Part I: (ISM reports)
- Not Allowed to Live (ISM report from Hebron)
- Amaari Refugee Camp (Mike McCurdy)
Part II: (Articles and News)
- What did he do that they shot him? (By Amira Hass)
- Bush’s constructive engagement (By Fadi Kiblawi)
- Strongly Recomended (Ghassan Andoni)
- The Penal Colonies (by Tanya Reinhart)
Not Allowed to Live
On the morning of July 2, 2002, a group of seven internationals, working with theInternational Solidarity Movement (ISM) and the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT),accompanied a group of Palestinian farmers from the village of Halhoul, outside Hebron, toharvest their fields. The fields are close to the settlement of Karme Tzur, and the farmershave been routinely denied access to their lands by soldiers and attacked by settlers whenthey attempt to work there.
As we approached the first roadblock, a family came climbing over. An elderly woman was cryingand shouting, clutching her head in pain. The family had been working on their land whensettlers attacked, throwing stones. The woman had been hit in the head and had a laceration aswell as a lemon-sized lump over her left eye. She was very upset and frightened, and in a lot ofpain. As we tried to comfort her and call an ambulance, the soldiers came.
They pulled up in an APC, three soldiers sticking their heads up out of the hatch. The farmersbegan to tell the soldiers that the woman had been attacked and needed medical attention. Onesoldier repeated, “I don’t care. This road is closed. You have to get off.” The other two kepttheir rifles trained on us. The farmers we were escorting had written permission from thepolice to work their land, and we showed this to the soldiers. They didn’t care; they just keptgetting angrier, shouting at us to get off the road and firing in the air. One woman from CPT gotthe chief of police on the phone and convinced the soldier doing most of the yelling to talk tohim. A few moments of quiet while they talk, just the sound of the woman crying. He handed thephone back. “They cannot be on this road. There is a curfew on this road and these fields.”
There was no curfew in Hebron or in Halhoul, but there suddenly was a “curfew” in the exact placewhere we needed to be.
We argued some more, and the soldiers began firing again, first in the air and then at us, overour heads. They threw a sound bomb, and we retreated down the road a short distance. At thispoint the APC turned around and headed down the newly-closed road.
An ambulance arrived to take the injured woman to the hospital, and we waited for several hoursby the side of the road while the farmers discussed what to do. Finally we approached theroadblock again. A jeep pulled up, and we attempted to reason with the soldiers again; we wereagain unsuccessful. This time, the soldier in charge physically pushed us away from theroadblock, and gave us a vague promise that we could come back “later.”
Most of us headed back to the home of one of the farmers for lunch and rest, while two of us headedback to Hebron. When we reached the bridge between Hebron and Halhoul, however, we found out itwas closed; snipers shot at us when we tried to cross. There was a large group of Palestinianswaiting for the shooting to stop so that they could get through to Hebron. We returned to thefarmer’s house and spent the afternoon there. Around 4:30 p.m. we put in a call to TIPH(Temporary International Presence in Hebron), who told us they hadn’t heard any shooting atthe bridge for half an hour, so we made our way across. We are all back in Hebron now, and plan totry again in the morning.
Eden C.
To reach us in Hebron, please call – 056-389-317
For more information on the International Solidarity Movement:
Huwaida Arraf – 052-642-709 or 067-473-308
Ghassan Andoni 052 595 319
Amaari Refugee Camp, Rammalah June 30
Today soldiers began to round up all of the men and boys between the ages of 15 and 50 at the Amaarirefugee camp in Rammalah. I accompanied around 20 international peace activists into thecamp in an attempt to lower the level of violence being implemented on the population.
I observed many small pockets of men being held at different locations around the refugeecamp. In one large field there were around 200 men being held. Our group decided to split up inorder to be able to cover more territory and myself along with three other activists began tonavigate the narrow alleyways observing soldiers going home to home with several soldiersentering each, often having to sledge hammer in the doors. Occasional explosions in the areamade the tense situation worse. Women and children looked out of their homes and were verygreatful for our presence. Sometimes inviting us in to look at the damage done by the soldiers,offering us beverages. Even in this situation hospitality was the rule. We witnessed one homethat had been taken over by Israeli Soldiers who were enjoying the World Cup game in theirconfiscated living room. We observed several homes the soldiers had taken over at least onewith a Palestinian man and we were informed, a baby girl that we believe were being held hostageinside.
At one point an elderly man was being forced to walk ahead of the soldiers as a shield but wasreleased when I informed the soldiers they were in flagrant violation of international law.In this same area a small baby was made to be out in the narrow alleyway along with hergrandmother while the Soldiers occupied the house. There were approximately 12 soldiersguns at the ready, pointed in all directions with this small baby sitting in the street.
A few meters away there was a young girl about 4 years of age obviously terrified wanting hermother but the soldiers were in her home and all around it’s entrance. She held my hand and hidbehind my leg until a young woman from the neighborhood also obviously frightened came andescorted her away. Through out the day soldiers forced all of the international observers toleave. Soon after the incident with the little girl those same soldiers chose to forciblyremove myself and the other three international observers from the area. When we challengedthe authority they had to do this my arm was taken and twisted behind my back and another soldierattempted to put plastic handcuffs on me. I managed to squirm free but one of my companions wasput in handcuffs and we seemed to have no choice but to get in the military jeep or be physicalyforced in. We were driven out of the refugee camp to the outskirts of Ramallah where some boysthrough rocks at the jeep and the soldiers jumped out and promptly responded with gunfire. Wewere unable to see if any of the children were wounded. We were dropped off just outsideRammalah and warned not to return.
Mike McCurdy
Haaretz (Israeli daily), July 02, 02
How Abd a-Samed became the 116th child killed in Gaza
Some 26 percent of those killed by IDF fire in the Strip are children,compared to 15 percent in the West Bank
By Amira Hass
The June 21 funeral of Abd a-Samed Shamalekh, 10 : ” What did he dothat they shot him? He didn’t even throw stones. “
GAZA – He loved nothing more than to go down to the sea, swim, and fly his home-made kite – but onFriday morning, June 21, Abd a-Samed Shamalekh, aged 10, went instead to his family’s plot ofland to pick eggplants and cucumbers. This is how Abd a-Samed and his brother Mohammed, 12,spent their summer vacation – either by the sea, or working in the fields and sellingvegetables. The family owns 4.5 dunams of land and the vegetables they grow on it support 15people.
The Shamalekh family lives in the Sheikh Ajlin neighborhood, in the southern part of GazaCity. It is a crowded place of two-story homes built in the past two decades by people whose mainlivelihood comes from tilling the soil. The neighborhood sprawls over the sandy hill thatrises from the beach. Red Bougainvillea sprout from the sand and climb over the iron gates andup the concrete plaster of the houses. The narrow, bottleneck of a coastal road separates thefamily’s home from the sea. They ride in a donkey cart to the field, about 1.5 kilometers to thesouth. As in most of Sheikh Ajlin, the land was once planted with vines but the Shamalekh familyswitched to vegetables. A vineyard produced grapes once a year, but vegetables provide workand income throughout the whole year.
On June 21, there was shooting early in the morning. Perhaps at 5, or maybe at 6 A.M. It’s hard toremember exactly, the family says. When
they looked outside, they saw the southbound traffic had come to a halt and realized it would bestill impossible to get the field. Around 8:00 or 8:30, the cars began to move again and thefamily understood that the situation had calmed. Shooting, a traffic halt, more shooting,and then quiet again – it’s a regular routine in the neighborhood.
Netzarim settlement is 2 km to the southeast, guarded by ” half the Israeli army ” as they say inGaza. Most of the agricultural land in the sand dunes surrounding Netzarim has already beendestroyed in the past 22 months. Fields and hothouses have been crushed, raked over, andflattened, with grape vines uprooted or cut down. Dry tomato plants and remnants ofgrapevines are scattered on the sides of the road. Nonetheless, some green patches havesurvived and they continue to be worked by their owners or by those who have leased the plots – onthe eastern and western sides of the coastal road.
The asphalt road leading to Netzarim to the east is barred to Palestinian traffic and used onlyfor tanks and jeeps. A single dwelling, belonging to the Abu Husa family, stands alone in thescorched earth. The IDF has taken up positions in this house for over a year, keeping closewatch on the farmers returning to their fields and on the vehicles and carts on the road.
Lots of blood
Abd a-Samed and Mohammed went to the field that Friday morning to see what was happening – thecuriosity of children. Rumors had reached the city that an Israeli bulldozer had begun todestroy and clear out the farm plots in the area. They also wanted to pick several kilos ofvegetables and bring them in the cart to their father, so he could sell them in the market. Thenthey’d be able to return to the sea and play with the kite, the wind and waves.
Just after 9 o’clock in the morning, about half an hour after the children left the house, wordreached the parents that Mohammed was wounded. Then they were told that it was Abd a-Samed andthat he had been rushed to the hospital. The parents found his dead body at the hospital with abullet in his head. On that Friday morning, Palestinians had fired an improvised anti-tankrocket against an IDF position adjacent to the Netzarim settlement. A Givati soldier wasseriously injured.
Army sources told Ha’aretz that this had occurred at six or seven in the morning and that IDFforces ” identified the sources of shooting and returned fire. ” Later, the IDF destroyed anearby position of the Palestinian naval police. According to the IDF Spokesman, the rockethad been fired from this naval base. Did Palestinians also fire at an IDF post at 9 A.M.? The IDFSpokesman told Ha’aretz that it is reasonable to assume that there was and that the IDF hadfired in response. Journalists who visited the spot, a researcher for the Palestinian Centerfor Human Rights and residents of the area said that the scene had already become quiet by 8:30and there were no exchanges of gunfire. The fact is traffic had begun to move again, farmers hadbegun to hurry to their fields to see what had happened to their plots of land, andphotographers came to take pictures of the bulldozer moving back and forth over the ground,crushing additional vegetable plants. Heavy fire suddenly broke through the quiet.
The reporters and residents said that the shooting came either from the positions in Netzarimor from a tank that had just crossed the road. Dozens of people, mostly women and children,clung to the ground in fear, their faces buried in the sand and soil. Mohammed and his brotherAbd a-Samed had had almost reached their family’s land already when the shooting began. Likeeveryone else, they lay flat on the ground – or at least Mohammed thought so.
After several minutes, he said to his brother that the shooting was apparently over and theycould continue on. Abd a-Samed didn’t answer and when Mohammed turned to look, he saw lots ofblood. He called for help, but there was no ambulance in the area. Someone dragged Abd a-Samedto a donkey cart that somebody else brought. They took the child in this cart, not knowingwhether he was still alive, until they reached an ambulance.
” He was already gone when they brought him from there, ” the father says. ” What did he do thatthey shot at him? He didn’t even throw stones. The soldiers have everything – cameras,binoculars – they always brag that they see everything. So they could know very well that thischild didn’t shoot at them. They could see very clearly that they were children and that theyhad no weapons. This was also in broad daylight, not in the dark. “
Later, the bulldozer also plowed up the Shamalekh family’s vegetable plot. All of thecucumbers, eggplants, and tomatoes were crushed. All of their livelihood for the summer andfall months was ruined in a matter of minutes. Three motorized pumps that brought water fromthe well were also destroyed. Since the days of the Turks, we have been working this land, ” thefather said. ” Now we’ll go and sell lupine beans in the street, ” his wife said with a bitterlaugh.
Their son Mohammed contributes a small pittance to the family – he helps his uncle inconstruction work, returning home with black and blistered hands. The family still hasanother half a dunam, where it grows tomatoes. But since it is now impossible to exportvegetables from Gaza to the West Bank or Israel, there is a huge supply of tomatoes and their lowprice in the Gaza market does not cover the cost of cultivation. A carton of 17 kilos of tomatoessells for only three shekels.
Killing Gaza kids
Abd a-Samed Shamalekh, who was supposed to start Grade 4 after the summer vacation, was the116th Palestinian child the IDF has killed in the Gaza Strip since September 28, 2000.According to figures compiled by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, 450 Palestinianshave been killed by the IDF during the intifada as of yesterday. These figures do not includethose who mounted offensives against IDF positions or settlements and were killed duringthese attacks. The numbers do include armed Palestinian civilians or security personnel whoresponded to IDF attacks against residential neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip.
According to these strict criteria, 1,398 people were killed by IDF fire in the West Bank andGaza Strip in the intifada as of June 18. (Since then, 8 more were killed in Gaza and at least 15 inthe West Bank.)
Of these 1,398 fatalities, 253 were children. This does not include Shamalekh, a 17-year oldfrom Rafah, seven children killed by IDF fire during the past 10 days in the West Bank, andanother child who died when his house collapsed after the IDF destroyed an adjacent home.
Among the Palestinian dead are 77 women, including 18 in the Gaza Strip. Since this data wascompiled on June 18, another woman was also killed by the IDF in Dir al-Balah. The proportion ofchildren among those killed in Gaza is much higher than in the West Bank – 26 percent of thefatalities in Gaza were children, compared to 15 percent in the West Bank. The PalestinianCenter for Human Rights attributes this to the higher population density in the Gaza Strip, tothe fact that children make up over 50 percent of this crowded region, and to the closeproximity of IDF bases to Palestinian communities. But the Center’s analysts believe thatthe high number of child victims primarily indicates that IDF forces have often fired atcivilians and residential areas without using the means at their disposal to confirm thattheir fire is indeed directed precisely ” at the sources of [Palestinian] fire. “
According to the Center, this high number of children killed also reflects the fact the IDF hassometimes responded to shootings hours after an incident, not as part of an exchange of fire.This is how Abd a-Samed Shamalekh was killed.
Bush’s constructive engagement
Michigan Daily
By Fadi Kiblawi
July 01, 2002
In July 1986, in an address to the nation criticizing Nelson Mandela’s African NationalCongress, former President Ronald Reagan affirmed,
” The South African government is under no obligation to negotiate the future of the countrywith any organization that proclaims a goal of
creating a communist state and uses terrorist tactics to achieve this. ” Dיjא vu? The oddfamiliarity of this invective to last week’s short-sighted singling out of the Palestinianleadership by President Bush marks a resurgence of United States complicity in the face ofinjustice.
Countering this, the international community has been stirring due to an onslaught of publicstatements from a growing number of South
Africans, including Mandela and Jewish Parliament Minister Ronnie Kasrils, analogizingIsrael’s occupation to apartheid. A quick look at
a map of the West Bank, with its 13 isolated cantons embodying 287 enclosed areas, shows anuncanny resemblance, as echoed by a growing number of academics and scholars, to theBantustans of apartheid South Africa. This cantonization, catalyzed by an 8-year peaceprocess beginning with the Oslo Accords in 1993, was characterized with a recurring theme offull implementation by Israel of Palestinian
concessions (including a recognition of an Israeli state on 78 percent of historicPalestine), in exchange for vague Israeli offers. To avoid
implementing these, the Israelis, with a blind eye or a slap on the wrist by the United States,either cited ambiguity or insisted on renegotiating, until finally nearly everything thePalestinians were due was thrown into the imaginary vault reserved for ” final-status talks.” In an article entitled, ” Apartheid in the Holy Land, ” Nobel Peace Prize winner ArchbishopDesmond Tutu described the resulting suffering of the Palestinian people: ” I’ve been verydistressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us blacks inSouth Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks,suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. “
While the Israelis continue to slice the territories with Jewish-only by pass roads andsettlements, they are resurrecting the same unsubstantiated rhetoric that the Afrikanersemployed, and in turn the international community eventually rejected, in the 1980s. Just asthe
South African government offered the blacks non-contiguous self-determination withintheir ” homelands, ” so too did the Israelis with their not-so- ” generous offer ” to thePalestinians at Camp David in the summer of 2000. Just as the white government justified theirsubjugation of the black population as a war on terrorism, so too are the Israelis with theirrepression of the Palestinians. One victim, Breyten Breytenbach, who like Mandela, wasincarcerated under the Terrorism Act of 1967, described what he saw on his visit to Palestineas, ” resembling Bantustans – for only too often are they reminiscent of the ghettoes and thecontrolled camps of misery one knew in South Africa. ” Just as Sharon, whose Likud Party’sofficial platform opposes a Palestinian state on the baseless grounds that it will lead to thedestruction of Israel, wants peace on his own intransigent terms; former South AfricanPresident P.W. Botha, who repeatedly asserted that he was committed to change at his own pace,stated in his infamous 1985 Rubicon Speech, ” I am not prepared to lead white South Africa andother minority groups on a road to abdication and suicide. ” With the predominance of peacefulcoexistence today, the antithesis has been confirmed.
On the home front, the similarities continue. In the 1980s, the Reagan administrationtacitly supported South African apartheid, which was
militarily supplied by Israel, with a policy they called, ” constructive engagement. ” Thisapproach, based on common strategic objectives, offered closer diplomatic ties andexpressions of solidarity with the minority government. To marginalize Mandela’sresistance movement, Reagan referred to the ANC, which like the Palestinian counterpartemployed violent tactics, as a terrorist enemy in their, during the times of the Cold War,battle against communism. Replacing the war on ” communism ” with, ironically, its offshoot,the subjectively-based war on terrorism, Bush’s platform against Palestine is identical.While there are merits for a call for new Palestinian leadership and reform, the fact remainsthat this, as The New York Times argued last week, is impossible under the Israeli occupation,the root cause of today’s conflict.
As the struggle against apartheid taught us, a peace based on justice will inevitablyprevail. Unfortunately, with the Israeli right, full of its zealots and war criminals, inpower, little room is left for hope for the time being. While we wait for an Israeli F.W. DeKlerk, who is willing to take the necessary steps towards peace, we must pressure ouradministration to take a moral stand against Israel’s violations of international law andhuman rights. In the words of Archbishop Tutu, who is a patron of a Holocaust center in SouthAfrica: ” If apartheid ended, so can the occupation, but the moral force and internationalpressure will have to be just as determined. The current divestment effort is the first,though certainly not the only, necessary move in that direction. “
Kiblawi is an LSA senior, president of the University’s chapter of the Arab-AmericanAnti-Discrimination Committee, co-chair of the Minority
Affairs Commission and a co-founder of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality.
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www.whowillsavethechildren.org then order as many copies as you can
distribute for the cost of postage only.
The Penal Colonies
by Tanya Reinhart
(This is an expanded version of an article in Yediot Aharonot, June 30, 2002.)
The Gaza strip is a perfect realization of the Israeli vision of ” separation ” . Surroundedwith electric fences and army posts, completely sealed off the outside world, Gaza has becomea huge prison. About onethird of its land was confiscated for the 7,000 Israeli settlersliving there (and their defense array), while over a million Palestinians are crowded in theremaining areas of the prison. With no work or sources of income, about 80% of its residentsdepend, for their living, on UNRWA, or contributions from Arab states and charityorganizations. Now Israel is considering the imprisonment there of families of suicidebombers from the West Bank (1). As a senior Israeli analyst stated, Gaza can now
serve as ” the penal colony ” of Israel its ” devils island, Alcatraz ” . (Nahum Barnea, YediotAharonot June 21, 2002).
This is the future that Sharon and the Israeli army designate for the West Bank as well. Whilethe external fence is presently being built, Israel’s current military operation is set to bethe final step in the implementation the IDF plans for reestablishing full military rule(which was abolished in large parts of the West Bank during the Oslo process). Though Israeldescribes everything it does as a spontaneous reaction to terror,
the plan was fully spelled out in the Israeli media already back in March 2001, soon afterSharon entered office. Alex Fishman, military and strategic analyst of Yediot Aharonot,explained at the time that since Oslo, ” the IDF regarded the occupied territories as if theywere one territorial cell ” , and this placed some constraints on the IDF and enabled a certainamount of freedom for the PA and the Palestinian population. The new plan is a return to theconcept of the military administration during the preOslo years: the occupied territorieswill be divided into tens of isolated ” territorial cells ” , each of which will be assigned aspecial military force, ” and the local commander will have
freedom to use his discretion ” as to when and who to shoot. (Yediot Ahronot weekendsupplement, March 9.2001).
The first stage of this plan the destruction of the institutions of the Palestinian Authoritywas completed in the previous ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ in April of this year. Inpractice, from that time on, the towns and villages of the West Bank have been completelysealed. Even exit by foot, which was possible up to that point, became blocked, and movementbetween the ” territorial cells ” now requires formal permits from the Israeli militaryauthorities. Soldiers and snipers prevent any ” unauthorized ” walking to agriculturalfields, to places of work and study, or for medical treatment.
However, unlike the preOslo period of Israeli military rule, the army makes it clear thatthere is no intention to construct any civil administration that will take care of the basicdaily needs of the two million Palestinians, such as food supplies, health services, garbageand sewage. For these tasks, some form of a Palestinian Authority will be maintained, thoughin practice it will not be allowed to function.
As a ‘military source’ told Ha’aretz, ” Internal conclusions of the security echelons,following operation ‘Defensive Shield’, assessed that the functioning of the civilbranches of the Palestinian Authority had reached an unprecedented nadir, mainly due to thedestruction the IDF operation left behind in Ramallah (including the systematicdestruction of computers and databases)… Combined with the severe restrictions onmovement, the Palestinian population is becoming, as the military source defined it, ‘poor,dependent, unemployed, rather hungry, and extreme’… The financial reserves of thePalestinian authority are reaching the bottom… In a future not far off, the majority ofPalestinians will only be able to maintain a reasonable life through the help ofinternational aid. ” (Ha’aretz Hebrew edition, June 23, 2002, Amos Har’el). Thus, the WestBank is being driven to the level of poverty of the Gaza strip.
Nevertheless, at the same time that Israel deprives the Palestinians of their means ofincome, it also makes a substantial effort to diminish or block international aid, under thepretext that the aid is used to support terrorists or their families. At the outset of its new’operation’, Israel ” decided to stop the flow of foodaid and medicine from Iran and Iraq toPalestinians in the territories ” (Ha’aretz, June 24, 2002, Amos Har’el).
Iranian and Iraqi aid is an easy target for Israel, as these countries belong to the ” Axis ofEvil ” . However, Israel started launching a more ambitious campaign: The EU the largest PAdonor is under constant pressure from Israel to cut its aid, which is used, inter alia to pay thesalaries of teachers and health workers. The tactics are always the same: Israel providessome documents presumably linking the PA to terror. Any aid to the PA is, therefore, aid toterror (2).
UNRWA’s aid is the next target. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the NearEast (UNRWA) has become a major source of food for Palestinians in the besieged territories.Its food supplies are now delivered not only to the refugee camps, but also in towns andvillages. The amount of food UNRWA supplies has increased fourfold in two years (3).Recently, ” Israel has begun a campaign in the United States and the United Nations to urge areconsideration of the way the UN Relief and Works Agency, which runs the Palestinian refugeecamps in the West Bank and Gaza, operates. Israel charges that UNRWA workers simply ignoredthe fact that Palestinian organizations were turning the camps into terrorist bases and it isdemanding the agency start reporting all military or terrorist actions within the camps tothe UN…. Meanwhile, Jewish and proIsraeli lobbyists in the U.S. are waging a parallelcampaign … American Jewish lobbyists are basing their efforts on the fact that the U.S.currently contributes some 30 percent of UNRWA’s $400 million a year budget, and is thereforein a position to influence the agency: A congressional refusal to approve UNRWA’s fundingcould seriously disrupt its operations. (Ha’aretz June 29, 2002, Nathan Guttman). Thecampaign is not yet demanding cutting UNRWA’s aid and presence altogether, but raising theimpossible demand that UNRWA
should serve as an active force in ” the war against terror ” ( ” reporting military or terroristactions ” ) is the first step towards such a demand.(4)
Since September 11, Sharon has been constructing an analogy between the occupiedterritories and Afghanistan (with the PA as Al Qaeda). He keeps declaring that the solution toPalestinian terror, and the required ‘reforms’, should be along the lines set inAfghanistan. The analogy is frighteningly revealing: As it established the ‘reforms’ inAfghanistan, the US forced starvation upon millions of people. This is how Noam Chomskydescribed it: ” On Sept. 16, the New York Times reported that ‘Washington has also demanded[from Pakistan] a cutoff of fuel supplies…and the elimination of truck convoys thatprovide much of the food and other supplies to Afghanistan’s civilian population.’
Astonishingly, that report elicited no detectable reaction in the West, a grim reminder ofthe nature of the Western civilization that leaders and elite commentators claim to uphold.In the following days, those demands were implemented… ‘The country was on a lifeline,’ oneevacuated aid worker reports, ‘and we just cut the line’ (NY times Magazine, September 30).According to the world’s leading newspaper, then, Washington demanded that Pakistanensures the death of enormous numbers of Afghans, millions of them already on the brink ofstarvation, by cutting off the limited sustenance that was keeping them alive. ” (Interviewwith Michael Albert, reprinted in Noam Chomsky, 911, Seven
Stories, 2002). Arundhati Roy, summarized this at the time: ” Witness the infinite justice ofthe new century. Civilians starving to death while they’re waiting to be killed ” (Guardian,Sept. 29).
The new stage of Israel’s ‘separation’ can no longer be compared to the Apartheid of SouthAfrica. As Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa’s Minister of Water Affairs, said in an Interviewwith Al Ahram Weekly, ” the South African apartheid regime never engaged in the sort ofrepression Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians ” (Issue of March 28 April 3, 2002). We arewitnessing the daily invisible killing of the sick and wounded being deprived of medicalcare, the weak who cannot survive in the new poverty conditions, and those who are bound toreach starvation.
Nevertheless, the public debate in Israel revolves around questions of efficiency: Is itpossible to stop terror in such methods. Let us suppose even that it is. Is it allowed? Is thiswhat we (Israelis) want to be?
One people stole the ‘Lamb of its poor neighbor'(5): Gaza and the West Bank are 22% of the land ofIsraelPalestine, where the Palestinians lived in the past. On this small piece of land, threemillion people live, with hopes, needs and dreams, just like ours. Since Oslo, they have beenlured with promises that we are about to evacuate the settlements and give them back theirland, at the very same time that we have been imprisoning them in Gaza, stealing more of theirland in the West Bank, and leaving them no hope whatsoever. The Palestinian people arefighting for their freedom. The crimes of Palestinian terror do not remove our culpabilityfor our own crimes.
Before Oslo, as well, there was a wave of horrible terror attacks. But at that time, after eachsuch attack, the call was heard get out of the territories! Then it was still understood thatwhen you leave people no hope, there is no way to stop the madness of suicide bombing. It is nottoo late to get out of the territories.
(1) In its meeting on Friday, June 21, 2002, the Israeli cabinet ” decided in principle in favorboth of the expulsion of families of suicide strikers from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip…The implementation of this expulsion policy depends upon the outcome of a legal review. “(‘IDF set to expel bombers’ families’ By Aluf Benn, Amos Harel and Gideon Alon,
Ha’aretz June 23, 2002).
(2) Here is one example of the pressure on the EU: ” The documents seized from PA offices inrecent months, some of which were included in the document compiled by minister withoutportfolio Dan Naveh following Operation Defensive Shield, were presented last week to the ECdelegation in Israel and representatives of the International Monetary Fund at a meetingwith IDF intelligence officers. Naveh claims the documents prove European financial aid hasbeen used to finance terrorism and incitement, and has also found its way into the pockets ofsenior PA officials.
The head of the EC’s delegation to Israel, Giancarlo Chevallard, told Ha’aretz that at themeeting, the delegation saw evidence that Arafat is financing terrorism, but added Israelhad not provided evidence that European financial aid which is designated to pay the salariesof PA employees is being used to finance terrorist attacks. Another senior delegationofficial said he was extremely skeptical Israel had evidence to prove European aid is beingused by the PA to finance terrorism…
Meanwhile, in the shadow of the Israeli accusations, the European Parliament’s budgetarycommittee last week delayed the transfer of 18.7 million euros in financial aid to the PA untilthe EC reports how the money is to be distributed… ” (Ha’aretz, June 6, 2002, Yair Ettinger)This specific frozen amount was released in the meanwhile, however Israel’s pressurecontinues.
(3) Amos Har’el, ‘The IDF neutralizes the Palestinian Authority, and humanitarianorganizations try to replace it’, Ha’aretz Hebrew edition, June 23, 2002. (Quoted before).
(4). The campaign against UNRWA started earlier: ” In letters written to Annan in May,Republican U.S. Senator Arlen Specter and Democratic U.S. Representative Tom Lantosaccused the U.N. agency of allowing and promoting terrorist activity in the camps. Spectersaid UNRWA schools promoted antiIsraeli and anti Semitic sentiments and Lantos said theagency allowed terrorists to organize in the camps. ” (Inter Press Service, June 24, 2002)
(5) Bible, Samuel II, 12:11: ” 12:1The LORD sent Natan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. 12:2The rich man had very manyflocks and herds, 12:3but the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb, which he hadbought and raised. It grew up together with him, and with his children. It ate of his own food,drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was to him like a daughter. 12:4A traveler came tothe rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaringman who had come to him, but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man who had come tohim. “
(http://ebible.org/bible/hnv/2Sam.htm)
The Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement between People
64 Star Street, P.O.Box 24
Beit Sahour – Palestine
www.rapprochement.org
The center is a non-profit making NGO, started in 1988 during the first Intifada.
PCR runs community service programs, youth empowerment and training programs.
PCR is also very much involved in the non-violent resistance against the Israeli Occupationto Palestine.
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