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Today's
Stories
December 12, 2003
David Vest
Bush
Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton
December 11, 2003
Siegfried Sassoon
A
Soldier's Declaration Against War
Douglas Valentine
Preemptive
Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program
John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra
Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride
James M. Carter
The
Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq
December 10, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Pat Youngblood / Robert
Jensen
Workers
Rights are Human Rights
Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children
CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart
Case
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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December
12, 2003
Two States or One?
An
Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva Accords
By JEAN-PAUL BARROIS
Translated from the French for CounterPunch
by Norman Madarasz (nmphdiol2@yahoo.ca)
Question: Can you tell us a little
about yourself?
I am a Christian of Palestinian origin
and a Swiss citizen. I have lived in Switzerland since 1970.
I earned my Bachelor's degree (1974) and my Ph.D. in law at the
University of Fribourg (1979). I also have a degree in political
science from the Geneva Institute of International Studies (1976).
Since 1980, I have been working for a Swiss institute as head
of Arab and Muslim Law.
I have written several books and articles
dealing mainly with the ties between law, religion and politics.
My doctoral dissertation was a study of non-Muslims in Egypt.
My latest book is on Muslims in the West. You can find a bibliographical
list of my publications and a few articles on my website: www.go.to/samipage.
Question: Tell us about your involvement
in the Palestinian Question?
Before coming to Switzerland, I had worked
as a local employee of the International Red Cross in the Jenin
region for two years. My job was to accompany Red Cross delegates
and their interpreters. I would greet and visit the families
of Palestinian prisoners. I could see the misery of my compatriots.
When I came to Switzerland on a student's scholarship, I told
myself I would not go into politics. My goal was to finish my
studies and return home to better serve the people there. But
in seeing Swiss Zionist Jews indiscriminately defending Israel
I told myself I could not remain silent.
One day these Zionists distributed a
tract in Switzerland requesting money to "make the desert
bloom". I was then reminded of the village of Emmaus, the
famous Biblical village that Israel had completely razed to the
ground in 1967 after expelling its inhabitants. At the place
where the village once stood, Israel has planted a forest for
picnickers called Canada Park, thanks to the "generosity"
of Canadian Jews. Israel has erased the traces of this village
with a forest! I then started to wonder about how many other
Palestinian villages suffered the same fate under the effect
of Israeli lies to "make the desert bloom". I later
encountered Israel Shahak's list, which I publicized in various
letters to the editor I sent to Swiss newspapers. The Zionists
accused me of lying. I then offered to submit the list to the
Hebrew University to see whether the list was true or not. They
rejected my offer. I then discovered they were speaking in bad
faith. Meanwhile I was able to get three pictures of Emmaus from
Father Pierre Medebielle of Jerusalem taken before and after
Israel's destruction of the village. I had them published in
Switzerland. The Zionists once again accused me of lying. Yet
the photos are there to see! I knew this village well since I
had visited it before and after its destruction.
In March 1987 I decided to found an association
with my Swiss friends to rebuild Emmaus. Our goal was to make
the history of the village and its inhabitants' demands known.
One of our members, Christophe Uehlinger, took care of checking
the list of Palestinian villages destroyed by Israel based on
Israel Shahak's list, as well as Israeli maps specifically mentioning
the names of villages with a Hebrew overprint "harouss",
which means "destroyed". This list was published in
two editions by the Association for Reconstruction of Emmaus.
I also put the list of villages classified according to their
district on the Internet, without the other details featured
in Christophe Uehlinger's brochure, so they could be available
to anyone (see the list in: http://w1.858.telia.com/).
Swiss-Italian television went to Palestine
to shoot an investigative report on the village of Emmaus. At
the time, the crew met an Israeli soldier from Kibbutz Nachshon
who had participated in the 1967 Six-Day War and had taken pictures
of the destruction of Emmaus, and the expulsion of its inhabitants
by Israel. We were able to buy the pictures in order to have
a documented record of the village's destruction. These photos
are now available on the Internet (http://www.lpj.org/Nonviolence/Sami/Album.html).
The documentary was broadcast by Swiss-Italian television on
May 29, 1987. The inhabitants of Emmaus keep demanding the right
to return to their homes, but the Israeli authorities have refused
to grant them that right.
Question: Tell us about the Association
for One Democratic State in Palestine/Israel.
Emmaus is one among 385 Palestinian villages
destroyed by Israel. Its inhabitants are one example among many
of Palestinians who were expelled from their lands and homes.
With the collapse of the Oslo Accords and the Roadmap for Peace,
which gave refugees a lot of hope, I told myself we also had
to take care of the other Palestinian refugees. The main goal
of these two accords, and for that matter the Geneva Accord,
was to create two States. As such, the Israelis sought to strip
the refugees of the right to return home. They told them: "You
have a Palestinian State now for yourselves. You no longer have
a right to come and live in the Jewish State. Get yourself a
place to live in your own State." This will never be accepted
by the refugees, who are the eternal losers of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. They have proved themselves able to bring down any
accord that has not taken their right to return into account.
After all, if Sharon the Russian and Peres the Pole have the
right to come and live in Palestine, it's incomprehensible why
these refugees would not be authorized to return home. I want
to emphasize here that such a right poses no major problems since
most of the villages destroyed by Israel are uninhabited. Most
of the time, Israel has simply covered them over with forests
so as to wipe out their traces.
Apart from the refugee problem, it had
to be made clear that the creation of two states means that the
Palestinian State will have a Muslim majority discriminating
against non-Muslims and women, and that the majority in the Israeli
State will be Jewish and discriminate against non-Jews and women.
Finally, the territory on which the two
states would be established is as large as a handkerchief. Both
Jews and non-Jews who live there feel tied to the totality of
the territory, and they share common economic interests. Cutting
the territory in two would only create other injustices. And
in neither of these cases would the Palestinian refugees allow
Israel to live in peace. In the event of an attack, Israel will
reoccupy the Palestinian State and everything will start over
again at square one.
Therefore we have got to bow before the
evidence that the only viable solution is to found a single state
with equal rights for everyone. This state would have to reject
all forms of discrimination on the basis of religion and sex.
Moreover, throughout its history Palestine has been divided for
only about twenty years, i.e. between 1949 and 1967. The country's
geography doesn't allow division. To be sure, one can say that
the hatred between Jews and non-Jews in that region is preventing
the creation of a single state for the moment. But this hate
is due to injustice. If injustice is repaired, hate will disappear.
The territory's division into two states will only exacerbate
this hatred. If you have contempt for your brother, it isn't
acceptable to cut your mother in two.
The idea to create a single state has
often been asserted by Israelis and Palestinians alike. The PLO
once adopted it as its main credo. The late Edward Said used
to plead for such a state. But nobody went into the details regarding
the legal framework by which such a state would be governed.
It appeared to me then that we had to create an association to
take care of this idea and develop it. This is how the Association
for One Democratic Sate in Palestine/Israel was born on April
15, 2003. For the very first time its bylaws have set the legal
framework for the state we seek. They can be found in different
languages on our site: www.one-democratic-state.org.
These bylaws are based on the principle
that: "The fruit of justice will be peace." (Isaiah
32:17). Today, December 6, 2003, the Association has 296 members:
Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others, who live inside and out
of Palestine/Israel. Several new members join almost daily. We
have tried to gather different articles on our website arguing
in favor of such a solution.
Question: What is your position on
the Geneva Accord?
Our Association has rejected the Geneva
Accord, judging it to be immoral. The Accord knowingly neglects
the Palestinian refugee's right to return. In addition, it divides
the country into two states, which will necessarily be two discriminatory
regimes. We have always condemned the role played by Switzerland
in settling the Accord, which violates the Geneva Convention
and International Law.
We have informed the Swiss government and parliament about this,
as well as the national and international press. We have also
requested that Switzerland, in the name of democratic and pluralistic
debate, finance another conference that would take account of
the Palestinian refugees' right to return as well as plead for
the creation of one democratic state in Palestine/Israel. We
are still awaiting a reply.
Palestinian negotiators were set up by
their Israeli interlocutors. The Zionists have always tried to
get the Palestinians to give up on their right to return. But
this is the first time that they have managed to get such a renunciation.
Those who participated in the negotiations can never turn back.
Even worse, these negotiators did not have a mandate to discuss
the right to return and did not consult the Palestinian refugees.
Now that the Palestinian negotiators
have returned to their country, they are discovering that the
refugees are angry with them. They have threatened to take them
to court, even to kill them. It has risked provoking a civil
war among Palestinians. What can be done in this case? Our Association
believes that it is Switzerland's duty to come to the negotiators'
assistance and grant them political asylum--before they are killed.
This is what we have requested from the Swiss authorities.
Question: How does your association
intend to reach its objectives?
Our Association has an educational goal.
It wants to promote the idea of peace based on justice and respect
for international law. It believes that there will never be peace
in the Near-East without the return of the Palestinian refugees.
It is convinced that the conflicting parties will end up adopting
this point of view--which is increasingly contemplated by Israeli
and Palestinian authors. We therefore want to spark a debate
about this solution on Israeli, Palestinian, Arab and international
levels. We cannot force anyone to adopt our point of view, but
we are telling them that the only alternative to this solution
is a descent into hell for all of us. And this is being confirmed
on the field on a daily basis.
Further to promoting the idea of one
democratic state, we do not discount the possibly of one day,
if our numbers keep increasing, proclaiming a government in exile,
just as De Gaulle did with a view to liberating France. We may
also form a political party that will consist of Jews, Christians,
Muslims, and others to help us carry out our objective.
For information on our association or
on joining it, please fill in the questions below, returning
them to the following address: aldeeb@bluewin.ch
I accept the bylaws and would like to
be a member.
Name:
Address:
Religion:
Nationality:
E-mail:
Personal indications in brief (CV and current position):
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
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