The real Israel-Palestine story is in the West Bank

Israel's targeting of civilian resistance to the separation wall proves the two-state solution is now just a meaningless slogan

It is quite likely that you have not heard of the most important developments this week in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the West Bank, while it has been "occupation as normal", there have been some events that together should be overshadowing Gaza, Gilad Shalit and Avigdor Lieberman.

First, there have been a large number of Israeli raids on Palestinian villages, with dozens of Palestinians abducted. These kinds of raids are, of course, commonplace for the occupied West Bank, but in recent days it appears the Israeli military has targeted sites of particularly strong Palestinian civil resistance to the separation wall.

For three consecutive days this week, Israeli forces invaded Jayyous, a village battling for survival as their agricultural land is lost to the wall and neighbouring Jewish colony. The soldiers occupied homes, detained residents, blocked off access roads, vandalised property, beat protestors, and raised the Israeli flag at the top of several buildings.

Jayyous is one of the Palestinian villages in the West Bank that has been non-violently resisting the separation wall for several years now. It was clear to the villagers that this latest assault was an attempt to intimidate the protest movement.

Also earlier this week, Israel tightened still further the restrictions on Palestinian movement and residency rights in East Jerusalem, closing the remaining passage in the wall in the Ar-Ram neighbourhood of the city. This means that tens of thousands of Palestinians are now cut off from the city and those with the right permit will now have to enter the city by first heading north and using the Qalandiya checkpoint.

Finally – and this time, there was some modest media coverage – it was revealed that the Efrat settlement near Bethlehem would be expanded by the appropriation of around 420 acres land as "state land". According to Efrat's mayor, the plan is to triple the number of residents in the colony.

Looked at together, these events in the West Bank are of far more significance than issues being afforded a lot of attention currently, such as the truce talks with Hamas, or the discussions about a possible prisoner-exchange deal. Hamas itself has become such a focus, whether by those who urge talks and cooption or those who advocate the group's total destruction, that the wider context is forgotten.

Hamas is not the beginning or the end of this conflict, a movement that has been around for just the last third of Israel's 60 years. The Hamas Charter is not a Palestinian national manifesto, and nor is it even particularly central to today's organisation. Before Hamas existed, Israel was colonising the occupied territories, and maintaining an ethnic exclusivist regime; if Hamas disappeared tomorrow, Israeli colonisation certainly would not.

Recognising what is happening in the West Bank also contextualises the discussion about Israel's domestic politics, and the ongoing question about the makeup of a ruling coalition. For the Palestinians, it does not make much difference who is eventually sitting around the Israeli cabinet table, since there is a consensus among the parties on one thing: a firm rejectionist stance with regards to Palestinian self-determination and sovereignty.

During the coverage of the Israeli elections, while it was clear that Palestinians mostly did not care which of the candidates for PM won, the reason for this apathy was not explained. Labor, Likud and Kadima alike, Israeli governments without fail have continued or intensified the colonisation of the occupied territories, entrenching Israel's separate-and-unequal rule, a reality belied by the false "dove"/"hawk" dichotomy.

Which brings us to the third reason why news from the West Bank is more significant than the Gaza truce talks or the Netanyahu-Livni rivalry – it is a further reminder that the two-state solution has completed its progression from worthy (and often disingenuous) aim to meaningless slogan, concealing Israel's absorption of all Palestine/Israel and confinement of the Palestinians into enclaves.

The fact that the West Bank reality means the end of the two-state paradigm has started to be picked up by mainstream, liberal commentators in the US, in the wake of the Israeli elections. Juan Cole, the history professor and blogger, recently pointed out that there are now only three options left for Palestine/Israel: "apartheid", "expulsion", or "one state".

The path of the wall, and the number of Palestinians it directly and indirectly affects, continues to make a mockery of any plan for Palestinian statehood. Jayyous is just one example of the way in which the Israeli-planned, fenced-in Palestinian "state-lets" are at odds with the stated intention of the quartet and so many others, of two viable states, "side by side". As the World Bank pointed out (pdf), land colonisation is not conducive to economic prosperity or basic independence.

In occupied East Jerusalem meanwhile, Israel has continued its process of Judaisation, enforced through bureaucracy and bulldozers. The latest tightening of the noose in Ar-Ram is one example of where Palestinian Jerusalemites are at risk of losing their residency status, victims of what is politely known as the "demographic battle".

It is impossible to imagine Palestinians accepting a "state" shaped by the contours of Israel's wall, disconnected not only from East Jerusalem but even from parts of itself. Yet this is the essence of the "solution" being advanced by Israeli leaders across party lines. For a real sense of where the conflict is heading, look to the West Bank, not just Gaza.

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Amnesty International urges Barack Obama to suspend military aid to Israel

Dear friends,

Sadly, it has taken 60 years and 1,300+ (the killing continues) additional loss of lives in Gaza to get to this point, nevertheless, this is an opening we must support. It is the same track I mentioned in my last op-ed, End the Occupation First .

The newly released Amnesty report noted in the two articles below may be downloaded from ePalestine, since I could not find it on Amnesty's website:

Fueling Conflict: Foreign Arms supplies to Israel/Gaza (PDF, 1.1MB)

Every legislator in the world and every newspaper editorial and letters page in the world should be making the call to support an arms embargo on Israel. Please act now and make this report known in your community. Organize, Organize, Organize: For Results.

Stop the Arms, Save the Children, All the Children,
Sam


Amnesty International has called for a global arms embargo to be placed on Israel following the recent Gaza conflict.

The human rights group said it found evidence that Israel and Hamas had both used weapons supplied from overseas to carry out attacks on civilians, accusing both sides of committing war crimes during the three-week conflict at the start of the year. It accused Israel of using white phosphorous and other weapons from the US and said Barack Obama had a "particular obligation" to suspend military aid over their use.

Amnesty called for the UN Security Council to enact an arms embargo until mechanisms were put in place to ensure that equipment was not used to commit violations of international law.

"Israeli forces used white phosphorus and other weapons supplied by the USA to carry out serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes," said Donatella Rovera, who headed an Amnesty fact-finding mission to southern Israel and Gaza.

"Their attacks resulted in the death of hundreds of children and other civilians, and massive destruction of homes and infrastructure."

The report also said Hamas and other Palestinian groups should be subject to the embargo because they had committed war crimes by attacking Israeli towns with rockets.

"Though far less lethal than the weaponry used by Israel, such rocket firing also constitutes a war crime and caused several civilian deaths," Ms Rovera said.

Both sides have dismissed the report.

Amnesty said it had found fragments and components of artillery, tank shells, mortar fins and airborne missiles and bombs in school playgrounds, hospitals and homes in Gaza.

In southern Israel it found remains of rockets fired indiscriminately at civilian areas by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.

"We urge the UN Security Council to impose an immediate and comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups until effective mechanisms are found to ensure that munitions and other military equipment are not used to commit serious violations of international law," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty's Middle East director.

"In addition all states should suspend all transfers of military equipment, assistance and munitions to Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups until there is no longer a substantial risk of human rights violations.

"There must be no return to business as usual, with the predictably devastating consequences for civilians in Gaza and Israel."

The release of the report came as hundreds of travellers left blockaded Gaza for Egypt, in one of the sporadic openings that enable students, patients and others with Egyptian visas to cross the border.

About 1,000 university students and holders of foreign residency permits were eligible to cross, and by mid-afternoon Sunday, about 600 people had made the trip, border officials said.

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Gazans: IDF used us as 'human shields' during offensive

GAZA - The question "Who is it?" was answered with: "The Israel Defense Forces." Majdi Abed Rabbo, 39, who is a Palestinian Authority (Ramallah) employee and a member of its intelligence apparatus, went down to open the door. Standing there was the son of his neighbors, Mahmoud Daher, and behind him a soldier whose rifle was jammed into Daher's back. The soldier pushed Daher aside and aimed the rifle at Abed Rabbo.

"He ordered me to pull down my pants. I pulled them down. He demanded that I raise my shirt. I raised it. That I turn around. I turned around," Abed Rabbo related. And then the room filled up with soldiers. "Twelve, or something like that."

This was in the morning of Monday, January 5, 2009, about 40 hours after the start of the Israeli ground offensive in Gaza.

The soldiers had already taken over Daher's house on Sunday evening, located in I'zbet Abed Rabbo, an eastern neighborhood of Jabaliya city. First they gathered the family on the ground floor. Gunfire rang out around the house. Then they moved the family up to the first floor. The family wondered why the soldiers had taken them upstairs, to the cold, uncomfortable room - parents, children, two infants and an elderly mother. But they could not refuse, and they did not yet know that the move upstairs brought them closer to the range of fire. Only later did they learn about the three fighters from Iz al-Din al-Qassam, Hamas' military wing, positioned in the empty house to the northeast of them. The regular occupants of the house, owned by their neighbor Abu Hatem, had long since gone abroad. Abed Rabbo's tall house stood next to Abu Hatem's narrow, empty one.

At about 7 A.M. on Monday, the soldiers took Shafiq Daher - a 53-year-old financial manager who gets his salary from the PA in Ramallah - as well as Mahmoud and two other sons from their home, and then separated them from each other.

The soldiers took the elder Daher to the house of his neighbor to the east, Jaber Zeydan. The door had already been broken, and the neighbors were huddled in one room. The search here, as in the four other homes Daher was forced to enter that day, was conducted in the same way: He entered first, with the soldiers behind him. One soldier placed his rifle on Daher's right shoulder, and pressed down on his left shoulder. The members of the Zeydan family were taken into the adjacent house, owned by Tawfiq Katari. The hands of all the men, including boys of 14 and 16, were tied, some behind the back, some in front.

Protecting soldiers

The soldiers also took over Katari's house on Sunday night, January 4. The Kataris, too, were rounded up and taken to the ground floor. There was shooting all around. The soldiers took up positions on one of the upper floors and turned the northeast window, close to the Abu Hatem home, into a firing position. "There was one nice soldier who told us that where we were sitting was dangerous and moved us next to an inner wall," one of the women related.

At about 9 A.M. on Monday, the soldiers took Katari's son Jamal from the house. During the next four days Jamal accompanied the soldiers and performed several tasks. He was made to enter what he estimates were 10 houses, going in first and calling on the occupants to come downstairs. He preceded the huge army bulldozer that forced its way through the neighborhood, ripping up the streets. "I am afraid the soldiers will shoot me," he told a soldier, who replied: "Don't be afraid."

In the meantime, that same Monday morning, Shafiq Daher, too, was continuing his mission of protecting Israel Defense Forces soldiers. The second house he was made to check was also empty. It belonged to the Al-Ajarmi family. Daher did not know that his two oldest sons were accompanying other groups of soldiers, and were being forced to smash holes in the walls of houses using sledgehammers. Nor did he know that at that very moment, a soldier was jamming his rifle into the back of his third son, standing at the door of Abed Rabbo's home.

Abed Rabbo himself, after being forced to smash a hole in the wall that separated his roof from his neighbors' roof and to accompany the soldiers inside, was made to enter several houses near the mosque, break into a car and then go into the Zeydan house. He was then taken to the Katari family's home, where he met Shafiq Daher and told him that his son was all right. At about 2 P.M., a soldier took him outside, pointed to the Abu Hatem house and said, according to Abed Rabbo's testimony: "There were armed people in that house. We killed them. Take off their clothes and take their weapons." At first he refused and said that was not his job. "Obey orders," he was told.

Dead or alive?

Abbed Rabbo went to the Abu Hatem house, shouting in Arabic that he was the owner. In the house, he found three very much alive members of Iz al-Din al-Qassam. They told him to leave and threatened him not to come back, "because we will shoot you." He returned to the soldiers, who made him undress and turn around, and then told them that the three were alive. The officer on hand asked to see his ID card and discovered that Abed Rabbo was a member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' intelligence. He was handcuffed and moved aside. He heard shooting. Then he was again sent to check the Abu Hatem house, after being told the three militants were now dead; he found one wounded and the others "all right." One of them said: "Tell the officer that if he is a man, he can come up here himself."

The soldiers didn't like what they heard. One of them cursed, said Abed Rabbo, who was handcuffed again and made to wait. It began to grow dark when he heard a helicopter approaching, followed by the sound of a missile exploding. One of the soldiers said: Now we have killed them, with a missile. Come over here. Abed Rabbo complied and saw, with horror, that the missile had struck his house.

He told the soldier that the missile had missed. "Are you majnoun [nuts]?" the soldier asked him. "No," Abed Rabbo replied. "The missile hit my house."

There was a huge mess: Water was bursting out of pipes, pieces of concrete were lying all over. And all around the shooting continued unabated, interspersed with the sounds of many explosions and helicopters flying overhead.

At about midnight, between Monday and Tuesday, Abed Rabbo was forced to go for a third time, to ascertain whether the three Hamas militants were dead. The soldiers lit the way for him. He found two of the gunmen, still alive, but buried under the rubble; the third was still holding his weapon. Abed Rabbo returned to the soldiers, stripped down again and repeated that the three were alive.

"Are you majnoun?" they demanded.

"No, I am not majnoun, I am telling you what I saw," he replied. Hungry, thirsty and with a throbbing headache, Abbed Rabbo was taken back to the Katari house.

At 6:30 A.M. he was brought out, in front of what was once his house. Soldiers brought a megaphone, he recalled later, and started to shout: "Ya, armed people, you have 15 minutes to turn yourselves in. Come down, remove your clothes, the Red Cross is here, the journalists are here, we will treat the wounded men."

The soldiers then sent a dog into the house. One of the Hamas fighters shot and killed it. The soldiers again started calling on them to come out. There was no reply. "And then a bulldozer arrived and started to demolish my house, right before my eyes." Abed Rabbo was sent into the Katari house as the bulldozer started to wreck Abu Hatem's house. He heard sporadic gunfire shots. When he emerged, two hours later, he found two of the armed men "sprawled on the demolished concrete, dead." He did not see the third man.

"What kind of army is this, which can't break into one house where there are armed men?" Abed Rabbo asked himself.

The IDF responds

Haaretz spoke with eight residents of I'zbet Abed Rabbo neighborhood, who testified that they were made to accompany IDF soldiers on missions involving breaking into and searching houses - not to mention the family members who remained in the houses the army took over, which were used as firing positions. The eight estimated that about 20 local people were made to carry out "escort and protection" missions of various kinds, as described here, between January 5 and January 12.

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit stated in response: "The IDF is a moral army and its soldiers operate according to the spirit and values of the IDF, and we suggest a thorough examination of the allegations of Palestinian elements with vested interests. The IDF troops were instructed unequivocally not to make use of the civilian population within the combat framework for any purpose whatsoever, certainly not as 'human shields.'

"Following an examination with the commanders of the forces that were in the area in question, no evidence was found of the cases mentioned. Anyone who tries to accuse the IDF of actions of this kind creates a mistaken and misleading impression of the IDF and its fighters, who operate according to moral criteria and international law."

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Lives buried under the rubble in Gaza

Maysa al-Louh, 16, sitting on the rubble of her home with the bombed Sakhnin school in the background. (Sarah Malian/Christian Aid)

Three weeks after the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, 16-year-old Maysa al-Louh sits stoically on the pile of sand that consumes half her home in Beit Lahiya. Under the sand, churned up by Israeli bulldozers during incursions into the area on 4 January 2009 lie all her report cards and school awards that were testament to her excellent academic record.

Nearby her grandmother tries to heat water on a pile of ash. The smell of decomposing chicken carcasses is overwhelming: the family's chicken coop that provided them with eggs, as well as their vegetable garden, were all destroyed by the bulldozers and tanks.

Thirty-five people lived in the three-story al-Louh house. The contents of home life -- a refrigerator, notebooks, framed pictures, and plastic flowers, lie scattered over the area. The adjacent Sakhnin Elementary School was also damaged by artillery shells and some of its classrooms are now a masse of mangled chairs, steel rods, shattered concrete and broken glass. Israel says militants were firing rockets from the school grounds.

"We were trapped in our home for two days while the Israeli army was based in the school nearby and operating in the area," says Maysa's 32-year-old mother Najat. "I had to give my children water from the toilet cistern to keep them alive. Then they ordered us to leave our house."

"As soon as we left the house they opened fire on the area and some of our neighbors were killed. My husband and I said our goodbyes to each other when the tanks came," Najat adds. "We thought it was the end."

Najat is three months pregnant with her eighth child. Her youngest daughter Sara who lies listlessly nearby, has been unwell for days, with vomiting and a high fever. They have been unable to get her to a doctor.

When the family returned to their home after Israel's unilateral ceasefire they discovered it had been shelled twice and all their animals killed. 250 meters away, and visible through a hole in the side of the house, is the toppled minaret of the local mosque, which took a direct hit. An air strike also hit Beit Lahiya's large Ibrahim al-Maqadmah mosque on 2 January 2009, killing 16 people and injuring dozens more. A total of 2,400 homes were completely destroyed during the three week offensive and over 12,000 were partially damaged.

International organizations have established a number of tent camps around the Gaza Strip. But in search of adequate shelter from the elements, some displaced and homeless people have moved in with extended family members in other areas. This is further squeezing Gaza's urban centers and placing an extra burden on already densely populated areas. It also means the scale of the problem of internally displaced people in Gaza is less visibly apparent.

On what was the second floor of the house, Najat's sister-in-law Faiza, 44 picks through the remains of their children's clothes. "Sometimes I wish we'd died rather than this ..." she says. "There were no militants near our house. Is this not sinful? Destroying homes, bombing mosques, killing chickens. Is that not sinful?"

Maysa has been too upset to study since the end of the offensive. "She had 99 percent in English, but all her school reports and prizes are under that sand," says her mother Najat. "What will happen to her future?" She shows me her bedroom now consumed by a mound of earth, and the edge of her bed that pokes out of the sand. "I had a few savings under my mattress," she says. Who knows if I'll ever find them."

International law and the destruction of civilian property

"Operation Cast Lead," or what Israel calls its 22-day offensive on the Gaza Strip between 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009 had a devastating impact on Gaza's physical infrastructure.

The preliminary list of damage to civilian property includes:
•Two thousand and four hundred homes destroyed, and at least 12,000 homes damaged.
•Sixty police stations and 30 mosques completely destroyed.
•Twenty-one private enterprises, including cafeterias, wedding halls and hotels.
•Twenty-eight public civilian facilities, including ministry buildings, municipalities and fishing harbors.
•One hundred and twenty-one industrial/commercial workshops destroyed and at least 200 damaged.
•Five concrete factories and one juice factory destroyed.
•Five media and two health institutions destroyed.
•Nine educational facilities including schools damaged or destroyed.
•Thousands of dunums (a dunam is the equivalent of 1,000 square meters) of agricultural land razed to the ground.

Israel's destruction of property and land belonging to Palestinians has been a feature of its occupation since 1967 and is in clear violation of international law. It has also contributed to the steadily deteriorating humanitarian situation in the occupied territories.

Despite Israel's withdrawal of its forces and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel remains in control of Gaza's seas, external borders, and airspace. The Gaza Strip is defined as occupied territory in accordance with international law. Consequently, as the Occupying Power, Israel remains bound by international humanitarian law. The targeting of civilian property violates the most basic tenets of humanitarian law, and is explicitly prohibited by both customary international humanitarian law and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.

Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the targeting of civilian property, except where such destruction is rendered "absolutely necessary by military operations." As the Occupying Power, Israel has specific legally-binding obligations towards the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. If the destruction of property is found to be disproportionate to the direct military advantage gained, this would constitute a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.

The systematic nature of Israel's destruction of Palestinian civilian property and its use of heavy artillery, tanks and fighter jets against heavily populated residential areas has resulted in a disproportionately high number of civilian deaths and injuries, as well as extensive damage to civilian objects. The attacks are therefore illegal; they violate the principles of distinction and proportionality, and as such constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights is calling upon the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions to fulfill their obligations under Article 1 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to prevent such crimes, as well as their legally-binding obligation in accordance with Article 146 to bring persons alleged of committing grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions to justice.

This report is part of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights' series "Aftermath" that looks at the aftermath of Israel's 22-day offensive on the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing impact it is having on the civilian population.

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Israeli forces uproot newly-planted olive trees near Bethlehem

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israeli police and soldiers uprooted more than 100 newly-planted olive trees from privately-owned Palestinian land in the West Bank village of Al-Jab’a, southwest of Bethlehem.

According to witnesses, between 10am and noon on Thursday, Israeli personnel uprooted each of the young trees individually, along with plastic protective tubes and wooden stakes.

The trees had been planted by a crew of American and European volunteers last Sunday with a program organized by the Joint Advocacy Initiative (JAI) of the YMCA of Palestine.

A JAI campaign officer visited the land on Thursday, confirming to Ma’an that the trees had been uprooted and taken away.

The land is owned by a farmer named Abu Firas, who has documents dating to the Ottoman era proving ownership of the land.

After the planting session on Sunday, Israeli authorities declared the south of Jab’a, including the planted area, a “closed military zone.” The Israeli Civil Administration also, the same day, issued an order to “evacuate” or clear-cut the land. Abu Firas says he only found the printed evacuation notice on his land on Wednesday.

"Obviously, they don't want me to plant on my land, in order to steal it," Abu Firas said, according to a statement sent by JAI, complaining that he was not given the opportunity to challenge the order through legal means. He also fears that he will be forced to pay for the uprooting of his trees, as is mentioned in the evacuation notice.

Abu Firas says that until 2005, the Israeli military used his land to park military vehicles. When the army stopped this, he resumed cultivating the land.

A village of less than a thousand inhabitants, Jab’a lies in Area C of the West Bank, designated by the Oslo Interim Agreement to be under full Israeli military control. Much of the village’s land has been seized by the Israeli government.

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US Senator John Kerry visits Gaza

John Kerry visits the destroyed American International School in northern Gaza

The Palestinian group Hamas has sent a letter addressed to the US president via a US politician visiting Gaza, a senior UN official has said.

UN relief agency chief Karen Abu Zayd told the BBC the letter had been received by the UN and passed on.

She did not say if Senator John Kerry had accepted it, and there were no details about the letter's contents.

The US views Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007, as a terrorist organisation and will not deal with it.

A former presidential candidate, Mr Kerry was visiting Gaza with US congressmen Brian Baird and Keith Ellison in the first such visit to the Hamas-run Strip since 2007.

The men are not likely to meet Hamas.

Correspondents say their visit appears to be more humanitarian than political.

As the head of the Senate Foreign Committee, Mr Kerry is a senior Democrat, but all three men are visiting Gaza in their capacity as lawmakers, not representatives of the administration of President Barack Obama.

A spokeswoman for the US consulate said it was thought to be the first visit by US congressmen for at least four years.

Mr Kerry also visited the Israeli town of Sderot, a target of Palestinian rocket attacks, before entering Gaza.

Standing in front of a pile of used rockets, Mr Kerry said that both he and President Obama believed that nobody should have to spend their lives in fear of attack.

"I know that our president, President Obama, whom I support strongly, stood right here," he said, referring to a visit before the 2008 US election.

"He was right here in front of these rockets. He came to Sderot as I have because we feel very deeply that no-one should live under this kind of threat, no children should be raised in that kind of fear.

"We are sympathetic with the crisis that people face on a daily basis here in Israel, from those who choose no other path other than to use instruments of terror."

Earlier he said: "[The visit] does not indicate any shift whatsoever with respect to Hamas... what it indicates is our effort to listen and to learn."

Hamas won elections in 2006 and consolidated control by force in 2007.

Like Israel, the EU and the UN, the US government officials refuse to deal with the militant group.

In addition, there have been security concerns since Palestinian militants blew up an American diplomatic convoy in October 2003, killing three people.

Mr Ellison, from Minnesota, was the first Muslim elected to the US Congress, while Mr Baird, a clinical psychologist, is from Washington.

Rockets fired

Their visit came as violent incidents tested the unilateral ceasefires Israel and Hamas have both declared, amid Egyptian-brokered attempts to reach a firmer truce deal.

The Israeli military confirmed it was carrying out airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, but gave no further details.

This followed the launching of two rockets from Gaza into Israel on Thursday morning, after two mortars were fired the previous night.

The Israeli military said its forces had also crossed into Gaza and shot and lightly injured a Palestinian near the border fence, after the man's behaviour raised suspicions he was attempting to plant a bomb.

About 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died during Israel's three-week operation in January, which was aimed at halting Palestinian rocket fire into Israel.

Since Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza, sporadic rocket and mortar fire has continued, while Israel has carried out several airstrikes against smuggling tunnels in the south of Gaza, and what it says are militant facilities elsewhere in the territory.

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Israeli forces withdraw from Jayyus after day-long incursion

Now the Zionists are attacking the West Bank! They don't want or ever had any intention of making PEACE!

Qalqilia – Ma'an – Israeli forces withdrew from the West Bank village of Qalqiliya on Wednesday evening after a 15 hour military operation in which some 65 Palestinians were rounded up and held in a school and dozens of houses raided.

Israeli troops occupied Palestinians’ houses and conducted house to house raids in what they said was a search for weapons. Seventeen people were taken from the village by the Israeli military.

Witnesses said that Israeli forces had destroyed the interior of resents houses. The town’s school, where locals were taken for interrogation, was also damaged. Sources reported that the science laboratory and computer room were vandalized.

“The Israelis’ actions aim to make us leave our land,” said Jayyous’ mayor Muhammad Taher Jaber, speaking to Ma’an. Jaber’s own house was raided during the incursion.

“The school was severely damaged. The front gate had been smashed open and all the doors taken off their hinges. There were mass interrogations there,” said Ulrika Lundquist, a Swedish volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, speaking from Jayyus.

“Israel is clearly attempting to crush through force any form of popular resistance to the illegal Apartheid Wall,” said Lundquist, referring to the weekly demonstrations the villagers stage against Israel’s separation barrier, which it is building on village land.

Up to 277 dunums of land will be razed for the new path of the Wall, with a further 5,585 dumums to be permanently confiscated when the Wall is completed.

Some of those arrested by the invading forces have been identified as: Muhammad Na’im Bedda, Laith Abdul Qadir Salim, Ahmad Ghassan Harami, Hamada Mahmoud Bedda, Mohamed Abdel-Halim Khaled, Jaber Methqal Shamasneh, Kamal Muhamad Taher Shamasneh, Anwar Aref Salim, Shadi Yousef Waqed, Sadeq Muhammad Hussein, Muhammad Ammer Hassan Nofal, Muhamad Hussein Al-Mukhtar. The other detainees have not yet been identified.

Israeli troops also assaulted Ammar Shahrour, breaking his hand.

A resident named Imad Shahrour said Israeli troops stole 450 shekels (over 100 US dollars) from his house. Yousef Mahmoud Waked said 3,200 shekels were stolen from him. Fadi Methqal Shamasneh said that troops seized documents from his house.

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Memories of Gaza dead continue to haunt the living

Dear friends,

I pass below a glimpse into the memories of one person-- of the thousands--in Gaza who remain tortured by Israel's slaughter in Gaza last month. The world has moved on, we can't!

The Gaza borders remain closed. The Gaza sea remains blockaded. The airspace remains prohibited. No building materials allowed in. Electricity still shabby. Etc, etc, etc...the world has moved on...Gaza remains occupied 100%!

As we enter the 40 day mourning day of all those murdered...a special prayer for the children, the hundreds of children...

Humanity should be ashamed of itself--deeply ashamed,
Sam


Gaza – Ma’an – Layla Hussein Nassar “Umm Ibrahim” is 40-years old, though she seems much older.

Her home in Jabaliya was destroyed during the Israeli war on Gaza. Two relatives, her husband and five children were inside the home when it was hit by a missile. Umm Ibrahim collected as many of her injured children as she could and crawled out of the damaged building with her son Nahidh and sought safety in a house across the street.

Her husband Muhammad and four-year-old son Rakan were buried beneath the rubble. She did not know whether they were alive or dead.

Eventually Nahidh crawled out of the shelter to find help, leaving Umm Ibrahim alone with a dying daughter and seriously wounded daughter-in-law.

She is haunted by the girls’ screams and calls for help, and recalls staring intently at her destroyed home, willing there to be some sort of movement to let her know some of her other family members were alive.

Umm Ibrahim sat down with Ma’an reporter Khadra Hamdan on Saturday. Her thoughts are scattered and painful; now on the record as one of the victims of Israel’s war on Gaza.

I have nothing in mind except what has happened to me. Everything is in my memory and I will never forget it all of my life. I am a mother who collected the fragments of her children, so how could I forget that?

…My son Rakan was torn to pieces. No hands, no legs and even no face were left. I could not bring him to the hospital; the house was falling down around him and my husband.

My daughter Fidaa was as beautiful as the moon. Oh God! How beautiful you were Fidaa! Her clothes were torn like her body. She died in my hands.

My elder son Ibrahim, I collected his body in a blanket and took him with me to the neighbors’ home. I went back for my daughter-in-law Eman; her face and legs were chopped and bloody and she kept asking me to call an ambulance.

The first day, I was not aware that my husband was killed. I was calling him to tell him that his sons and daughters were killed. I heard him asking for ambulance, and then his voice vanished.


Eiman remained alive for approximately 18 hours. Umm Ibrahim remembers trying to sooth her:

- May God help you tolerate this.
- I also pray that God relieves you of this torture.
- Aunty, I am thirsty and hungry. My wounds are burning.

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Choose life!

By: Deb Reich

Most people will say I'm delusional; that's okay. I will say what I have to say anyway. When your opinion is way out on the periphery, it may mean you are delusional - or it may just mean that the so-called center has gradually drifted closer and closer to a very high cliff, and finally fallen off the edge, while the majority of the population follows along like a horde of doomed lemmings. In that scenario, someone needs to stake out a position at the other extreme and drag the locus of the center back from oblivion. So here goes.

After this futile, criminal, pornographic war in Gaza (Shmuel Amir rightly termed it a "hunt" rather than a war) and yet another national election in Israel ending basically in impasse, but this time with a distinctly fascist motif, we are no closer to sustainable peace in the Middle East. We need a drastic revisioning of what we are doing here.

So we start with this: Speaking as an Israeli Jew, I say that we (Israeli Jews and our friends abroad) ought to embrace EVERYONE who wants to live here among us, so long as they truly love the land and have some reasonable claim to it. This would not include, say, tourists from Zanzibar or Antarctica - but would naturally include the Palestinians, whose claim to the land is (or ought to be) beyond dispute and whose deep and enduring love for the land is richly evident to any observer not in a vegetative state.

I say we bring all the long-suffering, besieged, shell-shocked Gazans home to Israel now! They miss their homes. They want to come home. Let us welcome them! We can all move over a little bit and make room. Believe me, there is still plenty of room.

Dayenu! (Enough!). Enough suffering inflicted on the surviving families in Gaza who are hungry, thirsty, cold, frightened, wounded, traumatized for life, and bereaved. Enough. And enough suffering on the other side of the fence in Sderot and environs, too. (Their fates are inextricably intertwined; all our fates are inextricably intertwined.)

The generals and the militants have had their day, for the nth time - and at the end of it, as usual, all that we (any of us) have now, as a result, is war crimes and grief. War crimes and grief and fear. War crimes, grief, fear, hatred, and despair… with thousands of injured and disabled people bearing the burden most directly, forever.

Enough! Israelis are more afraid now than before, and more at risk, too. Time to ABANDON this insane strategy that we (any of us) can force people to love us, or anyhow accept us, by killing them!

Let us in Israel who have so much, open our homes and our communities to the victims of this insane war who have so little - exactly as we once opened our homes to refugees from northern Israel when the Katyushas were falling. Our traditional ethos is full of charity and generosity; we know all about providing refuge and succour; we have taken in wave after wave of refugees over the decades, most recently more than a million Russian émigrés deemed essential to our future, for whom we moved over and made room.

So let's get going. Let every family in Israel who wants to live in peace in this region, open their home to a Gaza family until new housing can be built. Let the participating families declare a hudna between themselves. Now. Today.

You start by not picturing these neighbors as "the enemy"; picture them instead as families who have suffered a tsunami like the one that flattened coastal Indonesia a few years ago - and in fact, the order of magnitude of what they have been through is about the same. Presto! Reaching out to help suddenly makes perfect sense. Moreover, professional planners have already minutely addressed the question of exactly where Palestinians coming home to Israel could reside, eager to make their best contribution to a shared future. What is missing in Israel is not sufficient space, but sufficient imagination to envision how much there is to be gained by all concerned. Now is a good time to change that.

The Gaza disaster can become the turning point. Let the Gazan expatriates whose families came from Ashdod (Issdod) be matched with Ashdod-area families. Let the expatriates from Lod (Lydd) be matched with Lod/Lydd-area families - Jewish or Palestinian. And so forth. And let no time be lost! They have lost everything and their situation is dire. We in Israel have lost our moral compass and we want to reclaim it. Bingo!

Let the governments of the world, led by the USA, immediately stop sending Israel aid for military ordnance, and earmark it instead for a massive rehabilitation and reconciliation program.

Let all the tens of thousands of Palestinian professionals who are citizens of Israel, born and raised here - doctors, social workers, nurses, dentists, psychiatrists, lawyers, engineers, teachers, designers, journalists - join gladly and wholeheartedly in this effort, finally and at long last, to bring their fellow Palestinians home from exile in Gaza. Let us bind up the wounds and become whole, together. All of us. Let us build a really wonderful society together, for the sake of ALL OUR CHILDREN. Rewrite the national anthem! Why not? It's a SONG, folks. No song is holier than the life of even one child (anyone's child).

The Gaza families who actually lived in Gaza before 1948 will want to stay and rebuild their homes and communities. Volunteers would doubtless throng to Gaza from all over the world to help them. Imagine them turning what was the world's largest open-air prison into the world's largest open-air Reconciliation Park - with facilities for tourism, education, environmental studies, cultural attractions, and museums (including a Palestinian Nakba Museum). Imagine Gaza as the reconciliation capital of the world - people in Israel could commute to work in Gaza for a change, instead of the other way around. Very refreshing.

This is a blueprint for a SHARED LIFE. If it sounds crazy, just ask yourself: Which is crazier -- rampant slaughter, or rampant cooperation? Rivers of blood, or the free flow of joint prosperity? Rampant mass cooperation could break out here tomorrow - and in a week or two, or maybe a month or two, we would feel like we have always believed in it.

A political accommodation would follow the humanitarian one - probably some creative form of federation, with complete, reciprocal, national-cultural autonomy based on each group's granting the other group the same perks it wants for itself. The technical restructuring follows the vision, not the other way around. There are several good plans, already fully elaborated, for political power-sharing here. Anyone can read them; they're on the web. Once we dare to envision a shared future, we can make it happen. And if not now, when?

We Jews consider it rational and wonderful to rejoice in our emergence as a modern nation in the ancient homeland, after… not twenty years, not two hundred years, but two thousand years of exile!! Yet the idea of repatriating all those homesick Palestinian families, exiled from their homes a mere 60 years ago, is considered delusional. Something there does not compute.

So think it over and let's put the guns away for good. Let the tribunals meet to apportion blame and responsibility, by all means, but as for the rest of us: we have other tasks. Treat the wounded, yes, of course, and heal the traumatized… And beat the swords into ploughshares and recycle the tank parts into computer equipment. Retool the death factories to make swimsuits instead of parachutes, irrigation pipes for farmers instead of M16 rifles. No time for missiles; we'll all be too busy getting a life. The only phosphorous I ever want to see around here again is in a spelling contest for the kids (ALL our kids). Haul out the welcome mat for the long-lost cousins and let's get busy – there's a lot of work to do here. It's not too late, even now, but you have to take the first step: Choose life!!!

* Deb Reich is a writer and translator in Israel/Palestine - debmail@alum.barnard.edu

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Hampshire College first in US to divest from Israel

Press release, Students for Justice in Palestine (Hampshire College), 12 February 2009

Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, has become the first of any college or university in the US to divest from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

This landmark move is a direct result of a two-year intensive campaign by the campus group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The group pressured Hampshire College's Board of Trustees to divest from six specific companies due to human rights concerns in occupied Palestine. More than 800 students, professors and alumni have signed SJP's "institutional statement" calling for the divestment.

The proposal put forth by SJP was approved on Saturday, 7 February 2009 by the Board. By divesting from these companies, SJP believes that Hampshire has distanced itself from complicity in the illegal occupation and war crimes of Israel.

Meeting minutes from a committee of Hampshire's Board of Trustees confirm that "President Hexter acknowledged that it was the good work of SJP that brought this issue to the attention of the committee." This groundbreaking decision follows in Hampshire's history of being the first college in the country to divest from apartheid South Africa 32 years ago, a decision based on similar human rights concerns. This divestment was also a direct result of student pressure.

The divestment has so far been endorsed by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Rashid Khalidi, Vice President of the EU Parliament Luisa Morganitini, Cynthia McKinney, former member of the African National Congress Ronnie Kasrils, Mustafa Barghouti, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, John Berger, Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, among others.

The six corporations, all of which provide the Israeli military with equipment and services in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip are: Caterpillar, United Technologies, General Electric, ITT Corporation, Motorola and Terex. Furthermore, our policy prevents the reinvestment in any company involved in the illegal occupation.

SJP is responding to a call from Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) as a way of bringing nonviolent pressure to bear on the state of Israel to end its violations of international law. SJP is following in the footsteps of many noted groups and institutions such as the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education in the UK, the Israeli group Gush Shalom, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the Canadian Union of Public Employees and the American Friends Service Committee.

As well as voicing our opposition to the illegal occupation and the consistent human rights violations of the Palestinian people, we as members of an institute of higher education see it as our moral responsibility to express our solidarity with Palestinian students whose access to education is severely inhibited by the Israeli occupation.

SJP has proven that student groups can organize, rally and pressure their schools to divest from the illegal occupation. The group hopes that this decision will pave the way for other institutions of higher learning in the US to take similar stands.

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West Bank settlement gets green light for major expansion

The settlements have been deemed illegal and yet they are still doing it!

Some 1,700 dunams of land in the northern part of Efrat were declared state land last week, paving the way for the West Bank settlement to start the process of seeking government approval to build there.

The Civil Administration issued the declaration after rejecting eight appeals by Palestinians against the move. A ninth appeal was accepted, and the land covered by this appeal was consequently removed from Efrat's jurisdiction.

However, construction is still a long way off. First, the Civil Administration must formally allocate the land to the Housing Ministry, which, under new rules adopted by Ehud Olmert's government, cannot be done without approval from both the prime minister and defense minister.

Then the Housing Ministry must give Efrat's local council a permit to start the usually long planning process, which involves securing permits from various agencies. Only then can the work of building some 2,500 housing units in the Givat Ha'eytam neighborhood begin.

Since the outcome of the elections makes it likely that the next government will lean more to the right than the current one, Efrat plans to wait until the new government takes office before submitting its request.

Efrat, with around 9,000 residents, is the largest settlement in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, and Givat Ha'eytam is the last unbuilt hill of the seven within the town's jurisdiction. Despite being the hill nearest Jerusalem, Ha'eytam lies outside the planned route of the separation fence, which has yet to be built in this area.

Gush Etzion is one of the settlement blocs that all Israeli governments have said they want to retain under any final-status agreement with the Palestinians.

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Israeli "investigation" whitewashes West Bank execution

Report, Al-Haq, 11 February 2009

On 2 February 2009, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported the findings of an "investigation" into an incident in which, that morning, "a Palestinian gunman opened fire at an [Israeli army] Patrol Force near the Community Yatir [sic], south of Hebron." As a result of the investigation, the Israeli military Central Command "assumes" that the "terrorist," who was shot dead by Israeli soldiers, "was intending to execute a terror attack against Israeli civilians."

After a full field investigation, Al-Haq has determined serious factual inaccuracies and false assumptions in the Israeli authorities' version of events, and reports the following findings:

On the morning of Monday, 2 February 2009, an infantry unit of the Israeli occupying forces was deployed to Janba, southeast of Yatta in the Hebron district of the southern West Bank. Between 7:30 and 8:00am, the Israeli soldiers stopped a total of three vehicles on a dirt road in the Marah al-Tabaka area of Janba. This road is close to the West Bank's southern border with Israel, and is used by Palestinian merchants who travel to Israel to sell their goods. Two of the three vehicles were returning from Israel, while the other was traveling towards Israel from Yatta. The Israeli soldiers had not set up a visible "flying" checkpoint on the road, but rather each time a vehicle arrived, the soldiers jumped out from positions of hiding off to the side of the road, ordered the drivers to turn off their engines, took the IDs of those in the vehicles, and forced them to wait at the side of the road. By the time the three vehicles had been stopped, a total of 11 Palestinians were being kept by the Israeli soldiers at the side of the road.

At approximately 8:45am, a fourth vehicle arrived along the road, coming from Yatta, containing only the driver, Taysir Shihda Manasra, 28, from Bani Neim. Although the first three vehicles were still blocking the road, they were not yet visible to Manasra because of a bend in the road. The Palestinian witnesses, being guarded by soldier "A," were at the side of the road, on the bend, and could see Manasra's car approaching. Further back up the road, the rest of the Israeli soldiers were hiding again, and two of them jumped out (one from each side of the road) to ambush Manasra in a similar manner to the other vehicles. He was already passing them by the time they emerged and called on him to stop. It is not clear whether Manasra noticed the soldiers or not, as he did not stop immediately, driving for another 10 meters, before seeing soldier A emerge from the side of the road at the bend, 25 meters in front of him. Manasra stopped immediately as the soldier fired five shots into the air. A total of five Israeli soldiers then opened fire on the car, without warning or justification: soldier A, from the front; the two soldiers who had initially called on Manasra to stop, from behind; and another two soldiers who had been hiding in line with where Manasra stopped his car, from the side.

Corroborated witness reports confirmed that no shots came from the car, and that the barrage of shooting at the car continued for approximately 15 minutes, with hundreds of bullets fired. Medical reports later showed that Manasra was hit and killed by four bullets: one to the face, one to the back, one to the left arm, and the fourth to the left leg. Manasra's body was left on the road outside his car until approximately 2:00pm. He was then placed on a stretcher by four Israeli soldiers who repeatedly kicked the body as they brought it to a military ambulance.

Shortly after the victim had been killed, a number of Israeli officials arrived, including a military police unit as well as an apparently senior officer who arrived in a helicopter, spoke to the soldiers present about what had happened, and left after 10 minutes. At approximately 10:00am, a remote-controlled robot was brought by the Israeli forces to open the doors of the car and remove Manasra's body from the car.

Between 11:00am and 2:00pm, the Palestinian witnesses were taken one by one to a military jeep close to where they were still being kept at the side of the road, and interviewed by Israeli military police officers. Each one was asked whether Manasra had shot at the Israeli soldiers, and each one responded in the negative. However, when one of the military police investigators asked soldier A what had happened, the soldier claimed that Manasra had fired 30 shots at him with a pistol from inside the car. Witnesses reported that no gun was found on Manasra's body or in his car when searched by the Israeli soldiers.

After the body was removed, the Palestinian witnesses were all brought to the nearby Israeli military checkpoint at Lasifer, and held there from 3:00pm to 5:00pm before being released.

The findings above demonstrate that Taysir Manasra was summarily executed by the Israeli occupying forces, amounting to an extrajudicial killing in violation of international human rights and humanitarian law. It also constitutes a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, as a willful killing. Having stopped his car, Manasra was under the control of the Israeli soldiers, yet they made no attempt to question or arrest him for any alleged offense before opening fire. The "assumption" on the part of the Israeli authorities that Manasra intended to carry out an attack on Israeli civilians is disingenuous and unfounded in fact. There is no evidence that Manasra had any weapon, and the Israeli military is fully aware of the fact that the road in question is regularly used by Palestinian workers and merchants to enter Israel, which Manasra did every day. Any assumptions or suspicions as to the victim's intentions certainly provide no basis in law for the arbitrary deprivation of his inalienable and inviolable right to life.

Al-Haq emphasizes its concern over the lack of impartiality and diligence in the Israeli authorities' "investigation," the findings of which were reported on the same day as the incident occurred, and calls for a full and independent investigation into the incident by the Israeli authorities. Al-Haq further reiterates its condemnation of the systematic impunity with which the Israeli occupying forces in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are allowed to persistently violate the right to life of Palestinians.

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Canada becomes Israel

(EI Illustration)
Yves Engler,
The Electronic Intifada,
12 February 2009

Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper's government publicly supported Israel's brutal assault on Gaza and voted alone at the UN Human Rights Committee in defense of Israel's actions three weeks ago. Now Canada has taken over Israeli diplomacy. Literally.

In solidarity with Gaza, Venezuela expelled Israel's ambassador at the start of the bombardment and then broke off all diplomatic relations two weeks later. Israel need not worry since Ottawa plans to help out. On 29 January, The Jerusalem Post reported that "Israel's interests in Caracas will now be represented by the Canadian Embassy." This means Canada is officially Israel, at least in Venezuela.

Prior to the recent bombing in Gaza, the Harper government made it abundantly clear that it would support Israel no matter what that country did. It publicly endorsed Israel's 2006 attack on Lebanon, voted against a host of UN resolutions supporting Palestinian rights and in January 2008 refused to criticize illegal Israeli settlement construction at Har Homa near Jerusalem (even Washington publicly criticized these settlements). Canada was also the first country (after Israel) to cut off financial aid to the elected Hamas government and Ottawa has provided millions of dollars as well as personnel to create a US-trained Palestinian police force to act as a counterweight to the Hamas government and to oversee Israel's occupation.

Harper's support for Israel is extreme, but despite what many well-meaning commentators claim, it is not a break from Canada's role as an "honest broker" in the Arab-Israeli conflict. There is a long history of Canadian support for Zionism, a European settler ideology that has violently dispossessed Palestinians for more than six decades.

The idea for a Middle Eastern Jewish homeland to serve Western imperial interests has a long history in Canada. Since at least the 1870s Christian Zionists called for their biblical prophesies to be fulfilled under British auspices. By November 1915, Solicitor General (and then Prime Minister) Arthur Meighen publicly proclaimed, "I think I can speak for those of the Christian faith when I express the wish that God speed the day when the land of your [Jewish] forefathers shall be yours again. This task I hope will be performed by that champion of liberty the world over -- the British Empire." Two decades later Prime Minister RB Bennett began a national radio broadcast of the United Palestine Appeal with a speech about how the Balfour declaration and British control over Palestine was a step towards Biblical prophecies. "Scriptural prophecy is being fulfilled," he noted. "The restoration of Zion has begun."

During the 1947 UN negotiations over the British mandate of historic Palestine, Canada played an important role in creating Israel. Lester Pearson (then under-secretary of state for External Affairs) who chaired two different UN committees dealing with the mandate and Supreme Court Justice Ivan C. Rand, a member of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), played central roles in the negotiations that led to partition. In State in the Making, David Horowitz (the first governor of the Bank of Israel and first director general of Israel's ministry of finance) writes: "It may be said that Canada more than any other country played a decisive part in all stages of the UNO [United Nations Organization] discussions of Palestine."

The UN's 1948 partition plan gave the new Jewish state the majority of Palestine despite the Jewish population owning roughly seven percent of the land and representing a third of the population. Rand's assistant on UNSCOP, Leon Mayrand, provides a window into the dominant mindset at External Affairs: "The Arabs were bound to be vocal opponents of partition but they should not be taken too seriously. The great majority were not yet committed nationalists and the Arab chiefs could be appeased through financial concessions, especially if these accompanied a clearly declared will to impose a settlement whatever the means necessary." A dissident within External Affairs, the department's only Middle East expert, Elizabeth MacCallum, claimed Ottawa supported partition, "because we didn't give two hoots for democracy."

Above all else support for partition was driven by a geostrategic worldview. An internal report circulated at External Affairs explained: "The plan of partition gives to the western powers the opportunity to establish an independent, progressive Jewish state in the Eastern Mediterranean with close economic and cultural ties with the West generally and in particular with the United States." The Ottawa mandarins largely supported Israel as a possible western outpost in the heart of the (oil-producing) Middle East.

When the first Palestinian intifada broke out in 1987, then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney told the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) that Israel's brutal suppression of rock throwing Palestinian youth was handling the situation with "restraint." When questioned by a CBC reporter about the similarity between the plight of Palestinians and Blacks in South Africa, Mulroney replied that any comparison between Israel and South Africa was "false and odious and should never be mentioned in the same breath."

A decade later, Ottawa signed a free trade agreement with Israel. It was only Canada's fourth free trade agreement. Begun January 1997, the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement includes the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of where Israel's custom laws are applied.

The political motivation for supporting Israel has not changed significantly over the years. The government in Ottawa today receives limited electoral support from the Jewish community, but is close to a right-wing Christian Zionist movement. Most importantly, the Harper government strongly supports Western (US-led) imperialism in the Middle East. This is why Canada has taken over Israeli diplomacy in Venezuela.

Yves Engler is the author of the forthcoming Canada on the World Stage: A Force for Good or Bad Actor? and other books. He can be reached at yvesengler A T hotmail D O T com

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Review of Guantanamo detainees begins

Protesters dressed as detainees call for closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A review of evidence against the prisoners begun this week is a step toward closure and a decision on whether Obama will end Bush’s detention policies.

The Justice Department is compiling the evidence against each prisoner, a first step toward shuttering the facility and deciding whether Obama can close the book on Bush's detention policies.

Reporting from Washington -- The Obama administration has begun the process of reviewing files of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay to determine who can be prosecuted and who can be transferred to other countries, officials said Friday, a crucial first step toward closing the prison.

"We think it essential that these files get looked at with a completely new eye by the new administration," said Devon Chaffee, advocacy counsel for Human Rights First.

But depending on the outcome of the review, the Obama administration may decide it has to retain some form of the controversial military commission system begun under President Bush.

Administration officials also could decide they must continue holding some prisoners without trials, relying on the same powers under the law of armed conflict that the Bush administration used to detain "enemy combatants."


Either of those moves would be controversial in the eyes of many human rights groups, who expected that Obama's executive order last month ordering Guantanamo closed would have essentially put an end to the military commission system and the practice of detention without trial.

"The Obama administration made great gains when it announced the plan to close Guantanamo," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counter-terrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch. "Many of those gains will be undercut if the administration is perceived as merely transferring the system of indefinite detention to U.S. soil."

Under the executive order, the review of each case will be led by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and the Justice Department. The Defense Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and other agencies will also take part.

The reviews will first compile the evidence the government has against individual detainees.

"The review team is in the process of identifying all the information," a senior administration official said on condition of anonymity because the review will not be public.

The process will not be simple. The executive order directs Holder to assemble the evidence to "the extent reasonably practicable."

But the senior official said there is not, and may never be, a single file for each detainee. And because evidence was collected by different agencies, or by different parts of the Defense Department, much of it remains classified and scattered in multiple locations.

Human rights groups said it was critical that the Justice Department lead the review, and they urged officials to take a close look at the intelligence reports being used to hold the detainees.

"It is clearly important that the administration not take for granted any of the assertions about any particular detainee," said Chaffee, the Human Rights First attorney. "The Bush administration's assertions about Guantanamo detainees have been wrong in the past."

Daskal, the Human Rights Watch official, said the review would need to look for creative ways to prosecute some detainees. Some critics of the Guantanamo prison have said that if the evidence of detainees' larger alleged misdeeds is too tainted to use in court, the government may have to charge them with lesser crimes, such as conspiracy or material support for terrorism.

"It very may well be the Department of Justice may have to adopt the Al Capone theory, where you get the guy on tax evasion," Daskal said.

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Israel air strike hits Gaza Strip

Israel has launched an air strike in Gaza, killing one Palestinian and wounding at least one other, medical officials said.

The strike hit close to the town of Khan Younis, in the south of Gaza.

The men were on a motorcycle when they were hit by fire from an Israeli drone, Palestinian security officials said.

The strike came hours after officials from Hamas - which has internal control of Gaza - said they expected a truce with Israel to be announced in days.

The Israeli military said the men had been planning an attack into Israel, the Associated Press reported.

At least one of them was a member of a militant group, the Popular Resistance Committees, reports citing officials in Gaza said.

The air strike came hours after the military said militants in Gaza fired two rockets into Israel, causing no casualties.

The two sides have exchanged sporadic fire since calling unilateral ceasefires in mid-January at the end of Israel's three-week offensive against Gaza.

Hamas officials in Cairo said earlier that a long-term truce could be announced within days.

Border crossings would reportedly be re-opened and a ceasefire would be called for 18 months under the Egyptian-brokered deal - on which Israel has not yet formally commented.

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Jimmy Carter: Include Hamas in Israel-Palestinian peace talks

Likudniks don't scare former United States president Jimmy Carter. On the contrary: The electoral turnaround of 1977 that brought them to power for the first time enabled Carter to be inscribed in the history books as the leader who facilitated the first peace agreement between Israelis and Arabs. In his new book, "We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land" (Simon & Schuster), Carter relates that neither he nor America's Jewish community knew what to expect from prime minister Menachem Begin, a former underground fighter who had acquired a bad name for himself as a war-mongering fanatic. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat reported to Carter that he had asked Eastern European leaders who knew the new prime minister whether Begin was an honest man and a strong person. According to him, the answers were in the affirmative.

In a telephone interview before this week's election, I asked Carter what he thinks of Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu. From his office at the Carter Center in Atlanta, the 39th U.S. president answered calmly that Netanyahu is a practical politician, and that if a proposed peace agreement wins broad support among the Israeli public, the Likud leader would not turn his back on it, and would be "constructive."

Carter does remember, however, that he had differences of opinion with Netanyahu, who argued - in contrast to Ariel Sharon, who as Begin's agriculture minister, enthusiastically supported a peace agreement with Egypt - that relinquishing Sinai would be harmful to Israel. Still, Carter thinks it is also important to note that during Netanyahu's first term as prime minister, he sent out feelers to Syria regarding the Golan Heights.

He nor America's Jewish community knew what to expect from prime minister Menachem Begin, a former underground fighter who had acquired a bad name for himself as a war-mongering fanatic. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat reported to Carter that he had asked Eastern European leaders who knew the new prime minister whether Begin was an honest man and a strong person. According to him, the answers were in the affirmative.

In a telephone interview before this week's election, I asked Carter what he thinks of Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu. From his office at the Carter Center in Atlanta, the 39th U.S. president answered calmly that Netanyahu is a practical politician, and that if a proposed peace agreement wins broad support among the Israeli public, the Likud leader would not turn his back on it, and would be "constructive."

Carter does remember, however, that he had differences of opinion with Netanyahu, who argued - in contrast to Ariel Sharon, who as Begin's agriculture minister, enthusiastically supported a peace agreement with Egypt - that relinquishing Sinai would be harmful to Israel. Still, Carter thinks it is also important to note that during Netanyahu's first term as prime minister, he sent out feelers to Syria regarding the Golan Heights.

The need for an immediate renewal of Israel's peace process with Syria, as well as with the Palestinians and Lebanon, was one of the topics of the conversation last month between the 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the newly elected 44th U.S. president, Barack Obama. The elderly peace activist says he came away with the feeling that he had burst through an open door.

Peace plan outline

Carter's latest book begins with a personal confession concerning the use of the word "apartheid" on the cover of his previous book ("Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid"), and ends with an outline for an American peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians. It includes the demilitarization of the Palestinian state and the introduction of peacekeeping forces; a withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries, with border adjustments in Jerusalem and its surroundings, in exchange for alternative territories for the Palestinians; shared control over Jerusalem's Old City; a Palestinian right of return to the territories only; and monetary compensation for the refugees. Carter proposed setting this September as the target for achieving these goals or at least for evaluating the progress and the remaining difficulties.

There are voices in the Israeli peace camp who believe that the United States, as well as other countries in the West, should be sending a clearer message to Israel about the military operation in Gaza, which not only cost the lives of so many, but also undermined the support, peace and trust of many Palestinians as well as Israelis in the process.

Carter: "Yes, I believe that's true. I'm very gratified to see the choice that President Obama has made of a peace envoy: George Mitchell. In my opinion, he's the best American he could possibly have chosen for that task and it may be that, with the strong backing of the White House and some direct American involvement in the negotiations, we'll see some progress made."

Do you think that if Israel had accepted the document you brought from Damascus [in April 2008], from Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, we could have avoided this last round of violence in Gaza?

"Absolutely ... And Meshal and his entire politburo, top members, were committed to that. To stop the rockets completely and to observe the cease-fire would open up the gates and let the people there have food, water, medicine and fuel.

"Hamas had offered to extend the cease-fire in December, but the Israelis were not willing to do it. I have met twice with Hamas leaders during this past year and both times that seems to be the only thing that they demanded - that there be no more attacks by either side, and that the crossings be opened, so that at least a moderate amount of food and water and medicine and fuel be permitted to come in to the people in Gaza.

"I don't have any doubt that Gaza could be peaceful if the one and a half million people there could get adequate food and supplies and have access to the outside world. But when you imprison that many Palestinians, of all political persuasions, and deprive them of the basic necessities of life, and also of freedom to move back and forth between there and the West Bank - or there and Egypt, or there and Jordan, or there and the ocean - then you breed dissension and that dissension is going to be expressed in violence."

In your opinion, why is Israel doing this?

"I don't understand why. Unless it's an attempt to punish the people in Gaza so badly that [they] will turn politically against Hamas. But I think that has proven to be a fallacy."

'Two separate issues'

Noting similarities between Hamas and Hezbollah, Carter says: "I think that Hezbollah in Lebanon has now gotten a very substantial status, as part of a major political organization. I was in Lebanon in December to help them prepare for an [upcoming] election, and Hezbollah and the other similar groups there might very well gain substantial [electoral] strength."

You have spoken to Meshal recently about captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. What are the chances that he will be home soon?

"When I met with the leaders in Damascus, they said he was well and alive, and so one of my requests to them was to get a letter written from him to his parents so they would know he was okay.

"I think that a good negotiator could work out an accommodation between Israel and Palestinians on a prisoner exchange that would result in the freedom of Shalit. But I don't think it's advisable to tie that to a cease-fire. I think they ought to be two separate issues."

Would you advocate Israel speaking directly with Hamas?

"Well, I think there needs to be a step-by-step process. The first step, in my opinion, in an overall peace agreement - there's got to be some reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. And that can go forward, I believe, if the United States and Israel would give it our tacit support, our strong support."

Carter points out that Meshal has said that "Hamas would accept any agreement negotiated between [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] Abu Mazen and Israeli authorities if it was submitted to the Palestinian people in a referendum and got a positive vote. So, it's not a hopeless case to have good-faith talks based on a two-state solution that would be approved by the Palestinians."

Would you advocate a change in the American attitude toward Hamas?

"Yes. I think it's absolutely important that Hamas be involved in any sort of peace process. In fact, I don't know what the relative popularity is of Hamas - I haven't seen any public opinion polls since the invasion and attack on Gaza, but I was the main observer in 2006, in January, when Hamas won a majority of the parliamentary seats. And as you know, almost all of those candidates who won, who lived in the West Bank, are now in Israeli prisons. So that means that the Hamas and Fatah unity government can't be formed at all. It's not an elected government there representing the Palestinian people; it's just a temporary government, basically appointed just to avoid having Hamas members."

George Mitchell visited Israel and the West Bank, and he went to Jordan and Egypt, but he avoided seeing Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"I know. I think that was just his first trip, where he's probably trying to refresh his memory, and learn the latest developments over there. But I have confidence that in the future, without too much delay, the United States will have diplomatic relations with Syria once again. When I go to the Middle East, I always go to Syria because I've known Bashar Assad since he was a college student, in London. When I go over there I enjoy meeting with him. I find him to be quite intelligent, and quite eager to have an agreement with Israel. And to be supportive, not only of the Golan Heights issue providing peace, but also supportive of the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement."

The former president adds that he believes that if Assad feels comfortable with the United States and with Israel, he can also play a positive role vis-a-vis Hamas and Hezbollah.

You often sound like you're more concerned about the future of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state than many Israelis.

"I am. I'm deeply concerned about it. I would say that the top priority in my life, for international affairs in the last 30 years, has been to see Israel as a Jewish state living in security and peace. That's a number one priority that I have in my life. I'm getting old now, but I'm still active, and that's still a very high priority for me.

"I've known the history of the Jewish people, the Hebrew people, the Israelites, and I've taught these things every Sunday since I was 18 years old. So I'm deeply committed as a Christian to seeing the covenant with Abraham fulfilled," says Carter, noting that peace in the Middle East is also "a key to tremendously reducing the level of animosity against my own country, and reducing the commitment to violence through terrorist acts."

Do you believe it's also an American blunder that, in spite of U.S. policy and warnings and messages, the settlements kept growing and they keep growing actually as we speak?

"That's true. When I first visited the West Bank and the Golan Heights in 1973, I think there were only 1,500 Jewish settlers in the occupied territories. I think that [the expansion] happened particularly in the last 16 years. George Bush, Sr. was very strict in deterring, I think, then-prime minister [Yitzhak] Shamir from building settlements, and even withheld several hundred million dollars in U.S. aid from Israel because of a large settlement between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. And Shamir backed down because of that. But under president [Bill] Clinton and president George W. Bush, the settlements have not been deterred by influence from the United States, which is a mistake."

Carter is asked whether, after the traumatic evacuation of Gush Katif, it would be possible to remove approximately 120,000-130,000 settlers from the West Bank, and whether NATO countries will go along with his proposal to send forces there. He says he definitely believes that, within the context of a peace agreement, Israel will evacuate settlements. He also does not discount the possibility that U.S. forces could "assure that during the transition period, there wouldn't be any threats to Israel from Palestinians or to Palestinians from Israel."

The former president adds that "another option might have been Turkey, since a few weeks ago, Turkey and Israel were fairly friendly" - or alternatively any Arab or Muslim country that would be acceptable to both sides.

How do you see the solution to the problem of Iran's nuclear program?

"I spent several days studying the maps and looking at the flight paths and the distances and so forth, because my profession was military as well, so I'm familiar with how far a plane can fly, of different types, and how much fuel that requires. When you have to go 2,000 miles round trip, you're going to have to refuel somewhere, over Iraq or over Saudi Arabia, which would be very difficult, or you'd have to carry a very tiny bomb to drop. You know you can't have both.

"I think that that kind of attack would not be effective in destroying Iran's plans for nuclear power ..., but I think it would enhance the support that Arab countries are giving Iran. I think Iran has been greatly strengthened in the last few years - by the war in Iraq, which I think was unnecessary, and also by the lack of progress on meeting the legitimate needs of the Palestinians. So if we can get out of Iraq, and if we could bring peace to the Palestinians - those two factors in themselves would greatly reduce the influence of Iran."

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Pro-Palestinian Bronx Expressway banner - a Jewish initiative

If drivers on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway were wondering who was responsible for hanging banners over the highway calling to "Free Palestine" - they might be surprised to discover it was an initiative by Jewish activists.

Another banner was spotted over New York City's entrance to the Cross Bronx Expressway, at 179th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan on Wednesday morning.

The group is calling themselves JATO (Jews against the occupation); some of them also participated in demonstrations against last month's Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, claiming that "The occupation is being paid for with U.S. taxpayers' money," and "Even if foreclosures and unemployment weren't decimating our neighborhoods, surely there are better uses for $3 billion a year than helping the Israeli government commit war crimes."

"Today's action is one small contribution to the growing movement in solidarity with the 1.5 million Palestinians whose lives are being destroyed by the occupation," said Ethan Heitner, one of the group's activists.

"We know from our own history what being sealed behind barbed wire and checkpoints is like, and we know that 'Never Again' means not anyone, not anywhere - or it means nothing at all," he said.

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Strong Words

I have cross-posted this from Nin's Journey.

JEWISH SOCIALISTS SAY:

stop the bombing and the siege
end the occupation
and give peace a chance!


Jewish Socialists condemn the Israeli siege and bombing of the Palestinian people in Gaza. We express our solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, and in the occupied territories, and with those Israelis who oppose their government and its war.

We support those young Israelis who would rather go to jail than serve in the armed forces of occupation and war.

We call upon our own and other governments to cease supporting Israel's aggression, and put pressure on Israel's leaders to halt this war, lift the blockade, and end the occupation of Palestinian lands.

The Jewish Socialists' Group has many differences with the politics of Hamas. This war, on a largely defenceless people, is not about Hamas. It was Israeli forces that broke a four-month long ceasefire with a raid killing six Palestinians on November 4. This attack was launched as Hamas and Fatah were agreeing a unified approach. On November 5, Israel stepped up its siege of Gaza, on land and sea, which has brought warnings of human and environmental disaster.

Even so, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told a European parliamentary delegation that Hamas was prepared to declare a long-term truce with Israel, and negotiate for a Palestinian state within 1967 borders. (Amira Hass, Haaretz (November 15 2008)


Evidently, Israeli leaders, including Labour Defence Minister Ehud Barak, were not interested. They had already planned this war. A couple of days after Haniyeh's spech the Israeli navy seized Palestinian fishing boats and crews.

Israel's military-political elite don't care about poorer Israelis, mainly from Arab countries, whom they shoved out to exposed places like Sderot. They have not even evacuated the children. They did not care about captured soldier Gilad Shalit, whose release they could have negotiated long ago, had they and their US backers not preferred a pretext for war, in Gaza and then Lebanon, where Washington wanted to test its latest bombs.

Every people has the right to resist occupation. But the tactic of hitting civilian targets like Sderot is wrong, and the Israeli government has used it to raise public support for war against the Palestinian people. Even so,

500 Sderot residents petitioned asking the government not to escalate the conflict but to seek peace.
A majority of Israelis thought their government should negotiate with Hamas or whoever else the Palestuinian people elected.
A majority of people on both sides wanted the cease fire to continue, and would be prepared to share this land in a just peace.

But 40 years of occupation have so poisoned Israeli politics that Barak and Olmert are competing with the far-right Benyamin Netanyahu to show who is best at waging war. The Israeli Right has been encouraged by neo-cons and right-wing Christian fundamentalists in the United States, who want Israel to spearhead a major Middle East war.

The majority of Americans, including more than 75% of American Jews, voted for Barack Obama and change. Obama's wooing of the unrepresentative Zionist lobbyists AIPAC, and Hillary Clinton's pledge that if Israel was attacked, America would "obliterate" Iran, suggest change is yet to come. The Israeli forces may have timed their attack before Obama takes office, but he has said only that he "understands" them. EU leaders have urged a ceasefire, but Israel continues to enjoy EU trade privileges and a promised closer relationship".

If we want to help the Palestinian people and those Israelis who want a genuine peace, we have to change our own government's policies. Jewish Socialists, together with our friends in European Jews for Just Peace, and similar bodies in the United States and Canada, are campaigning for this.

Alongside solidarity with the Palestinian people, we have a special job - to challenge leaders who claim to speak for the Jewish community, but subordinate its interests to Israeli policy and its reactionary allies. We say politicians must stop listening to the Zionist Lobby - and stop using it as an excuse!

Jewish Socialists stand for peace, freedom and equality in the Middle East, and for unity to fight antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism and every other kind of prejudice here and now.

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Rabin’s legacy: Protesters' accounts show Israel ‘breaking the bones’ of peaceful demonstrators

Salfit – Ma’an – Israeli forces are carrying out a policy of shooting at the legs of peaceful demonstrators who protest the Israeli separation wall each Friday in towns across the West Bank, demonstrators are reporting.

The accounts of the Palestinian demonstrators who have been wounded by Israeli fire in recent weeks is raising the legacy of the first Palestinian Intifada, when Israeli then-defense minister Yitzak Rabin ordered his soldiers to “break the bones” of young protesters.

A representative of the Popular Committee against the Wall in the village of Ni’lin, Ahed Al-Khawaja, said that Israeli snipers, shooting from nearby hilltops or from stands of trees, are causing debilitating injuries, especially among young men who come to demonstrate.

In the village of Jayyus, which also holds a weekly demonstration against the wall, protesters said Israeli soldiers put silencers on their guns. When five young men were shot at last Friday’s demonstration, none of the marchers present said they heard the sound of gunshots when they were shot.

In Ni’lin, soldier allowed the protesters to reach the wall, then opened fire without warning, deploying tear gas and sound grenades. According to witnesses, soldiers fired on demonstrators as they were fleeing, their backs turned.

On 9 January, a Ma’an photojournalist, Khalil Ryash was among those who was shot in the legs. Another young man was also shot that day while he was sitting in his front yard.

“At the beginning, I did not feel pain,” Ryash said. “A medic tried to help me and I told him I was okay and did not need help. As soon as I finished the phrase, I felt very severe pain in my leg and I was evacuated to an ambulance which was about 100 meters away. The pain became intolerable. We got to Azzun health center where I was x-rayed and medics told me I had shrapnel in my leg, and needed to be taken to a hospital.”

“In hospital they discovered that I was hit by a live gunshot in my left leg, and the gunshot exited from my leg leaving behind shrapnel of different sizes. The doctor told me that some of the larger shrapnel could be removed after the wound heals up, but other could not be removed because removal would tear muscles.”

It was later learned that Ryash was hit with a new brand of ammunition that produces a scatter-shot, a spray of metal pellets that embed themselves in the flesh.

Muhammad Al-Khawaja, 26, from Ni’lin was injured last week. He was hit by a similar gunshot.

Al-Khawaja described his experience: “About half an hour after we arrived at the site of the separation wall, Israeli soldiers showered demonstrators with gunshots and tear gas canisters. As demonstrators rushed away, I was hit by a gunshot to my right leg and was taken to hospital. Doctors discovered that the gunshot penetrated the bones and the muscle leaving behind 20 pieces of shrapnel of which they removed some, but those in the bone they could not remove.”

Twenty-nine-year-old Hamada Al-Khawaja, also from Ni’lin was shot after the demonstration was over.

He said, “At about 4:00 pm, on Friday 6 February, and after confrontations were over, I wandered with my friends trying to see what happened in the village. Israeli soldiers were stationed on a hill at the other side of the wall. They started firing at us gunshots and tear gas canisters. As I turned trying to flee the scene, a gunshot hit me in the leg. I could not move, and was evacuated to hospital. Doctors discovered that the bullet broke my bones and left behind 10 pieces of shrapnel in different sizes.”

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Tragedy struck my family

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Last Saturday, January 31st in the evening, my son Mark (39) was killed in a motor vehicle accident. I am on my way to South Dakota for the funeral and won't be able to post for the rest of the week.

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God bless you all.

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