The Other Israel Issue Nr 129-130 March-April 2007 (raw version)
Index in the end
Of the lead article a definite version has already been posted:
THE MALAISE T129-130
THE MALAISE
"The weakness of Abu Mazen" has become proverbial immediately when Mahmoud Abbas (his official name) assumed the Palestinian presidency, as was before "The Terrorism of Yasser Arafat", each expressing that "Israel has 'no partner' on the Palestinian side and therefore needs to make no concessions."
Ariel Sharon's crude "chick without feathers" remark was not essentially different from the Bush administration's patronizing attitude. Repeated declarations of the wish to "help Abu Mazen" and "strengthen" him had the effect of weakening him and depicting the Palestinian president as a collaborator with the occupation forces. Especially since the best means of "strengthening" which occurred to Israelis and Americans was the supply of weapons for use against opposing Palestinian factions.
From time to time there was talk of "good will gestures." Solemn pledges by the Israeli side to ease the stifling travel restrictions on West Bank Palestinians were made in Prime Ministerial interviews to the international media -- but invariably failed to be implemented on the ground.
The obvious and only way of strengthening Abu Mazen would have been to provide him with concrete proof that the end of the occupation could be achieved by way of diplomatic negotiations. But Israelis and Americans rather seemed engaged in showing to Palestinians the utter futility of the diplomatic track.
During the January 2005 Palestinian presidential campaign, Abu Mazen firmly and unequivocally committed himself to a negotiated solution, and gained an unquestioned popular mandate.
For a whole year afterwards, he had an unfettered authority to conduct negotiations and sign agreements on behalf of the Palestinian people, with his Fatah party holding a solid parliamentary majority and a cabinet committed to cooperating with the president along his chosen path. But he was not invited to any negotiating table, the government of Israel opting instead for a unilateral disengagement from Gaza and an equally unilateral deepening of its stranglehold over the West Bank.
To the extent that the Gaza Disengagement could be seen as a Palestinian achievement at all, Palestinians tended -- and not without reason -- to attribute it to Hamas armed struggle rather than to Fatah diplomacy.
Moreover, by the time of the January 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, Israel was clearly seen to be still maintaining a suffocating stranglehold over all entrances to the Gaza Strip, in effect transforming it into a giant open-air prison.
These were the circumstances under which Hamas won a parliamentary majority and formed a cabinet, with which Abu Mazen had to share a very illusory and limited power under occupation -- setting the final seal on his "weakness."
Yet by a kind of poetic justice, both Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush soon found themselves in not so much better positions, as the result of wars which turned into fiascos: a war in Lebanon entered into light-heartedly, without proper political or military preparation, and a war in Iraq entered into after a years-long preparation based on false premises.
Thus, with the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians approaching its fortieth anniversary and almost universally acknowledged (at least verbally) as an evil which must be abolished, the three leaders who are supposed to do something about it are too weak to act decisively, even if they sincerely wished to. And on more than one occasion, Abu Mazen seemed to have a bit more room for manoeuvre than his Israeli and American counterparts.
Unilateralism's dead end
Ehud Olmert, who attained to the top more or less by accident following Ariel Sharon's stroke, started out by emphatically advocating a unilateral withdrawal from large parts -- but not the whole -- of the West Bank. This was the main plank of his elections campaign in March 2006, and in the agenda of the cabinet, which after the elections he formed in partnership with Labor's Amir Peretz.
Olmert seemed to accept the need for a head-on confrontation with the settlers in order to implement any such plan. The clashes during the evacuation of the illegal outpost of Amona were taken as a foretaste of what was in store. General Dan Halutz, the Army Chief of Staff who had carried out the evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements, was expected to preside also over this confrontation with the settlers. As is
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well known by now, none of this happened. From its inception the Olmert Government embarked on an all-out confrontation not with the settlers but with the freshly formed Palestinian government.
First there was the severe economic boycott, leaving all government workers -- a major part of the overall Palestinian workforce -- without livelihood.
Then came a rapid escalation of mutual provocations, culminating in the massive Israeli bombings of the Gaza Strip.
Finally, the Palestinian raid resulting in the capture of Israeli soldier Gil'ad Shalit precipitated a massive invasion of the Gaza Strip, in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed, as well as to a virtual manhunt on Hamas members of the Palestinian legislature and cabinet, dozens of whom were apprehended and taken to Israeli prisons.
For some time, all this was regarded -- by observers on both sides of the political spectrum, and apparently also by Olmert himself -- as a temporary distraction, which would eventually dissipate and let the government resume its original agenda on the West Bank. But such expectations were laid to rest once Hizbullah staged its own daring cross-border raid and capture of Israeli soldiers, setting off the Second Lebanon War.
Olmert, Peretz and Halutz jauntily set off a full-scale war, so arrogantly certain of victory that they did not bother to either check the army's abilities to achieve its military objectives or prepare any set of coherent political goals. The resulting fiasco left the careers of all three in tatters and the government lurching rudderless from crisis to crisis, with no goal or agenda beyond short-term survival.
Moreover, not only did the war result in the personal discrediting of the country's main policy-makers, it also discredited the concept of unilateral withdrawals that had become so popular under Sharon.
The Hizbullah attacks from the Lebanese territory evacuated by Ehud Barak, together with the shooting of missiles from the Gaza territory that Sharon evacuated, gave the idea that such a unilateral withdrawal -- without any agreement with or obligation by the other side -- was after all not a very good idea.
It still left the question open whether there should just be no withdrawal at all -- as avowed by a shrill right-wing chorus -- or that withdrawal should be part of a negotiated solution -- as asserted with renewed vehemence by leftists who were never really happy with Sharon's unilateralism.
Tooth and nail
In the immediate aftermath of the war, Olmert did manage to whether an extra-parliamentary movement demanding his resignation -- which was not quite massive enough to topple the government (nor did it quite succeed in convincing the public of its impartiality). But with the passing months, this came to be seen as little more than a temporary reprieve and stay of execution.
Olmert and Peretz's ratings in the polls plummeted to depths rarely if ever recorded for the holders of such senior positions and showed no sign of recovery. So did Halutz's, all the more remarkable in the militarily minded Israeli society where generals usually enjoy high popularity simply by virtue of being such.
Were new elections to be held, the major winner would clearly be Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, whom commentators had written off as "a failure" and "a has been" just before. Not that Netanyahu's performance has visibly improved since the rather ignominious end of his term as Prime Minister in 1999 -- but in the public mind, his half-remembered failures seemed to pale in comparison with Olmert's fresh ones.
Olmert's first priority was, therefore, to forge a solid parliamentary majority blocking any initiative for new elections. The obvious means was to divide the ranks of the right-wing opposition and entice into the government the extreme-right demagogue Avigdor Lieberman.
A shrewd and ruthless man, Lieberman had started as Netanayhu's protŽgŽ and henchman, but had long since launched his own party and career. At first allied with the settler leadership, Lieberman concluded from the settlers' failure to stop Sharon's "disengagement" that relying on Biblically derived "historical rights" and claiming the whole of "Greater Israel" had a very limited appeal in the Israeli society.
Such arguments attracted mainly the national-
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religious sector, some ten percent of the Israeli population. These, moreover, had plenty of leaders preferable to Lieberman -- who is a settler but not a very religious one.
Instead, Lieberman forged his own political mixture. This included an ethnic appeal to Israelis who are like him of Russian origin combined with persistent incitement against Israel's Arab citizens who are depicted as "an internal threat" and "fifth column". He promises to disenfranchise them by demanding "oaths of loyalty to the Jewish state", proposing to "give a whole lot of them to Palestine, together with their villages."
A last ingredient was a call to institute in Israel "a presidential system" so as to "make possible a strong and stable leadership." The resulting brew -- which gained Lieberman eleven Knesset seats, nearly 10% -- was judged by more than one observer as "the closest to a classic Fascist party ever to arise in the Israeli political system."
Olmert proved highly eager to bringing Lieberman into his cabinet and make him "a Special Minister for Strategic Threats" -- a title that was never clearly explained, but there were broad hints that it had to do with the Iranians plans to develop nuclear arms.
To the dismay of his fast-dwindling supporters on the left, the Labor Party's Amir Peretz made no more than token protests at the entry of such an unsavory character, and only a single one of Labor's seven ministers resigned rather than become Lieberman's fellow minister.
The price of Lieberman's presence in the government was very clear and officially stated: no more evacuations of settlement outposts, even those considered "illegal" under Israeli as well as international law. Certainly, no far-reaching political and diplomatic plans involving evacuation of territories and dismantling of "legal" settlements, and no more talking of "convergence" (i.e. unilateral withdrawal) on the West Bank, which had been the main electoral plank of Olmert and his Kadima Party and now went officially into a "deep freeze."
When critics pointed out that he had left his government without an agenda, the PM replied forthrightly: "A government does not need to have an agenda."
Who's next?
In the aftermath of the war Olmert managed to sidestep the demand for a fully empowered Judicial Commission of Inquiry to investigate the Lebanon failures -- whose kind already terminated several ministerial careers in Israel's history.
Instead he established a commission of lesser power and independence headed by former judge Winograd. However, so often were the five members of the Winograd Commission castigated as "spineless lackeys" and their integrity roundly questioned and impugned, that they soon began showing signs of conducting a more thorough and aggressive investigation than expected, and the Prime Minister's bureau started to look forward with growing alarm and apprehension to the forthcoming presentation of their report.
Meanwhile, there appeared another eager candidate for delivering the coup de grace, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstraus. Since taking up this position, Lindenstraus had adopted far more assertive and aggressive modes than his predecessors in the job.
He decided to start his own competing investigation of the Lebanon War failures. Especially, he took up the government's inability to provide adequate support to the population of northern Israel during six weeks of living under constant missile bombardments. After all, the firing of rockets from Lebanon into Israel had been a predictable result, which anyone embarking on an aerial war in Lebanon should have foreseen.
Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz and Dan Halutz all faced constant challenges to their continued tenure of their respective positions -- and it did not bring about any cordial relations between the three of them. On the contrary, in an increasingly brutal tug-of-war each sought to save himself by making the others into scapegoats, with the Prime Minister and his Defence Minister engaging in particularly acrimonious public quarreling.
PM Olmert faced an increasing restiveness within the ruling Kadima Party -- a jury-rigged structure improvised by Sharon less than a year ago. Especially Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni started, more and more openly, to manifest her belief -- shared by quite a few others -- that she could do a better job.
Amir Peretz faced a more intensive and open challenge to both his tenure of the Defence Ministry and his leadership of the Labor Party. Peretz had totally lost his considerable initial support from the Left, gained when posing as a staunch peacenik and white-hot social reformer, had evaporated due to his actual performance in office. And those who objected to him to start with were confirmed in their stance.
Virtually everybody in Israel, with the notable exception of Peretz himself, became convinced that he was never fit for the role of Defence Minister and should vacate it as soon as possible. Peretz was obdurate -- but had to submit to an all-out leadership contest set for May 2007.
There, he is likely to lose out to either former PM, retired General Ehud Barak (who made an impressive "comeback", due less to his own merits than to the proven demerits of the incumbent) or to the more dovish former Admiral and Security Chief Ami Ayalon.
The strongest challenge of all seems to have confronted Chief of Staff Halutz. In theory an army commander, not being an elected official, has no need of popular backing. In practice, however, a general finds it very difficult to continue functioning when his competence is seriously doubted by many of his direct subordinates, and when at the same time the middle and low ranking officers express a growing lack of confidence both in him and in the high command as a whole.
Following an intensive power struggle inside the
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army, exposed to the public gaze as such struggles never were before, a Brigadier and a Major General had to resign for faulty conduct during the Lebanon War -- with media commentators strongly implying, in both cases, that they were taking the rap for faults originating at the very top. At last, in January Halutz submitted his long-expected resignation.
But the careers that teetered on the verge of extinction were not only of those implicated with the Lebanon fiasco. In the past months, Israel seems to have embarked on what has already been labelled "anti-corruption crusade", "puritanical mania" and "witch-hunt", with scandals of various kinds following each other in the headlines with bewildering rapidity.
The most well known and sensational was the criminal investigation launched against President Moshe Katzav, charged with sexual assault and actual rape of female employees in the Presidential Mansion. Though manifestly unable to go on being the "Unifying National Symbol", Katzav persistently refused to give up his titular role, making angry accusations of being "persecuted and victimized by the media" (to which the media gave extensive coverage).
Justice Minister Haim Ramon, one of the wiliest of Israel's politicians, lost his job when being convicted of having intimately kissed a girl soldier without her consent, en route to the cabinet meeting that resolved upon the war in Lebanon (though this aspect was remarkably absent from the entire Ramon Controversy).
And the Chief Commissioner of Israel's National Police had to resign when found to have covered up for a senior police officer suspected of collusion with an organized crime "family." And the government's Chief Tax Collector, along with all his chief helpers, was arrested on suspicion of having received bribes from
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rich business people for various illegal "favors." And PM Olmert's trusted Chef de Bureau was arrested on suspicion of involvement with the tax scandal. And the PM's name was mentioned in connection with half a dozen other corruption scandals, big and small -- some with sufficient evidence uncovered to have Attorney General Mazuz deliberate whether or not to present criminal charges...
For his part, Olmert appointed to the vacant Justice portfolio a law professor dedicated to "cutting down" the Supreme Court and reducing the "excessive powers" of its judges -- which observers considered an especially inappropriate act for a PM who might sooner or later face the judicial system as a defendant in the dock. But at the same time, Olmert's men also tried to make use of the Supreme Court to obtain injunctions and hinder the investigations of State Comptroller Lindenstraus, whose mediagenic probing of ever-new corruption scandals were "making it impossible for the government to function"...
Under such circumstances, the demise of an ambitious politician, who lost a bid to become Minister of Tourism because she was revealed to have included in her CV a couple of non-existent academic degrees, would have been little more than comic relief. Except that the Knesset Member in question -- a lieutenant of the noxious Lieberman -- had also made some very blunt racist remarks on Arabs (which in themselves had not hurt her career at all -- rather the reverse).
The prevailing atmosphere of "malaise" -- with Israelis on all parts of the political and social spectrum tending to lose confidence in all leaders, parties, and institutions and to feel themselves sinking into a morass -- has many implications. Not least, the growing worry that sooner or later Israeli society might turn to "a strong man" who would succeed in making himself seem "clean" and "decisive."
No more jumps
After being so damaged by having jumped light-heartedly into war, Olmert does not at present seem very eager to plunge into further large-scale military adventures, such as are enthusiastically advocated in various political and military circles: a new war in Lebanon, and possibly involving Syria too, in order to "restore Israel's deterrence" after the 2006 debacle as well as a complete re-conquest of the Gaza Strip aimed at "rooting out terrorism" -- both of which might be combined with a "pre-emptive" aerial strike at Iran, attempting to destroy that country's nuclear program.
But if not eager to engage in large pyrotechnics beyond the "routine" operations daily stamping on the occupied Palestinians, even less was Olmert inclined to make even a small move towards peace which might involve any kind of controversial concession. Indeed, it is generally assumed -- by Israelis as by international observers and diplomats -- that "the chick has no feathers"; Olmert is simply far too weak to do anything of the kind.
This was what defined for example the PM's negative response to what news editors called "The Syrian Peace Offensive." In the past half year Syrian President Assad has been making a long series of conciliatory statements. He repeatedly made overtures via Arab and European diplomats and non-governmental Americans and Israelis, among them Alon Li'el, a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official in the Oslo years.
The message passed through all these various channels was similar: Syria was willing to resume negotiations -- and conclude them with a peace agreement -- on the same terms as formed the basis for past negotiations: return of the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967 and unilaterally annexed in 1981, but whose possession by Israel was never recognized by any other country.
These Syrian offers were accompanied by not quite explicit threats and hints that the prolonged cease-fire on the Golan border -- scrupulously maintained since 1974 -- might not survive in case of
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Israel persisting in holding on to the Golan.
There were visible moves to upgrade the Syrian armed forces, long considered obsolete and unable to face Israel in the field -- especially the large-scale purchase of anti-tank missiles of the kinds that had proven so effective against Israeli armor in South Lebanon.
There were a considerable number of voices in the mainstream political system and press calling upon the government to at least try to make a deal with the Syrians -- so as to avoid the danger of war and effect a strategic change by depriving the outspokenly hostile Iran of its a major ally located at Israel's border.
Israel's Military Intelligence took a similar position in several reports submitted to the government -- in open debate with the hawkish stance of Mossad, the country's external intelligence agency, which persistently expressed extreme suspicion of the Syrians.
For his part, Olmert had what seemed the perfect response: an American veto. The Bush Administration had declared Syria to be part of the "Axis of Evil" and imposed diplomatic isolation and various sanctions; Israel, as a loyal US ally, could do nothing else but follow and avoid any contact with the Syrians, whatever its own interests.
In other countries, a Prime Minister might have been hesitant to speak out loud of having accepted such a severe limitation on his country's sovereignty; to Olmert in Israel, it was a cinch.
Nor was he disturbed by the intransigent anti-Syrian line being cast in doubt at Washington itself, notably with the Iraq Study Group of former Secretary of State Baker recommending a dialogue with Syria (and Iran) as a way out of America's dire predicament in Iraq.
As was often pointed out, in his weakened condition Olmert was in no position to tackle the formidable Golan settlers' lobby, with its position in the Israeli public opinion far stronger than any other settler group.
With minor differences, Olmert took the same line towards the Palestinians. The elected Hamas parliamentary majority and cabinet were, of course, beyond the pale -- to be boycotted and hounded beyond measure.
Government speakers repeated ad nauseam the "Three Conditions" mantra -- renunciation of terrorism, recognition of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements. Plainly, however, the last thing Olmert wanted was for Hamas to truly accept these conditions and become a respectable partner who could ask for concessions at the table.
Olmert did not outrightly refuse to talk to "The Respectable Abu Mazen", but was rather reluctant. And when he did finally talk to him, he excluded from the agenda any substantive issue such as ending the occupation, and preferred to concentrate on "improving the quality of Palestinian life" -- a subject which the Americans are in the habit of raising again and again, as does the international media.
The talks would end with (again) solemn promises to remove at least some of hundreds of military checkpoints and roadblocks effectively cutting the West Bank territory into small ribbons. Then, the army and security service would inform the PM that actually removing roadblocks would facilitate suicide bombers, so nothing came of it.
In the final account, all that Abu Mazen got out of meeting Olmert was a kiss on his cheek by the Israeli PM, which was certainly not what he was waiting for, its only effect being to discredit him among Palestinians.
Economy of hunger
For all of the country's other ailments, Israel's economy seems to be growing and flourishing (though the poor in Israeli society got little benefit of that growth). Indeed, Olmert aides bitterly complained that their boss got no credit for "his economic achievement."
The same could by no means be said of the Palestinian economy, in the process of drastic fast shrinking towards total collapse, with its props being cut one by one over the past six years.
First, Palestinians were almost entirely deprived of the possibility of working in Israel, hitherto one of their main sources of income. Then, Palestinian farmers were deprived of more and more land, for the building of settlements and of the Separation Wall -- some of it confiscated outright and much more made inaccessible and not available for cultivation. In addition, travel restrictions made it far more difficult to sell agricultural produce beyond the immediate region where it was grown.
The complete or partial closing of vital roads and passages to Palestinian traffic, with no prior notice and at the complete discretion of Israeli military commanders, makes impossible any serious planning of economic activity. As a result, many Palestinian business people either went bankrupt or took their money elsewhere.
Nor did the trumpeted Israeli "Disengagement from Gaza" provide any relief to this blighted region: while Israeli settlements in the Strip were removed, the Palestinians were not allowed to have any seaport or airport of their own, all import and export remaining completely dependent on border crossings under effective Israeli control -- and these had been closed much more often than open.
By early 2006, the one significant remaining source of income in the Palestinian territories was the government service, providing the livelihood directly to about one-third of the population and indirectly to many more.
However, as a result of all the above, the Palestinian government has no way of maintaining itself by the collection of taxes. Having no control over its borders, its customs duties are collected by Israel, which is supposed to pass the funds over, but which reserves for itself the right to withhold them. And the international donations, in the Oslo days designated for development of infrastructure, came to sustain bare survival. These remaining sources of
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income were, however, brutally cut off with the Hamas electoral victory, economically pitching the Palestinians into the void.
Israeli government speakers have repeatedly objected to the use of the term "hunger", pointing out that there were no reports of people actually starving to death. But there is no doubt that a large part of the Palestinians suffers from severe malnutrition -- more than half of the Palestinian children, according to the reports of international humanitarian organizations.
Package deal diplomacy
Already in mid-2006, some mediators came up with the idea for a comprehensive deal, which would extricate the Palestinians from their insufferable plight and give some hope of moving forward.
Among them were European diplomats -- especially from such countries as France and Spain that were never happy to participate in the boycott on the Palestinians; from Arab regimes such as those in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, where it was feared that the continuing turmoil and suffering in the Palestinian territories could threaten their own stability. Last but not least, intensive efforts to get things moving again were made by imprisoned Palestinian leaders such as Fatah's Marwan Barghouti and his colleagues from Hamas and smaller organizations.
The package of measures envisaged an exchange of prisoners between Israel and the Palestinians, reuniting with their respective families the captured soldier Gil'ad Shalit as well as a significant numbers of incarcerated Palestinians; a ceasefire putting an end to all offensive acts of Israelis and Palestinians against each other; the creation of a Palestinian National Unity Government, with a compromise program which Hamas could accept without feeling that they have surrendered and which would still satisfy international donors enough to make them renew the vital flow of funds; and a re-launching of Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab peace negotiations, in conjunction with a revival of the Arab Peace Initiative, proposed by Saudi Arabia and adopted by the Arab Summit in Beirut in 2002 (and never getting a real Israeli response).
Enumerating these points was, however, far more easy than concretely achieving them. Not one but several sets of intricate negotiations were necessary. There were the inter-Palestinian negotiations between Fatah and Hamas, parties possessing large militias and with little trust in each other, and which needed to achieve both a common political platform and an acceptable division of political power positions.
The fact that under the occupation the Palestinian cabinet had little real power did not preclude fierce struggles for possession of key ministries. There was also the byplay between the "internal" and "external" leaderships of Hamas, with the latter housed in Damascus -- which gives the Syrians some leverage.
Concurrently, Palestinians conducted secret negotiations with Israel, via the Egyptians and other mediators, of whose progress (or lack thereof) there were occasional conflicting leaks to the media. It took long to determine how many prisoners would get free, and who they would be. Especially, the issue of releasing so-called "prisoners with blood on their hands" is always a highly sensitive issue in Israeli politics, and even more so with a government so weak.
Still further negotiations, more in the nature of informal international contacts, were aimed at trying to ensure that the donors -- or at least the Europeans -- would recognize the new Palestinian government and resume funding it.
Moreover, there were two Israeli soldiers held by Hizbullah, with a separate set of secret negotiations for their release. Even though Hamas made clear they wanted no direct linkage, this added at least some kind of tie-up with the intricate complications of Lebanese politics, and some more Syrian involvement...
Omnipotence and its limitations
Meanwhile, in addition to their boundless economic plight, Gaza Strip Palestinians continued to be exposed for half a year to an ongoing Israeli military offensive, each day bringing an aerial bombardment, a destructive intrusion of tanks and bulldozers, or a combination of both.
After the Lebanon ceasefire of August 2006, which terminated Israel's unhappy northward venture, the attack on Gaza actually intensified.
With the Palestinian militias lacking the advanced anti-tank missiles which Hizbullah had, Israeli forces could rampage more or less at will, killing hundreds of Palestinians while hardly sustaining any losses themselves.
They proved, however, unable to achieve the operation's proclaimed aims: neither to browbeat the Palestinians into releasing Shalit, nor to stop the shooting of clumsy but not totally harmless Palestinian Qassam missiles into Israeli border cities.
The generals -- vociferously backed by the right-wing opposition as well as by some hawkish members of the ruling coalition -- were pressing for a move "beyond mere incursions into Gaza" and for an all-out reconquest of the Strip, on the model of the 2002 reconquest of the West bank cities ("Operation Defensive Shield").
This agitating was accompanied by urgent warnings that the Palestinian militias were striving to smuggle anti-tank missiles from Egypt (which is, indeed, the obvious lesson that Palestinian could draw from the Lebanon battles) and that a later reconquest of the Strip might prove far more difficult and expensive.
However, an all-out Israeli conquest in Gaza might have spelled the end of Abu Mazen's career as Palestinian President, or at least the end of his ability to maintain any kind of contact with Israel and the US. Therefore, Washington apparently placed a veto on any such scheme.
Moreover, even without possessing anti-tank missiles, Palestinians proved able to exact a growing price for the continuing operation. At the border town of Beit Lahia, hundreds of unarmed Palestinians
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turned up on November 19 to sit on the roof of a militant leader's home due to be bombed by Israeli warplanes, forcing the pilots to cancel the strike.
This was probably inspired by what had been going on in the previous weeks in neighboring Beit Hanoun.
Two weeks earlier, Israeli ground troops had entered Beit Hanoun on a weeklong, large-scale raid killing 40 people and not leaving one house undamaged. During this week, militants had taken refuge in the local mosque, but the army made itself ready to demolish the mosque with the militants inside.
Then, townswomen formed a human chain and succeeded in extricating dozens of militants besieged by the troops -- at the price of two Palestinian women being themselves killed. It was conceived, by friend and foe alike, as a humiliation for the army.
A few days later, after the army had gone out, the town was shot at with artillery at an early morning hour and an entire Palestinian family wiped out, at home in their beds. With bloody pictures flooding the international media and reminding the world of this forgotten Gaza war, the Israeli authorities made deep apologies for the "tragic mistake." A confrontation with the limitations of almightiness.
Meanwhile, inhabitants of the Israeli border town of Sderot, prime target of the Qassams, were shown on TV fighting for a place on "evacuation buses", financed by the dubious multi-millionaire Arkady Gaidamek.
Shortly afterwards, Olmert suddenly announced a ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
The Trojan ceasefire
The banner headlines on the morning of November 26, proclaiming "Ceasefire!" came as a total surprise to nearly everybody -- for example, to the coalition of Israeli peace groups, in the midst of a month-long "Campaign Against the Siege of Gaza." It was the first piece of good news in a very long time. Certainly, it saved the lives of many people who stood to be killed on the following days and weeks. But it soon turned out that its significance was far less than seemed at first.
Momentarily, it seemed possible to extend the ceasefire from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank and achieve a complete end of all attacks by Israelis on Palestinians and vice versa. However, the army and security services -- whom Olmert had not consulted before ending the Gaza offensive, and who were far from pleased -- put down their collective foot.
It was totally out of the question to cease the raids into the West Bank cities, conducted every day and especially every night, in which between fifty and hundred "wanted terrorists" were every week caught and hauled off to Israeli detention cells -- and some five to ten per week killed while "resisting arrest" or "trying to escape."
These raids were all that stood between the population of Israel's main population centers and a new wave of deadly suicide bombings, so said the generals; a government which stopped them and relied on "worthless Palestinian promises" would "bear full responsibility for all the results."
It would have taken a far stronger Prime Minister to stand against this kind of blackmail. The West Bank raids continued, and were actually intensified with the Gaza Strip ceasefire. For its part, Hamas kept the Gaza ceasefire, but smaller militia groups declared they would retaliate for West Bank casualties by continuing to shoot rockets into Israeli territory from Gaza -- and did, though at a much lower intensity than before, and mostly without causing any casualties.
As presented to the Israeli public by its mainstream media, the Israeli raids on the West Bank were vital and completely justified pre-emptive actions against terrorism, while the shooting of Palestinian rockets from Gaza was an unprovoked aggression and a dastardly cease-fire violation.
The lack of Israeli retaliation for these rockets was, according to government speakers, a remarkable act of forbearance, demonstrating the purity of Israel's intentions. According to the right wing, it was a shameful caving in to terrorism. Meanwhile, the killings of West Bank Palestinians continued, week by week.
The orchestrated civil war
Publications in the American and Israeli press during December 2006 and January 2007 spoke increasingly of what some termed "The Conspiracy of the Women" -- i.e., a joint plan by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Israeli colleague Tzipi Livni, to revive the moribund "Road Map for Peace."
According to the press reports, the two resolved to bypass their respective bosses, Bush and Olmert, and jump over the "first stage" of the Road Map -- which obliges The Palestinian side to "dismantle the terrorist infrastructure" and the Israelis to do the same to "illegal settlement outposts", and which neither side showed any inclination of implementing since officially adopting the Road Map in 2003.
Instead, the two "conspirators" proposed to move over to the second stage, involving the creation of "A Palestinian state in temporary borders."
There was, however, a sting that soon became more obvious. The efforts of the Palestinians to achieve national unity were not at all appreciated. On the contrary, before getting anything from Israel or the US, Abu Mazen was expected to stop negotiating with the rival Palestinian faction, enter into an all-out civil war with Hamas, and extirpate the elected Palestinian government.
For some weeks the design seemed to work. Israel's strict observation of the Gaza Strip ceasefire seemed more and more a deliberate ploy to avoid disturbing the process in which difficulties in the inter-Palestinian negotiations widened and deepened, and the rival militias trained and prepared -- each regarding itself as the legal armed forces of the Palestinian Authority, under conflicting interpretations of a vague and ambiguous law. Minor incidents
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multiplied and escalated into major ones and into all-out confrontations between Hamas and Fatah militias, with acts fully rivalling the worst which the occupation troops had perpetrated: The targeting of militia commanders private homes, their families and children, plus the waging of savage street battles with the inevitable toll of many casualties among innocent bystanders.
There was no clear victor, Hamas and Fatah forces appearing quite evenly matched; and though some on both sides seemed caught up in the frenzy of internecine fighting, many others felt increasingly uncomfortable at turning their guns on fellow-Palestinians. Certainly the fighting was highly unpopular among the grassroots of both movements.
Moreover, the infighting tended to enhance the popularity of smaller factions, such as the Islamic Jihad -- which steered clear of it.
Just as the smoke and fire filled the streets of Gaza, a youthful Jihad militant succeeded to slip out of the besieged Strip, and via Egypt enter the Israeli resort of Eilat and blow himself up in a bakery -- taking with him three random victims, two Israelis and an African migrant worker. The youth's recorded last message -- calling upon the feuding factions "to cease fighting and unite against the real enemy" struck deep chords among Palestinians (and the Israeli random victims were hardly noticed).
To top it all, the Fatah troops were not promised any kind of adequate reward for the brutal civil war they were supposed to fight. Far from being an alluring inducement, the idea of "A state in temporary borders" seemed in Palestinian eyes very much like a dangerous trap.
The "temporary borders" on offer would obviously fall far short of the 1967 borders, and Israel would keep control of "settlement blocs", water sources, and of course of Palestinian East Jerusalem. Judging from the precedents of the Oslo Process, "temporary borders" might endure for decades and even generations. Hardly a goal justifying what would be -- quite literally in more than one Palestinian family -- a war of Brother against Brother.
News from Mecca
Saudi Arabia did not hide its deep concern with the internecine Palestinian fighting (also with the drift of Hamas, traditionally a Saudi client, towards the Iranians, the only ones willing to offer Palestinians the sorely-needed funds).
The Saudi bid to bring the Palestinian factions together for a final make-or-break summit, in sight of Islam's holiest sites at Mecca, was launched quite openly -- in fact, with considerable publicity. Still, decision makers in both Israel and the US disregarded the Mecca Summit, took its failure for granted, and seemed dismayed and angry at the fact that it did produce an agreement on forming a Palestinian National Unity Government.
In the streets of Gaza there was mass dancing at the news from Mecca. In the bureau of the Olmert Government, the news was most alarming and unwelcome. Livni set out immediately on a tour of the European capitals, with the proclaimed aim of "stemming the tide" and preventing the EU from recognizing the new Palestinian cabinet. And the Jerusalem summit of Olmert, Abu Mazen and Rice -- trumpeted weeks in advance as "the opening of a New Political Horizon" -- ended with no other outcome than the Israeli and American participants both reportedly berating their Palestinian interlocutor for his "betrayal" in Mecca.
And so, this account ends in mid-March with quite a bleak outlook. The new Palestinian government is due to be inaugurated in the coming weeks, on a program pledging to "respect" previously signed agreements with Israel -- which, while not accepting chapter and verse of the famous "Quartet Demands", is an enormous change from previous Hamas positions.
And at the end of this month, the Saudis are about to gather the leaders of the whole Arab World at Riyadh, to reaffirm the offer made already in 2002: peace with Israel in return for the end of the occupation.
With somebody else at the helm, this might have marked a true new start -- the exit from decades of bloodshed and the end of an occupation which most Israelis are long since ready to give up. With bankrupt leaders both here in Israel and across the Atlantic, this is most likely going to be one more entry in the long long list of missed opportunities, as this land lurches towards the fortieth anniversary of an occupation which had already lasted more than two-thirds of Israel's total span of history.
A year ago, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt stirred up a hornet's nest with their assertion that Israel, via the Jewish Lobby, effectively controls American policy. Some people, no less critical of Israeli and American governmental policies, asserted that it was still the United States setting the lines of an aggressive policy in the Middle East (and elsewhere) and Israel profitably fitting itself within these lines. However that may be judged, Israel and the United States seem more and more like drowning twins, clinging and likely to drag each other under.
The Editors
Holon, March 9, 2007
****
Dreaming of vegetables
Adel Shadid
Hebron, 2.1.2007.
In the week between Christmas and Sylvester the Muslims all over the world celebrated Eid al-Adha, "The Big Holiday."
On that occasion, Muslims use to buy their kids new cloths and toys and to visit family members and bring them gifts. Since old days a central part of the holiday is to share the meat of the sacrificed cows or sheep with the poor. This year Muslims in the Occupied Palestinian Territories could do hardly any of these.
Palestinian children did see on TV how children in
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other countries were getting presents. To their parents fell the thankless task of explaining why there were none for them.
It is almost a year that the government of Israel imposed a boycott on the Palestinian Authority, after Hamas won the elections and formed the government. Not only did Israel withhold the Palestinian people's money, some seven hundred million Dollars in tax money that Israel had collected and did not pass on to its owners -- but they also prevented the passage of workers and goods.
At the same time the countries of the world stopped their support of the Palestinian people. An enormous blow was dealt to the already meagre standard of living of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. As occupier Israel has a legal obligation to preserve the livelihood of the Palestinian people, a duty clearly violated.
It leaves individual Palestinians with the need to find on their own a way of surviving. In all Palestinian towns and villages you can see little children under the age of ten who don't go to school anymore, wandering the streets with small cheap things such as matches or crackers, trying to sell them and bring a few Shekels home to their hard-pressed parents.
In the markets, merchants can be seen sitting idle, with no customers left. Many merchants had to shut down, after some 90% of the checks were returned by the banks.
When buying basic products such as bread or meat, you hear the people telling the shopkeeper that they have no money and can he please wait with the payment until God improves the situation. Some shopkeepers agree, especially when it is a customer they know and can trust to pay when he would be able. Others are simply not able to show such generosity.
The same situation exists also between the shopkeepers themselves and the wholesalers who supply them. Some shopkeepers accumulate heavy debts to the wholesalers; others have no choice but to close their shops for lack of supplies.
In order to cope, families started selling such belongings as furniture, TV sets, satellite dishes, even their stores of cooking and heating gas. By now, many already have nothing left to sell.
Many no longer pay the municipalities and electricity company for the supply of water and electricity. Also, telephones -- mobiles and landlines both -- are increasingly cut off for the inability to pay the charges.
Thousands of Palestinian Authority workers ceased paying back loans to the banks -- with their debts skyrocketing, which they will have to pay once they start getting paid again. A large part of the officials, who had moved to rented lodgings in another town for their job, have ceased to pay the rent.
Those who are the worst off are often asking for private loans from those who are in a slightly better position, with solemn promises to pay it back later.
People do help those who need it most. Recently, I was myself in a fixed-line taxi travelling from Hebron to Bethlehem, the fare being 10 Shekels per passenger. A woman told she could not pay, and she had to visit her husband in hospital. I and four other passengers gave one Shekel each on her behalf, and the driver forgave the other five Shekels and took her.
In the rural sector, people have started cultivating every inch of their land that is still left after the confiscations for settlements and Separation Wall, in order to provide for their families. But thousands live in such dire conditions that they can only dream of vegetables and bread; they pass whole long days without any food, pass the cold mountain winter without heating, lighting candles in order to save electricity, walking on foot or riding donkeys in order to save travelling fares.
The number of the poor and hungry is ever growing. The unemployment rate among Palestinians is enormous, and in practice it can be said that the entire Palestinian people is unemployed.
Still, the Palestinians hope to get soon to the end of these extremely difficult times, that Israel will renew the flow of moneys and the rest of the world will start again to support the Palestinian people. Failing that, we are headed towards a hellish time, when the Palestinian territories will explode in a whirlwind of violence and terror.
Contact: adelshadeed@yahoo.com
****
A hole in the fence
On the night of January 23, soldiers fired at three teenagers who tried to cross the fence, killing one. Just a small item in the news. Two days later Muhammad Sabah of the Israeli Human Rights organization B'tselem went to Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip, and talked with Abd a-Ra'uf Feisal Hussein al-Adini, one of the three 16-year olds who thought they could make it to the 'Paradise behind the Fence.'
I live with my father, grandmother, and aunt in a two-room shack with a tin roof. I am in the tenth grade at the government school in Deir el-Balah. My father is ill and is unemployed. My aunt, who works at a vegetable store, supports us. She works ten days a month and makes less than 600 Shekels (approximately US$130). The welfare ministry gives us 100 Shekels every two months, and once a month we get 50 kilograms of flour, four kilograms of rice, and one liter of cooking oil. We have to make do with this.
Because of the lack of money, I go to school without. Before going to school, I try to get some breakfast at home as I can't buy anything during the whole day. Once a week, I get a Shekel or two for myself, but everyday I have to walk to school, a distance of around 1.5 kilometers, because I can't afford transportation and I don't have a bicycle, either.
The financial situation of my best friends at school -- Mahran Zakaria Abu Nseir and Imad Abu Sheikhah -- is better than mine, but not by much. We spend time together in school and out, and we
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meet during recesses. Two days ago, the last day of school semester, I went to school and took an exam in mathematics. Then, around nine o'clock, I met my two friends.
We sat together for about fifteen minutes when Mahran suggested that we quit school and look for work in Israel, anything other than this life of hardship in the Gaza Strip. Mahran's father is a government clerk, living of advances that he gets on his salary, which is not currently being paid. Imad's father is a merchant, and comparatively well off. Imad and I agreed to the idea of working in Israel; in any case the situation there is better than it is here.
We agreed to meet at ten at night in the center of town. Mahran arrived at my house by bicycle before ten. We both got on his bike and drove to the meeting place. We left the bicycle with a friend of Mahran's. We started on our way, walking east, to the Israeli border. We got there at 11:30 at night. When we got to about fifty meters from the border, we hid behind some trees. We watched the border for about an hour. We saw an Israeli army jeep and waited for it to go away. We didn't see it anymore and thought it had left. Later it turned out that it had simply turned off its lights.
We moved closer to the border fence. We didn't have any tools to cut the barbed wire. We thought we would have to climb over it. We crawled on our stomachs until we got to the barbed wire and then quickly stood up. Unfortunately, there was an opening, and this encouraged us to enter. Mahran died because of this.
We moved closer to the opening and then gunfire erupted. My friend, whom I loved, Mahran Abu Nesayer, was hit in the stomach. I heard him cry out and recite the martyr's prayer. Then they fired flares into the air. I looked at Mahran and saw he was bleeding from the stomach. His shirt was torn in the area of the wound. The three of us lay there and the shooting continued. Mahran died five minutes after he was hit. I was hit on the right side of my buttocks, because I was lying on my stomach. I called quietly to Imad and asked him if he had been hit. He said that he had been hit in the shoulder. He was about half a meter from me. I had hugged Mahran's body after he died, so he was right next to me. I cried when I hugged him, begging him to wake up, but he was already dead.
After four or five minutes, the shooting stopped, and one of the soldiers said something in Hebrew, but we didn't understand a word. We said, in a loud voice, "Help us, we are bleeding and we are not armed, we only want to work in Israel. We don't want to carry out attacks." Immediately, the soldiers again started shooting. We were totally exposed. We had no place to hide, and lots of flares had been shot into the air. We lay there bleeding. The shooting continued for about twenty minutes.
Then one of the soldiers spoke to us in Arabic: "Come through the [hole in the] barbed wire, with your hands up." Imad and I stood up and didn't see anyone. We crossed the barbed wire and then saw about twenty soldiers just on the other side of the electric fence, their weapons aimed at us. They ordered us to undress. We undressed to our underwear. They ordered us to remove that as well.
We stood there completely naked. We were shaking from fear and from the cold of night in the middle of winter.
We stood there for about five minutes, and then they ordered us to get dressed. It was hard to undress and dress because of the wounds we had sustained and because of the bleeding.
They told us to come toward them and climb the electronic fence. Imad tried but couldn't do it because his shoulder hurt so much. I helped him climb the barbed wire, which was about three meters
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high. I, too, could barely climb over the barbed wire. They ordered us to sit down on the ground and put our head between our legs. We stayed like that for less than five minutes. They ordered us to start walking, and they followed with their rifles aimed at us. We walked east about fifty meters. Then they treated our wounds for about ten minutes. One of the soldiers gave me first aid. He was wearing a green uniform and had a flashlight on his head. Another soldier treated Imad. They took the two of us to an army jeep and blindfolded us. The jeep drove off and about half an hour later, we got to an Israeli army outpost, where they removed the blindfold. Some of the soldiers filmed us, as if we were some wonder. They took Imad away. I later learned that they took him to a hospital in Israel. They didn't take me to hospital although my wound hurt a lot. They put me in a room.
At 6:00 in the morning, an Israeli in civilian clothes came into the room He was apparently from Israeli Intelligence. He spoke with me in Arabic and asked me how old I was and what my name was. I told him. He asked: "Why do you want to come to Israel?" I told him I wanted to work in Israel. He offered me money but I refused because I was sure he wanted me to work with Israeli Intelligence. He offered me money again, and again I refused. Later, they moved me to a room with a bed and thin blanket. I was alone in the room. At 9:00 A.M., Imad arrived. At around 2:00 P.M., a group of soldiers came. They ordered us to get ready to go back to Gaza. They blindfolded us and put us in an army jeep. The jeep took us to a gate at the border in the area of al-Maghazi. We crossed through the gate, and the residents of al-Maghazi called an ambulance for us. The ambulance came and took us to Shohada al-Aqsa Hospital, in Deir el-Balah. The doctors examined and X-rayed us. Palestinian Police officers came and asked us to tell them what happened. When we were discharged, we went to the police station in Deir el-Balah and told them our story.
Now I am at home, and the days pass. But I feel as if I am still living what happened.
****
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Peace of no choice
Rabin memorial rally & Grossman speech
Adam Keller
Saturday, November 4. The year's most bloody weekend. The Palestinian death toll at beleaguered Beit Hanoun creeps higher and higher up with every news bulletin. In the afternoon a twelve-year old girl is reported killed from a direct shot to the head by an Israeli army sniper. "The sniper thought it was an armed militant," says a perfunctory apology from the military spokesman's office. The killing goes on.
The man in charge (at least nominally) of this rampaging military juggernaut is Amir Peretz, Labour Party leader and Defence Minister of Israel. Precisely a year ago, it was Amir Peretz who mounted the stage at the annual Rabin Memorial -- to anoint himself Rabin's successor and speak of his dream that "One day, Israeli and Palestinian children will play together in the no-man's-land between Israel and the Gaza Strip"...
Wisely, the organizers of this year's commemoration took a blanket decision to have no politicians at all among the speakers. This exclusion of Peretz may well have saved him from being greeted by prolonged whistles and catcalls from those who have a good reason to feel cheated.
Peace groups decided to make the Rabin Rally a starting point for their month long Gaza campaign, against the siege and carnage. At 7.00 dozens of volunteers were assembled at the edge of the Rabin Square, with Jana Kanapova of the Women's Peace Coalition energetically coordinating the preparations. A big helium canister was brought to fill an enormous lot of black balloons with the inscription 'SOS GAZA'; yellow jackets had been collected from car owners to make the planned human chain more conspicuous, and packages of stickers contained the message 'Gaza -- Open the Siege, Stop the War' -- the logo of barbed wire turning into an olive branch.
These were distributed to the youngsters who started to arrive at the spot, together with the brochure Frequently Asked Questions:
What did we get of leaving Gaza? Nothing, because we did it unilaterally, without a negotiated agreement which could have prevented the shooting of missiles. And anyway, we did not really leave; Israel controls all the passages in and out of the Strip. Why should I care what happens to the Palestinians? If you enclose your neighbors in a big prison and starve them, you create a powder keg, which will explode, in your own face!
Other groups and movements also arrived, with a big medley of stickers, leaflets, brochures, balloons, signs and the blue ribbons remembered from last year struggle on the Sharon Disengagement... The Peace Now blue and black placards read 'Olmert and Peretz -- You Have Abandoned His Way!' (a bit unfair, as Olmert never claimed to be a Rabin follower...). Meretz, in green on white, had: 'Rabin, We Are With You -- Labour Is With Lieberman!'
The entry of arch-racist Avigdor Lieberman to the government, with Labour concurrence, was also the subject of a Hadash leaflet, and of various hand-made signs carried by a group of youngsters unaffiliated with any organization.
Supporters of the Geneva Initiative distributed their maps with 'Mutual Minor Territorial Exchanges Between Israel and Palestine' and the "One Voice" placards asked 'What Are You Willing To Do In Order To End The Conflict?' and "The Fifth Mother" had 'Only Dialogue Can Bring Good Neighborliness'.
The "Studying and Working Youth", like every year present in massive blue-shirted contingents, made the solemn pledge: 'We will neither forget nor forgive those who incited, hated beyond measure, harmed democracy and did all they could to prevent any chance for living in peace, among ourselves and with our neighbors. We vow to continue ever onwards on the way of Yitzchak Rabin, who was murdered because of his striving for peace.'
Meanwhile, members of the Gay Community were mobilizing support for their controversial Jerusalem Gay Pride March ('If you believe in a liberal, open and tolerant Jerusalem, come and march with us'), supported by the militants of "Socialist Struggle" ('The Knesset Members' and police's opposition to the march shows the inherent homophobia of the establishment. Wide social solidarity must be mobilized!'). And Tzedek (Justice) made an urgent appeal: 'The new government budget imposes new cuts in the welfare, education and health budgets, Tens of thousands more children will be pushed under the poverty line. Come with us tomorrow evening, to protest outside the Finance Minister's home, to voice the outcry of the hungry children.' And the animal rights groups were there, too: 'If you eat meat, you should know that your meal had wanted to live, just as much as you want to live!'
Suddenly, out of the powerful loudspeakers, the recorded voice of Rabin -- speaking from this same podium eleven years ago, strong and confident and having no idea it was the last day of his life:
'I have been a military man. I fought when fighting was necessary. But when the chance for peace comes, you must take it. And the chance is real, peace is possible!'
Words which may have sounded a bit banal at the time, at the heyday of Oslo, assumed retrospective significance after years when belief in the very possibility of peace had vanished.
Then, well-known artists go up to sing, one by one, some songs with politically significant words, others which have become in a way hallowed by being sung here every year.
Meanwhile, the 'TALK TO HAMAS!' Gush Shalom sticker led to quite some debates. Some took it up enthusiastically, others with an embarrassed smile, but there were also quite a few opponents, also in this milieu: "Why? They are extremists, terrorists!" "Do you see on the side of the sticker: 'Peace is made with the enemy'. This is what Rabin said, for whose sake we came here". "But they are so reactionary!" "And what about our government?
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Are they progressives? Let our reactionaries talk to theirs!"
Suddenly, a hush. The writer David Grossman got up to deliver the keynote (in fact, virtually the only) speech, which would be broadcast live on radio and TV.
Grossman had been much in the limelight recently. He had supported the Second Lebanon War at its inception, but later turned around and made a dramatic call for ceasefire, which the government ignored -- and in the last battle of the war, his own son was killed.
"THERE WAS A WAR. Israel exerted a powerful military muscle -- but exposed fragility and shortcoming. We found that after all the military might in our hands cannot in itself ensure our survival. Especially, we discovered that Israel is in a deep crisis, far deeper than we guessed, a crisis touching all spheres of our life.
I am talking as one whose love for this country is a difficult and complicated love, and still unequivocal, and as one whose alliance with this country has been horribly sealed in blood. I am a completely secular person, and still for me the creation -- and very existence -- of Israel is a miracle. A miracle that happened to us as a people, a political, national, human miracle.
I don't forget that for a single moment, even when many things in the reality of our life revolt and depress me, even when the miracle is converted into the small change of routine and squalor, of corruption and cynicism. Even when reality looks like a bad parody of the miracle, I always remember.
"Look, land, how wasteful we have been" wrote the poet Tchernichovsky in 1938. He mourned the fact that again and again we commit to the soil of this country young people in the very prime of their life.
The death of young people is a terrible waste. But just as terrible is the feeling that for many years already, Israel is wasting not only the lives of her sons but the miraculous opportunity which was given to her -- the rare opportunity granted by history to create here an enlightened democratic state, conducted according to Jewish and Universal values. A state that would give Jews not only a refuge but also a new meaning for their lives. A state that would regard its Jewish identity and Jewish ethos as inextricably involving respect and complete equality of its non-Jewish citizens. And look what happened! (Loud clapping and cheers).
LOOK WHAT happened to the young, daring country that was here, full of a flaming spirit. How, as in an accelerated process of aging, Israel jumped from vivid youth directly to a frustrated angry old age. When did this happen? When did we lose the feeling that there could ever be a different life for us, a better life? How can we still stand aside and look, as if hypnotized, at the madness and roughness, violence and racism taking over our home?
I ask you, how is it that a people with such powers of recuperation and creation as ours, a people which rose like a phoenix from the ashes time after time, finds itself -- exactly when it possesses such an overwhelming military power -- so frail and helpless? How did our people become a victim again -- but this time its own victim, the victim of its anxieties and despair, of its own shortsightedness?
ONE OF THE most terrible results of the last war was to increase the feeling that there is no king in Israel, no leadership. Our leadership is hollow -- the political and military leadership both.
I don't now talk only of the obvious fiascos of the war, of the big and small corruption scandals. I am talking about the fact that the people who now lead Israel can offer nothing more than anxiety on the one hand and intimidation on the other. The cheap fascination of naked power, and the wink of crooked deals. It seems that the vision of those who lead extends no further than the next newspaper headline, or the next interrogation by the Attorney General.
MR. PRIME MINISTER, you would not be able to say that I was overcome with grief and in this way dismiss what I have to say to you. Of course I feel grief. I feel pain for this country and what you and your friends are doing to it. Believe me: your success is important to me, because the future of all of us depends on your ability to really act.
Yitzchak Rabin took the road of peace with the Palestinians -- and not because he felt any great affection for them, or for the leader they then had. As you may remember, also then the general feeling was that we don't have a partner.
Rabin decided to take action because he decided, with great wisdom, that Israeli society could not endure long in a situation of unsolved conflict. He understood, long before many others, that life in a permanent atmosphere of violence, of occupation, of terror and anxiety and hopelessness, such a life is exacting an unpayable exorbitant price.
All these things are still true today. Today, they are more sharp and urgent. Before talking of the [Palestinian] partner we have or haven't, let us take a look at ourselves.
FOR MORE than a hundred years already we live in a conflict. We, the citizens of this conflict, were born into a war, and educated in it, and in a certain way programmed by it. That's perhaps why we sometimes think that this madness, in which we live for hundred years already, is the one and only real thing. That this is the only life destined for us, that we have no possibility, nor even a right, to seek a new life: by the sword shall we live and by the sword shall we die, forevermore.
Perhaps that is the reason for the indifference with which we accept the total absence of any peace process, an absence that lasts more and more years and exacts ever more victims. That might also explain the lack of reaction by most of us to the blow delivered to democracy when Avigdor Lieberman was appointed a senior minister, a proven pyromaniac appointed to head the fire brigade! (Prolonged clapping)
THAT MIGHT be part of the reason why in such a
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short time the state of Israel degenerated into a cruel indifference towards the weak, the poor and suffering.
This indifference towards the fate of hungry people, of old people, of the ill and handicapped; the indifference to the trade in women for enforced prostitution and the exploitation of migrant workers in conditions of virtual slavery; and the deep institutionalized racism towards the Arab minority.
ALL THESE things happen here with a complete naturalness, causing no shock and no protest. I am beginning to fear that even if peace comes tomorrow, even if we ever return to some kind of normalcy, perhaps we already missed the opportunity for complete recovery.
The disaster that happened to my family and me, with the fall of our son Uri, does not give me any special privileged position in the public debate. But it seems to me that facing death and loss does carry some kind of clarity and sobriety, at least as regards the distinction between important things and unimportant ones. Between what can be achieved and what cannot be. Between reality and illusion.
Nowadays, every clear-headed person in Israel -- and let me add, also in Palestine -- knows precisely the outline of a possible solution to the conflict between the two peoples. Every clearheaded person, among us as among them, knows in the depth of the heart the difference between dreams and wishes and between what can be achieved at the end of negotiations. And anybody who does not know it -- be they Jews or Arabs -- is already now not a partner. Such people are trapped in a hermetic fanaticism, and therefore they are not partners. Let us look for a moment at these who are supposed to be our partners.
The Palestinians placed at their head Hamas, which refuses to negotiate with us or even recognize us. What can we do in such a situation? To go on strangling them, more and more? To go on killing hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, most of them innocent civilians just like us?
ADDRESS THE Palestinians, Mr. Olmert. Address them over the head of Hamas. Address the moderates among them; those who like you and me oppose the Hamas and its way. Address the Palestinian people. Speak to their deep wound; recognize their prolonged suffering. This will detract nothing from your position, from Israel's negotiating position in future negotiations. It will just open the hearts a bit to each other, and this opening will have enormous power. Simple human compassion can have the power of a force of nature, exactly in situation of deadlock and hatred.
Just for once, don't look at them through gun sights or across the closed checkpoint. Just look, and you will see a people no less tortured than us. Of course, also the Palestinians share in the blame for this deadlock. Of course, they too have a great share in the failure of the peace process. But look at them just for a second with a different look. Look not only at the extremists among them. Not only at those who share an interest with our extremists. Look at the overwhelming majority of that miserable people, whose fate is inextricably tied to ours, whether or not we want it.
GO TO the Palestinians, Mr. Olmert. Stop looking for reasons and excuses not to talk to them. You have given up the unilateral "convergence", and it is well that you did it. But don't leave a vacuum. A vacuum will immediately fill with violence and destruction.
Talk to them. Make them an offer that the moderates among them could accept (and there are more of them than what the media shows us). Give them an offer that will place them in a real dilemma between accepting it and becoming the hostages of the most fanatic brand of Islam. Come to them with the most brave and serious plan which Israel can offer, with the proposal which every clear-eyed Israeli and Palestinian knows to be the limit of concession and the limit of refusal, ours and theirs.
If you delay, it will not be long before we start missing the amateurishness of Palestinian terrorism. We will hit our heads in remorse and cry out, why did we not use our mental flexibility, our Israeli creativity, in order to extract our enemies from their self-made trap.
THERE IS peace of no choice. Just like there is a war of no choice, there is a peace of no choice, because really there is no other choice left -- not to us and not to them. And a peace of no choice should be waged with as much creativity and determination as a war of no choice. There is no other choice. Those who think that there is another choice, that time is on our side, don't comprehend the deep processes in whose midst we already are.
By the way, Mr. Prime Minister, perhaps I need to remind you that when an Arab leader sends a peace signal -- even the lightest and most hesitant -- you have to respond. You must check immediately how serious he is. You have no moral right to ignore such a signal. You owe it to those from whom you will ask to sacrifice their lives if another war breaks out. So, if President Assad says that Syria wants peace, even if you don't believe him -- and we all suspect him -- you must offer to meet him the same day.
(Clapping, Peace Now activists distribute stickers reading 'Assad is waiting for Olmert' and 'Abu Mazen is waiting for Olmert'.)
DON'T WAIT even one day. When you went into the last war you did not wait even for an hour. You charged right ahead, with all weapons. With all the destructive might. Why, when there is a glimmering of peace, do you immediately reject and erode it? What have you got to lose?
You suspect the Syrian president -- present him with such conditions as will uncover any plot. Offer a peace process which will last several years, and only at its conclusion, and if he fulfills all conditions, would he get back the Golan. (Clapping, but less strong than earlier). Oblige him to a process of prolonged dialogue. Make this possibility known to his people; help the moderates who surely exist
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also there. Try to shape reality, not just be its slave. That's what you were elected for, exactly that.
And to conclude: Of course, not everything is up to us. There are big and strong forces that act in the world and the region, and some of them -- like Iran, like extreme Islam -- work against us. And still, so much depends on what we will do, and on what we will be.
The differences of opinion between Left and Right are in fact not that big any more. The decisive majority of Israel's citizens already understands -- though some of them without much enthusiasm -- how the outline of the solution to the conflict will look like. Most of us understand that the land will be divided, that a Palestinian state will arise.
Why, therefore, are we continuing this internal bickering that has already gone on for nearly forty years? Why is our political leadership continuing to reflect the positions of the extremists, and not of the majority of the public? Is it not clear that out position will be much better if we reach this national agreement by ourselves, rather than be forced to it by circumstances -- external pressure, or a new Intifada, or another war? If we do this, we will save ourselves years of bloodshed, of unnecessary bloodshed. Years of a terrible mistake.
FROM WHERE I now stand I request, call upon anybody who listens to me -- to the young people who came back from the war, and who know that they will have to pay the price of the next war; to Jewish and Arab citizens, to leftists and rightists: stop for a moment. Look at the edge of the abyss; think of how close we are to losing all that we have created here. Ask yourself if the time has not come to break out of the paralysis and at long last demand for ourselves the kind of life which we deserve to live.
Very very long and loud applause throughout the vast square. A feeling of revelation, even for those who disagreed on specific points. As we read on the following day's paper, the Labour Party leaders -- who were seated at the stage, though not given access to the microphone -- did not share in the enthusiasm, but were rather shocked and angry; Peretz went away immediately when Grossman was done.
For the rest of us the politicians had deservedly been exposed, and the force manifested in these hundred thousand people crowded in the square and listening to their "prophet on the dais" created a rare moment of hope.
(The media were also impressed; again and again were parts of Grossman's speech broadcast, and Yediot Aharonot printed it in full, of which we made use for this translation.)
****
Revisiting Apartheid
Daniel Olinsky
On the third time the guy passed by me with a silver tray carrying tea glasses, I did not know where to hide my face. I already had two glasses today and my hosts don't even have running water, instead counting on the winter season to fill their wells enough. We must be about 200 guests, certainly a setback to their water supplies. But how can I say no without being rude? Besides, I would like another glass on this January afternoon.
Saturday, Jan 13, I joined a visit to the villagers of the South Hebron mountains, south east of the town of Yata, organized by members of Ta'ayush (Arab-Jewish Partnership). Not villagers actually, but cave dwellers. The nicest people, I had a chance to meet the elderly as we sat on bare rocks, listening to the calm winds that swept the mountainside. I also kicked around a deflated soccer ball with the children, edgy over each kid tripping over the uneven, sharp rocks.
More significantly, the group and I walked over to the fences encircling the small area, which on any other day they are not allowed to get near, not to mention cross over to tend to their fields. Today they could, as the Israeli police and army forces showed extra patience faced with such a force majeure as the presence of Jewish Israelis.
We spent a few hours with our Palestinian hosts. It was a rather pleasant day and most of us were overdressed, expecting it to be much colder. In fact, I got some sun that day. How I love being in the sun. Except for a small group of young settlers who came up to the fence at some time during the day to provoke the locals, showing their lordship over the land and freedom in roaming anywhere they wish, there were no violent events.
A true feeling of solidarity and co-existence, as the speakers -- local Palestinians, the mayor of Yata (the biggest nearby Palestinian town), a Jewish lawyer who has been representing the otherwise unorganized Palestinians in the Israeli courts -- all were simultaneously translated into both Arabic and Hebrew. It was a taste of co-existence for me, and a taste of mere existence for the Palestinians.
Before leaving, the locals asked to comment that our visit, ironically, missed the point in a way. It was pleasant, too pleasant. The weather was kind to us, as were all the other elements, helping us forget for a moment that the day-to-day reality in this area is significantly different. The wells were poisoned by the nearby Jewish settlers; the olive trees chopped down or burned; the children are scared to walk to school in the neighboring village, needing international volunteers to escort them and protect them from the sticks and stones with which they are attacked daily; and more.
As we said our uncomfortable goodbyes, we were asked to return and visit in the future. We made plans to attend the High Court of Justice on January 29, the day the cave dwellers' case will be decided upon -- another expulsion from their lands or the right to remain in their place, in caves, among the rocks and scarce bushes. [In the event, the judges delayed their decision, leaving the villagers in limbo for more months. Ed.]
We then headed towards the buses that would take us back to our homes in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Be'er Sheva from which we came. That is when the idyllic afternoon smashed against the sharp rocks of
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reality. Israeli police in blue uniform stopped the Palestinians who were on their way back to their homes, after coming to meet us for the day. There is more than one word to describe this behavior: harassment comes to mind, as does provocation and aspects of an occupation; Apartheid is not far off the mark either.
A peaceful day that ended before sunset, on time for all to return safely to their homes, was interrupted by the routine checkup of the police, manifesting their authority and power over the helpless Palestinians.
We ran over, expressed our irritation and anger over this heartless and thickheaded behavior on behalf of the Israeli security forces. They were humiliating the Palestinians, but I too felt humiliated. The Palestinians who got stopped and their paperwork confiscated were there because of me. Now, though I am free to return to my comfortable one-bedroom in Tel Aviv, they are left to the caprice of some miserable policemen with nothing better else to do than aim their guns at innocent people.
I felt responsible for the Palestinians' suffering, as the soldiers represent me as an Israeli. If only we hadn't come that day to visit these people. How can I go home now? How can I continue at all? Should I act, shout or attack a policeman? It would only send me to prison and hurt my moral, non-violent ground, besides encouraging the policemen even more in retaliating against the Palestinians next time around -- tomorrow or even later that night. I cried.
On the bus, after the Palestinians were released and sent on their way with our intervention, thanks in large part to the large number of media cameras that were present, I read the Newsweek my father passed to me Friday evening. In the magazine, former President Jimmy Carter was asked whether he agonized about the use of the word "Apartheid" in describing what is going on in Palestine. He said: "There is no doubt about it, and no one can go there and visit the different cities in Palestine without agreeing with what I have said." Indeed.
+++ Shortly after the above was written, the South Hebron Palestinians learned what it means to be left with an unclear juridical status. On February 14, military forces accompanied by bulldozers simultaneously descended on the tiny villages of Quwais, M'neizel, and Um el Cheir - and also on the houses of the Abu-Kbeita extended family, who live a bit further from the others (in the dangerous vicinity of the Israeli settlement of Yatir).
Everywhere, the army energetically and thoroughly destroyed the villagers' very modest (but "illegal") residential and farming structures. Also targeted were the quite rudimentary toilet facilities, evidently considered a luxury these people were not entitled to have.
In addition, demolition orders were delivered for twenty more buildings -- at Jinba, a slightly bigger though still very small village. ("You are hereby instructed to demolish and remove the illegal structure erected at ... failing which it would be removed by the authorities").
A family living within a cave -- which cannot be considered "an illegally built structure" -- did get an order to immediately dismantle a small toilet with they had installed within their subterranean home. (Of course, the army did not touch the ever-growing manifestly illegal settlement outposts, just around the corner).
+++ Jerusalem-based activists of Ta'ayush, who maintain years-long contact with these communities, were urgently called -- but by the time the Israelis arrived, the bulldozers had already completed their dirty work and departed. The activists found desolate families huddled among the ruins and waiting for the tents promised by the Red Cross. They were, however, determined to build again "since we have nowhere else to go," and some were already digging in the rubble and searching for pieces that could be salvaged.
The plan of joint rebuilding by Palestinians, Israeli and internationals more or less defined itself. Expenses would be mainly for the materials, since the builders would all be volunteers.
The cost of cement, blocks, stone, sand, concrete and roofs needed for all the houses to be re-erected was estimated at about 100,000 Shekels (22,000 Dollars). Since all materials would be bought at the nearby Palestinian town of Yata, it would be also a small injection of funds into the strangled Palestinian economy.
Ta'ayush approached various other organizations, and gained numerous pledges of funds and/or volunteers: Rabbis for Human Rights, Gush Shalom, Committee Against House Demolitions (naturally), Coalition of Women for Peace, the international volunteers of ISM, Machsom Watch, Yesh Gvul, and also the Beer Sheba student groups affiliated to Peace Now and Meretz.
+++ On the morning of March 10, buses and private cars set out from Jerusalem, nearly 150 Israelis and internationals altogether. Army and police were present when they arrived at Quwais, got down and shook hands with the waiting villagers.
Yoel Marshak of the Kibbutz Movement, who is on good terms with Defense Minister Peretz, went to confer with the officer in command, returning with a calming message: "The army is going to observe, they will not interfere."
The work proceeded in good spirits (the weather was favourable, too). Altogether, erection of eight houses was finished on this day (some of them had been began already earlier in the week by the villagers, and ended today with a good pool of "unskilled" but enthusiastic construction workers). This accounts for about half of the demolished houses - the other half to be completed soon.
"Of course, the fact that the army did not interfere today does not mean that they will not come back tomorrow, or next month, and destroy everything again," said organizer Avichai Sharon.
Jerusalem Attorney Shlomo Leker, who already
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handles similar cases in other nearby villages, has taken up the legal representation of the new cases for a minimal fee. But, whether justice will be obtained in courtrooms can never be taken for granted, and less so in an Israeli court dealing with a case of Palestinians under occupation.
Evening, Tuesday, November 7. "With every new invasion of Gaza, Israeli officials use lower and lower standards of justifications for their killings. After almost 50 people were killed in the past week, demonstrations were attacked with machine guns and schoolchildren with missiles, even the hypocritical expressions of regret for the loss of innocent lives are hardly heard." Upon this call of the Anarchists, protesters came again to line the sidewalk opposite the Defence Ministry.
A few signs -- 'Stop the killing!' 'Get the IDF out of Gaza!' 'End the Siege!' Many candles. A black-bordered sign, 'We mourn all the victims of Occupation and Violence'.
The pale face of a young soldier peeping out of the guard hut across the road. Demonstrators stand in silence. A passing taxi driver opens his window, shouting, "Go to hell, dirty traitors, Arab-lovers!" A few minutes later another taxi driver, like him enough to be his brother, calls out cheerfully "Good luck, brothers, I am with you!"
The silent vigil continues for half an hour. Than a latecomer cries out "Did you hear? Another eight killed!" and the youths in the central part of the line burst out with hysterical shouting 'Peretz, child killer!' and 'All the ministers are war criminals!' accompanied by wild drumming on the sheet metal fence.
After a quarter of an hour they subside, and then it is a silent vigil again, activists engaged in the agonizingly difficult act of keeping a flame alive in the strong wind. Quite a metaphor...
This vigil was part of the month-long Gaza Campaign with events in different cities.
+++ Saturday, November 18, Morning. One by one, cars driven by activists arrive at the Cinema City parking lot north of Tel-Aviv, rendezvous of the Sderot-Gaza Cavalcade.
Activists pick up the Peace Now signs reading 'Gaza: There is No Military Solution' and 'It Won't End Until We Talk', and attach them with sticky tapes to their cars. A woman, with a T-shirt reading 'If they can talk to us, surely we can talk to them', finds place for no less than five signs on the front, sides and back of a diminutive car.
The joint hard work of several activists is needed to successfully cover the sides of an especially chartered truck with enormous banners reading 'Only Negotiations Can Stop the Qassam Missiles'.
Finally, the preparations are completed and some forty cars set out in a long and imposing line, the narrow blue ribbons tied to radio aerials fluttering in the wind. Not far on the way, the banners on the truck get loose in the strong wind, and activists need to tie them tightly all over again under the cover of a pedestrian bridge, like sailors on an ancient windjammer struggling with billowing sails.
The next hour's radio news tells of soldiers killing Palestinian militants at Qalqiliya, but then goes on to say: "A Peace Now Convoy is at this hour on its way from Tel-Aviv to Sderot and the Erez Checkpoint, to protest army activities in the Strip. The Gush Shalom Movement sent a telegram to the Spanish Foreign Minister Moratinos with congratulations for the European proposal to place an international force in the Gaza Strip."
"Hey, two left wing items on one news broadcast? And on The Army Radio at that! Was the government controller sleeping?" says Tzachi, student at Be'er Sheva University and Peace Now organizer.
Sderot -- the town which is the main target of Palestinian hand-made rockets in the past five years and whose name is the main argument used by the government for the bloody Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. The convoy goes into the main street.
A small hand-made sign on a fence reads, "We have been thrown to the dogs. Give the army a free hand to smash them!" As if in intentional answer, the lead car has a big sign 'People of Sderot, don't let yourselves be fooled. There is NO military solution!'
The militant signs are, however, outnumbered by forlorn "for sale" signs on many houses, and the streets are nearly empty. Some four thousand inhabitants, a large percentage of the townspeople, had yesterday accepted the offer of populist billionaire Arkady Gaidamak to have a week of "holiday from the Qassam" at the resorts of Eilat on the Red Sea.
The few people on the street don't seem so well disposed towards the convoy passing through their city. But suddenly, the mobile phone rings in the lead car: "Hello, I am Shirley; I am from Kibbutz Bror Chail, which is here in range of the Qassams. I have been working with Sderot youths for three years. Can I come to your rally?" "Sure, you are most welcome!" A piece of unexpected luck.
A big official sign says in Hebrew, English and Arabic: 'Welcome to the Erez Crossing Point.' Rather a mockery; very few have crossed through this modern facility in the past year, either into or out of Gaza. Activists get off their cars on the large, empty parking lot and take up the signs. Members of the Gaza Coalition brought some hand-painted signs, used last week in a joint Israeli-Palestinian convoy to the same place: 'Stop the Siege! Stop the War!'
Chanting starts: 'In Beit Hanoun and Sderot/ Children want to live' (it rhymes in Hebrew). From the other side of the Gaza border, we hear a burst of machine-gun fire. (Later in the day, we heard of a Palestinian being killed in the morning -- had we heard the shot that killed him?).
Haim Oron -- kibbutznik and former Agriculture Minister from Meretz -- takes up the megaphone: "A unique opportunity is now opening up, and if Olmert does not take it he will have on his hands the blood of the children in Sderot and Beit Hanoun
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whose lives can still be saved. A new Palestinian government is going to be formed. Talk to them! First, about an immediate cease-fire, to stop all this killing. Then, about the solution -- the solution that everybody knows will be implemented sooner or later, call it the Geneva Agreement of the Clinton Outline or whatever. It will come; everybody knows it. Why do thousands still have to die before it comes?"
"We asked for a permit to let Sufian Abu Zeida, the former Palestinian minister, to cross the border and join us here. The army denied it, because it was not 'an urgent humanitarian case'. We will hear him over the phone."
"Hello, my friends. I am sorry I can't address you face to face. I want to thank you for caring for the suffering of the people here in Gaza, for seeking to make real peace. I want to say something to the other kind of Israelis, those who want a giant new military operation in Gaza, those who want to fight and conquer and kill us: You don't learn from your own failures. If you try this, you will have another bloody failure. There is no military solution, nothing but two states and a fair solution for the refugees. This is the only way: Sit together, make our two states live together!" (Chanting: 'Israel and Palestine, two states for two peoples!')
Journalist Gideon Levy: "I, unlike most of you, was able to cross to the other side. I saw Beit Hanoun destroyed and ruined, streets with every house showing signs of damage, many completely collapsed.
I saw wounded people dying slowly because they are dependent on respirators and electricity is erratic since our air force bombed the Strip's only electric generator.
Five minutes' drive from here, across this crossing point, a terrible humanitarian crisis is developing. Everyone who stands complacently aside, which means most people in Israel, shares in the guilt.
And I want to say: everybody is talking about the terrible suffering of the Sderot people. They suffer, true, but you can't compare it to Beit Hanoun. Sderot is mourning one victim this week, in Beit Hanoun they mourn more than eighty!" As if on cue, at the exact end of Levy's speech there was again a prolonged machine-gun burst, and we could see a helicopter flying very fast over the fields of the North Gaza Strip.
"I am Shirley, and I come here from Sderot. I identify with the aims of this rally, but I don't agree with the end of what Gideon Levy said. You can't measure the suffering of Sderot only by the number of the dead.
I am working with children and youths and I see how this tension affects them. I saw how they were taken to a safe place, to a nice quiet beach, and when the lifeguard announced something trivial on the loudspeaker they were shaking with fear and instinctively looking for an air raid shelter. There is a whole traumatized generation growing there, in fear and hatred." Yariv Oppenheimer, of Peace Now, calmed down an incipient debate: "We have not come here to set a competition of who is the worst sufferer. We have come to try and stop the suffering of everybody, on both sides of the border."
+++ Just as participants were dispersing, a startling piece of news came over the phone: "The Anarchists are making their own action, some kilometres south of here. They have gotten on tanks, and wave their signs on top!'
Several cars head fast in that direction, across a muddy track. Ahead, a row of armored vehicles, and in front of them a clump of blue-uniformed police. "ID's please. This is as far as you go, not a step further!" "Oh, yeah? And by what authority do you stop Israeli citizens from proceeding in the territory of their own country?"
A few minutes' interaction, and we are able to proceed. In fact, what are in front of us are not tanks but armored personnel carriers, of the type that the IDF quite appropriately designates as "Achzarit" ("Cruella").
The nearest one bears graffiti apparently made by the soldiers themselves: "Sweet revenge". "Gil'ad, we are coming!" (referring to captured Israeli soldier Gil'ad Shalit). "Khaled Mash'al, we are coming!" (referring to the Damascus-based Hamas leader). On the ground, some empty cartons with the inscription: "Israeli Defence Forces -- Advanced Grade Machine Gun Ammunition." In the second row are the two machines on which the Anarchists chose to make their stand.
There they stand, on top of the "Cruellas". Three are spreading out a giant banner: 'Stop the murder machines!' while others hold out color photos of the wounded Palestinians from Beit Hanoun. Some cover their face with life-size photos of a bandaged child's face. They have made red stains on their faces and clothing, and the ground is strewn with dummies simulating body parts. One of these, with arms upraised as if to block the brutal threads, is marked 'Rachel Corrie.'
Several press photographers and TV cameras are present. Yonathan Pollack, central organizer of Anarchists Against the Wall, gives non-stop press interviews on his mobile phone: "(...) Since we are Israeli citizens, this murder is perpetrated also in our name. Protesting as strongly as we can is not an option, it is an absolute duty. This is not the first time that we are deliberately and intentionally facing detention for our protesting injustice. That is a very low price to pay, and we are completely willing to pay it."
One of the girls on top of the vehicle tries to sing a parody of a song from the 1967 war: "We have fought like lions..." But her companions retort: "Sorry, we don't know this song. We did not have the advantage of your militarist education". They settle for singing raucously "Avanti Popolo", the song of the Italian Left.
The police start approaching closer, and the metallic glint from their belts indicates handcuffs ready for use. The group on top of the vehicles gets
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ready, as do the photographers. But the police stop, and in the sudden silence we can hear one of them asking on his phone: "But precisely what should we charge them with, sir?"
A few minutes later, the police turn back, pile into their patrol cars and disappear. There is left the strange tableau of demonstrators apparently left in possession of the army vehicles, with only two conscripts, on guard duty, standing bewildered on one side.
Across the border the shooting starts again.
+++ December 2, evening. Three thousand demonstrators marching through the streets and boulevards of central Tel Aviv "With drive and intensity, filling the air with our sounds and passion" -- as later described by Gila Svirsky of the Women's Peace Coalition, which had taken the initiative for the Campaign Against the Gaza Siege", to which Gush Shalom, Ta'ayush, the Rabbis, the Anarchists and a whole lot of others eventually adhered.
The crowd was full of young people, ceaselessly chanting and drumming. Due to anti-Globalization and Animal Rights activists being prominently present, riot police were heavily deployed outside the nearby McDonald's -- the target of some past protests -- and a violent confrontation narrowly averted.
In front the enormous banner: 'GAZA: Stop the Siege! End the War!' was followed by a Street Theater of stumbling activists chained together, under the black 'SOS Gaza!' balloons. The Italian "Action for Peace" was represented by senior trade unionists and members of the Italian Parliament and the European one (among them, of course, the irrepressible Luisa Morgantini).
There was little to show, outwardly, the debates and discussions that had preceded this march following Olmert's declaration of a ceasefire a few days earlier. "Sure, in principle there are still many reasons to demonstrate, but in practice we need very many words to explain why we are doing it precisely today. The fact is that we are doing it because we made a plan before the ceasefire, in which a lot of energy had been invested", said former KM Uri Avnery (who, despite his reservations came to the march.)
Speaking to journalists, another former KM, Tamar Gozansky, dealt with the same subject: "Of course we are happy that there is a ceasefire, even if it is partial and faulty. We are happy that the tanks are outside the Strip, that we do not every morning wake to hear how many people were killed during the night and how many of them were innocent civilians.
I think that the ceasefire owes something to the campaign that we have been holding in the past month, to two convoys going to the Gaza Strip border, to young people climbing on tanks and heckling during the speech of Peretz at Tel-Aviv University. I am sure that somebody from the government is monitoring our website and emails, so they knew that there were solidarity demonstrations and protests scheduled for tonight in 107 cities and sites all over the world, including 30 places in the United States.
But occupation is not just about killing and wounding. It is also about withholding food, water, medicine, electricity, and basic living needs. This is still going on, this government is just strangling the people of Gaza, all the Palestinians, and they have no intention of stopping.
The occupation goes on, it is cruel and brutal even when a ceasefire is declared and Mr. Olmert asks the world to praise him for being so moderate and peace loving. And if we don't get rid of the occupation, the fire will break out again, and worse. This is why we demonstrate tonight and will continue to demonstrate."
The participating groups included:
Coalition of Women for Peace * Gush Shalom * Anarchists Against the Wall * Hadash * Balad * The High School Seniors' Letter * Taayush * Yesh Gvul* Rabbis for Human Rights * ICAHD * The Student Coalition -- Tel Aviv University.
****
Protesting yet another invasion...
+++ On the evening of Feb. 26, about a hundred demonstrators marched through the streets of Jaffa, protesting the army invasion of Nablus, the massive curfew imposed on the city's inhabitants and the killing of an unarmed inhabitant on that same morning.
Jewish and Arab demonstrators, a large part of them Jaffa inhabitants, and including members of Anarchists Against Fences, Gush Shalom and the Coalition of Women for Peace, marched southwards on Jaffa's Jerusalem Boulevard -- from which they turned to Yefet St., chanting: 'Occupation is Illegal, Remove the Siege!' 'Nablus People, Don't Despair, We Will End the Occupation Yet!' 'Dismantle the Border Guard, Get Out of the Territories Now!' 'Peretz, Peretz, Hey, Hey, Hey. How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?' and 'In Gaza and Sderot, Children Want to Live.'
After passing Yehuda Hayamit St., the marchers ended two and a half hours of protest with a rally at Jaffa's Clock Tower Square, holding placards reading: 'Nablus: Hospitals and Schools Under Siege', '300,000 Nablus People Under Curfew-Shame!' 'The IDF is the Biggest Terrorist Organization in the Middle East!' and 'We Must Put an End to the Madness of Israel', as well as black-bordered signs reading 'We mourn Anan a-Tibi, 50 year old Nablus inhabitant who was this morning murdered by the occupation forces while standing unarmed on the roof of his home.' Police patrol cars followed the march throughout, but the police made no attempt to disperse it by force.
"This demonstration was initiated spontaneously by young people who cannot bear to remain silent accomplices in the horrible acts perpetrated in our
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name in the Occupied Territories, the backyard of the state of Israel. The public is being told of 'fighting terror', about 'The capture of wanted terrorists' and 'the uncovering of explosive labs.' The
Invasion of Nablus
A whole town terrorized
The occupied territories put on fire
To divert attention from corruption.
Gush Shalom - pb 3322, Tel-Aviv 610388
From the ad in Haaretz, March 2, 2007
public is not told that such massive use of brute force is arousing hatred and the wish for revenge.
The public is not told that the Palestinians are not willing to live under occupation and oppression, that just like us they want to live in freedom.
The public is not told that acts such as this provocative invasion of Nablus are building up the real 'infrastructure of terror', which is the determination of the Palestinians to maintain their struggle against the occupation.
We have come here in order to tell the Israeli public that there will be neither peace nor quiet as long as we continue to oppress the Palestinians" the organizers explain.
****
From Purim Spiel to Adloyada
Beate Zilversmidt
For Palestinians under occupation, the period around Jewish holidays is not something to look forward to. Already for years it means for them "total closure." Even workers with a permit are then forced to leave Israel.
And inside the city of Hebron Palestinian free movement is curtailed even more than usual. The religious Jewish settlers (with a lot of invited supportive "guests") have to be able to dance in the center of the city dressed as personages in the Book of Esther -- their habit during the spring holiday of Purim. (Purim has rather aggressive elements, such as eating cookies that are called "ears of Haman." According to the Bible story Haman advised Persian King Ahasverus to kill the Jews, but thanks to the wisdom of the Jew Mordechai, and the beauty of his niece Esther, Haman himself was hanged in the end...)
In the city of Holon, the yearly tradition of the "Adloyada" on the eve of Purim is a very friendly version. As a matter of fact, the colorful procession of dressed-up school youths is influenced not only by Jewish tradition, but also by "Carnival in Rio" (the pictures of it).
The event includes a broad spectrum of the Holon population, everybody from mildly traditional unto secular, and this new tradition has not been created from above by professionals with a huge budget, but is visibly the result of a few determined people's organizing talent and creativity.
With multicolored hats and capes worn on top of their normal clothes, whole school classes are passing while clapping, singing and dancing. They are interrupted by trucks transformed into impressive exhibits with the work of many hands and used over the years -- an elephant, a riding theater, a sleeping giant surrounded by live dwarfs.
This year, on March 4, it was good weather and the whole route through the streets of Holon was packed with people, many of whom themselves in costumes. The theme of this 15th Adloyada was "Brotherhood of the Children of the World", groups presenting different nations.
So as to immediately make good on the promise of brotherhood, a group of Arab pupils from neighboring Jaffa opened the procession. But that was not all: after we had seen Israeli children dressed as Americans, French, Germans, and Jordanians, the Thai group turned out to consist of real Thailanders, and the Filipinos were real ones, too, as were the Chinese. More and more South-East Asians work in Israel and there they were walking in their national dress, a bit shy and silent, but smiling.
Their inclusion in the exuberant Holon Purim fest which also this year was shown prominently on television gave me some hope that, maybe after all, things can change for the better.
It goes too far to see this already as a step towards Israel becoming "the state of all its citizens", a pluralistic state without privileged position for its Jewish majority, a state free of discrimination. Alas, that seems still a far away dream. Reactions to a recent Arab Israeli proposal for equality with cultural autonomy are not encouraging. The cries that "the Arabs want to destroy all that Zionism stands for" did not come from the nationalist-religious camp but from the "secular Zionist elite", the people who consider themselves to be the liberal part of society.
Still, things do sometimes change -- and not always should one look for signs of change among the so-called enlightened. Sometimes things simply start to happen on the streets of a provincial town.
****
State of all its peoples
The Israeli perception of what constitutes "a people" is essentially derived from early Twentieth Century Eastern Europe, where most founding Fathers of Zionism originated. In Poland of the 1920s and 1930s, "The Polish People" was generally perceived as an ethnic group closely bound up with the Catholic Church, and of which Jews and other minorities were not accepted as being part. This was the model that the Polish-born David Ben Gurion and his associates implemented in the state that they created in 1948, changing little but the position of Jews in the pecking order.
Essentially, this situation endures up to the present. For all of Israel's loud protestations of being part of "The West", the Western concepts of "A nation" and "A people" -- where, by definition, every French citizen is a member of the French People -- never had much currency in Israel.
There is no way of knowing how things would have
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developed, had the State of Israel on its inception offered its newly made Arab citizens a true equality and membership in a comprehensive Israeli nationality. A broken, leaderless remnant after their crushing defeat in 1948, the Arab citizens may have been attracted by such a proposal -- but it was never on offer.
A Tel-Avivian atheist who appealed to have his nationality registered as "Israeli" was turned down by the Supreme Court, the judges ruling that "There is no such thing as an Israeli People" and consigning the appellant to continue in a registration of "Jewish" which he did not want. (The issue is now being reopened in a new and wider appeal, which might or might not be treated differently.)
And when Arab writer Anton Shamas wrote in the 1980's a series of (Hebrew language) articles expressing his deep wish to become part of The Israeli People, he was met with derision and some crude insults in the counter-articles of the supposedly dovish writer A.B. Yehoshua. (Shamas is now living in the United States.)
The "radical" concept that Israel should be "The State of All Its Citizens", was introduced to the mainstream discourse by Knesset Member Azmi Bishara in the 1990's, and rejected out of hand by virtually the entire Zionist political spectrum -- even though it could be argued (and was argued) that a democratic state is by definition the state of all its citizens.
The new generation of Arab activists and intellectuals which has grown in Israel in the past two decades, often known as "The Upright Generation", has spent little effort in trying to chase the chimera of membership in an Israeli People.
They have no hesitation in asserting loudly and clearly -- as their parents would not have done -- that they are members of the Palestinian People, while at the same time demanding to have equal rights as citizens of the State of Israel, and rejecting outright the suggestion of such racist demagogues as Lieberman to "shove them off" into the Palestine which might one day be created outside the boundaries of Israel.
In December 2006, a document entitled "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," was published by the National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel, and endorsed by the High Follow-up Committee, the umbrella organization that is meant to represent all the political currents and organizations among Israel's Arab citizens.
The basic thrust of this document -- as of the Draft Constitution presented a month later by Adallah, a prominent Arab Civil Rights organization based in the Galilee -- in essence accepts the fact that the Jewish majority in Israel is insistent and intransigent in keeping a sacrosanct ethnic identity. Both documents, however, demand a reciprocal recognition of the equally strong national identity of the minority.
The proposals for a thorough reform in the state's institutions are, in fact, modelled to a considerable degree on those of Belgium -- which, while far from foolproof, do seem to have established a reasonable equilibrium between the Walloon and Flemish communities.
This approach was, however, rejected even more indignantly and emphatically as the earlier one. Typically, the "Council for Peace and Security" -- the group of dovish-minded former generals which takes quite reasonable positions about the Occupied Territories -- had a "thorough discussion" at whose conclusion they announced their "rejection out of hand" of "the Arab Vision for the Future, which contradicts Israel's character as a Jewish Democratic State." People and groups further to the right used more crude terms.
Whether or not connected with this controversy, exactly the same month saw -- for the first time in Israel's history -- a Muslim Arab Minister joining the ranks of an Israeli cabinet.
To many the move by Labor Party leader Amir Peretz, to have his Arab fellow Laborite Raleb Majadla fill the empty slot of Minister of Science seemed less of a principled act and more part of the desperate survival efforts of a virtually bankrupt party leader.
Yet, whatever its motives this act was taken, and the objections of Lieberman's odious lieutenant Esterina Tartman ("This is an ax raised to uproot Zionism!") were brushed aside.
Too little, too late? It seems so. An Arab Minister, or rather more than one, should have been included in the Israeli cabinet of 1949 -- at least on the basis of the Israeli declaration of Independence offering Arabs "an equal and fitting representation in all state institutions."
****
Occupation: how it works
MachsomWatch Report, January 2007
This monthly report that came out Feb. 25, was compiled by Tamar Avraham, Hava Levy, and Hana Barag based on testimonies -- of themselves and of other women volunteers daily monitoring the checkpoints. Translation: Brenda Herzberg.
The checkpoint does not stand there alone. The checkpoint is only the tip of the iceberg. On all sides, behind, in front of, and in particular, supporting it from below, there is a giant bureaucratic network, an unseen web that ensures its tight grip on a daily basis.
In the manner of bureaucratic networks, this is large and complex, riddled with contradictions, its rules are concealed and each person who is involved with it is familiar only with his or her part.
In attempting to cope with this massive bureaucracy, countless hours are wasted and vast sums of money are lost by those poor people who are trapped in its web. Involved in keeping this sophisticated network viable are not only the Shabak, the Army and the Police, but also almost every government office. The compartmentalization, the fact that each element
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knows only about his or her own section, deepens its hold and frustrates possibilities of solving problems, since each restriction or prohibition involves more than one department and is enforced by more than one operative. This month we bring several illustrative examples.
The Civil Administration
"About 50 men and women are crowding around the gate at Rihan Barta'a CP (checkpoint), most of them laborers who work in the industrial zone of Shahak in the Seam Zone (the area between the Green Line and the 'Security Fence'), and also agricultural laborers and seamstresses who work in the sewing factory in East Barta'a.
The Shahak laborers say that it would be easier for them if they were permitted to go through at the Shaked (Tura) CP, which is near their place of work. The seamstresses, who live in Tura, would also prefer to go through from there.
People keep coming to the Palestinian parking lot. A little after 07:00, the pressure is gone. It turned out that there was a reason for the crowding in the terminal. The laborers who work at picking oranges near Hadera asked to go through at the Rihan CP, as they were allowed to do recently (that is the shortest way to their work place). Today, two went through and the rest were not allowed to go through.
At the District Coordinating Office (DCO) they were told that their passage at Rihan was a mistake and that they had to go through either at Jalameh or at Irtach. About 20 laborers with sacks for picking fruit in their hands went back to the Palestinian parking lot to wait. At about 08:00 they left to go through at Jalameh, and thus they will begin their day's work very late.
Two Israeli cars that want to pass Shaked CP from Tura to the Seam Zone are sent back. No Israelis -- whether in cars or on foot -- are allowed to go through at this CP. Residents of Daher el-Malek and of Umm e-Rihan are allowed to go through the Shaked CP even if their permit says that they have to go through at Rihan. Others are allowed through only if the permit says: Gate 300." (Rihan, Shaked, 22.01.07)
06:55 -- at this time the lot is packed with cars waiting for laborers, and with dozens of laborers waiting for their ride. They show us the magnetic cards that they were forced to replace with new ones even though the expiration date hasn't been reached. A laborer pays 130 NIS to replace the card because of the transition to identification by fingerprints.
But there's another problem: since these are manual workers, the skin on their fingers is gnarly, and this makes identification by the machine difficult, and then they are forced to replace the card again (and pay another 130 NIS). One man was forced to replace his card three times within a short period of time, even though its expiration date is a long way off." (Irtach, 10.01.07)
Interior Ministry -- Population Administration
"A man tells us of the catch he is embroiled in. He is from Umm e-Rihan (in the Seam Zone) and married for 17 years to a woman from Umm el-Fahm (inside Israel) and their children are at school there. The man has a Palestinian ID and a permit that allows him to stay in Israel. He has to renew it every 6 months.
At the DCO he was told that he has to give up his permanent resident permit for the Seam Zone, which he holds as a resident of Umm e-Rihan. He teaches in the school at Umm e-Rihan and he is connected administratively to Jenin. If they take away his permit as a resident of the Seam Zone, he will not be able to go through at Tura, and will have to go through at Jalameh, which is some distance away. Life is complicated." (Shaked, 22.01.07)
"By the gate a woman with three children (5-15) was waiting. An Israeli citizen from Umm el-Fahm, married to a resident of A'anin in the West Bank and living there for 17 years, her children study there. She went to visit her mother and, yesterday afternoon, she tried to return home, but was prevented from doing so. Yesterday, she tried also at Rihan, but to no avail. Today, she came back to A'anin CP and hopes to cross this time.
The husband and the two older children are permitted to pass from Israel to the West Bank because they are registered in both parents' IDs, but the little one and the mother cannot return home. All of them together returned to us, on the 'blue' (Israeli) side of the gate.
Before the closing of the gates, the husband tries again to return to the village and to persuade the soldiers to let his wife and children through to go home. After a consultation between ourselves, we took the mother and children and drove to Shaked, where they might perhaps cross. As expected, they couldn't pass there either. The husband told us on the phone that after we left they had let him cross, but not his wife and children." (A'anin,1.02.07)
Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor
"Workers returning from agriculture jobs in Israel cross the gate carrying bags of fruits. They all rush home but a few stop to talk to us. One tells us that he was employed in Israel by a manpower firm in Netanya. The contractor needs to pay taxes on their behalf. Since his contractor did not pay his share, this worker can not renew his permit to work in Israel, and can't start working with another contractor either." (Rihan, 08.02.07)
The Army
"7:00 - M. called and he said that since 6:00 they wouldn't let anyone pass at El Bidan checkpoint. There are already long lines. From the calls we made to the army we learned that they were looking for explosives that were supposed to pass through that checkpoint and that's why no one was allowed to pass.
8:30 - M. told us that they haven't opened the checkpoint and that the lines were only getting longer. We made a phone call to the regiment commander, who said there was a strict inspection, but he denied the fact the checkpoint was completely closed. The brigade commander said that, indeed,
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the checkpoint was closed. After 20 minutes the regiment commander phoned and explained that the checkpoint really was closed.
We asked when it would open and he said 'until Intelligence call off the warning notice.' We asked how would the people there pass. In the beginning he suggested they use alternative paths but then he remembered that they weren't an option for the Palestinians, so he left the question unanswered. It's not the army's problem.
Towards noon he announced that the checkpoint had opened and even promised that the inspection would be done quickly so that people won't have to wait too long. We were optimistic.
At 12:30 S. arrived with his children at the checkpoint. At 18:30 he was still stuck, there were about 70 cars standing in front of him. According to what M. said, two out of the three lanes were blocked by concrete cubes. At the remaining lane stood 4 soldiers, 3 guards and only one to let people pass. A car to Nablus and then a car heading out of Nablus, alternating, one car every half an hour.
He said that hundreds of cars were waiting on both sides. High authorities at the army told us that it wasn't true and that the traffic was flowing. Afterwards, the head of the DCO at Nablus confirmed that there was a problem, he said he personally was taking care of it and that he might send a DCO officer over there. What kind of officer is willing to go to El Bidan checkpoint after dark? After all, the checkpoint is located inside Ascar refugee camp. According to M. no DCO officer arrived.
18:45 - The Palestinians said that two more jeeps with soldiers showed up and that teargas grenades were thrown. Someone from B'tselem came there; she documented it and took photos of what was going on. In a conversation with the DCO at Nablus B'tselem was told that nothing was going on, the checkpoint was wide open, a real Champs Elysees. M. reported that there was no movement, H., who arrived at the checkpoint at 12:30, hadn't passed yet. He had been waiting for six hours!
We called everyone again. The assistant brigade commander said we had false information, two lanes were active and the passage was quick. M. said that wasn't true -- they were only inspecting in one lane, one time checking those heading into Nablus, and then checking those that were going out, barely two cars passed every half an hour. Then, at 19:15, the checkpoint was finally completely opened and they let everyone pass without inspection." (Nablus area, El Bidan, 22.1.07)
The Police
Palestinians have to present themselves to the Police Station at Ras Al Amud, which is in East Jerusalem, for the return of their confiscated documents, to arrange a hearing for cancelled licenses and other matters. As is known, Ras Al Amud is part of Jerusalem, on the Western side of the separation barrier -- situated where entrance is forbidden to residents of the occupied territories.
Some of the fines for the violation of traffic laws must be paid only at an Israeli post office, the branches of which are in Israel or in the settlements, where Palestinians are forbidden entrance.
...and not to forget, the settlers
Settlers deface Palestinian graves
under the protection of the army
Maariv, 25.1.07: Settlers defaced Palestinian graves under the protection of the army. Hundreds of settlers entered a village close to Nablus with protection of the army in order to pray. They destroyed graves, scrawled 'Death to Arabs' and did a great deal of damage to property."
The following is a description of the event in the Yesha (settlers') site:
"Yesterday, about 600 Jews came and ascended into the village of Awarta, opposite Horon Camp in Samaria. This is the biblical "Pinchas Hill" from the book of Joshua -- the place of burial of Elazar, son of Aharon the Priest and Itamar son of Aharon the Priest, and the cave of the 70 elders, their merits may protect us.
It is good to report on the welcome cooperation between the Religious Council of Samaria and groups who work for the holy sites in Samaria, the Association of "One Portion" [cf. Genesis 48,22] and "the Committee of those who dwell in Samaria", which together with the Army brigade of Samaria did all that could be demanded from the security and organizational point of view in order to hold the prayers, organize access and maintain cleanliness. On behalf of all the associations active here and on behalf of all those who came to the event, the Chairman of the Religious Council of Samaria, Mr. Dov Shapiro, paid personal respects to the brigade commander of Samaria, Colonel Amir Baram, the assistant brigade commander lieutenant colonel Yaron Frankel, the new operations commander captain Carmi Grabovski and the officers and soldiers of the Regiment 931 of the Nahal, and emphasized how much we value and honor their welcome cooperation.
It was heartwarming to see the crowds that came from near and far, from the faithful followers in the national religious, the ultra orthodox, the Chassidic and the traditional public, all united in a special prayer taken from the book "Names of the Righteous", since by the rights of all those Righteous -- may you have mercy on us in your great mercy ... and visit us with salvation and mercy, Amen.
January 3, morning: quite a large crowd, composed of peace activists and of Israeli and foreign journalists, tensely waiting outside the gates of the Ayalon prison compound in Ramle. "Here she comes!" somebody shouts, and there is loud cheering and clapping.
Until the last moment the activists who had followed Tali Fahima's long struggle, from one court
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session to the next, were not sure that she would really be set free today. There had been the disappointing moment last September, when the Prison Authority seemed to be finding excuses for wriggling out of the early release clause which was part of her plea bargain, and keeping her behind bars for the full three years of her sentence. Organizers were preparing for a spontaneous protest demo at the prison gate, but fortunately it was not needed.
On that evening, the activists held in her honor a private party at a Tel Aviv apartment. Not quite private, as Vered Lee of Ha'aretz was there and later wrote about it: "The small apartment was packed with thrilled people who drank white wine and came to hug, kiss and touch Fahima. For a moment, the place looked like the bustling headquarters of an election campaign. A computer terminal that was hooked up to the Internet offered frequent updates about Fahima, the television positioned in the center of the room broadcast reports about her release, drawing applause and cries of joy, and cameras flashed. Every few minutes Fahima's conversation with one of her ardent supporters was interrupted and a telephone was placed next to her ear accompanied by a whisper -- 'Tali, the Guardian wants to interview you,' 'Tali, a call from the Daily Telegraph,' 'Tali, it's from Jordan TV, what should I say?" (Ha'aretz weekend supplement, Jan 13).
Indeed, for more than a week Tali Fahima's face appeared frequently on the TV screens, and the attitude of interviewers was exceptionally friendly, considering the charges of which the court found her guilty. Right wing columnist Uri Elitzur wrote furiously in Yediot Aharonot: "Only a country bent on national suicide would make such a traitor into its cultural icon!" By and large, Israeli society clearly did not regard Tali Fahima as a traitor.
Still, she is not quite free. For the next three years, at least, Fahima is forbidden to enter the Occupied Territories and re-engage in the direct dialogue with Palestinians for which she paid such a high price. And she is not allowed to communicate in any way whatsoever with Jenin militia leader Zakariya Zubeidi. (Though it could not be considered "breaking the parole" when she hears his good wishes broadcast on TV).
After some time, of course, the novelty wore off. The media had their fill of interviews and minute revelations of her prison life ('For the first nine months they kept me in isolation, without books or television or any distraction. I used to lie on my bed and think about Jenin, the people I met, and wonder how things were going there. I never get bored on my own.').
Other topics and other people came to the fore, leaving Tali Fahima to try and rebuild her life. In the demonstrations and processions of the past month, she is a frequent participant -- evidently content to be no longer a martyr or hero or celebrity, but just an activist among activists.
****
Equality only where it hurts
Until recently, it was quite easy for Israeli women to get an exemption from military service on grounds of conscience -- far easier than for men. However, since early 2005 a rather misguided measure of gender equality has resulted in male and female COs alike having to apply to the army's Conscience Committee.
This (unlike the now disbanded Conscience Committee for Women) is an integral part of the army. Its members (four men and one woman, all but one of the men being military career officers) tend to regard applicants as "swindlers" and "shirkers" and discount what they have to say about their views and convictions. In fact, the committee seems to reject a higher percentage of applications by women than by men.
Last November, the 19-year old Hadas Amit of Rehovot (a town south of Tel-Aviv) appeared before the military Conscience Committee. As she later told, the committee members often interrupted her, spoke in a derisive and humiliating way, and one of them left the room while she was trying to answer his questions. Later she was told that her appeal was rejected and that she had to show up at the Recruitment Center on the appointed day -- December 18.
She did -- but only to present again, in writing, the reasoned arguments to which the committee had refused to pay attention:
'If I were to be recruited into the army, this would absolutely and in all respects contradict my convictions and my way of life -- of which violence, killing, nationalism and vandalism are not part. I am not willing to wear the uniform of an organization responsible for killing and destruction, acting in a way detrimental to its environment. (...) I refuse to enlist in the IDF. For me, this acronym does not stand for 'Israel Defence Forces' but for 'Israel Death Forces' [Tzva Hereg instead of Tzva Hagana]. Who has presumed to decide that I am not a peace-seeker? Who has decided to put me with my back to the wall? I could lie to get out of this situation, but I choose not to. I choose to pay the price for my principles. It is for morality and justice and the love of humankind that I shall be going to prison.'
Go to prison she did -- specifically, to the army's Prison 400, reserved for women -- after an "instant trial", held in camera and lasting less than five minutes. She got ten days, and upon her release -- when she proved obdurate -- was sent to another "installment" of three weeks. And so on. At the time this goes into print, she is in the middle of her fifth consecutive term.
Her case was taken up by New Profile and the High School Seniors' Letter, and internationally by the London-based War Resisters' International.
A considerable number of protest letters and email messages were sent to the army and Defence Ministry, and to Israeli embassies and consulates abroad. There were also many letters expressing solidarity and warm support sent to Hadas herself,
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though many of them were apparently held up by the prison authorities (useful, even so, to indicate to the military authorities the level of support for her). On February 3, when she entered upon her fourth prison term, dozens of activists gathered outside the prison walls, chanting and drumming.
There is no legal limit on how many times Hadas could be sentenced to ever new prison terms. But past precedents show that the army eventually tires of cat-and-mouse games and lets a persistent refuser go. When it would happen depends, among other things, on the amount of attention and support shown.
Contact: Shministim@gmail.com / www.newprofile.org
+++ Meanwhile, encouraging news arrived about objector Fidaa Saad, from the Druze community of Beit Jan. Druze are the only part of Israel's Arab citizens to whom conscription is applied, but he refused to join "an army fighting an ethnic war against my own people." After some prison terms, he has been finally granted a discharge.
+++ Sergeant Major (res.) Omry Harari has been sentenced to 28 days in prison for refusing to take part in military reserve service in the West Bank. Omry is 28 years old, and is a student of education.
Contact: www.yeshgvul.org
****
Silent deportation
There had been no announcement of a change in policy. The policy just changed. Holders of foreign passports resident in the Occupied Territories, who had been in the habit of routinely going in and out, suddenly found in March 2006 that if they go out they might not be allowed to come back.
There are, in fact, quite a lot of people with such a legal status -- a hundred thousand or more. Some of them are Palestinians, born and bred in this territory, who lost their right of residency because they lived in another country for some years, but were (until 2006) given the chance to stay in their homeland as "tourists" whose visa needed to be renewed every three months.
Others are the spouses (Palestinian and non-Palestinian) of Palestinian residents, some of whom have been living in the West Bank for decades, bringing up their children, having grandchildren -- though officially never recognized as more than "tourists." Still others are lecturers, students, doctors, business people, social workers, human rights workers and a host of others.
Had Palestine been a sovereign state, with the basic right to grant naturalization or residency rights, there should have been no problem to any such people -- with a manifest reason to live there, and a lot to contribute.
There has been no advance warning. Some people left a busy life in Ramallah or Nablus, went on what they thought would be a visit of one or two days to Jordan -- only to be informed by Israeli border officials that "your name appears in the computer" and that they couldn't go back home.
It took some months for shocked people to compare notes, to realize that it was no bureaucratic mistake but a deliberate and widespread policy. Nor was it just a personal tragedy to very many families. Birzeit University, for example, lost within a few months half of its employees with foreign passports.
Israeli government speakers denied any change of policy; it simply was "a slightly more strict enforcement of existing policy."
The occupation often targets the most marginal sectors of Palestinian society, such as the poor cave-dwelling shepherds of the South Hebron Hills -- with the assumption that nobody will notice what happens in such godforsaken corners.
But now, the most articulate and cosmopolitan of the West Bank population were suddenly in the same kind of plight. People such as Sam Bahour of Ramallah, a Palestinian-American entrepreneur who had come over in the optimistic Oslo times, took up the project of constructing the largest western-style shopping center in the West Bank -- and persistently carried it through in the anything but auspicious days of the Second Intifada. Being "informed of the non-renewal of his visa" in June 2006 had thrust Bahour into the center of the struggle.
A campaign was officially launched, and the issue got increasing media publicity. Embassies and consulates, and the foreign ministries themselves, were bombarded with calls to do their duty and intervene on behalf of their own nationals. Sympathetic Israelis organized the Committee for the Right of Residency and started lobbying the government and Knesset.
After some time the diplomats of the EU countries did officially take up the issue, and even Condoleezza Rice felt obliged to mention, on one of her visits, the sharply increasing number of Palestinian Americans denied entry.
Without admitting that it had started a policy of Silent Deportation, the government promised, again and again, to rescind or at least ameliorate it. Deputy Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh was most friendly and understanding when approached by human rights activists. General Yusef Mishlav, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, published what seemed a very liberal and open-minded directive; so did the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which took care to inform all foreign missions of the enlightened new policy.
As so often, the situation on the ground told another story. To be sure, the threat of expulsion to Bahour and some others whose names appeared prominently in the media was withdrawn. On the other hand, many less well-known people still find their re-entry barred. The most recent report of the Ramallah-based Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-entry noted, among other cases, that:
* Mahmoud M. Alie, 70, US national from Chicago, has been trying to enter the West Bank for nine months to be with his 70-year-old wife. He was last denied entry at the Jordanian border on Jan.20.
* Nader Rahwan Hadallah, 43, US national from Florida, went to Amman with his Palestinian wife
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and was denied entry when they tried to return on Jan. 18.
* Dr. Dirgham Abu Ramadan, a German national, has been working as one of the few open-heart surgeons in the West Bank since 2001. He was denied a visa extension on January 15 and 25 and threatened with deportation. After legal intervention he received a three-month visa, instead of the long-term permit he requested.
* Abdel Jamal Wadoud Ali, 67, and his wife Kuthar Khuri Ali, 52, both US nationals from Florida, came to visit their daughters and Kuthar's 80-year-old mother. They were held for seven days at Ben Gurion airport and then deported to Jordan on Jan. 16.
* Mrs. A. and her two-year-old daughter, US nationals, have tried to reunite with her husband six times over the past year with no success. They were last denied entry on Jan. 8 with no reason given.
As admitted off the record, the rationale behind all this is demographics, the keeping of a kind of ledger where Jews are entered on the credit side, and Arabs are debit.
Noon, Feb. 23. For three hours, more gas grenades, stun grenades and rubber-coated steel bullets were shot than ever before. A water cannon was also employed. Never, in all the 102 weekly demonstrations, was such an amount of ammunition spent.
A 75-year old Palestinian demonstrator was hit by a stream of water, and while he was lying helpless on the ground, the water cannon continued to concentrate its jet on him, until he was surrounded by paramedics. Dr. Mustapha Barghouti, the physician who has been a candidate for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority, treated him on the spot.
To mark two whole years of weekly demonstrations in Bil'in, the 'Palestinian Stalingrad', this demonstration was larger than usual. Five buses and a convoy of private cars brought the 300 Israeli protesters, who joined some 1000 local demonstrators. The occupation forces had blocked all the roads leading to the village, but the protesters got in anyway.
There was also a conspicuous presence of Palestinians from other parts of the West Bank, for whom getting through all the checkpoints and roadblocks had also not been easy. Especially, there was a large contingent of villagers from Umm Salamuna in the South Bethlehem Region, which is fast getting the reputation of "a second Bil'in"; they, too, are a village which stands to lose much of its land to the Wall.
The main street of Bil'in looked like a big happening. The veteran and new participants passed through several exhibitions: a huge Palestinian flag that covered the walls of several houses; hundreds of large photos hanging on the walls along the street, showing memorable events of past demonstrations; huge scales that showed the inequality between the weight of Israel and that of the rest of the world; street players and guests from a British circus group in their vivid costumes, who passed between the participants and amused the children.
Together, the Palestinians and Israelis then started the march to the Fence, bearing Palestinian flags, posters with the joint flags of Israel and Palestine, and placards: 'Israelis and Palestinians Against the Wall!'
The first of the demonstrators reached the gate of the Fence area and started rattling it. Within seconds the soldiers reacted with a heavy salvo of tear gas.
The demonstrators tried to speak to the soldiers. Drenched by the water cannon, which had dragged him on the ground and caused some abrasions, Uri Avnery was hoisted on the shoulders of a Palestinian protester:
'You don't have to react, just think about it,' he told them, 'You are not defending the country. You can see for yourselves that the fence could be moved two or three kilometers to the west, without affecting security in any way. But this area of agricultural land, which has been stolen from the village, is worth hundreds of millions of dollars when it is used for building. These millions go to real-estate tycoons. You were brought here to protect their profits.'
Immediately afterwards, the shooting started again. The confrontations lasted for three hours and the air was filled with tear gas. Two protesters were arrested, 17 wounded. The demonstration ended when the army released the arrested persons.
Iyad Burnat, one of the most well known activists of the Bil'in's Popular Committee, had sustained what was first considered a "routine" hit by a rubber bullet. But when he collapsed, puking blood, it was determined at the hospital to which he was rushed that he had internal bleeding in the right kidney.
+++ Two days later Jonathan Pollack, a central activist of Anarchists Against Fences showed up at the court where he and several of his friends were sentenced for having blocked a Tel-Aviv road during a 2005 protest against the Wall. He made an unusual request:
'While this is indeed my first conviction, it is unlikely to be my last. I believe that what I did was necessary and morally correct, and that resistance to oppression is the duty of every human being, even at a personal price.
It is customary to ask for the court for leniency, for a conditional sentence rather than an active one. I won't. If your honor believes one should be sent to prison for such acts, please send me to prison here and now.'
The prosecutor requested that Pollack receive a conditional sentence and a fine. The judge did impose a three months' suspended sentence. But he did not impose a fine, explicitly stating: "I know that Pollack would not pay it."
Since Judas Iscariot embraced Jesus, Jerusalem has not seen such a kiss.
After being boycotted by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert for years, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) was invited to the official residence of the Prime Minister of Israel two weeks ago. There, in front of the cameras, Olmert embraced him and kissed him warmly on both cheeks. Abbas looked stunned, and froze.
Somehow the scene was reminiscent of another incident of politically-inspired physical contact: the embarrassing occurrence at the Camp David meeting, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak pushed Yasser Arafat forcefully into the room where Bill Clinton stood waiting.
In both instances it was a gesture that was intended to look like paying respect to the Palestinian leader, but both were actually acts of violence that -- seemingly -- testified to ignorance of the customs of the other people and of their delicate situation. Actually, the aim was quite different.
According to the New Testament, Judas Iscariot kissed Jesus in order to point him out to those who had come to arrest him.
In appearance -- an act of love and friendship. In effect -- a death sentence.
On the face of it, Olmert was out to do Abbas a favor. He paid him respect, introduced him to his wife and honored him with the title "Mr. President".
That should not be underestimated. At Oslo, titanic battles were fought over this title. The Palestinians insisted that the head of the future Palestinian Authority should be called "President". The Israelis rejected this out of hand, because this title could indicate something like a state.
In the end, it was agreed that the (binding) English version would carry the Arabic title "Ra'is", since that language uses the same word for both President and Chairman. Abbas, who signed the document for the Palestinian side, probably did not envisage that he himself would be the first to be addressed by an Israeli Prime Minister as "President".
But enough trivia. More important is the outcome of this event. After the imposed kiss, Abbas needed a big Israeli gesture to justify the meeting in the eyes of his people. And indeed, why shouldn't Olmert do something resounding? For example, to release on the spot a thousand prisoners, remove all the hundreds of checkpoints scattered across the West Bank, open the passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip?
Nothing of the sort happened. Olmert did not release a single prisoner -- no woman, no child, no old man, no sick person. He did indeed announce (for the umpteenth time) that the roadblocks would be "eased", but the Palestinians report that they have not felt any change. Perhaps, here and there, the endless queue at some of the roadblocks has become a little shorter. Also, Olmert gave back a fifth of the Palestinian tax money withheld (or embezzled) by the Israeli government.
To the Palestinians, this looked like another shameful failure for their President: he went to Canossa and received meaningless promises that were not kept.
Why did Olmert go through all these motions?
The naive explanation is political. President Bush wanted some movement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which would look like an American achievement. Condoleezza Rice transmitted the order to Olmert. Olmert agreed to meet Abbas at long last. There was a meeting. A kiss was effected. Promises were made and immediately forgotten. Americans, as is well known, have short memories. Even shorter (if that is possible) than ours.
But there is also a more cynical explanation. If one humiliates Abbas, one strengthens Hamas. Palestinian support for Abbas depends on one single factor: his ability to get from the US and Israel things Hamas cannot. The Americans and the Israelis love him, so -- the argument goes -- they will give him what is needed: the mass release of prisoners, an end to the targeted killings, the removal of the monstrous roadblocks, the opening of the passage between the West Bank and Gaza, the start of serious negotiations for peace. But if Abbas cannot deliver any of these -- what remains but the methods of Hamas?
The business of the prisoners provides a good example. Nothing troubles the Palestinians more than this: almost every Palestinian clan has people in prison. Every family is affected: a father, a brother, a son, sometimes a daughter. Every night, the Israeli army "arrests" another dozen or so. How to get them free?
Hamas has a proven remedy: to capture Israelis (in the Israeli and international media, Israelis are "kidnapped" while Palestinians are "arrested"). For the return of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Olmert will release many prisoners. Israelis, according to Palestinian experience, understand only the language of force.
Some of Olmert's advisors had a brilliant idea: to give Abbas hundreds of prisoners as a gift, just for nothing. That would reinforce the position of the Palestinian president and prove to the Palestinians that they can get more from us this way than by violence. It would deal a sharp blow to the Hamas government, whose overthrow is a prime aim of the governments of both Israel and the USA.
Out of the question, cried another group of Olmert's spin doctors. How will the Israeli media react if prisoners are released before Shalit comes home?
The trouble is that Shalit is held by Hamas and its allies, and not by Abbas. If it is forbidden to release prisoners before the return of Shalit, then all the cards are in the hands of Hamas. In that case, perhaps it makes sense to speak with Hamas? Unthinkable!
The result: no strengthening of Abbas, no dialogue with Hamas, no nothing.
That is an old Israeli tradition: when there are two alternatives, we choose the third: not to do anything.
For me, the classic example is the Jericho affair. In the middle 70s, King Hussein made an offer to Henry Kissinger: Israel should withdraw from Jericho and turn the town over to the king. The Jordanian army would hoist the Jordanian flag there, announcing symbolically that Jordan is the decisive Arab presence in the West Bank.
Kissinger liked the idea and called Yigal Allon, the Israeli foreign minister. Allon informed the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin. All the top political echelon -- Rabin, Allon, Defense Minister Shimon Peres -- were already enthusiastic supporters of the "Jordanian Option", as were their predecessors, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan and Abba Eban. My friends and I, who, on the contrary, advocated the "Palestinian Option", were a marginal minority.
But Rabin rejected the offer categorically. Golda had publicly promised to hold a referendum or elections before giving back even one square inch of occupied territory. "I will not call an election because of Jericho!" Rabin declared.
No Jordanian Option. No Palestinian Option. No nothing.
Now the same is happening vis-ˆ-vis Syria.
Again there are two alternatives. The first: to start negotiations with Bashar al-Assad, who is making public overtures. That means being ready to give back the Golan Heights and allow the sixty thousand Syrian refugees to return home. In return, Sunni Syria could well cut itself loose from Iran and Hizbullah and join the front of Sunni states. Since Syria is both Sunni and secular-nationalist, that may also have a positive effect on the Palestinians.
Olmert has demanded that Assad cut himself off from Iran and stop helping Hizbullah before any negotiations. That is a ridiculous demand, obviously intended to serve as an alibi for refusing to start talking. After all, Assad uses Hizbullah in order to put pressure on Israel to return the Golan. His alliance with Iran also serves the same purpose. How can he give up in advance the few cards he holds and still hope to achieve anything in the negotiations?
The opposite alternative suggested by some senior army commanders: to invade Syria and do the same there as the Americans have done in Iraq. That would create anarchy throughout the Arab world, a situation that would be good for Israel. That would also renovate the image of the Israeli army that was damaged in Lebanon and restore its "deterrence power".
So what will Olmert do? Give the Golan back? God forbid! Does he need trouble with the 16 thousand vociferous settlers there? What then, will he start a war with Syria? No! Hasn't he had enough military setbacks? So he will go for the third alternative: to do nothing.
Bashar Assad has at least one consolation: He does not run the risk of being kissed by Olmert.
****
Fortieth Anniversary of the Occupation
In June this year, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will be forty years old, comprising more than two thirds of the State of Israel's total span of history. Given the present Israeli policies (and those of the United States) there is, unfortunately, no reason to think that it will be coming to its end any time soon.
Israeli peace groups, Palestinian organizations and a growing international network are all planning large-scale protest actions. Tentatively, Saturday June 9 has been marked as the day for simultaneous worldwide protests -- including, of course, in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
There are also plans for a major joint action of Israelis, Palestinians and internationals -- including some international public figures -- probably in Ramallah. Included in the protest agenda are the dates of what the government terms "Celebration of the Fortieth Anniversary of the Unification of
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Jerusalem" (which are planned, according to the Jewish Calendar, for mid-May).
More concrete details will be available for everyone receiving our email briefings (registration by sending an email to otherisr@actcom.co.il).
The website of Gush Shalom (www.gush-shalom.org) is also kept up to date, as is Occupation Magazine (www.kibush.co.il). The nearer we get to the date, you will find it on virtually any website of groups involved in the struggle against the occupation.
We also target civilians
Idan Landau
Y-net, March 2.
The "al-Sanabel" television station in Nablus almost aired an exclusive report this week: An elite unit of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades raided an Israel Military Industries plant in the coastal plain and uncovered sophisticated weapons labs. The arms that were confiscated include 300 air-to-surface missiles for helicopters, 20 tons of plastic explosives, one bulletproof bulldozer, and six Merkava 4 tanks.
The report that was almost aired noted that this achieved strategic balance against the weapons labs uncovered in the raid on Nablus, where forces confiscated five pipe bombs, one LAW rocket, a large explosive device, and four bags of fertilizer used for bomb-making.
The report, as noted, was not aired. Not only because Israel Military Industries labs were not uncovered, but also because "al-Sanabel" was put out of action. The IDF detained the station manager and confiscated its broadcasting equipment. Why is the IDF assaulting journalists and media outlets? This is apparently an irrelevant question and an almost immoral one under the current climate.
Why did the IDF impose a siege on the government hospital in Nablus and prevent wounded Palestinians from being taken there? Why does the IDF take over a school and turn it into a Shin Bet interrogation center? What was the sin committed by Anan al-Tabibi, who was shot in the head by a sniper while in his own backyard? Again, illogical questions. We have a war, and in war there is no reason to be strict when it comes to respecting life of civilians.
The thing is, this is untrue. This is not a war, but rather, a unilateral invasion into a Palestinian town. And even in wars there are explicit bans on unnecessary harm to the civilian population. The IDF has not heard about it; the Palestinian population, including its assets and needs, are like thin air for the invading forces.
It is doubtful whether anyone in Israel was stunned by the uncovered weapons labs in Nablus. It is even more difficult to believe that anyone is shocked by the strategic threat faced by the State of Israel, in light of the quantity and ridiculous quality of weapons that were confiscated.
In fact, what were we expecting? That Palestinians accept our aerial raids and tank shells with a bare chest and an olive branch? This is a violent conflict and each side makes sure to arm itself to the teeth.
The tank shells produced by Israel Military Industries do not serve loftier goals than those served by pipe bombs in Nablus. Both are used, maliciously and arbitrarily, against innocent civilians. The difference is merely in power: The immense damage caused to West Bank towns by Israel's military technology cannot be compared to the limited damage caused by Palestinian terrorism in Israel's cities.
Many Israelis cling to the over-used argument that "yes, but we don't mean to harm civilians, and they do." After 5,000 killed Palestinians (including about 1,000 minors), 50,000 injured Palestinians, 30,000 razed homes, and 13 million (!) uprooted olive trees, this justification sounds like a bad joke and nothing but. It's better to remain silent in shame.
No dialogue with Arab world
We say that terrorism needs no excuses, only opportunities: It appears the IDF's periodic invasions into West Bank towns and the extensive destruction they leave in their wake do not need excuses. And still, it's difficult not to connect the current military activism to the diplomatic freeze we've seen, particularly in recent weeks.
Within an amazingly short period of time, the Olmert government managed to slam shut almost every possible door for dialogue with the Arab world. The Mecca Agreement on Palestinian national unity "did not deliver the goods," officials in Jerusalem grumbled. With the Syrians we are not even allowed to make initial contacts, lest we irritate Big Brother Bush; even the release of abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit is not urgent enough for the government.
Diplomatic envoys are running around European capitals and in Cairo, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice comes and goes, and everything is at a standstill.
Actually, some things are moving, the same things that are always moving -- the settlements. More than a thousand new residential units are being built, while a police headquarters was recently established in the E1 area -- slated to connect Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem and detach once and for all the northern West Bank from its south; meanwhile, the fence continues to expand eastward.
This is unpleasant, so Olmert and Peretz sit there sweating and wondering: How do we get out of this mess? The international community is already starting to doubt Israel's willingness to reach a peace agreement. The Israeli public is bored, and is already fed up with the ever-new scandals.
The Esterina Tartman spin barely lasted a day and a half. And suddenly, Army Chief Gabi Ashkenazi bursts in with a sparkle in his eyes: I have an idea! How about we invade Nablus? We'll blow up a few houses, come back with five pipe bombs, the world will see what kind of scum we are dealing with here, and the people of Israel will again be proud. Hmmm, says Olmert. Hmmm, Peretz agrees.
Idan Landau is a Linguistics lecturer at Ben Gurion University. He spent time in prison for refusing to serve in Gaza or the West Bank.
Published in Y-net (Yediot online), March 2, 2007
In this issue:
* THE MALAISE (editorial overview), p. 1-8
- Unilateralism's dead end, p.1
- Tooth and nail, p.2
- Who's next?, p. 3
- No more jumps, p.4
- Economy of hunger, p.5
- Package deal diplomacy, p.6
- Omnipotence and its limitations, p.6
- The Trojan ceasefire, p.7
- The orchestrated civil war, p.7
- News from Mecca, p.8
* Dreaming of vegetables/A.Shadid, p.8
* A hole in the fence/a testimony, p.9-10
* Peace of no choice/rally+Grossman, p.11-14
* Revisiting Apartheid/Daniel Olinsky, p.14-15
* Gaza, p.16-18
* Protesting yet another invasion..., p.18
* From Purin Spiel to Adloyada, BZ, p.19
* State of all its peoples, p.19-20
* Occupation: how it works, MachsomWatch, p.20-22
* From traitor to VIP, p.22
* Equality only where it hurts, p.23
* The silent deportation, p.24
* Bil'in, two years of struggle, p.25
* Kiss of death, Uri Avnery, p.28
* We also target civilians, Idan Landau, p.28
