Dear friends,

More sad days here.  What is even sadder is that the youngest child
here saw it coming but world leaders just keep ignoring and
Palestinian leadership just keep hoping.

I'm personally consumed with the rapidly approaching grand
opening of my project (see pics below).  Every thing that could go
wrong is.  The Israeli checkpoints have disrupted the flow of
products to the supermarket and my staff is sometimes not
permitted to enter the city (from 5 km away!). Nevertheless, we
continue to build for the future.

Yesterday my father and I took our routine trip to the Jordanian
border near Jericho.  As many of you are aware, we, like thousands
of Palestinians who lived or were born (like me) in foreign countries,
are only allowed to be here in Occupied Palestine as tourists.  Thus,
given we are not permitted, from the Israelis, to have permanent
residence (even though ever since I was married 9 years ago I have
had a family reunification application pending) we must exist the
country every 3 months to renew our Israeli visa.  This has been my
life routine for 8 years now.  Yesterday, the Israeli border police (one
of the meanest women--if she can be called as such-- I've met)
refused to renew the visa with another 3 months and instead only
gave us 2 days.  I always felt this was coming but it was an eye
opener nonetheless.

So tomorrow, we must leave the country again.  My wife and
daughters cannot travel with me because they have Palestinian
I.D.s and thus cannot travel outside of Ramallah.  My older
daughter, Areen, is worried sick I will not be allowed back in.  We
will stay in Amman for 2 days and try to re-enter. You may also be
aware that all of this visa renewal procedure does not apply to US
citizens that are Jewish. So, my dad who was born in Al-Bireh,
whose farther and grand-father and etc...were all from Al-Bireh. And
my dad who owns land here and has a home here, etc...is only
allowed to be a 3-month tourist in Al-Bireh, while Mr. XYZ, a
Brooklyn-born American Jewish settler can live on the hilltop across
the valley from our home (land confiscated from our family I may
add) and can gain permanent residence here in 24 hours.

And the world is stupid enough to keep asking why we are where we
are.  More bloodletting from both sides will only cause more
bitterness and tears. What's needed is an immediate end to
occupation and no more maps without cars or drivers.

Three interesting articles below.

Bracing for exile,

Sam

Watch us grow, despite Sharon: http://www.apic-pal.com/html/news70603.html

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Road Map or Road Kill? by Rashid I. Khalidi, The Nation, June 9, 2003 Issue

Apparently having learned nothing from the collapse of earlier

efforts, the mainly American drafters of the road map included

several features that almost guarantee its failure. One is the

absence of a fixed timetable. Thus either party (in practice the

Israelis, if the past is any indication) can hold up movement from

stage to stage and within each stage. Another feature is the addition

of interim phases to a process that is already prolonged. This

means, in effect, the postponement of the most difficult aspect of

the resolution of the conflict--the negotiation of issues like

settlements, sovereignty, Jerusalem and refugees--until a third

phase, which, if past practice is any guide, means indefinitely.

The theory of interim agreements, beloved of pro-Israeli "peace

processors" in the Bush I and Clinton administrations, should have

been buried for good by now, after the spectacular failure of the

Madrid-Oslo approach, which relied on such phased interim

agreements. But this theory is resuscitated once more in the road

map, in the form of a gratuitous proposal for "an independent

Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of

sovereignty." If the plan gets that far, this is a sure recipe for

endless discord, which will be exploited by Israel to procrastinate

further, while keeping the essentials of the military occupation and

most Israeli settlements in business indefinitely, and restricting

Palestinian control to as little of the occupied territories as possible--

40 percent of the West Bank, if Ariel Sharon has his way.

It is here that the road map is the most flawed. For in failing to focus

on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East

Jerusalem, about to enter its thirty-seventh year, and on Israeli

settlements, which underpin that occupation, the road map misses

an opportunity to end this conflict. Instead, it concentrates on

Palestinian violence and how to combat it--as if it came out of

nowhere, and as if, were it to be halted, the situation of occupation

and settlement would be normal. This is a reflection of the

preponderant US role in the drafting of this document. It is also a

sign of why it will probably fail, for official Washington is obsessively

fixated on Palestinian violence as the root cause of all the problems

between Palestinians and Israelis.

This obsession has led to an American focus on cosmetic changes

in the Palestinian leadership, like the appointment of Mahmoud

Abbas (Abu Mazen) as prime minister. His new government cannot

possibly succeed in reducing Palestinian violence without a rollback

of the tide of settlement and a release on the chokehold of the

occupation. But that is unlikely to happen, for the Bush

Administration's obsession with Palestinian violence to the exclusion

of all else will probably lead to a continued bias in favor of the

Sharon/Likud interpretation of the road map. By this interpretation,

before Israel is required to do anything, the Palestinian security

services, eviscerated by two years of pitiless Israeli attacks, must be

reconstituted by Abu Mazen's choice to head them, Muhammad

Dahlan, and then must wage a relentless war against the

Palestinian factions that attack Israeli occupation forces and settlers

in the occupied territories as well as civilians inside Israel.

Palestinians complain that this means starting a Palestinian civil war

before there is any indication that the Sharon government,

dominated by hard-line supporters of the extension of settlements

and the continued repression of the Palestinians, will do any of the

things that are required of it. Nominally, the road map requires that

both sides take steps simultaneously: Palestinian action against

militant factions should take place alongside Israel's dismantling of

settlements, and releasing its grip on the more than 3 million people

of the occupied territories, who have lived for most of the past two

years under siege, curfew and constant threat of Israeli attack.

But with the neocons riding high in Washington, with the Pentagon

having taken over many of the responsibilities of the State

Department and the CIA, and with the Bush Administration already

in campaign mode and the Israeli lobby flexing its grotesquely well-

developed muscles, there should be little doubt which interpretation

of the road map will prevail in Washington. All that remains is to

await precisely how this latest fledgling dove will turn into road kill,

and what such a development will portend.

Should the Sharonistas who dominate the Bush Administration

continue to prevail, as they have in nearly every Washington

showdown since September 2001, not only will this effort fail, as

they and Sharon desire, but the Palestinians will be blamed for it.

There will undoubtedly continue to be enough Palestinian violence

to justify this, though it will pale alongside the routine, mechanized

violence of the occupation. Beyond the daily brutality of a foreign

army policing and denying the rights of a civilian population while

their land is being stolen for the benefit of settlers, force has been

used indiscriminately in heavily populated areas to crush Palestinian

resistance, as per the words of Lieut. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, the

Israeli army chief of staff: "The Palestinians must be made to

understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they

are a defeated people."

Israel can probably continue to rely on the existing American media

double standard, whereby Palestinian civilians slaughtered in

packed urban neighborhoods by battlefield weapons like heavy

machine guns, helicopter gunship missiles and tank cannons are

only "collateral damage" in the search to assassinate militants, and

do not count as much as Israeli civilians slaughtered in Israeli cities

by Palestinian suicide bombers, while the three-to-one ratio of

Palestinians to Israelis killed (most on both sides being civilian) is

constantly ignored. Thus, over one ten-day period, twenty

Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed, and went unnamed and

unmourned in the US media, which instead focused on three

Israelis killed in Tel Aviv by a suicide bomber.

In the long run, it will not be possible to oblige Palestinians to protect

the expansion of settlements and the continuation of occupation,

which is what the Oslo accords did; during the decade after

negotiations began in 1991, the settler population more than

doubled. If this is what the road map tries to do, it will fail. It remains

to be seen if even a fair implementation of this profoundly flawed

document can revive the vanishing prospects of a two-state

solution, or if this has been rendered untenable by thirty-six years of

relentless settlement and occupation dedicated to sabotaging the

possibility of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank,

Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. If so, Palestinians and Israelis will

have to find a new means of living together peacefully in the same

land, a prospect that daily seems ever more remote.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030609&s=khalidi

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Israel can halt this now, by Oona King in Gaza, The Guardian, June 12, 2003

The no man's land separating Israel from the Gaza Strip gives way

to what can only be described as desecrated land. Razor wire and

crushed buildings line the route. Torn slabs of concrete look like

tattered cardboard on a rubbish heap. In front of us two Israeli tanks

block our path. Behind us, the border will shortly be sealed to

prevent Palestinian reprisals for the helicopter attack launched

hours earlier against the extremist Hamas leader, Abdul-Aziz al-

Rantissi - who is still alive. A Palestinian woman and her young

child, on their way to hospital, are dead, and 35 are injured.

Later that afternoon we hurriedly leave the building we are in when a

missile lands nearby. As two British MPs travelling with Christian

Aid, myself and Jenny Tonge are alarmed. For Gaza residents this

is business as usual. More than 1 million Palestinians live on this

tiny piece of land (smaller than the Isle of Wight) - more than three-

quarters of on less than £1.30 a day. Life below the poverty line for

these Palestinians contrasts with the 5,000 Israeli settlers who

occupy one-third of the land and enjoy watered gardens, first world

housing and protection by the Israeli army. This protection means

Palestinians wait for hours - sometimes days - at Israeli

checkpoints, trying to find work or get access to essential services

such as medical care.

The sun is setting on Gaza. From my hotel balcony I hear

demonstrations in the street below. It occurs to me that I can put on

a headscarf and slip into the crowd as a Palestinian. No one will

guess I'm Jewish, still less that I'm a British MP. The sounds lead

me to the hospital where Rantissi is being treated. Cars rush into

the compound, horns blaring, people hanging out of windows. A

man carries an injured girl into the hospital. But most of the

Palestinians just stand waiting. They wait for Israelis to stamp their

permits, and they wait for a Palestinian state. They are no different

from us: deny them human rights and they will respond with

unacceptable terrorist violence.

That's what Jews did when they set up the Stern Gang and blew up

the King David Hotel in the 1940s. Ninety-four people died. The

leader of that terrorist group, on Britain's "most wanted" list, went on

to be the Israeli prime minister. Many Jews revere him, even while

they abhor the terrorism that ruins their lives today. Israelis must be

freed from terrorism - such as yesterday's horrific attack in

Jersualem. All terrorism, not least Palestinian terrorism, is

abhorrent. But it is also predictable. When the Israeli government

chose Tuesday to launch an attack in Gaza (as it did again after

yesterday's bombing), it cannot have been ignorant of its effect on

the peace process and the certainty of Palestinian reprisals.

The original founders of the Jewish state could surely not imagine

the irony facing Israel today: in escaping the ashes of the Holocaust,

they have incarcerated another people in a hell similar in its nature -

though not its extent - to the Warsaw ghetto.

Any visitor to the Palestinian ghetto can see the signs: residents are

sealed off and live under curfew; the authorities view torture as

acceptable and use collective punishment as a means of control;

soldiers drive families from their homes, confiscate property and

demolish neighbourhoods; unemployment runs in places at 80%,

and utilities such as water are withheld; the economy has "client"

status, and is subservient to the occupiers in every way.

As the more powerful side in the dispute, Israel must break the

cycle of violence, comply with UN resolution 242 and withdraw from

territories occupied in 1967. As the occupying power, Israel must

uphold the fourth Geneva convention and end all collective

punishments. Illegal settlements must be dismantled. Repair of

water, sewage, and other essential infrastructure should take place

immediately.

Just under 80% of all water resources in the West Bank and Gaza

Strip are redirected from Palestinians to Israelis. The international

community has to recognise the scale of the humanitarian disaster

facing Palestinians and George Bush must put greater pressure on

Sharon to give meaning to the road map. Yes, there are two sides to

every story. But no story should hold within it the horrors I have

witnessed here, so similar in detail to humiliations suffered by the

Jews.

I have sadly come to the conclusion that, given the scale of the

atrocities and collective punishment waged by the Israelis against

the Palestinians, I have no choice but to boycott Israeli products. On

reflection, whether Jewish or not, you might decide to do the same.

Oona King is Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow

miahr@parliament.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,975423,00.html

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Might As Well Get To Know It, by Charley Reese, April 9, 2003

Now that our president has embedded us in the Middle East for an

indefinite future, you might as well start trying to educate yourself

about the area and its conflicts. As one can say about so many

problems in this world, it all began with the British Empire.

When you look at a map of the Middle East, you are looking at a

map drawn by two Europeans by the names of Sykes and Picot.

This map represents the betrayal of the Arabs and the Kurds.

Before this map was drawn, the area had been part of the Ottoman

Empire. (That's Turkey, for those of you who hate history and

geography.)

The British, with their usual perfidy, had promised everything to

everybody. Help us overthrow the Turks, they said to the Arabs, and

you can have an independent Arab nation afterward. Help us

overthrow the Turks, they said to the Kurds, and you will get an

independent Kurdistan. And for some reason historians still argue

about, they also promised European Zionists that they (the Brits)

would establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. They betrayed

them, too, because what they did was establish the Palestine

mandate - or, in plain language, British occupation of Palestine.

Britain and France divided the Middle East between themselves,

and this basic fact set off the conflicts we are still dealing with. The

problem with establishing a Jewish state was that Arabs already

occupied the area chosen. While they initially had no quarrel with

Jews who wanted to immigrate to Palestine (the Israeli-Palestinian

conflict has nothing to do with religion and never has), as soon as

they figured out that European Jews were not coming to be

Palestinians but to take their land away from them, the Arabs

revolted. The British crushed this.

It wasn't too long, however, before Jews became impatient with

British occupation and so, to drive out the British, did what

Palestinians are doing today - used terror. Two of the premier

Jewish terrorists - Menachem Begin, who led the Irgun, and

Yitzhak Shamir, who led the Stern Gang - would later become

prime ministers of Israel. It is the political parties these terrorists

started that rule Israel today. Begin is famous for blowing up the

King David Hotel, Shamir for reputedly ordering the assassination of

Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte, who had been sent on a

peace mission by the United Nations. Both of their groups joined

forces to commit one of the most infamous massacres in history at

the little village of Deir Yassin, where more than 200 men, women

and children were slaughtered. Much of modern terrorist methods

were pioneered by Begin. You should read his book "The Revolt."

Sometime in 1947, the British had had enough of Palestine and

announced they were going to end the mandate the following year

and dump the problem in the lap of the United Nations. The Zionists

fiercely lobbied both Harry Truman and Joe Stalin. The deal was to

get a vote to partition Palestine. The Jews would immediately

proclaim the state of Israel, and, as preplanned, the United States

and the Soviet Union would instantly recognize it. This was the first

instance of the United States using a combination of threats and

bribery to round up votes at the United Nations.

Jews and Palestinians were already fighting, and in the course of

that fighting, the better-organized Zionists decided to expand

beyond the boundaries set by the partition resolution and to do a

little ethnic cleansing, since Arabs still outnumbered Jewish

residents 2-1. Despite some volunteers coming in from other Arab

countries, the Zionists had accomplished both goals by the cease-

fire in 1948. In a 1967 war, the Zionists took the rest of Palestine,

and Palestinians, who stubbornly insist on self-determination (once,

but no longer, an American value), are fighting them the best way

they can.

With the United States loading the Israelis down with both modern

arms and billions of dollars, however, the Palestinians are having a

hard time. This issue has made the United States hated in the

region and the king of hypocrites because we have vetoed 35 U.N.

resolutions to prevent the international community from giving any

justice or help to the Palestinians.

Now, our president has included Palestinian organizations that are

not international terrorists (Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah) on

our list of enemies. Originally, they were just aiming their attacks at

Israel, but I suppose this might change since George Bush has

become the puppet of the Israeli government.

 

Hang on to your hats, folks. You're in for a violent next 50 years or

so. - http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20030409/index.php