Monday, May 21, 2007
'The world is closing on us, pushing us through the last passage, and we tear off our limbs to pass through.' Thus Mahmoud Darwish, writing in the aftermath of the PLO's exit from Beirut in August 1982. 'Where shall we go after the last frontiers, where should the birds fly after the last sky'?
Twenty years later, what was happening then to the Palestinians in Lebanon is happening to them in Palestine. Palestinians have been sequestered by the Israeli Army in no fewer than 220 discontinuous little ghettos, and subjected to intermittent curfews often lasting for weeks at a stretch. No one, young or old, sick or well, dying or pregnant, student or doctor, can move without spending hours at barricades, manned by rude and deliberately humiliating Israeli soldiers. These brutalised young Israeli conscripts trained to punish Palestinian civilians as the main part of their military duty? I think not.
No one and no force to check, much less prevent the daily incursions of which this particular feat of military daring was a part. Past years Israeli F-16s (generously supplied by the Bush administration) have regularly bombed and strafed Palestinian towns and villages, Guernica style, destroying property and killing civilians and security officials (there is no Palestinian army, navy or air force to protect the people); Apache attack helicopters (again supplied by the Bush's) have used their missiles to murder 77 Palestinian leaders, for alleged terrorist offences, past or future. A group of unknown Israeli intelligence operatives have the authority to decide on these assassinations, presumably with the approval on each occasion of the Israeli Cabinet and, more generally, that of the Bush's. The helicopters have also done an efficient job of bombing Palestinian Authority installations, police as well as civilian. During the night of 5 December 2002, the Israeli Army entered the five-storey offices of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in Ramallah, carried off the computers, as well as most of the files and reports, thereby effacing virtually the entire record of collective Palestinian life. In 1982 the same Army under the same commander entered West Beirut and carted off documents and files from the Palestinian Research Centre, before flattening the structure. A few days later came the massacres of Sabra and Shatila.
After years of barren peace discussions 65 per cent of Palestinians are unemployed and 70 per cent live on less than 2 dollars a day. Every day brings with it unopposable land grabs and house demolitions. The Israeli army even make a point of destroying trees and orchards on Palestinian land. Although five or six Palestinians have been killed in the last few months for every one Israeli, the obese old warmonger has the gall to keep repeating that Israel has been the victim of the same terrorism as that meted out by Bin Laden.
The crucial point in all this is that Israel has been in illegal military occupation since 1967; it is the longest such occupation in history, and the only one anywhere in the world today: this is the original and continuing violence against which all the Palestinian acts of violence have been directed. two children aged 3 and 13 were killed by Israeli bombs in Hebron, yet at the same time an EU delegation was demanding that Palestinians curtail their violence and acts of terrorism. five more Palestinians were killed, all of them civilian, victims of helicopter bombings of Gaza's refugee camps. To make matters worse, as a result of the 11 September attacks, the word 'terrorism' is being used to blot out legitimate acts of resistance against military occupation and any causal or even narrative connection between the dreadful killing of civilians (which I have always opposed) and Fifty plus years of collective punishment is proscribed.
Arafat's great mistake, a consequence of frustration and poor advice, was to try to make a deal with the occupation when he authorised 'peace' discussions between scions of two prominent Palestinian families and Mossad in 1992 at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge. These discussions were all to do with Israeli security: nothing was said about Palestinian security, nothing at all, and the struggle of his people to achieve an independent state was left to one side. Indeed, Israeli security to the exclusion of anything else has become the recognised international priority which allows General Zinni and Javier Solana to preach at the PLO while remaining totally silent on the occupation. The terrible and, in my opinion, stupid suicide raids against civilians in Haifa and Jerusalem over the weekend of 1 December should of course be condemned, but in order for the condemnation to make any sense the raids must be considered in the context of Abu Hanoud's assassination earlier in the week, along with the killing of five children by an Israeli booby-trap in Gaza - to say nothing of the houses destroyed, the Palestinians killed throughout Gaza and the West Bank, the constant tank incursions, the endless grinding away of Palestinian aspirations, minute by minute, for the past 36 years. In the end desperation only produces poor results, none worse than the green light George W. seem to have given Olmart when he was in Washington (all too reminiscent of the green light Al Haig gave in May 1982). With their support went the usual ringing declarations turning the people under occupation and their hapless, inept leader into world-wide aggressors who had to 'bring to justice' their own criminals even as Israeli soldiers were systematically destroying the Palestinian police structure which was supposed to do the arresting.
the believe that they can make a series of independent agreements with local warlords and divide 40 per cent of the West Bank and most of Gaza into several non-contiguous cantons whose borders the Israeli Army will control. How this is supposed to make Israel more secure eludes me, but not, alas, the people with the relevant power.
That leaves out the players, or groups of players, two of whom in his racist way Olmart gives no weight to. First, the Palestinians themselves who are far too intransigent and politicised finally to accept anything less than unconditional Israeli withdrawal. Israel's policies, like all such aggressions, produce the opposite effect to the one intended: to suppress is to provoke resistance. (an unimpressive and unpopular Arafat hanger-on called Abul Ala, much admired by Israelis for his 'flexibility'). After that, a succession struggle would ensue between other Arafat cronies such as Abu Mazen and two or three of the leading (and capable) security chiefs - notably Jibril Rajoub of the West Bank and Mohammed Dahlan in Gaza. None of these people has Arafat's stature, or anything resembling his popularity. Temporary chaos is the likely result: New groups are emerging, however: secular, hard-working, committed, dedicated to a democratic polity in an independent Palestine. Over these people, the PA has no control at all. It should be said that no one in Palestine is willing to accede to the Israeli-US demand for an end to 'terrorism', although it will be difficult to draw a line in the public mind between suicidal adventurism and resistance to the occupation so long as Israel goes on with its bombings.
The wall that is suffocating the Gaza strip compiled by the humiliation that is called peace and the PA will drive the secession straggle into full out bloody civil war that was the idea then that is the idea now, For long I did not grasp or understand the reasoning behind such in fighting but taking into facts the above disappointments and the constant humiliation tactics of the Israeli army, any immature and young person will fallow even the likes of Dahlan
No one and no force to check, much less prevent the daily incursions of which this particular feat of military daring was a part. Past years Israeli F-16s (generously supplied by the Bush administration) have regularly bombed and strafed Palestinian towns and villages, Guernica style, destroying property and killing civilians and security officials (there is no Palestinian army, navy or air force to protect the people); Apache attack helicopters (again supplied by the Bush's) have used their missiles to murder 77 Palestinian leaders, for alleged terrorist offences, past or future. A group of unknown Israeli intelligence operatives have the authority to decide on these assassinations, presumably with the approval on each occasion of the Israeli Cabinet and, more generally, that of the Bush's. The helicopters have also done an efficient job of bombing Palestinian Authority installations, police as well as civilian. During the night of 5 December 2002, the Israeli Army entered the five-storey offices of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in Ramallah, carried off the computers, as well as most of the files and reports, thereby effacing virtually the entire record of collective Palestinian life. In 1982 the same Army under the same commander entered West Beirut and carted off documents and files from the Palestinian Research Centre, before flattening the structure. A few days later came the massacres of Sabra and Shatila.
After years of barren peace discussions 65 per cent of Palestinians are unemployed and 70 per cent live on less than 2 dollars a day. Every day brings with it unopposable land grabs and house demolitions. The Israeli army even make a point of destroying trees and orchards on Palestinian land. Although five or six Palestinians have been killed in the last few months for every one Israeli, the obese old warmonger has the gall to keep repeating that Israel has been the victim of the same terrorism as that meted out by Bin Laden.
The crucial point in all this is that Israel has been in illegal military occupation since 1967; it is the longest such occupation in history, and the only one anywhere in the world today: this is the original and continuing violence against which all the Palestinian acts of violence have been directed. two children aged 3 and 13 were killed by Israeli bombs in Hebron, yet at the same time an EU delegation was demanding that Palestinians curtail their violence and acts of terrorism. five more Palestinians were killed, all of them civilian, victims of helicopter bombings of Gaza's refugee camps. To make matters worse, as a result of the 11 September attacks, the word 'terrorism' is being used to blot out legitimate acts of resistance against military occupation and any causal or even narrative connection between the dreadful killing of civilians (which I have always opposed) and Fifty plus years of collective punishment is proscribed.
Arafat's great mistake, a consequence of frustration and poor advice, was to try to make a deal with the occupation when he authorised 'peace' discussions between scions of two prominent Palestinian families and Mossad in 1992 at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge. These discussions were all to do with Israeli security: nothing was said about Palestinian security, nothing at all, and the struggle of his people to achieve an independent state was left to one side. Indeed, Israeli security to the exclusion of anything else has become the recognised international priority which allows General Zinni and Javier Solana to preach at the PLO while remaining totally silent on the occupation. The terrible and, in my opinion, stupid suicide raids against civilians in Haifa and Jerusalem over the weekend of 1 December should of course be condemned, but in order for the condemnation to make any sense the raids must be considered in the context of Abu Hanoud's assassination earlier in the week, along with the killing of five children by an Israeli booby-trap in Gaza - to say nothing of the houses destroyed, the Palestinians killed throughout Gaza and the West Bank, the constant tank incursions, the endless grinding away of Palestinian aspirations, minute by minute, for the past 36 years. In the end desperation only produces poor results, none worse than the green light George W. seem to have given Olmart when he was in Washington (all too reminiscent of the green light Al Haig gave in May 1982). With their support went the usual ringing declarations turning the people under occupation and their hapless, inept leader into world-wide aggressors who had to 'bring to justice' their own criminals even as Israeli soldiers were systematically destroying the Palestinian police structure which was supposed to do the arresting.
the believe that they can make a series of independent agreements with local warlords and divide 40 per cent of the West Bank and most of Gaza into several non-contiguous cantons whose borders the Israeli Army will control. How this is supposed to make Israel more secure eludes me, but not, alas, the people with the relevant power.
That leaves out the players, or groups of players, two of whom in his racist way Olmart gives no weight to. First, the Palestinians themselves who are far too intransigent and politicised finally to accept anything less than unconditional Israeli withdrawal. Israel's policies, like all such aggressions, produce the opposite effect to the one intended: to suppress is to provoke resistance. (an unimpressive and unpopular Arafat hanger-on called Abul Ala, much admired by Israelis for his 'flexibility'). After that, a succession struggle would ensue between other Arafat cronies such as Abu Mazen and two or three of the leading (and capable) security chiefs - notably Jibril Rajoub of the West Bank and Mohammed Dahlan in Gaza. None of these people has Arafat's stature, or anything resembling his popularity. Temporary chaos is the likely result: New groups are emerging, however: secular, hard-working, committed, dedicated to a democratic polity in an independent Palestine. Over these people, the PA has no control at all. It should be said that no one in Palestine is willing to accede to the Israeli-US demand for an end to 'terrorism', although it will be difficult to draw a line in the public mind between suicidal adventurism and resistance to the occupation so long as Israel goes on with its bombings.
The wall that is suffocating the Gaza strip compiled by the humiliation that is called peace and the PA will drive the secession straggle into full out bloody civil war that was the idea then that is the idea now, For long I did not grasp or understand the reasoning behind such in fighting but taking into facts the above disappointments and the constant humiliation tactics of the Israeli army, any immature and young person will fallow even the likes of Dahlan
Labels: Were should we go after the last sky
# posted by Philistini : 2:21 AM
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