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On the Future of Israel and Palestine

An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky

By FRANK BARAT

Barat: Thanks for accepting this interview. Firstly I would like to ask if you are working on something at the moment that you would like to let us know about?

Ilan Pappé: I am completing several books. The first is a concise history of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the other is on the Palestinian minority in Israel and one on the Arab Jews. I am completing an edited volume comparing the South Africa situation to that of Palestine

Noam Chomsky: The usual range of articles, talks, etc.  No time for major projects right now.

Barat: A British M.P recently said that he had felt a change in the last 5 years regarding Israel. British M.Ps nowadays sign E.D.M (Early Day Motions) condemning Israel in bigger number than ever before and he told us that it was now easier to express criticism towards Israel even when talking on U.S campuses.

Also, in the last few weeks, John Dugard, independent investigator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the U.N Human Right Council said that “Palestinian terror ‘inevitable’ result of occupation”, the European parliament adopted a resolution saying that “policy of isolation of the Gaza strip has failed at both the political and humanitarian level” and the U.N and the E.U have condemned Israel use of excessive and disproportionate force in the Gaza strip.

Could we interpret that as a general shift in attitude towards Israel?

READ ON

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Vittorio Arrigoni, Gaza, January 9, 2009

Take some kittens, some tender little moggies in a box”, said Jamal, a surgeon at the Al Shifa, Gaza’s main hospital, while a nurse actually placed a couple of blood-stained cardboard boxes in front of us. “Seal up the box, then jump on it with all your weight and might, until you feel their little bones crunching, and you hear the last muffled little mew.” I stared at the boxes in astonishment, and the doctor continued: “Try to imagine what would happen after such images were circulated. The righteous outrage of public opinion, the complaints of the animal rights organisations…” The doctors went on in this vein, and I was unable to take my eyes off those boxes, sitting at our feet. “Israel trapped hundreds of civilians inside a school as if in a box, including many children, and then crushed them with all the might of its bombs. What were the world’s reactions? Almost nothing. We would have been better off as animals rather than Palestinians, we would have been more protected.”

At this point the doctor leans towards one of the boxes, and takes its lid off in front of me. Inside it are the amputated limbs, legs and arms, some from the knee down, others with the entire femur attached, amputated from the injured at the Al Fakhura United Nations school in Jabalia, which resulted in more than fifity casualties. Pretending to be taking an urgent call, I took my leave of Jamal, actually rushing to the bathroom to bend over and throw up.

A little earlier I’d been involved in a conversation with Dr. Abdel, an ophtalmologist, regarding the rumours that the Israeli Army had been showering us with non-conventional weapons, forbidden by the Geneva Convention, such as cluster bombs and white phosphorous. The very same that the Tsahal Army used in the last Lebanese war, as well as the US air force in Falluja, still violating international norms. In front of Al Auda hospital we witnessed and filmed white phosphorous bombs being used about five hundred metres from where we were, too far to be absolutely certain there were any civilians underneath the Israeli Apaches, but so terribly close to us all the same.

The Geneva Treaty of 1980 forbids white phosphorous being used directly as a war weapon in civilian areas, allowing it only as a smoke screen or for lighting. There’s no doubt that using this weapon in Gaza, a strip of land concentrating the highest population rate in the world, is a crime all on its own. Doctor Abdel told me that at Al Shifa hospital they don’t have the medical and military competence to say for sure whether the wounds they examined on certain corpses were indeed provoked by white phosphorous bullets.

But on his word, in twenty years on the job he had never seen casualties like those now being carried into the ward. He told me about the traumas to the skull, with the fractures to the vomer bone, the jaw, the cheekbones, tear duct, nasal and palatine bones showed signs of the collision of an immense force against the victim’s face. What he finds inexplicable is the total lack of eyeballs, which ought to leave a trace somewhere within the skull even in case of such a violent impact. Instead, we see Palestinian corpses coming into the hospitals without eyes at all, as if someone had removed them surgically before handing them over to the coroner.

Israel has let us know that we’ve been granted a daily 3-hour truce, from 1:00 to 4:00 PM. These statements from the Israeli military summit are considered by the people of Gaza as having the same reliability as the Hamas leaders’ declarations that they’ve just provoked a massacre of enemy soldiers. Just to be clear on this point, the soldiers of Tel Aviv’s worse enemy are the very same who fight under the Star of David. Yesterday a war ship off the coast of Gaza’s port picked out a large group of alleged guerrilla fighters from the Palestinian Resistance, moving as a united front around Jabalia. They shot their cannons at them. But as it turned out, they were their own fellow soldiers, with the shooting resulting in three being killed and about twenty injured. No one here believes in the truces that Israel declares, and as it happens, today at 2:00 PM Rafah was under attack by the Israeli helicopters. There was also yet another massacre of children in Jabalia: three little sisters aged 2, 4 and 6 from the Abed Rabbu family were slaughtered. Just half an hour earlier in Jabalia, once again the  Red Crescent hospital’s ambulances were under attack. Eva and Alberto, my ISM colleagues were on board that ambulance and managed to film everything, passing those videos and photos on to all the major media.

Hassan was kneecapped, fresh from mourning the death of his friend Araf, a paramedic who was killed two days ago as he came in aid of the injured in Gaza City. They had stopped to pick up the body of a man languishing in agony in the middle of the road, when they were under fire by about ten shots from an Israeli sniper. One bullet hit Hassan in the knee and the ambulance was filled with holes. We’re now at a death toll of 688, in addition to 3,070 injured, 158 dead children and countless missing. Only yesterday, we counted 83 dead, 80 of which were civilians. Thankfully, the death toll on the Israeli side is still only at 4.

Travelling towards Al Quds hospital, where I’ll be working all night on the ambulances, as I raced along on board one of the very few fearless taxis left, zig-zagging to avoid the bombs, on the corner of one street I saw a group of dirty street urchins with tattered clothes, looking exactly like the “sciuscià” kids of the Italian afterwar period. They threw stones towards the sky with slingshots, at far away and unapproachable enemy who was toying with their lives. This is a crazy metaphor, which could serve as a snapshot of the absurdity of this time and place.

Stay human

Vittorio Arrigoni
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Israel and international law

Watch Phyllis Bennis

Bennis: Calling a TV station pro-Hamas does not make it a military target Pt.2/2

On the eleventh day of the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, two UN schools were bombed by Israeli jets. The schools were housing people who had been displaced from their homes as a result of the conflict, and the Associate Press reports that 37 civilians were killed in the attacks. As the costs of the conflict to civilian populations continues to increase, the Real News spoke to Phyllis Bennis to find out what international law has to say about the events. Phyllis believes that while certain key members of the UN apparatus have spoken out against international law violations, the power structure of the Security Council continues to make definitive action impossible.

Bio

Phyllis Bennis is a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. She is the author of Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis , Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the UN Defy US Power. and Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer.

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From As’ad

Thursday, January 08, 2009

763 Palestinians killed 3121 injured

Don’t forget. Don’t forgive.
Posted by As’ad at 7:58 AM
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Song for Gaza : we will not go down

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlfhoU66s4Y

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No pasaran

From the Angry Arab

You Shall not Pass

From the Land Poem by Mahmud Darwish (As’ad’s translation):
“O you who are crossing over my body
You shall not pass
I am the land in a body
You shall not pass
I am the land in its splendor
You shall not pass
I am the land
O you who cross on the land
in its splendor
You shall not pass
You shall not pass
You shall not pass!”
Posted by As’ad at 3:39 PM

State of Siege

From Mahmud Darwish’s State of Siege (As’ad’s translation):
“Standing here. Sitting here. Always here.
Immortals here. And we have one one goal:
To be.
After that, we disagree on everything;
on the shape of the national flag
[You will do well, o my living people, if you choose
the symbol of a simple donkey]
on the words of the new national anthem
[you will do well if you select a song about the marriage of doves]
on the duties of women
[you will do well if you select a woman to head
the security apparatus]
we disagree on the percentages
on the public and the private;
we disagree on everything. We have one goal:
to be…
After that, the individual will find
the space to select the goal.”
Posted by As’ad at 3:04 PM
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Israel’s fait accompli in Gaza

 
from al jazeera
 
 By Eric S. Margolis  
 

There are two completely different versions of what is currently happening in Gaza.
 
In the Israeli and North American press version, Hamas – ‘Islamic terrorists’ backed by Iran – have in an unprovoked attack fired deadly rockets on innocent Israel with the intent of destroying the Jewish state.

North American politicians and the media say Israel “has the right to defend itself”. 
 
True enough. No Israeli government can tolerate rockets hitting its towns, even though the casualty totals have been less than the car crash fatalities registered during a single holiday weekend on Israel’s roads.   
 
The firing of the feeble, home-made al-Qassam rockets by Palestinians is both useless and counter-productive.
 
It damages their image as an oppressed people and gives right-wing Israeli extremists a perfect reason to launch more attacks on the Arabs and refuse to discuss peace.  
 
Israel’s supporters insist it has the absolute right to drop hundreds of tonnes of bombs on ‘Hamas targets’ inside the 360sq km Gaza Strip to ‘take out the terrorists’.
 
Civilians suffer, says Israel, because the cowardly Hamas hide among them. 
 
Actually, it is more like shooting fish in a barrel.
 
Omitting facts
 
As usual, this cartoon-like version of events omits a great deal of nuance and background. 
 

 
]

While firing rockets at civilians is a crime so, too, is the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which is an egregious violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions.
 
According to the UN, most of Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinian refugees subsist near the edge of hunger. Seventy per cent of Palestinian children in Gaza suffer from severe malnutrition and psychological trauma. 
 
Medical facilities are critically short of doctors, personnel, equipment, and drugs. Gaza has quite literally become a human garbage dump for all the Arabs that Israel does not want.
 
Gaza is one of the world’s most-densely populated places, a vast outdoor prison camp filled with desperate people. In the past, they threw stones at their Israeli occupiers; now they launch home-made rockets.

Call it a prison riot, writ large.
 
Eyeing the elections
 
When the so-called truce between Tel Aviv and Hamas expired on December 19, Israeli politicians were in the throes of preparing for the February 10 national elections.
 
Israeli politics are playing a key role in this crisis.
 
Ehud Barak, the defence minister and leader of the Labour party, and Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and leader of the Kadima party, are trying to prove themselves tougher than Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line Likud party – and one another. 
 
Israel’s elections are only six weeks away, and Likud was leading until the air raids on Gaza began. Kadima and Labour are now up in the polls. 
 
The heavy attacks on Gaza are also designed to intimidate Israel’s Arab neighbours, and make up for Israel’s humiliating 2006 defeat in Lebanon, which still haunts the country’s politicians and generals. 
 
A fait accompli
 
When the air raids on Gaza began, Barak said: “We have totally changed the rules of the game.”
 
He was right. By blitzing Hamas-run Gaza, Barak presented the incoming US administration with a fait accompli, and neatly checkmated the newest player in the Middle East Great Game – Barack Obama, the US president-elect – before he could even take a seat at the table.
 

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The Israeli offensive into Gaza now looks likely to short-circuit any plans Obama might have had to press Israel into withdrawing to its pre-1967 borders and sharing Jerusalem.

This has pleased Israel’s supporters in North America who have been cheering the war in Gaza and have been backing away from their earlier tentative support for a land-for-peace deal. 

Israel’s successes in having Western media portray the Gaza offensive as an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ will also diminish hopes of peace talks any time soon.

Obama inherits this mess in a few weeks. During the elections, Obama bowed to the Israel lobby, offering a new US carte blanche to Israel and even accepting Israel’s permanent monopoly of all of Jerusalem. 
 
As he concludes forming his cabinet, his Middle East team looks like it may be top-heavy with friends of Israel’s Labour party. 

Obama keeps saying he must remain silent on policy issues until George Bush, the outgoing US president, leaves office, but his staff appear happy to avoid having to make statements about Gaza that would antagonise Israel’s American supporters.  
  
Obama will take office facing a Middle East up in arms over Gaza and the entire Muslim world blaming the US for the carnage in Gaza. 

Unless he moves swiftly to distance himself from the policies of the Bush administration, he will soon find himself facing the same problems and anger as the Bush White House. 

Arab deal killed
 
Israel’s Gaza offensive is also likely to torpedo the current Saudi-sponsored peace plan, which had been backed by all members of the Arab League.

The plan, now likely defunct, had called for Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders and share Jerusalem in exchange for full recognition and normalised relations with the Muslim world. 

Arab governments will now be unable to sell the deal as they face a storm of criticism from their own people over their powerlessness to help the Palestinians of Gaza. 

Egypt, in particular, is being widely accused of collaborating with Israel in further sealing off and isolating Gaza. It seems highly unlikely they will be able to advance a peace plan with Israel for now.

This is a bonus for right-wing Israelis, who have always been dead set against any withdrawal and strongly supported the attack on Gaza.

Other Israeli factions who were always lukewarm about the Saudi peace plan are now unlikely to reconsider it.
 
Israel’s security establishment is committed to preventing the creation of a viable Palestinian state, and refuses to negotiate with Hamas. Unable to kill all of Hamas’ men, Israel is slowly destroying Gaza’s infrastructure around them, as it did to Yasser Arafat’s PLO.

Israel’s hardliners point to Gaza and claim that any Palestinian state on the West Bank would threaten their nation’s security by firing rockets into Israel’s heartland. 

Mighty information machine
 
Israel is confident that its mighty information machine will allow it to weather the storm of worldwide outrage over its Biblical punishment of Gaza. Who remembers Israel’s flattening of parts of the Palestinian city of Jenin, or the US destruction in Falluja, Iraq, or the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in Beirut?  
 

The US media has focused on the rockets being fired on Israel from Gaza [GALLO/GETTY]

Though the torment of Gaza is seen across the horrified Muslim world as a modern version of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising by Jews against the Nazis during World War Two, Western governments still appear bent on taking no action. 
 
Though Israel’s use of American weapons against Gaza violates the US Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts, the docile US Congress will remain mute. 

Israel’s assault on Gaza was clearly timed for America’s interregnum between administrations and the year-end holidays, a well-used Israeli tactic. 
 
Hamas refuses to recognise Israel as long as Israel refuses to recognise Hamas and the rights of millions of homeless Palestinian refugees.  

It calls for a non-religious state to be created in Palestine, meaning an end to Zionism. Ironically, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and late leader of Hamas, had spoken of a compromise with Tel Aviv shortly before he was assassinated by Israel in 2004. 
 
An inherited mess

Israel’s hopes that it can bomb Gazans into rejecting Hamas are as ill-conceived as its failed attempt in 2006 to blast Lebanon into rejecting Hezbollah.  
 
The Fatah regime on the West Bank installed by the US and Israel after Yasser Arafat’s suspicious death will be further discredited, leaving the militants of Hamas as the sole authentic voice of Palestinian nationalism.  
 
Hamas, the militant but still democratically elected government of Gaza, is even less likely to compromise. 
 
The Muslim world is in a rage. But so what? Stalin liked to say “the dogs bark, and the caravan moves on,” and as long as the US gives Israel carte blanche, it can do just about anything it wants. 
 
The tragedy of Palestine will thus continue to poison US relations with the Muslim world. 

Those Americans who still do not understand why their nation was attacked on 9/11 need only look to Gaza, for which the US is now being blamed as much as Israel.  
 
Unless Israel can make 5 to 7 million Palestinians disappear, it must find some way to co-exist with them. Israeli leaders on the centre and right continue to avoid facing this fact. 

The brutal collective punishment inflicted on Gaza will likely strengthen Hamas and reverse any hopes of a Middle East peace in the coming years.  
 
Eric S. Margolis is an author, syndicated foreign affairs columnist, broadcaster, and veteran war correspondent. His latest book is American Raj: America and the Muslim world.

The views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.
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509 Palestinians killed, 2450 injured


Don’t forgive, don’t forget.

Posted by As’ad at 8:01 PM

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Why Gaza’s Message Is Threatening To Some?

ا

By Abu Al-Sous (Salah Mansour)*

The Israeli war on Gaza hasn’t been only unprecedented in its ferocity, but it has been unprecedented in the support it received from the so called “Moderate” Arab Regimes** as well. In all circles, the Israeli attack was expected but not with this ferocity, however, the open alliance between the “Moderate” Arab Regimes with the Israeli policy makers never been this clear and obvious.

Early 2006, Palestinians in the West Bank and especially in the Gaza Strip voted overwhelmingly for Hamas in a transparent and a fair election that was monitored by the former US President Carter. In response, all Western Powers (European Union and the United States), the “Moderate” Arab Regimes, and the Israelis conspired to topple the newly elected government (see related articles section for details). As a first response, the Israeli government jailed all the elected Hamas’ representatives in the West Bank and Western Powers started all sorts of blockade against the freely elected government. I’m not a fan of Hamas or its agenda, however, I believe it’s critical to understand why these Arab leader joined the Western Powers & Israel in a conspiracy to oust the freely elected Palestinian Government. To simply say they are puppets in hands of Israel and Western powers is not good enough, there must be more to it than that.

Since the “Moderate” Arab Regimes’ hold on power is based on very little popular support (mostly imposed on the Arab people by the Western Powers), they perceive Gaza’s messages of democracy, hope, resistance, rule of law, and above all accountability & transparency as an existential threat to their shaky & undemocratic rule; it scares them that this message of hope could spread beyond the Gaza Strip. No other reason explains why President Mahmoud Abbas and the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak are passionately closing ranks with their Israeli counterparts. This explains why the Israeli Air Force has first targeted the instruments that Hamas uses to enforce the rule of law, such as police stations, prisons, courts, justice & education ministries, fuel depots, and Universities. The primary reason behind the latest war on Gaza is make Palestinians submit to their will regardless if Hamas is power or not. Prior to Hamas’ election to power early 2006, it was Yasser Arafat who was targeted with similar policies because he refused to submit to Israeli and Western dictates, and because of that he was branded as an obstacle to “peace”.

The people in the Middle East lost hope in Westerners’ call for human rights, liberty, and democracy; sadly Westerners are the first to run from their ideals and principals when their interests are at stake. Their primary interests in the Middle East are simple: protecting Israel by all possible means and having a secure access to Middle Eastern oil; promoting liberty, human rights, and democracy are by far secondary. On the other hand, what has been shocking and humiliating to me as an Arab is how the “Moderate” Arab Regimes are flocking to support the Israeli government in its attack on our people in Gaza. In my humble opinion, this could be a signal that they are disparate; they are almost in panic mode; this is unprecedented.

Since the blockade on Gaza has been fruitless up to this point, the conspirators opted for the usage of Israeli Army to weaken, if not, destroy Hamas’ rule. The urgency to act quickly might have be driven with the fact the the clock is running out on Mr. Abbas’ and Mr. Bush’s presidencies. I also suspect that the conspirators are worried that the President elect Obama may not be as accommodating as Mr. Bush since he will be focusing on the financial melt that hit the US recently. I believe the America’s military and financial weakness will reflect negatively on its foreign policy, especially in the Middle East.

Finally, I like to end this short article by reminding the reader of what David Ben-Gurion (the 1st Israeli PM) wrote in his diary on November 11, 1948:

“Let us recognize the truth: we won not because we performed wonders, but because the Arab army is rotten. Must this rottenness persist forever?” (Simha Flapan, p. 238)

I believe Arab rottenness which Ben-Gurion spoke of may have started to reached its limits; I am afraid we’re witnessing the early signs of a political tsunamis that could transform the Middle East.

Our DATE is 60 years LATE, we shall return.

* Salah Mansour is the founder and editor of PalestineRemembered.com, the largest Palestinian online community.
** Often Western Media parades Arab Dictators as Moderate Regimes because they serve Western Powers’ interests in the Middle East. It should be noted that there is nothing moderate about these regimes, they are radicals and extremist especially when it comes to corruption, common use of torture, deployment of the intelligence services in walks of life, and filling up their prisons systems.

sincerely,

Abu al-Sous (Salah Mansour)
Chicago – USA

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