Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry: Lies are Truth

The people in the press staff of the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry are talented science fiction writers. Almost nothing that they write has any bearing on reality, and it seems that they use Orwell’s 1984 as a guidebook for news dispatches. All that they need to do is look at the facts on the ground (terminology that was invented by the hasbara commission, more than likely, because it is something different than reality. It has a bit of the sense of imposition of a negative reality that cannot however be challenged by ‘ordinary’ people), and turn them on their heads. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. That’s exactly how the Israeli PR staff represents reality with their warped mirror.

I do suggest, for those who, like myself, find some pleasure in reading nonsense to subscribe to their newsletter or to read it on their site. It is just about as absurd a thing one can find to read. The trouble with it is: it’s taken seriously by the Big Mass Media and a lot of the dispatch services never verify any of the information that is released. If you wonder just why everyone is so wrong about Israel and Palestine, look no further.

On 7 May, this was their press release. I will deconstruct it. Their original in Israeli Blue.

Behind the Headlines: Hamas holding civilian population in Gaza hostage.

How’s that for a shock headline? It is as if the people of Gaza are in a concentration camp and kept hostage. Well, they are, of course, but it’s not Hamas who has locked them in and thrown away the keys, but this does not matter. Israel KNOWS that people are going to notice sooner or later that Gaza has become the place on earth where the greatest number of people are confined and held hostage, but passing the stick to Hamas is going to resolve any nasty questions about who is keeping them prisoner.

By seizing the fuel, food, and medical supplies that Israel is transferring to the Gaza Strip, and using the supplies itself, the Hamas terror organization is basically holding the civilian population of Gaza hostage.

Ah, so all of these wonderful things have been delivered by generous Israel to Gaza? No one has seen any of it, so it must be the bad guys of Hamas who have diverted all of it and probably are storing everything in warehouses, or selling it on the black market. The crossings have all been closed, but no one should become aware of the fact, unless they wonder how a million and a half people can get by without replacement of the material that is consumed. Naturally, it’s not a good idea to indicate to people that a blockade has been made in order to break the resistance of these people, which at least are classified as civilians by the people who bomb them indiscriminately when it suits them. But for Israel, all that material has arrived, in fact, Israel itself is transferring it to the Gaza Strip! But since things have a material presence, they don’t just disappear, the culprit for these enormous quantities of goods simply NOT BEING THERE has got to be the bad guys. Hamas can’t let anyone see all the truckloads of material, including fuel, that Israel is donating. Seizing it for political purposes, so they can justify the uprising. Well, of course, none of that is true. Since the siege started last fall, nothing has entered into the Gaza Strip, and very little has gotten out. The population is indeed being held hostage, but Israel is doing a three card shuffle – blame it on Hamas (repeat as well that they are a ‘terror organization’ so that it’s easier to insert in a copy and paste journalist report.

 

Israel has continued to supply fuel, food, medical supplies and other humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip, despite Hamas attacks precisely on those crossings Israel must use to transfer the supplies. 

Israel has supplied nothing, nor have they let anyone else do so. Yet, to deny material sustenance would be a crime against humanity, because the occupier is obligated to provide for the people who are being occupied. However, Israel will state that they no longer occupy the Gaza Strip. “We left! The settlers are gone,” they say. Well, one does not have to have colonial presence to exact control over a territory. All that needs to be done is to control its borders, and Israel does just that: stick them in the prison and let them fight it out between themselves is the policy that Israel has decided to enact in order to bring Gazans to their knees or, failing that, make them beg for Fatah to take control of the elections Hamas won, therefore, giving Israel the electoral results they wanted but were denied. Israel controls the air space, territorial waters, offshore maritime access, and the border between Israel and Gaza, with most of the crossings being closed even for those needing medical assistance. Egypt controls the southern border. This means that they are committing crimes against humanity by denying Gazans aid, food, fuel and freedom of movement. But, they won’t admit it. In fact, that’s what the lie about Hamas taking the materials is there to cover. 

 

It is apparent that Hamas is targeting the crossings in order to prevent the transfer of humanitarian aid to the civilian population, thus both needlessly depriving its own population as well as causing an artificial humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Clearly, Hamas wants to create a crisis in order that international pressure will be placed on Israel.

It is apparent to those who invent this lie, and it is tragic that many believe it! Hamas does not have any control over the crossings of incoming goods. Nothing has been turned back or stashed away for the simple reason that nothing has been delivered! The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is far from artificial. It is real and evident to anyone who has access to view it. Clearly, the crisis was created by Israel, but passing the buck of the ‘international pressure’ is the only remedy that Israel can come up with. They have no intention to break the siege. It is in their interests to continue it to the bitter end. Unfortunately, neither Gazans nor Hamas can do anything to change this. We are going to see a long, hot summer ahead, and Israel is doing damage control. 

Recent reports indicate that not only is Hamas depriving the civilization population, it is allocating the supplies for its own use.

Then, we get a flaming headline:

Hamas steal fuel from the civilian population

A Jerusalem Post report, on the 29th of April, ( ) states that Hamas stole 60,000 liters of fuel from the civilian population of Gaza. This was confirmed by the head of the Palestinian Authority’s gas agency, who added that Hamas gunmen had raided the Palestinian side of the Nahal Oz fuel terminal, stealing at least 60,000 liters of fuel meant for the Gaza power station, for use in their own vehicles.Of course, this quote is in quite a few papers, all of them stating that Mohahed Salama stated as such to Israeli Radio. I’ve been unable to find any other source to confirm this. As a matter of fact, Israel doesn’t like to quote him when he stated something much more sinister: 

 

Mojahed Salama, head of the PA Petrol Agency in Gaza, said that fuel imports Sunday showed a 40 to 50 percent reduction in diesel and benzene supplies and a 12 percent reduction in fuel for Gaza’s power plant. “We sent the supplying company the same daily requests, but they said they were sorry and that because of the new imposed sanctions they could only send us a reduced quantity”, Salama told Reuters. A spokesman for Dor Alon, the Israeli energy company that supplies Gaza, said the company had “received instructions” from the Defense Ministry and was “acting according to those instructions”.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-172296528.html

So, who is stealing fuel from the civilian population? Ask the Israeli Defence Ministry all about their instructions.

Of course, these international reports are very worrying if one takes them by the soundbites provided by Israel. Take the London Independent report:

The London Independent reports on the artificial crisis caused by Hamas, which even caused the UN to suspend food aid to 650,000 refugees in the Gaza Strip after running out of fuel for its delivery vehicles. An emergency tanker sent to the Nahal Oz terminal was turned back by demonstrators, and was forced to return empty.  EU condemns Hamas actions which lead to further suffering of the Palestinian population.Now, that sounds really awful. But, if someone actually did read the article they would find these quotes:

 

Both sides agree that storage tanks on the Gaza side of the terminal are full, with stocks of up to 1 million litres of fuel. But Mahmoud Khozendar, the distributors’ vice-chairman, said that was only enough to meet three or four hours’ demand. They needed at least 10 times as much as Israel was prepared to deliver.Did you see what I saw? That last line kind of sticks like a pin in the cheek. They needed at least 10 times as much as Israel was prepared to deliver.

 

And this quote from the same article:

 

Last night Hamas proposed a six-month cease-fire with Israel, saying the Gaza Palestinian group would stop firing rockets into the Jewish state if Israel lifts its blockade of the coastal strip at the same time, Egypt’s state run Mena news agency reported.

The report came after a day of closed-door meetings between Egypt’s powerful intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who has been mediating between Hamas and Israel, and Hamas’ strongman, Mahmoud Zahar.

Under the international boycott imposed after Hamas seized Gaza by force last June, Israel’s declared policy has been to allow in enough fuel, food and medical supplies to keep people alive, but not enough for them to live well.

So, even the best article that Israel propaganda experts could fine from an independent source point out something that doesn’t make Israel look too wonderful:

Namely, Hamas has offered a cease-fire of the Qassam Rockets (which at any rate cause limited damage). It is willing to come to a solution to have the blockade lifted. Evidently, while this is what Israel claims is behind the blockade, when action is taken to do so, they refuse to accept it and blame Hamas of being terrorists and depriving their own people of things they need to live. Ah, but remember, Israel admits it will KEEP PEOPLE ALIVE, at some level of survival, but they are going to have to suffer. Sounds like Auschwitz to me. 

On 24 April, the Presidency of the EU stated that Hamas activities were obstructing and even preventing humanitarian work by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).This is terrible news. Let’s see what else is on that press statement by the EU:

 

…the Presidency urges regular and unrestricted delivery of fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip in order not to aggravate further the humanitarian crisis there. The Presidency reiterates the EU’s call on all parties to work urgently for the controlled re-opening of the crossings in and out of Gaza for both humanitarian reasons and commercial flows.In other words, they are calling on Israel to put an end to their policies and to urgently act so as not to aggravate the humanitarian crisis that everyone knows is in full swing.

 

But let’s conclude this press release.

 

Hamas nationalizing fuel supplies meant for the civilian populationIn another report, Nissim Keinan of Israel’s Second Radio channel reported on 4 May that Hamas was in fact holding the civilian population hostage. 

 

Nissim Keinan, nationally famous for his Voice of Israel broadcasts from the Sderot and Gaza regions, told Arutz-7 the IDF Gaza offensive accomplished a “drop in the ocean” of what needs to be done.

Who is this reporter? I never heard of him, but he’s very famous in Israel. Here is something to give us an idea of who our source is:

 

Nissim Keinan is the voice heard several times a day on national radio, reporting from the south on Kassam rockets in Sderot, terrorist activity from within Gaza, and nearly everything else that goes on in that area of the country.

Speaking with Arutz-7´s Hebrew newsmagazine on Monday, Keinan said, “Yes, it was a successful operation, but it appears that the terrorist activity will simply revert right away to the way it was before. We’re talking about looking for a needle in a haystack – because Beit Hanoun, where the offensive took place, is just a small town of 30,000 people; but what about Beit Lahiya and all its terrorists? And what about Jebalya, and the entire area of the Shati refugee camp, and the Khan Yunis area, and Dir el-Balach – I mean, the entire place is swarming with terrorists. Just because you took care of one place and confiscated weapons and ammunitions, it still doesn’t mean that you´ve achieved the goals.”

“In any event,” Keinan continued without stopping, “it´s strange to hear the army talk of such great successes, when really it was just a routine operation. They moved the Kassam launchers southward, true – but you can fire Kassams from the south too, you know, and they also fire them from the north. Yes, the accuracy of the firing has been impaired, but they were never accurate; they just shoot and it hits wherever it hits.”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/115008

The Summer Rain Offensive was a Drop in the Ocean of what needs to be done? So, Keinan thinks that 197 civilians and 48 children killed by the IDF is a good and positive thing? Sounds again, a hell of a lot like Auschwitz to me. So, I leave you to speculate on his final words here:

He stated that Hamas has nationalized all the fuel supplies transferred by Israel for the civilian population, and for operation of the electricity plant, and is using it solely for its own purposes. In addition, food sent by the donor countries is allocated in accordance with Hamas instructions. Of the thousands of tons of grains, food and fuel that were transferred, none was able to reach the civilian population.All of a sudden, he cares about the civilian population of Gaza? And I am Santa Claus.

 

See also Israel has what you like! Hasbara Instructions

Khalid Amayreh – Shimon Peres: the lying old man

Does Shimon Peres carry the genes of a pathological liar?

The question may sound facetious to many, but Peres’s apparent inability to distinguish between truth and falsehood makes the question quite valid.

At 84, Peres continues to dish out a daily staple of lies, including obscene lies.

This week, the “hero” of the Qana-1 massacre, told foreign correspondents based in Israel that “Hamas was standing in the way of Palestinian statehood.”

Well, this is, of course, a blatant lie, to say the least, because every honest person under the sun, Jew or gentile, knows well that the main obstacle impeding the realization of peace in the Middle East has been the intensive colonization of Palestinian land and unending expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied territories that belong to another people.

So how can we possibly buy the argument that Hamas is responsible for the building on the West Bank of hundreds of Jewish settlements, inhabited by hundreds of thousands of fascist-minded “settlers” who view non-Jews as animals in the shape of humans who should be enslaved by the “master race” as water carriers and wood hewers?

To be sure, Hamas is not an organization of angels. However, blaming the Islamic movement for the liquidation of the two-state solution is noting short of a pornographic lie.

Indeed, from its very inception, Hamas entrusted “peace negotiations” to the PLO, and said on numerous occasions that it would live with a Palestinian state covering the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

Moreover, the movement, many of whose leaders have been brutally murdered by Israel, repeatedly voiced a willingness to reach a ceasefire with the Israeli occupation army on condition of parity and reciprocity.

Hence, it was Israel – not Hamas – that rejected peace, first by stealing Palestinian land from rightful proprietors at gunpoint and then, by pursuing a genocidal assault against the Palestinian people’s very existence. Needless to say, this ongoing onslaught has certain hair-raising commonalities with the Nazi onslaught against European Jewry during the Second World War.

Peres is not stupid, he knows the power of words and the magic of sound-bites. However, he often doesn’t say what he means, nor does he mean what he says, all for the purpose of eluding a world that dreads confronting Zionist lies.

Peres’s conception of “Palestinian state” is incompatible with the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, as well as being incompatible with international law and human rights.

“Mr. Peace,” as he is occasionally deceptively dubbed, would like the Palestinians to “settle for” a deformed, truncated and territorially discontinuous entity on “parts” of the West Bank, without East Jerusalem and certainly without the repatriation of millions of Palestinian refugees who were uprooted from their homes and towns and villages around this time sixty years ago, in a drama of deportation and exile that continues to this date.

Hamas, like 99% of Palestinians, does reject such a scandalous sell-out of inalienable Palestinian rights. Indeed, even Mahmoud Abbas, the Chairman of the American puppet regime in Ramallah, whom Israel views as “moderate” and an “acceptable peace partner” openly rejects such a humiliating surrender to Zionism.

A classical example of the consummate Zionist leader, Peres may think that deceiving the world and frustrating the hapless Palestinian Authority regime into capitulating to the Zionist reality will be good for the Jews and for peace.

He is absolutely wrong. Palestinians may be in a state of weakness at the present as opposed to Israel, a powerful state that draws much of its military, economic and technological superiority from its tight domination of American politics and policies. However, this anomalous situation can’t be perpetuated forever. Nazi Germany (Israel is undoubtedly an updated version of the Third Reich despite all the fanfare and hasbara to the contrary) didn’t last forever. Nor did diabolical Stalinism, which had much in common with Zionism in certain respects. A fact that is well known to historians.

Coercing the Palestinians to surrender to Zionism, either through brute force as Israel has been doing, or economic inducements as Peres is trying to do, or both, would only keep the embers of injustice smoldering thinly beneath the surface.

So, what Peres and his ilk view as “Jewish ingenuity” will eventually be proven an expression of visionless arrogance and poor statesmanship.

In addition to uttering his usual quotable but mendacious sound-bites about the Palestinians and their enduring plight, Peres is spending time these days trying to convince the world that Iran is Nazi Germany number-2 and its President Ahmadinejad is Adolph Hitler.

Well, how could any person with an iota of honesty and rectitude compare Nazi Germany, which destroyed Europe and caused the death of tens of millions of people, with Iran, a third world country whose only “crime” is its refusal to be subservient to the American-Zionist hegemony?

Besides, it is amply clear that Peres, who played a key role in introducing nuclear weapons to the Middle East via the French connection several decades ago, is utterly unqualified to lecture the world about an alleged Iranian nuclear threat.

To be sure, Israel, which possesses a huge arsenal of hundreds of nuclear bombs and warheads that are trained toward Teheran, Cairo, Damascus and Beirut (and perhaps Berlin as well), has no right to incite the west against the Islamic Republic. In the final analysis, Iran has an inalienable right to develop nuclear technology and even nuclear weapons to deter the mad dogs of Zionism, both in Tel Aviv and in Washington, D.C.

Nuclear weapons, like all weapons of mass destruction, are ugly and evil. However, America and Israel are first and foremost to blame for transforming our world into a jungle where one must be a fox, or a tiger or a venomous cunning snake in order to survive.

Israel claims that it has never threatened to decimate any country or any people and that its nuclear stockpile is for “peaceful purposes.”

But Israel has been decimating the Palestinian people for sixty years and some of its leaders who have a Hitlerian mentality are already threatening to inflict a holocaust on their victims.

For sure, had the Palestinians been strong, Israel would not have destroyed their towns, demolished their homes, bulldozed their farms before expelling them to the four corners of the globe.

In conclusion, Peres and other Zionist leaders can’t be trusted to tell the truth since Zionism and truth are inherently incompatible.

During his stint as Prime Minister in 1996, flowing the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Peres oversaw the Qana-1 massacre in Southern Lebanon when the Israeli Wehrmacht knowingly and deliberately murdered more than a hundred Lebanese civilians, including numerous children who had sought refuge at the UN peace-keeping forces’ headquarters at the village of Qana.

For those who have forgotten or don’t know, neither Peres nor Israel has had the moral courage to say “sorry.”

Obviously they both lack the moral caliber to do so. And their crimes are too colossal and too numerous to be atoned for.

Khalid Amayreh – Building the Palestinian Contras

By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Jerusalem

7 April, 2008 

 

Israel, the Bush Administration and the Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by Mahmoud Abbas, are collaborating to build a depoliticized Palestinian security force whose main task and raison d’être will be to crush any popular uprising against a prospective “peace deal” imposed upon the Palestinians.

 

The new force, whose members are being trained in neighboring countries, particularly Jordan, is being prepared to gradually replace the vast bulk of existing Fatah-dominated security forces in the West Bank.

 

The PA, acting on instructions from the donor countries, especially the US, has already laid off thousands of Fatah soldiers and officers for a variety of reasons, including retirement age, financial difficulties and the necessity of restructuring PA security agencies, notoriously plagued by corruption, nepotism, cronyism, indiscipline and lack of professionalism.

 

Many of the people being laid off, however, are in their early and mid 40s, which suggests that the PA is trying as much as possible to “dispose of” elements deemed “too patriotic” and “indoctrinated in hostility to Israel and Zionism.”

 

According to one cadet from the Hebron region, the force, whose members had to be thoroughly sifted by the Shin Bet, Israel’s chief domestic intelligence agency, is being trained in crowd-control tactics, conducting arrests, suppressing demonstrations as well as using rifles.

 

Currently the cadets receive a monthly salary of $600-800 per month, which will reach $1000-1500 after graduation. (This is nearly equal to the monthly salary of an average Ph.D holder at Palestinian universities).

 

Interestingly, most of the trainees don’t even possess a high-school diploma, and very few have a college degree.

 

One disgruntled officer, a traditional Arafatist from Dura, near Hebron, intimated to this writer that “ignorance is the main and sought-after qualification of these recruits.”

 

“The more ignorant, the more uneducated, the more stupid one is, the better qualified he will be viewed. They want blockheads, people whose brains are empty so that they would be able to handle them the way the want,” said the officer, who asked for anonymity for obvious reasons.

 

“They are following the old adage which says ‘a good soldier doesn’t think, he only obeys orders’.”

 

In addition to ‘nearly total ignorance’, the new recruits must be as apolitical as possible, as unreligious as possible and have no previous affiliation or association with any political groups, especially Islamist groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

 

“They are trying to brainwash a given cadet in a way that if and when they instruct him to shoot his father, for example, he would shoot father, mother and brother as well,” said the disgruntled officer from Dura.

 

One PA officer involved in building the ‘new security force’ said the main purpose was to replace the existing, unreliable, and mostly corrupt security forces with professional forces that can “get the mission accomplished.”

 

However, when asked what the ‘main mission’ was, the officer responded, “the mission was always to be determined by the political leadership.”

 

A few months ago, PA Interior Minister General Abdel Razak al Yahya told hundreds of trainees at the village of Jeftilik near Jericho that “your mission is not to fight Israel, your mission is to establish security and restore law and order.”

 

“You are not here to confront Israel, the conflict of Israel has until now led nowhere. You must show the Israelis that you can do the job!!”

 

Earlier this year, more than 250 trainees were sent to Jordan for a four-month crash course sponsored and financed by the United States under the close supervision of Lieutenant General Keith Dayton.

Last year, Dayton botched up a plot conceived by his boss, Elliot Abrams, a neocon Jewish member of the Bush Administration, which would have seen forces loyal to Gaza’s former strongman Muhammed Dahlan topple and possibly crush the democratically-elected Hamas government.

 

However, Hamas preempted Dahlan’s planned coup, by carrying a counter-coup during which Hamas’s smaller but more disciplined and better trained forces decisively defeated and ousted Fatah forces, thus consolidating its control over the entire Gaza Strip.

 

 As a result of the ‘Gaza fiasco’, the Bush Administration reportedly sought a more ‘authentic alternative’ namely to establish a more bona fide Palestinian quisling force that would help the American-backed PA regime impose a possible ‘peace deal’ with Israel, presumably one that would allow Israel to annex large parts of the West Bank, including the bulk of East Jerusalem and surrounding Jewish colonies, in return for the creation of a deformed Palestinian entity, to be called a State, made up of disconnected Bantustans and truncated territories.

 

Hence, the ongoing efforts to create the new Palestinian Security Forces, whose main task is to repress and, if deemed necessary, kill Palestinians who dare oppose the liquidation of their just cause.

 

I asked Professor Abdul Sattar Qassem of the Najah National University in Nablus what could be done to thwart efforts to create a ‘quisling force’ whose main job is to repress Palestinians on Israel’s behalf.

Qassem said he thought that the term ‘quisling’ accurately described the new force or forces being created and trained by the CIA.

 

“First of all we have to tell our sons who are being trained in Jordan that they are being trained to carry out immoral and unpatriotic acts, that they will be instructed to kill Palestinians in defense of Israel.”

 

Qassem said he was certain that the PA was effectively a tool to liquidate the Palestinian cause in exchange for some money from the US.

 

He dismissed the PA claim that the new forces were necessary for re-establishing the rule of law and protecting the personal security of the Palestinian people.

 

“I think we can uphold the rule of the law without sending our sons to be trained by the CIA to kill their own countrymen on Israel’s behalf. Let the PA take its hands off the justice system, let them rein in their thugs, and law and order would be restored immediately.”

 

“The problem, the main problem, is that we are dealing with a lying authority.

 

“They lie a lot.”

Adel Samara – A Global Massacre Against Gaza

source Kanaan Online (thanks to Nadia Hasan for the forward)

Note: I certainly need help in answering the following two questions:

· What is going on in the mind of a Palestinian infant in the last moments of his or her life when a US/Israeli rocket strikes him/her?

· What do Israeli military leaders tell their pilot when he shows them the picture of that infant?

The debate on whether Israel will launch a large scale or “limited” aggression against Gaza is pure nonsense and meaningless. Any “limited” aggression against civilians, by an army with most recent US inventions of war machine and Zionist inhuman behavior, will kill many people.

The most important question, however, is somewhere else: What are the reasons and who is really behind this holocaust?

The main reason can be summarized as “No Resistance in the Era of Globalization” (NOREG). This should remind us of the fact that US neo-cons regime, western capitalist regimes, and Arab comprador regimes support and encourage Zionists to wipe out Hezbollah as the main force of resistance in this era. That is why, the war of summer 2006, was a precious gift for Arab regimes. But fortunately, the results were deeply disappointing.

Since 2006, if one does not mention the holocaust in Iraq, Arab regimes and the Palestinian Authority (PA) stand in the camp of: “No Resistance in the Era of Globalization” NOREG.

This is an international camp. It transcends national, ethnic, religious and ideological boundaries. That is why, Arab rulers, Zionists, US neo-cons, Anglo-Saxon, French, German regimes are in one camp.

Accordingly, the war against Gaza is a decision from a terrorist leadership of all these regimes, and the Zionists are its paw. It is the war of regimes and ruling classes that is aimed at liquidating all forms of resistance.

Any Palestinian, Arab or Thirdworld-ist who stands on the line of resistance is a candidate for termination: Baghdad , Gaza , Lebanon , Serbia …etc are all fields for implementing this rule.

Rockets are not the Reason

Those who pretend that rockets are the reason behind the current Zionist massacre are liars. If we have to look for a reason for that massacre, it should be found in the1948 Zionist occupation of Palestine, the eviction of Palestinians from their homeland, and the Zionist insistence on terminating the Palestinian Right of Return (RoR) by all means. Three quarters of the population of Gaza are refugees who were evicted as a result of the occupation of Palestine in 1948, and who are part of a large community of Palestinian refugees amounting to 6.5 million scattered all over the globe. Why shouldn’t they resist?

The Zionist regime, US and most of western capitalist regimes, and later many Arab regimes are hand in hand supporting the Zionist settler and criminal regime working on terminating the RoR. Oslo Accords follow the same direction albeit it is not directly written in their text.

It is worth noting that the Zionist massacre is not only because Hamas stands for the RoR and refuses the recognition of the Zionist regime. It is well known that the Zionist massacres against the Palestinian people had never ceased since 1948, and Palestinian resistance will never stop as well.

It should be also noted that Palestinians are the only native people who still resist the white settlers, while in other white settlements, i.e. USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the native people had been mainly terminated while some have given up the struggle.

Will there be a big war?

This form of question is a simplification of facts. Israel does not need more than this level of holocaust against civilians. It is in Israel’s interest to force Palestinians into another mass eviction than to kill all of them at once. Zionists have never changed their plans: to occupy Palestine in its entirety, but ….void of its people. That is why; they prefer Palestinians’ self- ‘transfer’.

Of course, this does not eliminate the possibility of launching a massive war against Gaza or a massive destruction as the Zionists did in Lebanon 2006[1] considering the fact that the camp of globalization in their support. It is not an exaggeration to note that the transfer of Palestinians is a real possibility now.

One of the reasons for delaying a more extensive war is the Zionist expectation that they will lose more soldiers in a fierce face to face battle, a loss they are never ready for. For a colonial settler entity that fights for importing more settlers, losses of soldiers is of catastrophic consequences. The Zionist entity, Israel, is the only white settler regime that is still ‘buying’ new settlers, while the US white settlement is building a wall against Mexican immigrant workers who are fighting to enter the country even as slaves. During 2007, the number of settlers who left the Zionist regime exceeded the new incoming immigrants.

Bin Laden in Gaza !

A year or so ago, the PA repeated that some al-Qaeda fighters are in Gaza. Later, the PA and some Arab rulers repeated the same lies and accused Hamas of facilitating the infiltration of al-Qaeda militant to Gaza.

This propaganda is another war against resistance. As a matter of fact, many do not buy the story that there is a single al-Qaeda organization. I believe that the NOREG consider any militant all over Arab, Islamic and even Third world as al-Qaeda. Even if there is one single al-Qaeda, the question is: Who created it? Who started terror in the modern world history? It is the western capitalist regimes and later the comprador capitalist classes in the periphery against their own people.

The most dangerous part of the peoples’ enemy propaganda is its ability to mix all Arab and Islamic militants in one pot[2] and show that they are the so-called al-Qaeda or the Salafi!

Unfortunately, some Arab thinkers fall into that trap. In their criticism to Political Islam (PI), they are being lured by the hatred of the Zionist and western leftists towards Arab and Moslem resistance. Some of these writers are keen to proof to the Zionists and western leftists that they are not religious, and they are anti pan-Arabism …etc. They strive to be accepted in western leftist circles!

One of the bad results of this subjugation is that they confirm that Arab people support Salafiyah! That is why; Zionists and many western leftists used the victory of Hamas to ‘prove’ this pretence. These Arab writers failed to explain that in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and other Arab countries, the people have to choose between PI and the comprador which betray their history, memory, present, and future.

As long as these Arab leftist writers help the deformity of PI groups, they are, whether they mean it or not, placing socialist/Communist Arabs in the camp of imperialism. This, in fact, delays the re-emergence of an Arab radical left.

If Hamas wants to create something, it will not create al-Qaeda; it will create other fighters for Hamas! But, since the war machine is that extensive and is declared against the Palestinian people, why would not Palestinians create many al-Qaedas?

Israel Fights for Arab Regimes as well

This is another dimension or reason of the massacre in Gaza. We must remember that Arab regimes were and still are terrified by the Palestinian struggle. When the first Intifada erupted, the goal of Arab regimes was to keep their citizens away from its influence. When Hezbollah liberated South Lebanon, and later defeated the Zionists in 2006, Arab regimes were devastated.

When Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January 2006, Arab regimes were terrified again, and a global, though gradual, coup d’état started against it. The crisis reaches its peak when Hamas defeated Fateh in June 2007.

Consider the following developments: the Zionist aggression in Gaza is a protection for Arab regimes from the expansion of this phenomenon. One should keep in mind that these regimes are ready to pay any price to avoid the provocation of their suppressed people.

The Two Weak Wings

Anyone who believes that the Zionists will reduce their aggression, is either naïve or cooperating with them. It is an entity that was created against the Arab Homeland especially the Palestinian people. That is why, they have no alternative but to prove and emphasize their role.

If radical people in the region want to re-build their power and to fight for a united Arab socialist Homeland, defeat of the Zionist regime, and achieve the RoR, they must first start their battle against two local groups:

· The ruling comprador classes in Arab Homeland;

· The various groups of local intellectuals: the westernized, renegade communists, NGOized political activists and many academicians who are tied (and financed) in one way or another, by the bloody regimes of the United Sates, many other western regimes, and even the Zionist regime.[3]

____________

Please write to us or send your contributions to: mail@kanaanonline.org.
To visit Kana’an (KOL) website, please go to: http://www.kanaanonline.org
To subscribe to our mailing list, please send a blank e-mail message to english-join@kanaanonline.org

——————————————————————————–

[1] The arrival of the US Cole warship to the Lebanese shores is a direct threat for another destruction of that country.

[2] That is why; the comprador regime in Morocco arrested lately some leftists with Political Islamists. It should be noted that these arrests are in fact directed against the influence of Hezbollah of Lebanon as a new current which is not a fundamentalist. It might attract leftists as well.

[3] A very recent example of those intellectuals is the Moroccan poet Abdullatif Al-Lua’bi, who is visiting the occupied WBG now during the mass extermination of Palestinians in Gaza under occupation invited by the French Cultural Center. For those who are not familiar with the issue of normalization, any Arab who visits the occupied WBG is in fact normalizing with the Zionist occupation and recognizes the Zionist regime.

The Author is a Palestinian Marxist Economist living in Ramallah.

Bill Fletcher – Palestine Matters

When atrocities befall the Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli occupiers, much of the Western world remains silent. Particularly in the USA, we await an Israeli explanation for the atrocity, often assuring ourselves that we will be offered a rational and acceptable justification for whatever has taken place. Civilians killed, for instance, when the Israelis choose to assassinate a Palestinian leader, and we are generally told that it is tragic collateral damage. The use of cluster bombs in the attack on Lebanon in 2006, and we are treated to stories about the brutality of Hezbollah. The fact is that Israel is the only power in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, and we are entertained with silence. In each case, the response is accepted as understandable, given Israel’s fight for existence.

Today the people of Gaza are victims of what both Israeli and Palestinian human rights activists correctly call collective punishment. After the Hamas/Fatah mini-civil war in which Hamas took over Gaza, allegedly because they believed that Fatah was preparing to attack them, the Israelis began a blockade (as well as military incursions) with the full support of the Bush administration. This was followed by rocket attacks on Israeli settlements near Gaza by some Palestinian military units. The Israeli blockade never let up nor did Israeli attacks on Gaza or Palestinian rocket attacks against settlements. Despite Hamas’ repeated offers for a truce, the Israeli government has turned a deaf ear, finally locking the people of Gaza into a collective hell.

When, a few weeks ago, humanitarian organizations began voicing louder and louder concerns regarding the conditions facing the people of Gaza, the Israeli government and their apologists in the USA shrugged this off. I was stunned, for instance, to read commentaries in the US media where it was suggested that, while conditions may not have been ideal, there was no humanitarian threat. When Hamas blew up the walls blocking off Gaza from Egypt and hundreds of thousands of people entered Egypt in order to get badly needed supplies, some commentators in the USA suggested that the Palestinians were really just interested in obtaining more cheap cigarettes.

As a little reminder, the notion of collective punishment, that is, taking steps against an entire people due to the actions of some, is illegal according to international law. Consider, for instance, if the USA decided to blockade and bomb Sicily due to the activities of the Sicilian Mafia (which has been responsible for the deaths of thousands through the drug trade as well as other illegal activity). What if, in addition, the USA took military action against the Italian government because it had not taken a strong enough stand against the Mafia? Such an approach would be considered absurd, but this is, in effect, what has been unfolding against the Palestinians, not just today, but for the length of the Occupation that began in 1967.

The suffering in Gaza specifically, and Palestine in general, has not been the subject of any substantive discussion in the 2008 Presidential campaign. There is a code of silence that surrounds this subject and an unspoken assumption that whatever steps Israel needs to take to ensure its survival will receive 100% support from the US political establishment. Additionally, as was in full view in the aftermath of former President Jimmy Carter’s best-selling book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, those who question the Israeli Occupation and the US complicity in it, are subject to vitriolic attack, and more often than not, accused of being anti-Semitic. Thus, the conditions have been stacked in most so-called mainstream circles against a reasonable discussion of a key foreign policy matter.

The continued consequences of this approach should not need to be reiterated. Despite the photo-op that took place in Annapolis with the Bush-orchestrated Israeli/Palestinian summit in 2007, little progress has been made. Israeli strangulation of the Gaza makes it politically unlikely for the Palestinian National Authority, under President Abbas, to make any significant compromises, not that the Palestinians have much more to give.

The garroting of the Gaza and the destruction of the wall separating it from Egypt actually serves as a metaphor for the larger Palestinian situation. Whether through the “apartheid” Wall created by the Israelis cutting off Palestinian territory and creating, in effect, reservations for the Palestinians; through the imprisonment of some Palestinian leaders; through the assassination of other Palestinian leaders; and through the increase in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, the Palestinian people are being pushed further and further to the brink.

The good news, to the extent to which there is any, is that there has been a noticeable change in the climate on the ground in the USA when it comes to discussing Palestine. The fact that Carter’s book was a best seller, not to mention the growing attention in the USA and in Europe to the need for an immediate end to the Israeli Occupation, quite possibly portends an opening toward a just resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Yet the US political establishment does not get it. Each time they attempt to silence discussion of Palestine, or pretend that atrocities against Palestinians are simply the figments of someone’s imagination, their credibility in the eyes of the world further diminishes. It is the equivalent of attempting to keep a bubble under water.

With each atrocity against the Palestinian people comes another battle cry from one or another part of the planet, not only against Israel, but against their unconditional backers in Washington, DC. And those battle cries should raise our concern.

What about this do our political leaders not understand? When will they get the wax out of their ears and the cotton out of their mouths and recognize that a different road must be taken?

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is Executive Editor of The Black Commentator. He is also a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies and the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.

Al-Hakim George Habash: Testimony of the great Palestinian Arab leader

About his uprooting during the 1948 battle of Al-Lid Palestine

Interview edited by: Adib S. Kawar, a chapter of his book “Testimonies of Uprooted Palestinians”

Al-Hakim George Habash was a born leader, the respect of whom was inevitable and willingly accepted by the people around him without demand on his part… generations of young and old Palestinians and other Arabs in complete devotion and dedication to the Arab cause in general and the Palestinian one in particular, which is in its core… Al-Hakim (doctor and wise man) George Habash, made irreplaceable and unforgettable favors to all those who accompanied and worked with the beginning of the Arab nationalist movement and Palestinian Arab struggle on the road of return to the stolen and occupied homeland, Palestine and its neighborhood, that is ours in the past, present and future.

Al-Hakim exhausted his youth and up till the last breath of his life in the struggle for the cause. He sacrificed his promising and lucrative profession as a medical doctor that he studied and worked hard to complete for long years, but he sacrificed the profession, wealth and his health without regret or request for gratitude.

He deserves all the gratitude, respect and admiration by all his people…

Place and date of birth: Al-Lid Palestine 1927
I left Al-Lid twice: The first time to Yafa at age 13 after completing my elementary schooling. I had the patriotic feelings, simply general patriotic feelings, and I still remember demonstrations and resistance that were organized by Palestinian Arab citizens…

In Yafa I joined the secondary Orthodox school, and remained in it up till second secondary. I would like to mention here my Lebanese teacher of the Arabic language, Munah Khoury from the Lebanese south. He left in us a deep and strong impression. Arabic as a language was for him his complete, beloved and full world, he was reciting poetry as if being sung, and I admire him today. I still remember him well. I met him in Beirut when I joined the American University of Beirut, and I learned that he left later for the United States.

As Yafa’s school was an incomplete secondary school, I had to move to Jerusalem to join the Terra Santa secondary school. Upon completing my secondary education I returned to Yafa where I taught for two years, and in 1944 I joined the American University. While in Yafa I used to frequently go the Orthodox Club to read newspapers and magazines that came from Egypt, in which I used to read literary and cultural topics.

At the American University I was a top student, paying full attention to my lessons. In my spare time I used to practice my hobbies, especially swimming, and sometimes I used to sing. I had a good voice. Politics was out of my mind, and never occurred to me that I would get involved in it, and that it would become my whole life.

This condition of mine remained constant up till the beginning of my fourth year in the university, my second year in the school of medicine. When one day a friend in the university, Maatouk Al-Asmar, approached me and said that there was a professor in the university – meaning Dr. Constantine Zureik – who was conducting small closed cultural circles, talking to a limited number of students (20 – 30 students) about Arab nationalism, and about the Arab nation and how and why it should resurrect. He suggested to me the idea of attending these circles.

These were lectures the aim of which was enlightenment and stirring debate, and there were no organizational commitments. To be specific, Maatouk told me about a person called Ramez Shihadeh who at the time had already graduated from the university. “I want you to meet him to talk about Arab unity and the salvation of Palestine and how to achieve these goals, but as I was at the time planning to go back home, the meeting didn’t materialize.

That was at the end of June/July 1948, when Zionists had been trying to complete the uprooting of Palestinians from their homes and land, which at the time had reached its peak. The year ended and the university closed its doors. I told myself that I should go to Palestine and to Al-Lid in particular. Zionist forces uprooted the people of Yafa to temporally settle in Al-Lid. But my parents asked me to stay in Beirut, and sent me money; my mother was always worrying about me a lot. My arrival surprised the family and my mother said, “What do you want to do son?” And my sister for her part added asked: “What could you do?” I wondered whether I could fight. I had already started studying medicine and probably I could help in this field. There was in the hospital a doctor of the Zahlan family, and I started assisting him.

Al-Lid, like other Palestinian Arab cities and villages was in severe condition of confusion and worry. Zionists airplanes were bombarding Palestinians and frightening them. Conditions were severe and horrible.

I was involved in my work when my mother’s aunt came to the hospital and told me that my mother was worrying about me and asked me to return home. I refused and insisted on remaining in the hospital, but she insisted and I in my turn insisted on doing my duty. When I continued refusing then she told me that my elder sister whom I dearly loved had passed away. On my way back home I saw people in the streets in a severe condition of fright, and the injured, including some that I knew, lying unattended on the sidewalk.

We buried my sister near our house, as reaching the graveyard was impossible. Three hours later Zionist terrorists attacked our house shouting and ordering us to leave in Arabic, “Yala Barah, yala barah ukhrojo”, go out leave. My mother and I, along with my sister’s children –including a baby whom we carried – walked with our relatives and neighbors. We didn’t know where to go. The terrorists were ordering us to walk, and we walked. It was a very hot day, and it was Ramadan. Some of those around us were saying “this is resurrection day” and others said “This is hell”. Upon reaching the end of the town we saw a Zionist check point to search the people. We didn’t have any arms or weapons. And it seemed that our neighbor’s son, Amin Hanhan, was hiding money; fearing that they steal it from him, he refused to be searched. The terrorists shot him dead just in front of us. His mother and his younger sister rushed to see him and started wailing. His younger brother, Bishara, was a friend and classmate of mine, and we used to study together.

You ask me why I chose this path, why did I become an Arab nationalist. This Zionism and they speak about peace? This is the Zionism I know, saw and experienced.(*)

Al-Hakim referred us to us for details to the book: “Palestinian Struggle Experience. A full dialogue with George Habash”. One of the founders of ‘The Arab Nationalist Movement” and “The Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine”, and their first secretary general.

Amira Hass – Finally, a popular uprising

At the left, Ms Hass when interviewed recently in Italy.

The fall of the Rafah wall was a fitting combination of planning and the precise reading of the social and political map by the Hamas government, mixed with a mass response to the dictates of the overlord, Israel.

Quite a few people in Rafah knew that “anonymous figures” had secretly been destabilizing the foundations of the wall for several months, so that it would be possible to knock it down easily when the time came – but the secret didn’t leak. The hundreds of people who began leaving Palestinian Rafah right after the wall was breached did so despite the risk, and the precedent of the Egyptians shooting at those who infiltrate through the border.

The leadership and public of Gaza, as two elements of the occupied people, were partners in the courageous and necessary step of breaking the Israeli rules of the game. The breach of the wall is a clear manifestation of the conception and temperament of a popular resistance among the Palestinian people, which for various reasons, were dormant in recent years.

The Palestine Liberation Organization is concerned, and rightly so, that the collapse of the wall will provide Israel with an additional excuse to finalize the separation of Gaza from the West Bank. There is nothing new in this tendency: The Israeli siege of Gaza has been developing radually and persistently since 1991, and intensified during the Oslo years. But the PLO leadership then did not have the necessary creativity to lay down in time a practical challenge to Israel’s consistent, destructive and strangling policy of restricting Palestinian freedom of movement.

No wonder. Then, like today, Israel worked to heap privileges on senior Palestinian Authority officials and their associates, granting them some freedom of movement. The officials publicly condemned the restrictions on the movement of the general public, while submissively accepting their privileges. Therefore, their political imagination was unable to provide practical plans of action against the separation of Gaza from the West Bank, and against the reality of incarceration faced by the majority of their people.

The chance of using the achievement of having breached the wall as a way of moving forward and developing the tactics of a popular struggle is hampered by two primary obstacles. One is what’s called the “armed struggle” – such as rocket fire from Gaza targeting Israeli towns, or a suicide bombing in Israel. The Palestinian mantra that an occupied nation has the right “to fight using all means” rings hollow, since what’s at stake is not a right, but the effectiveness of the struggle.

It has been proven that through popular disobedience, the Palestinians manage to break the Israeli rules of the game and bring their concerns back to the centre of global attention – as well as intensifying criticism of Israel. The “armed struggle,” especially when it is aimed at civilians, achieves the opposite: It presents the Palestinians as the aggressor, not as the occupied party under attack, thereby weakening their global standing.

If the Gaza government does not want to lose the momentum of the wall’s fall, it must not make do with just having its own militants desist from firing Qassams: it must make it clear to other organizations that they are hindering a successful move of resistance.
The second obstacle is the Ramallah government’s entrenched refusal to speak with Hamas. These are, after all, two quasi governments whose legality is questionable from the perspective of the Palestinian Authority’s basic law. But both represent the same occupied people and the same tract of land subject to an accelerated process of colonization – and that overcomes all legal quibbling. Mahmoud Abbas met with Ehud Olmert without preconditions during the same weekend when Israel imposed the cruelest siege yet on Gaza, but Abbas can’t speak to Ismail Haniyeh without the Hamas leader accepting his preconditions?

This boycott contributes to the severance that Israel works so diligently to intensify. The longer the delay in direct talks between the two leaderships over practical ways of lifting the siege of Gaza, the greater the concern that indeed, as Hamas officials argue, the Ramallah government listens to the United States and to Israel – but not to the will of its own people.
from http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/949361.html

And Blair’s Plan Comes to Palestine

Michele Giorgio reporting from Jerusalem (from il manifesto, 18/12/07)
Blair played the role of protagonist also in Paris. The Quartet’s envoy for the Middle East and former British Premier takes seriously the duty of “developing the Palestinian economy”, as he has been entrusted by the American President George W. Bush, his companion in many military adventures. He takes his task so seriously that he’s churning out plans one after another. As many as four are the proposals the Quartet’s envoy has recently put forward for the “Rebirth of the Palestinian economy”, amongst which one with a striking name: “Corridor for Peace and Prosperity”.

It’s been ready for some time now, because it was already conceived by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). It foresees the development of a large agro-industrial area in the Jordan Valley, the most fertile zone in the Palestinian Territories occupied by Israel 40 years ago. Behind the good-intention rhetoric, the project reveals not only the aim to make the dependence of the Palestinian economy on the Israeli one official, but also the intention of indirectly legalising the Israeli settlements in that portion of Palestinian territory.

Also included in the “Corridor for Peace and Prosperity” are plans for waste management about which some criticism has already come from the people of Jericho. As a matter of fact, the dumping grounds are expected to be built only in the tiny A-area, the one which, according to the outdated Oslo Accords, is controlled (at least formally) by the PNA.

Actually, the plan doesn’t take into consideration building dumping areas in the C-Area, which includes most of the occupied West Bank and is under the full authority of the Israeli army. Evidently, the Japanese and Blair seem to take for granted that, in the future, the C-Area will remain under Israel’s control. Jamal Jumaa, a leading representative of the Palestinian civil society and activist for the “Stop the Wall” campaign, suspects that the plan includes “also managing waste from the Israeli settlements built in that area, for instance the massive Ma’ale Adumim, which by international law, are illegal.”

In contrast with the socio-economical pattern of the Jericho area, comprised of farmers who work their small plot of land, the development plan which has been conceived by the Japanese and approved by Blair, foresees the set up of big agro-industrial enterprises with a remarkable workforce. If one takes into account the indigence in which most of the inhabitants of the Jordan Valley live, it won’t be too hard to guess that it will be the Israelis and the same old Palestinian elite who will dominate the entrepreneurial scene whilst the peasants will be employed as unskilled workers.

In the JICA plan, at pages 8 and 9, reference is made to the primary role for the development of the agro-industrial area that is expected to be carried out by “Israeli migrant firms”, an expression behind which are concealed those Israeli firms operating in the Palestinian Occupied Territories that maintain business relations with the Jewish settlements of the Jordan Valley. “The Corridor for Peace and Prosperity,” Jamal Jumaa warns, “goads the Palestinians, through economic cooperation, into recognising the presence of the Israeli settlements. What’s more, with such starting points, the benefits for the Palestinians will be minimal to say the least, since our farmers will never have the necessary tools to be at the top of the managerial pyramid and therefore they will have to make do with the crumbs that drop off the table.”

Even the building of “Morajat Road” seems to confirm Jumaa’s warnings. Officially, this road, as conceived in the plan, has the task of making the movements of the local goods and farmers along the Jordan Valley easier. Actually, it allows Israel to bar Palestinian traffic from state roads connecting Jerusalem to the Jericho area, thus it has a share in the development of the twofold traffic system—one for the Palestinians and one for the Israelis—which the UN spokesman for human rights himself, John Dugard, has described as being “semi-apartheid”. It is worthwhile to remember that the “Morajat Road” starts and ends with Israeli checkpoints.

Being allowed to criticise the “peace” and “development” patterns that were formulated at the Annapolis conference of the past month, as well as those ones emerging from Blair’s plans, is becoming an increasingly harder feat. Yet, some Arab regimes that maintain close relationships with the Bush administration are starting to have some doubts. Yesterday, while in Paris it was decided to provide Abu Mazen’s PNA with hefty financial aid, more than a few people wondered whether the Arab States will fulfil the obligations they undertook towards the Palestinian President the past month in Annapolis. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in fact, seem to be reluctant to unreservedly take the side of Abu Mazen and to keep Hamas at a distance, which has controlled Gaza since last June.

Precisely from the Palestinian President’s entourage, it has been rumoured that Saudi Arabia is reconsidering the promise of covering half of the PNA’s yearly deficit (this year: 1.4 billion dollars). What’s more, only 80 out of 421 billion dollars that the Arab States granted to Abu Mazen in 2007 have been delivered.

On one hand, Saudi Arabia sides with Abu Mazen while on the other, it heistates in breaking off relations with Hamas, which represents an important portion of the Palestinian population.

Some day ago, the Hamas leader in exile, Khaled Meshaal, was warmly welcomed in Riyad by the Saudi establishment and therefore it is not surprising that the meeting was harshly criticised by the Palestinian President’s staff.

Translated by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo, members of www.tlaxcala.es, network of translators for linguistic diversity.

Italian source:http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/18-Dicembre-2007/art48.html

Nadim Rouhana – Israel’s Palestinians Speak Out

The Annapolis peace talks regard me as an interloper in my own land. Israel’s deputy prime minister, Avigdor Lieberman, argues that I should “take [my] bundles and get lost.” Henry Kissinger thinks I ought to be summarily swapped from inside Israel to the would-be Palestinian state.

I am a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship–one of 1.4 million. I am also a social psychologist trained and working in the United States. In late November, on behalf of Mada al-Carmel, the Arab Center for Applied Social Research, I polled Palestinian citizens of Israel regarding their reactions to the Annapolis conference and their views about our future, and how they would be affected by Middle East peace negotiations.

During Israel’s establishment, three-quarters of a million Palestinians were driven from their homes or fled in fear. They remain refugees to this day, scattered throughout the West Bank and Gaza, the Arab world and beyond. We Palestinian citizens of Israel are among the minority who managed to remain on our land. Like many Mexican-Americans, we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us. We have been struggling ever since against a system that subjects us to separate and unequal treatment because we are Palestinian Arabs–Christian, Muslim and Druze–not Jewish. More than twenty Israeli laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews.

The Palestinian Authority is under intense pressure to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This is not a matter of semantics. If Israel’s demand is granted, the inequality that we face as Palestinians–roughly 20 percent of Israel’s population–will become permanent.

The United States, despite being settled by Christian Europeans fleeing religious persecution, has struggled for decades to make clear that it is not a “Christian nation.” It is in a similar vein that Israel’s indigenous Palestinian population rejects the efforts of Israel and the United States to seal our fate as a permanent underclass in our own homeland.

We are referred to by leading Israeli politicians as a “demographic problem.” In response, many in Israel, including the deputy prime minister, are proposing land swaps: Palestinian land in the occupied territories with Israeli settlers on it would fall under Israel’s sovereignty, while land in Israel with Palestinian citizens would fall under Palestinian authority.

This may seem like an even trade. But there is one problem: no one asked us what we think of this solution. Imagine the hue and cry were a prominent American politician to propose redrawing the map of the United States so as to exclude as many Mexican-Americans as possible, for the explicit purpose of preserving white political power. Such a demagogue would rightly be denounced as a bigot. Yet this sort of hyper-segregation and ethnic supremacy is precisely what Israeli and American officials are considering for many Palestinian citizens of Israel — and hoping to coerce Palestinan leaders into accepting.

Looking across the Green Line, we realize that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has no mandate to negotiate a deal that will affect our future. We did not elect him. Why would we give up the rights we have battled to secure in our homeland to live inside an embryonic Palestine that we fear will be more like a bantustan than a sovereign state? Even if we put aside our attachment to our homeland, Israel has crushed the West Bank economy–to say nothing of Gaza’s–and imprisoned its people behind a barrier. There is little allure to life in such grim circumstances, especially since there is the real prospect of further Israeli sanctions, which could make a bad situation worse.

In the poll I just conducted, nearly three-quarters of Israel’s Palestinian citizens rejected the idea of the Palestinian Authority making territorial concessions that involve them, and 65.6 percent maintained that the PA also lacked the mandate to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Nearly 80 percent declared that it lacks the mandate to relinquish the right of Palestinian refugees–affirmed in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1948 and reaffirmed many times–to return to their homes and properties inside Israel.

Palestinians inside Israel have developed a history and identity after nearly sixty years of hard work and struggle. We are not simply pawns to be shuffled to the other side of the board. We expect no more and no less than the right to equality in the land of our ancestors. Israeli Jews have now built a nation, and have the right to live here in peace. But Israel cannot be both Jewish and democratic, nor can it find the security it seeks by continuing to deny our rights, nor those of Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, nor those of Palestinian refugees. It is time for us to share this land in a true democracy, one that honors and respects the rights of both peoples as equals.

This article can be found on the web at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071224/rouhana

Khalid Amayreh – Our Great Palestinian Negotiators

Ramallah, 2 December, 2007

Defending the farcical Annapolis conference, Palestinian negotiator Sa’eb Erekat (in the photo) has been indulging in a lot of verbal theatrics lately.

In a succession of interviews with the indisputably pliant Palestinian media, the “devil of Jericho,” as the late Yasser Arafat used to refer to him, has argued that the Palestinian negotiators are actually fighting a real battle with Israel for the purpose of restoring Palestinian rights.

Other Palestinian negotiators, mostly veterans of the ill-reputed Oslo era, have been making similar statements, aimed at duping the Palestinian masses into giving the Annapolis malarkey the benefit of the doubt.

Well, if battle it is, then it is amply clear that Palestinian negotiators are marching to it almost totally unprepared despite the existence of a Negotiations Affairs Department (NAD), which is answerable to the PLO, as well as a well-oiled Negotiations Support Unit (NSU) at which corruption, nepotism and cronyism reign supreme.

The NSU is funded and effectively controlled by the Adam Smith Institute (ASI), a pro-Israeli right-wing Think-Tank based in London. ASI runs the NSU through a man named Andrew Kuhn, who has the official title of “Senior Policy Advisor”.

ASI defines itself as the UK’s leading innovator of practical market-economic policies. For over 25 years it has been a pioneer in the worldwide movement towards free markets, public-sector reform, and free trade.

The Institute’s main focus is on reforming governments and state enterprises in order to promote choice, competition, enterprise, and user-focus. It works through research, reports, conferences, advice, and media debate.

As to how this institute can be entrusted with formulating recommendations on how Palestinian negotiators ought to deal with final status issues remains a mystery, at least to this writer.

Since 1999, the NSU has received tens of millions of dollars from European donors, including UK, which pays the lion’s share, Norway, The Netherlands and Denmark.

However, there is a shroud of secrecy surrounding NSU activities and especially with regard to its financial transparency and undeclared international connections. Inside sources have intimated that some of the NSU executives receive hefty salaries reaching $15,000 per month, in addition to other unspecified perks.

According to the sources, the NSU, which is closely monitored by ASI, is instructed to have no contacts with Palestinians who reject the Oslo Accords or are affiliated with organizations such as Hamas. NSU is also advised by the donors to shun Palestinians and others who “hold maximalist attitudes toward Israel and on core issues such as ‘the right of return’ and Jerusalem.

The NSU is also instructed to refrain from giving legal advice to the NAD and Palestinian negotiators if such an advice is incompatible with the letter and spirit of the Oslo Accords and subsequent bilateral agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

For example, the NSU recommended that the opening negotiating position adopted by the PA start with the demand that Israel should withdraw to the fourth of June, 1967, with the possibility of a land swap not exceeding 5% of the total area of the West Bank.

I really don’t understand why the PA allows a foreign-funded body to have an influence on a matter so paramount as the negotiations with Israel. Aren’t there competent Palestinian experts to do the job? Can’t the PA itself have an independent Palestinian “negotiations support unit”?

I recently spoke with Prof. Ali Jerbawi, Political Science Professor at Beir Zeit University and asked him why Palestinian negotiators had decided to make the Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders and the resolution of the refugee plight pursuant UN resolution 194, the maximum ceiling of their demands?

Jerbawi laughed and then said the following: “Because they are stupid, because they are ignorant, because they don’t understand the basics of negotiations. Even my grandmother understood that in order to have a reasonable price for one’s commodity, one had to demand first the highest possible price in order to finally get the wanted price.”

“They should have made the 1947- partition resolution, not UN resolutions 242 and 33. Their opening negotiating position. After all, if negotiations are to be conducted pursuant international law, then Palestinian negotiators should remind Israel and the world that the 1967 borders were actually and still are military armistice lines, not de jure borders.”

Jerbawi is right and to the point. The Armistice agreements of 1949 allowed Israel to gain 77% of the total land of mandatory Palestine. These agreements gave Israel the right to occupy 22% of Palestine more than the area allotted to the Jewish state by the Partition Resolution no. 181 of 1947.

More to the point, it was clear that the armistice agreements were dictated exclusively by military, not political, considerations. This means that Israel had no legal right to possess the territories occupied during the 1948 hostilities beyond the lines specified in the Partition Resolution.

In other words, the only de jure and legal boundaries Israel has ever had are those which were specified in the Partition Resolution, and that Israel’s pre-1967 borders are no more than de facto boundaries.

Hence, the armistice line of 1949 in no way created a new de jure borders to which one could attribute prerogatives of sovereignty.

Interestingly, this view was unambiguously stipulated in the Armistice Agreement itself in Article II, par. 2, which states: It is also recognized that no provision of this agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims and positions of either party hereto.

Similarly, Article VI, par. 9 states: “The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in Articles V and VI of this agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either party relating thereto.”

In light of the above-mentioned, it wouldn’t be unacceptable for Palestinian negotiators to demand or indeed insist that Israel withdraw to the partition lines of 1947. Indeed, the opposite is true, as such an insistence, or at least an opening negotiating position, is perfectly compatible with the letter and spirit of pertinent UN resolutions.

There is no doubt that the current Palestinian negotiating strategy is a gigantic disaster in every conceivable aspect.

The reason for that is clear. The PA, if it continues the present course, will eventually come under intense pressure to be flexible, by retreating from the starting negotiating stand, e.g. accepting less than a total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and especially East Jerusalem.

In so doing, the PA wouldn’t only compromise the Palestinian national constants it routinely but mendaciously claims to uphold, but would effectively succumb to the Israeli view that the territories occupied in 1967 are actually disputed rather than occupied territories.

This is a real disaster that should have been rectified a long time ago. However, because of the rampant corruption permeating throughout the PA, the same scandalous flaws characterizing the failed Oslo process have basically remained unchanged, and in some cases even exacerbated.

I know that military commanders shouldn’t be dismissed in the midst of ‘battle.’ However, in the Palestinian case, it is absolutely certain that entrusting strategic negotiations with a covetous Israel to the same old failed faces will lead to even a greater disaster.

The barren Oslo years should have taught us many lessons in how to handle Israeli prevarications and deceitfulness. However, the dismal performance of PA negotiators shows that they have learned next to nothing.