MCC Palestine Update #26
[Note: This was due to be sent out last Wednesday. We delayed sending it out until today. We will send another update out this Wednesday with pieces related to the attacks of September 11.]
With news this past week of plans to declare large stretches of land east of the "Green Line" closed military zones, the Israeli siege on the occupied territories has intensified. More homes in Rafah, probably the Palestinian town hardest hit during this past year, were demolished.
MCC is supporting a project initiatied by the Bethlehem Bible College and Defense for Children International-Palestine Section in which Palestinian schoolchildren will write messages of peace on postcards destined for the White House. Palestinian children will write on one half, children in US churches on the other. MCC in the US will promote this project in Mennonite churches during the Advent season. Participating churches can combine this postcard activity with other MCC materials, such as a packet of worship and advocacy materials or the MCC Middle East Children's Box. If your church would like to participate, contact us, and we'll forward your interest to the relevant people.
Below are three pieces. The first, by the lawyer John Whitbeck, examines how Israel's dream of a peace of "non-belligerency" which does not end the occupation will not work. Uri Avneri of Gush Shalom then looks at the influence of the military class on Israeli politics. Finally, a news piece from Ha'aretz newspaper looks at the growing number of conscientious objectors in Israeli society.
1. Crusader Kingdoms: No to Non-Belligerency – Yes to Peace
John V. Whitbeck
Al-Ahram Weekly, 17-23 May 2001
When, almost ten years ago, Yitzhak Shamir lost his bid for reelection as Israel's prime minister, he gave a remarkably frank interview to the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv. Mr. Shamir stated that, if reelected, he would have dragged out Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for ten years while settling a further half a million Jews in the occupied Palestinian territories. (Actually, he referred to "souls" rather than to "Jews," and to "Judea, Samaria, and Gaza" rather than to the occupied Palestinian territories, but everyone knew what he meant.) He thereby made clear that it was never his intention that the "peace process" launched at the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference should, in fact, lead to peace._
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It should now be sadly clear that Mr. Shamir's electoral defeat changed nothing. His spirit lived on in Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. While a full half a million Jews have not settled in the occupied Palestinian territories since the "peace process" began in Madrid, the number of settlers living there has approximately doubled during this period, and all of Mr. Shamir's successors have demonstrated, in deeds if not in words, that their only interest in the "peace process" was in the "process" (intended to keep the rest of the world off their back while they dug in deeper in the occupied Palestinian territories) rather than in "peace."_
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Until Ariel Sharon, that is. He at least has the merit of honesty in having formally dropped any pretense of seeking peace with Palestine. He has made clear, with support from his soulmate
and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and to apparent international indifference, that all he is interested in negotiating with the Palestinians is a "long-term non-belligerency agreement."_
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What precisely would a "non-belligerency agreement" between an occupying power and an occupied people signify? Non-belligerency may sound like a close cousin of peace, but its essence could not be more different. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, it would signify Palestinian acquiescence in the continuing illegal occupation of the Palestinian lands conquered
in 1967 and Palestinian renunciation of the internationally recognized right to resist occupation. Where will one find the Palestinian who would be interested in even discussing such a
thing?_
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Nevertheless, the near-universal reaction of the international community to the current intifida and the succession of war crimes deployed to repress it continues to be to call for an end to violence (with the emphasis on Palestinian violence) and a return to negotiations. Negotiations about what? What will it take for the international community to recognize that the problem is not the resistance to the occupation but the occupation itself and that the goal must be to end the
occupation, not to end the resistance?_
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The Palestinian people have made clear that they are prepared to pay a high price for their freedom, their dignity and their fundamental human rights. For most of them, the conditions of their lives are already so miserable and humiliating that the prospect of death with dignity is not an unattractive option. They have nothing left to lose. What will it take for the international community to start to live up to the principles of international law and basic humanity which it professes to support at least elsewhere?_
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One must always expect the worst from the United States and cannot be surprised that it would veto even sending unarmed observers to the occupied Palestinian territories. The United States would probably give unqualified support to Israel even if it pushed three million Palestinians, live, through a meat-grinder. However, one used to expect better from Europe. While obsessing daily over alleged war criminals in the former Yugoslavia, the European Union has greeted Ariel Sharon's assumption of power (and even the inclusion in his cabinet of Rehavam Zeevi, whose entire political career is founded on the advocacy of ethnically cleansing the entire indigenous population of historical Palestine) with apparent equanimity and has reacted to the ongoing and accelerating rape of Palestine with remarkable silence and passivity._
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It is particularly disappointing and depressing to see certain Arab governments adopting the Israeli-American analysis and priorities and publicly calling for an end to violence, rather
than for an end to the occupation and solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. _
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The primordial requirement for peace must now be to make Ariel Sharon and all he represents appear, in Israeli eyes, even a worse disaster than Ehud Barak, so that the Israeli body politic undergoes a powerful laxative purge which produces a successor willing to get serious about actually achieving peace, not simply keeping a never-ending, so-called "peace process" twitching with faint signs of life, and which could cause Israeli public opinion to finally grasp the fundamental reality and essential truth that complying with international law and relevant UN resolutions and ending the occupation is profoundly in Israel's own self-interest._
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Unfortunately, this will require that conditions on the ground get even worse in the short term in order for there to be any hope of their getting better in the long term. During the difficult months ahead, a far greater degree of Arab solidarity with the Palestinian people than has been demonstrated to date--not simply on the rhetorical level but on the practical and financial levels--will be required. The Arab world has the means to summon the world's attention and to force it to take effective action on behalf of a genuine peace if its leaders can only summon the political will to do so._
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Israelis love to recite, with a certain smugness, that "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." If Israel had any true friends in the world, they would now be screaming that Israel is in the process of missing a golden opportunity that may never come again. _
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Since the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, almost all Arab and Muslim states (including, most significantly, the State of Palestine) have been offering to accept the permanence of the Jewish State in the 78% of historical Palestine which the Zionist movement conquered in 1948 and which the international community has come to recognize as Israel's sovereign territory, even though this represents substantially more land than the UN proposed for the Jewish minority in its November 1947 partition resolution, in return for Israel's withdrawal to its internationally recognized borders in compliance with international law and relevant UN resolutions. This offer, if accepted, would have constituted an awesome achievement for the Zionist movement._
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However, the Israelis wanted--and still want--more. Their spurning of this generous offer and their abuse of the peace process and of the goodwill of their Arab neighbors are changing the assumption of permanence in Arab eyes. The 78% offer may no longer be on the table--at least in the hearts and minds of most of the people of the Arab and Muslim states. It will certainly be off the table if Ariel Sharon's successor is not serious about actually achieving peace._
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One thing should be clear to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the history of Palestine: Nothing is permanent except the presence of the Palestinian people. Historically, short-term interlopers have come and gone. The Crusader Kingdom in Palestine lasted for 88 years. So far, the Jewish State has lasted for 53 years. Unless a radical change in Israeli attitudes and direction occurs soon (and it is in everyone's interest that such a change should occur), a prudent person would hesitate to bet on the Jewish State's matching the 88-year lifespan of the Crusader Kingdom._
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John V. Whitbeck is an international lawyer who writes frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict._
2. Military Democracy
Uri Avneri
Gush Shalom.org, 8 September 2001
“The Israeli army does not have a state!” Ariel Sharon declared this week, after the Chief-of-Staff tried to create a fait accompli behind his back. I am not sure that Sharon knows where this phrase comes from. It was coined by the Count Honore de Mirabeau, one of the instigators of the French revolution, in his essay about Prussia. After stating that “war is the national industry of Prussia”, Mirabeau said that while in other countries the state has an army, in Prussia the army has a state. It has been said more than once that Israel is the “Prussia of the Middle East”. I have tried to analyze the origins of this similarity.
The Prussian state came into being after a holocaust, before which it was just another small German state, called Brandenburg at the time. In 1618, the Thirty Years War broke out, killing a third of the German people and devastating most of its towns and villages. It left behind a trauma that has not yet entirely disappeared.
In the Thirty Years War almost all the major European armies took part, and all of them fought each other on German soil. Germany is located in the middle of Europe and has no natural boundaries. No sea, no desert and no mountain chain defend it. After the calamity, the leaders of Prussia drew the obvious lesson: if we have no natural barriers to defend us, we must create an artificial barrier in the form of a regular, big and efficient army. That’s how the Prussian army came into being, a force that was designed to defend the fatherland, and in the course of time became the terror of its neighbors, until, in the end, it became the Nazi army ironically called the Wehrmacht – the “defense force”.
Israel is faced with a similar dilemma. Zionism was, in the beginning, a small and weak movement, rejected even by the majority of the Jews. When the first Zionists came to this country, they were surprised to find here a population that did not agree to turn its homeland over to another people. It resisted violently, and the Zionists defended themselves as well as they could.
Then came the Holocaust and annihilated a third of the Jewish people. It gave Zionism a tremendous impetus. The movement was seen as a valiant effort by the Holocaust survivors to redeem themselves. By the same measure, Arab resistance grew. The Zionists needed to create an “Iron Wall” (as Ze’ev Jabotinsky phrased it) against the resistance, a “defense force” strong enough to withstand the onslaught of the entire Arab world. Thus the IDF was born and, in the war of 1948 conquered some 78% of Mandate Palestine, and in the June 1967 war the remaining 22%, as well as great chunks of the neighboring countries. Since then, the “defense force” has become an army of occupation.
In the Second German Reich there was a popular saying, “der Soldate ist der beste Mann in Staate” (The soldier is the best man in the state.) In Israel, the slogan was “The best go to the Air Force”. In the young state, the army attracted the best and the brightest. The attitude towards the senior officers sometimes bordered on idolatry.
From the time the state was established until today, the generals have controlled the media, both by means of strong personal relations with the editors and by a complex network of army spokesmen masquerading as “our military correspondent”, “our Arab affairs correspondent” (generally former army intelligence officers) and “our political correspondent’.
Foreign observers have frequently asked whether a military coup could occur in Israel. That’s a silly question, because a coup is quite unnecessary. Since its early days, the army command has had a decisive influence on national policy, and its members have occupied key positions in the Israeli democracy, in a way unimaginable in any other democratic state.
A few facts may suffice: of the 15 chiefs-of-staff who preceded Mofaz, two became prime ministers (Rabin, Barak), four others became cabinet ministers (Yadin, Bar-Lev, Eytan, Lipkin-Shahak). Two prime ministers were past leaders of the pre-state armed underground organizations (Begin, Shamir), and one a former Director General of the Defense Ministry (Peres). Two generals became Presidents of Israel (Herzog, Weizman). In the present government there are five generals (Sharon, Ze’evi, Vilnai, Sneh, Ben-Eliezer.)
Former generals have always been allotted the key economic positions and have controlled almost all big corporations and state services. Many generals became mayors. The entire political-military-economic-administrative class in Israel is full of generals.
The dispersal of the generals among different political parties does not change anything. This is proved by the fact that many generals, upon leaving the army, were offered leading positions in oth major political parties – Labor and Likud – and chose one or the other according to the price offered. Some wandered from one party to another (Dayan, Weizman, Sharon, Mordecai). At the beginning of the present Knesset, four political parties were headed by generals (Likud by Sharon, Labor by Barak, Merkaz by Modecai, Moledet by Ze’evi). The religious camp has, until now, been bereft of generals, but with the appearance of the far-rightist, Effi Eytam, this will be corrected.
There would have been nothing bad in all this if it would have been only a personal and professional phenomena. But the problem is much more serious, because all the governing generals have a common mentality. All of them believe in the policy of force, annexations and settlements, even if some of them are less extreme than others. The exceptions can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and some would say on one finger (the late Matti Peled).
In this respect, there is no difference between active and retired officers. All of them together have always formed a kind of super-party, directing the political establishment. Not because they are organized and decide together, and not because of their strong social bonds, but because of their uniform way of thinking, which leads them almost automatically to the same conclusions in any given situation – irrespective of their belonging to Likud, Labor, National Union or Merkaz. Not necessarily on every detail, but in the general direction.
One of the results is the neutralization of women in the Israeli political system. Women have no place on the upper echelons of the army and its machoist ethos, which directs all spheres of
Israeli policy. (The only outstanding exceptions, Golda Mair, took pride in being “the only man in the government” and surrounded herself with generals.)
All this is being done quite democratically. In the “Only Democracy in the Middle East”, the army gets its orders from the government and obeys. In Israeli law, the government as such is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. But when the government itself is controlled by former generals, this is meaningless.
That’s how it was in the 50s, when the Chief-of-Staff Moshe Dayan imposed on the government a policy of “retaliatory actions” and had it implemented by Major Ariel Sharon. And that’s how it is today, when the same General Sharon imposes the same policy and has it implemented by general Ben-Eliezer, the Minister of Defense, who happens to belong to the rival party. (In democratic countries, it is extremely rare for a Minister of Defense to be a former general.) Sharon’s predecessor, the former Chief-of-Staff Barak, surrounded himself with a bunch of generals, rejecting all civilians.
Lately a new and dangerous development has taken place. Under the leadership of the Chief-of-Staff, Shaul Mofaz, a man with a far-rightist outlook, the army has started to rebel against the “political directives”. It mobilizes the media against the government and makes it responsible for its abject failure in the war against “terrorism”- reminding one of the Prussian generals after World War I who accused the politicians of “sticking a knife in the back of the army”. When Foreign Minister Peres, with the approval of Sharon, recently started to initiate a meeting with Arafat, a “senior military source” leaked to the media that the army strongly objects to all such meetings.
Things reached a climax this week, when the Chief-of-Staff decided to create across the Green Line (the pre-1967 border) “closed military areas”, with detention camps and military, Kangaroo courts for Palestinians trying to enter. This means de facto annexation, with far-reaching political, international and national implications.
Sharon, who heard about this while on a state visit in Russia, seethed with anger. A game of accusations and counter-accusations began, with the army leaking secret documents to the media. (“I came across a document…” a TV commentator announced.)
If this gives the impression that this is a major fight between the government and the army, it’s an illusion. Sharon himself belongs to the military clique more than anyone else. But he has an old grudge against the General Staff, which at the time prevented him from becoming Chief-of-Staff. On top of that, contrary to civilian politicians, he has no inferiority complex when
dealing with the generals.
This is a fight within the family. There are no real differences of opinions between Sharon and Mofaz. Both believe in the same policy of enlarging the settlements and preventing any compromise with the Palestinian people. Both believe in the maxim “If force doesn’t work, use more force”. Both are moving towards escalation and more escalation.
In the Weimar republic after World Wart I, there was a saying: the Kaiser went, the generals remained”. In Israel, the government changes hands from time to time, but the generals always remain.
3. They also serve who refuse to serve
Joseph Algazy
Haaretz, 6 September 2001
The number of conscientious objectors is growing, but the IDF prefers to ignore the phenomenon.
There are currently six soldiers in the regular army and the reserves who are serving time in three military prisons for refusing to serve in the army or in the territories. Among them are two reserve officers with the rank of captain: Sefi Sendik, who is refusing to serve in the army for
political reasons, and Dan Tamir, who refuses to serve in the occupied territories for reasons of conscience.
In July, six soldiers were jailed, and in August another five. This week, two more regular army soldiers were sentenced to prison terms: a woman soldier and youth leader, Avia Atai, and a male soldier-teacher, Rotem Mor. The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office said that the army has no statistics on the dimensions of the phenomenon of refusal to serve, and it does not intend to comment on the issue.
Most of those who refuse to serve explain that their motives are political -the reason is either pacifism or opposition to government policy toward the Palestinians. Two of the organizations dealing with soldiers who refuse to serve, Yesh Gvul and New Profile, a movement to turn Israel into a civil society, report that the phenomenon of declaring a refusal to serve has grown - including refusals that the IDF accepts. Some of those who refuse are not put on trial by the IDF, and do not go to prison.
Two days ago, Rotem Mor was sent to Prison No. 4, after the IDF had sentenced him to 28 days of prison and 28 days of probation. Mor, who is 20 years old, finished high school in the summer of 1999 and took the matriculation exams. In February 2000, he was drafted. He served for a while in the liaison unit with foreign forces in Eilat, and then took a course for soldier-teachers, which in the past was open only to women. Mor admitted that he was not always a disciplined soldier, but he liked working with teenagers, and was willing to invest his time and talent for their benefit. A few weeks ago, however, he decided that he didn't want to serve in the army any longer. By then he had already served for about a year and a half.
When he made his decision to be a conscientious objector, he removed his uniform and showed up at his military unit in civilian clothing. Even when he came to the IDF Conscientious Objectors Committee, he wore civilian clothes, and in reaction, the committee refused to hear his arguments. Mor told his friends that for him, military service had become "slavery," and that he didn't feel that the IDF was protecting him.
Early hatred
In a political statement that he published shortly before his arrest, Mor wrote: "For a long time, I have had doubts about the honesty of military service. These questions began to arise long before I was drafted. They stemmed from information I had acquired about the Israeli-Arab conflict,
and from discovering the false information about it, to which I was exposed for years. As I learned more, I was increasingly skeptical about the official Israeli version of what happened. This official version is the basis on which most of Israeli youth justifies its military service. I started to understand to what extent fear and hatred had been instilled in me from a very early age. I discovered that I do not believe in the existence of an "enemy," but rather in the existence of people of different cultures, who are frightened and angry, just like me."
In order to conduct his fight, Mor opened a Web site in which he explained his commitment to his own truth. Mor points out that he formulated his pacifist view on his own, with the aid of books.
Love of the land
Avia Atai, 19, a high school graduate and a former youth leader in the Scouts, declared even before she was drafted into the IDF that she would not bear arms or serve in the occupied territories. Before she was drafted, she took a pre-army course given by the Jewish National Fund, which trained her to be a youth leader in the IDF on topics related to JNF projects. When she finished basic training, she served as a soldier-youth leader in the Kennedy Forest near Jerusalem. In this position, she did not bear arms or engage in guard duty, "but in love of the land," her father, Yehuda Atai, explained this week.
Last week, Atai was asked by her superiors to take on another assignment: teaching children and teens in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood how to defend themselves from bullets, mortar shells and bombs. Atai refused, explaining that she lacked the proper training. If they don't want to endanger the lives of children in streets that are under fire, the safest way is to take them out of there, she suggested. The decision to leave children in the line of fire, she added, is political, and therefore, the job of protecting and defending them should be given to those who were trained to do so.
Avia Atai's father says he read the instruction manual given to the women soldiers sent to Gilo, and it seemed to him "full of absurdities ... it doesn't give a true and proper answer to the dangers threatening the children of Gilo." Because of her refusal to join the woman soldiers sent to Gilo, Atai was sentenced on Monday to 28 days in jail; the same day, she was transferred to Prison 400.
Yehuda Atai is an officer in the paratroops who served in the unit led by Yoni Netanyahu, hero of the 1976 Entebbe rescue operation and late brother of Benjamin Netanyahu. Atai said this week that he totally supports his daughter, who was educated, like all his five children, to love the country. "The ruling system in Israel has collapsed," he said, "and the country is suffering from loss of direction and an identity crisis."
Yishai Menuhin, a major in the reserves, and one of the heads of Yesh Gvul, believes the phenomenon of refusal is growing; the number of regular and reserve soldiers who turn to his organization is on the increase, he says. "We know of many cases where the IDF avoids confrontation with soldiers who refused to serve, and sweeps their problem under the rug. As the problem grows, the IDF is disturbed by it, is not succeeding in dealing with it, and therefore is refusing to pay attention to it."
Public call
This week, Yesh Gvul made a public call to soldiers to refuse "to participate in war crimes," declaring that "shooting unarmed civilians, including children, shelling and bombing of residential neighborhoods, assassinations, destruction of homes, withholding of food and medical care, and destruction of sources of income" are actions "that are defined in international and in Israeli law as war crimes."
Heading the declaration of Yesh Gvul, there is a stanza from a song published by Israeli poet Natan Alterman in 1948, after a massacre:
"Because those who bear arms, including me/ some actively, and some by agreement,
are pushed, with the muttering of `it's essential' and `revenge',/ to the area of war crimes."
This Saturday,(Sept 22) Yesh Gvul will hold a vigil to identify with the imprisoned objectors, next to Prison 7 in Atlit.
Yesh Gvul recently received a message from the Canadian organization Palestinian and Jewish Unity, that they have adopted the imprisoned reserve captain, Dan Tamir "as a man who believes in democracy and Jewish values, and who refuses to take part in military operations whose goal is to perpetuate the Israeli occupation in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip." A letter from the Canadian organization to Tamir says that if there is peace in the Middle East, "it will also be due to the courage of people like you. Know that you have many friends." The organization plans a protest vigil tomorrow opposite the Israeli consulate in Montreal, as a sign of identification with Tamir and the other imprisoned soldiers.
New Profile provides information about those who refuse to serve on its Web site, and calls on the public to protest to the government against their imprisonment. And this week, over 60 high school seniors signed a letter they sent to the prime minister, the defense minister and the chief of staff, in which they declared that they would refuse to take part in the activities of repression against the Palestinian nation. They called on young people their age to do the same.
One of those who signed the letter, Haggai Matar, is to be drafted next July. He has been engaged in a voluminous correspondence with the IDF, and is asking to serve according to his conscience, in an alternative framework, similar to that offered to conscientious objector Yinon Heller, after a decision by the Supreme Court. The IDF was prepared to allow Heller to do his obligatory military service in a hospital, without undergoing basic training, without wearing a uniform, and without bearing arms.
At the beginning of July, Matar was invited to the Conscientious Objectors Committee, composed of representatives of the draft board and of the military legal division. He explained his political views, his activity in Jewish-Arab political contexts, and his friendship with Palestinians from the territories. In response to his request for alternative service, like Heller's, the members of the committee told him that Heller's case is not a precedent. The committee rejected his request to be released from service in the IDF for reasons of conscience. Matar announced this week that he would appeal the decision. When the time comes, "I will refuse to be drafted into the army, for reasons of conscience," he said.
Monday, September 10
Friday, August 24
MCC Palestine Update #25
MCC Palestine Update #25
Early morning, August 28, 2001 the Israeli military entered Beit Jala, a day after assassinating the political leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Ali Mustafa. The Israeli military shows no sign of leaving Beit Jala. In the afternoon of August 28, MCC country representative Alain Epp Weaver accompanied the Lutheran Bishop of Jerusalem Munib Younan to the Lutheran church and school in Beit Jala. Early in the morning, soldiers broke into the church's compound, which houses an orphanage for 45 boys, ages 6-17. The soldiers took the keys to the church from the frightened children and entered the church and an adjacent building which had been intended as an interfaith center. As of this writing, the soldiers have not left the church; Palestinians report that the soldiers have been firing from the roof of the church and the interfaith center.
The pastor of the church, Jadallah Shehadeh, was shot at this morning as he tried to reach the church. This afternoon an ecumenical delegation in which Alain participated went to the church / orphanage to distribute food to the boys held captive within.
Please pray for the citizens of Beit Jala, Christian and Muslim, held under tight curfew. Pray for the students at the Lutheran orphanage and school. Pray also for the boarding students at the Hope Secondary School (formerly Mennonite school) in Beit Jala--while not under curfew, the school is right next to an army base, and tanks are continually rolling by the school's gates.
YMCA visit: Haitham Qaraqe', six years old, was in a car with his pregnant mother, his father and his uncle the night he lost an eye last spring. Israeli soldiers from a nearby post opened fire on the car: their bullets pierced Haitham's eye, killed his father Imad, and seriously wounded his uncle.
The Israeli military later said that it had been a case of "mistaken identity." Nicola Abu hannam, also six years old, comes from a Palestinian Christian family in Beit Jala. He was going with his mother to visit the neighbors on the occasion of St. George's feast when a stray Israeli shell hit him and tore off his left arm, the arm his mother had been holding at the time.
Both Haitham and Nicola are clients of the YMCA Rehabilitation Center in Beit Sahour. The dedicated professionals of the YMCA Rehabilitation Center have sadly had an increased workload for the past year, with an estimated 2500 injured people left with ermanent disabilities. Please keep children like Haitham and Nicola, and the workers at the YMCA, in your prayers.
And pray for the safety of Palestinians as they try to circumvent roadblocks to do such basic tasks as buying school supplies. One Palestinian man was gunned down walking into Nablus on his way to buy backpacks for his children. With the siege on the occupied territories tighter than ever, some Palestinians are now taking a 3 kilometer donkey ride in order to enter Nablus. MCC country representative Alain Epp Weaver didn't have to take a donkey ride, but did have to join scores of Palestinians on a one kilometer walk over piles of dirt separating two impromptu taxi stands. A subsequent taxi ride from Nablus to Ramallah involved several kilometers through a "road" in an olive orchard, the bottom of the taxi scraping the ground every couple meters.
Included below are three pieces. The first, by Israeli commentator Meron Benvenisti, unflinchingly and correctly describes Israeli practice in the occupied territories as apartheid. The second, by Gideon Levy of Haaretz newspaper, outlines life at the checkpoints marking Palestinian existence. The final piece, by Haaretz journalist Amira Hass, looks at life under Israeli shelling in Rafah in the Gaza Strip along the Egyptian border.
1. Unilateral separation leads inexorably to Apartheid
Meron Benvinisti
Haaretz, 23 August 2001
While a wall separates Israel from the West Bank between Bat Hefer (left) and Tulkarm, unilateral separation of Israel from the Palestinians, like all ideologies, mocks any argument that dares challenge the feasibility of its implementation. (Photo: AP )
One day, more than 30 years ago, two Israelis who dealt with handling the Palestinian population - one in Jerusalem and the other in the West Bank - met a high-ranking South African official. At the meeting, the two explained their jobs and the way they were improving Israeli-Palestinian relations by letting the Palestinians manage their own lives.
Suddenly, the guest said, "What would you say if I invited you to assist the new regime in the Transkei homeland?" The Israelis were astonished. Their guest's question insinuated that their tolerant and liberal activities were similar to the racist practices of apartheid rule.
When they objected, he smiled at them. "I understand your reaction. But aren't you basically doing the same thing? You and we both face the same existential problems, so we reach the same solution. The only difference is that your solution is pragmatic and ours ideological. Yes, we're all in love with the compromises we make with ourselves."
More than 30 years have passed, and the pragmatic solutions "necessitated by reality" have crystallized into a coherent ideology. It's called unilateral separation. Like all ideologies, unilateral separation "rises above" pragmatic solutions to immediate needs, and purports to provide "an answer" to existential problems: Jewish existence (dubbed "Zionist") is in mortal danger because of the demo-geographic threat. Therefore everyone - liberals, conservatives, leftists and nationalists - rally round to save the Zionist enterprise by "separating" all the others, including Arab citizens of the state, using three barbed-wire fences – one "around Area A," the second "near the Green Line," and a third, never mentioned, along the international borders of mandatory Palestine.
Like all ideologies, unilateral separation mocks any argument that dares challenge the feasibility of its implementation. It all depends on making "brave national decisions" that rise to the occasion of the expected catastrophe, and those who are not ready to rise up to face the severity of the situation are being irresponsible. Opposition to the ideology of unilateral separation on principle, for example, like using the "demographic threat" to characterize "the proliferation" of the other, and that its implementation will only meet the needs of the ruling group and the price will be paid by the other, are rejected with disgust.
Along with mocking the soft bleeding hearts, the ideologues of unilateral separation emphasize the "fact" that it will require "the evacuation of 30- 35 settlements in Judea and Samaria and tearing out sections of the state populated by Arabs of Israel." That heavy price will remain, of course, theoretical, since the ideology of separation is based on the monopoly of absolute power (the "unilateral") remaining forever in the hands of the stronger side -whether it has a demographic majority or whether it becomes a minority "in 2010." And when the demographic reversal does take place, they'll simply stop counting the "others": in any case there's no relevance to the number of heads as long as they cannot raise their hands to vote.
The demographic "threat" is nothing more than a contemptible means to enlist xenophobia and the isolationist tendencies beating in the breasts of masses of frightened people who are lost without leadership, for the purpose of creating political movements that pretend to offer "solutions for the situation."
The ideological preaching serves as a cover for "pragmatic" steps like closures and sieges, and the failure of the method requires ever-more extreme measures of separation, accompanied by ever-more extremist declarations about the "others" to justify the extreme measures. And then, when the separation comes dangerously close to apartheid, everyone criesout, "How dare you compare? We're in favor of a Palestinian state prospering on the other side of and between the three barbed-wire fences. Bantustan, you say? That's an insult."
If that South African official were to return today, he'd shake his head in sorrow. "We reached the conclusion ten years ago that unilateral separation that keeps the monopoly of coercion in the hands of the white community simply won't last and has to go. Your political thinking now is the same as it was back when we first met. True, as I said then, the existential problems are the same; we chose a united multi-racial state(what you call a "binational" state). Maybe there's still the alternative of dividing the country with an agreement. If there is, grab it. Believe me, unilateral separation is not an option. It only will turn you into a pariah state isolated from the West, just as we were. We also thought the world didn't understand us, wasn't sensitive to our plight. You have it a little easier, because you can think it's all anti-Semitism. Forget it. Learn from us."
2. A slice of roadblock reality
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 19 August 2001
The roadblock at Qalandiya, in June: Each vehicle has to wait in the withering heat for three to four hours in each direction - and this is not in the rush hour. (Photo: AP )
The reports that appeared at week's end about the tightening of the blockade of Ramallah, just north of Jerusalem in the West Bank, took at least a few of the local residents by surprise: "How can they tighten the siege any more?" wondered A, a resident of the closed city.
Still, the underlying rationale for the total prohibition the Israel Defense Forces imposed on vehicles seeking to travel south from Ramallah was understandable: Security sources reported that place-specific warnings had been received about suicide bombers, and many roadblocks were put up on Israeli roads, too. The siege of Ramallah will probably be lifted soon, the city will revert to its old routine, and Israel may even score propaganda points by declaring it has having "relaxed the closure." The traffic on the Jerusalem-Ramallah road will return to "normal" and the state of things will go back to what it was, for example, at the Qalandiya roadblock.
The roadblock at Qalandiya is a relatively new one, having been established in the midst of the current Intifada. It is located opposite the fence that surrounds the deserted international airport at Atarot, in the north of Jerusalem, on the main road to Ramallah, and next to the neighborhood of Qalandiya, which is within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. This is not the Palestinians' entryway into Jerusalem and Israel - for that, there is the A-Ram checkpoint, a few kilometers to the south.
The Qalandiya roadblock is located on a road that is in a scandalous state of maintenance and is the busiest route in the West Bank. More than half a million Palestinians make use of it -residents of the Ramallah and East Jerusalem areas, including all the many villages and refugee camps around the cities. They have no other way. Jews do not have need of this route: The way to the settlements in the region passes on separate roads, on which Palestinians are forbidden to travel. Now another wide road is being built there, which will also be reserved exclusively for the use of the settlers.
At the Qalandiya roadblock three or four soldiers check the vehicles, their passengers and their contents (the permits to enter Israel are checked a bit later, at the A-Ram site). Here's how they go about it: the line of cars, which is several kilometers long, stretches toward the horizon behind concrete blocks and a terrifying army bulldozer, which sits, poised and mute, by the roadside, perhaps to intimidate the travelers, and one of the soldiers signals one vehicle at a time to move forward. When the check is over and the vehicle has been cleared to go ahead, the soldier takes a break - it can last two minutes, or five minutes, and sometimes more - before signaling the next vehicle to move forward to be checked. It's a methodical procedure. The result is that each vehicle has to wait for three to four hours in each direction - and this is not in the rush hour.
Under the blazing August sun thousands of perspiring, irritable drivers wait for the soldier's signal, so that one more car can at last move ahead. Some of them get out of their cars, unable to bear the overwhelming heat, others occasionally sound their horns in a furious cacophony, which quickly fades away because of its uselessness.
There are young people and old people, women and children, for whom the trip is obviously vital; otherwise, it stands to reason, they would not subject themselves to this agony. They wait in the vast traffic jam for hours to make a journey that in ordinary times would take a few minutes. Last Sunday, the Palestinian Authority's minister for international cooperation, Nabil Sha'ath, was also here, in his air-conditioned van, and he waited together with a bridegroom
in a decorated car: the Qalandiya roadblock is a great social leveler.
The sight of the pedestrians is even more pathetic. Having no other choice, thousands of Palestinians cross the roadblock on foot. No one checks them, even though they are carrying packages, a situation that raises doubts about the security usefulness of the roadblock. In a procession that can only arouse pity, are old people leaning on their son's shoulders, people who are ill and are making their way with their last remaining strength, the disabled, pregnant women and children who can't understand why they have to drag themselves like this in the withering heat.
Says the IDF spokesman in response: "In humanitarian cases the IDF ensures that the checks are expedited and that the travelers are not delayed." That is simply ridiculous: No vehicle, not even an ambulance, can get around this horrific traffic jam, and anyone who is ill is condemned to wait for hours in a vehicle or to make his way on foot.
The conclusions are almost unavoidable. To begin with, this roadblock is not meant only to check vehicles but also to punish their passengers, and perhaps to dissuade them from leaving
their places of residence. Otherwise it's hard to understand what the justification is for this most terrible of the West Bank roadblocks, for what do security needs have to do with the infuriatingly slow-motion behavior of the soldiers?
Second, along with the security benefits, whether real or imaginary, the security damage also has to be taken into account. No one can know whether it is more likely that a terrorist attack will be prevented by a permanent roadblock whose existence is known far and wide, or that the hatred that is generated during the long hours of exhausting and humiliating waiting will produce more terrorism.
Finally, if more Israelis were exposed to this slice of reality, which is a regular part of Palestinian life, and saw with their own eyes the ordeals endured by ordinary, innocent Palestinians, they might gain a better understanding of the roots of the hatred the Palestinians feel for them. One roadblock is enough to understand it.
3. ‘Why would we need a key when we don’t have a house?’
Amira Hass
Haaretz, 20 August 2001
Looking out at an IDF post from a shelled Palestinian home in Rafah, close to the border with Egypt. (Photo: Reuters)
Palestinians traveling along the roads of the Gaza Strip rarely see any Israeli soldiers. Expanses of tilled gray soil and dry thorns extend from either side of the roads.
Over the past 10 months, the Israel Defense Forces has uprooted thousands of olive, citrus and palm trees and grapevines, and flattened hundreds of dunams of fields and hothouses. In the
wasteland created by the army's bulldozers, the soldiers are invisible. What can be seen are the thickets of concrete blocks that bisect roads, dividing Israeli from Palestinian traffic, as well as
tanks, armored personnel carriers (APCs), armored jeeps, observation towers manned by video cameras, and positions dug into low hills, with camouflage nets and gun nests at their summits.
These guard posts - round concrete structures of varying height -have replaced the tanks, which at the start of the Intifada were positioned at the intersections. The rifle and machine-gun barrels
protrude from the narrow slits that ring these guard posts. Sometimes you spot a hand sticking out of a slit: it is a soldier directing a car either to stop or to keep moving. Nor does one see
the soldiers who man the positions that are only steps away from dense residential quarters, primarily in Khan Yunis and Rafah.
"As far as I could see, the bulldozer that destroyed my house may have been guided by remote control," says Anwar Kalloub from "O Block," a refugee neighborhood in Rafah that is adjacent to the Egyptian border. On the night of July 10, he watched as the huge tractor ("It wasn't a tractor, it was a building that moves") chewed up and spat out his home until it was a pile of rubble. He was not able to see who was operating the tractor. "A 15-year-old dream was destroyed in seconds; money I'd saved up from 20 years of work evaporated in a single night."
Sixteen residential homes were completely demolished that night, in what the IDF then described as "engineering activity and removal of abandoned buildings, from which came individuals who laid explosive charges and from which gunfire was directed at IDF soldiers."
All told, about 50 homes were demolished in Rafah, which has a population of about 100,000. Another thousand or so dwellings have been directly damaged by gunfire, mortar shells or fires
set off by incendiary illumination shells. The windows of several hundred more were shattered by the concussion waves from the shooting and shelling.
Life in Rafah goes on, in the shadow of the unseen soldiers, the APCs rumbling along the Egyptian border and the reinforced positions that are filled with weapons of every sort - between
the homes of the dead and injured of the Intifada, near the completely destroyed homes, within the homes pierced like sieves by the bullets, and amid unemployment of more than 60 percent.
Anwar Kalloub is now sitting with other owners of demolished homes, at the still-intact house of a neighbor. Together they are looking through the piles of rubble: a shattered and overturned
refrigerator, a school backpack, a few scattered Lego blocks, torn school notebooks, shreds of furniture, bent iron hinges. "Are these abandoned homes?" Kalloub rhetorically asks.
He asks the guests not to get any closer to what had been his home: from his and his neighbor's experience, when anyone gets close to the border, the invisible soldiers from "Termite," the
nearby army post, start shooting.
Kalloub's home had been only a few meters from the border fence. Part of it was built in 1948, the rest in 1996. Anwar and his brother Jihad bought it from a previous owner. Their family originally came from Ashdod. Kalloub, 38, worked in the Tel Aviv's Carmel market for 20 years for the same employer. He would rehire Kalloub whenever the closures and curfews of the first Intifada were lifted. The two men speak on the phone occasionally. Kalloub stills owes
him a few hundred shekels he borrowed last year. Don't worry about the money, his boss told him. You'll pay it back when you come back to work. For the past nine months he hasn't been
able to go to work - a job for which he used to leave home every morning at 1:30 a.m., returning home at 9:00 p.m.
Kalloub paid $17,000 on September 2 for the house next to the border, a sizable sum in a city that has the highest poverty in the Strip. The houses are ringed by unpaved sandy paths, like most of the refugee neighborhoods in the city. A closed sewage system was completed only two months ago, replacing the open sewage canals.
The family moved into the home on October 10, a few days after the start of the Intifada. "Who thought it would go on so long?" he says. On October 18, the army fired at the neighborhood,
including Kalloub's house, for the first time. The IDF Spokesman said it was in response to Palestinian gunfire. On two occasions, the family was at home while shooting was going on outside. They crowded into a room on the far side from the border fence. "The soldiers
definitely knew there were children in the house," says Kalloub. The video camera on the observation tower, on the other side of the border fence - only meters from the front door of the
house -undoubtedly saw them as they walked in and out of the house.
Subsequently, when the exchanges of gunfire and mortar shellings grew more frequent, the family rented a small apartment in central Rafah. But when the money ran out, they had no other choice but to return to the house along the border. They comforted themselves by saying that things were calmer now, that there was less shooting, that the armed youths were no longer prowling around the neighborhood trying to squeeze off a few rounds at the well-protected position, which were invariably answered by volleys of rifle fire and a few shells.
According to Kalloub and the neighbors still living in the houses that have not been destroyed and which now form the front rank facing the border, the soldiers have fired from the position and from the APCs on countless occasions when not a single Palestinian shot had been fired at them. "We would be cringing two times a day, whenever a tank passed along the border fence," which is reinforced by concrete and piles of sand. At such times, the neighborhood would be quaking with fear and the rumbling of the APCs. (Palestinians do not differentiate between tanks
and APCs, but according to the agreement with Egypt, the IDF may not have tanks along the border).
Bulldozers approach
After midnight on July 10, Kalloub was chatting with some friends in the street when he heard the APCs coming. He ran home in time to see the bulldozers approaching and to wake up his six
children, as well as his neighbor, Abu Halil, in the next house over. He noticed that the man had not even emerged from his house before the teeth of the bulldozer blade were already chomping at it. It was only then that the exchanges of gunfire broke out. Armed Palestinians ran up and fired at the force, which returned fire.
"Should we take the house key?" one of Kalloub's daughters asked. He stared at her, dazed. "Why would we need a key when we don't have a house?" Incidentally, the large iron key of the
house in Ashdod is still kept in his parents' home.
The Palestinian Authority promised alternate housing to Kalloub and a few dozen others who had lost their homes. A 150-square meter parcel of land was allocated to each family, on which
UNWRA would build the home. Each family received NIS 8,000 in exchange for waiving its rights to the land on which their ruined homes had stood. Abu Halil, an elderly refugee from Be'er Sheva, refused to sign the waiver, or accept the money. He did not want to be a refugee for a second time, he says.
"O Block" is situated on the north side of Saladin Street, a commercial street that used to continue straight into the Egyptian part of Rafah, and from there to El Arish. Saladin was
considered the Champs-Elysees of Rafah. It was lit up, bustling, a magnet for shoppers and tradesmen. After Sinai was returned to Egypt, its popularity eclipsed. The current visitor requires a special brand of courage, or utter resignation with one's fate, to walk down the street in the direction of the border. All of the shops along the first 200 meters of the street, from the border side, are shuttered. Their metal doors are riddled with holes: countless holes of every size
testify to the bullets and shells they have absorbed. The holes also perforate the walls of all the homes still standing within a range of 100 to 500 meters of the border, on both sides of the
street. This is true for the refugee neighborhoods as well as the area south of Saladin Street, the older residential quarters. These are the original neighborhoods of pre-'48 Rafah, many of whose
residents belong to the large Khishta clan.
During a guided tour of one home there, attention is called to the perforated walls, which have been patched with mortar. Look, there are eight holes in the children's room. In the older aunt's room -nine holes. In the northern room - a large hole made by a shell, which had to be sealed with a few cinder blocks. The metal back door of the house is carefully opened. More piles of
rubble come into view. Some of the homes were demolished on April 14, others on July 19. Here and there is a yellow chrysanthemum bush. And looming over the entire scene is the Termite position, with its observation tower and video camera. Here, too, they warn visitors against walking around the rubble, lest someone open fire from the position or from a tank concealed
behind the concrete fence and sand embankment.
The Khishta family knows the reason for caution: The wife of one of the brothers was seriously injured while she was cooking in the kitchen of her home, which is in the fourth or fifth row of
houses from the border. She was hit by shrapnel from a shell that was intended for somewhere else. She lost an eye, and is now paralyzed in one arm and both legs. She is hospitalized in Saudi
Arabia, and defined as 90 percent disabled.
In November, one of the brothers, Najib, was walking home from a field owned by the family. It is situated in an open expanse between the fourth and fifth rows of houses. An IDF bullet
penetrated a narrow metal grating in a garage under one of the homes, and hit him in the head. He was one of Rafah's first residents to be killed.
Lesson for the deaf
Shadi Siam, 17 was killed on May 24. Siam supported himself though odd jobs in carpentry or agriculture. He was deaf, and as he was walking near Saladin Street that day, he did not hear the
gunfire. He was hit by a bullet in the chest, which exited his back. The school for the deaf and dumb that he had attended until two years earlier suspended classes for three days after Siam's
death. The teachers held special sessions with the agitated students, and discussed ways that the deaf might avoid gunfire in the future.
Siam's killing spiked awareness in Rafah of the problems now faced by the deaf, when shots are suddenly fired by invisible soldiers from observation towers or tanks or outposts. Rafah has
an especially high incidence of deafness: the older families of Rafah tend to intermarry, so as to keep the real estate assets in the family. These marriages between relatives often result in the
birth of children with hearing problems. Ten years ago, the Rafah community decided to build a school for them. No one thought they would need special coaching on how to act when a civilian
population is under fire.
Early morning, August 28, 2001 the Israeli military entered Beit Jala, a day after assassinating the political leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Ali Mustafa. The Israeli military shows no sign of leaving Beit Jala. In the afternoon of August 28, MCC country representative Alain Epp Weaver accompanied the Lutheran Bishop of Jerusalem Munib Younan to the Lutheran church and school in Beit Jala. Early in the morning, soldiers broke into the church's compound, which houses an orphanage for 45 boys, ages 6-17. The soldiers took the keys to the church from the frightened children and entered the church and an adjacent building which had been intended as an interfaith center. As of this writing, the soldiers have not left the church; Palestinians report that the soldiers have been firing from the roof of the church and the interfaith center.
The pastor of the church, Jadallah Shehadeh, was shot at this morning as he tried to reach the church. This afternoon an ecumenical delegation in which Alain participated went to the church / orphanage to distribute food to the boys held captive within.
Please pray for the citizens of Beit Jala, Christian and Muslim, held under tight curfew. Pray for the students at the Lutheran orphanage and school. Pray also for the boarding students at the Hope Secondary School (formerly Mennonite school) in Beit Jala--while not under curfew, the school is right next to an army base, and tanks are continually rolling by the school's gates.
YMCA visit: Haitham Qaraqe', six years old, was in a car with his pregnant mother, his father and his uncle the night he lost an eye last spring. Israeli soldiers from a nearby post opened fire on the car: their bullets pierced Haitham's eye, killed his father Imad, and seriously wounded his uncle.
The Israeli military later said that it had been a case of "mistaken identity." Nicola Abu hannam, also six years old, comes from a Palestinian Christian family in Beit Jala. He was going with his mother to visit the neighbors on the occasion of St. George's feast when a stray Israeli shell hit him and tore off his left arm, the arm his mother had been holding at the time.
Both Haitham and Nicola are clients of the YMCA Rehabilitation Center in Beit Sahour. The dedicated professionals of the YMCA Rehabilitation Center have sadly had an increased workload for the past year, with an estimated 2500 injured people left with ermanent disabilities. Please keep children like Haitham and Nicola, and the workers at the YMCA, in your prayers.
And pray for the safety of Palestinians as they try to circumvent roadblocks to do such basic tasks as buying school supplies. One Palestinian man was gunned down walking into Nablus on his way to buy backpacks for his children. With the siege on the occupied territories tighter than ever, some Palestinians are now taking a 3 kilometer donkey ride in order to enter Nablus. MCC country representative Alain Epp Weaver didn't have to take a donkey ride, but did have to join scores of Palestinians on a one kilometer walk over piles of dirt separating two impromptu taxi stands. A subsequent taxi ride from Nablus to Ramallah involved several kilometers through a "road" in an olive orchard, the bottom of the taxi scraping the ground every couple meters.
Included below are three pieces. The first, by Israeli commentator Meron Benvenisti, unflinchingly and correctly describes Israeli practice in the occupied territories as apartheid. The second, by Gideon Levy of Haaretz newspaper, outlines life at the checkpoints marking Palestinian existence. The final piece, by Haaretz journalist Amira Hass, looks at life under Israeli shelling in Rafah in the Gaza Strip along the Egyptian border.
1. Unilateral separation leads inexorably to Apartheid
Meron Benvinisti
Haaretz, 23 August 2001
While a wall separates Israel from the West Bank between Bat Hefer (left) and Tulkarm, unilateral separation of Israel from the Palestinians, like all ideologies, mocks any argument that dares challenge the feasibility of its implementation. (Photo: AP )
One day, more than 30 years ago, two Israelis who dealt with handling the Palestinian population - one in Jerusalem and the other in the West Bank - met a high-ranking South African official. At the meeting, the two explained their jobs and the way they were improving Israeli-Palestinian relations by letting the Palestinians manage their own lives.
Suddenly, the guest said, "What would you say if I invited you to assist the new regime in the Transkei homeland?" The Israelis were astonished. Their guest's question insinuated that their tolerant and liberal activities were similar to the racist practices of apartheid rule.
When they objected, he smiled at them. "I understand your reaction. But aren't you basically doing the same thing? You and we both face the same existential problems, so we reach the same solution. The only difference is that your solution is pragmatic and ours ideological. Yes, we're all in love with the compromises we make with ourselves."
More than 30 years have passed, and the pragmatic solutions "necessitated by reality" have crystallized into a coherent ideology. It's called unilateral separation. Like all ideologies, unilateral separation "rises above" pragmatic solutions to immediate needs, and purports to provide "an answer" to existential problems: Jewish existence (dubbed "Zionist") is in mortal danger because of the demo-geographic threat. Therefore everyone - liberals, conservatives, leftists and nationalists - rally round to save the Zionist enterprise by "separating" all the others, including Arab citizens of the state, using three barbed-wire fences – one "around Area A," the second "near the Green Line," and a third, never mentioned, along the international borders of mandatory Palestine.
Like all ideologies, unilateral separation mocks any argument that dares challenge the feasibility of its implementation. It all depends on making "brave national decisions" that rise to the occasion of the expected catastrophe, and those who are not ready to rise up to face the severity of the situation are being irresponsible. Opposition to the ideology of unilateral separation on principle, for example, like using the "demographic threat" to characterize "the proliferation" of the other, and that its implementation will only meet the needs of the ruling group and the price will be paid by the other, are rejected with disgust.
Along with mocking the soft bleeding hearts, the ideologues of unilateral separation emphasize the "fact" that it will require "the evacuation of 30- 35 settlements in Judea and Samaria and tearing out sections of the state populated by Arabs of Israel." That heavy price will remain, of course, theoretical, since the ideology of separation is based on the monopoly of absolute power (the "unilateral") remaining forever in the hands of the stronger side -whether it has a demographic majority or whether it becomes a minority "in 2010." And when the demographic reversal does take place, they'll simply stop counting the "others": in any case there's no relevance to the number of heads as long as they cannot raise their hands to vote.
The demographic "threat" is nothing more than a contemptible means to enlist xenophobia and the isolationist tendencies beating in the breasts of masses of frightened people who are lost without leadership, for the purpose of creating political movements that pretend to offer "solutions for the situation."
The ideological preaching serves as a cover for "pragmatic" steps like closures and sieges, and the failure of the method requires ever-more extreme measures of separation, accompanied by ever-more extremist declarations about the "others" to justify the extreme measures. And then, when the separation comes dangerously close to apartheid, everyone criesout, "How dare you compare? We're in favor of a Palestinian state prospering on the other side of and between the three barbed-wire fences. Bantustan, you say? That's an insult."
If that South African official were to return today, he'd shake his head in sorrow. "We reached the conclusion ten years ago that unilateral separation that keeps the monopoly of coercion in the hands of the white community simply won't last and has to go. Your political thinking now is the same as it was back when we first met. True, as I said then, the existential problems are the same; we chose a united multi-racial state(what you call a "binational" state). Maybe there's still the alternative of dividing the country with an agreement. If there is, grab it. Believe me, unilateral separation is not an option. It only will turn you into a pariah state isolated from the West, just as we were. We also thought the world didn't understand us, wasn't sensitive to our plight. You have it a little easier, because you can think it's all anti-Semitism. Forget it. Learn from us."
2. A slice of roadblock reality
Gideon Levy
Haaretz, 19 August 2001
The roadblock at Qalandiya, in June: Each vehicle has to wait in the withering heat for three to four hours in each direction - and this is not in the rush hour. (Photo: AP )
The reports that appeared at week's end about the tightening of the blockade of Ramallah, just north of Jerusalem in the West Bank, took at least a few of the local residents by surprise: "How can they tighten the siege any more?" wondered A, a resident of the closed city.
Still, the underlying rationale for the total prohibition the Israel Defense Forces imposed on vehicles seeking to travel south from Ramallah was understandable: Security sources reported that place-specific warnings had been received about suicide bombers, and many roadblocks were put up on Israeli roads, too. The siege of Ramallah will probably be lifted soon, the city will revert to its old routine, and Israel may even score propaganda points by declaring it has having "relaxed the closure." The traffic on the Jerusalem-Ramallah road will return to "normal" and the state of things will go back to what it was, for example, at the Qalandiya roadblock.
The roadblock at Qalandiya is a relatively new one, having been established in the midst of the current Intifada. It is located opposite the fence that surrounds the deserted international airport at Atarot, in the north of Jerusalem, on the main road to Ramallah, and next to the neighborhood of Qalandiya, which is within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem. This is not the Palestinians' entryway into Jerusalem and Israel - for that, there is the A-Ram checkpoint, a few kilometers to the south.
The Qalandiya roadblock is located on a road that is in a scandalous state of maintenance and is the busiest route in the West Bank. More than half a million Palestinians make use of it -residents of the Ramallah and East Jerusalem areas, including all the many villages and refugee camps around the cities. They have no other way. Jews do not have need of this route: The way to the settlements in the region passes on separate roads, on which Palestinians are forbidden to travel. Now another wide road is being built there, which will also be reserved exclusively for the use of the settlers.
At the Qalandiya roadblock three or four soldiers check the vehicles, their passengers and their contents (the permits to enter Israel are checked a bit later, at the A-Ram site). Here's how they go about it: the line of cars, which is several kilometers long, stretches toward the horizon behind concrete blocks and a terrifying army bulldozer, which sits, poised and mute, by the roadside, perhaps to intimidate the travelers, and one of the soldiers signals one vehicle at a time to move forward. When the check is over and the vehicle has been cleared to go ahead, the soldier takes a break - it can last two minutes, or five minutes, and sometimes more - before signaling the next vehicle to move forward to be checked. It's a methodical procedure. The result is that each vehicle has to wait for three to four hours in each direction - and this is not in the rush hour.
Under the blazing August sun thousands of perspiring, irritable drivers wait for the soldier's signal, so that one more car can at last move ahead. Some of them get out of their cars, unable to bear the overwhelming heat, others occasionally sound their horns in a furious cacophony, which quickly fades away because of its uselessness.
There are young people and old people, women and children, for whom the trip is obviously vital; otherwise, it stands to reason, they would not subject themselves to this agony. They wait in the vast traffic jam for hours to make a journey that in ordinary times would take a few minutes. Last Sunday, the Palestinian Authority's minister for international cooperation, Nabil Sha'ath, was also here, in his air-conditioned van, and he waited together with a bridegroom
in a decorated car: the Qalandiya roadblock is a great social leveler.
The sight of the pedestrians is even more pathetic. Having no other choice, thousands of Palestinians cross the roadblock on foot. No one checks them, even though they are carrying packages, a situation that raises doubts about the security usefulness of the roadblock. In a procession that can only arouse pity, are old people leaning on their son's shoulders, people who are ill and are making their way with their last remaining strength, the disabled, pregnant women and children who can't understand why they have to drag themselves like this in the withering heat.
Says the IDF spokesman in response: "In humanitarian cases the IDF ensures that the checks are expedited and that the travelers are not delayed." That is simply ridiculous: No vehicle, not even an ambulance, can get around this horrific traffic jam, and anyone who is ill is condemned to wait for hours in a vehicle or to make his way on foot.
The conclusions are almost unavoidable. To begin with, this roadblock is not meant only to check vehicles but also to punish their passengers, and perhaps to dissuade them from leaving
their places of residence. Otherwise it's hard to understand what the justification is for this most terrible of the West Bank roadblocks, for what do security needs have to do with the infuriatingly slow-motion behavior of the soldiers?
Second, along with the security benefits, whether real or imaginary, the security damage also has to be taken into account. No one can know whether it is more likely that a terrorist attack will be prevented by a permanent roadblock whose existence is known far and wide, or that the hatred that is generated during the long hours of exhausting and humiliating waiting will produce more terrorism.
Finally, if more Israelis were exposed to this slice of reality, which is a regular part of Palestinian life, and saw with their own eyes the ordeals endured by ordinary, innocent Palestinians, they might gain a better understanding of the roots of the hatred the Palestinians feel for them. One roadblock is enough to understand it.
3. ‘Why would we need a key when we don’t have a house?’
Amira Hass
Haaretz, 20 August 2001
Looking out at an IDF post from a shelled Palestinian home in Rafah, close to the border with Egypt. (Photo: Reuters)
Palestinians traveling along the roads of the Gaza Strip rarely see any Israeli soldiers. Expanses of tilled gray soil and dry thorns extend from either side of the roads.
Over the past 10 months, the Israel Defense Forces has uprooted thousands of olive, citrus and palm trees and grapevines, and flattened hundreds of dunams of fields and hothouses. In the
wasteland created by the army's bulldozers, the soldiers are invisible. What can be seen are the thickets of concrete blocks that bisect roads, dividing Israeli from Palestinian traffic, as well as
tanks, armored personnel carriers (APCs), armored jeeps, observation towers manned by video cameras, and positions dug into low hills, with camouflage nets and gun nests at their summits.
These guard posts - round concrete structures of varying height -have replaced the tanks, which at the start of the Intifada were positioned at the intersections. The rifle and machine-gun barrels
protrude from the narrow slits that ring these guard posts. Sometimes you spot a hand sticking out of a slit: it is a soldier directing a car either to stop or to keep moving. Nor does one see
the soldiers who man the positions that are only steps away from dense residential quarters, primarily in Khan Yunis and Rafah.
"As far as I could see, the bulldozer that destroyed my house may have been guided by remote control," says Anwar Kalloub from "O Block," a refugee neighborhood in Rafah that is adjacent to the Egyptian border. On the night of July 10, he watched as the huge tractor ("It wasn't a tractor, it was a building that moves") chewed up and spat out his home until it was a pile of rubble. He was not able to see who was operating the tractor. "A 15-year-old dream was destroyed in seconds; money I'd saved up from 20 years of work evaporated in a single night."
Sixteen residential homes were completely demolished that night, in what the IDF then described as "engineering activity and removal of abandoned buildings, from which came individuals who laid explosive charges and from which gunfire was directed at IDF soldiers."
All told, about 50 homes were demolished in Rafah, which has a population of about 100,000. Another thousand or so dwellings have been directly damaged by gunfire, mortar shells or fires
set off by incendiary illumination shells. The windows of several hundred more were shattered by the concussion waves from the shooting and shelling.
Life in Rafah goes on, in the shadow of the unseen soldiers, the APCs rumbling along the Egyptian border and the reinforced positions that are filled with weapons of every sort - between
the homes of the dead and injured of the Intifada, near the completely destroyed homes, within the homes pierced like sieves by the bullets, and amid unemployment of more than 60 percent.
Anwar Kalloub is now sitting with other owners of demolished homes, at the still-intact house of a neighbor. Together they are looking through the piles of rubble: a shattered and overturned
refrigerator, a school backpack, a few scattered Lego blocks, torn school notebooks, shreds of furniture, bent iron hinges. "Are these abandoned homes?" Kalloub rhetorically asks.
He asks the guests not to get any closer to what had been his home: from his and his neighbor's experience, when anyone gets close to the border, the invisible soldiers from "Termite," the
nearby army post, start shooting.
Kalloub's home had been only a few meters from the border fence. Part of it was built in 1948, the rest in 1996. Anwar and his brother Jihad bought it from a previous owner. Their family originally came from Ashdod. Kalloub, 38, worked in the Tel Aviv's Carmel market for 20 years for the same employer. He would rehire Kalloub whenever the closures and curfews of the first Intifada were lifted. The two men speak on the phone occasionally. Kalloub stills owes
him a few hundred shekels he borrowed last year. Don't worry about the money, his boss told him. You'll pay it back when you come back to work. For the past nine months he hasn't been
able to go to work - a job for which he used to leave home every morning at 1:30 a.m., returning home at 9:00 p.m.
Kalloub paid $17,000 on September 2 for the house next to the border, a sizable sum in a city that has the highest poverty in the Strip. The houses are ringed by unpaved sandy paths, like most of the refugee neighborhoods in the city. A closed sewage system was completed only two months ago, replacing the open sewage canals.
The family moved into the home on October 10, a few days after the start of the Intifada. "Who thought it would go on so long?" he says. On October 18, the army fired at the neighborhood,
including Kalloub's house, for the first time. The IDF Spokesman said it was in response to Palestinian gunfire. On two occasions, the family was at home while shooting was going on outside. They crowded into a room on the far side from the border fence. "The soldiers
definitely knew there were children in the house," says Kalloub. The video camera on the observation tower, on the other side of the border fence - only meters from the front door of the
house -undoubtedly saw them as they walked in and out of the house.
Subsequently, when the exchanges of gunfire and mortar shellings grew more frequent, the family rented a small apartment in central Rafah. But when the money ran out, they had no other choice but to return to the house along the border. They comforted themselves by saying that things were calmer now, that there was less shooting, that the armed youths were no longer prowling around the neighborhood trying to squeeze off a few rounds at the well-protected position, which were invariably answered by volleys of rifle fire and a few shells.
According to Kalloub and the neighbors still living in the houses that have not been destroyed and which now form the front rank facing the border, the soldiers have fired from the position and from the APCs on countless occasions when not a single Palestinian shot had been fired at them. "We would be cringing two times a day, whenever a tank passed along the border fence," which is reinforced by concrete and piles of sand. At such times, the neighborhood would be quaking with fear and the rumbling of the APCs. (Palestinians do not differentiate between tanks
and APCs, but according to the agreement with Egypt, the IDF may not have tanks along the border).
Bulldozers approach
After midnight on July 10, Kalloub was chatting with some friends in the street when he heard the APCs coming. He ran home in time to see the bulldozers approaching and to wake up his six
children, as well as his neighbor, Abu Halil, in the next house over. He noticed that the man had not even emerged from his house before the teeth of the bulldozer blade were already chomping at it. It was only then that the exchanges of gunfire broke out. Armed Palestinians ran up and fired at the force, which returned fire.
"Should we take the house key?" one of Kalloub's daughters asked. He stared at her, dazed. "Why would we need a key when we don't have a house?" Incidentally, the large iron key of the
house in Ashdod is still kept in his parents' home.
The Palestinian Authority promised alternate housing to Kalloub and a few dozen others who had lost their homes. A 150-square meter parcel of land was allocated to each family, on which
UNWRA would build the home. Each family received NIS 8,000 in exchange for waiving its rights to the land on which their ruined homes had stood. Abu Halil, an elderly refugee from Be'er Sheva, refused to sign the waiver, or accept the money. He did not want to be a refugee for a second time, he says.
"O Block" is situated on the north side of Saladin Street, a commercial street that used to continue straight into the Egyptian part of Rafah, and from there to El Arish. Saladin was
considered the Champs-Elysees of Rafah. It was lit up, bustling, a magnet for shoppers and tradesmen. After Sinai was returned to Egypt, its popularity eclipsed. The current visitor requires a special brand of courage, or utter resignation with one's fate, to walk down the street in the direction of the border. All of the shops along the first 200 meters of the street, from the border side, are shuttered. Their metal doors are riddled with holes: countless holes of every size
testify to the bullets and shells they have absorbed. The holes also perforate the walls of all the homes still standing within a range of 100 to 500 meters of the border, on both sides of the
street. This is true for the refugee neighborhoods as well as the area south of Saladin Street, the older residential quarters. These are the original neighborhoods of pre-'48 Rafah, many of whose
residents belong to the large Khishta clan.
During a guided tour of one home there, attention is called to the perforated walls, which have been patched with mortar. Look, there are eight holes in the children's room. In the older aunt's room -nine holes. In the northern room - a large hole made by a shell, which had to be sealed with a few cinder blocks. The metal back door of the house is carefully opened. More piles of
rubble come into view. Some of the homes were demolished on April 14, others on July 19. Here and there is a yellow chrysanthemum bush. And looming over the entire scene is the Termite position, with its observation tower and video camera. Here, too, they warn visitors against walking around the rubble, lest someone open fire from the position or from a tank concealed
behind the concrete fence and sand embankment.
The Khishta family knows the reason for caution: The wife of one of the brothers was seriously injured while she was cooking in the kitchen of her home, which is in the fourth or fifth row of
houses from the border. She was hit by shrapnel from a shell that was intended for somewhere else. She lost an eye, and is now paralyzed in one arm and both legs. She is hospitalized in Saudi
Arabia, and defined as 90 percent disabled.
In November, one of the brothers, Najib, was walking home from a field owned by the family. It is situated in an open expanse between the fourth and fifth rows of houses. An IDF bullet
penetrated a narrow metal grating in a garage under one of the homes, and hit him in the head. He was one of Rafah's first residents to be killed.
Lesson for the deaf
Shadi Siam, 17 was killed on May 24. Siam supported himself though odd jobs in carpentry or agriculture. He was deaf, and as he was walking near Saladin Street that day, he did not hear the
gunfire. He was hit by a bullet in the chest, which exited his back. The school for the deaf and dumb that he had attended until two years earlier suspended classes for three days after Siam's
death. The teachers held special sessions with the agitated students, and discussed ways that the deaf might avoid gunfire in the future.
Siam's killing spiked awareness in Rafah of the problems now faced by the deaf, when shots are suddenly fired by invisible soldiers from observation towers or tanks or outposts. Rafah has
an especially high incidence of deafness: the older families of Rafah tend to intermarry, so as to keep the real estate assets in the family. These marriages between relatives often result in the
birth of children with hearing problems. Ten years ago, the Rafah community decided to build a school for them. No one thought they would need special coaching on how to act when a civilian
population is under fire.
Monday, August 13
MCC Palestine Update #24
MCC Palestine Update #24
It is difficult to find words to express the numb sadness we at MCC have felt this past week. The suicide bombing by a Hamas activist of a pizza restaurant in West Jerusalem was shocking, if, sadly, not unexpected.
Not unexpected because the anger, despair, and humiliation felt by Palestinians living under siege in the occupied territories--people confined by roadblocks and checkpoints to their villages, almost daily burying new dead (a frighteningly large number of them children), coping with thousands of injured persons who will be forever disabled, facing constant confiscation of land for the construction of illegal Israeli colonies, and now dealing with the takeover of Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem--was bound to find expression. Noting the fundamental violence of the Israeli occupation is, of course, not to excuse horrific attacks against civilians, such as the pizza restaurant bombing; nor is it even to excuse attacks against Israeli soldiers, even as international law allows for an occupied people to resist an occupying force militarily within the standard norms of warfare.
For pacifist Christians such as ourselves, violence can find no excuse. We at MCC deplore the use of violence by Israeli and Palestinian alike and yearn for the justice which will allow both to live in peace. Below we have included two pieces. The first is by Ghassan Andoni, director of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between Peoples, a long-time MCC partner. Ghassan's outline of a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a helpful antidote to voices who would portray this conflict as an eternal, insoluble struggle. The other piece is the prayers of the people offered by MCC country co- representative Alain Epp Weaver at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer on August 12. Two additional pieces are available by contacting the MCC Washington Office (jdb@mcc.org): The first, by British journalist Robert Fisk, highlights how the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a type of war not dissimilar from other anti-colonialist wars. Fisk's article usefully underscores the choice facing Israel: does it wish to continue its colonization of the occupied territories (which of necessity involves violence) and live with the violent reaction, or can it decide to end the occupation and thus create the conditions for peace? The second, by Israeli commentator Meron Benvenisti, explores how the use of language can mask certain forms of violence.
1. Make no mistake; it is solvable, yet the interest of some stands against a solution.
Ghassan Andoni
The Palestinian problem is solvable. Both Palestinians and Israelis can live with peace without changing their beliefs or relinquishing their rights. Some want us to believe that there is no solution to this problem and that another option is inevitable. Someone is preparing us for an ideological war in which all of us except the ideological fanatics will lose. Someone wants to reverse history, bring it back to the forties of last century. Some fanatics are dreaming of genocide and forced transfer as the ultimate solution to the problem.
Yes, with all the magnified problems such as Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, and the creation of a state for Palestinians, the crisis is solvable. With all the incitement, fear, and racist education, the problem is solvable. We need not to forget this even for one minute. Many have lost their lives and the queue is long. We need not allow fanatics to wage the war until the last one of us.
So, how it is solvable? In territorial terms, dividing the land around 70% Israel, 30% Palestine is not only possible but will help both sides to preserve the main characters of their state and sovereignty and solve their major national problems. Israel can continue being Jewish and Palestine can become integral, sovereign, and able to solve, within its territory, the refugee problem. As the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza is 22% of the total area of Mandate Palestine; it is evident that an additional 8% is required to insure the Palestinian state integrity and to solve the Palestinian refugee problem. I know for sure that if racist education, incitement, and fear are put aside, there exists a reasonable majority on both sides that supports the idea of sharing the country between two nations.
The major obstacle, which stands in the way, is the misconception that "the land is already shared according to established realities." Established realities are only pointing towards racial segregation and apartheid, and can only serve the ones who want to continue with the bloodshed. Sharing the land between the two nations is very different from segregating both societies.
The only two options available for a peaceful solution are living in one country with equal rights, or sharing the country between the two nations and creating two separate sovereign states. Anything in between is not only inhuman but as well insures the continuity of the conflict.
In security terms, the best solution available and tested to insure the security of both is a peace treaty signed between two sovereign states. People tend to forget that a peace treaty between Israel and both Jordan and Egypt granted a level of security never encountered from before. Israelis have to remember that from the Jordanian borders many Israeli sensitive areas are within the reach of conventional weapons that both Jordanians and others have. While, the difficult situation in the north is primarily due to the lack of a peace treaty between Israel and both Syria and Lebanon.
There is no way to keep the conflict alive, unresolved, and enjoy peace and security. There are limitations to how much the utilization of military superiority can achieve. Examining the events of the past 10 years will make my point self-evident.
The only way to insure a state security is through working out a solution to the crisis with its surrounding, sign a peace treaty, and with years work out good relations based on common interests. This is what is attempted all over the world and the Middle East is not exceptional. But, what if there are groups among Palestinians who will not be satisfied with such a solution and still demand mandate Palestine as their final goal? Evidently there will still be such groups in both sides. They exist all over the world. Yet, communities are established to live and work for prosperity and better living conditions. Such groups on both sides will become more isolated, self-focused, and marginal when the majority decide on peace and create the proper education for peace.
All attempts to establish a peace environment and education prior to a peace treaty have failed, not only here but also worldwide. How would such arrangements end the refugee problem? What about the right to return? The additional 8% mentioned as part of the territorial dimension represents, more or less, the Palestinian built up area prior to 1948. So, in principle refugees will regain their property claims. As the right of return will be applicable within the context of a two state solution, Palestinian refugees can be rehabilitated on the territories provided as an exchange for their original and at the same time enjoy their own national identity and state. Such formula will be acceptable by the vast majority of refugees.
What about settlements? If Israelis want to stick to residential and territorial claims in the West Bank and Gaza strip, then there is no point in even attempting to solve the problem. Public opinion polls indicate that there exists a reasonable majority that stands against such claims. As a result of the Camp David negotiations, I have no doubts that a practical solution to this issue is possible.
What about Jerusalem? In Camp David summit, it was evident that both parties were very close to an agreement on Jerusalem. So, and without more arguing, if the religious side of the problem is dealt with more wisely, Jerusalem will not stand as the hard nut of the whole crisis.
The ones who want us to believe that the problem is not solvable are actively preparing the ground for using all of us as a fuel for their ideological war. The way to do so is to convince all of us that this problem is not solvable.
2. Prayers of the People, Redeemer Lutheran Church, Jerusalem
Alain Epp Weaver
12 August 2001
We gather together this morning before God, hearts filled with anger, bitterness, despair, cynicism, lament.
We come before God, wishing to offer praise and thanksgiving, but finding our tongues numbed by grief.
We approach God with righteous indignation at the violence and injustice perpetrated by others, but find ourselves painfully reminded of our own complicity, in spirit and in deed, with the powers of domination and violence.
With these burdens which we bring before God, it is truly a miracle of grace to be empowered to pray, be it with words spoken aloud or held before God in our hearts.
And so we welcome you to share your prayer requests, your joys and concerns, so that we may lift them up to God. Let us join together in prayer:
Gracious and merciful God, Creator of heaven and earth, of olive and sage, desert and forest, ocean and sky, we approach you humbled and awed by the works of your hand.
The land, the sea-- all is a gift of your creative bounty. Give your children new hearts to accept this gift, not with a spirit of hoarding and domination, but with an eagerness to share it with others.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. Sovereign God, you rule over the nations in truth and in justice, yet your rule is often obscured to our prideful and arrogant eyes. Curb our warring madness, calm our lust for domination, break our prideful insistence to justify oppression and violence on the pretexts of security, liberation, or revenge. Spur in all leaders a thirst for justice and righteousness. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Healing God, we come before you with broken bodies. Our political bodies are torn apart by lies, injustice, and violence. Once more this week fragile human bodies have been torn apart, caught in a cycle of violence and revenge. We pray for Israelis and Palestinians who were killed and injured this week. We don't want these, your precious children, to be reduced to statistics in mind and soul- numbing lists of dead and injured. And yet pondering each loss of life, each life-altering injury, threatens to overwhelm our hearts and paralyze us. Help us to memorialize death in a way that moves us to action, action on behalf of justice and peace so that no more lives are lost. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Sustainer God, we ask for your encouraging Spirit to bind together your broken church. You have called us your own and made us your people; now embolden us to live as prophetic, embodied signs of your boundary-breaking Kingdom. Bind up our bodies and spirits, Lord. Be with those struggling with illness, fear, and isolation. Make us as a congregation and as individuals a part of your healing Spirit. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
O Lord, you know us in our inmost hearts, and have heard our prayers spoken and unspoken. Loosen our tongues, strengthen our feet and hands, embolden our hearts, so that our lives might be ones of unceasing prayerful action. In the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
It is difficult to find words to express the numb sadness we at MCC have felt this past week. The suicide bombing by a Hamas activist of a pizza restaurant in West Jerusalem was shocking, if, sadly, not unexpected.
Not unexpected because the anger, despair, and humiliation felt by Palestinians living under siege in the occupied territories--people confined by roadblocks and checkpoints to their villages, almost daily burying new dead (a frighteningly large number of them children), coping with thousands of injured persons who will be forever disabled, facing constant confiscation of land for the construction of illegal Israeli colonies, and now dealing with the takeover of Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem--was bound to find expression. Noting the fundamental violence of the Israeli occupation is, of course, not to excuse horrific attacks against civilians, such as the pizza restaurant bombing; nor is it even to excuse attacks against Israeli soldiers, even as international law allows for an occupied people to resist an occupying force militarily within the standard norms of warfare.
For pacifist Christians such as ourselves, violence can find no excuse. We at MCC deplore the use of violence by Israeli and Palestinian alike and yearn for the justice which will allow both to live in peace. Below we have included two pieces. The first is by Ghassan Andoni, director of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement between Peoples, a long-time MCC partner. Ghassan's outline of a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a helpful antidote to voices who would portray this conflict as an eternal, insoluble struggle. The other piece is the prayers of the people offered by MCC country co- representative Alain Epp Weaver at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer on August 12. Two additional pieces are available by contacting the MCC Washington Office (jdb@mcc.org): The first, by British journalist Robert Fisk, highlights how the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a type of war not dissimilar from other anti-colonialist wars. Fisk's article usefully underscores the choice facing Israel: does it wish to continue its colonization of the occupied territories (which of necessity involves violence) and live with the violent reaction, or can it decide to end the occupation and thus create the conditions for peace? The second, by Israeli commentator Meron Benvenisti, explores how the use of language can mask certain forms of violence.
1. Make no mistake; it is solvable, yet the interest of some stands against a solution.
Ghassan Andoni
The Palestinian problem is solvable. Both Palestinians and Israelis can live with peace without changing their beliefs or relinquishing their rights. Some want us to believe that there is no solution to this problem and that another option is inevitable. Someone is preparing us for an ideological war in which all of us except the ideological fanatics will lose. Someone wants to reverse history, bring it back to the forties of last century. Some fanatics are dreaming of genocide and forced transfer as the ultimate solution to the problem.
Yes, with all the magnified problems such as Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, and the creation of a state for Palestinians, the crisis is solvable. With all the incitement, fear, and racist education, the problem is solvable. We need not to forget this even for one minute. Many have lost their lives and the queue is long. We need not allow fanatics to wage the war until the last one of us.
So, how it is solvable? In territorial terms, dividing the land around 70% Israel, 30% Palestine is not only possible but will help both sides to preserve the main characters of their state and sovereignty and solve their major national problems. Israel can continue being Jewish and Palestine can become integral, sovereign, and able to solve, within its territory, the refugee problem. As the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza is 22% of the total area of Mandate Palestine; it is evident that an additional 8% is required to insure the Palestinian state integrity and to solve the Palestinian refugee problem. I know for sure that if racist education, incitement, and fear are put aside, there exists a reasonable majority on both sides that supports the idea of sharing the country between two nations.
The major obstacle, which stands in the way, is the misconception that "the land is already shared according to established realities." Established realities are only pointing towards racial segregation and apartheid, and can only serve the ones who want to continue with the bloodshed. Sharing the land between the two nations is very different from segregating both societies.
The only two options available for a peaceful solution are living in one country with equal rights, or sharing the country between the two nations and creating two separate sovereign states. Anything in between is not only inhuman but as well insures the continuity of the conflict.
In security terms, the best solution available and tested to insure the security of both is a peace treaty signed between two sovereign states. People tend to forget that a peace treaty between Israel and both Jordan and Egypt granted a level of security never encountered from before. Israelis have to remember that from the Jordanian borders many Israeli sensitive areas are within the reach of conventional weapons that both Jordanians and others have. While, the difficult situation in the north is primarily due to the lack of a peace treaty between Israel and both Syria and Lebanon.
There is no way to keep the conflict alive, unresolved, and enjoy peace and security. There are limitations to how much the utilization of military superiority can achieve. Examining the events of the past 10 years will make my point self-evident.
The only way to insure a state security is through working out a solution to the crisis with its surrounding, sign a peace treaty, and with years work out good relations based on common interests. This is what is attempted all over the world and the Middle East is not exceptional. But, what if there are groups among Palestinians who will not be satisfied with such a solution and still demand mandate Palestine as their final goal? Evidently there will still be such groups in both sides. They exist all over the world. Yet, communities are established to live and work for prosperity and better living conditions. Such groups on both sides will become more isolated, self-focused, and marginal when the majority decide on peace and create the proper education for peace.
All attempts to establish a peace environment and education prior to a peace treaty have failed, not only here but also worldwide. How would such arrangements end the refugee problem? What about the right to return? The additional 8% mentioned as part of the territorial dimension represents, more or less, the Palestinian built up area prior to 1948. So, in principle refugees will regain their property claims. As the right of return will be applicable within the context of a two state solution, Palestinian refugees can be rehabilitated on the territories provided as an exchange for their original and at the same time enjoy their own national identity and state. Such formula will be acceptable by the vast majority of refugees.
What about settlements? If Israelis want to stick to residential and territorial claims in the West Bank and Gaza strip, then there is no point in even attempting to solve the problem. Public opinion polls indicate that there exists a reasonable majority that stands against such claims. As a result of the Camp David negotiations, I have no doubts that a practical solution to this issue is possible.
What about Jerusalem? In Camp David summit, it was evident that both parties were very close to an agreement on Jerusalem. So, and without more arguing, if the religious side of the problem is dealt with more wisely, Jerusalem will not stand as the hard nut of the whole crisis.
The ones who want us to believe that the problem is not solvable are actively preparing the ground for using all of us as a fuel for their ideological war. The way to do so is to convince all of us that this problem is not solvable.
2. Prayers of the People, Redeemer Lutheran Church, Jerusalem
Alain Epp Weaver
12 August 2001
We gather together this morning before God, hearts filled with anger, bitterness, despair, cynicism, lament.
We come before God, wishing to offer praise and thanksgiving, but finding our tongues numbed by grief.
We approach God with righteous indignation at the violence and injustice perpetrated by others, but find ourselves painfully reminded of our own complicity, in spirit and in deed, with the powers of domination and violence.
With these burdens which we bring before God, it is truly a miracle of grace to be empowered to pray, be it with words spoken aloud or held before God in our hearts.
And so we welcome you to share your prayer requests, your joys and concerns, so that we may lift them up to God. Let us join together in prayer:
Gracious and merciful God, Creator of heaven and earth, of olive and sage, desert and forest, ocean and sky, we approach you humbled and awed by the works of your hand.
The land, the sea-- all is a gift of your creative bounty. Give your children new hearts to accept this gift, not with a spirit of hoarding and domination, but with an eagerness to share it with others.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. Sovereign God, you rule over the nations in truth and in justice, yet your rule is often obscured to our prideful and arrogant eyes. Curb our warring madness, calm our lust for domination, break our prideful insistence to justify oppression and violence on the pretexts of security, liberation, or revenge. Spur in all leaders a thirst for justice and righteousness. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Healing God, we come before you with broken bodies. Our political bodies are torn apart by lies, injustice, and violence. Once more this week fragile human bodies have been torn apart, caught in a cycle of violence and revenge. We pray for Israelis and Palestinians who were killed and injured this week. We don't want these, your precious children, to be reduced to statistics in mind and soul- numbing lists of dead and injured. And yet pondering each loss of life, each life-altering injury, threatens to overwhelm our hearts and paralyze us. Help us to memorialize death in a way that moves us to action, action on behalf of justice and peace so that no more lives are lost. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Sustainer God, we ask for your encouraging Spirit to bind together your broken church. You have called us your own and made us your people; now embolden us to live as prophetic, embodied signs of your boundary-breaking Kingdom. Bind up our bodies and spirits, Lord. Be with those struggling with illness, fear, and isolation. Make us as a congregation and as individuals a part of your healing Spirit. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
O Lord, you know us in our inmost hearts, and have heard our prayers spoken and unspoken. Loosen our tongues, strengthen our feet and hands, embolden our hearts, so that our lives might be ones of unceasing prayerful action. In the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.
Thursday, August 2
MCC Palestine Update #23
MCC Palestine Update #23
2 August 2001
On July 26, we (we in this case being Alain and Sonia Epp Weaver, MCC Palestine country representatives) returned to Jerusalem after two months in the US on home leave. While difficult to believe, the situation in the occupied territories has worsened over the past two months. The siege which cuts off town from town, village from village, is tighter than ever. The economic situation is becoming increasingly desparate. Illegal Israeli settlements continue to be built. Few of our friends and partners have much hope for justice and peace breaking in during the near term.
MCC's partners continue to do marvels under exceedingly difficult conditions. The Center for Agricultural Services completed an agricultural road in Sammu' which will help 40 farmers reach their fields. The Union of Agricultural Work Committees distributed 800 boxes of MCC canned turkey meat to farmers engaged in land reclamation as part of a food for work program. The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees completed a road connecting Deir Ibziya with Sufa and Bala'en, after construction on the road between Deir Ibziya and Ein Qinya was halted by the Israeli military.
One year has passed since the failed Camp David II summit. While Israel and the US placed the blame squarely on the Palestinians, the reality of the summit was much different. Robert Malley, former adviser to President Clinton on Arab-Israeli affairs, has published a piece with Hussein Agha in the New York Review of Books which places much of the blame for the summit's failure on former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Meanwhile, Gush Shalom has made available maps of the Israeli proposal, maps which clearly demonstrate why no Palestinian could have accepted what was on the table at Camp David. The maps can be accessed at: http://www.gush-shalom.org/
Below you will find three pieces. The first, by Akiva Eldar, outlines the official PLO version of why Camp David failed. The second, by veteran Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, is a stinging
description of Ehud Barak as a "peace criminal." Finally, we include a joint Palestinian-Israeli declaration calling for an end to bloodshed and the occupation.
1. What went wrong at Camp David - the official PLO version
Akiva Eldar
Haaretz, 24 July 2001
Members of the panel of experts working alongside the Palestinian negotiating team, who have American passports in their possession that open Israel Defense Forces roadblocks, have embarked in recent weeks on a round of appearances throughout Israel. They lecture at living room meetings in homes in Herzliya and meet with forums of confused intellectuals in Jerusalem.
The questions repeat themselves: There is always someone who will ask why Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat reacted with such violence to the very generous proposals of former prime minister Ehud Barak? Had they really been prepared to accept Barak's proposal for an exchange of territories? And how could a pointed question about the right of return fail to be asked?
The young Palestinians, among them a legal adviser from New York and a doctoral student in law from Oxford, pull out an answer -in excellent English - to every question.
When Barak embarked on a spate of attacks against Arafat under the heading "I exposed his true face," the members of the Palestinian panel decided that this time they would not neglect Israeli public opinion. Under the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) logo, they collected the typical questions asked by Israeli listeners and next to them detailed the Palestinian positions and their version of Camp David and the events that snowballed from it.
Their version, especially concerning the map that Barak proposed there, is quite close to the one that Robert Malley, former U.S. president Bill Clinton's special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs, is now publishing in the world press (to Clinton's displeasure).
1. Why did the Palestinians reject the Camp David Peace Proposal?
For a true and lasting peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, there must be two viable and independent states living as equal neighbors. Israel's Camp David proposal, which was never set forth in writing, denied the Palestinian state viability and independence by dividing Palestinian territory into four separate cantons entirely surrounded, and therefore controlled, by Israel.The Camp David proposal also denied Palestinians control over their own borders, airspace and water resources while legitimizing and expanding illegal Israeli colonies in
Palestinian territory. Israel's Camp David proposal presented a 're-packaging' of military occupation, not an end to military occupation.
2. Didn't Israel's proposal give the Palestinians almost all of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967?
No. Israel sought to annex almost 9 percent of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in exchange offered only 1 percent of Israel's own territory. In addition, Israel sought control over an additional 10 percent of the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the form of a "long-term lease." However, the issue is not one of percentages - the issue is one of viability and independence.In a prison for example, 95 percent of the prison compound is ostensibly for the prisoners - cells, cafeterias, gym and medical facilities -but the remaining 5 percent is all that is needed for the prison guards to maintain control over the prisoner population. Similarly, the Camp David proposal, while admittedly making Palestinian prison cells larger, failed to end Israeli control over the Palestinian population.
3. Did the Palestinians accept the idea of a land swap?
The Palestinians were (and are) prepared to consider any idea that is consistent with a fair peace based on international law and equality of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. The Palestinians did consider the idea of a land swap but proposed that such land swap must be based on a one-to-one ratio, with land of equal value and in areas adjacent to the border with Palestine and in the same vicinity as the lands to be annexed by Israel. However, Israel's Camp David proposal of a nine-to-one land swap (in Israel's favor) was viewed as so unfair as to seriously undermine belief in Israel's commitment to a fair territorial compromise.
4. How did Israel's proposal envision the territory of a Palestinian state?
Israel's proposal divided Palestine into four separate cantons surrounded by Israel: the Northern West Bank, the Central West Bank, the Southern West Bank and Gaza. Going from any one area to another would require crossing Israeli sovereign territory and consequently subject movement of Palestinians within their own country to Israeli control. Not only would such restrictions apply to the movement of people, but also to the movement of goods, in effect subjecting the Palestinian economy to Israeli control. Lastly, the Camp David proposal would have left Israel in control over all Palestinian borders, thereby allowing Israel to control not only internal movement of people and goods but international movement as well. Such a Palestinian state would have had less sovereignty and viability than the Bantustans created by the South African apartheid government.
5. How did Israel's proposal address Palestinian East Jerusalem?
The Camp David Proposal required Palestinians to give up any claim to the occupied portion of Jerusalem. The proposal would have forced recognition of Israel's annexation of all of Arab East Jerusalem. Talks after Camp David suggested that Israel was prepared to allow Palestinians sovereignty over isolated Palestinian neighborhoods in the heart of East Jerusalem, however such neighborhoods would remain surrounded by illegal Israeli colonies and would remain separated not only from each other but also from the rest of the Palestinian state. In effect, such a proposal would create Palestinian ghettos in the heart of Jerusalem.
6. Why didn't the Palestinians ever present a comprehensive permanent settlement proposal of their own in response to Barak's proposals?
The comprehensive settlement to the conflict is embodied in United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338, as was accepted by both sides at the Madrid Summit in 1991 and later in the Oslo Accords of 1993. The purpose of the negotiations is to implement these UN [Security Council] resolutions (which call for an Israeli withdrawal from land occupied by force by Israel in 1967) and reach agreement on final status issues. On a number of occasions since Camp David - especially at the Taba talks - the Palestinian negotiating team presented its concept for the resolution of the key permanent status issues. It is important to keep in mind, however, that Israel and the Palestinians are differently situated. Israel seeks broad concessions from the Palestinians. Israel has not offered a single concession involving its own territory and rights. The Palestinians, on the other hand, seek to establish a viable, sovereign state on their own territory, to provide for the withdrawal of Israeli military forces and colonies (which are universally recognized as illegal), and to secure the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes they were forced to flee in 1948. Although Palestinian negotiators have been willing to accommodate legitimate Israeli needs within that context, particularly with respect to security and refugees, it is up to Israel to define these needs and to suggest the narrowest possible means of addressing them.
7. Why did the peace process fall apart just as it was making real progress toward a permanent agreement?
Palestinians entered the peace process on the understanding that (1) it would deliver concrete improvements to their lives during the interim period, (2) that the interim period would be relatively short in duration - i.e., five years, and (3) that a permanent agreement would implement United Nations [Security Council] Resolutions 242 and 338. But the peace process delivered none of these things. Instead, Palestinians suffered more burdensome restrictions on their movement and a serious decline in their economic situation. Israeli colonies expanded at an unprecedented pace and the West Bank and Gaza Strip became more fragmented with the construction of settler "by-pass" roads and the proliferation of Israeli military checkpoints. Deadlines were repeatedly missed in the implementation of agreements. In sum, Palestinians simply did not experience any "progress" in terms of their daily lives.
However, what decisively undermined Palestinian support for the peace process was the way Israel presented its proposal. Prior to entering into the first negotiations on permanent status issues, Prime Minister Barak publicly and repeatedly threatened Palestinians that his "offer" would be Israel's best and final offer and if not accepted, Israel would seriously consider "unilateral separation" (a euphemism for imposing a settlement rather than negotiating one). Palestinians felt that they had been betrayed by Israel who had committed itself at the beginning of the Oslo process to ending its occupation of Palestinian lands in accordance with Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
8. Doesn't the violence which erupted following Camp David prove that Palestinians do not really want to live in peace with Israel?
Palestinians recognized Israel's right to exist in 1988 and reiterated this recognition on several occasions including Madrid in 1991 and the Oslo Accords in September, 1993. Nevertheless, Israel has yet to explicitly and formally recognize Palestine's right to exist. The Palestinian people waited patiently since the Madrid Conference in 1991 for their freedom and independence despite Israel's incessant policy of creating facts on the ground by building colonies in occupied territory (Israeli housing units in Occupied Palestinian Territory - not including East Jerusalem - increased by 52 percent since the signing of the Oslo Accords and the settler population, including those in East Jerusalem, more than doubled). The Palestinians do indeed wish to live at peace with Israel but peace with Israel must be a fair peace not an unfair peace imposed by a stronger party over a weaker party.
9. Doesn't the failure of Camp David prove that the Palestinians are just not prepared to compromise?
The Palestinians have indeed compromised. In the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians recognized Israeli sovereignty over 78 percent of historic Palestine (23 percent more than Israel was granted pursuant to the 1947 UN Partition Plan) on the assumption that the Palestinians would be able to exercise sovereignty over the remaining 22 percent. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians accepted this compromise but this extremely generous compromise was ignored at Camp David and the Palestinians were asked to "compromise the compromise" and make further concessions in favor of Israel. Though the Palestinians can continue to make compromises, no people can be expected to compromise fundamental rights or the viability of their state.
10. Have the Palestinians abandoned the two-state solution and do they now insist on all of historic Palestine?
The current situation has undoubtedly hardened positions on both sides, with extremists in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories claiming all of historic Palestine.
Nevertheless, there is no evidence that the Palestinian Authority or the majority of Palestinians have abandoned the two-state solution. The two-state solution, however, is most seriously threatened by the on-going construction of Israeli colonies and bypass roads aimed at incorporating the Occupied Palestinian Territories into Israel. Without a halt to such construction, a two-state solution may simply be impossible to implement already prompting a number of Palestinian academics and intellectuals to argue that Israel will never allow the Palestinians to have a viable state and Palestinians should instead focus their efforts on obtaining equal rights as Israeli citizens.
11. Isn't it unreasonable for the Palestinians to demand the unlimited right of return to Israel of all Palestinian refugees?
The refugees were never seriously discussed at Camp David because Prime Minister Barak declared that Israel bore no responsibility for the refugee problem or its solution. Obviously, there can be no comprehensive solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict without resolving one of its key components: the plight of the Palestinian refugees.
There is a clearly recognized right under international law that non-combatants who flee during a conflict have the right to return after the conflict is over. But an Israeli recognition of the Palestinian right of return does not mean that all refugees will exercise that right. What is needed in addition to such recognition is the concept of choice. Many refugees may opt for (i) resettlement in third countries, (ii) resettlement in a newly independent Palestine (though they originate from that part of Palestine which became Israel) or (iii) normalization of their legal status in the host country where they currently reside. In addition, the right of return may be implemented in phases so as to address Israel's demographic concerns.
2. The Peace Criminal
Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom, 21 July 2001
Everybody knows who is a war criminal. For example, somebody who kills prisoners-of-war or massacres a civilian population (or allows others to do this) is one.
The time has come to define who is a peace criminal: somebody who kills peace and thereby makes war inevitable. Golda Meir, for example, in the early 70s, killed the chances for peace with Egypt and caused the Yom Kippur war, in which 2000 Israelis and countless others died.
Ehud Barak is such a peace criminal. He brought about the failure of the Camp David summit and its consequence, primarily the present intifada, in which hundred have already died. This
might well lead to a general war, in which thousands will perish.
If there were an International Court for Peace Crimes, Ehud Barak would be indicted on two counts:
Count 1: The accused pressured Arafat and Clinton into agreeing to the summit and brought about its failure by presenting to it an ultimatum of unacceptable proposals.
Count 2: The accused spread the lie that he had offered Arafat “everything he asked for” and that Arafat rejected it. By spreading this lie, the accused destroyed the Israeli peace camp which
believed him, brought the extreme right to power, prepared the ground for a “national unity” based on the lie and almost obliterated any real opposition.
At the Barak trial, evidence will be produced to show that he proposed at Camp David the formal annexation of 10% of the West Bank area (“settlement blocs”) and informal annexation of
another 10% (Jordan valley etc.), with the rest of the territory cut up into enclaves and cut off from the neighboring countries (Egypt and Jordan); that he pretended to “give up” East Jerusalem but without giving the Palestinians full sovereignty there, and especially not over the compound of the mosques (“Temple Mount”); that he did not agree to any compromise on the refugees; and that he demanded that the Palestinians declare this to be “the end of the conflict”.
Until now, Barak’s blind admirers have fervently denied these facts. But this week a witness appeared who could decide the outcome of the trial. He is a neutral and objective eye-witness,
whose integrity cannot be doubted by any judge: Robert Malley, personal assistant to President Clinton on the Middle East, who took part in all the Camp David deliberations. He will testify
to the following facts, among others:
0 Before the summit, Barak reneged on his promise to transfer to the Palestinian Authority the village of Abu Dis and two other villages near Jerusalem, in spite of the fact that Clinton
personally conveyed this promise to Arafat. Also, Barak refused to honor Israel’s obligations under the previous agreements: the third withdrawal from most of the West Bank areas, the release of Palestinian prisoners etc. Because of this, Clinton was furious with Barak on several occasions.
0 Before the summit, Barak continued to enlarge the settlements and build by-pass roads at a furious pace, thus destroying any vestige of Palestinian trust in his intentions.
0 Before and during the summit, the Palestinians not only gave up 78% of Mandatory Palestine, but also agreed to the annexation to Israel of “settlement blocs” and the Jewish neighborhoods built in occupied East Jerusalem. They also agreed to the principle that the Right of Return should be implemented without prejudicing the demographic and security interests of Israel. No other Arab government has ever agreed to similar concessions.
In exchange for the settlement blocs, Barak offered the Palestinians areas amounting to one ninth of the territory to be annexed, a ratio of 1 to 9, without specifying where
0 During the course of the summit, Barak did not submit any proposal in writing nor specify the details of his oral proposals, and, most importantly, did not disclose either to Arafat or even to Clinton his ideas for a final settlement. In return, Arafat, too, did not submit any proposals, so that in practice there was no negotiation at all.
0 Clinton agreed with Arafat that Barak is “politically inept, frustrating and devoid of personal contact warmth”, but believed, in spite of this, that Barak wanted peace. Arafat believed that Barak did not want peace; he only wanted to convince the world that the Palestinians don’t want peace. As a matter of fact, since the summit and until now, Barak’s main boast has been that he “unmasked Arafat”.
0 Clinton has broken his word to Arafat. Before the summit, he promised that if it fails, he would not blame the Palestinians. Only on this condition did Arafat agree to come to the
conference, which took place without proper preparation. After the failure, Clinton put the sole blame on Arafat, in order to help Barak in his eelection campaign.
When Barak’s admirers were compelled to admit that the story about “the generous Camp David offers” is a legend, they fell back to another line: “True, at Camp David no reasonable offers were made, but later, at the Taba meeting in January 2001, much more generous offers were made. These met all Palestinian demands, but were nevertheless rejected by them. At Taba the Israeli negotiators also submitted a map that reduced further the areas that Barak wanted to annex.”
Here are some of the answers:
0 If Barak really wanted to make much more “generous” offers, why did he not make them at Camp David, even when he realized that the summit was about to break down?
0 The failure of the summit caused the outbreak of the intifada, as we (and, it now appears, the Americans, too) prophesied. From that moment on, the political reality on the Palestinian side changed completely, hundreds were killed, and it became much more difficult for Arafat to convince his public opinion to halt the uprising without getting an important political achievement in advance.
0 The Taba proposals were never put to paper, and until this very moment it is not clear what was proposed, who proposed what and on whose authority. Barak, of course, repudiated everything the next day.
0 In the meantime, the election campaign had started in Israel and all the polls showed that Barak was about to be defeated by a landslide. How could Arafat make sweeping concessions to a man who, almost certainly, would lose power within two months? Especially since Barak did not reveal the proposals to his own public?
0 Arafat did not reject the Taba proposals, but declares even now that they must serve as a basis for any future negotiations, while Barak himself proclaims that the Taba proposals are null
and void.
At the end of the trial, the question will remain: Did the accused, Barak, sincerely intend to reach a peace agreement, and only a mixture of arrogance, ignorance and political stupidity
prevented him from achieving this (as Clinton believes, according to Malley), or did he, from the beginning, not have any such intention, but only intended to convince the world that he wanted peace while Arafat wants to throw Israel into the sea?
It’s up to the judges to decide that.
3. Joint Israeli-Palestinian Declaration:
NO TO BLOODSHED, NO TO OCCUPATION
YES TO NEGOTIATIONS, YES TO PEACE
"We, the undersigned Israelis and Palestinians, are meeting in the most difficult of circumstances for both our peoples. We come together to call for an end to bloodshed, an end to occupation, an urgent return to negotiations and the realization of peace between our peoples. We refuse to comply with the ongoing deterioration in our situation, with the growing list of victims, the suffering and the real possibility that we may all be drowned in a sea of mutual
hostility.
"We hereby raise our voices and implore all people of goodwill to return to sanity, to re-discover compassion, humanity, and critical judgment and to reject the unbearable ease of the descent into
fear, hatred, and calls for revenge.
"In spite of everything we still believe in the humanity of the other side, that we have a partner for peace and that a negotiated solution to the conflict between our peoples is possible.
Mistakes have been made on all sides, the trading of accusations and pointing of fingers is not a policy and is no substitute for serious engagement.
"The impression that exists in both communities that 'time is on our side' is illusory. The passage of time benefits only those who do not believe in peace. The longer we wait, the more innocent
blood will be spilt, the greater will be the suffering and hope will be further eroded. We must move urgently to re-build our partnership, to end the de-humanization of the other, and to revive the option of a just peace that holds out promise for our respective futures.
"The way forward lies in international legitimacy and the implementation of UNSCR 242 and 338 leading to a 2-State solution based on the 1967 borders, Israel and Palestine living side by side, with their respective capitals in Jerusalem. Solutions can be found to all outstanding issues that should be fair and just to both sides and should not undermine the sovereignty of the
Palestinian and Israeli states as determined by their respective citizens, and embodying the aspirations to statehood of both peoples, Jewish and Palestinian. This solution should build on
the progress made between November 1999 and January 2001.
"The immediate need is for the full and accurate implementation of the Recommendations of the Mitchell Committee, including: the cessation of violence, a total freeze on settlement activity, the
implementation of outstanding agreements and a return to negotiations. This process needs to be monitored by an objective third party.
"We see it as our duty to work together and each of us in their own communities, to put a halt to the deterioration in our relations, to rebuild trust, belief and the hope for peace."
2 August 2001
On July 26, we (we in this case being Alain and Sonia Epp Weaver, MCC Palestine country representatives) returned to Jerusalem after two months in the US on home leave. While difficult to believe, the situation in the occupied territories has worsened over the past two months. The siege which cuts off town from town, village from village, is tighter than ever. The economic situation is becoming increasingly desparate. Illegal Israeli settlements continue to be built. Few of our friends and partners have much hope for justice and peace breaking in during the near term.
MCC's partners continue to do marvels under exceedingly difficult conditions. The Center for Agricultural Services completed an agricultural road in Sammu' which will help 40 farmers reach their fields. The Union of Agricultural Work Committees distributed 800 boxes of MCC canned turkey meat to farmers engaged in land reclamation as part of a food for work program. The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees completed a road connecting Deir Ibziya with Sufa and Bala'en, after construction on the road between Deir Ibziya and Ein Qinya was halted by the Israeli military.
One year has passed since the failed Camp David II summit. While Israel and the US placed the blame squarely on the Palestinians, the reality of the summit was much different. Robert Malley, former adviser to President Clinton on Arab-Israeli affairs, has published a piece with Hussein Agha in the New York Review of Books which places much of the blame for the summit's failure on former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Meanwhile, Gush Shalom has made available maps of the Israeli proposal, maps which clearly demonstrate why no Palestinian could have accepted what was on the table at Camp David. The maps can be accessed at: http://www.gush-shalom.org/
Below you will find three pieces. The first, by Akiva Eldar, outlines the official PLO version of why Camp David failed. The second, by veteran Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, is a stinging
description of Ehud Barak as a "peace criminal." Finally, we include a joint Palestinian-Israeli declaration calling for an end to bloodshed and the occupation.
1. What went wrong at Camp David - the official PLO version
Akiva Eldar
Haaretz, 24 July 2001
Members of the panel of experts working alongside the Palestinian negotiating team, who have American passports in their possession that open Israel Defense Forces roadblocks, have embarked in recent weeks on a round of appearances throughout Israel. They lecture at living room meetings in homes in Herzliya and meet with forums of confused intellectuals in Jerusalem.
The questions repeat themselves: There is always someone who will ask why Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat reacted with such violence to the very generous proposals of former prime minister Ehud Barak? Had they really been prepared to accept Barak's proposal for an exchange of territories? And how could a pointed question about the right of return fail to be asked?
The young Palestinians, among them a legal adviser from New York and a doctoral student in law from Oxford, pull out an answer -in excellent English - to every question.
When Barak embarked on a spate of attacks against Arafat under the heading "I exposed his true face," the members of the Palestinian panel decided that this time they would not neglect Israeli public opinion. Under the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) logo, they collected the typical questions asked by Israeli listeners and next to them detailed the Palestinian positions and their version of Camp David and the events that snowballed from it.
Their version, especially concerning the map that Barak proposed there, is quite close to the one that Robert Malley, former U.S. president Bill Clinton's special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs, is now publishing in the world press (to Clinton's displeasure).
1. Why did the Palestinians reject the Camp David Peace Proposal?
For a true and lasting peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, there must be two viable and independent states living as equal neighbors. Israel's Camp David proposal, which was never set forth in writing, denied the Palestinian state viability and independence by dividing Palestinian territory into four separate cantons entirely surrounded, and therefore controlled, by Israel.The Camp David proposal also denied Palestinians control over their own borders, airspace and water resources while legitimizing and expanding illegal Israeli colonies in
Palestinian territory. Israel's Camp David proposal presented a 're-packaging' of military occupation, not an end to military occupation.
2. Didn't Israel's proposal give the Palestinians almost all of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967?
No. Israel sought to annex almost 9 percent of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in exchange offered only 1 percent of Israel's own territory. In addition, Israel sought control over an additional 10 percent of the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the form of a "long-term lease." However, the issue is not one of percentages - the issue is one of viability and independence.In a prison for example, 95 percent of the prison compound is ostensibly for the prisoners - cells, cafeterias, gym and medical facilities -but the remaining 5 percent is all that is needed for the prison guards to maintain control over the prisoner population. Similarly, the Camp David proposal, while admittedly making Palestinian prison cells larger, failed to end Israeli control over the Palestinian population.
3. Did the Palestinians accept the idea of a land swap?
The Palestinians were (and are) prepared to consider any idea that is consistent with a fair peace based on international law and equality of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. The Palestinians did consider the idea of a land swap but proposed that such land swap must be based on a one-to-one ratio, with land of equal value and in areas adjacent to the border with Palestine and in the same vicinity as the lands to be annexed by Israel. However, Israel's Camp David proposal of a nine-to-one land swap (in Israel's favor) was viewed as so unfair as to seriously undermine belief in Israel's commitment to a fair territorial compromise.
4. How did Israel's proposal envision the territory of a Palestinian state?
Israel's proposal divided Palestine into four separate cantons surrounded by Israel: the Northern West Bank, the Central West Bank, the Southern West Bank and Gaza. Going from any one area to another would require crossing Israeli sovereign territory and consequently subject movement of Palestinians within their own country to Israeli control. Not only would such restrictions apply to the movement of people, but also to the movement of goods, in effect subjecting the Palestinian economy to Israeli control. Lastly, the Camp David proposal would have left Israel in control over all Palestinian borders, thereby allowing Israel to control not only internal movement of people and goods but international movement as well. Such a Palestinian state would have had less sovereignty and viability than the Bantustans created by the South African apartheid government.
5. How did Israel's proposal address Palestinian East Jerusalem?
The Camp David Proposal required Palestinians to give up any claim to the occupied portion of Jerusalem. The proposal would have forced recognition of Israel's annexation of all of Arab East Jerusalem. Talks after Camp David suggested that Israel was prepared to allow Palestinians sovereignty over isolated Palestinian neighborhoods in the heart of East Jerusalem, however such neighborhoods would remain surrounded by illegal Israeli colonies and would remain separated not only from each other but also from the rest of the Palestinian state. In effect, such a proposal would create Palestinian ghettos in the heart of Jerusalem.
6. Why didn't the Palestinians ever present a comprehensive permanent settlement proposal of their own in response to Barak's proposals?
The comprehensive settlement to the conflict is embodied in United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338, as was accepted by both sides at the Madrid Summit in 1991 and later in the Oslo Accords of 1993. The purpose of the negotiations is to implement these UN [Security Council] resolutions (which call for an Israeli withdrawal from land occupied by force by Israel in 1967) and reach agreement on final status issues. On a number of occasions since Camp David - especially at the Taba talks - the Palestinian negotiating team presented its concept for the resolution of the key permanent status issues. It is important to keep in mind, however, that Israel and the Palestinians are differently situated. Israel seeks broad concessions from the Palestinians. Israel has not offered a single concession involving its own territory and rights. The Palestinians, on the other hand, seek to establish a viable, sovereign state on their own territory, to provide for the withdrawal of Israeli military forces and colonies (which are universally recognized as illegal), and to secure the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes they were forced to flee in 1948. Although Palestinian negotiators have been willing to accommodate legitimate Israeli needs within that context, particularly with respect to security and refugees, it is up to Israel to define these needs and to suggest the narrowest possible means of addressing them.
7. Why did the peace process fall apart just as it was making real progress toward a permanent agreement?
Palestinians entered the peace process on the understanding that (1) it would deliver concrete improvements to their lives during the interim period, (2) that the interim period would be relatively short in duration - i.e., five years, and (3) that a permanent agreement would implement United Nations [Security Council] Resolutions 242 and 338. But the peace process delivered none of these things. Instead, Palestinians suffered more burdensome restrictions on their movement and a serious decline in their economic situation. Israeli colonies expanded at an unprecedented pace and the West Bank and Gaza Strip became more fragmented with the construction of settler "by-pass" roads and the proliferation of Israeli military checkpoints. Deadlines were repeatedly missed in the implementation of agreements. In sum, Palestinians simply did not experience any "progress" in terms of their daily lives.
However, what decisively undermined Palestinian support for the peace process was the way Israel presented its proposal. Prior to entering into the first negotiations on permanent status issues, Prime Minister Barak publicly and repeatedly threatened Palestinians that his "offer" would be Israel's best and final offer and if not accepted, Israel would seriously consider "unilateral separation" (a euphemism for imposing a settlement rather than negotiating one). Palestinians felt that they had been betrayed by Israel who had committed itself at the beginning of the Oslo process to ending its occupation of Palestinian lands in accordance with Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
8. Doesn't the violence which erupted following Camp David prove that Palestinians do not really want to live in peace with Israel?
Palestinians recognized Israel's right to exist in 1988 and reiterated this recognition on several occasions including Madrid in 1991 and the Oslo Accords in September, 1993. Nevertheless, Israel has yet to explicitly and formally recognize Palestine's right to exist. The Palestinian people waited patiently since the Madrid Conference in 1991 for their freedom and independence despite Israel's incessant policy of creating facts on the ground by building colonies in occupied territory (Israeli housing units in Occupied Palestinian Territory - not including East Jerusalem - increased by 52 percent since the signing of the Oslo Accords and the settler population, including those in East Jerusalem, more than doubled). The Palestinians do indeed wish to live at peace with Israel but peace with Israel must be a fair peace not an unfair peace imposed by a stronger party over a weaker party.
9. Doesn't the failure of Camp David prove that the Palestinians are just not prepared to compromise?
The Palestinians have indeed compromised. In the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians recognized Israeli sovereignty over 78 percent of historic Palestine (23 percent more than Israel was granted pursuant to the 1947 UN Partition Plan) on the assumption that the Palestinians would be able to exercise sovereignty over the remaining 22 percent. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians accepted this compromise but this extremely generous compromise was ignored at Camp David and the Palestinians were asked to "compromise the compromise" and make further concessions in favor of Israel. Though the Palestinians can continue to make compromises, no people can be expected to compromise fundamental rights or the viability of their state.
10. Have the Palestinians abandoned the two-state solution and do they now insist on all of historic Palestine?
The current situation has undoubtedly hardened positions on both sides, with extremists in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories claiming all of historic Palestine.
Nevertheless, there is no evidence that the Palestinian Authority or the majority of Palestinians have abandoned the two-state solution. The two-state solution, however, is most seriously threatened by the on-going construction of Israeli colonies and bypass roads aimed at incorporating the Occupied Palestinian Territories into Israel. Without a halt to such construction, a two-state solution may simply be impossible to implement already prompting a number of Palestinian academics and intellectuals to argue that Israel will never allow the Palestinians to have a viable state and Palestinians should instead focus their efforts on obtaining equal rights as Israeli citizens.
11. Isn't it unreasonable for the Palestinians to demand the unlimited right of return to Israel of all Palestinian refugees?
The refugees were never seriously discussed at Camp David because Prime Minister Barak declared that Israel bore no responsibility for the refugee problem or its solution. Obviously, there can be no comprehensive solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict without resolving one of its key components: the plight of the Palestinian refugees.
There is a clearly recognized right under international law that non-combatants who flee during a conflict have the right to return after the conflict is over. But an Israeli recognition of the Palestinian right of return does not mean that all refugees will exercise that right. What is needed in addition to such recognition is the concept of choice. Many refugees may opt for (i) resettlement in third countries, (ii) resettlement in a newly independent Palestine (though they originate from that part of Palestine which became Israel) or (iii) normalization of their legal status in the host country where they currently reside. In addition, the right of return may be implemented in phases so as to address Israel's demographic concerns.
2. The Peace Criminal
Uri Avnery
Gush Shalom, 21 July 2001
Everybody knows who is a war criminal. For example, somebody who kills prisoners-of-war or massacres a civilian population (or allows others to do this) is one.
The time has come to define who is a peace criminal: somebody who kills peace and thereby makes war inevitable. Golda Meir, for example, in the early 70s, killed the chances for peace with Egypt and caused the Yom Kippur war, in which 2000 Israelis and countless others died.
Ehud Barak is such a peace criminal. He brought about the failure of the Camp David summit and its consequence, primarily the present intifada, in which hundred have already died. This
might well lead to a general war, in which thousands will perish.
If there were an International Court for Peace Crimes, Ehud Barak would be indicted on two counts:
Count 1: The accused pressured Arafat and Clinton into agreeing to the summit and brought about its failure by presenting to it an ultimatum of unacceptable proposals.
Count 2: The accused spread the lie that he had offered Arafat “everything he asked for” and that Arafat rejected it. By spreading this lie, the accused destroyed the Israeli peace camp which
believed him, brought the extreme right to power, prepared the ground for a “national unity” based on the lie and almost obliterated any real opposition.
At the Barak trial, evidence will be produced to show that he proposed at Camp David the formal annexation of 10% of the West Bank area (“settlement blocs”) and informal annexation of
another 10% (Jordan valley etc.), with the rest of the territory cut up into enclaves and cut off from the neighboring countries (Egypt and Jordan); that he pretended to “give up” East Jerusalem but without giving the Palestinians full sovereignty there, and especially not over the compound of the mosques (“Temple Mount”); that he did not agree to any compromise on the refugees; and that he demanded that the Palestinians declare this to be “the end of the conflict”.
Until now, Barak’s blind admirers have fervently denied these facts. But this week a witness appeared who could decide the outcome of the trial. He is a neutral and objective eye-witness,
whose integrity cannot be doubted by any judge: Robert Malley, personal assistant to President Clinton on the Middle East, who took part in all the Camp David deliberations. He will testify
to the following facts, among others:
0 Before the summit, Barak reneged on his promise to transfer to the Palestinian Authority the village of Abu Dis and two other villages near Jerusalem, in spite of the fact that Clinton
personally conveyed this promise to Arafat. Also, Barak refused to honor Israel’s obligations under the previous agreements: the third withdrawal from most of the West Bank areas, the release of Palestinian prisoners etc. Because of this, Clinton was furious with Barak on several occasions.
0 Before the summit, Barak continued to enlarge the settlements and build by-pass roads at a furious pace, thus destroying any vestige of Palestinian trust in his intentions.
0 Before and during the summit, the Palestinians not only gave up 78% of Mandatory Palestine, but also agreed to the annexation to Israel of “settlement blocs” and the Jewish neighborhoods built in occupied East Jerusalem. They also agreed to the principle that the Right of Return should be implemented without prejudicing the demographic and security interests of Israel. No other Arab government has ever agreed to similar concessions.
In exchange for the settlement blocs, Barak offered the Palestinians areas amounting to one ninth of the territory to be annexed, a ratio of 1 to 9, without specifying where
0 During the course of the summit, Barak did not submit any proposal in writing nor specify the details of his oral proposals, and, most importantly, did not disclose either to Arafat or even to Clinton his ideas for a final settlement. In return, Arafat, too, did not submit any proposals, so that in practice there was no negotiation at all.
0 Clinton agreed with Arafat that Barak is “politically inept, frustrating and devoid of personal contact warmth”, but believed, in spite of this, that Barak wanted peace. Arafat believed that Barak did not want peace; he only wanted to convince the world that the Palestinians don’t want peace. As a matter of fact, since the summit and until now, Barak’s main boast has been that he “unmasked Arafat”.
0 Clinton has broken his word to Arafat. Before the summit, he promised that if it fails, he would not blame the Palestinians. Only on this condition did Arafat agree to come to the
conference, which took place without proper preparation. After the failure, Clinton put the sole blame on Arafat, in order to help Barak in his eelection campaign.
When Barak’s admirers were compelled to admit that the story about “the generous Camp David offers” is a legend, they fell back to another line: “True, at Camp David no reasonable offers were made, but later, at the Taba meeting in January 2001, much more generous offers were made. These met all Palestinian demands, but were nevertheless rejected by them. At Taba the Israeli negotiators also submitted a map that reduced further the areas that Barak wanted to annex.”
Here are some of the answers:
0 If Barak really wanted to make much more “generous” offers, why did he not make them at Camp David, even when he realized that the summit was about to break down?
0 The failure of the summit caused the outbreak of the intifada, as we (and, it now appears, the Americans, too) prophesied. From that moment on, the political reality on the Palestinian side changed completely, hundreds were killed, and it became much more difficult for Arafat to convince his public opinion to halt the uprising without getting an important political achievement in advance.
0 The Taba proposals were never put to paper, and until this very moment it is not clear what was proposed, who proposed what and on whose authority. Barak, of course, repudiated everything the next day.
0 In the meantime, the election campaign had started in Israel and all the polls showed that Barak was about to be defeated by a landslide. How could Arafat make sweeping concessions to a man who, almost certainly, would lose power within two months? Especially since Barak did not reveal the proposals to his own public?
0 Arafat did not reject the Taba proposals, but declares even now that they must serve as a basis for any future negotiations, while Barak himself proclaims that the Taba proposals are null
and void.
At the end of the trial, the question will remain: Did the accused, Barak, sincerely intend to reach a peace agreement, and only a mixture of arrogance, ignorance and political stupidity
prevented him from achieving this (as Clinton believes, according to Malley), or did he, from the beginning, not have any such intention, but only intended to convince the world that he wanted peace while Arafat wants to throw Israel into the sea?
It’s up to the judges to decide that.
3. Joint Israeli-Palestinian Declaration:
NO TO BLOODSHED, NO TO OCCUPATION
YES TO NEGOTIATIONS, YES TO PEACE
"We, the undersigned Israelis and Palestinians, are meeting in the most difficult of circumstances for both our peoples. We come together to call for an end to bloodshed, an end to occupation, an urgent return to negotiations and the realization of peace between our peoples. We refuse to comply with the ongoing deterioration in our situation, with the growing list of victims, the suffering and the real possibility that we may all be drowned in a sea of mutual
hostility.
"We hereby raise our voices and implore all people of goodwill to return to sanity, to re-discover compassion, humanity, and critical judgment and to reject the unbearable ease of the descent into
fear, hatred, and calls for revenge.
"In spite of everything we still believe in the humanity of the other side, that we have a partner for peace and that a negotiated solution to the conflict between our peoples is possible.
Mistakes have been made on all sides, the trading of accusations and pointing of fingers is not a policy and is no substitute for serious engagement.
"The impression that exists in both communities that 'time is on our side' is illusory. The passage of time benefits only those who do not believe in peace. The longer we wait, the more innocent
blood will be spilt, the greater will be the suffering and hope will be further eroded. We must move urgently to re-build our partnership, to end the de-humanization of the other, and to revive the option of a just peace that holds out promise for our respective futures.
"The way forward lies in international legitimacy and the implementation of UNSCR 242 and 338 leading to a 2-State solution based on the 1967 borders, Israel and Palestine living side by side, with their respective capitals in Jerusalem. Solutions can be found to all outstanding issues that should be fair and just to both sides and should not undermine the sovereignty of the
Palestinian and Israeli states as determined by their respective citizens, and embodying the aspirations to statehood of both peoples, Jewish and Palestinian. This solution should build on
the progress made between November 1999 and January 2001.
"The immediate need is for the full and accurate implementation of the Recommendations of the Mitchell Committee, including: the cessation of violence, a total freeze on settlement activity, the
implementation of outstanding agreements and a return to negotiations. This process needs to be monitored by an objective third party.
"We see it as our duty to work together and each of us in their own communities, to put a halt to the deterioration in our relations, to rebuild trust, belief and the hope for peace."
Friday, May 11
MCC Palestine Update #22
MCC Palestine Update #22
In conversations over the past couple of months with Palestinian partners and other international workers, the conviction is continually raised that the situation could not get worse. This must reflect a desperate wish rather than reality, because things do seem to keep getting worse. The past two weeks have seen horrific killings: the shell which killed four-month old Iman Hijo in Khan Younis refugee camps while in her mother's arms; Yossi Ishran and Kobi Mendel, two Israeli teenagers from the settlement of Tekoa' bludgeoned to death; eighteen-year-old Kifah Zu'rub who died from wounds received when settlers in the Mawasi region in the Gush Katif bloc of settlements west of Khan Younis unleashed their dogs on him as he returned home from school. Over 410 Palestinians and nearly 80 Israeli Jews have been killed since September 28, 2000. The perpetuation of the occupation is clearly not bringing peace and security, either to Palestinians or to Israelis.
More than ever your prayers and action for justice and peace are needed. MCC has produced worship and advocacy resources for personal and congregational use. These materials are now available on MCC's website at the following URL: http://www.mcc.org/middleeast/worship.html Feel free to copy, pass around, plagiarize, etc.
We (Alain and Sonia Epp Weaver and children) will be out of the country on home leave for the coming two months. The Palestine updates will be suspended during this time. The following websites are useful sources of regularly updated information and comment on the situation in Palestine/Israel:
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/
http://www.arij.org/
http://www.hdip.org/
http://www.pchrgaza.org/
http://www.lawsociety.org/
http://www.sabeel.org/
http://www.rapprochement.org/
Below you will find an interview with the Rev. Naim Ateek, director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. If you would like additional comments by Israeli journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, please contact J. Daryl Byler in the MCC Washington Office (jdb@mcc.org).
Alain Epp Weaver, MCC Jerusalem Office
1. Palestine Report Interview: Rev. Naim Ateek
Palestine Report, 9 May 2001
This week Palestine Report Online interviews director of Sabeel Reverend Naim Ateek on the role of Palestinian and international Christians in the Aqsa Intifada.
PR: How do you see the role of Palestinian Christians in the ongoing Intifada?
Ateek: I see it in a number of ways, both locally and internationally. Locally, I think there have been a number of voices from the Christian community speaking out against the Israeli oppression. This was done through public speeches, through statements from churches and from other non-church organizations, and some of it has been carried out in the media. A person like Archmandrite Atallah Hanna has played a very significant role expressing the voice of the Christian community, especially regionally. I went with him to Morocco to meet with a group of foreign ministers and he has played a significant role in expressing the solidarity between Christians and Muslims and the importance of justice for Palestinians and the fact that Israel is not ready to honor United Nations resolutions. Internationally, I think a number of us have gone out, attending conferences, educating people, updating them on the situation, asking for a greater advocacy, helping people interpret the situation correctly. I think also that there have been a number of Christians getting together, not only by themselves, but also with Muslims and Jews, to strategize. In addition, I think that by and large (although I obviously cannot speak for all Christians and how Christians feel), many Christians know that if they are faithful to the Gospel, any resistance to injustice has to be done through non-violent action. I think that there has been a number of us who have been talking about the importance of nonviolent action and a non-violent resistance. The basic thing that I need to emphasize here is that we as a Christian community cannot sit back and watch things happen. Involvement is very important but our involvement is not in the area of an armed struggle, but in doing whatever we can non-violently towards the ending of the occupation. What all of us agree on is that the occupation must end.
PR: How do you view the Intifada in general? Would you prefer that the entire Intifada were non-violent?
Ateek: Let me begin with the premise that resisting injustice is a legitimate thing for any nation or any people who are living under oppression. I think the world community has legitimized rebellion. Whether we like it or not, resistance usually takes on the form of an armed struggle. Hopefully, there is also a resistance that is done non-violently. Now, this doesn't mean that all Christians believe in non-violence. But thank God there have always been Christians who believe that non-violence is the way to go. I believe that the Intifada is important and the Intifada is legitimate because Israel is not willing to give up its injustice and its control over all of Palestine and implement United Nations resolutions. I would like, personally, that [the Intifada] is conducted on more nonviolent terms. I believe that we will get greater support from the world community, including many Israelis, if we strengthen nonviolent action. There are also Palestinians who do feel uncomfortable with armed resistance, although the general feeling is that armed struggle is a quicker way. Unfortunately, the price is also very high, not only the physical price, but also the psychological, which remains within the community for many years. I am not saying that non-violent resistance does not have its price. It is also costly, but it is somehow the more human way of doing things, I think.
PR: I wanted to ask you about the growing dispute in the Bethlehem area between the local Christian communities and the armed fighters. There were reports in Ha'aretz that Christians were speaking out against the fighters coming into their neighborhoods and firing at the Israeli settlements, after which the Israeli military strikes hard at the neighborhood. It seems that this there has been some name-calling and leaflet-writing in both directions and I wonder if you could give us some perspective on that.
Ateek: I have not read these reports, but I can give you some perspective. I don't think it is right for anyone to shoot between the houses. I don't think this is the right way of resisting. If these people want to resist, they have to know how to do it and they have to do it in an organized way and not jeopardize the lives of civilians. If it is their choice to have armed resistance, they have to be much more mature and organized. I do think there is legitimate criticism there. There are all kinds of other things they can do. I think it is right for us to say to these people, to whoever it is, "Please think about it. If your family is there, would you do it? Think about it in the right way and don't add to the suffering of our people." We are already suffering from all kinds of things.
PR: Some people would say that making such a public outcry about the fighters shooting from certain neighborhoods will only create divisions in the Palestinian people, to be exploited by Israel.
Ateek: I would say that any honest criticism done with integrity is much needed. I think this is a very healthy thing. I would be very upset if we didn't like what is happening and we kept our mouths shut. I think part of the health of the community is to say clearly that this action is unacceptable and must stop. I think that kind of debate in the community, although it might be exploited here and there (and usually there is always exploitation of these things), is a healthier community that really speaks out against injustices. Obviously, it has to be done in the right way, in the right spirit, to the right people and once it is done that way, it will not cause friction in the community.
-Published 9/5/01 (c)Palestine Report
In conversations over the past couple of months with Palestinian partners and other international workers, the conviction is continually raised that the situation could not get worse. This must reflect a desperate wish rather than reality, because things do seem to keep getting worse. The past two weeks have seen horrific killings: the shell which killed four-month old Iman Hijo in Khan Younis refugee camps while in her mother's arms; Yossi Ishran and Kobi Mendel, two Israeli teenagers from the settlement of Tekoa' bludgeoned to death; eighteen-year-old Kifah Zu'rub who died from wounds received when settlers in the Mawasi region in the Gush Katif bloc of settlements west of Khan Younis unleashed their dogs on him as he returned home from school. Over 410 Palestinians and nearly 80 Israeli Jews have been killed since September 28, 2000. The perpetuation of the occupation is clearly not bringing peace and security, either to Palestinians or to Israelis.
More than ever your prayers and action for justice and peace are needed. MCC has produced worship and advocacy resources for personal and congregational use. These materials are now available on MCC's website at the following URL: http://www.mcc.org/middleeast/worship.html Feel free to copy, pass around, plagiarize, etc.
We (Alain and Sonia Epp Weaver and children) will be out of the country on home leave for the coming two months. The Palestine updates will be suspended during this time. The following websites are useful sources of regularly updated information and comment on the situation in Palestine/Israel:
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/
http://www.arij.org/
http://www.hdip.org/
http://www.pchrgaza.org/
http://www.lawsociety.org/
http://www.sabeel.org/
http://www.rapprochement.org/
Below you will find an interview with the Rev. Naim Ateek, director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. If you would like additional comments by Israeli journalists Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, please contact J. Daryl Byler in the MCC Washington Office (jdb@mcc.org).
Alain Epp Weaver, MCC Jerusalem Office
1. Palestine Report Interview: Rev. Naim Ateek
Palestine Report, 9 May 2001
This week Palestine Report Online interviews director of Sabeel Reverend Naim Ateek on the role of Palestinian and international Christians in the Aqsa Intifada.
PR: How do you see the role of Palestinian Christians in the ongoing Intifada?
Ateek: I see it in a number of ways, both locally and internationally. Locally, I think there have been a number of voices from the Christian community speaking out against the Israeli oppression. This was done through public speeches, through statements from churches and from other non-church organizations, and some of it has been carried out in the media. A person like Archmandrite Atallah Hanna has played a very significant role expressing the voice of the Christian community, especially regionally. I went with him to Morocco to meet with a group of foreign ministers and he has played a significant role in expressing the solidarity between Christians and Muslims and the importance of justice for Palestinians and the fact that Israel is not ready to honor United Nations resolutions. Internationally, I think a number of us have gone out, attending conferences, educating people, updating them on the situation, asking for a greater advocacy, helping people interpret the situation correctly. I think also that there have been a number of Christians getting together, not only by themselves, but also with Muslims and Jews, to strategize. In addition, I think that by and large (although I obviously cannot speak for all Christians and how Christians feel), many Christians know that if they are faithful to the Gospel, any resistance to injustice has to be done through non-violent action. I think that there has been a number of us who have been talking about the importance of nonviolent action and a non-violent resistance. The basic thing that I need to emphasize here is that we as a Christian community cannot sit back and watch things happen. Involvement is very important but our involvement is not in the area of an armed struggle, but in doing whatever we can non-violently towards the ending of the occupation. What all of us agree on is that the occupation must end.
PR: How do you view the Intifada in general? Would you prefer that the entire Intifada were non-violent?
Ateek: Let me begin with the premise that resisting injustice is a legitimate thing for any nation or any people who are living under oppression. I think the world community has legitimized rebellion. Whether we like it or not, resistance usually takes on the form of an armed struggle. Hopefully, there is also a resistance that is done non-violently. Now, this doesn't mean that all Christians believe in non-violence. But thank God there have always been Christians who believe that non-violence is the way to go. I believe that the Intifada is important and the Intifada is legitimate because Israel is not willing to give up its injustice and its control over all of Palestine and implement United Nations resolutions. I would like, personally, that [the Intifada] is conducted on more nonviolent terms. I believe that we will get greater support from the world community, including many Israelis, if we strengthen nonviolent action. There are also Palestinians who do feel uncomfortable with armed resistance, although the general feeling is that armed struggle is a quicker way. Unfortunately, the price is also very high, not only the physical price, but also the psychological, which remains within the community for many years. I am not saying that non-violent resistance does not have its price. It is also costly, but it is somehow the more human way of doing things, I think.
PR: I wanted to ask you about the growing dispute in the Bethlehem area between the local Christian communities and the armed fighters. There were reports in Ha'aretz that Christians were speaking out against the fighters coming into their neighborhoods and firing at the Israeli settlements, after which the Israeli military strikes hard at the neighborhood. It seems that this there has been some name-calling and leaflet-writing in both directions and I wonder if you could give us some perspective on that.
Ateek: I have not read these reports, but I can give you some perspective. I don't think it is right for anyone to shoot between the houses. I don't think this is the right way of resisting. If these people want to resist, they have to know how to do it and they have to do it in an organized way and not jeopardize the lives of civilians. If it is their choice to have armed resistance, they have to be much more mature and organized. I do think there is legitimate criticism there. There are all kinds of other things they can do. I think it is right for us to say to these people, to whoever it is, "Please think about it. If your family is there, would you do it? Think about it in the right way and don't add to the suffering of our people." We are already suffering from all kinds of things.
PR: Some people would say that making such a public outcry about the fighters shooting from certain neighborhoods will only create divisions in the Palestinian people, to be exploited by Israel.
Ateek: I would say that any honest criticism done with integrity is much needed. I think this is a very healthy thing. I would be very upset if we didn't like what is happening and we kept our mouths shut. I think part of the health of the community is to say clearly that this action is unacceptable and must stop. I think that kind of debate in the community, although it might be exploited here and there (and usually there is always exploitation of these things), is a healthier community that really speaks out against injustices. Obviously, it has to be done in the right way, in the right spirit, to the right people and once it is done that way, it will not cause friction in the community.
-Published 9/5/01 (c)Palestine Report
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