______________________________
ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN
News * Analysis * Research * Action
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- AFIB No. 343, April 9, 2002 -
Special Palestine Solidarity Issue
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
END THE OCCUPATION - ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE!
The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the
oppressed. -- Stephen Biko
Contents: Number 343
01. B'TSELEM [Jerusalem]: Torture and Total Communication Ban in Ofer
Detention Camp. A Human 'Defensive Shield': IDF Uses Palestinian Civilians
as Human Shields.
02. PALESTINE MONITOR [Ramallah]: The Israeli 'Withdrawal' - Only Partially
True.
03. BADIL RESOURCE CENTER [Bethlehem]: The Palestinian People Will Not
Surrender! Call for a Global Solidarity Campaign to Boycott Israeli Goods
and Services.
04. COUNTERPUNCH [Washington, D.C.]: Memories of Barbarity: Sharonism and
September.
05. WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE [London]: With Washington's Tacit Support,
Sharon Steps Up West Bank Assault.
06. THE GUARDIAN [London]: Grim Respite in Nablus Reveals Cashbah Toll.
07. COUNTERPUNCH [Washington, D.C.]: Colonel Aviv Kohavi, How Did You
Become a War Criminal?
* * *
B'TSELEM
The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
8 HaTa'asiya St. (4th Floor)
Jerusalem 93420, Israel.
Tel: 972-2-6735599
Fax: 972-2-6749111
E-Mail: mail@btselem.org
Web: http://www.btselem.org
- Tuesday, 9 April 2002 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
TORTURE AND TOTAL COMMUNICATION BAN IN OFER DETENTION CAMP
____________________________________________________________________
Since the beginning of operation "Defensive Wall", the IDF has detained
hundreds of Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories. In the
Ramallah area alone, over 1,600 Palestinians were detained and taken to
Ofer military camp near Beituniya. Following the release of some of the
detainees, Israeli human rights organizations began to receive information
about the difficult conditions in the detention camp and about the violent
treatment of detainees on the way to the camp and during detention.
Among other things, detainees reported overcrowding in the tents where they
were held. They reported that they were denied food for many hours and that
some of them were forced to sleep outdoors. On April 5, 2002, B'Tselem
received information from an Israeli source about torture during
interrogations in the camp. According to the information, investigators
broke detainees' toes.
In light of this information, Attorney Yossi Wolfson of HaMoked - Center
for the Defence of the Individual petitioned Lieutenant Colonel Yair
Lotstein, Deputy Legal Advisor for the West Bank, demanding that lawyers be
allowed into the detention camp immediately to meet with the detainees and
examine holding and interrogation conditions. In response, Attorney Wolfson
was told that there was an order forbidding all detainees to meet with
lawyers. The order, issued by the OC Central Commander on April 5, 2002,
determines that anyone detained on or after March 29, 2002, can be held for
18 days before being brought before a judge. After eight days, detainees
will allowed to plead their case. The order also determines that during the
eighteen days of detention, the detainee does not have a right to see a
lawyer.
B'Tselem along with HaMoked, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and
Physicians for Human Rights Israel, have filed an urgent petition to the
High Court of Justice, through Attorney Wolfson on the same day. The
organizations demanded that detainees be allowed to meet with lawyers and
that the court forbid the use of physical force against the detainees
during interrogation.
In the court hearing, held on April 7, 2002, the State claimed that in the
wave of detentions currently carried out in the Occupied Territories, the
IDF detains Palestinians involved in combat against the IDF or in attacks
on Israeli civilians, as well as innocent Palestinians who are not involved
in such actions. Processing the detainees takes a number of days. Until the
decision whether to release a certain detainee or hold him is reached, it
is impossible to allow them to see lawyers. The State claimed that the
order is justified in view of the combat nature of the situation and the
high number of detainees.
With regards to the claims about torture during interrogation, the State
claimed that it is not aware of such a phenomenon and that it cannot
investigate general claims, such as the ones presented in the petition.
Needless to say, as long as lawyers or human rights organizations are
denied access to the detainees, the names of those harmed and the details
of their cases cannot be produced.
Following a short hearing, Justices Levin, Engelrad and Gronis decided to
reject the petition and accept the arguments of the State. The judges claim
that in light of the combat in the Occupied Territories, the OC Central
Commander's order was legal and they were not inclined to interfere with
his judgement. In addition, the judges accepted the State's argument with
regards to the broadness of the claims with respect to torture and refused
to discuss the matter.
Israeli law acknowledges the right of a detainee to see a lawyer as a basic
right. It is entrenched in the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty and in
military legislation as well. The denial of this right is permitted only in
extreme cases, when it is absolutely necessary for the purposes of the
investigation or for security reasons. This right may be denied only in
such cases, and on an individual basis and not out of considerations of
convenience or utility.
The order issued by the OC Central Commander contradicts Israeli law. It is
sweeping and pertains to anyone detained since March 29, 2002. This
contravention of the law is particularly alarming in light of the fact that
the State admits that in the current wave of detentions, Palestinians were
detained according to broad criteria of age and gender, and that many were
detained simply because they were present where detentions were being
carried out and not because they were under suspicion. Under these
circumstances it is impossible to accept claims that denying detainees the
basic right to meet with lawyers complies with the exceptions outlined in
the law. Clearly, such meetings do not put the area at a security risk or
hamper the investigation. It is also clear that the ban on such meetings is
not made on an individual basis, and that the State has turned the narrow
exceptions the law reserves for extreme cases, into a norm.
When harsh claims about torture are made, a ban on meetings with lawyers is
particularly intolerable, since detainees are thus denied any kind of
protection. It appears that the military is seeking to prevent lawyers from
entering Ofer camp, not due the necessities of the interrogation or
security needs, but because it wants to conceal what goes on inside the
camp form the public eye.
B'Tselem demands that the IDF allow lawyers to meet with detainees and
examine holding and interrogation conditions at Ofer camp, as in other
detention facilities.
Mass detentions of people whose only sin was being at the wrong place at
the wrong time, holding them in appalling, inhuman conditions; a complete
ban on communication with the outside world for over two weeks; and above
all, torture during interrogation -- all this is currently being carried
out by the IDF throughout the Occupied Territories, with the seal of the
High Court of Justice.
* * *
____________________________________________________________________
A HUMAN 'DEFENSIVE SHIELD'
IDF uses Palestinian Civilians as Human Shields
____________________________________________________________________
- Monday, 8 April 2002 -
Today, at approximately 1:00 PM, six IDF soldiers entered the al-Baq Mosque
in the old city of Nablus, where an emergency clinic has been established.
At the time, present in the clinic were 45 wounded persons, four doctors,
several volunteers, and ten corpses that it had not yet been possible to
remove.
According to the information provided to B'Tselem by Dr. Zahara el-Wawi, a
doctor at the clinic, the soldiers entered the mosque with their guns
resting on the shoulders of Palestinian civilians who were forced to march
in front of the soldiers as "human shields."
According to Dr. Wawi, who spoke with a B'Tselem fieldworker while the
soldiers were in the mosque, the soldiers separated the medical staff from
the patients, searched the dead bodies, and checked the identities of the
injured patients.
The emergency clinic in the mosque was opened last Wednesday, immediately
following the IDF incursion into Nablus. According to Dr. Wawi, the
clinic's supply of medicines has been exhausted, and as a result the clinic
is unable to take in any additional patients. The supply of water in the
clinic has also been exhausted, as has the gas that runs the generator that
provides electricity to the clinic.
B'Tselem has asked the IDF to allow for the evacuation of the wounded, the
corpses and the medical staff from the clinic.
Over the past several days, B'Tselem has received additional reports
regarding the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields by IDF
soldiers, as well as the prevention of evacuation of wounded persons, and
the lack of electricity and medical supplies at medical centers.
Endangering the lives of innocent civilians constitutes a flagrant
violation of the most basic principles of international humanitarian law.
Such acts cannot be justified based on "military necessity" as the IDF has
frequently claimed in regard to many other violations.
B'Tselem calls on IDF commanders to clarify to their soldiers that such
acts are absolutely forbidden. B'Tselem also calls for a thorough
investigation into these incidents and that those found responsible for
these human rights violations be held accountable.
*****
PALESTINE MONITOR
The Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO)
c/o PARC
P.O. Box 2232, Ramallah, Palestine
E-mail: pngonet@p-ol.com
Web: http://www.pngo.net
Tel: +972 2 296 3847
Fax: +972 2 296 3848
- Tuesday, 9 April 2002 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
Palestine under attack
THE ISRAELI 'WITHDRAWAL' - ONLY PARTIALLY TRUE
____________________________________________________________________
Israeli military forces and media have announced that the Israeli troops
have withdrawn from the Palestinian towns of Tulkaram and Qalqiliya. This
is only partially true -- they have withdrawn from the town centers, but
remain in complete control of the towns with a ring of tanks and other
armed vehicles around them. People in Qalqiliya and Tulkaram remain
isolated from the surrounding villages and towns, and no one is able to
leave the cities.
As the governor of Qalqiliya, Mustafa Malki said, "this whole Israeli move
is an empty political maneuver in response to the statement of President
Bush, and because Colin Powell will come to visit the area next week".
Qalqiliya has been destroyed with sustained attacks on the infrastructure
and buildings; electricity poles have been torn down, houses have come
under heavy fire from tanks and helicopters, and the water pipes and
sewerage networks have been destroyed. Mr. Malki estimates that about 100
people have been detained or arrested from among the numerous men rounded
up and held during the invasion. The lack of water poses a serious problem;
food shortage is not yet an issue as the people were able to stock up prior
to the invasion -- however if the siege is not lifted and access to other
towns and villages permitted soon, shortages will become a problem.
The same situation has been revealed in Tulkaram with the moving back of
the troops to positions surrounding the city. Izz Ad-Din Al Sharief pointed
out that the tanks and Israeli troops are still surrounding the city --
hardly a withdrawal. In his view "the whole so-called withdrawal from
Qalqiliya and Tulkaram is merely a charade -- the Israeli government and
army are using this to cover up the most terrible crimes that they are
carrying out in Jenin and Nablus as we speak. These attacks are barbaric
and have to stop immediately".
This is a reoccurring sentiment in Palestinian society -- the false
withdrawal is being pointed to whenever the attacks on Jenin and Nablus are
mentioned.
Furthermore, according to Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, this also provides the
Israeli army with an opportunity to expand further their operations and
invasions; numerous villages have been invaded, such as Doura near Hebron,
and Aboun and Arruara, both near Ramallah.
The attack on Doura came at 3AM today, when approximately 50 Israeli tanks
attacked and entered the village, killing three Palestinians. Two of the
three killed, Aaref Muhammaed Sa'ed Ahmad and his cousin Na'ir Sa'ed Ahmad
were both shot and wounded, but medical staff were prevented access to them
until 11:30AM -- by which time they had both bled to death. Houses were
entered and searched, doors blown up, people detained without reason -- the
same things that have occurred for the past 11 days as Israel has
systematically assaulted the towns and cities of the West Bank.
The situation in the Jenin refugee camp and the city of Nablus are
currently indescribable. A doctor from Nablus tells how he has received
numerous phone calls from residents who are trying to prevent dogs from
eating the corpse of Muhammad Abu Khatib, a 40 year old man whose body has
lain in the streets since the 3rd of April; medical teams are prevented to
reach him and many others.
In Hawwara, near Nablus, Israeli soldiers shot dead Samir Wakat after he
was released from Israeli detention. This is the second instance of a
detainee being shot after release.
More than ever before it is becoming obvious that the cause of all violence
and the problems in the Middle East is the continuing illegal Israeli
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The only way to achieve peace
is through the full Israeli withdrawal from all the areas occupied by
Israel in 1967 -- and not just the most recently re-occupied towns and
cities.
*****
BADIL RESOURCE CENTER
PO Box 728
Bethlehem, Palestine
Tel/fax. 02-2747346
E-mail: info@badil.org
Web: http://www.badil.org
- Monday, 8 April 2002 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE WILL NOT SURRENDER!
Call for A Global Campaign to Boycott Israeli Goods and Services
____________________________________________________________________
BADIL Resource Center
For immediate release, 8 April 2002 (E/25/2002)
"The Israeli Defense Forces have rendered a hellish battleground among the
civilians in the Balata and Jenin refugee camps. We are getting reports of
pure horror... [The international conventions that protect non-combatants
in times of conflicts] are worthless, if they are not adhered to precisely
at times of the greatest blood-letting. The world is watching, and Israel
needs to end this pittyless assault on civilian refugee camps." (UNRWA High
Commissioner Peter Hanser, UNRWA press release "End the Horror in the
Camps," 7 April 2002)
Despite death, destruction, and the humanitarian crisis, however, Israel's
US-backed military campaign will not achieve the surrender of the
Palestinian people.
THE PALESTINIAN PEOLE WILL NOT SURRENDER, BECAUSE ALL OF US, in Jenin,
Nablus, Balata, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Aida,
Deheishe and elsewhere in occupied Palestine, HAVE PROOF THAT WE ARE NOT
ALONE! We are overwhelmed and empowered by the tremendous expression of
solidarity we witness daily in all parts of the world. Confined to our
homes by military curfews and in the midst of the rumbling of Israel's
tanks and the terrifying sound of shooting and shelling, and with the
United State's Apaches and F-16s roaming above our homes, we have seen you.
On our TV screens we have seen the tens- and hundreds of thousands of you
marching in al-Ribat, Cairo, Amman, Damascus, Saudi Arabia, South Africa,
New York, Paris, Rome, Brussels, Antwerpen, Berne and everywhere on this
globe for the sake of justice in Palestine. You, the global solidarity
movement, must know that you have been our source of strength in these dark
days, and that you will remain our source of strength for a better future.
Against the background of governments' unwillingness to provide
international protection for the Palestinian people and apply sanctions
against Israel, we call upon the global solidarity movement to launch and
coordinate a broad CAMPAIGN TO BOYCOTT ISRAELI GOODS AND SERVICES
everywhere in the world for the sake of a better future for the
Palestinian, Arab and Israeli people in the region. More than 50 yeas after
the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, Israel must no longer be permitted to stand
above international law, and the impunity of war criminals must end.
BADIL Resource Center welcomes the launching in the United States of the
"Boycott Israeli Goods (BIG)" grassroots campaign. BIG advocates consumer
boycotting of Israeli agricultural and industrial products, divestment of
US funds in Israeli companies and in State of Israel bonds, as well as
boycott of tourism, until Israel will end its occupation of all areas
occupied in 1967 and respect international law and human rights, including
the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands.
Similar boycotts and initiatives aimed at pressuring governments and the
European Union to suspend cultural, economic and military aid and
agreements with Israel have been launched in Europe, the West Coast of the
United States, many African and Asian countries, and in Israel itself.
It is time now, based on the broad consensus of civil society organizations
at the third World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South
Africa, to TRANSFORM THE IMPRESSIVE GLOBAL DEMONSTRATION OF SOLIDARITY with
the Palestinian people into a BROAD AND SUSTAINED ISRAEL BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN
similar to the boycott movement that finally removed the repressive
apartheid regime in South Africa. Consumers and activists should not only
boycott Israeli products and services, but also use the opportunity to
educate others about repressive and apartheid-like Israeli policies
supported by governments worldwide, especially by the United States.
For more information and coordination about global boycott initiatives, see:
Boycott Israeli Goods Campaign
Info@BoycottIsraeliGoods.org
http://www.BoycottIsraeliGoods.org
This excellent website includes relevant information in several languages,
as well as links to other boycott initiatives worldwide.
For information about the Palestinian NGO position paper submitted to the
WCAR at Durban, as well as the NGO Declaration and Joint Program of
Action/WCAR, see:
http://www.badil.org/Resources/WCAR/WCAR2001.htm
BADIL Resource Center aims to provide a resource pool of alternative,
critical and progressive information on the question of Palestinian
refugees in our quest to achieve a just and lasting solution for exiled
Palestinians based on their right of return.
*****
COUNTERPUNCH
'Tells the Facts and Names the Names'
Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
3220 N. St., NW, PMB 346
Washington, DC, 20007-2829
Tel: 1 (800) 840-3683
Fax: 1 (800) 967-3620
Web: http://www.counterpunch.org
E-mail: counterpunch@asis.com
- Tuesday, 9 April, 2002 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
MEMORIES OF BARBARITY: SHARONISM AND SEPTEMBER
____________________________________________________________________
By Vijay Prashad
http://www.counterpunch.org/prashadsharon1.html
The Israeli Defense Force continues its inhuman assault on the Palestinian
population of the Occupied Territories, sometimes euphemistically called
the Palestinian Authority. The Oslo Accords that produced this sham of
freedom did not change the fundamental relationship between the Israeli
state and the Palestinian people - one of colonial domination in all
aspects of life. What the PA had, as most reasonable commentators accepted,
was the right to manage only a short list of subjects, in a sense similar
to most of the comprador regimes that worked under the heel of the colonial
master.
But people with a long history of struggle, who chaff at the bit placed on
them by the US and the Israeli state, staff the PA. From the standpoint of
the Israeli state, any motion on their part is tantamount to terrorism.
When all reasonable opposition is squashed, what else must come but the
suicide bomber? The suicide bomber is not a result of some malady in
Palestinian or Islamic culture, but it is the end result of an ill-fated
policy since 1967 to render the Palestinians without the means to craft
their destiny. This is not to say that the Israeli people deserve what they
get. Far from it, it is to say that Sharonism produced the terrible social
conditions that led to this impasse.
And we hear NPR and other sources of liberal commentary flog the tired
horse of Arafat being soft on terrorism. These liberals are heirs to Jimmy
Carter, who said, early in 1980, "Any attempt to take control of the Gulf
will be seen as an attack against the interests of the US, and will be
resisted by any means, including military force." Palestinian assertion is,
in this view, an assault on the Gulf.
Meanwhile, as the IDF continues its barrage in Nablus and elsewhere, the
calendar brings us to the two decade anniversary of Sharonism's worst
crime: the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. How will we grieve those fifteen
thousand dead because of Sharonism in September 1982, when so much more
bloods flows from the streets of Ramallah to Tel Aviv even today? What is
the point of those memories of barbarism, when barbarity continues
unchecked?
Sharonism begins on 9 April 1948, when Menachem Begin's Irgun massacred two
hundred and fifty-four residents of Deir Yassin massacre. Begin only
followed the racist callousness of Israel's first President Chaim Weizmann
who said that the British informed him, "There are a few hundred thousand
Negroes [in pre-1948 Palestine], but that is a matter of no significance."
When you render human beings insignificant, it is license to mass murder.
All this is by way of prologue because what happened in 1967 and 1970
raises Sharonism to a fine art. In 1967, the main actor was the Jordanian
military, the right-hand of the US government and eager to maintain its own
domination over its people than accept any form of democratic dissent.
Today, again, Jordan is wracked with pro-Palestinian protests and its new
king, Abdullah, is as eager as his father to avoid the issue to protect his
throne. The troops in Amman these last few days have gone after the
students with ferocity. The second event is from 1982, when the Lebanese
Falange, pushed by Sharon, massacred the Palestinians in the camps.
Sharonism, via the Jordanian army, the Falange and the IDF, went after the
left Palestinians, thereby creating a vacuum filled earnestly by groups
like Hamas. Sharonism is the end of debate, because it went after
reasonable people with its weapons, produced a desert of political opinion,
and then used that as an excuse for further barbarity. Meanwhile, the
Palestinians continue to suffer and the US media pities Sharon for his
dilemma.
(1) Jordan, 1970
The 1967 Six Day War was a shambles for the Palestinian cause as the IDF
decimated the Arab forces, revealed the total military superiority of
Israel and stole East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordanian control.
Of Jordan's total population in 1970, seventy-five percent identified
itself as Palestinian. Nevertheless, both the Jordanian monarchy and the
United Nations repeatedly called them "refugees" or "displaced persons" and
denied them the right to fight for both the right to their lands in the
west or for the creation of a democratic state in Jordan. Jordan, itself a
creation of the British, relied upon oil monies and its subservience to the
other Arab monarchies as well as to its exploitation of the highly-trained
and literate Palestinian population for its own economic survival.
Nevertheless, the Jordanians, like the Syrians and the Egyptians, utilized
the Palestinians for their own purposes rather than allowing them to
control their own destiny within a democratic framework.
Many Palestinians realized the need to control the movement, so Dr. George
Habash founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Yasser
Arafat founded Harakat Tahreer Falasteen or Al-Fatah. Habash announced that
"the liberation of Palestine will come through Amman [capital of Jordan],"
mostly to challenge both King Hussein and a broken Nasser (both of whom
came under Israeli hegemony by 1970, something recognized in the US
Secretary of State Rogers' Plan). King Hussein (with help from Zia-ul-Haq
of the Pakistani army) sent in his Bedouin army on 27 September to clear
out the Palestinian bases in Jordan. A massacre of innumerable proportions
ensued. Moshe Dayan noted that Hussein "killed more Palestinians in eleven
days than Israel could kill in twenty years." Dayan is right in spirit, but
it is hardly the case that anyone can match the Sharonism in its brutality.
The horror conducted by the marginal Black September group against the
Israeli Olympians at the Munich games came as "retaliation." One barbarity
followed another.
(2) Sabra & Shatila, 1982
Driven from Jordan and from Syria (in 1976), scores of Palestinians moved
to the outskirts of Beirut into refugee camps. Two such camps, Sabra and
Shatila, housed almost forty thousand people by the early 1980s. Lebanon
benefited from the insecurity in West Asia, since most Arabs used it as a
haven for capital (notably, the Gulf Sheikhs, but also those capitalists
from Egypt, Syria and Iraq who fled the various "socialist" experiments).
The service sector (banking, finance, commerce, tourism) accounted for
seventy percent of Lebanon's GDP and it ensured an economic boom. The
Lebanese state, however, neglected the project of social justice and the
widespread misery among the working-class and the intermediate classes. A
Christian-fascist group, the Falange, took advantage of the state's
callousness and expanded its ranks from thirty-five thousand (1942) to
seventy thousand (1970). By 1975-76, the Falange was the backbone of the
regime and in September 1982, a Falangist (and Israeli ally) was elected
the head of state. The Lebanese regime, along with a Multinational Force
(US, France, Italy), ejected the Palestinian fighters from West Beirut and
sent them to the camps in the city's vicinity. The Falange was helped by
the IDF, whose then head Sharon said on 12 June 1982, "We are here to
destroy once and for all the PLO terrorists."
On 2 September, a 50-kilogram TNT explosive killed Bashir Gemayel, the
Lebanese ruler. The IDF, in contravention of the commitments made by US
envoy Philip Habib to the PLO, surrounded East Beirut. On 16 September, at
5pm, the IDF urged the Falangists to enter the Palestinian camps and for
the next two days, they held off the press and fleeing Palestinians as the
Falange (joined by the IDF) killed over three thousand five hundred people
(Israel claims that only eight hundred died). Begin, of Irgun fame, refused
to conduct an inquiry and blamed the events on "the bloodthirsty plot being
hatched against Israel and its government." Four hundred thousand people
protested in Tel Aviv on 25 September and forced the regime to form the
Kahane Commission (whose report relieved Begin of "a certain degree of
responsibility" and called for the dismissal of Sharon and of Raphael
Eytan, which did not happen -- both became members of the Knesset and then
Sharon was elevated to the top post in the land).
The Israeli media attempted to put the blame on the Falange ("organized
riffraff," said Yediot Aharonot on the 28th) without any acknowledgement of
Israel's instigation and logistical support of the massacre. Edward Said
correctly noted that in Lebanon, Sharon's IDF has "behaved like an
international gangster" (al-Hayat, 6 May 1994). Sharonism is gangsterism,
and even today, as every country in the world (even, in fits and starts,
the US) condemns the IDF violence, Sharonism continues in complete
arrogance.
Meanwhile, children stuck within homes, afraid that they will be the next
martyrs in the crossfire, memorize the poems of Mahmoud Darwish:
I saw nothing but a scaffold
With one single rope for two million necks
I see armed cities of paper that bristle
With kings and khaki
September has not been a good month for the Palestinian struggle. On 29
September 2000, the current Intifada began when Ehud Barak dispatched the
IDF into al-Aqsa, destroyed the peace process and his own political career.
The instigator of this violence was not just Sharonism, but Sharon himself.
In the decade before al-Aqsa Intifada, Sara Roy shows us how the Oslo
ghetto has devastated the everyday lives of Palestinians: unemployment
during the 1990s rose nine fold between 1992 and 1996, real gross GNP fell
by over eighteen percent and real per capita GNP fell by an even more
dramatic thirty seven percent. "The reasons for Palestinian economic
regression," Roy argues, "are many and interrelated but turn on one primary
axis: Israel's closure policy, which restricts and at times bans the
movement of labor and goods from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip to
Israel, to each other, and to external markets, represents the single most
deleterious factor shaping the nature of Palestinian economic activity and
Palestinian life in general" (this is in Verso's tremendous collection, The
New Intifada). The policy of closure began in March 1993 and the parties
signed Oslo in September of that yearSanother September in the Palestinian
odyssey. The al-Aqsa Intifada, that began in September 2000 and has now
been overtaken by the IDF invasion, "arose in response to Israel's
continued attempt to fragment and weaken the Palestinian community through
dispossession, denial and closure." Roy concludes.
The architect of Sharonism is not just Sharon, but also US neoconservatives
like Irving Kristol, who just over a decade ago ("Who Needs a Peace in the
Middle East?" Wall Street Journal, 21 June 1989) wrote, "A Palestinian
state in Gaza would be nothing more than an armed camp for intransigent
irredentists who would be at permanent war with Israel. Why should Israel
agree to any such scenario? It won't, since it would only end up having to
occupy Gaza all over again. The million or so Palestinian refugees -- by
now mainly children and grandchildren of the original refugees -- did not
come from the West Bank, have no family connections on the West Bank, have
no memories of the West Bank." These Palestinians, in words similar to
Golda Meir, have no right to belong, since they don't exist. This is the
ideology of Fortress Israel - barricade oneself behind the IDF and inflict
enormous pain on anyone who may try to resist your armed might.
And yet, NPR and its compatriots say that Sharon is reasonable, that Arafat
is untrustworthy. You can trust Sharon, that's right. You can trust him to
dip his hands into blood and still get arms shipments from the US.
Viijay Prashad teaches political science and international studies at
Trinity College. He is the author of Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting:
Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity and The Karma of
Brown Folk. Prashad can be reached at: Vijay.Prashad@trincoll.edu
Copyright 2002. All rights reserved. CounterPunch is a project of the
Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity.
*****
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: editor@wsws.org
- Tuesday, 9 April 2002 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
WITH WASHINGTON'S TACIT SUPPORT, SHARON STEPS UP WEST BANK ASSAULT
____________________________________________________________________
News & Analysis: Middle East
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/apr2002/isra-a09.shtml
By Patrick Martin
With a wink and a nod from the US government, Israeli military forces are
intensifying their pillaging of Palestinian cities on the West Bank,
destroying utilities, buildings and other infrastructure, demolishing
entire neighborhoods with tanks, artillery and air strikes, and killing
hundreds.
Virtually the entire urban population of the West Bank is under siege,
deprived of access to food, running water, electrical power, prescription
drugs and other necessities. There were reports Monday that the Israeli
Defense Forces (IDF) were preparing to launch similar attacks on cities and
refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, which have not been targeted in the
current offensive.
Perhaps the cruelest tactic employed by the Sharon government is the
blocking of ambulances and even foot traffic into hospitals, ensuring that
any Palestinian seriously wounded by gunfire, shells or bombs will
subsequently die.
In one incident, a Palestinian man, wounded in the stomach and hand, was
brought within four yards of the front door of Al Razi Hospital in Jenin.
Israeli soldiers in a tank unit would not permit doctors and other staff to
move the victim inside, and he died after several hours.
Humanitarian organizations said the Israeli military was deliberately
disrupting aid and medical operations for the Palestinian population.
Marie-Louise Weighill of Save the Children told the BBC, "The Israeli chain
of command on the streets is breaking down and there is no respect for the
humanitarian missions. The Israeli Defense Forces are not allowing any
humanitarian agencies to operate in areas under their control." The
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that its medical
personnel had been "prevented from performing their life saving duties."
The United States and Israel
In an hour-long speech to the Israeli Knesset Monday, Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon vowed to continue the onslaught on the West Bank until Israel had
completely dismantled what he called the "terror infrastructure," which he
identified with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. He gave no
indication as to how long this would take, while saying that in a telephone
conversation with US President Bush he had promised "every effort to
accelerate" the operation.
These comments expose the elaborate pretense of the Bush administration
that the US is trying to hold back Sharon. Sections of the American media
are even suggesting that there is a sharp conflict between the Israeli
regime and the United States over the methods being employed on the West
Bank, and that Sharon is "defying" the United States.
Bush's Rose Garden speech Thursday, when he announced that Secretary of
State Colin Powell would visit the Middle East and urged Israel to show
restraint, was followed by comments Saturday, at a press briefing with
visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair, calling on Sharon to halt the
offensive "without delay."
On the Sunday television interview programs, both Powell and National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice danced around the question of a timetable
for Israel to halt its military onslaught. "The president doesn't give
orders to a sovereign prime minister of another country," Powell said
Sunday--a comment which ex-leaders of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan
might dispute.
Rice told CNN that Bush wanted an Israeli withdrawal but "understands that
it can't be helter-skelter and chaotic." This is a most cynical pretext,
given that chaos is precisely the result of the Israeli invasion, which has
destroyed much of the economic and social infrastructure of an area that is
home to three million people.
The clearest proof that the Bush administration is encouraging, not
restraining, Israeli violence, is the decision to send Powell to the Middle
East by the slowest possible route. He will visit Arab leaders in Morocco
and Egypt, then zigzag west to Madrid for talks with European foreign
ministers, before arriving in Israel as late as Friday, April 12--thus
giving Sharon eight days, from the time of Bush's initial announcement--to
arrest and kill as many Palestinians as possible.
The hypocrisy of the US government is further underscored by the contrast
between Powell's posture toward Sharon and his attitude to Arafat. Powell
has announced he will meet in Jerusalem with Sharon--who is supposedly
defying American wishes--while he has refused to commit himself to even
meeting with Arafat--who has declared his unconditional support for Bush's
intervention.
The reality is that the Sharon government has little more independence of
Washington than the Central Command of General Tommy Franks in Afghanistan.
The Israeli military is entirely dependent on US weaponry, from jet
fighters and helicopter gunships to ammunition and fuel. The Israeli
economy and government could not function for a week without US financial
backing. If Sharon disregards US statements about pulling out of the West
Bank it is because he has been assured that these are merely for public
consumption, especially in the Arab states.
An illuminating precedent: the 1956 Suez crisis
If the US government were intent on halting the Israeli offensive
immediately, it would have no problem doing so. A relevant historical
precedent underscores this political fact.
In 1956, when Britain, France and Israel made a concerted attack on Egypt,
seizing the Suez Canal and threatening to move on to Cairo and oust the
nationalist regime of Nasser, the Eisenhower administration intervened
decisively. The American government at that time considered the military
action, aimed at protecting the oil interests of British and French
corporations and boosting the flagging influence of the former colonial
powers in the Middle East, to be inimical to US economic and geopolitical
aims in the region. Washington was intent on supplanting the European
powers as the dominant force in the oil-rich area.
American diplomatic threats and financial pressure on the British pound and
the French franc brought London, Paris and their Israeli ally quickly into
line. All three countries withdrew their troops from Egyptian soil and
British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, the principal architect of the
invasion, abruptly resigned.
The human toll of the Israeli attack
The heaviest fighting over the weekend took place in and around the
northern West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus. At least 100 Palestinians
have been killed fighting to defend their homes in the refugee camp just
outside Jenin, while at least 7 Israeli soldiers have been killed and 30
wounded.
The Israeli advance has been slow, despite the enormous superiority in
weaponry--helicopter gunships, tanks, bulldozers and artillery, against
small arms and homemade bombs. Israeli military officials described the
resistance as desperate and intense. An unknown number of dead and wounded
have been buried under the rubble of houses smashed down by tanks and
bulldozers.
Nearly all the population has fled the camp in the course of six days of
fighting that have virtually destroyed it. There is no electricity or
water, and little food, and medical workers have been barred from entering
the camp since Thursday, leaving many wounded to bleed to death.
Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in Nablus, where the battle is
still raging in the old quarter of the city. Narrow streets and closely
packed houses make tank operations there more difficult. Hundreds of
Palestinian fighters manned barricades or holed up in the drainage pipes
that run under the city. Helicopter gunships reportedly fired over 200
missiles at the center of the city, once home to more than a quarter
million people.
Each one of these missiles carries a greater charge than the 40 pounds of
explosives worn by the suicide bomber who killed 27 Israelis at a Passover
Seder in Netanya--the incident used as the pretext for Sharon's policy of
reconquest of the West Bank.
Suicide bombing is denounced as "terrorism" because it deliberately targets
innocent Israeli civilians. What other label can be applied to the
launching of hundreds of powerful missiles into a densely populated
Palestinian city, knowing that the result will be hundreds, if not
thousands, of deaths?
The US media's double standard
The American media cannot be bothered with history, or with a serious
examination of the political arguments being made by either Bush or Sharon.
It proceeds with an extraordinary double standard, reporting--in some cases
quite vividly--outrages being committed by Israeli forces, while branding
Arafat and the Palestinians as the "terrorists."
A report in the Washington Post Monday described Israeli forces as
"ravaging" Bethlehem, wrecking homes, shops and civic buildings, destroying
cars, appliances and other property, and detaining, abusing and beating
civilians.
Some 200 Palestinians, including the city's governor and many other
officials of the Palestinian Authority, have taken sanctuary in the Church
of the Nativity, protected by dozens of Palestinian Christian priests and
friars. The IDF has declared the Palestinians "terrorists" and the
clergymen "hostages," although the Roman Catholic Church has rejected this
description.
A mentally impaired church bell-ringer was killed in the initial Israeli
onslaught on the church. After Israeli troops fired into the church
compound a second time, setting fire to part of the facility and killing a
Palestinian policeman, a spokesman for custodians of Catholic sites in the
Holy Land, Fr. David Jaeger, denounced the attack as "a violation of every
law of humanity and civilization."
According to Jessica Montell, executive director of the Israeli human
rights group B'Tselem, soldiers operating on the West Bank act with
impunity. "There's no accountability," she told the Post. "There's no
investigation. It's like boys with no supervision who go crazy. There's no
sense that these are human beings like them, who are victims. It's hard to
find any security justification for what appears to be vandalism and wanton
destruction."
B'Tselem and three other human rights groups pressed their allegations of
torture by the Israeli military, going to Israel's High Court Sunday to
charge that Palestinians at the Ofer detention camp had their toes broken
as an interrogation tactic. The High Court refused to act, citing the
absence of Palestinian witnesses--these, of course, are for the most part
still in detention.
Another barbaric action for which the Sharon government is responsible is
the practice of using Palestinians as human bomb detectors. Several
Palestinians have described being forced at gunpoint to precede Israeli
soldiers into offices and buildings so that they would set off any booby
traps or bombs, or receive sniper fire. Israeli military spokesmen admitted
compelling civilians to enter buildings ahead of invading troops, claiming
that their function was "only to give directions" because they were
"familiar with the building."
At the same time, the Israeli military has closed off much of the West Bank
to the international press, and attacked American and other foreign
reporters with stun grenades and rubber bullets. Last week a reporting team
from the US cable news network MSNBC was arrested by Israeli soldiers when
it sought to cover US envoy Anthony Zinni's visit to Arafat in the
Palestinian leader's besieged Ramallah headquarters.
One can only imagine the US media outcry if any of these actions were being
carried out by Palestinians rather than Israelis.
Copyright 1998-2002 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
*****
____________________________________________________________________
GRIM RESPITE IN NABLUS REVEALS CASBAH TOLL
____________________________________________________________________
THE GUARDIAN
International News
Tuesday, 9 April 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,681167,00.html
Suzanne Goldenberg in Nablus
The stench of blood and rotting corpses carried far beyond the green mosque
where the bodies were laid out, tightly wedged together like firewood:
young men, perhaps Palestinian fighters, and those with the sagging paunch
of middle age.
At last, after five ferocious days of fighting in the vaulted stone
alleyways of the old town, the Israeli army yesterday allowed Palestinian
medical workers to take the 62 wounded to hospital and carry away the dead.
Twenty-six corpses awaited them; five had bled their lives away into the
stained mattresses strewn beneath the chandeliers of the Jamal Bek mosque,
which has been converted into a makeshift hospital and morgue.
"The first dead [man] was here on the first day, Wednesday," said Nisar
Smadi, a senior doctor. "He was killed by a shortage of medicine. It was an
abdomen wound."
The frenzied evacuation began at sundown. Medics scrambled down a vast
crater at the entrance to the old city, or casbah, and stretcher bearers
collided in vaulted alleyways in a feverish effort to collect the dead
before the Israeli army re-imposed its curfew.
Most of the dead and wounded were men, cut down as the Israeli army blasted
its way through the labyrinth of narrow lanes, raking the pavements with
heavy machine guns. The ground underfoot was littered with tank shells.
Water gushed from smashed pipelines, a child's lace-up black shoe lay
abandoned. The corpses were stacked in a courtyard of the mosque. Some
faces were blackened and pitted, apparently by an explosion. Blood curdled
around mouths, and seeped from gaping chest wounds. One wore the green
bandana of Hamas around his neck, the face of another was masked with a
black and white chequered keffiyeh (headdress), but it was impossible to
say in the chaos how many of the dead were Palestinian fighters, and how
many were civilians.
Yesterday was a turning point in the Israeli army's battle for Nablus. The
city, the most populous in the West Bank, has a proud history of militancy,
and the lanes of its casbah, which are too narrow for some Israeli armoured
vehicles, and three refugee camps are reckoned the toughest terrain the
Israeli military will encounter on its offensive.
When the army entered Nablus last Wednesday, and began the slow pincer
movement towards the old casbah, Israeli military commentators said: "Now
the real war has begun."
Yesterday it seemed as if the war may be ending as Israeli armour circled
the casbah, and a soldier, reading in halting Arabic from a printed sheet,
ordered the fighters holed up inside to surrender.
"The army of the Israeli occupation is surrounding the whole area," the
disembodied voice said. "If anybody is harbouring any armed person, he
should know the hand of the Israeli army can reach him anywhere."
On Sunday, the hand of the Israeli army reached out for a five-day-old
baby, Hala Amireh. The soldiers stormed the family's stone house in the
afternoon, her mother, Asma, said, perched on a cot in the mosque.
"The Israeli army came by and told us to get out of the house because they
were going to blow it up," she said. The army later fired four rockets at
the first floor of the home. "All our rooms were destroyed."
That was the threat hanging over all 30,000 residents of the casbah
yesterday as the Israeli army tried to force a surrender. At first sight,
it appeared the army was making headway; after a pounding from helicopter
gunships and tanks, the fabled resistance of the old town appeared to be
crumbling.
"The fighters are taking shelter in the old city, but when you are talking
about tanks and bullets raining down in buckets, the only one that can help
them is God," Walid Jardeh, a taxi driver who lives at the heart of the
casbah, said.
At 60, Mr Jardeh is too old to be of interest to the Israeli army; their
surrender demand yesterday applied to men between the ages of 18 and 40.
By mid-afternoon, about 150 men had trudged up the dusty road towards the
Israeli armoured vehicles. They filed out two by two, a large group at
first of about 50 men, hands laced behind their heads, followed by
stragglers in groups of 15 or 20.
On a stairway leading up from the casbah, another file of men formed - some
young, and some old. A few fluttered white handkerchiefs for safety. They
said that they came out because of Israeli army threats to blow up their
houses.
But while the surrender is beginning, few Palestinians believe the battle
for the old city is over. They say most of the men who surrendered were
ordinary civilians - not Palestinian militants - and that further desperate
days of fighting lie ahead.
After dark, the Israeli army yesterday pursued its campaign of "softening"
the casbah up for its final fall, and several thunderous explosions ripped
through the night.
"No, it is not finished. Tonight, they say they are going to destroy the
whole area, and you know these houses are so old. If you touch even one
house, you will destroy the whole area," said Futnah Masrujeh, a volunteer
medic at the mosque.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
*****
COUNTERPUNCH
'Tells the Facts and Names the Names'
Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
3220 N. St., NW, PMB 346
Washington, DC, 20007-2829
Tel: 1 (800) 840-3683
Fax: 1 (800) 967-3620
Web: http://www.counterpunch.org
E-mail: counterpunch@asis.com
- Monday, 8 April, 2002 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
A Letter to the IDF's Paratrooper Commander
COLONEL AVIV KOHAVI, HOW DID YOU BECOME A WAR CRIMINAL?
____________________________________________________________________
By Dr. Neve Gordon
http://www.counterpunch.org/nevegordon1.html
To Colonel Aviv Kohavi
Brigade Commander of the Israeli Defense Forces Paratroopers
I presume you remember me. In any event, I remember you. We first met in
the paratrooper brigade. I was a platoon sergeant in the corporals company;
you were a young platoon officer. Even then friends of mine who were
serving with you in the same post in Lebanon related that you were a
sensible, serious, and above all decent officer.
The better part of our acquaintance occurred, though, at Hebrew University.
We were studying towards our B.A. in Philosophy--you in preparation for a
career in the military, I as a human rights activist. During that period we
had more than one political discussion. I couldn't help but admire you. I
found you to be a thinking person, imaginative, and judicious--quite
different from the typical army officer that one meets at the university,
one who registers merely to snatch a degree and to run off. Looking back, I
believe that you really enjoyed your studies, a number of which, it should
be noted, dealt with ethical theory.
Years have passed since we last met. You became the paratroopers' brigade
commander, I a lecturer in the department of politics and government at Ben
Gurion University. On Thursday, March 1, 2002 I once again saw you, not
face to face, but on television. You were on the news program: the
commander of the troops that entered Balata refugee camp, near Nablus. You
solemnly explained that at that very moment your soldiers were transmitting
a forceful message to the Palestinian terrorists: the Israeli army will
hunt them down in every nook and cranny.
In the days after the interview, news began to trickle about what took
place in the camp: prior to the incursion the Israeli military reigned
terror on the inhabitants employing helicopters and tanks; then, Aviv, you
imposed a curfew on the camp, blew up the electric transmission lines,
cutting off electricity to 20,000 civilian inhabitants; bulldozers ruined
the water supply pipe lines. Your soldiers, Aviv, then moved from house to
house by smashing holes in the interior walls; they destroyed furniture and
other property, and riddled bullets in water tanks on roof tops. The
soldiers spread terror on the inhabitants, most of whom were women,
elderly, and children.
But that wasn't all. I learned that your soldiers also used inhabitants as
human shields. Also, in the first few hours of the incursion the
Palestinians had 120 wounded, and that you, Aviv, refused to allow
ambulances to enter and leave the camp.
There were, of course, several battles in the camp during the incursion;
two Palestinians and one of your soldiers were killed. You also reported
that you confiscated weapons and that your operation prevented future
terrorist acts from happening. But you totally ignored the connection
between Israeli military violence perpetrated in the Occupied Territories
and Palestinian violence in Israel, as if the incursions into the camps and
the reign of terror that you and your soldiers imposed do not drive
Israel/Palestine into a blood bath from which none can escape.
How, Aviv, do you think that your incursion affected the children whom you
locked up for hours with other members of their families, while you
searched their house and blasted holes through their walls? Did your
incursion contribute a smithereen to peace, or did it instead spread seeds
of hatred, despondence, and death in the crowded, poverty stricken,
hopeless refugee camp?
I have not stopped thinking about you since that television interview,
trying to understand what was going on in your mind. What caused you to
lead your soldiers -- soldiers of the paratrooper brigade -- to a war
against a civilian population?
Aviv, I am presently teaching a course entitled "The Politics of Human
Rights." One of the topics I discuss during the semester is the intifada
and its lessons with respect to human rights. From the standpoint of
international conventions, at least, your acts in Balata constitute blatant
violations of human rights. Such acts are, in fact, war crimes.
Aviv, what happened to the sensible and judicious officer? How did you
become a war criminal?
Dr. Neve Gordon
Department of Political Science
Ben-Gurion University
Beer Sheva, Israel
Copyright 2002. All rights reserved. CounterPunch is a project of the
Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity.
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