Former US president has met the Hamas leader Khaled Mashal despite opposition from the Bush administration and the Israel. The meeting took place under tight security in the Syrian capital Damascus where reporters were not allowed.
Mr. Carter is on a tour of the Middle East for finding solutions of Israel-Palestinian conflict. He has also met the Syrian President Bashar-ul-Asad. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. I think that the opposition is unjustified. No solution can be found without taking on board all stakeholders in the conflict.
Hamas has public support and it cannot be ignored if a solution is to be found. I think that Hamas should be engaged in talks and Mr. Carter has made a right move by meeting its leader.
The Russians are trying to increase their influence in the Middle East. Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas has visited Moscow and has called for a Middle East peace conference in Russia. He has said that the Moscow conference should be held as soon as possible in order speed up the slow peace talks with Israel.
I think that the Russian influence will provide a counterbalance in the Middle East. The Russians are acting in order to claim their lost power. They are now beginning to assert themselves in world affairs and I think that in the coming days the Russian influence in the region will increase all the more.
Despite this, I think that the Arab Israel conflict will not be solved even there is absence of sincere efforts on the part of big powers. The people of Palestine must also act to bring peace in the region. It must be realized that Israel is a reality which cannot be obliterated.
According to news report the Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrullah has vowed for the destruction of Israel and has also said that it was destined to disappear.
I think that Israel is a hard reality which the leaders of the Arab World must realize. They must also realize that they lack the power to undo Israel. Israel has unmatched firepower and has the open backing of the United States. It is a wishful thinking that Israel is destined to disappear. I do not see any such thing even in the remote future.
It would be better to find out ways of peaceful co-existance. I do not mean to say that I support Israel in whatever it is doing. I want the Muslim world to be united. Unity is their only option for survival in the present world.
After four years mucking up Iraq, President George W. Bush is calling an American-led "international meeting" on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Please, Mr. President, let it be, bad as it is. Go fishing, send Dick Cheney hunting, whatever. Don't blunder again in a region in which you and your neoconservative advisers have zero credibility.
The much-abused Israelis and Palestinians deserve an honest broker.
Events in the region have deteriorated since Israel's victory in the 1967 war resulted in control and eventually occupation of those lands left to Palestinians after creation of the state of Israel.
Reporting from the West Bank in 1982 for King Broadcasting, I concluded a 30-minute documentary: "The occupation has taken the land, diverted the water, and filled village life with tension and conflict. Palestinian boys leave to become guer-rillas, for there is little reason to stay under the guns and in the prisons of occupation. This is an occupation financed and forgotten by Americans. But while it continues, there will be no peace, on the land or in the souls of the people."
Shortly after the documentary aired, Israel invaded Lebanon and drove the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) into exile. Two Islamic organizations — Hamas and Hezbollah — emerged in the chaos, and now dominate the Palestinian cause. Palestinians were overwhelmingly secular in 1982 — the only PLO element with religious overtones was a Christian militia. Gradually, Palestinians turned to Islamists because nothing else worked.
With the exception of the Oslo agreements in 1993, events have gone downhill in the past 25 years, directly related to the building of permanent Israeli settlements (now 271) in Palestinian territory. Jerusalem is ringed by fortresslike settlements, a 30-foot wall is sealing off the West Bank, and a network of roads exclusively for Israeli settlers carves the West Bank into a series of isolated and impoverished enclaves.
Some 400,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.5 million West Bank Palestinians, but control more than 40 percent of the land. Israeli soldiers protect them, staff some 500 roadblocks and checkpoints, and control much of West Bank life.
These "facts on the ground" must be addressed along with the violence from both sides if any progress is to be made. The policy of the Bush administration has been to turn a blind eye to expansion of Israeli settlements while condemning Palestinian violence. Our Cheney-driven policy is black-or-white, us-or-them, good-or-evil, in a region where everything comes in shades of gray.
We have not helped our cause by promoting democratic elections in Palestinian territories and then refusing to accept the overwhelming victory of Hamas in a free and fair election. Just as our invasion created al-Qaida in Iraq, isolating and demon-izing Hamas may create a branch in Gaza.
Israel "gave" Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005, an overcrowded slum with no jobs and with borders sealed off by Israel. No one wanted Gaza — it has no religious significance — and its predictable implosion gave Israel an excuse not to yield on the West Bank.
Politics have failed on both sides. Israel's vibrant and democratic politics have been captured by right-wing religious zealots and sometimes-violent settlers. Among Palestinians, the Fatah government has been ineffectual and corrupt, and educated secular professionals have emigrated to find a better life, leaving a gap that has been filled by violence. Ordinary people on both sides want peace and support a two-state future.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas holds the shredded cloth of secularism, but is increasingly unpopular. Hopes for reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah remain, but lack a leader.
Israel is releasing some Fatah prisoners, but not Marwan Barghouti, perhaps the only Palestinian with the street credibility to unite Palestinians. Israel says Barghouti "has blood on his hands." Indeed. No major player in the dispute has clean hands. In 2006, according to B'tselem, an Israeli human-rights group, Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians; Palestinians killed 23 Israelis.
My dictionary defines terrorism: "The use of violence or threats to intimidate or coerce." There is terrorism on all sides. Palestinians carry suicide bombs and lob mortar rounds into Israel. Israeli soldiers raid Palestinian neighborhoods and shell from the air. One terrorist wears a robe, the other a uniform.
Earlier this month, departing British Prime Minister Tony Blair was named a special envoy to the Middle East. Better to give Blair a chance rather than turn this vital area over to the tender mercies of Bush, Cheney and the neocons. They need to make a genuine effort to get Syria and Iran to help extricate us from Iraq, not look for one more place to intervene.
Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor emeritus at Western Washington University, is a regular contributor to Times editorial pages. E-mail him at floydmckay@yahoo.com
Dozens of wanted Palestinian militants have made a rare pledge to halt anti-Israel attacks, officials said Sunday, in a deal that could bolster moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The pledge, part of a deal in which Israel offered an effective amnesty to the gunmen, was unveiled a day before Abbas is due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem.
Israel handed the Palestinians a list of 189 militants, most from Abbas' secular Fatah party, saying it would stop hunting them if they pledged to cease activities against the Jewish state.
"All of the 189 people included on the list handed in by Israel" have signed, a senior Palestinian security official said.
Israel has said that if the men respect their promise for three months, and not leave West Bank areas under exclusive control of the Palestinian Authority, their names would be erased from the list of wanted men, and they would be able to join Palestinian Authority security services.
Included on the list was Zakaria Zubeidi, leader of the Fatah offshoot militant group the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, Palestinian and Israeli officials have said.
Zubeidi said that all Al Aqsa militants on the list "have signed a pledge to stop their attacks against Israel. The Al Aqsa Brigades will not be an obstacle to any political project to solve the Palestinian question in a just manner."
The effective amnesty is the latest gesture by Israel to strengthen the moderate Abbas after forces loyal to him were overrun in Gaza by fighters from the Islamist movement Hamas, exactly a month ago.
"There are no other ways of helping Mahmoud Abbas except to allow modifications in the list of wanted Palestinians," Israel's deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai told army radio.
In another move, Olmert also favors allowing veteran Palestinian nationalist Nayef Hawatmeh, head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to go to the occupied West Bank this week, an Israeli official said on condition of anonymity.
Hawatmeh would attend a "crucial" summit of the Palestine Liberation Organization, an umbrella group of several Palestinian movements, which is expected to discuss preparations for a general election.
It would mark the first visit by Damascus-based Hawatmeh to the Palestinian territories since they were captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Abbas and Olmert are due to hold talks Monday in Jerusalem, instead of the West Bank town of Jericho, as previously reported by the media, an Israeli official said.
A senior Palestinian official said that the meeting was "most likely" to take place Monday, with the two sides still discussing the location.
Following the bloody June 15 takeover of Gaza by Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, Israel has taken several steps aimed at bolstering Abbas in his West Bank stronghold.
During the last meeting between Abbas and Olmert June 25 in a four-way summit in Egypt, Israel announced that it was releasing some Palestinian custom duties that it had withheld for more than a year after Hamas came to power.
Around $118 million have since been paid out, allowing Abbas' emergency government, led by Salam Fayyad, to pay full monthly salaries to civil servants for the first time in more than a year.
The government has also agreed to free 250 Palestinian prisoners, the majority members of Abbas' Fatah movement, out of the more than 11,000 Palestinian prisoners currently in Israel.
The final list of those to be released will be ready in the coming days, the Israeli official said.
Hamas contacts with Israelis for Gaza services hypocritical
munaeem | 02 July, 2007 11:00
A commentary in another London-based daily, Asharq Al Awsat, opined that while Abbas sitting by Olmert in Sharm El Sheikh was "embarrassing," the truly "scandalous scene" would be if Hamas representatives met with Israeli officials to negotiate on the provision of electricity, water, and gas services to the Gaza Strip.
It claimed that while the Islamist movement had blasted Abbas for dealing with Israel and refusing to negotiate with Hamas, the Islamic group, itself, had begun contacting Israeli officials to seek necessary services for the Gaza Strip, as if its contacts for services were not similar to political contacts.
"Contacting Israel, and [having dealings] with it is, in reality, the same thing," it argued, adding that "Hamas' negotiations with Israelis for services help the Jewish state's objective, which has, for a long time, said it was ready to discuss with 'Palestinian citizens' their domestic needs, [but] refuses to recognize their political rights."
By contacting the Israeli authorities, it stressed, Hamas was effectively recognizing Israel, following the Islamic group's toppling of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.
Yaakov Lappin An al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic sheikh, based in Kuwait, has released a statement addressed to the Palestinian people in which he declared that jihad is "the only way out of your crisis, you have no other."
Hamid al-Ali has been linked with forming al-Qaeda cells in Kuwait and supplying financial and ideological support for al-Qaeda across the Middle East. His communiqué forms one of a growing number of collective attempts by the global jihad movement to undermine Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as al-Qaeda attempts to gain a foothold in Gaza.
In a statement posted on an al-Qaeda internet forum, al-Ali unleashed a torrent of anti-Semitic statements, saying, "There is no nation on earth, and in the history of humanity, that is more deceitful, and false and fraudulent... than the Jewish nation."
"They have lied about God... and the messengers, and his angels, and have committed only sins," he added.
Reiterating Hamas rhetoric, al-Ali declared, "The Jews do everything to head towards one goal, the Judaization of Jerusalem and the obliterate of its Islamic features, especially the al-Aqsa Mosque, to build their temple."
"It is known that the Zionist entity has today reached its weakest form," al-Ali said, adding: "They are tired, divided, and dispersed, and they are weak and torn... they will never be able to stop the Islamic tide exploding on them, (and that) they incurred the wrath of Allah Almighty."
"For this we say to our people in Palestine, the Islamic Jihad is the only way out of the crisis, you have no other," al-Ali concluded.
Jews are not divided. Arabs are divided. Don't call it a Islamic Jihad. Call it a Arab Jihad.
You talked about Palestine. Kuwait kicked all Palestinians after Gulf war.
There’s something a little misleading in the media reports that routinely describe the fighting in Gaza as pitting Hamas against Fatah forces or security personnel “loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas.” That characterization suggests somehow that this catastrophic civil war that has killed more than 25 Palestinians since Sunday is a showdown between Abbas and the Hamas leadership — which simply isn’t true, although such a showdown would certainly conform to the desires of those running the White House Middle East policy.
The Fatah gunmen who are reported to have initiated the breakdown of the Palestinian unity government and provoked the latest fighting may profess fealty to President Abbas, but it’s not from him that they get their orders. The leader to whom they answer is Mohammed Dahlan, the Gaza warlord who has long been Washington’s anointed favorite to play the role of a Palestinian Pinochet. And while Dahlan is formally subordinate to Abbas, whom he supposedly serves as National Security Adviser, nobody believes that Dahlan answers to Abbas — in fact, it was suggested at the time that Abbas appointed Dahlan only under pressure from Washington, which was irked by the Palestinian Authority president’s decision to join a unity government with Hamas.
If Dahlan takes orders from anyone at all, it’s certainly not from Abbas. Abbas has long recognized the democratic legitimacy and popularity of Hamas, and embraced the reality that no peace process is possible unless the Islamists are given the place in the Palestinian power structure that their popular support necessitates. He has always favored negotiation and cooperation with Hamas — much to the exasperation of the Bush Administration, and also of the Fatah warlords whose power of patronage was threatened by the Hamas election victory — and could see the logic of the unity government proposed by the Saudis even when Washington couldn’t. Indeed, as the indispensable Robert Malley and Hussein Agha note, nothing has hurt Abbas’s political standing as much as the misguided efforts of Washington to boost his standing in the hope of undermining the elected Hamas government.
Needless to say, only an Administration as deluded about its ability to reorder Arab political realities in line with its own fantasies — and also, frankly, as utterly contemptuous of Arab life and of Arab democracy, empty sloganizing notwithstanding — as the current one has proved to be could imagine that the Palestinians could be starved, battered and manipulated into choosing a Washington-approved political leadership. Yet, that’s exactly what the U.S. has attempted to do ever since Hamas won the last Palestinian election, imposing a financial and economic chokehold on an already distressed population, pouring money and arms into the forces under Dahlan’s control, and eventually adapting itself to funnel monies only through Abbas, as if casting in him in the role of a kind of Quisling-provider would somehow burnish his appeal among Palestinian voters. (As I said, their contempt for Arab intelligence knows no bounds. )
But while the hapless Abbas is little more than a reluctant passenger in Washington’s strategy — and will, I still believe, repair to his former exile lodgings in Qatar in the not too distant future — Mohammed Dahlan is its point man, the warlord who commands the troops and who has been spoiling for a fight with Hamas since they had the temerity to trounce his organization at the polls on home turf.
Dahlan’s ambitions clearly coincided with plans drawn up by White House Middle East policy chief, Elliot Abrams — a veteran of the Reagan Administration’s Central American dirty wars — to arm and train Fatah loyalists to prepare them to topple the Hamas government. If Mahmoud Abbas has been reluctant to embrace the confrontational policy promoted by the White House, Dahlan has no such qualms. And given that Abbas has no political base of his own, he is dependent entirely on Washington and Dahlan.
Seeing the disastrous implications of the U.S. policy, the Saudis appeared to have put the kibosh on Abrams’ coup plan by drawing Abbas into a unity government with Hamas. And as Mark Perry at Conflict Forum detailed in an excellent analysis Dahlan was just about the only thing that the U.S. had going for it in terms of resisting the move towards a unity government. Although his fretting and sulking in Mecca couldn’t prevent the deal, the U.S. appears to have helped him fight back afterwards by ensuring that he was appointed national security adviser, a move calculated to provoke Hamas, whose leaders tend to view Dahlan as little more than a torturer and a de facto enforcer for Israel.
But Dahlan appears to have made his move when it came to integrating the Palestinian Authority security forces (currently dominated by Fatah) by drawing in Hamas fighters and subjecting the forces to the control of a politically neutral interior minister. Dahlan simply refused, and set off the current confrontations by ordering his men out onto the street last weekend without any authorization from the government of which he is supposedly a part.
The new provocation appears consistent with a revised U.S. plan, reported on by Mark Perry and Paul Woodward, that emphasized the urgency of toppling the unity government. They suggest the plan emanates from Abrams, who they say is operating at cross purposes with Condi Rice’s efforts to appease the Arab moderate regimes by reviving some form of peace process. They note, for example, that Jewish American sources have told the Forward and Haaretz that Abrams recently briefed Jewish Republicans and made clear to them that Rice’s efforts were merely a symbolic exercise aimed at showing Arab allies that the U.S. was “doing something,” but that President Bush would ensure that nothing would come of them, in the sense that Israel would not be required to make any concessions.
Whatever the precise breakdown within the Bush Administration, it’s plain that Dahlan, like Pinochet a quarter century, would not move onto a path of confrontation with an elected government unless he believed he had the sanction of powerful forces abroad to do so. If does move to turn the current street battle into a frontal assault on the unity government, chances are it will be because he got a green light from somewhere — and certainly not from Mahmoud Abbas.
But the confrontation under way has assumed a momentum of its own, and it may now be beyond the capability of the Palestinian leadership as a whole to contain it. If that proves true, the petulance that has substituted for policy in the Bush Administration’s response to the 2006 Palestinian election will have succeeded in turning Gaza into Mogadishu. But it may be too much to expect the Administration capable of anything different — after all, they’re still busy turning Mogadishu into Mogadishu all over again.
"Redeeming" Palestine? Two States, One State and Snake Oil
munaeem | 19 May, 2007 04:17
Written by Michael Neumann
May 18, 2007 at 10:30 AM
Those familiar with the Israel/Palestine conflict know that people propose one-state and two-state solutions. Two states means Israel plus a Palestinian state. One state means a single state covering all of Palestine.
There is a sort of one-state solution that I consider unattainable but otherwise unobjectionable. It essentially calls for Palestine to be given back to the Palestinians. This need not be a violent process, but it is radical. It can mean that all Jewish families and individuals who entered Palestine in the last 100 years or so have to leave, abandoning all their landed property. A more moderate but still radical variant is that these people can stay, but not on land previously occupied by Palestinians, unless the previous occupants were willing to sell or rent that property. Whatever its disposition, there would have to be compensation for past illegitimate occupancy. Presumably this compensation would be pretty enormous, into the millions of dollars per incident. The rationale for these solutions is that the Zionists did not simply settle in Palestine as immigrants, but planned and achieved a state which gave Palestinians a choice: accept ethnic Jewish sovereignty or leave. One-staters can argue that no one should profit from this abhorrent plan, so that everything should in principle revert to the pre-Zionist state of affairs.
My principal reason for favoring a two-state solution is that, like many, I don't feel there's the slightest chance that Israelis would accept a one-state solution as described, or that anyone could dictate it to them. If someone can show otherwise, fine. But recently another sort of one-state solution has been advanced, and it's snake oil.
The snake oil solution simply speaks of creating a single secular state in Palestine. This is sold without a price tag, but with a promise: it will be cheap! Essentially the Palestinians have everything to gain, and Israel's Jews nothing to lose but their chains: that is, their obsessive attachment to a state designated, in the sales pitch, as nasty, racist, undemocratic, and all sorts of other things. The idea that the nastiness of the state rule out the proposed solution never surfaces. Since Israel is roundly condemned in the pitch, it's assumed that the salesmen are on the level.
Invariably the promise of a cheap one-state solution is tied to the South African example. South Africa, it is said, experienced a non-violent transition to a single state in which whites and blacks have a future together. But is South Africa really a model for what could happen in Palestine?
South Africa is big (1,219,912 sq km), Palestine tiny (26,320 square kms). South Africa resource-rich, Palestine resource-poor. What is tolerable in South Africa is by no means tolerable in Palestine: the extraordinary magnanimity of South Africa's current leaders towards the white population is based on an abundance of land and resources not available in the Israel/Palestine conflict. There are other differences. In South Africa, whites were outnumbered almost ten to one within their own borders; Israeli Jews are a majority in Israel. When at last South African whites made serious concessions, it was not because they were awed by the fortitude of Nelson Mandela or crushed by economic boycotts. It was because violence within South Africa's borders was spiralling out of control. This is a long story that I have touched on elsewhere , but one historian puts it in a nutshell:
In June 1976 the Soweto uprising shook South Africa to the core.
The violent unrest challenged almost every aspect of the apartheid state's ideology. It is possible to read South Africa's history and conclude that apartheid's eventual disintegration was predetermined from the moment the first bullet hit thirteen-year-old Hector Peterson.
Israel does not fear massive violent unrest within its own borders. Israeli Arab rioters will not bring it down.
Finally and crucially, Israel's attachment to its existence as a Jewish state runs far deeper than the Boers' attachment to apartheid, because Israel thinks of itself as the sole barrier to the physical extermination of the Jewish race. This commitment is fervently supported by the great powers; its legitimacy is an article of faith: in marked contrast, it was the *ill*egitimacy of South Africa's apartheid state that became an article of faith among those same great powers. In other words, international support for Israel's current status is mountainously greater than support for South Africa's apartheid.
When it comes to settling land claims, the South African example is particularly inappropriate. In South Africa, white land ownership had a very long history. Whites had been in SA for 400 years, and their expansion included a period in which the Mfecane disturbances disrupted native land allocation. Among the Palestinians, on the other hand, there was a far more solid consensus about who was entitled to what. Most Israeli Jews have been in Israel for less than 60 years, and in the occupied territories for a far shorter time, between 40 years and a decade. They did not occupy vacant or disputed land; they obtained it either through purchase (but as part of a scheme to seize sovereignty) or through expulsion of the Palestinian owners. The Palestinian title to much Israeli occupied property is in many cases a matter of record. For Israelis to give up the land to which they are not entitled would be absolutely ruinous, particularly since, if justice were done, there would be huge compensation to be paid for the ill-gotten gains of illegal occupancy. Again, millions of dollars *per usurpation* would be at stake.
To appreciate the full scale of the problem, remember that there will be two accounts about what Palestinian property was rightfully and legally obtained: the Palestinian, and the Israeli. For many Palestinians, regaining their property is the difference between a life of relative comfort and one of abject poverty. No binational state has ever had a land problem on anything like this scale. When land disputes are taken into account, the snake oil solution looks a lot less like South Africa and a lot more like the bloody soil of Lebanon.
In a two-state solution, land claims are settled in the clearest and most brutal way. The Jewish settlers in the occupied territories leave, period. The whole of the occupied territories belong to the Palestinians. In Israel, the property situation is essentially unchanged, with Israeli Arabs doing as well as they can . Though immeasurably better than the death and starvation that today stalks the Palestinians, this is a bad solution. But it is doable, and its flaws are out in the open.
And how does this work in the snake oil one-state solution? Here the sales pitch gets murky. In Israel, Jewish property holders either keep what they have, or the disputes continue as they have since before Israel's foundation--it isn't clear. In the occupied territories, though, the settlers get a sweet deal: Jews in the occupied territories simply keep what they have.
Am I kidding? Here we have Jeff Halper, justly celebrated for his Committee against House Demolitions, writing around 2003:
"Israeli Jews wishing to live in the settlements could continue to do so under Palestinian sovereignty (which would permit the settlements to be integrated, of course), but would lose their role as extensions of Israeli control by remaining Israeli citizens. " [A Middle Eastern Confederation: A Regional 'two-Stage' Approach To The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict . A working paper by Jeff Halper, written around 2003)]
Here he is again, writing in The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle on November 24, 2006:
"The two-state solution is dead. Israel killed it (as Begin charged Sharon with doing back in 1977). The settlement enterprise has gone beyond the point of no return."
And Virginia Tilley agrees:
"...Israel must admit its Muslim and Christian population as citizens and then grapple with the ensuing tough work of pluralist democracy like the rest of us.
"This was the hard-won South African solution, where the state now represents everybody. Seventeen languages and differing historical narratives are recognized and dignified. Whites have retained their property and wealth, while black Africans are rising rapidly to join the middle and upper classes.
"...that we presently have a one-state solution--Israel's apartheid version--allows us to affirm a different one: a unified secular-democratic state, in which everyone is equal in dignity and rights, and where the Jewish and Palestinian national homes can share the land as they should."
Note the glowing "Whites have retained their property and wealth". I gather that, come Tilley's revolution, Palestinians and Israelis will be equal in their right to stare at what was once a Palestinian home. This will be very good because it will 'recognize and dignify different historical narratives'.
The more you look at claims about the settlements, the more suspicious you grow. Sure, the settlement enterprize has gone beyond the point of no return, and sure the settlements are there to stay. It's just that the settlers aren't: their buildings would house Palestinians quite as well as Jews. Is it impossible to get the settlers to give up their settlements? Not at all. If the Israeli army withdraws, the Palestinians would have no difficulty persuading the settlers it was time to leave. The Algerians did the same with settlers much more deeply rooted than in Palestine. If it's so impossible, why did it already happen--why did Israeli troops make it happen--in Gaza?
It's impossible to get rid of the settlers only if the Israeli government supports them, that is, only if it's impossible to get the Israeli government to stop supporting them. But if that's impossible, how, is it possible that Israeli government will give up something far dearer to it--its home turf, its own existence, and the existence of a Jewish state, at the very least within 1948 borders? How are the settlements a tougher nut to crack than the state of Israel itself?
What's the point of this one-state solution? If the settlements are something to be legitimated, why not say the same--as Tilley hints--of all Israeli land claims, everywhere in Palestine? Entrenching the settlements means a great big pat on the back for the very worst, least conciliatory, most violent political forces in Israel, the spoilt, fanatic racial supremacists who conceived the settler movement and made it into the formidable force it is today. It confirms that their strategy worked. Do Halper and Tilley really think this is a formula for peace? "Peace in our time", perhaps.
If only one could think that Tilley and Halper had been dishonest in stating their positions. Far from it; they have been very straightforward, if not very clear. The interplay between muddled idealism and muddled practicality makes for quite a comedy of errors. Having two states isn't good enough for these people; they want justice. To get justice, they confirm the worst of the usurpers in their usurpation--not only of land, but of scarce resources. Apparently the Palestinians will clutch citizenship papers to their breasts and be happy in the dusty leavings of what was once their land. Meanwhile the settler movement and their allies will be free to pursue their project of 'redeeming' Palestine, and it will all be ok, because it will happen within the confines of a single secular state.. Humpty Dumpty couldn't have got it more ass-backwards.
Human rights group claims Jewish state ’created conditions that made Palestinians move’ from central Hebron by discriminating residents based on their ethnicity. Settlers call report an ’unbroken string of lies and distortions’
"The survey showed that at least 1,014 Palestinian housing units, which account for 41.9 percent of those in the area, are empty. Of these, 65 percent were vacated during the course of the second Palestinian intifada, which began in 2000.
B’Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said :
’’They created conditions that made the Palestinians move. The army can’t now say that they didn’t know this was going to happen."
The Israeli military declined comment.
They say Israel is democratic country. It wants peace with Palestinians. But their actions belie their claims.
US pushing Iraq reconciliation, ignoring occupation's role in violence
munaeem | 12 May, 2007 06:01
George W. Bush administrationwas is doing its best and using all means to blame its military and political failure in Iraq on the absence of Iraqi reconciliation.
The White House talks of Iraqi reconciliation, but it is ignores the fact that the US occupation and intervention had caused the divisions among Iraqis and "spread the culture of killing and torture."
The United States is trying to fragment the Iraqi people, "turning them into more than one party, as if they are more than one people without a common land and an Arab and Islamic identity."
The Bush administration’s pressure on Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki to speed up there conciliation process while adopting laws on managing the country’s oil production and revenues "is merely pushing Iraq into more fragmentation and [increasing] the Iraqi disaster represented by the US occupation."
In my opinion , Iraq could only inch toward recovery through "its heroic resistance" against "the occupying invaders who planted divisions and sedition among the Iraqis.
Hamas encouraging rise of Islamist extremist groups
munaeem | 12 May, 2007 05:59
A commentary in Jordan’s Al Rai said Wednesday that Hamas was indirectly and tacitly responsible for the rise of Islamic extremist groups in the Palestinian territories, especially in Gaza.
The mass-circulation daily accused Hamas of laying the ground for the groups now threatening Palestinian society, and added that the group was believed to be responsible for the kidnappings of foreign aid workers and journalists, including British Broadcasting Corporation correspondent Alan Johnston.
It noted there were Palestinian government officials who claim to know who kidnapped the journalist and where he was being held, yet nothing was being done to secure his release.
The paper, partially owned by the government, argued it was too risky to assume the forces that took the law into their own hands were "strategic substitutes" for Hamas.
"Such assumptions will bring ruin ... damaging the image of the society living under occupation," it stressed.
The World Bank Report shows Apartheid established by Israel in Palestine
munaeem | 10 May, 2007 20:36
The latest World Bank report shows that Israel has established an Apartheid System in Palestine and isolated nearly 50 percent of the West Bank land, Dr. Mustafa Bagrhouthi, Palestinian Minister of Information said on Wednesday.
The report entitled “The imposed restrictions on the freedom of Movement in the West Bank” which will be published today shows that Israeli has created ten cantons in the West Bank, isolated, geographically and economically. The cantons prevented the local residents and especially the farmers from reaching 50 percent of their lands and became exclusive to Israeli settlers who are illegally residing in the West Bank.
Israel has destroyed the economic system in Palestine and set all the Palestinian roads under an apartheid system to benefit the illegal settlements, said Barghouthi.
He added that what has been created can not be treated by measures to ease the situation in some West Bank areas, it is necessary to remove the infrastructure of the 530 permanent roadblocks and military checkpoints and the 600 mobile checkpoints placed in the West Bank.
In addition, Barghouthi pointed out that all the collective punishment measures and the annexation wall should be removed to end this apartheid.
The Palestinian Minister demanded the international community following the World Bank report, not only to lift the embargo imposed on the Palestinian people, but also to impose sanctions against Israel to force it to dismantle the infrastructure of the Apartheid system it has created in Palestine.
“What is important also is to hear what the European Union and the United States would say about the report, which one can only conclude that who should be punished and boycott is the country that practices oppression and apartheid, not the Palestinian people who became victims of this apartheid,” Barghouthi stated.
A Hamas spokesman in an interview granted to an Iranian TV channel
munaeem | 29 April, 2007 18:59
Abu Mazen does not have full authority to engage in negotiations with Israel and Hamas will oppose any agreement reached in such negotiations
Ayman Muhammad Saleh Taha , a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, noted in an interview granted to an Iranian TV station that Abu Mazen does not have full authority to engage in negotiations with Israel and that Hamas rejects any agreement reached in such negotiations.
Ayman Muhammad Saleh Taha (Al-Alam TV, April 11, 2007 )
On April 17, Al-Alam, an Iranian TV channel in Arabic, broadcasted a talk show called Al-Mihwar (“the axis”). The show featured an interview with Ayman Muhammad Saleh Taha, a former Hamas operative who was held prisoner in Israel and is now one of the Hamas spokesmen and a member of the inter-organizational committee for preventing conflicts between Hamas and Fatah. In the interview, Ayman Taha was asked about Hamas's position on the contacts held by Abu Mazen with Israel . The highlights of his reply follow:
a. The stance of the Hamas movement has not changed and will not change regarding the “Zionist entity” and the meetings held by Abu Mazen with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert: “The movement is being very clear when it says that these meetings are pointless and do nothing to further the Palestinian cause.”
b. “The government platform is not the platform of Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement. The fundamental principles of the unity government are the lowest common denominator agreed upon by the Palestinian factions. We are saying loud and clear that the Hamas movement still considers itself the spearhead in the conflict with the oppressive enemy [ Israel ]. It will not relinquish its platform of resistance [i.e., violence and terrorism]…”
c. “In the strongest of terms, we oppose such negotiations and everything that will come out of it. We, the Hamas movement, will not agree to it, and I think these are clear, explicit statements already made by Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar and by the head of the Hamas faction in the [Legislative] Council, Dr. Khalil al-Hayya. While they expressed their confidence in the government, they stressed that they had reservations about giving the president full authority in the negotiations…”
d. When asked what Hamas would do when Abu Mazen would reach an agreement with Israel and whether the Hamas movement would oppose the government that it heads, Taha replied: “Definitely. That is, we are saying that we will not accept any negotiations with the occupier on the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights. We will not bargain about those rights and will refuse to do so, whether in the government or in the Legislative Council…”
Palestinians, Israelis should avow Holocaust, Nakba
munaeem | 27 April, 2007 14:08
While we are presently preoccupied with fighting extremism and terrorism, we should remember that history is a powerful resource for our images, beliefs, and actions. The more focused we are on learning its lessons, the more prepared we may be to meet its challenges.
Past and current tensions have lasting negative effects that breed enmity and hatred. Reconciliation is a process that can salve history's poisonous aftereffects by translating the painful memory of the past to the service of understanding, individual and social justice, and true peace.
The Yad VaShem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem and the ruins of Deir Yassin may be in geographical proximity, but a world apart in the psyche of Jews and Palestinians. While the first commemorates the systematic mass extermination of European Jews under Nazi occupation prior to and during World War II, the second marks the village where Palestinians were massacred at the hands of Jewish extremists in April 1948, and symbolizes Palestinian dispossession and their struggle for self-determination.
While there are fundamental differences between these human tragedies - and we have no intention of comparing them - Jews and Palestinians have been steadfast in their distinct interpretations of history, refusing to participate in each other's painful memories and denying each other's most sacred reconstructions of the past.
Unfortunately, the Oslo agreement was equally premised on putting the past aside. We, however, are suggesting history should be addressed, rather than repressed.
As difficult as it is, this must be done if the Abrahamic people and faiths are to embrace each other and bring about a just peace for both Israeli Jews and Palestinians, who, supported by other Jews and Arabs, are in conflict not merely over territory, but also over narratives, rituals, public opinion, and time frames. Indeed, it is common when Israelis and Palestinians meet for the former to emphasize building a different future, while the latter focuses on the unreconciled past.
Israeli Jews have generally refused to take even partial responsibility for the Nakba (the Catastrophe) that befell the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. Such an acknowledgement, in their mind, creates a moral obligation for the Right of Return or its equivalent, thereby undermining their majority in the State of Israel. Meanwhile, Palestinians have difficulty conjuring a positive vision of the future at a time when they are still subjected to critical conditions in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - something the Oslo process did not change.
Only in the past decade have a few Israeli Jewish and Palestinian intellectuals found the courage to try and acknowledge these two devastating chapters of Israeli and Palestinian history, still preoccupying the minds of their people.
Al Hayat columnist Hazem Saghiyeh and Tunisian journalist Saleh Bashir have both argued that Arab denial of the Holocaust achieves nothing. The Palestinian reporter Nazir Megally has expressed shame that Palestinian education ignores the Holocaust, even though recognition of Jewish suffering and feeling empathy for Jews could be viewed by many Palestinians as psychologically dangerous at this point in the conflict. Meanwhile, a group called Zochrot made up of Israeli citizens works to raise Israeli awareness of the Nakba and of the Arab villages that were destroyed in 1948. In addition, B'tselem and Ta'ayush are Israeli organizations focusing on the practical aspects of the occupation and its negative impact on the Palestinians, creating an Israeli Jewish awareness of the Palestinian plight.
The Peace Research Institute in the Middle East, the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, the Middle East Children's Association, and Neve Shalom all promote understanding between Israelis and Palestinians. We, hereby, wish to join the courageous few by emphasizing our shared history and our moral obligation toward both the past and the future.
If mutual dialogue is to occur between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, each national community must acknowledge and respect the other's painful memory, whether or not it was party to its creation. An empathetic embrace of the construction of the other's history will help both sides to work through their tragedies rather than exclusively ignoring each other's pain. Such an inclusive act of communication and faith will prepare the way for reconciling the past and for building a better future, one to which our children and grandchildren are entitled.
It may be not a coincidence that the new exhibit of Yad VaShem in the form of a deep mountain tunnel opens up unwittingly toward the hill where Deir Yassin was once located. That, for sure, was not the intention of the architect. It takes a new kind of courage to recognize the symbolic importance and implications of both Yad VaShem and Deir Yassin in order to go beyond them and envision a better future for both Israelis and Palestinians.
by Dan Bar-On & Saliba Sarsar
Dan Bar-On was born in Haifa and is Professor of Psychology at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He is also Co-Director of the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME) and presently a Fulbright Scholar-In-Residence at Monmouth University. Saliba Sarsar was born in Jerusalem and is the Associate Vice-President for Academic Program Initiatives as well as Professor of Political Science at Monmouth University. Bar-On and Sarsar submitted this commentary to the Middle East Times.
Israeli administration imprisoning mothers and wives of political prisoners to pressure confessions
munaeem | 24 April, 2007 13:20
Kawthar Nofal told PNN that Israeli intelligence has taken to arresting the mothers and wivers of Palestinian political prisoners in order to extract confessions.
Nofal, known as Umm Said for her eldest son, said that the idea is to threaten the prisoners by harming their loved ones. Israeli intelligence wants information, and will take what they can get, real or fabricated, the northwestern West Bank woman said candidly on Saturday.
“They arrested me from inside my house after the arrest of others in my family, and immediately took me to Jalama Prison so that my captive son, Said, could see that they had me.”
Now out of prison, Umm Said, continued, “I was subjected to two hours of interrogation tied to a chair with my feet and hands bound in chains without mercy or compassion.”
The woman said, “Intelligence officers told me that that I would be kept in prison and so would the men in my family. But I answered with confidence and pride. I said, 'Jail is not only inhabited by men and I do not fear for my children.'”
She described further assaults on her family. “My husband is sick and in need of care. And they bring a patient to the prison.”
Umm Said said that the threat was for the future as well. “They said that I would not be able to visit my children in the prisons and if I did I would be watched and monitored, subjected to other things.”
The Qaliqilia mother described the conditions of Jalama Prison built on Jenin lands in the northern West Bank. “The cell was so narrow. After two days one came and asked me if was still alive. I told him that I live with the Lord and pray to God while in the cell. 'I am not alone as you think,' I told him. He was angered and walked away.”
Umm Said described the moments before she was released from the Israeli prison. “Hours before the release I fainted, lost consciousness fully. And I woke up in the prison infirmary after my blood pressure fell due to the poor conditions in the cell and during the times of interrogation. After I was released they continued to pressure my family who have lived harsh weeks in the cells of Jalama.”
Corpus Delicti and the Palestinian Right of Return
Corpus-delicti is a Latin word referring to an object or a tool which helps to prove or to establish a crime and or to identify the criminal himself.
You see or hear that word in many detective-films and also in books.
The existence of the Palestinian refugees is a corpus-delicti to a crime called the establishment of the State of Israel and to criminals called the Zionists....better known as "Israelis".
To hide this corpus-delicti Israel must hide the refugees which is not possible , therefore the right of return of those refugees must be oppressed, ignored ,hidden and suppressed by the Zionists and by their friends.......in order to hiding the crime , itself.
Philosophically speaking, I say : if there is no victim , there is no crime.
Refugees are the first degree victims of Israel,followed very closely by the occupied Palestinian population and then the Arabs as a whole, will follow in that list.
Symbolically , and as an obvious example ,when Ariel Sharon and his dogs were slaughtering the population of Sabra and Chatila , or Jennin among other places, they were simply physically eliminating the corpus-delicti of their on-going crime.
Also Golda Meier declared once " Palestinians do not exist"meaning exactly "there is no corpus-delicti".
Palestinian-refugees are the corpus-delicti of the worse crime in the second half of the 20Th century done by Israel and Zionists.
It never occurred to him when he woke up startled that the ferocious explosion that shook the area was the after-effects of a bomb that targeted his Internet café in the Ramla neighborhood in downtown Gaza. He was perplexed when the owners of neighboring shops phoned to tell him that his shop had been targeted. The 30-year-old shop owner arrived to find his café reduced to rubble after the explosion of a bomb that had been planted by the main door and detonated from a distance.
Although months have passed since the incident happened, the owner remains terror-stricken and refuses to reveal his name fearing for his life. Even after reassurances that his name would not be mentioned he was still cautious to not elaborate on what happened to him.
Yet Gaza has witnessed a number of similar incidents lately all executed by obscure groups that claim responsibility for targeting Internet cafes, mobile phone shops, women’s cosmetics shops and female hairdressing salons, in addition to a number of cafes and restaurants on the beach. Those whose shops have been targeted confirm that there is no justification for the bombing of their shops.
The owner of the aforementioned Internet café who has requested anonymity said that it was possible that some of the customers accessed pornographic websites in his café but stressed that it rarely would have happened since he imposes strict censorship on them. He pointed out that the vast majority of people who used to come into his café were students who were doing research or families who would use chat-rooms to get in touch with family members who live abroad, moreover affirming that his café was gender segregated.
But the little-known parties who claim responsibility for these incidents stress that they are doing this to stop the spread of adultery and debauchery, which they claim these shops are encouraging. Palestinian security sources recently estimated the number of bombs to target such shops to be approximately 30 thus far. The parties responsible for them send warnings to the shops in question which they deem to be morally corrupt before attacking them. Most of the blasts that took place in central Gaza have received warnings bearing the name of these obscure groups.
One of the groups to partake in these operations goes by the name “the Islamic Swords of Truth”. In one of its statements, the group says that it acts to implement God’s law [Shariaa] in the land and has taken it upon itself to, “end corruption in all its forms in the Islamic nation by using the means it deems necessary, which are in accordance with Islamic Shariah and in the harsh manner that has now become inevitable to confront those who have chosen to follow the devil and are responsible for spreading doom amongst the Muslim youth and families,” said one statement.
In another statement the group said that, “it was implementing God’s law after consulting religious references and prominent leaders with the aim of punishing those deserving of it and that it will not relent in reprimanding any violations and will enforce the law to serve justice and execute those it considers to be symbols of corruption and debauchery.” The group has demanded that the owners of internet cafes close after 10pm, stressing that “it will not allow brothels, and that reactions to violators will be fierce.”
The self-appointed vice squad calls upon families to supervise their children adding, “we should not limit our knowledge to the fact that they are in schools and universities; it is their guardians’ duty to follow them even in their schools and universities. Bad company is the source of evil that leads girls on to the path of the devil to degradation and sin and we thank God that we have a list with all the names of the fallen and corrupt women who are actively transforming schools and universities into dens of sin. We also have names and details about a group of human predators who drive cabs in search of easy prey from the streets of our nation. We see them and they are stray dogs dispersed in the streets, greedy in search of carrion to prey upon. With God’s will we shall carry out their punishment very soon so that they and others like them who have fallen can be an example for those who listen.” Furthermore, in its statement the group warned, “all dealers, pushers and those who abuse drugs: silence has come to an end and your time for retribution has come. Nothing can save you from our swords except your return to God Almighty. We strike down with an iron fist on any person implicated in undermining the confidence, security and stability of this good land.”
But the question that poses itself is: Who exactly are the groups responsible for these operations, and do they all belong to one organizational fabric? There is no dispute among observers in Gaza that this phenomenon does not indicate the existence of an ideological framework or an ideological belief that supports it – else those involved in such operations would have been associated with organized groups to some degree. Nehad al Sheikh Khalil, a researcher in Islamic movement affairs spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat and said, “This phenomenon does not indicate that there is a clear ideological vision behind it. All it signifies is a group of teenagers who have taken advantage of the chaos and slip in security to undertake such practices.”
Al Sheikh Khalil rejects the notion and term the ‘Talibanization’ of the Gaza strip pointing out that experience has shown that phenomena such as these surface whenever chaos prevails and in the absence of security and law. He makes a direct link between the activities of these groups and the absence of a national agenda capable of consolidating Palestinian resources and channeling it into unity. He added, “When communities address significant issues and the leadership succeeds in realizing a national agenda that is both clear and convincing then the public becomes concerned and attentive to these issues. But when the public senses the lack of an important cause to unite it, it usually gets distracted with marginal issues that are of no real significance, which also lends room for suchlike negative phenomenon to manifest.”
Al Sheikh Khalil is firm in directing accusations at the Palestinian security apparatus, which he maintains has not shown any seriousness in addressing the security issues. He explains that when a leader from the security apparatus talks about the implementation of the security plan presented by the new Palestinian interior minister while discussing the ongoing efforts to reach a political accord among the conflicting Palestinian parties, this is proof that there is no real intention to remedy the deteriorated security situation and its repercussions. This recent phenomenon of bombing shops is among such consequences.
For his part Wissam Afifa, a senior journalist in Gaza’s weekly newspaper ‘al Risala’, agrees with al Sheikh Khalil’s statements. The newspaper has provided extensive coverage and has published numerous investigations pertaining to this phenomenon. Afifa believes that these events do not reflect the birth of an intellectual or ideological entity but rather a phenomenon that has come about as a result of the slip in security. But in his interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Afifa revealed that the youth responsible for the attacks on these shops are most likely among the marginal cadres on the peripheries of Palestinian organizations and as such, use weapons owned by these organizations to execute their operations. However, he points out that there is no coordination between leaderships – in fact, these groups go against these organizations’ orientations.
Afifa added that these youth use various types of explosives including time-controlled bombs and mortar fire. He elaborated that their operations depend on monitoring and the collection of accurate data on which they build the basis of all their operations to target shops. He pointed out that some of the members of these groups are not affiliated to purely Islamic organizations but rather ones that combine Islamic and nationalist inclinations so that they are united under the banner of fighting moral corruption. They perceive that such conduct goes against the religious teachings and is additionally one of the biggest obstacles that hinders the liberation of Palestine.
However Afifa says it is necessary to point out that such practices are not new and that the truth is Gaza has witnessed numerous similar phenomena that were likewise without ideological or organizational roots. In the eighties there were various attacks on what were deemed centers of moral decadence in Gaza. During this era, the Gaza Strip saw a chain of attacks on cafes led by a group of religious youth who were not affiliated to any organizations. Moreover, shops that were alleged to be selling alcohol were targeted, as were individuals seen eating in public during the fasting hours of Ramadan.
And yet dealing with what is considered to be ‘immoral practices’ is not really linked with the ideological nature that constitutes Palestinian organizations. With the outbreak of the first Intifada at the end of 1987, the leftist and secular groups played no lesser role than the Islamic organizations did in confronting the propagators of drugs and alcohol and those who were implicated in any immoral activities. Activists from the various Palestinian organizations used to kidnap drug dealers and anyone they suspected to have been involved in prostitution, and those who harass women on the streets were subject to interrogation. If proven guilty these parties or individuals were often punished – frequently before an audience of people.
There is prevalent belief among many in Gaza that the security problems in the Palestinian territories – and particularly in Gaza – are a result of some taking advantage of the situation to further personal interests by using bogus names for groups that do not exist simply to fulfill their interests or to seek revenge. Incidents that confirm this belief include the burning down of a children’s clothing shop under the claim that it was implicated in unethical practices. The owner of this shop who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity said that his shop was frequented by people of all ages and that in his wildest nightmares he could not have envisaged that his shop would go up in flames.
But it didn’t stop at the shops; a number of writers and journalists were also targeted. Selim al Naffar, a renowned writer and leading figure in the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, received a threat from one of these groups warning that it will use means to deter and discourage his writing. Al Naffar said that he found a letter by his front door that was signed by the ‘Islamic Swords of Truth’ warning him of the consequences if he resumed writing critical articles about the Palestinian arena on a number of websites. However the ‘Islamic Swords of Truth’ has denied writing and sending any threatening letters to him or to any other writer affiliated to a Palestinian institution.
If this proves anything it would be the ease with which one can attribute words or deeds to illusory organizations and use it to threaten or inflict harm upon others – all of which is a result of the state of lawlessness that reigns. A case in point is the account of an Internet café owner who was recently kidnapped in Khan Yunis and robbed of the US $500 that he had in his possession.
Hamas MP from Khan Yunis in southern Gaza and lawmaker, Dr. Yehya Mousa, confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat that these practices erupted as a result of the problems with security and that they will be immediately eliminated. The former professor at Gaza’s Islamic University said that these youth were driven by zeal and ignorance and pointed out that three vehicles are required to confront this phenomenon: the security element combined with the legal and the cultural elements. He stressed that security should not be limited to putting an end to these practices and that it should extend to stop any activities that aim towards disrupting public order.
For his part, Dr. Ghazi Hamad, the spokesman for the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority government told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Palestinian government is ascribing great importance to stop this phenomenon pointing out that the interior minister’s security plan tackles with this problem. He added that only the government and the security services had the right to question the owners of Internet cafes if unethical practices were suspected. He stressed that this right did not extend to any other individual or party whatsoever and added that the use of force lies in the hands of the government alone.
"Senior Palestinian officials are opposed to the release of jailed Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti in a prisoner exchange involving Israel's freeing Cpl. Gilad Schalit.
Barghouti's name topped a list of prisoners passed on to Israel recently by Schalit's Hamas captors.
The Post has learned that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas did not raise the release of Barghouti with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during their three meetings over the last three months.
Barghouti's release would undoubtedly have a huge impact on Palestinian politics, and some observers maintain that Abbas is not keen on facing a strong political rival from inside Fatah at this time.
Another school of thought believes that the fact that Hamas put Barghouti on the list of prisoners submitted to Israel, while Fatah has not actively pushed his release, indicated that he has moved closer to Hamas."
Marwan Barghouti was not well known among Palestinians until his leadership of the current intifada, and conviction in an Israeli court, turned him into a household name.Now he is a familiar figure across the area - and many see him as a potential future Palestinian leader.
In 1996, he was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council with overwhelming support.
He launched a campaign against human rights abuses by Arafat's own security services and corruption among his officials.
"Marwan Barghouti has always identified with the grass-roots rather than the leadership," says Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the influential pan-Arabic newspaper al-Quds
Jocelyn finds it painful to recollect her memories when she speaks about the suffering she endured while wandering down the corridors of Beer Sheva’s Soroka hospital in search of her son after he had been shot. She is the mother of Thomas Hurndall, a British peace activist who was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper while trying to get Palestinian children out of the line of gunfire in Rafah, Gaza Strip in April 2003.
“There were many Palestinian women dressed in black inside and outside of the hospital lobbies,” Jocelyn said, “and elderly men who dressed in white.” She said that she had initially thought they had come in search of their children only to find out that they had come to check up on her son, Tom. Tom was shot while attempting to rescue Palestinian children during a demonstration in Rafah, he was felled by a bullet fired at him by a soldier from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
An editorial in Palestine's Al Quds said Wednesday that while the West generally regarded Palestinians as aggressors and the Israelis as defending themselves, it appeared Western countries were about to deal with the new Palestinian government despite Israeli calls to boycott it.
The mainstream daily added that Israel would do its best to prevent international recognition of the Palestinian national unity government, and that the Jewish state was escalating its threats.
The paper cited Israeli warnings that it would forcefully retaliate to the shooting of an Israeli near the Gazan border, cautioning Palestinians to be realistic and to work toward their national interests at this stage.
"We believe national Palestinian interests call for a comprehensive truce in all areas, and for an official and media push [at all levels] ... in this direction," it said.
"This is to show the world [just] who is obstructing ... peaceful political steps, who is the aggressor, and who is rejecting all just solutions," added the daily.
The Jerusalem-based paper argued that a "comprehensive calm" would broaden acceptance of the new Palestinian situation and lift international sanctions. It also called for a swift deal to exchange an abducted Israeli soldier with Palestinian prisoners.
I’m not trying to make fun of this — people can wear what they want — but why call it burqini? A burqa is a rather extreme form of fundamentalist gear that is not found in much of the Muslim world outside of Afghanistan and, to a much less degree, India and Pakistan. Is the Taliban what they want their product to be associated with?
Incidentally, this “burqini” is now standard issue for Muslim female lifeguards in Australia.
"A year-old diplomatic boycott of the Palestinian government eased on Monday when Norway's deputy foreign minister met in Gaza with Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.
The meeting was the first between Haniyeh and a senior European diplomat since Western powers imposed an economic and diplomatic blockade on the Palestinian Authority in March 2006 to pressure the ruling Hamas group to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept interim peace deals.
Israeli officials played down Johansen's meetings with Haniyeh and the new Palestinian foreign minister, Ziad Abu Amr, saying economic anctions against the Hamas-led government remained in place.
An opinion poll in Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper showed 39 percent of Israelis supported talks with the new Palestinian unity government. Another 17 percent backed talks with only Fatah ministers.
Palestinian daily Al Ayyam said Palestinians themselves should have remained firm about their right to return to their homeland before handing the issue over to the Arabs. It complained Palestinians had always faced problems in their host Arab countries.
The West Bank-based mainstream paper pointed out that America and Europe had had no problems with their Palestinian communities, but this was not the case with the Arab world.
"Libya has a special problem with several thousand [of its immigrant] Palestinians," it said, adding that such problems arose as "[Libya] tries to mobilize them for its Arab nationalist projects, and once it tries to expel them to foil the settlement plan." It noted Libya's recent attempt to oust its Palestinians was the second time it had told them to return to Gaza.
The paper added that Libya was also inciting Syria and Lebanon to take similar measures, but insisted Palestinians had the right to both a political entity, as well as to human rights while in exile.
The daily, close to Fatah, stressed the upcoming Riyadh Arab summit should support Palestinian refugees' right of return to their homes as part of a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It also called on the Arab summit to form a framework to handle matters regarding Palestinian refugees and communities in Arab countries.
The paper said that just as the Arab world had failed to deal appropriately with Jewish communities before and after the establishment of Israel, it was now similarly failing with regards to Palestinian communities.
"The Palestinian Authority faces a fiscal crisis that could threaten its existence, in large part because it keeps expanding the public payroll despite sharply reduced revenues, the World Bank said in a report.
The Palestinian economy declined further in 2006 from an already low level, and the per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) dropped by at least 8 percent, said the report, obtained by The Associated Press."
Palestinians people should understand that world will not give them charity for ever. Please tell their leaders to mend their ways, and do something constructive.
They cannot wipe out Israel with their AK-47 and Kassams. If I was Israeli PM, I would have crushed you for ever for hurting my people with Kassams.
