department had to resign every time someone below him did something wrong, it'd be a very empty cabinet table,'' said Harold Brown, defense secretary under President Jimmy Carter and a panel member. Indeed, members of the panel went out of their way to praise Mr. Rumsfeld for having tried to avert abuses by directing his staff beginning in late 2002 to draw up rules for interrogation at the American detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But they said confusion about those rules, which were rewritten several times as part of a fierce Pentagon debate, ultimately added to problems in Afghanistan and Iraq as the procedures were put into force there, without adequate supervision, by military intelligence units that were moved from Cuba to the Middle East. Mr. Rumsfeld, who was briefed on the findings by video conference on Tuesday morning, responded later in the day only with a brief statement, saying that the panel had provided "important information and recommendations.'' "We have said from the beginning that we would see that these incidents were fully investigated, make findings, make the appropriate corrections, and make them public,'' Mr. Rumsfeld said. As described by Tillie K. Fowler, another member of the group and a former Republican congresswoman from Florida, the panel's mission was to find out "how this happened and who let it happen,'' a reference to the abuses that came to public attention in April with the publication of what have now become infamous photographs. The abuses depicted in those photographs themselves were primarily the work of a small group of wayward soldiers, including the seven members of a military police unit who have already been charged with the crime, the panel members said Tuesday. But the panel took issue with the idea, voiced publicly by senior officials including Mr. Bush, that the full array of misconduct at the prison was limited to no more than "a few'' soldiers. "We found a string of failures that go well beyond an isolated cellblock in Iraq,'' Ms. Fowler said at the Pentagon. "We found fundamental failures throughout all levels of command, from the soldiers on the ground to the Central Command and to the Pentagon," she said. "These failures of leadership helped to set the conditions which allowed for the abusive practice to take place.'' In addressing the role played by Mr. Rumsfeld in particular, the panel's report emphasized the defense secretary's decisions beginning on Dec. 2, 2002, to authorize for use at Guantanamo Bay 16 additional interrogation procedures more aggressive than the 17 methods long approved as part of standard military practice. The next month, in response to criticisms from the Navy, Mr. Rumsfeld rescinded a majority of the approved measures, and directed that the remaining aggressive techniques could be used only with his approval. But it was not until April 16, 2003, the report said, that a final list of approved techniques for use at Guantanamo was issued. It said that those changes "were an element contributing to uncertainties in the field as to which techniques were authorized,'' and that ultimately "the augmented techniques for Guantanamo migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq where they were neither limited nor safeguarded.'' "Had the secretary of defense had a wider range of legal opinions and a more robust debate regarding detainee policies and operations, his policy of April 16, 2003, might well have been developed and issued in early December 2002,'' the report said. "This would have avoided the policy changes which characterized the Dec. 2, 2002, to April 16, 2003, period.'' In terms of postwar planning, members of the panel faulted the Pentagon for assuming that the problems encountered in Iraq after a full-scale American invasion in 2003 would be limited to the refugee issues that followed the limited incursion of the Persian Gulf war of 1991. By last summer, as it became clear "that there was a major insurgency growing in Iraq,'' the report said, senior leaders within the uniformed military and the Pentagon "should have moved to meet the need for additional military police forces'' to help guard prisoners at Abu Ghraib in particular, whose population had begun to overwhelm the members of the 800th Military Police Brigade, who ultimately became the primary agents in the acts of abuse. Here in particular, the panel made clear its view that by October or November at least, the void should have been filled by Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides. Using an acronym that refers to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the report said, "It is the judgment of this panel that in the future, considering the sensitivity of this kind of mission, the OSD should assure itself that serious limitations in detention/interrogation missions do not occur.'' **************** ANALYSIS & VIEWS **************** (8) Betting on Mr. Sharon The Washington Post 25 August 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30284-2004Aug24. html IN APRIL President Bush placed a high-risk bet on Israel's Ariel Sharon. He delivered, in writing, commitments of U.S. support for Israel's position on crucial outstanding issues for a settlement with the Palestinians, on the prospect that this would spur Mr. Sharon to carry out a proposed Israeli evacuation of settlements in the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank. Mr. Bush's concessions have exacerbated an already parlous U.S. diplomatic position in the Middle East; Mr. Sharon, meanwhile, has suffered a string of reverses in his attempt to carry out the withdrawal. The administration might have responded by reassessing its reliance on a notoriously reckless leader. Instead, Mr. Bush has doubled up on his bet. Over the past few days administration officials have let it be known that they will not object to the recent announcement by Mr. Sharon's government of more than 2,000 new housing units in Jewish settlements in the West Bank -- even though official administration policy opposes all such construction. The new homes are in settlements near Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that Israel expects to annex in any eventual peace agreement with the Palestinians -- an expectation Mr. Bush publicly supported as part of his gift package to Mr. Sharon in April. Their high-profile approval by Mr. Sharon is intended, in part, to split the fierce opposition movement that now blocks his Gaza plan, thereby raising the chances that the evacuation can begin as scheduled next year. That withdrawal would be a significant step toward a Middle East settlement and could help U.S. standing in the region. For now, though, the United States will pay the price for its latest concession to Mr. Sharon, which has been headline news in Israel and around the Middle East. Once again the Bush administration will be seen as uncritically supporting a move by Israel to expand settlements regarded by the rest of the world as illegal, in contradiction to stated U.S. policy and commitments to allies in Europe and the Middle East. The fact that the White House has taken this position at a time when Mr. Bush is seeking support from pro-Israel voters in Florida and other closely contested states will raise reasonable questions about whether there are any grounds for his position other than electoral pandering. Administration officials would say that there are -- that they are confident that in the end Mr. Sharon will deliver. Maybe they are right, but the cost is growing. ********************************************************** (9) The rise and fall of the Zionist project for Palestine By Hasan Abu Nimah The Jordan Times 25 August 2004 http://jordantimes.com/wed/opinion/opinion3.htm The creation of Israel in 1948 was a source of great relief for the Western world. Palestine was presented by Zionist propaganda to a sympathetic West, at the time, as "a country without people": a perfect place for "a people without a country". Many people in the West also believed that Palestine was a desert and "Israel" would, and in fact did, make it bloom. The Palestinians who had to leave their historic land to make room for the incoming Jews had alternatives. The vast Arab world was large enough to accommodate them. The Jews, on the other hand, had only that narrow strip of land, Palestine, to settle in. There was no Arab presence in the West to correct a distorted view of the state and the history of the region, and the Arabs had few means of making their voices heard in the West. Their reliance on the justice of their cause was an additional factor contributing to their passiveness. They were then, as they are still now, neither united behind their cause nor able to plan their future. They always waited for others to rescue them from the "catastrophe" which visited them. Their failure to stand up for their rights, as well as their inability to defend their land, strengthened the view that prevailed in many parts of the West that the Arabs were no more than backward nomads and probably did not deserve the same consideration as their adversaries. While the creation of Israel as a national home for the Jews was seen in the West as a great historic achievement, a fulfilment, an expansion of civilisation into a culturally barren land and, most importantly, an absolution, for the West, of the guilt complex of the Holocaust, the plight of the Palestinians was seen merely as a humanitarian problem. The UN was mobilised to provide the needed charity. All measures by the UN were no more than soothing words, with no effort to enforce international law. Indeed, the only parts of UN resolutions that were implemented were the ones that helped solidify and legitimise the Zionist project in the region. The rest remained dead letters. Israeli leaders realised right from the beginning that the convenient circumstances that existed in the late 1940s might not last forever. Specifically, the Arab states could not remain endlessly weak and divided. The answer was to build in Israel enough military power to cope with any eventuality. Israel's only guarantee for survival amidst an ocean of "Arab hostility", its leaders believed, was military superiority, and this superiority was further enhanced, at a very early stage in Israel's life, by acquiring nuclear capability with the help of Western powers. Consequently, Israel won all its military wars with the Arabs. Even before Israel was formally created, and before it had its "defence forces", Jewish fighters managed to occupy 78 per cent of the historic land of Palestine and to ethnically cleanse most of it. Most of the armies of the Arab League member states, except the Jordanian Arab legion, which was able to defend its portion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, were defeated. That was the first Israeli military victory against the Palestinian and other Arab irregular defenders and the Arab states armies. In 1956, France and the UK conspired with Israel to seize the Sinai Peninsula and retake the Suez Canal. Israel served this purpose faithfully, marking the second major Israeli military victory against the largest Arab state. In June 1967, Israel, in response to minor provocations and border incidents but much political rhetoric from "revolutionary" Arab regimes, attacked again, on three fronts -- Egypt, Syria and Jordan. The victory of the Israeli army was even more spectacular this time, with the occupation of Sinai up to the shores of the Suez Canal for the second time. (Israel had to evacuate Sinai, except for the Tiran straights, under American and Soviet pressure, following the 1956 invasion). The Israeli invaders also occupied all that was left of Palestine (the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza) and the Syrian Golan Heights. The 1973 war, although it was an Egyptian-Syrian initiative to liberate occupied Arab lands, turned from a near Arab victory into defeat when Israel managed once more to overcome the initial surprise and overrun the attackers on both fronts. Up to that point, Israel had successfully used its military superiority as a tool for political achievement. Easy Israeli military victories prepared the ground for easy Israeli political gains. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982, marked the end of the era of political advantage through military conquest. From another stunning military victory against the Palestinian guerrillas who dominated the south and a non-belligerent Lebanon, Israel failed to extract any political advantage. On the contrary, the invasion was actually counter-productive from Israel's perspective. Although initially welcomed by some Lebanese factions, the invasion killed tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians and destroyed much of the country. With the occupation of the capital, Beirut, with mounting atrocities culminating in the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla, and with the humiliating imposition on the Lebanese government of the May 17, 1983, "Peace treaty", the Lebanese resistance turned against the enemy, forcing them to cut their losses and run. The May agreement was abrogated and Israel retreated to its so-called "Security Zone" in the south, from which it was eventually driven in 2000 by relentless resistance. Many factors contributed to the failure of the Israeli adventure in Lebanon. The most relevant here is that while strong armies are good for formal wars, they are more often totally ineffective against popular resistance, as the case was in Lebanon. The fragmented Lebanese army was neither the target of the invaders nor was it the force which forced their departure. This, precisely, was the problem of the powerful Israeli army against the first Intifada (1987-1993), which was only ended by the failed Oslo accords, and the second Intifada, which is still active. When powerful armies fight civilian populations, their strength becomes instantly their weakness. They lose legitimacy as their actions -- firing missiles at residential quarters and killing innocent people -- become war crimes and atrocities. That is what an occupation army is doing in Iraq and an occupation army is doing in Palestine. The more crimes they commit the more moral power they lose, and that gradually blunts their military strength as well. Both processes are evident in Iraq and Palestine, though the situation in Palestine demonstrates that an occupier can remain in place for decades, causing untold suffering and misery in the meantime. But eventually the crimes catch up with the wrongdoer. The Israeli dilemma nowadays is that there is no Palestinian army to defeat. Israel is fighting millions of civilians, whose crimes, it seems, is, first, that they exist, and, second, that they unanimously reject being dispossessed or subjugated, a fate that Zionism envisages for them. All that this can achieve is more murder, further deepening the wounds and further widening the gulf of hatred. Obviously, Israel wants the land without the people. Neither with its conventional military power nor with its nuclear can Israel defeat the Palestinians. The options, therefore, are either to eliminate five million Palestinians, as some Israelis still fantasise, or make them Israeli citizens. Either way means the end of the Zionist project for Palestine, and each passing day brings that end palpably closer. The writer is former ambassador and permanent representative of Jordan at the UN. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times. ********************************************************** (10) Between violence and non-violence By Amira Hass Haaretz 25 August 2004 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/468932.html The Mahatma Gandhi's grandson is visiting the country this week at the invitation of Palestinians who want to advance the idea of a popular struggle against the Israeli occupation. Gandhi is slated to speak to Palestinians about non-violent struggle, but it is a discussion that we Israelis should also conduct. As occupiers. The original violence, the primordial, ongoing violence, is the violence of the side that imposed through its military superiority a reign over another nation. Can Israeli society be attentive to the popular Palestinian struggle, and conduct the necessary internal revolution to truly disengage from the colonialist characteristics of the state of Israel? Even without tanks and helicopter fire, the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza is violent and has been since 1967, including the years 1994-2000, when most Israelis liked to believe that we had left the territories. Violent are the orders expropriating Palestinian land for "public purposes" that is only for Jews; violent is the way Israel distributes water - as much water as they want for the settlements near villages that aren't even connected to water lines; violent are the occupation lawyers who defined "state land" as land Palestinians are not allowed to develop, and Civil Administration inspectors who take note of every new vine and olive planted in that land; violent is the Shin Bet officer who pleasantly tells someone who needs a travel permit "to help us and we'll help you," and those who send that person on his mission; violent are the planners who drew boundaries around the Palestinian towns and surrounded them with settlements and security roads; violent are the bureaucratic arrangements that create queues in which people wait for hours and days to see a Civil Administration clerk; violent is the Israeli prohibition that prevents native-born West Bankers and Gazans from returning to their homes if they happened to be out of the country in 1967; violent is the concept that Divine Promise is a license to impose a regime of discrimination based on ethnicity. The Palestinians who to try to waken in their society a recognition of the efficiency of the unarmed popular struggle belong publicly and unequivocally to the "two-state solution" school. These are mostly veteran, determined Fatah activists as well as members or associates of the People's Party, the former Communist Party, which supported the two-state solution long before the PLO adopted it. Their job is to persuade their constituents that a popular struggle is far more effective than an armed struggle. They face two main obstacles. The first is an Israeli talent to excuse everything with "security concerns" or "military needs" - which in turn relies on the brainwashing that the Palestinians only want to destroy us, and that the current conflict has nothing to do with the Israeli occupation. Let's assume that as part of a non-violent popular struggle, the Palestinians decide to send out 50,000 people one day to plant olive trees in an area defined as "state lands" near their villages. Would the IDF impose a curfew or closure on the villages and roads on the grounds that armed men might infiltrate the planters, or that there is a risk to a nearby settlement? And let's assume that 20,000 Palestinian planters decide to take the chance and ignore the army's order closing the area; can we be sure that no Israeli commander would order soldiers to shoot - first tear gas, and then live fire - on the thousands of people carrying only hoes? And assume that there would be a few hundred people carrying olive saplings ready to be wounded, indeed even killed. Would they, as casualties, manage to shake Israeli society? And let's say that the IDF makes do with uprooting the saplings, over and over, and not shoot? Would Israeli society then understand that it is the Palestinians' right to develop their land, even if it is not privately owned? That is the second obstacle, and it is much tougher. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis - and possibly more - have an interest in the settlements remaining in place, constantly expanding, and in new highways that connect every remote settlement to Kfar Sava and Beit Shemesh, and Israeli control over all the water sources in the West Bank. There is the interest of Israelis whose country does not offer them any hope for improvement in their standard of living unless they move to settlements in the territories. There is the interest of Israeli companies that build the settlements, the security industries that manufacture equipment and trains people to defend the safety of the settlers, and of anyone who has a direct or indirect connection to settlers: family, employers, employees, Shin Bet officers and their families, officials from the educational and health systems. For decades, a complex web of interests has grown. This complex network, combined with the well-known mantra about an existential security risk emanating from the Palestinians - as opposed to the real, personal risk faced by soldiers and civilians - has made the Palestinian resistance silent to most Israelis. Those interested parties will back the army, whatever means it uses to put down any popular struggle. The armed Palestinian struggle did not manage to halt the Israeli settlement enterprise. Does that mean nothing can stand in the way of the violence of the occupation? ********************************************************** (11) Gaza Disengagement: Palestinian concerns ignored By Linh Truong The Electronic Intifada 24 August 2004 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3032.shtml Photo: Johannes Abeling Right-wing Israelis and many Palestinians have at least one thing in common: Both fear the disastrous ramifications of Sharon's Disengagement Plan. Of course, one viewpoint is an expansionist one that seeks to drive Palestinians from their land, while the other one comes from the very real fear that Sharon will show flexibility on Gaza only in order to entrench the occupation in the West Bank. Many members of the Likud party regard the withdrawal of settlements and certain military installations as a "reward for terrorism" that will only result in further attacks from Gaza. As a result, Sharon has attempted to minimize these concerns by vigorously pursuing the West Bank barrier. The fear of the Palestinians is that Sharon will move on Gaza and then stop prior to a full West Bank withdrawal. Many Palestinians objecting to Sharon's plan point out the obvious and troublesome flaws, which may prove to be detrimental to not only the Palestinians but the path towards peace: To date, the Bush administration has failed to grapple meaningfully with the Gaza Disengagement Plan in the context of its being a first step within the scenario of a full withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. From the Bush-Sharon Press Conference on April 14, 2004 about the Gaza Disengagement Plan, President Bush expressed his approval, "Success will require the active efforts of many nations...These steps can open the door to progress toward a peaceful, democratic, viable Palestinian state. Working together, we can help build democratic Palestinian institutions..." President Bush mentions many nations and organizations that will "work together" to make a Palestinian state, including the U.S., Israel, Egypt, Jordan, the EU, Russia, and the United Nations. Leaders from around the world are cited except the Palestinians. It is a telling omission as the Disengagement Plan obviously bears most directly on Palestinians. A unilateral Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip will: 1. undermine the Palestinian Authority in present and future negotiations, and 2. allow Israel to build itself an obstacle in its "progress toward a peaceful, democratic, viable Palestinian state" by refusing to address or even acknowledge the legitimate concerns of its counterparts. In order to avoid negotiating with the Palestinians, Israel has consulted Egypt to help with security issues in Gaza after the withdrawal. Egypt, however, sensibly refuses to put troops into Gaza to mop up the mess Sharon is creating or to participate as a middle man in any Israeli hand over of power to an impotent Palestinian entity. Egypt prefers that the Israelis deal directly with the Palestinians. Israel, for its part, has clearly forsaken the bilateral peace process that is necessary to establish any progress towards reconciliation between Israel and Palestine. The Bush and Sharon administrations appear oblivious to the fact that real peace must include the Palestinians and not simply be a series of negotiations between Israeli and American officials. >From the General Outline of the Disengagment Plan that was communicated by the Israeli Prime Minister's Office on April 18, 2004, Sharon sketches the provisions under which the disengagement will occur. 1) "The assumption [is] that, in any future permanent status arrangement, there will be no Israeli towns and villages in the Gaza Strip. On the other hand, it is clear that in the West Bank, there are areas which will be part of the State of Israel, including cities, towns and villages, security areas and installations, and other places of special interest to Israel." The second part of this provision explicitly conveys Israel's continued desire to occupy land in the West Bank even after a withdrawal from Gaza. But it is rather vague in its language about exactly what these "other places of special interest to Israel" are. Such open-ended phrases regarding the West Bank in the General Outline and Sharon's unveiling of the Disengagement Plan in the face of international criticism of the West Bank barrier lead many critics to conclude that Sharon's ulterior motive is to deflect attention away from the barrier and expansion into West Bank territory. 2) "Initially, Israel will continue to maintain a military presence along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt (Philadelphi route). This presence is an essential security requirement. At certain locations security considerations may require some widening of the area in which the military activity is conducted." The passage of Palestinians through the border of the Gaza Strip and Egypt will remain heavily restricted, and the "buffer zone" will be enlarged at the expense of Palestinians who will continue to lose their homes. This "buffer zone" has already resulted in the demolition of 2,500 homes and has left more than 17,000 Palestinians homeless. One can excuse Palestinians dispossessed in recent weeks of being less than sanguine about Sharon's intentions. 3) "Israel will guard and monitor the external land perimeter of the Gaza Strip, will continue to maintain exclusive authority in Gaza air space, and will continue to exercise security activity in the sea off the coast of the Gaza Strip." One of the main concerns of the critics of the plan is ongoing Israeli authority over Palestinian territorial waters, airspace, and borders. This arrangement is not conducive to President Bush's hope for "the Palestinian people to build a modern economy that will lift millions out of poverty". This failure is striking as Bush has time and again reduced the Palestinian cause to an economic/humanitarian one. He fails to grasp that, at root, it is about territory and self-determination rather than simply a bigger economy and good governance. >From an economist's standpoint, the restrictive Israeli disengagement plan may lead to a total collapse of Gaza's economy. By controlling Palestinian coastal waters, Israel prohibits Palestinian access to natural resources offshore (natural gas and fish stocks). By removing Palestinians from their natural gas resources, Israel has effectively prevented Palestinians from building their own electricity infrastructure or exporting the newly found resource. The Israeli control of airspace will prevent the Palestinians from importing and exporting goods and the development of mobile phone service and satellite technology. The control of the Gaza Strip borders will continue to restrict Palestinian movement into and out of their own territory, further separating Palestinians in Gaza from Palestinians in the West Bank - not to mention separating them from the rest of the world. In addition, the continued restrictions on Palestinian imports and exports will reduce the growth of the Gaza Strip's economy to Israeli discretion. For example, Israel has already ensured that Palestinians can only buy fuel from Israel. Under the Paris Protocol, Palestinians are entitled to buy fuel from other countries, but Israel's fuel quality standards make it too expensive for Palestinians to purchase fuel from others. Sharon's Disengagement Plan will continue these arrangements, thus preserving Israel's economy while suppressing the growth of the Palestinian economy. The Israeli government does provide for some potential economic growth by "leaving the immovable property relating to Israeli towns and villages intact" but with possible monetary compensations made to Israel. Even so, without access to global markets, Gaza's chances for economic prosperity are greatly diminished. Furthermore, Sharon mentions in his outline the "possibility of establishment of a seaport and airport in the Gaza Strip only when conditions permit it". The current conditions will turn the Gaza Strip into an enormous open-air prison by maintaining strong control of its external borders. These conditions will not be conducive to economic prosperity in the region and may instigate a new level of border tension. In order to improve the conditions in the Gaza Strip to the point where Israel will again begin negotiations with the Palestinians, Sharon's Gaza Disengagement Plan must be full and complete in that it will lead to Palestinian control over its territory and international borders. In addition, Israel cannot claim to ease Palestinians into economic independence while continuing to demolish their homes and further expand into West Bank territory. The plan needs to be an integral part of a bigger vision for peace between Israel and Palestine. Otherwise, as Ha'aretz columnist Amir Oren described in his article "Occupation Without Presence" on July 14, 2004, the Gaza Plan will merely become "occupation by remote control" with Sharon attempting to escape responsibility for the occupation while continuing its negative consequences. UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and Personal Representative of the Secretary-General Terje Roed-Larsen exclaimed, "If such a withdrawal was implemented in the wrong way, it would lead to more violence, possibly bringing the situation to a new low in the dismal annals of the Palestinian-Israeli tragedy." In the words of President Bush about the work towards a Palestinian state, "I believe a Palestinian state, when properly done, will provide enough hope for people, [and] provide a peaceful avenue for those who aspire for a better future." His words are exactly right, but his current actions will not produce these desired results. Under the current provisions of Sharon's Gaza Disengagement Plan, the prospect of a better future for Palestinians remains bleak. Linh Truong is a summer intern for Partners for Peace. ********************************************************** (12) Reporting for duty The Guardian 25 August 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,1290027,00.html It is two weeks since a British journalist was detained on arrival in Israel and told she would be deported as a political activist whose reports would "not be objective". Last week, Ewa Jasiewicz, who went to Israel to report for the left-wing magazine Red Pepper, briefly won her appeal and was allowed to enter the country, on condition she did not enter the occupied West Bank or Gaza. Within hours, the Israeli government appealed against even that, and Ms Jasiewicz was once more detained. The supreme court then ruled that her case must be reheard in the district court. Ms Jasiewicz will be back in the dock again today. The Israeli case against Ms Jasiewicz centres on her links with the International Solidarity Movement, the pro-Palestinian group whose members try to block Israeli forces carrying out security operations in the occupied territories. Two ISM supporters, one of them the Briton Tom Hurndall, who was shot by an Israeli soldier in Gaza last year, have been killed in the past two years, and more than 60 others have been deported. Ms Jasiewicz is indisputably a critic of Israeli policy. She is not alone in that. But she is also a working journalist, who holds a UK and an international press card. She was commissioned by a bona fide publication to report from Israel. Israel is a democracy and is committed to free speech. It stands out among its neighbours for these freedoms, and it rightly takes pride in them. It has a good past record of allowing foreign journalists to travel within the country and the occupied territories and to report what they see, even in very difficult circumstances. But the arrest of foreign journalists like Ms Jasiewicz and the limiting of their journalistic work causes damage to Israel's freedoms and reputation. That damage is worse than the damage done by inaccurate or even hostile reporting. These are not our words but those of the National Federation of Israeli Journalists in a letter last week to Ariel Sharon. The British government should press Ms Jasiewicz's case to report freely. So, even more importantly, should the Israelis themselves. ********************************************************** (13) Letter from Washington: The hawks on Iraq turn on each other By David D. Kirkpatrick The International Herald Tribune 24 August 2004 http://www.iht.com/articles/535483.htm In the 18 months since President George W. Bush went to war against Iraq, the hawkish intellectuals who built the case for the invasion have largely stood their ground. This close-knit community, often called neoconservative - which includes Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary; Richard Perle, former chairman of the Defense Policy Board; and William Kristol of the magazine The Weekly Standard - has often emphasized what it said were the invasion's underappreciated successes. Occasionally, some have faulted the U.S. military for mistakes in execution, like using too little force. Lately, however, there has been emerging discord within their ranks over the lessons from the war. Earlier this month, Francis Fukuyama, author of "The End of History" and one of the most influential thinkers associated with the movement, surprised many by delivering a lengthy attack on the neoconservatives' longstanding arguments in support of the war in Iraq, including their confidence in building a democracy there and their assessment of the threat from Islamic radicalism. In the clubby world of neoconservative intellectuals, many of whom are longtime friends and allies, Fukuyama's repudiation of the case for war, which appeared in The National Interest, was all the more startling because he presented it as an attack on a recent speech by his friend, the columnist Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post. Fukuyama faces stiff resistance. In an interview on Friday, Krauthammer says he is publishing a rebuttal in the next issue of The National Interest portraying Fukuyama's critique as "breathtakingly incoherent." Others are redoubling their arguments for the invasion of Iraq, contending that it should be the first step in a campaign to transform the region. In the next issue of Commentary magazine, Norman Podhoretz, who helped found the neoconservative movement in the 1970s, has written a 37-page defense of the Bush administration's foreign policy. In "World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win," he argues that the United States should now help seek the liberation of other Middle Eastern countries to help drain the swamp where Islamic radicalism breeds, just as the cold war helped liberate the Soviet Union. "Like anybody else in the world who is sane, I am very much worried about Iran gaining nuclear capacity," Podhoretz said in an interview Friday. "I am not advocating the invasion of Iran at this moment, although I wouldn't be heartbroken if it happened." Certainly, many plain old conservatives - or paleoconservatives - opposed the war from the beginning or changed their minds as the war progressed. But neoconservatives laid the intellectual foundation for the war, and they attained influence within the Bush administration. Many are also bound together by friendships with influential members of the administration's foreign policy team, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the undersecretary of defense, Douglas Feith. Fukuyama, for example, said he was a student at Cornell decades ago when he first became friends with Wolfowitz. Although few in the movement have criticized the neoconservative argument for the war as comprehensively as Fukuyama did, several others said his argument with Krauthammer had captured widespread attention as a new stage in the debate over the lessons of Iraq. "These are two of the intellectual heavyweights among neoconservatives, and their dispute is real," said Gary Rosen, managing editor of Commentary. "People are looking for guidance on this, and these are two strong proponents of opposing views within the movement." In an interview last week, Fukuyama said that he had harbored private doubts about the war at the time, although he kept quiet about them then. "I figured it was going to happen anyway, and there wasn't anything I could do about it," he said. "I believed it was a big roll of the dice, and I didn't believe it was a wise bet. But on the other hand, it was a roll of the dice, and for all I knew, it might have worked." He added, "It turned out to be even worse than I anticipated." But as he was listening to his friend Krauthammer deliver a recent speech on the theme of the United States as a unipolar power, Fukuyama said, he grew increasingly agitated. Krauthammer's speech "is strangely disconnected from reality," Fukuyama said in his article. "One gets the impression that the Iraq war," Fukuyama continued, "has been an unqualified success, with all of the assumptions and expectations on which the war had been based vindicated." Like many other critics of the war, he argued that Krauthammer and other neoconservatives were overconfident about turning Iraq into a democracy, too quick to dismiss arguments of longtime allies, and too willing to give up the practical advantages of partnership with other nations. Most of all, though, he argued that Krauthammer and other supporters of the war mischaracterized Iraq and Islamic radicals as an immediate threat to the existence of the United States, a claim that justified immediate intervention. The Soviet Union arguably threatened the existence of the United States, Fukuyama argues, but Iraq never did. But, Fukuyama said, he retained his neoconservative principles - a belief in the universal aspiration for democracy and the use of American power to spread democracy in the world. He said he was acknowledging the mistakes to preserve the credibility of the neoconservative movement. Krauthammer, for his part, argued that Fukuyama's essay did not amount to much of a critique at all. "His recalibrations are astonishingly empty," he said, arguing that Fukuyama's criticisms were undercut by his ultimate endorsement of the same neoconservative views. "I have never read a piece which is ostensibly meant to attack a person's position and then ends up explicitly endorsing it," he said. But he said that there was one substantive disagreement. "To think that the threat to the United States from Islamic radicalism is not existential is absurd," he said, comparing Al Qaeda today to Hitler in 1936, when he occupied the Rhineland. Hitler did not have the means then to overrun Europe, but, Krauthammer said, "he soon acquired the means." Podhoretz, another old friend of Fukuyama's, said, he, too, disagreed. "Some things went wrong, but things always go wrong in every war," he said. "It is always a question of compared to what?" Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and another founder of the neoconservative movement, said she, too, had doubts about the invasion. But she didn't think the debate over the Iraq war was about neoconservatism. "I think there's almost an epidemic of the use of the term," she said. For now, Fukuyama said, he was awaiting the full response from Krauthammer and his other neoconservative friends. "I have gotten a lot of e-mails from non-neoconservatives who liked it," he said. "I have yet to hear from almost any of my friends about it." Roger Cohen is on vacation. Thursday: Jane Perlez writes on Indonesia's threat to jail the editor of a prominent magazine. ********************************************************** MAILING LIST INSTRUCTIONS: Your e-mail address is considered private and will not be passed to any third party by either me or Yahoo Groups who hosts my mailing list. 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