SEPTEMBER 2005

French Writer Says Gaza Pullout "Mirage"

By Hadi Yahmid, IOL Correspondent

PARIS, August 18, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is a big mirage that only serves the Jewish state's measures to absorb the legitimate rights of Palestinian people, according to a French writer Thursday, August 18.

"The Israeli pullout from Gaza serves (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon's political purposes to show the whole world that Israel is making great sacrifices to achieve peace, though the step itself is limited ", Alain Gresh, Le Monde Diplomatique editor-in-chief, told IslamOnline.net.

Gresh, author of many books on the Palestinian cause, said the Gaza withdrawal mainly aims to win points on the public relations front, alleviate international pressures on the Sharon government, and manipulate the rest of the legitimate Palestinian rights.

"The Gaza withdrawal is marred by an unprecedented intensity of Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank and occupied Al-Quds (East Jerusalem)."

Questions are also still unanswered on guaranteeing a free access of the Palestinian in and out the strip following the Israeli withdrawal, he maintained.

"Would the Palestinians have free access to neighboring Egypt and the West Bank to visit their families and relatives and have their own airport and seaport?"

"Such unanswered questions threaten to turn the strip into a big prison for the Palestinians."

Many Palestinians believe the impoverished Gaza Strip would become a big prison unless Israel agrees to a "safe passage" into the West Bank, in addition to a new harbor and the reopening of Gaza airport.

Following talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on July 23, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington wants a freedom of movement in the Strip following the Israeli pullout.

What's Next?

What matters next is Israel's future moves on the peace track with the Palestinians
following the Gaza pullout, the French reporter said.

"Would Israel be ready to dismantle the settlements and evacuate settlers from the West Bank?"

Political analysts ruled out that the Israeli pullout from Gaza could make high hopes for any peace talks on the future of the occupied West Bank or dismantling more Jewish settlements for years.

Gresh further warned that the Israeli settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian lands would spark a new Palestinian Intifada.

"The Israeli policy on encouraging the settlement activities in Al-Quds and the West Bank could spark Palestinian military attacks and lead to the eruption of a new Palestinian Intifada."

Israel is already under intense international criticism over the separation barrier it is building in the West Bank, which will eventually extend 600 kilometers, cutting into the occupied territories and disrupting the lives of the Palestinians.

Israel claims that the West Bank barrier is for security reasons, but the Palestinians believe it is aimed at grabbing more of the land they need for their future state.

Palestinian State

The famed French reporter, however, ruled out the eruption of a new Palestinian Intifada in the near future.

"The ongoing face-off with the Israeli occupation forces have exhausted the Palestinian people.

"The Palestinians also want to give Abbas an opportunity to reach a peaceful solution with Israel, though they don't count much on this."

Gresh stressed that the setup of the independent Palestinian state is the only guarantee to end the reciprocated military clashes between the Palestinians and Israel.

"I don't see any chances ahead to establish the Palestinian state by the end of this year despite the fact that the internationally endorsed roadmap plan envisages this.

"In addition, we see no international pressures on Israel by the United States or the European Union to push the Jewish state to engage in peace negotiations with the Palestinians or withdraw from the Palestinian territories."

HILARIOUS PARAGRAPH FROM HA'ARETZ
After years in which the right wing appropriated blue and white as its symbol, the left is now using the national colors in the face of the right wing's orange. Years after the right wing kowtowed to the army and coined the slogan "Let the IDF win" in an attempt to foment a situation of divide and rule between the government and the Israel Defense Forces, right-wingers are now calling IDF soldiers "Nazis." The left, which viewed the IDF as the cruel arm of the occupying authorities, is now toadying to it and sending packages to the overworked soldiers. Conscientious objectors always came from the left but are now springing up on the right. The right, which brutally trampled democracy, is now outraged that democracy is not serving its ends. The left, which always invoked democracy, is now accepting its limitation by a government that is temporarily serving its political interests. Everything is topsy-turvy.

Jewish state idea mired in confusion
By Khalid Amayreh

Since the collapse of the Oslo accords nearly five years ago, Israeli leaders have been demanding that the Palestinian Authority recognise Israel as a Jewish state in any prospective settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Some Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, have even used the concept of "state of the Jewish people", with the connotation that Israel belongs not only to its citizens, but to Jews all over the world, including potential future converts.

The idea, Israeli academics and intellectuals say, occupies "centre-stage" in Israel's Zionist collective thinking.

Last year, former Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu openly called for the adoption of policies aimed specifically at reducing or at least neutralising Arab demographic growth in Israel.

The growing demographic weight of Israeli Arabs, who constitute up to 20% of Israel's overall population, was more serious and more dangerous for Israel than threats posed by the Palestinians, he said.

Netanyahu's remarks triggered no outcry in Israel.

Three opinions

But what exactly is meant by "Jewish state" in practical terms, and what are the long-term ramifications for a Palestinian and Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish state?

This question was put recently to three intellectuals: an Israeli professor, an Arab Knesset member and a Palestinian political scientist.

Palestinian advocates argue that given what they consider Israel's discriminatory policies, the world, let alone the Palestinians and Arabs, are under no more of a legal obligation to maintain Zionism in Israel than it was to maintain apartheid in the Republic of South Africa.

The concept of Jewish state (or, for that matter, Christian state) has no origin in international law.

This is the view of Azmi Bishara, an Arab legislator in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and an outspoken critic of Israeli treatment of its large Arab minority.
 
Israel, he said, wants the Arabs to recognise Israel's political legitimacy but also "Zionism's moral legitimacy".

Historical score

"Israel is interested in settling a historical score with the Palestinians and the Arabs. They want the Arabs to recognise Zionism and all that it did retroactively," Bishara told Aljazeera.net.

He cited two main reasons for Israel's insistence that the Palestinians recognise it as a Jewish state:

First, the negation and cancellation of the Palestinian right of return on the ground that Israel is a Jewish state, and since the estimated 4.5 million Palestinian refugees are not Jews, they have no right to return to their hometowns from which they were expelled or forced to flee amid war when Israel was created in 1948.

Second, a formal recognition of the Jewishness of Israel would lend "legitimacy" and "legality" to institutionalised policies and measures aimed at maintaining a Jewish majority.

These policies and measures, Bishara says, include encouraging Israel's Arab citizens to emigrate, preventing them for intermarrying with Palestinians, and seeing to it that their numbers remain within the "safe zone".

Asked if Israel would ever contemplate expelling at least some of its non-Jewish citizens in order to maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority, Bishara said Israel would first seek to exhaust all other "non-dramatic means".

Most Israelis, save probably a few marginal leftist intellectuals such as Illan Pappe of the University of Haifa, don't see any fault in insisting that their state be recognised as a Jewish state, rather than just merely another "nation state".

No special status

"We have been a Jewish state since 1948. This is reality. We are also a state for all its citizens, just as Jordan is an Arab state and a state for all its citizens and France is a French state," argues Ira Sharkansky, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Sharkansky argues that Israel should not be treated as any other normal nation state because of the Holocaust.

"I don't want to play the Holocaust card, but it is clear that the 'Jewish state' is viewed as a sort of guarantee against the recurrence of the Holocaust."

This is strongly rejected by Bishara, who argues that the "Jewishness" of Israel doesn't correspond to the "Americanness" of the US or the Frenchness of France.

"France, for example, is a state for all its citizens. France doesn't define itself as a Catholic state or the US as Protestant state. Israel can't be Jewish and democratic at the same time. The two are oxymoron."

Palestinian political scientist Atef Odwan, a professor of political science at Gaza's Islamic University, believes that Israel's insistence that other nations recognise it as a "Jewish state" is attributable first and foremost to undeclared Israeli designs against its sizeable Arab minority.

"Zionism has two sides - settling Jews in Palestine and uprooting non-Jews from it. Israel's long-term strategy is to ethnically cleanse and deport its non-Jewish citizens," he says.

Doomsday scenario

Odwan says: "They don't say this now because it is politically incorrect and the timing is wrong, but at one point in the future, they will tell the Arabs of Israel 'we are a Jewish state, you are not Jews, therefore you should leave'."

Odwan believes racist policies are adopted by successive Israeli governments. "Look at what they are doing to the Palestinians in the West Bank, where every act and every move is calculated to benefit Jews and harm non-Jews."

Sharkansky strongly rejects this "doomsday scenario", arguing that while there are indeed Jewish racists, the vast bulk of Israelis won't allow the occurrence of such a thing.

"Listen, we had Meir Kahane (the American rabbi founder of the extremist Kach group which advocates the collective deportation of Palestinians), and we outlawed his party. I would say Israel deals with its racists much more stringently than the Palestinians deal with their racists."

Fatah and Hamas after the Withdrawal

By: Dr. Elias Akleh *August 22, 2005

Gaza Strip now resembles many of the American jails. The jailers divide
prisoners into racial groups, spread hatred among them, and "pay" them to fight
each other. The Strip is surrounded by a jailing wall; Israel and media
broadcasts talk about Palestinians in Gaza as separate groups rather than one
people, and Israel is "paying" certain elements in the PA Security Forces to
start a civil war among these "groups".

Gaza can be looked at as having two major groups; Fatah PA and the Palestinian
factions under the seeming leadership of Hamas. Both groups claim to understand
the trap Sharon laid down to them. Each understands that Gaza Strip is
effectively still under occupation, and under the threat of being attacked again
according to the whim of the Israelis. Each claims to have the national benefit
as their goal. Each wants to serve the people and to avoid any internal
conflict.Each wants to maintain the rule of law and order in the Strip, and each
claim the willingness to share responsibility of governing through the
democratic process of election (the upcoming legislative election). Yet in fact
it seems that each wants to have a majority in the decision making. The
Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah personnel, wants to maintain a Fatah
majority that had been kept since the establishment of the PLO, while Hamas and
the other Palestinian factions want a big share in the decision making to end
Fatah's monopoly on the political decision making process.

The PA is in a dilemma. It failed to acquire any political gain throughout the
last ten years of political negotiations. It could not stop Israel's theft of
Palestinian land. It could not stop Israel's expansion of illegal colonies. It
could not stop Israel from stealing Palestinian money from their banks and
destroying Palestinian economy. It could not prevent Israel from bulldozing
civilian homes and communities, and it could not protect Palestinians from being
killed, assassinated, tormented on road blocks, or from being arrested and
jailed. Palestinian resistance factions were able, on the other hand, to pound
the Israelis into withdrawal. Yet the PA could not acknowledge their victory
because the US had declared these factions, especially Hamas, as terrorist
groups, and demanded the PA to fight them as part of the war against terror.
Besides, Israel has put pressure on Abbas to disarm and dismantle Hamas if he
would like to keep the status of "Israel's partner for peace". The Israeli
Minister of Foreign Affair Silvan Shalom stated that Israel had found a
Palestinian partner for peace in Abbas, but he warned him that Hamas must be
disarmed and dismantled, and not given a chance to win in Palestinian
legislative elections.

Due to the growing popularity of Hamas among the Palestinian population Fatah PA
recognizes that it needs to tread very carefully to assert its own dominance and
to contain Hamas. Fatah is now asserting its history as the leading faction in
the struggle against Israeli occupation, and its position as the sole
representative for the Palestinian people. It asserts that it earned authority
through popular democratic election, and it has the recognition and the
political support of the rest of the Arab countries and the international
community. The PA, therefore, asserts its commitment to the internationally
recognized "Road Map" demanding Israel to withdraw back to 1948 borders so
Palestinians can establish their own state with East Jerusalem as their capital,
and demands the adoption of resolution 194 allowing refugees the right of return
and compensation for their losses.

The PA agrees with the Palestinian resistance factions that the main goal is
liberation of land and gaining freedom and independence. It wants to rebuild
Gaza Strip and its economy to sustain the people, and to assure security and
peace in the Strip. This could not be accomplished unless there is one governing
authority that enforces the law. It entered into talks with Hamas leaders in
Egypt to avoid conflict and to assure unity. They came up with the understanding
to allow Hamas representatives into committees that will monitor the Israeli
withdrawal, and administer the liberated territories. There was an agreement
about allowing Hamas to share into decision making in the Palestinian
Legislative Council through democratic election.The PA acknowledged corruption
into some of its apparatuses and agreed to re-organize them in an attempt to
fight this corruption. Yet such reforms should be done through negotiations and
through political process rather than through chaos, spreading violence,
breaking of the laws and definitely not through a military coup to overthrow the
PA, which was a direct accusation to Hamas.

Abbas declared that there is no further need for military struggle, and arms
should be put down. He affirmed PA's commitment to the political negotiation
process the PA had followed through during the last ten years although it was
futile due to PA's weak position faced with the Israeli mighty military power
and America's unconditional support. PA claims that faced with the Israeli war
machine, liberation could be achieved only through political process. It accused
some Hamas leaders of ignoring the existence of an elected leadership and
insisting on "violence" for the sake of "violence" even though it brings only
destruction and death to the Palestinian population.

Hamas, and the other factions, on the other hand had affirmed their strategy of
continuing the armed struggle until complete liberation of Palestinian land.
Gaza's liberation is just the first step, and the West Bank is next. They
question who would protect Palestinians, and stop Israeli confiscation of land,
building Israeli colonies, and destruction of Palestinian economy? Who would
liberate the rest of Palestinian cities, release political detainees, protect
religious sites, especially Al-Aqsa, and liberate Jerusalem to make it a
Palestinian capital if they obeyed Abbas and stopped their armed struggle and
put down their weapons? Israel understands only the language of brute force that
is why they keep using it as their response to all the peaceful gestures Arab
countries had made. We need only remember Sharon's invasion of major Palestinian
cities in March 2003 as a response to Arab League's peaceful offer.This is also
evident in Netanyahu's late demand for Israel to take over the Jordanian city of
Aqaba as a response to launching a rocket from Aqaba into Israel. Why do they
ask people still under occupation to put down their weapons when independent and
free countries enter into arm race? Hamas sites the failure of PA to achieve any
gain as a proof of the inefficacy of political negotiation and the Israeli
withdrawal as the success of armed struggle.

Some Fatah figures such as the Security Minister Mohammad Dahlan and other
politicians as the previous Jordanian Minister of Information "Saleh Qallab"
accused Hamas of having a political agenda aiming at overturning PA to grab
power. Hamas answered that as any group of freedom fighters they aim at ending
the monopoly of one party over the process of making political decisions by
becoming another part of that process through legitimate democratic election.
Hamas also responded that unlike Dahlan, who had orchestrated a failed military
coup against Arafat, and whose security apparatus had instigated conflict
through firing at political figures including Abbas, who was hit while attending
one of Arafat's funerals, and who had kidnapped "Ghazi Jabali" when he was head
of police, and who fired at resistance fighters in Gaza, its men had never
retaliated against PA Security officers, who jailed and tortured them before the
break of the Intifada. Rather, they directed their struggle against the common
enemy; Israel.

When certain elements of the Security Forces instigated armed friction against
Palestinian guerrillas in Gaza Hamas leaders hastened to put a peaceful end to
it before it grows into real conflict. If Hamas wanted to overthrow PA this
friction would have been the perfect opportunity and a good excuse to do so.
Hamas had stated emphatically that it wants to avoid the Israeli trap of
entering into a civil war and declared that its weapons serve to protect
Palestinians and are directed only at Israel.

Hamas declared its present goals as continuation of armed struggle to liberate
Palestinian homeland, helping in providing security and administration of Gaza
Strip and support the people to rebuild a sustainable economy, and gaining seats
into the Legislative Council through election to share into the process of
cleansing and re-organizing PA's corrupt apparatuses. To accomplish such goals
Hamas established committees to deal with security issues, to monitor the
Israeli withdrawal, and to talk and come to understandings with the PA.

It seems, initially at least, that the PA and Hamas are in agreement on the
following main points; avoiding internal conflict, rebuilding Gaza Strip, and
having legislative election to take place on January 25th of 2006 with
reservation on Hamas' part especially after Abbas had changed legislative
election rules and had increased the legislative seats from 88 to 132. One
wonders what Abbas is cooking!

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent, born in the town
of Beit-Jala and lives in the US.