Gaza’s “fight to live” is its Hope

“Normalization” nonsense—Palestinians 
Nour Joudah, 
Nisreen Zaqout

Excerpt, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

As it is with most pathetic, easy-way-out shortcuts, transparent, often desperate and patently ineffective doing-anything-to-get-grant-money gestures – it seems so with something called a “Normalization” program for Palestinians and Israelis. Sounds to me like programming, a mind-manipulating measure cloaked in do-good-ism.

E

   xiled Palestinians Nour Joudah and Nisreen Zaqout

 

U.S. “‘Normalization’ programs attempt to build ‘harmony’ between Palestinians and Israeli Jews … without addressing underlying inequalities,” Nour Joudah writes.

This is a congenital malady in the USA, an epidemic condition among the “exceptional.” 

Americans wheedle themselves into key positions in which they pretend to be doing something constructive (“humanitarianism”) all the while deliberately or inadvertently making matters worse.

Nour Joudah quotes Gazan Nisreen Zaqout who was speaking to an audience in Washington, D.C., at the closing session of the 2014 “New Story Leadership” Normalization Program. Joudah writes --

Unlike the Israeli participants, Nisreen Zaqout’s ‘firsts’ were not meeting someone new or going sailing for the first time.

Nisreen Zaqout’s ‘firsts’ were: hearing ‘fear in her mother’s voice’; [hearing] ‘her brother cry over the death of a young friend’; [hearing] her grandfather say ‘no’ to evacuation --   ‘not again’ . 

The ethnic cleansing and dispossession Palestinians experienced in 1948 — the year of Israel’s establishment — was enough.

 

Turning “ ‘Normalization’s’ beloved rhetoric of hope” on its head,  Nour Joudah comments, Zaqout declares that “there is no hope to tout when we start talking about human lives in numbers and when we are so willing to focus only on the hundreds of women and children — as if every Palestinian man in Gaza were a legitimate target.”

T

wo insightful young women speak boldly the truth of Palestine

Joudah interprets Zaqout, “Hope comes when the will of Palestinians is respected and when their rights are affirmed and granted.” Hope derives from “Gaza’s fight to live.”

Sources and notes

“Palestinian student ‘wanted to quit’ normalization group over Gaza ‘torture’,” submitted by Nour Joudah, August 20, 2014, http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nour-joudah/palestinian-student-wanted-quit-normalization-group-over-gaza-torture

Nisreen Zaqout, who participated in 2014’s New Story Leadership program giving voice to her home and family, is a 21-year-old Palestinian woman from Gaza who is studying at Illinois College in mid-state Jacksonville, Illinois (Pop. around 19,000).

A Master’s graduate in Arab Studies from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Nour Joudah had returned to Palestine and was teaching high school and living in Ramallah before she was denied reentry and banned from traveling to Palestine. She has since been re-exiled and is living and working in Washington, D.C.  Joudah has worked as the Assistant Editor for the Journal of Palestine Studies, is currently a researcher for the Arab Studies Institute and the Institute for Palestine studies; and blogs at isdoud.wordpress.com. Nour Joudah’s blog

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Way Forward Peace through Ceasefire, Dialogue--Mairead Corrigan Maguire

Peace People Call for Fair Response to Palestinians
Maired Corrigan Maguire's words

Excerpt, editing for TIN by 

Carolyn Bennett

T

he Palestinian people have issued a call (we must answer)  for the support of the world’s people, asking us to stand with them.

Palestinians point out that the United Nations Security Council (permanent members U.S. UK, China, Russia, France) paralyzed by the United States will not send an observer mission so they have appealed for peace observers to go to Palestine to tell the world what is really happening to their people under Israeli military occupation. 

·     Western Leaders and mainstream media have come up with disingenuous statements repeating Israeli disinformation and blaming the Palestinian victims. 

·     Biased against Palestinians, these leaders and media outlets continue to tell the Israeli narrative. 

·     If Palestinians and Israelis, indeed the Middle East region are to be saved and to move toward peace, it is time that Israeli propaganda be shown for what it is – war propaganda. 

·    This is not an Israeli fight to stop Hamas-- who are not the aggressors. 

·      Israel has answered every occasion for dialogue with military attacks on Palestinian civilians. 

·     Israel has chosen land [grabs] and continues to annex Palestinian land, demolishing Palestinian homes. 

·      The war Israel is waging on Gaza is not about self-defense. 

·      The war Israel is waging is not about destroying Hamas; it is a war about complete control over a territory and a people and it is being conducted with complete disregard for human life. 

·      It is a war aimed at destroying the resilience of the Palestinian people whilst, all the time, illegally confiscating their land. 

P

Maired Corrigan Maguire

eace is possible.

An immediate ceasefire together with dialogue is the only way forward.

We owe it to our

Palestinian and Israeli brothers and Sisters who are working for peace and a nonviolent solution to answer their call …. Let us together as civil community around the world continue and increase our efforts to demand mainstream media talk about the real issues and reach out to all people of conscience in Europe and in the United States and elsewhere to support the Palestinians in their struggle for human rights and International law.

  

Sources and notes

“MAIREAD CORRIGAN MAGUIRE CALLS UPON BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION AND mainstream western media to end bias against Palestinians and [end] their [media’s] lack of impartiality against Palestinians and in their reporting of Middle East conflicts.

“She called on the BBC, and world media to give factual, fair and balanced reporting in order that people can be informed and not continue to be subjected to Israeli propaganda. Maguire also called for an immediate ceasefire and dialogue ‘as the only way forward.’” Mairead Corrigan Maguire is in Peace People press release July 14, 2014, http://www.peacepeople.com/?p=456

U

pdate on Israel's massacre in Gaza

RT: “Israeli tank strikes on Gaza hospital kill 4, scores injured – medics,” July 21, 2014, RT, http://rt.com/news/174408-israel-hospital-strike-gaza/

The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) death toll from the hostilities in Gaza has risen to 25, with seven Israeli soldiers killed in the last 24 hours (Haaretz). Since the operation began 14 days ago, the death toll in Gaza has reached 508 with 3,130 wounded.

Press TV: “Israeli forces killing Gazans with lethal shells: Rights group,” July 21, 2014, http://www.presstv.com/section/3510202.html

Medics say some Palestinians in the besieged enclave have been wounded by a new type of weapon that even doctors with previous experience in war zones do not recognize. Israel had also used depleted-uranium and white phosphorus shells in the besieged region during their previous assaults. This is while Israeli tanks and warplanes keep pounding the besieged enclave. At least 78 Palestinians were killed on Monday alone. 

This brings to 549 the total death toll from 14 days of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. Over 3,000 Palestinians have also been injured in the onslaught. The majority of victims have been civilians--including women, children, and the elderly. 

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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Ancient nomads denied work, robbed of ancestral lands

Bedouin woman
1898-1914
Wikipedia image

Cries from Sinai: Bedouin subjected to needless crisis

Re-reporting, editing, end comment by Carolyn Bennett

Middle East: Asia/Africa bleeding

Contemporary
Bedouin man
 lighting camp fireJordan

Contemporary Bedouin shepherd
Syria

The Bedouin (also spelled Beduin; Arabic Badawi; plural Badw) are Arabic-speaking nomadic peoples of the Middle Eastern deserts: Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Jordan.

Bedouin warriors were the nucleus of the Muslim armies that invaded the Middle East and North Africa in the 7th century and later on. Most of the Bedouin tribes migrated from the Arabian Peninsula (to what is now Jordan) between the 14th and 18th centuries. Today Bedouins make up 33 to 40 percent of Jordan’s population.

Historically, the Bedouin engaged in nomadic herding, agriculture and sometimes fishing. They also earned income by transporting goods and people across the desert. Scarcity of water and of permanent pastoral land required them to move constantly.

Bedouin population today: 4,000,000 (Wikipedia figures)

Regions with significant populations

Saudi Arabia 1,119,000 (2000)	Iraq 1,437,000
Jordan 832,000	Libya 919,000
Syria 1,389,000	Sudan
Egypt - mainly in Sinai 894,000 (2007)	Eritrea 46,000
Kuwait 260,000	UAE 765,000
Israel 111,000 (2012)	Western Sahara 13,100
Mauritania 54,000	Bahrain
Qatar 39,000	Oman 28,000
Yemen	Palestine 30,000

 Child inspects a destroyed
security building
Rafah

Palestinian city, southern Gaza Strip

site of Rafah Border Crossing

only crossing between 

Gaza Strip and Egypt

  Denied

Natural gas pipeline
running through
the Sinai

In the 1950s, Saudi Arabia and Syria nationalized Bedouin range lands; Jordan severely limited goat grazing; and conflicts over land use have increased since then.

In most countries in the Middle East the Bedouin have no land rights, only users’ privilege; this is especially true for Egypt. Since the mid-1980s, the Bedouins who held desirable coastal property have lost control of much of their land as it was sold by the Egyptian government to hotel operators. The Egyptian government did not see the land as belonging to Bedouin tribes, but rather as a state property.

In the summer of 1999, the latest dispossession of land took place when the army bulldozed Bedouin-run tourist campgrounds north of Nuweiba as part of the final phase of hotel development in the sector, overseen by the Tourist Development Agency (TDA). The director of the Tourist Development Agency dismissed Bedouin rights to most of the land, saying that they had not lived on the coast prior to 1982. Their traditional semi-nomadic culture has left Bedouins vulnerable to such claims.

Militarized

Egyptian border guards

The 2011–2012 Egyptian revolution brought more freedom to the Sinai Bedouin; but because of “weapons smuggling into Gaza” after a number of terror attacks on the Egypt-Israel border, a new Egyptian government in the summer-fall of 2012 initiated a military operation in Sinai.

Egypt-to-Gaza commerce through underground-tunnels that had brought income to Bedouins and Palestinians on either side of the border was abolished by the Egyptian military. This army (long-standing recipient of U.S. aid) demolished more than 120 of tunnels, threatened local Bedouin and forced them to cooperate with state troops and officials.

Sinai Peninsula (Egypt) Bedouin

Bedouin reside largely in the Sinai Peninsula and in the Egyptian suburbs of Cairo. The past few decades were difficult for traditional Bedouin culture because of changing surroundings and construction of new resort towns on the Red Sea coast (e.g., Sharm el-Sheikh). Bedouin in Egypt face a number of challenges: erosion of traditional values, unemployment and various land issues.

Because employers routinely offer low wages to Bedouins living in the Sinai Peninsula, they did not benefit much from the area’s initial construction boom. Also Sudanese and Egyptians were imported to the Peninsula to take jobs as construction workers and laborers. When the tourist industry started to bloom, local Bedouins increasingly moved into new service positions ─ such as cab drivers, tour guides, campgrounds or cafe managers ─ but competition was steep and many Sinai Bedouins remained unemployed.

Scarce employment opportunities led Tarabin Bedouins and other Bedouin tribes living along the border between Egypt and Israel to involve themselves in cross-border drugs and weapons smuggling and human trafficking.

Still robbed and denied 

Demonized and militarized

Al Jazeera reporting

Rafahpopulation of 71,003
Goods, people
move via
underground tunnels 

Bedouins today are prohibited (officially) from owning land, serving in the army or police (civil service jobs), or profiting from local tourism. Many locals cannot claim ownership of the ancestral lands their families and tribes have been using for centuries.

“Since the Egyptian uprising in 2011,” Al Jazeera reported in late December last year, “the Sinai Peninsula, a vast land of mountains and deserts, has become increasingly volatile. The new government (overthrown in 2013) inherited a legacy of lawlessness caused by 30 years of neglect, marginalization and hostility between the Bedouins native to the region and the state.”

Increasing attacks on “army checkpoints and police stations” have prompted “calls for more development in the region, which many see as a possible solution to the unrest.”

Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines edition “The battle for the Sinai” reported on underlying causes and the continuing crisis for “half a million people” wedged between Israel and the Gaza Strip. “For decades,” the report said,

The people have been governed by a strong security paradigm and the Camp David accords with Israel – underwritten by billions of dollars in U.S. military aid. 

The documentary concludes with a quote from Hossam Baghat of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights:

 

‘Only the people of Sinai can defeat terrorism. The central government is not going to defeat terrorism; it is stoking terrorism through its practices.’

 

Cannot simultaneously
prevent and prepare
for
war

This quote could have been referring to the people of the United States and the U.S. government's foreign relations character, policies and practices.

Sources and notes

Bedouin profile Britannica and Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedouin

“In Pictures: Egypt's troubled Sinai Peninsula ─ The Sinai has become more volatile since Egypt’s revolution - the result, many say, of years of government neglect” (Mosaab Elshamy, last modified December 27, 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2012/12/2012122484750886262.html

“The battle for the Sinai: Fault Lines examines the changing U.S.-Egyptian relationship through the lens of the Sinai Peninsula), December 19, 2012. Fault Lines can be seen on Al Jazeera English each week at the following times GMT: Tuesday: 2230; Wednesday: 0930; Thursday: 0330; Friday: 1630; Saturday: 2230; Sunday: 0930; Monday: 0330; Tuesday: 1630, http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/faultlines/2012/12/2012121874352233407.html

Al Jazeera images

Egypt’s troubled Sinai Peninsula (in pictures)

A natural gas pipeline running through the Sinai has been targeted more than a dozen times since the 2011 uprising. Bedouins who oppose the peace treaty and export of gas to Israel have attacked the pipeline, which starts in the building pictured above and extends hundreds of kilometers through the desert.

A child inspects a destroyed security building in Rafah, which was targeted by armed groups during the uprising. The Mubarak government's iron-fist policy in Sinai alienated Bedouins and resulted in violent attacks on state buildings during the uprising.

In the border town of Rafah, goods and people smuggling to Gaza has thrived for years using the subterranean tunnels burrowed beneath the border. Just a few hundred meters away from the besieged (Gaza) strip, Rafah lives depend almost exclusively on the tunnels’ economic activity, a more or less open secret.

A now-deserted police checkpoint in north Sinai is one of many that has been attacked by armed Bedouins with heavy weaponry.

Rafah

A Palestinian city in the southern Gaza Strip, Rafah is the site of the Rafah Border Crossing, the only crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

Located 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of Gaza, Rafah’s population of 71,003 is overwhelmingly comprised of Palestinian refugees. Rafah camp and Tall as-Sultan camp form separate localities. Rafah is the district capital of the Rafah Governorate. Yasser Arafat International Airport, Gaza’s only airport, is located just south of the city; the airport operated from 1998 to 2001 when it was bombed and bulldozed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) after the killing of Israeli soldiers by members of Hamas.

Rafah (Arabic: رفح‎; also known as Rafiah), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Nuclear powered impunity means they always “get away with murder”

Ben-Gurion and Sharon to Netanyahu ─ More than six decades “international community” aides, endorses elimination of a people

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Canadian economist and academic Michel Chossudovsky is a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur declaration to criminalize war and the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s ‘War on Terrorism’ (2005), and Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011).This week he was writing at Global Research on the latest carnage in the Occupied Territories.

“We are not dealing with an isolated event,” Michel Chossudovsky writes. “The invasion of Gaza is part of the broader U.S.-NATO-Israel military agenda.” 

Broader Middle East War

“The attack on Gaza must be understood in relation to the broader Middle East war,” he says.

“The Israeli attack was approved by [U.S. President Barack] Obama. It has a direct bearing on U.S.-NATO-Israeli pans for war pertaining to Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

“The timing is of utmost significance: one week following the U.S. presidential elections. ‘Operation Pillar of Cloud’ is a deliberate act of provocation, intended to lead to military escalation.”

 

Bitter irony

On November 14, Hamas military commander Ahmed Jabari was murdered in an Israeli missile attack. In a bitter irony, barely a few hours before the attack, Hamas had received the draft proposal of a permanent truce agreement with Israel.”

The firing of dozens of rockets by Hamas against Israel came after the Israeli attacks, Chossudovsky reports.

Self-fulfilling prophesy

circular propaganda

Manufacturing War - Creating and labeling “terrorists”

Rafah Crossing

“Palestine’s response was known to Israeli war planners and the resulting Israeli civilian casualties are now being used to justify military escalation on humanitarian grounds.

“What we are dealing with is a carefully planned operation, a clear act of provocation. The deaths of Israeli civilians (envisaged and foreseen by IDF military planners) are being used to muster the support of the Israeli public.

  

“Meanwhile, the Israeli attack is casually portrayed by the Western media as part of a legitimate counter-terrorism agenda.

Child's home
demolished

“The Obama administration is blaming the victims of Israeli atrocities. The victims are portrayed as terrorists.’” 

Background: The IDF or Israel Defense Forces or ‘The Army of Defense for Israel’ consists of ground forces, air force and navy, the military forces of the State of Israel. Headed by its Chief of General Staff, the Ramatkal, subordinate to the Defense Minister of Israel. The IDF is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel.

The IDF has served as Israel’s armed forces in all the country’s major military operations.

The number of wars and border conflicts in which it has engaged has made it “one of the most battle-trained armed forces in the world.”

Originally the IDF operated on three fronts: against Lebanon and Syria in the north, Jordan and Iraq in the east, and Egypt in the south. After the 1979 Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty, the IDF has concentrated its activities in southern Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories, including the First and the Second Intifada.

The Israel Defense Forces was officially established ─ comprised of a conscript army formed out of the paramilitary group Haganah, incorporating the militant groups Irgun and Lehi ─ on orders of Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion on May 26, 1948.

Ariel Sharon, Israel’s 11th Prime Minister, was a commander in the Israeli Army from its inception in 1948.

  

Operation flashback

Planned Humanitarian Disaster: Massacre in Palestine

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State (tenure February 13, 2007 – January 20, 2009) John Negroponte on December 8, 2008 “was in Tel Aviv for discussions with his Israeli counterparts.” Included in the meetings was Meir Dagan, the director of Israel’s national intelligence agency, Mossad, Chossudovsky recalls.

‘Operation Cast Lead,’ the December 27, 2008– January 18, 2009 war on Gaza that left more than a thousand Palestinians dead, “was initiated two days after Christmas and was coupled with a carefully designed international Public Relations campaign under the auspices of Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

“Hamas’ military targets [were] not the main objective; ‘Operation Cast Lead’ [was] intended, quite deliberately, to trigger civilian casualties. What we [were] dealing with [was] a ‘planned humanitarian disaster’ in Gaza, in a densely populated urban area.”

Chossudovsky continues documenting a historical design of calculated genocide and removal that has been escalating for more than 60 years.

Expulsion was referred to by Ariel Sharon as ‘a 1948 style solution.’

Referencing Tanya Reinhart’s “Evil Unleashed, Israel’s move to destroy the Palestinian Authority is a calculated plan, long in the making,” Global Research, December 2001, he writes:

For Sharon ‘it is only necessary to find another state for the Palestinians ─ Jordan is Palestine – was the phrase that Sharon coined.’

Sources and notes

“The Invasion of Gaza: Part of a Broader US-NATO-Israel Military Agenda. Towards a Scenario of Military Escalation?” (By Prof Michel Chossudovsky), Global Research, November 16, 2012,

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-invasion-of-gaza-part-of-a-broader-us-nato-israel-military-agenda-towards-a-scenario-of-military-escalation/5311957

Professor Michel Chossudovsky continued

In 1999, Chossudovsky joined the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research as an adviser and he has been a visiting professor internationally and has been advisor to governments of developing countries.

Michel Chossudovsky (b. 1946) is a Canadian economist and professor of economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Chossudovsky

Canadian economist and academic Michel Chossudovsky is a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur declaration to criminalize war and author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s ‘War on Terrorism’ (2005), and Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011).

Israel Defense Forces, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Defense_Forces

David Ben-Gurion or David Gruen (b. October 16, 1886, Płońsk, Pol., Russian Empire [now in Poland]; d. December 1, 1973, Tel Aviv–Yafo, Israel) was Israel’s first prime minister (1948–53, 1955–63) and defense minister (1948–53; 1955–63), “a Zionist statesman and political leader.”

Ariel Sharon (b. February 26, 1928; d., after being in a persistent vegetative state following a stroke, January 4, 2006), chief participant in Arab-Israeli wars, was a commander in the Israeli Army from its inception in 1948. The retired Israeli general also served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Sharon

Benjamin Netanyahu (var. refs Binyamin, Bibi, b. October 21, 1949, Tel Aviv [now Tel Aviv–Yafo], Israel) has been Israel’s prime minister twice: 1996–1999, and 2009 until the present.

Biographical notes Wikipedia and Britannica

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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“Right of Return Convoy” intends reaching Gaza Tuesday

 VIVA PALESTINA ARABIA
Excerpt, editing by Carolyn Bennett

Gaza

The flag of Palestine has become a leitmotif for humanitarians and for people around the world who care about justice. 

Now, there are attempts to reverse that development, to encourage people in the West, the Middle East and around the world to avert their eyes from Palestine.

So another Convoy takes sail

Flag of Palestine 
Palestinians protest

VIVA PALESTINA ARABIA follows the great siege-breaking efforts of Viva Palestina in Britain and of attempts to break the siege by sea and is scheduled to reach Gaza on May 15, Nakba Day on which Palestinians across the world commemorate the catastrophe that forced so many of them, now a majority, into exile.

WHY the right of return convoy?

More than three years since Israel’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’ that left more than 1,400 Palestinians dead in the Gaza Strip the siege remains.

The changes sweeping Egypt and the Middle East bring the promise of finally lifting that blockade and of further steps to relieve the suffering of the Palestinian people. But promise alone will not end the suffering now, nor address the reasons for it.

That is why Viva Palestina Arabia has organized an aid convoy to again break the siege on Gaza. It is looking to the future. That is why it will carry construction equipment to rebuild the schools, clinics, public buildings and homes that have been destroyed both by Israel’s attacks and by the effects of the ongoing siege.

Gaza

Its purpose is also to highlight in each country it passes  … the reasons for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the wider suffering of the Palestinian people.

Peace talks are stalled, yet illegal Israeli settlement building in the West Bank continues, as does the driving out of non-Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Conditions for millions of Palestinian refugees in the camps in Palestine and neighboring countries remain appalling.

Flag of Palestine

VIVA PALESTINA ARABIA will be highlighting the rights of those refugees, enshrined in international law and in UN resolutions. They have an inalienable right to return to the homes from which they were driven.

With this convoy, VPA will be part of another international effort to focus on these vital questions.

Sources and notes

“Whereas the Western world regarded the creation of Israel in May 1948 as a triumph for humanity — the righting for Jews of the terrible wrong of the Holocaust—Israel’s Arab neighbors saw the event as a catastrophe.” [Richard B. Parker, Britannica]

“Last year saw international protests on Nakba Day which brought the fundamental reasons for the humanitarian crisis in Palestine and in the camps to world attention … This convoy [returns] to Palestine—the right of Palestinians to return and returning attention to this central issue by contributing to the construction, the rebuilding, of a Palestine for all Palestinians, with Jerusalem recognized as its capital.”

http://www.vivapalestinaarabia.org/registration/index.html

http://www.vivapalestinaarabia.org/registration/

“Viva Palestina Arabia heads towards Palestine,” May 7, 2012, http://www.presstv.ir/Program/239971.html

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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History meets current conditions ─ conflict comments

A Second 2nd Intifada? From Professor Mark LeVine
Excerpting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

Her “gift”

To the Israeli government and its supporters her words were “an unexpected but welcome gift,” Mark LeVine writes in an opinion piece posted at Al Jazeera-English. For a while, media obsessed on her comments, downplayed or ignored reports of “30-plus shots fired into the bodies of activists on the high seas, and bent over backwards to demonstrate their commitment to Israel’s narrative [‘the world is against Jews’].” Instead of demanding better access to Gaza, media [had] “to refute the liberal anti-Israel bias of the media.”

Her “warning”…

“Her words were also an admonishment,” LeVine wrote. For as long as the American establishment and crucial political and economic constituencies perceive Israel as a strategic and political asset, Israel will continue its occupation, continue defying world opinion. “Israeli leaders are betting that their best chance of continuing the status quo indefinitely is for the United States to remain embroiled in so many conflicts abroad that no administration has the energy or political capital seriously to challenge Israel’s actions even when the actions contradict the assessment of generals and policy-makers about the best interests of the United States.”

… Of a breaking point

“With double-dip recession, weak job numbers, increasing casualties in distant battlefields, more oil and coal mining disasters, another this time successful attack by ‘terrorists’ … Americans are going to start looking for people to blame....”

However intemperate or prejudiced her words may have seemed, they warned also of letting Israel continue “the business of destroying itself while [Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran] look on, waiting to pounce ─ just as Israel did to Palestinian society during the worst years of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, when the pressure led to widespread chaos and infighting among Palestinians.

“The question is: will Israel play according to their script. Continue to defy world public opinion, slowly alienating the population of its only (until now) unequivocal benefactor? Or will Israel’s leaders and so-called friends change course before it is too late?”

Sources and notes
Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC-Irvine, senior visiting researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (Lund University, Sweden) and author of Heavy Metal Islam and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989. His opinion: “The cautionary tale of Helen Thomas,” June 9, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/06/201068132838677696.html

Al-Aqsa Intifada

A Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip

Al-Aqsa Intifada, or the Second Intifada, began after Ariel Sharon, a leader of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party, visited al-Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem on September 28, 2000. AlHaram, which contains al-Aqsa Mosque, is the third holiest shrine of Islam. The visit itself was provocative, especially because 1,000 riot police accompanied Sharon.

But what triggered the Intifada the following day was the Israeli police’s use of live ammunition and rubber bullets that killed 6 and injured 220 rock-throwing (but otherwise unarmed) Palestinian demonstrators.

The fundamental cause of the Intifada (‘shaking off’) was the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David in July 2000 that were supposed to end the occupation had broken down. Palestinians had expected that the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) recognition of Israel would lead to an end of the thirty-three-year Israeli occupation and to the establishment of a Palestine state. However, in the 1990s the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza had doubled to 200,000, for which Israel confiscated more Palestinian land for the settlements and their access roads. Israel extended its policy of closures, which restricted movements, and its network of checkpoints, where Palestinians were often humiliated. Israel also continued to demolish homes and to uproot and burn olive and fruit trees for security reasons and as a form of collective punishment for acts of terrorism. In short, Israeli repression and Palestinians’ unmet expectations of freedom and independence had contributed to years of pent-up Palestinian frustration, despair, and rage.

As in the first Intifada (1987 - 1991), in October 2000 Palestinians began by using nonviolent methods. But after 144 Palestinians had been killed, Islamist groups such as HAMAS and Islamic Jihad began a campaign of suicide bombings against mostly civilians in occupied territories and Israel. Groups associated with al-Fatah such as al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade focused on resisting Israeli army incursions and attacking settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. Starting in January 2002, al-Aqsa Brigade also began conducting suicide bombings against mostly Israeli civilians, a practice condemned by the international community. Although Yasir Arafat (head of al-Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization and president of the Palestinian Authority since 1996), did not initiate the Intifada, he reportedly gave tacit approval to armed resistance and terrorism despite his promise made in the Oslo Accord in 1993 to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to renounce ‘the use of terrorism and other acts of violence.’

Palestinian violence contributed to the downfall of Israel’s Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak and to the rising popularity of Ariel Sharon, who became prime minister on February 6, 2001.

Sharon ─ a proponent of Greater Israel, an architect of the settlements, and an opponent of the Oslo process ─ proceeded with broad public support to use harsh measures against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. In response to Palestinian violence, he initiated a policy of assassinations ─ euphemistically called ‘targeted killings’ ─ of suspected terrorist leaders, that sometimes included activists and innocent bystanders. He reoccupied major Palestinian cities, using helicopter gunships, warplanes, and tanks. Some of Sharon’s methods were considered to be war crimes by human rights groups, and were condemned by the United States.

The Intifada was costly to the Palestinians, to Israel, and to the United States.

Some Palestinian analysts considered the militarization of the Intifada to be a blunder. The Oslo process was destroyed, Arafat sidelined, the Palestinian economy damaged, and PA (Palestinian Authority) areas occupied, as Israeli settlement construction and a separation barrier (called wall by Palestinians, fence by Israelis) continued apace.

By early 2004, Sharon’s harsh measures had led to the deaths of about 3,000 Palestinians, most of whom were civilians, including about 500 children.

In addition, the Palestinians lost much popular, moral, and diplomatic support around the world.

The Intifada also cost the lives of about 900 Israelis, most of them civilians, and brought insecurity to the everyday lives of Israelis, who lost faith in the Palestinians as peace partners. It also contributed to Israel’s worst economic recession, for which the government sought a large loan from the United States.

President George W. Bush’s neglect of the peace process and support for the hard-line policies of Sharon resulted in anger at the United States in much of the Muslim and Arab world, which has helped anti-American Muslim extremist groups to recruit members.

The Intifada also had unintended positive consequences. Pressure from Sharon and Bush prompted reform of the Palestinian Authority, which most Palestinians had sought for years because they viewed the PA as corrupt, inept, and autocratic. A new office of prime minister was created to assume many of the duties and much of the authority of the PA president. One diplomatic by-product of the Intifada was the Arab League’s approval in March 2002 of a Saudi plan calling for Arab recognition and normalization of relations with Israel ─ provided that United Nations Resolution 242 is implemented and an independent state of Palestine is created.

Another was the U. S. initiation of another peace effort, the Road Map, in 2003. The Intifada also increased support within Israel for the dismantling of most of the settlements and withdrawal from Gaza. Despite the violence, destruction, and insecurity, and despite the failed leadership of Arafat, Sharon, and Bush, most Israelis and Palestinians continued to support the concept of a two-state solution as the only viable solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

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