Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

An aerial view of the separation fence, near Jerusalem. (AP)

UN: West Bank fence severs Palestinian farmers from fields, AP, Haaretz, Nov. 17, 2007

Only 18 percent of some 30,000 West Bank farmers who used to work the lands cut off by Israel’s separation fence now have Israeli permits to reach their fields, the United Nations said in a report on the lives of some 230,000 Palestinians in 67 communities close to the fence.

The report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs looked at 15 communities with about 10,000 residents trapped between the fence and Israel, and at 52 communities with 220,000 residents on the Palestinian side of the divider.

Those in the hemmed-in villages require permanent residency permits, while those on the east side of the fence need Israeli-issued visitors permits to reach lands or visit family in the enclosed communities.

“Hardly a day passes I don’t think about it,” the Rev. John H. Cross Jr. said of the 1963 bombing at his Birmingham, Ala., church, which killed four girls. (By Renee Hannans — Atlanta Journal-constitution Via Associated Press)

Rev. John Cross Jr.; Pastor at Bombed Church, WP, November 18, 2007

The Rev. John H. Cross Jr., who was pastor of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963, when four girls at his church were killed in a bombing that became a turning point in the civil rights movement, died Nov. 15 at DeKalb Medical at Hillandale, in Lithonia, Ga. He was 82 and had had a series of strokes in recent years.

Rev. Cross was named pastor of the venerable Birmingham church in 1962 after serving at a Baptist church in Richmond. Not previously identified as a civil rights activist, he appeared to be a good match for the conservative black church, which was known for its educated congregation.

But when he stepped off the train in Birmingham and tried to hail a taxicab, Rev. Cross encountered a level of racial animosity he hadn’t seen anywhere else.”[I] don’t drive coloreds,” a white taxi driver told him, according to a 1991 article in the Boston Globe.

“I’ll tell you what,” Rev. Cross said, leaning in the window. “I’m coming here to pastor a church. Before I leave here, you’ll be hauling anybody who wants to be hauled.”

With the encouragement of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Cross made his church a rallying point for the civil rights movement in one of the most volatile cities in the South. Birmingham had a strong Ku Klux Klan presence and had been shaken for years by an insidious, random violence that led to its infamous nickname, Bombingham.

The city’s public safety commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Connor, was notorious for unleashing dogs and turning high-powered fire hoses on demonstrators. Many protesters were beaten in clashes with police.

On Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, Rev. Cross was at the church, preparing to deliver a sermon called “A Rock That Will Not Roll” for a youth worship service. At 10:22 a.m., an explosion shattered the morning calm, crumbling a brick wall and destroying the face of Jesus in a stained-glass window.

At first, Rev. Cross thought the church’s water heater had exploded, but he could smell the powder of explosives and hear anguished cries amid clouds of dust and smoke. As he and church members dug through rubble in the collapsed basement, he found the bodies of 11-year-old Denise McNair and Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, all 14.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

ON EDGE A woman passes under the watchful eye of a member of Hamas’s security forces outside the Parliament building in Gaza City. In June, Hamas prevailed against its rival, Fatah.

Erlanger, Under Siege, Life in Gaza Just Shrinks - NYT, November 18, 2007

IT’S a miserable time to be a Gazan.

A Tightened Grip, Multimedia Feature, Photos by Ruth Fremson

Hopes were high in 2005, when Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops and 9,000 Jewish settlers, and the international community lined up to help the Palestinians make Gaza a model for their potential state.

But happy endings are rare in this part of the world. In the last year, life in Gaza has been plagued by criminal gangs as well as fighting among Palestinian groups. Some rocket barrages aimed at Israel fall on Gaza itself, and Israeli retaliation for the rest ranges from military strikes to economic quarantine.

Months of battling between the main political factions, Fatah and Hamas, culminated in a Gazan civil war in June, with 160 people killed and 800 wounded, many of them civilians. Hamas, which is classified as a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union, was the winner.

The struggle is hardly finished, with Fatah trying to consolidate in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. Just last week, a large Fatah demonstration on the third anniversary of Yasir Arafat’s death ended in violence when Hamas police fired into a rock-throwing crowd and killed six people, while beating others.

Hamas is under siege, and with it, the people of Gaza.

It’s not just that Hamas is shunned by the West and Israel, which has declared Gaza “a hostile entity” and is moving to restrict supplies of gasoline, diesel fuel and electricity. Gaza is also shunned by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who is a ready accomplice in the effort to punish and pressure Hamas.

After the Israelis pulled out in 2005, Gazans complained that they lived in a big prison, since Israel still controlled their airspace, sea coasts and principal border crossings. Such claims had an element of propaganda, but now, with the crossing into Egypt for people also shut, by Egypt, the accusation is much closer to reality.

A trickle of the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza can now leave their tiny coastal strip for any reason whatsoever. The streets are ghostly, with little traffic, and the private economy is dying, lacking needed imports and unable to export.

Gaza is a deeply conservative society, but Hamas’s growth has been reflected in the increasing number of women not only covering their hair, but also their faces. Israel says that it will ensure that no one starves in Gaza, and that the essentials of life will be provided.

But Israel also wants to see that Hamas suffers, by making Gazans suffer, to impress on them that the best path lies in accommodation and negotiation with Israel for a Palestinian state. Fatah backs that strategy, not the violent, religious and national struggle against Israel that Hamas advocates and practices.

Raji Sourani, director of Gaza’s Palestinian Center for Human Rights, is himself stuck in Gaza. No friend to Hamas, he has a new metaphor.

“At least in prison, and I’ve been in prison, there are rules,” he said. “But now we live in a kind of animal farm. We live in a pen, and they dump in food and medicine.”

Chavez warning opens Opec summit, BBC, November 17, 2007

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has warned oil prices could double if the US attacks Iran.

Opening the summit of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), he said said the price of crude could reach $150 or even $200 a barrel.

Oil has been hitting record peaks of well over $90 a barrel as markets believe Opec will not boost production.

The Opec summit in Saudi Arabia is only the organisation’s third in 47 years.

Mr Chavez kicked off the summit with a blistering attack on the US.

“If the United States was mad enough to attack Iran or aggress Venezuela again the price of a barrel of oil could reach $150 or even $200,” he said.

What do you mean when you say ‘no’? - Haaretz, November 18, 2007

Of all Israel’s iniquities in the occupied territories - the brutality, the assassinations, the siege, the hunger, the blackouts, the checkpoints and the mass arrests - nothing serves as witness to its real intentions than the settlements. Certainly for the future. Every home built in the territories, every light pole and every road are like a thousand witnesses: Israel does not want peace; Israel wants occupation. Whoever is serious about peace and a Palestinian state does not put up even a shed.

From Oslo through Camp David and on to the road map, Israel has not put an end to the most criminal enterprise in its history. A short memory refresher: In article 7 of the Oslo Accords, Israel promised that “no party would undertake unilateral steps to alter the situation on the ground, prior to the completion of negotiations for the final status.” That really made an impression on Israel. During the 10 years that followed, the number of settlers doubled. What about the heroic peace efforts of Ehud Barak as prime minister? During the 18 months of his government, Israel began the construction of 6,045 residential units in the territories.

And why did Israel sign up to the road map two years later? “The government of Israel will freeze all its settlement activities, in accordance with the Mitchell report, except for natural growth in the settlements.” And what happened in practice? Accusations that the Palestinians are not implementing the agreements, and a boatload of new settlers. This was also the case in 2005, another major “year of peace”: the disengagement. And what did Israel do in its own backyard? Another 12,000 new settlers.

This terrible enterprise, whose purpose is to foil any chance for peace, is also a criminal enterprise. According to Peace Now, based on Civil Administration data that have been kept hidden for years, about 40 percent of the settlements were built on privately owned land of Palestinians helpless to safeguard what is in most cases their sole property that was robbed in broad daylight by an occupying state. This took place years after the Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that it is illegal to build on private Palestinian land. Indeed, while Israel is debating whether it is a state of laws, whether the prime minister was given a discount for the house on Cremieux Street, and whether we want a powerful Supreme Court, we should remember that what is happening in the territories is the real corruption that engulfs us.

Now we are on the eve of another peace event, yet during the past year another 3,525 new residential units were built in the territories, under the auspices of a government that talks incessantly about the end of occupation and two states. All the grandiloquent statements are void of substance when we read the data: Construction is at a peak in 88 settlements.

When night falls, the assassins gather in Hayaniya Square, Guardian, November 17, 2007

Hayaniya Square in Basra is a busy intersection leading to a poor and run-down neighbourhood. On one side of the piazza, sewage water flows through what was once a dried-up river bed, filling the air with an oppressive smell. On the other side, a pair of kebab stalls send columns of smoke from skewers of burning meat into the warm air. Two sheep, whose fate lies on those skewers, stand tethered to a nearby telegraph pole.

The square is dominated by a painting of six men dressed in casual trousers and jackets, behind whom loom the faces of Moqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi army, and his father, Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr. The six men, described on the mural as martyrs, are Mahdi army commanders who were killed by the British.

At night, when traffic in the square slows, a group of men gather. These are the sakkaka, or assassins. Their Toyota saloons, chosen for the voluminous boots that can accommodate two bodies with room to spare, stand parked nearby.

The assassins chat, eat kebabs and stroll around in small groups, discussing their sinister trade. They buy and sell names of collaborators, Iraqis who worked for the British, as well as journalists and uncooperative police officers, businessmen and the footsoldiers of other militias.

Depending on the nature of their perceived crime, the price on a collaborator’s head can vary from couple of hundred dollars to a few thousand. The most valuable lives these days in Basra are those of the interpreters and contractors who were employed by the British before they withdrew from the city.