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March 2009

ISRAEL-PALESTINE IN THE NEW POLITICAL CONFIGURATION: FUTURE PROSPECTS

PANEL DISCUSSION

“Université Libre de Bruxelles”
Paul Emile JANSON Auditorium

Thursday 26 march at 20.00 p.m.

Speakers:

Maha abu Dayyeh, Director Women’s Center for Legal Aid
and Counseling (WCLAC)

Bassam Ezbidi, political Sciences Professor at Birzeit
University

Naomi Chazan, Former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset (Merets),
Chair New Israel Fund (NIF), Head School of Government and Society, Academic
College of Tel Aviv Yaffo

Yossi Alpher, Coeditor of the Bitterlemons.org family of
internet publications and former Director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic
Studies at Tel Aviv University

Hussein Agha, senior Associate, member of St Anthony’s
College, Oxford

Scott Lasensky, Senior Research Associate, US Institute of
Peace,Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, Author of Negociating
Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Meaddle East

Yves Aubin de la Messusière, former Director at the Quai
d’Orsay for the Middle-East, Vice-President of the “Institut du Monde Arabe”

Chair: Simone Susskind, Actions in the Mediterranean

Partners:
Cercle du Libre Examen
Institut Marcel Liebmann
Dor Hashalom
Israel-Palestine: Europe: Réveille-toi

With the Support of the Heinrich Böll Fondation and the Pôle Berheim – Paix
et Citoyenneté

The evening will be in English with simultaneous translation

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SOLIDSNAKE 112 WAKEUPPROJECT COM Obama and israel Gaza

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Wake up project

and soon enough

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GAZA REFLECTS

Viva Palestina Email Alert
23.00 (GMT) Sunday 15th March 2005

They have gone. The ‘angels’, some called them ‘saviours’, but in reality just ordinary men and women who took part in an extraordinary act – and in doing so brought hope and put smiles on the faces of thousands of Gaza children have all finally left.

All that remains in Gaza is the aid they left behind – the right-hand drive vehicles including many ambulances, now roaming the streets of Rafah, Khan Younes, Beit Hanoun and Gaza City – and the memories.

The memories of those heroes, from all walks of life, who crossed continents to reach them, of the jokes and laughter they shared, of the tales of suffering they found the courage to speak about to their guests.

At the Rafah crossing, where they numbered in excess of sixty five, they were inconsolable. Some of them sobbing, whilst others were speechless, sitting at the back of the coach on the way to Cairo, reflecting on what they have just witnessed and left behind.

After a long wait, they all headed for Al Arich, the scene of their final push towards Rafah barely a week ago. More waiting was to follow until transport was finally arranged and their journey home began.

Yet things are never that easy. Last night, some of our team spent several hours in the unscheduled company of scores of armed Egyptian police at the side of the road. But the waiting, tense at first, was relieved with the arrival of food and tea, brought by the Libyan drivers from the convoy. More police then arrived with a van full of plastic chairs, so at least they could all sit down as they waited for ‘instructions’! In the end common sense prevailed and our team joined the Libyans in their compound for the evening.

Contacts have been established, money was pledged or handed over for a multitude of projects by Viva Palestina.

Whilst world leaders are pledging billions for Gaza there remain disagreements on who should take charge of the reconstruction. Viva Palestina have started the process, George Galloway and the team walked the walk.

It took one man to show the way and open the door for other brave men and women to reach this besieged concentration camp known as the Gaza Strip.

Khalid Amayresh wrote ‘I salute you for challenging the forces of hypocrisy and moral duplicity back in Britain who instead of calling Israel a criminal state ruled by an evil clique of war criminals, by its real name, hasten to blame the helpless victims for surviving the recent genocide in Gaza and clinging to life, dignity and freedom.’

‘I salute you for being a “non-conformist”, because in a world overwhelmed by hypocrisy, immorality, human depravity, unethical expediency, and repulsive political correctness, it takes a true non-conformist to uphold true human values. And above all, I salute you for exposing and putting to shame the treacherous Arab leaders who played their fiddle while Gaza was burning’. The same is true of everyone who made this convoy possible.

Tonight Gaza reflects, stronger, with some more hope and belief than before. Viva Palestina was our lifeline for Gaza injecting love and hope into the veins of Palestinians. Tonight Gaza reflects on the ‘angels’ who came to town and they know that angels always come back.

Farid Arada (additional reporting by Clive Searle)

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Despair and rage among Gaza’s youths

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Gazan youths Mohammad al-Mukayed, 22 (left) and Hassan Abu al-Jeddian, 23 (centre).
Mohammad (left) is thinking of joining the militants, but Hassan (centre) stresses he remains a “civilian”

By Heather Sharp
BBC News, Gaza

Ten young men sit talking and smoking by the light of a paraffin lamp in a basement room.

The flags of militant groups – Hamas, Islamic Jihad – flutter outside among the densely packed cinder-block houses of Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp.

The area is a key haunt of the factions behind the rocket attacks that Israel’s recent assault on Gaza was aimed at ending.

Its frustrated, mainly unemployed youths are prime recruitment targets for the militants.

But as the young men, sitting in coats in the unheated room, mull over Israel’s 22-day operation, despair is as common a theme as revenge.

About half of the group say they have been members of armed groups at some point. Others now say they want to join.

I hope an earthquake flattens this place
I hope an earthquake flattens this place

READ ON

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Al Jazeera English : The week in Gaza

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Ilan Pappé

Ilan Pappé videos

Galloway meets Pappé, I

Galloway meets Pappé II

Galloway and Pappé III

The present dismal reality unfolding in the Middle East has clear historical roots and a journey into the past may help to illuminate what lies behind the destructive policies of Israel in both Palestine and Lebanon.

Zionism arrived in Palestine in the late 19th as a colonialist movement motivated by national impulses.

The colonisation of Palestine fitted well the interests and policies of the British Empire on the eve of the First World War.

With the backing of Britain, the colonisation project expanded, and became a solid presence on the land after the war and with the establishment of the British mandate in Palestine (which lasted between 1918 and 1948).

While this consolidation took place, the indigenous society underwent, like other societies in the rest of the Arab world, a steady process of establishing a national identity.

But with one difference. While the rest of the Arab world was shaping its political identity through the struggle against European colonialism, in Palestine nationalism meant asserting your collective identity against both an exploitative British colonialism and expansionist Zionism.

Thus, the conflict with Zionism was an additional burden. The pro-Zionist policy of the British mandate there naturally strained the relationship between Britain and the local Palestinian society.

This climaxed in a revolt in 1936 against both London and the expanding Zionist colonisation project.

At the end of November 1947, the UN offered to divide Palestine into two states almost equal in their territorial space. The Jews were only one third of the population by 1947 and most of them had arrived in Palestine only a few years earlier.

The categorical Palestinian refusal to go along with this deal, backed by the Arab League, allowed the Zionist leadership to plan carefully the next step. Between February 1947 and March 1948, a final plan for ethnic cleansing was prepared.

The Zionist leadership defined 80 percent of Palestine (Israel today without the West Bank) as the space for the future state.

This was an area in which one million Palestinians lived next to 600,000 Jews.

The idea was to uproot as many Palestinians as possible. From March 1948 until the end of that year the plan was implemented despite the attempt by some Arab states to oppose it, which failed. Some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled, 531 villages were destroyed and 11 urban neighbourhoods demolished.

Half of Palestine’s population was uprooted and half of its villages destroyed. The state of Israel was established in over 80 percent of Palestine, turning Palestinian villages into Jewish settlements and recreation parks, but allowing a small number of Palestinian to remain citizens in it.

The June 1967 war allowed Israel to take the remaining 20 percent of Palestine.

This seizure defeated in a way the ethnic ideology of the Zionist movement. Israel encompassed 100 percent of Palestine, but the state incorporated a large number of Palestinians, the people who Zionists made such an effort to expel in 1948.

The fact that Israel was let off easily in 1948, and not condemned for the ethnic cleansing it committed, encouraged it to ethnically cleanse a further 300,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

http://www.ilanpappe.org

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Israeli wins French prize for book questioning origins of Jewish people

By Maya Sela, Haaretz Correspondent

Professor Shlomo Sand, the Tel Aviv University history professor and author of a controversial book on the genetic origins of the Jews, this week received a top critics prize from French journalists.

Sand, whose book “When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?” ignited controversy in Israel and in Jewish circles, is the recipient of the Aujourd’hui Award, which is given to the best non-fiction political or historical work.

The book, which was published by the Resling imprint, spent 19 weeks on the bestseller list in Israel. Though it has been in bookstores for just six months in France, it has thus far sold 25,000 copies, good enough to remain on the bestseller list.

Sand’s book deals with questions that remain taboo in Israeli society, among them the ancestral origins of the Jewish people and the genetic lineage shared with modern-day Israelis.

Past winners of the prize include French intellectual Raymond Aron, literary critic George Steiner, author Milan Kundera, and historian Francois Pare

Have a look at the comments to this article

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Iraqi jailed for Bush shoe attack

Mr Zaidi's lawyers say he was making a legitimate protest
Mr Zaidi's lawyers say he was making a legitimate protest

An Iraqi journalist hailed as a hero in the Arab world for throwing his shoes at former US President George W Bush has been jailed for three years.

Muntadar al-Zaidi had told the court his actions were “natural, just like any Iraqi” against a leader whose forces had occupied his country.

Shoe hurling is a grave insult in Arab culture, but Mr Bush – on a farewell trip to Iraq – shrugged off the attack.

Defence lawyers described the sentence as “harsh” and said they would appeal.

The head of Zaidi’s team Dhiaa al-Saadi said the sentence was “not in harmony with the law” because his client had not meant to cause injury, but rather to express contempt for Mr Bush.

There has been no statement about the verdict from the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, which correspondents say suffered acute embarrassment over the incident.

‘Response to occupation’

The BBC’s Mike Sergeant who was at Thursday’s court hearing says relatives and supporters of the defendant came to court expecting him to be released.

Asked by presiding judge Abdul-Amir al-Rubaie if he was innocent or guilty, Zaidi replied: “I am innocent. What I did was a natural response to the occupation.”

After the final arguments by the defence lawyers, everyone was told to leave the room. The judges deliberated for a further 15 minutes, and an increasingly frustrated crowd gathered outside.

When news of the sentence filtered through, some relatives began to cry and scream insults at the judges.

They shouted “It’s an American court”, “He’s a hero”, “Down with President Bush” and “God is great”.

SOURCE

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