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Nobel Peace Laureate Margaret Mead reports on her journey to Gaza 28 October ? 1 November 2008

On 28th October, 2008, the Free Gaza Movement set sail in SS Dignity from Larnaca, Cyprus, for Gaza. On board were 27 Internationals from 13 countries, including Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, five physicians, human rights lawyers, etc., I felt deeply privileged to be part of this group going to Gaza.

On this, the second boat journey into Gaza the siege-breakers brought with them 6 cubic meters of medicine, and their hope that by going to Gaza across the sea (only the second boat to do so in over 41 years) they would give hope to the people of Gaza and that the outside world would break its silence to the tragedy of Gaza’s suffering and act to get the siege lifted.

It is hard to image that in the 2lst century a country can be so cut off from the outside world. Sixteen months ago, when Gazans voted for Hamas in free and fair elections, the reaction of Israel was not to open up dialogue with the elected representatives (as they eventually must do) but to put in place a policy of collective punishment of the entire population, which has led to a humanitarian catastrophe. Israel said it was ending the occupation of Gaza, but in truth it maintained it by closing all border entrances and isolating the Gazans from the entire world. Gaza is like an open air prison with Israel holding the keys, but it’s worse, at least in prison the inmates are fed and taken care of. The people of Gaza are drinking polluted water and have not enough food and medicines and materials for existence ? and in the words of one Gazan ?we are slowly choking to death with this siege’.

Before we sailed to Gaza the Israeli Government, warned we would not be allowed to sail into Gaza. However, we were determined to do so and just 20 miles off the coast of Gaza, held our breath as two Israeli navy gunboats stalked us but took no action. Common sense had prevailed ? hopefully a sign for the future that in the final analysis those in power in Israel will realize that dialogue not gunboats and F.16’s, is the only way to solve this too long and painful Palestinian occupation.

We arrived in Gaza exhausted and sea-sick. We were met by dozens of Palestinian heavily armed police and though, before leaving Gaza, I had requested not to be so guarded, we were informed that the Hamas Government wanted to ensure our safety, and throughout the entire 4 day visit we were escorted by armed Palestinian police.

Our reception by the people of Gaza was deeply moving. Their gratitude to the Free Gaza Movement was shown by their great warmth and hospitality. They were particularly grateful that Dr. Barghouti had come from the West Bank, and that Gideon Spiro an Israeli from Tel Aviv, had arrived with the boat. (On his way home through the Erez crossing he was arrested by Israeli Authorities, held overnight and charged with illegally entering Gaza).

The following 4 days was filled with events ranging from pure joy (like the concert with the children singing and one of our group an Italian Opera singer holding everyone in awe by the magic of his voice) to events of deep sadness such as our visit to Shifa hospital. Here the doctors explained they have shortage of basic medicines, no parts for machines as they are
blocked by Israel, and we met patients dying from cancer and preventable diseases, if only the medicines and equipment were available. A half built new hospital stands slowing disintegrating, as cement and wood and basic materials are not allowed into the Gaza strip for over 16 months now and everything is slowing, falling apart.

We visited next day the airport which had been bombed from the air and from land by Israeli tanks over two years ago. We visited the electricity plant and saw the huge generators, bombed by Israel and still not repaired due to shortage of parts and a legal debate as to who is responsible to repair. This Israeli air bombing of electricity plant means it is down to only 50%
capacity, so each day the electricity goes off for 7-8 hours at a time, including in hospitals.

The sewerage plant too has been damaged and Israel will not allow the pipes in to replace those destroyed, so raw sewage is pumped into the sea every day, causing an environmental disaster waiting to explode.

In Jabalia, there have been heavy rains which washed away the road, exposing broken sewerage pipes. A pool of raw sewage filled the street and the children played oblivious to the danger of disease . We visited homes flooded by rain and sewage whose owners had to flee and are now living with relatives in already overcrowded poverty stricken homes. There is
dreadful poverty in this area. The people have nothing, many hungry and malnutrition 80%. Still the international community remains silent as the Israeli Government, collectively punish one and a half million people, 50% under 21 years of age.

Some of our human rights colleagues went out on the boats with the Gazan fishermen. They were attacked by Israeli navy boats who bombarded the boats with water canons and fired live ammunition over the bow of the fishing boats. Many fishermen have been shot dead by the Israeli navy simply trying to catch fish 6 miles from shore to feed their families.

The following days, we were received by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh who announced we would be given Palestinian passports, and presented the Free Gaza Movement with a gift. There is a real desire here for peace, people have suffered enough, but they want a just peace, an end to occupation, a right to determine their future for their children. The next day the Prime Minister announced the release of Fatah prisoners and a promise there would be no more political arrests. (They awaited a response from President Abbas regarding Hamas prisoners they hold). Later that evening in the School of the Holy Family, we had the privilege of witnessing over 100 Politicians, representing all political parties, including Fatah and Hamas pledge to working for Palestinian National Unity and promising to send their leaders to attend the National Unity Conference in Cairo early November. Dr. Barghouthi (a true man of peace) addressed his political colleagues whom he had not met for 2 and a half years, due to the closure and separation of Gaza Strip from West Bank. (An apartheid policy of Israel dividing the Palestinian people into Bantustans and making the possibility of a viable Palestinian State very difficult ). This meeting took place under the watchful gaze of a huge wall picture of President Arafat. I was invited to address the political parties and I supported their non-violent campaign for an end to Occupation, and a Free Palestine. I also encouraged the National Unity of Palestinians reminding them ?in Palestinian unity there is strength, divided you will be conquered’. I also appealed to them to ?keep your struggle non-violent and the world will
support you’

The next day we visited the Palestinian Parliament.(Hamas). The Speaker of the Parliament thanked the Free Gaza Movement. He spoke of the suffering of the Palestinians under siege and occupation and paid tribute to the suffering also of the Palestinian political prisoners (over 40 elected Hamas politicians now in Israeli jails). I addressed the Parliament, speaking of the need for the release of political prisoners and made an appeal for the release of Col. GiladShalit, the Israeli Corporal a captive in Gaza for almost two years now. (There are a total of 11,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including parliamentarians, sick, disabled, women and
children, and before leaving Gaza, I appealed for the release of Palestinian political prisoners ? immediately to be released children, women, sick, those under administrative detention, and elected parliamentarians). I stressed the need to keep the struggle non-violent and spoke of dialogue forgiveness and reconciliation and lessons learned in our own peace process
in Northern Ireland.

We visited also the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt which remains closed cutting Gazans off from their families and friends just down the road. One of the Palestinian women (who had flown from Jerusalem to Cyprus and come on the boat because she had no other way to get to Gaza) banged on the Egyptian gate crying ?open up I want to get to my family’. Egypt too plays its part in cutting off completely from the world the people of Gaza not only from loved ones (and not to be able to touch those you love is the cruellest form of torture, not even letters or newspapers get into Gaza) but basic needs of medicine, food, materials to rebuild their infrastructure purposely bombed by Israeli jets (paid for by American taxpayers money - £10 million dollars a day). The Palestinians in a desperate attempt to feed their families or escape this open air prison, are digging dozens of underground tunnels from Gaza to Egypt, but on the day we left, 3 men were killed and other still missing as the soft sand collapsed on them. Thousands of Palestinian women are cut off from their husbands in the West Bank, and 700 students who have University places in outside countries, are
not allowed out of Gaza to continue their education.

The greatest tragedy of all this is that international governments and the Western media in particular remain silent about this slow destruction of the Palestinian people by policies of Israel which break the Geneva Convention and Apartheid Convention in its apartheid and racist policies.

Yet, in leaving Gaza I felt great hope. Hope at the tremendous resilience of the Palestinian people. One of our great Irish poets W.B.Yeats once wrote ?too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart’ but then a prayer of the Irish also says ?take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of love’. In my journeys to Israel and Palestine, and in Gaza, I found many hearts of love. One Palestinian man asked me to carry his message to the world and it is: ?We love our Israeli brothers, we have lived with them, we want to, but we do not believe the Israeli Government wants peace as their policies are destroying the Palestinian people’.

Another request from a Palestinian father to some of our group will remain with us: ?if I give you some money will you bring in on the next boat some milk for my children, we have none’.

I believe there is great hope for peace in the Middle East, as this is a political problem with a political solution, and the Israeli Government, and the USA, with real political will, can solve this historical conflict whose roots are in the occupation. We recognize the State of Israel and its need for security. We recognize there is a deep fear of ethnic annihilation amongst many Israeli, but we as the human family must all learn to deal with our fears non-violently, and realize our best hope for human security is not in occupation and siege, but in reaching out to make justice and our enemy, our friend.

Salaam Palestine, Shalom Israel.
Mairead Maguire (Nobel Peace Laureate)
4th November 2008
www.peacepeople.com

Source: WOMEN FOR PALESTINE
MELBOURNE ? AUSTRALIA

Guardian, November 18 2008

One of Britain’s most authoritative judicial figures last night delivered a blistering attack on the invasion of Iraq, describing it as a serious violation of international law, and accusing Britain and the US of acting like a “world vigilante”.

Lord Bingham, in his first major speech since retiring as the senior law lord, rejected the then attorney general’s defence of the 2003 invasion as fundamentally flawed.

Contradicting head-on Lord Goldsmith’s advice that the invasion was lawful, Bingham stated: “It was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had.” Adding his weight to the body of international legal opinion opposed to the invasion, Bingham said that to argue, as the British government had done, that Britain and the US could unilaterally decide that Iraq had broken UN resolutions “passes belief”.

Governments were bound by international law as much as by their domestic laws, he said. “The current ministerial code,” he added “binding on British ministers, requires them as an overarching duty to ‘comply with the law, including international law and treaty obligations’.”

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats continue to press for an independent inquiry into the circumstances around the invasion. The government says an inquiry would be harmful while British troops are in Iraq. Ministers say most of the remaining 4,000 will leave by mid-2009.

Addressing the British Institute of International and Comparative Law last night, Bingham said: “If I am right that the invasion of Iraq by the US, the UK, and some other states was unauthorised by the security council there was, of course, a serious violation of international law and the rule of law.

“For the effect of acting unilaterally was to undermine the foundation on which the post-1945 consensus had been constructed: the prohibition of force (save in self-defence, or perhaps, to avert an impending humanitarian catastrophe) unless formally authorised by the nations of the world empowered to make collective decisions in the security council …”

The moment a state treated the rules of international law as binding on others but not on itself, the compact on which the law rested was broken, Bingham argued. Quoting a comment made by a leading academic lawyer, he added: “It is, as has been said, ‘the difference between the role of world policeman and world vigilante’.”

Bingham said he had very recently provided an advance copy of his speech to Goldsmith and to Jack Straw, foreign secretary at the time of the invasion of Iraq. He told his audience he should make it plain they challenged his conclusions.

Both men emphasised that point last night by intervening to defend their views as consistent with those held at the time of the invasion. Goldsmith said in a statement: “I stand by my advice of March 2003 that it was legal for Britain to take military action in Iraq. I would not have given that advice if it were not genuinely my view. Lord Bingham is entitled to his own legal perspective five years after the event.” Goldsmith defended what is known as the “revival argument” - namely that Saddam Hussein had failed to comply with previous UN resolutions which could now take effect. Goldsmith added that Tony Blair had told him it was his “unequivocal view” that Iraq was in breach of its UN obligations to give up weapons of mass destruction.

Straw said last night that he shared Goldsmith’s view. He continued: “However controversial the view that military action was justified in international law it was our attorney general’s view that it was lawful and that view was widely shared across the world.”

Bingham also criticised the post-invasion record of Britain as “an occupying power in Iraq”. It is “sullied by a number of incidents, most notably the shameful beating to death of Mr Baha Mousa [a hotel receptionist] in Basra [in 2003]”, he said.

Such breaches of the law, however, were not the result of deliberate government policy and the rights of victims had been recognised, Bingham observed.

He contrasted that with the “unilateral decisions of the US government” on issues such as the detention conditions in Guant?namo Bay, Cuba.

After referring to mistreatment of Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib, Bingham added: “Particularly disturbing to proponents of the rule of law is the cynical lack of concern for international legality among some top officials in the Bush administration.”

Elviza Michele Kamal

On Oct 24, I braved a mean traffic crawl along Jalan Tun Razak en route to PWTC to attend a charity dinner hosted by the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.
However, I am still bereft of words to describe this meaningful cause championed by the foundation - guilt, anger and hopelessness now consume every fiber of my being in so far as any war is concerned.
According to of the foundation committee’s chairperson, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah, the royal charity dinner was held to raise funds to facilitate the foundation’s voluntary programmes on a national and global basis as well as to acquire a suitable premise to serve as the foundation’s headquarters.
His Majesty Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin launched the foundation at this royal charity dinner.
One unforgettable aspect of the royal charity dinner was the ten-minute-long video footage featuring what casualties of war ? mainly children and women ? had to endure as hostile fire destroyed their homes and blew their family members to pieces.
Gory images of a massacre; bodies of maimed children lumped into a mass grave; child soldiers mechanically firing away their guns with little thought about humanity let alone compassion; torn limbs piled up on a deserted ground; a howling mother beside charred remains, one could only assume them to be of her child; a teenager lying on a hospital bed with a blown- away midriff.
As the guests cringed in their seats, in fact, some even turned away from the giant screens around Merdeka Hall, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad knew that it was imperative for us to see the bloody images of war:
‘It is not a pleasant thing to see, these video clips, but then if we do not see these we will not understand the horrors of war. If we don’t understand then we will not be concerned about the facts of these young victims especially, and we will continue to subscribe to the idea that killing people, destroying countries is a legitimate way to solve problems between nations,’ he said.
What dawned on me that night ? besides the generosity of corporate tycoons in Malaysia ? was the fact that, here in our safe cocoon, we are relatively unperturbed by the hostility of war. We bask in our safe haven of domestic stability and economic growth since independence, with no armed conflicts at all save and except for May 13, 1969.
Even May 13 is pale in comparison with the recent wars waged in the Middle East and African countries. But war, by any other name, has a profound effect on helpless women and children.
History and statistics by Amnesty International reveal that war has seen women being oppressed, raped, impregnated and infected with the deadly HIV virus. Children have been reduced to orphans and their basic needs of decent shelter, food and education sorely neglected.
Meanwhile citizens of war-torn countries are being illegally trafficked across the globe as prostitutes, cheap labour or even to facilitate illegal adoption.
The repercussions of armed conflicts robs a nation’s fabric of history and culture. Political upheavals in Afghanistan and Iraq have seen its museums looted, records destroyed and historical books torn apart.
In addition thereto, war is a multifaceted beast extending its formidable arms onto the environment. The residues from firearm and bombing activities cause radiological and chemical pollution which threaten our fragile environment. Millions others face the risk of unexploded ordnance left after the conflict ended.
While we strive to be a developed nation with exemplary social, political and economic platforms, we must never take our country’s peace for granted, for the price of a conflict ? be it political or otherwise ? is just too expensive for us to pay.
World War II American general Dwight D Eisenhower was right when he said: ‘Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
‘This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.
‘Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.’
Make war a crime ? that is the least one could do

This video below should be seen in every home, American and otherwise; it should be on every TV channel, and should be distributed as widely as possible. It is about the WALL of HATE that Israel is constructing. It is so well done, well researched, documenting the atrocities Israel is committing by constructing this wall; by disseminating this video to your friends and your mailing list, you will contribute to rightly ending the conspiracy of silence surrounding the Palestinian ongoing tragedies and perhaps contribute to eventual peace.

Please connect to the Link below, and send it to all your friends and contacts after watching.. Thanks

http://chromovision.com/films/Wall.wmv

Paul Reynolds
World Affairs Correspondent
BBC News Website

Having fought three rather pointless - though at times bitter - little wars over fishing limits, Britain and Iceland have now allowed a problem over British deposits in a failed Icelandic bank to become a crisis.

Instead of two North Atlantic islands who are partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and who both charged into financial danger zones quietly sorting this out, prime ministers have swapped insults. Echoes of those cod wars are heard.

The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has publicly declared Icelandic actions to be “effectively illegal” and “unacceptable” and the Icelandic Prime Minister, Gier Haarde, has expressed his annoyance that the UK used anti-terrorism legislation to seize assets in Britain of the one of the Icelandic banks.

In a situation where people’s money is at stake, one government tends to blame another and vice versa.

The complaint in the present case from the British side is that Iceland was not prepared to compensate UK investors equally but was protecting its domestic savers first. I am told that the case refers only to that of the internet bank Icesave. Britain did not get the assurance it sought that a legal agreement for equal treatment would be honoured.

Icelanders are hurt that the British government acted under the Anti-terrorism Act

The British government therefore decided that it had to take steps to try to protect its own savers and seized assets of Icesave’s parent bank, Landsbanki, in the UK.

It is interesting to note that the tone adopted by Treasury minister Stephen Timms in the House of Commons on Thursday was much milder than that of his prime minister. Mr Timms said the freeze was a “precautionary measure… and could be lifted once safeguards are in place.”

But the damage had been done and will take some repairing.

The Icelanders are hurt that the British government acted under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, specifically Part 2, Article 4.

The Act is in fact very broadly based and says that assets can be frozen in the UK if the Treasury “reasonably believe” that “action to the detriment of the United Kingdom’s economy (or part of it) has been or is likely to be taken by a person or persons, or action constituting a threat to the life or property of one or more nationals of the United Kingdom…”

The person against whom action is taken has to be either a foreign government or resident.

It is not clear why the Act and not another had to be used but one suspects that it was to hand and was quick.

And it shows how an Act designed for one set of circumstances can easily be used for another.

It has come as a surprise to many of us how much British public money was invested in Icelandic banks. An island of 300,000 souls seems to have been supporting not just West Ham United (whose owner is Icelandic) but a great swathe of private and public investors

September 15, 2008 marked the 26th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre. The Perdana Global Peace Organisation mourns this tragedy and along with people throughout the world, we remember and salute the victims of the massacre.

For two fatal days, from September 15 to17 in 1982, Lebanese fascist paramilitaries, with the disgusting consent of the Israeli military occupiers, slaughtered more than 2,000 Palestinian residents of two refugee camps in Beirut. The overwhelming majority of those murdered were women, children and elderly men.

The perpetrators of this war crime, especially members of the Israeli Military, who presided over the massacre, must be brought to justice. It is an affront to peace that these criminals continue to live freely while the victims of the tragedy carry on to suffer.

The Perdana Global Peace Organization recognizes the International Day of Peace as an important event that serves as a benchmark in our arduous journey towards global peace.

We are pleased to be in support of United Nations Resolution 55/282 that declares September 21 of each year to be observed as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence. This is in line with our objectives of criminalising wars and that those involved in the killings in war must be subject to the international law of crimes.

The Perdana Global Peace Organisation will continue to work towards a world without wars, and a vital step towards this is to ensure the war criminals that have killed millions of innocent people in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan in the past decade are arrested and charged with crimes against humanity.

May peace prevail.

The Guardian Online
16 September 2008

Desmond Tutu, the South African Nobel laureate, said yesterday there was a “possibility” Israel had committed a war crime when 18 Palestinians from a single family were killed by Israeli artillery shells in Gaza two years ago.

Tutu said the Israeli attack, which hit the Athamna family house, showed “a disproportionate and reckless disregard for Palestinian civilian life”.

The archbishop presented his comments in a final report to the UN Human Rights Council, which had sent him to Gaza to investigate the killings in Beit Hanoun in November 2006. For 18 months Israel did not grant the archbishop or his team a visa. They entered Gaza in May this year on a rare crossing from Egypt.

On the three-day visit, Tutu and his team visited the house, interviewed the survivors and met others in Gaza, including the senior Hamas figure and former prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh. At the time, Tutu said he wanted to travel to Israel to hear the Israeli account of events, but he was not permitted.

“In the absence of a well-founded explanation from the Israeli military - which is in sole possession of the relevant facts - the mission must conclude that there is a possibility that the shelling of Beit Hanoun constituted a war crime,” Tutu said in his report to the 47-member council.

Tutu also said that rockets fired by Palestinian militants into southern Israel should stop and should be investigated. “Those firing rockets on Israeli civilians are no less accountable than the Israeli military for their actions,” he said.

For the past three months a ceasefire between Israel and the militant groups in Gaza has been in place. It has significantly reduced the number of incidents and the death toll from the conflict there. Israel maintains a tough economic blockade on the territory, restricting imports and banning nearly all exports.

“It is not too late for an independent, impartial and transparent investigation of the shelling to be held,” Tutu said.

He said those responsible for firing the shells should be held accountable, whether the cause of the incident was a mistake or wilful.

After the incident, Israel’s military said the shelling into Beit Hanoun that day was a mistake and was the result of a “rare and severe failure in the artillery fire-control system” which created “incorrect range-findings”. It said the shells had been aimed 450 metres away from the edge of town. No legal action was taken against any officer. However, it is unclear why the artillery was fired so close to a residential area that morning and why shells continued to be fired after the first one hit the Athamna house.

Tutu also said he recommended that Israel pay adequate compensation to the victims “without delay”. His report said “reparation” should also be made to the town of Beit Hanoun itself, and suggested a memorial to the victims would also help the survivors. He suggested a physiotheraphy clinic as one possibility.

The survivors in the family remain bitter and most of the large extended family no longer live in the building. Since the shelling they have received no financial help, apart from a monthly stipend from the Palestinian Authority of £50 for each of the 18 dead.

Aharon Leshno-Yaar, Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, where the Human Rights Council was meeting, rejected Tutu’s report as “another regrettable product of the Human Rights Council”.

“It is regrettable that this mission took place at all,” he added.

Leshno-Yaar said the report gave de facto legitimacy to Hamas, the Islamist movement that won elections in 2006 and then seized full control of Gaza last year. “This does not serve the interests of Israel or the Palestinians or the cause of peace,” he said.

by Jeff Halper

ZNet
8 September 2008

So rapid is the pace of systemic change in that indivisible entity known as Palestine/Israel that it almost defies our ability to keep up with it. The deliberate and systematic campaign of driving Palestinians out of the country in 1948 was quickly forgotten, the plight of more than 700,000 refugees becoming an invisible “non-issue.” Instead a plucky, European, “socialist” Israel became the darling of even the radical left, and for many years after 1967 Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza also remained a non-issue. Even the mention of the word “occupation,” not to mention “Palestinians,” would get you labeled an anti-Semite in a wink of the eye, especially given the identity of Palestinians with terrorism in the 1970s and early ’80s. Only with the outbreak of the first Intifada in late 1987 did the situation of the! Palestinians under Israeli rule show upon the radar of public consciousness, in Israel as elsewhere, becoming a full-fledged and official “issue” with the opening of the Madrid and Oslo peace talks in the early 1990s. Still, Israeli ruled the all-important realm of PR. Once Arafat refused Ehud Barak’s “generous offer” - a mythical proposal which put a positive spin on a blatant attempt to impose an apartheid regime of “cantons” on the Palestinians - the campaign to re-demonize Arafat and his people proved a relatively simple exercise. Sharon’s imprisoning the Palestinian president in a dark room of his demolished headquarters, eliminating him politically, and I believe, physically, raised virtually no major opposition or even criticism in the international community.

Still, a growing movement among civil society groups - human rights and political organizations, church and critical Jewish groups, trade unions, intellectuals and even certain political figures, in Israel as well as abroad - succeeded in the past decade or so in raising the Occupation to the status of global issue. A critical mass of descriptions of Israel’s “facts on the ground, combined with the witness of international activists on the ground and a growing body of analyses critical of Israel’s policies and intent, rendered both the term “occupation” and critiques of it valid in public and political discourse, despite the fact that Israel continued to deny the fact of occupation, casting its rule as one of “administration” over a “disputed territory.”

The rapid expansion of the facts on the ground, however, continued to overtake language and political analysis. An occupation is defined in international law as “a temporary military situation.” While the establishment of more than 200 settlements and outposts in the Occupied Territories, all tied inextricably into Israel proper by a massive network of Israeli-only highways and, ultimately, the Separation Barrier, seemed to indicate that the Occupation was no longer temporary, that it grown into one indivisible system between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, many Palestinians, Israelis and international observers and decision-makers alike, committed to a two-state solution, were loathe to admit the transformation of the Occupation into a permanent state of apartheid. The implications of so doing were simply too daunting. The transformation of the Occupation into a country-wide system of apartheid meant the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish state - unless apartheid could somehow be packaged as a two-state solution, a sleight-of-hand to which many liberal Israeli and Jewish peace groups have succumbed. Nevertheless, slowly, painfully (as Jimmy Carter discovered), the realization that we now have a de facto regime of apartheid over all Israel-Palestine - officially sanctioned if the Annapolis Process succeeds - has begun to sink in, although resistance, even among the Israeli peace movement, is still strong.

Yet no sooner have we begun to shift from occupation to apartheid than political realities, defined in large part by an accelerated Israeli campaign of expanding its facts on the ground, have rendered even that conception, radical only a few months ago, completely outmoded. Signs of this came, fittingly enough, from South Africans who knew the apartheid regime there intimately. While experiences of oppression cannot be compared in any objective way and cannot be minimized, a number of prominent South Africans - most of whom were labeled “terrorists,” a favorite term employed by colonial regimes to discredit indigenous struggles for freedom - have commented that what is happening to the Palestinians goes beyond even the despicable system they lived under. While black South Africans were deprived of their rights, apartheid’s policy of “separate development” did not deny the very existence of black African peoples and nations, as does Israel’s policy of “Judaization.” Demolishing the homes of African blacks was a common policy, but it was never as extensive as Israel’s practice, which has seen some 18,000 Palestinian homes demolished in the Occupied Territories since 1967, on the background of tens of thousands of other within Israel, a policy extending from 1948 until today - ethnic cleansing in a most tangible form. Torture and imprisonment under Israel’s Occupation and more widespread and institutionalized than they were in South Africa, Israeli courts are far less likely to challenge military policies or actions, and the level of violence is far higher: Apache helicopters never strafed Soweto nor were ANC leaders systematically assassinated in their dozens. Even segregation, the very essence of apartheid, is more complete, more institutionalized and more rigorously enforced that it was in South Africa.

Overall, while both peoples suffered extreme economic oppression leading to the impoverishment of their entire populations, the daily repression suffered by Palestinians is on a scale that apparently surpasses that of South Africa in its apartheid days. “The absolute control of people’s lives,” said Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a former deputy minister of defense and of health and a current member of Parliament on a recent visit to the West Bank, “the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere, the total separation and the extensive destruction we saw….What I see here is worse than what we experienced..” Ronnie Kasrils, a Jewish South African cabinet minister and former ANC guerrilla, concurred. “This is much worse than apartheid. The Israeli measures, the brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets attacking our townships. We never had sieges that lasted month after month. We never had tanks destroying houses. We had armoured vehicles and police using small arms to shoot people but not on this scale.” John Dugard, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 to the United Nations Human Rights Council: “Many aspects of Israel’s occupation surpass those of the apartheid regime. Israel’s large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, leveling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in apartheid South Africa. No wall was ever built to separate blacks and whites.” Dugard, a prominent South African judge, wrote in his report to the United Nations Human Rights Council: “Many aspects of Israel’s occupation surpass those of the apartheid regime. Israel’s large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, leveling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in apartheid South Africa. No wall was ever built to separate blacks and whites.”

Apartheid is nevertheless a useful term. It advances the political discussion in that it helps people to “get it,” to understand that we are speaking of a system that has gone beyond occupation in its scale and permanence. Boiled down to its essentials, apartheid comprises two elements: the separation of populations, whether on a racial basis or, in the case of Israel, according to religion or nationality, and the subsequent domination of one privileged people over others, institutionalized into a permanent system, supported by law. Not only do these elements accurately describe the system Israel has instituted over the entire country, Israel and the Occupied Territories included, but the Israeli government itself calls its system apartheid: hafrada in Hebrew, “separation” in English. The wall Israel is constructing is officially named the “Separation Barrier” (Mikhshol HaHafrada), not the “Security Barrier.” Its tortuous route deep into the Palestinian areas of the West Bank, where it incorporates seven major “settlement blocs” into Israel comprising 80% of the settlers, is known as Israel’s “demographic border.” In the end, Israel will expand to about 85% of the country, take all of its resources and elements of sovereignty (such as control of movement and borders), and leave the Palestinian majority to live in a truncated bantustan with no meaningful sovereignty, no freedom and no economy.

Apartheid is linked to occupation in the sense that both are conceived as political situations, as political issues that must be resolved by the parties with the intervention of the international community. Both possess a political dynamic involving grassroots resistance, the mobilizing of public opinion and political forces, appeals to international law, human rights and competing political claims. Israel’s “Occupation,” now more than four decades old, fully entrenched and with no end in sight, appears to have moved beyond both of these systems. It has evolved into a system of warehousing, a static situation emptied of all political content (Israel’s policies are cast as a “war on terrorism” with no reference to occupation, which Israel officially denies having), which Israel is attempting to present as a permanent “given,” a non-issue, a ! state of status quo (another Israeli term for its policy towards the Palestinians) immune to any genuine solution. “What Israel has constructed,” argues Naomi Klein in her powerful new book, The Shock Doctrine, is a system,…a network of open holding pens for millions of people who have been categorized as surplus humanity….Palestinians are not the only people in the world who have been so categorized….This discarding of 25 to 60 percent of the population has been the hallmark of the Chicago School [of Economics] crusade….In South Africa, Russia and New Orleans the rich build walls around themselves. Israel has taken this disposal process a step further: it has built walls around the dangerous poor (p. 442).
Warehousing is the best, if bleakest, term for what Israel is constructing for the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. It is indeed worse than the apartheid-era South African bantustans. The ten non-viable mini-states established by South Africa for the black African majority on only 11% of the country’s land were, to be sure, a type of warehouse. They were intended to supply South Africa with cheap labor while relieving it of its black population, thus making possible a European dominated “democracy.” This is precisely what Israel is intending - its Palestinian Bantustan encompassing 15% of historic Palestine, but with a crucial caveat: Palestinian workers will not be allowed into Israel, which has found a cheaper source of labor, some 300,000 foreign workers imported from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Rumania and West Africa, augmented by its own Arab, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Russian and Eastern European citizens. From every point of view, historically, culturally, politically and economically, the Palestinians have been defined as “surplus humanity;” nothing remains to do with them except warehousing, which the concerned international community appears willing to allow Israel to do.

Not only should the permanent warehousing of an entire people be of concern to the Palestinians and those who support them, it should, as Klein stresses, concern anyone troubled with warehousing as a global phenomenon. In fact, it may constitute an entirely new crime against humanity, one that affects, Klein says, those who have been judged irrevocably superfluous: the urban poor (more than a billion of whom are imprisoned in what Mike David, in his seminal book Planet of Slums, calls global slums), the rural poor, particular minorities, refugees and undocumented immigrants and, most recently, peoples, religions and countries demonized for political purposes as “evil” or “uncivilized.” To the extent that what we call Israel’s “Occupation” is, in fact, a model of warehousing, it has implications far beyond a localized conflict between! two peoples. If Israel can package and export its layered Matrix of Control, a system of permanent repression that combines Kafkaesque administration, law and planning with overtly coercive forms of control over a defined population hemmed in by hostile gated communities (settlements in this case), walls and obstacles of various kinds to movement, then, as Klein writes starkly, every country will look like Israel/Palestine: “One part looks like Israel; the other part looks like Gaza.” In other words, a Global Palestine.

This goes a long way towards explaining why Israel is unconcerned about entering into genuine peace processes or resolving its conflict with the Palestinians. By warehousing them it has the best of both worlds: complete freedom to expand its settlements and control without ever having to compromise, as a political solution would require. By the same token, it explains why the international community lets Israel “get away with it.” Instead of presenting the international community with issues that must be resolved - violations of human rights, international law and repeated UN resolutions, let alone the implications of the conflict itself - it is instead providing a valued service: it is offering a useful model that can applied to “surplus populations” everywhere, including right at home.

Israel, then is in complete sinc with both the economic and military logics of global capitalism, for which it is being rewarded generously. Our mistake, encouraged by such terms as “conflict,” “occupation” and “apartheid,” is to view Israel’s control of the Palestinians as a political issue which must be resolved. Instead, it will be “resolved” when the Palestinians are “disappeared,” just as people were “disappeared” in Latin American under its military regimes. Dov Weisglass, the architect of the Sharon government’s “disengagement” from Gaza, said as much in a revealing interview (”The Big Freeze,” Ha’aretz Magazine, Oct. 8, 2004):

The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president’s formula [that Israel can retain its settlement “blocs,” including a Greater Jerusalem] so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that’s necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.

Is what you are saying, then, is that you exchanged the strategy of a long-term interim agreement for a strategy of long-term interim situation?

The American term is to park conveniently. The disengagement plan makes it possible for Israel to park conveniently in an interim situation that distances us as far as possible from political pressure. It legitimizes our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians. There is a decision here to do the minimum possible in order to maintain our political situation. The decision is proving itself. It is making it possible for the Americans to go to the seething and simmering international community and say to them, “What do you want.” It also transfers the initiative to our hands. It compels the world to deal with our idea, with the scenario we wrote….

Warehousing is the most stark of political concepts because it represents the de-politization of repression, the transformation of a political issue of the first degree into a non-issue, a regrettable but unavoidable situation best dealt with through relief, charity and humanitarian programs. It is a dead-end, a “given,” for which no remedy is available. This, of course, is not the case. Warehousing is a policy, an economic and political consequence that can be addressed to the degree that a just “structural adjustment” is made to the system, including the possibility of replacing it if it proves recalcitrant. Using the term “warehousing,” then, is not meant to name the final stage of repression but, rather, to highlight it so as to better eliminate it. For despite the almost unlimited and unchecked power Israel has over every element of Palestinian life, it has failed to nail down either apartheid or warehousing. Palestinian resistance continues, supported by the Arab and wider Muslim peoples, significant sectors of the international civil society and the critical Israeli peace camp; the conflict’s destabilizing effect on the international system grows steadily; and neither the Israelis nor the Americans (with European complicity) can force the outcome they seek, despite their overwhelming power.

The term “warehousing,” then, is meant as a warning. We must continue our efforts to end the Israeli Occupation, even if this is meant in a wider sense, of creating a genuine Palestine/Israel, or a wider regional confederation, rather than an apartheid-cum-two-state solution or outright warehousing. Yet looking at Palestine as a microcosm of a broader global reality of warehousing enables us to more effectively identify those elements appearing elsewhere and grasp the model which Israel is developing, all the better to counter it. Regardless, our language and the analysis it generates must not only be honest and unsparing; they must keep pace with political intentions and ever more rapidly developing “facts on the ground.”

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Jeff Halper is the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.

Web link
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18750

www.independent.co.uk
7 September 2008

The Israeli Attorney General has been urged to launch a criminal investigation into whether Shaul Mofaz, a leading prime ministerial candidate, ordered “war crimes” to be committed when he was the military’s chief of staff.

A leading Israeli law professor has written to justice officials, calling for the investigation into claims ? highlighted by The Independent last month ? that during a briefing to army officers in May 2001, after the start of the second Palestinian uprising, Mr Mofaz ordered a daily “quota” of Palestinian deaths.

Last night, Israeli police recommended to prosecutors that the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, be indicted in a corruption investigation. With Mr Olmert committed to resigning after his Kadima party holds a leadership vote a week today, the recommendation will have no immediate impact on his tenure and does not guarantee an indictment by the Attorney General.

The Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, is the front-runner in the contest for the leadership of Kadima. Mr Mofaz, the Deputy Prime Minister, is his main rival.

David Kretzmer, emeritus professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that accounts of the briefing by Mr Mofaz give rise “to a grave suspicion” that he “committed serious offences, some of which at least, fall into the category of war crimes”.

The letter to the Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz, refers to a book by two Israeli journalists, Raviv Drucker and Ofer Shelah, which says that Mr Mofaz, after ensuring he was not being officially recorded, called for a Palestinian death toll of 70 per day.

Professor Kretzmer tells Mr Mazuz that one lesson of the corruption inquiry into Mr Olmert is that it is best to investigate candidates for high office before they reach it. “Otherwise the public is liable to be exposed once more to the disgrace of having police officers arrive at the Prime Minister’s official residence in order to interrogate him.”

Police have urged Mr Mazuz to indict Mr Olmert on two counts ? that he funded personal trips abroad for himself and his family with money secured by the multiple billing of public organisations, and another arising out of claims by a US businessman, Morris Talansky, that he illegally used political donations for personal expenditure. It is up to Mr Mazuz to decide if Mr Olmert should be indicted.

The Shelah/Drucker book, Boomerang: The Failure Of Leadership In The Second Intifada, says that while Mr Mofaz’s alleged instruction caused disquiet among some senior officers, a Hebron district commander said that the subsequent fatal shooting of a Palestinian policeman was in accordance with the briefing.

Professor Kretzmer, who also holds a senior academic post at the University of Ulster, says that an order to kill people “by quota” is “not consistent with the norms of humanitarian law”, and that the test of proportionality is especially relevant in cases of military occupation, in which even the actions of armed groups do not “relieve the Army of its obligations to residents of the territory”.

The letter cites reports in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2001 and 2002 which, he says, raise suspicions that Mr Mofaz ordered officers to shoot at every armed Palestinian regardless of the threat posed to Israeli forces.

It points out that at the start of hostilities in 2000, Palestinian police in particular were armed by agreement with the Israeli government, that the military had insisted the conflict was with armed groups and not against the Palestinian Authority or people, and that the Geneva Conventions prohibited killing people not taking part in hostilities.

Noting that countries are obliged to investigate grave breaches of the conventions, he warns that if the Israeli authorities do not do so, “there is a fear that it may be carried out by the authorities of another country”.

Professor Kretzmer has been told his letter has been passed to “relevant persons” in the justice ministry who will read it. A ministry spokesman said this did not mean that it accepted there was a case against Mr Mofaz, or that an investigation would be launched, and it was normal that “any complaint or letter” was studied before a reply was drafted. There was no response from Mr Mofaz’s office.

In 2002, while Mr Mofaz was visiting Britain, the British lawyer Imran Khan, representing a group of Palestinians, presented the Director of Public Prosecutions with claims of other war crimes by Mr Mofaz, including targeted assassinations and the demolition of Palestinian homes. While Mr Khan claimed the DPP had passed the file to Scotland Yard’s “crimes against humanity” section, no action was taken before Mr Mofaz departed