Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Gideon Levy / The last of the dreamers of peace - Haaretz, August 28, 2008

It was a Saturday afternoon in the late 1980s. We entered The Voice of Peace’s rickety Subaru truck and drove to Gaza to Mahmoud Zahar’s house. Afternoon coffee with the Hamasnik, just imagine. Imagine that once it was possible to visit Zahar on a Saturday afternoon. Just think  there once was a man here who dreamed of peace.

Picture a pilot who never drove a car. All those things sound like hallucinations now, even more than they used to.

Abie Nathan was perhaps the only Israeli who felt guilty about 1948. As a volunteer pilot from overseas he had bombed Palestinian villages and then wanted to make up for it. He didn’t shoot and whine about it but actually tried to make amends.

Today that sounds like science fiction. Israeli? Very doubtful. He lived among us for decades, but Abie dreamed in English and thought in Hindi. He helped Palestinian children, but also hastened to every disaster area in the world. In that, too, he was perhaps the last Israeli who saw compassion and aid as global notions. Our Mother Teresa.

Like another central figure in the Israeli peace movement, Uri Avneri (may he live long), he was both a bohemian and an ideologist. No party was comparable to Nathan’s roof parties in North Tel Aviv’s Zirelson Street. Nobody could be as treacherous as us, who lived it up at his parties and then abandoned him after he became sick and wheelchair-ridden many years ago. There are dozens of people around town who should feel deeply guilty today for neglecting him so criminally, including this writer.

Jonathan Cook: Israeli Outposts Seal Death of Palestinian State, Counterpunch, August 25, 2008

Migron, West Bank

Yehudit Genud hardly feels she is on the frontier of Israel’s settlement project, although the huddle of mobile homes on a wind-swept West Bank hilltop she calls home is controversial even by Israeli standards.

Despite the size and isolation of Migron, a settlement of about 45 religious families on a ridge next to the Palestinian city of Ramallah, Mrs Genud’s job as a social worker in West Jerusalem is a 25-minute drive away on a well-paved road.

Mrs Genud, 28, pregnant with her first child, points out that Migron has parks, children’s playgrounds, a kindergarten, a daycare centre and a synagogue, all paid for by the government — even if the buildings are enclosed by a razor-wire fence, and her husband, Roni, has to put in overtime as the settlement’s security guard.

From her trailer, she also has panoramic views not only of Ramallah but of the many communities hugging the slopes that gently fall away to the Jordan Valley.

Long-established Palestinian villages are instantly identifiable by their homes’ flat roofs and the prominence of the tall minarets of the local mosques. Interspersed among them, however, are a growing number of much newer, fortified communities of luxury villas topped by distinctive red-tiled roofs.

These are the Jewish settlements that now form an almost complete ring around Palestinian East Jerusalem, cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank and destroying any hope that the city will one day become the capital of a Palestinian state.

“These settlements are supposed to be the nail in the coffin of any future peace agreement with the Palestinians,” said Dror Etkes, a veteran observer of the settlements who works for the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din. “Their purpose is to make a Palestinian state unviable.”

Silverstein, ‘Professional Provocateur’ Peace Boats Break Gaza Blockade | Tikun Olam, August 24, 2008

Defying all odds and Israeli threats of force to stop them, two boats of the Free Gaza Movement reached port in Gaza earlier today:

Two boats carrying dozens of international activists sailed into the Gaza Strip Saturday in defiance of an Israeli blockade, receiving a jubilant welcome from thousands of Palestinians.

The boats docked in Gaza City’s tiny port after a two-day journey marred by communications troubles and rough seas. As they arrived, children swarmed around and leaped into the water in joy, while thousands of cheering residents looked on from the shore.

It is the first time that anyone has broken the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza, in force since Gazans chose Hamas to represent them in 2006 elections.

The boats were greeted by scores of Gaza fishing vessels which sailed out to meet the peace activists who began their journey in Crete two weeks ago and reached Gaza after a 180 mile, 30 hour journey from Cyprus.

It was touch and go all the way as the Israeli defense ministry threatened to use force to prevent the boats from violating the Israeli siege. During the past day of their journey, someone–possibly Israeli electronic warfare specialists–jammed the boats’ electronic gear and prevented them from communicating with each other:
Gazan swimmer celebrates arrival of FGM flotilla

Earlier Saturday, the Free Gaza activist group accused Israel of sabotaging the mission, saying that Israel had jammed the boats’ electronic communication systems.

“I can’t think of any other reason or any other party with an interest,” said Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, the group’s spokeswoman in Israel. She accused Israel of jeopardizing the activists’ safety, and appealed for international assistance.

In a statement, the activists said their communications systems had been jammed and scrambled and said they were victims of electronic piracy.

The foreign ministry denied involvement:

Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said Israel wanted “to avoid the media provocation” that the group was seeking. He dismissed the allegations that Israel damaged the communications system as “total lies.”

Haaretz reveals that there were a series of consultations between the defense and foreign ministries about how to handle the situation, with the IDF arguing for forcibly detaining the ships and participants for questioning in Israel. Free Gaza Movement spokespeople warned that they would consider such behavior a violation of international norms and kidnapping.

Ofri Ilani, The view from the boat / ‘Ordinary people can do something’ - Haaretz, August 24, 2008

Haaretz spoke last night by phone with Jeff Halper, an Israeli professor who was among the activists who sailed to Gaza.

“We proved that ordinary people can do something and succeed,” he said. “Even Tony Blair can’t go to Gaza, but ordinary people with drive can. The welcome was amazing. There were tens of thousands of people. People came out in boats and on windsurfers to meet us. Children swam out to sea and flashed the victory sign. I feel like we’re fresh air entering a prison where a million and half people are living.

“I tell myself: We’re in the modern world, the 21st century, and yet such excitement - over what? Over something we take for granted, that two boats arrived. Here it’s a national holiday. Their isolation is so complete,” he said.

Halper said that Gazans were eager to speak Hebrew with him, and to reminisce about the years they spent working in Israel. “Our impression that Gaza is Hamas, that there is only hatred there, is mistaken,” he said, adding that he learned that “we are more of an obstacle to peace than the Palestinians.”

Israel: Gaza blockade in place despite ships, Jerusalem Post, August 24, 2008

srael’s decision to allow two boats carrying international activists into Gaza’s port on Saturday was a “one-time” event and did not constitute a decision by the government to allow sea access to the blockaded Palestinian territory.

Israeli sources: Decision to allow boats into Gaza was an attempt to avoid PR show in sea

Carrying foreign activists from the US-based Free Gaza Movement, the two boats set sail from Cyprus on Friday and arrived in Gaza on Saturday. They received a warm welcome from thousands of jubilant Palestinians after a voyage marred by communications troubles and rough seas.

The 46 activists from 14 countries include an 81-year-old Catholic nun and Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of Quartet Middle East envoy Tony Blair. The organizations participating in the Free Gaza movement include the International Solidarity Movement.

“In this media war, it was impossible for them [Israel] to win because they have no case for what they are doing to your port and to your borders,” Booth said.

As the boats docked in Gaza City’s tiny port, children swarmed around the vessels and leaped into the water in joy, while thousands of cheering people looked on from the shore. Palestinian flags on one of the boats snapped in the wind, activists waved to the crowd, and the slogan “End Occupation” was written in large letters on its side.

Uri Avnery, The Devil’s Hoof, Gush Shalom, August 23, 2008

The “One-State Solution” is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. The One-State idea is not a solution, but an anti-solution. It is a recipe for an ongoing bloody conflict. Not a dream, but a nightmare.

There is no chance at all that the Jewish public will agree, in this generation or the next, to live as a minority in a state dominated by an Arab majority. 99.99% of the Jewish population will fight against this tooth and nail. The demography will not stop haunting them, but on the contrary, it will push them to do things which are unthinkable today. Ethnic cleansing will become a practical agenda. Even moderate Israelis will be driven into the arms of the fascist right-wing. All means of oppression will become acceptable when the Jewish majority adopts the aim of causing the Arabs to leave the country before they have a chance of becoming the majority.

True believers in the bi-national state idea will say: OK, let it be. We shall have one or two generations of bloodshed, of a state of civil war, but in the end we shall persuade or compel the Jews to accord the Palestinians citizenship and equality. But what normal people would take such a risk?

The real choice is, therefore: the “Two-State Solution” or the “Ethnic Cleansing Solution”.

Israel allows blockade busting boats enter Gaza, Haaretz , August 23, 2008

Israel decided on Saturday to permit a U.S.-based activist group protesting the Israeli-imposed blockade on the Gaza Strip to sail two boats carrying humanitarian supplies into the Palestinian territory.

Upon docking in Gaza City’s tiny port, the boats received a warm welcome from hundreds of jubilant Palestinians after a two-day journey marred by communications troubles and rough seas.

A senior Israeli official said Saturday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak consulted at length on the issue on Friday and decided not to prevent the boats, carrying 46 activists, from docking in the Strip.
The official added that “the organizers of the mission were looking to create a provocation and it has been decided to allow them to dock in order to prevent the provocation.”

He went on to say that the authorities in Greece and Cyprus inspected the vessels and their passengers before they set sail from the port of Larnaca in Cyprus Friday morning, and assured Israel that they carried no weapons.

Israel decided to permit the Free Gaza boats to sail into the Strip as a one-time measure and announced that similar missions in the future would be examined individually. It was further announced that the boats would be inspected upon their return to ensure they were not carrying wanted militants or weapons.

The 70-foot (21-meter) Free Gaza and 60-foot (18-meter) Liberty left the southern port of Larnaca about 10 a.m. Friday for the estimated 30-hour trip. The activists planned to deliver 200 hearing aids to a Palestinian charity for children and hand out 5,000 balloons.

The 46 activists from 14 countries include an 81-year-old Catholic nun and the sister-in-law of Mideast envoy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Israel has led an international boycott of the Gaza Strip since the militant Muslim group Hamas seized power of the territory in June 2007. Israel closed its trade crossings with the coastal territory, while neighboring Egypt sealed its passenger crossing, confining Gaza’s 1.4 million residents.

Israel has allowed little more than basic humanitarian supplies into Gaza, causing widespread shortages of fuel, electricity and basic goods. Only some people are allowed to leave Gaza for medical care, jobs abroad and the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

Under a June truce deal which halted a deadly cycle of bruising Palestinian rocket attacks and deadly Israel airstrikes, Israel has pledged to ease the blockade, but Palestinians say the flow of goods into Gaza remains insufficient and there has been little improvement in the quality of life. Israel has periodically closed the cargo crossings in response to sporadic Palestinian rocket fire that violated the truce.

Activist boats reach Gaza Strip, BBC, August 23, 2008

Two boats carrying members of a US-based pro-Palestinian group have arrived in the Gaza Strip, despite an Israeli blockade of the territory.

Israel earlier said they would be let in, saying they would not be given the chance to have a “provocation at sea”.

The boats left the port of Larnaca in Cyprus on Friday morning.

The Free Gaza protest group said about 40 activists from 14 countries were on board the boats to highlight the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza in June 2007 when the militant group Hamas took control of the territory by force.

Since then, Israel has allowed in little more than basic humanitarian aid as a means of isolating Hamas and persuading militant groups to stop firing rockets into Israel.

The closure of Gaza’s borders by the Israeli and Egyptian authorities has also meant that very few Gazans have been able to leave.

Gideon Levy, Twilight Zone / ‘Tossed out like a dog’ - Haaretz, August 21, 2008

In the lawless South Hebron Hills, things are wild as usual: The settlers continue to attack shepherd children with clubs and stones, to steal their sheep and to make their lives miserable, while the Israel Police continue to abuse anyone who tries to file a complaint against the settlers.

Mahmoud Abu Kabaita, whose children and flocks were the targets of settlers from Beit Yatir and Susia, was left outside the Kiryat Arba police station in the burning sun for four hours, until they even allowed him to enter. The members of the Abu Awad family, some of whose children suffer from a serious skin disease, have already been victims of a cruel pogrom by the settlers of Asael, as described here three weeks ago. Relatives waited outside the police station for two hours, and left without filing a complaint, after being attacked once again last Shabbat. That is how the Israel Police enforces the law here.

After writing in this column about the Abu Awads, all of whose meager property was destroyed and looted by the rioters from Asael, some readers offered to help the penniless family. One prominent figure, who is well known in the political establishment and not necessarily from the left, and who wanted to remain anonymous, gave the family a personal financial contribution which is considered huge by local standards. There was great joy in the miserable encampment, but it was short-lived: Last Shabbat the children and their sheep were attacked once again by the Asael people. A wonderful way to welcome the “Sabbath bride,” as is customary every week.

The Abu Kabaitas, whom Israel decreed would have to live outside the separation fence, along with and adjacent to Beit Yatir, were not very fortunate either. They were also attacked by rioters from the neighboring settlement. They were also abused by the Israel Police, which are supposed to protect them.

Thus there exists, with a distance of an hour and a half from Tel Aviv, a region with its own rules: The settlers rampage as much as they please, and the police don’t lift a finger and even treat the victims of the violence rudely when they want to complain. In the past weeks, as everyone knows, the rioting has mounted, for some reason, but for the police it’s business as usual.

BBC NEWS, Guide: Gaza under blockade, August 11, 2008

For the past year, Gaza’s 1.5m people have been relying on, on average, less than a fifth of the volume of imported supplies they received in December 2005. Some weeks significantly less than that has arrived.

Only basic humanitarian items have been allowed in, and virtually no exports permitted, paralysing the economy. Reduced fuel supplies and lack of spare parts have had heavy knock-on impacts on sewage treatment, waste collection, water supply and medical facilities.

In the wake of the Hamas takeover, Israel said it would allow only basic humanitarian supplies into the Strip. No specific list of what is and is not classed as humanitarian exists, although aid agencies say permitted items generally fall into four categories - human food, animal food, groceries (cleaning products, nappies etc) and medicines.

In September 2007, the Israeli government declared the Strip a “hostile entity” in response to continued rocket attacks on southern Israel, and said it would start cutting fuel imports. Israel maintains the blockade has at no point caused a humanitarian crisis - but in early 2008, a group of aid agencies described the situation as exactly that, and the worst situation in the strip since Israel occupied it in 1967.

Richard Silverstein, Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s Greatest Poet, Dies | Tikun Olam, August 10, 2008

My Mother

I long for my mother’s bread
My mother’s coffee
Her touch
Childhood memories grow up in me
Day after day
I must be worth my life
At the hour of my death
Worth the tears of my mother.

And if I come back one day
Take me as a veil to your eyelashes
Cover my bones with the grass
Blessed by your footsteps
Bind us together
With a lock of your hair
With a thread that trails from the back of your dress
I might become immortal
Become a God
If I touch the depths of your heart.

If I come back
Use me as wood to feed your fire
As the clothesline on the roof of your house
Without your blessing
I am too weak to stand.

I am old
Give me back the star maps of childhood
So that I
Along with the swallows
Can chart the path
Back to your waiting nest.

Gershom Gorenberg, Waltz With Unbearable Memory | The American Prospect, August 7, 2008

In his new documentary Waltz With Bashir, filmmaker Ari Folman explores his own inability to recall the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon as a means of considering how nations go to war, and how we judge what leaders do.

The tank rumbles north into Lebanon. The Israeli commander and another crew member are standing, their heads out of the hatches, singing boisterously. They’re young men out on a road trip. Then the commander goes silent, hit by a bullet, and he dies inside the tank, as his stunned soldiers forget their training and what they are supposed to do next. A missile strikes the tank; flames blossom from it; the young men, naked of weapons, are running, zigzagging through bullets. Only one survives, finds shelter, and watches as the rest of his unit retreats. And this is only the outset of the journey from childhood toward the inferno.Young soldiers lie on a beach, terrified, firing madly, perforating an approaching car with bullets. At last it stops. When they approach it, they find the corpses of a Lebanese family inside. And this, too, is but the beginning of the journey toward Beirut, toward events too awful to remember or to leave forgotten.

These scenes — rendered in dark, realistic animation — are from Waltz With Bashir, a documentary about Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon that is deservedly Israel’s most talked-about film this year. The movie recounts director Ari Folman’s effort to restore his own lost memory of his service in Lebanon, especially of the days when he was deployed in Beirut on the outskirts of the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps, where Israel’s Christian Lebanese allies were massacring Palestinians.

Gideon Levy, Twilight Zone / Free passage, Haaretz, August 7, 2008

She walks from the pool to the stylish portico of the Bethlehem Intercontinental, a bikini showing beneath shorts and a revealing shirt. There’s an anklet on her leg, her hair is dyed a reddish brown, and she’s holding a French Gauloise cigarette and a red cell phone. She has come for a weekend at the Intercontinental, for a wedding: When you drink you don’t drive, so she stayed at the luxurious hotel, five stars at $130 a night, which was bustling with vacationers - Israeli Arabs from Haifa.

She is not allowed to be in Bethlehem, where we met her; she is not allowed to visit Ramallah, where she has been living for years; she is not allowed to travel to the beach in Tel Aviv, as she does several times a week during the summer; and she is not allowed to go to Jerusalem for entertainment or work purposes, yet is there almost every day. She is in the north, but her heart and her family are in the south. A native of Rafah, she arrived 16 years ago to study at Bir Zeit University and has been stuck in Ramallah ever since, far from her loving family. She carries a “Gaza ID card” and despises the whole idea of it. It is supposed to be impossible for her to live in the West Bank and travel in Israel. At any given moment, at any checkpoint, she is liable to find herself expelled back to Rafah. That’s how it’s been for all these years.

Courageous and determined, she has built a full life for herself, between the checkpoints. “Anyone who was born near the sea can’t live without it,” she told me when we sat over coffee in the lobby of the Intercontinental. Her “passport,” she wrote me a few days ago, cost her $300 and was worth it: Elegant and confident, with her Giorgio Armani sunglasses, she passes through all the checkpoints.

Areej Hijazi lives without borders. But her longings for her parents, her siblings and her relatives, and for her childhood landscapes in Rafah, repeatedly arouse in her a sadness that is reflected in her eyes.

A few days ago she sent me an e-mail on behalf of a group of Gazans who are stuck in Ramallah: “As for Gaza, it is a one-way ticket; we can go back there without ever dreaming of coming back to the West Bank! … We missed the opportunity to have a normal life that all people around us simply had and still have, just because we hold [a] so-called Gaza ID (by the way I am sick of this term); to visit your family on holidays and school vacations, to attend your siblings’, cousins’, friends’ weddings or graduations, to welcome new members into your family or bid a warm farewell to those who leave, to grow up around your beloved ones, to have your family around you in your wedding or to make your parents, while getting old, happy to see their grandchildren, to benefit from a scholarship abroad and to advance your career, to enjoy times with your parents that you simply didn’t enjoy as a rebellious teenager before you left your family home … to have your mom around you when you’re heartbroken, to complain to your father about how crazy the world is getting, to share with your sister your love stories or to chat with her about life and men and success and failure, to visit your school or to pass by those places where you had crazy childhood encounters.

“Now comes the fun part. I have what my friends call ‘the checkpoint syndrome’ - you know, those times when you feel helpless and hopeless, and where all becomes meaningless, due to pure personal reasons sometimes. I go to one of the Jerusalem checkpoints and try to pass. Why, I don’t know. It could be that at those times you need to do something crazy to regain some of your internal balance, and in my case the craziest thing ever is to challenge the so-called ‘Israeli security and checkpoints system.’ Success is 100 percent: Each time I tried to pass, I passed not only to Jerusalem, but also to Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa and Nazareth. My passport was my curly hair and the Giorgio Armani sunglasses that I bought only for the checkpoints, and guess what? I believe the $300 investment was worth it. It is so funny that I cannot see my family in Gaza for years, while I spend most of the summer swimming in Tel Aviv or having fun in Jerusalem. What a brilliant security system!

Avi Issacharoff, The land of unchecked settler harassment, Haaretz, August 7, 2008

The carcass of a butchered donkey is still lying in the olive grove of the Sufan family. Every single week since mid-June, the family, whose home is on the southern edge of the village of Burin, near Nablus, has suffered harassment by settlers living in outposts near the settlement of Yitzhar.

The mother, Hinan (Umm Ayman), says she has filed an endless number of complaints with the police, “but everything is kalam fadi (empty talk). They do nothing, and they do not even compensate us.”

On June 16, Musa’ab, the son, took the sheep herd out with his neighbor Munir and his brother Bashir in the hills surrounding the family home. “At some point,” Munir recalls, “we saw a car heading our way from the direction of Yitzhar. Two settlers stepped out of the car, and the vehicle continued on its way, went around a bend and disappeared. But then we saw that eight more settlers were walking toward us, and some had knives in their hands. They set sheafs of wheat on fire and moved closer to the home of Umm Ayman and threw stones at the house. We ran away with our sheep but left the Sufan family’s donkey behind. One of the settlers took a knife and stabbed the donkey over and over until he killed him. We filed a complaint with the police, who came and took photographs of the site.”

Umm Ayman’s home is now surrounded by burned-out hills, the result of repeated arson by settlers. The family home looks like a semi-fortified outpost. The windows in the upper floor are covered with metal nets, to keep stones out, and the windows in the lower level are protected by heavy metal shutters.

Political suicide, Palestinian style, The Daily Star, August 2008

It is painful watching events in Gaza and the West Bank unfold, as Fatah and Hamas battle it out like a bunch of armed neighborhood gangs. The mood among Palestinians throughout the world is one of despair and gloom, tinged with embarrassment and occasional shame.

Arab and others supporters of the Palestinian cause throw their hands up in the air in bewilderment. It will not be surprising to see some friends of Palestine quietly walk away, mumbling that if the Palestinians wish to kill each other and destroy their own society, they are free to do so. The world will easily forget about them.

These are grim days for the Palestinians, but not unusual ones for the Arab world as a whole. The sight of clan-based political groups in Gaza killing each other is familiar in many parts of the Middle East, sadly. That does not make it any better. It simply is a sign that national dysfunctionality expressed in internecine political violence is a regional Arab ailment, not a peculiarly Palestinian one.

The Palestinians, especially their political leaders, must assume most of the blame for this round of fighting, which is absolutely incomprehensible at a time when economic pressures and sanctions have reduced Gaza not just to a prison-like encampment, but to a ward of paupers. Israel and other enemies of the Palestinians will be pleased to see them fighting each other. We will hear another chorus from the skinheads and racists in the world who will point to this round of fighting as proof that Israel withdrew from Gaza and all it got in return were rockets fired at it and hooligans running the show inside. They will be right, but superficially.

The rockets fired at Gaza are to be seen in the context of a war that still rages between Israelis and Palestinians, now more or less quiet due to a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel. The fighting among the Palestinians is not so easy to understand. It is also not the first time that Palestinians have quarreled or fought each other. They did it in the 1940s, in the 1980s in refugee camps in Lebanon, and now they are doing it again in their squeezed little landscape in Gaza.

This is the latest and most troubling example of how a once grand and noble Palestinian national liberation movement has allowed itself to degenerate into ineptitude. The consequences of the fighting are unlikely to increase the chance of liberating Palestine, forcing Israel to negotiate an honorable and fair peace, or providing Palestinians opportunities to live more secure, stable and prosperous lives. All that will emerge from this is the functional equivalent of a child taking over a tree house, and claiming that as a great victory.