The Progressive magazine interview
URI AVNERY and JON ELMER
The Progressive, April 2004

Uri Avnery is a founding member of Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc). As a teenager, Avnery was an independence fighter in the Irgun, the armed Jewish resistance, and later a soldier in the Israeli army. He also served three times as a member of the Knesset. Avnery was the first Israeli to establish contact with the Palestinian Liberation Organization leadership in 1974. During the war on Lebanon in 1982, he crossed enemy lines to meet with Yasser Arafat. He has been a journalist since 1947, including forty years as editor-in-chief of the newsmagazine Ha'olam Haze. He is the author of numerous books on the conflict, including My Friend, the Enemy and Two People, Two States. I spoke with him twice, the first time on September 14 of last year and the second time on February 15 of this year.

The cost of Zionism
URI AVNERY and JON ELMER
FromOccupiedPalestine, 23 February 2004

[ed. these are questions left out of an interview published in The Progressive magazine's April 2004 issue because of space limitations]

Jon Elmer: Israel's raison d'etre is to be a national safe haven for Jews of the world, yet we know now that Israel is the most dangerous place in the world for a Jew to live. Elsewhere you have written that Israel is a breeding ground for anti-Semitism internationally. How has Israel helped or hindered the security of Jews, both within Israel and internationally?

Hurtling toward the abyss: Hanan Ashrawi interview
HANAN ASHRAWI and JON ELMER
FromOccupiedPalestine.org, 21 November 2003

Jon Elmer, FromOccupiedPalestine.org: The pro-Israel lobby went on a rabid campaign of defamation and intimidation when you were announced as the winner of the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize. To certain symbolic lengths, they succeeded: Sydney University withdrew the use of the Great Hall for the ceremony, the Lord Mayor of Sydney disassociated the city with the award. The former chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation was quoted as having said to Stuart Rees, the current director: "I have to speak logically. It is either Hanan Ashrawi or the Peace Foundation. That's our choice, Stuart. My distinct impression is that if you persist in having her here, they’ll destroy you" [Robert Fisk, "When did Arab become a dirty word?" Independent, 6 November 2003]. Were you at all surprised by the reaction to your selection?

PRCS paramedic: "You tell me why I am face-down on the ground"
GHASSAN ABU IBAID
FromOccupiedPalestine.org, 18 November 2003

Ghassan Abu Ibaid, 43, is a paramedic with the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Jenin. He has five children and a sixth on the way. In February, he will be moving with his family to California. We interviewed him in the sitting area of the PRCS building, while the television in the background relayed news of the Maxim Restaurant bombing in Haifa that had happened only minutes earlier.

The two intifadas: Interview with a PLO activist
KAMEL JABER
FromOccupiedPalestine.org, 4 November 2003

Jenin, West Bank -- Because of the constant threat of arrest or assassination, the setting for most of our interviews with activists has been dramatic: a secluded cemetery, an abandoned office, or a house on the outskirts of the city with the requisite gunfire in the background, and the roar of tanks. This time was different. We interviewed Kamel Jaber in the baby supplies store that he manages; to make room for our recorder he cleared the desk of crib-assembly instructions.

At 54 years-old, Kamel's history reads like the standard rap-sheet of a Palestinian Liberation Organization activist.

The lost generation
JON ELMER
FromOccupiedPalestine, 28 October 2003

Jenin, West Bank -- Mohammed is four years-old. As he ran up the stairs to the roof where we were sitting, his chattering noises became louder and louder until his tiny figure came flying around the corner of the stairwell. He ran directly toward me and jumped up on my lap as if we were brothers. It was the first time we had met.

Testimony: Paramedics under siege
MAHMOUD HUSSIN BAJAWI
Jenin Palestine Red Crescent Society, 17 October 2003

We spoke with Mahmoud in the sleeping quarters of the Palestine Red Crescent Society station in Jenin on the afternoon of October fourth. As the old ceiling fan hummed and one of Mahmoud's colleagues slept nearby underneath a clothesline of PRCS uniforms, Mahmoud spoke with distant reflection and thoughtfulness.

Showing us pictures of his three children - six, three and one - he said, "every time I see them when I return home from work, I cry. I think of the three children of my colleague who was killed beside me. I haven't slept properly in one year, since he was killed. But what can I do? I love my job... to help our people - but there is no cover from the tanks, the Apaches..."

Jenin: A snapshot of an occupied land
JON ELMER
FromOccupiedPalestine.org, 12 October 2003

Jenin, West Bank -- At the time, I was inclined to think that the walloping the boy got from his mother for being on the street throwing stones with the older boys was as bad as anything the IDF might have dealt him. But hours later I saw what a tank's heavy-calibre mounted machinegun will do to a young child's leg - a red gooey mass of mangled flesh bigger than a softball. I then saw what a mother looks like as she hurries with terrified panic through the hospital doors to see her son who has been shot.

Testimony: Life under curfew
NADYYA AZIZ
Jenin, 9 October 2003

We met with Nadyya behind the locked steel green doors of an internet cafe in Jenin. She was breaking curfew in order to communicate with her children in Jordan, and connect with the outside world after five days of 24-hour curfew.

In 1969 Nadyya left Jenin, where she was born, to study English literature in Jordan. She returned to Palestine after 30 years to work as a government translator in Ramallah in the department of International Relations and moved back to Jenin in 2000 to work for the municipality.

Human Rights in the Occupied Territories:
Interview with B'Tselem's Executive Director Jessica Montell
JESSICA MONTELL and JON ELMER
FromOcccupiedPalestine.org, 28 September 2003

Jon Elmer, FromOccupiedPalestine.org: Three Jewish settlers from the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin were convicted on [17 September] of plotting to bomb a Palestinian girls school in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of At-Tur, as well as a hospital. Judges said that scores of school children would have been slaughtered if the attack had not been foiled. Back in April a group calling itself Revenge of the Infants hurled grenades into a high school in Jenin, injuring 29. Can you discuss the threat of Jewish settler terrorism?

Israel and the Empire
JEFF HALPER and JON ELMER
FromOccupiedPalestine.org, 20 September 2003

Jon Elmer, FromOccupiedPalestine.org: You use the term 'matrix of control' to describe the Israeli occupation. Can you explain exactly what that is and how it functions?

Jeff Halper: The Israel-Palestine conflict is often framed in terms of territory: ending the occupation, a viable Palestinian state, and what that means in terms of territory. But two states and a complete end of the occupation, even in the best scenario, is not really the best solution. The whole Palestinian state would be on only 22% of the country, divided between the West Bank and Gaza. The State of Israel today, within the 1967 borders, represents 78% percent of the country. So even in the ideal situation, if the entire occupation ended and Israel pushed back to 1967 borders, the Palestinian state would be in only 22% of the country. Israel can't compromise on any more than that - even that is a question mark.

No end in sight
GIDEON LEVY and JON ELMER
FromOccupiedPalestine.org, 17 September 2003

Jon Elmer, FromOccupiedPalestine.org: I have just returned from, Muqata, Arafat's compound in Ramallah. When I spoke with people on the street who had come to express their solidarity with the besieged leader, they were unanimous in their belief that assassinating Arafat would be a disaster. One man said, "There will be an earthquake - not just in Israel, but all across the Arab world." Is the threat of assassinating Yasser Arafat just Israeli bluster or is it a real possibility?

Violence is a symptom; the occupation is the disease
URI AVNERY and JON ELMER
FromOccupiedPalestine.org, 14 September 2003

Jon Elmer, FromOccupiedPalestine.org: There is an active debate in Israeli society, in government and in the media about murdering Yasser Arafat. Have you ever heard of a discussion of assassinating the elected leader of another country taking place in a 'democratic' society? What logic drives the open discussion of assassinating Arafat? What would the consequences of such an action be?

A slow and steady genocide
TANYA REINHART and JON ELMER
FromOccupiedPalestine.org, 10 September, 2003

Jon Elmer, FromOccupiedPalestine.org: I would like to begin the discussion with the topic of September 11th, given the coming of the second anniversary. In The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis writes of September 11th: "There are few acts of comparable deliberate and indiscriminate wickedness in human history." Can you comment on this assertion with a view from the Middle East?

Whither the peace process?
JON ELMER and NORMAN FINKELSTEIN
Guerrilla Radio, ZNET, Dalhousie Gazette, ZNET Deutschland, 17 November 2002

Jon Elmer, Guerrilla Radio: Professor Finkelstein, on Friday [Nov. 15] a senior Israeli military official declared that the army's recent siege of Hebron had "succeeded to clean these streets of terrorists" - only hours later Islamic Jihad attacked settlers and soldiers in Hebron, killing 12 people including the commander of Israeli forces in Hebron. Judging by this definition of success, can there be a military solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict?