Briefing Paper November 2007

5th November 2007 4:06 pm

First it was the refugees, the majority of the Palestinian people; absurdly, the main victims of the conflict were denied respect, involvement, and participation in peace. Next came the elimination of an entire sector of Palestinian representation under occupation: some assassinated, others now languishing in Israeli jails in their thousands, most of whom want peace – just not one entirely on Israel’s terms. And finally an international boycott of any elected party whose political views unsurprisingly run counter to its enemy’s. An inevitable outcome of these exclusions is that all civic-minded, active and representative Palestinians have quit, in revulsion, the corrupted public space and secret backrooms of such negotiations.

Karma Nabulsi

Dehumanizing the Palestinians

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, Sep 21, 2007

The Israeli cabinet has voted to declare the occupied Gaza Strip a “hostile entity,” thus in its own eyes permitting itself to cut off the already meagre supplies of food, water, electricity and fuel that it allows the Strip’s inmates to receive. The decision was quickly given backing by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

There have been barely audible bleats of protest from the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (“Such a step would be contrary to Israel’s obligations towards the civilian population under international humanitarian and human rights law”) and the European Union (“The [European] Commission hopes that Israel will not find it necessary to implement the measures for which the [cabinet] decisions set the framework yesterday.”

Israel is the occupying power in the Gaza Strip, despite having removed its settlers in 2005 and transforming the area, home to 1.5 million mostly refugee Palestinians, into the world’s largest open-air prison which it besieges and fires into from the perimeter. Under international law Israel is responsible for the well- being of the people whose lives and land it rules.

What? It hopes that Israel will not find it necessary to cut off water supplies to 1.5 million people of whom half are children?

These statements serve only to underline that Israel operates in a context where the “international community” has become inured to a discourse of extermination of the Palestinian people — political and physical.

Yossi Alpher, for example, a former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and once a special adviser to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, argued coolly this week that Israel should murder the democratically-elected leaders who won the Palestinian legislative election in January 2006 — calling for “decapitating the Hamas leadership, both military and ‘civilian.'” True, he admitted, there would be a possible downside: “Israel would again undoubtedly pay a price in terms of international condem- nation, particularly if innocent civilians were killed,” and because “Israel would presumably be targeting legally elected Hamas officials who won a fair election.” Nevertheless, such condemnation would be quickly forgotten and, he argued, “this is a mode of retaliation and deterrence whose effectiveness has been proven,” and thus, this is “an option worth reconsidering.”

Alpher incited the murder of democratically-elected politicians not in a fringe, right-wing journal, but in the European Union-funded online newsletter Bitterlemons, which he co-founded along with former Palestinian Authority minister Ghassan Khatib. What journal would publish a call by a Palestinian — or anyone else — to murder the Israeli prime minister? Alpher presumably does not worry that he will be denied visas to travel to conferences in the European Union, or will fail to receive invitations to American universities. History tells us that he can feel confident he will suffer no consequences. Indeed, in the current political climate, any attempt to exclude Alpher might even be cast as an attack on academic freedom!

Declarations that reduce Palestinians to bare biological life that can be extinguished without any moral doubt are not isolated exceptions. In May, as reported by The Jerusalem Post, Israel’s former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu issued a religious ruling to the prime minister “that there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings” (See ” Top <http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6987.shtml> Israeli rabbis advocate genocide,” The Electronic Intifada, 31 May 2007). I could find no statement by any prominent Israeli figure condemning Eliyahu’s ruling.

And, in a September 6 blog posting, an advisor to leading US Republican Presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani argued for “shutting off utilities to the Palestinian Authority as well as a host of other measures, such as permitting no transportation in the PA of people or goods beyond basic necessities, implementing the death penalty against murderers, and razing villages from which attacks are launched.” This, the advisor stated, would “impress Palestinians with the Israeli will to survive, and so bring closer their eventual acceptance of the Jewish state.” (See: “Giuliani Advisor: Raze Palestinian Villages,” <http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001213> by Ken Silverstein, Harper’s Magazine , 14 September 2007) Giuliani faced no calls from other candidates to dismiss the advisor for advocating ethno- religiously motivated war crimes. Indeed the presence of such a person in his campaign might even be an electoral asset.

The latest Israeli government declaration comes as Palestinians this week marked the 25th anniversary of the massacres in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, in which the Israeli occupation army and political leadership were full participants. We can reflect that Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians and other Arabs, its near daily killing of children, destruction of communities and racist apartheid against millions of people has been so normalized that if those massacres occurred today Israel would not need to go through the elaborate exercise of denying its culpability. Indeed, the “international community” might barely notice.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse

We will be unable to meet the needs of the population if these conditions exist

UNRWA

Increasing need, decreasing access: Humanitarian access to the West Bank

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) 10 Sep 2007

UN agencies have been informed by Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials that all crossings into the occupied Palestinian territory will be standardized by the end of 2007 by which time much of the construction of the Barrier will be completed. Already, UN agencies are seeing increasing restrictions at crossings into the West Bank similar to those already in place into Gaza. This Fact Sheet explains how existing and planned restrictions will seriously impair the ability of humanitarian organisations to operate.

Humanitarian supplies into the West Bank:

Until January 2007 the crossing regime consisted of twelve crossings at which humanitarian organisations could truck supplies through the Barrier. Trucks were allowed to drive directly into the West Bank from Israel and containers cleared at the port of entry could be taken directly to West Bank destinations. The IDF was the sole controlling authority at all crossings; final responsibility rested with the Ministry of Defence through the office of Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories. Since January there has been a steady tightening of restrictions on the access for humanitarian goods and a reduction in the number of crossings that can be used.

By early 2008 the planned regime will include:

A reduction from 12 crossings to five for all import and export trucks. A sixth crossing near Bethlehem(Mazmouria)is scheduled to open towards the end of 2008. Three of the six crossing Beitunya,MazmouriaandTarqumiya- are inside the Green Line on Palestinian territory.
A ‘back-to-back’ system will be installed whereby goods will have to be unloaded from trucks the Israeli side of the Barrier, scanned, and then loaded onto trucks on the Palestinian side, and vice versa. Goods will have to be on palettes and scanned. Container loads may have to be ‘palletised in Israel before crossing into Israel or into the West Bank. Even if UN go can remain in containers, UN agencies are concerned that the Palestinian transport sector will n have sufficient trucks requiring multiple contracts and resulting in long delays. They are also concerned that certain commodities may be restricted, as is currently the case in Gaza. For example, 20% ofUNRWA’shumanitarian supplies are not amenable to containerisation.
A variety of authorities will be at the barrier crossing points includinIDg F, Border Police, civil Police, private security firms and Customs Department officers, answering to at least three different Ministries which will preclude a common and coherent chain of command.

Impact: The impact on humanitarian services will be serious. There will be large additional costs for more trucks, drivers, and handling. Long delays, and damage to goods through extra handling can be foreseen. The security of goods will not be guaranteed. Humanitarian organisations anticipate major difficulty meeting the needs of the population.

Israel bars students from leaving Gaza at last minute

Amira Hass amira@haaretz.co.il

On Monday night, the Defense Ministry telephoned the Israeli liaison office for the Gaza Strip and delivered surprising news: Despite lengthy prior coordination, civilians would not be allowed to leave the strip through the Erez and Nitzana crossings. But the Ministry for Civilian Affairs in Ramallah, the Palestinian body that coordinated the passage through the crossings, did not receive this message. Thus the ministry, which is the liaison office’s Palestinian counterpart, could not inform its Gaza office – which is manned by Fatah loyalists.

As a result, the ministry’s head, Hussein al-Sheikh, had already announced the happy but false news on Tuesday: Students from Gaza would be allowed to go through the crossings to study abroad. There are currently several thousand Palestinian students who have been accepted to universities abroad, but cannot leave the strip through Israel to attend. A Palestinian official said that no more than 100 students have been allowed to leave since June. The Israeli authorities had agreed to allow 700 students to leave,but the remaining 600 are still waiting. Some of these 600 students arrived at Erez Tuesday, expecting to be allowed through. One of them, call him B., realized something had gone wrong only after getting there. Eventually, he was told to head back home. B. was accepted into a scholarship program for a master’s degree in Britain. Hamoked – the Center for the Defense of the Individual, a Jerusalem-based Israeli organization whose main objective is to assist Palestinians whose rights have been violated by Israel’s policies, helped B. obtain clearance to leave. But if he fails to arrive in the United Kingdom by today, September 20, he can forget about his scholarship.

In despair, B. called Hamoked to tell them that he and another 200 people had been sent away from the crossing and not allowed to go through. The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman’s Office told Haaretz on Tuesday that it was not aware of any security limitations that necessitated closing down the Erez crossing. “Go ask the liaison office,” it said. The liaison office referred questions to the Ministry of Defense, but added that only those who were supposed to leave on student visas were barred from crossing. “Regular travelers” were allowed to go through as usual. But the term “regular travelers” refers only to sick people who need medical attention in Israel or Palestinians with special permits to either enter or transit Israel or the West Bank. Moreover, one holder of such a permit, M., begged to differ with the liaison office’s claim. M., a Gaza factory owner and holder of a permit for business people, said he came to the crossing before the cabinet declared Gaza a hostile entity yesterday. “I came there on Tuesday morning,” he said. “We were 150 people, mostly sick people and businessmen. They let only 15 people through. Maybe less. They kept us there for hours, and then told us we had to go back.” M. was scheduled to cross over to Jordan from Israel. “I don’t want to open a factory in the West Bank,” he said, referring to what many Gaza businessmen now hope to do. Instead, M. wants to set up shop in the Hashemite Kingdom. “But now, they won’t let me through to Jordan.

It’s not Hamas who didn’t let me through today. It’s not Hamas that’s keeping me out of business,” he complained. “It’s a recipe for suicide.” The Defense Ministry referred Haaretz’s query on the students to the chief of staff’s office. From there, it went back to the IDF Spokesman’s Office – which, once again, said the agency qualified to answer the question was the liaison office.

The answer to the question of when the students will be allowed to study remained unanswered.

It is unjust and absurd to apply economics to this hell

Karma Nabulsi The Guardian 18/09/07

No people, territory or issue on earth have had more international attention devoted to them than Palestine and its people. Yet no conflict looks further from resolution, and no people further from achieving the freedom promised them. More Palestinians lack more basic freedoms today than they did 60 years ago. While an expensive and extensive peace process was in full swing, Israel managed to illegally expropriate most of the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, install hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers, kill more Palestinian families, arrest more young men, destroy more crops, homes and businesses, build a monstrous wall deemed illegal by the international court of justice, and set forth, unchecked, a policy of aggressive expansionism in Palestine that continues until this moment.

Citizens of this country may wish to ask why this is so, and what on earth their government has been doing all this time with their money. Yesterday the UK government attempted to answer this question with the launch of a report on the Economic Aspects of the Peace Process. What the report doesn’t explain is the direct link between throwing economics at this conflict and the repeated failures to solve it.

The symbiotic relationship between the illegal “facts on the ground” created by Israel in occupied Palestine; the simultaneous loss of nerve by almost all international leaders and institutions to reverse those facts; the subsequent flurry of international activities designed to avoid challenging illegal Israeli actions – this triangle of desolation has been masterfully described in a remarkable publication by Chatham House, entitled Aid, Diplomacy, and Facts on the Ground: the Case of Palestine. Its authors – World Bank representatives, UN officials, and humanitarian agencies – detail the economic, political and diplomatic strategies by which international donors have (by default or by design) encouraged illegal Israeli practices that have made peace impossible. Without polemics or partisanship, these expert contributors coolly demonstrate the calamity of this approach, and suggest practical solutions to redirect attention towards doing good.

Two of the most treacherous mechanisms of avoidance need highlighting: diplomacy through international negotiations, and the type of economic assistance given to an increasingly impoverished Palestinian people. Since the Oslo agreement in 1993, every subject Israeli governments refused to discuss was removed from the negotiating table. Unfortunately this required excluding the people and issues essential to resolving the conflict: the Palestinians and their right to their land.

As well as entire sectors of people, political issues Israelis deemed unacceptable have also been pushed off the agenda. This is the ugly shape of the international conference President Bush is seeking to convene in November. Its purpose is to legitimise the intolerable status quo, especially Israel’s recent military conquests. Worse, it will endeavour to demonstrate, through a PR campaign by paid-up pro-Israel lobbyists that the deal is authentic and supported by ordinary people uniting for peace. Everyone who disagrees will face being smeared as marginal, anti-peace, or dangerously extremist.

The “problem” of Palestine is now restricted to a discussion in purely economic terms. It is not the military occupation, the enforced exile and statelessness of millions of Palestinians, or the daylight robbery of Palestinian land that needs confronting, but the lack of economic stability in occupied Palestine for jobs and development.

The latest initiative from the government suggests improvements driven by private investment. The absurdity of proposing to stimulate investment in this hell – where because of Israeli closures and checkpoints Palestinians cannot trade between their own towns much less with the outside world – or the fact that the present economic catastrophe is a direct consequence of the military occupation, gets no acknowledgement here. By avoiding the real issue of Israeli intransigence, and with no plan on tackling it, neither jobs nor justice are on offer to Palestinians. They expect international support to help them win their freedom – or at least not assistance in their oppression. As Mary Anderson, a contributor to the Chatham House book, explains: if you can do no good in Palestine, at least do no harm.

Palestinians die after being denied access through Israeli checkpoints

UNNews@un.org 28/09/07

An increasing number of Palestinians have died after being denied passage through Israeli checkpoints, according to the latest United Nations humanitarian report on the occupied Palestinian territory.

The latest incident occurred in August when a 76-year-old woman from Barta’a a-Sharqiya in Jenin district with heart problems died after Israeli soldiers refused to allow her to pass a gate in order to reach the hospital in Jenin, the Humanitarian Monitor Report for August said.

The monthly report of key humanitarian indicators and field observations collected by UN agencies, noted that July and August witnessed the highest total number of Israeli settler incidents against Palestinians in the occupied Territory in 2007, 37 and 30 respectively, a significant increase over the previous two months and considerably higher than the 2006 monthly average of 20. Children under 18 also continued to be victims of Israeli-Palestinian violence and of conflict within the Palestinian community, with a three-fold increase in deaths in August compared to July.

Since the beginning of the second Intifada (Palestinian uprising) in 2000, 48 people have died after they were denied passage through an Israeli checkpoint. The vast majority of those deaths, 34, occurred during 2001 and 2002. After international condemnation, the number of deaths then dropped dramatically to an average of 2 or 3 per year, but from 1 January to 31 August this year five people have died because they were unable to access medical attention, the Monitor said.

“The figure also corresponds to a disturbing increase in the number of delays and denials of ambulances at checkpoints,” it added, noting that while in 2006 there was a monthly average of 10 delays or denials of ambulance access, the monthly average for 2007 is 53. “Under international humanitarian law there is an obligation to ensure that the sick, aged, feeble, and expectant mothers be accorded particular protection and respect,” the Monitor said. “The IDF (Israeli army) claims that soldiers are informed of a special procedure related to persons requiring medical treatment, which is intended to expedite their crossing at checkpoints. “By obstructing ambulances and denying people medical care in emergency situations, soldiers not only violate those procedures, but also contribute to the unnecessary deaths of the sick and wounded,” it added.

On settler incidents, the Monitor noted that on 2 August, two Israeli settlers from Mitzpe Ya’ir outpost in southern Hebron district attacked a UN vehicle carrying three UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) employees and two Israeli journalists. One settler broke the windshield of the vehicle, injuring one OCHA employee in the eye. Israeli soldiers and police intervened and detained the two settlers.”The issue of settler violence against Palestinian civilians will be an issue of particular concern in the coming months as Palestinians throughout the West Bank attempt to harvest their olive crop,” it said.

On Palestinian children, the Monitor reported a three-fold increase in those killed in August compared to July – 11 to four – bringing the 2007 total to 70, 47 per cent of whom were killed by the Israeli armed forces, 44 per cent by Palestinians and 9 percent by unexploded ordnance. In August, eight were killed by the IDF, two by a Palestinian Qassam rocket that exploded in Palestinian territory and one in internal violence. Of those killed by the IDF, two, aged 9 and 12 years, were allegedly present near a rocket launcher and were hit by a surface-to- surface missile fired by Israeli soldiers.

As previous reports have noted, the Monitor stressed that the continued closure of the principle Gaza crossing points at Karni and Rafah have had a significant impact on the daily lives of Gaza’s 1.4 million residents. The closure has been effective since June following the defeat of Fatah forces by Hamas, which resulted in a break down in Israeli- Palestinian coordination mechanisms at the crossings. On the West Bank, Bethlehem and Hebron-area farmers have been severely affect by the inability to effectively market their grape harvest due to tightened Israeli internal closures, including denial of access to their lands especially around Israeli settlements, and the loss of markets in Israel, abroad, Gaza and the northern West Bank.

Treachery for treatment

Al-Ahram Weekly 15/10/07

Retired Shin Bet officers have admitted that they had strict instructions to practise the harshest degrees of coercion and exploitation in order to force Palestinian patients to become Israeli informants. Avner, a former top Shin Bet officer, admitted in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Maariv published last Friday that officers in charge of enlisting agents are ordered not to hesitate in exploiting any human condition, no matter how severe, in order to enlist the largest number possible of Palestinian informants.

His calm demeanour belies the personal tragedy he is living. Journalist Bassam Al-Wahidi, 30, is on the verge of giving in to perpetual darkness. This will happen if he doesn’t have an operation to reposition his retina, an operation that he was supposed to have had last month in a Palestinian hospital in Jerusalem. Although Al-Wahidi, a news presenter on the Voice of the Workers radio station in Gaza, had completed all the necessary administrative procedures required of him to travel to Jerusalem, officers in the Israeli domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, at the Erez Crossing on the northern border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, won’t allow him to cross until he agrees to become an Israeli agent and provide information on the activities, leaders and members of Palestinian resistance movements active in Gaza.

When Al-Wahidi was stopped at Erez, Shin Bet officers insulted him and stripped him completely before taking him to one of the agency’s interrogators. The interrogator, who introduced himself as “Captain”, flooded him with questions about Palestinian resistance movements for five and a half hours, demanding he divulge information before being allowed to reach Jerusalem and undergo his operation. The interrogator used all the sticks and carrots that such agencies keep on hand. Al-Wahidi, who belongs to a well-established Gazan family that is closely connected to resistanceagainst the occupation, refused to consider the Shin Bet interrogator’s offers, and belittled his attempts to enlist him as a spy.

The operation’s schedule came and went while Al-Wahidi was still in the interrogation room. At six in the evening, after the officer lost hope in Al-Wahidi offering up whatever he imagined he knew, he threw him out of the office and threatened that he would lose his vision forever and not be allowed to go to Jerusalem until he agreed to use his position as a journalist to cooperate with Shin Bet. Al-Wahidi, who told his story to Al-Ahram Weekly, says with confidence that after what happened to him at the hands of Shin Bet he is convinced more than ever that he must resist the occupation.

The sadistic coercion that Palestinians with chronic illnesses have been subjected to by Shin Bet has become the talk of the street in Gaza. The story typically begins when a Palestinian patient requests a permit from the Israeli- Palestinian Civil Liaisons Department to be allowed to travel from Gaza to the West Bank or Israel for an operation. After exhausting efforts, patients receive permits and go to Erez only to face the same procedures Al-Wahidi confronted. According to files passed to the Weekly by prominent human rights centres on the practices of Shin Bet, the agency’s officers, in their attempt to coerce and entrap patients, do not distinguish between youth and the elderly. Neither are women, and even children, set apart.

Professor Kamel Al-Mughni, 65, is the former dean of the College of Fine Arts at An-Najah National University in Nablus. He lives in the Al-Shajaiyeh neighbourhood of Gaza City and two years ago was diagnosed with throat cancer. He underwent surgery in an Israeli hospital, and this improved his health condition. Those supervising his treatment requested that he visit regularly to receive radiological treatment so as to not suffer a setback. One month ago, Al-Mughni set out for Israel, but at the Erez Crossing he was taken by surprise when a number of Shin Bet members led him to a room where he was heavily interrogated by a Shin Bet officer who told him in clear terms that he would not be allowed to continue his journey to the Israeli hospital unless he was prepared to cooperate with Shin Bet and provide it with information about resistance activists.

Al-Mughni was shocked that Shin Bet would propose such a thing, especially in light of his academic status and advanced age. He rejected the offer and returned to Gaza, fearing that his health would suffer a setback. Similarly, a 34-year-old woman who declined to reveal her name has been diagnosed with cancer. She was scheduled for an operation in an Israeli hospital, but when she reached Erez, a Shin Bet interrogator was waiting for her and attempted to coerce her. She returned home without undergoing the operation, and since that time her health has declined.

Raji Al-Sourani, director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, told the Weekly that his centre has monitored cases in which Shin Bet officers have attempted to entrap sick children through bartering health services for the provision of intelligence information. Al-Sourani points out that the “criminal practices” of Shin Bet have also led it to attempt to exploit the poor health conditions of some Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons by conditioning treatment on their spying on fellow inmates. Al-Sourani stresses that what Shin Bet is doing is a grave breach of international laws that affirms the right of the sick to receive appropriate treatment. Denial of this right is a “war crime” and “crime against humanity”.

Al-Sourani’s centre succeeded in bringing arrest warrants against a number of Israeli army generals and heads of intelligence in Britain and America, accusing them of committing war crimes against Palestinians. Yet he acknowledges the difficulty of raising lawsuits against leaders in Shin Bet — and Israel in general — for the pressure they exert on sick Palestinians. Lawsuits require witnesses to offer testimony under oath in court. Victims of coercion usually refuse to identify themselves and offer testimony because they continue to hope that Israel will allow them to receive treatment. They fear that if they raise lawsuits against Israel, their likelihood of obtaining permits that would allow them to reach hospitals would diminish.

Yet a Palestinian security source told the Weekly that while most Palestinians subjected to coercion by Shin Bet reject its attempts to exploit their critical situation in order to enlist them as informants, a small number of patients agree to Shin Bet demands in an attempt to save their lives. This source stated that some of those who were obliged to deal with Shin Bet later went to Palestinian security agencies and told them what had happened and the nature of the information they had provided to Shin Bet. They were allowed to return home once it was confirmed that they had severed their relations with Israeli intelligence.

Some Israeli human rights organisations constantly monitor Shin Bet’s efforts to coerce sick Palestinians. “Recently we have noted an obvious rise in Palestinian patients, and particularly those who are residents of Gaza, for whom permits to receive treatment outside of the Strip depend on cooperation with Shin Bet,” says Ron Yaroun, spokesperson of the Israeli Physicians for Human Rights organisation. “I’m dealing with a group of people who feel weak and frightened. These people are in a trap. On the one hand, they are worried about their health, but at the same time, they are not prepared to cooperate with Israel and offer it intelligence information in order to save their lives.”

As for Danny Valak, head of Physicians for Human Rights, he considers what Shin Bet is doing to Palestinian patients with authorisation from the Israeli government a “situation that is rejected from the perspective of medical ethics and all other ethical perspectives one can think of. From the perspective of ethics, not everything is permissible in the name of security. Just as torture is prohibited, so too pressure on patients or exploitation of the ill to make them agents is also rejected. Strong ethical standards are what, in my opinion, provide security to a state in the long run. States that decline ethically do not remain strong societies.”

Only those who meet those suffering from chronic illness and for whom minutes pass like hours as they await death, denied the most basic human right of the opportunity to receive treatment because they refuse to become informants and cooperate with the enemy against their people, can understand the depth and reason of the contempt Palestinians bear in their hearts against Israel. What adds to the bitterness these patients and their families feel, and all those who witness their situation feel, is the world’s silence over the organised state crime they are subjected to.

The 41st kilometre

Amira Hass 15/10/07

Since 1991, Israel has been using the partial or total imprisonment of the Gazans in their cage, for longer or shorter periods, as a political strategy: Sometimes it is depicted as punishment, sometimes as a deterrent action and always as a preface to a political plan. Until not long ago, it seemed as though the terms of imprisonment could not be any worse. The past four months have proven that there is always “worse.”

A zoo. This is one of the ways that Palestinians describe the conditions under which nearly 1.5 million of them have been living: in an area of some 360 square kilometers, closed in on three sides by sophisticated barbed-wire fences, concrete walls and military lookout towers, and to the west by Israeli navy ships that seal them off from the sea. Overhead, in the sky, unmanned aircraft and hot air balloons continually photograph whatever happens inside this closed cage, which has seven gates connecting it to the world, all of which are sealed off almost hermetically.

During the past four months, Israel has permitted about 2,000 people to leave the Gaza Strip – a minority of

them were ill; more than half were Fatah senior activists or loyalists who were fleeing from the Strip; and the rest were individuals holding dual citizenship or visas for prolonged stays abroad. For the sake of comparison: In 1999, 1,400 people a day went through the Rafah crossing point alone, in addition to the thousands who passed though the Erez crossing point, despite the permanent closure policy. Now, 1.5 million human beings are living with the knowledge that the length of their world is at most 41 kilometers long and 12 kilometers wide.

The comparison to a zoo was made by Dr. Mamdouh al Aker, a doctor who heads the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens’ Rights. For another Gazan, a prominent businessman whose food plant is working at about 5 percent of its capacity, the situation is reminiscent of a hospital: Like patients, the inhabitants do not work, but they receive food. They do not work, because for four months Israel has prohibited not only the exit of any Gazan products to market, but also the entry of any raw materials or means of production. If the prices of goods continue to rise and the cash crisis worsens because of the severing of contact between banks in Israel and the banks in Gaza, the international aid organizations will soon increase the quantities of food that they donate, which today account for about 10 percent of the supplies that are brought in. Perhaps the day will come when they will drop food packages from helicopters.

The governments of Israel, the United States and Europe see the hermetic imprisonment of 1.5 million human beings and the final destruction of Gaza’s economic infrastructure as a suitable answer to Hamas, at least until it falls. It appears that the Ramallah “government” agrees with them. Indeed, the head of the Gazan “government,” Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, has hinted that the exclusive Hamas regime in Gaza is temporary. But, this temporary nature depends on the success of a dialogue between Hamas and Fatah, whereas Israel and the United States are forbidding Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from carrying on such a dialogue. And Abbas, in any case, is for the moment sticking to the approach that Hamas is a hostile entity.

As always, the students who are not being allowed to leave are a minority whose imprisonment reflects the extent of the destruction inflicted upon the Palestinian future. For years now Israel has been preventing Gazans from studying in the West Bank. As a consequence, those who want to undertake advanced studies at the university level must go abroad. Take, for example, 10 outstanding students who have received scholarships for master’s and doctoral studies in Germany. Take another several hundred students, who are already studying abroad and got stuck in the Gaza Strip over the summer, and others who registered for studies abroad this year. The essential future contribution by all of these students to their community is ensured. But if they do not leave the Gaza Strip today, right now, some of them will lose their scholarships, others the first semester of the school year and still others the entire year. Thousands of other young people have simply given up on their aspiration to study abroad because of the closed-gates policy. And when they do not receive the opportunity to get to know the world, the world according to Hamas and the religious horizons that it offers are the most persuasive.

Palestinians’ lives invisible to Israelis

Edward Mast palestineinformation.org

On a visit to Tel Aviv last month, I asked some Israeli friends what people in Israel were saying about the Palestinian situation. Not much, they told me. Israelis are more concerned about the corruption charges against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, coming on the heels of corruption charges against previous governments. Palestinians and their issues, my friends told me, are becoming more and more invisible to the Israeli people.

Palestinian lives are kept invisible in David Brumer’s Oct. 10 guest column, “Despite concerns, Israel a vibrant country.” Also invisible are Israel’s military occupation and the ongoing takeover of Palestinian land. If Brumer had traveled to the other side of the wall, as I did, he could have witnessed the many ways that the Israeli occupation crushes people with poverty, violence and injustice.

Before visiting Tel Aviv, I spent two weeks working with a theater in the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the West Bank. During that short time, the Israeli army killed at least 15 Palestinians in the occupied territories; several killed were children. For Palestinians, these are regular occurrences. Over the past seven years, the Israeli army has killed more than 4,000 Palestinians. The majority of these, even according to Israeli statistics, have been unarmed civilians. Many thousands more have been wounded or kidnapped. The severe underreporting of Palestinian casualties in the U.S. and Israel can leave the impression that Palestinian lives have less value. In Ramallah, I learned that, though there is plenty of water near the city, the several hundred thousand residents had spent the summer with running water available only three or four days each week. That sort of fact tends to be invisible to Israelis, along with the reasons.

Ramallah is near the cluster of West Bank aquifers, which are the main sources of water for both the West Bank and Israel, but 80 percent of the West Bank’s water goes to Israel and Israeli settlements. For decades, Israel has used its military occupation of the West Bank to build an illegal network of settlements around the water sources. Palestinians have been beaten, killed and driven away to make space for these settlements, and Israel has built a continuous wall, not on the border of Israel but inside Palestinian territory, which effectively annexes the settlements and water resources into Israel.

Israelis are told the wall is for their security. Palestinians call it the annexation wall, and it is difficult for them to believe Israel can be a partner for peace while the Israeli government continues taking Palestinian land for

settlements, building the wall to annex them and maintaining the system of checkpoints that paralyze movement and life in the West Bank.

With some colleagues, I spent one day traveling from Ramallah to Jerusalem. The eight-mile trip took 2 1/2 hours. In Ramallah, the wall is 25 feet high, and the Israeli checkpoint is like an airport security station. We lined up for more than half an hour with Palestinians at a remote-controlled 8-foot turnstile where people had to crowd like cattle and wait for a green light to get as many through as possible before the light turned red. Once past X-ray security and more turnstiles, we boarded shared taxis for what should have been a short ride to Jerusalem. However, the Israeli military had set up an additional temporary “flying checkpoint” some 1,640 feet down the road, forcing several lanes of traffic down to a single lane for stopping and searching. That took almost an hour. Business in Ramallah is at a standstill. Poverty is everywhere; jobs are not to be found. The people at the checkpoint said to us, “Take pictures. Tell people what is happening here.”

The Israeli government has recently confiscated more Palestinian land near Jerusalem to build a segregated road, literally underground, for Palestinians. Israeli settlers will be able to commute back and forth from the territories without having so much as to see a Palestinian. Invisibility here is no accident.

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