Acknowledging the long and bitter legacy
of persecution and displacement that tears at the hearts of both
our Jewish and Palestinian sisters and brothers, we grieve with
both. We call for a Palestinian state along with the state of Israel,
and are thankful for the many individuals and groups who are working
for an equitable solution.
--Lysistrata Project
Does the death of an Arab weigh the same as that of a US or Israeli
citizen? The Israeli army, with utter impunity, has killed more
unarmed Palestinian civilians since September 2000 than the number
of people who died on September 11, 2001. In conducting 238 extrajudicial
executions the army has also killed 186 bystanders (including
26 women and 39 children). Two thirds of the 621 children (two
thirds under 15 years) killed at checkpoints, in the street, on
the way to school, in their homes, died from small arms fire,
directed in over half of cases to the head, neck and chest—the
sniper's wound. Clearly, soldiers are routinely authorised to
shoot to kill children in situations of minimal or no threat.
These statistics attract far less publicity than suicide bombings,
atrocious though these are too.
Amnesty International has called for an investigation into the
killing of Asma al-Mughayr (16 years) and her brother Ahmad (13
years) on the roof terrace of their home in Rafah on 18 May, each
with a single bullet to the head. Asma had been taking clothes
off the drying line and Ahmad feeding pigeons. Amnesty noted that
the firing appeared to have come from the top floor of a nearby
house, which had been taken over by Israeli soldiers shortly before.
Amnesty suspects that this is not "caught in crossfire,"
this is murder.
Israeli military reoccupation of the West Bank and Gaza—a
system of military checkpoints splitting towns and villages into
ghettos, curfews, closures, raids, mass demolition and destruction
of houses (more than 60 000), and land expropriations—has
made ordinary life impossible for everyone, and is driving Palestinian
society and its institutions towards destitution. Moreover, Israel
has been constructing a grotesque barrier that, when completed,
will total over 400 miles—four times longer than the Berlin
Wall. Extending up to 15 miles into Palestinian territory, the
real purpose of the wall is permanently to lock more than 50 illegal
Israeli settlements into Israel proper. This is expansive, aggressive
colonisation, in defiance of the International Court of Justice
in The Hague and the United Nations General Assembly resolution
of last July.
Last year a UN rapporteur concluded that Gaza and the West Bank
were "on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe." The
World Bank estimates that 60% of the population are subsisting
at poverty level (£1.12; $2; 1.6 per day), a tripling in
only three years. Half a million people are now completely dependent
upon food aid, and Amnesty International has expressed concern
that the Israeli army has been hampering distribution in Gaza.
Over half of all households are eating only one meal per day.
A study by Johns Hopkins and Al Quds universities found that 20%
of children under 5 years old were anaemic, 9.3% were acutely
malnourished, and a further 13.2% chronically malnourished. The
doctors I met on a professional visit in March pointed to a rising
prevalence of anaemia in pregnant women and low birthweight babies.
The coherence of the Palestinian health system is being destroyed.
The wall will isolate 97 primary health clinics and 11 hospitals
from the populations they serve. Qalqilya hospital, which primarily
serves refugees, has seen a 40% fall in follow up appointments
because patients cannot enter the city. There have been at least
87 documented cases (including 30 children) in which denial of
access to medical treatment has led directly to deaths, including
those of babies born while women were held up at checkpoints.
The checkpoint at the entrance to some villages closes at 7 pm
and not even ambulances can pass after this time. As a recent
example, a man in a now fenced in village near Qalqilya approached
the gate with his seriously ill daughter in his arms, and begged
the soldiers on duty to let him pass so that he could take her
to hospital. The soldiers refused, and a Palestinian doctor summoned
from the other side was also refused access to the child. The
doctor was obliged to attempt a physical examination, and to give
the girl an injection, through the wire.
There are consistent reports of ambulances containing gravely
ill people being hit by gunfire, or detained at checkpoints while
drivers and paramedics are interrogated, searched, threatened,
humiliated, and assaulted. Wounded men are abducted from ambulances
at checkpoints and sent directly to prison. Clearly marked clinics
are fired on, and doctors and other health workers shot dead on
duty.
Physicians for Human Rights (Israel) have lambasted the Israeli
Medical Association (IMA) for its silence in the face of these
systematic violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees
the right to health care and the protection of health professionals
as they do their duty. Remarkably, IMA president Dr Y Blachar
is currently chairperson of the council of the World Medical Association
(WMA), the official international watchdog on medical ethics.
A supine BMA appears in collusion with this farce at the WMA.
Others are silenced by a fear of being labelled "anti-semitic,"
a term used in a morally corrupt way by the pro-Israel lobby in
order to silence. How are we to affect this shocking situation,
one which to this South African-born doctor has gone further than
the excesses of the apartheid era.
Tel Aviv -- More than 100,000 dovish Israelis packed a central
square in Tel Aviv on Saturday night to urge an Israeli withdrawal
from the Gaza Strip, the proposal launched by the country's most
prominent hawk, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Sharon's call for a Gaza pullout has shaken up Israel's already
turbulent political scene, and in a surprising twist, is winning
him rare applause from liberal Israelis. Meanwhile, many of his
traditional right-wing allies are campaigning against the plan.
The huge crowd that filled Rabin Square and spilled into the
side streets was essentially the same constituency that gathered
here throughout the 1990s to support Israeli-Palestinian peace
negotiations. It was here in 1995 that Yitzhak Rabin, then prime
minister, was assassinated by an Israeli extremist after speaking
at a peace rally.
"I'm here to tell the prime minister that we have to leave
Gaza, but he already knows this," said Ami Ayalon, a former
head of the Shin Bet security service who is now promoting an
informal peace plan he has developed with a Palestinian partner.
"Gaza is no longer about politics, it's a matter of saving
lives," Ayalon said to the cheering crowd.
The left has been largely sidelined during the past 31/2 years
of Israeli- Palestinian fighting. The Israeli public has moved
to the right, demanding a tough response to Palestinian violence,
and Sharon won landslide electoral victories in 2001 and again
last year.
Sharon's call to unilaterally withdraw Israeli soldiers and settlers
from Gaza has broad overall support among Israelis. Two newspaper
polls released Friday both showed support for a pullout exceeding
70 percent, figures similar to previous opinion surveys.
But Sharon has been unable to persuade his own Likud Party, which
soundly rejected the plan in a party referendum two weeks ago.
A number of Cabinet members either oppose the proposal or have
deep reservations about it.
Still, the 60,000 Likud Party members who voted against the proposal
represent less than 1 percent of Israel's population, and supporters
of the withdrawal plan say it is being threatened by a small minority.
"Eighty percent of Israelis want peace, and just 1 percent
are trying to block it," said Shimon Peres, leader of the
center-left Labor Party, the main opposition in Parliament. "We
will not allow them."
This past week, 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza in some
of the most intense fighting in the territory since the Palestinian
uprising began in September 2000.
These recent events have fueled the heated debate over Sharon's
plan, and contributed to the turnout on Saturday, which the police
estimated at more than 120,000.
"We felt an important decision was being made and we were
being left out, " said Sharon Peled, 26, a marketing manager
from Tel Aviv.
"We don't support Sharon, but when he has a good idea, we
can support it, " said Peled, who was with her mother, who
drove from the northern city of Haifa to attend.
Sharon says he will continue to pursue his Gaza withdrawal plan
despite the resistance he faces from his own political base.
He sees the Gaza pullout as part of a larger chess match, and
says he is prepared to withdraw the 7,500 Jewish settlers from
Gaza, and dismantle some small settlements in the West Bank as
he attempts to consolidate Israel's hold on the larger areas of
settlement in the West Bank, where about 225,000 settlers live.
The Israeli leader says the "disengagement plan" should
be carried out unilaterally because he does not regard the current
Palestinian leadership, headed by Yasser Arafat, to be a reliable
negotiating partner.
The Palestinians say Sharon's plan is an attempt to avoid negotiations
and impose one-sided decisions.
In a speech on Saturday, the 56th anniversary of the founding
of Israel, Arafat called on Palestinians to be "steadfast"
in their struggle with Israel. In remarks on Palestinian television,
Arafat quoted a passage from the Koran, the Muslim holy book:
"Find what strength you have to terrorize your enemy, and
the enemy of God." He followed that with another verse from
the Koran: "If they want peace, then let us have peace."
In Gaza, meanwhile, Israeli helicopters carried out three air
strikes on Saturday that damaged buildings and wounded about a
dozen Palestinians, according to Palestinian witnesses and hospital
workers. But the overall level of violence was down after four
days of heavy fighting.
The military said the strikes were directed at two offices in
Gaza City linked to Islamic Jihad, and a bomb-making laboratory
belonging to the group in the southern town of Rafah. Islamic
Jihad has carried out many suicide bombings against Israel and
was involved in the deadly attacks last week on Israeli soldiers.
Palestinians said the Israeli helicopters hit two structures
linked to Islamic Jihad. The third was an office in Gaza City
previously used by a senior leader, Muhammad al-Hindi. But the
group gave up the office, and it was rented by a nursing organization,
the building's owner said.
AWWARTA VALLEY: I dig my thumbnail into the newly-picked
olive and the rich oil spurts into my palm of my hand. I am
picking "zitoon" (in Spanish, "aceituna")
in the harvest of the
Awwarta valley of Nablus, Palestine, a millennium-old tradition
that finds voice in the Old Testament-only now it is not the
Pharoahs or the Romans that seek to crush the farmers and
seize the fruit of their labor but the Israeli settlers and the
brutal
army and police that protect them.
In this in the most ancient of lands, where even the children
seem old, the struggle to stay on the land remains fundamental
to the survival of villages like Awwarta, a hillside cluster of
5,000
Palestinian farmers and their families (another 5,000 live in
the
diaspora, mostly in Jordan, Europe and the US).
At night the settlement of Itamar, where 300 security troops
vigorously protect 150 Israeli settler families, scowls down on
Awwarta from heights that ride the ridge like an unidentified
flying
object-sometimes almost at whim the settlers will cut off the
juice, leaving the villagers in darkness just to remind them who
controls the power in this biblical valley.
In season, the Israelis will steal the olives and burn and strip
the
trees. Two years ago Mohammod, (not his real name), could still
harvest 2,000 kilos east of the settlement fence, but this year
his
bounty has been reduced to 400. Saleem arrived in his grove of
10 trees this season to find them already prepicked by the
settlers. Now in the villages, crazy settlers like a bushy-bearded
gentleman named Victor curse and poison the wells and fire off
their Uzis to scatter the Palestinian pickers. Stray donkeys are
stolen and disappear behind the Itamar fence. International
solidarity workers who accompany the farmers are detained and
deported on the spurious grounds that they defend terrorists.
Villages like Awwarta are no longer allowed to sell their own
oil
to outside buyers, although ISM (International Solidarity
Movement), which sponsors an annual olive harvest project,
does manage to smuggle some out. The dynamics of tension in
Awwarta are not unlike those in the Chiapas highlands after the
Acteal massacre at the height of the coffee harvest six years
ago
this December.
In early morning, under the daily swoosh of the Israeli jets,
the
"Terrorists," mostly older men and women in kaffias
and
headscarves, plus many young children on furlough from the
local grade school, load up their patient donkeys with ladders,
tarps and buckets and head out to their trees, small family plots
first defined under the Ottoman empire, neat rows of green
against the red-brown valley floor and hillside where gazelles
are sometimes spotted by the pickers. Much as their
grandfathers before them, they beat the olives from the branches
with stout sticks, and a green rainfall spills onto the tarps
spread
below where the women sort and clean the fruit (there are seven
distinct types of olives-none of them stuffed with pimientos).
This
year Awwarta and other Nablus valley villages were assigned
special days when it was "legal" according to the Israeli
government to pick their own olives-these days were often
changed or curtailed when settlers complained that the
"Terrorists" were picking too close to the fence, and
ISM activists
and Rabbis for Human Rights sought to intervene to ward off
police and army harassment.
Mosher and his family invite me to pick from his dusty trees
beneath the Itamar gate and as we glean the dry gnarly
branches he sings me the bitter hymns of Marcel Khalifa and the
words of the great Palestinian poet of repression Mamoud
Darwish (there are many Darwishes in Awwarta). "They tell
the
world of how hard our life is, but no one will listen," the
twenty-year-old grade school teacher insists as we pull black
olives from a tree that is perhaps twice my age, and I am
sixty-five years old.
After sunset the farmers will load up their donkeys to transport
the harvest to the town olive press, a gleaming Italian machine
of
which the village is justifiably proud. Men mingle and smoke.
comparing this year's yield to the past and complain loudly about
how the Israelis have seized their trees to create a "security
perimeter" where migrant workers from Thailand and the
Philippines now pick Awwarta's olives for about 50 shekels a
day.
The olive groves of Awwarta are the heart and soul of this
village's identity. Throughout Palestine, villages have lost
perhaps a half million olive trees to the settlements since Israel
was declared a nation 55 years ago, and without their trees and
their land the villagers are being forced into a global commodity
culture that above all negates the Palestinian identity.
But for farmers like Saad, a burly member of the Awwarta city
council, resistance to this genocide has become second nature.
We sit around his large table, filled with hummus from his
garbanzo patch, yogurt provided by his few cows, flat bread
baked from his wheat fields on olive wood fires taken in the
pruning of his trees, and of course, many ripe olives (even the
pits are dried for fuel to heat homes in the cold winters), and
Saad sighs "This is why I love this land -- no matter what
the
Israelis do to us, we will never leave it."
Israel's Colonization of The Occupied Palestinian Territories
Since The Road Map's Issuance
October 2003
"GOI [Government of Israel] immediately dismantles settlement
outposts erected since March 2001. Consistent with the Mitchell
Report, GOI [Government of Israel] freezes all settlement activity
(including natural growth of settlements)." - Road Map (April
30,
2003)
"Settlements can be built, but there is no need to talk
about it and
come out dancing every time a building permit is given. Let them
build but without talking."[1]- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
to his
Cabinet (June 22, 2003)
Despite the Road Map (and international legal) prohibition
against colonyconstruction and expansion, Israel has recently
accelerated colony expansion in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories ("OPT"):
1. Approved Colony Expansion - 1,646 Housing Units. Since
April 30, 2003, Israel has issued tenders for the construction
of
approximately 1,624 housing units in the Occupied West Bank
and an additional 22 housing units in the Occupied Gaza Strip.
These units are in addition to the 133 housing tenders issued
from January to April 2003.
2. Planned Colony Expansion - 11,806 Housing Units. Israel
has announced plans to construct 11,806 housing units within
the OPT.[2] The plans will be finalized by the end of 2003.
3. Construction of Colony Outposts Continues. According to
Peace Now, although the number of outposts has decreased by
four (there are approximately 96 remaining outposts), outposts
continue to be erected. These new outposts are generally larger
in size, larger in population and have greater infrastructure
accorded to them (i.e. electricity, water, sewage).[3]
3a. Threatening Occupied East Jerusalem with Accelerated
Colonization. In August 2003, Israel's Housing Minister, Effi
Eitam, announced plans to direct "state resources for building
many homes in East Jerusalem in order to attract thousands of
Jews, with the aim of foiling a dividing of . . . [Jerusalem]
by
creating .Jewish settlement contiguity in East Jerusalem."[4]
The plan involves the establishment of at least two new colonies
and continuing expansion in existing ones. The Housing
Ministry is providing approximately $45 million (NIS 200 million)
in grants and loans to developers and buyers in order to finance
colony purchases. Settlers purchasing homes in parts of
Occupied East Jerusalem will receive an additional grant of
$11,235 (NIS 50,000) in addition to the subsidized loan offered
through this program for other settlements in the OPT.[5]
4. Thirteen Percent Tax Break for Settlers: Israel's Finance
Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has recently formulated a plan for
granting huge tax benefits and deductions for approximately 60
colonies and outposts in the Occupied West Bank and all of the
colonies and their outposts in the Occupied Gaza Strip. Under
this plan, these settlements will receive a 13% tax deduction.
It
will be submitted shortly for government approval.[6] Most
settlers have received income tax breaks for living in the OPT.
5. Expanding the Settler Population in the Jordan Valley. In
an
effort to expand the settler population in the Jordan Valley,
the
Israel's Social-Economic Committee has recently decided to
grant several significant benefits worth approximately $90 million
(NIS 400 million) to the Jordan Valley settlements. [7] The plan
will provide an apartment to young settler couples who
undertake to live in the Jordan Valley for four years. Moreover,
one member of each settler couple will receive free academic
education, and if one of them works in the Jordan Valley area,
they will receive an annual grant of approximately $2,700 (NIS
12,000). According to the head of the Jordan Valley Regional
Council David Levy, "We've been trying to get this program
for a
while, and now it is finally been approved."[8]
6. Israeli Tourism Ministry Pumps Millions into Israeli Colonies.
On August 26, 2003, the Israeli Tourism and Finance Ministries
approved financing for colony tourism projects totaling
approximately $2.8 million (NIS 12.5 million) in the OPT.[9] This
financing is in addition to the $7 million the Israeli government
invested in colony tourism projects from 1999 through 2002.[10]
7. New Settler By-Pass Roads. On 10 August 2003, Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon approved construction of three additional
settler by-pass roads at a cost of $33.7 million (NIS 150
million).[11] In addition, the Israeli government started
construction on three new settler roads for the colonies of Har
Homa and Nahal Negohot, and to link the Gaza settlements of
Dugit and Eli Sinai.[12]
8. Train Route to Ariel. Israel's Transportation Minister, Avigdor
Lieberman, has instructed the Israel Railways Company to plan
a railway line to the West Bank colony of Ariel and to give its
construction top priority. The cost is estimated to be $67 million
(NIS 300 million). Regarding the planned 29 kilometer railroad,
some of which will be built on confiscated Palestinian land, Ariel
Mayor Ron Nahman said, "The intention is for the railroad
to
pass through Ariel and go on to Nablus and Jenin.as a kind of
bridge to peace."[13]
[1] Itamar Eichner, Yediot aharanot, as reported in Israel Media
Digest, 23 June 2003.
[2] Foundation for Middle East Peace, Settlement Watch Report
on Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories, July - August
2003, vol. 13, num. 4 at 8. www.fmep.org and Ha'aretz, 29 June
2003.
[3] Interview with Dror Etkes of Peace Now, 29 September 2003.
[4] Ofir Petersburg, Yediot Aharanot, as reported in Israel Media
Digest, 1 August 2003,; Elazar Levin, "A Four Month Window
of
Opportunity," Globes Real Estate Supplement, 17 August 2003.
[5] Elazar Levin, "A Four Month Window of Opportunity,"
Globes
Real Estate Supplement, 17 August 2003.
[6] Uri Yablonca, maariv, as reported in Israel Media Digest
4
August 2003.
[7] Americans for Peace Now, Middle East Peace Report, July 7,
2003, vol. 4, issue 50.
[8] Id..
[9] Irir Rosenblum, NIS 12.5 Million Approved for Tourism
Projects in Territories, Ha'aretz, 26 August 2003.
[10] Id..
[11] Ma'ariv, 10 August 2003 and Yedioth Ahronot, 11 August
2003.
[12] Al Quds 14 July 2003; Wafa 12 July 2003.
[13] Americans for Peace Now, Middle East Peace Report, July
14, 2003, vol. 5, issue 1.
Imagine a concrete wall up to 1000km long, eight meters high
with a round watchtower every 200 meters. Visions of a Stalag
come to mind, of a huge prison camp. Such an entity cannot
exist, surely, without international condemnation echoing in the
halls of the good and the great through-out the world.
The 1000km does not exist, yet. However, by the end of 2002,
115km had been constructed at a cost of $1 million per
kilometer. This is Israel's very own Apartheid Wall or "Seam
Zone". It is twice the height of the former Berlin Wall and
could
end up 30 times as long.
And yet there has been no reaction, of any consequence, from
the international community.
Eventually, the 1000km may not all be solid concrete. There will
be deep,impassable four meter wide trenches flanking the route,
a barbed wire fence and a road patrolled by the Israeli army.
In
places there will be smooth stretches of sand, constantly
monitored for footprints.
There will be electronic sensors. All buildings within 35 meters
of the Wall, on the Palestinian side, will be razed to the ground.
*** The Purpose ***
And the purpose of this monstrosity? Security according to Israel,
to separate Israeli from the West Bank Palestinian. Not so,
according to Palestinians.
If you want security, end the occupation, acknowledge the rights
of the Palestinian people and observe international law as it
applies to the question of Palestine. The wall will entrench the
occupation, squeeze the Palestinian under occupation further
into their ghetto and make life more and more intolerable. It
is a
recipe, not for achieving security, but for guaranteeing further
instability and violence in the region.
With the boundary between Israel and the occupied Palestinian
territory of the West Bank being about 350km long, why does the
route of the proposed wall come to 1000km? The answer lies in
the route of the Wall. It is set to loop deep into Palestinian
occupied territory, embracing clusters of illegal settlements,
enclosing much fertile land and important subterranean water
reservoirs .
Every conflict in Palestine has resulted in expansion by Israel.
In
1948, the nascent Israeli state expanded vastly out with the area
determined by the United Nations partition resolution. In 1967
there was further expansion into the West Bank and Gaza Strip
(not forgetting the Syrian Golan). The current conflict is no
exception, with the wall construction being used as an
opportunity to confiscate about 10% of the West Bank.
Israel argues that the construction is temporary, contingent
on
the state's perception of the "security situation."
Experience has
long shown that, in the absence of external pressure, particularly
from the United States,Israel has never relinquished any land
it
has occupied.
*** Horrific consequences - the Ghetto of Qalqilya ***
The consequences for the Palestinian living close to the wall
are
nothing short of horrific.
Take the case of the once prosperous market town of Qalqilya.
Already the town is surrounded on three sides by the wall. Very
much as if enclosed by a bottle. The bottle-neck is the only way
in and out of this town of 42 000 residents. Gates at the long
neck, overlooked by a watchtower, controls the flow in and out
of
the town - one person or vehicle at a time. For the residents
of
Qalqilya, their town can be transformed into a prison at the whim
of any occupation soldier.
More than 1,500 acres, one third of Qalqilya's town land has
been confiscated. Forty five per cent of the district land has
been
similarly appropriated. A wealthy town, with about half the water
resources of the West Bank, the area - the most important
agricultural basket in the West Bank, producing about 42% of all
its fruit and vegetable - was an exporter to Israel and the Gulf
states. Now the 18 000 residents of nine villages, together with
19 artesian wells, are trapped to the west, between
Israel and the Wall. Access to the rest of the West Bank will,
once again, be at the whim of the occupier.
One of Qalqilya's affected villages is Jayyous, where the wall
deviates up to 6 km from the Green Line (the 1948 Armistice
Line). It virtually encircles about 500 homes, cutting them off
from their land. In the process, an 80 meter swathe has been
cut through the centuries old olive grove. Of the 960 trees owned
by Mayor Salim (some 500 years old), only 50 remain.
Such circumstances are, in reality, part of the strategy leading
to
the slow process of ethnic cleansing in occupied Palestine.
Already Palestinian businesses have relocated to the east of the
Wall. Where the monthly family income in Qalqilya was once
$1 000, it is now closer to $60.
Building for Domination - make the occupation irreversible In
tandem with the Wall project, there is the Trans-Israel Highway
which runs from North to South through a 17% swathe of the
West Bank. It has a buffer zone the width of three football pitches
on either side. Its creation, as with the Wall, was only possible
by
the demolition of Palestinian homes and the virtual
desertification of Palestinian land.
This Highway complements the 250 miles of the settler-only
apartheid road system, which criss-crosses the West Bank. The
dual effect could be to cut the West Bank into 200 enclaves. All
totally reliant on Israel and injections of foreign aid - with
no
prospect of establishing a viable Palestinian state.
Settlements currently take up 1.6% of total land in the West
Bank.
Together with the road network which services the settlements,
the settlers and their settlements control an effective 46% of
West Bank land. When the PLO accepted the Oslo Peace
Accords, they agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state
on 22% of historic Palestine. Of this 22%, under 18% is now
controlled by the Palestinian people.
In the words of Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against
House Demolition, There is no intention to allow a viable
Palestinian state. . .
Please read and feel free to forward, print, and publish.
We would like to apologize for any repeated messages, and any
typing or grammatical errors.
We act because we believe in this quote: " You can fool
some
people some time, but you cannot fool all people all time"
The road map to peace in my opinion should have two separate
language state governments, plus a new federal layer of government
above the state governments.
Only shared greatest international borders for all and a shared
capitol resolves everything spiritually and will cause lasting
peace.
America did not end civil war with only separate states. Actually
all U.S. citizens share federal borders.
Early Quebec French and English Ontario negotiators in Canada
also spoke different languages and practiced different religions.
They too ended bloody war with a federation of states.
Citizens in a federal democracy share international borders, they
share a capitol, they share federal laws.
They share a currency, share an army, and all have integrated
police forces.
Citizens in a federal democracy live where they choose and are
all equally protected under federal law.
I suggest the new federal constitution legislate permanent 50%-50%
equal representation from each state
with a non voting multi-lingual speaker, so no side ever has power
and only good ideas rule.
A Federation of States as a time tested peace plan repeated in
history.
They Torah, bible and Koran are historically correct. Everybody
wants the same thing, which is everything, and only a federal
democracy can achieve that fairly.
An equal share in one is better than half of nothing. We are so
selfish that we deny each other the exact same dream rather than
sharing.
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Cry, the Beloved Two-State Solution
"We will have to come to terms with the fact that we will
live here
as a Jewish minority that will no longer be squeezed between
Hadera and Gedera, but will be able to settle in Nablus and
Baghdad and Damascus .."
By Ari Shavit
Thursday, August 14 2003 @ 07:21 PM GMT
The groundwater
Meron Benvenisti and Haim Hanegbi did not exchange views.
Benvenisti lives in Jerusalem, on the edge of the desert, and
is
trying to write a last book, a summing up. Hanegbi lives in
Ramat Aviv, not far from the sea, and is trying to formulate a
last,
definitive, manifesto. Yet this summer both Benvenisti and
Hanegbi reached an intriguing point in their conceptual
development. They both reached the conclusion that there is no
longer any prospect of ending the conflict by means of a
two-state solution. Each of them separately has come to believe
that the time has come to establish one state between the
Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea: a bi-national state.
On the face of it, they come from utterly different worlds.
Benvenisti's roots lie deep in the old Zionist establishment.
He
was the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek's right-hand
man, a candidate of Ratz (the predecessor of Meretz) for the
Knesset. Hanegbi, in contrast, is a retired revolutionary. He
was
a central activist in the radical-left Matzpen group, one of the
founders of the Progressive List, a partner in the leadership
of
the peace movement Gush Shalom. However, Benvenisti and
Hanegbi also share a deep common background. Both are from
Jerusalem and are graduates of the city's Beit Hakerem high
school, both are Ashkenazi-Sephardi whose ideas were shaped
in the latter stages of the British Mandate period. And both of
them love this land and love human beings. Both are surging
rivers of emotions and stories and sheer human vitality.
It's precisely because they are not cut of the same cloth,
because they are not from the same ideological circle, that the
parallel, albeit not identical, processes they are undergoing
are
so fascinating. True, they are both end-figures, lone wolves,
sensitive sentimentalists who are sometimes perceived as
eccentrics. Nevertheless, each is an original thinker with finely
tuned senses. Both have a knee-jerk aversion to falsity,
whitewashing, and uniform thought. So perhaps the fact that the
two of them arrived during the past year at the conceptual place
they now occupy is of some significance. Possibly it says
something about the groundwater of the current Israeli reality.
Haim Hanegbi
Where did it start? Right after the start of the intifada. Already
then I told [veteran peace activist] Uri Avnery that I was
regressing, I was returning to my origins, that it might be time
to
reconsider the dream of a shared state. But Avnery laughed -
that's his way. He said I was dreaming. Avnery has done a lot
in
the battle for peace and the battle against the occupation, but
Avnery also has a defect. He has no psychic mechanism. Just
as [pioneer Zionist activist Joseph] Trumpeldor had only one
arm, Avnery is incapable of relating to people. It's not something
evil, it's not indifference, it's a disability. He simply lacks
that
emotional organ. So he laughed at me with a kind of patronizing
disdain and ignored what I said. I didn't respond.
For the next three years we continued to formulate the Friday
messages of Gush Shalom. But at the beginning of the summer
I decided I could no longer remain silent, that I had to come
out
with it. So I wrote a text against the occupation at the end of
which I included, for the first time, the idea of one state for
the
two nations. A state in partnership, a bi-national state.
Avnery went wild. He was furious. He said I was harming the
Palestinian cause and endangering the Palestinian state and
serving the right wing. That I was reinforcing fears of the "phased
theory." When I insisted that the text be sent to all the
members
of Gush Shalom, I was told that it would not be disseminated
because it was contrary to the Gush Shalom consensus. I said,
fine, if that's how it is I'm leaving Gush Shalom. So with one
phone call, I left Gush Shalom. Others also left in my wake. Half
of the hardcore left, so now I am working with a few good people
on disseminating my old-new idea about the renewal of
bi-national thinking.
As I wrote in my document, it is plain to me today that there
is no
other alternative to ending the conflict. Everyone with eyes to
see
and ears to hear has to understand that only a bi-national
partnership can save us. That is the only way to transform
ourselves from being strangers in our land into native sons.
The truth is that it all started long ago, in the Mekor Baruch
neighborhood of Jerusalem. When I was 10, at the end of the
Mandate period, our landlord was an Arab named Jamil. The
word "Alhambra" was chiseled in stone on the house in
Arabic
and English. And the house next door was not only owned by
Arabs, it was also inhabited by Arabs. The whole neighborhood
from our house west was mixed. And at my dad's place of work,
the Jerusalem municipality, Jews and Arabs worked together,
too. My dad took me on outings in and around Jerusalem. I
remember Palestinian Ein Karem very well, and Malha and Lifta
and Beit Mazmil. So the Arabs were never strangers to me. They
were always part of my landscape. Part of the country. And I
never doubted the possibility of living with them: house next
to
house, street next to street.
At the end of 1947 they disappeared. It was in the winter, in
the
middle of eighth grade. And the strange thing is that it wasn't
in
the least traumatic. It was all done quietly, without any dramatics.
They just sort of evaporated. I'm not even sure I saw them
packing. I'm not really sure I saw them collecting their things
and
melting away down the slope behind Schneller Camp. But I
remember Deir Yassin well. I remember that we were in our
classroom in the Beit Hakarem high school when we saw the
smoke rising from Deir Yassin [an Arab village on the western
edge of Jerusalem where a massacre was perpetrated in 1948].
So, in the 1960s, when we talked about the principle of equality
in Matzpen, I wasn't just thinking in terms of socialism or a
universal concept. With me it was baladi, my country, the scents
and memories of my childhood. Then came obsessive collecting
of Mandate period maps to locate the villages that had been
erased, the life that ceased to be. And the feeling that without
them this is a barren country, a disabled country, a country that
caused an entire nation to disappear.
So it wasn't easy for me to adopt the two-state solution, in
the
1980s. It was a tough inner struggle. And I never, ever, joined
the
Zionist left. I never abandoned revolutionary thinking. But when
I
saw that Peace Now existed and that there was some sort of
movement in the streets I didn't think it was right to stay cooped
up with dogmas. I thought the two-state idea was a worthy one.
When Oslo came, I thought it was really something great. I read
the accords thoroughly, under a magnifying glass, and I reached
the conclusion that there really was mutual recognition, that
the
possibility existed of closing the conflict file. So in the mid-1990s
I had second thoughts about my traditional approach. I didn't
think it was my task to go to Ramallah and present the
Palestinians with the list of Zionist wrongs and tell them not
to
forget what our fathers did to their fathers. I believed in the
dynamics of Oslo. I also believed in [Yitzhak] Rabin. After the
assassination I even joined the Labor Party.
In the past couple of years I realized that I made a mistake;
that,
like the Palestinians, I too was taken in. I took Israeli talk
seriously and didn't pay attention to Israeli deeds. When I
realized, one day, that the settlements had doubled themselves,
I also realized that Israel had missed its one hour of grace,
had
rejected the rare opportunity it was given. Then I understood
that
Israel could not free itself of its expansionist pattern. It is
bound
hand and foot to its constituent ideology and to its constituent
act, which was an act of dispossession.
I realized that the reason it is so tremendously difficult for
Israel
to dismantle settlements is that any recognition that the
settlements in the West Bank exist on plundered Palestinian
land will also cast a threatening shadow over the Jezreel Valley,
and over the moral status of Beit Alfa and Ein Harod. I
understood that a very deep pattern was at work here. That there
is one historical continuum that runs from Kibbutz Beit Hashita
to
the illegal settler outposts; from Moshav Nahalal to the Gush
Katif settlements in the Gaza Strip. And that continuity apparently
cannot be broken. It's a continuity that takes us back to the
very
beginning, to the incipient moment.
I am now reading a book by Eliezer Be'eri about the beginning
of
the conflict and the start of the Zionist enterprise. At one point,
he
describes how, on November 3, 1878, as Yehuda Raab tilled the
first furrow in the soil of Petah Tikva, he felt that "he
is the first
person to hold a Jewish plow on the soil of the prophets after
the
long years of exile." But look what it says here: "Arabs
also joined
Yehuda Raab on the big day when plowing began. He himself,
with his plow harnessed to animals, could not have tilled an
area of hundreds of dunams. He was joined in the plowing by 12
Arab fellahin."
What does that mean, Ari? You tell me what it means. What it
means is that when Yehuda Raab came to till the first furrow
after 2,000 years of exile he didn't have the strength to do it
alone. He needed fellahin, and 12 of them came to help him.
Reading that, I tell myself that I know all about Raab and who
his
descendants were and I know how his project developed. But I
know absolutely nothing about the 12 fellahin. They appear in
history as unknowns and disappear from history the same way,
with hardly a trace. They were removed from history by Zionism.
Who were they? Where did they go? Where are they today?
So the aging revolutionary you see before you has taken a vow
to
find those 12 vanished individuals, those 12 abductees of
history. My life mission is to set them free from their historical
captivity and give them names and faces and rights. Because
their whole sin in relation to Raab was that they lived in this
country untold generations before him. Why should they be
punished for that? Why insist on their oblivion?
I don't think this is some private madness. On the contrary:
I think
it is an attempt to be released from madness. I am not a
psychologist, but I think that everyone who lives with the
contradictions of Zionism condemns himself to protracted
madness. It's impossible to live like this. It's impossible to
live
with such a tremendous wrong. It's impossible to live with such
conflicting moral criteria. When I see not only the settlements
and the occupation and the suppression, but now also the
insane wall that the Israelis are trying to hide behind, I have
to
conclude that there is something very deep here in our attitude
to
the indigenous people of this land that drives us out of our
minds.
There is something genetic here that doesn't allow us truly to
recognize the Palestinians, that doesn't allow us to make peace
with them. And that something has to do with the fact that even
before the return of the land and the houses and the money, the
settlers' first act of expiation toward the natives of this land
must
be to restore to them their dignity, their memory, their justness.
But that is just what we are incapable of doing. Our past won't
allow us to do it. Our past forces us to believe in the project
of a
Jewish nation-state that is a hopeless cause. Our past prevents
us from seeing that the whole story of Jewish sovereignty in the
Land of Israel is over. Because if you want Jewish sovereignty
you must have a border, but as [Zionist thinker and activist
Yitzhak] Tabenkin said, this country cannot tolerate a border
in its
midst. If you want Jewish sovereignty you need a fortified,
separatist uni-national structure, but that is contrary to the
spirit
of the age. Even if Israel surrounds itself with a fence and a
moat
and a wall, it won't help. Because your fears are well-placed,
Ari:
Israel as a Jewish state can no longer exist here. In the long
term, Israel as a Jewish state will not be able to exist.
I'm not crazy. I don't think that it will be possible to enlist
thousands of people in the cause of a bi-national state tomorrow
morning. But when I consider that Meron Benvenisti was right in
saying that the occupation has become irreversible, and when I
see where the madness of sovereignty is leading good Israelis,
I
raise my own little banner again. I do so without illusions. I
am
not part of any army. I am not the leader of any army. In the
meantime our act is that of a few people. But I think it's important
to place this idea on the table now.
In essence, the bi-national principle is the deepest antithesis
of
the wall. The purpose of the wall is to separate, to isolate,
to
imprison the Palestinians in pens. But the wall imprisons the
Israelis, too. It turns Israel into a ghetto. The wall is the
great
despairing solution of the Jewish-Zionist society. It is the last
desperate act of those who cannot confront the Palestinian
issue. Of those who are compelled to push the Palestinian
issue out of their lives and out of their consciousness. In the
face
of that I say the opposite. I say that we were apparently too
forgiving toward Zionism; that the Jews who came here and
found a land that wasn't empty adopted a pattern of unrestrained
force. Instead of the conflict foisting moral order and reason
on
them, it addicted them to the use of force. But that force has
played itself out, it has reached its limits. If Israel remains
a
colonialist state in its character, it will not survive. In the
end the
region will be stronger than Israel, in the end the indigenous
people will be stronger than Israel. Those who hope to live by
the
sword will die by the sword. That is perfectly clear, Ari: they
will
die by the sword.
Don't treat me as a stranger, as an outsider. True, it's easier
for
me, because I'm from Hebron and Jerusalem, from the Old
Yishuv. It's easier for me because I never took part in the killing
and the dispossession and the occupation. All the same, I feel
a
commitment toward the society I live in. And precisely because
of
that, I believe that anyone who wants to ensure the existence
of a
Jewish community in this country has to free himself from the
Zionist pattern, has to open gates. Because as things are now,
there is no chance. A Jewish nation-state will not take hold here.
It's totally clear that it can't be done without recognition
in
principle of the right of return, because this is a case in which
a
nation was condemned to exile from its land, not because there
was no room, but because it was supplanted by others. That
injustice has not been erased for 55 years and it won't be erased
in another 55 years. But that doesn't mean they will return to
Jamusin, which is in the middle of Tel Aviv. It doesn't mean they
will settle at the corner of Arlosoroff and Ibn Gvirol.
What it means is that the borders have to be open to them, as
in
Europe. It means the establishment of a super-modern city in
Galilee for the 200,000 or 300,000 refugees in Lebanon. It
means the establishment of another Palestinian-Jewish city
between Hebron and Gaza that will both make the desert bloom
and connect the two parts of Palestine.
In general, we have to shift to a bi-national mode of thinking.
Maybe in the end we have to create a new, bi-national Israel,
just
as a new, multiracial South Africa was created.
There will be no other choice, anyway. The attempt to achieve
Jewish sovereignty that is fenced in and insular has to be
abandoned. We will have to come to terms with the fact that we
will live here as a minority: a Jewish minority that will no longer
be squeezed between Hadera and Gedera, but will be able to
settle in Nablus and Baghdad and Damascus, too - and take
part in the democratization of the Middle East. That will be able
to
live and die here, to establish mixed cities and mixed
neighborhoods and mixed families. But for that to happen, the
mad dream of sovereignty will have to be given up, Ari. We have
to forgo that mad dream, which has caused so much bloodshed
here, has inflicted so many disasters, has generated a hundred
years of conflict.
SPECIAL FEATURE: GRASSROOTS INTERVIEW WITH
DANIEL ELLSBERG
This week, the second of our new Grassroots Interviews. Daniel
Ellsberg leaked the top-secret Pentagon Papers to the press in
1971, exposing the U.S. government's motives for involvement in
the Vietnam War. Last fall, he published "Secrets,"
which relates his changing attitudes toward Vietnam and raises
crucial questions of government transparency in times of war.
Ellsberg has responsed to five of the top questions written and
ranked by MoveOn members over the last two weeks. Here's an excerpt:
"Are we 'only' 5%, 10%, of the population? Isn't that five
to ten million adults? One percent? A million. More than that
were in demonstrations, in this country alone: as part of a far
larger global movement, the largest worldwide protest ever seen
before or during any war! That's enough activists to move and
change any country in the world, even (with courage) a police
state. And we're far from that, yet. We can avert that real danger
if we continue using to the fullest all the freedoms we still
have."
The rest of Mr. Ellsberg's responses follow this week's bulletin.
------------------------------
CONTENTS
1. Introduction: Where Does the Road Map Lead?
2. One Link
3. Read the Road Map
4. Critique
5. Facts on the Ground: Terrorism
6. Facts on the Ground: Outposts and Settlements
7. Facts on the Ground: The Separation Wall
8. Conclusion
9. Credits
10. Grassroots Interview: Daniel Ellsberg
11. About the Bulletin
------------------------------
INTRODUCTION: WHERE DOES THE ROAD MAP LEAD?
In July, 2000 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak broke off talks
with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat at the Camp
David summit hosted by U.S. President Bill Clinton. That September,
Ariel Sharon, chairman of the Likud party, made a provocative
visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Control
over this holy site for both Muslims and Jews is contested by
Palestinians and Israelis. The visit implied Israeli sovereignty
over all Jerusalem, the eastern portion of which is considered
occupied territory by the international community. So began the
second intifada, or Palestinian uprising.
As in the first intifada in the late 1980s, the demand is for
an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip,
and East Jerusalem -- which has persisted since 1967 -- and acknowledgment
of the Palestinian refugees right to return to the villages from
which they were forced to leave during the 1948 war that established
the State of Israel. In the 33 months since, human death has saturated
the region: 816 Israelis and 2,384 Palestinians have been killed.
Early in his presidency, George W. Bush avoided substantial involvement
in the Israel-Palestine conflict. After September 11, 2001 a number
of factors -- escalating violence in the area and Israel's attempt
to link September 11th with Palestinian suicide bombings, pressure
from the Israel lobby and the Christian Right, and the desire
for an increasing U.S. influence in the oil-rich Middle East --
prompted Bush to take an active, personal role in promoting an
agreement.
That proposed agreement is the Road Map. While the initiative
has been praised for calling for an end to violence and for endorsing
the formation a Palestinian state, the Road Map provides no mechanism
for actually ending the violence, leaves uncertain the borders
of the proposed state, and postpones determining the status of
the 380,000 Israeli settlers and four million Palestinian refugees.
With matters so central to the resolution of the conflict left
to be decided at a future date or ignored entirely, the Road Map
is still far from being a bona fide peace proposal.
