Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September
19, 2003
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
Recent
Stories
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
September
19, 2003
Holes in the Road
Map
Peace
Plan Fails to Deal with the Occupation
By ILAN PAPPE
The "road map" in the Middle East is
leading nowhere. Even those who were still harbouring some hopes
about it in recent weeks must now admit that it is dead for all
intents and purposes.
This should not surprise anyone who is
familiar with the history of peace-making in the Middle East.
The map has all the deficiencies of the previous abortive attempts
to solve the conflict, while having none of the merits included
in the efforts of the past.
The previous attempts had something in
common: they evaded the real issues at the heart of the matter,
but at least in most cases they were born out of a genuine concern
with the conflict and its victims. They were orchestrated by
American and European mediators who adopted usually the Israeli
and not the Palestinian point of view. According to the latter
view, the conflict in Palestine began in 1967 with the occupation
of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Hence, peace meant an Israeli
withdrawal from these areas. The Camp David accord in 1979, and
then the Oslo process in 1993, tried to persuade the Palestinians
that the best they can get was establishing in these areas a
Bantustan with no sovereignty, territorial integrity or a capital.
Additionally, the Palestinian leaders were asked to forsake the
only reason for their struggle ever since 1948--fulfilling the
right of return of the refugees who had been expelled by Israel
in 1948--a right recognised by the UN in 1948.
The Palestinian leader, and later president
, Arafat refused to sanction such a deal as a final settlement
when asked to do so in Camp David in the summer of 2000. The
people under occupation rose once more when the humiliating offer
was made by Clinton and Barak in that summer.
The recent road map was a brainchild
of Tony Blair, who understood that global opinion found it hard
to accept his and Bush's explanations for the invasion of Iraq.
The war in Iraq was presented as a precondition for peace in
Palestine (this was just one station in many on the train of
excuses Blair and Bush are using in order to justify the war).
Palestine is to be divided into two huge
prison camps that would be called a state with no independent
foreign or economic policy or territorial continuity. Anyone
willing to be its leader will be the chief warden, making sure
that the people do not rise again against the brutal occupation.
This occupation has not changed in nature
since 1967. Long before the Palestinian suicide bombs, Israel
terrorised the occupied territories: demolishing houses, starving
communities with closures, expelling people and harassing them
daily on roadblocks. The road map does not offer any significant
change in this respect, nor did the Oslo accord before it. No
wonder it is hard to find a Palestinian leader who can accept
it. Sharon's plan is to leave the Palestinians a mere fragmented
10 per cent of historical Palestine with no solution for the
refugee problem. The next intifada and a next war in the Middle
East can be the only result from such an offer. What is needed
now is a different and more comprehensive approach. The end of
the occupation is a precondition for peace. This barren truth
was not recognised even by well-intentioned peace-makers in the
area. For genuine peace to be achieved, Israel has to be made
accountable for the expulsion of almost all the Palestinians
who lived in 1948 in the areas which became the Jewish state
(which constituted 78 per cent of the original Mandate Palestine).
If Israel does not admit to its 1948 ethnic cleansing through
the recognition of the right of the Palestinians to return, why
should its leaders genuinely bother with the fate of the remaining
22 per cent of Palestine in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip?
A just solution to the heart of the matter--the
refugee problem--can probably best be served by constructing
a unitary or a bi-national state involving both Palestine and
present-day Israel. This would be based on the principles of
human and civil rights that would enable the people living in
between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean to attend to other
issues--women's rights, ecology, human economy and poverty. Any
other way, as the past has shown, will perpetuate the conflict
in the torn land of Palestine and Israel.
Dr. Ilan Pappe
is an Israeli historian at Haifa University.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
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