MCC Palestine Update #52
June 28, 2002
The phone call came around 9 pm: "Alain, the curfew is being lifted tomorrow. Can you come?" With that call, I quickly began making preparations to enter Bethlehem the next day (Thursday, June 27). The curfew would be lifted from 9 am to 3 pm, and I wanted to squeeze in as many project visits as possible: to families whose water tanks were being repaired through the Women's Training Program of the YMCA; to clients of the YMCA's Rehabilitation Center for persons with disabilities; to the olive wood producers for Ten Thousand Villages; to the Wi'am Conflict Resolution Center. Under normal conditions, any one of these visits could have stretched out leisurely to occupy an entire day, or at least half a day. But these are not normal times, with Palestinians having to scramble to combine shopping and work during the hours that curfew is lifted and with internationals such as myself scrambling to complete some project visits during that same time. The current word going around here--spoken by Palestinians and Israelis alike-is that the Israeli army will be in Palestinian cities for weeks, probably months, with a curfew system becoming regularized; the Israeli military will probably stall until the "separation fence" is built. Palestinian cities have never felt more like a prison, a cage.
It is with sadness that we must report that Adla Issa and Sahir Dajani, MCC's senior staff people, will be leaving MCC at the end of August after 38 and 27 years with MCC, respectively. Adla and Sahir have demonstrated unflagging commitment, creativity and skill in their years with MCC and have been friends to many MCC volunteers over the decades. MCC hopes to continue to draw informally on their knowledge and expertise in the future. Anyone who knows Adla or Sahir is welcome to send an e-mail message of appreciation (or regular post mail--MCC, P.O. Box 19208, Jerusalem, via Israel) to be shared with them at a meal in the honor in August. As MCC continues and expands its work alongside Palestinians, we build on, and strive to live up to, the legacy left by such dedicated workers as Adla and Sahir.
Below you will find four pieces. The first two, by Gideon Samet of Ha'aretz newspaper and Ghassan Andoni of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement, address President Bush's speech on the Middle East. The third, by Ha'aretz journalist Amira Hass, outlines why both Israelis and Palestinians are mistaken in thinking that violent force will resolve the conflict. The next piece is a statement issued by members of the Association of International Development Agencies in the occupied territories, signed by MCC, calling for free and unrestricted access for all humanitarian aid workers in the occupied territories.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Another step toward nowhere
Gideon Samet: gsamet@barak.net.il
The only useful thing in President Bush's useless speech is that now we know which way the dice in Washington have fallen when it comes to the Middle East. Those millions of Israelis who are losing hope for an agreement to end the conflict through political means now have authorization from the leader of the West that for a long time to come, there won't be even the beginning of movement. With this step to nowhere, essentially he did not quote the Bible with "choose life," but rather with "be devoured by the sword." It wasn't by accident, nor did the president hide anything. That's just the way he perceives American interests.
Particularly interesting was the drama on the way to the presidential decision. Colin Powell, a large number of White House staffers and most of the leading media in America are also staunch patriots. And Bush has a clear interest in getting along with the European Union and the Arab world, so why did he completely reject the EU approach and why did he trash the initiative by the main Arab capitals? Because the president's supreme interest right now is to get through the Congressional mid-term elections in November, and his reelection two years from now, without going through the humiliation that a few thousand more Jewish votes in Florida could prevent.
There are worthy political plans that are difficult to implement, like the Oslo agreements and the Clinton plan. Then there is the Bush speech, which is talk without suggesting what to do with it. It was an unimplementable menu, full of hopeless conditions, posed not to solve a difficulty but to circumvent it. This was the last chance, for a long time to come, to do something useful in the matter of the conflict. But Bush, like the Palestinians in Abba Eban's famous saying, once again did not miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. He was cold blooded, not without consideration, not without pondering the various formulas brought to him. His preference, therefore, was regrettably irresponsible toward the real needs for managing the conflict.
But that's the realpolitik in which he prefers to operate. The damage done by his choices, despite his general vision, will soon unfold. Arafat also threw words when he unavoidably responded by saying that the speech was "a serious contribution to peace." He has no partners to that view in the entire Palestinian leadership. At the same time, Bush strengthened the hawkish Sharon, essentially adopting his position. Bush's words could yet strengthen the determination of the terrorists, rather than weakening it. In the fundamentalist halls of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, he signaled that it's all-out war, and lacking any implementable vision, he practically invited them to double their sticks of dynamite. The Palestinian entity has no reason to assume that Bush's America will be more efficient and energetic in pushing his hollow vision forward than it was in formulating it.
He didn't even propose a pretense of urgency, with no timetable, no regional conference, and not even a dispatching of "my secretary of state in the near future." The dominant tone in the text, which came straight from the hearts of Bush, his vice president Cheney, and the right wing of the Pentagon, could now intensify the feelings of many despairing Israelis with their sense of a dead end. Sharon is preparing to churn through Gaza. Like Bush, he has no clear timetable. How long will his approach remain exclusively military, without any political accompaniment? Approximately as long as it takes for Bush's conditions to ripen - in other words, the devil knows.
For the Israeli minority still not ready to surrender to this determinism, all that remains is a narrow track to some change. Despite the very weighty political circumstances, this minority can hope that the Labor Party, or at least Shimon Peres, will show a way out of the dangerous maze and present a political alternative by withdrawing from the war coalition. That there's only the slightest chance such a thing could happen is another reason for Israel remaining stuck in the military, political, economic and psychological mud for a long time to come.
2. Palestinian reflections on President Bush speech
Ghassan Andoni
A Palestinian pessimist:
This speech is an official declaration of war against the Palestinian people. It is a clear attempt to disqualify our liberation movement and deny our legitimate rights. What President Bush is practically saying: you Palestinians go ahead and get rid of all your current political parties and resistance groups. Then dismantle your authority and replace it with Palestinians to my taste. I promise that Israeli tanks will lead you towards the ballot boxes to do so. And after getting engaged in this bloody internal conflict, if anyone of you is still alive, I "challenge" Israel to show enough of good well to offer you a provisional state. I am doing so because Israel needs to preserve its Jewish character and democratic principles.
A Palestinian optimist:
This is a great opportunity. He presented a vision of a Palestinian State in three years period. He even asked Israel to end its occupation that started in 1967. Therefore he indicates that even when the borders should be secured, those borders are 1967 borders. There is no direct indication for the need to replace Arafat. Reforms are a Palestinian need and we already started working in that direction. He calls upon Israel to withdraw its forces to where they were prior to September 28, 2000. He promises a Marshall plan to build the Palestinian economy and an active American role
in establishing a Palestinian state. He even stated the need for solving issues like Jerusalem and refugees through negotiations. We need to accept this plan and trust that President Bush will stand to his words.
A Palestinian realist:
Pay little attention to what he stated. He said so many things and demanded from the parties much more and could not deliver. Start immediately an internal dialogue among the different Palestinian active political and resistance parties. Define exactly and practically what you want. Present your own initiative for a decent solution. Start the reforms that Palestinians deserve. While you need to preserve you right to resist occupation with all means, wisely choose the ones that bring you closer to achieve your goals. Announce an immediate unilateral cease fire but at the same time build up your ability to massively and non-violently struggle against the Israeli occupation. If you fail to at least define a practical political program that unifies all the nation then you will be trapped in what ever President Bush is planning for you. Yes there is an opportunity and there is a great danger, the choice is yours. Choose wisely your way in the coming period.
3. Both sides are wrong
Amira Hass
www.haaretzdaily.com
A radio interviewer asked IDF Spokesman Ron Kitrey on Sunday about the three children killed in Jenin by Israeli soldiers in a tank (who also killed a 60-year-old civilian). The interviewer chose his words carefully. So carefully, that he asked Kitrey about the "youths" who were killed. These "youths" were 6-year-old Soujoud Turkey, Ahmed Ghazawi, also 6 years old, and his 12-year-old brother Jamil. The two brothers had been riding their bicycles in their neighborhood. They, like many others, thought that the curfew had been lifted for several hours. Soujoud Turkey had gone out with her father to buy bread.
The interviewer stammered slightly as he posed his question, perhaps because in these days of suicide bombings it is not considered politically correct to discuss Palestinian casualties. Turning them into "youths" was not a slip of the tongue. It reflects a phenomenon. Even before the suicide attacks became a daily routine, for Israeli society the IDF's Palestinian civilian victims simply evaporated, and they continue to evaporate. They are not perceived as relevant in the political and military contexts.
This is not about appealing to one's sense of morality and compassion, nor is it forgetting the Israeli pain. It is about the ability to analyze why the conflict has become entangled to the point of a bloody cycle of violence beyond control. To analyze in order to be able to control it. Israel's analytical ability has been impaired because its collective political consciousness is unwilling to take into account the cumulative Palestinian pain in this intifada and during the Oslo years that preceded it.
Israeli political consciousness has rejected and continues to reject any attempt or proposal to grasp the sum total of the details, characteristics and consequences of the continued Israeli rule over another people. When one tries to talk of the "totality" known as the occupation, the media - the social barometer responds with resentment. This "totality" is too abstract, transparent, academic. Let's talk about "personal stories" instead.
But when one talks about personal stories, that is exactly how they are perceived: as another tear-jerker about an individual suffering Palestinian. Before this intifada, such stories (deaths at roadblocks, Israeli quotas for drinking water, a ban on building schools in Area C, a significant expansion of settlements, movement restrictions) were perceived as exceptions to "the peace process," although they harmed the Palestinian population every day.
Today, reports on "Palestinian suffering" are perceived as national treason. Israelis conclude that the suicide attacks are the result of a murderous tendency inherent to the Palestinians, their religion, their mentality. In other words, people turn to bio-religious explanations, not social or historical ones. This is a grave mistake. If one wants to put an end to the terror attacks in general, and to the suicide attacks in particular, one must ask why the majority of the Palestinian population supports them. Without their support, the Palestinian organizations would not dare to send suicide attackers and "invite" the expected escalating Israeli response. The Palestinians support the attacks, even the cruelest ones, because they are convinced that they, their existence and their future as a nation are the real targets of the Israeli regime - both when it applied rule-by-deceit tactics during the Oslo period, and now, when it uses tactics of military escalation and siege.
Israeli society did not pay heed to Palestinian warnings during the Oslo period, that an imposed arrangement would lead to disaster. Neither did Israeli political consciousness listen at the beginning of the intifada when the Palestinians pointed to the excessive use of Israeli military force against the first demonstrations. Now, 22 months later, one can here and there find comments by journalists and politicians who in hindsight admit that under Ehud Barak and Shaul Mofaz, excessive use was already made of lethal methods. If there was indeed a desire to control the whirlpool of violence, that harsh military response was a mistake. But this excessive use of force has not been erased from the Palestinians' consciousness. And why should they forget their children, who were killed just because they threw stones at armored jeeps, tanks and fortified outposts? Why should they forget the civilians killed by IDF fire at roadblocks and in their homes, not during gunfights?
The Palestinians are now driven by the same misguided notion that directed Barak, Mofaz and the commanders on the ground at the beginning of the intifada, and the entire Israeli society that stood behind them: "More force and more killing and suffering, as quickly as possible, will teach the other side a lesson and foil their plans."
The suicide attacks in Israel indicate an impaired analytical ability on the part of the majority of Palestinian society. They fail to grasp that just as the daily killings by IDF soldiers and unbearable living conditions under the tightening siege policy only strengthen them, the Israeli response to the death sown in their midst by the Palestinians is much the same. Both sides areconvinced that only more deadly and devastating force will restrain the opposing force. Both sides are wrong.
4. A Joint Statement on Humanitarian Access by members of the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA)
25 June 2002
The right to receive humanitarian assistance, and to offer it, is a fundamental humanitarian principle which should be enjoyed by all citizens of all countries. As members of the international community, we recognize our obligation to provide humanitarian assistance wherever it is needed. Hence the need for unimpeded access to civilian populations, which is of fundamental importance in exercising that responsibility. Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief.
In the past two months, it has become increasingly difficult for our members, as humanitarian and development agencies operating in the West Bank and Gaza, to carry out their work effectively because of an intensification of unprecedented Israeli military restrictions on humanitarian access to the civilian populations affected by conflict. On a daily basis, we are experiencing the following: unacceptable delays at checkpoints, inconsistent and sometimes complete refusal to access project sites and beneficiaries, and harassment of, and severe restrictions on, the movements of local staff. As a result humanitarian agencies are no longer able to effectively reach the populations in immediate need of basic assistance, and our capacity to provide sustained and quality support in the long term has been severely undermined.
As non-governmental humanitarian and development agencies, we operate according to internationally recognized standards, such as “The Sphere Humanitarian Charter and Minimum
Standards in Disaster Response” and the “Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief.” These standards are based on International Humanitarian Law, which is universally recognized as the reference that defines the legal obligations of the parties to a conflict. It is also the foundation upon which the Geneva Conventions rest, and to which our governments are signatories.
The basic principles contained in these documents neutrality, impartiality and accountability - guide our work and set the standards by which we measure our quality, performance and most importantly accountability to our beneficiaries. Therefore, the nature of our work as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is such that if we do not have complete freedom to choose partners and staff, and crucially to gain access to those communities that we are obligated to help, then our ability to achieve our programme objectives and fulfill our humanitarian mandate will be severely hampered.
As a direct result of increasingly restrictive closure policies, we have now reached a point where we can no longer adequately fulfill our mandate.
In light of the announcement by the Government of Israel on 19 June 2002 to impose further restrictions on access to the West Bank, we reiterate our conviction that the Israeli government has the obligation to guarantee free and unrestricted humanitarian access.
We, as international humanitarian and development organizations, therefore urge the following:
*For the Government of Israel and the Israeli military authorities to act to guarantee unrestricted access for all staff members and humanitarian goods and services to the civilian populations
throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
*For the international community to intervene with the Israeli government to ensure that humanitarian access is free and unrestricted as guaranteed under international law.
Friday, June 28
Thursday, June 20
MCC Palestine Update #51
MCC Palestine Update #51
This past week has been yet another of sadness, insecurity, and loss in Israel/Palestine. Two suicide bombings in Jerusalem have caused death, pain, anger, and grief. Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip feel increasingly insecure, with the closure continuing to tighten and with many cities now reoccupied once more and under curfew.
How can Christians act and respond amidst such violence and despair? Jonathan Kuttab, a Palestinian Christian and former MCC volunteer, spoke this week to a visiting delegation of Quakers on this topic. Kuttab pointedly noted that the peace and justice community (he included himself in this group) had failed during the Oslo process, failed by not insisting that final settlements be grounded in international law and be non-discriminatory, by making Palestinian statehood an end in itself rather than a means to landed security for all, and by not observing that direct negotiations in a situation of dramatic power imbalance would inevitably favor the stronger party. Whatever Christians should do now, Kuttab suggested, they should not retreat from vigorous critiques of any "peace" moves (say, the recent talk of a "provisional" Palestinian state) which are once more ripped out of the context of international law and resolutions; rather than worrying about being "effective" (since, as he noted, peace and justice groups have been notably ineffective at securing a just peace in Palestine/Israel), Christians should be willing to be marginalized if that is the price for speaking the truth.
Part of truth-telling, Kuttab noted, involves critiquing the mismanagement and corruption of the Palestinian Authority. There has been much in the press about US and Israeli calls for the "reform" of the Authority. Palestinians, too, are calling for reform, although for different reasons than the US and Israel; the reform envisioned is also quite different. Below are three pieces on the topic of reform. The first, by Edward Said, outlines a call for new elections. The second presents a new Palestinian movement for reform in the occupied territories. The third and final piece calls for a reform of the Palestinian struggle, as Palestinian intellectuals issue a call for an immediate end to the immoral and counterproductive use of suicide bombings.
1. Palestinian Elections Now
Edward Said
Six distinct calls for Palestinian reform and elections are being uttered now: five of them are, for Palestinian purposes, both useless and irrelevant. Sharon wants reform as a way of further disabling Palestinian national life, that is, as an extension of his failed policy of constant intervention and destruction. He wants to be rid of Yasser Arafat, cut up the West Bank into fenced-in cantons, re-install an occupation authority preferably with some Palestinians helping out -- carry on with settlement activity, and maintain Israeli security the way he's been doing it. He is too blinded by his own ideological hallucinations and obsessions to see that this will neither bring peace nor security, and will certainly not bring the "quiet" he keeps prattling on about. Palestinian elections in the Sharonian scheme are quite unimportant.
Second, the United States wants reform principally as a way of combating "terrorism," a panacea of a word that takes no account of history, context, society or anything else. George Bush has a visceral dislike for Arafat, and no understanding at all of the Palestinian situation. To say that he and his disheveled administration "want" anything is to dignify a series of spurts, fits, starts, retractions, denunciations, totally contradictory statements, sterile missions by various officials of his administration, and about-faces, with the status of an over-all desire, which of course doesn't exist. Incoherent, except when it comes to the pressures and agendas of the Israeli lobby and the Christian Right whose spiritual head he now is, Bush's policy consists in reality of calls for Arafat to end terrorism, and (when he wants to placate the Arabs) for someone somewhere somehow to produce a Palestinian state and a big conference, and finally, for Israel to go on getting full and unconditional US support including most probably ending Arafat's career. Beyond that, US policy waits to be formulated, by someone, somewhere, somehow. One should always keep in mind though that the Middle East is a domestic, not a foreign, policy issue in America and subject to dynamics within the society that are difficult to predict.
All this perfectly suits the Israeli demand, which wants nothing more than to make Palestinian life collectively more miserable and more unlivable, whether by military incursions or by impossible political conditions that suit Sharon's frenzied obsession with stamping out Palestinians forever. Of course there are other Israelis who want co- existence with a Palestinian state, as there are American Jews who want similar things, but neither group has any determining power now. Sharon and the Bush administration run the show.
Third, is the Arab leaders' demand which as far as I can tell is a combination of several different elements, none of them directly helpful to the Palestinians themselves. First is fear of their own populations who have been witnessing Israel's mass and essentially unopposed destruction of the Palestinian territories without any serious Arab interference or attempt at deterrence. The Beirut summit peace plan offers Israel precisely what Sharon has refused, which is land for peace, and it is a proposal without any teeth, much less one with a timetable. While it may be a good thing to have it on record as a counter-weight to Israel's naked belligerence, we should have no illusions about its real intention which, like the calls for Palestinian reform, are really tokens offered to seething Arab populations who are thoroughly sick with the mediocre inaction of their rulers. Second, of course, is the sheer exasperation of most of the Arab regimes with the whole Palestinian problem. They seem to have no ideological problem with Israel as a Jewish state without any declared boundaries, which has been in illegal military occupation of Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank for 35 years, or with Israel's dispossession of the Palestinian people. They are prepared to accommodate nicely those terrible injustices if only Arafat and his people would simply either behave or quietly go away. Third, of course, is the long-standing desire of Arab leaders to ingratiate themselves with the US and, among themselves, to vie for the title of most important US ally. Perhaps they are simply unaware of how contemptuous most Americans are of them, and how little understood or regarded is their cultural and political status in the US.
Fourth, in the chorus of reform are the Europeans. But they only scurry around sending emissaries to see Sharon and Arafat, they make ringing declarations in Brussels, they fund a few projects and more or less leave it at that, so great is the shadow of the US over them.
Fifth, is Yasser Arafat and his circle of associates who have suddenly discovered the virtues (theoretically at least) of democracy and reform. I know that I speak at a great distance from the field of struggle, and I also know all the arguments about the besieged Arafat as a potent symbol of Palestinian resistance against Israeli aggression, but I have come to a point where I think none of that has any meaning anymore. Arafat is simply interested in saving himself. He has had almost ten years of freedom to run a petty kingdom and has succeeded essentially in bringing opprobrium and scorn on himself and most of his team; the Authority became a byword for brutality, autocracy and unimaginable corruption. Why anyone for a moment believes that at this stage he is capable of anything different, or that his new streamlined cabinet (dominated by the same old faces of defeat and incompetence) is going to produce actual reform, defies past year he has exposed to unacceptable pain and hardship, all of it based on a combination of his absence of a strategic plan and his unforgivable reliance on the tender mercies of Israel and the US via Oslo. Leaders of independence and liberation movements have no business exposing their unarmed people to the savagery of war criminals like Sharon, against whom there was no real defence or advance preparation. Why then provoke a war whose victims would be mostly innocent people when you have neither the military capacity to fight one nor the diplomatic leverage to end it? Having done this now three times (Jordan, Lebanon, West Bank) Arafat should not be given a chance to bring on a fourth disaster.
He has announced that elections will take place in early 2003, but his real concentration is to reorganise the security services. I have long pointed out in these columns that Arafat's security apparatus was always designed principally to serve him and Israel, since the Oslo accords were based on his having made a deal with Israel's military occupation. Israel cared only about its security, for which it held Arafat responsible (a position, by the way, he willingly accepted as early as 1992). In the meantime Arafat used the 15 or 19 or whatever the right number of groups was to play each off against the other, a tactic he perfected in Fakahani, and which is patently stupid so far as the general good is concerned. He never really reined in Hamas and Islamic Jihad which suited Israel perfectly: it would have a ready- made excuse to use the so-called martyr's (mindless) suicide bombings to further diminish and punish the whole people. If there is one thing along with Arafat's ruinous regime that has done us more harm as a cause it is this calamitous policy of killing Israeli civilians, which further proves to the world that we are indeed terrorists and an immoral movement. For what gain no one has been able to say.
Having therefore made a deal with the occupation through Oslo, Arafat was never really in a position to lead a movement to end it. And ironically, he is trying to make another deal now, both to save himself and prove to the US, Israel and the other Arabs that he deserves another chance. I myself don't care a whit for what Bush, or the Arab leaders, or Sharon says: I am interested in what we as a people think of our leader, and there I believe we must be
elections, reorganising the government and security services. His record of failure is too dismal and his capacities as a leader too enfeebled and incompetent for him to try yet again to save himself for another try.
Sixth, finally, is the Palestinian people who are now justifiably clamouring both for reform and elections. As far as I am concerned, this clamour is the only legitimate one of the six I have outlined here. It's important to point out that Arafat's present administration as well as the Legislative Council have overstayed their original term, which should have ended with a new round of elections in 1999. Moreover, the whole basis of the 1996 elections were the Oslo accords, which in effect simply licensed Arafat and his people to run bits of the West Bank and Gaza for the Israelis, without true sovereignty or security, since Israel retained control of the borders, security, land (on which it doubled and even tripled the settlements), water and air. In other words, the old basis for elections and reform, which had been Oslo, is now null and void. Any attempt to go forward on that kind of platform is simply a wasteful ploy and will produce neither reform nor real elections. Hence the current confusion which causes every Palestinian everywhere to feel chagrin and bitter frustration.
What then is to be done if the old basis of Palestinian legitimacy no longer really exists? Certainly there can be no return to Oslo, anymore than there can be to Jordanian or Israeli law. As a student of periods of important historical change, I should like to point out that when a major rupture with the past occurred (as during the period after the fall of the monarchy because of the French Revolution, or with the demise of apartheid in South Africa before the elections of 1994 took place), a new basis of legitimacy has to be created by the only and ultimate source of authority, namely, the people itself. The major interests in Palestinian society, those that have kept life going, from the trade unions, to health workers, teachers, farmers, lawyers, doctors, in addition to all the many NGOs must now become the basis on which Palestinian reform despite Israel's incursions and the occupation -- is to be constructed. It seems to me useless to wait for Arafat, or Europe, or the US, or the Arabs to do this: it must absolutely be done by Palestinians themselves by way of a Constituent Assembly that contains in it all the major elements of Palestinian society. Only such a group, constructed by the people themselves and not by the remnants of the Oslo dispensation, certainly not by the shabby fragments of Arafat's discredited Authority , can hope to succeed in re-organising society from the ruinous, indeed catastrophically incoherent condition in which it is to be found. The basic job for such an Assembly is to construct an emergency system of order that has two purposes. One, to keep Palestinian life going in an orderly way with full participation for all concerned. Two, to choose an emergency executive committee whose mandate is to end the occupation, not negotiate with it. It is quite obvious that militarily we are no match for Israel. Kalishnikoffs are not effective weapons when the balance of power is so lopsided. What is needed is a creative method of struggle that mobilises all the human resources at our disposal to highlight, isolate and gradually make untenable the main aspects of Israeli occupation e.g., settlements, settlement roads, roadblocks and house demolitions.The present group around Arafat is hopelessly incapable of thinking of, much less implementing, such a strategy: it is too bankrupt, too bound up in corrupt selfish practices, too burdened with the failures of the past.
For such a Palestinian strategy to work there has to be an Israeli component made up of individuals and groups with whom a common basis of struggle against occupation can and indeed must be established. This is the great lesson of the South African struggle: that it proposed the vision of a multi- racial society from which neither individuals nor groups and leaders were ever deflected. The only vision coming out of Israel today is violence, forcible separation and the continued subordination of Palestinians to an idea of Jewish supremacy. Not every Israeli believes in these things of course, but it must be up to us to project the idea of co-existence in two states that have natural relations with each other on the basis of sovereignty and equality. Mainstream Zionism has still not been able to produce such a vision, so it must come from the Palestinian people and their new leaders whose new legitimacy has to be constructed now, at a moment when everything is crashing down and everyone is anxious to re-make Palestine in his own image and according to his own ideas.
We have never faced a worse, or at the same time, a more seminal moment. The Arab order is in total disarray; the US administration is effectively controlled by the Christian Right and the Israeli lobby (within 24 hours, everything that George Bush seems to have agreed with President Mubarak was reversed by Sharon's visit); and our society has been nearly wrecked by poor leadership and the insanity of thinking that suicide bombing will lead directly to an Islamic Palestinian state. There is always hope for the future, but one has to able to look for it and find it in the right place. It is quite clear that in the absence of any serious Palestinian or Arab information policy in the United States (especially in the Congress) we cannot for a moment delude ourselves that Powell and Bush are about to set a real agenda for Palestinian rehabilitation. That's why I keep saying that the effort must come from us, by us, for us. I'm at least trying to suggest a different avenue of approach. Who else but the Palestinian people can construct the legitimacy they need to rule themselves and fight the occupation with weapons that don't kill innocents and lose us more support than ever before? A just cause can easily be subverted by evil or inadequate or corrupt means. The sooner this is realised the better the chance we have to lead ourselves out of the present impasse.
2. The Palestinian National Initiative
June 17, 2002
Today a group of Palestinian leaders announced the launching of the Palestinian National Initiative at a press conference in Ramallah, led by Dr. Haidar Abdul Shafi, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi and Mr. Ibrahim Dakkak. The main objective of the Initiative is the realization of of Palestinian national rights and of a durable, just peace. Both of these objectives can be best achieved at this juncture through the establishment of a national emergency leadership, the immediate implementation of democratic elections at all levels of the political system, and reform of political, administrative, and other institutional structures in order to meet the needs of the Palestinian people.
Summary of the Statement Distributed at the Press Conference
The Palestinian people have sacrificed a great deal in their struggle to achieve freedom, justice and lasting peace. They will not accept that these sacrifices should have been in vain; on the contrary, they assert that these sacrifices need to be translated into concrete achievements and outcomes. It is imperative that the Palestinians’ resilience and their determination to be freed from 35 years of military occupation be activated and channeled to achieve the collective goals of ending the Israeli occupation of the West bank and Gaza and the dismantling of all Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Only then can a just peace be achieved--through the establishment of a sovereign, independent, viable, and democratic Palestinian state on all of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital.
This Initiative calls for the implementation of relevant United Nations resolutions requiring the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the West Bank and Gaza and safeguarding the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland. At this most critical time, we call upon all concerned parties to prevent the Israeli government from annexing the Palestinian territories and from consolidating its discriminatory policy of cantonization and the creation of an apartheid system in the West Bank and Gaza.
The absence of true internal reform and of a unified strategy has been a weakness that Israel has tried to exploit. This has been taken advantage of in order to undermine the Palestinian cause and to divide the Palestinians internally. It is necessary to address this situation through genuine reform and through the creation of internal political structures that can best serve the cause of freedom, independence, and socioeconomic development. Basic measures, rather than superficial changes, must be implemented in order to regain the confidence of the Palestinian people here and in the diaspora.
This Initiative is a response to popular demands from men and women calling for increased participation by Palestinian citizens in the process of nation building and for the opportunity to participate in the just struggle for the realization of an independent, viable, democratic and prosperous state which guarantees security, justice, equality before the law, and a dignified existence for its citizens.
The Initiative is based on a belief in the capacities of our people and in the strength of our country’s human resources. Our challenge is to create the appropriate conditions that will allow for the full and constructive utilization of this collective energy and for the participation of the people in the creation of our national structures. We affirm that internal reform and the development of state structures concern the Palestinian people and their institutions and should be carried out with the active participation of the people, and not only as a response to external pressures.
This Initiative is intended to be part of a dynamic process and should not be conceived of as a predetermined recipe for action. It should be viewed as a catalyst for the purpose of mobilizing the intellectual, cultural, social and political energies of our people. We are and will remain open to the enrichment of this Initiative by the people, so that it might become the means for the development of a wide-scale national democratic movement.
The Immediate Objectives of the Initiative
Creating a national emergency leadership with a unified strategy based on
the principle of full participation in decision-making
Working for free, democratic elections for all institutions and political
Posts including the Presidency, the Palestinian Legislative Council (Parliament), and local councils with an international presence to ensure free elections.
Restructuring government institutions with clear mandates, bylaws, and responsibilities in order to guarantee transparency, accountability, and lack of corruption
Implementing the Basic Law and all other laws passed by the PLC
Working towards the separation of powers with independent judicial and legislative structures, and reform of the court system
Serving the needs of the poor and underprivileged by developing poverty alleviation programs through employment and social welfare schemes
Enhancing the role of local councils, and allocation of adequate budgets to facilitate the execution of their mandates
Consolidating and enhancing the role of civil society institutions and guaranteeing their independence
Centralizing the national budget, instituting a transparent system of expenditures, and guaranteeing oversight by the legislature
Eliminating factors that can lead to corruption, the misuse of funds, and the abuse of power and authority
Restructuring security forces to eliminate the duplication of structures and to ensure their abstention from interference in economic, administrative and political decisions. The security services will be subject to the rule of law and the decisions of the independent judiciary, and their main task will be the protection of the security of Palestinians
Developing and improving basic services in health, education, and social welfare
Promoting a sustainable and high-quality system of higher education to meet the developmental needs of Palestinian society
Continuing the struggle for the release of all Palestinian prisoners and detainees
Activating and engaging diaspora Palestinians in the nation building effort
Developing and expanding the international solidarity movement with the Palestinian people.
3. Urgent Appeal to Stop Suicide Bombings
We the undersigned feel that it is our national responsibility to issue this appeal in light of the dangerous situation engulfing the Palestinian people. We call upon the parties behind military operations targeting civilians in Israel to reconsider their policies and stop driving our young men to carry out these operations. Suicide bombings deepen the hatred and widen the gap between the Palestinian and Israeli people. Also, they destroy the possibilities of peaceful co-existence between them in two neighboring states.
We see that these bombings do not contribute towards achieving our national project that calls for freedom and independence. On the contrary, they strengthen the enemies of peace on the
Israeli side and give Israel’s aggressive government under Sharon the excuse to continue its harsh war against our people. This war targets our children, elderly, villages, cities, and our national hopes and achievements.
Military action is viewed are not assessed as positive or negative exclusively out of the general context and situation. They assessed based on whether they fulfill political ends. Therefore, there is a need to re-evaluate these acts considering that pushing the area towards an existential war between the two people living on the holy land will lead to destruction for the whole region. We do not find any logical, humane, or political justification for this end result.
Signatories:
Below are some of the Palestinian intellectuals and public figures who have signed the petition:
Dr. Sari Nuseiba, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, Saleh Ra’fat, Salah Zuheika, Mamdouh Nofal, Hanna Sineora, Dr. Mohammad Ishtiya, Ibrahim Kandalaft, Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj, Dr. Moussa El-Budeiri Huda El-Imam, Dr. Marwan Abu El-Zuluf, Saman Khoury, Dr. Said Zidani, Dr. Omayya Khammash, Dr. Jad Is’haq, Dr. Manuel Hassasian, Salah Abdel Shafi, Shaher Sa’ad, Dr. Mohammad Dajani, Imad Awad, Fadel Tahboub, Majed Kaswani, Taysir El-Zibri, Dr. Ahmad Majdalani, Dr. Taleb Awad, Khader Sh’kirat, Zahi Khouri, Majed Abu Qubo’, Ehab Boulous , Dr. Isam Nassar, Dr. Salim Tamari, Dr. Suad El-Ameri, Dr. Adam Abu Sh’rar, Dr. Riema Hamami, Subhi El-Z’beidi, Dr. Munther El-Dajani, Osama Daher, Simone Cupa, Jeana Abu El-Zuluf, Yousef Daher, Jamal Zaqout, Dr. Saleh Abdel Jawwad, Dr. Nathmi El-Ju’ba, Dr. Jamil Hilal, Dr. Arafat El-Hadmi, Dr. Leila Faydi, Dr. Zakaria El-Qaq, Amna Badran, Dr. Ali Q’leibo, Marwan Tarazi, Dr. Raja’I El-Dajani, Issa Q’seisiya, Hani El-Masri, Dr. Jumana Odeh, Lucy Nuseiba, Abdel Qader El-Husseini, Zahra El-Khaldi
This past week has been yet another of sadness, insecurity, and loss in Israel/Palestine. Two suicide bombings in Jerusalem have caused death, pain, anger, and grief. Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip feel increasingly insecure, with the closure continuing to tighten and with many cities now reoccupied once more and under curfew.
How can Christians act and respond amidst such violence and despair? Jonathan Kuttab, a Palestinian Christian and former MCC volunteer, spoke this week to a visiting delegation of Quakers on this topic. Kuttab pointedly noted that the peace and justice community (he included himself in this group) had failed during the Oslo process, failed by not insisting that final settlements be grounded in international law and be non-discriminatory, by making Palestinian statehood an end in itself rather than a means to landed security for all, and by not observing that direct negotiations in a situation of dramatic power imbalance would inevitably favor the stronger party. Whatever Christians should do now, Kuttab suggested, they should not retreat from vigorous critiques of any "peace" moves (say, the recent talk of a "provisional" Palestinian state) which are once more ripped out of the context of international law and resolutions; rather than worrying about being "effective" (since, as he noted, peace and justice groups have been notably ineffective at securing a just peace in Palestine/Israel), Christians should be willing to be marginalized if that is the price for speaking the truth.
Part of truth-telling, Kuttab noted, involves critiquing the mismanagement and corruption of the Palestinian Authority. There has been much in the press about US and Israeli calls for the "reform" of the Authority. Palestinians, too, are calling for reform, although for different reasons than the US and Israel; the reform envisioned is also quite different. Below are three pieces on the topic of reform. The first, by Edward Said, outlines a call for new elections. The second presents a new Palestinian movement for reform in the occupied territories. The third and final piece calls for a reform of the Palestinian struggle, as Palestinian intellectuals issue a call for an immediate end to the immoral and counterproductive use of suicide bombings.
1. Palestinian Elections Now
Edward Said
Six distinct calls for Palestinian reform and elections are being uttered now: five of them are, for Palestinian purposes, both useless and irrelevant. Sharon wants reform as a way of further disabling Palestinian national life, that is, as an extension of his failed policy of constant intervention and destruction. He wants to be rid of Yasser Arafat, cut up the West Bank into fenced-in cantons, re-install an occupation authority preferably with some Palestinians helping out -- carry on with settlement activity, and maintain Israeli security the way he's been doing it. He is too blinded by his own ideological hallucinations and obsessions to see that this will neither bring peace nor security, and will certainly not bring the "quiet" he keeps prattling on about. Palestinian elections in the Sharonian scheme are quite unimportant.
Second, the United States wants reform principally as a way of combating "terrorism," a panacea of a word that takes no account of history, context, society or anything else. George Bush has a visceral dislike for Arafat, and no understanding at all of the Palestinian situation. To say that he and his disheveled administration "want" anything is to dignify a series of spurts, fits, starts, retractions, denunciations, totally contradictory statements, sterile missions by various officials of his administration, and about-faces, with the status of an over-all desire, which of course doesn't exist. Incoherent, except when it comes to the pressures and agendas of the Israeli lobby and the Christian Right whose spiritual head he now is, Bush's policy consists in reality of calls for Arafat to end terrorism, and (when he wants to placate the Arabs) for someone somewhere somehow to produce a Palestinian state and a big conference, and finally, for Israel to go on getting full and unconditional US support including most probably ending Arafat's career. Beyond that, US policy waits to be formulated, by someone, somewhere, somehow. One should always keep in mind though that the Middle East is a domestic, not a foreign, policy issue in America and subject to dynamics within the society that are difficult to predict.
All this perfectly suits the Israeli demand, which wants nothing more than to make Palestinian life collectively more miserable and more unlivable, whether by military incursions or by impossible political conditions that suit Sharon's frenzied obsession with stamping out Palestinians forever. Of course there are other Israelis who want co- existence with a Palestinian state, as there are American Jews who want similar things, but neither group has any determining power now. Sharon and the Bush administration run the show.
Third, is the Arab leaders' demand which as far as I can tell is a combination of several different elements, none of them directly helpful to the Palestinians themselves. First is fear of their own populations who have been witnessing Israel's mass and essentially unopposed destruction of the Palestinian territories without any serious Arab interference or attempt at deterrence. The Beirut summit peace plan offers Israel precisely what Sharon has refused, which is land for peace, and it is a proposal without any teeth, much less one with a timetable. While it may be a good thing to have it on record as a counter-weight to Israel's naked belligerence, we should have no illusions about its real intention which, like the calls for Palestinian reform, are really tokens offered to seething Arab populations who are thoroughly sick with the mediocre inaction of their rulers. Second, of course, is the sheer exasperation of most of the Arab regimes with the whole Palestinian problem. They seem to have no ideological problem with Israel as a Jewish state without any declared boundaries, which has been in illegal military occupation of Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank for 35 years, or with Israel's dispossession of the Palestinian people. They are prepared to accommodate nicely those terrible injustices if only Arafat and his people would simply either behave or quietly go away. Third, of course, is the long-standing desire of Arab leaders to ingratiate themselves with the US and, among themselves, to vie for the title of most important US ally. Perhaps they are simply unaware of how contemptuous most Americans are of them, and how little understood or regarded is their cultural and political status in the US.
Fourth, in the chorus of reform are the Europeans. But they only scurry around sending emissaries to see Sharon and Arafat, they make ringing declarations in Brussels, they fund a few projects and more or less leave it at that, so great is the shadow of the US over them.
Fifth, is Yasser Arafat and his circle of associates who have suddenly discovered the virtues (theoretically at least) of democracy and reform. I know that I speak at a great distance from the field of struggle, and I also know all the arguments about the besieged Arafat as a potent symbol of Palestinian resistance against Israeli aggression, but I have come to a point where I think none of that has any meaning anymore. Arafat is simply interested in saving himself. He has had almost ten years of freedom to run a petty kingdom and has succeeded essentially in bringing opprobrium and scorn on himself and most of his team; the Authority became a byword for brutality, autocracy and unimaginable corruption. Why anyone for a moment believes that at this stage he is capable of anything different, or that his new streamlined cabinet (dominated by the same old faces of defeat and incompetence) is going to produce actual reform, defies past year he has exposed to unacceptable pain and hardship, all of it based on a combination of his absence of a strategic plan and his unforgivable reliance on the tender mercies of Israel and the US via Oslo. Leaders of independence and liberation movements have no business exposing their unarmed people to the savagery of war criminals like Sharon, against whom there was no real defence or advance preparation. Why then provoke a war whose victims would be mostly innocent people when you have neither the military capacity to fight one nor the diplomatic leverage to end it? Having done this now three times (Jordan, Lebanon, West Bank) Arafat should not be given a chance to bring on a fourth disaster.
He has announced that elections will take place in early 2003, but his real concentration is to reorganise the security services. I have long pointed out in these columns that Arafat's security apparatus was always designed principally to serve him and Israel, since the Oslo accords were based on his having made a deal with Israel's military occupation. Israel cared only about its security, for which it held Arafat responsible (a position, by the way, he willingly accepted as early as 1992). In the meantime Arafat used the 15 or 19 or whatever the right number of groups was to play each off against the other, a tactic he perfected in Fakahani, and which is patently stupid so far as the general good is concerned. He never really reined in Hamas and Islamic Jihad which suited Israel perfectly: it would have a ready- made excuse to use the so-called martyr's (mindless) suicide bombings to further diminish and punish the whole people. If there is one thing along with Arafat's ruinous regime that has done us more harm as a cause it is this calamitous policy of killing Israeli civilians, which further proves to the world that we are indeed terrorists and an immoral movement. For what gain no one has been able to say.
Having therefore made a deal with the occupation through Oslo, Arafat was never really in a position to lead a movement to end it. And ironically, he is trying to make another deal now, both to save himself and prove to the US, Israel and the other Arabs that he deserves another chance. I myself don't care a whit for what Bush, or the Arab leaders, or Sharon says: I am interested in what we as a people think of our leader, and there I believe we must be
elections, reorganising the government and security services. His record of failure is too dismal and his capacities as a leader too enfeebled and incompetent for him to try yet again to save himself for another try.
Sixth, finally, is the Palestinian people who are now justifiably clamouring both for reform and elections. As far as I am concerned, this clamour is the only legitimate one of the six I have outlined here. It's important to point out that Arafat's present administration as well as the Legislative Council have overstayed their original term, which should have ended with a new round of elections in 1999. Moreover, the whole basis of the 1996 elections were the Oslo accords, which in effect simply licensed Arafat and his people to run bits of the West Bank and Gaza for the Israelis, without true sovereignty or security, since Israel retained control of the borders, security, land (on which it doubled and even tripled the settlements), water and air. In other words, the old basis for elections and reform, which had been Oslo, is now null and void. Any attempt to go forward on that kind of platform is simply a wasteful ploy and will produce neither reform nor real elections. Hence the current confusion which causes every Palestinian everywhere to feel chagrin and bitter frustration.
What then is to be done if the old basis of Palestinian legitimacy no longer really exists? Certainly there can be no return to Oslo, anymore than there can be to Jordanian or Israeli law. As a student of periods of important historical change, I should like to point out that when a major rupture with the past occurred (as during the period after the fall of the monarchy because of the French Revolution, or with the demise of apartheid in South Africa before the elections of 1994 took place), a new basis of legitimacy has to be created by the only and ultimate source of authority, namely, the people itself. The major interests in Palestinian society, those that have kept life going, from the trade unions, to health workers, teachers, farmers, lawyers, doctors, in addition to all the many NGOs must now become the basis on which Palestinian reform despite Israel's incursions and the occupation -- is to be constructed. It seems to me useless to wait for Arafat, or Europe, or the US, or the Arabs to do this: it must absolutely be done by Palestinians themselves by way of a Constituent Assembly that contains in it all the major elements of Palestinian society. Only such a group, constructed by the people themselves and not by the remnants of the Oslo dispensation, certainly not by the shabby fragments of Arafat's discredited Authority , can hope to succeed in re-organising society from the ruinous, indeed catastrophically incoherent condition in which it is to be found. The basic job for such an Assembly is to construct an emergency system of order that has two purposes. One, to keep Palestinian life going in an orderly way with full participation for all concerned. Two, to choose an emergency executive committee whose mandate is to end the occupation, not negotiate with it. It is quite obvious that militarily we are no match for Israel. Kalishnikoffs are not effective weapons when the balance of power is so lopsided. What is needed is a creative method of struggle that mobilises all the human resources at our disposal to highlight, isolate and gradually make untenable the main aspects of Israeli occupation e.g., settlements, settlement roads, roadblocks and house demolitions.The present group around Arafat is hopelessly incapable of thinking of, much less implementing, such a strategy: it is too bankrupt, too bound up in corrupt selfish practices, too burdened with the failures of the past.
For such a Palestinian strategy to work there has to be an Israeli component made up of individuals and groups with whom a common basis of struggle against occupation can and indeed must be established. This is the great lesson of the South African struggle: that it proposed the vision of a multi- racial society from which neither individuals nor groups and leaders were ever deflected. The only vision coming out of Israel today is violence, forcible separation and the continued subordination of Palestinians to an idea of Jewish supremacy. Not every Israeli believes in these things of course, but it must be up to us to project the idea of co-existence in two states that have natural relations with each other on the basis of sovereignty and equality. Mainstream Zionism has still not been able to produce such a vision, so it must come from the Palestinian people and their new leaders whose new legitimacy has to be constructed now, at a moment when everything is crashing down and everyone is anxious to re-make Palestine in his own image and according to his own ideas.
We have never faced a worse, or at the same time, a more seminal moment. The Arab order is in total disarray; the US administration is effectively controlled by the Christian Right and the Israeli lobby (within 24 hours, everything that George Bush seems to have agreed with President Mubarak was reversed by Sharon's visit); and our society has been nearly wrecked by poor leadership and the insanity of thinking that suicide bombing will lead directly to an Islamic Palestinian state. There is always hope for the future, but one has to able to look for it and find it in the right place. It is quite clear that in the absence of any serious Palestinian or Arab information policy in the United States (especially in the Congress) we cannot for a moment delude ourselves that Powell and Bush are about to set a real agenda for Palestinian rehabilitation. That's why I keep saying that the effort must come from us, by us, for us. I'm at least trying to suggest a different avenue of approach. Who else but the Palestinian people can construct the legitimacy they need to rule themselves and fight the occupation with weapons that don't kill innocents and lose us more support than ever before? A just cause can easily be subverted by evil or inadequate or corrupt means. The sooner this is realised the better the chance we have to lead ourselves out of the present impasse.
2. The Palestinian National Initiative
June 17, 2002
Today a group of Palestinian leaders announced the launching of the Palestinian National Initiative at a press conference in Ramallah, led by Dr. Haidar Abdul Shafi, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi and Mr. Ibrahim Dakkak. The main objective of the Initiative is the realization of of Palestinian national rights and of a durable, just peace. Both of these objectives can be best achieved at this juncture through the establishment of a national emergency leadership, the immediate implementation of democratic elections at all levels of the political system, and reform of political, administrative, and other institutional structures in order to meet the needs of the Palestinian people.
Summary of the Statement Distributed at the Press Conference
The Palestinian people have sacrificed a great deal in their struggle to achieve freedom, justice and lasting peace. They will not accept that these sacrifices should have been in vain; on the contrary, they assert that these sacrifices need to be translated into concrete achievements and outcomes. It is imperative that the Palestinians’ resilience and their determination to be freed from 35 years of military occupation be activated and channeled to achieve the collective goals of ending the Israeli occupation of the West bank and Gaza and the dismantling of all Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Only then can a just peace be achieved--through the establishment of a sovereign, independent, viable, and democratic Palestinian state on all of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital.
This Initiative calls for the implementation of relevant United Nations resolutions requiring the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the West Bank and Gaza and safeguarding the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland. At this most critical time, we call upon all concerned parties to prevent the Israeli government from annexing the Palestinian territories and from consolidating its discriminatory policy of cantonization and the creation of an apartheid system in the West Bank and Gaza.
The absence of true internal reform and of a unified strategy has been a weakness that Israel has tried to exploit. This has been taken advantage of in order to undermine the Palestinian cause and to divide the Palestinians internally. It is necessary to address this situation through genuine reform and through the creation of internal political structures that can best serve the cause of freedom, independence, and socioeconomic development. Basic measures, rather than superficial changes, must be implemented in order to regain the confidence of the Palestinian people here and in the diaspora.
This Initiative is a response to popular demands from men and women calling for increased participation by Palestinian citizens in the process of nation building and for the opportunity to participate in the just struggle for the realization of an independent, viable, democratic and prosperous state which guarantees security, justice, equality before the law, and a dignified existence for its citizens.
The Initiative is based on a belief in the capacities of our people and in the strength of our country’s human resources. Our challenge is to create the appropriate conditions that will allow for the full and constructive utilization of this collective energy and for the participation of the people in the creation of our national structures. We affirm that internal reform and the development of state structures concern the Palestinian people and their institutions and should be carried out with the active participation of the people, and not only as a response to external pressures.
This Initiative is intended to be part of a dynamic process and should not be conceived of as a predetermined recipe for action. It should be viewed as a catalyst for the purpose of mobilizing the intellectual, cultural, social and political energies of our people. We are and will remain open to the enrichment of this Initiative by the people, so that it might become the means for the development of a wide-scale national democratic movement.
The Immediate Objectives of the Initiative
Creating a national emergency leadership with a unified strategy based on
the principle of full participation in decision-making
Working for free, democratic elections for all institutions and political
Posts including the Presidency, the Palestinian Legislative Council (Parliament), and local councils with an international presence to ensure free elections.
Restructuring government institutions with clear mandates, bylaws, and responsibilities in order to guarantee transparency, accountability, and lack of corruption
Implementing the Basic Law and all other laws passed by the PLC
Working towards the separation of powers with independent judicial and legislative structures, and reform of the court system
Serving the needs of the poor and underprivileged by developing poverty alleviation programs through employment and social welfare schemes
Enhancing the role of local councils, and allocation of adequate budgets to facilitate the execution of their mandates
Consolidating and enhancing the role of civil society institutions and guaranteeing their independence
Centralizing the national budget, instituting a transparent system of expenditures, and guaranteeing oversight by the legislature
Eliminating factors that can lead to corruption, the misuse of funds, and the abuse of power and authority
Restructuring security forces to eliminate the duplication of structures and to ensure their abstention from interference in economic, administrative and political decisions. The security services will be subject to the rule of law and the decisions of the independent judiciary, and their main task will be the protection of the security of Palestinians
Developing and improving basic services in health, education, and social welfare
Promoting a sustainable and high-quality system of higher education to meet the developmental needs of Palestinian society
Continuing the struggle for the release of all Palestinian prisoners and detainees
Activating and engaging diaspora Palestinians in the nation building effort
Developing and expanding the international solidarity movement with the Palestinian people.
3. Urgent Appeal to Stop Suicide Bombings
We the undersigned feel that it is our national responsibility to issue this appeal in light of the dangerous situation engulfing the Palestinian people. We call upon the parties behind military operations targeting civilians in Israel to reconsider their policies and stop driving our young men to carry out these operations. Suicide bombings deepen the hatred and widen the gap between the Palestinian and Israeli people. Also, they destroy the possibilities of peaceful co-existence between them in two neighboring states.
We see that these bombings do not contribute towards achieving our national project that calls for freedom and independence. On the contrary, they strengthen the enemies of peace on the
Israeli side and give Israel’s aggressive government under Sharon the excuse to continue its harsh war against our people. This war targets our children, elderly, villages, cities, and our national hopes and achievements.
Military action is viewed are not assessed as positive or negative exclusively out of the general context and situation. They assessed based on whether they fulfill political ends. Therefore, there is a need to re-evaluate these acts considering that pushing the area towards an existential war between the two people living on the holy land will lead to destruction for the whole region. We do not find any logical, humane, or political justification for this end result.
Signatories:
Below are some of the Palestinian intellectuals and public figures who have signed the petition:
Dr. Sari Nuseiba, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, Saleh Ra’fat, Salah Zuheika, Mamdouh Nofal, Hanna Sineora, Dr. Mohammad Ishtiya, Ibrahim Kandalaft, Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj, Dr. Moussa El-Budeiri Huda El-Imam, Dr. Marwan Abu El-Zuluf, Saman Khoury, Dr. Said Zidani, Dr. Omayya Khammash, Dr. Jad Is’haq, Dr. Manuel Hassasian, Salah Abdel Shafi, Shaher Sa’ad, Dr. Mohammad Dajani, Imad Awad, Fadel Tahboub, Majed Kaswani, Taysir El-Zibri, Dr. Ahmad Majdalani, Dr. Taleb Awad, Khader Sh’kirat, Zahi Khouri, Majed Abu Qubo’, Ehab Boulous , Dr. Isam Nassar, Dr. Salim Tamari, Dr. Suad El-Ameri, Dr. Adam Abu Sh’rar, Dr. Riema Hamami, Subhi El-Z’beidi, Dr. Munther El-Dajani, Osama Daher, Simone Cupa, Jeana Abu El-Zuluf, Yousef Daher, Jamal Zaqout, Dr. Saleh Abdel Jawwad, Dr. Nathmi El-Ju’ba, Dr. Jamil Hilal, Dr. Arafat El-Hadmi, Dr. Leila Faydi, Dr. Zakaria El-Qaq, Amna Badran, Dr. Ali Q’leibo, Marwan Tarazi, Dr. Raja’I El-Dajani, Issa Q’seisiya, Hani El-Masri, Dr. Jumana Odeh, Lucy Nuseiba, Abdel Qader El-Husseini, Zahra El-Khaldi
Sunday, June 16
MCC Palestine Update #50
MCC Palestine Update #50
16 June 2002
The Al-Majd Women's Society in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip operates literacy courses for Palestinian women from the camp. MCC has supported this project now for nearly three years and we, together with the women at al-Majd, have been excited by the fact that some of the participants in the course have gone on not only to read but also to sit for and pass the tawjihi, or end of high school, exam.
Questions of access and the new permit system (which is being implemented even as the Israeli military authorities refuse to put new procedures in writing) continue to be areas of urgent discussion among NGOs. The European Commission and the Palestinian NGO Network urge noncompliance with the system, a refusal to apply for permits for staff to travel within the West Bank, say from Nablus to Jenin. The Association of International Development Agencies will meet on Wednesday to discuss if we can have a unified stance on the question of noncompliance. Putting aside the question of compliance, one can undoubtedly state that the prolonged and intensified restrictions on travel and access are leading to increased operational costs for all foreign actors, be they governmental-level donor agencies like the EC or USAID, secular NGOs like Save the Children, or Christian NGOs like MCC, Catholic Relief Service and World Vision.
The plight of Palestinian NGOs, meanwhile, is much more severe, to say nothing of the clients / beneficiaries of these organizations. Below you will find two pieces. The first, by Haaretz journalist Amira Hass, tackles the effects of "long-term sieges." The second is a press release by Bir Zeit University, and gives the reader a sense of how the siege is devastating higher education in the occupied territories.
1. Long-term sieges
Amira Hass
Haaretz, June 12, 2002
The far-reaching significance of Israel's siege policy and the institutionalization of the pass system for travel through the West Bank is in direct contradiction to the minimal - if any - interest shown in Israel about the phenomenon.
The siege policy is perceived as a legitimate means to prevent attacks on Israelis inside Israel, and on soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since September 2000, the sieges on all the Palestinian cities and villages has been increasingly tightened and at the same time, motivation has risen among young Palestinians to kill themselves in suicide attacks on Israelis. The Palestinians understand that urge as a reaction to the concrete suffocation that the siege creates, as well as a metaphor for their utter lack of hope for a chance for free lives. On the Israeli side, the majority is convinced that there is no connection between the two and that if not for the sieges, the number of attacks would greatly increase.
So, there's no point in wasting words on Israelis on the immorality of effectively locking up 3 million people in enclaves, between barbed wire and frightening army checkpoints. What the Palestinians perceive as ruthless collective punishment, the Israelis perceive as a necessary evil: It may cause "discomfort" to the innocent, but it is the system that puts limits on the use of lethal means in the hands of the army.
For the same reason, explanations by the coordinator of government activity in the territories, that the pass system in the West Bank is meant to ease the situation for the Palestinians, sound logical. And the Israel Defense Forces has been doing what it can in the past few weeks to make it easier for the government coordinator to make his position clear. The closure of every city, town and village is more and more hermetic, and more and more violent. That's why when people are being sent to the CivilAdministration offices to ask for permission to do the most basic things in daily life - go to work, to school, to the doctor, to friends, to family - it appears humane.
Nonetheless, here's a scenario built into the siege policy. Most people considered the pass system as a "temporary measure." But, since it now covers all Palestinian movement inside the territories, it's impossible to distinguish between it and the settlements' existence. The internal sieges are meant to protect their security and safety and the safety of the soldiers protecting the settlements. As opposed to the illusions of those who support peace, Israel does not regard the settlements as "temporary" or as a "bargaining card." The statistics about the growth of the
settlements in the "peace decade" of Madrid and Oslo are proof of this.
Bureaucratic institutions have a tendency to perpetuate themselves and their methods. The IDF and the Civil Administration will do all they can in the coming years to convince whoever they must that it's still not time to give up the travel pass system, which means maximum supervision of all Palestinian movement. Their approach will influence the political negotiations in the coming years.
Just as the travel pass between Gaza and the West Bank became a permanent feature, the travel passes for movement inside the West Bank will become permanent. People will wait days and weeks for permission to go from one town to the next, and that permission won't be granted - whether because of a lack of manpower, or because of efforts to draft recruits as informants. Every commercial and industrial activity will require the good graces of an Israeli official who will apply his own personal translation to the rules handed down by the Shin Bet and the army, and those rules will change daily.
As the World Bank has warned, sieges and closures are in direct contradiction to every principle of development and advancement of the private sector. It will only take a few months for the division of the West Bank into disconnected enclaves to reduce most of the Palestinian population into welfare cases. The higher education system will totally collapse - of course, the security authorities in Israel always have regarded the students as a dangerous population that should not be allowed to travel. It will be impossible to rehabilitate industry because of the need for credit in other cities, the marketing costs (the back-to-back trucking system, which requires multiple transfers of goods from one truck to the next on the outskirts of each town, forbidding direct transport of merchandise from town to town), the difficult in finding labor and the lack of land reserves (most of the open land is outside the areas under siege).
Already the sieges are causing severe sanitation and health problems. There are signs of malnutrition, it is difficult to move refuse to areas outside the boundaries of the siege, and water is in short supply, particularly in those villages that depend on regular delivery of water containers. This is in addition to delays in medical supplies and vaccinations for infants. As unemployment mounts, such problems and many others will only get worse.
The long-term imprisonment in the enclaves is paralyzing the senses, the desire and the ability to initiate, blocking both individual and collective creativity. But it presumably is pushing more desperate young people to dream about their own destructive reaction to the Israeli policy, no matter how difficult it will be to accomplish.
This is only an imaginary scenario for those who aren't ready to look at what's going on a kilometer from their homes and those who aren't ready to think about "security" in terms that are far from long-term.
2. The Ramallah-Birzeit Road: The Path to Progress and Prosperity
Birzeit University Memorandum
June 5, 2002
The University has just issued a memorandum describing the effects of the closure of the Ramallah-Birzeit road on the education process for the University community as well as its effects on the well being—economic and health wise—on the residents of the town of Birzeit and the more than 35 towns and villages neighboring Birzeit. Copies of the memorandum have been sent to members of the diplomatic corps in the region as well as to international agencies involved in higher education and human rights issues with the hope that they use their good offices to see this siege lifted as a first concrete step toward the reduction of current tensions and in order to allow Birzeit University to resume its normal operations and continue to contribute to progress and prosperity which are necessary underpinnings to development, hope and a just and lasting peace.
Memorandum
June 5, 2002
Birzeit University lies on the outskirts of the town of Birzeit, a few miles north of Ramallah. The University has a student body of over 5,000 students and over 700 faculty and staff. The overwhelming majority of the University community members reside in Ramallah and Jerusalem and their only means of reaching the University is through the Ramallah- Birzeit-Road.
Since the spring of 2001, the Israeli occupation forces have been obstructing vehicular and pedestrian travel along this vital artery by various means. They have dug ditches in the road and erected barriers that have made vehicular travel physically impossible and pedestrian crossing difficult and dangerous. The Israeli army has created a military checkpoint that arbitrarily stops individuals for hours at a time to check their identity card numbers. Many students have been stopped, beaten, humiliated, made to sit on dirt mounds, had their hands shackled and then were released. No reason is ever given by the Israeli soldiers for stopping individuals or for this ill treatment. As such the ten minutes that it should take to travel between Ramallah and Birzeit, has stretched into hours, greatly disrupting the normal operation of the University and making the delivery of essential goods an arduous task.
The Israeli military have been continuously escalating their obstruction of travel along the road. Currently there are two barricades across the road. The distance between the first and the second is about two kilometers which has to be traversed by foot. Patients and invalids have to be carried on stretchers or wheel chairs as even ambulances are not allowed and cannot cross this blockade.
On May 29, 2002 and for the ninth time since March 2001, the Israeli military totally barred pedestrians from crossing the barricades, thus completely isolating the University and the residents of the thirty five surrounding villages in the northern part of Ramallah district from Ramallah city, which is the hub of the region. All University operations have once again ceased; the lives of the population of the northern Ramallah district has come to a standstill. Within a short period of time, with access to health services and work denied, this critical situation will turn into a humanitarian disaster.
These escalating actions by the Israeli military serve no purpose whatsoever and are totally unjustifiable. They are a flagrant example of arbitrary collective punishment of tens of thousands of innocent civilians. Closures are clear violations of all international norms and conventions and are completely unacceptable from any point of view, be it humanitarian, political or economic. Furthermore, Israeli claims that security requirements are the rationale for the closure of the Ramallah-Birzeit road are totally unfounded claims since this road connects directly between two Palestinian population centers.
Birzeit University has dedicated itself during the past three decades to the educational, cultural, social and economic advancement of the Palestinian people. The liberal atmosphere, respect for the individual, excellent academic standards and modern facilities have made the University a prominent force within Palestinian society. Thousands of its graduates occupy leading positions in the public, private and non-governmental sectors in a variety of fields, which has enabled the liberal atmosphere of Birzeit to spread throughout the society. Further, Birzeit conducts various community development projects, research and training through a range of community institutes and centers that promote democracy, human rights, health, gender, the rule of law and environmental issues that positively effect governmental policy and raise community awareness.
It is thus essential that the University be allowed to resume its normal operations immediately so that it can continue to contribute to progress and prosperity which are necessary underpinnings to development, hope and a just and lasting peace. Moreover, the restoration of free travel along the Ramallah-Birzeit Road, without ditches, barriers, military checkpoints, or other impediments, would constitute an important concrete first step towards the reduction of current tensions.
For further information about Birzeit University, you can contact us at webinfo@birzeit.edu or visit the University website at www.birzeit.edu
Birzeit University
__________________________
Dalia Habash
Senior Information Officer
Birzeit University
Birzeit, Palestine
www.birzeit.edu
16 June 2002
The Al-Majd Women's Society in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip operates literacy courses for Palestinian women from the camp. MCC has supported this project now for nearly three years and we, together with the women at al-Majd, have been excited by the fact that some of the participants in the course have gone on not only to read but also to sit for and pass the tawjihi, or end of high school, exam.
Questions of access and the new permit system (which is being implemented even as the Israeli military authorities refuse to put new procedures in writing) continue to be areas of urgent discussion among NGOs. The European Commission and the Palestinian NGO Network urge noncompliance with the system, a refusal to apply for permits for staff to travel within the West Bank, say from Nablus to Jenin. The Association of International Development Agencies will meet on Wednesday to discuss if we can have a unified stance on the question of noncompliance. Putting aside the question of compliance, one can undoubtedly state that the prolonged and intensified restrictions on travel and access are leading to increased operational costs for all foreign actors, be they governmental-level donor agencies like the EC or USAID, secular NGOs like Save the Children, or Christian NGOs like MCC, Catholic Relief Service and World Vision.
The plight of Palestinian NGOs, meanwhile, is much more severe, to say nothing of the clients / beneficiaries of these organizations. Below you will find two pieces. The first, by Haaretz journalist Amira Hass, tackles the effects of "long-term sieges." The second is a press release by Bir Zeit University, and gives the reader a sense of how the siege is devastating higher education in the occupied territories.
1. Long-term sieges
Amira Hass
Haaretz, June 12, 2002
The far-reaching significance of Israel's siege policy and the institutionalization of the pass system for travel through the West Bank is in direct contradiction to the minimal - if any - interest shown in Israel about the phenomenon.
The siege policy is perceived as a legitimate means to prevent attacks on Israelis inside Israel, and on soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since September 2000, the sieges on all the Palestinian cities and villages has been increasingly tightened and at the same time, motivation has risen among young Palestinians to kill themselves in suicide attacks on Israelis. The Palestinians understand that urge as a reaction to the concrete suffocation that the siege creates, as well as a metaphor for their utter lack of hope for a chance for free lives. On the Israeli side, the majority is convinced that there is no connection between the two and that if not for the sieges, the number of attacks would greatly increase.
So, there's no point in wasting words on Israelis on the immorality of effectively locking up 3 million people in enclaves, between barbed wire and frightening army checkpoints. What the Palestinians perceive as ruthless collective punishment, the Israelis perceive as a necessary evil: It may cause "discomfort" to the innocent, but it is the system that puts limits on the use of lethal means in the hands of the army.
For the same reason, explanations by the coordinator of government activity in the territories, that the pass system in the West Bank is meant to ease the situation for the Palestinians, sound logical. And the Israel Defense Forces has been doing what it can in the past few weeks to make it easier for the government coordinator to make his position clear. The closure of every city, town and village is more and more hermetic, and more and more violent. That's why when people are being sent to the CivilAdministration offices to ask for permission to do the most basic things in daily life - go to work, to school, to the doctor, to friends, to family - it appears humane.
Nonetheless, here's a scenario built into the siege policy. Most people considered the pass system as a "temporary measure." But, since it now covers all Palestinian movement inside the territories, it's impossible to distinguish between it and the settlements' existence. The internal sieges are meant to protect their security and safety and the safety of the soldiers protecting the settlements. As opposed to the illusions of those who support peace, Israel does not regard the settlements as "temporary" or as a "bargaining card." The statistics about the growth of the
settlements in the "peace decade" of Madrid and Oslo are proof of this.
Bureaucratic institutions have a tendency to perpetuate themselves and their methods. The IDF and the Civil Administration will do all they can in the coming years to convince whoever they must that it's still not time to give up the travel pass system, which means maximum supervision of all Palestinian movement. Their approach will influence the political negotiations in the coming years.
Just as the travel pass between Gaza and the West Bank became a permanent feature, the travel passes for movement inside the West Bank will become permanent. People will wait days and weeks for permission to go from one town to the next, and that permission won't be granted - whether because of a lack of manpower, or because of efforts to draft recruits as informants. Every commercial and industrial activity will require the good graces of an Israeli official who will apply his own personal translation to the rules handed down by the Shin Bet and the army, and those rules will change daily.
As the World Bank has warned, sieges and closures are in direct contradiction to every principle of development and advancement of the private sector. It will only take a few months for the division of the West Bank into disconnected enclaves to reduce most of the Palestinian population into welfare cases. The higher education system will totally collapse - of course, the security authorities in Israel always have regarded the students as a dangerous population that should not be allowed to travel. It will be impossible to rehabilitate industry because of the need for credit in other cities, the marketing costs (the back-to-back trucking system, which requires multiple transfers of goods from one truck to the next on the outskirts of each town, forbidding direct transport of merchandise from town to town), the difficult in finding labor and the lack of land reserves (most of the open land is outside the areas under siege).
Already the sieges are causing severe sanitation and health problems. There are signs of malnutrition, it is difficult to move refuse to areas outside the boundaries of the siege, and water is in short supply, particularly in those villages that depend on regular delivery of water containers. This is in addition to delays in medical supplies and vaccinations for infants. As unemployment mounts, such problems and many others will only get worse.
The long-term imprisonment in the enclaves is paralyzing the senses, the desire and the ability to initiate, blocking both individual and collective creativity. But it presumably is pushing more desperate young people to dream about their own destructive reaction to the Israeli policy, no matter how difficult it will be to accomplish.
This is only an imaginary scenario for those who aren't ready to look at what's going on a kilometer from their homes and those who aren't ready to think about "security" in terms that are far from long-term.
2. The Ramallah-Birzeit Road: The Path to Progress and Prosperity
Birzeit University Memorandum
June 5, 2002
The University has just issued a memorandum describing the effects of the closure of the Ramallah-Birzeit road on the education process for the University community as well as its effects on the well being—economic and health wise—on the residents of the town of Birzeit and the more than 35 towns and villages neighboring Birzeit. Copies of the memorandum have been sent to members of the diplomatic corps in the region as well as to international agencies involved in higher education and human rights issues with the hope that they use their good offices to see this siege lifted as a first concrete step toward the reduction of current tensions and in order to allow Birzeit University to resume its normal operations and continue to contribute to progress and prosperity which are necessary underpinnings to development, hope and a just and lasting peace.
Memorandum
June 5, 2002
Birzeit University lies on the outskirts of the town of Birzeit, a few miles north of Ramallah. The University has a student body of over 5,000 students and over 700 faculty and staff. The overwhelming majority of the University community members reside in Ramallah and Jerusalem and their only means of reaching the University is through the Ramallah- Birzeit-Road.
Since the spring of 2001, the Israeli occupation forces have been obstructing vehicular and pedestrian travel along this vital artery by various means. They have dug ditches in the road and erected barriers that have made vehicular travel physically impossible and pedestrian crossing difficult and dangerous. The Israeli army has created a military checkpoint that arbitrarily stops individuals for hours at a time to check their identity card numbers. Many students have been stopped, beaten, humiliated, made to sit on dirt mounds, had their hands shackled and then were released. No reason is ever given by the Israeli soldiers for stopping individuals or for this ill treatment. As such the ten minutes that it should take to travel between Ramallah and Birzeit, has stretched into hours, greatly disrupting the normal operation of the University and making the delivery of essential goods an arduous task.
The Israeli military have been continuously escalating their obstruction of travel along the road. Currently there are two barricades across the road. The distance between the first and the second is about two kilometers which has to be traversed by foot. Patients and invalids have to be carried on stretchers or wheel chairs as even ambulances are not allowed and cannot cross this blockade.
On May 29, 2002 and for the ninth time since March 2001, the Israeli military totally barred pedestrians from crossing the barricades, thus completely isolating the University and the residents of the thirty five surrounding villages in the northern part of Ramallah district from Ramallah city, which is the hub of the region. All University operations have once again ceased; the lives of the population of the northern Ramallah district has come to a standstill. Within a short period of time, with access to health services and work denied, this critical situation will turn into a humanitarian disaster.
These escalating actions by the Israeli military serve no purpose whatsoever and are totally unjustifiable. They are a flagrant example of arbitrary collective punishment of tens of thousands of innocent civilians. Closures are clear violations of all international norms and conventions and are completely unacceptable from any point of view, be it humanitarian, political or economic. Furthermore, Israeli claims that security requirements are the rationale for the closure of the Ramallah-Birzeit road are totally unfounded claims since this road connects directly between two Palestinian population centers.
Birzeit University has dedicated itself during the past three decades to the educational, cultural, social and economic advancement of the Palestinian people. The liberal atmosphere, respect for the individual, excellent academic standards and modern facilities have made the University a prominent force within Palestinian society. Thousands of its graduates occupy leading positions in the public, private and non-governmental sectors in a variety of fields, which has enabled the liberal atmosphere of Birzeit to spread throughout the society. Further, Birzeit conducts various community development projects, research and training through a range of community institutes and centers that promote democracy, human rights, health, gender, the rule of law and environmental issues that positively effect governmental policy and raise community awareness.
It is thus essential that the University be allowed to resume its normal operations immediately so that it can continue to contribute to progress and prosperity which are necessary underpinnings to development, hope and a just and lasting peace. Moreover, the restoration of free travel along the Ramallah-Birzeit Road, without ditches, barriers, military checkpoints, or other impediments, would constitute an important concrete first step towards the reduction of current tensions.
For further information about Birzeit University, you can contact us at webinfo@birzeit.edu or visit the University website at www.birzeit.edu
Birzeit University
__________________________
Dalia Habash
Senior Information Officer
Birzeit University
Birzeit, Palestine
www.birzeit.edu
Tuesday, June 4
MCC Palestine Update #49
MCC Palestine Update #49
4 June 2002
“These will probably be bulldozed under this week," sighs Muhammad Kalloush sadly as he bends over cucumber plants in his field in Ras al-Wad east of Bethlehem. The day before, Israeli military bulldozers had uprooted olive trees nearby as part of the initial land-clearing for a new bypass road which will connect the illegal Israeli settlements of Tekoa and Nokidim with Jerusalem.
The bulldozers have come onto Kalloush's land before. Kalloush is one of 65 farmers participating in a project operated by the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem and supported by MCC and the Canadian Food Grains Bank to test rainfed farming seed varieties. In March 2002, paving the way for the bypass road, bulldozers plowed under land Kalloush had planted with chickpeas as part of the project. While he quickly replanted the land with cucumbers, Kalloush has few illusions that the bulldozers won't be back.
The bypass road under construction is the pet project of the former Israeli Cabinet Minister Avigador Lieberman, a resident of Nokidim and an outspoken proponent of what is euphemistically called the "transfer" of Palestinians from the West Bank. The road will enable settlers to travel to Jerusalem without passing through Palestinian villages.
MCC, with funds from the Canadian Food Grains Bank, supports the Applied Research Institute in its work with Palestinian farmers to find seed varieties which perform well in a climate where rainfall is often limited. Participating farmers are testing various of wheat, lentils and chickpeas. Unfortunately, 30% of the test plots this spring were negatively effected by the Israeli occupation, with some test plots plowed under to make way for the settlement road and with others overgrown with weeds while farmers were confined to their homes during weeks of 24-hour-a-day curfew.
"It's more than your land being bulldozed and your plants uprooted," laments Nader Hreimat, project coordinator for the Applied Research Institute. "It's your culture and history that are uprooted." Farmers whose families have worked land for generations now are watching it be confiscated. "America is silent, but God can't be silent in the face of injustice," says Ibrahim Salahat, a farmer in Za'atareh village, a village whose lands will be confiscated for the new bypass road. "The truth is the truth and can't be kept quiet."
Below you will find four pieces, all of them addressing what is euphemistically called "transfer" within Israeli political discourse, namely, the driving out of Palestinians from the occupied territories. While most people doubt that such a horrific scenario will materialize, the increased rhetoric on the Israeli right talking about transfer is leading Israeli peace activists to warn about the dangers of such discourse. The first piece, by Profs. Oren Yiftchael and Neve Gordon, warns that recent moves to legitimize the expulsion of Palestinian cave-dwellers from the foothills south of Hebron will set a dangerous precedent. In a second piece published in The Telegraph, Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld outlines a frightening scenario in which transfer becomes reality. In the third item, Jeff Halper discusses the incarceration of Palestinians into increasingly smaller bits of land in the occupied territories. Finally, Uri Avneri outlines what he imagines the military operations orders might be which are guiding the Sharon government's policies.
1. The Lurking Shadow of Expulsion
Oren Yiftachel and Neve Gordon
May 15, 2002
(This article was originally written in Hebrew in order to be published in Haaretz but was rejected).
The State of Israel has reached an important crossroad. For some months now the nationalist camp, aided by the media, has been trickling into the public discourse the idea of expulsion -- branded in Israel as "transfer" -- despite the fact that it is antithetical to both international norms and human rights covenants. There are, of course, various formulations for how the transfer of the Palestinian population should be carried out, ranging from the aggressive version proposed by ex-minister Avigdor Lieberman, through the 'soft' version of "voluntary transfer" according to the right wing party "Moledet," and all the way to the idea of abrogating the political rights of the Palestinians and transferring them from their land and homes "only at a time of need," as suggested by Minister and inner Cabinet Member Efi Eitam.
Accordingly, the idea of expelling Palestinians from their land is already deeply entrenched in the political discourse, and has acquired legitimacy within broad sectors of the Israeli public. Labor Party Minister Ephraim Sneh's new plan, which proposes territorial exchange of Arab localities in Israel with West Bank Jewish settlements, suggests that even segments within the Israeli peace camp are prepared to adopt political programs inspired by the "transfer" idea.
Recently, the transfer proponents have been handed the chance to begin implementing an expulsion at the expense of a particularly weak Palestinian population, the cave inhabitants living in the South Hebron region of the occupied West Bank. The impact of such an expulsion, particularly as a political and legal precedent, cannot be overstated. A "small" transfer now is likely to sanction more extensive expulsions in the future, just as the first entry of the Israeli military into Area "A" during summer 2001 prepared the ground for the massive and deadly invasion dubbed "Defensive Shield."
Here are some of the facts. The cave dwellers live off of agriculture and tending flocks, and have preserved a unique cultural way of life since the early 19th century. After the 1948 war they lived under Jordanian rule, while losing all their land located on Israel's side of the border. Following the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israel set up military bases on parts of their property and closed off a whole section for training purposes. The inhabitants' living space was accordingly already small when the government began (in the early 1980s) to establish Jewish settlements in the region -- such as Carmel, Maon and Susiya -- a considerable number of which were founded in an attempt to create territorial contiguity beyond the Green Line. During the 1990s, particularly when Ehud Barak was prime minister, Jewish ranches were established alongside the settlements, causing additional friction with the Palestinian population.
In May 1999, Barak's government, in coordination with settler leaders, carried out the first organized expulsion, in which 750 local residents were driven out of their homes on the pretence invading state land. Despite a Supreme Court injunction permitting the Palestinian residents to return to their land, the cave dwellers continued to be exposed to pressure from the Israeli military and Jewish settlers; pressure that included the destruction of houses, tents and caves, ruining water holes, uprooting olive trees, and preventing the residents from reaching their land for purposes of cultivation and grazing. Simultaneously, the government continued to expropriate more land, setting up illegal Jewish outposts and issuing writs limiting the stay of Palestinian residents in the area. The principle was to establish facts on the ground.
It was Shakespeare who wrote somewhere that "there is method behind the madness." And indeed, all these actions were carried out by the military -- whether the Defense Minister was Arens, Barak or Ben-Eliezer -- with the aim of exhausting the residents and forcing them out. It seems that the Defense Ministers acted according to a premeditated plan whose practical purpose is to annex the whole area to Israel "clean" of Arabs in order to create a corridor from Be'er Sheva to the Jewish settlement Kiryat Arba. This claim is not a figment of our imagination, since it appears on the maps the Israeli delegation presented the Palestinians during the Camp David talks.
The threat of transfer has been hovering over the cave dwellers' heads even since the 1999 expulsion, and it is at the end of this June that the Supreme Court is scheduled to convene in order to discuss their status. Underlying the verbal 'laundering' of 'security considerations' or 'illegality' is a vital question: Will the Supreme Court permit the Sharon- Ben Eliezer -Eitam government to carry out a "population transfer." If the Court decides to expel the Palestinian residents it will create a dangerous precedent, essentially granting legal, political and moral legitimacy to transfer. A decision of this sort will shake the precarious barriers still holding back the expulsion option, and the inevitable horrific consequences of escalating the bloody conflict. It is with great apprehension that we wait to see whether the Supreme Court will turn a blind eye to the cave dwellers' plight or whether it will prevent the further deterioration of ethnic relations in this troubled land.
For more information on the case, consult: http://www.southebron.com
For more information on: Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD): http://www.icahd.org
Ta'ayush -- Arab-Jewish Partnership
Oren Yiftachel is the head of the Geography Department and Neve Gordon is a lecturer in the Politics and Government Department, both at Ben Gurion University, Israel.
2. Arial Sharon's plan is to drive Palestinians across the Jordan
Martin van Creveld
The Telegraph, 28 April 2002
The leading Israeli historian Martin van Creveld predicts that a US attack on Iraq or a terrorist strike at home could trigger a massive mobilisation to clear the occupied territories of their two million Arabs
Two years ago, less than eight per cent of those who took part in a Gallup poll among Jewish Israelis said they were in favour of what is euphemistically called "transfer" - that is, the expulsion of perhaps two million Palestinians across the River Jordan. This month that figure reached 44 per cent. Earlier this year, when a journalist asked Ariel Sharon whether he favoured such a move, the Israeli prime minister said he did not think in such terms. A glance at his memoirs, however, shows that he has not always been so fastidious. In September 1970 King Hussein of Jordan fell on the Palestinians in his kingdom, killing perhaps 5,000 to 10,000. The then Gen Sharon, serving as Commanding Officer, Southern Front, argued that Israel's policy of helping the king was a mistake; instead it should have tried to topple the Hashemite regime. He has often said since that Jordan, which, according to him, has a Palestinian majority even now, is the Palestinian state. The inference - that the Palestinians should go there - is clear. During its 1948 War of Independence, Israel drove 650,000 Palestinians from their homes into neighbouring countries. If it were to try something similar today, the outcome could well be a regional war. More and more people in Jerusalem believe that such is Mr Sharon's objective. It might explain why Mr Sharon, famous for his ability to plan ahead, appears not to have a plan. In fact, he has always harboured a very clear plan, nothing less than to rid Israel of the Palestinians. Few people, least of all me, want the following events to happen. But such a scenario could easily come about.
Mr Sharon would have to wait for a suitable opportunity such as an American offensive against Iraq, which some Israelis think is going to take place in early summer. Mr Sharon himself told Colin Powell, the secretary of state, that America should not allow the situation in Israel to delay the operation. An uprising in Jordan, followed by the collapse of King Abdullah's regime, would also prese> such an opportunity as would a spectacular act of terrorism inside Israel that killed hundreds. Should such circumstances arise, then Israel would mobilise with lightning speed - even now, much of its male population is on standby.
First, the country's three ultra-modern submarines would take up firing positions out at sea. Borders would be closed, a news blackout imposed, and all foreign journalists rounded up and confined to a hotel as guests of the Government. A force of 12 divisions, 11 of them armoured, plus various territorial units suitable for occupation duties, would be deployed: five against Egypt, three against Syria, and one opposite Lebanon. This would leave three to face east as well as enough forces to put a tank inside every Arab-Israeli village just in case their populations get any funny ideas. The expulsion of the Palestinians would require only a few brigades.
They would not drag people out of their houses but use heavy artillery to drive them out; the damage caused to Jenin would look like a pinprick in > comparison. Any outside intervention would be held off by the Israeli > air force. In 1982, the last time it engaged in large-scale operations, it destroyed 19 Syrian anti-aircraft batteries and shot down 100 Syrian aircraft against the loss of one. Its advantage is much greater now than it was then and would present an awesome threat to any Syrian armoured attack on the Golan Heights. As for the Egyptians, they are separated from Israel by 150 miles or so of open desert. Judging by what happened in 1967, should they try to cross it they would be destroyed. The Jordanian and Lebanese armed forces are too small to count and Iraq is in no position to intervene, given that it has not recovered its pre-1991 strength and is being held down by the Americans.
Saddam Hussein may launch some of the 30 to 40 missiles he probably has. The damage they can do, however, is limited. Should Saddam be mad enough to resort to weapons of mass destruction, then Israel's response would be so "awesome and terrible" (as Yitzhak Shamir, the former prime minister, once said) as to defy the imagination. Some believe that the international community will not permit such an ethnic cleansing. I would not count on it. If Mr Sharon decides to go ahead, the only country that can stop him is the United States.
The US, however, regards itself as being at war with parts of the Muslim world that have supported Osama bin Laden. America will not necessarily object to that world being taught a lesson - particularly if it could be as swift and brutal as the 1967 campaign; and also particularly if it does not disrupt the flow of oil for too long. Israeli military experts estimate that such a war could be over in just eight days. If the Arab states do not intervene, it will end with the Palestinians expelled and Jordan in ruins. If they do intervene, the result will be the same, with the main Arab armies destroyed. Israel would, of course, take some casualties, especially in the north, where its population would come under fire from Hizbollah. However, their number would be limited and Israel would stand triumphant, as it did in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973.
Are you listening Mr Arafat?
Prof van Creveld is author of The Sword and the Olive; a Critical History of the Israel Defence Force (New York, 1998). He lives in Jerusalem
3. Incarceration of Transfer: The Post-Incursion Plan
Jeff Halper
May 26, 2002
Like Sharon's 1982 war in Lebanon, which was also minimized as simply an "operation" (Operation Peace for the Galilee), Operation Defensive Shield had political goals far beyond that indicated by its modest defensive" name. Under the guise of destroying the "infrastructure of terrorism," Sharon (and his willing partner Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the elected head of the Labor Party) believe they have accomplished two major goals that fundamentally alter the political situation. In Jenin they destroyed the Palestinians' ability to resist the ever-expanding Occupation. And in Ramallah they destroyed the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society, rendering the Palestinians unable to govern themselves. To be sure, terrorist "incidents" will still occur occasionally, but the Israeli army is today engaged in mopping up exercises. It enters Palestinian areas with absolute impunity, with nary a whiff of opposition from the international community.
The Israeli government believes it has defeated the Palestinians once and for all. What is left is mopping up operations what we are witnessing these days in towns and cities throughout the West Bank and construction of a type of rule that leaves Israel firmly in control of Jerusalem and the West Bank (and its settlement network intact), yet relieves it of direct rule over the Territories' three million Palestinians. It is no coincidence that Israeli and American insistence on "reforms" within the Palestinian Authority begin with the security services and that Washington has "discovered" in Muhammad Dahlan a "leader" it can deal with. So, too, can the vilification campaign being waged against Arafat be interpreted as trying to get beyond him to a leader who will sign off on a mini-state that ensures Israel's continued control.
In order to make this all palatable to the international community, however, Israel and the US must also offer a sop to the notion of Palestinian self-determination. The outlines of Sharon's grand scheme are already taking shape on the ground. Israel's emerging post-incursion strategy has three main components:
(1) "Separation."
On the surface the notion of "separation" seems to be an innocent security measure. It involves the construction of a massive "buffer zone" extending along the "Green Line" some 10-20 kilometers into Palestinian territory, where Israel is currently erecting a formidable maze of concrete walls and barricades, trenches, canals, electrified and barbed-wire fences, bunkers, guard towers, surveillance cameras, security crossings and platforms. While it has its security side, the policy of separation is intended to delineate the areas of the West Bank that Israel wishes to claim. In eliminates forever the possibility that the thick corridor between the Ariel settlement bloc and Greater Jerusalem will be relinquished to the Palestinians, as Clinton's plan envisioned. It places the large settlements in the western part of the West Bank squarely (and irreversibly) within the de facto border created by the security installations including East Jerusalem, which is today being "isolated" from the wider West Bank.
"Separation" is, in the end, a mechanism for annexation of about 15% of the West Bank under the guise of "security," effectively removing it as a subject of negotiation. The militarized "buffer zone" is only one component of a wider system of incorporation that includes the construction of the Trans-Israel Highway and the "by-pass" highways that link it to the settlements.
(2) Cantonization.
One of the most dramatic outcomes of the Israeli incursions is the effective nullification of Areas A, B and C, fundamental components of the Oslo process. Instead a new, more rational form of control is emerging, one that institutionalizes the siege on the Palestinian cities and turns it into a permanent administrative arrangement. The extra-territorial status of Areas A and B, supposedly under the civil jurisdiction the Palestinian Authority, has been effectively ended. Areas A and B will be replaced by an even more constricting system of cantons (called euphemistically and misleadingly "security zones" in Israeli parlance).
The West Bank, it was announced this week, will be carved into eight zones organized around the major cities: Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Tul Karm, Ramallah, Jericho, Bethlehem and Hebron. Gaza will be divided into three such zones. Besides restrictions on movement of people, Palestinian cargoes will have to be transferred "back-to-back" to Israeli trucks at platforms strategically located between Palestinian cities, then re-transferred back to Palestinian vehicles for transport to their Palestinian destinations. Cargo travelling between Hebron and Jenin, for example, will have to be loaded and unloaded some five or six times. Not only does this policy violate international law guaranteeing freedom of movement in occupied territories, it also deals a devastating blow to Palestinian commerce, already virtually moribund.
Cantonization also requires restrictions on Palestinian movement reminiscent of South Africa's notorious "pass laws." Palestinian residents will need permits issued by the Civil Administration, Israel's military government, for travel between cities and cantons within the West Bank and Gaza. These permits will be valid for specified hours only (5 AM-7 PM), and will have to be renewed each month. Like the South African "passbooks," these internal permits imprison Palestinian residents within their tiny cantons.
The Civil Administration has also announced that West Bank residents of Areas A and B will be denied all entry to Israel (including East Jerusalem), thus tightening the already strangling "closure."
(3) Settlement and Israel-Only Highway Expansion.
Besides military and administrative measures, Israel has always relied on "creating facts on the ground" to make its presence in the Occupied Territories irreversible and neutralize any attempt to wrest control from it. Simultaneous to presenting its cantonization plan, the government publicly announced its intention to build 957 housing units in the West Bank settlements, most in the "Greater Jerusalem" area. Both its timing and the casual, almost contemptuous way it was announced at a time when the international community is working to freeze settlement construction under the US Tenet Plan indicates the degree to which Israel feels its activities are beyond international control. And the construction of the 480 kilometer system of "by-pass" highways that link the settlements into Israel while creating additional barriers to Palestinian movement continues unabated.
Since the Palestinians have been roundly and, in Sharon's view, permanently defeated, there is no longer any need to give even lip- service to the limited independence envisioned for the Palestinians in the Oslo "peace process." The ongoing incursions begun in late March have destroyed Oslo once and for all a key goal of Sharon and his predecessor/successor Netanyahu. We have returned to the notion of "autonomy" formulated by Sharon's mentor Menachem Begin, and for which the Civil Administration was established in 1981 and for which the war in Lebanon was fought in 1982. The Palestinians' choice, to put it starkly but precisely, is between incarceration and transfer.
Sharon's grand scheme (until such a time that transfer is made possible, i.e. when a Palestinian state emerges in Jordan) is today emerging "on the ground" as follows: The West Bank will be divided into three or four separate cantons according to settlement blocs and Israeli highways already in place. A northern canton would be created around the city of Nablus, a central one around Ramallah and a southern one in the area of Hebron, with a possible separation of Qalkilya and Tul Karm from the rest. Each would be disconnected from the other and connected independently to Israel. A road or two might connect the different cantons, but checkpoints and cargo docks would ensure completely Israeli control. Each canton would be granted local autonomy under the supervision of the Civil Authority.
Since the international community would demand a sop (no more) to Palestinian self-determination, Gaza will become the Palestinian state, probably when Arafat leaves the scene and a more compliant leader can be found to sign off on such an arrangement. If Israel was hard- pressed to concede more, it could upgrade the status of the Palestinians in the West Bank from "residents of autonomous cantons" to Palestinian "citizens without endangering its control.
Does Israel really believe this scenario is possible, that the Palestinians will submit to a truncated set of autonomous islands instead of a viable and truly sovereign state? The answer is "yes." Given the state of international response for the foreseeable future, Israel sees little effective opposition to this arrangement provided that it can maintain a kind of "industrial quiet" that will allow the US, Europe and the Arab states to get on with their particular agendas. Besides some discordant noises coming from NGOs and some churches (as well as the Muslim community abroad, whose influence has been largely neutralized since 9-11), the international community has proven extremely compliant. Incarceration, and eventually transfer, seems eminently plausible to Sharon and his colleagues. Despite protestations by Sharon, the May 12th vote by acclamation of the Likud Central Committee against the establishment of any Palestinian state flowed logically and smoothly from "Operation Defensive Shield."
(Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He can be reached at icahd@zahav.net.il. This brief has been published by the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestinian in Washington DC.)
4. Operations Order
Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom, 25 May 2002
If Ariel Sharon were to formulate his intentions as an military operations order, like he used to do in the army, instead of hiding them behind a host of smoke screens, it would look like this:
1. Aims:
To bring the Zionist Revolution to its conclusion, by turning all of Eretz-Israel, from the sea to the Jordan river, into a Jewish state, with a minimum of non-Jewish inhabitants (if any at all).
2. Information:
The 1948 War of Independence was broken off before achieving its aim. The State of Israel was established only on 78% of the land, which brought about the removal of only 64% of the Palestinians. In the 1967 Six-Day War we conquered the remaining 22% of the territories, but successive Israeli governments lacked the necessary willpower to conclude the Zionist revolution
by annexing the territories and removing the remaining Arab population.
Now a window of opportunity has opened for concluding the job. Only one super-power (the US) remains; all the other powers (the UN, Europe, Russia and others) have effectively been eliminated.
The US is now lending us unlimited and unqualified support. It is to be hoped that it will continue to do so even when we employ harsh methods in the pursuit of our national aims. Experience shows that even when somebody in the American administration resists the implementation of our aims, this resistance collapses when faced with our determined stand (Operation “Defensive Shield”). Our control over both houses of the Congress and our decisive influence on most of the American media guarantee us freedom of action.
3. Methods:
Our task will be achieved by the following methods, to be employed simultaneously:
a. Military operations, to break the armed Palestinian resistance.
b. Economic pressure, to cause mass Arab emigration from the country.
c. Settlement activity, to cut up the territories and prepare them for annexation to Israel.
d. Political action, to break the Palestinian political and social institutions.
4. Implementation:
(a) Military operations: These will be conducted incessantly, without long pauses. The whole army, including the reserves, will be employed for this task, even if this necessitates a weakening of our preparedness vis-a-vis the Arab states and limiting training.
The IDF will occupy the Palestinian territories as needed, for long and short periods, in order to catch, arrest or execute all Palestinian militants who could organize resistance to our policy. For this purpose there is no difference between terrorists and political leaders, between armed or civil resistance, between Hamas and Fatah. Maximal destruction of property will cause deterrence. This will be a repeated action, in order to eliminate every new set of leaders as it emerges.
Our actions will necessarily increase the motivation for terrorists to execute suicide- bombings in Israel. These will provide us – both in the domestic and the international arena – with reasons for our military action, which will be seen as a response.
The IDF will also assume a central role in exercising economic pressure (as follows).
It must be ensured that no officer who does not wholeheartedly support this task attains a senior position (Chief-of-Staff, officer in charge of regional commands, chief of departments, commander of divisions and brigades). For fulfilling a historic mission, hardness and cruelty are needed; there can be no place for bleeding hearts.
(b) Economic pressure: Mass expulsion, like in 1948, can be effected only in a special situation, such as a fully-fledged war or during an exceptional international event that draws away world attention.
Until this eventuality occurs, Palestinians must be induced to leave the country by economic pressure that makes their life intolerable. Such pressure will be achieved through closures and blockades that will prevent the movement of merchants and workers, teachers and pupils, doctors and patients. The whole economic life in the territories must be gradually brought to a standstill, so that the ability of the heads of families to feed their children is effectively destroyed.
IDF actions will enclose the Palestinians in small enclaves, where they will receive some kind of limited local autonomy, so as to relieve us of any formal responsibility for their situation.
In the prosecution of this policy, international public opinion and international aid agencies must be taken into account. From time to time, exceptions must be made to prevent extreme situations from arising.
(c) Settlement activity: This is a central tool for fulfilling the historic task. In spite of the fact that all Israeli governments since 1967 have understood this and acted accordingly, the tempo was slow. While more than 30% of Judea and Samaria are part of the town planning areas of the settlements, hardly more than 1% is actually settled. This is an intolerable scandal which must be speedily rectified. All ministries must take part in this urgent effort, devoting a considerable part of their resources to it.
Existing settlements must be enlarged and new ones set up by all possible means (takeovers after terrorist attacks, new neighborhoods far from the existing settlements, etc.) The network of bypass roads must be expanded rapidly in order to cut off Palestinians towns and villages, to annex more land to the settlements and strengthen our control on the ground. All this must be done according to the existing strategic plan, which prevents Palestinian territorial continuity and tightens the economic blockade.
For the settlement effort, the economic resources of all ministries must be centralized and all other tasks must take second place. More people, including new immigrants, must be encouraged to join the settlements. If necessary, young couples should be offered villas at zero cost. The flight of the factories from the settlement industrial parks, following threats by the European Community, must be stopped.
The IDF will devote the necessary resources to the protection of the settlements and the roads leading to them, even if this means calling up the reserves and ordering a whole battalion to protect one single isolated settlement.
(d) Political pressure: Breaking the Palestinian leadership is a central component of the whole campaign. In order to destroy the ability of the Palestinians to resist, the central leadership, and especially Yasser Arafat, who is a unifying symbol and a strong leader, must be eliminated.
Therefore, the whole propaganda effort must be concentrated on Arafat personally. Every Palestinian factor that is ready to fight against Arafat (including Hamas) must be exploited, as well
as anti-Arafat utterances by Israeli left-wing extremists. Arafat will be physically eliminated once the international situation permits.
At the same time, in-fighting between second-row Palestinian leaders must be encouraged, in order to create a leadership vacuum, such as existed in 1948.
All these pressures – military, economic, settlement and political – must be increased, until the situation of the Palestinians becomes so intolerable that they prefer to move to Jordan. If a historical opportunity for mass expulsion should present itself, we shall exploit it rapidly. The
apparatus for this must already be prepared now. The Israeli Arabs are a special problem, as they
have been given (by mistake) Israeli citizenship. The problem demands a creative solution, in
accordance with our main aims.
4 June 2002
“These will probably be bulldozed under this week," sighs Muhammad Kalloush sadly as he bends over cucumber plants in his field in Ras al-Wad east of Bethlehem. The day before, Israeli military bulldozers had uprooted olive trees nearby as part of the initial land-clearing for a new bypass road which will connect the illegal Israeli settlements of Tekoa and Nokidim with Jerusalem.
The bulldozers have come onto Kalloush's land before. Kalloush is one of 65 farmers participating in a project operated by the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem and supported by MCC and the Canadian Food Grains Bank to test rainfed farming seed varieties. In March 2002, paving the way for the bypass road, bulldozers plowed under land Kalloush had planted with chickpeas as part of the project. While he quickly replanted the land with cucumbers, Kalloush has few illusions that the bulldozers won't be back.
The bypass road under construction is the pet project of the former Israeli Cabinet Minister Avigador Lieberman, a resident of Nokidim and an outspoken proponent of what is euphemistically called the "transfer" of Palestinians from the West Bank. The road will enable settlers to travel to Jerusalem without passing through Palestinian villages.
MCC, with funds from the Canadian Food Grains Bank, supports the Applied Research Institute in its work with Palestinian farmers to find seed varieties which perform well in a climate where rainfall is often limited. Participating farmers are testing various of wheat, lentils and chickpeas. Unfortunately, 30% of the test plots this spring were negatively effected by the Israeli occupation, with some test plots plowed under to make way for the settlement road and with others overgrown with weeds while farmers were confined to their homes during weeks of 24-hour-a-day curfew.
"It's more than your land being bulldozed and your plants uprooted," laments Nader Hreimat, project coordinator for the Applied Research Institute. "It's your culture and history that are uprooted." Farmers whose families have worked land for generations now are watching it be confiscated. "America is silent, but God can't be silent in the face of injustice," says Ibrahim Salahat, a farmer in Za'atareh village, a village whose lands will be confiscated for the new bypass road. "The truth is the truth and can't be kept quiet."
Below you will find four pieces, all of them addressing what is euphemistically called "transfer" within Israeli political discourse, namely, the driving out of Palestinians from the occupied territories. While most people doubt that such a horrific scenario will materialize, the increased rhetoric on the Israeli right talking about transfer is leading Israeli peace activists to warn about the dangers of such discourse. The first piece, by Profs. Oren Yiftchael and Neve Gordon, warns that recent moves to legitimize the expulsion of Palestinian cave-dwellers from the foothills south of Hebron will set a dangerous precedent. In a second piece published in The Telegraph, Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld outlines a frightening scenario in which transfer becomes reality. In the third item, Jeff Halper discusses the incarceration of Palestinians into increasingly smaller bits of land in the occupied territories. Finally, Uri Avneri outlines what he imagines the military operations orders might be which are guiding the Sharon government's policies.
1. The Lurking Shadow of Expulsion
Oren Yiftachel and Neve Gordon
May 15, 2002
(This article was originally written in Hebrew in order to be published in Haaretz but was rejected).
The State of Israel has reached an important crossroad. For some months now the nationalist camp, aided by the media, has been trickling into the public discourse the idea of expulsion -- branded in Israel as "transfer" -- despite the fact that it is antithetical to both international norms and human rights covenants. There are, of course, various formulations for how the transfer of the Palestinian population should be carried out, ranging from the aggressive version proposed by ex-minister Avigdor Lieberman, through the 'soft' version of "voluntary transfer" according to the right wing party "Moledet," and all the way to the idea of abrogating the political rights of the Palestinians and transferring them from their land and homes "only at a time of need," as suggested by Minister and inner Cabinet Member Efi Eitam.
Accordingly, the idea of expelling Palestinians from their land is already deeply entrenched in the political discourse, and has acquired legitimacy within broad sectors of the Israeli public. Labor Party Minister Ephraim Sneh's new plan, which proposes territorial exchange of Arab localities in Israel with West Bank Jewish settlements, suggests that even segments within the Israeli peace camp are prepared to adopt political programs inspired by the "transfer" idea.
Recently, the transfer proponents have been handed the chance to begin implementing an expulsion at the expense of a particularly weak Palestinian population, the cave inhabitants living in the South Hebron region of the occupied West Bank. The impact of such an expulsion, particularly as a political and legal precedent, cannot be overstated. A "small" transfer now is likely to sanction more extensive expulsions in the future, just as the first entry of the Israeli military into Area "A" during summer 2001 prepared the ground for the massive and deadly invasion dubbed "Defensive Shield."
Here are some of the facts. The cave dwellers live off of agriculture and tending flocks, and have preserved a unique cultural way of life since the early 19th century. After the 1948 war they lived under Jordanian rule, while losing all their land located on Israel's side of the border. Following the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israel set up military bases on parts of their property and closed off a whole section for training purposes. The inhabitants' living space was accordingly already small when the government began (in the early 1980s) to establish Jewish settlements in the region -- such as Carmel, Maon and Susiya -- a considerable number of which were founded in an attempt to create territorial contiguity beyond the Green Line. During the 1990s, particularly when Ehud Barak was prime minister, Jewish ranches were established alongside the settlements, causing additional friction with the Palestinian population.
In May 1999, Barak's government, in coordination with settler leaders, carried out the first organized expulsion, in which 750 local residents were driven out of their homes on the pretence invading state land. Despite a Supreme Court injunction permitting the Palestinian residents to return to their land, the cave dwellers continued to be exposed to pressure from the Israeli military and Jewish settlers; pressure that included the destruction of houses, tents and caves, ruining water holes, uprooting olive trees, and preventing the residents from reaching their land for purposes of cultivation and grazing. Simultaneously, the government continued to expropriate more land, setting up illegal Jewish outposts and issuing writs limiting the stay of Palestinian residents in the area. The principle was to establish facts on the ground.
It was Shakespeare who wrote somewhere that "there is method behind the madness." And indeed, all these actions were carried out by the military -- whether the Defense Minister was Arens, Barak or Ben-Eliezer -- with the aim of exhausting the residents and forcing them out. It seems that the Defense Ministers acted according to a premeditated plan whose practical purpose is to annex the whole area to Israel "clean" of Arabs in order to create a corridor from Be'er Sheva to the Jewish settlement Kiryat Arba. This claim is not a figment of our imagination, since it appears on the maps the Israeli delegation presented the Palestinians during the Camp David talks.
The threat of transfer has been hovering over the cave dwellers' heads even since the 1999 expulsion, and it is at the end of this June that the Supreme Court is scheduled to convene in order to discuss their status. Underlying the verbal 'laundering' of 'security considerations' or 'illegality' is a vital question: Will the Supreme Court permit the Sharon- Ben Eliezer -Eitam government to carry out a "population transfer." If the Court decides to expel the Palestinian residents it will create a dangerous precedent, essentially granting legal, political and moral legitimacy to transfer. A decision of this sort will shake the precarious barriers still holding back the expulsion option, and the inevitable horrific consequences of escalating the bloody conflict. It is with great apprehension that we wait to see whether the Supreme Court will turn a blind eye to the cave dwellers' plight or whether it will prevent the further deterioration of ethnic relations in this troubled land.
For more information on the case, consult: http://www.southebron.com
For more information on: Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD): http://www.icahd.org
Ta'ayush -- Arab-Jewish Partnership
Oren Yiftachel is the head of the Geography Department and Neve Gordon is a lecturer in the Politics and Government Department, both at Ben Gurion University, Israel.
2. Arial Sharon's plan is to drive Palestinians across the Jordan
Martin van Creveld
The Telegraph, 28 April 2002
The leading Israeli historian Martin van Creveld predicts that a US attack on Iraq or a terrorist strike at home could trigger a massive mobilisation to clear the occupied territories of their two million Arabs
Two years ago, less than eight per cent of those who took part in a Gallup poll among Jewish Israelis said they were in favour of what is euphemistically called "transfer" - that is, the expulsion of perhaps two million Palestinians across the River Jordan. This month that figure reached 44 per cent. Earlier this year, when a journalist asked Ariel Sharon whether he favoured such a move, the Israeli prime minister said he did not think in such terms. A glance at his memoirs, however, shows that he has not always been so fastidious. In September 1970 King Hussein of Jordan fell on the Palestinians in his kingdom, killing perhaps 5,000 to 10,000. The then Gen Sharon, serving as Commanding Officer, Southern Front, argued that Israel's policy of helping the king was a mistake; instead it should have tried to topple the Hashemite regime. He has often said since that Jordan, which, according to him, has a Palestinian majority even now, is the Palestinian state. The inference - that the Palestinians should go there - is clear. During its 1948 War of Independence, Israel drove 650,000 Palestinians from their homes into neighbouring countries. If it were to try something similar today, the outcome could well be a regional war. More and more people in Jerusalem believe that such is Mr Sharon's objective. It might explain why Mr Sharon, famous for his ability to plan ahead, appears not to have a plan. In fact, he has always harboured a very clear plan, nothing less than to rid Israel of the Palestinians. Few people, least of all me, want the following events to happen. But such a scenario could easily come about.
Mr Sharon would have to wait for a suitable opportunity such as an American offensive against Iraq, which some Israelis think is going to take place in early summer. Mr Sharon himself told Colin Powell, the secretary of state, that America should not allow the situation in Israel to delay the operation. An uprising in Jordan, followed by the collapse of King Abdullah's regime, would also prese> such an opportunity as would a spectacular act of terrorism inside Israel that killed hundreds. Should such circumstances arise, then Israel would mobilise with lightning speed - even now, much of its male population is on standby.
First, the country's three ultra-modern submarines would take up firing positions out at sea. Borders would be closed, a news blackout imposed, and all foreign journalists rounded up and confined to a hotel as guests of the Government. A force of 12 divisions, 11 of them armoured, plus various territorial units suitable for occupation duties, would be deployed: five against Egypt, three against Syria, and one opposite Lebanon. This would leave three to face east as well as enough forces to put a tank inside every Arab-Israeli village just in case their populations get any funny ideas. The expulsion of the Palestinians would require only a few brigades.
They would not drag people out of their houses but use heavy artillery to drive them out; the damage caused to Jenin would look like a pinprick in > comparison. Any outside intervention would be held off by the Israeli > air force. In 1982, the last time it engaged in large-scale operations, it destroyed 19 Syrian anti-aircraft batteries and shot down 100 Syrian aircraft against the loss of one. Its advantage is much greater now than it was then and would present an awesome threat to any Syrian armoured attack on the Golan Heights. As for the Egyptians, they are separated from Israel by 150 miles or so of open desert. Judging by what happened in 1967, should they try to cross it they would be destroyed. The Jordanian and Lebanese armed forces are too small to count and Iraq is in no position to intervene, given that it has not recovered its pre-1991 strength and is being held down by the Americans.
Saddam Hussein may launch some of the 30 to 40 missiles he probably has. The damage they can do, however, is limited. Should Saddam be mad enough to resort to weapons of mass destruction, then Israel's response would be so "awesome and terrible" (as Yitzhak Shamir, the former prime minister, once said) as to defy the imagination. Some believe that the international community will not permit such an ethnic cleansing. I would not count on it. If Mr Sharon decides to go ahead, the only country that can stop him is the United States.
The US, however, regards itself as being at war with parts of the Muslim world that have supported Osama bin Laden. America will not necessarily object to that world being taught a lesson - particularly if it could be as swift and brutal as the 1967 campaign; and also particularly if it does not disrupt the flow of oil for too long. Israeli military experts estimate that such a war could be over in just eight days. If the Arab states do not intervene, it will end with the Palestinians expelled and Jordan in ruins. If they do intervene, the result will be the same, with the main Arab armies destroyed. Israel would, of course, take some casualties, especially in the north, where its population would come under fire from Hizbollah. However, their number would be limited and Israel would stand triumphant, as it did in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973.
Are you listening Mr Arafat?
Prof van Creveld is author of The Sword and the Olive; a Critical History of the Israel Defence Force (New York, 1998). He lives in Jerusalem
3. Incarceration of Transfer: The Post-Incursion Plan
Jeff Halper
May 26, 2002
Like Sharon's 1982 war in Lebanon, which was also minimized as simply an "operation" (Operation Peace for the Galilee), Operation Defensive Shield had political goals far beyond that indicated by its modest defensive" name. Under the guise of destroying the "infrastructure of terrorism," Sharon (and his willing partner Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the elected head of the Labor Party) believe they have accomplished two major goals that fundamentally alter the political situation. In Jenin they destroyed the Palestinians' ability to resist the ever-expanding Occupation. And in Ramallah they destroyed the infrastructure of Palestinian civil society, rendering the Palestinians unable to govern themselves. To be sure, terrorist "incidents" will still occur occasionally, but the Israeli army is today engaged in mopping up exercises. It enters Palestinian areas with absolute impunity, with nary a whiff of opposition from the international community.
The Israeli government believes it has defeated the Palestinians once and for all. What is left is mopping up operations what we are witnessing these days in towns and cities throughout the West Bank and construction of a type of rule that leaves Israel firmly in control of Jerusalem and the West Bank (and its settlement network intact), yet relieves it of direct rule over the Territories' three million Palestinians. It is no coincidence that Israeli and American insistence on "reforms" within the Palestinian Authority begin with the security services and that Washington has "discovered" in Muhammad Dahlan a "leader" it can deal with. So, too, can the vilification campaign being waged against Arafat be interpreted as trying to get beyond him to a leader who will sign off on a mini-state that ensures Israel's continued control.
In order to make this all palatable to the international community, however, Israel and the US must also offer a sop to the notion of Palestinian self-determination. The outlines of Sharon's grand scheme are already taking shape on the ground. Israel's emerging post-incursion strategy has three main components:
(1) "Separation."
On the surface the notion of "separation" seems to be an innocent security measure. It involves the construction of a massive "buffer zone" extending along the "Green Line" some 10-20 kilometers into Palestinian territory, where Israel is currently erecting a formidable maze of concrete walls and barricades, trenches, canals, electrified and barbed-wire fences, bunkers, guard towers, surveillance cameras, security crossings and platforms. While it has its security side, the policy of separation is intended to delineate the areas of the West Bank that Israel wishes to claim. In eliminates forever the possibility that the thick corridor between the Ariel settlement bloc and Greater Jerusalem will be relinquished to the Palestinians, as Clinton's plan envisioned. It places the large settlements in the western part of the West Bank squarely (and irreversibly) within the de facto border created by the security installations including East Jerusalem, which is today being "isolated" from the wider West Bank.
"Separation" is, in the end, a mechanism for annexation of about 15% of the West Bank under the guise of "security," effectively removing it as a subject of negotiation. The militarized "buffer zone" is only one component of a wider system of incorporation that includes the construction of the Trans-Israel Highway and the "by-pass" highways that link it to the settlements.
(2) Cantonization.
One of the most dramatic outcomes of the Israeli incursions is the effective nullification of Areas A, B and C, fundamental components of the Oslo process. Instead a new, more rational form of control is emerging, one that institutionalizes the siege on the Palestinian cities and turns it into a permanent administrative arrangement. The extra-territorial status of Areas A and B, supposedly under the civil jurisdiction the Palestinian Authority, has been effectively ended. Areas A and B will be replaced by an even more constricting system of cantons (called euphemistically and misleadingly "security zones" in Israeli parlance).
The West Bank, it was announced this week, will be carved into eight zones organized around the major cities: Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Tul Karm, Ramallah, Jericho, Bethlehem and Hebron. Gaza will be divided into three such zones. Besides restrictions on movement of people, Palestinian cargoes will have to be transferred "back-to-back" to Israeli trucks at platforms strategically located between Palestinian cities, then re-transferred back to Palestinian vehicles for transport to their Palestinian destinations. Cargo travelling between Hebron and Jenin, for example, will have to be loaded and unloaded some five or six times. Not only does this policy violate international law guaranteeing freedom of movement in occupied territories, it also deals a devastating blow to Palestinian commerce, already virtually moribund.
Cantonization also requires restrictions on Palestinian movement reminiscent of South Africa's notorious "pass laws." Palestinian residents will need permits issued by the Civil Administration, Israel's military government, for travel between cities and cantons within the West Bank and Gaza. These permits will be valid for specified hours only (5 AM-7 PM), and will have to be renewed each month. Like the South African "passbooks," these internal permits imprison Palestinian residents within their tiny cantons.
The Civil Administration has also announced that West Bank residents of Areas A and B will be denied all entry to Israel (including East Jerusalem), thus tightening the already strangling "closure."
(3) Settlement and Israel-Only Highway Expansion.
Besides military and administrative measures, Israel has always relied on "creating facts on the ground" to make its presence in the Occupied Territories irreversible and neutralize any attempt to wrest control from it. Simultaneous to presenting its cantonization plan, the government publicly announced its intention to build 957 housing units in the West Bank settlements, most in the "Greater Jerusalem" area. Both its timing and the casual, almost contemptuous way it was announced at a time when the international community is working to freeze settlement construction under the US Tenet Plan indicates the degree to which Israel feels its activities are beyond international control. And the construction of the 480 kilometer system of "by-pass" highways that link the settlements into Israel while creating additional barriers to Palestinian movement continues unabated.
Since the Palestinians have been roundly and, in Sharon's view, permanently defeated, there is no longer any need to give even lip- service to the limited independence envisioned for the Palestinians in the Oslo "peace process." The ongoing incursions begun in late March have destroyed Oslo once and for all a key goal of Sharon and his predecessor/successor Netanyahu. We have returned to the notion of "autonomy" formulated by Sharon's mentor Menachem Begin, and for which the Civil Administration was established in 1981 and for which the war in Lebanon was fought in 1982. The Palestinians' choice, to put it starkly but precisely, is between incarceration and transfer.
Sharon's grand scheme (until such a time that transfer is made possible, i.e. when a Palestinian state emerges in Jordan) is today emerging "on the ground" as follows: The West Bank will be divided into three or four separate cantons according to settlement blocs and Israeli highways already in place. A northern canton would be created around the city of Nablus, a central one around Ramallah and a southern one in the area of Hebron, with a possible separation of Qalkilya and Tul Karm from the rest. Each would be disconnected from the other and connected independently to Israel. A road or two might connect the different cantons, but checkpoints and cargo docks would ensure completely Israeli control. Each canton would be granted local autonomy under the supervision of the Civil Authority.
Since the international community would demand a sop (no more) to Palestinian self-determination, Gaza will become the Palestinian state, probably when Arafat leaves the scene and a more compliant leader can be found to sign off on such an arrangement. If Israel was hard- pressed to concede more, it could upgrade the status of the Palestinians in the West Bank from "residents of autonomous cantons" to Palestinian "citizens without endangering its control.
Does Israel really believe this scenario is possible, that the Palestinians will submit to a truncated set of autonomous islands instead of a viable and truly sovereign state? The answer is "yes." Given the state of international response for the foreseeable future, Israel sees little effective opposition to this arrangement provided that it can maintain a kind of "industrial quiet" that will allow the US, Europe and the Arab states to get on with their particular agendas. Besides some discordant noises coming from NGOs and some churches (as well as the Muslim community abroad, whose influence has been largely neutralized since 9-11), the international community has proven extremely compliant. Incarceration, and eventually transfer, seems eminently plausible to Sharon and his colleagues. Despite protestations by Sharon, the May 12th vote by acclamation of the Likud Central Committee against the establishment of any Palestinian state flowed logically and smoothly from "Operation Defensive Shield."
(Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He can be reached at icahd@zahav.net.il. This brief has been published by the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestinian in Washington DC.)
4. Operations Order
Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom, 25 May 2002
If Ariel Sharon were to formulate his intentions as an military operations order, like he used to do in the army, instead of hiding them behind a host of smoke screens, it would look like this:
1. Aims:
To bring the Zionist Revolution to its conclusion, by turning all of Eretz-Israel, from the sea to the Jordan river, into a Jewish state, with a minimum of non-Jewish inhabitants (if any at all).
2. Information:
The 1948 War of Independence was broken off before achieving its aim. The State of Israel was established only on 78% of the land, which brought about the removal of only 64% of the Palestinians. In the 1967 Six-Day War we conquered the remaining 22% of the territories, but successive Israeli governments lacked the necessary willpower to conclude the Zionist revolution
by annexing the territories and removing the remaining Arab population.
Now a window of opportunity has opened for concluding the job. Only one super-power (the US) remains; all the other powers (the UN, Europe, Russia and others) have effectively been eliminated.
The US is now lending us unlimited and unqualified support. It is to be hoped that it will continue to do so even when we employ harsh methods in the pursuit of our national aims. Experience shows that even when somebody in the American administration resists the implementation of our aims, this resistance collapses when faced with our determined stand (Operation “Defensive Shield”). Our control over both houses of the Congress and our decisive influence on most of the American media guarantee us freedom of action.
3. Methods:
Our task will be achieved by the following methods, to be employed simultaneously:
a. Military operations, to break the armed Palestinian resistance.
b. Economic pressure, to cause mass Arab emigration from the country.
c. Settlement activity, to cut up the territories and prepare them for annexation to Israel.
d. Political action, to break the Palestinian political and social institutions.
4. Implementation:
(a) Military operations: These will be conducted incessantly, without long pauses. The whole army, including the reserves, will be employed for this task, even if this necessitates a weakening of our preparedness vis-a-vis the Arab states and limiting training.
The IDF will occupy the Palestinian territories as needed, for long and short periods, in order to catch, arrest or execute all Palestinian militants who could organize resistance to our policy. For this purpose there is no difference between terrorists and political leaders, between armed or civil resistance, between Hamas and Fatah. Maximal destruction of property will cause deterrence. This will be a repeated action, in order to eliminate every new set of leaders as it emerges.
Our actions will necessarily increase the motivation for terrorists to execute suicide- bombings in Israel. These will provide us – both in the domestic and the international arena – with reasons for our military action, which will be seen as a response.
The IDF will also assume a central role in exercising economic pressure (as follows).
It must be ensured that no officer who does not wholeheartedly support this task attains a senior position (Chief-of-Staff, officer in charge of regional commands, chief of departments, commander of divisions and brigades). For fulfilling a historic mission, hardness and cruelty are needed; there can be no place for bleeding hearts.
(b) Economic pressure: Mass expulsion, like in 1948, can be effected only in a special situation, such as a fully-fledged war or during an exceptional international event that draws away world attention.
Until this eventuality occurs, Palestinians must be induced to leave the country by economic pressure that makes their life intolerable. Such pressure will be achieved through closures and blockades that will prevent the movement of merchants and workers, teachers and pupils, doctors and patients. The whole economic life in the territories must be gradually brought to a standstill, so that the ability of the heads of families to feed their children is effectively destroyed.
IDF actions will enclose the Palestinians in small enclaves, where they will receive some kind of limited local autonomy, so as to relieve us of any formal responsibility for their situation.
In the prosecution of this policy, international public opinion and international aid agencies must be taken into account. From time to time, exceptions must be made to prevent extreme situations from arising.
(c) Settlement activity: This is a central tool for fulfilling the historic task. In spite of the fact that all Israeli governments since 1967 have understood this and acted accordingly, the tempo was slow. While more than 30% of Judea and Samaria are part of the town planning areas of the settlements, hardly more than 1% is actually settled. This is an intolerable scandal which must be speedily rectified. All ministries must take part in this urgent effort, devoting a considerable part of their resources to it.
Existing settlements must be enlarged and new ones set up by all possible means (takeovers after terrorist attacks, new neighborhoods far from the existing settlements, etc.) The network of bypass roads must be expanded rapidly in order to cut off Palestinians towns and villages, to annex more land to the settlements and strengthen our control on the ground. All this must be done according to the existing strategic plan, which prevents Palestinian territorial continuity and tightens the economic blockade.
For the settlement effort, the economic resources of all ministries must be centralized and all other tasks must take second place. More people, including new immigrants, must be encouraged to join the settlements. If necessary, young couples should be offered villas at zero cost. The flight of the factories from the settlement industrial parks, following threats by the European Community, must be stopped.
The IDF will devote the necessary resources to the protection of the settlements and the roads leading to them, even if this means calling up the reserves and ordering a whole battalion to protect one single isolated settlement.
(d) Political pressure: Breaking the Palestinian leadership is a central component of the whole campaign. In order to destroy the ability of the Palestinians to resist, the central leadership, and especially Yasser Arafat, who is a unifying symbol and a strong leader, must be eliminated.
Therefore, the whole propaganda effort must be concentrated on Arafat personally. Every Palestinian factor that is ready to fight against Arafat (including Hamas) must be exploited, as well
as anti-Arafat utterances by Israeli left-wing extremists. Arafat will be physically eliminated once the international situation permits.
At the same time, in-fighting between second-row Palestinian leaders must be encouraged, in order to create a leadership vacuum, such as existed in 1948.
All these pressures – military, economic, settlement and political – must be increased, until the situation of the Palestinians becomes so intolerable that they prefer to move to Jordan. If a historical opportunity for mass expulsion should present itself, we shall exploit it rapidly. The
apparatus for this must already be prepared now. The Israeli Arabs are a special problem, as they
have been given (by mistake) Israeli citizenship. The problem demands a creative solution, in
accordance with our main aims.
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