We have been through such periods of turmoil before. Aroused feelings and mounting tensions, hatred and violence and counter-violence and killing answered by killing and more killing...
What makes it so extremely difficult to act nowadays is not the killing in itself -- however sickening the daily news.
It is the cloying cover of unbearably unconvincing sham and pretence, spread over the yawning gap of raw fear, hatred and bloodshed. The cheapening of words; terms, ideas that had once been taken seriously. The solemn pronouncements and ceremonies, which arouse no hope, nothing but a cynical shrug.
****
"History repeats itself. First as tragedy, second as farce," said Karl Marx -- as if he had in mind President Bush and his Annapolis Conference.
The colorful pageant of world and regional leaders, answering the imperial summons and duly attending at the hall of the US Naval Academy, failed to evoke the faintest chord among the people directly concerned. "Nothing will come of it" was the very sensible comment given by "the man (or woman) in the street" in Tel-Aviv and Ramallah alike.
Sham upon sham upon sham. Originally, Annapolis was billed as "a concluding ceremony" where an Israeli-Palestinian agreement was supposed to be unveiled and formally signed. But there was no sign of any such agreement, and Annapolis merely "launched negotiations."
It was declared that an agreement would be signed until the end of George W. Bush's term -- but Olmert soon amended: "Reaching an agreement in 2008 is desirable, but not a binding timetable." And moreover, a signed agreement would not be the same as an implemented agreement. Implementation would wait upon the Palestinians "dismantling the terrorist infrastructure." Until then, it would remain "a shelf agreement" (a term coined by FM Tzipi Livni).
The negotiating teams were given a wide mandate: to discuss "honestly and thoroughly" all the "core issues" -- Jerusalem, settlements, borders and refugees. However, a week before they were to meet for the first time, the Israeli Ministry of Housing announced the extension of a settlement in East Jerusalem -- namely of Har Homa established in 1996 by Binyamin Netanyahu, in the teeth of a nearly unanimous condemnation by the UN General Assembly.
Now, 300 new housing units would be erected -- so as to widen "the Jewish wedge" driven between the East Jerusalem Arabs and their brethren in Bethlehem and Beit Sahour to the south.
There was a major diplomatic row. Abu Mazen's emissaries walked out in anger, stating that it was useless to negotiate while Israel was unilaterally determining the result. The Europeans, the Egyptians and the UN made strong protests -- and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a bit more muted one. Finally, Olmert met with Abu Mazen and agreed a compromise -- the Palestinians would pass over the Har Homa construction, and Israel would initiate no further settlement construction. (Olmert's word was kept -- for all of two and a half months.)
At the least, it now seems that Annapolis did not mark the foundation of a coalition to back an imminent war against Iran -- which is what more than one radical group suspected ("Not a peace conference but a summit to prepare war!").
Perhaps Annapolis would have been just that, but for the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, published two weeks later, asserting "with high confidence" that Tehran had halted its nuclear weapons already in the Fall of 2003." What had seemed an unstoppable avalanche of a war drive was set far back, no longer likely to happen during Bush's term. Thank God for small mercies...
Survival without ratings
As all observers of the Israeli scene agree, Ehud Olmert is a master at the art of manipulating and navigating the murky depths of Israeli party politics (rather than at peace-making, or for that matter war-making).
Olmert's participation at Annapolis reeked of a domestic agenda -- as did his getting President Bush to pay a personal visit to the region, a month later.
Ever since the Lebanese fiasco of mid-2006, Olmert's opinion poll results invariably gave a poor
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showing. For many months, he had persistent single-digit popularity ratings.
Even the September 2007 bombing of a supposed Syrian nuclear reactor -- officially never admitted, unofficially taken credit for and boasted about -- only brought a very modest recovery.
By all polls, should elections take place, they would result in a Netanyahu victory. Olmert strives with all his might to keep his coalition together so that elections remain at their scheduled date, the safely distant November 2010. Binyamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party direct their efforts to detaching the more right-wing elements in the coalition, pointing to "Olmert's irresponsible concessions to the Arabs."
These very accusations gained Olmert some support on his left flank, among peace-seekers willing to do everything to avert a Netanyahu comeback. All the more so when the racist demagogue Avigdor Lieberman departed the cabinet in a huff, loudly condemning Olmert's very willingness to negotiate on the "core issues."
Olmert needed all the support he could get towards the publication of the Winograd Commission's final report on the conduct of the Second Lebanon War.
An extra-parliamentary movement, spearheaded by reserve soldiers who had served in Lebanon and bereaved parents whose sons had fallen there, gathered momentum and prepared to pounce on Olmert, in what was billed a "non-partisan movement uniting the entire people -- left, right and center -- to get rid of the incompetent Olmert."
Israeli history provided a precedent -- the 1974 protest movement that ended the careers of PM Golda Meir and Defence Minister Dayan following the Yom Kippur War. And moreover, the present Defence Minister, Labor Party leader Ehud Barak, had during the contest for the party leadership solemnly promised to take Labor out of the government "immediately following the publication of the Winograd Report."
Netanyahu, expecting to ride to the ballot box on the crest of the wave, was willing even to embrace some arguments originally made by the anti-war movement. For example, that the land offensive launched at the very end of the 2006 Lebanon war, after the UN already resolved upon a cease-fire, was completely futile and useless, expending unnecessarily the lives of 33 soldiers.
It wasn't too difficult for Olmert to keep peace-seekers away from the incipient new mass movement. They were eager for the bait of the PM's dovish proclamations -- at Annapolis, during Bush's visit to Jerusalem and in speeches and newspaper interviews. ("If we don't create an independent Palestinian state now, the world will demand that we give the vote to Arabs in the Territories, which would be the end of Zionism, of the Jewish state. If there is no Palestinian state, Israel is finished!")
It worked. The radical Meretz KM Zehava Gal'on did vociferously attack Olmert, even at the cost of rubbing shoulders with extreme-rightists, but she was virtually alone among the notable leaders of what is accounted the Israeli Peace Camp.
Others either stayed out of the Winograd game or backed Olmert, implicitly and sometimes explicitly. ("At least Olmert is saying some good things, though so far he has done little to implement them. Even that is more than can be said of either Netanyahu, or Barak").
Once published, The Winograd Report -- while far from giving Olmert a clean bill of health -- was ambiguous enough for the expert spin doctors of Olmert's bureau to present it as a victory. The small crowd of demonstrators seen on TV, hoarsely chanting "Olmert, Go Home!" looked like what they were -- predominantly settler-friendly Religious Nationalists -- leaving people in other parts of the spectrum with little inclination to join.
Within a few days it was all over: the protest on the streets fizzled out before it could begin. Barak -- to nobody's surprise -- wriggled out of his promise and stayed on in the government and at the Ministry of Defence, even at the cost of losing some face. And Olmert actually gained some grudging respect for his political acumen and sheer talent for survival.
Hardly anyone on the Left mourned the aborted anti-Olmert mass movement. But the whole affair increased, in all parts of Israeli society, the feeling of alienation, of a political establishment completely insulated from and uncaring about grassroots movements of all kinds -- which wouldn't make it easier to mobilize people for future causes.
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For his part, Olmert -- having defused the crisis by securing his left flank -- turned to the other direction. The remaining major threat was the possible defection of Rabbi Ovadyah Yosef's Shas Party, exposed to direct and indirect pressures by the settlers and their supporters. Olmert made quite clear that the Shas leaders could more or less name their price for staying on in the cabinet.
Nothing loath, they came up with an impressive shopping list in various spheres: considerable sums to their school system and other religious institutions, including the revival under the party's control of the notoriously corrupt Ministry of Religious Affairs; increased welfare payments to poor families with many children, of which there are many in the Shas electorate; a law restricting access to pornographic sites on the Internet...
Shas, however, also demanded (and got) concessions directly connected with the Palestinians. With Rabbi Ovadyah declaring "We will leave the government if negotiations start on the Holy City of Jerusalem", Olmert announced that "Jerusalem will be the very last subject coming up in the negotiations" -- which deprived the desultory talks with Abu Mazen's representatives of the little significance they may have had.
To considerable derision, the negotiating teams resolved to set up a committee to deliberate on the modalities of operating border crossings between Israel and Palestine, leaving aside for the moment the question of precisely where that border will be demarcated...
Later on, Shas also demanded and got the "defreezing" of choice settlements construction projects -- as it happened, mainly construction projects earmarked for the kind of impoverished ultra-religious people who are the Shas party's main electoral support.
Now, it was the turn of the left to rage against Olmert's acts, while the right-wingers tacitly had to approve of them...
Survival without an economy
In November 2007, the International Committee of the Red Cross published a brochure entitled "Dignity Denied in the Palestinian Occupied Territories." The preface stated:
"In the Gaza Strip as well as in the West Bank, Palestinians continuously face hardship in simply going about their lives. They are prevented from doing what makes up the daily fabric of most people's existence. The Palestinian territories face a deep human crisis, where millions of people are denied their human dignity. Not once in a while, but every day.
Nothing is predictable for Palestinians. Rules can change from one day to the next without notice or explanation. They live in an arbitrary environment, continuously adapting to circumstances they cannot influence and that increasingly reduce the range of their possibilities."
Similar reports (sometimes worded more sharply) are continually produced by human rights and humanitarian organizations -- international, Israeli and Palestinian -- as well as by representatives of countries on cordial good terms with the Israeli government. Recently, Condoleezza Rice made some remarks in this vein.
The high-ranking dignitaries of the "Donor States" -- who gathered in Paris for gala occasion, solemnly pledging no less than seven billion dollars "to bail out the Palestinian economy" -- were also well aware of the situation depicted.
However much money is poured in, it is unlikely to fundamentally help an economy where travelling (or transporting goods) between one city and another is an unpredictable adventure, dependent on the considerations of senior Israeli officers placing a sudden roadblock on a well-travelled road, as well as on the mood and whims of the 19-year old Israeli corporal or sergeant on the spot.
At the Paris conference, as on many previous and later occasions, the Israeli representatives promised to "improve the quality of daily Palestinian life" -- but always with the proviso "subject to security considerations", which in effect nullifies all such promises.
Having long charged Palestinian leaders of being unable or unwilling to control the various militias and armed factions, Israeli leaders are increasingly seen to have a similar failing. The claim of being "The Only Democracy in the Middle East" is still a staple of Israeli propaganda -- especially in the US. However, it is the generals and security chiefs who increasingly seem the true decision-makers, with the elected government reduced to being a mediator -- and an often ineffective one -- between them and the international community.
On George W. Bush's visit to Ramallah -- held under very tight security, since quite a few Palestinians seemed less than enthusiastic about this state visit by the President of the United States -- he spoke about having "passed without hindrance" the Israeli roadblocks on the way from Jerusalem. (Not all of his listeners at Ramallah's Presidential Compound could produce the obligatory smile, considering the long waiting and harassment that even prominent Palestinians often endure at the same roadblocks.)
The American President could hold out no hope of a real change. On the contrary, he echoed the words he heard from Olmert and Barak on the previous evening, telling Palestinians that a change in the West Bank checkpoints must wait upon "an improvement in the security situation."
It is not much different with regard to the "illegal" or "unauthorized" settlements outposts. "Illegal" even under Israeli law, since under International Law all settlements in occupied territory are illegal by definition; "unauthorized", since the settlers created them without authorization -- which did not prevent the government from posting soldiers to protect them and from providing them water, electricity and all other amenities.
There are at least 26 such outposts, though some
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reckon them at more than a hundred (depending who is doing the counting, and by exactly which criteria).
Israeli Prime Ministers and Defence Ministers have pledged to remove them (all the 26, at the very least), repeating and reiterating this pledge at numerous international gatherings and ever so many press conferences. In practice, some more outposts have been added and others have considerably grown.
Nor is there any sign of Barak preparing the forces under his authority to undertake any operation to remove them and confront the wild bands of settler youths, who already proclaimed their intention to resist by force.
Rather, Barak's aides have entered into a prolonged process of negotiations with the settler leadership in an effort to procure "an agreed evacuation of the outposts." Settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein told the radio what form such an agreement might take: "Well, we might agree to three or four outposts being moved to another location, provided that the others stay where they are and the whole outposts issue be considered closed, once and for all. And, of course, that we have no further restrictions on building anywhere in Judea and Samaria..."
The normally moderate writer A.B. Yehoshua was driven to call upon the Americans for an extreme action. "Does President Bush not realize that he is being made fun of? If he was to recall his ambassador from Tel Aviv and announce he would not be returned until the outposts had been dismantled, we would see some quick action." Which may well be
The masquerade continues
Ad in Ha'aretz, March 19
The Olmert Government implements a right-wing policy under the pretence of being "a peace government."
The Government of Israel does not fulfill the pledges of Annapolis. It does not remove settlement outposts or reduce the number of roadblocks. It weakens Abu Mazen and continues settlement construction. It surrenders to the dictates of Shas and undertakes construction on an unprecedented scale in East Jerusalem.
It is time to change direction, and save the diplomatic process!
so, except that Bush did not seem to contemplate any such action.
Still a third area of controversy are the Palestinian cities of the West Bank -- which the Oslo Agreements had made into "A" areas, "under complete control of the Palestinian Authority's security forces", but which the Israeli Army reoccupied in April 2002 and on which the Israeli generals refuse ever since to relax their stranglehold.
Every night, Israeli forces hold raids and capture "terrorist suspects" -- or sometimes, shoot them to death since they had been "trying to escape" or "resisting arrest" or simply were "armed and dangerous." The Palestinians captured in such raids and hauled off to the Shabak Security Service's interrogation centers greatly outnumber those released in the "good will gestures to Abu Mazen" occasionally announced by Olmert.
When Israelis and Americans embarked a year ago on re-arming the PA's forces -- with the almost openly proclaimed aim of getting them to embark on a civil war with the forces of Hamas -- Abu Mazen entertained some hope that the deal would also include a restoration of the pre-2002 situation in the Palestinian cities.
The Israeli generals and security chiefs, however, rejected the idea out of hand -- both before and after the PA forces were thoroughly beaten in the struggle for control of the Gaza Strip.
True, Abu Mazen was able to send several hundreds of his police into the city of Nablus. There, they conducted some operations against the local Hamas militias -- which were highly controversial; and also some operations against what were described as "criminal gangs masquerading as resistance fighters" -- which seem to have been welcome to many inhabitants.
Thereupon, Israeli forces entered Nablus, imposed several days' curfew over the entire city and conducted house-to-house searches -- all the while confining Abu Mazen's forces to barracks, on pain of being instantly shot down should they try to venture out.
"Abu Mazen? He is a joke, a nothing. We are the only force propping him up. Should we withdraw from the cities, Hamas will sweep him and his men away, as they did in Gaza" was how General Gadi Shamni, commander of IDF forces on the West Bank, described the situation in a Knesset briefing.
The more that Israeli military officers and civil officials speak and behave in this way, the more true it becomes. Mahmud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, has never been a charismatic figure; but he heads Fatah, which led the Palestinian National Movement for four decades, and he had gotten an unquestioned popular mandate to replace the beloved Arafat, just three years ago. With every passing day, Abu Mazen now sinks deeper into the morass of being seen as -- and of actually being -- a collaborator with a brutal occupation.
Abu Mazen's only hope is to achieve quickly something concrete: significant and clearly visible change in the situation on the ground, and/or a signed agreement with Israel which Palestinians at large would see as providing a real solution to their predicament and suffering. But the chance of getting either from Olmert and Barak, Bush and Rice, seems increasingly forlorn.
The tightening noose
It is difficult to determine precisely when did the Siege of Gaza start, since there were so many stages and intermediate steps since the 1990's -- the separation becoming increasingly stringent concur-
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rently with the Oslo Agreements, when the Israeli army withdrew from Gaza City, and later with Sharon's Disengagement when the Israeli settlements in the Strip were also evacuated.
The tragedy of it all -- or rather: the logic of occupation -- is that all the changes in the end only made things worse, in Gaza and to a lesser extent also on the West Bank. After the mostly non-violent popular uprising (First Intifada) which earned the Palestinians worldwide sympathy, what Gazans actually got was isolation and deprivation. And the subsequent outbursts of violence, when frustration became too much, was met with collective punishment. Gradually, bitterness replaced hope in the occupied and the occupier societies, alike.
First, "measures had to be taken" because of knife-wielding Palestinians; then, it was the threat of suicide bombers; then, it was the missile-shooting militias whose actions were cited as the reason for the increasingly harsh collective punishment imposed on the Gaza Strip's million and half-strong population.
Already impoverished and overcrowded to begin with, Gazans have become more numerous and far poorer and miserable as they were increasingly encircled and cut off from the outside world.
Access to work in Israel, once a mainstay of the Gazan economy providing jobs to tens of thousands, was restricted, reduced to a trickle and cut off altogether. Nowadays, a Gazan could only get a permit to cross the Erez Checkpoint in an urgent case of a life-threatening disease (and not always then, either).
The entrance of Israelis into the Strip was increasingly restricted, and then forbidden altogether "for their own safety." For some years, an exception was made for Israeli journalists going to cover Gaza events; then their entrance, too, was forbidden.
The entrance of foreigners was restricted to Representatives of Recognized Humanitarian Organizations and the number of organizations on the list of such "recognized" organizations steadily reduced.
Israeli gunboats patrolling off the Gazan shore strictly forbade Gazan fishermen from going more than two or three kilometers into the Mediterranean, any boat venturing further being suspected of arms-smuggling and harshly treated.
Work on Gaza's own seaport -- the prestige project of the Oslo years, which was supposed to create thousands of jobs -- has been halted before it has fairly begun. And the Gaza International Airport near Rafah, which had been ceremoniously opened by President Clinton, was long since closed down -- its runways thoroughly ploughed up by Israeli army bulldozers.
Still, up to mid-2006, Gaza's border crossings with Egypt -- over which Israel had no control in theory, though quite a bit in practice -- were open, at least for a large part of the time. Also, there was no lack of consumer goods (at least, for those who could afford to buy them).
The situation rapidly deteriorated after the armed confrontation of June 2006, which the American and Israeli governments intended to end with the crushing of Hamas -- but in which it was the Fatah forces under Muhammad Dahlan who were pulverized and driven out, leaving the Hamas government headed by Ismail Haniya in control.
The Rafah Border Crossing has remained closed ever since -- with the Egyptians (and the Europeans observers) falling in with the Israeli and American boycott and declaring their unwillingness to recognize the Hamas Government or admit its forces to the crossing.
The Gaza Strip has become completely encircled, with no opening left on any side, and virtually no one allowed in or out. And the government of Israel moved to tighten the noose, steadily reducing the number and quantity of goods allowed in.
Calls for going further and cutting off the supplies of electricity and water were constantly made -- not only by the right-wing opposition, but also by prominent members of the ruling coalition, such as Minister Without Portfolio Haim Ramon, Olmert's close helper and confidant.
Government speakers reiterated that "Israel will not allow a humanitarian crisis to develop." However, extreme hardship falling short of mass starvation was deemed acceptable and indeed desirable, in the cause of stopping the shooting of missiles at Israeli border communities as well as destabilizing and overthrowing the Hamas Government.
But the mounting hardships imposed on the Gaza population seemed to have the opposite result -- an increase in both the shooting of missiles and the Hamas Government's resilience.
The war of words
As on very many other issues in the course of the century-old conflict, the Israeli "narrative" and the Palestinian one are completely divergent and contradictory with regard to how and why the shooting of Qassam missiles started.
As seen by most Israelis -- including quite a few who consider(ed) themselves part of the Peace Camp -- Israel in 2005 exhibited an unmatched generosity, evacuating its military forces and settlers from all of the Gaza Strip's territory and leaving the Palestinians the option of making the Strip into "a flourishing garden." "The Palestinians", however, "responded by wantonly shooting missiles across the border" -- thus proving in the eyes of said Israelis the essential malevolence of the Palestinians as a whole, and the inability to ever reach an agreement with them. (Or the somewhat more liberal variation: it might be possible, but not with Islamic parties and militias.)
Palestinians -- even the considerable number who regard the shooting of missiles a wrong and harmful strategy -- point out that Israel had never truly "disengaged" from Gaza.
Also, in Israel it is virtually never mentioned that the missile attacks from the Gaza Strip upon Israel had started in retaliation for West Bank Palestinians killed in the ongoing army raids. At least to begin
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with, every Gazan missile launching was an explicit retaliation for a specific killing on the West Bank.
However it is considered to have started, by the beginning of 2007 the fighting in and around the Gaza Strip had settled into a sort of lethal routine. Virtually every day saw a "drizzle" (as Israeli inhabitants came to call it) of two or three missiles, shot at the town of Sderot and some Kibbutzim in the immediate vicinity of the Gaza Strip.
The Qassams in most cases caused no physical harm, often landing in empty fields, but also could not be ignored. The tension of the daily air raid alarms greatly traumatized the population, especially the children -- and the plight of Sderot became a major issue in the Israeli media. Hamas usually refrained from shooting missiles itself, though tacitly allowing smaller militias -- such as the Islamic Jihad or the Popular Resistance Committees -- to go ahead with it.
The Israeli side of the routine fighting included constant air raids on Gaza, plus ground "incursions" penetrating more than a kilometer into the Strip and the creation of a "no-go zone" on the Palestinian side of the perimeter fence, where any venturing Palestinian might be killed out of hand. The cumulative effect amounted to some two or three dead Palestinians per day -- some of them armed militants, some unarmed civilians "who were in the wrong place in the wrong time." (The traumatizing effect that this had on the children of Gaza was, of course, not a topic in the Israeli media.)
On days which were considered "exceptional" -- i.e., when an Israeli was killed or seriously wounded, or when the number of Palestinians killed on a single day exceeded five -- the side feeling aggrieved felt the need to mount an impressive retaliation: Israeli battalions of infantry and tanks charging deep into the densely built-up areas of Gaza, killing and destroying; spectacular salvos of thirty or forty missiles in a single hour, bringing Hamas' own batteries into play.
After a few days of mounting bloodshed, retaliation and counter-retaliation, there would be a de-escalation and a return to the deadly "routine."
In January, a variation was introduced by Defence Minister Barak, with the declared aim of "changing the rules of the game." An army raid into Gaza had claimed 19 Palestinian lives on a single day, and was as usual answered by a salvo of Palestinian missiles (in which nobody was killed, though there was damage to property). Thereupon, Barak ordered the complete closure of all passages into Gaza and the cutting off of even the most vital of supplies.
First to feel the burnt was the Palestinian power station of Gaza, supplying some 30% of the Strip's needs, and whose supplies of fuel were stopped. Thereupon, TV screens all over the world were filled with footage of Gazan children marching with candles through darkened streets and ministers of the Hamas-led Palestinian cabinet holding an emergency meeting by candlelight.
Israeli governmental speakers were quick to decry the Gazan "Candle Children" as "a sham and lying propaganda show" -- since "Gaza still had a lot a electricity." There may have been some truth in this -- but it was a highly effective "show." (All the more so since the international media had files bulging with quotations of Israeli politicians explicitly threatening "to plunge Gaza into total darkness").
About a week later, Barak -- together with the entire government and high command of the army -- was surprised and staggered by the sudden breaking of the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Egypt -- "The Mother of all Shows" or "The Largest Prison Break in History", to quote only two of the numerous epithets for the event which nearly monopolized the headlines during the following two weeks.
Fall and rise of the wall
It was not quite a spontaneous event. As it turned out, militants had months in advance placed explosive charges under the eight-metre high wall, erected at considerable expense by Israel all along the Gaza-Egypt border before the army evacuated the area, with the strident demand (hitherto heeded) that it be kept standing.
Barak's order to close the passages completely and threaten Gaza with total strangulation provided the final trigger.
The walls were blown up late in the night, and the early morning already saw tens of thousands of Gazans flowing inexorably across the suddenly open border -- a scene that invited the obvious comparison with the breaking of the Berlin Wall.
End the blockade!
Ceasefire Now -- for Gaza and Sderot!
Jan. 24 press release
It is impossible to keep one and a half million people in a huge prison. If you try, an explosion is inevitable -- as happened at the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt. The residents of Gaza, like those of Israel and every other place in the world, have the fundamental right of free access to the outside world.
On January 26 we will protest at Erez Checkpoint, arriving with a relief convoy carrying much-needed supplies. From all over Israel we'll converge on the Gaza border, in close cooperation with our Palestinian partners coming from the other side.
We will show that there is an alternative to siege and rocket-fire -- an alternative of ceasefire, peace and quiet, and the flourishing of Sderot and Gaza alike [report in separate article].
There was no mistaking the widespread euphoria, visible on every one of the countless photos disseminated within hours all over the world.
Also the shared happiness of Egyptian civilians on the other side of the border -- and not only because the shopping spree of famished Gazans provided a moment of unmatched prosperity to the merchants of the normally sleepy Egyptian Rafah, and the
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popularity of Hamas mounted, in Gaza and far beyond.
To some degree, the Gazan exhilaration also touched upon the communities on the Israeli side of the border, which experienced an immediate sharp plunge in the number of missile attacks. (This remained the case for the entire period when the Rafah border was open).
Unlike Berliners in 1989, however, Gazans entertained few illusions that the new situation would remain in existence. Anyone who had money at all went into Egypt, bought and bought and bought all they could lay hands on. And indeed, soon there came reports of Egyptian police converging on the breached border, clashing with the Palestinians who tried to keep it open a bit longer.
The regime of President Hosni Mubarak had been under pressure -- from Israel, from the US, to some degree even from the Europeans -- to reseal the border. And anyway, Mubarak was far from happy at having an open border where anyone could go in or out unchecked. (Even before 1967, when Egypt ruled the Gaza Strip, it never allowed Gazans an unimpeded access to its territory). But a move against the Gazans would be extremely unpopular as the Palestinian masses breaking out of the siege was extremely popular among the masses throughout the Arab World -- including in Egypt.
In fact, there were those in the Israeli political and military establishment who saw an opportunity to "throw the Gazans upon the Egyptians": Keep Gaza's passages to Egypt open while those with Israel remain closed, charging Egypt with the exclusive responsibility for the Gazans' needs -- thus cutting off any remaining contact between the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Palestinians started to feel that they may have fallen into a subtle trap. But soon, an opposite Israeli establishment faction came to the fore -- stridently warning that Palestinian militias were using the open border to smuggle advanced weapons into the Strip. (Before the breaking of the Rafah wall, the same people had charged that the border was "porous with smugglers' tunnels" and that arms were getting into Gaza this way).
It was further charged that armed assailants were using the open border in order to infiltrate into Israel via the Sinai Desert. A sudden suicide bombing in the Negev town of Dimona, claiming the lives of two Israelis, seemed to clinch the argument (until it turned out that the assailants had in fact come from the West Bank).
Still, pressure on the Egyptians mounted, and the border was re-sealed two weeks after its dramatic opening -- once again closing the siege. Gazans were left to consume the stores they had accumulated and wait upon an Egyptian promise to negotiate with Hamas on "reopening the Rafah Crossing in a formal and regulated way."
With the siege back in place, the cross-border routine of shooting and retaliation and counter-retaliation was also resumed.
Osher Twito -- the eight-year old Sderot child who lost a leg in a direct hit -- was days-long in every headline. Barak openly threatened to have the Hamas leaders -- including Prime Minister Haniya -- assassinated in targeted aerial attacks. Haniya and his fellows went into hiding, amid speculations about an imminent "Grand Ground Operation" for total Israeli reconquest of Gaza.
However, suddenly and unexpectedly, it was Hizbullah which was targeted -- Israel's enemy on the northern flank. Imad Mughnia, accounted "Hizbullah's Number 2" was assassinated in a mysterious explosion in the Syrian capital Damascus.
As on previous occasions, the Olmert government officially denied all responsibility while informally boasting of "settling accounts with an arch-terrorist."
The Israeli media converged on the case referring to Mughnia as the mastermind behind a list of heinous bloody attacks in the 1980s and 1990s, among them against the Jewish Community Center and Israeli Embassy in Argentina. The Israeli and
See under: Mussawi.*
An assassination Experience shows
Is followed by That in the place
Revenge Of the assassinated
Dozens of innocents Is almost always
Are killed in the Taken by a
Vicious circle of More talented
Revenge and bloodshed Enemy
*Abbas Mussawi -- Hizbullah leader assassinated in Lebanon by Israeli attack helicopters in 1992. He was replaced by Hassan Nasrallah.
Gush Shalom
ad in Ha'aretz Feb. 15, 2008
American governments agreed that "whoever killed Mughnia, the world is a better place without him."
Mughnia was buried at a mass funeral at Beirut, and Israeli diplomatic representatives around the world were ordered to brace themselves for the imminent revenge.
All in all, attention had shifted away from the Gaza Strip and tensions eased -- for a while.
Winner takes nothing
"Gasoline stores in Gaza dried out completely" stated a terse headline. "If they shoot missiles, let them walk" remarked Prime Minister Olmert. In Gaza, the price of donkeys rose.
Gazan organizations (not precisely Hamas, though the media blurred the difference) issued a call for a mass march and non-violent human chain all along the border with Israel. After the recent Rafah events there was in Israel widespread apprehension. The possible breaking of the border by a Palestinian crowd -- even if unarmed -- was declared "an intolerable threat."
TV was invited to the border area, to take footage of soldiers preparing machine gun positions pointing at the Gaza border "in case that tear gas and water cannon would prove not enough to stop the charging Palestinians." Some reports mentioned the possibility of using even artillery as "a means of crowd control."
Defence Minister Barak and Foreign Minister
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Livni published a dramatic communiquŽ, placing in advance "the full responsibility for any bloodshed" upon "Hamas, and Hamas only."
While Israel had shown itself vulnerable and easily panicking, the event seemed an anti-climax: turnout fell short of the promised 40,000, and those who did come simply stood in an orderly line parallel to the border, holding hands and waving "End the Siege" signs in English and Arabic.
The Israeli media dismissed the Palestinian effort as "a fiasco" and quickly forgot about it. Decision-makers were spared the inconvenience of offering explanations for shooting at an unarmed crowd of
'Reckless use of force'
So far this year more than 230 Palestinians, many of them civilians, have been killed by Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli government says these are targeted attacks on militants, in response to hundreds of rockets launched by Palestinian armed groups.
One Israeli civilian was killed on 27 February and dozens of Israelis wounded as a result of these rocket attacks.
The recent attacks by the Israeli Defence Force, however, are disproportionate and go beyond lawful measures that the Israeli authorities are entitled to take in response to attacks by armed groups.
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) killed more than 100 Palestinians during a five-day incursion into the Gaza Strip, which ended on 3 March. Many of those killed were Palestinian militants involved in attacks on Israel, but at least half of those killed are reported to have been unarmed civilians taking no part in the fighting, including at least 25 children.
Gaza Hospitals treating hundreds of people wounded in recent Israeli attacks lack adequate functioning medical equipment. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, 85 essential drug items are 'at zero availability at the major drug stores, mainly drugs needed for operation rooms and emergency interventions'. 30 out of 87 ambulances cannot operate because of lack of fuel.
Amnesty International fears that, unless there is strong pressure on the Israeli government, there may be more attacks using reckless and disproportionate force leading to deaths of civilian bystanders.
Amnesty International continues to call on Palestinian armed groups to end such attacks on civilians and on Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to prevent such attacks and hold those who commit them to account.
[Excerpted from Amnesty International release March 5]
civilians, and went back to normal -- promptly ordering the "liquidation" by an Israeli plane of five senior Hamas men travelling in a car.
As expected, there was a retaliatory salvo of missiles out of Gaza. This time, however, Hamas demonstrated its possession of improved rockets, the "Grad" -- able to hit the hitherto almost unscathed Israeli town of Ashkelon, with 120,000 inhabitants (as compared with 20,000 in Sderot, the main target of Palestinian missile attacks).
On the following day, Israeli forces in far greater numbers than hitherto deployed staged an massive invasion of the Jebalya Refugee Camp.
Jebalya: a large-scale warren of small alleys, with countless impoverished families eking out a very miserable existence and countless militants of small and large militias, members of the same families, holed out everywhere and shooting from their hiding places -- however ineffectively when wielding light weapons against dozens of tanks and armored vehicles.
The only way for the Israeli forces to carry out their mission -- as those who ordered it knew full well in advance -- was to smash and destroy buildings and entire streets as they advanced, and direct torrents of hellfire at any source of real or suspected resistance.
Judging by the "body count" it was, indeed, an Israeli victory. The invading forces lost two soldiers, killed when they ventured out of the cover of an armored vehicle in the early stages, while they inflicted 120 deaths on the Palestinians in the course of four days -- 70 of them on Saturday, March 1, the most bloody single day in the Palestinian Territories in more than 40 years of occupation.
The ratio of armed militants to unarmed civilians among the dead, and of how many among them were children, became immediately the source of fierce controversy, which is not likely to be ever conclusively resolved.
"Body Count" apart, modern wars are often won on TV screens rather than in the field. Soon, the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem was flooded with desperate calls from embattled Israeli diplomats around the globe, warning of "a propaganda disaster" and reporting condemnations and expressions of "grave concern" by their host governments.
The West Bank erupted in violent protests and clashes of Palestinian youths with Israeli soldiers, reminiscent of the outbreak of the two intifadas -- and similar scenes were seen in East Jerusalem, long considered to have been "pacified." Abu Mazen saw no choice but to suspend his negotiations with Olmert, "in protest at the Israeli crimes in Gaza."
A few days later, an armed Palestinian from East Jerusalem broke into a religious academy (yeshiva) in Jerusalem and shot down eight young students; Israeli media did its best to deny any connection between this brutal act and what had occurred in Gaza in the previous week.
It was at this juncture that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the region, on what had been intended as "a routine visit." To judge from what occurred then, even a lame-duck President and a Secretary of State nearing the end of an undistinguished career could still pull some weight, if they really put their minds to it.
It is a fact that Israeli forces were immediately pulled out of the Strip, and have not (up to the time of writing) gone back in.
The long-stalled Egyptian mediation efforts suddenly gained momentum, with the aim of achieving a
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"package deal" including a lasting cease-fire, an opening of the Rafah Crossing and end to the siege, as well as the long-delayed exchange of captured Israeli soldier Gile'ad Shalit for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Several days passed without any missiles being fired out of the Gaza Strip, and even after Israeli undercover agents in Bethlehem shot down four Palestinian militants at Bethlehem, the Palestinian retaliatory shooting of missiles fizzled out after one day and did not proceed into a major new conflagration.
Barak, however, categorically denied that any ceasefire was signed, officially or unofficially, or was being sought -- and he darkly declared: "The worst escalation is still ahead of us."
Where to go from here?
The futility of it all is increasingly evident: of negotiations for an agreement that is unlikely to be implemented (if signed at all); of fighting a bloody war in which conclusive victory is just as unlikely.
Former Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer -- head of a considerable Labor Party faction and (for
'Eran died for nothing'
Shelly Paz, Jerusalem Post, Mar. 3.
"It is not good to die for any country, and Gaza is certainly not ours to die for. God, if there is one, please stop this madness."
These words were spoken by Yoel Mizrahi during the eulogy for his nephew, St.-Sgt. Eran Dan-Gur, at the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem. Dan-Gur, a Givati Brigade soldier, was killed in action in Jabalya, the northern Gaza Strip, early on Saturday morning.
"Eran, you are a third generation of Israeli patriotism. Only 20 years old... None of us expected such bloody patriotism, and we didn't expect your and your friends' blood to be abandoned, and that young men like yourself would be sent to Gaza to a dire fate known in advance. The prime minister and the defense minister stutter, just as they did during the Second Lebanon War. The answers are our children returning home in coffins," Mizrahi said.
Eran's mother, Merri, said her son had died in vain. "If Eran's death could have stopped the rockets, I would have been prepared to make this sacrifice," she told Channel 2. "But that's not the case. Eran died for nothing."
[Eran Dan Gur was one of two Israeli casualties of Saturday March 1, during the incursion in which 70 Palestinians were killed. TOI-ed.]
the moment) an ally of Barak -- is the most prominent of those who see a way out of the impasse by releasing Marwan Barghouti, presently serving five cumulative life imprisonments in an Israeli prison.
Barghouti, who also from his prison cell plays a central role in Palestinian politics, seems the only Fatah leader capable of rebuilding the party's mass base of support. But even he cannot do that without getting significant Israeli concessions.
Failing that, Barghouti -- to avoid being seen as a collaborator and/or actually becoming one -- would have to embark on a militant struggle, which might get him back in prison -- or dead.
For its part, the IDF Military Intelligence recommended a way out of the impasse by a shift of the diplomatic effort towards a deal with Syria. Offering the return of the occupied Golan Heights in return for peace and the severing of Syria's ties with Iran, so the generals argue, would strategically weaken both Hizbullah and Hamas and deprive them of much of the aid they at present get.
However, Syria would not fall in with any such plan without exacting a carefully calculated price. Leaks in the Arab media mention an Israeli-Syrian meeting which was supposedly due to take place at Istanbul under Turkish mediation -- but which was cancelled when news arrived of the Gaza bloodbath.
Though not always in the best of terms with the Palestinians, Syria would clearly not leave Israel a free hand to crush them, and a ceasefire in Gaza seems an indispensable prerequisite also for making a headway with Damascus.
Increasingly, politicians and generals talk of the need to take one of two clear-cut ways: an unambiguous, lasting ceasefire with Hamas, followed by the Islamists' direct or indirect inclusion in the negotiations process -- or alternately, an all-out war to conquer and re-occupy the Gaza Strip, accepting the huge price in death and destruction (and the loss of any Palestinian partner for the foreseeable future).
Ehud Olmert, however, seems far from ready to taking any such decisions. If it is up to him we head for many more months of dithering and ineffective measures, one indecisive move followed by another in a zigzagging medley.
Such tactics cannot, however, last indefinitely -- if only because further dithering would most likely result in the demise of Abu Mazen, very likely entailing the final collapse of the weakened and discredited Palestinian Authority itself.
Indeed, an increasing number of Palestinians are advocating just that -- having come to regard the PA as a liability for their national cause, the sad and futile remnant of a failed hope.
The discrediting of diplomacy
For decades, Middle East peace-making was dominated by a single, clear-cut paradigm: the leaders of both warring sides dramatically presenting themselves before hundreds of TV cameras, and under the aegis of the President of the United States shaking hands and vowing "No more war, no more bloodshed."
Afterwards, they would supposedly walk hand in hand towards the dawn of a new day of peace and plenty, and a well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize.
To a considerable degree, we too played this game. We were, indeed, an important and sometimes indispensable part of it. Hundreds of thousands
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gathered in Tel Aviv's main square, to raise an euphoric cheer when Anwar Sadat of Egypt broke through decades of psychological barriers to speak from the Knesset podium and stand with Begin and Carter at Camp David.
The same hundreds of thousands turned out to the same square in mounting anger and frustration, feeling bitterly betrayed when Begin turned from televised ceremonies to intensive settlement construction and the bloody invasion of Lebanon, culminating with the carnage of Sabra and Shatila.
Yitzchak Rabin went the opposite route: the hated breaker of Palestinian bones during the First Intifada became the hailed breaker of taboos who shook Arafat's hand on the White House lawn. Finally, he was apotheosed into a glorious and impeccable martyr, the very pattern and example against whom all would-be peacemakers are measured.
To be sure, most candidates are found sadly wanting -- but sooner or later, a worthy successor would take up Rabin's mantle and complete the dead hero's lifework -- so, at least, the speakers promise every November from the Memorial Rally podium.
Such had once been the appeal that enabled Peace Now to get masses of supporters into the street, which gave Meretz an electoral prominence and made the Labor Doves a powerful faction.
Even more radical groups, conducting highly controversial and sometimes downright illegal dialogue with "terrorists", fully hoped and expected to thereby facilitate eventual formal negotiations by fully authorized government representatives.
But the Camp David fiasco of 2000 deeply discredited this model of peace making. The people were promised "the historic agreement to top all historic agreements", neatly tying up all loose ends left over from earlier occasions -- and by all opinion polls they were willing to give such an agreement their massive support.
Instead, the people of Israel were presented with a flood of denunciations of the treacherous Palestinians, who had "rejected Barak's generous offers" and were solely and entirely to blame for the hellish cycle of violence and bloodshed that followed.
(Until today, Peace Now and Meretz have not recovered from that blow, steadily losing extraparliamentary and electoral support, respectively.)
For a time, the mirage of "unilateralism" and "disengagement" were presented as an alternative -- Israel alone (or in consultation with Washington) would determine which piece of territory to relinquish and which to keep, and how much control to continue exercising where it had supposedly withdrawn.
Yet this model did not work either, judging from the bitter results of the Gaza "Disengagement", and further by Olmert's fiasco in Lebanon -- from where Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2000.
When exhumed at Annapolis, the old model universally got skeptical to cynical reactions, failing to arouse even a trace of the old enthusiasm.
Should Olmert's negotiators, against all odds, achieve an agreement with Abu Mazen's, wary and weary people might still support it. But they are very unlikely to come out into the streets to cheer and speed on a process in which they place so little confidence or hope.
For peace activists the marathon struggle is far from over. The question after all those years: how to keep oneself going, expecting no dramatic results, yet never losing sight of the ultimate goal.
Senior activists take inspiration from and join hands with the group of young people known as Anarchists Against Walls. Among the forces opposing occupation and oppression, it is those young who set an example of courage and determination. By their most basic ethos and view of the world, the last source from which Anarchists would seek salvation are meetings between heads of state where formal diplomatic agreements and accords are ceremoniously signed.
Three years of constant struggle at Bil'in Village, in which Israeli Anarchists have taken part alongside Palestinian villagers, have produced no more of a concrete result than a court order to move the Separation Fence half a kilometer westwards. An order that the army is in no hurry to implement (and the judges in no hurry to enforce).
Still, this mode of struggle is spreading to other villages, and the long term implications of grassroots partnership as a model of non-violent struggle creates a rare ray of hope -- where governments and diplomats prove so impotent in putting an end to the misery of Israelis and Palestinians.
The Editors
****
The pain is the same pain
End the Siege -- Gaza Ceasefire NOW!
At the height of the bloody Israeli invasion in the last week of February, activists in Israel and the Gaza Strip communicated urgently by phone and email and drafted a joint call for a ceasefire -- which was spread over the internet and within days gained more than thousand Israeli and Palestinian signatures, quite some from Gazans.
The escalation in and around the Gaza Strip is causing terrible suffering to people -- to men, women, elderly and children, Palestinian as well as Israeli civilians.
The military offensive conducted by the Israeli armed forces has so far caused hundreds of Palestinian casualties; many of them were unarmed civilians.
The siege and economic blockade have reduced most of the Gaza Strip's population to abject poverty, devastated its economy, and caused the death of critically ill patients, denied access to vital treatment.
The Palestinian attacks on Sderot have severely traumatized its population, far beyond the physical casualties caused among them.
This is not a conflict between two equal forces. The most powerful army in the Middle East, backed
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by the world's single remaining super-power, is daily using tanks, fighter planes, helicopters and gunships against the lightly-armed militias and overcrowded population of a small area, whose people have lived under occupation and in poverty long before the present siege.
Yet the individuals caught in the fighting are all suffering -- on both sides of the fighting, between both peoples. The pain of living in daily fear, of being wounded and mutilated for life, of grieving for the loss of loved ones, is the same pain -- whether one's country be oppressed or oppressor, occupied or occupier, rich or poor, powerful or powerless.
The attacks on both sides of the border feed on each other and intensify each other. Palestinians in Gaza, rightly feeling themselves still living under occupation despite the Israeli 'disengagement', seek to resist occupation, but when some use launching of rockets against civilians, they manage only to provide an additional justification for tightening the siege on Gaza and the escalation of Israeli violence.
The cycle of violence and bloodshed goes on and on, and the threat of an overall invasion and re-conquest of the Gaza Strip is openly and repeatedly made by the Israeli military and political leaders -- with the cost estimated at hundreds or thousands of casualties.
We, the undersigned -- Israelis and Palestinians -- do not accept this grim reality as inevitable. There is a clear and obvious alternative to bloody escalation and strangulating siege, an alternative providing hope: an end to the siege of Gaza, and a ceasefire and cessation of all hostilities.
The siege of Gaza and the collective punishment of its population are totally unacceptable. It is a medieval form of war that is in utter contradiction to the present norms of human rights and international law -- which Israel, as an occupying power, is bound to respect. There should be an immediate end to the siege, unconnected with any other issue, and the Gaza Strip must have free access to the outside world, for the free passage of persons and goods.
It has already been clearly seen that the suffering inflicted on Palestinian civilians in Gaza did not and cannot solve the problem of Sderot. The only solution is a complete and mutual ceasefire, an end to all armed attacks by the Israeli occupation on Palestinians, including all shootings by infantry, tanks, artillery, aircraft and gunboats, and all targeted killings, armed incursions and arrests across the border, and an end to launching of rockets by Palestinians on Israelis.
In addition, this should involve a reopening of the prisoners issue, starting with negotiations on the exchange of Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit with Palestinian prisoners.
We regard such a ceasefire as an entirely realistic, achievable and desirable act, which would save lives, alleviate misery and create better conditions for any attempt to achieve peace between the two peoples -- while understanding that no long-lasting solution is possible while the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem continue to live under occupation.
"There is a problem" said the elderly woman who phoned urgently on the day before we set out. "The food which I and my husband bought for the Gaza Convoy is too much to be put into one box. But if we divide it in two, the Palestinian families who get each box will feel that Israelis are misers. And the shops are already closed, we can't buy more. What shall we do?"
This Tel Aviv couple was among the very many people, in Israel as all over the world, touched by the plight of Gaza and trying to do something about it. After many months in which it had festered, virtually unnoticed by the world at large (though full reports by a great variety of organizations and observers were available for any who cared to look them up), the Siege of Gaza has suddenly burst into the headlines and the TV screens. This was the result of Mr. Barak making an already terrible situation completely intolerable by altogether closing down the border passes, Gaza's fragile lifeline. Also due to desperate Palestinians taking for once the kind of step which is often urged on them, not always in good faith -- i.e., a mass non-violent action a la Mahatma Gandhi, in this case breaking down a massive wall and swarming across an international border.
In fact, a relief convoy had been in stages of preparation already for several weeks before these stirring events. The initiative started in late December, when Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj -- the well-known Gazan psychiatrist and human rights activist -- got a permit to enter Israel. This provided a rare opportunity for Israeli peace activists, hosted at the Gush Shalom office, to hear a first-hand account of the increasingly desperate hardships of daily life in the Strip -- much of it new also to those who spend hours every day to surf the net and find information which the mainstream media does not bother with.
It was out of the question to hear all that and just nod our heads in sadness. On the spot, it was decided to organize a relief convoy for Gaza -- providing both some real, concrete aid, and also a powerful symbolic gesture -- and to struggle by all political and juridical means for the right to actually get the supplies into the Strip.
Further, the arrival of the convoy at the border of the Strip would be marked by two parallel protest rallies, to be held simultaneously on the two sides of the impassable border. There followed weeks of
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preparations, meetings held every few days, attended by more and more activists, the drafting of manifestos and statements which were translated back and forth between Hebrew, Arabic and English, amended and amended again so as to satisfy all 26 peace groups which eventually joined the initiative. There were considerable political and ideological differences and, no less important, in the age and general outlook of the various groups' membership. A single slogan was chosen, uniting everybody: Gaza: End the Blockade!
On occasion, petty rivalries and quarrels flared up, sometimes acrimoniously -- as they must in all human enterprises, however well intentioned. Still, many activists from various organizations worked feverishly -- long days and deep into the night: distributing leaflets at street corners and on university
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campuses, working to take care of numerous small difficulties and logistical hitches. There were quite a few new faces we had not seen before, young people who suddenly stepped in to take a heavy share of the burden.
Gush Shalom started a fund-raising campaign among its sympathizers. Hundreds of checks came pouring in -- from all over Israel, as out of obscure towns in faraway countries. The US-based Jewish Voice for Peace gave wings to the campaign as did its Dutch counterpart, and longtime members of Solidarity with Palestine groups also used this opportunity to get some help through to Gaza. Often, words of thanks accompanied the checks for an opportunity to join the struggle. And various groups picketed Israeli embassies and consulates with signs reading 'Let the Convoy Pass!'
In consultation with Dr. al-Sarraj it was decided to buy, not only five tons of essential foodstuffs -- flour, sugar, rice, oil, salt, beans and lentils -- but also water filters.
In the original meeting with him in Tel Aviv, one of the salient details was how polluted and undrinkable water is in the Gaza Strip, even in "ordinary" times. The Israeli siege caused a very severe shortage of water filters -- which are far from providing a full answer, but do at least reduce the danger to the drinkers' health. So, the Israeli supplier was duly located in the town of Petach Tikva, and a quantity of filters purchased (we decided to concentrate on the heavy-duty large filters, costing 250 Dollars apiece, and destined for schools and other public institutions in the Strip).
Activists scouting ahead around the Gaza border found what seemed the ideal spot for holding the rally -- a hillside overlooking the Gaza Strip, where Israeli protesters could stand while our Palestinian partners came to a nearby field on their side of the border, so that denominators on both sides could see each other. Alas, this creative idea was foiled by the army, declaring said hill "a closed military zone" and going as far as surrounding it with barbed wire, to prevent any chance of our ascending. The military decree was issued just a single day before the convoy was due to set out, too short to try an appeal to the Supreme Court, so we had to make do with keeping contact between the Israeli rally and the Palestinian one via mobile phone.
Prayer against rain
January 26, and the weather forecasts were far from auspicious: "Rain and thunderstorms predicted all over the country, rainfall will increase during the day."
Already in the preceding night, we had been woken up by strong thunderbolts. "Who is going to get up early on a Shabbat morning in such stormy weather, in order to participate in an open-air protest rally and carry sacks of food?"
But a single look at any of the bustling rendezvous points (Nazareth, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Be'er Sheba) was enough to dispel all such apprehensions. Under the drizzle, old and young activists were very busy -- strapping the boxes of supplies (well wrapped in nylon against the rain) to the roofs of cars, and attaching long black ribbons to radio aerials.
As requested by the organizers, hundreds of families came in their private cars, all of which were soon decorated by posters showing a map of Gaza surrounded by barbed wire, and the slogan 'End the blockade!' in three languages. Some added on their own cars older placards and posters left over from earlier campaigns: Gaza: Stop the madness, stop the war! / No to Occupation, Yes to Israeli-Palestinian Peace! / It won't end until we talk!
A battered old car, full of youngsters with weird hairstyles, was completely covered with graffiti: One More Car Against the Siege / You have gas? Gazans Don't!
Together with those travelling by bus, the number of participants amounted to about two thousands -- far above expectations.
It was the veteran Ya'akov Manor who had come up with the idea of asking demonstrators to bring private relief parcels and to add personal letters "from family to family." This touched a chord among activists who had seen the distressing TV broadcasts from Gaza.
Families spent considerable care and expense in preparing their personal aid packages, bringing not only food and mineral water, but also blankets, warm clothing and many other useful articles, even stoves. Parcels were fastened to the tops of the cars or put in the baggage holds of the buses. When later collected together, they amounted to no less than an additional two tons of supplies.
At the moment of assembly the rain was slight, no real hindrance. But during the drive southwards to the Erez Border Crossing it grew heavier and heavier, pouring down, making it almost impossible to see the road, and considerably slowing down the
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numerous cars. Enough to make the most obdurate of atheists utter a fervent prayer, precisely the opposite of what peasants in this land have prayed for since time immemorial "No rain! No rain! Please, please, can you not stop it for two hours! Just two hours, that is all I ask!"
A call from the Reuters TV camera crew: "We are positioned at Erez and waiting for you. All set to start worldwide live broadcast at 12.45 sharp. Please be punctual -- these satellite links cost a lost of money, you know." A hasty cell phone consultation from car to car, and the organizers' resolve: "We must make it, by hook or by crook, even if we all get soaking wet. We just CAN'T afford to miss that broadcast!" Dr. Sarraj, calling from the preparations for the Palestinian parallel rally in Gaza, with a ray of hope: "Don't worry, the rain in Gaza has stopped and the clouds are clearing away. We are all under the same sky, whatever the barriers on the ground!"
And so it proved. By the time the convoys from all over the country converged on the Yad Mordechai Junction and set out for the final few kilometres, there were only large puddles on the ground to remind of the fury of the elements. The sun broke out to give camera crews a full chance to capture the long, long, slow moving line of cars, buses and trucks.
Disembarkation at the locked gates of the Erez Checkpoint -- once a crowded thoroughfare, where tens of thousands of Gazan workers passed very early every morning on their way to low-paid jobs in Israel, now a concrete wasteland that only "excep-
List of parallel actions worldwide
US: New York, Phoenix, Seattle, San Diego, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Anaheim, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, Boston, Alameda, Detroit, Chapel Hill, Durham, Champaign, Anaheim, Charlotte, Costa Mesa, Sioux Falls, St. Paul, New Haven; CANADA: Montreal, Sydney, Toronto, Melbourne; UK: London, Birmingham, Brighton, Leicester, Manchester, Edinburgh, Swansea, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Glasgow; SPAIN: Madrid, Malaga, Cordoba, Barcelona, Valencia, Santander, Torrelavega, Celra (Girona), Lerida, Asturias, Mallorca; ITALY: Rome, Modena, Bologna, Grosseto, Naples, Milan, Padova Como Udine, Torino; FRANCE: Paris, Poitiers, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Nantes, Orleans; GERMANY: Berlin, Gelsenkirchen, Gothenburg, Koblenz, Wuppertal; SWEDEN: Stockholm, Gotaplatsen; AUSTRIA: Vienna; SOUTH AFRICA: Cape Town, and... sorry if this wasn't all.
tional humanitarian cases" are granted the rare privilege of traversing.
Jewish and Arab demonstrators -- about half and half, with a leavening of Swedes, Germans, Americans, Canadians, Japanese and a single Korean -- held aloft aid packages and placards, marching parallel to the high walls separating the Strip from Israel.
From the loudspeaker atop a van chants were initiated in Hebrew and Arabic, enthusiastically picked up by the marchers: Gaza, Gaza, don't despair -- we will end the occupation yet! / Gazans deserve Freedom, Gaza will be Free! / Peace -- Yes! Occupation -- No! Peace -- Yes! Siege -- No! / Occupation is Terrorism, The Refuser is a Hero!
Mounted police shadowed the march, and a cordon of police and soldiers was stretched along the Wall. Ahead, the truck loaded with sacks of flour was already waiting, covered with heavy tarpaulins against the weather -- to be used as an improvised speakers' podium.
A phone call from Dr. Sarraj, from the rally of the Palestinian-International Campaign to End the Siege at the Unknown Soldier's Tomb in Gaza City, magnified by loudspeaker for the waiting crowd: "I am proud and honoured to be addressing you today, this is a significant date in the history of the region. Maybe the siege and collective punishment are a blessing in disguise, when they brought us together, Palestinians and Jews, Israelis and Arabs, united in the pursuit of peace -- of security for Gaza and Israel, for Ramallah and Sderot!"
Prolonged applause, and a reciprocal message of peace by the undersigned relayed in the same way to the Palestinian rally. It was even possible to faintly hear the cheering of the Gazan crowd. (On more than one past occasion, attempts at such phone-relayed speeches ended with embarrassing scenes of loud squeaking and inarticulate noises. But recent improvements in cell phone technology have evidently come to the rescue of cross-border peace activism.)
"What shall we say to the hungry child and his mother, seeking bread in the streets of Gaza -- we who stand helpless at the locked gate? What shall we say to all the children trapped in this terrible ghetto, to the stillborns dying in their incubators because the State of the Jews has cut off their oxygen? And what can we say to ourselves?" cried out Nurit Peled-Elhanan, whose own daughter was killed in a Jerusalem suicide bombing ten years ago.
"Three days ago, the Rafah Wall has fallen, as the Berlin Wall has fallen, as the 'Separation Wall' cutting through the West Bank will also fall. But our government and our army still continue, in our names, a monstrous policy of siege and denial of vital supplies to the inhabitants of Gaza" said Uri Avnery.
"Our hearts are with our brothers and sisters in Gaza, who demonstrate at this very moment on the other side, with our brothers and sisters in Sderot who live under the threat of the Qasam missiles. This threat will not be removed by siege or military retaliation. 'An eye for an eye' will only make us all blind.
There is only one way and one solution for ending the Quassams: to sit down and talk -- yes, talk to the Hamas! Talk about a full ceasefire. No more Qassams from Gaza to Israel, and no deadly raids and incursions of Israel into Gaza, no more mortar bombs and no more aerial 'liquidations.' A full ceasefire on the way to full peace with all parts of the Palestinian people!"
Advocate Fatmeh al-Ijou spoke of last week's
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hearing at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem. "The state had enough temerity and cynicism to assert that the cutting off of electricity and fuel to Gaza is legal under International Law, as being 'similar to the international economic boycott against Apartheid South Africa.' As if there is anyone in the world who does not know who is implementing Apartheid methods in the Middle East, which country it is that constructs roads where permission to drive is dependant on the motorist's ethnic origin!"
"Together with us and with our friends in Gaza, tens of thousands of people are standing at this moment in demonstrations and pickets and rallies all over the world, in capital cities and megalopolises as well as in small towns -- all of them demanding the end of the siege on Gaza and of the occupation in general," said Professor Jeff Halper, who went on to call upon the people of Sderot to rebel against the role imposed on them by the government -- "The role of hostages to missile fire and pretexts for acts of oppression in Gaza, which only serve to provoke further shooting of missiles."
"As soon as the spotlight went out on the visit of President George W. Bush [a loud "Boo"! from the audience], the light also went out in the homes and hospitals of Gaza" called former Hadash MK Issam Makhoul. "But the years of silence are over. Jewish and Arab people of peace and goodwill are uniting in the struggle for a just peace, which alone can ensure the future of the children of Gaza and Sderot."
And Balad Mk Jamal Zahalka added: "The so-called negotiations and Peace Process, which the government announced, are empty of any real content, a mere camouflage to hide the crimes committed in Gaza. What the government tries to hide from the public is the basic fact that numerous offers of a ceasefire were made by the Palestinian side and were all rejected out of hand by the Government of Israel."
Teddy Katz read out a message from former Minister Shulamit Aloni, a scheduled speaker who could not come for health reasons:
"Enough of the killing, murder and destruction, committed in our name! Enough of false propaganda, media spins which end in death! This is my direct message to the Minister of Defence, Ehud Barak, and his henchmen: The time is over for your mentality of reckless, unthinking commando raids and assassinations. The time has come for maturity and rational consideration -- a time for peace!" (Aside from her words, Aloni provided a substantial monetary donation and two personal aid packages.)
A completely unexpected speaker, who came up at the last moment, was a young woman from Sderot, Shir Shusdig -- who climbed the truck/podium with some diffidence and took the microphone: "For the past seven years, at Sderot and Kibbutz Zikim, I have lived under the constant threat of the Qassams. I have become so attuned to them that even in other, quiet parts of the country, when I hear a public address system I instinctively think this is the missile alarm. I know that the people on the other side are also suffering very much. I don't trust either our government or the Hamas to solve the problem and bring peace. But the fact that we have come here, so many people together, Jews and Arabs and Palestinians over there, that is what gives hope; that we all want peace!"(Very loud cheers).
A few minutes after protesters piled into the cars and buses, the rain started again.
...but how to get it into Gaza?
The convoy and the two parallel rallies gave a good feeling, but the hard part -- getting the goods through -- was still to come. Pending the necessary wrangling with the military bureaucracy, the personal packages, together with the sacks of flour and rice and the precious water filters, were all loaded and taken to warehouses -- placed free of charge at the organizers' disposal, by Kibbutz Kerem Shalom and the Bedouin township of Rahat.
Indeed, there were many layers of bureaucracy, presenting obstacles to overcome. The officers in direct charge of the border crossings into Gaza, the office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, and the Bureau and personal aides of Defence Minister Barak, all have some say in the matter and are in the habit of referring applicants back and forth. But Adv. Orna Cohen, of the Human Rights organization Adalah, does not give up easily. First, the answer was an unqualified "no" -- since "the decision had been taken to close the passes altogether." Hundreds of protests were sent to the government from all over the world, especially by people and groups who had donated to buy the supplies that were being held up.
Moreover, on exactly this week Olmert met with the Knesset Members of Hadash, in an attempt to solicit from them some degree of support for the government -- and they took up the issue of the convoy, as well as more long-range matters.
Finally, organizer Ya'akov Manor got a fax from Barak's bureau, confirming that "permission was granted to transfer the goods into Gaza."
Not quite yet the happy end. The officer in charge of the border crossings duly received the Defence Ministry fax -- whereupon it turned out that "only a limited quota of trucks" were being allowed to cross every day." Therefore "I don't know when your turn would come -- perhaps in a month, perhaps in two...."
After more protests and the preparation of an appeal to the Supreme Court, a specific permit was granted -- a specific permit for a particular truck driven by a particular driver (and only for them) to enter on February 9 the closely guarded Sufa Compound and offload its cargo, where it could be picked by a Palestinian driver and taken to Gaza.
There was a final hitch on the morning itself. The truck driver -- a Bedouin, who is not a political activist and who does this route frequently -- had been intimidated by something which soldiers at the border had told him a few days previously (he would
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not say exactly what). It took a lot of talking and convincing before his truck, draped with the big banner "End the Siege!" set off, accompanied by several TV crews. (At the last moment Rahat residents added some more sacks of floor.)
A delegation of activists, among them Uri and Rachel Avnery, Ya'akov Manor, Michel Warshawski, Yossi Elgazi and the TOI-staff came with the truck until the entrance to the compound. The gates of Gaza opened -- at least for a moment.
Israeli Coalition Against the Siege -- list of participants:
Gush Shalom * Combatants for Peace * Coalition of Women for Peace * ICAHD (The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) * Bat Shalom * Bat Tzafon for Peace and Equality * Balad * Hadash * Adalah * Tarabut-Hithabrut * Physicians for Human Rights-Israel * AIC (Alternative Information Center) * Psychoactive-Mental Health Workers for Human Rights * ActiveStills * The Student Coalition (Tel Aviv University) * New Profile * MachsomWatch * PCATI (Public Committee Against Torture in Israel) * Yesh Gvul * Gisha * Local Television on the Internet * Committee for Israeli-Palestinian Dialogue * On the Left Side * Faculty for Palestinian-Israeli Peace (Israel).
As Gush Shalom continued to receive donations a second shipment is about to be sent. This time the request was for medicines and medical equipment. All in all, more than $80,000 was collected and spent on buying goods and bringing them into Gaza.
****
Protest vigil against Bloody Saturday
Sunday, March 2
The Defence Ministry area in the heart of Tel Aviv has been recently renovated. A neat park was laid out and old houses carefully restored, and refurbished, at considerable expense to the public purse.
It is from here that the orders come, the orders to inflict misery and death upon the terribly impoverished and overcrowded Gaza, the orders for the big offensive in which not less than seventy people were killed on the preceding day, Saturday.
So, we have to write again a report of a protest that was hastily called, and to which some five hundred people gathered at short notice, (not such a bad turn out, actually). During the preparatory hours there had been some friction: certain radicals turning their nose at standing with the Zionist Peace Nowers -- and, for its part, Peace Now trying to "keep some distance from the extremists."
But once on the pavement, facing the ministry, there is a strong feeling of common purpose, amity created by the common chanting: "How long will blood be shed/Suffering and killing must end!" -- "In Gaza and Sderot/Children want to Live!" (this rhymes well in Hebrew) -- "Stop the guns/Save the peoples!" and "Barak, Barak, hey hey hey/How many kids did you kill today?"
The many flags, expressing all kind of nuances, actually increased the presence of the long line of demonstrators -- the two-nations flag of Gush Shalom, Peace Now flags as well as Israeli national flags brought by them, the red flag of the Communists, the green one of Meretz, black flags of the Anarchists.
"The media coverage is terrible. Hardly any mention of the dead children in Gaza. They just hide it on the bottom of page 5 where nobody will notice. And the bombastic statement of this war criminal Barak. Leader of the Labour Party, indeed! Why do I have to look at BBC or Al-Jazeera to know what the army of my own country is doing?" says Amikam, a balding man who had come all the way from the north in a battered old car covered with dozens of stickers.
"Maybe we should go from here to picket the offices of the newspapers and TV stations. To tell the editors we want news, not war propaganda!" says Varda, Amikam's wife. "The editors are the collaborators, they make the carnage possible."
Meanwhile the 10-year old Yossi, the couple's youngest child, has picked up a red marking pen and wrote on the backside of a placard: "Booooo to the War!" Then he moved a bit away from his parents and found for himself a place in the long line of grownups stretching along the sidewalk, holding up multiple hand-written signs in the direction of the ministry gate:
"Jews and Arabs, we refuse to be enemies"/ "A ceasefire -- for Gaza and Sderot!" / "Killing children is a war crime" / "Only negotiations will stop the Qassam" / "Is a monster nice? No, but that is what the occupation produces!" / "Remove the siege! Give hope!" / "Talk -- also to Hamas!" / "No more war -- end the killing now!" / "Barak and Bush have a rendezvous in the Hague!"
"Everybody knows how it will end. Neither side could defeat the other, so in the end they will sit down and talk, the only question is how many people will be killed before. My own son was killed eleven years ago, he was a paratrooper officer. For me it is too late, but there are so many people who can still be saved!" said Yona Bar Gur to journalists present. (Bar Gur is member of the Parents' Circle, which brings together Israeli and Palestinian bereaved families.)
"There could have a ceasefire already, but the government says explicitly they don't want it because they want to dictate to Hamas what they call 'The new rules of the game', and for that they continue to shed blood!" said former MK Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom.
Yariv Oppenheimer (Peace Now) added: "We demand that the government start talking to Hamas -- directly or via the mediators who offer themselves, the 'how' is secondary. The idea of destabilizing Hamas into collapse is just not realistic, and our decision-makers had best understand this. We are here also for the sake of Sderot and the other bombed Israeli communities, ceasefire and talks are the only solution for them, too."
Hadash MK Hanin: "The lessons of the Second Lebanon War have not been internalized. We must stop the fire at once and prevent unnecessary
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suffering on both sides of the border. The killings in Gaza are not only immoral, they are also against the most basic interests of the citizens of Israel."
Suddenly the sidewalk press conference was interrupted and Hanin -- a lawyer by profession -- was called urgently to the other side of the picket line. There, a violent confrontation was fast developing with the police.
Members of the notorious "Special Patrol Unit" ("Yasam" by its Hebrew acronym) had spread out in a long line in front of the protest, in order to avert the possibility of demonstrators running forward and blocking the road (which did happen on some past occasions).
Tonight, however, there had been no serious attempt to do that -- and nevertheless the riot policemen were aggressively pushing against the crowd, answered by the protesters pushing back. Three were detained and taken away to the police car, while the others chanted "Police State! Police State!"
"I talked with the police and told them we were in any case planning to end the demonstration in a quarter of an hour, and they agreed to free the detainees" said Hanin to the crowd. (One of the detainees, Hagai Matar, had already been Hanin's client, back when he was court-martialed for refusing to join an army of occupation)
During the dispersal, the young Yossi insisted upon tying his placard to a tree. "So that Barak can see it from the limousine."
****
Prisoner starts hunger strike
Never-ending detention without trial
Palestinian women prisoners have for decades been monitored by the Tel-Aviv based Women's Organization for Political Prisoners (WOFPP), which arranges visits by lawyers and exposes in its newsletter and on its website findings about the prison conditions. From time to time, they campaign about an extremely outrageous case.
Nura el-Hashlamon, from Hebron, mother of six and suffering from a kidney disease, is in prison since Sept. 17, 2006. Harsh interrogations did not lead to any "confession" and she was transferred to Hasharon Prison (Tel Mond) as an "Administrative Detainee", i.e.: without charge, without trial.
Her husband, Muhamad Sami el-Hashlamon, is already an Administrative Detainee since 2005 and is held in the notorious Negev Prison (Ktziot). Like Nura's, his 6-months' administrative terms are constantly and automatically renewed.
After more than a year of imprisonment, the Israeli authorities did after all put Nura on trial in a military court, where she was charged with "membership in an illegal organization" for which the military judge sentenced her to a fine -- no more. Nura's family did not understand much of the trial, which was conducted in Hebrew, but, expecting that it would lead to her release, paid the full sum demanded, 5000 NIS (appr. $1500). The authorities, however, were in no hurry to release Nura and, as it turned out, simply continued the Administrative Detention also after the accused had complied fully with the verdict in her trial. On December 12, Nura began a hunger strike demanding to be immediately released.
As if to add insult to injury, the prison authorities punished the prisoner for protesting at the expense of her own health: they transferred her to an isolation cell, took all her belongings except some clothes and deprived her of her children's visits and of the recreation time in the courtyard.
(In its sober but meticulous reporting on prison conditions, the WOFPP December 2007 newsletter tells about a whole lot of broken glass on the floor of the isolation cell, hindering Nura during prayers. The authorities refusing her request for a broom, she succeeds in the end to scrape away the glass fragments and splinters with a piece of paper.)
On Jan. 7, after 27 days, Nura el-Hashlamon stopped her hunger strike, and some days later -- on the 16th -- her prisoner husband was allowed an exceptional visit.
In this case, as in others, it seems that Nura is kept in prison to put pressure on her husband, against whom the authorities apparently can't make a solid case without his incriminating himself. Among the 11000 Palestinian prisoners there are quite a few who have been sentenced solely on the basis of extorted confessions.
On 13 March 2008, the day after the authorities extended Nura's Administrative Detention for another three months, she went on hunger strike again.
Protest letters on behalf of Nura Jaber el-Hashlamon to be sent to:
The Israeli Embassy in your country / Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, fax: +972-2-6546717 / The International Committee of the Red Cross: ICRC-Tel-Aviv, 185, Hayarkon Street, Tel Aviv 63453, Israel -- fax: +972-3-5270370; ICRC-Jerusalem, Nabi Shu'eib St. 8, Sheikh Jarrah district, PO Box 20253, Jerusalem 91202, Israel -- fax: +972-2-5811375; jerusalem.jer@icrc.org
In the early morning and afternoon teams of the well-organized MachsomWatch, involving hundreds of women volunteers, have for more than five years been monitoring the ever-increasing number of checkpoints.
In minute detail they write down what they see, and they also sometimes ask the soldiers questions or in extreme cases mobilize help from human rights organizations and phone to Knesset Members.
The reading through the list of checkpoints that they made, with only sober explanations added, gives a chilling impression of what it means for Palestinian daily life. Originally considered temporary emergency measures the checkpoints, like the settlements and the "hilltop outposts", persist through the years and only increase in number.
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'Anin: located on the Separation Fence, east of Mei Ami, between the village of 'Anin in the West Bank and Um el-Fahm in Israel. Those who pass and return here are residents of 'Anin, mostly to cultivate their lands which have been cut off from the village by the Separation Fence. The checkpoint opens two days a week, morning and afternoon, and daily during the olive harvest season. People go out from the village in the morning and must return the same afternoon. Anyone who does not return that same day has his permits confiscated, and until he gets the situation corrected he is prohibited from transit.
A-Ram: two kilometers south of Qalandiya and 300 metres north of Neve Yaacov Junction, in Dahiyat el-Barid Quarter. Checkpoint has operated since 1991, in a Palestinian area annexed to Jerusalem in 1967. When the Jerusalem Envelope (read: Separation Wall) is complete, this checkpoint will be dismantled.
A-Ras: on Tulkarm-Qalqiliya road (574), east of Hirbet Jubara. Intended for residents travelling to and from Tulkarm, so they should not cross Apartheid Road 557 (only permissible for settlers).
Abu Dis: the completion of the Separation Wall stopped all passage between Abu Dis and Al 'Eizaria and Ras-al-Amud, which is within the 1967 annexed area of Jerusalem. The only passage is the so-called "Pishpash" ("wicket gate"), which is no more than a narrow gap between concrete plates of the Separation Wall. Used by schoolchildren and nearby residents with Jerusalem ID cards, whose names appear on soldiers' lists.
Al Jura: one of the permanent manned checkpoints of the southern West Bank, on Route 35, always locked except for days of "encirclement" -- nicknamed The Humanitarian Checkpoint.
Al Khadr: Al-Khadr served as transit from Bethlehem to Route 60. A dirt mound to prevent vehicular traffic from and to Bethlehem from the west. A small market developed there. Taxi ranks were on both sides of the obstruction. It was replaced by a similar obstruction at Al Nashash that has recently been removed, and thus the way from Bethlehem to Hebron through Route 60 is now free.
Al Nashshash: South of Al-Khadr, served as transit from Bethlehem to Route 60. A concrete block obstruction prevented vehicular traffic from south (Hebron) to Bethlehem and the northern West Bank. A small market developed there to replace the market of Al-Khadr. Taxi ranks on both sides of the obstruction. Usually, no on-site military or police supervision.
Al-Ezariya: At exit from Al Ezariya, before square leading to the large Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim. Mobile checkpoint (jeep and Border Police) operating till 09:00 am, facilitating traffic exiting Maale Adumin on three kilometer strip of road, also permissible for Palestinian vehicles. A similar checkpoint in the opposite direction, on road between Mishor Adumim and Adumim Junction. This checkpoint facilitates settler traffic on the Jerusalem-Jericho-Rift Valley road.
Anabta: South of Anabta village, before junction with 557 (close to Einav settlement).
Awarta: East of Huwwara checkpoint, at junction of Route 557 (Apartheid Road forbidden to Palestinians) and access road to Nablus. Serves as transit for goods to and from Nablus.
Beit Furik: east of Nablus at junction of Route 557 (Apartheid Road forbidden to Palestinians, leading to Itamar and Elon Moreh settlements), and Route 5487. Checkpoint has operated since 2001, seemingly serving residents of Beit Furik and Beit Dajan. In practice it only serves the settlers. One of the three permanent checkpoints that close off Nablus, together with Huwwara and Beit Iba.
Beit Iba: West of Nablus and southeast of Shavey Shomron settlement, between villages of Beit Iba and Deir Sharaf, has operated since 2001. One of three permanent checkpoints that close off the city (in addition to Beit Furik to the east and Huwwara in the south).
Bethlehem (300): close to the 'Jerusalem Envelope' Wall in north Bethlehem, cutting West Bank off from East Jerusalem. This checkpoint, which is the only entrance to Israel for residents of southern West Bank, Hebron and satellites, has a sophisticated terminal.
Bir Nabala: With completion of the Bir Nabala enclave, which includes also Al Jib, Al Judeira and Beit Hanina al Balad, a checkpoint was put at enclave exit. The passage into the enclave is allowed only to the enclave inhabitants and to Ramallah District people.
Container: Wadi Nar ("Container"/"Kiosk") -- between Sawahira a-Sharqiya and Bethlehem and satellites, allowing transit only to public and commercial vehicles. Pedestrians may use turnstile without special permit. Wadi Nar Checkpoint isolates one Palestinian area from another and controls traffic between north and south of the West Bank. Prevention of transit here cuts the two parts of the West Bank off from each other.
Deir Ballut: On Route 446, parallel to Zaatra Checkpoint and close to the settlements of Alei Zahav and Peduel. Prevents Palestinians from travelling southward.
Dura/Al Fawwar Junction: One of the roadblocks (earthworks, rocks, concrete blocks or iron gates) that prevent transit of vehicles to Route 60 in the southern West Bank.
Etzion DCO: serves residents of Bethlehem and surrounding villages who need magnetic cards, work permits for Israel, permits for one-time entry for religious or health reasons, various police permits, etc.
Hakvasim (Sheep) Junction: One of the roadblocks (earthworks, rocks, concrete blocks or iron gates) that prevent transit of vehicles to Route 60 in the southern West Bank and block the southern entrance to Hebron.
Halhul-Hebron Bridge: Generally allows free flowing traffic, except for sudden checks by soldiers stationed
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permanently in the pillbox, on Route 35 in the southern West Bank.
Hamra (Beqaot): One of the Jordan Rift Valley checkpoints that prevent direct transit between the West Bank and the Jordan Valley, in addition to Tayasir Checkpoint. Located next to Hamra settlement, on Route 57 and the Allon Road.
Hebron: According to the Hebron Agreement (1997), the city of Hebron is divided in two: H1 is under Palestinian Authority control, H2 is under Israeli control. In Hebron there are 170,000 Palestinian citizens, 60,000 of them in H2. Between the two areas are 12 permanent checkpoints, manned at all hours, preventing the movement of all Palestinians but special permit holders such as teachers and schoolchildren. Some 800 settlers live in the enclaves of Avraham Avinu, Tel Rumeida, on Givat HaAvot and in the former Palestinian wholesale market.
Huwwara: South of Nablus, at the junction of Routes 57/557, between the settlements of Bracha and Itamar. One of three checkpoints that close off Nablus, together with Beit Furik and Beit Iba.
Irtah (Sha'ar Efrayim): On the Green Line north of Route 557 and south of Tulkarm, operated by a civilian manpower company. Serves as exit and entry gate to Israel for workers from Tulkarm, and for transit of commercial quantities of goods by back-to-back method (i.e.: moving goods from one truck to another).
Jaba (Lil): Jaba Checkpoint is east of Qalandiya Checkpoint at the entrance to Ramallah. Its declared purpose is the prevention of Israeli citizens from entering Area A.
Jit Junction: A roadblock on Route 60 that has become a permanent checkpoint.
Jubara (Kafriat): On Route 557, south of Tulkarm. Though located inside PA territory (a few kilometers east of the Green Line), serves as entry checkpoint between Occupied Territories and Israel.
Makkabim: Makkabim Checkpoint is at the Palestinian side of the 1949 No Man's Land, on Route 443 going, through the Palestinian territory, from Jerusalem to the Modi'in area. Israeli citizens and Israeli identity card holders as well as Palestinian permit holders are allowed through going from east to west.
Nuaman (Masmuria): situated on the Wall route as part of "Jerusalem Envelope" (i.e. Separation Wall) in its southeastern stretch, east of Zur Baher, Um Tuba and the small Nuaman Village. On Beit Sahur road, the checkpoint will serve as the main crossing for commercial goods from the southern West Bank to Jerusalem.
Qalandiya: three kilometers south of Ramallah, in the heart of Palestinian population. Integrates into "Jerusalem Envelope" as part of Wall that separates between East Jerusalem and the northern Palestinian suburbs Kafr Aqab, Semiramis and Qalandiya (in spite of them being annexed to Jerusalem in 1967) and Ar-Ram and Bir Nabala (not annexed). Some residents of Kafr Aqab, Semiramis and Qalandiya have Jerusalem ID cards. A terminal operated by Israel Police has functioned at Qalandia since early 2006. As of August 2006, northbound pedestrians (i.e.: those on the way to Ramallah) are not checked.
Qalqiliya: The route from Qalqiliya to Israel is through the Eyal terminal, situated on the Green Line, northwest of the city. The connection to the West Bank is through another checkpoint, which is at the eastern city limit.
Ramadin: on Routes 354/3255 completely isolates Ramadin village that is located east of the fence but half encircled by a bend in its route. The checkpoint at the village's only connection to the rest of the West Bank is designed to prevent into Israel.
Ras Abu Sbeitan: northwest end of Al Ezariya, at foot of At-Tur. Intended only for pedestrians holding Jerusalem ID cards and other appropriate permits. Site has shed and turnstiles that let people pass into sophisticated terminal. Checkpoint is distant from centre of life of suburbs east of Wall, and access is difficult.
Reihan: Reihan (Bartaa) Checkpoint allows transit only to vehicles and pedestrians holding transit permits appropriate to the place. The checkpoint is located on the Separation Fence, east of East Bartaa. It is supposed to enable the "fabric of life" to the Palestinian residents living in the "Seam Zone" (the area between the Separation Wall and the 1949-Green Line), who have been physically cut off from the West Bank. Since May 16, 2007, it has been maintained by a civilian security company subcontracting to the Defense Ministry.
Sansana: On Route 60, will serve as border crossing of Separation Fence on the Israeli side of Green Line.
Shaked: Shaked (Tura) Checkpoint is located on the Separation Fence, near the Palestinian villages of Tura and Dahar el-Malh and the settlement of Shaked. The checkpoint opens twice a day, for a total of 10 hours. The transients are schoolchildren from the "Seam Zone" who learn in West Bank educational institutions, farmers from both sides of the Separation Fence who have been cut off from their lands, pedestrians and vehicles. The names of those entitled to pass here are on lists held by the soldiers.
Shavey Shomron: The checkpoint is on Route 60 (the main road to the northern West Bank), opposite the Shavey Shomron settlement. Has been blocked to Palestinians since disengagement from Gaza and northern West Bank.
Sheikh Saed: Sheikh Saed District near Jerusalem is part of West Sawahira (that also includes Jebel Mukaber), due to be separated from each other when Wall will be completed. Sheikh Saed has only one entry/exit, blocked by rocks since 2002, so passage is only for pedestrians.
Tarkumiya: one of the permanent manned checkpoints of the southern West Bank. Is supposed to serve as a border crossing on the Green Line, including sophisticated terminal. Located on Route 35 that
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connects the Gaza Strip with the West Bank. The Civil Administration has here a Transport Licensing Office, a station for ownership transfer, a Ministry of Agriculture Plant and Livestock Supervisory Unit. Workers and prison visitors cross. Almost no regular civilian traffic.
Tayasir: one of the checkpoints that prevent Palestinians from the rest of the West Bank access to the Jordan Valley. Located on Route 5799.
Za'tara (Tapuah): Junction of Routes 60 and 5 ("Trans Samaria Highway"), east of Tapuach settlement. This checkpoint is the borderline between north and central West Bank set by the IDF according to the quarantine policy in effect since December 2005.
Zif Junction: One of the unmanned roadblocks on Route 356 in the southern West Bank.
The size of the West Bank, speckled with this myriad of obstacles to free movement, is 5860 square kilometres. Imagine yourself travelling inside an area of 60 to 100 kilometres where for every traffic light you have to wait hours, and/or may have to leave you car and continue with a taxi -- never sure whether you will pass at all. Such is life in the West Bank, which gets favorable treatment compared with the Gaza Strip...
For more than three years the villagers of Bil'in hold their weekly Friday protests against the Israeli Wall cutting off the bigger part of their lands.
Up to now, it's far from clear when does the army (if ever) intend to carry out the Supreme Court's ruling of last August, by which it is bound to move back the Fence and restore to Bil'in at least some of their land (the part on which the settlers had not yet started construction).
The judges' verdict only stated that it has to be done "within a reasonable time", a term open to different interpretations -- though a manifestly unreasonable delay would give the villagers grounds to charge the military authorities with "contempt of court."
So, the Friday protests continue, as they must. And the Anarchists Against Walls, who are more and more engaged also in other villages' anti-Wall struggles, continue to gather every Friday morning in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and go to Bil'in, occasionally drawing in other Israeli groups. Same story for the internationals organized by the ISM (International Solidarity Movement), setting out from Ramallah.
Each week, after the Friday prayers, villagers are gathering in the plaza before the mosque where they are met by their Israeli and international supporters. In the past months Palestinians from neighboring as well as faraway villages increasingly show up -- in solidarity and as preparation for applying the method in their own village.
Then, at about 1pm the crowd embarks on a festive and colourful march towards the Wall, with a great variety of banners and flags and a bit of "street theatre." Each week a "special theme" is drawn from events of the week in Palestine or the world at large. The procession soon leaves the built-up part of the village, entering the open fields with the Fence -- and the Israeli troops -- just ahead.
Almost invariably, it ends with the army using considerable violence, though the details might vary a bit. Sometimes the soldiers open up immediately on the demonstrators' arrival; sometimes, there is half an hour (even an hour, in exceptional cases) of a peaceful rally in front of the Fence, before the inevitable confrontation.
Sometimes, soldiers restrict themselves to tear gas and sound bombs; but all too often they resort to "rubber bullets", i.e. metal bullets coated with rubber which might cause considerable damage, especially when shot at short range.
That is the signal for Palestinian youths to respond with stones (the army always claims it's the opposite order), pitched battles sometimes continue for hours -- and then it ends until the next week.
On February 27, the 4,800 residents of Saffa, Bili'n neighbour to the south, also engaged Adv. Michael Sfard who represents Bil'in to make an appeal on their behalf. Of 970 hectares of land that were registered for Saffa back under British rule, no less than 370 have been locked away behind the Fence, with access effectively denied to the owners (the gate is opened to them only once a year).
These Saffa lands are earmarked for the expansion of Israeli settlements -- some for erecting 1,100 housing units which would greatly enlarge the Kfar Oranim settlement; another part -- for an even further expansion of Mod'in Illit, the giant settlement-city which already swallowed much land of Bil'in and several other villages.
However, in the Bil'in case it was ruled that when routing the barrier, the military commander must not take into consideration settlement planning schemes that have not yet been implemented. This is applicable to the case of Saffa, where the settlement expansion plans were made in 1999 but never implemented. The villagers would like to get a verdict saying so -- even if its implementation might take long.
The appeal also asks for the gate to the Saffa lands to be open every day, as the gate at Bil'in is -- so as to give villagers constant access to their land.
# January 25 -- Kaoru Kishida, a Japanese activist shot dangerously near the eye by a rubber-coated steel bullet. Three Israeli activists, who were walking him away from the demonstration, were all
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shot -- one in the leg, one in the behind, and one near the eye. They have since recovered. Kishida was operated on in St. John's Eye Hospital in Jerusalem; at the time of writing it is still uncertain whether he will be able to use again the operated eye.
# Feb. 1 -- Fire opened immediately when demonstrators approached a military barrier erected on their route. Three villagers -- Mohamed Abu Rahmah, Nizar Abu Rahmah, and Oudah Abu Rahamh -- sustained moderate wounds and were taken to a Ramallah hospital.
# Feb. 8 -- A Palestinian teenager, Saarie Khalil, 18, shot in the arm with a rubber-coated steel bullet.
# Feb. 15 -- This week protesters managed to reach the gate of the wall separating the villagers from their lands; troops closed the gate and fired tear gas and sound bombs, and then rubber-coated steel bullets which injured a journalist, Imad Burnat, and broke his camera.
Soldiers also took over Palestinian homes nearby and used them as shoot-out posts; local and international peace activists intervened and managed to make soldiers leave the homes.
# Feb. 22 -- An especially large mobilization to mark three years since the Bil'in struggle began. Israeli groups (Gush Shalom, Women's Coalition for Peace, Ta'ayush, Yesh Gvul, ICAHD, Student Coalition of Tel Aviv University) joined with the Anarchists Against Walls who come every week. The joint call stated: "Join us in saying a big 'NO!' to oppression, separation and land theft, an even bigger 'YES!' to partnership and solidarity between Israelis and Palestinians."
There were also very many internationals, Palestinians from Nablus and other places came in special buses, and there were VIP's such as the popular physician/activist former minister Mustafa Barghouti.
For its part, the army on this day opened fire particularly early -- immediately when the head of the thousands-strong column passed the last houses and entered the fields ahead of the army positions. They manifestly did not wait for anything that could be construed as a provocation on the demonstrators' part.
Within a few minutes from the beginning of the march, activist Shambu Hanuman from California was shot in the head with a tear-gas canister. An eyewitness said, "There was blood all over him, you could see his skull inside the wound." Several other demonstrators were more lightly wounded.
On the following evening, a large contingent of Bil'in villagers went to Ramallah, to take part in a candlelight march and sit-in at Al-Manara Square, in solidarity with besieged Gaza.
# Feb. 29 -- A much smaller procession than the previous week's large mobilization. But representatives of some international groups, who had joined last week and were still around, came again (Boomchucka Circus, Irish Palestine Solidarity Movement, Jewish Voice for Peace (American and European variants), with the Swedish-Israeli Dror Feiler leading the way playing the saxophone. Villagers made a call for Palestinian National Unity holding the flags of Hamas and Fatah together with Palestinian national flags, as well as a meters-long banner of jet black.
One demonstrator walked alone towards the soldiers, carrying a large doll representing the six-month old baby killed in Gaza.
The soldiers first let him come near, but when he called out in Hebrew "This is the baby that your comrades killed in Gaza" they started shooting and wounded him, and afterwards run in among the demonstrators, hitting in all directions. Altogether, four people had been injured in the demonstration, one person detained.
# March 6 -- Wa'am Burnat, an 18-year old Bil'in villager, was shot by soldiers while working on his family's plot near the Fence. He got at least five bullets to his legs and thigh.
The soldiers did bandage his wounds (otherwise he might have soon died) but also detained him on the spot for half an hour, delaying his arrival to hospital in spite of his considerable loss of blood.
The reasons for the soldiers' act are unclear, as Wa'am was not involved in stone throwing, or any other kind of provocation -- but of course hardly a chance for any objective investigation. Maybe they had been instructed to consider anyone coming near as "a potential terrorist."
# March 7 -- On the occasion of the International Women's Day, it was an Israeli woman activist, Marina (no family name given), who was moderately wounded by the Israeli soldiers' gunfire -- as was a Palestinian protester, Naji Shouha.
Israeli protesters divided themselves between Bil'in and Qaffin further to the north. The Fence/Wall has in fact arrived at Qaffin years earlier than in Bil'in; some 12,000 olive trees were razed to make place for the Fence, and 120,000 left on the other side, effectively inaccessible.
Some four hundred Qaffin villagers, accompanied by Israelis and internationals, held a march to remind that they had not given up their land and olive trees -- being met by two army jeeps, and a volley of "rubber" bullets leaving three demonstrators wounded (not seriously, in this case), and others who needed treatment for tear gas inhalation.
# March 14 -- During the Bil'in march, soldiers singled out for detention Blake Murphy, American activist from Bedford, MA. Often, the targets of shooting and detentions are quite arbitrary; in this case, however, the soldiers knew who Murphy was -- he had been the full-time media coordinator for the ISM in the previous six months, and had evidently drawn the unfavorable attention of the military authorities.
While being detained he was violently assaulted and pepper sprayed; after being kept a week in an overcrowded detention cell, he was on March 21 deported to the US.
# On the night of March 14, a few hours after
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Murphy's violent detention, soldiers arrived at the "outpost" (a small, single-room hut) that the Bil'in villagers maintain on the land beyond the Fence (which is recognized as theirs and under last year's Supreme Court ruling is supposed to be returned to their full possession at some future time).
The soldiers expelled the single villager present, beat him until he could hardly walk and threatened him with murder. Five Israelis from Anarchists Against Walls, having heard the news, rushed to the spot and were told by soldiers that "the whole area has been declared a closed military zone."
Continually standing there in protest while preparing a judicial appeal, Israelis and Bil'in villagers were finally allowed to go back and resume (in fact, increase) their precarious presence at the "Bil'in outpost."
# March 21 -- Bil'in's weekly protest carried banners saying: "Soldier, don't kill unarmed demonstrators." It was two days after Ma'ariv Newspaper had published prominently a report about new instructions authorizing soldiers to shoot live ammunition against any Palestinian approaching the Wall/Fence -- but... not when Israelis and/or internationals are involved.
Indeed, the soldiers at the spot did not shoot to kill -- there were actually many Israelis and internationals in the crowd -- but the tear gas clouds were especially high and thick, and many participants needed treatment after inhalation (including a paramedic who had run into the cloud to help others).
# To be continued -- next week, and the week after, and so on and on and on...
Anarchists Against Walls, www.awalls.org
Register for weekly protests: +972-3-6482749 (Ilan)
Third Annual Bil'in Conference
The Organizing Committee and the Bil'in Friends of Freedom and Justice Society invite you to take part in the 'Third Annual Conference on Popular Struggle in Bil'in, Palestine.'
Conference dates: April 30 -- May 2, 2008 (with a major non-violent action on the final day).
Not only in the Occupied Territories but also inside Israel proper, Arabs are hardly provided with any housing projects. Moreover, they even find it difficult to impossible to get a permit to build themselves a house on their own land. Especially hard hit are the Bedouin villages of the Negev.
But Arabs still need homes, and when they build anyway, bulldozers come to destroy the houses. (Military bulldozers in the West Bank, Interior Ministry bulldozers in the Negev, municipal bulldozers in East Jerusalem). The frequent demolition of their homes is felt by Arabs -- and not by them alone -- to be an instrument of hostility and discrimination.
The governmental authorities involved in the demolition of Arab homes are the same who energetically engage in the massive construction, promotion and subsidizing of housing intended for exclusive Jewish habitation.
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) was founded in the 1990's in order to confront this policy -- by speaking out in protest and drawing public attention to the problem, in Israel and internationally, as well as by working on the ground and rebuilding destroyed Palestinian homes.
Over the years, thousands of people from all over the world have contributed to funding the rebuilding of demolished Palestinian homes. In 2007, this struggle got a considerable boost through a very successful fundraising campaign conducted by the affiliates, ICAHD-USA and ICAHD-UK -- providing no less than half a million dollars for the specific purpose of rebuilding destroyed homes.
ICAHD did have to agree to the stipulation that the money be used only for rebuilding homes demolished for lack of a building permit -- not those destroyed in extrajudicial punishment for an armed attack on Israelis.
(Fortunately, the army is nowadays less inclined to destroy an entire family home in retaliation for an act committed by a father, husband or son already dead; the army's own investigative committee, headed by a brigadier general, concluded that such policies were "completely counter-productive.")
ICAHD's "Constructing Peace Campaign" was launched last year at a press conference held at the a symbolic site for the issue of house demolition -- the place in Jerusalem's Old City where the historic Mugrabi Quarter stood until the night of June 11, 1967.
At that time, immediately following the Israeli army's arrival, 135 Palestinian families -- over 600 people -- were roused from their beds and witnessed their homes being demolished and totally razed. (The justification given at the time for that act of mass destruction was "the need to create a large open space in front of the Wailing Wall", where Jewish worshippers could gather and... mourn the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Army in the year 70 A.D.)
As told by ICAHD's organizers, adjusting to the new scale of activity was "a roller coaster ride." New fiscal and management frameworks had to be designed and the paid staff greatly expanded -- mainly by appointing Palestinians familiar with local conditions as field supervisors. In addition, contractors were locally engaged for specific building projects.
Within a few months, ICAHD was able to provide replacement to the destroyed homes of no less than 67 families -- in the Negev Desert, Hebron District, East
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compared with 32 houses rebuilt in the whole of the previous nine years.
Many of the houses that ICAHD had built in the past have been at the order of 100-150 sq. meters (900 sq. ft), accommodating families of 6-15 people. However, in the present campaign -- in order to spread the available funds between as many families as possible -- a decision was made to use, as a baseline, a standard home of only 30 sq. meters (270 sq. ft.). The basic floor plan was for two bedrooms, a bathroom with shower, and a kitchen/living room.
This basic house is being constructed of concrete and cinder blocks, a sheet metal roof, stucco on the exterior walls, plaster on the interior, four or five windows, and one external steel door. The interiors have tile floors, wooden doors, surface-mounted electrical conduits, and full indoor plumbing.
Houses of the basic model were built by ICAHD for an average construction cost of $8-10,000 each, accommodating families of up to six people -- with bigger families naturally getting larger homes.
Many families opted to change the basic floor plan, making one room a bit larger, or moving the bathroom to change the configuration. The process allowed a certain amount of flexibility in order to help families personalize their new homes. Also, many are planning to add insulation to the roof and other enhancements.
It should be noted that for some families these homes are only a temporary solution to their tragedy, while others accept them as a long-term solution.
In most cases, the new houses were not built on the original foundations of the demolished home, for several reasons. By building the new home (usually much smaller) adjacent to the demolished one, the project saved money -- since the rubble and tangled metal bars of the destroyed home did not have to be removed, while the new one, given its size, did not need substantial foundations. Also, it was hoped that the government might not notice the new homes since they have a much lower profile than the original houses.
The families also retain the option of rebuilding their original homes on the original foundation at a later date, when it would be safe, and their finances permitting. However this option is in the remote future for most families, since their life savings had usually been tied up in their demolished home.
Some families had available funds and opted to add their money to the campaign's contribution. Thus in some cases ICAHD only put in the foundation of a more substantial home, or paid for a solid concrete roof.
Palestinian Field Coordinators were charged with supervising the contractors, liaising with the families, and helping arrange the purchase of materials. All the coordinating field staff, contractors, tradesmen, labourers, and construction material suppliers were Palestinian, too.
Thus, the house-rebuilding campaign also helped the general economy of the West Bank, with wages paid to construction workers rippled through businesses where they do their family shopping.
The ICAHD 2007 Summer Camp, drawing considerable participation of Israeli and international activists, was in a different category; in this case, organizational grants and camp participant contributions made it possible to rebuild during the weeks of the camp activity three much larger houses.
With substantial additional donations expected, ICAHD's Jeff Halper and Salim Shawamreh hope to get to the point of replacing 300 demolished Palestinian homes per year -- which would approach the goal of matching the rate of destruction effected by the government agencies.
Restoring the footbridge
From Fred Schlomka's report, Feb. 17
In December 2007 ICAHD volunteers rebuilt the demolished home of a Bedouin family at Ramadin, a village of 2,208 people at the South Hebron Hills (on the southernmost edge of the West Bank). While there, the team discovered a destroyed bridge at a polluted stream nearby.
The bridge over the stream had been built several years ago by a Palestinian NGO. When the army destroyed it, the villagers' cars had to drive through the putrid stream. Children on their way to school had, at good times, a rickety wooden plank over the stream.
When this was washed away -- which often happened, especially in winter when the stream was swollen with water -- the kids had no choice but roll up their trousers and skirts, and wade through water poisoned with industrial waste.
Something had to be done. ICAHD decided to rebuild the bridge with Israeli volunteers, as part of its ongoing civil disobedience and resistance activities.
ICAHD-USA collected funds for the bridge's reconstruction, and it was managed by the Constructing Peace Team as one more project amidst the many houses to be rebuilt. All construction projects are coordinated only with local Palestinians, with no permits applied for from the military government's "civil" administration.
It was decided to first build a strong footbridge, since the need was great and funds were in short supply. The footbridge was built in three stages. An engineer from Hebron consulted with ICAHD's contractor and a design was finalized for a steel bridge 8 meters (24 ft.) long, 1.5 meters wide with 1.2 meter high handrails on both sides.
On the 19th January 2008, ten Israeli ICAHD activists assisted the local Bedouins and the contractor with laying the foundations. A footing of local stone was laid, collected from the adjacent field. Concrete was then mixed and poured to form a solid slab. During the next week the contractor poured a concrete pillar on both sides of the stream, the width of the bridge.
On February 1, ICAHD brought another busload of
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Israeli activists to the site. The group included photographers from the activist photography collective ActiveStills. The plan had been to build the entire bridge in one day. However, two days earlier there had been a snowstorm in Jerusalem and surrounding areas, including Hebron where the steel had been prepared. Also, the army closed the main road southward -- due to a bomb having exploded there, they said. As a result of all this, the volunteer bus arrived late, and there was a delay in delivering the materials.
After some tea from the hospitable Bedouins and a bit of waiting, the steel girders and decking from Hebron finally arrived at the construction site. However, the generator took a bit longer.
In the meantime the crew hauled the girders and placed them on the foundation pillars, across the stream. While waiting for the generator to arrive some of the volunteers went up the hill and visited the family whose home had been rebuilt last December.
The generator which finally arrived, towed by a pick-up truck, looked like a huge 19th Century custom-built machine. It was started by a hand crank. Finally, reluctantly, it turned over with a belch of acrid diesel smoke.
The cables were then unrolled to the bridge, hooked up to the welding machine, and the first steel plate placed across the girders. However, when the first attempt at welding was made, there was just not enough electricity to be had from the huge machine.
After half a dozen people had tweaked and poked at its innards, the generator finally permitted enough electricity to emerge from the cables, and the welding commenced. Afterwards, the work proceeded quickly, with volunteers standing on the steel pates to flatten them to the girders while the welder did his work. Within a couple of hours, the main part of the bridge had been entirely welded together.
Then, a lunch of Palestinian makluba was delivered. Delicious! The personal interactions and socialization at the event were just as important as the labour, with the mingling and lively discussions.
Unfortunately, the steps and the handrails could not be delivered because the shop in Hebron was snowed in. This had to be left to the contractor to finish; there was no reason to ask the villagers to wait until volunteers could be brought again.
The tiny village of Aqaba, in the northeastern corner of the West Bank, does not appear on Israeli maps -- because the government departments that supply data to the mapmakers would like it not to exist. This attitude is manifested in an endless series of harassments -- especially, in dozens of demolition orders for "illegal" houses, which means virtually all family homes and public buildings in the village.
Nevertheless, Aqaba is still there, its few hundred inhabitants clinging stubbornly to their small plot of land -- fighting the demolition orders in the courts and through the support of Israeli groups such as Gush Shalom and ICAHD. People from all over the world repeatedly writing protest letters is an effective way of letting the authorities know that their acts, even in this obscure corner of the Occupied Territories, don't go unnoticed.
However, on March 14 army jeeps once again stormed into Aqaba's main (and only) street. An officer (first name Asher, family name unknown, and greatly feared by the Aqaba inhabitants) handed out an order to immediately demolish "a recently erected illegal structure" -- i.e., the single kindergarten available to the village's 130 children, recently extended and renovated with grants from the Japanese, Belgian and Norwegian governments. A second demolition order concerned a sheet metal hut that is the only roof over a poor family with eight children.
(In a letter to the Defence Minister, Gush Shalom noted that not long ago the army placed a warning sign at the entrance of Aqaba forbidding Israeli citizens to enter, since the village is "a Palestinian territory" and "if this is indeed so, it is high time that military bureaucrats cease their harassment and leave the Aqaba villagers alone.")
ICAHD engaged the Jerusalem Attorney Elia Tusya-Cohen, who already managed to hold up implementation of earlier demolition orders. The Supreme Court is due to rule on the Aqaba case on April 17; if they give the green light to the planned demolitions, only immediate reactions from all over the globe could still save Aqaba's kindergarten. The US-based Rebuilding Alliance, involved in Aqaba affairs for years, is about to launch a "Pinwheels for Aqaba" campaign via a network of kindergartens. Children all over the world are to join the children of Aqaba making "pinwheels for peace" during those fateful days.
Please, write a protest letter to: Defence Minister Ehud Barak, via the Israeli Embassy in your country. Copies to: Haj Sami Sadek, Mayor of Aqaba, Tubas District, West Bank. via Israel.
Pinwheels info: rebuildingalliance.org; Sadek can be contacted:aqaba2006@yahoo.com, 972-9-2572201.
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Bicycles against occupation
Already for some years, cyclists are getting together for "Critical Mass" protests. In Tel-Aviv everybody has met them occasionally, crowding the streets in compact groups, a protest demanding that bicycle paths be created -- an environmental must.
Among these cyclists there is a large core of committed peace and anti-occupation activists. A Critical Mass Against the Occupation action -- starting from the Tel Aviv CinematŠque and looping all around the Ministry of Defence complex -- had been among the events bringing to the public eye the Forty Years of Occupation protest of June last year. A hundred cyclists make for a colourful cavalcade, the bicycles covered with flags and banners.
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Following this success it was decided to have such rides regularly, on the last Thursday of every month, with the riders of "inline skates, or any other non-propelled vehicle" also welcome to participate.
The police were at first indulgent, but as the Critical Mass events became a regular phenomenon the authorities became less tolerant.
On the afternoon of February 28, when the monthly protest was mainly devoted to protesting the Siege of Gaza, a large confrontation with the police ended with six cyclists being detained on charges of "obstructing the traffic." The others nevertheless continued on their way, and the judge before whom the detainees were brought ordered their immediate release and reprimanded the police for "false and groundless arrest."
As we go to press, the call is going again through the activist networks: "The opportunity to practice our freedom compels us to join the struggle of those who are unable to move without restraint, people living just an hour away from Tel-Aviv! Thursday, March 27th, at 7:00 pm, we meet at Rabin Square with bicycles, man-powered engines, signs, whistles, costumes and any other noise-making instruments. If somebody needs to repair her bike, come earlier and we will help him fix it [gender pan is no mistake-ed]."
We don't know who was first, but also in the UK, riders of the Hackney Critical Mass Against the Occupation went cycling all along Hackney High Street, London -- to protest Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, as well as addressing anti-war issues in other parts of the world. www.wiki.co.il/index.php/Critical_mass
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From Jaffa to Kfar Shalem
"Why are 500 Jaffa families about to be evicted? A) Because they are Arabs / B) Because they are poor / C) The combination of answers A) and B).
The above multiple-choice questionnaire, painted on a large placard, greeted protesters arriving at the Land Day demonstration on March 28 -- held for the first time in Jaffa.
The small Arab community of Jaffa -- a broken remnant of what had been a thriving Palestinian city before 1948, annexed to Tel Aviv as a forgotten backwater -- has lived in neglect and squalor for six decades.
In recent years, however, the winding Jaffa streets and stretch of blue Mediterranean shore were "discovered" as highly desirable pieces of real estate. Thereupon, a deluge of demolition orders arrived for houses suddenly discovered to have been "illegally built" (some of them before the creation of Israel) and eviction orders delivered to "squatter" families (sometimes, after they had lived in a house for half a century or more).
Actively promoted by Tel Aviv-Jaffa Mayor Ron Huldai, compounds of high-class apartments are going up where old Jaffa families have been displaced. City and government officials reiterate that "there is no ethnic discrimination" and Jaffa Arabs are welcome to buy an apartment in the new housing projects -- which they can't afford ...
Adding to the feeling of anger and frustration is a recent court ruling declaring legal the sale to real estate developers of half of Jaffa's only Muslim cemetery -- which means exhuming hundreds of the dead. The deal had been signed in the 1970's by the Jaffa Muslim Properties Guardianship Committee, which had the legal power to sell the cemetery -- except that this committee was appointed by the government without consulting the Jaffa inhabitants' wishes, and its members were mainly concerned to please those who appointed them and to line their own pockets (several of them ended up in prison).
So, more than a thousand protestors gathered on the small plaza of Toulouse Street, with the Arab-Jewish Community Center on one side and on the other the French Embassy with its Tricolor and EU Flag, the only foreign representative to locate in Jaffa. There were Jaffa Arabs together with supporters from the harassed Arab communities of Lod (Lydda) and Ramla to the east, as well as a considerable number of Jewish activists who arrived in solidarity from Tel Aviv and further afield.
A Ma'ariv article in the morning mentioned "a tense atmosphere" and "a possible violent outbreak", referring to Jaffa residents allegedly smashing en masse the windows of expensive cars parked in their streets by rich newcomers. But the actual march was orderly with no hint of violence -- even when participants muttered in anger while passing a large compound completely walled in and draped with signs: "No trespassing! Warning -- Guard Dogs inside!"
"Jaffa for the Jaffans!" cried the marchers, and "Here we were born, here we live, here we will die!" and "Expel Huldai, not the Jaffans"/"Mr. Mayor -- Don't be a Pig!"/ "Destruction is not the way to coexistence!" /"Stop the demolitions, give us solutions!"/ and "No more ethnic cleansing in Jaffa -- never again!"
A large sign, reading "The municipality destroys -- the community rebuilds!" was decorated with the counterposed photos of municipal bulldozers in the act of demolition and a long line of volunteers passing buckets of cement up a half-built wall. A group of women -- some in traditional garb and others with western clothing -- had signs reading "Jewish and Arab women stand together against racism and discrimination."
Palestinian flags were flying, and red flags of the Hadash Communists, Islamic flags with intricate Koran verses; also Meretz flags. ("We had some debate on coming here, some people in Meretz were afraid of radical slogans; but in the end a call was issued to Meretz members to come, we must stand with the people of Jaffa" explained Tamar, the Meretz organizer present. Beside her, a young man wore a British trade union t-shirt with "An Injury to One Is an Injury to All!"
At the concluding rally there were many stirring
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speeches by representatives of different parties/factions -- mostly in Arabic, some in Hebrew, a few shifting from one language to the other.
Nearly all speakers referred to "Arus al-Bahar" ("Bride of the Sea"), Jaffa's old Arabic nickname. There was a burst of applause for the firebrand Sheikh Raed Salah -- "Don't play with us! We are here and we won't go away. On this land we will live -- or die, fighting for it. You will not touch our land, our holy places!" A second burst of applause for the measured and determined speech of Hadash KM Dov Hanin: "Mr. Huldai and all the real estate tycoons behind you -- we here, Jews and Arabs standing together, will just not let you implement the expulsion of the Jaffa residents. Forget about it!"
As a matter of fact, this time the solidarity is not a one-way affair. Kfar Shalem is a slum neighborhood in south Tel Aviv, where numerous impoverished Jewish inhabitants have recently been expelled -- also to make place for real estate megalomaniac plans, victims of a similar gentrification process. At the time, Jaffa Arabs residents stood together with the people of Kfar Shalem, and though the latter are traditional right-wing voters there had been much amity in this unprecedented common protest outside the home of Mayor Huldai.
Chanting of: "From Jaffa to Kfar Shalem -- no expulsions, no racism!" when Reuven Aberjil went up the improvised podium. The veteran of the Israeli Black Panthers recalled: "In 1948 hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled, and my people were brought from the Arab countries to take their places. We were told that because we were Jewish we were better than Arabs, and would be treated better. But all these were vicious, racist lies, in order to confuse and divide us. Now they have no use for us, now we also are being expelled. They just don't want any blacks in Tel Aviv!"
Towards the municipal elections due in November, efforts are made to forge a multi-ethnic Block of the Dispossessed and Disinherited, with the support of Hadash and Meretz. The initiative seems to appeal even to Anarchists who normally stay away from party politics, and carries implications far beyond Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipal politics.
March 13 headline: "Rabbi arrested with connection to East Jerusalem incitement." No, this was not about one of those extreme-right "spiritual leaders" openly exhorting their followers to indiscriminate violence against East Jerusalem Palestinians. The rabbi who spent a night in detention was Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights for "inciting Silwan residents to disobey the police."
Silwan, just south of the Old City of Jerusalem, has already been in the headlines many times before. Its tens of thousands of Palestinian inhabitants have the great misfortune of having some archaeological remnants found in their vicinity "from the time of the Biblical King David." This identification, however, is speculative and strongly contested by historians and archaeologists. However, a certain David Be'eri, who first arrived at Silwan in 1986 in his then role as the undercover commander of an elite military unit, took it seriously enough that he appointed himself to the mission of restoring the site's ancient Jewish glories -- by means of eradicating its Arab present.
The Elad Association, which Be'eri founded and still heads, has been aggressively taking over more and more houses and lands in Silwan, on the most flimsy legal grounds. For example, on March 9, 2006 some 50 armed settlers broke into the Silwan house of Ibrahim Ghozlan, evicting him and his family, and claiming that they acquired the rights to the building from an earlier Jewish association which bought it from its Palestinian owner as early as 1923.
The alleged seller, it turned out, had been only six years old in 1923. Nevertheless, police accepted the new status quo, preventing members of the Ghozlan family from approaching the house. Later, it was surrounded with barbed wire entanglements patrolled by security guards -- funded by the government -- and a huge Israeli national flag hoisted from the roof, as in earlier occupied Silwan homes.
A neighboring house, for which Elad could not find even this kind of legal pretext and whose owners refused tempting offers to sell, happened to be the target of an massive raid by police, who broke down the doors and turned the house upside down while "looking for drugs" (none were found).
Israeli peace groups had some successes in their efforts to help the Silwan residents stem the settler tide. The takeover of some Palestinian homes was prevented -- and of others, delayed for years -- by prolonged legal and public struggle. Israelis also held several summer camps in Silwan and helped rebuild houses demolished by the Jerusalem municipality (which claimed such demolitions were "unconnected" to presence of settlers just next door). And when it turned out that the Jerusalem Municipality failed to notice the settlers erecting -- without asking for any kind of permit -- a massive seven-floor structure on a piece of seized Silwan land, a judge ordered the settlers vacated and the structure sealed with concrete blocks.
In 2005, a big outcry, in Israel and internationally, prevented the Jerusalem Municipality from carrying out an announced plan -- believed to be inspired by the Elad settlers -- for the massive destruction of 88 Silwan houses, which were to be replaced by a big park with the name "King David's Garden." And the Registrar of Associations began proceedings about Elad's refusal to divulge the sources of donations totaling over $7 million that the settler association received in 2005.
Nevertheless, despite such setbacks to their cause the Elad settlers succeeded in establishing what Akiva Eldar of Ha'aretz described as "a veritable empire." Particularly, the government authorized them to run the "City of David Archaeological Garden." It covers a large and expanding area, and is energetically promoted by the Ministry of Tourism in the glossy brochures provided to foreign visitors (in which the presence of Palestinians in the vicinity is in no way hinted at).
Moreover, the government authorised Elad to continue archeological excavations on the site, which it immediately embarked upon and in no time announced the uncovering of... yes, King David's Palace.
All around Elad's archaeological digs, an increasing number of cracks appeared in Palestinian houses, and Silwan's main street repeatedly caved in -- for which the settlers and their pet archaeologists denied all responsibility, while blocking "interfering outsiders" from any access to their tunnels.
On Friday, February 7, Silwan residents held a demonstration and established a protest tent on a privately owned plot adjacent to the Elad "Visitors Center." Israeli activists started distributing leaflets to visiting tourists, and an Alternative Archaeological Tour was established, covering historical periods omitted from the Elad-sponsored tours. Knesset
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Member Yossi Beilin of Meretz came to the spot, but the settlers refused to let him inspect their tunnels, where diggings continued under police protection.
On February 10, a number of Silwan residents, apprehensive lest diggings threaten their homes with collapse, lodged an appeal to the Supreme Court. The following night they were lifted from their beds and arrested, charged with "sabotaging Elad property."
Meanwhile, the Elad archaeologists announced that they had discovered parts of an ancient roadway used by Jewish pilgrims on their way to the Temple; uncovering the full length was, they said, their manifest duty to Jewish history and heritage.
A different interpretation of Judaism was offered by Rabbi Arik Ascherman. Citing the ancient precept "Where nobody is acting as a decent human being, try to be one" from the Talmudic Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), Ascherman threw himself in and by his presence made the police/settler game more difficult.
Ascherman afterwards pointed out that his detention had been far more brief and easy than what some Silwan residents recently endured -- and still got more attention. Fellow Rabbis came to the courtroom to express solidarity. More Rabbis wrote extensive shocked and outraged reactions from America.
Three days after his release, on March 18, the Supreme Court issued an unequivocal order to halt immediately and completely the settler diggings at Silwan. But as is their frequent habit, the judges "counter-balanced" this by a negative ruling on another contentious issue, and approved the exclusion of Palestinian motorists from the notorious Highway 443 ("Apartheid Road").
Contact: info@rhr.israel.nethttp://rhr.israel.net/
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Blood and Champagne
Uri Avnery
Feb. 16, 2008
If a person in the street were asked to name the area of enterprise in which we Israelis excel, the answer would probably be: Hi-Tech. And indeed, in this area we have recorded some impressive achievements. It seems as if hardly a day passes without an Israeli start-up company that was born in a garage being sold for hundreds of millions. Little Israel is one of the major hi-tech powers in the world.
But the profession in which Israel is not only one of the biggest, but the unchallenged Numero Uno is: liquidations.
This week this was proven once again. The Hebrew verb "lekhassel" -- to liquidate -- in all its grammatical forms currently dominates our public discourse. Respected professors debate with academic solemnity when to "liquidate" and whom. Used-up generals discuss with professional zeal the technicalities of "liquidation", its rules and methods. Shrewd politicians compete with each other about the number and status of the candidates for "liquidation."
Indeed, for a long time now there has not been such an orgy of jubilation and self-congratulation in the Israeli media as there was this week. Every reporter, every commentator, every political hack, every transient celeb interviewed on TV, on the radio and in the newspapers, was radiant with pride. We have done it! We have succeeded! We have "liquidated" Imad Mughniyeh!
He was a "terrorist." And not just a terrorist, a master terrorist! An arch-terrorist! The very king of terrorists! From hour to hour his stature grew, reaching gigantic proportions. Compared to him, Osama Bin-Laden is a mere beginner. The list of his exploits grew from news report to news report, from headline to headline.
There is and never has been anyone like him. For years he has kept out of sight. But our good boys -- many, many good boys -- have not neglected him for a moment. They worked day and night, weeks and months, years and decades, in order to trace him. They "knew him better than his friends, better than he knew himself" (verbatim quote from a respected Ha'aretz commentator, gloating like all his colleagues).
True, one killjoy Western commentator argued on Aljazeera that Mughniyeh had dropped from sight because he had ceased to be important, that his great days as a terrorist were in the 80s and 90s, when he hijacked a plane and brought down the Marine headquarters in Beirut and Israeli institutions abroad. Since Hizbullah has turned into a state-within-the-state, with a kind of regular army, he had -- according to this version -- outlived his usefulness.
But what the hell. Mughniyeh-the-person has disappeared, and Mughniyeh-the-legend has taken his place, a world-embracing mythological terrorist, who has long been marked as "a Son of Death" (i.e. a person to be killed) as declared on TV by another out-of-use general. His "liquidation" was a huge, almost supra-natural, achievement, much more important than Lebanon War II, in which we were not so very successful. The "liquidation" equals at least the glorious Entebbe exploit, if not more.
True, the Holy Book enjoins us: "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth / Lest the Lord see it and it displeases him." (Proverbs 24:17) But this was not just any enemy, it was a super-super-enemy, and therefore the Lord will certainly excuse us for dancing with joy from talk-show to talk-show, from issue to issue, from speech to speech, as long as we do not distribute candies in the street -- even if the Israeli government denies feebly that we were the ones who "liquidated" the man.
As chance would have it, the "liquidation" was carried out only a few days after I wrote an article about the inability of occupying powers to understand the inner logic of resistance organizations. Mughniyeh's "liquidation" is an outstanding example of this. (Of course, Israel gave up its occupation of South Lebanon some years ago, but the relationship between the parties has remained as it was.)
In the eyes of the Israeli leadership, the "liquidation" was a huge success. We have "cut off the head of the serpent" (another headline from Ha'aretz). We have inflicted on Hizbullah immense damage, so much that it cannot be repaired. "This is not revenge but
(Continued on page 26)prevention", as another of the guided reporters (Ha'aretz again) declared. This is such an important achievement, that it outweighs the inevitable revenge, whatever the number of victims-to-be.
In the eyes of Hizbullah, things look quite different. The organization has acquired another precious asset: a national hero, whose name fills the air from Iran to Morocco. The "liquidated" Mughniyeh is worth more than the live Mughniyeh, irrespective of what his real status may have been at the end of his life.
Enough to remember what happened here in 1942, when the British "liquidated" Abraham Stern (a.k.a. Ya'ir): from his blood the Lehi organization (a.k.a. Stern Gang) was born and became perhaps the most efficient terrorist organization of the 20th Century.
Therefore, Hizbullah has no interest at all in belittling the status of the liquidatee. On the contrary, Hassan Nasrallah, exactly like Ehud Olmert, has every interest in blowing up his stature to huge proportions.
If Hizbullah has lately been far from the all-Arab spotlight, it is now back with a bang. Almost every Arab station devoted hours to "the brother the martyr the commander, Imad Mughniyeh al-Hajj Raduan."
In the struggle for Lebanon -- the main battle that occupies Nasrallah -- the organization has scored a great advantage. Multitudes joined the funeral, overshadowing the almost simultaneous memorial parade for his adversary, Rafiq al-Hariri. In his speech, Nasrallah described his opponents contemptuously as accomplices to the murder of the hero, despicable collaborators of Israel and the United States, and called upon them to leave the house and move to Tel Aviv or New York. He has gone up another notch in his struggle for domination of the Land of the Cedars.
And the main thing: the anger about the murder and the pride in the martyr will inspire another generation of youngsters, who will be ready to die for Allah and Nasrallah. The more Israeli propaganda enlarges the proportions of Mughniyeh, the more young Shiites will be inspired to follow his example.
The career of the man himself is interesting in this respect. When he was born in a Shiite village in South Lebanon, the Shiites there were a despised, downtrodden and impotent community. He joined the Palestinian Fatah organization, which dominated South Lebanon at the time, eventually becoming one of Yasser Arafat's bodyguards (I may even have seen him when I met Arafat in Beirut). But when Israel succeeded in driving the Fatah forces out of South Lebanon, Mughniyeh stayed behind and joined Hizbullah, the new fighting force that had sprung up as a direct result of the Israeli occupation.
Israel now resembles the person whose neighbor overhead has dropped one boot on the floor, and who is waiting for the second boot to fall.
Everybody knows that there will be revenge. Nasrallah has promised this, adding that it could take place anywhere in the world. For a long time already, people in Israel believe Nasrallah much more than Olmert.
Israeli security organs are issuing dire warnings for people going abroad -- to be on guard at every moment, not to be conspicuous, not to congregate with other Israelis, not to accept unusual invitations, etc. The media have magnified these warnings to the point of hysteria. In the Israeli embassies, security has been tightened. On the Northern border, too, an alert has been sounded -- just a few days after Olmert boasted in the Knesset that, as a result of the war, the Northern border is now quieter than ever before.
Such worries are far from baseless. All the past "liquidations" of this kind have brought with them dire consequences:
The classic example is, of course, the "liquidation" of Nasrallah's predecessor, Abbas Mussawi. He was killed in South Lebanon in 1992 by Apache gunships. All of Israel rejoiced. Then, too, the champagne was flowing. In revenge, Hizbullah blew up the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, as well as the Jewish community center there. The planner was, it is now
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alleged, Imad Mughniyeh. More than a hundred people perished. The main result: instead of the rather grey Mussawi, the sophisticated, masterly Nasrallah took over.
Before that, Golda Meir ordered a series of "liquidations" to revenge the tragedy of the Israeli athletes in Munich (most of whom were actually killed by the inept German police trying to prevent their being flown to Algeria as hostages). Not one of the "liquidated" had anything to do with the outrage itself. They were PLO diplomatic representatives, sitting ducks in their offices. The matter is described at length in Stephen Spielberg's kitschy film "Munich." The result: the PLO became stronger and turned into a state-in-the-making, Yasser Arafat eventually returned to Palestine.
The "liquidation" of Yahyah Ayyash in Gaza in 1996 resembles the Mughniyeh affair. It was carried out by means of a booby-trapped cellular telephone. Ayyash's dimensions, too, were blown up to giant proportions, so that he had become a legend already in his own lifetime. The nickname "the engineer" was attached to him because he prepared the explosive devices used by Hamas. Shimon Peres, who had succeeded to the Prime Ministership after the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, believed that the "liquidation" would lend him huge popularity and get him re-elected. The opposite happened: Hamas reacted with a series of sensational suicide bombings and brought Binyamin Netanyahu to power.
Fathi Shikaki, head of Islamic Jihad, was "liquidated" in 1995 by a bicyclist who shot him down on a Malta street. The small organization was not eradicated, but on the contrary grew through its revenge actions. Today it is the group that is launching the Qassams at Sderot.
Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al was actually being "liquidated" in a street in Amman by the injection of poison. The act was exposed and its perpetrators identified and a furious King Hussein compelled Israel to provide the antidote that saved his life. The "liquidators" were allowed to go home in return for the release of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmad Yassin from Israeli prison. As a result, Mash'al was promoted and is now the senior political leader of Hamas.
Sheik Yassin himself, a paraplegic, was "liquidated" by attack helicopters while leaving a mosque after prayer. A previous attempt by bombing his home had failed. The sheik became a martyr in the eyes of the entire Arab world, and has served since as an inspiration for hundreds of Hamas attacks.
The common denominator of all these and many other actions is that they did not harm the organizations of the "liquidatees", but boomeranged. And all of them brought in their wake grievous revenge attacks.
The decision to carry out a "liquidation" resembles the decision that was taken to start the Second Lebanon War: not one of the deciders gives a damn for the suffering of the civilian population that inevitably falls victim to the revenge.
Why, then, are the "liquidations" carried out?
The response of one of the generals who was asked this question: "There is no unequivocal answer to this."
These words are dripping with Chutzpa: how can one decide on such an action when there is no unequivocal answer to the question of its being worth the price?
I suspect that the real reason is both political and psychological. Political, because it is always popular. After every "liquidation", there is much jubilation. When the revenge arrives, the public (and the media) do not see the connection between the "liquidation" and the response. Each is seen separately. Few people have the time and the inclination to think about it, when everybody is burning with fury about the latest murderous attack.
In the present situation, there is an additional political motivation: the army has no answer to the Qassams, nor has it any desire to get enmeshed in the re-occupation of the Gaza Strip, with all the expected casualties. A sensational "liquidation" is a simple alternative.
The psychological reason is also clear: it is satisfying. True, the "liquidation" -- as the word shows -- is more appropriate for the underworld than for the security organs of a state. But it is a challenging and complex task, as in a Mafia film, which gives much satisfaction to the "liquidators." Ehud Barak, for example, was a liquidator from the start of his military career. When the "liquidation" ends in success, the executioners can raise glasses of champagne.
A mixture of blood, champagne and folly is an intoxicating but toxic cocktail.
****
In this issue:
* THE BANALITY OF OPPORTUNISM, editorial, p.1-10
- Survival without ratings, p.1
- Survival without an economy, p.3
- The masquerade continues, p.4
- The war of words, p.5
- Fall and rise of the wall, p.6
- Winner takes nothing, p.7
- Where to go from here?, p.9
- The discrediting of diplomacy, p.9
* The pain is the same pain, p.10
* Under the same sky (Gaza Convoy), p.11-15
-- Prayer against rain, p.12
-- ...but how to get it into Gaza?, p.14
* Protest vigil against Bloody Saturday, p.15
* Prisoner starts hunger strike, p.16
* MachsomWatch's long list, p.16-p.19
* Bil'in chronicles, p.19-21
* Dissident building contractors, p.21-23
-- Restoring the footbridge, p.22
* Say it with pinwheels, p.23
* Bicycles against occupation, p.23
* From Jaffa to Kfar Shalem, p.24
* Blood and Champagne, Avnery, p. 28
* Who is inciting (Silwan), p. 28
