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Palestine is not a piece of real estate for Mahmoud Abbas

Editorial by Khalid Amayreh

There have been real fears of late that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas may compromise fundamental Palestinian national rights for the sake of "reaching peace with Israel."

According to insiders within Abbas' immediate circles, "the President!" may be willing and ready to offer far-reaching concessions to the Israeli apartheid state on three major issues:

The first is the paramount right of return for nearly five million refugees, uprooted from their homes and villages by the terrorist Israeli entity back in 1948, and subsequently expelled and dispersed all over the globe.

Abbas reportedly may be willing to accept the Israeli-American view, and, now, the French view, that there is no way the refugees can return to their original homes, now mostly destroyed and obliterated, or occupied by Jewish immigrants imported from around the world to fulfill Zionism.

According to Israeli media, Abbas on several occasions intimated to Israeli leaders that he would never insist on the return of the refugees to Israel proper and that only a symbolic return of tens of thousands, or even less, would suffice.

On 28 October, Sari Nusseiba, a protégé of Abbas, was quoted by the Jewish settler paper, the Jerusalem Post, as saying that the "Palestinians" would be willing to trade the right of return for Israeli withdrawal to the 1967.

The second major concession to Israel Abbas is contemplating will take the form of ceding large parts of East Jerusalem, particularly the Jewish colonies built after 1967. These include major settlements such as Ma'ali Adomim, Har Homa, and other colonies.

The PLO chairman, who has been acting and behaving like an absolute dictator and "ruling" by decrees, is reportedly willing to barter these settlements for Palestinian territories occupied in 1948, possibly in the Negev desert. Needless to say, this would be like giving up a piece of pearl for a piece of coal.

The third and equally scandalous concession, which Abbas reportedly views as "innocuous" and "foregone conclusion" is recognizing Israel as a country "of the Jews, for the Jews and by the Jews."

If true, and Abbas can't be given the benefit of the doubt, then the PA Chairman would be committing the greatest of all follies and the grandest of all treason.

First of all, Abbas has no right whatsoever to tamper with this most paramount issue which touches a sensitive nerve in each and every Palestinian man, woman and child.

Abbas and his flamboyant but gullible spokespersons may argue that as an elected president, he has the right to negotiate with Israel and even reach a peace settlement with it.

But this is a spurious and easily refutable argument. Abbas never said in his election campaign in 2005 that he would scrap the right of return. Had he said something like this, not only he wouldn't have been elected, but actually he might have been killed, even by his own Fatah party.

More to the point, Abbas was elected by a small percentage of the estimated 10 million Palestinians. Indeed, the total number of voters who elected him didn't exceed five per cent of Palestinians.

Hence, the claim that he has a mandate by the Palestinian people to sacrifice Palestinian rights for the sake of a peace that would effectively spell outright surrender to Zionist hegemony is laughable and silly.

Indeed, the right of return is sanctioned by international law and by the International Declaration of Human Rights which states that every person who had left his or her home for whatever reasons has an inherent right to return home.

Besides, if the refugees have no right to return to territories occupied in 1948, e.g. Israel proper, then, using the same logic, they will have no right to return to the territories occupied in 1967, for in both cases, repatriation is sanctioned by relevant UN resolutions.

As to Jerusalem, one would wonder what would become of the capital of Palestine when the bulk of it will be usurped by the deformed children of rape, the Jewish settlements.

And what kind of peace would that be if ethnic cleansing and settlement expansion were to be allowed to win? That wouldn't be peace, that would be a "legitimization" and perpetuation of an act of rape; and if Abbas would accept it to prove his good will to George Bush and Ehud Olmert, the Palestinian masses certainly wouldn't.

Thirdly, Israeli leaders have already indicated that Abbas is ready and willing to recognize Israel as "a Jewish state."

This is probably the most scandalous and stupidest political blunder any Palestinian politician would make. The reason is very simple: Recognizing Israel as a Jewish state implies that Israel, possibly at one point in the future, would have the "right" to expel its Palestinian citizens on the ground that Israel is a Jewish state and they are not Jewish. In fact, the Israeli parliament or Knesset is already discussing racist bills that would strip non-Jews of Israeli citizenship if they refuse to recognize Jewish supremacy vis-à-vis non-Jewish citizens of the state.

Mahmoud Abbas and his aides and hangers-on may well parrot the silly Israeli mantra that Israel is both democratic and Jewish, not realizing…or perhaps realizing, which would be even more appalling, that whenever there is any modicum of incompatibility between the Jewish aspect and the democratic aspect of the mendacious formula, the former would override the latter. Isn't that happening already?

Besides, one might really wonder what political or moral right Abbas thinks he has to speak on behalf of the nearly 1.5 million Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. Are they orphans or minors or leaderless that Abbas should speak for them in a matter of life or death such as this?

This is a paramount strategic matter for all Palestinians, especially across the Green Line, which really makes it imperative for Arab leaders in Israel, people like Sheikh Ra'ed Salah, Ahmed Teibi, Muhammed Barake, Taleb Sani' and others to speak up and warn Abbas to shut his mouth up and stop jeopardizing their future and national survival.

Finally, a word to Israeli leaders and their American subordinates. You should realize that the Palestinian people are different from other Arabs. We simply don't sheepishly follow our leaders; our leaders must follow us, and if they don't, we will dispose of them.

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Grand-Children of the Holocaust turning Gaza into another Ghetto Warsaw

Comment by Khalid Amayreh While the world is looking on passively, Israel is perfecting its strangulation of the Gaza Strip’s 1.4 million civilians. On Sunday, Oct. 28, the Israeli army reduced by more than 20% fuel supplies to the Strip. More cuts are slated to take place in the next few days and weeks, according to Israeli officials. Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered a gradual cutoff of fuel and electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip, ostensibly in preparation for a deep blitz into the occupied coastal territory. Given past experience, hundreds of mostly innocent Palestinians can be expected be murdered and maimed in such a blitz. Barak, a certified war criminal for his role, as Prime Minister, in the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians , including children, in 2000 and 2001, is using the recurrent firing of homemade projectiles from Gaza onto nearby Jewish colonies, as a pretext for his long-anticipated campaign of murder and terror against the impoverished territory. Barak also want to use another wave of bloodshed and terror in Gaza in order enhance his own popularity and public standing ahead of possible general elections in Israel. Needless to say, killing and tormenting Palestinians has always been the most effective tactic to win elections in Israel where the Jewish public has been for years drifting toward right-wing jingoism. The Qassam argument, often made to justify Israel’s Nazi-like approach toward the people of Gaza and Palestinians in general, is disingenuous and unacceptable. In fact, one could argue that Israel has done everything possible to push Palestinian resistance fighters to resort to this desperate act to deter Israeli aggression. Israel, which has been lying to the international community by claiming that it no longer occupies Gaza, has effectively turned that most densely populated spot on earth into a huge detention camp, very much like the Ghetto Warsaw. In this huge open-air prison, 1.4 million Palestinians are confined to 300 square kilometers, with very little food, little water, rampant unemployment, and a huge reservoir of despair, indignation and poverty. And at the top of all of this, the Israeli army, with its state-of-the-art technology of death, continues to murder and maim Palestinians, including civilians, on a daily basis. More to the point, Israel doesn’t allow Gazans to travel abroad for work or medical care, causing numerous Gazans to succumb to their illnesses. Last week, a Gaza middle-aged man died at the Eretz border terminal while awaiting indifferent Israeli occupation soldiers to allow him to enter Israel or travel to the West Bank for medical care. Similarly, numerous other Palestinians, with chronic health problems, had to succumb to their illnesses because the “apple of God’s eye” wouldn’t give them mercy nor allow God’s mercy to reach them. Israel’s callousness and criminality are also manifested in preventing Palestinians who had left Gaza from returning home. There are really no objective justifications for this hateful policy toward a people thoroughly tormented by 40 years of a Nazi-like occupation. Israeli leaders and apologetics routinely invoke the issue of terror. However, one is always prompted to ask what terror and what criminality is greater than keeping an entire people in a state of indescribable oppression for all these years? Besides, what would any people on the face of earth do when faced with these hellish conditions? Indeed, are Palestinians supposed to be denied access to food, work and basic necessities of life, and be killed and maimed and hounded and blockaded, and then remain silent? The Palestinian authorities in Gaza have repeatedly proposed a total ceasefire with Israel whereby both sides would refrain from attacking the other. However, an characteristically insolent and bellicose Israel has always said “No” on the ground that Israel, the chosen, can’t be treated on equal footing with “terrorists.”!!! The Israeli posture is very telling and needs no further explanation. Israel, like any other fascist-minded state is not after peace or coexistence with the Palestinian people, its enduring victims. Instead, Israel simply wants to kill Palestinians, starve and torment them until they surrender to Zionist designs of ethnic cleansing, lebensraum and territorial aggrandizement. But this the Palestinians won’t accept even if the entire Palestinian people at home and in the Diaspora were to perish. Today the survival of the Palestinian people is the ultimate litmus test of human conscience everywhere because if Palestinians were to be let down by a world that is increasingly overwhelmed by spin and lies and ferocious capitalism, then this would be an absolute indicator that the world is on a sure course of moral demise and self-destruction. On the other way, a brave stand against the powers of darkness and hegemony, e.g. Israel, its guardian-ally, the United States, and their allies, would be a soul-saver for humanity. There is no doubt that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Likewise, resisting oppression and fascism will help the cause of freedom and justice everywhere in the world. This is why all honest people on earth, people who will not cower before brute force, people who are willing to call the spade a spade, are called upon to rise up and take to the streets in order to send an unmistakable message to the Nazis of our time in Tel Aviv, who are now committing a slow-motion genocide in Gaza. Don’t say “we didn’t know.”

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The 9-11 Conspirators & Their "Unbreakable Bond" with Israel

Exposing the 9-11 Cover-Up

The "Unbreakable Bond"
with Israel of the Zionist Judges Controlling the 9-11 Litigation

By Christopher Bollyn

As expected, the nominee to be next Attorney General of the United States has a long history of obstructing justice,
preventing discovery, and covering up the evidence of Israeli involvement in the terror attacks of 9-11.

President Bush with the nominee Michael B. Mukasey

If Israeli agents were not prime suspects in the "false flag" terror attacks on the World Trade Center,
and if a passenger screening company owned by Israeli intelligence agents were not a defendant in the 9-11 litigation,
the fact that the crucial 9-11 lawsuits have been handled by two Zionist judges from the same synagogue might be considered a coincidence.

But with so much evidence of Israeli involvement in 9-11 in plain view, the intimate connection with the State of Israel of
these judges can not be discarded as mere coincidence. It should rather be viewed as evidence of the on-going, high-level, and well-planned cover-up.

The Zionist judges controlling the 9-11 litigation have acted like the Israeli bulldozers after the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra,
Shatila, and Jenin. Like judicial bulldozers, the mission of these orthodox Jewish judges is to bury the evidence of Israeli involvement in the
"false flag" terror attacks of 9-11.

ZIONIST JUDGES

In what might otherwise be seen as coincidence, the two presidentially-appointed federal judges who have presided over the
most crucial 9-11 cases are both orthodox Zionist Jews who attend the same Manhattan synagogue and support its Talmudic yeshiva.

The federal judges Alvin K. Hellerstein and Michael B. Mukasey, the nominee to be the next U.S. attorney general, are
both members of a Zionist congregation, the orthodox Kehilath Jeshrun synagogue of Manhattan, and are
active supporters of its yeshiva, the Ramaz School.

A yeshiva is an orthodox Jewish school affiliated with a synagogue where Talmudic interpretation of Mosaic law is taught. In an
orthodox yeshiva, the Talmudic interpretation of the Torah is based on rabbinical teaching that completely changes the meaning of Mosaic law.

Talmudic interpretation effectively negates the meaning of the Ten Commandments as the late Israeli scholar Israel
Shahak pointed out in his book on Jewish supremicism, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years.

To an orthodox Jew, Shahak wrote, Talmudic scholars interpret the commandment "Thou shall not kill,"
to mean that a Jew is proscribed only from killing another Jew. Non-jews, on the other hand, are fair
game and can be killed like animals. The rest of the Mosaic law is interpreted likewise concerning treatment
of non-Jews, according the Shahak's book.

Unbeknownst to most Americans, the key judges who have overseen the most important 9-11 lawsuits and
Michael Chertoff, the Asst. Attorney General who directed the non-investigation of 9-11, are all members of this
extremely racist and un-American religious sect. They, like the other key officials involved in the 9-11 conspiracy,
were all raised and educated in this tradition.

The judges, officials, and advisors involved at every critical point of the 9-11 conspiracy and cover-up are
all Jewish Zionists dedicated to the State of Israel. This is how Zionist agents have been able to cover up
the truth of what really happened on 9-11.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Michael Chertoff,
the former assistant attorney general responsible
for the criminal division of the Dept. of Justice.

Chertoff was the key Zionist gate-keeper and controller
of the "non-investigation" of 9-11.

THE SYNAGOGUE

The Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun is a Zionist synagogue, according to its mission statement.
It defines itself as a "modern Orthodox" synagogue, which is "deeply committed" to "an unbreakable
bond with the State of Israel and its citizens."

The orthodox branch of Judaism is a minority sect making up about 10 percent of American Jews.
This minority sect, however, wields immense power in the government and courts of the United States.

The Kehilath Jeshurun congregation has a long history of shaping the Zionist agenda. In the 1920s,
for example, it hosted orthodox Zionist conferences where plans were discussed to bring all the Jews of
Russia to the southwestern United States.

"Our identification with the State of Israel and our fellow Jews extends well beyond the more conventional
UJA/Federation, Israel Bonds and tree-planting campaigns," the congregation's mission statement says – and indeed it does.

The Kehilath Jeshurun congregation acts as an agency of Israel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and
some of its members occupy positions of power within the government of the United States.

The "modern" orthodox congregation also has a long history of calling for segregation and separation of
Jews from Christians and Christian influences in the community. Like other orthodox Jews, the congregation is
opposed to Reform Judaism, the largest branch of Judaism. Orthodox religious expression is the only form of
Judaism that is recognized by the State of Israel.

As a religious sect that is based on race, intermarriage between Jews and Christians is anathema to
orthodox Jews like Chertoff, Hellerstein, and Mukasey.

ROOTS IN THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT

Like most Zionists, the parents or grandparents of Chertoff, Hellerstein, and Mukasey are from the largely
uncivilized frontier region between the Russian and German spheres of influence known as the Pale of Settlement.

The Pale of Settlement refers to the expanse that reaches from Lithuania to the Black Sea, a region between
Prussia and the Russian Empire of Catherine the Great, who created the Pale in 1791. The Pale existed until
1917 and is occupied today by Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania.

The areas around Brest-Litovsk, Grodno, and Byalistok had the largest concentrations of Jews and were
hotbeds of Zionist activity in the late 1800s. Jews outnumbered Christians in some of the towns, such as
Grodno, an old Lithuanian city.

When Catherine the Great annexed this western region, she banned the Asiatic Jews who lived there
from coming to Russia. These Jews were primarily descendents of the displaced Khazars who
had converted to Judaism in the 8th Century.

In the Pale of Settlement, the Khazar Jews, generally referred to as Ashkenazi, usually lived in
communities separated from the non-Jewish people they lived among.

MUKASEY & HIS YESHIVA

Michael Bernard Mukasey and his wife are members of Kehilath Jeshurun, the orthodox synagogue
that is connected to the Ramaz yeshiva. The Ramaz School was started in 1937 by Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein.

First class in the Ramaz School, 1937

Lookstein served concurrently as principal of the Ramaz School in New York and as president and chancellor
of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, where he was chancellor from 1958 to 1979. This illustrates the intense Zionist
character of the Ramaz school and synagogue.

Mukasey attended the Ramaz School and graduated in 1959. His wife, the former Susan Bernstock
Saroff, was a teacher and headmistress of the Ramaz Lower School. Both of Susan's children, who were
adopted by Mukasey, attended the Ramaz yeshiva.

Mukasey, the nominee for attorney general, attended the Ramaz yeshiva and reportedly "remains heavily
involved in that community." That "community" would be the orthodox, Zionist, and Israeli community of Manhattan.

In 1948, according to the Ramaz school's website, children of Israeli diplomats on "special missions"
began enrolling in the Ramaz School. These Israeli students attended Ramaz with Mukasey, who speaks Hebrew.

Isaac Herzog, the son of Chaim Herzog, the former president of Israel and head of the Israeli military
intelligence, attended the Ramaz school in the 1970s. Isaac Herzog was government secretary under
Ehud Barak and is currently a minister in the Israeli government.

Mukasey will be the second Jewish attorney general, if confirmed. Ed Levi, who served under
President Gerald Ford was the first.

Mukasey was nominated as a federal judge in New York in 1987 by President Ronald
Reagan and became the chief judge in 2000.

Mukasey was elevated to Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of
New York, succeeding Judge Thomas P. Griesa, on March 12, 2000. Mukasey remained in this position until
August 1, 2006. As chief judge for New York City, Mukasey was well placed to control the entire legal process concerning 9-11.

"From 1967 to 1972, Mukasey was in private practice, where his clients ranged from right-wing lawyer
Roy Cohn to the Daily News," the newspaper reported. "He then switched sides and joined the Manhattan prosecutor's office,
where he forged a life-long friendship with future Mayor Rudy Giuliani."

In an article entitled "Local Rabbi Thinks Michael Mukasey Perfect for AG Job," the New York Daily
News reported that after President Bush announced his intention to nominate Mukasey, the FBI called on his rabbi in Manhattan.

"Rabbi Haskel Lookstein said the G-men wanted to know if there was anything in the 66-year-old judge's
background that could scuttle his nomination," the Daily News reported. Lookstein
reportedly told the agents that Mukasey was "a mensch."

"There's nothing wrong with him," the rabbi said. "He's as close to perfect as you can be.
And that's the way he was at 15."

Very little is known about Mukasey's family background. There are very few articles that mention the name
Mukasey prior to 1960. The Mukasey name is a Jewish surname from a place named Lachowicze, in the region of Brest.

Judge Mukasey's wife was the headmistress of the Ramaz Lower School in the 1990s when he was
handling the case of the first "false flag" terror bombing of the World Trade Center. This case was
primarily meant to prepare public opinion for what was planned for 9-11.

A "STRONGLY BIASED ZIONIST JUDGE"

At the beginning of the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the sheik's lawyers filed a
motion requesting Mukasey recuse himself from the trial.

The motion argued that Mukasey's allegiance to Israel created a bias against the
Muslim defendants. Mukasey dismissed the motion as "utterly irrelevant."

Michael Bernard Mukasey

"A strongly-biased Zionist judge," is how Dr. Edward W. Miller described Mukasey
in his 1997 article about the trial of the blind sheik.

"Mukasey is a committed Zionist, a long-time supporter of Israel,"
Miller wrote. "His wife is also a Zionist."

"Sheik Rahman was denied the lawyer of his choice by Judge Mukasey, and when he asked the
court to permit an expert to explain the practices of Islam to an ignorant American jury, he was refused
this due process. Eventually, on January 17, 1996, Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman was sentenced by a Jewish
judge of strong Zionist leanings to imprisonment for life plus 65 years."

"After receiving his lifetime sentence," Miller wrote, "this elderly, sick and blind sheik, standing before the
Jewish judge, spoke quietly and at length in Arabic.

"He pointed out the on-going 'historical junction' at which 'the spiritual power of Islam was confronting
the military/material juggernaut of a Zionist White House.'

"Sheik Rahman continued, debunking the prosecution's theory that he heads an international terrorist
organization. He emphasized that he was sequestered in a jail in Cairo in the early 1980s at the time the so-called
'international terrorist group' was allegedly being formed.

"Judge Michael Mukasey was visibly irritated by the Sheik's remarks, and interrupted the scholarly cleric
repeatedly and rudely, finally remarking that 'religion has nothing to do with the case.'

Source: Miller, Edward W., "A Political Prisoner In the U.S.: Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman,"
The Coastal Post, March, 1997

A lawyer who tried a case before Mukasey described him as
"Dour and condescending; imperious and egotistic."

"I seriously doubt whether he has the 'people skills' that the DOJ needs in a new AG," the attorney said.

HELLERSTEIN & RAMAZ SCHOOL

Alvin K. Hellerstein, who has presided over all the 9-11 cases brought by victims and relatives of victims,
is also a trustee and sponsor of the Ramaz School on the Upper East Side, where his children also studied.

Hellerstein has been president of the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York and serves on
a taskforce for the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, which addresses the needs of
Orthodox Jewish women who want a divorce.

Hellerstein's wife, Mildred, and Audrey Lookstein, the wife of the rabbi of Kehilath Jeshrun,
are Zionist colleagues and senior officers of an Israeli organization named AMIT.

Mildred Hellerstein is listed as being a National Treasurer of AMIT, an organization dedicated to fostering
"religious values and Zionist ideals" in the Israeli children in its schools and programs in Israel. Lookstein has
been vice president of AMIT several times and was chair of AMIT's national board of directors in 2006.

TEVI TROY – ASHCROFT'S POLICY DIRECTOR

Tevi David Troy, former policy director for Sen. John Ashcroft

Tevi Troy (formerly Troyansky), Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human
Service, is another graduate of the Ramaz School.

Troy was the policy director for Sen. John Ashcroft (R-MO) in the late 1990s before he was appointed to be
Bush's first Attorney General, an appointment Troy enthusiastically supported in his article
"My Boss the Fanatic" published in The New Republic.

Attorney General John Ashcroft listening to his assistant, Michael Chertoff

Ashcroft now has a consulting business and earns much of his money by representing Israeli
military companies. In 2006, Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) was reported to be a major client of the Ashcroft Group, LLC.

Prior to his May 2007 appointment as Deputy Secretary of the DHHS, Troy was Deputy
Assistant to the President George W. Bush for Domestic Policy. In August 2003, Troy was appointed to
serve at the White House as Deputy Cabinet Secretary and Liaison to the Jewish community.

An orthodox Jew, Troy is the son of Elaine Gerson Troy and Bernard Dov Troy, the former
"Executive Director of the Jewish Educators' Assembly in Manhattan."

Troy is the grandson of Thomas and Pauline Troyansky, Russian Jewish immigrants
who came to the United States in the early 1900s.

He is married to Kami J. Pliskow, the daughter of Dr. Raymond and Vita Pliskow of Tacoma,
Washington. Raymond studied medicine at the University of Michigan.

The Pliskow family, a Russian Jewish family that immigrated to the U.S. in the early
1900s has its own interesting history of terrorism.

Barbara Pliskow, a former instructor in psychology at Wayne State University in Detroit,
attempted to hijack an American Airlines Boeing 727 on September 24, 1971 armed with a gun, dynamite,
and other explosives. She was reportedly attempting to hijack the flight on behalf of the "Black Liberation Army"
to free imprisoned members of the Black Panther Party.

Pliskow was charged with the capital offense of attemped piracy of an airliner.
Because the engines of the plane had not been started, however, Pliskow was not
prosecuted under the federal skyjacking statue.

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Blair's true colours

"The real reason Blair was seconded to the Quartet -- liquidating
Palestinian resistance to occupation
-- appears ever clearer, writes Saleh Al-Naami

Rabbi Benny Elon, president of the right-wing Israeli National Union
Party, was unable to conceal his relief last Thursday when a Hebrew
radio news programme presenter asked him about his evaluation of the
recent plan devised by Quartet envoy and former British Prime Minister
Tony Blair. "Finally, even Blair agrees with us on two primary
points," Benny Elon said. "These are uprooting the Palestinian
terrorist organisations and solving the problem of the refugees
without holding Israel any responsibility for it."

Revealed the previous day, Blair's plan for the reform of Palestinian
Authority (PA) institutions left resounding reverberations in the
Palestinian arena. Factions, elites and the Palestinian public alike
were shocked when it became clear that "reform" of PA institutions, as
Blair sees it, means ensuring conditions that allow for a tightening
grip on Palestinian resistance movements, particularly in the West
Bank. The plan draws no tie between this and decreasing attacks on
Palestinians by Israel's occupation army and settlers.

According to the plan, a Hebrew copy of which was posted on the
Israeli Haaretz newspaper website last Wednesday, Blair views it
necessary to enact administrative reform in the security agencies of
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in order to make their war against
Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the West Bank more effective. The
plan draws a connection between the ability of Abbas's agencies to
wage a relentless campaign against Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the
future of a settlement to the conflict. In the plan's introduction,
Blair wrote that without the Palestinian security agencies conducting
severe operations against Palestinian resistance movements in the West
Bank, there is no hope of reaching a settlement to the conflict.

To make Abbas's security agencies more effective in their war against
Palestinian resistance movements, the plan recommends granting powers
to the judiciary and the Office of the Public Attorney in the West
Bank that allow them to try members and leaders of the resistance. In
addition, the plan recommends forming a new PA administration for the
supervision of prisons that includes European oversight so as to
guarantee that members of the resistance who have been tried are not
released.

The plan further calls for increasing the number of European
consultants who aid the Palestinian police in its activities to pursue
members of resistance movements. It also calls for increasing the work
of the team led by American security coordinator General Keith Dayton,
who is responsible for increasing the effectiveness of the PA's
security agencies and in particular the national security and
presidential security agencies.

Palestinians were appalled by Blair's recommendation to include
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak as a member of the committee to
supervise execution of the plan, alongside Palestinian Prime Minister
Salam Fayyad and Blair himself. Blair has submitted a copy of his plan
to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and plans to present it for
approval during the upcoming summit meeting set to convene this year
in Annapolis.

Yet Palestinians agree that the most alarming part of Blair's plan is
its attempt to lay a basis for settling the Palestinian refugee issue.
Using the argument of working to improve the economic conditions of
Palestinians, the plan recommends constructing new housing projects in
the West Bank with the goal of repatriating refugees there. At the
head of the projects recommended by Blair is the establishment of a
new Palestinian city near Ramallah in the central West Bank and
allocated to house hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees as
part of a plan to "rehabilitate" them. Israeli right-wing leaders and
pundits promote this same plan as a solution to the refugee issue.

In return for all the obligations the plan places upon the PA, it only
urges Israel to lighten restrictions placed on the freedom of movement
for Palestinians in the West Bank as Blair considers it important for
Palestinians there to feel a "positive" change in their standard of
life.

For their part, representatives of the Palestinian factions have
harshly criticised Blair's plan, describing it as seeking to eliminate
the Palestinian cause. Jamil Al-Majdalawi, politburo member of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and head of the
refugee committee in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), holds
that some of the parties close to Abbas had encouraged Blair to
propose his plan.

For his part, Khaled Al-Butsh, a prominent leader in Islamic Jihad,
says the plan aims to "cheat" the right of return under the slogan of
"rehabilitating refugees". It represents an attempt to essentially put
an end to the refugee issue. Speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly, Al-Butsh
said that Blair sees no problem in Israel's "criminal assaults",
settlement activities, Judaisation of Palestinian areas, and settler
attacks.

For Yehia Moussa, vice-president of the Hamas bloc in the PLC, Abbas
is colluding with Blair to eliminate the refugee issue. Moussa points
to statements made by Abbas recently indicating the possibility of
finding "creative solutions" to the refugee issue. Speaking to the
Weekly, Moussa stressed that Blair and those in contact with him will
discover that the Palestinian people are capable of "undermining the
conspiracy they are plotting".

The rancour of Palestinians was piqued by the fact that Blair's plan
flagrantly ignores the oppressive measures visited upon Palestinians
by the Israeli army and settlers. This despite all the statistics
provided by human rights groups, including Israeli organisations,
confirming that Palestinian civilians are subjected to horrendous
abuses. According to statistics, the number of Palestinians killed by
occupation army bullets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the
beginning of the year is 350 while the number of occupation soldiers
and settlers killed by Palestinian resistance operations has been only
five.

According to Israeli human rights organisations, settlers committed
25,000 assaults against Palestinians throughout the West Bank since
the start of this year alone. In some areas, such as Hebron, these
assaults have led to large numbers of Palestinians leaving their
neighbourhoods. Despite the widening scope and intensity of such
assaults, only one settler has been sent to trial, and he was released
on a meagre bail. In the northern West Bank, settlers have uprooted
10,000 olive trees and have poisoned hundreds of artesian wells. They
have also let loose large herds of swine to destroy agricultural
crops. And according to an Israeli study, the military checkpoints
Israel has erected in the West Bank interfere with the lives of 80 per
cent of all Palestinians.

Yet even more serious in Blair's plan is the fact that it ignores the
frank and documented statements made by leaders of the Israeli army in
which they admit that they create conditions that facilitate settlers
committing crimes against Palestinian civilians. General Yuval Bazak,
head of the "military theory development" department in the Israeli
army's joint staff and who once led the Israeli army in the West Bank,
recently told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot that the
occupation army has for dozens of years ignored the assaults of
settlers on Palestinian civilians. "A grave deception is taking place
here," Bazak said. "We, as the army, are helping Jewish settlers to
commit crimes against unarmed Palestinian civilians."

He added that the Israeli army covered for Israeli terrorist
organisations active in settlements. He further stressed that the army
and Israeli intelligence do not make any moves to dismantle Israeli
terrorist organisations.

At the same time that the plan recommends "reform" of the Palestinian
judicial system to make it more "competent" in dealing with
Palestinian resistance movements, it fails to address the Israeli
judicial system, which Israeli human rights organisations say ignores,
in a racist manner, the grievances of Palestinian citizens assaulted
by settlers. A report issued by the Israeli organisation There is Law,
which monitors occupation activities in the West Bank, states that
only one per cent of the complaints filed by Palestinian citizens in
the West Bank with the Israeli police over settler assaults made
against them end with positive convictions. In all of the remaining
cases, the file is simply closed.

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Unmasking AIPAC

By WILLIAM A. COOK

VRay Suarez (PBS News Hour Reporter, October 2, 2007): "You're saying that the national legislature of this country, rather than doing the will of the citizens of the United States, passed that Iran resolution, sanctioning the Republican Guard, because of the American-Israeli Political Action Committee?"

Mike Gravel (Democratic Presidential Candidate): "Wait a second. They'll (sic) be some information coming out about how this thing was drafted. So the answer is yes, the short answer. ... This is what's at stake with this resolution. And it's the height of immorality, irresponsibility, and the United States Senate, with the Democrats in charge, voted for the passage of this resolution. It doesn't get any worse than that, Ray.".

In asking his question, Ray Suarez implies that our Senators capitulated to the desires of AIPAC, knowing their vote negated the expressed will of the American people. Gravel, once a Senator from Alaska during the Vietnam War period, answers unhesitatingly, "yes," the short answer is yes. The obvious follow-up question would appear to be: "Why do you think that our Senators would vote against the expressed wishes of their constituents in favor of a special interest lobby?" It was never asked. Fortunately, Sy Hersh, in an interview with Amy Goodman that same day, responded to a question posed by Goodman, a question drawn from a Gravel criticism of Hillary Clinton for having voted for this resolution. Goodman pointed to the 76 votes in favor, both Republican and Democrat, asking Hersh to respond to Gravel's critique: "This is fantasy land," Gravel commented, "We're talking about ending the war. My god, we're just starting a war right today. There was a vote in the Senate today. Joe Lieberman, who authored the Iraq resolution, has authored another resolution, and it is essentially a fig leaf to let George Bush go to war with Iran. And I want to congratulate Biden for voting against it, Dodd for voting against it, and I'm ashamed of you, Hillary, for voting for it. You're not going to get another shot at this, because what's happened, if this war ensues, we invade, and they're looking for an excuse to do it." Goodman's question is simple enough, why would 76 senators vote for such a resolution. Hersh's response: "Money. A lot of the Jewish money from New York. Come on, let's not kid about it. A significant percentage of Jewish money, and many leading American Jews support the Israeli position that Iran is an existential threat. And I think it is as simple as that. ... That's American politics circa 2007."

Gravel understands the consequences of giving Cheney and Bush the freedom to attack Iran's Republican Guard as a terrorist organization rather than as the legally constituted military of the state existing to protect the citizens of that state. They need no act of Congress to attack a terrorist organization and, citing the Encarta encyclopedia description of terrorism, "These violent acts are committed by non-governmental groups or individuals ­ that is by those who are neither part of or officially serving in the military forces ­ ...," they have defanged the definition of terrorism as it cannot be applied to a nation state. Cheney and Bush are now free to invade Iran to wipe out the terrorist organization harbored by that country. Why pretend that an established arm of the government of Iran is a terrorist organization when the opposite is so evident? Because Cheney and Bush and their Neo-con/AIPAC alliance have not been able to convince the American people of the threat to the US should Iran eventually acquire nuclear capability. The Kyl-Lieberman resolution gives this administration license to attack Iran using the original resolution passed by the Congress for the invasion of Afghanistan since Iran now harbors terrorists that threaten America.

How serious is this possibility we might ask. Newsweek carried an article in the October 1 issue about Israel's "secret" raid on Syria. In it, Sam Gardiner, a former Air Force Colonel, seen as an expert in simulation of military exercises, makes this observation: "Even if Israel goes it alone (attacks Iran's nuclear facilities), we will be blamed (the United States). Hence we would see retaliation against U.S. interests." In short, the United States is tied to Israel and its interests by an umbilical cord that determines how and when we go to war and with whom. Iran is Israel's primary nemesis as well as its primary target. The "mysterious raid deep in Syria" magnifies this point; only the media control created by "a nearly impenetrable wall of silence around the operation" has kept the American public from understanding the potential consequences of the Kyl-Lieberman resolution that passed October 2, only a month after Israel's "raid." Should Syria have responded to this unwarranted aggression by a missile or bomb attack on Israel, the U.S. Congress would have been forced to determine how to respond. With the Kyl-Lieberman resolution in place, only Bush has to respond by citing the Iranian terrorist organization's ties to Syria and especially to Hezbollah. A threat to Israel is a threat to the U.S.

It is this reality that makes the recent study by Mearsheimer and Walt so dangerous to the Israeli lobbies, especially AIPAC. Indeed, they define AIPAC by encompassing the multitude of Jewish lobbies under that umbrella while adding in non-Jewish Neo-cons, Christian evangelicals of the far right and other sympathizers.

Gravel's awareness of this threat as expressed to PBS represents the rare occurrence when the reality of our total support for Israel's interests is aired in public. An objective consideration of the "raid" of September 6, 2007 by the Israeli Air Force against Syria as it would have been reported in the American press had it been Syria attacking Israel would not have been headlined "The Whispers of War." Indeed that report did not focus on Israel's disregard for international law or its consequences, but rather on how Israel can deliver nuclear or standard bombs as far as Iran. It went further to turn this unprovoked operation to Israel's cause by noting how that state's very existence is threatened by one atomic bomb, thus presenting Israel as the potential victim not the perpetrator of an action contrary to the United Nations' charter. Had Syria attacked Israel, the explosiveness of such an unprovoked and uncalled for attack against an innocent country would have made front page headlines and the cover of all our news magazines. Yet Israel's unprovoked and uncalled for attack on Syria is presented in U.S. News as "Israel takes a swipe at Syria," hardly an item that would make the American people aware that they were at risk for their ally's illegal action against a neighbor. And as if that were not enough, the significance of one nation bombing another without provocation becomes only the 10% hike in Ehud Olmert's ratings as opposed to the death and destruction caused by this illegal action with an accompanying photo, not of the death and destruction, but of Olmert giving blood for his countrymen. No outcry follows this despicable behavior by the Teflon state ­ not from the United States, not from the United Nations, not from the EU, not from NATO. Only silence.

Consider for example the consequences of Israel using its United States' gifts of nuclear bunker buster bombs on Syria or Iran, both possible scenarios as this "raid" ( the name of an insect repellent) makes clear: "... huge amounts of radioactive material will be lofted into the air to contaminate the people of Iran and surrounding countries ... This fallout will induce cancers, leukemia, and genetic disease in these populations for years to come, both a medical catastrophe and a war crime of immense proportions,"(Dr. Helen Caldicott, Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer.) No outcry, only silence. Why?

What does AIPAC's control of our Congress mean for the American people? Arguably, that influence propelled the U.S. into war against Iraq with its inevitable consequences in death, destruction and debt leaving the nation bereft of a resolution; it has solidified perception around the world that Israel's defiance of the UN resolutions demanding that it obey international law regarding right of return for Palestinians and return of occupied territory is not just condoned by the U.S. but is the policy of the U.S., making the United States a co-partner in international crime; it has made Israel's illegal treatment of the Palestinians in its indiscriminate killing of children and women, in its use of extrajudicial assassination, in its imprisonment of a whole people resulting in extreme poverty, malnutrition, and disease, in its total control of the lives of these people who have no recourse to overcome the occupation since they have no means to do so, practices condoned by the United States, and turned the U.S. from a compassionate and morally responsible nation to one that is amoral and hypocritical; and, in absolute despair, it has placed America on the thresh hold of one more devastating war against a people that has done nothing against the United States, has not occupied another nations's territory, has not invaded another nation, and has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, all actions that are diametrically opposed to those of our client state, Israel. Such is the sell out by our representatives of their constituents as they grovel, unlike Mike Gravel, before the insidious lobby that controls our fate. No outcry, only silence. Why?

Ultimately the question comes back to why those 76 senators voted for a resolution that "wipes the desires of the American people off the map," to borrow an intentionally falsified and reiterated translation of the Iranian President's message to his people. But those 76 are not alone. Virtually everyone of our representatives are subservient to the same lobbies, passing on average 100 resolutions per year favorable to Israel and written by the lobbyists, obsequiously fawning before AIPAC's annual meeting where its very existence is touted as of "significant benefit for both the United States and Israel," and where no one dares to question or criticize the state of Israel lest they suffer the fate of those who have, and lose their seats in Congress. This one might argue is coercion. Can it be documented? One need only research the congressional and senate races that put Paul Findley, Cynthia McKenny, Charles Percy and the few other renegades that dared to be critical of Israel out of their positions. "The handful of members of Congress who have been critical of Israel over the last 40 years have been publicly chastised with a figurative dunce cap or, worse, lost their seats to AIPAC-backed opponents" (NewsMax.com, May 1, 2006. "Israel the Third Rail of American Foreign Policy," Arnaud de Borchgrava, Editor at large of the Washington Times).

Interestingly, the United States defines terrorism (18 USC 2331) as "violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that ... appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnaping." Could one not make a case that our Congress in its total support for Israeli policies regardless of their negative impact on the country and its disregard for the expressed desires of its citizens as the Kyl-Lieberman resolution demonstrates is "influenced" by "intimidation and coercion" by these lobbies? Add to this reality the influence they wield in our media where they limit the perception of the public to the lies and mythologies they present that justifies the actions of the Israeli state, and the pervasiveness of the lobbies prevents the American people from controlling their own destinies. Does that not make them terrorists residing on K street in our nation's capitol?

Isn't it obvious today that the direction of America's policies regarding Iran, and our almost certain to be pre-emptive invasion of this nation on behalf of Israel, is directed by the same coterie of men who pushed us into the disastrous war against Iraq -- Podhoretz, Wurmser, Perle, Feith, Crystal, Kagan, Krouthammer, Abrams and others too numerous to mention, the hounds of war that find no guilt in sending the sons and daughters of others to fight the wars they wage so eloquently in their heads as they sit in front of their computers guiding to their deaths those they never met.

The Hounds of War are gathered round
To forge the battle plan,
They pat each other on the back,
And grasp their fellow's hand.

To battle stations they disperse
To carry on the fray,
These warriors of the word sublime
That makes us weep or pray.

They swing behind the keyboard now
That spits out their deceit;
Their goal, the end they desire,
That makes their life complete.

These victors suffer no regrets
As they pen brilliant epithets,
And so they ply their lonely craft,
And carve another's epitaph.

William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Depception: Bush's Mideast Policy. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU

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How the Zionist Sabotaged the Rescue of Jewish DPs

In regards to a article on Canada's low intake of Jews during and after WW II - and how Canada had racist reasons for its poor response: I would like to add another perspective.

Did you know that Pres. Roosevelt spearheaded a successful initiative to persuade Allied nations to take in virtually all of Europe's displaced Jews, and was talked out of it by American ZIONIST leaders?

The story is told in Alfred Lilienthal's 1953 book What Price Israel? told below -

By Alfred Lilienthal

From What Price Israel? Chapter 2

There were other lands, besides Palestine, to which the Displaced Persons could have gone. President Roosevelt was deeply concerned with the plight of the European refugees and thought that all the free nations of the world ought to accept a certain number of immigrants, irrespective of race, creed, color or political belief. The President hoped that the rescue of 500,000 Displaced Persons could be achieved by such a generous grant of a worldwide political asylum.

In line with this humanitarian idea, Morris Ernst, New York attorney and close friend of the President, went to London in the middle of the war to see if the British would take in 100,000 or 200,000 uprooted people. The President had reasons to assume that Canada, Australia, and the South American countries would gladly open their doors. And if such good examples were set by other nations, Mr. Roosevelt felt that the American Congress could be ‘educated to go back to our traditional position of asylum’. The key was in London. Would Morris Ernst succeed there?

Mr. Ernst came home to report, and this is what took place in the White House (as related by Mr. Ernst to a Cincinnati audience in 1950):

Ernst: We are at home plate. That little island [and it was during the second Blitz that he visited England] on a properly representative program of a World Immigration Budget, will match the United States up to 150,000.

Roosevelt: 150,000 to England – 150,000 to match that in the United States – pick up 200,000 or 300,000 elsewhere, and we can start with half a million of these oppressed people.

A week later, or so, Mr. Ernst and his wife again visited the President.

Roosevelt (turning to Mrs. Ernst): Margaret, can’t you get me a Jewish Pope? I cannot stand it any more. I have got to be careful that when Stevie Wise leaves the White House he doesn’t see Joe Proskauer on the way in. (Then, to Mr. Ernst): Nothing doing on the program. We can’t put it over because the dominant vocal Jewish leadership of America won’t stand for it.

Ernst: It’s impossible?! Why?

Roosevelt: They are right from their point of view. The Zionist movement knows that Palestine is, and will be for some time, a remittance society. They know that they can raise vast sums for Palestine by saying to donors, ‘There is no other place this poor Jew can go.’ But if there is a world political asylum for all people irrespective of race, creed or color, they cannot raise their money. Then the people who do not want to give the money will have an excuse to say ‘What do you mean, there is no place they can go but Palestine? They are the preferred wards of the world.’

Morris Ernst, shocked, first refused to believe his leader and friend. He began to lobby among his influential Jewish friends for this world program of rescue, without mentioning the President’s or the British reaction. As he himself has put it: I was thrown out of parlors of friends of mine who very frankly said ‘Morris, this is treason. You are undermining the Zionist movement’.

He ran into the same reaction amongst all Jewish groups and their leaders. Everywhere he found ‘a deep, genuine, often fanatically emotional vested interest in putting over the Palestinian movement’ in men ‘who are little concerned about human blood if it is not their own.’

This response of Zionism ended the remarkable Roosevelt effort to rescue Europe’s Displaced Persons.

On December 22, 1945, President Truman directed the Secretaries of State and War, and certain other federal authorities, to speed in every possible way the granting of visas and ‘facilitate full immigration to the United States under existing quota laws.’ Congress, which had often shown its vulnerability to Jewish pressure groups, did not implement the President’s request regarding the application of unused quotas to uprooted Europeans. Finally, Congressman William G. Stratton in the so-called "Do-Nothing" 80^th Republican Congress introduced a bill in 1947, to admit Displaced Persons ‘in a number equivalent to a part of the total quota numbers unused during the war years.’

Under the Stratton Bill, up to 400,000 Displaced Persons of all faiths would have been permitted admission into the United States. The Committee hearings on this legislation (HR 2910) lasted eleven days and covered 693 pages of testimony. But there were exactly 11 pages of testimony given by Jewish organizations. They seemed, in fact, profoundly uninterested. But in 1944, when the House Foreign Af­fairs Committee was considering the Wright-Compton resolution that called for the establishment of a Jewish Commonwealth, there had been scarcely a Zionist organization that had not testified, sent telegraphed messages, or had some Congressman testify in their behalf. In support of the Wright-Compton resolution, 500 pages of testimony were produced in four days, the vast bulk by Zionists and their allies.

Yet on the Stratton Bill , which would have opened America’s doors to 400,000 Displaced Persons, the powerful Zionist Washington lobby (otherwise most articulate) was virtually silent. Only one witness appeared for all the major Jewish organizations – Senator Herbert Lehman, then the ex-Governor of New York. In addition to Lehman’s statement, there was a resolution from the Jewish Community Councils of Washington-Heights and Inwood, and the testimony of the National Commander of the Jewish War Veterans . Not a single word was volunteered in behalf of Displaced Persons by any of the Zionist organizations, which were at that moment recruiting members and soliciting funds ‘to alleviate human suffering’.

To a meeting at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, Congressman Stratton expressed his surprise at the lack of support from certain organizations, which normally ought to have been most active in liberalizing the immigration law. Obviously, the Illinois Representative (now Governor) had never heard the President of the Zionist Organization of America exhort his membership:

‘I am happy that our movement has finally veered around to the point where we are all, or nearly all, talking about a Jewish State . That was always classical Zionism. ... But I ask … are we again, in moments of desperation, going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism, which is likely to defeat Zionism? Zionism is not a refugee movement. It is not a product of the Second World War, nor of the first. Were there no displaced Jews in Europe, and were there free opportunities for Jewish immigration in other parts of the world at this time, Zionism would still be an imperative necessity.’

The generous admission of Jewish Displaced Persons to the United States, and other countries, would have eradicated the necessity for a ‘Jewish State’. Yet the human flotsam in former concentration camps impressed the Zionist only in two respects – as manpower and as justification for Jewish Statehood.

This is what a Yiddish paper had to say on the distressing subject: ‘By pressing for an exodus of Jews from Europe; by insisting that Jewish DPs do not wish to go to any country outside of Israel; by not participating in the negotiations on behalf of the DPs; and by refraining from a campaign of their own – by all this they [the Zionists] certainly did not help to open the gates of America for Jews. In fact, they sacrificed the interests of living people – their brothers and sisters who went through a world of pain – to the politics of their own movement.’

And this is what the Jewish Forward, largest Yiddish newspaper in the world, had to say on December 11, 1943: ‘The Jewish Conference is alive only when there is something in the air which has to do with a Commonwealth in Palestine, and it is asleep when it concerns rescue work for the Jews in the Diaspora.’

Dr. Louis Finkelstein of the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan, one of the country’s most renowned theologians, stated in an interview in 1951, it had always been his feeling that ‘if United States Jews had put as much effort into getting DPs admitted to this country as they put into Zionism, a home could have been found in the New World for all the displaced Jews of Europe.’

Speaking at the Eightieth Anniversary of the Miztah Congregation at Chattanooga, Tennessee, New York Times publisher Sulzberger pleaded that ‘plans to move Jews to Palestine should be but part of larger plans to empty these camps of all refugees, Jew and otherwise.’ He called for a reversal of Zionist policy that put statehood first, refugees last: ‘Admitting that the Jews of Europe have suffered beyond expression, why in God’s name should the fate of all these unhappy people be subordinated to the single cry of Statehood? I cannot rid myself of the feeling that the unfortunate Jews of Europe’s DP camps are helpless hostages for whom statehood has been made the only ransom.’

All these voices of reason and honest compassion were lost in the nationalist emotionalism of the day. Zionism’s real objective was hidden behind the incessant denunciations of the British and anyone else who opposed Zionist aspirations in Palestine. The non-Zionist American of Jewish faith was engulfed by frenzied sentiment. A letter to the Editor of the Washington Post, pointing out that ‘it ill behooved Zionist sympathizers to shed crocodile tears over the displaced persons’, resulted in a violent fistfight on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The following stereotyped reminder invariably hushed dissenting whispers against the partition of Palestine: ‘How can you be so cruel as to prevent those poor refugees from finding a home?’

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An Open Letter to Mahmoud Abbas - President of the Palestinian National Authority

We the Palestinian Canadian community assembly at the Palestinian National Voice Preparatory Conference in Hamilton, Canada, issue this letter out of profound concern regarding the present state of the Palestinian national struggle and the November 2007 “peace” conference to be hosted by the United States in Annapolis, Maryland.

While Palestinians still suffer from the disaster of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian National Authority has now agreed to attend another round of flawed negotiations. This time it does so under the pressure of North American and European nations that have actively collaborated with Israel to divide the Palestinian people and inflict collective punishment and other war crimes against them.

Even now Israel is being allowed to deny the Palestinians the basic necessities for a functioning society through a humiliating siege against the Palestinian people in response to the exercise of Palestinian democracy and the adherence to its results.

It is our belief that the purpose of the Annapolis round of negotiations is to extract further critical concessions from the Palestinians while further delaying final status agreements. In particular, we believe that Israel will attempt to redefine the conflict with the Palestinians as being only about ending the occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, or parts thereof. Such a redefinition leads the Palestinians into the trap of the “two-state” formula which subverts our legitimate rights under international law. We stress that the central issue in the Palestinian conflict with Israel has always been the dispossession of the Palestinian people from their land and property caused by the Zionist ethnic cleansing of 1948 and the Israeli denial to Palestinians of the basic human right to return and to live in peace and security as equal citizens on their land.

We further specifically caution you against any recognition of Israel as a “Jewish” state. Such a recognition would give Israel the façade of moral and legal legitimacy while critically compromising the full implementation of the inalienable Palestinian right of return. In addition, it would contradict the struggle by Palestinian citizens of Israel to maintain their identity and gain equal rights as citizens. We point out that Israel was established through United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (Partition Resolution) which does not envisage or consent to the establishment of states on a religious or ethnic basis.

In addition, we underscore that Israel was admitted as a member of the United Nations on the basis of its having recognized the full right of return of the Palestinian people on the basis of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 (Right of Return Resolution).

Today it is more apparent than ever that the only basis on which peace can be brought to the historic land of Palestine is through the establishment of a unified secular democratic state in which all citizens are equal and share the same rights and responsibilities regardless of a citizen’s religion.

Palestinians can only be properly represented through a delegation representing the united Palestinian people. Accordingly, it is essential that the internal dispute between Ramallah and Gaza be resolved before Palestinians participate in any negotiations with the Israelis.

In addition, the ultimate decision on what Palestinians can accept can only be determined by a fully elected and democratically effective Palestinian National Council (PNC) representing all of the world’s 10 million Palestinians.

Palestinians who are denied the right to participate in elections to the PNC cannot be regarded as having consented to any agreement made in their name. The re-activation of the PNC as a fully elected and democratically effective body would also have the effect of re-energizing the Palestine Liberation Organization as a legitimate instrument of the Palestinian people.

We stress that any attempt to establish peace and security in the land of Palestine can only be successful if it is firmly based on natural justice and the principles of international law. We reconfirm that the right of the Palestinian people to return to their homes and property and to receive full compensation for all damage done to their property as well as for all other losses associated with the violation of their rights by Zionist forces is both an inalienable individual and collective right.

Any Palestinian leadership that suggests that the inalienable Palestinian right of return can be negotiated away abrogates any legitimacy it may have had to speak in the name of the Palestinian people.

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The beginnings of "Canada Park" (the destruction of Imwas)

I posted a story a story once about one of Canada's Dirty Little Secret
found Here

Here are videos that attach the video in the above link:
Part 1 2 3 and 4
Canada Park in Israel

Rich Wiles is a photographic artist who has been living and working in Palestine for much of the last five years.

His photography work has been shown around Europe, in the U.S., Australia and Palestine itself, amongst other places.

Since 2006 he has been writing from Occupied Palestine under the title 'Behind the Wall' for a forthcoming book.

Much of this work is based in and around the refugee camps where he is based in Palestine, highlighting daily life and memories of refugees who still live in forced exile nearly 60 years after Al Nakba.

On the table in front of me a young boy stares out from an old photograph on the back of a magazine. The strong-looking boy is around ten years old and dressed simply, behind him the classic brick work of a traditional Palestinian abode contextualizes the image. The photograph was taken in the early 1960’s outside the school in a small village north-west of Al Quds. This small village has a million stories to tell about the last 60 years or so, about colonialism and occupation, resistance, and the ongoing struggle for its rights.

It is a village with a dark history that its people are still struggling against today although now exiled from their land.

The village of Imwas, and the neighbouring villages of Yalo, and Beit Nuba, which make up the area known as the Latrun Enclave, bore witness to war crimes.

Abu Gaush was born in the village of Imwas, and though now exiled from his land he continues
to struggle for it actively. He was born just a few years after Al Nakba during which Imwas was attacked several times by Zionist militias but never fully occupied. Around 50,000 Dunums of the village’s land was stolen but most of the houses and the center of the village were elevated from the surrounding plains and were successfully protected by some Jordanian soldiers and Palestinian resistance groups. Yishtak Rabin was the Israeli military leader in Al Quds in 1948 and Ariel Sharon fought and was injured in the Latrun during these unsuccessful Zionist attempts to occupy the villages.

The villages were strategically situated being on the transport routes from Al Quds to Yafa. Abu Gaush grew up hearing these stories and the stories of neighbouring villages that had been demolished and depopulated, but at the age of 14 he says he really started to understand and feel what occupation meant:

“Two days before the war started in 1967 everybody was preparing for a war between Israel and the Arabs. Some Egyptian soldiers came to the villages and we also noticed a lot of Jordanian soldiers moving unusually in the area. The old men were very afraid because they had seen 1948 but us youth were pleased because we thought Egypt was strong and could free Palestine. On June 5th my father asked me to work with him to make a shelter in a cave to use when the bombing started. We worked until about 1am then I went to sleep, I was very tired. At 4am I woke after hearing noises. I could hear people saying that (Israeli) tanks had surrounded our village.

Our house was at the eastern edge of the village and on one of the highest points so we could
see what was happening.

We saw tanks in semi-circles surrounding the village and advancing from the north, south, and west. Many of the men of 20 years or older went to support the Jordanian soldiers. Some of the villagers had old guns from the First World War. My brother went to defend the village but he said the Jordanian army pulled out of the village around midnight. He stayed with many other youth to defend the village but once the Jordanians had left and they saw that tanks were all over the villages his men also decided to withdraw.

The Israeli’s were searching houses, my family fled to the mountains as they were frightened
that 1948 was happening all over again, we remembered what had happened in Deir Yassin and other villages less than 20 years earlier. Some families went to the Latrun Ministry believing they would be safe there because it was a Christian place but they were not. My family first went to Yalo, then Beit Nuba, then onto Beit Ur before finally being forced to walk all the way to Ramallah.

The soldiers emptied all the houses in the villages and forced everyone out onto the streets.
The only way open was to Ramallah and they told us to go there. Other soldiers were saying ‘
Go to Jedah, all land before there is ours and if you stop before Jedah we will kill you!’”

Abu Gaush was young and strong but not all villagers were so able and some simply couldn’t leave:

“There were ten elders in the village including one disabled man. They didn’t leave. We know
they didn’t leave because they couldn’t, but nobody ever saw any of them again after that night.

One soldier has written a testimony which said he saw another soldier telling one of these old
men to leave his house, but the man refused saying ‘I cant walk and I wont leave!
You can kill me here but I will not leave!’”

Maybe these ten villagers were killed and buried, or maybe they were buried alive underneath the destruction of their houses, but no evidence of them has ever been found. They never got out of the village that much is known. Those that did leave, over 10,000 from the three villages, took very little with them:

“People took keys, small things, some were forced to go with no shoes or real clothes,
they were forced out in just their nightclothes, I saw people walking barefoot. We walked all
the way to Ramallah, 32 kilometres with no food or water, it took us about nine or ten hours.
Four people from the village died during this journey. My family was friends with the Mayor of
Ramallah and we went to live with him for 2 months. Some other people also came to Ramallah
but most just kept going straight to Jordan. Many of those that came to Ramallah lived inside schools or mosques when they first arrived.”

About a week after being forced out of the Latrun villages in June 1967 an announcement was
made over Israeli radio that all villagers could return to their homes peacefully. Those still in the West Bank tried but when they reached the villages they found checkpoints and tanks surrounding the villages and forcing everyone away. Abu Gaush’s brother made this journey back to Imwas, his parents decided he should make the journey alone to see if it was safe before taking all the family.

Their hesitancy proved wise. Despite the Israeli announcement that villagers could return home nobody was allowed into the villages. A ruling had been made to allow the villagers back but it was over-ruled militarily. Instead villagers could watch the spectacle as one by one their homes were being systematically blown up. Bulldozers ploughed over ancient olive trees and houses were crushed under these huge mechanical monsters or blown up by Israeli Explosive Units. There was no resistance in the village and its people had been forced out days earlier. Nobody knows if the ten elders were still alive inside their houses or not when this happened. The villagers were forced to return to Ramallah again.

As Abu Gaush explains the story of Imwas though his experiences I look through a series of
postcards documenting the destruction. An Israeli photographer was in the village as the Explosive Units carefully laid their wires before bringing each home its knees. But to me the images seem to show men at work, there isn’t the urgency and panic of war photographs. The members of the Explosives Unit seem relaxed as though they could be instead workmen constructing a family home. There was no panic as the men ‘worked’. All villagers excluding the ten who were never found, were already away from the village. There had been no resistance in the event when the IOF came, and the days the houses were demolished were many days later, the village had already been depopulated.

These ‘relaxed workmen’ were carrying out the orders from above. These orders were to commit war crimes.

Two months later villagers were told that they could return to the villages with trucks but only to collect their harvest which had been stored away before they were forced out:

“My brother drove our truck. We saw everything destroyed, just the mosque was still standing.
People were crying and weeping, some were just standing, looking, speechless... Some had lost
all their land in 1948 but had tried to rebuild there lives and now it had all happened again.
People needed anything so took whatever they could find and put it into trucks.
Some people found a sheep or a goat but the houses were totally destroyed.
We found our ‘cawasheen’ (a big box containing important documents such as deeds to
property and land) but couldn’t get any clothes or anything else. We knew there was
nothing left but we wanted to see what had happened to our village…”

The villagers collected what few things they could salvage and their harvest before leaving once more, nobody was allowed to stay. The villagers who stayed in the West Bank formed a committee to oversee negotiations with Israel about returning to their land:

“My father was on the committee that negotiated with Israel. They were offering money as compensation for our land and homes. My father told them 'we will not accept all the money in the world for one dunum of Imwas, and we will not accept one dunum in heaven for one dunum in Imwas!’.

The Israeli’s told him that he had three choices ‘…one, u can go the same way as
Abdul Hameed; two – prison; three – put something sweet in your mouth and keep quiet!’

Abdul Hameed Al Sayeh was a Palestinian Sheik who vociferously spoke up for unalienable
Palestinian rights including the Right of Return and was exiled by Israel for speaking out.
With these three options they were basically being told to accept some compensation and give
up the right to ever return to their villages and keep their mouths shut, otherwise they would end up in prison or being exiled. The committee members said that they were not the leaders of
the village, most of them had gone to Amman, and that Israel must allow the leaders to come
back from Amman to negotiate, but Moshe Dayan refused. Those who had gone straight to Jordan were not issued West Bank ID cards in 1967 and Israel would not allow them to return. In fact Dayan had struck a deal with the Ministry Of Defense and the Israeli cabinet in which he agreed that the Palestinians who had been forced out of six other villages including Qalqilya, Habla, and Zeta, could return to their villages on the understanding that the Latrun villagers could never return.

Dayan, Rabin, and Sharon had all been involved in and around the Latrun enclave during the
Nakba years. Sharon was injured in the villages in 1948 and all three had been involved in various Zionist attempts to occupy the villages without success. By 1967 all were prominent figures in the military leadership and were seemingly all intent on settling what seemed like personal grievances because of the successful Palestinian resistance of the villages years earlier and the subsequent embarrassment it no doubt caused the three leaders. Dayan wrote soon after the war about the ethnic cleansing of the Latrun villages:

"[houses were destroyed] not in battle, but as punishment . . . and in order to chase away the inhabitants . . .”

Rabin, as the Chief of Staff and IOF leader in 1967, ordered the destruction of the villages
which was an act in direct violation of article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which concerns property protection under Occupation. Furthermore, ‘Forced displacement’ as perpetrated against the villagers is prohibited under article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and also under International Humanitarian Law.

The Imwasees and refugees from the neighbouring villages continued to try to negotiate and
struggle for their return whilst also living in forced exile.

“I started to hate them because they forced me out. I ‘felt’ this from the first day they came
in 1967. A feeling began to build in my chest and in my mind. First I had heard stories about
Al Nakba but from 1967 I saw myself what they did. After years of this we all search for a way
to fight... for a way to struggle against it. In 1973 I went to Beirut to study and I became active
with Palestinians groups there. What you see in your childhood gives you the feelings which
you struggle with…”

After completing his studies Abu Gaush returned to Palestine and started working with a small
secret resistance cell. He was arrested in 1977 and sentenced to eleven years. Not long after
release he was arrested again in 1991, and sentenced to a further 18 months for taking part in
the resistance. Between these two spells in prison Abu Gaush was able to return to Imwas to visit several times:

“We would walk in the village. We collected fruits like romman (pomegranate) and grapes,
and zatar (Thyme), but it made me angry to go back. The reason I fought the Occupation was
because of Imwas.”

Abu Gaush says he is ‘old’ now so he must struggle in different ways.
Since his release from prison he has put all his time into struggling through campaigning for
the rights of the Latrun villagers and also political prisoners.

“Now we see what they do and from generation to generation this grows and we want again
and always to struggle. Now I must continue my struggle in other ways, I am still with the struggle and I always will be. I stand with our interests; we have the right to our land!”

So now Abu Gaush devotes his time to the Imwas Human Society (www.imwas.org) which canvasses for publicity and awareness to the war crimes committed in the Latrun Enclave, and campaigns for the villager’s rights. They work to produce literature based on testimony’s both from villagers themselves and also from members of the IOF who took part and bore witness to the events of 1967 in the area. They also organize annual demonstrations and other activities to raise the profile of Imwas and tell its tortured story. Imwas was a village Occupied in 1967 so the villagers are not looking to return to a village now located inside ‘Israel’, but a village that is inside the West Bank. Abu Gaush is quite clear what the villagers want:

“This is land Occupied in 1967 and we have the full right to return to our land and rebuild our
homes even under Occupation. We refuse any compensation if it is not included with full return.

We refuse any resettlement or any border modification. We have also held demonstrations against the PA for not actively attempting to help us get our rights. We are happy to talk to the PA but I think they will give up our rights and give our villages away. They are not strong enough to stand up to Israel, and I think they will agree to a land swap…”

If you go to find the village of Imwas today you will not see a traditional Palestinian village. Instead you will see Canada Park. In 1973 the Jewish National Fund of Canada raised $15million in order to establish a pleasant picnic area for Israeli’s on the road from Tel Aviv to Al Quds. The Canadian JNF still maintain the facility today and are clearly proud of Canada Park. In their literature they describe the park as ‘one of the largest parks in Israel covering an area of 7,500 acres in the biblical Ayalon Valley. At peak season, some 30,000 individuals visit the Park each day, enjoying its many play and recreational facilities and
installations.’ The project to establish Canada Park began less than 5 years after war crimes were committed in the village.

The website of the JNF of Canada goes on to proudly proclaim ‘We are proud
of our role in the transformation of the land of Israel in partnership with our brethren in Israel.
We remain committed to "reclaiming our homeland"’. The hundreds of thousands of visitors
who relax and enjoy the fresh air of Canada Park every year now are doing so on the site of unrecognized war crimes for whom no-one has ever been held accountable. Underneath the park there still remains the cemetery of Imwas, and maybe somewhere down there lay the ten village elders who were never accounted for.

And for sure, down there past the buried layers of this ‘park’, past the footprints and amongst the dust of former homes, are the spirits and souls of the displaced, the Imwassees. Abu Gaush knows his soul, or rather his ‘childhood’, is still in Imwas:

“I can draw every neighbourhood (in Imwas) from memory, I can still see the faces of my house. Every stone, every tree means something to me. We lived in peace but they forced us out.

I left my childhood in Imwas – money or property is nothing to me but I left my childhood there… and now it is a park for Israel.”

The Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 to help establish a Jewish State in Palestine.
It has branches worldwide and buys up state land in ‘Israel’ (including occupied Palestinian land); it currently owns around 13% of all state land including the land of many destroyed Palestinian villages.

Its funds have supported practices of ethnic cleansing, the destruction of Palestinian villages, and the appropriation of Palestinian land, much as in Imwas. In July 2007 the Israeli Knesset approved a bill reaffirming that all JNF land can only be allocated to Jews. Luisa Morgantini
(Vice President of the European Parliament) described this move as Israel striking ‘another blow against democracy, fueling discrimination and Apartheid’. However, such nuances didn’t concern Israel’s staunch supporters either side of the Atlantic. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown accepted an invitation to become the new patron for the UK branch of the JNF only weeks later, and in the U.S. such supposed advocates of ‘democracy and human rights’ as Hilary Clinton are similarly willing to support practices of Apartheid with her work as a JNF lobbyist.

Whilst Israel attempts to bury and erase history with the full backing and support of much of the outside world the people of Imwas, Yalo, and Beit Nuba, continue to struggle for their rights.

Through their campaigning they are trying to raise awareness to their case,
something Abu Gaush does passionately:

“We want to send a message to European people that they must stand with us because their
governments stood against us and with Zionists and caused this suffering. We want British people to correct what the British Government did, and still do, and stop this suffering. We believe that Zionism cannot accomplish its ends without the support of Europe and the British Government…

What happened in Imwas is against all standards of law, and if people talk about democracy
and freedom than they must support those who struggle for them. You must stand with the Palestinian right to return back to our land. Israel is an occupying state and it must respect international humanitarian law.

It was a war crime and people must be held accountable and sent to court for that. The soldier’s testimonies say they met no resistance – they forced us out and demolished our homes for no reason.”

Abu Gaush is an articulate and dedicated man. His features are strong but his face is warm, its
lines hint at the struggles of life. He bares little resemblance now to the fresh faced young boy in the photograph on the back of the magazine. But that confident and strong looking young boy in the image still had his village, and he still had his home. The photograph of Abu Gaush had been taken nearly half a century earlier in his village of Imwas, but that was before he had been exiled, before his village had been destroyed, before he had walked 32 kilometres to Ramallah without food or water, before he had spent 12 years in prison. The photograph was taken before it had all happened…

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Pro-War Mongerers are Mostly [Pharisee-Masonic]-Jews

The Jewish Telegraph Agency Reports

Four of five members of the board of a campaign promoting President

Bush's policies in the Iraq war are Republican Jews.

The board of "Freedom's Watch" includes Ari Fleischer, Bush's former

press secretary; Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican

Jewish Coalition; Bradley Blakeman, a senior White House staffer in

Bush's first term; and Mel Sembler, a longtime RJC leader and former

ambassador to Rome.

Brooks told JTA that the fifth member, William Weidner, a casino

operator in Las Vegas, is not Jewish. However, Weidner's wife, Lynn,

is Jewish and is active in that city's federation. Blakeman is the

group's president.

Brooks said it would be a mistake to regard the group as having a

Jewish direction.

"It's a coincidence that several of the board members are Jewish," he

said, noting that half of the donors contributing to the group's first

$15 million ad campaign are not Jewish.

The ad blitz will promote Bush's "surge" policy in Iraq ahead of

September, when Congress is set to assess the success of the influx of

additional U.S. troops into Iraq.

Brooks said the aim ultimately is to build a grassroots organization

that would promote Republican domestic and foreign policies and would

replicate similar groups backing Democrats.

"This is a clear message to conservatives and Republicans and others

who see what has happened on the left to let them know with Freedom's

Watch that the cavalry is coming," Brooks said.

Of eight donors named Thursday in Politico, a political newspaper,

four are Jewish: Sembler; Richard Fox, the chairman of the Jewish

Policy Center, an RJC-affiliated think tank; Ed Snider, the founder of

the Philadelphia Flyers ice hockey franchise who has been elected to

several Jewish Sports Halls of Fame; and Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas

casino operator who recently launched a giveaway newspaper venture in

Israel.

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Much like Auschwitz

Israel's regard for Palestinians can be summed up in how it imprisons and terrorises them, writes Khaled Amayreh in the occupied West Bank

A few weeks ahead of the upcoming "peace conference" in Annapolis, Maryland, Israel has been displaying its "goodwill" towards the Palestinians. At the notorious Kitziot Prison, a real concentration camp minus gas chambers, crack Israeli soldiers have been ganging up on helpless and fettered Palestinian prisoners, shooting, beating and humiliating them under largely concocted pretexts.

 On Monday 22 October, in the quiet hours before dawn, hundreds of soldiers from two notoriously brutal army units, code-named Nachshon and Massada, stormed the prisoner camp for what was described as a "routine inspection". During these routine inspections, inmates are forced to take off their clothes and are subject to every imaginable form of humiliation. Whoever protests is normally placed in open-ended solitary confinement.

 Rudely awoken, Kitziot's estimated 1,200 inmates, already fed-up with draconian punitive measures, decided to resist their tormentors. According to one prisoner leader, this resistance had not been planned, coming as an instinctive defensive reflex to "obvious provocation".  Some prisoner leaders pleaded with the detention camp's administration to wait until morning to carry out the impromptu inspection. The administration's response came in the form of bullets, sonic grenades (which the Israelis call stun grenades), tear-gas and smoke bombs.

 "I don't know what a Nazi concentration camp looked like, but I imagine that Kitziot looked very much like a concentration camp yesterday," said Abu Ahmed, a detainee from Hebron, who has been languishing at the facility for nine months without charge or trial. Abu Ahmed, who was speaking via a smuggled mobile phone, described the assault on the prisoners as "planned and premeditated", calling Israeli claims that the soldiers were only defending themselves against rioters "obscene lies meant to cover up a criminal act".

The pogrom-like attack on the helpless Kitziot prisoners lasted for more than two hours as a huge cloud of smoke hovered over the area. When the dust settled, there were hundreds of prisoners who suffered significant to serious wounds, mostly in the head and upper body. At least nine inmates were severely injured, including Mohamed Sati Al-Ashkar, who was hit with a live round in the head, causing massive brain haemorrhage.

On 23 October, Al-Ashkar was pronounced clinically dead. As is usual in such circumstances, the Israeli media and government spokespersons switched to damage-control mode, disseminating disinformation about what happened while barring reporters access to the notorious facility. Even serious newspapers like Haaretz played a role parroting army propaganda that "violent clashes" took place between the prisoners and guards and that only "non-lethal methods" were used to disperse the protesting inmates.

The Israeli army has so far refused to reveal what it was that killed Al-Ashkar, whether a sonic bomb that hit him on the head, whether he was beaten with a club, or whether he was hit by plastic-coated bullets. Usually the Israeli army waits several days before issuing statements on such cases, seemingly to allow any protest sentiment to die down. The murder at Kitziot is only a small leitmotif of the ferocious onslaught of repression being visited on Palestinians in the occupied territories, where Israeli death squads continue to roam and strike. This happens despite -- or partly as a result of -- close security coordination between President Mahmoud Abbas's "forces" and the Israeli occupation army. The low-key reaction by the Abbas regime is already raising eyebrows in the West Bank, with many seeing the Kitziot assault and general terror under occupation as a means of "softening up" the Palestinians ahead of Annapolis for a peace deal that fails to meet minimum Palestinian expectations.

Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, Israel continues its slow-motion genocide of the occupied territory's estimated 1.5 million persecuted inhabitants. "Gaza is being sacrificed, is being decapitated but slowly, while the Arabs are watching 'Babel Hara' and the world is preoccupied with Iran and a peace conference in America," said one unemployed worker who used to work in construction in Israel, alluding to a popular Syrian TV series screened during the Holy month of Ramadan. Another man, a plasterer, also unemployed because Israel won't allow raw materials, such as cement, into the Strip, insists on more daring language. "I don't know why the world doesn't call things by their real name. Here the Jews are starving us to death. Gaza is a large concentration camp. It is very much like Auschwitz. Yes, there are no gas chambers and crematoria. But people are dying for lack of food and lack of medicine. "And I am 100 per cent sure that hadn't it been for the world media and international public opinion, or whatever is left of it, Israel would have disposed of us a long, long time ago," the worker added.

Earlier this week, Gazan hospitals faced an acute and critical crisis when they ran out of nitrous oxide, vital for operations. Eventually, an SOS by Gazan doctors embarrassed Israeli leaders, who decided to allow, for the time being, passage of a small amount of the gas, which Gazan doctors say will last only a few weeks. When talking to foreign media, Israeli leaders and spokespersons claim the hermetic blockade of Gaza is a reaction to Hamas's takeover of Gaza in mid-June, following sporadic clashes with Fatah. A few weeks ago, Israel declared Gaza a "hostile entity", as if the occupied coastal strip of land where poverty, despair and occupation violence define daily life had been treated as a friendly entity before. Finally, Israel doesn't want to take sole responsibility for exterminating the people of Gaza. The Israeli government has been inciting the powerful Jewish lobby, which deeply influences American policies and politics, to pressure Egypt to seal its border with Gaza so that the concentration camp can be perfected.

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90 years since the Balfour Declaration on 2nd of November

Did we double-cross the Arabs?

Peter Mansfield

This coming 2 November marks the 90th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which promised the Jews a "national home" in Palestine.

As a result, the state of Israel was formed in 1947. This article, written by the Middle East expert Peter Mansfield half a century after the Balfour Declaration, provides an insightful analysis of a fateful document that provoked the most insoluble problem in contemporary international politics.

Selected by Robert Taylor

The root cause of the chronic instability of the Middle East is an irresponsible act of statesmanship of half a century ago. When the Balfour Declaration was issued on 2 November 1917, in the form of a letter from the British Foreign Secretary to Lord Rothschild, saying that His Majesty's Government 'view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people', some members of the Lloyd George government forecast the storms ahead. Curzon, who had studied Zionist literature, said he 'could not share the optimistic views held concerning the future of Palestine' and he feared that the Declaration 'raised false expectations which could never be realised'. Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India and the only Jew in the Cabinet, regarded the Declaration as an anti-Semitic act because it would jeopardise the position of Jews throughout the world. He also believed that it broke promises made to the Arabs and violated the principle of self-determination. These opponents were easily overwhelmed by the confidence of the Declaration's three champions — Balfour, Cecil and Lloyd George himself.

Their motives have been the subject of endless speculation. They seem to have been a peculiarly British blend of hard-headed realism and romantic idealism, strongly tinged with hypocrisy. The Declaration's sponsors were so vague about their reasons that they were driven to post hoc rationalisation in later years. Lloyd George told the House of Commons in 1936 that in 1917 the war was going so badly for the Allies that 'we came to the conclusion that it was vital that we should have the sympathies of the Jewish community'. But there is no evidence that they thought of this at the time.

An important influence on the minds of the government was the Bible-reading Protestant belief in the return of the Jews to Zion on which men like Lloyd George (and the agnostic Churchill — another enthusiastic Zionist) had been nourished. Imperialist motives also played their part, but it was less the specific aims of balancing French influence in Syria with a pro-British community in Palestine which would also help to protect the Suez Canal (although this was in the back of their minds) than the general idea that the Jews, as civilised Europeans, would carry the white man's burden in an area where Britons were unlikely to do so themselves.

Did they understand the implications of their action? Were they aware that the Zionist aim was to make Palestine a Jewish national state? Had they considered the reactions of the 'natives' — that is, the Arabs who formed more than 90 per cent of the population — and, if so, did they think they mattered? There are several pieces of evidence to help answer these questions. One is that the first draft of the Declaration prepared by the Zionist Organisation at Balfour's invitation foresaw the creation of an autonomous Jewish state under the protection of one of the Allied powers. It was after the strong protests of the Jewish Conjoint Committee, representing British Jewry, backed by Edwin Montagu, that the draft was changed to refer to the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, adding the words 'it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.' But, as Balfour was undoubtedly aware, a Jewish national state was what the Zionists wanted.

In his efforts to persuade the war cabinet. Balfour said the Declaration 'did not necessarily involve the early establishment of an independent Jewish state, which was a matter of gradual development in accordance with the ordinary laws of political evolution.' But, being a philosopher more than a politician, Balfour could be unusually candid. In August 1919 he wrote a memorandum on Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia in which he said:

The contradiction between the letter of the Covenant and the policy of the Allies is even more flagrant in the case of the independent nation of Palestine than in that of the independent nation of Syria. For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country, though the American Commission [the 1919 King-Crane Commission] has been through the form of asking what they are. The four great powers are committed to Zionism, and Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices [sic] of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.

He went on to say that in his opinion this was quite right but that he did not see how this policy could be harmonised with all the other declarations and pledges that had been made by the Allies. 'In fact, so far as Palestine is concerned, the powers have made no statement of fact that is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate.'

A rare and remarkable confession, Apart from the Allies' general pledges to set up national governments in the Middle East which would derive their authority 'from the free exercise and choice of the indigenous population', the British government had committed itself in two other ways. One was in the correspondence in 1915 between Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Cairo, and the Sherif Hussain of Mecca, the leader of the Arab revolt against the Turks, and the other was the so-called Sykes-Picot agreement, an Anglo-French understanding on the partition of the Middle East into great-power spheres of influence, which was published by the Russians, to the acute embarrassment of the Allies, after October 1917.

Fountains of ink have flowed in the discussion of how far the British government was to blame for making these pledges which, though couched in ambiguous and evasive language, were undeniably incompatible with each other. Evidence which has recently come to light proves fairly condo. sively that at least the Foreign Office believed that the Sherif Hussain had been promised that Palestine should be an independent Arab state.

The question is whether this has any relevance to the present day. Israelis celebrate, while Arabs mourn, the anniversary of the Declaration, but does it mean any more than, say, the British and French attitudes to Agincourt? The answer is surely yes. It is sometimes said that, whatever the rights or wrongs of the past, the Zionists have taken Palestine, the Arabs have lost and should recognise the fact, just as Germany will have to forget about her eastern provinces. But the peculiar nature of Zionism invalidates this agreement. What the Arabs remember is that out of this small beginning - a brief letter from the British Foreign Secretary to a prominent English Jew — a 9-percent minority in Palestine grew in 30 years to establish its own exclusive and powerful nation-state on land which had been theirs for 1,500 years. They can be forgiven for regarding Zionism as expansionist by nature — especially when Zionists reassert their aim of gathering in the Diaspora of 12 million Jews. Possibly the Palestinian Arabs would have done better to settle for half a loaf by accepting almost any of the proposals for the partition of their country which were made during the British mandate. But would they? It is hard to imagine that Zionism would have been content to live within even narrower frontiers than it occupied last June. And Britain was incapable of seeing that it did.

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Stop the Genocide of Palestinians in Gaza

Gaza is not only starving; it is dying before the eyes of the international community. If the international conspiracy of silence does not come to an end, and if the policy of blaming the victim continues, the 21^st Century will witness its first brutal genocide. Thousands of Israeli soldiers are surrounding Gaza in a hermetic manner, shooting and killing any Palestinian trying to escape. The Rafah Crossing, the only exit to the external world, has been closed for two years.

The Gaza Strip has been turned into the largest concentration camp with the largest population of prisoners in the world. Gazans have repeatedly reiterated their view that the international conspiracy of silence towards the genocidal war taking place against them indicates complicity in these war crimes.

As a result of Israel's blockade on most imports and exports and other policies designed to punish Gazans, about 70% of Gaza's workforce is now unemployed or without pay, according to the United Nations, and about 80% of its residents live in grinding poverty. About 1.2 million of them are now dependent for their day-to-day survival on food handouts from U.N. or international agencies, An increasing number of Palestinian families in Gaza are unable to offer their children more than one meager meal a day, often little more than rice and boiled lentils. Fresh fruit and vegetables are beyond the reach of many families. Meat and chicken are impossibly expensive. And fish is unavailable in its markets because the Israeli navy has curtailed the movements of Gaza's fishermen.

It is a violation of international law to collectively punish more than a million people for something they did not do. But Israel has shrugged off the law, has ignored the repeated demands of the U.N. Security Council. Which leaves us with Civil Society organizations, solidarity campaigns and freedom loving people: BREAK THE SIEGE AND STOP THE GENOCIDAL WAR BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.

The One Democratic State Group

University Teachers’ Association in Palestine

Ajras Alawda-Editorial Board

Arab Cultural Forum

For Comments

+972 599 880608

+ 972 599 441766

+ 972 599 322636

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The REAL Reason Canada Supported Partition

C.F. Bernadotte

Canada loves Jews, it would seem...as long as they live somewhere else;

 

"...he(Pearson) asked Hugh Keenleyside...responsible for immigration matters, to supply him with statistics about Jewish immigration into Canada in the years 1933-1947 as background material for the delegation.  The numbers were shameful, especially in regard to the first half of the 1940's, the peak of extermination of European Jewry.   In 1940-19, 284 overseas Jews Jews were admitted to Canada: 1941-1942, 111 overseas Jews; in 1942-1943, 31; in 1943-1944, 56: and in 1944-1945, 93.

 

   At the beginning of the Palestine debate in the second session, the delegation asked for further up-to-date information about Jewish immigration and for a "confidential statement" of how the changes lately introduced into Canadian immigration policy could affect the issue.  In other words, how many Jews were expected to arrive in Canada among the overall number of displaced persons admitted.  This was after the British had suggested that every member of the United Nations should resettle in its' territory an appropriate share of Jewish displaced persons as an "indispensable" part of solving the Palestine problem.  Pearson wanted to know if the changes in Canadian immigration policy had met the British suggestion.  The Immigration Branch answered that a total of 20,000 displaced persons were allowed to immigrate to Canada, but found it hard to predict how many would be Jewish.  It would surmise that 1,000 of them would be Jewish garment workers and another 750 Jews from other professions.  A special Order-in-Council to admit 1,000 Jewish orphans was also mentioned, and a "considerable number" of Jews would possibly be admitted on the basis of kinship.

 

    Evidently none of this was very promising for the 200,000 Jewish refugees in Europe.  Pearson realized there was only one sensible solution for them; PALESTINE(emphasis mine)"

 

- Eliezer Tauber, "Personal Policy Making; Canada's Role in the Adoption of the Palestine Partition Resolution", p. 85

 

trivia;

Q; Let's reduce Canada to the 100 mile strip running along the border with America.  Even with those reduced borders, if Canada had permitted an equivalent number of Jews to immigrate, proportional to its' size, as Britain permitted to immigrate to Palestine 1933-45, how many Jews would have been allowed in?

 

A;  2.7 million

 

Now one might argue that it would have been impossible for Canada, with a population of around 11 million at the time, to absorb so many refugees in such a short period of time.  But somehow Palestine managed.

 

How many Jews, who might have contributed so much to this country, lie buried in mass graves in Eastern Europe, one wonders...

._,_._,__

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Fwd: Palestine Chronicle - Palestinian Dignity

By Sherri Muzher
 
"I am Mr. Nobody," stated Palestinian Mahmoud Jnaid in an October 19th Reuters article.  Jnaid recently doused himself in fuel and tried to set himself on fire before other Palestinian on-lookers overpowered him.  
 
"When I poured the petrol on my body I felt life was the same as death," the 25-year-old said while he sat next to his wife and children.
 
Israel won't approve ID papers for Jnaid and tens of thousands like him, effectively prohibiting them from traveling, getting driver's licenses, or even opening bank accounts.   Apparently, the denial of these daily basics makes Israel feel more secure.  Go figure that one out.  Ahem . . .
 
It was just the latest heart-wrenching story to come out of Palestine and I couldn't help but wonder if Palestinian politicians and activists had lost sight of the Jnaids of Palestine with all of the ridiculous factionalism and meaningless infighting.
 
Sure, people are going to disagree on strategies and opinions.  But there should be one sole driving force that unites people:  Obtaining dignity and hope for the average Palestinian Joe.
 
Some argue that implementing laws is the prerequisite to obtaining that dignity and hope . . . so, the infighting continues over principles.
 
Well, most would consider that 'living with dignity' is an honorable principle in itself.    The reality is that complicated and warped dynamics make the implementation of international laws unlikely in the near future.   So until then, improving the lives of Palestinians should be the priority.
 
"What should move us to action is human dignity: the inalienable dignity of the oppressed, but also the dignity of each of us. We lose dignity if we tolerate the intolerable"
 
Those wise words came from civil rights activist Dominique de Menil. It's applicable to so many crises around the world and especially to the Palestinian tragedy.   So why aren't some Palestinians remembering this as they waste valuable energies on marginalizing each other?   The infighting is nothing short of self-destructive   Also lost during the nasty disagreements is the civility and decency that signified our parents' generation and the generations before them . . . but I digress.
 
To a large degree, it is understandable that many everyday Palestinians are now harsher and more mistrustful in their lives.  They are responding to nearly 60 years of dispossession and 40 years of a cruel Israeli occupation -- they've learned to respond in kind in a tough world of survival.  But the privileged in Palestine who've largely made their money through corruption and the activists who live in comfort here in the States?    Please . . .
 
Palestine has now become about factions and ideology. There's Hamas sitting on its "throne" in Gaza while the people's suffering reaches epic proportions because of world isolation and there's Fatah jousting for a meaningless spotlight by meeting with Israel while Palestinians are murdered in Israeli raids.  There are the non-productive activists who spend their time labeling other Palestinians in the most repulsive terms and there are those who wish to negotiate with a self-righteous Opposition for the sake of negotiating.  When exactly did self-respect and dignity go out of style?  Sadly, every one of these behaviors illustrates a lack of self-respect.
 
W'aman La Yokarrem Nafsaho la Yokarram, which in Arabic means "he that doesn't respect himself shall not be respected."    Does this still mean something?
 
In a nutshell, there seems to be a huge disconnect between the politicians/activists and the Palestinian people they claim to champion.   
 
Yes, that was a simplistic generalization to make because a lot of us feel blessed to know some brilliant diamonds in the coal.   But there could be so many more diamonds if Palestinians and pro-Palestinians weren't so turned off by the infighting.   Add to this the huge feeling of burn-out among those few diamonds who are expected to keep producing and carrying the load. 
 
People are naturally starting to ask, "what's' the point?"
 
Well, there is a major point and that point is to give hope to family and friends in Palestine .  When a person has reason to hope, it's easier to hold one's head up high in dignity.  
 
What can lead to this hope?
 
An abrupt stop to the new "us v. them" showdown is one important step.  But no less important is the requirement of a different mindset so that progress is made     It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that when a particular strategy hasn't worked for decades, it's time re-visit it until you get something workable and effective.  There is nothing honorable or smart about clinging to useless slogans and strategies.    Furthermore, history has proven that good intentions alone don't matter.
 
I certainly don't pretend to have all the answers but I'd like to suggest some new strategies: 
 
-Build coalitions with mainstream organizations.  There are so many issues that upset fellow Americans, especially paying taxes to support governments that don't need it.  Israel doesn't need it.
 
- Break down barriers and dispel popular stereotypes.  Take advantage of our precious freedom of speech by writing letters to the editors. 
 
- Don't assume that others have the same knowledge about the issue.  Most people don't know and get their knowledge from biased sources or pop culture.  Don't get mad; take advantage of the opportunity to calmly correct the misinformation.  Note the world "calmly."  The popular stereotype is that people of Palestinian descent cannot control their tempers.  Destroy that myth by example.  People are more convinced by someone who is rational and calm.   
 
- Quit pursuing the support of every leftist who claims to love justice.  By now, I'd like to think that most activists are aware of the many insincere activists whose focus is to distract and sabotage relationships between pro-Palestinian groups.  Besides, the Palestine conflict is a human issue, not a leftist issue.     
 
- Passion has its positives and negatives, but use it to rejuvenate yourself and others.  Don't use it to tear people down because they disagree with you. 
 
- Do unto others as you would want other to do to you.  This Golden Rule sounds simple and yet some of the most rabid and rude individuals are activists.  What exactly do people hope to gain by creating more enemies?
 
- Know the personal achievements of fellow Palestinians.  There's more to being Palestinian than just politics, and activists need to know these achievements.  Celebrating the Palestinian identity is the single greatest thing activists can do.
 
- Remember that we are Americans, first and foremost.   Vocalizing dislike for various policies just like every other American does is natural.  Make sure to clarify that!  Don't hate this wonderful land of freedom.  Big distinction but it is a distinction that often gets blurred in all the rhetoric and anger.  The Opposition then manipulates the angry words for their dishonest PR efforts.
 
- If a political strategy doesn't bring about understanding among the target audience (fellow Americans), then why bother?   Preaching to the choir feels good up to a point.  What's the final goal though?
 
By no means should this piece be interpreted as blaming the victims.  Israel has somehow convinced our nation though its intimidating lobbying that depriving people of their basic rights is a good thing.  It's a shame that they don't look into the mindset of the Jewish instigators of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  The defiance of Mordechai Anielewicz and others in the face of utter misery was nothing short of remarkable and honorable.   
 
In the end, perhaps it is the United Arab Emirates ' Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum who said it best in his recent Sixty Minutes interview with Steve Kroft.  They were discussing the unbelievably fast development in Dubai:
 
KROFT:  Why do you want everything to be the biggest, the tallest?
SHEIK MOHAMMED: Steve, why not? Why not? If you can have it in New York, why can't we have it here?
KROFT: Why are you in such a hurry? Most people would try and do all of this in a lifetime, not in five years.
SHEIKH MOHAMMED: I want--I want my people to live better life now, to go to high school now, to go to the good health care now. Not after 20 years. 
 
Wanting a better life for one's people now . . . It's a refreshing message and a rare one in the Arab World.  Our goal should be to improve the lives of Palestinians everywhere, especially those in the Occupied Territories and squalid refugee camps.  This certainly doesn't mean giving up on the principles of justice or not holding Israel responsible for its crimes, but it does mean realizing the principles of dignity and hope for every Palestinian individual now.
 
It's also a goal that should bring some unity and reason back into the current Palestinian atmosphere of infighting and insanity.  We owe it to our families and friends in Palestine.
 
-Sherri Muzher, of Mason , Michigan , is a writer/activist and Director of the Michigan Media Watch.

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U.S Prosecution of Muslim Group Ends in Mistrial

Gordo

Shukri Abu Baker, former president of the Holy Land Foundation

A federal judge declared a mistrial on Monday in what was widely seen as the government’s flagship terrorism-financing case after prosecutors failed to persuade a jury to convict five leaders of a Muslim charity on any charges, or even to reach a verdict on many of the 197 counts. The case, involving the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its backers, is the government’s largest and most complex legal effort to shut down what it contends is American financing for terrorist organizations in the Middle East.

This fiasco is just the latest in a long string of prosecutorial failures for the Bush administration. I guess it’s tough to win a case when you don’t have much evidence.

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Former mufti: Western Wall was never part of Jewish temple

Mike Seid

The former mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, has made the claim that there never was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall was really part of a mosque.

"There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa [the mosque compound] and there is no proof that there was ever a temple," he told The Jerusalem Post via a translator. "Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand."

Sabri rejected judaism's claim to the Western Wall as part of the outer wall of the Second Temple.

"The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque," he said. "There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews."

Asked if Jews would ever be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount under Muslim control, he replied: "It is not the Temple Mount, you must say Al-Aksa. And no Jews have the right to pray at the mosque. It was always only a mosque - all 144 dunams, the entire area. No Jewish prayer. If the Jews want real peace, they must not do anything to try to pray on Al-Aksa. Everyone knows that."

"Zionism tries to trick the Jews claiming that this was part of a Jewish temple, but they dug there and they found nothing," Sabri added.

Archeologists overseeing Islamic infrastructure work on the Mount announced this week that they had unveiled a sealed archeological level dating back to the First Temple period.

The First Temple was built by King Solomon in the 10th century BCE, and destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The Second Temple was built 70 years later, enlarged during the first century BCE by Herod, and destroyed by the Romans in the year 70.

The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aksa Mosque were constructed on the Temple Mount site in the late seventh century.

The controversial issue of the holy sites is expected to come up during negotiations ahead of a US-sponsored summit on the Middle East in Annapolis later this year.

Palestinian leaders, most notably the late Yasser Arafat, have consistently denied Jewish claims to the Mount.

Sabri made the comments in an interview with the Post's Friday supplement, In Jerusalem, for a cover story on how religious leaders view the capital.

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Between Boycott and Apartheid

  By Hammam Farah

After passing a motion in May that called for the circulation and debate of the Palestinian call for the academic boycott of Israel, Britain's University and College Union (UCU)'s strategy and finance committee unanimously accepted a recommendation from its Secretary-General, Sally Hunt, that not only is the call to boycott apparently unlawful under discrimination legislation, but even debates on the issue at the union's meetings should be silenced "to ensure that the union acts lawfully." Consequently, the union also cancelled a UK speaking tour in which Palestinian academics would discuss the academic boycott of Israel with their counterparts at UK universities.

There is ample reason to doubt the claim that the union and its members are at risk.  After months of trepidation over the boycott due to its alleged violation of academic freedom, the irony lies in that the sole violator of academic freedom is the leadership of the UCU.  One is forced to question whether they were driven by genuine concern for justice and the importance of the boycott for achieving it, or bitter resentment at their own membership's democratic decision to discuss the boycott. As Amjad Barham, head of the council of the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, stated, "by muzzling debate and free discussion on the boycott, the [Israeli] lobby and its supporters within the UCU are suppressing academic freedom in the most crude manner." In addition, the opacity of the UCU statement further compounds the perception of hypocrisy felt towards the leadership of the union. The fact that academic unions in the UK are discussing the issue of academic boycott is a big step in the right direction, but it seems like the activists in the UCU will have to continue this uphill battle against apartheid, and we can expect them to keep fighting.

It appears we have been put on the defensive, consumed more with rebutting the allegations of violating academic freedom and singling out Israel than with providing a thorough elaboration of the appalling ways in which Israel has been systematically violating Palestinian academic freedom and students' right to education for the past 60 years:  Schools and universities have been closed for hundreds of days by the military government; students shot and left to bleed in their classrooms; violent crackdowns on student non-violent demonstrations; thousands of arrests and detainments of students and faculty members are common; permits to study abroad, even from Gaza to the West Bank, are regularly denied.  Just recently, Israel's High Court rejected a petition by students from Gaza to transfer to the West Bank to study occupational therapy because the universities in Gaza do not provide the program.  This process of academic destruction has driven Palestinian education underground, where classes are held secretly in teachers' apartments, in local churches and mosques, and in refugee camps.

Perhaps more importantly concerning the academic boycott, however, is not only the Israeli government's actions, but the active participation of Israeli academia itself in discriminating against Palestinian students, and here I mean Palestinian citizens of Israel since Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are not even allowed to physically access Israeli universities to take admission exams, let alone go to class. Here are just some of the examples of Israeli academic institutions' role in perpetuating apartheid, above and beyond the fact that they have failed to condemn Israel's colonial/apartheid policies.

While 25% of Haifa University's students are Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, they make up 80% of the students facing disciplinary action, a clear disproportion.  Recently, students were brought in front of a disciplinary committee for demonstrating against a university-sponsored conference entitled "The Demographic Problem and the Demographic Policy of Israel." The "demographic problem" alludes to the racist fear of the high Arab birth rates that threaten Zionism's obsession with maintaining Israel's Jewish majority at any and all costs.  Can you imagine the uproar that would ensue if Black students were brought in front of a disciplinary committee in the US or Canada for demonstrating against a conference addressing the population growth "problem" of Blacks?  Furthermore, Haifa University's official guide for foreign and exchange students includes a warning entitled "Special Security Instructions" cautioning against visiting Arab-Palestinian towns and villages in Israel.  These are only a few of many Haifa University discriminatory practices. At Ohalo College, the only Palestinian student candidate running for head of the student union was disqualified, on the day of the election nonetheless. At the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Arab-Palestinian visitors are required to carry a "certificate of integrity" if they wish to enter the university.

Many of the universities have also played a role in the theft and confiscation of Palestinian land. Hebrew University began expanding its housing and offices in 2004 over the destroyed and depopulated Palestinian village of Lifta – and of course, the Palestinian refugees do not have the right to return, which means that the people whose land the university is built on are not allowed to study at the institution, let alone reclaim their land. Professor Margaret Aziza Pappano of Canada's Queen's University informed us recently that "Hebrew University has a long and deleterious history of appropriating Palestinian land.  In 1968, in opposition to a UN resolution, the university evicted hundreds of Palestinian families to expand their campus in East Jerusalem. This history of confiscation continues, as October 2004 saw more evictions of Palestinian families and destruction of their homes for another campus expansion."

Tel Aviv University was built over the destroyed and depopulated village of Sheikh Muwannis. The former home of the village Mukhtar (mayor) has become the faculty club/cafeteria.  To add insult to injury, the university refuses to allow the posting of a sign that would explain the origins of the building – perhaps it would spoil the faculty's appetite.  The university plans to ironically build a new Faculty of Archeology as an expansion of its campus further into the lands of the destroyed village.  Last but not least, in perhaps the most infamous case, the Ariel University Centre of Samaria (AKA "the settler university"), an extension of Bar Ilan University, was built inside the illegal settlement of Ariel inside the West Bank.  The village of Salfit endured massive land confiscations to make way for the settlement and its residents will soon be displaced to the other side of the illegal Wall that is being erected inside the West Bank (separating students from their universities) to cage in Palestinian communities and to eventually annex the illegal settlement blocks where this University will operate.

This is only a glimpse of the long list of Israeli academia's participation in the colonization of Palestinian land and in the discrimination against Palestinian students.  If we are to build on the case for the academic boycott of Israel, we must dedicate more time to disseminating the painful details of this academic apartheid that is part and parcel of the wider apartheid system imposed by Israel on the Palestinians.

In light of this, it is a fair demand on behalf of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine that the leadership of the UCU publish the 'legal advice' for examination and tell us who provided it, tell us whether any other sources were sought out for advice, and what the nature of that advice was.  Furthermore, an explanation of why it was 'heroic' for British academic unions to lead the academic boycott of South Africa, but 'illegal' to even discuss the academic boycott of Israel is vital.  Indeed, a fundamental component of academic freedom is academic transparency.

Lastly, it is important to note that academia, perhaps more than any other sector of society, should be at the forefront of the boycott campaign because of its long professed commitments to anti-oppressive and anti-racist ideals.  Just as dangerous or hate-speech is ideally exempted from the right to freedom of speech, so should academic practices that perpetuate and entrench racism and apartheid be exempted from academic freedom.  All around the world, academics have begun to take principled positions against Israeli apartheid, and history will remember this. Conversely, history will also remember those academics and university presidents who stood on the side of apartheid, oppression, and colonial domination. So, to Sally Hunt and her 'legal' team, the lines are drawn – which will it be?

-Hammam Farah is a Palestinian Canadian who was born in the Gaza Strip as part of Gaza's small Christian community.  He resides in Toronto and is a solidarity activist with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), which is spearheading the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign in Canada.  He can be reached at hammamf@gmail.com

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Support Toronto's only Arab Community Radio Show

**Please forward to your friends and contacts - please donate generously**

Dear Friends,

"KanYaMakan" (Once Upon A Time) is the Arab community radio show on
CKLN 88.1fm. It airs from 8-10pm every Tuesday night, and is the ONLY
Arab radio show in and around Toronto. KanYaMakan has been on the air
for over 12 years, showcasing Arab artists, community initiatives, and
broadcasting news and analysis relating to the Arab world, and to
Arabs in the diaspora that is usually ignored and side-lined by the
mainstream media. We do much of our programming in English so that it
is accessible to most of those who tune in.

This week is FundFest ? the week in which the radio station (CKLN
88.1fm) does most of its fundraising. Each show is expected to raise a
certain amount of money to keep the station alive, otherwise that show
comes under review.

WE NEED YOUR HELP TO FUNDRAISE FOR KANYAMAKAN!!!
WE NEED TO FUNDRAISE $1500 THIS WEEK!!

Please support this show with as much as you can donate.

How to donate (Visa, Mastercard, or cheque/money order):
1. Call 416-598-8810 while the show is happening 8-10pm on Tuesday
October 16 (we will be giving away KanYaMakan prizes to people who
make donations during the show):
2. Email us at: kanyamakan@ckln.fm with your phone number and how
much you would like to pledge, and we will call you to get the rest of
the information
3. [credit card only] go to http://www.ckln.fm and click on "donate
now"; type in "Kan Ya Makan" in the 'payment for' section of the
paypal form.

- All donations over $100 are tax refundable
- All donors who have paid their pledges by December 31 will be
entered into a draw for the grand prizes:
1. Travel Cuts: $250 voucher, 14 day Euro-rail pass
2. $500 bicycle from Cycle Therapy

If you have any questions, please email kanyamakan@ckln.fm

help keep Toronto's only Arab community radio show alive - donate as
much as you can.

and don't hesitate to contact us if you have ideas for shows...
the KanYaMakan team.

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Jewish group condemns meeting by extremist Jewish Defence League

TORONTO - The Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians condemns a public meeting by the Jewish Defence League planned for tonight and calls on the Shaarei Tefillah Synagogue (3600 Bathurst Street) to cancel the event which features a speech by far-right Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin, who has advocated the revocation of Israeli citizenship from non-Jews and the large scale deportation of Palestinians resident in Israel. Feiglin has been described as a "Jewish fascist" by former Israeli cabinet minister Tommy Lapid.  

"There is no place in the Jewish community for fascists or racists," said ACJC Administrative Council member Andy Lehrer, who conducted an investigation of the JDL earlier this year. "That such a hateful organization is having a public meeting in a synagogue is incompatible with Jewish principles. Most Jews unequivocally reject the extremists of the Jewish Defence League."

The Jewish Defence League is described by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States as a "right-wing terrorist group". In 2001 JDL Chairman Irv Rubin and his west coast organizer Earl Krugel were arrested for plotting to bomb a mosque and the office of a Lebanese-American US Congressman. Krugel pled guilty while Rubin committed suicide while awaiting trial.  

The Canadian JDL relaunched itself in late 2006 after being absent for several years. Despite having had a number of protests and actively recruiting among Jewish youth, groups such as the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Bnai Brith have failed to openly condemn the JDL or attempt to educate the Jewish community and youth in particular about the danger of the organization. Despite the fact that the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith in the United States openly condemns the JDL on its website, Bnai Brith Canada has published a number of uncritical reports on the JDL in it's "Jewish Tribune" and, this past week, carried a front page advertisement promoting the JDL's meeting .

The Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians calls upon all Jewish organizations to join together in opposing the resurgent Jewish Defence League. "The fact that some who claim to be leaders of the Jewish community have not only failed to oppose the JDL but have actually allowed it a platform is unacceptable and cannot continue," said Lehrer.

ACJC  is an umbrella organization of Canadian Jewish groups who demand Israel's withdrawal from the occupied Territories and Gaza and believe Canadian Jews should play a larger role in supporting and promoting a peaceful and just solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

For more information contact acjctoronto@gmail.com

._._,___

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Today in Palestine! ~ Headlines October 24 , 2007 ~

Brought to you by Shadi Fadda
Click on the Headline to View Full Story

Sixty-second General Assembly

Speakers in Second Committee call on Israel to stop destroying infrastructure, causing environmental damage in occupied Arab lands.

Crisis in Gaza is unnecessary

Escalating conflict in Gaza can be mitigated, says new report by Oxford Research Group.

Israel works on plan to cut power supplies to Gaza

Israeli officials prepared a plan on Wednesday to cut power supplies to the Gaza Strip in response to a surge in Palestinian cross-border rocket attacks. "We plan to dramatically reduce the two-thirds of power that is supplied by Israel, which will take several weeks," Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio.

Israel expected to approve severance of electricity to Gaza this week

Defense Minister Ehud Barak is expected this week to approve a gradual severance of the supply of electricity and fuel to the Gaza Strip in response to the persistent rocket fire from the Palestinian territory, military officials said Wednesday.

"They murdered him in cold blood"

A Palestinian political prisoner  who on Monday  was shot in the head by an Israeli prison guard at the notorious desert detention camp, Kitziot, has died of his wounds. The prisoner is Muhammed Sati al Ashkar, of the village of Sida near Tulkarm and  a father of a 2-year-old child.  He had been  sentenced to  three and a half years for opposing the Israeli occupation. He was to be released from prison after three months.

Bir Zeit University Students protest in support of Negev detainees

Hundreds of students at Bir Zeit University, located near the central West Bank of Ramallah, on Tuesday organized protest against the attack on political prisoners at the Negev detention facility which left one dead and at least a further 50 injured.

Israel Violates Prisoner Treatment Convention

Israel violates the international convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. Mohammed Safi Muhammed Al-Ashkar, a Palestinian prisoner of age 29, was murdered today morning at 2 AM by an Israeli jailer, who shot him with dumdum bullets at the "Ansar 3/ Nafha" concentration camp south of Al-Nakab, also known as Ketziot. International laws forbid using dumdum ammunitions, which explode inside the victims bodies. Over 400 IDF soldiers from the Shimshon and Metsada special forces raided eight departments of Palestinian prisoners at Al-Nakab in a savage way, shooting live bullets, destroying and burning the prisoners property.

Dozens of East Jerusalem leaders protest against home demolitions

Muslim and Christian leaders from East Jerusalem joined with Palestinian-Israeli members of the Israeli Knesset and members of the Palestinian legislative council in a demonstration Tuesday challenging the Israeli policy of home demolitions in East Jerusalem.

Several protestors injured by PA security forces at Hebron demonstration

Palestinian sources in the southern West Bank city of Hebron reported on Monday night that PA security forces had clashed with demonstrators at a Hamas-organized protest against recent events in the Negev detention center, injuring several civilians.

Report: Sixty-eight Palestinians imprisoned in their village

The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, B'tselem, issued a report Tuesday documenting the case of sixty-eight Palestinians, including twenty-six children, who are imprisoned in Tel 'Adasa village in East Jerusalem.

Arson Fire Damages Church in Jerusalem

Arsonists forced their way into a church used by Messianic Jews and three other congregations and set it on fire, causing moderate damage, church officials said Wednesday. There was no claim of responsibility, but the church was burned down in 1982 by an ultranationalist Jewish group and later rebuilt, said a pastor, Charles Kopp.

J'lem church officials suspect extremist Jews behind arson

A church in central Jerusalem was set afire before dawn Wednesday and suffered extensive damage, police said.  Arsonists, suspected to be extremist Jews, forced their way into the church and set it afire, church officials said Wednesday.

Patients caught up in middle of Fatah and Hamas tug of war

One of the few journalists in Gaza reports on the Fatah-imposed doctors' strike in force last month for a series of exclusive Guardian films.

Abbas forces arrest 20 Hamas members in West Bank

\Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) said Wednesday that President Mahmoud Abbas security forces detained 20 members of its movement in different West Bank areas.  The group said in a leaflet sent to reporters that Abbas security forces stormed houses in the towns of Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus, Ramallah and Hebron, and detained 20 Hamas members.

Amnesty criticises Hamas, Fatah over rights abuses

Human rights violations in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have become widespread since fighting in June between the Palestinian factions saw Hamas seize control of Gaza, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

Arab MK leads campaign against bill allocating state land to Jews only

Hadash MK Hanna Swaid has been promoting action to foil a Jewish National Fund bill, which calls for all JNF lands to be allocated to Jews only. The bill is geared to bypass a 2004 court ruling that annulled an Israel Lands Administration (ILA) policy preventing Israeli Arabs from participating in bids to purchase JNF-owned land.

US to transfer $410 million to PA

'Unprecedented amount' part of effort to strengthen Abbas in battle against Hamas for public opinion. Finance Minister Bar-On: International community must aid PA economic recovery.

Breaking the Siege on Gaza: A United Front for Peace

We, the (Israel-based) National Committee to Break the Siege on Gaza (hereafter the National Committee), have adopted the initiative of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program to launch an international campaign for breaking the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip since June 2007. The aim of this humanitarian, non-political campaign is to put pressure on the Israeli government in order to lift the siege imposed on the population of Gaza. By raising the awareness of the international community on the deteriorating life conditions resulting from the siege, we aim at other governments to stop the boycott of Gaza. We are pleased to note here that the European Parliament has recently adopted a resolution calling on the Israeli government to end the siege.

Syria to issue ID cards to Golan residents

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has ordered ID cards to be granted to Syrians citizens living in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the state news agency SANA reported on Tuesday. "The Syrian president has issued orders to grant Syrian ID cards to Syrian citizens of the occupied Golan Heights," the official news agency reported. The move aims to "ease the suffering" of the Druze people living on the Golan, caused by "harassment and Israeli human rights violations," SANA added.

 

Oxford cancels one-state debate

Following talks with Oxford Union President Luke Tryll, the union decided to drop Finkelstein and invited Usiskin to participate along with Yossi Mekelberg, an associate fellow of the Middle East program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, who is also Israeli.

Between Boycott and Apartheid

After passing a motion in May that called for the circulation and debate of the Palestinian call for the academic boycott of Israel, Britain's University and College Union (UCU)'s strategy and finance committee unanimously accepted a recommendation from its Secretary-General, Sally Hunt, that not only is the call to boycott apparently unlawful under discrimination legislation, but even debates on the issue at the union's meetings should be silenced "to ensure that the union acts lawfully." Consequently, the union also cancelled a UK speaking tour in which Palestinian academics would discuss the academic boycott of Israel with their counterparts at UK universities.

 

Meanwhile in Iraq
'

Meanwhile in Afghanistan

 

Meanwhile in Amreeka

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The Bulldozing of Homes not only Happens in Palestine by Israel but on American Soil bu American Government

I came across This very sad story. A heartbreaking one indeed. It is one of Danielle Shenandoah a Traditional Oneida Woman and Mother who has paid a heavy price for speaking out against having a casino in her territory.

She is not Palestinian but like Palestinians she is indigenous to the land, that land is what is called America Today. One can only look at the indigenous people of North America to see what happens after being colonized and having your land taken. If Genocide don't get you, then systems created and left by the people who colonized will try. One of the attempts is making their leaders become puppets for Governments like United States, and Canada and Israel to name a few.

They become slaves to the Corporate Whores and sometimes manage to become one. In the case of Danielle, it seems the people in charge have forsaken personal values and traditions selling it for the almighty buck. This is the theme behind the Almighty American Dream.

They have become what was once they despised, they have forsaken themselves and sacrificed their values at the corporate alter of greed and became corporate whores.

Traditional people do not support casinos for economic development because of the devastating consequences it has on the lives of the people. Schenandoah is one of those people who had courage and principle to stand up against her Nation and Government, but now is paying the price.

For being very vocal against the casino Schenandoah has been ostracized and punished. Sources say that Danielle is one of several traditional Oneida who was disenrolled. Since then this single mother and her 3 children have had their home bulldozed with the blessing of the United States government, and has had a constant struggle for years to remain together. They receive no insurance, assistance, or other help from the Oneida nation. (see www.oneidasfordemocracy.org for the full struggle of the Oneida traditionals.)

To make things worse, at the end of this past August 2007, Danielles 14 year-old daughter Clarisse was in a serious car accident. She has suffered several extensive injuries including a shattered pelvis, punctured lung, ruptured spleen, split pallet, and broken facial bones with jaw just to name a few.

This accident has been a serious setback to the Schenandoah’s progress. Things had started to improve for the family last October when Danielle was able to buy a used trailer and rent land on the Onondaga Reservation. She found a job and enrolled her children in school where they excelled. They did not have much, but they were finally together in their own home. Then came the accident.

Since there is no medical insurance or financial resources, Danielle must now stay home to care for Clarisse. As a result, she is no longer able to work. With no income, they are now in danger of losing everything they fought so hard to get… their home, and most importantly, their life together. She has already been threatened to lose her children and if not for the generosity of some family (who are in the same situation with being disenrolled) they would have been removed from her home.

This single mother and her 3 children need your help to stay together and to cover the growing medical bills. Currently their car is in disrepair and it is getting harder to get Clarisse to the doctors for her many follow up visits and physical therapy appointments. They also have other mounting bills, they are a couple months behind on their land rent, their phone has been shut off, and getting food and clothing for growing children, is a constant worry.

I am appealing to those people out there who live the good mind. Please, if you are at all able to, consider speaking out against this. Write to Media, Let everyone one know about this story
donate.....to this a fund that has been established .... ALL money will go directly to this family.

Click Here to Visit the site and get details has they happen, also there is a Fund Site
to help the family. If you want to get involved please email danielleschenandoahfund@hotmail.com

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CANDLES FOR GAZA CAMPAIGN

The continuing power cuts in Gaza have made
candles a basic necessity, but many residents
can no longer afford them


Self-help Gazans still need outside world ?

The continuing power cuts in Gaza
have made candles a basic necessity, but many residents can no longer afford them.

Ahmed Asidawi, aged 42, has been mostly unemployed since the start of the
Palestinian uprising in September 2000 and he is barred from entering Israel to
seek work. He is a refugee registered with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian
refugees.

"I don't have money to buy candles. I get aid from the agency. I am registered as a
special hardship case. I have no other source of income," he told IRIN from
Nussairat refugee camp in central Gaza.

Najwa Sheikh Ahmed and her husband Taher, also residents of Nussairat, recently
began a campaign to help their poorest neighbours.

Najwa's job with UNRWA brought her into contact with international aid workers
who are able to exit and enter the Gaza Strip, a luxury few Palestinians have enjoyed
since June, when, following bloody battles which left the Islamic group Hamas in
control of Gaza, the borders were sealed.

She asked international friends and their colleagues "on the outside" - a phrase used
to describe everywhere but the enclave - to buy candles and bring them to Gaza.
Conventional imports into the Strip are restricted. She and Taher then distribute the
candles in the camp. "It was an idea to help my people. I don't have money to give.
This idea is simple but can help," she told IRIN.

Najwa said she felt the need to do something after the sudden, but temporary, end to
European Union-funded fuel for power generators in August, which plunged Gaza
into the dark for several days.

Since an Israeli airstrike on Gaza's power station last year, electricity in the Strip has
been generally unstable.

"We need help from the outside"

Najwa's candle initiative relies on the connection to the outside world she maintains
through foreign aid workers. It highlights, observers said, the impact of the sanctions
in place on Gaza and the need for the enclave to resume contact with the outside world.

Fida Qishta, a resident of the Rafah District in southern Gaza, began a programme in
2003 to help the traumatised children of the area who have seen more than their fair
share of violence in recent years.

"We saw children suffering, children without a childhood. Young girls talked like
20-year-old women," she said. In the area closest to the border, the children could only
talk about tanks, bullets and guns, she added.

Her children's groups have grown from four children per group to over 70. More than
400 youngsters have undergone some sort of educational therapy through her Life
Makers Team in the past few years.

The project was a local one, relying on volunteers and a "fee" of a dollar a month from
the parents of the children. "The economic situation is so bad. Even one dollar is too
much now. One father said to me 'if I don't make a dollar, how can I give you one',"
Qishta told IRIN from Rafah, with its 150,000 residents, most of them refugees.

She has come to rely on foreign donations, typically from individuals in the USA.
"To get anything big running, we need help from the outside," she said, adding that
she was now trying to raise money to build Rafah's first playground.

"The children need more green. Life is too black," she said.

The closures on Gaza have also affected her other projects which generated income for
the poor.

"The women from our centre made handicrafts and sent them abroad, to places like
France - bags and wallets in a Palestinian embroidery style. Now we can't. The raw
materials are out of reach and anyway we can't export the finished product," Qishta said.

Najwa, for her part, also noted the heavy price paid by the most vulnerable. "My son
came home from school saying children in his class didn't have notebooks or pencils,
because their parents couldn't afford them. I want to launch a new campaign, to bring
in more school bags and equipment, like pencils and pens, for these children," she said.

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A Must See - North American Union

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Arabs won’t be Rice’s rabbit in the hat

Rami G. Khouri

What does it mean when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says it is time to establish a Palestinian state within a year, for the sake of Palestinian, Israeli and US national interests, and that, "we are not going to tire until I have given my last ounce of energy and my last moment in office [to working for a two-state solution]"?

There is an unreal yet intriguing quality to America's newfound enthusiasm for an instant Palestinian state. That is a welcomed goal - if it were sincere.
Rice's first big problem is that few people in the Middle East believe the United States is sincere, because every aspect of Washington's policy during the past seven years flatly contradicts everything Bush-Rice have stated rhetorically in recent months about their commitment to creating a Palestinian state.
They do not seem to realise that they are now finally paying the price for years of policies of disdain and neglect of Palestinian and Arab rights, in favour of broadly supporting Israeli positions.
 

The United States haughtily gambled on getting away with pursuing a policy of nice words that gravely contradicts its actual destructive policies on the ground. Consequently, most people in the Middle East no longer believe the United States, respect its policies or fear its power. Anyone who cares to live in the real world can observe this in the defiant behaviour of Iran, Syria, Turkey, Hizbollah, Hamas and many other states and popular mass movements that probably comprise 75 per cent of the people of this region.
This is not the first time that American presidents and Israeli prime ministers have tried to salvage their damaged reputations by pulling an Arab-Israeli peace rabbit out of the hat at the last minute. It will not work, just as it did not work in the past.
 

Negotiated, durable peace accords and Palestinian states cannot be ordered like a late night pizza to meet an urgent physical or emotional craving by slightly disoriented fraternity boys. If the United States suddenly decides it needs Arab partners to help it get out of its messes throughout the Middle East, it will not get them by a change of rhetoric without a change in policy that sheds its years of contempt and disregard for Palestinian and Arab rights alongside Israeli rights.
Washington would be more convincing if it were to commit to the known elements of a negotiated peace that are firmly grounded in UN resolutions and international law. A consistent American affirmation of the illegal and destructive nature of Israeli colonies, settlements and land expropriations, for example, would be a much more effective way to secure Arab respect and diplomatic cooperation than the Bush-Rice policy of supporting in writing Ariel Sharon's colonial policies on settlements and refugees, and then standing by Ehud Olmert's perpetuation of those positions.
 

The Arab people, and perhaps even a few leaders, are totally fed up with being asked to play the role of the rabbit that is pulled out of the hat by American illusionists. Remarkably, Washington and others still have not grasped perhaps the single most important strategic change that has occurred in the Arab world in the past generation: many - perhaps most - ordinary Arabs and their political movements have crossed the threshold of fear and passive acquiescence to the power of the United States, Israel and entrenched Arab regimes.
The United States is happy to recognise, laud and ride this phenomenon when, say, Lebanese citizens rally against Syria; but it refuses to see the same defiant, fearless spirit among many more Arabs who rally against the US itself.
 

Through a combination of resistances - Islamist, nationalist, tribal, sectarian, ethnic, revivalist, democratic and other indigenous movements - most ordinary Arab men and women now behave in a totally different manner than the previous three generations, since the birth of the modern Arab world around 1920. They refuse to bow to foreign ultimatums and threats; refuse to cringe in fear of American, Israeli or British military attacks; refuse to waste time sending petitions to Western leaders asking them to adhere to global rights norms; and refuse to play smoke-and-mirror deception games designed in Washington and Tel Aviv - or in Tony Blair's wandering mind.
The Arabs will no longer be treated like rabbits to be pulled out of American conjurers' hats on demand, as late night curatives for ideological hangovers, to get through the next day - or the last year in office. Grasping this fact, and designing a peace process that is equitable and anchored in law, rather than illusionary and driven by colonial mindsets and power imbalances, is the right way to get to both a Palestinian state and Israel's secure acceptance in the Middle East.

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Perspectives on Christian Zionism

Important video to watch.

Click on the link below.

hazem

Bill Moyers talks with Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of TIKKUN, a Jewish journal of politics, culture, and spirituality, and Dr. Timothy P. Weber, author of ON THE ROAD TO ARMAGEDDON: HOW EVANGELICALS BECAME ISRAEL'S BEST FRIEND.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10052007/watch3.html

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Hike in Israeli violence at Hebron settlement

Palestinians have been subjected to a sharp rise in violence from Israeli settlers
 and security forces in the flashpoint city of Hebron in the last seven months, human rights
groups said on Friday.

 

Dozens of cases in which Jewish settlers attacked Palestinians after they moved into a large Palestinian house last March are listed in a report published by B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

 

"Since the establishment of the new settlement in the a-Ras neighbourhood of Hebron there has been a noticeable increase in attacks by settlers and Israeli security forces on the neighborhood's Palestinian residents," the report said.

 

"Settler attacks include beatings, destruction of property, throwing of stones and eggs, hurling of refuse, urinating from the settlement building onto the street, and verbal abuse," it said.

 

It accused Israeli security forces of failing to intervene, and charged that they also increased abuse and violence against Palestinian residents after the Jewish settlers moved into the house in March.

 

"B'Tselem and ACRI have documented beatings, firing of blanks and threats of gunfire, property damage, blocking of passage, swearing, and racist comments by security forces," it said.

 

"Many Palestinians will be left no choice but to abandon the neighbourhood," the report said, urging Israel to evict the settlers immediately.

 

About 200 settlers moved into the three-storey building on the road between the southern West Bank city of Hebron and the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba.

 

Around 600 hardline settlers live in a tightly-guarded enclave in Hebron, which is also home to around 170,000 Palestinians. All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.

 

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20071019/twl-mideast-conflict-israel-settlers-3cd7efd.html

.

__,_._,___

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The Wall In Palestine - Facts, Testimonies, Analysis and Call to Action

GET THE BOOK!


Click On The To Get More Deatails

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Bush and Blair Comedy (rap)

Watch this video. This is for an entertainment purposes only.

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Laugh Time - Now That's Funny!

thanks to Ange over at top blog buzzing for buzzing this quote:

“Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy,

and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it”

What do you wish for?

Someone tell the folks over at mnsbc
to watch their editing!
A couple of missing letters meant this
U.S news channel was in a spot of bother…

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Palestinian refugees in 2007 UNHCR excom meeting

NGOs urge UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR): "Provide immediate effective protection and find rights-based durable solutions for Palestinian refugees, including voluntary repatriation"

Some 270 NGOs from around the world reminded member states of the UNHCR Executive Committee that, "Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) constitute the largest and longest-standing unresolved caseload of refugees and displaced persons in the world today. NGOs urge the international community to increase efforts to find voluntary durable solutions to their plight [...], including local integration, resettlement and voluntary repatriation."

 

In two statements delivered to the annual UNHCR Executive Committee (Excom) Meeting in early October, NGOs recognized the generosity of Syria, Egypt and Jordan, who are hosting thousands of refugees from Iraq, and called upon States to pursue their efforts to ensure that the approximately 15,000 Palestinian refugees in Iraq and on its borders "are provided with temporary protection, and access to durable solutions [...] In cooperation with UNHCR, all Palestinian refugees from Iraq should be registered with UNRWA as a matter of high priority."

The Excom, UNHCR's governing body, however, has yet to engage. The Committee is composed of 70 member states from all continents. It includes UNHCR's major donors (United States, European Commission, Japan, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, a.o.), as well as several Arab states and Israel. The Excom has been unable, for political reasons, to reach a consensus for engagement based on Palestinian refugees' right of return to their homes of origin located in Israel or the 1967 Occupied Palestinian Territory under Israel's effective control.

UNHCR currently holds that its mandate is limited to Palestinian refugees outside the area of operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), such as Palestinians refugees in/from Iraq. UNHCR-Israel does not include Palestinian refugees in its mandate. Arab states are reluctant to cooperate with a UNHCR unable to hold Israel to account and ensure equal burden sharing with rich western states. Thus most Arab and western states – for different reasons - have been unwilling to provide temporary protection or resettlement slots for Palestinian refugees from Iraq. Only Syria, Jordan, Canada, Brazil, Chile and Norway have agreed to host limited numbers.

 

The result is a situation where most Palestinian refugees in/from Iraq cross borders on their own into neighboring Arab and other countries where they find themselves with little or no protection by states and agencies. Others remain stuck in Iraq or at its borders in grave danger and under inhuman conditions.

Meanwhile, UNHCR is pressured for rapid humanitarian solutions and in danger of violating its own standards. "Protection" of Palestinian refugees is negotiated with states already over-burdened with refugees, and with states threatened with armed conflict and generating refugees of their own. In this context, BADIL calls upon UNHCR to uphold its principle of voluntariness, as 300 Palestinian refugees stranded at the Syrian-Iraqi border have already turned down Sudan's offer to host them, explaining that they are unwilling to move to Sudan that may soon face civil war and where conflict in the Darfur region has already left the country with some 2.5 million refugees of its own.

BADIL calls upon civil society organizations, in particular NGOs working with UNHCR, to continue joint efforts for states, members of the UNHCR Excom, to:

- Provide immediate temporary protection slots to displaced Palestinian refugees and IDPs;

- Enhance protection efforts through inter-agency cooperation, in particular among UNRWA and UNHCR;

- Develop a comprehensive global protection regime for Palestinian refugees and IDPs in which repatriation, the preferred durable solution of UNHCR and the Palestinian refugee and IDPs, is recognized and promoted as their primary durable solution under international law and UN resolutions.

60 years after their original displacement, Palestinian refugees and IDPs are entitled to an international protection regime which can prevent renewed displacement, protect during displacement and promote durable solutions based on their right to return.

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
PO Box 728, Bethlehem, Palestine
Telefax: 00972-2-2747346
info@badil.org - www.badil.org

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Palestinians' lives invisible to Israelis

By EDWARD MAST

GUEST COLUNIST

 
On a visit to Tel Aviv last month, I asked some Israeli friends what people in Israel were saying about the Palestinian situation. Not much, they told me. Israelis are more concerned about the corruption charges against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, coming on the heels of corruption charges against previous governments. Palestinians and their issues, my friends told me, are becoming more and more invisible to the Israeli people.

 

Palestinian lives are kept invisible in David Brumer's Oct. 10 guest column, "Despite concerns, Israel a vibrant country." Also invisible are Israel's military occupation and the ongoing takeover of Palestinian land. If Brumer had traveled to the other side of the wall, as I did, he could have witnessed the many ways that the Israeli occupation crushes people with poverty, violence and injustice.

 

Before visiting Tel Aviv, I spent two weeks working with a theater in the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the West Bank. During that short time, the Israeli army killed at least 15 Palestinians in the occupied territories; several killed were children. For Palestinians, these are regular occurrences. Over the past seven years, the Israeli army has killed more than 4,000 Palestinians. The majority of these, even according to Israeli statistics, have been unarmed civilians. Many thousands more have been wounded or kidnapped. The severe underreporting of Palestinian casualties in the U.S. and Israel can leave the impression that Palestinian lives have less value.

 

While I was there, Brian Avery came from the United States to testify in Jerusalem against the Israeli army. Avery is a peace activist who was shot in the face by the Israeli army in 2003. At first the Israeli army denied that the shooting took place, but has been forced to launch an investigation now that Avery is bringing a suit.

 

In Ramallah, I learned that, though there is plenty of water near the city, the several hundred thousand residents had spent the summer with running water available only three or four days each week. That sort of fact tends to be invisible to Israelis, along with the reasons.

 

Ramallah is near the cluster of West Bank aquifers, which are the main sources of water for both the West Bank and Israel, but 80 percent of the West Bank's water goes to Israel and Israeli settlements. For decades, Israel has used its military occupation of the West Bank to build an illegal network of settlements around the water sources. Palestinians have been beaten, killed and driven away to make space for these settlements, and Israel has built a continuous wall, not on the border of Israel but inside Palestinian territory, which effectively annexes the settlements and water resources into Israel.

 

Israelis are told the wall is for their security. Palestinians call it the annexation wall, and it is difficult for them to believe Israel can be a partner for peace while the Israeli government continues taking Palestinian land for settlements, building the wall to annex them and maintaining the system of checkpoints that paralyze movement and life in the West Bank.

 

With some colleagues, I spent one day traveling from Ramallah to Jerusalem. The eight-mile trip took 2 1/2 hours. In Ramallah, the wall is 25 feet high, and the Israeli checkpoint is like an airport security station. We lined up for more than half an hour with Palestinians at a remote-controlled 8-foot turnstile where people had to crowd like cattle and wait for a green light to get as many through as possible before the light turned red.

 

Once past X-ray security and more turnstiles, we boarded shared taxis for what should have been a short ride to Jerusalem. However, the Israeli military had set up an additional temporary "flying checkpoint" some 1,640 feet down the road, forcing several lanes of traffic down to a single lane for stopping and searching. That took almost an hour.

 

Business in Ramallah is at a standstill. Poverty is everywhere; jobs are not to be found. The people at the checkpoint said to us, "Take pictures. Tell people what is happening here."

 

Some Israelis, such as my Tel Aviv friends, no longer accept the excuse that the virtual imprisonment and killing of Palestinians are justified by the need for security.

 

The Israeli government has recently confiscated more Palestinian land near Jerusalem to build a segregated road, literally underground, for Palestinians. Israeli settlers will be able to commute back and forth from the territories without having so much as to see a Palestinian. Invisibility here is no accident.

 

Edward Mast is a Seattle playwright who volunteers with the Palestine Information Project; www.palestineinformation.org

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Latest Israeli Violations of Human Rights

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks on
Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)

Highlights 5 Palestinians, including an old man, were killed by IOF while 2 of the victims were extra-judicially executed by IOF.   31 Palestinians, including 8 children, 2 women and a journalist, were wounded by IOF.   IOF conducted 34 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and 5 ones into the Gaza Strip. IOF arrested 54 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and 3 others in the Gaza Strip. IOF arrested 4 Palestinian fishermen opposite to the Rafah seashore. IOF razed at least 163 donums [1] of agricultural land and demolished a house in the Gaza Strip. IOF destroyed an under-construction house in Qalqilya. IOF transformed a number of houses into military sites. IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT. IOF have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world and a humanitarian crisis has emerged. Palestinian civilians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been denied access to Jerusalem. IOF troops arrested 5 Palestinian civilians at checkpoints in the West Bank. IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attacks Palestinian civilians and property. This Summary is the Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law continued in the OPT during the reporting period (11 – 17 October 2007) Shooting: During the above reporting period, IOF killed 5 Palestinians and wounded 31 others, including 8 children, 2 women and a journalists, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.   In the West Bank, IOF killed 3 Palestinians, including an old man, and wounded 15 others, including 5 children, a woman and a journalist. On Thursday, 11 October 2007, an IOF undercover unit extra-judicially executed a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (an armed wing of Fatah movement) and wounded and arrested another one. On Tuesday, 16 October 2007, a member of the Palestinian resistance and an old man were killed and 8 others, including a child, a woman and a journalist, were wounded during an incursion by IOF into Nablus. The resistance activist was killed when a home-made shell, which he and his colleagues wanted to fire at IOF, exploded near him. Two of his colleagues were also wounded. The old man was killed when IOF troops opened fire at him as he was about to open the door of his house when they knocked it. During the reporting period, 6 other civilians, including 4 children, were wounded by IOF troops in various areas in the West Bank. In the Gaza Strip, IOF killed 2 Palestinians and wounded 16 others, including 3 children and a woman. On Saturday, 13 October 2007, IOF extra-judicially executed a member of the 'Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades (the military wing of Hamas) and wounded 3 others and a passing child. On Wednesday, 17 October 2007, IOF killed a member of the Palestinian resistance and wounded 6 others and a woman during an incursion into al-Farrahin area in 'Abassan village, east of Khan Yunis. During the reporting period, 6 Palestinians civilians, including 2 children, were wounded by IOF in various areas in the Gaza Strip. Incursions: During the reporting period, IOF conducted at least 34 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank. During those incursions, IOF arrested 54 Palestinian civilians, including 5 children. Thus, the number of Palestinians arrested by IOF in the West Bank since the beginning of this year has mounted to 2,146. IOF also destroyed an under-construction house in Qalqilya belonging to a Palestinian who has been detained in Israeli jails. In the Gaza Strip, IOF conducted 5 incursions into Palestinian communities. During those incursions, IOF troops transformed a number of houses into military sites, demolished a house, razed 163 donums of agricultural land and arrested 3 Paletsinian civilians. Restrictions on Movement: Since Wednesday morning, 26 September 2007, IOF have imposed a total siege on the OPT. IOF have continued to impose a tightened siege on the OPT and imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.  Gaza Strip IOF have imposed a strict siege on the Gaza Strip. They have closed its border crossings as a form of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians. IOF have closed Rafah International Crossing Point, even though they do not directly control it. They have prevented European observers working at the crossing point form reaching it. IOF had already closed Rafah International Crossing Point following an armed attack against an IOF military post in Kerem Shalom area, southeast of Rafah, on 25 June 2006. The crossing point had been partially reopened for short, sporadic periods to allow few numbers of Palestinian to travel through it. The crossing point has been completely closed since Hamas' takeover of the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of Palestinian security forces from the crossing point. There are approximately 6,000 Palestinians held at the Egyptian side of the border awaiting to return to their homes in the Gaza Strip. Most of them have run out of money and are living on assistance. In addition, 19 of them have died in Egypt. The bodies were returned to Gaza through the Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing. In addition, thousands of travelers were allowed to return to the Gaza Strip through al-Ojah crossing, 8 kilometers southeast of Rafah. From there, they were transported to Erez Checkpoint to enter the Gaza Strip.  IOF have also closed commercial crossings, especially al-Mentar (Karni) crossing. IOF have continued to close Erez crossing in the northern Gaza Strip. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have been prevented from traveling through this crossing. During the reporting period, IOF arrested 4 Palestinian fishermen opposite to Rafah seashore.  West Bank IOF have continued to impose severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians to and from Jerusalem. Thousands of Palestinian civilians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been denied access to the city. IOF have established many checkpoints around and inside the city. Restrictions of the movement of Palestinian civilians often escalate on Fridays to prevent them from praying at the al-Aqsa Mosque. IOF often violently beat Palestinian civilians who attempt to bypass checkpoints and enter the city. IOF have imposed additional restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the city during the Eid al-Futr. IOF have also tightened the siege imposed on Palestinian communities in the West Bank. They have isolated Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. IOF positioned at various checkpoints in the West Bank have continued to impose severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians. IOF also erected more checkpoints on the main roads and intersections in the West Bank. During the reporting period, IOF arrested 5 Palestinian civilians at checkpoints in the West Bank.  Settlement Activities: Israeli settlers living in the OPT in violation of international humanitarian law have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property. During the reporting period, Israeli settlers escalated attacks against Palestinian farmers in an attempt to prevent them from cultivating olives.     The full report is available online at: html format: Here pdf format: Here

For further information on the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights please visit their website at http://www.pchrgaza.org

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Rudy Giuliani, liar extraordinaire

It’s a sin to tell a lie right? It was a popular song. The nuns told me not to lie in Sunday school. My mother and father echoed it and emphasized, “tell the truth or else.” So why is that New York’s self-styled crime-fighter, terror-slammer, and general standard bearer a liar? Because that’s what makes Rudy Giuliani run, from mayor to president.

For instance on his website, Rudy claims that he grew New York City’s police force by 12,000 officers between his swearing in as mayor in January 1994 and mid-2000. That’s a flat out lie. Most of the police he’s counting, 7,100 to a man, were already working as housing or transit cops. They were simply folded into the New York Police Department. The merger of departments didn’t increase the NYPD at all, as reported in Cop-Counting Cop-Out.

The writer who ferreted out the material was Viveca Novack. She points out that the real increase in the force’s size was about 3,600, or 10 percent, during the time Giuliani highlights. But Giuliani does not mention that the tab for hiring 3,500 of the officers was partially covered by the federal government, in fact by Rudy’s anathema, Bill Clinton, whose national agenda contained a policy to expand police presence in cities.

As passed by Congress as part of Clinton’s 1994 crime bill, New York City received enough money to cover the first $25,000 of the salaries of some 3,500 new officers from 1997 to 2000, according to the city’s nonpartisan Independent Budget Office.

Rudy does finally, officially, include the addition of the housing and transit cops to his NYPD tally in fiscal 1995. Those make up the nearly 7,100 officers. This number was vaulted again to 12,000 cops added to the force by a boasting but lying Giuliani still later. But, lying aside, Rudy’s administrative juggling did not put any new police on the city’s streets. Those cops were already patrolling crime-ridden subways and housing projects.

The move may have helped the NYPD from an efficiency standpoint, supposedly to eventually save money for the city. But it’s dishonest and misleading to leave the transit and housings cops out of the count in the first place, and then take a bow for adding them. The number on his blog actually cites another inflated number, 7,555, “ . . . the result of merging the NYPD with Transit and Housing Police Depts.”

In fact, in Rudy’s FY 1996 Message of the Mayor budget document, just two months before, the housing and transit police actually had 7,095 officers, excluding civilian workers. Also, going back to when Rudy took office, the number of police officers he uses for the NYPD, 28,000, is inaccurate. It would have been true six months earlier, under Mayor David Dinkins.

But the NYPD numbered 29,450 when Giuliani took the job, according to the FY 1996 Message of the Mayor. By using the earlier number, Rudy takes credit for 1,450 officers that former Mayor Dinkins, who had begun a special anti-crime initiative, Safe Streets, Safe City, had added.

More that Dinkins and Koch did

As BraveNewFilms.Org reports . . .

Who really cleaned up New York? In the early 1990s, former Mayor Dinkins put 6,000 more police officers on the street.

• The city's murder rate fell by 13.7 percent, robbery fell by 14.6 percent, burglary fell by 17.6 percent, and auto theft fell by 23.8 percent.
  
  
• The city's crime rate dropped in all seven FBI major-felony categories for the first time in nearly four decades.
  
  
• The notorious porn shops and movie houses along 42nd Street had already been shut down.
  
  
• The last graffiti-covered subway car had been taken off the line in 1989, under Mayor Ed Koch who preceded Dinkins.

Some 9/11 lies from Rudy

As Novack reports, Rudy’s claim that on 9/11 he had a new command center “up and running within half an hour” is a lie. First, he was forced to evacuate his primary center on the 23rd floor of Building 7, across the street from the world’s largest target, the World Trade Center. Locating it there in the first place was against the repeated advice of Jerry Hauer, NYC’s first emergency management director, not to mention former Police Chief Howard Safir. No backup site was chosen or created at the time.

Furthermore, Rudy did more truth-twisting in his 2002 book, Leadership, when he said that “we arrived about noon” [on 9/11] at the backup site. In fact, it was two-and-a-half hours after the evacuation. And where was he/”we” in between, scrambling like rats for a new ship to board, while firemen, policemen, first responders, and innocent citizens were dying for want of a Central Command Center.

Along these lines, Novack reports that even the 9/11 Commission of Omission raised the issue of misplacing the OEM headquarters at Building 7, next to a major “terrorist target,” the WTC.

The 9/11 Commission Report said, “The [Office of Emergency Management's] headquarters was located at 7 WTC. Some questioned locating it both so close to a previous terrorist target and on the 23rd floor of a building (difficult to access should elevators become inoperable). There was no backup site.”

In a September 19 interview on CNN, reporter John King asked Giuliani about this. Rudy’s response was as follows: “You know how many buildings in New York are targeted by terrorists? I used to know the list cold. It wasn't necessarily the only building that was. And in fact, you want an emergency center sort of in the main area of the city. We also had backup centers. So if you look at the response, actually, to the September 11, we had a virtual center, we had our center up and running within a half hour.”

As stated, there was no backup center. And it took two-and-a-half hours to find and set-up a back-up command center in the middle of an Apocalypse. So he’s flat-out lying.

More criminal lies

Rudy spews more lies in his bid for the presidential nomination. He talks a lot about cutting taxes, one of the main chapters from the Republican bible, when in fact he has inflated [lied about] his number of cuts during his watch as mayor.

In August, he lied that he spent as much time at Ground Zero and exposed himself to the same health-destroying risks as the workers who actually sifted through he rubble. He appears to be in perfectly good health these days, while some 9,000 Ground Zero workers have put forth a class action lawsuit against NYC for health-and-life-threatening conditions and injuries sustained in the pit.

These injuries are being assessed at more than a billion dollars. Under consideration is creating something like the Victim’s Compensation Fund, where some settlement can be made with each victim. Unfortunately, these health costs will be ongoing and hard to put a fixed number on, as was and is being done with the families of victims who perished on 9/11.

And so, we draw the curtain of Giuliani lies for now to give you time to digest these. Trust that more will be forthcoming, including the latest from the New York Times, Giuliani Sells New York as Town He Tamed. Read it and laugh, cry, or ball it up and throw at the wall. In any case, a more fitting verb than “Tamed” would be “Screwed.”

Jerry Mazza is a freelance wrier living in New York. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.netThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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Formalizing apartheid packaged as peace initiative

Next month the US plans to host a regional meeting to discuss peace in the Middle East, or at least peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The maneuvering, deal making and negotiating about what will be on the table has been going on for some time. But the details of the agreement being discussed have been a well-guarded secret but for the steady flow of leaks and trial balloons. Deciphering this information combined with facts on the ground, one can put together a clear outline of Israel's "next generous offer."

Political maneuvers can be spun to sound good if the details are kept vague, but when held to scrutiny it becomes obvious that the upcoming Israeli offer is not so generous. Like the Oslo Accords and the "disengagement" from Gaza, the peace process being cooked now is a move to consolidate Israeli control of all of historic Palestine while taking a large portion of the Palestinian population off Israel's hands. The devil is in the details that follow.

The agreement on the table offers Palestinians what Israel's president Shimon Peres calls "the equivalent of 100 percent of the territory occupied in 1967." According to Peres, Israel will retain its major West Bank population centers, also known as settlement blocs, which Peres claims make up only five percent of the West Bank. In exchange Israel will offer to give the Palestinians the same amount of territory elsewhere. According to Peres, Israel will exchange land in Israel populated by Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship. This will allow Israel to remove some of its Palestinian Arab population, whom most Jewish Israelis perceive as "demographic threat" to the nature of the Jewish state.

When Israeli politicians like Peres talk about retaining five percent of the West Bank, they do not include occupied East Jerusalem. Israel illegally and unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem in 1967-68. Hence, Israeli sources claim there are 250,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, completely discounting the estimated additional 250,000 settlers in occupied East Jerusalem.

Israel's settlement blocs are being created and built as you read these words. For years Israel has been creating settlement blocs on strategic land that will carve the West Bank into disconnected islands, maintain Israeli access to the West Bank water resources and surround and strangle Arab Jerusalem. The de facto annexation of this strategic 9.5 percent of the West Bank's land behind Israel's apartheid wall has already taken place. The "peace" process will simply make it official.

In March 2006 the newly formed Kadima party was elected to implement Ariel Sharon's "convergence plan." According to this plan, the non-strategic settlements outside of the settlement blocs would be dismantled. The evacuated settlers would be resettled in the "blocs" behind the wall that would in turn be annexed by Israel.

On 14 April 2004, President Bush wrote to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing population centers it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949 ..." This letter was subsequently ratified in both US Houses of Congress.

Israel took this as a green light from the US to keep whatever areas they can fill with settlers. Therefore, despite the Road Map requirement that Israel freeze settlement expansion, Israel accelerated the creation of so-called "existing" settlement blocs in strategically important areas.

In the same letter to Sharon, Bush also stated, "It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel." Consequently, in the offer to be made by Israel, Palestinian refugees will be allowed the right to return, not to their homes, but to small, non-contiguous parts of their original homeland, divided into disconnected territorial units, with no chance of maintaining a sustainable economy and with no control over water, power, or other necessary resources. They will be allowed to return to a cage, with Israel manning every door.

Israeli plans, backed by these US guarantees, create an unlivable apartheid situation for Palestinians. But Palestinians are not even likely to receive such a "generous" apartheid offer in November.

Now, with less than sixteen months left in the Bush administration, Ehud Olmert lacks the political clout to carry out Israel's end of the deal. Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak recently stated his opposition to what he called "withdrawal from Israeli principles that have stood for 40 years, merely to gain favor in the eyes of an American president who is leaving office in a year." Therefore, at the Olmert's administration's insistence, the goals of the regional meeting have been watered down to a joint statement that will outline the basis of the future agreement. Olmert is demanding that the joint declaration include a reference to Bush's April 2004 letter to Sharon and to the Road Map.

Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni's stated objective is to declare a "transitional" Palestinian state with "provisional" borders, an option that appears in the second phase of the Road Map. When Israel accepted the Road Map in March 2003 it attached "14 reservations." Israel considers these reservations as integral parts of the Road Map. Israel's fifth reservation states: "The provisional state will have provisional borders and certain aspects of sovereignty, be fully demilitarized ... be without the authority to undertake defense alliances or military cooperation, and Israeli control over the entry and exit of all persons and cargo, as well as of its air space and electromagnetic spectrum." Such a state would be squeezed between the separation wall, Israel's "demographic border," and the Jordan Valley, Israel's "security border" with Jordan. With the Jordan Valley making up approximately 30 percent of the West Bank, under this scenario Israel would likely retain more than 40 percent of the West Bank. This transitional Palestinian state would consist of a series of isolated Bantustans, or as Sharon, who fathered the plan, preferred to refer to them, "cantons."

In the past the Palestinians have pressed to have this option of the temporary state removed from the Road Map, since the history of Israel's occupation shows that "temporary measures" are almost always permanent. However, Palestinian negotiators now accept the possibility of a temporary state on the condition that they receive international assurances that the third and final phase of the Road Map, that includes a permanent settlement, will be implemented within six months. Israel has no intention of accepting this condition.

It is questionable whether Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will be able to accept this offer without a timeframe for a permanent settlement. But perhaps he is not even meant to accept. For if Abbas refuses another Israeli-American "generous offer" his rejection could be presented to the world as more proof that there is no Palestinian "partner for peace." Israel would then be "justified" in implementing its convergence plan unilaterally.

Unilateral "convergence" will make it possible to create a situation in the West Bank similar to what unilateral "disengagement" has created in the Gaza. Gaza's residents, 70 percent of whom are refugees from what is now Israel, are currently isolated, starving and under total Israeli blockade from land, air and sea.

Olmert, Bush, Blair and their accomplices in the "Quartet" have vast, sophisticated and boundlessly resourced PR machinery that, through unlimited access to an uncritical media, can put a compelling "peace spin" on an apartheid process. During the November meeting they will assure the world of their commitment to a Palestinian state (with the appropriate Abbas/Olmert/Bush photo ops). They will promise to commit millions of dollars, funding Palestinian "institution building" and humanitarian aid and arming troops in order to "keep the peace" inside the Bantustans. Arab states will normalize relations with Israel, strengthening the "moderates" of the entire region, thus softening the Arab street as a prerequisite for an American-led strike on Iran.

If we, the peace and justice community, manage to expose this latest maneuver for what it really is, Israel could be forced into fair negotiations for the first time.

For this to happen we must mobilize immediately. It is our job to educate the rest of the world about what these talks really mean and the truth about what is happening. The writing is literally on the wall and on the ground. It took many months if not years to expose the ugly truth behind the first "generous offer." Let's not make that mistake again.

Neta Golan is an Israeli peace with justice activist living in Ramallah and a founder of the Internaitonal Solidarity Movement. Mohammed Khatib is a leading member of Bil'in's Popular Committee Against the Wall and the secretary of Bil'in's Village Council. For more information see: http://www.apartheidmasked.org/

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Warning letters delivered to thousands of Jewish families in Iran advise them to leave the country without delay

The letters, according to Iranian sources, have been posted to Jewish families in Tehran (where the community numbers some 13,000), Isfahan (under 2,000) and Shiraz (some 4,000). They are captioned: Danger! Danger! Danger! and tell recipients to try and reach the West with all possible speed. Iranian Jews like the rest of the population face grave danger from impending events, the anonymous writers warn.

Wednesay, Oct. 17, President George W. Bush spoke of World War Three if Iran which seeks to destroy Israel gains a nuclear bomb. He said those who helped the Islamic Republic would be held responsible, a broad hint at Russia and China.

The Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s sudden trip to Moscow Thursday, Oct. 18, for one day there and back, and the two hours President Vladimir Putin has allotted for their conversation, tie in with these events.

sources report that the meeting was requested by Olmert after he conferred with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice on the last day of her Middle East shuttle, and with Washington. The prime minister is seeking Putin’s assurance that Russia will not complete construction of Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr or supply the fuel for its activation.

Sources in Washington and Jerusalem decided to strike while the iron is hot, namely straight after Putin’s return from Tehran and before his final commitment to Tehran, in the hope of gaining his personal pledge to leave the reactor unfinished. This would be an important obstacle to Iran’s nuclear plans.

But our sources in Moscow judge these calculations are unrealistic. If Putin did not show his cards to the Iranian leaders in Tehran, they say, there is no chance of him giving Olmert any commitments. The Russian president is playing the world leader to the hilt. He will emphasize to the Israeli prime minister that Moscow has its own interests in the Middle East, just like the US and Israel.

The letters posted to Iranian Jews, our sources report, are not signed; they were postmarked from different towns in America and Europe and from private addresses so as not to raise the suspicions of Iranian security services.

All the same, some were discovered and confiscated, prompting Tehran to accuse Israel and world Zionist organizations of a campaign to scare its Jewish citizens.

In recent months, Iranian officials angrily held up a new Israeli offer of a one-time grant of $10,000 for every Iranian Jew migrating to Israel, over and above the regular grants for other immigrants. Learning of these incentives, the Iranian authorities not long ago ordered the Jewish deputy in the Majlis, Mauris Mo’tamed, to declare that the Jews of Iran cannot be bought for money and would never forsake their country.

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Chasing a mirage

by Ali Jarbawi

In all previous attempts at negotiations with Israel, Palestinians have never made any real breakthrough. Progress has only been made on procedural or superficial issues, even if expectations were always raised unreasonably high, which in turn created exaggerated hopes for the peace process. This has been the case since the Madrid peace conference and was true of the Oslo process. Throughout, the Palestinian position was in permanent retreat and concessions were offered Israel at no cost.

What is true of the past holds true for the present. When US President George W. Bush first announced his intention to convene an international meeting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Palestinian side was concerned about the lack of any clear agenda for the meeting, as well as the lack of substance and the absence of a list of invitees. The Palestinian side consequently insisted that the meeting should be preceded by agreement between the Palestinian and Israeli sides regarding how and when to tackle final status issues such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees.

Israel resisted this and insisted instead that nothing but a general declaration of principles could come from the meeting--now set to take place in Annapolis some time in late November--and that there could be no talk of specific content or any timetable. Slowly, but irresistibly, the Palestinian position changed. Today, Palestinian officials speak of agreement at the meeting on a general framework that will then be followed by negotiations on final status issues to be concluded no later than six months after the meeting. Indeed, beyond the talk of a six-month timetable, the Palestinian position has become the Israeli one, something that is glossed over with optimistic announcements about that point in the future after the Annapolis meeting.

It seems we have not learned our lessons.

What, after all, is the cause of this optimism? What has changed that has put the Palestinian side in a better position now than it was seven or 17 years ago? And if there is nothing that has changed for the better in our case, is it that Palestinian negotiators believe that the US or Israel are now, for their own internal reasons, ready to sign an agreement that respects Palestinian rights and demands?

Those who believe the time is ripe for Palestinians to conclude an agreement with Israel are deluded. On the ground, the Palestinian position is at its weakest. There is political as well as geographical division between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Social and economic conditions are on the verge of collapse, the Israeli grip on the West Bank and Jerusalem is stronger and more draconian than ever while Arab and international support for Palestinians is dwindling. In view of that, how can Palestinians change the balance of power and squeeze anything successful from negotiations with Israel?

Some argue that the US administration has finally recognized the compelling necessity of resolving the Palestinian question. But this would be an enormous assumption. The current US administration is suffering severe domestic criticism over its war in Iraq and is stumbling through its remaining months in power. Furthermore, nothing indicates that the Bush administration's unwavering support of Israel has changed. The White House may have recognized that it needs to reinvigorate the Palestinian-Israeli political process. It is clear, however, that it is neither willing nor capable of imposing a settlement, something Arab countries and Palestinians have long looked for. In truth, the Arab peace initiative would have constituted a shorter and easier path to achieve a political settlement. But one of the American aims in holding the Annapolis meeting is exactly to consign this initiative to the dustbin.

Some, meanwhile, see in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert someone willing to make unprecedented progress toward a just settlement. But Olmert is not only pressing full steam ahead with the construction of his Apartheid wall in the West Bank, he is also struggling, not only with the opposition but with his own party and his partners in the ruling coalition, to retain his tenuous hold on power. To survive, he might do well to resuscitate a negotiations process to distract his detractors, but is he really going to reach an agreement that meets Palestinian demands? And would he be able to push such an agreement through? Of course not. He has neither the power, the vision nor the intellect.

This is anything but a good time to pursue a final agreement with Israel, and the Palestinian side should not peddle false hope. Since negotiators have agreed to attend the Annapolis meeting unconditionally they should face the Palestinian people honestly and say that any negotiations now are undertaken on Israeli premises, i.e., that there can be no return to the 1967 borders, there can be no Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem and there can be no return of refugees. Should Palestinians accept these terms, agreement is at hand. If not, we will see the start of yet another cycle of negotiations, propelling negotiators around the globe and onto endless satellite TV discussion programs.

For 15 years Palestinians have been pursuing the mirage of a negotiations process. Let us not this time kid ourselves into thinking it is any cause for optimism.- Published 8/10/2007 © bitterlemons.org

Dr. Ali Jarbawi is a professor of political science at Birzeit University.

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Provide immediate effective protection and find rights-based durable solutions for Palestinian refugees

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights

NGOs urge UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR): “Provide immediate effective protection and find rights-based durable solutions for Palestinian refugees, including voluntary repatriation”

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Some 270 NGOs from around the world reminded member states of the UNHCR Executive Committee that, “Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) constitute the largest and longest-standing unresolved caseload of refugees and displaced persons in the world today. NGOs urge the international community to increase efforts to find voluntary durable solutions to their plight [...], including local integration, resettlement and voluntary repatriation.” In two statements delivered to the annual UNHCR Executive Committee (Excom) Meeting in early October, NGOs recognized the generosity of Syria, Egypt and Jordan, who are hosting thousands of refugees from Iraq, and called upon States to pursue their efforts to ensure that the approximately 15,000 Palestinian refugees in Iraq and on its borders “are provided with temporary protection, and access to durable solutions [...] In cooperation with UNHCR, all Palestinian refugees from Iraq should be registered with UNRWA as a matter of high priority.” The Excom, UNHCR's governing body, however, has yet to engage. The Committee is composed of 70 member states from all continents. It includes UNHCR's major donors (United States, European Commission, Japan, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, a.o.), as well as several Arab states and Israel. The Excom has been unable, for political reasons, to reach a consensus for engagement based on Palestinian refugees' right of return to their homes of origin located in Israel or the 1967 Occupied Palestinian Territory under Israel's effective control. UNHCR currently holds that its mandate is limited to Palestinian refugees outside the area of operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), such as Palestinians refugees in/from Iraq. UNHCR-Israel does not include Palestinian refugees in its mandate. Arab states are reluctant to cooperate with a UNHCR unable to hold Israel to account and ensure equal burden sharing with rich western states. Thus most Arab and western states – for different reasons - have been unwilling to provide temporary protection or resettlement slots for Palestinian refugees from Iraq. Only Syria, Jordan, Canada, Brazil, Chile and Norway have agreed to host limited numbers. The result is a situation where most Palestinian refugees in/from Iraq cross borders on their own into neighboring Arab and other countries where they find themselves with little or no protection by states and agencies. Others remain stuck in Iraq or at its borders in grave danger and under inhuman conditions. Meanwhile, UNHCR is pressured for rapid humanitarian solutions and in danger of violating its own standards. “Protection” of Palestinian refugees is negotiated with states already over-burdened with refugees, and with states threatened with armed conflict and generating refugees of their own. In this context, BADIL calls upon UNHCR to uphold its principle of voluntariness, as 300 Palestinian refugees stranded at the Syrian-Iraqi border have already turned down Sudan's offer to host them, explaining that they are unwilling to move to Sudan that may soon face civil war and where conflict in the Darfur region has already left the country with some 2.5 million refugees of its own. BADIL calls upon civil society organizations, in particular NGOs working with UNHCR, to continue joint efforts for states, members of the UNHCR Excom, to: · Provide immediate temporary protection slots to displaced Palestinian refugees and IDPs; · Enhance protection efforts through inter-agency cooperation, in particular among UNRWA and UNHCR; · Develop a comprehensive global protection regime for Palestinian refugees and IDPs in which repatriation, the preferred durable solution of UNHCR and the Palestinian refugee and IDPs, is recognized and promoted as their primary durable solution under international law and UN resolutions. 60 years after their original displacement, Palestinian refugees and IDPs are entitled to an international protection regime which can prevent renewed displacement, protect during displacement and promote durable solutions based on their right to return.

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Palestinians disinterested in November conference

From Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem Apart from reiterating the same old platitudes about U.S. commitment to a PalestinianState living side by side with Israel, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brought very little with her to the region during her latest visit end-September. Speaking often as a distant third-party observer, rather than a thoroughly involved honest broker, Rice spoke in terms of what “should” and “could” and “would” be achieved at the regional-international peace conference slated to take place in Washington in November. The phraseology she used, which obviously lacked both certainty and certitude, suggested that even she didn’t really know if the conference would be a success or a failure. Indeed, her frequent reference to “the two sides” (Israel and the Palestinian Authority [PA]) gave the impression that the key to a successful conference was not with the Bush Administration, but was squarely with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Olmert on Monday, 24 September, said the purpose of the upcoming Washington meeting shouldn’t be to make peace but rather to create a suitable environment conducive to peace-making. For Palestinians, the obvious prevarication holds one and only one message, namely that Israel is not interested in reaching true peace with them, especially one that would make Israel end its 40-year-old occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Indeed, with less than six weeks separating us from the November conference, it seems that virtually no noteworthy progress has been made in the often highlighted talks between Olmert and PA Chairman Abbas. And as one disgruntled Palestinian official in Ramallah put it, the talks revealed that Abbas and Olmert were talking in terms of cross purposes. “These talks were a total failure. President Abbas wanted a concrete agreement on the core issues, namely ending the occupation, but Olmert was just prevaricating, quibbling and babbling about Hamas, isolating the extremists and Israeli good-will gestures.” In mid-September, officials in Ramallah warned that the PA might not attend the conference if it became clear that it would be “a talking occasion.” However, the warning was largely seen as a desperate tactic aimed at getting the Bush administration to press Israel to address the final status issues, at least in order to enhance Abbas’ public standing among Palestinians, especially vis-à-vis Hamas. Interestingly, the warnings from Ramallah, coming from an “authority” whose very survival depends almost completely on Israeli and American good will, were rebuffed sooner rather than later when the American Secretary of State made it abundantly clear that it was up to the two sides—not the Bush administration—to see to it that the conference would not turn into a mere talking occasion. The nearly total PA dependence on the Americans to get an extremely parsimonious Israel to be more forthcoming with regard to the core issues has already forced the PA leadership to “beg for” rather than “demand” Israeli good will, whatever that means. But, for most Palestinians and Arabs, the term “Israeli good will” is an eternal oxymoron that should never be used. In addition, with an election year coming up soon in the U.S., even the Bush administration will be in a weak position to pressure Israel, assuming its willingness and inclination, which experience shows can’t be taken for granted. On Monday, 24 September, Abbas, whose main bargaining asset has been his crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank, got a clear preview of the overall American position during his meeting with President Bush at the White House. In that meeting, Bush repeated the same old words about his commitment to the creation of a PalestinianState, leaving details to bilateral talks between the vanquished supplicant (the PA) and the arrogant occupier (Israel). “I strongly support the creation of a PalestinianState. I believe it is in the interests of the Palestinian people; I believe it is in the interests of Israel to have a democracy living next to it. Democracies living side-by-side in peace,” said Bush. Bush dutifully lauded Abbas for “fighting the extremists,” a clear allusion to Hamas, but didn’t utter a single word about Palestinian rights and grievances as if the Palestinians already had a State and all that they needed was to make a democracy out of that imaginary State. Of course, that democracy would have to be tailored and shaped according to the American taste and mood, because otherwise a Palestinian democracy that doesn’t go with the flow will be hounded, boycotted and strangled, as is amply evident from the way the Bush administration dealt with the democratically elected Hamas government. The bleak prospect of a conference that almost everyone predicts will fail has already made Palestinian leaders analyze the posture the PA should assume after the (failure of) the conference. Fateh leader Qaddura Fares said the Fateh leadership should resume reconciliation talks with Hamas right after the conference. “I believe the dialogue with the two movements (Fateh and Hamas) is a certain choice, but I think it will be delayed until after the conference in the fall,” said Fares, a member of the central committee of the Fateh movement and a close confidant of imprisoned Fateh leader, Marwan Barghouthi, who many predict will succeed Abbas as the next PA Chairman. Fares warned that Fateh would have to reconsider its (hostile) stance vis-à-vis Hamas if the conference failed to achieve a concrete outcome with regard to Palestinian statehood. However, as stated above, it is unlikely that utilizing the current estrangement between Fateh and Hamas as a pressure tactic to wrest concessions from Israel will work, especially with the Israeli government. A deeper frustration has been displayed by other PLO factions. Jamil Majdalawi, a lawmaker representing the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said that “it is a foregone conclusion that the conference will be a failure.” “I think we need a salvation strategy that would deliver us from the state of powerlessness and an American change of mind and heart that will never happen.” While blaming Hamas’s “military takeover” in Gaza, the PLFP leader stressed that “it would be a big mistake to go to the conference in Washington with our internal front deeply divided.” Similarly, Hamas has called on Abbas not to harm Palestinian national interests by allowing the Americans and Israel to give a false impression about an ongoing peace process that doesn’t exist in reality. “The Palestinian cause stands to lose from these barren meetings with the Israelis and Americans. Abbas should realize the futility of relying on the U.S. to make Israel come to terms with Palestinian rights,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas’s spokesman in Gaza. The mounting Palestinian disenchantment with Washington, and, of course, with Israel, seems almost completely justified. Israel, it is increasingly obvious, has come to view Abbas at least privately very much as “a puppet leader.” The last week in September, and under this very title, Israeli commentator Gideon Levy wrote that Abbas shouldn’t go to Washington. “Even his meetings with Ehud Olmert are gradually turning into a disgrace and have become a humiliation for his people. It has become impossible to bear the spectacle of the Palestinian leader’s jolly visits in Jerusalem, kissing the cheek of the wife of the very Prime Minister who is meanwhile threatening to blockade a million and a half of his people, condemning them to darkness and hunger.” Levy, writing in Ha’aretz, further berated Abbas for his perceived subservience to Israel and the U.S. and for not having the courage to stand up to the Olmert government’s arrogance and insolence. “If Abu Mazen (Abbas’ nom de guerre) were a genuine national leader instead of a petty retailer, he would refuse to participate in the summit and any other meetings until the blockade of Gaza is lifted. If he were a man of truly historic stature he would add that no conference can be held without Ismael Haniyeh, another crucial Palestinian representative…and if Israel really wanted peace, not only an ‘agreement of principles’ with a puppet-leader that will lead nowhere, it should respect Abbas’s demand.”

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IOF troops kill elderly Palestinian in W. Bank incursion

Two Palestinian citizens, including 70-year-old man, were killed by IOF troops as tens of IOF armored vehicles pushed into the West Bank city of Nablus at dawn Tuesday, Palestinian sources affirmed. The sources identified the elderly Palestinian as Abd Shaker Wazeer, affirming that he was shot dead by a band of Israeli soldiers immediately after he opened the door of his house on their orders. He was rushed to the hospital in critical condition but, the sources added, he died along the way before he could reach the hospital due to the soldiers' deliberate blocking of the ambulance that transported him. The second Palestinian fatality was identified as Bassim Abu Surreyya, one of the Palestinian resistance field commanders in Nablus city, who died of wounds he had sustained in earlier clashes with the invading IOF troops in the refugee camp. Three other Palestinian fighters were critically wounded when the intruding IOF troops unleashed a missile at one of the houses in the city the fighters had sought as shelter. Fierce armed clashes erupted between tens of Israeli occupation soldiers backed by at least 30 armored vehicles and apache choppers on the one hand, and few Palestinian resistance fighters belong to the Faris Al-Lail (Night Knight) armed group which is an offshoot of Fatah faction on the other hand. The IOF troops were seen cordoning off the Ettehad and the Watani hospital in the city with the aim to block and arrest wounded Palestinian fighters in the event they are brought to those hospitals for treatment. However, local eyewitnesses affirmed that the fighting was still going on at the Biet Ein Al-Ma'a refugee camp, a stronghold of the Faris Al-Lail group, amidst persistent reports that the IOF troops were posing to demolish one of the buildings in the camp on a number of Palestinian fighters entrenched inside and rejecting calls from IOF troops to give up. The armed group was one of the Palestinian resistance factions that rejected Israel's "deceptive" amnesty and refused to lay down their weapons, vowing to "continue on the path of resistance till the full liberation of occupied Palestine". Tens of Fatah fighters believed to be associated with the mutiny trend within the faction had surrendered their weapons to the PA security apparatuses on Israeli and Abbas promises that they won't be pursued or arrested by the IOF troops. Yet, facts on the ground proved that those promises were only fictitious pledges as IOF troops arrested a number of those fighters after they surrendered and gave up the resistance option.

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Hamas criticizes W. Bank governor for mishandling crisis in refugee camp

Hamas Movement has accused the governor of Nablus Jamal Al-Muhaisen of dealing with the needs of those refugees affected by the invasion of the IOF troops of al-Ain refugee camp in a discriminatory manner. Furthermore, the Movement criticized the Ma'an news agency for publishing a news report entitled "Hamas attacks and defends Nablus governor at the backdrop of evaluating the damage at al-Ain refugee camp." In the article the editor claimed that some websites close to Hamas attacked the governor while an activist associated with Hamas in the West Bank refuted the news when he was contacted by phone. Hamas said that the movement issued no statement in this regard, but the news published on those websites regarding the factionalism of the governor is true and everyone at the refugee camp knows it, that is why a state of disgruntlement was prevailing in the refugee camp as the affected inhabitants underlined that the governor should have acted in a patriotic manner and should have dealt with his constituents evenhandedly regardless of their political affiliations. While agreeing with news on the factionalism of the governor Hamas stressed that the movement's official views regarding any matter should be taken either from statements issued by the movement or made by its spokesmen. The person that the Ma'an news agency claimed to have contacted denied receiving any phone calls for the agency according to Hamas's statement. Finally Hamas called on the Ma'an news agency to investigate the part about contacting Mr. Mahmoud Diab, the person whom the paper described as "associated with Hamas", because he denies any such contact, and to correct the news report accordingly.

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Blair trying to bribe PA with economic promises

From Khalid Amayreh in occupied Hebron

Left to right: Hussein al Araj (Hebron's governor), Toney Blair, Khalid al Oseili (Hebron's mayor)

Tony Blair, the Quartet envoy to Palestine-Israel, has been holding meetings with Palestinian officials in the West Bank , ostensibly to discuss ways and means to revive the moribund Palestinian economy, decimated by an increasingly Nazi-like Israeli repression. The former British Prime Minister on Wednesday, 10 October, met with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and reportedly discussed with him creating “economic incentives” that would be conducive to creating the right environment for advancing peace between the Palestinians and Israel . In Hebron , Blair met with the Governor of Hebron Hussein al Araj and town’s mayor Khalid al Oseili, both appointed by Abbas. Hebron is considered a Hamas stronghold. The two local officials briefed Blair on the political and economic situation in Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank, where hundreds of extremist Jewish settlers, backed by the Israeli army, routinely attack Arabs and vandalize their property. “We told Mr. Blair that economic revival is very difficult under the current political and security situation,” Oseili told reporters after the meeting. “In order to have normal economic activities, you’ve got to have freedom of movement and a free flow of goods and services. And given the draconian Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement within the West Bank, it is extremely difficult to conduct normal economic activities.” Asked if he sensed or detected any modicum of honesty in the tone of Blair’s words, Oseili evaded the question, saying “I am an optimistic person.” Asked further if he would give Blair the benefit of the doubt, the Hebron mayor said “my job is to lay out the bare facts to whomever is willing to listen.” Earlier, some Hebron businessmen and entrepreneurs accused Blair of seeking “to bribe the Palestinians into giving up the right of return in exchange of economic aide.” “This man is deceitful and duplicitous and can’t be trusted. Besides, he should have understood a long time ago, while he was Britain’s Prime Minister, that the problem in Palestine is this Nazi Jewish occupation which prevents normal economic activities,” said Abu Ahmed Qasrawi. “How can we have normal economic activities in the West Bank when we are not allowed to travel on our own roads, when Israeli military roadblocks, manned by young, trigger-happy, Gestapo-like soldiers kill every semblance of normal life, economic and otherwise.?” In Ramallah, Blair reportedly told Abbas that a prospective political settlement of the conflict with Israel wouldn’t survive and be durable without economic prosperity. According to PA officials, Abbas welcomed Blair’s interest in uplifting living conditions of Palestinians. However, Abbas told him that the basic problem in Palestine was the Israeli occupation which precludes normal economic activities. In Hebron , Blair avoided reporters and refused to answer questions. Most Palestinian journalists and cameramen boycotted Blair’s visit to Hebron after PA crack police verbally assaulted reporters, threatening to smash their cameras. Eventually, a few foreign journalists, including this reporter, managed to enter Hebron City Hall, but were not allowed to ask questions. One Palestinian journalist said he would have asked Blair how he thought future Arab and Muslim generations would view him in light of his key role in engineering the Anglo-American invasion and destruction of Iraq , which has so far caused the death of nearly a million Iraqis. Predictably, Blair is deeply despised in the occupied Palestinian territories as well as through the Arab-Muslim world for his close association with George Bush’s “war on terror,” which is widely viewed by Muslims as a western crusade against their own religion. Blair is also hated for supporting Israel’s genocidal campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza which killed and maimed thousands of civilians and caused widespread damage to civilian infrastructure.

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60 years later the world remains a bystander

Iqbal Jassat

Must Israeli repression be rewarded with folded arms?

The current Israeli military escalation in the Gaza has fuelled suspicion by many in the OccupiedTerritories that the Jewish state’s commitment to “peace” is as hollow as all earlier ones. Daily reports record intensity in Israeli military aggression and determination to crush resistance in the vain hope that it will pave the way for the installation of tin pot dictator Abu Mazen as their local deputy sheriff.

With November looming over the horizon, the prospect of a “promised land” for wandering Palestinians, secluded behind the American funded apartheid wall and cut up into portions revealing Israel’s morbid fascination for the ugly tapestry of Apartheid-era “Bantustans” becomes urgent.

After all, George Bush will be loathe to have to deal with pesky reporters’ questions about Hamas if it remains unchallenged in Gaza and able to pose its own challenge on the validity of the “great sell-out”. Crush them, bury them and remove them from the collective consciousness of all Palestinians is the order. Don’t bother about world opinion or international law. Kill, kill and kill!

Has world opinion no relevance? Do the constraints of international conventions apply to some and not to others? UN Security Council chamber has a remarkable appetite for double standards in concert with America’s veto power. “Don’t touch Israel” is the invisible message written all over the chambers’ wall, floor and roof.

The problem of Palestine lies with the Palestinians – not with Israel – screams the unwritten graffiti on the walls of the UN. If you haven’t seen it, blame your favourite TV cameraperson for not focusing his/her lens on it!

The UN has become a bystander. Much of mainstream Western media have become bystanders. Arab states are bystanders. The EU is a collective of bystanders. Even South Africa which under Nelson Mandela held the potential of being a critical proponent and agitator [all rolled into one] for Palestinian human rights has sadly become a pedestrian, looking on as yet another bystander.

To understand the “dread of being a bystander”, Robert Fisk in his book The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East describes an Israeli journalist’s rejection of the “bystander” model of reporting the brutality of the Israeli occupation:

Whenever Amira Hass tries to explain her vocation as an Israeli journalist – as a journalist of any nationality – she recalls a seminal moment in her mother’s life. Hannah Hass was being marched from a cattle train to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen on a summer’s day in 1944. “She and the other women had been ten days in the train from Yugoslavia. They were sick and some were dying by the road. Then my mother saw these German women looking at the prisoners, just ‘looking from the side.’ It’s as if I were there myself.” Amira Hass stares at me through wire-framed glasses as she speaks, to see if I have understood the Jewish Holocaust in her life.

The stance adopted by numerous countries is seemingly informed by a position of neutrality. But is neutrality not merely an excuse to avoid earning the wrath of the Bush administration? Neutrality – like passive onlookers – allows gross human rights violations to multiply, for by lacking principle it also lacks power. There certainly cannot be any power of deterrence possessed for instance by South Africa, if it positions its foreign policy on Israel as “neutral”.

Such neutrality not only lacks an ability to contest Israel’s belligerent conduct towards unarmed civilians, it also implies that it’s ok for Palestinian suffering to continue unabated.

What a cop-out! With arms-folded you position your policy on both sides of Israel in order to hedge your bets by avoiding a principled position one way or the other.

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The United States in Iraq

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Mirror, mirror on the wall

Saleh Al-Naami

Fatah confronts itself in Gaza, and it's not a pretty picture, observes Saleh Al-Naami

Only 10 days separated the two demonstrations that Hassan Zarqi, a 29-year-old officer in the Gaza security forces and supporter of Fatah, participated in. The first was in support of the Fayad government and criticism of the Hamas movement and its "putsch" in Gaza. The second was in criticism of the Fayad government and its policy based on "discrimination". Zarqi had previously participated in all protest actions against Hamas, but last Wednesday could not avoid participating in a demonstration against the Fayad government itself after the government stopped paying his salary and that of 10,000 other members of the security forces, most of whom belong to Fatah. "In my worst nightmares, I never imagined that this would happen to me," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. "I never expected to be punished by the government I have risked my life to defend," he said.

The sudden decision of the Fayyad government to stop paying the salaries of thousands of those in the security agencies caused embarrassment for its collective leadership in the Gaza Strip. Ahmed Halas, a prominent leader, says that he and his colleagues submitted a mass resignation to Abu Mazen in his capacity as the head of Fatah. "The Salam Fayyad government does not show the sensitivity appropriate to the problems of people here, and we cannot defend the positions of this government at a time when it is taking such a step," he told the Weekly. Halas did not mention what many Fatah leaders in Gaza are saying in their private meetings. They stress that there are other reasons that led them to resign, and that it was not only a form of protest against the severance of salaries.

Fatah leaders in Gaza believe that Abu Mazen, the Fayyad government, and Fatah leaders in Ramallah treat them with disrespect, do not consult them, and overlook their views. One of the Fatah leaders expressed his disappointment in dealings with the movement's leaders in Ramallah by telling the Weekly that they "deal with us top- down and do not give our views the slightest attention. They are insistent on us being only tools for the implementation of their policies." There are those who believe that the margin for manoeuvring for Fatah leaders in the Gaza Strip has shrunk, and that the movement's leadership there is no longer able to attack the Hamas government and accuse it of violating human rights and freedoms and oppressing Fatah activists when evidence is rising that the Fayyad government and its security agencies are undertaking a much more vicious campaign against Hamas activists and institutions.

What has made matters even more critical for Fatah leaders in Gaza is the fact that oppression of the Hamas movement in the West Bank by the security agencies of Abu Mazen takes place in full coordination with the Israeli security agencies. Fatah leaders in Gaza have been stunned by the response of their allies in Palestinian leftist movements that used to line up behind them to confront Hamas and who are now demanding an explanation for the organised oppression of Hamas in the West Bank and the cooperation of Prime Minister Fayyad with Israeli security forces.

Nehad Al-Sheikh Khalil, a researcher specialised in Palestinian partisan affairs, views the growing crisis within Fatah as a result of the leaders refusing to respond to the many questions raised following the movement's defeat by Hamas. "When one party is defeated by another, numerous questions are raised over the reasons for the defeat and the party responsible for it. Yet the Fatah leadership repeated its prior mistakes when it refused to respond to these questions," he told the Weekly.

Al-Sheikh Khalil added that Abu Mazen never dealt seriously with the Fatah leaders in Gaza to begin with, and that he appointed these leaders to be mere "shop fronts" to implement the policies approved by Ramallah. He suggested that this attitude was highly influential in driving Fatah leaders in Gaza to submit their resignations, and stressed that they realise the movement's leadership in Ramallah has decided to move to bloody confrontation with Hamas through a plan based on bombings and other disruptions of the Hamas regime in Gaza. As such, the movement's leadership has decided to disappear from the arena before this plan is carried out so that it is not held responsible by Hamas and subjected to legal questioning.

So why did Abu Mazen and the Fayyad government sever the pay of a large number of those in the security agencies who belong to Fatah after the salaries of all those in security and affiliated with Haniyeh's government had been frozen? Logic suggests that it would have been better for the Fayad government not to harm Fatah supporters given it wants to force Hamas to throw in the towel. It is illogical for the Fayad government to have taken this step if it was truly serious about reaching this goal. An official in Fatah who asked to remain anonymous told the Weekly that this step was the result of pressures by his advisors to disengage from the Gaza Strip. These advisors argue that paying the salaries of employees in the security agencies doesn't help, but rather cements the influence of Ismail Haniyeh's dismissed government by improving the economic situation.

Abu Mazen and the Fayad government feel that the leadership of the Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip is incompetent and has failed to wage an effective campaign against Hamas. According to this Fatah official, members of the leadership in the Gaza Strip are either "individuals lacking charisma or who exhibit an inclination toward cooperation with Hamas." Evidence of Abu Mazen's negative regard for the Fatah leadership is found in his haste to accept their resignation without waver. Some Palestinian sources have claimed that Abu Mazen plans to appoint a leadership for the administration of Fatah affairs in the Gaza Strip that will remain secret from the Haniyeh government, affirming that Abu Mazen is seeking to turn the battle with Hamas into a bloody one. This will not guarantee him success, for experience with the security agencies of the Haniyeh government indicates that they are aware of everything taking place within the corridors of the Fatah movement, a fact that has previously aided it in thwarting its plans. From another perspective, such a step would mean limiting the ability of Fatah to engage in mass political action, which naturally requires an open leadership and not a secret one.

On his part, the dismissed prime minister has announced that his government and the Hamas movement have no relation whatsoever to Fatah's internal crisis. "The resignation of Fatah leaders in the Gaza Strip is an internal matter that does not concern us and we have no inclination to intervene in it," Haniyeh said. Yet there are Hamas leaders who view the resignation as an sign of "sincerity" in the movement's positions. Yehia Moussa, deputy head of the Hamas parliamentary bloc in the Palestinian Legislative Council, holds that the Fatah leadership in Gaza was "forced" to present its resignation and that this "confirms the absence of a democratic process within the movement". He accuses the Fatah leadership in Ramallah of "appealing to personal considerations and abandoning Gaza in all of its political components." Moussa holds that such a development contains a "positive transformation in that it will wake up Fatah supporters and point them in the right direction," he told the Weekly.

Whatever the reasons behind the internal crisis of the Fatah movement, it has already undermined protest activities organised by Fatah in Gaza against Hamas and will further weaken Abu Mazen in his campaign against Hamas.

Caption: Released Palestinians from Israeli prisons, wearing scarves bearing the colours of their national flag, arrive at the Palestinian Authority headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. But another 29 prisoners who were due to be released into Gaza continue to languish behind bars

C a p t i o n 2: Released Palestinians from Israeli prisons, wearing scarves bearing the colours of their national flag, arrive at the Palestinian Authority headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. But another 29 prisoners who were due to be released into Gaza continue to languish behind bars

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The rights of the refugees are personal

Dear Sir,

In your article "Olmert hints Israel may be willing to split up Jerusalem" by Donald Macintyre, reference is made to " In particular, Israel is pressing Mr Abbas to concede that the families of refugees who fled or were driven out of their homes in 1948 will not return to Israel. Palestinian officials argue this would be extremely problematic for him, especially ahead of actual final-status negotiations." It is less than honest for Abbas, if he did, to claim the right to speak for the refugees. It is certainly less than honest for Israel to pretend that Abbas has that right.

There seems some confusion, perhaps deliberate(?), over the rights of the refugees. Firstly, Abbas does not speak for the refugees. He was not elected by them in any way. For that matter, Hamas does not speak for thre refugees either. They can only speak for themselves, each one individually, for their rights are personal and can only be surrendered by each refugee himself/herself. International law is 100% clear on this.

Yours faithfully,

Christopher

Olmert hints Israel may be willing to split up Jerusalem

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, hinted yesterday that he might be willing to split Jerusalem, by questioning for the first time whether certain Palestinian neighbourhoods needed to be part of what Israel officially sees as its undivided capital.

Mr Olmert's tentative – and reversible – step towards a possible compromise on the future of the city, an essential requirement for any final two-state solution to the conflict, was the first he has personally made in public.

It came as the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, went out of her way to emphasise that the forthcoming Middle East conference in Annapolis, Maryland – which she sees as a stepping stone to full negotiations on a final deal – needed to be substantive. "Frankly, it is time for the establishment of a Palestinian state," she said after meeting the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah.

Dr Rice came close to sidelining a statement on Sunday by Mr Olmert that an accord between the two sides was not a prerequisite of the conference, saying that "we frankly have better things to do" than invite participants "to a photo-op".

Mr Olmert used his speech at a Knesset ceremony to commemorate the assassination six years ago of the right-wing minister Rehavam Zeevi to ask: "Was it necessary to also add the Shuafat refugee camp, Sawakra, Walaje and other villages and define them as part of Jerusalem?"

Sawakra and Walaje in particular are, geographically, relatively outlying districts of Arab East Jerusalem. But Israeli officials and media swiftly interpreted his remarks as indicating a message that Israel was prepared for concessions in advance of the Annapolis talks.

Mr Qureia made it clear last week that the emergency Palestinian leadership in Ramallah wanted and expected a commitment by Israel to the designation of East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state to form part of a pre-Annapolis accord.

It was not immediately clear whether Mr Olmert was seeking to prepare Israeli public opinion for an agreement in principle to divide Jerusalem – which even in the abstract would infuriate the Israeli right – or merely to demonstrate to Ms Rice, among others, that Israel is not inflexible about a possible agreement, or both.

Mr Qureia also said last week that an equal landswap between the West Bank and Israel could also be part of the deal on borders. While Israel argues that such a swap – which would mean Palestinians keeping an equivalent in size to all the West Bank territory – would be a significant concession on its own part, Mr Qureia's declaration largely made headlines for implying that the Palestinians were prepared to allow Israel to keep the biggest Jewish West Bank settlements.

Eli Yishai, the leader of the Sephardic party Shas, warned Ms Rice on Sunday that an agreement to divide Jerusalem would spell the break-up of Mr Olmert's coalition. Avigdor Lieberman, head of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu Party, also in the coalition, has similarly warned that concessions could lead to such a break-up. Mr Lieberman told Ms Rice the timing of the Annapolis talks was a "mistake".

Even if Mr Olmert's remarks last night presage an agreement to divide Jerusalem – if and when a final peace deal is made – there remain formidable obstacles in the negotiations which Ms Rice will now use her good offices to advance. In particular, Israel is pressing Mr Abbas to concede that the families of refugees who fled or were driven out of their homes in 1948 will not return to Israel. Palestinian officials argue this would be extremely problematic for him, especially ahead of actual final-status negotiations.