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The Hour Before Dawn
By Nick Pretzlik, Dissident Voice 1/26/2004
Returning to Jerusalem yesterday, an Israeli soldier at the Bethlehem checkpoint glanced at my passport and mumbled "Did you enjoy the visit?"
"Yes" I replied.
"Well," he said pointing towards the town "it stinks in there. I smell it every day."
Taken aback, I asked "What do you mean?"
He repeated the comment and waved me through.
The previous day at the al Hamra checkpoint, south of Jenin, I had watched a soldier order people out of their cars. It was 7:00 in the morning and the slopes of the hills down one side of the valley were bathed in soft dawn light. Songbirds flitted from tree to tree and the valley floor was lush and green – the sky pristine blue. An extensive queue of cars taking Palestinians to work had formed already and the soldier was strutting up and down in Chaplinesque fashion, his rifle comically large in proportion to his diminutive frame.
Passengers were shouted instructions to line up in front of him – even local UN personnel – and harangued, while he jabbed his finger repeatedly in their direction. The intention was to humiliate and the process continued until appropriate signs of submission were displayed. Only then were the passengers permitted to continue on their way. The charade took hours and did nothing for security. But that was not the intention.
Criminal at birth: refugees in Lebanon
By Stefan Christoff, The Rabble 1/26/2004
The youths who play football on the small streets and narrow alleys of Bourj El Barajneh represent an entire generation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who live in a day-to-day low intensity war. This is a war waged against Palestinian refugees by the government of Lebanon. It is not waged through military campaigns and guerrilla battles as in the Lebanese civil war, but through policies and laws which are slowly choking the life from Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps.
This economic warfare is carried out through specific laws and regulations which attack Palestinian refugees' ability to survive. They are forbidden from owning property, working in over 70 professions, receiving proper health care, and moving and traveling freely. They do not hold Lebanese citizenship, which gives them little influence over the political decisions of the country in which the majority of them have lived for over 50 years. Most Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live in poverty-stricken, war-destroyed camps as non-citizens with the struggle for the right of return to Palestine the only light shining in an otherwise dark future.
The lack of employment opportunity has created devastating economic conditions throughout the refugee camps. According to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) more than 60 per cent of Palestinian refugees live below the poverty line.
Blood, Soil and Art
By Gilad Atzmon, CounterPunch 1/27/2004
Mazel's Rampage -- As an artist I would like to declare that I was delighted with the Israeli ambassador's reaction last week in Sweden. I was thrilled with Sharon's response and the Jewish outrage. Art is there to provoke. It isn't there to please; nor is it there to support the common perception of what is right and what is wrong. Art is the most effective means of generating confrontation between different perspectives. In fact, if ever there was any doubt regarding the artistic value of the Feilers' installation, Ambassador Mazel's emotional reaction should have dispelled it: this is a piece of art of immense importance. It is a piece of art about the art of peace--terms that are lacking from Zionist discourse.
The installation 'Snow White and Madness of Truth' consists of a pool of blood-coloured water on which a boat carrying the photograph of the suicide bomber Hahadi Jaradat floats. As far as I know, there is no indication that the red pool refers in particular to either Palestinian or Jewish blood. Presumably a person with poetic and artistic tendencies might even go as far as to suggest that the work has something to tell us about the situation in Iraq or Afghanistan or any other conflict. Mazel, however, interpreted the installation as anti-Semitic propaganda. For Zionists, blood is always their own blood, the blood of 'innocent Jewish victims'. Given the fact that in the second intifada Palestinian casualties have far outnumbered Israeli ones, we should ask ourselves why the ambassador concluded that the red pool symbolises some sort of mockery of Jewish blood. How did an official representative of an oppressive state come to adopt the bizarre self-image of an innocent victim?
For some, a secular quick fix could never work
By Danny Rubinstein, Place4Peace/Ha'aretz 1/25/2004
Muslim leaders from the territories met in Cairo a few days ago, with guests Rabbi Menahem Fruman and Rabbi Michael Melchior. Unless religion is brought into the picture, says Melchior, no agreement can be forged. -- Last week, January 12-15, an unusual conference featuring 35 religious leaders from the Gaza Strip and West Bank was held in Cairo. Participants were official guests invited by Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, who bears the title Sheikh Al-Azhar. Participants included Imad Al-Faluji from the Gaza Strip, a former Hamas operative who served as PA Communications Minister in Yasser Arafat's government, Sheikh Tayseer Al-Tamimi from Hebron, who heads the PA's Islamic legal system (a few days before the Cairo meeting he was detained and questioned in Jerusalem for having allegedly violated security orders), and Sheikh Talal Sider, also from Hebron and a former PA Cabinet minister.
The other participants were familiar figures from the Waqf Muslim religious trust, or well-known preachers in Islamic frameworks in the territories.
Israel's government allowed participants to travel to Cairo for the event, even though some of them are known to hold extremist views. Though no current leading Hamas operatives took part in the event, some participants are known sympathizers of Islamic militants. There is no doubt that Arafat and his aides carefully reviewed the list of participants, and gave a stamp of approval to their involvement in the event.
The Washington dilemma
By Nathan Guttman, Ha'aretz 1/26/2004
WASHINGTON - In the coming days the United States is expected to decide what to do about the suit against the Israeli separation fence at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The approaching deliberations are putting Washington in a delicate situation - the United States is not a big fan of expanding the authority of the International Court and the transfer of disputes between nations for adjudication there, but it is also far from liking the separation fence that Israel is erecting in the territories.
Along this narrow path the administration will have to act during the coming weeks: How to prevent the International Court of Justice in The Hague from becoming a permanent factor in international affairs, without thereby causing Israel to see this as America's agreement to the continued construction of the separation fence.
Ever since the United Nations decision to send the issue of the separation fence to the International Court of Justice, Israel has been making a concerted effort to convince the American administration to stand by it in this matter. The subject was brought up last week in the discussion between the director of the Prime Minister's Bureau, Dov Weisglass, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and in talks that the legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, Alan Baker, held with his opposite number at the State Department, William Taft. It was also brought up by Foreign Ministry Director-General Yoav Biran in his meetings with senior State Department and National Security Council officials.
The United States is missing its best chance to ‘de-Finlandize’ Lebanon
By Parag Khanna, Daily Star 1/27/2004
When crossing the final checkpoint from Syria into Lebanon, I glanced in the rearview mirror to see portraits of the late Hafez al-Assad and son Bashar gazing down at me. With the October Israeli airstrikes against a suspected Islamic Jihad camp just 25 kilometers from Damascus, Lebanon is again threatened with being caught once again in the middle of a proxy war between its two powerful neighbors.
The US is also heavily involved, as Syria is a charter member of the State Department’s list of terrorist-sponsoring nations. Thus, securing Lebanese autonomy would be a critical step toward promoting political stability.
In reality, Western policy continues to conflate Hizbollah with Lebanon, thus missing critical opportunities. Since Sept. 11, 2001, America’s increasingly watchful eye on Syria has inadvertently given Lebanon’s four million inhabitants their first dose of geopolitical breathing space in 30 years. Indeed, Lebanon’s emerging autonomy from dual occupation by Syria and Israel holds the potential to restore its historical status as a geographic and cultural bridge between the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
Why the BBC Ducks the Palestinian Story
By Tim Llewellyn, ZNet 1/26/2004
Watching a peculiarly crass, inaccurate and condescending programme about the endangered historical sites of “Israel” – that is to say, the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories – on BBC2 in early June 2003,(1) I determined to try to work out, as a former BBC Middle East correspondent, why the Corporation has in the past two and a half years been failing to report fairly the most central and lasting reason for the troubles of the region: the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom.
The approach of the programme – made by Arts rather than News and Current Affairs – reflected the general run of BBC domestic coverage of the issue: the strained effort at “balance”; the failure to question the circumstances of the beleaguered historical sites (why are they beleaguered?); the acceptance of the “equivalence” of the two peoples fighting over this territory, the indigenous population and an occupying army; the assumption on which the whole programme was built: that in the then looming Anglo-American invasion of Iraq these historical and holy places might be damaged by missiles fired from Iraq. Perhaps BBC Arts was not aware before their team arrived that many ancient Arab monuments had already been besieged, shelled, violated, ransacked, bulldozed, and in many cases closed to their worshippers and their inheritors by Israel’s occupying army.
A week earlier, in a BBC News documentary about the wall that Israel is building between the Israelis and the Palestinians (2) – much of it encroaching on occupied Palestinian land, destroying houses and olive groves and dividing families – it was again felt necessary to leaven the images of Arab suffering with the “balance” of how awkward the wall would be for a handful of illegal Jewish settlers. To explain this, a sympathetic Irish woman settler told that side of the story in the vivid English of her people.
Palestinian Children and the Second Intifada
By Catherine Cook, Media Monitors Network 1/27/2004
Overview: Palestinian children have been the subject of much debate during the second intifada. Israeli government officials have falsely portrayed them as unwitting pawns of Palestinian gunmen who use them as human shields, and as the offspring of calculating parents who value their children's lives as an economic commodity that they are willing to sacrifice for money.
As the intifada has intensified, the image of Palestinian children in Israel has become progressively melded with the faceless image of the “Palestinian terrorist.’’ In the international media, children are depicted as either stone-throwing youth or as casualty statistics, lying on a stretcher or in a morgue. Palestinian children are either demonized or victimized. The reality of these children's lives is far more complex.
For the past 36 years, each generation of Palestinian children has grown up under Israeli occupation. The occupation not only impacts their immediate physical integrity and mental health, but also has a profound impact on their future. At present, children live in an environment of extreme instability and are exposed to violence on a daily basis. Vital factors necessary for their healthy development, including stability, security, recreation, and sound nutrition are frequently lacking. These conditions prematurely force children into adult roles and rob them of their childhood.
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